Arcana Coelestia (Potts) n. 444

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444. Conversing with one who while he lived in this world had believed that the spirit has no extension, and on that ground would admit of no word that implied extension, I asked him what he now thought of himself, seeing that now he was a soul or spirit, and possessed sight, hearing, smell, an exquisite sense of touch, desires, thoughts, insomuch that he supposed himself to be exactly as if in the body. He was kept in the idea which he had when he had so thought in the world, and he said that the spirit is thought. I was permitted to ask him in reply, whether, having lived in the world, he was not aware that there can be no bodily sight without an organ of vision or eye? and how then can there be internal sight, or thought? Must it not have some organic substance from which to think? He then acknowledged that while in the bodily life he had labored under the delusion that the spirit is mere thought, devoid of everything organic or extended. I added that if the soul or spirit were mere thoughts man would not need so large a brain, seeing that the whole brain is the organ of the interior senses; for if it were not so the skull might be hollow, and the thought still act in it as the spirit. From this consideration alone, as well as from the operation of the soul into the muscles, giving rise to so great a variety of movements, I said that he might be assured that the spirit is organic, that is, an organic substance. Whereupon he confessed his error, and wondered that he had been so foolish.


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