112. All this shows that if we are to be cleansed from our compulsions to do evil, it is absolutely necessary that the evils be banished from our outer self. Until that happens, there is no vent for our compulsions, and if there is no vent, then they remain pent up inside, breathing out their pleasures and urging us to consent and then to act. Our inner compulsions enter our bodies through our outer thought processes; so the moment there is consent in our outer thought processes, the compulsions are present in our bodies. That is the locus of the pleasure that we feel. (On the quality of the mind determining that of the body and therefore the whole person, see Divine Love and Wisdom 362-370.)

I may illustrate this by comparisons and by examples.

[2] As for comparisons, we can compare our compulsions and their pleasures to a fire that burns more intensely the more it is fed and that spreads wider the more room it is given, until it destroys the houses in a city or the trees in a forest. In fact, our compulsions for what is evil are compared to fire in the Word, and the evils they cause are compared to destruction by fire. Then too, in the spiritual world our cravings for evil and their pleasures look like fires. That is exactly what hellfire is.

We can also compare them to the deluges and floods that happen when dikes or levees are breached, or to cases of gangrene or abscesses that cause physical death if they spread or are not healed.

[3] As for examples, it is obvious that if evils are not banished from our outer self, the compulsions and their pleasures will increase dramatically. The more thieves steal, the more obsessed they are with stealing until eventually they cannot help themselves. It is the same with the cheating of cheaters, with hatred and vengefulness, with hedonism and gluttony, with promiscuity, blasphemy, and the like. Everyone knows that a love of power for self-aggrandizement grows to the extent that restraints are relaxed, and the same holds for a love of possessions for worldly reasons. It seems as though there were no limit to them, no end.

We can see from all this that to the extent that evils are not banished from our outer self, their compulsions flourish, and that as restraints on evil behavior are relaxed, the compulsions intensify.