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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ruysbroeck, by Evelyn Underhill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Ruysbroeck
+
+Author: Evelyn Underhill
+
+Release Date: October 27, 2011 [EBook #37870]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RUYSBROECK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Roger Frank and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            THE QUEST SERIES
+
+
+                        Edited by G. R. S. MEAD,
+                         EDITOR OF ‘THE QUEST.’
+
+                     _Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. net each._
+
+                         FIRST LIST OF VOLUMES.
+
+PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND SURVIVAL. By James H. Hyslop, Ph.D., LL.D.,
+        Secretary of Psychical Research Society of America.
+
+THE QUEST OF THE HOLY GRAIL. By Jessie L. Weston, Author of ‘The Legend
+        of Sir Perceval.’
+
+JEWISH MYSTICISM. By J. Abelson, M.A., D.Lit, Principal of Aria College,
+        Portsmouth.
+
+THE MYSTICS OF ISLAM. By Reynold A. Nicholson, M.A., Litt.D, LL.D.,
+        Lecturer on Persian, Cambridge University.
+
+BUDDHIST PSYCHOLOGY. By C. A. F. Rhys Davids, M.A., Lecturer on Indian
+        Philosophy, Manchester University.
+
+RUYSBROECK. By Evelyn Underhill, Author of ‘Mysticism,’ ‘The Mystic Way,’
+        etc.
+
+THE SIDEREAL RELIGION OF THE ANCIENTS. By Robert Eisler, Ph.D., Author of
+        Weltenmantel und Himmelszelt.’    [_In the Press._
+
+                     London: G. BELL AND SONS LTD.
+
+
+
+
+                               RUYSBROECK
+
+
+                                   BY
+                            EVELYN UNDERHILL
+                               AUTHOR OF
+               ‘MYSTICISM,’ ‘THE MYSTIC WAY,’ ETC., ETC.
+
+
+                                 LONDON
+                         G. BELL AND SONS LTD.
+                                  1915
+
+
+                                  FOR
+                                 JESSIE
+                        TO WHOM IT OWES SO MUCH
+                 THIS LITTLE TRIBUTE TO A MUTUAL FRIEND
+
+
+
+
+                             EDITOR’S NOTE
+
+
+A glance at the excellent Bibliographical Note at the end of the volume
+will reveal the surprising paucity of literature on Ruysbroeck in this
+country. A single version from the original of one short treatise,
+published in the present year, is all that we possess of direct
+translation; even in versions from translation there is only one treatise
+represented; add to this one or two selections of the same nature, and
+the full tale is told. We are equally poorly off for studies of the life
+and doctrine of the great Flemish contemplative of the fourteenth
+century. And yet Jan van Ruusbroec is thought, by no few competent
+judges, to be the greatest of all the mediæval Catholic mystics; and,
+indeed, it is difficult to point to his superior. Miss Evelyn Underhill
+is, therefore, doing lovers not only of Catholic mysticism, but also of
+mysticism in general, a very real service by her monograph, which deals
+more satisfactorily than any existing work in English with the life and
+teachings of one of the most spiritual minds in Christendom. Her book is
+not simply a painstaking summary of the more patent generalities of the
+subject, but rather a deeply sympathetic entering into the mind of
+Ruysbroeck, and that, too, with no common insight.
+
+
+
+
+                             PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+I owe to the great kindness of my friend, Mrs. Theodore Beck, the
+translation of several passages from Ruysbroeck’s _Sparkling Stone_ given
+in the present work; and in quoting from _The Twelve Béguines_ have
+often, though not always, availed myself of the recently published
+version by Mr. John Francis. For all other renderings I alone am
+responsible.
+
+                                                               E. U.
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAP.                                                               PAGE
+     I. Ruysbroeck the Man                                               1
+    II. His Works                                                       36
+   III. His Doctrine of God                                             52
+    IV. His Doctrine of Man                                             66
+     V. The Active Life                                                 94
+    VI. The Interior Life: Illumination and Destitution                115
+   VII. The Interior Life: Union and Contemplation                     136
+  VIII. The Superessential Life                                        164
+
+        Bibliographical Note                                           187
+
+
+
+
+      Luce divina sopra me s’ appunta,
+      penetrando per questa ond’ io m’ inventro;
+  La cui virtù, col mio veder conguinta,
+      mi leva sopra me tanto, ch’ io veggio
+      la somma essenza della quale è munta.
+  Quinci vien l’ allegrezza, ond’ io fiammeggio;
+      perchè alla vista mia, quant’ ella è chiara,
+      la chiarità della fiamma pareggio.
+
+                                                       Par. xxi. 83.
+
+  [Divine Light doth focus itself upon me, piercing through that wherein
+  I am enclosed; the power of which, united with my sight, so greatly
+  lifts me up above myself that I see the Supreme Essence where from it
+  is drawn. Thence comes the joy wherewith I flame; for to my vision,
+  even as it is clear, I make the clearness of the flame respond.]
+
+
+
+
+                               RUYSBROECK
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I
+                           RUYSBROECK THE MAN
+
+
+  The tree Igdrasil, which has its head in heaven and its roots in hell
+  (the lower parts of the earth), is the image of the true man.... In
+  proportion to the divine heights to which it ascends must be the
+  obscure depths in which the tree is rooted, and from which it draws the
+  mystic sap of its spiritual life.
+
+                                                     Coventry Patmore.
+
+In the history of the spiritual adventures of man, we find at intervals
+certain great mystics, who appear to gather up and fuse together in the
+crucible of the heart the diverse tendencies of those who have preceded
+them, and, adding to these elements the tincture of their own rich
+experience, give to us an intensely personal, yet universal, vision of
+God and man. These are constructive spirits, whose creations in the
+spiritual sphere sum up and represent the best achievement of a whole
+epoch; as in other spheres the great artist, musician, or poet—always the
+child of tradition as well as of inspiration—may do.
+
+John Ruysbroeck is such a mystic as this. His career, which covers the
+greater part of the fourteenth century—that golden age of Christian
+mysticism—seems to exhibit within the circle of a single personality, and
+carry up to a higher term than ever before, all the best attainments of
+the Middle Ages in the realm of Eternal Life. Rooted firmly in history,
+faithful to the teachings of the great Catholic mystics of the primitive
+and mediæval times, Ruysbroeck does not merely transmit, but
+transfigures, their principles: making from the salt, sulphur, and
+mercury of their vision, reason, and love, a new and living jewel—or, in
+his own words, a ‘sparkling stone’—which reflects the actual radiance of
+the Uncreated Light. Absorbing from the rich soil of the Middle Ages all
+the intellectual nourishment which he needs, dependent too, as all real
+greatness is, on the human environment in which he grows—that mysterious
+interaction and inter-penetration of personalities without which human
+consciousness can never develop its full powers—he towers up from the
+social and intellectual circumstances that conditioned him: a living,
+growing, unique and creative individual, yet truly a part of the earth
+from which he springs.
+
+To speak of Ruysbroeck, as some enthusiastic biographers have done, as an
+isolated spiritual phenomenon totally unrelated to the life of his time,
+an ‘ignorant monk’ whose profound knowledge of reality is entirely the
+result of personal inspiration and independent of human history, is to
+misunderstand his greatness. The ‘ignorant monk’ was bound by close links
+to the religious life of his day. He was no spiritual individualist; but
+the humble, obedient child of an institution, the loyal member of a
+Society. He tells us again and again that his spiritual powers were
+nourished by the sacramental life of the Catholic Church. From the
+theologians of that Church came the intellectual framework in which his
+sublime intuitions were expressed. All that he does—though he does this
+to a degree perhaps unique in Christian history—is to carry out into
+action, completely actualise in his own experience, the high vision of
+the soul’s relation to Divine Reality by which that Church is possessed.
+The central Christian doctrine of Divine Fatherhood, and of the soul’s
+‘power to become the son of God’: it is this, raised to the _n_th degree
+of intensity, experienced in all its depth and fullness, and demonstrated
+with the exactitude of a mathematician and the passion of a poet, which
+Ruysbroeck gives us. Thus tradition and authority, no less than the
+abundant inspiration, the direct ecstatic knowledge of God to which his
+writings bear witness, have their part in his achievement. His
+theological culture was wide and deep. Not only the Scriptures and the
+Liturgy, but St. Augustine, Dionysius the Areopagite, Richard of St.
+Victor, St. Bernard, St. Bonaventura, St. Thomas Aquinas, and many others
+have stimulated and controlled his thought; interpreting to him his
+ineffable adventures, and providing him with vessels in which the fruit
+of those adventures could be communicated to other men.
+
+Nor is Catholic tradition the only medium through which human life has
+exercised a formative influence upon Ruysbroeck’s genius. His worldly
+circumstances, his place within and reaction to the temporal order, the
+temper of those souls amongst which he grew—these too are of vital
+importance in relation to his mystical achievements. To study the
+interior adventures and formal teachings of a mystic without reference to
+the general trend and special accidents of his outer life, is to neglect
+our best chance of understanding the nature and sources of his vision of
+truth. The angle from which that vision is perceived, the content of the
+mind which comes to it, above all the concrete activities which it
+induces in the growing, moving, supple self: these are primary _data_
+which we should never ignore. Action is of the very essence of human
+reality. Where the inner life is genuine and strong the outer life will
+reflect, however faintly, the curve on which it moves; for human
+consciousness is a unit, capable of reacting to and synthesising two
+orders, not an unresolved dualism—as it were, an angel and an
+animal—condemned to lifelong battle within a narrow cage.
+
+Therefore we begin our study of Ruysbroeck the mystic by the study of
+Ruysbroeck the man: the circumstances of his life and environment, so far
+as we can find them out. For the facts of this life our chief authority
+will be the Augustinian Canon Pomerius, who was Prior and chronicler of
+Ruysbroeck’s own community of Groenendael. Born in 1382, a year after
+Ruysbroeck’s death, and entering Groenendael early in the fifteenth
+century, he knew and talked with at least two of the great mystic’s
+disciples, John of Hoelaere and John of Scoonhoven. His life of
+Ruysbroeck and history of the foundation of the monastery was finished
+before 1420; that is to say, within the lifetime of the generation which
+succeeded the first founders of the house.[1] It represents the careful
+gathering up, sifting, and arranging of all that was remembered and
+believed by the community—still retaining several members who had known
+him in the flesh—of the facts of Ruysbroeck’s character and career.
+
+Pomerius was no wild romancer, but a reasonably careful as well as a
+genuinely enthusiastic monastic chronicler. Moderation is hardly the
+outstanding virtue of such home-made lives of monastic founders. They are
+inevitably composed in surroundings where any criticism of their subject
+or scepticism as to his supernatural peculiarities is looked upon as a
+crime; where every incident has been fitted with a halo, and the
+unexplained is indistinguishable from the miraculous. Nevertheless the
+picture drawn by Pomerius—exaggerated though it be in certain respects—is
+a human picture; possessed of distinct characteristics, some natural and
+charming, some deeply impressive. It is completed by a second documentary
+source: the little sketch by Ruysbroeck’s intimate friend, Gerard Naghel,
+Prior of the Carthusian monastery of Hérines near Groenendael, which
+forms the prologue to our most complete MS. collection of his writings.
+
+Ruysbroeck’s life, as it is shown to us by Pomerius and Gerard, falls
+into three main divisions, three stages of ascent: the natural active
+life of boyhood; the contemplative, disciplined career of his middle
+period; the superessential life of supreme union which governed his
+existence at Groenendael. This course, which he trod in the temporal
+order, seems like the rough sketch of that other course trodden by the
+advancing soul within the eternal order—the Threefold Life of man which
+he describes to us in _The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage_ and other
+of his works.
+
+Now the details of that career are these: John Ruysbroeck was born in
+1293 at the little village of Ruysbroeck or Ruusbroec, between Brussels
+and Hal, from which he takes his name. We know nothing of his father; but
+his mother is described as a good and pious woman, devoted to the
+upbringing of her son—a hard task, and one that was soon proved to be
+beyond her. The child Ruysbroeck was strong-willed, adventurous,
+insubordinate; already showing signs of that abounding vitality, that
+strange restlessness and need of expansion which children of genius so
+often exhibit. At eleven years of age he ran away from home, and found
+his way to Brussels; where his uncle, John Hinckaert, was a Canon of the
+Cathedral of St. Gudule. Pomerius assures us that this escapade, which
+would have seemed a mere naughtiness in normal little boys, was in fact a
+proof of coming sanctity; that it was not the attraction of the city but
+a precocious instinct for the religious life—the first crude stirrings of
+the love of God—which set this child upon the road. Such a claim is
+natural to the hagiographer; yet there lies behind it a certain truth.
+The little John may or may not have dreamed of being a priest; he did
+already dream of a greater, more enticing life beyond the barriers of use
+and wont. Though he knew it not, the vision of a spiritual city called
+him. Already the primal need of his nature was asserting itself—the
+demand, felt long before it was understood, for something beyond the
+comfortable world of appearance—and this demand crystallised into a
+concrete act. In the sturdy courage which faced the unknown, the
+practical temper which translated dream into action, we see already the
+germ of those qualities which afterwards gave to the great contemplative
+power to climb up to the ‘supreme summits of the inner life’ and face the
+awful realities of God.
+
+Such adventures are not rare in the childhood of the mystics. Always of a
+romantic temperament, endowed too with an abounding vitality, the craving
+for some dimly-guessed and wonderful experience often shows itself early
+in them; as the passion for music, colour or poetry is sometimes seen in
+embryo in artists of another type. The impact of Reality seems to be felt
+by such spirits in earliest childhood. Born susceptible in a special
+degree to the messages which pour in on man from the Transcendent, they
+move from the first in a different universe from that of other boys and
+girls; subject to experiences which they do not understand, full of
+dreams which they are unable to explain, and often impelled to strange
+actions, extremely disconcerting to the ordinary guardians of youth. Thus
+the little Catherine of Siena, six years old, already lived in a world
+which was peopled with saints and angels; and ruled her small life by the
+visions which she had seen. Thus the baby Teresa, mysteriously attracted
+by sacrifice, as other children are attracted by games and toys, set out
+to look for ‘the Moors and martyrdom.’ So too the instinct for travel,
+for the remote and unknown, often shows itself early in these wayfarers
+of the spirit; whose destiny it is to achieve a more extended life in the
+interests of the race, to find and feel that Infinite Reality which alone
+can satisfy the heart of man. Thus in their early years Francis, Ignatius
+and many others were restless, turbulent, eager for adventure and change.
+
+This first adventure brought the boy Ruysbroeck to a home so perfectly
+fitted to his needs, that it might seem as though some secret instinct,
+some overshadowing love, had indeed guided his steps. His uncle, John
+Hinckaert, at this time about forty years of age, had lately been
+converted—it is said by a powerful sermon—from the comfortable and
+easy-going life of a prosperous ecclesiastic to the austere quest of
+spiritual perfection. He had distributed his wealth, given up all
+self-indulgence, and now, with another and younger Canon of the Cathedral
+named Francis van Coudenberg, lived in simplest, poorest style a
+dedicated life of self-denial, charity and prayer. He received his
+runaway nephew willingly. Perhaps he saw in this strange and eager child,
+suddenly flung upon his charity, an opportunity for repairing some at
+least amongst the omissions of his past—that terrible wreck of wasted
+years which torments the memory of those who are converted in middle
+life. His love and remorse might spend themselves on this boy. He might
+make of him perhaps all that he now longed to be, but could never wholly
+achieve: a perfect servant of the Eternal Goodness, young, vigorous,
+ardent, completely responsive to the touch of God.
+
+Ruysbroeck, then, found a home soaked in love, governed by faith,
+renunciation, humility; a forcing-house of the spiritual life. In the
+persons of these two grown men, who had given up all outward things for
+the sake of spiritual realities, he was brought face to face—and this in
+his most impressionable years—with the hard facts, the concrete
+sacrifices, the heroic life of deliberate mortification, which underlay
+the lovely haunting vision, the revelation of the Divine beauty and love
+that had possessed him. No lesson is of higher value to the natural
+mystic than this. The lovers of Ruysbroeck should not forget how much
+they owe to the men who received, loved, influenced, educated the
+brilliant wayward and impressionable child. His attainment is theirs. His
+mysticism is rooted in their asceticism; a flower directly dependent for
+its perfection on that favouring soil. Though his achievement, like that
+of all men of genius, is individual, and transcends the circumstances and
+personalities which surround it; still, from those circumstances and
+personalities it takes its colour. It represents far more than a personal
+and solitary experience. Behind it lies the little house in Brussels, the
+supernatural atmosphere which filled it, and the fostering care of the
+two men whose life of external and deliberate poverty only made more
+plain the richness of the spirits who could choose, and remain constant
+to, this career of detachment and love.
+
+The personal influence of Hinckaert and Coudenberg, the moral disciplines
+and perpetual self-denials of the life which he shared with them, formed
+the heart of Ruysbroeck’s education; helping to build up that manly and
+sturdy character which gave its special temper to his mystical outlook.
+Like so many children destined to greatness, he was hard to educate in
+the ordinary sense; uninterested in general knowledge, impatient of
+scholastic drudgery. Nothing which did not minister to his innate passion
+for ultimates had any attraction for him. He was taught grammar with
+difficulty; but on the other hand his astonishing aptitude for religious
+ideas, even of the most subtle kind, his passionate clear vision of
+spiritual things, was already so highly developed as to attract general
+attention; and his writings are sufficient witness to the width and depth
+of his theological reading. With such tastes and powers as these, and
+brought up in such a household, governed by religious enthusiasms and
+under the very shadow of the Cathedral walls, it was natural that he
+should wish to become a priest; and in 1317 he was ordained and given,
+through the influence of his uncle, a prebend in St. Gudule.
+
+Now a great mystic is the product not merely of an untamed genius for the
+Transcendent, but of a moral discipline, an interior education, of the
+most strenuous kind. All the varied powers and tendencies of a nature
+which is necessarily strong and passionate, must be harnessed, made
+subservient to this one central interest. The instinctive egotism of the
+natural man—never more insidious than when set upon spiritual things—must
+be eradicated. So, behind these few outward events of Ruysbroeck’s
+adolescence, we must discern another growth; a perpetual interior
+travail, a perpetual slow character-building always going forward in him,
+as his whole personality is moulded into that conformity to the vision
+seen which prepares the way of union, and marks off the mystical saint
+from the mere adept of transcendental things. We know from his writings
+how large a part such moral purifications, such interior adjustments,
+played in his concept of the spiritual life; and the intimacy with which
+he describes each phase in the battle of love, each step of the spiritual
+ladder, the long process of preparation in which the soul adorns herself
+for the ‘spiritual marriage,’ guarantees to us that he has himself
+trodden the path which he maps out. That path goes the whole way from the
+first impulse of ‘goodwill,’ of glad acquiescence in the universal
+purpose, through the taming of the proud will to humility and suppleness,
+and of the insurgent heart to gentleness, kindness, and peace, to that
+last state of perfect charity in which the whole spirit of man is one
+will and one love with God.
+
+Though his biographers have left us little material for a reconstruction
+of his inner development, we may surely infer something of the course
+which it followed from the vividly realistic descriptions in _The Kingdom
+of Lovers_ and _The Spiritual Marriage_. Personal experience underlies
+the wonderful account of the ascent of the Spiritual Sun in the heavens
+of consciousness; the rapture, wildness and joy, the ‘fever of love’
+which fulfils the man who feels its light and heat. Experience, too,
+dictates these profound passages which deal with the terrible spiritual
+reaction when the Sun declines in the heavens, and man feels cold, dead,
+and abandoned of God. Through these phases, at least, Ruysbroeck had
+surely passed before his great books came to be written.
+
+One or two small indications there are which show us his progress on the
+mystic way, the development in him of those secondary psychic characters
+peculiar to the mystical type. It seems that by the time of his
+ordination that tendency to vision which often appears in the earliest
+youth of natural mystics, was already established in him. Deeply
+impressed by the sacramental side of Catholicism, and finding in it
+throughout his life a true means of contact with the Unseen, the
+priesthood was conceived by him as bringing with it a veritable access of
+grace; fresh power poured in on him from the Transcendent, an increase of
+strength wherewith to help the souls of other men. This belief took, in
+his meditations, a concrete and positive form. Again and again he saw in
+dramatic vision the soul specially dear to him, specially dependent on
+him—that of his mother, who had lately died in the Brussels
+Béguinage—demanding how long she must wait till her son’s ordination made
+his prayers effectual for her release from Purgatory. At the moment in
+which he finished saying his first Mass, this vision returned to him; and
+he saw his mother’s spirit, delivered from Purgatory by the power of the
+sacrifice which he had offered, entering into Heaven—an experience
+originating in, and giving sharp dramatic expression to, that sense of
+new and sacred powers now conferred on him, which may well at such a
+moment have flooded the consciousness of the young priest. This story was
+repeated to Pomerius by those who had heard it from Ruysbroeck himself;
+for “he often told it to the brothers.”
+
+For twenty-six years—that is to say, until he was fifty years of
+age—Ruysbroeck lived in Brussels the industrious and inconspicuous life
+of a secular priest. It was not the solitude of the forest, but the
+normal, active existence of a cathedral chaplain in a busy capital city
+which controlled his development during that long period, stretching from
+the very beginnings of manhood to the end of middle age; and it was in
+fact during these years, and in the midst of incessant distractions, that
+he passed through the great oscillations of consciousness which mark the
+mystic way. It is probable that when at last he left Brussels for the
+forest, these oscillations were over, equilibrium was achieved; he had
+climbed ‘to the summits of the mount of contemplation.’ It was on those
+summits that he loved to dwell, absorbed in loving communion with Divine
+Reality; but his career fulfilled that ideal of a synthesis of work and
+contemplation, an acceptance and remaking of the whole of life, which he
+perpetually puts before us as the essential characteristic of a true
+spirituality. No mystic has ever been more free from the vice of
+other-worldliness, or has practised more thoroughly and more unselfishly
+the primary duty of active charity towards men which is laid upon the
+God-possessed.
+
+The simple and devoted life of the little family of three went on year by
+year undisturbed; though one at least was passing through those profound
+interior changes and adventures which he has described to us as governing
+the evolution of the soul, from the state of the ‘faithful servant’ to
+the transfigured existence of the ‘God-seeing man.’ Ruysbroeck grew up to
+be a simple, dreamy, very silent and totally unimpressive person, who,
+‘going about the streets of Brussels with his mind lifted up into God,’
+seemed a nobody to those who did not know him. Yet not only a spiritual
+life of unequalled richness, intimacy and splendour, but a penetrating
+intellect, a fearless heart, deep knowledge of human nature, remarkable
+powers of expression, lay behind that meek and unattractive exterior. As
+Paul’s twelve years of quiet and subordinate work in Antioch prepared the
+way of his missionary career; so during this long period of service, the
+silent growth of character, the steady development of his mystical
+powers, had gone forward in Ruysbroeck. When circumstances called them
+into play he was found to be possessed of an unsuspected passion,
+strength and courage, a power of dealing with outward circumstances,
+which was directly dependent on his inner life of contemplation and
+prayer.
+
+The event into which the tendencies of this stage of his development
+crystallised, is one which seems perhaps inconsistent with the common
+idea of the mystical temperament, with its supposed concentration on the
+Eternal, its indifference to temporal affairs. As his childhood was
+marked by an exhibition of adventurous love, so his manhood was marked by
+an exhibition of militant love; of that strength and sternness, that
+passion for the true, which—no less than humility, gentleness, peace—is
+an integral part of that paradoxical thing, the Christian character.
+
+The fourteenth century, like all great spiritual periods, was a century
+fruitful in mystical heresies as well as in mystical saints. In
+particular, the extravagant pantheism preached by the Brethren of the
+Free Spirit had become widely diffused in Flanders, and was responsible
+for much bad morality as well as bad theology; those on whom the ‘Spirit’
+had descended believing themselves to be already divine, and emancipated
+from obedience to all human codes of conduct. Soon after Ruysbroeck came
+as a boy to Brussels, a woman named Bloemardinne placed herself at the
+head of this sect, and gradually gained extraordinary influence. She
+claimed supernatural and prophetic powers, was said to be accompanied by
+two Seraphim whenever she went to the altar to receive Holy Communion,
+and preached a degraded eroticism under the title of ‘Seraphic love,’
+together with a quietism of the most exaggerated and soul-destroying
+type. All the dangers and follies of a false mysticism, dissociated from
+the controlling influence of tradition and the essential virtue of
+humility, were exhibited in her. Against this powerful woman, then at the
+height of her fame, Ruysbroeck declared war; and prosecuted his campaign
+with a violence and courage which must have been startling to those who
+had regarded him only as a shy, pious, rather negligible young man. The
+pamphlets which he wrote against her are lost; but the passionate
+denunciations of pantheism and quietism scattered through his later works
+no doubt have their origin in this controversy, and represent the angle
+from which his attacks were made.
+
+Pantheists, he says in _The Book of Truth_, are “a fruit of hell, the
+more dangerous because they counterfeit the true fruit of the Spirit of
+God.” Far from possessing that deep humility which is the soul’s
+inevitable reaction to the revelation of the Infinite, they are full of
+pride and self-satisfaction. They claim that their imaginary identity
+with the Essence of God emancipates them from all need of effort, all
+practice of virtue, and leaves them free to indulge those inclinations of
+the flesh which the ‘Spirit’ suggests. They “believe themselves sunk in
+inward peace; but as a matter of fact they are deep-drowned in error.”[2]
+
+Against all this the stern, virile, ardent spirituality of Ruysbroeck
+opposed itself with its whole power. Especially did he hate and condemn
+the laziness and egotism of the quietistic doctrine of contemplation: the
+ideal of spiritual immobility which it set up. That ‘love cannot be lazy’
+is a cardinal truth for all real mystics. Again and again it appears in
+their works. Even that profound repose in which they have fruition of
+God, is but the accompaniment or preliminary of work of the most
+strenuous kind, and keeps at full stretch the soul which truly tastes it;
+and this supernatural state is as far above that self-induced quietude of
+‘natural repose’—“consisting in nothing but an idleness and interior
+vacancy, to which they are inclined by nature and habit”—in which the
+quietists love to immerse themselves, as God is above His creatures.
+
+Here is the distinction, always needed and constantly ignored, between
+that veritable fruition of Eternal Life which results from the
+interaction of will and grace, and demands of the soul the highest
+intensity and most active love, and that colourable imitation of it which
+is produced by a psychic trick, and is independent alike of the human
+effort and the divine gift. Ruysbroeck in fighting the ‘Free Spirit’ was
+fighting the battle of true mysticism against its most dangerous and
+persistent enemy,—mysticality.
+
+His attack upon Bloemardinne is the one outstanding incident in the long
+Brussels period which has been preserved to us. The next great outward
+movement in his steadily evolving life did not happen until the year
+1343, when he was fifty years of age. It was then that the three
+companions decided to leave Brussels, and live together in some remote
+country place. They had long felt a growing distaste for the noisy and
+distracting life of the city; a growing dissatisfaction with the
+spiritual apathy and low level of religious observance at the Cathedral
+of St. Gudule; the need of surroundings in which they might devote
+themselves with total concentration to the contemplative life. Hinckaert
+and Coudenberg were now old men; Ruysbroeck was advanced in middle age.
+The rhythm of existence, which had driven him as a child from country to
+town, and harnessed him during long years to the service of his
+fellow-men, now drew him back again to the quiet spaces where he might be
+alone with God. He was approaching those heights of experience from which
+his greatest mystical works proceed; and it was in obedience to a true
+instinct that he went away to the silent places of the forest—as Anthony
+to the solitude of the desert, Francis to the ‘holy mountain’ of La
+Verna—that, undistracted by the many whom he had served so faithfully, he
+might open his whole consciousness to the inflow of the One, and receive
+in its perfection the message which it was his duty to transmit to the
+world, He went, says Pomerius, “not that he might hide his light; but
+that he might tend it better and make it shine more brightly.”
+
+By the influence of Coudenberg, John III., Duke of Brabant, gave to the
+three friends the old hermitage of Groenendael, or the Green Valley, in
+the forest of Soignes, near Brussels. They entered into possession on the
+Wednesday of Easter week, 1343; and for five years lived there, as they
+had lived in the little house in Brussels, with no other rule save their
+own passion for perfection. But perpetual invasions from the outer world,
+not only of penitents and would-be disciples—for their reputation for
+sanctity grew quickly—but of huntsmen in the forest and pleasure parties
+from the town, who demanded and expected hospitality, soon forced them to
+adopt some definite attitude towards the question of enclosure. It is
+said that Ruysbroeck begged for an entire seclusion; but Coudenberg
+insisted that this was contrary to the law of charity, and that some at
+least of those who sought them must be received. In addition to these
+practical difficulties, the Prior of the Abbey of St. Victor at Paris had
+addressed to them strong remonstrances, on account of the absence of rule
+in their life and the fact that they had not even adopted a religious
+habit; a proceeding which in his opinion savoured rather of the
+ill-regulated doings of the heretical sects, than of the decorum proper
+to good Catholics. As a result of these various considerations, the
+simple and informal existence of the little family was re-modelled in
+conformity with the rule of the Augustinian Canons, and the Priory of
+Groenendael was formally created. Coudenberg became its provost, and
+Ruysbroeck, who had refused the higher office, was made prior; but
+Hinckaert, now a very old man in feeble health, refused to burden the
+young community with a member who might be a drag upon it and could not
+keep the full rigour of the rule. In a spirit of renunciation which
+surely touches the heroic, he severed himself from his lifelong friend
+and his adopted son, and went away to a little cell in the forest, where
+he lived alone until his death.
+
+The story of the foundation and growth of the Priory of Groenendael, the
+saintly personalities which it nourished, is not for this place; except
+in so far as it affects our main interest, the story of Ruysbroeck’s
+soul. Under the influences of the forest, of the silent and regular life,
+those supreme contemplative powers which belong to the ‘Superessential
+Life’ of Unity now developed in him with great rapidity. It is possible,
+as we shall see, that some at least of his mystical writings may date
+from his Brussels period; and we know that at the close of this period
+his reputation as an ‘illuminated man’ was already made. Nevertheless it
+seems safe to say that the bulk of his works, as we now possess them,
+represent him as he was during the last thirty years of his life, rather
+than during his earlier and more active career; and that the intense
+certitude, the wide deep vision of the Infinite which distinguishes them,
+are the fruits of those long hours of profound absorption in God for
+which his new life found place. In the silence of the woods he was able
+to discern each subtle accent of that Voice which “is heard without
+utterance, and without the sound of words speaks all truth.”
+
+Like so many of the greatest mystics, Ruysbroeck, drawing nearer to
+Divine Reality, drew nearer to nature too; conforming to his own ideal of
+the contemplative, who, having been raised to the simple vision of God
+Transcendent, returns to find His image reflected by all life. Many
+passages in his writings show the closeness and sympathy of his
+observation of natural things: the vivid description in _The Spiritual
+Marriage_ of the spring, summer and autumn of the fruitful soul, the
+constant insistence on the phenomena of growth, the lessons drawn from
+the habits of ants and bees, the comparison of the surrendered soul to
+the sunflower, ‘one of nature’s most wonderful works’; the three types of
+Christians, compared with birds who can fly but prefer hopping about the
+earth, birds who swim far on the waters of grace, and birds who love only
+to soar high in the heavens. For the free, exultant life of birds he felt
+indeed a special sympathy and love; and ‘many-feathered’ is the best name
+that he can find for the soul of the contemplative ascending to the glad
+vision of God.
+
+It is probably a true tradition which represents him as having written
+his greatest and most inspired pages sitting under a favourite tree in
+the depths of the woods. When the ‘Spirit’ came on him, as it often did
+with a startling suddenness, he would go away into the forest carrying
+his tablet and stylus. There, given over to an ecstasy of
+composition—which seems often to have approached the limits of automatic
+writing, as in St. Teresa, Boehme, Blake and other mystics—he would write
+that which was given to him, without addition or omission; breaking off
+even in the middle of a sentence when the ‘Spirit’ abruptly departed, and
+resuming at the same point, though sometimes after an interval which
+lasted several weeks, when it returned. In his last years, when eyesight
+failed him, he would allow a younger brother to go with him into the
+woods, and there to take down from dictation the fruits of those
+meditations in which he ‘saw without sight’; as the illiterate Catherine
+of Siena dictated in ecstasy the text of her Divine Dialogue.
+
+Two witnesses have preserved Ruysbroeck’s solemn affirmation, given first
+to his disciple Gerard Groot ‘in great gentleness and humility,’ and
+repeated again upon his death-bed in the presence of the whole community,
+that every word of his writings was thus composed under the immediate
+domination of an inspiring power; that ‘secondary personality of a
+superior type,’ in touch with levels of reality beyond the span of the
+surface consciousness, which governs the activities of the great mystics
+in their last phases of development. These books are not the fruit of
+conscious thought, but ‘God-sent truths,’ poured out from a heart
+immersed in that Divine Abyss of which he tries to tell.
+
+That a saint must needs be a visionary, is a conviction deeply implanted
+in the mind of the mediæval hagiographer; who always ascribes to these
+incidents an importance which the saints themselves are the first to
+deny. Pomerius thus attributes to Ruysbroeck not only those profound and
+direct experiences of Divine Reality to which his works bear witness; but
+also numerous visions of a conventional and anthropomorphic type, in
+which he spoke with Christ, the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, ecstasies
+which fell upon him when saying Mass—and the passionate devotion to the
+Eucharist which his writings express makes these at least probable—a
+certain faculty of clairvoyance, and a prophetic knowledge of his own
+death. Further, it is said that once, being missed from the priory, he
+was found after long search by one of the brothers he loved best, sitting
+under his favourite tree, rapt in ecstasy and surrounded by an _aura_ of
+radiant light; as the discerning eyes of those who loved them have seen
+St. Francis, St. Teresa, and other contemplatives transfigured and made
+shining by the intensity of their spiritual life. I need not point out
+that the fact that these things are common form in the lives of the
+mystics, does not necessarily discredit them; though in any case their
+interest is less of a mystical than of a psychological kind.
+
+Not less significant, and to us perhaps more winning, is that side of
+Ruysbroeck’s personality which was turned towards the world of men. In
+his own person he fulfilled that twofold duty of the deified soul which
+he has described to us: the in-breathing of the Love of God, the
+out-breathing of that same radiant charity towards the race. “To give and
+receive, both at once, is the essence of union,” he says; and his whole
+career is an illustration of these words. He took his life from the
+Transcendent; he was a focus of distribution, which gave out that joyous
+life again to other souls. His retreat at Groenendael, his ecstasies of
+composition, never kept him from those who wanted his help and advice. In
+his highest ascents towards Divine Love, the rich complexities of human
+love went with him. Other men always meant much to Ruysbroeck. He had a
+genius for friendship, and gave himself without stint to his friends; and
+those who knew him said that none ever went to him for consolation
+without returning with gladness in their hearts. There are many tales in
+the _Vita_ of his power over and intuitive understanding of other minds;
+of conversions effected, motives unveiled and clouds dispelled. His great
+friend, Gerard Naghel, the Carthusian prior—at whose desire he wrote one
+of the most beautiful of his shorter works, _The Book of Supreme
+Truth_—has left a vivid little account of the impression which his
+personality created: “his peaceful and joyful countenance, his humble
+good-humoured speech.” Ruysbroeck spent three days in Gerard’s monastery,
+in order to explain some difficult passages in his writings, “and these
+days were too short, for no one could speak to him or see him without
+being the better for it.”
+
+By this we may put the description of Pomerius, founded upon the
+reminiscences of Ruysbroeck’s surviving friends. “The grace of God shone
+in his face; and also in his modest speech, his kindly deeds, his humble
+manners, and in the way that every action of his life exhibited
+uprightness and radiant purity. He lived soberly, neglected his dress,
+and was patient in all things and with all people.”
+
+Plainly the great contemplative who had seemed in Brussels a ‘negligible
+man,’ kept to the end a great simplicity of aspect; closely approximating
+to his own ideal of the ‘really humble man, without any pose or
+pretence,’ as described in _The Spiritual Marriage_. That profound
+self-immersion in God which was the source of his power, manifested
+itself in daily life under the least impressive forms; ever seeking
+embodiment in little concrete acts of love and service, “ministering, in
+the world without, to all who need, in love and mercy.”[3] We see him in
+his Franciscan love of living things, his deep sense of kinship with all
+the little children of God, ‘going to the help of the animals in all
+their needs’; thrown into a torment of distress by the brothers who
+suggested to him that during a hard winter the little birds of the forest
+might die, and at once making generous and successful arrangements for
+their entertainment. We see him ‘giving Mary and Martha _rendez-vous_ in
+his heart’; working in the garden of the community, trying hard to be
+useful, wheeling barrow-loads of manure, and emerging from profound
+meditation on the Infinite to pull up young vegetables under the
+impression that they were weeds. He made, in fact, valiant efforts to
+achieve that perfect synthesis of action and contemplation ‘ever abiding
+in the simplicity of the Spirit, and perpetually flowing forth in
+abundant acts of love towards heaven and earth,’ which he regarded as the
+proper goal of human growth—efforts constantly thwarted by his own
+growing concentration on the Transcendent, the ease and frequency with
+which his consciousness now withdrew from the world of the senses to
+immerse itself in Spiritual Reality. In theory there was for him no
+cleavage between the two: Being and Becoming, the Temporal and the
+Eternal, were but two moods within the mind of God, and in the
+superessential life of perfect union these completing opposites should
+merge in one.
+
+A life which shall find place for the activities of the lover, the
+servant, and the apostle, is the goal towards which the great mystics
+seem to move. We have seen how the homely life of the priory gave to
+Ruysbroeck the opportunity of service, how the silence of the forest
+fostered and supported his secret life of love. As the years passed, the
+third side of his nature, the apostolic passion which had found during
+his long Brussels period ample scope for its activities, once more came
+into prominence. He was sought out by numbers of would-be disciples, not
+only from Belgium itself, but from Holland, Germany and France; and
+became a fountainhead of new life, the father of many spiritual children.
+The tradition which places among these disciples the great Dominican
+mystic Tauler is probably false; though many passages in Tauler’s later
+sermons suggest that he was strongly influenced by Ruysbroeck’s works,
+which had already attained a wide circulation. But Gerard Groot,
+afterwards the founder of the Brothers of the Common Life, and spiritual
+ancestor of Thomas à Kempis, went to Groenendael shortly after his
+conversion in 1374, that he might there learn the rudiments of a sane and
+robust spirituality. Ruysbroeck received him with a special joy,
+recognising in him at first sight a peculiar aptitude for the things of
+the Spirit. A deep friendship grew up between the old mystic and the
+young and vigorous convert. Gerard stayed often at the priory, and
+corresponded regularly with Ruysbroeck; whose influence it was which
+conditioned his subsequent career as a preacher, and as founder of a
+congregation as simple and unconventional in its first beginnings, as
+fruitful in its later developments, as that of Groenendael itself.
+
+The penetrating remarks upon human character scattered through his works,
+and the anecdotes of his dealings with disciples and penitents preserved
+by Pomerius, suggest that Ruysbroeck, though he might not always
+recognise the distinction between the weeds and vegetables of the garden,
+was seldom at fault in his judgment of men. An instinctive knowledge of
+the human heart, an unerring eye for insincerity, egotism,
+self-deception, is a power which nearly all the great contemplatives
+possess, and often employed with disconcerting effect. I need refer only
+to the caustic analysis of the ‘false contemplative’ contained in _The
+Cloud of Unknowing_, and the amusing sketches of spiritual
+self-importance in St. Teresa’s letters and life. The little tale, so
+often repeated, of the somewhat self-conscious priests who came from
+Paris to consult Ruysbroeck on the state of their souls, and received
+from him only the blunt observation—apparently so careless, yet really
+plumbing human nature to its deeps—“You are as holy as you wish to be,”
+shows him possessed of this same power of stripping off the husks of
+unreality and penetrating at once to the fundamental facts of the soul’s
+life: the purity and direction of its will and love.
+
+The life-giving life of union, once man has grown up to it, clarifies,
+illuminates, raises to a higher term, all aspects of the self:
+intelligence, no less than love and will. That self is now harmonised
+about its true centre, and finding ‘God in all creatures and all
+creatures in God’ finds them in their reality. So it is that Ruysbroeck’s
+long life of growth, his long education in love, bringing him to that
+which he calls the ‘God-seeing’ stage, brings him to a point in which he
+finds everywhere Reality: in those rhythmic seasonal changes of the
+forest life which have inspired his wonderful doctrine of the perpetual
+rebirth and re-budding of the soul; in the hearts of men—though often
+there deep buried—above all, in the mysteries of the Christian faith.
+Speaking with an unequalled authority and intimacy of those supersensuous
+regions, those mysterious contacts of love which lie beyond and above all
+thought, he is yet firmly rooted in the concrete; for he has reconciled
+in his own experience the paradox of a Transcendent yet Immanent God.
+There is no break in the life-process which begins with the little
+country boy running away from home in quest of some vaguely felt object
+of desire, some ‘better land,’ and which ends with the triumphant passing
+over of the soul of the great contemplative to the perfect fruition of
+Eternal Love.
+
+Ruysbroeck died at Groenendael on December 2, 1381. He was eighty-eight
+years old; feeble in body, nearly blind, yet keeping to the last his
+clear spiritual vision, his vigour and eagerness of soul. His death, says
+Pomerius, speaking on the authority of those who had seen it, was full of
+peaceful joy, of gaiety of heart; not the falling asleep of the tired
+servant, but the leap to more abundant life of the vigorous child of the
+Infinite, at last set free. With an immense gladness he went out from
+that time-world which, in his own image, is ‘the shadow of God,’ to
+“those high mountains of the land of promise where no shadow is, but only
+the Sun.” One of the greatest of Christian seers, one of the most manly
+and human of the mystics, it is yet as a lover, in the noblest and most
+vital sense of the word, that his personality lives for us. From first to
+last, under all its external accidents, we may trace in his life the
+activity—first instinctive, and only gradually understood—of that
+‘unconquerable love,’ ardent, industrious, at last utterly surrendered,
+which he describes in the wonderful tenth chapter of _The Sparkling
+Stone_, as the unique power which effects the soul’s union with God. “For
+no man understandeth what love is in itself, but such are its workings:
+which giveth more than one can take, and asketh more than one can pay.”
+That love it was which came out from the Infinite, as a tendency, an
+instinct endowed with liberty and life, and passed across the stage of
+history, manifested under humblest inconspicuous forms, but ever growing
+in passion and power; till at last, achieving the full stature of the
+children of God, it returned to its Source and Origin again. When we
+speak of the mysticism of Ruysbroeck, it is of this that we should think:
+of this growing spirit, this ardent, unconquerable, creative thing. A
+veritable part of our own order, therein it was transmuted from unreal to
+real existence; putting on Divine Humanity, and attaining the goal of all
+life in the interests of the race.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+                               HIS WORKS
+
+
+  In all that I have understood, felt, or written, I submit myself to the
+  judgment of the saints and of Holy Church, for I would live and die
+  Christ’s servant in Christian Faith.
+
+                                            The Book of Supreme Truth.
+
+Before discussing Ruysbroeck’s view of the spiritual world, his doctrine
+of the soul’s development, perhaps it will be well to consider the
+traditional names, general character, and contents of his admittedly
+authentic works. Only a few of these works can be dated with precision;
+for recent criticism has shown that the so-called chronological list
+given by Pomerius[4] cannot be accepted. As to several of them, we cannot
+tell whether they were composed at Brussels or at Groenendael, at the
+beginning, middle or end of his mystical life. All were written in the
+Flemish vernacular of his own day—or, strictly speaking, in the dialect
+of Brabant—for they were practical books composed for a practical object,
+not academic treatises on mystical theology. Founded on experience, they
+deal with and incite to experience; and were addressed to all who felt
+within themselves the stirrings of a special grace, the call of a
+superhuman love, irrespective of education or position—to hermits,
+priests, nuns, and ardent souls still in the world who were trying to
+live the one real life—not merely to learned professors trying to
+elucidate the doctrines of that life. Ruysbroeck therefore belongs to
+that considerable group of mystical writers whose gift to the history of
+literature is only less important than their gift to the history of the
+spiritual world; since they have helped to break down the barrier between
+the written and the spoken word.
+
+At the moment in which poetry first forsakes the ‘literary’ language and
+uses the people’s speech, we nearly always find a mystic thus trying to
+tell his message to the race. His enthusiasm it is which is equal to the
+task of subduing a new medium to the purposes of art. Thus at the very
+beginning of Italian poetry we find St. Francis of Assisi singing in the
+popular tongue his great Canticle of the Sun, and soon after him come the
+sublime lyrics of Jacopone da Todì. Thus German literature owes much to
+Mechthild of Magdeburg, and English to Richard Rolle—both forsaking Latin
+for the common speech of their day. Thus in India the poet Kabir,
+obedient to the same impulse, sings in Hindi rather than in Sanscrit his
+beautiful songs of Divine Love.
+
+In Ruysbroeck, as in these others, a strong poetic inspiration mingled
+with and sometimes controlled the purely mystical side of his genius.
+Often his love and enthusiasm break out and express themselves, sometimes
+in rough, irregular verse, sometimes in rhymed and rhythmic prose: a kind
+of wild spontaneous chant, which may be related to the ‘ghostly song’
+that ‘boiled up’ within the heart of Richard Rolle. It is well-known that
+automatic composition—and we have seen that the evidence of those who
+knew him suggests the presence of an automatic element in Ruysbroeck’s
+creative methods—tends to assume a rhythmic character; being indeed
+closely related to that strange chanted speech in which religious
+excitement frequently expresses itself. Released from the control of the
+surface-intellect, the deeper mind which is involved in these mysterious
+processes tends to present its intuitions and concepts in measured waves
+of words; which sometimes, as in Rolle’s ‘ghostly song’ and perhaps too
+in Ruysbroeck’s ‘Song of Joy,’ are actually given a musical form. In such
+rhythm the mystic seems to catch something of the cadences of that
+far-off music of which he is writing, and to receive and transmit a
+message which exceeds the possibilities of speech. Ruysbroeck was no
+expert poet. Often his verse is bad; halting in cadence, violent and
+uncouth in imagery, like the stammering utterance of one possessed. But
+its presence and quality, its mingled simplicity and violence, assure us
+of the strong excitement that fulfilled him, and tend to corroborate the
+account of his mental processes which we have deduced from the statements
+in Pomerius’ _Life_.
+
+Eleven admittedly authentic books and tracts survive in numerous MS.
+collections,[5] and from these come all that we know of his vision and
+teaching. _The Twelve Virtues_, and the two Canticles often attributed to
+him, are probably spurious; and the tracts against the Brethren of the
+Free Spirit, which are known to have been written during his Brussels
+period, have all disappeared. I give here a short account of the
+authentic works, their names and general contents; putting first in order
+those of unknown date, some of which may possibly have been composed
+before the foundation of Groenendael. In each case the first title is a
+translation of that used in the best Flemish texts; the second, that
+employed in the great Latin version of Surius. Ruysbroeck himself never
+gave any titles to his writings.
+
+1. The Spiritual Tabernacle (called by Surius _In Tabernaculum
+Mosis_).—The longest, most fantastic, and, in spite of some fine
+passages, the least interesting of Ruysbroeck’s works. Probably founded
+upon the _De Arca Mystica_ of Hugh of St. Victor, this is an elaborate
+allegory, thoroughly mediæval in type, in which the Tabernacle of the
+Israelites becomes a figure of the spiritual life; the details of its
+construction, furniture and ritual being given a symbolic significance,
+in accordance with the methods of interpretation popular at the time. In
+this book, and perhaps in the astronomical treatise appended to _The
+Twelve Béguines_ (No. 11), I believe that we have the only surviving
+works of Ruysbroeck’s first period; when he had not yet ‘transcended
+images,’ but was at that point in his mystical development in which the
+young contemplative loves to discern symbolic meanings in all visible
+things.
+
+2. The Twelve Points of True Faith (_De Fide et Judicio_).—This little
+tract is in form a gloss upon the Nicene Creed; in fact, a
+characteristically Ruysbroeckian confession of faith. Without ever
+over-passing the boundaries of Catholic doctrine, Ruysbroeck is here able
+to turn all its imagery to the purposes of his own vision of truth.
+
+3. The Book of the Four Temptations (_De Quatuor Tentationibus_).—The
+Four Temptations are four manifestations of the higher egotism specially
+dangerous to souls entering on the contemplative life: first, the love of
+ease and comfort, as much in things spiritual as in things material;
+secondly, the tendency to pose as the possessor of special illumination,
+with other and like forms of spiritual pretence; thirdly, intellectual
+pride, which seeks to understand unfathomable mysteries and attain to the
+vision of God by the reason alone; fourthly,—most dangerous of all—that
+false ‘liberty of spirit’ which was the mark of the heretical mystic
+sects. This book too may well have been written before the retreat to
+Groenendael.
+
+4. The Book of the Kingdom of God’s Lovers (_Regnum Deum Amantium_).—This
+and the following work, _The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage_,
+contain Ruysbroeck’s fullest and most orderly descriptions of the
+mystical life-process. The ‘Kingdom’ which God’s lovers may inherit is
+the actual life of God, infused into the soul and deifying it. This
+essential life reveals itself under five modes: in the sense world, in
+the soul’s nature, in the witness of Scripture, in the life of grace or
+‘glory,’ and in the Superessential Kingdom of the Divine Unity. By the
+threefold way of the Active, Contemplative, and Superessential Life, here
+described as the steady and orderly appropriation of the Seven Gifts of
+the Holy Spirit, the spirit of man may enter into its inheritance and
+attain at last to the perfect fruition of God. To the Active Life belong
+the gifts of Holy Fear, Godliness, and Knowledge; to the Contemplative
+those of Strength and Counsel; to the Superessential those of
+Intelligence and Wisdom. _The Kingdom of God’s Lovers_ was traditionally
+regarded as Ruysbroeck’s earliest work. It was more probably written
+during the early years at Groenendael. Much of it, like _The Twelve
+Béguines_, is in poetical form. This was the book which, falling into the
+hands of Gerard Naghel, made him seek Ruysbroeck’s acquaintance, in order
+that he might ask for an explanation of several profound and difficult
+passages.
+
+5. The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage (_De Ornatu Spiritalium
+Nuptiarum_).—This is the best known and most methodical of Ruysbroeck’s
+works. In form a threefold commentary upon the text, “Behold, the
+bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him,” it is divided into three
+books, tracing out in great detail, and with marvellous psychological
+insight, those three stages of Active, Contemplative and Superessential
+Life, which appear again and again in his writings. Paying due attention
+to the aberrations of the quietists, he exhibits—with an intimacy which
+surely reflects his own personal experience of the Way—the conditions
+under which selves in each stage of development may see, encounter, and
+at last unite with, the Divine Bridegroom of the soul. A German
+translation of several of its chapters, preserved in MS. at Munich,
+states that Ruysbroeck sent this book to the Friends of God in 1350. In
+this case it belongs to the years immediately preceding or succeeding his
+retreat.
+
+We now come to the works which were certainly composed at Groenendael,
+though probably some of those already enumerated also belong to the last
+thirty years of Ruysbroeck’s life. First come the three treatises
+apparently written for Margaret van Meerbeke, a choir nun of the Convent
+of Poor Clares at Brussels; who seems to have been to him what St. Clare
+was to St. Francis, Elizabeth Stägel to Suso, Margaret Kirkby to Richard
+Rolle—first a spiritual daughter, then a valued and sympathetic friend.
+
+6. The Mirror of Eternal Salvation or Book of the Blessed Sacrament
+(_Speculum Æternæ Salutis_).—This, the first of the three, was written in
+1359. It is addressed to one who is evidently a beginner in the spiritual
+life, as she is yet a novice in her religious community; but whom
+Ruysbroeck looks upon as specially ‘called, elect and loved.’ In simplest
+language, often of extreme beauty, he puts before her the magnitude of
+the vocation she has accepted, the dangers she will encounter, and the
+great source from which she must draw her strength: the sacramental
+dispensation of the Church. In a series of magnificent chapters, he
+celebrates the mystical doctrine of the Eucharist, the feeding of the
+ever-growing soul on the substance of God; following this by a
+digression, full of shrewd observation, on the different types of
+believers who come to communion. We see them through his eyes: the
+religious sentimentalists, ‘who are generally women and only very seldom
+men’; the sturdy normal Christian, who does his best to struggle against
+sin; the humble and devout lover of God; the churchy hypocrite, who
+behaves with great reverence at Mass and then goes home and scolds the
+servants; the heretical mystic full of spiritual pride; the easy-going
+worldling, who sins and repents with equal facility. The book ends with a
+superb description of the goal towards which the young contemplative is
+set: the ‘life-giving life’ of perfect union with God in which that
+‘higher life’ latent in every soul at last attains to maturity.
+
+7. The Seven Cloisters (_De Septem_ _Custodiis_).—This was written before
+1363, and preserves its address to ‘The Holy Nun, Dame Margaret van
+Meerbeke, Cantor of the Monastery of St. Clare at Brussels.’ The novice
+of the ‘Mirror’ is now a professed religious; and her director instructs
+her upon the attitude of mind which she should bring to the routine
+duties of a nun’s day, the opportunity they offer for the enriching and
+perfecting of love and humility. He describes the education of the human
+spirit up to that high point of consciousness where it knows itself
+established ‘between Eternity and Time’: one of the fundamental thoughts
+of Flemish and German mysticism. This education admits her successively
+into the seven cloisters which kept St. Clare, Foundress of the Order,
+unspotted from the world. The first is the physical enclosure of the
+convent walls; the next the moral and volitional limitation of
+self-control. The third is ‘the open door of the love of Christ,’ which
+crowns man’s affective powers, and leads to the fourth—total dedication
+of the will. The fifth and sixth represent the two great forms of the
+Contemplative Life as conceived by Ruysbroeck: the ecstatic and the
+deiform. The seventh admits to Abyss of Being itself: that ‘dim silence’
+at the heart of which, as in the Seventh Habitation of St. Teresa’s
+‘Interior Castle,’ he will find himself alone with God. There the mystic
+union is consummated, and the Divine activity takes the place of the
+separate activity of man, in “a simple beatitude which transcends all
+sanctity and the practice of virtue, an Eternal Fruition which satisfies
+all hunger and thirst, all love and all craving, for God.” Finally, he
+returns to the Active Life; and ends with a practical chapter on clothes,
+and a charming instruction, full of deep poetry, on the evening
+meditation which should close the day.
+
+8. The Seven Degrees of the Ladder of Love (_De Septem Gradibus
+Amoris_).—This book, which was written before 1372, is believed by the
+Benedictines of Wisques, the latest and most learned of Ruysbroeck’s
+editors, to complete the trilogy of works addressed to Dame Margaret van
+Meerbeke. It traces the soul’s ascent to the height of Divine love by way
+of the characteristic virtues of asceticism, under the well-known
+mediæval image of the ‘ladder of perfection’ or ‘stairway of love’—a
+metaphor, originating in Jacob’s Dream, which had already served St.
+Benedict, Richard of St. Victor, St. Bonaventura and many others as a
+useful diagram of the mystic way. Originality of form, however, is the
+last thing we should look for in Ruysbroeck’s works. He pours his strange
+wine into any vessel that comes to hand. As often his most sublime or
+amazing utterances originate in commentaries upon some familiar text, or
+the deepest truths are hidden under the most grotesque similitudes; so
+this well-worn metaphor gives him the opportunity for some of his finest
+descriptions of the soul’s movement to that transmutation in which all
+ardent spirits ‘become as live coals in the fire of Infinite Love.’ This
+book, in which the influence of St. Bernard is strongly marked, contains
+some beautiful passages on the mystic life considered as a ‘heavenly
+song’ of faithfulness and love, which “Christ our Cantor and our Choragus
+has sung from the beginning of things,” and which every Christian soul
+must learn.
+
+9. The Book of the Sparkling Stone (_De Calculo, sive de Perfectione
+Filiorum Dei_).—This priceless work is said to have been written by
+Ruysbroeck at the request of a hermit, who wished for further light on
+the high matters of which it treats. It contains the finest flower of his
+thought, and shows perhaps more clearly than any other of his writings
+the mark of direct inspiration. Here again the scaffolding on which he
+builds is almost as old as Christian mysticism itself: that three-fold
+division of men into the ‘faithful servants, secret friends, and hidden
+sons’ of God, which descended through the centuries from Clement of
+Alexandria. But the tower which he raises with its help ascends to
+heights unreached by any other writer: to the point at which man is given
+the supreme gift of the Sparkling Stone, or Nature of Christ, the goal of
+human transcendence. I regard the ninth and tenth chapters of _The
+Sparkling Stone_—‘How we may become Hidden Sons of God and live the
+Contemplative Life,’ and ‘How we, though one with God, must eternally
+remain other than Him’—as the high-water mark of mystical literature.
+Nowhere else do we find such a marvellous combination of wide and soaring
+vision with the most delicate and intimate psychological analysis. The
+old mystic, sitting under his friendly tree, seems here to be gazing at
+and reporting to us the final secrets of that eternal world, where “the
+Incomprehensible Light enfolds and penetrates us, as the air is
+penetrated by the light of the sun.” There he tastes and apprehends, in
+‘an unfathomable seeing and beholding,’ the inbreathing and the
+outbreathing of the Love of God—that double movement which controls the
+universe; yet knows, along with this great cosmic vision, that intimate
+and searching communion in which “the Beloved and the Lover are immersed
+wholly in love, and each is all to the other in possession and in rest.”
+
+10. The Book of Supreme Truth (called in some collections _The Book of
+Retractations_, and by Surius, _Samuel_.)—This is the tract written by
+Ruysbroeck, at the request of Gerard Naghel, to explain certain obscure
+passages in _The Book of the Kingdom of God’s Lovers_. In it he is
+specially concerned to make clear the vital distinction between his
+doctrine of the soul’s union with God—a union in which the primal
+distinction between Creator and created is never overpassed—and the
+pantheistic doctrine of complete absorption in Him, with cessation of all
+effort and striving, preached by the heretical sects whose initiates
+claim to ‘be God.’ By the time that this book was written, careless
+readers had already charged Ruysbroeck with these pantheist tendencies
+which he abhorred and condemned; and here he sets out his defence. He
+discusses also the three degrees of union with God which correspond to
+the ‘three lives’ of the growing soul: union by means of sacraments and
+good deeds; union achieved in contemplative prayer ‘without means,’ where
+the soul learns its double vocation of action and fruition; and the
+highest union of all, where the spirit which has swung pendulum-like
+between the temporal and eternal worlds, achieves its equilibrium and
+dwells wholly in God, ‘drunk with love, and sunk in the Dark Light.’
+
+11. The Twelve Béguines (_De Vera Contemplatione_).—This is a long,
+composite book of eighty-four chapters, which apparently consists of at
+least three distinct treatises of different dates. The first, _The Twelve
+Béguines_, which ends with chapter xvi., contains the longest consecutive
+example of Ruysbroeck’s poetic method; its first eight chapters being
+written in irregular rhymed verse. It is believed to be one of his last
+compositions. Its doctrine differs little from that already set forth in
+his earlier works; though nowhere, perhaps, is the development of the
+spiritual consciousness described with greater subtlety. The soul’s
+communion with and feeding on the Divine Nature in the Eucharist and in
+contemplative prayer; its acquirement of the art of introversion; the Way
+of Contemplation with its four modes, paralleled by the Way of Love with
+its four modes; these lead up to the perfect union of the spirit with God
+“in one love and one fruition with Him, fulfilled in everlasting bliss.”
+The seventeenth chapter begins a new treatise, with a description of the
+Active Life on Ruysbroeck’s usual lines; and at the thirtieth there is
+again a complete change of subject, introducing a mystical and symbolic
+interpretation of the science of astronomy. This section, so unlike his
+later writings, somewhat resembles _The Spiritual Tabernacle_, and may
+perhaps be a work of the same period. A collection of Meditations upon
+the Passion of Christ, arranged according to the Seven Hours of the Roman
+Breviary (capp. lxxiii. to end), completes the book; and also the tale of
+Ruysbroeck’s authentic works. A critical list of the reprints and
+translations in which these may best be studied will be found in the
+Bibliographical Note.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III
+                          HIS DOCTRINE OF GOD
+
+
+  My words are strange; but those who love will understand.
+
+                                      The Mirror of Eternal Salvation.
+
+Mystical writers are of two kinds. One kind, of which St. Teresa is
+perhaps the supreme type, deals almost wholly with the personal and
+interior experiences of the soul in the states of contemplation, and the
+psychological rules governing those states; above all, with the emotional
+reactions of the self to the impact of the Divine. This kind of
+mystic—whom William James accused, with some reason, of turning the
+soul’s relation with God into a ‘duet’—makes little attempt to describe
+the ultimate Object of the self’s love and desire, the great movements of
+the spiritual world; for such description, the formulæ of existing
+theology are felt to be enough. Visions of Christ, experiences of the
+Blessed Trinity—these are sufficient names for the personal and
+impersonal aspects of that Reality with which the contemplative seeks to
+unite. But the other kind of mystic—though possibly and indeed usually as
+orthodox in his beliefs, as ardent in his love—cannot, on the one hand,
+remain within the circle of these subjective and personal conceptions,
+and, on the other, content himself with the label which tradition has
+affixed to the Thing that he has known. He may not reject the label, but
+neither does he confuse it with the Thing. He has the wide vision, the
+metaphysical passion of the philosopher and the poet; and in his work he
+is ever pressing towards more exact description, more suggestive and
+evocative speech. The symbols which come most naturally to him are
+usually derived from the ideas of space and of wonder; not from those of
+human intimacy and love. In him the intellect is active as well as the
+heart; sometimes, more active. Plotinus is an extreme example of
+mysticism of this type.
+
+The greatest mystics, however, whether in the East or in the West, are
+possessed of a vision and experience of God so deep and rich that it
+embraces at once the infinite and the intimate aspects of Reality;
+illuminating those religious concepts which are, as it were, an artistic
+reconstruction of the Transcendent, and at the same time having contact
+with that vast region above and beyond reason whence come the fragmentary
+intimations of Reality crystallised in the formulæ of faith. For them, as
+for St. Augustine, God is both near and far; and the paradox of
+transcendent-immanent Reality is a self-evident if an inexpressible
+truth. They swing between hushed adoration and closest communion, between
+the divine ignorance of the intellect lifted up into God and the divine
+certitude of the heart in which He dwells; and give us by turns a
+subjective and psychological, an objective and metaphysical, reading of
+spiritual experience. Ruysbroeck is a mystic of this type. The span of
+his universe can include—indeed demand—both the concept of that Abyss of
+Pure Being where all distinctions are transcended, and the soul is
+immersed in the ‘dark light’ of the One, and the distinctively Christian
+and incarnational experience of loving communion with and through the
+Person of Christ. For him the ladder of contemplation is firmly planted
+in the bed-rock of human character—goes the whole way from the heart of
+man to the Essence of God—and every stage of it has importance for the
+eager and ascending soul. Hence, when he seems to rush out to the
+farthest limits of the cosmos, he still remains within the circle of
+Catholic ideas; and is at once ethical and metaphysical, intensely
+sacramental and intensely transcendental too.
+
+Nor is this result obtained—as it sometimes seems to be, for instance, in
+such a visionary as Angela of Foligno—by a mere heaping up of the various
+and inconsistent emotional reactions of the self. There is a fundamental
+orderliness in the Ruysbroeckian universe which, though it may be
+difficult to understand, and often impossible for him to express without
+resort to paradox, yet reveals itself to careful analysis. He tries hard
+to describe, or at least suggest, it to us, because he is a mystic of an
+apostolic type. Even where he is dealing with the soul’s most ineffable
+experiences and seems to hover over that Abyss which is ‘beyond Reason,’
+stammering and breaking into wild poetry in the desperate attempt to
+seize the unseizable truth he is ever intent on telling us how these
+things may be actualised, this attitude attained by other men. The note
+is never, as with many subjective visionaries, “_I_ have seen,” but
+always “_We_ shall or may see.”
+
+Now such an objective mystic as this, who is not content with retailing
+his private experiences and ecstasies, but accepts the great vocation of
+revealer of Reality, is called upon to do certain things. He must give
+us, not merely a static picture of Eternity, but also a dynamic ‘reading
+of life’; and of a life more extended than that which the moralist, or
+even the philosopher, offers to interpret. He must not only tell us what
+he thinks about the universe, and in particular that ultimate Spiritual
+Reality which all mysticism discerns within or beyond the flux. He must
+also tell us what he thinks of man, that living, moving, fluid
+spirit-thing: his reactions to this universe and this Reality, the
+satisfaction which it offers to his thought, will and love, the
+obligations laid upon him in respect of it. We, on our part, must try to
+understand what he tells us of these things; for he is, as it were, an
+organ developed by the race for this purpose—a tentacle pushed out
+towards the Infinite, to make, in our name and in our interest, fresh
+contacts with Reality. He performs for us some of the functions of the
+artist extending our universe, the pioneer cutting our path, the hunter
+winning food for our souls.
+
+The clue to the universe of such a mystic will always be the vision or
+idea which he has of the Nature of God; and there we must begin, if we
+would find our way through the tangle of his thought. From this Centre
+all else branches out, and to this all else must conform, if it is to
+have for him realness and life; for truth, as Aquinas teaches, is simply
+the reality of things as they are in God. We begin, then, our exploration
+of Ruysbroeck’s doctrine by trying to discover the character of his
+vision of the Divine Nature, and man’s relation with it.
+
+That vision is so wide, deep and searching, that only by resort to the
+language of opposites, by perpetual alternations of spatial and personal,
+metaphysical and passionate speech, is he able to communicate it to us.
+His fortunate and profound acquaintance with the science of theology—his
+contact through it with the formulæ of Christian Platonism—has given him
+the framework on which he stretches out his wonderful and living picture
+of the Infinite. This picture is personal to himself, the fruit of a
+direct and vivid inspiration; not so the terms by which it is
+communicated. These for the most part are the common property of
+Christian theology; though here used with a consummate skill, often with
+an apparent originality. Especially from St. Augustine, Dionysius the
+Areopagite, Richard of St. Victor, St. Bernard and the more orthodox
+utterances of his own immediate predecessor, Meister Eckhart—sometimes
+too from his contemporaries, Suso and Tauler—has he taken the
+intellectual concepts, the highly-charged poetic metaphors, in which his
+perceptions are enshrined. So close does he keep to these masters, so
+frequent are his borrowings, that almost every page of his writings might
+be glossed from their works. It is one of the most astonishing features
+of the celebrated and astonishing essay of M. Maeterlinck that, bent on
+vindicating the inspiration of his ‘simple and ignorant monk,’ he
+entirely fails to observe the traditional character of the formulæ which
+express it. No student of the mystics will deny the abundant inspiration
+by which Ruysbroeck was possessed; but this inspiration is spiritual, not
+intellectual. The truth was told to him in the tongue of angels, and he
+did his best to translate it into the tongue of the Church; perpetually
+reminding us, as he did so, how great was the difference between vision
+and description, how clumsy and inadequate those concepts and images
+wherewith the artist-seer tried to tell his love.
+
+This distinction, which the reader of Ruysbroeck should never forget, is
+of primary importance in connection with his treatment of the Nature of
+God; where the disparity between the thing known and the thing said is
+inevitably at a maximum. The high nature of the Godhead, he says, in a
+string of suggestive and paradoxical images, to which St. Paul, Dionysius
+and Eckhart have all contributed, is, in itself, “Simplicity and
+One-foldness; inaccessible height and fathomless deep; incomprehensible
+breadth and eternal length; a dim silence, and a wild desert”—oblique,
+suggestive, musical language which enchants rather than informs the soul;
+opens the door to experience, but does not convey any accurate knowledge
+of the Imageless Truth, “Now we may experience many wonders in that
+fathomless Godhead; but although, because of the coarseness of the human
+intellect, when we would describe such things outwardly, we must use
+images, in truth that which is inwardly perceived and beheld is nought
+else but a Fathomless and Unconditioned Good.”[6]
+
+Yet this primal Reality, this ultimately indivisible One, has for human
+consciousness a two-fold character; and though for the intuition of the
+mystic its fruition is a synthetic experience, it must in thought be
+analysed if it is ever to be grasped. God, as known by man, exhibits in
+its perfection the dual property of Love; on the one hand active,
+generative, creative; on the other hand a still and ineffable possession
+or _Fruition_—one of the master-words of Ruysbroeck’s thought. He is,
+then, the Absolute One, in whom the antithesis of Eternity and Time, of
+Being and Becoming, is resolved; both static and dynamic, transcendent
+and immanent, impersonal and personal, undifferentiated and
+differentiated; Eternal Rest and Eternal Work, the Unmoved Mover, yet
+Movement itself. “Although in our way of seeing we give God many names,
+His nature is One.”
+
+He transcends the storm of succession, yet is the inspiring spirit of the
+flux. According to His fruitful nature, “He works without ceasing, for He
+is Pure Act”—a reminiscence of Aristotle which seems strange upon the
+lips of the ‘ignorant monk.’ He is the omnipotent and ever-active Creator
+of all things; ‘an immeasurable Flame of Love’ perpetually breathing
+forth His energetic Life in new births of being and new floods of grace,
+and drawing in again all creatures to Himself. Yet this statement
+defines, not His being, but one manifestation of His being. When the soul
+pierces beyond this ‘fruitful’ nature to His simple essence—and ‘simple’
+is here and throughout to be understood in its primal meaning of
+‘synthetic’—He is that absolute and abiding Reality which seems to man
+Eternal Rest, the ‘Deep Quiet of the Godhead,’ the ‘Abyss,’ the ‘Dim
+Silence’; and which we can taste indeed but never know. There, ‘all
+lovers lose themselves’ in the consummation of that experience at which
+our fragmentary intuitions hint.
+
+The active and fertile aspect of the Divine Nature is manifested in
+differentiation: for Ruysbroeck the Catholic, in the Trinity of Persons,
+as defined by Christian theology. The static and absolute aspect is the
+‘calm and glorious Unity of the Godhead’ which he finds beyond and within
+the Trinity, “the fathomless Abyss that _is_ the Being of God,”—an idea,
+familiar to Indian mysticism and implicit in Christian Neoplatonism,
+which governed all Meister Eckhart’s speculations upon the Divine Nature.
+There is, says Ruysbroeck in one of his most Eckhartian passages, “a
+distinction and differentiation, according to our reason, between God and
+the Godhead, between action and rest. The fruitful nature of the Persons,
+of whom is the Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity, ever worketh in a
+living differentiation. But the Simple Being of God, according to the
+nature thereof, is an Eternal Rest of God and of all created things.”[7]
+
+In differentiating the three great aspects of the Divine Life, as known
+by the love and thought of man, Ruysbroeck keeps close to formal
+theology; though investing its academic language with new and deep
+significance, and constantly reminding us that such language, even at its
+best, can never get beyond the region of image and similitude or provide
+more than an imperfect reflection of the One who is ‘neither This nor
+That.’ On his lips, credal definitions are perpetually passing over from
+the arid region of theological argument to the fruitful one of spiritual
+experience. There they become songs, as ‘new’ as the song heard by the
+Apocalyptist; real channels of light, which show the mind things that it
+never guessed before. For the ‘re-born’ man they have a fresh and
+immortal meaning; because that ‘river of grace,’ of which he perpetually
+speaks as pouring into the heart opened towards the Infinite,
+transfigures and irradiates them. Thus the illuminated mind knows in the
+Father, not a confusingly anthropomorphic metaphor, but the uniquely
+vital Source and unconditioned Origin of all things “in whom our life and
+being is begun.” He is the “Strength and Power, Creator, Mover, Keeper,
+Beginning and End, Cause and Existence of all creatures.”[8] Further, the
+intuition of the mystic discerns in the Son the Eternal Word and
+fathomless Wisdom and Truth perpetually generated of the Father, shining
+forth in the world of conditions: the Pattern or Archetype of creation
+and of life, the image of God which the universe reflects back before the
+face of the Absolute, the Eternal Rule incarnate in Christ. And this same
+‘light wherein we see God’ also shows to the enlightened mind the
+veritable character of the Holy Spirit; the Incomprehensible Love and
+Generosity of the Divine Nature, which emanates in an eternal procession
+from the mutual contemplation of Father and Son, “for these two Persons
+are always hungry for love.” The Holy Spirit is the source of the Divine
+vitality immanent in the universe. It is an outflowing torrent of Good
+which streams through all heavenly spirits; it is a Flame of Fire that
+consumes all in the One; it is also the Spark of transcendence latent in
+man’s soul. The Spirit is the personal, Grace the impersonal, side of
+that energetic Love which enfolds and penetrates all life; and “all this
+may be perceived and beheld, inseparable and without division, in the
+Simple Nature of the Godhead.”[9]
+
+The relations which form the character of these Three Persons exist in an
+eternal distinction for that world of conditions wherein the human soul
+is immersed, and where things happen ‘in some wise.’ There, from the
+embrace of the Father and Son and the outflowing of the Spirit in ‘waves
+of endless love,’ all created things are born; and God, by His grace and
+His death, recreates them, and adorns them with love and goodness, and
+draws them back to their source. This is the circling course of the
+Divine life-process ‘from goodness, through goodness, to goodness,’
+described by Dionysius the Areopagite. But beyond and above this plane of
+Divine differentiation is the superessential world, transcending all
+conditions, inaccessible to thought—“the measureless solitude of the
+Godhead, where God possesses Himself in joy.” This is the ultimate world
+of the mystic, discerned by intuition and love “in a simple seeing,
+beyond reason and without consideration.” There, within the ‘Eternal
+Now,’ without either before or after, released from the storm of
+succession, things happen indeed, ‘yet in no wise,’ There, “we can speak
+no more of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, nor of any creature; but only of
+one Being, which is the very substance of the Divine Persons. There were
+we all one before our creation; for this is our _superessence_.... There
+the Godhead is, in simple essence, without activity; Eternal Rest,
+Unconditioned Dark, the Nameless Being, the Superessence of all created
+things, and the simple and infinite Bliss of God and of all Saints.”[10]
+
+Ruysbroeck here brings us to the position of Dante in the last canto of
+the _Paradiso_, when, transcending those partial apprehensions of Reality
+which are figured by the River of Becoming and the Rose of Beatitude, he
+penetrated to the swift vision of “that Eternal Light which only in
+Itself abideth”—discerned best by man under the image of the three
+circles, yet in its ‘profound and clear substance’ indivisibly One.
+
+“The simple light of this Being is limitless in its immensity, and
+transcending form, includes and embraces the unity of the Divine Persons
+and the soul with all its faculties; and this to such a point that it
+envelopes and irradiates _both_ the natural tendency of our ground
+[_i.e._ its dynamic movement to God—the River] and the fruitive adherence
+of God and all those who are united with Him in this Light [_i.e._
+Eternal Being—the Rose]. And this is the union of God and the souls that
+love Him.”[11]
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IV
+                          HIS DOCTRINE OF MAN
+
+
+  That which was begun by Grace, is accomplished by Grace and Free-will;
+  so that they work mixedly not separately, simultaneously not
+  successively, in each and all of their processes.
+
+                                                          St. Bernard.
+
+The concept of the Nature of God which we have traced through its three
+phases—out from the unchanging One to the active Persons and back to the
+One again—gives us a clue to Ruysbroeck’s idea of the nature and destiny
+of man. In man, both aspects of Divine Reality, active and fruitive, are
+or should be reflected; for God is the ‘Living Pattern of Creation’ who
+has impressed His image on each soul, and in every adult spirit the
+character of that image must be brought from the hiddenness and realised.
+Destined to be wholly real, though yet in the making, there is in man a
+latent Divine likeness, a ‘spark’ of the primal fire. Created for union
+with God, already in Eternity that union is a fact.
+
+“The creature is in Brahma and Brahma is in the creature; they are ever
+distinct yet ever united,” says the Indian mystic. Were it translated
+into Christian language, it is probable that this thought—which does
+_not_ involve pantheism—would have been found acceptable by Ruysbroeck;
+for the interpenetration yet eternal distinction of the human and Divine
+spirits is the central fact of his universe. Man, he thinks, is already
+related in a threefold manner to his Infinite Source; for “we have our
+being in Him as the Father, we contemplate Him as does the Son, we
+ceaselessly tend to return to Him as does the Spirit.”
+
+“The first property of the soul is a _naked being_, devoid of all image.
+Thereby do we resemble, and are united to, the Father and His nature
+Divine.” This is the ‘ground of the soul’ perpetually referred to by
+mystics of the Eckhartian School; the bare, still place to which
+consciousness retreats in introversion, image of the static and absolute
+aspect of Reality. “The second property might be called the _higher
+understanding_ of the soul. It is a mirror of light, wherein we receive
+the Son of God, the Eternal Truth. By this light we are like unto Him;
+but in the act of receiving, we are one with Him.” This is the power of
+knowing Divine things by intuitive comprehension: man’s fragmentary share
+in the character of the Logos, or Wisdom of God. “The third property we
+call the _spark_ of the soul. It is the inward and natural tendency of
+the soul towards its Source; and here do we receive the Holy Spirit, the
+Charity of God. By this inward tendency we are like the Holy Spirit; but
+in the act of receiving, we become one spirit and one love with God.”[12]
+Here the Divine image shows itself in its immanent and dynamic aspect, as
+the ‘internal push’ which drives Creation back to the Father’s heart.
+
+The soul then is, as Julian of Norwich said, “made Trinity, like to the
+unmade Blessed Trinity.” Reciprocally, there is in the Eternal World the
+uncreated Pattern or Archetype of man—his ‘Platonic idea.’ Now man must
+bring from its hiddenness the latent likeness, the germ of Divine
+humanity that is in him, and develop it until it realises the ‘Platonic
+idea’; achieving thus the implicit truth of his own nature as it exists
+in the mind of God. This, according to Ruysbroeck, is the whole art and
+object of the spiritual life; this actualisation of the eternal side of
+human nature, atrophied in the majority of men—the innate Christliness in
+virtue of which we have power to become ‘Sons’ of God.
+
+“Lo! thus are we all one with God in our Eternal Archetype, which is His
+Wisdom who hath put on the nature of us all. And although we are already
+one with Him therein by that putting on of our nature, we must also be
+like God in grace and virtue, if we would find ourselves one with Him in
+our Eternal Archetype, which is Himself.”[13]
+
+Under the stimulus of Divine Love perpetually beating in on him, feeding
+perpetually on the substance of God, perpetually renewed and ‘reborn’ on
+to ever higher levels through the vivifying contact of reality, man must
+grow up into the ‘superessential life’ of complete unity with the
+Transcendent. There, not only the triune aspect but the dual character of
+God is reproduced in him, reconciled in a synthesis beyond the span of
+thought; and he becomes ‘deiform’—both active and fruitive, ‘ever at work
+and ever at rest’—at once a denizen of Eternity and of Time. Every aspect
+of his being—love, intellect and will—is to be invaded and enhanced by
+the new life-giving life; it shall condition and enrich his
+correspondences with the sense-world as well as with the world of soul.
+
+Man is not here invited to leave the active life for the contemplative,
+but to make the active life perfect within the contemplative; carrying up
+these apparent opposites to a point at which they become one. It is one
+of Ruysbroeck’s characteristics that he, as few others, followed
+mysticism out to this, its last stage; where it issues in a balanced,
+divine-human life. The energetic Love of God, which flows perpetually
+forth from the Abyss of Being to the farthest limits of the universe,
+enlightening and quickening where it goes, and ‘turns again home’ as a
+strong tide drawing all things to their Origin, here attains equilibrium;
+the effort of creation achieves its aim.
+
+Now this aim, this goal, is already realised within God’s nature, for
+there all perfection eternally Is. But to man it is super-nature; to
+achieve it he must transcend the world of conditions in which he lives
+according to the flesh, and grow up to fresh levels of life. Under the
+various images of sonship, marriage, and transmutation, this is the view
+of human destiny which Ruysbroeck states again and again: the creative
+evolution of the soul. His insistence on the completeness of the Divine
+Union to which the soul attains in this final phase, his perpetual resort
+to the dangerous language of deification in the effort towards describing
+it, seems at first sight to expose him to the charge of pantheism; and,
+as a matter of fact, has done so in the past. Yet he is most careful to
+guard himself at every point against this misinterpretation of his vision
+of life. In his view, by its growth towards God, personality is not lost,
+but raised to an ever higher plane. Even in that ecstatic fruition of
+Eternal Life in which the spirit passes above the state of Union to the
+state of Unity, and beyond the Persons to the One, the ‘eternal
+otherness’ of Creator and created is not overpassed; but, as in the
+perfect fulfilment of love, utter fusion and clear differentiation
+mysteriously co-exist. It is, he says, not a mergence but a ‘mutual
+inhabitation.’ In his attempts towards the description of this state, he
+borrows the language of St. Bernard, most orthodox of the mystics;
+language which goes back to primitive Christian times. The Divine light,
+love and being, he tells us, penetrates and drenches the surrendered,
+naked, receptive soul, ‘as fire does the iron, as sunlight does the air’;
+and even as the sunshine and the air, the iron and the fire, so are these
+two terms distinct yet united. “The iron doth not become fire nor the
+fire iron; but each retaineth its substance and its nature. So likewise
+the spirit of man doth not become God, but is God-formed, and knoweth
+itself breadth and length and height and depth.”[14] Again, “this union
+is _in_ God, through grace and our homeward-tending love. Yet even here
+does the creature feel a distinction and otherness between itself and God
+in its inward ground.”[15] The dualistic relation of lover and beloved,
+though raised to another power and glory, is an eternal one.
+
+I have spoken of Ruysbroeck’s concept of God, his closely related concept
+of man’s soul; the threefold diagram of Reality within which these terms
+are placed, the doctrine of transcendence he deduced therefrom. But such
+a diagram cannot express to us the rich content, the deeply personal
+character of his experience and his knowledge. It is no more than a map
+of the living land he has explored, a formal picture of the Living One
+whom he has seen without sight. For him the landscape lived and flowered
+in endless variety of majesty and sweetness; the Person drew near in
+mysterious communion, and gave to him as food His very life.
+
+All that this meant, and must mean, for our deeper knowledge of Reality
+and of man’s intuitive contacts with the Divine Life, we must find if we
+can in his doctrine of Love. Love is the ‘very self-hood’ of God, says
+Ruysbroeck in strict Johannine language. His theology is above all the
+theology of the Holy Spirit, the immanent Divine Energy and Love. It is
+Love which breaks down the barrier between finite and infinite life. But
+Love, as he understands it, has little in common with the feeling-state
+to which many of the female mystics have given that august name. For him,
+it is hardly an emotional word at all, and never a sentimental one;
+rather the title of a mighty force, a holy energy that fills the
+universe—the essential activity of God. Sometimes he describes it under
+the antique imagery of Light; imagery which is more than a metaphor, and
+is connected with that veritable consciousness of enhanced radiance, as
+well in the outer as in the inner world, experienced by the ‘illuminated’
+mystic. Again it is the ‘life-giving Life,’ hidden in God and the
+substance of our souls, which the self finds and appropriates; the whole
+Johannine trilogy brought into play, to express its meaning for heart,
+intellect and will. This Love, in fact, is the dynamic power which St.
+Augustine compared with gravitation, ‘drawing all things to their own
+place,’ and which Dante saw binding the multiplicity of the universe into
+one. All Ruysbroeck’s images for it turn on the idea of force. It is a
+raging fire, a storm, a flood. He speaks of it in one great passage as
+‘playing like lightning’ between God and the soul.
+
+Whoever will look at William Blake’s great picture of the Creation of
+Adam, may gain some idea of the terrific yet infinitely compassionate
+character inherent in this concept of Divine Love: the agony, passion,
+beauty, sternness, and pity of the primal generating force. This love is
+eternally giving and taking—it is its very property, says Ruysbroeck,
+‘ever to give and ever to receive’—pouring its dower of energy into the
+soul, and drawing out from that soul new vitality, new love, new
+surrender. ‘Hungry love,’ ‘generous love,’ ‘stormy love,’ he calls it
+again and again. Streaming out from the heart of Reality, the impersonal
+aspect of the very Spirit of God, its creative touch evokes in man, once
+he becomes conscious of it, an answering storm of love. The whole of our
+human growth within the spiritual order is conditioned by the quality of
+this response; by the will, the industry, the courage, with which man
+accepts his part in the Divine give-and-take.
+
+“That measureless Love which is God Himself, dwells in the pure deeps of
+our spirit, like a burning brazier of coal. And it throws forth brilliant
+and fiery sparks which stir and enkindle heart and senses, will and
+desire, and all the powers of the soul, with a fire of love; in a storm,
+a rage, a measureless fury of love. These be the weapons with which we
+fight against the terrible and immense Love of God, who would consume all
+loving spirits and swallow them in Himself. Love arms us with its own
+gifts, and clarifies our reason, and commands, counsels and advises us to
+oppose Him, to fight against Him, and to maintain against Him our right
+to love, so long as we may.”[16] In the spiritual realm, giving and
+receiving are one act, for God is an ‘ocean that ebbs and flows’; and it
+is only by opposing love to love, by self-donation to His mysterious
+movements, that the soul appropriates new force, invigorating and
+fertilising it afresh. Thus, and thus alone, it lays hold on eternal
+life; sometimes sacramentally, under external images and accidents;
+sometimes mystically, in the communion of deep prayer. “Every time we
+think with love of the Well-beloved, He is anew our meat and drink”—more,
+we too are His, for the love between God and man is a mutual love and
+desire. As we lay hold upon the Divine Life, devour and assimilate it, so
+in that very act the Divine Life devours us, and knits us up into the
+mystical Body of Reality. “Thou shalt not change Me into thine own
+substance, as thou dost change the food of thy flesh, but thou shalt be
+changed into Mine,” said the Spirit of God to St. Augustine; and his
+Flemish descendant announces this same mysterious principle of life with
+greater richness and beauty.
+
+“It is the nature of love ever to give and to take, to love and to be
+loved, and these two things meet in whomsoever loves. Thus the love of
+Christ is both avid and generous ... as He devours us, so He would feed
+us. If He absorbs us utterly into Himself, in return He gives us His very
+self again.”[17]
+
+This is but another aspect of that great ‘inbreathing and outbreathing’
+of the Divine nature which governs the relation between the Creator and
+the flux of life; for Ruysbroeck’s Christological language always carries
+with it the idea of the Logos, the Truth and Wisdom of Deity, as revealed
+in the world of conditions,—not only in the historical Jesus, but also in
+the eternal generation of the Son. St. Francis of Assisi had said that
+Divine Love perpetually swings between and reconciles two mighty
+opposites: “What is God? and, What am I?” For Ruysbroeck, too, that Love
+is a unifying power, manifested in motion itself, “an outgoing
+attraction, which drags us out of ourselves and calls us to be melted and
+naughted in the Unity”;[18] and all his deepest thoughts of it are
+expressed in terms of movement.
+
+The relation between the soul and the Absolute, then, is a love
+relation—as in fact all the mystics have declared it to be. Man, that
+imperfectly real thing, has an inherent tendency towards God, the Only
+Reality. Already possessed of a life within the world of conditions, his
+unquiet heart reaches out towards a world that transcends conditions. How
+shall he achieve that world? In the same way, says Ruysbroeck, as the
+child achieves the world of manhood: by the double method of growth and
+education, the balanced action of the organism and its environment. In
+its development and its needs, spirit conforms to the great laws of
+natural life. Taught by the voices of the forest and that inward Presence
+who ‘spoke without utterance’ in his soul, he is quick to recognise the
+close parallels between nature and grace. His story of the mystical life
+is the story of birth, growth, adolescence, maturity: a steady progress,
+dependent on food and nurture, on the ‘brooks of grace’ which flow from
+the Living Fountain and bring perpetual renovation to help the wise
+disciplines and voluntary choices that brace and purge our expanding will
+and love.
+
+Ruysbroeck’s universe, like that of Kabir and certain other great
+mystics, has three orders: Becoming, Being, God. Parallel with this, he
+distinguishes three great stages in the soul’s achievement of complete
+reality: the Active, the Interior, and the Superessential Life, sometimes
+symbolised by the conditions of Servant, Friend, and Son of God. These,
+however, must be regarded rather as divisions made for convenience of
+description, answering to those divisions which thought has made in the
+indivisible fact of the universe, than as distinctions inherent in the
+reality of things. The spiritual life has the true character of duration;
+it is one indivisible tendency and movement towards our source and home,
+in which the past is never left behind, but incorporated in the larger
+present.
+
+In the Active Life, the primary interest is ethical. Man here purifies
+his normal human correspondences with the world of sense, approximates
+his will to the Will of God. Here, his contacts with the Divine take
+place within that world of sense, and ‘by means.’ In the Interior Life,
+the interest embraces the intellect, upon which is now conferred the
+vision of Reality. As the Active Life corresponded to the world of
+Becoming, this Life corresponds with the supersensual world of Being,
+where the self’s contacts with the Divine take place ‘without means.’ In
+the Superessential Life, the self has transcended the intellectual plane
+and entered into the very heart of Reality; where she does not behold,
+but has fruition of, God in one life and one love. The obvious parallel
+between these three stages and the traditional ‘threefold way’ of
+Purgation, Illumination and Union is, however, not so exact as it
+appears. Many of the characters of the Unitive Way are present in
+Ruysbroeck’s ‘second life’; and his ‘third life’ takes the soul to
+heights of fruition which few amongst even the greatest unitive mystics
+have attained or described.
+
+(A) When man first feels upon his soul the touch of the Divine Light, at
+once, and in a moment of time, his will is changed; turned in the
+direction of Reality and away from unreal objects of desire. He is, in
+fact, ‘converted’ in the highest and most accurate sense of that ill-used
+word. Seeing the Divine, he wants the Divine, though he may not yet
+understand his own craving; for the scrap of Divine Life within him has
+emerged into the field of consciousness, and recognises its home. Then,
+as it were, God and the soul rush together, and of their encounter
+springs love. This is the New Birth; the ‘bringing forth of the Son in
+the ground of the soul,’ its baptism in the fountain of the Life-giving
+Life.
+
+The new force and tendency received into the self begins to act on the
+periphery, and thence works towards the centre of existence. First, then,
+it attacks the ordinary temporal life in all its departments. It pours in
+fresh waves of energy which confer new knowledge and hatred of sin,
+purify character, bring fresh virtues into being. It rearranges the
+consciousness about new and higher centres, gathering up all the
+faculties into one simple state of ‘attention to God.’ Thence results the
+highest life which is attainable by ‘nature.’ In it, man is united with
+God ‘through means,’ acts in obedience to the dictates of Divine Love and
+in accordance with the tendency of the Divine Will, and becomes the
+‘Faithful Servant’ of the Transcendent Order. Plainly, the Active Life,
+thus considered, has much in common with the ‘Purgative Way’ of ascetic
+science.
+
+(B) When this growth has reached its term, when “Free-will wears the
+crown of Charity, and rules as a King over the soul,” the awakened and
+enhanced consciousness begins to crave a closer contact with the
+spiritual: that unmediated and direct contact which is the essence of the
+Contemplative or Interior Life, and is achieved in the deep state of
+recollection called ‘unitive prayer.’ Here voluntary and purposive
+education takes its place by the side of organic development. The way
+called by most ascetic writers ‘Illumination’—the state of ‘proficient’
+in monastic parlance—includes the _training_ of the self in the
+contemplative art as well as its _growth_ in will and love. This training
+braces and purifies intellect, as the disciplines of the active life
+purified will and sense. It teaches introversion, or the turning inward
+of the attention from the distractions of the sense-world; the cleansing
+of the mirror of thought, thronged with confusing images; the production
+of that silence in which the music of the Infinite can be heard. Nor is
+the Active Life here left behind; it is carried up to, and included in,
+the new, deepened activities of the self, which are no longer ruled by
+the laws, but by the ‘quickening counsels’ of God.
+
+Of this new life, interior courage is a first necessity. It is no easy
+appropriation of supersensual graces, but a deeper entering into the
+mystery of life, a richer, more profound, participation in pain, effort,
+as well as joy. There must be no settling down into a comfortable sense
+of the Divine Presence, no reliance on the ‘One Act’; but an incessant
+process of change, renewal, re-emergence. Sometimes Ruysbroeck appears to
+see this central stage in the spiritual life-process in terms of upward
+growth toward transcendent levels; sometimes in terms of recollection,
+the steadfast pressing inwards of consciousness towards that bare ground
+of the soul where it unites with immanent Reality, and finds the Divine
+Life surging up like a ‘living fountain’ from the deeps. This double way
+of conceiving one process is puzzling for us; but a proof that for
+Ruysbroeck no one concept could suggest the whole truth, and a useful
+reminder of the symbolic character of all these maps and itineraries of
+the spiritual life.
+
+As the sun grows in power with the passing seasons, so the soul now
+experiences a steady increase in the power and splendour of the Divine
+Light, as it ascends in the heavens of consciousness and pours its heat
+and radiance into all the faculties of man. The in-beating of this energy
+and light brings the self into the tempestuous heats of high summer, or
+full illumination—the ‘fury of love,’ most fertile and dangerous epoch of
+the spiritual year. Thence, obedient to those laws of movement, that
+‘double rhythm of renunciation and love’ which Kabir detected at the
+heart of the universal melody, it enters on a negative period of psychic
+fatigue and spiritual destitution; the ‘dark night of the soul.’ The sun
+descends in the heavens, the ardours of love grow cold. When this stage
+is fully established, says Ruysbroeck, the ‘September of the soul’ is
+come; the harvest and vintage—raw material of the life-giving
+Eucharist—is ripe. The flowering-time of spiritual joy and beauty is as
+nothing in its value for life compared with this still autumnal period of
+true fecundity, in which man is at last ‘affirmed’ in the spiritual life.
+
+This, then, is the curve of the self’s growth. Side by side with it runs
+the other curve of deliberate training: the education by which our
+wandering attention, our diffused undisciplined consciousness, is
+sharpened and focussed upon Reality. This training is needed by intellect
+and feeling; but most of all by the _will_, which Ruysbroeck, like the
+great English mystics, regards as the gathering-point of personality, the
+‘spiritual heart.’ On every page of his writings the reference to that
+which the spiritual Light and Love do for man, is balanced by an
+insistence on that which man himself must do: the choices to be made, the
+‘exercises’ to be performed, the tension and effort which must
+characterise the mystic way until its last phase is reached. Morally,
+these exercises consist in progressive renunciations on the one hand and
+acceptances on the other ‘for Love’s sake’; intellectually, in
+introversion, that turning inwards and concentration of consciousness,
+the stripping off of all images and emptying of the mind, which is the
+psychological method whereby human consciousness transcends the
+conditioned universe to which it has become adapted, and enters the
+contemplative world. Man’s attention to life is to change its character
+as he ascends the ladder of being. Therefore the old attachments must be
+cut before the new attachments can be formed. This is, of course, a
+commonplace of asceticism; and much of Ruysbroeck’s teaching on
+detachment, self-naughting and contemplation, is indeed simply the
+standard doctrine of Christian asceticism seen through a temperament.
+
+When the self has grown up from the ‘active’ to the ‘contemplative’ state
+of consciousness, it is plain that his whole relation to his environment
+has changed. His world is grouped about a new centre. It now becomes the
+supreme business of intellect to ‘gaze upon God,’ the supreme business of
+love to stretch out towards Him. When these twin powers, under the
+regnancy of the enhanced and trained will, are set towards Reality, then
+the human creature has done his part in the setting up of the relation of
+the soul to its Source, and made it possible for the music of the
+Infinite to sound in him. “For this intellectual gazing and this
+stretching forth of love are two heavenly pipes, sounding without the
+need of tune or of notes; they ever go forward in that Eternal Life,
+neither straying aside nor returning backward again; and ever keeping
+harmony and concord with the Holy Church, for the Holy Spirit gives the
+wind that sings in them.”[19] Observe, that _tension_ is here a condition
+of the right employment of both faculties, and ensures that the Divine
+music shall sound true; one of the many implicit contradictions of the
+quietist doctrine of spiritual limpness, which we find throughout
+Ruysbroeck’s works.
+
+(C) When the twofold process of growth and education has brought the self
+to this perfection of attitude as regards the Spiritual Order—an attitude
+of true _union_, says Ruysbroeck, but not yet of the unthinkable _unity_
+which is our goal—man has done all that he can do of himself. His
+‘Interior Life’ is complete, and his being is united through grace with
+the Being of God, in a relation which is the faint image of the mutual
+relations of the Divine Persons; a conscious sonship, finding expression
+in the mutual interchange of the spirit of will and love. This existence
+is rooted in ‘grace,’ the unconditioned life-force, intermediary between
+ourselves and God,’ as the active stage was rooted in ‘nature.’ Yet there
+is something beyond this. As beyond the Divine Persons there is the
+Superessential Unity of the Godhead, so beyond the plane of Being
+(_Wesen_) Ruysbroeck apprehends a reality which is ‘more than Being’
+(_Overwesen_). Man’s spirit, having relations with every grade of
+reality, has also in its ‘fathomless ground’ a potential relation with
+this superessential sphere; and until this be actualised he is not wholly
+real, nor wholly _deiform_. Ruysbroeck’s most original contribution to
+the history of mysticism is his description of this supreme state; in
+which the human soul becomes truly free, and is made the ‘hidden child’
+of God. Then only do we discern the glory of our full-grown human nature;
+when, participating fully in the mysterious double life of God, the
+twofold action of true love, we have perfect fruition of Him as Eternal
+Rest, and perfect sharing in that outgoing love which is His eternal
+Work: “God with God, one love and one life, in His eternal
+manifestation.”[20]
+
+The consummation of the mystic way, then, represents not merely a state
+of ecstatic contemplation, escape from the stream of succession, the
+death of self-hood, joyous self-immersion in the Abyss; not merely the
+enormously enhanced state of creative activity and energetic love which
+the mystics call ‘divine fecundity’; but _both_—the flux and reflux of
+supreme Reality. It is the synthesis of contemplation and action, of
+Being and Becoming: the discovery at last of a clue—inexpressible indeed,
+but really held and experienced—to the mystery which most deeply torments
+us, the link between our life of duration and the Eternal Life of God.
+This is the Seventh Degree of Love, “noblest and highest that can be
+realised in the life of time or of eternity.”
+
+That process of enhancement whereby the self, in its upward progress,
+carries with it all that has been attained before, here finds its
+completion. The active life of Becoming, and the essential life of Being,
+are not all. “From beyond the Infinite the Infinite comes,” said the
+Indian; and his Christian brother, in parallel terms, declares that
+beyond the Essence is the Superessence of God, His ‘simple’ or synthetic
+unity. It is for fruition of this that man is destined; yet he does not
+leave this world for that world, but knows them as one. Totally
+surrendered to the double current of the universe, the inbreathing and
+outbreathing of the Spirit of God, “his love and fruition live between
+labour and rest.” He goes up and down the mountain of vision, a living
+willing tool wherewith God works. “Hence, to enter into restful fruition
+and come forth again in good works, and to remain ever one with God—this
+is the thing that I would say. Even as we open our fleshly eyes to see,
+and shut them again so quickly that we do not even feel it, thus we die
+into God, we live of God, and remain ever one with God. Therefore we must
+come forth in the activities of the sense-life, and again re-enter in
+love and cling to God; in order that we may ever remain one with Him
+without change.”[21]
+
+All perfect lives, says Ruysbroeck, conform to this pattern, follow this
+curve; though such perfect lives are rare amongst men. They are the
+fruit, not of volition, but of vocation; of the mysterious operations of
+the Divine Light which—perpetually crying through the universe the
+“unique and fathomless word ‘Behold! behold!’” and “therewith giving
+utterance to itself and all other things”—yet evokes only in some men an
+answering movement of consciousness, the deliberate surrender which
+conditions the new power of response and of growth. “To this divine
+vision but few men can attain, because of their own unfitness and because
+of the darkness of that Light whereby we see: and therefore no one shall
+thoroughly understand this perception by means of any scholarship, or by
+their own acuteness of comprehension. For all words, and all that men may
+learn and understand in a creaturely fashion, is foreign to this and far
+below the truth that I mean. To understand and lay hold of God as He is
+in Himself above all images—this is _to be God with God_, without
+intermediary or any difference that might become an intermediary or an
+obstacle. And therefore I beg each one, who can neither understand this,
+nor feel it by the way of spiritual union, that he be not grieved
+thereby, and let it be as it is.”[22]
+
+I end this chapter by a reference to certain key-words frequent in
+Ruysbroeck’s works, which are sometimes a source of difficulty to his
+readers. These words are nearly always his names for inward experiences.
+He uses them in a poetic and artistic manner, evocative rather than
+exact; and we, in trying to discover their meaning, must never forget the
+coloured fringe of suggestion which they carry for the mystic and the
+poet, and which is a true part of the message he intends them to convey.
+
+The first of these words is Fruition. Fruition, a concept which Eucken’s
+philosophy has brought back into current thought, represents a total
+attainment, complete and permanent participation and possession. It is an
+absolute state, transcending all succession, and it is applied by
+Ruysbroeck to the absolute character of the spirit’s life in God; which,
+though it seem to the surface consciousness a perpetually renewed
+encounter of love, is in its ground ‘fruitive and unconditioned,’ a
+timeless self-immersion in the Dark, the ‘glorious and essential
+Oneness.’ Thus he speaks of ‘fruitive love,’ ‘fruitive possession’; as
+opposed to striving, dynamic love, partial, progressive and conditioned
+possession. Perfect contemplation and loving dependence are the eternal
+fruition of God’: the Beatific Vision of theology. “Where we are one with
+God, without intermediary, beyond all separation; there is God our
+fruition and His own in an eternal and fathomless bliss.”[23]
+
+Next perhaps in the power of provoking misunderstanding is the weight
+attached by Ruysbroeck to the adjective Simple. This word, which
+constantly recurs in his descriptions of spiritual states, always conveys
+the sense of wholeness, completeness, synthesis; not of poverty,
+thinness, subtraction. It is the white light in which all the colours of
+the spectrum are included and fused. ‘Simple Union,’ ‘Simple
+Contemplation,’ ‘Simple Light’—all these mean the total undifferentiated
+act or perception from which our analytic minds subtract aspects. “In
+simplicity will I unite with the Simple One,” said Kabir. So Ruysbroeck:
+“We behold His face in a simple seeing, beyond reason and without
+consideration.”
+
+Another cause of difficulty to those unfamiliar with the mystics is the
+constant reference to Bareness or Nudity, especially in descriptions of
+the contemplative act. This is, of course, but one example of that
+negative method of suggestion—darkness, bareness, desolation, divine
+ignorance, the ‘rich nothing,’ the ‘naked thought’—which is a stock
+device of mysticism, and was probably taken by Ruysbroeck from Dionysius
+the Areopagite. It represents, first, the bewildering emptiness and
+nakedness of consciousness when introduced into a universe that
+transcends our ordinary conceptual world; secondly, the necessity of such
+transcendence, of emptying the field of consciousness of ‘every vain
+imagining,’ if the self is to have contact with the Reality which these
+veil.
+
+With the distinction between Essence (_Wesen_) and Superessence
+(_Overwesen_) I have already dealt; and this will appear more clearly
+when we consider Ruysbroeck’s ‘second’ and ‘third’ stages of the mystic
+life.
+
+There remains the great pair of opposites, fundamental for his thought,
+called in the Flemish vernacular _Wise_ and _Onwise_, and generally
+rendered by translators as ‘Mode’ and ‘Modeless.’ Wherever possible I
+have replaced these tasteless Latinisms by the Old English equivalents
+‘in some wise’ and ‘in no wise,’ occasionally by ‘conditioned’ and
+‘unconditioned’; though perhaps the colloquial ‘somehow’ and ‘nohow’
+would be yet more exactly expressive. Now this pair of opposites is
+psychological rather than metaphysical, and has to do with the
+characteristic phenomena of contemplation. It indicates the difference
+between the universe of the normal man, living as the servant or friend
+of God within the temporal order, and the universe of the true
+contemplative, the ‘hidden child.’ The knowledge and love of the first is
+a conditioned knowledge and love. Everything which happens to him happens
+‘in some wise’; it has attachments within his conceptual world, is
+mediated to him by symbols and images which intellect can grasp. “The
+simple ascent into the Nude and the Unconditioned is unknown and unloved
+of him”; it is through and amongst his ordinary mental furniture that he
+obtains his contacts with Reality. But the knowledge and love of the
+second, his contacts, transcend the categories of thought. He has escaped
+alike from the tyrannies and comforts of the world of images, has made
+the ‘ascent into the Nought,’ where all _is_, yet ‘in no wise.’ “The
+power of the understanding is lifted up to that which is beyond all
+conditions, and its seeing is in no wise, being without manner, and it is
+neither thus nor thus, neither here nor there.”[24] This is the direct,
+unmediated world of spiritual intuition; where the self touches a Reality
+that has not been passed through the filters of sense and thought. There
+man achieves a love, a vision, an activity which are ‘wayless,’ yet far
+more valid than anything that can be fitted into the framework of our
+conditioned world.
+
+  “In a place beyond uttermost place, in a track without shadow of trace,
+  Soul and body transcending, I live in the soul of my Loved One anew.”
+
+Thus cries the great Sūfī poet, Jalālu’ddīn; and the suggestion which his
+words convey is perhaps as close as speech can come to what Ruysbroeck
+meant by _Onwise_. The change of consciousness which initiates man into
+this inner yet unbounded world—the world that is ‘unwalled,’ to use his
+own favourite metaphor—is the essence of contemplation; which consists,
+not in looking at strange mysteries, but in a movement to fresh levels,
+shut to the analytic intellect, open to adventurous love. There, without
+any amazement, the self can ‘know in no wise’ that which it can never
+understand.
+
+  “Contemplation is a knowing that is in no wise,
+  For ever dwelling above the Reason.
+  Never can it sink down into the Reason,
+  And above it can the Reason never climb.
+  The shining forth of That which is in no wise is as a fair mirror.
+  Wherein shines the Eternal Light of God.
+  It has no attributes,
+  And here all the works of Reason fail.
+  It is not God,
+  But it is the Light whereby we see Him.
+  Those who walk in the Divine Light of it
+  Discover in themselves the Unwalled.
+  That which is in no wise, is above the Reason, not without it:
+  It beholds all things without amazement.
+  Amazement is far beneath it:
+  The contemplative life is without amazement.
+  That which is in no wise sees, it knows not what;
+  For it is above all, and is neither This nor That.”[25]
+
+
+
+
+                                    CHAPTER V
+THE ACTIVE LIFE
+
+
+  If we would discover and know that Kingdom of God which is hidden in
+  us, we must lead a life that is virtuous within, well-ordered without,
+  and fulfilled with true charity. Thus imitating Christ in every way, we
+  can, through grace, love and virtue, raise ourselves up to that apex of
+  the soul where God lives and reigns.
+
+                                      The Mirror of Eternal Salvation.
+
+The beginning of man’s Active Life, says Ruysbroeck—that uplifting of the
+diurnal existence into the Divine Atmosphere, which confers on it meaning
+and reality—is a movement of response. Grace, the synthesis of God’s
+love, energy and will, pours like a great river through the universe, and
+perpetually beats in upon the soul. When man consents to receive it,
+opens the sluices of the heart to that living water, surrenders to it;
+then he opens his heart and will to the impact of Reality, his eyes to
+the Divine Light, and in this energetic movement of acceptance begins for
+the first time to live indeed. Hence it is that, in the varied ethical
+systems which we find in his books, and which describe the active
+crescent life of Christian virtue, the laborious adjustment of character
+to the Vision of God, Ruysbroeck always puts first the virtue, or rather
+the attitude, which he calls _good-will_: the voluntary orientation of
+the self in the right direction, the eager acceptance of grace. As all
+growth depends upon food, so all spiritual development depends upon the
+self’s appropriation of its own share of the transcendent life-force, its
+own ‘rill of grace’; and good-will breaks down the barrier which prevents
+that stream from pouring into the soul.
+
+Desire, said William Law, _is_ everything and _does_ everything; it is
+the primal motive-power. Ruysbroeck, too, finds in desire turned towards
+the best the beginning of human transcendence, and regards willing and
+loving as the essence of life. Basing his psychology on the common
+mediæval scheme of Memory, Intelligence and Will, he speaks of this last
+as the king of the soul; dominating both the other powers, and able to
+gather them in its clutch, force them to attend to the invitations and
+messages of the eternal world. Thus in his system the demand upon man’s
+industry and courage is made from the very first. The great mystical
+necessity of self-surrender is shown to involve, not a limp acquiescence,
+but a deliberate and heroic choice; the difficult approximation of our
+own thoughts and desires to the thoughts and desires of Divine Reality.
+“When we have but one thought and one will with God, we are on the first
+step of the ladder of love and of sanctity; for good-will is the
+foundation of all virtue.”[26]
+
+In _The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage_, Ruysbroeck has used the
+words said to the wise and foolish virgins of the parable—“Behold, the
+bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him”—as an epitome of the self’s
+relations with and reactions to Reality. First, all created spirits are
+called to behold God, who is perpetually ‘coming’ to the world of
+conditions, in a ceaseless procession of love; and in this seeing our
+happiness consists. But in order really to see a thing, we need not only
+light and clear sight, but the _will_ to look at it; every act of
+perception demands a self-giving on the seer’s part. So here we need not
+only the light of grace and the open eyes of the soul, but also the
+_will_ turned towards the Infinite: our attention to life, the regnant
+fact of our consciousness, must be focussed upon eternal things. Now,
+when we see God, we cannot but love Him; and love is motion, activity.
+Hence, this first demand on the awakened spirit, ‘Behold!’ is swiftly
+followed by the second demand, ‘Go ye out!’ for the essence of love is
+generous, outflowing, expansive, an “upward and outward tendency towards
+the Kingdom of God, which is God Himself.” This outgoing, this concrete
+act of response, will at once change and condition our correspondences
+with and attitude towards God, ourselves and our neighbours; expressing
+itself within the world of action in a new ardour for perfection—the
+natural result of the ‘loving vision of the Bridegroom,’ the self’s first
+glimpse of Perfect Goodness and Truth. We observe the continued
+insistence on effort, act, as the very heart of all true self-giving to
+transcendent interests.
+
+Whilst in the volitional life drastic readjustments, stern
+character-building, and eager work are the expression of goodwill, in the
+emotional life it is felt as a profound impulse to self-surrender: a
+loving yielding up of the whole personality to the inflow and purging
+activities of the Absolute Life. “This good-will is nought else but the
+infused Love of God, which causes him to apply himself to Divine things
+and all virtues; ... when it turns towards God, it crowns the spirit with
+Eternal Love, and when it returns to outward things it rules as a
+mistress over his external good deeds.”[27]
+
+We have here, then, a disposition of heart and mind which both receives
+and responds to the messages of Reality; making it possible for the self
+to begin to grow in the right direction, to enter into possession of its
+twofold heritage. That completely human life of activity and
+contemplation which moves freely up and down the ladder of love between
+the temporal and eternal worlds, and reproduces in little the ideal of
+Divine Humanity declared in Christ, is the ideal towards which it is set;
+and already, even in this lowest phase, the double movement of the
+awakened consciousness begins to show itself. Our love and will, firmly
+fastened in the Eternal World, are to swing like a pendulum between the
+seen and the unseen spheres; in great ascending arcs of balanced
+adoration and service, which shall bring all the noblest elements of
+human character into play. Therefore the pivoting of life upon Divine
+Reality, which is the result of good-will—the setting up of a right
+relation with the universe—is inevitably the first condition of virtue,
+the ‘root of sanctity,’ the beginning of spiritual growth, the act which
+makes man free; translating him, in Ruysbroeck’s image, from the state of
+the slave to that of the conscious and willing servant of Eternal Truth.
+“From the hour in which, with God’s help, he transcends his self-hood ...
+he feels true love, which overcomes doubt and fear and makes man trust
+and hope; and so he becomes a true servant, and means and loves God in
+all that he does.”[28]
+
+So man, emerging from the shell of selfhood, makes—of his own free
+choice, by his own effort—his first timid upward beat to God; and,
+following swiftly upon it, the compensating outward beat of charity
+towards his fellow-men. We observe how tight a hold has this most
+transcendental of the mystics on the _wholeness_ of all healthy human
+life: the mutual support and interpenetration of the active and
+contemplative powers. ‘Other-worldliness’ is decisively contradicted from
+the first. It is the appearance of this eager active charity—this
+imitation in little of the energetic Love of God—which assures us that
+the first stage of the self’s growth is rightly accomplished; completing
+its first outward push in that new direction to which its good-will is
+turned. “For charity ever presses towards the heights, towards the
+Kingdom of God, the which is God Himself.”
+
+In the practical counsels given to the young novice to whom _The Mirror
+of Salvation_ is addressed, we may see Ruysbroeck’s ideal of that active
+life of self-discipline and service which the soul has now set in hand;
+and which he describes in greater detail in _The Adornment of the
+Spiritual Marriage_ and _The Kingdom of God’s Lovers_. Total
+self-donation, he tells her, is her first need—‘choosing God, for love’s
+sake’ without hesitations or reserves; and this dedication to the
+interests of Reality must be untainted by any spiritual selfishness, any
+hint of that insidious desire for personal beatitude which ‘fades the
+flower of true love.’ This done, self-conquest and self-control become
+the novice’s primary duties: the gradual subduing and rearrangement of
+character about its new centre, the elimination of all tendencies
+inimical to the demands of Eternal Life; the firm establishment upon its
+throne of that true free-will which desires only God’s will. This
+self-conquest, the essence of the ‘Way of Purgation,’ as described and
+experienced by so many ascetics and mystics, includes not only the
+eradication of sins, but the training of the attention, the adaptation of
+consciousness to its new environment; the killing-out of inclinations
+which, harmless in themselves, compete with the one transcendent interest
+of life.
+
+Like all great mystics, Ruysbroeck had a strong ‘sense of sin.’ This is
+merely a theological way of stating the fact that his intense realisation
+of Perfection involved a vivid consciousness of the imperfections,
+disharmonies, perversities, implicit in the human creature; the need of
+resolving them if the soul was to grow up to the stature of Divine
+Humanity. Yet there is in his writings a singular absence of that
+profound preoccupation with sin found in so many mediæval ascetics. His
+attitude towards character was affirmative and robust; emphasising the
+possibilities rather than the disabilities of man. Sin, for him, was
+egotism; showing itself in the manifold forms of pride, laziness,
+self-indulgence, coldness of heart, or spiritual self-seeking, but always
+implying a central wrongness of attitude, resulting in a wrong employment
+of power. Self-denials and bodily mortifications he regarded partly as
+exercises in self-control—spiritual athletics—useful because educative of
+the will; partly as expressions of love. At best they are but the means
+of sanctity, and never to be confused with its end; for the man who
+deliberately passed the greater part of his life in the bustle of the
+town was no advocate of a cloistered virtue or a narrow perfectionism.
+
+Morbid piety is often the product of physical as well as spiritual
+stuffiness; and Ruysbroeck wrote his great books out of doors, with light
+and air all round him, and the rhythmic life of trees to remind him how
+much stronger was the quiet law of growth than any atavism, accident, or
+perversion by which it could be checked. Thus, throughout his works, the
+accent always falls upon power rather than weakness: upon the spiritual
+energy pouring in like sunshine; the incessant growth which love sets
+going; the perpetual rebirths to ever higher levels, as the young sapling
+stretches upward every spring. What he asks of the novice is contrition
+without anxiety, self-discipline without fuss; the steady, all-round
+development of her personality, stretching and growing towards God. She
+is to be the mistress of her soul, never permitting it to be drawn hither
+and thither by the distractions and duties of external life. Keeping
+always in the atmosphere of Reality, she shall bring therefrom truth and
+frankness to all her words and deeds; and perform her duties with that
+right and healthy detachment which springs, not from a contempt of the
+Many, but from the secure and loving possession of the One.
+
+The disciplines to which she must subject herself in the effort towards
+attainment of this poise, will, like a wise gymnastic, produce in her a
+suppleness of soul; making the constant and inevitable transition from
+interior communion to outward work, which charity and good sense demand,
+easy and natural, and causing the spirit to be plastic in the hand of
+God. Such suppleness—the lightness and lissomeness which comes from
+spiritual muscles exercised and controlled—was one of the favourite
+qualities of that wise trainer of character, St. François de Sales; and
+the many small and irritating mortifications with which he was accustomed
+to torment his disciples had no other aim than to produce it.
+
+In the stage of development to which the Active Life belongs, the soul
+enjoys communion with Reality, not with that directness proper to the
+true contemplative, but obliquely, by ‘means,’ symbols and images;
+especially by the sacramental dispensation of the Church, a subject to
+which Ruysbroeck devotes great attention. As always in his system, growth
+from within is intimately connected with the reception of food and power
+from without. The movement of the self into God, the movement of God into
+the self, though separable in thought, are one in fact: will and grace
+are two aspects of one truth. Only this paradox can express the relation
+between that Divine Love which is ‘both avid and generous,’ and the self
+that is destined both to devour and be devoured by Reality.
+
+In the beautiful chapters on the Eucharist which form the special feature
+of _The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, Ruysbroeck develops this idea. “If
+He gives us all that He has and all that He is, in return He takes from
+us all that we have and all that we are, and demands of us more than we
+are capable of giving.... Even in devouring us, He desires to feed us. If
+He absorbs us utterly into Himself, He gives Himself in return. He causes
+to be born in us the hunger and thirst of the spirit, which shall make us
+savour Him in an eternal fruition; and to this spiritual hunger, as well
+as to the love of our heart, He gives His own Body as food.... Thus does
+He give us His life full of wisdom, truth and knowledge, in order that we
+may imitate Him in all virtues; and then He lives in us and we in Him.
+Then do we grow, and raise ourselves up above the reason into a Divine
+Love which causes us to take and consume that Food in a spiritual manner,
+and stretch out in pure love towards the Divinity. There takes place that
+encounter of the spirit, that is to say of measureless love, which
+consumes and transforms our spirit with all its works; drawing us with
+itself towards the Unity, where we taste beatitude and rest. Herein
+therefore is our eternal life: ever to devour and be devoured, to ascend
+and descend with love.”[29]
+
+The soul, then, turned in the direction of the Infinite, ‘having God for
+aim,’ and with her door opened to the inflowing Divine Life, begins to
+grow. Her growth is up and out; from that temporal world to which her
+nature is adapted, and where she seems full of power and efficiency, to
+that eternal world to which the ‘spark’ within her belongs, but where she
+is as yet no more than a weak and helpless child. Hence the first state
+of mind and heart produced in her, if the ‘new birth’ has indeed taken
+place, will be that humility which results from all real self-knowledge;
+since “whoso might verily see and feel himself as he _is_, he should
+verily be meek.” This clear acknowledgment of facts, this finding of
+one’s own place, Ruysbroeck calls ‘the solid foundation of the Kingdom of
+the Soul.’ In thus discerning love and humility as the governing
+characteristics of the soul’s reaction to Reality, he is of course
+keeping close to the great tradition of Christian mysticism; especially
+to the teaching of Richard of St. Victor, which we find constantly
+repeated in the ascetic literature of the Middle Ages.
+
+From these two virtues, then, of humble self-knowledge and God-centred
+love, are gradually developed all those graces of character which ‘adorn
+the soul for the spiritual marriage,’ mark her ascent of the first
+degrees of the ‘ladder of love,’ and make possible the perfecting of her
+correspondences with the ‘Kingdom.’ This development follows an orderly
+course, as subject to law as the unfolding of the leaves and flowers upon
+the growing plant; and though Ruysbroeck in his various works uses
+different diagrams wherewith to explain it, the psychological changes
+which these diagrams demonstrate are substantially the same. In each case
+we watch the opening of man’s many-petalled heart under the rays of the
+Divine Light, till it blossoms at last into the rose of Perfect Charity.
+
+Thus in _The Seven Degrees of Love_, since he is there addressing a
+cloistered nun, he accommodates his system to that threefold monastic vow
+of voluntary poverty or perfect renunciation, chastity or singleness of
+heart, and obedience or true humility in action, by which she is bound.
+When the reality which these vows express is actualised in the soul, and
+dominates all her reactions to the world, she wears the ‘crown of
+virtue’; and lives that ‘noble life’ ruled by the purified and enhanced
+will, purged of all selfish desires and distractions, which—seeking in
+all things the interests of the spiritual world—is ‘full of love and
+charity, and industrious in good works.’
+
+In _The Spiritual Marriage_ a more elaborate analysis is possible; based
+upon that division of man’s moral perversities into the ‘seven mortal
+sins’ or seven fundamental forms of selfishness, which governed, and
+governs yet, the Catholic view of human character. After a preliminary
+passage in which the triple attitude of love as towards God, humility as
+towards self, justice as towards other men, is extolled as the only
+secure basis of the spiritual life, Ruysbroeck proceeds to exhibit the
+seven real and positive qualities which oppose the seven great abuses of
+human freedom. As Pride is first and worst of mortal sins and follies, so
+its antithesis Humility is again put forward as the first condition of
+communion with God. This produces in the emotional life an attitude of
+loving adoration; in the volitional life, obedience. By _obedience_,
+Ruysbroeck means that self-submission, that wise suppleness of spirit,
+which is swayed and guided not by its own tastes and interests but by the
+Will of God; as expressed in the commands and prohibitions of moral and
+spiritual law, the interior push of conscience. This attitude, at first
+deliberately assumed, gradually controls all the self’s reactions, and
+ends by subduing it entirely to the Divine purpose. “Of this obedience
+there grows the abdication of one’s own will and one’s own opinion; ...
+by this abdication of the will in all that one does, or does not do, or
+endures, the substance and occasion of pride are wholly driven out, and
+the highest humility is perfected.”[30]
+
+This movement of renunciation brings—next phase in the unselfing of the
+self—a compensating outward swing of love; expressed under the beautiful
+forms of _patience_, ‘the tranquil tolerance of all that can happen,’ and
+hence the antithesis of Anger; _gentleness_, which “with peace and calm
+bears vexatious words and deeds”; _kindness_, which deals with the
+quarrelsome and irritable by means of “a friendly countenance,
+affectionate persuasion and compassionate acts”; and _sympathy_, “that
+inward movement of the heart which compassionates the bodily and
+spiritual griefs of all men,” and kills the evil spirit of Envy and hate.
+This fourfold increase in disinterested love is summed up in the
+condition which Ruysbroeck calls _supernatural generosity_; that
+largeness of heart which flows out towards the generosity of God, which
+is swayed by pity and love, which embraces all men in its sweep. By this
+energetic love which seeks not its own, “all virtues are increased, and
+all the powers of the spirit are adorned”; and Avarice, the fourth great
+mortal sin, is opposed.
+
+Generosity is no mere mood; it is a motive-force, demanding expression in
+action. From the emotions, it invades the will, and produces _diligence_
+and _zeal_: an ‘inward and impatient eagerness’ for every kind of work,
+and for the hard practice of every kind of virtue, which makes impossible
+that slackness and dulness of soul which is characteristic of the sin of
+Sloth. It is dynamic love; and the spirit which is fired by its ardours,
+has reached a degree of self-conquest in which the two remaining evil
+tendencies—that to every kind of immoderate enjoyment, spiritual,
+intellectual or physical, which is the essence of Gluttony, and that to
+the impure desire of created things which is Lust—can be met and
+vanquished. The purged and strengthened will, crowned by unselfish love,
+is now established on its throne; man has become captain of his soul, and
+rules all the elements of his character and that character’s expression
+in life—not as an absolute monarch, but in the name of Divine Love.[31]
+He has done all he can do of himself towards the conforming of his life
+to Supreme Perfection; has opposed, one after another, each of those
+exhibitions of the self’s tendency to curl inwards, to fence itself in
+and demand, absorb, enjoy as a separate entity, which lie at the root of
+sin. The constructive side of the Purgative Way has consisted in the
+replacement of this egoistic, indrawing energy by these outflowing
+energies of self-surrender, kindness, diligence and the rest; summed up
+in that perfection of humility and love, which “in all its works, and
+always, stretches out towards God.”
+
+The first three gifts of the Holy Spirit are possessed by the soul which
+has reached this point, says Ruysbroeck in _The Kingdom of God’s Lovers_:
+that loving Fear, which includes true humility with all its ancillary
+characteristics; that general attitude of charity which makes man gentle,
+patient and docile, ready to serve and pity every one, and is called
+Godliness, because there first emerges in it his potential likeness to
+God; and finally that Knowledge or discernment of right and prudent
+conduct which checks the disastrous tendency to moral fussiness, helps
+man to conform his life to supreme Perfection, and gives the calmness and
+balance which are essential to a sane and manly spirituality. Thus the
+new life-force has invaded and affected will, feeling and intellect;
+raised the whole man to fresh levels of existence, and made possible
+fresh correspondences with Reality. “Hereby are the three lower powers of
+the soul adorned with Divine virtues. The Irascible [_i.e._ volitional
+and dynamic] is adorned with loving and filial fear, humility, obedience
+and renunciation. The Desirous is adorned with kindness, pity, compassion
+and generosity. Finally, the Reasonable with knowledge and discernment,
+and that prudence which regulates all things.”[32] The ideal of character
+held out and described under varying metaphors in Ruysbroeck’s different
+works, is thus seen to be a perfectly consistent one.
+
+Now when the growing self has actualised this ideal, and lives the Active
+Life of the faithful servant of Reality, it begins to feel an ardent
+desire for some more direct encounter with That which it loves. Since it
+has now acquired the ‘ornaments of the virtues’—cleansed its mirror,
+ordered its disordered loves—this encounter may and does in a certain
+sense take place; for every Godward movement of the human is met by a
+compensating movement of the Divine. Man now begins to find God in all
+things: in nature, in the soul, in works of charity. But in the turmoil
+and bustle of the Active Life such an encounter is at best indirect; a
+sidelong glimpse of the ‘first and only Fair.’ That vision can only be
+apprehended in its wholeness by a concentration of all the powers of the
+self. If we would look the Absolute in the eyes, we must look at nothing
+else; the complete opening of the eye of Eternity entails the closing of
+the eye of Time. Man, then, must abstract himself from multiplicity, if
+only for a moment, if he would catch sight of the unspeakable Simplicity
+of the Real. Longing to ‘know the nature of the Beloved,’ he must act as
+Zacchæus did when he wished to see Christ:
+
+“He must run before the crowd, that is to say the multiplicity of created
+things; for these make us so little and low that we cannot perceive God.
+And he must climb up on the Tree of Faith, which grows from above
+downwards, for its root is in the Godhead. This tree has twelve branches,
+which are the twelve articles of the Creed. The lower branches speak of
+the Humanity of God; ... the upper branches, however, speak of the
+Godhead: of the Trinity of Persons and the Unity of the Divine Nature.
+Man must cling to the Unity which is at the top of the tree, for it is
+here that Jesus will pass by with all His gifts. And now Jesus comes, and
+He sees man, and shows him in the light of faith that He is, according to
+His Divinity, unmeasured and incomprehensible, inaccessible and
+fathomless, and that He overpasses all created light and all finite
+comprehension. This is the highest knowledge of God which man can acquire
+in the Active Life: thus to recognise by the light of faith that God is
+inconceivable and unknowable. In this light God says to the desire of
+man: “Come down quickly, for I would dwell in your house to-day.” And
+this quick descent, to which God invites him, is nought else but a
+descent, by love and desire, into the Abyss of the Godhead, to which no
+intellect can attain by its created light. But here, where intellect must
+rest without, love and desire may enter in. When the soul thus leans upon
+God by intention and love, above all that she understands, then she rests
+and dwells in God, and God in her. When the soul mounts up by desire,
+above the multiplicity of things, above the activities of the senses and
+above the light of external nature, then she encounters Christ by the
+light of faith, and is illuminated; and she recognises that God is
+unknowable and inconceivable. Finally, stretching by desire towards this
+incomprehensible God, she meets Christ and is fulfilled with His gifts.
+And loving and resting above all gifts, above herself and above all
+things, she dwells in God and God in her. According to this manner Christ
+may be encountered upon the summit of the Active Life.”[33]
+
+This, then, is the completion of the first stage in the mystic way; this
+showing to the purified consciousness of the helplessness of the analytic
+intellect, the dynamic power of self-surrendered love. “Where intellect
+must rest without, love and desire may enter in.” The human creature,
+turning towards Reality, has pressed up to the very edge of the ‘Cloud of
+Unknowing’ in which the goal of transcendence is hid. If it is to go
+further it must bring to the adventure not knowledge but divine
+ignorance, not riches but poverty; above all, an eager and industrious
+love.
+
+  “A fiery flame of devotion leaping and ascending into the very goodness
+              of God Himself,
+  A loving longing of the soul to be with God in His Eternity,
+  A turning from all things of self into the freedom of the Will of God;
+  With all the forces of the soul gathered into the unity of the
+              spirit.”[34]
+
+
+
+
+                                    CHAPTER VI
+THE INTERIOR LIFE: ILLUMINATION AND DESTITUTION
+
+
+  Let whoso thirsts to see his God cleanse his mirror, purge his spirit;
+  and when thus he has cleansed his mirror, and long and diligently gazed
+  in it, a certain brightness of divine light begins to shine through
+  upon him, and a certain immense ray of unwonted vision to appear before
+  his eyes.... From the beholding of this light, which it sees within
+  itself with amazement, the mind is mightily set on fire, and lifted up
+  to behold that Light which is above itself.
+
+                                                Richard of St. Victor.
+
+It is plain that the Active Life in Ruysbroeck’s system answers more or
+less to the Purgative Way, considered upon its affirmative and
+constructive side, as a building up of the heroic Christian character.
+So, too, the life which he calls Interior or Contemplative, and which
+initiates man into the friendship of God, corresponds in the main with
+the Illuminative Way of orthodox mysticism; though it includes in its
+later stages much that is usually held to belong to the third, or
+Unitive, state of the soul. The first life has, as it were, unfolded to
+the sunlight the outer petals of the mystic rose; exhibiting in their
+full beauty, adjusting to their true use, the normally-apparent
+constituents of man’s personality. All his relations with the given world
+of sense, the sphere of Becoming, have been purified and adjusted. Now
+the expansive and educative influence of the Divine Light is able to
+penetrate nearer to the heart of his personality; is brought to bear upon
+those interior qualities which he hardly knows himself to possess, and
+which govern his relation with the spiritual world of Being. The flower
+is to open more widely; the inner ring of petals must uncurl.
+
+As the primary interest of the Active Life was ethical purification, so
+the primary interest of this Second Life is intellectual purification.
+Intellect, however, is here to be understood in its highest sense; as
+including not only the analytic reason which deals with the problems of
+our normal universe, but that higher intelligence, that contemplative
+mind, which—once it is awakened to consciousness—can gather news of the
+transcendental world. The development and clarification of this power is
+only possible to those who have achieved, and continue to live at full
+stretch, the high, arduous and unselfish life of Christian virtue. Again
+we must remind ourselves that Ruysbroeck’s theory of transcendence
+involves, not the passage from one life to another, but the _adding_ of
+one life to another: the perpetual deepening, widening, heightening and
+enriching of human experience. As the author of _The Cloud of Unknowing_
+insists that none can be truly contemplative who is not also active, so
+Ruysbroeck says that no man ever rises above the ordinary obligations of
+Christian kindness and active good works.
+
+“We find nowadays many silly men who would be so interior and so
+detached, that they will not be active or helpful in any way of which
+their neighbours are in need. Know, such men are neither hidden friends
+nor yet true servants of God, but are wholly false and disloyal; for none
+can follow His counsels but those who obey His laws.”[35]
+
+Nevertheless it would be generally true to say that, whilst the aim of
+the Active Life is right conduct, the aim of the Interior Life is right
+vision and thought. As, in that first life, all the perversions of man’s
+ordinary powers and passions were rectified, all that was superfluous and
+unreal done away, and his nature set right with God; now—still holding
+and living in its fulness this purified active life—he is to press deeper
+and deeper into the resources of his being, finding there other powers
+and cravings which must be brought within the field of consciousness, and
+set up those relations with the Transcendent of which they are capable.
+This deepening and enlarging of man’s universe, together with the further
+and more drastic discarding of illusions and unrealities, is the business
+of the Second Life, considered on its impersonal side.
+
+“If thou dost desire to unfold in thyself the Contemplative Life, thou
+must enter within, beyond the sense-life; and, on that apex of thy being,
+adorned with all the virtues of which I have spoken, looking unto God
+with gratitude and love and continual reverence, thou must keep thy
+thoughts bare, and stripped of every sensible image, thine understanding
+open and lifted up to the Eternal Truth, and thy spirit spread out in the
+sight of God as a living mirror to receive His everlasting likeness.
+Behold, therein appears a light of the understanding, which neither
+sense, reason, nature, nor the clearest logic can apprehend, but which
+gives us freedom and confidence towards God. It is nobler and higher than
+all that God has created in nature; for it is the perfection of nature,
+and transcends nature, and is the clear-shining intermediary between
+ourselves and God. Our thoughts, bare and stripped of images, are
+themselves the living mirror in which this light shines: and the light
+requires of us that we should be like to and one with God, in this living
+mirror of our bare thoughts.”[36]
+
+In this strongly Victorine passage, the whole process of the Second Life
+is epitomised; but in _The Spiritual Marriage_, where its description
+occupies the seventy-three chapters of the second book, we see how long
+is the way which stretches from that first ‘entering in beyond the sense
+life’ to the point at which the soul’s mirror is able to receive in its
+fullness that Light wherein alone it can apprehend Reality.
+
+Considered upon its organic side, as a growth and movement of the soul,
+this Way, as conceived, and probably experienced, by Ruysbroeck, can be
+divided into three great phases. We might call these Action, Reaction and
+Equilibrium. Broadly speaking, they answer to the Illumination, Dark
+Night and Simple Union of orthodox mystical science. Yet since in his
+vivid description of these linked states he constantly departs from the
+formulæ of his predecessors, and as constantly illustrates their
+statements by intimate and homely touches only possible to one who has
+endured the adventures of which he tells, we are justified in claiming
+the description as the fruit of experience rather than of tradition; and
+as evidence of the course taken by his own development.
+
+It is surely upon his own memory that he is relying, when he tells us
+that the beginning of this new life possesses something of the abrupt
+character of a second conversion. It happens, he says, when we least
+expect it; when the self, after the long tension and struggle of moral
+purgation, has become drowsy and tired. Then, suddenly, “a spiritual cry
+echoes through the soul,” announcing a new encounter with Reality, and
+demanding a new response; or, to put it in another way, consciousness on
+its ascending spiral has pushed through to another level of existence,
+where it can hear voices and discern visions to which it was deaf and
+blind before. This sudden clarity of mind, this new vivid apprehension of
+Divine Love, is the first indication of man’s entrance on the
+Illuminative Way. It is introversive rather than out-going in type.
+Changing the character of our attention to life, we discern within us
+something which we have always possessed and always ignored: a secret
+Divine energy, which is now to emerge from the subconscious deeps into
+the area of consciousness. There it stimulates the will, evicts all
+lesser images and interests from the heart, and concentrates all the
+faculties into a single and intense state, pressing towards the Unity of
+God, the synthetic experience of love; for perpetual movement towards
+that unity—not achievement of it—is the mark of this Second Life, in
+which the separation of God and the soul remains intact. In Victorine
+language, it is the period of spiritual betrothal, not of spiritual
+marriage; of a vision which, though wide, rich and wonderful, is mirrored
+rather than direct.
+
+The new God-inspired movement, then, begins within, like a spring
+bubbling from the deeps; and thrusts up and out to the consciousness
+which it is destined to clarify and enhance. “The stream of Divine grace
+swiftly stirs and moves a man inwardly, and from within outwards; and
+this swift stirring is the first thing that makes us _see_. Of this swift
+stirring is born from the side of man the second point: that is, a
+gathering together of all the inward and outward powers in spiritual
+unity and in the bonds of love. The third is that liberty which enables
+man to retreat into himself, without images or obstacles, whensoever he
+wills and thinks of his God.”[37]
+
+So we may say that an enhancement of the conative powers, a greater
+control over the attention, are the chief marks of the Illuminative Way
+as perceived by the growing self. But the liberty here spoken of has a
+moral as well as a mental aspect. It is a freeing of the whole man from
+the fetters of illusion, and involves that perfect detachment of heart,
+that self-naughting, which makes him equally willing to have joy or pain,
+gain or loss, esteem or contempt, peace or fear, as the Divine Will may
+ordain. Thus is perfected that suppleness of soul which he began to
+acquire in the Active Life: a gradual process, which needs for its
+accomplishment the negative rhythm of renunciation, testing the manliness
+and courage of the self, as well as the positive movement of love. Hence
+the Contemplative Life, as Ruysbroeck knows and describes it, has, and
+must have, its state of pain as well as its state of joy. With him,
+however, as with nearly all the mystics, the state of joy comes first:
+the glad and eager reaction to those new levels of spiritual reality
+disclosed to consciousness when the struggles and readjustments of the
+Active Life have done their work. This is the phase in the self’s
+progress which mystical writers properly mean by Illumination: a
+condition of great happiness, and of an intuition of Reality so vivid and
+joyous, that the soul often supposes that she has here reached the goal
+of her quest. It is in the spiritual year, says Ruysbroeck, that which
+the month of May is in the seasons of the earth: a wholesome and
+necessary time of sunshine, swift growth and abundant flowers, when the
+soul, under the influence of ‘the soft rain of inward consolations and
+the heavenly dew of the Divine sweetness’ blossoms in new and lovely
+graces.
+
+Illumination is an unstable period. The sun is rising swiftly in the
+heaven of man’s consciousness; and as it increases in power, so it calls
+forth on the soul’s part greater ardours, more intense emotional
+reactions. Once more the flux of God is demanding its reflux. The soul,
+like the growing boy suddenly made aware of the beauty, romance and
+wonder—the intense and irresistible appeal—of a world that had seemed
+ordinary before, flows out towards this new universe with all the
+enthusiasm and eagerness of its young fresh powers. Those powers are so
+new to it, that it cannot yet control or understand them. Vigorous and
+ungovernable, they invade by turns the heart, the will, the mind, as do
+the fevers and joys of physical adolescence; inciting to acts and
+satisfactions for which the whole self is hardly ready yet. “Then is
+thrown wide,” says Ruysbroeck, “the heaven which was shut, and from the
+face of Divine Love there blazes down a sudden light, as it were a
+lightning flash.” In the meeting of this inward and outward spiritual
+force—the Divine Light without, the growing Divine Spark within—there is
+great joy. Ecstasy, and that state of musical rapture, exceeding the
+possibilities of speech, which Ruysbroeck like Richard Rolle calls
+‘ghostly song,’ are the natural self-expressions of the soul in this
+moment of its career.[38]
+
+In more than one book we find references to this ecstatic period: a
+period so strongly marked in his own case, that it became for him—though
+he was under no illusions as to its permanent value—one of the landmarks
+in man’s journey to his home. Looking back on it in later life, he sees
+in it two great phases, of which the earlier and lower at any rate is
+dangerous and easily misunderstood; and is concerned to warn those who
+come after him of its transitory and imperfect character. The first phase
+is that of ‘spiritual inebriation,’ in which the fever, excitement and
+unrest of this period of growth and change—affecting as they do every
+aspect of personality—show themselves in the psycho-physical phenomena
+which are well-known accompaniments of religious emotion in selves of a
+certain temperament. This spiritual delirium, which appears to have been
+a common phase in the mystical revivals of the fourteenth century, is
+viewed by Ruysbroeck with considerable distrust; and rightly attributed
+by him to an excitement of the senses rather than of the soul. At best it
+is but ‘children’s food,’ given to those who cannot yet digest ‘the
+strong food of temptation and the loss of God.’ Its manifestations, as he
+describes them, overpass the limits not merely of common sense but also
+of sanity; and are clearly related to the frenzies of revivalists and the
+wild outbreaks of songs, dance and ecstatic speech observed in nearly all
+non-Christian religions of an enthusiastic type. In this state of
+rapture, “a man seems like a drunkard, no longer master of himself.” He
+sings, shouts, laughs and cries both at once, runs and leaps in the air,
+claps his hands, and indulges in absurdly exaggerated gestures ‘with many
+other disagreeable exhibitions.’[39] These he may not be able to help;
+but is advised to control them as soon as he can, passing from the merely
+sensuous emotion which results when the light of Eternal Love invades the
+‘inferior powers’ of the soul, to the spiritual emotion, amenable to
+reason, which is the reaction of the ‘higher powers’ of the self to that
+same overwhelming influx of grace.
+
+That inpouring grace grows swiftly in power, as the strength of the sun
+grows with the passing of the year. The Presence of God now stands over
+the soul’s supreme summits, in the zenith: the transcendent fact of the
+illuminated consciousness. His power and love shine perpetually upon the
+heart, ‘giving more than we can take, demanding more than we can pay’;
+and inducing in the soul upon which this mighty energy is playing, a
+strange unrest, part anguish and part joy. This is the second phase of
+the ecstatic period, and gives rise to that which Ruysbroeck, and after
+him Tauler, have called the ‘storm of love’: a wild longing for union
+which stretches to the utmost the self’s powers of response, and
+expresses itself in violent efforts, impassioned ascents towards the
+Spirit that cries without ceasing to our spirit: “Pay your debt! Love the
+Love that has loved you from Eternity.”[40]
+
+Now the vigorous soul begins to find within itself the gift of Spiritual
+Strength; that enthusiastic energy which is one of the characters of all
+true love. This is the third of the ‘Seven Gifts of the Spirit,’ and the
+first to be actualised in the Illuminated Life.[41] From this strong and
+ardent passion for the Transcendent, adoration and prayer stream forth;
+and these again react upon the self, forming the fuel of the fire of
+love. The interior invitation of God, His attractive power, His delicate
+yet inexorable caress, is to the loving heart the most pure delight that
+it has ever known. It responds by passionate movements of adoration and
+gratitude, opening its petals wide to the beams of the Eternal Sun.
+
+This is the joy; and close behind it comes the anguish, ‘sweetest and
+heaviest of all pains.’ It is the sense of unsatisfied desire—the pain of
+love—which comes from the enduring consciousness of a gulf fixed between
+the self and That with which it desires to unite. “Of this inward demand
+and compulsion, which makes the creature to rise up and prepare itself to
+the utmost of its power, without yet being able to reach or attain the
+Unity—of this, there springs a spiritual pain. When the heart’s core, the
+very source of life, is wounded by love, and man cannot attain that thing
+which he desires above else; when he must stay ever where he desires no
+more to be, of these feelings comes this pain.... When man cannot achieve
+God, and yet neither can nor will do without Him; in such men there
+arises a furious agitation and impatience, both within and without. And
+whilst man is in this tumult, no creature in heaven or earth can help him
+or give him rest.”[42]
+
+The sensible heat of love is felt with a greater violence now than at any
+other period of life; the rays of the Spiritual Sun strike the soul with
+terrific force, ripening the fruits of the virtues, yet bringing danger
+to the health, both mental and physical, of those who are not properly
+prepared, and who faint under the exhaustion of this ‘intense fury of
+Divine Love,’ this onslaught which ‘eats up the heart.’ These are ‘the
+dog-days of the spiritual year.’ As all nature languishes under their
+stifling heat, so too long an exposure to their violence may mean ruin to
+the physical health of the growing self. Yet those who behave with
+prudence need not take permanent harm; a kind of wise steadfastness will
+support them throughout this turbulent period. “Following through all
+storms the path of love, they will advance towards that place whither
+love leadeth them.”[43]
+
+To this period of vivid illumination and emotional unrest belongs the
+development of those ‘secondary automatisms’ familiar to all students of
+mysticism: the desperate efforts of the mind to work up into some
+intelligible shape—some pictured vision or some spoken word—the
+overwhelming intuitions of the Transcendent by which it is possessed; the
+abrupt suspension of the surface-consciousness in rapture and ecstasy,
+when that overwhelming intuition develops into the complete mono-ideism
+of the ecstatic, and cuts off all contacts with the world of sense. Of
+these phenomena Ruysbroeck speaks with intimacy, and also with much
+common sense. He distinguishes visions into those pictures or material
+images which are ‘seen in the imagination,’ and those so-called
+‘intellectual visions,’—of which the works of Angela of Foligno and St.
+Teresa provide so rich a series of examples,—which are really direct and
+imageless messages from the Transcendent; received in those supersensuous
+regions where man has contact with the Incomprehensible Good and “seeing
+and hearing are one thing.” To this conventional classification he adds a
+passage which must surely be descriptive of his own experiences in this
+kind:
+
+“Sometimes God gives to such men swift spiritual glimpses, like to the
+flash of lightning in the sky. It comes like a sudden flash of strange
+light, streaming forth from the Simple Nudity. By this is the spirit
+uplifted for an instant above itself; and at once the light passes, and
+the man again comes to himself. This is God’s own work, and it is
+something most august; for often those who experience it afterwards
+become illuminated men. And those who live in the violence and fervour of
+love have now and then another manner, whereby a certain light shines
+_in_ them; and this God works by means. In this light, the heart and the
+desirous powers are uplifted toward the Light; and in this encounter the
+joy and satisfaction are such that the heart cannot contain itself, but
+breaks out in loud cries of joy. And this is called _jubilus_ or
+jubilation; and it is a joy that cannot be expressed in words.”[44]
+
+Here the parallel with Richard Rolle’s ‘ghostly song, with great voice
+outbreaking’ will strike every reader of that most musical of the
+mystics; and it is probable that in both cases the prominence given to
+this rather uncommon form of spiritual rapture points back to personal
+experience. “Methinketh,” says Rolle, “that contemplation is this
+heavenly song of the Love of God, which is called _jubilus_, taken of the
+sweetness of a soul by praising of God. This song is the end of perfect
+prayer, and of the highest devotion that may be here. This gladness of
+soul is had of God, and it breaketh out in a ghostly voice
+well-sounding.”[45]
+
+This exultant and lyrical mood then, this adoring rapture, which only the
+rhythm of music can express, is the emotional reaction which indicates
+the high summer of the soul. It will be seen that each phase of its
+seasonal progress has been marked by a fresh inflow of grace and gifts, a
+fresh demand upon its power of response. The tension never slackens; the
+need for industry is never done away. The gift of Strength, by which the
+self presses forward, has now been reinforced by the gift of Counsel,
+_i.e._ by the growth and deepening of that intuition which is its medium
+of contact with the spiritual world. The Counsel of the Spirit, says
+Ruysbroeck, is like a stirring or inspiration, deep within the soul. This
+stirring, this fresh uprush of energy, is really a ‘new birth’ of the
+Son, the Divine Wisdom; lighting up the intelligence so that it perceives
+its destiny, and perceives too that the communion it now enjoys is but an
+image of the Divine Union which awaits it.[46] God is counselling the
+soul with an inward secret insistence to rush out towards Him,
+stimulating her hunger for Reality; or, to put it otherwise, the Divine
+Spark is growing swiftly, and pressing hard against the walls of its
+home. Therefore the culmination of this gift, and the culmination too of
+the illuminated consciousness, brings to the soul a certitude that she
+must still press on and out; that nothing less than God Himself can
+suffice her, or match the mysterious Thing which dwells in her deeps.
+
+Now this way of love and ecstasy and summer heats has been attended
+throughout by grave dangers for the adolescent spirit; above all by the
+primary danger which besets the mystical life, of mistaking spiritual joy
+for spiritual reality, desiring ‘consolations’ and ‘illuminations’ for
+their own sake, and resting in the gift instead of the Giver. “Though he
+who dedicates himself to love ever experiences great joy, he must never
+seek this joy.” All those tendencies grouped by St. John of the Cross
+under the disagreeable name of ‘spiritual gluttony,’ those further
+temptations to self-indulgent quietism which are but an insidious form of
+sloth, are waiting to entrap the self on the Illuminative Way. But there
+is a way beyond this, another ‘Coming of the Bridegroom,’ which
+Ruysbroeck describes as ‘eternally safe and sure.’ This is the way of
+pain and deprivation; when the Presence of God seems to be withdrawn, and
+the fatigue and reaction consequent on the violent passions and energies
+of the illuminated state make themselves felt as a condition of misery,
+aridity and impotence,—all, in fact, that the Christian mystics mean by
+the ‘Spiritual Death’ or ‘Dark Night of the Soul,’ and which Ruysbroeck’s
+contemporaries, the Friends of God, called ‘the upper school of perfect
+self-abandonment.’
+
+The mirror is now to be cleansed of all false reflections, all beautiful
+prismatic light; the thoughts stripped bare of the consolations they have
+enjoyed. Summer is over, and autumn begins; when the flowers indeed die
+down, but the fruits which they heralded are ripe. Now is the time when
+man can prove the stuff of which he is made; and the religious amorist,
+the false mystic, is distinguished from the heroic and long-suffering
+servant of God. “In this season is perfected and completed all the work
+that the sun has accomplished during the year. In the same manner, when
+Christ the glorious Sun has risen to His zenith in the heart of man and
+then begins to descend, and to hide the radiance of His Divine light, and
+to abandon the man; then the impatience and ardour of love grow less. And
+this concealment of Christ, and this withdrawal of His light and heat,
+are the first working and the new coming of this degree. And now Christ
+says spiritually within the man: ‘Go forth, in the way which I now teach
+you.’ And the man goes forth, and finds himself poor, wretched and
+abandoned. And here the tempest, the ardour, the impatience of love grows
+cold; and the hot summer becomes autumn, and its riches turn to great
+poverty. Then man begins to lament in his distress—where now has gone
+that ardent love, that intimacy, that gratitude, that all-sufficing
+adoration? And that interior consolation, that intimate joy, that
+sensible savour, how has he lost all this?”[47]
+
+The veil that had seemed so transparent now thickens again; the
+certitudes that made life lovely all depart. Small wonder if the tortured
+spirit of the mystic fails to recognise this awful destitution as a
+renewed caress from the all-demanding Lover of the Soul; an education in
+courage, humility and selflessness; a last purification of the will. The
+state to which that self is being led is a renewed self-donation on new
+and higher levels: one more of those mystical deaths which are really
+mystical births; a giving-up, not merely of those natural tastes and
+desires which were disciplined in the Active Life, but of the higher
+passions and satisfactions of the spirit too. He is to be led to a state
+of such complete surrender to the Divine purposes that he is able to say:
+“Lord, not my will according to nature, but Thy will and my will
+according to spirit be done.” The darkness, sorrow and abandonment
+through which this is accomplished are far more essential to his
+development than the sunshine and happiness that went before. It is not
+necessary, says Ruysbroeck, that all should know the ecstasies of
+illumination; but by this dark stairway every man who would attain to God
+must go.
+
+When man has achieved this perfect resignation and all tendency to
+spiritual self-seeking is dead, the September of the soul is come. The
+sun has entered the sign of the Balance, when days and nights are equal;
+for now the surrendered self has achieved equilibrium, and endures in
+peace and steadfastness the alternations of the Divine Dark and Divine
+Light. Now the harvest and the vintage are ripe: “That is to say, all
+those inward and outward virtues, which man has practised with delight in
+the fire of love, these, now that he knows them and is able to accomplish
+them, he shall practise diligently and dutifully and offer them to God.
+And never were they so precious in His sight: never so noble and so fair.
+And all those consolations which God gave him before, he will gladly give
+up, and will empty himself for the glory of God. This is the harvest of
+the wheat and the many ripe fruits which make us rich in God, and give to
+us Eternal Life. Thus are the virtues perfected; and the absence of
+consolation is turned to an eternal wine.”[48]
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII
+               THE INTERIOR LIFE: UNION AND CONTEMPLATION
+
+
+  _Lume è lassu, che visibile face_
+    _lo Creatore a quella creatura_
+    _che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace._
+
+                                                      Par, xxx. 100.
+
+  And the Light floweth forth in similitude, and indraweth Itself in
+  unity; which we perceive, beyond the reason, in that high point of our
+  understanding which is bare and turned within.
+
+                                                  The Twelve Béguines.
+
+The soul which has endured with courage and humility the anguish of the
+Dark Night, actualising within its own experience the double rhythm of
+love and renunciation, now enters upon a condition of equilibrium; in
+which it perceives that all its previous adventures and apprehensions
+were but episodes of growth, phases in the long preparation of character
+for those new levels of life on which it is now to dwell.
+
+Three points, says Ruysbroeck, must characterise the truly interior man.
+First, his mind must be detached from its natural inclination to rest in
+images and appearances, however lovely; and must depend altogether upon
+that naked Absence of Images, which is God. This is the ‘ascent to the
+Nought’ preached by the Areopagite. Secondly, by means of his spiritual
+exercises, his progressive efforts to correspond with that Divine Life
+ever experienced by him with greater intensity, he must have freed
+himself from all taint of selfhood, all personal desire; so that in true
+inward liberty he can lift himself up unhindered towards God, in a spirit
+of selfless devotion. Plainly, the desolations of the Dark Night are
+exactly adapted to the production within the self of these two
+characters; which we might call purity of intelligence and purity of
+will. Directly resulting from their actualisation, springs the third
+point: the consciousness of inward union with God.[49] This consciousness
+of union, which we must carefully distinguish from the _Unity_ that is
+Ruysbroeck’s name for the last state of the transfigured soul, is the
+ruling character of that state of equilibrium to which we have now come;
+and represents the full achievement of the Interior Life.
+
+In many of his works, under various images, Ruysbroeck tries to tell us
+what he means by this inward union with God, this ‘mutual inhabitation,’
+as he calls it in one passage of great beauty, which is the goal of the
+‘Second Life.’ He reminds us again of that remote point of the spirit,
+that ‘apex’ of our being, where our life touches the Divine Life; where
+God’s image ‘lives and reigns.’ With the cleansing of the heart and mind,
+the heightening and concentration of the will, which the disciplines of
+the Active Life and Dark Night have effected, this supreme point of the
+spirit is brought at last within the conscious field. Then man feels and
+knows the presence there of an intense and creative vitality, an Eternal
+Essence, from which all that is worth having in his selfhood flows. This
+is the Life-giving Life (_Levende Leven_), where the created and
+Uncreated meet and are one: a phrase, apparently taken by Ruysbroeck from
+St. Bernard, which aptly expresses an idea familiar to all the great
+contemplatives. It is the point at which man’s separate spirit, as it
+were, emerges from the Divine Spirit: the point through which he must at
+last return to his Source. Here the Father has impressed His image, the
+Son is perpetually born, the Spirit wells up;[50] and here the Divine
+Unity dwells and calls him to the One. Here Eternity and Time are
+intertwined. Here springs the fountain of ‘Living Water’—grace,
+transcendent vitality—upon which the mystic life of man depends.
+
+Now the self, because it is at last conformed to the demands of the
+spiritual world, feels new powers from this life-giving source streaming
+into all departments of its being. The last barriers of self-will are
+broken; and the result is an inrush of fresh energy and light. Whereas in
+the ‘First Life’ God fed and communed with him by ‘means,’ and was
+revealed under images appropriate to a consciousness still immersed in
+the world of appearance; now man receives these gifts and messages, makes
+his contacts with Reality, ‘without means,’ or ‘by grace’—_i.e._ in a
+spiritual and interior manner. Those ‘lightning flashes from the face of
+Divine Love,’ those abrupt and vivid intuitions which he enjoyed during
+illumination, have given way before the steady shining of the Uncreated
+Light. Though light-imagery is never long absent from Ruysbroeck’s pages,
+it is, however, the spring of Living Water ever welling up, the rills or
+brooks which flow from it, and take its substance to the farthest
+recesses of the thirsty land, which seems to him the best image of this
+new inpouring of life. He uses it in all his chief works, perhaps most
+successfully in _The Spiritual Marriage_. Faithful to the mediæval
+division of personality into Memory or Mind, Intelligence or
+Understanding, and Will,—influenced too by his deep conviction that all
+Divine activity is threefold in type,—he describes the Well-spring as
+breaking into three Brooks of Grace, which pour their waters into each
+department of the self. The duct through which these waters come, ‘living
+and foaming’ from the deeps of the Divine Riches, is the Eternal Christ;
+who ‘comes anew’ to the purified soul, and is the immediate source of its
+power and happiness.
+
+The first of the brooks which flow from Him is called ‘Pure Simplicity.’
+It is a ‘simple light,’ says Ruysbroeck in another place; the white
+radiance of Eternity which, streaming into the mind, penetrates
+consciousness from top to bottom, and unifies the powers of the self
+about the new and higher centre now established. This simple light, in
+which we see things as they are—and therefore see that only one thing
+truly _is_—delivers us from that slavery to the multiplicity of things,
+which splits the attention and makes concentration upon Reality
+impossible to the soul. The achievement of such mental simplicity,
+escaping the prismatic illusion of the world, is the first condition of
+contemplation. “Thanks to this simple light which fills him, the man
+finds himself to be unified, established, penetrated and affirmed in the
+unity of his mind or thought. And thereby he is uplifted and established
+in a _new condition_; and he turns inward upon himself, and stays his
+mind upon the Nudity, above all the pressure of sensual images, above all
+multiplicity.”[51]
+
+The second stream which pours out from that Transcendent Life is a
+‘Spiritual Clarity,’ which illuminates the intelligence and shows it all
+good. This clarity is a new and heightened form of intuition: a lucid
+understanding, whereby the self achieves clear vision of its own life,
+and is able to contemplate the sublime richness of the Divine Nature;
+gazing upon the mystery of the Trinity, and finding everywhere the
+Presence of God. Those who possess this light do not need ecstasies and
+revelations—sudden uprushes towards the supernal world—for their life and
+being is established in that world, above the life of sense. They have
+come to that state which Eckhart calls ‘finding all creatures in God and
+God in all creatures.’ They see things at last in their native purity.
+The heart of that vision, says Ruysbroeck, is their perception of “the
+unmeasured loyalty of God to His creation”—one of his deepest and most
+beautiful utterances—“and therefrom springs a deep inward joy of the
+spirit, and a high trust in God; and this inward joy embraces and
+penetrates all the powers of the soul, and the most secret part of the
+spirit.”[52]
+
+The third Brook of Grace irrigates the conative powers of the self;
+strengthens the will in all perfection, and energises us anew. “Like
+fire, this brook enkindles the will, and swallows up and absorbs all
+things in the unity of the spirit ... and now Christ speaks inwardly in
+the spirit by means of this burning brook, saying, ‘Go forth, in
+exercises proper to this gift and this coming.’ By the first brook, which
+is a _Simple Light_, the Mind is freed from the invasions of the senses,
+and grounded and affirmed in spiritual unity. And by the second brook,
+which is a _Spreading Light_, the Reason and Understanding are
+illuminated, that they may know and distinguish all manner of virtues and
+exercises, and the mysteries of Scripture. And by the third brook, which
+is an _Infused Heat_, the heights of the Will are enkindled with quiet
+love and adorned with great riches. And thus does man become spiritually
+illuminate; for the grace of God dwells like a fountain-head in the unity
+of his spirit, and the brooks cause a flowing forth of all virtues from
+the powers of the soul. And the fountain-head of grace demands a
+back-flowing into that same ground from whence the flood has come.”[53]
+
+So the Interior Life, now firmly established, is found to conform to
+those great laws which have guided the growing spirit from the first.
+Again, the dual property of love, possession and action, satisfaction and
+fecundity, is to be manifested upon new levels. The pendulum motion of
+life, swinging between the experience of union with God to which ‘the
+Divine Unity ever calls us,’ and its expression in active charity to
+which the multiplicity of His creatures and their needs ever entreat us,
+still goes on. The more richly and strongly the life-giving Life wells up
+within the self, the greater are the demands made upon that self’s
+industry and love. In the establishment of this balance, in this
+continual healthy act of alternation, this double movement into God and
+out to men, is the proof that the soul has really centred itself upon the
+spiritual world—is, as Ruysbroeck puts it, confirmed in love. “Thus do
+work and union perpetually renew themselves; and this renewal in work and
+in union, _this_ is a spiritual life.”[54]
+
+Now the self which has achieved this degree of transcendence has
+achieved, too, considerable experience in that art of contemplation or
+introversion which is the mode of its communion with God. Throughout,
+training and development have gone hand in hand; and the fact that
+Ruysbroeck seldom troubles to distinguish between them, but accepts them
+as two aspects of one thing—the gradual deification of the
+soul—constitutes one of the great obstacles to an understanding of his
+works. Often he describes the whole spiritual life as consisting in
+introversion, an entering of consciousness into the supersensuous regions
+beyond thought; in defiance of his own principle of active charity,
+movement, work, as the essential reaction to the universe which
+distinguishes a ‘deified’ man. The truth is that the two processes run
+side by side; and now one, now the other, is in the foreground of his
+thought. Therefore all that I shall now say of the contemplative art must
+be understood as describing acts and apprehensions taking place
+throughout the whole course of the Interior Life.
+
+What, then, is introversion? It is one of the two great modes under which
+the spiritual consciousness works. Plainly, any living sense of God’s
+presence must discern that Circle whose centre is everywhere, as both
+exterior and interior to the self. In Ruysbroeck’s own works we find a
+violent effort to express this ineffable fact of omnipresence, of a truly
+Transcendent yet truly Immanent Reality; an effort often involving a
+collision of imagery. God, he says, may be discovered at the soul’s apex,
+where He ‘eternally lives and reigns’; and the soul itself dwells _in_
+God, ebbing and flowing, wandering and returning, within that Fathomless
+Ground. Yet none the less He comes to that soul from without; pouring in
+upon it like sunshine, inundating it with torrents of grace, seizing the
+separate entity and devouring whilst He feeds it; flashing out upon it in
+a tempest of love from the Empyrean Heaven, the Abyss of Being, where He
+dwells. “Present, yet absent; near, yet far!” exclaims St. Augustine.
+“Thou art the sky, and Thou art the nest as well!” says the great mystic
+poet of our own day.
+
+Whilst nearly all the mystics have possessed clear consciousness of this
+twofold revelation of the Divine Nature, and some have experienced by
+turns the ‘outward and upward’ rush and the inward retreat,
+temperamentally they usually lean towards one or other form of communion
+with God,—ecstasy or introversion. For one class, contact with Him seems
+primarily to involve an outgoing flight towards Transcendent Reality; an
+attitude of mind strongly marked in all contemplatives who are near to
+the Neoplatonic tradition—Plotinus, St. Basil, St. Macarius—and also in
+Richard Rolle and a few other mediæval types. These would agree with
+Dionysius the Areopagite that “we must contemplate things divine by our
+whole selves standing _out_ of our whole selves.” For the other class,
+the first necessity is a retreat of consciousness from the periphery,
+where it touches the world of appearance, to the centre, the Unity of
+Spirit or ‘Ground of the Soul,’ where human personality buds forth from
+the Essential World. True, this inturning of attention is but a
+preliminary to the self’s entrance upon that same Transcendent Region
+which the ecstatic claims that he touches in his upward flights. The
+introversive mystic, too, is destined to ‘sail the wild billows of the
+Sea Divine’; but here, in the deeps of his nature, he finds the door
+through which he must pass. Only by thus discovering the unity of his own
+nature can he give himself to that ‘tide of light’ which draws all things
+back to the One.
+
+Such is Ruysbroeck’s view of contemplation. This being so, introversion
+is for him an essential part of man’s spiritual development. As the Son
+knows the Father, so it is the destiny of all spirits created in that
+Pattern to know Him; and the mirror which is able to reflect that Divine
+Light, the Simple Eye which alone can bear to gaze on it, lies in the
+deeps of human personality. The will, usually harnessed to the
+surface-consciousness, devoted to the interests of temporal life; the
+love, so freely spent on unreal and imperfect objects of desire; the
+thought which busies itself on the ceaseless analysis and arrangement of
+passing things—all these are to be swept inwards to that gathering-point
+of personality, that Unity of the Spirit, of which he so often speaks;
+and there fused into a single state of enormously enhanced consciousness,
+which, withdrawn from all attention to the changeful world of
+‘similitudes,’ is exposed to the direct action of the Eternal World of
+spiritual realities. The pull of Divine Love—the light that ever flows
+back into the One—is to withdraw the contemplative’s consciousness from
+multiplicity to unity. His progress in contemplation will be a progress
+towards that complete mono-ideism in which the Vision of God—and here
+_vision_ is to be understood in its deepest sense as a totality of
+apprehension, a ‘ghostly sight’—dominates the field of consciousness to
+the exclusion, for the time of contemplation, of all else.
+
+Psychologically, Ruysbroeck’s method differs little from that described
+by St. Teresa. It begins in recollection, the first drawing inwards of
+attention from the world of sense; passes to meditation, the centring of
+attention on some intellectual formula or mystery of faith; and thence,
+by way of graduated states, variously divided and described in his
+different works, to contemplation proper, the apprehension of God ‘beyond
+and above reason.’ All attempts, however, to map out this process, or
+reduce it to a system, must necessarily have an arbitrary and symbolic
+character. True, we are bound to adopt some system, if we describe it at
+all; but the dangers and limitations of all formulas, all concrete
+imagery, where we are dealing with the fluid, living, changeful world of
+spirit, should never be absent from our minds. The bewildering and often
+inconsistent series of images and numbers, arrangements and
+rearrangements of ‘degrees,’ ‘states,’ ‘stirrings,’ and ‘gifts,’ in which
+Ruysbroeck’s sublime teachings on contemplation are buried, makes the
+choice of some one formula imperative for us; though none will reduce his
+doctrines to a logical series, for he is perpetually passing over from
+the dialectic to the lyrical mood, and forgets to be orderly as soon as
+he begins to be subjective. I choose, then, to base my classification on
+that great chapter (xix.) in _The Seven Cloisters_, where he
+distinguishes three stages of contemplation; finding in them the
+responses of consciousness to the special action of the Three Persons of
+the Blessed Trinity. These three stages in the soul’s apprehension of
+God, are: the Emotional, the Intellectual, the Intuitive. I think that
+most of the subtly distinguished interior experiences of the mystic, the
+‘comings’ of the Divine Presence, the ‘stirrings’ and contacts which he
+describes in his various books, can be ranged under one or other of them.
+
+1. First comes that loving contemplation of the ‘uplifted heart’ which is
+the work of the Holy Spirit, the consuming fire of Divine Love. This
+ardent love, invading the self, and satisfying it in that intimate
+experience of personal communion so often described in the writings of
+the mystics, represents the self’s first call to contemplation and first
+natural response; made with “so great a joy and delight of soul and body,
+in his uplifted heart, that the man knoweth not what hath befallen him,
+nor how he may endure it.” For Ruysbroeck this purely emotional reaction
+to Reality, this burning flame of devotion—which seemed to Richard Rolle
+the essence of the contemplative life—is but its initial phase. It
+corresponds with—and indeed generally accompanies—those fever-heats,
+those ‘tempests’ of impatient love endured by the soul at the height of
+the Illuminative Way. Love, it is true, shall be from first to last the
+inspiring force of the contemplative’s ascents: his education is from one
+point of view simply an education in love. But this love is a passion of
+many degrees; and the ‘urgency felt in the heart,’ the restlessness and
+hunger of this spiritual feeling-state, is only its lowest form. The love
+which burns like white fire on the apex of the soul, longs for sacrifice,
+inspires heroic action, and goes forward without fear, ‘holy, strong and
+free,’ to brave the terrors of the Divine Dark, is of another temper than
+this joyful sentiment.
+
+2. A loving stretching out into God, and an intellectual gazing upon Him,
+says Ruysbroeck, in a passage which I have already quoted, are the ‘two
+heavenly pipes’ in which the wind of the Spirit sings. So the next phase
+in the contemplative’s development is that enhancement of the intellect,
+the power of perceiving, as against desiring and loving Reality, which is
+the work of the Logos, the Divine Wisdom. As the cleansed and detached
+heart had been lifted up to _feel_ the Transcendent; now the
+understanding, stripped of sense-images, purged of intellectual
+arrogance, clarified by grace, is lifted up to _apprehend_ it. This
+degree has two phases. First, that enlargement of the understanding to an
+increased comprehension of truth, the finding of deeper and diviner
+meanings in things already known, which Richard of St. Victor called
+_mentis dilatatio_. Next, that further uplift of the mind to a state in
+which it is able to contemplate things above itself whilst retaining
+clear self-consciousness, which he called _mentis sublevatio_.
+Ruysbroeck, however, inverts the order given by Richard; for him the
+uplift comes first, the dilation of consciousness follows from it. This
+is a characteristic instance of the way in which he uses the Victorine
+psychology; constantly appropriating its terms but never hesitating to
+modify, enrich or misuse them as his experience or opinions may dictate.
+
+The first phase of Intellectual Contemplation, then, is a lifting of the
+mind to a swift and convincing vision of Reality: one of those sudden,
+incommunicable glimpses of Truth so often experienced early in the
+contemplative’s career. The veil parts, and he sees a “light and vision,
+which give to the contemplating spirit a conscious certitude that she
+sees God, so far as man may see Him in mortal life.”[55] That strange
+mystical light of which all contemplatives speak, and which Ruysbroeck
+describes in a passage of great subtlety as ‘the intermediary between the
+seeing thought and God,’ now floods his consciousness. In it “the Spirit
+of the Father speaks in the uplifted thought which is bare and stripped
+of images, saying, ‘Behold Me as I behold thee.’ Then the pure and single
+eyes are strengthened by the inpouring of that clear Light of the Father,
+and they behold His face, in a simple vision, beyond reason, and without
+reason.”[56]
+
+It might be thought that in this ‘simple vision’ of Supreme Reality, the
+spirit of the contemplative reached its goal. It has, indeed, reached a
+point at which many a mystic stops short. I think, however, that a
+reference to St. Augustine, whose influence is so strongly marked in
+Ruysbroeck’s works, will show what he means by this phase of
+contemplation; and the characters which distinguish it from that infused
+or unitive communion with God which alone he calls _Contemplatio_. In the
+seventh book of his _Confessions_, Augustine describes just such an
+experience as this. By a study of the books of the Platonists he had
+learned the art of introversion, and achieved by its aid a fleeting
+‘Intellectual Contemplation’ of God; in his own words, a “hurried vision
+of That which Is.” “Being by these books,” he says, “admonished to return
+into myself, I entered into the secret closet of my soul, guided by Thee
+... and beheld the Light that never changes, above the eye of my soul,
+above the intelligence.”[57] It was by “the withdrawal of thought from
+experience, its abstraction from the contradictory throng of sensuous
+images,” that he attained to this transitory apprehension; which he
+describes elsewhere as “the _vision_ of the Land of Peace, but not the
+_road_ thereto.” But intellect alone could not bear the direct impact of
+the terrible light of Reality; his “weak sight was dazzled by its
+splendour,” he “could not sustain his gaze,” and turned back to that
+humble discovery of the Divine Substance by means of Its images and
+attributes, which is proper to the intellectual power.[58]
+
+Now surely this is the psychological situation described by Ruysbroeck.
+The very images used by Augustine are found again in him. The mind of the
+contemplative, purified, disciplined, deliberately abstracted from
+images, is inundated by the divine sunshine, “the Light which is not God,
+but that whereby we see Him”; and in this radiance achieves a hurried but
+convincing vision of Supreme Reality. But “even though the eagle, king of
+birds, can with his powerful sight gaze steadfastly upon the brightness
+of the sun; yet do the weaker eyes of the bat fail and falter in the
+same.”[59] The intellectual vision is dazzled and distressed, like a man
+who can bear the diffused radiance of sunshine but is blinded if he dares
+to follow back its beams to the terrible beauty of their source. “Not for
+this are my wings fitted,” says Dante, drooping to earth after his
+supreme ecstatic flight. Because it cannot sustain its gaze, then, the
+intelligence falls back upon the second phase of intellectual
+contemplation: _Speculatio_, the deep still brooding in which the soul,
+‘made wise by the Spirit of Truth,’ contemplates God and Creation as He
+and it are reflected in the clear mirror of her intellectual powers,
+under ‘images and similitudes’—the Mysteries of Faith, the Attributes of
+the Divine Nature, the forms and manners of created things. As the Father
+contemplates all things in the Son, ‘Mirror of Deity,’ so now does the
+introverted soul contemplate Him in this ‘living mirror of her
+intelligence’ on which His sunshine falls. Because her swift vision of
+That which Is has taught her to distinguish between the ineffable Reality
+and the Appearance which shadows it forth, she can again discover Him
+under those images which once veiled, but now reveal His presence. The
+intellect which has apprehended God Transcendent, if only for a moment,
+has received therefrom the power of discerning God Immanent. “He shows
+Himself to the soul in the living mirror of her intelligence; not as He
+is in His nature, but in images and similitudes, and in the degree in
+which the illuminated reason can grasp and understand Him. And the wise
+reason, enlightened of God, sees clearly and without error in images of
+the understanding all that she has heard of God, of faith, of truth,
+according to her longing. But that image which is God Himself, although
+it is held before her, she cannot comprehend; for the eyes of her
+understanding must fail before that Incomparable Light.”[60]
+
+In _The Kingdom of God’s Lovers_ Ruysbroeck pours forth a marvellous list
+of the attributes under which the illuminated intelligence now
+contemplates and worships That Which she can never comprehend; that
+“Simple One in whom all multitude and all that multiplies, finds its
+beginning and its end.” From this simple Being of the Godhead the
+illuminated reason abstracts those images and attributes with which it
+can deal, as the lower reason abstracts from the temporal flux the
+materials of our normal universe. Such a loving consideration of God
+under His attributes is the essence of meditation: and meditation is in
+fact the way in which the intellectual faculties can best contemplate
+Reality. But “because all things, when they are considered in their
+inwardness, have their beginning and their ending in the Infinite
+Being as in an Abyss,” here again the contemplative is soon led
+above himself and beyond himself, to a point at which intellect and
+‘consideration’—_i.e._ formal thought—fail him; because “here we touch
+the Simple Nature of God.” When intellectual contemplation has brought
+the self to this point, it has done its work; for it has “excited in the
+soul an eager desire to lift itself up by contemplation into the
+simplicity of the Light, that thereby its avid desire of infinite
+fruition may be satisfied and fulfilled”;[61] _i.e._ it has performed the
+true office of meditation, induced a shifting of consciousness to higher
+levels.
+
+We observe that the emphasis, which in the First Degree of Contemplation
+fell wholly on feeling, in the Second Degree falls wholly upon knowledge.
+We are not, however, to suppose from this that emotion has been left
+behind. As the virtues and energies of the Active Life continue in the
+Contemplative Life, so the ‘burning love’ which distinguished the first
+stage of communion with the Transcendent, is throughout the source of
+that energy which presses the self on to deeper and closer
+correspondences with Reality. Its presence is presupposed in all that is
+said concerning the development of the spiritual consciousness.
+Nevertheless Ruysbroeck, though he cannot be accused of intellectualism,
+is led by his admiration for Victorine ideas to lay great stress upon the
+mental side of contemplation, as against those emotional reactions to the
+Transcendent which are emphasised—almost to excess—by so many of the
+saints. His aim was the lifting of the _whole man_ to Eternal levels: and
+the clarifying of the intelligence, the enhancement of the understanding,
+seemed to him a proper part of the deification of human nature, the
+bringing forth in the soul’s ground of that Son who is the Wisdom of God
+as well as the Pattern of Man. Though he moves amongst deep mysteries,
+and in regions beyond the span of ordinary minds, there is always
+apparent in him an effort towards lucidity of expression, sharp
+definition, plain speech. Sometimes he is wild and ecstatic, pouring
+forth his vision in a strange poetry which is at once uncouth and
+sublime; but he is never woolly or confused. His prose passages owe much
+of their seeming difficulty to the passion for exactitude which
+distinguishes and classifies the subtlest movements of the spiritual
+atmosphere, the delicately graded responses of the soul.
+
+3. Now the Third Degree of Contemplation lifts the whole consciousness to
+a plane of perception which transcends the categories of the intellect:
+where it deals no longer with the label but with the Thing. It has passed
+beyond image and also beyond thought; to that knowledge by contact which
+is the essence of intuition, and is brought about by the higher powers of
+love. Such contemplation is regarded by Ruysbroeck as the work of the
+Father, “Who strips from the mind all forms and images and lifts up the
+Naked Apprehension [_i.e._ intuition] into its Origin, that is
+Himself.”[62] It is effected by concentration of all the powers of the
+self into a single state ‘uplifted above all action, in a bare
+understanding and love,’ upon that apex of the soul where no reason can
+ever attain, and where the ‘simple eye’ is ever open towards God. There
+the loving soul apprehends Him, not under conditions, ‘in some wise,’ but
+as a _whole_, without the discrete analysis of His properties which was
+the special character of intellectual contemplation; a synthetic
+experience which is ‘in no wise.’ This is for Ruysbroeck the
+contemplative act _par excellence_. It is ‘an intimacy which is
+ignorance,’ a ‘simple seeing,’ he says again and again; “and the name
+thereof is _Contemplatio_; that is, the seeing of God in simplicity.”[63]
+
+“Here the reason no less than all separate acts must give way, for our
+powers become simple in Love; they are silent and bowed down in the
+Presence of the Father. And this revelation of the Father lifts the soul
+above the reason into the Imageless Nudity. There the soul is simple,
+pure, spotless, empty of all things; and it is in this state of perfect
+emptiness that the Father manifests His Divine radiance. To this radiance
+neither reason nor sense, observation nor distinction, can attain. All
+this must stay below; for the measureless radiance blinds the eyes of the
+reason, they cannot bear the Incomprehensible Light. But above the
+reason, in the most secret part of the understanding, the _simple eye_ is
+ever open. It contemplates and gazes at the Light with a pure sight that
+is lit by the Light itself: eye to eye, mirror to mirror, image to image.
+This threefold act makes us like God, and unites us to Him; for the sight
+of the _simple eye_ is a living mirror, which God has made for His image,
+and whereon He has impressed it.”[64]
+
+Intuitive or infused contemplation is the form of communion with the
+Transcendent proper to those who have grown up to the state of Union; and
+feel and know the presence of God within the soul, as a love, a life, an
+‘indrawing attraction,’ calling and enticing all things to the still
+unachieved consummation of the Divine Unity. He who has reached this
+pitch of introversion, and is able, in his spiritual exercises, to
+withdraw himself thus to the most secret part of his spirit, feels—within
+the Eternal Light which fills his mirror and is ‘united with it,’—this
+perpetual demand of the Divine Unity, entreating and urging him towards a
+total self-loss. In the fact that he knows this demand and impulsion as
+other than himself, we find the mark which separates this, the highest
+contemplation proper to the Life of Union, from that ‘fruitive
+contemplation’ of the spirit which has died into God which belongs to the
+Life of Unity.[65] When the work of transmutation is finished and he has
+received the ‘Sparkling Stone of Divine Humanity,’ this subject-object
+distinction—though really an eternal one, as Ruysbroeck continually
+reminds us—will no longer be possible to his consciousness. Then he will
+live at those levels to which he now makes impassioned ascents in his
+hours of unitive prayer: will be immersed in the Beatific Vision on which
+he now looks, and ‘lose himself in the Imageless Nudity.’
+
+This is the clue to the puzzling distinction made by Ruysbroeck between
+the contemplation which is ‘without conditions,’ and that which is
+‘beyond and above conditions’ and belongs to the Superessential Life
+alone. In Intuitive Contemplation the seeing self apprehends the
+Unconditioned World, _Onwise_, and makes ‘loving ascents thereto.’ It
+‘finds within itself the unwalled’; yet is still anchored to the
+conditioned sphere. In Superessential Contemplation, it _dies into_ that
+‘world which is in no wise.’ In the great chapter of _The Sparkling
+Stone_[66] where he struggles to make this distinction clear, Ruysbroeck
+says that the Friends of God (_i.e._ the Interior Men) “cannot with
+themselves and all their works penetrate to that Imageless Nudity.”
+Although they feel united with God, yet they feel in that union an
+otherness and difference between themselves and God; and therefore “the
+ascent into the Nought is unknown to them.” They feel themselves carried
+up towards God in the tide of His all-subduing Fire of Love; but they
+retain their selfhood, and may not be consumed and burned to nothing in
+the Unity of Love. They do not yet desire to die into God, that they may
+receive a deiform life from Him; but they are in the way which leads to
+this fulfilment of their destiny, and are “following back the light to
+its Origin.”
+
+This following-back is one continuous process, in which we, for
+convenience of description, have made artificial breaks. It is the thrust
+of consciousness deeper and deeper into the heart of Reality. As in the
+stream of physical duration, so in this ceaseless movement of the spirit,
+there is a persistence of the past in the present, a carrying through and
+merging of one state in the next. Thus the contemplation which is
+‘wayless,’ the self’s intuitive communion with the Infinite Life and
+Light, growing in depth and richness, bridges the gap which separates the
+Interior and the Superessential Life.
+
+We find in Ruysbroeck’s works indications of a transitional state, in
+which the soul “is guided and lost, wanders and returns, ebbs and flows,”
+within the ‘limitless Nudity,’ to which it has not yet wholly surrendered
+itself. “And its seeing is in no wise, being without manner, and it is
+neither thus nor thus, neither here nor there; for that which is in no
+wise hath enveloped all, and the vision is made high and wide. It knows
+not itself where That is which it sees; and it cannot come thereto, for
+its seeing is in no wise, and passes on, beyond, for ever, and without
+return. That which it apprehends it cannot realise in full, nor wholly
+attain, for its apprehension is wayless, and without manner, and
+therefore it is apprehended of God in a higher way than it can apprehend
+Him. Behold! such a following of the Way that is Wayless, is intermediary
+between contemplation in images and similitudes of the intellect, and
+unveiled contemplation beyond all images in the Light of God.”[67]
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VIII
+                        THE SUPERESSENTIAL LIFE
+
+
+  If, therefore, thou art become the throne of God and the Heavenly
+  Charioteer hath seated Himself within thee, and thy soul is wholly
+  become a spiritual eye and is wholly made into light; if, too, thou art
+  nourished with the heavenly food of that Spirit and hast drunk of the
+  Living Water and put on the secret vesture of light—if thine inward man
+  has experienced all these things and is established in abundant faith,
+  lo! thou livest indeed the Eternal Life and thy soul rests even in this
+  present time with the Lord.
+
+                                                St. Macarius of Egypt.
+
+We have seen that Ruysbroeck, in common with a few other supreme mystics,
+declares to us as veritably known and experienced by him, a universe of
+three orders—Becoming, Being, God—and further, three ways of life whereby
+the self can correspond to these three orders, and which he calls the
+life of nature, the life of grace, the life of glory. ‘Glory,’ which has
+been degraded by the usage of popular piety into a vague superlative, and
+finally left in the hands of hymn-writers and religious revivalists, is
+one of the most ancient technical terms of Christian mysticism. Of
+Scriptural origin, from the fourth century to the fifteenth it was used
+to denote a definite kind of enhanced life, a final achievement of
+Reality—the unmediated radiance of God—which the gift of ‘divine sonship’
+made possible to the soul. In the life of grace, that soul transcends
+conditions in virtue of a Divine vitality poured in from the Absolute
+Sphere, and actualises its true being, (_Wesen_); in the life of glory,
+it becomes a denizen of that sphere, and achieves an existence that is
+‘more than being’ (_Overwesen_). The note of the first state is
+contemplation, awareness; the note of the second is fruition, possession.
+
+That power of making ‘swift and loving ascents’ to the plane of _Onwise_
+to which man attained at the end of the Interior Life, that conscious
+harmony with the Divine Will which then became the controlling factor of
+his active career, cannot be the end of the process of transcendence. The
+soul now hungers and thirsts for a more intense Reality, a closer contact
+with ‘Him who is measureless’; a deeper and deeper penetration into the
+burning heart of the universe. Though contemplation seems to have reached
+its term, love goes on, to ‘lose itself upon the heights.’ Beyond both
+the conditioned and unconditioned world, beyond the Trinity Itself, that
+love discerns its ultimate objective—the very Godhead, the Divine Unity,
+“where all lines find their end”; where “we are satisfied and
+overflowing, and with Him beyond ourselves eternally fulfilled.”[68] The
+abiding life which is there discoverable, is not only ‘without manner’
+but ‘above manner’—the ‘deified life,’ indescribable save by the oblique
+methods of music or poetry, wherein, in Maeterlinck’s great phrase, “the
+psychology of man mingles with the psychology of God.” All Ruysbroeck’s
+most wonderful passages are concerned with the desperate attempt to tell
+us of this ‘life,’ this utter fruition of Reality: which seems at one
+time to involve for the contemplative consciousness a self-mergence in
+Deity, so complete as to give colour to that charge of pantheism which is
+inevitably flung at all mystics who try to tell what they have known; at
+others, to represent rather the perfect consummation of that ‘union in
+separateness’ which is characteristic of all true love.
+
+This is but one instance of that perpetual and inevitable resort to
+paradox which torments all who try to follow him along this ‘track
+without shadow of trace’; for the goal towards which he is now enticing
+us is one in which all the completing opposites of our fragmentary
+experience find their bourne. Hence the rapid alternation of spatial and
+personal symbols which confuses our industrious intellects, is the one
+means whereby he can suggest its actuality to our hungry hearts.
+
+As we observed in Ruysbroeck’s earlier teaching on contemplation three
+distinct forms, in which the special work that theology attributes to the
+three Divine Persons seemed to him to be reflected; now, in this
+Superessential Contemplation, or Fruition, we find the work of the
+Absolute Godhead Itself, energising upon a plane of intensity which so
+utterly transcends our power of apprehension, that it seems to the
+surface consciousness—as Dionysius the Areopagite had named it—a negation
+of all things, a Divine Dark.
+
+This Fruition, says Ruysbroeck, “is wild and desolate as a desert, and
+therein is to be found no way, no road, no track, no retreat, no measure,
+no beginning, no end, nor any other thing that can be told in words. And
+this is for all of us Simple Blessedness, the Essence of God and our
+superessence, above reason and beyond reason. To know it we must be in
+it, beyond the mind and above our created being; in that Eternal Point
+where all our lines begin and end, that Point where they lose their name
+and all distinction, and become one with the Point itself, and that very
+One which the Point is, yet nevertheless ever remain in themselves nought
+else but lines that come to an end.”[69]
+
+What, then, is the way by which the soul moves from that life of intense
+contemplation in which the ‘spreading light’ of the Spirit shows her the
+universe fulfilled with God, to this new transfigured state of joy and
+terror? It is a way for which her previous adventures might have prepared
+us. As each new ascent, new inflow of grace, was prepared by a time of
+destitution and stress—as the compensating beats of love and renunciation
+have governed the evolving melody of the inner life—so here a last death
+of selfhood, a surrender more absolute than all that has gone before,
+must be the means of her achievement of absolute life.
+
+“Dying, and behold I live!” says Paul of his own attainment of supernal
+life in Christ. Ruysbroeck, who never strays far from the vital and
+heroic mysticism of the New Testament saints, can find no other language
+for this last crisis of the spirit—its movement from the state of _Wesen_
+to that of _Overwesen_—than the language of death. The ever-moving line,
+though its vital character of duration continues, now seems to itself to
+swoon into the Point; the separate entity which has felt the flood of
+grace pour into it to energise its active career, and the ebb of
+homeward-tending love draw it back towards the One, now feels itself
+pouring into the Infinite Sea. Our personal activity, he says, has done
+all that it can: as the separate career of Christ our Pattern closed with
+His voluntary death, so the death of our selfhood on that apex of
+personality where we have stretched up so ardently toward the Father,
+shall close the separate career of the human soul and open the way to its
+new, God-driven career, its resurrection-life. “None is sure of Eternal
+Life unless he has died with all his own attributes wholly into
+God”[70]—all else falls short of the demands of supreme generosity.
+
+It is _The Book of the Sparkling Stone_ which contains Ruysbroeck’s most
+wonderful descriptions of the consciousness peculiar to these souls who
+have grown up to ‘the fulness of the stature of Christ’; and since this
+is surely the finest and perhaps the least known of his writings, I offer
+no apology for transcribing a long passage from its ninth chapter: ‘How
+we may become the Hidden Sons of God.’
+
+“When we soar up above ourselves, and become, in our upward striving
+towards God, so simple, that the naked Love in the Heights can lay hold
+on us, there where Love cherishes Love, above all activity and all virtue
+(that is to say, in our Origin, wherefrom we are spiritually born)—then
+we cease, and we and all that is our own die into God. And in this death
+we become hidden Sons of God, and find in ourselves a new life, and that
+is Eternal Life. And of these Sons, St. Paul says: ‘Ye are dead, and your
+life is hid with Christ in God.’ In our approach to God we must bear with
+us ourselves and all that we do, as a perpetual sacrifice to God; and in
+the Presence of God we must leave ourselves and all our works, and, dying
+in love, soar up above all created things into the Superessential Kingdom
+of God. And of this the Spirit of God speaks in the Book of Hidden
+Things, saying: ‘Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.’... If we
+would _taste_ God, and feel in ourselves Eternal Life above all things,
+we must go forth into God with a faith that is far above our reason, and
+there dwell, simple, idle, without image, lifted up by love into the
+Unwalled Bareness of our intelligence. For when we go out from ourselves
+in love, and die to all observances in ignorance and darkness, then we
+are made complete, and transfigured by the Eternal Word, Image of the
+Father. And in this emptiness of spirit we receive the Incomprehensible
+Light, which enfolds and penetrates us as air is penetrated by the light
+of the sun; and this Light is nought else but a fathomless gazing and
+seeing. What we are, that we gaze at; and what we gaze at, that we are.
+For our thought, our life, our being, are lifted up in simplicity, and
+united with the Truth, that is God. Therefore in this simple gazing we
+are one life and one spirit with God—and this I call the _seeing
+life_.”[71]
+
+Such a passage as this lies beyond our poor attempts at analysis. Those
+only will understand it who yield themselves to it; entering into its
+current, as we enter into the music that we love. It tells us all it can
+of this life which is ‘more than being,’ as _felt_ in the supreme
+experience of love. Life and Death, Dark and Light, Idleness,
+Bareness—these are but images of the feeling-states that accompany it.
+But here, more than elsewhere in Ruysbroeck’s writings, we must remember
+the peril which goes with all subjective treatment of mystical truth.
+Each state which the unitive mystic experiences is so intense, that it
+monopolises for the time being his field of consciousness. Writing under
+the ‘pressure of the Spirit’ he writes of it—as indeed it seems to him at
+the moment—as ultimate and complete. Only by a comparison of different
+and superficially inconsistent descriptions of this enhanced life—which
+must harmonise and fulfil _all_ the needs of our complex personality,
+providing inexhaustible objectives for love, intelligence and will—can we
+form any true idea concerning it.
+
+When we do this, we discover that the side of it which _seems_ a static
+beatitude, still Fruition, perfect Rest, is always balanced by the other
+side; which _seems_ a perpetual and progressive attainment, a seeking and
+finding, a hungering and feeding, a giving and taking. These coexist; as
+the ever-renewed ‘coming of the Bridegroom,’ the welling-up of the
+Spirit, the stormy, eager, unsatisfied love of the soul do as a matter of
+experience coexist within that perfect and personal union wherein Love
+and Fruition, as Ruysbroeck puts it, ‘live between action and rest.’ The
+alternate consciousness of the line and the Point, the moving river and
+the Sea, the relative and the Absolute, persists so long as consciousness
+persists at all; it is no Christianised Nirvana into which he seeks to
+induct us, but that mysterious synthesis of Being and Becoming, ‘eternal
+stillness and eternal work’—a movement into God which is already a
+complete achievement of Him—which certain other great mystics have
+discerned beyond the ‘flaming ramparts’ of the common life.
+
+The unbreakable unity with God, which constitutes the mark of the Third
+Life, exists in the ‘essential ground of the soul’; where the river flows
+into the Sea, the line into the Point; where the pendulum of self has its
+attachment to Reality. _There_, the hidden child of the Absolute is ‘one
+with God in restful fruition’; there, his deep intuition of Divine
+things—that ‘Savouring Wisdom’ which is the last supreme gift of the
+Spirit[72]—is able to taste and apprehend the sweetness of Infinite
+Reality. But at the other end, where he still participates in the
+time-process, where his love and will are a moving river, consciousness
+hungers for that total Attainment still; and attention will swing between
+these two extremes, now actualised within the living soul, which has put
+on the dual character of ‘Divine Humanity’ and is living Eternal Life,
+not in some far-off celestial region, but here, where Christ lived it, in
+the entangled world of Time. Thus active self-mergence, incessant
+re-birth into God, perpetual eager feeding on Him, is implicit in all
+spiritual life. Even for the souls of the ‘deified,’ quietism is never
+right. “For love cannot be lazy, but would search through and through,
+and taste through and through, the fathomless kingdom that lives in her
+ground; and this hunger shall _never_ be stilled.”[73]
+
+The soul, whenever it attends to itself—withdraws itself, so to speak,
+from the Divine Synthesis, dwells in itself, and beholds instead of
+being—feels again the ‘eternal unrest of love’; the whip of the Heavenly
+Charioteer, driving all spirits in towards the heart of God, where they
+are ‘one fire with Him.’ “This stirring, that mediates between ourselves
+and God, we can never pass beyond; and what that stirring is in its
+essence, and what love is in itself, we can never know.”[74] But when it
+dwells beyond itself, and in the supreme moments of ecstasy merges its
+consciousness in the Universal Consciousness, it transcends succession
+and centres itself in the Divine Selfhood—the ‘still, glorious, and
+absolute One-ness.’ Then it feels, not hunger but satisfaction, not
+desire but fruition; and knows itself beyond reason ‘one with the abysmal
+depth and breadth,’ in “a simple fathomless savouring of all good and of
+Eternal Life. And in this savouring we are swallowed up, above reason and
+beyond reason, in the deep Quiet of the Godhead which is never
+moved.”[75]
+
+Such experiences however, such perfect fruition, in which the self dies
+into the overwhelming revelation of the Transcendent, and its rhythm is
+merged in the Divine Rhythm, cannot be continuous for those still living
+in the flesh. There is in Ruysbroeck no foolish insistence on any
+impossible career of ceaseless ecstasy; but a robust acceptance of the
+facts and limitations of life. Man cannot, he says, “perpetually
+contemplate with attention the superessential Being of God in the Light
+of God. But whosoever has attained to the gift of Intelligence [_i.e._
+the sixth of the Seven Gifts of the Spirit] attains this power, which
+becomes habitual to him; and whensoever he will, he can wholly absorb
+himself in this manner of contemplation, in so far as it is possible in
+this life.”[76]
+
+The superessential man, in fact, is, as Francis Thompson said of the
+soul, a
+
+  “... swinging-wicket set
+          Between
+  The Unseen and Seen.”
+
+He is to move easily and at will between these two orders, both actual,
+both God-inhabited, the complementary expressions of One Love;
+participating both in the active, industrious, creative outflow in
+differentiation, and the still indrawing attraction which issues in the
+supreme experience of Unity. For these two movements the Active and
+Interior Lives have educated him. The truly characteristic experience of
+the Third Life is the fruition of that Unity or Simplicity in which they
+are harmonised, beyond the balanced consciousness of the indrawing and
+outdrawing tides.[77]
+
+Ruysbroeck discerns three moments in this achievement. First, a negative
+movement, the introversive sinking-down of our created life into God’s
+absolute life, which is the consummation of self-naughting and surrender
+and the essence of dark contemplation. Next, the positive ecstatic
+stretching forth above reason into our ‘highest life,’ where we undergo
+complete transmutation in God and feel ourselves wholly enfolded in Him.
+Thirdly, from these ‘completing opposites’ of surrender and love springs
+the perfect fruition of Unity, so far as we may know it here; when “we
+feel ourselves to be one with God, and find ourselves transformed of God,
+and immersed in the fathomless Abyss of our Eternal Blessedness, where we
+can find no further separation between ourselves and God. So long as we
+are lifted up and stretched forth into this height of feeling, all our
+powers remain idle, in an essential fruition; for where our powers are
+utterly naughted, there we lose our activity. And so long as we remain
+idle, without observation, with outstretched spirit and open eyes, so
+long can we see and have fruition. But in that same moment in which we
+would test and comprehend _What_ that may be which we feel, we fall back
+upon reason; and there we find distinction and otherness between God and
+ourselves, and find God as an Incomprehensible One exterior to us.”[78]
+
+It is clear from this passage that such ‘utterness’ of fruition is a
+fleeting experience; though it is one to which the unitive mystic can
+return again and again, since it exists as a permanent state in his
+essential ground, ever discoverable by him when attention is focussed
+upon it. Further, it appears that the ‘absence of difference’ between God
+and the soul, which the mystic in these moments of ecstasy feels and
+enjoys, is a psychological experience, not an absolute truth. It is the
+only way in which his surface-mind is able to realise on the one side the
+overwhelming apprehension of God’s Love, that ‘Yes’ in which all other
+syllables are merged; on the other the completeness of his being’s
+self-abandonment to the Divine embrace—“that Superessential Love with
+which we are one, and which we possess more deeply and widely than any
+other thing.”[79] It was for this experience that Thomas à Kempis prayed
+in one of his most Ruysbroeckian passages: “When shall I at full gather
+myself in Thee, that for Thy love I feel not myself, but Thee only, above
+all feeling and all manner, in a _manner not known to all_?”[80] It is to
+this same paradoxical victory-in-surrender—this apparent losing which is
+the only real finding—that Francis Thompson invites the soul:
+
+  “To feel thyself and be
+  His dear nonentity—
+        Caught
+  Beyond human thought
+
+  In the thunder-spout of Him,
+  Until thy being dim,
+        And be
+  Dead deathlessly.”
+
+Now here it is, in these stammered tidings of an adventure ‘far outside
+and beyond our spirit,’ in ‘the darkness at which reason gazes with wide
+eyes,’[81] that we must look for the solution of that problem which all
+high mystic states involve for analytic thought: how can the human soul
+become one with God ‘without intermediary, beyond all separation,’[82]
+yet remain eternally distinct from Him? How can the ‘deification,’ the
+‘union with God without differentiation’ on which the great mystics
+insist, be accepted, and pantheism be denied?
+
+First, we notice that in all descriptions of Unity given us by the
+mystics, there is a strong subjective element. Their first concern is
+always with the experience of the heart and will, not with the deductions
+made by the intelligence. It is at our own peril that we attach
+ontological meaning to their convinced and vivid psychological
+statements. Ruysbroeck in particular makes this quite clear to us; says
+again and again that he has ‘_felt_ unity without difference and
+distinction,’ yet that he _knows_ that ‘otherness’ has always remained,
+and “that this is true we can only know by feeling it, and in no other
+way.”[83]
+
+In certain great moments, he says, the purified and illuminated soul
+which has died into God does achieve an Essential Stillness; which seems
+to human thought a static condition, for it is that Eternal Now of the
+Godhead which embraces in its span the whole process of Time. Here we
+find nothing but God: the naked and ultimate Fact or Superessential Being
+‘whence all Being has come forth,’ stripped of academic trimmings and
+experienced in its white-hot intensity. Here, far beyond the range of
+thought, unity and otherness, like hunger and fulfilment, activity and
+rest, _can_ co-exist in love. The ultimate union is a love-union, says
+Ruysbroeck. “The Love of God is a consuming Fire, which draws us out of
+ourselves and swallows us up in unity with God, where we are satisfied
+and overflowing, and with Him, beyond ourselves, eternally
+fulfilled.”[84]
+
+This hungry and desirous love, at once a personal passion and a cosmic
+force, drenches, transfigures and unites with the soul, as sunlight does
+the air, as fire does the iron flung into the furnace; so that the molten
+metal ‘changed into another glory’ is both iron and fire ‘ever distinct
+yet ever united’—an antique image of the Divine Union which he takes
+direct from a celebrated passage in St. Bernard’s works. “As much as is
+iron, so much is fire; and as much as is fire, so much is iron; yet the
+iron doth not become fire, nor the fire iron, but each retains its
+substance and nature. So likewise the spirit of man doth not become God,
+but is deified, and knows itself breadth, length, height and depth: and
+as far as God is God, so far the loving spirit is made one with Him in
+love.”[85] The iron, the air, represent our created essence; the fire,
+the sunlight, God’s Essence, which is added to our own—our
+_superessence_. The two are held in a union which, when we try to see it
+under the symbolism of space, appears a mingling, a self-mergence; but,
+when we feel it under the symbolism of personality, is a marriage in
+which the lover and beloved are ‘distinct yet united.’ “Then are we one
+being, one love, and one beatitude with God ... a joy so great and
+special that we cannot even think of any other joy. For then one is one’s
+self a Fruition of Love, and can and should want nothing beyond one’s
+own.”[86]
+
+It follows from all this that when the soul, coming to the Fourth State
+of Fruitive Love, enters into the Equilibrium which supports and
+penetrates the flux, it does and must reconcile the opposites which have
+governed the earlier stages of its career. The communion reached is with
+a Wholeness; the life which flows from it must be a wholeness too. Full
+surrender, harmonised with full actualisation of all our desires and
+faculties; not some thin, abstract, vertical relation alone, but an
+all-round expansion, a full, deep, rich giving and taking, a complete
+correspondence with the infinitely rich, all-demanding and all-generous
+God whose “love is measureless for it is Himself.” Thus Ruysbroeck
+teaches that love static and love dynamic must coexist for us as for Him;
+that the ‘eternal hunger and thirst’ of the God-demanding soul continues
+within its ecstatic satisfaction; because, however deeply it may love and
+understand, the Divine Excess will always baffle it. It is destined ‘ever
+to go forward within the Essence of God,’ to grow without ceasing deeper
+and deeper into this life, in “the eternal longing to follow after and
+attain Him Who is measureless.” “And we learn this truth from His sight:
+that all we taste, in comparison with that which remains out of our
+reach, is no more than a single drop of water compared with the whole
+sea.... We hunger for God’s Infinity, which we cannot devour, and we
+aspire to His Eternity, which we cannot attain.... In this storm of love,
+our activity is above reason and is in no wise. Love desires that which
+is impossible to her; and reason teaches that love is within her rights,
+but can neither counsel nor persuade her.”[87]
+
+Hence an eternal desire and an eternal satisfaction are preserved within
+the circle of the deified life. The full-grown self feels, in its most
+intense degree, the double movement of the Divine Love and Light, the
+flux and reflux; and in its perfect and ever-renewed responses to the
+‘indrawing and outflowing attraction’ of that Tide, the complete
+possession of the Superessential Life consists.
+
+“The indrawing attraction drags us out of ourselves, and calls us to be
+melted away and naughted in the Unity. And in this indrawing attraction
+we feel that God wills that we should be His, and for this we must
+abnegate ourselves and let our beatitude be accomplished in Him. But when
+He attracts us by flowing out towards us, He gives us over to ourselves
+and makes us free, and sets us in Time.”[88]
+
+Thus is accomplished that paradoxical synthesis of ‘Eternal Rest and
+Eternal Work’ which Ruysbroeck regards as the essential character of God,
+and towards which the whole of his system has been educating the human
+soul. The deified or ‘God-formed’ soul is for him the spirit in which
+this twofold ideal is actualised: this is the Pattern, the Likeness of
+God, declared in Christ our Archetype, towards which the Indwelling
+Spirit presses the race. Though there are moments in which, carried away
+as it seems by his almost intolerable ecstasy, he pushes out towards
+‘that unwalled Fruition of God,’ where all fruition begins and ends,
+where ‘one is all and all is one,’ and Man is himself a ‘fruition of
+love’;[89] yet he never forgets to remind us that, as love is not love
+unless it looks forward towards the creation of new life, so here, “when
+love falls in love with love, and each is all to the other in possession
+and in rest,” the _object_ of this ecstasy is not a permanent self-loss
+in the Divine Darkness, a ‘slumbering in God,’ but a “new life of virtue,
+such as love and its impulses demand.”[90] “To be a living, willing Tool
+of God, wherewith God works what He will and how He will,” is the goal of
+transcendence described in the last chapter of _The Sparkling Stone_.
+“Then is our life a _whole_, when contemplation and work dwell in us side
+by side, and we are perfectly in both of them at once”;[91] for then the
+separate spirit is immersed in, and part of, the perpetual creative act
+of the Godhead—the flowing forth and the drawing back, which have at
+their base the Eternal Equilibrium, the unbroken peace, wherein “God
+contemplates Himself and all things in an Eternal Now that has neither
+beginning nor end.”[92] On that Unbroken Peace the spirit hangs; and
+swings like a pendulum, in wide arcs of love and service, between the
+Unconditioned and the Conditioned Worlds.
+
+So the Superessential Life is the simple, the synthetic life, in which
+man actualises at last all the resources of his complex being. The active
+life of response to the Temporal Order, the contemplative life of
+response to the Transcendent Order are united, firmly held together, by
+that ‘eternal fixation of the spirit’; the perpetual willed dwelling of
+the being of man within the Incomprehensible Abyss of the Being of God,
+_qui est per omnia saecula benedictus_.
+
+
+
+
+                          BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
+
+
+                            I. Flemish Text
+
+  _Werken van Jan van Ruusbroec_. Ed. J. David. 6 vols. (Maetschappy der
+  Vlaemsche Bibliophilen). (Gent, 1858-68.)
+
+This edition, based on the MSS. preserved at Brussels and Ghent, and the
+foundation of all the best translations, is now rare. It may be consulted
+at the British Museum.
+
+A re-issue of the Flemish text is now in progress; the first volume being
+_Jan van Ruysbroeck, Van den VII. Trappen_ (i.e. _The Seven Degrees of
+Love_) _met Geert Groote’s latijnsche Vertaling_. Ed. Dom. Ph. Müller
+(Brussels, 1911).
+
+
+                            II. Translations
+
+
+                               A. _Latin_
+
+The chief works of Ruysbroeck were early translated into Latin, some
+during their author’s lifetime, and widely circulated in this form. Three
+of these early translations were printed in the sixteenth century: the
+_De Ornatu Spiritualium Nuptiarum_ of Jordaens, at Paris, in 1512; and
+the _De Septem Scalæ Divini Amoris Gradibus_ of Gerard Groot, together
+with the _De Perfectione Filiorum Dei_ (i.e. _The Sparkling Stone_), at
+Bologna, in 1538.
+
+The standard Latin translation, however—indispensable to all students of
+Ruysbroeck—is the great work of the Carthusian monk, Laurentius Surius:
+_D. Joannis Rusbrochii Opera Omnia_ (Cologne, 1552).
+
+This was reprinted in 1609 (the best edition), and again in 1692. It
+contains all Ruysbroeck’s authentic works, and some that are doubtful; in
+a translation singularly faithful to the sense of the original, though it
+fails to reproduce the rugged sublimity, the sudden lapses into crude and
+homely metaphor, so characteristic of his style.
+
+
+                              B. _English_
+
+  _The Book of the Twelve Béguines_ (the first sixteen chapters only).
+  Translated from the Flemish, by John Francis (London, 1913).
+
+A useful translation of one of Ruysbroeck’s most difficult treatises.
+
+
+                              C. _French_
+
+  _Œuvres de Ruysbroeck l’Admirable. Traduction du Flamand par les_
+  Bénédictins de Saint Paul de Wisques.
+
+    Vol. I.: _Le Miroir du Salut Éternel_; _Les Sept Clôtures_; _Les Sept
+    Degrés de l’Êchelle d’Amour Spirituel_ (Brussels, 1912, in progress).
+
+This edition, when completed, will form the standard text of Ruysbroeck
+for those unable to read Flemish. The translation is admirably lucid, and
+a short but adequate introduction is prefixed to each work.
+
+  _L’Ornement des Noces Spirituelles. Traduit du Flamand par_ Maurice
+  Maeterlinck (Brussels, 1900).
+
+This celebrated book, still more its beautiful though unreliable
+introduction, is chiefly responsible for the modern interest in
+Ruysbroeck. The translation, exquisite as French prose, over-emphasises
+the esoteric element in his teaching. Those unable to read Flemish should
+check it by Lambert’s German text (see below).
+
+  _Vie de Rusbroch suivie de son Traité des Sept Degrés de l’Amour.
+  Traduction littérale du Texte Flamand-Latin, par_ R. Chamonal (Paris,
+  1909). _Traité du Royaume des Amants de Dieu. Traduit par_ R. Chamonal
+  (Paris, 1911). _De la Vraie Contemplation_ (i.e. _The Twelve
+  Béguines_). _Traduit par_ R. Chamonal. 3 vols. (Paris, 1912).
+
+These are the first volumes of a proposed complete translation; which is,
+however, far from literal, and replaces the rough vigour of the original
+by the insipid language of conventional French piety.
+
+  _Livre des XII. Béguines ou de la Vraie Contemplation_ (first sixteen
+  chapters only). _Traduit du Flamand, avec Introduction, par_ L’Abbé P.
+  Cuylits (Brussels, 1909).
+
+This also contains a French version of the _Vita_ of Pomerius. The
+translator is specially successful in rendering the peculiar quality of
+Ruysbroeck’s verse; but the statements in his introduction must be
+accepted with reserve.
+
+
+                              D. _German_
+
+  _Drei Schriften des Mystikers Johann van Ruysbroeck, aus dem Vlämischen
+  übersetzt von_ Franz A. Lambert (Leipzig, 1902).
+
+A vigorous and accurate translation of _The Adornment of the Spiritual
+Marriage_, _The Sparkling Stone_ and _The Book of Supreme Truth_.
+
+Ruysbroeck translates better into German than into any other language;
+and this volume is strongly recommended to all who can read that tongue.
+
+
+                            III. Selections
+
+  _Rusbrock l’Admirable: Œuvres Choisies. Traduit par_ E. Hello (Paris,
+  1902).
+
+A series of short passages, paraphrased (_not_ translated) from the Latin
+of Surius. There are two English versions of this unsatisfactory book,
+the second being the best:
+
+    _Reflections from the Mirror of a Mystic._ Translated by Earle
+    Baillie (London, 1905).
+
+    _Flowers of a Mystic Garden._ Translated by C. E. S. (London, 1912).
+
+  _Life, Light, and Love: Selections from the German Mystics._ By the
+  Very Rev. W. R. Inge, D.D., Dean of St. Paul’s (London, 1905).
+
+Contains an abridged version of _The Adornment of the Spiritual
+Marriage_.
+
+
+
+
+                        Biography and Criticism
+
+
+                            (_A Selection_)
+
+  Auger, A.—_De Doctrina et Meritis Joannis van Ruysbroeck_ (Louvain,
+  1892).
+
+  Engelhardt, J. G. von.—_Richard von St. Victor und J. Ruysbroeck_
+  (Erlangen, 1838).
+
+Useful for tracing the correspondences between the Victorines and
+Ruysbroeck.
+
+  Maeterlinck, Maurice.—_Ruysbroeck and the Mystics._ Translated by Jane
+  Stoddart (London, 1908).
+
+An English version of the Introduction to _L’Ornement des Noces
+Spirituelles_, above-mentioned; with many fine passages translated from
+Ruysbroeck’s other works.
+
+  Pomerius, H.—_De Origine Monasterii Viridisvallis una cum Vitis Joannis
+  Rusbrochii._
+
+Printed in _Analecta Bollandiana_, vol. iv. (Brussels, 1885). The chief
+authority for all biographical facts.
+
+  Scully, Dom Vincent.—_A Mediæval Mystic_ (London, 1910).
+
+A biographical account, founded on Pomerius, with a short analysis of
+Ruysbroeck’s works. Popular and uncritical.
+
+  Vreese, Dr. W. L. de.—_Jean de Ruysbroeck_ (_Biographie Nationale de
+  Belgique_, vol. xx.) (Brussels, 1907).
+
+An important and authoritative article with analysis of all Ruysbroeck’s
+works and full bibliography.
+
+  ——_Bijdragen tot de Kennis van het Leven en de Werken van Jan van
+  Ruusbroec_ (Gent, 1896).
+
+Contains Gerard Naghel’s sketch of Ruysbroeck’s life, with other useful
+material.
+
+  ——_De Handschriften van Jan van Ruusbroec’s Werken._ 2 vols. (Gent,
+  1900).
+
+An important and scholarly study of the manuscript sources by the
+greatest living authority.
+
+
+Notices of Ruysbroeck will be found in the following works:—
+
+  Auger, A.—_Étude sur les Mystiques des Pays Bas au Moyen Age_
+  (_Académie Royale de Belgique_, vol. xlvi., 1892).
+
+  Fleming, W. K.—_Mysticism in Christianity_ (London, 1913).
+
+  Inge, Very Rev. W. R., D.D., Dean of St. Paul’s.—_Christian Mysticism_
+  (London, 1899).
+
+  Jones, Dr. Rufus M.—_Studies in Mystical Religion_ (London, 1909).
+
+
+Applications of his doctrine to the spiritual life in:—
+
+  Baker, Venerable Augustin.—_Holy Wisdom; or Directions for the Prayer
+  of Contemplation_ (London, 1908).
+
+  Blosius, F. V.—_Book of Spiritual Instruction_ (London, 1900); _A
+  Mirror for Monks_ (London, 1901); _Comfort for the Faint-hearted_
+  (London, 1903); _Sanctuary of the Faithful Soul_ (London, 1905).
+
+  Denis the Carthusian.—_Opera Omnia_ (Monstrolii, 1896), in progress.
+
+  Petersen, Gerlac.—_The Fiery Soliloquy with God_ (London, 1872).
+
+  Poulain, Aug., S.J.—_The Graces of Interior Prayer_ (London, 1910).
+
+  Underhill, E.—_Mysticism_, 5th ed. (London, 1914).
+
+
+                               Influences
+
+Much light is thrown on Ruysbroeck’s doctrine by a study of the authors
+who influenced him; especially:
+
+  St. Augustine; Migne, _P.L._, xxvii.-xlvii.; Eng. Trans., edited by M.
+  Dods (Edinburgh, 1876).
+
+  Dionysius the Areopagite; Migne, _P.G._, iii., iv.; Eng. Trans., by
+  Parker (Oxford, 1897).
+
+  Hugh and Richard of St. Victor; Migne, _P.L._, clxxv.-clxxvii. and
+  cxcvi.
+
+  St. Bernard; Migne, _P.L._, clxxxii.-clxxxv.; Eng. Trans., by Eales
+  (London, 1889-96).
+
+  St. Thomas Aquinas; _Opera_ (Romæ, 1882-1906); Eng. Trans., by the
+  Dominican Fathers (in progress).
+
+  St. Bonaventura; _Opera_ (Paris, 1864-71).
+
+  Meister Eckhart; _Schriften und Predigten_ (Leipzig, 1903).
+
+  Suso; _Schriften_, ed. Denifle (Munich, 1876). Eng. Trans., _Life_, ed.
+  by W. R. Inge (London, 1913); _Book of Eternal Wisdom_ (London, 1910).
+
+  Tauler, _Predigten_ (Prague, 1872); Eng. Trans., _Twenty-five Sermons_,
+  trans. by Winkworth (London, 1906); _The Inner Way_, edited by A. W.
+  Hutton (London, 1909).
+
+
+
+
+                               Footnotes
+
+
+[1]The _Vita_ of Pomerius is printed in the _Analecta Bollandiana_, vol.
+   iv. pp. 257 ff.
+
+[2]_The Book of Supreme Truth_, cap. iv.
+
+[3]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. vii.
+
+[4]_Vita_, cap. xv.
+
+[5]De Vreese has identified 160 Flemish and 46 Latin MSS. of Ruysbroeck.
+
+[6]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxxvii.
+
+[7]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xiv.
+
+[8]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxxvii.
+
+[9]_Op. cit._, _ibid._
+
+[10]_The Seven Degrees of Love_, cap. xiv.
+
+[11]_The Kingdom of God’s Lovers_, cap. xxix.
+
+[12]_The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, cap. viii.
+
+[13]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. ix.
+
+[14]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xiv.
+
+[15]_The Book of Truth_, cap. xi.
+
+[16]_The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, cap. xvii.
+
+[17]_Op. cit._, cap. vii.
+
+[18]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. x.
+
+[19]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xiv.
+
+[20]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xiii.
+
+[21]_The Seven Degrees of Love_, cap. xiv.
+
+[22]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. iii. cap. i.
+
+[23]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xvi.
+
+[24]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xii.
+
+[25]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. viii.
+
+[26]_The Seven Degrees of Love_, cap. i.
+
+[27]_The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, cap. xvi.
+
+[28]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. vi.
+
+[29]_The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, cap. vii.
+
+[30]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. i. cap. xiv.
+
+[31]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. i. capp. xii.-xxiv.
+
+[32]_The Kingdom of God’s Lovers_, cap. xviii.
+
+[33]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. i. cap. xxvi.
+
+[34]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. vii.
+
+[35]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. vii.
+
+[36]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. ix.
+
+[37]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. iv.
+
+[38]Cf. _The Twelve Béguines_, cap. x.
+
+[39]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xix.; _The Book of Truth_,
+   cap. ix.
+
+[40]_The Seven Degrees of Love_, cap. xiv.
+
+[41]_The Kingdom of God’s Lovers_, cap. xx.
+
+[42]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxiii.
+
+[43]_Op. cit._, lib. ii. cap. xxvii.
+
+[44]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxiv.
+
+[45]Richard Rolle; _The Mending of Life_, cap. xii. (Harford’s edition,
+   p. 82).
+
+[46]_The Kingdom of God’s Lovers_, cap. xxv.
+
+[47]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxviii.
+
+[48]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxix.
+
+[49]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ii.
+
+[50]Cp. _The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. lvii.
+
+[51]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxxvi.
+
+[52]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxxviii.
+
+[53]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxxix.
+
+[54]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ii.
+
+[55]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xi.
+
+[56]_Loc. cit._
+
+[57]St. Augustine, _Confessions_, lib. vii. cap. x.
+
+[58]St. Augustine, _Confessions_, lib. vii. capp. xvii. and xx.
+
+[59]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xii.
+
+[60]_Loc. cit._
+
+[61]_The Kingdom of God’s Lovers_, cap. xxxiv.
+
+[62]_The Seven Cloisters_, cap. xix.
+
+[63]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xii.
+
+[64]_The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, cap. xvii.
+
+[65]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. iii.
+
+[66]Cap. viii.: ‘Of the Difference between the Secret Friends and the
+   Hidden Sons of God.’
+
+[67]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xii.
+
+[68]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xvi.
+
+[69]_The Seven Cloisters_, cap. xix.
+
+[70]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. viii.
+
+[71]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ix.
+
+[72]_The Kingdom of God’s Lovers_; cap. xxxiii.
+
+[73]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ix.; cp. also _The Twelve Béguines_, cap.
+   xvi.
+
+[74]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xvi.
+
+[75]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ix.; cp. also _The Book of Truth_, cap.
+   xii.
+
+[76]_The Kingdom of God’s Lovers_, cap. xxxi.
+
+[77]_The Book of Truth_, cap. xii.
+
+[78]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. x.
+
+[79]_Op. cit._ cap. ix.
+
+[80]_The Imitation of Christ_, lib. iii. cap. xxiii.
+
+[81]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xiv., and _The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ix.
+
+[82]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xvi.
+
+[83]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ix.; cp. _The Book of Truth_, cap. xi.
+
+[84]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xvi.
+
+[85]_Ibid._ cap. xiv.; cp. St. Bernard, _De Diligendo Deo_, cap. x. The
+   same image is found in St. Macarius and many other writers.
+
+[86]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. xii.
+
+[87]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. x.
+
+[88]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. x.
+
+[89]_Op. cit._ cap. xii.
+
+[90]_Op. cit._ cap. xiii.; cp. also _The Seven Degrees_, cap. xiv.
+
+[91]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. xiv.
+
+[92]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. iii. cap. v.
+
+
+                              _Printed by_
+                        Morrison & Gibb Limited
+                              _Edinburgh_
+
+
+
+
+
+
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diff --git a/37870-0.zip b/37870-0.zip
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ruysbroeck, by Evelyn Underhill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Ruysbroeck
+
+Author: Evelyn Underhill
+
+Release Date: October 27, 2011 [EBook #37870]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RUYSBROECK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Roger Frank and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            THE QUEST SERIES
+
+
+                        Edited by G. R. S. MEAD,
+                         EDITOR OF 'THE QUEST.'
+
+                     _Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. net each._
+
+                         FIRST LIST OF VOLUMES.
+
+PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND SURVIVAL. By James H. Hyslop, Ph.D., LL.D.,
+        Secretary of Psychical Research Society of America.
+
+THE QUEST OF THE HOLY GRAIL. By Jessie L. Weston, Author of 'The Legend
+        of Sir Perceval.'
+
+JEWISH MYSTICISM. By J. Abelson, M.A., D.Lit, Principal of Aria College,
+        Portsmouth.
+
+THE MYSTICS OF ISLAM. By Reynold A. Nicholson, M.A., Litt.D, LL.D.,
+        Lecturer on Persian, Cambridge University.
+
+BUDDHIST PSYCHOLOGY. By C. A. F. Rhys Davids, M.A., Lecturer on Indian
+        Philosophy, Manchester University.
+
+RUYSBROECK. By Evelyn Underhill, Author of 'Mysticism,' 'The Mystic Way,'
+        etc.
+
+THE SIDEREAL RELIGION OF THE ANCIENTS. By Robert Eisler, Ph.D., Author of
+        Weltenmantel und Himmelszelt.'    [_In the Press._
+
+                     London: G. BELL AND SONS LTD.
+
+
+
+
+                               RUYSBROECK
+
+
+                                   BY
+                            EVELYN UNDERHILL
+                               AUTHOR OF
+               'MYSTICISM,' 'THE MYSTIC WAY,' ETC., ETC.
+
+
+                                 LONDON
+                         G. BELL AND SONS LTD.
+                                  1915
+
+
+                                  FOR
+                                 JESSIE
+                        TO WHOM IT OWES SO MUCH
+                 THIS LITTLE TRIBUTE TO A MUTUAL FRIEND
+
+
+
+
+                             EDITOR'S NOTE
+
+
+A glance at the excellent Bibliographical Note at the end of the volume
+will reveal the surprising paucity of literature on Ruysbroeck in this
+country. A single version from the original of one short treatise,
+published in the present year, is all that we possess of direct
+translation; even in versions from translation there is only one treatise
+represented; add to this one or two selections of the same nature, and
+the full tale is told. We are equally poorly off for studies of the life
+and doctrine of the great Flemish contemplative of the fourteenth
+century. And yet Jan van Ruusbroec is thought, by no few competent
+judges, to be the greatest of all the medi�val Catholic mystics; and,
+indeed, it is difficult to point to his superior. Miss Evelyn Underhill
+is, therefore, doing lovers not only of Catholic mysticism, but also of
+mysticism in general, a very real service by her monograph, which deals
+more satisfactorily than any existing work in English with the life and
+teachings of one of the most spiritual minds in Christendom. Her book is
+not simply a painstaking summary of the more patent generalities of the
+subject, but rather a deeply sympathetic entering into the mind of
+Ruysbroeck, and that, too, with no common insight.
+
+
+
+
+                             PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+I owe to the great kindness of my friend, Mrs. Theodore Beck, the
+translation of several passages from Ruysbroeck's _Sparkling Stone_ given
+in the present work; and in quoting from _The Twelve B�guines_ have
+often, though not always, availed myself of the recently published
+version by Mr. John Francis. For all other renderings I alone am
+responsible.
+
+                                                               E. U.
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAP.                                                               PAGE
+     I. Ruysbroeck the Man                                               1
+    II. His Works                                                       36
+   III. His Doctrine of God                                             52
+    IV. His Doctrine of Man                                             66
+     V. The Active Life                                                 94
+    VI. The Interior Life: Illumination and Destitution                115
+   VII. The Interior Life: Union and Contemplation                     136
+  VIII. The Superessential Life                                        164
+
+        Bibliographical Note                                           187
+
+
+
+
+      Luce divina sopra me s' appunta,
+      penetrando per questa ond' io m' inventro;
+  La cui virt�, col mio veder conguinta,
+      mi leva sopra me tanto, ch' io veggio
+      la somma essenza della quale � munta.
+  Quinci vien l' allegrezza, ond' io fiammeggio;
+      perch� alla vista mia, quant' ella � chiara,
+      la chiarit� della fiamma pareggio.
+
+                                                       Par. xxi. 83.
+
+  [Divine Light doth focus itself upon me, piercing through that wherein
+  I am enclosed; the power of which, united with my sight, so greatly
+  lifts me up above myself that I see the Supreme Essence where from it
+  is drawn. Thence comes the joy wherewith I flame; for to my vision,
+  even as it is clear, I make the clearness of the flame respond.]
+
+
+
+
+                               RUYSBROECK
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I
+                           RUYSBROECK THE MAN
+
+
+  The tree Igdrasil, which has its head in heaven and its roots in hell
+  (the lower parts of the earth), is the image of the true man.... In
+  proportion to the divine heights to which it ascends must be the
+  obscure depths in which the tree is rooted, and from which it draws the
+  mystic sap of its spiritual life.
+
+                                                     Coventry Patmore.
+
+In the history of the spiritual adventures of man, we find at intervals
+certain great mystics, who appear to gather up and fuse together in the
+crucible of the heart the diverse tendencies of those who have preceded
+them, and, adding to these elements the tincture of their own rich
+experience, give to us an intensely personal, yet universal, vision of
+God and man. These are constructive spirits, whose creations in the
+spiritual sphere sum up and represent the best achievement of a whole
+epoch; as in other spheres the great artist, musician, or poet--always
+the child of tradition as well as of inspiration--may do.
+
+John Ruysbroeck is such a mystic as this. His career, which covers the
+greater part of the fourteenth century--that golden age of Christian
+mysticism--seems to exhibit within the circle of a single personality,
+and carry up to a higher term than ever before, all the best attainments
+of the Middle Ages in the realm of Eternal Life. Rooted firmly in
+history, faithful to the teachings of the great Catholic mystics of the
+primitive and medi�val times, Ruysbroeck does not merely transmit, but
+transfigures, their principles: making from the salt, sulphur, and
+mercury of their vision, reason, and love, a new and living jewel--or, in
+his own words, a 'sparkling stone'--which reflects the actual radiance of
+the Uncreated Light. Absorbing from the rich soil of the Middle Ages all
+the intellectual nourishment which he needs, dependent too, as all real
+greatness is, on the human environment in which he grows--that mysterious
+interaction and inter-penetration of personalities without which human
+consciousness can never develop its full powers--he towers up from the
+social and intellectual circumstances that conditioned him: a living,
+growing, unique and creative individual, yet truly a part of the earth
+from which he springs.
+
+To speak of Ruysbroeck, as some enthusiastic biographers have done, as an
+isolated spiritual phenomenon totally unrelated to the life of his time,
+an 'ignorant monk' whose profound knowledge of reality is entirely the
+result of personal inspiration and independent of human history, is to
+misunderstand his greatness. The 'ignorant monk' was bound by close links
+to the religious life of his day. He was no spiritual individualist; but
+the humble, obedient child of an institution, the loyal member of a
+Society. He tells us again and again that his spiritual powers were
+nourished by the sacramental life of the Catholic Church. From the
+theologians of that Church came the intellectual framework in which his
+sublime intuitions were expressed. All that he does--though he does this
+to a degree perhaps unique in Christian history--is to carry out into
+action, completely actualise in his own experience, the high vision of
+the soul's relation to Divine Reality by which that Church is possessed.
+The central Christian doctrine of Divine Fatherhood, and of the soul's
+'power to become the son of God': it is this, raised to the _n_th degree
+of intensity, experienced in all its depth and fullness, and demonstrated
+with the exactitude of a mathematician and the passion of a poet, which
+Ruysbroeck gives us. Thus tradition and authority, no less than the
+abundant inspiration, the direct ecstatic knowledge of God to which his
+writings bear witness, have their part in his achievement. His
+theological culture was wide and deep. Not only the Scriptures and the
+Liturgy, but St. Augustine, Dionysius the Areopagite, Richard of St.
+Victor, St. Bernard, St. Bonaventura, St. Thomas Aquinas, and many others
+have stimulated and controlled his thought; interpreting to him his
+ineffable adventures, and providing him with vessels in which the fruit
+of those adventures could be communicated to other men.
+
+Nor is Catholic tradition the only medium through which human life has
+exercised a formative influence upon Ruysbroeck's genius. His worldly
+circumstances, his place within and reaction to the temporal order, the
+temper of those souls amongst which he grew--these too are of vital
+importance in relation to his mystical achievements. To study the
+interior adventures and formal teachings of a mystic without reference to
+the general trend and special accidents of his outer life, is to neglect
+our best chance of understanding the nature and sources of his vision of
+truth. The angle from which that vision is perceived, the content of the
+mind which comes to it, above all the concrete activities which it
+induces in the growing, moving, supple self: these are primary _data_
+which we should never ignore. Action is of the very essence of human
+reality. Where the inner life is genuine and strong the outer life will
+reflect, however faintly, the curve on which it moves; for human
+consciousness is a unit, capable of reacting to and synthesising two
+orders, not an unresolved dualism--as it were, an angel and an
+animal--condemned to lifelong battle within a narrow cage.
+
+Therefore we begin our study of Ruysbroeck the mystic by the study of
+Ruysbroeck the man: the circumstances of his life and environment, so far
+as we can find them out. For the facts of this life our chief authority
+will be the Augustinian Canon Pomerius, who was Prior and chronicler of
+Ruysbroeck's own community of Groenendael. Born in 1382, a year after
+Ruysbroeck's death, and entering Groenendael early in the fifteenth
+century, he knew and talked with at least two of the great mystic's
+disciples, John of Hoelaere and John of Scoonhoven. His life of
+Ruysbroeck and history of the foundation of the monastery was finished
+before 1420; that is to say, within the lifetime of the generation which
+succeeded the first founders of the house.[1] It represents the careful
+gathering up, sifting, and arranging of all that was remembered and
+believed by the community--still retaining several members who had known
+him in the flesh--of the facts of Ruysbroeck's character and career.
+
+Pomerius was no wild romancer, but a reasonably careful as well as a
+genuinely enthusiastic monastic chronicler. Moderation is hardly the
+outstanding virtue of such home-made lives of monastic founders. They are
+inevitably composed in surroundings where any criticism of their subject
+or scepticism as to his supernatural peculiarities is looked upon as a
+crime; where every incident has been fitted with a halo, and the
+unexplained is indistinguishable from the miraculous. Nevertheless the
+picture drawn by Pomerius--exaggerated though it be in certain
+respects--is a human picture; possessed of distinct characteristics, some
+natural and charming, some deeply impressive. It is completed by a second
+documentary source: the little sketch by Ruysbroeck's intimate friend,
+Gerard Naghel, Prior of the Carthusian monastery of H�rines near
+Groenendael, which forms the prologue to our most complete MS. collection
+of his writings.
+
+Ruysbroeck's life, as it is shown to us by Pomerius and Gerard, falls
+into three main divisions, three stages of ascent: the natural active
+life of boyhood; the contemplative, disciplined career of his middle
+period; the superessential life of supreme union which governed his
+existence at Groenendael. This course, which he trod in the temporal
+order, seems like the rough sketch of that other course trodden by the
+advancing soul within the eternal order--the Threefold Life of man which
+he describes to us in _The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage_ and other
+of his works.
+
+Now the details of that career are these: John Ruysbroeck was born in
+1293 at the little village of Ruysbroeck or Ruusbroec, between Brussels
+and Hal, from which he takes his name. We know nothing of his father; but
+his mother is described as a good and pious woman, devoted to the
+upbringing of her son--a hard task, and one that was soon proved to be
+beyond her. The child Ruysbroeck was strong-willed, adventurous,
+insubordinate; already showing signs of that abounding vitality, that
+strange restlessness and need of expansion which children of genius so
+often exhibit. At eleven years of age he ran away from home, and found
+his way to Brussels; where his uncle, John Hinckaert, was a Canon of the
+Cathedral of St. Gudule. Pomerius assures us that this escapade, which
+would have seemed a mere naughtiness in normal little boys, was in fact a
+proof of coming sanctity; that it was not the attraction of the city but
+a precocious instinct for the religious life--the first crude stirrings
+of the love of God--which set this child upon the road. Such a claim is
+natural to the hagiographer; yet there lies behind it a certain truth.
+The little John may or may not have dreamed of being a priest; he did
+already dream of a greater, more enticing life beyond the barriers of use
+and wont. Though he knew it not, the vision of a spiritual city called
+him. Already the primal need of his nature was asserting itself--the
+demand, felt long before it was understood, for something beyond the
+comfortable world of appearance--and this demand crystallised into a
+concrete act. In the sturdy courage which faced the unknown, the
+practical temper which translated dream into action, we see already the
+germ of those qualities which afterwards gave to the great contemplative
+power to climb up to the 'supreme summits of the inner life' and face the
+awful realities of God.
+
+Such adventures are not rare in the childhood of the mystics. Always of a
+romantic temperament, endowed too with an abounding vitality, the craving
+for some dimly-guessed and wonderful experience often shows itself early
+in them; as the passion for music, colour or poetry is sometimes seen in
+embryo in artists of another type. The impact of Reality seems to be felt
+by such spirits in earliest childhood. Born susceptible in a special
+degree to the messages which pour in on man from the Transcendent, they
+move from the first in a different universe from that of other boys and
+girls; subject to experiences which they do not understand, full of
+dreams which they are unable to explain, and often impelled to strange
+actions, extremely disconcerting to the ordinary guardians of youth. Thus
+the little Catherine of Siena, six years old, already lived in a world
+which was peopled with saints and angels; and ruled her small life by the
+visions which she had seen. Thus the baby Teresa, mysteriously attracted
+by sacrifice, as other children are attracted by games and toys, set out
+to look for 'the Moors and martyrdom.' So too the instinct for travel,
+for the remote and unknown, often shows itself early in these wayfarers
+of the spirit; whose destiny it is to achieve a more extended life in the
+interests of the race, to find and feel that Infinite Reality which alone
+can satisfy the heart of man. Thus in their early years Francis, Ignatius
+and many others were restless, turbulent, eager for adventure and change.
+
+This first adventure brought the boy Ruysbroeck to a home so perfectly
+fitted to his needs, that it might seem as though some secret instinct,
+some overshadowing love, had indeed guided his steps. His uncle, John
+Hinckaert, at this time about forty years of age, had lately been
+converted--it is said by a powerful sermon--from the comfortable and
+easy-going life of a prosperous ecclesiastic to the austere quest of
+spiritual perfection. He had distributed his wealth, given up all
+self-indulgence, and now, with another and younger Canon of the Cathedral
+named Francis van Coudenberg, lived in simplest, poorest style a
+dedicated life of self-denial, charity and prayer. He received his
+runaway nephew willingly. Perhaps he saw in this strange and eager child,
+suddenly flung upon his charity, an opportunity for repairing some at
+least amongst the omissions of his past--that terrible wreck of wasted
+years which torments the memory of those who are converted in middle
+life. His love and remorse might spend themselves on this boy. He might
+make of him perhaps all that he now longed to be, but could never wholly
+achieve: a perfect servant of the Eternal Goodness, young, vigorous,
+ardent, completely responsive to the touch of God.
+
+Ruysbroeck, then, found a home soaked in love, governed by faith,
+renunciation, humility; a forcing-house of the spiritual life. In the
+persons of these two grown men, who had given up all outward things for
+the sake of spiritual realities, he was brought face to face--and this in
+his most impressionable years--with the hard facts, the concrete
+sacrifices, the heroic life of deliberate mortification, which underlay
+the lovely haunting vision, the revelation of the Divine beauty and love
+that had possessed him. No lesson is of higher value to the natural
+mystic than this. The lovers of Ruysbroeck should not forget how much
+they owe to the men who received, loved, influenced, educated the
+brilliant wayward and impressionable child. His attainment is theirs. His
+mysticism is rooted in their asceticism; a flower directly dependent for
+its perfection on that favouring soil. Though his achievement, like that
+of all men of genius, is individual, and transcends the circumstances and
+personalities which surround it; still, from those circumstances and
+personalities it takes its colour. It represents far more than a personal
+and solitary experience. Behind it lies the little house in Brussels, the
+supernatural atmosphere which filled it, and the fostering care of the
+two men whose life of external and deliberate poverty only made more
+plain the richness of the spirits who could choose, and remain constant
+to, this career of detachment and love.
+
+The personal influence of Hinckaert and Coudenberg, the moral disciplines
+and perpetual self-denials of the life which he shared with them, formed
+the heart of Ruysbroeck's education; helping to build up that manly and
+sturdy character which gave its special temper to his mystical outlook.
+Like so many children destined to greatness, he was hard to educate in
+the ordinary sense; uninterested in general knowledge, impatient of
+scholastic drudgery. Nothing which did not minister to his innate passion
+for ultimates had any attraction for him. He was taught grammar with
+difficulty; but on the other hand his astonishing aptitude for religious
+ideas, even of the most subtle kind, his passionate clear vision of
+spiritual things, was already so highly developed as to attract general
+attention; and his writings are sufficient witness to the width and depth
+of his theological reading. With such tastes and powers as these, and
+brought up in such a household, governed by religious enthusiasms and
+under the very shadow of the Cathedral walls, it was natural that he
+should wish to become a priest; and in 1317 he was ordained and given,
+through the influence of his uncle, a prebend in St. Gudule.
+
+Now a great mystic is the product not merely of an untamed genius for the
+Transcendent, but of a moral discipline, an interior education, of the
+most strenuous kind. All the varied powers and tendencies of a nature
+which is necessarily strong and passionate, must be harnessed, made
+subservient to this one central interest. The instinctive egotism of the
+natural man--never more insidious than when set upon spiritual
+things--must be eradicated. So, behind these few outward events of
+Ruysbroeck's adolescence, we must discern another growth; a perpetual
+interior travail, a perpetual slow character-building always going
+forward in him, as his whole personality is moulded into that conformity
+to the vision seen which prepares the way of union, and marks off the
+mystical saint from the mere adept of transcendental things. We know from
+his writings how large a part such moral purifications, such interior
+adjustments, played in his concept of the spiritual life; and the
+intimacy with which he describes each phase in the battle of love, each
+step of the spiritual ladder, the long process of preparation in which
+the soul adorns herself for the 'spiritual marriage,' guarantees to us
+that he has himself trodden the path which he maps out. That path goes
+the whole way from the first impulse of 'goodwill,' of glad acquiescence
+in the universal purpose, through the taming of the proud will to
+humility and suppleness, and of the insurgent heart to gentleness,
+kindness, and peace, to that last state of perfect charity in which the
+whole spirit of man is one will and one love with God.
+
+Though his biographers have left us little material for a reconstruction
+of his inner development, we may surely infer something of the course
+which it followed from the vividly realistic descriptions in _The Kingdom
+of Lovers_ and _The Spiritual Marriage_. Personal experience underlies
+the wonderful account of the ascent of the Spiritual Sun in the heavens
+of consciousness; the rapture, wildness and joy, the 'fever of love'
+which fulfils the man who feels its light and heat. Experience, too,
+dictates these profound passages which deal with the terrible spiritual
+reaction when the Sun declines in the heavens, and man feels cold, dead,
+and abandoned of God. Through these phases, at least, Ruysbroeck had
+surely passed before his great books came to be written.
+
+One or two small indications there are which show us his progress on the
+mystic way, the development in him of those secondary psychic characters
+peculiar to the mystical type. It seems that by the time of his
+ordination that tendency to vision which often appears in the earliest
+youth of natural mystics, was already established in him. Deeply
+impressed by the sacramental side of Catholicism, and finding in it
+throughout his life a true means of contact with the Unseen, the
+priesthood was conceived by him as bringing with it a veritable access of
+grace; fresh power poured in on him from the Transcendent, an increase of
+strength wherewith to help the souls of other men. This belief took, in
+his meditations, a concrete and positive form. Again and again he saw in
+dramatic vision the soul specially dear to him, specially dependent on
+him--that of his mother, who had lately died in the Brussels
+B�guinage--demanding how long she must wait till her son's ordination
+made his prayers effectual for her release from Purgatory. At the moment
+in which he finished saying his first Mass, this vision returned to him;
+and he saw his mother's spirit, delivered from Purgatory by the power of
+the sacrifice which he had offered, entering into Heaven--an experience
+originating in, and giving sharp dramatic expression to, that sense of
+new and sacred powers now conferred on him, which may well at such a
+moment have flooded the consciousness of the young priest. This story was
+repeated to Pomerius by those who had heard it from Ruysbroeck himself;
+for "he often told it to the brothers."
+
+For twenty-six years--that is to say, until he was fifty years of
+age--Ruysbroeck lived in Brussels the industrious and inconspicuous life
+of a secular priest. It was not the solitude of the forest, but the
+normal, active existence of a cathedral chaplain in a busy capital city
+which controlled his development during that long period, stretching from
+the very beginnings of manhood to the end of middle age; and it was in
+fact during these years, and in the midst of incessant distractions, that
+he passed through the great oscillations of consciousness which mark the
+mystic way. It is probable that when at last he left Brussels for the
+forest, these oscillations were over, equilibrium was achieved; he had
+climbed 'to the summits of the mount of contemplation.' It was on those
+summits that he loved to dwell, absorbed in loving communion with Divine
+Reality; but his career fulfilled that ideal of a synthesis of work and
+contemplation, an acceptance and remaking of the whole of life, which he
+perpetually puts before us as the essential characteristic of a true
+spirituality. No mystic has ever been more free from the vice of
+other-worldliness, or has practised more thoroughly and more unselfishly
+the primary duty of active charity towards men which is laid upon the
+God-possessed.
+
+The simple and devoted life of the little family of three went on year by
+year undisturbed; though one at least was passing through those profound
+interior changes and adventures which he has described to us as governing
+the evolution of the soul, from the state of the 'faithful servant' to
+the transfigured existence of the 'God-seeing man.' Ruysbroeck grew up to
+be a simple, dreamy, very silent and totally unimpressive person, who,
+'going about the streets of Brussels with his mind lifted up into God,'
+seemed a nobody to those who did not know him. Yet not only a spiritual
+life of unequalled richness, intimacy and splendour, but a penetrating
+intellect, a fearless heart, deep knowledge of human nature, remarkable
+powers of expression, lay behind that meek and unattractive exterior. As
+Paul's twelve years of quiet and subordinate work in Antioch prepared the
+way of his missionary career; so during this long period of service, the
+silent growth of character, the steady development of his mystical
+powers, had gone forward in Ruysbroeck. When circumstances called them
+into play he was found to be possessed of an unsuspected passion,
+strength and courage, a power of dealing with outward circumstances,
+which was directly dependent on his inner life of contemplation and
+prayer.
+
+The event into which the tendencies of this stage of his development
+crystallised, is one which seems perhaps inconsistent with the common
+idea of the mystical temperament, with its supposed concentration on the
+Eternal, its indifference to temporal affairs. As his childhood was
+marked by an exhibition of adventurous love, so his manhood was marked by
+an exhibition of militant love; of that strength and sternness, that
+passion for the true, which--no less than humility, gentleness, peace--is
+an integral part of that paradoxical thing, the Christian character.
+
+The fourteenth century, like all great spiritual periods, was a century
+fruitful in mystical heresies as well as in mystical saints. In
+particular, the extravagant pantheism preached by the Brethren of the
+Free Spirit had become widely diffused in Flanders, and was responsible
+for much bad morality as well as bad theology; those on whom the 'Spirit'
+had descended believing themselves to be already divine, and emancipated
+from obedience to all human codes of conduct. Soon after Ruysbroeck came
+as a boy to Brussels, a woman named Bloemardinne placed herself at the
+head of this sect, and gradually gained extraordinary influence. She
+claimed supernatural and prophetic powers, was said to be accompanied by
+two Seraphim whenever she went to the altar to receive Holy Communion,
+and preached a degraded eroticism under the title of 'Seraphic love,'
+together with a quietism of the most exaggerated and soul-destroying
+type. All the dangers and follies of a false mysticism, dissociated from
+the controlling influence of tradition and the essential virtue of
+humility, were exhibited in her. Against this powerful woman, then at the
+height of her fame, Ruysbroeck declared war; and prosecuted his campaign
+with a violence and courage which must have been startling to those who
+had regarded him only as a shy, pious, rather negligible young man. The
+pamphlets which he wrote against her are lost; but the passionate
+denunciations of pantheism and quietism scattered through his later works
+no doubt have their origin in this controversy, and represent the angle
+from which his attacks were made.
+
+Pantheists, he says in _The Book of Truth_, are "a fruit of hell, the
+more dangerous because they counterfeit the true fruit of the Spirit of
+God." Far from possessing that deep humility which is the soul's
+inevitable reaction to the revelation of the Infinite, they are full of
+pride and self-satisfaction. They claim that their imaginary identity
+with the Essence of God emancipates them from all need of effort, all
+practice of virtue, and leaves them free to indulge those inclinations of
+the flesh which the 'Spirit' suggests. They "believe themselves sunk in
+inward peace; but as a matter of fact they are deep-drowned in error."[2]
+
+Against all this the stern, virile, ardent spirituality of Ruysbroeck
+opposed itself with its whole power. Especially did he hate and condemn
+the laziness and egotism of the quietistic doctrine of contemplation: the
+ideal of spiritual immobility which it set up. That 'love cannot be lazy'
+is a cardinal truth for all real mystics. Again and again it appears in
+their works. Even that profound repose in which they have fruition of
+God, is but the accompaniment or preliminary of work of the most
+strenuous kind, and keeps at full stretch the soul which truly tastes it;
+and this supernatural state is as far above that self-induced quietude of
+'natural repose'--"consisting in nothing but an idleness and interior
+vacancy, to which they are inclined by nature and habit"--in which the
+quietists love to immerse themselves, as God is above His creatures.
+
+Here is the distinction, always needed and constantly ignored, between
+that veritable fruition of Eternal Life which results from the
+interaction of will and grace, and demands of the soul the highest
+intensity and most active love, and that colourable imitation of it which
+is produced by a psychic trick, and is independent alike of the human
+effort and the divine gift. Ruysbroeck in fighting the 'Free Spirit' was
+fighting the battle of true mysticism against its most dangerous and
+persistent enemy,--mysticality.
+
+His attack upon Bloemardinne is the one outstanding incident in the long
+Brussels period which has been preserved to us. The next great outward
+movement in his steadily evolving life did not happen until the year
+1343, when he was fifty years of age. It was then that the three
+companions decided to leave Brussels, and live together in some remote
+country place. They had long felt a growing distaste for the noisy and
+distracting life of the city; a growing dissatisfaction with the
+spiritual apathy and low level of religious observance at the Cathedral
+of St. Gudule; the need of surroundings in which they might devote
+themselves with total concentration to the contemplative life. Hinckaert
+and Coudenberg were now old men; Ruysbroeck was advanced in middle age.
+The rhythm of existence, which had driven him as a child from country to
+town, and harnessed him during long years to the service of his
+fellow-men, now drew him back again to the quiet spaces where he might be
+alone with God. He was approaching those heights of experience from which
+his greatest mystical works proceed; and it was in obedience to a true
+instinct that he went away to the silent places of the forest--as Anthony
+to the solitude of the desert, Francis to the 'holy mountain' of La
+Verna--that, undistracted by the many whom he had served so faithfully,
+he might open his whole consciousness to the inflow of the One, and
+receive in its perfection the message which it was his duty to transmit
+to the world, He went, says Pomerius, "not that he might hide his light;
+but that he might tend it better and make it shine more brightly."
+
+By the influence of Coudenberg, John III., Duke of Brabant, gave to the
+three friends the old hermitage of Groenendael, or the Green Valley, in
+the forest of Soignes, near Brussels. They entered into possession on the
+Wednesday of Easter week, 1343; and for five years lived there, as they
+had lived in the little house in Brussels, with no other rule save their
+own passion for perfection. But perpetual invasions from the outer world,
+not only of penitents and would-be disciples--for their reputation for
+sanctity grew quickly--but of huntsmen in the forest and pleasure parties
+from the town, who demanded and expected hospitality, soon forced them to
+adopt some definite attitude towards the question of enclosure. It is
+said that Ruysbroeck begged for an entire seclusion; but Coudenberg
+insisted that this was contrary to the law of charity, and that some at
+least of those who sought them must be received. In addition to these
+practical difficulties, the Prior of the Abbey of St. Victor at Paris had
+addressed to them strong remonstrances, on account of the absence of rule
+in their life and the fact that they had not even adopted a religious
+habit; a proceeding which in his opinion savoured rather of the
+ill-regulated doings of the heretical sects, than of the decorum proper
+to good Catholics. As a result of these various considerations, the
+simple and informal existence of the little family was re-modelled in
+conformity with the rule of the Augustinian Canons, and the Priory of
+Groenendael was formally created. Coudenberg became its provost, and
+Ruysbroeck, who had refused the higher office, was made prior; but
+Hinckaert, now a very old man in feeble health, refused to burden the
+young community with a member who might be a drag upon it and could not
+keep the full rigour of the rule. In a spirit of renunciation which
+surely touches the heroic, he severed himself from his lifelong friend
+and his adopted son, and went away to a little cell in the forest, where
+he lived alone until his death.
+
+The story of the foundation and growth of the Priory of Groenendael, the
+saintly personalities which it nourished, is not for this place; except
+in so far as it affects our main interest, the story of Ruysbroeck's
+soul. Under the influences of the forest, of the silent and regular life,
+those supreme contemplative powers which belong to the 'Superessential
+Life' of Unity now developed in him with great rapidity. It is possible,
+as we shall see, that some at least of his mystical writings may date
+from his Brussels period; and we know that at the close of this period
+his reputation as an 'illuminated man' was already made. Nevertheless it
+seems safe to say that the bulk of his works, as we now possess them,
+represent him as he was during the last thirty years of his life, rather
+than during his earlier and more active career; and that the intense
+certitude, the wide deep vision of the Infinite which distinguishes them,
+are the fruits of those long hours of profound absorption in God for
+which his new life found place. In the silence of the woods he was able
+to discern each subtle accent of that Voice which "is heard without
+utterance, and without the sound of words speaks all truth."
+
+Like so many of the greatest mystics, Ruysbroeck, drawing nearer to
+Divine Reality, drew nearer to nature too; conforming to his own ideal of
+the contemplative, who, having been raised to the simple vision of God
+Transcendent, returns to find His image reflected by all life. Many
+passages in his writings show the closeness and sympathy of his
+observation of natural things: the vivid description in _The Spiritual
+Marriage_ of the spring, summer and autumn of the fruitful soul, the
+constant insistence on the phenomena of growth, the lessons drawn from
+the habits of ants and bees, the comparison of the surrendered soul to
+the sunflower, 'one of nature's most wonderful works'; the three types of
+Christians, compared with birds who can fly but prefer hopping about the
+earth, birds who swim far on the waters of grace, and birds who love only
+to soar high in the heavens. For the free, exultant life of birds he felt
+indeed a special sympathy and love; and 'many-feathered' is the best name
+that he can find for the soul of the contemplative ascending to the glad
+vision of God.
+
+It is probably a true tradition which represents him as having written
+his greatest and most inspired pages sitting under a favourite tree in
+the depths of the woods. When the 'Spirit' came on him, as it often did
+with a startling suddenness, he would go away into the forest carrying
+his tablet and stylus. There, given over to an ecstasy of
+composition--which seems often to have approached the limits of automatic
+writing, as in St. Teresa, Boehme, Blake and other mystics--he would
+write that which was given to him, without addition or omission; breaking
+off even in the middle of a sentence when the 'Spirit' abruptly departed,
+and resuming at the same point, though sometimes after an interval which
+lasted several weeks, when it returned. In his last years, when eyesight
+failed him, he would allow a younger brother to go with him into the
+woods, and there to take down from dictation the fruits of those
+meditations in which he 'saw without sight'; as the illiterate Catherine
+of Siena dictated in ecstasy the text of her Divine Dialogue.
+
+Two witnesses have preserved Ruysbroeck's solemn affirmation, given first
+to his disciple Gerard Groot 'in great gentleness and humility,' and
+repeated again upon his death-bed in the presence of the whole community,
+that every word of his writings was thus composed under the immediate
+domination of an inspiring power; that 'secondary personality of a
+superior type,' in touch with levels of reality beyond the span of the
+surface consciousness, which governs the activities of the great mystics
+in their last phases of development. These books are not the fruit of
+conscious thought, but 'God-sent truths,' poured out from a heart
+immersed in that Divine Abyss of which he tries to tell.
+
+That a saint must needs be a visionary, is a conviction deeply implanted
+in the mind of the medi�val hagiographer; who always ascribes to these
+incidents an importance which the saints themselves are the first to
+deny. Pomerius thus attributes to Ruysbroeck not only those profound and
+direct experiences of Divine Reality to which his works bear witness; but
+also numerous visions of a conventional and anthropomorphic type, in
+which he spoke with Christ, the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, ecstasies
+which fell upon him when saying Mass--and the passionate devotion to the
+Eucharist which his writings express makes these at least probable--a
+certain faculty of clairvoyance, and a prophetic knowledge of his own
+death. Further, it is said that once, being missed from the priory, he
+was found after long search by one of the brothers he loved best, sitting
+under his favourite tree, rapt in ecstasy and surrounded by an _aura_ of
+radiant light; as the discerning eyes of those who loved them have seen
+St. Francis, St. Teresa, and other contemplatives transfigured and made
+shining by the intensity of their spiritual life. I need not point out
+that the fact that these things are common form in the lives of the
+mystics, does not necessarily discredit them; though in any case their
+interest is less of a mystical than of a psychological kind.
+
+Not less significant, and to us perhaps more winning, is that side of
+Ruysbroeck's personality which was turned towards the world of men. In
+his own person he fulfilled that twofold duty of the deified soul which
+he has described to us: the in-breathing of the Love of God, the
+out-breathing of that same radiant charity towards the race. "To give and
+receive, both at once, is the essence of union," he says; and his whole
+career is an illustration of these words. He took his life from the
+Transcendent; he was a focus of distribution, which gave out that joyous
+life again to other souls. His retreat at Groenendael, his ecstasies of
+composition, never kept him from those who wanted his help and advice. In
+his highest ascents towards Divine Love, the rich complexities of human
+love went with him. Other men always meant much to Ruysbroeck. He had a
+genius for friendship, and gave himself without stint to his friends; and
+those who knew him said that none ever went to him for consolation
+without returning with gladness in their hearts. There are many tales in
+the _Vita_ of his power over and intuitive understanding of other minds;
+of conversions effected, motives unveiled and clouds dispelled. His great
+friend, Gerard Naghel, the Carthusian prior--at whose desire he wrote one
+of the most beautiful of his shorter works, _The Book of Supreme
+Truth_--has left a vivid little account of the impression which his
+personality created: "his peaceful and joyful countenance, his humble
+good-humoured speech." Ruysbroeck spent three days in Gerard's monastery,
+in order to explain some difficult passages in his writings, "and these
+days were too short, for no one could speak to him or see him without
+being the better for it."
+
+By this we may put the description of Pomerius, founded upon the
+reminiscences of Ruysbroeck's surviving friends. "The grace of God shone
+in his face; and also in his modest speech, his kindly deeds, his humble
+manners, and in the way that every action of his life exhibited
+uprightness and radiant purity. He lived soberly, neglected his dress,
+and was patient in all things and with all people."
+
+Plainly the great contemplative who had seemed in Brussels a 'negligible
+man,' kept to the end a great simplicity of aspect; closely approximating
+to his own ideal of the 'really humble man, without any pose or
+pretence,' as described in _The Spiritual Marriage_. That profound
+self-immersion in God which was the source of his power, manifested
+itself in daily life under the least impressive forms; ever seeking
+embodiment in little concrete acts of love and service, "ministering, in
+the world without, to all who need, in love and mercy."[3] We see him in
+his Franciscan love of living things, his deep sense of kinship with all
+the little children of God, 'going to the help of the animals in all
+their needs'; thrown into a torment of distress by the brothers who
+suggested to him that during a hard winter the little birds of the forest
+might die, and at once making generous and successful arrangements for
+their entertainment. We see him 'giving Mary and Martha _rendez-vous_ in
+his heart'; working in the garden of the community, trying hard to be
+useful, wheeling barrow-loads of manure, and emerging from profound
+meditation on the Infinite to pull up young vegetables under the
+impression that they were weeds. He made, in fact, valiant efforts to
+achieve that perfect synthesis of action and contemplation 'ever abiding
+in the simplicity of the Spirit, and perpetually flowing forth in
+abundant acts of love towards heaven and earth,' which he regarded as the
+proper goal of human growth--efforts constantly thwarted by his own
+growing concentration on the Transcendent, the ease and frequency with
+which his consciousness now withdrew from the world of the senses to
+immerse itself in Spiritual Reality. In theory there was for him no
+cleavage between the two: Being and Becoming, the Temporal and the
+Eternal, were but two moods within the mind of God, and in the
+superessential life of perfect union these completing opposites should
+merge in one.
+
+A life which shall find place for the activities of the lover, the
+servant, and the apostle, is the goal towards which the great mystics
+seem to move. We have seen how the homely life of the priory gave to
+Ruysbroeck the opportunity of service, how the silence of the forest
+fostered and supported his secret life of love. As the years passed, the
+third side of his nature, the apostolic passion which had found during
+his long Brussels period ample scope for its activities, once more came
+into prominence. He was sought out by numbers of would-be disciples, not
+only from Belgium itself, but from Holland, Germany and France; and
+became a fountainhead of new life, the father of many spiritual children.
+The tradition which places among these disciples the great Dominican
+mystic Tauler is probably false; though many passages in Tauler's later
+sermons suggest that he was strongly influenced by Ruysbroeck's works,
+which had already attained a wide circulation. But Gerard Groot,
+afterwards the founder of the Brothers of the Common Life, and spiritual
+ancestor of Thomas � Kempis, went to Groenendael shortly after his
+conversion in 1374, that he might there learn the rudiments of a sane and
+robust spirituality. Ruysbroeck received him with a special joy,
+recognising in him at first sight a peculiar aptitude for the things of
+the Spirit. A deep friendship grew up between the old mystic and the
+young and vigorous convert. Gerard stayed often at the priory, and
+corresponded regularly with Ruysbroeck; whose influence it was which
+conditioned his subsequent career as a preacher, and as founder of a
+congregation as simple and unconventional in its first beginnings, as
+fruitful in its later developments, as that of Groenendael itself.
+
+The penetrating remarks upon human character scattered through his works,
+and the anecdotes of his dealings with disciples and penitents preserved
+by Pomerius, suggest that Ruysbroeck, though he might not always
+recognise the distinction between the weeds and vegetables of the garden,
+was seldom at fault in his judgment of men. An instinctive knowledge of
+the human heart, an unerring eye for insincerity, egotism,
+self-deception, is a power which nearly all the great contemplatives
+possess, and often employed with disconcerting effect. I need refer only
+to the caustic analysis of the 'false contemplative' contained in _The
+Cloud of Unknowing_, and the amusing sketches of spiritual
+self-importance in St. Teresa's letters and life. The little tale, so
+often repeated, of the somewhat self-conscious priests who came from
+Paris to consult Ruysbroeck on the state of their souls, and received
+from him only the blunt observation--apparently so careless, yet really
+plumbing human nature to its deeps--"You are as holy as you wish to be,"
+shows him possessed of this same power of stripping off the husks of
+unreality and penetrating at once to the fundamental facts of the soul's
+life: the purity and direction of its will and love.
+
+The life-giving life of union, once man has grown up to it, clarifies,
+illuminates, raises to a higher term, all aspects of the self:
+intelligence, no less than love and will. That self is now harmonised
+about its true centre, and finding 'God in all creatures and all
+creatures in God' finds them in their reality. So it is that Ruysbroeck's
+long life of growth, his long education in love, bringing him to that
+which he calls the 'God-seeing' stage, brings him to a point in which he
+finds everywhere Reality: in those rhythmic seasonal changes of the
+forest life which have inspired his wonderful doctrine of the perpetual
+rebirth and re-budding of the soul; in the hearts of men--though often
+there deep buried--above all, in the mysteries of the Christian faith.
+Speaking with an unequalled authority and intimacy of those supersensuous
+regions, those mysterious contacts of love which lie beyond and above all
+thought, he is yet firmly rooted in the concrete; for he has reconciled
+in his own experience the paradox of a Transcendent yet Immanent God.
+There is no break in the life-process which begins with the little
+country boy running away from home in quest of some vaguely felt object
+of desire, some 'better land,' and which ends with the triumphant passing
+over of the soul of the great contemplative to the perfect fruition of
+Eternal Love.
+
+Ruysbroeck died at Groenendael on December 2, 1381. He was eighty-eight
+years old; feeble in body, nearly blind, yet keeping to the last his
+clear spiritual vision, his vigour and eagerness of soul. His death, says
+Pomerius, speaking on the authority of those who had seen it, was full of
+peaceful joy, of gaiety of heart; not the falling asleep of the tired
+servant, but the leap to more abundant life of the vigorous child of the
+Infinite, at last set free. With an immense gladness he went out from
+that time-world which, in his own image, is 'the shadow of God,' to
+"those high mountains of the land of promise where no shadow is, but only
+the Sun." One of the greatest of Christian seers, one of the most manly
+and human of the mystics, it is yet as a lover, in the noblest and most
+vital sense of the word, that his personality lives for us. From first to
+last, under all its external accidents, we may trace in his life the
+activity--first instinctive, and only gradually understood--of that
+'unconquerable love,' ardent, industrious, at last utterly surrendered,
+which he describes in the wonderful tenth chapter of _The Sparkling
+Stone_, as the unique power which effects the soul's union with God. "For
+no man understandeth what love is in itself, but such are its workings:
+which giveth more than one can take, and asketh more than one can pay."
+That love it was which came out from the Infinite, as a tendency, an
+instinct endowed with liberty and life, and passed across the stage of
+history, manifested under humblest inconspicuous forms, but ever growing
+in passion and power; till at last, achieving the full stature of the
+children of God, it returned to its Source and Origin again. When we
+speak of the mysticism of Ruysbroeck, it is of this that we should think:
+of this growing spirit, this ardent, unconquerable, creative thing. A
+veritable part of our own order, therein it was transmuted from unreal to
+real existence; putting on Divine Humanity, and attaining the goal of all
+life in the interests of the race.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+                               HIS WORKS
+
+
+  In all that I have understood, felt, or written, I submit myself to the
+  judgment of the saints and of Holy Church, for I would live and die
+  Christ's servant in Christian Faith.
+
+                                            The Book of Supreme Truth.
+
+Before discussing Ruysbroeck's view of the spiritual world, his doctrine
+of the soul's development, perhaps it will be well to consider the
+traditional names, general character, and contents of his admittedly
+authentic works. Only a few of these works can be dated with precision;
+for recent criticism has shown that the so-called chronological list
+given by Pomerius[4] cannot be accepted. As to several of them, we cannot
+tell whether they were composed at Brussels or at Groenendael, at the
+beginning, middle or end of his mystical life. All were written in the
+Flemish vernacular of his own day--or, strictly speaking, in the dialect
+of Brabant--for they were practical books composed for a practical
+object, not academic treatises on mystical theology. Founded on
+experience, they deal with and incite to experience; and were addressed
+to all who felt within themselves the stirrings of a special grace, the
+call of a superhuman love, irrespective of education or position--to
+hermits, priests, nuns, and ardent souls still in the world who were
+trying to live the one real life--not merely to learned professors trying
+to elucidate the doctrines of that life. Ruysbroeck therefore belongs to
+that considerable group of mystical writers whose gift to the history of
+literature is only less important than their gift to the history of the
+spiritual world; since they have helped to break down the barrier between
+the written and the spoken word.
+
+At the moment in which poetry first forsakes the 'literary' language and
+uses the people's speech, we nearly always find a mystic thus trying to
+tell his message to the race. His enthusiasm it is which is equal to the
+task of subduing a new medium to the purposes of art. Thus at the very
+beginning of Italian poetry we find St. Francis of Assisi singing in the
+popular tongue his great Canticle of the Sun, and soon after him come the
+sublime lyrics of Jacopone da Tod�. Thus German literature owes much to
+Mechthild of Magdeburg, and English to Richard Rolle--both forsaking
+Latin for the common speech of their day. Thus in India the poet Kabir,
+obedient to the same impulse, sings in Hindi rather than in Sanscrit his
+beautiful songs of Divine Love.
+
+In Ruysbroeck, as in these others, a strong poetic inspiration mingled
+with and sometimes controlled the purely mystical side of his genius.
+Often his love and enthusiasm break out and express themselves, sometimes
+in rough, irregular verse, sometimes in rhymed and rhythmic prose: a kind
+of wild spontaneous chant, which may be related to the 'ghostly song'
+that 'boiled up' within the heart of Richard Rolle. It is well-known that
+automatic composition--and we have seen that the evidence of those who
+knew him suggests the presence of an automatic element in Ruysbroeck's
+creative methods--tends to assume a rhythmic character; being indeed
+closely related to that strange chanted speech in which religious
+excitement frequently expresses itself. Released from the control of the
+surface-intellect, the deeper mind which is involved in these mysterious
+processes tends to present its intuitions and concepts in measured waves
+of words; which sometimes, as in Rolle's 'ghostly song' and perhaps too
+in Ruysbroeck's 'Song of Joy,' are actually given a musical form. In such
+rhythm the mystic seems to catch something of the cadences of that
+far-off music of which he is writing, and to receive and transmit a
+message which exceeds the possibilities of speech. Ruysbroeck was no
+expert poet. Often his verse is bad; halting in cadence, violent and
+uncouth in imagery, like the stammering utterance of one possessed. But
+its presence and quality, its mingled simplicity and violence, assure us
+of the strong excitement that fulfilled him, and tend to corroborate the
+account of his mental processes which we have deduced from the statements
+in Pomerius' _Life_.
+
+Eleven admittedly authentic books and tracts survive in numerous MS.
+collections,[5] and from these come all that we know of his vision and
+teaching. _The Twelve Virtues_, and the two Canticles often attributed to
+him, are probably spurious; and the tracts against the Brethren of the
+Free Spirit, which are known to have been written during his Brussels
+period, have all disappeared. I give here a short account of the
+authentic works, their names and general contents; putting first in order
+those of unknown date, some of which may possibly have been composed
+before the foundation of Groenendael. In each case the first title is a
+translation of that used in the best Flemish texts; the second, that
+employed in the great Latin version of Surius. Ruysbroeck himself never
+gave any titles to his writings.
+
+1. The Spiritual Tabernacle (called by Surius _In Tabernaculum
+Mosis_).--The longest, most fantastic, and, in spite of some fine
+passages, the least interesting of Ruysbroeck's works. Probably founded
+upon the _De Arca Mystica_ of Hugh of St. Victor, this is an elaborate
+allegory, thoroughly medi�val in type, in which the Tabernacle of the
+Israelites becomes a figure of the spiritual life; the details of its
+construction, furniture and ritual being given a symbolic significance,
+in accordance with the methods of interpretation popular at the time. In
+this book, and perhaps in the astronomical treatise appended to _The
+Twelve B�guines_ (No. 11), I believe that we have the only surviving
+works of Ruysbroeck's first period; when he had not yet 'transcended
+images,' but was at that point in his mystical development in which the
+young contemplative loves to discern symbolic meanings in all visible
+things.
+
+2. The Twelve Points of True Faith (_De Fide et Judicio_).--This little
+tract is in form a gloss upon the Nicene Creed; in fact, a
+characteristically Ruysbroeckian confession of faith. Without ever
+over-passing the boundaries of Catholic doctrine, Ruysbroeck is here able
+to turn all its imagery to the purposes of his own vision of truth.
+
+3. The Book of the Four Temptations (_De Quatuor Tentationibus_).--The
+Four Temptations are four manifestations of the higher egotism specially
+dangerous to souls entering on the contemplative life: first, the love of
+ease and comfort, as much in things spiritual as in things material;
+secondly, the tendency to pose as the possessor of special illumination,
+with other and like forms of spiritual pretence; thirdly, intellectual
+pride, which seeks to understand unfathomable mysteries and attain to the
+vision of God by the reason alone; fourthly,--most dangerous of all--that
+false 'liberty of spirit' which was the mark of the heretical mystic
+sects. This book too may well have been written before the retreat to
+Groenendael.
+
+4. The Book of the Kingdom of God's Lovers (_Regnum Deum
+Amantium_).--This and the following work, _The Adornment of the Spiritual
+Marriage_, contain Ruysbroeck's fullest and most orderly descriptions of
+the mystical life-process. The 'Kingdom' which God's lovers may inherit
+is the actual life of God, infused into the soul and deifying it. This
+essential life reveals itself under five modes: in the sense world, in
+the soul's nature, in the witness of Scripture, in the life of grace or
+'glory,' and in the Superessential Kingdom of the Divine Unity. By the
+threefold way of the Active, Contemplative, and Superessential Life, here
+described as the steady and orderly appropriation of the Seven Gifts of
+the Holy Spirit, the spirit of man may enter into its inheritance and
+attain at last to the perfect fruition of God. To the Active Life belong
+the gifts of Holy Fear, Godliness, and Knowledge; to the Contemplative
+those of Strength and Counsel; to the Superessential those of
+Intelligence and Wisdom. _The Kingdom of God's Lovers_ was traditionally
+regarded as Ruysbroeck's earliest work. It was more probably written
+during the early years at Groenendael. Much of it, like _The Twelve
+B�guines_, is in poetical form. This was the book which, falling into the
+hands of Gerard Naghel, made him seek Ruysbroeck's acquaintance, in order
+that he might ask for an explanation of several profound and difficult
+passages.
+
+5. The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage (_De Ornatu Spiritalium
+Nuptiarum_).--This is the best known and most methodical of Ruysbroeck's
+works. In form a threefold commentary upon the text, "Behold, the
+bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him," it is divided into three
+books, tracing out in great detail, and with marvellous psychological
+insight, those three stages of Active, Contemplative and Superessential
+Life, which appear again and again in his writings. Paying due attention
+to the aberrations of the quietists, he exhibits--with an intimacy which
+surely reflects his own personal experience of the Way--the conditions
+under which selves in each stage of development may see, encounter, and
+at last unite with, the Divine Bridegroom of the soul. A German
+translation of several of its chapters, preserved in MS. at Munich,
+states that Ruysbroeck sent this book to the Friends of God in 1350. In
+this case it belongs to the years immediately preceding or succeeding his
+retreat.
+
+We now come to the works which were certainly composed at Groenendael,
+though probably some of those already enumerated also belong to the last
+thirty years of Ruysbroeck's life. First come the three treatises
+apparently written for Margaret van Meerbeke, a choir nun of the Convent
+of Poor Clares at Brussels; who seems to have been to him what St. Clare
+was to St. Francis, Elizabeth St�gel to Suso, Margaret Kirkby to Richard
+Rolle--first a spiritual daughter, then a valued and sympathetic friend.
+
+6. The Mirror of Eternal Salvation or Book of the Blessed Sacrament
+(_Speculum �tern� Salutis_).--This, the first of the three, was written
+in 1359. It is addressed to one who is evidently a beginner in the
+spiritual life, as she is yet a novice in her religious community; but
+whom Ruysbroeck looks upon as specially 'called, elect and loved.' In
+simplest language, often of extreme beauty, he puts before her the
+magnitude of the vocation she has accepted, the dangers she will
+encounter, and the great source from which she must draw her strength:
+the sacramental dispensation of the Church. In a series of magnificent
+chapters, he celebrates the mystical doctrine of the Eucharist, the
+feeding of the ever-growing soul on the substance of God; following this
+by a digression, full of shrewd observation, on the different types of
+believers who come to communion. We see them through his eyes: the
+religious sentimentalists, 'who are generally women and only very seldom
+men'; the sturdy normal Christian, who does his best to struggle against
+sin; the humble and devout lover of God; the churchy hypocrite, who
+behaves with great reverence at Mass and then goes home and scolds the
+servants; the heretical mystic full of spiritual pride; the easy-going
+worldling, who sins and repents with equal facility. The book ends with a
+superb description of the goal towards which the young contemplative is
+set: the 'life-giving life' of perfect union with God in which that
+'higher life' latent in every soul at last attains to maturity.
+
+7. The Seven Cloisters (_De Septem_ _Custodiis_).--This was written
+before 1363, and preserves its address to 'The Holy Nun, Dame Margaret
+van Meerbeke, Cantor of the Monastery of St. Clare at Brussels.' The
+novice of the 'Mirror' is now a professed religious; and her director
+instructs her upon the attitude of mind which she should bring to the
+routine duties of a nun's day, the opportunity they offer for the
+enriching and perfecting of love and humility. He describes the education
+of the human spirit up to that high point of consciousness where it knows
+itself established 'between Eternity and Time': one of the fundamental
+thoughts of Flemish and German mysticism. This education admits her
+successively into the seven cloisters which kept St. Clare, Foundress of
+the Order, unspotted from the world. The first is the physical enclosure
+of the convent walls; the next the moral and volitional limitation of
+self-control. The third is 'the open door of the love of Christ,' which
+crowns man's affective powers, and leads to the fourth--total dedication
+of the will. The fifth and sixth represent the two great forms of the
+Contemplative Life as conceived by Ruysbroeck: the ecstatic and the
+deiform. The seventh admits to Abyss of Being itself: that 'dim silence'
+at the heart of which, as in the Seventh Habitation of St. Teresa's
+'Interior Castle,' he will find himself alone with God. There the mystic
+union is consummated, and the Divine activity takes the place of the
+separate activity of man, in "a simple beatitude which transcends all
+sanctity and the practice of virtue, an Eternal Fruition which satisfies
+all hunger and thirst, all love and all craving, for God." Finally, he
+returns to the Active Life; and ends with a practical chapter on clothes,
+and a charming instruction, full of deep poetry, on the evening
+meditation which should close the day.
+
+8. The Seven Degrees of the Ladder of Love (_De Septem Gradibus
+Amoris_).--This book, which was written before 1372, is believed by the
+Benedictines of Wisques, the latest and most learned of Ruysbroeck's
+editors, to complete the trilogy of works addressed to Dame Margaret van
+Meerbeke. It traces the soul's ascent to the height of Divine love by way
+of the characteristic virtues of asceticism, under the well-known
+medi�val image of the 'ladder of perfection' or 'stairway of love'--a
+metaphor, originating in Jacob's Dream, which had already served St.
+Benedict, Richard of St. Victor, St. Bonaventura and many others as a
+useful diagram of the mystic way. Originality of form, however, is the
+last thing we should look for in Ruysbroeck's works. He pours his strange
+wine into any vessel that comes to hand. As often his most sublime or
+amazing utterances originate in commentaries upon some familiar text, or
+the deepest truths are hidden under the most grotesque similitudes; so
+this well-worn metaphor gives him the opportunity for some of his finest
+descriptions of the soul's movement to that transmutation in which all
+ardent spirits 'become as live coals in the fire of Infinite Love.' This
+book, in which the influence of St. Bernard is strongly marked, contains
+some beautiful passages on the mystic life considered as a 'heavenly
+song' of faithfulness and love, which "Christ our Cantor and our Choragus
+has sung from the beginning of things," and which every Christian soul
+must learn.
+
+9. The Book of the Sparkling Stone (_De Calculo, sive de Perfectione
+Filiorum Dei_).--This priceless work is said to have been written by
+Ruysbroeck at the request of a hermit, who wished for further light on
+the high matters of which it treats. It contains the finest flower of his
+thought, and shows perhaps more clearly than any other of his writings
+the mark of direct inspiration. Here again the scaffolding on which he
+builds is almost as old as Christian mysticism itself: that three-fold
+division of men into the 'faithful servants, secret friends, and hidden
+sons' of God, which descended through the centuries from Clement of
+Alexandria. But the tower which he raises with its help ascends to
+heights unreached by any other writer: to the point at which man is given
+the supreme gift of the Sparkling Stone, or Nature of Christ, the goal of
+human transcendence. I regard the ninth and tenth chapters of _The
+Sparkling Stone_--'How we may become Hidden Sons of God and live the
+Contemplative Life,' and 'How we, though one with God, must eternally
+remain other than Him'--as the high-water mark of mystical literature.
+Nowhere else do we find such a marvellous combination of wide and soaring
+vision with the most delicate and intimate psychological analysis. The
+old mystic, sitting under his friendly tree, seems here to be gazing at
+and reporting to us the final secrets of that eternal world, where "the
+Incomprehensible Light enfolds and penetrates us, as the air is
+penetrated by the light of the sun." There he tastes and apprehends, in
+'an unfathomable seeing and beholding,' the inbreathing and the
+outbreathing of the Love of God--that double movement which controls the
+universe; yet knows, along with this great cosmic vision, that intimate
+and searching communion in which "the Beloved and the Lover are immersed
+wholly in love, and each is all to the other in possession and in rest."
+
+10. The Book of Supreme Truth (called in some collections _The Book of
+Retractations_, and by Surius, _Samuel_.)--This is the tract written by
+Ruysbroeck, at the request of Gerard Naghel, to explain certain obscure
+passages in _The Book of the Kingdom of God's Lovers_. In it he is
+specially concerned to make clear the vital distinction between his
+doctrine of the soul's union with God--a union in which the primal
+distinction between Creator and created is never overpassed--and the
+pantheistic doctrine of complete absorption in Him, with cessation of all
+effort and striving, preached by the heretical sects whose initiates
+claim to 'be God.' By the time that this book was written, careless
+readers had already charged Ruysbroeck with these pantheist tendencies
+which he abhorred and condemned; and here he sets out his defence. He
+discusses also the three degrees of union with God which correspond to
+the 'three lives' of the growing soul: union by means of sacraments and
+good deeds; union achieved in contemplative prayer 'without means,' where
+the soul learns its double vocation of action and fruition; and the
+highest union of all, where the spirit which has swung pendulum-like
+between the temporal and eternal worlds, achieves its equilibrium and
+dwells wholly in God, 'drunk with love, and sunk in the Dark Light.'
+
+11. The Twelve B�guines (_De Vera Contemplatione_).--This is a long,
+composite book of eighty-four chapters, which apparently consists of at
+least three distinct treatises of different dates. The first, _The Twelve
+B�guines_, which ends with chapter xvi., contains the longest consecutive
+example of Ruysbroeck's poetic method; its first eight chapters being
+written in irregular rhymed verse. It is believed to be one of his last
+compositions. Its doctrine differs little from that already set forth in
+his earlier works; though nowhere, perhaps, is the development of the
+spiritual consciousness described with greater subtlety. The soul's
+communion with and feeding on the Divine Nature in the Eucharist and in
+contemplative prayer; its acquirement of the art of introversion; the Way
+of Contemplation with its four modes, paralleled by the Way of Love with
+its four modes; these lead up to the perfect union of the spirit with God
+"in one love and one fruition with Him, fulfilled in everlasting bliss."
+The seventeenth chapter begins a new treatise, with a description of the
+Active Life on Ruysbroeck's usual lines; and at the thirtieth there is
+again a complete change of subject, introducing a mystical and symbolic
+interpretation of the science of astronomy. This section, so unlike his
+later writings, somewhat resembles _The Spiritual Tabernacle_, and may
+perhaps be a work of the same period. A collection of Meditations upon
+the Passion of Christ, arranged according to the Seven Hours of the Roman
+Breviary (capp. lxxiii. to end), completes the book; and also the tale of
+Ruysbroeck's authentic works. A critical list of the reprints and
+translations in which these may best be studied will be found in the
+Bibliographical Note.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III
+                          HIS DOCTRINE OF GOD
+
+
+  My words are strange; but those who love will understand.
+
+                                      The Mirror of Eternal Salvation.
+
+Mystical writers are of two kinds. One kind, of which St. Teresa is
+perhaps the supreme type, deals almost wholly with the personal and
+interior experiences of the soul in the states of contemplation, and the
+psychological rules governing those states; above all, with the emotional
+reactions of the self to the impact of the Divine. This kind of
+mystic--whom William James accused, with some reason, of turning the
+soul's relation with God into a 'duet'--makes little attempt to describe
+the ultimate Object of the self's love and desire, the great movements of
+the spiritual world; for such description, the formul� of existing
+theology are felt to be enough. Visions of Christ, experiences of the
+Blessed Trinity--these are sufficient names for the personal and
+impersonal aspects of that Reality with which the contemplative seeks to
+unite. But the other kind of mystic--though possibly and indeed usually
+as orthodox in his beliefs, as ardent in his love--cannot, on the one
+hand, remain within the circle of these subjective and personal
+conceptions, and, on the other, content himself with the label which
+tradition has affixed to the Thing that he has known. He may not reject
+the label, but neither does he confuse it with the Thing. He has the wide
+vision, the metaphysical passion of the philosopher and the poet; and in
+his work he is ever pressing towards more exact description, more
+suggestive and evocative speech. The symbols which come most naturally to
+him are usually derived from the ideas of space and of wonder; not from
+those of human intimacy and love. In him the intellect is active as well
+as the heart; sometimes, more active. Plotinus is an extreme example of
+mysticism of this type.
+
+The greatest mystics, however, whether in the East or in the West, are
+possessed of a vision and experience of God so deep and rich that it
+embraces at once the infinite and the intimate aspects of Reality;
+illuminating those religious concepts which are, as it were, an artistic
+reconstruction of the Transcendent, and at the same time having contact
+with that vast region above and beyond reason whence come the fragmentary
+intimations of Reality crystallised in the formul� of faith. For them, as
+for St. Augustine, God is both near and far; and the paradox of
+transcendent-immanent Reality is a self-evident if an inexpressible
+truth. They swing between hushed adoration and closest communion, between
+the divine ignorance of the intellect lifted up into God and the divine
+certitude of the heart in which He dwells; and give us by turns a
+subjective and psychological, an objective and metaphysical, reading of
+spiritual experience. Ruysbroeck is a mystic of this type. The span of
+his universe can include--indeed demand--both the concept of that Abyss
+of Pure Being where all distinctions are transcended, and the soul is
+immersed in the 'dark light' of the One, and the distinctively Christian
+and incarnational experience of loving communion with and through the
+Person of Christ. For him the ladder of contemplation is firmly planted
+in the bed-rock of human character--goes the whole way from the heart of
+man to the Essence of God--and every stage of it has importance for the
+eager and ascending soul. Hence, when he seems to rush out to the
+farthest limits of the cosmos, he still remains within the circle of
+Catholic ideas; and is at once ethical and metaphysical, intensely
+sacramental and intensely transcendental too.
+
+Nor is this result obtained--as it sometimes seems to be, for instance,
+in such a visionary as Angela of Foligno--by a mere heaping up of the
+various and inconsistent emotional reactions of the self. There is a
+fundamental orderliness in the Ruysbroeckian universe which, though it
+may be difficult to understand, and often impossible for him to express
+without resort to paradox, yet reveals itself to careful analysis. He
+tries hard to describe, or at least suggest, it to us, because he is a
+mystic of an apostolic type. Even where he is dealing with the soul's
+most ineffable experiences and seems to hover over that Abyss which is
+'beyond Reason,' stammering and breaking into wild poetry in the
+desperate attempt to seize the unseizable truth he is ever intent on
+telling us how these things may be actualised, this attitude attained by
+other men. The note is never, as with many subjective visionaries, "_I_
+have seen," but always "_We_ shall or may see."
+
+Now such an objective mystic as this, who is not content with retailing
+his private experiences and ecstasies, but accepts the great vocation of
+revealer of Reality, is called upon to do certain things. He must give
+us, not merely a static picture of Eternity, but also a dynamic 'reading
+of life'; and of a life more extended than that which the moralist, or
+even the philosopher, offers to interpret. He must not only tell us what
+he thinks about the universe, and in particular that ultimate Spiritual
+Reality which all mysticism discerns within or beyond the flux. He must
+also tell us what he thinks of man, that living, moving, fluid
+spirit-thing: his reactions to this universe and this Reality, the
+satisfaction which it offers to his thought, will and love, the
+obligations laid upon him in respect of it. We, on our part, must try to
+understand what he tells us of these things; for he is, as it were, an
+organ developed by the race for this purpose--a tentacle pushed out
+towards the Infinite, to make, in our name and in our interest, fresh
+contacts with Reality. He performs for us some of the functions of the
+artist extending our universe, the pioneer cutting our path, the hunter
+winning food for our souls.
+
+The clue to the universe of such a mystic will always be the vision or
+idea which he has of the Nature of God; and there we must begin, if we
+would find our way through the tangle of his thought. From this Centre
+all else branches out, and to this all else must conform, if it is to
+have for him realness and life; for truth, as Aquinas teaches, is simply
+the reality of things as they are in God. We begin, then, our exploration
+of Ruysbroeck's doctrine by trying to discover the character of his
+vision of the Divine Nature, and man's relation with it.
+
+That vision is so wide, deep and searching, that only by resort to the
+language of opposites, by perpetual alternations of spatial and personal,
+metaphysical and passionate speech, is he able to communicate it to us.
+His fortunate and profound acquaintance with the science of theology--his
+contact through it with the formul� of Christian Platonism--has given him
+the framework on which he stretches out his wonderful and living picture
+of the Infinite. This picture is personal to himself, the fruit of a
+direct and vivid inspiration; not so the terms by which it is
+communicated. These for the most part are the common property of
+Christian theology; though here used with a consummate skill, often with
+an apparent originality. Especially from St. Augustine, Dionysius the
+Areopagite, Richard of St. Victor, St. Bernard and the more orthodox
+utterances of his own immediate predecessor, Meister Eckhart--sometimes
+too from his contemporaries, Suso and Tauler--has he taken the
+intellectual concepts, the highly-charged poetic metaphors, in which his
+perceptions are enshrined. So close does he keep to these masters, so
+frequent are his borrowings, that almost every page of his writings might
+be glossed from their works. It is one of the most astonishing features
+of the celebrated and astonishing essay of M. Maeterlinck that, bent on
+vindicating the inspiration of his 'simple and ignorant monk,' he
+entirely fails to observe the traditional character of the formul� which
+express it. No student of the mystics will deny the abundant inspiration
+by which Ruysbroeck was possessed; but this inspiration is spiritual, not
+intellectual. The truth was told to him in the tongue of angels, and he
+did his best to translate it into the tongue of the Church; perpetually
+reminding us, as he did so, how great was the difference between vision
+and description, how clumsy and inadequate those concepts and images
+wherewith the artist-seer tried to tell his love.
+
+This distinction, which the reader of Ruysbroeck should never forget, is
+of primary importance in connection with his treatment of the Nature of
+God; where the disparity between the thing known and the thing said is
+inevitably at a maximum. The high nature of the Godhead, he says, in a
+string of suggestive and paradoxical images, to which St. Paul, Dionysius
+and Eckhart have all contributed, is, in itself, "Simplicity and
+One-foldness; inaccessible height and fathomless deep; incomprehensible
+breadth and eternal length; a dim silence, and a wild desert"--oblique,
+suggestive, musical language which enchants rather than informs the soul;
+opens the door to experience, but does not convey any accurate knowledge
+of the Imageless Truth, "Now we may experience many wonders in that
+fathomless Godhead; but although, because of the coarseness of the human
+intellect, when we would describe such things outwardly, we must use
+images, in truth that which is inwardly perceived and beheld is nought
+else but a Fathomless and Unconditioned Good."[6]
+
+Yet this primal Reality, this ultimately indivisible One, has for human
+consciousness a two-fold character; and though for the intuition of the
+mystic its fruition is a synthetic experience, it must in thought be
+analysed if it is ever to be grasped. God, as known by man, exhibits in
+its perfection the dual property of Love; on the one hand active,
+generative, creative; on the other hand a still and ineffable possession
+or _Fruition_--one of the master-words of Ruysbroeck's thought. He is,
+then, the Absolute One, in whom the antithesis of Eternity and Time, of
+Being and Becoming, is resolved; both static and dynamic, transcendent
+and immanent, impersonal and personal, undifferentiated and
+differentiated; Eternal Rest and Eternal Work, the Unmoved Mover, yet
+Movement itself. "Although in our way of seeing we give God many names,
+His nature is One."
+
+He transcends the storm of succession, yet is the inspiring spirit of the
+flux. According to His fruitful nature, "He works without ceasing, for He
+is Pure Act"--a reminiscence of Aristotle which seems strange upon the
+lips of the 'ignorant monk.' He is the omnipotent and ever-active Creator
+of all things; 'an immeasurable Flame of Love' perpetually breathing
+forth His energetic Life in new births of being and new floods of grace,
+and drawing in again all creatures to Himself. Yet this statement
+defines, not His being, but one manifestation of His being. When the soul
+pierces beyond this 'fruitful' nature to His simple essence--and 'simple'
+is here and throughout to be understood in its primal meaning of
+'synthetic'--He is that absolute and abiding Reality which seems to man
+Eternal Rest, the 'Deep Quiet of the Godhead,' the 'Abyss,' the 'Dim
+Silence'; and which we can taste indeed but never know. There, 'all
+lovers lose themselves' in the consummation of that experience at which
+our fragmentary intuitions hint.
+
+The active and fertile aspect of the Divine Nature is manifested in
+differentiation: for Ruysbroeck the Catholic, in the Trinity of Persons,
+as defined by Christian theology. The static and absolute aspect is the
+'calm and glorious Unity of the Godhead' which he finds beyond and within
+the Trinity, "the fathomless Abyss that _is_ the Being of God,"--an idea,
+familiar to Indian mysticism and implicit in Christian Neoplatonism,
+which governed all Meister Eckhart's speculations upon the Divine Nature.
+There is, says Ruysbroeck in one of his most Eckhartian passages, "a
+distinction and differentiation, according to our reason, between God and
+the Godhead, between action and rest. The fruitful nature of the Persons,
+of whom is the Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity, ever worketh in a
+living differentiation. But the Simple Being of God, according to the
+nature thereof, is an Eternal Rest of God and of all created things."[7]
+
+In differentiating the three great aspects of the Divine Life, as known
+by the love and thought of man, Ruysbroeck keeps close to formal
+theology; though investing its academic language with new and deep
+significance, and constantly reminding us that such language, even at its
+best, can never get beyond the region of image and similitude or provide
+more than an imperfect reflection of the One who is 'neither This nor
+That.' On his lips, credal definitions are perpetually passing over from
+the arid region of theological argument to the fruitful one of spiritual
+experience. There they become songs, as 'new' as the song heard by the
+Apocalyptist; real channels of light, which show the mind things that it
+never guessed before. For the 're-born' man they have a fresh and
+immortal meaning; because that 'river of grace,' of which he perpetually
+speaks as pouring into the heart opened towards the Infinite,
+transfigures and irradiates them. Thus the illuminated mind knows in the
+Father, not a confusingly anthropomorphic metaphor, but the uniquely
+vital Source and unconditioned Origin of all things "in whom our life and
+being is begun." He is the "Strength and Power, Creator, Mover, Keeper,
+Beginning and End, Cause and Existence of all creatures."[8] Further, the
+intuition of the mystic discerns in the Son the Eternal Word and
+fathomless Wisdom and Truth perpetually generated of the Father, shining
+forth in the world of conditions: the Pattern or Archetype of creation
+and of life, the image of God which the universe reflects back before the
+face of the Absolute, the Eternal Rule incarnate in Christ. And this same
+'light wherein we see God' also shows to the enlightened mind the
+veritable character of the Holy Spirit; the Incomprehensible Love and
+Generosity of the Divine Nature, which emanates in an eternal procession
+from the mutual contemplation of Father and Son, "for these two Persons
+are always hungry for love." The Holy Spirit is the source of the Divine
+vitality immanent in the universe. It is an outflowing torrent of Good
+which streams through all heavenly spirits; it is a Flame of Fire that
+consumes all in the One; it is also the Spark of transcendence latent in
+man's soul. The Spirit is the personal, Grace the impersonal, side of
+that energetic Love which enfolds and penetrates all life; and "all this
+may be perceived and beheld, inseparable and without division, in the
+Simple Nature of the Godhead."[9]
+
+The relations which form the character of these Three Persons exist in an
+eternal distinction for that world of conditions wherein the human soul
+is immersed, and where things happen 'in some wise.' There, from the
+embrace of the Father and Son and the outflowing of the Spirit in 'waves
+of endless love,' all created things are born; and God, by His grace and
+His death, recreates them, and adorns them with love and goodness, and
+draws them back to their source. This is the circling course of the
+Divine life-process 'from goodness, through goodness, to goodness,'
+described by Dionysius the Areopagite. But beyond and above this plane of
+Divine differentiation is the superessential world, transcending all
+conditions, inaccessible to thought--"the measureless solitude of the
+Godhead, where God possesses Himself in joy." This is the ultimate world
+of the mystic, discerned by intuition and love "in a simple seeing,
+beyond reason and without consideration." There, within the 'Eternal
+Now,' without either before or after, released from the storm of
+succession, things happen indeed, 'yet in no wise,' There, "we can speak
+no more of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, nor of any creature; but only of
+one Being, which is the very substance of the Divine Persons. There were
+we all one before our creation; for this is our _superessence_.... There
+the Godhead is, in simple essence, without activity; Eternal Rest,
+Unconditioned Dark, the Nameless Being, the Superessence of all created
+things, and the simple and infinite Bliss of God and of all Saints."[10]
+
+Ruysbroeck here brings us to the position of Dante in the last canto of
+the _Paradiso_, when, transcending those partial apprehensions of Reality
+which are figured by the River of Becoming and the Rose of Beatitude, he
+penetrated to the swift vision of "that Eternal Light which only in
+Itself abideth"--discerned best by man under the image of the three
+circles, yet in its 'profound and clear substance' indivisibly One.
+
+"The simple light of this Being is limitless in its immensity, and
+transcending form, includes and embraces the unity of the Divine Persons
+and the soul with all its faculties; and this to such a point that it
+envelopes and irradiates _both_ the natural tendency of our ground
+[_i.e._ its dynamic movement to God--the River] and the fruitive
+adherence of God and all those who are united with Him in this Light
+[_i.e._ Eternal Being--the Rose]. And this is the union of God and the
+souls that love Him."[11]
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IV
+                          HIS DOCTRINE OF MAN
+
+
+  That which was begun by Grace, is accomplished by Grace and Free-will;
+  so that they work mixedly not separately, simultaneously not
+  successively, in each and all of their processes.
+
+                                                          St. Bernard.
+
+The concept of the Nature of God which we have traced through its three
+phases--out from the unchanging One to the active Persons and back to the
+One again--gives us a clue to Ruysbroeck's idea of the nature and destiny
+of man. In man, both aspects of Divine Reality, active and fruitive, are
+or should be reflected; for God is the 'Living Pattern of Creation' who
+has impressed His image on each soul, and in every adult spirit the
+character of that image must be brought from the hiddenness and realised.
+Destined to be wholly real, though yet in the making, there is in man a
+latent Divine likeness, a 'spark' of the primal fire. Created for union
+with God, already in Eternity that union is a fact.
+
+"The creature is in Brahma and Brahma is in the creature; they are ever
+distinct yet ever united," says the Indian mystic. Were it translated
+into Christian language, it is probable that this thought--which does
+_not_ involve pantheism--would have been found acceptable by Ruysbroeck;
+for the interpenetration yet eternal distinction of the human and Divine
+spirits is the central fact of his universe. Man, he thinks, is already
+related in a threefold manner to his Infinite Source; for "we have our
+being in Him as the Father, we contemplate Him as does the Son, we
+ceaselessly tend to return to Him as does the Spirit."
+
+"The first property of the soul is a _naked being_, devoid of all image.
+Thereby do we resemble, and are united to, the Father and His nature
+Divine." This is the 'ground of the soul' perpetually referred to by
+mystics of the Eckhartian School; the bare, still place to which
+consciousness retreats in introversion, image of the static and absolute
+aspect of Reality. "The second property might be called the _higher
+understanding_ of the soul. It is a mirror of light, wherein we receive
+the Son of God, the Eternal Truth. By this light we are like unto Him;
+but in the act of receiving, we are one with Him." This is the power of
+knowing Divine things by intuitive comprehension: man's fragmentary share
+in the character of the Logos, or Wisdom of God. "The third property we
+call the _spark_ of the soul. It is the inward and natural tendency of
+the soul towards its Source; and here do we receive the Holy Spirit, the
+Charity of God. By this inward tendency we are like the Holy Spirit; but
+in the act of receiving, we become one spirit and one love with God."[12]
+Here the Divine image shows itself in its immanent and dynamic aspect, as
+the 'internal push' which drives Creation back to the Father's heart.
+
+The soul then is, as Julian of Norwich said, "made Trinity, like to the
+unmade Blessed Trinity." Reciprocally, there is in the Eternal World the
+uncreated Pattern or Archetype of man--his 'Platonic idea.' Now man must
+bring from its hiddenness the latent likeness, the germ of Divine
+humanity that is in him, and develop it until it realises the 'Platonic
+idea'; achieving thus the implicit truth of his own nature as it exists
+in the mind of God. This, according to Ruysbroeck, is the whole art and
+object of the spiritual life; this actualisation of the eternal side of
+human nature, atrophied in the majority of men--the innate Christliness
+in virtue of which we have power to become 'Sons' of God.
+
+"Lo! thus are we all one with God in our Eternal Archetype, which is His
+Wisdom who hath put on the nature of us all. And although we are already
+one with Him therein by that putting on of our nature, we must also be
+like God in grace and virtue, if we would find ourselves one with Him in
+our Eternal Archetype, which is Himself."[13]
+
+Under the stimulus of Divine Love perpetually beating in on him, feeding
+perpetually on the substance of God, perpetually renewed and 'reborn' on
+to ever higher levels through the vivifying contact of reality, man must
+grow up into the 'superessential life' of complete unity with the
+Transcendent. There, not only the triune aspect but the dual character of
+God is reproduced in him, reconciled in a synthesis beyond the span of
+thought; and he becomes 'deiform'--both active and fruitive, 'ever at
+work and ever at rest'--at once a denizen of Eternity and of Time. Every
+aspect of his being--love, intellect and will--is to be invaded and
+enhanced by the new life-giving life; it shall condition and enrich his
+correspondences with the sense-world as well as with the world of soul.
+
+Man is not here invited to leave the active life for the contemplative,
+but to make the active life perfect within the contemplative; carrying up
+these apparent opposites to a point at which they become one. It is one
+of Ruysbroeck's characteristics that he, as few others, followed
+mysticism out to this, its last stage; where it issues in a balanced,
+divine-human life. The energetic Love of God, which flows perpetually
+forth from the Abyss of Being to the farthest limits of the universe,
+enlightening and quickening where it goes, and 'turns again home' as a
+strong tide drawing all things to their Origin, here attains equilibrium;
+the effort of creation achieves its aim.
+
+Now this aim, this goal, is already realised within God's nature, for
+there all perfection eternally Is. But to man it is super-nature; to
+achieve it he must transcend the world of conditions in which he lives
+according to the flesh, and grow up to fresh levels of life. Under the
+various images of sonship, marriage, and transmutation, this is the view
+of human destiny which Ruysbroeck states again and again: the creative
+evolution of the soul. His insistence on the completeness of the Divine
+Union to which the soul attains in this final phase, his perpetual resort
+to the dangerous language of deification in the effort towards describing
+it, seems at first sight to expose him to the charge of pantheism; and,
+as a matter of fact, has done so in the past. Yet he is most careful to
+guard himself at every point against this misinterpretation of his vision
+of life. In his view, by its growth towards God, personality is not lost,
+but raised to an ever higher plane. Even in that ecstatic fruition of
+Eternal Life in which the spirit passes above the state of Union to the
+state of Unity, and beyond the Persons to the One, the 'eternal
+otherness' of Creator and created is not overpassed; but, as in the
+perfect fulfilment of love, utter fusion and clear differentiation
+mysteriously co-exist. It is, he says, not a mergence but a 'mutual
+inhabitation.' In his attempts towards the description of this state, he
+borrows the language of St. Bernard, most orthodox of the mystics;
+language which goes back to primitive Christian times. The Divine light,
+love and being, he tells us, penetrates and drenches the surrendered,
+naked, receptive soul, 'as fire does the iron, as sunlight does the air';
+and even as the sunshine and the air, the iron and the fire, so are these
+two terms distinct yet united. "The iron doth not become fire nor the
+fire iron; but each retaineth its substance and its nature. So likewise
+the spirit of man doth not become God, but is God-formed, and knoweth
+itself breadth and length and height and depth."[14] Again, "this union
+is _in_ God, through grace and our homeward-tending love. Yet even here
+does the creature feel a distinction and otherness between itself and God
+in its inward ground."[15] The dualistic relation of lover and beloved,
+though raised to another power and glory, is an eternal one.
+
+I have spoken of Ruysbroeck's concept of God, his closely related concept
+of man's soul; the threefold diagram of Reality within which these terms
+are placed, the doctrine of transcendence he deduced therefrom. But such
+a diagram cannot express to us the rich content, the deeply personal
+character of his experience and his knowledge. It is no more than a map
+of the living land he has explored, a formal picture of the Living One
+whom he has seen without sight. For him the landscape lived and flowered
+in endless variety of majesty and sweetness; the Person drew near in
+mysterious communion, and gave to him as food His very life.
+
+All that this meant, and must mean, for our deeper knowledge of Reality
+and of man's intuitive contacts with the Divine Life, we must find if we
+can in his doctrine of Love. Love is the 'very self-hood' of God, says
+Ruysbroeck in strict Johannine language. His theology is above all the
+theology of the Holy Spirit, the immanent Divine Energy and Love. It is
+Love which breaks down the barrier between finite and infinite life. But
+Love, as he understands it, has little in common with the feeling-state
+to which many of the female mystics have given that august name. For him,
+it is hardly an emotional word at all, and never a sentimental one;
+rather the title of a mighty force, a holy energy that fills the
+universe--the essential activity of God. Sometimes he describes it under
+the antique imagery of Light; imagery which is more than a metaphor, and
+is connected with that veritable consciousness of enhanced radiance, as
+well in the outer as in the inner world, experienced by the 'illuminated'
+mystic. Again it is the 'life-giving Life,' hidden in God and the
+substance of our souls, which the self finds and appropriates; the whole
+Johannine trilogy brought into play, to express its meaning for heart,
+intellect and will. This Love, in fact, is the dynamic power which St.
+Augustine compared with gravitation, 'drawing all things to their own
+place,' and which Dante saw binding the multiplicity of the universe into
+one. All Ruysbroeck's images for it turn on the idea of force. It is a
+raging fire, a storm, a flood. He speaks of it in one great passage as
+'playing like lightning' between God and the soul.
+
+Whoever will look at William Blake's great picture of the Creation of
+Adam, may gain some idea of the terrific yet infinitely compassionate
+character inherent in this concept of Divine Love: the agony, passion,
+beauty, sternness, and pity of the primal generating force. This love is
+eternally giving and taking--it is its very property, says Ruysbroeck,
+'ever to give and ever to receive'--pouring its dower of energy into the
+soul, and drawing out from that soul new vitality, new love, new
+surrender. 'Hungry love,' 'generous love,' 'stormy love,' he calls it
+again and again. Streaming out from the heart of Reality, the impersonal
+aspect of the very Spirit of God, its creative touch evokes in man, once
+he becomes conscious of it, an answering storm of love. The whole of our
+human growth within the spiritual order is conditioned by the quality of
+this response; by the will, the industry, the courage, with which man
+accepts his part in the Divine give-and-take.
+
+"That measureless Love which is God Himself, dwells in the pure deeps of
+our spirit, like a burning brazier of coal. And it throws forth brilliant
+and fiery sparks which stir and enkindle heart and senses, will and
+desire, and all the powers of the soul, with a fire of love; in a storm,
+a rage, a measureless fury of love. These be the weapons with which we
+fight against the terrible and immense Love of God, who would consume all
+loving spirits and swallow them in Himself. Love arms us with its own
+gifts, and clarifies our reason, and commands, counsels and advises us to
+oppose Him, to fight against Him, and to maintain against Him our right
+to love, so long as we may."[16] In the spiritual realm, giving and
+receiving are one act, for God is an 'ocean that ebbs and flows'; and it
+is only by opposing love to love, by self-donation to His mysterious
+movements, that the soul appropriates new force, invigorating and
+fertilising it afresh. Thus, and thus alone, it lays hold on eternal
+life; sometimes sacramentally, under external images and accidents;
+sometimes mystically, in the communion of deep prayer. "Every time we
+think with love of the Well-beloved, He is anew our meat and
+drink"--more, we too are His, for the love between God and man is a
+mutual love and desire. As we lay hold upon the Divine Life, devour and
+assimilate it, so in that very act the Divine Life devours us, and knits
+us up into the mystical Body of Reality. "Thou shalt not change Me into
+thine own substance, as thou dost change the food of thy flesh, but thou
+shalt be changed into Mine," said the Spirit of God to St. Augustine; and
+his Flemish descendant announces this same mysterious principle of life
+with greater richness and beauty.
+
+"It is the nature of love ever to give and to take, to love and to be
+loved, and these two things meet in whomsoever loves. Thus the love of
+Christ is both avid and generous ... as He devours us, so He would feed
+us. If He absorbs us utterly into Himself, in return He gives us His very
+self again."[17]
+
+This is but another aspect of that great 'inbreathing and outbreathing'
+of the Divine nature which governs the relation between the Creator and
+the flux of life; for Ruysbroeck's Christological language always carries
+with it the idea of the Logos, the Truth and Wisdom of Deity, as revealed
+in the world of conditions,--not only in the historical Jesus, but also
+in the eternal generation of the Son. St. Francis of Assisi had said that
+Divine Love perpetually swings between and reconciles two mighty
+opposites: "What is God? and, What am I?" For Ruysbroeck, too, that Love
+is a unifying power, manifested in motion itself, "an outgoing
+attraction, which drags us out of ourselves and calls us to be melted and
+naughted in the Unity";[18] and all his deepest thoughts of it are
+expressed in terms of movement.
+
+The relation between the soul and the Absolute, then, is a love
+relation--as in fact all the mystics have declared it to be. Man, that
+imperfectly real thing, has an inherent tendency towards God, the Only
+Reality. Already possessed of a life within the world of conditions, his
+unquiet heart reaches out towards a world that transcends conditions. How
+shall he achieve that world? In the same way, says Ruysbroeck, as the
+child achieves the world of manhood: by the double method of growth and
+education, the balanced action of the organism and its environment. In
+its development and its needs, spirit conforms to the great laws of
+natural life. Taught by the voices of the forest and that inward Presence
+who 'spoke without utterance' in his soul, he is quick to recognise the
+close parallels between nature and grace. His story of the mystical life
+is the story of birth, growth, adolescence, maturity: a steady progress,
+dependent on food and nurture, on the 'brooks of grace' which flow from
+the Living Fountain and bring perpetual renovation to help the wise
+disciplines and voluntary choices that brace and purge our expanding will
+and love.
+
+Ruysbroeck's universe, like that of Kabir and certain other great
+mystics, has three orders: Becoming, Being, God. Parallel with this, he
+distinguishes three great stages in the soul's achievement of complete
+reality: the Active, the Interior, and the Superessential Life, sometimes
+symbolised by the conditions of Servant, Friend, and Son of God. These,
+however, must be regarded rather as divisions made for convenience of
+description, answering to those divisions which thought has made in the
+indivisible fact of the universe, than as distinctions inherent in the
+reality of things. The spiritual life has the true character of duration;
+it is one indivisible tendency and movement towards our source and home,
+in which the past is never left behind, but incorporated in the larger
+present.
+
+In the Active Life, the primary interest is ethical. Man here purifies
+his normal human correspondences with the world of sense, approximates
+his will to the Will of God. Here, his contacts with the Divine take
+place within that world of sense, and 'by means.' In the Interior Life,
+the interest embraces the intellect, upon which is now conferred the
+vision of Reality. As the Active Life corresponded to the world of
+Becoming, this Life corresponds with the supersensual world of Being,
+where the self's contacts with the Divine take place 'without means.' In
+the Superessential Life, the self has transcended the intellectual plane
+and entered into the very heart of Reality; where she does not behold,
+but has fruition of, God in one life and one love. The obvious parallel
+between these three stages and the traditional 'threefold way' of
+Purgation, Illumination and Union is, however, not so exact as it
+appears. Many of the characters of the Unitive Way are present in
+Ruysbroeck's 'second life'; and his 'third life' takes the soul to
+heights of fruition which few amongst even the greatest unitive mystics
+have attained or described.
+
+(A) When man first feels upon his soul the touch of the Divine Light, at
+once, and in a moment of time, his will is changed; turned in the
+direction of Reality and away from unreal objects of desire. He is, in
+fact, 'converted' in the highest and most accurate sense of that ill-used
+word. Seeing the Divine, he wants the Divine, though he may not yet
+understand his own craving; for the scrap of Divine Life within him has
+emerged into the field of consciousness, and recognises its home. Then,
+as it were, God and the soul rush together, and of their encounter
+springs love. This is the New Birth; the 'bringing forth of the Son in
+the ground of the soul,' its baptism in the fountain of the Life-giving
+Life.
+
+The new force and tendency received into the self begins to act on the
+periphery, and thence works towards the centre of existence. First, then,
+it attacks the ordinary temporal life in all its departments. It pours in
+fresh waves of energy which confer new knowledge and hatred of sin,
+purify character, bring fresh virtues into being. It rearranges the
+consciousness about new and higher centres, gathering up all the
+faculties into one simple state of 'attention to God.' Thence results the
+highest life which is attainable by 'nature.' In it, man is united with
+God 'through means,' acts in obedience to the dictates of Divine Love and
+in accordance with the tendency of the Divine Will, and becomes the
+'Faithful Servant' of the Transcendent Order. Plainly, the Active Life,
+thus considered, has much in common with the 'Purgative Way' of ascetic
+science.
+
+(B) When this growth has reached its term, when "Free-will wears the
+crown of Charity, and rules as a King over the soul," the awakened and
+enhanced consciousness begins to crave a closer contact with the
+spiritual: that unmediated and direct contact which is the essence of the
+Contemplative or Interior Life, and is achieved in the deep state of
+recollection called 'unitive prayer.' Here voluntary and purposive
+education takes its place by the side of organic development. The way
+called by most ascetic writers 'Illumination'--the state of 'proficient'
+in monastic parlance--includes the _training_ of the self in the
+contemplative art as well as its _growth_ in will and love. This training
+braces and purifies intellect, as the disciplines of the active life
+purified will and sense. It teaches introversion, or the turning inward
+of the attention from the distractions of the sense-world; the cleansing
+of the mirror of thought, thronged with confusing images; the production
+of that silence in which the music of the Infinite can be heard. Nor is
+the Active Life here left behind; it is carried up to, and included in,
+the new, deepened activities of the self, which are no longer ruled by
+the laws, but by the 'quickening counsels' of God.
+
+Of this new life, interior courage is a first necessity. It is no easy
+appropriation of supersensual graces, but a deeper entering into the
+mystery of life, a richer, more profound, participation in pain, effort,
+as well as joy. There must be no settling down into a comfortable sense
+of the Divine Presence, no reliance on the 'One Act'; but an incessant
+process of change, renewal, re-emergence. Sometimes Ruysbroeck appears to
+see this central stage in the spiritual life-process in terms of upward
+growth toward transcendent levels; sometimes in terms of recollection,
+the steadfast pressing inwards of consciousness towards that bare ground
+of the soul where it unites with immanent Reality, and finds the Divine
+Life surging up like a 'living fountain' from the deeps. This double way
+of conceiving one process is puzzling for us; but a proof that for
+Ruysbroeck no one concept could suggest the whole truth, and a useful
+reminder of the symbolic character of all these maps and itineraries of
+the spiritual life.
+
+As the sun grows in power with the passing seasons, so the soul now
+experiences a steady increase in the power and splendour of the Divine
+Light, as it ascends in the heavens of consciousness and pours its heat
+and radiance into all the faculties of man. The in-beating of this energy
+and light brings the self into the tempestuous heats of high summer, or
+full illumination--the 'fury of love,' most fertile and dangerous epoch
+of the spiritual year. Thence, obedient to those laws of movement, that
+'double rhythm of renunciation and love' which Kabir detected at the
+heart of the universal melody, it enters on a negative period of psychic
+fatigue and spiritual destitution; the 'dark night of the soul.' The sun
+descends in the heavens, the ardours of love grow cold. When this stage
+is fully established, says Ruysbroeck, the 'September of the soul' is
+come; the harvest and vintage--raw material of the life-giving
+Eucharist--is ripe. The flowering-time of spiritual joy and beauty is as
+nothing in its value for life compared with this still autumnal period of
+true fecundity, in which man is at last 'affirmed' in the spiritual life.
+
+This, then, is the curve of the self's growth. Side by side with it runs
+the other curve of deliberate training: the education by which our
+wandering attention, our diffused undisciplined consciousness, is
+sharpened and focussed upon Reality. This training is needed by intellect
+and feeling; but most of all by the _will_, which Ruysbroeck, like the
+great English mystics, regards as the gathering-point of personality, the
+'spiritual heart.' On every page of his writings the reference to that
+which the spiritual Light and Love do for man, is balanced by an
+insistence on that which man himself must do: the choices to be made, the
+'exercises' to be performed, the tension and effort which must
+characterise the mystic way until its last phase is reached. Morally,
+these exercises consist in progressive renunciations on the one hand and
+acceptances on the other 'for Love's sake'; intellectually, in
+introversion, that turning inwards and concentration of consciousness,
+the stripping off of all images and emptying of the mind, which is the
+psychological method whereby human consciousness transcends the
+conditioned universe to which it has become adapted, and enters the
+contemplative world. Man's attention to life is to change its character
+as he ascends the ladder of being. Therefore the old attachments must be
+cut before the new attachments can be formed. This is, of course, a
+commonplace of asceticism; and much of Ruysbroeck's teaching on
+detachment, self-naughting and contemplation, is indeed simply the
+standard doctrine of Christian asceticism seen through a temperament.
+
+When the self has grown up from the 'active' to the 'contemplative' state
+of consciousness, it is plain that his whole relation to his environment
+has changed. His world is grouped about a new centre. It now becomes the
+supreme business of intellect to 'gaze upon God,' the supreme business of
+love to stretch out towards Him. When these twin powers, under the
+regnancy of the enhanced and trained will, are set towards Reality, then
+the human creature has done his part in the setting up of the relation of
+the soul to its Source, and made it possible for the music of the
+Infinite to sound in him. "For this intellectual gazing and this
+stretching forth of love are two heavenly pipes, sounding without the
+need of tune or of notes; they ever go forward in that Eternal Life,
+neither straying aside nor returning backward again; and ever keeping
+harmony and concord with the Holy Church, for the Holy Spirit gives the
+wind that sings in them."[19] Observe, that _tension_ is here a condition
+of the right employment of both faculties, and ensures that the Divine
+music shall sound true; one of the many implicit contradictions of the
+quietist doctrine of spiritual limpness, which we find throughout
+Ruysbroeck's works.
+
+(C) When the twofold process of growth and education has brought the self
+to this perfection of attitude as regards the Spiritual Order--an
+attitude of true _union_, says Ruysbroeck, but not yet of the unthinkable
+_unity_ which is our goal--man has done all that he can do of himself.
+His 'Interior Life' is complete, and his being is united through grace
+with the Being of God, in a relation which is the faint image of the
+mutual relations of the Divine Persons; a conscious sonship, finding
+expression in the mutual interchange of the spirit of will and love. This
+existence is rooted in 'grace,' the unconditioned life-force,
+intermediary between ourselves and God,' as the active stage was rooted
+in 'nature.' Yet there is something beyond this. As beyond the Divine
+Persons there is the Superessential Unity of the Godhead, so beyond the
+plane of Being (_Wesen_) Ruysbroeck apprehends a reality which is 'more
+than Being' (_Overwesen_). Man's spirit, having relations with every
+grade of reality, has also in its 'fathomless ground' a potential
+relation with this superessential sphere; and until this be actualised he
+is not wholly real, nor wholly _deiform_. Ruysbroeck's most original
+contribution to the history of mysticism is his description of this
+supreme state; in which the human soul becomes truly free, and is made
+the 'hidden child' of God. Then only do we discern the glory of our
+full-grown human nature; when, participating fully in the mysterious
+double life of God, the twofold action of true love, we have perfect
+fruition of Him as Eternal Rest, and perfect sharing in that outgoing
+love which is His eternal Work: "God with God, one love and one life, in
+His eternal manifestation."[20]
+
+The consummation of the mystic way, then, represents not merely a state
+of ecstatic contemplation, escape from the stream of succession, the
+death of self-hood, joyous self-immersion in the Abyss; not merely the
+enormously enhanced state of creative activity and energetic love which
+the mystics call 'divine fecundity'; but _both_--the flux and reflux of
+supreme Reality. It is the synthesis of contemplation and action, of
+Being and Becoming: the discovery at last of a clue--inexpressible
+indeed, but really held and experienced--to the mystery which most deeply
+torments us, the link between our life of duration and the Eternal Life
+of God. This is the Seventh Degree of Love, "noblest and highest that can
+be realised in the life of time or of eternity."
+
+That process of enhancement whereby the self, in its upward progress,
+carries with it all that has been attained before, here finds its
+completion. The active life of Becoming, and the essential life of Being,
+are not all. "From beyond the Infinite the Infinite comes," said the
+Indian; and his Christian brother, in parallel terms, declares that
+beyond the Essence is the Superessence of God, His 'simple' or synthetic
+unity. It is for fruition of this that man is destined; yet he does not
+leave this world for that world, but knows them as one. Totally
+surrendered to the double current of the universe, the inbreathing and
+outbreathing of the Spirit of God, "his love and fruition live between
+labour and rest." He goes up and down the mountain of vision, a living
+willing tool wherewith God works. "Hence, to enter into restful fruition
+and come forth again in good works, and to remain ever one with God--this
+is the thing that I would say. Even as we open our fleshly eyes to see,
+and shut them again so quickly that we do not even feel it, thus we die
+into God, we live of God, and remain ever one with God. Therefore we must
+come forth in the activities of the sense-life, and again re-enter in
+love and cling to God; in order that we may ever remain one with Him
+without change."[21]
+
+All perfect lives, says Ruysbroeck, conform to this pattern, follow this
+curve; though such perfect lives are rare amongst men. They are the
+fruit, not of volition, but of vocation; of the mysterious operations of
+the Divine Light which--perpetually crying through the universe the
+"unique and fathomless word 'Behold! behold!'" and "therewith giving
+utterance to itself and all other things"--yet evokes only in some men an
+answering movement of consciousness, the deliberate surrender which
+conditions the new power of response and of growth. "To this divine
+vision but few men can attain, because of their own unfitness and because
+of the darkness of that Light whereby we see: and therefore no one shall
+thoroughly understand this perception by means of any scholarship, or by
+their own acuteness of comprehension. For all words, and all that men may
+learn and understand in a creaturely fashion, is foreign to this and far
+below the truth that I mean. To understand and lay hold of God as He is
+in Himself above all images--this is _to be God with God_, without
+intermediary or any difference that might become an intermediary or an
+obstacle. And therefore I beg each one, who can neither understand this,
+nor feel it by the way of spiritual union, that he be not grieved
+thereby, and let it be as it is."[22]
+
+I end this chapter by a reference to certain key-words frequent in
+Ruysbroeck's works, which are sometimes a source of difficulty to his
+readers. These words are nearly always his names for inward experiences.
+He uses them in a poetic and artistic manner, evocative rather than
+exact; and we, in trying to discover their meaning, must never forget the
+coloured fringe of suggestion which they carry for the mystic and the
+poet, and which is a true part of the message he intends them to convey.
+
+The first of these words is Fruition. Fruition, a concept which Eucken's
+philosophy has brought back into current thought, represents a total
+attainment, complete and permanent participation and possession. It is an
+absolute state, transcending all succession, and it is applied by
+Ruysbroeck to the absolute character of the spirit's life in God; which,
+though it seem to the surface consciousness a perpetually renewed
+encounter of love, is in its ground 'fruitive and unconditioned,' a
+timeless self-immersion in the Dark, the 'glorious and essential
+Oneness.' Thus he speaks of 'fruitive love,' 'fruitive possession'; as
+opposed to striving, dynamic love, partial, progressive and conditioned
+possession. Perfect contemplation and loving dependence are the eternal
+fruition of God': the Beatific Vision of theology. "Where we are one with
+God, without intermediary, beyond all separation; there is God our
+fruition and His own in an eternal and fathomless bliss."[23]
+
+Next perhaps in the power of provoking misunderstanding is the weight
+attached by Ruysbroeck to the adjective Simple. This word, which
+constantly recurs in his descriptions of spiritual states, always conveys
+the sense of wholeness, completeness, synthesis; not of poverty,
+thinness, subtraction. It is the white light in which all the colours of
+the spectrum are included and fused. 'Simple Union,' 'Simple
+Contemplation,' 'Simple Light'--all these mean the total undifferentiated
+act or perception from which our analytic minds subtract aspects. "In
+simplicity will I unite with the Simple One," said Kabir. So Ruysbroeck:
+"We behold His face in a simple seeing, beyond reason and without
+consideration."
+
+Another cause of difficulty to those unfamiliar with the mystics is the
+constant reference to Bareness or Nudity, especially in descriptions of
+the contemplative act. This is, of course, but one example of that
+negative method of suggestion--darkness, bareness, desolation, divine
+ignorance, the 'rich nothing,' the 'naked thought'--which is a stock
+device of mysticism, and was probably taken by Ruysbroeck from Dionysius
+the Areopagite. It represents, first, the bewildering emptiness and
+nakedness of consciousness when introduced into a universe that
+transcends our ordinary conceptual world; secondly, the necessity of such
+transcendence, of emptying the field of consciousness of 'every vain
+imagining,' if the self is to have contact with the Reality which these
+veil.
+
+With the distinction between Essence (_Wesen_) and Superessence
+(_Overwesen_) I have already dealt; and this will appear more clearly
+when we consider Ruysbroeck's 'second' and 'third' stages of the mystic
+life.
+
+There remains the great pair of opposites, fundamental for his thought,
+called in the Flemish vernacular _Wise_ and _Onwise_, and generally
+rendered by translators as 'Mode' and 'Modeless.' Wherever possible I
+have replaced these tasteless Latinisms by the Old English equivalents
+'in some wise' and 'in no wise,' occasionally by 'conditioned' and
+'unconditioned'; though perhaps the colloquial 'somehow' and 'nohow'
+would be yet more exactly expressive. Now this pair of opposites is
+psychological rather than metaphysical, and has to do with the
+characteristic phenomena of contemplation. It indicates the difference
+between the universe of the normal man, living as the servant or friend
+of God within the temporal order, and the universe of the true
+contemplative, the 'hidden child.' The knowledge and love of the first is
+a conditioned knowledge and love. Everything which happens to him happens
+'in some wise'; it has attachments within his conceptual world, is
+mediated to him by symbols and images which intellect can grasp. "The
+simple ascent into the Nude and the Unconditioned is unknown and unloved
+of him"; it is through and amongst his ordinary mental furniture that he
+obtains his contacts with Reality. But the knowledge and love of the
+second, his contacts, transcend the categories of thought. He has escaped
+alike from the tyrannies and comforts of the world of images, has made
+the 'ascent into the Nought,' where all _is_, yet 'in no wise.' "The
+power of the understanding is lifted up to that which is beyond all
+conditions, and its seeing is in no wise, being without manner, and it is
+neither thus nor thus, neither here nor there."[24] This is the direct,
+unmediated world of spiritual intuition; where the self touches a Reality
+that has not been passed through the filters of sense and thought. There
+man achieves a love, a vision, an activity which are 'wayless,' yet far
+more valid than anything that can be fitted into the framework of our
+conditioned world.
+
+  "In a place beyond uttermost place, in a track without shadow of trace,
+  Soul and body transcending, I live in the soul of my Loved One anew."
+
+Thus cries the great Sufi poet, Jalalu'ddin; and the suggestion which his
+words convey is perhaps as close as speech can come to what Ruysbroeck
+meant by _Onwise_. The change of consciousness which initiates man into
+this inner yet unbounded world--the world that is 'unwalled,' to use his
+own favourite metaphor--is the essence of contemplation; which consists,
+not in looking at strange mysteries, but in a movement to fresh levels,
+shut to the analytic intellect, open to adventurous love. There, without
+any amazement, the self can 'know in no wise' that which it can never
+understand.
+
+  "Contemplation is a knowing that is in no wise,
+  For ever dwelling above the Reason.
+  Never can it sink down into the Reason,
+  And above it can the Reason never climb.
+  The shining forth of That which is in no wise is as a fair mirror.
+  Wherein shines the Eternal Light of God.
+  It has no attributes,
+  And here all the works of Reason fail.
+  It is not God,
+  But it is the Light whereby we see Him.
+  Those who walk in the Divine Light of it
+  Discover in themselves the Unwalled.
+  That which is in no wise, is above the Reason, not without it:
+  It beholds all things without amazement.
+  Amazement is far beneath it:
+  The contemplative life is without amazement.
+  That which is in no wise sees, it knows not what;
+  For it is above all, and is neither This nor That."[25]
+
+
+
+
+                                    CHAPTER V
+THE ACTIVE LIFE
+
+
+  If we would discover and know that Kingdom of God which is hidden in
+  us, we must lead a life that is virtuous within, well-ordered without,
+  and fulfilled with true charity. Thus imitating Christ in every way, we
+  can, through grace, love and virtue, raise ourselves up to that apex of
+  the soul where God lives and reigns.
+
+                                      The Mirror of Eternal Salvation.
+
+The beginning of man's Active Life, says Ruysbroeck--that uplifting of
+the diurnal existence into the Divine Atmosphere, which confers on it
+meaning and reality--is a movement of response. Grace, the synthesis of
+God's love, energy and will, pours like a great river through the
+universe, and perpetually beats in upon the soul. When man consents to
+receive it, opens the sluices of the heart to that living water,
+surrenders to it; then he opens his heart and will to the impact of
+Reality, his eyes to the Divine Light, and in this energetic movement of
+acceptance begins for the first time to live indeed. Hence it is that, in
+the varied ethical systems which we find in his books, and which describe
+the active crescent life of Christian virtue, the laborious adjustment of
+character to the Vision of God, Ruysbroeck always puts first the virtue,
+or rather the attitude, which he calls _good-will_: the voluntary
+orientation of the self in the right direction, the eager acceptance of
+grace. As all growth depends upon food, so all spiritual development
+depends upon the self's appropriation of its own share of the
+transcendent life-force, its own 'rill of grace'; and good-will breaks
+down the barrier which prevents that stream from pouring into the soul.
+
+Desire, said William Law, _is_ everything and _does_ everything; it is
+the primal motive-power. Ruysbroeck, too, finds in desire turned towards
+the best the beginning of human transcendence, and regards willing and
+loving as the essence of life. Basing his psychology on the common
+medi�val scheme of Memory, Intelligence and Will, he speaks of this last
+as the king of the soul; dominating both the other powers, and able to
+gather them in its clutch, force them to attend to the invitations and
+messages of the eternal world. Thus in his system the demand upon man's
+industry and courage is made from the very first. The great mystical
+necessity of self-surrender is shown to involve, not a limp acquiescence,
+but a deliberate and heroic choice; the difficult approximation of our
+own thoughts and desires to the thoughts and desires of Divine Reality.
+"When we have but one thought and one will with God, we are on the first
+step of the ladder of love and of sanctity; for good-will is the
+foundation of all virtue."[26]
+
+In _The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage_, Ruysbroeck has used the
+words said to the wise and foolish virgins of the parable--"Behold, the
+bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him"--as an epitome of the self's
+relations with and reactions to Reality. First, all created spirits are
+called to behold God, who is perpetually 'coming' to the world of
+conditions, in a ceaseless procession of love; and in this seeing our
+happiness consists. But in order really to see a thing, we need not only
+light and clear sight, but the _will_ to look at it; every act of
+perception demands a self-giving on the seer's part. So here we need not
+only the light of grace and the open eyes of the soul, but also the
+_will_ turned towards the Infinite: our attention to life, the regnant
+fact of our consciousness, must be focussed upon eternal things. Now,
+when we see God, we cannot but love Him; and love is motion, activity.
+Hence, this first demand on the awakened spirit, 'Behold!' is swiftly
+followed by the second demand, 'Go ye out!' for the essence of love is
+generous, outflowing, expansive, an "upward and outward tendency towards
+the Kingdom of God, which is God Himself." This outgoing, this concrete
+act of response, will at once change and condition our correspondences
+with and attitude towards God, ourselves and our neighbours; expressing
+itself within the world of action in a new ardour for perfection--the
+natural result of the 'loving vision of the Bridegroom,' the self's first
+glimpse of Perfect Goodness and Truth. We observe the continued
+insistence on effort, act, as the very heart of all true self-giving to
+transcendent interests.
+
+Whilst in the volitional life drastic readjustments, stern
+character-building, and eager work are the expression of goodwill, in the
+emotional life it is felt as a profound impulse to self-surrender: a
+loving yielding up of the whole personality to the inflow and purging
+activities of the Absolute Life. "This good-will is nought else but the
+infused Love of God, which causes him to apply himself to Divine things
+and all virtues; ... when it turns towards God, it crowns the spirit with
+Eternal Love, and when it returns to outward things it rules as a
+mistress over his external good deeds."[27]
+
+We have here, then, a disposition of heart and mind which both receives
+and responds to the messages of Reality; making it possible for the self
+to begin to grow in the right direction, to enter into possession of its
+twofold heritage. That completely human life of activity and
+contemplation which moves freely up and down the ladder of love between
+the temporal and eternal worlds, and reproduces in little the ideal of
+Divine Humanity declared in Christ, is the ideal towards which it is set;
+and already, even in this lowest phase, the double movement of the
+awakened consciousness begins to show itself. Our love and will, firmly
+fastened in the Eternal World, are to swing like a pendulum between the
+seen and the unseen spheres; in great ascending arcs of balanced
+adoration and service, which shall bring all the noblest elements of
+human character into play. Therefore the pivoting of life upon Divine
+Reality, which is the result of good-will--the setting up of a right
+relation with the universe--is inevitably the first condition of virtue,
+the 'root of sanctity,' the beginning of spiritual growth, the act which
+makes man free; translating him, in Ruysbroeck's image, from the state of
+the slave to that of the conscious and willing servant of Eternal Truth.
+"From the hour in which, with God's help, he transcends his self-hood ...
+he feels true love, which overcomes doubt and fear and makes man trust
+and hope; and so he becomes a true servant, and means and loves God in
+all that he does."[28]
+
+So man, emerging from the shell of selfhood, makes--of his own free
+choice, by his own effort--his first timid upward beat to God; and,
+following swiftly upon it, the compensating outward beat of charity
+towards his fellow-men. We observe how tight a hold has this most
+transcendental of the mystics on the _wholeness_ of all healthy human
+life: the mutual support and interpenetration of the active and
+contemplative powers. 'Other-worldliness' is decisively contradicted from
+the first. It is the appearance of this eager active charity--this
+imitation in little of the energetic Love of God--which assures us that
+the first stage of the self's growth is rightly accomplished; completing
+its first outward push in that new direction to which its good-will is
+turned. "For charity ever presses towards the heights, towards the
+Kingdom of God, the which is God Himself."
+
+In the practical counsels given to the young novice to whom _The Mirror
+of Salvation_ is addressed, we may see Ruysbroeck's ideal of that active
+life of self-discipline and service which the soul has now set in hand;
+and which he describes in greater detail in _The Adornment of the
+Spiritual Marriage_ and _The Kingdom of God's Lovers_. Total
+self-donation, he tells her, is her first need--'choosing God, for love's
+sake' without hesitations or reserves; and this dedication to the
+interests of Reality must be untainted by any spiritual selfishness, any
+hint of that insidious desire for personal beatitude which 'fades the
+flower of true love.' This done, self-conquest and self-control become
+the novice's primary duties: the gradual subduing and rearrangement of
+character about its new centre, the elimination of all tendencies
+inimical to the demands of Eternal Life; the firm establishment upon its
+throne of that true free-will which desires only God's will. This
+self-conquest, the essence of the 'Way of Purgation,' as described and
+experienced by so many ascetics and mystics, includes not only the
+eradication of sins, but the training of the attention, the adaptation of
+consciousness to its new environment; the killing-out of inclinations
+which, harmless in themselves, compete with the one transcendent interest
+of life.
+
+Like all great mystics, Ruysbroeck had a strong 'sense of sin.' This is
+merely a theological way of stating the fact that his intense realisation
+of Perfection involved a vivid consciousness of the imperfections,
+disharmonies, perversities, implicit in the human creature; the need of
+resolving them if the soul was to grow up to the stature of Divine
+Humanity. Yet there is in his writings a singular absence of that
+profound preoccupation with sin found in so many medi�val ascetics. His
+attitude towards character was affirmative and robust; emphasising the
+possibilities rather than the disabilities of man. Sin, for him, was
+egotism; showing itself in the manifold forms of pride, laziness,
+self-indulgence, coldness of heart, or spiritual self-seeking, but always
+implying a central wrongness of attitude, resulting in a wrong employment
+of power. Self-denials and bodily mortifications he regarded partly as
+exercises in self-control--spiritual athletics--useful because educative
+of the will; partly as expressions of love. At best they are but the
+means of sanctity, and never to be confused with its end; for the man who
+deliberately passed the greater part of his life in the bustle of the
+town was no advocate of a cloistered virtue or a narrow perfectionism.
+
+Morbid piety is often the product of physical as well as spiritual
+stuffiness; and Ruysbroeck wrote his great books out of doors, with light
+and air all round him, and the rhythmic life of trees to remind him how
+much stronger was the quiet law of growth than any atavism, accident, or
+perversion by which it could be checked. Thus, throughout his works, the
+accent always falls upon power rather than weakness: upon the spiritual
+energy pouring in like sunshine; the incessant growth which love sets
+going; the perpetual rebirths to ever higher levels, as the young sapling
+stretches upward every spring. What he asks of the novice is contrition
+without anxiety, self-discipline without fuss; the steady, all-round
+development of her personality, stretching and growing towards God. She
+is to be the mistress of her soul, never permitting it to be drawn hither
+and thither by the distractions and duties of external life. Keeping
+always in the atmosphere of Reality, she shall bring therefrom truth and
+frankness to all her words and deeds; and perform her duties with that
+right and healthy detachment which springs, not from a contempt of the
+Many, but from the secure and loving possession of the One.
+
+The disciplines to which she must subject herself in the effort towards
+attainment of this poise, will, like a wise gymnastic, produce in her a
+suppleness of soul; making the constant and inevitable transition from
+interior communion to outward work, which charity and good sense demand,
+easy and natural, and causing the spirit to be plastic in the hand of
+God. Such suppleness--the lightness and lissomeness which comes from
+spiritual muscles exercised and controlled--was one of the favourite
+qualities of that wise trainer of character, St. Fran�ois de Sales; and
+the many small and irritating mortifications with which he was accustomed
+to torment his disciples had no other aim than to produce it.
+
+In the stage of development to which the Active Life belongs, the soul
+enjoys communion with Reality, not with that directness proper to the
+true contemplative, but obliquely, by 'means,' symbols and images;
+especially by the sacramental dispensation of the Church, a subject to
+which Ruysbroeck devotes great attention. As always in his system, growth
+from within is intimately connected with the reception of food and power
+from without. The movement of the self into God, the movement of God into
+the self, though separable in thought, are one in fact: will and grace
+are two aspects of one truth. Only this paradox can express the relation
+between that Divine Love which is 'both avid and generous,' and the self
+that is destined both to devour and be devoured by Reality.
+
+In the beautiful chapters on the Eucharist which form the special feature
+of _The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, Ruysbroeck develops this idea. "If
+He gives us all that He has and all that He is, in return He takes from
+us all that we have and all that we are, and demands of us more than we
+are capable of giving.... Even in devouring us, He desires to feed us. If
+He absorbs us utterly into Himself, He gives Himself in return. He causes
+to be born in us the hunger and thirst of the spirit, which shall make us
+savour Him in an eternal fruition; and to this spiritual hunger, as well
+as to the love of our heart, He gives His own Body as food.... Thus does
+He give us His life full of wisdom, truth and knowledge, in order that we
+may imitate Him in all virtues; and then He lives in us and we in Him.
+Then do we grow, and raise ourselves up above the reason into a Divine
+Love which causes us to take and consume that Food in a spiritual manner,
+and stretch out in pure love towards the Divinity. There takes place that
+encounter of the spirit, that is to say of measureless love, which
+consumes and transforms our spirit with all its works; drawing us with
+itself towards the Unity, where we taste beatitude and rest. Herein
+therefore is our eternal life: ever to devour and be devoured, to ascend
+and descend with love."[29]
+
+The soul, then, turned in the direction of the Infinite, 'having God for
+aim,' and with her door opened to the inflowing Divine Life, begins to
+grow. Her growth is up and out; from that temporal world to which her
+nature is adapted, and where she seems full of power and efficiency, to
+that eternal world to which the 'spark' within her belongs, but where she
+is as yet no more than a weak and helpless child. Hence the first state
+of mind and heart produced in her, if the 'new birth' has indeed taken
+place, will be that humility which results from all real self-knowledge;
+since "whoso might verily see and feel himself as he _is_, he should
+verily be meek." This clear acknowledgment of facts, this finding of
+one's own place, Ruysbroeck calls 'the solid foundation of the Kingdom of
+the Soul.' In thus discerning love and humility as the governing
+characteristics of the soul's reaction to Reality, he is of course
+keeping close to the great tradition of Christian mysticism; especially
+to the teaching of Richard of St. Victor, which we find constantly
+repeated in the ascetic literature of the Middle Ages.
+
+From these two virtues, then, of humble self-knowledge and God-centred
+love, are gradually developed all those graces of character which 'adorn
+the soul for the spiritual marriage,' mark her ascent of the first
+degrees of the 'ladder of love,' and make possible the perfecting of her
+correspondences with the 'Kingdom.' This development follows an orderly
+course, as subject to law as the unfolding of the leaves and flowers upon
+the growing plant; and though Ruysbroeck in his various works uses
+different diagrams wherewith to explain it, the psychological changes
+which these diagrams demonstrate are substantially the same. In each case
+we watch the opening of man's many-petalled heart under the rays of the
+Divine Light, till it blossoms at last into the rose of Perfect Charity.
+
+Thus in _The Seven Degrees of Love_, since he is there addressing a
+cloistered nun, he accommodates his system to that threefold monastic vow
+of voluntary poverty or perfect renunciation, chastity or singleness of
+heart, and obedience or true humility in action, by which she is bound.
+When the reality which these vows express is actualised in the soul, and
+dominates all her reactions to the world, she wears the 'crown of
+virtue'; and lives that 'noble life' ruled by the purified and enhanced
+will, purged of all selfish desires and distractions, which--seeking in
+all things the interests of the spiritual world--is 'full of love and
+charity, and industrious in good works.'
+
+In _The Spiritual Marriage_ a more elaborate analysis is possible; based
+upon that division of man's moral perversities into the 'seven mortal
+sins' or seven fundamental forms of selfishness, which governed, and
+governs yet, the Catholic view of human character. After a preliminary
+passage in which the triple attitude of love as towards God, humility as
+towards self, justice as towards other men, is extolled as the only
+secure basis of the spiritual life, Ruysbroeck proceeds to exhibit the
+seven real and positive qualities which oppose the seven great abuses of
+human freedom. As Pride is first and worst of mortal sins and follies, so
+its antithesis Humility is again put forward as the first condition of
+communion with God. This produces in the emotional life an attitude of
+loving adoration; in the volitional life, obedience. By _obedience_,
+Ruysbroeck means that self-submission, that wise suppleness of spirit,
+which is swayed and guided not by its own tastes and interests but by the
+Will of God; as expressed in the commands and prohibitions of moral and
+spiritual law, the interior push of conscience. This attitude, at first
+deliberately assumed, gradually controls all the self's reactions, and
+ends by subduing it entirely to the Divine purpose. "Of this obedience
+there grows the abdication of one's own will and one's own opinion; ...
+by this abdication of the will in all that one does, or does not do, or
+endures, the substance and occasion of pride are wholly driven out, and
+the highest humility is perfected."[30]
+
+This movement of renunciation brings--next phase in the unselfing of the
+self--a compensating outward swing of love; expressed under the beautiful
+forms of _patience_, 'the tranquil tolerance of all that can happen,' and
+hence the antithesis of Anger; _gentleness_, which "with peace and calm
+bears vexatious words and deeds"; _kindness_, which deals with the
+quarrelsome and irritable by means of "a friendly countenance,
+affectionate persuasion and compassionate acts"; and _sympathy_, "that
+inward movement of the heart which compassionates the bodily and
+spiritual griefs of all men," and kills the evil spirit of Envy and hate.
+This fourfold increase in disinterested love is summed up in the
+condition which Ruysbroeck calls _supernatural generosity_; that
+largeness of heart which flows out towards the generosity of God, which
+is swayed by pity and love, which embraces all men in its sweep. By this
+energetic love which seeks not its own, "all virtues are increased, and
+all the powers of the spirit are adorned"; and Avarice, the fourth great
+mortal sin, is opposed.
+
+Generosity is no mere mood; it is a motive-force, demanding expression in
+action. From the emotions, it invades the will, and produces _diligence_
+and _zeal_: an 'inward and impatient eagerness' for every kind of work,
+and for the hard practice of every kind of virtue, which makes impossible
+that slackness and dulness of soul which is characteristic of the sin of
+Sloth. It is dynamic love; and the spirit which is fired by its ardours,
+has reached a degree of self-conquest in which the two remaining evil
+tendencies--that to every kind of immoderate enjoyment, spiritual,
+intellectual or physical, which is the essence of Gluttony, and that to
+the impure desire of created things which is Lust--can be met and
+vanquished. The purged and strengthened will, crowned by unselfish love,
+is now established on its throne; man has become captain of his soul, and
+rules all the elements of his character and that character's expression
+in life--not as an absolute monarch, but in the name of Divine Love.[31]
+He has done all he can do of himself towards the conforming of his life
+to Supreme Perfection; has opposed, one after another, each of those
+exhibitions of the self's tendency to curl inwards, to fence itself in
+and demand, absorb, enjoy as a separate entity, which lie at the root of
+sin. The constructive side of the Purgative Way has consisted in the
+replacement of this egoistic, indrawing energy by these outflowing
+energies of self-surrender, kindness, diligence and the rest; summed up
+in that perfection of humility and love, which "in all its works, and
+always, stretches out towards God."
+
+The first three gifts of the Holy Spirit are possessed by the soul which
+has reached this point, says Ruysbroeck in _The Kingdom of God's Lovers_:
+that loving Fear, which includes true humility with all its ancillary
+characteristics; that general attitude of charity which makes man gentle,
+patient and docile, ready to serve and pity every one, and is called
+Godliness, because there first emerges in it his potential likeness to
+God; and finally that Knowledge or discernment of right and prudent
+conduct which checks the disastrous tendency to moral fussiness, helps
+man to conform his life to supreme Perfection, and gives the calmness and
+balance which are essential to a sane and manly spirituality. Thus the
+new life-force has invaded and affected will, feeling and intellect;
+raised the whole man to fresh levels of existence, and made possible
+fresh correspondences with Reality. "Hereby are the three lower powers of
+the soul adorned with Divine virtues. The Irascible [_i.e._ volitional
+and dynamic] is adorned with loving and filial fear, humility, obedience
+and renunciation. The Desirous is adorned with kindness, pity, compassion
+and generosity. Finally, the Reasonable with knowledge and discernment,
+and that prudence which regulates all things."[32] The ideal of character
+held out and described under varying metaphors in Ruysbroeck's different
+works, is thus seen to be a perfectly consistent one.
+
+Now when the growing self has actualised this ideal, and lives the Active
+Life of the faithful servant of Reality, it begins to feel an ardent
+desire for some more direct encounter with That which it loves. Since it
+has now acquired the 'ornaments of the virtues'--cleansed its mirror,
+ordered its disordered loves--this encounter may and does in a certain
+sense take place; for every Godward movement of the human is met by a
+compensating movement of the Divine. Man now begins to find God in all
+things: in nature, in the soul, in works of charity. But in the turmoil
+and bustle of the Active Life such an encounter is at best indirect; a
+sidelong glimpse of the 'first and only Fair.' That vision can only be
+apprehended in its wholeness by a concentration of all the powers of the
+self. If we would look the Absolute in the eyes, we must look at nothing
+else; the complete opening of the eye of Eternity entails the closing of
+the eye of Time. Man, then, must abstract himself from multiplicity, if
+only for a moment, if he would catch sight of the unspeakable Simplicity
+of the Real. Longing to 'know the nature of the Beloved,' he must act as
+Zacch�us did when he wished to see Christ:
+
+"He must run before the crowd, that is to say the multiplicity of created
+things; for these make us so little and low that we cannot perceive God.
+And he must climb up on the Tree of Faith, which grows from above
+downwards, for its root is in the Godhead. This tree has twelve branches,
+which are the twelve articles of the Creed. The lower branches speak of
+the Humanity of God; ... the upper branches, however, speak of the
+Godhead: of the Trinity of Persons and the Unity of the Divine Nature.
+Man must cling to the Unity which is at the top of the tree, for it is
+here that Jesus will pass by with all His gifts. And now Jesus comes, and
+He sees man, and shows him in the light of faith that He is, according to
+His Divinity, unmeasured and incomprehensible, inaccessible and
+fathomless, and that He overpasses all created light and all finite
+comprehension. This is the highest knowledge of God which man can acquire
+in the Active Life: thus to recognise by the light of faith that God is
+inconceivable and unknowable. In this light God says to the desire of
+man: "Come down quickly, for I would dwell in your house to-day." And
+this quick descent, to which God invites him, is nought else but a
+descent, by love and desire, into the Abyss of the Godhead, to which no
+intellect can attain by its created light. But here, where intellect must
+rest without, love and desire may enter in. When the soul thus leans upon
+God by intention and love, above all that she understands, then she rests
+and dwells in God, and God in her. When the soul mounts up by desire,
+above the multiplicity of things, above the activities of the senses and
+above the light of external nature, then she encounters Christ by the
+light of faith, and is illuminated; and she recognises that God is
+unknowable and inconceivable. Finally, stretching by desire towards this
+incomprehensible God, she meets Christ and is fulfilled with His gifts.
+And loving and resting above all gifts, above herself and above all
+things, she dwells in God and God in her. According to this manner Christ
+may be encountered upon the summit of the Active Life."[33]
+
+This, then, is the completion of the first stage in the mystic way; this
+showing to the purified consciousness of the helplessness of the analytic
+intellect, the dynamic power of self-surrendered love. "Where intellect
+must rest without, love and desire may enter in." The human creature,
+turning towards Reality, has pressed up to the very edge of the 'Cloud of
+Unknowing' in which the goal of transcendence is hid. If it is to go
+further it must bring to the adventure not knowledge but divine
+ignorance, not riches but poverty; above all, an eager and industrious
+love.
+
+  "A fiery flame of devotion leaping and ascending into the very goodness
+              of God Himself,
+  A loving longing of the soul to be with God in His Eternity,
+  A turning from all things of self into the freedom of the Will of God;
+  With all the forces of the soul gathered into the unity of the
+              spirit."[34]
+
+
+
+
+                                    CHAPTER VI
+THE INTERIOR LIFE: ILLUMINATION AND DESTITUTION
+
+
+  Let whoso thirsts to see his God cleanse his mirror, purge his spirit;
+  and when thus he has cleansed his mirror, and long and diligently gazed
+  in it, a certain brightness of divine light begins to shine through
+  upon him, and a certain immense ray of unwonted vision to appear before
+  his eyes.... From the beholding of this light, which it sees within
+  itself with amazement, the mind is mightily set on fire, and lifted up
+  to behold that Light which is above itself.
+
+                                                Richard of St. Victor.
+
+It is plain that the Active Life in Ruysbroeck's system answers more or
+less to the Purgative Way, considered upon its affirmative and
+constructive side, as a building up of the heroic Christian character.
+So, too, the life which he calls Interior or Contemplative, and which
+initiates man into the friendship of God, corresponds in the main with
+the Illuminative Way of orthodox mysticism; though it includes in its
+later stages much that is usually held to belong to the third, or
+Unitive, state of the soul. The first life has, as it were, unfolded to
+the sunlight the outer petals of the mystic rose; exhibiting in their
+full beauty, adjusting to their true use, the normally-apparent
+constituents of man's personality. All his relations with the given world
+of sense, the sphere of Becoming, have been purified and adjusted. Now
+the expansive and educative influence of the Divine Light is able to
+penetrate nearer to the heart of his personality; is brought to bear upon
+those interior qualities which he hardly knows himself to possess, and
+which govern his relation with the spiritual world of Being. The flower
+is to open more widely; the inner ring of petals must uncurl.
+
+As the primary interest of the Active Life was ethical purification, so
+the primary interest of this Second Life is intellectual purification.
+Intellect, however, is here to be understood in its highest sense; as
+including not only the analytic reason which deals with the problems of
+our normal universe, but that higher intelligence, that contemplative
+mind, which--once it is awakened to consciousness--can gather news of the
+transcendental world. The development and clarification of this power is
+only possible to those who have achieved, and continue to live at full
+stretch, the high, arduous and unselfish life of Christian virtue. Again
+we must remind ourselves that Ruysbroeck's theory of transcendence
+involves, not the passage from one life to another, but the _adding_ of
+one life to another: the perpetual deepening, widening, heightening and
+enriching of human experience. As the author of _The Cloud of Unknowing_
+insists that none can be truly contemplative who is not also active, so
+Ruysbroeck says that no man ever rises above the ordinary obligations of
+Christian kindness and active good works.
+
+"We find nowadays many silly men who would be so interior and so
+detached, that they will not be active or helpful in any way of which
+their neighbours are in need. Know, such men are neither hidden friends
+nor yet true servants of God, but are wholly false and disloyal; for none
+can follow His counsels but those who obey His laws."[35]
+
+Nevertheless it would be generally true to say that, whilst the aim of
+the Active Life is right conduct, the aim of the Interior Life is right
+vision and thought. As, in that first life, all the perversions of man's
+ordinary powers and passions were rectified, all that was superfluous and
+unreal done away, and his nature set right with God; now--still holding
+and living in its fulness this purified active life--he is to press
+deeper and deeper into the resources of his being, finding there other
+powers and cravings which must be brought within the field of
+consciousness, and set up those relations with the Transcendent of which
+they are capable. This deepening and enlarging of man's universe,
+together with the further and more drastic discarding of illusions and
+unrealities, is the business of the Second Life, considered on its
+impersonal side.
+
+"If thou dost desire to unfold in thyself the Contemplative Life, thou
+must enter within, beyond the sense-life; and, on that apex of thy being,
+adorned with all the virtues of which I have spoken, looking unto God
+with gratitude and love and continual reverence, thou must keep thy
+thoughts bare, and stripped of every sensible image, thine understanding
+open and lifted up to the Eternal Truth, and thy spirit spread out in the
+sight of God as a living mirror to receive His everlasting likeness.
+Behold, therein appears a light of the understanding, which neither
+sense, reason, nature, nor the clearest logic can apprehend, but which
+gives us freedom and confidence towards God. It is nobler and higher than
+all that God has created in nature; for it is the perfection of nature,
+and transcends nature, and is the clear-shining intermediary between
+ourselves and God. Our thoughts, bare and stripped of images, are
+themselves the living mirror in which this light shines: and the light
+requires of us that we should be like to and one with God, in this living
+mirror of our bare thoughts."[36]
+
+In this strongly Victorine passage, the whole process of the Second Life
+is epitomised; but in _The Spiritual Marriage_, where its description
+occupies the seventy-three chapters of the second book, we see how long
+is the way which stretches from that first 'entering in beyond the sense
+life' to the point at which the soul's mirror is able to receive in its
+fullness that Light wherein alone it can apprehend Reality.
+
+Considered upon its organic side, as a growth and movement of the soul,
+this Way, as conceived, and probably experienced, by Ruysbroeck, can be
+divided into three great phases. We might call these Action, Reaction and
+Equilibrium. Broadly speaking, they answer to the Illumination, Dark
+Night and Simple Union of orthodox mystical science. Yet since in his
+vivid description of these linked states he constantly departs from the
+formul� of his predecessors, and as constantly illustrates their
+statements by intimate and homely touches only possible to one who has
+endured the adventures of which he tells, we are justified in claiming
+the description as the fruit of experience rather than of tradition; and
+as evidence of the course taken by his own development.
+
+It is surely upon his own memory that he is relying, when he tells us
+that the beginning of this new life possesses something of the abrupt
+character of a second conversion. It happens, he says, when we least
+expect it; when the self, after the long tension and struggle of moral
+purgation, has become drowsy and tired. Then, suddenly, "a spiritual cry
+echoes through the soul," announcing a new encounter with Reality, and
+demanding a new response; or, to put it in another way, consciousness on
+its ascending spiral has pushed through to another level of existence,
+where it can hear voices and discern visions to which it was deaf and
+blind before. This sudden clarity of mind, this new vivid apprehension of
+Divine Love, is the first indication of man's entrance on the
+Illuminative Way. It is introversive rather than out-going in type.
+Changing the character of our attention to life, we discern within us
+something which we have always possessed and always ignored: a secret
+Divine energy, which is now to emerge from the subconscious deeps into
+the area of consciousness. There it stimulates the will, evicts all
+lesser images and interests from the heart, and concentrates all the
+faculties into a single and intense state, pressing towards the Unity of
+God, the synthetic experience of love; for perpetual movement towards
+that unity--not achievement of it--is the mark of this Second Life, in
+which the separation of God and the soul remains intact. In Victorine
+language, it is the period of spiritual betrothal, not of spiritual
+marriage; of a vision which, though wide, rich and wonderful, is mirrored
+rather than direct.
+
+The new God-inspired movement, then, begins within, like a spring
+bubbling from the deeps; and thrusts up and out to the consciousness
+which it is destined to clarify and enhance. "The stream of Divine grace
+swiftly stirs and moves a man inwardly, and from within outwards; and
+this swift stirring is the first thing that makes us _see_. Of this swift
+stirring is born from the side of man the second point: that is, a
+gathering together of all the inward and outward powers in spiritual
+unity and in the bonds of love. The third is that liberty which enables
+man to retreat into himself, without images or obstacles, whensoever he
+wills and thinks of his God."[37]
+
+So we may say that an enhancement of the conative powers, a greater
+control over the attention, are the chief marks of the Illuminative Way
+as perceived by the growing self. But the liberty here spoken of has a
+moral as well as a mental aspect. It is a freeing of the whole man from
+the fetters of illusion, and involves that perfect detachment of heart,
+that self-naughting, which makes him equally willing to have joy or pain,
+gain or loss, esteem or contempt, peace or fear, as the Divine Will may
+ordain. Thus is perfected that suppleness of soul which he began to
+acquire in the Active Life: a gradual process, which needs for its
+accomplishment the negative rhythm of renunciation, testing the manliness
+and courage of the self, as well as the positive movement of love. Hence
+the Contemplative Life, as Ruysbroeck knows and describes it, has, and
+must have, its state of pain as well as its state of joy. With him,
+however, as with nearly all the mystics, the state of joy comes first:
+the glad and eager reaction to those new levels of spiritual reality
+disclosed to consciousness when the struggles and readjustments of the
+Active Life have done their work. This is the phase in the self's
+progress which mystical writers properly mean by Illumination: a
+condition of great happiness, and of an intuition of Reality so vivid and
+joyous, that the soul often supposes that she has here reached the goal
+of her quest. It is in the spiritual year, says Ruysbroeck, that which
+the month of May is in the seasons of the earth: a wholesome and
+necessary time of sunshine, swift growth and abundant flowers, when the
+soul, under the influence of 'the soft rain of inward consolations and
+the heavenly dew of the Divine sweetness' blossoms in new and lovely
+graces.
+
+Illumination is an unstable period. The sun is rising swiftly in the
+heaven of man's consciousness; and as it increases in power, so it calls
+forth on the soul's part greater ardours, more intense emotional
+reactions. Once more the flux of God is demanding its reflux. The soul,
+like the growing boy suddenly made aware of the beauty, romance and
+wonder--the intense and irresistible appeal--of a world that had seemed
+ordinary before, flows out towards this new universe with all the
+enthusiasm and eagerness of its young fresh powers. Those powers are so
+new to it, that it cannot yet control or understand them. Vigorous and
+ungovernable, they invade by turns the heart, the will, the mind, as do
+the fevers and joys of physical adolescence; inciting to acts and
+satisfactions for which the whole self is hardly ready yet. "Then is
+thrown wide," says Ruysbroeck, "the heaven which was shut, and from the
+face of Divine Love there blazes down a sudden light, as it were a
+lightning flash." In the meeting of this inward and outward spiritual
+force--the Divine Light without, the growing Divine Spark within--there
+is great joy. Ecstasy, and that state of musical rapture, exceeding the
+possibilities of speech, which Ruysbroeck like Richard Rolle calls
+'ghostly song,' are the natural self-expressions of the soul in this
+moment of its career.[38]
+
+In more than one book we find references to this ecstatic period: a
+period so strongly marked in his own case, that it became for him--though
+he was under no illusions as to its permanent value--one of the landmarks
+in man's journey to his home. Looking back on it in later life, he sees
+in it two great phases, of which the earlier and lower at any rate is
+dangerous and easily misunderstood; and is concerned to warn those who
+come after him of its transitory and imperfect character. The first phase
+is that of 'spiritual inebriation,' in which the fever, excitement and
+unrest of this period of growth and change--affecting as they do every
+aspect of personality--show themselves in the psycho-physical phenomena
+which are well-known accompaniments of religious emotion in selves of a
+certain temperament. This spiritual delirium, which appears to have been
+a common phase in the mystical revivals of the fourteenth century, is
+viewed by Ruysbroeck with considerable distrust; and rightly attributed
+by him to an excitement of the senses rather than of the soul. At best it
+is but 'children's food,' given to those who cannot yet digest 'the
+strong food of temptation and the loss of God.' Its manifestations, as he
+describes them, overpass the limits not merely of common sense but also
+of sanity; and are clearly related to the frenzies of revivalists and the
+wild outbreaks of songs, dance and ecstatic speech observed in nearly all
+non-Christian religions of an enthusiastic type. In this state of
+rapture, "a man seems like a drunkard, no longer master of himself." He
+sings, shouts, laughs and cries both at once, runs and leaps in the air,
+claps his hands, and indulges in absurdly exaggerated gestures 'with many
+other disagreeable exhibitions.'[39] These he may not be able to help;
+but is advised to control them as soon as he can, passing from the merely
+sensuous emotion which results when the light of Eternal Love invades the
+'inferior powers' of the soul, to the spiritual emotion, amenable to
+reason, which is the reaction of the 'higher powers' of the self to that
+same overwhelming influx of grace.
+
+That inpouring grace grows swiftly in power, as the strength of the sun
+grows with the passing of the year. The Presence of God now stands over
+the soul's supreme summits, in the zenith: the transcendent fact of the
+illuminated consciousness. His power and love shine perpetually upon the
+heart, 'giving more than we can take, demanding more than we can pay';
+and inducing in the soul upon which this mighty energy is playing, a
+strange unrest, part anguish and part joy. This is the second phase of
+the ecstatic period, and gives rise to that which Ruysbroeck, and after
+him Tauler, have called the 'storm of love': a wild longing for union
+which stretches to the utmost the self's powers of response, and
+expresses itself in violent efforts, impassioned ascents towards the
+Spirit that cries without ceasing to our spirit: "Pay your debt! Love the
+Love that has loved you from Eternity."[40]
+
+Now the vigorous soul begins to find within itself the gift of Spiritual
+Strength; that enthusiastic energy which is one of the characters of all
+true love. This is the third of the 'Seven Gifts of the Spirit,' and the
+first to be actualised in the Illuminated Life.[41] From this strong and
+ardent passion for the Transcendent, adoration and prayer stream forth;
+and these again react upon the self, forming the fuel of the fire of
+love. The interior invitation of God, His attractive power, His delicate
+yet inexorable caress, is to the loving heart the most pure delight that
+it has ever known. It responds by passionate movements of adoration and
+gratitude, opening its petals wide to the beams of the Eternal Sun.
+
+This is the joy; and close behind it comes the anguish, 'sweetest and
+heaviest of all pains.' It is the sense of unsatisfied desire--the pain
+of love--which comes from the enduring consciousness of a gulf fixed
+between the self and That with which it desires to unite. "Of this inward
+demand and compulsion, which makes the creature to rise up and prepare
+itself to the utmost of its power, without yet being able to reach or
+attain the Unity--of this, there springs a spiritual pain. When the
+heart's core, the very source of life, is wounded by love, and man cannot
+attain that thing which he desires above else; when he must stay ever
+where he desires no more to be, of these feelings comes this pain....
+When man cannot achieve God, and yet neither can nor will do without Him;
+in such men there arises a furious agitation and impatience, both within
+and without. And whilst man is in this tumult, no creature in heaven or
+earth can help him or give him rest."[42]
+
+The sensible heat of love is felt with a greater violence now than at any
+other period of life; the rays of the Spiritual Sun strike the soul with
+terrific force, ripening the fruits of the virtues, yet bringing danger
+to the health, both mental and physical, of those who are not properly
+prepared, and who faint under the exhaustion of this 'intense fury of
+Divine Love,' this onslaught which 'eats up the heart.' These are 'the
+dog-days of the spiritual year.' As all nature languishes under their
+stifling heat, so too long an exposure to their violence may mean ruin to
+the physical health of the growing self. Yet those who behave with
+prudence need not take permanent harm; a kind of wise steadfastness will
+support them throughout this turbulent period. "Following through all
+storms the path of love, they will advance towards that place whither
+love leadeth them."[43]
+
+To this period of vivid illumination and emotional unrest belongs the
+development of those 'secondary automatisms' familiar to all students of
+mysticism: the desperate efforts of the mind to work up into some
+intelligible shape--some pictured vision or some spoken word--the
+overwhelming intuitions of the Transcendent by which it is possessed; the
+abrupt suspension of the surface-consciousness in rapture and ecstasy,
+when that overwhelming intuition develops into the complete mono-ideism
+of the ecstatic, and cuts off all contacts with the world of sense. Of
+these phenomena Ruysbroeck speaks with intimacy, and also with much
+common sense. He distinguishes visions into those pictures or material
+images which are 'seen in the imagination,' and those so-called
+'intellectual visions,'--of which the works of Angela of Foligno and St.
+Teresa provide so rich a series of examples,--which are really direct and
+imageless messages from the Transcendent; received in those supersensuous
+regions where man has contact with the Incomprehensible Good and "seeing
+and hearing are one thing." To this conventional classification he adds a
+passage which must surely be descriptive of his own experiences in this
+kind:
+
+"Sometimes God gives to such men swift spiritual glimpses, like to the
+flash of lightning in the sky. It comes like a sudden flash of strange
+light, streaming forth from the Simple Nudity. By this is the spirit
+uplifted for an instant above itself; and at once the light passes, and
+the man again comes to himself. This is God's own work, and it is
+something most august; for often those who experience it afterwards
+become illuminated men. And those who live in the violence and fervour of
+love have now and then another manner, whereby a certain light shines
+_in_ them; and this God works by means. In this light, the heart and the
+desirous powers are uplifted toward the Light; and in this encounter the
+joy and satisfaction are such that the heart cannot contain itself, but
+breaks out in loud cries of joy. And this is called _jubilus_ or
+jubilation; and it is a joy that cannot be expressed in words."[44]
+
+Here the parallel with Richard Rolle's 'ghostly song, with great voice
+outbreaking' will strike every reader of that most musical of the
+mystics; and it is probable that in both cases the prominence given to
+this rather uncommon form of spiritual rapture points back to personal
+experience. "Methinketh," says Rolle, "that contemplation is this
+heavenly song of the Love of God, which is called _jubilus_, taken of the
+sweetness of a soul by praising of God. This song is the end of perfect
+prayer, and of the highest devotion that may be here. This gladness of
+soul is had of God, and it breaketh out in a ghostly voice
+well-sounding."[45]
+
+This exultant and lyrical mood then, this adoring rapture, which only the
+rhythm of music can express, is the emotional reaction which indicates
+the high summer of the soul. It will be seen that each phase of its
+seasonal progress has been marked by a fresh inflow of grace and gifts, a
+fresh demand upon its power of response. The tension never slackens; the
+need for industry is never done away. The gift of Strength, by which the
+self presses forward, has now been reinforced by the gift of Counsel,
+_i.e._ by the growth and deepening of that intuition which is its medium
+of contact with the spiritual world. The Counsel of the Spirit, says
+Ruysbroeck, is like a stirring or inspiration, deep within the soul. This
+stirring, this fresh uprush of energy, is really a 'new birth' of the
+Son, the Divine Wisdom; lighting up the intelligence so that it perceives
+its destiny, and perceives too that the communion it now enjoys is but an
+image of the Divine Union which awaits it.[46] God is counselling the
+soul with an inward secret insistence to rush out towards Him,
+stimulating her hunger for Reality; or, to put it otherwise, the Divine
+Spark is growing swiftly, and pressing hard against the walls of its
+home. Therefore the culmination of this gift, and the culmination too of
+the illuminated consciousness, brings to the soul a certitude that she
+must still press on and out; that nothing less than God Himself can
+suffice her, or match the mysterious Thing which dwells in her deeps.
+
+Now this way of love and ecstasy and summer heats has been attended
+throughout by grave dangers for the adolescent spirit; above all by the
+primary danger which besets the mystical life, of mistaking spiritual joy
+for spiritual reality, desiring 'consolations' and 'illuminations' for
+their own sake, and resting in the gift instead of the Giver. "Though he
+who dedicates himself to love ever experiences great joy, he must never
+seek this joy." All those tendencies grouped by St. John of the Cross
+under the disagreeable name of 'spiritual gluttony,' those further
+temptations to self-indulgent quietism which are but an insidious form of
+sloth, are waiting to entrap the self on the Illuminative Way. But there
+is a way beyond this, another 'Coming of the Bridegroom,' which
+Ruysbroeck describes as 'eternally safe and sure.' This is the way of
+pain and deprivation; when the Presence of God seems to be withdrawn, and
+the fatigue and reaction consequent on the violent passions and energies
+of the illuminated state make themselves felt as a condition of misery,
+aridity and impotence,--all, in fact, that the Christian mystics mean by
+the 'Spiritual Death' or 'Dark Night of the Soul,' and which Ruysbroeck's
+contemporaries, the Friends of God, called 'the upper school of perfect
+self-abandonment.'
+
+The mirror is now to be cleansed of all false reflections, all beautiful
+prismatic light; the thoughts stripped bare of the consolations they have
+enjoyed. Summer is over, and autumn begins; when the flowers indeed die
+down, but the fruits which they heralded are ripe. Now is the time when
+man can prove the stuff of which he is made; and the religious amorist,
+the false mystic, is distinguished from the heroic and long-suffering
+servant of God. "In this season is perfected and completed all the work
+that the sun has accomplished during the year. In the same manner, when
+Christ the glorious Sun has risen to His zenith in the heart of man and
+then begins to descend, and to hide the radiance of His Divine light, and
+to abandon the man; then the impatience and ardour of love grow less. And
+this concealment of Christ, and this withdrawal of His light and heat,
+are the first working and the new coming of this degree. And now Christ
+says spiritually within the man: 'Go forth, in the way which I now teach
+you.' And the man goes forth, and finds himself poor, wretched and
+abandoned. And here the tempest, the ardour, the impatience of love grows
+cold; and the hot summer becomes autumn, and its riches turn to great
+poverty. Then man begins to lament in his distress--where now has gone
+that ardent love, that intimacy, that gratitude, that all-sufficing
+adoration? And that interior consolation, that intimate joy, that
+sensible savour, how has he lost all this?"[47]
+
+The veil that had seemed so transparent now thickens again; the
+certitudes that made life lovely all depart. Small wonder if the tortured
+spirit of the mystic fails to recognise this awful destitution as a
+renewed caress from the all-demanding Lover of the Soul; an education in
+courage, humility and selflessness; a last purification of the will. The
+state to which that self is being led is a renewed self-donation on new
+and higher levels: one more of those mystical deaths which are really
+mystical births; a giving-up, not merely of those natural tastes and
+desires which were disciplined in the Active Life, but of the higher
+passions and satisfactions of the spirit too. He is to be led to a state
+of such complete surrender to the Divine purposes that he is able to say:
+"Lord, not my will according to nature, but Thy will and my will
+according to spirit be done." The darkness, sorrow and abandonment
+through which this is accomplished are far more essential to his
+development than the sunshine and happiness that went before. It is not
+necessary, says Ruysbroeck, that all should know the ecstasies of
+illumination; but by this dark stairway every man who would attain to God
+must go.
+
+When man has achieved this perfect resignation and all tendency to
+spiritual self-seeking is dead, the September of the soul is come. The
+sun has entered the sign of the Balance, when days and nights are equal;
+for now the surrendered self has achieved equilibrium, and endures in
+peace and steadfastness the alternations of the Divine Dark and Divine
+Light. Now the harvest and the vintage are ripe: "That is to say, all
+those inward and outward virtues, which man has practised with delight in
+the fire of love, these, now that he knows them and is able to accomplish
+them, he shall practise diligently and dutifully and offer them to God.
+And never were they so precious in His sight: never so noble and so fair.
+And all those consolations which God gave him before, he will gladly give
+up, and will empty himself for the glory of God. This is the harvest of
+the wheat and the many ripe fruits which make us rich in God, and give to
+us Eternal Life. Thus are the virtues perfected; and the absence of
+consolation is turned to an eternal wine."[48]
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII
+               THE INTERIOR LIFE: UNION AND CONTEMPLATION
+
+
+  _Lume � lassu, che visibile face_
+    _lo Creatore a quella creatura_
+    _che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace._
+
+                                                      Par, xxx. 100.
+
+  And the Light floweth forth in similitude, and indraweth Itself in
+  unity; which we perceive, beyond the reason, in that high point of our
+  understanding which is bare and turned within.
+
+                                                  The Twelve B�guines.
+
+The soul which has endured with courage and humility the anguish of the
+Dark Night, actualising within its own experience the double rhythm of
+love and renunciation, now enters upon a condition of equilibrium; in
+which it perceives that all its previous adventures and apprehensions
+were but episodes of growth, phases in the long preparation of character
+for those new levels of life on which it is now to dwell.
+
+Three points, says Ruysbroeck, must characterise the truly interior man.
+First, his mind must be detached from its natural inclination to rest in
+images and appearances, however lovely; and must depend altogether upon
+that naked Absence of Images, which is God. This is the 'ascent to the
+Nought' preached by the Areopagite. Secondly, by means of his spiritual
+exercises, his progressive efforts to correspond with that Divine Life
+ever experienced by him with greater intensity, he must have freed
+himself from all taint of selfhood, all personal desire; so that in true
+inward liberty he can lift himself up unhindered towards God, in a spirit
+of selfless devotion. Plainly, the desolations of the Dark Night are
+exactly adapted to the production within the self of these two
+characters; which we might call purity of intelligence and purity of
+will. Directly resulting from their actualisation, springs the third
+point: the consciousness of inward union with God.[49] This consciousness
+of union, which we must carefully distinguish from the _Unity_ that is
+Ruysbroeck's name for the last state of the transfigured soul, is the
+ruling character of that state of equilibrium to which we have now come;
+and represents the full achievement of the Interior Life.
+
+In many of his works, under various images, Ruysbroeck tries to tell us
+what he means by this inward union with God, this 'mutual inhabitation,'
+as he calls it in one passage of great beauty, which is the goal of the
+'Second Life.' He reminds us again of that remote point of the spirit,
+that 'apex' of our being, where our life touches the Divine Life; where
+God's image 'lives and reigns.' With the cleansing of the heart and mind,
+the heightening and concentration of the will, which the disciplines of
+the Active Life and Dark Night have effected, this supreme point of the
+spirit is brought at last within the conscious field. Then man feels and
+knows the presence there of an intense and creative vitality, an Eternal
+Essence, from which all that is worth having in his selfhood flows. This
+is the Life-giving Life (_Levende Leven_), where the created and
+Uncreated meet and are one: a phrase, apparently taken by Ruysbroeck from
+St. Bernard, which aptly expresses an idea familiar to all the great
+contemplatives. It is the point at which man's separate spirit, as it
+were, emerges from the Divine Spirit: the point through which he must at
+last return to his Source. Here the Father has impressed His image, the
+Son is perpetually born, the Spirit wells up;[50] and here the Divine
+Unity dwells and calls him to the One. Here Eternity and Time are
+intertwined. Here springs the fountain of 'Living Water'--grace,
+transcendent vitality--upon which the mystic life of man depends.
+
+Now the self, because it is at last conformed to the demands of the
+spiritual world, feels new powers from this life-giving source streaming
+into all departments of its being. The last barriers of self-will are
+broken; and the result is an inrush of fresh energy and light. Whereas in
+the 'First Life' God fed and communed with him by 'means,' and was
+revealed under images appropriate to a consciousness still immersed in
+the world of appearance; now man receives these gifts and messages, makes
+his contacts with Reality, 'without means,' or 'by grace'--_i.e._ in a
+spiritual and interior manner. Those 'lightning flashes from the face of
+Divine Love,' those abrupt and vivid intuitions which he enjoyed during
+illumination, have given way before the steady shining of the Uncreated
+Light. Though light-imagery is never long absent from Ruysbroeck's pages,
+it is, however, the spring of Living Water ever welling up, the rills or
+brooks which flow from it, and take its substance to the farthest
+recesses of the thirsty land, which seems to him the best image of this
+new inpouring of life. He uses it in all his chief works, perhaps most
+successfully in _The Spiritual Marriage_. Faithful to the medi�val
+division of personality into Memory or Mind, Intelligence or
+Understanding, and Will,--influenced too by his deep conviction that all
+Divine activity is threefold in type,--he describes the Well-spring as
+breaking into three Brooks of Grace, which pour their waters into each
+department of the self. The duct through which these waters come, 'living
+and foaming' from the deeps of the Divine Riches, is the Eternal Christ;
+who 'comes anew' to the purified soul, and is the immediate source of its
+power and happiness.
+
+The first of the brooks which flow from Him is called 'Pure Simplicity.'
+It is a 'simple light,' says Ruysbroeck in another place; the white
+radiance of Eternity which, streaming into the mind, penetrates
+consciousness from top to bottom, and unifies the powers of the self
+about the new and higher centre now established. This simple light, in
+which we see things as they are--and therefore see that only one thing
+truly _is_--delivers us from that slavery to the multiplicity of things,
+which splits the attention and makes concentration upon Reality
+impossible to the soul. The achievement of such mental simplicity,
+escaping the prismatic illusion of the world, is the first condition of
+contemplation. "Thanks to this simple light which fills him, the man
+finds himself to be unified, established, penetrated and affirmed in the
+unity of his mind or thought. And thereby he is uplifted and established
+in a _new condition_; and he turns inward upon himself, and stays his
+mind upon the Nudity, above all the pressure of sensual images, above all
+multiplicity."[51]
+
+The second stream which pours out from that Transcendent Life is a
+'Spiritual Clarity,' which illuminates the intelligence and shows it all
+good. This clarity is a new and heightened form of intuition: a lucid
+understanding, whereby the self achieves clear vision of its own life,
+and is able to contemplate the sublime richness of the Divine Nature;
+gazing upon the mystery of the Trinity, and finding everywhere the
+Presence of God. Those who possess this light do not need ecstasies and
+revelations--sudden uprushes towards the supernal world--for their life
+and being is established in that world, above the life of sense. They
+have come to that state which Eckhart calls 'finding all creatures in God
+and God in all creatures.' They see things at last in their native
+purity. The heart of that vision, says Ruysbroeck, is their perception of
+"the unmeasured loyalty of God to His creation"--one of his deepest and
+most beautiful utterances--"and therefrom springs a deep inward joy of
+the spirit, and a high trust in God; and this inward joy embraces and
+penetrates all the powers of the soul, and the most secret part of the
+spirit."[52]
+
+The third Brook of Grace irrigates the conative powers of the self;
+strengthens the will in all perfection, and energises us anew. "Like
+fire, this brook enkindles the will, and swallows up and absorbs all
+things in the unity of the spirit ... and now Christ speaks inwardly in
+the spirit by means of this burning brook, saying, 'Go forth, in
+exercises proper to this gift and this coming.' By the first brook, which
+is a _Simple Light_, the Mind is freed from the invasions of the senses,
+and grounded and affirmed in spiritual unity. And by the second brook,
+which is a _Spreading Light_, the Reason and Understanding are
+illuminated, that they may know and distinguish all manner of virtues and
+exercises, and the mysteries of Scripture. And by the third brook, which
+is an _Infused Heat_, the heights of the Will are enkindled with quiet
+love and adorned with great riches. And thus does man become spiritually
+illuminate; for the grace of God dwells like a fountain-head in the unity
+of his spirit, and the brooks cause a flowing forth of all virtues from
+the powers of the soul. And the fountain-head of grace demands a
+back-flowing into that same ground from whence the flood has come."[53]
+
+So the Interior Life, now firmly established, is found to conform to
+those great laws which have guided the growing spirit from the first.
+Again, the dual property of love, possession and action, satisfaction and
+fecundity, is to be manifested upon new levels. The pendulum motion of
+life, swinging between the experience of union with God to which 'the
+Divine Unity ever calls us,' and its expression in active charity to
+which the multiplicity of His creatures and their needs ever entreat us,
+still goes on. The more richly and strongly the life-giving Life wells up
+within the self, the greater are the demands made upon that self's
+industry and love. In the establishment of this balance, in this
+continual healthy act of alternation, this double movement into God and
+out to men, is the proof that the soul has really centred itself upon the
+spiritual world--is, as Ruysbroeck puts it, confirmed in love. "Thus do
+work and union perpetually renew themselves; and this renewal in work and
+in union, _this_ is a spiritual life."[54]
+
+Now the self which has achieved this degree of transcendence has
+achieved, too, considerable experience in that art of contemplation or
+introversion which is the mode of its communion with God. Throughout,
+training and development have gone hand in hand; and the fact that
+Ruysbroeck seldom troubles to distinguish between them, but accepts them
+as two aspects of one thing--the gradual deification of the
+soul--constitutes one of the great obstacles to an understanding of his
+works. Often he describes the whole spiritual life as consisting in
+introversion, an entering of consciousness into the supersensuous regions
+beyond thought; in defiance of his own principle of active charity,
+movement, work, as the essential reaction to the universe which
+distinguishes a 'deified' man. The truth is that the two processes run
+side by side; and now one, now the other, is in the foreground of his
+thought. Therefore all that I shall now say of the contemplative art must
+be understood as describing acts and apprehensions taking place
+throughout the whole course of the Interior Life.
+
+What, then, is introversion? It is one of the two great modes under which
+the spiritual consciousness works. Plainly, any living sense of God's
+presence must discern that Circle whose centre is everywhere, as both
+exterior and interior to the self. In Ruysbroeck's own works we find a
+violent effort to express this ineffable fact of omnipresence, of a truly
+Transcendent yet truly Immanent Reality; an effort often involving a
+collision of imagery. God, he says, may be discovered at the soul's apex,
+where He 'eternally lives and reigns'; and the soul itself dwells _in_
+God, ebbing and flowing, wandering and returning, within that Fathomless
+Ground. Yet none the less He comes to that soul from without; pouring in
+upon it like sunshine, inundating it with torrents of grace, seizing the
+separate entity and devouring whilst He feeds it; flashing out upon it in
+a tempest of love from the Empyrean Heaven, the Abyss of Being, where He
+dwells. "Present, yet absent; near, yet far!" exclaims St. Augustine.
+"Thou art the sky, and Thou art the nest as well!" says the great mystic
+poet of our own day.
+
+Whilst nearly all the mystics have possessed clear consciousness of this
+twofold revelation of the Divine Nature, and some have experienced by
+turns the 'outward and upward' rush and the inward retreat,
+temperamentally they usually lean towards one or other form of communion
+with God,--ecstasy or introversion. For one class, contact with Him seems
+primarily to involve an outgoing flight towards Transcendent Reality; an
+attitude of mind strongly marked in all contemplatives who are near to
+the Neoplatonic tradition--Plotinus, St. Basil, St. Macarius--and also in
+Richard Rolle and a few other medi�val types. These would agree with
+Dionysius the Areopagite that "we must contemplate things divine by our
+whole selves standing _out_ of our whole selves." For the other class,
+the first necessity is a retreat of consciousness from the periphery,
+where it touches the world of appearance, to the centre, the Unity of
+Spirit or 'Ground of the Soul,' where human personality buds forth from
+the Essential World. True, this inturning of attention is but a
+preliminary to the self's entrance upon that same Transcendent Region
+which the ecstatic claims that he touches in his upward flights. The
+introversive mystic, too, is destined to 'sail the wild billows of the
+Sea Divine'; but here, in the deeps of his nature, he finds the door
+through which he must pass. Only by thus discovering the unity of his own
+nature can he give himself to that 'tide of light' which draws all things
+back to the One.
+
+Such is Ruysbroeck's view of contemplation. This being so, introversion
+is for him an essential part of man's spiritual development. As the Son
+knows the Father, so it is the destiny of all spirits created in that
+Pattern to know Him; and the mirror which is able to reflect that Divine
+Light, the Simple Eye which alone can bear to gaze on it, lies in the
+deeps of human personality. The will, usually harnessed to the
+surface-consciousness, devoted to the interests of temporal life; the
+love, so freely spent on unreal and imperfect objects of desire; the
+thought which busies itself on the ceaseless analysis and arrangement of
+passing things--all these are to be swept inwards to that gathering-point
+of personality, that Unity of the Spirit, of which he so often speaks;
+and there fused into a single state of enormously enhanced consciousness,
+which, withdrawn from all attention to the changeful world of
+'similitudes,' is exposed to the direct action of the Eternal World of
+spiritual realities. The pull of Divine Love--the light that ever flows
+back into the One--is to withdraw the contemplative's consciousness from
+multiplicity to unity. His progress in contemplation will be a progress
+towards that complete mono-ideism in which the Vision of God--and here
+_vision_ is to be understood in its deepest sense as a totality of
+apprehension, a 'ghostly sight'--dominates the field of consciousness to
+the exclusion, for the time of contemplation, of all else.
+
+Psychologically, Ruysbroeck's method differs little from that described
+by St. Teresa. It begins in recollection, the first drawing inwards of
+attention from the world of sense; passes to meditation, the centring of
+attention on some intellectual formula or mystery of faith; and thence,
+by way of graduated states, variously divided and described in his
+different works, to contemplation proper, the apprehension of God 'beyond
+and above reason.' All attempts, however, to map out this process, or
+reduce it to a system, must necessarily have an arbitrary and symbolic
+character. True, we are bound to adopt some system, if we describe it at
+all; but the dangers and limitations of all formulas, all concrete
+imagery, where we are dealing with the fluid, living, changeful world of
+spirit, should never be absent from our minds. The bewildering and often
+inconsistent series of images and numbers, arrangements and
+rearrangements of 'degrees,' 'states,' 'stirrings,' and 'gifts,' in which
+Ruysbroeck's sublime teachings on contemplation are buried, makes the
+choice of some one formula imperative for us; though none will reduce his
+doctrines to a logical series, for he is perpetually passing over from
+the dialectic to the lyrical mood, and forgets to be orderly as soon as
+he begins to be subjective. I choose, then, to base my classification on
+that great chapter (xix.) in _The Seven Cloisters_, where he
+distinguishes three stages of contemplation; finding in them the
+responses of consciousness to the special action of the Three Persons of
+the Blessed Trinity. These three stages in the soul's apprehension of
+God, are: the Emotional, the Intellectual, the Intuitive. I think that
+most of the subtly distinguished interior experiences of the mystic, the
+'comings' of the Divine Presence, the 'stirrings' and contacts which he
+describes in his various books, can be ranged under one or other of them.
+
+1. First comes that loving contemplation of the 'uplifted heart' which is
+the work of the Holy Spirit, the consuming fire of Divine Love. This
+ardent love, invading the self, and satisfying it in that intimate
+experience of personal communion so often described in the writings of
+the mystics, represents the self's first call to contemplation and first
+natural response; made with "so great a joy and delight of soul and body,
+in his uplifted heart, that the man knoweth not what hath befallen him,
+nor how he may endure it." For Ruysbroeck this purely emotional reaction
+to Reality, this burning flame of devotion--which seemed to Richard Rolle
+the essence of the contemplative life--is but its initial phase. It
+corresponds with--and indeed generally accompanies--those fever-heats,
+those 'tempests' of impatient love endured by the soul at the height of
+the Illuminative Way. Love, it is true, shall be from first to last the
+inspiring force of the contemplative's ascents: his education is from one
+point of view simply an education in love. But this love is a passion of
+many degrees; and the 'urgency felt in the heart,' the restlessness and
+hunger of this spiritual feeling-state, is only its lowest form. The love
+which burns like white fire on the apex of the soul, longs for sacrifice,
+inspires heroic action, and goes forward without fear, 'holy, strong and
+free,' to brave the terrors of the Divine Dark, is of another temper than
+this joyful sentiment.
+
+2. A loving stretching out into God, and an intellectual gazing upon Him,
+says Ruysbroeck, in a passage which I have already quoted, are the 'two
+heavenly pipes' in which the wind of the Spirit sings. So the next phase
+in the contemplative's development is that enhancement of the intellect,
+the power of perceiving, as against desiring and loving Reality, which is
+the work of the Logos, the Divine Wisdom. As the cleansed and detached
+heart had been lifted up to _feel_ the Transcendent; now the
+understanding, stripped of sense-images, purged of intellectual
+arrogance, clarified by grace, is lifted up to _apprehend_ it. This
+degree has two phases. First, that enlargement of the understanding to an
+increased comprehension of truth, the finding of deeper and diviner
+meanings in things already known, which Richard of St. Victor called
+_mentis dilatatio_. Next, that further uplift of the mind to a state in
+which it is able to contemplate things above itself whilst retaining
+clear self-consciousness, which he called _mentis sublevatio_.
+Ruysbroeck, however, inverts the order given by Richard; for him the
+uplift comes first, the dilation of consciousness follows from it. This
+is a characteristic instance of the way in which he uses the Victorine
+psychology; constantly appropriating its terms but never hesitating to
+modify, enrich or misuse them as his experience or opinions may dictate.
+
+The first phase of Intellectual Contemplation, then, is a lifting of the
+mind to a swift and convincing vision of Reality: one of those sudden,
+incommunicable glimpses of Truth so often experienced early in the
+contemplative's career. The veil parts, and he sees a "light and vision,
+which give to the contemplating spirit a conscious certitude that she
+sees God, so far as man may see Him in mortal life."[55] That strange
+mystical light of which all contemplatives speak, and which Ruysbroeck
+describes in a passage of great subtlety as 'the intermediary between the
+seeing thought and God,' now floods his consciousness. In it "the Spirit
+of the Father speaks in the uplifted thought which is bare and stripped
+of images, saying, 'Behold Me as I behold thee.' Then the pure and single
+eyes are strengthened by the inpouring of that clear Light of the Father,
+and they behold His face, in a simple vision, beyond reason, and without
+reason."[56]
+
+It might be thought that in this 'simple vision' of Supreme Reality, the
+spirit of the contemplative reached its goal. It has, indeed, reached a
+point at which many a mystic stops short. I think, however, that a
+reference to St. Augustine, whose influence is so strongly marked in
+Ruysbroeck's works, will show what he means by this phase of
+contemplation; and the characters which distinguish it from that infused
+or unitive communion with God which alone he calls _Contemplatio_. In the
+seventh book of his _Confessions_, Augustine describes just such an
+experience as this. By a study of the books of the Platonists he had
+learned the art of introversion, and achieved by its aid a fleeting
+'Intellectual Contemplation' of God; in his own words, a "hurried vision
+of That which Is." "Being by these books," he says, "admonished to return
+into myself, I entered into the secret closet of my soul, guided by Thee
+... and beheld the Light that never changes, above the eye of my soul,
+above the intelligence."[57] It was by "the withdrawal of thought from
+experience, its abstraction from the contradictory throng of sensuous
+images," that he attained to this transitory apprehension; which he
+describes elsewhere as "the _vision_ of the Land of Peace, but not the
+_road_ thereto." But intellect alone could not bear the direct impact of
+the terrible light of Reality; his "weak sight was dazzled by its
+splendour," he "could not sustain his gaze," and turned back to that
+humble discovery of the Divine Substance by means of Its images and
+attributes, which is proper to the intellectual power.[58]
+
+Now surely this is the psychological situation described by Ruysbroeck.
+The very images used by Augustine are found again in him. The mind of the
+contemplative, purified, disciplined, deliberately abstracted from
+images, is inundated by the divine sunshine, "the Light which is not God,
+but that whereby we see Him"; and in this radiance achieves a hurried but
+convincing vision of Supreme Reality. But "even though the eagle, king of
+birds, can with his powerful sight gaze steadfastly upon the brightness
+of the sun; yet do the weaker eyes of the bat fail and falter in the
+same."[59] The intellectual vision is dazzled and distressed, like a man
+who can bear the diffused radiance of sunshine but is blinded if he dares
+to follow back its beams to the terrible beauty of their source. "Not for
+this are my wings fitted," says Dante, drooping to earth after his
+supreme ecstatic flight. Because it cannot sustain its gaze, then, the
+intelligence falls back upon the second phase of intellectual
+contemplation: _Speculatio_, the deep still brooding in which the soul,
+'made wise by the Spirit of Truth,' contemplates God and Creation as He
+and it are reflected in the clear mirror of her intellectual powers,
+under 'images and similitudes'--the Mysteries of Faith, the Attributes of
+the Divine Nature, the forms and manners of created things. As the Father
+contemplates all things in the Son, 'Mirror of Deity,' so now does the
+introverted soul contemplate Him in this 'living mirror of her
+intelligence' on which His sunshine falls. Because her swift vision of
+That which Is has taught her to distinguish between the ineffable Reality
+and the Appearance which shadows it forth, she can again discover Him
+under those images which once veiled, but now reveal His presence. The
+intellect which has apprehended God Transcendent, if only for a moment,
+has received therefrom the power of discerning God Immanent. "He shows
+Himself to the soul in the living mirror of her intelligence; not as He
+is in His nature, but in images and similitudes, and in the degree in
+which the illuminated reason can grasp and understand Him. And the wise
+reason, enlightened of God, sees clearly and without error in images of
+the understanding all that she has heard of God, of faith, of truth,
+according to her longing. But that image which is God Himself, although
+it is held before her, she cannot comprehend; for the eyes of her
+understanding must fail before that Incomparable Light."[60]
+
+In _The Kingdom of God's Lovers_ Ruysbroeck pours forth a marvellous list
+of the attributes under which the illuminated intelligence now
+contemplates and worships That Which she can never comprehend; that
+"Simple One in whom all multitude and all that multiplies, finds its
+beginning and its end." From this simple Being of the Godhead the
+illuminated reason abstracts those images and attributes with which it
+can deal, as the lower reason abstracts from the temporal flux the
+materials of our normal universe. Such a loving consideration of God
+under His attributes is the essence of meditation: and meditation is in
+fact the way in which the intellectual faculties can best contemplate
+Reality. But "because all things, when they are considered in their
+inwardness, have their beginning and their ending in the Infinite
+Being as in an Abyss," here again the contemplative is soon led
+above himself and beyond himself, to a point at which intellect and
+'consideration'--_i.e._ formal thought--fail him; because "here we touch
+the Simple Nature of God." When intellectual contemplation has brought
+the self to this point, it has done its work; for it has "excited in the
+soul an eager desire to lift itself up by contemplation into the
+simplicity of the Light, that thereby its avid desire of infinite
+fruition may be satisfied and fulfilled";[61] _i.e._ it has performed the
+true office of meditation, induced a shifting of consciousness to higher
+levels.
+
+We observe that the emphasis, which in the First Degree of Contemplation
+fell wholly on feeling, in the Second Degree falls wholly upon knowledge.
+We are not, however, to suppose from this that emotion has been left
+behind. As the virtues and energies of the Active Life continue in the
+Contemplative Life, so the 'burning love' which distinguished the first
+stage of communion with the Transcendent, is throughout the source of
+that energy which presses the self on to deeper and closer
+correspondences with Reality. Its presence is presupposed in all that is
+said concerning the development of the spiritual consciousness.
+Nevertheless Ruysbroeck, though he cannot be accused of intellectualism,
+is led by his admiration for Victorine ideas to lay great stress upon the
+mental side of contemplation, as against those emotional reactions to the
+Transcendent which are emphasised--almost to excess--by so many of the
+saints. His aim was the lifting of the _whole man_ to Eternal levels: and
+the clarifying of the intelligence, the enhancement of the understanding,
+seemed to him a proper part of the deification of human nature, the
+bringing forth in the soul's ground of that Son who is the Wisdom of God
+as well as the Pattern of Man. Though he moves amongst deep mysteries,
+and in regions beyond the span of ordinary minds, there is always
+apparent in him an effort towards lucidity of expression, sharp
+definition, plain speech. Sometimes he is wild and ecstatic, pouring
+forth his vision in a strange poetry which is at once uncouth and
+sublime; but he is never woolly or confused. His prose passages owe much
+of their seeming difficulty to the passion for exactitude which
+distinguishes and classifies the subtlest movements of the spiritual
+atmosphere, the delicately graded responses of the soul.
+
+3. Now the Third Degree of Contemplation lifts the whole consciousness to
+a plane of perception which transcends the categories of the intellect:
+where it deals no longer with the label but with the Thing. It has passed
+beyond image and also beyond thought; to that knowledge by contact which
+is the essence of intuition, and is brought about by the higher powers of
+love. Such contemplation is regarded by Ruysbroeck as the work of the
+Father, "Who strips from the mind all forms and images and lifts up the
+Naked Apprehension [_i.e._ intuition] into its Origin, that is
+Himself."[62] It is effected by concentration of all the powers of the
+self into a single state 'uplifted above all action, in a bare
+understanding and love,' upon that apex of the soul where no reason can
+ever attain, and where the 'simple eye' is ever open towards God. There
+the loving soul apprehends Him, not under conditions, 'in some wise,' but
+as a _whole_, without the discrete analysis of His properties which was
+the special character of intellectual contemplation; a synthetic
+experience which is 'in no wise.' This is for Ruysbroeck the
+contemplative act _par excellence_. It is 'an intimacy which is
+ignorance,' a 'simple seeing,' he says again and again; "and the name
+thereof is _Contemplatio_; that is, the seeing of God in simplicity."[63]
+
+"Here the reason no less than all separate acts must give way, for our
+powers become simple in Love; they are silent and bowed down in the
+Presence of the Father. And this revelation of the Father lifts the soul
+above the reason into the Imageless Nudity. There the soul is simple,
+pure, spotless, empty of all things; and it is in this state of perfect
+emptiness that the Father manifests His Divine radiance. To this radiance
+neither reason nor sense, observation nor distinction, can attain. All
+this must stay below; for the measureless radiance blinds the eyes of the
+reason, they cannot bear the Incomprehensible Light. But above the
+reason, in the most secret part of the understanding, the _simple eye_ is
+ever open. It contemplates and gazes at the Light with a pure sight that
+is lit by the Light itself: eye to eye, mirror to mirror, image to image.
+This threefold act makes us like God, and unites us to Him; for the sight
+of the _simple eye_ is a living mirror, which God has made for His image,
+and whereon He has impressed it."[64]
+
+Intuitive or infused contemplation is the form of communion with the
+Transcendent proper to those who have grown up to the state of Union; and
+feel and know the presence of God within the soul, as a love, a life, an
+'indrawing attraction,' calling and enticing all things to the still
+unachieved consummation of the Divine Unity. He who has reached this
+pitch of introversion, and is able, in his spiritual exercises, to
+withdraw himself thus to the most secret part of his spirit,
+feels--within the Eternal Light which fills his mirror and is 'united
+with it,'--this perpetual demand of the Divine Unity, entreating and
+urging him towards a total self-loss. In the fact that he knows this
+demand and impulsion as other than himself, we find the mark which
+separates this, the highest contemplation proper to the Life of Union,
+from that 'fruitive contemplation' of the spirit which has died into God
+which belongs to the Life of Unity.[65] When the work of transmutation is
+finished and he has received the 'Sparkling Stone of Divine Humanity,'
+this subject-object distinction--though really an eternal one, as
+Ruysbroeck continually reminds us--will no longer be possible to his
+consciousness. Then he will live at those levels to which he now makes
+impassioned ascents in his hours of unitive prayer: will be immersed in
+the Beatific Vision on which he now looks, and 'lose himself in the
+Imageless Nudity.'
+
+This is the clue to the puzzling distinction made by Ruysbroeck between
+the contemplation which is 'without conditions,' and that which is
+'beyond and above conditions' and belongs to the Superessential Life
+alone. In Intuitive Contemplation the seeing self apprehends the
+Unconditioned World, _Onwise_, and makes 'loving ascents thereto.' It
+'finds within itself the unwalled'; yet is still anchored to the
+conditioned sphere. In Superessential Contemplation, it _dies into_ that
+'world which is in no wise.' In the great chapter of _The Sparkling
+Stone_[66] where he struggles to make this distinction clear, Ruysbroeck
+says that the Friends of God (_i.e._ the Interior Men) "cannot with
+themselves and all their works penetrate to that Imageless Nudity."
+Although they feel united with God, yet they feel in that union an
+otherness and difference between themselves and God; and therefore "the
+ascent into the Nought is unknown to them." They feel themselves carried
+up towards God in the tide of His all-subduing Fire of Love; but they
+retain their selfhood, and may not be consumed and burned to nothing in
+the Unity of Love. They do not yet desire to die into God, that they may
+receive a deiform life from Him; but they are in the way which leads to
+this fulfilment of their destiny, and are "following back the light to
+its Origin."
+
+This following-back is one continuous process, in which we, for
+convenience of description, have made artificial breaks. It is the thrust
+of consciousness deeper and deeper into the heart of Reality. As in the
+stream of physical duration, so in this ceaseless movement of the spirit,
+there is a persistence of the past in the present, a carrying through and
+merging of one state in the next. Thus the contemplation which is
+'wayless,' the self's intuitive communion with the Infinite Life and
+Light, growing in depth and richness, bridges the gap which separates the
+Interior and the Superessential Life.
+
+We find in Ruysbroeck's works indications of a transitional state, in
+which the soul "is guided and lost, wanders and returns, ebbs and flows,"
+within the 'limitless Nudity,' to which it has not yet wholly surrendered
+itself. "And its seeing is in no wise, being without manner, and it is
+neither thus nor thus, neither here nor there; for that which is in no
+wise hath enveloped all, and the vision is made high and wide. It knows
+not itself where That is which it sees; and it cannot come thereto, for
+its seeing is in no wise, and passes on, beyond, for ever, and without
+return. That which it apprehends it cannot realise in full, nor wholly
+attain, for its apprehension is wayless, and without manner, and
+therefore it is apprehended of God in a higher way than it can apprehend
+Him. Behold! such a following of the Way that is Wayless, is intermediary
+between contemplation in images and similitudes of the intellect, and
+unveiled contemplation beyond all images in the Light of God."[67]
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VIII
+                        THE SUPERESSENTIAL LIFE
+
+
+  If, therefore, thou art become the throne of God and the Heavenly
+  Charioteer hath seated Himself within thee, and thy soul is wholly
+  become a spiritual eye and is wholly made into light; if, too, thou art
+  nourished with the heavenly food of that Spirit and hast drunk of the
+  Living Water and put on the secret vesture of light--if thine inward
+  man has experienced all these things and is established in abundant
+  faith, lo! thou livest indeed the Eternal Life and thy soul rests even
+  in this present time with the Lord.
+
+                                                St. Macarius of Egypt.
+
+We have seen that Ruysbroeck, in common with a few other supreme mystics,
+declares to us as veritably known and experienced by him, a universe of
+three orders--Becoming, Being, God--and further, three ways of life
+whereby the self can correspond to these three orders, and which he calls
+the life of nature, the life of grace, the life of glory. 'Glory,' which
+has been degraded by the usage of popular piety into a vague superlative,
+and finally left in the hands of hymn-writers and religious revivalists,
+is one of the most ancient technical terms of Christian mysticism. Of
+Scriptural origin, from the fourth century to the fifteenth it was used
+to denote a definite kind of enhanced life, a final achievement of
+Reality--the unmediated radiance of God--which the gift of 'divine
+sonship' made possible to the soul. In the life of grace, that soul
+transcends conditions in virtue of a Divine vitality poured in from the
+Absolute Sphere, and actualises its true being, (_Wesen_); in the life of
+glory, it becomes a denizen of that sphere, and achieves an existence
+that is 'more than being' (_Overwesen_). The note of the first state is
+contemplation, awareness; the note of the second is fruition, possession.
+
+That power of making 'swift and loving ascents' to the plane of _Onwise_
+to which man attained at the end of the Interior Life, that conscious
+harmony with the Divine Will which then became the controlling factor of
+his active career, cannot be the end of the process of transcendence. The
+soul now hungers and thirsts for a more intense Reality, a closer contact
+with 'Him who is measureless'; a deeper and deeper penetration into the
+burning heart of the universe. Though contemplation seems to have reached
+its term, love goes on, to 'lose itself upon the heights.' Beyond both
+the conditioned and unconditioned world, beyond the Trinity Itself, that
+love discerns its ultimate objective--the very Godhead, the Divine Unity,
+"where all lines find their end"; where "we are satisfied and
+overflowing, and with Him beyond ourselves eternally fulfilled."[68] The
+abiding life which is there discoverable, is not only 'without manner'
+but 'above manner'--the 'deified life,' indescribable save by the oblique
+methods of music or poetry, wherein, in Maeterlinck's great phrase, "the
+psychology of man mingles with the psychology of God." All Ruysbroeck's
+most wonderful passages are concerned with the desperate attempt to tell
+us of this 'life,' this utter fruition of Reality: which seems at one
+time to involve for the contemplative consciousness a self-mergence in
+Deity, so complete as to give colour to that charge of pantheism which is
+inevitably flung at all mystics who try to tell what they have known; at
+others, to represent rather the perfect consummation of that 'union in
+separateness' which is characteristic of all true love.
+
+This is but one instance of that perpetual and inevitable resort to
+paradox which torments all who try to follow him along this 'track
+without shadow of trace'; for the goal towards which he is now enticing
+us is one in which all the completing opposites of our fragmentary
+experience find their bourne. Hence the rapid alternation of spatial and
+personal symbols which confuses our industrious intellects, is the one
+means whereby he can suggest its actuality to our hungry hearts.
+
+As we observed in Ruysbroeck's earlier teaching on contemplation three
+distinct forms, in which the special work that theology attributes to the
+three Divine Persons seemed to him to be reflected; now, in this
+Superessential Contemplation, or Fruition, we find the work of the
+Absolute Godhead Itself, energising upon a plane of intensity which so
+utterly transcends our power of apprehension, that it seems to the
+surface consciousness--as Dionysius the Areopagite had named it--a
+negation of all things, a Divine Dark.
+
+This Fruition, says Ruysbroeck, "is wild and desolate as a desert, and
+therein is to be found no way, no road, no track, no retreat, no measure,
+no beginning, no end, nor any other thing that can be told in words. And
+this is for all of us Simple Blessedness, the Essence of God and our
+superessence, above reason and beyond reason. To know it we must be in
+it, beyond the mind and above our created being; in that Eternal Point
+where all our lines begin and end, that Point where they lose their name
+and all distinction, and become one with the Point itself, and that very
+One which the Point is, yet nevertheless ever remain in themselves nought
+else but lines that come to an end."[69]
+
+What, then, is the way by which the soul moves from that life of intense
+contemplation in which the 'spreading light' of the Spirit shows her the
+universe fulfilled with God, to this new transfigured state of joy and
+terror? It is a way for which her previous adventures might have prepared
+us. As each new ascent, new inflow of grace, was prepared by a time of
+destitution and stress--as the compensating beats of love and
+renunciation have governed the evolving melody of the inner life--so here
+a last death of selfhood, a surrender more absolute than all that has
+gone before, must be the means of her achievement of absolute life.
+
+"Dying, and behold I live!" says Paul of his own attainment of supernal
+life in Christ. Ruysbroeck, who never strays far from the vital and
+heroic mysticism of the New Testament saints, can find no other language
+for this last crisis of the spirit--its movement from the state of
+_Wesen_ to that of _Overwesen_--than the language of death. The
+ever-moving line, though its vital character of duration continues, now
+seems to itself to swoon into the Point; the separate entity which has
+felt the flood of grace pour into it to energise its active career, and
+the ebb of homeward-tending love draw it back towards the One, now feels
+itself pouring into the Infinite Sea. Our personal activity, he says, has
+done all that it can: as the separate career of Christ our Pattern closed
+with His voluntary death, so the death of our selfhood on that apex of
+personality where we have stretched up so ardently toward the Father,
+shall close the separate career of the human soul and open the way to its
+new, God-driven career, its resurrection-life. "None is sure of Eternal
+Life unless he has died with all his own attributes wholly into
+God"[70]--all else falls short of the demands of supreme generosity.
+
+It is _The Book of the Sparkling Stone_ which contains Ruysbroeck's most
+wonderful descriptions of the consciousness peculiar to these souls who
+have grown up to 'the fulness of the stature of Christ'; and since this
+is surely the finest and perhaps the least known of his writings, I offer
+no apology for transcribing a long passage from its ninth chapter: 'How
+we may become the Hidden Sons of God.'
+
+"When we soar up above ourselves, and become, in our upward striving
+towards God, so simple, that the naked Love in the Heights can lay hold
+on us, there where Love cherishes Love, above all activity and all virtue
+(that is to say, in our Origin, wherefrom we are spiritually born)--then
+we cease, and we and all that is our own die into God. And in this death
+we become hidden Sons of God, and find in ourselves a new life, and that
+is Eternal Life. And of these Sons, St. Paul says: 'Ye are dead, and your
+life is hid with Christ in God.' In our approach to God we must bear with
+us ourselves and all that we do, as a perpetual sacrifice to God; and in
+the Presence of God we must leave ourselves and all our works, and, dying
+in love, soar up above all created things into the Superessential Kingdom
+of God. And of this the Spirit of God speaks in the Book of Hidden
+Things, saying: 'Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.'... If we
+would _taste_ God, and feel in ourselves Eternal Life above all things,
+we must go forth into God with a faith that is far above our reason, and
+there dwell, simple, idle, without image, lifted up by love into the
+Unwalled Bareness of our intelligence. For when we go out from ourselves
+in love, and die to all observances in ignorance and darkness, then we
+are made complete, and transfigured by the Eternal Word, Image of the
+Father. And in this emptiness of spirit we receive the Incomprehensible
+Light, which enfolds and penetrates us as air is penetrated by the light
+of the sun; and this Light is nought else but a fathomless gazing and
+seeing. What we are, that we gaze at; and what we gaze at, that we are.
+For our thought, our life, our being, are lifted up in simplicity, and
+united with the Truth, that is God. Therefore in this simple gazing we
+are one life and one spirit with God--and this I call the _seeing
+life_."[71]
+
+Such a passage as this lies beyond our poor attempts at analysis. Those
+only will understand it who yield themselves to it; entering into its
+current, as we enter into the music that we love. It tells us all it can
+of this life which is 'more than being,' as _felt_ in the supreme
+experience of love. Life and Death, Dark and Light, Idleness,
+Bareness--these are but images of the feeling-states that accompany it.
+But here, more than elsewhere in Ruysbroeck's writings, we must remember
+the peril which goes with all subjective treatment of mystical truth.
+Each state which the unitive mystic experiences is so intense, that it
+monopolises for the time being his field of consciousness. Writing under
+the 'pressure of the Spirit' he writes of it--as indeed it seems to him
+at the moment--as ultimate and complete. Only by a comparison of
+different and superficially inconsistent descriptions of this enhanced
+life--which must harmonise and fulfil _all_ the needs of our complex
+personality, providing inexhaustible objectives for love, intelligence
+and will--can we form any true idea concerning it.
+
+When we do this, we discover that the side of it which _seems_ a static
+beatitude, still Fruition, perfect Rest, is always balanced by the other
+side; which _seems_ a perpetual and progressive attainment, a seeking and
+finding, a hungering and feeding, a giving and taking. These coexist; as
+the ever-renewed 'coming of the Bridegroom,' the welling-up of the
+Spirit, the stormy, eager, unsatisfied love of the soul do as a matter of
+experience coexist within that perfect and personal union wherein Love
+and Fruition, as Ruysbroeck puts it, 'live between action and rest.' The
+alternate consciousness of the line and the Point, the moving river and
+the Sea, the relative and the Absolute, persists so long as consciousness
+persists at all; it is no Christianised Nirvana into which he seeks to
+induct us, but that mysterious synthesis of Being and Becoming, 'eternal
+stillness and eternal work'--a movement into God which is already a
+complete achievement of Him--which certain other great mystics have
+discerned beyond the 'flaming ramparts' of the common life.
+
+The unbreakable unity with God, which constitutes the mark of the Third
+Life, exists in the 'essential ground of the soul'; where the river flows
+into the Sea, the line into the Point; where the pendulum of self has its
+attachment to Reality. _There_, the hidden child of the Absolute is 'one
+with God in restful fruition'; there, his deep intuition of Divine
+things--that 'Savouring Wisdom' which is the last supreme gift of the
+Spirit[72]--is able to taste and apprehend the sweetness of Infinite
+Reality. But at the other end, where he still participates in the
+time-process, where his love and will are a moving river, consciousness
+hungers for that total Attainment still; and attention will swing between
+these two extremes, now actualised within the living soul, which has put
+on the dual character of 'Divine Humanity' and is living Eternal Life,
+not in some far-off celestial region, but here, where Christ lived it, in
+the entangled world of Time. Thus active self-mergence, incessant
+re-birth into God, perpetual eager feeding on Him, is implicit in all
+spiritual life. Even for the souls of the 'deified,' quietism is never
+right. "For love cannot be lazy, but would search through and through,
+and taste through and through, the fathomless kingdom that lives in her
+ground; and this hunger shall _never_ be stilled."[73]
+
+The soul, whenever it attends to itself--withdraws itself, so to speak,
+from the Divine Synthesis, dwells in itself, and beholds instead of
+being--feels again the 'eternal unrest of love'; the whip of the Heavenly
+Charioteer, driving all spirits in towards the heart of God, where they
+are 'one fire with Him.' "This stirring, that mediates between ourselves
+and God, we can never pass beyond; and what that stirring is in its
+essence, and what love is in itself, we can never know."[74] But when it
+dwells beyond itself, and in the supreme moments of ecstasy merges its
+consciousness in the Universal Consciousness, it transcends succession
+and centres itself in the Divine Selfhood--the 'still, glorious, and
+absolute One-ness.' Then it feels, not hunger but satisfaction, not
+desire but fruition; and knows itself beyond reason 'one with the abysmal
+depth and breadth,' in "a simple fathomless savouring of all good and of
+Eternal Life. And in this savouring we are swallowed up, above reason and
+beyond reason, in the deep Quiet of the Godhead which is never
+moved."[75]
+
+Such experiences however, such perfect fruition, in which the self dies
+into the overwhelming revelation of the Transcendent, and its rhythm is
+merged in the Divine Rhythm, cannot be continuous for those still living
+in the flesh. There is in Ruysbroeck no foolish insistence on any
+impossible career of ceaseless ecstasy; but a robust acceptance of the
+facts and limitations of life. Man cannot, he says, "perpetually
+contemplate with attention the superessential Being of God in the Light
+of God. But whosoever has attained to the gift of Intelligence [_i.e._
+the sixth of the Seven Gifts of the Spirit] attains this power, which
+becomes habitual to him; and whensoever he will, he can wholly absorb
+himself in this manner of contemplation, in so far as it is possible in
+this life."[76]
+
+The superessential man, in fact, is, as Francis Thompson said of the
+soul, a
+
+  "... swinging-wicket set
+          Between
+  The Unseen and Seen."
+
+He is to move easily and at will between these two orders, both actual,
+both God-inhabited, the complementary expressions of One Love;
+participating both in the active, industrious, creative outflow in
+differentiation, and the still indrawing attraction which issues in the
+supreme experience of Unity. For these two movements the Active and
+Interior Lives have educated him. The truly characteristic experience of
+the Third Life is the fruition of that Unity or Simplicity in which they
+are harmonised, beyond the balanced consciousness of the indrawing and
+outdrawing tides.[77]
+
+Ruysbroeck discerns three moments in this achievement. First, a negative
+movement, the introversive sinking-down of our created life into God's
+absolute life, which is the consummation of self-naughting and surrender
+and the essence of dark contemplation. Next, the positive ecstatic
+stretching forth above reason into our 'highest life,' where we undergo
+complete transmutation in God and feel ourselves wholly enfolded in Him.
+Thirdly, from these 'completing opposites' of surrender and love springs
+the perfect fruition of Unity, so far as we may know it here; when "we
+feel ourselves to be one with God, and find ourselves transformed of God,
+and immersed in the fathomless Abyss of our Eternal Blessedness, where we
+can find no further separation between ourselves and God. So long as we
+are lifted up and stretched forth into this height of feeling, all our
+powers remain idle, in an essential fruition; for where our powers are
+utterly naughted, there we lose our activity. And so long as we remain
+idle, without observation, with outstretched spirit and open eyes, so
+long can we see and have fruition. But in that same moment in which we
+would test and comprehend _What_ that may be which we feel, we fall back
+upon reason; and there we find distinction and otherness between God and
+ourselves, and find God as an Incomprehensible One exterior to us."[78]
+
+It is clear from this passage that such 'utterness' of fruition is a
+fleeting experience; though it is one to which the unitive mystic can
+return again and again, since it exists as a permanent state in his
+essential ground, ever discoverable by him when attention is focussed
+upon it. Further, it appears that the 'absence of difference' between God
+and the soul, which the mystic in these moments of ecstasy feels and
+enjoys, is a psychological experience, not an absolute truth. It is the
+only way in which his surface-mind is able to realise on the one side the
+overwhelming apprehension of God's Love, that 'Yes' in which all other
+syllables are merged; on the other the completeness of his being's
+self-abandonment to the Divine embrace--"that Superessential Love with
+which we are one, and which we possess more deeply and widely than any
+other thing."[79] It was for this experience that Thomas � Kempis prayed
+in one of his most Ruysbroeckian passages: "When shall I at full gather
+myself in Thee, that for Thy love I feel not myself, but Thee only, above
+all feeling and all manner, in a _manner not known to all_?"[80] It is to
+this same paradoxical victory-in-surrender--this apparent losing which is
+the only real finding--that Francis Thompson invites the soul:
+
+  "To feel thyself and be
+  His dear nonentity--
+        Caught
+  Beyond human thought
+
+  In the thunder-spout of Him,
+  Until thy being dim,
+        And be
+  Dead deathlessly."
+
+Now here it is, in these stammered tidings of an adventure 'far outside
+and beyond our spirit,' in 'the darkness at which reason gazes with wide
+eyes,'[81] that we must look for the solution of that problem which all
+high mystic states involve for analytic thought: how can the human soul
+become one with God 'without intermediary, beyond all separation,'[82]
+yet remain eternally distinct from Him? How can the 'deification,' the
+'union with God without differentiation' on which the great mystics
+insist, be accepted, and pantheism be denied?
+
+First, we notice that in all descriptions of Unity given us by the
+mystics, there is a strong subjective element. Their first concern is
+always with the experience of the heart and will, not with the deductions
+made by the intelligence. It is at our own peril that we attach
+ontological meaning to their convinced and vivid psychological
+statements. Ruysbroeck in particular makes this quite clear to us; says
+again and again that he has '_felt_ unity without difference and
+distinction,' yet that he _knows_ that 'otherness' has always remained,
+and "that this is true we can only know by feeling it, and in no other
+way."[83]
+
+In certain great moments, he says, the purified and illuminated soul
+which has died into God does achieve an Essential Stillness; which seems
+to human thought a static condition, for it is that Eternal Now of the
+Godhead which embraces in its span the whole process of Time. Here we
+find nothing but God: the naked and ultimate Fact or Superessential Being
+'whence all Being has come forth,' stripped of academic trimmings and
+experienced in its white-hot intensity. Here, far beyond the range of
+thought, unity and otherness, like hunger and fulfilment, activity and
+rest, _can_ co-exist in love. The ultimate union is a love-union, says
+Ruysbroeck. "The Love of God is a consuming Fire, which draws us out of
+ourselves and swallows us up in unity with God, where we are satisfied
+and overflowing, and with Him, beyond ourselves, eternally
+fulfilled."[84]
+
+This hungry and desirous love, at once a personal passion and a cosmic
+force, drenches, transfigures and unites with the soul, as sunlight does
+the air, as fire does the iron flung into the furnace; so that the molten
+metal 'changed into another glory' is both iron and fire 'ever distinct
+yet ever united'--an antique image of the Divine Union which he takes
+direct from a celebrated passage in St. Bernard's works. "As much as is
+iron, so much is fire; and as much as is fire, so much is iron; yet the
+iron doth not become fire, nor the fire iron, but each retains its
+substance and nature. So likewise the spirit of man doth not become God,
+but is deified, and knows itself breadth, length, height and depth: and
+as far as God is God, so far the loving spirit is made one with Him in
+love."[85] The iron, the air, represent our created essence; the fire,
+the sunlight, God's Essence, which is added to our own--our
+_superessence_. The two are held in a union which, when we try to see it
+under the symbolism of space, appears a mingling, a self-mergence; but,
+when we feel it under the symbolism of personality, is a marriage in
+which the lover and beloved are 'distinct yet united.' "Then are we one
+being, one love, and one beatitude with God ... a joy so great and
+special that we cannot even think of any other joy. For then one is one's
+self a Fruition of Love, and can and should want nothing beyond one's
+own."[86]
+
+It follows from all this that when the soul, coming to the Fourth State
+of Fruitive Love, enters into the Equilibrium which supports and
+penetrates the flux, it does and must reconcile the opposites which have
+governed the earlier stages of its career. The communion reached is with
+a Wholeness; the life which flows from it must be a wholeness too. Full
+surrender, harmonised with full actualisation of all our desires and
+faculties; not some thin, abstract, vertical relation alone, but an
+all-round expansion, a full, deep, rich giving and taking, a complete
+correspondence with the infinitely rich, all-demanding and all-generous
+God whose "love is measureless for it is Himself." Thus Ruysbroeck
+teaches that love static and love dynamic must coexist for us as for Him;
+that the 'eternal hunger and thirst' of the God-demanding soul continues
+within its ecstatic satisfaction; because, however deeply it may love and
+understand, the Divine Excess will always baffle it. It is destined 'ever
+to go forward within the Essence of God,' to grow without ceasing deeper
+and deeper into this life, in "the eternal longing to follow after and
+attain Him Who is measureless." "And we learn this truth from His sight:
+that all we taste, in comparison with that which remains out of our
+reach, is no more than a single drop of water compared with the whole
+sea.... We hunger for God's Infinity, which we cannot devour, and we
+aspire to His Eternity, which we cannot attain.... In this storm of love,
+our activity is above reason and is in no wise. Love desires that which
+is impossible to her; and reason teaches that love is within her rights,
+but can neither counsel nor persuade her."[87]
+
+Hence an eternal desire and an eternal satisfaction are preserved within
+the circle of the deified life. The full-grown self feels, in its most
+intense degree, the double movement of the Divine Love and Light, the
+flux and reflux; and in its perfect and ever-renewed responses to the
+'indrawing and outflowing attraction' of that Tide, the complete
+possession of the Superessential Life consists.
+
+"The indrawing attraction drags us out of ourselves, and calls us to be
+melted away and naughted in the Unity. And in this indrawing attraction
+we feel that God wills that we should be His, and for this we must
+abnegate ourselves and let our beatitude be accomplished in Him. But when
+He attracts us by flowing out towards us, He gives us over to ourselves
+and makes us free, and sets us in Time."[88]
+
+Thus is accomplished that paradoxical synthesis of 'Eternal Rest and
+Eternal Work' which Ruysbroeck regards as the essential character of God,
+and towards which the whole of his system has been educating the human
+soul. The deified or 'God-formed' soul is for him the spirit in which
+this twofold ideal is actualised: this is the Pattern, the Likeness of
+God, declared in Christ our Archetype, towards which the Indwelling
+Spirit presses the race. Though there are moments in which, carried away
+as it seems by his almost intolerable ecstasy, he pushes out towards
+'that unwalled Fruition of God,' where all fruition begins and ends,
+where 'one is all and all is one,' and Man is himself a 'fruition of
+love';[89] yet he never forgets to remind us that, as love is not love
+unless it looks forward towards the creation of new life, so here, "when
+love falls in love with love, and each is all to the other in possession
+and in rest," the _object_ of this ecstasy is not a permanent self-loss
+in the Divine Darkness, a 'slumbering in God,' but a "new life of virtue,
+such as love and its impulses demand."[90] "To be a living, willing Tool
+of God, wherewith God works what He will and how He will," is the goal of
+transcendence described in the last chapter of _The Sparkling Stone_.
+"Then is our life a _whole_, when contemplation and work dwell in us side
+by side, and we are perfectly in both of them at once";[91] for then the
+separate spirit is immersed in, and part of, the perpetual creative act
+of the Godhead--the flowing forth and the drawing back, which have at
+their base the Eternal Equilibrium, the unbroken peace, wherein "God
+contemplates Himself and all things in an Eternal Now that has neither
+beginning nor end."[92] On that Unbroken Peace the spirit hangs; and
+swings like a pendulum, in wide arcs of love and service, between the
+Unconditioned and the Conditioned Worlds.
+
+So the Superessential Life is the simple, the synthetic life, in which
+man actualises at last all the resources of his complex being. The active
+life of response to the Temporal Order, the contemplative life of
+response to the Transcendent Order are united, firmly held together, by
+that 'eternal fixation of the spirit'; the perpetual willed dwelling of
+the being of man within the Incomprehensible Abyss of the Being of God,
+_qui est per omnia saecula benedictus_.
+
+
+
+
+                          BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
+
+
+                            I. Flemish Text
+
+  _Werken van Jan van Ruusbroec_. Ed. J. David. 6 vols. (Maetschappy der
+  Vlaemsche Bibliophilen). (Gent, 1858-68.)
+
+This edition, based on the MSS. preserved at Brussels and Ghent, and the
+foundation of all the best translations, is now rare. It may be consulted
+at the British Museum.
+
+A re-issue of the Flemish text is now in progress; the first volume being
+_Jan van Ruysbroeck, Van den VII. Trappen_ (i.e. _The Seven Degrees of
+Love_) _met Geert Groote's latijnsche Vertaling_. Ed. Dom. Ph. M�ller
+(Brussels, 1911).
+
+
+                            II. Translations
+
+
+                               A. _Latin_
+
+The chief works of Ruysbroeck were early translated into Latin, some
+during their author's lifetime, and widely circulated in this form. Three
+of these early translations were printed in the sixteenth century: the
+_De Ornatu Spiritualium Nuptiarum_ of Jordaens, at Paris, in 1512; and
+the _De Septem Scal� Divini Amoris Gradibus_ of Gerard Groot, together
+with the _De Perfectione Filiorum Dei_ (i.e. _The Sparkling Stone_), at
+Bologna, in 1538.
+
+The standard Latin translation, however--indispensable to all students of
+Ruysbroeck--is the great work of the Carthusian monk, Laurentius Surius:
+_D. Joannis Rusbrochii Opera Omnia_ (Cologne, 1552).
+
+This was reprinted in 1609 (the best edition), and again in 1692. It
+contains all Ruysbroeck's authentic works, and some that are doubtful; in
+a translation singularly faithful to the sense of the original, though it
+fails to reproduce the rugged sublimity, the sudden lapses into crude and
+homely metaphor, so characteristic of his style.
+
+
+                              B. _English_
+
+  _The Book of the Twelve B�guines_ (the first sixteen chapters only).
+  Translated from the Flemish, by John Francis (London, 1913).
+
+A useful translation of one of Ruysbroeck's most difficult treatises.
+
+
+                              C. _French_
+
+  _OEuvres de Ruysbroeck l'Admirable. Traduction du Flamand par les_
+  B�n�dictins de Saint Paul de Wisques.
+
+    Vol. I.: _Le Miroir du Salut �ternel_; _Les Sept Cl�tures_; _Les Sept
+    Degr�s de l'�chelle d'Amour Spirituel_ (Brussels, 1912, in progress).
+
+This edition, when completed, will form the standard text of Ruysbroeck
+for those unable to read Flemish. The translation is admirably lucid, and
+a short but adequate introduction is prefixed to each work.
+
+  _L'Ornement des Noces Spirituelles. Traduit du Flamand par_ Maurice
+  Maeterlinck (Brussels, 1900).
+
+This celebrated book, still more its beautiful though unreliable
+introduction, is chiefly responsible for the modern interest in
+Ruysbroeck. The translation, exquisite as French prose, over-emphasises
+the esoteric element in his teaching. Those unable to read Flemish should
+check it by Lambert's German text (see below).
+
+  _Vie de Rusbroch suivie de son Trait� des Sept Degr�s de l'Amour.
+  Traduction litt�rale du Texte Flamand-Latin, par_ R. Chamonal (Paris,
+  1909). _Trait� du Royaume des Amants de Dieu. Traduit par_ R. Chamonal
+  (Paris, 1911). _De la Vraie Contemplation_ (i.e. _The Twelve
+  B�guines_). _Traduit par_ R. Chamonal. 3 vols. (Paris, 1912).
+
+These are the first volumes of a proposed complete translation; which is,
+however, far from literal, and replaces the rough vigour of the original
+by the insipid language of conventional French piety.
+
+  _Livre des XII. B�guines ou de la Vraie Contemplation_ (first sixteen
+  chapters only). _Traduit du Flamand, avec Introduction, par_ L'Abb� P.
+  Cuylits (Brussels, 1909).
+
+This also contains a French version of the _Vita_ of Pomerius. The
+translator is specially successful in rendering the peculiar quality of
+Ruysbroeck's verse; but the statements in his introduction must be
+accepted with reserve.
+
+
+                              D. _German_
+
+  _Drei Schriften des Mystikers Johann van Ruysbroeck, aus dem Vl�mischen
+  �bersetzt von_ Franz A. Lambert (Leipzig, 1902).
+
+A vigorous and accurate translation of _The Adornment of the Spiritual
+Marriage_, _The Sparkling Stone_ and _The Book of Supreme Truth_.
+
+Ruysbroeck translates better into German than into any other language;
+and this volume is strongly recommended to all who can read that tongue.
+
+
+                            III. Selections
+
+  _Rusbrock l'Admirable: OEuvres Choisies. Traduit par_ E. Hello (Paris,
+  1902).
+
+A series of short passages, paraphrased (_not_ translated) from the Latin
+of Surius. There are two English versions of this unsatisfactory book,
+the second being the best:
+
+    _Reflections from the Mirror of a Mystic._ Translated by Earle
+    Baillie (London, 1905).
+
+    _Flowers of a Mystic Garden._ Translated by C. E. S. (London, 1912).
+
+  _Life, Light, and Love: Selections from the German Mystics._ By the
+  Very Rev. W. R. Inge, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's (London, 1905).
+
+Contains an abridged version of _The Adornment of the Spiritual
+Marriage_.
+
+
+
+
+                        Biography and Criticism
+
+
+                            (_A Selection_)
+
+  Auger, A.--_De Doctrina et Meritis Joannis van Ruysbroeck_ (Louvain,
+  1892).
+
+  Engelhardt, J. G. von.--_Richard von St. Victor und J. Ruysbroeck_
+  (Erlangen, 1838).
+
+Useful for tracing the correspondences between the Victorines and
+Ruysbroeck.
+
+  Maeterlinck, Maurice.--_Ruysbroeck and the Mystics._ Translated by Jane
+  Stoddart (London, 1908).
+
+An English version of the Introduction to _L'Ornement des Noces
+Spirituelles_, above-mentioned; with many fine passages translated from
+Ruysbroeck's other works.
+
+  Pomerius, H.--_De Origine Monasterii Viridisvallis una cum Vitis
+  Joannis Rusbrochii._
+
+Printed in _Analecta Bollandiana_, vol. iv. (Brussels, 1885). The chief
+authority for all biographical facts.
+
+  Scully, Dom Vincent.--_A Medi�val Mystic_ (London, 1910).
+
+A biographical account, founded on Pomerius, with a short analysis of
+Ruysbroeck's works. Popular and uncritical.
+
+  Vreese, Dr. W. L. de.--_Jean de Ruysbroeck_ (_Biographie Nationale de
+  Belgique_, vol. xx.) (Brussels, 1907).
+
+An important and authoritative article with analysis of all Ruysbroeck's
+works and full bibliography.
+
+  ----_Bijdragen tot de Kennis van het Leven en de Werken van Jan van
+  Ruusbroec_ (Gent, 1896).
+
+Contains Gerard Naghel's sketch of Ruysbroeck's life, with other useful
+material.
+
+  ----_De Handschriften van Jan van Ruusbroec's Werken._ 2 vols. (Gent,
+  1900).
+
+An important and scholarly study of the manuscript sources by the
+greatest living authority.
+
+
+Notices of Ruysbroeck will be found in the following works:--
+
+  Auger, A.--_�tude sur les Mystiques des Pays Bas au Moyen Age_
+  (_Acad�mie Royale de Belgique_, vol. xlvi., 1892).
+
+  Fleming, W. K.--_Mysticism in Christianity_ (London, 1913).
+
+  Inge, Very Rev. W. R., D.D., Dean of St. Paul's.--_Christian Mysticism_
+  (London, 1899).
+
+  Jones, Dr. Rufus M.--_Studies in Mystical Religion_ (London, 1909).
+
+
+Applications of his doctrine to the spiritual life in:--
+
+  Baker, Venerable Augustin.--_Holy Wisdom; or Directions for the Prayer
+  of Contemplation_ (London, 1908).
+
+  Blosius, F. V.--_Book of Spiritual Instruction_ (London, 1900); _A
+  Mirror for Monks_ (London, 1901); _Comfort for the Faint-hearted_
+  (London, 1903); _Sanctuary of the Faithful Soul_ (London, 1905).
+
+  Denis the Carthusian.--_Opera Omnia_ (Monstrolii, 1896), in progress.
+
+  Petersen, Gerlac.--_The Fiery Soliloquy with God_ (London, 1872).
+
+  Poulain, Aug., S.J.--_The Graces of Interior Prayer_ (London, 1910).
+
+  Underhill, E.--_Mysticism_, 5th ed. (London, 1914).
+
+
+                               Influences
+
+Much light is thrown on Ruysbroeck's doctrine by a study of the authors
+who influenced him; especially:
+
+  St. Augustine; Migne, _P.L._, xxvii.-xlvii.; Eng. Trans., edited by M.
+  Dods (Edinburgh, 1876).
+
+  Dionysius the Areopagite; Migne, _P.G._, iii., iv.; Eng. Trans., by
+  Parker (Oxford, 1897).
+
+  Hugh and Richard of St. Victor; Migne, _P.L._, clxxv.-clxxvii. and
+  cxcvi.
+
+  St. Bernard; Migne, _P.L._, clxxxii.-clxxxv.; Eng. Trans., by Eales
+  (London, 1889-96).
+
+  St. Thomas Aquinas; _Opera_ (Rom�, 1882-1906); Eng. Trans., by the
+  Dominican Fathers (in progress).
+
+  St. Bonaventura; _Opera_ (Paris, 1864-71).
+
+  Meister Eckhart; _Schriften und Predigten_ (Leipzig, 1903).
+
+  Suso; _Schriften_, ed. Denifle (Munich, 1876). Eng. Trans., _Life_, ed.
+  by W. R. Inge (London, 1913); _Book of Eternal Wisdom_ (London, 1910).
+
+  Tauler, _Predigten_ (Prague, 1872); Eng. Trans., _Twenty-five Sermons_,
+  trans. by Winkworth (London, 1906); _The Inner Way_, edited by A. W.
+  Hutton (London, 1909).
+
+
+
+
+                               Footnotes
+
+
+[1]The _Vita_ of Pomerius is printed in the _Analecta Bollandiana_, vol.
+   iv. pp. 257 ff.
+
+[2]_The Book of Supreme Truth_, cap. iv.
+
+[3]_The Twelve B�guines_, cap. vii.
+
+[4]_Vita_, cap. xv.
+
+[5]De Vreese has identified 160 Flemish and 46 Latin MSS. of Ruysbroeck.
+
+[6]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxxvii.
+
+[7]_The Twelve B�guines_, cap. xiv.
+
+[8]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxxvii.
+
+[9]_Op. cit._, _ibid._
+
+[10]_The Seven Degrees of Love_, cap. xiv.
+
+[11]_The Kingdom of God's Lovers_, cap. xxix.
+
+[12]_The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, cap. viii.
+
+[13]_The Twelve B�guines_, cap. ix.
+
+[14]_The Twelve B�guines_, cap. xiv.
+
+[15]_The Book of Truth_, cap. xi.
+
+[16]_The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, cap. xvii.
+
+[17]_Op. cit._, cap. vii.
+
+[18]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. x.
+
+[19]_The Twelve B�guines_, cap. xiv.
+
+[20]_The Twelve B�guines_, cap. xiii.
+
+[21]_The Seven Degrees of Love_, cap. xiv.
+
+[22]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. iii. cap. i.
+
+[23]_The Twelve B�guines_, cap. xvi.
+
+[24]_The Twelve B�guines_, cap. xii.
+
+[25]_The Twelve B�guines_, cap. viii.
+
+[26]_The Seven Degrees of Love_, cap. i.
+
+[27]_The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, cap. xvi.
+
+[28]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. vi.
+
+[29]_The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, cap. vii.
+
+[30]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. i. cap. xiv.
+
+[31]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. i. capp. xii.-xxiv.
+
+[32]_The Kingdom of God's Lovers_, cap. xviii.
+
+[33]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. i. cap. xxvi.
+
+[34]_The Twelve B�guines_, cap. vii.
+
+[35]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. vii.
+
+[36]_The Twelve B�guines_, cap. ix.
+
+[37]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. iv.
+
+[38]Cf. _The Twelve B�guines_, cap. x.
+
+[39]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xix.; _The Book of Truth_,
+   cap. ix.
+
+[40]_The Seven Degrees of Love_, cap. xiv.
+
+[41]_The Kingdom of God's Lovers_, cap. xx.
+
+[42]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxiii.
+
+[43]_Op. cit._, lib. ii. cap. xxvii.
+
+[44]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxiv.
+
+[45]Richard Rolle; _The Mending of Life_, cap. xii. (Harford's edition,
+   p. 82).
+
+[46]_The Kingdom of God's Lovers_, cap. xxv.
+
+[47]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxviii.
+
+[48]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxix.
+
+[49]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ii.
+
+[50]Cp. _The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. lvii.
+
+[51]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxxvi.
+
+[52]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxxviii.
+
+[53]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxxix.
+
+[54]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ii.
+
+[55]_The Twelve B�guines_, cap. xi.
+
+[56]_Loc. cit._
+
+[57]St. Augustine, _Confessions_, lib. vii. cap. x.
+
+[58]St. Augustine, _Confessions_, lib. vii. capp. xvii. and xx.
+
+[59]_The Twelve B�guines_, cap. xii.
+
+[60]_Loc. cit._
+
+[61]_The Kingdom of God's Lovers_, cap. xxxiv.
+
+[62]_The Seven Cloisters_, cap. xix.
+
+[63]_The Twelve B�guines_, cap. xii.
+
+[64]_The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, cap. xvii.
+
+[65]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. iii.
+
+[66]Cap. viii.: 'Of the Difference between the Secret Friends and the
+   Hidden Sons of God.'
+
+[67]_The Twelve B�guines_, cap. xii.
+
+[68]_The Twelve B�guines_, cap. xvi.
+
+[69]_The Seven Cloisters_, cap. xix.
+
+[70]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. viii.
+
+[71]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ix.
+
+[72]_The Kingdom of God's Lovers_; cap. xxxiii.
+
+[73]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ix.; cp. also _The Twelve B�guines_, cap.
+   xvi.
+
+[74]_The Twelve B�guines_, cap. xvi.
+
+[75]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ix.; cp. also _The Book of Truth_, cap.
+   xii.
+
+[76]_The Kingdom of God's Lovers_, cap. xxxi.
+
+[77]_The Book of Truth_, cap. xii.
+
+[78]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. x.
+
+[79]_Op. cit._ cap. ix.
+
+[80]_The Imitation of Christ_, lib. iii. cap. xxiii.
+
+[81]_The Twelve B�guines_, cap. xiv., and _The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ix.
+
+[82]_The Twelve B�guines_, cap. xvi.
+
+[83]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ix.; cp. _The Book of Truth_, cap. xi.
+
+[84]_The Twelve B�guines_, cap. xvi.
+
+[85]_Ibid._ cap. xiv.; cp. St. Bernard, _De Diligendo Deo_, cap. x. The
+   same image is found in St. Macarius and many other writers.
+
+[86]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. xii.
+
+[87]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. x.
+
+[88]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. x.
+
+[89]_Op. cit._ cap. xii.
+
+[90]_Op. cit._ cap. xiii.; cp. also _The Seven Degrees_, cap. xiv.
+
+[91]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. xiv.
+
+[92]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. iii. cap. v.
+
+
+                              _Printed by_
+                        Morrison & Gibb Limited
+                              _Edinburgh_
+
+
+
+
+
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ruysbroeck, by Evelyn Underhill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Ruysbroeck
+
+Author: Evelyn Underhill
+
+Release Date: October 27, 2011 [EBook #37870]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RUYSBROECK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Roger Frank and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<div class="box">
+<h2 id="c1">THE QUEST SERIES</h2>
+<p class="center">Edited by G. R. S. MEAD,
+<br /><span class="small">EDITOR OF &lsquo;THE QUEST.&rsquo;</span></p>
+<p class="center"><i>Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. net each.</i></p>
+<p class="center">FIRST LIST OF VOLUMES.</p>
+<dl class="biblio">
+<dt class="biblio">PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND SURVIVAL. By
+<span class="sc">James H. Hyslop</span>, Ph.D., LL.D., Secretary of
+Psychical Research Society of America.</dt>
+<dt class="biblio">THE QUEST OF THE HOLY GRAIL. By <span class="sc">Jessie
+L. Weston</span>, Author of &lsquo;The Legend of Sir
+Perceval.&rsquo;</dt>
+<dt class="biblio">JEWISH MYSTICISM. By <span class="sc">J. Abelson</span>, M.A.,
+D.Lit, Principal of Aria College, Portsmouth.</dt>
+<dt class="biblio">THE MYSTICS OF ISLAM. By <span class="sc">Reynold A.
+Nicholson</span>, M.A., Litt.D, LL.D., Lecturer on
+Persian, Cambridge University.</dt>
+<dt class="biblio">BUDDHIST PSYCHOLOGY. By <span class="sc">C. A. F. Rhys
+Davids</span>, M.A., Lecturer on Indian Philosophy,
+Manchester University.</dt>
+<dt class="biblio">RUYSBROECK. By <span class="sc">Evelyn Underhill</span>, Author of
+&lsquo;Mysticism,&rsquo; &lsquo;The Mystic Way,&rsquo; etc.</dt>
+<dt class="biblio">THE SIDEREAL RELIGION OF THE ANCIENTS.
+By <span class="sc">Robert Eisler</span>, Ph.D., Author of Weltenmantel
+und Himmelszelt.&rsquo; <span class="hst">[<i>In the Press.</i></span></dt>
+</dl>
+<p class="center"><span class="sc">London</span>: G. BELL AND SONS LTD.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="box">
+<h1>RUYSBROECK</h1>
+<p class="center"><span class="small">BY</span>
+<br /><span class="large">EVELYN UNDERHILL</span>
+<br /><span class="small">AUTHOR OF
+<br />&lsquo;MYSTICISM,&rsquo; &lsquo;THE MYSTIC WAY,&rsquo; ETC., ETC.</span></p>
+<p class="tbcenter"><span class="small">LONDON</span>
+<br />G. BELL AND SONS LTD.
+<br />1915</p>
+<p class="tbcenter"><span class="small">FOR</span>
+<br />JESSIE
+<br /><span class="small">TO WHOM IT OWES SO MUCH
+<br />THIS LITTLE TRIBUTE TO A MUTUAL FRIEND</span></p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_vii">[vii]</div>
+<h2>EDITOR&rsquo;S NOTE</h2>
+<p>A glance at the excellent Bibliographical
+Note at the end of the volume will reveal
+the surprising paucity of literature on
+Ruysbroeck in this country. A single version
+from the original of one short treatise,
+published in the present year, is all that
+we possess of direct translation; even in
+versions from translation there is only one
+treatise represented; add to this one or
+two selections of the same nature, and
+the full tale is told. We are equally poorly
+off for studies of the life and doctrine of
+the great Flemish contemplative of the
+fourteenth century. And yet Jan van
+Ruusbroec is thought, by no few competent
+judges, to be the greatest of all the
+medi&aelig;val Catholic mystics; and, indeed, it
+is difficult to point to his superior. Miss
+Evelyn Underhill is, therefore, doing lovers
+<span class="pb" id="Page_viii">[viii]</span>
+not only of Catholic mysticism, but also of
+mysticism in general, a very real service by
+her monograph, which deals more satisfactorily
+than any existing work in English
+with the life and teachings of one of the most
+spiritual minds in Christendom. Her book
+is not simply a painstaking summary of
+the more patent generalities of the subject,
+but rather a deeply sympathetic entering
+into the mind of Ruysbroeck, and that,
+too, with no common insight.</p>
+<h2>PREFATORY NOTE</h2>
+<p>I owe to the great kindness of my friend,
+Mrs. Theodore Beck, the translation of
+several passages from Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s <i>Sparkling
+Stone</i> given in the present work; and
+in quoting from <i>The Twelve B&eacute;guines</i> have
+often, though not always, availed myself of
+the recently published version by Mr. John
+Francis. For all other renderings I alone
+am responsible.</p>
+<p><span class="lr">E. U.</span></p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_xi">[xi]</div>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<dl class="toc">
+<dt class="jl"><span class="small">CHAP.</span> <span class="jr"><span class="small">PAGE</span></span></dt>
+<dt><a href="#c2"><span class="cn">I.</span> <span class="sc">Ruysbroeck the Man</span></a> 1</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c3"><span class="cn">II.</span> <span class="sc">His Works</span></a> 36</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c4"><span class="cn">III.</span> <span class="sc">His Doctrine of God</span></a> 52</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c5"><span class="cn">IV.</span> <span class="sc">His Doctrine of Man</span></a> 66</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c6"><span class="cn">V.</span> <span class="sc">The Active Life</span></a> 94</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c7"><span class="cn">VI.</span> <span class="sc">The Interior Life: Illumination and Destitution</span></a> 115</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c8"><span class="cn">VII.</span> <span class="sc">The Interior Life: Union and Contemplation</span></a> 136</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c9"><span class="cn">VIII.</span> <span class="sc">The Superessential Life</span></a> 164</dt>
+</dl>
+<dl class="toc">
+<dd><a href="#c10"><span class="sc">Bibliographical Note</span></a> 187</dd>
+</dl>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_xii">[xii]</div>
+<div class="hymn">
+<div class="verse">
+<p class="t2">Luce divina sopra me s&rsquo; appunta,</p>
+<p class="t2">penetrando per questa ond&rsquo; io m&rsquo; inventro;</p>
+<p class="t0">La cui virt&ugrave;, col mio veder conguinta,</p>
+<p class="t2">mi leva sopra me tanto, ch&rsquo; io veggio</p>
+<p class="t2">la somma essenza della quale &egrave; munta.</p>
+<p class="t0">Quinci vien l&rsquo; allegrezza, ond&rsquo; io fiammeggio;</p>
+<p class="t2">perch&egrave; alla vista mia, quant&rsquo; ella &egrave; chiara,</p>
+<p class="t2">la chiarit&agrave; della fiamma pareggio.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<p class="lr"><span class="sc">Par.</span> xxi. 83.</p>
+</div>
+<blockquote>
+<p>[Divine Light doth focus itself upon me,
+piercing through that wherein I am enclosed;
+the power of which, united with my
+sight, so greatly lifts me up above myself
+that I see the Supreme Essence where from
+it is drawn. Thence comes the joy wherewith
+I flame; for to my vision, even as it is
+clear, I make the clearness of the flame
+respond.]</p>
+</blockquote>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_1">[1]</div>
+<h1>RUYSBROECK</h1>
+<h2 id="c2">CHAPTER I
+<br /><span class="small">RUYSBROECK THE MAN</span></h2>
+<blockquote>
+<p>The tree Igdrasil, which has its head in heaven and
+its roots in hell (the lower parts of the earth), is the image
+of the true man.... In proportion to the divine heights
+to which it ascends must be the obscure depths in which
+the tree is rooted, and from which it draws the mystic sap
+of its spiritual life.</p>
+<p><span class="lr"><span class="sc">Coventry Patmore.</span></span></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In the history of the spiritual adventures of
+man, we find at intervals certain great
+mystics, who appear to gather up and fuse
+together in the crucible of the heart the
+diverse tendencies of those who have preceded
+them, and, adding to these elements
+the tincture of their own rich experience,
+give to us an intensely personal, yet universal,
+vision of God and man. These are
+constructive spirits, whose creations in the
+spiritual sphere sum up and represent the
+best achievement of a whole epoch; as in
+other spheres the great artist, musician, or
+<span class="pb" id="Page_2">[2]</span>
+poet&mdash;always the child of tradition as well
+as of inspiration&mdash;may do.</p>
+<p>John Ruysbroeck is such a mystic as
+this. His career, which covers the greater
+part of the fourteenth century&mdash;that golden
+age of Christian mysticism&mdash;seems to exhibit
+within the circle of a single personality,
+and carry up to a higher term than ever
+before, all the best attainments of the Middle
+Ages in the realm of Eternal Life. Rooted
+firmly in history, faithful to the teachings
+of the great Catholic mystics of the primitive
+and medi&aelig;val times, Ruysbroeck does not
+merely transmit, but transfigures, their
+principles: making from the salt, sulphur,
+and mercury of their vision, reason, and love,
+a new and living jewel&mdash;or, in his own words,
+a &lsquo;sparkling stone&rsquo;&mdash;which reflects the actual
+radiance of the Uncreated Light. Absorbing
+from the rich soil of the Middle Ages all
+the intellectual nourishment which he needs,
+dependent too, as all real greatness is, on the
+human environment in which he grows&mdash;that
+mysterious interaction and inter-penetration
+of personalities without which human
+consciousness can never develop its full
+powers&mdash;he towers up from the social and
+intellectual circumstances that conditioned
+him: a living, growing, unique and creative
+individual, yet truly a part of the earth
+from which he springs.</p>
+<p>To speak of Ruysbroeck, as some enthusiastic
+<span class="pb" id="Page_3">[3]</span>
+biographers have done, as an isolated
+spiritual phenomenon totally unrelated to
+the life of his time, an &lsquo;ignorant monk&rsquo;
+whose profound knowledge of reality is
+entirely the result of personal inspiration
+and independent of human history, is to
+misunderstand his greatness. The &lsquo;ignorant
+monk&rsquo; was bound by close links to the
+religious life of his day. He was no
+spiritual individualist; but the humble,
+obedient child of an institution, the loyal
+member of a Society. He tells us again
+and again that his spiritual powers were
+nourished by the sacramental life of the
+Catholic Church. From the theologians
+of that Church came the intellectual framework
+in which his sublime intuitions were
+expressed. All that he does&mdash;though he
+does this to a degree perhaps unique in
+Christian history&mdash;is to carry out into action,
+completely actualise in his own experience,
+the high vision of the soul&rsquo;s relation to
+Divine Reality by which that Church is
+possessed. The central Christian doctrine
+of Divine Fatherhood, and of the soul&rsquo;s
+&lsquo;power to become the son of God&rsquo;: it is
+this, raised to the <i>n</i>th degree of intensity,
+experienced in all its depth and fullness,
+and demonstrated with the exactitude of a
+mathematician and the passion of a poet,
+which Ruysbroeck gives us. Thus tradition
+and authority, no less than the abundant
+<span class="pb" id="Page_4">[4]</span>
+inspiration, the direct ecstatic knowledge
+of God to which his writings bear witness,
+have their part in his achievement. His
+theological culture was wide and deep. Not
+only the Scriptures and the Liturgy, but
+St. Augustine, Dionysius the Areopagite,
+Richard of St. Victor, St. Bernard, St.
+Bonaventura, St. Thomas Aquinas, and many
+others have stimulated and controlled his
+thought; interpreting to him his ineffable
+adventures, and providing him with vessels
+in which the fruit of those adventures could
+be communicated to other men.</p>
+<p>Nor is Catholic tradition the only medium
+through which human life has exercised a formative
+influence upon Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s genius.
+His worldly circumstances, his place within
+and reaction to the temporal order, the temper
+of those souls amongst which he grew&mdash;these
+too are of vital importance in relation to his
+mystical achievements. To study the interior
+adventures and formal teachings of
+a mystic without reference to the general
+trend and special accidents of his outer life,
+is to neglect our best chance of understanding
+the nature and sources of his vision of truth.
+The angle from which that vision is perceived,
+the content of the mind which comes
+to it, above all the concrete activities which
+it induces in the growing, moving, supple
+self: these are primary <i>data</i> which we should
+never ignore. Action is of the very essence
+<span class="pb" id="Page_5">[5]</span>
+of human reality. Where the inner life
+is genuine and strong the outer life will
+reflect, however faintly, the curve on which
+it moves; for human consciousness is a
+unit, capable of reacting to and synthesising
+two orders, not an unresolved dualism&mdash;as
+it were, an angel and an animal&mdash;condemned
+to lifelong battle within a narrow
+cage.</p>
+<p>Therefore we begin our study of Ruysbroeck
+the mystic by the study of Ruysbroeck
+the man: the circumstances of his
+life and environment, so far as we can find
+them out. For the facts of this life our
+chief authority will be the Augustinian
+Canon Pomerius, who was Prior and chronicler
+of Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s own community of
+Groenendael. Born in 1382, a year after
+Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s death, and entering Groenendael
+early in the fifteenth century, he knew
+and talked with at least two of the great
+mystic&rsquo;s disciples, John of Hoelaere and John
+of Scoonhoven. His life of Ruysbroeck
+and history of the foundation of the monastery
+was finished before 1420; that is to
+say, within the lifetime of the generation
+which succeeded the first founders of the
+house.<a class="fn" id="fr_1" href="#fn_1">[1]</a>
+It represents the careful gathering
+up, sifting, and arranging of all that was
+remembered and believed by the community&mdash;still
+<span class="pb" id="Page_6">[6]</span>
+retaining several members who had
+known him in the flesh&mdash;of the facts of
+Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s character and career.</p>
+<p>Pomerius was no wild romancer, but a
+reasonably careful as well as a genuinely
+enthusiastic monastic chronicler. Moderation
+is hardly the outstanding virtue of such
+home-made lives of monastic founders.
+They are inevitably composed in surroundings
+where any criticism of their subject or
+scepticism as to his supernatural peculiarities
+is looked upon as a crime; where every
+incident has been fitted with a halo, and the
+unexplained is indistinguishable from the
+miraculous. Nevertheless the picture drawn
+by Pomerius&mdash;exaggerated though it be in
+certain respects&mdash;is a human picture; possessed
+of distinct characteristics, some natural
+and charming, some deeply impressive.
+It is completed by a second documentary
+source: the little sketch by Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+intimate friend, Gerard Naghel, Prior of the
+Carthusian monastery of H&eacute;rines near
+Groenendael, which forms the prologue to
+our most complete MS. collection of his
+writings.</p>
+<p>Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s life, as it is shown to us by
+Pomerius and Gerard, falls into three main
+divisions, three stages of ascent: the natural
+active life of boyhood; the contemplative,
+disciplined career of his middle period; the
+superessential life of supreme union which
+<span class="pb" id="Page_7">[7]</span>
+governed his existence at Groenendael.
+This course, which he trod in the temporal
+order, seems like the rough sketch of
+that other course trodden by the advancing
+soul within the eternal order&mdash;the Threefold
+Life of man which he describes to us in
+<i>The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage</i>
+and other of his works.</p>
+<p>Now the details of that career are these:
+John Ruysbroeck was born in 1293 at the
+little village of Ruysbroeck or Ruusbroec,
+between Brussels and Hal, from which he
+takes his name. We know nothing of his
+father; but his mother is described as a
+good and pious woman, devoted to the upbringing
+of her son&mdash;a hard task, and one
+that was soon proved to be beyond her. The
+child Ruysbroeck was strong-willed, adventurous,
+insubordinate; already showing signs of
+that abounding vitality, that strange restlessness
+and need of expansion which children
+of genius so often exhibit. At eleven years
+of age he ran away from home, and found
+his way to Brussels; where his uncle, John
+Hinckaert, was a Canon of the Cathedral
+of St. Gudule. Pomerius assures us that
+this escapade, which would have seemed a
+mere naughtiness in normal little boys, was
+in fact a proof of coming sanctity; that it
+was not the attraction of the city but a
+precocious instinct for the religious life&mdash;the
+first crude stirrings of the love of God&mdash;which
+<span class="pb" id="Page_8">[8]</span>
+set this child upon the road. Such a
+claim is natural to the hagiographer; yet
+there lies behind it a certain truth. The
+little John may or may not have dreamed
+of being a priest; he did already dream of
+a greater, more enticing life beyond the
+barriers of use and wont. Though he knew
+it not, the vision of a spiritual city called
+him. Already the primal need of his nature
+was asserting itself&mdash;the demand, felt long
+before it was understood, for something
+beyond the comfortable world of appearance&mdash;and
+this demand crystallised into a
+concrete act. In the sturdy courage which
+faced the unknown, the practical temper
+which translated dream into action, we see
+already the germ of those qualities which
+afterwards gave to the great contemplative
+power to climb up to the &lsquo;supreme summits
+of the inner life&rsquo; and face the awful realities
+of God.</p>
+<p>Such adventures are not rare in the
+childhood of the mystics. Always of a
+romantic temperament, endowed too with
+an abounding vitality, the craving for some
+dimly-guessed and wonderful experience
+often shows itself early in them; as the
+passion for music, colour or poetry is sometimes
+seen in embryo in artists of another
+type. The impact of Reality seems to be
+felt by such spirits in earliest childhood.
+Born susceptible in a special degree to the
+<span class="pb" id="Page_9">[9]</span>
+messages which pour in on man from the
+Transcendent, they move from the first
+in a different universe from that of other
+boys and girls; subject to experiences which
+they do not understand, full of dreams
+which they are unable to explain, and often
+impelled to strange actions, extremely disconcerting
+to the ordinary guardians of
+youth. Thus the little Catherine of Siena,
+six years old, already lived in a world which
+was peopled with saints and angels; and
+ruled her small life by the visions which
+she had seen. Thus the baby Teresa,
+mysteriously attracted by sacrifice, as other
+children are attracted by games and toys,
+set out to look for &lsquo;the Moors and martyrdom.&rsquo;
+So too the instinct for travel, for
+the remote and unknown, often shows itself
+early in these wayfarers of the spirit; whose
+destiny it is to achieve a more extended life
+in the interests of the race, to find and feel
+that Infinite Reality which alone can satisfy
+the heart of man. Thus in their early
+years Francis, Ignatius and many others
+were restless, turbulent, eager for adventure
+and change.</p>
+<p>This first adventure brought the boy Ruysbroeck
+to a home so perfectly fitted to his
+needs, that it might seem as though some
+secret instinct, some overshadowing love, had
+indeed guided his steps. His uncle, John
+Hinckaert, at this time about forty years of
+<span class="pb" id="Page_10">[10]</span>
+age, had lately been converted&mdash;it is said
+by a powerful sermon&mdash;from the comfortable
+and easy-going life of a prosperous
+ecclesiastic to the austere quest of spiritual
+perfection. He had distributed his wealth,
+given up all self-indulgence, and now, with
+another and younger Canon of the Cathedral
+named Francis van Coudenberg, lived in
+simplest, poorest style a dedicated life of
+self-denial, charity and prayer. He received
+his runaway nephew willingly. Perhaps
+he saw in this strange and eager child,
+suddenly flung upon his charity, an opportunity
+for repairing some at least amongst
+the omissions of his past&mdash;that terrible
+wreck of wasted years which torments the
+memory of those who are converted in middle
+life. His love and remorse might spend
+themselves on this boy. He might make of
+him perhaps all that he now longed to be,
+but could never wholly achieve: a perfect
+servant of the Eternal Goodness, young,
+vigorous, ardent, completely responsive to
+the touch of God.</p>
+<p>Ruysbroeck, then, found a home soaked
+in love, governed by faith, renunciation,
+humility; a forcing-house of the spiritual
+life. In the persons of these two grown
+men, who had given up all outward things
+for the sake of spiritual realities, he was
+brought face to face&mdash;and this in his most
+impressionable years&mdash;with the hard facts,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_11">[11]</span>
+the concrete sacrifices, the heroic life of
+deliberate mortification, which underlay the
+lovely haunting vision, the revelation of the
+Divine beauty and love that had possessed
+him. No lesson is of higher value to the
+natural mystic than this. The lovers of
+Ruysbroeck should not forget how much they
+owe to the men who received, loved, influenced,
+educated the brilliant wayward and
+impressionable child. His attainment is
+theirs. His mysticism is rooted in their
+asceticism; a flower directly dependent
+for its perfection on that favouring soil.
+Though his achievement, like that of all
+men of genius, is individual, and transcends
+the circumstances and personalities which
+surround it; still, from those circumstances
+and personalities it takes its colour. It
+represents far more than a personal and
+solitary experience. Behind it lies the little
+house in Brussels, the supernatural atmosphere
+which filled it, and the fostering
+care of the two men whose life of external
+and deliberate poverty only made more
+plain the richness of the spirits who could
+choose, and remain constant to, this career
+of detachment and love.</p>
+<p>The personal influence of Hinckaert and
+Coudenberg, the moral disciplines and perpetual
+self-denials of the life which he shared
+with them, formed the heart of Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+education; helping to build up that manly
+<span class="pb" id="Page_12">[12]</span>
+and sturdy character which gave its special
+temper to his mystical outlook. Like so
+many children destined to greatness, he was
+hard to educate in the ordinary sense; uninterested
+in general knowledge, impatient
+of scholastic drudgery. Nothing which did
+not minister to his innate passion for ultimates
+had any attraction for him. He was
+taught grammar with difficulty; but on
+the other hand his astonishing aptitude for
+religious ideas, even of the most subtle
+kind, his passionate clear vision of spiritual
+things, was already so highly developed as to
+attract general attention; and his writings
+are sufficient witness to the width and depth
+of his theological reading. With such tastes
+and powers as these, and brought up in
+such a household, governed by religious
+enthusiasms and under the very shadow of
+the Cathedral walls, it was natural that he
+should wish to become a priest; and in 1317
+he was ordained and given, through the
+influence of his uncle, a prebend in St.
+Gudule.</p>
+<p>Now a great mystic is the product not
+merely of an untamed genius for the Transcendent,
+but of a moral discipline, an interior
+education, of the most strenuous kind.
+All the varied powers and tendencies of a
+nature which is necessarily strong and
+passionate, must be harnessed, made subservient
+to this one central interest. The
+<span class="pb" id="Page_13">[13]</span>
+instinctive egotism of the natural man&mdash;never
+more insidious than when set upon
+spiritual things&mdash;must be eradicated. So,
+behind these few outward events of Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+adolescence, we must discern another
+growth; a perpetual interior travail,
+a perpetual slow character-building always
+going forward in him, as his whole personality
+is moulded into that conformity to the vision
+seen which prepares the way of union, and
+marks off the mystical saint from the mere
+adept of transcendental things. We know
+from his writings how large a part such
+moral purifications, such interior adjustments,
+played in his concept of the spiritual life;
+and the intimacy with which he describes
+each phase in the battle of love, each step
+of the spiritual ladder, the long process of
+preparation in which the soul adorns herself
+for the &lsquo;spiritual marriage,&rsquo; guarantees to
+us that he has himself trodden the path which
+he maps out. That path goes the whole
+way from the first impulse of &lsquo;goodwill,&rsquo;
+of glad acquiescence in the universal purpose,
+through the taming of the proud will
+to humility and suppleness, and of the insurgent
+heart to gentleness, kindness, and
+peace, to that last state of perfect charity
+in which the whole spirit of man is one will
+and one love with God.</p>
+<p>Though his biographers have left us little
+material for a reconstruction of his inner
+<span class="pb" id="Page_14">[14]</span>
+development, we may surely infer something
+of the course which it followed from the
+vividly realistic descriptions in <i>The Kingdom
+of Lovers</i> and <i>The Spiritual Marriage</i>.
+Personal experience underlies the wonderful
+account of the ascent of the Spiritual Sun in
+the heavens of consciousness; the rapture,
+wildness and joy, the &lsquo;fever of love&rsquo; which
+fulfils the man who feels its light and heat.
+Experience, too, dictates these profound
+passages which deal with the terrible spiritual
+reaction when the Sun declines in the
+heavens, and man feels cold, dead, and
+abandoned of God. Through these phases,
+at least, Ruysbroeck had surely passed before
+his great books came to be written.</p>
+<p>One or two small indications there are
+which show us his progress on the mystic
+way, the development in him of those
+secondary psychic characters peculiar to
+the mystical type. It seems that by the
+time of his ordination that tendency to
+vision which often appears in the earliest
+youth of natural mystics, was already established
+in him. Deeply impressed by the
+sacramental side of Catholicism, and finding in
+it throughout his life a true means of contact
+with the Unseen, the priesthood was conceived
+by him as bringing with it a veritable
+access of grace; fresh power poured in
+on him from the Transcendent, an increase
+of strength wherewith to help the souls of
+<span class="pb" id="Page_15">[15]</span>
+other men. This belief took, in his meditations,
+a concrete and positive form. Again
+and again he saw in dramatic vision the
+soul specially dear to him, specially dependent
+on him&mdash;that of his mother, who had
+lately died in the Brussels B&eacute;guinage&mdash;demanding
+how long she must wait till
+her son&rsquo;s ordination made his prayers
+effectual for her release from Purgatory.
+At the moment in which he finished saying
+his first Mass, this vision returned to him;
+and he saw his mother&rsquo;s spirit, delivered
+from Purgatory by the power of the sacrifice
+which he had offered, entering into
+Heaven&mdash;an experience originating in, and
+giving sharp dramatic expression to, that
+sense of new and sacred powers now conferred
+on him, which may well at such a
+moment have flooded the consciousness of
+the young priest. This story was repeated
+to Pomerius by those who had heard it
+from Ruysbroeck himself; for &ldquo;he often
+told it to the brothers.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For twenty-six years&mdash;that is to say, until
+he was fifty years of age&mdash;Ruysbroeck lived
+in Brussels the industrious and inconspicuous
+life of a secular priest. It was not the solitude
+of the forest, but the normal, active
+existence of a cathedral chaplain in a busy
+capital city which controlled his development
+during that long period, stretching
+from the very beginnings of manhood to
+<span class="pb" id="Page_16">[16]</span>
+the end of middle age; and it was in fact
+during these years, and in the midst of
+incessant distractions, that he passed through
+the great oscillations of consciousness which
+mark the mystic way. It is probable that
+when at last he left Brussels for the forest,
+these oscillations were over, equilibrium was
+achieved; he had climbed &lsquo;to the summits of
+the mount of contemplation.&rsquo; It was on
+those summits that he loved to dwell,
+absorbed in loving communion with Divine
+Reality; but his career fulfilled that ideal
+of a synthesis of work and contemplation,
+an acceptance and remaking of the whole
+of life, which he perpetually puts before us
+as the essential characteristic of a true
+spirituality. No mystic has ever been more
+free from the vice of other-worldliness,
+or has practised more thoroughly and more
+unselfishly the primary duty of active
+charity towards men which is laid upon the
+God-possessed.</p>
+<p>The simple and devoted life of the little
+family of three went on year by year undisturbed;
+though one at least was passing
+through those profound interior changes and
+adventures which he has described to us as
+governing the evolution of the soul, from the
+state of the &lsquo;faithful servant&rsquo; to the transfigured
+existence of the &lsquo;God-seeing man.&rsquo;
+Ruysbroeck grew up to be a simple, dreamy,
+very silent and totally unimpressive person,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_17">[17]</span>
+who, &lsquo;going about the streets of Brussels
+with his mind lifted up into God,&rsquo; seemed a
+nobody to those who did not know him.
+Yet not only a spiritual life of unequalled
+richness, intimacy and splendour, but a penetrating
+intellect, a fearless heart, deep knowledge
+of human nature, remarkable powers
+of expression, lay behind that meek and unattractive
+exterior. As Paul&rsquo;s twelve years
+of quiet and subordinate work in Antioch
+prepared the way of his missionary career;
+so during this long period of service, the
+silent growth of character, the steady
+development of his mystical powers, had
+gone forward in Ruysbroeck. When circumstances
+called them into play he was
+found to be possessed of an unsuspected
+passion, strength and courage, a power of
+dealing with outward circumstances, which
+was directly dependent on his inner life of
+contemplation and prayer.</p>
+<p>The event into which the tendencies of
+this stage of his development crystallised,
+is one which seems perhaps inconsistent
+with the common idea of the mystical
+temperament, with its supposed concentration
+on the Eternal, its indifference to temporal
+affairs. As his childhood was marked by
+an exhibition of adventurous love, so his
+manhood was marked by an exhibition of
+militant love; of that strength and sternness,
+that passion for the true, which&mdash;no less
+<span class="pb" id="Page_18">[18]</span>
+than humility, gentleness, peace&mdash;is an
+integral part of that paradoxical thing, the
+Christian character.</p>
+<p>The fourteenth century, like all great
+spiritual periods, was a century fruitful
+in mystical heresies as well as in mystical
+saints. In particular, the extravagant pantheism
+preached by the Brethren of the
+Free Spirit had become widely diffused in
+Flanders, and was responsible for much bad
+morality as well as bad theology; those
+on whom the &lsquo;Spirit&rsquo; had descended believing
+themselves to be already divine,
+and emancipated from obedience to all
+human codes of conduct. Soon after Ruysbroeck
+came as a boy to Brussels, a woman
+named Bloemardinne placed herself at the
+head of this sect, and gradually gained
+extraordinary influence. She claimed supernatural
+and prophetic powers, was said to
+be accompanied by two Seraphim whenever
+she went to the altar to receive Holy Communion,
+and preached a degraded eroticism
+under the title of &lsquo;Seraphic love,&rsquo; together
+with a quietism of the most exaggerated
+and soul-destroying type. All the dangers
+and follies of a false mysticism, dissociated
+from the controlling influence of tradition
+and the essential virtue of humility, were
+exhibited in her. Against this powerful
+woman, then at the height of her fame,
+Ruysbroeck declared war; and prosecuted
+<span class="pb" id="Page_19">[19]</span>
+his campaign with a violence and courage
+which must have been startling to those
+who had regarded him only as a shy, pious,
+rather negligible young man. The pamphlets
+which he wrote against her are lost;
+but the passionate denunciations of pantheism
+and quietism scattered through his
+later works no doubt have their origin in
+this controversy, and represent the angle
+from which his attacks were made.</p>
+<p>Pantheists, he says in <i>The Book of Truth</i>,
+are &ldquo;a fruit of hell, the more dangerous
+because they counterfeit the true fruit of
+the Spirit of God.&rdquo; Far from possessing
+that deep humility which is the soul&rsquo;s
+inevitable reaction to the revelation of the
+Infinite, they are full of pride and self-satisfaction.
+They claim that their imaginary
+identity with the Essence of God emancipates
+them from all need of effort, all practice
+of virtue, and leaves them free to indulge
+those inclinations of the flesh which the
+&lsquo;Spirit&rsquo; suggests. They &ldquo;believe themselves
+sunk in inward peace; but as a matter
+of fact they are deep-drowned in
+error.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_2" href="#fn_2">[2]</a></p>
+<p>Against all this the stern, virile, ardent
+spirituality of Ruysbroeck opposed itself
+with its whole power. Especially did he
+hate and condemn the laziness and egotism
+of the quietistic doctrine of contemplation:
+the ideal of spiritual immobility which it
+<span class="pb" id="Page_20">[20]</span>
+set up. That &lsquo;love cannot be lazy&rsquo; is a
+cardinal truth for all real mystics. Again
+and again it appears in their works. Even
+that profound repose in which they have
+fruition of God, is but the accompaniment
+or preliminary of work of the most strenuous
+kind, and keeps at full stretch the soul
+which truly tastes it; and this supernatural
+state is as far above that self-induced
+quietude of &lsquo;natural repose&rsquo;&mdash;&ldquo;consisting in
+nothing but an idleness and interior vacancy,
+to which they are inclined by nature and
+habit&rdquo;&mdash;in which the quietists love to immerse
+themselves, as God is above His
+creatures.</p>
+<p>Here is the distinction, always needed and
+constantly ignored, between that veritable
+fruition of Eternal Life which results from the
+interaction of will and grace, and demands
+of the soul the highest intensity and most
+active love, and that colourable imitation
+of it which is produced by a psychic trick,
+and is independent alike of the human
+effort and the divine gift. Ruysbroeck in
+fighting the &lsquo;Free Spirit&rsquo; was fighting the
+battle of true mysticism against its most
+dangerous and persistent enemy,&mdash;mysticality.</p>
+<p>His attack upon Bloemardinne is the one
+outstanding incident in the long Brussels
+period which has been preserved to us. The
+next great outward movement in his steadily
+<span class="pb" id="Page_21">[21]</span>
+evolving life did not happen until the year
+1343, when he was fifty years of age. It was
+then that the three companions decided to
+leave Brussels, and live together in some
+remote country place. They had long felt
+a growing distaste for the noisy and distracting
+life of the city; a growing dissatisfaction
+with the spiritual apathy and
+low level of religious observance at the
+Cathedral of St. Gudule; the need of surroundings
+in which they might devote themselves
+with total concentration to the contemplative
+life. Hinckaert and Coudenberg were now
+old men; Ruysbroeck was advanced in
+middle age. The rhythm of existence, which
+had driven him as a child from country to
+town, and harnessed him during long years
+to the service of his fellow-men, now drew
+him back again to the quiet spaces where
+he might be alone with God. He was
+approaching those heights of experience
+from which his greatest mystical works
+proceed; and it was in obedience to a true
+instinct that he went away to the silent
+places of the forest&mdash;as Anthony to the
+solitude of the desert, Francis to the &lsquo;holy
+mountain&rsquo; of La Verna&mdash;that, undistracted
+by the many whom he had served so faithfully,
+he might open his whole consciousness
+to the inflow of the One, and receive in its
+perfection the message which it was his duty
+to transmit to the world, He went, says
+<span class="pb" id="Page_22">[22]</span>
+Pomerius, &ldquo;not that he might hide his
+light; but that he might tend it better and
+make it shine more brightly.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>By the influence of Coudenberg, John III.,
+Duke of Brabant, gave to the three
+friends the old hermitage of Groenendael,
+or the Green Valley, in the forest of
+Soignes, near Brussels. They entered into
+possession on the Wednesday of Easter
+week, 1343; and for five years lived there,
+as they had lived in the little house in
+Brussels, with no other rule save their own
+passion for perfection. But perpetual invasions
+from the outer world, not only of
+penitents and would-be disciples&mdash;for their
+reputation for sanctity grew quickly&mdash;but
+of huntsmen in the forest and pleasure
+parties from the town, who demanded and
+expected hospitality, soon forced them to
+adopt some definite attitude towards the
+question of enclosure. It is said that Ruysbroeck
+begged for an entire seclusion; but
+Coudenberg insisted that this was contrary
+to the law of charity, and that some
+at least of those who sought them must be
+received. In addition to these practical
+difficulties, the Prior of the Abbey of St.
+Victor at Paris had addressed to them strong
+remonstrances, on account of the absence of
+rule in their life and the fact that they had
+not even adopted a religious habit; a proceeding
+which in his opinion savoured rather
+<span class="pb" id="Page_23">[23]</span>
+of the ill-regulated doings of the heretical
+sects, than of the decorum proper to good
+Catholics. As a result of these various
+considerations, the simple and informal existence
+of the little family was re-modelled
+in conformity with the rule of the Augustinian
+Canons, and the Priory of Groenendael
+was formally created. Coudenberg became
+its provost, and Ruysbroeck, who had refused
+the higher office, was made prior; but
+Hinckaert, now a very old man in feeble
+health, refused to burden the young community
+with a member who might be a drag
+upon it and could not keep the full rigour
+of the rule. In a spirit of renunciation
+which surely touches the heroic, he severed
+himself from his lifelong friend and his
+adopted son, and went away to a little
+cell in the forest, where he lived alone until
+his death.</p>
+<p>The story of the foundation and growth of
+the Priory of Groenendael, the saintly personalities
+which it nourished, is not for this
+place; except in so far as it affects our
+main interest, the story of Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+soul. Under the influences of the forest,
+of the silent and regular life, those supreme
+contemplative powers which belong to the
+&lsquo;Superessential Life&rsquo; of Unity now developed
+in him with great rapidity. It is possible,
+as we shall see, that some at least of his
+mystical writings may date from his Brussels
+<span class="pb" id="Page_24">[24]</span>
+period; and we know that at the close of
+this period his reputation as an &lsquo;illuminated
+man&rsquo; was already made. Nevertheless it
+seems safe to say that the bulk of his works,
+as we now possess them, represent him as he
+was during the last thirty years of his life,
+rather than during his earlier and more
+active career; and that the intense certitude,
+the wide deep vision of the Infinite which
+distinguishes them, are the fruits of those
+long hours of profound absorption in God
+for which his new life found place. In
+the silence of the woods he was able to discern
+each subtle accent of that Voice which &ldquo;is
+heard without utterance, and without the
+sound of words speaks all truth.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Like so many of the greatest mystics,
+Ruysbroeck, drawing nearer to Divine Reality,
+drew nearer to nature too; conforming
+to his own ideal of the contemplative, who,
+having been raised to the simple vision of
+God Transcendent, returns to find His image
+reflected by all life. Many passages in his
+writings show the closeness and sympathy
+of his observation of natural things: the
+vivid description in <i>The Spiritual Marriage</i>
+of the spring, summer and autumn of the
+fruitful soul, the constant insistence on the
+phenomena of growth, the lessons drawn
+from the habits of ants and bees, the comparison
+of the surrendered soul to the sunflower,
+&lsquo;one of nature&rsquo;s most wonderful
+<span class="pb" id="Page_25">[25]</span>
+works&rsquo;; the three types of Christians, compared
+with birds who can fly but prefer hopping
+about the earth, birds who swim far on the
+waters of grace, and birds who love only to soar
+high in the heavens. For the free, exultant
+life of birds he felt indeed a special sympathy
+and love; and &lsquo;many-feathered&rsquo; is the best
+name that he can find for the soul of the
+contemplative ascending to the glad vision
+of God.</p>
+<p>It is probably a true tradition which represents
+him as having written his greatest
+and most inspired pages sitting under a
+favourite tree in the depths of the woods.
+When the &lsquo;Spirit&rsquo; came on him, as it
+often did with a startling suddenness, he
+would go away into the forest carrying his
+tablet and stylus. There, given over to an
+ecstasy of composition&mdash;which seems often
+to have approached the limits of automatic
+writing, as in St. Teresa, Boehme, Blake and
+other mystics&mdash;he would write that which
+was given to him, without addition or
+omission; breaking off even in the middle
+of a sentence when the &lsquo;Spirit&rsquo; abruptly
+departed, and resuming at the same point,
+though sometimes after an interval which
+lasted several weeks, when it returned. In
+his last years, when eyesight failed him, he
+would allow a younger brother to go with
+him into the woods, and there to take down
+from dictation the fruits of those meditations
+<span class="pb" id="Page_26">[26]</span>
+in which he &lsquo;saw without sight&rsquo;; as the
+illiterate Catherine of Siena dictated in
+ecstasy the text of her Divine Dialogue.</p>
+<p>Two witnesses have preserved Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+solemn affirmation, given first to his disciple
+Gerard Groot &lsquo;in great gentleness and
+humility,&rsquo; and repeated again upon his
+death-bed in the presence of the whole community,
+that every word of his writings
+was thus composed under the immediate
+domination of an inspiring power; that
+&lsquo;secondary personality of a superior type,&rsquo;
+in touch with levels of reality beyond the
+span of the surface consciousness, which
+governs the activities of the great mystics
+in their last phases of development. These
+books are not the fruit of conscious thought,
+but &lsquo;God-sent truths,&rsquo; poured out from a
+heart immersed in that Divine Abyss of
+which he tries to tell.</p>
+<p>That a saint must needs be a visionary, is
+a conviction deeply implanted in the mind
+of the medi&aelig;val hagiographer; who always
+ascribes to these incidents an importance
+which the saints themselves are the first
+to deny. Pomerius thus attributes to Ruysbroeck
+not only those profound and direct
+experiences of Divine Reality to which his
+works bear witness; but also numerous
+visions of a conventional and anthropomorphic
+type, in which he spoke with Christ,
+the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, ecstasies
+<span class="pb" id="Page_27">[27]</span>
+which fell upon him when saying Mass&mdash;and
+the passionate devotion to the Eucharist
+which his writings express makes these at
+least probable&mdash;a certain faculty of clairvoyance,
+and a prophetic knowledge of his
+own death. Further, it is said that once,
+being missed from the priory, he was found
+after long search by one of the brothers he
+loved best, sitting under his favourite
+tree, rapt in ecstasy and surrounded by an
+<i>aura</i> of radiant light; as the discerning
+eyes of those who loved them have seen St.
+Francis, St. Teresa, and other contemplatives
+transfigured and made shining by the intensity
+of their spiritual life. I need not
+point out that the fact that these things are
+common form in the lives of the mystics,
+does not necessarily discredit them; though
+in any case their interest is less of a mystical
+than of a psychological kind.</p>
+<p>Not less significant, and to us perhaps
+more winning, is that side of Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+personality which was turned towards the
+world of men. In his own person he fulfilled
+that twofold duty of the deified soul
+which he has described to us: the in-breathing
+of the Love of God, the out-breathing
+of that same radiant charity towards the
+race. &ldquo;To give and receive, both at once,
+is the essence of union,&rdquo; he says; and his
+whole career is an illustration of these
+words. He took his life from the Transcendent;
+<span class="pb" id="Page_28">[28]</span>
+he was a focus of distribution,
+which gave out that joyous life again to other
+souls. His retreat at Groenendael, his ecstasies
+of composition, never kept him from
+those who wanted his help and advice.
+In his highest ascents towards Divine Love,
+the rich complexities of human love went
+with him. Other men always meant much
+to Ruysbroeck. He had a genius for friendship,
+and gave himself without stint to his
+friends; and those who knew him said
+that none ever went to him for consolation
+without returning with gladness in their
+hearts. There are many tales in the <i>Vita</i>
+of his power over and intuitive understanding
+of other minds; of conversions
+effected, motives unveiled and clouds dispelled.
+His great friend, Gerard Naghel,
+the Carthusian prior&mdash;at whose desire he
+wrote one of the most beautiful of his
+shorter works, <i>The Book of Supreme Truth</i>&mdash;has
+left a vivid little account of the impression
+which his personality created: &ldquo;his
+peaceful and joyful countenance, his humble
+good-humoured speech.&rdquo; Ruysbroeck spent
+three days in Gerard&rsquo;s monastery, in order
+to explain some difficult passages in his
+writings, &ldquo;and these days were too short,
+for no one could speak to him or see him
+without being the better for it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>By this we may put the description of
+Pomerius, founded upon the reminiscences
+<span class="pb" id="Page_29">[29]</span>
+of Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s surviving friends. &ldquo;The
+grace of God shone in his face; and also
+in his modest speech, his kindly deeds, his
+humble manners, and in the way that every
+action of his life exhibited uprightness and
+radiant purity. He lived soberly, neglected
+his dress, and was patient in all things and
+with all people.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Plainly the great contemplative who had
+seemed in Brussels a &lsquo;negligible man,&rsquo; kept
+to the end a great simplicity of aspect;
+closely approximating to his own ideal of the
+&lsquo;really humble man, without any pose or pretence,&rsquo;
+as described in <i>The Spiritual Marriage</i>.
+That profound self-immersion in God which
+was the source of his power, manifested itself
+in daily life under the least impressive forms;
+ever seeking embodiment in little concrete
+acts of love and service, &ldquo;ministering, in
+the world without, to all who need, in love and
+mercy.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_3" href="#fn_3">[3]</a>
+We see him in his Franciscan
+love of living things, his deep sense of kinship
+with all the little children of God, &lsquo;going
+to the help of the animals in all their needs&rsquo;;
+thrown into a torment of distress by the
+brothers who suggested to him that during
+a hard winter the little birds of the forest
+might die, and at once making generous
+and successful arrangements for their entertainment.
+We see him &lsquo;giving Mary and
+Martha <i>rendez-vous</i> in his heart&rsquo;;
+<span class="pb" id="Page_30">[30]</span>
+working in the garden of the community,
+trying hard to be useful, wheeling barrow-loads
+of manure, and emerging from profound
+meditation on the Infinite to pull up
+young vegetables under the impression that
+they were weeds. He made, in fact, valiant
+efforts to achieve that perfect synthesis of
+action and contemplation &lsquo;ever abiding in
+the simplicity of the Spirit, and perpetually
+flowing forth in abundant acts of love towards
+heaven and earth,&rsquo; which he regarded
+as the proper goal of human growth&mdash;efforts
+constantly thwarted by his own growing
+concentration on the Transcendent, the
+ease and frequency with which his consciousness
+now withdrew from the world of
+the senses to immerse itself in Spiritual
+Reality. In theory there was for him no
+cleavage between the two: Being and Becoming,
+the Temporal and the Eternal,
+were but two moods within the mind of God,
+and in the superessential life of perfect
+union these completing opposites should
+merge in one.</p>
+<p>A life which shall find place for the
+activities of the lover, the servant, and the
+apostle, is the goal towards which the great
+mystics seem to move. We have seen how
+the homely life of the priory gave to Ruysbroeck
+the opportunity of service, how the
+silence of the forest fostered and supported
+his secret life of love. As the years passed,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_31">[31]</span>
+the third side of his nature, the apostolic
+passion which had found during his long
+Brussels period ample scope for its activities,
+once more came into prominence. He was
+sought out by numbers of would-be disciples,
+not only from Belgium itself, but from
+Holland, Germany and France; and became a
+fountainhead of new life, the father of many
+spiritual children. The tradition which
+places among these disciples the great
+Dominican mystic Tauler is probably false;
+though many passages in Tauler&rsquo;s later sermons
+suggest that he was strongly influenced
+by Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s works, which had already
+attained a wide circulation. But Gerard
+Groot, afterwards the founder of the Brothers
+of the Common Life, and spiritual ancestor
+of Thomas &agrave; Kempis, went to Groenendael
+shortly after his conversion in 1374, that he
+might there learn the rudiments of a sane
+and robust spirituality. Ruysbroeck received
+him with a special joy, recognising in him at
+first sight a peculiar aptitude for the things
+of the Spirit. A deep friendship grew up
+between the old mystic and the young and
+vigorous convert. Gerard stayed often at
+the priory, and corresponded regularly with
+Ruysbroeck; whose influence it was which
+conditioned his subsequent career as a
+preacher, and as founder of a congregation
+as simple and unconventional in
+its first beginnings, as fruitful in its
+<span class="pb" id="Page_32">[32]</span>
+later developments, as that of Groenendael
+itself.</p>
+<p>The penetrating remarks upon human
+character scattered through his works, and
+the anecdotes of his dealings with disciples
+and penitents preserved by Pomerius, suggest
+that Ruysbroeck, though he might not
+always recognise the distinction between the
+weeds and vegetables of the garden, was
+seldom at fault in his judgment of men. An
+instinctive knowledge of the human heart,
+an unerring eye for insincerity, egotism,
+self-deception, is a power which nearly all
+the great contemplatives possess, and often
+employed with disconcerting effect. I need
+refer only to the caustic analysis of the
+&lsquo;false contemplative&rsquo; contained in <i>The Cloud
+of Unknowing</i>, and the amusing sketches of
+spiritual self-importance in St. Teresa&rsquo;s
+letters and life. The little tale, so often
+repeated, of the somewhat self-conscious
+priests who came from Paris to consult
+Ruysbroeck on the state of their souls, and
+received from him only the blunt observation&mdash;apparently
+so careless, yet really
+plumbing human nature to its deeps&mdash;&ldquo;You
+are as holy as you wish to be,&rdquo; shows him
+possessed of this same power of stripping off
+the husks of unreality and penetrating at
+once to the fundamental facts of the soul&rsquo;s
+life: the purity and direction of its will and
+love.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_33">[33]</div>
+<p>The life-giving life of union, once man has
+grown up to it, clarifies, illuminates, raises
+to a higher term, all aspects of the self:
+intelligence, no less than love and will.
+That self is now harmonised about its true
+centre, and finding &lsquo;God in all creatures
+and all creatures in God&rsquo; finds them in their
+reality. So it is that Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s long
+life of growth, his long education in love,
+bringing him to that which he calls the &lsquo;God-seeing&rsquo;
+stage, brings him to a point in which he
+finds everywhere Reality: in those rhythmic
+seasonal changes of the forest life which
+have inspired his wonderful doctrine of the
+perpetual rebirth and re-budding of the soul;
+in the hearts of men&mdash;though often there
+deep buried&mdash;above all, in the mysteries of
+the Christian faith. Speaking with an unequalled
+authority and intimacy of those
+supersensuous regions, those mysterious contacts
+of love which lie beyond and above
+all thought, he is yet firmly rooted in the
+concrete; for he has reconciled in his own
+experience the paradox of a Transcendent
+yet Immanent God. There is no break in
+the life-process which begins with the little
+country boy running away from home in
+quest of some vaguely felt object of desire,
+some &lsquo;better land,&rsquo; and which ends with the
+triumphant passing over of the soul of the
+great contemplative to the perfect fruition
+of Eternal Love.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_34">[34]</div>
+<p>Ruysbroeck died at Groenendael on
+December 2, 1381. He was eighty-eight
+years old; feeble in body, nearly blind,
+yet keeping to the last his clear spiritual
+vision, his vigour and eagerness of soul.
+His death, says Pomerius, speaking on the
+authority of those who had seen it, was full
+of peaceful joy, of gaiety of heart; not the
+falling asleep of the tired servant, but the
+leap to more abundant life of the vigorous
+child of the Infinite, at last set free. With an
+immense gladness he went out from that time-world
+which, in his own image, is &lsquo;the shadow
+of God,&rsquo; to &ldquo;those high mountains of the
+land of promise where no shadow is, but
+only the Sun.&rdquo; One of the greatest of
+Christian seers, one of the most manly and
+human of the mystics, it is yet as a lover,
+in the noblest and most vital sense of the
+word, that his personality lives for us.
+From first to last, under all its external
+accidents, we may trace in his life the
+activity&mdash;first instinctive, and only gradually
+understood&mdash;of that &lsquo;unconquerable love,&rsquo;
+ardent, industrious, at last utterly surrendered,
+which he describes in the wonderful
+tenth chapter of <i>The Sparkling Stone</i>, as the
+unique power which effects the soul&rsquo;s union
+with God. &ldquo;For no man understandeth
+what love is in itself, but such are its workings:
+which giveth more than one can take,
+and asketh more than one can pay.&rdquo; That
+<span class="pb" id="Page_35">[35]</span>
+love it was which came out from the Infinite,
+as a tendency, an instinct endowed
+with liberty and life, and passed across the
+stage of history, manifested under humblest
+inconspicuous forms, but ever growing in
+passion and power; till at last, achieving
+the full stature of the children of God, it
+returned to its Source and Origin again.
+When we speak of the mysticism of Ruysbroeck,
+it is of this that we should think:
+of this growing spirit, this ardent, unconquerable,
+creative thing. A veritable part
+of our own order, therein it was transmuted
+from unreal to real existence; putting on
+Divine Humanity, and attaining the goal of
+all life in the interests of the race.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_36">[36]</div>
+<h2 id="c3">CHAPTER II
+<br /><span class="small">HIS WORKS</span></h2>
+<blockquote>
+<p>In all that I have understood, felt, or written, I submit
+myself to the judgment of the saints and of Holy Church,
+for I would live and die Christ&rsquo;s servant in Christian Faith.</p>
+<p><span class="lr"><span class="sc">The Book of Supreme Truth.</span></span></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Before discussing Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s view of
+the spiritual world, his doctrine of the soul&rsquo;s
+development, perhaps it will be well to
+consider the traditional names, general
+character, and contents of his admittedly
+authentic works. Only a few of these works
+can be dated with precision; for recent
+criticism has shown that the so-called
+chronological list given by
+Pomerius<a class="fn" id="fr_4" href="#fn_4">[4]</a>
+cannot be accepted. As to several of them, we
+cannot tell whether they were composed
+at Brussels or at Groenendael, at the beginning,
+middle or end of his mystical life.
+All were written in the Flemish vernacular
+of his own day&mdash;or, strictly speaking, in the
+dialect of Brabant&mdash;for they were practical
+books composed for a practical object, not
+<span class="pb" id="Page_37">[37]</span>
+academic treatises on mystical theology.
+Founded on experience, they deal with and
+incite to experience; and were addressed
+to all who felt within themselves the stirrings
+of a special grace, the call of a superhuman
+love, irrespective of education or position&mdash;to
+hermits, priests, nuns, and ardent souls
+still in the world who were trying to live
+the one real life&mdash;not merely to learned
+professors trying to elucidate the doctrines
+of that life. Ruysbroeck therefore belongs
+to that considerable group of mystical writers
+whose gift to the history of literature is
+only less important than their gift to
+the history of the spiritual world; since
+they have helped to break down the barrier
+between the written and the spoken word.</p>
+<p>At the moment in which poetry first forsakes
+the &lsquo;literary&rsquo; language and uses the
+people&rsquo;s speech, we nearly always find a
+mystic thus trying to tell his message to the
+race. His enthusiasm it is which is equal
+to the task of subduing a new medium to the
+purposes of art. Thus at the very beginning
+of Italian poetry we find St. Francis
+of Assisi singing in the popular tongue
+his great Canticle of the Sun, and soon
+after him come the sublime lyrics of Jacopone
+da Tod&igrave;. Thus German literature
+owes much to Mechthild of Magdeburg, and
+English to Richard Rolle&mdash;both forsaking
+Latin for the common speech of their day.
+<span class="pb" id="Page_38">[38]</span>
+Thus in India the poet Kabir, obedient to
+the same impulse, sings in Hindi rather than
+in Sanscrit his beautiful songs of Divine
+Love.</p>
+<p>In Ruysbroeck, as in these others, a strong
+poetic inspiration mingled with and sometimes
+controlled the purely mystical side of
+his genius. Often his love and enthusiasm
+break out and express themselves, sometimes
+in rough, irregular verse, sometimes in
+rhymed and rhythmic prose: a kind of wild
+spontaneous chant, which may be related to
+the &lsquo;ghostly song&rsquo; that &lsquo;boiled up&rsquo; within
+the heart of Richard Rolle. It is well-known
+that automatic composition&mdash;and we
+have seen that the evidence of those who
+knew him suggests the presence of an automatic
+element in Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s creative
+methods&mdash;tends to assume a rhythmic character;
+being indeed closely related to that
+strange chanted speech in which religious
+excitement frequently expresses itself. Released
+from the control of the surface-intellect,
+the deeper mind which is involved
+in these mysterious processes tends to
+present its intuitions and concepts in
+measured waves of words; which sometimes,
+as in Rolle&rsquo;s &lsquo;ghostly song&rsquo; and
+perhaps too in Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s &lsquo;Song of Joy,&rsquo;
+are actually given a musical form. In such
+rhythm the mystic seems to catch something
+of the cadences of that far-off music
+<span class="pb" id="Page_39">[39]</span>
+of which he is writing, and to receive and
+transmit a message which exceeds the possibilities
+of speech. Ruysbroeck was no
+expert poet. Often his verse is bad; halting
+in cadence, violent and uncouth in
+imagery, like the stammering utterance of
+one possessed. But its presence and quality,
+its mingled simplicity and violence, assure
+us of the strong excitement that fulfilled
+him, and tend to corroborate the account
+of his mental processes which we have
+deduced from the statements in Pomerius&rsquo;
+<i>Life</i>.</p>
+<p>Eleven admittedly authentic books and tracts survive in numerous MS.
+collections,<a class="fn" id="fr_5" href="#fn_5">[5]</a>
+and from these come all that we know
+of his vision and teaching. <i>The Twelve
+Virtues</i>, and the two Canticles often attributed
+to him, are probably spurious; and
+the tracts against the Brethren of the Free
+Spirit, which are known to have been written
+during his Brussels period, have all disappeared.
+I give here a short account
+of the authentic works, their names and
+general contents; putting first in order
+those of unknown date, some of which may
+possibly have been composed before the
+foundation of Groenendael. In each case
+the first title is a translation of that used
+in the best Flemish texts; the second,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_40">[40]</span>
+that employed in the great Latin version of
+Surius. Ruysbroeck himself never gave any
+titles to his writings.</p>
+<p>1. <span class="sc">The Spiritual Tabernacle</span> (called
+by Surius <i>In Tabernaculum Mosis</i>).&mdash;The
+longest, most fantastic, and, in spite of some
+fine passages, the least interesting of Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+works. Probably founded upon
+the <i>De Arca Mystica</i> of Hugh of St. Victor,
+this is an elaborate allegory, thoroughly
+medi&aelig;val in type, in which the Tabernacle
+of the Israelites becomes a figure of the
+spiritual life; the details of its construction,
+furniture and ritual being given a
+symbolic significance, in accordance with
+the methods of interpretation popular at
+the time. In this book, and perhaps in the
+astronomical treatise appended to <i>The Twelve
+B&eacute;guines</i> (No. 11), I believe that we have the
+only surviving works of Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s first
+period; when he had not yet &lsquo;transcended
+images,&rsquo; but was at that point in his mystical
+development in which the young contemplative
+loves to discern symbolic meanings
+in all visible things.</p>
+<p>2. <span class="sc">The Twelve Points of True
+Faith</span> (<i>De Fide et Judicio</i>).&mdash;This little
+tract is in form a gloss upon the Nicene
+Creed; in fact, a characteristically Ruysbroeckian
+confession of faith. Without ever
+over-passing the boundaries of Catholic doctrine,
+Ruysbroeck is here able to turn all
+<span class="pb" id="Page_41">[41]</span>
+its imagery to the purposes of his own vision
+of truth.</p>
+<p>3. <span class="sc">The Book of the Four Temptations</span>
+(<i>De Quatuor Tentationibus</i>).&mdash;The Four
+Temptations are four manifestations of the
+higher egotism specially dangerous to souls
+entering on the contemplative life: first,
+the love of ease and comfort, as much in
+things spiritual as in things material;
+secondly, the tendency to pose as the
+possessor of special illumination, with other
+and like forms of spiritual pretence; thirdly,
+intellectual pride, which seeks to understand
+unfathomable mysteries and attain to the
+vision of God by the reason alone; fourthly,&mdash;most
+dangerous of all&mdash;that false &lsquo;liberty
+of spirit&rsquo; which was the mark of the heretical
+mystic sects. This book too may
+well have been written before the retreat
+to Groenendael.</p>
+<p>4. <span class="sc">The Book of the Kingdom of God&rsquo;s
+Lovers</span> (<i>Regnum Deum Amantium</i>).&mdash;This
+and the following work, <i>The Adornment
+of the Spiritual Marriage</i>, contain Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+fullest and most orderly descriptions
+of the mystical life-process. The
+&lsquo;Kingdom&rsquo; which God&rsquo;s lovers may inherit
+is the actual life of God, infused into the
+soul and deifying it. This essential life
+reveals itself under five modes: in the sense
+world, in the soul&rsquo;s nature, in the witness of
+Scripture, in the life of grace or &lsquo;glory,&rsquo;
+<span class="pb" id="Page_42">[42]</span>
+and in the Superessential Kingdom of the
+Divine Unity. By the threefold way of
+the Active, Contemplative, and Superessential
+Life, here described as the steady and
+orderly appropriation of the Seven Gifts
+of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of man may
+enter into its inheritance and attain at last
+to the perfect fruition of God. To the Active
+Life belong the gifts of Holy Fear, Godliness,
+and Knowledge; to the Contemplative those
+of Strength and Counsel; to the Superessential
+those of Intelligence and Wisdom.
+<i>The Kingdom of God&rsquo;s Lovers</i> was traditionally
+regarded as Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s earliest
+work. It was more probably written during
+the early years at Groenendael. Much of
+it, like <i>The Twelve B&eacute;guines</i>, is in poetical
+form. This was the book which, falling into
+the hands of Gerard Naghel, made him seek
+Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s acquaintance, in order that
+he might ask for an explanation of several
+profound and difficult passages.</p>
+<p>5. <span class="sc">The Adornment of the Spiritual
+Marriage</span> (<i>De Ornatu Spiritalium Nuptiarum</i>).&mdash;This
+is the best known and most
+methodical of Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s works. In form
+a threefold commentary upon the text,
+&ldquo;Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye
+out to meet him,&rdquo; it is divided into three
+books, tracing out in great detail, and with
+marvellous psychological insight, those three
+stages of Active, Contemplative and Superessential
+<span class="pb" id="Page_43">[43]</span>
+Life, which appear again and again
+in his writings. Paying due attention to the
+aberrations of the quietists, he exhibits&mdash;with
+an intimacy which surely reflects his
+own personal experience of the Way&mdash;the
+conditions under which selves in each stage
+of development may see, encounter, and at
+last unite with, the Divine Bridegroom of
+the soul. A German translation of several
+of its chapters, preserved in MS. at Munich,
+states that Ruysbroeck sent this book to
+the Friends of God in 1350. In this case
+it belongs to the years immediately preceding
+or succeeding his retreat.</p>
+<p>We now come to the works which were
+certainly composed at Groenendael, though
+probably some of those already enumerated
+also belong to the last thirty years of Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+life. First come the three treatises
+apparently written for Margaret van Meerbeke,
+a choir nun of the Convent of Poor
+Clares at Brussels; who seems to have been
+to him what St. Clare was to St. Francis,
+Elizabeth St&auml;gel to Suso, Margaret Kirkby
+to Richard Rolle&mdash;first a spiritual daughter,
+then a valued and sympathetic friend.</p>
+<p>6. <span class="sc">The Mirror of Eternal Salvation</span>
+or <span class="sc">Book of the Blessed Sacrament</span>
+(<i>Speculum &AElig;tern&aelig; Salutis</i>).&mdash;This, the first
+of the three, was written in 1359. It is
+addressed to one who is evidently a beginner
+in the spiritual life, as she is yet a novice in
+<span class="pb" id="Page_44">[44]</span>
+her religious community; but whom Ruysbroeck
+looks upon as specially &lsquo;called, elect
+and loved.&rsquo; In simplest language, often of
+extreme beauty, he puts before her the
+magnitude of the vocation she has accepted,
+the dangers she will encounter, and the
+great source from which she must draw her
+strength: the sacramental dispensation of
+the Church. In a series of magnificent
+chapters, he celebrates the mystical doctrine
+of the Eucharist, the feeding of the ever-growing
+soul on the substance of God;
+following this by a digression, full of shrewd
+observation, on the different types of believers
+who come to communion. We see
+them through his eyes: the religious sentimentalists,
+&lsquo;who are generally women and
+only very seldom men&rsquo;; the sturdy normal
+Christian, who does his best to struggle
+against sin; the humble and devout lover
+of God; the churchy hypocrite, who behaves
+with great reverence at Mass and then
+goes home and scolds the servants; the
+heretical mystic full of spiritual pride; the
+easy-going worldling, who sins and repents
+with equal facility. The book ends with
+a superb description of the goal towards
+which the young contemplative is set: the
+&lsquo;life-giving life&rsquo; of perfect union with God
+in which that &lsquo;higher life&rsquo; latent in every
+soul at last attains to maturity.</p>
+<p>7. <span class="sc">The Seven Cloisters</span> (<i>De Septem</i>
+<span class="pb" id="Page_45">[45]</span>
+<i>Custodiis</i>).&mdash;This was written before 1363,
+and preserves its address to &lsquo;The Holy
+Nun, Dame Margaret van Meerbeke, Cantor
+of the Monastery of St. Clare at Brussels.&rsquo;
+The novice of the &lsquo;Mirror&rsquo; is now a professed
+religious; and her director instructs her
+upon the attitude of mind which she should
+bring to the routine duties of a nun&rsquo;s day,
+the opportunity they offer for the enriching
+and perfecting of love and humility. He
+describes the education of the human spirit
+up to that high point of consciousness where
+it knows itself established &lsquo;between Eternity
+and Time&rsquo;: one of the fundamental
+thoughts of Flemish and German mysticism.
+This education admits her successively into
+the seven cloisters which kept St. Clare,
+Foundress of the Order, unspotted from the
+world. The first is the physical enclosure
+of the convent walls; the next the moral
+and volitional limitation of self-control. The
+third is &lsquo;the open door of the love of Christ,&rsquo;
+which crowns man&rsquo;s affective powers, and
+leads to the fourth&mdash;total dedication of the
+will. The fifth and sixth represent the two
+great forms of the Contemplative Life as
+conceived by Ruysbroeck: the ecstatic and
+the deiform. The seventh admits to Abyss
+of Being itself: that &lsquo;dim silence&rsquo; at the
+heart of which, as in the Seventh Habitation
+of St. Teresa&rsquo;s &lsquo;Interior Castle,&rsquo; he
+will find himself alone with God. There
+<span class="pb" id="Page_46">[46]</span>
+the mystic union is consummated, and the
+Divine activity takes the place of the separate
+activity of man, in &ldquo;a simple beatitude
+which transcends all sanctity and the practice
+of virtue, an Eternal Fruition which
+satisfies all hunger and thirst, all love and all
+craving, for God.&rdquo; Finally, he returns to
+the Active Life; and ends with a practical
+chapter on clothes, and a charming instruction,
+full of deep poetry, on the evening
+meditation which should close the day.</p>
+<p>8. <span class="sc">The Seven Degrees of the Ladder
+of Love</span> (<i>De Septem Gradibus Amoris</i>).&mdash;This
+book, which was written before 1372,
+is believed by the Benedictines of Wisques,
+the latest and most learned of Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+editors, to complete the trilogy of works
+addressed to Dame Margaret van Meerbeke.
+It traces the soul&rsquo;s ascent to the height of
+Divine love by way of the characteristic
+virtues of asceticism, under the well-known
+medi&aelig;val image of the &lsquo;ladder of perfection&rsquo;
+or &lsquo;stairway of love&rsquo;&mdash;a metaphor,
+originating in Jacob&rsquo;s Dream, which had
+already served St. Benedict, Richard of St.
+Victor, St. Bonaventura and many others
+as a useful diagram of the mystic way.
+Originality of form, however, is the last
+thing we should look for in Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+works. He pours his strange wine into any
+vessel that comes to hand. As often his
+most sublime or amazing utterances originate
+<span class="pb" id="Page_47">[47]</span>
+in commentaries upon some familiar text,
+or the deepest truths are hidden under the
+most grotesque similitudes; so this well-worn
+metaphor gives him the opportunity
+for some of his finest descriptions of the soul&rsquo;s
+movement to that transmutation in which all
+ardent spirits &lsquo;become as live coals in the
+fire of Infinite Love.&rsquo; This book, in which
+the influence of St. Bernard is strongly
+marked, contains some beautiful passages
+on the mystic life considered as a &lsquo;heavenly
+song&rsquo; of faithfulness and love, which &ldquo;Christ
+our Cantor and our Choragus has sung
+from the beginning of things,&rdquo; and which
+every Christian soul must learn.</p>
+<p>9. <span class="sc">The Book of the Sparkling Stone</span>
+(<i>De Calculo, sive de Perfectione Filiorum
+Dei</i>).&mdash;This priceless work is said to have been
+written by Ruysbroeck at the request of a
+hermit, who wished for further light on the
+high matters of which it treats. It contains
+the finest flower of his thought, and shows
+perhaps more clearly than any other of his
+writings the mark of direct inspiration.
+Here again the scaffolding on which he
+builds is almost as old as Christian mysticism
+itself: that three-fold division of men
+into the &lsquo;faithful servants, secret friends,
+and hidden sons&rsquo; of God, which descended
+through the centuries from Clement of Alexandria.
+But the tower which he raises with
+its help ascends to heights unreached by
+<span class="pb" id="Page_48">[48]</span>
+any other writer: to the point at which
+man is given the supreme gift of the Sparkling
+Stone, or Nature of Christ, the goal of
+human transcendence. I regard the ninth
+and tenth chapters of <i>The Sparkling Stone</i>&mdash;&lsquo;How
+we may become Hidden Sons of God
+and live the Contemplative Life,&rsquo; and &lsquo;How
+we, though one with God, must eternally
+remain other than Him&rsquo;&mdash;as the high-water
+mark of mystical literature. Nowhere
+else do we find such a marvellous
+combination of wide and soaring vision
+with the most delicate and intimate psychological
+analysis. The old mystic, sitting
+under his friendly tree, seems here to be
+gazing at and reporting to us the final
+secrets of that eternal world, where &ldquo;the
+Incomprehensible Light enfolds and penetrates
+us, as the air is penetrated by the
+light of the sun.&rdquo; There he tastes and apprehends,
+in &lsquo;an unfathomable seeing and
+beholding,&rsquo; the inbreathing and the outbreathing
+of the Love of God&mdash;that double
+movement which controls the universe;
+yet knows, along with this great cosmic
+vision, that intimate and searching communion
+in which &ldquo;the Beloved and the
+Lover are immersed wholly in love, and each
+is all to the other in possession and in rest.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>10. <span class="sc">The Book of Supreme Truth</span> (called
+in some collections <i>The Book of Retractations</i>,
+and by Surius, <i>Samuel</i>.)&mdash;This is the tract
+<span class="pb" id="Page_49">[49]</span>
+written by Ruysbroeck, at the request of
+Gerard Naghel, to explain certain obscure
+passages in <i>The Book of the Kingdom of God&rsquo;s
+Lovers</i>. In it he is specially concerned to
+make clear the vital distinction between his
+doctrine of the soul&rsquo;s union with God&mdash;a
+union in which the primal distinction between
+Creator and created is never overpassed&mdash;and
+the pantheistic doctrine of complete
+absorption in Him, with cessation of all
+effort and striving, preached by the heretical
+sects whose initiates claim to &lsquo;be God.&rsquo;
+By the time that this book was written,
+careless readers had already charged Ruysbroeck
+with these pantheist tendencies which
+he abhorred and condemned; and here he
+sets out his defence. He discusses also the
+three degrees of union with God which
+correspond to the &lsquo;three lives&rsquo; of the growing
+soul: union by means of sacraments
+and good deeds; union achieved in contemplative
+prayer &lsquo;without means,&rsquo; where
+the soul learns its double vocation of action
+and fruition; and the highest union of all,
+where the spirit which has swung pendulum-like
+between the temporal and eternal worlds,
+achieves its equilibrium and dwells wholly
+in God, &lsquo;drunk with love, and sunk in the
+Dark Light.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>11. <span class="sc">The Twelve B&eacute;guines</span> (<i>De Vera Contemplatione</i>).&mdash;This
+is a long, composite book
+of eighty-four chapters, which apparently
+<span class="pb" id="Page_50">[50]</span>
+consists of at least three distinct treatises
+of different dates. The first, <i>The Twelve
+B&eacute;guines</i>, which ends with chapter xvi.,
+contains the longest consecutive example of
+Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s poetic method; its first eight
+chapters being written in irregular rhymed
+verse. It is believed to be one of his last
+compositions. Its doctrine differs little from
+that already set forth in his earlier works;
+though nowhere, perhaps, is the development
+of the spiritual consciousness described
+with greater subtlety. The soul&rsquo;s
+communion with and feeding on the Divine
+Nature in the Eucharist and in contemplative
+prayer; its acquirement of the art
+of introversion; the Way of Contemplation
+with its four modes, paralleled by the Way of
+Love with its four modes; these lead up
+to the perfect union of the spirit with God
+&ldquo;in one love and one fruition with Him,
+fulfilled in everlasting bliss.&rdquo; The seventeenth
+chapter begins a new treatise, with a
+description of the Active Life on Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+usual lines; and at the thirtieth
+there is again a complete change of subject,
+introducing a mystical and symbolic interpretation
+of the science of astronomy. This
+section, so unlike his later writings, somewhat
+resembles <i>The Spiritual Tabernacle</i>,
+and may perhaps be a work of the same
+period. A collection of Meditations upon
+the Passion of Christ, arranged according
+<span class="pb" id="Page_51">[51]</span>
+to the Seven Hours of the Roman Breviary
+(capp. lxxiii. to end), completes the book;
+and also the tale of Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s authentic
+works. A critical list of the reprints and
+translations in which these may best be
+studied will be found in the Bibliographical
+Note.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_52">[52]</div>
+<h2 id="c4">CHAPTER III
+<br /><span class="small">HIS DOCTRINE OF GOD</span></h2>
+<blockquote>
+<p>My words are strange; but those who love will understand.</p>
+<p><span class="lr"><span class="sc">The Mirror of Eternal Salvation.</span></span></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Mystical writers are of two kinds. One
+kind, of which St. Teresa is perhaps the
+supreme type, deals almost wholly with the
+personal and interior experiences of the soul
+in the states of contemplation, and the
+psychological rules governing those states;
+above all, with the emotional reactions of
+the self to the impact of the Divine. This
+kind of mystic&mdash;whom William James
+accused, with some reason, of turning the
+soul&rsquo;s relation with God into a &lsquo;duet&rsquo;&mdash;makes
+little attempt to describe the ultimate Object
+of the self&rsquo;s love and desire, the great
+movements of the spiritual world; for such
+description, the formul&aelig; of existing theology
+are felt to be enough. Visions of Christ,
+experiences of the Blessed Trinity&mdash;these are
+sufficient names for the personal and impersonal
+aspects of that Reality with which
+the contemplative seeks to unite. But the
+<span class="pb" id="Page_53">[53]</span>
+other kind of mystic&mdash;though possibly and
+indeed usually as orthodox in his beliefs,
+as ardent in his love&mdash;cannot, on the one
+hand, remain within the circle of these subjective
+and personal conceptions, and, on the
+other, content himself with the label which
+tradition has affixed to the Thing that he
+has known. He may not reject the label,
+but neither does he confuse it with the
+Thing. He has the wide vision, the metaphysical
+passion of the philosopher and the
+poet; and in his work he is ever pressing
+towards more exact description, more suggestive
+and evocative speech. The symbols
+which come most naturally to him are
+usually derived from the ideas of space
+and of wonder; not from those of human
+intimacy and love. In him the intellect is
+active as well as the heart; sometimes, more
+active. Plotinus is an extreme example of
+mysticism of this type.</p>
+<p>The greatest mystics, however, whether
+in the East or in the West, are possessed
+of a vision and experience of God so deep
+and rich that it embraces at once the infinite
+and the intimate aspects of Reality;
+illuminating those religious concepts which
+are, as it were, an artistic reconstruction
+of the Transcendent, and at the same time
+having contact with that vast region above
+and beyond reason whence come the fragmentary
+intimations of Reality crystallised
+<span class="pb" id="Page_54">[54]</span>
+in the formul&aelig; of faith. For them, as for
+St. Augustine, God is both near and far;
+and the paradox of transcendent-immanent
+Reality is a self-evident if an inexpressible
+truth. They swing between hushed adoration
+and closest communion, between the
+divine ignorance of the intellect lifted up
+into God and the divine certitude of the
+heart in which He dwells; and give us by
+turns a subjective and psychological, an
+objective and metaphysical, reading of
+spiritual experience. Ruysbroeck is a mystic
+of this type. The span of his universe
+can include&mdash;indeed demand&mdash;both the
+concept of that Abyss of Pure Being where
+all distinctions are transcended, and the
+soul is immersed in the &lsquo;dark light&rsquo; of the
+One, and the distinctively Christian and incarnational
+experience of loving communion
+with and through the Person of Christ. For
+him the ladder of contemplation is firmly
+planted in the bed-rock of human character&mdash;goes
+the whole way from the heart of man
+to the Essence of God&mdash;and every stage of it
+has importance for the eager and ascending
+soul. Hence, when he seems to rush out to
+the farthest limits of the cosmos, he still
+remains within the circle of Catholic ideas;
+and is at once ethical and metaphysical,
+intensely sacramental and intensely transcendental
+too.</p>
+<p>Nor is this result obtained&mdash;as it sometimes
+<span class="pb" id="Page_55">[55]</span>
+seems to be, for instance, in such a visionary
+as Angela of Foligno&mdash;by a mere heaping
+up of the various and inconsistent emotional
+reactions of the self. There is a fundamental
+orderliness in the Ruysbroeckian
+universe which, though it may be difficult
+to understand, and often impossible for him
+to express without resort to paradox, yet
+reveals itself to careful analysis. He tries
+hard to describe, or at least suggest, it to us,
+because he is a mystic of an apostolic type.
+Even where he is dealing with the soul&rsquo;s
+most ineffable experiences and seems to
+hover over that Abyss which is &lsquo;beyond
+Reason,&rsquo; stammering and breaking into wild
+poetry in the desperate attempt to seize
+the unseizable truth he is ever intent on
+telling us how these things may be actualised,
+this attitude attained by other men. The
+note is never, as with many subjective
+visionaries, &ldquo;<i>I</i> have seen,&rdquo; but always &ldquo;<i>We</i>
+shall or may see.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Now such an objective mystic as this,
+who is not content with retailing his
+private experiences and ecstasies, but
+accepts the great vocation of revealer of
+Reality, is called upon to do certain things.
+He must give us, not merely a static picture
+of Eternity, but also a dynamic &lsquo;reading of
+life&rsquo;; and of a life more extended than that
+which the moralist, or even the philosopher,
+offers to interpret. He must not only tell
+<span class="pb" id="Page_56">[56]</span>
+us what he thinks about the universe, and
+in particular that ultimate Spiritual Reality
+which all mysticism discerns within or
+beyond the flux. He must also tell us what
+he thinks of man, that living, moving, fluid
+spirit-thing: his reactions to this universe
+and this Reality, the satisfaction which it
+offers to his thought, will and love, the
+obligations laid upon him in respect of it.
+We, on our part, must try to understand what
+he tells us of these things; for he is, as it
+were, an organ developed by the race for
+this purpose&mdash;a tentacle pushed out towards
+the Infinite, to make, in our name and
+in our interest, fresh contacts with Reality.
+He performs for us some of the functions
+of the artist extending our universe, the
+pioneer cutting our path, the hunter winning
+food for our souls.</p>
+<p>The clue to the universe of such a mystic
+will always be the vision or idea which he
+has of the Nature of God; and there we
+must begin, if we would find our way through
+the tangle of his thought. From this
+Centre all else branches out, and to this
+all else must conform, if it is to have for him
+realness and life; for truth, as Aquinas
+teaches, is simply the reality of things as
+they are in God. We begin, then, our exploration
+of Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s doctrine by trying
+to discover the character of his vision of the
+Divine Nature, and man&rsquo;s relation with it.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_57">[57]</div>
+<p>That vision is so wide, deep and searching,
+that only by resort to the language
+of opposites, by perpetual alternations of
+spatial and personal, metaphysical and
+passionate speech, is he able to communicate
+it to us. His fortunate and profound
+acquaintance with the science of theology&mdash;his
+contact through it with the formul&aelig;
+of Christian Platonism&mdash;has given him the
+framework on which he stretches out his
+wonderful and living picture of the Infinite.
+This picture is personal to himself, the fruit
+of a direct and vivid inspiration; not so the
+terms by which it is communicated. These
+for the most part are the common property
+of Christian theology; though here used with
+a consummate skill, often with an apparent
+originality. Especially from St. Augustine,
+Dionysius the Areopagite, Richard of St.
+Victor, St. Bernard and the more orthodox
+utterances of his own immediate predecessor,
+Meister Eckhart&mdash;sometimes too from his
+contemporaries, Suso and Tauler&mdash;has he
+taken the intellectual concepts, the highly-charged
+poetic metaphors, in which his
+perceptions are enshrined. So close does
+he keep to these masters, so frequent are his
+borrowings, that almost every page of his
+writings might be glossed from their works.
+It is one of the most astonishing features of
+the celebrated and astonishing essay of
+M. Maeterlinck that, bent on vindicating
+<span class="pb" id="Page_58">[58]</span>
+the inspiration of his &lsquo;simple and ignorant
+monk,&rsquo; he entirely fails to observe the
+traditional character of the formul&aelig; which
+express it. No student of the mystics will
+deny the abundant inspiration by which
+Ruysbroeck was possessed; but this inspiration
+is spiritual, not intellectual. The
+truth was told to him in the tongue of
+angels, and he did his best to translate it
+into the tongue of the Church; perpetually
+reminding us, as he did so, how great was the
+difference between vision and description,
+how clumsy and inadequate those concepts
+and images wherewith the artist-seer tried
+to tell his love.</p>
+<p>This distinction, which the reader of
+Ruysbroeck should never forget, is of primary
+importance in connection with his treatment
+of the Nature of God; where the disparity
+between the thing known and the thing
+said is inevitably at a maximum. The
+high nature of the Godhead, he says, in a
+string of suggestive and paradoxical images,
+to which St. Paul, Dionysius and Eckhart
+have all contributed, is, in itself, &ldquo;Simplicity
+and One-foldness; inaccessible height and
+fathomless deep; incomprehensible breadth
+and eternal length; a dim silence, and a
+wild desert&rdquo;&mdash;oblique, suggestive, musical
+language which enchants rather than informs
+the soul; opens the door to experience,
+but does not convey any accurate
+<span class="pb" id="Page_59">[59]</span>
+knowledge of the Imageless Truth, &ldquo;Now
+we may experience many wonders in that
+fathomless Godhead; but although, because
+of the coarseness of the human intellect,
+when we would describe such things outwardly,
+we must use images, in truth that
+which is inwardly perceived and beheld is
+nought else but a Fathomless and Unconditioned
+Good.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_6" href="#fn_6">[6]</a></p>
+<p>Yet this primal Reality, this ultimately
+indivisible One, has for human consciousness
+a two-fold character; and though for the
+intuition of the mystic its fruition is a synthetic
+experience, it must in thought be
+analysed if it is ever to be grasped. God,
+as known by man, exhibits in its perfection
+the dual property of Love; on the one hand
+active, generative, creative; on the other
+hand a still and ineffable possession or
+<i>Fruition</i>&mdash;one of the master-words of Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+thought. He is, then, the Absolute
+One, in whom the antithesis of Eternity
+and Time, of Being and Becoming, is resolved;
+both static and dynamic, transcendent
+and immanent, impersonal and
+personal, undifferentiated and differentiated;
+Eternal Rest and Eternal Work, the Unmoved
+Mover, yet Movement itself. &ldquo;Although
+in our way of seeing we give
+God many names, His nature is One.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He transcends the storm of succession, yet
+<span class="pb" id="Page_60">[60]</span>
+is the inspiring spirit of the flux. According
+to His fruitful nature, &ldquo;He works without
+ceasing, for He is Pure Act&rdquo;&mdash;a reminiscence
+of Aristotle which seems strange upon the
+lips of the &lsquo;ignorant monk.&rsquo; He is the
+omnipotent and ever-active Creator of all
+things; &lsquo;an immeasurable Flame of Love&rsquo;
+perpetually breathing forth His energetic
+Life in new births of being and new floods
+of grace, and drawing in again all creatures
+to Himself. Yet this statement defines, not
+His being, but one manifestation of His
+being. When the soul pierces beyond this
+&lsquo;fruitful&rsquo; nature to His simple essence&mdash;and
+&lsquo;simple&rsquo; is here and throughout to be
+understood in its primal meaning of &lsquo;synthetic&rsquo;&mdash;He
+is that absolute and abiding
+Reality which seems to man Eternal
+Rest, the &lsquo;Deep Quiet of the Godhead,&rsquo; the
+&lsquo;Abyss,&rsquo; the &lsquo;Dim Silence&rsquo;; and which we
+can taste indeed but never know. There, &lsquo;all
+lovers lose themselves&rsquo; in the consummation
+of that experience at which our fragmentary
+intuitions hint.</p>
+<p>The active and fertile aspect of the Divine
+Nature is manifested in differentiation: for
+Ruysbroeck the Catholic, in the Trinity of
+Persons, as defined by Christian theology.
+The static and absolute aspect is the &lsquo;calm
+and glorious Unity of the Godhead&rsquo; which
+he finds beyond and within the Trinity, &ldquo;the
+fathomless Abyss that <i>is</i> the Being of God,&rdquo;&mdash;an
+<span class="pb" id="Page_61">[61]</span>
+idea, familiar to Indian mysticism and
+implicit in Christian Neoplatonism, which
+governed all Meister Eckhart&rsquo;s speculations
+upon the Divine Nature. There is, says
+Ruysbroeck in one of his most Eckhartian
+passages, &ldquo;a distinction and differentiation,
+according to our reason, between God
+and the Godhead, between action and rest.
+The fruitful nature of the Persons, of whom
+is the Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity,
+ever worketh in a living differentiation.
+But the Simple Being of God, according to
+the nature thereof, is an Eternal Rest of
+God and of all created
+things.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_7" href="#fn_7">[7]</a></p>
+<p>In differentiating the three great aspects
+of the Divine Life, as known by the love
+and thought of man, Ruysbroeck keeps
+close to formal theology; though investing
+its academic language with new and deep
+significance, and constantly reminding us
+that such language, even at its best, can
+never get beyond the region of image and
+similitude or provide more than an imperfect
+reflection of the One who is &lsquo;neither This
+nor That.&rsquo; On his lips, credal definitions
+are perpetually passing over from the arid
+region of theological argument to the fruitful
+one of spiritual experience. There they
+become songs, as &lsquo;new&rsquo; as the song heard
+by the Apocalyptist; real channels of light,
+which show the mind things that it never
+<span class="pb" id="Page_62">[62]</span>
+guessed before. For the &lsquo;re-born&rsquo; man
+they have a fresh and immortal meaning;
+because that &lsquo;river of grace,&rsquo; of which he
+perpetually speaks as pouring into the heart
+opened towards the Infinite, transfigures
+and irradiates them. Thus the illuminated
+mind knows in the Father, not a confusingly
+anthropomorphic metaphor, but the uniquely
+vital Source and unconditioned Origin of
+all things &ldquo;in whom our life and being is
+begun.&rdquo; He is the &ldquo;Strength and Power,
+Creator, Mover, Keeper, Beginning and End,
+Cause and Existence of all
+creatures.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_8" href="#fn_8">[8]</a>
+Further, the intuition of the mystic discerns
+in the Son the Eternal Word and fathomless
+Wisdom and Truth perpetually generated
+of the Father, shining forth in the world of
+conditions: the Pattern or Archetype of
+creation and of life, the image of God which
+the universe reflects back before the face
+of the Absolute, the Eternal Rule incarnate
+in Christ. And this same &lsquo;light wherein
+we see God&rsquo; also shows to the enlightened
+mind the veritable character of the Holy
+Spirit; the Incomprehensible Love and
+Generosity of the Divine Nature, which
+emanates in an eternal procession from the
+mutual contemplation of Father and Son,
+&ldquo;for these two Persons are always hungry
+for love.&rdquo; The Holy Spirit is the source
+of the Divine vitality immanent in the universe.
+<span class="pb" id="Page_63">[63]</span>
+It is an outflowing torrent of Good
+which streams through all heavenly spirits;
+it is a Flame of Fire that consumes all in
+the One; it is also the Spark of transcendence
+latent in man&rsquo;s soul. The Spirit
+is the personal, Grace the impersonal, side
+of that energetic Love which enfolds and
+penetrates all life; and &ldquo;all this may be
+perceived and beheld, inseparable and
+without division, in the Simple Nature of
+the Godhead.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_9" href="#fn_9">[9]</a></p>
+<p>The relations which form the character
+of these Three Persons exist in an eternal
+distinction for that world of conditions
+wherein the human soul is immersed, and
+where things happen &lsquo;in some wise.&rsquo; There,
+from the embrace of the Father and Son
+and the outflowing of the Spirit in &lsquo;waves
+of endless love,&rsquo; all created things are born;
+and God, by His grace and His death, recreates
+them, and adorns them with love
+and goodness, and draws them back to
+their source. This is the circling course of
+the Divine life-process &lsquo;from goodness,
+through goodness, to goodness,&rsquo; described by
+Dionysius the Areopagite. But beyond and
+above this plane of Divine differentiation
+is the superessential world, transcending all
+conditions, inaccessible to thought&mdash;&ldquo;the
+measureless solitude of the Godhead, where
+God possesses Himself in joy.&rdquo; This is the
+<span class="pb" id="Page_64">[64]</span>
+ultimate world of the mystic, discerned by
+intuition and love &ldquo;in a simple seeing,
+beyond reason and without consideration.&rdquo;
+There, within the &lsquo;Eternal Now,&rsquo; without
+either before or after, released from the
+storm of succession, things happen indeed,
+&lsquo;yet in no wise,&rsquo; There, &ldquo;we can speak
+no more of Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
+nor of any creature; but only of one Being,
+which is the very substance of the Divine
+Persons. There were we all one before our
+creation; for this is our <i>superessence</i>....
+There the Godhead is, in simple essence,
+without activity; Eternal Rest, Unconditioned
+Dark, the Nameless Being, the
+Superessence of all created things, and the
+simple and infinite Bliss of God and of all
+Saints.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_10" href="#fn_10">[10]</a></p>
+<p>Ruysbroeck here brings us to the position
+of Dante in the last canto of the <i>Paradiso</i>,
+when, transcending those partial apprehensions
+of Reality which are figured by the
+River of Becoming and the Rose of Beatitude,
+he penetrated to the swift vision of
+&ldquo;that Eternal Light which only in Itself
+abideth&rdquo;&mdash;discerned best by man under
+the image of the three circles, yet in its
+&lsquo;profound and clear substance&rsquo; indivisibly
+One.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The simple light of this Being is limitless
+in its immensity, and transcending
+<span class="pb" id="Page_65">[65]</span>
+form, includes and embraces the unity of
+the Divine Persons and the soul with all
+its faculties; and this to such a point that
+it envelopes and irradiates <i>both</i> the natural
+tendency of our ground [<i>i.e.</i> its dynamic
+movement to God&mdash;the River] and the
+fruitive adherence of God and all those who
+are united with Him in this Light [<i>i.e.</i>
+Eternal Being&mdash;the Rose]. And this is the
+union of God and the souls that love
+Him.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_11" href="#fn_11">[11]</a></p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_66">[66]</div>
+<h2 id="c5">CHAPTER IV
+<br /><span class="small">HIS DOCTRINE OF MAN</span></h2>
+<blockquote>
+<p>That which was begun by Grace, is accomplished by
+Grace and Free-will; so that they work mixedly not
+separately, simultaneously not successively, in each and
+all of their processes.</p>
+<p><span class="lr"><span class="sc">St. Bernard.</span></span></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The concept of the Nature of God which
+we have traced through its three phases&mdash;out
+from the unchanging One to the active
+Persons and back to the One again&mdash;gives
+us a clue to Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s idea of the nature
+and destiny of man. In man, both aspects
+of Divine Reality, active and fruitive, are
+or should be reflected; for God is the
+&lsquo;Living Pattern of Creation&rsquo; who has
+impressed His image on each soul, and in
+every adult spirit the character of that
+image must be brought from the hiddenness
+and realised. Destined to be wholly real,
+though yet in the making, there is in man
+a latent Divine likeness, a &lsquo;spark&rsquo; of the
+primal fire. Created for union with God,
+already in Eternity that union is a fact.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The creature is in Brahma and Brahma
+<span class="pb" id="Page_67">[67]</span>
+is in the creature; they are ever distinct yet
+ever united,&rdquo; says the Indian mystic. Were
+it translated into Christian language, it is
+probable that this thought&mdash;which does <i>not</i>
+involve pantheism&mdash;would have been found
+acceptable by Ruysbroeck; for the interpenetration
+yet eternal distinction of the
+human and Divine spirits is the central fact
+of his universe. Man, he thinks, is already
+related in a threefold manner to his Infinite
+Source; for &ldquo;we have our being in Him as
+the Father, we contemplate Him as does
+the Son, we ceaselessly tend to return to Him
+as does the Spirit.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The first property of the soul is a <i>naked
+being</i>, devoid of all image. Thereby do we
+resemble, and are united to, the Father and
+His nature Divine.&rdquo; This is the &lsquo;ground of
+the soul&rsquo; perpetually referred to by mystics
+of the Eckhartian School; the bare, still
+place to which consciousness retreats in
+introversion, image of the static and absolute
+aspect of Reality. &ldquo;The second property
+might be called the <i>higher understanding</i>
+of the soul. It is a mirror of light,
+wherein we receive the Son of God, the
+Eternal Truth. By this light we are like
+unto Him; but in the act of receiving, we
+are one with Him.&rdquo; This is the power of
+knowing Divine things by intuitive comprehension:
+man&rsquo;s fragmentary share in the
+character of the Logos, or Wisdom of
+<span class="pb" id="Page_68">[68]</span>
+God. &ldquo;The third property we call the
+<i>spark</i> of the soul. It is the inward and
+natural tendency of the soul towards its
+Source; and here do we receive the Holy
+Spirit, the Charity of God. By this inward
+tendency we are like the Holy Spirit; but
+in the act of receiving, we become one spirit and one love with
+God.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_12" href="#fn_12">[12]</a>
+Here the Divine image shows itself in its immanent and
+dynamic aspect, as the &lsquo;internal push&rsquo; which
+drives Creation back to the Father&rsquo;s heart.</p>
+<p>The soul then is, as Julian of Norwich
+said, &ldquo;made Trinity, like to the unmade
+Blessed Trinity.&rdquo; Reciprocally, there is in
+the Eternal World the uncreated Pattern
+or Archetype of man&mdash;his &lsquo;Platonic idea.&rsquo;
+Now man must bring from its hiddenness the
+latent likeness, the germ of Divine humanity
+that is in him, and develop it until it realises
+the &lsquo;Platonic idea&rsquo;; achieving thus the
+implicit truth of his own nature as it exists
+in the mind of God. This, according to
+Ruysbroeck, is the whole art and object of
+the spiritual life; this actualisation of the
+eternal side of human nature, atrophied in
+the majority of men&mdash;the innate Christliness
+in virtue of which we have power to
+become &lsquo;Sons&rsquo; of God.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Lo! thus are we all one with God in
+our Eternal Archetype, which is His Wisdom
+who hath put on the nature of us all. And
+<span class="pb" id="Page_69">[69]</span>
+although we are already one with Him
+therein by that putting on of our nature,
+we must also be like God in grace and virtue,
+if we would find ourselves one with Him in
+our Eternal Archetype, which is
+Himself.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_13" href="#fn_13">[13]</a></p>
+<p>Under the stimulus of Divine Love perpetually
+beating in on him, feeding perpetually
+on the substance of God, perpetually
+renewed and &lsquo;reborn&rsquo; on to ever
+higher levels through the vivifying contact
+of reality, man must grow up into the
+&lsquo;superessential life&rsquo; of complete unity with
+the Transcendent. There, not only the
+triune aspect but the dual character of God
+is reproduced in him, reconciled in a synthesis
+beyond the span of thought; and
+he becomes &lsquo;deiform&rsquo;&mdash;both active and
+fruitive, &lsquo;ever at work and ever at rest&rsquo;&mdash;at
+once a denizen of Eternity and of Time.
+Every aspect of his being&mdash;love, intellect and
+will&mdash;is to be invaded and enhanced by the
+new life-giving life; it shall condition and
+enrich his correspondences with the sense-world
+as well as with the world of soul.</p>
+<p>Man is not here invited to leave the active
+life for the contemplative, but to make
+the active life perfect within the contemplative;
+carrying up these apparent opposites
+to a point at which they become one. It is
+one of Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s characteristics that he,
+as few others, followed mysticism out to
+<span class="pb" id="Page_70">[70]</span>
+this, its last stage; where it issues in a
+balanced, divine-human life. The energetic
+Love of God, which flows perpetually forth
+from the Abyss of Being to the farthest
+limits of the universe, enlightening and
+quickening where it goes, and &lsquo;turns again
+home&rsquo; as a strong tide drawing all things
+to their Origin, here attains equilibrium;
+the effort of creation achieves its aim.</p>
+<p>Now this aim, this goal, is already realised
+within God&rsquo;s nature, for there all perfection
+eternally Is. But to man it is super-nature;
+to achieve it he must transcend the world
+of conditions in which he lives according to
+the flesh, and grow up to fresh levels of
+life. Under the various images of sonship,
+marriage, and transmutation, this is the
+view of human destiny which Ruysbroeck
+states again and again: the creative evolution
+of the soul. His insistence on the
+completeness of the Divine Union to which
+the soul attains in this final phase, his
+perpetual resort to the dangerous language of
+deification in the effort towards describing
+it, seems at first sight to expose him to the
+charge of pantheism; and, as a matter of
+fact, has done so in the past. Yet he is
+most careful to guard himself at every point
+against this misinterpretation of his vision
+of life. In his view, by its growth towards
+God, personality is not lost, but raised to
+an ever higher plane. Even in that ecstatic
+<span class="pb" id="Page_71">[71]</span>
+fruition of Eternal Life in which the spirit
+passes above the state of Union to the state
+of Unity, and beyond the Persons to the
+One, the &lsquo;eternal otherness&rsquo; of Creator and
+created is not overpassed; but, as in the
+perfect fulfilment of love, utter fusion and
+clear differentiation mysteriously co-exist.
+It is, he says, not a mergence but a &lsquo;mutual
+inhabitation.&rsquo; In his attempts towards the
+description of this state, he borrows the
+language of St. Bernard, most orthodox of
+the mystics; language which goes back to
+primitive Christian times. The Divine light,
+love and being, he tells us, penetrates and
+drenches the surrendered, naked, receptive
+soul, &lsquo;as fire does the iron, as sunlight does
+the air&rsquo;; and even as the sunshine and
+the air, the iron and the fire, so are these
+two terms distinct yet united. &ldquo;The iron
+doth not become fire nor the fire iron; but
+each retaineth its substance and its nature.
+So likewise the spirit of man doth not
+become God, but is God-formed, and knoweth
+itself breadth and length and height and
+depth.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_14" href="#fn_14">[14]</a>
+Again, &ldquo;this union is <i>in</i> God,
+through grace and our homeward-tending
+love. Yet even here does the creature feel
+a distinction and otherness between itself and God in its inward
+ground.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_15" href="#fn_15">[15]</a>
+The dualistic relation of lover and beloved,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_72">[72]</span>
+though raised to another power and glory,
+is an eternal one.</p>
+<p>I have spoken of Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s concept of
+God, his closely related concept of man&rsquo;s
+soul; the threefold diagram of Reality
+within which these terms are placed, the
+doctrine of transcendence he deduced therefrom.
+But such a diagram cannot express
+to us the rich content, the deeply personal
+character of his experience and his knowledge.
+It is no more than a map of the
+living land he has explored, a formal picture
+of the Living One whom he has seen without
+sight. For him the landscape lived and
+flowered in endless variety of majesty and
+sweetness; the Person drew near in mysterious
+communion, and gave to him as food
+His very life.</p>
+<p>All that this meant, and must mean, for
+our deeper knowledge of Reality and of
+man&rsquo;s intuitive contacts with the Divine
+Life, we must find if we can in his doctrine of
+Love. Love is the &lsquo;very self-hood&rsquo; of God,
+says Ruysbroeck in strict Johannine language.
+His theology is above all the theology
+of the Holy Spirit, the immanent
+Divine Energy and Love. It is Love which
+breaks down the barrier between finite and
+infinite life. But Love, as he understands
+it, has little in common with the feeling-state
+to which many of the female mystics
+have given that august name. For him, it
+<span class="pb" id="Page_73">[73]</span>
+is hardly an emotional word at all, and
+never a sentimental one; rather the title
+of a mighty force, a holy energy that fills
+the universe&mdash;the essential activity of God.
+Sometimes he describes it under the antique
+imagery of Light; imagery which is more
+than a metaphor, and is connected with that
+veritable consciousness of enhanced radiance,
+as well in the outer as in the inner world,
+experienced by the &lsquo;illuminated&rsquo; mystic.
+Again it is the &lsquo;life-giving Life,&rsquo; hidden in
+God and the substance of our souls, which
+the self finds and appropriates; the whole
+Johannine trilogy brought into play, to
+express its meaning for heart, intellect and
+will. This Love, in fact, is the dynamic
+power which St. Augustine compared with
+gravitation, &lsquo;drawing all things to their
+own place,&rsquo; and which Dante saw binding
+the multiplicity of the universe into one.
+All Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s images for it turn on the
+idea of force. It is a raging fire, a storm, a
+flood. He speaks of it in one great passage
+as &lsquo;playing like lightning&rsquo; between God and
+the soul.</p>
+<p>Whoever will look at William Blake&rsquo;s
+great picture of the Creation of Adam, may
+gain some idea of the terrific yet infinitely
+compassionate character inherent in this
+concept of Divine Love: the agony, passion,
+beauty, sternness, and pity of the primal
+generating force. This love is eternally
+<span class="pb" id="Page_74">[74]</span>
+giving and taking&mdash;it is its very property,
+says Ruysbroeck, &lsquo;ever to give and ever
+to receive&rsquo;&mdash;pouring its dower of energy into
+the soul, and drawing out from that soul
+new vitality, new love, new surrender.
+&lsquo;Hungry love,&rsquo; &lsquo;generous love,&rsquo; &lsquo;stormy
+love,&rsquo; he calls it again and again. Streaming
+out from the heart of Reality, the impersonal
+aspect of the very Spirit of God, its creative
+touch evokes in man, once he becomes conscious
+of it, an answering storm of love.
+The whole of our human growth within the
+spiritual order is conditioned by the quality
+of this response; by the will, the industry,
+the courage, with which man accepts his
+part in the Divine give-and-take.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That measureless Love which is God
+Himself, dwells in the pure deeps of our
+spirit, like a burning brazier of coal. And
+it throws forth brilliant and fiery sparks
+which stir and enkindle heart and senses,
+will and desire, and all the powers of the
+soul, with a fire of love; in a storm, a rage,
+a measureless fury of love. These be the
+weapons with which we fight against the
+terrible and immense Love of God, who
+would consume all loving spirits and swallow
+them in Himself. Love arms us with its
+own gifts, and clarifies our reason, and
+commands, counsels and advises us to oppose
+Him, to fight against Him, and to maintain
+against Him our right to love, so long as we
+<span class="pb" id="Page_75">[75]</span>
+may.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_16" href="#fn_16">[16]</a>
+In the spiritual realm, giving and
+receiving are one act, for God is an
+&lsquo;ocean that ebbs and flows&rsquo;; and it is only
+by opposing love to love, by self-donation to
+His mysterious movements, that the soul
+appropriates new force, invigorating and
+fertilising it afresh. Thus, and thus alone,
+it lays hold on eternal life; sometimes
+sacramentally, under external images and
+accidents; sometimes mystically, in the communion
+of deep prayer. &ldquo;Every time we
+think with love of the Well-beloved, He is
+anew our meat and drink&rdquo;&mdash;more, we too
+are His, for the love between God and man
+is a mutual love and desire. As we lay hold
+upon the Divine Life, devour and assimilate
+it, so in that very act the Divine Life
+devours us, and knits us up into the mystical
+Body of Reality. &ldquo;Thou shalt not change
+Me into thine own substance, as thou dost
+change the food of thy flesh, but thou shalt
+be changed into Mine,&rdquo; said the Spirit of
+God to St. Augustine; and his Flemish
+descendant announces this same mysterious
+principle of life with greater richness and
+beauty.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is the nature of love ever to give and
+to take, to love and to be loved, and these
+two things meet in whomsoever loves. Thus
+the love of Christ is both avid and generous
+... as He devours us, so He would feed us.
+<span class="pb" id="Page_76">[76]</span>
+If He absorbs us utterly into Himself, in
+return He gives us His very self
+again.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_17" href="#fn_17">[17]</a></p>
+<p>This is but another aspect of that great
+&lsquo;inbreathing and outbreathing&rsquo; of the Divine
+nature which governs the relation between the
+Creator and the flux of life; for Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+Christological language always carries with
+it the idea of the Logos, the Truth and
+Wisdom of Deity, as revealed in the world
+of conditions,&mdash;not only in the historical
+Jesus, but also in the eternal generation of
+the Son. St. Francis of Assisi had said that
+Divine Love perpetually swings between
+and reconciles two mighty opposites: &ldquo;What
+is God? and, What am I?&rdquo; For Ruysbroeck,
+too, that Love is a unifying power,
+manifested in motion itself, &ldquo;an outgoing
+attraction, which drags us out of ourselves
+and calls us to be melted and naughted in the
+Unity&rdquo;;<a class="fn" id="fr_18" href="#fn_18">[18]</a>
+and all his deepest thoughts
+of it are expressed in terms of movement.</p>
+<p>The relation between the soul and the
+Absolute, then, is a love relation&mdash;as in
+fact all the mystics have declared it to be.
+Man, that imperfectly real thing, has an
+inherent tendency towards God, the Only
+Reality. Already possessed of a life within
+the world of conditions, his unquiet heart
+reaches out towards a world that transcends
+conditions. How shall he achieve that world?
+<span class="pb" id="Page_77">[77]</span>
+In the same way, says Ruysbroeck, as the
+child achieves the world of manhood: by
+the double method of growth and education,
+the balanced action of the organism
+and its environment. In its development
+and its needs, spirit conforms to the great
+laws of natural life. Taught by the voices
+of the forest and that inward Presence who
+&lsquo;spoke without utterance&rsquo; in his soul, he
+is quick to recognise the close parallels
+between nature and grace. His story of
+the mystical life is the story of birth, growth,
+adolescence, maturity: a steady progress, dependent
+on food and nurture, on the &lsquo;brooks
+of grace&rsquo; which flow from the Living
+Fountain and bring perpetual renovation
+to help the wise disciplines and voluntary
+choices that brace and purge our expanding
+will and love.</p>
+<p>Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s universe, like that of Kabir
+and certain other great mystics, has three
+orders: Becoming, Being, God. Parallel
+with this, he distinguishes three great stages
+in the soul&rsquo;s achievement of complete reality:
+the Active, the Interior, and the
+Superessential Life, sometimes symbolised
+by the conditions of Servant, Friend, and
+Son of God. These, however, must be regarded
+rather as divisions made for convenience
+of description, answering to those
+divisions which thought has made in the
+indivisible fact of the universe, than as
+<span class="pb" id="Page_78">[78]</span>
+distinctions inherent in the reality of things.
+The spiritual life has the true character of
+duration; it is one indivisible tendency
+and movement towards our source and
+home, in which the past is never left behind,
+but incorporated in the larger present.</p>
+<p>In the Active Life, the primary interest
+is ethical. Man here purifies his normal
+human correspondences with the world of
+sense, approximates his will to the Will of
+God. Here, his contacts with the Divine
+take place within that world of sense, and
+&lsquo;by means.&rsquo; In the Interior Life, the
+interest embraces the intellect, upon which
+is now conferred the vision of Reality. As
+the Active Life corresponded to the world of
+Becoming, this Life corresponds with the
+supersensual world of Being, where the
+self&rsquo;s contacts with the Divine take place
+&lsquo;without means.&rsquo; In the Superessential Life,
+the self has transcended the intellectual
+plane and entered into the very heart of
+Reality; where she does not behold, but
+has fruition of, God in one life and one love.
+The obvious parallel between these three
+stages and the traditional &lsquo;threefold way&rsquo;
+of Purgation, Illumination and Union is,
+however, not so exact as it appears. Many
+of the characters of the Unitive Way are
+present in Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s &lsquo;second life&rsquo;; and
+his &lsquo;third life&rsquo; takes the soul to heights
+of fruition which few amongst even the
+<span class="pb" id="Page_79">[79]</span>
+greatest unitive mystics have attained or
+described.</p>
+<p>(A) When man first feels upon his soul
+the touch of the Divine Light, at once,
+and in a moment of time, his will is changed;
+turned in the direction of Reality and
+away from unreal objects of desire. He
+is, in fact, &lsquo;converted&rsquo; in the highest and
+most accurate sense of that ill-used word.
+Seeing the Divine, he wants the Divine,
+though he may not yet understand his
+own craving; for the scrap of Divine Life
+within him has emerged into the field of consciousness,
+and recognises its home. Then,
+as it were, God and the soul rush together,
+and of their encounter springs love. This
+is the New Birth; the &lsquo;bringing forth of the
+Son in the ground of the soul,&rsquo; its baptism
+in the fountain of the Life-giving Life.</p>
+<p>The new force and tendency received
+into the self begins to act on the periphery,
+and thence works towards the centre of
+existence. First, then, it attacks the ordinary
+temporal life in all its departments.
+It pours in fresh waves of energy which
+confer new knowledge and hatred of sin,
+purify character, bring fresh virtues into
+being. It rearranges the consciousness about
+new and higher centres, gathering up all
+the faculties into one simple state of &lsquo;attention
+to God.&rsquo; Thence results the highest life
+which is attainable by &lsquo;nature.&rsquo; In it, man
+<span class="pb" id="Page_80">[80]</span>
+is united with God &lsquo;through means,&rsquo; acts in
+obedience to the dictates of Divine Love
+and in accordance with the tendency of
+the Divine Will, and becomes the &lsquo;Faithful
+Servant&rsquo; of the Transcendent Order.
+Plainly, the Active Life, thus considered,
+has much in common with the &lsquo;Purgative
+Way&rsquo; of ascetic science.</p>
+<p>(B) When this growth has reached its
+term, when &ldquo;Free-will wears the crown of
+Charity, and rules as a King over the soul,&rdquo;
+the awakened and enhanced consciousness
+begins to crave a closer contact with the
+spiritual: that unmediated and direct
+contact which is the essence of the Contemplative
+or Interior Life, and is achieved
+in the deep state of recollection called
+&lsquo;unitive prayer.&rsquo; Here voluntary and purposive
+education takes its place by the
+side of organic development. The way
+called by most ascetic writers &lsquo;Illumination&rsquo;&mdash;the
+state of &lsquo;proficient&rsquo; in monastic
+parlance&mdash;includes the <i>training</i> of the self
+in the contemplative art as well as its
+<i>growth</i> in will and love. This training
+braces and purifies intellect, as the disciplines
+of the active life purified will and
+sense. It teaches introversion, or the turning
+inward of the attention from the distractions
+of the sense-world; the cleansing
+of the mirror of thought, thronged with
+confusing images; the production of that
+<span class="pb" id="Page_81">[81]</span>
+silence in which the music of the Infinite
+can be heard. Nor is the Active Life here
+left behind; it is carried up to, and included
+in, the new, deepened activities of the
+self, which are no longer ruled by the laws,
+but by the &lsquo;quickening counsels&rsquo; of God.</p>
+<p>Of this new life, interior courage is a first
+necessity. It is no easy appropriation of
+supersensual graces, but a deeper entering
+into the mystery of life, a richer, more
+profound, participation in pain, effort, as
+well as joy. There must be no settling
+down into a comfortable sense of the Divine
+Presence, no reliance on the &lsquo;One Act&rsquo;;
+but an incessant process of change, renewal,
+re-emergence. Sometimes Ruysbroeck
+appears to see this central stage in the
+spiritual life-process in terms of upward
+growth toward transcendent levels; sometimes
+in terms of recollection, the steadfast
+pressing inwards of consciousness towards
+that bare ground of the soul where it unites
+with immanent Reality, and finds the
+Divine Life surging up like a &lsquo;living fountain&rsquo;
+from the deeps. This double way of conceiving
+one process is puzzling for us; but
+a proof that for Ruysbroeck no one concept
+could suggest the whole truth, and a useful
+reminder of the symbolic character of all
+these maps and itineraries of the spiritual
+life.</p>
+<p>As the sun grows in power with the passing
+<span class="pb" id="Page_82">[82]</span>
+seasons, so the soul now experiences a steady
+increase in the power and splendour of the
+Divine Light, as it ascends in the heavens
+of consciousness and pours its heat and
+radiance into all the faculties of man. The
+in-beating of this energy and light brings
+the self into the tempestuous heats of high
+summer, or full illumination&mdash;the &lsquo;fury of
+love,&rsquo; most fertile and dangerous epoch of
+the spiritual year. Thence, obedient to
+those laws of movement, that &lsquo;double rhythm
+of renunciation and love&rsquo; which Kabir detected
+at the heart of the universal melody,
+it enters on a negative period of psychic
+fatigue and spiritual destitution; the &lsquo;dark
+night of the soul.&rsquo; The sun descends in the
+heavens, the ardours of love grow cold.
+When this stage is fully established, says
+Ruysbroeck, the &lsquo;September of the soul&rsquo; is
+come; the harvest and vintage&mdash;raw
+material of the life-giving Eucharist&mdash;is
+ripe. The flowering-time of spiritual joy and
+beauty is as nothing in its value for life compared
+with this still autumnal period of true
+fecundity, in which man is at last &lsquo;affirmed&rsquo;
+in the spiritual life.</p>
+<p>This, then, is the curve of the self&rsquo;s growth.
+Side by side with it runs the other curve
+of deliberate training: the education by
+which our wandering attention, our diffused
+undisciplined consciousness, is sharpened and
+focussed upon Reality. This training is needed
+<span class="pb" id="Page_83">[83]</span>
+by intellect and feeling; but most of all by
+the <i>will</i>, which Ruysbroeck, like the great
+English mystics, regards as the gathering-point
+of personality, the &lsquo;spiritual heart.&rsquo;
+On every page of his writings the reference
+to that which the spiritual Light and Love
+do for man, is balanced by an insistence on
+that which man himself must do: the choices
+to be made, the &lsquo;exercises&rsquo; to be performed,
+the tension and effort which must characterise
+the mystic way until its last phase
+is reached. Morally, these exercises consist
+in progressive renunciations on the one hand
+and acceptances on the other &lsquo;for Love&rsquo;s
+sake&rsquo;; intellectually, in introversion, that
+turning inwards and concentration of consciousness,
+the stripping off of all images
+and emptying of the mind, which is the psychological
+method whereby human consciousness
+transcends the conditioned universe
+to which it has become adapted, and enters
+the contemplative world. Man&rsquo;s attention to
+life is to change its character as he ascends
+the ladder of being. Therefore the old attachments
+must be cut before the new attachments
+can be formed. This is, of course, a commonplace
+of asceticism; and much of Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+teaching on detachment, self-naughting
+and contemplation, is indeed simply the
+standard doctrine of Christian asceticism seen
+through a temperament.</p>
+<p>When the self has grown up from the
+<span class="pb" id="Page_84">[84]</span>
+&lsquo;active&rsquo; to the &lsquo;contemplative&rsquo; state of consciousness,
+it is plain that his whole relation
+to his environment has changed. His world is
+grouped about a new centre. It now becomes
+the supreme business of intellect to &lsquo;gaze upon
+God,&rsquo; the supreme business of love to stretch
+out towards Him. When these twin powers,
+under the regnancy of the enhanced and
+trained will, are set towards Reality, then the
+human creature has done his part in the setting
+up of the relation of the soul to its Source, and
+made it possible for the music of the Infinite
+to sound in him. &ldquo;For this intellectual
+gazing and this stretching forth of love are
+two heavenly pipes, sounding without the need
+of tune or of notes; they ever go forward
+in that Eternal Life, neither straying aside
+nor returning backward again; and ever
+keeping harmony and concord with the Holy
+Church, for the Holy Spirit gives the wind that sings in
+them.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_19" href="#fn_19">[19]</a>
+Observe, that <i>tension</i>
+is here a condition of the right employment
+of both faculties, and ensures that the
+Divine music shall sound true; one of the
+many implicit contradictions of the quietist
+doctrine of spiritual limpness, which we find
+throughout Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s works.</p>
+<p>(C) When the twofold process of growth
+and education has brought the self to this
+perfection of attitude as regards the Spiritual
+Order&mdash;an attitude of true <i>union</i>, says Ruysbroeck,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_85">[85]</span>
+but not yet of the unthinkable <i>unity</i>
+which is our goal&mdash;man has done all that he
+can do of himself. His &lsquo;Interior Life&rsquo; is complete,
+and his being is united through grace
+with the Being of God, in a relation which
+is the faint image of the mutual relations of
+the Divine Persons; a conscious sonship,
+finding expression in the mutual interchange
+of the spirit of will and love. This existence
+is rooted in &lsquo;grace,&rsquo; the unconditioned life-force,
+intermediary between ourselves and
+God,&rsquo; as the active stage was rooted in
+&lsquo;nature.&rsquo; Yet there is something beyond
+this. As beyond the Divine Persons there
+is the Superessential Unity of the Godhead,
+so beyond the plane of Being (<i>Wesen</i>) Ruysbroeck
+apprehends a reality which is &lsquo;more
+than Being&rsquo; (<i>Overwesen</i>). Man&rsquo;s spirit, having
+relations with every grade of reality, has
+also in its &lsquo;fathomless ground&rsquo; a potential
+relation with this superessential sphere; and
+until this be actualised he is not wholly
+real, nor wholly <i>deiform</i>. Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+most original contribution to the history of
+mysticism is his description of this supreme
+state; in which the human soul becomes
+truly free, and is made the &lsquo;hidden child&rsquo;
+of God. Then only do we discern the glory
+of our full-grown human nature; when,
+participating fully in the mysterious double
+life of God, the twofold action of true love,
+we have perfect fruition of Him as Eternal
+<span class="pb" id="Page_86">[86]</span>
+Rest, and perfect sharing in that outgoing
+love which is His eternal Work: &ldquo;God with
+God, one love and one life, in His eternal
+manifestation.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_20" href="#fn_20">[20]</a></p>
+<p>The consummation of the mystic way,
+then, represents not merely a state of
+ecstatic contemplation, escape from the
+stream of succession, the death of self-hood,
+joyous self-immersion in the Abyss; not
+merely the enormously enhanced state of
+creative activity and energetic love which the
+mystics call &lsquo;divine fecundity&rsquo;; but <i>both</i>&mdash;the
+flux and reflux of supreme Reality. It
+is the synthesis of contemplation and action,
+of Being and Becoming: the discovery at
+last of a clue&mdash;inexpressible indeed, but
+really held and experienced&mdash;to the mystery
+which most deeply torments us, the link
+between our life of duration and the Eternal
+Life of God. This is the Seventh Degree of
+Love, &ldquo;noblest and highest that can be
+realised in the life of time or of eternity.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>That process of enhancement whereby the
+self, in its upward progress, carries with it
+all that has been attained before, here finds
+its completion. The active life of Becoming,
+and the essential life of Being, are not all.
+&ldquo;From beyond the Infinite the Infinite
+comes,&rdquo; said the Indian; and his Christian
+brother, in parallel terms, declares that
+beyond the Essence is the Superessence of
+<span class="pb" id="Page_87">[87]</span>
+God, His &lsquo;simple&rsquo; or synthetic unity. It
+is for fruition of this that man is destined;
+yet he does not leave this world for that
+world, but knows them as one. Totally
+surrendered to the double current of the
+universe, the inbreathing and outbreathing
+of the Spirit of God, &ldquo;his love and fruition
+live between labour and rest.&rdquo; He goes up
+and down the mountain of vision, a living
+willing tool wherewith God works. &ldquo;Hence,
+to enter into restful fruition and come forth
+again in good works, and to remain ever
+one with God&mdash;this is the thing that I would
+say. Even as we open our fleshly eyes to
+see, and shut them again so quickly that we
+do not even feel it, thus we die into God, we
+live of God, and remain ever one with God.
+Therefore we must come forth in the activities
+of the sense-life, and again re-enter in
+love and cling to God; in order that we may
+ever remain one with Him without
+change.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_21" href="#fn_21">[21]</a></p>
+<p>All perfect lives, says Ruysbroeck, conform
+to this pattern, follow this curve; though
+such perfect lives are rare amongst men.
+They are the fruit, not of volition, but of
+vocation; of the mysterious operations of
+the Divine Light which&mdash;perpetually crying
+through the universe the &ldquo;unique and fathomless
+word &lsquo;Behold! behold!&rsquo;&rdquo; and &ldquo;therewith
+giving utterance to itself and all other
+things&rdquo;&mdash;yet evokes only in some men an
+<span class="pb" id="Page_88">[88]</span>
+answering movement of consciousness, the
+deliberate surrender which conditions the
+new power of response and of growth.
+&ldquo;To this divine vision but few men can
+attain, because of their own unfitness and
+because of the darkness of that Light whereby
+we see: and therefore no one shall thoroughly
+understand this perception by means
+of any scholarship, or by their own acuteness
+of comprehension. For all words, and all
+that men may learn and understand in a
+creaturely fashion, is foreign to this and far
+below the truth that I mean. To understand
+and lay hold of God as He is in Himself
+above all images&mdash;this is <i>to be God with God</i>,
+without intermediary or any difference that
+might become an intermediary or an obstacle.
+And therefore I beg each one, who can
+neither understand this, nor feel it by the
+way of spiritual union, that he be not
+grieved thereby, and let it be as it
+is.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_22" href="#fn_22">[22]</a></p>
+<p>I end this chapter by a reference to certain
+key-words frequent in Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s works,
+which are sometimes a source of difficulty to
+his readers. These words are nearly always
+his names for inward experiences. He uses
+them in a poetic and artistic manner,
+evocative rather than exact; and we, in
+trying to discover their meaning, must never
+forget the coloured fringe of suggestion
+which they carry for the mystic and the
+<span class="pb" id="Page_89">[89]</span>
+poet, and which is a true part of the message
+he intends them to convey.</p>
+<p>The first of these words is <span class="sc">Fruition</span>.
+Fruition, a concept which Eucken&rsquo;s philosophy
+has brought back into current thought,
+represents a total attainment, complete and
+permanent participation and possession. It
+is an absolute state, transcending all succession,
+and it is applied by Ruysbroeck to the
+absolute character of the spirit&rsquo;s life in God;
+which, though it seem to the surface consciousness
+a perpetually renewed encounter
+of love, is in its ground &lsquo;fruitive and unconditioned,&rsquo;
+a timeless self-immersion in the
+Dark, the &lsquo;glorious and essential Oneness.&rsquo;
+Thus he speaks of &lsquo;fruitive love,&rsquo; &lsquo;fruitive
+possession&rsquo;; as opposed to striving, dynamic
+love, partial, progressive and conditioned
+possession. Perfect contemplation and loving
+dependence are the eternal fruition of
+God&rsquo;: the Beatific Vision of theology.
+&ldquo;Where we are one with God, without intermediary,
+beyond all separation; there is God
+our fruition and His own in an eternal and fathomless
+bliss.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_23" href="#fn_23">[23]</a></p>
+<p>Next perhaps in the power of provoking
+misunderstanding is the weight attached by
+Ruysbroeck to the adjective <span class="sc">Simple</span>. This
+word, which constantly recurs in his descriptions
+of spiritual states, always conveys
+the sense of wholeness, completeness, synthesis;
+<span class="pb" id="Page_90">[90]</span>
+not of poverty, thinness, subtraction.
+It is the white light in which all the colours
+of the spectrum are included and fused.
+&lsquo;Simple Union,&rsquo; &lsquo;Simple Contemplation,&rsquo;
+&lsquo;Simple Light&rsquo;&mdash;all these mean the total undifferentiated
+act or perception from which
+our analytic minds subtract aspects. &ldquo;In
+simplicity will I unite with the Simple One,&rdquo;
+said Kabir. So Ruysbroeck: &ldquo;We behold
+His face in a simple seeing, beyond reason
+and without consideration.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Another cause of difficulty to those unfamiliar
+with the mystics is the constant
+reference to <span class="sc">Bareness</span> or <span class="sc">Nudity</span>, especially
+in descriptions of the contemplative act.
+This is, of course, but one example of that
+negative method of suggestion&mdash;darkness,
+bareness, desolation, divine ignorance, the
+&lsquo;rich nothing,&rsquo; the &lsquo;naked thought&rsquo;&mdash;which
+is a stock device of mysticism, and was probably
+taken by Ruysbroeck from Dionysius
+the Areopagite. It represents, first, the
+bewildering emptiness and nakedness of consciousness
+when introduced into a universe
+that transcends our ordinary conceptual
+world; secondly, the necessity of such transcendence,
+of emptying the field of consciousness
+of &lsquo;every vain imagining,&rsquo; if the self
+is to have contact with the Reality which
+these veil.</p>
+<p>With the distinction between Essence
+(<i>Wesen</i>) and Superessence (<i>Overwesen</i>) I have
+<span class="pb" id="Page_91">[91]</span>
+already dealt; and this will appear more
+clearly when we consider Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+&lsquo;second&rsquo; and &lsquo;third&rsquo; stages of the mystic
+life.</p>
+<p>There remains the great pair of opposites,
+fundamental for his thought, called in the
+Flemish vernacular <i>Wise</i> and <i>Onwise</i>, and
+generally rendered by translators as &lsquo;Mode&rsquo;
+and &lsquo;Modeless.&rsquo; Wherever possible I have
+replaced these tasteless Latinisms by the Old
+English equivalents &lsquo;in some wise&rsquo; and &lsquo;in
+no wise,&rsquo; occasionally by &lsquo;conditioned&rsquo; and
+&lsquo;unconditioned&rsquo;; though perhaps the colloquial
+&lsquo;somehow&rsquo; and &lsquo;nohow&rsquo; would be yet
+more exactly expressive. Now this pair of
+opposites is psychological rather than metaphysical,
+and has to do with the characteristic
+phenomena of contemplation. It indicates
+the difference between the universe
+of the normal man, living as the servant or
+friend of God within the temporal order,
+and the universe of the true contemplative,
+the &lsquo;hidden child.&rsquo; The knowledge and
+love of the first is a conditioned knowledge
+and love. Everything which happens to
+him happens &lsquo;in some wise&rsquo;; it has attachments
+within his conceptual world, is mediated
+to him by symbols and images which
+intellect can grasp. &ldquo;The simple ascent
+into the Nude and the Unconditioned is
+unknown and unloved of him&rdquo;; it is through
+and amongst his ordinary mental furniture
+<span class="pb" id="Page_92">[92]</span>
+that he obtains his contacts with Reality.
+But the knowledge and love of the second,
+his contacts, transcend the categories of
+thought. He has escaped alike from the
+tyrannies and comforts of the world of
+images, has made the &lsquo;ascent into the
+Nought,&rsquo; where all <i>is</i>, yet &lsquo;in no wise.&rsquo;
+&ldquo;The power of the understanding is lifted
+up to that which is beyond all conditions,
+and its seeing is in no wise, being without
+manner, and it is neither thus nor thus, neither here nor
+there.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_24" href="#fn_24">[24]</a>
+This is the direct, unmediated world of spiritual intuition;
+where the self touches a Reality that has not
+been passed through the filters of sense and
+thought. There man achieves a love, a
+vision, an activity which are &lsquo;wayless,&rsquo; yet
+far more valid than anything that can be
+fitted into the framework of our conditioned
+world.</p>
+<div class="verse">
+<p class="t0">&ldquo;In a place beyond uttermost place, in a track without shadow of trace,</p>
+<p class="t0">Soul and body transcending, I live in the soul of my Loved One anew.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<p>Thus cries the great S&#363;f&#299; poet, Jal&#257;lu&rsquo;dd&#299;n;
+and the suggestion which his words convey
+is perhaps as close as speech can come to
+what Ruysbroeck meant by <i>Onwise</i>. The
+change of consciousness which initiates man
+into this inner yet unbounded world&mdash;the
+world that is &lsquo;unwalled,&rsquo; to use his own
+<span class="pb" id="Page_93">[93]</span>
+favourite metaphor&mdash;is the essence of contemplation;
+which consists, not in looking
+at strange mysteries, but in a movement to
+fresh levels, shut to the analytic intellect,
+open to adventurous love. There, without
+any amazement, the self can &lsquo;know in no
+wise&rsquo; that which it can never understand.</p>
+<div class="verse">
+<p class="t0">&ldquo;Contemplation is a knowing that is in no wise,</p>
+<p class="t0">For ever dwelling above the Reason.</p>
+<p class="t0">Never can it sink down into the Reason,</p>
+<p class="t0">And above it can the Reason never climb.</p>
+<p class="t0">The shining forth of That which is in no wise is as a fair mirror.</p>
+<p class="t0">Wherein shines the Eternal Light of God.</p>
+<p class="t0">It has no attributes,</p>
+<p class="t0">And here all the works of Reason fail.</p>
+<p class="t0">It is not God,</p>
+<p class="t0">But it is the Light whereby we see Him.</p>
+<p class="t0">Those who walk in the Divine Light of it</p>
+<p class="t0">Discover in themselves the Unwalled.</p>
+<p class="t0">That which is in no wise, is above the Reason, not without it:</p>
+<p class="t0">It beholds all things without amazement.</p>
+<p class="t0">Amazement is far beneath it:</p>
+<p class="t0">The contemplative life is without amazement.</p>
+<p class="t0">That which is in no wise sees, it knows not what;</p>
+<p class="t0">For it is above all, and is neither This nor That.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_25" href="#fn_25">[25]</a></p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_94">[94]</div>
+<h2 id="c6">CHAPTER V
+<br /><span class="small">THE ACTIVE LIFE</span></h2>
+<blockquote>
+<p>If we would discover and know that Kingdom of God
+which is hidden in us, we must lead a life that is virtuous
+within, well-ordered without, and fulfilled with true
+charity. Thus imitating Christ in every way, we can,
+through grace, love and virtue, raise ourselves up to that
+apex of the soul where God lives and reigns.</p>
+<p><span class="lr"><span class="sc">The Mirror of Eternal Salvation.</span></span></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The beginning of man&rsquo;s Active Life, says
+Ruysbroeck&mdash;that uplifting of the diurnal
+existence into the Divine Atmosphere, which
+confers on it meaning and reality&mdash;is a
+movement of response. Grace, the synthesis
+of God&rsquo;s love, energy and will, pours like
+a great river through the universe, and perpetually
+beats in upon the soul. When man
+consents to receive it, opens the sluices of
+the heart to that living water, surrenders
+to it; then he opens his heart and will
+to the impact of Reality, his eyes to the
+Divine Light, and in this energetic movement
+of acceptance begins for the first time
+to live indeed. Hence it is that, in the varied
+ethical systems which we find in his books,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_95">[95]</span>
+and which describe the active crescent life
+of Christian virtue, the laborious adjustment
+of character to the Vision of God, Ruysbroeck
+always puts first the virtue, or rather
+the attitude, which he calls <i>good-will</i>: the
+voluntary orientation of the self in the right
+direction, the eager acceptance of grace.
+As all growth depends upon food, so all
+spiritual development depends upon the
+self&rsquo;s appropriation of its own share of the
+transcendent life-force, its own &lsquo;rill of grace&rsquo;;
+and good-will breaks down the barrier which
+prevents that stream from pouring into the
+soul.</p>
+<p>Desire, said William Law, <i>is</i> everything
+and <i>does</i> everything; it is the primal motive-power.
+Ruysbroeck, too, finds in desire
+turned towards the best the beginning of
+human transcendence, and regards willing
+and loving as the essence of life. Basing
+his psychology on the common medi&aelig;val
+scheme of Memory, Intelligence and Will,
+he speaks of this last as the king of the soul;
+dominating both the other powers, and able
+to gather them in its clutch, force them to
+attend to the invitations and messages of
+the eternal world. Thus in his system the
+demand upon man&rsquo;s industry and courage
+is made from the very first. The great
+mystical necessity of self-surrender is shown
+to involve, not a limp acquiescence, but a
+deliberate and heroic choice; the difficult
+<span class="pb" id="Page_96">[96]</span>
+approximation of our own thoughts and
+desires to the thoughts and desires of Divine
+Reality. &ldquo;When we have but one thought
+and one will with God, we are on the first
+step of the ladder of love and of sanctity;
+for good-will is the foundation of all
+virtue.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_26" href="#fn_26">[26]</a></p>
+<p>In <i>The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage</i>,
+Ruysbroeck has used the words said to the
+wise and foolish virgins of the parable&mdash;&ldquo;Behold,
+the bridegroom cometh; go ye
+out to meet him&rdquo;&mdash;as an epitome of the
+self&rsquo;s relations with and reactions to Reality.
+First, all created spirits are called to behold
+God, who is perpetually &lsquo;coming&rsquo; to the
+world of conditions, in a ceaseless procession
+of love; and in this seeing our happiness
+consists. But in order really to see a thing,
+we need not only light and clear sight, but the
+<i>will</i> to look at it; every act of perception
+demands a self-giving on the seer&rsquo;s part.
+So here we need not only the light of grace
+and the open eyes of the soul, but also the
+<i>will</i> turned towards the Infinite: our
+attention to life, the regnant fact of our
+consciousness, must be focussed upon eternal
+things. Now, when we see God, we cannot
+but love Him; and love is motion, activity.
+Hence, this first demand on the awakened
+spirit, &lsquo;Behold!&rsquo; is swiftly followed by the
+second demand, &lsquo;Go ye out!&rsquo; for the essence
+of love is generous, outflowing, expansive,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_97">[97]</span>
+an &ldquo;upward and outward tendency towards
+the Kingdom of God, which is God Himself.&rdquo;
+This outgoing, this concrete act of response,
+will at once change and condition our
+correspondences with and attitude towards
+God, ourselves and our neighbours; expressing
+itself within the world of action
+in a new ardour for perfection&mdash;the natural
+result of the &lsquo;loving vision of the Bridegroom,&rsquo;
+the self&rsquo;s first glimpse of Perfect
+Goodness and Truth. We observe the
+continued insistence on effort, act, as the
+very heart of all true self-giving to transcendent
+interests.</p>
+<p>Whilst in the volitional life drastic readjustments,
+stern character-building, and
+eager work are the expression of goodwill,
+in the emotional life it is felt as a
+profound impulse to self-surrender: a
+loving yielding up of the whole personality
+to the inflow and purging activities of the
+Absolute Life. &ldquo;This good-will is nought
+else but the infused Love of God, which
+causes him to apply himself to Divine
+things and all virtues; ... when it turns
+towards God, it crowns the spirit with
+Eternal Love, and when it returns to outward
+things it rules as a mistress over his external good
+deeds.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_27" href="#fn_27">[27]</a></p>
+<p>We have here, then, a disposition of heart
+and mind which both receives and responds
+<span class="pb" id="Page_98">[98]</span>
+to the messages of Reality; making it possible
+for the self to begin to grow in the
+right direction, to enter into possession
+of its twofold heritage. That completely
+human life of activity and contemplation
+which moves freely up and down the ladder
+of love between the temporal and eternal
+worlds, and reproduces in little the ideal
+of Divine Humanity declared in Christ, is
+the ideal towards which it is set; and
+already, even in this lowest phase, the
+double movement of the awakened consciousness
+begins to show itself. Our love
+and will, firmly fastened in the Eternal
+World, are to swing like a pendulum between
+the seen and the unseen spheres; in great
+ascending arcs of balanced adoration and
+service, which shall bring all the noblest
+elements of human character into play.
+Therefore the pivoting of life upon Divine
+Reality, which is the result of good-will&mdash;the
+setting up of a right relation with the
+universe&mdash;is inevitably the first condition
+of virtue, the &lsquo;root of sanctity,&rsquo; the beginning
+of spiritual growth, the act which
+makes man free; translating him, in Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+image, from the state of the slave
+to that of the conscious and willing servant
+of Eternal Truth. &ldquo;From the hour in
+which, with God&rsquo;s help, he transcends his
+self-hood ... he feels true love, which
+overcomes doubt and fear and makes man
+<span class="pb" id="Page_99">[99]</span>
+trust and hope; and so he becomes a true
+servant, and means and loves God in all
+that he does.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_28" href="#fn_28">[28]</a></p>
+<p>So man, emerging from the shell of selfhood,
+makes&mdash;of his own free choice, by
+his own effort&mdash;his first timid upward beat
+to God; and, following swiftly upon it, the
+compensating outward beat of charity
+towards his fellow-men. We observe how
+tight a hold has this most transcendental
+of the mystics on the <i>wholeness</i> of all healthy
+human life: the mutual support and interpenetration
+of the active and contemplative
+powers. &lsquo;Other-worldliness&rsquo; is decisively
+contradicted from the first. It is the
+appearance of this eager active charity&mdash;this
+imitation in little of the energetic
+Love of God&mdash;which assures us that the
+first stage of the self&rsquo;s growth is rightly
+accomplished; completing its first outward
+push in that new direction to which its
+good-will is turned. &ldquo;For charity ever
+presses towards the heights, towards the
+Kingdom of God, the which is God Himself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In the practical counsels given to the
+young novice to whom <i>The Mirror of Salvation</i>
+is addressed, we may see Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+ideal of that active life of self-discipline
+and service which the soul has now set in
+hand; and which he describes in greater
+<span class="pb" id="Page_100">[100]</span>
+detail in <i>The Adornment of the Spiritual
+Marriage</i> and <i>The Kingdom of God&rsquo;s Lovers</i>.
+Total self-donation, he tells her, is her first
+need&mdash;&lsquo;choosing God, for love&rsquo;s sake&rsquo; without
+hesitations or reserves; and this
+dedication to the interests of Reality must
+be untainted by any spiritual selfishness,
+any hint of that insidious desire for personal
+beatitude which &lsquo;fades the flower of
+true love.&rsquo; This done, self-conquest and
+self-control become the novice&rsquo;s primary
+duties: the gradual subduing and rearrangement
+of character about its new
+centre, the elimination of all tendencies
+inimical to the demands of Eternal Life;
+the firm establishment upon its throne of
+that true free-will which desires only God&rsquo;s
+will. This self-conquest, the essence of the
+&lsquo;Way of Purgation,&rsquo; as described and experienced
+by so many ascetics and mystics,
+includes not only the eradication of sins,
+but the training of the attention, the
+adaptation of consciousness to its new
+environment; the killing-out of inclinations
+which, harmless in themselves, compete
+with the one transcendent interest of life.</p>
+<p>Like all great mystics, Ruysbroeck had
+a strong &lsquo;sense of sin.&rsquo; This is merely a
+theological way of stating the fact that his
+intense realisation of Perfection involved
+a vivid consciousness of the imperfections,
+disharmonies, perversities, implicit in the
+<span class="pb" id="Page_101">[101]</span>
+human creature; the need of resolving
+them if the soul was to grow up to the
+stature of Divine Humanity. Yet there
+is in his writings a singular absence of
+that profound preoccupation with sin found
+in so many medi&aelig;val ascetics. His attitude
+towards character was affirmative and robust;
+emphasising the possibilities rather
+than the disabilities of man. Sin, for him,
+was egotism; showing itself in the manifold
+forms of pride, laziness, self-indulgence,
+coldness of heart, or spiritual self-seeking,
+but always implying a central wrongness
+of attitude, resulting in a wrong employment
+of power. Self-denials and bodily
+mortifications he regarded partly as exercises
+in self-control&mdash;spiritual athletics&mdash;useful
+because educative of the will; partly
+as expressions of love. At best they are
+but the means of sanctity, and never to be
+confused with its end; for the man who
+deliberately passed the greater part of his
+life in the bustle of the town was no advocate
+of a cloistered virtue or a narrow
+perfectionism.</p>
+<p>Morbid piety is often the product of
+physical as well as spiritual stuffiness; and
+Ruysbroeck wrote his great books out of
+doors, with light and air all round him, and
+the rhythmic life of trees to remind him
+how much stronger was the quiet law of
+growth than any atavism, accident, or
+<span class="pb" id="Page_102">[102]</span>
+perversion by which it could be checked.
+Thus, throughout his works, the accent
+always falls upon power rather than weakness:
+upon the spiritual energy pouring in
+like sunshine; the incessant growth which
+love sets going; the perpetual rebirths to
+ever higher levels, as the young sapling
+stretches upward every spring. What he
+asks of the novice is contrition without
+anxiety, self-discipline without fuss; the
+steady, all-round development of her personality,
+stretching and growing towards God.
+She is to be the mistress of her soul, never
+permitting it to be drawn hither and thither
+by the distractions and duties of external
+life. Keeping always in the atmosphere of
+Reality, she shall bring therefrom truth
+and frankness to all her words and deeds;
+and perform her duties with that right
+and healthy detachment which springs,
+not from a contempt of the Many, but from
+the secure and loving possession of the One.</p>
+<p>The disciplines to which she must subject
+herself in the effort towards attainment of
+this poise, will, like a wise gymnastic, produce
+in her a suppleness of soul; making
+the constant and inevitable transition from
+interior communion to outward work, which
+charity and good sense demand, easy and
+natural, and causing the spirit to be plastic
+in the hand of God. Such suppleness&mdash;the
+lightness and lissomeness which comes from
+<span class="pb" id="Page_103">[103]</span>
+spiritual muscles exercised and controlled&mdash;was
+one of the favourite qualities of that
+wise trainer of character, St. Fran&ccedil;ois de
+Sales; and the many small and irritating
+mortifications with which he was accustomed
+to torment his disciples had no
+other aim than to produce it.</p>
+<p>In the stage of development to which the
+Active Life belongs, the soul enjoys communion
+with Reality, not with that directness
+proper to the true contemplative, but
+obliquely, by &lsquo;means,&rsquo; symbols and images;
+especially by the sacramental dispensation
+of the Church, a subject to which Ruysbroeck
+devotes great attention. As always
+in his system, growth from within is intimately
+connected with the reception of food
+and power from without. The movement
+of the self into God, the movement of God
+into the self, though separable in thought,
+are one in fact: will and grace are two
+aspects of one truth. Only this paradox
+can express the relation between that Divine
+Love which is &lsquo;both avid and generous,&rsquo;
+and the self that is destined both to devour
+and be devoured by Reality.</p>
+<p>In the beautiful chapters on the Eucharist
+which form the special feature of <i>The
+Mirror of Eternal Salvation</i>, Ruysbroeck
+develops this idea. &ldquo;If He gives us all
+that He has and all that He is, in return He
+takes from us all that we have and all that
+<span class="pb" id="Page_104">[104]</span>
+we are, and demands of us more than we are
+capable of giving.... Even in devouring
+us, He desires to feed us. If He absorbs
+us utterly into Himself, He gives Himself
+in return. He causes to be born in us the
+hunger and thirst of the spirit, which shall
+make us savour Him in an eternal fruition;
+and to this spiritual hunger, as well as to the
+love of our heart, He gives His own Body as
+food.... Thus does He give us His life full
+of wisdom, truth and knowledge, in order that
+we may imitate Him in all virtues; and
+then He lives in us and we in Him. Then
+do we grow, and raise ourselves up above
+the reason into a Divine Love which causes
+us to take and consume that Food in a
+spiritual manner, and stretch out in pure
+love towards the Divinity. There takes
+place that encounter of the spirit, that is
+to say of measureless love, which consumes
+and transforms our spirit with all its works;
+drawing us with itself towards the Unity,
+where we taste beatitude and rest. Herein
+therefore is our eternal life: ever to devour
+and be devoured, to ascend and descend
+with love.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_29" href="#fn_29">[29]</a></p>
+<p>The soul, then, turned in the direction
+of the Infinite, &lsquo;having God for aim,&rsquo; and
+with her door opened to the inflowing Divine
+Life, begins to grow. Her growth is up and
+out; from that temporal world to which
+<span class="pb" id="Page_105">[105]</span>
+her nature is adapted, and where she seems
+full of power and efficiency, to that eternal
+world to which the &lsquo;spark&rsquo; within her belongs,
+but where she is as yet no more than a weak
+and helpless child. Hence the first state of
+mind and heart produced in her, if the &lsquo;new
+birth&rsquo; has indeed taken place, will be that
+humility which results from all real self-knowledge;
+since &ldquo;whoso might verily
+see and feel himself as he <i>is</i>, he should
+verily be meek.&rdquo; This clear acknowledgment
+of facts, this finding of one&rsquo;s own
+place, Ruysbroeck calls &lsquo;the solid foundation
+of the Kingdom of the Soul.&rsquo; In thus
+discerning love and humility as the governing
+characteristics of the soul&rsquo;s reaction to
+Reality, he is of course keeping close to
+the great tradition of Christian mysticism;
+especially to the teaching of Richard of St.
+Victor, which we find constantly repeated
+in the ascetic literature of the Middle Ages.</p>
+<p>From these two virtues, then, of humble
+self-knowledge and God-centred love, are
+gradually developed all those graces of
+character which &lsquo;adorn the soul for the
+spiritual marriage,&rsquo; mark her ascent of the
+first degrees of the &lsquo;ladder of love,&rsquo; and
+make possible the perfecting of her correspondences
+with the &lsquo;Kingdom.&rsquo; This development
+follows an orderly course, as
+subject to law as the unfolding of the leaves
+and flowers upon the growing plant; and
+<span class="pb" id="Page_106">[106]</span>
+though Ruysbroeck in his various works
+uses different diagrams wherewith to explain
+it, the psychological changes which
+these diagrams demonstrate are substantially
+the same. In each case we watch the
+opening of man&rsquo;s many-petalled heart under
+the rays of the Divine Light, till it blossoms
+at last into the rose of Perfect Charity.</p>
+<p>Thus in <i>The Seven Degrees of Love</i>, since
+he is there addressing a cloistered nun,
+he accommodates his system to that threefold
+monastic vow of voluntary poverty or
+perfect renunciation, chastity or singleness
+of heart, and obedience or true humility in
+action, by which she is bound. When the
+reality which these vows express is actualised
+in the soul, and dominates all her reactions
+to the world, she wears the &lsquo;crown
+of virtue&rsquo;; and lives that &lsquo;noble life&rsquo; ruled
+by the purified and enhanced will, purged
+of all selfish desires and distractions, which&mdash;seeking
+in all things the interests of the
+spiritual world&mdash;is &lsquo;full of love and charity,
+and industrious in good works.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>In <i>The Spiritual Marriage</i> a more elaborate
+analysis is possible; based upon that
+division of man&rsquo;s moral perversities into
+the &lsquo;seven mortal sins&rsquo; or seven fundamental
+forms of selfishness, which governed,
+and governs yet, the Catholic view of human
+character. After a preliminary passage in
+which the triple attitude of love as towards
+<span class="pb" id="Page_107">[107]</span>
+God, humility as towards self, justice as
+towards other men, is extolled as the only
+secure basis of the spiritual life, Ruysbroeck
+proceeds to exhibit the seven real and positive
+qualities which oppose the seven great
+abuses of human freedom. As Pride is
+first and worst of mortal sins and follies,
+so its antithesis Humility is again put forward
+as the first condition of communion
+with God. This produces in the emotional
+life an attitude of loving adoration; in the
+volitional life, obedience. By <i>obedience</i>,
+Ruysbroeck means that self-submission,
+that wise suppleness of spirit, which is
+swayed and guided not by its own tastes
+and interests but by the Will of God; as
+expressed in the commands and prohibitions
+of moral and spiritual law, the interior
+push of conscience. This attitude, at first
+deliberately assumed, gradually controls all
+the self&rsquo;s reactions, and ends by subduing
+it entirely to the Divine purpose. &ldquo;Of this
+obedience there grows the abdication of
+one&rsquo;s own will and one&rsquo;s own opinion;
+... by this abdication of the will in all
+that one does, or does not do, or endures,
+the substance and occasion of pride are
+wholly driven out, and the highest humility
+is perfected.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_30" href="#fn_30">[30]</a></p>
+<p>This movement of renunciation brings&mdash;next
+phase in the unselfing of the self&mdash;a compensating
+<span class="pb" id="Page_108">[108]</span>
+outward swing of love; expressed
+under the beautiful forms of <i>patience</i>, &lsquo;the
+tranquil tolerance of all that can happen,&rsquo;
+and hence the antithesis of Anger; <i>gentleness</i>,
+which &ldquo;with peace and calm bears
+vexatious words and deeds&rdquo;; <i>kindness</i>,
+which deals with the quarrelsome and irritable
+by means of &ldquo;a friendly countenance,
+affectionate persuasion and compassionate
+acts&rdquo;; and <i>sympathy</i>, &ldquo;that inward movement
+of the heart which compassionates the bodily
+and spiritual griefs of all men,&rdquo; and kills
+the evil spirit of Envy and hate. This fourfold
+increase in disinterested love is summed
+up in the condition which Ruysbroeck calls
+<i>supernatural generosity</i>; that largeness of
+heart which flows out towards the generosity
+of God, which is swayed by pity and
+love, which embraces all men in its sweep.
+By this energetic love which seeks not its
+own, &ldquo;all virtues are increased, and all
+the powers of the spirit are adorned&rdquo;;
+and Avarice, the fourth great mortal sin, is
+opposed.</p>
+<p>Generosity is no mere mood; it is a
+motive-force, demanding expression in action.
+From the emotions, it invades the will,
+and produces <i>diligence</i> and <i>zeal</i>: an
+&lsquo;inward and impatient eagerness&rsquo; for every
+kind of work, and for the hard practice
+of every kind of virtue, which makes
+impossible that slackness and dulness of
+<span class="pb" id="Page_109">[109]</span>
+soul which is characteristic of the sin of
+Sloth. It is dynamic love; and the spirit
+which is fired by its ardours, has reached a
+degree of self-conquest in which the two
+remaining evil tendencies&mdash;that to every
+kind of immoderate enjoyment, spiritual,
+intellectual or physical, which is the essence
+of Gluttony, and that to the impure desire
+of created things which is Lust&mdash;can be
+met and vanquished. The purged and
+strengthened will, crowned by unselfish love,
+is now established on its throne; man has
+become captain of his soul, and rules all the
+elements of his character and that character&rsquo;s
+expression in life&mdash;not as an absolute
+monarch, but in the name of Divine Love.<a class="fn" id="fr_31" href="#fn_31">[31]</a>
+He has done all he can do of himself towards
+the conforming of his life to Supreme Perfection;
+has opposed, one after another,
+each of those exhibitions of the self&rsquo;s tendency
+to curl inwards, to fence itself in and
+demand, absorb, enjoy as a separate entity,
+which lie at the root of sin. The constructive
+side of the Purgative Way has consisted in
+the replacement of this egoistic, indrawing
+energy by these outflowing energies of
+self-surrender, kindness, diligence and the
+rest; summed up in that perfection of
+humility and love, which &ldquo;in all its
+works, and always, stretches out towards
+God.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_110">[110]</div>
+<p>The first three gifts of the Holy Spirit
+are possessed by the soul which has reached
+this point, says Ruysbroeck in <i>The Kingdom
+of God&rsquo;s Lovers</i>: that loving Fear, which
+includes true humility with all its ancillary
+characteristics; that general attitude of
+charity which makes man gentle, patient
+and docile, ready to serve and pity every
+one, and is called Godliness, because there
+first emerges in it his potential likeness to
+God; and finally that Knowledge or discernment
+of right and prudent conduct
+which checks the disastrous tendency to
+moral fussiness, helps man to conform his
+life to supreme Perfection, and gives the
+calmness and balance which are essential
+to a sane and manly spirituality. Thus the
+new life-force has invaded and affected will,
+feeling and intellect; raised the whole man
+to fresh levels of existence, and made possible
+fresh correspondences with Reality. &ldquo;Hereby
+are the three lower powers of the soul
+adorned with Divine virtues. The Irascible
+[<i>i.e.</i> volitional and dynamic] is adorned with
+loving and filial fear, humility, obedience
+and renunciation. The Desirous is adorned
+with kindness, pity, compassion and generosity.
+Finally, the Reasonable with knowledge
+and discernment, and that prudence
+which regulates all things.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_32" href="#fn_32">[32]</a> The ideal of
+character held out and described under
+<span class="pb" id="Page_111">[111]</span>
+varying metaphors in Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s different
+works, is thus seen to be a perfectly consistent
+one.</p>
+<p>Now when the growing self has actualised
+this ideal, and lives the Active Life of the
+faithful servant of Reality, it begins to feel
+an ardent desire for some more direct encounter
+with That which it loves. Since
+it has now acquired the &lsquo;ornaments of the
+virtues&rsquo;&mdash;cleansed its mirror, ordered its
+disordered loves&mdash;this encounter may and
+does in a certain sense take place; for every
+Godward movement of the human is met
+by a compensating movement of the Divine.
+Man now begins to find God in all things:
+in nature, in the soul, in works of charity.
+But in the turmoil and bustle of the Active
+Life such an encounter is at best indirect;
+a sidelong glimpse of the &lsquo;first and only
+Fair.&rsquo; That vision can only be apprehended
+in its wholeness by a concentration of all
+the powers of the self. If we would look
+the Absolute in the eyes, we must look at
+nothing else; the complete opening of the
+eye of Eternity entails the closing of the eye
+of Time. Man, then, must abstract himself
+from multiplicity, if only for a moment, if he
+would catch sight of the unspeakable Simplicity
+of the Real. Longing to &lsquo;know
+the nature of the Beloved,&rsquo; he must act
+as Zacch&aelig;us did when he wished to see
+Christ:</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_112">[112]</div>
+<p>&ldquo;He must run before the crowd, that is
+to say the multiplicity of created things;
+for these make us so little and low that we
+cannot perceive God. And he must climb
+up on the Tree of Faith, which grows from
+above downwards, for its root is in the
+Godhead. This tree has twelve branches,
+which are the twelve articles of the Creed.
+The lower branches speak of the Humanity
+of God; ... the upper branches, however,
+speak of the Godhead: of the Trinity of
+Persons and the Unity of the Divine Nature.
+Man must cling to the Unity which is at the
+top of the tree, for it is here that Jesus will
+pass by with all His gifts. And now Jesus
+comes, and He sees man, and shows him in
+the light of faith that He is, according to His
+Divinity, unmeasured and incomprehensible,
+inaccessible and fathomless, and that He
+overpasses all created light and all finite
+comprehension. This is the highest knowledge
+of God which man can acquire in the
+Active Life: thus to recognise by the light of
+faith that God is inconceivable and unknowable.
+In this light God says to the desire
+of man: &ldquo;Come down quickly, for I would
+dwell in your house to-day.&rdquo; And this
+quick descent, to which God invites him, is
+nought else but a descent, by love and desire,
+into the Abyss of the Godhead, to which no
+intellect can attain by its created light.
+But here, where intellect must rest without,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_113">[113]</span>
+love and desire may enter in. When the
+soul thus leans upon God by intention and
+love, above all that she understands, then
+she rests and dwells in God, and God in her.
+When the soul mounts up by desire, above
+the multiplicity of things, above the activities
+of the senses and above the light of external
+nature, then she encounters Christ by the
+light of faith, and is illuminated; and she
+recognises that God is unknowable and inconceivable.
+Finally, stretching by desire
+towards this incomprehensible God, she
+meets Christ and is fulfilled with His gifts.
+And loving and resting above all gifts,
+above herself and above all things, she
+dwells in God and God in her. According
+to this manner Christ may be encountered
+upon the summit of the Active
+Life.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_33" href="#fn_33">[33]</a></p>
+<p>This, then, is the completion of the first
+stage in the mystic way; this showing to the
+purified consciousness of the helplessness of
+the analytic intellect, the dynamic power of
+self-surrendered love. &ldquo;Where intellect must
+rest without, love and desire may enter
+in.&rdquo; The human creature, turning towards
+Reality, has pressed up to the very edge of
+the &lsquo;Cloud of Unknowing&rsquo; in which the
+goal of transcendence is hid. If it is to go
+further it must bring to the adventure not
+knowledge but divine ignorance, not riches
+<span class="pb" id="Page_114">[114]</span>
+but poverty; above all, an eager and industrious
+love.</p>
+<div class="verse">
+<p class="t0">&ldquo;A fiery flame of devotion leaping and ascending into the very goodness of God Himself,</p>
+<p class="t0">A loving longing of the soul to be with God in His Eternity,</p>
+<p class="t0">A turning from all things of self into the freedom of the Will of God;</p>
+<p class="t0">With all the forces of the soul gathered into the unity of the spirit.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_34" href="#fn_34">[34]</a></p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_115">[115]</div>
+<h2 id="c7">CHAPTER VI
+<br /><span class="small">THE INTERIOR LIFE: ILLUMINATION AND DESTITUTION</span></h2>
+<blockquote>
+<p>Let whoso thirsts to see his God cleanse his mirror,
+purge his spirit; and when thus he has cleansed his
+mirror, and long and diligently gazed in it, a certain
+brightness of divine light begins to shine through upon
+him, and a certain immense ray of unwonted vision to
+appear before his eyes.... From the beholding of this
+light, which it sees within itself with amazement, the
+mind is mightily set on fire, and lifted up to behold that
+Light which is above itself.</p>
+<p><span class="lr"><span class="sc">Richard of St. Victor.</span></span></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It is plain that the Active Life in Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+system answers more or less to
+the Purgative Way, considered upon its
+affirmative and constructive side, as a building
+up of the heroic Christian character.
+So, too, the life which he calls Interior or
+Contemplative, and which initiates man
+into the friendship of God, corresponds
+in the main with the Illuminative Way of
+orthodox mysticism; though it includes
+in its later stages much that is usually
+held to belong to the third, or Unitive,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_116">[116]</span>
+state of the soul. The first life has, as it
+were, unfolded to the sunlight the outer
+petals of the mystic rose; exhibiting in
+their full beauty, adjusting to their true
+use, the normally-apparent constituents of
+man&rsquo;s personality. All his relations with
+the given world of sense, the sphere of
+Becoming, have been purified and adjusted.
+Now the expansive and educative influence
+of the Divine Light is able to penetrate
+nearer to the heart of his personality; is
+brought to bear upon those interior qualities
+which he hardly knows himself to possess,
+and which govern his relation with the
+spiritual world of Being. The flower is to
+open more widely; the inner ring of petals
+must uncurl.</p>
+<p>As the primary interest of the Active Life
+was ethical purification, so the primary
+interest of this Second Life is intellectual
+purification. Intellect, however, is here to
+be understood in its highest sense; as
+including not only the analytic reason which
+deals with the problems of our normal
+universe, but that higher intelligence, that
+contemplative mind, which&mdash;once it is
+awakened to consciousness&mdash;can gather
+news of the transcendental world. The
+development and clarification of this power
+is only possible to those who have achieved,
+and continue to live at full stretch, the
+high, arduous and unselfish life of Christian
+<span class="pb" id="Page_117">[117]</span>
+virtue. Again we must remind ourselves
+that Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s theory of transcendence
+involves, not the passage from one life to
+another, but the <i>adding</i> of one life to another:
+the perpetual deepening, widening, heightening
+and enriching of human experience.
+As the author of <i>The Cloud of Unknowing</i>
+insists that none can be truly contemplative
+who is not also active, so Ruysbroeck says
+that no man ever rises above the ordinary
+obligations of Christian kindness and active
+good works.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We find nowadays many silly men who
+would be so interior and so detached, that
+they will not be active or helpful in any
+way of which their neighbours are in need.
+Know, such men are neither hidden friends
+nor yet true servants of God, but are wholly
+false and disloyal; for none can follow
+His counsels but those who obey His laws.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_35" href="#fn_35">[35]</a></p>
+<p>Nevertheless it would be generally true
+to say that, whilst the aim of the Active Life
+is right conduct, the aim of the Interior
+Life is right vision and thought. As, in
+that first life, all the perversions of man&rsquo;s
+ordinary powers and passions were rectified,
+all that was superfluous and unreal done
+away, and his nature set right with God;
+now&mdash;still holding and living in its fulness
+this purified active life&mdash;he is to press
+deeper and deeper into the resources of
+<span class="pb" id="Page_118">[118]</span>
+his being, finding there other powers and
+cravings which must be brought within
+the field of consciousness, and set up those
+relations with the Transcendent of which
+they are capable. This deepening and enlarging
+of man&rsquo;s universe, together with
+the further and more drastic discarding
+of illusions and unrealities, is the business
+of the Second Life, considered on its impersonal
+side.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If thou dost desire to unfold in thyself
+the Contemplative Life, thou must enter
+within, beyond the sense-life; and, on that
+apex of thy being, adorned with all the
+virtues of which I have spoken, looking
+unto God with gratitude and love and
+continual reverence, thou must keep thy
+thoughts bare, and stripped of every sensible
+image, thine understanding open and lifted
+up to the Eternal Truth, and thy spirit
+spread out in the sight of God as a living
+mirror to receive His everlasting likeness.
+Behold, therein appears a light of the understanding,
+which neither sense, reason, nature,
+nor the clearest logic can apprehend, but
+which gives us freedom and confidence
+towards God. It is nobler and higher than
+all that God has created in nature; for it
+is the perfection of nature, and transcends
+nature, and is the clear-shining intermediary
+between ourselves and God. Our thoughts,
+bare and stripped of images, are themselves
+<span class="pb" id="Page_119">[119]</span>
+the living mirror in which this light shines:
+and the light requires of us that we should
+be like to and one with God, in this living
+mirror of our bare thoughts.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_36" href="#fn_36">[36]</a></p>
+<p>In this strongly Victorine passage, the
+whole process of the Second Life is epitomised;
+but in <i>The Spiritual Marriage</i>, where
+its description occupies the seventy-three
+chapters of the second book, we see how
+long is the way which stretches from that
+first &lsquo;entering in beyond the sense life&rsquo; to
+the point at which the soul&rsquo;s mirror is able
+to receive in its fullness that Light wherein
+alone it can apprehend Reality.</p>
+<p>Considered upon its organic side, as a
+growth and movement of the soul, this
+Way, as conceived, and probably experienced,
+by Ruysbroeck, can be divided into
+three great phases. We might call these
+Action, Reaction and Equilibrium. Broadly
+speaking, they answer to the Illumination,
+Dark Night and Simple Union of orthodox
+mystical science. Yet since in his vivid
+description of these linked states he constantly
+departs from the formul&aelig; of his
+predecessors, and as constantly illustrates
+their statements by intimate and homely
+touches only possible to one who has endured
+the adventures of which he tells, we are
+justified in claiming the description as the
+fruit of experience rather than of tradition;
+<span class="pb" id="Page_120">[120]</span>
+and as evidence of the course taken by his
+own development.</p>
+<p>It is surely upon his own memory that
+he is relying, when he tells us that the
+beginning of this new life possesses something
+of the abrupt character of a second
+conversion. It happens, he says, when we
+least expect it; when the self, after the
+long tension and struggle of moral purgation,
+has become drowsy and tired. Then,
+suddenly, &ldquo;a spiritual cry echoes through
+the soul,&rdquo; announcing a new encounter
+with Reality, and demanding a new response;
+or, to put it in another way,
+consciousness on its ascending spiral has
+pushed through to another level of existence,
+where it can hear voices and discern
+visions to which it was deaf and blind before.
+This sudden clarity of mind, this new vivid
+apprehension of Divine Love, is the first
+indication of man&rsquo;s entrance on the Illuminative
+Way. It is introversive rather
+than out-going in type. Changing the character
+of our attention to life, we discern
+within us something which we have always
+possessed and always ignored: a secret
+Divine energy, which is now to emerge
+from the subconscious deeps into the area
+of consciousness. There it stimulates the
+will, evicts all lesser images and interests
+from the heart, and concentrates all the
+faculties into a single and intense state,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_121">[121]</span>
+pressing towards the Unity of God, the
+synthetic experience of love; for perpetual
+movement towards that unity&mdash;not achievement
+of it&mdash;is the mark of this Second Life,
+in which the separation of God and the soul
+remains intact. In Victorine language, it
+is the period of spiritual betrothal, not
+of spiritual marriage; of a vision which,
+though wide, rich and wonderful, is mirrored
+rather than direct.</p>
+<p>The new God-inspired movement, then,
+begins within, like a spring bubbling from
+the deeps; and thrusts up and out to the
+consciousness which it is destined to clarify
+and enhance. &ldquo;The stream of Divine grace
+swiftly stirs and moves a man inwardly,
+and from within outwards; and this swift
+stirring is the first thing that makes us
+<i>see</i>. Of this swift stirring is born from the
+side of man the second point: that is, a
+gathering together of all the inward and
+outward powers in spiritual unity and in
+the bonds of love. The third is that liberty
+which enables man to retreat into himself,
+without images or obstacles, whensoever
+he wills and thinks of his God.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_37" href="#fn_37">[37]</a></p>
+<p>So we may say that an enhancement of the
+conative powers, a greater control over
+the attention, are the chief marks of the
+Illuminative Way as perceived by the growing
+self. But the liberty here spoken of has
+<span class="pb" id="Page_122">[122]</span>
+a moral as well as a mental aspect. It is a
+freeing of the whole man from the fetters
+of illusion, and involves that perfect detachment
+of heart, that self-naughting,
+which makes him equally willing to have
+joy or pain, gain or loss, esteem or contempt,
+peace or fear, as the Divine Will may
+ordain. Thus is perfected that suppleness
+of soul which he began to acquire in the
+Active Life: a gradual process, which needs
+for its accomplishment the negative rhythm
+of renunciation, testing the manliness and
+courage of the self, as well as the positive
+movement of love. Hence the Contemplative
+Life, as Ruysbroeck knows and
+describes it, has, and must have, its state
+of pain as well as its state of joy. With
+him, however, as with nearly all the mystics,
+the state of joy comes first: the glad and
+eager reaction to those new levels of spiritual
+reality disclosed to consciousness when the
+struggles and readjustments of the Active
+Life have done their work. This is the
+phase in the self&rsquo;s progress which mystical
+writers properly mean by Illumination:
+a condition of great happiness, and of an
+intuition of Reality so vivid and joyous,
+that the soul often supposes that she has
+here reached the goal of her quest. It is in
+the spiritual year, says Ruysbroeck, that
+which the month of May is in the seasons of
+the earth: a wholesome and necessary time
+<span class="pb" id="Page_123">[123]</span>
+of sunshine, swift growth and abundant
+flowers, when the soul, under the influence
+of &lsquo;the soft rain of inward consolations
+and the heavenly dew of the Divine sweetness&rsquo;
+blossoms in new and lovely graces.</p>
+<p>Illumination is an unstable period. The
+sun is rising swiftly in the heaven of man&rsquo;s
+consciousness; and as it increases in power,
+so it calls forth on the soul&rsquo;s part greater
+ardours, more intense emotional reactions.
+Once more the flux of God is demanding
+its reflux. The soul, like the growing boy
+suddenly made aware of the beauty, romance
+and wonder&mdash;the intense and irresistible
+appeal&mdash;of a world that had seemed ordinary
+before, flows out towards this new universe
+with all the enthusiasm and eagerness
+of its young fresh powers. Those powers
+are so new to it, that it cannot yet control
+or understand them. Vigorous and ungovernable,
+they invade by turns the heart,
+the will, the mind, as do the fevers and
+joys of physical adolescence; inciting to
+acts and satisfactions for which the whole
+self is hardly ready yet. &ldquo;Then is thrown
+wide,&rdquo; says Ruysbroeck, &ldquo;the heaven which
+was shut, and from the face of Divine
+Love there blazes down a sudden light,
+as it were a lightning flash.&rdquo; In the meeting
+of this inward and outward spiritual
+force&mdash;the Divine Light without, the growing
+Divine Spark within&mdash;there is great
+<span class="pb" id="Page_124">[124]</span>
+joy. Ecstasy, and that state of musical
+rapture, exceeding the possibilities of speech,
+which Ruysbroeck like Richard Rolle calls
+&lsquo;ghostly song,&rsquo; are the natural self-expressions
+of the soul in this moment of its
+career.<a class="fn" id="fr_38" href="#fn_38">[38]</a></p>
+<p>In more than one book we find references
+to this ecstatic period: a period so strongly
+marked in his own case, that it became for
+him&mdash;though he was under no illusions
+as to its permanent value&mdash;one of the
+landmarks in man&rsquo;s journey to his home.
+Looking back on it in later life, he sees in it
+two great phases, of which the earlier and
+lower at any rate is dangerous and easily
+misunderstood; and is concerned to warn
+those who come after him of its transitory
+and imperfect character. The first phase
+is that of &lsquo;spiritual inebriation,&rsquo; in which
+the fever, excitement and unrest of this
+period of growth and change&mdash;affecting as
+they do every aspect of personality&mdash;show
+themselves in the psycho-physical phenomena
+which are well-known accompaniments
+of religious emotion in selves of a
+certain temperament. This spiritual delirium,
+which appears to have been a
+common phase in the mystical revivals of
+the fourteenth century, is viewed by
+Ruysbroeck with considerable distrust; and
+rightly attributed by him to an excitement
+<span class="pb" id="Page_125">[125]</span>
+of the senses rather than of the soul. At
+best it is but &lsquo;children&rsquo;s food,&rsquo; given to
+those who cannot yet digest &lsquo;the strong
+food of temptation and the loss of God.&rsquo;
+Its manifestations, as he describes them,
+overpass the limits not merely of common
+sense but also of sanity; and are clearly
+related to the frenzies of revivalists and
+the wild outbreaks of songs, dance and
+ecstatic speech observed in nearly all non-Christian
+religions of an enthusiastic type.
+In this state of rapture, &ldquo;a man seems
+like a drunkard, no longer master of himself.&rdquo;
+He sings, shouts, laughs and cries
+both at once, runs and leaps in the air,
+claps his hands, and indulges in absurdly
+exaggerated gestures &lsquo;with many other
+disagreeable exhibitions.&rsquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_39" href="#fn_39">[39]</a> These he may
+not be able to help; but is advised to control
+them as soon as he can, passing from the
+merely sensuous emotion which results when
+the light of Eternal Love invades the &lsquo;inferior
+powers&rsquo; of the soul, to the spiritual emotion,
+amenable to reason, which is the reaction
+of the &lsquo;higher powers&rsquo; of the self
+to that same overwhelming influx of grace.</p>
+<p>That inpouring grace grows swiftly in
+power, as the strength of the sun grows
+with the passing of the year. The Presence
+of God now stands over the soul&rsquo;s supreme
+<span class="pb" id="Page_126">[126]</span>
+summits, in the zenith: the transcendent
+fact of the illuminated consciousness. His
+power and love shine perpetually upon
+the heart, &lsquo;giving more than we can take,
+demanding more than we can pay&rsquo;; and
+inducing in the soul upon which this mighty
+energy is playing, a strange unrest, part
+anguish and part joy. This is the second
+phase of the ecstatic period, and gives rise
+to that which Ruysbroeck, and after him
+Tauler, have called the &lsquo;storm of love&rsquo;:
+a wild longing for union which stretches to
+the utmost the self&rsquo;s powers of response,
+and expresses itself in violent efforts, impassioned
+ascents towards the Spirit that
+cries without ceasing to our spirit: &ldquo;Pay
+your debt! Love the Love that has loved
+you from Eternity.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_40" href="#fn_40">[40]</a></p>
+<p>Now the vigorous soul begins to find
+within itself the gift of Spiritual Strength;
+that enthusiastic energy which is one of the
+characters of all true love. This is the
+third of the &lsquo;Seven Gifts of the Spirit,&rsquo; and
+the first to be actualised in the Illuminated
+Life.<a class="fn" id="fr_41" href="#fn_41">[41]</a> From this strong and ardent
+passion for the Transcendent, adoration and
+prayer stream forth; and these again react
+upon the self, forming the fuel of the fire
+of love. The interior invitation of God,
+His attractive power, His delicate yet inexorable
+<span class="pb" id="Page_127">[127]</span>
+caress, is to the loving heart the
+most pure delight that it has ever known.
+It responds by passionate movements of
+adoration and gratitude, opening its petals
+wide to the beams of the Eternal Sun.</p>
+<p>This is the joy; and close behind it
+comes the anguish, &lsquo;sweetest and heaviest
+of all pains.&rsquo; It is the sense of unsatisfied
+desire&mdash;the pain of love&mdash;which comes
+from the enduring consciousness of a gulf
+fixed between the self and That with which
+it desires to unite. &ldquo;Of this inward
+demand and compulsion, which makes the
+creature to rise up and prepare itself to
+the utmost of its power, without yet being
+able to reach or attain the Unity&mdash;of this,
+there springs a spiritual pain. When the
+heart&rsquo;s core, the very source of life, is
+wounded by love, and man cannot attain
+that thing which he desires above else;
+when he must stay ever where he desires
+no more to be, of these feelings comes this
+pain.... When man cannot achieve God,
+and yet neither can nor will do without
+Him; in such men there arises a furious
+agitation and impatience, both within and
+without. And whilst man is in this tumult,
+no creature in heaven or earth can help him
+or give him rest.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_42" href="#fn_42">[42]</a></p>
+<p>The sensible heat of love is felt with a
+greater violence now than at any other period
+<span class="pb" id="Page_128">[128]</span>
+of life; the rays of the Spiritual Sun strike
+the soul with terrific force, ripening the
+fruits of the virtues, yet bringing danger to
+the health, both mental and physical, of
+those who are not properly prepared, and
+who faint under the exhaustion of this
+&lsquo;intense fury of Divine Love,&rsquo; this onslaught
+which &lsquo;eats up the heart.&rsquo; These are
+&lsquo;the dog-days of the spiritual year.&rsquo; As
+all nature languishes under their stifling
+heat, so too long an exposure to their
+violence may mean ruin to the physical
+health of the growing self. Yet those who
+behave with prudence need not take permanent
+harm; a kind of wise steadfastness
+will support them throughout this turbulent
+period. &ldquo;Following through all storms
+the path of love, they will advance towards
+that place whither love leadeth them.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_43" href="#fn_43">[43]</a></p>
+<p>To this period of vivid illumination and
+emotional unrest belongs the development
+of those &lsquo;secondary automatisms&rsquo; familiar
+to all students of mysticism: the desperate
+efforts of the mind to work up into some
+intelligible shape&mdash;some pictured vision or
+some spoken word&mdash;the overwhelming intuitions
+of the Transcendent by which it
+is possessed; the abrupt suspension of the
+surface-consciousness in rapture and ecstasy,
+when that overwhelming intuition develops
+into the complete mono-ideism of the ecstatic,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_129">[129]</span>
+and cuts off all contacts with the world of
+sense. Of these phenomena Ruysbroeck
+speaks with intimacy, and also with much
+common sense. He distinguishes visions
+into those pictures or material images which
+are &lsquo;seen in the imagination,&rsquo; and those so-called
+&lsquo;intellectual visions,&rsquo;&mdash;of which the
+works of Angela of Foligno and St. Teresa
+provide so rich a series of examples,&mdash;which
+are really direct and imageless messages
+from the Transcendent; received in
+those supersensuous regions where man
+has contact with the Incomprehensible
+Good and &ldquo;seeing and hearing are one
+thing.&rdquo; To this conventional classification
+he adds a passage which must surely be
+descriptive of his own experiences in this
+kind:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sometimes God gives to such men swift
+spiritual glimpses, like to the flash of lightning
+in the sky. It comes like a sudden
+flash of strange light, streaming forth from
+the Simple Nudity. By this is the spirit
+uplifted for an instant above itself; and at
+once the light passes, and the man again
+comes to himself. This is God&rsquo;s own work,
+and it is something most august; for often
+those who experience it afterwards become
+illuminated men. And those who live in
+the violence and fervour of love have now
+and then another manner, whereby a certain
+light shines <i>in</i> them; and this God works
+<span class="pb" id="Page_130">[130]</span>
+by means. In this light, the heart and the
+desirous powers are uplifted toward the
+Light; and in this encounter the joy and
+satisfaction are such that the heart cannot
+contain itself, but breaks out in loud cries of
+joy. And this is called <i>jubilus</i> or jubilation;
+and it is a joy that cannot be expressed in
+words.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_44" href="#fn_44">[44]</a></p>
+<p>Here the parallel with Richard Rolle&rsquo;s
+&lsquo;ghostly song, with great voice outbreaking&rsquo;
+will strike every reader of that most
+musical of the mystics; and it is probable
+that in both cases the prominence
+given to this rather uncommon form of
+spiritual rapture points back to personal
+experience. &ldquo;Methinketh,&rdquo; says Rolle,
+&ldquo;that contemplation is this heavenly song
+of the Love of God, which is called <i>jubilus</i>,
+taken of the sweetness of a soul by praising
+of God. This song is the end of perfect
+prayer, and of the highest devotion that
+may be here. This gladness of soul is had
+of God, and it breaketh out in a ghostly
+voice well-sounding.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_45" href="#fn_45">[45]</a></p>
+<p>This exultant and lyrical mood then, this
+adoring rapture, which only the rhythm
+of music can express, is the emotional reaction
+which indicates the high summer of
+the soul. It will be seen that each phase
+<span class="pb" id="Page_131">[131]</span>
+of its seasonal progress has been marked by
+a fresh inflow of grace and gifts, a fresh
+demand upon its power of response. The
+tension never slackens; the need for industry
+is never done away. The gift of
+Strength, by which the self presses forward,
+has now been reinforced by the gift of
+Counsel, <i>i.e.</i> by the growth and deepening
+of that intuition which is its medium of
+contact with the spiritual world. The
+Counsel of the Spirit, says Ruysbroeck, is
+like a stirring or inspiration, deep within
+the soul. This stirring, this fresh uprush
+of energy, is really a &lsquo;new birth&rsquo; of the Son,
+the Divine Wisdom; lighting up the intelligence
+so that it perceives its destiny, and
+perceives too that the communion it now
+enjoys is but an image of the Divine Union
+which awaits it.<a class="fn" id="fr_46" href="#fn_46">[46]</a> God is counselling the
+soul with an inward secret insistence to
+rush out towards Him, stimulating her
+hunger for Reality; or, to put it otherwise,
+the Divine Spark is growing swiftly, and
+pressing hard against the walls of its home.
+Therefore the culmination of this gift, and
+the culmination too of the illuminated
+consciousness, brings to the soul a certitude
+that she must still press on and out; that
+nothing less than God Himself can suffice
+her, or match the mysterious Thing which
+dwells in her deeps.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_132">[132]</div>
+<p>Now this way of love and ecstasy and
+summer heats has been attended throughout
+by grave dangers for the adolescent spirit;
+above all by the primary danger which besets
+the mystical life, of mistaking spiritual joy
+for spiritual reality, desiring &lsquo;consolations&rsquo;
+and &lsquo;illuminations&rsquo; for their own sake, and
+resting in the gift instead of the Giver.
+&ldquo;Though he who dedicates himself to love
+ever experiences great joy, he must never
+seek this joy.&rdquo; All those tendencies grouped
+by St. John of the Cross under the disagreeable
+name of &lsquo;spiritual gluttony,&rsquo;
+those further temptations to self-indulgent
+quietism which are but an insidious form
+of sloth, are waiting to entrap the self on
+the Illuminative Way. But there is a
+way beyond this, another &lsquo;Coming of the
+Bridegroom,&rsquo; which Ruysbroeck describes
+as &lsquo;eternally safe and sure.&rsquo; This is the way
+of pain and deprivation; when the Presence
+of God seems to be withdrawn, and the
+fatigue and reaction consequent on the
+violent passions and energies of the illuminated
+state make themselves felt as a condition
+of misery, aridity and impotence,&mdash;all,
+in fact, that the Christian mystics mean
+by the &lsquo;Spiritual Death&rsquo; or &lsquo;Dark Night of
+the Soul,&rsquo; and which Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s contemporaries,
+the Friends of God, called
+&lsquo;the upper school of perfect self-abandonment.&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_133">[133]</div>
+<p>The mirror is now to be cleansed of all
+false reflections, all beautiful prismatic
+light; the thoughts stripped bare of the
+consolations they have enjoyed. Summer
+is over, and autumn begins; when the
+flowers indeed die down, but the fruits
+which they heralded are ripe. Now is the
+time when man can prove the stuff of
+which he is made; and the religious amorist,
+the false mystic, is distinguished from the
+heroic and long-suffering servant of God.
+&ldquo;In this season is perfected and completed
+all the work that the sun has accomplished
+during the year. In the same manner,
+when Christ the glorious Sun has risen to
+His zenith in the heart of man and then
+begins to descend, and to hide the radiance
+of His Divine light, and to abandon the man;
+then the impatience and ardour of love
+grow less. And this concealment of Christ,
+and this withdrawal of His light and
+heat, are the first working and the new
+coming of this degree. And now Christ
+says spiritually within the man: &lsquo;Go
+forth, in the way which I now teach you.&rsquo;
+And the man goes forth, and finds himself
+poor, wretched and abandoned. And here
+the tempest, the ardour, the impatience of
+love grows cold; and the hot summer
+becomes autumn, and its riches turn to
+great poverty. Then man begins to lament
+in his distress&mdash;where now has gone that
+<span class="pb" id="Page_134">[134]</span>
+ardent love, that intimacy, that gratitude,
+that all-sufficing adoration? And that
+interior consolation, that intimate joy, that
+sensible savour, how has he lost all this?&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_47" href="#fn_47">[47]</a></p>
+<p>The veil that had seemed so transparent
+now thickens again; the certitudes that
+made life lovely all depart. Small wonder
+if the tortured spirit of the mystic fails to
+recognise this awful destitution as a renewed
+caress from the all-demanding Lover of
+the Soul; an education in courage, humility
+and selflessness; a last purification of the
+will. The state to which that self is being
+led is a renewed self-donation on new and
+higher levels: one more of those mystical
+deaths which are really mystical births;
+a giving-up, not merely of those natural
+tastes and desires which were disciplined
+in the Active Life, but of the higher passions
+and satisfactions of the spirit too. He is to
+be led to a state of such complete surrender
+to the Divine purposes that he is able to
+say: &ldquo;Lord, not my will according to
+nature, but Thy will and my will according
+to spirit be done.&rdquo; The darkness, sorrow
+and abandonment through which this is
+accomplished are far more essential to his
+development than the sunshine and happiness
+that went before. It is not necessary,
+says Ruysbroeck, that all should know the
+ecstasies of illumination; but by this dark
+<span class="pb" id="Page_135">[135]</span>
+stairway every man who would attain to
+God must go.</p>
+<p>When man has achieved this perfect
+resignation and all tendency to spiritual
+self-seeking is dead, the September of the
+soul is come. The sun has entered the
+sign of the Balance, when days and nights
+are equal; for now the surrendered self
+has achieved equilibrium, and endures in
+peace and steadfastness the alternations
+of the Divine Dark and Divine Light. Now
+the harvest and the vintage are ripe:
+&ldquo;That is to say, all those inward and outward
+virtues, which man has practised
+with delight in the fire of love, these, now
+that he knows them and is able to accomplish
+them, he shall practise diligently and
+dutifully and offer them to God. And
+never were they so precious in His sight:
+never so noble and so fair. And all those
+consolations which God gave him before,
+he will gladly give up, and will empty himself
+for the glory of God. This is the harvest
+of the wheat and the many ripe fruits which
+make us rich in God, and give to us Eternal
+Life. Thus are the virtues perfected; and
+the absence of consolation is turned to an
+eternal wine.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_48" href="#fn_48">[48]</a></p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_136">[136]</div>
+<h2 id="c8">CHAPTER VII
+<br /><span class="small">THE INTERIOR LIFE: UNION AND CONTEMPLATION</span></h2>
+<div class="verse">
+<p class="t0"><i>Lume &egrave; lassu, che visibile face</i></p>
+<p class="t"><i>lo Creatore a quella creatura</i></p>
+<p class="t"><i>che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace.</i></p>
+</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<p class="lr"><span class="sc">Par</span>, xxx. 100.</p>
+</div>
+<blockquote>
+<p>And the Light floweth forth in similitude, and indraweth
+Itself in unity; which we perceive, beyond the reason,
+in that high point of our understanding which is bare and
+turned within.</p>
+<p><span class="lr"><span class="sc">The Twelve B&eacute;guines.</span></span></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The soul which has endured with courage
+and humility the anguish of the Dark Night,
+actualising within its own experience the
+double rhythm of love and renunciation,
+now enters upon a condition of equilibrium;
+in which it perceives that all its
+previous adventures and apprehensions were
+but episodes of growth, phases in the
+long preparation of character for those
+new levels of life on which it is now to
+dwell.</p>
+<p>Three points, says Ruysbroeck, must
+characterise the truly interior man. First,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_137">[137]</span>
+his mind must be detached from its
+natural inclination to rest in images and
+appearances, however lovely; and must
+depend altogether upon that naked Absence
+of Images, which is God. This is the &lsquo;ascent
+to the Nought&rsquo; preached by the Areopagite.
+Secondly, by means of his spiritual
+exercises, his progressive efforts to correspond
+with that Divine Life ever experienced
+by him with greater intensity, he must
+have freed himself from all taint of selfhood,
+all personal desire; so that in true inward
+liberty he can lift himself up unhindered
+towards God, in a spirit of selfless devotion.
+Plainly, the desolations of the Dark Night
+are exactly adapted to the production
+within the self of these two characters;
+which we might call purity of intelligence
+and purity of will. Directly resulting from
+their actualisation, springs the third point:
+the consciousness of inward union with
+God.<a class="fn" id="fr_49" href="#fn_49">[49]</a> This consciousness of union, which
+we must carefully distinguish from the
+<i>Unity</i> that is Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s name for the
+last state of the transfigured soul, is the
+ruling character of that state of equilibrium
+to which we have now come; and represents
+the full achievement of the Interior
+Life.</p>
+<p>In many of his works, under various
+images, Ruysbroeck tries to tell us what he
+<span class="pb" id="Page_138">[138]</span>
+means by this inward union with God, this
+&lsquo;mutual inhabitation,&rsquo; as he calls it in one
+passage of great beauty, which is the goal
+of the &lsquo;Second Life.&rsquo; He reminds us again
+of that remote point of the spirit, that
+&lsquo;apex&rsquo; of our being, where our life touches
+the Divine Life; where God&rsquo;s image &lsquo;lives
+and reigns.&rsquo; With the cleansing of the
+heart and mind, the heightening and concentration
+of the will, which the disciplines
+of the Active Life and Dark Night have
+effected, this supreme point of the spirit is
+brought at last within the conscious field.
+Then man feels and knows the presence
+there of an intense and creative vitality,
+an Eternal Essence, from which all that is
+worth having in his selfhood flows. This
+is the Life-giving Life (<i>Levende Leven</i>),
+where the created and Uncreated meet and
+are one: a phrase, apparently taken by
+Ruysbroeck from St. Bernard, which aptly
+expresses an idea familiar to all the great
+contemplatives. It is the point at which
+man&rsquo;s separate spirit, as it were, emerges
+from the Divine Spirit: the point through
+which he must at last return to his Source.
+Here the Father has impressed His image, the
+Son is perpetually born, the Spirit wells
+up;<a class="fn" id="fr_50" href="#fn_50">[50]</a> and here the Divine Unity dwells and
+calls him to the One. Here Eternity and
+Time are intertwined. Here springs the
+<span class="pb" id="Page_139">[139]</span>
+fountain of &lsquo;Living Water&rsquo;&mdash;grace, transcendent
+vitality&mdash;upon which the mystic
+life of man depends.</p>
+<p>Now the self, because it is at last conformed
+to the demands of the spiritual
+world, feels new powers from this life-giving
+source streaming into all departments of
+its being. The last barriers of self-will
+are broken; and the result is an inrush of
+fresh energy and light. Whereas in the
+&lsquo;First Life&rsquo; God fed and communed with him
+by &lsquo;means,&rsquo; and was revealed under images
+appropriate to a consciousness still immersed
+in the world of appearance; now
+man receives these gifts and messages,
+makes his contacts with Reality, &lsquo;without
+means,&rsquo; or &lsquo;by grace&rsquo;&mdash;<i>i.e.</i> in a spiritual
+and interior manner. Those &lsquo;lightning
+flashes from the face of Divine Love,&rsquo;
+those abrupt and vivid intuitions which he
+enjoyed during illumination, have given way
+before the steady shining of the Uncreated
+Light. Though light-imagery is never long
+absent from Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s pages, it is, however,
+the spring of Living Water ever
+welling up, the rills or brooks which flow
+from it, and take its substance to the
+farthest recesses of the thirsty land, which
+seems to him the best image of this new
+inpouring of life. He uses it in all his
+chief works, perhaps most successfully in
+<i>The Spiritual Marriage</i>. Faithful to the
+<span class="pb" id="Page_140">[140]</span>
+medi&aelig;val division of personality into
+Memory or Mind, Intelligence or Understanding,
+and Will,&mdash;influenced too by his
+deep conviction that all Divine activity is
+threefold in type,&mdash;he describes the Well-spring
+as breaking into three Brooks of
+Grace, which pour their waters into each
+department of the self. The duct through
+which these waters come, &lsquo;living and
+foaming&rsquo; from the deeps of the Divine
+Riches, is the Eternal Christ; who &lsquo;comes
+anew&rsquo; to the purified soul, and is the immediate
+source of its power and happiness.</p>
+<p>The first of the brooks which flow from
+Him is called &lsquo;Pure Simplicity.&rsquo; It is a
+&lsquo;simple light,&rsquo; says Ruysbroeck in another
+place; the white radiance of Eternity
+which, streaming into the mind, penetrates
+consciousness from top to bottom, and
+unifies the powers of the self about the
+new and higher centre now established.
+This simple light, in which we see things
+as they are&mdash;and therefore see that only one
+thing truly <i>is</i>&mdash;delivers us from that slavery
+to the multiplicity of things, which splits
+the attention and makes concentration upon
+Reality impossible to the soul. The achievement
+of such mental simplicity, escaping
+the prismatic illusion of the world, is the
+first condition of contemplation. &ldquo;Thanks
+to this simple light which fills him, the
+man finds himself to be unified, established,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_141">[141]</span>
+penetrated and affirmed in the unity of his
+mind or thought. And thereby he is uplifted
+and established in a <i>new condition</i>;
+and he turns inward upon himself, and
+stays his mind upon the Nudity, above all
+the pressure of sensual images, above all
+multiplicity.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_51" href="#fn_51">[51]</a></p>
+<p>The second stream which pours out from
+that Transcendent Life is a &lsquo;Spiritual
+Clarity,&rsquo; which illuminates the intelligence
+and shows it all good. This clarity is a new
+and heightened form of intuition: a lucid
+understanding, whereby the self achieves
+clear vision of its own life, and is able to
+contemplate the sublime richness of the
+Divine Nature; gazing upon the mystery
+of the Trinity, and finding everywhere the
+Presence of God. Those who possess this
+light do not need ecstasies and revelations&mdash;sudden
+uprushes towards the supernal
+world&mdash;for their life and being is established
+in that world, above the life of sense. They
+have come to that state which Eckhart
+calls &lsquo;finding all creatures in God and
+God in all creatures.&rsquo; They see things at
+last in their native purity. The heart of
+that vision, says Ruysbroeck, is their perception
+of &ldquo;the unmeasured loyalty of God
+to His creation&rdquo;&mdash;one of his deepest and
+most beautiful utterances&mdash;&ldquo;and therefrom
+springs a deep inward joy of the spirit, and
+<span class="pb" id="Page_142">[142]</span>
+a high trust in God; and this inward joy
+embraces and penetrates all the powers of
+the soul, and the most secret part of the
+spirit.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_52" href="#fn_52">[52]</a></p>
+<p>The third Brook of Grace irrigates the
+conative powers of the self; strengthens
+the will in all perfection, and energises us
+anew. &ldquo;Like fire, this brook enkindles
+the will, and swallows up and absorbs all
+things in the unity of the spirit ... and
+now Christ speaks inwardly in the spirit
+by means of this burning brook, saying, &lsquo;Go
+forth, in exercises proper to this gift and this
+coming.&rsquo; By the first brook, which is a
+<i>Simple Light</i>, the Mind is freed from the
+invasions of the senses, and grounded and
+affirmed in spiritual unity. And by the
+second brook, which is a <i>Spreading Light</i>, the
+Reason and Understanding are illuminated,
+that they may know and distinguish all
+manner of virtues and exercises, and the
+mysteries of Scripture. And by the third
+brook, which is an <i>Infused Heat</i>, the heights
+of the Will are enkindled with quiet love
+and adorned with great riches. And thus
+does man become spiritually illuminate; for
+the grace of God dwells like a fountain-head
+in the unity of his spirit, and the
+brooks cause a flowing forth of all virtues
+from the powers of the soul. And the
+fountain-head of grace demands a back-flowing
+<span class="pb" id="Page_143">[143]</span>
+into that same ground from whence
+the flood has come.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_53" href="#fn_53">[53]</a></p>
+<p>So the Interior Life, now firmly established,
+is found to conform to those great
+laws which have guided the growing spirit
+from the first. Again, the dual property of
+love, possession and action, satisfaction
+and fecundity, is to be manifested upon
+new levels. The pendulum motion of life,
+swinging between the experience of union
+with God to which &lsquo;the Divine Unity ever
+calls us,&rsquo; and its expression in active charity
+to which the multiplicity of His creatures
+and their needs ever entreat us, still goes
+on. The more richly and strongly the
+life-giving Life wells up within the self, the
+greater are the demands made upon that
+self&rsquo;s industry and love. In the establishment
+of this balance, in this continual
+healthy act of alternation, this double
+movement into God and out to men, is the
+proof that the soul has really centred itself
+upon the spiritual world&mdash;is, as Ruysbroeck
+puts it, confirmed in love. &ldquo;Thus do work
+and union perpetually renew themselves;
+and this renewal in work and in union, <i>this</i>
+is a spiritual life.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_54" href="#fn_54">[54]</a></p>
+<p>Now the self which has achieved this
+degree of transcendence has achieved, too,
+considerable experience in that art of contemplation
+<span class="pb" id="Page_144">[144]</span>
+or introversion which is the
+mode of its communion with God. Throughout,
+training and development have gone
+hand in hand; and the fact that Ruysbroeck
+seldom troubles to distinguish between
+them, but accepts them as two
+aspects of one thing&mdash;the gradual deification
+of the soul&mdash;constitutes one of the
+great obstacles to an understanding of
+his works. Often he describes the whole
+spiritual life as consisting in introversion,
+an entering of consciousness into the supersensuous
+regions beyond thought; in
+defiance of his own principle of active
+charity, movement, work, as the essential
+reaction to the universe which distinguishes
+a &lsquo;deified&rsquo; man. The truth is that the
+two processes run side by side; and now
+one, now the other, is in the foreground of
+his thought. Therefore all that I shall
+now say of the contemplative art must be
+understood as describing acts and apprehensions
+taking place throughout the whole
+course of the Interior Life.</p>
+<p>What, then, is introversion? It is one
+of the two great modes under which the
+spiritual consciousness works. Plainly, any
+living sense of God&rsquo;s presence must discern
+that Circle whose centre is everywhere,
+as both exterior and interior to the
+self. In Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s own works we find
+a violent effort to express this ineffable
+<span class="pb" id="Page_145">[145]</span>
+fact of omnipresence, of a truly Transcendent
+yet truly Immanent Reality; an
+effort often involving a collision of imagery.
+God, he says, may be discovered at the soul&rsquo;s
+apex, where He &lsquo;eternally lives and reigns&rsquo;;
+and the soul itself dwells <i>in</i> God, ebbing and
+flowing, wandering and returning, within
+that Fathomless Ground. Yet none the
+less He comes to that soul from without;
+pouring in upon it like sunshine, inundating
+it with torrents of grace, seizing the separate
+entity and devouring whilst He feeds it;
+flashing out upon it in a tempest of love
+from the Empyrean Heaven, the Abyss of
+Being, where He dwells. &ldquo;Present, yet
+absent; near, yet far!&rdquo; exclaims St.
+Augustine. &ldquo;Thou art the sky, and Thou
+art the nest as well!&rdquo; says the great mystic
+poet of our own day.</p>
+<p>Whilst nearly all the mystics have possessed
+clear consciousness of this twofold
+revelation of the Divine Nature, and some
+have experienced by turns the &lsquo;outward
+and upward&rsquo; rush and the inward retreat,
+temperamentally they usually lean towards
+one or other form of communion with God,&mdash;ecstasy
+or introversion. For one class,
+contact with Him seems primarily to involve
+an outgoing flight towards Transcendent
+Reality; an attitude of mind strongly
+marked in all contemplatives who are near
+to the Neoplatonic tradition&mdash;Plotinus,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_146">[146]</span>
+St. Basil, St. Macarius&mdash;and also in Richard
+Rolle and a few other medi&aelig;val types.
+These would agree with Dionysius the Areopagite
+that &ldquo;we must contemplate things
+divine by our whole selves standing <i>out</i> of
+our whole selves.&rdquo; For the other class,
+the first necessity is a retreat of consciousness
+from the periphery, where it touches
+the world of appearance, to the centre,
+the Unity of Spirit or &lsquo;Ground of the
+Soul,&rsquo; where human personality buds forth
+from the Essential World. True, this inturning
+of attention is but a preliminary
+to the self&rsquo;s entrance upon that same
+Transcendent Region which the ecstatic
+claims that he touches in his upward
+flights. The introversive mystic, too, is
+destined to &lsquo;sail the wild billows of the Sea
+Divine&rsquo;; but here, in the deeps of his
+nature, he finds the door through which he
+must pass. Only by thus discovering the
+unity of his own nature can he give himself
+to that &lsquo;tide of light&rsquo; which draws all
+things back to the One.</p>
+<p>Such is Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s view of contemplation.
+This being so, introversion is for
+him an essential part of man&rsquo;s spiritual
+development. As the Son knows the
+Father, so it is the destiny of all spirits
+created in that Pattern to know Him; and
+the mirror which is able to reflect that
+Divine Light, the Simple Eye which alone
+<span class="pb" id="Page_147">[147]</span>
+can bear to gaze on it, lies in the deeps
+of human personality. The will, usually
+harnessed to the surface-consciousness, devoted
+to the interests of temporal life; the
+love, so freely spent on unreal and imperfect
+objects of desire; the thought which
+busies itself on the ceaseless analysis and
+arrangement of passing things&mdash;all these
+are to be swept inwards to that gathering-point
+of personality, that Unity of the
+Spirit, of which he so often speaks; and
+there fused into a single state of enormously
+enhanced consciousness, which, withdrawn
+from all attention to the changeful world
+of &lsquo;similitudes,&rsquo; is exposed to the direct
+action of the Eternal World of spiritual
+realities. The pull of Divine Love&mdash;the
+light that ever flows back into the One&mdash;is
+to withdraw the contemplative&rsquo;s consciousness
+from multiplicity to unity. His
+progress in contemplation will be a progress
+towards that complete mono-ideism in
+which the Vision of God&mdash;and here <i>vision</i>
+is to be understood in its deepest sense as a
+totality of apprehension, a &lsquo;ghostly sight&rsquo;&mdash;dominates
+the field of consciousness to the
+exclusion, for the time of contemplation,
+of all else.</p>
+<p>Psychologically, Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s method
+differs little from that described by St.
+Teresa. It begins in recollection, the first
+drawing inwards of attention from the
+<span class="pb" id="Page_148">[148]</span>
+world of sense; passes to meditation, the
+centring of attention on some intellectual
+formula or mystery of faith; and thence,
+by way of graduated states, variously
+divided and described in his different works,
+to contemplation proper, the apprehension
+of God &lsquo;beyond and above reason.&rsquo; All
+attempts, however, to map out this process,
+or reduce it to a system, must necessarily
+have an arbitrary and symbolic character.
+True, we are bound to adopt some system,
+if we describe it at all; but the dangers
+and limitations of all formulas, all concrete
+imagery, where we are dealing with the
+fluid, living, changeful world of spirit, should
+never be absent from our minds. The
+bewildering and often inconsistent series
+of images and numbers, arrangements and
+rearrangements of &lsquo;degrees,&rsquo; &lsquo;states,&rsquo; &lsquo;stirrings,&rsquo;
+and &lsquo;gifts,&rsquo; in which Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+sublime teachings on contemplation are
+buried, makes the choice of some one
+formula imperative for us; though none
+will reduce his doctrines to a logical series,
+for he is perpetually passing over from the
+dialectic to the lyrical mood, and forgets
+to be orderly as soon as he begins to be
+subjective. I choose, then, to base my
+classification on that great chapter (xix.)
+in <i>The Seven Cloisters</i>, where he distinguishes
+three stages of contemplation; finding in
+them the responses of consciousness to the
+<span class="pb" id="Page_149">[149]</span>
+special action of the Three Persons of the
+Blessed Trinity. These three stages in the
+soul&rsquo;s apprehension of God, are: the
+Emotional, the Intellectual, the Intuitive.
+I think that most of the subtly distinguished
+interior experiences of the mystic, the
+&lsquo;comings&rsquo; of the Divine Presence, the
+&lsquo;stirrings&rsquo; and contacts which he describes
+in his various books, can be ranged under
+one or other of them.</p>
+<p>1. First comes that loving contemplation
+of the &lsquo;uplifted heart&rsquo; which is the work
+of the Holy Spirit, the consuming fire of
+Divine Love. This ardent love, invading
+the self, and satisfying it in that intimate
+experience of personal communion so often
+described in the writings of the mystics,
+represents the self&rsquo;s first call to contemplation
+and first natural response; made with
+&ldquo;so great a joy and delight of soul and
+body, in his uplifted heart, that the man
+knoweth not what hath befallen him, nor
+how he may endure it.&rdquo; For Ruysbroeck
+this purely emotional reaction to Reality,
+this burning flame of devotion&mdash;which
+seemed to Richard Rolle the essence of the
+contemplative life&mdash;is but its initial phase.
+It corresponds with&mdash;and indeed generally
+accompanies&mdash;those fever-heats, those
+&lsquo;tempests&rsquo; of impatient love endured by the
+soul at the height of the Illuminative Way.
+Love, it is true, shall be from first to last
+<span class="pb" id="Page_150">[150]</span>
+the inspiring force of the contemplative&rsquo;s
+ascents: his education is from one point
+of view simply an education in love. But
+this love is a passion of many degrees;
+and the &lsquo;urgency felt in the heart,&rsquo; the
+restlessness and hunger of this spiritual
+feeling-state, is only its lowest form. The
+love which burns like white fire on the
+apex of the soul, longs for sacrifice, inspires
+heroic action, and goes forward without
+fear, &lsquo;holy, strong and free,&rsquo; to brave the
+terrors of the Divine Dark, is of another
+temper than this joyful sentiment.</p>
+<p>2. A loving stretching out into God, and
+an intellectual gazing upon Him, says Ruysbroeck,
+in a passage which I have already
+quoted, are the &lsquo;two heavenly pipes&rsquo; in
+which the wind of the Spirit sings. So the
+next phase in the contemplative&rsquo;s development
+is that enhancement of the intellect,
+the power of perceiving, as against desiring
+and loving Reality, which is the work
+of the Logos, the Divine Wisdom. As the
+cleansed and detached heart had been lifted
+up to <i>feel</i> the Transcendent; now the
+understanding, stripped of sense-images,
+purged of intellectual arrogance, clarified
+by grace, is lifted up to <i>apprehend</i> it. This
+degree has two phases. First, that enlargement
+of the understanding to an increased
+comprehension of truth, the finding of deeper
+and diviner meanings in things already
+<span class="pb" id="Page_151">[151]</span>
+known, which Richard of St. Victor called
+<i>mentis dilatatio</i>. Next, that further uplift
+of the mind to a state in which it is able
+to contemplate things above itself whilst
+retaining clear self-consciousness, which he
+called <i>mentis sublevatio</i>. Ruysbroeck, however,
+inverts the order given by Richard;
+for him the uplift comes first, the dilation
+of consciousness follows from it. This is a
+characteristic instance of the way in which
+he uses the Victorine psychology; constantly
+appropriating its terms but never hesitating
+to modify, enrich or misuse them as his
+experience or opinions may dictate.</p>
+<p>The first phase of Intellectual Contemplation,
+then, is a lifting of the mind to a swift
+and convincing vision of Reality: one of
+those sudden, incommunicable glimpses of
+Truth so often experienced early in the contemplative&rsquo;s
+career. The veil parts, and
+he sees a &ldquo;light and vision, which give to
+the contemplating spirit a conscious certitude
+that she sees God, so far as man may
+see Him in mortal life.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_55" href="#fn_55">[55]</a> That strange
+mystical light of which all contemplatives
+speak, and which Ruysbroeck describes in
+a passage of great subtlety as &lsquo;the intermediary
+between the seeing thought and
+God,&rsquo; now floods his consciousness. In it
+&ldquo;the Spirit of the Father speaks in the uplifted
+thought which is bare and stripped of
+<span class="pb" id="Page_152">[152]</span>
+images, saying, &lsquo;Behold Me as I behold
+thee.&rsquo; Then the pure and single eyes are
+strengthened by the inpouring of that clear
+Light of the Father, and they behold His
+face, in a simple vision, beyond reason, and
+without reason.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_56" href="#fn_56">[56]</a></p>
+<p>It might be thought that in this &lsquo;simple
+vision&rsquo; of Supreme Reality, the spirit of
+the contemplative reached its goal. It has,
+indeed, reached a point at which many
+a mystic stops short. I think, however,
+that a reference to St. Augustine, whose
+influence is so strongly marked in Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+works, will show what he means by
+this phase of contemplation; and the characters
+which distinguish it from that infused
+or unitive communion with God which
+alone he calls <i>Contemplatio</i>. In the seventh
+book of his <i>Confessions</i>, Augustine describes
+just such an experience as this. By a study
+of the books of the Platonists he had learned
+the art of introversion, and achieved by its
+aid a fleeting &lsquo;Intellectual Contemplation&rsquo;
+of God; in his own words, a &ldquo;hurried
+vision of That which Is.&rdquo; &ldquo;Being by these
+books,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;admonished to return into
+myself, I entered into the secret closet of my
+soul, guided by Thee ... and beheld the
+Light that never changes, above the eye of
+my soul, above the intelligence.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_57" href="#fn_57">[57]</a> It was
+<span class="pb" id="Page_153">[153]</span>
+by &ldquo;the withdrawal of thought from experience,
+its abstraction from the contradictory
+throng of sensuous images,&rdquo; that he
+attained to this transitory apprehension;
+which he describes elsewhere as &ldquo;the <i>vision</i>
+of the Land of Peace, but not the <i>road</i>
+thereto.&rdquo; But intellect alone could not
+bear the direct impact of the terrible light
+of Reality; his &ldquo;weak sight was dazzled by
+its splendour,&rdquo; he &ldquo;could not sustain his
+gaze,&rdquo; and turned back to that humble
+discovery of the Divine Substance by means
+of Its images and attributes, which is proper
+to the intellectual power.<a class="fn" id="fr_58" href="#fn_58">[58]</a></p>
+<p>Now surely this is the psychological
+situation described by Ruysbroeck. The
+very images used by Augustine are found
+again in him. The mind of the contemplative,
+purified, disciplined, deliberately
+abstracted from images, is inundated by the
+divine sunshine, &ldquo;the Light which is not
+God, but that whereby we see Him&rdquo;; and
+in this radiance achieves a hurried but
+convincing vision of Supreme Reality. But
+&ldquo;even though the eagle, king of birds, can
+with his powerful sight gaze steadfastly upon
+the brightness of the sun; yet do the weaker
+eyes of the bat fail and falter in the same.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_59" href="#fn_59">[59]</a>
+The intellectual vision is dazzled and distressed,
+like a man who can bear the diffused
+<span class="pb" id="Page_154">[154]</span>
+radiance of sunshine but is blinded if he
+dares to follow back its beams to the terrible
+beauty of their source. &ldquo;Not for this are
+my wings fitted,&rdquo; says Dante, drooping to
+earth after his supreme ecstatic flight. Because
+it cannot sustain its gaze, then, the
+intelligence falls back upon the second phase
+of intellectual contemplation: <i>Speculatio</i>,
+the deep still brooding in which the soul,
+&lsquo;made wise by the Spirit of Truth,&rsquo; contemplates
+God and Creation as He and it are
+reflected in the clear mirror of her intellectual
+powers, under &lsquo;images and similitudes&rsquo;&mdash;the
+Mysteries of Faith, the Attributes
+of the Divine Nature, the forms and
+manners of created things. As the Father
+contemplates all things in the Son, &lsquo;Mirror
+of Deity,&rsquo; so now does the introverted soul
+contemplate Him in this &lsquo;living mirror of
+her intelligence&rsquo; on which His sunshine
+falls. Because her swift vision of That which
+Is has taught her to distinguish between the
+ineffable Reality and the Appearance which
+shadows it forth, she can again discover
+Him under those images which once veiled,
+but now reveal His presence. The intellect
+which has apprehended God Transcendent,
+if only for a moment, has received therefrom
+the power of discerning God Immanent.
+&ldquo;He shows Himself to the soul in the
+living mirror of her intelligence; not as He
+is in His nature, but in images and similitudes,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_155">[155]</span>
+and in the degree in which the illuminated
+reason can grasp and understand
+Him. And the wise reason, enlightened of
+God, sees clearly and without error in images
+of the understanding all that she has heard
+of God, of faith, of truth, according to her
+longing. But that image which is God
+Himself, although it is held before her, she
+cannot comprehend; for the eyes of her
+understanding must fail before that Incomparable
+Light.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_60" href="#fn_60">[60]</a></p>
+<p>In <i>The Kingdom of God&rsquo;s Lovers</i> Ruysbroeck
+pours forth a marvellous list of the
+attributes under which the illuminated intelligence
+now contemplates and worships
+That Which she can never comprehend;
+that &ldquo;Simple One in whom all multitude
+and all that multiplies, finds its beginning
+and its end.&rdquo; From this simple Being of
+the Godhead the illuminated reason abstracts
+those images and attributes with
+which it can deal, as the lower reason abstracts
+from the temporal flux the materials
+of our normal universe. Such a loving
+consideration of God under His attributes
+is the essence of meditation: and meditation
+is in fact the way in which the intellectual
+faculties can best contemplate
+Reality. But &ldquo;because all things, when they
+are considered in their inwardness, have their
+beginning and their ending in the Infinite
+<span class="pb" id="Page_156">[156]</span>
+Being as in an Abyss,&rdquo; here again the contemplative is soon led
+above himself and beyond himself, to a point at which intellect
+and &lsquo;consideration&rsquo;&mdash;<i>i.e.</i> formal thought&mdash;fail
+him; because &ldquo;here we touch the Simple
+Nature of God.&rdquo; When intellectual contemplation
+has brought the self to this
+point, it has done its work; for it has
+&ldquo;excited in the soul an eager desire to lift
+itself up by contemplation into the simplicity
+of the Light, that thereby its avid
+desire of infinite fruition may be satisfied
+and fulfilled&rdquo;;<a class="fn" id="fr_61" href="#fn_61">[61]</a> <i>i.e.</i> it has performed the true
+office of meditation, induced a shifting of
+consciousness to higher levels.</p>
+<p>We observe that the emphasis, which in
+the First Degree of Contemplation fell
+wholly on feeling, in the Second Degree falls
+wholly upon knowledge. We are not, however,
+to suppose from this that emotion has
+been left behind. As the virtues and energies
+of the Active Life continue in the Contemplative
+Life, so the &lsquo;burning love&rsquo; which
+distinguished the first stage of communion
+with the Transcendent, is throughout the
+source of that energy which presses the self
+on to deeper and closer correspondences
+with Reality. Its presence is presupposed
+in all that is said concerning the development
+of the spiritual consciousness. Nevertheless
+Ruysbroeck, though he cannot be
+<span class="pb" id="Page_157">[157]</span>
+accused of intellectualism, is led by his
+admiration for Victorine ideas to lay great
+stress upon the mental side of contemplation,
+as against those emotional reactions to
+the Transcendent which are emphasised&mdash;almost
+to excess&mdash;by so many of the saints.
+His aim was the lifting of the <i>whole man</i> to
+Eternal levels: and the clarifying of the
+intelligence, the enhancement of the understanding,
+seemed to him a proper part of the
+deification of human nature, the bringing
+forth in the soul&rsquo;s ground of that Son who
+is the Wisdom of God as well as the Pattern
+of Man. Though he moves amongst deep
+mysteries, and in regions beyond the span of
+ordinary minds, there is always apparent
+in him an effort towards lucidity of expression,
+sharp definition, plain speech. Sometimes
+he is wild and ecstatic, pouring forth
+his vision in a strange poetry which is at
+once uncouth and sublime; but he is never
+woolly or confused. His prose passages owe
+much of their seeming difficulty to the
+passion for exactitude which distinguishes
+and classifies the subtlest movements of the
+spiritual atmosphere, the delicately graded
+responses of the soul.</p>
+<p>3. Now the Third Degree of Contemplation
+lifts the whole consciousness to a plane
+of perception which transcends the categories
+of the intellect: where it deals no
+longer with the label but with the Thing.
+<span class="pb" id="Page_158">[158]</span>
+It has passed beyond image and also beyond
+thought; to that knowledge by contact
+which is the essence of intuition, and is
+brought about by the higher powers of
+love. Such contemplation is regarded by
+Ruysbroeck as the work of the Father,
+&ldquo;Who strips from the mind all forms and
+images and lifts up the Naked Apprehension
+[<i>i.e.</i> intuition] into its Origin, that is
+Himself.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_62" href="#fn_62">[62]</a> It is effected by concentration
+of all the powers of the self into a
+single state &lsquo;uplifted above all action, in a
+bare understanding and love,&rsquo; upon that apex
+of the soul where no reason can ever attain,
+and where the &lsquo;simple eye&rsquo; is ever open
+towards God. There the loving soul apprehends
+Him, not under conditions, &lsquo;in some
+wise,&rsquo; but as a <i>whole</i>, without the discrete
+analysis of His properties which was the
+special character of intellectual contemplation;
+a synthetic experience which is &lsquo;in
+no wise.&rsquo; This is for Ruysbroeck the contemplative
+act <i>par excellence</i>. It is &lsquo;an
+intimacy which is ignorance,&rsquo; a &lsquo;simple
+seeing,&rsquo; he says again and again; &ldquo;and
+the name thereof is <i>Contemplatio</i>; that is,
+the seeing of God in simplicity.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_63" href="#fn_63">[63]</a></p>
+<p>&ldquo;Here the reason no less than all separate
+acts must give way, for our powers
+become simple in Love; they are silent
+<span class="pb" id="Page_159">[159]</span>
+and bowed down in the Presence of the
+Father. And this revelation of the Father
+lifts the soul above the reason into the
+Imageless Nudity. There the soul is simple,
+pure, spotless, empty of all things; and it is
+in this state of perfect emptiness that the
+Father manifests His Divine radiance. To
+this radiance neither reason nor sense, observation
+nor distinction, can attain. All
+this must stay below; for the measureless
+radiance blinds the eyes of the reason, they
+cannot bear the Incomprehensible Light.
+But above the reason, in the most secret
+part of the understanding, the <i>simple eye</i>
+is ever open. It contemplates and gazes
+at the Light with a pure sight that is lit
+by the Light itself: eye to eye, mirror to
+mirror, image to image. This threefold
+act makes us like God, and unites us to
+Him; for the sight of the <i>simple eye</i> is a
+living mirror, which God has made for His
+image, and whereon He has impressed it.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_64" href="#fn_64">[64]</a></p>
+<p>Intuitive or infused contemplation is the
+form of communion with the Transcendent
+proper to those who have grown up to the
+state of Union; and feel and know the
+presence of God within the soul, as a love,
+a life, an &lsquo;indrawing attraction,&rsquo; calling and
+enticing all things to the still unachieved
+consummation of the Divine Unity. He
+who has reached this pitch of introversion,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_160">[160]</span>
+and is able, in his spiritual exercises, to
+withdraw himself thus to the most secret
+part of his spirit, feels&mdash;within the Eternal
+Light which fills his mirror and is &lsquo;united
+with it,&rsquo;&mdash;this perpetual demand of the Divine
+Unity, entreating and urging him towards
+a total self-loss. In the fact that he
+knows this demand and impulsion as other
+than himself, we find the mark which
+separates this, the highest contemplation
+proper to the Life of Union, from that
+&lsquo;fruitive contemplation&rsquo; of the spirit which
+has died into God which belongs to the
+Life of Unity.<a class="fn" id="fr_65" href="#fn_65">[65]</a> When the work of transmutation
+is finished and he has received
+the &lsquo;Sparkling Stone of Divine Humanity,&rsquo;
+this subject-object distinction&mdash;though
+really an eternal one, as Ruysbroeck continually
+reminds us&mdash;will no longer be possible
+to his consciousness. Then he will
+live at those levels to which he now makes
+impassioned ascents in his hours of unitive
+prayer: will be immersed in the Beatific
+Vision on which he now looks, and &lsquo;lose
+himself in the Imageless Nudity.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>This is the clue to the puzzling distinction
+made by Ruysbroeck between the contemplation
+which is &lsquo;without conditions,&rsquo;
+and that which is &lsquo;beyond and above conditions&rsquo;
+and belongs to the Superessential
+Life alone. In Intuitive Contemplation the
+<span class="pb" id="Page_161">[161]</span>
+seeing self apprehends the Unconditioned
+World, <i>Onwise</i>, and makes &lsquo;loving ascents
+thereto.&rsquo; It &lsquo;finds within itself the unwalled&rsquo;;
+yet is still anchored to the conditioned
+sphere. In Superessential Contemplation,
+it <i>dies into</i> that &lsquo;world which
+is in no wise.&rsquo; In the great chapter of
+<i>The Sparkling Stone</i><a class="fn" id="fr_66" href="#fn_66">[66]</a> where he struggles to
+make this distinction clear, Ruysbroeck says
+that the Friends of God (<i>i.e.</i> the Interior
+Men) &ldquo;cannot with themselves and all
+their works penetrate to that Imageless
+Nudity.&rdquo; Although they feel united with
+God, yet they feel in that union an otherness
+and difference between themselves and
+God; and therefore &ldquo;the ascent into the
+Nought is unknown to them.&rdquo; They feel
+themselves carried up towards God in the
+tide of His all-subduing Fire of Love;
+but they retain their selfhood, and may
+not be consumed and burned to nothing in
+the Unity of Love. They do not yet desire
+to die into God, that they may receive a
+deiform life from Him; but they are in the
+way which leads to this fulfilment of their
+destiny, and are &ldquo;following back the light
+to its Origin.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This following-back is one continuous
+process, in which we, for convenience of
+description, have made artificial breaks.
+<span class="pb" id="Page_162">[162]</span>
+It is the thrust of consciousness deeper and
+deeper into the heart of Reality. As in the
+stream of physical duration, so in this
+ceaseless movement of the spirit, there is
+a persistence of the past in the present,
+a carrying through and merging of one
+state in the next. Thus the contemplation
+which is &lsquo;wayless,&rsquo; the self&rsquo;s intuitive communion
+with the Infinite Life and Light,
+growing in depth and richness, bridges
+the gap which separates the Interior and
+the Superessential Life.</p>
+<p>We find in Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s works indications
+of a transitional state, in which the
+soul &ldquo;is guided and lost, wanders and
+returns, ebbs and flows,&rdquo; within the &lsquo;limitless
+Nudity,&rsquo; to which it has not yet wholly
+surrendered itself. &ldquo;And its seeing is in
+no wise, being without manner, and it is
+neither thus nor thus, neither here nor
+there; for that which is in no wise hath
+enveloped all, and the vision is made high
+and wide. It knows not itself where That
+is which it sees; and it cannot come thereto,
+for its seeing is in no wise, and passes
+on, beyond, for ever, and without return.
+That which it apprehends it cannot realise
+in full, nor wholly attain, for its apprehension
+is wayless, and without manner,
+and therefore it is apprehended of God in
+a higher way than it can apprehend Him.
+Behold! such a following of the Way that
+<span class="pb" id="Page_163">[163]</span>
+is Wayless, is intermediary between contemplation
+in images and similitudes of
+the intellect, and unveiled contemplation
+beyond all images in the Light of God.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_67" href="#fn_67">[67]</a></p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_164">[164]</div>
+<h2 id="c9">CHAPTER VIII
+<br /><span class="small">THE SUPERESSENTIAL LIFE</span></h2>
+<blockquote>
+<p>If, therefore, thou art become the throne of God and
+the Heavenly Charioteer hath seated Himself within thee,
+and thy soul is wholly become a spiritual eye and is
+wholly made into light; if, too, thou art nourished with
+the heavenly food of that Spirit and hast drunk of the
+Living Water and put on the secret vesture of light&mdash;if
+thine inward man has experienced all these things and is
+established in abundant faith, lo! thou livest indeed the
+Eternal Life and thy soul rests even in this present time
+with the Lord.</p>
+<p><span class="lr"><span class="sc">St. Macarius of Egypt.</span></span></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>We have seen that Ruysbroeck, in common
+with a few other supreme mystics, declares
+to us as veritably known and experienced
+by him, a universe of three orders&mdash;Becoming,
+Being, <span class="sc">God</span>&mdash;and further, three
+ways of life whereby the self can correspond
+to these three orders, and which he calls
+the life of nature, the life of grace, the
+life of glory. &lsquo;Glory,&rsquo; which has been
+degraded by the usage of popular piety
+into a vague superlative, and finally left
+in the hands of hymn-writers and religious
+revivalists, is one of the most ancient
+<span class="pb" id="Page_165">[165]</span>
+technical terms of Christian mysticism. Of
+Scriptural origin, from the fourth century
+to the fifteenth it was used to denote a
+definite kind of enhanced life, a final achievement
+of Reality&mdash;the unmediated radiance
+of God&mdash;which the gift of &lsquo;divine sonship&rsquo;
+made possible to the soul. In the life of
+grace, that soul transcends conditions in
+virtue of a Divine vitality poured in from
+the Absolute Sphere, and actualises its
+true being, (<i>Wesen</i>); in the life of glory,
+it becomes a denizen of that sphere, and
+achieves an existence that is &lsquo;more than
+being&rsquo; (<i>Overwesen</i>). The note of the first
+state is contemplation, awareness; the note
+of the second is fruition, possession.</p>
+<p>That power of making &lsquo;swift and loving
+ascents&rsquo; to the plane of <i>Onwise</i> to which
+man attained at the end of the Interior Life,
+that conscious harmony with the Divine
+Will which then became the controlling
+factor of his active career, cannot be the
+end of the process of transcendence. The
+soul now hungers and thirsts for a more
+intense Reality, a closer contact with
+&lsquo;Him who is measureless&rsquo;; a deeper and
+deeper penetration into the burning heart
+of the universe. Though contemplation
+seems to have reached its term, love goes
+on, to &lsquo;lose itself upon the heights.&rsquo; Beyond
+both the conditioned and unconditioned
+world, beyond the Trinity Itself, that love
+<span class="pb" id="Page_166">[166]</span>
+discerns its ultimate objective&mdash;the very
+Godhead, the Divine Unity, &ldquo;where all
+lines find their end&rdquo;; where &ldquo;we are
+satisfied and overflowing, and with Him
+beyond ourselves eternally fulfilled.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_68" href="#fn_68">[68]</a> The
+abiding life which is there discoverable,
+is not only &lsquo;without manner&rsquo; but &lsquo;above
+manner&rsquo;&mdash;the &lsquo;deified life,&rsquo; indescribable
+save by the oblique methods of music or
+poetry, wherein, in Maeterlinck&rsquo;s great
+phrase, &ldquo;the psychology of man mingles
+with the psychology of God.&rdquo; All Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+most wonderful passages are concerned
+with the desperate attempt to tell
+us of this &lsquo;life,&rsquo; this utter fruition of Reality:
+which seems at one time to involve for the
+contemplative consciousness a self-mergence
+in Deity, so complete as to give colour to
+that charge of pantheism which is inevitably
+flung at all mystics who try to tell what
+they have known; at others, to represent
+rather the perfect consummation of that
+&lsquo;union in separateness&rsquo; which is characteristic
+of all true love.</p>
+<p>This is but one instance of that perpetual
+and inevitable resort to paradox which
+torments all who try to follow him along
+this &lsquo;track without shadow of trace&rsquo;; for
+the goal towards which he is now enticing
+us is one in which all the completing opposites
+of our fragmentary experience find their
+<span class="pb" id="Page_167">[167]</span>
+bourne. Hence the rapid alternation of
+spatial and personal symbols which confuses
+our industrious intellects, is the one means
+whereby he can suggest its actuality to our
+hungry hearts.</p>
+<p>As we observed in Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s earlier
+teaching on contemplation three distinct
+forms, in which the special work that
+theology attributes to the three Divine
+Persons seemed to him to be reflected;
+now, in this Superessential Contemplation,
+or Fruition, we find the work of the
+Absolute Godhead Itself, energising upon
+a plane of intensity which so utterly transcends
+our power of apprehension, that it
+seems to the surface consciousness&mdash;as
+Dionysius the Areopagite had named it&mdash;a
+negation of all things, a Divine Dark.</p>
+<p>This Fruition, says Ruysbroeck, &ldquo;is wild
+and desolate as a desert, and therein is to
+be found no way, no road, no track, no
+retreat, no measure, no beginning, no end,
+nor any other thing that can be told in
+words. And this is for all of us Simple
+Blessedness, the Essence of God and our
+superessence, above reason and beyond
+reason. To know it we must be in it,
+beyond the mind and above our created
+being; in that Eternal Point where all
+our lines begin and end, that Point where
+they lose their name and all distinction,
+and become one with the Point itself, and
+<span class="pb" id="Page_168">[168]</span>
+that very One which the Point is, yet
+nevertheless ever remain in themselves
+nought else but lines that come to an end.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_69" href="#fn_69">[69]</a></p>
+<p>What, then, is the way by which the soul
+moves from that life of intense contemplation
+in which the &lsquo;spreading light&rsquo; of the Spirit
+shows her the universe fulfilled with God,
+to this new transfigured state of joy and
+terror? It is a way for which her previous
+adventures might have prepared us. As
+each new ascent, new inflow of grace, was
+prepared by a time of destitution and stress&mdash;as
+the compensating beats of love and
+renunciation have governed the evolving
+melody of the inner life&mdash;so here a last
+death of selfhood, a surrender more absolute
+than all that has gone before, must be the
+means of her achievement of absolute life.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Dying, and behold I live!&rdquo; says Paul of
+his own attainment of supernal life in Christ.
+Ruysbroeck, who never strays far from the
+vital and heroic mysticism of the New Testament
+saints, can find no other language
+for this last crisis of the spirit&mdash;its movement
+from the state of <i>Wesen</i> to that of
+<i>Overwesen</i>&mdash;than the language of death.
+The ever-moving line, though its vital character
+of duration continues, now seems to
+itself to swoon into the Point; the separate
+entity which has felt the flood of grace pour
+into it to energise its active career, and the
+<span class="pb" id="Page_169">[169]</span>
+ebb of homeward-tending love draw it back
+towards the One, now feels itself pouring
+into the Infinite Sea. Our personal activity,
+he says, has done all that it can: as the
+separate career of Christ our Pattern closed
+with His voluntary death, so the death of
+our selfhood on that apex of personality
+where we have stretched up so ardently
+toward the Father, shall close the separate
+career of the human soul and open the way
+to its new, God-driven career, its resurrection-life.
+&ldquo;None is sure of Eternal Life
+unless he has died with all his own attributes
+wholly into God&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_70" href="#fn_70">[70]</a>&mdash;all else falls
+short of the demands of supreme generosity.</p>
+<p>It is <i>The Book of the Sparkling Stone</i>
+which contains Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s most wonderful
+descriptions of the consciousness peculiar
+to these souls who have grown up to &lsquo;the
+fulness of the stature of Christ&rsquo;; and since
+this is surely the finest and perhaps the least
+known of his writings, I offer no apology for
+transcribing a long passage from its ninth
+chapter: &lsquo;How we may become the Hidden
+Sons of God.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When we soar up above ourselves, and
+become, in our upward striving towards
+God, so simple, that the naked Love in the
+Heights can lay hold on us, there where
+Love cherishes Love, above all activity and
+all virtue (that is to say, in our Origin,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_170">[170]</span>
+wherefrom we are spiritually born)&mdash;then we
+cease, and we and all that is our own die
+into God. And in this death we become
+hidden Sons of God, and find in ourselves
+a new life, and that is Eternal Life. And
+of these Sons, St. Paul says: &lsquo;Ye are dead,
+and your life is hid with Christ in God.&rsquo;
+In our approach to God we must bear with
+us ourselves and all that we do, as a perpetual
+sacrifice to God; and in the Presence
+of God we must leave ourselves and all our
+works, and, dying in love, soar up above
+all created things into the Superessential
+Kingdom of God. And of this the Spirit of
+God speaks in the Book of Hidden Things,
+saying: &lsquo;Blessed are the dead that die in the
+Lord.&rsquo;... If we would <i>taste</i> God, and feel
+in ourselves Eternal Life above all things,
+we must go forth into God with a faith that
+is far above our reason, and there dwell,
+simple, idle, without image, lifted up by love
+into the Unwalled Bareness of our intelligence.
+For when we go out from ourselves
+in love, and die to all observances in ignorance
+and darkness, then we are made complete,
+and transfigured by the Eternal Word,
+Image of the Father. And in this emptiness
+of spirit we receive the Incomprehensible
+Light, which enfolds and penetrates us as
+air is penetrated by the light of the sun;
+and this Light is nought else but a fathomless
+gazing and seeing. What we are, that we
+<span class="pb" id="Page_171">[171]</span>
+gaze at; and what we gaze at, that we are.
+For our thought, our life, our being, are
+lifted up in simplicity, and united with
+the Truth, that is God. Therefore in this
+simple gazing we are one life and one
+spirit with God&mdash;and this I call the <i>seeing
+life</i>.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_71" href="#fn_71">[71]</a></p>
+<p>Such a passage as this lies beyond our poor
+attempts at analysis. Those only will understand
+it who yield themselves to it; entering
+into its current, as we enter into the
+music that we love. It tells us all it can of
+this life which is &lsquo;more than being,&rsquo; as <i>felt</i>
+in the supreme experience of love. Life and
+Death, Dark and Light, Idleness, Bareness&mdash;these
+are but images of the feeling-states
+that accompany it. But here, more than
+elsewhere in Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s writings, we must
+remember the peril which goes with all
+subjective treatment of mystical truth.
+Each state which the unitive mystic experiences
+is so intense, that it monopolises for
+the time being his field of consciousness.
+Writing under the &lsquo;pressure of the Spirit&rsquo;
+he writes of it&mdash;as indeed it seems to him
+at the moment&mdash;as ultimate and complete.
+Only by a comparison of different and superficially
+inconsistent descriptions of this enhanced
+life&mdash;which must harmonise and
+fulfil <i>all</i> the needs of our complex personality,
+providing inexhaustible objectives
+<span class="pb" id="Page_172">[172]</span>
+for love, intelligence and will&mdash;can we form
+any true idea concerning it.</p>
+<p>When we do this, we discover that the
+side of it which <i>seems</i> a static beatitude,
+still Fruition, perfect Rest, is always
+balanced by the other side; which <i>seems</i>
+a perpetual and progressive attainment,
+a seeking and finding, a hungering and
+feeding, a giving and taking. These coexist;
+as the ever-renewed &lsquo;coming of the
+Bridegroom,&rsquo; the welling-up of the Spirit,
+the stormy, eager, unsatisfied love of the
+soul do as a matter of experience coexist
+within that perfect and personal union
+wherein Love and Fruition, as Ruysbroeck
+puts it, &lsquo;live between action and rest.&rsquo;
+The alternate consciousness of the line and
+the Point, the moving river and the Sea,
+the relative and the Absolute, persists so
+long as consciousness persists at all; it is
+no Christianised Nirvana into which he
+seeks to induct us, but that mysterious
+synthesis of Being and Becoming, &lsquo;eternal
+stillness and eternal work&rsquo;&mdash;a movement
+into God which is already a complete achievement
+of Him&mdash;which certain other great
+mystics have discerned beyond the &lsquo;flaming
+ramparts&rsquo; of the common life.</p>
+<p>The unbreakable unity with God, which
+constitutes the mark of the Third Life,
+exists in the &lsquo;essential ground of the soul&rsquo;;
+where the river flows into the Sea, the line
+<span class="pb" id="Page_173">[173]</span>
+into the Point; where the pendulum of self
+has its attachment to Reality. <i>There</i>, the
+hidden child of the Absolute is &lsquo;one with God
+in restful fruition&rsquo;; there, his deep intuition
+of Divine things&mdash;that &lsquo;Savouring Wisdom&rsquo;
+which is the last supreme gift of the Spirit<a class="fn" id="fr_72" href="#fn_72">[72]</a>&mdash;is
+able to taste and apprehend the sweetness
+of Infinite Reality. But at the other end,
+where he still participates in the time-process,
+where his love and will are a moving
+river, consciousness hungers for that total
+Attainment still; and attention will swing
+between these two extremes, now actualised
+within the living soul, which has put on the
+dual character of &lsquo;Divine Humanity&rsquo; and is
+living Eternal Life, not in some far-off
+celestial region, but here, where Christ lived
+it, in the entangled world of Time. Thus
+active self-mergence, incessant re-birth into
+God, perpetual eager feeding on Him, is
+implicit in all spiritual life. Even for the
+souls of the &lsquo;deified,&rsquo; quietism is never
+right. &ldquo;For love cannot be lazy, but would
+search through and through, and taste
+through and through, the fathomless kingdom
+that lives in her ground; and this
+hunger shall <i>never</i> be stilled.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_73" href="#fn_73">[73]</a></p>
+<p>The soul, whenever it attends to itself&mdash;withdraws
+itself, so to speak, from the
+<span class="pb" id="Page_174">[174]</span>
+Divine Synthesis, dwells in itself, and beholds
+instead of being&mdash;feels again the &lsquo;eternal
+unrest of love&rsquo;; the whip of the Heavenly
+Charioteer, driving all spirits in towards
+the heart of God, where they are &lsquo;one fire
+with Him.&rsquo; &ldquo;This stirring, that mediates
+between ourselves and God, we can never
+pass beyond; and what that stirring is in
+its essence, and what love is in itself, we can
+never know.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_74" href="#fn_74">[74]</a> But when it dwells beyond
+itself, and in the supreme moments of
+ecstasy merges its consciousness in the
+Universal Consciousness, it transcends succession
+and centres itself in the Divine
+Selfhood&mdash;the &lsquo;still, glorious, and absolute
+One-ness.&rsquo; Then it feels, not hunger but
+satisfaction, not desire but fruition; and
+knows itself beyond reason &lsquo;one with the
+abysmal depth and breadth,&rsquo; in &ldquo;a simple
+fathomless savouring of all good and of
+Eternal Life. And in this savouring we
+are swallowed up, above reason and beyond
+reason, in the deep Quiet of the Godhead
+which is never moved.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_75" href="#fn_75">[75]</a></p>
+<p>Such experiences however, such perfect
+fruition, in which the self dies into the
+overwhelming revelation of the Transcendent,
+and its rhythm is merged in the
+Divine Rhythm, cannot be continuous for
+<span class="pb" id="Page_175">[175]</span>
+those still living in the flesh. There is in
+Ruysbroeck no foolish insistence on any
+impossible career of ceaseless ecstasy;
+but a robust acceptance of the facts and
+limitations of life. Man cannot, he says,
+&ldquo;perpetually contemplate with attention the
+superessential Being of God in the Light of
+God. But whosoever has attained to the
+gift of Intelligence [<i>i.e.</i> the sixth of the
+Seven Gifts of the Spirit] attains this power,
+which becomes habitual to him; and whensoever
+he will, he can wholly absorb himself
+in this manner of contemplation, in so far
+as it is possible in this life.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_76" href="#fn_76">[76]</a></p>
+<p>The superessential man, in fact, is, as
+Francis Thompson said of the soul, a</p>
+<div class="verse">
+<p class="t0">&ldquo;... swinging-wicket set</p>
+<p class="t4">Between</p>
+<p class="t0">The Unseen and Seen.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<p>He is to move easily and at will between
+these two orders, both actual, both God-inhabited,
+the complementary expressions of
+One Love; participating both in the active,
+industrious, creative outflow in differentiation,
+and the still indrawing attraction
+which issues in the supreme experience of
+Unity. For these two movements the
+Active and Interior Lives have educated
+him. The truly characteristic experience of
+the Third Life is the fruition of that Unity
+<span class="pb" id="Page_176">[176]</span>
+or Simplicity in which they are harmonised,
+beyond the balanced consciousness of the
+indrawing and outdrawing tides.<a class="fn" id="fr_77" href="#fn_77">[77]</a></p>
+<p>Ruysbroeck discerns three moments in
+this achievement. First, a negative movement,
+the introversive sinking-down of our
+created life into God&rsquo;s absolute life, which
+is the consummation of self-naughting and
+surrender and the essence of dark contemplation.
+Next, the positive ecstatic
+stretching forth above reason into our
+&lsquo;highest life,&rsquo; where we undergo complete
+transmutation in God and feel ourselves
+wholly enfolded in Him. Thirdly, from
+these &lsquo;completing opposites&rsquo; of surrender
+and love springs the perfect fruition of
+Unity, so far as we may know it here; when
+&ldquo;we feel ourselves to be one with God, and
+find ourselves transformed of God, and
+immersed in the fathomless Abyss of our
+Eternal Blessedness, where we can find no
+further separation between ourselves and
+God. So long as we are lifted up and
+stretched forth into this height of feeling,
+all our powers remain idle, in an essential
+fruition; for where our powers are utterly
+naughted, there we lose our activity. And
+so long as we remain idle, without observation,
+with outstretched spirit and open eyes,
+so long can we see and have fruition. But
+in that same moment in which we would
+<span class="pb" id="Page_177">[177]</span>
+test and comprehend <i>What</i> that may be
+which we feel, we fall back upon reason;
+and there we find distinction and otherness
+between God and ourselves, and find God
+as an Incomprehensible One exterior to us.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_78" href="#fn_78">[78]</a></p>
+<p>It is clear from this passage that such
+&lsquo;utterness&rsquo; of fruition is a fleeting experience;
+though it is one to which the unitive
+mystic can return again and again, since
+it exists as a permanent state in his essential
+ground, ever discoverable by him when
+attention is focussed upon it. Further, it
+appears that the &lsquo;absence of difference&rsquo;
+between God and the soul, which the mystic
+in these moments of ecstasy feels and enjoys,
+is a psychological experience, not an absolute
+truth. It is the only way in which
+his surface-mind is able to realise on the
+one side the overwhelming apprehension of
+God&rsquo;s Love, that &lsquo;Yes&rsquo; in which all other
+syllables are merged; on the other the
+completeness of his being&rsquo;s self-abandonment
+to the Divine embrace&mdash;&ldquo;that Superessential
+Love with which we are one, and
+which we possess more deeply and widely
+than any other thing.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_79" href="#fn_79">[79]</a> It was for this
+experience that Thomas &agrave; Kempis prayed in
+one of his most Ruysbroeckian passages:
+&ldquo;When shall I at full gather myself in
+Thee, that for Thy love I feel not myself,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_178">[178]</span>
+but Thee only, above all feeling and all
+manner, in a <i>manner not known to all</i>?&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_80" href="#fn_80">[80]</a>
+It is to this same paradoxical victory-in-surrender&mdash;this
+apparent losing which is
+the only real finding&mdash;that Francis Thompson
+invites the soul:</p>
+<div class="verse">
+<p class="t0">&ldquo;To feel thyself and be</p>
+<p class="t0">His dear nonentity&mdash;</p>
+<p class="t3">Caught</p>
+<p class="t0">Beyond human thought</p>
+</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<p class="t0">In the thunder-spout of Him,</p>
+<p class="t0">Until thy being dim,</p>
+<p class="t3">And be</p>
+<p class="t0">Dead deathlessly.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<p>Now here it is, in these stammered tidings
+of an adventure &lsquo;far outside and beyond
+our spirit,&rsquo; in &lsquo;the darkness at which reason
+gazes with wide eyes,&rsquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_81" href="#fn_81">[81]</a> that we must look
+for the solution of that problem which all
+high mystic states involve for analytic
+thought: how can the human soul become
+one with God &lsquo;without intermediary, beyond
+all separation,&rsquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_82" href="#fn_82">[82]</a> yet remain eternally
+distinct from Him? How can the &lsquo;deification,&rsquo;
+the &lsquo;union with God without differentiation&rsquo;
+on which the great mystics insist,
+be accepted, and pantheism be denied?</p>
+<p>First, we notice that in all descriptions
+<span class="pb" id="Page_179">[179]</span>
+of Unity given us by the mystics, there is
+a strong subjective element. Their first
+concern is always with the experience of
+the heart and will, not with the deductions
+made by the intelligence. It is at our own
+peril that we attach ontological meaning
+to their convinced and vivid psychological
+statements. Ruysbroeck in particular
+makes this quite clear to us; says again
+and again that he has &lsquo;<i>felt</i> unity without
+difference and distinction,&rsquo; yet that he
+<i>knows</i> that &lsquo;otherness&rsquo; has always remained,
+and &ldquo;that this is true we can only
+know by feeling it, and in no other way.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_83" href="#fn_83">[83]</a></p>
+<p>In certain great moments, he says, the
+purified and illuminated soul which has
+died into God does achieve an Essential
+Stillness; which seems to human thought
+a static condition, for it is that Eternal
+Now of the Godhead which embraces in
+its span the whole process of Time. Here
+we find nothing but God: the naked and
+ultimate Fact or Superessential Being
+&lsquo;whence all Being has come forth,&rsquo; stripped
+of academic trimmings and experienced in
+its white-hot intensity. Here, far beyond
+the range of thought, unity and otherness,
+like hunger and fulfilment, activity and
+rest, <i>can</i> co-exist in love. The ultimate
+union is a love-union, says Ruysbroeck.
+<span class="pb" id="Page_180">[180]</span>
+&ldquo;The Love of God is a consuming Fire,
+which draws us out of ourselves and swallows
+us up in unity with God, where we are
+satisfied and overflowing, and with Him,
+beyond ourselves, eternally fulfilled.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_84" href="#fn_84">[84]</a></p>
+<p>This hungry and desirous love, at once
+a personal passion and a cosmic force,
+drenches, transfigures and unites with the
+soul, as sunlight does the air, as fire does
+the iron flung into the furnace; so that
+the molten metal &lsquo;changed into another
+glory&rsquo; is both iron and fire &lsquo;ever distinct
+yet ever united&rsquo;&mdash;an antique image of
+the Divine Union which he takes direct from
+a celebrated passage in St. Bernard&rsquo;s works.
+&ldquo;As much as is iron, so much is fire; and
+as much as is fire, so much is iron; yet the
+iron doth not become fire, nor the fire iron,
+but each retains its substance and nature.
+So likewise the spirit of man doth not
+become God, but is deified, and knows
+itself breadth, length, height and depth:
+and as far as God is God, so far the loving
+spirit is made one with Him in love.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_85" href="#fn_85">[85]</a>
+The iron, the air, represent our created
+essence; the fire, the sunlight, God&rsquo;s Essence,
+which is added to our own&mdash;our <i>superessence</i>.
+The two are held in a union
+<span class="pb" id="Page_181">[181]</span>
+which, when we try to see it under the
+symbolism of space, appears a mingling,
+a self-mergence; but, when we feel it under
+the symbolism of personality, is a marriage
+in which the lover and beloved are &lsquo;distinct
+yet united.&rsquo; &ldquo;Then are we one being, one
+love, and one beatitude with God ...
+a joy so great and special that we cannot
+even think of any other joy. For then one
+is one&rsquo;s self a Fruition of Love, and can and
+should want nothing beyond one&rsquo;s own.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_86" href="#fn_86">[86]</a></p>
+<p>It follows from all this that when the soul,
+coming to the Fourth State of Fruitive
+Love, enters into the Equilibrium which
+supports and penetrates the flux, it does
+and must reconcile the opposites which
+have governed the earlier stages of its
+career. The communion reached is with
+a Wholeness; the life which flows from it
+must be a wholeness too. Full surrender,
+harmonised with full actualisation of all
+our desires and faculties; not some thin,
+abstract, vertical relation alone, but an
+all-round expansion, a full, deep, rich giving
+and taking, a complete correspondence
+with the infinitely rich, all-demanding and
+all-generous God whose &ldquo;love is measureless
+for it is Himself.&rdquo; Thus Ruysbroeck
+teaches that love static and love dynamic
+must coexist for us as for Him; that the
+&lsquo;eternal hunger and thirst&rsquo; of the God-demanding
+<span class="pb" id="Page_182">[182]</span>
+soul continues within its ecstatic
+satisfaction; because, however deeply it
+may love and understand, the Divine Excess
+will always baffle it. It is destined &lsquo;ever
+to go forward within the Essence of God,&rsquo;
+to grow without ceasing deeper and deeper
+into this life, in &ldquo;the eternal longing to
+follow after and attain Him Who is measureless.&rdquo;
+&ldquo;And we learn this truth from
+His sight: that all we taste, in comparison
+with that which remains out of our reach,
+is no more than a single drop of water
+compared with the whole sea.... We
+hunger for God&rsquo;s Infinity, which we cannot
+devour, and we aspire to His Eternity,
+which we cannot attain.... In this storm
+of love, our activity is above reason and
+is in no wise. Love desires that which is
+impossible to her; and reason teaches that
+love is within her rights, but can neither
+counsel nor persuade her.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_87" href="#fn_87">[87]</a></p>
+<p>Hence an eternal desire and an eternal
+satisfaction are preserved within the circle
+of the deified life. The full-grown self
+feels, in its most intense degree, the double
+movement of the Divine Love and Light,
+the flux and reflux; and in its perfect and
+ever-renewed responses to the &lsquo;indrawing
+and outflowing attraction&rsquo; of that Tide,
+the complete possession of the Superessential
+Life consists.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_183">[183]</div>
+<p>&ldquo;The indrawing attraction drags us out
+of ourselves, and calls us to be melted away
+and naughted in the Unity. And in this
+indrawing attraction we feel that God wills
+that we should be His, and for this we must
+abnegate ourselves and let our beatitude
+be accomplished in Him. But when He
+attracts us by flowing out towards us, He
+gives us over to ourselves and makes us
+free, and sets us in Time.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_88" href="#fn_88">[88]</a></p>
+<p>Thus is accomplished that paradoxical
+synthesis of &lsquo;Eternal Rest and Eternal
+Work&rsquo; which Ruysbroeck regards as the
+essential character of God, and towards
+which the whole of his system has been
+educating the human soul. The deified or
+&lsquo;God-formed&rsquo; soul is for him the spirit in
+which this twofold ideal is actualised:
+this is the Pattern, the Likeness of God,
+declared in Christ our Archetype, towards
+which the Indwelling Spirit presses the
+race. Though there are moments in which,
+carried away as it seems by his almost intolerable
+ecstasy, he pushes out towards
+&lsquo;that unwalled Fruition of God,&rsquo; where all
+fruition begins and ends, where &lsquo;one is all
+and all is one,&rsquo; and Man is himself a &lsquo;fruition
+of love&rsquo;;<a class="fn" id="fr_89" href="#fn_89">[89]</a> yet he never forgets to remind
+us that, as love is not love unless it looks
+forward towards the creation of new life,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_184">[184]</span>
+so here, &ldquo;when love falls in love with love,
+and each is all to the other in possession and
+in rest,&rdquo; the <i>object</i> of this ecstasy is not a
+permanent self-loss in the Divine Darkness,
+a &lsquo;slumbering in God,&rsquo; but a &ldquo;new life of
+virtue, such as love and its impulses demand.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_90" href="#fn_90">[90]</a>
+&ldquo;To be a living, willing Tool of
+God, wherewith God works what He will
+and how He will,&rdquo; is the goal of transcendence
+described in the last chapter of <i>The
+Sparkling Stone</i>. &ldquo;Then is our life a <i>whole</i>,
+when contemplation and work dwell in us
+side by side, and we are perfectly in both of
+them at once&rdquo;;<a class="fn" id="fr_91" href="#fn_91">[91]</a> for then the separate
+spirit is immersed in, and part of, the perpetual
+creative act of the Godhead&mdash;the
+flowing forth and the drawing back, which
+have at their base the Eternal Equilibrium,
+the unbroken peace, wherein &ldquo;God contemplates
+Himself and all things in an
+Eternal Now that has neither beginning nor
+end.&rdquo;<a class="fn" id="fr_92" href="#fn_92">[92]</a>
+On that Unbroken Peace the
+spirit hangs; and swings like a pendulum,
+in wide arcs of love and service, between
+the Unconditioned and the Conditioned
+Worlds.</p>
+<p>So the Superessential Life is the simple,
+the synthetic life, in which man actualises at
+last all the resources of his complex being.
+<span class="pb" id="Page_185">[185]</span>
+The active life of response to the Temporal
+Order, the contemplative life of response
+to the Transcendent Order are united,
+firmly held together, by that &lsquo;eternal fixation
+of the spirit&rsquo;; the perpetual willed
+dwelling of the being of man within the
+Incomprehensible Abyss of the Being of God,
+<i>qui est per omnia saecula benedictus</i>.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_187">[187]</div>
+<div class="biblionote">
+<h2 id="c10">BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE</h2>
+<h3>I. <span class="sc">Flemish Text</span></h3>
+<blockquote>
+<p><i>Werken van Jan van Ruusbroec</i>. Ed. <span class="sc">J. David</span>.
+6 vols. (Maetschappy der Vlaemsche Bibliophilen).
+(Gent, 1858-68.)</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This edition, based on the MSS. preserved at
+Brussels and Ghent, and the foundation of all the
+best translations, is now rare. It may be consulted
+at the British Museum.</p>
+<p>A re-issue of the Flemish text is now in progress;
+the first volume being <i>Jan van Ruysbroeck,
+Van den VII. Trappen</i> (i.e. <i>The Seven Degrees of
+Love</i>) <i>met Geert Groote&rsquo;s latijnsche Vertaling</i>. Ed.
+Dom. Ph. <span class="sc">M&uuml;ller</span> (Brussels, 1911).</p>
+<h3>II. <span class="sc">Translations</span></h3>
+<h3>A. <i>Latin</i></h3>
+<p>The chief works of Ruysbroeck were early
+translated into Latin, some during their author&rsquo;s
+lifetime, and widely circulated in this form.
+Three of these early translations were printed in
+the sixteenth century: the <i>De Ornatu Spiritualium
+Nuptiarum</i> of Jordaens, at Paris, in 1512; and the
+<i>De Septem Scal&aelig; Divini Amoris Gradibus</i> of Gerard
+<span class="pb" id="Page_188">[188]</span>
+Groot, together with the <i>De Perfectione Filiorum
+Dei</i> (i.e. <i>The Sparkling Stone</i>), at Bologna, in 1538.</p>
+<p>The standard Latin translation, however&mdash;indispensable
+to all students of Ruysbroeck&mdash;is the
+great work of the Carthusian monk, <span class="sc">Laurentius
+Surius</span>: <i>D. Joannis Rusbrochii Opera Omnia</i>
+(Cologne, 1552).</p>
+<p>This was reprinted in 1609 (the best edition),
+and again in 1692. It contains all Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+authentic works, and some that are doubtful;
+in a translation singularly faithful to the sense of
+the original, though it fails to reproduce the rugged
+sublimity, the sudden lapses into crude and homely
+metaphor, so characteristic of his style.</p>
+<h3>B. <i>English</i></h3>
+<blockquote>
+<p><i>The Book of the Twelve B&eacute;guines</i> (the first sixteen
+chapters only). Translated from the Flemish,
+by <span class="sc">John Francis</span> (London, 1913).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>A useful translation of one of Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+most difficult treatises.</p>
+<h3>C. <i>French</i></h3>
+<blockquote>
+<p><i>&OElig;uvres de Ruysbroeck l&rsquo;Admirable. Traduction du
+Flamand par les</i> <span class="sc">B&eacute;n&eacute;dictins de Saint Paul
+de Wisques</span>.</p>
+<div class="bibliosub"><span class="sc">Vol. I.</span>: <i>Le Miroir du Salut &Eacute;ternel</i>;
+<i>Les Sept Cl&ocirc;tures</i>; <i>Les Sept Degr&eacute;s
+de l&rsquo;&Ecirc;chelle d&rsquo;Amour Spirituel</i>
+(Brussels, 1912, in progress).</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This edition, when completed, will form the
+standard text of Ruysbroeck for those unable
+to read Flemish. The translation is admirably
+<span class="pb" id="Page_189">[189]</span>
+lucid, and a short but adequate introduction
+is prefixed to each work.</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p><i>L&rsquo;Ornement des Noces Spirituelles. Traduit du
+Flamand par</i> <span class="sc">Maurice Maeterlinck</span> (Brussels,
+1900).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This celebrated book, still more its beautiful
+though unreliable introduction, is chiefly responsible
+for the modern interest in Ruysbroeck.
+The translation, exquisite as French prose, over-emphasises
+the esoteric element in his teaching.
+Those unable to read Flemish should check it by
+<span class="sc">Lambert&rsquo;s</span> German text (see below).</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p><i>Vie de Rusbroch suivie de son Trait&eacute; des Sept
+Degr&eacute;s de l&rsquo;Amour. Traduction litt&eacute;rale du
+Texte Flamand-Latin, par</i> <span class="sc">R. Chamonal</span>
+(Paris, 1909). <i>Trait&eacute; du Royaume des Amants
+de Dieu. Traduit par</i> <span class="sc">R. Chamonal</span> (Paris,
+1911). <i>De la Vraie Contemplation</i> (i.e. <i>The
+Twelve B&eacute;guines</i>). <i>Traduit par</i> <span class="sc">R. Chamonal</span>.
+3 vols. (Paris, 1912).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>These are the first volumes of a proposed complete
+translation; which is, however, far from literal,
+and replaces the rough vigour of the original by
+the insipid language of conventional French piety.</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p><i>Livre des XII. B&eacute;guines ou de la Vraie Contemplation</i>
+(first sixteen chapters only). <i>Traduit
+du Flamand, avec Introduction, par</i> <span class="sc">L&rsquo;Abb&eacute;
+P. Cuylits</span> (Brussels, 1909).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This also contains a French version of the <i>Vita</i>
+of Pomerius. The translator is specially successful
+in rendering the peculiar quality of Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+verse; but the statements in his introduction must
+be accepted with reserve.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_190">[190]</div>
+<h3>D. <i>German</i></h3>
+<blockquote>
+<p><i>Drei Schriften des Mystikers Johann van Ruysbroeck,
+aus dem Vl&auml;mischen &uuml;bersetzt von</i>
+<span class="sc">Franz A. Lambert</span> (Leipzig, 1902).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>A vigorous and accurate translation of <i>The
+Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage</i>, <i>The Sparkling
+Stone</i> and <i>The Book of Supreme Truth</i>.</p>
+<p>Ruysbroeck translates better into German than
+into any other language; and this volume is
+strongly recommended to all who can read that
+tongue.</p>
+<h3>III. <span class="sc">Selections</span></h3>
+<blockquote>
+<p><i>Rusbrock l&rsquo;Admirable: &OElig;uvres Choisies. Traduit
+par</i> <span class="sc">E. Hello</span> (Paris, 1902).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>A series of short passages, paraphrased (<i>not</i>
+translated) from the Latin of Surius. There are
+two English versions of this unsatisfactory book,
+the second being the best:</p>
+<blockquote>
+<div class="bibliosub"><i>Reflections from the Mirror of a Mystic.</i>
+Translated by <span class="sc">Earle Baillie</span> (London,
+1905).</div>
+<div class="bibliosub"><i>Flowers of a Mystic Garden.</i> Translated by
+C. E. S. (London, 1912).</div>
+</blockquote><blockquote>
+<p><i>Life, Light, and Love: Selections from the German
+Mystics.</i> By the Very Rev. <span class="sc">W. R. Inge</span>,
+D.D., Dean of St. Paul&rsquo;s (London, 1905).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Contains an abridged version of <i>The Adornment
+of the Spiritual Marriage</i>.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_191">[191]</div>
+<h2 id="c11"><span class="sc">Biography and Criticism</span></h2>
+<p class="center">(<i>A Selection</i>)</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="sc">Auger, A.</span>&mdash;<i>De Doctrina et Meritis Joannis van
+Ruysbroeck</i> (Louvain, 1892).</p>
+<p><span class="sc">Engelhardt, J. G. von.</span>&mdash;<i>Richard von St. Victor
+und J. Ruysbroeck</i> (Erlangen, 1838).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Useful for tracing the correspondences between
+the Victorines and Ruysbroeck.</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="sc">Maeterlinck, Maurice.</span>&mdash;<i>Ruysbroeck and the
+Mystics.</i> Translated by <span class="sc">Jane Stoddart</span>
+(London, 1908).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>An English version of the Introduction to
+<i>L&rsquo;Ornement des Noces Spirituelles</i>, above-mentioned;
+with many fine passages translated from
+Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s other works.</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="sc">Pomerius, H.</span>&mdash;<i>De Origine Monasterii Viridisvallis
+una cum Vitis Joannis Rusbrochii.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Printed in <i>Analecta Bollandiana</i>, vol. iv.
+(Brussels, 1885). The chief authority for all
+biographical facts.</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="sc">Scully, Dom Vincent.</span>&mdash;<i>A Medi&aelig;val Mystic</i>
+(London, 1910).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>A biographical account, founded on Pomerius,
+with a short analysis of Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s works.
+Popular and uncritical.</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="sc">Vreese, Dr. W. L. de.</span>&mdash;<i>Jean de Ruysbroeck</i>
+(<i>Biographie Nationale de Belgique</i>, vol. xx.)
+(Brussels, 1907).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>An important and authoritative article with
+<span class="pb" id="Page_192">[192]</span>
+analysis of all Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s works and full bibliography.</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p>&mdash;&mdash;<i>Bijdragen tot de Kennis van het Leven en de
+Werken van Jan van Ruusbroec</i> (Gent, 1896).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Contains Gerard Naghel&rsquo;s sketch of Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s
+life, with other useful material.</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p>&mdash;&mdash;<i>De Handschriften van Jan van Ruusbroec&rsquo;s
+Werken.</i> 2 vols. (Gent, 1900).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>An important and scholarly study of the manuscript
+sources by the greatest living authority.</p>
+<p class="tb">Notices of Ruysbroeck will be found in the
+following works:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="sc">Auger, A.</span>&mdash;<i>&Eacute;tude sur les Mystiques des Pays Bas
+au Moyen Age</i> (<i>Acad&eacute;mie Royale de Belgique</i>,
+vol. xlvi., 1892).</p>
+<p><span class="sc">Fleming, W. K.</span>&mdash;<i>Mysticism in Christianity</i>
+(London, 1913).</p>
+<p><span class="sc">Inge</span>, Very Rev. W. R., D.D., Dean of St. Paul&rsquo;s.&mdash;<i>Christian
+Mysticism</i> (London, 1899).</p>
+<p><span class="sc">Jones</span>, Dr. <span class="sc">Rufus M.</span>&mdash;<i>Studies in Mystical Religion</i>
+(London, 1909).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="tb">Applications of his doctrine to the spiritual life
+in:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="sc">Baker</span>, Venerable <span class="sc">Augustin</span>.&mdash;<i>Holy Wisdom;
+or Directions for the Prayer of Contemplation</i>
+(London, 1908).</p>
+<p><span class="sc">Blosius, F. V.</span>&mdash;<i>Book of Spiritual Instruction</i>
+(London, 1900); <i>A Mirror for Monks</i>
+(London, 1901); <i>Comfort for the Faint-hearted</i>
+(London, 1903); <i>Sanctuary of the
+Faithful Soul</i> (London, 1905).</p>
+<p><span class="sc">Denis the Carthusian.</span>&mdash;<i>Opera Omnia</i> (Monstrolii,
+1896), in progress.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_193">[193]</div>
+<p><span class="sc">Petersen, Gerlac.</span>&mdash;<i>The Fiery Soliloquy with
+God</i> (London, 1872).</p>
+<p><span class="sc">Poulain, Aug., S.J.</span>&mdash;<i>The Graces of Interior
+Prayer</i> (London, 1910).</p>
+<p><span class="sc">Underhill, E.</span>&mdash;<i>Mysticism</i>, 5th ed. (London, 1914).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<h3><span class="sc">Influences</span></h3>
+<p>Much light is thrown on Ruysbroeck&rsquo;s doctrine
+by a study of the authors who influenced him;
+especially:</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="sc">St. Augustine</span>; <span class="sc">Migne</span>, <i>P.L.</i>, xxvii.-xlvii.; Eng.
+Trans., edited by <span class="sc">M. Dods</span> (Edinburgh, 1876).</p>
+<p><span class="sc">Dionysius the Areopagite</span>; <span class="sc">Migne</span>, <i>P.G.</i>, iii., iv.;
+Eng. Trans., by <span class="sc">Parker</span> (Oxford, 1897).</p>
+<p><span class="sc">Hugh</span> and <span class="sc">Richard of St. Victor</span>; <span class="sc">Migne</span>,
+<i>P.L.</i>, clxxv.-clxxvii. and cxcvi.</p>
+<p><span class="sc">St. Bernard</span>; <span class="sc">Migne</span>, <i>P.L.</i>, clxxxii.-clxxxv.;
+Eng. Trans., by <span class="sc">Eales</span> (London, 1889-96).</p>
+<p><span class="sc">St. Thomas Aquinas</span>; <i>Opera</i> (Rom&aelig;, 1882-1906);
+Eng. Trans., by the <span class="sc">Dominican Fathers</span> (in
+progress).</p>
+<p><span class="sc">St. Bonaventura</span>; <i>Opera</i> (Paris, 1864-71).</p>
+<p>Meister <span class="sc">Eckhart</span>; <i>Schriften und Predigten</i>
+(Leipzig, 1903).</p>
+<p><span class="sc">Suso</span>; <i>Schriften</i>, ed. <span class="sc">Denifle</span> (Munich, 1876).
+Eng. Trans., <i>Life</i>, ed. by <span class="sc">W. R. Inge</span> (London,
+1913); <i>Book of Eternal Wisdom</i> (London,
+1910).</p>
+<p><span class="sc">Tauler</span>, <i>Predigten</i> (Prague, 1872); Eng. Trans.,
+<i>Twenty-five Sermons</i>, trans. by <span class="sc">Winkworth</span>
+(London, 1906); <i>The Inner Way</i>, edited by
+<span class="sc">A. W. Hutton</span> (London, 1909).</p>
+</blockquote>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_194">[194]</div>
+<h2 class="nothml" id="c12">Footnotes</h2>
+<div class="fnblock"><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_1" href="#fr_1">[1]</a>The <i>Vita</i> of Pomerius is printed in the
+<i>Analecta Bollandiana</i>, vol. iv. pp. 257 ff.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_2" href="#fr_2">[2]</a><i>The Book of Supreme Truth</i>, cap. iv.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_3" href="#fr_3">[3]</a><i>The Twelve B&eacute;guines</i>, cap. vii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_4" href="#fr_4">[4]</a><i>Vita</i>, cap. xv.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_5" href="#fr_5">[5]</a>De Vreese has identified 160 Flemish and 46 Latin
+MSS. of Ruysbroeck.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_6" href="#fr_6">[6]</a><i>The Spiritual Marriage</i>, lib. ii. cap. xxxvii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_7" href="#fr_7">[7]</a><i>The Twelve B&eacute;guines</i>, cap. xiv.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_8" href="#fr_8">[8]</a><i>The Spiritual Marriage</i>, lib. ii. cap. xxxvii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_9" href="#fr_9">[9]</a><i>Op. cit.</i>, <i>ibid.</i>
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_10" href="#fr_10">[10]</a><i>The Seven Degrees of Love</i>, cap. xiv.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_11" href="#fr_11">[11]</a><i>The Kingdom of God&rsquo;s Lovers</i>, cap. xxix.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_12" href="#fr_12">[12]</a><i>The Mirror of Eternal Salvation</i>, cap. viii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_13" href="#fr_13">[13]</a><i>The Twelve B&eacute;guines</i>, cap. ix.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_14" href="#fr_14">[14]</a><i>The Twelve B&eacute;guines</i>, cap. xiv.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_15" href="#fr_15">[15]</a><i>The Book of Truth</i>, cap. xi.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_16" href="#fr_16">[16]</a><i>The Mirror of Eternal Salvation</i>, cap. xvii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_17" href="#fr_17">[17]</a><i>Op. cit.</i>, cap. vii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_18" href="#fr_18">[18]</a><i>The Sparkling Stone</i>, cap. x.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_19" href="#fr_19">[19]</a><i>The Twelve B&eacute;guines</i>, cap. xiv.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_20" href="#fr_20">[20]</a><i>The Twelve B&eacute;guines</i>, cap. xiii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_21" href="#fr_21">[21]</a><i>The Seven Degrees of Love</i>, cap. xiv.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_22" href="#fr_22">[22]</a><i>The Spiritual Marriage</i>, lib. iii. cap. i.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_23" href="#fr_23">[23]</a><i>The Twelve B&eacute;guines</i>, cap. xvi.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_24" href="#fr_24">[24]</a><i>The Twelve B&eacute;guines</i>, cap. xii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_25" href="#fr_25">[25]</a><i>The Twelve B&eacute;guines</i>, cap. viii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_26" href="#fr_26">[26]</a><i>The Seven Degrees of Love</i>, cap. i.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_27" href="#fr_27">[27]</a><i>The Mirror of Eternal Salvation</i>, cap. xvi.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_28" href="#fr_28">[28]</a><i>The Sparkling Stone</i>, cap. vi.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_29" href="#fr_29">[29]</a><i>The Mirror of Eternal Salvation</i>, cap. vii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_30" href="#fr_30">[30]</a><i>The Spiritual Marriage</i>, lib. i. cap. xiv.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_31" href="#fr_31">[31]</a><i>The Spiritual Marriage</i>, lib. i. capp. xii.-xxiv.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_32" href="#fr_32">[32]</a><i>The Kingdom of God&rsquo;s Lovers</i>, cap. xviii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_33" href="#fr_33">[33]</a><i>The Spiritual Marriage</i>, lib. i. cap. xxvi.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_34" href="#fr_34">[34]</a><i>The Twelve B&eacute;guines</i>, cap. vii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_35" href="#fr_35">[35]</a><i>The Sparkling Stone</i>, cap. vii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_36" href="#fr_36">[36]</a><i>The Twelve B&eacute;guines</i>, cap. ix.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_37" href="#fr_37">[37]</a><i>The Spiritual Marriage</i>, lib. ii. cap. iv.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_38" href="#fr_38">[38]</a>Cf. <i>The Twelve B&eacute;guines</i>, cap. x.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_39" href="#fr_39">[39]</a><i>The Spiritual Marriage</i>, lib. ii. cap. xix.; <i>The Book of
+Truth</i>, cap. ix.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_40" href="#fr_40">[40]</a><i>The Seven Degrees of Love</i>, cap. xiv.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_41" href="#fr_41">[41]</a><i>The Kingdom of God&rsquo;s Lovers</i>, cap. xx.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_42" href="#fr_42">[42]</a><i>The Spiritual Marriage</i>, lib. ii. cap. xxiii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_43" href="#fr_43">[43]</a><i>Op. cit.</i>, lib. ii. cap. xxvii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_44" href="#fr_44">[44]</a><i>The Spiritual Marriage</i>, lib. ii. cap. xxiv.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_45" href="#fr_45">[45]</a>Richard Rolle; <i>The Mending of Life</i>, cap. xii. (Harford&rsquo;s
+edition, p. 82).
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_46" href="#fr_46">[46]</a><i>The Kingdom of God&rsquo;s Lovers</i>, cap. xxv.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_47" href="#fr_47">[47]</a><i>The Spiritual Marriage</i>, lib. ii. cap. xxviii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_48" href="#fr_48">[48]</a><i>The Spiritual Marriage</i>, lib. ii. cap. xxix.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_49" href="#fr_49">[49]</a><i>The Sparkling Stone</i>, cap. ii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_50" href="#fr_50">[50]</a>Cp. <i>The Spiritual Marriage</i>, lib. ii. cap. lvii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_51" href="#fr_51">[51]</a><i>The Spiritual Marriage</i>, lib. ii. cap. xxxvi.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_52" href="#fr_52">[52]</a><i>The Spiritual Marriage</i>, lib. ii. cap. xxxviii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_53" href="#fr_53">[53]</a><i>The Spiritual Marriage</i>, lib. ii. cap. xxxix.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_54" href="#fr_54">[54]</a><i>The Sparkling Stone</i>, cap. ii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_55" href="#fr_55">[55]</a><i>The Twelve B&eacute;guines</i>, cap. xi.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_56" href="#fr_56">[56]</a><i>Loc. cit.</i>
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_57" href="#fr_57">[57]</a>St. Augustine, <i>Confessions</i>, lib. vii. cap. x.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_58" href="#fr_58">[58]</a>St. Augustine, <i>Confessions</i>, lib. vii. capp. xvii. and xx.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_59" href="#fr_59">[59]</a><i>The Twelve B&eacute;guines</i>, cap. xii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_60" href="#fr_60">[60]</a><i>Loc. cit.</i>
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_61" href="#fr_61">[61]</a><i>The Kingdom of God&rsquo;s Lovers</i>, cap. xxxiv.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_62" href="#fr_62">[62]</a><i>The Seven Cloisters</i>, cap. xix.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_63" href="#fr_63">[63]</a><i>The Twelve B&eacute;guines</i>, cap. xii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_64" href="#fr_64">[64]</a><i>The Mirror of Eternal Salvation</i>, cap. xvii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_65" href="#fr_65">[65]</a><i>The Sparkling Stone</i>, cap. iii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_66" href="#fr_66">[66]</a>Cap. viii.: &lsquo;Of the Difference between the Secret
+Friends and the Hidden Sons of God.&rsquo;
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_67" href="#fr_67">[67]</a><i>The Twelve B&eacute;guines</i>, cap. xii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_68" href="#fr_68">[68]</a><i>The Twelve B&eacute;guines</i>, cap. xvi.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_69" href="#fr_69">[69]</a><i>The Seven Cloisters</i>, cap. xix.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_70" href="#fr_70">[70]</a><i>The Sparkling Stone</i>, cap. viii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_71" href="#fr_71">[71]</a><i>The Sparkling Stone</i>, cap. ix.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_72" href="#fr_72">[72]</a><i>The Kingdom of God&rsquo;s Lovers</i>; cap. xxxiii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_73" href="#fr_73">[73]</a><i>The Sparkling Stone</i>, cap. ix.; cp. also <i>The Twelve
+B&eacute;guines</i>, cap. xvi.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_74" href="#fr_74">[74]</a><i>The Twelve B&eacute;guines</i>, cap. xvi.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_75" href="#fr_75">[75]</a><i>The Sparkling Stone</i>, cap. ix.; cp. also <i>The Book of
+Truth</i>, cap. xii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_76" href="#fr_76">[76]</a><i>The Kingdom of God&rsquo;s Lovers</i>, cap. xxxi.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_77" href="#fr_77">[77]</a><i>The Book of Truth</i>, cap. xii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_78" href="#fr_78">[78]</a><i>The Sparkling Stone</i>, cap. x.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_79" href="#fr_79">[79]</a><i>Op. cit.</i> cap. ix.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_80" href="#fr_80">[80]</a><i>The Imitation of Christ</i>, lib. iii. cap. xxiii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_81" href="#fr_81">[81]</a><i>The Twelve B&eacute;guines</i>, cap. xiv., and <i>The Sparkling
+Stone</i>, cap. ix.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_82" href="#fr_82">[82]</a><i>The Twelve B&eacute;guines</i>, cap. xvi.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_83" href="#fr_83">[83]</a><i>The Sparkling Stone</i>, cap. ix.; cp. <i>The Book of Truth</i>,
+cap. xi.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_84" href="#fr_84">[84]</a><i>The Twelve B&eacute;guines</i>, cap. xvi.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_85" href="#fr_85">[85]</a><i>Ibid.</i> cap. xiv.; cp. St. Bernard, <i>De Diligendo Deo</i>,
+cap. x. The same image is found in St. Macarius and
+many other writers.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_86" href="#fr_86">[86]</a><i>The Sparkling Stone</i>, cap. xii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_87" href="#fr_87">[87]</a><i>The Sparkling Stone</i>, cap. x.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_88" href="#fr_88">[88]</a><i>The Sparkling Stone</i>, cap. x.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_89" href="#fr_89">[89]</a><i>Op. cit.</i> cap. xii.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_90" href="#fr_90">[90]</a><i>Op. cit.</i> cap. xiii.; cp. also <i>The Seven Degrees</i>, cap. xiv.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_91" href="#fr_91">[91]</a><i>The Sparkling Stone</i>, cap. xiv.
+</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_92" href="#fr_92">[92]</a><i>The Spiritual Marriage</i>, lib. iii. cap. v.
+</div>
+</div>
+<p class="tbcenter"><span class="small"><i>Printed by</i>
+<br /><span class="sc">Morrison &amp; Gibb Limited</span>
+<br /><i>Edinburgh</i></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ruysbroeck, by Evelyn Underhill
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diff --git a/37870.txt b/37870.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ruysbroeck, by Evelyn Underhill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Ruysbroeck
+
+Author: Evelyn Underhill
+
+Release Date: October 27, 2011 [EBook #37870]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RUYSBROECK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Roger Frank and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            THE QUEST SERIES
+
+
+                        Edited by G. R. S. MEAD,
+                         EDITOR OF 'THE QUEST.'
+
+                     _Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. net each._
+
+                         FIRST LIST OF VOLUMES.
+
+PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND SURVIVAL. By James H. Hyslop, Ph.D., LL.D.,
+        Secretary of Psychical Research Society of America.
+
+THE QUEST OF THE HOLY GRAIL. By Jessie L. Weston, Author of 'The Legend
+        of Sir Perceval.'
+
+JEWISH MYSTICISM. By J. Abelson, M.A., D.Lit, Principal of Aria College,
+        Portsmouth.
+
+THE MYSTICS OF ISLAM. By Reynold A. Nicholson, M.A., Litt.D, LL.D.,
+        Lecturer on Persian, Cambridge University.
+
+BUDDHIST PSYCHOLOGY. By C. A. F. Rhys Davids, M.A., Lecturer on Indian
+        Philosophy, Manchester University.
+
+RUYSBROECK. By Evelyn Underhill, Author of 'Mysticism,' 'The Mystic Way,'
+        etc.
+
+THE SIDEREAL RELIGION OF THE ANCIENTS. By Robert Eisler, Ph.D., Author of
+        Weltenmantel und Himmelszelt.'    [_In the Press._
+
+                     London: G. BELL AND SONS LTD.
+
+
+
+
+                               RUYSBROECK
+
+
+                                   BY
+                            EVELYN UNDERHILL
+                               AUTHOR OF
+               'MYSTICISM,' 'THE MYSTIC WAY,' ETC., ETC.
+
+
+                                 LONDON
+                         G. BELL AND SONS LTD.
+                                  1915
+
+
+                                  FOR
+                                 JESSIE
+                        TO WHOM IT OWES SO MUCH
+                 THIS LITTLE TRIBUTE TO A MUTUAL FRIEND
+
+
+
+
+                             EDITOR'S NOTE
+
+
+A glance at the excellent Bibliographical Note at the end of the volume
+will reveal the surprising paucity of literature on Ruysbroeck in this
+country. A single version from the original of one short treatise,
+published in the present year, is all that we possess of direct
+translation; even in versions from translation there is only one treatise
+represented; add to this one or two selections of the same nature, and
+the full tale is told. We are equally poorly off for studies of the life
+and doctrine of the great Flemish contemplative of the fourteenth
+century. And yet Jan van Ruusbroec is thought, by no few competent
+judges, to be the greatest of all the mediaeval Catholic mystics; and,
+indeed, it is difficult to point to his superior. Miss Evelyn Underhill
+is, therefore, doing lovers not only of Catholic mysticism, but also of
+mysticism in general, a very real service by her monograph, which deals
+more satisfactorily than any existing work in English with the life and
+teachings of one of the most spiritual minds in Christendom. Her book is
+not simply a painstaking summary of the more patent generalities of the
+subject, but rather a deeply sympathetic entering into the mind of
+Ruysbroeck, and that, too, with no common insight.
+
+
+
+
+                             PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+I owe to the great kindness of my friend, Mrs. Theodore Beck, the
+translation of several passages from Ruysbroeck's _Sparkling Stone_ given
+in the present work; and in quoting from _The Twelve Beguines_ have
+often, though not always, availed myself of the recently published
+version by Mr. John Francis. For all other renderings I alone am
+responsible.
+
+                                                               E. U.
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAP.                                                               PAGE
+     I. Ruysbroeck the Man                                               1
+    II. His Works                                                       36
+   III. His Doctrine of God                                             52
+    IV. His Doctrine of Man                                             66
+     V. The Active Life                                                 94
+    VI. The Interior Life: Illumination and Destitution                115
+   VII. The Interior Life: Union and Contemplation                     136
+  VIII. The Superessential Life                                        164
+
+        Bibliographical Note                                           187
+
+
+
+
+      Luce divina sopra me s' appunta,
+      penetrando per questa ond' io m' inventro;
+  La cui virtu, col mio veder conguinta,
+      mi leva sopra me tanto, ch' io veggio
+      la somma essenza della quale e munta.
+  Quinci vien l' allegrezza, ond' io fiammeggio;
+      perche alla vista mia, quant' ella e chiara,
+      la chiarita della fiamma pareggio.
+
+                                                       Par. xxi. 83.
+
+  [Divine Light doth focus itself upon me, piercing through that wherein
+  I am enclosed; the power of which, united with my sight, so greatly
+  lifts me up above myself that I see the Supreme Essence where from it
+  is drawn. Thence comes the joy wherewith I flame; for to my vision,
+  even as it is clear, I make the clearness of the flame respond.]
+
+
+
+
+                               RUYSBROECK
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I
+                           RUYSBROECK THE MAN
+
+
+  The tree Igdrasil, which has its head in heaven and its roots in hell
+  (the lower parts of the earth), is the image of the true man.... In
+  proportion to the divine heights to which it ascends must be the
+  obscure depths in which the tree is rooted, and from which it draws the
+  mystic sap of its spiritual life.
+
+                                                     Coventry Patmore.
+
+In the history of the spiritual adventures of man, we find at intervals
+certain great mystics, who appear to gather up and fuse together in the
+crucible of the heart the diverse tendencies of those who have preceded
+them, and, adding to these elements the tincture of their own rich
+experience, give to us an intensely personal, yet universal, vision of
+God and man. These are constructive spirits, whose creations in the
+spiritual sphere sum up and represent the best achievement of a whole
+epoch; as in other spheres the great artist, musician, or poet--always
+the child of tradition as well as of inspiration--may do.
+
+John Ruysbroeck is such a mystic as this. His career, which covers the
+greater part of the fourteenth century--that golden age of Christian
+mysticism--seems to exhibit within the circle of a single personality,
+and carry up to a higher term than ever before, all the best attainments
+of the Middle Ages in the realm of Eternal Life. Rooted firmly in
+history, faithful to the teachings of the great Catholic mystics of the
+primitive and mediaeval times, Ruysbroeck does not merely transmit, but
+transfigures, their principles: making from the salt, sulphur, and
+mercury of their vision, reason, and love, a new and living jewel--or, in
+his own words, a 'sparkling stone'--which reflects the actual radiance of
+the Uncreated Light. Absorbing from the rich soil of the Middle Ages all
+the intellectual nourishment which he needs, dependent too, as all real
+greatness is, on the human environment in which he grows--that mysterious
+interaction and inter-penetration of personalities without which human
+consciousness can never develop its full powers--he towers up from the
+social and intellectual circumstances that conditioned him: a living,
+growing, unique and creative individual, yet truly a part of the earth
+from which he springs.
+
+To speak of Ruysbroeck, as some enthusiastic biographers have done, as an
+isolated spiritual phenomenon totally unrelated to the life of his time,
+an 'ignorant monk' whose profound knowledge of reality is entirely the
+result of personal inspiration and independent of human history, is to
+misunderstand his greatness. The 'ignorant monk' was bound by close links
+to the religious life of his day. He was no spiritual individualist; but
+the humble, obedient child of an institution, the loyal member of a
+Society. He tells us again and again that his spiritual powers were
+nourished by the sacramental life of the Catholic Church. From the
+theologians of that Church came the intellectual framework in which his
+sublime intuitions were expressed. All that he does--though he does this
+to a degree perhaps unique in Christian history--is to carry out into
+action, completely actualise in his own experience, the high vision of
+the soul's relation to Divine Reality by which that Church is possessed.
+The central Christian doctrine of Divine Fatherhood, and of the soul's
+'power to become the son of God': it is this, raised to the _n_th degree
+of intensity, experienced in all its depth and fullness, and demonstrated
+with the exactitude of a mathematician and the passion of a poet, which
+Ruysbroeck gives us. Thus tradition and authority, no less than the
+abundant inspiration, the direct ecstatic knowledge of God to which his
+writings bear witness, have their part in his achievement. His
+theological culture was wide and deep. Not only the Scriptures and the
+Liturgy, but St. Augustine, Dionysius the Areopagite, Richard of St.
+Victor, St. Bernard, St. Bonaventura, St. Thomas Aquinas, and many others
+have stimulated and controlled his thought; interpreting to him his
+ineffable adventures, and providing him with vessels in which the fruit
+of those adventures could be communicated to other men.
+
+Nor is Catholic tradition the only medium through which human life has
+exercised a formative influence upon Ruysbroeck's genius. His worldly
+circumstances, his place within and reaction to the temporal order, the
+temper of those souls amongst which he grew--these too are of vital
+importance in relation to his mystical achievements. To study the
+interior adventures and formal teachings of a mystic without reference to
+the general trend and special accidents of his outer life, is to neglect
+our best chance of understanding the nature and sources of his vision of
+truth. The angle from which that vision is perceived, the content of the
+mind which comes to it, above all the concrete activities which it
+induces in the growing, moving, supple self: these are primary _data_
+which we should never ignore. Action is of the very essence of human
+reality. Where the inner life is genuine and strong the outer life will
+reflect, however faintly, the curve on which it moves; for human
+consciousness is a unit, capable of reacting to and synthesising two
+orders, not an unresolved dualism--as it were, an angel and an
+animal--condemned to lifelong battle within a narrow cage.
+
+Therefore we begin our study of Ruysbroeck the mystic by the study of
+Ruysbroeck the man: the circumstances of his life and environment, so far
+as we can find them out. For the facts of this life our chief authority
+will be the Augustinian Canon Pomerius, who was Prior and chronicler of
+Ruysbroeck's own community of Groenendael. Born in 1382, a year after
+Ruysbroeck's death, and entering Groenendael early in the fifteenth
+century, he knew and talked with at least two of the great mystic's
+disciples, John of Hoelaere and John of Scoonhoven. His life of
+Ruysbroeck and history of the foundation of the monastery was finished
+before 1420; that is to say, within the lifetime of the generation which
+succeeded the first founders of the house.[1] It represents the careful
+gathering up, sifting, and arranging of all that was remembered and
+believed by the community--still retaining several members who had known
+him in the flesh--of the facts of Ruysbroeck's character and career.
+
+Pomerius was no wild romancer, but a reasonably careful as well as a
+genuinely enthusiastic monastic chronicler. Moderation is hardly the
+outstanding virtue of such home-made lives of monastic founders. They are
+inevitably composed in surroundings where any criticism of their subject
+or scepticism as to his supernatural peculiarities is looked upon as a
+crime; where every incident has been fitted with a halo, and the
+unexplained is indistinguishable from the miraculous. Nevertheless the
+picture drawn by Pomerius--exaggerated though it be in certain
+respects--is a human picture; possessed of distinct characteristics, some
+natural and charming, some deeply impressive. It is completed by a second
+documentary source: the little sketch by Ruysbroeck's intimate friend,
+Gerard Naghel, Prior of the Carthusian monastery of Herines near
+Groenendael, which forms the prologue to our most complete MS. collection
+of his writings.
+
+Ruysbroeck's life, as it is shown to us by Pomerius and Gerard, falls
+into three main divisions, three stages of ascent: the natural active
+life of boyhood; the contemplative, disciplined career of his middle
+period; the superessential life of supreme union which governed his
+existence at Groenendael. This course, which he trod in the temporal
+order, seems like the rough sketch of that other course trodden by the
+advancing soul within the eternal order--the Threefold Life of man which
+he describes to us in _The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage_ and other
+of his works.
+
+Now the details of that career are these: John Ruysbroeck was born in
+1293 at the little village of Ruysbroeck or Ruusbroec, between Brussels
+and Hal, from which he takes his name. We know nothing of his father; but
+his mother is described as a good and pious woman, devoted to the
+upbringing of her son--a hard task, and one that was soon proved to be
+beyond her. The child Ruysbroeck was strong-willed, adventurous,
+insubordinate; already showing signs of that abounding vitality, that
+strange restlessness and need of expansion which children of genius so
+often exhibit. At eleven years of age he ran away from home, and found
+his way to Brussels; where his uncle, John Hinckaert, was a Canon of the
+Cathedral of St. Gudule. Pomerius assures us that this escapade, which
+would have seemed a mere naughtiness in normal little boys, was in fact a
+proof of coming sanctity; that it was not the attraction of the city but
+a precocious instinct for the religious life--the first crude stirrings
+of the love of God--which set this child upon the road. Such a claim is
+natural to the hagiographer; yet there lies behind it a certain truth.
+The little John may or may not have dreamed of being a priest; he did
+already dream of a greater, more enticing life beyond the barriers of use
+and wont. Though he knew it not, the vision of a spiritual city called
+him. Already the primal need of his nature was asserting itself--the
+demand, felt long before it was understood, for something beyond the
+comfortable world of appearance--and this demand crystallised into a
+concrete act. In the sturdy courage which faced the unknown, the
+practical temper which translated dream into action, we see already the
+germ of those qualities which afterwards gave to the great contemplative
+power to climb up to the 'supreme summits of the inner life' and face the
+awful realities of God.
+
+Such adventures are not rare in the childhood of the mystics. Always of a
+romantic temperament, endowed too with an abounding vitality, the craving
+for some dimly-guessed and wonderful experience often shows itself early
+in them; as the passion for music, colour or poetry is sometimes seen in
+embryo in artists of another type. The impact of Reality seems to be felt
+by such spirits in earliest childhood. Born susceptible in a special
+degree to the messages which pour in on man from the Transcendent, they
+move from the first in a different universe from that of other boys and
+girls; subject to experiences which they do not understand, full of
+dreams which they are unable to explain, and often impelled to strange
+actions, extremely disconcerting to the ordinary guardians of youth. Thus
+the little Catherine of Siena, six years old, already lived in a world
+which was peopled with saints and angels; and ruled her small life by the
+visions which she had seen. Thus the baby Teresa, mysteriously attracted
+by sacrifice, as other children are attracted by games and toys, set out
+to look for 'the Moors and martyrdom.' So too the instinct for travel,
+for the remote and unknown, often shows itself early in these wayfarers
+of the spirit; whose destiny it is to achieve a more extended life in the
+interests of the race, to find and feel that Infinite Reality which alone
+can satisfy the heart of man. Thus in their early years Francis, Ignatius
+and many others were restless, turbulent, eager for adventure and change.
+
+This first adventure brought the boy Ruysbroeck to a home so perfectly
+fitted to his needs, that it might seem as though some secret instinct,
+some overshadowing love, had indeed guided his steps. His uncle, John
+Hinckaert, at this time about forty years of age, had lately been
+converted--it is said by a powerful sermon--from the comfortable and
+easy-going life of a prosperous ecclesiastic to the austere quest of
+spiritual perfection. He had distributed his wealth, given up all
+self-indulgence, and now, with another and younger Canon of the Cathedral
+named Francis van Coudenberg, lived in simplest, poorest style a
+dedicated life of self-denial, charity and prayer. He received his
+runaway nephew willingly. Perhaps he saw in this strange and eager child,
+suddenly flung upon his charity, an opportunity for repairing some at
+least amongst the omissions of his past--that terrible wreck of wasted
+years which torments the memory of those who are converted in middle
+life. His love and remorse might spend themselves on this boy. He might
+make of him perhaps all that he now longed to be, but could never wholly
+achieve: a perfect servant of the Eternal Goodness, young, vigorous,
+ardent, completely responsive to the touch of God.
+
+Ruysbroeck, then, found a home soaked in love, governed by faith,
+renunciation, humility; a forcing-house of the spiritual life. In the
+persons of these two grown men, who had given up all outward things for
+the sake of spiritual realities, he was brought face to face--and this in
+his most impressionable years--with the hard facts, the concrete
+sacrifices, the heroic life of deliberate mortification, which underlay
+the lovely haunting vision, the revelation of the Divine beauty and love
+that had possessed him. No lesson is of higher value to the natural
+mystic than this. The lovers of Ruysbroeck should not forget how much
+they owe to the men who received, loved, influenced, educated the
+brilliant wayward and impressionable child. His attainment is theirs. His
+mysticism is rooted in their asceticism; a flower directly dependent for
+its perfection on that favouring soil. Though his achievement, like that
+of all men of genius, is individual, and transcends the circumstances and
+personalities which surround it; still, from those circumstances and
+personalities it takes its colour. It represents far more than a personal
+and solitary experience. Behind it lies the little house in Brussels, the
+supernatural atmosphere which filled it, and the fostering care of the
+two men whose life of external and deliberate poverty only made more
+plain the richness of the spirits who could choose, and remain constant
+to, this career of detachment and love.
+
+The personal influence of Hinckaert and Coudenberg, the moral disciplines
+and perpetual self-denials of the life which he shared with them, formed
+the heart of Ruysbroeck's education; helping to build up that manly and
+sturdy character which gave its special temper to his mystical outlook.
+Like so many children destined to greatness, he was hard to educate in
+the ordinary sense; uninterested in general knowledge, impatient of
+scholastic drudgery. Nothing which did not minister to his innate passion
+for ultimates had any attraction for him. He was taught grammar with
+difficulty; but on the other hand his astonishing aptitude for religious
+ideas, even of the most subtle kind, his passionate clear vision of
+spiritual things, was already so highly developed as to attract general
+attention; and his writings are sufficient witness to the width and depth
+of his theological reading. With such tastes and powers as these, and
+brought up in such a household, governed by religious enthusiasms and
+under the very shadow of the Cathedral walls, it was natural that he
+should wish to become a priest; and in 1317 he was ordained and given,
+through the influence of his uncle, a prebend in St. Gudule.
+
+Now a great mystic is the product not merely of an untamed genius for the
+Transcendent, but of a moral discipline, an interior education, of the
+most strenuous kind. All the varied powers and tendencies of a nature
+which is necessarily strong and passionate, must be harnessed, made
+subservient to this one central interest. The instinctive egotism of the
+natural man--never more insidious than when set upon spiritual
+things--must be eradicated. So, behind these few outward events of
+Ruysbroeck's adolescence, we must discern another growth; a perpetual
+interior travail, a perpetual slow character-building always going
+forward in him, as his whole personality is moulded into that conformity
+to the vision seen which prepares the way of union, and marks off the
+mystical saint from the mere adept of transcendental things. We know from
+his writings how large a part such moral purifications, such interior
+adjustments, played in his concept of the spiritual life; and the
+intimacy with which he describes each phase in the battle of love, each
+step of the spiritual ladder, the long process of preparation in which
+the soul adorns herself for the 'spiritual marriage,' guarantees to us
+that he has himself trodden the path which he maps out. That path goes
+the whole way from the first impulse of 'goodwill,' of glad acquiescence
+in the universal purpose, through the taming of the proud will to
+humility and suppleness, and of the insurgent heart to gentleness,
+kindness, and peace, to that last state of perfect charity in which the
+whole spirit of man is one will and one love with God.
+
+Though his biographers have left us little material for a reconstruction
+of his inner development, we may surely infer something of the course
+which it followed from the vividly realistic descriptions in _The Kingdom
+of Lovers_ and _The Spiritual Marriage_. Personal experience underlies
+the wonderful account of the ascent of the Spiritual Sun in the heavens
+of consciousness; the rapture, wildness and joy, the 'fever of love'
+which fulfils the man who feels its light and heat. Experience, too,
+dictates these profound passages which deal with the terrible spiritual
+reaction when the Sun declines in the heavens, and man feels cold, dead,
+and abandoned of God. Through these phases, at least, Ruysbroeck had
+surely passed before his great books came to be written.
+
+One or two small indications there are which show us his progress on the
+mystic way, the development in him of those secondary psychic characters
+peculiar to the mystical type. It seems that by the time of his
+ordination that tendency to vision which often appears in the earliest
+youth of natural mystics, was already established in him. Deeply
+impressed by the sacramental side of Catholicism, and finding in it
+throughout his life a true means of contact with the Unseen, the
+priesthood was conceived by him as bringing with it a veritable access of
+grace; fresh power poured in on him from the Transcendent, an increase of
+strength wherewith to help the souls of other men. This belief took, in
+his meditations, a concrete and positive form. Again and again he saw in
+dramatic vision the soul specially dear to him, specially dependent on
+him--that of his mother, who had lately died in the Brussels
+Beguinage--demanding how long she must wait till her son's ordination
+made his prayers effectual for her release from Purgatory. At the moment
+in which he finished saying his first Mass, this vision returned to him;
+and he saw his mother's spirit, delivered from Purgatory by the power of
+the sacrifice which he had offered, entering into Heaven--an experience
+originating in, and giving sharp dramatic expression to, that sense of
+new and sacred powers now conferred on him, which may well at such a
+moment have flooded the consciousness of the young priest. This story was
+repeated to Pomerius by those who had heard it from Ruysbroeck himself;
+for "he often told it to the brothers."
+
+For twenty-six years--that is to say, until he was fifty years of
+age--Ruysbroeck lived in Brussels the industrious and inconspicuous life
+of a secular priest. It was not the solitude of the forest, but the
+normal, active existence of a cathedral chaplain in a busy capital city
+which controlled his development during that long period, stretching from
+the very beginnings of manhood to the end of middle age; and it was in
+fact during these years, and in the midst of incessant distractions, that
+he passed through the great oscillations of consciousness which mark the
+mystic way. It is probable that when at last he left Brussels for the
+forest, these oscillations were over, equilibrium was achieved; he had
+climbed 'to the summits of the mount of contemplation.' It was on those
+summits that he loved to dwell, absorbed in loving communion with Divine
+Reality; but his career fulfilled that ideal of a synthesis of work and
+contemplation, an acceptance and remaking of the whole of life, which he
+perpetually puts before us as the essential characteristic of a true
+spirituality. No mystic has ever been more free from the vice of
+other-worldliness, or has practised more thoroughly and more unselfishly
+the primary duty of active charity towards men which is laid upon the
+God-possessed.
+
+The simple and devoted life of the little family of three went on year by
+year undisturbed; though one at least was passing through those profound
+interior changes and adventures which he has described to us as governing
+the evolution of the soul, from the state of the 'faithful servant' to
+the transfigured existence of the 'God-seeing man.' Ruysbroeck grew up to
+be a simple, dreamy, very silent and totally unimpressive person, who,
+'going about the streets of Brussels with his mind lifted up into God,'
+seemed a nobody to those who did not know him. Yet not only a spiritual
+life of unequalled richness, intimacy and splendour, but a penetrating
+intellect, a fearless heart, deep knowledge of human nature, remarkable
+powers of expression, lay behind that meek and unattractive exterior. As
+Paul's twelve years of quiet and subordinate work in Antioch prepared the
+way of his missionary career; so during this long period of service, the
+silent growth of character, the steady development of his mystical
+powers, had gone forward in Ruysbroeck. When circumstances called them
+into play he was found to be possessed of an unsuspected passion,
+strength and courage, a power of dealing with outward circumstances,
+which was directly dependent on his inner life of contemplation and
+prayer.
+
+The event into which the tendencies of this stage of his development
+crystallised, is one which seems perhaps inconsistent with the common
+idea of the mystical temperament, with its supposed concentration on the
+Eternal, its indifference to temporal affairs. As his childhood was
+marked by an exhibition of adventurous love, so his manhood was marked by
+an exhibition of militant love; of that strength and sternness, that
+passion for the true, which--no less than humility, gentleness, peace--is
+an integral part of that paradoxical thing, the Christian character.
+
+The fourteenth century, like all great spiritual periods, was a century
+fruitful in mystical heresies as well as in mystical saints. In
+particular, the extravagant pantheism preached by the Brethren of the
+Free Spirit had become widely diffused in Flanders, and was responsible
+for much bad morality as well as bad theology; those on whom the 'Spirit'
+had descended believing themselves to be already divine, and emancipated
+from obedience to all human codes of conduct. Soon after Ruysbroeck came
+as a boy to Brussels, a woman named Bloemardinne placed herself at the
+head of this sect, and gradually gained extraordinary influence. She
+claimed supernatural and prophetic powers, was said to be accompanied by
+two Seraphim whenever she went to the altar to receive Holy Communion,
+and preached a degraded eroticism under the title of 'Seraphic love,'
+together with a quietism of the most exaggerated and soul-destroying
+type. All the dangers and follies of a false mysticism, dissociated from
+the controlling influence of tradition and the essential virtue of
+humility, were exhibited in her. Against this powerful woman, then at the
+height of her fame, Ruysbroeck declared war; and prosecuted his campaign
+with a violence and courage which must have been startling to those who
+had regarded him only as a shy, pious, rather negligible young man. The
+pamphlets which he wrote against her are lost; but the passionate
+denunciations of pantheism and quietism scattered through his later works
+no doubt have their origin in this controversy, and represent the angle
+from which his attacks were made.
+
+Pantheists, he says in _The Book of Truth_, are "a fruit of hell, the
+more dangerous because they counterfeit the true fruit of the Spirit of
+God." Far from possessing that deep humility which is the soul's
+inevitable reaction to the revelation of the Infinite, they are full of
+pride and self-satisfaction. They claim that their imaginary identity
+with the Essence of God emancipates them from all need of effort, all
+practice of virtue, and leaves them free to indulge those inclinations of
+the flesh which the 'Spirit' suggests. They "believe themselves sunk in
+inward peace; but as a matter of fact they are deep-drowned in error."[2]
+
+Against all this the stern, virile, ardent spirituality of Ruysbroeck
+opposed itself with its whole power. Especially did he hate and condemn
+the laziness and egotism of the quietistic doctrine of contemplation: the
+ideal of spiritual immobility which it set up. That 'love cannot be lazy'
+is a cardinal truth for all real mystics. Again and again it appears in
+their works. Even that profound repose in which they have fruition of
+God, is but the accompaniment or preliminary of work of the most
+strenuous kind, and keeps at full stretch the soul which truly tastes it;
+and this supernatural state is as far above that self-induced quietude of
+'natural repose'--"consisting in nothing but an idleness and interior
+vacancy, to which they are inclined by nature and habit"--in which the
+quietists love to immerse themselves, as God is above His creatures.
+
+Here is the distinction, always needed and constantly ignored, between
+that veritable fruition of Eternal Life which results from the
+interaction of will and grace, and demands of the soul the highest
+intensity and most active love, and that colourable imitation of it which
+is produced by a psychic trick, and is independent alike of the human
+effort and the divine gift. Ruysbroeck in fighting the 'Free Spirit' was
+fighting the battle of true mysticism against its most dangerous and
+persistent enemy,--mysticality.
+
+His attack upon Bloemardinne is the one outstanding incident in the long
+Brussels period which has been preserved to us. The next great outward
+movement in his steadily evolving life did not happen until the year
+1343, when he was fifty years of age. It was then that the three
+companions decided to leave Brussels, and live together in some remote
+country place. They had long felt a growing distaste for the noisy and
+distracting life of the city; a growing dissatisfaction with the
+spiritual apathy and low level of religious observance at the Cathedral
+of St. Gudule; the need of surroundings in which they might devote
+themselves with total concentration to the contemplative life. Hinckaert
+and Coudenberg were now old men; Ruysbroeck was advanced in middle age.
+The rhythm of existence, which had driven him as a child from country to
+town, and harnessed him during long years to the service of his
+fellow-men, now drew him back again to the quiet spaces where he might be
+alone with God. He was approaching those heights of experience from which
+his greatest mystical works proceed; and it was in obedience to a true
+instinct that he went away to the silent places of the forest--as Anthony
+to the solitude of the desert, Francis to the 'holy mountain' of La
+Verna--that, undistracted by the many whom he had served so faithfully,
+he might open his whole consciousness to the inflow of the One, and
+receive in its perfection the message which it was his duty to transmit
+to the world, He went, says Pomerius, "not that he might hide his light;
+but that he might tend it better and make it shine more brightly."
+
+By the influence of Coudenberg, John III., Duke of Brabant, gave to the
+three friends the old hermitage of Groenendael, or the Green Valley, in
+the forest of Soignes, near Brussels. They entered into possession on the
+Wednesday of Easter week, 1343; and for five years lived there, as they
+had lived in the little house in Brussels, with no other rule save their
+own passion for perfection. But perpetual invasions from the outer world,
+not only of penitents and would-be disciples--for their reputation for
+sanctity grew quickly--but of huntsmen in the forest and pleasure parties
+from the town, who demanded and expected hospitality, soon forced them to
+adopt some definite attitude towards the question of enclosure. It is
+said that Ruysbroeck begged for an entire seclusion; but Coudenberg
+insisted that this was contrary to the law of charity, and that some at
+least of those who sought them must be received. In addition to these
+practical difficulties, the Prior of the Abbey of St. Victor at Paris had
+addressed to them strong remonstrances, on account of the absence of rule
+in their life and the fact that they had not even adopted a religious
+habit; a proceeding which in his opinion savoured rather of the
+ill-regulated doings of the heretical sects, than of the decorum proper
+to good Catholics. As a result of these various considerations, the
+simple and informal existence of the little family was re-modelled in
+conformity with the rule of the Augustinian Canons, and the Priory of
+Groenendael was formally created. Coudenberg became its provost, and
+Ruysbroeck, who had refused the higher office, was made prior; but
+Hinckaert, now a very old man in feeble health, refused to burden the
+young community with a member who might be a drag upon it and could not
+keep the full rigour of the rule. In a spirit of renunciation which
+surely touches the heroic, he severed himself from his lifelong friend
+and his adopted son, and went away to a little cell in the forest, where
+he lived alone until his death.
+
+The story of the foundation and growth of the Priory of Groenendael, the
+saintly personalities which it nourished, is not for this place; except
+in so far as it affects our main interest, the story of Ruysbroeck's
+soul. Under the influences of the forest, of the silent and regular life,
+those supreme contemplative powers which belong to the 'Superessential
+Life' of Unity now developed in him with great rapidity. It is possible,
+as we shall see, that some at least of his mystical writings may date
+from his Brussels period; and we know that at the close of this period
+his reputation as an 'illuminated man' was already made. Nevertheless it
+seems safe to say that the bulk of his works, as we now possess them,
+represent him as he was during the last thirty years of his life, rather
+than during his earlier and more active career; and that the intense
+certitude, the wide deep vision of the Infinite which distinguishes them,
+are the fruits of those long hours of profound absorption in God for
+which his new life found place. In the silence of the woods he was able
+to discern each subtle accent of that Voice which "is heard without
+utterance, and without the sound of words speaks all truth."
+
+Like so many of the greatest mystics, Ruysbroeck, drawing nearer to
+Divine Reality, drew nearer to nature too; conforming to his own ideal of
+the contemplative, who, having been raised to the simple vision of God
+Transcendent, returns to find His image reflected by all life. Many
+passages in his writings show the closeness and sympathy of his
+observation of natural things: the vivid description in _The Spiritual
+Marriage_ of the spring, summer and autumn of the fruitful soul, the
+constant insistence on the phenomena of growth, the lessons drawn from
+the habits of ants and bees, the comparison of the surrendered soul to
+the sunflower, 'one of nature's most wonderful works'; the three types of
+Christians, compared with birds who can fly but prefer hopping about the
+earth, birds who swim far on the waters of grace, and birds who love only
+to soar high in the heavens. For the free, exultant life of birds he felt
+indeed a special sympathy and love; and 'many-feathered' is the best name
+that he can find for the soul of the contemplative ascending to the glad
+vision of God.
+
+It is probably a true tradition which represents him as having written
+his greatest and most inspired pages sitting under a favourite tree in
+the depths of the woods. When the 'Spirit' came on him, as it often did
+with a startling suddenness, he would go away into the forest carrying
+his tablet and stylus. There, given over to an ecstasy of
+composition--which seems often to have approached the limits of automatic
+writing, as in St. Teresa, Boehme, Blake and other mystics--he would
+write that which was given to him, without addition or omission; breaking
+off even in the middle of a sentence when the 'Spirit' abruptly departed,
+and resuming at the same point, though sometimes after an interval which
+lasted several weeks, when it returned. In his last years, when eyesight
+failed him, he would allow a younger brother to go with him into the
+woods, and there to take down from dictation the fruits of those
+meditations in which he 'saw without sight'; as the illiterate Catherine
+of Siena dictated in ecstasy the text of her Divine Dialogue.
+
+Two witnesses have preserved Ruysbroeck's solemn affirmation, given first
+to his disciple Gerard Groot 'in great gentleness and humility,' and
+repeated again upon his death-bed in the presence of the whole community,
+that every word of his writings was thus composed under the immediate
+domination of an inspiring power; that 'secondary personality of a
+superior type,' in touch with levels of reality beyond the span of the
+surface consciousness, which governs the activities of the great mystics
+in their last phases of development. These books are not the fruit of
+conscious thought, but 'God-sent truths,' poured out from a heart
+immersed in that Divine Abyss of which he tries to tell.
+
+That a saint must needs be a visionary, is a conviction deeply implanted
+in the mind of the mediaeval hagiographer; who always ascribes to these
+incidents an importance which the saints themselves are the first to
+deny. Pomerius thus attributes to Ruysbroeck not only those profound and
+direct experiences of Divine Reality to which his works bear witness; but
+also numerous visions of a conventional and anthropomorphic type, in
+which he spoke with Christ, the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, ecstasies
+which fell upon him when saying Mass--and the passionate devotion to the
+Eucharist which his writings express makes these at least probable--a
+certain faculty of clairvoyance, and a prophetic knowledge of his own
+death. Further, it is said that once, being missed from the priory, he
+was found after long search by one of the brothers he loved best, sitting
+under his favourite tree, rapt in ecstasy and surrounded by an _aura_ of
+radiant light; as the discerning eyes of those who loved them have seen
+St. Francis, St. Teresa, and other contemplatives transfigured and made
+shining by the intensity of their spiritual life. I need not point out
+that the fact that these things are common form in the lives of the
+mystics, does not necessarily discredit them; though in any case their
+interest is less of a mystical than of a psychological kind.
+
+Not less significant, and to us perhaps more winning, is that side of
+Ruysbroeck's personality which was turned towards the world of men. In
+his own person he fulfilled that twofold duty of the deified soul which
+he has described to us: the in-breathing of the Love of God, the
+out-breathing of that same radiant charity towards the race. "To give and
+receive, both at once, is the essence of union," he says; and his whole
+career is an illustration of these words. He took his life from the
+Transcendent; he was a focus of distribution, which gave out that joyous
+life again to other souls. His retreat at Groenendael, his ecstasies of
+composition, never kept him from those who wanted his help and advice. In
+his highest ascents towards Divine Love, the rich complexities of human
+love went with him. Other men always meant much to Ruysbroeck. He had a
+genius for friendship, and gave himself without stint to his friends; and
+those who knew him said that none ever went to him for consolation
+without returning with gladness in their hearts. There are many tales in
+the _Vita_ of his power over and intuitive understanding of other minds;
+of conversions effected, motives unveiled and clouds dispelled. His great
+friend, Gerard Naghel, the Carthusian prior--at whose desire he wrote one
+of the most beautiful of his shorter works, _The Book of Supreme
+Truth_--has left a vivid little account of the impression which his
+personality created: "his peaceful and joyful countenance, his humble
+good-humoured speech." Ruysbroeck spent three days in Gerard's monastery,
+in order to explain some difficult passages in his writings, "and these
+days were too short, for no one could speak to him or see him without
+being the better for it."
+
+By this we may put the description of Pomerius, founded upon the
+reminiscences of Ruysbroeck's surviving friends. "The grace of God shone
+in his face; and also in his modest speech, his kindly deeds, his humble
+manners, and in the way that every action of his life exhibited
+uprightness and radiant purity. He lived soberly, neglected his dress,
+and was patient in all things and with all people."
+
+Plainly the great contemplative who had seemed in Brussels a 'negligible
+man,' kept to the end a great simplicity of aspect; closely approximating
+to his own ideal of the 'really humble man, without any pose or
+pretence,' as described in _The Spiritual Marriage_. That profound
+self-immersion in God which was the source of his power, manifested
+itself in daily life under the least impressive forms; ever seeking
+embodiment in little concrete acts of love and service, "ministering, in
+the world without, to all who need, in love and mercy."[3] We see him in
+his Franciscan love of living things, his deep sense of kinship with all
+the little children of God, 'going to the help of the animals in all
+their needs'; thrown into a torment of distress by the brothers who
+suggested to him that during a hard winter the little birds of the forest
+might die, and at once making generous and successful arrangements for
+their entertainment. We see him 'giving Mary and Martha _rendez-vous_ in
+his heart'; working in the garden of the community, trying hard to be
+useful, wheeling barrow-loads of manure, and emerging from profound
+meditation on the Infinite to pull up young vegetables under the
+impression that they were weeds. He made, in fact, valiant efforts to
+achieve that perfect synthesis of action and contemplation 'ever abiding
+in the simplicity of the Spirit, and perpetually flowing forth in
+abundant acts of love towards heaven and earth,' which he regarded as the
+proper goal of human growth--efforts constantly thwarted by his own
+growing concentration on the Transcendent, the ease and frequency with
+which his consciousness now withdrew from the world of the senses to
+immerse itself in Spiritual Reality. In theory there was for him no
+cleavage between the two: Being and Becoming, the Temporal and the
+Eternal, were but two moods within the mind of God, and in the
+superessential life of perfect union these completing opposites should
+merge in one.
+
+A life which shall find place for the activities of the lover, the
+servant, and the apostle, is the goal towards which the great mystics
+seem to move. We have seen how the homely life of the priory gave to
+Ruysbroeck the opportunity of service, how the silence of the forest
+fostered and supported his secret life of love. As the years passed, the
+third side of his nature, the apostolic passion which had found during
+his long Brussels period ample scope for its activities, once more came
+into prominence. He was sought out by numbers of would-be disciples, not
+only from Belgium itself, but from Holland, Germany and France; and
+became a fountainhead of new life, the father of many spiritual children.
+The tradition which places among these disciples the great Dominican
+mystic Tauler is probably false; though many passages in Tauler's later
+sermons suggest that he was strongly influenced by Ruysbroeck's works,
+which had already attained a wide circulation. But Gerard Groot,
+afterwards the founder of the Brothers of the Common Life, and spiritual
+ancestor of Thomas a Kempis, went to Groenendael shortly after his
+conversion in 1374, that he might there learn the rudiments of a sane and
+robust spirituality. Ruysbroeck received him with a special joy,
+recognising in him at first sight a peculiar aptitude for the things of
+the Spirit. A deep friendship grew up between the old mystic and the
+young and vigorous convert. Gerard stayed often at the priory, and
+corresponded regularly with Ruysbroeck; whose influence it was which
+conditioned his subsequent career as a preacher, and as founder of a
+congregation as simple and unconventional in its first beginnings, as
+fruitful in its later developments, as that of Groenendael itself.
+
+The penetrating remarks upon human character scattered through his works,
+and the anecdotes of his dealings with disciples and penitents preserved
+by Pomerius, suggest that Ruysbroeck, though he might not always
+recognise the distinction between the weeds and vegetables of the garden,
+was seldom at fault in his judgment of men. An instinctive knowledge of
+the human heart, an unerring eye for insincerity, egotism,
+self-deception, is a power which nearly all the great contemplatives
+possess, and often employed with disconcerting effect. I need refer only
+to the caustic analysis of the 'false contemplative' contained in _The
+Cloud of Unknowing_, and the amusing sketches of spiritual
+self-importance in St. Teresa's letters and life. The little tale, so
+often repeated, of the somewhat self-conscious priests who came from
+Paris to consult Ruysbroeck on the state of their souls, and received
+from him only the blunt observation--apparently so careless, yet really
+plumbing human nature to its deeps--"You are as holy as you wish to be,"
+shows him possessed of this same power of stripping off the husks of
+unreality and penetrating at once to the fundamental facts of the soul's
+life: the purity and direction of its will and love.
+
+The life-giving life of union, once man has grown up to it, clarifies,
+illuminates, raises to a higher term, all aspects of the self:
+intelligence, no less than love and will. That self is now harmonised
+about its true centre, and finding 'God in all creatures and all
+creatures in God' finds them in their reality. So it is that Ruysbroeck's
+long life of growth, his long education in love, bringing him to that
+which he calls the 'God-seeing' stage, brings him to a point in which he
+finds everywhere Reality: in those rhythmic seasonal changes of the
+forest life which have inspired his wonderful doctrine of the perpetual
+rebirth and re-budding of the soul; in the hearts of men--though often
+there deep buried--above all, in the mysteries of the Christian faith.
+Speaking with an unequalled authority and intimacy of those supersensuous
+regions, those mysterious contacts of love which lie beyond and above all
+thought, he is yet firmly rooted in the concrete; for he has reconciled
+in his own experience the paradox of a Transcendent yet Immanent God.
+There is no break in the life-process which begins with the little
+country boy running away from home in quest of some vaguely felt object
+of desire, some 'better land,' and which ends with the triumphant passing
+over of the soul of the great contemplative to the perfect fruition of
+Eternal Love.
+
+Ruysbroeck died at Groenendael on December 2, 1381. He was eighty-eight
+years old; feeble in body, nearly blind, yet keeping to the last his
+clear spiritual vision, his vigour and eagerness of soul. His death, says
+Pomerius, speaking on the authority of those who had seen it, was full of
+peaceful joy, of gaiety of heart; not the falling asleep of the tired
+servant, but the leap to more abundant life of the vigorous child of the
+Infinite, at last set free. With an immense gladness he went out from
+that time-world which, in his own image, is 'the shadow of God,' to
+"those high mountains of the land of promise where no shadow is, but only
+the Sun." One of the greatest of Christian seers, one of the most manly
+and human of the mystics, it is yet as a lover, in the noblest and most
+vital sense of the word, that his personality lives for us. From first to
+last, under all its external accidents, we may trace in his life the
+activity--first instinctive, and only gradually understood--of that
+'unconquerable love,' ardent, industrious, at last utterly surrendered,
+which he describes in the wonderful tenth chapter of _The Sparkling
+Stone_, as the unique power which effects the soul's union with God. "For
+no man understandeth what love is in itself, but such are its workings:
+which giveth more than one can take, and asketh more than one can pay."
+That love it was which came out from the Infinite, as a tendency, an
+instinct endowed with liberty and life, and passed across the stage of
+history, manifested under humblest inconspicuous forms, but ever growing
+in passion and power; till at last, achieving the full stature of the
+children of God, it returned to its Source and Origin again. When we
+speak of the mysticism of Ruysbroeck, it is of this that we should think:
+of this growing spirit, this ardent, unconquerable, creative thing. A
+veritable part of our own order, therein it was transmuted from unreal to
+real existence; putting on Divine Humanity, and attaining the goal of all
+life in the interests of the race.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+                               HIS WORKS
+
+
+  In all that I have understood, felt, or written, I submit myself to the
+  judgment of the saints and of Holy Church, for I would live and die
+  Christ's servant in Christian Faith.
+
+                                            The Book of Supreme Truth.
+
+Before discussing Ruysbroeck's view of the spiritual world, his doctrine
+of the soul's development, perhaps it will be well to consider the
+traditional names, general character, and contents of his admittedly
+authentic works. Only a few of these works can be dated with precision;
+for recent criticism has shown that the so-called chronological list
+given by Pomerius[4] cannot be accepted. As to several of them, we cannot
+tell whether they were composed at Brussels or at Groenendael, at the
+beginning, middle or end of his mystical life. All were written in the
+Flemish vernacular of his own day--or, strictly speaking, in the dialect
+of Brabant--for they were practical books composed for a practical
+object, not academic treatises on mystical theology. Founded on
+experience, they deal with and incite to experience; and were addressed
+to all who felt within themselves the stirrings of a special grace, the
+call of a superhuman love, irrespective of education or position--to
+hermits, priests, nuns, and ardent souls still in the world who were
+trying to live the one real life--not merely to learned professors trying
+to elucidate the doctrines of that life. Ruysbroeck therefore belongs to
+that considerable group of mystical writers whose gift to the history of
+literature is only less important than their gift to the history of the
+spiritual world; since they have helped to break down the barrier between
+the written and the spoken word.
+
+At the moment in which poetry first forsakes the 'literary' language and
+uses the people's speech, we nearly always find a mystic thus trying to
+tell his message to the race. His enthusiasm it is which is equal to the
+task of subduing a new medium to the purposes of art. Thus at the very
+beginning of Italian poetry we find St. Francis of Assisi singing in the
+popular tongue his great Canticle of the Sun, and soon after him come the
+sublime lyrics of Jacopone da Todi. Thus German literature owes much to
+Mechthild of Magdeburg, and English to Richard Rolle--both forsaking
+Latin for the common speech of their day. Thus in India the poet Kabir,
+obedient to the same impulse, sings in Hindi rather than in Sanscrit his
+beautiful songs of Divine Love.
+
+In Ruysbroeck, as in these others, a strong poetic inspiration mingled
+with and sometimes controlled the purely mystical side of his genius.
+Often his love and enthusiasm break out and express themselves, sometimes
+in rough, irregular verse, sometimes in rhymed and rhythmic prose: a kind
+of wild spontaneous chant, which may be related to the 'ghostly song'
+that 'boiled up' within the heart of Richard Rolle. It is well-known that
+automatic composition--and we have seen that the evidence of those who
+knew him suggests the presence of an automatic element in Ruysbroeck's
+creative methods--tends to assume a rhythmic character; being indeed
+closely related to that strange chanted speech in which religious
+excitement frequently expresses itself. Released from the control of the
+surface-intellect, the deeper mind which is involved in these mysterious
+processes tends to present its intuitions and concepts in measured waves
+of words; which sometimes, as in Rolle's 'ghostly song' and perhaps too
+in Ruysbroeck's 'Song of Joy,' are actually given a musical form. In such
+rhythm the mystic seems to catch something of the cadences of that
+far-off music of which he is writing, and to receive and transmit a
+message which exceeds the possibilities of speech. Ruysbroeck was no
+expert poet. Often his verse is bad; halting in cadence, violent and
+uncouth in imagery, like the stammering utterance of one possessed. But
+its presence and quality, its mingled simplicity and violence, assure us
+of the strong excitement that fulfilled him, and tend to corroborate the
+account of his mental processes which we have deduced from the statements
+in Pomerius' _Life_.
+
+Eleven admittedly authentic books and tracts survive in numerous MS.
+collections,[5] and from these come all that we know of his vision and
+teaching. _The Twelve Virtues_, and the two Canticles often attributed to
+him, are probably spurious; and the tracts against the Brethren of the
+Free Spirit, which are known to have been written during his Brussels
+period, have all disappeared. I give here a short account of the
+authentic works, their names and general contents; putting first in order
+those of unknown date, some of which may possibly have been composed
+before the foundation of Groenendael. In each case the first title is a
+translation of that used in the best Flemish texts; the second, that
+employed in the great Latin version of Surius. Ruysbroeck himself never
+gave any titles to his writings.
+
+1. The Spiritual Tabernacle (called by Surius _In Tabernaculum
+Mosis_).--The longest, most fantastic, and, in spite of some fine
+passages, the least interesting of Ruysbroeck's works. Probably founded
+upon the _De Arca Mystica_ of Hugh of St. Victor, this is an elaborate
+allegory, thoroughly mediaeval in type, in which the Tabernacle of the
+Israelites becomes a figure of the spiritual life; the details of its
+construction, furniture and ritual being given a symbolic significance,
+in accordance with the methods of interpretation popular at the time. In
+this book, and perhaps in the astronomical treatise appended to _The
+Twelve Beguines_ (No. 11), I believe that we have the only surviving
+works of Ruysbroeck's first period; when he had not yet 'transcended
+images,' but was at that point in his mystical development in which the
+young contemplative loves to discern symbolic meanings in all visible
+things.
+
+2. The Twelve Points of True Faith (_De Fide et Judicio_).--This little
+tract is in form a gloss upon the Nicene Creed; in fact, a
+characteristically Ruysbroeckian confession of faith. Without ever
+over-passing the boundaries of Catholic doctrine, Ruysbroeck is here able
+to turn all its imagery to the purposes of his own vision of truth.
+
+3. The Book of the Four Temptations (_De Quatuor Tentationibus_).--The
+Four Temptations are four manifestations of the higher egotism specially
+dangerous to souls entering on the contemplative life: first, the love of
+ease and comfort, as much in things spiritual as in things material;
+secondly, the tendency to pose as the possessor of special illumination,
+with other and like forms of spiritual pretence; thirdly, intellectual
+pride, which seeks to understand unfathomable mysteries and attain to the
+vision of God by the reason alone; fourthly,--most dangerous of all--that
+false 'liberty of spirit' which was the mark of the heretical mystic
+sects. This book too may well have been written before the retreat to
+Groenendael.
+
+4. The Book of the Kingdom of God's Lovers (_Regnum Deum
+Amantium_).--This and the following work, _The Adornment of the Spiritual
+Marriage_, contain Ruysbroeck's fullest and most orderly descriptions of
+the mystical life-process. The 'Kingdom' which God's lovers may inherit
+is the actual life of God, infused into the soul and deifying it. This
+essential life reveals itself under five modes: in the sense world, in
+the soul's nature, in the witness of Scripture, in the life of grace or
+'glory,' and in the Superessential Kingdom of the Divine Unity. By the
+threefold way of the Active, Contemplative, and Superessential Life, here
+described as the steady and orderly appropriation of the Seven Gifts of
+the Holy Spirit, the spirit of man may enter into its inheritance and
+attain at last to the perfect fruition of God. To the Active Life belong
+the gifts of Holy Fear, Godliness, and Knowledge; to the Contemplative
+those of Strength and Counsel; to the Superessential those of
+Intelligence and Wisdom. _The Kingdom of God's Lovers_ was traditionally
+regarded as Ruysbroeck's earliest work. It was more probably written
+during the early years at Groenendael. Much of it, like _The Twelve
+Beguines_, is in poetical form. This was the book which, falling into the
+hands of Gerard Naghel, made him seek Ruysbroeck's acquaintance, in order
+that he might ask for an explanation of several profound and difficult
+passages.
+
+5. The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage (_De Ornatu Spiritalium
+Nuptiarum_).--This is the best known and most methodical of Ruysbroeck's
+works. In form a threefold commentary upon the text, "Behold, the
+bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him," it is divided into three
+books, tracing out in great detail, and with marvellous psychological
+insight, those three stages of Active, Contemplative and Superessential
+Life, which appear again and again in his writings. Paying due attention
+to the aberrations of the quietists, he exhibits--with an intimacy which
+surely reflects his own personal experience of the Way--the conditions
+under which selves in each stage of development may see, encounter, and
+at last unite with, the Divine Bridegroom of the soul. A German
+translation of several of its chapters, preserved in MS. at Munich,
+states that Ruysbroeck sent this book to the Friends of God in 1350. In
+this case it belongs to the years immediately preceding or succeeding his
+retreat.
+
+We now come to the works which were certainly composed at Groenendael,
+though probably some of those already enumerated also belong to the last
+thirty years of Ruysbroeck's life. First come the three treatises
+apparently written for Margaret van Meerbeke, a choir nun of the Convent
+of Poor Clares at Brussels; who seems to have been to him what St. Clare
+was to St. Francis, Elizabeth Staegel to Suso, Margaret Kirkby to Richard
+Rolle--first a spiritual daughter, then a valued and sympathetic friend.
+
+6. The Mirror of Eternal Salvation or Book of the Blessed Sacrament
+(_Speculum AEternae Salutis_).--This, the first of the three, was written
+in 1359. It is addressed to one who is evidently a beginner in the
+spiritual life, as she is yet a novice in her religious community; but
+whom Ruysbroeck looks upon as specially 'called, elect and loved.' In
+simplest language, often of extreme beauty, he puts before her the
+magnitude of the vocation she has accepted, the dangers she will
+encounter, and the great source from which she must draw her strength:
+the sacramental dispensation of the Church. In a series of magnificent
+chapters, he celebrates the mystical doctrine of the Eucharist, the
+feeding of the ever-growing soul on the substance of God; following this
+by a digression, full of shrewd observation, on the different types of
+believers who come to communion. We see them through his eyes: the
+religious sentimentalists, 'who are generally women and only very seldom
+men'; the sturdy normal Christian, who does his best to struggle against
+sin; the humble and devout lover of God; the churchy hypocrite, who
+behaves with great reverence at Mass and then goes home and scolds the
+servants; the heretical mystic full of spiritual pride; the easy-going
+worldling, who sins and repents with equal facility. The book ends with a
+superb description of the goal towards which the young contemplative is
+set: the 'life-giving life' of perfect union with God in which that
+'higher life' latent in every soul at last attains to maturity.
+
+7. The Seven Cloisters (_De Septem_ _Custodiis_).--This was written
+before 1363, and preserves its address to 'The Holy Nun, Dame Margaret
+van Meerbeke, Cantor of the Monastery of St. Clare at Brussels.' The
+novice of the 'Mirror' is now a professed religious; and her director
+instructs her upon the attitude of mind which she should bring to the
+routine duties of a nun's day, the opportunity they offer for the
+enriching and perfecting of love and humility. He describes the education
+of the human spirit up to that high point of consciousness where it knows
+itself established 'between Eternity and Time': one of the fundamental
+thoughts of Flemish and German mysticism. This education admits her
+successively into the seven cloisters which kept St. Clare, Foundress of
+the Order, unspotted from the world. The first is the physical enclosure
+of the convent walls; the next the moral and volitional limitation of
+self-control. The third is 'the open door of the love of Christ,' which
+crowns man's affective powers, and leads to the fourth--total dedication
+of the will. The fifth and sixth represent the two great forms of the
+Contemplative Life as conceived by Ruysbroeck: the ecstatic and the
+deiform. The seventh admits to Abyss of Being itself: that 'dim silence'
+at the heart of which, as in the Seventh Habitation of St. Teresa's
+'Interior Castle,' he will find himself alone with God. There the mystic
+union is consummated, and the Divine activity takes the place of the
+separate activity of man, in "a simple beatitude which transcends all
+sanctity and the practice of virtue, an Eternal Fruition which satisfies
+all hunger and thirst, all love and all craving, for God." Finally, he
+returns to the Active Life; and ends with a practical chapter on clothes,
+and a charming instruction, full of deep poetry, on the evening
+meditation which should close the day.
+
+8. The Seven Degrees of the Ladder of Love (_De Septem Gradibus
+Amoris_).--This book, which was written before 1372, is believed by the
+Benedictines of Wisques, the latest and most learned of Ruysbroeck's
+editors, to complete the trilogy of works addressed to Dame Margaret van
+Meerbeke. It traces the soul's ascent to the height of Divine love by way
+of the characteristic virtues of asceticism, under the well-known
+mediaeval image of the 'ladder of perfection' or 'stairway of love'--a
+metaphor, originating in Jacob's Dream, which had already served St.
+Benedict, Richard of St. Victor, St. Bonaventura and many others as a
+useful diagram of the mystic way. Originality of form, however, is the
+last thing we should look for in Ruysbroeck's works. He pours his strange
+wine into any vessel that comes to hand. As often his most sublime or
+amazing utterances originate in commentaries upon some familiar text, or
+the deepest truths are hidden under the most grotesque similitudes; so
+this well-worn metaphor gives him the opportunity for some of his finest
+descriptions of the soul's movement to that transmutation in which all
+ardent spirits 'become as live coals in the fire of Infinite Love.' This
+book, in which the influence of St. Bernard is strongly marked, contains
+some beautiful passages on the mystic life considered as a 'heavenly
+song' of faithfulness and love, which "Christ our Cantor and our Choragus
+has sung from the beginning of things," and which every Christian soul
+must learn.
+
+9. The Book of the Sparkling Stone (_De Calculo, sive de Perfectione
+Filiorum Dei_).--This priceless work is said to have been written by
+Ruysbroeck at the request of a hermit, who wished for further light on
+the high matters of which it treats. It contains the finest flower of his
+thought, and shows perhaps more clearly than any other of his writings
+the mark of direct inspiration. Here again the scaffolding on which he
+builds is almost as old as Christian mysticism itself: that three-fold
+division of men into the 'faithful servants, secret friends, and hidden
+sons' of God, which descended through the centuries from Clement of
+Alexandria. But the tower which he raises with its help ascends to
+heights unreached by any other writer: to the point at which man is given
+the supreme gift of the Sparkling Stone, or Nature of Christ, the goal of
+human transcendence. I regard the ninth and tenth chapters of _The
+Sparkling Stone_--'How we may become Hidden Sons of God and live the
+Contemplative Life,' and 'How we, though one with God, must eternally
+remain other than Him'--as the high-water mark of mystical literature.
+Nowhere else do we find such a marvellous combination of wide and soaring
+vision with the most delicate and intimate psychological analysis. The
+old mystic, sitting under his friendly tree, seems here to be gazing at
+and reporting to us the final secrets of that eternal world, where "the
+Incomprehensible Light enfolds and penetrates us, as the air is
+penetrated by the light of the sun." There he tastes and apprehends, in
+'an unfathomable seeing and beholding,' the inbreathing and the
+outbreathing of the Love of God--that double movement which controls the
+universe; yet knows, along with this great cosmic vision, that intimate
+and searching communion in which "the Beloved and the Lover are immersed
+wholly in love, and each is all to the other in possession and in rest."
+
+10. The Book of Supreme Truth (called in some collections _The Book of
+Retractations_, and by Surius, _Samuel_.)--This is the tract written by
+Ruysbroeck, at the request of Gerard Naghel, to explain certain obscure
+passages in _The Book of the Kingdom of God's Lovers_. In it he is
+specially concerned to make clear the vital distinction between his
+doctrine of the soul's union with God--a union in which the primal
+distinction between Creator and created is never overpassed--and the
+pantheistic doctrine of complete absorption in Him, with cessation of all
+effort and striving, preached by the heretical sects whose initiates
+claim to 'be God.' By the time that this book was written, careless
+readers had already charged Ruysbroeck with these pantheist tendencies
+which he abhorred and condemned; and here he sets out his defence. He
+discusses also the three degrees of union with God which correspond to
+the 'three lives' of the growing soul: union by means of sacraments and
+good deeds; union achieved in contemplative prayer 'without means,' where
+the soul learns its double vocation of action and fruition; and the
+highest union of all, where the spirit which has swung pendulum-like
+between the temporal and eternal worlds, achieves its equilibrium and
+dwells wholly in God, 'drunk with love, and sunk in the Dark Light.'
+
+11. The Twelve Beguines (_De Vera Contemplatione_).--This is a long,
+composite book of eighty-four chapters, which apparently consists of at
+least three distinct treatises of different dates. The first, _The Twelve
+Beguines_, which ends with chapter xvi., contains the longest consecutive
+example of Ruysbroeck's poetic method; its first eight chapters being
+written in irregular rhymed verse. It is believed to be one of his last
+compositions. Its doctrine differs little from that already set forth in
+his earlier works; though nowhere, perhaps, is the development of the
+spiritual consciousness described with greater subtlety. The soul's
+communion with and feeding on the Divine Nature in the Eucharist and in
+contemplative prayer; its acquirement of the art of introversion; the Way
+of Contemplation with its four modes, paralleled by the Way of Love with
+its four modes; these lead up to the perfect union of the spirit with God
+"in one love and one fruition with Him, fulfilled in everlasting bliss."
+The seventeenth chapter begins a new treatise, with a description of the
+Active Life on Ruysbroeck's usual lines; and at the thirtieth there is
+again a complete change of subject, introducing a mystical and symbolic
+interpretation of the science of astronomy. This section, so unlike his
+later writings, somewhat resembles _The Spiritual Tabernacle_, and may
+perhaps be a work of the same period. A collection of Meditations upon
+the Passion of Christ, arranged according to the Seven Hours of the Roman
+Breviary (capp. lxxiii. to end), completes the book; and also the tale of
+Ruysbroeck's authentic works. A critical list of the reprints and
+translations in which these may best be studied will be found in the
+Bibliographical Note.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III
+                          HIS DOCTRINE OF GOD
+
+
+  My words are strange; but those who love will understand.
+
+                                      The Mirror of Eternal Salvation.
+
+Mystical writers are of two kinds. One kind, of which St. Teresa is
+perhaps the supreme type, deals almost wholly with the personal and
+interior experiences of the soul in the states of contemplation, and the
+psychological rules governing those states; above all, with the emotional
+reactions of the self to the impact of the Divine. This kind of
+mystic--whom William James accused, with some reason, of turning the
+soul's relation with God into a 'duet'--makes little attempt to describe
+the ultimate Object of the self's love and desire, the great movements of
+the spiritual world; for such description, the formulae of existing
+theology are felt to be enough. Visions of Christ, experiences of the
+Blessed Trinity--these are sufficient names for the personal and
+impersonal aspects of that Reality with which the contemplative seeks to
+unite. But the other kind of mystic--though possibly and indeed usually
+as orthodox in his beliefs, as ardent in his love--cannot, on the one
+hand, remain within the circle of these subjective and personal
+conceptions, and, on the other, content himself with the label which
+tradition has affixed to the Thing that he has known. He may not reject
+the label, but neither does he confuse it with the Thing. He has the wide
+vision, the metaphysical passion of the philosopher and the poet; and in
+his work he is ever pressing towards more exact description, more
+suggestive and evocative speech. The symbols which come most naturally to
+him are usually derived from the ideas of space and of wonder; not from
+those of human intimacy and love. In him the intellect is active as well
+as the heart; sometimes, more active. Plotinus is an extreme example of
+mysticism of this type.
+
+The greatest mystics, however, whether in the East or in the West, are
+possessed of a vision and experience of God so deep and rich that it
+embraces at once the infinite and the intimate aspects of Reality;
+illuminating those religious concepts which are, as it were, an artistic
+reconstruction of the Transcendent, and at the same time having contact
+with that vast region above and beyond reason whence come the fragmentary
+intimations of Reality crystallised in the formulae of faith. For them, as
+for St. Augustine, God is both near and far; and the paradox of
+transcendent-immanent Reality is a self-evident if an inexpressible
+truth. They swing between hushed adoration and closest communion, between
+the divine ignorance of the intellect lifted up into God and the divine
+certitude of the heart in which He dwells; and give us by turns a
+subjective and psychological, an objective and metaphysical, reading of
+spiritual experience. Ruysbroeck is a mystic of this type. The span of
+his universe can include--indeed demand--both the concept of that Abyss
+of Pure Being where all distinctions are transcended, and the soul is
+immersed in the 'dark light' of the One, and the distinctively Christian
+and incarnational experience of loving communion with and through the
+Person of Christ. For him the ladder of contemplation is firmly planted
+in the bed-rock of human character--goes the whole way from the heart of
+man to the Essence of God--and every stage of it has importance for the
+eager and ascending soul. Hence, when he seems to rush out to the
+farthest limits of the cosmos, he still remains within the circle of
+Catholic ideas; and is at once ethical and metaphysical, intensely
+sacramental and intensely transcendental too.
+
+Nor is this result obtained--as it sometimes seems to be, for instance,
+in such a visionary as Angela of Foligno--by a mere heaping up of the
+various and inconsistent emotional reactions of the self. There is a
+fundamental orderliness in the Ruysbroeckian universe which, though it
+may be difficult to understand, and often impossible for him to express
+without resort to paradox, yet reveals itself to careful analysis. He
+tries hard to describe, or at least suggest, it to us, because he is a
+mystic of an apostolic type. Even where he is dealing with the soul's
+most ineffable experiences and seems to hover over that Abyss which is
+'beyond Reason,' stammering and breaking into wild poetry in the
+desperate attempt to seize the unseizable truth he is ever intent on
+telling us how these things may be actualised, this attitude attained by
+other men. The note is never, as with many subjective visionaries, "_I_
+have seen," but always "_We_ shall or may see."
+
+Now such an objective mystic as this, who is not content with retailing
+his private experiences and ecstasies, but accepts the great vocation of
+revealer of Reality, is called upon to do certain things. He must give
+us, not merely a static picture of Eternity, but also a dynamic 'reading
+of life'; and of a life more extended than that which the moralist, or
+even the philosopher, offers to interpret. He must not only tell us what
+he thinks about the universe, and in particular that ultimate Spiritual
+Reality which all mysticism discerns within or beyond the flux. He must
+also tell us what he thinks of man, that living, moving, fluid
+spirit-thing: his reactions to this universe and this Reality, the
+satisfaction which it offers to his thought, will and love, the
+obligations laid upon him in respect of it. We, on our part, must try to
+understand what he tells us of these things; for he is, as it were, an
+organ developed by the race for this purpose--a tentacle pushed out
+towards the Infinite, to make, in our name and in our interest, fresh
+contacts with Reality. He performs for us some of the functions of the
+artist extending our universe, the pioneer cutting our path, the hunter
+winning food for our souls.
+
+The clue to the universe of such a mystic will always be the vision or
+idea which he has of the Nature of God; and there we must begin, if we
+would find our way through the tangle of his thought. From this Centre
+all else branches out, and to this all else must conform, if it is to
+have for him realness and life; for truth, as Aquinas teaches, is simply
+the reality of things as they are in God. We begin, then, our exploration
+of Ruysbroeck's doctrine by trying to discover the character of his
+vision of the Divine Nature, and man's relation with it.
+
+That vision is so wide, deep and searching, that only by resort to the
+language of opposites, by perpetual alternations of spatial and personal,
+metaphysical and passionate speech, is he able to communicate it to us.
+His fortunate and profound acquaintance with the science of theology--his
+contact through it with the formulae of Christian Platonism--has given him
+the framework on which he stretches out his wonderful and living picture
+of the Infinite. This picture is personal to himself, the fruit of a
+direct and vivid inspiration; not so the terms by which it is
+communicated. These for the most part are the common property of
+Christian theology; though here used with a consummate skill, often with
+an apparent originality. Especially from St. Augustine, Dionysius the
+Areopagite, Richard of St. Victor, St. Bernard and the more orthodox
+utterances of his own immediate predecessor, Meister Eckhart--sometimes
+too from his contemporaries, Suso and Tauler--has he taken the
+intellectual concepts, the highly-charged poetic metaphors, in which his
+perceptions are enshrined. So close does he keep to these masters, so
+frequent are his borrowings, that almost every page of his writings might
+be glossed from their works. It is one of the most astonishing features
+of the celebrated and astonishing essay of M. Maeterlinck that, bent on
+vindicating the inspiration of his 'simple and ignorant monk,' he
+entirely fails to observe the traditional character of the formulae which
+express it. No student of the mystics will deny the abundant inspiration
+by which Ruysbroeck was possessed; but this inspiration is spiritual, not
+intellectual. The truth was told to him in the tongue of angels, and he
+did his best to translate it into the tongue of the Church; perpetually
+reminding us, as he did so, how great was the difference between vision
+and description, how clumsy and inadequate those concepts and images
+wherewith the artist-seer tried to tell his love.
+
+This distinction, which the reader of Ruysbroeck should never forget, is
+of primary importance in connection with his treatment of the Nature of
+God; where the disparity between the thing known and the thing said is
+inevitably at a maximum. The high nature of the Godhead, he says, in a
+string of suggestive and paradoxical images, to which St. Paul, Dionysius
+and Eckhart have all contributed, is, in itself, "Simplicity and
+One-foldness; inaccessible height and fathomless deep; incomprehensible
+breadth and eternal length; a dim silence, and a wild desert"--oblique,
+suggestive, musical language which enchants rather than informs the soul;
+opens the door to experience, but does not convey any accurate knowledge
+of the Imageless Truth, "Now we may experience many wonders in that
+fathomless Godhead; but although, because of the coarseness of the human
+intellect, when we would describe such things outwardly, we must use
+images, in truth that which is inwardly perceived and beheld is nought
+else but a Fathomless and Unconditioned Good."[6]
+
+Yet this primal Reality, this ultimately indivisible One, has for human
+consciousness a two-fold character; and though for the intuition of the
+mystic its fruition is a synthetic experience, it must in thought be
+analysed if it is ever to be grasped. God, as known by man, exhibits in
+its perfection the dual property of Love; on the one hand active,
+generative, creative; on the other hand a still and ineffable possession
+or _Fruition_--one of the master-words of Ruysbroeck's thought. He is,
+then, the Absolute One, in whom the antithesis of Eternity and Time, of
+Being and Becoming, is resolved; both static and dynamic, transcendent
+and immanent, impersonal and personal, undifferentiated and
+differentiated; Eternal Rest and Eternal Work, the Unmoved Mover, yet
+Movement itself. "Although in our way of seeing we give God many names,
+His nature is One."
+
+He transcends the storm of succession, yet is the inspiring spirit of the
+flux. According to His fruitful nature, "He works without ceasing, for He
+is Pure Act"--a reminiscence of Aristotle which seems strange upon the
+lips of the 'ignorant monk.' He is the omnipotent and ever-active Creator
+of all things; 'an immeasurable Flame of Love' perpetually breathing
+forth His energetic Life in new births of being and new floods of grace,
+and drawing in again all creatures to Himself. Yet this statement
+defines, not His being, but one manifestation of His being. When the soul
+pierces beyond this 'fruitful' nature to His simple essence--and 'simple'
+is here and throughout to be understood in its primal meaning of
+'synthetic'--He is that absolute and abiding Reality which seems to man
+Eternal Rest, the 'Deep Quiet of the Godhead,' the 'Abyss,' the 'Dim
+Silence'; and which we can taste indeed but never know. There, 'all
+lovers lose themselves' in the consummation of that experience at which
+our fragmentary intuitions hint.
+
+The active and fertile aspect of the Divine Nature is manifested in
+differentiation: for Ruysbroeck the Catholic, in the Trinity of Persons,
+as defined by Christian theology. The static and absolute aspect is the
+'calm and glorious Unity of the Godhead' which he finds beyond and within
+the Trinity, "the fathomless Abyss that _is_ the Being of God,"--an idea,
+familiar to Indian mysticism and implicit in Christian Neoplatonism,
+which governed all Meister Eckhart's speculations upon the Divine Nature.
+There is, says Ruysbroeck in one of his most Eckhartian passages, "a
+distinction and differentiation, according to our reason, between God and
+the Godhead, between action and rest. The fruitful nature of the Persons,
+of whom is the Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity, ever worketh in a
+living differentiation. But the Simple Being of God, according to the
+nature thereof, is an Eternal Rest of God and of all created things."[7]
+
+In differentiating the three great aspects of the Divine Life, as known
+by the love and thought of man, Ruysbroeck keeps close to formal
+theology; though investing its academic language with new and deep
+significance, and constantly reminding us that such language, even at its
+best, can never get beyond the region of image and similitude or provide
+more than an imperfect reflection of the One who is 'neither This nor
+That.' On his lips, credal definitions are perpetually passing over from
+the arid region of theological argument to the fruitful one of spiritual
+experience. There they become songs, as 'new' as the song heard by the
+Apocalyptist; real channels of light, which show the mind things that it
+never guessed before. For the 're-born' man they have a fresh and
+immortal meaning; because that 'river of grace,' of which he perpetually
+speaks as pouring into the heart opened towards the Infinite,
+transfigures and irradiates them. Thus the illuminated mind knows in the
+Father, not a confusingly anthropomorphic metaphor, but the uniquely
+vital Source and unconditioned Origin of all things "in whom our life and
+being is begun." He is the "Strength and Power, Creator, Mover, Keeper,
+Beginning and End, Cause and Existence of all creatures."[8] Further, the
+intuition of the mystic discerns in the Son the Eternal Word and
+fathomless Wisdom and Truth perpetually generated of the Father, shining
+forth in the world of conditions: the Pattern or Archetype of creation
+and of life, the image of God which the universe reflects back before the
+face of the Absolute, the Eternal Rule incarnate in Christ. And this same
+'light wherein we see God' also shows to the enlightened mind the
+veritable character of the Holy Spirit; the Incomprehensible Love and
+Generosity of the Divine Nature, which emanates in an eternal procession
+from the mutual contemplation of Father and Son, "for these two Persons
+are always hungry for love." The Holy Spirit is the source of the Divine
+vitality immanent in the universe. It is an outflowing torrent of Good
+which streams through all heavenly spirits; it is a Flame of Fire that
+consumes all in the One; it is also the Spark of transcendence latent in
+man's soul. The Spirit is the personal, Grace the impersonal, side of
+that energetic Love which enfolds and penetrates all life; and "all this
+may be perceived and beheld, inseparable and without division, in the
+Simple Nature of the Godhead."[9]
+
+The relations which form the character of these Three Persons exist in an
+eternal distinction for that world of conditions wherein the human soul
+is immersed, and where things happen 'in some wise.' There, from the
+embrace of the Father and Son and the outflowing of the Spirit in 'waves
+of endless love,' all created things are born; and God, by His grace and
+His death, recreates them, and adorns them with love and goodness, and
+draws them back to their source. This is the circling course of the
+Divine life-process 'from goodness, through goodness, to goodness,'
+described by Dionysius the Areopagite. But beyond and above this plane of
+Divine differentiation is the superessential world, transcending all
+conditions, inaccessible to thought--"the measureless solitude of the
+Godhead, where God possesses Himself in joy." This is the ultimate world
+of the mystic, discerned by intuition and love "in a simple seeing,
+beyond reason and without consideration." There, within the 'Eternal
+Now,' without either before or after, released from the storm of
+succession, things happen indeed, 'yet in no wise,' There, "we can speak
+no more of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, nor of any creature; but only of
+one Being, which is the very substance of the Divine Persons. There were
+we all one before our creation; for this is our _superessence_.... There
+the Godhead is, in simple essence, without activity; Eternal Rest,
+Unconditioned Dark, the Nameless Being, the Superessence of all created
+things, and the simple and infinite Bliss of God and of all Saints."[10]
+
+Ruysbroeck here brings us to the position of Dante in the last canto of
+the _Paradiso_, when, transcending those partial apprehensions of Reality
+which are figured by the River of Becoming and the Rose of Beatitude, he
+penetrated to the swift vision of "that Eternal Light which only in
+Itself abideth"--discerned best by man under the image of the three
+circles, yet in its 'profound and clear substance' indivisibly One.
+
+"The simple light of this Being is limitless in its immensity, and
+transcending form, includes and embraces the unity of the Divine Persons
+and the soul with all its faculties; and this to such a point that it
+envelopes and irradiates _both_ the natural tendency of our ground
+[_i.e._ its dynamic movement to God--the River] and the fruitive
+adherence of God and all those who are united with Him in this Light
+[_i.e._ Eternal Being--the Rose]. And this is the union of God and the
+souls that love Him."[11]
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IV
+                          HIS DOCTRINE OF MAN
+
+
+  That which was begun by Grace, is accomplished by Grace and Free-will;
+  so that they work mixedly not separately, simultaneously not
+  successively, in each and all of their processes.
+
+                                                          St. Bernard.
+
+The concept of the Nature of God which we have traced through its three
+phases--out from the unchanging One to the active Persons and back to the
+One again--gives us a clue to Ruysbroeck's idea of the nature and destiny
+of man. In man, both aspects of Divine Reality, active and fruitive, are
+or should be reflected; for God is the 'Living Pattern of Creation' who
+has impressed His image on each soul, and in every adult spirit the
+character of that image must be brought from the hiddenness and realised.
+Destined to be wholly real, though yet in the making, there is in man a
+latent Divine likeness, a 'spark' of the primal fire. Created for union
+with God, already in Eternity that union is a fact.
+
+"The creature is in Brahma and Brahma is in the creature; they are ever
+distinct yet ever united," says the Indian mystic. Were it translated
+into Christian language, it is probable that this thought--which does
+_not_ involve pantheism--would have been found acceptable by Ruysbroeck;
+for the interpenetration yet eternal distinction of the human and Divine
+spirits is the central fact of his universe. Man, he thinks, is already
+related in a threefold manner to his Infinite Source; for "we have our
+being in Him as the Father, we contemplate Him as does the Son, we
+ceaselessly tend to return to Him as does the Spirit."
+
+"The first property of the soul is a _naked being_, devoid of all image.
+Thereby do we resemble, and are united to, the Father and His nature
+Divine." This is the 'ground of the soul' perpetually referred to by
+mystics of the Eckhartian School; the bare, still place to which
+consciousness retreats in introversion, image of the static and absolute
+aspect of Reality. "The second property might be called the _higher
+understanding_ of the soul. It is a mirror of light, wherein we receive
+the Son of God, the Eternal Truth. By this light we are like unto Him;
+but in the act of receiving, we are one with Him." This is the power of
+knowing Divine things by intuitive comprehension: man's fragmentary share
+in the character of the Logos, or Wisdom of God. "The third property we
+call the _spark_ of the soul. It is the inward and natural tendency of
+the soul towards its Source; and here do we receive the Holy Spirit, the
+Charity of God. By this inward tendency we are like the Holy Spirit; but
+in the act of receiving, we become one spirit and one love with God."[12]
+Here the Divine image shows itself in its immanent and dynamic aspect, as
+the 'internal push' which drives Creation back to the Father's heart.
+
+The soul then is, as Julian of Norwich said, "made Trinity, like to the
+unmade Blessed Trinity." Reciprocally, there is in the Eternal World the
+uncreated Pattern or Archetype of man--his 'Platonic idea.' Now man must
+bring from its hiddenness the latent likeness, the germ of Divine
+humanity that is in him, and develop it until it realises the 'Platonic
+idea'; achieving thus the implicit truth of his own nature as it exists
+in the mind of God. This, according to Ruysbroeck, is the whole art and
+object of the spiritual life; this actualisation of the eternal side of
+human nature, atrophied in the majority of men--the innate Christliness
+in virtue of which we have power to become 'Sons' of God.
+
+"Lo! thus are we all one with God in our Eternal Archetype, which is His
+Wisdom who hath put on the nature of us all. And although we are already
+one with Him therein by that putting on of our nature, we must also be
+like God in grace and virtue, if we would find ourselves one with Him in
+our Eternal Archetype, which is Himself."[13]
+
+Under the stimulus of Divine Love perpetually beating in on him, feeding
+perpetually on the substance of God, perpetually renewed and 'reborn' on
+to ever higher levels through the vivifying contact of reality, man must
+grow up into the 'superessential life' of complete unity with the
+Transcendent. There, not only the triune aspect but the dual character of
+God is reproduced in him, reconciled in a synthesis beyond the span of
+thought; and he becomes 'deiform'--both active and fruitive, 'ever at
+work and ever at rest'--at once a denizen of Eternity and of Time. Every
+aspect of his being--love, intellect and will--is to be invaded and
+enhanced by the new life-giving life; it shall condition and enrich his
+correspondences with the sense-world as well as with the world of soul.
+
+Man is not here invited to leave the active life for the contemplative,
+but to make the active life perfect within the contemplative; carrying up
+these apparent opposites to a point at which they become one. It is one
+of Ruysbroeck's characteristics that he, as few others, followed
+mysticism out to this, its last stage; where it issues in a balanced,
+divine-human life. The energetic Love of God, which flows perpetually
+forth from the Abyss of Being to the farthest limits of the universe,
+enlightening and quickening where it goes, and 'turns again home' as a
+strong tide drawing all things to their Origin, here attains equilibrium;
+the effort of creation achieves its aim.
+
+Now this aim, this goal, is already realised within God's nature, for
+there all perfection eternally Is. But to man it is super-nature; to
+achieve it he must transcend the world of conditions in which he lives
+according to the flesh, and grow up to fresh levels of life. Under the
+various images of sonship, marriage, and transmutation, this is the view
+of human destiny which Ruysbroeck states again and again: the creative
+evolution of the soul. His insistence on the completeness of the Divine
+Union to which the soul attains in this final phase, his perpetual resort
+to the dangerous language of deification in the effort towards describing
+it, seems at first sight to expose him to the charge of pantheism; and,
+as a matter of fact, has done so in the past. Yet he is most careful to
+guard himself at every point against this misinterpretation of his vision
+of life. In his view, by its growth towards God, personality is not lost,
+but raised to an ever higher plane. Even in that ecstatic fruition of
+Eternal Life in which the spirit passes above the state of Union to the
+state of Unity, and beyond the Persons to the One, the 'eternal
+otherness' of Creator and created is not overpassed; but, as in the
+perfect fulfilment of love, utter fusion and clear differentiation
+mysteriously co-exist. It is, he says, not a mergence but a 'mutual
+inhabitation.' In his attempts towards the description of this state, he
+borrows the language of St. Bernard, most orthodox of the mystics;
+language which goes back to primitive Christian times. The Divine light,
+love and being, he tells us, penetrates and drenches the surrendered,
+naked, receptive soul, 'as fire does the iron, as sunlight does the air';
+and even as the sunshine and the air, the iron and the fire, so are these
+two terms distinct yet united. "The iron doth not become fire nor the
+fire iron; but each retaineth its substance and its nature. So likewise
+the spirit of man doth not become God, but is God-formed, and knoweth
+itself breadth and length and height and depth."[14] Again, "this union
+is _in_ God, through grace and our homeward-tending love. Yet even here
+does the creature feel a distinction and otherness between itself and God
+in its inward ground."[15] The dualistic relation of lover and beloved,
+though raised to another power and glory, is an eternal one.
+
+I have spoken of Ruysbroeck's concept of God, his closely related concept
+of man's soul; the threefold diagram of Reality within which these terms
+are placed, the doctrine of transcendence he deduced therefrom. But such
+a diagram cannot express to us the rich content, the deeply personal
+character of his experience and his knowledge. It is no more than a map
+of the living land he has explored, a formal picture of the Living One
+whom he has seen without sight. For him the landscape lived and flowered
+in endless variety of majesty and sweetness; the Person drew near in
+mysterious communion, and gave to him as food His very life.
+
+All that this meant, and must mean, for our deeper knowledge of Reality
+and of man's intuitive contacts with the Divine Life, we must find if we
+can in his doctrine of Love. Love is the 'very self-hood' of God, says
+Ruysbroeck in strict Johannine language. His theology is above all the
+theology of the Holy Spirit, the immanent Divine Energy and Love. It is
+Love which breaks down the barrier between finite and infinite life. But
+Love, as he understands it, has little in common with the feeling-state
+to which many of the female mystics have given that august name. For him,
+it is hardly an emotional word at all, and never a sentimental one;
+rather the title of a mighty force, a holy energy that fills the
+universe--the essential activity of God. Sometimes he describes it under
+the antique imagery of Light; imagery which is more than a metaphor, and
+is connected with that veritable consciousness of enhanced radiance, as
+well in the outer as in the inner world, experienced by the 'illuminated'
+mystic. Again it is the 'life-giving Life,' hidden in God and the
+substance of our souls, which the self finds and appropriates; the whole
+Johannine trilogy brought into play, to express its meaning for heart,
+intellect and will. This Love, in fact, is the dynamic power which St.
+Augustine compared with gravitation, 'drawing all things to their own
+place,' and which Dante saw binding the multiplicity of the universe into
+one. All Ruysbroeck's images for it turn on the idea of force. It is a
+raging fire, a storm, a flood. He speaks of it in one great passage as
+'playing like lightning' between God and the soul.
+
+Whoever will look at William Blake's great picture of the Creation of
+Adam, may gain some idea of the terrific yet infinitely compassionate
+character inherent in this concept of Divine Love: the agony, passion,
+beauty, sternness, and pity of the primal generating force. This love is
+eternally giving and taking--it is its very property, says Ruysbroeck,
+'ever to give and ever to receive'--pouring its dower of energy into the
+soul, and drawing out from that soul new vitality, new love, new
+surrender. 'Hungry love,' 'generous love,' 'stormy love,' he calls it
+again and again. Streaming out from the heart of Reality, the impersonal
+aspect of the very Spirit of God, its creative touch evokes in man, once
+he becomes conscious of it, an answering storm of love. The whole of our
+human growth within the spiritual order is conditioned by the quality of
+this response; by the will, the industry, the courage, with which man
+accepts his part in the Divine give-and-take.
+
+"That measureless Love which is God Himself, dwells in the pure deeps of
+our spirit, like a burning brazier of coal. And it throws forth brilliant
+and fiery sparks which stir and enkindle heart and senses, will and
+desire, and all the powers of the soul, with a fire of love; in a storm,
+a rage, a measureless fury of love. These be the weapons with which we
+fight against the terrible and immense Love of God, who would consume all
+loving spirits and swallow them in Himself. Love arms us with its own
+gifts, and clarifies our reason, and commands, counsels and advises us to
+oppose Him, to fight against Him, and to maintain against Him our right
+to love, so long as we may."[16] In the spiritual realm, giving and
+receiving are one act, for God is an 'ocean that ebbs and flows'; and it
+is only by opposing love to love, by self-donation to His mysterious
+movements, that the soul appropriates new force, invigorating and
+fertilising it afresh. Thus, and thus alone, it lays hold on eternal
+life; sometimes sacramentally, under external images and accidents;
+sometimes mystically, in the communion of deep prayer. "Every time we
+think with love of the Well-beloved, He is anew our meat and
+drink"--more, we too are His, for the love between God and man is a
+mutual love and desire. As we lay hold upon the Divine Life, devour and
+assimilate it, so in that very act the Divine Life devours us, and knits
+us up into the mystical Body of Reality. "Thou shalt not change Me into
+thine own substance, as thou dost change the food of thy flesh, but thou
+shalt be changed into Mine," said the Spirit of God to St. Augustine; and
+his Flemish descendant announces this same mysterious principle of life
+with greater richness and beauty.
+
+"It is the nature of love ever to give and to take, to love and to be
+loved, and these two things meet in whomsoever loves. Thus the love of
+Christ is both avid and generous ... as He devours us, so He would feed
+us. If He absorbs us utterly into Himself, in return He gives us His very
+self again."[17]
+
+This is but another aspect of that great 'inbreathing and outbreathing'
+of the Divine nature which governs the relation between the Creator and
+the flux of life; for Ruysbroeck's Christological language always carries
+with it the idea of the Logos, the Truth and Wisdom of Deity, as revealed
+in the world of conditions,--not only in the historical Jesus, but also
+in the eternal generation of the Son. St. Francis of Assisi had said that
+Divine Love perpetually swings between and reconciles two mighty
+opposites: "What is God? and, What am I?" For Ruysbroeck, too, that Love
+is a unifying power, manifested in motion itself, "an outgoing
+attraction, which drags us out of ourselves and calls us to be melted and
+naughted in the Unity";[18] and all his deepest thoughts of it are
+expressed in terms of movement.
+
+The relation between the soul and the Absolute, then, is a love
+relation--as in fact all the mystics have declared it to be. Man, that
+imperfectly real thing, has an inherent tendency towards God, the Only
+Reality. Already possessed of a life within the world of conditions, his
+unquiet heart reaches out towards a world that transcends conditions. How
+shall he achieve that world? In the same way, says Ruysbroeck, as the
+child achieves the world of manhood: by the double method of growth and
+education, the balanced action of the organism and its environment. In
+its development and its needs, spirit conforms to the great laws of
+natural life. Taught by the voices of the forest and that inward Presence
+who 'spoke without utterance' in his soul, he is quick to recognise the
+close parallels between nature and grace. His story of the mystical life
+is the story of birth, growth, adolescence, maturity: a steady progress,
+dependent on food and nurture, on the 'brooks of grace' which flow from
+the Living Fountain and bring perpetual renovation to help the wise
+disciplines and voluntary choices that brace and purge our expanding will
+and love.
+
+Ruysbroeck's universe, like that of Kabir and certain other great
+mystics, has three orders: Becoming, Being, God. Parallel with this, he
+distinguishes three great stages in the soul's achievement of complete
+reality: the Active, the Interior, and the Superessential Life, sometimes
+symbolised by the conditions of Servant, Friend, and Son of God. These,
+however, must be regarded rather as divisions made for convenience of
+description, answering to those divisions which thought has made in the
+indivisible fact of the universe, than as distinctions inherent in the
+reality of things. The spiritual life has the true character of duration;
+it is one indivisible tendency and movement towards our source and home,
+in which the past is never left behind, but incorporated in the larger
+present.
+
+In the Active Life, the primary interest is ethical. Man here purifies
+his normal human correspondences with the world of sense, approximates
+his will to the Will of God. Here, his contacts with the Divine take
+place within that world of sense, and 'by means.' In the Interior Life,
+the interest embraces the intellect, upon which is now conferred the
+vision of Reality. As the Active Life corresponded to the world of
+Becoming, this Life corresponds with the supersensual world of Being,
+where the self's contacts with the Divine take place 'without means.' In
+the Superessential Life, the self has transcended the intellectual plane
+and entered into the very heart of Reality; where she does not behold,
+but has fruition of, God in one life and one love. The obvious parallel
+between these three stages and the traditional 'threefold way' of
+Purgation, Illumination and Union is, however, not so exact as it
+appears. Many of the characters of the Unitive Way are present in
+Ruysbroeck's 'second life'; and his 'third life' takes the soul to
+heights of fruition which few amongst even the greatest unitive mystics
+have attained or described.
+
+(A) When man first feels upon his soul the touch of the Divine Light, at
+once, and in a moment of time, his will is changed; turned in the
+direction of Reality and away from unreal objects of desire. He is, in
+fact, 'converted' in the highest and most accurate sense of that ill-used
+word. Seeing the Divine, he wants the Divine, though he may not yet
+understand his own craving; for the scrap of Divine Life within him has
+emerged into the field of consciousness, and recognises its home. Then,
+as it were, God and the soul rush together, and of their encounter
+springs love. This is the New Birth; the 'bringing forth of the Son in
+the ground of the soul,' its baptism in the fountain of the Life-giving
+Life.
+
+The new force and tendency received into the self begins to act on the
+periphery, and thence works towards the centre of existence. First, then,
+it attacks the ordinary temporal life in all its departments. It pours in
+fresh waves of energy which confer new knowledge and hatred of sin,
+purify character, bring fresh virtues into being. It rearranges the
+consciousness about new and higher centres, gathering up all the
+faculties into one simple state of 'attention to God.' Thence results the
+highest life which is attainable by 'nature.' In it, man is united with
+God 'through means,' acts in obedience to the dictates of Divine Love and
+in accordance with the tendency of the Divine Will, and becomes the
+'Faithful Servant' of the Transcendent Order. Plainly, the Active Life,
+thus considered, has much in common with the 'Purgative Way' of ascetic
+science.
+
+(B) When this growth has reached its term, when "Free-will wears the
+crown of Charity, and rules as a King over the soul," the awakened and
+enhanced consciousness begins to crave a closer contact with the
+spiritual: that unmediated and direct contact which is the essence of the
+Contemplative or Interior Life, and is achieved in the deep state of
+recollection called 'unitive prayer.' Here voluntary and purposive
+education takes its place by the side of organic development. The way
+called by most ascetic writers 'Illumination'--the state of 'proficient'
+in monastic parlance--includes the _training_ of the self in the
+contemplative art as well as its _growth_ in will and love. This training
+braces and purifies intellect, as the disciplines of the active life
+purified will and sense. It teaches introversion, or the turning inward
+of the attention from the distractions of the sense-world; the cleansing
+of the mirror of thought, thronged with confusing images; the production
+of that silence in which the music of the Infinite can be heard. Nor is
+the Active Life here left behind; it is carried up to, and included in,
+the new, deepened activities of the self, which are no longer ruled by
+the laws, but by the 'quickening counsels' of God.
+
+Of this new life, interior courage is a first necessity. It is no easy
+appropriation of supersensual graces, but a deeper entering into the
+mystery of life, a richer, more profound, participation in pain, effort,
+as well as joy. There must be no settling down into a comfortable sense
+of the Divine Presence, no reliance on the 'One Act'; but an incessant
+process of change, renewal, re-emergence. Sometimes Ruysbroeck appears to
+see this central stage in the spiritual life-process in terms of upward
+growth toward transcendent levels; sometimes in terms of recollection,
+the steadfast pressing inwards of consciousness towards that bare ground
+of the soul where it unites with immanent Reality, and finds the Divine
+Life surging up like a 'living fountain' from the deeps. This double way
+of conceiving one process is puzzling for us; but a proof that for
+Ruysbroeck no one concept could suggest the whole truth, and a useful
+reminder of the symbolic character of all these maps and itineraries of
+the spiritual life.
+
+As the sun grows in power with the passing seasons, so the soul now
+experiences a steady increase in the power and splendour of the Divine
+Light, as it ascends in the heavens of consciousness and pours its heat
+and radiance into all the faculties of man. The in-beating of this energy
+and light brings the self into the tempestuous heats of high summer, or
+full illumination--the 'fury of love,' most fertile and dangerous epoch
+of the spiritual year. Thence, obedient to those laws of movement, that
+'double rhythm of renunciation and love' which Kabir detected at the
+heart of the universal melody, it enters on a negative period of psychic
+fatigue and spiritual destitution; the 'dark night of the soul.' The sun
+descends in the heavens, the ardours of love grow cold. When this stage
+is fully established, says Ruysbroeck, the 'September of the soul' is
+come; the harvest and vintage--raw material of the life-giving
+Eucharist--is ripe. The flowering-time of spiritual joy and beauty is as
+nothing in its value for life compared with this still autumnal period of
+true fecundity, in which man is at last 'affirmed' in the spiritual life.
+
+This, then, is the curve of the self's growth. Side by side with it runs
+the other curve of deliberate training: the education by which our
+wandering attention, our diffused undisciplined consciousness, is
+sharpened and focussed upon Reality. This training is needed by intellect
+and feeling; but most of all by the _will_, which Ruysbroeck, like the
+great English mystics, regards as the gathering-point of personality, the
+'spiritual heart.' On every page of his writings the reference to that
+which the spiritual Light and Love do for man, is balanced by an
+insistence on that which man himself must do: the choices to be made, the
+'exercises' to be performed, the tension and effort which must
+characterise the mystic way until its last phase is reached. Morally,
+these exercises consist in progressive renunciations on the one hand and
+acceptances on the other 'for Love's sake'; intellectually, in
+introversion, that turning inwards and concentration of consciousness,
+the stripping off of all images and emptying of the mind, which is the
+psychological method whereby human consciousness transcends the
+conditioned universe to which it has become adapted, and enters the
+contemplative world. Man's attention to life is to change its character
+as he ascends the ladder of being. Therefore the old attachments must be
+cut before the new attachments can be formed. This is, of course, a
+commonplace of asceticism; and much of Ruysbroeck's teaching on
+detachment, self-naughting and contemplation, is indeed simply the
+standard doctrine of Christian asceticism seen through a temperament.
+
+When the self has grown up from the 'active' to the 'contemplative' state
+of consciousness, it is plain that his whole relation to his environment
+has changed. His world is grouped about a new centre. It now becomes the
+supreme business of intellect to 'gaze upon God,' the supreme business of
+love to stretch out towards Him. When these twin powers, under the
+regnancy of the enhanced and trained will, are set towards Reality, then
+the human creature has done his part in the setting up of the relation of
+the soul to its Source, and made it possible for the music of the
+Infinite to sound in him. "For this intellectual gazing and this
+stretching forth of love are two heavenly pipes, sounding without the
+need of tune or of notes; they ever go forward in that Eternal Life,
+neither straying aside nor returning backward again; and ever keeping
+harmony and concord with the Holy Church, for the Holy Spirit gives the
+wind that sings in them."[19] Observe, that _tension_ is here a condition
+of the right employment of both faculties, and ensures that the Divine
+music shall sound true; one of the many implicit contradictions of the
+quietist doctrine of spiritual limpness, which we find throughout
+Ruysbroeck's works.
+
+(C) When the twofold process of growth and education has brought the self
+to this perfection of attitude as regards the Spiritual Order--an
+attitude of true _union_, says Ruysbroeck, but not yet of the unthinkable
+_unity_ which is our goal--man has done all that he can do of himself.
+His 'Interior Life' is complete, and his being is united through grace
+with the Being of God, in a relation which is the faint image of the
+mutual relations of the Divine Persons; a conscious sonship, finding
+expression in the mutual interchange of the spirit of will and love. This
+existence is rooted in 'grace,' the unconditioned life-force,
+intermediary between ourselves and God,' as the active stage was rooted
+in 'nature.' Yet there is something beyond this. As beyond the Divine
+Persons there is the Superessential Unity of the Godhead, so beyond the
+plane of Being (_Wesen_) Ruysbroeck apprehends a reality which is 'more
+than Being' (_Overwesen_). Man's spirit, having relations with every
+grade of reality, has also in its 'fathomless ground' a potential
+relation with this superessential sphere; and until this be actualised he
+is not wholly real, nor wholly _deiform_. Ruysbroeck's most original
+contribution to the history of mysticism is his description of this
+supreme state; in which the human soul becomes truly free, and is made
+the 'hidden child' of God. Then only do we discern the glory of our
+full-grown human nature; when, participating fully in the mysterious
+double life of God, the twofold action of true love, we have perfect
+fruition of Him as Eternal Rest, and perfect sharing in that outgoing
+love which is His eternal Work: "God with God, one love and one life, in
+His eternal manifestation."[20]
+
+The consummation of the mystic way, then, represents not merely a state
+of ecstatic contemplation, escape from the stream of succession, the
+death of self-hood, joyous self-immersion in the Abyss; not merely the
+enormously enhanced state of creative activity and energetic love which
+the mystics call 'divine fecundity'; but _both_--the flux and reflux of
+supreme Reality. It is the synthesis of contemplation and action, of
+Being and Becoming: the discovery at last of a clue--inexpressible
+indeed, but really held and experienced--to the mystery which most deeply
+torments us, the link between our life of duration and the Eternal Life
+of God. This is the Seventh Degree of Love, "noblest and highest that can
+be realised in the life of time or of eternity."
+
+That process of enhancement whereby the self, in its upward progress,
+carries with it all that has been attained before, here finds its
+completion. The active life of Becoming, and the essential life of Being,
+are not all. "From beyond the Infinite the Infinite comes," said the
+Indian; and his Christian brother, in parallel terms, declares that
+beyond the Essence is the Superessence of God, His 'simple' or synthetic
+unity. It is for fruition of this that man is destined; yet he does not
+leave this world for that world, but knows them as one. Totally
+surrendered to the double current of the universe, the inbreathing and
+outbreathing of the Spirit of God, "his love and fruition live between
+labour and rest." He goes up and down the mountain of vision, a living
+willing tool wherewith God works. "Hence, to enter into restful fruition
+and come forth again in good works, and to remain ever one with God--this
+is the thing that I would say. Even as we open our fleshly eyes to see,
+and shut them again so quickly that we do not even feel it, thus we die
+into God, we live of God, and remain ever one with God. Therefore we must
+come forth in the activities of the sense-life, and again re-enter in
+love and cling to God; in order that we may ever remain one with Him
+without change."[21]
+
+All perfect lives, says Ruysbroeck, conform to this pattern, follow this
+curve; though such perfect lives are rare amongst men. They are the
+fruit, not of volition, but of vocation; of the mysterious operations of
+the Divine Light which--perpetually crying through the universe the
+"unique and fathomless word 'Behold! behold!'" and "therewith giving
+utterance to itself and all other things"--yet evokes only in some men an
+answering movement of consciousness, the deliberate surrender which
+conditions the new power of response and of growth. "To this divine
+vision but few men can attain, because of their own unfitness and because
+of the darkness of that Light whereby we see: and therefore no one shall
+thoroughly understand this perception by means of any scholarship, or by
+their own acuteness of comprehension. For all words, and all that men may
+learn and understand in a creaturely fashion, is foreign to this and far
+below the truth that I mean. To understand and lay hold of God as He is
+in Himself above all images--this is _to be God with God_, without
+intermediary or any difference that might become an intermediary or an
+obstacle. And therefore I beg each one, who can neither understand this,
+nor feel it by the way of spiritual union, that he be not grieved
+thereby, and let it be as it is."[22]
+
+I end this chapter by a reference to certain key-words frequent in
+Ruysbroeck's works, which are sometimes a source of difficulty to his
+readers. These words are nearly always his names for inward experiences.
+He uses them in a poetic and artistic manner, evocative rather than
+exact; and we, in trying to discover their meaning, must never forget the
+coloured fringe of suggestion which they carry for the mystic and the
+poet, and which is a true part of the message he intends them to convey.
+
+The first of these words is Fruition. Fruition, a concept which Eucken's
+philosophy has brought back into current thought, represents a total
+attainment, complete and permanent participation and possession. It is an
+absolute state, transcending all succession, and it is applied by
+Ruysbroeck to the absolute character of the spirit's life in God; which,
+though it seem to the surface consciousness a perpetually renewed
+encounter of love, is in its ground 'fruitive and unconditioned,' a
+timeless self-immersion in the Dark, the 'glorious and essential
+Oneness.' Thus he speaks of 'fruitive love,' 'fruitive possession'; as
+opposed to striving, dynamic love, partial, progressive and conditioned
+possession. Perfect contemplation and loving dependence are the eternal
+fruition of God': the Beatific Vision of theology. "Where we are one with
+God, without intermediary, beyond all separation; there is God our
+fruition and His own in an eternal and fathomless bliss."[23]
+
+Next perhaps in the power of provoking misunderstanding is the weight
+attached by Ruysbroeck to the adjective Simple. This word, which
+constantly recurs in his descriptions of spiritual states, always conveys
+the sense of wholeness, completeness, synthesis; not of poverty,
+thinness, subtraction. It is the white light in which all the colours of
+the spectrum are included and fused. 'Simple Union,' 'Simple
+Contemplation,' 'Simple Light'--all these mean the total undifferentiated
+act or perception from which our analytic minds subtract aspects. "In
+simplicity will I unite with the Simple One," said Kabir. So Ruysbroeck:
+"We behold His face in a simple seeing, beyond reason and without
+consideration."
+
+Another cause of difficulty to those unfamiliar with the mystics is the
+constant reference to Bareness or Nudity, especially in descriptions of
+the contemplative act. This is, of course, but one example of that
+negative method of suggestion--darkness, bareness, desolation, divine
+ignorance, the 'rich nothing,' the 'naked thought'--which is a stock
+device of mysticism, and was probably taken by Ruysbroeck from Dionysius
+the Areopagite. It represents, first, the bewildering emptiness and
+nakedness of consciousness when introduced into a universe that
+transcends our ordinary conceptual world; secondly, the necessity of such
+transcendence, of emptying the field of consciousness of 'every vain
+imagining,' if the self is to have contact with the Reality which these
+veil.
+
+With the distinction between Essence (_Wesen_) and Superessence
+(_Overwesen_) I have already dealt; and this will appear more clearly
+when we consider Ruysbroeck's 'second' and 'third' stages of the mystic
+life.
+
+There remains the great pair of opposites, fundamental for his thought,
+called in the Flemish vernacular _Wise_ and _Onwise_, and generally
+rendered by translators as 'Mode' and 'Modeless.' Wherever possible I
+have replaced these tasteless Latinisms by the Old English equivalents
+'in some wise' and 'in no wise,' occasionally by 'conditioned' and
+'unconditioned'; though perhaps the colloquial 'somehow' and 'nohow'
+would be yet more exactly expressive. Now this pair of opposites is
+psychological rather than metaphysical, and has to do with the
+characteristic phenomena of contemplation. It indicates the difference
+between the universe of the normal man, living as the servant or friend
+of God within the temporal order, and the universe of the true
+contemplative, the 'hidden child.' The knowledge and love of the first is
+a conditioned knowledge and love. Everything which happens to him happens
+'in some wise'; it has attachments within his conceptual world, is
+mediated to him by symbols and images which intellect can grasp. "The
+simple ascent into the Nude and the Unconditioned is unknown and unloved
+of him"; it is through and amongst his ordinary mental furniture that he
+obtains his contacts with Reality. But the knowledge and love of the
+second, his contacts, transcend the categories of thought. He has escaped
+alike from the tyrannies and comforts of the world of images, has made
+the 'ascent into the Nought,' where all _is_, yet 'in no wise.' "The
+power of the understanding is lifted up to that which is beyond all
+conditions, and its seeing is in no wise, being without manner, and it is
+neither thus nor thus, neither here nor there."[24] This is the direct,
+unmediated world of spiritual intuition; where the self touches a Reality
+that has not been passed through the filters of sense and thought. There
+man achieves a love, a vision, an activity which are 'wayless,' yet far
+more valid than anything that can be fitted into the framework of our
+conditioned world.
+
+  "In a place beyond uttermost place, in a track without shadow of trace,
+  Soul and body transcending, I live in the soul of my Loved One anew."
+
+Thus cries the great Sufi poet, Jalalu'ddin; and the suggestion which his
+words convey is perhaps as close as speech can come to what Ruysbroeck
+meant by _Onwise_. The change of consciousness which initiates man into
+this inner yet unbounded world--the world that is 'unwalled,' to use his
+own favourite metaphor--is the essence of contemplation; which consists,
+not in looking at strange mysteries, but in a movement to fresh levels,
+shut to the analytic intellect, open to adventurous love. There, without
+any amazement, the self can 'know in no wise' that which it can never
+understand.
+
+  "Contemplation is a knowing that is in no wise,
+  For ever dwelling above the Reason.
+  Never can it sink down into the Reason,
+  And above it can the Reason never climb.
+  The shining forth of That which is in no wise is as a fair mirror.
+  Wherein shines the Eternal Light of God.
+  It has no attributes,
+  And here all the works of Reason fail.
+  It is not God,
+  But it is the Light whereby we see Him.
+  Those who walk in the Divine Light of it
+  Discover in themselves the Unwalled.
+  That which is in no wise, is above the Reason, not without it:
+  It beholds all things without amazement.
+  Amazement is far beneath it:
+  The contemplative life is without amazement.
+  That which is in no wise sees, it knows not what;
+  For it is above all, and is neither This nor That."[25]
+
+
+
+
+                                    CHAPTER V
+THE ACTIVE LIFE
+
+
+  If we would discover and know that Kingdom of God which is hidden in
+  us, we must lead a life that is virtuous within, well-ordered without,
+  and fulfilled with true charity. Thus imitating Christ in every way, we
+  can, through grace, love and virtue, raise ourselves up to that apex of
+  the soul where God lives and reigns.
+
+                                      The Mirror of Eternal Salvation.
+
+The beginning of man's Active Life, says Ruysbroeck--that uplifting of
+the diurnal existence into the Divine Atmosphere, which confers on it
+meaning and reality--is a movement of response. Grace, the synthesis of
+God's love, energy and will, pours like a great river through the
+universe, and perpetually beats in upon the soul. When man consents to
+receive it, opens the sluices of the heart to that living water,
+surrenders to it; then he opens his heart and will to the impact of
+Reality, his eyes to the Divine Light, and in this energetic movement of
+acceptance begins for the first time to live indeed. Hence it is that, in
+the varied ethical systems which we find in his books, and which describe
+the active crescent life of Christian virtue, the laborious adjustment of
+character to the Vision of God, Ruysbroeck always puts first the virtue,
+or rather the attitude, which he calls _good-will_: the voluntary
+orientation of the self in the right direction, the eager acceptance of
+grace. As all growth depends upon food, so all spiritual development
+depends upon the self's appropriation of its own share of the
+transcendent life-force, its own 'rill of grace'; and good-will breaks
+down the barrier which prevents that stream from pouring into the soul.
+
+Desire, said William Law, _is_ everything and _does_ everything; it is
+the primal motive-power. Ruysbroeck, too, finds in desire turned towards
+the best the beginning of human transcendence, and regards willing and
+loving as the essence of life. Basing his psychology on the common
+mediaeval scheme of Memory, Intelligence and Will, he speaks of this last
+as the king of the soul; dominating both the other powers, and able to
+gather them in its clutch, force them to attend to the invitations and
+messages of the eternal world. Thus in his system the demand upon man's
+industry and courage is made from the very first. The great mystical
+necessity of self-surrender is shown to involve, not a limp acquiescence,
+but a deliberate and heroic choice; the difficult approximation of our
+own thoughts and desires to the thoughts and desires of Divine Reality.
+"When we have but one thought and one will with God, we are on the first
+step of the ladder of love and of sanctity; for good-will is the
+foundation of all virtue."[26]
+
+In _The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage_, Ruysbroeck has used the
+words said to the wise and foolish virgins of the parable--"Behold, the
+bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him"--as an epitome of the self's
+relations with and reactions to Reality. First, all created spirits are
+called to behold God, who is perpetually 'coming' to the world of
+conditions, in a ceaseless procession of love; and in this seeing our
+happiness consists. But in order really to see a thing, we need not only
+light and clear sight, but the _will_ to look at it; every act of
+perception demands a self-giving on the seer's part. So here we need not
+only the light of grace and the open eyes of the soul, but also the
+_will_ turned towards the Infinite: our attention to life, the regnant
+fact of our consciousness, must be focussed upon eternal things. Now,
+when we see God, we cannot but love Him; and love is motion, activity.
+Hence, this first demand on the awakened spirit, 'Behold!' is swiftly
+followed by the second demand, 'Go ye out!' for the essence of love is
+generous, outflowing, expansive, an "upward and outward tendency towards
+the Kingdom of God, which is God Himself." This outgoing, this concrete
+act of response, will at once change and condition our correspondences
+with and attitude towards God, ourselves and our neighbours; expressing
+itself within the world of action in a new ardour for perfection--the
+natural result of the 'loving vision of the Bridegroom,' the self's first
+glimpse of Perfect Goodness and Truth. We observe the continued
+insistence on effort, act, as the very heart of all true self-giving to
+transcendent interests.
+
+Whilst in the volitional life drastic readjustments, stern
+character-building, and eager work are the expression of goodwill, in the
+emotional life it is felt as a profound impulse to self-surrender: a
+loving yielding up of the whole personality to the inflow and purging
+activities of the Absolute Life. "This good-will is nought else but the
+infused Love of God, which causes him to apply himself to Divine things
+and all virtues; ... when it turns towards God, it crowns the spirit with
+Eternal Love, and when it returns to outward things it rules as a
+mistress over his external good deeds."[27]
+
+We have here, then, a disposition of heart and mind which both receives
+and responds to the messages of Reality; making it possible for the self
+to begin to grow in the right direction, to enter into possession of its
+twofold heritage. That completely human life of activity and
+contemplation which moves freely up and down the ladder of love between
+the temporal and eternal worlds, and reproduces in little the ideal of
+Divine Humanity declared in Christ, is the ideal towards which it is set;
+and already, even in this lowest phase, the double movement of the
+awakened consciousness begins to show itself. Our love and will, firmly
+fastened in the Eternal World, are to swing like a pendulum between the
+seen and the unseen spheres; in great ascending arcs of balanced
+adoration and service, which shall bring all the noblest elements of
+human character into play. Therefore the pivoting of life upon Divine
+Reality, which is the result of good-will--the setting up of a right
+relation with the universe--is inevitably the first condition of virtue,
+the 'root of sanctity,' the beginning of spiritual growth, the act which
+makes man free; translating him, in Ruysbroeck's image, from the state of
+the slave to that of the conscious and willing servant of Eternal Truth.
+"From the hour in which, with God's help, he transcends his self-hood ...
+he feels true love, which overcomes doubt and fear and makes man trust
+and hope; and so he becomes a true servant, and means and loves God in
+all that he does."[28]
+
+So man, emerging from the shell of selfhood, makes--of his own free
+choice, by his own effort--his first timid upward beat to God; and,
+following swiftly upon it, the compensating outward beat of charity
+towards his fellow-men. We observe how tight a hold has this most
+transcendental of the mystics on the _wholeness_ of all healthy human
+life: the mutual support and interpenetration of the active and
+contemplative powers. 'Other-worldliness' is decisively contradicted from
+the first. It is the appearance of this eager active charity--this
+imitation in little of the energetic Love of God--which assures us that
+the first stage of the self's growth is rightly accomplished; completing
+its first outward push in that new direction to which its good-will is
+turned. "For charity ever presses towards the heights, towards the
+Kingdom of God, the which is God Himself."
+
+In the practical counsels given to the young novice to whom _The Mirror
+of Salvation_ is addressed, we may see Ruysbroeck's ideal of that active
+life of self-discipline and service which the soul has now set in hand;
+and which he describes in greater detail in _The Adornment of the
+Spiritual Marriage_ and _The Kingdom of God's Lovers_. Total
+self-donation, he tells her, is her first need--'choosing God, for love's
+sake' without hesitations or reserves; and this dedication to the
+interests of Reality must be untainted by any spiritual selfishness, any
+hint of that insidious desire for personal beatitude which 'fades the
+flower of true love.' This done, self-conquest and self-control become
+the novice's primary duties: the gradual subduing and rearrangement of
+character about its new centre, the elimination of all tendencies
+inimical to the demands of Eternal Life; the firm establishment upon its
+throne of that true free-will which desires only God's will. This
+self-conquest, the essence of the 'Way of Purgation,' as described and
+experienced by so many ascetics and mystics, includes not only the
+eradication of sins, but the training of the attention, the adaptation of
+consciousness to its new environment; the killing-out of inclinations
+which, harmless in themselves, compete with the one transcendent interest
+of life.
+
+Like all great mystics, Ruysbroeck had a strong 'sense of sin.' This is
+merely a theological way of stating the fact that his intense realisation
+of Perfection involved a vivid consciousness of the imperfections,
+disharmonies, perversities, implicit in the human creature; the need of
+resolving them if the soul was to grow up to the stature of Divine
+Humanity. Yet there is in his writings a singular absence of that
+profound preoccupation with sin found in so many mediaeval ascetics. His
+attitude towards character was affirmative and robust; emphasising the
+possibilities rather than the disabilities of man. Sin, for him, was
+egotism; showing itself in the manifold forms of pride, laziness,
+self-indulgence, coldness of heart, or spiritual self-seeking, but always
+implying a central wrongness of attitude, resulting in a wrong employment
+of power. Self-denials and bodily mortifications he regarded partly as
+exercises in self-control--spiritual athletics--useful because educative
+of the will; partly as expressions of love. At best they are but the
+means of sanctity, and never to be confused with its end; for the man who
+deliberately passed the greater part of his life in the bustle of the
+town was no advocate of a cloistered virtue or a narrow perfectionism.
+
+Morbid piety is often the product of physical as well as spiritual
+stuffiness; and Ruysbroeck wrote his great books out of doors, with light
+and air all round him, and the rhythmic life of trees to remind him how
+much stronger was the quiet law of growth than any atavism, accident, or
+perversion by which it could be checked. Thus, throughout his works, the
+accent always falls upon power rather than weakness: upon the spiritual
+energy pouring in like sunshine; the incessant growth which love sets
+going; the perpetual rebirths to ever higher levels, as the young sapling
+stretches upward every spring. What he asks of the novice is contrition
+without anxiety, self-discipline without fuss; the steady, all-round
+development of her personality, stretching and growing towards God. She
+is to be the mistress of her soul, never permitting it to be drawn hither
+and thither by the distractions and duties of external life. Keeping
+always in the atmosphere of Reality, she shall bring therefrom truth and
+frankness to all her words and deeds; and perform her duties with that
+right and healthy detachment which springs, not from a contempt of the
+Many, but from the secure and loving possession of the One.
+
+The disciplines to which she must subject herself in the effort towards
+attainment of this poise, will, like a wise gymnastic, produce in her a
+suppleness of soul; making the constant and inevitable transition from
+interior communion to outward work, which charity and good sense demand,
+easy and natural, and causing the spirit to be plastic in the hand of
+God. Such suppleness--the lightness and lissomeness which comes from
+spiritual muscles exercised and controlled--was one of the favourite
+qualities of that wise trainer of character, St. Francois de Sales; and
+the many small and irritating mortifications with which he was accustomed
+to torment his disciples had no other aim than to produce it.
+
+In the stage of development to which the Active Life belongs, the soul
+enjoys communion with Reality, not with that directness proper to the
+true contemplative, but obliquely, by 'means,' symbols and images;
+especially by the sacramental dispensation of the Church, a subject to
+which Ruysbroeck devotes great attention. As always in his system, growth
+from within is intimately connected with the reception of food and power
+from without. The movement of the self into God, the movement of God into
+the self, though separable in thought, are one in fact: will and grace
+are two aspects of one truth. Only this paradox can express the relation
+between that Divine Love which is 'both avid and generous,' and the self
+that is destined both to devour and be devoured by Reality.
+
+In the beautiful chapters on the Eucharist which form the special feature
+of _The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, Ruysbroeck develops this idea. "If
+He gives us all that He has and all that He is, in return He takes from
+us all that we have and all that we are, and demands of us more than we
+are capable of giving.... Even in devouring us, He desires to feed us. If
+He absorbs us utterly into Himself, He gives Himself in return. He causes
+to be born in us the hunger and thirst of the spirit, which shall make us
+savour Him in an eternal fruition; and to this spiritual hunger, as well
+as to the love of our heart, He gives His own Body as food.... Thus does
+He give us His life full of wisdom, truth and knowledge, in order that we
+may imitate Him in all virtues; and then He lives in us and we in Him.
+Then do we grow, and raise ourselves up above the reason into a Divine
+Love which causes us to take and consume that Food in a spiritual manner,
+and stretch out in pure love towards the Divinity. There takes place that
+encounter of the spirit, that is to say of measureless love, which
+consumes and transforms our spirit with all its works; drawing us with
+itself towards the Unity, where we taste beatitude and rest. Herein
+therefore is our eternal life: ever to devour and be devoured, to ascend
+and descend with love."[29]
+
+The soul, then, turned in the direction of the Infinite, 'having God for
+aim,' and with her door opened to the inflowing Divine Life, begins to
+grow. Her growth is up and out; from that temporal world to which her
+nature is adapted, and where she seems full of power and efficiency, to
+that eternal world to which the 'spark' within her belongs, but where she
+is as yet no more than a weak and helpless child. Hence the first state
+of mind and heart produced in her, if the 'new birth' has indeed taken
+place, will be that humility which results from all real self-knowledge;
+since "whoso might verily see and feel himself as he _is_, he should
+verily be meek." This clear acknowledgment of facts, this finding of
+one's own place, Ruysbroeck calls 'the solid foundation of the Kingdom of
+the Soul.' In thus discerning love and humility as the governing
+characteristics of the soul's reaction to Reality, he is of course
+keeping close to the great tradition of Christian mysticism; especially
+to the teaching of Richard of St. Victor, which we find constantly
+repeated in the ascetic literature of the Middle Ages.
+
+From these two virtues, then, of humble self-knowledge and God-centred
+love, are gradually developed all those graces of character which 'adorn
+the soul for the spiritual marriage,' mark her ascent of the first
+degrees of the 'ladder of love,' and make possible the perfecting of her
+correspondences with the 'Kingdom.' This development follows an orderly
+course, as subject to law as the unfolding of the leaves and flowers upon
+the growing plant; and though Ruysbroeck in his various works uses
+different diagrams wherewith to explain it, the psychological changes
+which these diagrams demonstrate are substantially the same. In each case
+we watch the opening of man's many-petalled heart under the rays of the
+Divine Light, till it blossoms at last into the rose of Perfect Charity.
+
+Thus in _The Seven Degrees of Love_, since he is there addressing a
+cloistered nun, he accommodates his system to that threefold monastic vow
+of voluntary poverty or perfect renunciation, chastity or singleness of
+heart, and obedience or true humility in action, by which she is bound.
+When the reality which these vows express is actualised in the soul, and
+dominates all her reactions to the world, she wears the 'crown of
+virtue'; and lives that 'noble life' ruled by the purified and enhanced
+will, purged of all selfish desires and distractions, which--seeking in
+all things the interests of the spiritual world--is 'full of love and
+charity, and industrious in good works.'
+
+In _The Spiritual Marriage_ a more elaborate analysis is possible; based
+upon that division of man's moral perversities into the 'seven mortal
+sins' or seven fundamental forms of selfishness, which governed, and
+governs yet, the Catholic view of human character. After a preliminary
+passage in which the triple attitude of love as towards God, humility as
+towards self, justice as towards other men, is extolled as the only
+secure basis of the spiritual life, Ruysbroeck proceeds to exhibit the
+seven real and positive qualities which oppose the seven great abuses of
+human freedom. As Pride is first and worst of mortal sins and follies, so
+its antithesis Humility is again put forward as the first condition of
+communion with God. This produces in the emotional life an attitude of
+loving adoration; in the volitional life, obedience. By _obedience_,
+Ruysbroeck means that self-submission, that wise suppleness of spirit,
+which is swayed and guided not by its own tastes and interests but by the
+Will of God; as expressed in the commands and prohibitions of moral and
+spiritual law, the interior push of conscience. This attitude, at first
+deliberately assumed, gradually controls all the self's reactions, and
+ends by subduing it entirely to the Divine purpose. "Of this obedience
+there grows the abdication of one's own will and one's own opinion; ...
+by this abdication of the will in all that one does, or does not do, or
+endures, the substance and occasion of pride are wholly driven out, and
+the highest humility is perfected."[30]
+
+This movement of renunciation brings--next phase in the unselfing of the
+self--a compensating outward swing of love; expressed under the beautiful
+forms of _patience_, 'the tranquil tolerance of all that can happen,' and
+hence the antithesis of Anger; _gentleness_, which "with peace and calm
+bears vexatious words and deeds"; _kindness_, which deals with the
+quarrelsome and irritable by means of "a friendly countenance,
+affectionate persuasion and compassionate acts"; and _sympathy_, "that
+inward movement of the heart which compassionates the bodily and
+spiritual griefs of all men," and kills the evil spirit of Envy and hate.
+This fourfold increase in disinterested love is summed up in the
+condition which Ruysbroeck calls _supernatural generosity_; that
+largeness of heart which flows out towards the generosity of God, which
+is swayed by pity and love, which embraces all men in its sweep. By this
+energetic love which seeks not its own, "all virtues are increased, and
+all the powers of the spirit are adorned"; and Avarice, the fourth great
+mortal sin, is opposed.
+
+Generosity is no mere mood; it is a motive-force, demanding expression in
+action. From the emotions, it invades the will, and produces _diligence_
+and _zeal_: an 'inward and impatient eagerness' for every kind of work,
+and for the hard practice of every kind of virtue, which makes impossible
+that slackness and dulness of soul which is characteristic of the sin of
+Sloth. It is dynamic love; and the spirit which is fired by its ardours,
+has reached a degree of self-conquest in which the two remaining evil
+tendencies--that to every kind of immoderate enjoyment, spiritual,
+intellectual or physical, which is the essence of Gluttony, and that to
+the impure desire of created things which is Lust--can be met and
+vanquished. The purged and strengthened will, crowned by unselfish love,
+is now established on its throne; man has become captain of his soul, and
+rules all the elements of his character and that character's expression
+in life--not as an absolute monarch, but in the name of Divine Love.[31]
+He has done all he can do of himself towards the conforming of his life
+to Supreme Perfection; has opposed, one after another, each of those
+exhibitions of the self's tendency to curl inwards, to fence itself in
+and demand, absorb, enjoy as a separate entity, which lie at the root of
+sin. The constructive side of the Purgative Way has consisted in the
+replacement of this egoistic, indrawing energy by these outflowing
+energies of self-surrender, kindness, diligence and the rest; summed up
+in that perfection of humility and love, which "in all its works, and
+always, stretches out towards God."
+
+The first three gifts of the Holy Spirit are possessed by the soul which
+has reached this point, says Ruysbroeck in _The Kingdom of God's Lovers_:
+that loving Fear, which includes true humility with all its ancillary
+characteristics; that general attitude of charity which makes man gentle,
+patient and docile, ready to serve and pity every one, and is called
+Godliness, because there first emerges in it his potential likeness to
+God; and finally that Knowledge or discernment of right and prudent
+conduct which checks the disastrous tendency to moral fussiness, helps
+man to conform his life to supreme Perfection, and gives the calmness and
+balance which are essential to a sane and manly spirituality. Thus the
+new life-force has invaded and affected will, feeling and intellect;
+raised the whole man to fresh levels of existence, and made possible
+fresh correspondences with Reality. "Hereby are the three lower powers of
+the soul adorned with Divine virtues. The Irascible [_i.e._ volitional
+and dynamic] is adorned with loving and filial fear, humility, obedience
+and renunciation. The Desirous is adorned with kindness, pity, compassion
+and generosity. Finally, the Reasonable with knowledge and discernment,
+and that prudence which regulates all things."[32] The ideal of character
+held out and described under varying metaphors in Ruysbroeck's different
+works, is thus seen to be a perfectly consistent one.
+
+Now when the growing self has actualised this ideal, and lives the Active
+Life of the faithful servant of Reality, it begins to feel an ardent
+desire for some more direct encounter with That which it loves. Since it
+has now acquired the 'ornaments of the virtues'--cleansed its mirror,
+ordered its disordered loves--this encounter may and does in a certain
+sense take place; for every Godward movement of the human is met by a
+compensating movement of the Divine. Man now begins to find God in all
+things: in nature, in the soul, in works of charity. But in the turmoil
+and bustle of the Active Life such an encounter is at best indirect; a
+sidelong glimpse of the 'first and only Fair.' That vision can only be
+apprehended in its wholeness by a concentration of all the powers of the
+self. If we would look the Absolute in the eyes, we must look at nothing
+else; the complete opening of the eye of Eternity entails the closing of
+the eye of Time. Man, then, must abstract himself from multiplicity, if
+only for a moment, if he would catch sight of the unspeakable Simplicity
+of the Real. Longing to 'know the nature of the Beloved,' he must act as
+Zacchaeus did when he wished to see Christ:
+
+"He must run before the crowd, that is to say the multiplicity of created
+things; for these make us so little and low that we cannot perceive God.
+And he must climb up on the Tree of Faith, which grows from above
+downwards, for its root is in the Godhead. This tree has twelve branches,
+which are the twelve articles of the Creed. The lower branches speak of
+the Humanity of God; ... the upper branches, however, speak of the
+Godhead: of the Trinity of Persons and the Unity of the Divine Nature.
+Man must cling to the Unity which is at the top of the tree, for it is
+here that Jesus will pass by with all His gifts. And now Jesus comes, and
+He sees man, and shows him in the light of faith that He is, according to
+His Divinity, unmeasured and incomprehensible, inaccessible and
+fathomless, and that He overpasses all created light and all finite
+comprehension. This is the highest knowledge of God which man can acquire
+in the Active Life: thus to recognise by the light of faith that God is
+inconceivable and unknowable. In this light God says to the desire of
+man: "Come down quickly, for I would dwell in your house to-day." And
+this quick descent, to which God invites him, is nought else but a
+descent, by love and desire, into the Abyss of the Godhead, to which no
+intellect can attain by its created light. But here, where intellect must
+rest without, love and desire may enter in. When the soul thus leans upon
+God by intention and love, above all that she understands, then she rests
+and dwells in God, and God in her. When the soul mounts up by desire,
+above the multiplicity of things, above the activities of the senses and
+above the light of external nature, then she encounters Christ by the
+light of faith, and is illuminated; and she recognises that God is
+unknowable and inconceivable. Finally, stretching by desire towards this
+incomprehensible God, she meets Christ and is fulfilled with His gifts.
+And loving and resting above all gifts, above herself and above all
+things, she dwells in God and God in her. According to this manner Christ
+may be encountered upon the summit of the Active Life."[33]
+
+This, then, is the completion of the first stage in the mystic way; this
+showing to the purified consciousness of the helplessness of the analytic
+intellect, the dynamic power of self-surrendered love. "Where intellect
+must rest without, love and desire may enter in." The human creature,
+turning towards Reality, has pressed up to the very edge of the 'Cloud of
+Unknowing' in which the goal of transcendence is hid. If it is to go
+further it must bring to the adventure not knowledge but divine
+ignorance, not riches but poverty; above all, an eager and industrious
+love.
+
+  "A fiery flame of devotion leaping and ascending into the very goodness
+              of God Himself,
+  A loving longing of the soul to be with God in His Eternity,
+  A turning from all things of self into the freedom of the Will of God;
+  With all the forces of the soul gathered into the unity of the
+              spirit."[34]
+
+
+
+
+                                    CHAPTER VI
+THE INTERIOR LIFE: ILLUMINATION AND DESTITUTION
+
+
+  Let whoso thirsts to see his God cleanse his mirror, purge his spirit;
+  and when thus he has cleansed his mirror, and long and diligently gazed
+  in it, a certain brightness of divine light begins to shine through
+  upon him, and a certain immense ray of unwonted vision to appear before
+  his eyes.... From the beholding of this light, which it sees within
+  itself with amazement, the mind is mightily set on fire, and lifted up
+  to behold that Light which is above itself.
+
+                                                Richard of St. Victor.
+
+It is plain that the Active Life in Ruysbroeck's system answers more or
+less to the Purgative Way, considered upon its affirmative and
+constructive side, as a building up of the heroic Christian character.
+So, too, the life which he calls Interior or Contemplative, and which
+initiates man into the friendship of God, corresponds in the main with
+the Illuminative Way of orthodox mysticism; though it includes in its
+later stages much that is usually held to belong to the third, or
+Unitive, state of the soul. The first life has, as it were, unfolded to
+the sunlight the outer petals of the mystic rose; exhibiting in their
+full beauty, adjusting to their true use, the normally-apparent
+constituents of man's personality. All his relations with the given world
+of sense, the sphere of Becoming, have been purified and adjusted. Now
+the expansive and educative influence of the Divine Light is able to
+penetrate nearer to the heart of his personality; is brought to bear upon
+those interior qualities which he hardly knows himself to possess, and
+which govern his relation with the spiritual world of Being. The flower
+is to open more widely; the inner ring of petals must uncurl.
+
+As the primary interest of the Active Life was ethical purification, so
+the primary interest of this Second Life is intellectual purification.
+Intellect, however, is here to be understood in its highest sense; as
+including not only the analytic reason which deals with the problems of
+our normal universe, but that higher intelligence, that contemplative
+mind, which--once it is awakened to consciousness--can gather news of the
+transcendental world. The development and clarification of this power is
+only possible to those who have achieved, and continue to live at full
+stretch, the high, arduous and unselfish life of Christian virtue. Again
+we must remind ourselves that Ruysbroeck's theory of transcendence
+involves, not the passage from one life to another, but the _adding_ of
+one life to another: the perpetual deepening, widening, heightening and
+enriching of human experience. As the author of _The Cloud of Unknowing_
+insists that none can be truly contemplative who is not also active, so
+Ruysbroeck says that no man ever rises above the ordinary obligations of
+Christian kindness and active good works.
+
+"We find nowadays many silly men who would be so interior and so
+detached, that they will not be active or helpful in any way of which
+their neighbours are in need. Know, such men are neither hidden friends
+nor yet true servants of God, but are wholly false and disloyal; for none
+can follow His counsels but those who obey His laws."[35]
+
+Nevertheless it would be generally true to say that, whilst the aim of
+the Active Life is right conduct, the aim of the Interior Life is right
+vision and thought. As, in that first life, all the perversions of man's
+ordinary powers and passions were rectified, all that was superfluous and
+unreal done away, and his nature set right with God; now--still holding
+and living in its fulness this purified active life--he is to press
+deeper and deeper into the resources of his being, finding there other
+powers and cravings which must be brought within the field of
+consciousness, and set up those relations with the Transcendent of which
+they are capable. This deepening and enlarging of man's universe,
+together with the further and more drastic discarding of illusions and
+unrealities, is the business of the Second Life, considered on its
+impersonal side.
+
+"If thou dost desire to unfold in thyself the Contemplative Life, thou
+must enter within, beyond the sense-life; and, on that apex of thy being,
+adorned with all the virtues of which I have spoken, looking unto God
+with gratitude and love and continual reverence, thou must keep thy
+thoughts bare, and stripped of every sensible image, thine understanding
+open and lifted up to the Eternal Truth, and thy spirit spread out in the
+sight of God as a living mirror to receive His everlasting likeness.
+Behold, therein appears a light of the understanding, which neither
+sense, reason, nature, nor the clearest logic can apprehend, but which
+gives us freedom and confidence towards God. It is nobler and higher than
+all that God has created in nature; for it is the perfection of nature,
+and transcends nature, and is the clear-shining intermediary between
+ourselves and God. Our thoughts, bare and stripped of images, are
+themselves the living mirror in which this light shines: and the light
+requires of us that we should be like to and one with God, in this living
+mirror of our bare thoughts."[36]
+
+In this strongly Victorine passage, the whole process of the Second Life
+is epitomised; but in _The Spiritual Marriage_, where its description
+occupies the seventy-three chapters of the second book, we see how long
+is the way which stretches from that first 'entering in beyond the sense
+life' to the point at which the soul's mirror is able to receive in its
+fullness that Light wherein alone it can apprehend Reality.
+
+Considered upon its organic side, as a growth and movement of the soul,
+this Way, as conceived, and probably experienced, by Ruysbroeck, can be
+divided into three great phases. We might call these Action, Reaction and
+Equilibrium. Broadly speaking, they answer to the Illumination, Dark
+Night and Simple Union of orthodox mystical science. Yet since in his
+vivid description of these linked states he constantly departs from the
+formulae of his predecessors, and as constantly illustrates their
+statements by intimate and homely touches only possible to one who has
+endured the adventures of which he tells, we are justified in claiming
+the description as the fruit of experience rather than of tradition; and
+as evidence of the course taken by his own development.
+
+It is surely upon his own memory that he is relying, when he tells us
+that the beginning of this new life possesses something of the abrupt
+character of a second conversion. It happens, he says, when we least
+expect it; when the self, after the long tension and struggle of moral
+purgation, has become drowsy and tired. Then, suddenly, "a spiritual cry
+echoes through the soul," announcing a new encounter with Reality, and
+demanding a new response; or, to put it in another way, consciousness on
+its ascending spiral has pushed through to another level of existence,
+where it can hear voices and discern visions to which it was deaf and
+blind before. This sudden clarity of mind, this new vivid apprehension of
+Divine Love, is the first indication of man's entrance on the
+Illuminative Way. It is introversive rather than out-going in type.
+Changing the character of our attention to life, we discern within us
+something which we have always possessed and always ignored: a secret
+Divine energy, which is now to emerge from the subconscious deeps into
+the area of consciousness. There it stimulates the will, evicts all
+lesser images and interests from the heart, and concentrates all the
+faculties into a single and intense state, pressing towards the Unity of
+God, the synthetic experience of love; for perpetual movement towards
+that unity--not achievement of it--is the mark of this Second Life, in
+which the separation of God and the soul remains intact. In Victorine
+language, it is the period of spiritual betrothal, not of spiritual
+marriage; of a vision which, though wide, rich and wonderful, is mirrored
+rather than direct.
+
+The new God-inspired movement, then, begins within, like a spring
+bubbling from the deeps; and thrusts up and out to the consciousness
+which it is destined to clarify and enhance. "The stream of Divine grace
+swiftly stirs and moves a man inwardly, and from within outwards; and
+this swift stirring is the first thing that makes us _see_. Of this swift
+stirring is born from the side of man the second point: that is, a
+gathering together of all the inward and outward powers in spiritual
+unity and in the bonds of love. The third is that liberty which enables
+man to retreat into himself, without images or obstacles, whensoever he
+wills and thinks of his God."[37]
+
+So we may say that an enhancement of the conative powers, a greater
+control over the attention, are the chief marks of the Illuminative Way
+as perceived by the growing self. But the liberty here spoken of has a
+moral as well as a mental aspect. It is a freeing of the whole man from
+the fetters of illusion, and involves that perfect detachment of heart,
+that self-naughting, which makes him equally willing to have joy or pain,
+gain or loss, esteem or contempt, peace or fear, as the Divine Will may
+ordain. Thus is perfected that suppleness of soul which he began to
+acquire in the Active Life: a gradual process, which needs for its
+accomplishment the negative rhythm of renunciation, testing the manliness
+and courage of the self, as well as the positive movement of love. Hence
+the Contemplative Life, as Ruysbroeck knows and describes it, has, and
+must have, its state of pain as well as its state of joy. With him,
+however, as with nearly all the mystics, the state of joy comes first:
+the glad and eager reaction to those new levels of spiritual reality
+disclosed to consciousness when the struggles and readjustments of the
+Active Life have done their work. This is the phase in the self's
+progress which mystical writers properly mean by Illumination: a
+condition of great happiness, and of an intuition of Reality so vivid and
+joyous, that the soul often supposes that she has here reached the goal
+of her quest. It is in the spiritual year, says Ruysbroeck, that which
+the month of May is in the seasons of the earth: a wholesome and
+necessary time of sunshine, swift growth and abundant flowers, when the
+soul, under the influence of 'the soft rain of inward consolations and
+the heavenly dew of the Divine sweetness' blossoms in new and lovely
+graces.
+
+Illumination is an unstable period. The sun is rising swiftly in the
+heaven of man's consciousness; and as it increases in power, so it calls
+forth on the soul's part greater ardours, more intense emotional
+reactions. Once more the flux of God is demanding its reflux. The soul,
+like the growing boy suddenly made aware of the beauty, romance and
+wonder--the intense and irresistible appeal--of a world that had seemed
+ordinary before, flows out towards this new universe with all the
+enthusiasm and eagerness of its young fresh powers. Those powers are so
+new to it, that it cannot yet control or understand them. Vigorous and
+ungovernable, they invade by turns the heart, the will, the mind, as do
+the fevers and joys of physical adolescence; inciting to acts and
+satisfactions for which the whole self is hardly ready yet. "Then is
+thrown wide," says Ruysbroeck, "the heaven which was shut, and from the
+face of Divine Love there blazes down a sudden light, as it were a
+lightning flash." In the meeting of this inward and outward spiritual
+force--the Divine Light without, the growing Divine Spark within--there
+is great joy. Ecstasy, and that state of musical rapture, exceeding the
+possibilities of speech, which Ruysbroeck like Richard Rolle calls
+'ghostly song,' are the natural self-expressions of the soul in this
+moment of its career.[38]
+
+In more than one book we find references to this ecstatic period: a
+period so strongly marked in his own case, that it became for him--though
+he was under no illusions as to its permanent value--one of the landmarks
+in man's journey to his home. Looking back on it in later life, he sees
+in it two great phases, of which the earlier and lower at any rate is
+dangerous and easily misunderstood; and is concerned to warn those who
+come after him of its transitory and imperfect character. The first phase
+is that of 'spiritual inebriation,' in which the fever, excitement and
+unrest of this period of growth and change--affecting as they do every
+aspect of personality--show themselves in the psycho-physical phenomena
+which are well-known accompaniments of religious emotion in selves of a
+certain temperament. This spiritual delirium, which appears to have been
+a common phase in the mystical revivals of the fourteenth century, is
+viewed by Ruysbroeck with considerable distrust; and rightly attributed
+by him to an excitement of the senses rather than of the soul. At best it
+is but 'children's food,' given to those who cannot yet digest 'the
+strong food of temptation and the loss of God.' Its manifestations, as he
+describes them, overpass the limits not merely of common sense but also
+of sanity; and are clearly related to the frenzies of revivalists and the
+wild outbreaks of songs, dance and ecstatic speech observed in nearly all
+non-Christian religions of an enthusiastic type. In this state of
+rapture, "a man seems like a drunkard, no longer master of himself." He
+sings, shouts, laughs and cries both at once, runs and leaps in the air,
+claps his hands, and indulges in absurdly exaggerated gestures 'with many
+other disagreeable exhibitions.'[39] These he may not be able to help;
+but is advised to control them as soon as he can, passing from the merely
+sensuous emotion which results when the light of Eternal Love invades the
+'inferior powers' of the soul, to the spiritual emotion, amenable to
+reason, which is the reaction of the 'higher powers' of the self to that
+same overwhelming influx of grace.
+
+That inpouring grace grows swiftly in power, as the strength of the sun
+grows with the passing of the year. The Presence of God now stands over
+the soul's supreme summits, in the zenith: the transcendent fact of the
+illuminated consciousness. His power and love shine perpetually upon the
+heart, 'giving more than we can take, demanding more than we can pay';
+and inducing in the soul upon which this mighty energy is playing, a
+strange unrest, part anguish and part joy. This is the second phase of
+the ecstatic period, and gives rise to that which Ruysbroeck, and after
+him Tauler, have called the 'storm of love': a wild longing for union
+which stretches to the utmost the self's powers of response, and
+expresses itself in violent efforts, impassioned ascents towards the
+Spirit that cries without ceasing to our spirit: "Pay your debt! Love the
+Love that has loved you from Eternity."[40]
+
+Now the vigorous soul begins to find within itself the gift of Spiritual
+Strength; that enthusiastic energy which is one of the characters of all
+true love. This is the third of the 'Seven Gifts of the Spirit,' and the
+first to be actualised in the Illuminated Life.[41] From this strong and
+ardent passion for the Transcendent, adoration and prayer stream forth;
+and these again react upon the self, forming the fuel of the fire of
+love. The interior invitation of God, His attractive power, His delicate
+yet inexorable caress, is to the loving heart the most pure delight that
+it has ever known. It responds by passionate movements of adoration and
+gratitude, opening its petals wide to the beams of the Eternal Sun.
+
+This is the joy; and close behind it comes the anguish, 'sweetest and
+heaviest of all pains.' It is the sense of unsatisfied desire--the pain
+of love--which comes from the enduring consciousness of a gulf fixed
+between the self and That with which it desires to unite. "Of this inward
+demand and compulsion, which makes the creature to rise up and prepare
+itself to the utmost of its power, without yet being able to reach or
+attain the Unity--of this, there springs a spiritual pain. When the
+heart's core, the very source of life, is wounded by love, and man cannot
+attain that thing which he desires above else; when he must stay ever
+where he desires no more to be, of these feelings comes this pain....
+When man cannot achieve God, and yet neither can nor will do without Him;
+in such men there arises a furious agitation and impatience, both within
+and without. And whilst man is in this tumult, no creature in heaven or
+earth can help him or give him rest."[42]
+
+The sensible heat of love is felt with a greater violence now than at any
+other period of life; the rays of the Spiritual Sun strike the soul with
+terrific force, ripening the fruits of the virtues, yet bringing danger
+to the health, both mental and physical, of those who are not properly
+prepared, and who faint under the exhaustion of this 'intense fury of
+Divine Love,' this onslaught which 'eats up the heart.' These are 'the
+dog-days of the spiritual year.' As all nature languishes under their
+stifling heat, so too long an exposure to their violence may mean ruin to
+the physical health of the growing self. Yet those who behave with
+prudence need not take permanent harm; a kind of wise steadfastness will
+support them throughout this turbulent period. "Following through all
+storms the path of love, they will advance towards that place whither
+love leadeth them."[43]
+
+To this period of vivid illumination and emotional unrest belongs the
+development of those 'secondary automatisms' familiar to all students of
+mysticism: the desperate efforts of the mind to work up into some
+intelligible shape--some pictured vision or some spoken word--the
+overwhelming intuitions of the Transcendent by which it is possessed; the
+abrupt suspension of the surface-consciousness in rapture and ecstasy,
+when that overwhelming intuition develops into the complete mono-ideism
+of the ecstatic, and cuts off all contacts with the world of sense. Of
+these phenomena Ruysbroeck speaks with intimacy, and also with much
+common sense. He distinguishes visions into those pictures or material
+images which are 'seen in the imagination,' and those so-called
+'intellectual visions,'--of which the works of Angela of Foligno and St.
+Teresa provide so rich a series of examples,--which are really direct and
+imageless messages from the Transcendent; received in those supersensuous
+regions where man has contact with the Incomprehensible Good and "seeing
+and hearing are one thing." To this conventional classification he adds a
+passage which must surely be descriptive of his own experiences in this
+kind:
+
+"Sometimes God gives to such men swift spiritual glimpses, like to the
+flash of lightning in the sky. It comes like a sudden flash of strange
+light, streaming forth from the Simple Nudity. By this is the spirit
+uplifted for an instant above itself; and at once the light passes, and
+the man again comes to himself. This is God's own work, and it is
+something most august; for often those who experience it afterwards
+become illuminated men. And those who live in the violence and fervour of
+love have now and then another manner, whereby a certain light shines
+_in_ them; and this God works by means. In this light, the heart and the
+desirous powers are uplifted toward the Light; and in this encounter the
+joy and satisfaction are such that the heart cannot contain itself, but
+breaks out in loud cries of joy. And this is called _jubilus_ or
+jubilation; and it is a joy that cannot be expressed in words."[44]
+
+Here the parallel with Richard Rolle's 'ghostly song, with great voice
+outbreaking' will strike every reader of that most musical of the
+mystics; and it is probable that in both cases the prominence given to
+this rather uncommon form of spiritual rapture points back to personal
+experience. "Methinketh," says Rolle, "that contemplation is this
+heavenly song of the Love of God, which is called _jubilus_, taken of the
+sweetness of a soul by praising of God. This song is the end of perfect
+prayer, and of the highest devotion that may be here. This gladness of
+soul is had of God, and it breaketh out in a ghostly voice
+well-sounding."[45]
+
+This exultant and lyrical mood then, this adoring rapture, which only the
+rhythm of music can express, is the emotional reaction which indicates
+the high summer of the soul. It will be seen that each phase of its
+seasonal progress has been marked by a fresh inflow of grace and gifts, a
+fresh demand upon its power of response. The tension never slackens; the
+need for industry is never done away. The gift of Strength, by which the
+self presses forward, has now been reinforced by the gift of Counsel,
+_i.e._ by the growth and deepening of that intuition which is its medium
+of contact with the spiritual world. The Counsel of the Spirit, says
+Ruysbroeck, is like a stirring or inspiration, deep within the soul. This
+stirring, this fresh uprush of energy, is really a 'new birth' of the
+Son, the Divine Wisdom; lighting up the intelligence so that it perceives
+its destiny, and perceives too that the communion it now enjoys is but an
+image of the Divine Union which awaits it.[46] God is counselling the
+soul with an inward secret insistence to rush out towards Him,
+stimulating her hunger for Reality; or, to put it otherwise, the Divine
+Spark is growing swiftly, and pressing hard against the walls of its
+home. Therefore the culmination of this gift, and the culmination too of
+the illuminated consciousness, brings to the soul a certitude that she
+must still press on and out; that nothing less than God Himself can
+suffice her, or match the mysterious Thing which dwells in her deeps.
+
+Now this way of love and ecstasy and summer heats has been attended
+throughout by grave dangers for the adolescent spirit; above all by the
+primary danger which besets the mystical life, of mistaking spiritual joy
+for spiritual reality, desiring 'consolations' and 'illuminations' for
+their own sake, and resting in the gift instead of the Giver. "Though he
+who dedicates himself to love ever experiences great joy, he must never
+seek this joy." All those tendencies grouped by St. John of the Cross
+under the disagreeable name of 'spiritual gluttony,' those further
+temptations to self-indulgent quietism which are but an insidious form of
+sloth, are waiting to entrap the self on the Illuminative Way. But there
+is a way beyond this, another 'Coming of the Bridegroom,' which
+Ruysbroeck describes as 'eternally safe and sure.' This is the way of
+pain and deprivation; when the Presence of God seems to be withdrawn, and
+the fatigue and reaction consequent on the violent passions and energies
+of the illuminated state make themselves felt as a condition of misery,
+aridity and impotence,--all, in fact, that the Christian mystics mean by
+the 'Spiritual Death' or 'Dark Night of the Soul,' and which Ruysbroeck's
+contemporaries, the Friends of God, called 'the upper school of perfect
+self-abandonment.'
+
+The mirror is now to be cleansed of all false reflections, all beautiful
+prismatic light; the thoughts stripped bare of the consolations they have
+enjoyed. Summer is over, and autumn begins; when the flowers indeed die
+down, but the fruits which they heralded are ripe. Now is the time when
+man can prove the stuff of which he is made; and the religious amorist,
+the false mystic, is distinguished from the heroic and long-suffering
+servant of God. "In this season is perfected and completed all the work
+that the sun has accomplished during the year. In the same manner, when
+Christ the glorious Sun has risen to His zenith in the heart of man and
+then begins to descend, and to hide the radiance of His Divine light, and
+to abandon the man; then the impatience and ardour of love grow less. And
+this concealment of Christ, and this withdrawal of His light and heat,
+are the first working and the new coming of this degree. And now Christ
+says spiritually within the man: 'Go forth, in the way which I now teach
+you.' And the man goes forth, and finds himself poor, wretched and
+abandoned. And here the tempest, the ardour, the impatience of love grows
+cold; and the hot summer becomes autumn, and its riches turn to great
+poverty. Then man begins to lament in his distress--where now has gone
+that ardent love, that intimacy, that gratitude, that all-sufficing
+adoration? And that interior consolation, that intimate joy, that
+sensible savour, how has he lost all this?"[47]
+
+The veil that had seemed so transparent now thickens again; the
+certitudes that made life lovely all depart. Small wonder if the tortured
+spirit of the mystic fails to recognise this awful destitution as a
+renewed caress from the all-demanding Lover of the Soul; an education in
+courage, humility and selflessness; a last purification of the will. The
+state to which that self is being led is a renewed self-donation on new
+and higher levels: one more of those mystical deaths which are really
+mystical births; a giving-up, not merely of those natural tastes and
+desires which were disciplined in the Active Life, but of the higher
+passions and satisfactions of the spirit too. He is to be led to a state
+of such complete surrender to the Divine purposes that he is able to say:
+"Lord, not my will according to nature, but Thy will and my will
+according to spirit be done." The darkness, sorrow and abandonment
+through which this is accomplished are far more essential to his
+development than the sunshine and happiness that went before. It is not
+necessary, says Ruysbroeck, that all should know the ecstasies of
+illumination; but by this dark stairway every man who would attain to God
+must go.
+
+When man has achieved this perfect resignation and all tendency to
+spiritual self-seeking is dead, the September of the soul is come. The
+sun has entered the sign of the Balance, when days and nights are equal;
+for now the surrendered self has achieved equilibrium, and endures in
+peace and steadfastness the alternations of the Divine Dark and Divine
+Light. Now the harvest and the vintage are ripe: "That is to say, all
+those inward and outward virtues, which man has practised with delight in
+the fire of love, these, now that he knows them and is able to accomplish
+them, he shall practise diligently and dutifully and offer them to God.
+And never were they so precious in His sight: never so noble and so fair.
+And all those consolations which God gave him before, he will gladly give
+up, and will empty himself for the glory of God. This is the harvest of
+the wheat and the many ripe fruits which make us rich in God, and give to
+us Eternal Life. Thus are the virtues perfected; and the absence of
+consolation is turned to an eternal wine."[48]
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII
+               THE INTERIOR LIFE: UNION AND CONTEMPLATION
+
+
+  _Lume e lassu, che visibile face_
+    _lo Creatore a quella creatura_
+    _che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace._
+
+                                                      Par, xxx. 100.
+
+  And the Light floweth forth in similitude, and indraweth Itself in
+  unity; which we perceive, beyond the reason, in that high point of our
+  understanding which is bare and turned within.
+
+                                                  The Twelve Beguines.
+
+The soul which has endured with courage and humility the anguish of the
+Dark Night, actualising within its own experience the double rhythm of
+love and renunciation, now enters upon a condition of equilibrium; in
+which it perceives that all its previous adventures and apprehensions
+were but episodes of growth, phases in the long preparation of character
+for those new levels of life on which it is now to dwell.
+
+Three points, says Ruysbroeck, must characterise the truly interior man.
+First, his mind must be detached from its natural inclination to rest in
+images and appearances, however lovely; and must depend altogether upon
+that naked Absence of Images, which is God. This is the 'ascent to the
+Nought' preached by the Areopagite. Secondly, by means of his spiritual
+exercises, his progressive efforts to correspond with that Divine Life
+ever experienced by him with greater intensity, he must have freed
+himself from all taint of selfhood, all personal desire; so that in true
+inward liberty he can lift himself up unhindered towards God, in a spirit
+of selfless devotion. Plainly, the desolations of the Dark Night are
+exactly adapted to the production within the self of these two
+characters; which we might call purity of intelligence and purity of
+will. Directly resulting from their actualisation, springs the third
+point: the consciousness of inward union with God.[49] This consciousness
+of union, which we must carefully distinguish from the _Unity_ that is
+Ruysbroeck's name for the last state of the transfigured soul, is the
+ruling character of that state of equilibrium to which we have now come;
+and represents the full achievement of the Interior Life.
+
+In many of his works, under various images, Ruysbroeck tries to tell us
+what he means by this inward union with God, this 'mutual inhabitation,'
+as he calls it in one passage of great beauty, which is the goal of the
+'Second Life.' He reminds us again of that remote point of the spirit,
+that 'apex' of our being, where our life touches the Divine Life; where
+God's image 'lives and reigns.' With the cleansing of the heart and mind,
+the heightening and concentration of the will, which the disciplines of
+the Active Life and Dark Night have effected, this supreme point of the
+spirit is brought at last within the conscious field. Then man feels and
+knows the presence there of an intense and creative vitality, an Eternal
+Essence, from which all that is worth having in his selfhood flows. This
+is the Life-giving Life (_Levende Leven_), where the created and
+Uncreated meet and are one: a phrase, apparently taken by Ruysbroeck from
+St. Bernard, which aptly expresses an idea familiar to all the great
+contemplatives. It is the point at which man's separate spirit, as it
+were, emerges from the Divine Spirit: the point through which he must at
+last return to his Source. Here the Father has impressed His image, the
+Son is perpetually born, the Spirit wells up;[50] and here the Divine
+Unity dwells and calls him to the One. Here Eternity and Time are
+intertwined. Here springs the fountain of 'Living Water'--grace,
+transcendent vitality--upon which the mystic life of man depends.
+
+Now the self, because it is at last conformed to the demands of the
+spiritual world, feels new powers from this life-giving source streaming
+into all departments of its being. The last barriers of self-will are
+broken; and the result is an inrush of fresh energy and light. Whereas in
+the 'First Life' God fed and communed with him by 'means,' and was
+revealed under images appropriate to a consciousness still immersed in
+the world of appearance; now man receives these gifts and messages, makes
+his contacts with Reality, 'without means,' or 'by grace'--_i.e._ in a
+spiritual and interior manner. Those 'lightning flashes from the face of
+Divine Love,' those abrupt and vivid intuitions which he enjoyed during
+illumination, have given way before the steady shining of the Uncreated
+Light. Though light-imagery is never long absent from Ruysbroeck's pages,
+it is, however, the spring of Living Water ever welling up, the rills or
+brooks which flow from it, and take its substance to the farthest
+recesses of the thirsty land, which seems to him the best image of this
+new inpouring of life. He uses it in all his chief works, perhaps most
+successfully in _The Spiritual Marriage_. Faithful to the mediaeval
+division of personality into Memory or Mind, Intelligence or
+Understanding, and Will,--influenced too by his deep conviction that all
+Divine activity is threefold in type,--he describes the Well-spring as
+breaking into three Brooks of Grace, which pour their waters into each
+department of the self. The duct through which these waters come, 'living
+and foaming' from the deeps of the Divine Riches, is the Eternal Christ;
+who 'comes anew' to the purified soul, and is the immediate source of its
+power and happiness.
+
+The first of the brooks which flow from Him is called 'Pure Simplicity.'
+It is a 'simple light,' says Ruysbroeck in another place; the white
+radiance of Eternity which, streaming into the mind, penetrates
+consciousness from top to bottom, and unifies the powers of the self
+about the new and higher centre now established. This simple light, in
+which we see things as they are--and therefore see that only one thing
+truly _is_--delivers us from that slavery to the multiplicity of things,
+which splits the attention and makes concentration upon Reality
+impossible to the soul. The achievement of such mental simplicity,
+escaping the prismatic illusion of the world, is the first condition of
+contemplation. "Thanks to this simple light which fills him, the man
+finds himself to be unified, established, penetrated and affirmed in the
+unity of his mind or thought. And thereby he is uplifted and established
+in a _new condition_; and he turns inward upon himself, and stays his
+mind upon the Nudity, above all the pressure of sensual images, above all
+multiplicity."[51]
+
+The second stream which pours out from that Transcendent Life is a
+'Spiritual Clarity,' which illuminates the intelligence and shows it all
+good. This clarity is a new and heightened form of intuition: a lucid
+understanding, whereby the self achieves clear vision of its own life,
+and is able to contemplate the sublime richness of the Divine Nature;
+gazing upon the mystery of the Trinity, and finding everywhere the
+Presence of God. Those who possess this light do not need ecstasies and
+revelations--sudden uprushes towards the supernal world--for their life
+and being is established in that world, above the life of sense. They
+have come to that state which Eckhart calls 'finding all creatures in God
+and God in all creatures.' They see things at last in their native
+purity. The heart of that vision, says Ruysbroeck, is their perception of
+"the unmeasured loyalty of God to His creation"--one of his deepest and
+most beautiful utterances--"and therefrom springs a deep inward joy of
+the spirit, and a high trust in God; and this inward joy embraces and
+penetrates all the powers of the soul, and the most secret part of the
+spirit."[52]
+
+The third Brook of Grace irrigates the conative powers of the self;
+strengthens the will in all perfection, and energises us anew. "Like
+fire, this brook enkindles the will, and swallows up and absorbs all
+things in the unity of the spirit ... and now Christ speaks inwardly in
+the spirit by means of this burning brook, saying, 'Go forth, in
+exercises proper to this gift and this coming.' By the first brook, which
+is a _Simple Light_, the Mind is freed from the invasions of the senses,
+and grounded and affirmed in spiritual unity. And by the second brook,
+which is a _Spreading Light_, the Reason and Understanding are
+illuminated, that they may know and distinguish all manner of virtues and
+exercises, and the mysteries of Scripture. And by the third brook, which
+is an _Infused Heat_, the heights of the Will are enkindled with quiet
+love and adorned with great riches. And thus does man become spiritually
+illuminate; for the grace of God dwells like a fountain-head in the unity
+of his spirit, and the brooks cause a flowing forth of all virtues from
+the powers of the soul. And the fountain-head of grace demands a
+back-flowing into that same ground from whence the flood has come."[53]
+
+So the Interior Life, now firmly established, is found to conform to
+those great laws which have guided the growing spirit from the first.
+Again, the dual property of love, possession and action, satisfaction and
+fecundity, is to be manifested upon new levels. The pendulum motion of
+life, swinging between the experience of union with God to which 'the
+Divine Unity ever calls us,' and its expression in active charity to
+which the multiplicity of His creatures and their needs ever entreat us,
+still goes on. The more richly and strongly the life-giving Life wells up
+within the self, the greater are the demands made upon that self's
+industry and love. In the establishment of this balance, in this
+continual healthy act of alternation, this double movement into God and
+out to men, is the proof that the soul has really centred itself upon the
+spiritual world--is, as Ruysbroeck puts it, confirmed in love. "Thus do
+work and union perpetually renew themselves; and this renewal in work and
+in union, _this_ is a spiritual life."[54]
+
+Now the self which has achieved this degree of transcendence has
+achieved, too, considerable experience in that art of contemplation or
+introversion which is the mode of its communion with God. Throughout,
+training and development have gone hand in hand; and the fact that
+Ruysbroeck seldom troubles to distinguish between them, but accepts them
+as two aspects of one thing--the gradual deification of the
+soul--constitutes one of the great obstacles to an understanding of his
+works. Often he describes the whole spiritual life as consisting in
+introversion, an entering of consciousness into the supersensuous regions
+beyond thought; in defiance of his own principle of active charity,
+movement, work, as the essential reaction to the universe which
+distinguishes a 'deified' man. The truth is that the two processes run
+side by side; and now one, now the other, is in the foreground of his
+thought. Therefore all that I shall now say of the contemplative art must
+be understood as describing acts and apprehensions taking place
+throughout the whole course of the Interior Life.
+
+What, then, is introversion? It is one of the two great modes under which
+the spiritual consciousness works. Plainly, any living sense of God's
+presence must discern that Circle whose centre is everywhere, as both
+exterior and interior to the self. In Ruysbroeck's own works we find a
+violent effort to express this ineffable fact of omnipresence, of a truly
+Transcendent yet truly Immanent Reality; an effort often involving a
+collision of imagery. God, he says, may be discovered at the soul's apex,
+where He 'eternally lives and reigns'; and the soul itself dwells _in_
+God, ebbing and flowing, wandering and returning, within that Fathomless
+Ground. Yet none the less He comes to that soul from without; pouring in
+upon it like sunshine, inundating it with torrents of grace, seizing the
+separate entity and devouring whilst He feeds it; flashing out upon it in
+a tempest of love from the Empyrean Heaven, the Abyss of Being, where He
+dwells. "Present, yet absent; near, yet far!" exclaims St. Augustine.
+"Thou art the sky, and Thou art the nest as well!" says the great mystic
+poet of our own day.
+
+Whilst nearly all the mystics have possessed clear consciousness of this
+twofold revelation of the Divine Nature, and some have experienced by
+turns the 'outward and upward' rush and the inward retreat,
+temperamentally they usually lean towards one or other form of communion
+with God,--ecstasy or introversion. For one class, contact with Him seems
+primarily to involve an outgoing flight towards Transcendent Reality; an
+attitude of mind strongly marked in all contemplatives who are near to
+the Neoplatonic tradition--Plotinus, St. Basil, St. Macarius--and also in
+Richard Rolle and a few other mediaeval types. These would agree with
+Dionysius the Areopagite that "we must contemplate things divine by our
+whole selves standing _out_ of our whole selves." For the other class,
+the first necessity is a retreat of consciousness from the periphery,
+where it touches the world of appearance, to the centre, the Unity of
+Spirit or 'Ground of the Soul,' where human personality buds forth from
+the Essential World. True, this inturning of attention is but a
+preliminary to the self's entrance upon that same Transcendent Region
+which the ecstatic claims that he touches in his upward flights. The
+introversive mystic, too, is destined to 'sail the wild billows of the
+Sea Divine'; but here, in the deeps of his nature, he finds the door
+through which he must pass. Only by thus discovering the unity of his own
+nature can he give himself to that 'tide of light' which draws all things
+back to the One.
+
+Such is Ruysbroeck's view of contemplation. This being so, introversion
+is for him an essential part of man's spiritual development. As the Son
+knows the Father, so it is the destiny of all spirits created in that
+Pattern to know Him; and the mirror which is able to reflect that Divine
+Light, the Simple Eye which alone can bear to gaze on it, lies in the
+deeps of human personality. The will, usually harnessed to the
+surface-consciousness, devoted to the interests of temporal life; the
+love, so freely spent on unreal and imperfect objects of desire; the
+thought which busies itself on the ceaseless analysis and arrangement of
+passing things--all these are to be swept inwards to that gathering-point
+of personality, that Unity of the Spirit, of which he so often speaks;
+and there fused into a single state of enormously enhanced consciousness,
+which, withdrawn from all attention to the changeful world of
+'similitudes,' is exposed to the direct action of the Eternal World of
+spiritual realities. The pull of Divine Love--the light that ever flows
+back into the One--is to withdraw the contemplative's consciousness from
+multiplicity to unity. His progress in contemplation will be a progress
+towards that complete mono-ideism in which the Vision of God--and here
+_vision_ is to be understood in its deepest sense as a totality of
+apprehension, a 'ghostly sight'--dominates the field of consciousness to
+the exclusion, for the time of contemplation, of all else.
+
+Psychologically, Ruysbroeck's method differs little from that described
+by St. Teresa. It begins in recollection, the first drawing inwards of
+attention from the world of sense; passes to meditation, the centring of
+attention on some intellectual formula or mystery of faith; and thence,
+by way of graduated states, variously divided and described in his
+different works, to contemplation proper, the apprehension of God 'beyond
+and above reason.' All attempts, however, to map out this process, or
+reduce it to a system, must necessarily have an arbitrary and symbolic
+character. True, we are bound to adopt some system, if we describe it at
+all; but the dangers and limitations of all formulas, all concrete
+imagery, where we are dealing with the fluid, living, changeful world of
+spirit, should never be absent from our minds. The bewildering and often
+inconsistent series of images and numbers, arrangements and
+rearrangements of 'degrees,' 'states,' 'stirrings,' and 'gifts,' in which
+Ruysbroeck's sublime teachings on contemplation are buried, makes the
+choice of some one formula imperative for us; though none will reduce his
+doctrines to a logical series, for he is perpetually passing over from
+the dialectic to the lyrical mood, and forgets to be orderly as soon as
+he begins to be subjective. I choose, then, to base my classification on
+that great chapter (xix.) in _The Seven Cloisters_, where he
+distinguishes three stages of contemplation; finding in them the
+responses of consciousness to the special action of the Three Persons of
+the Blessed Trinity. These three stages in the soul's apprehension of
+God, are: the Emotional, the Intellectual, the Intuitive. I think that
+most of the subtly distinguished interior experiences of the mystic, the
+'comings' of the Divine Presence, the 'stirrings' and contacts which he
+describes in his various books, can be ranged under one or other of them.
+
+1. First comes that loving contemplation of the 'uplifted heart' which is
+the work of the Holy Spirit, the consuming fire of Divine Love. This
+ardent love, invading the self, and satisfying it in that intimate
+experience of personal communion so often described in the writings of
+the mystics, represents the self's first call to contemplation and first
+natural response; made with "so great a joy and delight of soul and body,
+in his uplifted heart, that the man knoweth not what hath befallen him,
+nor how he may endure it." For Ruysbroeck this purely emotional reaction
+to Reality, this burning flame of devotion--which seemed to Richard Rolle
+the essence of the contemplative life--is but its initial phase. It
+corresponds with--and indeed generally accompanies--those fever-heats,
+those 'tempests' of impatient love endured by the soul at the height of
+the Illuminative Way. Love, it is true, shall be from first to last the
+inspiring force of the contemplative's ascents: his education is from one
+point of view simply an education in love. But this love is a passion of
+many degrees; and the 'urgency felt in the heart,' the restlessness and
+hunger of this spiritual feeling-state, is only its lowest form. The love
+which burns like white fire on the apex of the soul, longs for sacrifice,
+inspires heroic action, and goes forward without fear, 'holy, strong and
+free,' to brave the terrors of the Divine Dark, is of another temper than
+this joyful sentiment.
+
+2. A loving stretching out into God, and an intellectual gazing upon Him,
+says Ruysbroeck, in a passage which I have already quoted, are the 'two
+heavenly pipes' in which the wind of the Spirit sings. So the next phase
+in the contemplative's development is that enhancement of the intellect,
+the power of perceiving, as against desiring and loving Reality, which is
+the work of the Logos, the Divine Wisdom. As the cleansed and detached
+heart had been lifted up to _feel_ the Transcendent; now the
+understanding, stripped of sense-images, purged of intellectual
+arrogance, clarified by grace, is lifted up to _apprehend_ it. This
+degree has two phases. First, that enlargement of the understanding to an
+increased comprehension of truth, the finding of deeper and diviner
+meanings in things already known, which Richard of St. Victor called
+_mentis dilatatio_. Next, that further uplift of the mind to a state in
+which it is able to contemplate things above itself whilst retaining
+clear self-consciousness, which he called _mentis sublevatio_.
+Ruysbroeck, however, inverts the order given by Richard; for him the
+uplift comes first, the dilation of consciousness follows from it. This
+is a characteristic instance of the way in which he uses the Victorine
+psychology; constantly appropriating its terms but never hesitating to
+modify, enrich or misuse them as his experience or opinions may dictate.
+
+The first phase of Intellectual Contemplation, then, is a lifting of the
+mind to a swift and convincing vision of Reality: one of those sudden,
+incommunicable glimpses of Truth so often experienced early in the
+contemplative's career. The veil parts, and he sees a "light and vision,
+which give to the contemplating spirit a conscious certitude that she
+sees God, so far as man may see Him in mortal life."[55] That strange
+mystical light of which all contemplatives speak, and which Ruysbroeck
+describes in a passage of great subtlety as 'the intermediary between the
+seeing thought and God,' now floods his consciousness. In it "the Spirit
+of the Father speaks in the uplifted thought which is bare and stripped
+of images, saying, 'Behold Me as I behold thee.' Then the pure and single
+eyes are strengthened by the inpouring of that clear Light of the Father,
+and they behold His face, in a simple vision, beyond reason, and without
+reason."[56]
+
+It might be thought that in this 'simple vision' of Supreme Reality, the
+spirit of the contemplative reached its goal. It has, indeed, reached a
+point at which many a mystic stops short. I think, however, that a
+reference to St. Augustine, whose influence is so strongly marked in
+Ruysbroeck's works, will show what he means by this phase of
+contemplation; and the characters which distinguish it from that infused
+or unitive communion with God which alone he calls _Contemplatio_. In the
+seventh book of his _Confessions_, Augustine describes just such an
+experience as this. By a study of the books of the Platonists he had
+learned the art of introversion, and achieved by its aid a fleeting
+'Intellectual Contemplation' of God; in his own words, a "hurried vision
+of That which Is." "Being by these books," he says, "admonished to return
+into myself, I entered into the secret closet of my soul, guided by Thee
+... and beheld the Light that never changes, above the eye of my soul,
+above the intelligence."[57] It was by "the withdrawal of thought from
+experience, its abstraction from the contradictory throng of sensuous
+images," that he attained to this transitory apprehension; which he
+describes elsewhere as "the _vision_ of the Land of Peace, but not the
+_road_ thereto." But intellect alone could not bear the direct impact of
+the terrible light of Reality; his "weak sight was dazzled by its
+splendour," he "could not sustain his gaze," and turned back to that
+humble discovery of the Divine Substance by means of Its images and
+attributes, which is proper to the intellectual power.[58]
+
+Now surely this is the psychological situation described by Ruysbroeck.
+The very images used by Augustine are found again in him. The mind of the
+contemplative, purified, disciplined, deliberately abstracted from
+images, is inundated by the divine sunshine, "the Light which is not God,
+but that whereby we see Him"; and in this radiance achieves a hurried but
+convincing vision of Supreme Reality. But "even though the eagle, king of
+birds, can with his powerful sight gaze steadfastly upon the brightness
+of the sun; yet do the weaker eyes of the bat fail and falter in the
+same."[59] The intellectual vision is dazzled and distressed, like a man
+who can bear the diffused radiance of sunshine but is blinded if he dares
+to follow back its beams to the terrible beauty of their source. "Not for
+this are my wings fitted," says Dante, drooping to earth after his
+supreme ecstatic flight. Because it cannot sustain its gaze, then, the
+intelligence falls back upon the second phase of intellectual
+contemplation: _Speculatio_, the deep still brooding in which the soul,
+'made wise by the Spirit of Truth,' contemplates God and Creation as He
+and it are reflected in the clear mirror of her intellectual powers,
+under 'images and similitudes'--the Mysteries of Faith, the Attributes of
+the Divine Nature, the forms and manners of created things. As the Father
+contemplates all things in the Son, 'Mirror of Deity,' so now does the
+introverted soul contemplate Him in this 'living mirror of her
+intelligence' on which His sunshine falls. Because her swift vision of
+That which Is has taught her to distinguish between the ineffable Reality
+and the Appearance which shadows it forth, she can again discover Him
+under those images which once veiled, but now reveal His presence. The
+intellect which has apprehended God Transcendent, if only for a moment,
+has received therefrom the power of discerning God Immanent. "He shows
+Himself to the soul in the living mirror of her intelligence; not as He
+is in His nature, but in images and similitudes, and in the degree in
+which the illuminated reason can grasp and understand Him. And the wise
+reason, enlightened of God, sees clearly and without error in images of
+the understanding all that she has heard of God, of faith, of truth,
+according to her longing. But that image which is God Himself, although
+it is held before her, she cannot comprehend; for the eyes of her
+understanding must fail before that Incomparable Light."[60]
+
+In _The Kingdom of God's Lovers_ Ruysbroeck pours forth a marvellous list
+of the attributes under which the illuminated intelligence now
+contemplates and worships That Which she can never comprehend; that
+"Simple One in whom all multitude and all that multiplies, finds its
+beginning and its end." From this simple Being of the Godhead the
+illuminated reason abstracts those images and attributes with which it
+can deal, as the lower reason abstracts from the temporal flux the
+materials of our normal universe. Such a loving consideration of God
+under His attributes is the essence of meditation: and meditation is in
+fact the way in which the intellectual faculties can best contemplate
+Reality. But "because all things, when they are considered in their
+inwardness, have their beginning and their ending in the Infinite
+Being as in an Abyss," here again the contemplative is soon led
+above himself and beyond himself, to a point at which intellect and
+'consideration'--_i.e._ formal thought--fail him; because "here we touch
+the Simple Nature of God." When intellectual contemplation has brought
+the self to this point, it has done its work; for it has "excited in the
+soul an eager desire to lift itself up by contemplation into the
+simplicity of the Light, that thereby its avid desire of infinite
+fruition may be satisfied and fulfilled";[61] _i.e._ it has performed the
+true office of meditation, induced a shifting of consciousness to higher
+levels.
+
+We observe that the emphasis, which in the First Degree of Contemplation
+fell wholly on feeling, in the Second Degree falls wholly upon knowledge.
+We are not, however, to suppose from this that emotion has been left
+behind. As the virtues and energies of the Active Life continue in the
+Contemplative Life, so the 'burning love' which distinguished the first
+stage of communion with the Transcendent, is throughout the source of
+that energy which presses the self on to deeper and closer
+correspondences with Reality. Its presence is presupposed in all that is
+said concerning the development of the spiritual consciousness.
+Nevertheless Ruysbroeck, though he cannot be accused of intellectualism,
+is led by his admiration for Victorine ideas to lay great stress upon the
+mental side of contemplation, as against those emotional reactions to the
+Transcendent which are emphasised--almost to excess--by so many of the
+saints. His aim was the lifting of the _whole man_ to Eternal levels: and
+the clarifying of the intelligence, the enhancement of the understanding,
+seemed to him a proper part of the deification of human nature, the
+bringing forth in the soul's ground of that Son who is the Wisdom of God
+as well as the Pattern of Man. Though he moves amongst deep mysteries,
+and in regions beyond the span of ordinary minds, there is always
+apparent in him an effort towards lucidity of expression, sharp
+definition, plain speech. Sometimes he is wild and ecstatic, pouring
+forth his vision in a strange poetry which is at once uncouth and
+sublime; but he is never woolly or confused. His prose passages owe much
+of their seeming difficulty to the passion for exactitude which
+distinguishes and classifies the subtlest movements of the spiritual
+atmosphere, the delicately graded responses of the soul.
+
+3. Now the Third Degree of Contemplation lifts the whole consciousness to
+a plane of perception which transcends the categories of the intellect:
+where it deals no longer with the label but with the Thing. It has passed
+beyond image and also beyond thought; to that knowledge by contact which
+is the essence of intuition, and is brought about by the higher powers of
+love. Such contemplation is regarded by Ruysbroeck as the work of the
+Father, "Who strips from the mind all forms and images and lifts up the
+Naked Apprehension [_i.e._ intuition] into its Origin, that is
+Himself."[62] It is effected by concentration of all the powers of the
+self into a single state 'uplifted above all action, in a bare
+understanding and love,' upon that apex of the soul where no reason can
+ever attain, and where the 'simple eye' is ever open towards God. There
+the loving soul apprehends Him, not under conditions, 'in some wise,' but
+as a _whole_, without the discrete analysis of His properties which was
+the special character of intellectual contemplation; a synthetic
+experience which is 'in no wise.' This is for Ruysbroeck the
+contemplative act _par excellence_. It is 'an intimacy which is
+ignorance,' a 'simple seeing,' he says again and again; "and the name
+thereof is _Contemplatio_; that is, the seeing of God in simplicity."[63]
+
+"Here the reason no less than all separate acts must give way, for our
+powers become simple in Love; they are silent and bowed down in the
+Presence of the Father. And this revelation of the Father lifts the soul
+above the reason into the Imageless Nudity. There the soul is simple,
+pure, spotless, empty of all things; and it is in this state of perfect
+emptiness that the Father manifests His Divine radiance. To this radiance
+neither reason nor sense, observation nor distinction, can attain. All
+this must stay below; for the measureless radiance blinds the eyes of the
+reason, they cannot bear the Incomprehensible Light. But above the
+reason, in the most secret part of the understanding, the _simple eye_ is
+ever open. It contemplates and gazes at the Light with a pure sight that
+is lit by the Light itself: eye to eye, mirror to mirror, image to image.
+This threefold act makes us like God, and unites us to Him; for the sight
+of the _simple eye_ is a living mirror, which God has made for His image,
+and whereon He has impressed it."[64]
+
+Intuitive or infused contemplation is the form of communion with the
+Transcendent proper to those who have grown up to the state of Union; and
+feel and know the presence of God within the soul, as a love, a life, an
+'indrawing attraction,' calling and enticing all things to the still
+unachieved consummation of the Divine Unity. He who has reached this
+pitch of introversion, and is able, in his spiritual exercises, to
+withdraw himself thus to the most secret part of his spirit,
+feels--within the Eternal Light which fills his mirror and is 'united
+with it,'--this perpetual demand of the Divine Unity, entreating and
+urging him towards a total self-loss. In the fact that he knows this
+demand and impulsion as other than himself, we find the mark which
+separates this, the highest contemplation proper to the Life of Union,
+from that 'fruitive contemplation' of the spirit which has died into God
+which belongs to the Life of Unity.[65] When the work of transmutation is
+finished and he has received the 'Sparkling Stone of Divine Humanity,'
+this subject-object distinction--though really an eternal one, as
+Ruysbroeck continually reminds us--will no longer be possible to his
+consciousness. Then he will live at those levels to which he now makes
+impassioned ascents in his hours of unitive prayer: will be immersed in
+the Beatific Vision on which he now looks, and 'lose himself in the
+Imageless Nudity.'
+
+This is the clue to the puzzling distinction made by Ruysbroeck between
+the contemplation which is 'without conditions,' and that which is
+'beyond and above conditions' and belongs to the Superessential Life
+alone. In Intuitive Contemplation the seeing self apprehends the
+Unconditioned World, _Onwise_, and makes 'loving ascents thereto.' It
+'finds within itself the unwalled'; yet is still anchored to the
+conditioned sphere. In Superessential Contemplation, it _dies into_ that
+'world which is in no wise.' In the great chapter of _The Sparkling
+Stone_[66] where he struggles to make this distinction clear, Ruysbroeck
+says that the Friends of God (_i.e._ the Interior Men) "cannot with
+themselves and all their works penetrate to that Imageless Nudity."
+Although they feel united with God, yet they feel in that union an
+otherness and difference between themselves and God; and therefore "the
+ascent into the Nought is unknown to them." They feel themselves carried
+up towards God in the tide of His all-subduing Fire of Love; but they
+retain their selfhood, and may not be consumed and burned to nothing in
+the Unity of Love. They do not yet desire to die into God, that they may
+receive a deiform life from Him; but they are in the way which leads to
+this fulfilment of their destiny, and are "following back the light to
+its Origin."
+
+This following-back is one continuous process, in which we, for
+convenience of description, have made artificial breaks. It is the thrust
+of consciousness deeper and deeper into the heart of Reality. As in the
+stream of physical duration, so in this ceaseless movement of the spirit,
+there is a persistence of the past in the present, a carrying through and
+merging of one state in the next. Thus the contemplation which is
+'wayless,' the self's intuitive communion with the Infinite Life and
+Light, growing in depth and richness, bridges the gap which separates the
+Interior and the Superessential Life.
+
+We find in Ruysbroeck's works indications of a transitional state, in
+which the soul "is guided and lost, wanders and returns, ebbs and flows,"
+within the 'limitless Nudity,' to which it has not yet wholly surrendered
+itself. "And its seeing is in no wise, being without manner, and it is
+neither thus nor thus, neither here nor there; for that which is in no
+wise hath enveloped all, and the vision is made high and wide. It knows
+not itself where That is which it sees; and it cannot come thereto, for
+its seeing is in no wise, and passes on, beyond, for ever, and without
+return. That which it apprehends it cannot realise in full, nor wholly
+attain, for its apprehension is wayless, and without manner, and
+therefore it is apprehended of God in a higher way than it can apprehend
+Him. Behold! such a following of the Way that is Wayless, is intermediary
+between contemplation in images and similitudes of the intellect, and
+unveiled contemplation beyond all images in the Light of God."[67]
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VIII
+                        THE SUPERESSENTIAL LIFE
+
+
+  If, therefore, thou art become the throne of God and the Heavenly
+  Charioteer hath seated Himself within thee, and thy soul is wholly
+  become a spiritual eye and is wholly made into light; if, too, thou art
+  nourished with the heavenly food of that Spirit and hast drunk of the
+  Living Water and put on the secret vesture of light--if thine inward
+  man has experienced all these things and is established in abundant
+  faith, lo! thou livest indeed the Eternal Life and thy soul rests even
+  in this present time with the Lord.
+
+                                                St. Macarius of Egypt.
+
+We have seen that Ruysbroeck, in common with a few other supreme mystics,
+declares to us as veritably known and experienced by him, a universe of
+three orders--Becoming, Being, God--and further, three ways of life
+whereby the self can correspond to these three orders, and which he calls
+the life of nature, the life of grace, the life of glory. 'Glory,' which
+has been degraded by the usage of popular piety into a vague superlative,
+and finally left in the hands of hymn-writers and religious revivalists,
+is one of the most ancient technical terms of Christian mysticism. Of
+Scriptural origin, from the fourth century to the fifteenth it was used
+to denote a definite kind of enhanced life, a final achievement of
+Reality--the unmediated radiance of God--which the gift of 'divine
+sonship' made possible to the soul. In the life of grace, that soul
+transcends conditions in virtue of a Divine vitality poured in from the
+Absolute Sphere, and actualises its true being, (_Wesen_); in the life of
+glory, it becomes a denizen of that sphere, and achieves an existence
+that is 'more than being' (_Overwesen_). The note of the first state is
+contemplation, awareness; the note of the second is fruition, possession.
+
+That power of making 'swift and loving ascents' to the plane of _Onwise_
+to which man attained at the end of the Interior Life, that conscious
+harmony with the Divine Will which then became the controlling factor of
+his active career, cannot be the end of the process of transcendence. The
+soul now hungers and thirsts for a more intense Reality, a closer contact
+with 'Him who is measureless'; a deeper and deeper penetration into the
+burning heart of the universe. Though contemplation seems to have reached
+its term, love goes on, to 'lose itself upon the heights.' Beyond both
+the conditioned and unconditioned world, beyond the Trinity Itself, that
+love discerns its ultimate objective--the very Godhead, the Divine Unity,
+"where all lines find their end"; where "we are satisfied and
+overflowing, and with Him beyond ourselves eternally fulfilled."[68] The
+abiding life which is there discoverable, is not only 'without manner'
+but 'above manner'--the 'deified life,' indescribable save by the oblique
+methods of music or poetry, wherein, in Maeterlinck's great phrase, "the
+psychology of man mingles with the psychology of God." All Ruysbroeck's
+most wonderful passages are concerned with the desperate attempt to tell
+us of this 'life,' this utter fruition of Reality: which seems at one
+time to involve for the contemplative consciousness a self-mergence in
+Deity, so complete as to give colour to that charge of pantheism which is
+inevitably flung at all mystics who try to tell what they have known; at
+others, to represent rather the perfect consummation of that 'union in
+separateness' which is characteristic of all true love.
+
+This is but one instance of that perpetual and inevitable resort to
+paradox which torments all who try to follow him along this 'track
+without shadow of trace'; for the goal towards which he is now enticing
+us is one in which all the completing opposites of our fragmentary
+experience find their bourne. Hence the rapid alternation of spatial and
+personal symbols which confuses our industrious intellects, is the one
+means whereby he can suggest its actuality to our hungry hearts.
+
+As we observed in Ruysbroeck's earlier teaching on contemplation three
+distinct forms, in which the special work that theology attributes to the
+three Divine Persons seemed to him to be reflected; now, in this
+Superessential Contemplation, or Fruition, we find the work of the
+Absolute Godhead Itself, energising upon a plane of intensity which so
+utterly transcends our power of apprehension, that it seems to the
+surface consciousness--as Dionysius the Areopagite had named it--a
+negation of all things, a Divine Dark.
+
+This Fruition, says Ruysbroeck, "is wild and desolate as a desert, and
+therein is to be found no way, no road, no track, no retreat, no measure,
+no beginning, no end, nor any other thing that can be told in words. And
+this is for all of us Simple Blessedness, the Essence of God and our
+superessence, above reason and beyond reason. To know it we must be in
+it, beyond the mind and above our created being; in that Eternal Point
+where all our lines begin and end, that Point where they lose their name
+and all distinction, and become one with the Point itself, and that very
+One which the Point is, yet nevertheless ever remain in themselves nought
+else but lines that come to an end."[69]
+
+What, then, is the way by which the soul moves from that life of intense
+contemplation in which the 'spreading light' of the Spirit shows her the
+universe fulfilled with God, to this new transfigured state of joy and
+terror? It is a way for which her previous adventures might have prepared
+us. As each new ascent, new inflow of grace, was prepared by a time of
+destitution and stress--as the compensating beats of love and
+renunciation have governed the evolving melody of the inner life--so here
+a last death of selfhood, a surrender more absolute than all that has
+gone before, must be the means of her achievement of absolute life.
+
+"Dying, and behold I live!" says Paul of his own attainment of supernal
+life in Christ. Ruysbroeck, who never strays far from the vital and
+heroic mysticism of the New Testament saints, can find no other language
+for this last crisis of the spirit--its movement from the state of
+_Wesen_ to that of _Overwesen_--than the language of death. The
+ever-moving line, though its vital character of duration continues, now
+seems to itself to swoon into the Point; the separate entity which has
+felt the flood of grace pour into it to energise its active career, and
+the ebb of homeward-tending love draw it back towards the One, now feels
+itself pouring into the Infinite Sea. Our personal activity, he says, has
+done all that it can: as the separate career of Christ our Pattern closed
+with His voluntary death, so the death of our selfhood on that apex of
+personality where we have stretched up so ardently toward the Father,
+shall close the separate career of the human soul and open the way to its
+new, God-driven career, its resurrection-life. "None is sure of Eternal
+Life unless he has died with all his own attributes wholly into
+God"[70]--all else falls short of the demands of supreme generosity.
+
+It is _The Book of the Sparkling Stone_ which contains Ruysbroeck's most
+wonderful descriptions of the consciousness peculiar to these souls who
+have grown up to 'the fulness of the stature of Christ'; and since this
+is surely the finest and perhaps the least known of his writings, I offer
+no apology for transcribing a long passage from its ninth chapter: 'How
+we may become the Hidden Sons of God.'
+
+"When we soar up above ourselves, and become, in our upward striving
+towards God, so simple, that the naked Love in the Heights can lay hold
+on us, there where Love cherishes Love, above all activity and all virtue
+(that is to say, in our Origin, wherefrom we are spiritually born)--then
+we cease, and we and all that is our own die into God. And in this death
+we become hidden Sons of God, and find in ourselves a new life, and that
+is Eternal Life. And of these Sons, St. Paul says: 'Ye are dead, and your
+life is hid with Christ in God.' In our approach to God we must bear with
+us ourselves and all that we do, as a perpetual sacrifice to God; and in
+the Presence of God we must leave ourselves and all our works, and, dying
+in love, soar up above all created things into the Superessential Kingdom
+of God. And of this the Spirit of God speaks in the Book of Hidden
+Things, saying: 'Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.'... If we
+would _taste_ God, and feel in ourselves Eternal Life above all things,
+we must go forth into God with a faith that is far above our reason, and
+there dwell, simple, idle, without image, lifted up by love into the
+Unwalled Bareness of our intelligence. For when we go out from ourselves
+in love, and die to all observances in ignorance and darkness, then we
+are made complete, and transfigured by the Eternal Word, Image of the
+Father. And in this emptiness of spirit we receive the Incomprehensible
+Light, which enfolds and penetrates us as air is penetrated by the light
+of the sun; and this Light is nought else but a fathomless gazing and
+seeing. What we are, that we gaze at; and what we gaze at, that we are.
+For our thought, our life, our being, are lifted up in simplicity, and
+united with the Truth, that is God. Therefore in this simple gazing we
+are one life and one spirit with God--and this I call the _seeing
+life_."[71]
+
+Such a passage as this lies beyond our poor attempts at analysis. Those
+only will understand it who yield themselves to it; entering into its
+current, as we enter into the music that we love. It tells us all it can
+of this life which is 'more than being,' as _felt_ in the supreme
+experience of love. Life and Death, Dark and Light, Idleness,
+Bareness--these are but images of the feeling-states that accompany it.
+But here, more than elsewhere in Ruysbroeck's writings, we must remember
+the peril which goes with all subjective treatment of mystical truth.
+Each state which the unitive mystic experiences is so intense, that it
+monopolises for the time being his field of consciousness. Writing under
+the 'pressure of the Spirit' he writes of it--as indeed it seems to him
+at the moment--as ultimate and complete. Only by a comparison of
+different and superficially inconsistent descriptions of this enhanced
+life--which must harmonise and fulfil _all_ the needs of our complex
+personality, providing inexhaustible objectives for love, intelligence
+and will--can we form any true idea concerning it.
+
+When we do this, we discover that the side of it which _seems_ a static
+beatitude, still Fruition, perfect Rest, is always balanced by the other
+side; which _seems_ a perpetual and progressive attainment, a seeking and
+finding, a hungering and feeding, a giving and taking. These coexist; as
+the ever-renewed 'coming of the Bridegroom,' the welling-up of the
+Spirit, the stormy, eager, unsatisfied love of the soul do as a matter of
+experience coexist within that perfect and personal union wherein Love
+and Fruition, as Ruysbroeck puts it, 'live between action and rest.' The
+alternate consciousness of the line and the Point, the moving river and
+the Sea, the relative and the Absolute, persists so long as consciousness
+persists at all; it is no Christianised Nirvana into which he seeks to
+induct us, but that mysterious synthesis of Being and Becoming, 'eternal
+stillness and eternal work'--a movement into God which is already a
+complete achievement of Him--which certain other great mystics have
+discerned beyond the 'flaming ramparts' of the common life.
+
+The unbreakable unity with God, which constitutes the mark of the Third
+Life, exists in the 'essential ground of the soul'; where the river flows
+into the Sea, the line into the Point; where the pendulum of self has its
+attachment to Reality. _There_, the hidden child of the Absolute is 'one
+with God in restful fruition'; there, his deep intuition of Divine
+things--that 'Savouring Wisdom' which is the last supreme gift of the
+Spirit[72]--is able to taste and apprehend the sweetness of Infinite
+Reality. But at the other end, where he still participates in the
+time-process, where his love and will are a moving river, consciousness
+hungers for that total Attainment still; and attention will swing between
+these two extremes, now actualised within the living soul, which has put
+on the dual character of 'Divine Humanity' and is living Eternal Life,
+not in some far-off celestial region, but here, where Christ lived it, in
+the entangled world of Time. Thus active self-mergence, incessant
+re-birth into God, perpetual eager feeding on Him, is implicit in all
+spiritual life. Even for the souls of the 'deified,' quietism is never
+right. "For love cannot be lazy, but would search through and through,
+and taste through and through, the fathomless kingdom that lives in her
+ground; and this hunger shall _never_ be stilled."[73]
+
+The soul, whenever it attends to itself--withdraws itself, so to speak,
+from the Divine Synthesis, dwells in itself, and beholds instead of
+being--feels again the 'eternal unrest of love'; the whip of the Heavenly
+Charioteer, driving all spirits in towards the heart of God, where they
+are 'one fire with Him.' "This stirring, that mediates between ourselves
+and God, we can never pass beyond; and what that stirring is in its
+essence, and what love is in itself, we can never know."[74] But when it
+dwells beyond itself, and in the supreme moments of ecstasy merges its
+consciousness in the Universal Consciousness, it transcends succession
+and centres itself in the Divine Selfhood--the 'still, glorious, and
+absolute One-ness.' Then it feels, not hunger but satisfaction, not
+desire but fruition; and knows itself beyond reason 'one with the abysmal
+depth and breadth,' in "a simple fathomless savouring of all good and of
+Eternal Life. And in this savouring we are swallowed up, above reason and
+beyond reason, in the deep Quiet of the Godhead which is never
+moved."[75]
+
+Such experiences however, such perfect fruition, in which the self dies
+into the overwhelming revelation of the Transcendent, and its rhythm is
+merged in the Divine Rhythm, cannot be continuous for those still living
+in the flesh. There is in Ruysbroeck no foolish insistence on any
+impossible career of ceaseless ecstasy; but a robust acceptance of the
+facts and limitations of life. Man cannot, he says, "perpetually
+contemplate with attention the superessential Being of God in the Light
+of God. But whosoever has attained to the gift of Intelligence [_i.e._
+the sixth of the Seven Gifts of the Spirit] attains this power, which
+becomes habitual to him; and whensoever he will, he can wholly absorb
+himself in this manner of contemplation, in so far as it is possible in
+this life."[76]
+
+The superessential man, in fact, is, as Francis Thompson said of the
+soul, a
+
+  "... swinging-wicket set
+          Between
+  The Unseen and Seen."
+
+He is to move easily and at will between these two orders, both actual,
+both God-inhabited, the complementary expressions of One Love;
+participating both in the active, industrious, creative outflow in
+differentiation, and the still indrawing attraction which issues in the
+supreme experience of Unity. For these two movements the Active and
+Interior Lives have educated him. The truly characteristic experience of
+the Third Life is the fruition of that Unity or Simplicity in which they
+are harmonised, beyond the balanced consciousness of the indrawing and
+outdrawing tides.[77]
+
+Ruysbroeck discerns three moments in this achievement. First, a negative
+movement, the introversive sinking-down of our created life into God's
+absolute life, which is the consummation of self-naughting and surrender
+and the essence of dark contemplation. Next, the positive ecstatic
+stretching forth above reason into our 'highest life,' where we undergo
+complete transmutation in God and feel ourselves wholly enfolded in Him.
+Thirdly, from these 'completing opposites' of surrender and love springs
+the perfect fruition of Unity, so far as we may know it here; when "we
+feel ourselves to be one with God, and find ourselves transformed of God,
+and immersed in the fathomless Abyss of our Eternal Blessedness, where we
+can find no further separation between ourselves and God. So long as we
+are lifted up and stretched forth into this height of feeling, all our
+powers remain idle, in an essential fruition; for where our powers are
+utterly naughted, there we lose our activity. And so long as we remain
+idle, without observation, with outstretched spirit and open eyes, so
+long can we see and have fruition. But in that same moment in which we
+would test and comprehend _What_ that may be which we feel, we fall back
+upon reason; and there we find distinction and otherness between God and
+ourselves, and find God as an Incomprehensible One exterior to us."[78]
+
+It is clear from this passage that such 'utterness' of fruition is a
+fleeting experience; though it is one to which the unitive mystic can
+return again and again, since it exists as a permanent state in his
+essential ground, ever discoverable by him when attention is focussed
+upon it. Further, it appears that the 'absence of difference' between God
+and the soul, which the mystic in these moments of ecstasy feels and
+enjoys, is a psychological experience, not an absolute truth. It is the
+only way in which his surface-mind is able to realise on the one side the
+overwhelming apprehension of God's Love, that 'Yes' in which all other
+syllables are merged; on the other the completeness of his being's
+self-abandonment to the Divine embrace--"that Superessential Love with
+which we are one, and which we possess more deeply and widely than any
+other thing."[79] It was for this experience that Thomas a Kempis prayed
+in one of his most Ruysbroeckian passages: "When shall I at full gather
+myself in Thee, that for Thy love I feel not myself, but Thee only, above
+all feeling and all manner, in a _manner not known to all_?"[80] It is to
+this same paradoxical victory-in-surrender--this apparent losing which is
+the only real finding--that Francis Thompson invites the soul:
+
+  "To feel thyself and be
+  His dear nonentity--
+        Caught
+  Beyond human thought
+
+  In the thunder-spout of Him,
+  Until thy being dim,
+        And be
+  Dead deathlessly."
+
+Now here it is, in these stammered tidings of an adventure 'far outside
+and beyond our spirit,' in 'the darkness at which reason gazes with wide
+eyes,'[81] that we must look for the solution of that problem which all
+high mystic states involve for analytic thought: how can the human soul
+become one with God 'without intermediary, beyond all separation,'[82]
+yet remain eternally distinct from Him? How can the 'deification,' the
+'union with God without differentiation' on which the great mystics
+insist, be accepted, and pantheism be denied?
+
+First, we notice that in all descriptions of Unity given us by the
+mystics, there is a strong subjective element. Their first concern is
+always with the experience of the heart and will, not with the deductions
+made by the intelligence. It is at our own peril that we attach
+ontological meaning to their convinced and vivid psychological
+statements. Ruysbroeck in particular makes this quite clear to us; says
+again and again that he has '_felt_ unity without difference and
+distinction,' yet that he _knows_ that 'otherness' has always remained,
+and "that this is true we can only know by feeling it, and in no other
+way."[83]
+
+In certain great moments, he says, the purified and illuminated soul
+which has died into God does achieve an Essential Stillness; which seems
+to human thought a static condition, for it is that Eternal Now of the
+Godhead which embraces in its span the whole process of Time. Here we
+find nothing but God: the naked and ultimate Fact or Superessential Being
+'whence all Being has come forth,' stripped of academic trimmings and
+experienced in its white-hot intensity. Here, far beyond the range of
+thought, unity and otherness, like hunger and fulfilment, activity and
+rest, _can_ co-exist in love. The ultimate union is a love-union, says
+Ruysbroeck. "The Love of God is a consuming Fire, which draws us out of
+ourselves and swallows us up in unity with God, where we are satisfied
+and overflowing, and with Him, beyond ourselves, eternally
+fulfilled."[84]
+
+This hungry and desirous love, at once a personal passion and a cosmic
+force, drenches, transfigures and unites with the soul, as sunlight does
+the air, as fire does the iron flung into the furnace; so that the molten
+metal 'changed into another glory' is both iron and fire 'ever distinct
+yet ever united'--an antique image of the Divine Union which he takes
+direct from a celebrated passage in St. Bernard's works. "As much as is
+iron, so much is fire; and as much as is fire, so much is iron; yet the
+iron doth not become fire, nor the fire iron, but each retains its
+substance and nature. So likewise the spirit of man doth not become God,
+but is deified, and knows itself breadth, length, height and depth: and
+as far as God is God, so far the loving spirit is made one with Him in
+love."[85] The iron, the air, represent our created essence; the fire,
+the sunlight, God's Essence, which is added to our own--our
+_superessence_. The two are held in a union which, when we try to see it
+under the symbolism of space, appears a mingling, a self-mergence; but,
+when we feel it under the symbolism of personality, is a marriage in
+which the lover and beloved are 'distinct yet united.' "Then are we one
+being, one love, and one beatitude with God ... a joy so great and
+special that we cannot even think of any other joy. For then one is one's
+self a Fruition of Love, and can and should want nothing beyond one's
+own."[86]
+
+It follows from all this that when the soul, coming to the Fourth State
+of Fruitive Love, enters into the Equilibrium which supports and
+penetrates the flux, it does and must reconcile the opposites which have
+governed the earlier stages of its career. The communion reached is with
+a Wholeness; the life which flows from it must be a wholeness too. Full
+surrender, harmonised with full actualisation of all our desires and
+faculties; not some thin, abstract, vertical relation alone, but an
+all-round expansion, a full, deep, rich giving and taking, a complete
+correspondence with the infinitely rich, all-demanding and all-generous
+God whose "love is measureless for it is Himself." Thus Ruysbroeck
+teaches that love static and love dynamic must coexist for us as for Him;
+that the 'eternal hunger and thirst' of the God-demanding soul continues
+within its ecstatic satisfaction; because, however deeply it may love and
+understand, the Divine Excess will always baffle it. It is destined 'ever
+to go forward within the Essence of God,' to grow without ceasing deeper
+and deeper into this life, in "the eternal longing to follow after and
+attain Him Who is measureless." "And we learn this truth from His sight:
+that all we taste, in comparison with that which remains out of our
+reach, is no more than a single drop of water compared with the whole
+sea.... We hunger for God's Infinity, which we cannot devour, and we
+aspire to His Eternity, which we cannot attain.... In this storm of love,
+our activity is above reason and is in no wise. Love desires that which
+is impossible to her; and reason teaches that love is within her rights,
+but can neither counsel nor persuade her."[87]
+
+Hence an eternal desire and an eternal satisfaction are preserved within
+the circle of the deified life. The full-grown self feels, in its most
+intense degree, the double movement of the Divine Love and Light, the
+flux and reflux; and in its perfect and ever-renewed responses to the
+'indrawing and outflowing attraction' of that Tide, the complete
+possession of the Superessential Life consists.
+
+"The indrawing attraction drags us out of ourselves, and calls us to be
+melted away and naughted in the Unity. And in this indrawing attraction
+we feel that God wills that we should be His, and for this we must
+abnegate ourselves and let our beatitude be accomplished in Him. But when
+He attracts us by flowing out towards us, He gives us over to ourselves
+and makes us free, and sets us in Time."[88]
+
+Thus is accomplished that paradoxical synthesis of 'Eternal Rest and
+Eternal Work' which Ruysbroeck regards as the essential character of God,
+and towards which the whole of his system has been educating the human
+soul. The deified or 'God-formed' soul is for him the spirit in which
+this twofold ideal is actualised: this is the Pattern, the Likeness of
+God, declared in Christ our Archetype, towards which the Indwelling
+Spirit presses the race. Though there are moments in which, carried away
+as it seems by his almost intolerable ecstasy, he pushes out towards
+'that unwalled Fruition of God,' where all fruition begins and ends,
+where 'one is all and all is one,' and Man is himself a 'fruition of
+love';[89] yet he never forgets to remind us that, as love is not love
+unless it looks forward towards the creation of new life, so here, "when
+love falls in love with love, and each is all to the other in possession
+and in rest," the _object_ of this ecstasy is not a permanent self-loss
+in the Divine Darkness, a 'slumbering in God,' but a "new life of virtue,
+such as love and its impulses demand."[90] "To be a living, willing Tool
+of God, wherewith God works what He will and how He will," is the goal of
+transcendence described in the last chapter of _The Sparkling Stone_.
+"Then is our life a _whole_, when contemplation and work dwell in us side
+by side, and we are perfectly in both of them at once";[91] for then the
+separate spirit is immersed in, and part of, the perpetual creative act
+of the Godhead--the flowing forth and the drawing back, which have at
+their base the Eternal Equilibrium, the unbroken peace, wherein "God
+contemplates Himself and all things in an Eternal Now that has neither
+beginning nor end."[92] On that Unbroken Peace the spirit hangs; and
+swings like a pendulum, in wide arcs of love and service, between the
+Unconditioned and the Conditioned Worlds.
+
+So the Superessential Life is the simple, the synthetic life, in which
+man actualises at last all the resources of his complex being. The active
+life of response to the Temporal Order, the contemplative life of
+response to the Transcendent Order are united, firmly held together, by
+that 'eternal fixation of the spirit'; the perpetual willed dwelling of
+the being of man within the Incomprehensible Abyss of the Being of God,
+_qui est per omnia saecula benedictus_.
+
+
+
+
+                          BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
+
+
+                            I. Flemish Text
+
+  _Werken van Jan van Ruusbroec_. Ed. J. David. 6 vols. (Maetschappy der
+  Vlaemsche Bibliophilen). (Gent, 1858-68.)
+
+This edition, based on the MSS. preserved at Brussels and Ghent, and the
+foundation of all the best translations, is now rare. It may be consulted
+at the British Museum.
+
+A re-issue of the Flemish text is now in progress; the first volume being
+_Jan van Ruysbroeck, Van den VII. Trappen_ (i.e. _The Seven Degrees of
+Love_) _met Geert Groote's latijnsche Vertaling_. Ed. Dom. Ph. Mueller
+(Brussels, 1911).
+
+
+                            II. Translations
+
+
+                               A. _Latin_
+
+The chief works of Ruysbroeck were early translated into Latin, some
+during their author's lifetime, and widely circulated in this form. Three
+of these early translations were printed in the sixteenth century: the
+_De Ornatu Spiritualium Nuptiarum_ of Jordaens, at Paris, in 1512; and
+the _De Septem Scalae Divini Amoris Gradibus_ of Gerard Groot, together
+with the _De Perfectione Filiorum Dei_ (i.e. _The Sparkling Stone_), at
+Bologna, in 1538.
+
+The standard Latin translation, however--indispensable to all students of
+Ruysbroeck--is the great work of the Carthusian monk, Laurentius Surius:
+_D. Joannis Rusbrochii Opera Omnia_ (Cologne, 1552).
+
+This was reprinted in 1609 (the best edition), and again in 1692. It
+contains all Ruysbroeck's authentic works, and some that are doubtful; in
+a translation singularly faithful to the sense of the original, though it
+fails to reproduce the rugged sublimity, the sudden lapses into crude and
+homely metaphor, so characteristic of his style.
+
+
+                              B. _English_
+
+  _The Book of the Twelve Beguines_ (the first sixteen chapters only).
+  Translated from the Flemish, by John Francis (London, 1913).
+
+A useful translation of one of Ruysbroeck's most difficult treatises.
+
+
+                              C. _French_
+
+  _OEuvres de Ruysbroeck l'Admirable. Traduction du Flamand par les_
+  Benedictins de Saint Paul de Wisques.
+
+    Vol. I.: _Le Miroir du Salut Eternel_; _Les Sept Clotures_; _Les Sept
+    Degres de l'Echelle d'Amour Spirituel_ (Brussels, 1912, in progress).
+
+This edition, when completed, will form the standard text of Ruysbroeck
+for those unable to read Flemish. The translation is admirably lucid, and
+a short but adequate introduction is prefixed to each work.
+
+  _L'Ornement des Noces Spirituelles. Traduit du Flamand par_ Maurice
+  Maeterlinck (Brussels, 1900).
+
+This celebrated book, still more its beautiful though unreliable
+introduction, is chiefly responsible for the modern interest in
+Ruysbroeck. The translation, exquisite as French prose, over-emphasises
+the esoteric element in his teaching. Those unable to read Flemish should
+check it by Lambert's German text (see below).
+
+  _Vie de Rusbroch suivie de son Traite des Sept Degres de l'Amour.
+  Traduction litterale du Texte Flamand-Latin, par_ R. Chamonal (Paris,
+  1909). _Traite du Royaume des Amants de Dieu. Traduit par_ R. Chamonal
+  (Paris, 1911). _De la Vraie Contemplation_ (i.e. _The Twelve
+  Beguines_). _Traduit par_ R. Chamonal. 3 vols. (Paris, 1912).
+
+These are the first volumes of a proposed complete translation; which is,
+however, far from literal, and replaces the rough vigour of the original
+by the insipid language of conventional French piety.
+
+  _Livre des XII. Beguines ou de la Vraie Contemplation_ (first sixteen
+  chapters only). _Traduit du Flamand, avec Introduction, par_ L'Abbe P.
+  Cuylits (Brussels, 1909).
+
+This also contains a French version of the _Vita_ of Pomerius. The
+translator is specially successful in rendering the peculiar quality of
+Ruysbroeck's verse; but the statements in his introduction must be
+accepted with reserve.
+
+
+                              D. _German_
+
+  _Drei Schriften des Mystikers Johann van Ruysbroeck, aus dem Vlaemischen
+  uebersetzt von_ Franz A. Lambert (Leipzig, 1902).
+
+A vigorous and accurate translation of _The Adornment of the Spiritual
+Marriage_, _The Sparkling Stone_ and _The Book of Supreme Truth_.
+
+Ruysbroeck translates better into German than into any other language;
+and this volume is strongly recommended to all who can read that tongue.
+
+
+                            III. Selections
+
+  _Rusbrock l'Admirable: OEuvres Choisies. Traduit par_ E. Hello (Paris,
+  1902).
+
+A series of short passages, paraphrased (_not_ translated) from the Latin
+of Surius. There are two English versions of this unsatisfactory book,
+the second being the best:
+
+    _Reflections from the Mirror of a Mystic._ Translated by Earle
+    Baillie (London, 1905).
+
+    _Flowers of a Mystic Garden._ Translated by C. E. S. (London, 1912).
+
+  _Life, Light, and Love: Selections from the German Mystics._ By the
+  Very Rev. W. R. Inge, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's (London, 1905).
+
+Contains an abridged version of _The Adornment of the Spiritual
+Marriage_.
+
+
+
+
+                        Biography and Criticism
+
+
+                            (_A Selection_)
+
+  Auger, A.--_De Doctrina et Meritis Joannis van Ruysbroeck_ (Louvain,
+  1892).
+
+  Engelhardt, J. G. von.--_Richard von St. Victor und J. Ruysbroeck_
+  (Erlangen, 1838).
+
+Useful for tracing the correspondences between the Victorines and
+Ruysbroeck.
+
+  Maeterlinck, Maurice.--_Ruysbroeck and the Mystics._ Translated by Jane
+  Stoddart (London, 1908).
+
+An English version of the Introduction to _L'Ornement des Noces
+Spirituelles_, above-mentioned; with many fine passages translated from
+Ruysbroeck's other works.
+
+  Pomerius, H.--_De Origine Monasterii Viridisvallis una cum Vitis
+  Joannis Rusbrochii._
+
+Printed in _Analecta Bollandiana_, vol. iv. (Brussels, 1885). The chief
+authority for all biographical facts.
+
+  Scully, Dom Vincent.--_A Mediaeval Mystic_ (London, 1910).
+
+A biographical account, founded on Pomerius, with a short analysis of
+Ruysbroeck's works. Popular and uncritical.
+
+  Vreese, Dr. W. L. de.--_Jean de Ruysbroeck_ (_Biographie Nationale de
+  Belgique_, vol. xx.) (Brussels, 1907).
+
+An important and authoritative article with analysis of all Ruysbroeck's
+works and full bibliography.
+
+  ----_Bijdragen tot de Kennis van het Leven en de Werken van Jan van
+  Ruusbroec_ (Gent, 1896).
+
+Contains Gerard Naghel's sketch of Ruysbroeck's life, with other useful
+material.
+
+  ----_De Handschriften van Jan van Ruusbroec's Werken._ 2 vols. (Gent,
+  1900).
+
+An important and scholarly study of the manuscript sources by the
+greatest living authority.
+
+
+Notices of Ruysbroeck will be found in the following works:--
+
+  Auger, A.--_Etude sur les Mystiques des Pays Bas au Moyen Age_
+  (_Academie Royale de Belgique_, vol. xlvi., 1892).
+
+  Fleming, W. K.--_Mysticism in Christianity_ (London, 1913).
+
+  Inge, Very Rev. W. R., D.D., Dean of St. Paul's.--_Christian Mysticism_
+  (London, 1899).
+
+  Jones, Dr. Rufus M.--_Studies in Mystical Religion_ (London, 1909).
+
+
+Applications of his doctrine to the spiritual life in:--
+
+  Baker, Venerable Augustin.--_Holy Wisdom; or Directions for the Prayer
+  of Contemplation_ (London, 1908).
+
+  Blosius, F. V.--_Book of Spiritual Instruction_ (London, 1900); _A
+  Mirror for Monks_ (London, 1901); _Comfort for the Faint-hearted_
+  (London, 1903); _Sanctuary of the Faithful Soul_ (London, 1905).
+
+  Denis the Carthusian.--_Opera Omnia_ (Monstrolii, 1896), in progress.
+
+  Petersen, Gerlac.--_The Fiery Soliloquy with God_ (London, 1872).
+
+  Poulain, Aug., S.J.--_The Graces of Interior Prayer_ (London, 1910).
+
+  Underhill, E.--_Mysticism_, 5th ed. (London, 1914).
+
+
+                               Influences
+
+Much light is thrown on Ruysbroeck's doctrine by a study of the authors
+who influenced him; especially:
+
+  St. Augustine; Migne, _P.L._, xxvii.-xlvii.; Eng. Trans., edited by M.
+  Dods (Edinburgh, 1876).
+
+  Dionysius the Areopagite; Migne, _P.G._, iii., iv.; Eng. Trans., by
+  Parker (Oxford, 1897).
+
+  Hugh and Richard of St. Victor; Migne, _P.L._, clxxv.-clxxvii. and
+  cxcvi.
+
+  St. Bernard; Migne, _P.L._, clxxxii.-clxxxv.; Eng. Trans., by Eales
+  (London, 1889-96).
+
+  St. Thomas Aquinas; _Opera_ (Romae, 1882-1906); Eng. Trans., by the
+  Dominican Fathers (in progress).
+
+  St. Bonaventura; _Opera_ (Paris, 1864-71).
+
+  Meister Eckhart; _Schriften und Predigten_ (Leipzig, 1903).
+
+  Suso; _Schriften_, ed. Denifle (Munich, 1876). Eng. Trans., _Life_, ed.
+  by W. R. Inge (London, 1913); _Book of Eternal Wisdom_ (London, 1910).
+
+  Tauler, _Predigten_ (Prague, 1872); Eng. Trans., _Twenty-five Sermons_,
+  trans. by Winkworth (London, 1906); _The Inner Way_, edited by A. W.
+  Hutton (London, 1909).
+
+
+
+
+                               Footnotes
+
+
+[1]The _Vita_ of Pomerius is printed in the _Analecta Bollandiana_, vol.
+   iv. pp. 257 ff.
+
+[2]_The Book of Supreme Truth_, cap. iv.
+
+[3]_The Twelve Beguines_, cap. vii.
+
+[4]_Vita_, cap. xv.
+
+[5]De Vreese has identified 160 Flemish and 46 Latin MSS. of Ruysbroeck.
+
+[6]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxxvii.
+
+[7]_The Twelve Beguines_, cap. xiv.
+
+[8]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxxvii.
+
+[9]_Op. cit._, _ibid._
+
+[10]_The Seven Degrees of Love_, cap. xiv.
+
+[11]_The Kingdom of God's Lovers_, cap. xxix.
+
+[12]_The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, cap. viii.
+
+[13]_The Twelve Beguines_, cap. ix.
+
+[14]_The Twelve Beguines_, cap. xiv.
+
+[15]_The Book of Truth_, cap. xi.
+
+[16]_The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, cap. xvii.
+
+[17]_Op. cit._, cap. vii.
+
+[18]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. x.
+
+[19]_The Twelve Beguines_, cap. xiv.
+
+[20]_The Twelve Beguines_, cap. xiii.
+
+[21]_The Seven Degrees of Love_, cap. xiv.
+
+[22]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. iii. cap. i.
+
+[23]_The Twelve Beguines_, cap. xvi.
+
+[24]_The Twelve Beguines_, cap. xii.
+
+[25]_The Twelve Beguines_, cap. viii.
+
+[26]_The Seven Degrees of Love_, cap. i.
+
+[27]_The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, cap. xvi.
+
+[28]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. vi.
+
+[29]_The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, cap. vii.
+
+[30]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. i. cap. xiv.
+
+[31]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. i. capp. xii.-xxiv.
+
+[32]_The Kingdom of God's Lovers_, cap. xviii.
+
+[33]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. i. cap. xxvi.
+
+[34]_The Twelve Beguines_, cap. vii.
+
+[35]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. vii.
+
+[36]_The Twelve Beguines_, cap. ix.
+
+[37]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. iv.
+
+[38]Cf. _The Twelve Beguines_, cap. x.
+
+[39]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xix.; _The Book of Truth_,
+   cap. ix.
+
+[40]_The Seven Degrees of Love_, cap. xiv.
+
+[41]_The Kingdom of God's Lovers_, cap. xx.
+
+[42]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxiii.
+
+[43]_Op. cit._, lib. ii. cap. xxvii.
+
+[44]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxiv.
+
+[45]Richard Rolle; _The Mending of Life_, cap. xii. (Harford's edition,
+   p. 82).
+
+[46]_The Kingdom of God's Lovers_, cap. xxv.
+
+[47]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxviii.
+
+[48]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxix.
+
+[49]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ii.
+
+[50]Cp. _The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. lvii.
+
+[51]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxxvi.
+
+[52]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxxviii.
+
+[53]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxxix.
+
+[54]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ii.
+
+[55]_The Twelve Beguines_, cap. xi.
+
+[56]_Loc. cit._
+
+[57]St. Augustine, _Confessions_, lib. vii. cap. x.
+
+[58]St. Augustine, _Confessions_, lib. vii. capp. xvii. and xx.
+
+[59]_The Twelve Beguines_, cap. xii.
+
+[60]_Loc. cit._
+
+[61]_The Kingdom of God's Lovers_, cap. xxxiv.
+
+[62]_The Seven Cloisters_, cap. xix.
+
+[63]_The Twelve Beguines_, cap. xii.
+
+[64]_The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, cap. xvii.
+
+[65]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. iii.
+
+[66]Cap. viii.: 'Of the Difference between the Secret Friends and the
+   Hidden Sons of God.'
+
+[67]_The Twelve Beguines_, cap. xii.
+
+[68]_The Twelve Beguines_, cap. xvi.
+
+[69]_The Seven Cloisters_, cap. xix.
+
+[70]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. viii.
+
+[71]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ix.
+
+[72]_The Kingdom of God's Lovers_; cap. xxxiii.
+
+[73]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ix.; cp. also _The Twelve Beguines_, cap.
+   xvi.
+
+[74]_The Twelve Beguines_, cap. xvi.
+
+[75]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ix.; cp. also _The Book of Truth_, cap.
+   xii.
+
+[76]_The Kingdom of God's Lovers_, cap. xxxi.
+
+[77]_The Book of Truth_, cap. xii.
+
+[78]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. x.
+
+[79]_Op. cit._ cap. ix.
+
+[80]_The Imitation of Christ_, lib. iii. cap. xxiii.
+
+[81]_The Twelve Beguines_, cap. xiv., and _The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ix.
+
+[82]_The Twelve Beguines_, cap. xvi.
+
+[83]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ix.; cp. _The Book of Truth_, cap. xi.
+
+[84]_The Twelve Beguines_, cap. xvi.
+
+[85]_Ibid._ cap. xiv.; cp. St. Bernard, _De Diligendo Deo_, cap. x. The
+   same image is found in St. Macarius and many other writers.
+
+[86]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. xii.
+
+[87]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. x.
+
+[88]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. x.
+
+[89]_Op. cit._ cap. xii.
+
+[90]_Op. cit._ cap. xiii.; cp. also _The Seven Degrees_, cap. xiv.
+
+[91]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. xiv.
+
+[92]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. iii. cap. v.
+
+
+                              _Printed by_
+                        Morrison & Gibb Limited
+                              _Edinburgh_
+
+
+
+
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