493. Our first state after death is like our state in this world, since we are then similarly involved in outward concerns. We have similar faces, voices, and character; we lead similar moral and civil lives. This is why it still seems to us as though we were in this world unless we notice things that are out of the ordinary and remember that angels told us we were spirits when we were awakened (450). So the one life carries on into the other, and death is only a passage.
Divine Love and Wisdom #179
179. There are degrees of love and wisdom, and therefore degrees of heat and light, and so, too, degrees of atmospheres. Unless one is aware of the existence of degrees, and of what they are and their nature, the following observations cannot be comprehended, since there are degrees in every created thing, thus in every form. Therefore in this third part of Divine Love and Wisdom we must take up degrees.
That there are degrees of love and wisdom can be plainly seen from the love and wisdom of the angels of the three heavens. Angels of the third heaven excel angels of the second heaven in their love and wisdom, and these in turn excel angels of the lowest heaven, and this to such an extent that they cannot dwell together. The degrees of their love and wisdom distinguish them and separate them.
So it is that angels of the lower heavens cannot ascend to angels of the higher heavens, and if it is granted them to ascend, they do not then see those higher angels, nor anything of their surroundings. The reason they do not see them is that the love and wisdom of those higher angels is in a higher degree, which transcends their perception. For every angel is an embodiment of his love and wisdom, and love together with wisdom is in its form the human being, because God, who is love itself and wisdom itself, is a human God.
[2] I have been granted several times to see angels of the lowest heaven ascend to angels of the third heaven, and when they had worked their way up there, I heard them complain that they did not see anyone, even though they were surrounded by those higher angels. They were afterward then informed that the higher angels were invisible to them because they were incapable of perceiving those angels' love and wisdom, and that it is an angel's love and wisdom that cause him to be seen as a person.
