2059. They also learned how people's mental images that are mixed with opposite and foreign elements must be separated and set aside, for these recur in their every thought; and there being so many spirits, some arouse this mixed image, some that one, and the result is confusion. Of course, this is not so harmful in bodily and earthly matters as it is in spiritual ones. When spiritual matters become mixed in with and contaminated by filthy terrestrial, bodily, and earthly elements, this prevents a soul from being able to be transferred into heavenly societies. For the societies, being a communion of the ideas of many spirits, sense at once whatever they abominate and abhor. Whatever has been mixed in with a given mental image, which the spirit thinks to be hidden, they nonetheless plainly see, for which reason that spirit cannot but be removed from that society until the polluted mental images are purified. For heavenly spirits are gifted with a most exquisite perception of all the components [of an idea], and if [an opposing component] is not noticed in one state, still it will be in another, and the more plainly as it more closely approaches the state opposite to the filthy mental images. So the soul can certainly be let into heaven, but only in certain states, and into certain societies, many additional precautions being taken through the way in which the spirits are arranged. 1748, 23 May. This the spirits also confessed who had been raised up into heaven, and they did so in a tone of voice as if they were entirely convinced. # #