Page:Swedenborg's Doctrine of Correspondence.djvu/69

Rh hatred and revenge, and brooding over a special grievance, or by habitual indulgence of passion, man associates with himself spirits who may in a moment tear him away from all thought of restraint, and lash him into the act of murder. So of other passions. So on a high tower, if he dwells with fear on the possibility of falling. So in the presence of an epidemic of disease, or of any danger, if he dwells upon the subject long or morbidly, he puts himself into the power of spirits, and, becoming a prey to the panic which they induce, arrests or disorders the common influx into the bodily organs, and opens the way for evil spirits to flow in and control the functions of both mind and body.

It has been said that though man even while living in this world is in the midst of spirits, yet the spirits are not aware that they are with man, any more than he is conscious of their presence. "The reason is that they are conjoined immediately as to the affections of the will, and mediately as to the thoughts of the understanding; for man thinks naturally and spirits think spiritually, and natural thought and spiritual make one only by correspondence." Mediumship, as in spiritualism, clairvoyance, and occult