The cause of these equilibriums is to be found in the fact that the same Divine goods and Divine truths that the angels in the heavens receive from the Lord, the spirits in the hells turn into evils and falsities.  All angels, spirits, and men are kept by the Lord in equilibrium between good and evil, and thus between truth and falsity, in order that they may be in freedom; and thus may be led from evil to good and from falsity to truth easily and as if by themselves, although in fact they are led by the Lord.  For the same reason they are led in freedom from good to evil, and from truth to falsity, and this, too, as if by themselves, although the leading is from hell. (A.E., n. 1043.)

II.  The First Kind of Profanation

Profanations are of many kinds.  The most grievous kind is when one acknowledges and lives according to the truths and goods of the Word, of the church, and of worship, and afterward denies them and lives contrary to them, or even lives contrary to them and does not deny them.  Such profanation effects a conjunction and coherence of good with falsity, and of truth with evil, and from this it comes to pass that man is at the same time in heaven and in hell; consequently, when heaven wills to have its own, and hell wills to have its own, and yet they cohere, they are both swept away, and thus the proper human life perishes, and the man becomes like a brute animal, continually delirious, and carried hither and thither by fantasy like a dragon in the air, and in his fantasy shreds and specks appear like giants and crowds, and a little platter like the universe; and so on.

As such have no longer any human life they are not called spirits, but something profane, nor are they called he or she, but it; and when they are seen in the light of heaven they appear like dried skeletons.  But this kind of profanation is rare, since the Lord provides against a man’s entering into a belief in truth and a life of good unless he can be kept in them continually even to the end of his life. (A.E., n. 1047.)

It has been said that the most grievous kind of profanation is when the truths of the Word are acknowledged in faith and confirmed in the life, and man afterward recedes from faith and lives wickedly, or if he does not recede from faith he nevertheless lives wickedly.  But one who is in faith and in a life according to it from childhood to youth, and afterward in adult age recedes from faith and from a life of faith, does not profane, for the reason that the faith of childhood is a faith of the memory, and is the master’s faith in the child; while the faith of adult age is a faith of the understanding, and thus a man’s own faith.  This faith a man can profane if he recedes from it and lives contrary to it, but not the former.  For nothing enters the life of a man and affects it except what comes into the understanding and from that into the will; and a man does not think from his own understanding and act from his own will until he arrives at adult age.  Before that he has thought merely from knowledge and acted merely from obedience; and this does not make a part of his life, and therefore cannot be profaned.