Working with Spiritual ‘Friends’
The state of man's spirit that immediately follows his life in the world being such, he is then recognized by his friends and by those he had known in the world; for this is something that spirits perceive not only from one's face and speech but also from the sphere of his life when they draw near. (HH 494)
Because the exterior affections and memory of newly arrived spirits is still active, they can recognise and hence connect with those they knew as friends in the world but who, like them, have passed into the spiritual world. We are told that these friends take on the function of addressing the spirit’s curiosity about heaven and hell, what each is like and where they are located.  They take the newly arrived spirit to various places and introduce them into various companies of other spirits and instruct them as to the state of eternal life.  This process causes the newly arrived spirit to reflect on the beliefs they had held about such things while in the world.

These friends, when seen as something related to the experience of awakening to spiritual life through the practice of the Word, can be thought of as those ideas about the spiritual matters that we relate to and have come to trust and rely on. From our first contact with the spiritual teachings found in the Word, these “friends”, some old and some new, are a vital support to being led deeper into the practice of truths and our exploration of what the Word teaches regarding the interior life.
… their friends tell them about the conditions of eternal life, and take them about to various places and into various companies, and sometimes into cities, and into gardens and parks, showing them chiefly such magnificent things as delight the externals in which they are. They are then brought in turn into those notions about the state of their soul after death, and about heaven and hell, that they had entertained in the life of the body,

…. Nearly all are anxious to know whether they will get to heaven (HH 495).
We need to be able to recognise that these “friends” assist us to explore “places” and “companies” and “cities” and “gardens” that belong to the inner world of the mind, this being the spiritual world.  These “friends” or concepts may be somewhat sensually or naturally orientated, or they may be of a purely historical or persuasive faith.  They may be drawn from other spiritual traditions both traditional and contemporary. They may even be opposed to the deeper perspective the Word offers.  Whatever they are or whatever their quality, they remain an important starting point from which we can be led into a more genuine sense of what living a spiritual life entails.

One aspect of being in a state of exteriors is that newcomers to the spiritual world believe that entry into heaven is based on a person’s outer conduct.  The strength of their attachment to this idea means that it is difficult to break. This is particularly the case for those who believe that because they have lived upright moral and civic lives in the world they qualify for entry to heaven.  They fail to reflect on the fact that everything done in outer life by the good, can also be done by the evil, so that if the outer actions or speech are viewed alone, one is unable to draw any distinction (HH 495) between the good and the evil.  There is, as yet, a lack of understanding that it is the quality of a spirit’s interior life that makes the difference and not their outer behaviour.  A spirit’s true nature always comes back to the quality of the affections and thoughts they live from and to what degree these are centred in a love for what is genuinely spiritual or not.
Still less is it known that outward acts are such as the intentions and thoughts are, and the love and faith in these from which they spring. And even when taught they fail to comprehend that thinking and willing are of any avail, but only speaking and acting. (HH 495).

Ver todos los episodios