233. * I have been permitted to talk with many people, who believed that after death they would shine like stars in heaven. For, so they said, they had regarded the Word as holy, frequently read it right through, and collected many passages from it to prove the dogmas of their faith, and by this means gained a reputation for their learning. As a result, they thought they would become like Michael or Raphael. Many of these, however, were tested to see what love had impelled them to study the Word; and it was discovered that some had been impelled by self-love, wishing to receive the reverence due to the leaders of the church, and some by worldly love, hoping thereby to become wealthy. When they went on to be tested to see what they had learned from the Word, it proved that they had learned no genuine truth from it, but only the sort called falsified truth. This really is rotten falsity, for in heaven it stinks. They were told that the reason this happened to them was that the ends they had in view in reading the Word were themselves and the world, not the truth of faith and the good of life. When one's ends in view are oneself and the world, then while reading the Word the mind cannot rise above oneself and the world; and one's thinking is constantly dominated by the self, and a person's self is enveloped in thick darkness in all he thinks about heaven or the church. In that state a person cannot be withdrawn by the Lord and lifted into the light of heaven, and so cannot receive any influence from the Lord through heaven.