792. SUPPLEMENT ¹ I wrote a special book about the spiritual world called HEAVEN AND HELL, containing descriptions of many things in that world. Since every human being after death comes into that world, I also described the condition of people there. Everyone knows, or can know, that a person goes on living after death, because he is born a man, created an image of God, and because the Lord teaches this in His Word. But up to now no one has known what that life is like.

It has been believed that a person would then be a soul; and the idea held about this has been no different from that of ether or air, that is to say, that it is breath like that a person breathes out on dying, but still retaining its vitality, though devoid of the kind of sight the eye has, of the kind of hearing the ear has, or of the kind of speech the mouth has. Yet after death a person is just as much a person, and indeed so much so that he is unaware that he is no longer in his previous world. He can see, hear and speak, as in his previous world. He can walk, run and sit down, as in his previous world. He can lie down sleep and wake up, as in his previous world. He can eat and drink, as in his previous world. He can enjoy the delights of married life, as in his previous world. In short, he is in every single respect a person. It is obvious from this that death is not an extinction but a continuation of life, and it is merely a passing over.

Footnotes:

466. I. The fact that two trees, one of life and one of the knowledge of good and evil, were put in the Garden of Eden, means that man was given free will in spiritual matters.

Many people have believed that by Adam and Eve in the book of Moses are not meant the first human beings to be created, and in support of this view they have employed proofs that there were people before Adam, drawn from computations and chronologies preserved by some peoples. It is also supported by what Cain, Adam's firstborn, said to Jehovah:

I shall be a wanderer, driven to and fro on the earth, so that anyone meeting me will kill me. For which reason Jehovah set a mark on Cain, that anyone meeting him should not kill him, Genesis 4:14-15.

And after he went from before the face of Jehovah, he dwelt in the land of Nod, and built a city, Genesis 4:16-17.

It follows from this that the earth was inhabited before Adam.

I proved at length in the work called ARCANA CAELESTIA, which I published in London, that Adam and his wife mean the most ancient church on this earth. I also proved there that the Garden of Eden means the wisdom of the people in that church, the tree of life means the Lord being in man and man being in the Lord, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil means man not being in the Lord but immersed in his own self (proprium), as is everyone who believes that he does everything, even good, of himself. Eating from this tree means making evil one's own.