HH 575 - gnashing of teeth

HH 575
Gnashing of teeth
is the continual contention and combat of falsities
with each other,
consequently of those who are in falsities,
joined with contempt of others,
with enmity, mockery, ridicule, blaspheming;
and these evils burst forth into lacerations of various kinds;
since everyone fights for his own falsity and calls it truth.
These contentions and combats
are heard outside of these hells like the gnashings of teeth;
and are also turned into gnashings of teeth
when truths from heaven flow in among them.
In these hells are all
who have acknowledged nature and have denied the Divine.
In the deeper of these hells are those
that have confirmed themselves in such denials.
As such are unable to receive any thing of light from heaven,
and are thus unable to see any thing inwardly in themselves,
they are for the most part corporeal sensual spirits,
who believe nothing
except what they see with their eyes and touch with their hands.
Therefore all the fallacies of the senses are truths to them;
and it is from these that they dispute.
This is why their contentions are heard as gnashings of teeth;
for in the spiritual world all falsities give a grating sound,
and the teeth correspond to the outmost things in nature
and to the outmost things in man, which are corporeal sensual.