manifestly so that he is not aware of it, but still it is regnant . . . . . . Men can see this in others. And this is the kind of thing that in the other life makes a sphere . . . as it were the man's image extended outside of himself, the image in fact of all things that are in him." 23
Swedenborg mentions that he had known a man in the world who appeared in the spirit world with such a sphere of high opinion of himself that all other spirits fled away and he was left alone. Another person known to him had "contracted a sphere of supereminence and authority" surrounding him like a mist that crept over the other spirits, so that they wanted to go away. But those who had been born to a sphere of high authority and who were also good soon strove to put it off.
As among men so among spirits there were spheres tranquil and pleasant, others disturbing and depressing. Each soul, so to speak, carried its own climate with it favorable or unfavorable to those near it. Worst of all Swedenborg found those spirits in the nearness of whose spheres it was almost impossible even for him to believe in the good and the true; under whose influence in fact evil seemed good and false seemed true; spheres they had carried with them from their life on earth. But he was not undefended. Once, he says, when he was surrounded by such spirits, "an angel came, and I saw that the spirits could not endure his presence; for as he came nearer, they fell back more and more." They could not "endure the sphere of mutual love." 24
