Spiritual Experiences-Word Exp. n. 11

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11. 1149. The things I am telling are amazing, yet I have experienced them so often that I have stopped numbering the instances when heavenly spirits have so controlled the actions of my whole body, that I have gone wherever they wished, so responsively that I went without resistance and not against my will. They directed my foot-steps, every one, and my gait and other movements of my body, of my hands, fingers, arms, eyes, head, completely at their pleasure, as if they themselves were moving my body. I did retain the ability to resist, and to turn from their leading to a different one, but this was because power was given to me by the Messiah. Moreover, they even informed me how they were able to do this, namely by simply willing it for themselves, as if it were their will. This communicates completely with our mental faculty, causing us to think that something is our own, when yet it is the spirits' - and not even theirs, because they are only instrumental means, while it is the Messiah Himself through spirits Who controls and tempers all things down to the very least. So spirits suppose it to be their own will; in fact, evil spirits themselves think the very body they are controlling is their own, and do not know differently. This is how they rule the will of a person who has yielded to their passions. Whatever freedom people then have consists in being able to resist; but this the Messiah gives them. If they do resist, then indeed there arises a combat and [the spirits] withdraw, but they come back, and so they continue life in those who are bound to them through passions. Such is the human state, and I cannot help being amazed that it is unknown, when yet it is so clearly declared in the Divine Word that no one ought to have any doubt. But they interpret it differently because they are unaware of this state of mankind, and are afraid to hear that they are led in this way by the devil and his demons. The experience is so clear that there is nothing I can affirm with greater certainty than that I have undergone this so often and so consciously. Sometimes it lasted for a whole day, together with conversations on this very subject, and about the effort and the resistance, and the fact that I then got away, and many more details I pass over on account of their number. [Step; Mankind (Man); Foot; Spirit]


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