Heavenly body

“ If only we thus address our-selves in the proper spirit, according to the right method, to this ceaseless quest of the Eternal One, how in a single moment we feel we are transformed! This so-called fleshly body, with its encumbrance of bone and muscle and skin and what not, becomes the holy temple in which the Spirit is enshrined; and, as one keen-sighted thinker suggests, when we touch the human body with the right sentiment, we really touch the hem of His garment, the sacred garb of the Divine. ”

“ She actually saw God enfolding all things. "For as the body is clad in the cloth, and the flesh in the skin, and the bones in the flesh, and the heart in the whole, so are we, soul and body, clad in the Goodness of God, and enclosed." ”

“ The natural is visible in nature, but the spiritual is always existing, for "there is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God," hence the soul-form, without the material body, but in its spiritual organized body, will do so. ”

“ It is a solemn and impressive fact, that within each of our material frames is a spiritual and immortal body, receiving its daily and hourly sustenance from the spiritual world; a body which lives and grows upon the food of angels, or the food of devils. ”

“ Earth borrows light and heat from the sun, the body borrows Life and Intelligence from Soul. As earth is opaque, having no light of her own, so the body material is a lifeless, unintelligent belief; but the spiritual body reflects Life, Love and Truth. ”

“ His body was now a nobler, a more beautiful, a glorified body, a spiritual body, one which could do whatever His Spirit chose to make it do, one which could never die again, one which could come through closed doors, appear and vanish as He liked, instead of being bound to walk the earth, and stand cold and heat, sickness and weariness. ”

“ They pertain rather to the spiritual than the material department of this being; so that when my body is brought to a certain condition of development, it becomes receptive by a sort of induction of new conditions. Certain relations are established between my body and spirit. My body depends upon certain things for nourishment, and my spirit depends upon my body for certain assistance. These relations make my body subject to a law of consciousness ”

“ The body and life principle. The mystery of life. Sleep and death are due to excess of life not bearable by the organism. The body an illusion. What is the cell. Life is universal. It is not the result of the organism. The Astral Body. What it is made of. Its powers and functions. As a model for the body. It is possessed by all kingdoms of nature. Its power to travel. The real sense organs are in the astral body. The place the astral body has at spiritualistic séances. The astral body accounts for telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience, and all such psychical phenomena. ”

“ After the body and spirit are separated by death, what, pertaining to this earth, shall we receive first? The body; that is the first object of a divine affection beyond the grave. We first come in possession of the body. The spirit has overcome the body, and the body is made subject in every respect to that divine principle God has planted in the person. ”

“ Again He saith,—‘He that eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, dwelleth in Me, and I in him.’ Now, if the eating be after a literal manner, so also must be the dwelling. Our bodies, therefore, must be withinside the body of Christ in Heaven, and His body must be withinside every one of ours on earth. ”

“ The spiritual body while yet in the flesh, grows with the material,—indeed it is the growth of the spiritual which causes that of the material; what then is to hinder its continued growth after it leaves the flesh? It is not natural but spiritual substance that feeds the soul while in the natural body ”

“ We all [Pg 35] live and have our being physically within the sphere of activity and consequently within the physical elements of the sun; in a similar sense we live and have our being spiritually in the spiritual body and substance of Love, and as the sun of the physical world shines upon our body; so the light of divine wisdom is all around us and ready to penetrate into our soul. ”

“ What Scripture teaches as to the intimacy of the connection between the body and spirit, physiology confirms. What appear at first merely physical transgressions leave a stain and have a degrading influence on the soul, and through it drag down the spirit. And on the other side, spiritual sins, sins of thought and imagination and disposition, pass through the soul into the body, fix themselves in the nervous constitution, and express themselves even in the countenance and the habits or tendencies of the body. ”

“ To illustrate, man has a material body in the natural world sustained by heat and light from the sun. Within the material body part for part is the soul, made of spiritual substances and perpetually bathed by the heat and light of the spiritual world, which are love and wisdom from the Lord. Yet while his body is in nature sustained by heat and light from the sun, and his soul is in the spiritual world likewise under its sun, the spiritual body is within the material body giving life and power to it and every part. ”

“ Do not, however, discard or think lightly of the physical phase of the subject, for remember that it needs a sound body to support a sound mind, and also that the body is the temple of the Ego, the lamp in which burns the light of the Spirit. ”

“ But a consideration of the wonderful mechanism of the human body, and of the mutual dependence of its various parts, will furnish the best idea of the human form, and reveal most clearly the order of heaven. For as the body in its entireness corresponds to the soul, so its different parts correspond to the various faculties and functions of the soul, or to the goods and truths of heaven in their various orders and degrees. Therefore the bodily organs correspond to the various societies of which the whole angelic heaven is composed, and which are the living embodiment of these goods and truths. ”

“ Meanwhile, the very fact that we lament so sincerely this dire and man-caused fate serves to illustrate the view we inevitably take that the earth-body is not only a means of manifestation but is a real servant of the soul,—that flesh can in some sense help spirit as spirit can undoubtedly help flesh,—and that while its very weaknesses are serviceable and stimulating, its strength is exhilarating and superb. ”

“ The earth and man thus restored and exalted, will not yet be perfect in the celestial sense of the word, but will be considered, in the light of eternity, as occupying an intermediate and still progressive position amid the varieties of nature.
The flesh, bones, sinews, nerves—all the organs—all the particles of the celestial body, must be quickened, filled, surrounded with that divine and holy element, which is purer, more intelligent, more refined and active, fuller of light and life, than any other substance in the universe. ”

“ Let us, then, now treat of the visions of corporeal substances, received spiritually in the soul, which come after the manner of bodily visions. For, just as the eyes see bodily visions by means of natural light, even so does the soul, through the understanding, by means of supernaturally derived light, as we have said, see those same natural things inwardly, together with others, as God wills; the difference between the two kinds of vision is only in the mode and manner of them. For spiritual and intellectual visions are much clearer and subtler than those which pertain to the body. ”

“ We have seen that there is some reason for believing that, simultaneously with the birth or coming to consciousness of what we have called the divine soul, there occurs within us the formation of a ‘spiritual’ or very subtly material body. ”

“ He believed also that the spiritual body was connected with, and had its birthplace in, the natural body, so that the body we now wear is to be represented by that finer and more spiritual organism we are hereafter to be clothed in. ”

“ What is this earthly body? I speak of my astral body, which envelopes the soul, my real self. I am no more bound to this body than you are to the black gown you wear at the present moment, which, by the way, becomes you immensely. ”

“ You live again in the body,—in the very body, as to all essential properties, and to all practical intents and purposes, in which you live now. I am not to live as a ghost, a spectre, a spirit, I am to live then as I live now, in the body. ”

“ And yet it may be admitted that there is a certain loose sense in which man is "God manifest in the flesh." As may be afterwards shown, he is God's image manifested in the flesh; and an image or likeness is a manifestation or making evident of that which it represents, whether it be an image or likeness of body or of mind. ”

“ I am not yet ready for vision. But it will come, for we have a natural body, and we have a spiritual body—not we are going to have—we already possess it, and as we develop our spiritual faculties, they will be ours. ”

“ The body was made of earth, but the soul came immediately from God.
The more we learn about our own body, that wonderful and beautiful house in which we live, the more we shall see, in what God thus formed from the dust of the ground, to call forth our admiration; but the body of the first man, although fashioned with such perfection in all its parts, did not live until God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. ”

“ Yesterday, while walking, I prayed and experienced a remarkable sensation which is perhaps similar to that which the mystics excite in themselves by spiritual works; I felt myself to be a spiritual, free being bound by the illusion of the body. ”

“ Out of this damp earth, God made a man, body and legs and arms and head; and when the man was made, God breathed upon him, and, behold, the man lived. The body of earth was changed to flesh and blood, and the man opened his eyes, and rose up and began to walk and speak. ”

“ It seems in the highest degree probable that all the bodily senses that we possess now will be wonderfully intensified and enlarged when this "natural body" passes off, and the "spiritual body" is taken on. ”

“ But that human body which God declares expressly was made to be the temple of the Holy Spirit, which he considers worthy to be perpetuated by a resurrection and an immortal existence, cannot be intended to be a clog and a hindrance to spiritual advancement. A perfect body, working in perfect tune and time, would open glimpses of happiness to the soul approaching the joys we hope for in heaven. ”

“ But I say the following in regard to this dogma of the soul: What we call the soul, is the [189] divine, spiritual, limited in us in our bodies. Only the body limits this divine, this spiritual. And it is this limiting which gives it a form like a vessel gives form to a liquid or a gas which is enclosed in it. ”

“ In their religion they worship the Source of Life, and look upon the Sun as the place to which the spirit goes at death. In brief, the Sun is their Heaven. They believe that the Sun's heat will be no barrier to the spirit's complete happiness when liberated from the body. ”

“ Not subject to weakness by labour, decays of age, to impotency and wasting by diseases; but nimble, strong, active, and that without reluctancy or molestation, grief, pain, or lassitude; it is raised a spiritual body, possessed and acted by the Holy Spirit; and advanced so far to the perfection of spirits, as to be free from grossness, ponderosity, from needing rest, sleep, or sustenance, and is fitted for a spiritual and celestial state in which our bodies shall wholly serve our spirits, and depend upon them, and therefore may be styled spiritual. ”

“ His spirit was made to present the peculiar marks which had been inflicted upon his physical body, cases parallel to which are now witnessed every day by modern spiritualists. Hundreds of cases have occurred of departed spirits presenting themselves to their friends with all the peculiar marks which their physical bodies had long worn while in the earth life. ”

“ Let us learn of the real and eternal, and prepare for the reign of Spirit, the Kingdom of Heaven, — the reign and rule of universal harmony, which cannot be lost, or remain forever unseen.
Mind, not matter, is causation. A material body only expresses a material and mortal mind. A mortal man Sickness in thought. possesses this body, and he makes it harmonious or discordant, according to the images of thought impressed upon it. You embrace your body in your thought, and you should delineate upon it thoughts of health, not of sickness. ”

“ The body itself, what we term the physical body, whatever may be the facts regarding a finer spiritual body within it all the time giving form to and animating and directing all its movements, is of material origin, and derives its sustenance from the food we take, from the air we breathe, the water we drink. ”

“ Let us consider the third part of Natural & Supernatural things in Physick, the Virtues and Powers of each; this Medicine of every thing must first be driven out of a visible, tangible, natural Body, and be brought into a spiritual, meliorated, supernatural operation, that the Spirit which at the first was infused and given to the Body to live, might be released, that it should operate and penetrate as a Spiritual Essence, and Fire, having its Vent-holes left that it might burn and have no opposition, which might suffocate, suppress, or hinder the burning Life ”

“ Your bodies, because if you are Christians, you have already presented your hearts; your bodies, because through the body, too often temptation enters into the soul and leads it to actual sin. Your bodies, because of their wonderful mechanism and their equally wonderful activities. ”