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In the second division (caps. 35-38) this process is extended to
the "higher powers" of the soul: the memory or mind, the
understanding, and the will. The experience of God is, for these
higher powers, an experience of fresh enlightenment and fresh
ardour; in Ruysbroeck's favourite imagery, of light and fire.
Grace, which dwells like a living fountain at the heart of our
personality�the "unity of the spirit"�thence pours forth into each
faculty in three streams of radiance: claerheit, a word expressive
at once of pervading brightness and limpid clearness, which occurs
on almost every page of his writings. The sense of this supernal
clarity, veritably experienced�a viva luce, a quickening light, of
which we become aware when we open the soul's eyes�is found in
nearly every mystical writer from the time of St John, and
probably originates in that consciousness of enhanced lucidity
which frequently accompanies spiritual exaltation. It was
crystallised by the schoolmen in the doctrine of the lumen gloriae�the
Divine light which transfigures the soul and makes it like to
God[20]�and much of Ruysbroeck's work is really a poetic
elaboration of this idea.
As a "simple light" this Radiance now
frees the mind from the teasing complexity of distracting images:
as a "spreading light" it illuminates the understanding: as a
burning flame, it enkindles the will. The self thus becomes
capable of the first form of contemplation, adherence to God by
means of the purified reason and will: responding to the "loving
drawing-nigh" of God�dat minlike neyghen Gods�with an ardent
outstretching of himself towards that seeking and compelling
power.
The powers of the soul, then, in the second stage of illumination,
become inundated by the divine claerheit. It "drenches them"; and
the result of this is seen in the state of perfect charity to
which the self now attains: the condition of equable outflowing
love to God and all manner of men (caps. 39-43).
In the third and
highest stage (caps. 49-65), we pass beyond the enhancement and
enlightenment of the separate powers of our nature to the
"essential being" of the self: that unity of the spirit of which Ruysbroeck is always speaking, and wherefrom the powers proceed,
as the Divine Persons proceed from the Unity of God.[21] Whether
our mental and emotional powers as such participate in the
spiritual life, is for him a secondary consideration. They may do
so, if they be wholly surrendered to God. But our true union with
Him takes place in the abysmal deeps of our being�our "ground"�and
ever abides there: for here our life, as it were, buds out from
the Divine life, and here God dwells eternally "according to His
essence." If we learn to enter within, passing beyond the powers
to the unity of the spirit, we become conscious of this.[22] There
we experience His mysterious touch and stirrings; feel and respond
to the thrust and invitation of His love, as He drives each
created spirit forth to work His will, and draws it home again
towards His heart. There, outside Time, the Eternal Birth takes
place (caps. 57-61).
As a result of this practice in introversion, this simplification
of consciousness, the self now first becomes capable of the second
form of contemplation, described in The Twelve Beguines as
"A knowing which is in no wise;
For ever abiding above the reason."[23]
and enters upon that profound yet simple communion with God which
Ruysbroeck calls the most inward of all exercises. For this his
favourite image is that of feeding: the soul tastes God (cap. 65),
eats, devours, assimilates Him, and in her turn is eaten and
consumed[24]�language which probably reflects his great personal
devotion to the Eucharist. With this mystical savouring and
feeding upon Reality, the self reaches the term of the interior
life, and the full stature of that "secret friend of God"
described with such marvellous subtlety in the 8th chapter of The
Sparkling Stone.
It is at this point that the dangers of a false mysticism make
themselves felt. Here, then, Ruysbroeck enters upon a vigorous and
acute criticism of Quietism (caps. 66-67): especially valuable to
us at the present day, when so many irresponsible apostles of "new
mysticism" are recommending voluntary passivity of this type as a
substitute for the stern discipline and perpetual willed effort
involved in the Christian science of prayer.
Ruysbroeck describes
the interior blankness and silence of the quietist as a psychic
trick: a deliberate sinking down into the subconscious�the subsoil
of human nature�where it is true that the Divine Life dwells and
supports our created life, but where we are below instead of above
the levels of normal consciousness. Here, indeed, the soul
experiences a sensation of rest and peace: but it is merely
resting in its own emptiness, a false repose which demands no
exercise of virtue, no tension of the will, and is a caricature of
the active and loving surrender taught by the Christian saints.
The true emptiness and idleness of which Ruysbroeck speaks as an
essential preparation of the contemplative state, is a condition
of meek and passive attentiveness to God, which excludes
consciousness of the ordinary objects of perception and thought;
sweeps and garnishes the interior castle. Here the virtue is not
in the emptiness and idleness, but in the humble and eager
yielding of ourselves. Although man cannot by his own effort reach
God, yet without such deliberate loving effort we shall never
possess Him.[25]
Beyond even the highest point of this interior life, in which the
contemplative feels himself to be living "in God,"[26] is that
transfigured or deified life, as the Platonic mystics named it,
which Ruysbroeck calls overwesen�superessential�the life of the
"God-seeing man" (Book III). Whereas in the interior life we may
be said to re-discover the lost inheritance of our spirit, in this
life there is a genuine transcendence, a passing beyond that
spirit's created being: for the Being of God, in which this
consummation is found, is "more than being" to us. It abides
beyond all the concepts of reason, beyond anything that we can
name or describe, outside Time, in the bosom of Divine Reality:
that deep Quiet of the Godhead which cannot be moved.
Those who
ascend thereto have passed from the state of "secret friends" to
that of the "hidden sons" of God, and completed the soul's journey
to its home.[27] Then they find themselves, so far as their
separate consciousness persists, in a place that is placeless and
a way that is wayless: in the abysmal Onwise of God, a word for
which we have no exact equivalent, but which embodies one of
Ruysbroeck's most important conceptions, and is the occasion of
some of his most mysterious utterances. It represents that world
of spiritual reality which is beyond all attributes and
conditions; which is neither This nor That, which is "in no
wise"�the Absolute wherein all ways and modes of being, all wise,
are swallowed up, and all our finite perceptions die into
ignorance and darkness (cap. 4).[28]
"The splendour of That which is in no wise is as a fair mirror
Wherein shines the everlasting light of God:
It has no attributes,
And in it all the activities of reason fail.
It is not God
But it is the light whereby we see Him:
Those who walk in the divine light thereof
Discover in themselves the Unwalled."[29]
Seen from the synthetic and spiritual point of view, this supernal
world of experience is the Essential Unity, wherein the richness
of Eternal Life consists, and where the surrendered soul enjoys
the peaceful fruition of God. But seen from the analytic and
intellectual point of view it is the Essential Nudity, the
"nought" or "divine dark" of Dionysius the Areopagite: for it has
been stripped of every character of which we can think.[30] Here
the mystic feels himself, as regards his essential being, to be
poured out into God, melted and merged in Him as a river in the
sea: and, as regards his own separate consciousness, apprehends
Him in one simple act of absorbed attention "seeing and staring"
with wide-open eyes. It is in this one act, sometimes felt by us
as a passing beyond ourselves, sometimes as a fixed ecstatic
vision, "beholding that which we are, and becoming that which we
behold" that the self at last knows itself to be one life and one
spirit with God.[31]
The mystic has now entered into union with the three wise, the
three modes or ways, under which Divine Love imparts itself in the
spirit of man: characteristically distinguished by Ruysbroeck as
three forms of movement. First this energetic love pours itself
out from the Godhead into us as grace: and we, in receiving it and
making it ours by our virtues and good works, are united to God
"through means." This is the function of the active life
harmonising man's work with God's work. Then, as a compelling
tide, it draws us within its own flood back towards God. This is
the union "without means"' wherein we are wholly surrendered to
His love: it is the proper condition of the interior life.
But
when we have reached the superessential life, and seem to our own
feeling to be lost in the Darkness, burned up in the Brightness,
and sunk in the Eternal Stillness of God�that "dark silence where
all lovers lose themselves,"[32]�then the circle is complete. We
are made part of His divine fruition or "content the eternal
satisfaction and eternal activity of Perfect Love; achieving thus
the "union without distinction," though not union without
"otherness."[33] Henceforward we can participate in God's dual
life of rest and work, transcendent fruition and immanent
fruitfulness: abiding in restful possession of Him, yet
perpetually sent down from the heights to serve the whole
world.[34]
The final state of the Christian mystic, then, is not annihilation
in the Absolute. It is a condition wherein we dwell wholly in God,
one life and truth with Him; yet still "feel God and ourselves,"
as the lover feels his beloved, in a perfect union which depends
for its joy on an invincible otherness. The soul, transfused and
transfigured by the Divine Love as molten iron is by the fire,
becomes, it is true, "one simple blessedness with God"[35] yet
ever retains its individuality: one with God beyond itself, yet
other than God within itself.[36] The "deified man" is fully human
still, but spiritualised through and through; not by the
destruction of his personality, but by the taking up of his
manhood into God.
There he finds, not a static beatitude, but a
Height, a Depth, a Breadth of which he is made part, yet to which
he can never attain: for the creature, even at its highest,
remains finite, and is conscious that Infinity perpetually eludes
its grasp and leads it on. So heaven itself is discovered to be no
mere passive fulfillment, but rather a forward-moving life:[37] an
ever new loving and tasting, new exploring and enjoying of the
Infinite Fulness of God, that inexhaustible Object of our
knowledge and delight. It is the eternal voyage of the adventurous
soul on the vast and stormy sea of the Divine.
EVELYN UNDERHILL
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