'Wilderness' signifies something with little life in it, as described in the internal sense in Luke 1:80 'Wilderness' signifies somewhere there is no good because there is no truth. 'Wilderness,' as in Jeremiah 23:10, signifies the Word when it is adulterated.

(Odkazy: Arcana Coelestia 1927)

6200. Because I have been living - constantly, for nine years now ¹ - in company with spirits and angels, I have been able to take careful note of the nature of influx. When I have been thinking, the material ideas in my thought have presented themselves so to speak in the middle of a wave-like motion. I have noticed that the wave was made up of nothing other than such ideas as had become attached to the particular matter in my memory that I was thinking about, and that a person's entire thought is seen by spirits in this way. But nothing else enters that person's awareness then apart from what is in the middle which has presented itself as a material idea. I have likened that wave round about to spiritual wings which serve to raise the particular matter the person is thinking about up out of his memory. And in this way the person becomes aware of that matter. The surrounding material in which the wave-like motion takes place contained countless things that harmonized with the matter I was thinking about. This was made clear to me by the fact that from those things spirits living in a more perfect sphere knew everything I had ever learned on that particular subject. It accordingly showed me that spirits take in and absorb everything a Person knows, while genii, who are interested solely in his desires and affections, do the same to all aspects of his loves.

[2] Let the following example illustrate the point. Whenever I have thought about a person I knew, an image of that person, like that which comes to anyone s mind when his name is mentioned, presented itself in the middle. But round about the image of him - looking like the wings of a bird that are moving up and down - there was everything I had known and thought since childhood regarding that person. Consequently the entire character of that person as it existed in my thought and affection presented itself to spirits in an instant. The like has also happened whenever I have thought about any city. From the sphere round about moving like a wave spirits knew in an instant everything I had ever seen in it or known about it. The same thing has applied to my scientific knowledge.

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