426. In the world of spirits there are vast numbers, because the first meeting of all is there, and all are there examined and prepared. The time of their stay in that world is not fixed. Some merely enter it, and are soon either taken into heaven or are cast down into hell; some remain there only a few weeks, some several years, but not more than thirty. These differences in the time they remain depend on the correspondence or lack of correspondence of man's interiors with his exteriors. How man is led in that world from one state into another and prepared will be told in what follows.