Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 10381

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10381. One of those spirits came towards me. I noticed him overhead, near the pulsating hollow called the fontanelle; from there he spoke to me. He was able to scrutinize skillfully all the details of my thought, keep them all the time in their proper order, and reveal them to me. But he drew out only such as he could find fault with. He did so because spirits from our planet were around me, whom he was not at all willing to go near because their thoughts were of bodily things. When he found fault with me I was allowed to say that what he found fault with did not belong to me but to the spirits around me, because what I was thinking did not begin in myself but in these spirits, who were influencing my thinking. He was astonished at this but nevertheless perceived that it was so. I was allowed to go on and say that to search out what is bad in a person is not an angelic thing to do unless at the same time one looked for what is good. Having heard this he departed, perceiving that his displeasure described above had caused him to do that.


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