Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 1118

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1118. By means of a certain influx that I am unable to describe I have been shown the type of speech which those people employed when they lived in the world. It was not articulated, like the vocal speech of our own times, but was non-audible, produced not by external breathing but by means of internal breathing. I have also been allowed to ascertain the nature of their internal breathing. It came from between the navel and the heart and so through the lips without any sounds It did not enter someone else's ear by an external route, striking what is called the ear-drum, but by a certain route inside the mouth, and in point of fact by that part inside it which is nowadays called the Eustachian tube. I have also been shown that by means of this type of speech they were able to express far more fully the feelings present in the mind (animus) and the ideas comprising their thought (cogitatio) than can possibly be done by articulated sounds or spoken words, which are similarly delivered by means of breath, which however is external For not one syllable of any spoken word is delivered without the use of breath. But with those people of the Most Ancient Church it was delivered in a far more perfect way because it was done by means of internal breathing And because this interior breathing is also far more perfect, it is more applicable and appropriate to the actual ideas comprising thought. In addition they even communicated by movements of the lips and by corresponding changes of facial expression. For, being celestial people, whatever they were thinking shone out of their face and eyes which altered correspondingly. They were quite incapable of assuming facial expressions that did not accord with what they were thinking. Pretence, and still more deception, was to them something absolutely outrageous.


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