7072. Afterward I represented to them birds of different sizes, large and small, such as exist on our earth; for in the other life such may be represented as it were to the life, the very speech of spirits and angels being full of representations. When they saw those represented birds, they at first desired to change them, but afterward were delighted with them, and acquiesced. The reason was that birds signify the knowledges of things, of which fact the perception then flowed in; and therefore they abstained from changing them, and so turning them from the ideas of their memory. Afterward I was allowed to represent before them a most pleasing garden full of lights and oil-lamps. This arrested their attention, because lights together with oil-lamps signify truths which shine from good. From this it was evident that their attention could be fixed on material things, provided there was at the same time instilled the signification of them in the spiritual sense; for the things of the spiritual sense are abstracted from material things, but are represented in them.