290 HEAVEN and HELL §488
[ 5 ] If people have devoted their lives wholly to pleasure, living ele-
gantly, pandering to the gullet and the belly, loving this as the greatest
good of life, in the other life they love feces and latrines and fi nd them
delightful. This is because pleasures like these are spiritual fi lth. They avoid
places that are clean and free from fi lth because they fi nd them distasteful.
[ 6 ] People who took pleasure in adultery pass their time in broth-
els where everything is fi lthy and foul. They love these places and avoid
chaste homes. The moment they come near such homes they feel faint.
Nothing pleases them more than to break up marriages.
People who have been bent on revenge and have therefore taken on
a savage and sadistic nature love places like morgues, and are in hells of
that sort.
Others fare differently.489 In contrast, the life pleasures of people who have lived in heavenly
love in the world change into the kinds of corresponding things that exist
in the heavens, things that come into being from heaven’s sun and from
its light. The things which that light renders visible have hidden within
them divine realities. What comes to view from this source moves the
deeper reaches of angels’ minds and the outer levels of their bodies as
well; and since a divine light (which is divine truth emanating from the
Lord) is fl owing into their minds, which have been opened by heavenly
love, it presents in outward form things that answer to the pleasures of
their love. In the chapter that dealt with representations and appearances
in heaven (§§ 170 – 176 ) and the chapter on the wisdom of heaven’s angels
(§§ 265 – 275 ), I have explained that the things presented to angels’ sight
in the heavens answer to their own deeper natures or to elements of their
faith and love, and therefore to their intelligence [and] wisdom.
[ 2 ] Since I have begun supporting this general proposition by exam-
ples drawn from my experience, to shed light on what has been said so
far on the basis of the causes of things, I should also like to bring in at
this point something about the heavenly pleasures into which the natural
pleasures turn for people who live in heavenly love in the world.
People who have loved divine truths and the Word from a deep affec-
tion, or from an affection for the truth itself, live in the light, in uplands
that look like mountains, and are constantly bathed in the light of heaven
there. They know nothing of the kind of darkness we have at night in
the world, and they live in a springtime climate as well. Their scenery
offers them views like fi elds ripe for harvest and vineyards. Everything
in their houses gleams as though it were made of precious stones. Look-
ing through their windows is like looking through pure crystal. These