280 HEAVEN and HELL §478
is materialistic and worldly without any heavenly and spiritual dimension;
fourth, our faith does not stay with us unless it comes from a heavenly
love; and fi fth, love in action, and therefore our life, is what remains.479 A great deal of my experience has testifi ed to the fact that we are our
love or intention after death. All heaven is differentiated into communities
on the basis of differences in the quality of love, and every spirit who is
raised up into heaven and becomes an angel is taken to the community
where her or his love is. When we arrive there we feel as though we are
in our own element, at home, back to our birthplace, so to speak. Angels
sense this and associate there with kindred spirits. When they leave and
go somewhere else, they feel a constant pull, a longing to go back to their
kindred and therefore to their dominant love. This is how people gather
together in heaven. The same applies in hell. There too, people associate
according to loves that oppose heavenly ones. On the fact that both heaven
and hell are made up of communities and that they are all differentiated
according to differences of love, see §§ 41 – 50 and 200 – 212 above.
[ 2 ] We may also gather that we are our love after death from the
fact that anything that does not agree with our dominant love is then
removed and apparently taken away from us. For good people, what
is removed and apparently taken away is everything that disagrees and
confl icts, with the result that they are admitted to their love. It is much
the same for evil people, except that what is taken away from them is
everything true, while for good people everything false is taken away.
Either way, the result is that ultimately everyone becomes his or her own
love. This happens when we are brought into our third state, which will
be discussed below.
Once this has happened, we constantly hold our faces toward our
love and have it constantly before our eyes no matter which way we turn
(see above, §§ 123 – 124 ).
[ 3 ] All spirits can be led wherever you want as long as they are kept in
their dominant love. They cannot resist even though they know what is
happening and think that they will refuse. Spirits have often tried to do
something in opposition, but without success. Their love is like a knot
or rope tied around them, with which they can be pulled and which they
cannot escape. It is the same for people in this world. Our love leads us as
well, and it is through our love that we are led by others. It is even more
so when we become spirits, though, because then we are not allowed to
present a different love or pretend to a love that is not ours.
[ 4 ] It is obvious in every gathering in the other life that our spirit is
our dominant love. To the extent that we act and talk in keeping with