1983. What evil spirits want more than anything else, what they burn to do, is to attack and harass us as we sleep; but that is a time when the Lord guards us with special care. Love does not sleep.

The spirits who harass us undergo terrible punishments. More times than I can tell I have heard their punishments, which consist of mutilation, as reported in §§829, 957, 959. This takes place under the heel of the left foot and sometimes lasts for hours at a time.

Sirens, who are inwardly devoted to sorcery, are the main ones to attack us by stealth during the night. They try to inject themselves into our deeper thoughts and feelings, but angels from the Lord always stop them, and eventually they are frightened off by severe punishments.

Sirens have also talked to various people by night exactly as though it was I who was speaking. Imitating my speech so perfectly that it could not be distinguished from mine, they have made foul suggestions and foisted falsehoods on their victims.

[2] One time I had the pleasantest possible night of sleep, filled entirely with sweet peace. When I woke up, though, certain good spirits started to chastise me for molesting them. They accused me of treating them so horribly that, in their words, they thought they were in hell. "I know nothing at all about it," I answered. "I was sleeping very peacefully, so I could not have bothered you in any way." Dumbfounded at this, they finally perceived that the sirens had used their sorceries to do it. The same demonstration was repeated later to teach me what that mob of sirens was like.

[3] For the most part sirens are women. During bodily life they poured all their energies into attracting friends by subtle wiles, using outward appearances to worm their way in and employing every available method to ensnare others' minds. They enter into everyone's desires and pleasures, but with ulterior motives, particularly that of gaining control. The result in the next life is that by their very nature they seem inherently capable of anything, imbibing and inventing various deceitful skills, which they seize on so readily. Just as sponges absorb water whether polluted or pure, they absorb both profane and sacred means and put them to work for the purpose (again) of gaining control.

I was allowed to sense how foul their deeper dimensions are, how defiled with adultery and hatred. I was also allowed to sense how powerful their aura is. They prepare themselves internally to sway others' minds, in an effort to coordinate their own inward and outward powers in pursuit of their aims. Then they forcefully compel spirits to think exactly the way they themselves do.

[4] They do not appear to use reasoned argumentation; but there is still a certain accumulated force of argument, infused with negative emotion, that fills the same function. They also accommodate to others' personalities, gain access to their lower minds (which they take on as their own), and either entice or overpower them by the use of persuasion.

There is nothing they work harder at than destroying our conscience, and once it is destroyed, they take possession–total possession, in fact–of our inner depths, although we remain unaware of it. Outward possession no longer exists, as it once did, but inward possession by these spirits does. People on earth who are devoid of conscience are possessed in this way; deep down, their thinking is nearly as crazy, but they veil and conceal it with a superficial decency and false integrity for the sake of their status, prosperity, and reputation. Such people can recognize this tendency in themselves if they will only pay attention to the nature of their thoughts.

959. One night I awoke from sleep and heard around me spirits who had wanted to ambush me while I lay asleep. Soon drifting off, I had a nightmare but then woke up again, and suddenly, to my surprise, found some scourging spirits at hand. They inflicted bitter punishment on the spirits who had plotted against me in my sleep, by giving them a kind of body — a visible one — and physical sensation and then torturing them by violently knocking their limbs back and forth. They also enhanced the pain by inducing resistance. The scourgers fully intended to kill the spirits, if they could, so they used extreme violence.

Most of them were sirens, who are described in §831. ¹ The punishment lasted a long time and spread out around me to include many other gangs. What amazed me was that all of the spirits who had ambushed me were tracked down, even though they wanted to hide.

Because they were sirens, they tried many tricks for escaping punishment, although they failed at the attempt. First they wanted to slip away to a more hidden plane of existence. Then they wanted to pretend they were someone else. Then they tried to divert the punishment to others by projecting their thoughts. Then they created the illusion that they were babies, whom the castigators were punishing, then good spirits, then angels. They attempted many other ruses too, but all in vain.

Although I was surprised to see how severely they were disciplined, I perceived that this kind of behavior is intolerable because of our need to sleep in safety, since if we could not sleep safely, the human race would die out. That was why the penalty simply had to be so harsh.

I sensed that the same events also occur in the vicinity of other people whom spirits endeavor to attack by stealth in their sleep, although the people themselves are unaware of it. If they are unable to talk with spirits and be present with them by way of an inner perception, they cannot hear, still less see, any such thing, despite the fact that similar occurrences are taking place around them.

The Lord guards us with utmost care when we sleep.

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