1869. CONTINUATION CONCERNING THE HOLY SCRIPTURE OR WORD
How many things there are in a single word of the Word has been shown me by the opening of the ideas of thought. It is a remarkable fact that in the other life this can be done so to the very life that the ideas themselves appear visible in form, and thus like pictured images. One who during his life in this world had lived in charity or mutual love, and had taken great delight in the Word, had his ideas thus opened. There then appeared beautiful things beyond number, together with delicious and delightful things of an affecting nature, and it was said that the things which thus appear visible can be opened again as to their interiors, and that when these have been opened things still more beautiful and delightful are presented that are attended with happiness itself. Such are all angelic ideas, for they are open from the Lord Himself. [2] To spirits who wondered that ideas of thought could be so opened in the other life, this was illustrated by taking the case of the sight of the eye, the rays of vision of which are so dull and obscure that the smaller things in nature (which contain things innumerable) they see only as something opaque, black, and shapeless; but when the same objects are viewed through a microscope, things more interior are presented to view, connected in beautiful series and flowing in delightful order; and it is seen that these might in like manner be opened still more by a more powerful microscope. In this way such spirits have been shown how the case is with the internal sight, the rays of which are nothing but ideas, in that in themselves these ideas are so gross that anything more gross can scarcely exist in that sphere, although men think differently. But concerning ideas, of the Lord's Divine mercy hereafter.