(18) Thou canst not better comprehend, apprehend or understand this, than in and by thy own body, which, through the first fall of Adam with all its [the body's] birth or geniture, fitness, faculties and will, is become just such a house as the place of this world is come to be.

(15) Now the body of God, as to this world, could not remain in death, so God moved himself with his seven qualifying or fountain spirits to the birth or geniture. But thou must understand this high thing rightly.

(16) And now as we understand, that Man (with the Similitude wherein God dwells) is not merely at Home in this World, much Hurts, or moves. less in the stinking Carcase, so it is manifest (in that we are so very blind as to Paradise) that our first Parents (with their Spirit) are gone out of the heavenly Paradise into the Spirit of this World, where then the Spirit of this World instantly captivated their Body, and made it earthly, so that Body and Soul are perished; and now we have the pure Element no more for our Body, but the Out-Birth, (viz. the four Elements, with the Dominion of the Stars) and the Sun only is the Light of the Body; also this Body does not belong to the Deity. God does not discover himself in the stinking Carcase [or Corpse,] but in the holy Man, in the pure Image which he created in the Beginning.

(1) IF we consider now (in the Light of Nature) of Man, the Image of God, of his Beginning, and of his eternal Enduring, Being, [or Substance,] and then of the Breaking of his Body, how Body and Soul part asunder, and whither the Souls go, when the Spirit of their Breath does break [or dissolve] in them, and the Springing or Moving in the Tincture of this World does cease, then we find the Ground of the Unquietness of the Soul, when it is separated from the Body, [being] unregenerated; from whence Lamentation and Desiring arise; from whence then the Babel of Confusion has risen, so that very many Things have therefore been invented to ransom Souls [out of Distress.]

(6) But that God said, Thou shalt turn to Earth from whence thou wast taken, that is also very true; but the Understanding is [hidden] in the Word, and the earthly Vail hangs before it, we must look under the Vail. For Adam was taken out of the Earth, not out of the four Productions of the Elements, [but he was] an Extract out of the Element, which qualified [or mingled] with the Earth. But when he fell into the four Elements, then he became Earth, as also Fire, Air, and Water. And now what should the bestial Man do [with] the heavenly paradisical Fruit? He could not a eat of it; and therefore God does not cast his heavenly Kingdom to Beasts and Swine, but it belongs to Angels.

(3) You must not so understand it, as if it were extinguished in itself: No; but the Soul of Adam went out from the Principle of God, into the Principle of this World; and therein now the Spirit of every Soul is thus generated again by human Propagation, as is mentioned before, and it cannot be otherwise. And therefore if we would be fit for the Kingdom of Heaven, we must be regenerated anew in the Spirit of God, or else none can inherit the Kingdom of God, as Christ taught us faithfully; of which I will write hereafter, that it may be a Fountain for the Thirsty, and a Light to the noble Way, in the Blossom of the Lily.

(37) "And when God had said this, Providence, with the aid of the Seven Governors and Harmony, brought the sexes together, making the mixtures and establishing the generations, and all things were multiplied according to their kind. He who through the error of attachment loves his body, abides wandering in darkness, sensible and suffering the things of death, but he who realizes that the body is but the tomb of his soul, rises to immortality."

(7) Men must not think, that Man before his Fall had bestial Members to propagate with, but heavenly [Members,] nor any as Man has in his Body, does not belong to the Holy Trinity in Paradise, but to the Earth; it must go again into its Ether. But Man was created immortal, and also holy, like the Angels; and seeing he was created out of the Limbus, therefore he was pure. Now in what manner he is, and out of what he was made, it follows further.

(87) But when he set his Imagination in the Kingdom of this World, then the bright and clear Will of his Soul drew the swelled Kingdom of the Out-Birth to the Soul in its Will; and so the pure paradisical Soul became dark, and the Element of the Body got the xMesch or Massa, which the Will of the Soul of the Mind attracted into the Element [of the Body;] and then he was a fleshly Man, and got the Fierceness of the first Principle, which the strong Breaking-through to God, in the Gate of the Deep, made to be hard Gristles and Bones.

(5) When then the Saviour had said this unto his disciples he said unto them: "Understand ye in what manner I discourse with you?" "The fourth thought on the other hand concerning the word which thou hast said: 'If the soul goeth forth out of the body and travelleth on the way with the counterfeiting spirit, and if it hath not found the mystery of the undoing of all the bonds and the seals which are bound to the counterfeiting spirit, so that it may cease to haunt or be assigned to it,--if it then hath not found it, the counterfeiting spirit leadeth the soul to the Virgin of Light, the judge; and the judge, the Virgin of Light, proveth the soul and findeth that it hath sinned and, as she also hath not found the mysteries of the Light with it, she handeth it over to one of her receivers, and her receiver leadeth it and casteth it into the body, and it cometh not out of the changes of the body before it hath yielded its last circuit,'--concerning this word, then, my Lord, thou hast said unto us aforetime: 'Be reconciled with thy foe as long as thou art on the way with him, lest perchance thy foe hand thee over to the judge and the judge hand thee over to the servant and the servant cast thee into prison, and thou shalt not come forth out of that region till thou hast yielded the last farthing.' "Because of this manifestly is thy word: Every soul which cometh forth out of the body and travelleth on the way with the counterfeiting spirit and findeth not the mystery of the undoing of all the seals and all the bonds, so that it may undo itself from the counterfeiting spirit which is bound to it,--that soul which hath not found mysteries of the Light and hath not found the mysteries of detachment from the counterfeiting spirit which is bound to it,--if then it hath not found it, the counterfeiting spirit leadeth that soul to the Virgin of Light, and the Virgin of Light, yea that judge, handeth over that soul to one of her receivers, and her receiver casteth it into the sphere of the æons, and it cometh not out of the changes of the body before it hath yielded the last circuit which is appointed for it. This then, my Lord, is the fourth thought."

(30) Also the new birth blossomed in the time of the creation, when man had not spoiled or corrupted it; but by him nature was still more corrupted; and so God cursed the ground. But seeing man took hold of the fruit of the old body, thereupon the fruit of the new body was hidden in its heaven, and man must now behold it with the new body, and cannot partake of it with the natural body.

(28) But the gross Body cannot see into it, because it belongs not to [Paradise,] it belongs to the Earth, and must putrify, or rot, and rise in a new Virtue [or Power,] (which is like Paradise) in Christ, at the End of Days; and then it also may dwell in Paradise, and not before: It must lay off the third Principle; [viz.] this Skin, [Fleece or Covering,] which Father Adam and Mother Eve are got into, in which they supposed they should be wise when they should wear all the three Principles manifested in them; if they had rather worn two hidden in them, and had stayed in the cone, it had been good for us, of which further about the Fall.

(16) Seeing then that Man is so very earthly, therefore he has none but earthly Knowledge, except he be regenerated in the Gate of the Deep. He always supposes that the Soul (at the Deceasing of the Body) goes only out at the Mouth; and he understands nothing concerning its odeep Essences above the Elements. When he sees a blue Vapor go forth out of the Mouth of a dying Man (which makes a strong Smell all over the Chamber) then he supposes that is the Soul.

(52) That soul and body will come together again at the Day of the Resurrection thou may perceive here by the earth. For the Creator said, Let the earth bring forth grass and herbs, and trees bearing fruit, each according to its kind. Then each sprang up according to its kind, and grew. And as before the time of the wrath it had a heavenly body, so it got now an earthly one, answerable to its mother.

(106) For [there] the Word clothed the Soul, and shut up the Kingdom of Hell, and there it shall wait till the Day of the Restitution, and then it shall get a Body again out of the Element, out of the Body that was here [in this Life,] when the last Day; and not a strange Body, but the same it did bear, in the [one] Element hidden in the four Elements, that same shall go forth and flourish as Adam [had done] in [his] Creation. The Gate of the Redemption.

(72) For this body is but a husk, from which the new body grows— ["The new body grows out of the heavenly substantiality in the Word, out of the flesh and blood of Christ, out of the mystery of the old body."] —as it is with a grain of wheat in the earth. The husk or shell will not rise again, no more than it does in the wheat, but will remain for ever in death and in hell.

(3) Tat: Thou sayest things impossible, O father, things that are forced. Hence answers would I have direct unto these things. Am I a son strange to my father's race? Keep it not, father, back from me. I am a true-born son; explain to me the manner of Rebirth. Hermes: What may I say, my son? I can but tell thee this. Whene'er I see within myself the Simple Vision brought to birth out of God's mercy, I have passed through myself into a Body that can never die. And now i am not as I was before; but I am born in Mind. The way to do this is not taught, and it cannot be seen by the compounded element by means of which thou seest. Yea, I have had my former composed form dismembered for me. I am no longer touched, but I have touch; I have dimension too; and [yet] am I a stranger to them now. Thou seest me with eyes, my son; but what I am thou dost not understand [even] with fullest strain of body and of sight.

(27) Therefore now we know, that we were not created to generate [that which is] earthly, but heavenly, out of the Body of the pure Element, which [Body] Adam had before his Sleep, and [before] his Eve [was,] when he was neither Man nor Woman [Male nor Female,] but one only Image of God, full of Chastity, out of the pure Element. He should have generated an Image again like himself; but because he went into the Spirit of this World, therefore his Body became earthly, and so the heavenly Birth was gone, and God must make the Woman out of him, as is before mentioned. Now if we, the Children of Eve, are to be helped, then there must come a new Virgin, and bear us a Son, who should be God with us, and in us.

(4) "The second mystery of the First Mystery, on the other hand,-- if thou accomplishest it finely in all its figures,--the man, therefore, who shall accomplish its mystery, if he speaketh that mystery over the head of any man who goeth forth out of the body, and he speaketh it into his two ears, if indeed the man who goeth forth out of the body hath received mysteries for the second time and is sharing in the word of truth,--amēn, I say unto you: That man, if he goeth forth out of the body of matter, then will his soul become a great light-stream and pass through all the regions, until it cometh to the kingdom of that mystery.

(23) Accordingly, the word 'former' [in the quotation] implieth that prior to the three and one-half days thou wilt have been thinking thou hadst the same sort of a body as the former body of flesh and blood, possessed by thee in the former existence because of habitual propensities; and the word 'produced' is so used because, afterwards, the vision of thy future place of birth will appear to thee. Hence, the expression as a whole, 'former and that to be produced', referreth to these [i.e. the fleshly body just discarded and the fleshly body to be assumed at rebirth].