6. Since we are life-receivers, not life, it follows that our conception from our parents is not the conception of life but simply the conception of the first and purest forms that can accept life. These forms serve as a nucleus or beginning in the womb, to which are added, step by step, material substances in forms suited, in their various patterns and levels, to the reception of life.
Arcana Coelestia #168
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:
