1532. Spiritual ideas, spoken of earlier [1487, 1498], are able to comprehend that the people of this earth will judge these matters in a variety of ways. For they judge from outer sensation the assertions both that these planets exist (which, however, cannot possibly be denied), and that they are as described, or specifically, that a person was enabled to speak with their [inhabitants]. And each will judge from his own imagination and love. But it makes no difference, because these things were seen and heard, as tangibly as things in human society, so I do not wait upon their judgment. I am convinced that when they become spirits, and even more, angels, they will ascertain the truth-they, and probably even some of the human race [on earth], if it so please the Lord. Let them just consider that in the spiritual world, as they call it, the distance to a place matters so little that what is far away appears nearby. For example, the souls who spoke with me and I heard next to me, in fact, near my ear, could have been a hundred miles away, as I sometimes told them. Since the distance to places appear so little to an eye beholding the sun and stars, how much less must it appear to the inner sight! It is sensory illusions which mislead the inhabitants of our planet, who are bodily senses, that is, who hardly stretch their mental sight beyond the senses of the body. 1748, 18 March.