Heaven and Hell - Swedenborg Foundation

HEAVEN AND HELL 267
345. What the difference is between those who die in
childhood and those who die in mature life shall also be told.
Those dying in mature life have a plane acquired from the
earthly and material world, and this they carry with them. This
plane is their memory and its bodily natural affection. This
remains fixed and becomes quiescent, but still serves their
thought after death as an outmost plane, since the thought
flows into it. Consequently such as this plane is, and such as
the correspondence is between the things that are in it and the
rational faculty, such is the man after death. But the children
who die in childhood and are educated in heaven have no such
plane, since they derive nothing from the material world and
the earthly body; but they have a spiritual-natural plane. For
this reason they cannot be in such gross affections and
consequent thoughts, since they derive all things from heaven.
Moreover, these children do not know that they were born in
the world, but believe that they were born in heaven. Neither
do they know about any other than spiritual birth, which is
effected through knowledges of good and truth and through
intelligence and wisdom, from which man is a man; and as
these are from the Lord they believe themselves to be the
Lord’s own, and love to be so. Nevertheless it is possible for the
state of men who grow up on the earth to become as perfect as
the state of children who grow up in heaven, provided they put
away bodily and earthly loves, which are the loves of self and
the world, and receive in their place spiritual loves.