Page:The Other Life.djvu/55

 tion is a condition or state of that spiritual body although we now refer them to the natural. It is through our spiritual bodies that we are brought into contact with spirits, with heavenly or infernal powers. Our affections and thoughts communicate, although we are not conscious of it, with the spheres of affection and thought which exist in the spiritual world. Our spiritual body is already an unconscious, invisible member of some society in heaven or hell. It is indeed continually moving or changing its place in the spiritual world, according to our interior changes of thought and affection, of conduct and life. Our spiritual senses are ordinarily closed during our earthly sojourn, and we are unconscious of this interior or double life. At death our natural senses are closed or perish, and we enter consciously into the senses of the spiritual body and upon the purely spiritual life; or rather the spiritual senses (previously closed) are then opened.

It is because our natural and spiritual bodies exist one within the other, that our spiritual senses may be opened into the spiritual world, and we may see, hear and converse with spirits and angels while still living on the earth. This fact not only renders the state of Swedenborg clear to the mind,