447. Bosom friendship is harmful after death, as can be established by considering the situation of heaven, that of hell, and that of a person's spirit relative to them. The situation in heaven is that it is divided into countless communities which differ in keeping with all the varieties of affections belonging to love for good. Hell on the other hand is similarly divided in keeping with all the varieties of affections belonging to the love for evil. After death a person, being then a spirit, is at once allotted to a community in keeping with his life in the world, and this is where his dominant love is. It is a heavenly community, if love to God and towards the neighbour were chief among his loves, a community in hell, if self-love and love of the world were his chief loves. Immediately after entering the spiritual world, a process accomplished by dying and consigning the material body to the grave, a person is over a period prepared for the community to which he is allotted. This preparation is effected by rejecting the loves which are not in harmony with his principal one. One person is therefore parted from another, one friend from another, an underling from his lord, and a parent from his children, and a brother from his brother. Each of them is inwardly brought into contact with people of like disposition, with whom he is destined to live a harmonious life, one that is really his own, for ever. But in the first stage of preparation they meet and have friendly conversations as they did in the world; but little by little they drift apart without being aware of it.