168. MAN'S AWAKENING FROM THE DEAD, AND HIS ENTRY INTO ETERNAL LIFE

Since I am being allowed, as mentioned already, ¹ to make known step by step how someone passes from the life of the body into that of eternity, and so that it might be known how a person is awakened, I have been shown not by hearing but by actual experience.

Footnotes:

330. Since the final end in creation is an angelic heaven from the human race, and so also the human race, therefore its intermediate ends are all other phenomena that have been created. And because these have relation to mankind, they have regard to these three constituents of a person, namely, his body, his rational faculty, and his spiritual character, for the sake of his conjunction with the Lord. For a person cannot be conjoined with the Lord unless he is spiritual, and he cannot be spiritual without being rational, and he cannot be rational without having a body in sound condition. These three are like a house. The body is like the foundation. The person's rational faculty is like the superstructure of the house. His spiritual character is like the furnishings in the house. And conjunction with the Lord is like his inhabiting of it.

Apparent from this is the order, degree and respect in which forms of use, the intermediate ends of creation, have relation to mankind, namely, that they are for sustaining a person's body, for perfecting his rational faculty, and for his receiving a spiritual character from the Lord.