127. THE FIRST EARTH IN THE STARRY HEAVEN, ITS SPIRITS AND INHABITANTS; FROM THINGS HEARD AND SEEN.
I was led by the Lord by means of angels to a certain earth in the starry heaven, where it was given me to look into the earth itself, yet not to speak with the inhabitants there, but with the spirits who were from it. All the inhabitants or men of every earth, after the life in the world is finished, become spirits, and remain near their own earth. From these spirits, however, information is given about their earth, and about the state of the inhabitants there; for men who leave the body bring with them all their former life, and all their memory.# To be led to earths in the universe is not to be led and transferred thither as to the body, but as to the spirit; and the spirit is led by variations of the state of the interior life, which appear to it as progressions through space.## Approaches also are made according to agreements or similarities of states of life; for agreement or similarity of life conjoined disagreement and dissimilarity disjoin. From this mite be evident how transference is made as to the spirit, and approach to what is distant, the man still remaining in his place. But to lead the spirit beyond its own world by variations of the state of its interiors, and to make the variations advance successively even to a state agreeing with or similar to that of those to whom it is led, is in the power of the Lord alone. For there must be continual direction and foresight from first to last, in going and returning; especially with a man who is still in the world of nature as to the body, and thereby in space. That this has been done, those who are in the bodily senses and think from them, cannot be induced to believe, for the reason that what is of bodily sense cannot comprehend progressions without space. But still they who think from the sense of their spirit, somewhat removed or withdrawn from the sense of the body, thus interiorly in themselves, may be led to believe and to comprehend; since in the idea of the interior thought there is not space nor time, but instead thereof those things from which spaces and times exist. It is for such persons that what follows concerning the earths in the starry heaven is related, and not for others, unless they will suffer themselves to be instructed.
# Man after death retains the memory of all his affairs in the world (n. 2476-2486).
## Movements, progressions, and changes of place in the other life are changes of state of the interiors of the life, and still they appear to spirits and angels as real changes of place (n. 1273-1277, 1377, 3356, 5605, 10,734).
