6626. I will also mention an astonishing phenomenon. The Lord alone is human, and angels, spirits, and the inhabitants of the earth are called human from him. By his inflow into heaven, he causes the whole of heaven to represent and replicate a single human being. Moreover, by his inflow both through heaven and directly from himself into every individual there, he gives everyone a human appearance; and he gives angels a form too beautiful and too radiant to describe. His inflow into the spirit of a person on earth has the same effect. In fact, in angels, spirits, and people who live lives of charity for their neighbor and of love for the Lord, the very slightest bits of their thought also resemble a human being. That is because such charity and love come from the Lord, and whatever comes from the Lord resembles a human being. These are the same qualities that make us human.
Hell’s inhabitants, on the other hand, adopt qualities opposed to charity and heavenly love, so although they look human in their own illumination, in heaven’s light they resemble dreadful monsters. Some of these monsters display almost no sign of the human form. That is because the inhabitants there do not accept what flows in from the Lord through heaven but reject, snuff out, or corrupt it. That is why they look the way they do. The slightest bits of their thought, or their individual ideas, likewise display a monstrous shape, because everyone is the same in part as in whole. The part and the whole are of the same type and nature.
The form in which hell’s inhabitants appear is also the form of the hell they inhabit. Every hell has its own form, which in heaven’s light resembles a monster. When the inhabitants of a hell appear, the identity of the hell they come from is recognized from their form. I saw them standing in some gates that lay open to the world of spirits, and they resembled a wide variety of monsters. (On the point that the gates of hell open into the world of spirits, see §5852.)
END OF GENESIS
