1885. These two types of visions are unusual, however. They were demonstrated to me simply for the purpose of teaching me what they are like. All the sights you find reported, by the Lord's divine mercy, at the beginning or end of each chapter in these first two volumes are ordinary ones. They are not visions but sights that I have seen for many years now in full physical consciousness.

1408. The events of this verse and later ones happened as written, but the historical facts are representative and the words are each symbolic.

This is true of all the narrative parts of the Word — not only the books of Moses but Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings as well. Nothing but history appears in any of them. Yet although the literal meaning is a history, the inner meaning holds the mysteries of heaven, which lie hidden there. These mysteries can never be seen, as long as we train our mind's eye on the historical details; they are not unveiled until we withdraw our minds from the literal meaning.

The Lord's Word is like a body with a living soul. Anything having to do with the soul remains invisible — to the point that we scarcely believe we even have a soul, let alone that it lives on after death — as long as the body monopolizes our thinking. As soon as concern for our person ebbs from our minds, though, qualities of the soul and of life reveal themselves. That is why everything connected with our body has to die before we can be born anew or regenerate. Not only that, the body itself also has to die, so that we can enter heaven and behold heavenly sights.

[2] The case with the Lord's Word is the same. Its "body" is the contents of the literal meaning, and as long as we fix our minds on those, we see nothing deeper. When they "die," though, [the deeper content] first stands out in plain sight.

Still, the features of the literal sense are like those things in us that belong to the body. Specifically, they are like facts that we glean from our sense impressions and retain in our memory. These are general containers that hold deeper levels inside. ¹ You can see from this that containers are one thing, the vital concepts contained within them are another. The containers are earthly; their vital contents are spiritual and heavenly. So also with the historical passages of the Word, and with the individual words there as well. They are general containers that are earthly and even physical, and they hold spiritual and heavenly features. The latter never enter our field of vision except through the inner meaning.

[3] Anyone can see this merely from the consideration that the Word often speaks in accord with appearances and even in accord with illusions of the senses. It says, for instance, that the Lord feels anger, punishes people, curses them, kills them, and so on, when in fact the inner meaning says the opposite — that the Lord never feels anger or punishes people, let alone cursing or killing them. Yet it does not hurt people to believe in simplicity of heart that the Word is just what they take it to be in the letter, as long as they live lives of neighborly love. The reason it does no harm is that the Word teaches nothing but the need for each of us to live in charity with our neighbor and to love the Lord above all. People who do this have deeper dimensions inside, so any illusions they acquire from the literal meaning are easily dispelled.

Фусноте:

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.