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.

231. The existence of these three degrees in people can be seen from the elevation of a person's mind even to the degrees of love and wisdom possessed by angels of the second and third heavens. For all angels were born people, and a person is, in respect to the interior elements which are those of his mind, a heaven in miniature form. Consequently there are from creation as many degrees of height in a person as there are heavens. The human being is furthermore an image and likeness of God, and these three degrees are therefore engraved on a person because they exist in the human God, which is to say, in the Lord.

As for these degrees being in the Lord infinite and uncreated and in people finite and created, this can be seen from points we demonstrated in Part One, as from the following, that the Lord is love and wisdom in Himself, whereas people are recipients of love and wisdom from the Lord; and that nothing can be predicated of the Lord except what is infinite, and nothing of people except what is finite.