282 HEAVEN and HELL §479
These proofs from experience support what was said above on ratio-
nal grounds, namely, that after death we are our own love and our own
intent. I say “intent” because for each of us, our intent is our love.480 A great deal of experience has also convinced me that after death we
remain the same forever in regard to our volition or dominant love. I have
been allowed to talk with some people who lived more than two thou-
sand years ago, people whose lives are described in history books and
are therefore familiar. I discovered that they were still the same, just as
described, including the love that was the source and determinant of
their lives.
There were others who had lived seventeen centuries ago, also
known from history books, and some who had lived four centuries ago,
some three, and so on, with whom I was also allowed to talk and to
learn that the same affection still governed within them. The only dif-
ference was that the pleasures of their love had been changed into cor-
responding ones.
Angels have told me that the life of our dominant love never changes
for anyone to all eternity because we are our love, so to change it in any
spirit would be to take away and snuff out his or her life.
They have also told me that this is because after death we can no
longer be reformed by being taught the way we could in this world, since
the outmost level, made up of natural insights and affections, is then dor-
mant and cannot be opened because it is not spiritual (see above, § 464 ).
The deeper functions of our mind or character rest on this level the way
a house rests on its foundation, which is why we do stay forever like the
life of our love in the world. Angels are utterly amazed that people do not
realize that our nature is determined by the nature of our dominant love
and that many people actually believe they can be saved by instantaneous
mercy, simply on the basis of their faith alone, regardless of the kind
of life they have led, not realizing that divine mercy operates through
means. The means involve being led by the Lord in the world as well as
afterward in heaven, and the people who are led by mercy are the ones
who do not live in evil. People do not even know that faith is an affec-
tion for what is true, an affection that comes from a heavenly love that
comes from the Lord.
481 We come into heaven if our love is heavenly and spiritual and into hell
if our love is materialistic and worldly without any heavenly and spiritual
dimension. My evidence for this conclusion is all the people I have seen
raised into heaven and cast into hell. The ones who were raised into
heaven had lives of heavenly and spiritual love, while the ones who