A state of peace is on the higher level, a calm state of mind on the lower. Since early this morning, I have been allowed to learn from experience what a calm state of mind is like. There was a kind of drawing toward, or drawing upward to inner regions, toward spirits who were in a calm state, and had been through the entire night. This state lasted until morning, and afterwards for more than an hour, and I was thus allowed to find out how sweet that state is, and how incalculably many are the states of joy in heaven. While in that state, I was then given to reflect on those people who like to live with the cares and worries involving bodily and worldly affairs, how miserable they are, though they imagine that they are then in their veriest joy. I was likewise given to reflect on how that [calm] state is little by little supplanted in the mind by a state of worries, like clouds in a fair sky. This state, however, as well as many others belonging to those who are heavenly, cannot be felt, because they are unknown to the unknowing, consequently cannot be expressed credibly. In order to believe, they must have some knowledge that will enable them to believe. Nevertheless, I am able to say with certainty that the states of joy in the heavens are unlimited in respect to pleasantness and delights of all kinds, completely inconceivable to a person on earth, but nonetheless, these joys, even the very least of them, are such that when one feels them, one does not want ever to be in the body again, and engrossed in bodily and worldly cares. 1748, 9 May.