457. When we first enter the world of spirits (which happens shortly after the reawakening just described), our spirit has a similar face and tone of voice as it did in the world. This is because at that point we are in the state of our external concerns, with our deeper concerns not yet uncovered. This is our initial state after decease. Later, though, our face changes and becomes quite different. It comes to look like the ruling affection in which the deeper reaches of our minds were engaged in the world, the kind of affection characteristic of the spirit within our body, because the face of our spirit is very different from the face of our body. We get our physical face from our parents and our spiritual face from our affection, which it images. Our spirit takes on this face after our physical life is over, when the outer coverings have been removed. This is our third state.

I have seen some newcomers from the world and have recognized them by their faces and voices; but when I saw them later, I did not recognize them. People who were engaged in good affections had lovely faces, while people who were engaged in evil affections had ugly ones. Seen in its own right, our spirit is nothing but our affections, whose outward form is our face.

The reason our faces change is that in the other life no one is allowed to pretend to affections they do not really have, so we cannot put on a face that is contrary to the love we are engaged in. We are all refined down to a state in which we say what we think and manifest in expression and act what we intend. This is why our faces all become forms and images of our affections; and this is why all the people who have known each other in the world still recognize each other in the world of spirits, but not in heaven or hell, as already noted (427). ¹

Footnotes:

4791. CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE GRAND MAN - continued

IN THIS SECTION THE CORRESPONDENCE OF TASTE AND OF THE TONGUE, AND ALSO OF THE FACE, WITH THAT GRAND MAN

The tongue provides an entrance leading into both the lungs and the stomach, and so represents a kind of forecourt leading to spiritual things and to celestial ones, to spiritual because it serves the lungs and thereby speech, to celestial because it serves the stomach which supplies nourishment to the blood and the heart. For the lungs correspond to spiritual realities, the heart to celestial ones, see 3635, 3883-3896. All this being so, the tongue corresponds in general to the affection for truth, that is, to those in the Grand Man whose affection is for truth, and after that whose affection is for good which is a product of that truth. People therefore who love the Word of the Lord and wish to gain from it a knowledge of what is good and true belong to that province. Yet they differ from one another, in that some belong to the actual tongue, some to the larynx and trachea, some to the throat, some also to the gums, while others belong to the lips. For not even the smallest part of the human being fails to have a correspondence.

[2] I have been allowed on many occasions to learn by experience that those governed by an affection for truth belong to that province understood in the broad sense. On one occasion they plainly entered my tongue, on another my lips; and I have been allowed to talk to them. I have also noticed that some correspond to the more internal parts of the tongue and lips, others to their more external parts. There are some who have an affection for and receive only exterior truths, not interior ones, though they do not reject them. The operation of these I have felt in the exterior but not the interior parts of my tongue.