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.

Примітки:

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.

66. There are in general four differing styles in the Word. The FIRST is that of the Most Ancient Church. In their mode of expression, when they mentioned earthly and worldly things their thought was of the spiritual and celestial things which these represented. For this reason they not only expressed themselves by means of representatives but also, to bring them to life, they arranged them in quasi-historical sequence, and this gave them extremely great delight. This style was meant when Hannah prophesied and said,

Speak that which is high, that which is high; let that which is ancient come from your mouth. 1 Samuel 2:3.

In David those representatives are called,

Dark sayings from antiquity. Psalms 78:2-4.

From the descendants of the Most Ancient Church Moses came into possession of these stories concerning Creation, concerning the Garden of Eden, and of the event, down to the time of Abram.

[2] The SECOND is the historical style, which appears in the books of Moses to describe the time of Abram onwards, and in the books of Joshua, the Judges, Samuel, and the Kings. In these books the facts of history are exactly as set out in the sense of the letter, yet every single one contains something entirely different in the internal sense, which in the Lord's Divine mercy will be dealt with in proper order later on. The THIRD is the prophetical style, the offspring of the style of the Most Ancient Church, a style which they revered. However it is not continuous, nor does it take quasi-historical form as the most ancient style did. Instead it is diffuse and scarcely ever intelligible except in the internal sense where very deep arcana reside, linked together and following in perfect order. These arcana focus on the external man and the internal, the many states of the Church, heaven itself, and inmostly on the Lord. The FOURTH style is that of the Psalms of David, which varies between the prophetical style and ordinary speech. There in the personage of David asking the internal sense deals with the Lord.