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.

3645. The whole of the Lord's kingdom is a kingdom of ends and purposes, so that not even the least thing occurs there which does not have a purpose to achieve some end in view. I have been allowed to perceive clearly this Divine sphere of ends and purposes, some of which are beyond description. Every single thing flows from that sphere, and is governed by means of it. Insofar as his affections, thoughts, and actions have within them the end in view of doing good from the heart, man, spirit, or angel dwells in the Grand Man, that is, in heaven. But insofar as man's or spirit's end in view is to do evil from the heart, he dwells outside the Grand Man, that is, in hell.