The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage

[64] This conception of the dual life which man possesses in the likeness of God appears to be derived from Dionysius, who says:

"That which is established above both every rest and every movement, and moves each thing according to the law of its own being in its own movement, is both the Rest and the Movement of all." (Divine Names, cap. 1.)

[65] This adherence or deliberate cleaving of the loving will to God is the supreme work of the self in the Divine union and is never transcended. Its absence marks the distinction between heretical quietism and true contemplation.

[66] Ruysbroeck's word "ledich" means both empty and idle: a blank passivity of the mind and of the will.

[67] "God-lidende": i.e. passively suffering God to act in and through them.

[68] This entrance of the soul into the God-seeing life is the equivalent of Dante's entrance into the Empyrean.

". . . noi semo usciti fuore del maggior corpo al ciel, ch' pura luce; luce intellettual piena d'amore, amor di vero ben pien di letizia, letizia che trascende ogni dolzore." (Par. xxx. 38.)

[69] So Dionysius: "The Beginning and Cause beyond all beginning of every being, grasping all things superessentially in an irresistible embrace." (Celestial Hierarchy, cap. 7.)

[70] "When this takes place," says Plotinus, "the soul will see both God and herself, so far as it is lawful for her to see Him. And she will see herself indeed illumined, and full of intelligible light; or rather, she will perceive herself to be pure light." (On the Good, or the One.)

[71] "In levenden redenen," perhaps more exactly "in life-giving ideas." Surius, in his great Latin translation renders, this, "sub vividis rationibus." This is one of the passages in which the Platonic character of Ruysbroeck's doctrine is specially marked.

[72] Suso expresses this doctrine with even greater daring

"Mark this: in eternity, all creatures are God in God; and there, there is no fundamental difference between them, save that which we have said. And in so much as they are in God, they are the same life, the same being, the same power: they are the same One, and nothing less. (Suso, The Book of Truth, cap. 3.)

[73] Thus Dionysius says, "We should know that our mind has the power of thought, through which it perceives intellectual things: but the union through which it is brought into contact with things beyond itself surpasses the nature of the mind. We must therefore contemplate Divine things by means of this union; not in ourselves, but by standing out of ourselves with our whole selves and becoming wholly of God. For it is better to be of God than of ourselves." (Divine Names, cap 7.)

[74] Cf. The Twelve Béguines, cap. 8

"That which is wayless is above reason, not without it, And it perceives all things without wonder. Wonder is far beneath it, And the life of contemplation is without wonder."

[75] The last phrases of this passage are written in the irregular rhymed verse which Ruysbroeck so often interpolated in his prose writings. It has been found impossible to give a sufficiently close English rendering of this. I therefore give the original Flemish as an example of his poetic style

"En dit is in dat wiselose wesen dat age ynnighe gheeste boven alle dinc hebben vercoren, Dit is die donkere stille daer alle minnende in sijn verloren: Maer moche wi ons aldus in doghenden ghereden, Wi souden ons schiere van den live ontcleden, En souden vlieten in wilde zeebaren: Nemmermeer en mochte ons creature verhalen."

[76] These are the mystical forms of the Evangelical Counsels of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience.

[77] Ruysbroeck wrote, or dictated, terdelinc, literally "tread-ling," probably imagining some relation between calculus (pebble), from calx (stone), and calcare (to tread), from calx (knuckle, heel).

[78] "Een eenformich leven met Gode draghen." Here Ruysbroeck accepts in the most extreme form possible to a Catholic Christian the dangerous doctrine of the "deification" of the soul; its total transformation in God. We must, however, read such passages in the light thrown upon them by his distinct declarations in other places concerning the "invincible otherness" of God and the human spirit. Cf. infra cap. 10, where it is shown that this transmutation within the Divine Essence cannot and does not involve identity. Compare The Book of Truth, cap. 11. So, too, in The Twelve Béguines, cap. 14: "The spirit of man doth not become God, but is God-formed, and knows itself to be breadth and length and height and depth."

[79] This "death in God" or total self-loss in the Divine Abyss was one of the favourite doctrines of the Friends of God, with whom Ruysbroeck appears to have been closely connected.

Thus Tauler says

"Everything depends on this: a fathomless sinking into a fathomless nothingness. . . . The Heavenly Father says, 'Thou shalt call Me Father, and shalt never cease to enter in; entering ever further, ever nearer, so as to sink ever deeper into an unknown and unnamed Abyss, and, above all ways, images and forms, above an powers, to lose thyself, deny thyself, and even unform thyself.' In this lost state, nothing is seen but a ground which rests upon itself: everywhere one being, one life. Thus, man may say, he becomes without knowledge, without love, without feeling. But this does not come from our natural qualities; but from the transformation of the created spirit by the Spirit of God, in the fathomless self-immersion of the created spirit, and its fathomless resignation." (Sermon on St Matthew.)

[80] Compare St Augustine

"In this seeing and beholding of Truth, which is the seventh and last stage of the soul (and not indeed a stage but a habitation to which she attains by these stages), what shall I say of the joys, of the fruition of the Supreme and True Good, of the perfect peace and breath of Eternity. (De Quantitate Animae, cap. 33.)

[81] This, too, seems to have an Augustinian source

"I heard Thy voice from on high crying unto me, 'I am the Food of the full-grown: grow, and thou shalt feed on Me; nor shalt thou change Me into thine own substance, as thou changest the food of the flesh, but thou shalt be changed into Mine.'" (Confessions, bk. vii. cap. 10.)

[82] Ruysbroeck wrote "bloter ghedacten"; probably meaning the simple and undifferentiated consciousness, above the discursive reason, which is attained in high contemplative states: the "pure intellect" of Plotinus.

[83] "Dat wide onploken behagene Gods." Compare note 53.

[84] It will be seen that this is another aspect of that balanced life of action and fruition described in The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, which parallels on the human plane the essentially static and personally dynamic aspects of the Divine life. Compare note 66.

[85] This ancient simile for the union of the soul with God is constantly used by Ruysbroeck. It goes back at least to the fourth century A.D.; being found in the sermons of St Macarius. Ruysbroeck probably took it from St Bernard (De diligendo Deo, cap. 10), or possibly Richard of St Victor (De Quatuor Gradibus Violentae Charitatis).

[86] "Hi gheeft hem in dat wesen der sielen, dar der sielen crachten, boven redene, gheenvoldicht sijn en ghedaghen die overforminghen Gods eenvoldigher wijs."

Reason, will and love must here be fused in one simple state, in order that they may apprehend the Unity in which an wisdom, love and will are resumed. This doctrine of self-simplification was well understood by the Platonic mystics and has passed from them into the Christian tradition. Thus Plotinus says, "The soul must ascend to the principle which is in herself, and become one instead of many, in order that she may contemplate the Principle of all things, and the One." (On the Good, or the One.)

[87] The Flemish word "instaerne," which Ruysbroeck here uses, conveys the idea of an absorbed inward gazing, for which we have no exact expression in English.

[88] "Staende in syn abijt." This phrase has puzzled all translators, from Surius onwards. Taken with its context, it seems to mean that the self's ascent to the heights of Divine fruition does not entail any impoverishment of the lower levels of existence. The senses, the intellect, the normal religious faculty, each continue to exist "in their own place." This is another statement of the profound truth insisted upon inThe Sparkling Stone: that the completed life of man, like that of its Pattern Christ, is both active and contemplative, both human and divine"living wholly in God where we possess our blessedness, and wholly in ourselves where we exercise ourselves in love to God."