5175. When a person dies and enters the next life, his life may be likened to food which is received in a gentle manner by the lips and is then passed down through the mouth, throat, and oesophagus into the stomach, the whole process being conditioned by his character which has been formed during his lifetime by the things he did. To begin with, the treatment that most spirits receive is mild, for they are kept in the company of angels and good spirits. This is represented by what happens to food, when at first it is touched gently by the lips and then tasted by the tongue to see what it is like. Food that is soft, containing that which is sweet, oily, and spirituous is received instantly through the veins and carried away into the bloodstream, whereas food that is hard, containing that which is bitter, disagreeable, and of little nutritive value, is harder to break down, being sent down through the oesophagus into the stomach where it is refined by various methods and violent actions. Food that is even harder, even less agreeable, and of even less value is forced down into the intestines and at length into the rectum where the first hell is situated, and is then finally expelled and becomes excrement. Analogous to all this is a person's life after death. At first he is confined to matters of an external nature; and because in matters of an external nature he has led a decent and respectable life, he is among angels and upright spirits. But once he ceases to be confined to them, what he had been like inwardly - what he had been like so far as his thoughts and affections were concerned, and at length so far as his ends in view were concerned - is revealed; and those ends determine the life that awaits him.