EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
tain faculty of retrocession from physical activity when thinking deeply. In The Animal Kingdom he had remarked, "When the mind is thinking very intently and breathing tacitly and slowly, then the lungs elevated to a certain degree appear in like manner to keep silence, and to send out and draw in the air almost imperceptibly, so as not to disturb the analyses of the rational mind by any motion on their part." And again, "If we carefully attend to profound thoughts, we shall find that when we draw breath, a host of ideas rush from beneath as through an open door into the sphere of thought, whereas when we hold the breath, and slowly let it out, we deeply keep the while in the tenor of our thought, and communicate as it were with the higher faculty of the soul—as I have observed in my own person times without number. Retaining or holding back the breath is equivalent to having intercourse with the soul: attracting or drawing it in amounts to intercourse with the body."
But it was long after spiritual manifestations began to occur to him before he thought of the possibility of conversing with spirits. Indeed, he knew nothing about spirits. He believed in the
168
