[2] Continuation [concerning Omnipresence and Omniscience]. - 5. That the Lord, from the intellectual faculty which every man possesses, and from its opposite, is also present with those who are out of heaven and the church and with those who are in hell, or will come into hell and knows their whole state.

Every man has three degrees of life; the lowest he has in common with beasts; this is not the case in regard to the two higher. It is through these two higher degrees that man is man; they are closed with the wicked, but are open with the good. They are not however closed so far as the light of heaven is concerned, which is wisdom and proceeds from the Lord as the Sun; but they are closed to the heat, which is love, and proceeds at the same time from the same source. It is for this reason that all men, even the wicked, have the faculty of understanding, though not that of willing, from heavenly love. For the will is the recipient of heat, that is of love; and the understanding is the recipient of light, that is of wisdom, from this Sun.

[3] The reason why every man is not intelligent and wise is, that he who is not, has by his life closed the receptacle of this love; and this being closed, he has not the will to understand anything but what he loves; for he wills and loves this as the object of his thoughts, and consequently also of his understanding. Since then all men, even the wicked, have the faculty of understanding, and that faculty is from the influx of light from the Sun which is the Lord, it is plain that the Lord is present also with those who are out of heaven and the church, and who are either in hell, or will go there. It is from this faculty also that man has the power of thinking and reasoning on a variety of subjects; beasts are incapable of this; and it is from this faculty again that man lives for ever.

[4] Another proof of the Lord's Omnipresence in hell is, that the whole of hell, equally with the whole of heaven, is before the Lord as one man; but in this case it is a man-devil, that is, a monster. With him all things are in opposition to those which are in the Divine Man-Angel, and therefore from the latter is known everything that exists in the former; that is, from heaven everything in hell is known. For from good evil is known, and from truth falsity; thus all the quality of the latter from that of the former. There are three heavens and three hells; and as the former are distinguished into societies, so also are the latter. Every society in hell corresponds by contrast, to a society in heaven, the correspondence being like that between good and evil affections; for all the societies are affections. Thus as each society in heaven is, as has been said, in the sight of the Lord like one man-angel in the similarity of its affections, as we have stated; so also each society in hell is in the sight of the Lord like one man-devil in the similarity of its evil affections. I have been permitted to see this. The societies of this latter kind appear indeed as men, but of a monstrous form; I have seen three kinds of them, the fiery, the black, and the pallid; all of them have however deformed features, a husky tone of voice, external speech, and a corresponding demeanour. The love of all of them is lascivious and they are unchaste; the delights of their will are evils, and the delights of their thought falsities.