“The Hur and Kasur are concealed in the pavilions.”
The hand of men with an elegant and fanciful conception has never reached, nor shall ever reach, them.
“Nobody has ever touched them before, neither men nor genii.”
For these Hur and Kaśur belong to men endowed with sanctity and truth; as often as these perfect personages approach them, they find also virgins, and enjoy each time a pleasure such as they never had before; because each time they meet with the beginning of a new meaning, finer than the former, although they obtain these objects before their death.
It has been stated by some sages that, when they were intent upon some high undertaking, they declared after its conclusion: “How can emperors and their sons enjoy such a happiness, which is still to be increased when all impediments will be removed.” Know, men attached to exterior evidence said, that whatever is commonly believed of the last judgment, and what is connected with the soul of the world, implies nothing else but that, from the time when the Almighty God brought forth out of nothingness into existence, the heavens, the stars, the material bodies, the three kingdoms of nature, and the essences, the duration of the world shall extend to that period when he will again plunge the whole into non-existence, and this shall be “the other world.”
The learned say besides, that the composition of the human body, and its conjunction with the soul, make but one period of time, although birth and life appear two distinct periods; the one comprising the sensible and perceptible world, the other the rational and intellectual world: for
“Whoever is not born twice, shall not enter at the same time into the kingdom of heaven and that of the earth.”[120]
This is the speech of the Lord Jesus, and with him the present and the future world have also a twofold signification, also both a particular and a common one. As to the particular—there is something external and internal in every one; body and soul in every one; this is his present and future world. As to the common signification—there is an external and an internal world, that is, the material world is the present, and the future is the internal world. As to what is stated in the ostensible law, that the earth has seven stories and the heaven also seven, the interpretation of this is, that the earth is divided into seven regions, whence is concluded that the heaven also is divided into seven, separate from which they account the Kersi or Arsh, that is the ninth heaven. As to what is said, that on the day of resurrection the heaven will be folded together,
“On the day on which we shall fold the heavens, as the angel folds the book (of good and bad actions of men), we shall replace them as they were formed at the beginning of the creation. The heavens will then be folded by his grace, power, and strength,”