Death and Rebirth - Swedenborgian Church€¦ · after the separation, but not past when the heart has completely stopped be ating. This happens in different ways depending on the

Deathand

RebirthBringing together

Near Death Experiences,Swedenborg’s Stages after Death,

and our own spiritual rebirth process

By

Lee Woofenden

© Lee Woofenden, 1995

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

The Experience of Dying. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Our First Stage After Death . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Our Second Stage After Death. . . . . . . . . . 63

Our Third Stage After Death. . . . . . . . . . . 94

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

Further Reading. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

Introduction

In 1975, Raymond Moody published his bookLife After Life. It became an instant bestseller,sparking an intense popular interest in NearDeath Experiences (NDEs) that has continuedto grow ever since. Suddenly, there was newlight shining on a part of human experiencethat had been shrouded in mystery before.Suddenly, we had up-do-date reports on theafterlife from ordinary people.

Though Moody’s book was the first popularbook on NDEs, it was not the first material tobe published containing descriptions of whathappens to us when we die. Various articlesand a few books had already been publishedtouching on the subject of NDEs in the yearsleading up to Moody’s book. There was a quietbuildup of investigation and reporting leadingto the wide open door of Life After Life.

Even before that buildup, though, there hadlong been texts containing descriptions of

INTRODUCTION 5

what happens to us when we die. For example,from the East, we have The Tibetan Book of theDead. From Africa, we have The Egyptian Bookof the Dead. In the west, we have Heaven andHell, by Emanuel Swedenborg. In this book Iwill focus on Swedenborg’s descriptions of thetransition begun by death, putting them in awider context and exploring their meaning forour spiritual growth during our lives.

When Emanuel Swedenborg began hiscareer in the early 1700s, he had no thought ofvisiting the spiritual world or becoming a spir-itual seer. Though he was the son of a promi-nent Lutheran bishop, his fascination was withscience and engineering—and that was wherehe wanted to make his mark on the world.

He did exceptionally well. Soon after hisstudies were finished, he was appointed to theSwedish Board of Mines, which oversaw themost important industry in Sweden. Sweden-borg served faithfully in this post for manyyears, doing everything from creating miningregulations to descending into the mines

6 DEATH AND REBIRTH

themselves to do inspections and suggestimprovements.

When his family was ennobled by theSwedish queen, as the eldest surviving sonSwedenborg took a seat in the House ofNobles of the Swedish Parliament. He servedin this post for the rest of his life, whenever hewas in Sweden. His contributions to the Parlia-ment showed a pragmatic concern for the well-being of his country.

Even with these important posts he was notsatisfied. His mind was restless. He wanted acomprehensive grasp of science and humannature. He studied all the sciences of his day,and wrote groundbreaking books and articleson mechanics, engineering, mathematics,physics, cosmology, metallurgy, chemistry,anatomy, psychology, and many other subjects.Due to his scientific work, he was elected tothe Royal Swedish Academy of Science.1

As time went on, he focused his studiesincreasingly on the human body. By this time

1. The Swedenborg Epic, by Cyriel Odhner Sigstedt. (London:Swedenborg Society, 1981) p. 162.

INTRODUCTION 7

he had set a difficult task for himself: hewanted to find the human soul. He thought hecould do this by studying the body. But themore painstaking his researches, the farther heseemed to be from finding the soul.

When he was in his mid-fifties, he wentthrough a spiritual crisis, marked by manyvivid dreams and visions. He said the Lordappeared to him and gave him a new mission:to study the spiritual realm. He tells us thatGod then opened his spiritual eyes so that hecould be conscious in the material world andthe spiritual world at the same time.

It was a difficult struggle for Swedenborg togive up his hopes for worldly fame and go on aspiritual journey. He knew he would beattacked and ridiculed by many educated andinfluential people. Still, he accepted God’s call,and for the last thirty years of his life he wroteon spiritual rather than scientific subjects.

This resulted in extensive and detaileddescriptions of the spiritual world—includingan account of what it is like to die and thechanges we go through afterwards. Many of

8 DEATH AND REBIRTH

these descriptions are contained in his mostpopular book, Heaven and Hell. Others arescattered throughout the thirty plus volumesof his religious writings.

Swedenborg described several stages that wego through when we die. The chapters of thisbook take up each of Swedenborg’s stages inorder. For each, there is a brief introduction, anew, abridged translation of Swedenborg’sdescription of the stage, and my commentaryon how this relates to our own spiritualgrowth. Along the way, I will draw parallelswith NDEs as described in the current litera-ture on the subject.

The Experience of Dying

There is a difference between Swedenborg’sexperience and the experiences of people whohave come close to dying and returned. WhenSwedenborg described the spiritual world andthe process of dying in Heaven and Hell, healready had years of regular, almost daily, con-sciousness in the spiritual world. By the timehe wrote his description of the experience ofdeath, he was familiar with the spiritual world,and had a sense of perspective on the dyingexperience.

Because of this, Swedenborg’s descriptionsare more analytical than those of manypresent-day NDEers—most of whom hadnever experienced the spiritual world before.The descriptions of the death process given byNDEers are probably closer to what you or Imight experience as we die. Most of us do nothave previous experience in the spiritual world.We will approach death in a state of mind

10 DEATH AND REBIRTH

more like those who nearly die and come backto tell of their experiences.

But here is a description of the process ofdying as experienced by a Western mindtrained in both material and spiritual reality.

THE EXPERIENCE OF DYING 11

Waking Up From Death

From Heaven and Hell #445–52by Emanuel Swedenborg

When our body can no longer perform its func-tions in the physical world, expressing thethoughts and feelings of our spirit (which wehave from the spiritual world) we say that wedie. This happens when our lungs stop breathingand our heart stops beating.

Yet we do not die, but are only separatedfrom the body that had been useful to us in theworld. We ourselves continue to live. I say weourselves continue to live since we are nothuman because of our body, but because of ourspirit. It is the spirit within us that thinks—andthinking together with feeling makes us human.

This means that when we die, we only passfrom one world to another. Because of this,when “death” is mentioned in the Bible, itsdeeper meaning is re-awakening and continuedlife.


The deepest connection of our spirits is withour breathing and the motion of our heart. Ourthinking communicates with our breathing andthe feelings of our love communicate with ourheart. So when these two motions stop, we areimmediately separated from our body. Thesetwo motions—the breathing of our lungs andthe beating of our heart—are the links. Whenthey are broken, our spirit is on its own. Sinceour body no longer has the life of its spirit, itgrows cold and decays.

The deepest communication of our spirits iswith our breathing and the motion of our heartbecause all our vital motion depends on thesetwo functions—and not merely in a general waybut in every single part of our body.

Our spirit stays in our body for a little whileafter the separation, but not past when the hearthas completely stopped beating. This happens indifferent ways depending on the sickness we diefrom. Sometimes the heart continues to beat fora while; other times it stops after a short time.

As soon as the heart stops beating, we areawakened—but only the Lord does this. By“awakening” I mean leading our spirit out of our


body and bringing it into the spiritual world.This is traditionally called “resurrection.” Ourspirit is not separated from our body until theheart stops beating because our heart corre-sponds1 to the feelings of our love, which is ourreal life. Our vital warmth comes from love. Soas long as this connection continues, there is acorrespondence and the life of our spirit remainsin our body.

I have not only been told how we wake upfrom death; I have been shown through experi-ence. I have actually gone through it so I couldknow exactly what it is like. I lost touch with myphysical senses almost as if I were dying. But Istill had all of my inner life and ability to think,so I could pay attention and remember whathappened to me—which is the same as whathappens to us when we wake up from death.

I noticed that my body’s breathing was almosttaken away, though my inner, spiritual breathingcontinued, along with a slight, quiet physical

1. Swedenborg uses the word “correspondence” to describe theliving relationship between two different levels of reality—usually the material and the spiritual. In this relationship,“correspondence” is the way spiritual things manifest them-selves on the material level.


breathing. My heartbeat started to communicatewith the heavenly realm, since that realm is con-nected with our heart.

I saw angels1 from that realm, some at a dis-tance, and two sitting at my head. They tookaway all my own feelings, but I kept my think-ing and awareness. I experienced this for severalhours. Then the spirits who were around me left,saying I had died. I noticed an aromatic odorlike an embalmed body. When heavenly angelsare nearby, the dead body seems aromatic. Spiritssense this, and cannot approach it. This is howevil spirits are kept away from our spirit whenwe are first brought into eternal life.

The angels who sat by my head were silent,communicating only with my thoughts. Whenwe receive their thoughts, the angels know ourspirit is ready to be drawn out of our body. Theangels shared their thoughts with me by lookingat my face. This is how people in heaven sharethoughts.

1. Swedenborg saw angels, not as a separate creation, but as hu-man beings who have lived on earth and gone on to heavenafter their physical death.


Since I could still think and be aware ofthings so that I could remember how waking upfrom death happens, I noticed that the angels atfirst asked whether my thoughts were like thethoughts of people who are dying, who usuallythink about eternal life. They wanted to holdmy mind in these thoughts. I was later told thatour spirits are kept in the last thoughts we hadwhen our body dies. This lasts until we go backto the way we had thought from our predomi-nant feelings in the world. I was especially givento sense and feel that there was a drawing outand pulling away of the inner parts of mymind—meaning my spirit—from my body. Iwas told that this was from the Lord, and that itcauses us to wake up from death.

The heavenly angels who are with us as we arebeing awakened from death do not leave us,since they love each one of us. But when ourspirit can no longer be with heavenly angels, westart wanting to leave them. When this happens,angels from the Lord’s spiritual realm come tous. They give us the ability to see. Before, we hadnot seen anything, but had only thought things.I was shown how this happens.


I saw an angel there seem to roll a coveringoff my left eye toward my nose to open my eyesand give me sight. It does seem to us as if this iswhat happens, though it is only the way itappears. When the covering was rolled off, I sawsome light, but it was dim. It was like lookingthrough my eyelids at daybreak. This dim lightseemed to be heavenly warmth. I was told,though, that this happens differently for differ-ent people.

Next I felt something soft rolled off my face,and then I was able to think spiritually. The feel-ing that something was being rolled off my facewas also merely the way it looks. It means thatour material thought has now passed over intospiritual thought. The angels are very careful notto let in any ideas about waking up from deaththat do not have a sense of love about them.Then they tell us that we are a spirit.

After the spiritual angels give us the ability tosee, they offer us everything we could possiblywant in this situation. They also tell us as muchabout the other life as we are able to understand.But if we do not wish to be taught, we want toget away from those angels. The angels do not


leave us; no, we leave them. Angels love everyone of us. They love nothing better than doinggood things for us, teaching us, and leading usinto heaven. This gives them their greatest joy.

When we leave them, good spirits welcomeus. They also offer us every kind of help. But ifwe had lived on earth in a way that made it sothat we could not be together with good spirits,we also wish to get away from them. This goeson as many times as it takes for us to cometogether with spirits who are completely harmo-nious with our life in the world. Then we livewith them—and surprisingly enough, we livethe same way we had lived on earth.

However, this first stage of our life after deathdoes not last more than a few days. I willdescribe in the next chapter how we are led fromone stage to the next, and finally either intoheaven or into hell. I know these things alsofrom a lot of experience.

I have talked with some people three daysafter they died, when they had already beenthrough the experiences I just described. I haveeven talked with three people I had known inthe world. I told them that their mortal remains


were now being prepared so that their bodycould be buried. When they heard me say “bur-ied,” they were struck with astonishment. Theysaid that they were alive, and that those peoplewere merely burying what had served them inthe world.

Afterwards they were absolutely amazed thatwhen they had lived in their body they had notbelieved there was this kind of life after death—and especially that practically everyone in thechurch had not believed it.

People who had not believed in the worldthat there was any life after physical life are veryembarrassed when they realize that they are stillalive. But those who had convinced themselvesthat there was no afterlife get together with peo-ple who believe the same thing and are separatedfrom people who had faith. Most of them areconnected to some hellish community becausethey also deny the divine and are contemptuousof spiritual truth. As much as we convince our-selves against the eternal life of our soul, we alsoconvince ourselves against heavenly and spiritualthings. �


This is how Swedenborg describes the processof dying. Like NDEers, he regained conscious-ness in this world afterwards so that he couldtell people who are still on earth about it.Though his experience happened over twohundred years ago, it is similar in many waysto the experiences of people today who haveNDEs. It is also different in some ways.

Before going into the meaning of this expe-rience for our own spiritual growth, I wouldlike to explore some of these similarities anddifferences. To do this, I will compare Sweden-borg’s experience with the pattern of commonelements experienced by NDEers. This patternwas initially outlined by Raymond Moody,1

and later studied more rigorously and system-atized by such scholars as Kenneth Ring2 andBruce Greyson.3 These writers are careful to

1. Life After Life, by Raymond Moody, Jr. (New York: Bantam, 1975)2. Life at Death, A Scientific Investigation of the Near-Death Ex-

perience, by Kenneth Ring (New York: Coward, McCann,and Geoghegan, 1980).

3. “The Near-Death Experience Scale: Construction, Reliability,and Validity,” by Bruce Greyson; in The Near-Death Experi-ence: Problems, Prospects, Perspectives. Bruce Greyson, CharlesP. Flynn, Ed. (Springfield, Il: Charles Thomas, 1984).


point out that no NDEer experiences all ofthese elements. In the same way, Swedenborgdid not experience all of them. I will focus par-ticularly on the five stages of the NDE asdescribed by Kenneth Ring, while bringing inother common elements along the way.

NDEers often say that words cannotdescribe what they have experienced. Theysometimes say there are “more than threedimensions” to the experience. In Moody’sterms, the experience is “ineffable.” Sweden-borg does not mention this when he describeshis death experience, but listen to what he saysabout some newly arrived spirits in the spiri-tual world:

There were certain souls recently arrived fromthe world who, on account of the assumptionsthey had adopted during their lifetime,doubted whether things of this sort could pos-sibly be found in the next life where there is nowood or stone. They were brought up to [acertain] place, and from there they talked tome. In their amazement they said that it wasbeyond description, that they could neverthink of any way of representing how farbeyond description it was, and that forms of


joy and happiness shone from every detail—and this in ever-changing variety. (Arcana Coe-lestia #1622)

Even if the people who come back from deathcannot completely describe what they experi-enced, they tell us that it is the most amazingthing that ever happened to them.

People who are dying often hear someonepronounce them dead. Usually it is a doctor ornurse or somebody at the scene of an accident.For Swedenborg, it was the angels who werewith him. In his words, the angels with us “tellus that we are a spirit.” For most of us, dying issuch a new experience that we may not evenrealize what is happening. Being told that wehave died can help us to understand thesestrange and new experiences.

A few NDEers experience some kind ofsound as they are dying. It may be a loud ring-ing noise, a banging, buzzing, or whistlingnoise, or something else, such as music. Some-times it is pleasant and sometimes it is unpleas-ant. Though Swedenborg does describe noiseand music in the spiritual world, he does notmention it during his experience of dying. He


does talk about an odor—the odor of anembalmed body—associated with his experi-ence. NDEers rarely mention odors.

Usually, though, NDEers describe a feelingof great peace and quiet that comes over themas they are dying. Here is what Swedenborghas to say about the peacefulness of angels:

There are two inmost elements of heaven:innocence and peace. They are called inmostbecause they come directly from the Lord. . . .These two elements, innocence and peace,come from the Lord’s divine love, and affectangels from their very core. (True ChristianReligion #182)

Swedenborg felt this deep, inner peace whenhe was with angels. It was part of his experi-ence of dying, as it is for many today whoalmost die and come back. This sense of peaceis the main characteristic of Ring’s first stage ofthe NDE.

A common thread that is present amongSwedenborg and NDEers at this point in theexperience is a sense of leaving the physicalbody behind. This body separation brings theNDEer to the second stage described by Ring.


Swedenborg did not encounter this in theway many NDEers do: as an out-of-bodyexperience. NDEers often say they lookeddown on their own lifeless body, and on thepeople and things around it—perhaps fromsome kind of “spiritual body” that was differ-ent from their physical body. Swedenborg talksin similar ways about the physical and spiritualbodies, but his usual experience was that whenpeople were in their spiritual bodies, they didnot see anything in the physical world.

An interesting parallel to the out-of-bodyexperience is Swedenborg’s conversations withthree of his friends who had recently died.When he tells them that their body is beingprepared for burial, they are struck withamazement. They are still alive! That body isonly something they had used while they werein the world. This type of detachment fromour physical body is commonly reported byNDEers. They sometimes speak of lookingdown on their body as if it had nothing to dowith them. Others find it confusing to be outof their bodies. Perhaps they are feeling some


of the amazement that Swedenborg reports tobe common among those who have justarrived in the spiritual world when they seethat they are still very much alive even thoughthey are not in their bodies.

NDEers who lose awareness of their physi-cal surroundings often enter a black void, or“dark tunnel.” Ring calls it “entering the dark-ness,” which forms his third stage of the NDE.This is a feeling of floating in or movingthrough a dark space. Not all NDEers experi-ence it—even when they have an other-worldexperience. In Swedenborg’s case, it is moreimplied than described: at first he did not havethe use of his eyes; only later did he gain theuse of his eyes and see the bright world inwhich he then was.

Once NDEers go beyond the physicalworld into the spiritual world, practicallyeverything they describe has parallels in Swe-denborg’s spiritual world experience. Ring’sfourth stage takes place on the other side of thedarkness: “seeing the light.”


The most vivid form of seeing the light isencountering a presence that Moody called“the being of light”—a name that has stuckthough, as Ring points out, NDEers them-selves more often refer to it simply as a “pres-ence.” This presence or being of light isdefinitely personal, but not like any person wehave ever met. There is a dazzling light comingfrom it. The light is brighter than any light wehave ever seen here, yet it does not blind us orhurt our eyes when we see it. It is as thoughthe light is a sense of radiating love, warmth,and understanding. Meeting this being is sucha powerful experience that NDEers often iden-tify the being with the highest spiritual beingsthey knew of from their own religious tradi-tion: God, an angel, Jesus, and so on. Otherssee it as all the universe comprehendedtogether.

Swedenborg says two angels from the high-est heavenly realm are with us when we die.His description of these angels reflects whatNDEers experience as the being of light:

I have seen angelic faces of the third heaven,whose quality was such that no artist, with all


his skill, could impart enough of that kind oflight to his colors to capture a thousandth partof the light and life you can see in their faces.(Heaven and Hell #459)

Swedenborg commonly describes spirituallight and warmth as a sense of love and under-standing flowing among people and betweenGod and people. This is the light that NDEersexperience coming from the being of light.

There is also a tantalizing hint in Sweden-borg that perhaps he thinks it is indeed Godwho meets us initially when we die. He says,“As soon as the heart stops beating, we areawakened—but only the Lord does this.”

As Swedenborg mentioned in his deathexperience, there is communication with thisbeing, but not in words. He says, “The angelswho sat by my head were silent, communicat-ing only with my thoughts.” They did this bylooking at his face. This type of direct commu-nication of thoughts goes on as long as we arewith the being of light. It is a communicationfull of love, compassion, and mutual under-standing.


The being often asks a question. It may behard for NDEers to express exactly what thequestion is. Sometimes they say the question is“Are you ready to die?” Other times it seemsmore like “What have you accomplished withyour life?” These both seem to be the samequestion, only expressed differently. Sweden-borg says the angels kept him in “thoughts thatwere like the thoughts of people who aredying,” which is probably the same thing. It isnatural for us to be thinking about our livesand our readiness for death as we are dying.

The being of light does not ask this ques-tion about life accomplishments to confront orcondemn, but to cause us to think deeplyabout our lives. Along with the question, theremay be an incredibly fast review of our wholelives. Some NDEers say they saw every detailof their lives; others say it was only the highpoints. It is almost always very fast and veryvivid. Usually they see themselves doing thingsfrom another person’s perspective, not as ifthey were experiencing it themselves at thatmoment.


Swedenborg does not describe this processas vividly as NDEers, but he does talk aboutangels bringing out of our memory what wehad done in this life and showing it to us, as inthis quote from Heaven and Hell #462b.8:

I have even heard the things which a personthought during a month seen and reviewed byangels out of his memory, a day at a time with-out error—things recalled as though the per-son were engaged in them at the time theyhappened.

According to Swedenborg, nothing we haveever done or experienced is hidden from theangels. This agrees with what NDEers sayabout the being of light. Fortunately, the beingof light loves us completely while goingthrough these things with us. There is no con-demnation for anything we have done, but aneffort to help us learn from it. To the being oflight, love and learning are the two mostimportant things.

NDEers who do not meet the “presence” or“being of light” often say they meet peoplethey had known on earth who have died.These people may serve some of the functions


the being of light otherwise would, such as get-ting the NDEer to reflect on his or her life,and to make a decision about whether toreturn. Swedenborg also had the experience ofmeeting deceased friends and relations. Hesaid, “I have talked with all my relations andfriends, as well as with kings and dukes, not tomention scholars, who have met their fates”(True Christian Religion #281).

Often, people who have this experience ofmeeting friends or relations in the spiritualworld also experience Ring’s fifth and finalstage of the NDE, “entering the light.” This isthe deepest stage. When they first “see thelight,” most NDEers do not become aware ofanother world around them. Those who go onto enter the light are able to see the scenery ofwhat they describe as another world—whatSwedenborg calls the spiritual world. Theydescribe incredibly beautiful fields, lakes,mountains, and forests, and buildings all insuch vivid colors and bathed in such clear,bright light that they often say there are nowords in our language to adequately describe


what they saw. In Heaven and Hell, Sweden-borg describes the scenery of the spiritualworld in great detail, including its plants, ani-mals, buildings, and human communities.

Swedenborg recounts the process of dyingas it would be if we were continuing on intothe other life. Unlike NDEers, Swedenborgcould stay in the other world even while hewas living in this one—so he did not describewhat it is like to come back. NDEers do expe-rience this, though. A few of them talk ofreaching some kind of visually representedborder or limit. It may be a door, or a fence,the other side of a lake, or simply a line. Theyknow that if they passed beyond the border,they would not come back to earth. For others,instead of a visual border, there is a point atwhich a choice is made, either by the NDEeror by the person or presence he or she metthere. Still others simply felt they were pulledback into their body, without any sense of achoice. Of course, those who are still here totell us about it did come back, whether or notit was by choice.


Coming back to earth after visiting the spir-itual world can be difficult. Once we haveexperienced the beauty, joy, light, and love ofthat world, this world can seem dark and pain-ful. Yet most NDEers come back with a newsense of the spiritual depth within, and a sensethat they have work to do here. Experiencingthe spiritual world does not automaticallytransform us into angels. It only gives us aglimpse of the path. That path lies throughlearning to understand and love each other.

�In the final chapter of his book Broca’s Brain,called “The Amniotic Universe,” Carl Sagansays:

Every human being, without exception, hasalready shared an experience like that of thosetravelers who return from the land of death:the sensation of flight; the emergence fromdarkness into light; an experience in which, atleast sometimes, a heroic figure can be dimlyperceived, bathed in radiance and glory. There


is only one common experience that matchesthis description. It is called birth.1

Sagan uses this insight to speculate on whetherNDEs are a recreation of the birth experienceby the human brain—thus calling into ques-tion whether they are actually experiences ofan afterlife. People who have had vivid NDEsmight reply, “You have not had an NDE. Ihave. It was real.”

Yet the same insight can lead us in anentirely different direction. As people of manydifferent religious traditions have known forages, the parallel between physical birth andphysical death has a deeper cause. Each is anexperience of birth: physical birth is our birthinto the material world; physical death is ourbirth into the spiritual world. Some religionswould say that physical death is our birth intothe spiritual world preparatory to a new birthback into the physical world, if we have notcompleted our spiritual growth process.

1. Broca’s Brain, by Carl Sagan. (New York: Random House,1974) p. 304.


This connection between birth and deathhas been a part of our cultural heritage as well.When my son Christopher was born at homein July, 1995, his heart was not beating. Themidwives performed CPR on Chris andrevived him. A few weeks later, one of the mid-wives came by for a visit. As we talked aboutthe experience of Chris’s birth, she mentionedthat midwives used to be present at both birthsand deaths. The same people who attendednew births into this world also attended thetransition, or birth, from this world into thenext.

Like The Tibetan Book of the Dead andother accounts of our experiences at and afterdeath, Swedenborg describes various stagesthat we go through when we die. We can usethese descriptions as literal accounts of whatwe experience when we die. Using a similarparallelism to that between birth and death, wecan also take the descriptions as a metaphoricalaccount of our processes of spiritual death andrebirth—what we experience on our path ofspiritual birth and growth during our life on


earth. This is the parallelism I would like tofocus on for the rest of this book.

It might help to pause a moment and con-sider what our spiritual level is. Our materiallevel, of course, includes our physical bodiesand the physical aspects of everything we sayand do in the material world. Our spirituallevel exists, not apart from, but within ourmaterial level while we are living on earth. It isthe level of our human relationships and inter-actions with other people and with God. Ourwords and the actions are physical, but the loveand understanding (or lack of them) that theyexpress are spiritual.

Our spiritual growth, then, is our growth inlove for and understanding of other people,and our expression of that growth in our rela-tionships and interactions with them. Ourspiritual growth does not happen in isolationfrom others, but in community with others. Aswe grow closer to other people spiritually, wealso grow closer to God.

Back to the parallelisms I mentioned before.These parallelisms rest on two properties of the


physical/spiritual universe that are present inmany religious cosmologies, and especially welldeveloped in Swedenborg: the macrocosm/microcosm and correspondences.

The concept of macrocosm/microcosmstates that small things are images of largethings, and vice versa. The universe is reflectedin each individual human being, animal, plant,and rock, and in each part of each one ofthem. This means that the whole universe—and any part of it—also reflects an individualhuman being, animal, plant, rock, and so on.Each part of the universe reflects every otherpart of the universe. This characteristic is partof the very fabric of the universe. As WilliamBlake says in his Auguries of Innocence,

To see a World in a Grain of Sand,And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,And Eternity in an hour.

“Correspondence” is Swedenborg’s word forthe relationships that exist among various lev-els of reality. We live in a multi-layered uni-verse. There are the big levels: God, spirit, andmatter. Within each of those, there are other


levels reflecting the big levels of the universe.In God there is love, wisdom, and action. Inspirit there are the same levels as in God. Andin matter there is substance, form, and actionor subsistence. Using the principle of macro-cosm/microcosm, we could find each of theselevels within anything we cared to contem-plate, from the community of all humans onearth down to a single bone cell in our body.

Things on different levels are distinctly dif-ferent from each other. Spirit is not the same asmatter. God is not the same as spirit. Yet theyare intimately connected with each other. Ifthey are different, how can they be connected?How can they communicate with each other?Swedenborg describes this as happeningthrough correspondence.

Correspondence is not a mere symboliclink—A equals B. It is a living relationship. Itis the way God’s character is expressed on thespiritual level, and the way spiritual realities aremanifested on the physical level. A hug, forexample, is not merely a cultural symboldenoting affection for another person. It is a


direct, physical expression of warmth and car-ing through affectionate physical contact.

Similarly, physical birth and death are notmerely symbols of spiritual rebirth; they are aliving, physical expression of the realities ofspiritual birth and growth. It is no coincidencethat the experiences of birth and death paralleleach other. Through macrocosm/microcosmand correspondences, they are both physicalmanifestations of the same spiritual reality. Letus, then, explore the passage of death and seewhat it could mean for our own spiritualrebirth.

Using the parallel between death and birth,we will consider the moment of physical deathto be the moment of a spiritual birth withinourselves. This may be the time we first turnfrom a material to a spiritual focus, or it maybe a new birth in an already developing spiri-tuality. For now we will look at the experienceof dying as a parallel to the first beginnings ofour conscious spiritually-oriented life.

Our approach to physical death can comein many different ways. For some, there is a


long and gradual physical decline ending indeath. For others, there is an accident or severeillness, and death comes quickly, withoutmuch warning. This reflects our variousapproaches to the transition from a materially-oriented life to a spiritually oriented one. Someof us experience a gradual decline in our senseof satisfaction with a materially-oriented life.Physical pleasures that used to consume us losetheir savor. Gradually, the sense that some-thing is missing grows, until we feel that thereis very little aliveness left in the way we havebeen living so far.

For others, the death of our materialistic selfcomes quickly. A close friend or family mem-ber dies, a relationship breaks up, we lose thejob we have held for years, and suddenly thematerial things we had been so engrossed in nolonger seem so important to us. Suddenly wefind ourselves looking deeper for answers tolife’s questions.

However we approach it, at some point werealize that we want and need a spiritual levelin our life. This, correspondentially, is the


moment of our death in the physical worldand our new birth into the spiritual world.

Usually it is not an easy transition. In theexperience of physical birth, we are com-pressed and forced through an opening thatseems smaller than it ought to be. The transi-tion of spiritual rebirth also goes through a“small gate and a narrow road,” in Jesus’ words(Matthew 7:14). Like a baby in the womb, wehave grown comfortable with our previous wayof life. The change can be difficult. But it is achange we must make if we are to move on tothe next stage of our growth.

In our experience of death, there may behard passages. There is the physical pain thatoften accompanies death, the grief at the lossof our loved ones, and the fear of what mightcome next. At the moment of death, there arefrequent feelings of confusion and emotionaldiscomfort among those who float out of theirbodies but remain at the scene of their deaths.There is the common experience of the blackvoid or “dark tunnel,” which can be bewilder-ing. Afterwards, there may come an examina-


tion of our past life—which can be painful ifwe have lived in hurtful ways, or if we realizethat the “good” things we had done in our lifecame from egotistical motives.

All of these have their parallels in the expe-riences we may have at the time we move froma materialistic to a spiritual life. It hurts tomake changes within ourselves. We grieve theloss of the pleasure we used to get from ourold, familiar habits. We are anxious aboutwhat we will do next, and where we will go.We are still with our old friends and familymembers, and though we see them about theirnormal business, they may not recognize thechanges that are taking place in us. We mayfeel that there is a barrier between us and thosewe used to know; we can see them, but theycannot see us anymore. We may feel that weare passing through a “dark night of the soul,”as described by John of the Cross.1 As we lookat our past life in a new light, we may recoil,sometimes with a sense of guilt and shame,

1. As found in John of the Cross, Selected Writings. Kieran Ka-vanaugh, Ed. (New York: Paulist Press, 1987).


from the things we have thoughtlessly or mali-ciously done to others, or from harmful andabusive thoughts and feelings we have nursedinside of ourselves.

We may even decide we are not ready forthis transition, and go back to our former waysof life for a longer or shorter time. But as withthose who come back from an NDE, our lifewill still be changed afterwards. We will neverbe able to go back to exactly the way we werebefore; there will always be that sense thatthere is something more to life—somethingthat we need to return to sooner or later.

Most of us, though, having started a spiri-tual path, do not go back. We continue in thenew direction. And before long, we receivesupport and inspiration. At the other end ofthe dark tunnel there is a new light that isbrighter than anything we have ever experi-enced before. We begin to see new meaning inour lives that had been completely beyond usup until now. We have a new direction, andnew purpose.


And we have human and divine support.Some of us have a direct encounter with a“being of light.” This may be an experience ofcommunion with God, or it may be a deepconnection with another human being whohas developed to a high level of spirituality andhelps us in our transition. Others of us seeloved ones who have “died” before us—mean-ing we now have a new and deeper relationshipwith those who have already begun their spiri-tual paths, and have been waiting for us tobegin ours. We may still grieve the loss of oldfriendships, but they are replaced by new anddeeper ones—sometimes with the same peo-ple, but often with new friends.

At this point in our transition, the darknessand confusion has turned into joy and brilliantlight. We feel that we have at last arrived at ourtrue, spiritual home. Not so! We have onlytaken the first few steps on a long spiritualjourney. After the initial consuming experienceof spiritual birth, we settle back into our life.This may turn into a real anti-climax. We mayeven think afterwards that nothing has really


happened—that everything is exactly the sameas it was before.

This is where it helps to understand thenext stages of spiritual growth. There are manyways to look at those stages. One of these waysis to continue with Swedenborg along thestages he says we go through after we die.

Our First Stage After Death

In his Forward to The Tibetan Book of theDead, John Woodroffe says:

Life immediately after death is, according tothis view, as Spiritists assert, similar to, and acontinuation of, the life preceding it. As inSwedenborg’s account, and in the recent playOutward Bound, the deceased does not at firstknow that he is ‘dead.’ Swedenborg, who alsospeaks of an intermediate state, says that,except for those immediately translated toHeaven or Hell, the first state of man afterdeath is like his state in the world, so that heknows no other, believing that he is still in theworld notwithstanding his death.1

It may seem strange that after such a powerfulexperience, we could possibly think that noth-ing had happened and we had not died yet.However, as Swedenborg and others haveobserved, this is a common phenomenon. Per-

1. The Tibetan Book of the Dead. W. Y. Evans-Wentz, Ed. (Lon-don: Oxford University Press, 1960) p. lxxiv–lxxv.

OUR FIRST STAGE AFTER DEATH 45

haps we may think the experience was an espe-cially vivid dream or hallucination—as manyskeptics have claimed about NDEs. Or per-haps we simply forget it in the press of theeveryday life we have returned to. It requires ashift of consciousness to comprehend that ourlives have changed, completely and forever.This change of consciousness often takes sometime.

And so, after our initial experience of death,Swedenborg says we usually go back to a lifethat is very similar to the one we had leftbehind.


Living Still Behind Our Mask


We go through three stages after death before wecome into either heaven or hell. The first is liv-ing in our outer self, the second is living in ourinner self, and the third is getting ready. We gothrough these stages in the world of spirits.

Some of us, though, do not go through thesestages. As soon as we die we are either carried upinto heaven or thrown down into hell. If we havealready been prepared for heaven by being spiri-tually reborn in the world, we will be immedi-ately carried up into heaven. If we are rebornand prepared in this way, as soon as we shed thecrude physical aspects of ourselves along withour bodies, we are immediately carried up to theangels in heaven. I have seen people carried upthis way an hour after they died.

But if we have been inwardly malicious whileoutwardly appearing to be good, so that we filled


our destructiveness with deceit, and did goodthings for deceitful reasons, we are immediatelythrown into hell. I have seen some people likethis thrown into hell as soon as they died. Onevery deceitful person went head downwards andfeet upwards. Others went in different ways.

There are also some people who are banishedto caves as soon as they die to separate themfrom people who are in the World of Spirits.They are let out and sent back in from time totime. This will happen to us if we have actedmaliciously against the people around us whilepretending to be good neighbors.

However, there are not very many of thesekinds of people compared to those who stay for awhile in the World of Spirits. The World of Spir-its is where we are prepared either for heaven orfor hell in God’s orderly way.

The first stage is one of living in our outerselves; we begin it right after we die. Each of ushas an inner and an outer part to our spirit. Theouter part of our spirit is how we stay connectedwith our body in the world—especially our face,talking, and movements—so that we can be incommunity with other people. But the inner


part of our spirit—which has to do with ourintentions and the thoughts that come fromthem—is rarely expressed in our face, conversa-tion, and gestures. From the time we are veryyoung we get used to showing friendship, goodconduct, and sincerity, while hiding thethoughts of our own intentions. We get into thehabit of living an outwardly ethical and commu-nity-oriented life, no matter what we are likeinside. Because of this, we hardly know what weare like inside, and we do not pay any attentionto it.

Our first stage after death is a lot like our lifein the world, since we are then involved in out-ward things in a similar way. We have a similarface, way of talking, and mind, so we have a sim-ilar ethical and social life. This is why, at thatpoint, we do not realize that we are not still inthe world. That is, we do not realize it if we donot pay attention to what happened to us whenwe were being awakened, nor to what the angelssaid to us then: that we are now a spirit. So onelife continues into the other, and death is only atransition.


Since our spirit is like this just after our life inthe world ends, our friends and others who hadknown us in the world recognize us. They recog-nize us not only from our face and the way wetalk, but also from the aura of our life that sur-rounds us, which they can feel when they comenear us.

In the other life, whenever we think aboutother people, we get a picture of their face in ourthoughts, and also many things about their life.Then the person we were thinking of becomespresent with us just as if we had summoned himor her. This happens in the spiritual worldbecause we communicate our thoughts there,and there is no space of the kind that exists inthe physical world.

So when we first come into the other life, allour friends, relatives, and acquaintances recog-nize us. We talk with them and get together withthem, depending on the kind of friendship wehad with them in the world. I have often heardhow happy people were when they came fromthe world and saw their friends again, and howhappy their friends were to see them.


Married partners usually get back togetherand greet each other joyfully. They stay togetherfor a longer or shorter time depending on howhappy they had been together in the world. Ifthey had not had a real marital love for eachother—a love that united their minds fromheavenly love—they separate after they havebeen together for a while.

If the minds of married partners had clashed,and they were inwardly hostile to each other,they break out into open antagonism and some-times fight with each other. Still, they are notseparated until they reach the next stage, whichwill be covered in the following chapter.

As I just mentioned, recently arrived spiritslive almost the same way they had in the world.They do not know anything about what life afterdeath is like, or anything about heaven and hell,except some things from the literal meaning ofthe Bible and from Bible-based preaching. Theyare amazed that they still have a body and all thesenses they had in the world, and that they seethe same kinds of things. Soon they want toknow what heaven and hell are like, and wherethey are.


Their friends tell them about what eternal lifeis like and bring them around to different placesand introduce them to different people. Theyshow them cities, gardens, and parks—oftenmagnificent ones, since the newcomers enjoythese sights in the surface-level state of mindthey are then in.

They are occasionally reminded of how theyhad thought while they were still in the worldabout the condition of their soul, about heaven,and about hell. After a while, they become angrythat they had had absolutely no knowledgeabout these things—and that the church hadbeen ignorant of them as well.

Almost all of them want to know whetherthey will go to heaven. Most of them think theywill because they had lived in an ethical, law-abiding way in the world. They do not realizethat both bad and good people act the same wayoutwardly; both do good things for other peo-ple, go to church, listen to sermons, and pray inthe same way. They are completely unaware thatit is not the outer actions and worship thatcount, but the inner spirit from which the outeractions come.


There is hardly one in a thousand who knowswhat our inner self is, and that heaven and thechurch are in our inner self. Even fewer knowthat our outer actions get their character fromour intentions and thoughts, and the love andfaith they come from. Even when they are toldotherwise, they cannot comprehend that ourthoughts and motives are what count, not whatwe say and do. Most people from today’s Chris-tian world are like this when they come into theother life.

Still, good spirits examine these newcomersin various ways to see what they are like. Thismust be done, since as I just said, in this firststage bad people say just as many true things anddo just as many good things as good people.They do this because when they were in theworld they had lived an outwardly ethical life,since they had lived in a country with a set oflaws. Also, by being outwardly ethical they couldgain a reputation for honesty and fairness, win-ning people over and in this way becoming richand famous.

The main way to distinguish between goodand bad spirits is to notice what they pay atten-


tion to. Bad spirits eagerly listen when peopletalk about superficial matters, but hardly listenat all when the conversation is about deeperthings that have to do with spiritual and heav-enly truth and goodness. They do listen to thesethings, but with very little attention or enjoy-ment.

Another way to distinguish them is that spir-its often turn toward certain neighborhoods.When they are left alone, they follow paths thatlead to these neighborhoods. What neighbor-hoods they turn toward and what paths theytake to get there shows what kind of love leadsthem.

All spirits who arrive from the world are putinto connection with a particular community inheaven or in hell, but only in their inner self.This inner self is not seen as long as they are liv-ing in their outer self, since their outer self cov-ers and hides their inner self—especially withthose who are inwardly bad. Later on, though,when they get to the second stage, their innerself shows clearly. Then their inner self is openedup and their outer self goes to sleep.


�We may think that once we have gone througha spiritual birth, things will never be thesame—and in a sense, they won’t. But life goeson. We still have a job, and bills to be paid. Ifwe were in a troubled relationship before, wewill still be in a troubled relationship. We stillhave the same likes and dislikes.

Within days or weeks of the time we makeour first spiritual step, things may go back tojust about the way they were before. We mayfind the familiarity to be comforting, or wemay find the lack of change to be dishearten-ing. Either way, we soon realize that our spiri-tual journey has just begun—and we have along way yet to go. Some Christian traditionshold that being “born again” is a one-timedividing line between being “saved” and“unsaved.” For Swedenborg, rebirth is a pro-cess that begins with the initial spiritual birthand continues through all the stages of humangrowth.


So here we are back in our everyday life.What has changed? Really, the only thing thathas changed is the direction in which we areheading. Whereas before we were headeddown a materially-oriented path, now we areheading down a path leading in a spiritualdirection. Both paths start at the same place—in our ordinary, everyday life.

As with the first stage after death, initiallynothing much changes. We still live the waywe did before, with the same relationships andresponsibilities. But our inner attitude towardthem has begun to change. Though thingslook outwardly the same, inwardly we are in a“new world.” It is only a matter of time beforethere will be some changes in our outward lifeas well. But those come in the next stage.

Meanwhile, one of the main discoveries wemake is that spiritual living involves many ofthe same outward actions as materialistic livingdoes. We do not need to renounce the worldand live in a monastery in order to live spiritu-ally. Our everyday life is the stage on whichour spiritual life happens. We grow spiritually


within the matrix of our relationships andcommunity life. Outwardly, these may look nodifferent than before.

It is important to establish this for our-selves, since we may think that once we headin a spiritual direction, everything will betaken care of automatically, and we will nolonger have to work and struggle. But Sweden-borg insists that the heavenly, spiritual life isnot a lazy one but an active, useful one. Thisfirst stage after our initial experience is likeGod reminding us, “Yes, you still have work todo.”

Because our outward life is similar, we canresume our relationships with those around uson the same basis as before. Whereas when wewere initially going through the rebirth experi-ence, we may have felt estranged, now in thisstage of an outwardly similar life we can goback to much of how we were before, and re-establish ourselves as a part of the community.We may not even notice a break—and othersalmost certainly won’t.


Still, even though our outward life lookssimilar, inside ourselves we know we havechanged. And we wonder about exactly whatthe changes will be. We begin to talk to thosewho have gone before us on the spiritual pathand ask questions about what spiritual livingmeans. We explore, and begin to get a vision ofhow magnificent the spiritual life can be. Butwe are still not aware of the deep inner strug-gles we will need to pass through before werealize that vision.

In this stage, we also begin to take stock ofourselves. Unlike before, as we go about ourdaily business, we begin to observe the thingswe say and do, and the thoughts and feelingsbehind them. We notice what is good aboutourselves, and also what needs improvement.This is another reason we needed to return toour former outward life: that life in some wayexpressed our inner self—both the good partsand the bad parts. Before we can begin tochange the bad parts, we need to recognizethem clearly within ourselves. So this is a timeof observation and learning about ourselves in


preparation for the hard work of spiritualgrowth that lies ahead.

Before we go on, it might be useful to pauseand consider the nature of good and evil. Somepeople find it off-putting to read of hell as wellas heaven in Swedenborg’s books. Isn’t hell acruel, old-fashioned idea? Who can believe infire and brimstone?

For Swedenborg, hell, like heaven, is not aliteral location, but a state of mind and life.Heaven is the atmosphere we create within andaround ourselves when we love others and wishto make them happy. Hell is the atmospherewe create within and around ourselves whenwe love only ourselves, and consider others tobe merely stepping-stones or obstacles on theway to fulfilling our own desires for domi-nance and material possessions.

Though Swedenborg does talk of peoplebeing “thrown into hell,” in other places heexplains that this is only an appearance. InTrue Christian Religion, #650 he says:

The Lord is never angry, never takes revenge,hates, condemns, punishes, throws anyone


into hell, or tempts him; thus he never doesevil to anyone.

In fact, we throw ourselves into hell when weturn our backs on love and understanding—meaning we turn our backs on God and otherpeople. God always wishes to lead us out ofour personal hell, but will not force us if westeadily refuse, insisting on remaining in ourhellish state of mind and life. This means thathell is not a creation of God, but a creation ofhuman beings. God allows us to turn ourheaven into a hell because God values our free-dom above anything else.

Why is our freedom so important? Becausewithout it, none of our relationships—eitherwith God or with the people around us—could be real. It would have been easy for God,like a computer programmer, to hard-wire usonly to love and never to hate. But as with amarriage relationship, if we do not choose thelove, how real is it?

Since all love and all understanding comefrom God and are God, the only way we couldhave a choice about our relationship with Godis for there to be an alternative to love and


understanding. Evil and falsity come when weturn away from God’s love and understanding,twisting them into something they were neverintended to be.

Ironically, then, evil and falsity exist becauseGod loves us and respects us enough to wantus to make our own free choice about whetherwe will have a relationship with God or not.Choosing a spiritual path is choosing to builda closer and closer relationship with God. Inthe process, we build closer and closer relation-ships with each other.

What about those who choose the path ofselfishness and materialism? Will they everturn back again toward a spiritual path? Orwill they continue forever in the negative anddestructive direction they have chosen? This isa vexing question that has caused great contro-versy both within Christianity and among thevarious faiths around the world. Swedenborgcame down on the side of an eternal hell. Butit is important to understand that if there is aneternal hell, it is because we want it that way,not because God does.


In reading Swedenborg’s statements on hell,then, we have to make the conceptual adjust-ment outlined above. We have to see it, not asa place God sends those who break divine law,but as a place we ourselves create if we decideto go in a destructive direction rather than aconstructive one.

This places a lot of responsibility on ourshoulders, whether we look at it in terms ofwhether we are going to heaven or hell, or interms of the course of our life here on earth.Nobody else is going to determine the direc-tion we eventually head in. Even if we chooseto blindly follow someone else’s lead, that isstill our choice—and we can change it at anytime. If God is not going to decide where weare going, and no Devil is going to decidewhere we are going, that puts responsibility forthe direction of our life squarely on our ownshoulders.

This can be scary; but it can also give us tre-mendous power. Once we throw off the ideathat our fate is in someone else’s hands, we canbegin the job of determining our own fate. We


can’t change the laws that govern the universeand everyone in it. But we can decide whetherwe will live in harmony with or at odds withthose laws. Trying to thwart the laws of theuniverse will lead to our own destruction,while aligning ourselves with those laws willput great power in our hands. We may still bebound by external circumstances, but we canchange our inner attitude toward those cir-cumstances—which might help to change thecircumstances themselves.

When we go through a spiritual birth, weare making a choice to align ourselves moreclosely with the spiritual laws of the universe—which are the same as God’s laws. However, westill have ahead of us the work of sorting out inourselves what is and isn’t heading in a spiri-tual direction, and jettisoning those parts ofourselves that are going the wrong way. That isthe subject of the next chapter.

Our Second Stage After Death

After we die, we initially go back to an out-ward lifestyle similar to the one we had beforewe died. But that doesn’t last long. Soon, ourouter layers begin to get peeled away one byone, like an artichoke, until we reach the heart.The “heart” is what we really love most of all.It is our true inner thoughts and feelings. It isthe real us underneath the surface mask.Depending on how well we had covered ourtrue self, this process of unmasking may take ashorter or longer time.

Near Death Experiencers who have a lifereview as part of their experience gain a taste ofthis. They relive the passages of their lives, butfrom an inner view. They see not only whatthey did, but what they were thinking and feel-ing as they did it—and often what the peoplearound them were thinking and feeling, too.This unmasking of the deeper levels within our


everyday conversations and actions is the nextstep in our spiritual growth.

OUR SECOND STAGE AFTER DEATH 65

Removing Our Mask


Our second stage after death is called our innerstage. We are then introduced to the inner partsof our mind—our motivations and thoughts.The outer parts of ourselves that we were awareof in our first stage go to sleep.

Anyone who thinks about our life, what wesay and what we do, can recognize that we eachhave an inner and an outer part. By this I meanan inner and outer part to our thoughts andmotivations.

Here is how we can recognize this: When weare involved in the life of our community, wethink about other people based on what we haveheard about their reputation, or from what wehave heard and noticed while we are talking withthem. Yet we do not tell them what we reallythink of them. Even if they are bad people, we


talk to them politely and act in a decent waytoward them.

This is especially obvious from frauds andflatterers, who talk and act completely differ-ently than they think and feel. Hypocrites talkabout God, heaven, saving souls, spiritual truths,the good of the country, and the people aroundthem as if they had faith and love, when theybelieve something completely different in theirheart, and love only themselves.

We can see from this that we have two levelsof thought: one outward and one inward. Wetalk one way from our outward thought, whilefeeling differently from our inward thought.These two levels of thought are kept separate.We take care not to let our inner thought spillinto our outer thought, so that it will not haveany chance of appearing to anyone else.

We are created so that our inner thoughtworks together with our outer thought throughcorrespondence. If we are in a good state ofmind we have this kind of single-mindednesssince we think and speak only good things.

But if we are in a bad state of mind, our innerthought does not work together with our outer


thought, since we think bad things and say goodthings. The normal order of things is turnedupside-down, since the good in us is in our outerself, and the bad is in our inner self. This meansthat the bad parts control the good parts, andforce them to become a means toward gainingour goals, which are the things we love.

Since there are bad goals within the goodthings we say and do, you can see that the“good” we have is not good, but is corrupted bythe bad motives inside us—no matter how goodit appears outwardly to people who do not knowwhat is inside.

It is different when we are in a good state ofmind. Then the normal order is not upside-down. The good things from our inner thoughtflow into our outer thought, and from there intowhat we say and do. This is the way we were cre-ated. When we are like this, our inner self is inheaven and in the light there. Since the light ofheaven is the divine truth coming from theLord—for it is the Lord in heaven—we are ledby the Lord.

I mention these things to point out that weall have inner and outer thought, and that they


are distinct from each other. When I saythought, I also mean motivation, since ourthinking comes from our motivation. No onecan think without a motive behind it. From thiswe can see what our outer and inner stages are.

When I say motivation and thought, bymotivation I also mean feelings and love, plus allthe enjoyment and pleasure that come from ourfeelings and love. These relate to motivation astheir basis, since whatever we are motivated by,we love and feel enjoyment and pleasure in. Thereverse is also true—whatever we love and feelenjoyment and pleasure in we are motivated by.

When I say thought, then, I mean everythingwe use to reinforce our feelings and what welove. Thought is nothing but the form of moti-vation, or a way that what we want can appear inthe light. This form is brought about by variousrational analyses that come from the spiritualworld, and are a part of the human spirit.

We should realize that we are completely likewhat we are like inwardly, and not what we arelike outwardly separate from what we are likeinwardly. This is because our inner self is ourspirit. Our life is our spirit’s life—that is where


the life in our body comes from. This also meansthat whatever we are like inwardly, we will staythat way forever.

The outer part that relates to our body is sep-arated from us after death. Anything from it thatstays connected to our spirit goes to sleep andonly serves as a base for the inner parts.

So we can see what parts really belong to usand what parts do not really belong to us. If weare a bad person, our outer thought from whichwe speak and our outer motivation from whichwe act do not belong to us; only what is part ofour inner thought and motivation is part of us.

After the first stage is over—the stage of liv-ing in our outer self that I covered in the lastchapter—we are brought as a spirit into a stagewhere we are in our inner self. This is a stage ofour inner motivation and the thought thatcomes from it. In the world, we were in this stateof mind when we were by ourselves in freedomand without anything bridling our thoughts.Just as in the world, we lapse into this state with-out realizing it when the thought closest to ourwords—meaning the thought from which wespeak—withdraws toward our inner thought,


and we linger there. When we are in this state ofmind, we are in our real self and in our real life.Our real life—our real self—is thinking freelyfrom our own feelings.

As a spirit, in this stage we think from ourown motivations. This means we are thinkingfrom our own feelings and from our own love.Then our thinking is united with our motivationas if they were one. It hardly even seems as if weare thinking—only that we are intending things.

It is almost the same when we speak. Butthere is still this difference: we speak with somefear that the thoughts from our motives will goout naked. This had become a part of ourmotives through our community life in theworld.

Every single one of us is brought into thisstage after death, since it is what our spirit isreally like. The previous stage was what we werelike in spirit when we were with other people,which is not how we really are.

There are many things showing that the outerstage we are in at first after we die is not our realself. For example, spirits do not only think from


their feelings; they also talk from them, sincewhat they say comes from their feelings.

We think the same way in the world when weare thinking within ourselves. When we aredoing this, we do not think in physical speech,but only perceive it. Meanwhile we can thinkmore in one minute than we could say in half anhour.

We can also see that our outward state ofmind is not our real self or spirit from this: inthe world, when we are with people, we talkaccording to the ethical and civil laws. At thesetimes our inner thought rules our outer thoughtthe way one person rules another, so that it willnot go beyond the boundaries of decency andhonesty.

We can also see it from this: when we thinkwithin ourselves, we also think about how weshould speak and act so that we will please peo-ple and get their friendship, good will, and favor.We do this by outward means, which are differ-ent from what we would do if we acted from ourreal motivations.

We can see from these things that the stage ofour inner self that we are led into as spirits is our


real state of mind. This means it was also ourreal state of mind when we lived in the world.

When we are in this inner stage, what wewere like inside ourselves in the world is clearlyvisible, since we then do things from our realself. If we were inwardly good in the world, weact sensibly and wisely. We act even more sensi-bly and wisely than we did when we were in theworld, because our link with our body is broken.This breaks our link with the worldly things thathad dimmed our thinking as if it were wrappedin a cloud.

But if we were inwardly bad in the world, weact unwisely and crazily. We act even more cra-zily than we did when we were in the world,since we are free and not under any compulsion.When we had lived in the world, we had beenoutwardly sane, since that was how we pre-tended to be a reasonable person. So when thatsuperficial part of us is taken away, our crazinessappears.

Bad people who act outwardly as if they aregood are like a shiny polished vase covered witha cloth, with all kinds of filth hidden inside. Asthe Lord says:


They are like whitewashed graves that appearbeautiful outside, but inside are full of deadpeople’s bones and all kinds of unclean things.(Matthew 23:27)

If we have lived well in the world, and actedfrom our conscience, when we come into thestage of our inner self it seems to us as if we havebeen awakened from sleeping. (When I say “liv-ing well” I mean recognizing the Divine and lov-ing God’s truth—especially when we use it inour life.)

We then think from heavenly light, meaningfrom deep wisdom, and we do things fromgoodness, meaning from deeper feelings. Heavenflows into our thoughts and feelings with a deephappiness and joy that we had never knownbefore, for we are in touch with heavenly angels.We also accept the Lord and worship him fromour own life, since we are in our real life whenwe are living in our inner self. We also acceptand worship him in freedom, since freedombelongs to our deeper feelings.

We also withdraw from outward holiness andenter inner holiness, which is the nature of realworship. This is our state of life if we have lived


in a Christian way according to the teachings ofBible.1

It is exactly the opposite if we have livedbadly in the world, with no conscience and indenial of the Divine. Whenever we live in adestructive way, we deny the Divine inside our-selves, even if we think we are not denying butaccepting God while we are living at our surfacelevel. Accepting the Divine and living in adestructive way are opposites.

If we are like this, when we arrive at the stageof our inner self in the other life, we will lookfoolish to others in what we say and do. Ourcraving for destructive things will cause us tobreak out into hellish behavior—contempt forother people, ridicule and profanity, hatred,revenge, underhanded scheming, all with suchdeceitfulness and malice that it is hard to believeanything like it could be inside any person. Thishappens because we are then free to act out ofthe thoughts that come from our motives, since

1. Note that Swedenborg was writing for a primarily Christianaudience. Elsewhere, Swedenborg stated that both Christiansand non-Christians will find their place in heaven if they careabout others and do their best to live according to their ownreligious beliefs.


we have gotten away from the outward factorsthat had bound and restrained us in the world.In short, we are deprived of our rational ability,since in the world this ability had not been inour inner self, but in our outer self. Even so, toourselves we still seem wiser than other people.

Because we are like this, when we are in thissecond stage we are allowed back into our stageof outer life from time to time. Then we remem-ber what we had done when we were in the innerstage. Some of us are then ashamed and admitthat we had been crazy. Others are not ashamed.Some of us become furious that we are notallowed to be in that outward stage all the time.But then we are shown what would happen if westayed in this stage indefinitely: we would thinkup similar secret plans, and by pretending to begood, sincere, and honest, we would entrap peo-ple of simple heart and faith. We would alsototally destroy ourselves, since eventually thesame fire that is inside us would blaze out intothe open and burn up our entire life.

When we are in this second stage, we appearoutwardly just as we were inside ourselves whilewe were living in the world. Whatever we had


done and said in private becomes public knowl-edge. With no outward constraints, we sayopenly and try to do openly what we had doneonly privately before, without the fear for ourreputation that we had in the world. We alsoprogress through many stages of our owndestructiveness so that angels and good spiritscan see what we are like.

What was private is revealed, and our secretactions are exposed, as the Lord said:

Nothing is covered up that will not beexposed, nor hidden that will not be known.What you have said in the dark will be heardin the light. What you whispered in someone’sear in your bedroom will be shouted from therooftops. (Luke 12:2, 3)

And in another place:I tell you the truth, you will have to give a rea-son for every casual word you say to anyone.(Matthew 12:36)

We can all judge for ourselves what we would belike if we could live without any fear of the lawor for our life, and without external boundarieson our behavior such as the fear of damaging ourreputation and then losing status, money, andpleasure.


Still, if we are inwardly destructive the Lordwill put boundaries around our craziness so thatwe do not break out beyond the limits of useful-ness. Even when we are like this, every one of usprovides some useful function. Good spirits seein us what is bad, what our destructiveness islike, and what we will be like if we are not led bythe Lord. Also, by having our destructivenesscome out, people involved in similar bad thingsare gathered together and separated from goodpeople. Plus, the good and true things we hadmade an outward show of and pretended aretaken away from us, and we are brought into ourown destructive life, and the falsity that goeswith it. This is how we are prepared for hell.

We cannot get into hell until we are living outour own destructiveness and thinking our ownfalse thoughts. In the spiritual world, we are notallowed to have a divided mind by thinking andtalking one way while wanting something else. Ifwe are a bad person, we will think false thingsfrom that badness, and say what comes fromthese—both from our own motives, meaningfrom our real love, and from the happiness andpleasure we get from it. It is just as we were in


the world when we were in our own spirit,thinking within ourselves from our deeper feel-ings.

This is all true because our motivation is ourreal self, not our thinking—except when itcomes from our motives. Our motivation is ourreal personality and inner character. When weturn to our motivation, we turn to our real per-sonality and character, and also to our real life.We form our personality by the way we live.After death we keep the personality we hadacquired through our life in the world. If wehave formed a destructive personality, we can nolonger fix and change it through contemplationand understanding what is true.

If we are a bad person, we are punishedseverely and often in this second stage becausewe keep breaking out into all kinds of destruc-tive behavior. There are many different kinds ofpunishment in the spiritual world, and there isno consideration of what our status had been inthe world—high officials and menial laborers aretreated the same.

Every destructive action carries its own pen-alty with it; they are bound together. When we


become involved in any kind of destructivebehavior, we also become involved in its punish-ment.

However, in the spiritual world we are neverpunished for the bad things we had done in theworld. We are punished only for the bad thingswe do there. Yet it boils down to the same thingwhether you say we pay the penalty for the badthings we did in the world or we pay the penaltyfor the bad things we do in the other life. Wealways revert to our own real life after death—sowe revert to the same types of destructiveness.We have the same inner character that we had inour physical life.

We are punished for our bad behaviorbecause fear of punishment is the only way tocontrol destructive behavior at this stage. Warn-ings do not work anymore. Education does notwork anymore. Fear of the law and of a bad rep-utation does not work anymore. We act fromour own nature, which cannot be forced or bro-ken down except by punishment.

If we are good, however, we will never bepunished even if we have done bad things in theworld, since bad parts of us do not come back.


We are shown that the bad things we had donewere different, since we did not do them pur-posely to oppose the truth, or from a bad heart.It was simply what was passed on to us from ourparents, which we fell into from thoughtlesspleasure when we were engrossed in superficialthings and separated from our inner self.

After we die, we each go to our own commu-nity: the one we had been in spiritually while wewere in the world. We are each spiritually con-nected to some heavenly or hellish community.If we are bad, it is a hellish community. If we aregood, it is a heavenly one. Our spirit is led tothat community step by step, and finally wemove into it.

If we are bad, when we come to the stage ofour inner self we gradually turn toward our com-munity, and finally face directly toward it beforethis stage is over. When this stage is over, wethrow our own selves into a hell where there arespirits like us.

Good and bad spirits are separated in this sec-ond stage; they had been together in the firststage. When we are in the stage of our outer self,it is just like being in the world, so that good and


bad people are together with one another. It isdifferent when we move into our inner self andare left to our real character and motivation.

�People who have had Near Death Experiencesoften feel that a higher and deeper level ofhuman existence has been opened up to them.They no longer think that the material worldis the most important or even the most realpart of their existence. The spiritual level—thelevel of love and understanding—becomescentral to their lives.

This is exactly what happens to us when wereach the second stage after death as describedby Swedenborg. At first, we had lived the sameway we did in the world, with the same out-ward concerns. Now our inner self is graduallyopened up, and we realize that it is not ourbody and our outward actions that make ushuman, but our spirits and our inward loveand understanding. We recognize that thesehave been the real “us” all the way along. The

outer part was there simply so that we couldexpress what was inside.

However, if our outer expression does notcorrespond well with our real inner thoughtsand feelings, we have a sorting out process togo through until our outer self is in completeharmony with our inner self. In heaven, and inspiritual life, we are not allowed to have adivided mind or a divided life. Everything wedo must come from within, and be completelyexpressed outwardly. Only then can we be inthe kind of “flow state” that characterizes deep,full, human life. A contemporary author,Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, describes flow thisway:

“Flow” is the way people describe their state ofmind when consciousness is harmoniouslyordered, and they want to pursue whateverthey are doing for its own sake.1

Swedenborg was talking about this same stateof mind and spirit when he wrote:

Divine order is for the Lord to flow throughour inner levels into our outer levels, which

1. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csik-szentmihalyi. (New York: Harper Collins, 1990) p. 6.


means through our motives into our actions.This does happen when we are governed bygood—that is, when we are guided by a lovefor doing good for its own sake, and not forselfish reasons. When we do good for selfishreasons and not for its own sake, our inner lev-els are closed, and we cannot be led by theLord through heaven, but only by self. (ArcanaCoelestia #8513.2)

The key to this state of mind is that whateverwe are doing, we must be doing it for its ownsake, and not for some ulterior motive. If weare good to other people not simply for thesake of being good to them, but because wehope to get something from them in return,we have a divided self: our actions are express-ing something different from our feelings. Butif we are good to other people simply becausewe love being that way, we have a unified self:there is an uninterrupted flow from our lovethrough our understanding into our actions.And, Swedenborg would say, that flow comesinto our spirit from God, so that we are also atone with God.

We can fully experience life only when weare in this kind of flow state. In the spiritual

world, where everything inner flows into out-ward expression, we will sooner or later comeinto this flow state if we have chosen to loveand understand others. Our happiness willbecome their happiness, and there will bemutual harmony. A heavenly community isone where there is free, spontaneous flow oflove and understanding among all the mem-bers of the community.

If we have chosen to hate and misunder-stand others, our pleasure will be their pain;and in the clash of conflicting desires, we willonly sometimes be able to experience thedestructive kind of pleasure that we have cho-sen. In a hellish community, there is continualcompetition for possessions and for domi-nance; the “flow” is constantly broken. Insteadof flow, there is turbulence.

If we have chosen a spiritual path, we areheading in the direction of a flow state. But wehave a long way to go until we can be in thatflow state for any sustained period of time. Wehave too many inner conflicts that must beresolved first. The next stage of our process


after death—and of our spiritual path here onearth—is when we work toward that resolu-tion.

In the spiritual world, this sorting out andresolution is helped along by wise angels whoperceive what we are like, and help us to see it.

If we have been caught up in destructivebehavior even though we have a good heart,we may go through rough passages. If we clingto our destructive behavior we will be draggeddown with others who are caught up in thesame things until we realize in the “school ofhard knocks” that this is not how we reallywant to be.

There are parallels to both of these experi-ences in our life on earth. One of the besthelps along our spiritual journey is to find awell-trained and sympathetic counselor whocan help us understand our own thoughts,feelings, and actions, and work through themto a healthier way of living.

On the negative side, we may have to reapmany painful consequences from some of ourdestructive habits before we fully realize how


damaging they are, and resolve to leave thembehind. Beginning on a spiritual path may notimmediately make things better. In fact, it maybring on a crisis as our old, ingrained habitsfight back vigorously against the changes weare attempting to make. The path of spiritualgrowth is often a rocky one.

If we have resolved to follow a spiritual pathand overcome the obstacles in the way, how dowe go about making the changes that areneeded in our life?

First, for any spiritual path, we need a goal:an ideal of human life that we are movingtoward. We each have to determine this forourselves. But we can get help from peoplesuch as counselors or ministers who may serveas our spiritual guides; from sacred literature;and from secular literature dealing withhuman psychology and community.

From a spiritual perspective, the ultimategoal is God. In embarking on a spiritual path,we are beginning a journey toward God. Thusthe deeper and more universal our understand-ing of God is, the farther our spiritual path will


take us. If we put our sights on God, andalways allow our understanding of God dogrow, we will never reach a dead end on ourspiritual path—because God is infinite.

When we are mapping out a trip, we needto know not only where we are going but alsowhere we are right now in order to plan thebest route. We usually know where we arephysically, so finding the starting point on amap for a road trip is not hard. Spiritually,though, we may have very little concept ofwhere we are. So the next step is to take stockof our inner, spiritual self, and discover wherewe are so that we will know our starting point,and be able to start out on a route to our goal.

Those who have had a deep NDE thatincludes a life review have a head start on therest of us—especially if the being of lightguided them through the life review. But wecan take some guidelines from the being oflight in our own self-examination. What thebeing of light looks for with NDEers whenthey have a guided life review is times whenthe person has shown love to others, or failed


to show love, and times when the person haslearned new things, or failed to learn. Theseare the things we can look for in ourselveswhen we are determining where we are spiritu-ally right now.

Swedenborg gives some suggestions to helpus figure out what we really love to do. In thesection from Heaven and Hell that begins thischapter, he says:

We can all judge for ourselves what we wouldbe like if we could live without any fear of thelaw or for our life, and without externalboundaries to our behavior such as the fear ofdamaging our reputation and then losing sta-tus, money, and pleasure.

In other words, Swedenborg says, “Think whatyou would do if nothing whatever preventedyou from doing anything you wanted. Whatwould you do?” If we think carefully about thisquestion and clear away all the things we dobecause we have to or think we ought to, wewill begin to see what, underneath it all, wereally love. This can give us a starting point.


Another suggestion to help us figure outwhat we really love comes in the segment fromSwedenborg given in Chapter 2:

The main way to distinguish between goodand bad spirits is to notice what they payattention to. Bad spirits eagerly listen whenpeople talk about superficial matters, buthardly listen at all when the conversation isabout deeper things that have to do with spiri-tual and heavenly truth and goodness. They dolisten to these things, but with very little atten-tion or enjoyment.

What do our ears perk up for? What leaves usyawning? These are good indications of whereour real interest and love lies.

Some of the things we really love will begood. Others will not be so good. Our task forthe good ones is to bring them out more, andto be sure we are doing them for their ownsake, and not for some hidden motive thatblocks the flow. Our task for the not so goodones is to recognize them, confront them, andovercome them.

For Swedenborg, doing good things with-out resisting bad ones is meaningless. If we donot overcome the bad parts of ourselves, they


will always be there, tainting our seemingly“good” actions. We will do good things whenthey benefit us, or when we happen to feel likeit—not consistently and for the sake of thegood itself. This prevents us from entering aspiritual flow state.

Once we have recognized the areas wherewe need work, we need to confront them. Thismeans admitting that they are a part of our-selves and taking responsibility for them. Wemay see them in ourselves, but if we pass thebuck by blaming some outside person, group,event, or influence, we have not confrontedthem.

It is true that we have been influenced inmany ways by important people and experi-ences in our lives. We arrive at the beginningof spiritual maturity when, recognizing this,we still take responsibility for our own innerlife, and no longer pass the buck. It is like thetime of our lives when we first leave home andbegin supporting ourselves.

Along with the work of responsibility forourselves comes the power to change our own


lives for the better. Now that we recognize thatour spiritual and emotional life is in our ownhands, we can begin to put behind us the neg-ative habits that are blocking our path.

This is not something to do all by ourselves,but with the help of God, and of people wetrust. One goal of spiritual living is to buildcommunities based on mutual love and under-standing. By asking others for help, we beginto build this kind of community in the very actof healing ourselves spiritually.

The help we need may come from a counse-lor; it may come from a spouse, close friend, ortrusted family member; it may come from aminister or spiritual guide; and it always comesfrom God. With this help, we can put asideour negative and destructive habits and begin anew and more spiritual life. We will alwayshave shadows from our past life; but thoseshadows can be moved more and more to theedges of our life.

As we go through this process, we will beunifying our spirit, mind, and actions. We willbe clearing away everything that does not fit


with our deepest motives and deepest loves, sothat our words and actions will express our realthoughts and feelings. This is what is accom-plished during our second stage after death, asSwedenborg describes it.

It is also the longest stretch of our spiritualpath here on earth. If we recognize that this isnot a quick and easy process, but the work ofyears, we can avoid some of the discourage-ment of the long struggle. As long as we are onthe path, we are making progress, even thoughit may seem slow. God will give us periods ofrest along the way, and send us the people andexperiences we need at each step.

Eventually, there comes a time when thegreatest part of our struggle is over. We haveovercome the major spiritual obstacles withinus. We have come to a point where we knowwhat we want to do, we know how to do it,and we love doing it. This is the beginning ofthe more sustained flow state that we wereaiming for at the beginning. We still have workto do; the flow will not be unbroken. But wewill spend much of our time doing what we


love to do. This may happen here on earth, orit may happen in the spiritual world after wedie.

At this point, says Swedenborg, all that isleft for us to do before finding our permanentspiritual home is to shake off any remainingmisconceptions we had about spirit and life,and to learn any of the basics of spiritualitythat we may have missed along the way. Thatis what happens in the third and final stageafter death, near the end of our journey towardour spiritual home.

Our Third Stage After Death

Near Death Experiencers who meet the beingof light say that this being emphasizes love andlearning as the most important things in life.The love must come from within; but much ofour learning comes from the outside. Eventhough we may have gone far along the spiri-tual path, we may still be working under somemisconceptions about God and spirit. We maybe mistaken about some of the ideas we cher-ish.

As we go along in this life, if our heart is inthe right place, God will not force us to giveup mistaken notions that we love and see asguides. At some stages of our lives, certain mis-conceptions may even prod us farther alongthan we otherwise would have gone.

For example, some people seem to need tobelieve that God is angry with them for thewrong things they do, or they would not bemotivated to change their ways. But really,

OUR THIRD STAGE AFTER DEATH 95

Swedenborg says, God is never angry with us;God only allows it to appear that way if weneed to believe that for the time being.

Once we have overcome the bulk of ourdestructive side, though, we no longer have aneed to hold onto faulty beliefs about God andspirit. At that point we have also left behindthe ego that makes us cling to certain ideasbecause we think we understand things betterthan others. So we are ready to empty our-selves of everything remaining that does notcorrespond to our true love and motivation,and to learn what really does correspond tothem. This is what the final stage is for.


Learning the Ways of Heaven


Our third stage after death, when we are a spirit,is a learning stage. We go through this stage onlyif we are going to heaven and becoming anangel.

If we are headed toward hell we do not gothrough this stage because we cannot be taughtanything. In this case, our second stage is alsoour third. We are finished, since we have com-pletely turned ourselves toward our own love,and toward the hellish community that isinvolved in a similar love. When this has hap-pened we think and want things from what welove. Since our love is hellish, we are motivatedonly by destructive things, and everything wethink is false. This is what gives us pleasure,since these are the things we love. Because ofthis, we reject everything good and true that we


previously adopted because it had functioned asa means toward getting what we love.

If we are a good person, though, we are ledthrough the second stage into a third. In thisstage we are prepared for heaven by beingtaught. The only way we can be prepared forheaven is by knowing what is good and true,which means we must be taught. We cannotknow what is spiritually good and true, nor whatis destructive and false—their opposites—with-out being taught.

In the world, we can know what is legally andethically good and true, and is called right andhonest, because there are civil laws that teach uswhat is right. We also live among other people,so that we learn to live by ethical rules thatinvolve acting honestly and rightly. However, wedo not learn what is spiritually good and truefrom the world, but from heaven.

We could know these things from the Bibleand from the church’s teaching based on theBible. But these things cannot affect our lifeunless the deeper parts of our mind are inheaven. We are in heaven when we accept Godand also act rightly and honestly because that is


what the Bible tells us to do. This means livingrightly and honestly with the Divine as our goal,rather than being motivated by our own self andour worldly possessions.

We cannot act this way, though, until wehave been taught to do so. For example, we haveto be taught that there is a God, heaven and hell,and life after death; that we should love Godabove all else, and other people as much as welove ourselves; that we should believe what theBible teaches because the Bible is divine. With-out knowing and accepting these things, we can-not think spiritually. Without thinking aboutthem, we cannot be motivated by them, since wecannot think things we do not know about, andwe cannot want things we do not think.

When we do want these things, heaven flowsinto us, which means the Lord flows throughheaven into our lives. This flowing goes into ourmotivation, through that into our thinking, andthrough both of these into the way we live. Thisis where all our life comes from. We can see fromthis that we do not learn what is spiritually goodand true from the world, but from heaven—and


that we cannot possibly be prepared for heavenexcept by being taught.

As much as the Lord flows into our life, theLord teaches us, since our motivation is fired bya love for learning the truth. This enlightens ourthinking so that we can know the truth. And asmuch as this happens, our inner self is openedup, and heaven is planted in us.

Further, God and heaven flow into the hon-esty of an ethical life and the right living of alaw-abiding life, and make them spiritual. Wethen do what we do from God, since we aredoing it for God’s sake. The honest and rightthings we do in our ethical and community lifefrom that source are the real effects of spirituallife. Effects get their whole nature from whatcauses them. Whatever the cause is like, that iswhat the effect is like.

Angel teachers come from many differentcommunities. They come especially from thenorthern and southern regions of heaven, sincethese angelic communities have a great deal ofintelligence and wisdom from a knowledge ofwhat is good and true.


The places of learning are located in thenorthern areas. They vary, and are arranged anddistinguished by the various kinds of heavenlygood. We are all taught in a way that is appropri-ate to our personality, and at a level we can han-dle. These places of learning are spread out for agreat distance all around.

Those of us who become good spirits are ledthere by the Lord after we have gone throughour second stage in the World of Spirits, and areready to be taught.

Yet not all of us go there. If we have alreadylearned these things in the world, the Lord stillprepares us for heaven, but leads us there by adifferent path. We may go immediately after wedie. Or we may spend a short time with goodspirits while we get rid of some of the roughedges of our thoughts and feelings that we hadgotten from status and money in the world—sothat we become purified.

Some of us must first be purged, which hap-pens in a place called “the lower earth.” We mayhave to go through hard things there. This willhappen if we have convinced ourselves of falsethings, but have still lived a good life. False ideas


that we have convinced ourselves of cling to usstrongly. Before these false ideas are brokendown, we cannot see or accept the truth.

When we are in these places of learning, weeach live in our own home, since the inner self ofeach of us is connected to the community ofheaven where we will be going. Since the com-munities in heaven are arranged in a heavenlypattern, the places of learning are arranged thisway, too.

We are not all taught in the same way, or bypeople from the same heavenly community. Ifwe have been brought up in heaven from child-hood, we are taught by angels of the deeperheavens, since we have not gotten wrong ideasfrom false religion, nor have we dirtied our spiri-tual life with the contamination that comes fromstatus and money in the world. If we died asadults, we will usually be taught by angels fromthe lowest heaven, since these angels are closer toour level than angels of the deeper heavens.

Teaching in heaven is different from teachingon earth. There, we do not memorize informa-tion, but put it right into our life. As spirits, ourmemory is in our life. We accept and absorb


everything that is in harmony with our life anddo not accept, much less absorb, anything that isnot in harmony with our life. Spirits are feelings;so as spirits we are in a pattern that reflects ourfeelings. Since we are like this, we are alwaysfilled with a love for true ideas that we can use inour life. The Lord sees to it that each of us lovesthe kind of work that fits our personality. Thislove is also strengthened by the hope that we willbe angels.

Every useful activity in heaven relates to thegood of the community. The community is theLord’s realm, which is our country there. Themore each individual activity looks to the com-mon good, the better it is. This means that thecountless types of activity there are all heavenlyand good. Everyone loves both truth and usefulactivity, so that the two work together; ourunderstanding of truth grows in our useful activ-ities. The true ideas we learn are about how to beuseful. This is how we are taught as angelic spir-its, and prepared for heaven.

A love for the truth that suits our work isplanted in us in different ways, most of whichare unknown in the world. It happens especially


by visual images of useful activity. In the spiri-tual world these visual images are presented in athousand ways, all in such a pleasing and beauti-ful way that they pervade our being from thedeeper parts of our mind to the outer parts ofour body, touching our whole self. Through thisexperience we become our own occupation, soto speak. This means that when we reach thecommunity we have been introduced to by whatwe have learned, we are involved in our real lifebecause we are involved in our own work.

From all this we can see that knowledge,which is outward truth, does not bring us toheaven. We are brought into heaven by lifeitself—a life of useful activity that we enterthrough our knowledge.

It takes only a short time to prepare forheaven in the places of learning, since we arethinking in spiritual ideas, which can take inmany things at once. When our time there is fin-ished, we put on heavenly clothes, which areusually shining white as if made of linen. Thenwe are shown a path that goes up toward heaven.We are put in the care of angel guardians there,and then welcomed by other angels and invited


into different communities to take part in theirmany joys.

The Lord leads each of us into our own com-munity. We go along various paths, and some-times by a circuitous route. No angel knows thepath we are led by; only the Lord does. When wearrive at our own community, our deeper partsare opened up. Since our deeper parts are in har-mony with the angels in that community, theyrecognize us immediately, and welcome us withjoy.

�By the time we have reached this stage, we arebeyond memorization and rote learning. AsDannion Brinkley puts it in his book Saved bythe Light:

Now more than ever I knew that this was aplace of learning. I would be steeped in knowl-edge, taught in a way that I had never beentaught before. There would be no books andno memorization. In the presence of theseBeings of Light, I would become knowledgeand know everything that was important to


know. . . . It was like being a drop of waterbathed in the knowledge of the ocean, or abeam of light knowing what all light knows.1

In the spiritual world, we learn by direct expe-rience—and by putting the insights from ourexperience directly into our hearts and ourlives. When we are consciously being taught,this experience may come from visual imagespresented by angels. (It seems that what weknow as video and film has developed to amuch higher level in the spiritual world!) Brin-kley gives an especially vivid description of thetype of visual imagery the angels—or Beings ofLight, as he calls them—can use.

The Beings came at me one at a time. As eachone approached, a box the size of a videotapecame from its chest and zoomed right at myface.

The first time this happened I flinched,thinking I was going to be hit. But a momentbefore impact, the box opened to reveal whatappeared to be a tiny television picture of aworld event that was yet to happen. As I

1. Saved by the Light, by Dannion Brinkley. (New York: HarperCollins, 1994) p. 36.


watched, I felt myself drawn right into the pic-ture, where I was able to live the event.1

In the same chapter, called “The Boxes ofKnowledge,” Brinkley goes on to describe theimages he was shown. As both he and Sweden-borg say, it is not the type of learning thatrequires memorization, but the type that weexperience, and remember because of the com-pelling nature of the experience.

It is also the type of learning that goes to theheart of our own concerns. This means that itwill be different for each one of us. Both themethod and content of the teaching will varydepending on who we are.

We may or may not need this final learningphase in our own spiritual growth. If we havealready learned what we need to know alongthe way, and are not clinging to mistakenideas, we will pass directly to our spiritualhome. But most of us will still have things weneed to learn before we are fully prepared forthe spiritual work we will be doing in ourfuture life. Perhaps one of the reasons we slow

1. Saved by the Light, p. 37.


down physically at the end of our life on earthis so that we will take the time to observe lifearound us, and contemplate its meaning.

Of course, even after we have completedthis final learning phase, there will still bemany more things for us to learn. Knowledgeis infinite. The purpose of this learning phaseis to make sure our minds are pointed in theright direction—a direction that is in harmonywith our heart’s direction.

At last, we are received with joy into thecommunity that is our spiritual home. It is theplace where our heart has carried us—a placewhere we will find rest for our souls. Yet this isnot the rest of idleness. It is a rest in which weare doing the things we do because we love todo them. Though in one sense we may beworking very hard, in another sense everythingis an effortless, unhindered flow from God,through our soul, and into our outwardactions.

Conclusion

As the rock group The Police say in their songof the same title, “We are spirits in the materialworld.” While the hope of an afterlife certainlyfuels our fascination with Near Death Experi-ences, we miss much of their significance if wetake them only as interesting informationabout what will happen to us when we die.

Most of us have a number of years left inour lives here on earth before the afterlife willbecome a present reality for us. For us, thegreatest significance of NDEs—as well as Swe-denborg’s and others’ descriptions of the after-life—is in what they mean for us here andnow. If we think of the material world as anexpression of the spiritual world, descriptionsof a spiritual-world afterlife can take on thiskind of here-and-now meaning for us.

If we read accounts of NDEs simply out offascination for the descriptions of the spiritualworld, it will not necessarily touch our heart

CONCLUSION 109

and our life. But if we think of them as pat-terns for our life here, we are presented with adeep and lasting challenge. The Book of Reve-lation speaks of a city descending to earth fromheaven. The spiritual world provides a blue-print: a plan that we can use to build commu-nities based on mutual love and understandingright here on earth.

This community-building must start in thespirits of each one of us. By starting on a spiri-tual path and taking the steps described oneway in this book, and other ways in others, welay the foundations for the heavenly city inourselves. As each of us finds our own spiritualpath, we will also be reaching out to thosearound us and forming a spiritually-basedcommunity. This, I believe, is the direction weare being shown by those who have experi-enced the spiritual world, and come back totell us about it.

Further Reading

Basford, Terry K., Ed. Near-Death Experiences: AnAnnotated Bibliography. New York: Garland,1990.

Book of the Dead; The Egyptian Text. New York:Dover, 1967.

Brinkley, Dannion. Saved by the Light. New York:HarperCollins, 1994.

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology ofOptimal Experience. New York: HarperCollins,1990.

Dryden, S. H. Daisy Dryden: A Memoir. Boston:Colonial Press, 1909 (third edition).

Evans-Wentz, W. Y., Ed. The Tibetan Book of theDead. London: Oxford University Press, 1960.

Ford, Arthur. The Life Beyond Death. New York:Putnam, 1971.

Gallup, George, Jr. Adventures in Immortality: ALook Beyond the Threshold of Death. New York:McGraw Hill, 1982.

Grey, Margot. Return from Death: An Exploration ofthe Near-Death Experience. London: Arkana,1983.

FURTHER READING 111

Greyson, Bruce, and Charles P. Flynn, eds. TheNear-Death Experience: Problems, Prospects, Per-spectives. Springfield, IL: Charles Thomas,1984.

Grof, Stanislav, M.D., and Joan Halifax. TheHuman Encounter with Death. New York: E. P.Dutton, 1977.

Kavanaugh, Kieran, Ed. John of the Cross, SelectedWritings. New York: Paulist Press, 1987.

Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth, M.D. On Death andDying. New York: MacMillan, 1969.

Moody, Raymond, Jr., MD. Life After Life. NewYork: Bantam, 1975.

________. Life After Life (Video). Cascom Inter-national, 1992.

________. Reflections on Life After Life. New York:Bantam Books, 1977.

Morse, Melvin, M.D. Closer to the Light. NewYork: Ballantine, 1990.

Plato. Republic. New York: Random House, 1964.Rhodes, Leon S. “The NDE Enlarged by Sweden-

borg’s Vision.” Anabiosis Vol. 2, No. 1 (June1982), p. 15-35.

Ring, Kenneth. Heading Toward Omega: In Searchof the Near-Death Experience. New York: Mor-row, 1984.


________. Life at Death, A Scientific Investigationof the Near-Death Experience. New York, NY,Coward, McCann, and Geoghegan, 1980.

Ritchie, George G., M.D. Return from Tomorrow.New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell, 1978.

Sagan, Carl. Broca’s Brain. New York: RandomHouse, 1974.

Sigstedt, Cyriel Odhner. The Swedenborg Epic.London: Swedenborg Society, 1981.

“Silencing of Survival Instinct May Explain Near-Death After-Effects,” Brain/Mind: A Bulletin ofBreakthroughs, Vol. 20, No. 18 (May 1995),pp. 1, 6.

Swedenborg, Emanuel. Arcana Coelestia. London:Swedenborg Society, 1984–1995.

________. Heaven and Hell. New York: Sweden-borg Foundation, 1984.

________. The Heavenly City: A Spiritual Guide-book. West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Founda-tion, 1993.

________. Journal of Dreams. New York: Sweden-borg Foundation, 1977.

________. The True Christian Religion. London:Swedenborg Society, 1988.

Zaleski, Carol. Otherworld Journeys: Accounts ofNear-Death Experience in Medieval and ModernTimes. New York: Oxford University Press,1987.

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