e-coloured; and lastly, to those who
were black, some of whom were naked and some clothed; but the latter
and the former dwelt in a different part of the same earth; for a
spirit may be led in an instant to places far asunder on an earth,
since he does not proceed and advance like man through spaces, but
through changes of state (see above, nos. 125, 127)[ss].

165. I lastly conversed with the spirits of that earth concerning
the belief of the inhabitants of our Earth on the subject of the
resurrection, in that they cannot conceive that men come into the
other life immediately after death, and then appear as men as to the
face, the body, the arms, the feet, and all the external and internal
senses; still less that they are then clothed in garments, and have
mansions and dwelling-places; and that the sole reason of this is that
most persons here think from the sensuals which belong to the body,
and therefore believe in the existence of nothing but what they see
and touch; and that few of them can be withdrawn from external sensual
things to interior things, and thus be elevated into the light of
heaven, in which such things are perceived. Hence it is, that they can
have no idea of their soul or spirit as of a man, but as of wind, or
air, or a breath without form, in which there is yet something vital.
This is the reason why they do not believe they shall rise again till
the end of the world, which they call the Last Judgment, when the
body, though mouldered into dust, and scattered by every wind, will be
brought together again and conjoined to its soul or spirit. I added,
that it is permitted them to believe this, since those who, as was
said, think from external sensual things, can conceive no otherwise
than that the soul or spirit cannot live as a man in a human form,
unless it receive again that body which it carried about in the world;
wherefore, unless it were asserted that the body will rise again, they
would reject from their heart as incomprehensible the doctrine of
the resurrection and of eternal life. But nevertheless this thought
concerning the resurrection has this advantage with it, that it leads
them to believe in a life after death, a consequence of which belief
is, that when they lie on a sick bed, and do not, as theretofore,
think from worldly and corporeal things, thus not from sensual
things, they then believe that they shall live immediately after their
decease; they then also speak of heaven, and of