3240. Those spirits around me, together with the spirits of our planet, when they came to me in a denser aura, were all surprised that the things I was writing were so crude, because they seemed to contain no idea. But I was prompted to reply that the people of this planet are of such a nature that they would not understand one tenth, even a much smaller part, of the meaning of the things that have been written, and that they could hardly be written crudely enough so that people like them would understand anything-adding that they do not even know there is an inner sense, but imagine that it is the body that feels. Therefore neither do they believe there is a life after death, nor that spirits exist. They then asked whether such were able to become angels, and I said that those who spoke with them [3236] might have been such in their bodily life, and yet now are so intelligent, and in their bodily life had not known one whit of the things they told. This surprised them. 1748, 21 Sept.