5859. Some spirits came to me by ascending, and said that they had been with me from the beginning, knowing no otherwise. But when I showed them to the contrary, they at last confessed that they had now come for the first time, but because they had at once put on all things of my memory, they could know no otherwise. From this again it was evident that when spirits come to a man they instantly put on all the man's memory-knowledges as if they were their own; and also that when a number of spirits are present, they each of them put on these knowledges, and they each of them suppose that they are their own. Into this faculty comes man immediately after death. Hence also it is that when good spirits come into a heavenly society, they put on and possess all the wisdom of all in that society-for such is the communion-and this although in the life of the body they had known nothing whatever of such things as are said in the heavenly society. This is the case if when in the world they had lived in the good of charity, for this good is attended with the appropriation to itself of everything of wisdom, because this is secretly implanted in good itself; and it is from this that they know as it were from themselves things which in the bodily life had been incomprehensible and even unutterable.