Today some of those who were around me and spoke with me - both acquaintances and people unknown to me - were raised up into the very inward heaven, and they told me through messengers that the happiness is such that it can never be uttered by the mouth or perceived by the mind [of anyone below]. Then it was also granted them to guide my hand while I was writing these things, so that it would be as if they were telling and writing them. But before they had been raised up into the very inward heaven, a certain one who had departed the life of the body not long before, seemed to me to have to shed his outermost parts, or the earthly element that was still clinging. This can never be allowed to enter into the very inward heaven; but those enveloped with the earthly element are able, by the mercy of God the Messiah, to live in the last heaven, also among the blessed. About their condition, see the things reported here and there above [cf. 220, 262]. Happiness does not consist in the kind of symbolic displays, seen by the eye, that exist in the inward heaven,* but in the kind which the tongue can never utter, and which the mind in the body can never contemplate. Thus Paul, who was caught up into the innermost or third heaven [2 Cor. 12:2-4], must have been divested for the time of both the body and the earthly mind - which is [effected] by the omnipotence of God the Messiah. 2] Some others supposed that they also had been raised up to that heaven, but because they had not been divested of bodily and earthly elements, they were raised only toward the outer court of the very inward heaven; even they were proclaiming the blessedness [they felt]. Meanwhile, I spoke with several about the state of those who were raised up into the very inward heaven, saying that when they returned to their earthly mind, they would be unable to express the happiness, the reason being that the earthly elements of the mind as it were hide it from their sight, because those elements dominate in spirits of the last heaven, no differently than those of the body and the senses do in bodily life. Some spirits also who were unwilling to attach faith to these things were then also raised up toward the outer court of the very inward heaven, and they exclaimed aloud that they had never seen nor could ever have imagined anything more beautiful, and more delightful. 1747, the 2nd day of December. * See 262, footnote 3.