One morning on waking from sleep, I was meditating in the light of a fine dawn before being fully awake, when I saw through the window what looked like a flash of lightning, and soon afterwards heard what sounded like a peal of thunder. I wondered where it had come from, and heard these words from heaven: 'There are some near you who are engaged in a furious dispute about God and nature. The flash of light like lightning and the roaring in the air like thunder are correspondences, which present the appearance of a battle and a clash of arguments, with one side speaking in favour of God, the other of nature.'

This spiritual battle had started like this. There were some satans in hell who said to one another, 'If only we were allowed to talk to angels in heaven, we should prove to them fully and completely that what they call God, the source of everything, is nature, and God is nor more than an expression, unless we mean by it nature.' Since those satans deeply and whole-heartedly believed that, and were so keen to talk with the angels in heaven, they were permitted to climb out of the mud and darkness of hell, and talk with two angels who came down from heaven. They met in the world of spirits which lies midway between heaven and hell.

[2] The satans on seeing the angels rushed up to them, and shouted in a furious tone, 'Are you the angels from heaven with whom we can meet to debate God and nature? You call yourselves wise because you acknowledge God, but oh how simple you are! Who has ever seen God? Who understands what God is? Who can comprehend that God rules, and can control the universe and all its parts? Does anyone but the common people and the crowd acknowledge what they cannot see and understand? What is more obvious than that nature is the all in all? What else has the eye seen but nature? What else has the ear heard? What else has the nose smelt? What else has the tongue tasted? What else has anyone felt by the touch of his hand or body? Are not our bodily senses our only factual witnesses? It is on their evidence that anyone can swear that a thing is so. Are not your heads in nature? What do the thoughts in our heads come from but from that influence? Take away nature and you cannot think at all.' Much more was said of the same sort.

[3] On hearing this the angels replied, 'You talk like that because you are wholly under the influence of the senses. All in the hells have their mental ideas so sunk in the bodily senses that they cannot lift their minds above that level. So we forgive you. A life of evil leading to a belief in falsity has so shut off the inner levels of your minds that it is impossible for them to be lifted above the sensual level, except in a state where you are distant from the evils of your lives and your false beliefs. For a satan can understand truth just as well as an angel when he hears it, but he does not retain it, because evil obliterates truth and substitutes falsity. But we observe that you are now in that distanced state, so that you can understand the truth we are telling you. So pay attention to what we are about to say.

'You lived,' they said, 'in the natural world and there you died, and you are now in the spiritual world. Did you know anything before about life after death? Surely you denied its existence and put yourselves on a level with animals. Did you know anything before about heaven and hell, or about light and heat in this world? Or the fact that you are no longer within nature, but above it? For this world and everything in it are spiritual, and the spiritual is so far above the natural that nature cannot exert the slightest influence on this world. But you, because you believed that nature was a god or a goddess, still believe that the light and heat of this world are identical with the light and heat of the natural world. They are not in the slightest, for natural light is here darkness, and natural heat here is cold. Did you know anything about the sun of this world, the source of our light and heat? Did you know that this sun is undiluted love and the sun of the natural world is undiluted fire? That the sun of the world, being undiluted fire, is the source from which nature came into and continues in being? So nature, which you make into a god or a goddess, is completely lifeless.

[4] 'You can, if given protection, come up with us into heaven; and we can, if given protection, go down with you into hell. In heaven you will see magnificent and splendid sights, in hell foul and filthy ones. The reason for the difference is that in heaven all worship God, in the hells all worship nature. Those magnificent and splendid sights in the heavens are the correspondences of the affections for good and truth; but the foul and filthy sights in hell are the correspondences of the desires for evil and falsity. From both these facts you can now form a conclusion whether God or nature is the all in all.'

To this the satans replied, 'In our present state we can draw the conclusion from what we have heard that God is the all in all. But when the delight of evil takes hold of our minds, then we can see nothing but nature.'

[5] The two angels and the two satans were standing on the right not far from me, so I could see and hear them. Around them I suddenly saw many spirits who had been distinguished for their learning in the natural world. I was surprised to see these learned men standing at one moment next to the angels, at another next to the satans, and applauding the party they stood next to. I was told that their changes of position were changes in their mental states, as they favoured one side or the other, for they behave like weathercocks. 'And we will tell you a secret,' they said. 'We looked down to earth to see those distinguished scholars who had used their own judgment to think about God and nature, and we found six hundred out of a thousand on the side of nature, and the rest on the side of God. But we found them to be on the side of God, not because of any understanding, but because, relying on having been told that nature comes from God, they had often said so. Keeping on saying a thing from memory or recall, while not at the same time prompted by thought and intelligence, produces an appearance of belief.'

[6] After this the satans were given protection and went up with the two angels into heaven, and saw magnificent and splendid sights. On being enlightened by the light of heaven they there acknowledged that there is a God, and that nature was created to minister to life, which is in God and comes from Him; and that nature is in itself lifeless, and so does nothing of itself, but is acted upon by life. When they had seen these sights and experienced these perceptions, they went down; and as they came down, their love of evil returned and shut off their intellect above, opening it underneath. Then there appeared above what looked like a covering flashing with hellish fire. The moment their feet touched the earth, the ground yawned beneath them, and they sank back down to their own kind.