Afterlife: A Guided Tour of Heaven and Its Wonders - Swedenborg ...

Hell
denied or rejected them at heart, then after some conver -
sa tion we want to get away from them and try to leave.
When the angels notice this, they leave us. After spend -
ing some time with various other people, we even tually
take up with people who are devoted to similar evils.
When this happens, we are turning away from the Lord
and turn ing our faces toward the hell we were united to in
the world, where people live who are engaged in a similar
love of evil.
We can see from this that the Lord is leading every spirit
toward himself through angels and through an inflow
from heaven, but that spirits who are absorbed in evil
resist strenuously and virtually tear themselves away from
the Lord. They are drawn by their evil—by hell, that is, as
though it were a rope; and because they are drawn and
want to follow because of their love of evil, it follows that
they freely cast themselves into hell.
This is hard to believe in the world because of people’s
notions about hell. In fact, it does not even look that way
in the other life.
Evil spirits are punished severely in the world of spirits
to keep them terrified of doing evil. This too seems to
come from the Lord, but still no punishment there does
come from the Lord. It comes from the evil itself, since an
evil is so closely united to its punishment that they cannot
be separated. The hellish mob craves and loves nothing
more than inflicting harm, especially punishing and tor -
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