Page:Swedenborg's Doctrine of Correspondence.djvu/64

58 spiritual world. During this life, however, he is as to his spirit present in the spiritual world, though not sensibly perceiving it; and is in unconscious association with spirits who have put off the material body and live consciously in that world. By means of such unconscious association with spirits, affections, thoughts, ideas and impressions are awakened, formed, modified and multiplied in man, and adopted by him as his own in freedom according to the thought of his reason.

Spirits do not know that they are with man, any more than man knows he is with spirits. Both may know it in a general way from doctrine, but neither perceives the other under ordinary conditions. Spirits perceive man's thoughts and feel his affections as their own, and think of them as in their own minds, and thus modify, multiply and extend them in their own experience. This action of the spirits with man is in turn communicated to his mind; then thoughts and affections flow in and are perceived by him as his own. This fact, together with certain laws of the spiritual world, being known, mental