§550 evil spirits choose hell 333
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. It looks differ-
ent for people who are outside of hell, though not to the people who are
actually casting themselves in. They are entering voluntarily, and the ones
who are doing so out of a burning desire for evil look as though they were
diving in headfi rst. This is why it looks as though they were being thrown
into hell by divine power. There will be more on this below (see § 574 ).
We can now see that the Lord does not throw anyone into hell. We
throw ourselves in, not only while we are living in this world but after
death as well, when we arrive among spirits.
The reason the Lord cannot treat everyone alike from his divine 549
essence, which is goodness, love, and mercy, is that our evil and false
preoccupations stand in the way, not only blunting his divine infl ow but
even rejecting it. These evil and false proclivities are like black clouds
that stand between the sun and our eyes and deprive us of the clear sun-
light. All the while, the sun is trying to dispel the clouds. It is behind
them, working away, and in the meantime a little hazy light does get
through to our eyes by various detours. It is much the same in the spiri-
tual world. The sun there is the Lord and divine love (see §§ 116 – 140 ), the
light there is divine truth (§§ 126 – 140 ). The black clouds there are falsi-
ties from evil, the eye there is our ability to discern. To the extent that
we are absorbed in malevolent falsity, there is a cloud around us whose
blackness and density depends on the level of our evil. We can see from
this simile that the Lord’s presence with everyone is constant, but that
our acceptance varies.
Evil spirits are punished severely in the world of spirits to keep them 550
terrifi ed 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 infl icting
harm, especially punishing and torturing, and they do infl ict harm and
punishment on anyone who is not being protected by the Lord. So when
something evil is being done from an evil heart, since this rejects any pro-
tection by the Lord, evil spirits assail the evildoer and infl ict punishment.
To some extent, this can be illustrated by evil deeds and their pun-
ishments in the world, where they are also united. The laws here set pen-
alties for each crime, so anyone who plunges into evil is plunging into its
punishment as well. The only difference is that in the world, evil can be
hidden, which cannot happen in the other life.