Eric Gill

There is no before or after in spiritual matters. There is only being and non-being. If a spirit is, it is and there is no temporal or spatial beginning or end of it. You cannot say that the mind began with the body and ends with it. You can only say that the mind began to inform or determine or (figuratively) inhabit the body when the body began to be “habitable” or patient of determination or of being informed. The body has a temporal and spatial beginning and end but not the mind. And that is why it may be said: I have a body, but not: I am a body.

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Excerpts taken from Brian Keeble (ed.), A Holy Tradition of Working: Passages From the Writings of Eric Gill, Angelico Press, 2021. Republished here with thanks.