4186. 'And all that you see is mine' means all ability to perceive and to understand. This is clear from the meaning of 'seeing' as perceiving and understanding, dealt with in 2150, 3863, and so as all its ability to perceive and understand truth and good. The implications of all this have been discussed already and have been illustrated by the things that happen in the next life - in the description of what happens when spirits of the intermediate kind in particular are in some angelic community. At such times those spirits are not aware that the affections for good and truth flowing in from that community are anything other than their own. For that is what the communication of affections and thoughts is like in the next life; and in the measure that the spirits have become linked to that community they imagine those affections to be their own. When those same spirits are separated from that community they are extremely annoyed, and as they enter a state of annoyance they also enter the obscure state referred to above in 4184. Having no interior perception in that state they claim as their own the goods and truths which belong to that angelic community and which they too have possessed through the communication described above. It is this state that is described in the present verse.
[2] Furthermore, I have been given to know through much experience about the way in which affections for good and truth are communicated to others. Spirits of that kind have sometimes been with me, and when they have become linked to me through any degree of affection they have not been aware of the things that were mine as being anything other than their own. And I have been told that the same happens to all people, for everyone has spirits with him, who, the moment they come to him and enter his affection, are not conscious of anything at all which that person possesses - that is to say, any facet of his affection or thought - as being anything other than their own. This is the way in which spirits are linked to man, and through them the Lord governs him, 2488. A discussion of these matters from actual experience will appear below at the ends of chapters.
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