Heaven and Hell - Swedenborg Foundation

HEAVEN AND HELL 349
receiving intelligence and wisdom, and speaking from reason. Also
it is by virtue of this that he lives to eternity. But what is arranged
and provided by the Lord in this inmost does not distinctly fall
into the perception of any angel, because it is above his thought
and transcends his wisdom.
436. That in respect to his interiors man is a spirit I have
been permitted to learn from much experience, which, to
employ a common saying, would fill volumes if I were to
describe it all. I have talked with spirits as a spirit, and I have
talked with them as a man in the body; and when I talked with
them as a spirit they knew no otherwise than that I myself was
a spirit and in a human form as they were. Thus did my
interiors appear before them, for when talking with them as a
spirit my material body was not seen.
437. That in respect to his interiors man is a spirit can be
seen from the fact that after his separation from the body,
which takes place when he dies, man goes on living as a man
just as before. That I might be convinced of this I have been
permitted to talk with nearly everyone I had ever known in
their life in the body; with some for hours, with some for
weeks and months, and with some for years, and this chiefly
that I might be sure of it and might testify to it.
438. To this may be added that every man in respect to his
spirit, even while he is living in the body, is in some society
with spirits, although he does not know it; if a good man he is
by means of spirits in some angelic society; if an evil man in
some infernal society; and after death he comes into that same
society. This has been often told and shown to those who after
death have come among spirits. Man, to be sure, does not
appear in that society as a spirit while he is living in the world,
for the reason that he then thinks naturally; but when one is
thinking abstractly from the body, because he is then in the
spirit, he sometimes appears in his society; and when seen he is
easily distinguished from the spirits there, for he goes about
meditating and in silence, not looking at others, and