§569 hellfire & gnashing 345
a. There is an infl ow of the spiritual world into the natural world: 6053 – 6058 , 6189 – 6215 , 6307 –
6327 , 6466 – 6495 , 6598 – 6626. There is also an infl ow into the lives of animals: 5850 ; and into the
members of the vegetable kingdom as well: 3648. This infl ow is a constant effort to act in keeping
with the divine design: 6211 – 6212.
spiritual warmth or love as a vessel. We may gather that love in essence
is warmth from the fact that our minds and then our bodies become
warmer because of love and according to its intensity and quality. This
happens to us just as much in winter as in summer. We may also notice
the warming of our blood. As for the fact that natural heat arising from
the world’s sun serves spiritual heat as a vessel, this we may gather from
the warmth of the body that is stimulated by the warmth of its spirit
and abets it. We may look particularly at what the warmth of spring
and summer does for all kinds of animals with their annual love cycles.
[ 2 ] It is not that the [natural] warmth makes this happen, but that it
disposes their bodies to be receptive to the warmth that fl ows into them
as well from the spiritual world. You see, the spiritual world fl ows into
the natural the way a cause fl ows into its effect. People who believe that
natural warmth creates these loves are quite mistaken, since the infl ow is
of the spiritual world into the natural world and not of the natural world
into the spiritual; and all love is spiritual because it is the essence of life
itself. [ 3 ] Further, people who believe that anything happens in the natu-
ral world apart from the infl ow of the spiritual world are also mistaken,
since natural phenomena arise and persist only from spiritual ones. Even
the members of the plant kingdom get their power to sprout from this
kind of infl ow. The natural warmth of spring and summer simply dis-
poses their seeds into their natural forms by swelling and opening them
so that the infl ow from the spiritual world can have its causative effect.
I mention all this to make it clear that there are two kinds of warmth,
spiritual and natural, and that spiritual warmth comes from heaven’s sun
and natural warmth from the world’s sun, and that infl ow and coopera-
tion set up the effects that we see before us in the world.a
For us human beings, spiritual warmth is the warmth of life, because 568
as already noted it is essentially love. This love is what fi re means in the
Word. Heavenly fi re means love for the Lord and love for our neighbor,
and hellish fi re means love for ourselves and love of the world.
Hellish fi re or love has the same source as heavenly fi re or love, 569
namely, heaven’s sun or the Lord. However, it is changed into hellfi re
by the people who receive it, for all infl ow from the spiritual world varies
depending on how it is received or depending on the forms into which