These emanations are soul-rays and they become reflected upon those small MONADIC bodies already described. I can not prove this to you experimentally, but I can see these reflections as clearly as a physical experiment can demonstrate to you the light-reflection of the sun’s rays upon a raindrop.
Swedenborg claimed to have smelled the inner nature of certain spirits he met with in the spiritual world, and to have determined their moral value by these rays. In his work “Heaven and Hell,” he has recorded several such experiences.
It is an innate power of the soul, that enables it to throw off these rays and it does it by necessity, for without going beyond itself, to express itself, the soul would never realize itself.
The soul can, however, also be trained to emit these rays or auras, consciously.
If we will believe the famous Norse traveller and explorer of Spiritland, already referred to, Em. Swedenborg, we may learn from his Arcana Celestia, that “the particular quality of a spirit is perceived immediately on his entrance into the other life, from his sphere,” that “the sphere is the image of the spirit extended beyond him;” “indeed, it is the image of all that is in him.” The cause of the spheres around spirits, the same author states to be from “the activity of things in the interior memory,” from “the ruling love.”
Swedenborg further states, that “by the sphere which exhales from the spirit of man, even while he lives in the body, every deed, however secret, becomes manifest in clear light,” and that good or evil spirits recognize him by his sphere; and that good spirits can not be present with those who are in worldly and corporeal loves, however pious exteriorly, because they instantly perceive their sphere of evil as something filthy; and, on the other hand, that good spirits readily associate with those surrounded by pure and heavenly spheres. But it is not necessary to have recourse to the seers and those spiritually illuminated, most of us have some knowledge of these facts from daily life. Who has not perceived the low and filthy sphere that surrounds the sensual, or the intolerable atmosphere of a proud and haughty spirit, or been depressed in the surroundings of a melancholy and passionate man or woman? Indeed, we all have perceptions as to these things; some stronger, some less developed.
It is, as I said, the very life of the soul to diffuse itself through all its surroundings. Without such an activity it would not be soul. An inactive, an inert soul has no existence.
Next, the soul, while thus actualizing itself, takes its material from the monads, just described, and moulds them into such shapes and forms as are requisite for its own life and the influence it endeavors to exert. The Soul has the power to mould and shape them into any possible condition. (More about this later on.) This faculty is its image-making power or the form-making power of the soul.
In order to understand this image-making power, let it first be remembered, that it is an axiom in all mystical and spiritual philosophy, that the spiritual degree in man (Atman) contains in its unity with the Universal soul, the patterns of all things and that these are reflected through the soul (Buddhi and Manas).
This being so, the soul (Buddhi and Manas) to understand the principle of creation has only to descend to its own deep, the spirit (Atman), there to find it reflected. Having found and realized the idea of creation, the soul may take material from the ethereal world, called by the Orientals Akasa, and out of it build any form—image, I call it—it likes.