1273. POSITION IN THE GRAND MAN, ALSO PLACE AND DISTANCE IN THE NEXT LIFE

When the time has come to allow souls recently arrived from the world to leave the company of spiritual angels in order to enter that of spirits and at length to enter the community which they were in during their lifetime, they are carried by angels around to many dwelling-places, which are separate communities yet joined to others. At each place they are taken in and then move on to other communities. This continues for some time until they reach the community which they were in during their lifetime; and there they stay. This marks a new beginning to their life. If someone is an impostor, a hypocrite, or deceitful - one who is able to assume a deceptive state and a seemingly angelic disposition - he is sometimes received by good spirits. But in a little while the association is broken, and then he wanders around unaccompanied by the angels, and begs to be received. He is however rejected, and sometimes punished, till at length he comes down to be among those in hell. Those who, after they have been vastated, are borne away to be among angels - they too pass from one community to another. And when they move on from one to another, those whom they are leaving allow them to go with civility and charity; and this continues until they reach the angelic community that accords with their own kind of charity, true piety, honesty, or genuine civility. So that I might know about all this I too have been conducted in a similar way through those dwelling-places, and those who are there have talked to me. I was at that time allowed to reflect on changes of place, that they were merely apparent, and that they were nothing else than changes of state, with the body remaining where it was.