“
When someone's body
can no longer perform its functions in the natural world
in response to the thoughts and affections of its spirit
(which it derives from the spiritual world),
then we say that the individual has died.
This happens when the lungs’ breathing
and the heart's systolic motion have ceased.
The person, though, has not died at all.
We are only separated from the physical nature
that was useful to us in the world.
The essential person is actually still alive.
I say that the essential person is still alive
because we are not people because of our bodies
but because of our spirits.
After all, it is the spirit within us that thinks,
and thought and affection together
“
make us the people we are.
We can see, then, that when we die
we simply move from one world into another.
This is why in the inner meaning of the Word,
“death” means resurrection
and a continuation of life.
EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
VOLUME II | 47