301. As regards the second arcanum, if they had been instructed in mysteries of faith they would have perished for ever, meant by the words 'Now by chance he will put out his hand and also take from the tree of life ¹ and eat, and live forever', the position is this: Once people have become reversed orders of life and are unwilling to rely on anything but self and the proprium as the source of their life and wisdom, they are given to reasoning as to whether any matter of faith which they hear about is so or not so. And because self, sensory evidence, and facts are the basis of their reasoning, they inevitably adopt a negative attitude. And when their attitude is negative they also speak blasphemy and practise profanation, and at length do not care whether or not they mingle together unholy things with holy. When man becomes such he stands so condemned in the next life that there is no hope of salvation for him, for the things that have been mingled through acts of profanation remain that way permanently. The moment some idea of what is holy enters in, so does the idea joined to it of what is unholy, and this makes it impossible for that person to live in any but a community of people who are condemned. Anything at all that has been joined to, and is present as, an idea within a person's thought is in the next life perceived very precisely even by spirits in the world of spirits, but more so by angelic spirits. It is perceived so precisely that from merely one idea they know his whole character. Getting rid of unholy things such as are joined on to those that are holy is not possible without hellish torment, which is so intense that if man knew about it he would beware of profanation as of hell itself.

Footnotes:

The sun in the Bible represents the Lord, with its heat representing His love and its light representing His wisdom. “Daytime,” then, represents a state in which we are turned toward the Lord, receiving His love and being enlightened by His truth. And “nighttime,” obviously, represents states in which we are turned away from the Lord, left cold and blind to the truth. The most common word used for it in the New Christian theology is “obscurity.” The darkness is not absolute, of course. The light of the moon represents the understanding we can have based on facts and our own intelligence. But while the moon reflects some of the sun's light, it offers almost no heat, so this kind of understanding is a cold one, without the warmth of love. And at its darkest and coldest, night represents a state of judgment. This happens when a person -- or a church -- becomes so mired in evil and falsity that there is no light or heat. The Lord can then step in, separate the good from the evil, consign the evil to hell and begin rebuilding based on the remnant that is still good. Drastic as that sounds, it is something that we all go through repeatedly in various aspects of our loves, so that we can be rid of what is evil and let the Lord rebuild us as angels.