Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/232

216 But even before then, while he was still at home, he wrote, "These words are written in the presence of Jews who are around me, nor do I doubt but that Abraham is also present." He said they were still intent on turning everything into "phantasies," meaning they threw doubt on the reality of his experiences.42

The word "phantasy" (which he used for "hallucination") apparently bothered him. "Yet it is not in the least degree phantasy, but a continuous speech as of one man with another . . . and this now for fifteen months . . . that it is no phantasy can be clearly known by those in Sweden, with whom I have conversed in the meantime." 43

He had mentioned several times before that he was able to have inward conversation with spirits and to be with people in the flesh at the same time without the latter noticing anything.

But he finally looked to the future to prove that it had not been "phantasy." "It can also be evident from an historical account of my life, if opportunity be afforded for describing this." 44

Emanuel Swedenborg never tried to justify or explain himself by writing such an account, but perhaps he could not do more than he did do—put down his experiences as they came to him as honestly as he could, and venture on such explanations as he had available.

The year 1746 was long before the subconscious and extrasensory powers of the mind had been charted as much as they are now, little though that is, for it is still true what Swedenborg said early in his first script, wondering at the new vistas before him:

"There are marvellous things occurring in the human mind, so marvellous indeed that they cannot be expressed. In number they are infinitely more than all the things contained in the human body, in the three Kingdoms of Nature and in the universal world, visible and invisible. The sciences have drawn out only a few of them, and these are mere rivulets emanating from an ocean." 45