132 HEAVEN and HELL §255
d. Spirits sent out by communities of spirits to other communities are called “agents”: 4403 , 5856.
Communications in the spiritual world take place by means of such envoy spirits: 4403 , 5856 ,
5983. Spirits who have been sent out and are serving as agents do not think on their own but from
the spirits who sent them: 5985 , 5986 , 5987.However, the moment I was no longer in their company I was back in
my own language.
[ 2 ] It is also worth noting that when angels and spirits turn toward
us, they can talk with us even from a great distance. They have talked
with me from far off just as audibly as though they were nearby. Still,
when they turn away from us and talk with each other, nothing of what
they say is audible to us even though this is happening right next to our
ears. This has enabled me to see that in the spiritual world, all union
depends on the way people are facing.
[ 3 ] Again, it is worth noting that many of them can talk with one of
us at the same time, and that person with them. They send some particu-
lar spirit from themselves to the individual with whom they want to talk,
and this envoy spirit turns toward the person while the others turn
toward their [envoy] spirit and so concentrate their thoughts, which the
spirit then presents. It seems to such envoys entirely as though they were
talking on their own, and to the others as though they themselves were.
So a union of several with one is achieved by the way they face.d But we
will say more later about these envoy spirits, called agents, and the com-
munication that takes place through them.256 No angel or spirit is allowed to talk with one of us from the angel’s or
spirit’s own memory, only from that of the individual in question. Angels
and spirits actually have memory just as we do. If a spirit were to talk
with us from her or his own memory, then it would seem to us entirely
as though the thoughts were our own, when they would really belong to
the spirit. It is like remembering something that we have never seen or
heard. I have been granted knowledge of the truth of this by experience.
This is why some of the ancients were of the opinion that after some
thousands of years they would return to their former life and all its deeds,
and that they had in fact returned. They gathered this from the fact that
sometimes a kind of memory would come up of things that they had
never seen or heard. This happened because spirits had fl owed from their
own memory into the images of these people’s thoughts.
257 There are also spirits called natural and physical spirits who do not
unite with our thoughts when they come to us the way other spirits do
but rather enter our bodies and take over all its senses, talking through