1498. CONCERNING THE SPIRITUAL IDEA Spiritual ideas are much fuller than those which man has during the life of the body, and a spirit can clearly view more things than man. Thus, while I was held in spiritual ideas, I could to some extent see how these things which are disclosed concerning hell and heaven will enter into the faith of a man. For as soon as the character of the life or of the love of a man or soul is known, it is thence granted in a spiritual idea to know what he will believe concerning such disclosures - whether they will be rejected as fables and trifles, whether they will be declared enthusiasm or a vision of some kind, whether they will be altogether blasphemed, or whether they will be received, and so on. For when the Lord infills the idea and thus gives the vision, such things are seen quite manifestly. What must not heaven see! But He who alone sees is the Lord, for which reason all things that are rightly seen are of the Lord; otherwise false things are seen as true, and they believe true things to be false. The Lord diminishes and increases the faculty of thus seeing, but only as regards the exterior and proximately interior; the interior things that are of the rational mind, however, no one save the Lord alone sees. Thus the Lord alone sees what is to come, what effect these and the former [disclosures] will have, and what things are permitted to spirits, etc., etc. 1748, Mar. 18.