13. The following experience proved to me how anxious they are to seek out and absorb knowledge of the kind to be found in the levels of the memory above bodily sense-perceptions. When they were looking into my knowledge of heavenly matters, they ran through everything and kept saying: 'That's the sort of thing, that's it.' For when spirits approach a person, they review everything in his memory, calling up from it whatever suits them. In fact, as I have often observed, they read its contents as if it were a book.# These spirits used to do this more skillfully and faster, because they skipped the things that slow down and narrow the inward sight, so as to delay it. All earthly and bodily matters are in this class, if they are regarded as ends in themselves, if, that is, they alone are loved. They concentrate on real objects. For objects free from earthly encumbrance allow the mind to rise and expand widely; but purely material objects draw it downwards, restricting and closing it.
Another experience which plainly showed their anxiety to acquire knowledge and enrich their memory was this. I was once writing something about future events, and they were then too far off to look into these by drawing them out of my memory. They were very cross because I was unwilling to read those things in their presence, and contrary to their usual habit they wanted to abuse me, calling me very wicked, and similar names. So as to show their annoyance they brought on a kind of painful contraction of the right side of my head as far as the ear. But such efforts did me no harm. Since, however, they had done wrong, they kept withdrawing even farther, but still kept stopping, because they wanted to know what I had written. That is how anxious they are for knowledge. # The spirits present with a person have control over everything in his memory (AC 5853, 5857, 5859-60).
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