To make this more plain it needs to be divided up, as follows.

(a) Everyone has a life of his own. (b) Everyone has his own life awaiting him after death. (c) Then a wicked person has the evil of his life imputed, and a good person the good of his.

The first point, that everyone has a life of his own and different from any other's, is a well known fact. For there is perpetual variation and the same never repeats; this is what gives a person his individuality. This is clearly visible from people's faces; there is never a face absolutely identical with another, nor can there ever be. The reason is that there are never two characters alike, and the character determines the face; for the face is, as the saying goes, the stamp of character, and the character owes its origin and form to the way people live.

[2] If a person did not have a life of his own, just as he has a character and a face of his own, he would not have a life after death distinct from any other's. In fact, heaven would not exist either, since it is composed of perpetual differences. The form of heaven is solely due to the variations in souls and minds so ordered as to make one; and they make one by virtue of the One, whose life is in each and every person there, as the soul is in a person. If this were not so, heaven would fall apart because its form was undone. The One who is the source of life for each and every person, and who holds the form together, is the Lord.

Generally speaking every form is composed of different parts, and its nature is dictated by the harmonious co-ordination of its parts and their combination into a unit. Such is the human form, and thus it is that a person is composed of so many members, viscera and organs, without being aware of anything in him or done by him except as a unit.

[3] The second point, that everyone has his own life awaiting him after death, is a fact well known in the church from the Word, including these passages:

The Son of Man is to come and he will then reward everyone in accordance with his deeds. (Matt. 16:27). I saw the books opened, and all were judged in accordance with their works (Rev. 21:12, 13). On the day of judgment God will reward everyone in accordance with his works. (Rom. 2:6; 2 Cor. 5:10).

The works in accordance with which each is to be rewarded are his life, because it is his life which produces them and they are in keeping with it. Since I have been allowed for many years to enjoy the company of angels and to talk with new arrivals from the world, I can vouch for the fact that each person is there tested to see what sort of life he led in the world, and that the life he adopted in the world awaits him to eternity. I have talked with people who lived centuries ago and whose life was known to me from histories, and I recognised that their life was similar to the descriptions I had read. I have been told by angels that a person's life after death is immutable, because it has been organised in accordance with his love and thus with his works. If any change were made, this would upset the organisation, something that can never happen. Also, a change in the organisation is only possible in the material body, and it cannot be effected in the spiritual body after the rejection of the previous one.

[4] The third point is that a wicked person then has the evil of his life imputed to him, and a good person the good of his. The imputation of evil does not mean a process of accusation, arraignment, conviction and judgment as in the world, but it is the result of the evil itself. For wicked people in their own freedom separate themselves from the good, because they cannot be together. The pleasures of a love of evil turn away from the pleasures of a love of good; and everyone has pleasures emanating from him, like smells from every plant on earth. They are not absorbed and masked by a material body as before, but they diffuse freely from their loves into the spiritual aura. And because evil is there perceived as if by its smell, it is this which accuses, arraigns, convicts and judges, not before any judge, but before anyone who is in a state of good. This is what is meant by imputation. Moreover, the wicked man chooses companions with whom he can live and enjoy his pleasure; and since he turns his back on the pleasures of good, he takes himself off of his own accord to his kind in hell.

[5] The imputation of good takes place in much the same way. This happens to those who in the world have acknowledged that all the good in them is from the Lord, and none of it from themselves. After being prepared these are admitted to the inner pleasures of good, and then a way to heaven is opened for them, leading to a community with pleasures of the same kind. The Lord brings this about.