rom education; for a man lusts after honors and wealth, or eminence and
opulence, and in order to attain them, it is necessary that he appear
moral and spiritual, thus intelligent and wise; and he learns so to
appear from infancy. This the reason why, as soon as he comes among men,
or into company, he inverts his spirit, and removes it from
concupiscence, and speaks and acts from the fair and honorable maxims
which he has learnt from infancy, and retains in the bodily memory: and
he is particularly cautious, lest anything of the wild concupiscence
prevalent in his spirit should discover itself. Hence every man who is
not interiorly led by the Lord, is a pretender, a sycophant, a
hypocrite, and thereby an apparent man, and yet not a man; of whom it
may be said, that his shell or body is wise, and his kernel or spirit
insane; also that his external is human, and his internal bestial. Such
persons, with the hinder part of the head look upwards, and with the
fore part downwards; thus they walk as if oppressed with heaviness, with
the head hanging down and the countenance prone to the earth; and when
they put off the body, and become spirits, and are thereby set at
liberty from external restraints, they become the madnesses of their
respective concupiscences. Those who are in self-love desire to domineer
over the universe, yea, to extend its limits in order to enlarge their
dominion, of which they see no end: those who are in the love of the
world desire to possess whatever the world contains, and are full of
grief and envy in case any of its treasures are hid and concealed from
them by others: therefore to prevent such persons from becoming mere
concupiscences, and thereby no longer men, they are permitted in the
spiritual world to think from a fear of the loss of reputation, and
thereby of honor and gain, and also from a fear of the law and its
penalties, and also to give their mind to some study or work whereby
they are kept in externals and thus in a state of intelligence, however
wild and insane they may be interiorly." After this I asked them,
whether all who are in any concupiscence, are also in the phantasy
thereof; they replied, that those are in the phantasy of their
respective concupiscences, who think interiorly in themselves, and too
much indulge their imagination by talking with themselves; for these
almost separate their spirit from connection with the body, and by
vision overflow the understanding, and take a f