1. I. THE WORLDS IN SPACE

By the Lord's Divine mercy I have had my interior faculties, which belong to my spirit, opened, so that I have been enabled to talk with spirits and angels, not only those in the vicinity of our earth, but also with those near other worlds. Since therefore I was desirous of knowing whether there were other inhabited worlds, and what they and their inhabitants were like, I was allowed by the Lord to talk and mix with spirits and angels from other worlds. With some this lasted a day, with others a week, with yet others for months. I was informed by them about the worlds they came from and in the vicinity of which they were, about the life, behaviour and religious practices of their inhabitants, and other matters worth relating about them. Since I was allowed to gain my knowledge in this fashion, I can describe them from what I have heard and seen.

[2] It needs to be known that all spirits and angels are from the human race; ¹ they are near their own world, ² and know what happens there; and they can inform someone whose interior faculties are open sufficiently to be able to talk and mix with them. A human being is in essence a spirit, ³ and associates with spirits at the interior level. ⁴ Consequently anyone whose interior faculties are opened by the Lord can talk with them, exactly as a man can with another man. ⁵ I have been permitted to do this daily for the last twelve years.

Poznámky pod čarou:

7802. It is common on that planet for spirits to talk to inhabitants and instruct them, and also to chastise them if they have been behaving badly. Since this is a subject about which their angels have told me many things I would like to mention them in order. The reason why spirits there talk to people is that they concentrate much of their thought on heaven and life after death, and in comparison with this give little thought to life in the world. They know that they will be alive after death, living in a state of happiness that depends on the condition into which their internal man was brought in the world. Talking to spirits and angels was also common on our planet in ancient times, and for the same reason, that their thought was concentrated on heaven and little on the world. But in course of time that live contact with heaven was cut off, as people ceased to be internal and became external, that is, as man began to concentrate his thought on the world and little on heaven, and especially when he ceased to believe any longer in the existence of heaven or hell, or in the presence within himself of a person and spirit that lives after death. For the belief at the present day is that the body lives independently, not that it receives life from its spirit. Therefore unless people today were allowed to believe that they will rise again in their bodies they would have no belief at all in resurrection.

3513. 'And I will eat' means in that way making it its own. This is clear from the meaning of 'eating' as being made one's own, dealt with in 2187, 2343, 3168, 3503. It is made its own when, by means of forms of pleasantness and delight, truths, that is, cognitions of good and truth, are instilled into the natural; and when these truths are allied to the good in the natural, communication is effected with the truth and good of the rational and so with the rational itself. It is this communication that the expression 'being made one's own' is used to describe, for those truths belong to the rational within the natural. Indeed truths in the rational are related to those in the natural in the way that individual parts are related to their general wholes. It is well known that a general whole is the product of its individual parts and that without the individual parts no general whole can be produced. It is the general whole produced from the individual parts belonging to the rational that is manifested in the natural. And being a general whole it takes a different form, doing so according to the order of the individual constituent parts, and so according to the form that results. If it is the more specific and the consequent individual parts of celestial good and spiritual truth that give form to the general whole within the natural, then it is a celestial and spiritual form that is presented, and something of heaven is represented as a kind of image in the specific parts constituting the general whole. But if the more specific and the individual parts which give form to the general whole within the natural do not consist of good and truth but of evil and falsity, something of hell is in that case represented as a kind of image in the specific parts constituting the general whole.

[2] Such are the things meant by eating and drinking in the Holy Supper, where again eating and drinking mean making one's own; that is to say, 'eating' means making good one's own and 'drinking' making truth one's own. If good, that is to say, love to the Lord and charity towards the neighbour, gives form to the internal or rational man, and by way of this rational man gives form to a corresponding external or natural man, the person becomes in particular and in general an image of heaven, and therefore an image of the Lord. But if contempt for the Lord and for the good and truth of faith, and hatred towards the neighbour give form to the rational man, the person becomes in particular and in general an image of hell - the more so if at the same time he eats and drinks in a holy manner, for profanation then results. Consequently people who eat and drink worthily make eternal life their own, whereas those who do so unworthily make [eternal] death their own.