276. People who think their own intelligence could develop concepts of God, heaven and hell, and the spiritual things that the church teaches do not realize that our earthly self is intrinsically opposed to our spiritual self. Our earthly self tries either to uproot any spiritual things that come in or else to cover them in false concepts that are like grubs that devour the roots of vegetables and grains.

People like this could be compared to people who dream that they are sitting on eagles and soaring on high, or sitting on Pegasuses and flying over Mount Parnassus toward Mount Helicon, while they are actually like Lucifers in hell who nevertheless still call themselves children of the dawn (Isaiah 14:12).

They are like the people of the valley in the land of Shinar who set out to build a tower whose top would reach to heaven (Genesis 11:2, 4). They are as confident in themselves as Goliath, not foreseeing that they could be laid out, as he was, by a single stone driven by a sling into their forehead.

I should say what outcome awaits them after death. They first become like drunks, then silly, and finally brainless, and they sit in the dark. Be wary therefore of insanity like this.