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Now the Spirit of God says in the secret outpouring of our spirit:
Go ye out, in an eternal contemplation and fruition, according to
the way of God. All the riches which are in God by nature we
possess by way of love in God, and God in us, through the
unmeasured love which is the Holy Ghost, for in this love one
tastes of all that one can desire. And therefore through this love
we are dead to ourselves, and have gone forth in loving immersion
into Waylessness and Darkness. There the spirit is embraced by the
Holy Trinity, and dwells for ever within the superessential Unity,
in rest and fruition. And in that same Unity, according to Its
fruitfulness, the Father dwells in the Son, and the Son in the
Father, and all creatures dwell in Both. And this is above the
distinction of the Persons; for here by means of the reason we
understand Fatherhood and Sonhood as the life-giving fruitfulness
of the Divine Nature.
Here there arise and begin an eternal going out and an eternal
work which is without beginning; for here there is a beginning
with beginning. For, after the Almighty Father had perfectly
comprehended Himself in the ground of His fruitfulness, so the
Son, the Eternal Word of the Father, came forth as the second
Person in the Godhead. And, through the Eternal Birth, all
creatures have come forth in eternity, before they were created in
time. So God has seen and known them in Himself, according to
distinction, in living ideas,[73] and in an otherness from
Himself; but not as something other in all ways, for all that is
in God is God.[74] This eternal going out and this eternal life,
which we have and are in God eternally, without ourselves, is the
cause of our created being in time. And our created being abides
in the Eternal Essence and is one with it in its essential
existence. And this eternal life and being, which we have and are
in the eternal Wisdom of God, is like unto God. For it has an
eternal immanence in the Divine Essence, without distinction; and
through the birth of the Son it has an eternal outflowing in a
distinction and otherness, according to the Eternal Idea. And
through these two points it is so like unto God that He knows and
reflects Himself in this likeness without cessation, according to
the Essence and according to the Persons. For, though even here
there are distinction and otherness according to intellectual
perception, yet this likeness is one with that same Image of the
Holy Trinity, which is the wisdom of God and in which God beholds
Himself and all things in an eternal Now, without before and
after. In a single seeing He beholds Himself and all things. And
this is the Image and the Likeness of God, and our Image and our
Likeness; for in it God reflects Himself and all things. In this
Divine Image all creatures have an eternal life, outside
themselves, as in their eternal Archetype, and after this eternal
Image, and in this Likeness, we have been made by the Holy
Trinity. And therefore God wills that we shall go forth from
ourselves in this Divine Light, and shall reunite ourselves in a
supernatural way with this Image, which is our proper life, and
shall possess it with Him, in action and in fruition, in eternal
bliss.
For we know well that the bosom of the Father is our ground and
origin, in which we begin our being and our life. And from our
proper ground that is from the Father and from all that lives in
Him there shines forth an eternal brightness, which is the birth
of the Son. And in this brightness, that is, in the Son, the
Father knows Himself and all that lives in Him; for all that He
has, and all that He is, He gives to the Son, save only the
property of Fatherhood, which abides in Himself. And this is why
all that lives in the Father, unmanifested in the Unity, is also
in the Son actively poured forth into manifestation: and the
simple ground of our Eternal Image ever remains in darkness and in
waylessness, but the brightness without limit which streams forth
from it, this reveals and brings forth within the Conditioned the
hiddenness of God. And all those men who are raised up above their
created being into a God-seeing life are one with this Divine
brightness. And they are that brightness itself, and they see
feel, and find, even by means of this Divine Light, that, as
regards their uncreated essence, they are that same onefold ground
from which the brightness without limit shines forth in the Divine
way, and which, according to the simplicity of the Essence, abides
eternally onefold and wayless within. And this is why inward and
God-seeing men will go out in the way of contemplation, above
reason and above distinction and above their created being,
through an eternal intuitive gazing. By means of this inborn light
they are transfigured, and made one with that same light through
which they see and which they see.[75] And thus the God-seeing men
follow after their Eternal Image, after which they have been made;
and they behold God and all things, without distinction, in a
simple seeing, in the Divine brightness. And this is the most
noble and the most profitable contemplation to which one can
attain in this life; for in this contemplation, a man best remains
master of himself and free. And at each loving introversion he may
grow in nobility of life beyond anything that we are able to
understand; for he remains free and master of himself in
inwardness and virtue. And this gazing at the Divine Light holds
him up above all inwardness and all virtue and all merit, for it
is the crown and the reward after which we strive, and which we
have and possess now in this wise; for a God-seeing life is a
heavenly life. But were we set free from this misery and this
exile, so we should have, as regards our created being, a greater
capacity to receive this brightness; and so the glory of God would
shine through us in every way better and more nobly. This is the
way above all ways, in which one goes out through Divine
contemplation and an eternal intuitive gazing, and in which one is
transfigured and transmuted in the Divine brightness. This going
out of the God-seeing man is also in love; for through the
fruition of love he rises above his created being, and finds and
tastes the riches and the delights which are God Himself, and
which He causes to pour forth without interruption in the
hiddenness of the spirit, where the spirit is like unto the
nobility of God.
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73. |
"In levenden redenen," perhaps more exactly
"in life-giving ideas." Surius, in his great Latin translation
renders, this, "sub vividis rationibus." This is one of the
passages in which the Platonic character of Ruysbroeck's
doctrine is specially marked. |
74. |
Suso expresses this doctrine with even greater
daring�
"Mark this: in eternity, all creatures are God in God; and
there, there is no fundamental difference between them, save
that which we have said. And in so much as they are in God,
they are the same life, the same being, the same power: they
are the same One, and nothing less. (Suso, The Book of Truth,
cap. 3.) |
75. |
Thus Dionysius says, "We should know that our
mind has the power of thought, through which it perceives
intellectual things: but the union through which it is brought
into contact with things beyond itself surpasses the nature of
the mind. We must therefore contemplate Divine things by means
of this union; not in ourselves, but by standing out of
ourselves with our whole selves and becoming wholly of God.
For it is better to be of God than of ourselves." (Divine
Names, cap 7.) |
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