The same claim in substance is often repeated in his writings. And he tells us how this extraordinary privilege was granted him, or in what way this alleged open intercourse with the inhabitants of the other world was effected. It was through the providential opening of his spiritual senses. These senses, he says, belong alike to every human being. They are inherent in the very constitution of an immortal spirit—are included among its powers or capabilities, just as natural sight, hearing, feeling, etc., are included in the capabilities of our material organism. And although these senses (for a wise and beneficent purpose which he has repeatedly explained) are ordinarily closed during our life on earth, they nevertheless may be and repeatedly have been opened in men while living in the flesh. And when opened, the individual is for the time intromitted into
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scarcely anything about heaven or hell, nor yet about his own life after death, although these things are all treated of in the Word. Nay, many even among those who were born within the church deny these things, saying in their hearts, Who has ever come thence and told us? Lest, therefore, such a negative principle, which rules especially among those who possess much worldly wisdom, should also infect and corrupt the simple in heart and faith, it has been granted me to associate with angels and to converse with them as one man with another, and also to see the things which are in the heavens as well as those which are in the hells, and this for the space of thirteen years; so that I can now describe them from what I have myself seen and heard,—which I do, in the hope that ignorance may thus be enlightened and incredulity dissipated."
