Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 2889

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2889. Evil spirits are quite incapable of comprehending that they do not live independently of themselves and that they are merely organs of life. Still less can they comprehend that there is any life except that which comes from good and truth, and least of all that they do not start to live until the life of evil desires and false persuasions in which they are immersed is annihilated. They believe that if they were deprived of these no life at all could possibly be left to them, whereas the truth of the matter is that once they have got rid of the life of evil desires and of false persuasions they start to live for the first time, and the Lord, together with good and truth in which alone life consists, is received in a way He had not been previously. At that point also intelligence and wisdom, and so life itself, flow in, and after that increasingly and immeasurably so, together with delight, blessedness, and happiness, and so with inmost joy, and with a variety beyond description that continues endlessly.


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