3894. It was said above (n. 3892), that the respirations of angels and spirits are altogether according to their states of love and of the derivative faith. Hence one society does not respire in the same manner as another; and the evil, who are in the love of self and of the world, and thereby in what is false, cannot abide in company with the good; but when they come near them they seem to themselves unable to breathe, and as it were to be suffocated; in consequence whereof they fall down like persons half dead, or like stones, even into hell, where they again receive their respiration, which they have in common with those who are there. From this we can see that they who are in evil and falsity cannot be in the Grand Man, or in heaven; for when on their approaching it their respiration begins to cease, all their observation and thought also cease, and likewise all their endeavor to do what is evil and to persuade what is false; and together with the endeavor there perish all their action and vital motion, so that they can do no otherwise than cast themselves down headlong thence.

3894a. Because this is so, and because the well-disposed on their entrance into the other life are first remitted into the life which they had in the world (see n. 2119), thus also into the loves and pleasures of that life, therefore they cannot as yet, before they are prepared, be in fellowship with angels, even as to respiration. For this reason, when they are being prepared, they are first inaugurated into angelic life by concordant respirations, and then they come at the same time into interior perceptions and into heavenly freedom. This is effected in a society of many, or in choirs, in which the one respires in the same way as the others and also perceives in the same way, and in the same way acts from freedom. How this is effected has also been shown me to the life.