these are wholly evil
and even abominable unless the interior is purified from evils is meant
by "Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings, and
cease to do evil." That afterward they are all goods is meant by words
that follow. (A.E., n. 939.)

When man's interior is purified from evils by his refraining from them
and shunning them because they are sins, the internal which is above it,
and which is called the spiritual internal, is opened. This
communicates with heaven; consequently man is then admitted into heaven
and is conjoined to the Lord.

There are two internals in man, one beneath and the other above. While
man lives in the world he is in the internal which is beneath and from
which he thinks, for it is natural. This may be called for the sake of
distinction the interior. But the internal that is above is that into
which man comes after death when he enters heaven. All angels of heaven
are in this internal, for it is spiritual. This internal is opened to
the man who shuns evils as sins; but it is kept closed to the man who
does not shun evils as sins.

This internal is kept closed to the man who does not shun evils as sins,
because the interior, that is, the natural internal, until man has been
purified from sins, is hell; and so long as there is hell there heaven
cannot be opened; but as soon as hell has been set aside it is opened.
But let it be noted that in the measure in which the spiritual internal
and heaven are opened to man, the natural internal is purified from the
hell that is there. This is not done at once, but successively by
degrees. All this makes clear that man from himself is hell, and that
man is made a heaven by the Lord, consequently that he is snatched out
of hell by the Lord, and raised up into heaven to the Lord, not without
means but through means; and these means are the commandments just
mentioned, by which the Lord leads him who wishes to be led. (A.E., n.
940.)

When the spiritual internal is opened, and through it communication with
heaven and conjunction with the Lord are granted, enlightenment takes
place with man. He is enlightened especially when he reads the Word,
because the Lord is in the Word, and the Word is Divine truth, and
Divine truth is light to angels. Man is enlightened in the rational,
for this directly underlies the spiritual internal, and receives light
from heaven and transfers it into the natural when it is purified from
evils