him wisdom, and by wisdom love; but he that looks
backward from the Lord receives love and not wisdom;
and love without wisdom, is love from man and not from
the Lord; and this love, since it conjoins itself
with falses, does not acknowledge God, but acknowledges
itself for God, and confirms this tacitly by the faculty
of understanding and growing wise implanted in it
from creation as from itself; wherefore this love is
the origin of evil. That this is the case, will
admit of ocular demonstration. I will call hither
some wicked spirit who turns himself from God, and
will speak to him from behind, or into the hinder
part of the head, and you will see that the things
which are said are turned into their contraries.”
I called such a spirit and he presented himself, and
I spoke to him from behind and said, “Do you
know anything about hell, damnation, and torment in
hell?” And presently, when he was turned to me,
I asked him what he heard? He said, “I
heard, ’Do you know anything concerning heaven,
salvation, and happiness in heaven?’” and
afterwards when the latter words were said to him
from behind, he said that he heard the former.
It was next said to him from behind, “Do you
know that those who are in hell are insane from falses?”
and when I asked him concerning these words what he
heard, he said, “I heard, ’Do you know
that those who are in heaven are wise from truths?’”
and when the latter words were spoken to him from
behind, he said that he heard, “Do you know that
those who are in hell, are insane from falses?”
and so in other instances: from which it evidently
appears, that when the mind turns itself from the
Lord, it turns to itself, and then it perceives things
contrary. “This, as you know, is the reason
why, in this spiritual world, no one is allowed to
stand behind another, and to speak to him; for thereby
there is inspired into him a love, which his own intelligence
favors and obeys for the sake of its delight; but since
it is from man, and not from God, it is a love of
evil, or a love of the false. In addition to
the above, I will relate to you another similar circumstance.
On certain occasions I have heard goods and truths
let down from heaven into hell; and in hell they were
progressively turned into their opposites, good into
evil, and truth into the false; the cause of this,
the same as above, because all in hell turn themselves
from the Lord.” On hearing these two things
the two angels thanked me, and said, “As you
are now meditating and writing concerning a love opposite
to our conjugial love, and the opposite to that love
makes our minds sad, we will depart;” and when
they said, “Peace be unto you,” I besought
them not to mention that love to their brethren and
sisters in heaven, because it would hurt their innocence.
I can positively assert that those who die infants,
grow up in heaven, and when they attain the stature
which is common to young men of eighteen years old
in the world, and to maidens of fifteen years, they
remain of that stature; and further, that both before
marriage and after it, they are entirely ignorant
what adultery is, and that such a thing can exist.