2931. By that silly aura was portrayed what their spiritual part is like in their character. Afterwards I went to sleep, and when I woke up, their spiritual part was also being portrayed by them, foolishly, as a leafy cloud, which could not have had anything spiritual or understandable about it-based on their notion that a cloud cannot feel or perceive anything, thus that it is a mere earthly element such as beasts have. In short, their spiritual was earthly. So I was enabled to portray to them this truth: that we think spiritually, that there are spirits endowed with such intelligence-and yet they are portrayed as a cloud! How could they perceive [the spiritual] in that way, since this is a truth, and yet portray it in that way? From [my] portrayal those earthly spirits were so upset and so moved that it cannot be described, begging me to cease with that portrayal, saying that it reduced them to a kind of anxiety and nothingness, which was a punishment. How heavy it had been for them, I realized from the way they complained. 1748, 26 Aug.