differences in this profanation. (A.E., n.
1049.)

Why the state of profaners after death is so horrible shall be
disclosed. Man has two minds, a natural and a spiritual. The natural
mind is opened to him by knowledges (scientiae et cognitiones) of truth
and good, and the spiritual mind is opened by a life according to these;
and this is effected in those who know, acknowledge, and believe the
truths of the Word and live according to them. In others that mind is
not opened. When the spiritual mind has been opened, the light of
heaven, which is Divine truth, flows through it into the natural mind,
and there arranges truths in a corresponding order. Therefore when a
man passes over into a contrary state, and either in faith or life
denies the truths of the Word that he has previously acknowledged, the
things that are in the natural mind no longer correspond with those that
are in the spiritual mind; consequently heaven with its light flows in
through the spiritual mind into non-corresponding things, or into things
opposite to those that correspond in the natural man; and from this a
fantasy arises that is so direful that they seem to themselves to fly in
the air like dragons, while shreds and specks appear to them like giants
and crowds, and a little ball like the whole globe, and other like
things. The reason of this is that they have heaven in the spiritual
mind and hell in the natural mind, and when heaven, which is in the
spiritual mind, acts into hell, which is in the natural mind, such
things appear. And as this destroys all things pertaining to the
understanding, and the will with the understanding, the man comes to be
no longer a man. And this is why a profaner is no longer called a man,
nor he or she, but it, for he is a brute. (A.E., n. 1050.)

This kind of profanation exists especially in those who acknowledge the
Lord and His Divine, and the Word and its holiness; and for the reason
that the Lord alone by means of truths from the Word opens heaven to the
man who lives according to those truths; and unless heaven is opened
such profanation is not possible. And this shows why the Gentiles, who
are ignorant of the Lord and know nothing about the Word, cannot bring
upon themselves such profanation; neither can the Jews, for they deny
the Lord from their infancy, and heaven is not opened to them by means
of the Word; neither can the impious who have been such from childhood;
for, as has been said, those o