of spirits, the resurrection of the dead and their living among spirits, and these being able to see and hear by means of a man.  When my interior sight was first opened, and when those who are in the other life saw through my eyes the world and the things therein, they were so amazed that they called it the miracle of miracles, and were affected with new joy that there was thus granted a communication of the Earth with heaven, and of heaven with the Earth.  This joy continued for months; but afterwards it became familiar, and now the wonder has ceased.  I have been informed that the spirits and angels with other men do not in the least see the things in the world, but only perceive the thoughts and affections of those with whom they are.  From all this it may appear, that man was so created that, while living amongst men in the world, he might at the same time live in heaven amongst angels, and contrariwise, so that heaven and the world might be together with man, and act as a one, and that men might know what passes in heaven, and angels what passes in the world; and that when men depart this life, they might pass thus from the Lord’s kingdom on earth into His kingdom in the heavens, not as into another, but as into the same kingdom, in which they had been during their life in the body.  But as man has become so corporeal, he has closed heaven against himself.

136.  Lastly, I conversed with spirits who were from that earth concerning various things on our Earth, especially concerning the fact that sciences are cultivated here, which are not cultivated elsewhere, such as astronomy, geometry, mechanics, physics, chemistry, medicine, optics, and natural philosophy; and likewise arts, which are unknown elsewhere, as the arts of ship-building, of smelting metals, of writing on paper, and likewise of publishing by printing, and thus of communicating with others on the Earth, and thus also of preserving what is communicated for the use of posterity for thousands of years; and that this has been done also with the Word which is from the Lord, and that on this account revelation is for ever permanent on our Earth.

137.  At last I was shown the hell of those who are from that earth.  Those who appeared from there inspired great terror.  I dare not describe their monstrous faces.  Sorceresses also appeared there, who practise nefarious arts.  They appeared clad in green, and struck me with horror.

THE SECOND EARTH IN THE STARRY HEAVEN, AND ITS SPIRITS AND INHABITANTS.

138.  I was afterwards led by the Lord to an earth in the universe which was at a much greater distance from our Earth than the first one that has just been treated of.  That it was at a much greater distance, was plain from this circumstance, that I was two days in being led thither as to my spirit.  This earth was to the left, whereas the former was to the right.  As remoteness in the spiritual world does not, as