622. The second memorable occurrence. People's preparation for heaven occurs in the world of spirits, which is midway between heaven and hell. Once the time of their preparation has come to an end, they are all seized with an intense longing for heaven. Soon their eyes are opened and they see a pathway to a community in heaven. They take this pathway and make their ascent. At the top they come to a gated entrance with a guard. The guard opens the gate and allows them in. Then someone stops them for questioning and passes on word from the governor that they are to go farther into the community and look around to see whether there are any homes there that they recognize as their own. (There is a new home for every newly arrived angel.) If they find their home, they stay there and send a report back to that effect. If they do not find a home there, they go back and say that they did not see one. In that case, a wise person explores whether the light they have agrees with the light in that community, and especially whether the heat they have is the same. In essence, the light in heaven is divine truth and the heat is divine goodness. Both of them emanate from the Lord, who is the sun there. If the new arrivals have a different light and heat than that community has, that is, if they have a different truth and goodness, they are not accepted there. They leave and travel along pathways that are open between communities in heaven until they find a community that is in complete harmony with the feelings in their hearts. That is their home forever, because there they are among their own people, who are like relatives and friends that they love with all their heart because they share the same passions. There they experience the happiness that makes them most alive and their heart fills with delight because their soul is at peace. The intense pleasure of the heat and light of heaven cannot be expressed in words. Angels share that joy with each other. This is what happens to people who become angels.

[2] People who are involved in evils and falsities are given permission to go up to heaven as well; but when they enter it they begin to gasp and struggle for breath. Soon their vision blurs, their intellect shuts down and their thinking comes to a stop, and they feel as though they are looking death in the face, so they stand there stock-still. Then they start to have heart palpitations and chest pains, and their mind is overcome with agony and an ever increasing torment. By that point they are writhing like a snake placed too close to a fire. They roll themselves away and hurl themselves over a cliff that appears at that moment; they do not stop moving until they are in hell among people like themselves where they can take a deep breath and where their heart can again beat at its own rhythm.

After that they hate heaven, they reject the truth, and they have a blasphemous ill will toward the Lord, because they believe that he was responsible for the torture and torment they suffered in heaven.

[3] From these few sentences you can see what outcome awaits people who regard the truths that relate to faith as worthless (even though those truths constitute the light that angels have in heaven) and who regard good actions that come from love and goodwill as worthless (even though those good actions constitute the vital heat that angels have in heaven).

You can also see how seriously mistaken it is to believe that everyone can enjoy the bliss of heaven once she or he is allowed in. Nevertheless there is a belief today that getting into heaven is just a matter of mercy; and that getting into heaven is just like going to a wedding reception in this world and experiencing joy and happiness there.

People need to know that in the spiritual world, whatever desires you feel as a result of what you love and whatever thoughts they lead to are shared with everyone, because you will then be spirits, and desires related to love and the thoughts that result are the life of the spirit. Compatible desires bring people together and incompatible desires drive them apart; and incompatibility of that kind causes torment. A devil experiences this torment in heaven and an angel experiences it in hell. Therefore spirits are appropriately separated from each other based on all the varieties and diversities and differences in the desires they have as a result of what they love.

184. You can clearly tell that a trinity of gods dwells in the minds of Christians - although out of shame they would never say so - by the way many of them ingeniously demonstrate that three are one and one is three. They use various phenomena in plane geometry, solid geometry, arithmetic, and physics, as well as folding pieces of clothing and pieces of paper. Like a bunch of clowns, they horse around with the divine Trinity.

Their clowning is like people's eyesight when they have a fever: they see one object, be it a person, a table, or a candle, as three objects, or three objects as one. It is like the trick people play by softening wax in their fingers and pressing it into different shapes. First they make a three-sided shape to show the trinity; then they make a ball to show the unity, and they say, "Isn't the substance one and the same?"

Truly, though, the divine Trinity is like the pearl of great price [Matthew 13:46]. Dividing the Trinity into persons is like cutting a pearl into three parts: it completely destroys the pearl.