there. But such
persons are visionaries and enthusiasts; and whatever spirit they
hear they believe to be the Holy Spirit, when, in fact, such spirits
are enthusiastic spirits. Such spirits see falsities as truths, and
so seeing them they induce not themselves only but also those they
flow into to believe them. Such spirits, however, have been gradually
removed, because they began to lure others into evil and to gain
control over them. Enthusiastic spirits are distinguished from other
spirits by their believing themselves to be the Holy Spirit, and
believing what they say to be Divine. As man honors such spirits with
Divine worship they do not attempt to harm him. I have sometimes
talked with them, and the wicked things they infused into their
worshipers were then disclosed. They dwell together towards the left,
in a desert place.
{Footnote 1} Man is able to talk with spirits and angels; and
the ancient people frequently talked with them (n. 67-69, 784,
1634, 1636, 7802). In some earths angels and spirits appear in
human form and talk with the inhabitants (n. 10751, 10752). But
on this earth at this day it is dangerous to talk with spirits,
unless man is in true faith, and is led by the Lord (n. 784,
9438, 10751).
250. But to speak with the angels of heaven is granted only to those
who are in truths from good, especially to those who are in the
acknowledgment of the Lord and of the Divine in His Human, because
this is the truth in which the heavens are. For, as it has been shown
above, the Lord is the God of heaven (n. 2-6); it is the Divine of
the Lord that makes heaven (n. 7-12); the Divine of the Lord in
heaven is love to Him and charity towards the neighbor from Him (n.
13-19); the whole heaven in one complex reflects a single man; also
every society of heaven; and every angel is in complete human form,
and this from the Divine Human of the Lord (n. 59-86). All of which
makes evident that only those whose interiors are opened by Divine
Truths, even to the Lord, are able to speak with the angels of
heaven, since it is into these truths with man that the Lord flows,
and when the Lord flows in heaven also flows in. Divine truths open
the interiors of man because man was so created as to be in respect
to his internal man an image of heaven, and in respect to his
external an image of the world (n. 57); and the internal man is
opened only by means of Divine truth going forth from the Lord,
because th
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