Spiritual Experiences (Buss) n. 953

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953. THAT ANGELS PERCEIVE THE SIMULATIONS OF MAN, EVEN THOSE WHICH TO HIM SEEM MOST SECRET When a soul or a man wants to simulate - to think one thing and say another - it can become as manifest before the angels as does a great black cloud before the eyes. There are also some who in their thought can so simulate that they have as it were a double thought, as I have. They suppose, as a certain spirit said, that thus they can dissemble so as to deceive even the angels. But it was given me to see that this also is perceived - by myself and spirits as a thin vapor, and by angels as a mist, or as smoke with a stench. The things which to the man are most secret are laid open to this extent only before angels of the interior heaven; before those of the more interior heaven there can be no sensation of them on account of their grossness, unless, indeed, there is something more deeply hidden therein, or the like, which does not cohere with them. 1748, Feb. 23.


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