142. After a while I saw other spirits from the same earth, who appeared in a place below the former, with whom also I spoke. But they were idolaters, for they worshiped an idol of stone, resembling a man, but not beautiful. It is to be known that all who come into the other life have at first a worship like their worship in the world, but that they are gradually withdrawn from it. The reason is, that all worship remains implanted in man's interior life, from which it cannot be removed and eradicated but by degrees. On seeing this, it was given me to tell them that they ought not to worship what is dead, but what is living; to which they answered that they know that God lives, and that a stone does not; but that they think of the living God when they look upon a stone in the form of a man; and that otherwise the ideas of their thought cannot be fixed and determined to the invisible God. Then it was given me to tell them that the ideas of thought can be fixed and determined to the invisible God when they are fixed and determined to the Lord, Who is God visible in thought under the Human form; and thus that man can be conjoined to the invisible God in thought and affection, consequently in faith and love, when he is conjoined to the Lord, but in no other way.