of a delight which had afforded him so much enjoyment. But he was told that he had lost nothing at all; that he still knew everything which he ever knew; but that in the world which he now inhabits no one is allowed to recall such things; that it was sufficient that he could think and speak much better and more perfectly than before, without immersing his rational faculty as he used to do, in gross, obscure, material and corporeal things which are of no use in the kingdom which he had just entered; that he now possessed everything conducive to the uses of eternal life, and that thus he might become blessed and happy, but not otherwise; that therefore it was the part of ignorance to believe, that, in the kingdom in which he now is, intelligence perishes with the removal and quiescence of material things in the memory; when yet the truth is, that in proportion as the mind is withdrawn from the sensuals which belong to the external man or to the body, it is elevated to things spiritual and celestial.
Men who are in love to the Lord and in charity toward the neighbor, have angelic intelligence and wisdom within them while they live in the world, but stored up in the inmosts of their interior memory, and not at all apparent to them until they put off corporeal things. The natural memory is then laid asleep, and they awake into the interior memory, and gradually thereafter into angelic memory itself.
How the rational faculty may be cultivated shall
