Heaven and Hell (Harley) n. 466

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466. What these memories are is sometimes presented to view in the other life in forms not elsewhere seen; for many things which in man take the form of ideas are there presented as objects of sight. The exterior memory there presents the appearance of a callous, the interior the appearance of a medullary substance like that in the human brain; and from this what they are can be known. With those who have devoted themselves in the life of the body to the cultivation of the memory alone, and have not cultivated their rational, the callosity appears hard and streaked within as with tendons. With those who have filled the memory with falsities it appears hairy and rough, because of the confused mass of things in it. With those who have cultivated the memory with the love of self and the world as an end it appears glued together and ossified. With those who have wished to penetrate into Divine arcana by means of learning, especially of a philosophical kind, with an unwillingness to believe until convinced by such proofs, the memory appears like a dark substance, of such a nature as to absorb the rays of light and turn them into darkness. With those who have practised deceit and hypocrisy it appears hard and bony like ebony, which reflects the rays of light. But with those who have been in the good of love and the truths of faith there is no such callous appearance, because their interior memory transmits the rays of light into the exterior; and in its objects or ideas as in their basis or their ground, the rays terminate and find delightful receptacles; for the exterior memory is the ultimate of order in which, when goods and truths are there, the spiritual and celestial things are gently terminated and find their seat.


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