173. Amongst other things the spirits of that world said that their visitors, the monks already mentioned, had tried their hardest to persuade them to live together in a community instead of separately and alone. For spirits and angels live and form groups in the same way as in the world. Those who lived in groups in the world, go on living in groups in the next life; those who were split up into households and families go on living separately. When these spirits had lived as people in their own world, they had been split up into groups by households, families and so clans. Consequently they were ignorant of what it was like to live together in a community. So when they were told that those visitors tried to persuade them to do this in order to rule and control them, since this was the only way they could make them their subjects and slaves, they replied that they had no idea what rule and control meant. I observed their aversion to rule and control when one of them, who accompanied us on our return journey, ran away as soon as I showed him the city where I was living, and was not seen again.