2665. THAT NONE MORE DESIRE TO POSSESS THE BODY OF MAN AND TO RETURN INTO THE BODY, CONSEQUENTLY INTO THE WORLD THAN ADULTERERS AND THE CRUEL. (A certain one came to me and said, that he is desirous of returning into the world and so loved to be with me: for at first they wholly occupied my body, so that they seemed to themselves to be my body. [I was] as it were obsessed by them, although I was as sane as at other times, because the Lord protected me: when I told him, that this was contrary to the instituted [appointed] order, which was such, that man when he draws near to old age, then his body decays of itself: like as the husk of a seed is disjoined, so he desires to be unloosed from the body. Thus it was appointed, and thus he proceeds to interiors, thus to the other life: but he was willing to hear it, saying that [he was] a deceased young man, and wished to return into the world, and when I gave heed, I observed that he was led by those who are adulterers and cruel, and seek in these things pleasantness of life; they desire nothing more than to obsess the bodies of men; and so through man to live in the world. But they are kept by the Lord in the earth of inferior [spirits], and the license to thus occupy man is the more conceded to them. Wherefore did not the Lord guard man, they would each be obsessed by such [spirits], for there is an immense crowd [of them]. - 1748, July 22.