6088. About food in the spiritual world

They eat and drink there just as in the natural world, but all the food there is from a spiritual origin, so it is not prepared but simply given daily. When it is lunchtime and also dinnertime, a table with food appears for the time, and disappears when lunch or dinner has been eaten.

[2] All spirits, however many, are fed in keeping with their positions: the governors sumptuously, with table settings that are indescribable as regards their high quality, the rest less richly, in keeping with their status.

[3] N.B. Everyone is given food depending on to the work they do. Those who do not have some governmental office, business or trade get no food but beg. I have seen men of high standing begging for this reason, because they have not wanted to do any work, and even distinguished women.

؉ have seen high-standing individuals who had lived magnificently in the world given only milk and bread, and when they complained that they were not given more, it was said that they had done no work, and no food is given to those who are slothful and idly passing time. As a result they were reduced to performing some menial task so they could eat. Besides this they go to such as actually work, and as a favor get to eat with them, but this does not last long. They can buy bread in their own places, but no other foodstuffs. The reason is that certain ones want to be paid for the work they do, and because they work under these conditions, they can be paid money for buying bread, but the purchase [of other foodstuffs] is not possible except for those who are good In such positions bread comes gratis. Besides other like things.

[4] In the hells all are driven to performing useful services, and those who do not work receive no food, or clothing, or bed, so they are driven to laborious tasks. The reason is because idleness is the root of all wickedness, for in idleness the mind spreads out to various evil acts and false thoughts, but is restricted to one while on a task.

[5] Food cannot be kept to the next day: worms breed as in the manna [Ex. 16:20]. This is meant in the Lord's prayer: "Give us our daily bread" [Matt. 6:11]; and also as regards the paschal lamb that nothing was to be stored for the next day [Deut. 16:4],and that as regards the sacrifices [nothing was to be kept beyond the third day (Lev. 7:16; 19:6)].

[6] Because food is from a spiritual origin, and consequently in itself spiritual, and because spirits and angels are human beings and fitted with a spiritual body, therefore such spiritual food serves them. Therefore the spiritual person is nourished spiritually and the material person naturally. As all things that appear in the spiritual world correspond to affections and so to the thoughts of the understanding, from these they have houses, palaces, clothing, fields, gardens, pleasure gardens, which are also all from a spiritual origin. And because good affection together with the understanding's thought of truth cannot exist in idleness, but is dissipated, therefore food is not given otherwise than according to correspondences; and besides this, the works of those who are in hell have correspondences with the heavens, but not with infernal spirits themselves, just as happened with the Israelite and Judaic nation. Although it was evil, their representative worship nevertheless still corresponded [to heavenly things]. What their correspondences were may be seen in the doctrine of the new Jerusalem, number [Heavenly Doctrine of the New Jerusalem 248].

[7] Their food was seen very clearly to be similar to food in our world, to foods of every kind, even accompanied by various delicacies. There are also table decorations that cannot be described in natural language.