ging fire is peopled
by beings whose appearance may well seem horrifying and painful to
spiritual vision, whose pleasure seems to consist in destruction, and
whose passions impel them to evil-doing of such a description that the
evil of the physical world seems insignificant in comparison. Whatever
desires of the kind described above are brought into that world by man,
are looked upon by these beings as food, by means of which their powers
are continually strengthened and invigorated.

The picture thus sketched of a world imperceptible to the senses may seem
less incredible if we look with an unprejudiced eye on part of the animal
world. What is a fierce, devouring wolf, from a spiritual point of view?
What does it reveal to us through that which our senses perceive? Nothing
else than a soul that lives in desires, and acts by desire. The external
form of the wolf may be called an embodiment of those desires; and if man
had no organs with which to perceive that form, if its desires appeared
invisibly in their effects,--if, therefore, a force invisible to the eye
were prowling about, and might be the cause of all that happened through
the visible wolf,--he would still be forced to recognize the existence of a
creature corresponding to it. Now the beings of the region of purifying
fire are not visible to the physical eye, but to clairvoyant sight only;
but their effects are clearly apparent. They bring about the destruction
of the ego when it gives them nourishment. These effects are clearly
visible if what began as a pleasure leads to excess and debauchery.

For even what is perceptible to the senses would attract the ego only in
so far as the pleasure had its root in the ego's own nature. The animal is
prompted by desire for that in the outer world which its three bodies
crave. Man has higher enjoyments, because to the three principles of his
bodily nature is added the fourth, the ego. But if the ego seeks a
gratification which does not tend toward the maintenance and development
of its nature but to its destruction, then such a craving can be neither
the effect of its three bodies, nor that of its own nature, but can only
be caused by beings, concealed from the senses in their true form, but
able furtively to approach that higher nature of the ego, and excite in it
desires which, though it is cut off from the senses, can still be
satisfied only by means of sense-organs.

For there are beings which feed on passions and