hen I let my spirit into the body, you did not see me; but
when I let it out of the body, you did see me. You have been teaching in
the gymnasium, that you are souls, and that souls see souls, because
they are human forms; and you know, that when you were in the natural
world, you did not see yourself or your souls in your bodies; and this
is a consequence of the difference between what is spiritual and what is
natural." When he heard of the difference between what is spiritual and
what is natural, he said, "What do you mean by that difference? is it
not like the difference between what is more or less pure? for what is
spiritual but that which is natural in a higher state of purity?" I
replied, "The difference is of another kind; it is like that between
prior and posterior, which bear no determinate proportion to each other:
for the prior is in the posterior as the cause is in the effect; and the
posterior is derived from the prior as the effect from its cause: hence,
the one does not appear to the other." To this the chief teacher
replied, "I have meditated and ruminated upon this difference, but
heretofore in vain; I wish I could perceive it." I said, "You shall not
only perceive the difference between what is spiritual and what is
natural, but shall also see it." I then proceeded as follows: "You
yourself are in a spiritual state with your associate spirits, but in a
natural state with me; for you converse with your associates in the
spiritual language, which is common to every spirit and angel, but with
me in my mother tongue; for every spirit and angel, when conversing with
a man, speaks his peculiar language; thus French with a Frenchman,
English with an Englishman, Greek with a Greek, Arabic with an Arabian,
and so forth. That you may know therefore the difference between what is
spiritual and what is natural in respect to languages, make this
experiment; withdraw to your associates, and say something there: then
retain the expressions, and return with them in your memory, and utter
them before me." He did so, and returned to me with those expressions in
his mouth, and uttered them; and they were altogether strange and
foreign, such as do not occur in any language of the natural world. By
this experiment several times repeated, it was made very evident that
all the spiritual world have the spiritual language, which has in it
nothing that is common to any natural language, and that every man comes
of himself into t