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Ludlow, Fitz Hugh - The pain of separation
Identifier
005971
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
The Hasheesh Eater – Fitz Hugh Ludlow
Again, at the moment of the most rapturous exultation, the soul hears the outcry of the physical nature pouring up to its height of vision out of the walls of flesh and the burden of that cry is
‘I am in pain; I am finite, though thou are infinite!’
The cords which bind the two mysterious portions of our duality together have been stretched to their ultimate tensity; and the body, for the sake of its own existence, calls back the soul into the husk which it can not carry with it. Oftentimes, in the presence of the most ravishing views, have I felt these cords pulling me downwards with as distinct a sensation as if they were real sinews, and, compelled to ask the question
‘Is this happiness or torture?’
soul and body have returned opposite verdicts