have been permitted to see angels when fully awake or in possession
of all my bodily senses, and in a state of clear perception. And I
have often told them that men in the Christian world are in such
blind ignorance in regard to angels and spirits as to believe them to
be minds without form, even pure thoughts, of which they have no idea
except as something ethereal in which there is some vitality. And as
they thus ascribe to angels nothing human except a thinking faculty,
they believe that having no eyes they do not see, having no ears they
do not hear, and having no mouth or tongue they do not speak. [2] To
this the angels replied that they are aware that such a belief is
held by many in the world, and is prevalent among the learned, and to
their surprise, even among the clergy. The reason, they said, is that
the learned, who were the leaders and who first concocted such an
idea of angels and spirits, conceived of them from the
sense-conceptions of the external man; and those who think from
these, and not from interior light and from the general idea
implanted in everyone, must needs fabricate such notions, since the
sense-conceptions of the external man take in only what belongs to
nature, and nothing above nature, thus nothing whatever of the
spiritual world.{1} From these leaders as guides this falsity of
thought about angels extended to others who did not think from
themselves but adopted the thoughts of their leaders; and those who
first take their thoughts from others and make that thought their
belief, and then view it with their own understanding, cannot easily
recede from it, and are therefore in most cases satisfied with
confirming it. [3] The angels said, furthermore, that the simple in
faith and heart have no such idea about angels, but think of them as
the men of heaven, and for the reason that they have not extinguished
by learning what is implanted in them from heaven, and have no
conception of anything apart from form. This is why angels in