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.

Footnotes:

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.

9968. On my arrival there the actual planet did not appear, only spirits from that planet; for as I have noted several times previously, the spirits of each planet appear around their own planet. One reason for this is that being of differing character or disposition spirits differ as to their state of life (difference of state in the next life sets people apart, while likeness of state draws them together); and another more important reason is that they may be present with the inhabitants of their planet who are like themselves in character or disposition. For no person can live without spirits, and everyone has like spirits linked to him, see 5846-5866, 5976-5993. Those spirits appeared in a position very high above head-level, from where they had a clear view of me coming.

[2] It should be remembered that those positioned high up can have a clear view of those who are below, and that the higher they are, the wider their view is; and not only do they have a clear view of them, they can also speak to them. They observed from where they were that I was not from their planet but from somewhere else far away. Consequently they addressed me from up there, asking about various matters to which I was also allowed to reply. Among other things I told them what planet I was from and what it was like. After that I spoke about the planets in our solar system, and at the same time also about the spirits of the planet Mercury, who are allowed to wander around to very many planets, gathering items of knowledge about different things, as is their delight, see 6808-6817, 6921-6932, 7069-7079. On hearing this they said that they too had seen them among themselves.