LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 0002037^235 
 
SL Ha,&jxaJL \j I 
 
 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS, 
 
 BY 
 
 MADAME J. M. B. DE LA MOTHE GUYON. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY A. E. FORD. 
 
 55©tt{i ^Parallel passages 
 
 FEOM 
 
 THE WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY OTIS CLAPP, 
 
 HOOL g 
 
 1853. 
 
 H 
 
y!^" 
 
 a 
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by 
 
 OTIS CLAPP, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, 
 
 ITo. 22, School Street. 
 
\ 
 
 PREFACE BY THE TRANSLATOR. 
 
 The writings of Madame Guyon can be best appreciated by those 
 rYiio have accepted the heavenly doctrines of the New Jerusalem. 
 H she were really one of the few, who, in the first Christian Church, 
 .eached the celestial state, it cannot but be, that the voluminous 
 productions of her pen should throw light upon a path which is essen- 
 tially the Same under an imperfect as under a perfect form of Chris- 
 ianity. 
 
 If any of the New Church profession are disposed to look in what 
 they read chiefly for truth ofjlQctrine f they will take offence at this 
 little treatise, and perhaps at the very idea of putting it forth in the 
 interests of the New Church. But they who put doctrine below life, 
 who believe that the first Christian Church has produced, in many 
 cases, a higher love and charity than the New Church has yet realized, 
 and who, in perusing the records of past excellence, can pass over the 
 many errors which spring from a false doctrinal system, and feel 
 themselves addressed, elevated, and strengthened by the living spirit 
 which reigns in them, will probably draw something from this little 
 work, which they cannot, in the same degree, find in any of the prac- 
 tical writings as yet extant in the New Church, save those of Sweden- 
 borg himself. The mistakes to be found in Madame Guyon are not, 
 indeed, very likely to mislead; for who, at this day, not educated in 
 such views, would think of looking to penances and bodily austerities 
 as means of grace, or find it reasonable and scriptural to worship the 
 Virgin and the Saints 1 The truths of life, on the other hand, taught 
 by her and illustrated by her experience, are eternal, and cannot fail to 
 address every prepared mind with a living energy. 
 
iv translator's preface, 
 
 Even "with regard to her doctrinal errors, it may be said with truth, 
 that they are by no means in her what they are in others. She uses, 
 for example, the common language of those who divide the Godhead 
 into Three Persons ; yet it is plain that she had deep views, peculiar 
 to herself, respecting the Divine Unity. Though she would have stated 
 her creed concerning the Person of Christ in the words of the Roman 
 Communion, nothing is more certain than that she had a living recog- 
 nition of the Omnipotence of the Lord as the centre of all spiritual life, 
 and that she referred every thing she had or expected to Him. She be- 
 lieved in Purgatory; yet read her little treatise on it, and you will find 
 that the idea she entertained of it approximates closely to the vasta- 
 tions which the writings of the New Church describe in the world of 
 spirits. That her invocation of the Virgin and the Saints — an example 
 of which we have in the Preface to the Torrents — was interiorly a dif- 
 ferent thing from the superstitious practice generally known under that 
 term, may appear from the following extract from her life : " I could 
 no longer see the Saints nor the holy Virgin out of God; but I used 
 to see them all in Him, without being able, except with great difficulty, 
 to distinguish them from Him; and although I tenderly loved certain 
 saints, as St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Magdalene, St. Theresa, all indeed 
 who excelled in the life of the interior, I yet could not conceive of 
 them distinctly, or invoke them out of God; " as well as from a passage 
 in her Justifications, in which she resolves the invocation of saints into 
 " union or communion " with them. 
 
 But some things commonly alleged against Madame Guyon as 
 errors are, in the opinion of the translator, most important truths, 
 fully sustained by the doctrines of the New Church. The charge of 
 u mysticism," so commonly preferred against her writings, — by 
 which term, when used in the way of reproach, something which 
 soars above common apprehension into the unintelligible is under- 
 stood, — comes from those who know much of religion by science, and 
 nothing or very little by perception. " Whatever the spiritual man 
 then speaks," says Swedenborg, " merely natural men say that they 
 do not perceive, and likewise that it is not so; and if only mention 
 be made of what is internal or spiritual, they either ridicule it or call 
 it mystical." — A. C. 5022. Her quietism, or passivity, is almost of 
 necessity, by such minds, construed into a letting of the hands hang 
 down, and a waiting for influx. But that she did not so understand 
 her own language is manifest from many passages of her writings, 
 
translator's preface. 
 
 of which the following, from the twenty-first chapter of her " Short 
 Method of Prayer," is one : " Some persons, when they hear the 
 prayer of silence spoken of, suppose falsely that the soul in this state 
 remains stupid, dead, and inactive. But it is certain that it acts here 
 more nobly and more wisely than ever before, since it is moved of 
 God Himself, and acts by his Spirit. St. Paul demands that we 
 should suffer ourselves to 'be moved [led] by the Spirit of God.' 
 Rom. viii. 14. I do not say that we must not act, but that we must 
 act in dependence on the movements of grace. This action of the 
 soul is an action full of repose. When it acts of itself, it acts with 
 effort, and, for that reason, is more sensible of its own action; but, 
 when it acts in dependence on the spirit of grace, its action is so 
 free, so easy, so natural, that it appears not to act. There is, there- 
 fore, action; but action so noble, so peaceable, so tranquil, that the 
 soul appears not to act, because it acts as it were naturally." 
 
 Her language in reference to annihilation has also been misunder- 
 stood to signify the eradication of all desire and affection. But a 
 candid examination will find her views, considered as popular state- 
 ments, in remarkable accordance with the teachings of the New 
 Church ; for, while she holds, in effect, that " all the concupiscences 
 of the natural are to be extirpated" (A. C. 5647), she says nothing 
 inconsistent with the idea that we are " not to reject the natural, but 
 to accommodate it, that it may be in agreement [with the internal], 
 thus to subordinate it." — A. C. 5247. Annihilation with her is only a 
 recognition of the New Church truth, that man, in himself considered, 
 or such as he is previous to regeneration, is a " nothing " [see D. P. 
 19], and that there is to be an entire abstinence from all that this 
 " nothing " would suggest, either to the will or the understanding. 
 Thus she understands by it only that entire separation from the 
 proprium which the doctrines of the New Church teach to be the 
 main end of the Christian religion. 
 
 So with regard to the "divine life." Some of her figures and 
 expressions might lead one to suppose that she viewed it as a kind of 
 absorption into Deity, like that contended for by Pantheism; but her 
 more definite statements show that she recognizes that distinction 
 between the creature and the Creator which Swedenborg has stated 
 with precision, when he tells us, that man in his highest state has a 
 proprium still, though a celestial one, from which he continues to act 
 as of himself. Madame Guyon even states, in other terms, what 
 
vi translator's preface. 
 
 Swedenborg has declared, — "That a man, in proportion as he is 
 more nearly conjoined to the Lord, appears to himself to be more 
 distinctly at his own disposal, and perceives more evidently that he is 
 the Lord's." — D. P. 42. Sufficient proof of this may be found in 
 the Second Part of the following treatise. 
 
 But, although it is the strong conviction of the translator, that 
 those points in Madame. Ghiyon which have been most excepted to, 
 and have most provoked controversy, are most in agreement with the 
 doctrine of life of the New Church, still he does not design to recom- 
 mend this or any of her works, in any other point of view than as 
 containing popular statements of what, in the writings of the New 
 Church, is stated more truly, more widely, and with scientific preci- 
 sion. They are a presentation in the concrete of what is given by 
 Swedenborg in the abstract form ; and so will be useful in explaining, 
 confirming, and, through the medium of the affections, enforcing, his 
 higher and truer developments of a Divine Truth. 
 
 It is hoped that this little work may serve to commend the New 
 Church to the notice and examination of those as yet little acquainted 
 with it. There is a certain class in the religious community who have 
 learned to appreciate her writings, chiefly through the excellent life of 
 her prepared by Professor Upham. It may be matter of surprise to 
 such to find, from this little work, the coincidence between her and 
 the teachings of the New Church, on the deepest subjects of the 
 interior life. And, when they learn that Swedenborg developed the 
 profound wisdom so conspicuous in his theological works from the 
 Word, they will surely be induced to examine whether what he so 
 solemnly affirms may not be true, viz. that the Divine Word foretells 
 a New Church to be established after that founded by the Lord through 
 the apostles should have come to an end; that that Church commenced 
 in the middle of the last century; and that its doctrines, which him- 
 self was the divinely-prepared medium for making known to the 
 world, present Christianity in its final and perfect form. Te who seek 
 truth ! examine whether it be not developed, in a manner to satisfy at 
 once the demands of your rational faculty and your religious affections, 
 from its only genuine fountain, — the Word of God — in the writings 
 of Swedenborg ; and, if you discover it there, let no human regards 
 keep you from acknowledging the fact openly to the world, that others 
 may find where you have found. 
 
LETTER OP THE AUTHOR 
 
 to her confessor: 
 
 SERVING AS A PREFACE 
 
 Hail ! Jesus, Mary, Joseph ! 
 
 It is in their names, and to obey your reverence, that I begin 
 writing what I know not myself [beforehand], endeavoring, 
 as far as possible, to give up my mind and my pen to be moved 
 by the impulse of God, without other motion of my own but 
 that of the hand. But, as my infidelities, and our natural 
 inclination to mix what is our own with what God does, may 
 so betray me, unawares, as that I shall mix my own motes 
 and impurities among the divine rays, I hope that our Lord 
 will enable you to distinguish them ; and that this impurity, 
 not being able to join itself to the Sun, will serve the better 
 to discover Him, and display His purity to more advantage. I 
 acknowledge, then, that all which shall turn out to be good 
 will be from our Lord, myself having no share in it ; seeing 
 
viii author's letter. 
 
 that, when I begin to write, I do not know what it is to be ; 
 and that, if any thoughts of this kind should enter my mind, I 
 should consider them as distractions, and any regard I should 
 pay to them as great infidelities. All that shall prove worthless 
 will be my own; and, as I know that this will be submitted, 
 my very dear Father, to your light, I write simply and without 
 reflection, what comes into my mind, leaving to your Reverence 
 the care of separating the vile from the precious, the human 
 from the divine, and error from the truth. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 1. Souls touched of God are impelled to seek Him. 2, 3. But in different 
 ways, which are explained by a comparison, and reduced to three. 
 
 1. As soon as a soul is touched of God, and its 
 return to Him is true and sincere, He gives to it, after 
 the first cleansing effected by confession and contrition, 
 a certain instinct to return to Him more perfectly, so 
 that it may be [entirely] united to Him. Then it 
 feels that it is not created for the amusements and tri- 
 fles of the world, but that it has a centre and an end,* 
 
 * It is to be observed, that so far as man acknowledges the Lord 
 and lives according to His precepts, so far he is elevated above his pro- 
 prium, which elevation is out of the light of the world into the light of 
 heaven. Man does not know that he is thus elevated above his pro- 
 prium while he lives in the world, because it is not sensibly perceived 
 by him ; but still there is such elevation, or, as it were, attraction of 
 the interior understanding and interior will of man unto the Lord, 
 and thence a conversion of the face of man as to his spirit unto Him. 
 This, however, is manifested to the good man after death; for then the 
 conversion of the face is perpetual to the Lord, and there is, as it were, 
 an attraction unto Him as to a common centre. — A. E. 646. 
 2 
 
10 SPIRITUAL TORHENTS. 
 
 whither it must endeavor to return, and out of which 
 it can never find true repose. 
 
 2. This instinct is communicated to the soul in a 
 very high measure, though higher with some than with 
 others, according to the designs which God has with 
 them ; but they ail have a loving impatience to be 
 purified, and to take the ways and means necessary to 
 return to their source and origin. They may be com- 
 pared to rivers, which, after issuing from their sources, 
 flow with a perpetual course into the sea. Some of 
 these rivers you see moving majestically and slowly, 
 and others more rapidly. But there are some rivers 
 and torrents which run with a frightful impetuosity 
 that nothing can check. All the burdens you might 
 put upon them, and all the dikes you might erect to 
 hinder their course, would serve only to redouble its 
 violence. 
 
 3. It is thus with these souls. Some advance gently 
 towards perfection, never arriving at the sea, or reach- 
 ing it very late ; being satisfied to lose themselves in 
 some stronger and more rapid river, which hurries 
 them along with itself to the sea. Others, of the 
 second kind, proceed thither more decidedly and rap- 
 idly than the first. They even carry along with them 
 to the sea a large number of smaller streams ; but 
 they are dull and sluggish in comparison with the last, 
 who hurry on with so much impetuosity that they are 
 fit for very few purposes. No one dares sail on them, 
 or trust them with any merchandise, except in certain 
 places and at certain times. They are mad, headlong 
 streams, dashing themselves against rocks, creating 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 11 
 
 terror by their sound, and stopping for nothing. The 
 second, on the other hand, are more agreeable and 
 more useful. Their majesty is pleasing to behold ; they 
 are quite loaded with merchandise ; and all persons 
 venture upon them without fear or danger. 
 
 It is proposed to consider, by the help of grace, 
 these three class of persons, under the three figures 
 above mentioned, beginning with the first, and ending 
 aptly with the last.* 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Of the first way, which is active and of meditation, 1 — 5. What it is, its in- 
 firmities, usages, occupations, advantages, &c, 6 — 9. Important coun- 
 sel, a disregard of which is the source of almost all the disputes and 
 difficulties which have been raised about the passive ways and of the 
 unreasonable things laid to their charge, 10 — 12. Souls fitted for medi- 
 tation: they should be led thereby to the affections. Advice touching 
 dryness and want of power, 13, 14. Spiritual and interior reading, books 
 and authors, are attacked without good reason, 15, 16. Advice touching 
 directors, both good and bad, 17—19. Capacity and incapacity of souls. 
 The simple more hopeful than great reasoners. 
 
 1. Souls of the first kind are those who, after their 
 conversion, give themselves to meditation, or to the 
 works themselves of charity ; they practise some out- 
 ward austerities ; in a word, they endeavor by degrees 
 to purify themselves, to remove certain striking sins, 
 
 * There are three kinds of men within the church, namely, those 
 who are in love to the Lord, those who are in charity towards their 
 neighbor, and those who are in the affection of truth. — A. C. 3653. 
 
12 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 and even some venial ones of a voluntary kind. They 
 labor* according to their little strength to advance by 
 little and little, but do so feebly and slowly.f 
 
 2. As their source is not abundant, a drought almost 
 exhausts them. There are even places, at such times, 
 where they are quite dried up. They do not, indeed, 
 cease to flow from their source ; but it is in so feeble a 
 manner as scarcely to be perceived.^ These rivers 
 carry no merchandise, or but little ; and if, for the 
 public good, they must be made to do so, it is requi- 
 site for this purpose that art should make good the 
 defects of nature, and find means to swell them, either 
 by emptying into them some ponds, or by joining to 
 them other rivers of the same kind, and thus increas- 
 ing their waters ; whereby, by helping one another, 
 
 * That the confirmation of truth is also signified [by C( six years 
 shall he serve"] is, because spiritual truth, which is called the truth 
 of faith, is confirmed by labor and combat. — A. C. 8975. 
 
 f In the spiritual church -which the sons of Israel represented, 
 there are two kinds of men, — some who are in the truths of faith, and 
 not in correspondent good of life; and some who are in the good 
 of charity, and in correspondent truth of faith. They who are in the 
 good of charity, and in correspondent truth of faith, are they who 
 constitute the very church itself, and are men of the internal church. 
 In the internal sense of the word, these are they who are called the 
 Sons of Israel : these are of themselves free, because they are in good, 
 for they who are led of the Lord by good are free ; but they who are 
 in the truth of faith, and not in correspondent good of life, are men 
 of the external spiritual church. These are they who, in the internal 
 sense of the word, are meant by Hebrew servants. — A. C. 8974. 
 
 $ They who love truth for the sake of truth from external or 
 natural affections, when they hear truth, also rejoice ; but they do 
 not think about a life according to it : nevertheless, it flows in from 
 the internal, while they are ignorant of it. — A. C. 10, 683. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 13 
 
 they may be made capable of carrying some small 
 boats, not to the sea, but to some of those commanding 
 rivers of which we shall speak hereafter. 
 
 3. These souls are usually but little engaged inte- 
 riorly. They labor on the outside, and seldom get 
 beyond meditation ; for which reason they are not fit 
 for great things. They do not commonly carry mer- 
 chandise, that is to say, they have nothing for others ; 
 and God makes use of them, for the most part, only 
 to convey some small boats, that is, to do some works 
 of corporal mercy. Moreover, to derive profit from 
 them, they must have emptied into them the ponds of 
 sensible graces, or be united to others in the monastic 
 life ; in which case, many, of middling endowments in 
 grace, succeed in carrying a little boat, but not to the 
 sea itself (which is God), into which they do not enter 
 during this life, though they do in the next. 
 
 4. It is not meant that these souls are not sanctified 
 by this way. There is, indeed, a large number of 
 excellent souls commonly esteemed as very virtuous, 
 who do not go beyond it; God giving them lights** 
 adapted to their state, which sometimes are very beau- 
 tiful, and excite the admiration of ordinary Christians. 
 Some even of these souls, towards the end of life, 
 receive some passive lights, proportioned to the faith- 
 fulness which they have maintained in their way ;f but, 
 
 * They who are of the external church are clearly in its externals, 
 and obscurely in its internals ; whereas they who are of the internal 
 church are clearly in internals, and obscurely in externals. — A. C. 
 8762. 
 
 f Every man, when he is regenerating, first becomes a man of the 
 
14 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 for the most part, they do not get out of themselves : 
 all their graces and lights, being after a created man- 
 ner, — I mean, proportioned to their capacity, — are 
 distinguished, perceived, and accompanied with fer- 
 vors ;* and the more these lights are distinguished, 
 perceived, and accompanied with fervors, the more they 
 attach themselves thereto, thinking there can be no- 
 thing greater in this life. 
 
 5. The most favored of these souls practise virtue 
 with much generosity. They have a thousand holy 
 inventions and a thousand practices for seeking God, 
 and continuing in His presence. All, however, is done 
 by their own proper efforts, aided and assisted by 
 grace. Their own operation appears to exceed that of 
 God, and that of God only concurs with their own.f 
 
 6. I believe that one who should endeavor to move 
 these souls to a higher kind of prayer, would not suc- 
 
 external church, but afterwards a man of the internal church ; they 
 who are in the internal church are in superior intelligence and wisdom 
 to those who are of the external church, and on that account also more 
 interiorly in heaven. — A. C. 7840. 
 
 * They think of the Lord as of another man, and not as of God; 
 and they think of love to Him from a certain worldly love. 
 
 f The first state [of those who are reformed and become spiritual] 
 is, that they suppose they do good, and think truth from themselves ; 
 thus from proprium, knowing no otherwise at that time; and when it 
 is told them that all good and all truth is from the Lord, they do not, 
 indeed, reject it, but do not acknowledge it in heart, because they are 
 not sensible, nor do they inwardly perceive, that any thing flows in 
 from any other source than from themselves. Inasmuch as all who 
 are reformed are at first in such a state, therefore they are left of the 
 Lord in proprium; but still they are led of Him by their proprium, 
 themselves being ignorant of it. — A. C. 2G78. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 15 
 
 ceed ; and this for several reasons. The first is, that, 
 as they have nothing supernatural, except in proportion 
 to their labor, if you take their labor from them, you 
 stop the flow of their graces ; they being like pumps, 
 which give water only in proportion as they are worked. 
 You will even observe in these souls a great facility in 
 reasoning,* and in availing themselves of their facul- 
 ties, an activity always vigorous and strong, a desire 
 to be always doing something further and something 
 new towards perfecting themselves, and in their times 
 of dryness an anxiety to throw them off, as well as 
 their faults. f 
 
 7. These souls are greatly tossed between high and 
 low. At one time they do wonders, at another they 
 languish and creep ; they do not hold an even tenor 
 of progress. Inasmuch as the main principle of wor- 
 
 * But that the Lord is good itself, and that every thing which is of 
 love to Him and of charity towards the neighbor is good, and that 
 every thing which asserts and confirms this is truth, they know but 
 very obscurely ; yea 3 they even entertain doubts herein, and admit 
 reasonings against it ; and so long as they are in such a state, it is 
 impossible for the light of truth from the Lord to flow in. — A. C. 
 2935. 
 
 f In this verse [Glen. xxi. 14] is described of what quality in the 
 beginning is the state of those who are reformed, viz. that they are 
 carried away into various errors ; for it is impressed on them of the 
 Lord to think much about eternal life, thus much about the truths of 
 faith ; but because they do this from proprium, as was said, they must 
 needs wander hither and thither, as in doctrine so in life, catching at 
 that as truth which was inseminated from infancy, or which is im- 
 pressed upon them by others, or which is thought of by themselves, 
 besides that they are led away by various affections which they are 
 ignorant of. — A. C. 2679. 
 
16 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 ship resides with them in the faculties,* when these 
 faculties are dried up, whether from want of labor on 
 their part, or of correspondence on the part of God, 
 they fall into discouragement, or else overwhelm them- 
 selves with austerities, and efforts to recover, by 
 themselves, what they have lost. They do not possess, 
 like these other souls, a deep peace or calm in their 
 distractions,! but, on the contrary, are always on the 
 alert to combat them, or to complain of them. They 
 are commonly scrupulous, and entangled in their own 
 ways, J unless they happen to be gifted with a consid- 
 erable strength of mind. 
 
 8. These souls, then, should not be led to passive 
 prayer. This would be to ruin them beyond help, by 
 
 * The good in which he [the man of the external church] is, is 
 not from a spiritual origin, but from a natural origin. — A. C. 8977. 
 
 T In the beginning, he [the man who is regenerating] is in a state 
 of tranquillity ; but as he passes into new life, so also he passes into an 
 untranquil state ; for the evils and falsities which he had before im- 
 bibed, emerge and show themselves, and disturb him, and at length 
 to such a degree that he is immersed in temptations and vexations 
 from the diabolical crew, who are in the continual endeavor to destroy 
 the state of this new life. But still he has inmostly a state of 
 peace ; for, unless this were the case, he could not engage in combat. 
 — A.C. 3696. 
 
 ^ That the spiritual are held entangled in the scientific natural, 
 as to the truths of faith, the case is this : the spiritual have not a 
 perception of good and truth like the celestial, but, instead thereof, 
 they have conscience, &c. — A. C. 2831. 
 
 They who are in the affection of truth think, inquire, and debate 
 whether a thing be true or not true, whether it be so or not so; and 
 when they are confirmed that it is true, or that it is so, they further 
 think, inquire, and debate what it is: thus they stick in the very 
 threshold, and are incapable of being admitted into wisdom, until they 
 are void of doubt. — A. C. 2718. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 17 
 
 taking from them their means * of advancing towards 
 God. For, if you take from a person who is obliged 
 to travel, but who has neither boats nor coaches nor 
 any means of progress but walking, the use of his 
 feet, you put it out of his power to go forward ; and 
 so, if you take from these souls their own operation,! 
 which is their feet, they would never make any pro- 
 gress. 
 
 9. Here, I think, is the source of the disputes which 
 at present take place among persons given to prayer. 
 Those who are in the passive kind of prayer, knowing 
 
 * In this verse [Gen. xxi. 14] is described of what quality in the 
 beginning is the state of those who are reformed, viz. that they are 
 carried away into various errors ; for it is impressed on them of the 
 Lord to think much about eternal life, thus much about the truths 
 of faith ; but because they do this from proprium, as was said, they 
 must needs wander hither and thither, as in doctrine so in life, catch- 
 ing at that as truth which was insemenated from infancy, or which is 
 impressed upon them by others, or which is thought of by themselves; 
 besides that they are led away by various affections which they are 
 ignorant of: they are like fruits as yet unripe, whereunto form, beauty, 
 and flavor cannot be in a moment imparted; or they are like tender 
 shoots, which cannot in a moment put forth flower, or grow up into 
 the ear. Nevertheless, the things which then enter, although for the 
 most part erroneous, are yet such as may serve to promote growth; 
 and these things afterwards, when reformation is effected, are partly 
 separated, partly made serviceable for introducing as it were nourish- 
 ments and juices into the subsequent life, partly are adapted, as far 
 as may be, to the goods and truths afterwards implanted of the Lord, 
 and partly serve spiritual things for ultimate plans : thus they serve 
 as continual means for reformation, which means follow in perpetual 
 connection and order. — A. C. 2679. 
 
 •j- Inasmuch as all who are reformed are at first in such a state, 
 therefore they are left of the Lord in proprium ; but still they are led 
 of Him by their proprium, themselves being ignorant of it. — A. C. 
 2678. 
 
18 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 the good they derive from it, would have everybody 
 walk in it ; others, on the contrary, who are in medita- 
 tion, would confine all to their way, which would be 
 an inexpressible loss and injury. What is to be done 
 here ? We must take the middle course, and ascertain 
 whether souls are fit for the one way or the other. 
 
 10. The experienced director may know this by 
 their unwillingness to continue in a state of repose 
 and to give themselves up to be led by the Spirit of 
 God, by a swarm of faults and failings into which they 
 fall, almost without seeing or knowing them ;? or, in 
 case they are persons of a human discretion and pru- 
 dence, by a certain dexterity in covering up their faults 
 from themselves and others, by an attachment to their 
 feelings, and by a large number of faults which cannot 
 here be enumerated, but which the experienced director 
 will know.f 
 
 Must they, then, be left all their life in reasoning 1 
 I believe, that, if they are happy enough to find them 
 a skilful director, he will not fail to advance them 
 much beyond this. A vast number of souls, who 
 believe themselves fit only for meditation, would reach 
 
 * Besides that they [in the first state of reformation] are led away 
 by various affections which they are ignorant of. — A. C. 2679. 
 
 f They who do not suffer themselves to be regenerated, but only 
 to be reformed, do not act from affection, but from obedience. If they 
 seem to themselves to act from the heart and from a free principle, it 
 is for the sake of somewhat of self-glory, which makes it to be so 
 apperceived; nor do they act truth for the sake of truth, nor good 
 for the sake of good, but for the sake of the delight arising from that 
 glory : thus neither do they exercise charity towards the neighbor for 
 the sake of the neighbor, but that they may be seen and that they 
 may be recompensed. — A. C. 8987. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 19 
 
 the highest degree of perfection, if they only found 
 an accomplished director. So far would a director 
 who is in grace be from injuring, that he would help 
 them vastly, making them walk according to the whole 
 extent of the Divine will towards them ; so that they 
 should neither run before grace, nor be slack to follow 
 it, but should second and correspond to it. A director 
 of ordinary endowments in grace, on the contrary, 
 checks the progress of souls, hinders them from ad- 
 vancing, and appropriates them to himself. 
 
 11. The experienced director, then, will incline 
 these souls to deal less in reasonings, and more in affec- 
 tions ; he will strip them gradually of their reasoning 
 habits,*' substituting good affections! in place of them ; 
 and if he sees them growing by degrees in simplicity, 
 and finding more delight in affection than in reasoning, 
 the latter drying up by little and little, it is a sign 
 that there is something to be done in these souls, on 
 behalf of spiritual life. 
 
 12. It is to be observed, however, that if the habit 
 of reasoning should cease from weakness in the per- 
 son, and these souls should feel themselves inclined, 
 not to love, but only to be inactive from stupidity and 
 mental indolence, they should be led to active exercise. 
 If they cannot do it by the understanding, they should 
 
 * There are spirits who are disposed to reason on all subjects, hav- 
 ing no perception of what is good and true ; nay, the more they reason, 
 the less perception they have. — A. C. 1385. 
 
 f The rational is not born from sciences and knowledges, but of 
 the affection of sciences and knowledges ; as may appear solely from 
 this, that no one can possibly become rational, unless some delight or 
 affection of sciences and knowledges influence him. — A. C. 1895. 
 
20 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 at least by affection and the will. For souls who 
 begin to experience spiritual dryness by grace are not 
 more imperfect, the more they experience of it :* on 
 the contrary, they have an instinct to pursue them- 
 selves, in order to combat themselves, and to pursue the 
 light in order to find it again and follow it. They 
 must, then, be assisted, and be led, not to strip them- 
 selves, but to fill the will rather than the understand- 
 ing. They should not be led to seek states of repose, 
 but to run with all their strength, according to their 
 little ability, until it shall please God to relieve their 
 labor of walking by some conveyance, or rather, 
 according to my original comparison, until these fee- 
 ble little streams find the river or the great estuary, 
 which receives them into its bosom, and carries them 
 into the sea. 
 
 13. I know not why there is such an outcry against 
 spiritual books, and the persons who write and speak 
 of interior ways. I maintain that they can do no 
 harm, except to some who choose to be ruined for their 
 own pleasure, to whom' not only these things are hurt- 
 ful, but every thing besides, being like spiders who 
 change flowers into poison. To humble souls desirous 
 of perfection, they cannot be prejudicial, seeing it is 
 impossible that they should understand and make use 
 
 * As to what further regards desolation, it is on account of appe- 
 tite ; for goods and truths are received according to appetite, and the 
 desires which are from appetite, when they are obtained, constitute 
 what is satisfactory and happy: wherefore, in the other life, they 
 who are in desolation are frequently refreshed, and enjoy their desires. 
 By such vicissitudes all are perfected. — A.C. 6110. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 21 
 
 of them, if the gift therefor is not imparted to them ; 
 for, what books soever they may read, they cannot 
 imagine to themselves states which, inasmuch as they 
 are supernatural, are not to be apprehended by the 
 imagination, but only by experience.* Moreover, 
 even if one should be willing to deceive himself, and 
 to make use of terms he had met with in reading, the 
 skilful director, by the questions he would put, would 
 quickly detect the deception. Besides which, the state 
 of a soul in any given degree implies all the conse- 
 quences of that state, and perfection advances step by 
 step with interior progress.! 
 
 It is not meant to deny that there are souls advanced 
 in prayer, who will have faults apparently greater than 
 those of ordinary souls ; but these faults are not alike 
 either as to nature or as to quality. 
 
 14. The second reason for saying that these books 
 cannot do hurt, is, because they enjoin so many deaths, 
 so many separations from the world, so many things 
 to be conquered and destroyed, that the soul would 
 never have strength enough for the undertaking, if its 
 interior were not in a true state. And even if it 
 should undertake the task, it would derive from the 
 very practices recommended only the result which 
 meditation yields, which is only a laboring at the 
 destruction of self. The whole difference is, that the 
 
 * But whereas it is not known from any internal sensation or per- 
 ception what good is, therefore also such things cannot come to be 
 known; for what a man is ignorant of, this he does not understand, 
 notwithstanding its being presented to him. — A. C. 5365. 
 
 | Perfection increases towards interior things. — A. C. Index. 
 
22 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 soul would not act by a divine, but only by a virtuous 
 principle, — a thing which, the experienced director 
 would soon discover. 
 
 15. For this reason a soul should never undertake 
 to lead itself in the ways of religion, nor be afraid of 
 having a director too much enlightened. To seek any 
 other than such an one would be to deceive one's self, 
 and, from mere cowardice, to limit the Spirit of God 
 by limiting the perfection it bestows to this or that 
 particular. 
 
 What I conclude from this is, that the most spiritual 
 director should always be chosen. Such an one will be 
 useful, in whatever degree the person may be ; and God 
 will grant to you, ye who hope for nothing supernatu- 
 ral, by this man, so dear to Him, what He would not 
 grant to you by yourselves. 
 
 16. But as for those directors who appropriate souls 
 to themselves, who would fain conduct them in their 
 own way, and not in God's ; who would put limits to 
 His graces, and fix barriers to hinder them from ad- 
 vancing, — as for these directors, I say, who know 
 but one way, and who would fain make all the world 
 walk in it, the mischief they do to souls is remediless, 
 because they keep them fixed, all their lives, to certain 
 things which prevent God from communicating Him- 
 self to them without bounds. 
 
 What an account will they not have to render for 
 these souls 1 If they have not light enough to con- 
 duct them, why do they not suffer them to go to 
 masters more advanced ? They should have charity 
 enough to advise it themselves. We should do in 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 23 
 
 the spiritual life, it seems to me, as we do in schools. 
 Scholars are not kept always in the same class ; they 
 are transferred to higher ones, and the teachers of the 
 Sixth form and the Fifth do not intermeddle with the 
 teaching of Philosophy. O human sciences ! ye are of 
 so little account, and yet so much care is taken of you ! 
 O mystical and divine science ! thou art so great and 
 so necessary, and yet thou art neglected, limited, con- 
 strained, and tortured ! Oh, shall there never be a 
 school of prayer ! Alas ! by seeking to make a study 
 of it, men have spoiled all. They have endeavored to 
 give rules and measures to the Spirit of God, which is 
 without measure. 
 
 17. There is no soul which is not capable of prayer, 
 and which cannot and ought not to apply itself thereto. 
 The coarsest and dullest persons are capable of it. I 
 know this from experience. Certain persons applied 
 to me, who had an almost invincible incapacity for 
 prayer, who were unwilling to give themselves thereto, 
 and who, after having done so for a time, wished 
 to throw it up entirely ; but, as they had great con- 
 fidence in me, I obliged them, by a gentle violence, 
 to continue in spite of their repugnance and the little 
 advantage they thought themselves reaping ; for they 
 believed themselves quite unfit for it. These persons, 
 after persevering for several years, reached a high de- 
 gree of infused prayer. They have confessed to me, 
 of their own accord, that, if I had not been firm, they 
 should have given all up, and have been lost. Now, 
 if these souls had fallen in with some directors, they 
 would have told them without hesitation, that their 
 
24 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 having passed four and five years in praying, without 
 being able either to meditate or to be warmed with the 
 love of God, or becoming more perfect, was a sign that 
 God did not call them to this kind of prayer. Poor, 
 impotent souls ! you are more fit than others to answer 
 the designs of God ; and, if you are faithful, you will 
 succeed better than those high reasoners who rather 
 make a study of prayer than pray. 
 
 18. I say yet further, that the poor souls who appear 
 so impotent and incapable, are very well adapted to 
 contemplation, provided they do not grow weary of 
 knocking at the door, and of waiting with humble 
 patience until it is opened to them. These great rea- 
 soners,* these understandings so fertile that they 
 cannot remain a moment in silence before God, who 
 appear to have an admirable facility, and a perpetual 
 stream of words, who know so well how to give an 
 account of their prayer and of all its parts, who can 
 always pray as they like and with the same methods, 
 who expatiate at will on all the subjects they take up, 
 who are so well pleased with themselves and their own 
 lights, who refine on the preparations and methods of 
 prayer, will never in the least advance in it, and after 
 ten or twenty years of such practice will be still the 
 same. O my God ! will men undertake to teach others 
 how to testify love to love itself ? Alas ! when even 
 a wretched creature is to be loved, do we set about it 
 
 * The spirits who reason much in the other life perceive little what 
 is true and good ; wherefore neither can they be admitted into the 
 interior angelic societies, for nothing of intelligence can be communi- 
 cated to them there. — A. C. 6324. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 25 
 
 by plan and method ? The most ignorant in this mat- 
 ter are the most skilful ; and the case is the same, but 
 in a vastly higher degree, with the Divine Love. 
 
 19. Wherefore, O prudent director ! if a poor soul 
 that has never prayed applies to you to be taught 
 how, teach him to love God heartily ; make him cast 
 himself headlong into love,* and he will soon be con- 
 queror. If he has a nature little adapted to love, let 
 him do his best, and wait in patience till love itself 
 shall make him love, in its own way, rather than 
 yours. Simple, short, moving subjects, requiring lit- 
 tle reasoning, are the best ones for beginners. Solid 
 truths, read and somewhat digested at other times 
 than those of prayer, will do as much as meditation ; 
 but make them employ the period of prayer in loving 
 much. 
 
 * For nothing lives in the external man but affection ; the reason 
 of which is because the affection of good descends from the celestial, 
 that is, from celestial love, which vivifies all into which it flows. — 
 A. C. 1589. 
 
 All delight, blessedness, and happiness is solely from love; but ac- 
 cording to the quality of the love, such is the delight, blessedness, and 
 happiness. — A. C. 2718. 
 
26 SPIRITUAL TOKKEXTS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 1, 2. Of the second way of the soul's return to God, which is passive, hut 
 still a way of light, and of the two introductions into it. 3 — 6. Descrip- 
 tion of these souls, and their great advantages. 7 — 17. Several necessary 
 cautions and observations touching these souls ; the way of leading them ; 
 their dispositions, practices, perfections, imperfections, and trials. 
 
 1. Souls of the second kind are like those large 
 rivers which move with slow and stately steps. They 
 flow with pomp and majesty. The eye distinguishes 
 their course, which has a certain order. They are la- 
 den with merchandise, and can themselves go to the 
 sea without emptying into other rivers. But they 
 reach it only at a late period, their advance being 
 grave and slow. Moreover, there are some which 
 never enter it, losing themselves for the most part in 
 other greater rivers, or else ending in some arm of the 
 sea. Many of these rivers serve only to carry mer- 
 chandise, with which they are heavily burdened. 
 They can be checked by dams, and turned aside at 
 certain places. Such are the souls who are in the pas- 
 sive way of light. Their source is very abundant. 
 They are laden with gifts, graces, and heavenly favors. 
 They are the admiration of their age, and very many 
 saints who shine in the church like brilliant stars have 
 never passed this degree. 
 
 2. These souls are of two kinds. Those of the one 
 kind begin by the common way, and are afterwards 
 drawn to passive contemplation by the goodness of 
 God, who takes pity on their labor, so unfruitful, 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 27 
 
 dry, and arid ; or does it to reward their first faithful- 
 ness. 
 
 The others are taken as it were all at once. They 
 are seized by the heart, and feel themselves loving 
 without having become acquainted with the object of 
 their love. For there is this difference between divine 
 and human love, that the latter supposes a knowledge 
 of its object, because, as it is without, the senses must 
 be determined thereto, and the senses are determined 
 to it only because it is communicated to them : the 
 eyes see, and the heart loves. The case is not the 
 same with divine love. Since God has an absolute 
 control over the heart of man, and is its first princi- 
 ple and its end, there is no necessity that He should 
 make it acquainted with Himself [beforehand]. He 
 takes it by assault, without offering battle : the heart 
 is unable to resist Him. This, however, does not in- 
 fer that God makes use of absolute power and violence, 
 except in some cases where He does so to display 
 His might. He takes these souls, then, as was said, 
 making them burn all of a sudden ; though, in com- 
 mon, He gives them only flashes of light, which daz- 
 zle them and carry them away. 
 
 3. Nothing is so full of light and so ardent as these 
 souls : directors are delighted when they have them 
 under their care. And as the labor of these souls is 
 not thorough-going, they are early made perfect, ac- 
 cording to the degree which they have to perfect. For 
 as God does not exact of them a perfection so eminent 
 as from those next to be spoken of, nor a purification 
 so thorough, their defects are sooner removed. 
 
28 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 4. It is not meant that the souls we are speaking 
 of do not appear much higher than those that come 
 next, to such as have not divine discernment. For 
 they reach, exteriorly, a remarkable degree of perfec- 
 tion, God exalting their natural^ capacity in an eminent 
 degree. They have wonderful states of union with 
 Him, God adapting Himself to their capacity ,f which 
 He exalts in a certain extraordinary manner. But 
 still these persons are never truly annihilated, and God 
 does not commonly take them out of their own self- 
 hood, that they may lose themselves in Him. 
 
 5. Notwithstanding, these souls excite the admira- 
 tion and astonishment of men. God gives them gifts 
 upon gifts, graces upon graces, lights upon lights, 
 visions, revelations, interior words, ecstasies, ravish- 
 ments, &c. It appears as if He had no other care than 
 to enrich and beautify them, and to communicate to 
 them His secrets. All delights are for them. 
 
 * The spiritual man is not the interior rational man, but the inte- 
 rior natural; the interior rational man is what is called celestial; 
 what the difference is between the spiritual and celestial man has been 
 often told above. — A. C. 4402. 
 
 t As to what pertains to the other [arcanum], viz. that this ob- 
 scure with the spiritual is illuminated by the Lord's Divine Human, 
 it is an arcanum which cannot be explained to the apprehension, for 
 it is an influx of the Divine which would be described; only some 
 idea may be had of it from this, that if the Supreme Divine itself 
 flowed into such good as has been described, defiled with so many evils 
 and falses, it could not be received; and if it should be received in 
 any respect, the man who had such good would feel infernal tor- 
 ment, and they would perish. But the Divine Human of the Lord 
 may flow in with such persons, and illuminate such good, as the sun 
 flows into the dense clouds which are in the morning variegated into 
 the colors of the dawn. — A. C. 2716. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 29 
 
 6. It is not that they do not bear great crosses and 
 violent temptations, which are like dark shades, which 
 only serve to exalt the splendor of their virtues ;* for 
 these temptations are repelled with vigor, these crosses 
 are borne with strength, — they even wish for more 
 of them,f — they are all fire and flames, all languor, 
 all love. They have great hearts, ready to undertake 
 every thing. In a word, in a very little while they 
 are prodigies and the miracles of their age. God 
 makes use of them to do miracles, and it appears as 
 if it were enough that they desire a thing for God to 
 grant it to them. It seems as though He delighted 
 to accomplish all their desires and to effectuate all their 
 wills. They are in a high degree of mortification ; 
 they practise great austerities, some more and some 
 less, according to their state and degree, — for in 
 every state there are many degrees, and some arrive 
 at a perfection much more eminent than others. In 
 the same way there are many different degrees. 
 
 7. The director can hurt these souls much, or help 
 them much, because, if he does not understand their 
 way, he will either oppose them, causing them much 
 pain, as was the case with St. Theresa (which, how- 
 ever, is not the thing chiefly to be feared), or else he 
 
 * Temptations also give the quality of the apperception of good 
 and truth, by the opposites which evil spirits then infuse ; from the 
 opposites apperceived are procured relatives, from which all quality is ; 
 for no one knows what good is, unless he also knows what is not good ; 
 nor what truth is, unless he knows what is not true. — A. C. 5356. 
 
 f There are some who willingly endure to be vastated, and thereby 
 to put off the false principles which they had brought with them out 
 of the world.— A. C. 1107. 
 
30 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 will admire them too much, and will let them know 
 the esteem in which he holds them. This is the great 
 hurt most commonly done to souls, because their minds 
 are thus diverted to themselves, and they are made to 
 rest in the gifts of God, instead of being made to run 
 after God by His gifts. 
 
 The design of God in thus distributing, and even 
 pouring out profusely, His graces to them, is to draw 
 them to Himself; but they make a quite different use 
 of His mercies. They rest in them, they ponder 
 them, they look at them, they appropriate them to 
 themselves ;• and from this come vanities, self-compla- 
 cencies, self-esteem, preference of one's self to others, 
 and often the ruin and destruction of the interior.f 
 
 8. These souls are admirable as regards themselves ; 
 and sometimes, by special grace, they can greatly help 
 others, especially if they have been sinners. But they 
 
 * In the beginning, all who are reformed suppose that good is from 
 themselves, and thence that by the good which they do they merit 
 salvation ; for to imagine that by the good which they do they merit 
 salvation is a sure consequence of imagining good to be from them- 
 selves, for the one coheres with the other. — A. C. 4174. 
 
 The truth which is given by the Lord is at first received as if it 
 were not given; for man before regeneration supposes that he pro- 
 cures for himself truth ; and so long as he supposes this, he is in spirit- 
 ual theft. — A. C. 5747. 
 
 f With man about to be regenerated, the case is thus, that his first 
 affection of truth is very impure ; for there is in it an affection of use 
 and of end for the sake of himself, for the sake of the world, for the 
 sake of glory in heaven and the like things, which look towards him- 
 self, but not towards the community, the Lord's kingdom, and still 
 less towards the Lord. Such an affection must needs precede: never- 
 theless, it is successively purified of the Lord. — A. C. 3089. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 31 
 
 are not, for the most part, so fit to lead others as those 
 next described. For as they are very strong in God, 
 and in an eminent degree, they have a certain horror 
 towards sin, and often experience aversion towards 
 sinners, and certain antipathies which yet have some- 
 thing of grace in them. If they are superiors, they 
 are without a certain motherly compassion for sinners ; 
 and as they have never themselves experienced the 
 miseries that are told them, they are astonished, and 
 harangue about them. They exact too high a degree 
 of perfection from others, and do not put them in the 
 way thereto by little and little ; * and if they chance 
 to meet with souls in the state of weakness,! they do 
 not help them according to the degree they are in, and 
 according to the designs of God, and they often even 
 put them out of their right way. They find it diffi- 
 cult to converse with imperfect souls, preferring their 
 own solitude and their own life to all the accommoda- 
 tions of charity 4 
 
 * Their good [of those who are in doctrinals of faith], so to speak, 
 being hard, not suffering itself to be bended, not communicative, thus 
 not in heaven, but upon the threshold to heaven. — A. C. 3459. 
 
 f It is to be known that with those who are regenerating there is 
 effected a turning, namely, that they are led by truth to good, and 
 that afterwards from good they are led to truth. When this turning 
 takes place, or when the state is changed, and becomes inverse to the 
 foregoing, then there is mourning ; for then they are let into tempta- 
 tion, whereby the things of the proprium are weakened and debilita- 
 ted, and good is insinuated, and with good a new will-desire, and with 
 this a new freedom, thus a new proprium. — A. C. 5773. 
 
 ^ A man whose rational is such that he is only in truth, although 
 in the truth of faith, and not at the same time in the good of charity, 
 is altogether of this character; he is morose, impatient, opposite to 
 
32 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 9. One who listens to these persons without being 
 divinely enlightened will believe that they are in the 
 same ways with those of the last degree, and even 
 more advanced. They make use of the same terms, 
 such as death, loss, annihilation, &c. ; and it is indeed 
 true, that in their own way, they die, are annihilate, 
 they lose themselves in God. For often their facul- 
 ties are lost or suspended in prayer, and they even lose 
 the control of them, so that they cannot avail them- 
 selves of them or operate with them ; all that they 
 have being received passively. Thus these souls are 
 passive, but are still in light, in love, in strength. If 
 you examine things closely and converse with them, 
 you will see that they have very good and even admi- 
 rable wills. Their desires are the greatest and loftiest 
 possible ;, they carry perfection as far as it will go ; 
 they are detached ; they love poverty. Notwithstand- 
 ing, they are and always will be proprietary even of 
 virtue, but in a way so delicate that only the divine 
 eyes can discover it.* 
 
 all others, viewing every one as in the false, instantly rebuking, chas- 
 tising, and punishing: he is without pity, neither does he apply him- 
 self and endeavor to bend the minds of others ; for he regards every 
 thing from truth, and nothing from good. — A. C. 1949. 
 
 * The reason that man ought not to claim any thing to himself 
 which is from the Lord, thus ought not to claim truth and good, 
 is, that he may be in the truth; and so far as he is in the truth, 
 so far he is in the light in which the angels in heaven are ; and so far 
 as he is in that light, so far he is in intelligence and wisdom; and so 
 far as he is in intelligence and wisdom, so far he is in happiness. This 
 is the reason why man ought to acknowledge, in faith of the heart, 
 that nothing of truth and good is from himself, but all from the Lord ; 
 and this because it is so. — A. C. 5749. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 33 
 
 10. The greater part of the saints, whose lives are 
 so admirable, have been led by this way. These souls 
 are so laden with merchandise that their course is very 
 slow. What, then, must be done with them 1 Will 
 they never quit this way ? No, not unless they are 
 helped by a miracle of providence, and led by a direc- 
 tor divinely enlightened, who shall dispose them neither 
 to resist these graces, nor to look at them, but to go 
 beyond them, so that they shall not stop in them for a 
 moment. For these lookings at themselves are like 
 dams which keep water from flowing on its way. 
 
 1 1 . Their director should explain to them that there 
 is a surer way for them, — that of faith ; and that God 
 gives these favors only by reason of their weakness. 
 Their director, I repeat, should lead them on from the 
 sensible to the supernatural, from the perceived and cer- 
 tain* to the very deep and very certain darkness f of 
 faith. He should not seem to lay any stress upon all this 
 experience. He should not make them write about 
 it, unless the soul should be so notably advanced in its 
 way, that, having knowledges necessary to be known, 
 he should deem it necessary to have them put in wri- 
 
 * They who have conscience do not swear, and still less they who 
 have a perception of good and truth, that is, celestial men: these 
 latter do not even confirm by reasons with themselves, and amongst 
 themselves ; but only say that it is so, or that it is not so : wherefore, 
 these are still further removed from an oath. — A. C. 2842. 
 
 t " I will give thee the treasures cf darkness, and the hidden 
 wealth of hiding places, that thou mayest know that I am Jehovah," 
 Isa. xlv. 3; where the treasures of darkness and the hidden wealth 
 of hiding places denote such things as relate to heavenly wisdom or 
 intelligence, which are hidden from the natural man. — A. C. 10,227. 
 
34 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 ting. Even then it would be better they should not 
 write ; for it is also true [of others] that they should 
 build nothing on these knowledges, but only on Provi- 
 dence. It is good to know the designs of God, and 
 to labor for their accomplishment ; but Providence 
 alone ought to furnish the means, and lead to their 
 execution. Here there is no room for being deceived. 
 
 It is also unprofitable to seek to determine whether 
 these things are from God or not, inasmuch as they 
 should be left behind. For, if they are from God, 
 they will be brought to pass by Providence by our 
 giving up ourselves thereto ; and if they are not, we 
 shall not be deceived if we do not stop at them. 
 
 12. These souls experience much more difficulty in 
 entering on the way of faith than the first ; and, for 
 the most part, they do not enter on it, unless God has 
 some extraordinary design with them, and destines 
 them to lead others. For, as that which they have is 
 so great and so decidedly from God that they are 
 assured of it, and have even seen their predictions 
 accomplished, they do not believe that there is any 
 thing greater in the church of God ; and therefore 
 they cling to it. These persons are discreet, prudent, 
 — they often feel too strong a zeal towards the weak 
 and towards sinners. They would not take a false 
 step, so carefully do they guard themselves ; but what 
 they will, they will very imperfectly and very strongly.* 
 
 * That " between me and thee, what is this " [Gen. xxiii. 15], 
 signifies that he assented, but still willed from self, viz. to be prepared 
 or reformed, may appear from the sense of the letter applied to the 
 internal sense; which treats of reformation. It was said above by 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 35 
 
 O God ! how many ways of spiritual appropriation are 
 there, which appear as great virtues to souls not highly 
 enlightened, but which appear as great faults, exceed- 
 ing dangerous to those who are so ! * For souls of 
 this way regard as virtues what the others consider as 
 subtle faults : the light to discover them is not impart- 
 ed to them ; and, when they are spoken to about the 
 matter, they do not comprehend. f 
 
 13. These souls are firm in their opinions ; and, as 
 
 Ephron, " The field I give thee, and the cave which is therein I give 
 thee," verse 11; by which words was signified that they were willing 
 to prepare themselves as to the things pertaining to the church and 
 faith, that is to reform themselves. That the first state of those who 
 are reformed is such, may be seen, n. 2046; but when they are far- 
 ther advanced in the knowledges of truth or of faith, then is their, 
 second state, that they assent indeed, but still will from self. — A. C. 
 2960. 
 
 * All have the faculty of understanding and being wise ; but that 
 one is wiser than another is because they do not in like manner as- 
 cribe to the Lord all things of intelligence and wisdom, which are all 
 things of truth and good ; they who ascribe all things to the Lord are 
 wiser than others, since all things of truth and good which constitute 
 wisdom flow in from heaven, that is, from the Lord there. The as- 
 cribing of all things to the Lord opens the interiors of man towards 
 heaven, for thus it is acknowledged that nothing of good and truth 
 is from himself; and in proportion as this is acknowledged, in the 
 same proportion the love of self departs, and with the love of self 
 the thick darkness from falses and evils ; in the same proportion also 
 man comes into innocence, and into love and faith to the Lord ; hence 
 conjunction with the Divine, influx thence, and illustration. — A. C. 
 10, 227. 
 
 f When he [the spiritual man] superadds any thing of himself and 
 of his own thought, then, for the most part, the sensual with its falla- 
 cies, and the rational with its appearances, prevail, and effect that he 
 can scarce acknowledge any pure truth, such as the celestial acknow- 
 ledge. — A. C. 2715. 
 
cK) SPIKITUAL TOEKENTS. 
 
 their grace is great and eminent, they are the more 
 assured concerning them. They have rules and mea- 
 sures in their obediences, and [their own] prudence 
 always accompanies them. In a word, they are strong 
 and living in God, although they appear dead. They 
 are indeed dead as to their own proper operation, re- 
 ceiving light passively ; but they are not dead as to 
 their inmost.* 
 
 14. These souls also often enjoy interior silence, a 
 delightful peace, and certain absorptions in God, 
 which they distinguish and describe very well ; but 
 they have not that secret desire to be nothing which 
 belongs to the last. They desire, indeed, to be noth- 
 ing by a certain perceived annihilation, a deep hu- 
 mility, a certain prostration under the boundless 
 weight of the divine greatness, which is more difficult 
 for them to bear, the more strongly they feel this 
 weight of the divine presence. All this is an anni- 
 hilation where one stops by the way without being 
 annihilated.! They have the sentiment of annihila- 
 
 * For man in genuine humiliation divests himself of all ability to 
 think and do any thing from himself, and lends himself altogether to 
 the Divine. — A. C. 6866. 
 
 f Regeneration is nothing else than for the natural to be sub- 
 jugated, and the spiritual to obtain the dominion; and the natural is 
 then subjugated, when it is reduced to correspondence ; and when the 
 natural is reduced to correspondence, it then no longer resists, but 
 acts as it is commanded, and obeys the dictates of the spiritual, in 
 nearly the same manner as the acts of the body obey the dictates of 
 the will, and as the speech with the countenance is according to the 
 influx of the thought: hence it is evident that the natural ought alto- 
 gether to become as nothing, in respect to willing, in order that man 
 may become spiritual. — A. C. 5651. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 37 
 
 tion, but not the reality ; for this sentiment still sus- 
 tains the soul [in its own proper life], and is a state 
 more satisfactory to it than any other, inasmuch as it 
 is more sure, and they have a confident knowledge of 
 it.* 
 
 15. Such souls, for the most part, do not come to 
 God, except after death, with the exception of some 
 privileged ones, whom God destines to be the lights 
 of His church, or whom He would sanctify in a more 
 eminent manner.f These He strips, by little and lit- 
 tle, of all their riches. But, as there are few coura- 
 geous enough, after possessing so many goods, to be 
 willing to lose them all, there are few — fewer than 
 can be expressed — who go beyond this degree ; the 
 design of God being perhaps that they should not 
 do so, and that, " as there are many mansions in 
 
 * Hence it is that the spiritual have not love to the Lord like the 
 celestial ; consequently neither have they humiliation, which is essen- 
 tial in all worship, and by which good from the Lord may flow in. — 
 A.C. 2715. 
 
 t It was said above by Ephron : " The field I give thee, and the 
 cave which is therein I give it thee," Gren. xxiii. 11; by which words 
 was signified that they were willing to prepare themselves as to the 
 things pertaining to the church and to faith, that is, to reform them- 
 selves. That the first state of those who are reformed is such, may 
 be seen, n. 2046 ; but when they are further advanced in the 
 knowledges of truth or of faith, then is their second state, that they 
 assent indeed, but still will from self, and this is the state treated of 
 in this verse ; but a third state is described presently, that they be- 
 lieve they are reformed by the Lord. This is the third state, which 
 is followed by a fourth state, viz. that they perceive it to be from 
 the Lord ; but there are few who arrive at this state in the life of 
 the body, it being an angelic state : yet they who are regenerate 
 come into this state in another life. — A. C. 2960. 
 
38 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 the house of His Father," John xiv. 2, they should 
 occupy only this lower one. This may be for want 
 of courage on their part, or for want of enlightened 
 directors. Those who lead them would believe, per- 
 haps, that they had destroyed them, if they saw them 
 falling from those eminent gifts and graces. But let 
 us leave the causes of this among the hidden things 
 of God's Providence. 
 
 16. Some of these souls do not enjoy these free 
 gifts, but, instead of them, a generous, deep-seated 
 strength, a secret love, gentle and peaceable, pervad- 
 ing and vigorous, which consummates their perfection 
 and their life. Such are skilful in concealing and 
 disguising their faults, always giving them some good 
 color or pretext. 
 
 17. The trials * experienced by the souls I have just 
 spoken of are also as extraordinary as their state. 
 They come from the Devil ; f and although they are 
 
 * That they who are reformed are reduced to ignorance of truth 
 or desolation, even to grief and desperation, and that then first they 
 receive comfort and help from the Lord, is at this day unknown, by 
 reason that few are reformed. They who are such as to be capable of 
 being informed, if not in the life of the body, yet in another life, are 
 brought into this state, which in another life is well known, and is 
 called vastation or desolation. They who are in such vastation or 
 desolation are reduced even to desperation. — A. C. 2694. 
 
 Temptations are nothing else but the combats of evil with the 
 angels who are attendant on man. — A. C. 741. 
 
 ■j- Whereas it is known to few, if to any, what is the nature and 
 manner of temptations, because few at this day undergo temptations, 
 and they who do undergo them know no other than that it is some- 
 what inherent in themselves which is the subject of such suffering, it 
 is permitted briefly to explain the matter. They are evil spirits, 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 39 
 
 extremely violent, and quite other in appearance from 
 those which are to follow, they notwithstanding still 
 serve them for a support. They are given up to the 
 Devil, who exercises upon them the utmost of his 
 malice ; but they are entirely protected, despite the 
 frightful fury of these malignant spirits.^ It re- 
 quires a high degree of light to discover the support 
 concealed under a state so terrible ; but experience 
 gives one to know it. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Of the third way of souls returning to God, which is the passive way of faith, 
 and of its first degree. 1 — 4. A brief description of this way under the 
 figure of a torrent. 5 — 10. The inclination of the soul to God, its pro- 
 prieties, obstacles, effects, explained under the figure of fire. 11 — 18. 
 What happens to a soul called to the passive way of faith. Description of 
 the first degree of this third way, and of the state of a soul in it. 19, 20. 
 The repose it enjoys therein would be hurtful, did not God take it thence 
 in order to advance it. 
 
 1. As regards souls of the third degree, what shall 
 we say, except that they are like torrents which 
 have their source in high mountains ? f They have 
 
 who, on such occasions, excite man's falses and evils, and stir up in 
 his memory whatsoever he has thought or done from his infancy. 
 This the evil spirits can effect in so cunning and malicious a manner 
 as cannot be described. — A. C. 751. 
 
 * But the Lord by angels protects man and restrains the evil spirits 
 from wandering out of due bounds, and bringing on man a greater 
 inundation than he is capable of sustaining. — A. C. 741. 
 
 f Mountains denote the good of love. — A. C. Index. 
 
 Mountain denotes the Lord, hence things celestial. — Ibid, 
 
40 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 their source in God Himself, and enjoy not a mo- 
 ment's rest until they are lost in Him. Nothing 
 stops them, and for this reason they are not burdened 
 with any thing. They are quite bare, and run with 
 a rapidity which strikes fear into the boldest. These 
 torrents run irregularly hither and thither, through 
 all places on their way which can afford them passage. 
 Their beds are not regular like the others, nor is their 
 progress subject to any rule. You see them running 
 wherever they can make their way, without stopping 
 for any thing. They dash themselves against rocks, 
 and fall in loud-sounding cataracts. Sometimes, in 
 passing through grounds which are not firm, their 
 waters become impure, by sweeping the soil along with 
 them in their rapid course. Sometimes they are lost 
 in depths and gulfs, and are not found again for a 
 considerable distance ; and when, at length, they 
 make their appearance for a brief space, it is only to 
 plunge anew into some deeper and longer gulf. These 
 torrents delight to* show themselves for a time and 
 then disappear, and to dash themselves against the 
 rocks. Their course is so swift that the eye does not 
 distinguish it; there is nothing but a general roar, 
 confused and darksome. But, at length, after falling 
 from many steeps into gulfs, after being much beaten 
 against the rocks, after having been again and again 
 lost and recovered, they reach the sea, where they 
 happily lose themselves, never to find themselves 
 again. 
 
 2. There it is that this torrent, in the exact degree 
 that it has been poor, mean, useless, destitute of mer- 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 41 
 
 chandise, is admirably enriched. For it is not rich 
 by its own wealth, like other rivers which possess 
 only a certain amount of merchandise, or certain rari- 
 ties, but rich by the wealth of the sea itself. It carries 
 on its back the largest ships ; it is the sea that bears 
 these ships, that is to say, itself, because, being lost 
 in the sea, it has become one and the same with it.* 
 
 3. It is to be observed, however, that the river 
 thus fallen into the sea does not lose its nature, 
 although it is so changed and lost that it is no longer 
 to be known. It is still what it always was ; but its 
 essence is now confounded and lost, not as to reality,, 
 but as to quality. For it so takes the quality of the 
 ocean's water, that nothing proper to itself is any 
 longer discernible ; and the more it abysses itself, 
 plunges in and continues in the sea, the more it loses 
 its own quality, and assumes the quality of the sea in 
 its stead. \ 
 
 4. For what purposes is not this poor torrent now 
 fit 1 Its capacity is without limits, since it is that of 
 the sea itself. Its riches are immense, — though it- 
 
 * The Lord removes the proprium of man, and gives from His 
 own, and in that he dwells. — A. E. 254. 
 
 ■j- That by destroying every substance which I have made from off 
 the faces of the ground, is signified man's proprium, which is as it 
 were destroyed when it is vivified or made alive, appears from what 
 ■was said above concerning proprium. Man's proprium is wholly evil 
 and false, and so long as it remains, so long man is dead; but when 
 he undergoes temptations, then it is dispersed, that is, it is loosened 
 and tempered by truths and goods from the Lord, and thus it is vivi- 
 fied, and appears as if it was not present. Its not appearing, and not 
 being any longer hurtful, is signified by destroying, although it is 
 never destroyed, but remains. — A. C. 731. 
 4 
 
42 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 self has none, — since they are those of the sea itself. 
 i It is then capable of enriching the whole earth. O 
 happy loss ! Who can describe thee, or the gain 
 which was then made by this river, useless and good 
 for nought, despised and shunned; that headlong 
 stream to which the smallest boat might not be trust- 
 ed, because, unable to keep itself and losing itself so 
 often, it would have swallowed it up in its own ruin ? 
 What say you to the lot of this torrent, ye great 
 rivers flowing with so much majesty, who are the 
 joy and admiration of the tribes who wonder at you 
 for the vast amount of merchandise displayed upon 
 your faces ? This poor torrent, which you looked 
 upon with scorn, or at least with compassion, which 
 was a thing rejected by all the world, which appeared 
 fit for nothing, — what has become of it, and for what 
 now is it good ; nor, rather, for what is it not good 1 
 What is it that it lacks ? You are now its servants, 
 since you carry the wealth you have, either to unload 
 it of its abundance, or to bring to it a new supply of 
 wealth. 
 
 But before we speak of the happiness of a soul thus 
 lost in God, we must begin at the source, and then 
 proceed by degrees. 
 
 5. The soul, having its source, as was said, in God, 
 has a continual inclination to return to Him ; because, 
 as he is its first principle, He is also its last end.- ki 
 
 * Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, signifies that 
 the Lord is the self-substituting and only subsisting, from [first] prin- 
 ciples to ultimates, from whom are all things, and consequently the 
 all in all of heaven and the church. — A. It. 29. 
 
SPIRITUAL TOKRENTS. 43 
 
 Its course would be boundless, were it not interrupted 
 or checked, or altogether stopped, by continual sin and 
 unfaithfulness. This is the reason why man's heart is 
 in perpetual motion, and can find no rest until it 
 has returned to its origin and its centre, which is God ; * 
 like fire, which, being separated from its proper sphere, 
 is in continual agitation, never resting until it has 
 returned thither, when, by one of the miracles of 
 nature, though an element so active of itself that it 
 consumes every thing by its energy, it enjoys a perfect 
 rest.f 
 
 Ye poor souls who are seeking rest in this life, you 
 will never find it except in God. Seek to enter again 
 into Him ; for there all your longings and pains, all 
 your agitations and anxieties, will be reduced to the 
 unity of repose. 
 
 6. It is to be observed, that the nearer fire approaches 
 its centre, the nearer it approaches a state of repose, 
 although the speed of its return thither is perpetually 
 increasing. But as soon as no obstacle any longer 
 withholds it, it darts upward with an incredible velo- 
 city, increasing as/ it approaches its centre ; so that, 
 though its velocity augments, its activity diminishes. 
 It is the same with the soul : as soon as sin ceases to 
 
 * For heavenly peace flows in, when the lusts arising from the love 
 of self and the world are taken away, inasmuch as these lusts are 
 what take away peace ; for they infest the interiors of man, and cause 
 him at length to place rest in restlessness, and peace in disturbance, 
 because he delights in evils. 
 
 f No one can be gifted with this peace, but he who is led of the 
 Lord, and is in the Lord, that is, in heaven, where the Lord is all in 
 all.— A.C. 5662. 
 
44 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 hold it back, it runs indefatigably to find God again ; 
 and if, which is impossible, it were exempt from sin, 
 nothing would hinder its course, which would be so 
 swift that it would reach its destination forthwith. 
 Not only so, but the nearer it approached to God, the 
 more its speed would be augmented, while at the same 
 time this speed would become more peaceful. For 
 the repose, or rather peace (since it is not then re- 
 pose, but a peaceful coursing), would increase, so that 
 peace would redouble its speed, and speed would in- 
 crease its peace. 
 
 7. That which then causes disturbance is its sins 
 , and imperfections, which check for some time the course 
 of this soul more or less, according to the greatness 
 of the fault. Then the soul becomes fully aware of 
 its activity. If, when fire is ascending again to its 
 proper sphere, it should meet with obstacles, such as a 
 bit of wood or of straw, it would resume its former 
 activity, and consume this obstacle or hindrance ; and 
 the greater the resistance, the more its activity would 
 be increased. If it were a bit of wood, it would require 
 a longer and stronger activity to consume it ; but if it 
 were only a piece of straw, it would be consumed in 
 a moment, and would check its course but very little. 
 You will observe that the obstacle which the fire meets 
 with would serve only to increase its velocity, by giv- 
 ing it a new ardor to overcome all obstacles in joining 
 itself to its centre. It is also to be observed, that the 
 more obstacles the fire should meet with, and the more 
 considerable they were, the more they would retard 
 its course ; and if it were always finding new ones, 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 45 
 
 they would be so many objects serving to keep it 
 attached to themselves, and to hinder it from return- 
 ing to its origin. We know from experience, that, 
 if we are always putting wood upon the fire, we shall 
 be always keeping it under, and preventing it from 
 mounting upwards. 
 
 8. The case is the same with souls. Their natural 
 instincts and propensities incline them to God. "Were 
 it not for the hindrances they meet with, they would 
 run incessantly, without ever stopping in their course. 
 These hindrances are their sins and faults, which put 
 obstacles in the way of their return to God in propor- 
 tion as they are strong and enduring, so that, if they 
 are sinning incessantly, they are arrested without ever 
 reaching the goal ; and if they die in sin, they have 
 no possibility of ever reaching it, being then no longer 
 in the way and course [of amendment], and all being 
 terminated as regards them.* Others, dying in a 
 lesser degree of obstruction, such as is made by venial 
 sin, go into the fire of purgatory, that all which the fire 
 of love did not consume in this life may then be finally 
 consumed. Others, again, advance just so much or 
 so little, as the obstacles which they put in their own 
 way are stronger or weaker. 
 
 Such souls as have never committed mortal sin must, 
 of course, advance more than others. This is true for 
 
 * The Lord never operates unless from first principles by ultimates, 
 consequently in fulness ; for He does not reform and regenerate man 
 otherwise than by truths in ultimates, which are natural truths; and 
 from this circumstance it is, that such as is the quality of man in the 
 world, such he remains after his departure out of this world to eter- 
 nity. — A. E. 1087. 
 
46 SPIRITUAL TOKEENTS. 
 
 the most part ; but still, it seems as if God takes more 
 pleasure " in making his mercies abound where sin has 
 most abounded," Rom. v. 20. 
 
 I think one of the reasons for this fact, with regard 
 to those who have not sinned, comes from their having 
 a high opinion of their own righteousness in all the 
 points to which it extends.*'' If they are virgins, they 
 make an idol of their purity, — and so of the rest ; 
 and this disorderly attachment, this esteem and love 
 of their own righteousness, is an obstacle harder to 
 be overcome than the greatest sins ; f because we can- 
 not have so strong an attachment to sins, which are 
 so ugly in themselves, as we have to our own right- 
 eousness ; and God, who never violates our liberty, J 
 leaves such souls to take pleasure in their own sanc- 
 tity, while He delights to purge away the filth of the 
 most miserable. And, to ensure the success of His 
 purpose, he gives them a fire both stronger and 
 
 * If man believed, as is the truth, that all good and truth are 
 from the Lord, and all evil and falsity from hell, he would not appro- 
 priate good to himself, and make it meritorious ; nor would he appro- 
 priate evil to himself, and make himself guilty of it. — D. P. 320. 
 
 f Man, by means of these two faculties [freedom and rationality], 
 can be so far reformed and regenerated, as he can be led by them to 
 acknowledge that all the truth and good which he thinks is from the 
 Lord, and not from himself. — D. P. 87. 
 
 ^ If the freedom of willing evil, and of making it as of reason by 
 confirmations, was taken away from the natural man, liberty and 
 rationality would perish, and at the same time will and understand- 
 ing ; and he could not be led away from evils, and be reformed ; thus 
 not be conjoined to the Lord, and live to eternity: wherefore the Lord 
 so guards freedom with man, as man does the pupil of his eye. — 
 . D. P. 97. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 47 
 
 more ardent, which, by its activity, consumes these 
 gross faults more easily than a lighter fire consumes 
 lighter obstacles. It seems even as if God delighted 
 to make these guilty souls the throne of His love, that 
 He might display His power, and show how He can 
 perfect and re-establish them, though so deformed, in 
 their first state, and even make them fairer than those 
 who were never polluted. 
 
 10. The souls then which have sinned, and for whom,' 
 dropping the others, I write, find in themselves a great 
 fire, consuming in a moment all their faults and hin- 
 drances. They mount aloft with so much the more 
 force, as that which held them back was stronger and 
 harder to be consumed. They often find themselves 
 impeded by notable faults, contracted from former 
 habits ; * but this fire consumes them and goes on, 
 and this repeatedly, until it finds no more to operate 
 on. It must be observed, that the more it goes on 
 consuming, the more it grows, and the easier are the 
 obstacles it meets with to be consumed ; so that at 
 last they are nothing but straws, which, far from check- 
 ing its course, only make it more ardent. 
 
 This being premised and understood, it is easy to 
 apply it, and to understand the case as it is. It will be 
 well, therefore, to take the soul in its first state, and 
 go on regularly, if God, who dictates these things, 
 (which I see only as they are committed to paper), 
 wills me to do so. 
 
 11. God, designing to make the soul His own, in 
 
 * The evils and falses which he had before imbibed emerge and 
 come forth. — A. C. 3696. 
 
48 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 order that He may lose it in Himself in a wonderful 
 manner very little known to ordinary believers, begins 
 by making it feel interiorly its estrangement from Him- 
 self. 
 
 As soon as it feels and knows its estrangement, the 
 inclination implanted in it to return to its principle, 
 and which was, as it were, extinguished by sin, wakes 
 up. It then conceives a true grief for its sins, and 
 feels, with pain and trouble, the evil which this aliena- 
 tion causes it. 
 
 The restless feeling thus inspired into the soul causes 
 it to seek out the means of getting rid of this pain, 
 and of entering into a certain repose which it sees afar 
 off, but the sight of which serves only to redouble this 
 restlessness, and increase its desire of pursuing and 
 reaching it.*' 
 
 12. Some of these souls, for want of being instructed 
 that they must seek God in their interior, and there 
 follow after Him without going out of themselves, 
 turn themselves to meditation, and to seeking without 
 that which they will never find except within. This 
 meditation, for which they are commonly very little 
 adapted (because God, who desires something else 
 from them, does not allow them to attain any thing by 
 this exercise), serves only to increase their desire ; for, 
 while their wound is in the heart, they would fain 
 apply the plaster without, and this only soothes their 
 
 * But yet, inmostly, lie is in a state of peace; for, unless he were 
 in such a state in his inniosts, he would not engage in combat, inas- 
 much as he has continual respect to that state, as an end, in the combats 
 wherein he is engaged. — A. C. 369C. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 49 
 
 disease, not heals it. They fight for a long time by- 
 help of this exercise, and their combat redoubles their 
 impotence. And if these souls, of whom God takes 
 care Himself, do not meet with some one who can 
 show them that they have taken the wrong course, they 
 only lose their time, and will continue to lose it, as 
 long as they remain without this succor. 
 
 13. But God, all full of mercy, fails not to bring 
 them this succor by His Providence, if it were only 
 transitorily and for a few days. This succor is not 
 sought by themselves, although they are well aware 
 that something is wanting to them, without guessing 
 at the remedy ; but, by purely providential means, 
 they find it without looking for it. For, as they are 
 properly the true children of Providence, God sends 
 them, without extraordinary methods, all they have 
 need of, in a way, as it were, quite natural. 
 
 14. When, therefore, these souls are instructed by 
 some one providentially sent to them, that they are 
 not in the way of progress, because their wound is 
 within, and they would apply the remedy without, — 
 when they are instructed, I say, to turn within them- 
 selves, and seek in the inmost of their hearts what 
 they vainly seek abroad, they discover, with an aston- 
 ishment that at once delights and surprises them, that 
 they have within themselves the treasure they were 
 seeking afar off.* They languish with joy in their 
 
 * The Lord flows in with good through man's inmosts, and there 
 conjoins truth: their root must be in the inmost. — A. C. 2879. 
 
 Man is little concerned at this day about the things which are 
 transacting interiorly within him, inasmuch as external things occupy 
 
50 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 new-found liberty. They are all astonished that prayer 
 no longer costs them any thing, and that the more 
 they gather in their thoughts, and go deeply within 
 themselves, the more they experience an indiscribable 
 delight that transports and carries them away, so that 
 they would fain never cease from this state of love and 
 inward concentration.^ 
 
 Observe, if you please, that what they experience, 
 delicious as it appears, does not, if they are destined 
 to have faith, detain them, but disposes them ever to 
 hasten after that certain something with which they 
 are not yet acquainted.! The soul is nothing any 
 longer but ardor and love. It thinks itself already in 
 
 him wholly; and to him who is wholly occupied by external things, 
 that is, when external things are the ends of life, internal things are 
 of no account. Hence it is evident why those things which are trans- 
 acting inwardly in man are at this day concealed and altogether 
 unknown. Such an obscurity of intellect never existed among the 
 ancients: their wisdom was to cultivate interior things. — A. C. 5224. 
 
 * The delights which are perceived in things extreme, or corporeal, 
 are respectively vile ; for every delight is such that it becomes viler 
 the more it proceeds to external things, and happier the more it pro- 
 ceeds to things internal. Wherefore, as was said, as external things 
 are in order unfolded or unswathed, so much the more pleasant and 
 happy delights become — A. C. 996. 
 
 f Good, with man during regeneration, has continually a purpose 
 of inverting the state, and of reducing it into such an order that 
 truth may not be in the prior place, but in the posterior, as is agree- 
 able to the state of heaven: this purpose, however, lies deeply con- 
 cealed, nor is it perceived until it is effected. The case herein is as 
 with conjugial love, which does not appear in infancy and childhood, 
 but still lies treasured up, nor does it come forth until all and single 
 things are so arranged that it can manifest itself ; in the mean time 
 it produces all means suitable to itself, or they are produced. — A. C. 
 3610. 
 
SPIRITUAL TOEREXTS. 51 
 
 paradise;* 1 ' for what it experiences within being infi- 
 nitely sweeter than all the pleasures of earth, it leaves 
 them without regret, and would leave the whole world 
 to enjoy, for one moment, in its inmost, what it expe- 
 riences. 
 
 The soul, then, perceives that its prayer becomes 
 almost uninterrupted. Its love increases from day to 
 day, becoming so ardent that the soul cannot contain 
 it. Its senses are so much concentred, and a state of 
 recollection so takes entire possession of it, that every 
 thing drops from the hands. It would fain love per- 
 petually, and meet with no interruption. 
 
 15. And as the soul, in this state, is not strong 
 enough not to be dissipated by conversations, it shuns 
 and fears them. It would be always in solitude, and 
 be always enjoying the embraces of its well-beloved. 
 It has within itself a Director who does not suffer it 
 to take pleasure in any thing, nor to commit a fault 
 without reproving it, and making it sensible, by His 
 coldness, how much the fault displeases Him.f 
 
 * After man, by the opening of his internal, is introduced into 
 heaven, and receives light from thence, then the same affections which 
 the angels of heaven enjoy, together with their pleasantnesses and 
 delights, are communicated to him. — A. E. 942. 
 
 f " And all the churches shall know that I am He that searcheth 
 the reins and hearts," Rev. ii. 23. That hereby is signified the ac- 
 knowledgment of all who are in the church, that the Lord alone 
 knows and explores the exteriors and interiors, and the things pertain- 
 ing to faith and love, appears from the signification of searching, when 
 predicated of the Lord, as denoting that He alone knows and explores ; 
 and from the signification of the reins, as denoting the truths of faith, 
 and their purification from falsities, concerning which we shall speak 
 in what follows ; and from the signification of hearts as denoting the 
 goods of love. — A. E. 167. 
 
52 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 These coldnesses of God, by reason of faults, are 
 penances more dreadful to the soul than the heaviest 
 chastisements. It is reproved for an idle look -and a 
 hasty word.* It seems as if God had no other care 
 than to correct and reprove this soul, and that He 
 applies Himself only to accomplish its perfection. It 
 is astonished itself, and others also, to see that it has 
 changed more in one month, — yea, even in a day, 
 by this way, than in several years by the other. O 
 God ! it belongs to Thee alone to amend and purify 
 the soul. 
 
 The soul is taught concerning all kinds of mortifi- 
 cations, without having ever heard them spoken of. 
 If it is about to eat any thing gratifying to the taste, 
 it is held back as by an invisible hand : if it goes into 
 a garden, it can see nothing there, — it cannot even 
 hold a flower, or look at it. It seems as if God had 
 placed sentinels over all its senses. It dares not listen 
 to a piece of news. It can apply to itself now those 
 words of Scripture, that it is " surrounded with hedges 
 and thorns," Hosea ii. 6 ; for, if it would indulge 
 itself in any liberties, it feels itself pierced to the 
 quick. 
 
 * " Take heed of His face," Ex. xxiii. 21. That it signifies holy 
 fear, appears from the signification of taking heed to a face, when it 
 is said concerning the Lord, who is here meant by an angel, as denot- 
 ing to fear, lest He be angry on account of evils, or lest He be embit- 
 tered on account of prevarications. — A. C. 9306. 
 
 " Lest thou embitter Him." That it signifies aversion from Him 
 by falses derived from evil, appears from the signification of embit- 
 tering, or inciting anger, when concerning the Lord, who, in this case, 
 is the angel, as denoting to avert by falses derived from evil ; for falses 
 derived from evils are aversions from the Lord. — A. C. 9308. 
 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 53 
 
 It would fain then, especially in the beginning, con- 
 sume itself with austerities. It seems as if it no longer 
 held at all to earth, so much does it feel itself detached 
 therefrom. Its words are nothing but fire and flames. 
 
 God has still another way of punishing this soiil, 
 after it is somewhat more advanced, which is, by mak- 
 ing Himself felt more strongly after its fall. Then 
 the poor soul is swallowed up in confusion. It would 
 prefer the severest chastisement to this loving-kindness 
 of God, following upon its fall, which makes it ready 
 to die, and to be swallowed up with shame. 
 
 16. The soul is then so full of what it feels, that it 
 would fain impart it to all the world. It would teach 
 every one to love God. Its feelings towards Him are 
 so lively, so pure, so remote from interest, that those 
 directors, who, without being themselves experienced 
 in these ways, should hear it speak, would believe it 
 had reached the height of perfection. It is fertile in 
 beautiful thoughts, which it commits to writing with 
 admirable facility, and which are deep, lively, and inti- 
 mate feelings ; there being now no more reasonings, 
 nothing but the strongest and most ardent love. The 
 soul during the day feels itself seized and occupied by 
 a divine force, which ravishes and consumes it, and 
 holds it night and day without its knowing what it 
 does. The eyes close of themselves, and can scarcely be 
 opened. It would fain be blind, deaf, and dumb, that 
 nothing might hinder its enjoyment. It is like those 
 intoxicated persons who are so occupied and possessed 
 with wine that they know not what they do, and are 
 no longer their own masters. If these persons wish 
 
54 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 to read, the book falls from their hands ; a single line 
 is enough for them, and they can scarcely read a page 
 in a whole day, whatever industry they may use for 
 the purpose. It is not that they understand what 
 they read, for they do not think upon it ; but it is 
 that one word of God, or the approach of a book, 
 awakens the secret instinct w T hich animates and in- 
 flames them, so that love closes both their lips and 
 their eyes. 
 
 17. For this reason it is that they cannot make use 
 of vocal prayers, not being able to pronounce them. 
 A pater would keep them an hour. A poor soul not 
 used to this knows not what ails it ; for, having never 
 seen or heard of the like, it knows not why it can- 
 not pray. Nevertheless, it cannot resist one more 
 mighty than itself, who carries it away. It cannot 
 fear to do amiss, nor feels any concern of this kind ; 
 for He who holds it thus bound does not allow it to 
 doubt that it is Himself who does it, nor to defend 
 itself; for, if it should seek to exert itself for prayer, 
 it feels that He who occupies it closes its mouth, and 
 compels it by a sweet and lovely violence to keep 
 silence. 
 
 This does not mean that the creature cannot resist, 
 so as to speak by effort ; but that, besides doing itself 
 great violence hereby, it loses that heavenly peace, and 
 feels sensibly that a spiritual dryness supervenes. It 
 is requisite, therefore, that the soul should suffer itself 
 to be moved at the divine option, and not after its own 
 way ; and if one then has a director who has no expe- 
 rience in these matters, and who insists upon vocal 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 55 
 
 prayer, besides inflicting on the soul great constraint, 
 he does it an irreparable mischief. 
 
 18. The soul at this time experiences a desire of 
 suffering so vehement, that it causes it to languish and 
 die. It would fain make amends for the sins of every 
 one, and satisfy God. It now begins to find it impos- 
 sible to gain indulgences, and love does not allow it 
 any desire to shorten its sufferings. 
 
 19. The soul in this state believes that it is in inte- 
 rior silence, because its operation is so sweet, so easy, 
 and so tranquil, that it no longer perceives it. It 
 believes itself to have reached the summit of perfection, 
 and sees nothing more to be done than to enjoy the 
 good of which it is possessed. This degree lasts for 
 a long time, and goes on gradually increasing ; and, 
 very often, there are souls who do not get beyond it 
 but are in it all their lives, who yet come to be saints 
 and the admiration of all mankind. 
 
 The soul, in this degree, has certain transitory and 
 short drynesses, which do not take it out of its degree, 
 but which serve to advance it. 
 
 20. These souls, however, so ardent and so desirous 
 of God, begin to rest in this state, and insensibly to 
 lose their loving activity in running after God, content- 
 ing themselves with their enjoyment, which they believe 
 to be God Himself. This resting and ceasing from 
 their course would be an irreparable misfortune to 
 them, if God, from His infinite love, did not withdraw 
 them as speedily as possible from this state, and intro- 
 duce them into the one next to be described. 
 
 But, before speaking of this, it will be well to say 
 something about the imperfections of this degree. 
 
56 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS, 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 1 — 3. Imperfections of this first degree, as well interior as in relation to the 
 exterior. 4. A mistake often made in it. 5. Mark of passiveness in this 
 state. 6 — 10. Imperfections and mistakes of this degree continued. 11 — 
 14. Spiritual counsel. 15 — 19. Spiritual drynesses intermingled with a 
 tender but interested loye, which requires the trials and purifications of 
 the succeding degree. 
 
 The soul, while in the degree I have just spoken 
 of, can advance greatly in it, and does so, going from 
 love to love, and from cross to cross ; but it falls so 
 often, and is so proprietary, that it may be said to 
 go only at a tortoise pace, though it appears to itself 
 and to others to run with unbounded speed. The tor- 
 rent is here in a level country, and has not yet reached 
 the declivity of the mountain, where it is to throw 
 itself down and take a course destined no more to be 
 checked. 
 
 2. The faults of the soul in this degree * are a certain 
 esteem of itself, more hidden and more deeply rooted 
 than it was before receiving these graces and favors from 
 
 * The spiritual church is such that it must be introduced by truth 
 into good, and then be without perception of good, unless according to 
 the quantity and quality which lies concealed in the affection of truth, 
 at which time it cannot be distinguished from the delight of self-love 
 and the love of the world, which is together in that affection, and is 
 believed to be good. — A. C. 3325. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 57 
 
 God,*' — a certain secret undervaluing and contempt of 
 others, whom it sees so far distant from its own way,f — 
 a proneness to be scandalized by their faults, and a cer- 
 tain hardness towards sins a*nd sinners, — a zeal like 
 that of St. John before the coming of the Holy Spirit, 
 who would have called down fire out of heaven upon 
 the Samaritans, that they might be consumed, J — a 
 certain confidence in its own salvation and its own 
 virtue, so that it seems to itself incapable of sinning, 
 — a secret pride, especially at first, so that it is trou- 
 bled at faults committed openly. It would fain be 
 impeccable : it maintains a collected or reserved bear- 
 ing, perceptible to others : it claims to itself the gifts 
 of God, and deals with them as if they were its own.§ 
 
 * The spiritual, inasmuch as they have not perception like the 
 celestial, do not know that divine truth becomes rational truth with 
 man when he is regenerated. They say, indeed, that all good and 
 all truth is from the Lord ; but still, when these exist in their rational, . 
 they suppose them to be their own, and thus as it were from them- 
 selves ; so they cannot be separated from their own proprium, which 
 wills this. — A. C. 3394. 
 
 t When he [the spiritual man] has done any thing good, it is the 
 delight of his life to make mention of it, and thus to prefer himself 
 to others. —A. C. 2715. 
 
 X For truth without good is altogether stiff, and when it Respects 
 good as an end, that stiffness begins to soften ; but good is in itself 
 soft, and the truth which is insinuated, inasmuch as it becomes good 
 there, also grows soft. — A. C. 7068. 
 
 § Such is the first state of all who are reformed and become spir- 
 itual, viz. that they do not believe they are reformed of the Lord, but 
 of themselves; that is, that every thing of the will of good and the 
 thought of truth is from themselves: in this state, also, they are suf- 
 fered of the Lord to remain for a time, because otherwise they could 
 not be reformed. — A. C. 2946. 
 5 
 
58 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 It forgets its own weakness and poverty in the expe- 
 rience it has of its own strength ; so that it loses 
 distrust of itself, and is not afraid to expose itself to 
 occasions of sin. 
 
 Although all these faults, and many others, are to 
 be found in persons of this degree, they do not know 
 them,*' and it even appears as if they had more humility 
 than others, because their humility is more guarded.f 
 But wait only, and these faults will give themselves, 
 in due time, to be both seen and felt. J 
 
 3. The grace they feel so strongly within being to 
 them a testimony that they have nothing to fear, they 
 speak rashly without a divine mission. They would 
 fain communicate what they feel to all the world. 
 Hereby they do some good, it is true, to others ; for 
 their words, all fire and flames, kindle the hearts of 
 those who listen to them ; but besides that they do 
 not accomplish the good they would do if they were 
 in that degree in which the divine order disposes the 
 
 * The same appears also from this, that the spiritual man does not 
 know what is evil; he scarce believes any thing to be evil but what 
 is contrary to the commandments of the decalogue, being ignorant 
 of the evils of affection and thought, which are innumerable, and 
 neither reflecting on them, nor calling them evils. — A. C. 2715. 
 
 ■f That to bend themselves denotes exterior humiliation, and is 
 of those who are in truth, and that to bow themselves denotes inte- 
 rior humiliation, and is of those who are in good, see n. 5682. — 
 A.C. 7068. 
 
 ^ It is to be observed, that man cannot be purified from evils, and 
 thence from falsities, unless the unclean things that are in him emerge 
 even into the thought, and are there seen, acknowledged, discerned, 
 and rejected. — A. E. 580. 
 
 For the evils and falses which he had before imbibed, emerge and 
 come forth and disturb him. — A. C. 3696. 
 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 59 
 
 soul to communicate what it has, their graces being 
 not yet in their fulness, they give of their penury 
 instead of giving only of their abundance, in conse- 
 quence of which they grow dry themselves. If you 
 have seen several basins of water underneath a foun- 
 tain, the fountain alone giving of its fulness, and the 
 others dispensing, the one into the other, only from the 
 fulness which the source communicates to them, you 
 can understand how, if the source is stopped up or di- 
 verted while the basins still continue to flow, they will 
 be certain, having no longer any source, to be exhaust- 
 ed and dried up. The like happens to souls of this 
 degree : they wish to be sending abroad their waters 
 continually, not perceiving, until late, that the water 
 they have is only for themselves, and that they are 
 not in a degree suited for communication, because they 
 are not sources themselves. They are like bottles of 
 precious perfume left to exhale themselves, whose fra- 
 grance is so delightful that we do not take notice how 
 rapidly they waste away. 
 
 4. It is easy, in this degree, to be deceived by tak- 
 ing the means for the end ;* and as it lasts very long 
 
 * There are things essential, and there are things instrumental. 
 In order that what is essential may produce an effect, it must have 
 what is instrumental, as a means whereby to act; and as the instru- 
 mental is formed, so it acts. By instrumentals not being matters of 
 concern, is meant that they should not be regarded as an end, but 
 essentials; for so far as instrumentals are regarded as an end, so far 
 essentials withdraw themselves and vanish. Thus if the scientific be 
 regarded as an end, and truths are of no concern, the truths at length 
 so vanish away that it cannot be apperceived whether they are truths: 
 also, if truths are regarded as an end, and good is of no concern, good 
 at length so vanishes away as not to be. — A. C. 5948. 
 
60 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 with some souls, and there are even some that do not 
 get beyond it, it is common to take this state, espe- 
 cially towards its conclusion, for a state of perfection. 
 But this is a great mistake. There is a considerable 
 resemblance to it, it is true ; and, unless the director 
 has passed through all the states, he will easily believe 
 that the soul has reached the highest point, when it is 
 really very far distant from it. What serves the more 
 readily to persuade him, is the fact that the soul prac- 
 tises all the virtues with an admirable strength. It 
 easily overcomes itself, and finds nothing hard, " be- 
 cause love is strong as death," Cant. iii. 6. 
 
 5. It must also be observed, that the virtues appear 
 to have come into the heart without any trouble ;* for 
 the soul of which I am speaking does not think upon 
 them, since it is altogether taken up with a general 
 love, without motive or reason for loving. If you ask 
 it what it does in prayer and during the day, it will 
 tell you that it loves. But what motive or what rea- 
 
 * " And they filled their vessels with corn " [Gen. xlii. 25]. That 
 it signifies scientifics, that they were gifted with good from truth, ap- 
 pears from the signification of filling, because gratis, as denoting to be 
 gifted; and from the signification of vessels as being scientifics, and 
 from the signification of corn as being good from truth, or the good of 
 truth.— A. C. 5295. 
 
 « To bring back their silver " [Ibid]. That it signifies without any 
 ability of theirs, appears from the signification of buying with silver, 
 as being to procure from one's self for one's own: here, therefore, to 
 bring back silver is to give gratis, or without any ability of theirs 
 [or, what is the same, that nothing of aid was from them. — A. C. 
 5499]: as also in Isaiah, " Every one that thirsteth, go ye to the wa- 
 ters; and he who hath no silver, go ye, buy and eat, and go ye, buy, 
 without silver and without price, wine and milk;" lv. 1. — 5296. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 61 
 
 son have you for loving ? Of this it knows nothing. 
 All that it knows is, that it loves, and that it burns 
 to suffer for what it loves. But perhaps it is the sight 
 of what your Well-beloved has undergone, O soul ! 
 which thus moves in you a willingness to suffer ? — 
 Alas ! it will say, they do not come into my thoughts. 
 — Is it then a desire to imitate the virtues you see in 
 Him ? — About this I do not think. — What, then, is it 
 you do ? — I love. — Is it the view you have of the 
 beauty of Him who loves you that carries away your 
 heart 1 — I do not look at this beauty. — How is it 
 with you, then ? — I do not know : I only feel in the 
 inmost recesses of my heart a deep wound; a wound 
 so delightful, that I repose in my trouble, and find 
 pleasure in my smart. * 
 
 6. The soul now believes that it has gained and 
 finished all; for, though it is full of the defects I 
 have just mentioned, and a whole host of others 
 exceedingly dangerous, which are better felt in the 
 following degree than they can then be expressed, it 
 rests in the perfection it thinks it has acquired ; and, 
 stopping at the means, because it takes them for the 
 end, it would always remain attached to them, if God 
 did not lead this torrent (which is like a peaceful 
 lake on the summit of a mountain) to the declivity of 
 
 * I have experienced, as also on several other occasions, though 
 without reflection, that affections can act and be varied, to effect, 
 without ideas of thought: thus, that there are indefinite states of 
 affections, with their varieties and successions (which are the principles 
 of thoughts, although the man cannot perceive those thoughts), with- 
 out ideas of thought ; from which may be inferred that celestial states 
 are such from which come spiritual things. — S. D. 3127. 
 
62 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 the mountain, that it might cast itself down, and take 
 a course the more rapid in proportion to the depth of 
 its fall * 
 
 7. It seems to me that the soul in this first degree, 
 even with the most advanced, has a certain habit of 
 concealing its defects both from itself and from others. 
 It invents excuses and pretexts ; it never speaks 
 them out ingenuously, not by design, but from a cer- 
 tain love of its own excellence, and from a certain 
 habitual dissimulation under which it conceals itself, f 
 It has not so much peace [as afterwards] in its mis- 
 eries : J on the contrary, it finds itself wonderfully 
 cast down. It has a certain eagerness to be purified 
 from them, which it speaks about to others. § The 
 faults which are most visible to others are those 
 
 * Nearly similar to this is the case with the new life of a regene- 
 rate man. In the beginning he is in a state of tranquillity ; but as he 
 passes into a new life, he also passes at the same time into an untran- 
 quil state. — A.C. 3696. 
 
 f Man is accustomed from infancy to make a show of friendship, 
 of benevolence, and of sincerity, and to conceal the thoughts of his 
 own proper will: hence from habit he contracts a moral and civil life 
 in externals, whatever he may be in internals. The effect of this 
 habit is, that man scarcely knows his interiors, and also that he does 
 not attend to them. — H. H. 492. 
 
 X Peace is the inmost in every delight, even in what is undelight- 
 ful with the man who is in good. — A. C. 8455. 
 
 § " Let not any one make a residue of it until morning M [Ex. 
 xvi. 19]. That it signifies that they should not be so solicitous about 
 acquiring it of themselves, appears from this, that the manna was 
 given every morning, and that worms were born in the residue ; by 
 which is signified that the Lord daily provides necessaries, and that 
 thus they ought not to be solicitous about acquiring them of them- 
 selves. — A. C. 8478. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 63 
 
 which cause it most pain. It has a sensible taste and 
 relish of the gifts of God. It has a secret love of 
 itself stronger than ever ; a high esteem of its extra- 
 ordinary way ; a secret desire to attract notice ; a 
 certain composed bearing in the exterior ; a con- 
 strained and affected modesty. It is beset by a 
 swarm of self-reflections, when it falls into some 
 visible fault ; it is too ready to judge of others ; .and, 
 along with all these faults, it has a thousand proprie- 
 tary attachments to its devotions ; and, preferring 
 prayer to the duties of the family, it is the cause of a 
 thousand sins committed by those among whom it 
 resides.* 
 
 8. This is a matter of the highest importance ; for 
 the soul, feeling itself drawn in a manner so sweet 
 and so strong, would fain be always alone and in 
 prayer, and it prays more than comports with its 
 state either exterior or interior. Its exterior faults 
 give rise to a thousand reports, lead to a thousand 
 faults, and cause a neglect of essential obligations ; 
 its interior ones, by degrees, exhaust the strength of 
 the soul and its power of loving, and cause it times of 
 spiritual dryness, which, not being of the divine order, 
 hurt it instead of doing it any good. 
 
 9. Two unhappy consequences result from this. 
 
 * With man about to be regenerated the case is thus, that his 
 first affection of truth is very impure ; for there is in it an affection of 
 use and of end for the sake of himself, for the sake of the world, for 
 the sake of glory in heaven, and the like things, which look towards 
 himself, but not towards the community, the Lord's kingdom, and 
 still less towards the Lord. Such an affection must needs precede:, 
 nevertheless, it is successively purified of the Lord. — A. C. 3089.. 
 
64 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 The first is, that the soul desires too much to be in 
 prayer and solitude, when it has a facility therefor ; 
 the second is, that when it has thereby exhausted its 
 loving power, inasmuch as this is by its own fault, it 
 has not the same strength in the dryness which super- 
 venes ; it finds it difficult to continue so long in 
 prayer, and is very 'apt to shorten the time assigned 
 thereto ; it seeks amusement, at times, in exterior 
 objects;** it falls into dejection, discouragement, dis- 
 tress, believing that it has lost all, and does all it 
 can to bring back again the presence and the love 
 of God. 
 
 10. But if it were sufficiently strong to hold an 
 equal course, and not to do more in abundance than in 
 dryness, it would meet all demands. It is uncomply- 
 ing towards the neighbor, towards whom it practises 
 no complaisance, thinking it a great matter to relax a 
 little to please him. It feels a certain severity and 
 observes an austere silence where they are out of 
 place ; whereas, on other occasions, it is apt to talk 
 on without end concerning, the things of God. A 
 woman will have scruples about complying with her 
 husband's wishes, about conversing with him, about 
 
 * The good of truth or spiritual good is given indeed to the man 
 of the spiritual church ; but whereas every delight of the love of self 
 and of the world, which had before constituted their life, extinguishes 
 that good, inasmuch as they are opposite, therefore the pure good of 
 truth cannot long abide with that man, but is tempered from the 
 Lord by the delights of the loves which had before been of his life: 
 for, unless that good was so tempered, it would become undelightful 
 to him, and would thus be loathsome. Such is celestial good at first 
 with those who are regenerating. — A. C. 8487. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 65 
 
 walking or partaking of some amusement with him ; 
 but will have none whatever about talking two whole 
 hours, unnecessarily, with devotees of one or the 
 other sex. This is a dreadful mistake. We ought to 
 discharge our duties, of whatever nature they may be, 
 and whatever trouble it may cause us, even though 
 we may think ourselves guilty of some faults in the 
 way of doing them.* By this course we shall reap 
 vastly more spiritual profit, not in the way we ex- 
 pect, but because it makes us die to ourselves. It 
 seems even as if our Lord gave us to understand that 
 this was pleasing to Him, by the grace He com- 
 municates to us in thus doing. I knew a person, who, 
 in playing cards to oblige her husband, experienced a 
 stronger and more intimate union than she ever ex- 
 perienced in prayer ; and this was a thing of com- 
 mon occurrence in all she did to gratify the wishes of 
 her husband, notwithstanding the repugnance she 
 might feel for it ; and if she failed in this point, in 
 order, as she thought, to do better, she felt distinctly 
 that she was leaving her proper estate and the order 
 of God. This did not prevent the person I am speak- 
 ing of from often committing such faults, because the 
 attraction to an interior state and the excellence of 
 
 * By the worship of God at this day is meant principally the 
 worship of the mouth in a temple, both morning and evening. But 
 the worship of God does not consist essentially in this, but in a life of 
 uses: this worship is according to the order of Heaven. The worship 
 of the mouth is also worship, but it is altogether of no avail, unless 
 there be worship of the life; for this latter worship is of the heart, 
 and the former, that it may become worship, must proceed from this 
 latter. — A. C. 7884. 
 
66 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 prayer, which are preferred to this apparent waste of 
 time, insensibly carry the soul away, and put it on 
 a wrong track. And this appears as sanctity in the 
 greater number. 
 
 11. Still, however, souls destined for faith do not 
 commit these errors for a long time or frequently. 
 God desires to lead them in His divine order,* and 
 He therefore causes them to feel wherein they come 
 short. And the difference between a soul destined 
 for faith, and another, is, that the latter continues in 
 these devotions without difficulty ; it is like tearing 
 out his heart to withdraw him from this tranquil love : 
 but the other has no peace even in peace itself, until 
 he has satisfied his duty ; and when he does continue 
 in this peaceful state, notwithstanding the instinct to 
 leave it, it is an unfaithfulness which is sure to cause 
 him inward pain. 
 
 12. It happens also that the soul, by means of this 
 death and this contrariety, feels ijtself still more 
 strongly attached or attracted to its interior repose. 
 For it is peculiar to man to long more strongly for a 
 thing in proportion as it is more difficult for him to 
 enjoy it (at least, if he has some little firmness) ; and 
 to become fixed in his desires by opposition, willing 
 
 * By living according to order is here meant to be led of the Lord 
 by good, but to live not as yet according to order is to be led by 
 truth; and when man is led by truth, the Lord does not appear; 
 wherefore also man then goes in darkness, in which he does not see 
 good; it is otherwise when man is led by good, then he sees in the 
 light. — A. C. 8572. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 67 
 
 yet more strongly that which is denied him.* This 
 trouble of not being able to have repose except by 
 halves, increases the repose of the soul, and causes 
 that, even in action, it feels itself drawn so strongly, 
 that it seems as if there were within it two souls and 
 two conversations at one and the same time, and as 
 if the more interior of them were vastly stronger than 
 the exterior. f But if the soul would quit the duties 
 incumbent on it for prayer, it no longer finds any 
 thing, and its attraction perishes J 
 
 13. I do not mean prayer which is of obligation, 
 and which we have prescribed to ourselves as matter 
 
 * The end of refusal, when any one accepts, is sometimes that 
 affection may be insinuated; it is thence also increased, and thus 
 passes from thinking well into willing well. Man is led by the Lord 
 in spiritual life by things nearly similar to those by which man leads 
 others in civil life : it is a customary thing in civil life to refuse, to 
 the end that the favor may be done from affection, thus not only from 
 thinking, but also from willing. — A. C. 4366. 
 
 f By Adam and his wife is understood the most ancient church, 
 which was a celestial church. Spiritual things with them were alto- 
 gether distinct from natural things; the former residing in their 
 spiritual mind, and the latter in their natural mind; and hence they 
 did not immerse any thing spiritual in their natural mind, as is the 
 case with men who are spiritual-natural. — A. C. 617. 
 
 £ With respect to use, the case is this, that they who are in charity 
 that is, in love towards their neighbor, from which love is delight in 
 pleasures, which is living delight, do not regard the enjoyment of 
 pleasures except for the sake of use; for charity is no charity unless 
 there be works of charity, inasmuch as charity consists in exercise or 
 use. He who loves his neighbor as himself never perceives the delight 
 of charity except in the exercise thereof, or in use ; wherefore a life of 
 charity is a life of uses : therefore every pleasure which is from charity 
 receives its delight from use. — A. C. 997. 
 
68 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 of duty ; for in this we should not fail, except for 
 reasons beyond our control. But I speak of a prayer 
 we would fain make perpetual, where we feel our- 
 selves carried away by a secret force drawing us 
 within ourselves. Neither by action do I mean 
 that which is at our own option, but that of absolute 
 duty. For if a person has time, after meeting all 
 the duties incumbent on him, let him give it to 
 prayer; let him bestow on it, indeed, all the time 
 he can. In this case it will be of unbounded service 
 to him. We must take care also, not, under pretence 
 of obligation, to impose upon ourselves non-necessary 
 actions. Love for one's husband, for our children, 
 for the care of the household, can easily insinuate 
 itself under cover of what is necessary ; so also a 
 natural eagerness to finish a thing once begun. But 
 all this will easily be discovered by a soul not inclined 
 to flatter itself. This is not so dangerous [a mistake 
 as the other], 
 
 14. When the state of recollection is very deep, the 
 soul does not usually fall into the faults last men- 
 tioned ; but it does into those already mentioned, 
 of undue seclusion. When the state of dryness 
 begins, it is more to be feared that the person will 
 over-burden himself with occupations, by reason of 
 the pain which the senses experience in remaining 
 long in prayer. But one must be firm here, and 
 be as exact as in the time of recollection. I knew 
 a person who prayed most when prayer was most 
 painful, hardening herself against the pain itself. 
 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 69 
 
 But this is hurtful to the health, because of the 
 violent effort required for it, and the pain inflicted on 
 the senses and the understanding, which, not being 
 able to fix on any object, and being deprived of the 
 sweet correspondence which formerly kept it near to 
 God, suffers, in consequence, such dreadful torments, 
 that the soul would rather undergo the greatest 
 austerities than the violence it must make use of in 
 order to remain with God without sensible support.* 
 In this case the pain is intolerable, and nature is put 
 by it, as it were, in a rage.f The person of whom I 
 speak used to pass, at times, two and three hours in 
 succession in this painful species of prayer ; and, as 
 God had given her great courage, she suffered herself 
 to be devoured by her pain, although she felt her 
 senses to be in a rage. She has confessed to me, that 
 the most extraordinary austerities would have appear- 
 ed a pastime to her, compared with a continuance 
 in this state. Sometimes she actually resorted to 
 austerities for relief, which was no small unfaithful- 
 ness. But, as the use of so much violence with persons 
 
 * To humble one's self is expressed in the original tongue by a 
 word which signifies to aftiict; and for a person to afilict himself, 
 means, in the internal sense, to compel himself, as may appear from 
 very many passages in the Word. Alan's celestial proprium is 
 formed in the effort of his thought; and if he does not obtain it by 
 compelling himself, as it appears, he will never obtain it by not com- 
 pelling himself. — A. C. 1937. 
 
 t "And she called his name Naphtali " [Gen. xxx. 8]. That 
 this signifies the quality thereof, namely, of the temptation in which 
 man overcomes, and also of the resistance which arises from the 
 natural man, appears from the signification of name, and of calling 
 a name, being quality. See n. 144, <fec. — A. C. 3928. 
 
70 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 so feeble might destroy the health of mind and body, 
 I think it better neither to diminish nor to increase 
 prayer on account of changes in the state of the 
 feelings. 
 
 15. The states of dryness, so painful and distressing, 
 of which I have just spoken, which pass among certain 
 spiritual persons not much enlightened for terrible 
 states, and the severest trials from God, belong only 
 to this first degree of faith, and are often caused by 
 exhaustion.* Nevertheless, souls who have gone 
 through them believe that they are dead, and write 
 and speak of them, as of the most painful passage of 
 the spiritual life.f It is true they have no experience 
 of the contrary ; and very often the soul has not 
 courage to go on, though this is so small a matter. 
 For, in these pains, which are like a burning fire, the 
 soul is left to them by God, who withdraws from it 
 His sensible aid ; J but still it is the senses which 
 cause them ; because, being accustomed to act, to see, 
 to feel, and to taste, and having never experienced 
 the like privations, and finding no place beside where 
 
 * It is the delights of his [the spiritual man's] life to be instructed 
 in truths, and to be illustrated in such things as relate to his soul, 
 thus to his spiritual life; wherefore, when those things fail, his spi- 
 ritual life labors and suffers, whence come grief and anxiety. — 
 A.C. 8352. 
 
 ■f They who have not been instructed concerning the regeneration 
 of man, suppose that man can be regenerated without temptation, and 
 some that he is regenerated when he has undergone one temptation; 
 but it is to be known that without temptation no one is regenerated, 
 and that several temptations succeed one after another. — A. C. 8403. 
 
 ^ In temptations the Lord appears as absent. — A. E. 700. 
 
SPIRITUAL TOEE.ENTS. 71 
 
 they can be nourished,* they are reduced to a fright- 
 ful state of despair, f 
 
 The soul is far from not being, on these occasions, 
 in a state of vigor ; J it remains firm, if it has some 
 degree of courage. Its pain is glorious to it, neither 
 is it of long duration ; for the strength of the soul at 
 this time is not such that it can sustain such a burden 
 very long. It would turn backward to seek for 
 nourishment, or else it would give over altogether. 
 
 16. For this reason, our Lord does not long delay 
 to return : He returns sometimes before even the 
 prayer is finished. And if he does not return at the 
 conclusion of the prayer, He does so during the day 
 in a still stronger manner. § It appears as if he re- 
 
 * When the good of charity is to be insinuated which makes spiri- 
 tual life, then the delight of pleasures is removed, which had made 
 natural life. When this delight is removed, then man comes into 
 temptation; for he believes, if he be deprived of the delight of plea- 
 sures, that he is deprived of all life ; for his natural life consists in that 
 delight or good, as he calls it. — A. C. 8413. 
 
 t Spiritual temptations are commonly brought to despair. — 
 A.C. 8351. 
 
 X Where man is in temptations, which are combats against evils 
 and falses, the Lord flows in from the interior, and fights for him; 
 which also man may know from this, that when he is in temptations 
 he interiorly resists; for, unless he interiorly resisted, he would not 
 conquer, but would yield. This interior resistance at the time does 
 not come to the apperception of man, because when he is in temptations 
 he is in obscurity from the evil and falses of evil which assault; but 
 after temptations, with those who are in the perception of truth. — 
 A.C. 10,686. 
 
 § After every spiritual temptation come illustration and affection, 
 thus pleasantness and delight; pleasantness from illustration by truth, 
 and delight from the affection of good. — A. C. 8367. 
 
72 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 pented of having caused suffering to trie soul He loves 
 so well, or that He desired to recompense with usury 
 what it had endured for His sake. If the absence 
 continues for some days, the pains are such that they 
 are intolerable. It calls Him merciful and cruel. It 
 asks of Him if He has wounded it only that He may 
 slay it. But this amiable lover smiles at its pain, 
 and returns to put on its wound a balm so sweet that 
 it would always be feeling new wounds, that it might 
 always enjoy the delight of a healing which restores 
 to it, not only its first health, but a health yet more 
 abundant.*' 
 
 Hitherto we have seen nothing but the mere sports 
 of love, to which the soul would easily become accus- 
 tomed if its Friend did not change His course. Poor 
 souls, who complain of the inconstancies of love, you 
 know not that they are only feints, slight foretastes 
 and specimens of what is to follow. The hours of 
 absence seem to you days, weeks, months, and years. 
 You are to learn, at your own cost, to become more 
 
 * That these are words of despair [" Were there no sepulchres in 
 Egypt 1 Thou hast taken us to die in the wilderness," Ex. xiv. 11] is 
 evident. With those who are in despair, which is the last state of 
 temptation, such things also are thought, and then they are as it 
 were on a declivity, or as it were in the lapse to hell; but such 
 thought there is not at all hurtful, neither is it attended to by the 
 angels, for every man has a limited power; and when the temptation 
 comes even to the last limit of his power, then man endures no further, 
 but lapses. Then, however, that is, when he is in the inclination to 
 lapse, he is elevated by the Lord, and thus liberated from despair. In 
 this case, for the most part, he is brought into a state of hope, and 
 thence into a clear state of consolation, and also into a state of satis- 
 faction. — A. C. 8165. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 73 
 
 generous, and to let your Spouse go and return with- 
 out saying any thing to Him. I seem to myself to see 
 these young brides. They are in the deepest grief, 
 when their husband leaves them for ever so short a 
 time. They bewail three days of absence as if He 
 were dead, and they fight as much as they can against 
 letting Him go. This love appears strong and great, 
 yet it is by no means so. It is the pleasure they 
 enjoy in seeing their spouse that they weep for. It is 
 their own satisfaction that they seek. For if it were 
 the pleasure of their husband, they would be as well 
 pleased with the pleasure which He finds apart from 
 them, in walking, in hunting, or otherwise, as with 
 that which He enjoys with themselves. It is, there- 
 fore, an interested love, although it does not appear 
 such to the soul ; which, on the contrary, believes 
 that it loves Him only because He is worthy to be 
 loved. It is true, poor souls, that you love Him 
 because He is lovely ; but you love also for the plea- 
 sure which you find in this exercise of loving.*' 
 
 18. Nevertheless, you are willing, you say, to suffer 
 for Him who is your Friend. It is true you are, pro- 
 vided He is the witness and companion of your 
 suffering. You wish no reward for it, you say. I grant 
 you this ; but you would have him know your suffer- 
 
 * Reward serves as a medium of conjunction with those who are not 
 yet initiated; for they who are not yet initiated in good and its affec- 
 tion, that is, who are not yet fully regenerated, cannot do otherwise 
 than think also of reward, because in doing good they do it not from 
 the affection of good, but from the affection of somewhat blessed and 
 happy in regard to themselves. — A. C. 3816. 
 6 
 
74 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 ing, and accept it, — you would have him gratified 
 therewith. Is there, then, any thing, you will ask, 
 more natural and right than wishing that He for 
 whom we suffer should know it, accept it, and be 
 pleased with it ? Oh, how greatly are you mistaken ! 
 Jealous love will by no means let you enjoy the plea- 
 sure you take in seeing Him pleased with your griefs. 
 You must learn to suffer, without His exhibiting any 
 sign, either of seeing, of accepting, or of knowing it. 
 It is too much for you to be accepted. What pain 
 would one not undergo on this condition 1 What ! 
 to know that He who loves us sees our pains, and 
 has an infinite pleasure in them, — oh ! this is the 
 highest of pleasures to a generous heart. Neverthe- 
 less, I am convinced that the highest generosity of 
 those who belong to the state under consideration 
 does not go beyond this limit. 
 
 19. But to suffer without our Lover's knowing it, 
 and when he appears to despise and turn away from 
 what we do to please Him, and to feel nothing but 
 aversion for what seemed to delight Him formerly ; to 
 see Him recompense with coldness and dreadful dis- 
 tance what we do only to please Him, and yet not 
 cease to do it ; to see Him rewarding all our en- 
 deavors only with terrible hidings of his face ; to suffer 
 ourselves to be stripped, without complaint, of all 
 that He had formerly given as pledges of His love, 
 and which the soul believed it had payed for by its 
 own love, its faithfulness and its sufferings ; not only 
 to see ourselves stripped of them without complaining, 
 but to see others enriched with our spoils, yet with- 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 75 
 
 out failing to do, as before, all that can please our 
 Friend, absent though He be ; not to cease running 
 after Him, or if, from unfaithfulness or surprise, we 
 stop for a moment, to redouble our speed, without 
 fearing or looking at the precipices in our way, though 
 we fall and fall again a thousand times, though the soul 
 is so covered with mud and so wearied that it loses its 
 own proper strength, to die and expire by these con- 
 tinual fatigues (or if, at times, its Friend turns round 
 and looks at it, He gives it again life and prevents it 
 from dying, so much delight does this look afford 
 it), until, at length, its divine Friend becomes so 
 cruel, that He suffers it to expire for want of help ; — 
 all this, I say, belongs not to this stage, but to the 
 following one.* 
 
 It must be observed here, that the degree I have just 
 spoken of is very long, unless God designs to advance 
 the soul very greatly ; and very many, as I have said, 
 do not get beyond it. 
 
 * It is to be known that without temptation no one is regenerated, 
 and that several temptations succeed one after another. — A. C. 8403. 
 
 Man, who is being regenerated, is at length so far reduced by 
 repeated desolations and supports, that he no longer wills to be his 
 own, but the Lord's. —A. C. 6138. 
 
 Temptations are continual despairings concerning salvation, in the 
 beginning slight, but in process of time grievous, till at last there is 
 doubt almost negative concerning the presence of the Divine and His 
 aid. The spiritual life is generally brought to this extreme in 
 temptations; for so the natural life is extinguished, inasmuch as then 
 the inmost, in the midst of despair, is held by the Lord in combat 
 against the falses. — A. C. 8567. 
 
76 SPIRITUAL TORREXTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The second degree of the passive way of faith. 1 — 5. A short description of 
 this way. 6 — 7. Entrance on this degree, and useless efforts to avoid it. 
 8 — 14. Gradations and progresses in this degree, in which occur various 
 manifestations of Jesus Christ to the soul. The various uses and abuses 
 thereof successively, whereby the soul is forwarded to the mystical death, 
 or third degree of this passive way of faith. 
 
 1. The torrent beginning to find the declivity of 
 the mountain begins likewise the second degree of the 
 passive way of faith* The soul was so peaceful on 
 this mountain, and enjoyed there such a state of 
 delightful repose, that it had no thought of ever 
 falling from it. Nevertheless, for want of declivity 
 and descent, these waters of heaven were beginning, 
 by the pause they thus made on the earth, to become 
 putrid. For there is this difference between waters 
 that do not flow nor discharge themselves and those 
 that do, that the first, (unless they be the sea, or 
 those great lakes which resemble it,) are spoiled, and 
 their rest is their ruin. But when, after leaving their 
 source, they have a ready issue, the more rapidly they 
 run, the more pure they keep. 
 
 2. You will observe (as I have already said of this 
 
 * During the continuance of temptations, on one part are excited 
 evils, and the falses of evils ; on the other, goods, and the truths of 
 good which appertain to man. Hence he is in a turbulent state. — 
 A. C. 10,686. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 77 
 
 soul), that, when God imparted to it the gift of passive 
 faith, He gave it also an instinct to hasten towards 
 Him as its centre. But unfaithful to this instinct 
 (though it believes itself full of fidelity), the soul 
 extinguishes it by its repose, and would be inactive 
 without advancing, if God did not wake up this 
 instinct by causing it to find the declivity of the 
 mountain, where it must fall headlong almost in 
 spite of itself. It feels itself at once to lose the calm 
 which it believed itself in possession of for ever. Its 
 tranquil waters begin to murmur ; a tumult begins in 
 its waves ; they run and cast themselves headlong 
 down. But whither do they run ? Alas ! to their 
 own destruction [as it seems]. 
 
 If they could will any thing, they would hold back, 
 and return to their former calmness. But this is 
 impossible : the declivity has been reached, and they 
 must fall from one descent to another. There is as 
 yet no consideration about abyss or loss. The water 
 (the soul) continues visible, and is not lost in this 
 degree. It is agitated, and falls headlong ; wave 
 follows wave, and, in the fall, they meet and dash 
 against one another. 
 
 3. This water, however, meets with certain level 
 spots in the declivity of this mountain, where it takes 
 some little relaxation. It is pleased with the clear- 
 ness of its own waters, and sees that its falls, its 
 courses, and the dashing of its waves against the 
 rocks, have served only to make it more pure. It finds 
 itself delivered from its loud and stormy period, and 
 believes that it has reached already the place of rest, — 
 
78 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 believes this so much the more readily, because it 
 cannot doubt, that the state through which it has just 
 passed has served greatly to purify it. For it sees itself 
 to be more clear, and no longer perceives the stench 
 which certain stagnant places emitted at the top of 
 the mountain. It has even acquired a certain propen- 
 sity to fall; that is, it has gained a knowledge, in 
 some measure, of what itself is. It has been made 
 to see, by the trouble of its passions, or rather of its 
 waves, that they were not destroyed, but only hushed 
 to sleep.* 
 
 4. As, when it was on the declivity of the mountain 
 on its way to this last spot, it believed itself on the way 
 to destruction, and had no further hope of recovering 
 its peace ; so, now, when it no longer hears the sound 
 of its own waves, when it sees itself flowing so gently 
 and pleasantly over the sand, it forgets its former 
 suffering, and believes not that it will ever return ; 
 for it sees itself to have acquired more purity, and is 
 not afraid of becoming putrid, since it is not absolutely 
 at rest here, but flows in the gentlest and pleasantest 
 way imaginable.! Poor torrent ! thou thinkest thou 
 
 * The tempted are in interior anxiety, even to desperation, in 
 which they are kept more especially, for the end that they may 
 finally be confirmed in this, that all things are of the Lord's mercy, 
 that they are saved by Him alone, and that in themselves there 
 is nothing but evil; in which truths they are confirmed by combats 
 wherein they conquer. — A.C. 2334. 
 
 f That not temptations only, but also consolation is signified by 
 Schaddai, is because all spiritual temptations are succeeded by con- 
 solation, which has been given [me] to know from experience in the 
 other life. For when any one there suffers hardships from evil spirits, 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 79 
 
 hast found rest, and hast reached its very abode ! 
 Thou art beginning to take pleasure in thy own 
 waters ! The creatures gaze at themselves in the 
 mirror which these waters make, and think themselves 
 most fair. But what is thy surprise, when, in flowing 
 along so softly over the sand, thou meetest, all unex- 
 pectedly, with a declivity yet steeper, longer, and 
 more dangerous than the first 1 * Thus begins again 
 the murmuring of the torrent, which was a moderate 
 sound at first, but which now becomes insupportable. 
 It makes a noise and uproar still greater than before. 
 It has now scarcely a bed to run in, but falls from 
 rocks to rocks, going headlong without order or rea- 
 son. It frightens every one with its noise, and all 
 are afraid to approach it. 
 
 5. Poor torrent ! what wilt thou do 1 Thou 
 sweepest with thee all that thou encounterest in 
 thy mad career : thou feelest only the declivity that 
 hurries thee forward, and believest thyself lost. No, 
 no, fear not ; thou art not lost, but the period of thy 
 happiness is not yet attained. For this, other falls 
 and other losses are needful. Thou art only begin- 
 ning thy course. 
 
 At length this running torrent feels that it has 
 reached again the lower part of the mountain and the 
 
 by infestations, excitations to evil, and persuasions to falses, after- 
 wards when the evil spirits are removed, he is received by the angels, 
 and is brought into a state of comfort, by delights conformable to his 
 genius. — A. C. 5628. 
 
 * Temptations are continual despairings concerning salvation, in 
 the beginning slight, but in process of time grievous. — A. C. 8567. 
 
80 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 level country. It regains its former calmness, and 
 even a greater one ; and, after having passed long 
 years in these alternations, it enters upon the third 
 degree. 
 
 6. After having passed some years in this tranquil 
 place, of which, as we have said, it thought to keep 
 perpetual possession, — after having acquired the vir- 
 tues, as it thought, in all their extent, — the soul, be- 
 lieving all its passions to be dead, and thinking yet 
 more confidently to enjoy a happiness beyond all fear 
 of loss, is all astonished to find, that, instead of going 
 higher, or at least maintaining an equal state, it has 
 reached, without looking for it, the declivity of the 
 mountain. It begins, with astonishment, to expe- 
 rience an inclination for the things it had left. It 
 sees this delightful calm all at once beginning to be 
 disturbed. Distractions come in crowds. They fight 
 together and throw each other down. The soul finds 
 nothing but stones in its way, nothing but seasons of 
 drought and aridity. Disgust comes into its prayers ; 
 and its passions, which it believed to be dead, but 
 which were only laid asleep, rouse up into life. 
 
 7. It is quite astonished at this change. It would 
 either ascend again whence it has fallen, or, at least, 
 stop where it is. But this cannot be : it has reached 
 the crest of the mountain, and it needs must fall. It 
 does its best to recover from its falls ; it does what it 
 can to hold back, and stay itself ^n some species of 
 devotion. It redoubles its penances. It does its 
 best to bring back the delight of its former peace. It 
 seeks solitude with the hope of finding it there. But 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 81 
 
 all its labor is in vain. It sees that the fault is its 
 own. It resigns itself to suffer the humiliation which 
 results from this, and abominates sin. It would fain 
 adjust things, but it cannot be done. The torrent 
 must take its course, and sweep along all that stands 
 in its way. 
 
 The soul, seeing that it finds no further support in 
 God, goes about to see if it can find it in the crea- 
 ture ; but it finds none whatever, and this its unfaith- 
 fulness serves only to frighten it yet more. 
 
 8. At length, the poor soul, not knowing what to 
 do, everywhere lamenting the loss of its Well-beloved, 
 is all astonished to find that He presents Himself again 
 to her. Believing that it had lost Him for ever, it is at 
 once enraptured with the view. It esteems itself so 
 much the more happy, because it perceives that He 
 has brought with Him new blessings, a new purity, a 
 greater distrust of itself.* It has no longer a desire, 
 as at first, to stop ; it runs incessantly, but quietly, 
 gently, fearing again an interruption of its peace. 
 It dreads to lose again its treasure, which is the more 
 precious to it, because the loss of it was so keenly 
 felt. It fears to displease Him, lest He should again 
 
 * When man is in temptations, the goods of love and the truths of 
 faith are not then appropriated to him, but afterwards. For, during 
 the continuance of temptations, on one part are excited evils and the 
 falses of evils : on the other, goods and the truths of good appertaining 
 to man: hence he is in a turbulent state. In this state the internal is 
 opened ; but, after temptation, he has serenity, and in that state goods 
 and the truths of good are brought in by the Lord into the internal 
 now open. — A. C. 10,686. 
 
82 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 withdraw Himself. It endeavors to be more faithful 
 to Him, and not to make an end of the means. 
 
 9. Notwithstanding, this repose carries it away, 
 ravishes it, and makes it more neglectful. It cannot 
 help yielding itself up to its delights, and would fain be 
 always alone. It is still actuated by a spiritual avidity 
 or intemperance. To drag it forth from solitude and 
 prayer is like plucking out its very soul. It is yet 
 more proprietary than before, that which it delights 
 in being yet more delicate, and its taste having become 
 more nice by the pain it has suffered. It appears to 
 be in a new repose. 
 
 10. It goes on quietly, when suddenly it meets 
 with a new descent more decided and longer than the 
 first. It falls, all at once, into a new surprise ; it 
 would fain hold back, but in vain ; it must fall, and 
 run along the rocks from one to another. It is 
 astonished to find that it is losing all relish for prayer 
 and worship, and that it requires the greatest self- 
 compulsion to continue in it. It finds nothing but 
 death at every step. "What formerly gave it life now 
 brings it death. 
 
 It no longer feels any peace, but, on the contrary, 
 a trouble and agitation deeper than ever, as well in 
 regard to the passions, which awake with the more 
 strength the more they appeared extinct, as with 
 reference to crosses, which are multiplied without, 
 whilst the soul finds itself more weak in supporting 
 them. It arms itself with patience, it weeps, it 
 gnoans, it is cast down ; it complains to its Spouse 
 that He has thus abandoned it, but its complaints are 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 83 
 
 not heard.*' The more it is troubled, the more it 
 renews its complaints. Every thing becomes death 
 to it ; it finds all good difficult, it feels a tendency to 
 evil that hurries it away. 
 
 11. Nevertheless it cannot rest in the creature after 
 having tasted the Creator. It runs yet more earnestly ; 
 and the stronger the rocks and other obstacles that 
 oppose its passage, the more bent it is on redoubling 
 its course. 
 
 It is like the dove sent forth from the ark, which, 
 " not finding any spot of earth on which she could rest 
 her foot" [Gen. viii. 9], is compelled to return. But 
 alas ! what will this poor dove do when it would 
 return to the ark, if the good Noah will not put forth 
 his hand to take it again 1 It does nothing but hover 
 about the ark, seeking rest, but not able to find it. 
 It moans about the ark, until the divine Noah, having 
 pity upon her perseverance and her moanings, at 
 length opens the door, and receives her with accept- 
 ance. 
 
 12. O method altogether admirable and loving of 
 the Divine Goodness ! He deals thus with the soul, 
 only to make it hasten forward more rapidly. He 
 hides Himself that He may be sought for. He flies 
 that He may draw the soul after Him.f He lets it 
 fall, apparently, that He may have the pleasure of 
 
 * The prayers of those who are in temptations are little heard; 
 for the Lord wills the end, which is the salvation of man; which end 
 He knows, but not man ; and the Lord does not act for prayers against 
 the end, which is salvation. — A. C. 8179. 
 
 f "And they said, Nay" [Ex. xix. 2]. That it signifies doubt 
 which usually attends temptation, may appear from the refusal, and 
 
84 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 sustaining and lifting it up. Thou who art strong 
 and vigorous ; who hast never experienced these de- 
 vices of love, these apparent jealousies, these avoidings, 
 lovely to the soul that has gone through them, but 
 terrible to the one that is under them, — thou, I say, 
 who knowest nothing of these dealings of the divine 
 love, because intoxicated with the continual posses- 
 sion of thy Well-beloved — (or, if He hides Himself, it 
 is for so short a time that thou canst not judge, from 
 long and wearisome absence, of the blessedness of his 
 presence) — thou hast never experienced thine own 
 weakness, and the need thou hast of His aid. Where- 
 as, these poor souls thus left destitute begin to lean 
 no longer upon themselves, but only on their Well- 
 beloved.* 4 The severities of this Well-beloved have 
 made his favors yet more desirable. 
 
 13. These souls often commit faults by reason of 
 the weak state to which they are reduced, and because 
 
 that they nevertheless went to his house. Inasmuch as by Lot it is 
 here treated concerning the first state of the church, which is in the 
 good of charity, but in external worship, and whereas, before man 
 comes to this state, he must be reformed, which reformation is effected 
 also by a certain species of temptation, but which temptation is very 
 light with those who are in external worship ; therefore these circum- 
 stances are mentioned, which imply somewhat of temptation, viz. that 
 the angels first said, that they would stay all night in the street, and 
 that Lot pressed them, and thus that they turned down to him, and 
 came to his house. — A. C. 2334. 
 
 * The tempted are in interior anxiety even to desperation, in 
 which they are kept more especially for the end that they may finally 
 be confirmed in this, that all things are of the Lord's mercy, that 
 they are saved by Him alone, and that in themselves there is nothing 
 but evil; in which truths they are confirmed by combats in which 
 they conquer. — A. C. 2334. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 85 
 
 their senses no longer find any supports. These 
 faults make them so much ashamed, that they would 
 hide themselves, were this possible, from their Well- 
 beloved. Alas ! in the dreadful confusion in which 
 they are involved, He shows them His countenance 
 for a moment. He reaches out to them His sceptre, 
 like king Ahasuerus, that they may not die ; but His 
 caresses, so brief and so tender, serve only to increase 
 their confusion at having displeased Him. 
 
 At other times he makes them feel by His severities 
 how much their unfaithfulness displeases Him. O 
 God ! if these souls could be reduced to powder, they 
 would gladly be so. They throw themselves into a 
 thousand postures to repair the injury they have done 
 to God. And if, by some trifling quicknesses of temper 
 which they look upon as crimes, they have hurt their 
 neighbor, what reparations do they not make for it ? 
 They carry this so far, that they believe themselves 
 guilty therefor, as if they had done him some great 
 wrong, and ask his pardon for it. But it is pitiful to 
 see the state of the poor soul, when, by some fault, it 
 has been capable of expelling its Well-beloved.* It 
 makes use of all endeavors to amend; it does not 
 
 * This latter fear, viz. in which the good are, is called holy fear, 
 and is of admiration respecting the divine, and also is of love. Love 
 without holy fear is like somewhat unsavory, or like food unseasoned 
 with salt, and consequently insipid; but love with fear is like salted 
 food, which yet does not taste of salt. The fear of love is, lest in any 
 manner the Lord should suffer hurt, or in any manner a neighbor; 
 thus lest in any manner good and truth should suffer hurt, conse- 
 quently lest should the holy of love and faith, and thence of worship. 
 — A.C. 3718. ' 
 
86 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 cease to run after Him. But the more it runs, the 
 more He flies. Or, if He stops, it is only for some 
 moments, that it may take breath, and enjoy thereafter 
 a little repose. But the more it advances, the more 
 the repose becomes brief and delicate. 
 
 14. The poor soul sees well that it must needs die ; 
 for it no longer finds life in any thing ; every thing 
 becomes to it death and the cross. Prayer, reading, 
 conversation, all is death. It no longer has a relish 
 for any thing, neither for the practice of the virtues, 
 nor for aiding the sick, nor for any thing else which 
 constitutes a virtuous life. It loses all this, or rather 
 it dies to these things ; doing them with so much pain 
 and disrelish, that they become a kind of death to 
 it. At length, after having fought long but ineffectu- 
 ally,* after a long succession of sorrows and of repose, 
 of dyings and livings, it begins to perceive how it 
 
 * The case is similar in the other life with spirits, who by truths 
 are initiated into good, and especially into this, that all good and 
 truth flows in from the Lord ; and when they apperceive that what- 
 ever they think and will flows in, and thus that they cannot think 
 and will from themselves, they are then repugnant to the utmost of 
 their ability, believing that thus their own proper life would be 
 annihilated; and so all delight would perish, for they place delight 
 in proprium; and, moreover, if they cannot act what is good from 
 themselves, nor believe what is true from themselves, they think that 
 they should hang down their heads, doing nothing and thinking noth- 
 ing of themselves, and should wait for influx. Thus it is permitted 
 them to think, even to such a degree, that they almost conclude with 
 themselves that they are not willing thence to receive good and truth, 
 but from elsewhere, where there is not such a deprivation of proprium. 
 Sometimes also it is given them to inquire where they may find it; 
 but afterwards, when they know where to find it, they who are 
 regenerating return, and from freedom choose to be led of the Lord as 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 87 
 
 has abused the mercies of God, and how much more 
 profitable this state of death is to it than that of life. 
 For, when it sees its Well-beloved return, and finds 
 that the more it advances the more purely it possesses 
 Him, and that the state which precedes enjoyment is 
 one of purification, it gives itself up in good earnest 
 to death ; * submitting to all the comings and goings 
 of its Well-beloved, and giving him full liberty to go 
 and come as He will. It perceives then, that the 
 endeavor to retain Him would be an act of propriety, 
 and involve a fault. It is taught what it is capable 
 of. It loses by small degrees its own enjoyment, and 
 is thereby prepared for a new state. 
 
 But, before I speak of this, it must be observed, that 
 the more the soul advances, the shorter, simpler, and 
 purer are its enjoyments ; and the longer, harder, and 
 more anguishing are its trials ; and this, until the soul 
 has lost all [proprietary] enjoyment, never to find it 
 again. f Then comes the third degree, which is called 
 loss, burial, putrefaction. The former [the second] 
 terminates with death, and goes no further. 
 
 to -willing and thinking : they are also then informed, that they are to 
 receive a heavenly proprium such as the angels have, and with this 
 proprium likewise blessedness and happiness to eternity. — A. C. 
 5660. 
 
 * The privation of the life of truth from itself is not the extinc- 
 tion of truth, but is its vivification : for when truth appears to itself 
 to have life from itself, then it has not life, except such life as in 
 itself is not life ; but when it is deprived of that, it is then gifted with 
 real life, viz. by good from the Lord, who is life itself. — A. C. 3607. 
 
 •f When, therefore, the order is to be inverted, then the former 
 delight of pleasures expires, and becomes none, and a new [delight] 
 from a spiritual origin is insinuated in its place. — A. C. 8413. 
 
88 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Section I. 
 
 1 — L Third degree of the passive way of faith in its beginnings, and in its 
 progress through several particular deaths leading to total death, burial, 
 putrefaction, and ashes. 5 — 8. Duration of this transit, in which one 
 should neither advance of himself nor go back. 9 — 13. The stripping of 
 the soul, and its three kinds. 14 — 19. First degree of this stripping, 
 which has relation to gifts and favors, or the ornaments of the soul. Its 
 necessity and its effects. 
 
 1. You see these dying persons, when they are 
 thought to have breathed their last, all at once recov- 
 ering new strength, and so on until they really expire. 
 As a lamp, that has exhausted its supply of oil, darts 
 up its flame, from time to time, in the midst of its 
 obscurity, but only to die the sooner, so the soul 
 shoots forth some gleams which last but a few mo- 
 ments. At length, it is in vain for it to fight any 
 longer against this death. There is no more radical 
 moisture in it : the Sun of righteousness has so dried 
 it up, that it must of necessity expire. 
 
 2. But what else does this loving Sun aim at with 
 His rigorous heats, but to consume the soul ? And 
 the poor soul, thus burned up, believes itself all ice, 
 because the torment it endures does not allow it to 
 perceive the nature of its suffering. As long as the 
 Sun was covered with clouds, and gave His rays to be 
 felt in a temperate manner, it felt His heat, and 
 believed itself all on fire, though it was but slightly 
 
SPIRITUAL TOBBENTS. 89 
 
 warmed. But when He darts His rays perpendicu- 
 larly, it feels itself all burnt and dried up, without 
 believing that it is even receiving any warmth. 
 
 3. O gracious deception ! O Love at once gentle 
 and cruel ! Hast thou lovers only to deceive them 
 thus ? Thou woundest these souls, and then, con- 
 cealing Thy dart, makest them run after the author 
 of their wound. Thou drawest them after Thee, and 
 showest Thyself to them ; and, when they would pos- 
 sess Thee, Thou fleest away. When Thou seest the 
 soul reduced to extremities, and losing breath by the 
 earnestness with which it runs, Thou showest Thyself 
 to it for a moment, that it may recover life, but still 
 only that it may be made to die a thousand and a 
 thousand times more rigorously.* Rigorous Lover ! 
 Innocent Destroyer ! Why dost Thou not kill at 
 once 1 Wherefore give wine to the expiring soul, 
 imparting life to it anew, only to wrest it away again ? 
 This, then, is Thy sport. Thou woundest to death ; 
 and, when Thou seest the sufferer ready to expire, 
 
 * This state [concealment or receding] is signified in the word by 
 evening : when they are in that state, they recede from things celestial 
 and spiritual, and recede to such as contain nothing spiritual and 
 celestial. But this concealment or receding does not come to pass by 
 the Lord's concealing Himself or receding, but by themselves doing 
 so ; for they can no longer be withheld from their proprium, because 
 it is not expedient. Wherefore this state arrives when they are 
 left to themselves or their proprium; and so far as they are thus 
 left, or are immersed in the proprium, so far they recede from those 
 things which are of heaven, and so far good is unperceivable to them, 
 and truth obscure. Hence it is evident, that the Lord does not conceal 
 Himself, but that the man, the spirit and the angel, conceals himself. 
 — A.C. 5964. 
 7 
 
90 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 Thou healest his wound that Thou mayst inflict new 
 ones. Alas ! men die commonly but once, and the 
 most cruel tormentors were wont, in persecutions, to 
 lengthen out life indeed to the criminal ; but they 
 were satisfied when they had destroyed him once. 
 But Thou, with less pity, takest life from us a thou- 
 sand and a thousand times, and givest it anew. 
 
 4. O life, which we cannot lose without so many 
 deaths ! O death, which we cannot have but by the 
 loss of so many lives ! Thou wilt come at the end of 
 this life. But to what purpose ? Perhaps this soul, 
 after it has been swallowed up in thy bosom, will 
 enjoy its Well-beloved. It would be but too happy 
 if this were so ; but it must undergo another torment. 
 It must be buried, undergo putrefaction,* and be 
 brought to dust. But, perhaps, it will not suffer any 
 more, since bodies that putrefy are past sensation. 
 Oh ! it is not so with the soul. It goes on suffering ; 
 and burial, putrefaction, and nothingness are vastly 
 more painful than death itself, f 
 
 * The first rational is in the beginning like unripe fruit, which 
 successively ripens, till the seeds within are deposited in it ; and when 
 it is of such an age as to begin to separate itself from the tree, then is 
 its state full, concerning which n. 2636. But the other rational 
 with which man is gifted of the Lord, when he is regenerated, is like 
 the same fruit in good ground, in which there is a decay of those parts 
 which encompass the seeds, and the seeds themselves shoot forth from 
 their inmosts, and emit a root, and also a stem above ground; which 
 stem grows into a new tree, .and unfolds itself, even at length into 
 new fruits, and afterwards into gardens and paradises according to 
 the affections of good and of truth which are received. See Matt. 
 xiii. 3.1, 32 ; John xii. .24. ^- A. C. 2657. 
 
 f In this verse [Gen. xli. 31] it is treated concerning the last state 
 
 ■. \ 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 91 
 
 5. This degree of death is exceedingly long, and 
 lasts sometimes twenty or thirty years, unless with 
 those souls concerning whom God has special de- 
 signs. And, as I said that very few went "beyond 
 the other degrees, I now say that still fewer go be- 
 yond this.-'' 
 
 It is a circumstance that has astonished many per- 
 sons, to see those who have lived holy lives like the 
 angels die in terrible distress, and almost in despair 
 of salvation. They are astonished, and know not 
 how to account for it. The reason is, that they 
 finished their lives in this degree of the mystical 
 death ; and, as God was pleased to hasten their pro- 
 gress, He redoubled their sufferings, as happened in 
 Taulere's case. 
 
 I shall be told, in reply, that these persons were 
 saints perfected according to their degree and in their 
 degree. This is true ; but still they had not passed 
 the one under consideration, — a circumstance which 
 does not interfere with their being saints. A large 
 number have been canonized by the church who 
 experienced this degree only on their deathbeds, and 
 
 of desolation, when there is desperation, which proximately precedes 
 regeneration. The subject is here continued concerning the last 
 state of desolation, which is a state of desperation, and concerning its 
 increasing grievousness. — A.C. 5280, 5281. 
 
 * The good itself in which truth is implanted causes them not only 
 to acknowledge, but also to believe, that reformation is from the Lord. 
 This is the third state, which is followed by a fourth state, viz. that 
 they perceive it to be from the Lord ; but there are few who arrive 
 at this state in the life of the body, it being an angelic state. — 
 A.C. 2960. 
 
92 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 many also never entered upon it. Accordingly, when 
 I meet with persons who speak of the rapidity with 
 which they are advancing, I cannot help saying that 
 they are deceived. They are all perfected, no doubt, 
 in those interior states which they do not get beyond ; 
 but as for their having passed this, it is a mistake. 
 And this proves to be the case in the end. 
 
 6. Accordingly, those souls who are in a state of 
 union in the first degree, which marks the beginning 
 of that way of naked faith of which I am speaking, do 
 wrong to adopt for themselves the rules which apply 
 to more advanced states. The stripping of the soul 
 must be left to God. He will do it to perfection, 
 while the soul will second this stripping and the 
 whole process of death without interposing any ob- 
 stacle. But to do it of one's self is to spoil all, and 
 make of a divine a common state. Thus you see 
 some, who, from having read or heard that the soul 
 must be stripped of all, set about it themselves, and 
 continue always thus without progress ; for, as they 
 strip their own selves, God does not clothe them with 
 Himself; for, it must be observed, the Divine pur- 
 pose in unclothing is only to clothe upon. He 
 impoverishes only to make rich, becoming in secret 
 Himself the substitute for all that He takes away 
 from the soul. This is not the case with those who 
 act in this matter from themselves. They lose, in- 
 deed, by their faults the gifts of God ; but they do 
 not, for all that, possess God. 
 
 7. In this degree the soul cannot sufficiently suffer 
 itself to be stripped, emptied, impoverished, killed ; 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 93 
 
 and all it does to sustain itself is nothing but irrepara- 
 ble loss, since it is preserving a life which ought to 
 be laid down. A person who intended to let a lamp 
 go out without extinguishing it, need only refrain 
 from putting oil into it, and it would then go out of 
 itself; but if, while saying all the while that he 
 wished to let the lamp go out, he kept putting oil 
 in it from time to time, the lamp would never burn 
 out. It is the same with the soul, if, in this degree, 
 it takes ever so little of life to itself. If it solaces 
 itself, — if it does not suffer itself to be stripped, — in 
 a word, if it puts forth any act of life whatsoever, it 
 will postpone its death as long, and longer, than its 
 life lasts.* 
 
 8. Poor souls ! do not fight against death, and death 
 shall give you life. I see them in imagination like 
 persons who are drowning. Such struggle to the 
 utmost to reach the surface of the water, and hold by 
 every thing they can ; they cling to life as long as 
 
 * It is here in advance to be told, in a few words, how the case is 
 with that conjunction, namely, with the conjunction of the external 
 or natural man with the internal or spiritual. The external or natural 
 man, from the first age of life only, neither knows that there is an 
 internal or spiritual man: wherefore, when a man is reformed, and 
 begins to become spiritual or internal, then the natural at first rebels; 
 for it is taught that the natural man is to be subdued, that is, all its 
 concupiscences to be extirpated, together with those things which 
 confirm them. Hence, when the natural man is left to itself, it thinks 
 that so it shall totally perish ; for it does not know otherwise than 
 that the natural is all, and is wholly ignorant that there are immense 
 and ineffable things in the spiritual; and when the natural man 
 thinks thus, it then draws back, and is not willing to be subjected to 
 the spiritual. — A.C. 5647. 
 
94 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 they have any strength, and do not drown until they 
 are exhausted. It is thus with these souls. They 
 fight to the utmost that they may not perish : it is only 
 lack of strength and power from which they expire. 
 God, desirous of promoting this death, and pitying 
 the soul, cuts off the hands by which it keeps such 
 strong hold, and compels it thus to fall to the bottom. 
 It cries out with all its strength by reason of the pain 
 it feels, but in vain. God is without pity, and it is 
 His great mercy that He shows none to the soul at 
 this juncture. Be co-workers with God, ye spiritual 
 guides, in this course of His. Give no succor to this 
 soul. And as you are not allowed to contribute any 
 thing to its death, by plunging it, yourselves, into the 
 water, neither is it lawful for you to stretch out a 
 hand to hold it up. Suffer it to have no resting-place, 
 and be inexorable to its complaints. Become brass 
 to it, as the heavens have become ; and, if you see it 
 die, give no burial to its body. Love will give it 
 such an one as it knows of: burial and dust will come 
 together. 
 
 9. Crosses now follow ; crosses are multiplied ; and 
 the more they are multiplied, the weaker the soul 
 becomes to bear them, so that it seems to itself not 
 able to carry them any longer.*' What is peculiarly 
 afflicting at this time is, that the state of pain always 
 begins with something which appears to the soul 
 
 * When the state is changed, and becomes inverse to the fore- 
 going, then there is mourning; for then they are let into temptation, 
 whereby the things of the proprium are weakened and debilitated. — 
 A. C. 5773. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 95 
 
 faulty in itself. It believes itself to have contributed 
 to this evil state.*' 
 
 At length the soul is reduced almost to a state of 
 insensibility. It begins to grow accustomed to its 
 pains, to be convinced of its impotence, of its useless- 
 ness, and to despair of itself. It consents even to the 
 loss of all favors from on high, and it thinks that God 
 has taken them away justly. It does not even hope 
 ever to enjoy them again. 
 
 When it sees some gracious soul, its pain is 
 redoubled, and it feels itself plunged into the deepest 
 of its nothingness. It fain would imitate them ; but, 
 seeing its efforts useless, it is compelled to die and 
 breathe its last. Then it says, in the words of 
 Scripture, — " The thing which I greatly feared has 
 come upon me," Job iii. 25. What ! to lose God, it- 
 says, and to lose him for ever, without hope of ever 
 finding Him again ! What ! to be deprived of love 
 for time and eternity ; to be no longer able to love 
 Him we know to be so lovely ! Oh, is it not enough, 
 Divine Lover of the soul, to repulse Thy creature, 
 and to turn away from it, unless it also loses love, 
 and loses it (as seems) for ever ! The poor soul 
 believes itself, indeed, to have sustained this loss ; but, 
 in truth, it never loved more strongly or more purely. 
 
 * When, therefore, ultimate truth is taken away, and so he has 
 nothing whereby to defend himself against those who are natural, he 
 then comes into temptations, and is accused by evil spirits, who are 
 all merely natural, especially of false speaking against goods. Thence 
 now are spiritual anxieties, and thence the torments which are called 
 torments of conscience. These things appear to man as if in himself 
 by influx and communication. — A. C. 5036. 
 
96 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 It has indeed lost the vigor and sensible power of 
 love, but it has not lost love itself : on the contrary, it 
 never loved more truly. The poor soul cannot believe 
 it, yet it is plain that the fact is so; for the soul 
 cannot exist without love, and if it did not love God, 
 it must needs love some other thing. But the soul 
 in this state is far enough from taking pleasure in 
 any thing whatever.* 
 
 10. This does not mean that the senses do not 
 bend towards the creatures. This, in fact, now con- 
 stitutes the great cause of grief to the soul, which 
 regards the revolt of the passions, and its involuntary 
 faults, as dreadful transgressions, which bring upon it 
 the hatred of its spouse. It would fain wash, whiten, 
 purify itself; but it is no sooner washed than it thinks 
 that it falls back again into a sewer more filthy and 
 noisome than that which it had left. It does not see 
 that it gets muddy and falls by mere dint of running, 
 and that love is transporting it so vehemently and 
 drawing it after itself so swiftly, that it does not see 
 false steps. Nevertheless, it is so much ashamed of 
 running in this state, that it knows not what to do. 
 It goes with garments all torn, and loses all it has in 
 the earnestness of its course. 
 
 11. Its Spouse helps to strip it for two reasons. 
 
 * Truth is said to be not conspicuous, because truth in a state of 
 desolation appears as if it fled away ; but yet it is present, for all 
 truth and good, which at any time have been given by the Lord to 
 man, to a spirit, and to an angel, remain, and nothing is taken from 
 them, but in a state of desolation they are obscured by the proprium, 
 so as not to appear. But when a state of light returns, they are 
 made present and conspicuous. — A. C. 6122. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 97 
 
 The first is, that it has spotted its garments, so 
 beautiful and magnificent, by its vain self-compla- 
 cencies, and that it has appropriated to itself the gifts 
 of God by very many reflections and regards of self- 
 love.* The second is, because in running it would 
 be impeded by this load : the very fear of losing so 
 much riches would hinder it in its course. 
 
 12. Poor soul ! what has become of thee ? Thou 
 wert formerly the delight of thy Spouse, and He took 
 the utmost pleasure in adorning and beautifying thee ; 
 and now thou art so naked, so tattered, so poor, that 
 thou wouldst not dare either to look at thyself, or to 
 appear before Him. The men who now look at thee, 
 after having in former times admired thee, when 
 they see thee thus tattered, believe either that thou 
 hast become mad, or that thou hast committed the 
 greatest crimes, and thereby compelled thy Spouse to 
 abandon thee. They do not perceive that this jealous 
 Spouse, who loves this soul only for Himself, seeing 
 that she was amusing herself with her ornaments, 
 that she was taking a pleasure in them and indulging 
 self- admiration on their account,! — seeing this, I say, 
 and that she was ceasing to look at Him in order to 
 
 * With man about to be regenerated, the case is this, that his first 
 affection of truth is very impure; for there is in it an affection of use 
 and of end for the sake of himself, for the sake of the world, for the 
 sake of glory in heaven and the like things, which look towards him- 
 self, but not towards the community, the Lord's kingdom, and still 
 less towards the Lord. — A. C. 3089. 
 
 f The truth which is given by the Lord is at first received as if it 
 were not given ; for man before regeneration supposes that he pro- 
 cures for himself truth; and so long as he supposes this, he is in spirit- 
 
98 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 look at herself, and that she was weakening the love 
 she had for Him by loving herself too much, strips 
 her, and makes all her beauty and riches vanish from 
 before her eyes. 
 
 The soul, in the abundance of its goods, takes a 
 pleasure in looking at itself: it sees excellences in 
 itself which attract its love, and steal it away from its 
 Spouse. Poor, vain thing that it is ! It sees not that 
 it is beautiful only with the beauties of its Spouse ; 
 and that, if He took them away, it would become so 
 ugly that it would be frightful to itself. Moreover, 
 it neglects to follow the Spouse in His courses, into 
 the deserts and wherever He goes ; it fears to spoil its 
 complexion and to lose its jewels. O jealous Love ! 
 how well dost Thou do in thus thwarting this proud 
 one, and taking away from it what Thou hadst given, 
 that it may learn to know what it is, and that, being 
 naked and stripped of all, nothing might hold it back 
 in its course ! 
 
 13. Our Lord begins then to strip this soul by 
 little and little, to take away its ornaments, all its 
 gifts, graces, and favors, which are its jewelry that 
 encumbers it ; afterwards He takes from it all its 
 facilities to good, which are as its garments ; and, after 
 this, He takes from it the beauty of its face, which is 
 the divine virtue it is unable to practise actively.* 
 
 ual theft. That to claim to one's self, and to attribute to self good 
 and truth for righteousness and merit, is to take from the Lord what 
 is His, may be seen, n. 2609, &c. — A. C. 5747. 
 
 * It is treated in what now follows concerning the internal celes- 
 tial, that it reduced all things in the natural into order, under a 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 99 
 
 14. The first degree of its stripping consists in the 
 taking away of graces, gifts, and favors, and of love 
 sensible and perceived. It feels itself gradually 
 stripped of them. It sees that its Spouse takes back 
 by degrees the riches he had given it. It is at first 
 greatly afflicted at this loss ; but what most afflicts it 
 is, not the loss of these riches, but the displeasure of 
 its Spouse. For it believes it to be from anger that 
 He thus takes back what he had given. It sees well 
 the bad use it has made of them, and the self-com- 
 placency it has indulged on account of them, and is 
 so filled with shame for it that it is ready to die with 
 confusion.* It submits, and dares not say to Him, 
 Wherefore dost Thou take back what Thou hadst 
 
 general [principle] to the end that conjunction might be effected of 
 scientifics with the truths of the church, and by those truths with 
 spiritual good, and by this good with the internal celestial; but 
 because the reduction of scientifics into order under a general [prin- 
 ciple] cannot be effected otherwise than by vastations of good and 
 desolations of truth, and by subsequent supports, therefore both the 
 former and the latter are treated of in what now follows in the internal 
 sense. — A. C. 6109. 
 
 By precious stones are signified the knowledge of truth and good. 
 — A. E. 294. 
 
 Garments signify the truths which pertain to the understanding. — 
 A. E. 240. 
 
 Whereas good is the very essence, and truth is the existence thence, 
 by beautiful in form is signified the good of life. — A. C. 4985. 
 
 * When heaven flows in, it removes the hindrances, which are evils 
 and falses thence derived, which reside in the natural mind, or in the 
 natural man; and these cannot be removed, except by a living 
 acknowledgment of them by man, and grief of mind on account of 
 them. Hence it is that in temptations man experiences anguish from 
 the evils and falses rising up into the thought; and in proportion as 
 
100 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. , 
 
 given me ? For it sees itself to deserve this by the 
 bad use it has made of them, and in deep silence it 
 looks at Him in a way so pitiable as to manifest to 
 Him what it suffers.* 
 
 15. Although it keeps silence, it is not so deep 
 as afterwards. It interrupts this silence by tears 
 and broken sighs. But it is much astonished to find, 
 that, in looking at its Spouse, it sees Him all offended 
 at it for weeping over the righteous inflictions where- 
 by He has put it out of its power to abuse His 
 benefits, and for thinking so little on the evil use it 
 has made of them. The soul perceives at once its 
 fault and its mistake. It strives to manifest to its 
 Spouse that it is not concerned for the loss of His 
 gifts, provided He is not offended. It testifies to 
 Him that its tears and grief come from having dis- 
 pleased Him. The anger of its Spouse, justly offended, 
 is so deeply felt, that it thinks no longer of the loss 
 of all its riches, but only of that anger. It throws 
 
 he then acknowledges his sins, makes himself guilty, and supplicates 
 deliverance, in the same proportion temptations are made serviceable 
 to him. — A. E. 897. 
 
 * That they [Joseph's brethren] were charged with theft was that 
 there might be effected conjunction ; for man, until he is regenerated, 
 cannot otherwise than believe so [that he procures truth for himself], 
 He says indeed with his mouth from doctrine, that all the truth of 
 faith and good of charity is from the Lord ; but still he does not 
 believe this until faith is implanted in good: it is then that he first 
 acknowledges it from the heart. That they were charged with theft 
 to the intent that conjunction might be effected, is evident also from 
 this, that so Joseph brought them back to himself, and for some time 
 kept them in thought concerning that deed, and afterwards that he 
 manifested himself to them, that is, conjoined. — A. C. 5747. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 101 
 
 itself into a thousand postures to appease Him. Its 
 sighs, its groans, and its tears, are the expressions of 
 its grief.* This is yet another fault displeasing to its 
 Friend ; but, as the soul is still weak, he pretends not 
 to notice it. 
 
 16. After having left it to weep a long time, He 
 puts on a face as if He were appeased ; Himself dries 
 up its tears, and consoles it. O God! what joy is it 
 to this soul to see these new bounties of love after 
 what it has done ! f He does not, however, give it 
 back all its former riches ; but the soul is not troubled 
 at this, esteeming itself too happy in being looked at, 
 consoled, and cherished by its Well-beloved. At first 
 it receives His caresses with so much confusion that 
 it dares not lift up its eyes. But as present good 
 throws past evils into forgetfulness, it sinks and 
 
 * While man is regenerating, and conjunction is effecting of the 
 good of the internal man with the truths of the external, a commotion 
 takes place among truths ; for then they undergo another arrangement : 
 it is this commotion which is here [Glen. xlv. 3] meant, and which is 
 signified by their being in consternation. The commotion which then 
 exists manifests itself by an anxiety arising from the change of the 
 former state, namely, from a privation of the delight which had been 
 in that state: this commotion also manifests itself by anxiety con- 
 cerning the past life in that internal good and the internal itself were 
 discarded to what was lowest. — A. C. 5881. 
 
 ■f Something shall now be said concerning consolations after temp- 
 tations. All who are regenerating by the Lord undergo temptations, 
 and after temptations experience joys. When, therefore, the evils 
 and falses of man are removed, then temptations are finished; and, 
 these being finished, joy flows in through heaven from the Lord, and 
 fills his natural mind. This joy is what is here understood by con- 
 solations, which all receive who undergo spiritual temptations: I 
 speak from experience. — A. E. 897. 
 
102 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 drowns itself in these new caresses of its Spouse, and, 
 thinking no more on its past wretchedness, it feeds 
 and rests on these caresses. Hereby it compels its 
 Spouse to be displeased anew, and to strip it yet 
 further. 
 
 17. It must be observed, that God does not take 
 from the soul its riches except by little and little, — 
 something at one time, something at another. The 
 weaker the soul is, the longer is the process of stripping 
 it; and the stronger it is, the sooner it is finished: 
 inasmuch as God strips the latter more frequently and 
 of more things at once. But hard as is this stripping, 
 it is only of outside things and superfluities ; that is 
 to say, only of gifts, graces, and favors, but not of 
 other things. This is done in succession, by reason of 
 the soul's weakness.* 1 This proceeding is so admira- 
 ble, it is so great a love of God for the soul, that one 
 could never believe it previous to experience. For 
 the soul is so full of itself, so made up of self-love, 
 that, if God did not deal with it thus, it would 
 perish.f 
 
 * Man, when he is regenerating, which is effected by the implanta- 
 tion of spiritual truth and good, and then by the removal of what is 
 evil and false, is not hastily regenerated, but slowly. The reason is 
 because all things which the man had thought, intended, and done 
 from infancy, have added themselves to his life; and have made it, 
 and also have formed such a connection among themselves that one 
 cannot be moved away unless all are moved away together with it. — 
 A.C. 9334. 
 
 f Hence it is evident that the former life, which is of hell, must be 
 altogether destroyed; that is, evils and falses must be removed, to the 
 intent that new life, which is the life of heaven, may be implanted. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 103 
 
 18. It will be asked, perhaps, — If the gifts of God 
 are so hurtful, wherefore impart them ? God gives 
 them from His exceeding goodness, to draw the soul 
 from sin and from attachment to the creatures, and to 
 turn it back to Himself; * and if he did not give them, 
 the soul would be always criminal. But these very- 
 gifts with which He graciously endows it, in order 
 to detach it from the creature and from itself, and to 
 win from it for Himself the love at least of gratitude, 
 this creature is so wretched as to make use of for self- 
 love and self-admiration, turning its attention away 
 from the Giver to them. Self-love is so deeply rooted 
 in the creature that these gifts have served to increase 
 it ; for it finds in itself new charms, which did not 
 exist before; it immerses itself into itself; clings to 
 
 This cannot in any wise be done hastily; for every evil, being inrooted 
 ■with its falses, has connection with all evils and their falses; and 
 such evils and falses are innumerable, and their connection is so 
 manifold that it cannot be comprehended, not even by the angels, 
 but only by the Lord. Hence it is evident that the life of hell with 
 man cannot be destroyed suddenly ; for, if suddenly, he would alto- 
 gether expire. — A. C. 9336. 
 
 * During the process of man's regeneration, he is kept by the 
 Lord in a kind of mediatory good, which serves for introducing 
 genuine goods and truths ; but after these goods and truths are intro- 
 duced, they are separated thence. That man may be led from the 
 state of the old man into the state of the new, the concupiscences of 
 the world must be put off, and the affections of heaven must be put on. 
 Since, therefore, the states of his life are to be so much changed, it 
 cannot be otherwise than that he should be a long time held in a sort 
 of middle good; that is, in a good which partakes. both of the affections 
 of the world, and of the affections of heaven; and, unless he be kept 
 in this middle good, he in no wise admits heavenly goods and truths. 
 — A.C. 4063. 
 
104 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 itself; appropriates to itself what was God's; and 
 growing too familiar with Him, forgets the slavery out 
 of which He has delivered it, and a thousand things 
 of this kind. God, it is true, could deliver it from all 
 this, just as He can deliver man from the huge mass 
 of his concupiscences ; but He does not do it for 
 reasons known to Himself alone. 
 
 19. The soul, thus stripped of the divine gifts, 
 loses something of its self-love, and begins to see that 
 it is not as rich as it believed, and that its riches be- 
 long to its Spouse. It sees, I say, that it has made a 
 wrong use of them, and consents that He shall keep 
 them and take them back. It says : I will be rich 
 with the riches of my Spouse, and, although He keeps 
 them, we shall always be in a community of goods ; 
 He will not lose them. It becomes even glad at 
 having lost these gifts of God, since it finds itself 
 disencumbered, and more lightly equipped for pro- 
 gress : in a word, it grows accustomed, by degrees, to 
 being stripped, and perceives that it has been good 
 and serviceable to it. It is no longer troubled about 
 the matter. It arranges its habits as well as may be ; 
 and, as it is fair, it is satisfied- that it will still be as 
 pleasing to its Spouse, by its agreeable qualities and 
 by its own garments, as it was with all its orna- 
 ments. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 105 
 
 Section II. 
 
 20—24. The second degree of the stripping of the soul, having reference to its 
 habits, or its facility in practising good exteriorly, and in a sensible 
 manner. The causes of it, which are, that it attributed that good to itself, 
 and had complacency in it, instead of acknowledging how powerless it is 
 and destitute, in itself, of all good. 
 
 20. While the soul is thinking only about living in 
 peace in this state of loss, and sees clearly the good 
 coming to it thereby, and the injury it had inflicted 
 on itself by the bad use it had made of the gifts taken 
 from it,* it is all astonished that its Spouse, who had 
 given it a breathing space only by reason of its weak- 
 ness, comes, with yet greater harshness, to strip from 
 it its garments. 
 
 Poor soul ! what wilt thou do now 1 The case is 
 much worse than before ; for these garments are 
 necessary, and it is not seemly to be deprived of them. 
 Now it is that the soul resists with all its might. 
 It exhibits to its Spouse its reasons for not walking 
 thus naked, — shows that this would be matter of 
 reproach to Himself. Alas ! it says, I have lost all 
 the riches Thou didst bestow upon me, — Thy gifts, 
 the sweetness of Thy love ; but I could still perform 
 exterior actions of virtue. I used to perform charities. 
 
 * The state is here [Gen. xxxii. 5] described as to its quality 
 when inversion takes place, namely, when truth is made subordinate 
 to good, that is, when they who have been in the affection of truth 
 begin to be in the affection of good. But that such inversion and 
 subordination take place does not appear except to those who are 
 regenerate, and not to the regenerated except those who reflect. — 
 A. C. 4245. 
 
 8 
 
106 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 I prayed with diligence, although Thou hadst taken 
 away Thy sensible graces ; but to lose all this is 
 what I cannot consent to. I was still dressed accord- 
 ing to my station, and respected in the world as Thy 
 spouse ; but, if I lose my garments, this will bring 
 reproach upon Thyself. No matter, poor soul ; thou 
 must consent to this loss. Thou dost not yet know 
 thyself. Thou believest that thy garments are thine 
 own, and that thou canst always make use of them.* 
 — But I have gained them at the cost of so much care, 
 and Thou didst give them me as a reward of the 
 labors I underwent for Thy sake. — No matter ; thou 
 must lose them. 
 
 21. The soul, after doing its utmost to keep them, 
 feels itself stripped of them by little and little. 
 Every thing becomes insipid to it ; it has no longer a 
 relish for any thing ; f all works of charity are at- 
 tended with disgust, and it falls into a state where it 
 has no power to perform them. $ It had its disgusts 
 
 * There remain after temptations several states of truth and good 
 thence derived, to which the thoughts may be bended by the Lord. — 
 A.C. 2334. 
 
 f "To slay all this congregation with hunger" [Gen. xvi. 13]. 
 That it signifies, that, from a defect of delight and of good, they were 
 expiring, appears, &c. It may be expedient briefly to say how the case 
 herein is. When the good of charity is to be insinuated, which makes 
 spiritual life, then the delight of pleasures is removed, which had made 
 natural life. When this delight is removed, then man comes into 
 temptation ; for he believes, if he be deprived of the delight of plea- 
 sures, that he is deprived of all life ; for his natural life consists in that 
 delight or good, as he calls it. — A.C. 8413. 
 
 $ Spiritual life consists in exercises according to truths, conse- 
 quently in uses ; for they who are in spiritual life have an appetite 
 fo r and desire truths with a view to life ; that is, that they may live 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 107 
 
 and its pains before, but not impotency. But now- 
 all power is taken away from it. " Flesh and heart 
 faileth it," Ps. lxxiii. 26. It even loses " the remem- 
 brance " (ver. 6) of them for a long time, although 
 the inclination thereto still remains ; that being, as it 
 were, the last garment which must be removed. 
 
 22. This is done very gradually, and in a painful 
 manner ; because the soul sees all the time that this 
 has come to pass from its own fault. It no longer 
 dares to make any objections; for what it might say 
 would only excite the displeasure of its Spouse, whose 
 anger is worse to it than death. It begins to know 
 itself better, to see that it has nothing of its own, and 
 that all belongs to its Spouse.-* It begins to be dis- 
 trustful of itself, and loses by degrees the love it had 
 for itself. f 
 
 according to them, thus with a view to uses. So far, therefore, as they 
 can imbibe truths, according to which they are to effect uses, so far 
 they are in spiritual life, because so far in the light of intelligence- 
 and wisdom. When, therefore, truths fail, as is the case when a 
 state of shade comes, which is signified by evening in the Word, n. 
 6110, then spiritual life is in distress. — A.C. 6119. 
 
 * In this chapter [Gen. xxiv.] it is treated throughout of spiritual 
 theft, which consists in any one claiming to himself the good and 
 truth which is from the Lord. This is a thing of so great moment, 
 that a man after death cannot be admitted into heaven, until he 
 acknowledges in heart that nothing of good and truth is from himself, 
 but from the Lord, and that whatever is from himself is nothing but 
 evil. — A.C. 5758. 
 
 f The tempted are in interior anxiety, even to desperation, in 
 which they are kept more especially for the end that they may finally 
 be confirmed in this, that all things are of the Lord's mercy, that 
 they are saved by Him alone, and that in themselves there is nothing 
 but evil, in which truths they are confirmed by combats wherein they 
 conquer. — A.C. 2334. 
 
108 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 But it does not yet hate itself; for, although naked, 
 it is still fair. 
 
 It regards its Lover from time to time with a pitiable 
 look, but says not a single word : it is cast down at 
 His displeasure. It thinks it would be a small matter 
 to be stripped, if it had only not displeased its Spouse, 
 and if it had not made itself unworthy to wear His 
 nuptial garments. 
 
 23. If it was overwhelmed at first, when its riches 
 were taken a,way, it feels vastly more the shame of 
 seeing itself naked. So much ashamed is it, that it 
 fain would not appear before its Spouse. Notwith- 
 standing, it must acquiesce and run, in this condi- 
 tion, everywhere. What ! shall it not be allowed to 
 conceal itself ? No ; it must appear thus in public. 
 The world begins -to think less of it. They say: Is 
 this the soul that was the admiration of men and 
 of angels 1 See how it has fallen ! — Its confusion is 
 redoubled by these words, because it knows that its 
 Spouse has stripped it justly. It does what it can, 
 that He may in some measure clothe it again ; but 
 He will do nothing of the kind after thus stripping 
 it of all. This is a boundless mercy ; for its gar- 
 ments pleased the soul while they covered it, and hin- 
 dered it from seeing what it was. 
 
 24. It is very astonishing to a soul, which believed 
 itself to be far advanced in perfection, to see itself fall 
 thus all of a sudden. It thinks that this must be in 
 consequence of faults which it had corrected coming 
 back anew ; but it is mistaken. It . is because the 
 soul was concealed under its garments, which hindered 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 109 
 
 it from seeing itself .as it was.* It is a dreadful thing 
 to be in the state of a soul thus naked of the gifts and 
 graces of God, and no one without experience of it 
 would belier it.f 
 
 Section III. 
 
 25—28. Third degree of the stripping of the soul as it is led from the second 
 to the third degree of the passive way of faith. This third kind has refer- 
 ence to the heauty of the soul, or its perceived acts of the divine virtues, 
 instead of which there come faults of surprise. Consequences of this. How 
 God hereby brings the soul to a sensible despair. 29 — 33. Also, to a true 
 knowledge and hatred of itself and to true purity. 34 — 38. Interval and 
 respite followed by an increased intensity of the preceding operations 
 even to mystical death. 
 
 25. But all this would be little, if the soul were to 
 retain its heauty ; but the Spouse turns it into ugli- 
 ness, and destroys it. Hitherto the soul has submitted 
 to be stripped of gifts, graces, and favors, and facility 
 for good : it has lost all good things, such as austerities, 
 care of the poor, facility in helping the neighbor ; 
 but it has not lost the divine virtues. Nevertheless 
 it must now lose them also, as far as the practice of 
 them is concerned ; for, as regards their reality, they 
 are impressed on the soul more strongly than ever. 
 
 * When truth was in the first place, that is, when it seemed to 
 itself to have dominion, then falses intermixed themselves ; for truth 
 of itself cannot see whether it be truth, but must see it from good. — 
 A. C. 4256. 
 
 f When, therefore, the order is inverted, and good takes its prior 
 place manifestly, that is, when it begins to have dominion over truth, 
 then the natural man is in fear and straitness, and also enters into 
 temptations. — A. C. 4256. . 
 
110 SPIRITUAL TOL'ItEMTS. 
 
 It loses virtue as virtue, but only" to find it again in 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 This altogether humble soul becomes, as seems to 
 itself, all proud. This soul so patient, wich suffered 
 all things so easily, and found pleasure in It, finds 
 that it cannot endure any thing. The senses lose 
 their orderliness, and seem as if they would rebel. It 
 can neither mortify itself, nor guard itself from any 
 thing by its own endeavors, as formerly ; and, what 
 is worse, this soul thus disfigured defiles itself, as it 
 believes, every moment, and wounds itself with the 
 creatures. It complains with the Spouse, " The 
 watchmen found me, and wounded me" — Cant. v. 7. 
 
 26. It must be said, however, that persons in this 
 state do not commit any voluntary faults.* God 
 shows them in general such a depth of corruption in 
 themselves, that they would gladly say with Job, " Oh 
 that I might hide myself in hell until the anger of 
 God was passed! " Job xiv. 13. For it must not be 
 thought, that, either at this time or subsequently, God 
 suffers the soul to fall into any real sin. So much is 
 this the case, that though it appears in its own sight 
 as the most miserable of all creatures, yet, when called 
 upon to make confession, it finds no faults of detail 
 which it has committed, and only accuses itself of 
 being full of miseries and of having sentiments con- 
 trary to its desires. It is of God's glory, that, in 
 
 * It is further to be known that the evil which enters into the 
 thought does not hurt man, because evil is continually infused by- 
 spirits from hell, and is continually repelled by the angels; but when 
 evil enters into the will, it then hurts. — A. C. 6204. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. Ill 
 
 giving this soul to experience its corruption to the 
 utmost, He does not suffer it to fall into sins.* What 
 makes its grief so dreadful is, that it is, as it were, 
 overwhelmed with the purity of God ; a purity which 
 causes it to see the smallest motes of imperfection 
 as enormous sins, by reason of the infinite distance 
 there is between the purity of God and the impurity 
 of the creature, this sinful Adam. It sees that it 
 came forth pure from the hands of God, and that it 
 has contracted not only the sin of Adam, but also 
 innumerable actual sins,f so that its confusion is 
 beyond what words can express. What causes men 
 to despise it is, not any particular fault they then 
 observe, but only that, not seeing it do all that it used 
 formerly to do with so much ardor and faithfulness, 
 they infer that it has fallen. In this, however, they 
 are greatly deceived. 
 
 This explanation may serve for what follows, and 
 
 * All temptations appear evil, by reason that they are interior 
 anxieties and griefs, and as it were damnations ; for then man is let 
 into the state of his evils, consequently amongst evil spirits, who accuse 
 and thus torment the conscience ; but yet the angels defend, that is, 
 the Lord by angels, who keeps the man in hope and trust, which are 
 the powers of combat from an interior whereby he resists. — A. C. 
 6097. 
 
 f He who thinks from an illustrated rational may hence see and 
 perceive that man cannot be regenerated without combat, that is, 
 without spiritual temptations ; and further that he is not regenerated 
 by one temptation, but by several : for there are very many kinds of 
 evil which constituted the delight of the former life, that is, the old 
 life. All those evils cannot be subdued at once and together; for they 
 inhere pertinaciously, inasmuch as they were rooted in the parents 
 from many ages backwards, and hence are innate in man, and con- 
 firmed by actual evils of himself from infancy. — A. C. 8403. 
 
112 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 for all that I may express, perhaps too strongly, and 
 which those who have not experience in these things 
 might take in a bad sense. 
 
 It must also be observed, that, when I speak of 
 corruption, of putrefaction, of defilement, &c, I mean 
 the destruction and consumption of the old man by 
 the central conviction and inmost experience of the 
 depth of impurity and propriety that there is in man, 
 which, showing him what he is in himself without 
 God, causes him to cry out with David, " I am a 
 worm, and no man " Ps. xxii. 6 ; and with Job, " If 
 I wash myself with snow-water and make my hands 
 never so clean, yet shalt Thou plunge me in the 
 ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me," Job ix. 
 30, 31. 
 
 27. This poor soul does not, then, commit the 
 faults it thinks it does ; for it was never, interiorly, 
 more pure. The truth is, that, the senses and the 
 faculties being without supports, especially the senses, 
 they wander uncertainly. Moreover, as the course of 
 this soul towards God redoubles in speed, and it for- 
 gets itself more and more, it is not to be wondered at 
 that it is defiled by the muddy places through which 
 it must needs pass ; and, as all its attention is turned 
 towards its Well-beloved (although it does not per- 
 ceive this, because it is engaged in running), it does 
 not think about itself, nor consider where it plants its 
 steps. So true is this, that, while it believes itself the 
 most criminal of all creatures, it yet commits not a 
 single voluntary fault, although all its faults appear 
 to it as such. Still it does commit many faults of 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 113 
 
 surprise. Often, indeed, it does not see its faults, 
 except after they have been committed. 
 
 28. It cries to its Spouse to stretch out His hand 
 for its help ; but He is careful not to do it * at least 
 in a sensible manner, although He sustains it with an 
 invisible hand.f The soul sometimes thinks that it 
 is getting on better, but then is the very time when it 
 does worst ; for the design of the Spouse, in suffering 
 it to "fall," but yet without "hurting itself" (Ps. 
 xxxvii. 24), is, that it may no longer rest upon itself, 
 but may recognize its own impotence, % and conceive 
 an entire despair of itself, § so that it can say, "I 
 
 * Moreover, they who are in temptations, and not in some other 
 active life than that of prayers, they do not know that, in case the 
 temptations were intermitted before their full accomplishment, they 
 would not be prepared for heaven, thus that they cannot be saved : on 
 which account also the prayers of those who are in temptations are 
 little heard ; for the Lord wills the end, which is the salvation of man ; 
 which end He knows, but not man ; and the Lord does not act for 
 prayers against the end, which is salvation. — A.C. 8179. 
 
 t So long as temptation continues, man supposes that the Lord is 
 absent, because he is disturbed by evil genii, and that to such a degree 
 as sometimes to be reduced to a state of despair, in which he can 
 scarce believe that any God exists : nevertheless the Lord is then 
 more present than is to him credible. — A.C. 840. 
 
 % That man may become spiritual, it is necessary that his natural 
 should become of no account, that is, should have no power at all of 
 itself. — A.C. 5651. 
 
 § There are several reasons why despair is the last of desolation 
 and temptation, of which it is allowed to adduce only the following: 
 by despair is produced an effectual and sensible acknowledgment that 
 nothing of truth and good is from self, and that men are of themselves 
 damned, but are delivered by the Lord from damnation, and that sal- 
 vation flows in by truth and good. — A. C. 6144. 
 
114 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 have lost all hope, and I shall live no longer," Job 
 xvii. 15. 
 
 29. Now it is that the soul begins truly to hate 
 itself, and to know itself, which it never would do, if 
 our Lord did not make it feel what it is. All the 
 knowledges one has of himself by light, of whatever 
 degree they may be, have not power to make the soul 
 truly hate itself.* " He who loveth his soul shall 
 lose it, and he who hateth his soul shall save it," 
 John xii. 25. This is the only experience, I repeat, 
 which can truly give the soul to know its infinite 
 depth of wretchedness. No other way can give a 
 true purity : if it gives any, it gives it only on the 
 surface, and not in the inmost, where the impurity, 
 not being pressed out and so removed, remains 
 hidden. f 
 
 * The same appears also from this, that the spiritual man does not 
 know what is evil; he scarce believes any thing to be evil but what is 
 contrary to the commandments of the decalogue, being ignorant of 
 the evils of affection and thought, which are innumerable, and neither 
 reflecting on them, nor calling them evils; moreover he regards the 
 delights of lusts and of pleasures no otherwise than as good, and the 
 delights of self-love he both indulges and approves and excuses, not 
 knowing that such things affect his spirit, and determine its quality in 
 another life. — A. C. 2715. 
 
 f The proprium of innocence is, that one knows, acknowledges, 
 and believes, not with the mouth, but with the heart; that nothing 
 but evil is from self, and that all good is from the Lord; consequently, 
 that his proprium is nothing but black, namely, both the voluntary 
 proprium which is evil, and the intellectual proprium which is false. 
 When man is in this confession and faith from the heart, then the 
 Lord flows in with good and truth, and insinuates into him a heavenly 
 proprium which is bright and shining. It is impossible for any one 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 115 
 
 30. Now it is that God searches out, in the very 
 depths of the soul, its radical impurity, which is the 
 effect of that self-love and that propriety which God 
 would destroy. He presses it, and so forces it out. 
 If you take a sponge full of impurity and wash it ever 
 so much, you will only cleanse the outside : you will 
 not make it clean within, unless you press it, and thus 
 squeeze out all the filth it contains. This is what 
 God does. He presses this soul in a painful, agonizing 
 manner, and thereby brings out what was most deeply 
 hidden within it. 
 
 When the soul perceives the stench of this impu- 
 rity, it thinks it is some new filthiness whereby it is 
 defiled ; but it is quite the contrary. This filth was 
 there before, unseen ; and it is perceived now only 
 because it is in the process of removal,*' One who 
 has an imposthume in some part feels no disgust at 
 it so long as it is not opened. But when the sur- 
 geon makes an incision, and squeezes out the pus, 
 the patient complains of the stench, and is sick at the 
 stomach. This imposthume was just as offensive 
 while it was hidden, and much more dangerous, al- 
 though there was no complaint of its ofTensiveness. 
 The patient thinks he is undergoing defilement be- 
 to be in true humiliation, unless he be in this acknowledgment and 
 faith from the heart; for then he is in self-annihilation, yea, in self- 
 aversion, and thus in absence from himself, and thus in a state of 
 receiving the divine of the Lord. — A. C. 3994. 
 
 * It is to be observed that man cannot be purified from evils, and 
 thence from falsities, unless the unclean things which are in him 
 emerge even into the thought, and are there seen, acknowledged, 
 discerned, and rejected. — A. E. 580. 
 
116 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 cause it suppurates, whereas it is the very contrary.*' 
 The external, it is true, is defiled by it for a short 
 time, but only to the end that both the external and 
 the internal may be purified at last. Unless God 
 dealt thus with the soul, Self-love,| that frightful 
 imposthume, would never be cleansed ; and the more 
 it should be covered with beautiful garments, the 
 deeper it would go, and the more it would turn 
 inwardly, and ruin, without suspicion of the mischief 
 it was working, all the noble parts. 
 
 31. I say, then, that this way, so abject, so poor, 
 so filthy, is alone able to purify thoroughly ; and that, 
 without it, we should always be filthy, although we 
 might appear very neat. It is needful that God 
 should show the soul what itself is, to the very bot- 
 tom. This grace of faith to suffer one's self to be 
 stripped always has to do with the most deep-seated 
 faults, and those most hidden in self-love, with cer- 
 tain darling sins which nature presses to her bosom, 
 and guards with jealous care ; which others do not 
 regard as faults ; but which, on the contrary, appear 
 to be virtues, so that, in losing them, it seems as if 
 
 * All temptations appear evil by reason that they are interior 
 anxieties and griefs, and as it were damnations ; for then man is let 
 into the state of his evils, consequently amongst evil spirits, who 
 accuse, and thus torment the conscience. — A. C. 6097. 
 
 f Hence may appear what is the quality of self-love, viz., that it 
 is not only destructive of the human race, as was shown above, n. 2045, 
 but that it is also destructive of heavenly order; and, consequently, 
 that there is in it nothing but impurity, defilement, profaneness, and 
 hell itself, however different the appearance may be to those who are 
 in it. — A. C. 2057. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 117 
 
 we were losing virtue itself.*' For virtue is not truly- 
 acquired except by the opposite temptations, as it is 
 written, " He that is not tempted, what doth he 
 know?" Ecclus. xxxiv. 9.f The more attached we 
 are to a virtue, the more we are exercised with regard 
 to this same virtue. The faults of other ways are 
 known by those in them more superficially. Those 
 which God searches out in the inmost of such souls 
 would pass for perfections with the others, who have, 
 in fact, an admirable prudence, a great wisdom, a 
 thousand proprieties which they cherish dearly. They 
 have courage : they are great souls. But those I am 
 speaking of no longer have any thing at all. There 
 is with them nothing but weakness on weakness, im- 
 potence on impotence. There is not left to them the 
 least proprietism. Others go by what is, and subsist 
 by something great : they go from sanctity to sanc- 
 tity. These go by what they have not. Accordingly 
 
 * As to what concerns mourning on account of truths derived from 
 the proprium, which is signified by their rending their garments and 
 offering themselves for servants (Gen. xliv. 13), it is to be known 
 that with those who are regenerated, there is effected a turning, 
 namely, that they are led by truth to good, and that afterwards from 
 good they are left to truth. "When this turning takes place, or when 
 the state is changed, and becomes inverse to the foregoing, then there 
 is mourning; for then they are let into temptation, whereby the 
 things of the proprium are weakened or debilitated, and good is 
 insinuated. — A. C. 5773. 
 
 •f- Temptations also give the quality of the apperception of good 
 and truth by the opposites which evil spirits then infuse ; from the 
 opposites apperceived are procured relatives, from which all quality is; 
 for no one knows what good is, unless he also knows what is not 
 good, nor what truth is unless he knows what is not true. — A. C. 5356. 
 
118 SPIRITUAL TOUHENTS. 
 
 they are far removed from attaching themselves to 
 any thing, having lost all. Being so ugly and so 
 filthy, whereto should they attach themselves ? 
 
 32. The most favored of these souls are, for the 
 most part, the offscouring of the world : they are 
 always thwarted. What others do is admired ; but, 
 as for them, it seems as if they spoiled every thing 
 they undertook. They succeed in nothing, and are 
 approved of in nothing. In a word, in spite of them- 
 selves, they must do justice on themselves, and see 
 all happiness in their Spouse, and all misery in them- 
 selves.* 
 
 It could not he believed, except from experience, 
 what nature left to itself is capable of.f Indeed, 
 indeed, our own nature left to itself is worse than all 
 the devils .J 
 
 33. For this reason, it must not be thought that 
 the soul, in the wretched state that has been described, 
 
 * Whatsoever comes from man, spirit and angel, as from his own 
 or the proprium, is nothing but evil ; since all good, which appertains 
 to every one, is from the Lord. — A. C. 10,808. 
 
 He who is regenerated acknowledges and believes that the good 
 and the truth with which he is affected is not from himself, but from 
 the Lord ; also that whatever is from himself or from his proprium is 
 nothing but evil. — A. C. 5354. 
 
 ■j- It has been shown me by lively experience, that a man and a 
 spirit, yea an angel, considered in himself, that is, all his proprium, is 
 the vilest excrement ; and that, left to himself, he would breathe noth- 
 ing but hatred, revenge, cruelty, and the most foul adulteries. These 
 things are his proprium and his will. — A. C. 987. 
 
 $ Freedom derived from the proprium is to indulge in all kinds of 
 pleasures, &c. Such things are from freedom derived from the pro- 
 prium. Hence it is evident what is man's quality when he is in that 
 freedom, namely, that he is a devil under human form. — A. C. 5786. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 119 
 
 is forsaken of God. It was never better sustained by 
 Him :* it is only nature, left a little to itself, which 
 makes all this disorder, the soul having no part in it. 
 This poor widowed soul, running hither and thither 
 after its Well-beloved, is not only greatly defiled, as 
 I have said, but is wounded by the thorns it meets 
 with. It is so fatigued that it must needs breathe its 
 last, and die in its course without succor. 
 
 The greatest blessing the soul can receive in this 
 way is, that God should show it no pity ; and, when 
 He would greatly promote the progress of a soul, He 
 lets it run even to death. If he stops it for a few 
 moments — a thing which overjoys and gives new 
 life to the poor soul — it is by reason of its weakness, 
 lest it should lose all spirit, and mere weariness should 
 compel it to rest. 
 
 34. When he sees this, he casts a look upon it for 
 a moment ; and the poor soul, by this look, finds itself 
 seized and love-stricken anew, in a way so strong, 
 that it is beside itself, and as it were swooning with 
 delight. It would fain say to Him : Alas ! why hast 
 Thou made me run so much ? " Give me a little rest 
 until I can swallow down my spittle," Job vii. 19. 
 '• Oh that I might find Him alone, that I might lead 
 Him forth" (Cant. viii. 1, 2), and might see Him 
 face to face. But, alas ! when it thinks to hold Him, 
 
 * For then [in temptations] man is let into the state of his evils, 
 consequently among evil spirits, who accuse, and thus torment the 
 conscience; but yet the angels defend, that is, the Lord by angels, 
 who keeps the man in hope and trust, which are the powers of combat 
 from an interior whereby he resists. — A. C. 6097. 
 
120 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 He flies away again. " I sought Him," it says, " and 
 did not find Him," Cant. iii. 1. Inasmuch as, by 
 this look from its Spouse, the soul has become more 
 loving, it redoubles its course to find Him. Never- 
 theless it was stopped so long as the look lasted. 
 For this reason the Spouse looks at the soul as little 
 as possible, and then only when he sees that it is 
 losing courage. Were it only strong enough, it could 
 go much faster without stopping. If a traveller could 
 walk continually, without need of rest or of nourish- 
 ment, he could go much faster ; but he needs both 
 the one and the other on account of his weakness ; 
 both impart new strength to him, which is given him 
 because of his need, and because his nature would 
 sink if he were deprived of it. It is the same in 
 this way. 
 
 35. The soul, then, really dies here at the end of 
 its course, because all the active force necessary for 
 running fails it. For, although it has been hitherto 
 in a passive state, it still had not lost its active power, 
 although this activity was not apparent to itself: the 
 attraction it experienced, made it run without its feel- 
 
 * Celestial men are such, that, before they put off that state [the 
 state of the old or former natural man], they are in so strong a natural 
 as to truth, that they can combat with the infernals. — A. C. 3301. 
 
 When, therefore, truths fail, as is the case when a state of shade 
 comes, which is signified by evening in the Word, n. 6110, then 
 spiritual life is in distress; for such things present themselves as are 
 of shade, that is, of spiritual death, for they are not then kept in 
 light, as heretofore, but are remitted in some part into their pro- 
 prium. Hence there is presented from the shade an image of spiritual 
 death, that is, of damnation. — A. C. 6119. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 121 
 
 ing or knowing it. The Spouse says, " Draw us, and 
 we will run after thee " (Cant. i. 3). It runs, indeed; 
 but how 1 — By losing all. It is like the sun which 
 is constantly hastening without reaching a state of 
 rest. 
 
 The soul loses all, in this state, by the mystical 
 death, to run beneath other skies ; or rather, to speak 
 more truly, it is like the sun which vanishes from our 
 hemisphere, where it will be no longer visible, being 
 hidden in the sea. This is the sepulchre, where the 
 soul undergoes another kind of death, and experiences 
 its own noisomeness, as will be stated. 
 
 36. The self-hatred of the soul in this state is such 
 that it cannot endure itself. It cannot look upon 
 itself except by a side-long glance. It can say 
 nothing of itself but evil. Now it is that it is noth- 
 ing, either before God, or before the creatures, or 
 before itself. It thinks its Spouse has good cause to 
 treat it thus. It thinks that it is its own noisome- 
 ness which causes Him disgust. It sees not that the 
 case is just the other way, — that He flies only to 
 draw it after Him, and seems to defile it only to make 
 it pure. When the iron is put into the fire to purify 
 it and take away its rust, it appears at first to grow 
 black and dingy, but afterwards it is easy to see that 
 it has been purified. He makes it experience its 
 weakness, only that it may lose all its own proper 
 strength, and all self-dependence ; and that, despair- 
 ing of all, He may carry it Himself, and it may suffer 
 itself to be carried. For how vigorous so ever may 
 be its progress, it still walks like a child ; but when 
 
122 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 it is in God and God carries it, although it appears to 
 rest, its steps are boundless, because they are the 
 steps of God Himself. 
 
 37. This soul, yet more, sees others decked with its 
 own spoils. When it sees a holy soul, it dares not 
 accost it ; it only sees with admiration, how it is 
 decked with all the ornaments which the Spouse has 
 taken away from itself. But although it admires 
 such a soul, and feels itself plunged into the very 
 abyss of nothingness, it yet cannot desire to have 
 them, so much does it feel itself unworthy of them. 
 It thinks it would be profaning them to put them on 
 one so covered with filth and impurity. It even 
 rejoices to see, that, though itself excites sorrow in 
 its Well-beloved, there are others who are His favorites. 
 It is far removed from the jealousy of the first period, 
 when it wished to have and keep Him always : on the 
 contrary, it is glad that He does not look at it, that 
 He may not be sickened by the sight, and that He 
 may enjoy Himself with others, whom it esteems 
 happy in having gained the favors of their God ; for, 
 as regards the ornaments, although it sees them 
 decked therewith, it does not believe that they make 
 them happy. If it esteems them blessed at seeing 
 them decked therewith, it is because they are pledges 
 of the love of its Well-beloved. 
 
 38. When it holds itself thus lowly in the presence 
 of these souls, whom it regards as queens, it knows 
 not the good which its nakedness, its death, and its 
 putrefaction is destined to cause it. He makes it 
 naked, only to be Himself its clothing. " Put on 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 123 
 
 Jesus Christ," says St. Paul, Rom. xiii. 14. He kills 
 only to be Himself its life. " If we are dead with 
 Jesus Christ, we shall also rise with Him." He anni- 
 hilates it only to transform it into Himself. 
 
 This loss of virtue takes place only by degrees, 
 like the other losses ; and this apparent carrying away 
 to evil is involuntary. For the evil which makes 
 these souls so filthy in their own eyes is not true 
 evil, nor dangerous : it is not evil of which they are 
 proprietary ; for, in this state, they have no proper will, 
 nor determination to any thing whatsoever.* 
 
 What defiles them is certain instances of precipita- 
 tion and quickness, which pass immediately, though 
 not without filling them with confusion ; and certain 
 faults which are only in the sentiments. As soon as 
 a soul sees the beauty of a certain virtue, it falls im- 
 mediately, as seems to it, into the opposite vice. For 
 example, if it loves truth, it speaks words either of 
 precipitation or of exaggeration, and thinks itself 
 guilty of lying every moment ; though, in fact, this 
 is not the case, as it does not speak otherwise than 
 as it thinks. If it loves gentleness, hasty feelings 
 
 * By what enters into the mouth [Matt. xv. 11, 17 — 19], in the 
 literal sense, is understood food of every kind, which, after its use in 
 the body, goes through the belly into the draught; but, in the spiritual 
 sense, by the things which enter into the mouth, are understood all 
 things which enter into the thought from the memory, and also from 
 the world, which things also correspond to food; and those things 
 which enter into the thought, and not at the same time into the will, 
 do not render a man unclean, for the memory and the thought thence 
 derived pertaining to man are only as the entrance to him, since the 
 will is properly the man. — A. E. 580. 
 
124 SPIRITUAL TORBENTS. 
 
 come unexpectedly over it. It is so with all the other 
 virtues. And the more important the virtues are, and 
 the more the soul clings to them (because they appear 
 more essential to it), the more they are forcibly plucked 
 away from it, to its great pain and anguish. 
 
 Section IY. 
 
 9 — 41. Entrance of the soul on the mystic death as regards its senses, its 
 faculties, and even its perceptible inmost. 42 — 45. Important observa- 
 tions on this state. 
 
 39. The poor soul, after having lost all, is destined, 
 at length, to lose itself by an utter despair of any 
 thing ; or, rather, it is destined to die overwhelmed 
 with horrible fatigues.*' Prayer in this degree is very 
 painful, because, as the soul is no longer able to 
 make use of its faculties, the exercise of which is 
 entirely taken from it, and God has withdrawn from 
 it a certain sweet and profound calm which used to 
 sustain it, it comes to resemble those poor children 
 who run hither and thither seeking food, without find- 
 ing any one to give it them. From this cause, prayer 
 appears now to be entirely lost, as with those who 
 were never accustomed to its practice ; but with this 
 difference, that the pain of losing it is felt because 
 its value is known from previous possession, whereas 
 
 * "And the famine was upon all the faces of the land" [Gen. 
 xli. 56]. That it signifies when the desolation was even to despera- 
 tion, appears from the signification of famine, as being desolation; 
 and from the signification of land [earth], as being the natural: upon 
 all the faces of which when the famine is said to be, thereby is sig- 
 nified desperation, because then the desolation is everywhere ; for the 
 utmost and last state of desolation is desperation. — A. C. 5369. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 125 
 
 others feel no trouble from its privation because they 
 do not know its value. It can no longer find any 
 support in the creatures ; and if it feels itself, at times, 
 bent and carried towards them, it is from impetuosity, 
 without yet finding any thing satisfying in them. 
 Still, it often goes astray, and would fain cast itself 
 headlong into the things it delighted in formerly ; but 
 alas ! it finds in them so much bitterness, that it 
 withdraws from them as quickly as possible, and 
 there remains to it nothing but the pain of its unfaith- 
 fulness. 
 
 40. The imagination is thrown into utter disorder, 
 and allows of scarcely any rest. The three faculties 
 of the soul [the understanding, the memory, and the 
 will] gradually lose their life, so that, in the end, they 
 have none at all. This is very painful to the soul, 
 and especially to the will, which had learned to 
 delight in a certain secret and tranquil something 
 which comforted the other faculties in their death and 
 impotence. 
 
 41. This certain something which is a prop or stay, 
 in the inmost, is what it costs most to surrender, and 
 what the soul endeavors most strongly to retain ; for 
 the more subtle it is, the more it appears divine and 
 necessary. It would readily consent never to make 
 use of the other two faculties, and not even of that of 
 the will in a distinct and perceptible manner, if this 
 favorite something might be left it. For how should 
 a soul subsist without means, and without this, in 
 particular, so pure, that it would seem to be the end 
 to which every thing in religion tends, and the reward 
 
126 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 for all its labors 1 What, indeed, does a soul desire,, 
 in all its labors, but to have tbis testimony in its 
 inmost, that it is a child of God ? All spirituality 
 centres in this experience. 
 
 Nevertheless, it must be given up, like all the rest, 
 and be succeeded by the dreadful experience of all 
 the miseries we are full of. This is what truly 
 operates the death of the soul ; for whatever wretch- 
 edness the soul may feel, if this certain something, 
 which makes the life of the soul, were not yielded up, 
 it would not die ; and, in like manner, if this cer- 
 tain something were given up without its feeling its 
 miseries, it would have a support, and would never 
 die. It knows and easily understands, that it must 
 pass long and dreadful periods of darkness ; that it 
 must .give up all delights, all sentiments however 
 subtle they may be. For this reason it bears up 
 strongly under the privation of its props and its 
 delights — (especially is this the case with those who 
 are enlightened and wise) ; but to give up a certain 
 almost imperceptible support, and fall from weakness,* 
 fall into wretchedness and the very dust, — to this 
 we can never consent, because, in fact, we are not 
 required to consent to it. This is the point where 
 reason is lost. Tnen it is that mortal fears and 
 agonies seize upon the heart, which seems endowed 
 with life only to feel its death.f 
 
 * That man may become spiritual, it is necessary that his natural 
 should become of no account, that is, should have no power at all of 
 itself.— A. C. 5651. 
 
 f The external or natural man from the first age of life rules, 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 127 
 
 The loss, then, of this imperceptible support, and 
 the experience of its wretchedness, are the two things 
 which cause death. 
 
 42. The soul has need to be very faithful in a time 
 so naked and so hard, lest it should suffer its senses 
 to turn towards the creatures voluntarily, seeking 
 voluntary comfort and refreshment : I say voluntary ; 
 for as regards the practice of austerities, and the turn- 
 ing of its regards to itself, it is incapable of them in 
 this state. And the more such souls have been mor- 
 tified, and so brought into a state which, to the 
 unexperienced, appeared like death, the more incli- 
 nation have they towards the opposite, without being 
 aware of it themselves, like one out of his right 
 mind who goes wandering hither and thither. And 
 if you would hold them back too rigorously, besides 
 its being useless, this application to the external 
 would retard and hinder death. 
 
 43. What, then, is to be done 1 We must be care- 
 ful to do nothing to soothe the senses in a criminal 
 and imperfect manner ; we must suffer them, and some- 
 times refresh them in things innocent, from charity. 
 
 neither knows that there is an internal or spiritual man; wherefore 
 when a man is reformed and begins to become spiritual or internal 
 from being natural or external, then the natural at first rebels ; for 
 it is taught that the natural man is to be subdued, that is, all its 
 concupiscences to be extirpated, together with those things which 
 confirm them. Hence, when the natural man is left to itself, it thinks 
 that so it shall totally perish ; for it does not know otherwise than, 
 that the natural is all, and is wholly ignorant that there are immense 
 and ineffable things in the spiritual; and when the natural man 
 thinks thus, it then draws back, and is not willing to be subjected to, 
 the spiritual. — A. C. 5647. 
 
128 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 For as they are not capable of the operations that are 
 going on within, to constrain and force them would 
 be to ruin the health, and even the powers of the 
 mind, and perhaps the interior. All this must be 
 connived at, as we do with children, without being 
 too severe in refusing things permitted. 
 
 44. What I am saying is applicable only to the 
 degree under consideration. For, if the soul should 
 proceed thus in the period when grace is strong and 
 vigorous, it would be doing wrong. And indeed, our 
 Lord, infinite in His mercy, Himself shows the course 
 which ought to be pursued ; for, at the beginning, 
 He presses the poor senses so closely, that He gives 
 them no quarter. It is enough that they desire any 
 thing to have it snatched away from them : a look, 
 a word, the smallest gratification, would cause bound- 
 less suffering. God acts thus, in order to deliver the 
 senses from their imperfect operation, and make them 
 more interior ; and while he weans them outwardly, 
 He binds them inwardly, in a way so gentle that it 
 costs them scarcely any thing to deprive themselves 
 of all : they even find more sweetness in this than in 
 the possession of all things. But when they are 
 sufficiently purified and introverted, God, desiring to 
 draw the soul away from itself by a movement in 
 exactly the opposite direction,* permits the senses to 
 
 * It is to be known that with those who are regenerated there 
 is effected a turning, namely, that they are led by truth to good, 
 and that afterwards from good they are led to truth. When this 
 turning takes place, or when the state is changed and becomes in- 
 verse to the foregoing, then there is mourning; for then they are let 
 into temptation, &c. — A.C. 5773. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 129 
 
 extrovert themselves, and diffuse themselves towards 
 the exterior. This appears to the soul a great im- 
 purity : nevertheless, the thing is then appropriate to 
 its state, and to do otherwise would be to purify our- 
 selves otherwise than according to the Divine will, 
 and to incur defilement. 
 
 45. This does not hinder but that faults may be 
 committed in this extroversion of the senses ; but the 
 confusion redounding thence to the soul, and faithful- 
 ness in making use of it, constitute the dunghill 
 whereon it goes more quickly through putrefaction. 
 "All things work together for good to them who 
 love," Rom. viii. 28. Here, accordingly, it is that 
 we lose all the esteem of the creatures. They look 
 on you with scorn, and say, Is not this the soul we 
 used formerly to admire ? How is it that it has be- 
 come so unsightly and ugly 1 Alas ! the soul replies, 
 " Do not look upon me, by reason that I am black ; 
 for it is the sun that has made me thus unsightly," 
 Cant. i. 6. And now it enters all at once into the 
 third degree, which is that of burial and putrefac- 
 tion. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Third Degree of the passive way of naked faith, in its consummation. 
 1 — 4. The finished state of the soul's death. 5—7. Its burial. 8—13. Its 
 corruption or putrefaction. 14 — 16. Its reduction to ashes. 17 — 20. 
 Counsels as to guidance in these states, which are followed by a new life. 
 
 1. The torrent, as we have said, has gone through 
 all imaginable roarings and tossings. It has been 
 
130 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 hurled against the rocks, — its whole progress being 
 nothing but a tumbling from one rock to another; 
 but it has all along kept in sight, and we have not 
 yet seen it swallowed up from the view. But now it 
 begins to lose itself in gulf after gulf. It had, up to 
 this time, a certain steady pace, although so precipi- 
 tate, confused, and broken ; but now it plunges with 
 still greater impetuosity into deep caverns. It is for 
 a long time invisible ; then we perceive it for a little, 
 but rather by the ear than by the eye, and it makes 
 its appearance only to dash itself into a gulf yet 
 deeper. It falls from abyss to abyss, from precipice 
 to precipice, until at length it falls into the abyss of 
 the sea, where, losing all shape, it never finds itself 
 again, having become the sea itself. 
 
 2. The soul, after many deaths of ever-increasing 
 severity, expires at length in the arms of love, but 
 without perceiving those very arms. It no sooner 
 expires than it loses all action of life, however simple 
 and subtle, all desire, inclination, choice, all interior 
 repugnances and oppositions. The nearer it drew to 
 death, the weaker it became ; ■ and its life, although 
 languishing and agonizing, has still life, and there 
 might still remain to the soul some hope, although its 
 death was inevitable.*' But now there is hope no 
 longer. The torrent must make its plunge, and be 
 seen no more. 
 
 * Truth of itself has not life, but from good, inasmuch as truth is 
 only a vessel recipient of good ; and in good there is life, but not in 
 truth except what is from good. Wherefore the privation of the life 
 of truth from itself is not the extinction of truth, but is its vivifica- 
 
 \ 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 131 
 
 3. O God ! what a case is this ! Where, formerly, 
 were precipices are now abysses. The soul falls, with 
 a rush, into an abyss of miseries from which there is 
 no day of deliverance. At first this abyss is not so 
 great ; but the further it advances, the more abysses it. 
 meets with, and the more dreadful it finds them, so 
 that it goes from bad to worse ; for it is to be observed, 
 that any degree, at its commencement, partakes much 
 of that which precedes, and, at its close, begins to feel 
 much of that which is to follow.*' It is also to be 
 observed, that each degree includes an infinity of 
 other degrees. 
 
 4. A man, after his death and before he is buried, 
 is still among the living ; he has still the shape of a 
 man, although he inspires fear. The soul, in like 
 manner, in the first of this degree, has still some 
 resemblance to what it formerly was. There remains 
 to it a certain secret and hidden impression of God, 
 as there remains in a dead body a certain heat which 
 is extinguished by degrees.- The soul still attempts 
 worship and prayer ; but all this is soon taken from 
 it. It must lose not only all prayer and every gift of 
 God, but God Himself, in all appearance, and lose 
 Him, not for one, two, or three years, but for ever.f 
 
 tion ; for when truth appears to itself to have life from itself, then it 
 has not life, except such life as in itself is not life ; but when it is 
 deprived of that, it is then gifted with real life, viz., by good from 
 the Lord, who is life itself. — A. C. 3607. 
 
 * A medium, that it may be a medium, must derive somewhat from 
 each, namely, from the internal and external ; otherwise it is not a 
 conjoining medium. — A. C. 5822. 
 
 f Arrangement is effected by removal and concealment; not that 
 
132 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 All facility in doing good and all active virtue are 
 taken away from it.* It remains naked and stripped 
 of all. The world, which formerly thought so much 
 of it, begins to be afraid of it. They still keep up 
 an outward show of respect for it ; but it is only that 
 they may bury it, — hide it away in the earth, and 
 see it no longer. 
 
 It is to be observed, that it is no visible fault which 
 thus produces the contempt of men, but the inability 
 to do the good, which was formerly done with so much 
 facility. Formerly, whole days were passed in the 
 church, or in visiting the sick poor, often contrary to 
 duty ; but now those things cannot be done any longer. f 
 
 at any time the Lord removes or conceals mercy, but when he who is 
 regenerating is let into his own evils, then the Lord appears to him as 
 if removed and concealed, the evils interposing themselves and effect- 
 ing this; comparatively as thick clouds, which present themselves be- 
 fore the sun, and cause his absence and concealment. — A. C. 5696. 
 
 * In regard to this, that there is spiritual death when there is a 
 deficiency of truth, the case is this: Spiritual life consists in exer- 
 cises according to truths, consequently in uses ; for they who are in 
 spiritual life have an appetite for and desire truths with a view to 
 life, that is, that they may live according to them, thus with a view 
 to uses. So far, therefore, as they can imbibe truths, according to 
 which they are to effect uses, so far they are in spiritual life, because 
 so far in the light of intelligence and wisdom. When, therefore, 
 truths fail, as is the case when a state of shade comes, which is sig- 
 nified by evening in the Word, then spiritual life is in distress ; for 
 such things present themselves as are of shade, that is, of spiritual 
 death; for they are not then kept in light, as heretofore, but are 
 remitted, in some part, into their proprium : hence there is presented 
 from the shade an image of spiritual death, that is, of damnation. — 
 A. C. 6119. 
 
 ■f- So in David: "My father and my mother have forsaken me, 
 and Jehovah gathereth me," Ps. xxviii. 10; where father and 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 133 
 
 5. This poor soul will soon be given over entirely 
 to forge tfulness. By little and little it so loses every 
 thing, that it is entirely poor. The creatures cast it 
 into the earth, and it is thought of no more. Every 
 one casts dust upon it, and it is trodden under foot. 
 Poor soul, it must needs be that thou shouldst see 
 all this. If the body could see while they were 
 burying it, what distress would it not feel 1 The 
 soul sees all this, sees with it terror, but cannot help 
 it. It must suffer itself to be buried, covered with 
 earth, and crushed by all the creatures. 
 
 6. This is a state where there are excellent crosses; 
 the more excellent, the more the soul believes itself to 
 have deserved them. It begins accordingly to be hor- 
 rified at itself. God casts it off so far that it seems as 
 if he would abandon it for ever.*' Poor soul, thou must 
 have patience, and continue to lie in the sepulchre. 
 
 7. It continues there in peace, although with fright- 
 ful horrors, because indeed it sees that there is very 
 little likelihood of getting out of it, and that it must 
 remain there for ever. It sees, also, that this is the 
 fitting place for it, as it now is, and that any other 
 would be yet more afflictive.! It shuns the creatures 
 
 mother denote good and truth, which are said to have forsaken, when 
 man observes that of himself he is not able to do any thing good, or 
 to know any thing true. — A. C. 3703. 
 
 * Temptations are continual despairings concerning salvation, in the 
 beginning slight, but in process of time grievous, till at last there is 
 doubt almost negative concerning the presence of the Divine and His 
 aid. — A.C. 8567. 
 
 ■f Peace is the inmost in every delight, even in what is undelight- 
 lightful with the man who is in good. — A. C. 8455. 
 
134 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 in good earnest, because it sees there is nothing more 
 to be done on its behalf, and that they feel an aver* 
 sion towards it. The world speaks ill of it, and regards 
 it no longer except as a corpse which has lost the life 
 of grace, and is fit for nothing but to be buried in 
 the earth. 
 
 8. The soul bears patiently this abject state. But 
 alas ! how is even this state sweet, compared with 
 what is to follow ! How glad would it be to remain 
 in the sepulchre, if only it need not putrefy ! The 
 old man corrupts by little and little. Formerly, it 
 was tried by weakness and faintings ; but now, the 
 soul sees the depth of its corruption, which hitherto 
 it did not know, because it was impossible for it to 
 conceive what self-love and propriety are.*' All this 
 goes on in the inmost of the soul, without the senses 
 having any share in it. O God ! what horror is it to 
 the soul thus to see itself putrefying if All troubles, 
 scorns, and contradictions of the creatures cease to 
 affect it. It is even insensible to the privation of the 
 sun of righteousness. It knows that that does not 
 
 * But in proportion as those loves [the love of self and the love 
 of the world] are removed, heavenly love, flowing in from the Lord, 
 begins to appear, yea, to shine bright in the interior man ; and in the 
 same proportion man begins to see that he is in evil and the false, 
 yea, afterwards, that he is in the unclean and filthy, and lastly, that 
 this was his proprium. — A. C. 2041. 
 
 f But the other rational with which man is gifted of the Lord, 
 when he is regenerated, is like the same fruit in good ground, in which 
 there is a decay of those parts which encompass the seeds; and the 
 seeds themselves shoot forth from their inmosts, and emit a root, and 
 also a stem above ground. — A. C. 2657. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 135 
 
 shine in the tombs. But to feel its corruption is what 
 it cannot bear. Great God ! what would it not suf- 
 fer rather 7 Nevertheless it must be borne, and the 
 soul must experience to its inmost depths * what 
 itself is. — But these, perchance, are sins, and God 
 beholds me with horror. Yet what can be done 7 — 
 I must bear it, — there is no remedy. 
 
 9. But still, if I went through this putrefaction 
 without having God to see me, I could be w r ell pleased. 
 What troubles me is the aversion that I cause Him. 
 But alas ! poor, forsaken creature, what canst thou do 7 
 It ought to suffice thee that thou dost not love cor- 
 ruption, but bearest it ; although, indeed, thou dost 
 not even know that thou dost not will it. Thou canst 
 not judge of this matter thyself. Others judge of it 
 by the pain it causes thee. 
 
 10. The soul thus in corruption is so full of horror 
 at itself, that it cannot endure itself. The pain of suf- 
 fering its own stench is so great, that it is no longer 
 concerned at any thing that can be done to it out- 
 wardly. Nothing any longer affects it. It sees itself 
 worthy of all scorn. Others see it only with horror ; 
 but this gives it no concern, since the self-nausea it 
 feels and its own noisomeness convince it that they are 
 right ; and, if it sees souls living in God, it believes 
 
 * The fear of love is, lest in any manner the Lord should suffer 
 hurt, or in any manner a neighbor; thus lest in any manner good 
 and truth should suffer hurt, consequently lest should the holy of 
 love and faith, and thence of worship; but this fear is various, and 
 not alike with one person as with another. — A. C. 3718. 
 
136 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 itself unworthy to approach them. It plunges into 
 putrefaction as into the place appropriate to it.* 
 
 11. It is not troubled that God puts it away, for it 
 sees most plainly that it deserves this. It is even 
 delighted that He does not look on it any longer ; that 
 He leaves it in its putrefaction, and bestows all His 
 graces on others; that they are the objects of His 
 affection, and that itself inspires Him only with 
 horror. 
 
 But what it cannot make up its mind to is, that the 
 ill odor of its corruption should ascend even to God. 
 It fain would not sin. It matters not, says the soul, 
 that I putrefy, that I am the sport of all the creatures, 
 that I am in the depths of hell with all the devils.f 
 if I do not sin. It thinks no longer about loving or 
 not loving. It believes itself incapable of love, — 
 love is no longer for such as itself. It has become 
 worse than one in the more natural state, since it 
 is in the corruption common to bodies deprived of 
 life. 
 
 12. Well, perhaps, this corruption will last but a 
 little while. Alas ! quite otherwise. It will last 
 
 * It is impossible for any one to be in true humiliation, unless he 
 be in this acknowledgment and faith from the heart [that nothing 
 but evil is from self, and that all good is from the Lord] ; for then he 
 is in self-annihilation, yea, in self-aversion. — A. C. 3994. 
 
 •f When man is tempted, he is also near hell. From the hells by 
 spirits, those things flow in which occasion anxiety to man in tempta- 
 tions.— A. C. 8131. 
 
 In a state of desolation, when man is being regenerated, there is 
 not damnation, but the fear of damnation. — A. C. 6140. 
 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 137 
 
 several years, and go on continually increasing, except 
 towards the end, when putrefaction becomes dust, and 
 what is ashes returns to ashes. 
 
 13. The poor torrent goes like one wild from abyss 
 to abyss, from precipice to precipice, from corruption 
 to corruption ; all its members are attacked at the 
 same time. It is all over with it ; there is an end of 
 all good resolutions, of all austerities. It seems as 
 if all its senses and faculties were in confusion. Poor 
 soul, what wilt thou do in such a plight ? Thou must 
 needs resolve to be eternally the food of worms. Thine 
 own conscience upbraids thee with the state from 
 which thou hast fallen. What a difference between 
 the state of this torrent, when it was flowing pleas- 
 antly over the plain, and now when it is plunging 
 into frightful gulfs ! Yet this is its lot and its 
 destiny. 
 
 At length, by slow degrees, the soul gets used to 
 its corruption ; it perceives it less, and it becomes 
 natural to it, except at certain times when it exhales 
 a stench enough to cause its death, were it not im- 
 mortal. Poor torrent, wert thou not better off on 
 the top of the mountain than now ! Thou hadst 
 then some light corruption ; but now, though thou 
 runnest rapidly and nothing checks thee, thou passest 
 through places so dirty, so foul with sulphur, salt- 
 petre, and every kind of filth, that thou earnest with 
 thee their detestable stenches.* 
 
 * A state of temptation respectively to the state after it is also as 
 the state of a pit or a prison, filthy and unclean ; for when man is 
 10 
 
138 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 14. At length the poor soul begins no longer to 
 perceive its stench so grievously, to get accustomed 
 to it, to continue in it quietly without hope of ever 
 escaping from it,f and without being able to do any 
 thing for this end ; and thus 'its members, its flesh, 
 its entire self, is annihilated and becomes dust. Then 
 it is that annihilation % begins ; for, before, what 
 
 tempted, then unclean spirits are near him, and excite the evils and 
 falses appertaining to him, and likewise detain him therein, and 
 exaggerate even to despair : hence it is that man is then in an 
 unclean and filthy state. This state also, when it is presented to 
 view in the other life (all spiritual states can there be exhibited 
 to the sight), appears as a mist exhaled from dirty places, and a 
 stench likewise is thence perceived. Such is the appearance of the 
 sphere which encompasses him who is in temptation, and also in 
 vastation. — A. C. 5246. 
 
 -f In this passage is described a state of desolation by the priva- 
 tion of truth, the last of which state is desperation. That despera- 
 tion is the last of that state is, because thereby is removed the delight 
 of self-love, and the love of the world, and in the place of it is 
 insinuated the delight of the love of good and of truth; for despera- 
 tion with those to be regenerated relates to the spiritual life, conse- 
 quently to the privation of truth and good ; for, when they are deprived 
 of truth and good, they despair concerning the spiritual life. — 
 A.C. 5279. 
 
 X That the case is thus [that there are alternations of heat and 
 cold], every regenerate person may know by experience, viz., that 
 whilst he is in things corporeal and worldly, he is then absent and 
 remote from things internal, so that he not only thinks nothing about 
 them, but then feels in himself, as it were, a coldness; but when 
 things corporeal and worldly are quiescent, that then he is in faith and 
 charity. It may also be known by experience, that these states are 
 alternate; wherefore when things corporeal and worldly begin to over- 
 flow, and are desirous to gain dominion, then he comes into strait- 
 nesses and temptations, until he is reduced to such a state that the 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 139 
 
 stench so ever it emitted, there still remained some 
 marks of humanity ; it was an offensive corpse, but 
 still the remains of a man. But now there is noth- 
 ing but ashes. The soul no longer suffers any thing 
 from the ill odor ; it is naturalized to these things ; 
 it ceases to look at any thing, and is like a person 
 who is no more, and who never will be any more. It 
 does neither good nor evil. 
 
 15. Formerly, it was horrified at itself; now, it 
 thinks no more about it. It is in the last degree of 
 wretchedness without being affected with any horror 
 at it. Formerly, it used to dread the Holy Com- 
 munion from fear of infecting or dishonoring God ; 
 now, it seems to approach it as a matter of course. 
 All that is of grace is done as if from nature, and 
 there is no longer any sense either of pain or of plea- 
 sure. The only thing is, that its ashes rest in peace, 
 without hoping ever to be any thing but ashes. While 
 it perceived its stench, it was still aware that it was 
 putrefying ; but now, it has gone through this state, 
 and nothing either within or without affects it any 
 longer. 
 
 16. At length reduced to nonentity, there is found 
 in its ashes a germ of immortality, which, preserved 
 underneath them, will take life in due time.* But 
 
 external man does obeisance to the internal, which it never can do 
 until it is quiescent, and, as it were, is annihilated, — A. C. 933. 
 
 * When the state is changed, and becomes inverse to the foregoing, 
 then there is mourning ; for then they are let into temptation, whereby 
 the things of the proprium are weakened and debilitated, and good is 
 
140 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 this it does not know, and it has no thought of being 
 ever revived or resuscitated.* 
 
 17. The faithfulness of the soul in this state con- 
 sists in suffering itself to be buried, crushed, made 
 to walk, without stirring any more than a dead person ; 
 in enduring its own noisomeness in its grave ; and in 
 suffering itself to putrefy in the full extent of the 
 Divine will, without seeking any means of avoiding 
 the putrefaction. Some would apply balm or essences, 
 that they might not perceive the stench of their cor- 
 ruption. No, no, poor souls; leave yourselves just 
 what you are. Submit to the sense of your noisome- 
 ness. It is requisite you should know it, and should 
 see the bottomless abyss of corruption there is within 
 you. By applying balm, I mean seeking, by some good 
 and virtuous means, to cover over this corruption and 
 prevent the stench of it. Oh ! do not thus ; you would 
 be doing yourselves a mischief. God bears with you ; 
 why should you not bear with yourselves ? If you 
 look closely at the matter, you will even see, that 
 
 insinuated; and with good a new will-desire, and with this a new 
 freedom, thus a new proprium. — A. C. 5773. 
 
 * " And he said, Peace be to you, fear not" [Gen. xliii. 23]. That it 
 signifies that it is well, let them not despair, appears from the signi- 
 fication of peace, as denoting to be well, of which in what follows ; 
 and from the signification of ' fear not,' as being not to despair; for, in 
 the internal sense, a change of state is treated of, that they should no 
 longer procure to themselves truths by their own proper ability, and 
 by truths good, but that they should be gifted with them from the 
 Lord ; and whereas they supposed that so they should lose the pro- 
 prium, thus freedom, consequently all the delight of life, they were 
 in despair, as is evident from what goes before. — A. C. 5662. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 141 
 
 what you do to remove this ill odor involves a kind of 
 violence, and that it is more natural and better that 
 you should perceive it. 
 
 18. In my opinion the Director should give very 
 little or no relief to such a person, especially if he 
 has tolerable strength of mind ; if this should not be 
 the case, it would be necessary to sustain him ; since 
 otherwise he might be destroyed by the inwardness of 
 his distress. For the pain of putrefaction goes to the 
 very marrow of the bones. Other pains are more 
 exterior, and do not penetrate so deeply.^ But as 
 regards strong and able souls, the less they are suc- 
 cored, sustained, and strengthened, the sooner they 
 are reduced to dust. Do not, therefore, show them 
 pity ; leave them in their apparent state of unclean- 
 ness, — a state which yet is most pleasing to God, — 
 until from these ashes there is born a new life. 
 
 19. The soul reduced to nothingness ought to con- 
 tinue therein, without wishing, when it is dust, to get 
 out of this state, or desiring, as formerly, to live 
 again. It should continue as something that no 
 longer is. Then it is that the torrent plunges into 
 the sea, and loses itself there, never again to find 
 itself in itself, — having become one and the same 
 thing with the sea itself. 
 
 20. Then it is that this dead thing feels, by degrees, 
 without feeling, that its ashes are reviving and taking 
 
 * With those who have consciences, there arises hence [from 
 infestation and combat] a dull or still pain ; but, with those who 
 perception, an acute pah}; and so much the more acute, as the per- 
 ception is more interior. — A. C. 1668. 
 
142 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 a new life. % But this takes place so gradually, that it 
 appears like a dream, or a slumber in which we have 
 had a delightful vision. There is, as it were, a worm 
 forming itself from their ashes, and taking life by 
 degrees. This constitutes the last degree, which is the 
 beginning of the divine and truly interior life, which 
 contains degrees without number, and in which the 
 soul advances without limit,f in like manner as the 
 torrent can always go further into the sea, and take 
 more of its qualities to itself, the longer it dwells 
 there. 
 
 * For where they [those to be regenerated] are deprived of truth 
 and good, they despair concerning the spiritual life : hence they have 
 delight and blessedness when they emerge out of desperation. — 
 A. C. 5279. 
 
 f What is meant by the multiplication of truth from good is 
 briefly to be told. When a man is in good, that is, in love towards 
 his neighbor, then also he is in the love of truth : hence so far as he 
 is in that good, so far he is affected with truth, for good is in truth as 
 the soul in its body. As, therefore, good multiplies truth, so it propa- 
 gates itself, and if it be the good of genuine charity, it propagates 
 itself in truth and by truth indefinitely; for there is no end given 
 either to good or truth, the infinite being in all and single things, 
 because all and single things are from the infinite : nevertheless, that 
 indefinite can never reach to the infinite, inasmuch as no proportion is 
 given between the finite and the infinite. — A. C. 5356. 
 
SPIRITUAL TOEKENTS. 143 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Fourth Degree of the passive way of faith, which" is the beginning of the 
 divine life. 1 — 4. Passage from the human to the divine state, and to 
 the resurrection of the soul in God in the divine life. 5 — 13. Description 
 of this life and of its properties, gradations, identity, indifference ; senti- 
 ments of the soul; its being in God; its peace, &c. 14 — 16. Its duty 
 of faithful correspondence. 17 — 19. Power and views of the soul in 
 reference to others, to itself, to its state, to its actions, its word, and 
 its faults. 20—21. Of the inclinations of Jesus Christ in it. 22—27. 
 Several observations to guard against mistake as to its progress, its crosses, 
 its exterior. — Conclusion. 
 
 1. When the torrent begins to lose itself in the 
 sea, it can be distinguished for a considerable time. 
 Its motion is visible, until, by degrees, it loses all 
 its proper form, and assumes that of the sea. The 
 soul, in like manner, leaving this degree and begin- 
 ning to lose itself, still preserves for a time something 
 proper to itself, but, after a while, loses every thing 
 of this kind. A body that has gone through decay, 
 even to a state of ashes, is still dust and ashes ; but, 
 if any one should now swallow these ashes, there 
 would remain nothing proper to it, since it would 
 have become one and the same thing with the person 
 taking them. The soul hitherto, however dead and 
 putrefied, has retained its own proper essence, and 
 has not lost it. It is only in this degree that it is 
 truly taken out of itself.* 
 
 * Then he is in self-annihilation, yea, in self-aversion, and thus 
 in absence from himself, and thus in a state of receiving the Divine of 
 the Lord. — A. C. 3994. 
 
144 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 All that has taken place hitherto, has taken place 
 in the proper capacity of the creature ; but now the 
 creature is taken out of its own capacity, and receives 
 a boundless capacity in God Himself. As the tor- 
 rent, for example, when it enters the sea, loses its 
 own essence, so that there remains no longer any 
 thing of it, and takes that of the sea (or, rather, is 
 taken from itself to lose itself in the sea), the soul, 
 in like manner, parts with the human, to lose itself in 
 the Divine, which becomes its essence and its subsist- 
 ence — not essentially, but mystically.* Then the tor- 
 rent possesses all the treasures of the sea ; and the 
 more poor and miserable it was, the more glorious it 
 now is.f 
 
 2. It is in this tomb, then, that the soul begins to 
 recover life, and light makes its appearance by insen- 
 sible degrees. Then it may be said with truth, " Those 
 who were in darkness have seen a great light, and to 
 them that sat in the region of the shadow of death 
 has the day arisen," Matt. iv. 16. There is in Ezekiel 
 a beautiful figure of this resurrection, where the dry 
 
 * Man's proprium is wholly evil and false, and so long as it remains, 
 so long man is dead; but when he undergoes temptations, then it is 
 dispersed, that is, it is loosened and tempered by truths and goods 
 from the Lord, and thus it is vivified, and appears as if it was not 
 present. Its not appearing and not being any longer hurtful, is sig- 
 nified by destroying (Gen. vii. 4), although it is never destroyed, but 
 remains. — A. C. 731. 
 
 ■j- No one can have an exquisite perception of what is good, yea, 
 of what is blessed and happy, unless he has been in a state of what 
 is not good, not blessed, and not happy. From this he acquires a sphere 
 of perception, and this in the degree in which he was in the opposite 
 state.— -A. C. 2694. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 145 
 
 bones recover life again by degrees. This other pas- 
 sage is also applicable : " The hour cometh, and now 
 is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Lord," 
 John v. 25. 
 
 3. Ye souls coming forth from the sepulchre, how do 
 you feel in yourselves a germ of life springing up by 
 insensible degrees ! You are all astonished to find a 
 secret force taking possession of you. These ashes 
 are reviving. You find yourselves in a new country. 
 The poor soul whose only thought was to dwell 
 quietly in the sepulchre experiences an agreeable sur- 
 prise. It knows not what to believe and to think. 
 It supposes that the sun has shot in his rays through 
 some chink or opening for a little season, — but soon 
 to pass. It is yet more astonished when it feels 
 that this secret power is taking possession yet more 
 strongly of its entire nature, and that by degrees it 
 is receiving a new life never again to be lost ; * not 
 that one can be perfectly assured against falling in 
 this life, but because such a loss could not happen 
 without the blackest unfaithfulness. But this new 
 life is not like that formerly enjoyed; it is a "life 
 in God," Col. iii. 3 ; it is perfect life. The soul 
 " lives no longer," no longer operates by itself, but 
 " God lives," acts, and works, Gal. ii. 20. This goes 
 on increasing by degrees, so that the soul becomes 
 
 * The spiritual man, who is made the sixth day, when he begins 
 to be celestial, of which it is here first treated, is the evening of the 
 Sabbath, which was represented in the Jewish church by the sanctifi- 
 cation of the Sabbath from the evening: the celestial man is the 
 morning which i3 spoken of presently. — A. C. 86. 
 
146 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 perfect with the perfection of God, rich with His 
 riches, and loving with His love. 
 
 4. The soul perceives well, that all it had before, 
 great as it appeared, had been in its own possession. 
 But now it possesses no longer, but is possessed. It 
 no more is ; it takes a new life only to lose it in God, 
 or, rather, it lives only with the life of God ; * and, He 
 being the principle of life, the soul cannot want for 
 any thing. What gain has it not made for all its 
 losses ! It has lost the created for the uncreated, 
 nothingness for all things ; all is given to it, not in 
 itself, but in God, — not to be possessed by itself, but 
 to be possessed by God. Its riches are boundless : 
 they are God himself. It feels its capacity f perpetually 
 increasing, growing in breadth and extent every day. 
 Its capacity seems to be growing boundless.^ All the 
 virtues are given back to it again, but in God. 
 
 * The Divine Love is such that what is its own it wills should be 
 another's, thus man's and angel's; all spiritual love is such, and 
 most so the Divine Love. — D. P. 43. 
 
 f Every one who is either damned or saved has a certain measure 
 which is capable of being filled: the evil, or they who are damned, 
 have a certain measure of evil and the false ; and the good, or they 
 who are saved, have a certain measure of good and of truth. This 
 measure with every one is filled in the other life; but some have a 
 greater measure, some a lesser. This measure is procured in the 
 world by the affections which are of the love: by how much the 
 more any one had loved evil and the false thence, so much the greater 
 measure he had procured to himself; and by how much the more any 
 one had loved good and the truth thence, so much the greater is his 
 measure. — A. C. 7984. 
 
 ^ During man's initiation into truth, and thence into good, all 
 that he learns is obscure to him ; but when good is conjoined to him, 
 and he thence regards truth, it then becomes clear to him, and this 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 147 
 
 5. It is to observed, that as it was stripped by little 
 and little, so it is enriched and revivified only by de- 
 grees. The more it is lost in God, the greater becomes 
 its capacity, — just as the torrent, the more it is lost 
 in the sea, becomes the more enlarged and boundless, 
 having no other limits than those of the sea itself:* 
 it partakes then of all its qualities. The soul becomes 
 strong, boundless, firm ; it has lost all means, but it 
 is in the end, — just as a person who should walk on 
 the earth to cast himself into the sea would make use 
 of walking as a means to reach the sea, and then give 
 it up to plunge himself therein. 
 
 6. This divine life becomes altogether natural to 
 the soul.f As the soul no longer feels itself, sees 
 
 successively more and more ; for now he is no longer in doubt whether 
 a thing be, or whether it be so, but he knows that it is, and that it is 
 so. When man is in this state, he then begins to know innumerable 
 things ; for he now proceeds from the good and truth which he believes 
 and perceives, as from a centre to the circumferences ; and in propor- 
 tion as he proceeds, in the same proportion he sees the things which 
 are round about, and successively extends his views by a continual 
 removal and dilatation of their boundaries. Thenceforth also he 
 commences from every object in the space within these boundaries; 
 and hence, as from new centres, he produces new circumferences, and 
 so forth. Thence the light of truth from good increases immensely, 
 and becomes as a continuous lucidity ; for he is then in the light of 
 heaven, which is from the Lord. — A. C. 3833. 
 
 * For the celestial are in truth itself, concerning which the spiri- 
 tual dispute; and hence the celestial can see indefinite things apper- 
 taining to that truth, and thus, by virtue of the light, they can see, 
 as it were, the whole heaven. — A. C. 2715. 
 
 f The more nearly man is conjoined to the Lord, the more dis- 
 tinctly he appears to himself as if he was his own, and the more 
 indirectly he takes notice that he is the Lord's. — D. P. 42. 
 
148 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 itself, knows itself, it sees nothing of God, compre- 
 hends nothing of him, distinguishes nothing of him. 
 There is nothing more of love, of lights, or of know- 
 ledges. God no longer appears to it, as before, some- 
 thing distinct from itself ; but it no longer knows any 
 thing, except that God is, and that itself no longer 
 is, no longer subsists and lives, except in Him. Here 
 prayer is action, and action is prayer ; * every thing 
 is indifferent ; all is one and the same to this soul, for 
 all alike is God to it. 
 
 7. Formerly, it was necessary to practise virtue in 
 order to do virtuous works ; f now, all distinction 
 among actions is taken away, actions having no lon- 
 ger any proper virtues, but every thing being God to 
 the soul. The meanest action is so as well as the 
 highest, provided it be in the order of God and in 
 the divine movement ; J for any thing which should be 
 
 * When man is of such a quality, then in every work which he does 
 there is divine worship ; for then he has respect to the divine in every 
 thing ; he venerates and he loves it, consequently he worships it. — 
 A.C. 10,143. 
 
 t The good of the will consists in doing good from good, but the 
 good of the understanding in doing good from truth. These goods 
 appear as one to those who do good from truth, but still they differ 
 much from each other; for to do good from good is to do it from a per- 
 ception of good, which perception is given with none but the celestial ; 
 whereas, to do good from truth is to do it from science and intellect 
 thence derived, but without perception that it is so, only because the 
 person has been so instructed by others, or has concluded so of him- 
 self by his intellectual faculty, which may be fallacious truth. — 
 A.C. 4169. 
 
 X As far, therefore, as man lives in those commandments, so far 
 he lives in divine order; and as far as he lives in divine order, so 
 far all things are disposed in him by the Lord, according to the 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 149 
 
 from proper choice, if it be not in this order, would 
 not be attended with the same effect, but would cause 
 the soul to go out from God by reason of unfaithful- 
 ness. This does not mean that the soul goes out of 
 its degree, or of the state of being lost to itself, but 
 only out of the divine movement, which makes all 
 things one and all things God, not by view, applica- 
 tion, and thought, but by state,* so that the soul is 
 indifferent to being in one way or another. All 
 is the same to it, and it gives itself up thereto, as it 
 were, naturally. 
 
 8. This life becomes, so to speak, natural; and the 
 soul acts, as it were, naturally. f It gives itself up to 
 all that impels it, without being troubled about any 
 thing ; without thinking, willing, or choosing any 
 thing.J It remains well-pleased, without care or con- 
 cern about itself, not thinking any more about itself,§ 
 
 order which is from him in the heavens, viz., both his rationals and 
 his scientifics. — A. C. 2634. 
 
 * The human itself, and hence the angelic, is to think from the 
 truth ; and this is truth, that man does not think from himself, but 
 that it is given him to think from the Lord, in all appearance as from 
 himself.— D. P. 321. 
 
 f For the Lord wills to communicate to every one what is his; 
 thus the celestial, so that it may appear to man as his own, although 
 it is not his. — A. C. 1937. 
 
 X But the third or inmost degree is opened with those who imme- 
 diately apply divine truths to life, and do not first reason concerning 
 them from the memory, and thereby bring them into doubt. This is 
 called the celestial degree. — A. E. 739. 
 
 § When, therefore, those truths are conjoined to good, then man 
 is regenerated ; for then he no longer looks from truths at what is to 
 be believed and what is to be done, but from good, because he is 
 imbued with truths, and has them in himself; nor has he concern 
 
150 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 and not distinguishing its interior in order to speak 
 of it. The soul has nothing of all this. It has no 
 further thought about recollection or wandering. The 
 soul is no longer within, it is altogether in God. It is 
 no longer necessary for it to shut itself up in its inte- 
 rior ; it no longer thinks about finding Him there ; it 
 does not seek for Him there any more. If a person were 
 all surrounded by the sea, within and without, below 
 and above, if the sea were on all sides, he would have 
 no choice of one place more than another, but need 
 only remain as he is : even so it is with the soul. 
 
 9. Accordingly, this soul gives itself no concern to 
 seek any thing or to do any thing. It continues as it 
 is, and that is enough. — But what does it do ? — Noth- 
 ing, is the constant answer, nothing, nothing. It does 
 all that it is made to do. It suffers all that it is made 
 to suffer. Its peace is unchangeable, but entirely 
 natural ; it has passed, as it were, into a thing of 
 nature. — But what difference is there between this 
 person and a person all in the human 1 — The differ- 
 ence is, that it is God who causes it to act,*' without 
 its knowing it ;f whereas, before, it was nature which 
 
 about truths from any other source than what he can see from his own 
 good, and he sees continually more and more, for they are produced 
 thence as offsprings from their parents. — A. C. 8772. 
 
 * But they who are regenerated, because they are in good itself, 
 they are able to perceive, from the intelligence and wisdom thence 
 derived, what good is, and that it is from the Lord, and that it flows 
 in through the internal man into the external, and this continually, 
 man being altogether ignorant thereof. — A. C. 3325. 
 
 f In all these cases, the ruling principle is perpetually present [in 
 the minutest particulars], though the man is not conscious of it. In 
 like manner is the presence of the Lord with the celestial angels; 
 they do not know it, still it is the Lord's presence. — A. C. 4226. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 151 
 
 acted. It does, as appears to it, neither good nor 
 evil ; but lives satisfied, peaceable, doing in a ready 
 and unwavering manner whatever it is made to do. 
 
 God alone is its guide ; for, at the time of its giving 
 up all things, it lost all will. The soul now no lon- 
 ger has any will proper to itself; and, if you should 
 ask it what it willed, it could not tell. It can no 
 longer exercise any choice. All desires are taken 
 away ; because, being in the all and in the centre, the 
 heart loses all proclivity, bias, and activity, as it loses 
 all repugnance and contrariety.* The torrent no 
 longer has a career or movement. It is at rest, being 
 in its end. 
 
 10. But what is the nature of the contentment with 
 which the heart is thus pervaded 1 — It is the content- 
 ment of God himself, boundless, general, without 
 knowing or understanding what satisfies it ; for now, 
 all sentiments, tastes, views, particular observations, 
 however delicate, are taken away ; nothing touches 
 it, neither love, nor knowledge, nor intelligence. 
 That certain something, which formerly occupied it 
 without occupying it, is removed, and there is nothing 
 left it. 
 
 * Whoever lives in good, and believes that the Lord governs the 
 universe, and that from him alone comes all the good which is of 
 love and charity, and all the truth which is of faith, yea, that from 
 him comes life, thus that from him we live, move, and have our 
 being, he is in such a state that he can be gifted with heaveDly free- 
 dom, and therewith also with peace ; for then he trusts only in the 
 Lord, and counts other things of no concern, and is certain that then 
 all things tend to his good, blessedness, and happiness to eternity. — 
 A. C. 2892. 
 
152 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 But this insensibility is very different from that of 
 death, of the grave, of corruption. At that time it 
 was a privation of life, and of inclination towards 
 things, a disgust, a separation, an impotence as of a 
 dying person, an insensibility as of one dead; but 
 now it is an elevation above these things, which does 
 not deprive of them, but makes them of no account. 
 A dead person is deprived of all the functions of life, 
 but by that impotence which death occasions, or that 
 disgust which belongs to the dying ; but if he is 
 raised up in glory, he is all full of life, without the 
 means of preserving that life by making use of the 
 senses ; and, being above all means by the germ of 
 immortality he possesses, he does not feel what ani- 
 mates him, although he sees himself to be in life.* 
 
 11. I cannot express this better than by comparing 
 it to death. When one dies, he feels the separation of 
 his soul from his body. When the soul thus sepa- 
 rates itself, there is no longer any sensation : he is 
 without life, and death makes a separation from all. 
 But, when the man is raised up, he feels himself revi- 
 vified. When he is re-animated, he experiences in his 
 new state that God is the soul of his soul, the life of 
 his life, in such way that He makes Himself the, as it 
 were, natural principle of it, without the soul's feel- 
 
 * The appropriation of the life of the Lord comes from His love 
 and mercy towards the universal human race, in that He wills to give 
 Himself and what is His to every one, and that He actually gives so far 
 as they receive ; that is, so far as they act in the life of good and in 
 the life of truth, as likenesses and images of him. And whereas such 
 a divine effort proceeds continually from the Lord, therefore His life, 
 as was said, is appropriated. — A. C. 3742. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 153 
 
 ing or perceiving it by reason of its unity and its 
 intimateness, if I may use the word. The soul feels 
 that it lives, acts, walks, and performs all the func- 
 tions of life, but without feeling its soul.* 
 
 12. When we have some delight in God, however 
 subtle it may be ; when we know our interior retire- 
 ments, certain languors, pains, loves, desires, enjoy- 
 ments, these things do not constitute the degree I am 
 speaking of, but quite another. For, in this, God 
 cannot be tasted, felt, seen, because he is more our- 
 selves than ourselves, is not distinct from us.f If a 
 person could live without eating, in great disgust for 
 food, he would at first feel the disgust, and afterwards 
 the impossibility of eating, but he would not feel any 
 fulness. Here the soul has no inclination or relish 
 for any thing. Something like this takes place, indeed, 
 in the state of death and burial, but still there is a 
 difference. There, the want of appetite was from dis- 
 gust and impotence, but here, it is from plenitude and 
 
 * In all these cases the ruling principle is perpetually present [in 
 the minutest particulars], though the man is not conscious of it. In 
 like manner is the presence of the Lord with the celestial angels ; they 
 do not know it, still it is the Lord's presence. Consequently, when 
 it is said that the Lord is continually to be thought of, this that I 
 have now described is what is meant by it; not that man is to hold 
 his thoughts perpetually and sensibly on that one theme, which may 
 however be done on the outset [and be persisted in] until such a habit 
 of unconscious continuity is acquired. — A. D. 4226. 
 
 f The celestial man cannot think but from perception, and the 
 spiritual man cannot think but from conscience: the perception of 
 the former, like conscience, is from the Lord, and it does not appear 
 to him whence it is ; but the thought of the latter is from the rational, 
 and appears to him as from himself. — A. C. 2552. 
 11 
 
154 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 abundance; just as, if a person could live on air, lie 
 would be full without feeling his fulness, nor how it 
 had come to him. He would not be empty, nor 
 unable to eat or to taste, but only free from any neces- 
 sity of eating, by reason of fulness, without his 
 knowing how the air, entering through all his pores, 
 should so pervade him. 
 
 13. The soul, in this state, is in God as in the 
 atmosphere proper and natural to it for the mainte- 
 nance of its new life, and it no more feels Him than 
 we feel the air which we breathe. Nevertheless, it is 
 full, and nothing is lacking to it, and this is the reason 
 why all desires are taken away from it. 
 
 Its peace is great, but not as in other states.* In 
 the state which has been passed through, it was an 
 inanimate peace ; a certain state of burial whence there 
 issued, at times, exhalations which disturbed it. In 
 the state of dust it was in peace, but an unfruitful 
 peace, as if a dead body should be in peace amid the 
 storms of the sea and its most furious waves. It 
 would not feel them nor be troubled about them ; its 
 dead state makes it insensible. But in the case we 
 are considering, the soul is placed high above them, as 
 if it were surveying the waves, and listening to their 
 fury from the top of a mountain, without fearing 
 their assaults ; or, if you will, as if one were at the 
 bottom of the sea, which is always tranquil, whilst 
 
 * He who is gifted with a heavenly proprium is also in tranquillity 
 and in peace ; for he trusts in the Lord, and believes that nothing of 
 evil befalls him, and knows that concupiscences do not infest him. — 
 A. C. 5660. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 155 
 
 the surface was in agitation. The senses may suffer 
 pain, but the inmost of the soul maintains its equa- 
 nimity, because He who possesses it is immutable. 
 
 14. This supposes the faithfulness of the soul ; for, 
 in whatever state it is, it may fall therefrom and 
 relapse into itself. But here the soul makes advances 
 almost boundless in God, and can advance incessantly ; 
 just as, if the sea were without bottom, a person 
 fallen into it would go deeper and deeper for ever, and, 
 the further he descended into the ocean, the more of 
 its beauties and treasures he would discover. Thus 
 it is with the soul in God.* 
 
 15. But what must it do to be faithful to God? 
 Nothing, and less than nothing. It should give itself 
 up to be possessed, acted, moved without resistance, 
 to continue in its natural, consistent state, awaiting 
 the events of each moment and receiving them from 
 Providence without augmenting or diminishing any 
 thing ; suffering itself to be led in every thing with- 
 out sight or reason, and without reflection ; being 
 moved, as it were, by instinctive impulse, without 
 thought about the better or more perfect way, but 
 yielding itself up to all impulses, as it were, quite 
 naturally ; continuing in the equal and consistent 
 state in which God has placed it, without troubling 
 
 * In the former [the celestial] it is given to know, acknowledge, 
 and perceive, that the affections of good are innumerable, like the 
 societies in heaven. — A. C. 2718. 
 
 They who are in the affection of good, from perception know that 
 it is so [that he who loves his neighbor from good, loves the Lord], and 
 immediately see an open field of wisdom leading even to the Lord. — 
 A. C. 2718. 
 
156 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 itself to do any thing, but leaving to God the care 
 of originating occasions, and of executing them ; not 
 making acts of abandonment, but continuing therein 
 by state. 
 
 16. The soul cannot act, in ever so small a measure, 
 without being guilty of an unfaithfulness; just as, 
 in the state of death and putrefaction, it ought to 
 suffer itself to putrefy without doing or desiring 
 to do any thing. The man who is expiring perceives 
 a disgust at all the means which might support his 
 life ; next, an inability to make use of them ; lastly, 
 he dies, and every thing becomes useless to him. In 
 all these states, it requires great faithfulness to suffer 
 one's self to be stripped, to quit nourishment when dis- 
 gust supervenes, and to leave all things at the right 
 time, however subtle they may be. But now the 
 soul has all without having any thing. It has facility 
 for all that belongs to its duty ; for acting, for speak- 
 ing, and for doing, — no longer in its own way, but 
 in God's way. Faithfulness, here, does not consist 
 in ceasing from every thing, like one dead, but in 
 doing nothing except from the vivifying principle by 
 which it is animated. A soul in this state has no 
 bias for any thing, but yields itself to the will that 
 governs it, and does nothing but occupy the state 
 it is put into, without care or concern upon the 
 subject.* 
 
 * They who are in the perception of the Lord's presence are in 
 the perception that all and single things which befall them tend to 
 their good, and that evils do not reach them; hence they are in 
 tranquillity. — A. C. 6963. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 157 
 
 17. The soul cannot speak about its state, since it 
 does not see it, though it does see the actions of life 
 which it exercises. For, although there are then many 
 extraordinary things in its experience, they are no 
 longer what they were in its preceding states, when 
 the creature had some share in them (which was being 
 proprietary). But now the most divine and wonder- 
 ful things are, as it were, quite natural to the soul ; * 
 it does them without thinking of them ; the same 
 principle which gives life to the soul does them in it 
 and by it.f It has, as it were, a sovereign power 
 over evil spirits, J and even over the spirits of persons 
 with whose interests it is charged, — but all out of 
 
 * When they [truths] are in the interior man, he then no longer 
 acts from the memory, but from the bent of his inclination ; till at 
 length the things insinuated flow spontaneously into acts, being 
 inscribed on the interior memory; and what comes forth from this 
 appears as if it were innate. — A. C. 3843. 
 
 f But when he [man] loses this freedom, he then receives from 
 the Lord heavenly freedom, which is a thing altogether unknown to 
 those who are in the freedom derived from the proprium; these latter 
 suppose that if this freedom were to be taken away from them, there 
 would nothing of life remain, when nevertheless their real life com- 
 mences; and real delight, blessedness and happiness with wisdom, 
 then comes, because this freedom is from the Lord. — A. C. 5786. 
 
 X In combats of temptations, it is permitted evil spirits to bring 
 forth all the evil and false with man, and to combat from that ground ; 
 but when they are conquered, it is no longer allowed them to do so; 
 for they instantly perceive in man, that good and truth is confirmed. 
 Such is the perception of spirits, and so superior to that of men. 
 From the very sphere of a man confirmed in truth and good, they 
 know instantly how the case is, what answer they will receive, and 
 other things. This appears evidently with a regenerate spiritual man ; 
 with whom evil spirits are alike present, as with an unregenerate 
 man, but then they are subjugated and serve. — A. C. 1695. 
 
158 SPIKITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 itself. As it is no longer proprietary, it has no longer 
 any reserve ; and if it cannot say any thing about a 
 state so sublime, it is not because it is afraid of vanity, 
 which has no longer any existence ; neither is it for 
 want of light to express itself, as in the lower degrees. 
 It is because that which it has, without having any 
 thing, passes all expression by its extreme simplicity 
 and purity.*' This does not hinder but that there may 
 occur a thousand things which are, as it were, the 
 accidents of this state, and not of its essence, of which 
 it can speak very well.f These accidents are, as it 
 were, the crumbs that fall from the eternal feast which 
 the soul begins in time. They are the sparks which 
 give token that there is there a source of fire and 
 flames; but to speak of their beginning and their 
 
 * Those affections do not come in the understanding under any 
 species of ideas, but to the interior sensative perception, under a 
 species of delights of the will, which cannot possibly be described by 
 words.— A. E. 826. 
 
 The reason why they [celestial angels] appear simple is because 
 they cannot speak concerning the holy things of heaven and the 
 church ; for those things with them are not in the memory, whence all 
 discourse comes, but in the life, and thence in the understanding; not 
 as thought, but as the affection of good in its form, which does not 
 descend into discourse, and, if it should descend, would not speak but 
 only express a tone. — A. E. 829. 
 
 t Hence it is evident what love towards the neighbor is in the 
 third heaven. As for other things which concern the moral, civil, 
 and domestic life, these also are works which they do from affection; 
 but they are not such works as they understand by neighbor or 
 brother, and companion, for they derive somewhat from the world, 
 likewise from what is useful for themselves and their own ; they are 
 the derivations and productions of the uses before mentioned, and are 
 such things as proceed from their thought, concerning which therefore 
 they can discourse. — A. E. 828. 
 
SPIRITUAL TOBRENTS. 159 
 
 end, it is neither able to do this, nor desire it, hav- 
 ing no knowledge of them, except so far as it pleases 
 God to give that knowledge at the moment of speak- 
 ing or writing. 
 
 Does not the soul see its faults ? or does it not 
 commit any ? It commits them, * and knows them 
 better than ever ; especially at the beginning of this 
 new life. Those which it commits are much more 
 subtle and delicate than formerly. It knows them 
 better because it has its eyes open ; but it is not con- 
 cerned about them, and can do nothing to get rid of 
 them. It is sensible, indeed, when it has been guilty 
 of some unfaithfulness, or has committed a fault, of a 
 certain cloud, or of the rising up of a kind of dust ; 
 but this dust falls of itself, the soul doing nothing 
 either to make it fall, or to cleanse itself from its 
 effects. f All such endeavors of the soul would, at 
 
 * Such progressions and derivations are perpetual with the man 
 who is regenerated, from his infancy even to the last of his life in 
 the world, and also afterwards, even to eternity ; and yet he can 
 never be so regenerated as that in any measure he may be said to be 
 perfect. — A. C. 5122. 
 
 f For I have been now for four years in such a state that I have 
 neither thought nor spoken any thing from myself; but I still see that 
 when I seem to be, as it were, myself in thinking or speaking, yet 
 upon inquiry there are others immediately found who have prompted 
 it. When I spake with them, therefore, in the morning, after they 
 had considered awhile, it was given to say that this was well, inasmuch 
 as if there is any thing evil thought or spoken, it is not mine, but 
 proceeds from evil spirits, wherefore it is not appropriated by me. If 
 I should believe that it was from myself, the evil would be properly 
 appropriated by me, and thus I should add actual evil to actual evil. 
 On the contrary, whatever is good is from the Lord ; so that as I do 
 not attribute merit to myself from thinking, speaking, or doing good, 
 
160 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 this time, be useless, and would even serve only to 
 increase its impurity, so that the soul would feel the 
 second contamination to be worse than the first. All 
 idea of return is out of the question here, because, in 
 saying return, we presuppose alienation, and if we are 
 in God, it is only needful that we remain in Him. The 
 case is as when there arises some little cloudiness in 
 the middle region of the atmosphere ; if the wind then 
 blows, it moves the clouds, but does not scatter them, 
 — rather the contrary. We must leave the sun to 
 scatter them himself. The more subtle and delicate 
 the clouds are, the sooner he does it.* 
 
 18. Oh, if the soul were sufficiently faithful never 
 to regard itself, what advances would it not make ! f 
 
 so neither do I commit sin therein. He, therefore, who is of such a 
 character as to believe that the fact is as it is, that is, who is in true 
 faith, or in the truth of faith, he is guiltless of then committing sin ; 
 and whatever evil he seems to himself to do, believing still the truth 
 of the case to be what it is, that there are evil spirits who have been 
 present and persuaded him to it, the evil is not thus appropriated to 
 him. — S.D. 4228. 
 
 * There are with man* clouds so large and so dense, that, were he 
 aware of them, he would wonder how the rays of light from the Lord 
 could ever pass through them, so that he could be regenerated. Such 
 are the clouds abiding with the spiritual man; but with the celestial 
 man they are not so large, because he is principled in love towards 
 the Lord, and this love being implanted in his will part, he therefore 
 does not receive conscience like the spiritual man, but the perception 
 of goodness and thereby of truth from the Lord. — A. C. 1044. 
 
 f As to what concerns the heavenly proprium, it exists from the 
 new will which is given by the Lord, and differs from man's proprium 
 in this, that they no longer regard themselves in all and single things 
 which they do, and in all and single things which they learn and 
 teach; but they then regard the neighbor, the public, the church, the 
 kingdom of the Lord, and so the Lord himself. — A. C. 5660. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 161 
 
 Its own proper views are, as it were, little shrubs 
 which sustain it in the sea, and hinder it from de- 
 scending deeper, as long as their support lasts. If 
 their branches are very delicate, the weight of the 
 body breaks them down, and the soul is stopped only 
 for a few moments ; but if, by some notable unfaith- 
 fulness, the soul should look at itself voluntarily, and 
 for a length of time, it would be stopped as long as 
 its self-regard continued, and its loss would be very 
 great. 
 
 19. The faults of this state are certain slight emo- 
 tions or views of self, which are born and die the 
 same moment; certain breezes of self-regard, which, 
 passing over this tranquil sea, produce wrinkles on 
 •its surface. But these faults are dissipated by degrees, 
 
 and become continually more and more subtle. 
 
 20. The soul, on leaving the tomb, finds itself — 
 without knowing how it has come to pass, and with- 
 out thinking of it — clothed with all the inclinations 
 of Jesus Christ ; and this, not by distinct* views 
 or practices, but by state, finding them all on any 
 occasion when they are necessary to be acted, with- 
 out thought of its own ; just as a person who has a 
 treasure locked up, without thinking about it, finds it 
 in time of need. The soul is surprised, that, without 
 having reflected on the states of Jesus Christ nor on 
 His inclinations, for ten, twenty, or thirty years, it yet 
 finds them imprinted on itself by states. These incli- 
 nations of Jesus Christ are humility, poverty, submis- 
 
 * Thence the light of truth from good increases immensely and 
 becomes as a continuous lucidity. — A. C. 3833. 
 
162 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 sion, and His other virtues. The soul finds that every 
 thing demanded by these virtues takes place within 
 itself; but so easily, that it seems as if they had 
 become natural to it.* 
 
 21. Then it is that its treasure is in God alone, 
 from whom it draws continually and without end 
 what is suitable to itself, without any diminution or 
 drying up of the source. f Then it is truly clothed 
 with Jesus Christ. It is properly He who is acting, 
 speaking, and conversing in the soul ; our Lord 
 Jesus Christ being the principle of its movements. 
 For this reason, the neighbor is no more a trial to it ; 
 its heart enlarges every day to contain him. It has 
 no longer any inclination either for action or for retire- 
 ment ; it desires only to be what it is made to be 
 each moment. 
 
 22. As the soul can make boundless advances in 
 this state, J I leave it to those who know them by 
 experience to describe them ; the necessary light not 
 
 * Conjunction with truth, therefore, cannot take place with man 
 until those things which he has imbibed by doctrines are insinuated 
 from the external man into the interior. When they are in the 
 interior man, he then no longer acts from the memory, but from the 
 bent of his inclination, till at length the things insinuated flow spon- 
 taneously into acts, being inscribed on the interior memory, and what 
 comes forth from this appears as if it were innate. — A. C. 3833. 
 
 f When man is in this state [when good is conjoined to him], he 
 then begins to know innumerable things. — A. C. 3833. 
 
 X The apperception of truth is from good, inasmuch as the Lord 
 is in good and gives apperception ; when he thence receives truth, it 
 then increases indefinitely; the case herein is like that of a little 
 seed, which grows into a tree, and produces little seeds, and these 
 next produce a garden, and so on. — A. C. 5355. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 163 
 
 being given me as regards its higher degrees, and my 
 soul not being sufficiently advanced in God to see 
 them or know them. I will only say, that it is easy 
 to see, by the length of time required for those steps 
 which the soul must take in order to attain to God, 
 that we do not reach it so quickly as we think for ; 
 and that the most spiritual and enlightened souls mis- 
 take the consummation of the passive state of light 
 and love for the end of the one we are considering, 
 whereas it is only the beginning of it. The reason 
 why souls do not advance is because they do not suf- 
 fer themselves to be sufficiently stripped, or because 
 they do it too early. 
 
 23. As long as one finds delight in any given 
 practice or prayer, it should never be left, — never, 
 until there comes a disrelish for it, together with a 
 certain difficulty and pain in doing it ; for to wait for 
 absolute inability is to wait for miracles. God gives 
 such miracles only to certain souls, which have not 
 the requisite light for this stripping, and who have no 
 person to instruct them thereto ; for which end He 
 causes them, of His absolute power, to do what they 
 do not know. 
 
 24. It is to be observed, that, in the way of light 
 and passive love, there are drynesses, aridity, pains, 
 wearinesses ; but they are neither of the duration nor 
 the quality of those I have described in the way of 
 naked faith. Wherefore care should be taken not to 
 mistake here. It belongs to the director to judge of 
 all. Happy the soul which finds an experienced one. 
 
 25. It must also be observed, that what I say of 
 
164 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 the inclinations of Jesus Christ begins as soon as 
 the way of naked faith begins ; although the soul, 
 throughout all its way, has no distinct views of Jesus 
 Christ, it has yet a desire to conform itself to His 
 states. It desires the cross, humility, poverty ; after- 
 wards this desire disappears, and there remains a 
 leaning or secret inclination for the same things, 
 which grows continually deeper and deeper, acquiring 
 simplicity, and becomes, day by day, more intimate 
 and more hidden. 
 
 But inclination, bias, tendency, however delicate 
 they may be, are terms which imply something which 
 is not possessed, and which is without us. But now 
 the inclinations of Jesus Christ constitute the state of 
 the soul, are proper to it, habitual, and, as it were, 
 natural. They are as things not different from itself, 
 but as its own proper essence, and proper life ; Jesus 
 Christ exercising them Himself without going out 
 from Himself, and. the soul exercising them with Him 
 and in Him, without going out from Him ; exer- 
 cising them not as something distinct, which it knows, 
 sees, proposes, practises, but as something most natu- 
 ral to it. All the actions of life, such as respiration, 
 &c, are done naturally, without thinking about them ; 
 not by rule or measure, but according to need, — and 
 all without special purpose on the part of the person 
 doing them. It is the same as regards the inclina- 
 tions of Jesus Christ in this degree ; and this state is 
 continually growing, in proportion as the soul is trans- 
 formed into Him, and becomes one and the same thing 
 with Him. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 165 
 
 26. But are there, then, no crosses in this state 1 
 As the soul is strong, with the strength of God him- 
 self, God gives it yet more crosses, and heavier ones 
 than before ; but it bears them divinely. Formerly, 
 the cross delighted the soul, and it loved and che- 
 rished it ; but now it thinks no more about it ; it suf- 
 fers it to come and go. The cross becomes, like every 
 thing else, God to it, though this does not prevent 
 suffering, but only the pain, the trouble, the deep 
 occupation of suffering. Crosses are crosses no more ; 
 they are God ; and, for this reason, they do not sanc- 
 tify but divinize. In other states, the cross is virtue, 
 and is prominent in proportion as the state is ad- 
 vanced ; but in this, it is God to the soul, as also is 
 every thing else ; all that makes the life of the soul, all 
 that it has from moment to moment being God to it.* 
 
 27. The exterior of these persons is quite common, 
 and nothing extraordinary is to be seen in it. The 
 more they advance, the more free they become, having 
 nothing uncommon which appears externally, except 
 to those who are capable of receiving it. Here all is 
 seen, without seeing, in God, such as it really is.f It 
 
 * There are several kinds of temptations, which in general are 
 celestial, spiritual, and natural, which ought not in the least to be 
 confounded. In the case of those who are in love towards the Lord, 
 whatever assaults this love produces an inmost torture, which is 
 celestial temptation. In the case of those who are in love towards 
 the neighbor or charity, whatever assaults this love produces torment 
 of conscience, and this is spiritual temptation. — A. C. 847. 
 
 t They [the celestial] know instantly, by a certain internal ani- 
 madvertence, whether a thing be good, and whether it be true ; for 
 the Lord insinuates this, inasmuch as they are conjoined to the Lord 
 by love. — A. C. 2831. 
 
166 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 is for this reason that this state is not subject to delu- 
 sion.* There are no visions, revelations, ecstacies, 
 ravishments, changes. All this belongs not to this 
 state, which is quite above it all. This way is simple, 
 pure, and naked, seeing nothing except in God, as 
 God sees it, and by His eyes. 
 
 CONCLUSION OP THE AUTHOR IN THE FORM OF A LETTER TO 
 HER CONFESSOR. 
 
 It is not permitted me to go on here, there being a 
 total blank [in my thoughts]. I believe I have drawn 
 too much from my natural light. f You will easily 
 distinguish such passages. I have made reflections 
 to the effect that it was perhaps more from nature 
 than from grace that I have been impelled to write ; 
 and I desire, indeed, here to make my confession of 
 this, and frankly to avow that I have even committed, 
 towards the conclusion, some faults ; having retained 
 in my memory certain lights in regard to this state, 
 which had come to me in prayer, instead of losing 
 
 * What perception is at this day is a thing most unknown, because 
 at this day no one is in the perception in which the ancients were, 
 and particularly the most ancient; the latter of whom, from percep- 
 tion, knew whether a thing was good, and consequently whether it 
 was true. There was an influx into their rational from the Lord, 
 through heaven, whereby instantly, when they thought concerning 
 any thing holy, they perceived whether it was so, or whether it was 
 not so.— A.C. 2144. 
 
 f The state of the celestial man is, that he is in good, and from 
 good knows all truths, and never thinks and speaks from truths con- 
 cerning good, still less from scientifics concerning good. — A. C. 3301. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 167 
 
 them.* Moreover, I have not distinguished, in the 
 state that I am in, what is natural and what is divine, 
 what is God and what my own. I pray God that He 
 will show it to you. 
 
 I have not read this paper after writing it, and I 
 have been much interrupted. When I left the sense 
 unfinished, I read over a line or two, or a few words, 
 in order to continue. I know not if I have done 
 against your wishes. This has happened to me at 
 times, but I have not read it over afterwards. I have 
 not been careful to say every thing about the several 
 states, or to avoid repetitions. I leave all this to your 
 discernment, praying our Lord to enlighten you, that 
 you may distinguish the false from the true, and what 
 my self-love has sought to mix with His light. 
 
 * For the men of the celestial church are such, that they perceive 
 all the truths and goods of heaven from the Lord, by influx into their 
 interiors, whence they see goods and truths inwardly in themselves, 
 as implanted, and have no need to learn them by a posterior way, or 
 to treasure them up in their memory. — A. E. 739. 
 
 END OP PART FIRST. 
 
PART II. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 More particular description of several properties of the resuscitated and 
 divine life. 1, 2. True liberty and resuscitated life distinguished from 
 what is not such. Job a figure of it. 3. Beginning of the apostolic life. 
 Facility of its functions ; counsel not to enter upon it from, one's self; 
 its fruits. 4. How virtue is practised in it, especially humility. 5—8. It 
 is common in outward appearance. Its ecstatic joy. Blessedness of being 
 lost in God, and of abandoning one's self to God. 9—11. Perfect aban- 
 donment rarely practised, which results from the prudence of our own 
 wisdom, under pretence of the glory of God. A ray of glory escaped from 
 the interior. 
 
 1. I had forgotten to say that this is the state in 
 which true liberty* is given ; not a liberty, as some 
 think it, which deprives or exempts one from doing 
 things. This is rather a privation than liberty ; for 
 such persons believe themselves free, because, having 
 a disrelish for good things, they no longer practise 
 them. The liberty I speak of is not of this nature ; 
 the soul has a facility for all things which are in the 
 order of God and of its state, and it does them 
 
 * He who is in the heavenly proprium i3 in freedom itself; for to 
 be led of the Lord is freedom, and he is led in good from good to good ; 
 hence it may be manifest that such are in blessedness and in happiness* 
 for there is nothing which disturbs. — A. C. 5660. 
 12 
 
170 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 the more easily, the longer and the more painfully it 
 has been deprived of them. 
 
 I confess that I do not understand the state of 
 resuscitation and divine life spoken of by some per- 
 sons, who remain, notwithstanding, all their days in 
 impotence and the loss of all ; for, in this state, the 
 soul is restored to true life. The actions of a man 
 raised up from the dead are actions of life ; and if the 
 soul, after its resurrection, continues to be without 
 life, it is, in my opinion, dead or buried, but not raised 
 up. To be raised up, the soul ought to do the same 
 actions it used to do before its losses, and do them 
 without any difficulty ; only doing them in God. 
 Did not Lazarus, after his resurrection, perform all 
 the functions of life as before 1 And Jesus Christ, 
 after His resurrection, was pleased even to eat and to 
 converse with men. This will serve as an example. 
 Accordingly, I say of those who believe themselves to 
 be in God, and who yet are straitened and cannot 
 pray, that they are not raised up. For here every 
 thing is restored to the soul a hundred fold.* 
 
 2. There is a beautiful figure of this in Job, whom 
 I look upon as a mirror of the whole spiritual life.f 
 You see how God strips him of his goods, which are 
 
 gifts and graces ; then of his children, which is strip- 
 
 i 
 
 * When man, by the truths of faith, is being introduced to the 
 good of charity, he then undergoes temptations ; but, when he is in 
 the good of charity, temptations cease, for then he is in heaven. — 
 A. C. 8968. 
 
 f That the book of Job is a book of the ancient church is evident, 
 as has been mentioned, from the representative and figurative style 
 in it. — A.C. 3540. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 171 
 
 ping him of his faculties or good works, these being 
 our children and our dearest productions ; next God 
 takes from him his health, by which is meant the loss 
 of the virtues ; then he makes him to putrefy, render- 
 ing him an object of horror, of infection, and of con- 
 tempt ; it seems, even, as if this holy man committed 
 faults, and that he was deficient in resignation. He 
 is accused by his friends of being justly punished by 
 reason of his crimes ; there remains no sound part in 
 him. But after he has rotted on the dunghill, and 
 there remains nothing but his bones, and he is a mere 
 corpse, God does not give him back every thing, goods, 
 children, health, and life. 
 
 It is the same after the resurrection ; all is given 
 back, together with an admirable facility in making 
 use of them, without incurring defilement, without 
 attaching one's self to them, and without appropria- 
 ting them as formerly. All is done in God, divinely, 
 using things as not using them. In this state there 
 is true liberty and true life. " If ye have been like 
 to Jesus Christ in his death, you shall be like him in 
 his resurrection," Rom. vi. 5. Is it being free to be 
 under inability and restrictions 1 No. " If the Son 
 shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed " (John 
 viii. 36), but free with His own liberty. 
 
 3. Here it is that the apostolic life begins. "With- 
 out at all injuring one's self, nothing that God wills 
 is hard ; and, if a person is called to instruct, to preach, 
 &c, he does it with a wonderful facility, which costs 
 him nothing, and without its being necessary for him 
 to prepare his discourse, since he is well able to prac- 
 
172 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 tise what our Lord Jesus Christ says to His disciples, 
 that " they should not think beforehand of what they 
 should say, but that, when it was time to speak, He 
 would give them a wisdom which no one should be 
 able to resist," Matt. x. 19. 
 
 This is given only at a late period, and after dread- 
 ful inabilities have been endured ; and, the more severe 
 they have been, the greater the liberty. But one 
 must not put himself in this state of himself; for, as 
 God would not be the principle of such a state, the 
 result would not be what was aimed at.* 
 
 Those who are in this state effect wonderful conver- 
 sions, without thinking about them. It may indeed 
 be said of this resurrection life, " that all things good 
 are given with it," Wisdom, vii. 11. 
 
 4. In this state, the soul cannot practise virtue as 
 virtue ; it cannot even see or distinguish it. The 
 virtues have become, as it were, habitual and natural 
 to it, so that it practises them all without seeing or 
 knowing them, and without being able to apply itself 
 to them, or to make any distinction among them.f 
 
 * " And the men made a residue of it until morning " [Ex. xvi. 
 20.] That it signifies abuse of good divine, in that they were •wil- 
 ling to procure it of themselves for themselves, appears from the 
 signification of making a residue until the morning, as denoting to 
 be solicitous about the acquirement of good of themselves (see above, 
 n. 8478), consequently denoting abuse of Good divine; it is called 
 abuse when what is alike exists in ultimates, but from a contrary 
 origin. Good exists from a contrary origin when from man, not from 
 the Lord. — A. C. 8480. 
 
 f The case is this with the iniation of truth into good, that, before 
 truth is initiated and rightly conjoined, it is indeed with man, but 
 is not made as of him, or as his property ; but, as soon as it is initiated 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 173 
 
 When it hears some one uttering words of humility, 
 and greatly abasing himself, it is all surprised and 
 astonished to discover that itself does not practise the 
 like. It starts as from a lethargy ; and, if it should try 
 to humble itself, it would be rebuked for it as for an 
 unfaithfulness. Indeed, it would be unable to accom- 
 plish it ; because the state of annihilation through 
 which it has passed has placed it below all humility. 
 For, in order to humble ourselves, we must first be 
 something ; what is nothing cannot abase itself below 
 what it is ; [at the same time], the state it actually 
 is in has placed it above all humility and all virtue 
 by a transformation into God. Thus its inability comes 
 both from its annihilation and its elevation.* 
 
 5. For this reason, these souls are very ordinary 
 in outward appearance, and have nothing to distin- 
 guish them from others, except that they do no evil 
 to any one. For, as regards the exterior, it is very 
 ordinary.f It is for this reason that they are very 
 
 in*his good, then it is appropriated to him; it then vanishes out of his 
 external memory, and passes into the internal, or, what is the same, 
 it vanishes in his natural or external man, and passes into the rational 
 or internal man, and puts on the man himself, and makes his human, 
 that is, his quality as to the human. — A. C. 3108. 
 
 * Hence it is that the spiritual have not love to the Lord like the 
 celestial ; consequently, neither have they humiliation, which is essen- 
 tial in all worship, and by which good from the Lord may flow in ; 
 for an elated heart never receives such good, but an humble heart. — 
 A.C. 2715. 
 
 f These are in the third heaven, and are the wisest of all. Such 
 do those become in the world, who immediately apply to life the 
 divine things which they hear, turning away from evils as infer- 
 nal, and worshipping the Lord alone. These persons, being in 
 
174 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 little known; a circumstance which upholds their 
 state,* and makes them live in peace, without care or 
 concern about any thing whatever. f 
 
 6. They have a boundless joy, though not sensibly 
 perceived, arising from the fact that they neither fear, 
 desire, nor wish for any thing. For which cause, 
 nothing can either disturb their peace or lessen their 
 joy. David experienced this, when he said, "All 
 they who are in thee, O Lord, are like persons who 
 are transported with joy," Ps. lxxxvi. 7. A per- 
 son transported with joy no longer sees or feels or 
 thinks about himself; and his joy, although very 
 great, is not known to himself by reason of his trans- 
 port. 
 
 7. The soul, in truth, is in a state of transport 
 and ecstasy, unattended by any pain, because God has 
 enlarged its capacity almost without bounds. Those 
 ecstasies which are attended with a loss of sensation 
 produce this effect only from the weakness of those 
 
 innocence, appear to others as infants ; and, as there is nothing ' of 
 pride in their speech, they also appear simple. — D. L. W. 427. 
 
 * " To seduce, if possible, even the elect " [Mark xiii. 22] signifies 
 those who are in the life of good and truth, and thence with the Lord; 
 these are they who in the Word are called the elect. They seldom 
 appear in the company of those who veil profane worship under what 
 is holy ; or, if they appear, they are not known, for the Lord hides, 
 and thus protects them. — A. C. 3900. 
 
 | When man is in such a [passive] state, he can also be gifted 
 with peace by the Lord; for then he trusts solely in the Lord, and 
 cares nothing for other things. Thus, if a man would live in peace, 
 he must be in a passive state, and never in an active one, except by 
 reaction and concurrent action, which also come from the Lord, so 
 that the state is still a passive one. — S. D. 635. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 175 
 
 who are the subjects of them, and yet they excite the 
 admiration of the world. The weakness comes from 
 this, that God drawing the soul, as it were, away from 
 itself, to lose it in Himself, but the soul being neither 
 pure enough nor strong enough to endure that draw- 
 ing, it is necessary either that God should cease from 
 drawing the soul, whereby the ecstasy comes to an 
 end, or that nature should succumb and expire, as has 
 happened many times. But here the ecstasy has place 
 perpetually, and not for a few hours only, without 
 violence or injury, God having purified and strength- 
 ened the subject to the degree necessary for bearing 
 this wonderful ecstasy. 
 
 It seems to me, that ecstasy results when God goes 
 forth from Himself; but I am afraid to- affirm this for 
 fear of saying what is erroneous. What I will say 
 then is, that the soul drawn forth from itself expe- 
 riences that an ecstasy takes place with it, but a blessed 
 ecstasy, because it is drawn out of itself to be abyssed 
 and lost in God, leaving behind its imperfections, and 
 its own narrow and limited qualities, that it may 
 share in those of God himself. 
 
 8. O blessed nothingness ! how glorious is thy ter- 
 mination ! O miseries, poverties, fatigues ! how are 
 ye rewarded, and more than rewarded ! O happiness 
 which cannot be expressed ! What gain, O soul ! hast 
 thou not made for all thy losses ! Couldst thou have 
 believed, when thou wast in the mud and the dust, 
 that what caused thee so much horror was destined 
 to procure thee happiness so great as that which thou 
 
176 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 now enjoyest ?* If any one had told thee, thou couldst 
 not have believed it. Learn now, by thy own experi- 
 ence, how good it is to trust in God, and that they who 
 put their confidence in Him shall never be confounded. 
 
 O abandonment! what good dost thou not effect in a 
 soul ! and what advances would it not make if it only 
 knew how to find thee at the outset.f From how many 
 sorrows would it not be delivered, if it knew how to 
 yield itself up to the hand of God from the first ! 
 
 9. But, alas ! people will not abandon themselves, 
 and trust in God. Those who do this, and who 
 believe that they are so well established in the princi- 
 ple, are abandoned only in figure, and not in reality. 
 
 * Despair is on this further account, that the satisfaction of life 
 which is from the Lord may be made sensible; for, when they come 
 out of that state, they are those who, being condemned to death, are 
 liberated from prison. By desolations and temptations also, states 
 contrary to heavenly life are perceived, and hence is impressed a 
 sense and perception of the satisfaction and happiness of heavenly 
 life; for the sense and perception of what is satisfactory and happy 
 cannot come from any other source than from relation to things con- 
 trary. To the intent, therefore, that full relations may be had, deso- 
 lations and temptations are brought to the utmost pitch. — A. C. 
 6144. 
 
 f It is to be known that the Divine Providence is universal, that 
 is, in the most singular of all things; and that they who are in the 
 stream of Providence are conveyed continually to felicities, whatever 
 may be the appearance of the means ; and that they are in the stream 
 of Providence who put their trust in the Divine, and attribute all 
 things to him ; and that they are not in the stream of Providence who 
 trust to themselves alone, and attribute all things to themselves; for 
 they are in the opposite, inasmuch as they refuse to allow a Provi- 
 dence to the Divine, and claim it to themselves. It is to be known 
 also, that, so far as any one is in the stream of Providence, so far he 
 is in a state of peace. — A. C. 8478. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 177 
 
 They wish to abandon themselves in one thing, and 
 not in another. They would make terms with God, 
 and put limits as to how far they will submit to His 
 doings. They are willing to give themselves up, but 
 only on such and such conditions. No ; this is not 
 abandoning ourselves ; it is imagining that we do it, 
 while we do it not. A whole and entire abandonment 
 excepts nothing, reserves nothing, neither death nor 
 life, nor perfection nor salvation, nor paradise nor hell. 
 
 Cast yourselves headlong, poor souls, into this state 
 of abandonment : nothing but good will come to you 
 from it. Walk in assurance upon this stormy sea, 
 supported by the word of Jesus Christ, "Who has pro- 
 mised to take care of those who shall forsake all, and 
 abandon themselves to Him. But, if you sink with 
 St. Peter, be assured that it is from your little faith. 
 
 If we only had faith to advance unhesitatingly, and 
 meet all dangers without even looking at them, what 
 good would not betide us ! What fearest thou, O 
 craven heart ! Thou art afraid of losing thyself ! Alas ! 
 considering how little thou art worth, what great mat- 
 ter is that ? Yes ; thou wilt lose thyself, if thou hast 
 strength enough to abandon thyself to God, but thou 
 wilt lose thyself in Him. I cannot repeat often enough, 
 how blessed such a loss is. Why can I not persuade 
 all the world to this holy abandonment 1 And why 
 do preachers preach any thing beside 1 * 
 
 * The Lord, in order to render any one blessed and happy, wills 
 a total submission, that is, that he should not be partly his own, and 
 partly the Lord's; for there are then two Lords, whom man cannot 
 serve at the same time, Matt. vi. 24. A total submission is also 
 
178 
 
 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 10. But alas! people are so blind, that they con- 
 sider this as madness, lack of prudence, something fit 
 only for women or feeble minds, but quite unsuitable 
 for great minds. It is something too low for them ; 
 they must needs lead themselves with their own 
 measure of prudence. This track is unknown to 
 them, because they are wise and prudent to them- 
 selves ; but it is revealed to the humble, who can sub- 
 mit to be annihilated, and who are willing to be the 
 foot-ball of the Divine Providence, leaving to It full 
 power to exercise and treat them as It will, making 
 no resistance, and giving themselves no concern about 
 what the world will say. Oh, what trouble this pru- 
 dence of our own has to become nothing, both in its 
 own eyes, by losing all esteem of itself because of its 
 own corruption, and in those of the creatures, by being 
 willing to be their laughing-stock ! * 
 
 meant by the Lord's words in Matthew : " "Whosoever loveth father 
 and mother above me is not worthy of me, and whosoever loveth son 
 and daughter above me is not worthy of me," x. 37. By father and 
 mother are signified in general those things which are of man's pro- 
 prium from what is hereditary, and by son and daughter those things 
 which are of man's proprium from what is actual. — A. C. 6138. 
 
 * The enmity which is put [Gen. iii. 15] is between the love of 
 man's proprium and the Lord, thus also between man's own prudence, 
 and the Divine Providence of the Lord; for one's own prudence is 
 unceasing in the exaltation of its head, and the Divine Providence 
 is unceasing in the depression of it. If man was sensible of this, he 
 would be enraged and exasperated against God, and would perish ; 
 but, whilst he is not sensible of it, he may be enraged and exasperated 
 against men and against himself, and also against fortune, by which 
 means he does not perish. Hence it is that the Lord by his Divine 
 Providence continually leads man in freedom. — D. P. 211. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 179 
 
 People wish, according to their own declarations, 
 to keep a good standing that they may glorify God ; 
 but it is only to glorify themselves. To be really 
 willing to be nothing in the eyes of* God, to remain 
 in a state of entire abandonment, and even in despair, 
 to give ourselves to Him when we are most repulsed, 
 to acquiesce and not to look at ourselves when we 
 are on the brink of the abyss, — this is something 
 very uncommon, and what constitutes perfect aban- 
 donment. 
 
 11. There flows down, at times, even in this life, 
 into the faculties and the senses, something which is 
 like a shedding forth of glory from within ; but this 
 is not common. It is being as Jesus Christ was in 
 His transfiguration. This is an eminent grace, and is 
 attended with great purity. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 1 — 5. Firmness, trials, elevation, exalted peace and purity of the soul be- 
 come divine and abandoned by state. 6 — 8. All is then purely God 
 to it. 9 — 12. The loss of false liberty is rewarded with liberty in God. 
 Wonderfulness of this state, in which all is divinely sure, equal, and 
 indifferent. 
 
 1. The soul, after having reached a divine state, is, 
 as I have said, an immovable rock, not to be shaken 
 by trials or blows of any kind, except when the Lord 
 wills that it should do something contrary to usage 
 and common wont. If, in that case, it does not yield 
 
180 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 at the first impulse, He inflicts on it a pain of con- 
 straint which it cannot resist ; and it is compelled, by 
 a force which cannot be expressed, to do what He 
 wills. 
 
 To rehearse the strange trials to which He puts 
 these souls in a state of perfect abandonment, who 
 resist Him in nothing, is out of the question ; neither 
 would it be understood. All that can be said is, that 
 He does not leave them the shadow of a thing, which 
 can be said to be either in God or out of God. 
 
 And He so lifts them above all by the loss of all, 
 that nothing less than God Himself, either in heaven 
 or on earth, can stop them. Nothing can captivate 
 them, because there is for them no wickedness in any 
 thing whatsoever, by reason of their union with God, 
 who, in concurring with sinners, contracts nothing 
 of their wickedness by reason of His essential 
 purity. 
 
 2. This is more real than can be expressed ; so 
 that the soul participates in the purity of God, or 
 rather, all its proper purity (which is only a gross 
 kind of purity) having been abolished, the sole purity 
 of God in Himself subsists in this nothingness ; but 
 in a way so real, that the soul is in perfect ignorance 
 of evil, and, as it were, unable to commit it.* This, 
 
 * Because it is the truth, it is to be believed that the Lord governs 
 heaven and earth, and that none lives but the Lord. From this faith, 
 when it is given by the Lord, it follows that a man cannot commit sin ; 
 for he knows that spirits who believe that they live from themselves, 
 and govern themselves, excite those things in the man, which, though 
 in him, are not excited by himself, because he then lives in a passive 
 state, and suffers himself to be governed [by the Lord]. — S. D. 635. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 181 
 
 however, does not hinder but that there may be a fall 
 from this state ; although such a thing scarcely ever 
 happens, by reason of the profound annihilation the 
 soul is in, which leaves it no propriety ; and propriety 
 alone can cause sin, for what no longer is cannot 
 sin. 
 
 3. So much is this the case, that the souls I am 
 speaking of find great difficulty in confessing. For, 
 when they go to accuse themselves, they know not 
 what to accuse or condemn, not being able to find in 
 themselves any thing that lives, and can have willed 
 to offend God, — and this because their will is entirely 
 lost in God ; and as God cannot will sin, so neither 
 can they will it. If they are told to confess, they do 
 it, because they are very humble ; but they speak 
 with the lips what is suggested to them, like a little 
 child who should be told, You must confess this, — 
 who says it, not knowing what he says, or whether the 
 fact is so or not, and without reproach or remorse. 
 For the soul, in this state, can no longer discover any 
 thing of conscience ; * all is so lost in God that there 
 is no longer any accuser within it ; it remains well 
 pleased, without seeking to be so. But when it is 
 said to it, You have committed such a fault, it finds 
 nothing in itself which has done it ; and, if it is said, 
 Say that you have done it, it will say so with the 
 lips, without grief or repentance. 
 
 4. Its peace is then so unchangeable and so stead- 
 fast, that nothing in the world or in all hell can affect 
 
 * Perception is not conscience. The celestial have perception, the 
 spiritual have conscience. — A. C. 597. 
 
182 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 it for a moment.* The senses still remain subject to 
 suffering ; but when they are so overwhelmed by it 
 that they cry out, if the person is questioned, or if 
 he examines himself, he will find nothing in himself 
 that is suffering. In the midst of inconceivable pains, 
 he says, I suffer nothing ; not being able to say or to 
 acknowledge that he suffers by reason of the divine 
 state he is in, and the blessedness which he expe- 
 riences in his centre or highest part. 
 
 There is, here, a separation of the two parts, the 
 lower and the higher, so entire and perfect, that they 
 live together like strangers that do not know each 
 other, f and the most extraordinary pains do not pre- 
 vent the perfect peace, tranquillity, joy, and unmova- 
 bleness of the higher part, as the joyful and divine 
 state of the higher does not hinder extreme suffering 
 in the lower, — and this without mixture or confusion 
 in any way. 
 
 5. If you would attribute any thing to a soul which 
 is thus transformed and become God, it will refuse it 
 at once, not being able to find in itself any thing 
 which can be named, affirmed, or understood : it is 
 in a perfect negation. From this arises the difference 
 
 * He who is gifted with a heavenly proprium is also in tranquillity 
 and peace ; for he trusts in the Lord, and believes that nothing of evil 
 befalls him, and knows that concupiscences do not infest him. — A. C. 
 5660. 
 
 f Spiritual things with them [those of the most ancient church] 
 were altogether distinct from natural things, the former residing in 
 their spiritual mind, and the latter in their natural mind ; and hence 
 they did not immerse any thing spiritual in their natural mind, as is 
 the case with men who are spiritual natural. — A. E. 617. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 183 
 
 of the terms [applied to this state], and the use of 
 expressions which it is difficult to explain, except to 
 those who are in a similar condition. 
 
 This arises also from the fact, that, as the soul has 
 lost by its annihilation all that was proper to itself, 
 and God subsists within it, it can attribute nothing to 
 itself, any more than it can to God, because it no longer 
 knows any thing but Him alone, of Whom it can say 
 nothing. 
 
 6. Thus all is God to this soul ; for here the 
 question is no longer about seeing all things in God ; 
 for to see things is to distinguish them in Him. For 
 example : I see, in a chamber, what there is different 
 from the chamber itself, though included in it ; but if 
 every thing were transformed into this chamber, or 
 if every thing were taken from the chamber, I should 
 see nothing but the chamber itself. 
 
 All creatures, celestial, terrestrial, or pure intelli- 
 gences, — every thing disappears and vanishes, and 
 there remains nothing but God Himself as He was 
 before creation. The soul sees God only every- 
 where ; * and all is God to it, not in the way of 
 thought, view, light, f but by identity of state and 
 
 * In such a state were the most ancient people, who were celestial 
 men; for whatever they apprehended by any sense was to them a 
 medium of thinking concerning the things of the Lord, thus concern- 
 ing the Lord and His kingdom, and hence was the delight which they 
 derived from things worldly and terrestrial. — A. C. 3702. 
 
 | When man is in this state, he then begins to know innumerable 
 things, &c. Thence the light of truth from good increases immensely, 
 and becomes as a continuous lucidity ; for he is then in the light of 
 heaven, which is from the Lord. — A. C. 3833. 
 
184 
 
 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 consummation of unity ; and as this unity makes it 
 God by participation,* so that it is no longer able to 
 see itself, it also cannot see any thing [but God] any- 
 where. Hence such a soul would be as indifferent at 
 being for a whole eternity with devils as with angels. 
 Devils are to it as every thing else, and it is no longer 
 possible for it to see a created being out of the 
 uncreated ; for the uncreated essence alone is all and 
 in all, — all God ; as well in a devil as in a saint, 
 although in a different manner. f 
 
 7. But this is so real that it is impossible for the 
 soul to be otherwise. Accordingly, if all creatures 
 should join to condemn it, their censure would be a 
 thing of less account to it than a buzzing fly. This 
 would not be from obstinacy and firmness of will, as 
 people think, but from the impossibility of any longer 
 being concerned about itself, because it no longer sees 
 
 * All who are led by the Divine Providence of the Lord are 
 elevated from proprium, and then see that every good and truth is 
 from the Lord ; yea, they also see, that that which is from the Lord 
 in man is perpetually the Lord's, and never man's. — D. P. 316. 
 
 f In regard to the life of every one, whether man or spirit or 
 angel, it flows in solely from the Lord, who is life itself, and diffuses 
 Himself through the universal heaven, also through hell, thus into 
 every individual therein, and this in an incomprehensible order and 
 series ; but the life which flows in is received by every one according 
 to his character : good and truth is received as good and truth by the 
 good; whereas good and truth is received as evil and false by the 
 wicked, and is even changed into evil and the false in them. This 
 is comparatively as the light of the sun, which diffuses itself into all 
 objects of earth, but is received according to the quality of each 
 object, and becomes of a beautiful color in beautiful forms, and of an 
 ugly color in ugly forms. This is an arcanum in the world, but in 
 another life nothing is better known. — A. C. 2888. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 185 
 
 itself. You shall ask of this soul, What, I pray, dis- 
 poses you to do this thing and that ? Was it that God 
 directed you, and gave you to know or understand 
 His will ? — I know nothing ; I understand nothing ; 
 neither do I think about my knowing nothing ; * all is 
 God and God's will to me, and I no longer know 
 what God's will is, because that will has become, as 
 it were, natural to me. — But why do you do this 
 rather than that ? — I know not : I give myself up to 
 that which carries me along. — Well, why 1 — It car- 
 ries me along, because, my proper self having no longer 
 any being, I am carried along with God, and God 
 alone causes this movement. He goes that way ; He 
 acts, and I am but an instrument which I do not see 
 or look at. I no longer- have any interest separate 
 from Him, because, by losing myself, I have lost all 
 interest of my own ; accordingly, I am not capable of 
 understanding any reason, nor of giving any for my 
 conduct, for I no longer have any conduct.* I act, 
 however, infallibly, so long as I have no other prin- 
 ciple than the infallible principle. 
 
 This blind abandonment is a thing of state to the 
 soul I am speaking of ; because, having become one 
 and the same with God, it can see God only ; for, 
 having lost all dissimilarity, propriety, distinction, 
 
 * For they [angels in love to the Lord] see in themselves whether 
 the things which they hear are true or not, and they see this not 
 from any sight in the thought, like others, but from the affection of 
 truth in their understanding ; for all truths with them are inscribed 
 on their affections, which derive their essence from celestial love, 
 which is love to the Lord. Thus truths with them make one with their 
 affections. — A. E. 826. 
 13 
 
186 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 there is no longer room for abandonment, because to 
 abandon one's self one must needs be something, and 
 have the power of disposing of one's self.* 
 
 8. The soul I am speaking of is, by this state, lost 
 in God with Jesus Christ, as St. Paul says, — mingled 
 with Him, as the river I have spoken of is blended in 
 the sea, so that it finds itself no longer. It has the 
 ebb and flow of the sea, no longer by choice and will 
 and liberty, but by state, because, the boundless sea 
 having absorbed its scanty and limited waters, it 
 shares in all that is done by the sea, but without 
 being distinguished from the sea itself. It is the sea 
 that carries it along, and yet it is not carried along, 
 because it has lost all that is proper to it ; and having 
 no other movement than the sea, it acts as the sea 
 itself; not that by its nature it has these qualities, 
 but because, in losing all its proper qualities, it no 
 longer has any others than those of the sea, and can 
 never be any thing but the sea. 
 
 This does not mean, as I have said, that the soul 
 does not so retain its nature, that, if God willed, He 
 could not draw it forth in a moment from the sea, 
 though this is what He will not do. It does not lose its 
 nature as a creature, and God might cast it forth from 
 His divine bosom, but He does not do so. This crea- 
 ture, as we have said, acts then, in a manner, divinely. 
 
 9. But some one will say to me, — In this way you 
 take away from man his liberty. Not so ; he is now 
 
 * For man in genuine humiliation divests himself of all ability to 
 think and do any thing from himself, and leaves himself altogether 
 to the Divine, and thus accedes to the Divine. — A. C. 6866. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 187 
 
 without liberty by an excess of liberty, because he 
 has freely lost all created liberty. He shares in 
 the uncreated liberty, which is no longer narrowed, 
 limited, or confined, as regards any thing whatever.* 
 The soul is so free and so large, that the whole earth 
 appears to it only as a point, without its being con- 
 fined within it. It is free to do all things, and to do 
 nothing. There is no state or condition to which it 
 does not adapt itself; it can do all, and can do 
 nothing that other men do. 
 
 10. Oh, wonderful state ! who can describe thee, f 
 and what is it thou canst fear and apprehend 1 Loss, 
 death, damnation ? — Thou hast said, O holy Paul ! 
 " Who shall ever be able to separate us from the love 
 of Jesus Christ ? " " We are confident/' says this 
 great saint, " that neither death, nor life, nor princi- 
 palities, nor powers, &c, shall be able to separate us 
 therefrom," Rom. viii. 35, 38. Now, this expression, 
 " we are confident," excludes all doubt. Well, great 
 saint, where was thy confidence ? — It was in the 
 infallibility of God Himself. J — Frequently as the let- 
 
 * Freedom derived from the proprium is to indulge in all kinds of 
 pleasures, to despise others in comparison with one's self, to subject 
 them to himself as servants. But when he loses this freedom, he 
 then receives from the Lord heavenly freedom, which is a thing 
 altogether unknown to those who are in freedom derived from the 
 proprium. — A. C. 5786. 
 
 | The perceptions of the celestial man can never be described ; for 
 they extend to the most minute and particular things, with all 
 variety, according to states and circumstances. — A. C. 521. 
 
 X It is an eternal truth that the Lord governs heaven and earth; 
 also, that no one lives from himself, except the Lord; consequently, 
 that the all of life flows in, good of life from the Lord, and evil of 
 
188 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 ters of this great apostle, this mystical doctor, are 
 read by the world, it yet does not understand them, 
 although the whole mystic way, its beginning, its 
 progress, and its end, are described therein, and even 
 the divine life itself — the world does not understand 
 these things in them, but a person to whom the under- 
 standing of them has been imparted sees them there 
 plainer than the day. 
 
 11. Oh ! if the men who find it so hard to give 
 themselves up to God, could but experience this, they 
 would acknowledge, that, although the way which led 
 to it was extremely hard, one single day of this state 
 well rewards so many years of suffering. — But by 
 what route does God lead men thither 1 — By ways 
 quite the opposite to those we imagine for ourselves. 
 He builds by casting down ; He gives life by taking it 
 away. 
 
 Oh, if I could only tell what He does, and the won- 
 derful methods He makes use of to reach this point ! 
 But I must be silent, — man cannot receive it, — those 
 who are in this state can understand me.* Here 
 
 life from hell. This is the faith of the heavens : when man is in this 
 faith, in which he may be when in good, then evil cannot be affixed 
 and appropriated to him, because he knows that it is not from him- 
 self, but from hell. When man is in this state, he can then be gifted 
 with power; for then he will trust solely in the Lord. — A. C. 6325. 
 
 * But these things, although they are clear to those who are in 
 the light of heaven, are still obscure to those who are in the light of 
 the world; thus to most persons at this day, and perhaps so obscure 
 as to be scarcely intelligible. Nevertheless, inasmuch as these things 
 are treated of in the internal sense, and are of such a nature, the 
 opening of them is not to be dispensed with : a time is about to come 
 when there will be illustration. — A. C. 4402. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 189 
 
 there is no more need of place or of time ;* every 
 thing is alike ; all places are good, so that if the order 
 of God should lead them into Turkey, such persons 
 would find themselves as much at ease there as else- 
 where, all means being now useless, since the soul 
 has infinitely surpassed them. Being eminently in 
 the end, there is nothing more to be looked for.f 
 
 12. Here all is God; God is everywhere, and in 
 all ; and thus the soul is equal in all. Its prayer is 
 God Himself ; J always equal, never interrupted, — 
 although the soul does not perceive it otherwise than 
 by a state of consistence ;§ and if, at times, God 
 diffuses some overflowing of His glory over its facul- 
 
 * When man is in a state of love or of heavenly affection, he is 
 then in an angelic state, namely, as it were, not in time, if there be 
 no impatience in the affection ; for impatience is a corporeal affection, 
 and so far as man is in it, so far he is in time ; but so far as a man is 
 not in it, so far he is not in time. This is manifest in a sort of image 
 from all the joy and gladness which are of affection, in that, when 
 man is in them, time does not appear to him ; for he is then in the 
 internal man. The affection of genuine love withdraws man from 
 corporeal and worldly objects ; for it elevates his mind towards heaven, 
 and thus withdraws it from the things of time. — A. C. 3827. 
 
 •j- He who has arrived at spiritual good has no more need of doctri- 
 nals, which are from others, for he is in the end whither he was 
 tending, and no longer in the means; and doctrinals are nothing else 
 but the means of arriving at good as the end. — A. C. 5997. 
 
 X For the Lord's Divine Human is all worship and all doctrine, 
 insomuch that it is worship itself, and doctrine itself. — A. C. 2811. 
 
 § But as to what concerns divine worship from celestial good, such 
 as is with those who are in the Lord's celestial kingdom, it is not 
 effected by confessions, adorations, and prayers, of the same quality 
 with those who are in the spiritual kingdom; thus not by truths from 
 the memory, but by truths from the heart, which act as one with the 
 love itself in which they are. — A. C. 10,295. 
 
190 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 ties and senses, it works no change in this inmost 
 state, which ever continues the same. Mary, who 
 possessed this state in a degree more perfect than any 
 creature can have it, was indifferent about remaining 
 or not remaining on earth after the ascension of her 
 Son. And she would have remained thus throughout 
 eternity, if such had been the good pleasure of God. 
 Such a soul is not concerned about solitude, or inter- 
 course with the world ; all is alike to it. It is no 
 longer desirous of being delivered from the body, in 
 order to be united to God without a medium. In this 
 state it is not only united, but transformed ; changed 
 into the object of its love, which causes that it no 
 longer thinks about loving. For it loves God, Who 
 is love from Himself, and by state, although this 
 state is not such that it is impossible to be lost. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 1, 2. Perfect union, or Deiformity, explained by a comparison. 3 — 5. These 
 souls, apparently ordinary and despised, are of great value, as also their 
 actions ; but they are few in number, and of different degrees. 6, 7. The 
 secrets of God are manifested to these hidden souls, and by them to others. 
 8, 9. Permanence and growth of this state, although unequally. 10, 11. 
 All proper capacity is to be lost ; the capacity, participated from God by 
 transformation, grows boundlessly. 
 
 1. There occurs to me a comparison which seems 
 to me well suited to the subject, taken from grain. 
 The good is first separated from the bad, — whereby 
 is indicated conversion and separation from sin. After 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 191 
 
 the grain is thus separate and pure, it must be ground 
 by affliction, crosses, diseases, &c. When it is thus 
 ground and reduced to flour, it is still necessary to 
 remove from it, not impurities, for they exist no 
 longer ; but all that is coarse, which is the bran. 
 When there remains nothing but the finest flour, 
 purified from every thing foreign, we make bread of 
 it by kneading. It seems as if, in this operation, we 
 were defiling the flour, making it dark and dingy, and 
 taking from it its delicacy and whiteness ; and this, 
 only to make of it a pastry which is by no means as 
 beautiful in appearance as the flour was. Subsequent- 
 ly, this pastry is put to the fire. It must fare even so 
 with such souls. But, after the bread is baked, it is 
 destined for the king's mouth, who not only unites it 
 to himself by kneading it, but eats, digests, consumes, 
 and annihilates it, and so changes it into himself, and 
 causes it to pass into his own substance. 
 
 You will observe, that it is not enough that the 
 bread is handled and eaten even by the king, though 
 this is the very highest privilege it could enjoy, and 
 the end for which it is destined. It cannot be 
 changed into his substance, unless it is annihilated by 
 digestion, and thereby loses all its own proper form 
 and quality. 
 
 2. This comparison serves well to express all the 
 states of the soul, — that of union and the great differ- 
 ence .between it and transformation, in which, the soul, 
 in order to become one with God and be transformed 
 and changed into Him, must, of necessity, be not only 
 eaten, but digested, that thus, after losing all that is 
 
192 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 properly its own, it may become one and the same 
 thing with God ! 
 
 This state is very little known ; * for which reason, 
 it is not much spoken of.f O state of life ! how 
 strait is the way that leads to thee ! O love, purest of 
 all," since thou art God Himself! O love, boundless 
 and independent, incapable of being limited by any 
 thing whatsoever ! 
 
 3. Notwithstanding, these souls appear as if they 
 were very ordinary, as I have said, because they have 
 nothing in the exterior to distinguish them, except a 
 boundless liberty, which often scandalizes souls limited 
 and confined within themselves ; to whom, inasmuch 
 as they see nothing better than what they have, all 
 which they possess not themselves seems to be bad. 
 But the liberty they condemn in these souls, so sim- 
 ple and so innocent, is a holiness incomparably more 
 eminent than all that they believe holy. It is thus 
 we are to understand the passage which says, " that 
 the iniquity of a man is of more worth than a woman 
 who does well," Ecclus. xlii. 14 ; because the appa- 
 rent faults of these persons, who alone can deserve to 
 
 * The arcanum which here [Gen. xxix. 7] lies hid is, that there 
 are few who ever arrive at a full state (concerning which state see 
 n. 2636), and thus who can be regenerated. — A. C. 3787. 
 
 f But as these subjects are of such a nature, that they transcend 
 the apprehension of the natural man, and cannot be seen except in the 
 light in which the rational or internal man is, in which light few at 
 this day are, because few are regenerated, therefore it is better to 
 illustrate them no further, inasmuch as the illustration, unknown and 
 transcending the apprehension, is not to bring them into light, but 
 more into the shade. — A. C. 3596. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 193 
 
 be considered as men, are of more worth than the 
 good deeds of others, effeminate in comparison with 
 them, who do good so feebly, though in appearance 
 so fervently ; because the works of the latter have no 
 more power than the principle from which they spring, 
 which is nothing but the endeavor of a weak creature 
 — although an endeavor exalted and ennobled [by 
 grace]. But souls perfected in the Divine Unity act 
 in God, from a principle of boundless power ; and so 
 their small actions are more acceptable to God than 
 the many heroic actions of others, which appear so 
 great before men. 
 
 4. This is the reason why souls of this degree are 
 not concerned, and do not seek to do any great things, 
 being satisfied to be as they are each moment. What 
 wert thou doing, O Mary, on earth, after the ascension 
 of thy Son ? Wert thou pressed with anxiety to con- 
 vert many souls — to do great things 1 — Such a soul 
 does more, without doing any thing, towards convert- 
 ing a kingdom, than fi.Ye hundred preachers who are 
 not in this state. Mary did more for the church 
 while she did nothing, than all the apostles together. 
 I do not mean that God does not often permit these 
 souls to be known : this is by no means so, since very 
 many persons are directed to them, to whom they 
 communicate a vivifying principle, thereby winning 
 many others to Jesus Christ. But this is done with- 
 care or anxiety, by mere Providence. 
 
 Oh ! if men knew the glory which these persons, 
 often the offscouring of the world, render to God, 
 they would be astonished and delighted. For it is 
 
194 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 properly they who render to God a glory worthy of 
 God, without thinking about doing so, because, God 
 acting in them in God, He derives from Himself in 
 them a glory worthy of Himself.* 
 
 5. Oh, how many souls, quite seraphic in appear- 
 ance, are far distant from this state ! Still, there are 
 in this state, as in all the others, souls more or less 
 divine. The divine Mary was privileged above all ; 
 next to her, many progress in this state more or less, 
 according to the design of God. Those who reach it 
 in the present life, reach it, usually, only a little before 
 death, except it be that God, wishing to make use of 
 them and to do wonders by them, should, for some 
 special end, advance them in this way. Such cases, 
 however, are exceedingly rare.f 
 
 6. For God hides them in His bosom and under the 
 exterior of the most ordinary life, that they may be 
 known to Himself alone, although they are His favored 
 ones. Here the secrets of Gcd in Himself, and of 
 Himself in these pure creatures, are manifested, not 
 in the way of speech, view, light, but by the know- 
 
 * The Divine cannot look at any thing else than the Divine, and 
 cannot look at that elsewhere than in things created from itself. Hence 
 it is that the Lord is so conjoined to man, spirit, and angel, that every 
 thing which has relation to the Divine is not from them, but from the 
 Lord. In a word, the Lord cannot have an abode, and dwell with 
 man and angel, except in His own, and not in their proprium; for 
 this is evil.— D. P. 53. 
 
 f They who are regenerating do not all arrive at this [the celes- 
 tial] state, but some, and the greatest part at this day only to 
 the first; some only to the second; some to the third, fourth, and 
 fifth; few to the sixth; and scarcely any one to the seventh. — 
 A.C. 13. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 195 
 
 ledge of God dwelling in them.^' And when such 
 a soul is to write or speak, it is itself astonished 
 that all flows from this divine depth, without its ever 
 having thought that it possessed such things, f It 
 finds in itself, as it were, a deep [well] of knowledge, 
 without memory or recollection, like an invaluable 
 treasure which one does not observe until he is under 
 the necessity of manifesting it, when the manifesta- 
 tion of it to others is the manifestation of it to the 
 soul itself. X 
 
 When such a soul writes, it is astonished to find 
 that it writes of things it does not know, and did not 
 believe itself to be acquainted with, though it cannot 
 doubt that it really possesses them in writing them.§ 
 
 * They who are in good from truth look through truths upward to 
 the Lord ; but they who are in good, and thence in truth, are in the 
 Lord, and from Him look at truths. — A. C. 8771. 
 
 f That in the good of love, which flows in from the Lord through 
 the angels, there is all truth, which truth would manifest itself from 
 itself, if man lived in love to the Lord, and love towards the neighbor, 
 is manifest not only from those things which exist in heaven, but also 
 from those which exist in inferior nature. — A. C. 6323. 
 
 f In the interior man is the good which continually flows in from 
 the Lord, and there conjoins itself with truths, and makes them to be 
 faith, and next to be charity. When, therefore, these truths are con- 
 joined to good, then man is regenerated; for then he no longer 
 looks from truths at what is to be believed and what is to be done, 
 but from good, because he is imbued with truths; and has them in 
 himself. — A. C. 8772. 
 
 § Ey Adam and his wife is understood the most ancient church, 
 which was a celestial church. The men of that church, being prin- 
 cipled in love to the Lord, had divine truths inscribed upon them, and 
 thence knew from influx the things corresponding in the natural man, 
 which are called scientifics ; in a word, with the men of that church 
 spiritual influx had place, which is from the spiritual mind into the 
 
196 SPIRITUAL TOEJEtENTS. 
 
 This is not the case with others : their lights precede 
 their experience. They are like persons who see at a 
 distance things they do not possess, and who describe 
 things they have seen, known, understood, &c.-* But 
 the soul we are speaking of is like one who contains 
 a treasure within himself; it does not see it until 
 after its manifestation, although it has all along pos- 
 sessed it. 
 
 7. This does not, however, still express well my 
 meaning. God is in this soul, or rather the soul no 
 longer is, — it acts no longer ; but God acts, and it is 
 the instrument.! God comprehends in Himself all 
 treasures, and causes them to be manifested by this 
 soul to others ; and then, in drawing them from its 
 inmosts, it knows that they were there, although, by 
 being lost to itself, it could never have reflected upon 
 them. I am sure that any soul in this degree will 
 understand me, and know very well the difference 
 
 natural, and thus into the things which are therein, which things they 
 saw according to their quality, as in a mirror, from correspondence. — 
 A.C. 617. 
 
 * That they who are of the Lord's spiritual church are interiorly 
 natural, is because they only acknowledge that for truth which they 
 have imbibed from parents and masters, and afterwards have them- 
 selves confirmed with themselves, and do not see inwardly and per- 
 ceive whether truth be from any other source than from this, that 
 they have confirmed it with themselves. It is otherwise with the 
 celestial: hence it is that the latter are rational, but the former 
 interiorly natural. — A. C. 6240. 
 
 | It is known in the learned world that the principal cause and 
 the instrumental act together as one cause ; man, inasmuch as he is a 
 form recipient of the Lord's life, is an instrumental cause, but life 
 from the Lord is the principal cause ; this latter life is felt in the 
 instrumental as its life, when yet it is not its. — A. C. 6325. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 1 97 
 
 between this and other states. The first sees these 
 things and enjoys them as we enjoy the sun; the 
 second has become the sun himself, which does not 
 enjoy nor think upon his own light. * 
 
 8. This state is very permanent, and there is no 
 change as to the inmost of it, except an increased pro- 
 gress in God. And, as God is infinite, He can divinize 
 a soul ever more and more, and that by enlarging its 
 capacity. Mary, as I have said elsewhere, was 
 entirely filled with grace at her first conception. And 
 this is well discovered to the soul. She was in the 
 fulness of God when she conceived the "Word, and 
 yet she grew almost boundlessly until her death. — 
 How, if she was full, as the angel assures us, could 
 she be filled yet more 1 — It was because God enlarged 
 her capacity every day, losing her and expanding her 
 in Himself, as the water we have spoken of spreads 
 itself ever wide and wider in proportion as it is lost 
 in the sea, in which it is perpetually abyssing itself, 
 without ever going forth from it. 
 
 9. God deals in like manner with these souls. All 
 who are in this degree have God, but some more, 
 others less. They are all in a state of fulness, but 
 they are not all in an equal amount of fulness. A 
 small vessel, when full, is as much filled as a large 
 one ; but it does not contain as much. The case is 
 
 * For the men of the celestial church are such, that they perceive 
 all the truths and goods of heaven from the Lord by influx into their 
 interiors; whence they see goods and truths inwardly in themselves, 
 as implanted, and have no need to learn them by a posterior way, or 
 to treasure them up in their memory. — A. E. 739. 
 
198 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 the same with these souls : they all have the fulness of 
 God, but according to the capacity of receiving, and 
 thus there are those to whom God enlarges this capa- 
 city daily. For this reason, the more souls live in 
 this divine state the more they are ennobled, their 
 capacity becoming continually more immense, without 
 there being any thing for them either to desire or to 
 do. For they always have God in fulness, God never 
 allowing a moment's void in them; for, in proportion 
 as He increases and enlarges, in the same proportion 
 He fills with Himself. It is the same as with the air ; 
 a small apartment is full of air, but a large one con- 
 tains more air; enlarge this apartment more and 
 more, and just in that degree, infallibly though imper- 
 ceptibly, the air will always be getting admission. 
 In the same manner, without change of state or of 
 disposition, and without feeling any thing new, the 
 soul increases in fulness and largeness. But the capa- 
 city of the soul can never be increased in this manner, 
 except by annihilation, because, up to this time, the 
 soul has a repugnance to being enlarged. 
 
 10. It is well to explain here a point of some 
 importance, which is, that there is an apparent con- 
 tradiction in my saying that the soul must be annihi- 
 lated in order to pass into God, and lose what is 
 proper to it, while yet I speak of a certain capacity 
 which it retains. 
 
 There are two capacities. The one is proper to the 
 creature, and this capacity is small and limited : when 
 purified, it is adapted to receive the gifts of God, but 
 not God Himself; because what we receive in ourselves 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 199 
 
 is less than ourselves, as what is confined in a vessel 
 is less extended, although more precious, than the 
 vessel which receives it. 
 
 But the capacity I am now speaking of is a capacity 
 of being extended, and of becoming lost continually 
 more and more in God. This has place after the soul 
 has lost that propriety which fixed it in itself, and 
 when, being no longer held back or straitened in 
 itself (because its annihilation,* by taking from it all 
 particular form, has disposed it to flow into God, so 
 that it loses itself, and flows abroad in Him who can- 
 not be comprehended), the more it abysses itself in 
 Him, the more it extends itself and becomes boundless, 
 sharing in His perfections.! 
 
 11. It is a capacity of ever growing and extending 
 
 * Regeneration is nothing else than for the natural to be subju- 
 gated, and the spiritual to obtain the dominion; and the natural is 
 then subjugated when it is reduced to correspondence ; and, when the 
 natural is reduced to correspondence, it then no longer reacts, but 
 acts as it is commanded, and obeys the dictates of the spiritual in 
 nearly the same manner as the acts of the body obey the dictates of 
 the will, and as the speech with the countenance is according to the 
 influx of the thought. Hence it is evident that the natural ought 
 altogether to become as nothing in respect to willing, in order that 
 man may become spiritual. — A. C. 5651. 
 
 •f When it [the old natural] has become as nothing, then man is 
 gifted with a new natural, which is called the spiritual natural : it 
 is called spiritual from this, because the spiritual is what acts by 
 or through it, and manifests itself by it as the cause by the effect. 
 When this is the case, man then receives good from the. Lord; and, 
 when he receives good, he is gifted with truths ; and, when he is gifted 
 with truths, he is perfected in intelligence and wisdom ; and, when he 
 is perfected in intelligence and wisdom, he is blessed with happiness 
 to eternity.— A. C. 5651. 
 
200 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 more and more in God, being able to be transformed 
 into Him in an ever-increasing degree, just as water, 
 joined to its source, blends with it ever more and 
 more. 
 
 God being our original, He has created us with a 
 nature such that it can be united and transformed so 
 as to make one with Himself. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 1, 2. The first impulses of these souls are all divine. They have no more 
 reflections, and why. 3 — 5. Their sufferings are without reflection, but 
 by impression. 6—8. The greatness of these sufferings, which, however, 
 do not impair their repose or contentment, by reason of their deification, 
 which grows boundlessly but gradually. 9 — 12. Neither goods nor evils 
 can any longer impair their peace, just as God is neither troubled nor 
 changed by His sight of men's sins, because all redounds to His glory. 
 
 1. The soul, then, has nothing to do here but to 
 remain as it is, and to follow, without resistance, all 
 the impulses of its mover. All its first impulses in 
 this state are from God,*' and constitute His infallible 
 leading.f This is not the case in the lower states, 
 
 * For the truths with them [those of the Lord's celestial kingdom] 
 are inscribed on their love : wherefore, when they do from love what is 
 prescribed, they do it at the same time from truths, without any 
 thought concerning them from what is doctrinal, thus without calling 
 them forth from the memory. — A. C. 10,295. 
 
 f With respect to perception of good and truth in things celestial 
 and spiritual, the interior angels have this from the Lord, and the 
 men of the most ancient church had it, and the celestial have it who 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 201 
 
 except after the soul has begun to taste and delight in 
 its centre : but even then it is not so infallible ; and 
 any one who should observe this rule, without being 
 in this highly advanced state, would be likely to go 
 astray. 
 
 2. This, then, is the way in which such a soul is 
 led, viz., by following, blindly and without leading, 
 the impulses which are from God, without reflection. 
 Here all reflection is banished, and the soul would 
 find difficulty in resorting to it, even if it desired to 
 do so. But since it might perhaps, by making the ef- 
 fort, succeed in this, reflections must be shunned above 
 every thing else ; because reflection is the only thing 
 capable of leading man back into himself, and taking 
 him out of God. Now I say, that, if man does not go 
 forth from God, he will never sin ; and that, if he does 
 sin, it is because he has gone forth from Him, which 
 can only be done by propriety. The soul cannot 
 return into itself except by reflection, which would be 
 a hell like that which befell the first angel, who, in 
 looking at himself with complacency, instead of con- 
 sidering what he owed to God, loved himself, and 
 became a devil.* And this state would be so much 
 the more horrible, as the other should be more 
 advanced. 
 
 are in love to the Lord: they know instantly, by a certain internal 
 animadvertence, whether a thing be good and whether it be true; for 
 the Lord insinuates this, inasmuch as they are conjoined to the Lord 
 by love. — A. C. 2831. 
 
 * With respect to the state of a man of the church, the case is this: 
 during the progress of regeneration, he learns truth for the sake of 
 
 14 
 
202 SPIRITUAL TOBEENT8. 
 
 3. It will be objected, that, according to this, there 
 can be no suffering in this state — (there is none as to 
 the interior, but there may be as to the senses, as I 
 have said) — because, it will be said, there must be 
 reflection in order to suffering, and it is reflection 
 which constitutes the principal and most painful part 
 of suffering. All this is true in a certain sense ; and, 
 as it is the fact that souls far inferior to these suffer, 
 at one time in the way of reflection, and at another in 
 the way of impression, it is to be understood that 
 those of this degree cannot suffer otherwise than by 
 impression. This does not hinder that the pain 
 undergone is without limits, and much more severe 
 than that which results from reflection; just as one 
 burnt by having the fire impressed upon him would 
 feel it more sensibly than one who should be burnt 
 by reflection from the fire.* 
 
 good, for he has the affection of truth to this intent; but, after he is 
 regenerated, he then acts from truth and good. When he is arrived 
 at this state, he ought not to betake himself to his former state; for, if 
 he should do this, he would reason (ratiocinate) from truth concerning 
 the good in which he is, and would thereby pervert his state; for all 
 reasoning (ratiocination) ceases, and ought to cease, when man is in 
 a state to will what is true and good; for then he thinks and acts 
 from the will, consequently from conscience, and not from the under- 
 standing as before; and, if he should from this again, he would fall 
 into temptations and sink therein. — A. C. 3652. 
 
 * There are several kinds of temptations, which in general may 
 be divided into the celestial, spiritual, and natural ; and these ought 
 never to be confounded with each other. Celestial temptations can 
 have no place except with those who are principled in love towards 
 the Lord; and spiritual temptations with those only who are in charity 
 towards their neighbor. — A. C. 847. 
 
SPIRITUAL TORKENTS. 203 
 
 4. But it is asked, — Will not God direct their 
 thoughts by the way of reflection so as to make them 
 suffer more ? — God will not do this in the way of 
 reflection. He may show them in a moment what 
 they must suffer ; but it will be by a direct sight, not 
 accompanied with self-reflection, — just as beatified 
 spirits see in God what is in Himself, and what 
 takes place out of Him in the creatures and in them- 
 selves, without exercising self-regard or self-reflection, 
 but continuing firmly attached, abyssed, and lost in 
 God.* 
 
 5. This is a point as to which many spiritual per- 
 sons are deceived, since they believe that nothing can 
 be known or suffered except by reflection. On the 
 contrary, the knowledges and sufferings of this kind 
 are very light in comparison with the others. 
 
 6. All suffering that is distinguished and knows 
 itself, although commonly expressed in such high 
 terms, does not equal that of these souls, who do not 
 know their sufferings, and who cannot assert that 
 they suffer, because of the great separation of the 
 two parts. It is both true that they suffer extreme 
 anguish, and that they suffer nothing, and are in a 
 state of perfect contentment. I believe that if such 
 a soul were led into hell, it would endure its cruel 
 
 * For God is everywhere, and yet not in space ; wherefore, He is 
 as well within as without an angel, and hence an angel can see Grod; 
 that is, the Lord, both within and without himself, — within, when he 
 thinks from love and wisdom; without, when he thinks of love and 
 wisdom. — D.L.W. 130. 
 
204 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 pains in this manner, in complete contentment ; not 
 contentment caused by a sight of the good pleasure 
 of God, but an essential contentment by reason of the 
 blessedness of its transformed interior. It is this 
 which makes these souls indifferent as regards all 
 states. This does not prevent, as I have said, extreme 
 suffering, as extreme suffering does not prevent per- 
 fect happiness. Those who have experienced this, 
 can well understand it. 
 
 7. It is not here as in the passive state of love, in 
 which the soul is so rilled with sweetness, or with 
 love for suffering and for the good pleasure of God. 
 This is not at all the case. This state comes about 
 by a loss of all things in God ; by a state of deifica- 
 tion, in which all is God, without the soul's seeing 
 that it is so. The soul is established by state in its 
 sovereign good, without change. It is in a deep- 
 seated beatitude, where nothing can cross its perfect 
 happiness, when that happiness is from a permanent 
 state; for many enjoy it transitorily, previous to 
 having it by permanent state. God gives, in the 
 first place, the light of this state, and next, the delight 
 of it ; at length, He gives it in the way of confused 
 perception, not distinct ; next, He gives the state 
 itself, in a permanent manner, and establishes the soul 
 in it for ever. 
 
 8. I shall be told that, the soul being established in 
 this state, there is nothing further for it to do. The 
 fact is just the other way ; there is always a bound- 
 less work to be done on the side of God, though not 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 205 
 
 on that of the creature. God does not divinize the 
 soul all at once, but by little and little ; and then, as 
 has been said, He increases the capacity of the soul, 
 which He can always deify more and more, since He is 
 an unfathomable abyss. 
 
 " O God ! how great is Thy goodness which Thou 
 hast laid up for those who fear (Ps. xxxi. 19) and 
 who love Thee I" It was the sight of this state which 
 made David cry out so often after he was purified 
 from his sin. 
 
 9. These souls can no longer be astonished, either 
 at any grace that is related to them, or at any sin that 
 may be committed, since they know thoroughly both 
 the goodness of God which causes the one, and the 
 wickedness of man which is the source of the other. 
 The whole world might perish without their being 
 troubled by it, if God did not impress this concern 
 upon them. Are they, then, no longer jealous for the 
 honor of God, since they no longer afflict themselves 
 at the sins which are committed by the world ? No ; 
 by no means. They are jealous for the glory of God 
 as God Himself is. 
 
 God is, of necessity, obliged to love His own 
 glory more than any other can ; and all that He does 
 in Himself, and out of Himself in others, He does in 
 reference to Himself. Nevertheless, He cannot be 
 displeased at the sins of the whole world,*' nor at the 
 
 * The Lord is as far from cursing and being angry with any one 
 as heaven is from earth. Who can believe that the Lord, who is 
 omniscient and omnipotent, and rules the universe in wisdom, and is 
 
206 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 
 
 ruin of all men, although, in order that He might 
 save them all, He was incarnate, and took a suffering 
 and mortal body, and laid down His life. These 
 souls also would give a thousand lives to save them, 
 because God, Who has transformed them, has made 
 them share in His own qualities,* and they see it all 
 as God does. And although God does truly desire 
 the salvation of all men, and gives to them all the 
 grace necessary for their salvation, — although, by 
 their own fault, that grace is not always effectual, — 
 He yet does not fail to derive glory from their ruin. 
 For it is impossible that God should permit any thing 
 whatever in which He is not necessarily glorified, 
 either in the way of justice or of mercy. This, 
 indeed, is not the intention of him who transgresses 
 against God ; for he does Him thereby an active dis- 
 honor ; but still on God's side there is no passive 
 dishonor, and it must needs be that the transgressor's 
 own sin should, against his own will, redound to the 
 glory of God.f 
 
 thus infinitely above all infirmities, is angry with such miserable 
 dust, — that is, with men, who scarce know any thing that they do, 
 and can do nothing of themselves but what is evil! Wherefore 
 with the Lord there is never to be angry, but to be merciful.— 
 A. C. 1093. 
 
 * The nature and quality of the Lord's love transcends all 
 human understanding, and is more especially incredible to those who 
 do not know what the celestial love is, in which the angels are. Those 
 angels, for the sake of saving a soul from hell, make no account of 
 death ; yea, if it was in their power, they would endure hell for such 
 a soul.— A. C. 2077. 
 
 t For such is the state and such is the equilibrium of all things in 
 
SPIRITUAL TORRENTS. 207 
 
 11. Although God, from His nature, cannot be 
 offended, he who offends Him deserves boundless 
 punishment, by reason of the wicked will which he 
 has to offend and dishonor this infinite Goodness. If 
 he does not effect this as regards God, he yet always 
 does it as far as his own action and will are con- 
 cerned ; and this will is so malignant, that, if it could 
 take from God His divinity, it would do so.* It is, 
 therefore, this malignant will on the part of the sub- 
 ject which makes the guilt, and not the action ; for if 
 a person whose will is lost, abyssed, and transformed 
 in God, were reduced by absolute necessity to commit 
 deeds of sin, — as certain tyrants compelled the virgin 
 martyrs to do, — they would do them without sin. 
 This is plain. 
 
 12. But to return : I say that these souls can have 
 no concern about sin, because, although they hate it 
 without bounds, they are no longer painfully affected 
 
 another life, that evil returns upon him who does it, and becomes the 
 evil of punishment, and that it is inevitable. This is called its per- 
 mission for the sake of the amendment of evil: still, however, the 
 Lord turns all the evil of punishment into good, so that nothing but 
 good is from the Lord. — A. C. 592. 
 
 * These two loves [the love of self, and the love of the world] 
 increase, so far as the reins are given them, and so far as man is 
 advanced into them ; and at length they increase beyond measure, so 
 that they not only desire to govern all in their own kingdom, but also 
 beyond its borders, even to the ends of the earth : yea, those loves, 
 when they are unrestrained, ascend even to the God of the universe; 
 that is, to such a height that they who are in them wish to climb 
 into the throne of God, and to be worshipped instead of God Him- 
 self.— A. C. 7375. 
 
208 
 
 SPIRITUAL TORRENTS, 
 
 by the sight of it since they see it as God sees it. 
 And although, were it needful for them to give their 
 own life to prevent the commission of a single sin, 
 they would do it, if God so willed, yet this is without 
 action, without desires, without inclination, without 
 choice, without eagerness on their side, — all in a per- 
 fect state of death, in which they no longer see things 
 save as God sees them, and no longer judge of them 
 save as He judges. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 \iM