Spiritual Experiences (Buss) n. 5720

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5720. * AFTER DEATH MAN BECOMES AS HE HAS LIVED; ALSO, HE IS IN HUMAN FORM. That a man is his own good and his own truth, was shown from the obedience and unanimous agreement of the body with his spiritual world, or with his will and understanding. This appears to the life; so that when the man wills the body acts, and when the man thinks, he also speaks, with all the organs - the face also speaks too - to such a degree that the very will appears as it were in the body; so that, when the hand does anything, it is as if the will is in the hand; when the mouth speaks, that it is not the thought but the mouth with its organs; and so on with the rest: thus, that the man's will is everywhere in the body, and not as it were enthroned in one place, although its beginning is in the brain. Hence is plain what the body is, that it is only the Voluntary and Intellectual in a form. Why not [also] the spirit? - which is the man after death. This is more than a man, or [more than] will and understanding; for a spirit is nothing else in a form, which form also is the human, because the whole heaven, and the whole Divine, is from such a form and in such a form; and since such has been man's form in the world, still more must it be when he becomes a spirit. Hence it is that a spirit appears altogether according to his love, thus according to his will, or according to his interiors. It is plain, from this, that a man's life determines the quality of his spirit, and that he is such as his life is, thus as his will and understanding for the whole of man's life refers itself to those two, and proceeds from those two. * No. 5721 is placed after no. 5719, in compliance with the instructions conveyed by the Author's asterisks, which are reproduced. -TR.


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