[2] The following experience alone enables one to infer how difficult it is for a natural man to apprehend spiritual things, consequently things that belong to heaven. Can anyone like him see that space and time do not exist in heaven, but states instead? Or to be more precise, that states of good or states of being (esse) exist there, presenting themselves as extents of space, and states of truth or states of coming-into-being (existere), presenting themselves as periods of time? Will not a merely natural man suppose that where time and space do not exist there is complete emptiness and nothingness? From this it is evident that if a natural man makes up his mind to believe nothing apart from what he can apprehend he lays himself open to grossly mistaken ideas. And as it is with space and time, so it is also with many other matters. For example, a natural man inevitably falls into a nonsensical way of thinking about God when with notions involving the passage of time he contemplates what God was doing before the creation of the world, that is, what He was engaged in from eternity up to then. Nor can he be extricated from that tangled knot until notions of time and space are banished. When angels contemplate that eternity they never do so with notions of time but with ideas of state.

[3] In the next life two statues appear, partly of flesh and partly of stone. They are stationed on the edge of the created universe, in front over to the left. They are said to swallow up those who contemplate what God was doing from eternity before He created the world. The swallowing up represents the consideration that since a person cannot contemplate anything without notions involving space and time he cannot extricate himself from the difficulty unaided. He does so only with the aid of God, either by ceasing to contemplate the matter or by banishing notions involving time.