6212. It is known from the Word that there was an influx from the world of spirits and from heaven into the prophets, partly by dreams, partly by visions, and partly by speech; and also with some into the very speech and into the very gestures, thus into the things that belong to the body; and that at the time they did not speak from themselves, nor act from themselves, but from the spirits who were then in possession of their bodies. At such times some of them behaved like insane persons, as did Saul when he lay naked; others when they wounded themselves; others when they put horns on themselves, and others in similar ways. [2] And as I longed to know in what manner these men were actuated by spirits, I was shown by means of a living experience. To this end I was for a whole night possessed by spirits, who so took possession of my bodily things that I had only a very obscure sensation that it was my own body. When these spirits came, they appeared like little clouds heaped together into various forms, for the most part pointed; the little clouds were black. In the morning I saw a chariot with a pair of horses, in which a man was being conveyed. Afterward I saw a horse on which someone was sitting, who was thrown off from the horse backward, and there lay while the horse was kicking. Afterward another was seen seated on a horse. They were noble horses. [3] After these things were seen, the angels told me what they signified, namely, that the chariot in which the man was, signified the spiritual sense that was in the prophetical things that were uttered, and which these represented; that the horse which threw his rider and kicked, signified the Jewish and Israelitish people with whom were these things, that people being solely in externals, and therefore the intellectual rejected them, and as it were by kicking put them away; and that the other sitting on the horse signified the intellectual with those who are in the internal sense of the prophetic Word. [4] From this state, in which I was during the night until morning, I was instructed how the prophets, through whom spirits spake and acted, were possessed; namely, that the spirits had possession of their bodies, insomuch that scarcely anything was left except that they knew that they existed. There were certain spirits appointed to this use, who did not desire to obsess men, but merely to enter into the man's bodily affections; and when they entered into these, they entered into all things of the body. The spirits who were usually with me said that I was absent from them while I remained in this state. [5] The spirits who possessed my body, as formerly the bodies of the prophets, afterward talked with me, and said that at the time they knew no otherwise than that they had life as when in the body, besides saying much more. I was told further that there were also other influxes with the prophets, to enable them to be at their own disposal, and to use their own thought, only that spirits spake with them, for the most part at that time within them; but that this influx was not into the thought and the will, but was merely a discourse that came to their hearing.