The Forty Questions of the Soul

35. For a man must walk in obedience in great humility, and only cast his will into God's will, that God may be both the will and the deed in him: This is the way to salvation, and to the kingdom of heaven, and no other; let the Pope or doctors preach what they will to the contrary, all is but lying, and mere hypocritical juggling.

1 God fair words.

THE EIGHTEENTH QUESTION
How doth the Soul depart from the Body at the Death of a Man?

1. HERE we would have the world invited for a guest, especially Babel the whore, and see whether 1 she can be made a true child; for death is a terrible guest, he casteth the proud rider and his horse to the ground.

2. My beloved Friend, this is a very 2 hard Question, and needeth the eyes of all the three Principles to see it well; they must not die in death that would enter in and behold this; they must be poison to death, and a pestilence to hell; they must take death captive if they will see it; no man's understanding can otherwise find it out, except he cometh into death himself, and then he will feel indeed what death is; he shall surely taste what it is, when one Principle (viz. the life) perisheth.

3. You understood before, that all 3 essences are 4 magical, and that one is always the 5 glass of the other, and that in this glass the desire of the first glass is opened, and cometh to be an essence; and then also that the turba is in every essence, which destroyeth all [till it cometh] to the first essence, and that is alone, and hath no destroyer.

1 a child of grace can be found in her.

2 Or deep.

3 things or substances.

4 See the book of the Small Six Points. Point 5, ver. 65.

5 Or resemblance.

4. For there is nothing more; it cannot be broken, it standeth in itself, and out of itself, and goeth whithersoever it will: and thus it is everywhere in no place, for it is in the abyss, where there is no place of rest, it must only rest in itself.

5. Now seeing all essences have proceeded from one, therefore the beginning is also in the last essence; for the last is 1 gone back into the first, and seeketh the first, and findeth it in itself; and when it findeth the first, it letteth all the other go, and dwelleth in the hmit, and there it can be without 2 source.

6. For there is nothing that maketh it a 2 source: It is itself the matter of the first essence; and though it be somewhat else, yet that is but the twig of itself, and its own will and nothing else; for there is nothing that can give it another will.

7. Thus we give you to understand what dying is: the beginning seeketh the hmit; and when it findeth it, then it casteth away the seeking, viz. the earthly hfe, that shall be cast away, it must break off itself.

8. For the beginning (viz. the soul) continueth in the limit, and letteth the body perish; there is no complaining about it, neither doth the soul desire it any more: it must go into its hmit, viz. into the wonders of that which it hath been.

1 Or retired.

2 Or pain.

9. For the spirit of the soul grieveth not when the body iperisheth, but the firelife grieveth, because the matter of the fire, which the fire hath produced, that also perisheth, but only in the substance.

10. The figure continueth still in the will, for the will cannot be destroyed: and thus the soul must continue in the will, and it taketh the figure instead of matter, and burneth in the will; for the first glowing of the fire doth not pass away, but it is quite deprived of the matter of the earthly life, viz. of the 2 Phur.

11. And thus the fire becometh impotent, and passeth into darkness, unless the spirit hath heavenly 3 essentially, viz. the divine body; and then the fire (viz. the true soul) receiveth that meek body for a 4 sulphur, and so the soul burneth in the love-fire, and is quite gone out from the first 5 fire-life.