441.  As to being carried away by the spirit to another place, I have been shown by living experience what it is, and how it is done, but only two or three times.  I will relate a single instance.  Walking through the streets of a city and through fields, talking at the same time with spirits, I knew no otherwise than that I was fully awake, and in possession of my usual sight.  Thus I walked on without going astray, and all the while with clear vision, seeing groves, rivers, palaces, houses, men, and other objects.  But after walking thus for some hours, suddenly I saw with my bodily eyes, and noted that I was in another place.  Being greatly astonished I perceived that I had been in the same state as those who were said to have been led away by the spirit into another place.  For in this state the distance, even though it be many miles, and the time, though it be many hours or days, are not thought of; neither is there any feeling of fatigue; and one is led unerringly through ways of which he himself is ignorant, even to the destined place.

442.  But these two states of man, which are his states when he is in his interiors, or what is the same, when he is in the spirit, are extraordinary; but as they are states known about in the church, they were exhibited to me only that I might know what they are.  But it has been granted to me now for many years to speak with spirits and to be with them as one of them, even in full wakefulness of the body.

443.  That in respect to his interiors man is a spirit there are further evidences in what has been said and shown above (n. 311-317), where it is explained that heaven and hell are from the human race.

444.  That man is a spirit in respect to his interiors means in respect to the things pertaining to his thought and will, for these are the interiors themselves that make man to be man, and such a man as he is in respect to these interiors.

445.  XLVI.  The resuscitation of man from the dead and his entrance into eternal life.

When the body is no longer able to perform the bodily functions in the natural world that correspond to the spirit’s thoughts and affections, which the spirit has from the spiritual world, man is said to die.  This takes place when the respiration of the lungs and the beatings of the heart cease.  But the man does not die; he is merely separated from the bodily part that was of use to him in the world, while the man himself continues to live.  It is said that the man himself continues to live since man is not a man because of his body but because of his spirit, for it is the spirit that thinks in man, and thought with affection is what constitutes man.  Evidently, then, the death of man is merely his passing from one world into another.  And this is why in the Word in its internal sense “death” signifies resurrection and continuation of life.{1}