84. I saw a bald head, but only its upper, bony part; and I was told that those who are due to die within a year see such a vision, and they then prepare themselves. The people there are not afraid of dying, apart from having to leave their wife, children or parents, because they know they will go on living after death. They know they are not leaving life, because they are going to heaven; so they do not call it dying, but becoming heavenly. If in that world they have lived in a state of truly conjugial love and have taken care of their children as parents should, they do not die of disease, but peacefully as if in sleep; and so they pass from that world to heaven.
[2] The average age of people there at death is thirty, counting by the years of this world. The reason why they die within such a short span of time is that the Lord's Providence ensures that the population does not exceed the numbers who can be supported by that world. It is also because after reaching that age, they resist the guidance of spirits and angels, which those who have not yet reached that age accept, so that spirits and angels rarely approach those who are older. They reach maturity more quickly than people in our world, and get married in the first flush of youth. Their delights then are to love their wife or husband, and to take care of their children. Their other delights they admittedly call delights, but comparatively external ones.
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