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

AFTERLIFE
involved in the punishment of the evil as well. Still, no
one suffers any punishment for evil things done in the
world, only for current evil deeds. It boils down to the
same thing, though, and makes no difference whether you
say that we suffer punishments because of our evil deeds in
the world or that we suffer punishments because of our
evil deeds in the other life, because after death we all
return to our life, which means that we are involved in the
same kinds of evil. This is because our nature is deter -
mined by the kind of physical life we led.
The reason they are punished is that fear of punishment
is the only means of taming their evils in that state.
Encour agement does not work any more, or teaching or
fear of the law or fear for their reputation, because they are
acting from their nature, which cannot be compelled or
broken by anything but punishments.
Good spirits are never punished, though, even though
they have done bad things in the world. This is because
their evils do not come back. I have also been granted a
knowl edge that their evils are of a different kind or nature.
They do not stem from any deliberate resistance to what
is true, and they are not from any evil heart except the one
they acquired by heredity from their parents, which blind
pleasure drove them into when they were involved in
outward concerns separated from inner ones.
Every individual comes to the community where her or
his spirit was in the world. Each of us, as to spirit, is actu -
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