Spiritual Experiences (Buss) n. 3927

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3927. After a sleep, in which I dreamed concerning [certain] golden coins lost in a purse, which I sought for but was unable to find, though I found other golden articles but not the coins, a boy came who showed that he had similar coins of gold, of whom I could not suspect that he had taken them away. Being then awakened I heard how they are punished by severe punishments of contortion, which are of such a nature that those subjected to them are reduced from the state of subtlety in which they were to a state of the utmost grossness or dullness. And thus they are tormented with inflictions of grossness, being reduced thereto even in their speech, and also by the infusing of a reaction, so that they were compelled under a kind of torture to comply with it, even against their own deceits. They were then also contorted, or broken and lacerated by contortions as to all their members from the breast successively to the feet. It was said that they did not treat their heads in this manner, and the reason was perceived to be, that their heads were hard and bony, and if thus treated would be broken; wherefore they that deem themselves pre-eminently subtle, are reduced to such [mental] grossness that they cannot speak except in the grossest manner, and those who are almost without bodies, like spirits, yet become corporeal, and are able to feel pains and such things in the body, a fact of which they were fully convinced. The punishment proceeded from the highest degree of grossness to a less, and so on to one still more subtle, so that it was shown that they could be punished even in their own fallacious subtlety.


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