288 HEAVEN and HELL §487
a. By reason of correspondence, darkness in the Word means falsities, and dense darkness or
gloom means falsities that stem from evil: 1839 , 1860 , 7688 , 7711. Heaven’s light is darkness to evil
people: 1861 , 6832 , 8197. People who are in the hells are said to be in darkness because they are
engrossed in false notions that stem from evil; with some discussion: 3340 , 4418 , 4531. In the
Word, “the blind” means people who are engrossed in false convictions and do not want to be
taught: 2383 , 6990.does not happen, though, in the case of people who are so enmeshed in
their self-love that they have nothing but contempt for any teaching of
the wise.
[ 2 ] On the other hand, people who are in heavenly love do accept
instruction and do see the evils into which they were born when they are
led into them. They see them from truths because truths make evils obvi-
ous. Anyone can in fact see what is evil and the distortion it causes by
seeing from the truth that arises from what is good; but no one can see
what is good and true from an evil standpoint. This is because the false
notions that arise from evil are darkness and correspond to it. So people
who are caught up in false notions that arise from evil are like blind peo-
ple who do not see things that are in the light, and they avoid them the
way owls avoid daylight.a On the other hand, the true perceptions that
arise from good are light and correspond to light (see above, §§ 126 – 134 ).
So people who are focused on the true perceptions that arise from good
are sighted and open-eyed and can differentiate between things that are
in light and shade.
[ 3 ] I have been granted confi rmation of this too by experience.
The angels who are in the heavens both see and grasp the evil and false
promptings that well up in them from time to time; and they can also
see the evil and false promptings that engage the spirits in the world
of spirits who are in touch with the hells, though the spirits themselves
cannot see their own evil and false promptings. They do not grasp what
the virtue of heavenly love is, what conscience is, what is honest and fair
(except as it is to their own advantage), or what it means to be led by the
Lord. They say these things do not exist and therefore make no differ-
ence whatever.
All this has been presented to encourage people to examine them-
selves and to identify their dominant love on the basis of their pleasures,
so that according to their grasp of the knowledge of correspondences,
they may know their state of life after death.488 It is possible to know from a knowledge of correspondences how our
life pleasures are changed after death into what corresponds to them; but