498. This first state after death lasts a few days for some people, months for some, and a year for some, but rarely more than a year for anyone. The difference for particular individuals depends on the harmony or discord between their inner and outer natures. These inner and outer natures must act as one and correspond for everyone. No one is allowed to think and intend one way and speak and act another way in the spiritual world. Everyone must be an image of his or her affection or love, which means we must be outwardly what we are inwardly. This is why the outer concerns of a spirit are first stripped off and brought into order: so that they may serve as a plane responsive to the inner ones.

5883. 'Draw near to me, I beg you' means a more internal communication. This is clear from the meaning of 'drawing near' as communicating in closer proximity, which, in the context of the external in relation to the internal, is communicating on a more internal level. People have no knowledge of the fact that communication with the natural or external man is both interior and exterior. And the reason why they do not know it is that they have not formed any idea for themselves about the internal man or about the life of the internal, that its life is distinct and separate from that of the external man. The only idea anyone has of the internal man is that it exists inwardly but is in no way distinct and separate from the external man, when in actual fact the two are so distinct that the internal can be separated from the external and lead a life that is the same only purer.

[2] This is also what actually happens when a person dies. The internal is separated from the external, and the internal, which is alive after that separation, is what is then called a spirit. Yet it is the same person that lived in the body; and to himself, and to others in the next life, he looks like a person in the world, fully formed from head to toe. He is also equipped with the same powers that a person in the world has - of sensation when he is touched, of smelling, seeing, hearing, speaking, and thinking. He is equipped with them so completely that when he does not stop to reflect on the fact that he is in the next life, he imagines he is in his body in the world, as I have frequently heard spirits say. From all this one may see what a person's internal and external are. If some idea is gained of them from what has been said, a somewhat clearer picture will emerge of what has been stated about the internal man and the external man so often in explanations, also of what the phrase 'a more internal communication' describes, meant here by 'draw near to me, I beg you'.