Souls in the other life do indeed seem to have lost their memory of personal or bodily matters, which contains merely material mental images, because they cannot raise up anything from that memory. Yet the ability to understand and speak remains complete, as in life. But the fact of the matter is that the Lord has so ordained that souls may not draw forth anything out of that memory, for then they would raise up the same circumstances they had in life, and would live in the same way, and would not be able to be perfected. Nevertheless, that memory remains, though it is not active but passive. It can be stimulated by others, for whatever people have done, and anything they have seen, and have heard, when told to them in a similar form, they immediately recognize, and know clearly that they had spoken, seen and heard those things. This is clear to me from so many instances that I would fill up many pages citing them as confirmation. This being the case, therefore, it is clear that they keep all of their memory of personal matters and have lost nothing whatever of it, but are simply unable to draw anything from it, for the reasons given, namely that they are now being guided into life, and therefore no longer act from their own powers. Souls never know otherwise but that they have spoken from their own memory, and to be sure, they sometimes do so, as I have heard them, but it was from their inward memory, through which things in their bodily memory are raised up. But how they could speak, and even preach, from it, is another matter for investigation. They admitted that they had forgotten personal matters, and it made them indignant. They were only allowed to remember the things they could raise up out of my memory. So spirits do raise up, and then speak about those matters in my memory coinciding with their life which they brought with them from bodily life, for they are unable to raise up anything else. This takes place with variety, depending on the state of life they are in, brought on by the societies into which they are placed, in each of which they speak differently. And because they speak from the life [formed by] their loves, and this life appears very plainly, therefore many elements can be raised up by other spirits that they recognize, and thus they are stimulated to the remembrance of things they had said, seen and heard. But this is all directed by the Lord Alone. 1748, 23 March.