§302 heaven’s union with us 161
e. People who do not have a conscience do not know what a conscience is: 7490 , 9121. There are
even people who laugh at conscience when they hear that it exists: 7217. Some people believe that
conscience is nothing, some that it is a kind of natural, distressing sadness that arises either from
events in the body or events in the world, and some that it is something common people get from
their religion: 950. There is a true conscience, an imitation conscience, and a false conscience:
1033. Pangs of conscience are an anxiety of mind because of anything unjust, dishonest, and evil
that we believe to be contrary to God and contrary to the welfare of our neighbor: 7217. People
who are in love for God and charity toward their neighbor have conscience, but not people who
are not: 831 , 965 , 2380 , 7490.
love half-digested and noxious substances like the foods that are becom-
ing excrement in the stomach, so they attach themselves to the same sort
of matter in us, because they fi nd delight in it; and they talk with each
other there out of their evil affection. The emotional tone of their con-
versation fl ows into us, and since it is contrary to our affection, it brings
about a sadness and an anxious depression; while if it agrees with our
affection, it brings about a sense of happiness and exhilaration. These
spirits can be seen in the neighborhood of the stomach, some on the left
and some on the right, some lower and some higher, nearer or farther
away—variously depending on the affections they are involved in. A
great deal of experience has convinced me that they are the source of our
anxiety of spirit. I have seen them, heard them, felt the anxieties that well
up from them. I have talked with them, they have been driven off and
the anxiety has ceased, they have come back and the anxiety has returned,
I have observed its increase and decrease as they drew near and moved
away. It has become clear to me, then, where that anxiety originates that
is blamed on a stomachache by people who do not know what conscience
is because they do not have any.e
Heaven’s union with us is not like the union of one person with 300
another, but is a union with the deeper levels of our minds and therefore
with our spiritual or inner person. There is, though, a union with our
natural or outer person by correspondences, which union will be dis-
cussed in the next chapter when I deal with heaven’s union with us by
means of the Word.
I will also explain in the next chapter that heaven’s union with us and 301
our union with it are of such a nature that each relies on the other.
I have talked with angels about the union of heaven with the human 302
race and have told them that church people actually do say that every-
thing good is from the Lord and that there are angels with us, but few
people really believe that angels are so close to us, much less that they are