477. There is a dominant love that remains with each of us after death and never changes to eternity. We all have many loves, but they all go back to our dominant love and form a single whole with it, or compose it in the aggregate. All the elements of our volition that agree with our dominant love are called loves because they are loved. There are deeper and more superficial loves, loves that are directly united and loves that are indirectly united; there are closer and more distant ones; there are loves that serve in various ways. Taken all together they make a kind of kingdom. They are actually arranged in this way within us even though we are utterly unaware of their arrangement. However, the arrangement becomes visible to some extent in the other life because the outreach of our thoughts and affections there depends on it. The outreach is into heavenly communities if our dominant love is made up of loves of heaven, but it is into hellish communities if our dominant love is made up of loves of hell.

On the outreach into communities of all the thought and affection of spirits and angels, see the previous chapters on the wisdom of heaven's angels and on heaven's form, which determines its gatherings and communications [265-275, 200-212].

32. I should like to add to this chapter a secret of heaven which was mentioned in HEAVEN AND HELL, but not before this described. Each person is after death attached to a community, and this happens as soon as he reaches the spiritual world (see 427-497). But while he is in his first state he is unaware of this, for he is then still occupied with his external concerns and has not yet become aware of his internal ones. While he is in this state, he wanders here and there, wherever the desires of his character take him. But he is still really where his love is, that is to say, in the community of those who share his love.

[2] While a spirit is in such a state, he is to be seen in many different places, apparently present in each in bodily form; but this is no more than an appearance. As soon therefore as he is brought by the Lord into his dominant love, he vanishes at once from the eyes of others, and finds himself in the community to which he is attached. This is a special feature of the spiritual world and surprises those who are unaware of the reason. This then is why, as soon as spirits are collected together and separated from others, they are also judged, and each immediately finds his own place, the good in heaven and in company with their own people there, the wicked in hell and in company with their own people there.

[3] This is another proof that the Last Judgment can only take place in the spiritual world, both because each person there is a likeness of the way he has lived, and because he is associated with those who share a similar way of life, so he is with his own people. The case is different in the natural world; there the good and the wicked can be together without one knowing what the other is like, nor are they mutually separated depending upon the love that governs their lives. Nor indeed can anyone with a natural body be in heaven or in hell. So to reach either destination he must shed his natural body, and after this be judged in his spiritual body. This is why, as was said before, it is the spiritual, not the natural man who is judged.