speak specifically of suicide, but the connection is clear:
No one in the other world suffers punishment on account of the evils that he had
done in this world, but only on account of the evils that he then does; although it
amounts to the same . . . , since everyone after death returns into his own life and
thus into like evils and the person continues the same as he had been in the life of
the body. . . . But good spirits, although they had done evils in the world, are
never punished, because their evils do not return. Moreover, I have learned that
the evils they did were of a different kind or nature, not being done purposely in
opposition to the truth, or from any other badness of heart than that which they
received by inheritance from their parents, and that they were carried into this by a
blind delight when they were in externals separate from internals. (Heaven and Hell
509; emphasis added)
But as regards good spirits, if perchance they speak or do evil, they are not
punished, but pardoned, and also excused. For their end is not to speak or do evil,
and they know that such things are excited in them by hell, so that they have not
come to pass by their fault; and the same is also observed from their resistance, and
afterward from their grief. (Arcana Coelestia 6559)
From this we can see that a person who is basically good who commits
suicide will not be punished at all for this in the other life, because his or her
intention in committing suicide is not to hurt other people.
Suicide Permitted to Protect a Person’s Soul
Another passage in Swedenborg’s private diary speaks of evil spirits who
attempt to kill the people they are with:
It was told me they were such as had formerly [in their lifetime] slaughtered whole
armies, as is recorded in the Scripture h