Today, as previously [157], I was shown by actual experience that the human ability to understand can seemingly be taken away [from people], leaving them their native discernment and still as much and such ability to understand as nature allots to make them human. And I learned from actual experience that the souls of the dead in that state are then devils, and commit crimes like a devil, which was also shown by extensive experience. In fact, it was even shown that angels can be reduced to that same state, revealing what kind of a person each one had been as to the will. For then it is as if the will, which is reined in in the world by one's ambitions, as well as by the civil law, is set free. However, God the Messiah does not permit a saint to act so freely that he sees his own infernal qualities. 1747, the 10th day of December.