Chapter 14 (part 5)

"Man's own sins, his depravity and vices in rejecting God, are his hell-fire, which gnaws in him eternally. His mockeries are now before his eyes, and he does not dare to let even one good thought enter into his soul; for the good is to him like an angel, and on account of his great wickedness he cannot touch it with his soul, much less see it through her; but he must now eat his mockery, together with all his vices and sins for ever within himself, and he must despair eternally." 1 ( Three Principles , xxiv. 29.) "The godless are free. There is nothing imprisoning them. They may go down as far as they like; there will everywhere be the abyss and the darkness, and they are always in the same place. The deeper they desire to go the deeper will they fall, and nevertheless they will arrive nowhere, because there is no bottom or end." ( Forty Questions , xxxiv. 5.) Every being can live only in that element to which it belongs. A fish suffers in the air and a man under water. Likewise the divine light of God is painful p. 298 to the devils in hell, and appears to them in an angry aspect. "God also dwells in the abyss of the godless soul; but He is not recognisable to her in any other way than as a wrath, and this is the meaning where it is written—'With the saints Thou art holy, and with the perverted art Thou perverted.'" ( Mysterium , lx. 44.) "The same eternally generating and speaking word speaks in heaven— i.e. , in the power of the light—as holy wisdom (delight); but in hell, in darkness, it manifests itself as the flames of torment." ( Mysterium , lxi. 31.) As the godless soul finds nowhere relief or aid, she ultimately surrenders herself fully to the devil; that means to say, to her own evil will. 1 "The soul is like a person dreaming of being in great anguish and torture, and that he is seeking for relief everywhere without being able to find it. He then despairs, and seeing no help he surrenders himself to his driver (to the interior impulse that is driving him on), that the latter may do with him as he chooses. Thus the abandoned soul falls into the power of the devil, where she can neither follow nor is permitted to follow her own inclinations; but whatever the devil does, she is compelled to do also. Thus she becomes au enemy of God, and would fain rise in pride and fire over the princely throne of the angels. While on earth and in her physical body she used to make a fool of herself, and now she p. 299 remains a fool and a trickster, and whatever folly she has carried on in this life she now enacts it there. The same foolery is her treasure, and therein is, as Christ says, her heart and her will." ( Threefold Life , xviii. 10.) Nevertheless the devilish soul does not find full satisfaction in evil, for she trembles continually in fear of the judgment day, and the only gratification she finds is in her resistance to God, and in encouraging and supporting the evil deeds and inclinations of mankind. "The pain of the condemned (self-condemned) souls, which they suffer until the judgment day, is like that of an imprisoned convict who continually listens, and whenever something stirs thinks that the executioner is coming to submit him to justice and give him what he deserves.