from reason that lusts with their pleasures block and close the door to
the Lord and cannot be cast out by the Lord as long as the man himself
keeps the door shut and presses and pushes from outside to keep it from
being opened. It is plain from the Lord's words in the Apocalypse that a
man must himself open the door:

Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens
the door, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with Me (3:20).

[3] Plainly, then, so far as one shuns evils as diabolical and as
obstacles to the Lord's entrance, he is more and more closely conjoined
to the Lord, and he the most closely who abhors them as so many dusky and
fiery devils. For evil and the devil are one and the same, and the
falsity of evil and satan are one and the same. As the Lord's influx is
into the love of good and into its affections and by these into the
perceptions and thoughts, which have it from the good in which a man is
that they are truths, so the influx of the devil, that is of hell, is
into the love of evil and its affections, which are lusts, and by these
into the perceptions and thoughts, which have it from the evil in which
the man is that they are falsities.

[4] _How the conjunction seems closer and closer._ The more the evils in
the natural man are removed by shunning and turning away from them, the
more closely a man is conjoined to the Lord. Love and wisdom, which are
the Lord Himself, are not in space, as affection which is of love, and
thought which is of wisdom, have nothing in common with space. In the
measure of the conjunction by love and wisdom, therefore, the Lord seems
nearer; and, contrariwise, in the measure of the rejection of love and
wisdom, more distant. There is no space in the spiritual world; distance
and presence there are appearances according to similarity or