A spirit came to me and said that he longs to come back into the world, and therefore loved to be with me, for at an earlier time they had entirely occupied my body, so that they seemed to themselves to be my body as it were obsessed by them, even though I was just as sane as at other times because the Lord had protected me. When I told him that this was against the established order, which is that when the earthly human draws toward old age, then the body begins to droop of itself and is loosed like the shell of a seed, so the person wants to be released from the body. It has been ordained in this way so that they may pass through toward the inward regions, thus into the other life. But he did not want to hear it, saying that he had died a youth and wanted to return into the world. Now when I turned my mind to it, I observed that he was being led by those who are adulterers and cruel and who seek the pleasure of their life in those things. They desire nothing more strongly than to take possession of people's bodies and then by means of them live in the world. But they are kept by the Lord in the earth of lower spirits, nor are they permitted the freedom of thus occupying people on earth, every single one of whom would be obsessed by such spirits, for the gang of them is immense. 1748, 22 July.