Page:Arcana Coelestia (Potts) vol 1.djvu/208

 spirits, but so it is now when by crazy ratiocination men try to find out what spirits are, and by their definitions and suppositions deprive them of all the senses, and do this the more, the more learned they desire to be.

. Hitherto the nature of heaven and of heavenly joy has been known to none. Those who have thought about them have formed an idea concerning them so general and so gross as scarcely to amount to any idea at all. What notion they have conceived on the subject I have been able to learn most accurately from spirits who had recently passed from the world into the other life; for when left to themselves, as if they were in this world, they think in the same way. I may give a few examples.

. Some who during their abode in this world had seemed to be pre-eminently enlightened in regard to the Word, had conceived so false an idea about heaven that they supposed themselves to be in heaven when they were high up, and imagined that from that position they could rule all things below, and thus be in self-glory and pre-eminence over others. On account of their being in such a phantasy, and in order to show them that they were in error, they were taken up on high, and from there were permitted in some measure to rule over things below; but they discovered with shame that this was a heaven of phantasy, and that heaven does not consist in being on high, but is wherever there is any one who is in love and charity, or in whom is the Lord's kingdom; and that neither does it consist in desiring to be more eminent than others, for to desire to be greater than others is not heaven, but hell.

. A certain spirit, who during his life in the body had possessed authority, retained in the other life the desire to exercise command. But he was told that he was now in another