3540. CONCERNING THE GENERAL SPHERE OF THOSE WHO SUPPOSE SPIRITS TO BE OF THE NATURE OF THE ATMOSPHERE. I was for some time in a sphere which was very far from being agreeable, as it was so general that I could not perceive spirits any more than if there had been no spirit at all, as they disappeared so completely that I could scarcely perceive that they were anything. They were very numerous, and were manifested as in a small star or white scintillation, made up of a vast multitude of little wandering sparkles; and it was said that they were like these in number, so that no one of them could be perceived as anything. There was at the same time a certain disorder about them, such as to prevent any apparent consociation, so vaguely erratic were they in their sphere. Indeed there was nothing in such a sphere but a loose general somewhat, without any fixed tendency to societies; in a word nothing but an indeterminate and unassociated commune - a sphere that affected me most unpleasantly, and induced an idea as if there were no society, and that one did not know another, but everyone wandered about, as though flowing forth into the universe at large. I was instructed that they were those who in the life of the body had cherished the idea respecting spirits, that they were somewhat of the nature of the atmosphere, invisible, without any quality definable by words, thus not perceptible, though wandering about in the universe. Those that entertain this idea are innumerable, on which account all that are of such a quality are remitted into it. While in that sphere I wondered whether, in the other life, one would ever know another, thinking that all perception would perish, and still more, consociation; and yet, notwithstanding, one would [somehow] find another, and from this arose that most disagreeable sphere which I have called general. I was informed that they actually were in society, though it did not appear so, for they yet had life, and [from their associated life] they spoke with me.