4102. About the speech of spirits
The spirits all around me, wherever they were, spoke together throughout the night about a subject with which I was familiar, so that there was a constant kind of argumentative speaking due to which I could not help awakening several times from my nightly sleep. Their speech flowed into certain symbolic portrayals in a dream. They told me that they continually conversed together, and had so many reasonings and so many arguments on the subject, that it was incredible. I also saw that with them the series of reasonings were so countlessly many on a single subject, that it was hardly believable.
And I saw, and declared, that evil spirits invent shadowy shapes that are off the subject, and connect to them so many more shadowy shapes and fantasies of the matter at hand, which are taken to be those in the dream, just mentioned; and so forth. 1748, 30 Nov. Otherwise they seem to talk together among themselves entirely like people on earth, for they do not reflect on the fact that they speak by means of mental imagery - with me, entirely as one person to another.
4102. CONCERNING THE SPEECH OF SPIRITS.
The spirits round about me, wherever they were, kept up a conversation respecting some matter known to me during the whole night, so that there was a kind of unceasing chat embracing ratiocinations. The effect was to awaken me repeatedly from sleep, and their speech flowed into certain representations made in dreams. They then said to me that they could talk in a continued stream, and that they had at command such a multitude of arguments and reasonings on the subject as would be incredible. I perceived that there was with them such an indefinite series of reasonings on one topic as would exceed all belief. It was perceived also and said that evil spirits frame various shadowy things which do not truly relate to the subject in hand, and these they connect with numerous other shadows and phantasies of the subject of discourse and which can only be taken as the imagery of dreams just spoken of, and so on. - 1748, November 30. On other occasions, they seem to converse with each other altogether as men, for they do not reflect that it is through ideas. With me, however, the interaction was wholly like that of one man with another.
4102. De loquela spirituum
Spiritus circumcirca me, ubicunque erant, colloquuti sunt tota nocte, de aliqua re mihi nota, sic ut perpetua quaedam esset loquela tum ratiocinatio, sic ut non potuerim non aliquoties expergisci a somno in nocte, et quod loquela eorum influeret in repraesentata quaedam in somnio; dicebant mihi quod continue colloquerentur, et haberent tam multas rationes, et tam multa ratiocinia, de ea re, ut incredibile, perceptum etiam quod apud eos ratiociniorum series indefinitae sint de una re, ut vix credibile: tum perceptum et dictum quod mali spiritus fingant umbratilia, quae non ad rem pertinent, et iis alligent tam plura alia umbratilia, et phantasias rei, de qua, quae capiuntur sicut ea in somnio de quibus, et sic porro. 1748, 30 Nov. Alioquin colloqui inter se videntur prorsus sicut homines, nam quod per ideas, non reflectunt, mecum prorsus sicut homo cum homine.