IPLE OF LIFE.
Every one has excellence of life according to his conjugial love; for
that excellence conjoins itself with the life of the wife, and by
conjunction exalts itself; but as with those of whom we are speaking
there does not remain the least principle of conjugial love, and
consequently not anything of the inmost principle of life, therefore
their lot after death is miserable. After passing a certain period of
time in their externals, in which they converse rationally and act
civilly, they are let into their internals, and in this case into a
similar lust and its delights, in the same degree as in the world: for
every one after death is let into the same state of life which he had
appropriated to himself, to the intent that he may be withdrawn from it;
for no one can be withdrawn from this evil, unless he has first been led
into it; if he were not to be led into it, the evil would conceal
itself, and defile the interiors of the mind, and spread itself as a
plague, and would next burst through all barriers and destroy the
external principles of the body. For this end there are opened to them
brothels, which are on the side of hell, where there are harlots with
whom they have an opportunity of varying their lusts; but this is
granted with the restriction to one harlot in a day, and under a penalty
in case of communication with more than one on the same day. Afterwards,
when from examination it appears that that lust is so inbred that they
cannot be withdrawn from it, they are conveyed to a certain place which
is next above the hell assigned for them, and then they appear to
themselves as if they fall into a swoon, and to others as if they fall
down with the face upward; and also the ground beneath their backs is
actually opened, and they are absorbed, and sink down into hell among
their like; thus they are gathered to their own. I have been permitted
to see them there, and likewise to converse with them. Among themselves
they appear as men, which is granted them lest they should be a terror
to their companions; but at a certain distance they seem to have white
faces consisting only of skin, and this because they have no spiritual
life in them, which every one has according to the conjugial principle
sown in him. Their speech is dry, parched, and sorrowful: when they are
hungry, they lament; and their lamentations are heard as a peculiar
clashing noise. Their garments are tattered, and their lower garments
are draw