I have spoken with many of those deceased or departed from the life of the body, both known and unknown to me, about whom I can tell these things - but from rather much experience, because gathered from many sources. The souls had scarcely believed otherwise than that they were in the life of the body and that they were thinking in the same way and at first, especially [about] the things that touched them most closely and deeply and seemed to draw them toward desire and action. 1. As on previous occasions, many of those who are around me today acknowledge this, and now the ones who realize that they are in the other life are amazed. As for their condition, they have their states, of which there are many changes only between their deepest sleep and their highest wakefulness. They acknowledge, and I have also learned this from experience, that they have a waking state similar to what they had in the life of the body, and in fact, even much more perfect for the reason that they are able to grasp and see the inward content of speech and of mental images. 2. From this, their highest state of wakefulness, they are also carried into a sleeping state, just like a person in the world when he sinks gradually from a waking state into one of sleep, even into the kind of sleep in which he would dream dreams - and thus is borne from one state into another. There are also states of sleeping as if one were awake, in which I also have been - and so I have learned these and the above matters from experience - and in which they do not seem to themselves to be asleep, but awake, because they are speaking with a companion or with companions about one thing and another while in this state as they do when dreaming.* This can be grasped by a person who has been allowed to experience a transition from wakefulness, through several states of very gentle sleep, and then into a deep sleep, all accompanied by varying patterns of mental imagery. So the things I have here told about souls, I can affirm so positively, that they should never occasion any doubt. * The manuscript has "in somno" "asleep," but "insomnio," "while dreaming," must have been intended.