§509 our second state 303
[ 6 ] However, the Lord controls their madness so that it does not
transgress the bounds of usefulness, for there is some use for every such
individual. Good spirits see in them what evil is and what its nature is,
and what people are like if they are not led by the Lord. Openly evil indi-
viduals also serve to gather people of similar evil and separate them from
good people, to remove from evil people the true and good elements that
they presented and feigned outwardly, and to lead them into the evils of
their life and the falsities of their malice and thus prepare them for hell.
[ 7 ] This is because people do not get into hell until they are immersed
in their malice and in the falsities that stem from it, because no one is
allowed to have a divided mind, to think and say one thing and intend
something else. Every evil person there must think what is false out of
malice and talk out of that malicious falsity there, both from intent and
therefore from his or her own love and pleasure and gratifi cation. This is
how they behaved in the world when they were thinking in their spirit—
that is, when they were thinking within themselves, from their deeper
affection. This is because intent is the essential person, not thought
except as it is derived from intent; and volition is the essential nature or
character of the human being. So being remanded to our own intentions
is being remanded to our own nature or character and to our own life as
well, since it is through life that we acquire our nature. After death, we
retain the nature we had gained by our life in the world, which for evil
people can no longer be changed for the better by the path of thought or
of understanding what is true.
Since evil spirits plunge into all kinds of evils when they are in this 509
second state, it is normal for them to be punished often and severely.
There are many kinds of punishments in the world of spirits, and there
is no respect for rank, for whether someone was a king or a servant in the
world. Every evil brings its own punishment with it. They are united;
so whoever is involved in something evil is involved in the punishment
of the evil as well. Still, no one suffers any punishment for evil things
done in the world, only for current evil deeds. It boils down to the same
thing, though, and makes no difference whether you say that we suf-
fer punishments because of our evil deeds in the world or that we suffer
punishments because of our evil deeds in the other life, because after
death we all return to our life, which means that we are involved in the
same kinds of evil. This is because our nature is determined by the kind
of physical life we led (§§ 470 – 484 ).
The reason they are punished is that fear of punishment is the only
means of taming their evils in that state. Encouragement does not work