4046. A number of spirits once appeared overhead in a midway place, who were acting collectively like the beating of the heart. But it was so to speak a wave-like motion, alternatively falling and rising, with a kind of cold breath which struck my forehead. From this I was able to deduce that they were of the intermediate sort, that is to say, that they belonged both to the province of the heart and to that of the lungs, and also that they were not interior spirits. Afterwards the same spirits produced a flaming light, of poor quality but nevertheless luminous, which was first of all visible under the left side of the chin, then under the left eye, and after that above the eye. But it was a dim light; though flowing it was not bright. From all this I was enabled to know the nature of those spirits - lights being indicative of affections and also of levels of intelligence. When after this I laid my hand over the left side of my skull or head I felt a beating underneath my palm, which had a similar falling and rising wave-like motion. From this indication I knew that they belonged to the cerebrum. When I asked who they were they were unwilling to speak. Others said of them that it was their own choice not to speak. Compelled at length to do so they said that in that way they disclosed what kind of spirits they were. I perceived that among them there were those who constituted the province of the dura mater, which is the general covering of the cerebrum and of the cerebellum.
[2] Then it was disclosed what sort of spirits they were, for this I was allowed to know by talking to them. Just the same as when they had lived as people in the world, they were spirits who gave no thought to spiritual or celestial matters and who did not talk about those things because they were the kind of people who did not believe in the existence of anything other than that which was natural. They had not believed in anything more because they could not think beyond that which was natural; yet they had not declared their unbelief. Rather, they had worshipped the Divine as others had done, had said their prayers, and had been good citizens.
[3] After this there were others who also entered into the beating of the heart, though not with a motion falling and rising but in a crosswise manner. There were others again who did not act in an alternating way but in a more continuous one. And there were others yet again by whose action the beating leapt from one place to another. They said that they had correlated with the outer layer of the dura mater, and that among them were some who thought about spiritual and celestial matters solely on the basis of such things as are the objects of the external senses. They did not comprehend interior things in any other way. To me they sounded like members of the female sex. People who reason on the basis of the experiences of the external senses, and so on the basis of worldly and earthly things, about the things of heaven, that is, about the spiritual things of faith and love - insofar as they make them all the same and confuse them together - move away to what is more and more outward until they reach, on the outside of the head, the skin which they represent. They are still inside the Grand Man even though in its outermost parts, if they have led a good life. For everyone is saved who leads a good life from a desire inspired by charity.
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