Drawn entirely from the writings of the revelatory theologian Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) and people’s near-death experiences. If you don’t believe in the afterlife, perhaps you’ll appreciate this as what a wonderful thing human imagination can be. — All my best, Mike
Hundreds of thousands of people die each day. More than 100 million people die each year. Every person who has ever lived on Earth, immediately after his or her physical death, has gone into the afterlife, and people are constantly going into the afterlife today.
When our earthly body is no longer able to perform its functions in the natural world, the breathing of our lungs and the beating of our heart cease. Once the activity of our earthly body stops, the bond between it and our spirit is severed. Our physical body dies, grows cold, and begins to decay.
What happens as we arrive in the afterlife? Our spirit is awakened as it is drawn into the spiritual world. We become aware that we are being pulled out of our physical body. We may find ourselves floating above our physical body and we may hear what people around our body on Earth are saying.
What often happens next is that the new spirit feels a vibration, hears a rushing sound, or experiences a sense of traveling — swimming, floating, or zooming effortlessly — through what seems like a tunnel, a gate, or a glistening block. Free of all physical discomfort, the new spirit feels profoundly comfortable and peaceful.
We become aware of light ahead of us, which begins to fill our new visual field and becomes more brilliant. This light is primarily white and yellow or golden with other lovely colors – fantastic and beautiful and indescribable. And yet, as bright as it is, this light does not hurt our “eyes”.
We have arrived in the Interspace, which is much like a valley between the mountains of Heaven above and the caverns and caves of the Hells below.
In this realm, there is beauty all around us. There are windings and elevations here and there, and we see mountains, hills, plains, valleys, springs, rivers, parks, gardens, groves, forests, flowers, cities with houses, precious stones, books and other writings, and a wide variety of other places and things.
Throughout the afterlife, many ideas and qualities appear as objects of sight. For example, a rock signifies faith in the Divine. A precious stone signifies Divine Truth in which Divine Goodness is transparent. A garden, grove, or park signifies intelligence. Trees signify perception and knowledge. And flowers and herbs signify knowledge and truths that have been learned.
And so we begin to move around in the Interspace — the intermediate place and state between Heaven and Hell. From here — quite quickly, or after a few weeks, or after several years, or even after as long as 30 earthly years — each of us will move up into Heaven or down into the Hells.
How long we spend in the Interspace before passing onto Heaven or Hell will depend on how much our exterior self is in agreement with our interior self.
We are still a living being. As we pass from this world to the next, we carry with us everything that truly belongs to us. We lose nothing that is truly our own except our earthly body.
Our spirit is our will and mind with our substantial body. It is our spirit that thinks and wills, and it is our thoughts and our motives that constitute us.
Let’s consider our spiritual body. We have left behind our physical body. But we still have a body. Our body is now entirely spiritual. Our body is substantial rather than material. Our spiritual body is a subtle yet substantial organism in the same form as our physical body.
To eternity we will have a form and substance – a real, definite, tangible, and durable substance. Our spiritual body “houses” our spiritual will and our spiritual mind.
We can feel our spiritual heart beating in our spiritual chest. We can still walk, run, sit, lie down, sleep, and awaken. And spirits wear clothing in the spiritual world, and they take their clothes off and put them on much as we do on Earth.
At the level of our body, we will all function to eternity much as we function on Earth. However, if we suffer from any physical impairment, disability, illness, or infirmity here on Earth – including any brain impairment – our spiritual body will be free of it to eternity.
Next, let’s think of our spiritual senses. Our spirit sees and hears. Our spirit enjoys every sense, both inner and outer, that we enjoyed in the world. We see as before, we hear and speak as before, we smell and taste as before, and when touched we feel the touch as before.
And yet there is a great difference between our earthly senses and our spiritual senses. Our earthly senses are more like evening shade and our spiritual senses are more like noonday sunlight.
Let’s consider now our spiritual memory. Spirits have a memory. We carry with us in our internal or spiritual memory every least thing that we have willed, thought, spoken, written, done, heard, seen, read, or learned while we have been in the world — from our time in the womb to the end of our life.
Things in general and the most minute particulars that have entered our spiritual memory are inscribed there, and remain, and are never obliterated nor erased. And so it is common for a newly arriving spirit to re-experience the events and decisions of his or her life, without any pretense or hypocrisy.
What about our gender? In the afterlife, a man is a man and a woman is a woman. For the remainder of eternity, a male lives as a male and a female lives as a female. If a person has a condition during his or her Earthly life that has altered this, this condition will be lifted while he or she is a spirit in the Interspace, and it will be lifted for the remainder of eternity.
What about loved ones? While we are in the Interspace, we will be greeted by the spirits of the people who loved us the most during our life here on Earth. While in the Interspace, family members, friends, and others who knew each other from Earthly life meet and converse whenever they both desire.
Usually there is initial joy and rejoicing in these reunions. Wife and husband, sister and brother, and friend and friend spend time together. But if they did not share great delight in each other (or true love) in the world, or if they are of diverse dispositions or of diverse spiritual purposes, or if they simply do not share a conjoining of wills and minds in Heavenly love, after a while they separate.
Family and friends often take newly arrived spirits around to various places and various societies, primarily showing them cities, gardens, parks, and other magnificent things that delight their external senses and minds. And their relatives and friends tell them more about the conditions of eternal life.
Now let’s turn our attention to our interaction with angels. Angels greet us and welcome us. Each angel is filled with love — a warm and all-powerful love — and with wisdom. And angels radiate this love and wisdom to us. Angels are extremely careful that love surrounds each newly arriving spirit.
Angels begin introducing our spirit to the spiritual world. Angels render each new spirit every possible service, communicate to us with purpose, and teach us about the things of the other life so far as each of us can comprehend them.
Our first state in the next life is the state of our exterior soul. Every person’s soul has an exterior and an interior. Our first state after death is the state of our exteriors.
Our exteriors resemble our state in the world. Through our exteriors, we adapt our body in the world — especially our face, speech, and movement — to interact with other people. And as we begin the next life, our face, speech, tone of voice, disposition, and moral and civil life resemble those that we had in the world.
But for the remainder of eternity, we will not live in our exteriors. We will live in our interiors. Our interiors are from our motives and our affections — from our loves — especially from our leading love.
Some people while on Earth are highly regenerated, reformed, and instructed, and are well-prepared for Heaven. And so as new spirits, they simply cast off natural impurities of their body, and cast off the grosser things of their thoughts and affections which they contracted from worldly honors and riches. They are purified — some immediately after death and some after a short stay with good spirits — and are taken up by the angels into Heaven. There are few such spirits.
Some people while on Earth have deliberately deceived others into thinking that they were good people — by maintaining outward appearances of goodness — while being inwardly wicked. These at once cast themselves down into Hell — and the most deceitful dive into Hell. There are also few of these spirits.
The vast majority of spirits stay in the Interspace and take days or months or even a full year to complete their first state after death.
In the first state, both evil spirits and good spirits speak truths and do good acts. But steadily, each spirit’s exteriors are laid aside and laid asleep and can no longer cover and conceal his or her interiors. And our interiors are steadily disclosed and come to the fore.
Our second state in the next life is the state of our interior soul. Each of us has a spiritual mind and a spiritual will. Our mind and our will together make us, spiritually and essentially.
Our soul’s will receives and is formed by good, by evil, or by both. Our will includes our affections, motives, and loves, and all the delights and pleasure that spring from our affections, motives, and loves. Our will includes what we love, long for, desire, crave, and are stirred by.
Our soul’s mind receives and is formed by truths, by falsehoods, or by both. Our mind proceeds from our will like light proceeds from a flame. Thought is will’s form.
No one in the spiritual world can resist his or her drives, inmost desires, affections, intentions, motives, and loves, because these are the will – and the nature – from which each of us communicates and acts.
In our second state after death, our exteriors are made a subservient plane for our interiors, and we enter our interiors — our will and our mind. Our social mask while on Earth is peeled away, and the thoughts of our will go forth naked.
Without exception, everyone is let into his or her spirit’s true state. We become our will and our mind — we become our love and our thought — for the remainder of eternity.
To the extent that we think from truths, will good, and do good, we have Heaven in us.
To the extent that we think from falsehoods, will evil, and do evil, we have Hell in us.
On Earth, most of us are in an intermediate state. We have some knowledge of truths, and we give some thought to them, and we sometimes act in accord with these truths and sometimes act contrary to them. We understand some truths — we reason about them, and we store them as knowledge in our memory — but we do not will them and do them, and so the truths are not truly ours.
In the afterlife, everyone’s exteriors and interiors must make one. No one is permitted to be one thing outwardly and another thing inwardly. No one is permitted to think and will in one way and to speak and act in another.
What we will most is our leading love. To change that love after we die would be to extinguish our spirit and to end our life. Our soul is constituted of the loves in our will – and what we think, communicate, and do from the loves in our will.
It is what we most will — our leading love — that awaits us after death. After death each of us becomes our will, our leading love, forever.
In the second state in the next life, every spirit rejects loves that are not in accord with his or her leading love. Each of us unconsciously glides into what we truly and freely are, without restraint. We become our interiors. And our leading love is not changed for the remainder of eternity, because everyone is his or her love, and to take away one’s love would be to extinguish one’s life.
The quality of our will and mind affects the appearance of our spiritual body. Every spirit becomes his or her own loves, reflected in his or her mind, face, body, and speech. Everyone becomes an image of his or her own loves.
Our looks and gestures manifest the inclinations of our will. Our spirit is seen as nothing but our love, and our face is our love’s most fully expressed outward form. The face of our spirit is from our affections and is an image of our affections. Our face comes to reflect our leading love. Our face changes from conforming with our exteriors to conforming with our interiors.
In the Interspace, ways are seen, some leading to Heaven, some to Hell, and each to some particular society. Each spirit is gradually connected with those interiorly like himself or herself, with whom each spirit is to live to eternity.
What is the second state of evil spirits? The Divine Being never turns His Face away from any individual. The Lord is never angry with any individual nor does He ever punish or do evil to any individual. And the Lord never casts any individual into Hell.
The angels with a newly arrived spirit never withdraw from him or her. Angels love everyone and desire to render service, to teach, and to lead each spirit into Heaven. This is their highest delight, their inmost joy.
Spirits who did not abstain from evils as sins while in the world have a distaste for truths. These evil spirits back away from the angels who try to teach them.
Spirits who had an evil interior will while in the world continue to have one in the afterlife. Spirits with an evil will resist the influx of goodness from the Lord and the angels. If the spirit lived a life in the world that prevents enjoying the company of the good, in the afterlife the spirit desires to get away from the good.
There are also some spirits with a good will who adamantly confirmed and reinforced falsehoods not just in their minds but in their wills. These spirits will not accept truths and will not be taught by the angels.
And so evil spirits turn their faces away from the good. They turn their whole beings away, step by step, from the Lord and the angels. Spirits who have more selfish and worldly loves than Heavenly and spiritual loves are drawn to Hell by their own evil as if by a rope.
Spirits who were interiorly evil while in the world begin in the next life to act foolishly, stupidly, and insanely. Because they are under no restraint as they were in the world, what they wished secretly to do while in the world they now do openly. Their evil drives burst out into all sorts of abominations, contempt of others, ridicule, hatred, revenge, plots of intrigue, cunning, malice, and blasphemy.
The heat of Hell is the love of raging against others who do not favor them. The delights of that love are contempt of others, enmity, hatred, and revenge.
Evil love can also involve loving what is good, honest, and just not for its own sake but for the sake of self – to acquire reputation, honor, and gain. These people and spirits do not do what is good, honest, and just as they look to the Lord and to neighbors but as they look to the self and the world. They only commit good acts from evil, dishonest, and unjust motives.
Those spirits who are in such evil loves appear gross, dusky, black, and misshapen. Their interiors appear black because they are closed up, and their exteriors appear of a dirty color, disagreeable to the sight. The interiors of some spirits who were interiorly in malignant deceit appear like a dusky fire.
The faces of hypocrites are changed more slowly than those of others, because they had managed their interiors while imitating good affections. But what they had assumed is gradually put off, and the interiors of their mind are brought into accord with the form of their affections. And as this happens, the hypocrites become more misshapen than others.
Each evil spirit gradually turns toward his or her infernal society. And when this second state is completed, each evil spirit casts himself or herself into Hell, until he or she comes to the society where those whose drives, minds, and wills are most like his or her own. And here in his or her society in Hell the evil spirit resides for the remainder of eternity.
So what is the nature of the life that leads to Heaven?
Who goes to Heaven? People who have a good interior will, who are interiorly good, who let their will be formed from goodness and let their mind be formed from truth. People who love truth and goodness — for their own sake — so much that they delight in doing what is true and good.
Such people’s interiors of thought and affection are in Heavenly love. And so these people act from Heavenly love, and live a Heavenly life: a life of good uses from good motives. They love what is good for its own sake and implant it in their lives.
Many good people might have committed evils in the world but not purposely in opposition to Truth or from any other bad motive but only from a blind external delight.
Many good people struggled for wealth, vied for eminence, relished various pleasures, and even gave into their compulsions from time to time. But they were not willfully evil. They did not become evil people.
People can lead a Heavenly life without even being aware of the reality or presence of Heaven. People can lead a Heavenly life without even being aware of the reality or Presence of the Divine Being.
People can shun evils without even realizing that they are evils, without realizing the reality and presence of Hell. People can love their neighbors without knowing that the Lord is the source of this love. People can love, receive, apply, and live their lives from the Lord’s Divine Goodness and Truth without realizing the source of this goodness and truth.
While we are on Earth, it is better, of course, to love above all things the Divine as we understand the Divine. It is even better to love above all things the Divine Being.
Fortunately, almost all interiorly good people, when they become spirits, do accept, acknowledge, approach, and worship the one true Divine Being. Nearly all good people (unless they have confirmed falsehoods in their wills), when they become spirits do allow themselves to be instructed by the angels and accept the essential beliefs of Heaven.
What is the second state of good spirits? In the second state in the afterlife, whatever is not in harmony with a good spirit’s leading love is taken away, and each good spirit is let into his or her leading love.
Good spirits continue to have an interiorly good will in the afterlife, and they commit no evils there. Being in Heavenly love, good spirits perceive truths and they act rationally and wisely.
Good spirits begin to think from the truth of Heaven and interior wisdom, and to act from the goodness of Heaven and interior love. The truth and goodness of Heaven flow into their thoughts and affections with interior blessedness and delight. They acknowledge and worship the Lord from freedom, and they enter into an internal sanctity.
The more interiorly and deeply good spirits enter into the light of Heaven, the more clearly they see all things, and the more beautifully all good and true things appear to them.
Spirits who are in Heavenly loves appear fresh, bright, fair, and handsome or beautiful. Their interiors appear like light, and some like a flamed light, while their exteriors appear in various handsome or beautiful colors.
Good spirits appear with beautiful or handsome faces. The more interiorly we loved Divine truths and lived according to them while in the world, the more beautiful or handsome our spiritual body appears in the next life. The more interior our love is, the more like Heaven our love is, the more beautiful or more handsome our spiritual face is.
And good spirits turn toward Heaven and are gradually led toward their Heavenly society.
The third state of good spirits is preparation for Heaven. In the third state in the afterlife, which is only entered into by good spirits, good spirits are prepared for Heaven. These spirits are called angelic spirits.
Some of this preparation is by instruction. To be in Heaven, one must acknowledge the Divine, love the truth, and act from goodness out of love for goodness.
If a spirit does not yet know that there is one true Divine Being Who ought to be loved supremely, that neighbors ought to be loved as oneself, that Divine Truth ought to be believed, and that there is life after death and a Heaven and a Hell, then the angels must teach the spirit these things before he or she can enter Heaven.
In addition to instruction, there is, for many spirits, vastation: the removal of falsehoods. Those who led good lives and have good wills but who have confirmed falsehoods in their wills must endure vastations.
Elevation into Heaven is impossible until falsehoods have been removed, because they obstruct Heavenly things and are not in harmony with them. When falsehoods are confirmed in a person’s will, they inhere with force. Not until these falsehoods have been dispersed can Divine truths be accepted.
After falsehoods are vastated by various means, good spirits reach a state of enlightenment and joy, are raised up into Heaven, and are received there.
However, a spirit never enters Heaven by knowledge alone but by a love for the Divine Being and love for neighbors, and thus a love for being useful and a love for a life of uses. A spirit becomes his or her use, because his or her love and wisdom are in this use, and this use is his or her life. And so each good spirit is initiated by instruction into a Heavenly society where all angels share this use as their life.
The gates and doors of the Heavenly societies are visible only to those who are prepared for Heaven. Others cannot find them. There is one entrance from the Interspace to each Heavenly society, opening through a single path which branches out in its ascent into many paths.
And so, after instruction, good spirits are clothed with angelic garments that are as if made of linen. These garments are mostly glowing white. Each good spirit is brought to the way that leads upwards toward Heaven. And each good spirit is then taken up into Heaven, and is welcomed and received by the angels and joins the angels, and becomes an angel.
The entire Heaven is divided into societies according to differences of the good of love. Each spirit, after being prepared by instruction or vastation or both, sees a path that leads to the society in Heaven in which he or she is to live to eternity. And each spirit who is taken up to Heaven to become an angel is led by the Lord’s Providence by various paths into his or her own Heavenly society.
The new angel has the same leading love, the same light and warmth, and the same goodness and truth as all the angels of this Heavenly society. And so the new angel is immediately recognized and is introduced and received into this Heavenly society with joy.
The new angel perceives his or her affinity with the angels of this society and feels at home. And the newly arriving angel is fully received as a neighbor in this Heavenly society for the remainder of eternity.
Hi Mike! Are you familiar with Dr. Michael Newton’s work on life between lives? He wrote Destiny of Souls and Journey of Souls among other books - he’s a hypnotherapist and quite by accident a patient described the life between lives and thus began his research into that realm.