5721. 1After death people become such as they have lived, and they are in a human form
That a person is his own goodness and his own truth is demonstrated by the obedience of the body and its unanimous agreement with the person's spiritual world, which is to say, with his will and understanding. This is actually seen: as for example, when a person wills [something], the body acts; and when a person thinks, the person also speaks with all the body's organs, and the face as well, so much so that the will itself appears as if it were in the body: as when the hand acts, it is as if the will is in the hand; when the mouth speaks, it is not the thought, but the mouth with its organs, and so with the rest. Consequently a person's will is everywhere in the body and does not sit as it were in one place, although it is principally in the brain. From this is clear what the body is: it is only the will and the understanding in a form. Why not the spirit, which is the person after death? This person is more, that is to say, [more than] a faculty of will and understanding. For a spirit is nothing other than in a form, which form, also, is human, because all of heaven and all that is Divine is from a form like this and in a form like this. And since a person has a form like this in the world, still more must he when he becomes a spirit. Consequently a spirit appears entirely according to his love, thus to the will, or to his inward qualities. From this is clear that a person's life forms the nature his spirit, and that the way a person lives is the way a person wills and understanding things, for everything of a person's life relates to these two, and proceeds from these two.
Footnotes:
1. Following the author's instruction in the manuscript, we have inserted 5720 here, and numbered it as 5721 in the online version.
5721. 11It was moreover stated respecting those in Stockholm, that they care for nothing except to hear what happens in the city and outside the city; as, for example, who was with me, whether a thing is still so and so, but nothing at all about doctrinals, [even] what they are. They allied themselves with those who were merely natural and material, although they knew that they were devils. They do this, walking about in the streets and markets, and ridicule all things; thus, there is nothing of the Church and of heaven with them. They are almost all of such a disposition that they want to lead and rule others: this is fixed in them. I saw the vastation of a part of Stockholm. The left side of the new street 2was entirely destroyed, so that there was no longer a single house, but only a waste; also a part in Sodermalm, at the farther side there, right up to the houses nearer to mine; and everyone was cast forth according to his nature.
Footnotes:
1. No. 5721 is placed after no. 5719, in compliance with the instructions conveyed by the Author's asterisks, which are reproduced. -TR.
2. Swedish nygatan; - see n, 5711, above.
5721. # 1
Dicebatur porro de illis in Stockholmia quod nihil curent praeter audire quid fit intra urbem et extra urbem, ut quinam apud me, num adhuc ita sit, sed prorsus nihil de doctrinalibus, quid illa, se alligabant illis qui mere naturales et materiales erant, tametsi sciebant quod essent diaboli, ambulare in plateis et foris hoc faciunt, et videre omnia, sic nihil quod est Ecclesiae et coeli, omnes fere eo animo sunt, ut ducere alios vellent, et imperare, hoc insidet. - Vidi vastationem partis Stockholmiae, sinistra pars plateae Nygatan prorsus destruebatur, ut amplius nulla domus sed solum vastum, etiam pars in Sodermalm a parte remotiore ibi usque ad domos propiores ad me, et conjecti quisque secundum suam naturam.
Footnotes:
1. conformiter auctoris indicio in ms. 5721 huc inseruimus