2888. CONCERNING EVIL SPIRITS OF THE INTERIOR WORLD OF SPIRITS. THAT POWER TO RESIST EVILS, EVEN WITH VIOLENCE, IS GRANTED. Today, as often previously, evil spirits and genii, with their eyes, as it were, the points of thoughts, which no man can know, and therefore cannot believe there are such things, or that such spirits are given, continually harassed me, and, indeed, held me in my more pleasant [states]; thus it was a class of those, who act from premeditation, but spirits, and not genii, who are worse. These do nothing else, than do [produce] in the interior thought those things that do not come into the manifest thought of man, [but] merely into the idea of [his) thought, as an effect; so that man cannot know, that by such [spirits] [these] things are carried within the ideas of their thought, for he cannot conclude from the effect, so long as he is in the effect, unless he knows. Such are the deceitful and evil in the interior world of spirits, to wit, that the least ideas of thoughts with man, which he regards, and calls simple ideas of thoughts, are their effects. This was given me to know, from considerable and living experience. Man, while he is man, although of such a nature, still is not aware that such interior, natural thoughts are given; [but] when he becomes a spirit, in the other life, he is aware, when he is such; for certain evil and deceitful [spirits] are still in such, for then they come into the manifest exercise of such thoughts, and know.