443. Several Examples from Spirits of Opinions They Adopted during Their Physical Lives Concerning the Soul or Spirit

IN the other life it is easy to tell what opinions others held during bodily life concerning the soul, the spirit, and life after death. When people are kept in a state like the one they had in the body, they think the same way they did then, and their thinking is communicated as clearly as if they were talking out loud.

In the case of one spirit ¹ who had departed this world not long before, I perceived — and he admitted — that although he believed he would live on as a spirit, he expected to live a vague kind of life. His thinking, since he located life in the body, was that if physical life were withdrawn, only a vague something-or-other would remain. So his picture of the spirit was like that of a ghost. The observation that brute animals too had life, almost as people do, had confirmed him in his opinion. But now he was amazed to see that spirits and angels live in the greatest possible light and in the greatest possible intelligence, wisdom, and happiness, with such keen perception that it can hardly be described. Far from living a dim kind of life, he discovered, they live a clear and intensely vivid life.

Footnotes:

1619. The Light in Which Angels Live (Continued); Their Magnificent Gardens and Their Dwellings

WHEN we gain access to inward sight (the sight of our spirit), we see the objects of the other world, which could never be presented to the sight of our physical eyes. This is exactly what the visions of the prophets were.

In heaven, as noted [§1532], there are constant symbolic representations of the Lord and his kingdom. In fact every single thing the angels see represents and symbolizes something. This is the source of representation and symbolism in the Word, because the Word comes by way of heaven from the Lord.