The human race was so created by the Lord as to be able to be both in the world and in heaven, the outer person in the world and the inner one in heaven, consequently to be able to speak with spirits and angels as well as with fellow human beings. This was so that heaven would be united with the world, and the world with heaven. This has also, by the mercy of the Lord, taken place with me, and indeed in such a way that when I was mixing with people on earth, I did not differ in the least from myself as I had been before, nor could anyone tell me from an [ordinary] weak human being. But when I was with spirits, I was then as if separate from my body, yet at the same time joined to it, because my spiritual part was then with spirits - in fact, so much so, that when I wanted to write something like "the other life," I could hardly realize that it was the other life, or the life after death; for the spirits wanted "in this life," because I was with them.