6054. As regards the soul of which it is said that it will live after death, it is nothing else than the man himself who lives within the body, that is, the interior man who in this world acts through the body, and who causes the body to live. This man, when loosed from the body, is called a spirit, and then appears in a complete human form; yet he cannot possibly be seen with the eyes of the body, but only with the eyes of the spirit; and before the eyes of the latter he appears like a man in this world; he has senses (namely, touch, smell, hearing, sight) much more exquisite than in this world; he has appetites, cupidities, desires, affections, loves, such as there are in this world, but in a more surpassing degree; he also thinks as in this world, but more perfectly; he converses with others; in a word, he is there just as he had been in this world, insomuch that if he does not reflect upon being in the other life, he knows no otherwise than that he is in this world (as I have sometimes heard spirits say), for the life after death is a continuation of the life in this world. This then is the soul of man which lives after death.
[2] But lest in consequence of the conjectures and hypotheses about it, the word "soul" should give rise to the idea of the unknown, it is better to say man's "spirit," or if you prefer it, the "interior man," for the spirit appears there exactly like a man, with all the members and organs belonging to a man, and moreover is the man himself, even in the body. That this is so, is also evident from the angels that have been seen, as recorded in the Word, who were all seen in the human form; for all the angels in heaven have the human form, because the Lord has it, who after His resurrection appeared so many times as a man. That an angel, as well as the spirit of man, is in form a man, is because the universal heaven has from the Lord the capacity of conspiring into the human form, whence the universal heaven is called the Grand Man of which, and also of the correspondence of all things of man therewith, I have treated at the close of many chapters. And as the Lord lives in each one in heaven; and as by influx from the Lord the universal heaven acts into each one, therefore every angel is an image thereof, that is, is a form most perfectly human, and so in like manner is a man after death.
[3] All the spirits I have seen, who are thousands and thousands, have appeared to me exactly like men; and some of them have said that they are men just as in the world, and they added that in the life of the body they had never believed that it would be so. Many were sad because of the ignorance of men about their state after death; and because they think so inanely and emptily about the soul; and because most persons who have thought more deeply on the subject have supposed the soul to be a kind of thin air, which idea must needs lead into the insane error that it is dissipated after death.
