Afterlife: A Guided Tour of Heaven and Its Wonders - Swedenborg ...

AFTERLIFE
physical lives, with some for a few hours, with some for
weeks and months, and with some for years. This was pri -
ma rily so that I could be convinced and could bear witness.
I may add here that even while we are living in our bod -
ies, each one of us is in a community with spirits as to our
own spirits even though we are unaware of it. Good peo -
ple are in angelic communities by means of [their spirits]
and evil people are in hellish communities. Further, we
come into those same communities when we die. People
who are coming into the company of spirits after death are
often told and shown this.
Our Revival from the Dead and Entry
into Eternal Life
When someone’s body can no longer perform its func -
tions in the natural world in response to the thoughts and
affections of its spirit (which it derives from the spiritual
world), then we say that the individual has died. This
happens when the lungs’ breathing and the heart’s systolic
motion have ceased. The person, though, has not died at
all. We are only separated from the physical nature that
was useful to us in the world. The essential person is actu -
ally still alive. I say that the essential person is still alive
because we are not people because of our bodies but
because of our spirits. After all, it is the spirit within us
that thinks, and thought and affection together make us
the people we are.
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