constantly flowing out like a stream, and what flows out surrounds him; also that these substances, contiguous to his body, as they are constantly moved by his life’s two fountains of motion, the heart and the lungs, arouse the same activities in the atmospheres, and thereby produce a perception as of his presence with others; therefore that it is not a separate sphere of affections and of thoughts therefrom that goes forth and is continuous from him, although it is so called, since the affections are mere states of the mind’s forms in the angel.  They said, moreover, that there is such a sphere about every angel, because there is one about the Lord, and that the sphere about the Lord is in like manner from Him, and that that sphere is their sun, that is, the sun of the spiritual world.

292.  A perception has often been granted me of such a sphere around each angel and spirit, and also a general sphere around many in a society.  I have also been permitted to see it under various appearances, in heaven sometimes appearing like a thin flame, in hell like gross fire, also sometimes in heaven like a thin and shining white cloud, and in hell like a thick and black cloud.  It has also been granted me to perceive these spheres as various kinds of odors and stenches.  By these experiences I was convinced that a sphere, consisting of substances set free and separated from- their bodies, encompasses every one in heaven and every one in hell.

293.  It was also perceived that a sphere flows forth, not only from angels and spirits but also from each and all things that appear in the spiritual world, — from trees and from their fruits, from shrubs and from their flowers, from herbs, and from grasses, even from the soils and from their very particles.  From which it was patent that both in the case of things living and things dead this is a universal law, That each thing is encompassed by something like that which is within it, and that this is continually exhaled from it.  It is known, from the observation of many learned men, that it is the same in the natural world — that is, that there is a wave of effluvia constantly flowing forth out of man, also out of every animal, likewise out of tree, fruit, shrub, flower, and even out of metal and stone.  This the natural world derives from the spiritual, and the spiritual world from the Divine.

294.  Because those things that constitute the sun of the spiritual world are from the Lord, but are not the Lord, they are not life in itself, but are devoid of life in itself; just as those things that flow forth from angel or man, and constitute spheres around him are not the angel or the man, but are from him, and devoid of his life.  These spheres make one with the angel or man no otherwise than that they are concordant; and this they are because taken from the forms of their bodies, which in them were forms of their life.  This is an arcanum which angels, with their spiritual ideas, are able to see in thought and also express in speech, but men with their natural ideas are not; because a thousand spiritual ideas make one natural idea, and one natural idea cannot be resolved by man into any spiritual idea, much less into so many.  The reason is that these ideas differ according to degrees of height, which were treated of in Part Third.