an extent, since they are not in the Lord.  This is the reason why there are few at this day to whom it is given to speak and converse with angels; a manifest proof of which is, that at the present day it is scarcely believed that spirits and angels exist, and still less that they are present with every man, and that through them man has connection with heaven, and, through heaven, with the Lord; and that it is still less believed that a man, when he dies as to the body, lives a spirit, and in the human form as before.

124.  Since, with many in the church at the present day, there is no faith in a life after death, and scarcely any faith concerning heaven, nor concerning the Lord as being the God of heaven and earth, therefore the interiors that are of my spirit have been opened by the Lord, so that, while I am in the body, I might at the same time be with angels in heaven, and not only speak with them, but see the stupendous things there, and describe the same, lest possibly it might hereafter be said, Who has come to us from heaven, and told us of its existence, and of the things that are there?  But I know that those who hitherto have at heart denied heaven and hell, and the life after death, will still persist in confirming themselves against them, and in denying them; for it is easier to make a raven white than to make those believe who have once at heart rejected faith; the reason is, that they always think about such matters from a negative, and not from an affirmative, standpoint.  Nevertheless, let those facts that have already been stated, and that yet remain to be stated, concerning angels and spirits, be for those few who are in faith.  In order that others also may be led to some degree of acknowledgment, it has been granted me to relate such things as delight and allure the man who is desirous of acquiring knowledge:  of this character are the things that shall now be related concerning the earths in the starry heaven.

125.  He who is not acquainted with the arcana of heaven, cannot believe that a man can see earths that are so far distant, and give any account of them from sensuous experience.  But let him know that the spaces and distances, and therefore the progressions, which exist in the natural world, in their origin and first cause are changes of the state of the interiors, and that with angels and spirits they appear according to these changes[ss]; and that through changes of state they may be apparently translated from one place to another, and from one earth to another, even to earths which are at the end of the universe:  so likewise may man as to his spirit, his body still remaining in its own place.  This has been the case with me, since, by the Lord’s Divine mercy, it has been given to me to speak with spirits as a spirit, and at the same time with men as a man.  That a man, as to his spirit, can be translated in this manner, is inconceivable to the sensual man, since he is in space and in time, and measures his progressions according to them.