154. Nothing evil or false can possibly exist that is not our own and the product of our "autonomy." Human selfhood is wickedness itself, and consequently a human being is nothing but evil and falsity.

This fact has stood out whenever I have seen people's intrinsic characteristics presented visually in the world of spirits. ¹ The sight is as ugly as any a painter could paint — with variations, according to the nature of the particular personality involved. It is so hideous that the individual whose traits are being displayed shudders at herself or himself and wants to run, as if from the Devil. ²

When the Lord gives life to our intrinsic characteristics, though, they look lovely and beautiful — with variations, depending on the particular life involved and the heavenly quality the Lord can add to it. Those provided with charity, or enlivened by it, look like boys and girls with strikingly beautiful faces. Those for whom the quality is innocence look like toddlers, naked but decked out in different ways, with flower garlands around their chests or tiaras on their heads, living at play in diamond-bright air, attuned to the happiness that wells up from deep within.

Footnotes:

2299. The principal way of teaching children is through representative scenes suited to their frame of mind. No one could ever believe how beautiful and how full of inner wisdom these scenes are. Bit by bit they instill in the children an intelligence that takes its soul from goodness.

Let me report here just a single portrayal that I was permitted to see, from which the reader may draw conclusions about the others. [Teachers] represented how the Lord rose from the tomb and at the same time how he united his humanity with his divinity. The scene was performed with a wisdom surpassing all human wisdom and at the same time with childlike innocence. They also presented the image of a tomb. They did not present an image of the Lord along with it, except for one that was so abstract it could hardly be seen as the Lord except at a distance, so to speak. The reason was that the image of a tomb brings with it something having to do with death that they could push to the side in this way.

[2] Later, very carefully, they allowed into the tomb a thin, vapory-looking atmosphere, by which they symbolized–again at a fitting distance–the spiritual life present in baptism.

Afterward I saw them represent the Lord going down to the prisoners and taking them up to heaven, a scene they produced with incomparable skill and reverence. When they represented the Lord among the prisoners in the underground realm, for the sake of the children they let down tiny, soft, very delicate little threads, almost invisible, with which they helped lift the Lord as he rose. All the time they felt a holy fear, not wanting any part of their portrayal to border on what was not spiritual and heavenly.

The children experience other types of representation too, which lead them into a knowledge of truth and a desire for goodness, just as child's play does when it is suited to their temperament.