6468. Before spirits recently arrived from the world are taught by angels they believe nothing other than this, that every trace of life exists essentially in a person himself and that there is nothing flowing into him. The reason for such belief is that people know nothing in particular about heaven, nor thus about influx from there. Spirits who are not good have no wish to be taught anything about these matters, for they want life to be intrinsically their own. I have often talked to them on this subject, and they have said that I have no life because they have heard me saying that my life did not originate with me and that I knew it from unceasing experience. But they had no wish to stop and think about this. Then I have been led to say that the life everyone has depends on the form his interiors take, the form he has acquired through willing and acting, thinking and speaking.
[2] After that I have talked to good spirits about the influx of life from the Lord. I have said that it flows into everyone, and that this is evident from heaven, in that heaven resembles a human being and is therefore called the Grand Man, which - together with the correspondence of everything in the human being with it - has been the subject at the ends of a number of chapters. I have said that none of this would be possible if life from the Lord did not flow into heaven in general and into each of its inhabitants in particular.
[3] That influx of life is also evident from the fact that the whole of heaven relates back to the Lord and that the Lord is the focal point there of everyone's gaze. Those in heaven look up, towards Him, whereas those in hell look downwards, away from Him; for the Lord is seen by those in heaven as the Sun, up above them there. I have said in addition that the receipt from the Lord of every trace of life is also evident from the ability of the human soul in the womb to form the body in so wondrous a fashion, to form its complex members and organs in such proper connection with one another, and its interiors in the image of heaven. The soul could not possibly do this unless all life came from the Lord and unless heaven was such as has been described.
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