"No one goes to hell until he is in his own evil and in the falsities of evil [or until there is a perfect union of will and understanding]; since it is not allowed any one there to have a divided mind, that is, to think and speak one thing and to will another. Every evil spirit must there think what is false derived from evil, and must speak from such falsity; in both cases from the will, thus from his own proper love and its delight and pleasure, as he did in the world when he thought in his spirit, that is, as he thought in himself when he thought from interior affection. The reason is, that the will is the man himself, and not the thought, except so far as it partakes of the will; and the will is the man's very nature or disposition; therefore to be let into his will is to be let into his nature or disposition, and also into his life, for man puts on a nature according to his life; and after death, he remains of such a nature as he had procured to himself by his life in the world, which, with the wicked, can no longer be amended and changed by means of thought, or the understanding of truth.
"Every one goes to his own society in which his spirit was while he lived in the world; for every man as to his spirit is conjoined to some society, either infernal or heavenly. . . .The spirit is led to that society by successive steps, and at last enters it. An evil spirit, when he is in the state of his interiors, is turned by degrees toward his own society, and at length directly to it before this [second] state is completed; and when completed, the
