722. THAT MAN CAN LIVE IN BOTH LIVES The human race has been so created by the Lord that men might be at the same time both in the world and in heaven, the external man in the world and the internal in heaven; consequently, that man might speak with spirits and angels, and they also with men, so that heaven would thus be conjoined with the world, and the world with heaven. This also, of the Lord's mercy, has been effected with me, and indeed in such a manner that when I was conversing with men I was not in the least different from what I was before, nor could I be distinguished from feeble man. Yet, when I was with spirits, I was then as it were separated from the body, but nevertheless at the same time conjoined, because my spiritual was then with the spirits, and indeed so much so that when I wanted to write, "As in the other life", I could scarcely know that it was the other life, or the life after death, for the spirits wanted me to write, "In this life", because I was with them.