Hardly anyone at present knows what heaven is or what heavenly joy is. Those who have given any thought to these subjects have had so general and so gross an idea about them as scarcely to amount to anything. From spirits who have come from the world into the other life I have been able to learn fully what idea they had of heaven and heavenly joy; for when left to themselves, as they were in the world, they think as they then did. There is this ignorance about heavenly joy for the reason that those who have thought about it have formed their opinion from the outward joys pertaining to the natural man, and have not known what the internal and spiritual man is, nor in consequence the nature of his delight and blessedness. Therefore, even if they had been told by those in spiritual or inward delight what heavenly joy is, they could have had no comprehension of it, for it would have fallen only into an idea unknown to them, thus not into their perception. It would, therefore, have been among the things that the natural man had rejected. Yet everyone can know that when a man leaves his external or natural man he comes into the internal or spiritual man. Consequently, he can know that heavenly delight is internal and spiritual, not external and natural; and being internal and spiritual, it is more pure and exquisite, and affects the interiors of man which pertain to his soul or spirit. From these things alone, everyone can conclude that his delight is such as the delight of his spirit has previously been and that the delight of the body, which is called the delight of the flesh, is in comparison not heavenly. Also whatever is in the spirit of man when he leaves the body remains after death, since he then lives a man-spirit.