Section 1f

When wanton women see a man sitting alone, the man is overcome. They fondle him and pollute him. When wanton men see a beautiful woman sitting alone, they overcome her, and she is violated and polluted. But when spirits see a man and his wife sitting together, the female spirits cannot enter the male, nor the male the woman. When the image and angel are joined, none can force themselves on the man and woman. LEAVING THE WORLD When you leave the world, nothing can stop you because you were in the world. You are above desire and fear. You are master of envy. If someone does not leave the world, the forces grab and choke him. How can one escape those great grasping rulers? How can one hide from them? Some say, “We were faithful,” to escape the filthy spirits and demons. But if they had the holy spirit, nothing filthy would cleave to them. Have no fear of the flesh. Don’t love it. If you are fearful, it will gain mastery over you. If you love the flesh, it will swallow and paralyze you. IN THIS WORLD OR THE RESURRECTION Either someone will be in this world or in the resurrection or in the middle place. God forbid that I be found in the middle! In this world there is good and evil. Its good is not good, and evil not evil. But there is evil after this world that is truly evil—which is called the middle. The middle is death. While we are in this world it is best to acquire resurrection for ourselves so when we strip off the flesh we may rest and not walk in the middle. Many go astray on the way. WILL AND SIN It is good to leave the world before one has sinned. Some have neither the will nor the ability to act. Others, even if they have the will, are better off if they do not act, for the act of the will makes them sinners. But even if they have no will to act, justice may be concealed from them, whether they have the will or not. Will, not action, is always primary. HELL A messenger in a vision saw people locked up in a house of fire and bound with fiery chains, lying in a flaming ointment. He asked them, “Why can’t they be saved?” “We did not desire it,” they told the messenger, “but we got this place of punishment. It is the outer darkness, and we are in it.” KINDS OF FIRE Soul and spirit came into being from water and fire. From water and fire and light came the attendant in the bridal chamber. Fire is chrism. Light is fire. I am not referring to flame, which has no form, but to another kind of fire, whose appearance is white, which is luminous and beautiful and gives beauty. TRUTH AND NAKEDNESS Truth didn’t come into the world naked but in types and images. Truth is received only that way. There is rebirth and its image. They must be reborn through image. What is the resurrection? Image must rise again through image. The bridegroom and image enter through image into truth, which is restoration. It is right that those who don’t have it take on the name of the father and son and the holy spirit. But they have not done so on their own. If you do not take on the names for yourself, the name “Christian” will be taken from you. You receive them in the oil of the chrism, the aromatic unction of the power of the cross. The messengers called this power “the right and left.” You are no longer a Christian but Christ. FIVE SACRAMENTS The lord did everything through mystery: baptism and a chrism and a eucharist and a redemption and a bridal chamber.