§444 inwardly we are spirits 253
I have been admitted to this state three or four times, simply to let
me know what it was like, and also to teach me that spirits and angels
enjoy all the senses and that we do too, as to our spirits, when we are
taken out of the body.
As for the second kind of experience, being led by the spirit into 441
another place, I have been shown by fi rsthand experience what hap-
pens and how it happens, but only two or three times. I should like
to cite just one experience. While I was walking through city streets
and through the countryside, absorbed in conversation with spirits, it
seemed exactly as though I were just as awake and observant as ever,
walking without straying, though all the while I was in visions. I was see-
ing groves, rivers, mansions, houses, people, and more. After I had been
walking for some hours, though, I suddenly found myself back in con-
sciousness of my physical sight and realized that I was somewhere else. I
was utterly stunned by this, and realized that I had been in the state of
people described as being led by the spirit into another place; for as long as
it lasted I was not thinking about my route, even though it might have
been many miles, or about the time, though it might have been many
hours or even days. I was not conscious of any fatigue, either. This is
how we can be led by ways we know nothing of all the way to some pre-
determined place, without straying.
These two states, though, which are states we have when we are 442
awake to our deeper nature or (which is the same thing) our spirit, are
out of the ordinary. They were shown me simply to teach me what they
were like because they are known in the church. But talking with spirits,
being with them as one of them—this is something I have been granted
when I was fully awake physically, and it has been going on now for
years.
There is further support of our being spirits inwardly in the material 443
presented in §§ 311 – 317 above, where I discussed the fact that heaven and
hell are from the human race.
Our being spirits inwardly has reference to our capacities for think- 444
ing and intending because these are our actual inner natures. They are
what make us human, and the quality of our humanity depends on their
quality.