The material form that is added and superinduced in the world, is not a human form by itself, but only by virtue of the spiritual form, to which it is added and superinduced that man may be enabled to perform uses in the natural world, and also to draw to himself out of the purer substances of the world a fixed containant of spiritual things, and thus continue and perpetuate life.  It is a truth of angelic wisdom that man’s mind, not alone in general, but in every particular, is in a perpetual conatus toward the human form, for the reason that God is a Man.

389.  That man may be man there must be no part lacking, either in head or in body, that has existence in the complete man; since there is nothing therein that does not enter into the human form and constitute it; for it is the form of love and wisdom, and this, in itself considered, is Divine.  In it are all terminations of love and wisdom, which in God-Man are infinite, but in His image, that is, in man, angel, or spirit, are finite.  If any part that has existence in man were lacking, there would be lacking something of termination from the love and wisdom corresponding to it, whereby the Lord might be from firsts in outmosts with man, and might from His Divine Love through His Divine Wisdom provide uses in the created world.

390. (7) The conjunction of man’s spirit with his body is by means of the correspondence of his will and understanding with his heart and lungs, and their separation is from non- correspondence.  As it has heretofore been unknown that man’s mind, by which is meant the will and understanding, is his spirit, and that the spirit is a man; and as it has been unknown that man’s spirit, as well as his body, has a pulse and respiration, it could not be known that the pulse and respiration of the spirit in man flow into the pulse and respiration of his body and produce them.  Since, then, man’s spirit, as well as his body, enjoys a pulse and respiration, it follows that there is a like correspondence of the pulse and respiration of man’s spirit with the pulse and respiration of his body, — for, as was said, his mind is his spirit, — consequently, when the two pairs of motions cease to correspond, separation takes place, which is death.  Separation or death ensues when from any kind of disease or accident the body comes into such a state as to be unable to act in unison with its spirit, for thus correspondence perishes, and with it conjunction; not, however, when respiration alone ceases, but when the heart’s pulsation ceases.  For so long as the heart is moved, love with its vital heat remains and preserves life, as is evident in cases of swoon and suffocation, and in the condition of fetal life in the womb.  In a word, man’s bodily life depends on the correspondence of its pulse and respiration with the pulse and respiration of his spirit; and when that correspondence ceases, the bodily life ceases, and his spirit departs and continues its life in the spiritual world, which is so similar to his life in the natural world that he does not know that he has died.  Men generally enter the spiritual world two days after the death of the body.  For I have spoken with some after two days.