6611. I have talked to spirits about the changes of state that a person's life undergoes, saying that it does not remain constant but that it involves ups and downs, that is to say, being taken up to heaven and down to hell. But people who allow themselves to be regenerated are being carried ever upwards, thus into heavenly communities that are always more internal. The Lord enables the sphere of those who are being regenerated to extend into those communities primarily by means of temptations, in which evils and falsities are being withstood. For during temptations the Lord fights by means of angels against evils and falsities, and in this way a person is led into the more internal communities of these angels. Once he has been led into them he remains there; and this also gives him a broader and loftier ability to perceive.
