Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/215

Rh spirits and angels have often appeared to men on earth, how are such appearances to be accounted for? The only rational and philosophical explanation of the fact, that we have ever met with, or indeed are able to conceive of, is that given by Swedenborg. It is obvious that spirits and angels, since they are spiritual beings and inhabitants of a spiritual realm, cannot be seen with the natural eyes nor heard with the natural ears; for these senses are adapted to the natural world in which we are now living, and are not at all suited to the spiritual world which is a discrete degree above the natural.

Accordingly, Swedenborg says that every man has a spiritual body within his natural or material body. That this spiritual body which is the real man that continues to live after death, is endowed with senses suited to the spiritual world as the natural senses are to the natural world. That these senses, ordinarily closed during our earth-life, are nevertheless capable of being opened while we live in the flesh; and when opened, the individual is able to see and hear spirits as plainly as men see and hear one another, and to have sensible perception also of the light, objects and phenomena of the spiritual world. This is the way, he says, in which he was himself intromitted into the spiritual world—by the opening of his spiritual senses—and was permitted for so long a time to