6210. It has sometimes happened that I was earnestly thinking about worldly things, and about such things as give great concern to most persons, namely, about possessions, the acquirement of riches, about pleasures, and the like. At these times I noticed that I was sinking down into what is sensuous and that in proportion as my thought was immersed in such things, I was removed from the company of the angels. By this it was also made plain to me that they who are deeply immersed in such cares cannot have interaction with those who are in the other life. For when such thoughts possess the whole of the mind, they carry the lower mind downward, and are like weights which drag it down; and when they are regarded as the end, they remove the man from heaven, to which he cannot be elevated except by means of the good of love and of faith. This was made still more manifest to me from the fact that once when I was led through the abodes of heaven, and was at the time in a spiritual idea, it happened that I suddenly began to sink into thought about worldly things, and then all that spiritual idea was dissipated and became as naught.