1760. It is generally so in the world of spirits that they cannot believe the Lord is able to know all and the least things that are going on in the Universe, both in Heaven and in the World, and on all earths - even down to the very least detail in all and in each. For those spirits, like earthlings, are looking at those matters from below, from their extremely limited earthly mind, to which such thoughts pose nothing but impossibilities.
But then I kept telling them, and portrayed to them by mental imagery, that [if it were not so,] then it could be maintained that neither can the soul in the body know, and not knowing, be able to manage all and the tiniest details in its own body, and to heal its smallest parts. This the scholars ascribe to nature, but mistakenly and wrongly, seeing that this all comes from the Lord.
Then I added that the human will by itself is able to arrange and so to speak know which muscles and which motor tissues must take part in a single action-of which there are thousands, even tens of thousands, selected from here and there over the whole body. Then I portrayed this to them, asking, Why not the Lord, Who is God of the universe, and the Only life? And they were quite unable to reply; for the impossibilities had departed. 1748, 28 March.
1760. It is a fact of common occurrence in the world of spirits that those who are there are unable to believe that the Lord can know all and everything in all and everything, even things the most minute which take place in the universe, whether in heaven or in the world, or in all the earths; for they, like men, view all things from a lower plane, because from their natural mind, which is extremely limited, and to which impossibilities are prone to suggest themselves. But when I often said to them, and by suitable ideas represented, that it could be predicated of the soul in the body that it did not know the things [transpiring in it]; and if it did not know, it could not dispose all and everything in its own body, and minister healing [to diseased parts], which the learned ascribe to nature, but erroneously and perversely, inasmuch as they are all from the Lord; and when also it was said that the will of man alone could dispose, and, as it were, know what muscles and what motive fibers should concur to anyone action, of which there are thousands and myriads distributed everywhere over the body, and when by this it was represented to them how the case is with the Lord who is the God of the universe, and the only life; then they had nothing to say in reply, for impossibilities yielded [to such a view of the subject]. - 1748, March 28.)
1760. Id commune est in spirituum mundo, quod non possint credere, Dominum omnia et singula scire posse, quae aguntur in Universo, tam Coelo, quam Mundo, quam in omnibus terris, etiam singularissima, in omnibus et singulis, nam ii sicut homines spectant talia ab inferiori, quia ex mente sua naturali, sic finitissima, cui non nisi impossibilitates objiciuntur, sed cum toties iis dixi, ac per ideas repraesentabatur, quod sic praedicari posset de anima in corpore, quod illa nec scire, et si non sciat, non disponere possit omnia et singula in suo corpore, et mederi singulis, quae eruditi adscribunt naturae, sed perverse et male, quia ex Domino omnia; tum [cum] quoque dictum, quod sola voluntas hominis disponere, et quasi scire possit, qui musculi, et fibrae motrices ad unam actionem concurrent, quorum millia, imo myriades sunt, sparsim electae per totum corpus, et [cum] hoc iis repraesentatum, [et interrogatum,] quid non Dominus, Qui est Deus universi, et Sola vita?-tunc 1
nihil potuerunt respondere, nam impossibilitates disparatae sunt. 1748, 28 Martius.
Footnotes:
1. The Manuscript has vita; tunc