Here is a description from Swedenborg's book Divine Love and Wisdom, which reminded me of a character from Harry Potter. "What an earthly-minded person is like whose spiritual level has been completely closed. The spiritual level is closed in people who are focused on evil in their lives, especially if they are engaged in distortion because of their evils. It is rather like the way our little nerve fibers contract at the slightest touch of anything unsuitable, as does every muscular motor fiber and every muscle and the whole body, at the touch of something hard or cold. This is how the substances or forms of the spiritual level within us react to things that are evil and to the distortions that result--they are unsuitable. The spiritual level, being in the form of heaven, is open only to things that are good and to the truths that result from what is good. These are congenial to it, while evils and the falsities they give rise to are unsuitable.
This level contracts, and closes by contracting, especially in people who are caught up in a love of being in control for selfish reasons in this world, since this love is the opposite of a love for the Lord. It is also closed, though not as firmly, in people who because of their love for this world are caught up in a mindless craving to acquire the assets of others. The reason these loves close off the spiritual level is that they are the sources of our evils.
The contraction or closure of this level is like a coil twisting back on itself, which is why this level deflects heaven's light once it has been closed. This yields darkness in place of heaven's light. Accordingly, the truth that is found in heaven's light becomes sickening.
For these people, it is not just [the spiritual] level itself that is closed. It is also the higher area of the earthly level, the area called "rational." Eventually, then, only the lowest area of the earthly level stays open, the area we call "sensory." This is right next to the world and to our outward physical senses, which thereafter constitute the basis of our thinking, talking, and rationalizing. In the spiritual world, earthly-minded people who have become sense-centered because of their evils and consequent distortions do not look human in heaven's light. They look grotesque, with flattened noses. The reason they have these concave noses is that the nose corresponds to a perception of what is true. They cannot bear a single ray of heaven's light, either. The only light in their caves is like the light of embers or smoldering charcoal. We can see from this who the people are whose spiritual level has been closed, and what they are like." (DLW 254)
