Arcana Coelestia volume 1 - Swedenborg Foundation

ARCANA COELESTIA 157hearing, hearing so exquisite that the hearing of the body cannot becompared to it. For years they have spoken to me almostcontinually, but their speech also will of the Lord’s Divine mercybe described hereafter. They have also the sense of smell, which alsowill of the Lord’s Divine mercy be treated of hereafter. They have amost exquisite sense of touch, whence come the pains and tormentsendured in hell; for all sensations have relation to the touch, ofwhich they are merely diversities and varieties. They have desiresand affections to which those they had in the body cannot becompared, concerning which of the Lord’s Divine mercy more willbe said hereafter. Spirits think with much more clearness anddistinctness than they had thought during their life in the body.There are more things contained within a single idea of theirthought than in a thousand of the ideas they had possessed in thisworld. They speak together with so much acuteness, subtlety,sagacity, and distinctness, that if a man could perceive anything ofit, it would excite his astonishment. In short, they possesseverything that men possess, but in a more perfect manner, exceptthe flesh and bones and the attendant imperfections. Theyacknowledge and perceive that even while they lived in the body itwas the spirit that sensated, and that although the faculty ofsensation manifested itself in the body, still it was not of the body;and therefore that when the body is cast aside, the sensations are farmore exquisite and perfect. Life consists in the exercise of sensation,for without it there is no life, and such as is the faculty of sensation,such is the life, a fact that anyone may observe.323. At the end of the chapter, several examples will be given ofthose who during their abode in this world had thought otherwise.GENESIS 41. And the man knew Eve his wife, and she conceived, and bareCain, and said, I have gotten a man [vir], Jehovah.2. And she added to bear his brother Abel; and Abel was a shepherdof the flock, and Cain was a tiller of the ground.