All the People Who Are in the Hells Are Absorbed in Evils and Consequent Falsities Because of Their Love for Themselves and the World (Continued)

There are two ways of being in power. One comes from love for our neighbor and the other from love for ourselves. In essence, these two kinds of power are exact opposites. People who are empowered by love for their neighbor intend the good of everyone and love nothing more than being useful—that is, serving others (serving others means willing well and helping others, whether that is one’s church, country, community, or fellow citizen). This is their love and the delight of their hearts. As such people are raised to high positions they are delighted; but the delight is not because of the honor but because of the constructive things they can now do more abundantly and at a higher level. This is what empowerment is like in the heavens.

In contrast, people whose self-love leads them to take power intend good to no one but themselves. Any services they perform for others are actually for their own esteem and renown, since only this is of any use to them. Helping others is for them simply a means to being waited on and respected and deferred to. They strive for high office not for the good they ought to do for their country and their church but to be prominent and praised and therefore in their heart’s delight.

A love of power does stay with all of us after death. However, people whose authority rested on their love for their neighbor are entrusted with power in the heavens. Actually, it is not they who have power but the services that they love, and when service rules, the Lord is ruling. However, people whose authority rested on their self-love in the world arrive in hell after their life in this world and are miserable slaves there. I have seen powerful people whose authority had rested on their self-love in the world abandoned among the most miserable, some of them living in outhouses.

from Heaven and Hell, Section 564

All the People Who Are in the Hells Are Absorbed in Evils and Consequent Falsities Because of Their Love for Themselves and the World (Continued)

Some spirits appeared to me in the western region, toward the south, who said they had been granted high honor in the world and deserved to be promoted over others and to lord it over them. They were examined by angels to discover what they were like inwardly, and it turned out that in their earthly offices they had paid no attention to service but only to themselves, which meant that they had put themselves before service. Still, since they were aflame with ambition to be promoted, they were allowed to join a group of people who were discussing some rather important matters. You could tell, though, that they were unable to pay any attention to the real issues that were being discussed and could not see the matters in any depth. They did not say anything on the basis of the constructive effects of the discussion, but talked only on the basis of their own self-image.

Their behavior was motivated by a desire to ingratiate themselves; so they were dismissed from the task and left to seek office elsewhere. So they went farther westward, where they were accepted here and there; but in every case they were told that they were not thinking about anything but themselves, that they were not thinking about the business at hand except in terms of themselves. This meant that they were stupid, just like sensual, carnal spirits. Wherever they arrived, then, they were rejected. After a while they were utterly bankrupt and were asking for handouts.

Once more I could see from this that no matter how wisely people may seem to talk in the world from the fire of self-love, still it is just a matter of rote memory and not of any rational light. So in the other life, when they are no longer allowed to retrieve things from their natural memory, they are more stupid than other people because they are cut off from the Divine.

from Heaven and Hell, Section 563

All the People Who Are in the Hells Are Absorbed in Evils and Consequent Falsities Because of Their Love for Themselves and the World (Continued)

In broad terms, the evils characteristic of people focused on love for themselves are contempt for others; envy; enmity toward anyone who is not on their side, and a consequent hostility; various kinds of hatred; vengefulness; craft; deceit; callousness; and cruelty. In religious matters, this extends not only to a contempt for the Divine and for the divine gifts that are the true and good elements of the church; it extends also to anger at such things, an anger that turns into hatred when we become spirits. Then not only can we not stand hearing about these matters, we blaze with hatred against everyone who acknowledges and worships the Divine.

I talked with one man who had been in power in the world and loved himself far too much. When he simply heard the Divine mentioned—especially when he heard the Lord named—he was so struck by angry hatred that he was consumed with thoughts of murder. When the reins of his love were loosened, he even wanted to be the devil himself in order to satisfy his love by ceaseless attacks on heaven. Many individuals of the papal religion feel this desire in the other life when they realize that the Lord has all power and that they have none.

from Heaven and Hell, Section 562

All the People Who Are in the Hells Are Absorbed in Evils and Consequent Falsities Because of Their Love for Themselves and the World (Continued)

The deeper levels of the thoughts and affections of people who love themselves above all are turned toward themselves and the world—and are turned away, therefore, from the Lord and heaven. This is why such people fall prey to all kinds of evil and why the divine nature cannot flow in. It is because the moment it does flow in, it is submerged in thoughts about self and polluted, and is saturated with evils that arise from their self-centeredness.

This is why they all look away from the Lord in the other life, toward the gloom that occupies the site of our world’s sun there and is directly across from heaven’s sun, which is the Lord (see Section 123 above). Darkness means evil, and our world’s sun means self-love.

from Heaven and Hell, Section 561

Section 123: Published 6/30/2019

All the People Who Are in the Hells Are Absorbed in Evils and Consequent Falsities Because of Their Love for Themselves and the World (Continued)

Picture a community made up of people like this, all totally in love with themselves, not caring about others unless they are allies, and you will see that their love is no different from that of thieves for each other. To the extent that they are acting in concert, they embrace each other and call each other friends; but once they stop cooperating, once anyone resists their control, they attack and butcher each other.

If their deeper natures—their minds—are probed, it will be clear that they are full of virulent hatred for each other, that at heart they ridicule anything fair and honest and even ridicule the Deity, tossing it aside as worthless. This comes out even more clearly from their communities in the hells, which will be described below.

from Heaven and Hell, Section 560

All the People Who Are in the Hells Are Absorbed in Evils and Consequent Falsities Because of Their Love for Themselves and the World (Continued)

By nature, self-love runs wild to the extent that its reins are loosened, that is, to the extent that the outward restraints constituted by fears of the law and its penalties, fears of losing reputation, esteem, profit, position, and life are taken away. It runs wild even to the extent of wanting to rule not only over the whole globe but even over all heaven and the Lord himself. It knows no bound or limit. This is latent in everyone who is focused on self-love even though it may not show in the world, where the restraints we have mentioned hold it back.

We cannot fail to see this in people in power and kings who are not held back by any such restraints. They run wild and conquer as many territories and kingdoms as they can and aspire to boundless power and glory. This is even clearer in the modern Babylon, which extends its control into heaven and transfers all the Lord’s divine power to itself and even craves more.

The reader may see in the booklet Last Judgment that people like this are diametrically opposed to the Divine and to heaven and that they favor hell when they arrive in the other life after death.

from Heaven and Hell, Section 559

All the People Who Are in the Hells Are Absorbed in Evils and Consequent Falsities Because of Their Love for Themselves and the World (Continued)

If you look at their origins and essences, you can see that love for oneself and love of one’s neighbor are opposites. In people who are wrapped up in love for themselves, love of their neighbor begins from self. They claim that everyone is her or his own neighbor; and from this as a center they reach out to all who ally with them, with progressively less intensity depending on the love that unites the others with them. They regard people outside this group as worthless, and people who offer opposition to them and their evildoing they regard as enemies. It does not matter what they are actually like, whether they are wise or upright or honest or fair.

A spiritual love of their neighbor, though, begins with the Lord, and spreads out from him as its center to all who are united to him by love and faith. Its spread depends on the quality of their love and faith. We can see from this that a love of our neighbor that begins with ourselves is the opposite of a love of our neighbor that begins with the Lord. The former comes from evil because it comes from what we claim as our own; while the latter comes from what is good because it comes from the Lord, who is good itself. We can also see that a love of our neighbor that comes from us and from our self-image is a physical love, while a love of our neighbor that comes from the Lord is heavenly.

In a word, when we are absorbed in love for ourselves it constitutes our head, and heavenly love constitutes the feet we stand on. If heavenly love does not serve us, we trample it underfoot. This is why people who are being thrown into hell look as though they are diving in headfirst, with their heads down and their feet toward heaven (see above, Section 548).

from Heaven and Hell, Section 558b

All the People Who Are in the Hells Are Absorbed in Evils and Consequent Falsities Because of Their Love for Themselves and the World (Continued)

Further, to the extent that we are engaged in heavenly love—which is loving constructive and worthwhile activities and being moved by heartfelt pleasure when we provide them to our church, our country, the human community, and our fellow citizens—we are being led by the Lord because this is the love he is in and the love that comes from him. However, to the extent that we focus on love for ourselves—doing constructive and worthwhile things for our own sakes—we are leading ourselves; and to the extent that we lead ourselves, we are not being led by the Lord. Again, then, it follows that the more we love ourselves, the more we move away from the Divine and also from heaven.

Being led by self is being led by what we claim as our own, and what we claim as our own is nothing but evil. It is actually our evil heredity, which involves loving ourselves more than God and the world more than heaven.

We are completely absorbed in our self-image and therefore in our hereditary evil whenever we focus on ourselves in anything worthwhile we are doing, for we are focusing on ourselves and away from what is good and not on what is good and away from ourselves. So in the worthwhile activities we set up an image of ourselves and not an image of the Divine. I have been assured of this by experience as well. There are evil spirits who live halfway between the north and the west, underneath the heavens, who are particularly skilled at getting upright spirits involved in their self-image and therefore focused on various kinds of evil. They do this by getting them absorbed in thinking about themselves, either openly by words of praise and esteem or covertly by focusing their feelings exclusively on themselves. To the extent that they succeed, they turn the faces of the upright people away from heaven and also becloud their understanding, calling up evils from their self-concern.

from Heaven and Hell, Section 558a

All the People Who Are in the Hells Are Absorbed in Evils and Consequent Falsities Because of Their Love for Themselves and the World (Continued)

We can gather what love for oneself is like by comparing it to heavenly love. Heavenly love is loving constructive activity for its own sake, or loving for their own sake the worthwhile things we do for our church, our country, the human community, and our fellow citizens. This is really loving God and loving our neighbor, since all constructive activities and all worthwhile actions come from God and are the neighbor whom we are to love. In contrast, people who love these activities for the sake of self love them only as slaves who wait on them.

It follows that people devoted to a love for themselves want their church, their country, the human community, and their fellow citizens to be their servants rather than wanting to serve them. They station themselves above these neighbors and put them down. So to the extent that people are devoted to a love for themselves, they move themselves away from heaven because they move themselves away from heavenly love.

from Heaven and Hell, Section 557

All the People Who Are in the Hells Are Absorbed in Evils and Consequent Falsities Because of Their Love for Themselves and the World (Continued)

Love for oneself is intending well to oneself alone, not to others except for the sake of oneself—not the church, the country, or any human community. It is helping them solely for the sake of one’s own reputation and rank and glory. Unless these can be seen in the services we offer, we are saying at heart, “What difference does it make? Why should I? What’s in it for me?” So we forget it. We can see from this that people who are absorbed in a love for themselves do not love their church or country or community or any constructive activity.

They love only themselves. Their only pleasure lies in self-gratification; and since the pleasure that stems from love constitutes human life, their life is a life of self. A life of self is a life that depends on what we claim as our own, and in its own right what we claim as our own is nothing but evil.

People who love themselves do love their own as well, their own being specifically their children and grandchildren and more broadly all who ally with them, whom they call “their own people.” Loving both the former and the latter is actually loving themselves, because they regard the others as though they were in themselves, and focus on themselves in others. These “others” who are claimed as their own include everyone who praises and reveres and worships them.

from Heaven and Hell, Section 556