I have often walked through the streets of a city among a large crowd, not reflecting on the spirits around me, [supposing] that they, too, would be noticing everything along with me. This reflection happens by my simply looking inward and then tacitly calling things to their attention. Almost on every such occasion and so, quite often, they told me that during that time, they had seen and heard nothing, but had all the while been attending to thought in my mind. So also, any spirit whatever whom I reflected on was summoned up, so to speak, and this happened very often. From this I was able to infer that the spirits, when present with someone whose inward parts are not opened toward the Lord through faith, absolutely cannot speak with that person, nor see through his or her eyes. They only make use of the person's memory and so of their reasoning power, just as these spirits with me use mine, who have very often confessed that they had not been able to tell otherwise than that they were living my life. This also occurs in a group of many spirits, each one of whom thinks he lives his own life, unaware that the rest also think the same.