Spiritual Experiences (Buss) n. 5798

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5798. THE WAY WHICH LEADS TO HEAVEN IS THE SAME WAY, AS FAR AS THE CORNER-STONE, [AS THAT WHICH LEADS TO HELL]. I conversed with angels respecting the fact that it is believed that it is difficult to tread the way to heaven, because so many things must be done and all lusts forsaken, besides many things more. Wherefore, as occurs in the spiritual world, the matter was shown by means of a road, which signifies truth which leads. A road appeared at the right, where both the good and the evil trode. It was the same road; but, when they reached to a certain distance, there was a great stone, in shadow, which the good saw but not the evil. From that stone, which is called the corner-stone, a road led to one side and another to the opposite. The evil went on the opposite side, which was behind and sloped downwards; but the good went the other way, which inclined upwards. The latter led to heaven, the former to hell. That stone signified the Lord and His Divine Human. The evil did not acknowledge it: the good did acknowledge. It appeared that the evil fell upon it, because the stone was in shadow. Hence was shown that the moral life which both evil and good lead is the same, but from a different source; the evil do it from an infernal source, the good from a spiritual source. The evil who traveled it, were those who led a moral life like the moral life of the good About the corner-stone, see Matthew 21:42; Mark 12:10, 11; Luke 20:17, 18. They who fell upon the stone said, that, when they fell, they lay as if dazed. When they got up, they said that they did goods as much as the others - they were permitted to enumerate some of these - and that, therefore, they were equally entitled to enter heaven. But they were merely goods of civil life in external form; for the interiors, which were of the thought and of the love, were opened, and they were vile, and also defamatory about God, especially about the Lord. They angrily declared, also, that they were not able to do good of themselves; how, then, could they travel the way leading to heaven? But they were told that it was within their power, not to think evils about God and about the Lord, and thus to shun such things as are against the Word and against doctrine, and against the doctrine of their faith; and when they shun evils of thought, then, from the Lord, good affection and consequent thought inflows, and thus they are brought into good by the Lord; and so far as they are in this, so far they come into the affection of truth.


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