20 HEAVEN and HELL §33
c. There are as many levels of life within the human individual as there are heavens, and these are
opened after death depending on the way the individual has lived: 3747 , 9594. Heaven is within
us: 3884. So people who have accepted heaven within themselves in the world enter heaven after
death: 10717.
d. More inward things are more perfect because they are closer to the Lord: 3405 , 5146 , 5147.
There are thousands and thousands of things within that outwardly appear to be only a single
generality: 5707. To the extent that we are raised from outer concerns toward more inward ones,
we come into light and therefore into intelligence, and this ascent is like coming from the fog
into clear air: 4598 , 6183 , 6333 [ 6313 ].acceptance of what is good in response to truth. People who do not let
such gifts directly into their intentions, but into their memory and from
there into their discernment, intending and doing them as a result of this
process, are in the intermediate or second heaven. People who live good
moral lives, though, and believe in the Divine with no particular interest
in learning, are in the outmost or fi rst heaven.c We may therefore con-
clude that the state of our inner natures is what constitutes heaven and
that heaven is within each one of us, not outside us. This is what the
Lord teaches in saying,The kingdom of God does not arrive when we are looking for it, nor
do they say, “Here it is,” or “There it is.” Behold, you have the king-
dom of God within you. (Luke 17 : 20 – 21 )34 All perfection increases as we move inward and decreases as we move
outward, because more inward things are closer to the Lord and intrinsi-
cally purer, while more outward things are more remote from the Lord
and intrinsically cruder.d Angelic perfection consists of intelligence, wis-
dom, love, and everything good, with happiness as their result. It does
not consist in happiness without these former qualities, since happiness
without them is merely superfi cial, with no depth.
Since the inner reaches of angels of the central heaven are opened at
the third level, their perfection far surpasses that of angels in the interme-
diate heaven, whose inner reaches are opened at the second level. By the
same token, the perfection of angels of the intermediate heaven surpasses
that of angels of the outmost heaven.
35 Because of this difference, an angel of one heaven cannot gain admis-
sion to angels of another heaven: someone from a lower heaven cannot
come up, nor can someone from a higher heaven come down. Anyone
who comes up is seized by anxiety even to the point of pain and cannot