316 HEAVEN and HELL §527
wanted the life of the love they had acquired in the world to be taken
away from them and an angelic life or the life of heaven poured in to
replace it. Permission was given for even this to be done for them; but
once the life of their own love was taken away, they lay there like corpses,
with no control over themselves.
These and other similar kinds of experience teach simple good peo-
ple that there is no way to change anyone’s life after death, no way to
rewrite an evil life into a good one or a hellish life into an angelic one.
This is because the nature of every spirit from head to toe is determined
by his or her love and consequently by his or her life. To change this into
its opposite would mean the total destruction of the spirit. Angels insist
that it is easier to change one owl into a dove or another into a bird of
paradise than to change a hellish spirit into an angel of heaven.
The reader may see in the appropriate chapter above (§§ 470 – 484 )
that our nature after death is determined by the quality of our life in the
world. We can gather from this that no one can be accepted into heaven
on the basis of pure mercy.It Is Not So Hard to Lead a Heaven-Bound Life
as People Think It Is
528
S
OME people believe it is hard to lead the heaven-bound life that is
called “spiritual” because they have heard that we need to renounce
the world and give up the desires attributed to the body and the fl esh
and “live spiritually.” All they understand by this is spurning worldly
interests, especially concerns for money and prestige, going around in
constant devout meditation about God, salvation, and eternal life, devot-
ing their lives to prayer, and reading the Word and religious literature.
They think this is renouncing the world and living for the spirit and not
for the fl esh. However, the actual case is quite different, as I have learned
from an abundance of experience and conversation with angels. In fact,
people who renounce the world and live for the spirit in this fashion take