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MYSTICS FROM THE WEST - QUOTES
Meditation is not only an Indian phenomenon.
In the West, we had a vibrant mystical tradition as well, but it is now almost
extinct.
Listen to this quotation from C. G. Jung:
"The Goal of eastern practices is the same as
that of Western mysticism: The focus shifted from the "I" to the self, from man to God... The wisdom and mysticism of the East have, therefore, a very great deal to tell
us,
provided
they speak in their own inimitable speech.
They should remind us of what we posses in our
own culture of similar things and have already forgotten, and direct our attention to that which
we put
aside as unimportant, namely the destiny
of our inner man."
Foreword to Heinrich Zimmer´s
"Der Weg zum Selbst"
Since the mystical experience is timeless, it
transcends history. Mystics connect in a silent brotherhood regardless of
centuries and geography.
"Theologicans may quarrel, but the Mystics
of the world speak the same language."
Meister Eckhart
Meister Eckhart
1260-1328
Doctor Ecstaticus
Whoso
is unable to follow this discourse, let him never mind.
While he is not like this truth he shall not see my argument.
A Tribute to Meister Eckhart
My first western mystical love
was Meister Eckhart.
At that time, I had not yet met any divine inspirators in flesh and
blood. So, I sat with Doctor Ecstaticus in the space between the words
of books.
I intuitively chose these quotes after reading everything available on
Eckhart. When I was 25, I made this intuitive drawing imagining how dear
Doctor Ecstaticus would look:
Meister Eckhart's teachings captivated me before I encountered any
living spiritual guides. His words resonated deeply, filling the gaps
between the lines of his books.
At 25, inspired by his profound wisdom, I created a drawing that
embodied my vision of Doctor Ecstaticus. This artwork was a blend of my
imagination and the essence of Eckhart’s mystical teachings.
All
creatures contain one reflection: one, that is the denial of its being
the other;
the highest of the angels denies he is the lowest.
God is the denial of denials.
۞
When a man delights to read or hear about God,
that comes of divine grace and is lordly entertainment for the soul.
To entertain God in one's thoughts is sweeter than honey.
۞
God delights so in this likeness that
he pours out his whole nature,
his whole substance into it, in his own self.
The joy and satisfaction of it are ineffable.
It is like a horse turned loose
in a lush meadow, giving vent to his
horse-nature by galloping full-tilt about the field:
he enjoys it, and it is his nature.
۞
Merchants go when the truth appears,
for the truth needs no merchanting.
Behold thy temple cleared of merchants.
۞
He who seeks God in some way (read meditation technique
or ritual),
grasps the way and loses God, who dwells in the way. But he who seeks
God without a way, grasps God and lives with the Son.
۞
Had I a God whom I could
understand,
I would no longer hold him for
God.
۞
Man has to seek God in error and forgetfulness and foolishness.
۞
It must be understood that this is all the same thing:
knowing God and being known by God,
and seeing God and being seen by God
۞
If a man's spirit were always joined to God
in the same Power,
he could not age.
For the now wherein God made the first man and the now
wherein the last man disappears and the now I speak in, all are the
same in God where there is but now.
۞
The man in Truth has motion taken from him
and all things stand
intrinsic in him.
Nothing new comes to him from future things nor yet
by accident for he
dwells in the now
ever new and unceasingly renewed.
۞
The happenings of a thousand years ago, days spent millenniums since,
are
in eternity no furtheroff than is this moment I am passing now; the day to come a thousand years
ahead or in as many
years as you can count, is no more distant in eternity than this very
instant I am in.
۞
We feel an inkling of the perfection and stability of eternity,
for there
is neither
time nor space, neither before nor after,
but everything present in one
new,
fresh-sprinkling now where millenniums last no longer
than the
twinkling of an eye.
۞
The happiness he (Christ) brought was our own.
۞
To one who even for an instant has seen into this ground,
a thousand ducats of red beaten gold are worth no more than a false
farthing.
۞
We might question life for a thousand years: Why dost thou live?
It would only say, if it replied at al: I live because I live.
For life lives in a ground of its own, wells up out of its own.
It lives without a cause for it lives itself.
۞
Things are all made from nothing;
hence their true source is nothing.
۞
But God is truth, and things in time,
the things that God created, are not
true.
۞
There all too few who are fully ripe for gazing in God's magic mirror.
۞
Aye, in this power is such poignant joy, such vehement, immoderate delight
as none can tell
nor yet in truth reveal. I say, moreover, if once a man in intellectual
vision did really glimpse
the bliss and joy therein, then all his sufferings, all God intends that
he should suffer, would be
a trifle, a mere nothing to him, I say more; it would be pure joy and
pleasure.
۞
A life of rest and peace in God is good;
a life of pain in patience is still better;
but to have peace in a life of pain is best of all.
۞
The more we can impute to Him (God) not-likeness,
the nearer do we get to
understanding Him.
۞
In unknowing knowing shall we know God.
۞
Verily I say, the soul will bring fourth Person if God
laughs into him and
she laughs back to him.
۞
God is beyond all name, none can express him.
۞
Seeing nothing he saw God.
The light which is God is flowing and darkening every light.
۞
The body is much rather in the soul than the soul is in the body.
۞
God is the Word which pronounces itself.
۞
God's exit is his entrance.
He broke in to let us out.
۞
God is simple presence, a stay-at-home in himself
۞
Real knowledge, even in this body, is intrinsically so delightful
that the sum total of created things is nothing to the joys of pure
perception.
۞
Dedicate all acts to God.
۞
I am certain as I live that nothing is so close to me as God.
God is nearer to me than I am to my own self; my life depends upon God's
being near me, present in me. So is he also in a stone, a log of wood, only they do not
know it.
If the wood knew of God and realized his nearness like the highest of the
angels does,
then the log would be as blessed as the chief of all angels.
۞
A life of rest and peace in God is good;
a life of pain in patience is still better;
but to have peace in a life of pain is best of all.
۞
If we are more conscious of God being in a quiet place,
that comes of our own imperfection and is not due to God,
for God is the same in all things and all places.
۞
God is near to us, but we are far from him.
God is in, we are out;
God is at home, we are strangers.
۞
I never give God thanks for loving me,
because he cannot help it.
۞
This spirit knows no time nor number:
number does not exist apart from the malady of time.
۞
He rejoices all the time who is rejoicing above time and timelessly.
۞
Divine light is so overwhelming that the soul is unable to bear it
unless it is tempered in the angel's light and so conveyed into the soul.
He (God) enlightens her therefore by reflection. The angel conveys his own
knowledge
to the soul and strengthens her in this way to bear the light of God.
۞
The God-and-Man has prepared this supper, the ineffable man who is
wordless...The moral is that those who live the life of the five senses never taste
this food.
۞
Where is Christ sitting? He is sitting nowhere; he is nowhere.
If ye seek him anywhere ye shall not find him.
۞
God like forgiving big sins more than small ones.
۞
The spot I am standing on is small, but it must disappear.
۞
Were I wholly that I am I should be God; there would be for me neither
time nor place nor change.
There is nothing so easy to me, so possible, as to be God. To stay quiet
requires no work.
۞
Flee away and hide thee from the rush of inner thoughts
which cause such
great disquiet.
۞
The really virtuous man does not want God.
What I have I want not.
not
۞
To be undivided you must be free from not.
۞
Beware lest ye take yourself as either
this or that.
۞
But now I say: it is
neither this nor that.
Yet it is somewhat...
It is of all names free, of all forms void:
exempt and free as God is in himself.
۞
God is such that we apprehend him better by negation than by affirmation.
۞
To call a man enlightened as we sometimes do, means little.
۞
My firm conviction is that everything a good man sees must better him.
۞
God enjoys himself in all things.
۞
Grace is to God as the shine to the sun.
۞
The greatest happiness in earth or heaven lies in the likeness to God.
۞
God is creating the whole world now this instant.
۞
Here the soul is pregnant without form or image.
۞
To gauge the soul we must gauge it with God,
for the Ground of God
and the Ground of the soul
are one and the same...The highest part
of the soul stands
above time
and know nothing of time.
۞
It is permissible to take
life's blessings with both hands,
provided thou dost know thyself prepared in the opposite
event to leave them just as gladly.
۞
When the soul
beholds God purely, it takes all its being and its life
and whatever it is from the depth
of God; yet it knows no knowing,
no loving, or anything else whatsoever. It rests utterly
and completely
within the being of god, and knows nothing but only to be with with God.
So soon as it becomes conscious that it sees and loves and knows God,
that is in itself a departure.
۞
The Godhead gave
all things up to God.
The Godhead is poor,
naked and empty as though it were not;
it has not, wills not,
wants not,
works not, gets not.
It is God who has the treasure
and the bride in him,
the Godhead is as void
though it were not.
۞
Men should not think
so much of what they
ought to do, as of what they ought to be.
Think not to lay the foundation of thy
holiness upon doing, but rather upon being.
For works do not sanctify us,
but we should sanctify the works.
Whoever is not great in his essential
being will achieve nothing by works,
whatever he may do.
۞
God needs me
as much as I need him.
۞
Let no one be affrighted at my sayings that God loves none beside
himself...
He purposes to lure us to himself, to get us purged and take us to
himself,
so that with himself he may love himself in us and in him.
۞
The Spirit knows no time nor number; number does not exist apart from the
malady of time.
۞
Love is incompatible with fear and pain, for the waxing of love is the
waning of fear,
and when love is perfect all fear is gone. But at the beginning of the
virtuous life fear is of
use to man, providing him a thoroughfare for love.
۞
To rest in the illusion means delay in the attainment of real oneness.
۞
Know then that my soul is as young as when I was created, aye, much
younger.
And I tell you, I should be ashamed were she not younger to-morrow than
to-day.
۞
There is one power in the soul to which all things are alike sweet;
the very worst and the very best are all the same in this power which
takesthings above here and now. Now meaning time and here meaning
place.
۞
A man must be so true to God that nothing whatever can gladden him or
sadden him.
He must see all things in God, as they are there.
۞
There is one power in the soul and that not merely power but being; and
not merely being;
it radiates life, and is so pure, so high and so innately noble that
creatures cannot live in it;none but God can abide therein. Nay, even God cannot enter there in any
guise:
God is only there in his absolute divinity.
۞
The just man serves neither God nor creature: he is free; and the more he
is just the more he is free
and the more he is freedom itself. Nothing created is free.
۞
The tendency is ever towards self-repetition, towards the preservation of
the species:
it is every man' s intention that his work should be himself.
۞
He (God) never destroys without providing something better.
۞
I sometimes seem to like one better than another, and yet I have the same
goodwill towards
that other person whom I have never seen, only, by asking more of me, this
one enables me to
give him myself more. God loves creatures all alike and fills them with
his being. And we too should
pour forth ourselves in love of all creatures.
۞
But now we change our ground and declares withal, that a person in this
poverty has gotten all
he was when he lived not in any wise, not to himself. nor truth, nor God,
he is so quiet,
so free of any kind of knowledge, that no idea of God is alive in him.
۞
I sometimes say, if a man who seeks nothing finds nothing, what has he to
complain?
After all, he has found what he sought.
۞
Creature comfort is imperfect, it has innate defect.
But Gods comfort is complete, with no shortcoming..
۞
God is foolishly in love with us, it seems he has forgotten heaven and
earth and his happiness and deity,
his entire business seems with me alone, to give me everything to comfort
me; he gives it to me suddenly,
he gives it to me wholly, he gives it to me perfect,
he gives it all the time and he gives it to all creatures.
۞
Here there is no before nor after; everything is present, and in this
immediate vision I possess all things.
This is the perfection of time, and I am perfect and I am truly the only
Son and Christ.
۞
God's content is too subtle for renewal.
۞
God's delights so in this likeness that he pours out his whole nature, his
whole substance into it, in his own self.
The joy and satisfaction of it are ineffable. It is like a horse turned
loose in a lush meadow giving vent to his
horse-nature by galloping full-tilt about the field: he enjoys it, and it
is his nature.
۞
The only thing
that burns in hell is the part of you that won’t let go of your life:
your memories, your attachments.
They burn them all away, but they’re not punishing you, they’re freeing
your soul. If you’re frightened of dying and you’re holding on,
you’ll see devils tearing your life away. If you’ve made your peace,
then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth.
۞
A human being has so many skins
inside, covering the depths of the heart.
We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves!
Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or
bear's,
cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself
there.
۞
Theologicans may quarrel, but the Mystics
of the world speak the same language.
۞
When the Soul wants to experience
something
she through out an image in front of her
and then steps into it.
۞
I am what I wanted
and I want what I am.
۞
God is greater than God
۞
The outward man is the swinging door
The inner man is the still hinge.
۞
If the only prayer you say is thank you, it is enough.
۞
Thus, what you have sought before, now seeks you; what once you
persued, now persues you; what once you fled, now flees you.
Everything comes to him who truly comes to God, bringing all divinity
with it, while all that is strange and alien flies away.
۞
But if a man does well; God is really in him, and with him everywhere,
on the streets and among people, just as much in church, or a desert
place, or a cell.
۞
We should take care to follow him
intelligently, for he is much more intent on our love than on our
actions. We are always to follow him in our own way. But how? The manner
and the method must be settled in each situation individually. As I have
often said, I regard intelligent action as far better than literal
actions.
۞
... for the deeper the valleys go,
the loftier the heights that rise above them,
the deeper the well, the higher too:
for depth and height are the same thing.
۞
For you will have peace to the extent that you have God, and the further
you are away from God the less you will be at peace. Anything that is at
peace has God in it to the extent that it is at peace. Thus you may
measure your progress with God by measuring your peace or the lack of
it.
۞
God is not found in the
soul by adding anything
but by a process of subtraction.
۞
God is in all things, urging us to give
up our will.
۞
Those who do not know
this way will laugh and mock at me and I shall pity them. They like to
look at eternal things and consider divine works and to stand in the
light of eternity, while their hearts still flutter about in yesterday
and today, in space and time.
۞
"Sometimes I have used this illustration. When an artist makes a
sculpture out of wood or stone, he does not put his idea into the wood
but, rather, he chips away the material that has been hiding it. He does
not impart something to the wood but cuts the covering away and removes
the tarnish so that what was hidden there may shine. This is 'the
treasure hid in a field' of which our Lord speaks in the Gospel."
(This
passage seems to reflect a similar idea attributed to Michelangelo, but
here it is used by another author who references the concept in a
broader spiritual or philosophical context. This supports the idea that
the metaphor was used by multiple thinkers, including Meister Eckhart.)
۞
God says: "I am the first and the last." There are no distinctions in
God and no differences between the divine persons, since they are to be
regarded as one in nature. The divine nature is Oneness and each person
is One, the same One in nature. The distinction between being and
existence is referred back then to the One, where they are the same
thing. When that oneness is no longer in oneself, then division has
crept in. Since we find God in oneness, that oneness must be in him who
is to find God. Our Lord says that "a man went out." Neither the One,
nor being, nor God, nor rest, nor blessedness, nor satisfaction is to be
found where distinctions are. Be therefore that One so that you may find
God. And of course, if you are wholly that One, you shall remain so,
even where distinctions are. Different things will all be parts of that
One to you and will no longer stand in your way. The One remains the
same One in thousands of thousands of stones as much as in four stones:
a thousand times a thousand is just as simple a number as four.
۞
I shall offer still another explanation of what an aristocrat is. I say
that when a man looks at God [in soul and spirit], he knows it and knows
that he is the knower. That is to say, he knows it is God he is looking
at and knows that he knows him. Now some people wish it to appear that
the flower, the kernel of blessing is this awareness of the spirit, that
it is knowing God. For if I have rapture and am unconscious of it, what
good would it do and what would it mean? I cannot agree with this
position.
۞
For granting that the soul could not be happy without it [consciousness
of its own processes], still its happiness does not consist in that; for
the foundation of spiritual blessing is this: that the soul look at God
without anything between; here it receives its being and life and draws
its essence from the core of God, unconscious of the knowing-process, or
love or anything else. Then it is quite still in the essence of God, not
knowing at all where it is, knowing nothing but God.
۞
"The teachers praise love, and highly too, as St. Paul did, when he
said: 'No matter what I do, if I have not love, I am nothing.'
Nevertheless, I put disinterest higher than love. My first reason is as
follows. The best thing about love is that it makes me love God. Now, it
is much more advantageous for me to move God toward myself than for me
to move toward him, for my blessing in eternity depends on my being
identified with God. He is more able to deal with me and join me than I
am to join him. Disinterest brings God to me and I can demonstrate it
this way: Everything likes its own habitat best; God's habitat is purity
and unity, which are due to disinterest. Therefore God necessarily gives
himself to the disinterested heart."
۞
God does not see through time, nor does anything new happen in his
sight.
۞
Take an illustration. A door swings to and fro through an angle. I
compare the breadth of the door to the outward man and the hinge to the
inner person. When the door swings to and fro, the breadth of the door
moves back and forth, but the hinge is still unmoved and unchanged. It
is like this here.
۞
Now I ask what the object of pure disinterest is. I reply that it is
neither this nor that. Pure disinterest is empty nothingness, for it is
on that high plane on which God gives effect to his will.
۞
When a person learns the cause of anything, he soon grows tired of it
and looks for something else to work out, and is constantly uneasy until
he knows all about that, and thus he lacks
steadfastness. Only this unknown knowledge keeps the soul steadfast and
yet ever on the search.
۞
God despises ideas.
God acts without instrumentality and without ideas. And the freer you
are from ideas the more sensitive you are to his inward action.
۞
Not only the Son of the heavenly Father is born in the darkness which is
his own, but you, too, are born there, a son of the sameheavenly Father,
and to you also he gives power. Now see how great the profit is!
۞
May God, newly born in human form, eternally help us, that we frail
people, being born in him, may be divine. Amen.
۞
For
creatures are only God’s footprint
۞
Reject it and you reject all goodness and blessing; but given the birth
of God, whatever comes your way will bring with it unsullied reality and
stability. Whatever you try to get without it will come to nothing, try
how you will. It alone gives blessing. All else corrupts. Moreover, in
this birth you will have a part in the divine stream [that flows into
life] and will share its benefits. But the creature in which God’s idea
is not to be found is not eligible [to these
benefits]. It is the soul that is especially designed for the birth of
God….
۞
Angelus Silesius
1624 – 1677
I know that without
me
God cannot live an instant.
Lady Julian
1342 - ?
We are
God´s bliss,
for in us
He enjoyeth without end.
Scotus Erigena
800-880
God because of his
excellence
he may rightly be called Nothing.
Pseudo-Dionysius
345 - 407
God is The
absolute No-thing
which is above
all existence
۞
Do thou, in the intent
practice of mystic contemplation,
leave behind the senses and the operations of the intellect,
and all things that the senses or the intellect can percieve,
and all things which are not and things which are,
and strain upwards in unknowing as far as may be
towards the union with Him who is above all being and knowledge.
For by unceasing and absolute withdrawal
from thyself and all things in purity, abandoning
all and set free from all, thou wilt be borne up to the
ray of the Divine Darkness that surpasses all being.
Mystical Theology
۞
No monad or triad can
express the all-transcending hiddenness
of the all-transcending superessentially superexisting superdeity.
۞
There is that most divine
knowledge
of God which takes place through ignorance,
in the union which is above intelligence,
when the intellect quitting all things that are,
and then leaving itself also,
is united to the superlucent rays,
being illuminated thence and
therein by the unsearchable depth of wisdom.
Plotinus
205–270
One that
seeks to penetrate the nature of the Divine Mind must see
deeply into the nature of his
own soul, into the Divinest point of himself.
He must first make
abstraction of the body,
then of the lower soul and emotions
and every such triviality, of all
that leans towards
the mortal. What is left after
this abstraction is the part which we describe as the image
of the Divine
Mind, an emanation preserving some of that Divine Light.
Richard of St. Victor
1123 - 1173
The soul
utterly puts off itself and puts on divine love;
and being conformed to that beauty which
it has beheld,
it utterly passes into that other glory.
Christina Rosetti
1830 - 1882
Lord, we are rivers running to Thy sea,
Our waves and ripples all derived from Thee,
A
nothing we should have,
a nothing be Except for Thee.
Bishop Ullathorne
1880
-
Let it be
plainly understood
that we cannot return to God unless
we enter first into ourselves.
God is everywhere but not everywhere to us.
There is but one point in the universe
where God communicates with us,
and that is the center of our own soul.
There He waits for us.
There He meets us; there He speaks to us.
To seek Him therefore we must
enter into our own interior.
Groundwork of Christian Virtue
St. John of the Cross 1542 -1591
Of all forms and
manners of knowledge
the soul must strip and void itself
so that there may be left in it no kind
of impression of knowledge,
nor trace of aught soever,
but rather the soul must remain barren and bare,
as if these forms had never passed through it,
and in total oblivion and suspension.
۞
The soul
that is attached to anything,
however much good there may be in it,
will not arrive at the liberty of divine union.
For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender
and delicate thread that holds the bird,
it matters not, if it really holds it fast;
for until the cord be broken
the bird cannot fly.
So the soul, held by the bonds of human affections,
however slight they may be, cannot, while they last,
make its way to God.
۞
St Theresa
1515 - 1582
Beside me on the left
appeared an angel in bodily form . . .
He was not tall but short, and very beautiful;
and his face was so aflame that he appeared to be
one of the highest ranks of angels, who seem to be all on fire . . .
In his hands I saw a great golden spear,
and at the iron tip there appeared to be a point of fire.
This he plunged into my heart several times so that it penetrated my
entrails.
When he pulled it out I felt that he took them with it,
and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God.
The pain was so severe that it made me utter several moans.
The sweetness caused by this intense pain is so extreme
that one can not possibly wish it to cease, nor is one's
soul content with anything but God. This is not a physical but a
spiritual pain,
though the body has some share in it -- even a considerable share.
It is a caressing of love so sweet which
now takes place
between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness
to make him experience it who may think that I am lying.
Chapter XXIX; Part 17 Teresa's
۞
Spiritual marriage is like rain falling from
the sky
into a river, becoming
one and the same liquid,
so that the river water and the rain cannot
be divided; or it
resembles a streamlet flowing
into the ocean which cannot afterward
be dissevered from it.
St. Bernard
God who in his
simple substance, is all everywhere equally, nevertheless,
in efficacy, is in rational
creatures in another way than irrational, and in
good rational creatures in another way
than in bad. He is in irrational creatures
in such a way as not to be comprehended by
them; by all rational ones,
however, he can be comprehended through knowledge; but only
by
the good is he to be comprehended also through love.
۞
Grace is necessary
to salvation,
free will equally so,
but grace in order to give salvation,
free will in order to receive it.
Therefore we should not attribute
part of the good work to grace
and part to free will; it is performed in
its entirety by the common and inseparable
action of both; entirely by grace by the common
and inseparable action of both; entirely
by grace,
entirely by free will, but springing from
the first in the second.
۞
Who is God?
I can think of no better answer than,
He who is.
Nothing is more appropriate
to the eternity which God is.
If you call God good,
or great or blessed, or wise
or anything else of this sort,
it is included in these words,
namely, He is.
۞
God who in his
simple substance,
is all everywhere equally, nevertheless,
in efficacy, is in rational creatures
in another way than irrational,
and in good rational creatures
in another way than in bad.
He is in irrational creatures in such
a way as not to be comprehended
by them; by all rational ones,
however, he can be comprehended
through knowledge; but only by
the good is he to be comprehended
also through love.
۞
Jacob Boehme
1575 - 1624
When thou standest
still from the thinking of self and the willing of self;
when both thy intellect and will
are quiet and passive to the expressions
of the eternal world and spirit, and when thy
soul is winged up and above
that which is temporal, the outward senses and the imagination
being locked
up by holy abstraction, then the Eternal Hearing, Seeing and Speaking will be
revealed
in thee, and so God appeareth in thee and whispered to thy spirit. Blessed art
thou,
therefore, if thou canst stand still from thy self-thinking and self-willing
and
canst stop the wheel of thy imagination and senses.
۞
Thou shalt do
nothing but forsake thy own will,
whiz. that which thou callest "I" or "thyself".
By which means all thy evil properties
will grow weak,
faint and ready to die;
and then thou wilt sink down again
into that one thing,
from which thou art originally sprung.
Discourse between Two Souls
۞
St. Augustine
354-430
The highest spiritual state of the soul
in this life consist in the vision
and contemplation of truth,
wherein are joys, and the full enjoyment
of the highest and truest good,
and a breath of serenity and eternity.
۞
What a man loves a man is.
۞
Because the soul is greedy, because she wants to have and hold so much,
therefore she reaches into time and; snatching at things of time and
number,
loses what she already has.
Francis
Turner
Palgrave
1824–1897
This man is freed
from servile bonds
Of hope to rise, or fear to fall;
Lord of himself, though not of lands
And having nothing, yet hath all.
Golden Treasury
Dionysos
- the Areopagite - 25 -
God is invisible
from excess of light.
He who perceives God is himself in darkness.
God´s all-pervading darkness
is hidden from every light and
veils all recognition.
And if anyone who sees
God recognizes and understands
what he sees, then he himself
hath not seen Him.
Virgil
350 - ?
Blessed is he who has won
to the heart of the universe;
he is beyond good and evil.
But that is to much for ordinary
humanity to attain; it is very good
second best to know
the gods of the country,
to live the life of the country.
- Georgics
11.490ff
Boethius 480 -
525
In other living
creatures,
ignorance of self is nature;
in man it is vice.
St. Ansel
I cannot seek Thee
except Thou teach me,
nor find Thee
except Thou reveal Thyself.
John Smith - the Platonist
Jejune and
barren speculations
may unfold the pictures
of Truths garment but they
cannot discover her lovely face.
Louis of Blois
The soul, having entered the vast solitude
of the Godhead, happily loses itself;
and enlightened by the brightness of most lucid darkness,
becomes through knowledge
as if without knowledge,
and dwells in a sort of wise ignorance.
(Spiritual Mirror ch.XI)
William Law
To find or
know God in reality by any outward proofs, or by anything
but by God Himself made manifest
and self-evident in you, will never be
your case either here or hereafter. For neither
God, nor heaven, nor hell,
nor the devil, nor the flesh, can be any otherwise knowable in
you or by you,
but by their own existence and manifestation in you. And all pretended
knowledge
of any of these things, beyond and without this self-evident sensibility of
their birth
within you, is only such knowledge of them as the blind man hath of the
light
that hath never entered him.
۞
Though God
is everywhere preset, yet He is only present to thee in
deepest and most central part of
thy soul. The natural senses cannot
possess God or unite thee to him; nay, thy inward
faculties of understanding,
will and memory can only reach after God, but cannot be the
place of His habitation in
thee. But there is a root or depth of thee from whence all
these faculties come forth,
as lines from a center, or as branches from the body of the
tree. This depth is
the unity, the eternity - I had almost said the infinity of thy soul;
for it is so infinite
that nothing can satisfy it or give it rest but the infinity of God.
Taken from Perenial Philosophy - Aldous Huxley
Peter Abailar
However long you
exert yourself in dialectic,
you will consume your labour in vain,
unless grace
from heaven makes your mind
capable of so great
a mystery. Daily practice,
can, indeed, furnish
any mind with knowledge of
the other science,
but philosophy is to be attributed
to
divine grace alone, and, if this grace
does not prepare your mind inwardly,
your philosophy merely flogs the air
outside to no avail.
Hooker
Dangerous it were
for the feeble brain of man to
wade far into the doings of the Most High;
whom although to know be life and joy to make
mention of his name, yet our soundest knowledge
is to know that we know him not as indeed
he is....our safest eloquence concerning
him is our silence.
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