Arcana Coelestia (Potts) n. 5865

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5865. There was a certain spirit, not evil, to whom it was permitted to pass over to a certain man and speak with me from thence. When he came to the man he said that there appeared to him as it were a kind of black inanimate something, or as it were a black lifeless mass. This was the bodily life of the man, which he was permitted to view. It was said that the bodily life of a man who is in the good of faith appears, when one is permitted to view it, not black, but woody and of the color of wood. The same was given me to know by another experience. A certain evil spirit was let into the state of the body, by thinking from the sensuous things of the body, thus from the external memory. He then seemed to me as a black lifeless mass. When he was restored, he said that he had supposed he was in the life of the body. In other cases spirits are not allowed to look into the bodily things of man, for these are in the world and its light, and when spirits look at those things which are of the light of the world, these appear as mere darkness.


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