The Literal Meaning of Genesis (continued)
BOOK TWELVE 185 whether he was in the body (as a man's soul is in his body!9 but withdrawn from the bodily senses while he is awake or asleep or in ecstasy, though his body is said to be alive) or whether he actually went out of the body, so that his body would lie in death until, the vision over, his soul would be reunited with his dead members. In the latter case he would not awaken as if from sleep nor return to his senses as one coming from an ecstasy, but from death he would truly come to life again. Hence what he saw when caught up to the third heaven, and what he affirms with certain knowledge, he saw in reality and not under an image. But since it was doubtful whether the withdrawal from his body left his body truly dead, or whether his soul was still somehow present as it is in a living body, while his mind was carried away to see and hear the secrets of the vision—perhaps because of this doubt he said, Whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows.
CHAPTER 6
Three kinds of vision.
15. To see an object not in an image but in itself, yet not through the body, is to see with a vision surpassing all other visions. There are various ways of seeing, and with God's help I shall try to explain them and show how they differ.2° When we read this one commandment, You shall love your neighbor as yourself, we experience three kinds of vision: one through the eyes, by which we see the letters; a second through the spirit, by which we think of our neighbor even when he is absent; and a third through an intuition of the mind, by which we see and understand love itself. Of these three kinds of vision the first is clear to everyone: through it we see heaven and earth and in them everything that meets the eye. The second, by which we think of corporeal things?! that are absent,?? is not difficult to explain; for we think of heaven and earth and the visible things in them even when we are in the dark. In this case we see nothing with the eyes of the body but in the soul behold corporeal