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PHILOSOPHY OF DREAMS. 1071
After this personal statement he continues : "The dreams pro
duced by spirits with some are mere illusions, and contain hardly
anything except mere diversions originating in the things suggested
by the blood and past thoughts. In respect to the dreams them
selves, they are, as already remarked, excited by spirits ; and this
has been made so manifest to me, that I know it to be most certain;
since I have conversed frequently with the very spirits by whom
these things are caused, and hence have been most fully instructed
that they flow in from no other source."
Again we read in the Arcana Coelestia, "There are three kinds
of dreams. The first comes from the Lord mediately by heaven;
of this kind were the prophetical dreams, concerning which we may
read in the Word. The second kind comes by means of angelic
spirits . . . whence the men of the Most Ancient Church had their
dreams, which were instructive. The third kind comes from the
spirits who are near man when he sleeps ; this kind of dreams is
also significative. Fantastical dreams, however, have a different
origin" (no. 1976).
Concerning the dreams which flow in from the Lord through
heaven, we read : "Those dreams which flow in from the Lord
through heaven, never appear otherwise than according to represen
tatives. If any one, therefore, knows not what the various objects
in nature represent; and especially if he has no knowledge at all
that anything represents, he cannot but believe that dreams are mere
comparisons, like those which every one uses in common discourse.
They are indeed comparisons, but such as correspond, and are pre
sented in reality in the world of spirits, when the angels who are
in the interior heaven converse respecting the spiritual and celestial
things of the Lord’s kingdom" (Arcana Cœlestia, no. 5115).
Of the manner in which the ideas of angels are turned into
corresponding images in the world of spirits, and are represented
by dreams in the minds of men, we read in the "Spiritual Diary,"
no. 4033, as follows : "The ideas of the speech of the angels were
so represented, that their conversation in general and in particular,
was represented to me in a dream. They were told, and they per
ceived also, that the very same conversations might have descended
into, and might have been presented by, an indefinite number of
other representations, according to the spirits around me, and thus
according to my state; so that an infinite number of other dreams
may result from the same speech, or from the same ideas of speech;
for the memories of men are recipient vessels, which receive ideas
according to the variations of their forms, and according to their
states." Compare also Arcana Cœlestia, no. 1980.
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