6468. Spirits fresh from the world, before they have been instructed by angels, believe no otherwise than that the all of life is in the man himself, and that nothing flows in; because they know nothing in particular about heaven, thus neither about influx thence. Neither are spirits who are not good willing to be instructed in these things, for they desire to live from themselves; and they have said that I had no life, because they had heard me say that I do not live from myself, and that I know this by continual experience; but to this they were unwilling to attend. It was further given to say, that everyone has life in accordance with the form of the interiors which he has acquired by willing and acting, thinking and speaking.
[2] I afterward spoke with good spirits about the influx of life from the Lord, that it flows into all, and that this is evident from heaven, in that heaven resembles a man, and is therefore called the Grand Man (of which, and of the correspondence therewith of all things in man, I have already treated at the end of a number of chapters), and that this could not possibly be unless life from the Lord flowed into heaven in general, and into each one there in particular.
[3] It was further said that this is evident from the fact that the universal heaven has reference to the Lord, and that the Lord is there the center of all the looks, they who are in heaven looking upward to Him, and they who are in hell looking downward from Him. For the Lord appears to those who are in the heavens as a sun above them. It was further said that it is evident that the all of life is from the Lord from this fact also, that the soul of man can in the womb so wonderfully form a body, and its manifold members and organs in such a connection, and its interiors according to the image of heaven: this could not possibly be done unless all life were from the Lord, and unless heaven were such as has been described.