see, anything else.
2. If then one's own intelligence is confronted with truth, it either
turns away from it or falsifies it.
3. Divine providence continually causes man to see truth, and also gives
him affection for perceiving and receiving it.
4. Through this means man is withdrawn from evil, not by himself, but by
the Lord.

298. For these things to be made apparent to the rational man, whether he
is evil or good, thus whether he is in the light of winter or in the
light of summer (for colors appear the same in them), they are to be
explained in due order.

First: _When the will is in evil, one's own intelligence sees only
falsity, and neither desires nor is able to see anything else._ This has
often been demonstrated in the spiritual world. Everyone, on becoming a
spirit, which takes place after death when he puts off the material body
and puts on the spiritual, is introduced by turns into the two states of
his life, the external and the internal. In the external state he speaks
and acts rationally, quite as a rational and wise man does in the world;
he can also instruct others in much that pertains to moral and civil
life, and if he has been a preacher he can also give instruction in the
spiritual life. But when he is brought from this external state into his
internal state, and the external is put to sleep and the internal awakes,
the scene changes if he is evil. From being rational he becomes sensuous,
and from being wise he becomes insane. For he thinks then from the evil
of his will and its enjoyments, thus from his own intelligence, and sees
only falsity and does nothing but evil, believing that evil is wisdom and
that cunning is prudence. From his own intelligence he believes himself
to be a deity and with all his mind sucks up nefarious ways.

[2] I have often seen instances of such insanity. I have also seen
spirits introduced into these alternating states two or three times
within an hour, and it was granted them to see and also acknowledge their
insanities. Nevertheless they were unwilling to remain in a rational and
moral state, but voluntarily returned to their internal sensuous and
insane state. They loved this more than the other because the enjoyment
of their life's love was in it. Who can believe that an evil man is such
beneath his outward appearance and that he undergoes such a
transformation when he enters on his internal state? This one experience
makes plain the nature of one's own intellige