7475. SPIRITS AND INHABITANTS OF THE PLANET MARS - continued

When spirits belonging to Mars look at themselves they see themselves as the kind of people they were in the world. That is also how others see them, for in the next life everyone is seen by others as he sees himself, because what he perceives is communicated to others. When I was astounded by this they said that they could not be seen in any other way, because when they had lived in the world they had known that they were spirits clothed with the body and because at that time they had given little thought to their body, concentrating instead on the life of their spirit within the body. Consequently when they enter the next life they are hardly aware that their state of life has altered, and since at this time also their thought is about the life of the spirit, as it had been in the world, they see themselves as they had seen themselves then. All spirits, it is true, are enveloped in a human form, yet not in one so well-defined as those of Martian spirits since the latter retain the kind of ideas they had in the world. Furthermore in the case of people who know and believe, when they are in the world, that in the next life they will live within a human form, that thought grows all the stronger as the body loses its strength. Therefore when they cast aside the body which has been their servant for a useful life in the world they remain the same, as a result of that idea imprinted on them, as they were in the world.