3891. The fact that not only the whole of heaven breathes as one human being but also that all the individual communities breathe unitedly, indeed that all angels and spirits do so, has been proved to me by very many living experiences, so that I was not left in any doubt about it. Indeed spirits are amazed that anyone should be in any doubt about it. But because few have any other idea about angels and spirits than the idea of their being non-material (in which case they would be mere thoughts and so scarcely real substances) still less any idea about their enjoying the senses of sight, hearing, and touch as men do, and least of all any idea about angels and spirits breathing and therefore possessing life similar to man's (though a more interior life, as a spirit's life is in contrast to man's) let further experiences be introduced.
[2] On one occasion I was told before going to sleep that many were plotting against me who had it in mind to make me perish by suffocation. But I took no notice of their threats because the Lord protected me, and so I went comfortably off to sleep. But at midnight I woke up and plainly experienced that I was not breathing from myself but was doing so from heaven. For the act of breathing was not my own and yet I myself was still breathing. On countless other occasions I have been allowed to feel what the breathing of spirits and also of angels is like through the experience of them breathing within me, though my own breathing continued at the same time yet separately from theirs. But nobody is allowed to have such an experience unless the interior parts of him have been opened and communication with heaven granted to him in this way.
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