When people die and enter into the other life, their life is like the food received by the lips and then, passing through the mouth, jaws, pharynx, conveyed into the stomach-and sometimes into the intestines, depending on their passions and fantasies. For at first they are treated most gently, namely, by angels who are standing by them, spoken of earlier [1092-1109, 1115-20]. This episode is like when the food, unseen, at first gently touched by the lips, is then put into the mouth, tasted by the tongue to find out what it is like-whether it is hard, soft, sour, sweet-and treated accordingly, either to be softened by the purer saliva alone and thence absorbed into the bloodstream, and thus be conveyed down to some organ, or quite directly to the brain, on which journey it is gently chastened. One's evil qualities, or fantasies, are almost eradicated in various ways, and yet remain, imitating the circular course that the salivary fluid takes during digestion. Some are subdued by harder means, specifically, by teeth, when the mental crustations arising from fantasies are so [persistent] that they have to be broken up, so to speak. Then they are let down as if through the esophagus into the stomach where they undergo various kinds of treatment so they may be of use. Those which are yet harder are thrust down into the intestines, and finally into the rectum, where hell begins, and those which are not subdued are cast out into hell like excrement, and remain in hell until they have been subdued. 1748, 27 March.