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The interiors of my spirit have been opened by the Lord, and thus have I been permitted to converse with all whom I have ever known in the life of the body, after their decease; with some for days, with some for months, and with some for a year; many of whom were in the heavens and many in the hells.

I have also conversed with some two days after their decease, and have told them that preparations were now being made for their interment. They replied, that their friends did well to reject that which had served them for a body and its uses in the world. And they wished me to say that they were not dead but alive, being men now just the same as before, and that they had only migrated from one world to another; and that they were not conscious of having lost anything, since they were in a body and in the possession of bodily senses as before, and in the enjoyment of understanding and will as before; and that they had thoughts, affections, sensations and desires similar to those which they had in the world.

Most of those recently deceased, when they saw that they were still alive and men as before, and in a similar state (for after death every one's state of life is at first such as it had been in the world), were affected with new joy at being alive, and declared that they had not believed this.

But they wondered very much that they should have