250 HEAVEN and HELL §433
433 Since everything that is alive in the body—everything that acts and
feels because of life—belongs to the spirit alone and none of it belongs
to the body, it follows that the spirit is the actual person. In other words,
we are essentially spirits and have much the same form as well. You see,
everything that is alive and sensitive within us belongs to our spirit, and
there is nothing in us, from head to toe, that is not alive and sensitive.
This is why when our bodies are separated from our spirits, which is
called dying, we still continue to be human and to be alive.
I have heard from heaven that some dead people—while they are lying
on the funeral bier, before they have been revived [in the life after death]—
are still thinking in their cold bodies, and cannot help but feel that they
are alive, but with the difference that they cannot move a single part of the
matter that makes up their bodies.434 We could not think or intend if there were nothing supporting our
thought and will—some substance to serve as the source and focal point
of thought and intent. Anything we may imagine happening apart from
a substantial agent is nothing. We can tell this from the fact that we
could not see without an organ serving as the agent of our sight or hear
without an organ as the agent of our hearing. Apart from these, sight
and hearing would be nothing, would not exist. The same holds true
for thought, which is inner sight, and for attention, which is inner hear-
ing. Unless these happened in and from agents that are organic forms, as
subjects, they would not happen at all. We may gather from this that our
spirit is also in a form and that it is in human form, that it enjoys sensory
organs and senses when it is separated from the body just as it did when
it was in it. We may gather that all of the eye’s life, all of the ear’s life, in
fact all of our sensory life belongs not to the body but to the spirit that
is in these functions and even in their least details. This is why spirits see
and hear and feel just as much as we do, though after we have left the
body this does not happen in the natural world but in the spiritual one.
The reason the spirit was sensitive on the natural level when it was in the
body is that it worked through the material part that was appended to it.
However, it was still spiritually sensitive in its thinking and intending.
435 I have presented this to convince rational people that, seen in our
own right, we are spirits, and that the physical nature appended to us
so that we can function in the natural and material world is not the real
person but only the tool of our spirit.
But some supporting instances from experience would be better,
because rational arguments are beyond many people, and the ones who
have convinced themselves of opposite opinions make these arguments
grounds for their skepticism by arguing on the basis of sensory illusions.