191. [193.] 54. Regarding some who have no spiritual life owing to their ignorance of truth, and the fact that life is infused into them by the Lord through angels: I once felt a rather intense coldness from the soles of my feet to the knee. It was plain that the coldness was induced by cold spirits. I was told that they were ones who in the world had lived in absolute ignorance of God. After they were raised up I heard them speaking, and from their speech I perceived in them scarcely any vitality. They spoke as though forcing inanimate statues to speak. I despaired over whether any life would long remain in them. They were like automatons or carved figures making sounds. However, I heard shortly that they had been brought into a type of activity which appeared as a kind of gyration. Angels had been put in charge of infusing life into them, which they did with such care and attention that it can scarcely be described, nor did they permit themselves to be fatigued. In a word, they swung them back and forth-as is said in the Word of things sacrificed and of the Levites, that they were swung back and forth*-the purpose of which was for them to receive spiritual life. When this had gone on for some time, the spirits began to be vitalized and to be no longer as they were. Thus they began to hold some conversation with each other, saying that they were in heaven. This effort was continued by the Lord through His angels throughout the night, and after that they reached the point that they could be introduced or incorporated into some gatherings of others, in which they were then perfected; for they were capable of receiving life, because they had nothing in them to resist it, as those do who confirm themselves in falsities in opposition to truths. How life was progressively infused into them was represented by colors-the first stage of that life by an increasingly white marble color; the second by an increasingly blue color containing the white; and the third by patches of glistening white clouds rising up. I was afterward shown what their character was by an exhalation from them upon my face and the front parts of my breast. It was chilly, but verging on warmth. This was accomplished by the Lord alone through angels. They may be said to have been restored from no life to some life. * Rendered in English versions usually as "waved." See Exodus 29:24, 26, 27; Leviticus 7:30, 8:27, 29, 9:21, 14:12, 21, 24, 23:11, 12, 20; Numbers 5:25, 6:20, 8:11, 13, 15, 21.