(ii) Man after death continues to eternity such as his will or
ruling love is. This, too, has been confirmed by abundant experience.
I have been permitted to talk with some who lived two thousand years
ago, and whose lives are described in history, and thus known; and I
found that they continued to be just the same as they were described,
that is, in respect to the love out of which and according to which
their lives were formed. There were others known to history, that had
lived seventeen centuries ago, others that had lived four centuries
ago, and three, and so on, with whom I was permitted to talk; and I
found that the same affection still ruled in them, with no other
difference than that the delights of their love were turned into such
things as correspond. The angels declare that the life of the ruling
love is never changed in any one even to eternity, since everyone is
his love; consequently to change that love in a spirit is to take
away or extinguish his life; and for the reason that man after death
is no longer capable of being reformed by instruction, as in the
world, because the outmost plane, which consists of natural
knowledges and affections, is then quiescent and not being spiritual
cannot be opened (see above, n.
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