Our Life After Death

Our Life After Death
A Firsthand Accountfrom an 18th-Century Scientist and Seer
EMANUEL SWEDENBORG

Translated by George F. Dole
Introduction by Kenneth Ringswedenborg foundation
West Chester, Pennsylvania© 2014 by the Swedenborg Foundation. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted inany form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval
system, without prior permission from the publisher.
First printing 2013
Revised second printing 2014
This volume contains a modified version of text originallypublished in Emanuel Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell, astranslated by George F. Dole in the New Century Edition of theWorks of Emanuel Swedenborg (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg
Foundation, 2000). It is excerpted from material in that volume
titled “The World of Spirits and Our State after Death” (sections
421–535) and “Children in Heaven” (sections 329–345).
The introduction by Kenneth Ring was originally published in
Awaken from Death (San Francisco: J. Appleseed & Co., 1993) and isreprinted with permission.

Edited by Stuart Shotwell
Design and typesetting by Karen Connor
Printed in the United States of America
Swedenborg Foundation
320 North Church Street • West Chester, PA 19380
www.swedenborg.com

The Swedenborg Foundation
dedicates this volume to
Dick and Sally Brickman
in deep gratitude for theirvision, passion, and support.

Contents

Introduction
Editor’s Note
What the World of Spirits Is

ix
xv
3

	Each of Us Is Inwardly a Spirit

9

Our Revival from Death

15

After Death, We Are in a Fully Human Form

21

We Leave Nothing Behind except Our Earthly Body

29

What We Are Like after Death

43

Our First State after Death

59

Our Second State after Death

65

Our Third State after Death

75

	It Is Not as Hard as People Think It Is
		 to Live a Life That Leads to Heaven

83

Appendix: Children in Heaven97

About Emanuel Swedenborg

111

Introduction

There are of course many paths that lead up to the summit of
Emanuel Swedenborg’s sweeping spiritual vision of the life
beyond. In my case, I came to discover Swedenborg through myresearch into near-death experiences (NDEs)—those compelling revelations, occurring on the threshold of apparent imminent death, that appear to usher individuals into a realm of transcendent beauty where time dissolves into eternity and God’s
light is everywhere. Even before I came to see the unmistakableparallels between the world Swedenborg had described for us
more than two centuries ago and that which contemporary neardeath experiencers were being vaulted into as a result of somekind of near-death crisis, others had already made this connection clear. Indeed, the first, and still in many ways the best, bookto be written on the near-death experience in our own time, Life

After Life by Raymond A. Moody, Jr., contained a section where
those parallels were explicitly discussed. In it, Moody highlighted Swedenborg’s teachings concerning what happens at theix

Introduction
moment of death—and afterward. My appreciation of Swedenborg’s writings has from the beginning been filtered throughand indeed enhanced by my study of near-death experiences andmy pondering of their obvious implications both for life afterand before death.
The book you now hold in your hands is in fact one that, by
drawing from Swedenborg’s best-known and enduringly popular work on this subject, Heaven and Hell, provides an excellent
introduction to Swedenborg’s vision and understanding of thelife beyond. As one quickly learns, this rendering is not one thatstems from theological dogma but is, rather, rooted in Swedenborg’s own personal and extraordinary sojourns into the spiritual world itself. His revelations, however, do not derive from thekind of brief glimpses that near-death experiencers have often
reported to me and other NDE researchers, but from sustainedand deliberate forays into this domain. As Swedenborg himself
says, he was not merely told but shown through direct experience
what the dying person encounters, both at the moment of physical death and afterward, and he was enabled to have such experiences frequently over the last third of his lifetime, a period ofnearly three decades. Thus Swedenborg is hardly just a precursor
to today’s NDEers; he is a true seer and, as such, he had alreadymapped the realm that NDE research has tried to sketch out with
its own methods.
What is the nature of this world? Here, Swedenborg makes it
plain, we enter into a domain where the “essence” of ourselves isdisclosed, and where we—and others—see ourselves with razorsharp precision for who we really are. Death changes nothing,xIntroduction
but reveals everything about us. This is just one of the many
points of correspondence between Swedenborg’s teachings andthe findings of NDE research, by the way, which indicates thatmany persons have a detailed “life review” in which they are
led to see not merely how they have lived, but the inner meaning and motivations of their actions, and the effects of thoseactions upon others. At death, we enter a world where, in short,
our inner essence becomes “the environment” in which wefind ourselves. In the end, Swedenborg says, “everyone returns
after death to his own life.” A person who has lived a life of selfcentered cruelty finds himself continuing to live that way, farfrom the light of God. On the other hand, a person who has truly
lived for others and for whom the existence of the Divine is at
the heart of his life, is already in heaven, Swedenborg asserts,
and continues to experience directly the Light of heaven after
death and to find himself in the company of like-minded others. Either way, according to Swedenborg, everyone “is going to
be an image of his affection, or his love.” So it is, if we follow
Swedenborg’s teachings, that we are building our heaven andhell now, and living in them now, too, depending on the innermeaning of our actions in the world.
This, to me, is the great moral lesson in Swedenborg’s visionof the afterlife—and it is one that once again coincides with themoral implications of NDEs: as the beloved Sufi poet Kabir has
it, “what is found now is found then.” Near-death experiencers
emphasize the importance of being involved with the world,
not withdrawing from it; of serving others and not merely paying lip service to traditional religious pieties; of knowing, withxi

Introduction
certainty, that God exists and that there is a life after death. For
them, it is their NDEs that have made plain the undeniable truthof these things. Yet Swedenborg was enabled to see all this, andso much beyond this, through his incomparable experiences inthe spiritual realm. And because of his remarkable intellect andpowers of expression, his writings, as excerpted in this book,contain a depth of wisdom and understanding that no modern
NDEer could ever hope to match. Which is why I say the study
of NDEs only leads up to Swedenborg’s world—it can scarcely
begin to suggest its compass.
Yet NDE research is, I think, for contemporary students of
Swedenborg an important confirmation of his insights into theafterlife. During Swedenborg’s own lifetime, and certainly afterward, there were many who dismissed his supposed visions,even while acknowledging that he had exceptional psychic orclairvoyant powers. Some, of course, thought him quite mad.
However, in the light of NDEs—and literally millions of persons
across the globe have had these experiences—it is no longer
possible to deny that Swedenborg’s visions have a definite experiential foundation. Too many people have seen what Swedenborg did—if not so far—and have drawn essentially the sameconclusions as he did, for it to be tenable to explain away hisexperiences as merely some kind of idiosyncratic fancy or morbid hallucination. It is ironic that while many world-famous figures have of course long honored Swedenborg and recognizedhis greatness, it is the collective testimony of millions of ordinary men and women who have described what it is like to die

xiiIntroductionthat is helping to bring his sobering yet inspiring vision of life
after death to many new readers today.
The Swedenborg Foundation has provided a real service incompiling this volume, which will now introduce you directly tosome of the essential writings of Emanuel Swedenborg on life
after death. May it be a spur to you to examine further the worksof this spiritual genius.
—Kenneth Ring
Author of Life at Death and Heading Toward Omegaxiii

editor’s noteThis volume presents an excerpt from Emanuel Swedenborg’s
timeless classic, Heaven and Hell. Written more than two hundred years before Raymond A. Moody’s Life After Life launched thestudy of near-death experiences, Heaven and Hell describes, fromthe point of view of a firsthand investigator, our passing to thespiritual world after death and the shape of our life there. Since
its initial publication in 1758, it has inspired countless thinkers,
writers, and artists. Some scholars see it as forming one of the
crucial links between the Enlightenment and Romanticism.
This version is based on the translation by George F. Dole,
originally published in the Swedenborg Foundation’s New Century Edition of the Works of Emanuel Swedenborg. The focusof this edited version has been to expand the terms that readersusually find difficult in Swedenborg and to represent the clarity of Swedenborg’s thought in each sentence, rather than topreserve a level of diction identical to his. The resulting version
has been rechecked against the Latin at each step of the way toxvEditor’s Noteensure that the text does not stray from Swedenborg’s original
meaning.
For this edited version, some passages within Swedenborg’s
original chapters have been omitted or rearranged. In a very few
instances, the material in some sentences has been condensed.
These omissions and rearrangements have not been indicatedin the text. Readers who find this sample of Swedenborg’s work
intriguing are invited to read the full version in Heaven and Hell.

xvi

Our Life After DeathWhat the World of Spirits Is

The world of spirits is neither heaven nor hell but a place or astate of being between the two. It is where we first arrive after
death. From there in due course we are either raised into heavenor thrown into hell, depending on how we have lived in thisworld.
It became clear to me that it is a halfway place when I saw thatthe hells were underneath it and the heavens above it, and that it
is a halfway state of being when I learned that as long as we are init, we are not yet in either heaven or hell.
In the following pages, where I say “spirits,” I mean people in
the world of spirits; while by “angels” I mean people in heaven.
There is a vast number of people in the world of spirits,
because that is where everyone is first gathered and where everyone is examined and prepared. There is no fixed limit to our staythere. Some people barely enter it and are promptly either taken
up into heaven or thrown down into hell. Some stay there for
only a few weeks, others for a number of years, though not morethan thirty. The variations in the length of our stay occur because3Our Life after Deathof the correspondence or lack of correspondence between our
deeper and our outer natures.
In the following pages I will be explaining just how we areprepared and led from one state of being into another.
After we die, just as soon as we arrive in the world of spirits,
we are carefully sorted out by the Lord. Evil people are immediately connected with the hellish community their ruling love had
affiliated them with in the world, and good people are immediately connected with the heavenly community their love andkindness and faith had affiliated them with in the world.
Even though we are sorted out in this way, we are still together
in that world and can talk to anyone when we want to, to friends
and acquaintances from our physical life, especially husbands
and wives, and also brothers and sisters. I have seen a father recognizing and talking with his six sons. I have seen many otherpeople with their relatives and friends. However, since they differed in character because of their life in the world, they parted
company after a little while.
However, people who go into heaven from the world of spirits do not see people who go into hell, and vice versa. Nor do
those in each group recognize the others in it unless they havea similar character because of a similarity in what they love.
The reason they can see these other people when they are in theworld of spirits but not when they are in heaven or hell is thatwhile they are in the world of spirits they are brought into statesof being like those they were in during their physical lives, one
after another. After a while, though, they settle into a constantstate of being that agrees with the state of their ruling love. In
4What the World of Spirits Is
this state of being, people recognize others only if what they love
is similar, since similarity unites and dissimilarity separates.
Just as the world of spirits is a state of being halfway between
heaven and hell, it is also a halfway place, as I mentioned earlier.
The hells are underneath it and the heavens above it.
All the hells are closed on the side that faces that world, andare accessible only through holes and crevices like those in rocks
and through broad gaps that are guarded to prevent anyone fromcoming out without permission, which is granted only in casesof real need. Heaven, too, is bounded on all sides, and the only
access to any heavenly community is by a narrow way whose
entry is also guarded. These exits and entrances are what are
called the doors and gates of hell and heaven in the Word.
The world of spirits looks like a valley surrounded by mountains and cliffs, with glens and rising ground here and there.
The doorways and entrances to heavenly communities become
visible only to people who have been readied for heaven, and noone else finds them. There is one entrance going from the worldof spirits to each community, and beyond that there is only one
path; but as the path goes upward, it splits into many.
The doorways and gates to the hells are visible only to thepeople who are about to enter them. The gates open for them,and then they can see dark, sooty-looking caves slanting downward into the depths, where there are still more gates. Rank, foul
stenches breathe out from them. Good spirits flee from theseodors because they are repelled by them, but evil spirits are drawn
toward them because they find them enjoyable. In fact, just as we
enjoy our own evil in this world, we find enjoyment after death in5

Our Life after Deaththe stench that corresponds to our evil. This can be compared tothe enjoyment shown by carrion birds and beasts, such as crows
and wolves and pigs, which fly or run toward rotting corpses assoon as they get wind of them. I heard one man who screamed
aloud in utter torment at a breath of air from heaven, but wascalm and happy when a breath from hell reached him.
There are two doors, so to speak, within each of us as well,
one facing hell and open to evil and false things from there,
the other facing heaven and open to good and true things fromthere. The door to hell is opened for people who focus on whatis evil and on the falsity that comes from evil, though just a little
light from heaven flows in through certain cracks, which enables
us to think, reason, and speak. On the other hand, the door toheaven is opened for people who focus on what is good andthus on what is true. There are actually two paths that lead toour rational mind, one from above the mind or from inside it,through which goodness and truth enter from the Lord, and one
from below the mind or from outside it, through which evil andfalsity infiltrate from hell. The rational mind itself is in the middle, where these two paths meet; so the more light from heaven
is let in, the more rational we are, and the more that light is shutout, the less rational we are, however the situation may appear
to us.
I have mentioned these things so that our correspondencewith heaven and with hell may be known. While our rational
mind is in the process of being formed, it corresponds to theworld of spirits. What is above it belongs to heaven, and what is
beneath it belongs to hell. In people who are being readied for6What the World of Spirits Is
heaven, the higher aspects of the mind open, and the lower close
against the inflow of evil and falsity. In people who are being
readied for hell, the lower aspects open, and the higher close
against the inflow of goodness and truth. As a result, the latter
people can look only downward, toward hell, and the former
people can look only upward, toward heaven. Looking upward islooking toward the Lord, because he is the common center thateverything in heaven faces. Looking downward, though, is looking away from the Lord toward the opposite center, the center
toward which everything in hell faces and gravitates.

7

Each of Us Is Inwardly a Spirit

Anyone who thinks things through carefully can see that it is not
the body that thinks, because the body is material. Rather, it is
the soul, because the soul is spiritual. The human soul, whose
immortality has been the topic of many authors, is our spirit; itis in fact immortal in all respects, and it is also what does thethinking in our bodies. This is because it is spiritual and the spiritual is open to the spiritual and lives spiritually, through thinking and willing. So all the rational life we can observe in our bodies belongs to the soul and none of it to the body. Actually, thebody is material, as just noted, and the matter that makes up the
body is an added element, almost like an extension to the spirit.
Its purpose is to enable our spirit to lead its life and perform its
services in a physical world that is material in all respects andessentially lifeless. Since matter is not alive—only spirit is—we
may conclude that whatever is alive in us is our spirit and that the
body only serves it exactly the way a tool serves a living force thatmakes it move. We may, of course, say that a tool works or moves

9

Our Life after Deathor strikes, but it is a mistake to believe that this is a property ofthe tool and not of the person who is wielding it.
Since everything that is alive in the body—everything thatacts and senses things because it is alive—belongs to the spirit
alone and none of it belongs to the body, it follows that the spirit
is the actual person. In other words, when seen for what we reallyare, we are spirits, and we also have the same form as our spirits. You see, everything inside us that is alive and senses things
belongs to our spirit, and there is nothing in us, from head totoe, that is not alive and able to experience the senses. This is
why when our bodies are separated from our spirits, which iscalled dying, we still continue to be human and to be alive.
I have heard from heavenly sources that some dead people—
while they are lying in the coffin, before they have been restored
to life after death—continue to think even in their cold bodies.
They cannot help but feel that they are alive, except that they cannot move a single atom of the matter that makes up their bodies.
We could not think or will anything if there were nothing
supporting our thought and will—some substance where thinking and willing arise and in which they take place. We may imagine something happening apart from a supporting substance,
but nothing like that exists. We can tell this from the fact that we
could not see without an organ that supports our sight, or hear
without an organ that supports our hearing. Apart from these,sight and hearing would be nothing, would not exist. The same
holds true for thought, which is inner sight, and for perception,
which is inner hearing. Unless these arose from and happened in
substances that took the form of supporting organs, they would
10

Inwardly We Are Spirits
not happen at all. We may gather from this that our spirit is also
in a form, that its form is that of a human being, and that it possesses its senses and sensory organs when it is separated fromits body just as it did when it was in its body. We may gather thatthe entire experience of the eye, the entire experience of the ear,in fact our sensory experience as a whole belongs not to the bodybut to the spirit, which occupies the sensory organs completely,right through to their smallest feature.
This is why spirits see and hear and experience their senses
just as much as we do, though after they have left the body thissensing does not take place in the physical world but in the spiritual one. When they were in the body, their mental experienceof the senses on the physical level occurred through the materialpart that was an added element to their spirit. However, they
were throughout that time having mental experiences purely on
the spiritual level through their thinking and willing.
I have presented this to persuade rational people that, when
seen for what we really are, we are spirits, and that the physicalpart added to us so that we can function in the physical and material world is not the real person but only the tool of our spirit.
A great deal of experience has taught me that with respect toour inner self we are spirits—experience that would fill wholevolumes, as they say, if I were to include it all. I have talked withspirits as a spirit and I have talked with them as a person in abody. When I have talked with them as a spirit, they could nottell that I was not a spirit myself, in a form just as human as
theirs. That is how my inner self looked to them, because when I
talked with them as a spirit, they could not see my material body.
11

Our Life after Death
We may conclude that we are spirits with respect to our inner
self from the fact that after we depart from our bodies, whichhappens when we die, we are still alive and just as human as ever.
To convince me of this, I was allowed to talk with almost all thepeople I had ever met during their physical lives, with some for a
few hours, with some for weeks and months, and with some foryears. This was primarily so that I could be convinced and could
bear witness.
I may add here that even while we are living in our bodies,
each one of us is, with respect to our own spirits, in a community with other spirits even though we are unaware of it. Bymeans of their spirits, good people are in angelic communities
and evil people are in hellish communities. Furthermore, wecome into those same communities when we die. People whoare coming into the company of spirits after death are often toldand shown this.
Actually, we are not visible as spirits in our spiritual communities while we are living in the world, because we are thinking on
the physical level. However, if our thinking is directed away fromour bodies we are sometimes visible in our communities because
we are then in the spirit. When we are visible, it is easy to tell
us from the spirits who live there because we walk along deep inthought, silent, without looking at others, as though we did not
see them; and the moment any spirit speaks to us, we disappear.
To illustrate the fact that we are spirits inwardly, I would liketo explain from personal experience what happens when we aretaken out of the body and how we are carried away by the spirit toanother place.
12

Inwardly We Are Spirits
The first experience, being taken out of the body, is like this.
We are brought into a particular state of being that is halfway
between sleep and waking. When we are in this state, it seems
exactly as though we were awake; all our senses are as alert asthey are when we are fully awake physically—sight, hearing, andamazingly, touch, which is then more exquisitely keen than it canever be during physical wakefulness. This is the state in whichpeople have seen spirits and angels most vividly, even hearing
them and, strange to say, touching them, with hardly anythingphysical interfering. It is the state described as being taken out of

one’s body and not knowing whether one is in one’s body or outside it[2 Corinthians 12:2–4].
I have been admitted to this state three or four times, simply
to let me know what it was like, and also to teach me that spirits
and angels have the use of all the senses and that so do we, withrespect to our spirits, when we are taken out of our bodies.
As for the second kind of experience, being carried away by
the spirit to another place, I have been shown by firsthand experience what happens and how it happens, but only two or threetimes. I should like to cite just one experience. While I was walking through city streets and through the countryside, absorbed
in conversation with spirits, it seemed exactly as though I were
just as awake and observant as ever, walking without getting lost,though all the while I was having visions. I was seeing woods,
rivers, mansions, houses, people, and more. After I had beenwalking for some hours, though, I suddenly found myself backin an awareness of my physical sight and realized that I wassomewhere else. I was utterly amazed by this, and realized that I
13

Our Life after Death
had been in the state of those people who are described as being

carried away by the spirit to another place [1 Kings 18:12; Acts 8:39–
40]; for as long as it lasted I was not thinking about my route,even though it might have been many miles, or about the time,
though it might have been many hours or even days. I was notconscious of any fatigue, either. This is how we can be led byroutes we know nothing of, right to some predetermined place,
without becoming lost.
These two states of being, though, which are states we havewhen we are awake to our deeper nature or (which is the samething) to our spirit, are out of the ordinary. They were shown me
simply to teach me what they were like because people in the
church know of them. But talking with spirits, being with themas one of them—this is something it was granted me to do when
I was fully awake physically, and it has been so for many years.
Saying that we are spirits in our inner self is the same assaying that the things that have to do with our thinking andwilling are spiritual, because thinking and willing actually are
our inner being. They are what make us human, and the kindof human beings we are depends on what our thinking and ourwilling are like.

14

Our Revival from Death

When someone’s body can no longer perform its functions in
the material world in response to the thoughts and emotions of
its spirit, which come to it from the spiritual world, then we saythat the individual has died. This happens when the breathingof the lungs and the pumping motion of the heart have ceased.
But in fact that person has not died at all. He or she is only separated from the physicality that was useful to that individual in
the world. The essential person is actually still alive. I say that
because it is not our bodies that make us human, but our spirits.
After all, it is the spirit inside us that thinks; and thought, alongwith emotion, makes us human.
We can see, then, that when we die we simply move fromone world into another. This is why in the inner meaning of theWord, “death” means resurrection and a continuation of life.
Our spirits are very closely linked with our breathing andour heartbeat. Thought links to our breathing, and love’s emotion links to our heart. As a result, when these two motions in
the body cease, a separation immediately occurs. It is these two15

Our Life after Deathmotions, the respiratory motion of the lungs and the pumping of
the heart, that are the essential ties. Once they are severed, thespirit is left to itself; and the body, being now without the life ofits spirit, cools and decays.
The reason our spirits are very closely linked with our breathing and our heart is that all our vital processes depend on these,
not only in the body as a whole, but in every part as well.
After this separation, our spirit stays in the body briefly, but
not after the heart has completely stopped, which occurs at different times depending on the cause of death. In some cases the
motion of the heart continues for quite a while, and in others it
does not. The moment it does stop, we are awakened, but only
the Lord awakens us. “Being awakened” means having our spirit
led out of our body and into the spiritual world. It is commonly
called “resurrection.”
The reason our spirit is not separated from our body until the
motion of the heart has stopped is that the heart corresponds tolove’s emotion, which is our essential life, since all of us get ourvital warmth from love. So as long as the heart and the emotions
are joined, the correspondence remains, and the life of the spirit
is still in the body.
I have not only been told how the awakening happens, I havebeen shown by firsthand experience. The actual experience
happened to me so that I could have a full knowledge of how it
occurs.
I was brought into a state in which my physical senses were
inoperative—very much, then, like the state of people who are
dying. However, my deeper life and thought remained intact so16

Our Revival from Deaththat I could perceive and retain what was happening to me andwhat happens to people who are being awakened from death. I
noticed that my physical breathing was almost suspended, and a
deeper breathing, a breathing of the spirit, continued along witha very slight and silent physical one.
At first a connection was established between my heartbeat
and the heavenly kingdom, because that kingdom corresponds
to the human heart. I also saw angels from that kingdom, some
at a distance, but two sitting close to my head. The effect was totake away all my own emotions, but to leave me still in possession of thought and higher perception. I remained in this state
for several hours.
Then the spirits who were around me gradually drew away,
thinking that I was dead. I sensed a sweet odor like that of anembalmed body, because when heavenly angels are present
anything having to do with a corpse smells sweet. When spirits
sense this, they cannot come near. This is also how evil spirits
are kept away from our spirit when we are being admitted into
eternal life.
The angels who were sitting beside my head were silent,
simply sharing their thoughts with mine. When the deceased
accepts those thoughts, the angels know that the person’s spirit
is ready to be led out of the body. They accomplished this sharing of thoughts by looking into my face. This is actually how
thoughts are shared in heaven.
Since I had been left in possession of thought and higher
perception so that I could learn and remember how awakening
happens, I noticed that at first the angels were examining my17

Our Life after Deaththoughts to see whether they were like those of dying individuals, who are normally thinking about eternal life. They wanted tokeep my mind in these thoughts. I was later told that as the bodyis breathing its last, our spirit is kept in its final thought until
eventually it comes back to the thoughts that flowed from ourbasic or ruling love in the world.
I was in particular allowed to perceive and even to feel that
there was a pull, a kind of drawing out of the deeper levels of mymind and therefore of my spirit from my body; and I was toldthat this was being done by the Lord and that it is what brings
about our resurrection.
When heavenly angels are with people who have been awakened they do not leave them, because they love everyone. But
some spirits are simply unable to be in the company of heavenly
angels very long and want them to leave. When this happens,angels from the Lord’s spiritual kingdom arrive, through whom
we are granted the use of light, since before this we could not see
anything but could only think.
I was also shown how this is done. It seemed as though theangels rolled back a covering from my left eye toward the bridgeof my nose so that my eye was opened and able to see. To thespirit, it seems as though this were actually happening, but it is
only apparently so. As this covering seemed to be rolled back,I could see a kind of bright but diffused light like the light we
see through our eyelids when we are first waking up. It seemed
to me as though this bright, diffused light had a heavenly color
to it, but I was later told that this varies. After that, it felt as
though something were being rolled gently off my face, and once18

Our Revival from Death
this was done I had access to spiritual thought. This rolling ofsomething off the face is an appearance, and it represents thefact that we are moving from physical thinking to spiritual thinking. Angels take the greatest care to shield the awakening personfrom any concept that does not have love in it. Then they tell theindividual that she or he is a spirit.
After the spiritual angels have given us the use of light,
they do everything for us as newly arrived spirits that we could
ever wish for in that state of being. They tell us about the realities of the other life, or at least as much about them as we cangrasp. However, if we are the kind of people that do not want
to be taught, then once we are awakened we want to get out of
the company of angels. Still, the angels do not leave us; instead
we leave them. Angels really do love everyone. They want nothing more than to help people, to teach them, to lead them into
heaven. This is their highest joy.
When spirits leave the company of angels, they are welcomedby the good spirits who are accompanying them and who also do
all they can for them. However, if they have led the kind of lifein the world that makes it impossible for them to be in the company of good people, then they want to get away from these as
well. This happens as long and as many times as necessary, until
they find the company of people their earthly life has fitted themfor. Here they find their life; and remarkable as it may sound,they then lead the same kind of life they once led in the world.
This first stage of our life after death does not last more than afew days, though. In the following pages I will be describing how
we are then brought from one state of being into another until
19

Our Life after Death
finally we arrive either in heaven or in hell. This too is something
I have been allowed to learn from a great deal of experience.
I have talked with some people on the third day after their
death, when the events previously described have been completed. I talked with three whom I had known in the world andtold them that their funeral services were now being planned
so that their bodies could be buried. When they heard this, they
were struck with a kind of bewilderment. They said that they werealive, and that what was being buried had been useful to them
only in the material world. Later on, they were quite amazed at
the fact that while they had been living in their bodies they had
not believed in this kind of life after death, and still more that
this disbelief was shared by almost everyone in the church.
Some people during their earthly lives have not believed thesoul had any life after the life of the body. When they discoverthat they are still alive, they are deeply embarrassed. However,people who have convinced themselves that there is no eternal
life join up with others who think similarly, and they move awayfrom people who lived in faith while on earth. Most of them linkup with some hellish community because such people reject theDivine and have no use for the truths of the church. In fact, themore that we convince ourselves that the eternal life of the soulcannot be, the more we convince ourselves that nothing to dowith heaven and the church is real.

20

After Death, We Are
in a Fully Human Form

The fact that the form of a spirit-person is the human form follows from what has been presented earlier.
This may be grasped even more clearly from the fact that weare human because of our spirit, not because of our body, andbecause our physical form is appended to the spirit in keepingwith its form, not the other way around, since a spirit is clothedwith a body that matches its form. As a result, the human spirit
acts on the individual parts of the body, including the smallest
ones, even to the point that any part that is not activated by thespirit, any part in which there is no spirit acting, is not alive.
Anyone can see this by considering that thought and willpower
activate absolutely everything in the body and are so completely
in control that no part of the body dissents. If anything does
not consent it is not part of the body, and it is actually expelled
as something with no life in it. Thought and will belong to thespirit, not to the body.

21

Our Life after Death
The reason we cannot see the human form of the spirits who
have left the body and of the spirits that are inside the people wemeet is that our physical organ of sight, the eye, is material withrespect to the seeing it does in this world, and what is material
sees only what is material. What is spiritual, though, sees whatis spiritual; so when the material eye is covered over and loses its
coordination with the spirit, then spirits are visible in their own
form, which is human. And it is a human form not only for the
spirits who are in the spiritual world but also for the spirits inpeople we meet while they are still in their bodies.
The reason the form of a spirit is a human one is that inregard to our spirits we have been created in the form of heaven,since all of heaven and its design are summed up in what makes
up the human mind. This is the source of our ability to take inintelligence and wisdom. (It makes no difference whether you
talk about our ability to take in intelligence and wisdom or ourability to take in heaven.)
Years and years of daily experience have provided me withevidence that after separation from the body the human spirit isa person and is in a similar form. I have seen this thousands oftimes, I have heard such spirits, and I have even talked with them
about the fact that people in the world don’t believe that they arewhat they are. I’ve told them that scholars think people who dobelieve such things are naive.
Spirits are heartsick over the fact that this kind of ignorance
is still common in the world and especially in the church. But
they say that this belief is spread in particular by academics
who have thought about the soul only on the basis of the bodily
22After Death We Are Humansenses. The only conclusion these academics can come to bythinking this way is that the soul is only a concept, and since itdoes not exist in any medium in which and from which it canbe seen, it’s like pure ether, which readily evaporates, and it can
only fade into nothingness when the body dies. But since thechurch believes in the immortality of the soul on the basis of
the Word, these scholars are forced to concede that the soul hassome tinge of life, something thought-ish. Despite this concession, they don’t allow the soul any ability to sense things the way
we do, or at least not until it’s reunited with its body. Their doctrine of the resurrection is based on this idea, as is their belief
that there will be a reunion of soul and body when the Last Judgment comes. The result is that when people put doctrine andspeculation together and think about the soul on that basis, they
just don’t get the fact that the soul is the spirit and that it has ahuman form. To say nothing of the fact that hardly anyone nowadays knows what “spiritual” means, let alone knows that spiritpeople (that is, spirits and angels) have a human form.
Thus almost all the people who arrive from this world are
absolutely astounded to find that they are alive and that they
are just as human as ever, that they are seeing and hearing andtalking, that their bodies still possess the sense of touch, andthat nothing at all has changed. But once they get over that,then they go on to be astonished that the church doesn’t know
anything about this state of being we have after death, and so
is similarly ignorant about heaven and hell, even though all thepeople who have lived in this world are in the other life and areliving people.
23

Our Life after Death
Because people there kept wondering why this has not been
made plain to people on earth through visions, since it is critical to the faith of the church to know about it, they were told
by a heavenly source that such visions could be granted whenever it pleased the Lord—nothing could be easier. But, they
were told, even if people had such visions, no one would believethem, because they have all convinced themselves of the exact
opposite.
When we first enter the world of spirits (which happens
shortly after the reawakening just described), our face and thesound of our voice are the same as they were in the world. Thisis because at that point we are in a state of being in which weare focused on our outer self, and our inner self has not yet been
revealed to us. This is our initial state after we have died. Later,
though, our face changes and becomes quite different. It comesto look like the ruling love that the deeper reaches of our mind
focused on in the world, the kind of love characteristic of thespirit within our body, because the face of our spirit is very different from the face of our body. We get our physical face from ourparents and our spiritual face from our ruling love, of which ourface forms an image. Our spirit takes on this face after our physical life is over, when the outer coverings have been removed.
I have seen some newcomers from the world and have recognized them by their faces and voices; but when I saw them later,
I did not recognize them. People whose ruling love was good had
beautiful faces, while people whose ruling love was evil had ugly
ones. If our spirit is seen for what it really is, it is identical to ourlove. And our face is just the outward shape of our love.
24

After Death We Are Human
The reason our faces change is that in the other life no one
is allowed to pretend to love something they really don’t, so we
can’t put on a face that is the opposite of the love that guides
us. All of us are shifted to a state of being in which we say what
we think and show what we want to do in our expressions andactions. This is why our faces take on the shape of what we loveand form an image of it; and this is why all the people who have
known each other in the world still recognize each other in theworld of spirits, but not in heaven or hell.
The faces of hypocrites change more slowly than those ofother people, because by constant practice they have formed thehabit of arranging their inner selves into a counterfeit of a love
for what is good. So for a long time they look fairly attractive.
However, since this false front is gradually stripped off and the
deeper elements of their minds are gradually arranged in the
shape of what they love, they wind up uglier than other people.
Hypocrites are people who talk like angels but who inwardly
respect only material things, not the Divine Being, and who
therefore deny the reality of anything having to do with thechurch and heaven.
One thing we should be sure about is that our human form
will be all that much more beautiful after death if we have deeply
loved divine truths and have lived by them, since our deeper levels are opened and shaped according to both our love of thesetruths and the way we live. So the deeper our love and the more
it is like heaven, the more beautiful our faces will be. This is
why the angels who are in the very deepest heaven are the mostbeautiful—because they are forms of heavenly love. On the other25

Our Life after Deathhand, there are people who have loved divine truths more with
their outer selves and for that reason have lived by them in more
superficial ways, and they are less beautiful. This is because only
the more superficial qualities shine from their faces; and no
deeper, heavenly love can shine through those superficial qualities. And if that love doesn’t shine through, then neither does theshape of what heaven really is. In their faces you can see something that is dim by comparison with heaven—something that
can’t come to life, because no deeper life inside is lighting it up.
To put it briefly: the deeper anything is, the closer it is tobeing perfect; the more superficial it is, the farther it is frombeing perfect. And our beauty varies depending on how close toperfection we are.
I have seen faces of angels of the third heaven so beautifulthat no painters, with all their skill and pigment, could render afraction of their light or rival a thousandth part of the radianceand vitality that show in their faces. By contrast, the faces ofangels of the outermost heaven could just possibly be captured
in a painting.
Finally, I should like to offer a secret never before madeknown: Everything good and true that comes from the Lord andmakes up heaven is in the form of a human being. This is true
not only of the totality of heaven, on a grand scale, but also ofeach individual part of heaven, on the smallest scale. This heavenly form has an effect on everyone who takes in what is goodand what is true from the Lord: the more those in heaven take inthese things, the more truly human in form they are. This is whyheaven is self-consistent throughout, both in what is shared by26

After Death We Are Human
all and in its individual parts. It is also why the human form isthe form of the whole of heaven, and of each community, and ofeach angel. And, it should be added, this is why the human form
is the form taken even by the individual thoughts born from theheavenly love found among angels.
This secret may not make sense to anyone on earth, but it
makes perfect sense to angels, because they stand in heaven’s
light.

27

We Leave Nothing Behind
except Our Earthly Body

Repeated experience has proved to me that when we move fromthe material world into the spiritual, which happens when we die,
we take with us everything that pertains to our character except
our earthly body. In fact, when we enter the spiritual world, or
our life after death, we are in a body as we were in this world.
Since we don’t feel or see any difference, it seems as if nothing
has changed. Now our body is spiritual, though, which means
it has been separated from earthly matter and purified. Furthermore, when anything spiritual touches and sees something
spiritual, it is just like something material touching and seeing
something material. So when we have become a spirit, none of
our senses tells us that we are not in the body we inhabited in theworld, and therefore we do not realize that we have died.
As spirit-people, we possess every outer and inner sense we
had in the world. We see the way we used to, we hear and talkthe way we used to; we smell and taste; we feel it when we aretouched just the way we used to; we want, wish, crave, think,29

Our Life after Deathponder, are moved, love, and intend the way we used to. Studious types still read and write the way they did before. In a word,when we move from the one life into the other, or from the one
world into the other, it is like moving from one physical place toanother; and we take with us everything we possessed as humanbeings, to the point that it would be untrue to say that we havelost anything of our own after death, which is only a death of theearthly body. We even take with us our earthly memory, since weretain everything we have heard, seen, read, learned, or thoughtin the world from earliest infancy to the very end of life. But
since the earthly objects that reside in our memory are beyond
our power to retrieve in a world that is spiritual, they become
dormant there the way they do when we are not thinking about
them. They can, however, be retrieved when it so pleases theLord. But I will have more to say soon about the earthly memory
and its condition after death.
People who are focused on their senses are quite incapableof believing that our state after death is like this, because they
can’t conceive of such a thing. Such people can think only on thematerial level, even about spiritual matters. This means that anything they do not sense—that is, anything they do not see with
their physical eyes and touch with their hands—they say does
not exist, as we read of Thomas in John 20:25, 27, 29.
Nevertheless, the difference between our life in the spiritual
world and our life in the material world is considerable, withrespect both to our outer senses and the way they affect us, andto our inner senses and the way they affect us. People who are
in heaven are far more sensitive mentally. That is, they see and30

We Leave Only the Body Behindhear and also think more discerningly than when they were inthis world. This is because they are seeing in heaven’s light,
which vastly surpasses the world’s light, and they hear by wayof a spiritual atmosphere that vastly surpasses the atmosphereof the earth. The difference this makes to their outer senses is
as great as the difference we see in the material world between
clear skies and the obscurity of a cloud, or between noonday
light and the dimness of evening. Because the light of heaven is
divine truth, it enables angels to notice and distinguish between
even the smallest things by sight. Furthermore, their outer sightcorresponds to their inner sight (their understanding), sincefor angels each sight flows into the other and they act as a single faculty. This is why both the outer sight of angels and theirinner vision are so sharp. Their hearing corresponds in a similar
way to their higher perception, which is a function of both theirunderstanding and their will. So in the tone and words of others,
angels pick up the slightest shadings of the speakers’ emotion
and thought—shadings of emotion in the tone, and shadings ofthought in the words.
However, angels’ other senses are not as exquisitely keen as
their sight and hearing, because sight and hearing serve theirintelligence and wisdom, while the other senses do not. If theothers were as sharp, they would take away the illumination andthe joy that angels find in wisdom and replace them with a joy
in pleasures arising from physical appetites that obscure andweaken the intellect more and more as they become stronger.
This happens to people in the world as well, who become more
dull and mindless with respect to spiritual truths the more they31

Our Life after Deathindulge their appetite for food and yield to the body’s yearning
for the gratification of physical touch.
The deeper senses of heaven’s angels, which are connectedwith their thought and emotion, are more exquisitely keen andmore close to perfection than the ones they had in the world.
As for our keeping our complete memory when we leave theworld, I have been shown this by many examples and have seen
and heard a great deal worth mentioning. I would like to list a
few examples.
There were people who denied the crimes and transgressions they had committed in the world. To prevent them frombeing seen as blameless, everything was revealed and drawn outof their own memory in chronological order from the beginningof their life to the end. Most of these transgressions were acts ofadultery and fornication.
There were people who had deceived others with malicious
skill and had stolen from them. Their deceptions and thefts werealso recounted one after the other, many of which were known
to practically no one in the world other than themselves. They
admitted them, too, because they were plain as day, along withall the thoughts, intentions, pleasures, and fears that were swirling together in their minds at the time.
There were people who had taken bribes and made moneyfrom judicial decisions. They were similarly examined on thebasis of their own memories, and everything was recounted fromtheir first taking office to the end. Hundreds upon hundreds ofdetails of how much they took, and what kinds of things, at what32

We Leave Only the Body Behindtime, and their mental state and their intentions, were all simultaneously recalled to their remembrance and exposed to view. In
some cases, remarkably enough, the very ledgers in which they
had recorded these actions were opened and read to them, pageby page.
There were men who had seduced innocent women in order
to corrupt them and violate them. They were summoned to asimilar judgment, and the details were drawn out of their memory and listed. The actual faces of the young women and others
were presented as though they were there in person, along with
where the men took them, what the men told them, what they
were thinking. It was done as instantaneously as when something is actually being witnessed firsthand. Sometimes thesepresentations lasted for hours.
There was one man who thought nothing of speaking ill ofother people. I heard his slanders recounted in chronological order, and his false testimony against them too—the actual
words, and which individual he was slandering, and who waspresent. All these details were brought out and presented in one
stroke as if they were real life, though he had very carefully kept
them hidden while he was living in the world.
There was one man who had defrauded a relative of his legacy by some devious pretext. He was convicted and sentenced
in the same way. Remarkably, the letters and documents theyexchanged were read aloud to me, and he said that not a word
was missing. This same man had also secretly killed a neighborby poison just before his own death, a fact that was disclosed

33

Our Life after Deathin the following way. He appeared to be digging a trench under
his feet, and when it had been dug, a man came out as thoughfrom a tomb and shouted at him, “What have you done to me?”Then everything was revealed—how the poisoner had talked ina friendly way with him and offered him the drink, what he hadthought beforehand, and what happened afterward. Once thiswas uncovered, the murderer was condemned to hell.
In a word, all the evils, crimes, thefts, frauds, and deceptions committed by evil spirits are made clear to them and drawn
directly from their own memories, and they are convicted. They
cannot possibly deny anything, because all the circumstances arepresented together.
I also heard that angels have seen and displayed from thememory of one individual everything he had thought, one day
after another, over the course of a month, with not one single
mistake. These memories were recalled to him as though hehimself were back in those very days.
We may gather from these instances that we take our complete memory with us, and that nothing is so concealed in thisworld that it will not be made known after death, and madeknown in public, according to the Lord’s words: “Nothing is hidden that will not be revealed, and nothing concealed that will not
become known. Whatever you have said in the dark will be heard
in the light, and what you have spoken in someone’s ear will be
proclaimed on the rooftops” (Luke 12:2–3).
When we are being confronted after death with what we havedone in life, angels who have been given the task of examining
us look searchingly in our faces and continue their examination
34

We Leave Only the Body Behindthrough our entire bodies, beginning with the fingers first of
one hand and then of the other, and continuing through everything else. When I wondered why this was so, it was explained tome. The reason is that just as the details of our thought and will
are inscribed on the brain, because that is where their physicalbeginnings are, they are also inscribed on the whole body, since
whatever arises from our thought and our will moves from thepoint where it begins out into the body and is realized there in its
final form. This is why the things that are inscribed on our memory that come from our will, and from the thought that arises
from our willing something, are inscribed not only on the brain
but also on the whole person, where they take form in a patternthat follows the pattern of the parts of the body. I could therefore
see that our overall character depends on the kinds of things wewill to do, and on the thoughts that we have as a result. In fact, it
can be said that evil people are their own evil and good people are
their own good.
We can also gather from this what is meant by our book oflife, which is mentioned in the Word. Specifically, the meaning is that all our actions and all our thoughts are written on
our whole person and seem as though they are read from a bookwhen they are called out of our memory. They appear as a kind ofimage when our spirit is looked at in heaven’s light.
I would like to add to this something noteworthy about the
memory that we keep after death, something that convinced methat not just the general contents but even the smallest details
that have entered our memory do last and are never erased. I
saw some books with writing in them like earthly writing, and I
35

Our Life after Deathwas told that they had come from the memories of the people who
had originally written them—that not a single word was missing that had been in the books written by those people in thematerial world. I was also told that in the same way, the tiniest
details about everything could be retrieved from the memory of
another person, even things that individual had forgotten whileon earth. The reason for this was explained as well: namely, that
we have an outer and an inner memory. The outer belongs to ourmaterial person and the inner belongs to our spiritual person.
The details of what we have thought, willed, said, and done,even what we have heard and seen, are inscribed on our inner or
spiritual memory. There is no way to erase anything there, since
everything is written at once on our spirit itself and on the partsof our body, as has been mentioned. This means that our spirit
is formed in accordance with what we have thought and what wehave willed to do. I know that these things seem contrary to reason, and thus hard to believe, but they are true nevertheless.
So never believe that there is anything we have thought ordone in secret that will remain hidden after death. Believe insteadthat absolutely everything will come out into the light of day.
Although our outer or material memory is still part of us after
death, when we reach the other life we cannot remember anything that is merely material. We can retrieve from our memory
only spiritual things that are connected to the material ones bycorrespondences. Still, when those correspondences are presented visually, they look just as they did in the material world.
This is because everything we see in the heavens looks as it did in
the world, even though in essence it is not material but spiritual.
36

We Leave Only the Body Behind
As for our outer or material memory, though, inasmuch asits contents are derived from matter, time, space, and everythingelse that characterizes the material world, it does not serve thesame function for the spirit that it served in the world. This isbecause in the world, when we based our thinking on our outersenses and not at the same time on our inner senses—the senses
that belong to our higher understanding—we were thinking on
the material level and not on the spiritual one. However, in theother life, when our spirit is in the spiritual world, we do notthink on the material level but on the spiritual one. Thinking
on the spiritual level is thinking with our higher understanding,our reasoning powers. This is why our outer or material memory then goes dormant as far as material things are concerned.
The only things our memory uses are what we have gained in theworld through those material things and have made a part of ourreasoning ability.
This is why we possess the ability to reason after death tothe extent that we have acquired that ability through our use oflanguages and the arts and sciences in this world, and emphatically not to the extent that we have just gained knowledge about
languages and arts and sciences. I have talked with any numberof people who were regarded as learned in the world because of
their knowledge of such ancient languages as Hebrew and Greek
and Latin, but who had not developed their ability to reason bymeans of the things that were written in those languages. Someof them seemed as simple as people who did not know anything
about those languages; some of them seemed dense, but still they
were full of conceit, as though they were wiser than other people.
37

Our Life after DeathI have talked with some people who had written a great deal
when they were in the world, some of them in all kinds of academic fields, people who had therefore gained an international
reputation for learning. Some of them could quibble about
whether truths were true or not. Some of them understood what
was true when they turned toward people who were in the lightof truth; but since they still did not want to understand what wastrue, they denied it when they were focused on their own false
opinions and were therefore really being themselves. Some ofthem did not know any more than the illiterate masses. So theyvaried depending on the way they had developed their reasoning ability through the treatises they had written or copied. Still,if they had opposed the truths of the church, had based theirthinking on academic disciplines, and had used them to convince themselves of false principles, they had not developed theirreasoning ability but only their skill in argumentation—an ability that is confused with reasoning in the world, but is in fact a
different ability. It is an ability to prove anything one pleases, tosee what is false rather than what is true, all on the basis of preconceptions and illusions. People like this can never be brought
to recognize truths, because it is impossible to see truths on thebasis of false principles—though on the basis of true principles
it is possible to see what is false.
Our reasoning ability is like a garden or flower bed, like newly
tilled land. Our memory is the soil, information and knowledge
gained from experience are the seeds, and heaven’s light andwarmth make them productive. There is no germination without the last two. So there is no germination in us unless heaven’s
38

We Leave Only the Body Behind
light, which is divine truth, and heaven’s warmth, which is divine
love, are allowed in. They are the only source of our ability toreason.
Angels are profoundly grieved that scholars have, for themost part, continued to identify nature as the cause of all things,
and have therefore closed the deeper levels of their minds until
they can see no trace of truth from the light of truth, which is thelight of heaven. As a result, in the other life scholars are actuallydeprived of their ability to reason, so that they will not use reason to spread false notions among simple and good people andmislead them. They are banished to deserted areas.
One particular spirit resented the fact that he could notremember much of what he had known during his physical life.
He was grieving over the pleasure he had lost, because what hehad memorized had been his main source of enjoyment. He
was told, though, that he had not lost anything at all and that
he knew absolutely everything he had known before. It was justthat in the world where he was now living, he was not allowed toretrieve things of that kind from his memory. It should satisfy
him that his thought and speech were far better, more nearly perfect, and that now he did not smother his power to reason withthe dense darkness of material trivia the way he had before, inconcerns that were useless in the kingdom he had now reached.
Now he had all he needed to live eternally, and it was by usingthat and nothing else that he could become blessed and happy.
So it was pure ignorance to believe that his intelligence had diedout just because in this kingdom the facts of the material world
had been set to one side and had gone dormant in his memory.
39

Our Life after Death
The truth of the matter, he was told, is that the more the mind
can be guided out of what belongs to the senses of the outer self
and the body, the more it is raised toward what is spiritual andheavenly.
Sometimes in the other life a demonstration is made to showwhat the two kinds of memories are like, and they are given visible shape, though the shapes are only appearances there. (In thatworld many things are presented visually that for us here remain
purely in the realm of ideas.) In these demonstrations, the outermemory is shown as a callus, while the inner looks like the medullary substance found in the human brain.
This appearance also helps us understand what these twokinds of memory are like. In people who have focused solely
on memorizing knowledge during their physical lives, without
developing their powers of reasoning, the memory has a callused quality that looks hard and streaked with tendons inside.
In people who have filled their memories with false notions, it
looks shaggy and hairy because of the random mass of disorganized stuff it contains. In people who have eagerly memorizedknowledge, keeping themselves and the world uppermost in
their minds, it looks stuck-together and bony. In people whohave tried to use acquired facts, especially facts about philosophy, to learn secrets about the Divine, without actually believing in anything unless they are first convinced by those acquired
facts—in such people the memory looks dark, and it can actuallyabsorb rays of light and turn those rays into darkness. In people
who have been deceitful and hypocritical, the memory looks
bony and hard as ivory, and it repels rays of light.
40

We Leave Only the Body Behind
However, in people who have focused on the good that we
do out of love and on the truths that we know because of faith,
no such callus is visible. This is because their inner memory is
beaming rays of light into their outer memory, and those rays
come to rest in the contents or concepts of the outer memory,and are intensely satisfied in finding something to contain them
there (it is as though those concepts were their foundation or the
ground beneath them). In the divine design the outer memoryis the very outermost layer, where spiritual and heavenly mattersgently fill out their outline and remain firm, as long as there aregood and true contents in it.
While we are living in the world, if we are engaged in a love
for the Lord and in loving behavior toward our neighbor, wehave angelic intelligence and wisdom with us and even insideus, but it is hidden away in the depths of our inner memoryand cannot become visible until we leave our bodies. Then ourmaterial memory is put to sleep, and we are awakened into anawareness of our inner memory and eventually of our actual
angelic memory.
Spirits and angels have memory just as we do. What they
hear and see and think and intend and do stays with them; andthrough their memory they are constantly developing their ability to reason. This process goes on forever. This is why spirits andangels are being perfected in intelligence and wisdom throughexperiences of what is true and good, just the way we are.
The fact that spirits and angels have the ability to remember
is yet another thing I have been shown by a great deal of experience. I have seen everything they had thought and done, both41

Our Life after Deathin public and in private, called up from their memory when they
were with other spirits. I have also seen people who, because ofa simple goodness in themselves, had been focused on sometruth; and once they have been filled with insights, and with theintelligence that developed from those insights, they are taken
up into heaven.
It’s important for us to realize, though, that these people are
not filled with insights, and with the understanding that comesfrom insights, beyond the level of the affection for what is good
and true that they had reached in the world. In fact, each spirit
and angel retains the amount and kind of affection he or she hadin the world, and this is afterward perfected by being filled inwith more. This filling in goes on forever, since everything iscapable of infinite variation and enrichment by different means,so that it can be multiplied and can bear fruit. There is no end to
any instance of goodness, since its source is the Infinite.

42

What We Are Like after Death

Any Christian knows from the Word that our life continues after
death. It says in many places that we will be judged and rewarded
according to our actions. Furthermore, people who use goodness and real truth to do their thinking cannot help but see thatthose who lead good lives enter heaven and those who lead evil
lives enter hell. However, people who are intent on evil do notwant to believe that their state after death depends on theirlife in the world. They think rather—and especially when theirhealth begins to fail—that heaven is granted to all people purely
through God’s mercy, no matter how they may have lived. They
think that gaining heaven requires only faith, which they consider to have nothing to do with the way one lives.
Though it does say in many places in the Word that we will be
judged for our actions and rewarded accordingly, “actions” in the
Word does not refer only to the way actions appear outwardly. It
also refers to what actions really are inside. Everyone knows, ofcourse, that all our actions come from our will and our thought.
If they didn’t come from our willing and thinking, they would
43

Our Life after Deathbe no better than the kind of motions that machines or robots
make. So actions, if you look at them for what they really are, arejust the realizations of our will and thought. They get their souland life from our will and thought; they are our will and thought
in an outward form.
So we know that the quality of our actions is determined by
the will and thought they result from. If our will and thought
are good, then our actions are good; but if our will and thought
are evil, then our actions are evil, even though they may look
the same on the outside. A thousand people can do the samething—that is, they can each do something that is so much likewhat the others are doing that from the outward appearance
you can hardly tell the difference—but each action, if you lookat what it really is, does differ from the others, because it resultsfrom a different intention.
Take, for example, behaving honestly and fairly toward someone you know. One person can behave honestly and fairly toward
someone else in order to seem honest and fair for the sake of hisor her own self, and to gain respect; another person can do thesame for the sake of worldly profit; a third person to be rewarded
and get credit for being good; a fourth to win friends; a fifth outof fear of getting into trouble with the law or of losing a good
reputation or a job; a sixth to enlist people in some cause, evenan evil cause; a seventh in order to mislead people; and othersfor still other reasons. But even though what they do looks good(and behaving honestly and fairly toward someone you know
certainly is good), still their actions are evil because they don’t
do them because they love honesty and fairness for the sake of44

What We Are Like after Deathhonesty and fairness. They do them because they love themselves and material things, for the sake of themselves and material things. Honesty and fairness just serve what they really love,
like hired servants. When those servants are of no use to theiremployer, they are viewed as worthless and are sent away.
When people behave honestly and fairly toward someone
they know, and they really are acting from a love for what is honest and fair, the outward form of what they do looks just thesame as when others do it, [but again, it can be done for a variety of reasons]. Some of these people act that way because of thetruth of what they believe, or out of obedience, because the Word
makes being honest and fair into a key principle. Some of themact that way because of the goodness of what they believe, or outof conscience, because they are moved by religious feeling. Someof them act that way because it is good to be kind toward one’s
neighbor and because taking thought for the neighbor’s welfare
is important. Some of them do it out of the goodness of their love
for the Lord, because what is good should be done for its own
sake; so too what is honest and fair should be done for the sakeof honesty and fairness. These people love these good things
because they come from the Lord, and because honesty and fairness have inside them something divine that comes from theLord. So honesty and fairness are divine, if we see them in theirtrue essence. The actions of people like this are inwardly good,so their actions are outwardly good as well. As already pointed
out, whether actions are bad or good is entirely determined by
the thought and intention they come from, and without thought
and intention they are not actions at all, only lifeless motions.
45Our Life after Death
We can understand from this discussion of actions what ismeant in the Word by the term works.
It is important to recognize that it is our will that makes us
who we are. Thought contributes only to the extent that ourthoughts come from our will.
Actions, then, come from both our thought and our will.
Or in other words: love is what makes us who we are; faith
makes us who we are only to the extent that it comes from love;
and actions come from both love and faith.
It follows from this that our will or love is who we really are,because the things that come from a person are that person’s.
(“To come from” means to be produced and presented in a form
that can be perceived and seen.)
From this we can conclude what faith without love really is—
it is no faith at all, only information with no spiritual life in it.
The same holds true for actions without love. They are not living
actions at all, only dead works that contain an appearance of life,
which comes from a love of evil and a faith in what is false. Thisappearance of life is what we call spiritual death.
We should realize as well that we make our whole being visible in our actions. Our will and thought, or the love and faiththat make up our inner being, are not complete until they enter
into the actions that make up our outer being. Our actions arein fact the final forms that our love and faith end up in. If ourwill and thought do not come to their final form in our actions,they are like things that haven’t been finalized and don’t yet
have any real presence, and so they are like things that are notyet in us at all.
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What We Are Like after Death
To think and will to do something without acting when we
can is like a flame sealed in a jar and stifled, or it is like a seedsown in the sand that does not grow but dies along with its power
to reproduce. Thinking and willing and doing, though, is like aflame that sheds its light and warmth all around, or like a seedsown in the soil, that grows into a tree or a flower and becomessomething. Anyone can see that willing and not acting when
we can is not really willing at all, and loving and not doing goodwhen we can is not really loving. Instead it is nothing more than
thinking that we want to do something, thinking that we love; so
it is just an isolated thought that melts away and vanishes.
Love and will are the very soul of actions. That soul forms abody for itself in the honest and fair things that we do. This is the
only source of our spiritual body, the body of the human spirit;that is, our spiritual body is formed entirely from what we havedone out of love or intent. To put it simply, our entire characterand spirit are embodied in our actions.
We can see from this what is meant by the life that stays withus after death. It truly is our love and the faith that comes fromour love. It is not just what our love and faith might be, but what
they actually get done. So it is our actions, because these containwithin themselves our whole love and faith.
There is one ruling love that remains with each of us after
death and never changes to eternity. Each of us has many“loves,” but they all depend on our ruling love and form a single whole with it, or when taken together they add up to it. All
the parts of our will that agree with our ruling love are called“loves,” because we love them. Some loves are deep and others
47

Our Life after Deathare more superficial; some loves are directly linked together andother loves are indirectly linked together; some are near to us
and others are more distant; and there are loves that are there toserve other loves in various ways. Taken all together they make akind of kingdom. They are actually arranged in this way within
us even though we are utterly unaware of their arrangement.
However, the arrangement becomes visible to some extent in theother life, because the way our thoughts and emotions extend
outward there depends on it. They extend outward into heavenly
communities if our ruling love is made up of loves of heaven, butthey extend outward into hellish communities if our ruling loveis made up of loves of hell.
In the arguments I have presented so far, I have appealed
only to our powers of abstract reasoning. In order to show thatthe topic is something we can perceive with our senses, I would
like to add some experiences that may serve to illustrate and support the claims that (1) we are our love or will after death; (2) weremain the same forever with respect to our will or ruling love;(3) we go to heaven if we love heavenly and spiritual things, but
we go to hell if our love is materialistic and worldly and has noheavenly and spiritual dimension; (4) our faith does not stay with
us unless it comes from a heavenly love; and (5) only what ourlove has really done—that is, how we have lived—remains with
us when we go to the next world.
A great deal of my experience has given evidence of the factthat (1) we are our love or will after death. All heaven is divided up
into communities that love different things, and every spirit who
is raised up into heaven and becomes an angel is taken to the48

What We Are Like after Deathcommunity that loves the same thing she or he does. When wearrive there we feel as though we are in our own element—at
home, back in our birthplace, so to speak. Angels sense this andassociate there with spirits who are like them. When they leaveand go somewhere else, they feel a constant pull, a longing togo back to their kindred spirits and therefore to their ruling love.
This is how people gather together in heaven. The same applies
in hell. There people associate with others according to loves
that are the opposites of heavenly ones.
We can also see that we are our love after death from the factthat anything that does not agree with our ruling love is then set
to one side and, to all appearances, taken away from us. For goodpeople, what is set aside and apparently taken away is everythingthat disagrees and conflicts with their love, with the result thatthey are made to enter fully into their love. It is much the samefor evil people, except that everything true is taken away fromthem. Either way, the result is that ultimately everyone turns into
whatever love is most his or her own. This happens when we arebrought into our third state, which will be discussed below.
Once this has happened, we constantly hold our faces toward
our love and have it constantly before our eyes no matter which
way we turn.
All spirits can be led wherever you want as long as they are
kept focused on their ruling love. They cannot resist even though
they know what is happening and think that they will refuse.
Spirits have often tried to act in opposition to this, but without
success. Their love is like a knot or rope tied around them, withwhich they can be pulled and which they cannot escape. It is
49

Our Life after Deaththe same for people in this world. Our love leads us as well, and
it is through our love that we are led by others. It is even more
so when we become spirits, though, because then we are notallowed to look as though we have a different love or to claimthat a love is ours when it isn’t.
It is obvious in every gathering in the other life that our spirit
is our ruling love. To the extent that we act and talk in a way thatagrees with a person’s love, that individual looks complete, andwe can see his or her whole face, which is cheerful and lively.
To the extent that we act and talk in a way that disagrees withsomeone’s ruling love, though, that individual’s face begins tochange, to grow dim, and to become hard to see. Eventually it
disappears, as though it were not even there. I have often beenamazed at this because this kind of thing cannot happen in theworld. However, I have been told that the same thing happens tothe spirit inside us: when we turn our attention away from otherpeople, our spirit ceases to be perceived by theirs.
Another fact that has shown me that our spirit is our rulinglove is that we eagerly take up and make our own whatever isappropriate for our love, and we reject and push away whatever
is not appropriate for it. Our love is like a spongy, porous woodthat absorbs whatever liquids assist its growth, but repels others.
It is like animals of various kinds: they recognize their proper
foods, seek out the ones that suit their natures, and avoid theones that disagree. Every love actually wants to be nourished bywhat is appropriate to it—an evil love by falsity and a good loveby truth. I have occasionally been allowed to see some simple
and good people who wanted to teach evil people about things50What We Are Like after Deaththat were true and good. Faced with this teaching, though, theevil people fled far away; and when they reached their own kind,they seized with great pleasure on falsities that fit in with theirlove. I have also been allowed to see good spirits talking witheach other about truths, which other good spirits in attendance
listened to eagerly, while some evil spirits who were there paid
no attention, as though they did not hear anything.
Paths appear in the world of spirits, some leading to heavenand some leading to hell, each one going to some specific community. Good spirits travel only the paths that lead to heaven andto the community engaged in doing the good that arises fromtheir own particular love. They do not see paths that lead anywhere else. On the other hand, evil spirits travel only the paths
that lead to hell and to the community there that is engaged in
the evil that arises from their own particular love. They do not
see paths that lead anywhere else; or if they do see them, in any
case they do not want to follow them.
Paths like this in the spiritual world are [spiritual] realities
made visible. They correspond to various things either true or
false; so this is what paths in the Word symbolize.
These proofs from experience support what was said above
as an appeal to reason: after death we are our own love and ourown will. I say “will” because for each of us, our will is our love.
A great deal of experience has also convinced me that (2) after

death we remain the same forever with respect to our will or ruling love. I
have been allowed to talk with some people who lived more than
two thousand years ago, people whose lives are described in history books and are therefore familiar. I discovered that they were51

Our Life after Death
still the same, just as described, and that means they were thesame with respect to the love that gave rise to and determined
the way they lived.
There were others who had lived seventeen centuries ago,also known from history books, and some who had lived four
centuries ago, some three, and so on, with whom I was also
allowed to talk and to learn that the same love still ruled them.
The only difference was that the things in which their ruling love
took pleasure had been exchanged for the [spiritual] pleasuresthat corresponded to them.
Angels have told me that the life of our ruling love neverchanges for anyone to all eternity because we are our love, so tochange it in any spirit would be to take away and snuff out his or
her life.
They have also told me that this is because after death we
can no longer be reformed by being taught the way we could inthis world, since the outer self, which is made up of insights andemotions arising from the material world, then goes dormant.
It cannot be made active again because it is not spiritual. Our
deeper mind or character is based on this outer level the way ahouse rests on its foundation, which is why we remain foreverin the kind of life we lived as a result of our love when we were in
the world.
Angels are utterly amazed that people do not realize that ourruling love determines who we are. It amazes them too that many
people actually believe they can be saved by direct mercy, simply on the basis of their faith alone, regardless of the kind of life
they have led, since these people do not realize that divine mercy
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What We Are Like after Death
operates indirectly. It consists of being led by the Lord in theworld as well as afterward in heaven, and the people who are led
by mercy are the ones who do not live in evil. People do not evenknow that faith is an affection for what is true, an affection thatcomes from a heavenly love, which in turn comes from the Lord.
(3) We go to heaven if our love is heavenly and spiritual, and to hell

if our love is materialistic and worldly and has no heavenly and spiritual
dimension. My evidence for this conclusion is all the people I haveseen raised into heaven and cast into hell. The ones who wereraised into heaven had lives of heavenly and spiritual love, while
the ones who were cast into hell had lives of materialistic andworldly love.
Heavenly love is loving what is good, honest, and fair because
it is good, honest, and fair, and doing it because of that love.
This is why angels have a life of goodness, honesty, and fairness,
which is a heavenly life. If we love these things for their own
sakes and do or live them, we are also loving the Lord above all,because they come from him. We are also loving our neighbor,because these things are our neighbor who is to be loved.
Materialistic love, by contrast, is loving what is good andhonest and fair not for its own sake but for our own purposes,
because we can use them to gain fame, prestige, and profit.
In this case we are not focusing on the Lord and our neighborwithin what is good and honest and fair but on ourselves and theworld, and we find enjoyment in deceiving people. When our
motive is deceit, then whatever is good and honest and fair isactually evil and dishonest and unfair. This is what we really love
within the appearance of what is good and honest and fair.
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Our Life after Death
Since these loves define our lives, after we arrive in the worldof spirits immediately after death we are all examined so thatit can be discovered what kind of people we are. Then we arelinked up with people that have a similar love. If we are focusedon heavenly love, we are linked up with people in heaven; and if
we are focused on materialistic love, we are linked up with people in hell. Furthermore, once the first and second states havebeen completed, these two kinds of people are separated so thatthey no longer see or recognize each other. We actually become
our own love not only with respect to the deeper levels of ourminds but outwardly as well, in face, body, and speech, since we
become images of our love even in outer respects. People whoare materialistic loves look coarse, dim, dark, and misshapen;
people who are heavenly loves look lively, clear, bright, andattractive. These two kinds of people are completely different inspirit and in thought as well. People who are heavenly loves areintelligent and wise, while people who are materialistic loves aredense and rather foolish.
When one is allowed to examine the inner and outer aspectsof the thoughts and affections of people engaged in heavenly
love, the inner aspects look as though they were made of light,
in some cases like the light of a flame; and their outer aspects areof various beautiful colors, like a rainbow. By contrast, the inneraspects of people who are engaged in materialistic love lookgloomy because they are closed in, and like a smoky fire in thecase of some of those whose inner selves indulged in malicious
deceptions. Their outer aspects have an ugly color, depressing

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What We Are Like after Deathto look at. (Both the inner and outer aspects of the mind andspirit are presented visually in the spiritual world whenever it sopleases the Lord.)
People who are engaged in materialistic love do not see anything in heaven’s light. Heaven’s light is darkness to them, whilehell’s light, which is like the light of glowing embers, is likedaylight to them. In fact, in heaven’s light their inner sight is so
deprived of light that they become insane. As a result, they run
away from that light and hide in caves and caverns; and the more
false the convictions are that arise from their evil intentions, thedeeper they go. Exactly the reverse is true for people who are
engaged in heavenly love, though. The deeper (or higher) they go
into heavenly light, the more clearly they see everything and themore beautiful it all looks, and the more intelligently and wisely
they grasp what is true.
There is no way that people who are engaged in materialistic love can live in heaven’s warmth, because heaven’s warmth isheavenly love. They can live in hell’s warmth, though, which isa love of cruelty toward people who do not support them. This
love takes pleasure in contempt for others, hostility, hatred, andvengefulness. When such people are absorbed in these pleasures, they feel truly alive, and they have no idea whatsoever
what it means to do good for others out of sheer goodness, forthe sake of good itself. They only know how to do good if it isdone for evil reasons and for the sake of evil.
Nor can people who are engaged in materialistic love breathe
when they are in heaven. When evil spirits are taken there, they55Our Life after Deathbreathe like people gasping in agony. On the other hand, people
who are engaged in heavenly love breathe more freely and feel
more alive the deeper into heaven they go.
We may gather from this that a heavenly and spiritual loveis heaven for us because that love has every mark of something
heavenly; and we can see, too, that materialistic and worldly
love that is without any heavenly and spiritual love is hell for us
because that love has every mark of something hellish.
It is clear, then, that people come into heaven who have aheavenly and spiritual love, and people come into hell who havea materialistic and worldly love without a heavenly and spiritualone.
The fact that (4) our faith does not stay with us unless it comes froma heavenly love has been brought home to me by so much experience that if I were to relate what I have seen and heard about it, it
would fill a book all by itself. I can attest to this: there is no faith
whatever, and there can be none, in people who are immersed inlove of material and worldly things and are completely without
any heavenly and spiritual love. Their faith consists of mere facts
they have memorized. It is a secondhand belief that something istrue, in which they believe only because to do so serves the purposes of their own love.
Let me add this: A number of people who merely thought
they had had faith were introduced to people who really did.
Once they began talking to one another, the former realizedthat in fact they had no faith at all. They even admitted later that
simply believing the truth or the Word is not faith; faith is loving
what is true from a heavenly love, and intending and doing it
56

What We Are Like after Deathfrom a deep affection for it. I was also shown that the secondhand belief those people called faith was at best like the light ofwinter: because that light has no warmth, everything on earth
lies motionless under the snow, locked in ice. Because their loveis this way, the moment it is touched by rays of heaven’s light,
the light of their secondhand faith is not only extinguished but
actually becomes a dense darkness in which people cannot evensee themselves. At the same time, too, their deeper selves are sodarkened that they cannot understand anything. Ultimately theirfalse beliefs drive them mad.
This is the reason that all the truths such people have learned
from the Word and from the teaching of the church are taken
away from them—all the things they claimed were part of theirfaith. Instead they are filled with the false concepts that matchthe evil way they live. Every last one of them is made to enter
fully into what he or she loves and into the false ideas that support it. Then, since truths contradict the false and evil ideas they
are absorbed in, they hate the truth, they turn away from it, theyreject it.
From my many experiences of what happens in heaven andin hell, I can bear witness that people who have confessed faithalone as a matter of doctrine and have lived evil lives are all in
hell. I have seen thousands of them sent there.
The fact that (5) only what our love has really done—that is, how

we have lived—remains with us when we go to the next world follows
logically from what I have presented from experience and what I
have just said about actions. Our actions are in fact our love actually taking place.
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Our Life after Death
It is important that we realize that all our actions are part ofour moral and civic life and for that reason they are concernedwith what is honest and right and what is fair and evenhanded.
What is honest and right is a matter of moral life, and what isfair and evenhanded is a matter of civic life. The love these comefrom is either heavenly or hellish. The actions of our moral andcivic life are heavenly if we do them out of a love that is heavenly, because anything that we do out of a love that is heavenly
we do because we are moved by the Lord, and everything we dobecause we are moved by the Lord is good. On the other hand,the actions of our moral and civic life are hellish if we do themout of a love that is hellish, since whatever we do out of this love,
which is a love for ourselves and the world, we are moved to do
by our own selves, and whatever we do on that basis is intrinsically evil. In fact, if we are seen for what we really are, or in termsof what our selves are, we are nothing but evil.

58

Our First State after Death

There are three states of being that we pass through after deathand before we arrive in either heaven or hell. In the first state we
focus on our outer self, in the second we focus on our inner self,
and in the third we focus on our preparation. The world of spirits
is where we go through these states of being.
That said, some people don’t go through these states at all,but are either raised into heaven or cast into hell immediately
after their death. The people immediately raised into heaven are
ones who were regenerated—whose regeneration prepared themfor heaven—while they were in this world. People who have been
prepared in this way only have to cast off the stain of their material being as they shed their bodies, and angels immediately takethem into heaven. I have seen people raised up to heaven an hour
after their death.
On the other hand, people whose inner character is malicious but whose outer appearance is virtuous—people who fed
their malice on fraud to the bursting, and who used goodness as
no more than a tool to deceive others—they are cast directly into
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Our Life after Deathhell. I have seen this happen to people. One of the most deceitfulwent head first. For others there were other ways of falling.
There are also people who are sent off into caves right after
their death and in this way are segregated from people in theworld of spirits. They are alternately brought out and sent backin. These are people who have treated their neighbors maliciously while pretending to behave civilly toward them.
The very good and very evil people are few, though, compared to the number of people who are kept in the world of spirits and prepared there for either heaven or hell, according to thedivine plan.
We arrive in our first state of being—the state in which we
focus on our outer self—immediately after our death. Everyone
has an outer spiritual self and an inner spiritual self. We use theouter aspects of our spirit to adjust our physical person in theworld—especially our faces, speech, and behavior—in order tointeract with other people. The inner aspects of our spirit, bycontrast, belong to our desire to do things and the thoughts wethink as a result. They rarely show in our faces, speech, or behavior. We are trained from infancy to present ourselves as friendly,
benevolent, and honest, and to conceal the thoughts that our private intentions give rise to. So we become accustomed to living
in a way that is outwardly moral and civil no matter what we arelike inside. As a result of this habitual behavior, we scarcely know
our own inner selves, and in any case pay no attention to them.
Our first state of being after death is like our state in thisworld, since we are then similarly focused on our outer self. We
have similar faces, voices, and characters; we lead similar moral
60

Our First Stateand civic lives. This is why it still seems to us as though we werein this world unless we notice things that are out of the ordinary
and remember that angels told us we were spirits when we were
awakened. So the one life carries on into the other, and death is
only a passage.
Since this is what we are like as spirits immediately after ourlife in the world, our friends and people we have known in theworld then recognize us. Spirits perceive who we are, not only
from our faces and voices but also from the aura of our life when
they come near. In the other life, whenever we think about someone, we call up that individual’s face in our thought along withmany details about her or his life; and when we do this, the otheris present as though called to us. Things like this happen in thespiritual world because thoughts are shared there and because
space is not what it is in the material world. This is why assoon as we arrive in the other life, we are all recognized by ourfriends and relatives and by people we have known in one way or
another, and why we talk with others and meet with them as we
did during our friendship with them in the world. I have heard
many times how people newly arrived from the world rejoiced
to see their friends again, and how their friends rejoiced in turnthat the others had come to them.
It often happens that married partners meet and exchange
greetings joyfully. They stay together as well, but for a longer or
shorter time depending on how happily they had lived together
in the world. Ultimately, unless they had been united by true
marriage love (which happens when heavenly love unites two
minds), they separate after having been together for a while.
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Our Life after Death
If the minds of the partners disagreed, however, and if theirinner selves were repellent to each other, they break out into
open hostility and sometimes actually fight with each other.
Still, they are not separated until they enter the second state ofbeing, which will be described shortly.
Since the life of newly arrived spirits is not unlike their life in
the world, and since they do not know anything about life after
death, or about heaven or hell, except what they have learned
from the literal meaning of the Word and some sermons basedon it, once they get over their astonishment at being in a bodyand enjoying all the senses they had in the world, and at seeing familiar things around them, they find themselves wanting to know what heaven and hell are like and where they are.
So their friends tell them about what eternal life is like and takethem around to various places and into the company of different
people. They go to different cities, to gardens and parks, often tospectacular ones because things like that appeal to the outer self.
Then from time to time they are guided into the thoughts they
had during their physical lives about the state of the soul after
death and about heaven and hell. This makes them upset thatthey were so thoroughly ignorant about such matters—and thatthe church was too.
Almost all of them want to know whether they will be able
to get into heaven. Many of them think they will because they
led moral and civil lives in the world. They don’t reflect on thefact that evil and good people lead lives that are superficiallythe same. That is, both kinds of people help others; both go tochurch, listen to sermons, and pray, all the time utterly unaware
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Our First State
that outward behavior and outward worship mean nothing whatever—that all that really matters is the inner self that gives riseto these outward actions. Scarcely one person in thousands evenknows what the inner self is or that it is where we must look tofind heaven and the church. Even fewer realize that our intentions and thoughts determine our outward actions, as do the loveand faith that are behind those intentions and thoughts and giverise to them. Even when people are told this, they don’t grasp thefact that thinking and willing are what make the difference; they
believe instead that all that matter are the words they say and thedeeds they do. Many of the people who are coming into the otherlife from the Christian world nowadays are like this.
Eventually, good spirits examine them to determine what
they are like. This is done in various ways because in this firststate evil people can say true things and do good things just theway good people do. As I have already explained, this is because
superficially their lives appeared to be just as moral, since they
were living under governments and laws; and besides, living thatway gained them a reputation for fairness and honesty, and won
people to their side, and brought them prestige and wealth. But
you can tell evil spirits from good ones very easily by the fact thatthe evil ones pay close attention when the conversation is about
superficial things, and little attention when it is about deeper
subjects, about the true and good principles of the church andheaven. They do hear such things, but without any real attention
or pleasure. You can also identify them by the fact that they consistently turn toward certain regions of the spiritual world, andwhen they are left to themselves they follow paths that lead to63

Our Life after Death
those regions. You can tell what kind of love is leading them byobserving the regions they face and the paths they follow.
Each of the spirits who arrive from the world is linked up
with a particular community in heaven or a particular community in hell. However, this applies only to these newcomers’
inner selves, and their inner selves are not apparent to them aslong as they are focused on their outer selves. This is because
their outer selves cover and conceal their inner selves, especially in the case of people involved in evil. However, their innerselves become fully visible when they arrive in the second stateof being, because that is where their inner selves are opened andtheir outer selves become dormant.
This first state after death lasts a few days for some people,
months for others, and a year for still others, but rarely morethan a year for anyone. These differences depend on how muchthe inner self and the outer self of each individual disagree or are
in harmony. Everyone’s inner and outer selves must act in unisonand correspond to one another. In the spiritual world, no one isallowed to think and will in one way and yet at the same time tospeak and act in another. Everyone must be an image of his or
her affection or love, which means we must be the same on theoutside as we are on the inside. This is why the first thing that
happens is that the outer self of a spirit is uncovered [by spiritualexamination] and reorganized—so that it can correspond to theinner self.

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Our Second State after Death

Our second state of being after death is called a state of our inner
self because then we are brought fully into the deeper reaches ofour minds, or of our will and thoughts, while the more outward
interests that engaged us in the first state become dormant.
Anyone who is observant of our life and our words andactions can recognize that we all have an outer self and an inner
self, or (to put it another way) superficial thoughts and intentions and also deeper ones. We can know this from the fact that if
we are involved in civic life, we think about other people in termsof their reputation, or of what we have picked up about themwhen they were the subjects of conversation. However, our manner of talking to them can be quite different from our opinionof them. And even if they are evil people, we still behave courteously toward them. This is particularly noticeable in fakers andflatterers whose words and actions are completely different fromtheir thoughts and intentions, and in hypocrites who talk about
God, heaven, the salvation of souls, the truths of the church, the65Our Life after Death
welfare of their country, and their neighbor as though they were
motivated by faith and love, when at heart they believe in something else and love no one but themselves.
We may gather from this that we have two thought processes,
one that is superficial and one that is deeper in us, and that thewords we say come from our superficial thinking; but our feelings, which are something else altogether, come from our deeper
thoughts. Furthermore, these two thought processes have been
separated, because care must be taken to prevent the inner fromflowing into the outer and becoming visible in some way.
It is important to know that what we are really like is determined entirely by what our inner self is like, not by what we arelike superficially, apart from that inner self. This is because ourinner self is our spirit, and since it is from the spirit that the body
lives, our life is the life of our spirit. So whatever we are like in
our inner self, that is what we are like to eternity. Since our outerself belongs to the body, it is separated after death. Any elementof it that does cling to the spirit becomes dormant, serving thedeeper self only as an outer level [of the spirit].
We can see from this what really belongs to us and what doesnot. The fact is that in evil people, the contents of the outer
thought that gives rise to their words, and of the outer will thatgives rise to their actions, do not really belong to them at all.
What belongs to them is the contents of their deeper thought
and will.
Once the first state has been completed—the state in which
we focus on the outer self, as described in the previous chapter—
we are brought to enter fully, as spirits, into the state in which we66

Our Second Statefocus on our inner self. This second state is the one we had in theworld with respect to our inner will and the thoughts it produced
in us, during the time when we were on our own and our thinking ran free and without control.
We slip into this second state without realizing it, much as
we did in the world, when we draw our thoughts, which are thedirect source of our speech, back toward our inner self, and letthem remain there a while. So when we are in this state as spirits, we are being ourselves and living our real life, since thinking
freely, on the basis of what we have affection for, is in fact ourtrue life and our true self.
The thinking of spirits in this state comes from their own
will, and so it comes from their own real affection or their own
real love; and when that is the case, their thinking joins with theirwill so closely that they scarcely seem to be thinking of what they
do at all, but instead seem to be using only their power of will.
It is almost the same when such spirits talk, except that they areconcerned that the thoughts that come directly from their will
might appear without any covering, since their civic life in theworld had planted this fear in their will.
All of us, without exception, are brought into this state after
death because it is our own true spiritual state. The earlier state,when we focus on the outer self, was characteristic of our spirit
when we were in the company of others. That is not our spirit’s
own true state, as we can see for several reasons. For example,
not only do the thoughts of spirits come directly out of what they
love, but so do the things they say, because in the case of spirits,
their love is the real source of their speech. It was similar when67

Our Life after Deathwe engaged in our own private thoughts in the world, because
then we did not think in terms of words that we physicallyuttered, but simply visualized things—and at the same time wethought many more things in a minute than we could say in half
an hour.
Another way we can see that this first state that is focused on
the outer self is not our own true spiritual state is by consideringthat when we are in the company of others in the world, we keep
what we say in line with the laws of moral and civic life. Then our
deeper thinking restrains our outer thinking the way one person
restrains another to make sure that the other does not cross thebounds of propriety and decency.
Another indication of this fact is that when we do think privately, we think about what we will say and do in order to please
people and to gain friends, good will, and gratitude, and how to
do all this by means that are actually foreign to us—that is, how
to do this differently than we would if we were just acting on thebasis of what we truly want to do.
We can see from all this that the state that spirits are led into
next, which is focused on the inner self, is their own true state,
which means that it was also the true personal state of thoseindividuals when they were living in the world.
When spirits are in the state that is focused on their innerselves, then it is obvious what kind of people they really were in
the world. They actually base their behavior on what they reallyare. People whose inner self was devoted to good in the world
then behave sanely and wisely—more wisely than when they
were living in the world, in fact, because they have been freed
68Our Second State
from any connection with the body and therefore with theearthly things that confuse us and put a kind of cloud between
us and reality.
By contrast, people who were focused on evil in the world
then behave foolishly and insanely—more insanely than when
they were in the world, in fact, because they are free and no longer restrained. As long as they were living in the world, they weresuperficially sensible, because this was how they imitated rational people. So when the outer layers are stripped off, their innerinsanity is unveiled.
An evil person who makes a superficial show of being goodcan be compared to a brightly polished jar, capped with a lid, inwhich filth of all kinds is hidden. As the Lord said: “You are liketombs that have been painted white. They look beautiful on theoutside, but inside they are full of dead people’s bones and filthof every kind” (Matthew 23:27).
To all the people who have led good lives in the world andhave acted in accordance with their consciences—that is, people who have acknowledged the Divine Being and loved divine
truths, and especially people who have applied them to theirlives—it seems that they have awakened from sleep when they
are brought into the state that is focused on the inner self. They
feel like people who have come from darkness into light. Theirthoughts are actually set in motion by heaven’s light and therefore by a deeper wisdom, and their actions by what is good andtherefore by an inner affection. Heaven is flowing into theirthoughts and emotions with an inner blessedness and pleasurethat they have never known before. This is because they are in69

Our Life after Death
touch with heaven’s angels. Then too, they acknowledge the Lord
and worship him with their very lives, because they are in theirown true lives when they are in the state in which they focus on
their inner selves. They are also acknowledging and worshiping
him in a state of freedom, since that is what our inner affection
gives us. In this way they move away from an outer holiness andinto the inner holiness that is the essence of real worship. This is
the state of people who have lived a Christian life in accordancewith the principles provided by the Word.
Quite the opposite, though, is the state of people who in
the world led lives focused on evil, who had no conscience andtherefore denied the Divine Being, since all those who live in evil
deny the Divine Being inwardly, no matter how convinced they
are outwardly that they are not denying but acknowledging him.
This is because acknowledging the Divine Being and living inevil are opposites. When people like this in the other life comeinto the state that focuses on the inner self, they seem foolishto others who hear them talk or see them act, because their evil
impulses force them to break out into wicked deeds—into contempt for others, into jeering and blasphemy, hatred, and vengefulness. They cook up plots, some of them with such ingenuity
and malice that you would scarcely believe anything like thisexisted in any human being. They are then free to act in accordance with the thoughts of their will because they are separated
from the outer self that restrained them in the world. In short,they lose their ability to reason, because in the world that ability was not located in their inner but in their outer self. Still, tothemselves they seem to be wiser than anyone else.
70Our Second State
Once people like this are in the second state, they are sent
back and forth repeatedly between the state of their outer selves
and a recollection of how they behaved when they were in thestate of their inner selves. Some of them feel ashamed and admitthat they were insane. Some of them are not ashamed at all.
Some of them resent the fact that they are not allowed to be in thestate of their outer self all the time, but they are shown what theywould be like if they were constantly in this state. They would beconstantly trying to do the same things covertly, misleading people of simple heart and faith by faking goodness, honesty, andfairness. They would destroy themselves completely, because
eventually their outer selves would be ablaze with the same fireas their inner selves; and this would eat up their whole life.
When spirits are in this second state, they actually lookexactly the way their inner selves were in the world. The things
they had done and said in secret are made public, too, because
now they say the same things openly, since no consideration forthe outside world is restraining them, and they also keep trying
to do what they did before, but now without any of the anxiety
they had in the world about their reputations. Furthermore, they
are then brought into many of the states that belong to their particular evils, so that angels and good spirits will see them as thepeople they really are.
This is how hidden things are brought to light and how
secrets are exposed. As the Lord said: “Nothing is hidden thatwill not be revealed, and nothing concealed that will not become
known. Whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in
the light, and what you have spoken in someone’s ear in your71

Our Life after Deathrooms will be proclaimed on the rooftops” (Luke 12:2–3). And
in another passage: “I say to you that for every idle word people
have spoken, they will give an account of it on the day of judgment” (Matthew 12:36).
Every individual goes to the community where her or his
spirit was in the world. As I mentioned, each of us is actuallyunited in spirit to some community, either heavenly or hellish—
evil people to hellish communities and good people to heavenly
ones. Spirits are led toward their communities by stages andfinally enter them. When evil spirits are in the state that focuseson the inner self, they gradually turn toward their own communities, and before this state has been brought to a close they arefacing them directly.
When the second state has ended, then the evil spirits hurlthemselves into a hell where there are people of like mind. To
an observer, this plunge looks like that of someone falling backward head first. The reason it looks this way is that the arrangement of the inner self in such people is inverted, since they have
loved hellish things and spurned heavenly ones. During thissecond state, some evil people go in and out of various hells,
and while doing so they do not seem to fall headlong the way
people do when the process of their spiritual devastation has
been completed.
The actual community where their spirits were in the worldis shown to them, too, while they are in the state that focuseson the outer self, so that they realize that they were in hell during their physical life. But they were not in the same state as the72

Our Second State
people who are in hell itself; rather, they were in a state like thatof people in the world of spirits.
The separation of evil spirits from good spirits takes place inthis second state, since in the first state they were all together.
The reason is that as long as spirits are focused on their outerselves it is like the situation in the world—evil people are
together with good ones, and good people with evil ones. It isdifferent when people have been brought into their inner self
and are left to follow their own true character or will.
This separation of evil people from good ones occurs in various ways. Often the evil are led around to the communities they
had been in touch with through their good thoughts and affections during the first state. This brings them to communities
they had misled into believing that they were not evil by adopting
the outward appearance of goodness. Often they are led aroundin a large circuit, and good spirits everywhere are shown what
they are really like. The good spirits turn away as soon as they see
them; and in the same way that the good spirits turn away, theevil spirits who are being led around turn away too, facing thehellish community where they are going.
I will not go into the other ways that the separation of goodpeople from evil people takes place. There are many of them.

73Our Third State after Death

Our third state after death, or the third state of our spirits, is oneof instruction. This state is for people who are entering heavenand becoming angels, but not for people who are entering hell,because these latter cannot be taught. As a result, their second
state is also their third, and ends in their turning straight toward
their own love and therefore toward the hellish community thatis engaged in a love like their own. Once this has happened, thatlove becomes the source of their willing and thinking; and since
it is a hellish love, they will to do only what is evil and they think
only what is false. They take pleasure in willing and thinking inthis way because doing so is a part of what they love. Their finding pleasure in this way results in their rejecting every bit of good
and truth they had previously adopted because they thought thatit might serve their love as a means to an end.
Good people, though, are brought from the second state intoa third, which is a state of preparation for heaven by means of
instruction. In fact, no one can be prepared for heaven except
by knowing firsthand what is good and true, and that requires
75

Our Life after Deathbeing taught. Without being taught, no one can know what spiritual good and truth are, or know the evil and falsity that are theiropposites. When we are in the world, it is possible for us to knowwhat civic and moral good and truth are, and what is called fairand honest, because there are civic laws there that teach what isfair, and there are also social situations where we learn to live bymoral laws, all of which are based on what is honest and right.
Spiritual good and truth, however, are not learned from theworld but from heaven. We can in fact know them from the Word
and from church doctrine based on the Word, but spiritual good
and truth still cannot flow into our lives unless we are in heaven
with respect to the deeper levels of our minds. We are in heaven
when we acknowledge the Divine Being and at the same time act
fairly and honestly, recognizing that we should do so because theWord commands us to. In this way we live fairly and honestly forthe sake of the Divine and do not make ourselves and the world
our primary goals.
However, no one can behave in this way without first having
been taught things like the fact that God exists, that heaven andhell are real, that there is a life after death, that we should love
God above all and love our neighbor as we love ourselves, andthat we should believe what it says in the Word because the Word
is divine. Without recognizing and admitting these principles,
we cannot think spiritually. And without thinking about suchmatters we cannot will to do them, because we cannot think
about something if we do not even know of it, and we cannot willto do something that we are not even thinking about. But when76

Our Third State
we do will such things, heaven flows in—that is, the Lord flows
into our lives through heaven, because he flows into our will, andthrough that into our thought, and through both of these into
the way we live, since will and thought are where our entire life
comes from. We can see from this that spiritual good and truth
are not learned from the world but from heaven, and that no one
can be prepared for heaven except by instruction.
Then too, to the extent that the Lord flows into our lives on
earth he does teach us here as well, since to that same extent hekindles our will with a love of learning what is true, and enlightens our thought so that we know what is true. To the extent that
this happens, our inner self is opened and heaven is sown in it.
Even beyond this, to that same extent what is divine and heavenly flows into the honest actions of our moral life, and into thefair actions of our civic life, and makes them spiritual, since thesource of our actions is the Divine—because we are doing themfor the sake of the Divine. The honest and fair actions of our moral
and civic life that come from this source are actually the resultsof our spiritual life; and a result gets everything it is from thething that causes it, because what the cause is like determines
what the results are like.
The teaching is done by angels from a number of communities, mainly those in the northern and southern regions. Theseangels are focused on intelligence and wisdom based on firsthand knowledge of what is good and true.
The teaching sites are in the north. There are various kinds,
differentiated and arranged according to the types and subtypes

77

Our Life after Deathof heavenly good, so that everyone can be taught there in a manner suited to his or her character and ability to learn. The sites
are spread out over a large area in that region.
Good spirits who need to be taught are taken there by the
Lord after their second state in the world of spirits has ended.
This does not apply to everyone, though, since people who havebeen taught in the world have already been prepared for heavenby the Lord and are taken up into heaven by a different route.
For some, this happens immediately after death. For others, it
happens after a short stay with good spirits, during which they
are purified by the removal of the coarser elements of theirthoughts and affections, elements they picked up from an interest in rank and wealth while they were in the world. Some people
go through a process of being spiritually shattered first, whichhappens in sites called “the lower earth.” Some in that place
undergo hardships—these would be the people who have convinced themselves of false principles but have still lived good
lives. The fact is that false convictions cling tightly to our minds,
and until they are dispelled, we cannot see truths, and therefore
cannot accept them.
The people who are at these instructional sites reside apartfrom one another. Their inner selves are individually connectedwith the communities of heaven they are headed for; and sinceheaven’s communities are arranged in a pattern befitting heaven,so too are the sites where the teaching takes place. As a result,when you look at these sites from heaven, they look like heaven
in reduced form. In length they stretch from east to west, and inbreadth from south to north.
78

Our Third StateThe general arrangement is as follows.
Toward the front are people who died in childhood and wereeducated in heaven up to the age of early adolescence. Women
instruct them during their childhood, and then they are brought
to this location by the Lord and taught here.
Behind these, and farther to the north, there are sites for the
instruction of various non-Christian people. In the world they
lived good lives in accordance with their own religion, acquired
some degree of conscience, and behaved fairly and honestly.
They did so not because of the laws of their nation, but becauseof the laws of their religion, since they believed that these laws
were to be reverently obeyed and that nothing they did should
violate them. All of these people are readily brought to recognize
the Lord when they have been taught to do so, because at heart
they believed that God is not invisible but visible in human form.
The non-Christians outnumber all the others in the instructional sites. Those from Africa are especially good people.
Not everyone is taught in the same way or by the same communities of heaven. People who have been raised in heaven from
infancy are taught by angels of the inner heavens because they
have not absorbed false ideas from distorted religions or polluted their spiritual life with the residue of rank and wealth in
the world.
Most people who have died as adults are taught by angels of
the outermost heaven because these angels are better suited tothem than are the angels of the heavens farther in. The latter—that is, the more inward angels—focus on a deeper wisdom thatthe deceased cannot yet accept.
79

Our Life after Death
Teaching in the heavens differs from teaching on earth
because information there is not incorporated into one’s memory but into one’s way of life, since spirits’ memory is in theirlife. They take in and retain whatever agrees with their way of lifeand do not take in, much less retain, whatever does not agreewith it. This is because spirits actually are affections, and so they
are in a human form that resembles their affections.
Since this is the way they are, they are constantly inspiredwith a desire to know what is true so that they can put it to use in
their lives. The Lord in fact sees to it that they love doing the useful things that suit their personal gifts. That love is intensified bytheir hope of becoming angels.
Furthermore, everything done in heaven is focused on each
person’s being of use for one shared goal, which is the goodof the Lord’s kingdom (which now is their country). Since allangels there are useful in their own distinctive ways to the extent
that the things they do are focused directly and personally onthat common usefulness, each and every one of the countlessdistinctive and individual uses they fulfill is good and heavenly.
This means that for each of these spirits their affection for what
is true is so closely joined to their affection for usefulness thatthe two affections act together. A true understanding of usefulness is sown in them in this way, so that the truths they learn are
truths about what is useful. This is how angelic spirits are taught
and prepared for heaven.
There are various teaching methods (many of them unknown
in the world) by which an affection for the truth, suited to each80

Our Third State
person’s own particular usefulness, is instilled in these individuals. Most of these methods involve representations of useful activities. Such representations can be shown in thousandsof ways in the spiritual world, and they are so enjoyable andengaging that they soak deep into these spirits, passing all theway from the deeper levels of their minds to the outer levels of
their bodies. In this way the representations have an effect on
the entire person.
The result is that spirits virtually become the useful activities
they personally do. So when they arrive in the communities forwhich their instruction has prepared them and begin engaging
in those useful activities, they are fully living the lives that are
theirs alone.
We may gather from this that knowledge in itself, which
is an outward form of truth, does not get anyone into heaven.
Rather, what gets us in is the useful life that is granted throughknowledge.
After spirits have been prepared for heaven at these learning
sites (which does not take long, because they are immersed in
spiritual ideas, which efficiently cover many separate concepts
at once), they are dressed in angelic clothing, which is usuallyas white as if it were made of fine linen. Then they are taken toa path that leads up toward heaven and turned over to guardian angels there. After this they are received by other angels andacquainted with [various] communities and the great numberof blessings in them. The Lord then takes each person to her or
his own community. This happens by various paths, sometimes

81Our Life after Death
through round-about routes. No angel knows the paths along
which they are taken, only the Lord. When they arrive at theirown communities, their inner selves are opened, and since
they are in harmony with the inner selves of the angels who aremembers of that community, they are recognized instantly andreceived with joy.
I would like to add here something remarkable about thepaths that lead from these sites to heaven, the paths by which
newly arrived angels are admitted. There are eight paths, twofrom each teaching site. One leads up toward the east and theother toward the west. People who are entering the Lord’s heavenly kingdom are admitted by the eastern path, while people
who are entering the Lord’s spiritual kingdom are admitted by
the western path.
The four paths that lead to the Lord’s heavenly kingdom areadorned with olive trees and various fruit trees, while the ones
that lead to the Lord’s spiritual kingdom are adorned with grapevines and laurel. These are correspondences: vines and laurel
correspond to an affection for truth and how it is used, whileolive and fruit trees correspond to an affection for what is goodand how that is used.

82

It Is Not as Hard as People Think It Is
to Live a Life That Leads to Heaven

Some people believe it is hard to live a life that leads to heaven,the kind of life that is called “spiritual,” because they have heardthat they need to renounce the world, give up the desires associated with the body and the flesh, and “live spiritually.” Specifically, they think, this means they will have to reject worldly
things, especially money and prestige, and go around in constant, pious meditation about God, salvation, and eternal life,
devoting their lives to prayer, and reading the Word and religious
literature. This is what they call renouncing the world and living
for the spirit and not for the flesh.
However, the actual case is quite different, as I have learned
from an abundance of experience and conversation with angels.
In fact, people who renounce the world and live for the spirit
in this fashion only get themselves a depressing life, a life thatcannot experience the joy in heaven, since our life remains withus after death. No, if we are going to gain a life in heaven, we

83

Our Life after Deathabsolutely must live in the world and take part in its duties andits business. This is how we gain a spiritual life—by means ofour moral and civic life. There is no other way a spiritual life canbe formed within us, no other way our spirits can be preparedfor heaven. This is because living an inner life and not an outer
life at the same time is like living in a house that has no foundation: it gradually settles, develops gaping cracks, and sways
until it collapses.
If we look at human life and examine it with the insights
granted us by our power of reasoning, it turns out to be threefold. It is made up of spiritual life, moral life, and civic life.
These lives can be seen to be different: some people live a civic
life but not a moral or spiritual one, some live a moral life but nota spiritual one, and some live a civic and a moral life and a spiritual life as well. These last are the people who are leading the lifeof heaven, while the others are leading the world’s life, which is
disconnected from the life of heaven.
The primary thing that emerges from this discussion is thata spiritual life is not without connection to physical life—life in
the world—but is joined to it in the way a soul is joined to its
body. If a spiritual life were without that connection, it would be
like the house without a foundation that was just described.
In fact, our moral and civic living is the driving force behind
our spiritual life, because willing to do good is the essence of spiritual life, and doing good actions is the essence of moral and civic
life. If willing is disconnected from action, spiritual life becomesmere thinking, mere talking, and the power of the will falls

84Not Hard to Reach Heaven
away—because it has nothing to rest on. Our will is our actual
spiritual being.
What follows will make it possible for anyone to see that it is
not as hard as people think it is to live a life that leads to heaven.
Is there anyone who can’t live in a moral and civil fashion?
After all, we start off doing so in infancy, and living in the world
teaches us how. We live in this way whether we are evil or good,since no one wants to be called dishonest or unfair. Almost all
people behave honestly and fairly outwardly, even to the pointof seeming genuinely honest and fair—that is, seeming to basetheir actions on real honesty and fairness. Spiritual people arecalled upon to live in the same way and can do so just as easily as worldly people. But the difference is that spiritual people
believe in the Divine Being and act honestly and fairly not justbecause by doing so they are following civic and moral laws, butalso because they are following divine laws. In fact, since they
are thinking about divine laws when they act, they are in touchwith heaven’s angels; and to the extent that they are in touchwith those angels, they are united to them, and their inner self—
which is essentially a spiritual person—is made active. When thisis how we are, the Lord adopts and leads us without our realizing
it, and the things we do that are honest and fair—the actions ofour moral and civic life—come from a spiritual source. When an
honest and fair action comes from a spiritual source, it comesfrom genuine honesty and fairness. It comes from the heart.
On the outside, such honesty and fairness look just like thehonesty and fairness of worldly people or even evil and hellish85

Our Life after Deathpeople, but the inner form of those qualities is totally different.
Evil people do what is fair and honest purely for their own sakeand for worldly reasons. If they were not afraid of the law and its
penalties, and of losing their reputation, their wealth, and theirlife, they would act with utter dishonesty and unfairness. Since
they have no fear of God or of any divine law, they have no innerrestraint that keeps them in check; so they cheat and rob andplunder others as much as they can, for the sheer pleasure of it.
It is especially clear that their inner selves are this way if we compare them to people who are like them in the other life. There
the outer selves of all are stripped away and the inner selves areactivated—the selves with which such people will go on living
to eternity. Since evil people are then acting without external
restraints, which are (as was just pointed out) fear of the law andfear of losing reputation, prestige, profit, and life, their actions
are deranged, and they scoff at honesty and fairness.
By contrast, people who have lived honestly and fairly
because they are obeying divine laws will act wisely when theirouter selves are stripped away and they are left only with theirinner selves. They are then united to heaven’s angels, who share
their wisdom with them.
One thing that should now be clear from all this is that spiritual people may seem to behave in much the same way as worldly
people in their civic and moral life, but they are united to theDivine in their inner selves, in their will and thought.
The laws of spiritual life, the laws of civic life, and the lawsof moral life are handed down to us in the Ten Commandments.

86Not Hard to Reach Heaven
The first three commandments contain the laws of spiritual life,
the next four the laws of civic life, and the last three the laws ofmoral life. Outwardly, the people who are merely worldly liveby these commandments just the way spiritual people do. They
worship the Divine in the same way: they go to church, listen tosermons, and compose themselves for their devotions. They do
not kill or commit adultery or steal or bear false witness, do notcheat their companions of their goods. However, they behave
this way solely in their own interest, in order to look good in theworld. Inwardly, these same people are exactly the opposite ofwhat they seem to be outwardly. Because at heart they deny the
Divine, they play the hypocrite in their worship. In their private
thinking they scoff at the holy rites of the church, believing thatthey serve only to restrain the unsophisticated masses. This is
why they are totally cut off from heaven.
So since they are not spiritual, they are not moral or civic
people either: even though they do not kill, they hate everyone
who gets in their way, and their hatred makes them burn to takerevenge. If they were not bound by civic laws and the outward
restraints caused by their fears, they would kill.
But by craving to kill, they are constantly killing.
Even though they do not commit adultery, they are constantly
adulterous all the same, because they believe there is nothing
wrong with it. They actually do commit it as much as they can
and as often as they have the opportunity.
Even though they do not actually steal, they are constantly
meaning to steal all the same, since they covet other people’s

87Our Life after Deathassets and think of cheating and malicious fraud as legallyjustifiable.
The same applies to the other commandments of moral
life—not bearing false witness or coveting the goods of others.
All who deny the Divine are like this, all who do not have someconscience based on religion. It is obvious that this is the way
their inner selves are if we compare them to people who are likethem in the other life, after those spirits have had their outerselves stripped away and are brought fully into their inner selves.
Since they are cut off from heaven at that point, they act in league
with hell and keep company with the people there.
It is different for people who in their hearts acknowledged
the Divine Being and paid attention to divine laws in what they
did in the world, keeping not only the first three of the Ten Commandments but the others as well. When they are brought fully
into their inner self, after their outer self is stripped away, they
are wiser than they were in the world. Coming into their innerselves is like coming from darkness into light, from ignorance
into wisdom, from a sad life into a blissful one, because they arein the Divine and therefore in heaven.
I have described all this so that it can be seen what each ofthese two types of people is like, though both may lead the samekind of outward life.
Anyone can see that thoughts tend to follow where intentions
lead, or to go where we aim them. Thought is actually our innersight, and it behaves like our outer sight. It shifts toward andrests on whatever it is turned toward and aimed at. If our innersight or thought is turned toward the world and rests on that, the88Not Hard to Reach Heaven
result is that our thought becomes worldly. If it is turned toward
our selves and our prestige, it becomes materialistic. However, if
it is turned toward heaven, it becomes heavenly. So if it is turned
toward heaven, it is raised up; if it is turned toward our selves, it
is pulled away from heaven and immersed in the physical; if it isturned toward the world, it is also turned away from heaven anddispersed among whatever objects meet our eyes.
It is our love that creates our intentions and focuses our innersight, or our thought, on its objects. This is why love for ourselves directs our thought toward ourselves and whatever we callour own, while love of the world directs it toward worldly matters, and love of heaven directs it toward heavenly matters. From
this fact we can tell what state our inner minds are in—all weneed to do is to identify what we love. That is, if we love heaven,
the inner reaches of our minds are raised up toward heaven
and open upward. If we love the world and ourselves, the innerreaches of our minds are closed in the upward direction andinstead open toward outer things. So it’s clear that if the higher
reaches of our minds are closed to what is above them, we can nolonger see whatever has to do with heaven and the church. As far
as we are concerned, those things lie in darkness; and whateveris in darkness we either deny or at least do not understand. This
is why people who love themselves and the world above all, since
the higher levels of their minds are closed, in their hearts denydivine truths; and even if they do speak about them from rotememory, they still do not understand what they are saying. They
have the same attitude toward divine truths as they do toward
worldly and material things. Because this is the way they are,89

Our Life after Deaththey cannot think about anything except what comes in throughtheir physical senses, which for them are the sole source of pleasure. Their sensory experience also includes much that is foul,obscene, irreligious, and criminal. They cannot be distracted
from these obsessions because there is no inflow from heaven
into their minds, since as just mentioned their minds are closed
to what is above them.
Our intention is our will. This is what focuses our inner sightor thought, since what we want, we form an intention to get; andwhat we intend to get, we think about. So if we form an intention to go to heaven, we focus our thinking on that, and with ourthinking we focus our whole mind, which as a result is in heaven.
This means that our mind looks at the concerns of the world
as below itself, like someone looking down from the roof of ahouse. This is why people in whom the deeper levels of the mind
are open can see the evil and false elements in themselves, sincethese are below their spiritual mind. Conversely, if people’s innerselves are not open, they cannot see those evil and false elements
because they are right down among them and not above them.
This shows us where human wisdom comes from, and humaninsanity too, and what we will be like after death when we are left
to will and think and then to act and speak in keeping with ourinner self.
Again, this discussion has been included to indicate what aperson is like inside, and that it does not matter how similar tosomeone else she or he may seem outwardly.
We can now see that it is not as hard to lead the life of heaven
as people think. It is simply a matter of recognizing that when90

Not Hard to Reach Heaven
we encounter something that we know is dishonest or unfair, nomatter how tempting it is we are not to do it, because it is against
the divine commandments. If we get used to thinking like this,and from this familiarity form a habit, then we are graduallyunited to heaven. The more we are united to heaven, the more
the higher levels of our minds are opened, and the more they are
opened, the more we perceive what is dishonest or unfair in ourselves; and the more we can identify these qualities, the more we
can remove them. The fact is that no evil can be done away with
until we can see it.
It is our freedom that allows us to first enter into this state ofbeing in heaven, since everyone is free to think in this way. However, once the process has started, the Lord works his wonders
within us and causes us not only to see evils but also to not wantthem, and eventually to turn away from them. This is the meaning of the Lord’s words, “My yoke is easy and my burden light”(Matthew 11:30).
It is important to realize, though, that the difficulty of thinking like this and also of resisting evils increases the more wedeliberately do evil things—in fact, the more we become used todoing them and ultimately no longer see them. Then we come tolove them and to excuse them to gratify our love, and to rationalize them with all kinds of self-deceptions and say we are allowed
to do them, that they are good. This happens to people who inearly adulthood plunge into all kinds of evil without restraint andat the same time reject everything divine with all their hearts.
I was once shown the way to heaven and the way to hell.
There was a broad path leading off to the left or north. A great91

Our Life after Deathmany spirits could be seen traveling along it. In the distance,
however, I could see a fairly large boulder where the broad pathended. Two paths led away from the boulder; one went to theleft, and the other, which was on the other side of the stone,
went to the right. The path to the left was narrow and confined,leading around through the west to the south, and therefore into
the light of heaven. The path to the right was broad and open,
leading on a slant downwards toward hell.
At first—up to the large boulder at the fork—everyone could
be seen to be following the same path; but at that point theyparted company. The good turned to the left and started along
the confined path that led to heaven. The evil did not even see
the boulder at the fork but fell over it and hurt themselves. Whenthey got up, they hurried along the broad path to the right that
led toward hell.
Later the meaning of all this was explained to me. The firstpath, the broad one where many good people and many evil
people were traveling together—all chatting with one anotherlike friends, because they could not see the differences between
them—that path represented people who live similarly honest
and fair outward lives, and who cannot be told apart from the way
they look. The stone at the fork or corner where the evil people
stumbled, from which they hurried along the path to hell, represented divine truth, which is denied by people who are focusing
on hell. In the highest sense, this stone meant the Lord’s divine
human nature. However, people who acknowledged divine truth,
and the divine nature of the Lord as well, were taken along thepath that led to heaven.
92

Not Hard to Reach HeavenThis showed me again that both evil and good people live thesame life outwardly, or travel the same path, one as readily as theother. Yet the ones who in their hearts acknowledge the Divine,
especially those within the church who acknowledge the Lord’s
divine nature, are led to heaven. Those who do not acknowledge
it are led to hell.
Paths in the other life represent the thoughts that flow fromour will, or intention. The paths that are visible there answer
exactly to the thoughts that arise from our intentions. And wewalk wherever the thoughts lead us that arise from our intentions. This is why you can tell from the paths spirits take what
they and their thoughts are like.
Seeing the broad and narrow paths taught me the meaningof the Lord’s words, “Enter through the narrow gate, for wide is
the gate and open the way that leads to destruction, and there
are many who walk along it; confined is the path and narrow thegate that leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matthew
7:13–14). The way that leads to life is narrow not because it is difficult. Instead it is narrow because so few people find it, as has
been mentioned.
The boulder I saw at the corner where the broad, common
path ended and from which the two ways seemed to lead in
opposite directions showed me the meaning of the Lord’s words,“Have you not read what is written, ‘The stone that the builders
rejected has become the main cornerstone’? Whoever falls overthis stone will be shattered” (Luke 20:17–18). The stone means
divine truth, and the rock of Israel [2 Samuel 23:3] means the
Lord in regard to his divine human nature. The builders are the93Our Life after Deathpeople of the church. The main cornerstone is where the fork is,
and to fall and be shattered is to deny and perish.
I have been allowed to talk with some people in the other life
who had distanced themselves from the affairs of the world inorder to lead pious and holy lives, and also with some who had
mortified themselves in various ways because they thought thiswas renouncing the world and taming the desires of the flesh.
However, all that most of them got from this was a depressing
existence. They had distanced themselves from a life of active
kindness, which we can have only by taking part in the world. As
a result, they could not associate with angels, because the life ofangels—which is cheerful and blessed—consists of doing good,of actions done out of loving kindness for others.
To make matters worse, people who have led a life apart fromthe world are on fire with a sense of self-righteousness and constantly crave heaven. They think of heavenly joy as their reward,
but they have no knowledge whatever of what heavenly joy actually is. In fact, the joy of angels has no sense of self-righteousness
in it. It consists of work and of public duties and of bliss at thegood that is accomplished through these things. When people
who have led a life apart are brought together with angels andare allowed to share in their joy, they are as bewildered as though
they were seeing something totally alien to their faith. Since theycannot respond to that joy, they go away and associate with people who led the same kind of life in the world as they did.
I have discussed all this to show that the life that leads toheaven is not one of withdrawal from the world but of living in theworld, and that living piously but without loving kindness (and94Not Hard to Reach Heaven
we can act with loving kindness only by taking part in the world)
does not lead to heaven at all.
No, the life that leads to heaven is a life of loving kindness. It
is a life of behaving honestly and fairly in every duty, every business transaction, every task, acting from our deeper self andtherefore from a heavenly source. This source is operating in theway we live our lives whenever we act honestly and fairly specifically because doing so is in accordance with divine laws.
The life that leads to heaven is not hard. A life of piety apartfrom a life of loving kindness is hard. And just as surely as people
believe it leads to heaven, it doesn’t. It leads away from there.

95

APPENDIX

Children in Heaven

Some people believe that only children born in the church get
into heaven, not children born outside the church. They say
this is because children born in the church are baptized and are
introduced into the faith of the church by their baptism. Whatthey don’t realize is that being baptized doesn’t give people
faith or get them into heaven. Baptism serves only as a sign andreminder that we need to be regenerated, and that people bornin the church can be regenerated because the Word is there, theWord that contains the divine truths that make regeneration possible. The church is where the Lord, who is the source of regeneration, is known.
So these people should realize that every child who dies, nomatter where he or she was born, within the church or outsideit, of devout or irreverent parents, is accepted by the Lord after
death, brought up in heaven, taught according to the divine
design, and filled with affection for what is good and through97Children in Heaventhat with direct knowledge of the truth; and then, being continually perfected in intelligence and wisdom, all such individuals
are led into heaven and become angels.
Anyone who thinks rationally can realize that no one is bornto go to hell—everyone is born to go to heaven. We ourselves
are to blame if we arrive in hell, but children are not yet liable forany blame.
Children who die are still children in the other life. They havethe same kind of childlike mind, the same unknowing innocence, the same tenderness toward all. But they are only justbeginning to be able to become angels; they are not angels but
only angels-to-be.
Actually, everyone who leaves this world is [at first] in thesame state of life—a baby is in the state of a baby, a child in thestate of a child, an adolescent or adult or senior in the state of anadolescent, an adult, or a senior. This state does, of course, eventually change. A child’s state is better than the others, though,because a child is innocent, and because children have not yet
let evils take root in them by actually living them. Because of thenature of innocence, every heavenly thing can be sown in it; it isable to contain the truths that make our faith and the good thatcomes from love.
The condition of children in the other life is vastly better
than that of children in our world because they are not clothedwith an earthly body. Instead, they have an angelic one. An
earthly body is inherently heavy. It does not receive its primarysensations and primary impulses from the inner or spiritual
world but from the outer or material one; so children in this98

Children in Heaven
world have to learn through practice to walk, to do things, andto talk—even their senses, such as sight and hearing, are developed by use. It is different for children in the other life. Because
they are spirits, their actions arise directly from their innerselves. They walk without practice and even talk, though at first
they speak only on the basis of miscellaneous emotions thatare not yet differentiated into mental concepts. However, since
their outer selves are essentially the same as their inner selves,
they very soon begin using mental concepts [in their speech] aswell. The fact is that angels’ speech is in perfect agreement withthe thoughts that arise from their emotions, not only because
their speech flows from those emotions, but because their emotions take on their own varied coloration from their mental
concepts.
As soon as children are reawakened (which happens immediately after their death), they are taken to heaven and entrusted tofemale angels who loved children tenderly during their physicallives and loved God as well. Since in this world they loved all children as tenderly as if they had been mothers to them, they accept
these new ones as their own, and the children instinctively love
them as their mothers. Each such angel has as many children as
her spiritual maternal nature wants.
I need to explain briefly how children are brought up in
heaven. They learn to speak from their teachers. Their firstspeech is only a sound produced by emotion. It gradually
becomes more articulate as the concepts they are thinking enter
into it, since concepts of this kind that arise from emotions
make up the whole angelic language.
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Children in Heaven
The kinds of things children see with their eyes that particularly delight them are the first objects associated with these emotions, which are totally innocent in origin. Since everything theysee is from a spiritual source, aspects of heaven flow into themthat open their deeper selves. In this way they grow closer to perfection every day. Once this first stage has been completed, they
are taken to another heaven where they are taught by instructors,
and so on.
They are taught in particular by images suited to their characters, images that are unbelievably beautiful and full of a wisdom that comes from within. In this way there is gradually
instilled into them an intelligence whose very soul comes fromwhat is good.
I may cite at this point two examples I have been allowed
to see that will serve to suggest the nature of the rest of theseimages.
1. The Lord was shown rising from the tomb, and along withthis concept was shown the uniting of his human nature withhis divine nature. This was done in a manner so wise that it
surpassed all human wisdom, but also in a manner both childlike and innocent. For example, though the idea of the tomb
was indicated, the idea of the Lord was not shown at the sametime, except only so subtly that one could hardly tell that it was
the Lord, as though he were far off. They used this device toremove the idea of death that is associated with tombs. Thenthey very judiciously allowed something misty, something thatlooked like a thin vapor, to flow into the tomb. By this they were100

Children in Heaven
symbolizing, again with appropriate subtlety, the spiritual life
represented by baptism.
2. Then I saw these angels represent the Lord coming down tothose who were bound and rising with them into heaven [Psalms
68:18; Ephesians 4:8–10; 1 Peter 3:19–20]. This they showed withincomparable judiciousness and reverence. As a concession to
the way children understand things, they supported the Lord in
his ascent by small cords they had let down, so slender and sheer
as to be almost invisible. Throughout it all, they had a holy fearof letting any part of the representation touch on anything thatwas not spiritual and heavenly.
There were other representations that engaged the children
as well—for example, plays suited to children’s minds—throughwhich the children were led into awareness of truth and into anaffection for what is good.
I was also shown what their tender understanding is like.
When I was saying the Lord’s Prayer and they were flowing
into my concepts on the basis of their own understanding of it,
I noticed that their inflow was so tender and gentle that it wasalmost nothing but pure feeling. At the same time, I noted that
their understanding had been opened to the Lord, for it was asthough what was coming from them was flowing through them.
In fact, the Lord does flow into children’s ideas, primarily fromthe deepest self. Nothing has closed this off in children, as is
the case in adults—no false principles close them off from true
understanding, no evil way of life closes them off from accepting
what is good and thus from being wise.

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Children in Heaven
We can see from all this that immediately after their deathchildren do not enter the state that angels are in, but are gradually brought into that state through growing awareness of what
is good and true. This is according to the design of heaven. The
smallest details of their characters are known to the Lord, sothey are led, in a way that matches each and every impulse of
their own inclinations, toward the acceptance of truths that arise
from good and the good that is done because of truth.
I have also been shown how everything instilled in them istaught by methods that greatly interest and please the children
and suit their personalities. I have been allowed to see, as an
example of one of these methods, children exquisitely dressed,
wearing garlands of flowers around their necks and slenderarms, the blossoms bright with striking and heavenly colors.
Once I was also allowed to see some children with their teachers
in a garden like paradise, in the company of some young women.
It was a garden not of trees, but of something like laurels, shaped
into vaulted arches; these formed heavily decorated doorways
over paths leading to inner recesses. The children themselves
were dressed with comparable beauty. When they went inthrough the doorways, the flowers over the entrance radiated themost joyous light imaginable. From this one can see what sortsof things give them pleasure. From this, too, one can see how
they are guided into the blessings of innocence and loving kindness by things that interest them and please them, which the
Lord constantly fills with those blessings.
By a means of communication that is common in the otherlife, I have been shown what children’s concepts are like when102

Children in Heaven
they are looking at various objects. It is as though everything
were alive; so in the smallest concepts of their thought there isan inherent life. I gathered that children on earth have concepts
that are much the same when they are involved in their play,since they are not yet able to reflect, as do grownups, about what
is inanimate.
I mentioned earlier that children have either a heavenly or aspiritual nature. You can tell those who are heavenly from those
who are spiritual very readily. Heavenly children think and talkand act more gently, so that [the representation] that appears ishardly more than something flowing from a love of what is good,a love for the Lord and for other children.
Spiritual children do not think and talk and act so gently.
Instead, [their representation] is something like fluttering wings
that are revealed in little things about them. Then too, their difference from heavenly children can be seen in their moodiness,
as well as in other matters.
Many people conjecture that children continue as children
in heaven and are still like children when they are among theangels. People in ignorance of what an angel is may have had thisopinion erroneously confirmed by the images here and there inchurches, where angels are represented as children. However,
the truth of the matter is actually very different. Intelligence andwisdom make an angel, qualities that children do not have as
long as they remain children. Children are with the angels, butthey themselves are not angels yet. Once they are intelligent andwise they are angels for the first time. In fact—and this is something that surprised me—then they no longer look like children
103Children in Heaven
but like adults, because they no longer have a childlike nature
but a more grown-up angelic nature. This goes along with intelligence and wisdom.
The reason children look more grown-up—that is, like adolescents and young adults—as they grow closer to perfection in
intelligence and wisdom is that intelligence and wisdom are theessential spiritual food. So the things that nourish their minds
also nourish their bodies. This is a result of correspondence,since the form of the body is nothing but an outward form of
their inner selves.
It is important to realize that children in heaven do not growup beyond the prime of youth, but remain at that age forever. To
assure me of this, I have been allowed to talk with some who had
been raised as children in heaven and had grown up there. To
others I spoke while they were still children, and then with thesame group later when they had become youths; and I heard fromthem about the course of their life from one age level to another.
Innocence contains everything heavenly. That is the reason
that children’s innocence is a basis for all the affections for what
is good and true. Innocence is wanting to be led by the Lord andnot by oneself, so the more innocent we are, the less preoccupied we are with our self-image. And the more free we are of our
preoccupation with our self-image, the more we gain an identity
given by the Lord. The Lord’s identity is what is called the Lord’s
righteousness and merit.
Children’s innocence, though, is not real innocence, because
it still lacks wisdom. Real innocence is wisdom because to theextent that we are wise we want to be led by the Lord; or what104

Children in Heaven
amounts to the same thing, to the extent that we love being led
by the Lord, we are wise.
So children are brought from the outward innocence thatcharacterizes them at first, which is called the innocence ofinfancy, to the inner innocence that is the innocence of wisdom. This second innocence is the goal of their whole process of
instruction. So when they arrive at the innocence of wisdom, theinnocence of infancy that had served them as a basis during thisprocess is joined to them.
The nature of children’s innocence was represented to me assomething woody and almost lifeless. Then it was brought to life
as the children were brought closer to perfection by recognizing
truths and beginning to love what is good. After this display, thenature of true innocence was represented to me as a supremely
beautiful baby, naked and very much alive; and in fact in the eyesof other angels, the truly innocent people, in the deepest heaven,appear exactly like little children. Some of them are even naked,
since innocence is portrayed as a nakedness without embarrassment, as we read concerning the first human and his wife in thegarden (Genesis 2:25). So too, when they lost their innocencethey were ashamed of their nakedness and hid themselves (Genesis 3:7, 10, 11).
In short, the wiser angels are, the more innocent they are;and the more innocent they are, the more they look to themselves
like children. This is why infancy in the Word means innocence.
I have talked with angels about children, and I asked whether
they were pure and without evil, reasoning that they did not haveany evil that has been carried into action, the way adults do. I was
105Children in Heaven
told, though, that they have just as much evil within themselves—that in fact they too are nothing but evil. However, they, like all
the angels, are held back from their evil by the Lord and kept
focused on what is good, until it seems to them as though they
are focused on what is good of their own accord. So to preventchildren from having a false notion about themselves after they
have grown up in heaven—a belief that the good that surrounds
them is from them and not from the Lord—they are placed backin their hereditary evils from time to time and left in them until
they know and recognize and believe the way things really are.
There was one individual who had died in infancy and grown
up in heaven who had this kind of opinion. He was the son of aparticular king; so he was placed back in his own innate life ofevil. I could tell then from the aura of his life that he was driven
to lord it over others and regarded adultery as of no concern
whatever—evils that were part of his heredity from his parents.
Once he recognized that he was like this, though, he was welcomed back among the angels he had been with before.
In the other life, none of us ever suffers any punishment for
inherited evil, because it is not ours. We are not at fault for ourhereditary nature. We suffer punishment for any personal evil wehave carried into action—that is, for whatever hereditary evil wehave made our own by acting it out in our lives.
The reason grown-up children are placed back in the state of
their hereditary evil is not to punish them. It is to make sure theyknow that on their own they are nothing but evil and that they
are carried from the hell in which they are into heaven by the
Lord’s mercy, that they are in heaven not because they deserve it,106Children in Heaven
but because of the Lord. This prevents them from boasting thatthey are better than others because of the good that they have.
That would be against the goodness of loving one another just as
it is against what faith teaches to be true.
Several times a number of children have been with me inchoirs, before they had learned to talk at all. They made a faint,
disorganized sound, as though they were not yet able to perform
in unison the way they would when they were older. But whatreally surprised me was that the spirits who were with me could
not keep from trying to get them to talk—this kind of impulse
is innate in spirits. Every time, though, I noticed that the children resisted, not wanting to be compelled to speak in this way.
I often picked up a reluctance from them, a distaste that had akind of resentment in it. When they were granted some powerof speech, all they said was “That isn’t so.” I was told that thisis a kind of testing of the children not only to accustom andintroduce them to resisting whatever is false and evil but tokeep them from thinking or speaking or acting at the biddingof someone else, so that they will not let themselves be led byanyone but the Lord.
We may gather from this what the upbringing of children islike in heaven—through an understanding of truth and a wisdom about what is good, they are led into an angelic life, which
consists of love for the Lord and a mutual love that contains
innocence.
An example may serve to illustrate how different the upbring­ing of children on earth is in many instances. I was on the street
of a large city and saw some boys fighting with each other. A
107Children in Heaven
crowd gathered and watched this with considerable pleasure,and I was told that the parents themselves urged their children
into fights like these. The good spirits and angels who wereseeing all this through my eyes were so repelled that I could
feel them shudder, especially at the fact that the parents wereencouraging this kind of behavior. They said that by doing thisthey would at the very earliest age stifle all the mutual love andall the innocence that little ones receive from the Lord, and thatthey would lead them into hatred and vindictiveness. So by theirown deliberate practices they would shut their children out ofheaven, where there is nothing but mutual love. Let any parents
who wish well for their children beware of things like this.
I need also to describe the difference between people who die
as children and people who die as adults. People who die as adults
have a level [in their spirit] acquired from the earthly, material
world, and they take it with them. This level is their memory andits material and bodily emotion. After death, content is no longer added to it, and it then becomes inactive; but it still serves
their thought after death as an outer level because their thinking flows into it. Thus this level—and the way a person’s powersof reasoning correspond to what the level contains—determines
what a person is like after death.
People who have died in childhood and have been raised inheaven, though, do not have this kind of level. They have a levelthat has shifted from the worldly to the spiritual, because theybring with them nothing from the material world or their earthly
bodies. This means that they cannot be caught up in the coarse

108Children in Heaven
emotions of the world or in the thoughts that come from thoseemotions. They actually draw on heaven for everything they are.
Not only that, but little children are unaware that they wereborn on earth, so they think they were born in heaven. Thismeans they do not know what any birth is other than the spiritual birth that is accomplished through familiarity with what
is good and true and through the intelligence and wisdom thatmake people truly human. Since these come from the Lord,
they believe that they belong to the Lord himself, and love tohave it so.
However, if people who have grown up on earth distancethemselves from the love of material and earthly things, fromlove for themselves and for the world, and take up the love of
spiritual things instead, they can approach perfection just as
much as do children who have grown up in heaven.

109about emanuel Swedenborg

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) was born Emanuel Swedberg(or Svedberg) in Stockholm, Sweden, on January 29, 1688 (Juliancalendar). He was the third of the nine children of Jesper Swedberg (1653–1735) and Sara Behm (1666–1696). At the age of eight
he lost his mother. After the death of his only older brother tendays later, he became the oldest living son. In 1697 his father
married Sara Bergia (1666–1720), who developed great affection
for Emanuel and left him a significant inheritance. His father, aLutheran clergyman, later became a celebrated and controversial
bishop, whose diocese included the Swedish churches in Pennsylvania and in London, England.
After studying at the University of Uppsala (1699–1709),
Emanuel journeyed to England, Holland, France, and Germany(1710–1715) to study and work with leading scientists in western
Europe. Upon his return he apprenticed as an engineer under thebrilliant Swedish inventor Christopher Polhem (1661–1751). He
gained favor with Sweden’s King Charles XII (1682–1718), who

111About Emanuel Swedenborg
gave him a salaried position as an overseer of Sweden’s mining industry (1716–1747). Although he was engaged, he nevermarried.
After the death of Charles XII, Emanuel was ennobled by
Queen Ulrika Eleonora (1688–1741), and his last name waschanged to Swedenborg (or Svedenborg). This change in status gave him a seat in the Swedish House of Nobles, where heremained an active participant in the Swedish government
throughout his life.
A member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, hedevoted himself to scientific studies and philosophical reflections that culminated in a number of publications, most notably
a comprehensive three-volume work on mineralogy (1734) thatbrought him recognition across Europe as a scientist and philosopher. After 1734 he redirected his research and publishing to a
study of anatomy in search of the interface between the soul andbody, making several significant discoveries in physiology.
From 1743 to 1745 he entered a transitional phase that resulted
in a shift of his main focus from science and philosophy to theology. Throughout the rest of his life he maintained that this shift
was brought about by Jesus Christ, who appeared to him, called
him to a new mission, and opened his perception to a permanent dual consciousness of this life and the life after death.
He devoted the last decades of his life to studying Scripture and publishing eighteen theological titles that draw on the
Bible, reasoning, and his own spiritual experiences. These works
present a Christian theology with unique perspectives on the112About Emanuel Swedenborg
nature of God, the spiritual world, the Bible, the human mind,
and the path to salvation.
Swedenborg died in London on March 29, 1772, at the age ofeighty-four.

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Read More from Emanuel Swedenborg
Heaven and Hell (from which Our Life after
Death was excerpted) is Swedenborg’s
most popular book and his fullest reportof the afterlife, especially appropriate forreaders interested in near-death experiences or who seek consolation for the lossof a loved one. This volume, part of our
New Century Edition series, is offered inseveral formats: Deluxe annotated hardcover or paperback (pictured); “Portable” paperback, which includes only the text of thetranslation; or free download at www.swedenborg.com.
A Swedenborg Sampler presents key selections from five New Century Edition volumes, focusing on the afterlife, the natureof God and the spiritual dynamics behind
human suffering, new perspectives on
Christianity, and inner meanings of the
Bible. Available at fine book retailers or
through our website.

The Swedenborg Foundation has worked since 1849
to make Emanuel Swedenborg’s spiritual vision more
widely known. Visit us at www.swedenborg.com toread his writings online, peruse our bookstore, andconnect through social media with others who areinterested in his insights.