Spiritual Experiences (Buss) n. 3481

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3481. When I was myself led by them into such phantasies, in order that I might get free from them by having their fallacy exposed, it was given to ask them, whether they could conceive of anything existing beyond the bounds of the universe; whether there were any space without the universe; and if there were, whether this extended to infinity; for no termination can be conceived if space is conceived; thus how there could be space without space, or the infinite, which cannot be predicated of space (:some suppose that there God is, because he is infinite:) wherefore those who had been in such phantastic conceits in the life of the body, appeared to themselves to be conveyed without the universe; and some of them, when there, armed their condition to be so much to their mind, that they wished to remain there, aloof from the [troubles and] annoyances to which they were subject in the created universe. But while held in the phantasy that they were out of the universe, as things appeared to them according to their phantasy, they then began to reason concerning that non-space beyond the universe, as having no limit; wherefore they seemed to themselves to advance still farther, till at length they saw there certain beings, who spoke to them, and whom I also heard speaking, and saying, that they were in the terminus beyond the universe, and in fact that they themselves were termini, and if they approached that they should swallow them up. Whereupon they were smitten with terror in the prospect of being devoured if they ventured farther, and indeed seemed, from the effect of their terror, to be, as it were, actually devoured; thus deeming themselves reduced to nothing, and compelled to vanish away. Those who thus stood in the terminus, or as being themselves termini, were described as a kind of statues, yet neither of stone nor wood, but as somehow animated, and yet not animated; whether cold or hot, could not be determined, but they seemed to be both. These [reasoners] were those who in the life of the body had been in such a phantasy, viz., that of confounding the Divine infinite with infinite space, so that they could not conceive the infinite of the Lord except by the infinite of space; wherefore because they could not conceive the infinite of space, neither do they admit the infinite of the Lord.


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