495. As the life of spirits recently from the world is not unlike their life in the natural world, and as they know nothing about their state of life after death and nothing about heaven and hell except what they have learned from the sense of the letter of the Word and preaching from it, they are at first surprised to find themselves in a body and in every sense that they had in the world, and seeing like things; and they become eager to know what heaven is, what hell is, and where they are. Therefore they are instructed by their friends about the conditions of eternal life, and are also taken about by them to various places and into various companies, and sometimes into cities, and into gardens and parks, being shown chiefly such magnificent things as delight the externals in which they are. They are then brought in turn into those notions about the state of their soul after death, and about heaven and hell, that they had entertained in the life of the body, even until they feel indignant at their total ignorance of such things, and at the ignorance of the Church also. Nearly all are anxious to know whether they will come into heaven. Most of them believe that they will, because of their having lived in the world a moral and civil life, never considering that the bad and the good live a like life in externals, alike doing good to others, attending public worship, hearing sermons, and praying; and wholly ignorant that external deeds and external acts of worship are of no avail, but only the internals from which the externals proceed. There is hardly one out of thousands who knows what internals are, and that it is in them that a man has heaven and the Church. Still less is it known that outward acts are such as the intentions and thoughts are, and the love and faith in these from which they spring. And even when taught, they fail to comprehend that thinking and willing are of any avail, but only speaking and acting. Such for the most part are those who, at this day, come from the Christian world into the other life.