Heaven and Hell - Swedenborg Foundation

HEAVEN AND HELL 278
they are harassed by the fantasies into which their falsities are
turned. Their infernal fire is a lust for glory and reputation,
which prompts them to assail one another, and from an
infernal ardor to torment those about them who do not
worship them as deities; and this they do one to another in
turns. Into such things is all the learning of the world changed
that has not received into itself light from heaven through
acknowledgment of the Divine.
355. That these are such in the spiritual world when they
come into it after death may be inferred from this alone, that
all things that are in the natural memory and are in immediate
conjunction with the things of bodily sense (which is true of
such knowledges as are mentioned above) then become
quiescent; and only such rational principles as are drawn from
these then serve for thought and speech. For man carries with
him his entire natural memory, but its contents are not then
under his view, and do not come into his thought as when he
lived in the world. He can take nothing from that memory and
bring it forth into spiritual light because its contents are not
objects of that light. But those things of the reason and
understanding that man has acquired from knowledges while
living in the body are in accord with the light of the spiritual
world; consequently so far as the spirit of man has been made
rational in the world through knowledge and science it is to the
same extent rational after being loosed from the body; for man
is then a spirit, and it is the spirit that thinks in the body. 231
356. But in respect to those that have acquired intelligence
and wisdom through knowledge and science, who are such as
have applied all things to the use of life, and have also
231. Knowledges belong to the natural memory that man has while he
is in the body (n. 5212, 9922). Man carries with him after death his whole
natural memory (n. 2475) from experience (n. 2481–2486). But he is not
able, as he was in the world, to draw anything out of that memory, for several
reasons (n. 2476, 2477, 2479).