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The inward lover of God, who possesses God in fruitive love, and
himself in adhering and active love, and his whole life in virtues
according to righteousness; through these three things, and by the
mysterious revelation of God, such an inward man enters into the
God-seeing life. Yea, the lover who is inward and righteous, him
will it please God in His freedom to choose and to lift up into a
superessential contemplation, in the Divine Light and according to
the Divine Way.[70] This contemplation sets us in purity and
clearness above all our understanding, for it is a singular
adornment and a heavenly crown, and besides the eternal reward of
all virtues and of our whole life. And to it none can attain
through knowledge and subtlety, neither through any exercise
whatsoever. Only he with whom it pleases God to be united in His
Spirit, and whom it pleases Him to enlighten by Himself, can see
God, and no one else. The mysterious Divine Nature is eternally
and actively beholding and loving according to the Persons, and
has everlasting fruition in a mutual embrace of the Persons in the
unity of the Essence. In this embrace, in the essential Unity of
God, all inward spirits are one with God in the immersion of love;
and are that same one which the Essence is in Itself, according to
the mode of Eternal Bliss.[71] And in this most high unity of the
Divine Nature, the heavenly Father is origin and beginning of
every work which is worked in heaven and on earth. And He says in
the deep sunken hiddenness of the spirit: Behold, the Bride groom
cometh; go ye out to meet Him.
These words we will now explain and set forth in their relation to
that superessential contemplation which is the source of all
holiness, and of all perfec tion of life to which one may attain.
Few men can attain to this Divine seeing, because of their own in
capacity and the mysteriousness of the light in which I one sees.
And therefore no one will thoroughly understand the meaning of it
by any learning or subtle consideration of his own; for all words,
and all | that may be learnt and understood in a creaturely way,
are foreign to, and far below, the truth which I mean. But he who
is united with God, and is en lightened in this truth, he is able
to understand the truth by itself. For to comprehend and to under
stand God above all similitudes, such as He is in Himself, is to
be God with God, without intermediary, and without any otherness
that can become a hindrance or an intermediary. And therefore I
beg every one who cannot understand this, or feel it in the
fruitive unity of his spirit, that he be not offended at it, and
leave it for that which it is: for that which I am going to say is
true, and Christ, the Eternal Truth, has said it Himself in His
teaching in many places, if we could but show and explain it
rightly. And therefore, whosoever wishes to understand this must
have died to himself, and must live in God, and must turn his gaze
to the eternal light in the ground of his spirit, where the Hidden
Truth reveals Itself without means. For our Heavenly Father wills
that we should see; for He is the Father of Light, and this is why
He utters eternally, without intermediary and without
interruption, in the hiddenness of our spirit, one unique and
abysmal word, and no other. And in this word, He utters Himself
and all things. And this word is none other than: Behold. And this
is the coming forth and the birth of the Son of Eternal Light, in
Whom all blessedness is known and seen.
Now if the spirit would see God with God in this Divine light
without means, there needs must be on the part of man three
things.
The first is that he must be perfectly ordered from without in all
the virtues, and within must be unencumbered, and as empty of
every outward work as if he did not work at all: for if his
emptiness is troubled within by some work of virtue, he has an
image; and as long as this endures within him, he cannot
contemplate.
Secondly, he must inwardly cleave to God, with adhering intention
and love, even as a burning and glowing fire which can never more
be quenched. As long as he feels himself to be in this state, he
is able to contemplate.
Thirdly, he must have lost himself in a Waylessness and in a
Darkness, in which all contemplative men wander in fruition and
wherein they never again can find themselves in a creaturely way.
In the abyss of this darkness, in which the loving spirit has died
to itself, there begin the manifestation of God and eternal life.
For in this darkness there shines and is born an incomprehensible
Light, which is the Son of God, in Whom we behold eternal life.
And in this Light one becomes seeing; and this Divine Light is
given to the simple sight of the spirit, where the spirit receives
the brightness which is God Himself, above all gifts and every
creaturely activity, in the idle emptiness in which the spirit has
lost itself through fruitive love, and where it receives without
means the brightness of God, and is changed without interruption
into that brightness which it receives. Behold, this mysterious
brightness, in which one sees everything that one can desire
according to the emptiness of the spirit: this brightness is so
great that the loving contemplative, in his ground wherein he
rests, sees and feels nothing but an incomprehensible Light; and
through that Simple Nudity which enfolds all things, he finds
himself, and feels himself, to be that same Light by which he
sees, and nothing else.[72] And this is the first condition by
which one becomes seeing in the Divine Light. Blessed are the eyes
which are thus seeing, for they possess eternal life.
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