96. The reason why it is hurtful to confirm the apparent truth of the Word to the point of destroying the genuine truth that lies hidden within, is that each and all things of the sense of the letter of the Word communicate with heaven, and open it, as before shown (n. 62-69). So that when a man applies this sense to confirm loves of the world that are contrary to loves of heaven, the internal of the Word is made false, and the result is that when its external of the sense of the letter, and which now has a false internal, communicates with heaven, heaven is closed, for the angels, who are in the internal of the Word, reject that external of it. Thus it is evident that a false internal, or truth falsified, takes away communication with heaven and closes heaven. This is why it is hurtful to confirm any heretical falsity.

96a. The Word is like a garden, a heavenly paradise, that contains delicacies and delights of every kind, delicacies in its fruits and delights in its flowers; and in the midst of the garden trees of life with fountains of living water near them, while forest trees surround it. The man who from doctrine is in Divine truths is at its center where the trees of life are, and is in the actual enjoyment of its delicacies and delights; whereas the man who is in truths not from doctrine, but from the sense of the letter only, is at the outskirts, and sees nothing but the forest vegetation. And one who is in the doctrine of a false religion, and who has confirmed himself in its falsity, is not even in the forest, but is out beyond it in a sandy plain where there is not even grass. That such are their several states after death will be shown in its proper place.