THE FIRST WORLD IN THE STARRY SKY, AND ITS SPIRITS AND INHABITANTS: A REPORT BASED ON THINGS HEARD AND SEEN

Under the Lord's guidance I was taken by angels to a world in the starry sky, where I was allowed to look at the world itself, but not to talk with its inhabitants, only with spirits from it. All the inhabitants or people of each world become spirits when their life in the world is over, and they remain in the vicinity of their own world. I was, however, able to gather information from them about their world and the condition of its inhabitants. For when people leave the body, they take with them their whole previous life and everything in their memory.#

[2] Being taken to worlds in space does not mean being taken or travelling in body, but in spirit. The spirit is guided through varying states of inner life, which appear to him like travels through space.## Agreement or similarity in states of life determines how close people come, for agreement or similarity of life links them, disagreement or dissimilarity separates them. This can allow it to be seen how travel in spirit takes place, and how one can approach distant places, while the person still keeps to his same place.

[3] But taking spirits by changes of inner state outside their own globe, making the changes advance by stages until a state is reached which agrees with or resembles that of the people to whom they are being taken, is something only the Lord can do. For there must be continuous guidance and planned advance from first to last, on both outward and return journeys. It especially needs the Lord's help for this to happen to a person who in body is still in the world of nature, and consequently subject to spatial constraints. Those who are dependent on the impressions conveyed by the bodily senses, and think only in these terms, cannot be brought to believe this actually happened.

[4] The reason is that the bodily senses cannot grasp the idea of travel without movement through space. But those whose thinking comes from the senses of the spirit a little withdrawn or distanced from the body's senses, can be brought to believe and grasp it, since inner thinking has no concept of space or time, but their place is taken by the things which give rise to space and time. It is therefore for these people that the following reports on the worlds in the starry sky are intended, not for the others, unless they are the sort of people who will allow themselves to be instructed. # After death a person keep with him his memory of everything it contained in the world (AC 2476-86). ## Motion, progress and change of place in the next life are changes in the state of inner life; they still appear as real to spirits and angels as if they were actually taking place (AC 1273-7, 1377, 3356, 5605, 10734).