Heaven and Hell - Swedenborg Foundation

HEAVEN AND HELL 398
infinite variety. It is impossible for any one delight to be
exactly like another, or the same as another, either those that
follow one after another or those that exist together at the same
time, no one ever being the same as another. Nevertheless, the
particular delights in everyone have reference to his one love,
which is his ruling love, for they compose it and thus make one
with it. Likewise all delights in general have reference to one
universally ruling love, which in heaven is love to the Lord, and
in hell is the love of self.
487. Only from a knowledge of correspondences can it be
known what spiritual delights everyone’s natural delights are
changed into after death, and what kind of delights they are. In
general, this knowledge teaches that nothing natural can exist
without something spiritual corresponding to it. In particular it
teaches what it is that corresponds, and what kind of a thing it
is. Therefore, anyone that has this knowledge can ascertain and
know what his own state after death will be, if he only knows
what his love is, and what its relation is to the universally
ruling loves spoken of above, to which all loves have relation.
But it is impossible for those who are in the love of self to
know what their ruling love is, because they love what is their
own, and call their evils goods; and the falsities that they
incline to and by which they confirm their evils they call
truths. And yet if they were willing they might know it from
others who are wise, and who see what they themselves do not
see. This, however, is impossible with those who are so enticed
by the love of self that they spurn all teaching of the wise.
[2] On the other hand, those who are in heavenly love accept
instruction, and as soon as they are brought into the evils into
which they were born, they see them from truths, for truths
make evils manifest. From truth which is from good anyone
can see evil and its falsity; but from evil none can see what is
good and true; and for the reason that falsities of evil are
darkness and correspond to darkness; consequently those that
are in falsities from evil are like the blind, not seeing the things
that are in light, but shunning them instead like birds of