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diff --git a/37870-8.txt b/37870-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ea63639 --- /dev/null +++ b/37870-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4654 @@ +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 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 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 +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_ + + _OEuvres 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: 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 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_ + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ruysbroeck, by Evelyn Underhill + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RUYSBROECK *** + +***** This file should be named 37870-8.txt or 37870-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/8/7/37870/ + +Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Roger Frank and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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