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

AFTERLIFE
spir itual thought. They also immerse them in the thickets
of the cares of the world. It is different once the spirit has
been freed from the body and has arrived at its own spir -
itual state, which happens when it crosses from the nat -
ural world to the spiritual world that is appropriate to it.
The level of wisdom and intelligence for angels is also
the level of malice and craft among hellish spirits. The
issue is much the same because once the human spirit is
freed from its body it devotes itself wholly to its virtue or
to its vice. An angelic spirit devotes itself to its virtue and
a hellish spirit to its vice. This means that just as angelic
spirits think and intend and speak and act from their
good, so hellish spirits do the same from their evil. It was
different while they were living in the flesh because then
the evil of their spirits was under the restraints that apply
to all because of the law, or because of money, position,
reputation, and their fears of losing these things. So the
evil of their spirits could not break out and show itself in
its true colors. Further, the evil of their spirit then lurked
hidden by veils of outward integrity, honesty, fairness, and
affection for what is true and good, qualities that such peo -
ple presented and simulated in their speech for worldly
reasons. All the while, the evil remained so hidden and
veiled that they themselves scarcely knew that there was
so much malice and craft in their spirits, that they were
therefore intrinsically the very devils they would become
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