298 HEAVEN and HELL §499
We can see from this what our states of outer concerns and of inner
concerns are.500 When I speak of volition and thought, “volition” means affection
and love as well as every delight and pleasure that derives from affec-
tion and love, since these go back to volition as their basis. Whatever we
intend, we love, and it feels delightful and pleasant to us; and in turn,
whatever we love and fi nd pleasant and delightful, we intend. Thought,
though, also means everything we use to support our affection or love,
for thought is nothing but the form of our intention or the means by
which what we intend comes to light. This form is constructed by vari-
ous rational analyses that have their source in the spiritual world and are
integral functions of our spirit.
501 We need to know that our basic quality is determined entirely by
the quality of our inner natures, not by what we are like outwardly apart
from that inner nature. This is because our inner reaches are our spirit,
and since it is from the spirit that the body lives, our life is the life of our
spirit. Consequently, whatever we are like in our inward natures, that is
what we are like to eternity. Since our more outward natures belong to
the body they are separated after death, and any elements of them that
cling to the spirit become dormant, serving only as a plane for deeper
concerns, as I explained above in describing the memory that we retain
after death.
We can see from this what really belongs to us and what does not.
For evil people the contents of the outer thought that gives rise to their
words and the outer intent that gives rise to their actions do not really
belong to them. What belongs to them is the contents of their deeper
thought and intentions.502 Once the fi rst state has been completed—the state of more outward
concerns described in the preceding chapter—we as spirits are brought
into the state of our deeper concerns, or into the state of those deeper
intentions and consequent thoughts in which we engaged in this world
when we were left to ourselves and our thinking was free and unfettered.
We slip into this second state without realizing it, much as we did in the
world, when we draw the thought nearest to our speech, the immediate
source of our speech, back toward our inner thought, and let it pause
there a while. So when we as spirits are in this state, we are being our-
selves and living our real life, since thinking freely from our own affec-
tion is our very life and our very self.
503 Spirits in this state think from their own intent and therefore from
their own affection or love; and then their thought forms a unity with