128. While fully awake I was taken by angels under the Lord's guidance to one of the worlds in space, accompanied by some spirits from this globe. We travelled towards the right for a period of two hours. Around the limits of our solar system there was first to be seen a shining, but dense, cloud. After it came fiery smoke coming up from a great gap. It was a huge chasm, which in that direction separates our solar system from that of some stars. The fiery smoke could be seen at quite a long distance. I was taken through the middle of it, and then below me in that gap or chasm were to be seen large numbers of people, who were spirits. (Spirits are all to be seen in human form, and really are people.) I also heard them talking to one another, but I was not able to learn where they came from or what they were like. However, one of them told me that they were guards, set to prevent spirits passing from this system into another in space, unless given permission.
Confirmation that this was so came from some spirits in my company who, on reaching that great gap, were not allowed to cross; they began to shout out that they were dying. They resembled people struggling in their death-agony. So they stopped this side of that chasm, and could not travel any further. For the fiery smoke rising up from the chasm gripped them and subjected them to these tortures.
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