e changes of the colours and at the
same time of the life in the bird, till it became stony, signify the
successive changes of spiritual life as to intelligence. They also
knew that the spirits who ascend from below, through the region of the
loins to that of the breast, are in a strong persuasion that they
are in the Lord, and consequently believe that whatever they do, even
though it be evil, they do of the Lord's will. But nevertheless this
did not enable them to know who were meant by that sight. At length
they were instructed from heaven, that the inhabitants of Mars were
meant; that their celestial love, in which many of them still are, was
signified by the flaming object that adhered to the hand; and that the
bird in the beginning, while it was in the beauty of its colours and
the vigour of its life, signified their spiritual love: but that the
bird when it had become as it were stony and devoid of life, and at
length of a dusky colour, signified those inhabitants who have removed
themselves from the good of love, and are in evil, and still believe,
nevertheless, that they are in the Lord. The same thing was signified
by the spirit who rose up and wished to take away the bird.

95. The bird of stone also represented inhabitants of that earth,
who by a strange method transmute the life of their thoughts and
affections into almost no life, on which subject I have learned the
following particulars. There was a certain spirit above my head who
spoke with me, and from the tone of his voice he was apperceived to
be as it were in a state of sleep. In this state he spoke many things,
and with a sagacity (_prudentia_) that he could not have surpassed
when awake. It was given me to perceive that he was a subject through
whom angels spoke, and that in that state he apperceived [their
speech] and produced it[ll]; for he spoke nothing but what was true;
if anything inflowed from any other source, he indeed admitted it,
but did not produce it. I questioned him respecting his state. He
said that to him that state was a peaceful one, and was free from all
solicitude respecting the future; and that at the same time he was
performing uses by which he had communication with heaven. I was
told that such, in the Grand Man, have relation to the _longitudinal
sinus_, which lies in the brain between its two hemispheres, and is
there in a tranquil state, no matter how disturbed the brain may be
on either side. While I was in conversation