alled
hell fire.

575. Gnashing of teeth is the continual contention and combat of
falsities with each other, consequently of those who are in
falsities, joined with contempt of others, with enmity, mockery,
ridicule, blaspheming; and these evils burst forth into lacerations
of various kinds; since everyone fights for his own falsity and calls
it truth. These contentions and combats are heard outside of these
hells like the gnashings of teeth; and are also turned into gnashings
of teeth when truths from heaven flow in among them. In these hells
are all who have acknowledged nature and have denied the Divine. In
the deeper of these hells are those that have confirmed themselves in
such denials. As such are unable to receive any thing of light from
heaven, and are thus unable to see any thing inwardly in themselves,
they are for the most part corporeal sensual spirits, who believe
nothing except what they see with their eyes and touch with their
hands. Therefore all the fallacies of the senses are truths to them;
and it is from these that they dispute. This is why their contentions
are heard as gnashings of teeth; for in the spiritual world all
falsities give a grating sound, and the teeth correspond to the
outmost things in nature and to the outmost things in man, which are
corporeal sensual.{1} (That there is gnashing of teeth in the hells
may be seen in Matthew 8:12; 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30; Luke
13:28.)

{Footnote 1} The correspondence of the teeth (n. 5565-5568).
Those who are purely sensual and have scarcely anything of
spiritual light correspond to the teeth (n. 5565). In the Word
a tooth signifies the sensual, which is the outmost of the life
of man (n. 9052, 9062). Gnashing of teeth in the other life
comes from those who believe that nature is everything and the
Divine nothing (n. 5568).

576. LX. THE MALICE AND HEINOUS ARTIFICES OF INFERNAL SPIRITS

In what way spirits are superior to men everyone can see and
comprehend who thinks interiorly and knows any thing of the operation
of his own mind; for in his mind he can consider, evolve, and form
conclusions upon more subjects in a single moment than he can utter
or express in writing in half an hour. This shows the superiority of
man when he is in his spirit, and therefore when he becomes a spirit.
For it is the spirit that thinks, and it is the body by which the
spirit expresses its thoughts in speech or writing. In consequence of