2392. About the evident operations of spirits
From time to time I have observed, as discussed elsewhere, that spirits produced an effect on my body that was completely perceptible to every sense, just like objects outside of me. For example, they quite often spread odors, offensive or pleasant [323, 618, 2051]. And we spoke about it, that they had maltreated my body to the point of considerably severe pain, and had done so on several occasions [318[a], 153]. They had brought on feelings of cold or heat in a very obvious manner, and coldness more often [318, 324, 406, 1855-1862]. They had come at me like a gust of wind. I felt the wind plainly, and it even made the flame of the candle flicker.
So there can be no doubt that spirits are organic substances, and not just thought, as some like to conceive of them, apart from underlying substances [2366, 2369], and almost persuade others to conceive of them by their descriptions of spirits, whom they deprive of every possible attribute. When all attributes are taken away, people cannot have any thought image of spirits, so they doubt, and they deny, not realizing that spirits in the body, or spirits separated from the body, are real substances, and in people on earth, substances that are joined with their physical material elements, and from which they cannot be separated as long as they live on earth. But the nature of this conjunction can also be dealt with. 1748, 23 June.
