r funeral services and
obsequies were then being held in preparation for their interment; to
which they replied that it was well to cast aside that which had
served them as a body and for bodily functions in the world; and they
wished me to say that they were not dead, but were living as men the
same as before, and had merely migrated from one world into the
other, and were not aware of having lost anything, since they had a
body and its senses just as before, also understanding and will just
as before, with thoughts and affections, sensations and desires, like
those they had in the world. [5] Most of those who had recently died,
when they saw themselves to be living men as before, and in a like
state (for after death everyone's state of life is at first such as
it was in the world, but there is a gradual change in it either into
heaven or into hell), were moved by new joy at being alive, saying
that they had not believed that it would be so. But they greatly
wondered that they should have lived in such ignorance and blindness
about the state of their life after death; and especially that the
man of the church should be in such ignorance and blindness, when
above all others in the whole world he might be clearly enlightened
in regard to these things.{1} Then they began to see the cause of
that blindness and ignorance, which is, that external things which
are things, relating to the world and the body, had so occupied and
filled their minds that they could not be raised into the light of
heaven and look into the things of the church beyond its doctrinals;
for when matters relating to the body and the world are loved, as
they are at the present day, nothing but darkness flows into the mind
when men go beyond those doctrines.

{Footnote 1} There are few in Christendom at this day who
believe that man rises again immediately after death (preface
to Genesis, chap. 16 and n. 4622, 10758); but it is believed
that he will rise again at the time of the final judgment, when
the visible world will perish (n. 10595). The reason of this
belief (n. 10595, 10758). Nevertheless man does rise again
immediately after death, and then he is a man in all respects,
and in every least respect (n. 4527, 5006, 5078, 8939, 8991,
10594, 10758). The soul that lives after death is the spirit of
man, which in man is the man himself, and in the other life is
in a complete human form (n. 322, 1880, 1881, 3633, 4622, 4735,
588