527. I can testify from much experience that it is impossible to implant the life of heaven in those who in the world have lived a life opposite to the life of heaven. For there were some who had believed that they would readily receive Divine truths after death, when they heard them from the angels, and that they would believe them, and consequently live a different life, and could thus be received into heaven. But this was tried with very many, although it was confined to those who held this belief; and was permitted in their case that they might learn that repentance is not possible after death. Some of those with whom the experiment was made understood truths and seemed to receive them; but as soon as they turned to the life of their love they rejected them, and even spoke against them. Others were unwilling to hear them, and at once rejected them. Others wished to have the life of love that they had contracted from the world taken away from them, and to have the angelic life, or the life of heaven, infused in its place. This, too, was permitted to be done; but as soon as the life of their love was taken away they lay as if dead, with their powers gone. By these and other experiments the simple good were instructed that no one's life can by any means be changed after death; and that an evil life can in no way be changed into a good life, or an infernal life into an angelic life, for every spirit from head to heel is such as his love is, and therefore such as his life is; and to change his life into its opposite is to destroy the spirit completely. The angels declare that it would be easier to turn an owl into a dove, or a horned-owl into a bird of paradise, than to turn an infernal spirit into an angel of heaven. That man after death continues to be such as his life had been in the world can be seen above in the appropriate section (n. 470-484). From all this it can be confirmed that no one can be received into heaven as a result of immediate mercy.