391.  That a spirit, as well as a man on earth in the body enjoys a pulse and a respiration, can only be proved by spirits and angels themselves, when privilege is granted to speak with them.  This privilege has been granted to me.  When questioned about the matter they declared that they are just as much men as those in the world are, and possess a body as well as they, but a spiritual body, and feel the beat of the heart in the chest, and the beat of the arteries in the wrist, just as men do in the natural world.  I have questioned many about the matter, and they all gave like answer.  That man’s spirit respires within his body has been granted me to learn by personal experience.  On one occasion angels were allowed to control my respiration, and to diminish it at pleasure, and at length to withdraw it, until only the respiration of my spirit remained, which I then perceived by sense.  A like experience was granted me when permitted to learn the state of the dying (as may be seen in the work on Heaven and Hell, n. 449).  I have sometimes been brought into the respiration of my spirit only, which I have then sensibly perceived to be in accord with the common respiration of heaven.  Also many times I have been in a state like that of angels, and also raised up into heaven to them, and being then out of the body in spirit, I talked with angels with a respiration in like manner as in the world.  From this and other personal evidence it has been made clear to me that man’s spirit respires, not only in the body but also after it has left the body; that the respiration of the spirit is so silent as not to be perceptible to man; and that it inflows into the manifest respiration of the body almost as cause flows into effect, or thought into the lungs and through the lungs into speech.  From all this it is also evident that conjunction of spirit and body in man is by means of the correspondence of the cardiac and pulmonic movement in both.

392.  These two movements, the cardiac and the pulmonic, derive their origin and persistence from this, that the whole angelic heaven, in general and in particular, is in these two movements of life; and the whole angelic heaven is in these movements because the Lord pours them in from the sun, where He is, and which is from Him; for these two movements are maintained by that sun from the Lord.  It is evident that such is their origin since all things of heaven and all things of the world depend on the Lord through that sun in a connection, by virtue of form, like a chain-work from the first to outmosts, also since the life of love and wisdom is from the Lord, and all the forces of the universe are from life.  That the variation of these movements is according to the reception of love and wisdom, also follows.

393.  More will be said in what follows of the correspondence of these movements, as what the nature of that correspondence is in those who respire with heaven, and what it is in those who respire with hell; also what it is in those who speak with heaven, but think with hell, thus what it is with hypocrites, flatterers, deceivers, and others.