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

AFTERLIFE
and can do so just as easily as natural people, the differ -
ence being that spiritual people believe in the Divine
Being and act honestly and fairly not just because it fol -
lows civil and moral laws but also because it follows divine
laws. In fact, since they are thinking about divine [laws]
when they act, they are in touch with heaven’s angels; and
to the extent that they are, they are united to them, and
their inner person—which is essentially a spiritual per -
son—is opened. When this is our nature, the Lord adopts
and leads us without our realizing it, and whatever things
we do that are honest and fair—the deeds of our moral and
civil life—come from a spiritual source. Doing what is
hon est and fair from a spiritual source is doing it from
genuine honesty and fairness, or doing it from the heart.
The laws of spiritual life, the laws of civil life, and the
laws of moral life are handed down to us in the Ten Com -
mandments. The first three commandments contain the
laws of spiritual life, the next four the laws of civil life, and
the last three the laws of moral life. Outwardly, purely
natural people live by these same commandments just the
way spiritual people do. They worship the Divine, go to
church, listen to sermons, wear devout faces, do not kill or
commit adultery or steal or bear false witness, do not cheat
their colleagues of their goods. However, they behave this
way solely in their own interest, in order to look good in
the world. Inwardly, these same people are exactly the
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