172 HEAVEN and HELL §312
c. Not many people in today’s Christianity believe that we will rise again immediately after death:
Genesis 16 preface, 4622 , 10758 ; but only at the time of the Last Judgment, when the visible
world will perish: 10594 [ 10595 ]. The reason for this belief: 10594 [ 10595 ], 10758. The fact is,
though, that we do rise again immediately after death, and are then completely human in all
respects: 4527 , 5006 , 5078 , 8939 , 8991 , 10594 , 10758. The soul that lives after death is our spirit,
which is the essential person within us and is in a perfect human form in the other life as well:
322 , 1880 , 1881 , 3633 , 4622 , 4735 , 5883 , 6054 , 6605 , 6626 , 7021 , 10594 ; from experience: 4527 ,
5006 , 8939 ; from the Word: 10597. An explanation of the meaning of the dead who were seen in
the holy city in Matthew 27 : 53 : 9229. How we are revived from death, from experience: 168 – 189.
Our state after we have been revived: 317 , 318 , 319 , 2119 , 5079 , 10596. False notions about the soul
and its resurrection: 444 , 445 , 4527 , 4622 , 4658.
d. The spiritual world and the natural world are united in us: 6057. The inner person is formed
on the model of heaven, while the outer is formed on the model of the world: 3628 , 4523 , 4524 ,
6057 , 6314 [ 6013 ], 9706 , 10156 , 10472.been in such ignorance and blindness about the state of life after death,
all the more so that this is true of people within the church, who could
be in more light about such matters than all the rest of the whole world.c
Now for the fi rst time they were seeing the reason for this blindness and
ignorance, namely, that their outward concerns, their concerns for
worldly and bodily matters, preoccupied and fi lled their minds so com-
pletely that they could not be raised into heaven’s light and look into
ecclesiastical subjects beyond the formalities of doctrine. When bodily
and worldly matters are loved as much as they are today, nothing fl ows
in from them but darkness when the mind tries to press further.313 Many of the scholars of the Christian world are dumbfounded when
they fi nd themselves after death in bodies, wearing clothes, and in houses
the way they were in this world. When they call to mind what they had
thought about life after death, the soul, spirits, and heaven and hell, they
are embarrassed and say that they had been thinking nonsense. They say
that people of simple faith had been far wiser than they. Some scholars
were examined who had completely convinced themselves in this kind of
belief and attributed everything to nature. It turned out that their inner
natures were completely closed off, while their more outward natures were
open. This meant that they were not looking toward heaven but toward
the world, and therefore toward hell; for to the extent that our deeper
natures are opened, we look toward heaven, while to the extent that they
are closed and our more outward natures are open, we look toward hell.
Our deeper levels are formed for the acceptance of heaven and our more
outward ones for acceptance of the world; and if we accept the world
without accepting heaven at the same time, we are accepting hell.d