The Planets in the Universe

The Earthlike Bodies Called Planets in Our Solar System and in Deep Space, Their Inhabitants, and the Spirits and Angels There, Drawn from Things Heard and Seen

1. By the Lord’s ¹ divine mercy the deeper levels within me, which belong to my spirit, have been opened, enabling me to talk with spirits and angels ² -not only those near our world, but also those close to other planets. Because I have had a longing to know whether there are other worlds, what they are like, and what their inhabitants are like, the Lord has granted me opportunities to talk and interact with spirits and angels from other planets. With some of them I spent all day, with others a full week, and with still others months on end. I learned from them about the planets they came from and are close to now, about the life, customs, and worship of the inhabitants of those planets, and various other noteworthy details about them. Since it has been granted to me to know such things in this way, I am in a position to offer descriptions based on things I myself have heard and seen. ³

[2] It is important to know that all spirits and angels are human ⁴ and that they remain close to their planet of origin. ⁵ They know what is happening on that planet; and any people whose deeper levels have been opened to the point where they can talk and interact with spirits and angels can learn such things from those spirits and angels. After all, in our essence we too are spirits; ⁶ and in our deeper levels we are already among other spirits. ⁷ So anyone whose deeper levels have been opened by the Lord can talk with spirits and angels the way people talk with each other. ⁸ For twelve years now, this has been granted to me daily. ⁹

Footnotes:

3633. To themselves all spirits and angels look like men and women, having the same kind of faces and bodies as men and women do, together with organs and limbs. The reason for this is that their inmost being endeavours to produce that form, even as the primitive cell of the human being, which originates in the soul of the parent, strives in the ovum and womb to form the complete human being, though this first cell does not possess the form of a body but another most perfect form known only to the Lord. And because in a similar way the inmost being with every spirit or angel endeavours and strives to produce such a form, all in the spiritual world consequently look like men and women. What is more, the whole of heaven is such that every one is so to speak the focal point of all, for he is the focal point of influxes coming through the heavenly form from all. Consequently the image of heaven is reproduced in everyone, making him a likeness of heaven and so a human being; for the character of the general whole determines that of any part of the general whole, since the parts must be like their general whole if they are to belong to it.

453. After Death, We Are in a Complete Human Form

The fact that the form of a spirit-person is the human form or that a spirit is a person as far as form is concerned follows from what has been presented in a number of the earlier chapters, especially where I explained that every angel is in a perfect human form (73-77), that everyone is a spirit inwardly (432-444), and that the angels in heaven are from the human race (311-317).

[2] This may be grasped even more clearly from the fact that we are human because of our spirit, not because of our body, and because our physical form is appended to the spirit in keeping with its form, not the other way around, since a spirit is clothed with a body that suits its form. As a result, the human spirit acts upon the individual parts of the body, even the smallest ones, even to the point that any part that is not activated by the spirit, any part in which there is no spirit acting, is not alive. Anyone may realize this by considering that thought and intent activate absolutely everything in the body and are so completely in control that nothing dissents, and that if anything does not consent it is not part of the body. It is actually expelled as something with no life in it. Thought and intent are attributes of our spirit, not of the body.

[3] The reason we cannot see the human form of spirits who have left the body and spirits still within the people we meet is that our physical organ of sight, the eye, is material to the extent that it can see in this world, and what is material sees only what is material. What is spiritual, though, does see what is spiritual; so when the material eye is covered over and loses its coordination with the spirit, then spirit is visible in its own form. This is a human form not only for spirits who are in the spiritual world but also for spirits in people we meet while they are still in their bodies.