71. It is common on that earth for spirits to speak with the inhabitants and to instruct them, and also to chastise them if they have done evil, in regard to which since many things have been related to me by their angels, I wish to repeat them in order. The reason why spirits speak with the men there, is that they think much about heaven and about the life after death, and have comparatively little solicitude about life in the world; for they know that they are to live after death, and in a state happy according to the state of their internal man, formed in the world. To speak with spirits and angels was also common on this earth in ancient times, and for the same reason, namely, because they then thought much of heaven and little of the world. But that living communication with heaven in process of time was closed, as man from internal became external, or what is the same, as he began to think much about the world and little about heaven; and still more when he no longer believed that there is a heaven or a hell, nor that man in himself is a spirit which lives after death; for at this day it is believed that the body lives from itself, and not from its spirit; wherefore unless man now believed that he will rise again with the body, he would have no belief in the resurrection.