(67) AS OF the Lord’s Divine mercy it has been given me to know the internal meaning of the Word, in which are contained deepest arcana that have not before come to anyone’s knowledge, nor can come unless the nature of the other life is known (for very many things of the Word’s internal sense have regard to, describe, and involve those of that life), I am permitted to disclose what I have heard and seen during some years in which it has been granted me to be in the company of spirits and angels.

(68) I am well aware that many will say that no one can possibly speak with spirits and angels so long as he lives in the body; and many will say that it is all fancy, others that I relate such things in order to gain credence, and others will make other objections. But by all this I am not deterred, for I have seen, I have heard, I have felt.

(69) Man was so created by the Lord as to be able while living in the body to speak with spirits and angels, as in fact was done in the most ancient times; for, being a spirit clothed with a body, he is one with them. But because in process of time men so immersed themselves in corporeal and worldly things as to care almost nothing for aught besides, the way was closed. Yet as soon as the corporeal things recede in which man is immersed, the way is again opened, and he is among spirits, and in a common life with them.

(70) As it is permitted me to disclose what for several years I have heard and seen, it shall here be told, first, how the case is with man when he is being resuscitated; or how he enters from the life of the body into the life of eternity. In order that I might know that men live after death, it has been given me to speak and be in company with many who were known to me during their life in the body; and this not merely for a day or a week, but for months, and almost a year, speaking and associating with them just as in this world. They wondered exceedingly that while they lived in the body they were, and that very many others are, in such incredulity as to believe that they will not live after death; when in fact scarcely a day intervenes after the death of the body before they are in the other life; for death is a continuation of life.

(71) But as these matters would be scattered and disconnected if inserted among those contained in the text of the Word, it is permitted, of the Lord’s Divine mercy, to append them in some order, at the beginning and end of each chapter; besides those which are introduced incidentally.

(72) At the end of this chapter, accordingly, I am allowed to tell how man is raised from the dead and enters into the life of eternity.

CHAPTER 2 1. And the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the army of them. 2. And on the seventh day God finished His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. 3. And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it, because that in it He rested from all His work which God in making created. 4. These are the nativities of the heavens and of the earth when He created them, in the day in which Jehovah God made the earth and the heavens. 5. And there was no shrub of the field as yet in the earth, and there was no herb of the field as yet growing, because Jehovah God had not caused it to rain upon the earth. And there was no man to till the ground. 6. And He made a mist to ascend from the earth, and watered all the faces of the ground. 7. And Jehovah God formed man, dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives, and man became a living soul. 8. And Jehovah God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. 9. And out of the ground made Jehovah God to grow every tree desirable to behold, and good for food; the tree of lives also, in the midst of the garden; and the tree of t