(the substance or flesh of
Christ) and it is to this that Jesus Christ referred when he spoke of
feeding upon his body, and when he spoke of the true bread from heaven
"which giveth life to the World" (John vi. 33), of which he that eateth
shall "live for ever" (John vi. 58), or the "living water," whereof
whosoever drinketh "shall never thirst," but it shall be to him "a well
of water springing up into everlasting life" (John iv. 13, 14). This
feeding is in no way metaphorical but as real and actual as physical
feeding.

Behmen says, "The Essence of that Life eateth the Flesh of Christ and
drinketh His Blood.... Now if the Soul eat of this sweet, holy and
heavenly food, then it kindleth itself with the great Love in the name
and power of Jesus, whence its fire of anguish becometh a great triumph
of joy and glory."[B]

Behmen held that man lives at once in three worlds, firstly in the
outward visible elementary world of space and time (where man "_is_ the
Time and _in_ the Time;") secondly, the "Eternal Dark World, Hell, the
centre of Eternal Nature, whence is _generated_ the Soul-fire, that
source of anguish, and thirdly, in the Eternal Light World, Heaven--the
Divine habitation." The same processes of feeding and life take place in
the three Worlds, so that physical feeding is a kind of outside sheath
of spiritual feeding.

If the Soul accustoms itself to feed in this life upon the heavenly food
(that _panem de coelo omne delectamentum in se habentem_) it gradually
itself becomes of quite heavenly substance, purged from darkness, and,
when the natural life falls off at death, stands in heaven, where indeed
it already is. But, if the Soul feeds upon the Spirit and Things of this
World, then, when by reason of death, it can no longer feed upon them,
it is left in the condition of mere "aching Desire," or eternal
unsatisfied Hunger, working in a void, in perpetual anguish. Thus Heaven
and Hell are not places, but conditions of the Soul. So Milton, who had
no doubt studied the translation of Behmen made in his own time,
writes:

"The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven."

They are in this life everywhere commingled, but when this life falls
away, the Soul remains in that of the two states into which it has in
this life brought itself. The Soul, after death, remains _either_ as a
satisfied Desire, that is, a Desire no longer but a Joy, _or_ as an
aching Desire. Th