Emanuel Swedenborg: The Essential Person

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.

Emanuel Swedenborg:

AFTERLIFE: A GUIDED TOUR OF HEAVEN AND ITS WONDERS