§487 how our pleasures change 287
into spiritual things from the fact that as long as we are in our earthly
bodies we are in the natural world; but once we leave that body behind,
we arrive in the spiritual world and put on a spiritual body. (On angels
having perfect human forms and being people after death, and on the
bodies they wear being spiritual, see above, §§ 73 – 77 and 453 – 460 ; and
for a description of the correspondence of spiritual things with natural
ones, see §§ 87 – 115 .)
All our pleasures stem from our dominant love, for the only things 486
that feel pleasant to us are the ones that we love; so the most pleasant of
all is what we love above all. Whether you say “our dominant love” or
“what we love above all,” it amounts to the same thing.
There are different pleasures—as many, generally speaking, as there
are different dominant loves, which means as many as there are of us,
and of spirits and angels, since no one’s dominant love is entirely like
that of anyone else. This is why no one’s face is exactly like that of any-
one else, since the face is the image of the mind, and in the spiritual
world is an image of the dominant love. The pleasures of any specifi c
individual are infi nitely varied as well, with no pleasure ever entirely like
any other. This applies both to the pleasures that come in sequence and
to the ones that occur simultaneously. No two are ever alike. However,
the specifi c pleasures of any given individual go back to that single love
which is that individual’s dominant love. In fact, they constitute it and
therefore become one with it. In much the same way, all pleasures overall
go back to one love that is universally dominant—in heaven, a love for
the Lord, and in hell, a love for oneself.
The only way to know the kinds and qualities of the spiritual plea- 487
sures into which natural pleasures turn after death is through a knowl-
edge of correspondences. This teaches in general that there is nothing
natural to which something spiritual does not answer, and it teaches spe-
cifi cally the identity and nature of whatever does so correspond. This
means that people who are engaged in this knowledge can recognize and
know their state after death provided they know their love and how it
relates in its nature to the universally dominant love to which, as we have
just stated, all loves go back.
However, people who are involved in self-love cannot know what
their dominant love is because they love whatever is theirs and call their
evils good. They also call false things true, the false notions that support
them and that they use to rationalize their evils. If they were willing,
though, they could still know [their dominant love] from other people
who are wise, because these latter see what they themselves do not. This