4054. The brain, like heaven, belongs to the realm of ends which are uses, for whatever flows in from the Lord is an end looking towards the salvation of the human race. This is the end which reigns in heaven, and also which as a result reigns in the brain, for the brain, where man's mind is seated, looks to ends in the body, that is to say, so that the body may serve the soul and that the soul may be eternally happy. But some communities exist which have no end that has any use in view apart from mixing with friends, male and female, and enjoying themselves there; thus they are wholly self-indulgent and care about no one else but themselves. Whether at home or in public their end in view is the same. More communities of spirits such as these exist at the present day than one can possibly imagine. As soon as they arrive their sphere gets to work and destroys in others their affections for truth and good. And once these have been destroyed those spirits experience the delight which they share as friends with one another.
[2] These are obstructions in the brain, and they cause nonsensical confusions there. Many communities of such spirits have been with me, and I have perceived their presence from a dullness, slowness, and loss of emotional feeling. I have also talked to them on several occasions. They are pestilential and pernicious, though in everyday life when they were in the world they had apparently been good, pleasant, well-mannered, and also clever people, for they know how to behave correctly and how to worm their way in by such behaviour, especially into friendships. What is meant by being a friend to good, or by the friendship that is concerned for what is good, they neither know nor wish to know. A sad fate awaits them. In the end they live in squalor and in such stupidity that scarcely anything at all of their human ability to understand things is left to them. For the end he has in view is what makes a person, and the essential nature of his end determines the nature of him as a person and therefore of his human ability to understand after death.
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