4687. After death, he comes into a community of such spirits. How things happen with him below was not seen. (There are also some who are in heaven, high above the earth.)
Before death, no one is allowed to be with half of the body above the earth and half below the earth. It must be either above the loins or below the loins, where the love in general is. If the loins are below, it is the same if it [the love] stands above the rest of the body, and so on.
[2] When a person is about to die, he nods his head and finally falls. His life's progress appears as a gradually deeper descent.
4687. After death, he comes into the society of such spirits. How it happens with him, beneath, was not seen. (There are also some who are in heaven, high above the earth.) It is not permitted to anyone, before death, to be with half of his body above the earth, and half below the earth. This [the earth spoken of 1] must [after death] be either above the loins or below the loins. Love in general is there, if the loins are below; just as it is if he stands with the rest of the body above, and so forth. When about to die, he droops his head, and at last falls. The progression of his life appears by his descending more deeply by degrees.
Footnotes:
1. The Latin has the neuter form (hoc), which points to corpus, likewise neuter, as the antecedent; but the exigencies of the sense, and the construction of the sentence in the Latin, go to show that the Latin editor must have misread Swedenborg's manuscript, which, doubtless, had haec (fem.), pointing to terra as its antecedent.
4687. Post mortem in talium spirituum societatem venit. Quomodo infra cum illo fit, non visum est. (Sunt etiam quidam qui in coelo sunt alte supra terram.) Non licet alicui ante mortem medio corpore esse supra terram et medio infra terram, hoc sive erit supra lumbos, sive infra lumbos, ibi est amor in communi, si lumbi infra, perinde est si stet supra reliquo corpore, et sic porro.
[2] Cum moriturus est, nutat capite, et tandem cadit. Vitae ejus progressio apparet per quod profundius per gradus descendat.