1989. THAT EXTERNAL SENSES DISAPPEAR IN THE HEAVENS. It was represented by a spiritual idea that external senses perish in order [or one after the other] as they penetrate interiors, or, which is the same, as they ascend towards superiors, insomuch that if a style is filled with mere poetical names, as Parnassus, its fountain, Pegasus, and the like, those who employ those terms in writing know that they signify things pertaining to scientifics, which sense when it passes away, then comes the sense of the letter, which sense also perishes, and is succeeded by a higher, and when this disappears then comes one still more interior, and so on. Such is the penetration and ascension of senses while they penetrate or ascend towards interiors, until at length nothing remains but the pure, true, and good in the inmost heaven, originating from the Lord, who is the essence of all things. - 1748, May 18.