invective and abuse, they also cast themselves into the midst of them,
and, from the insanity in which they were, endeavoured to do them
injury. The spirits of Saturn, however, were not at all afraid,
because they were secure and in tranquillity; but those spirits of our
Earth, when in the midst of them, began to be tortured, and to breathe
with difficulty, and so rushed out, one in this direction, another in
that, and disappeared. Those who were present apperceived from this
what is the character of the natural man, separate from the spiritual,
when he comes into a spiritual sphere, namely, that he is insane;
for the natural man separate from the spiritual is wise only from the
world, and not at all from heaven; and he who is wise only from the
world, believes nothing but what the senses apprehend, and what he
believes he believes from the fallacies of the senses, which, unless
they are removed by the influx from the spiritual world, produce
falsities. Hence it is that spiritual things are nothing to him,
insomuch that he can hardly bear to hear the word spiritual mentioned;
wherefore such become insane when they are kept in a spiritual sphere.
It is different while they live in the world; then they either think
naturally about spiritual things, or avert their ears, that is, hear
and do not attend. It was also manifest from this experience, that
the natural man cannot introduce himself into the spiritual, that is,
ascend; but that, when man is in faith, and thus in spiritual life,
the spiritual man inflows into the natural, and thinks therein; for
there is spiritual influx, that is, influx from the spiritual world
into the natural, but not contrariwise[mm].

[Footnote mm: There is spiritual influx, and not physical or natural
influx, consequently influx is from the spiritual world into the
natural, and not from the natural into the spiritual, nos. 3219,
5119, 5259, 5427, 5428, 5477, 6322. It appears as if influx were from