Ruysbroeck and the Mystics: with selections from Ruysbroeck

by Maurice Maeterlinck

I ought in fairness to translate also the many strange things in chapters vi., vii., and viii., which deal with “The difference between the hirelings and the faithful servants of God,” “The difference between the faithful servants and the secret friends of God,” and “The difference between the secret friends and the hidden sons of God.” Here it does really seem as if the anchorite of the Green Valley had dipped into things beyond this world. But having run to such lengths already, I can hardly attempt it I must, however, be permitted to give the following fragment, which shall be the last from this book. It is strangely beautiful:—

“Understand, now, that this is the mode of progress: in our going towards God, we ought to carry our being and all our works before us, as an eternal offering to God; and in presence of God we shall surrender ourselves and all our works, and, dying in love, we shall pass beyond all creation into the super-essential kingdom of God. There we shall possess God in an eternal death to ourselves. And this is why the Spirit of God says in the book of the Apocalypse, ‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.’ Rightly indeed does He call them the blessed dead, for they remain continually dead to themselves and immersed beyond their own nature in the gladdening unity of God. And they die ever newly in love, by the attracting refreshment of that same unity. Furthermore, the divine Spirit saith, ‘They shall rest from their labours, and their works shall follow them.’ In this finite existence, where we are born of God into a spiritual and virtuous life, we carry our works before us as an offering to God; but in that unconditioned life, where we die anew in God, into a life of everlasting blessedness, our good works follow us, for they are one life with us. In our walk towards God, God dwells within us; but in our death to ourselves and to all things besides, we dwell in God. If we have faith, hope, and love, we have received God, and He dwells in us with His mercies, and He sends us out as His faithful servants, to keep His commandments. And He calls us in as His mysterious friends, and we obey His counsels. But above all things, if we desire to enjoy God, or to experience eternal life within us, we must rise far above human reason, and enter into God through faith; and there we shall remain pure, at rest, and free from all similitudes, lifted by love into the open nakedness of thought. For when in love we die to all things, when in ignorance and obscurity we die to all the notice of the world, we are wrought and reformed by the eternal Word, who is an image of the Father. And in the repose of our spirit we receive the incomprehensible splendour which envelops and penetrates us, just as the air is penetrated by the brightness of the sun. And this splendour is merely a boundless vision and a boundless beholding. What we are, that we behold; and what we behold, that we are; for our thought, our life, and our essence are closely united with that truth which is God, and are raised along with it. And that is why in this pure vision we are one life and one spirit with God; and this is what I call a contemplative life. By connecting ourselves closely to God through love, we choose the better part; but when we thus behold God in super-essence, we possess Him altogether. This contemplation is united with an untrammelled inward devotion, that is to say, with a life in which earthly things are destroyed; for when we go outside ourselves into darkness and into unlimited freedom, the pure ray of the brightness of God shines perpetually on us; we are fixed in the ray, and it draws us out of ourselves into our super-essence till we are overwhelmed in love. And this overwhelming in love is always accompanied and followed by the free inward exercise of love. For love cannot be idle; it longs by knowledge and taste to enter into the immense riches which dwell in its inmost heart; and its hunger is inappeasable. To be always receiving in this powerlessness is to swim against the stream. We can neither leave nor take, do without nor receive, speak nor be silent, for it is above reason and intelligence, and higher than all created beings. And so we can neither attain nor pursue it; but we shall look within, and there we shall feel that the Spirit of God is leading us and drawing us on in this impatience of love. We shall look above, and there we shall feel that the Spirit of God is drawing us out of ourselves, and that we are lost in Him—that is, in the super-essential love with which we are one, and which we possess more deeply and more widely than all other things.

“This possession is a pure and profound enjoyment of all good and of eternal life; and we are swallowed up in this enjoyment, above reason and without reason, in the deep calm of Godhead, which shall nevermore be stirred. It is by experience only that we can know that this is true. For how this is, or who, or in what place, or what, neither reason nor inward exercise can tell us, and it is for this reason that our inward exercise which follows must remain without mode or limit. For we can neither conceive nor understand the unfathomable good which we possess and enjoy; neither by our inward exercises can we go out of ourselves to enter into it. And so we are poor in ourselves, but rich in God; hungry and thirsty in ourselves, satiated and full of wine in God; laborious in ourselves, in God enjoying perfect rest. And thus we shall remain throughout eternity. For without the exercises of love we can never possess God, and he who feels or thinks otherwise is deceived. And thus we live wholly in God, by possessing our beatitude, and we live wholly in ourselves by exercising our souls in love towards God; and although we live wholly in God and wholly in ourselves, yet it is but one life, which has two-fold and contrary sensations. For riches and poverty, hunger and satiety, work and idleness, these things are absolutely contrary to one another. Nevertheless, in this consists the nobility of our nature, now and everlastingly, for it is impossible that we should become God, or lose our created essence. But if we remain wholly in ourselves, separated from God, we shall be miserable and unsaved; and so we ought to feel ourselves living wholly in God and wholly in ourselves, and between these two sensations we shall find nothing but the grace of God and the exercises of our love. For from the height of our highest sensation, the splendour of God shines upon us, and it teaches us truth and impels us towards all virtues into the eternal love of God. Without interruption we follow this splendour on to the source from which it flows, and there we feel that our spirits are stripped of all things and bathed beyond thought of rising in the pure and infinite ocean of love. If we remained there continually, with a pure vision, we should never lose this experience, for our immersion in the enjoyment of God would be without interruption, if we had gone out of ourselves and were swallowed up in love, so possessing God. For if, overwhelmed in love, and lost to ourselves, we are the possessors of God, God is ours and we are His, and we plunge far beyond our depth, eternally and irrevocably having God as our own. This immersion in love becomes the habit of our being, and so it takes place while we sleep and while we wake, whether we know it or whether we know it not. And in this way it deserves no other praise; but it maintains us in possession of God and of all the good which we have received from His hands. It is like unto streams, which, without pause and without returning, flow continually into the sea, since that is the place to which they belong. And so, if we possess God alone, the immersion of our being through habitual love is always, and without return, flowing into an unfathomable emotion, which we possess, and which belongs to us. If we were always pure, and if we always beheld with the same directness of vision, we should have such a feeling as this. Now, this immersion in love is above all virtues, and above all the practices of love. For it is simply an eternal going forth out of ourselves, by a clear prevision, into a changed state, towards which we lean out of ourselves, as if towards our beatitude. For we feel ourselves eternally drawn outside ourselves and towards another. And this is the most secret and the most hidden distinction which we can experience between God and ourselves, and above it there is no more any difference. Nevertheless, our reason remains with its eyes open in the darkness—that is to say, in infinite ignorance—and in that darkness the boundless splendour remains secret and hidden from us, for the presence of its immensity blinds our reason. But it wraps us round with its purity and transforms us by its essence, and so we are wrought out of our personality and transformed until, overwhelmed in love, we possess our beatitude, and are one with God.”

Let us next look at The Book of the Seven Steps of the Ladder of Love (called by Surius De Septem Gradibus amoris, libellus optimus) in which the prior of Grönendal studies seven virtues which lead from introversion to the confines of absorption. This seems to me one of the most beautiful works of a saint, whose works are all strange and beautiful I ought to translate from it some rather singular passages; among others, that in which he discusses the four melodies of heaven; but space fails us, and this introduction is already too long. I shall content myself with giving the following page:—

“The Holy Spirit cries in us with a loud voice and without words, ‘Love the love which loves you everlastingly.’ His crying is an inward contact with our spirit. This voice is more terrifying than the storm. The flashes which it darts forth open the sky to us and show us the light of eternal truth. The heat of its contact and of its love is so great that it well-nigh consumes us altogether. In its contact with our spirit it cries without interruption, ‘Pay your debt; love the love which has loved you from all eternity.’ Hence there arises a great inward impatience and also an unlimited resignation. For the more we love, the more we desire to love; and the more we pay of that which love demands, the greater becomes our debt to love. Love is not silent, but cries continually, ‘Love thou love.’ This conflict is unknown to alien senses. To love and to enjoy, that is to labour and to suffer. God lives in us by His grace. He teaches us, He counsels us, He commands us to love. We live in Him above all grace and above our own works, by suffering and enjoying. In us dwell love, knowledge, contemplation, and possession, and, above them, enjoyment. Our work is to love God; our enjoyment is to receive the embrace of love.

“Between love and enjoyment there is a distinction, even as between God and His grace. We are spirits when we hold fast by love, but when He robs us of our spirit, and re-makes us by His own spirit, then we are enjoyment. The Spirit of God breathes us out towards love and good works, and it breathes us in to rest and enjoyment; and that is eternal life, just as we breathe out the air which is in us and breathe in fresh air; and in that consists our mortal life and nature. And although our spirit should be ravished and its powers fail in enjoyment and in blessedness, it is always renewed in grace, in charity, and in virtues. And so what I love is to enter into a restful enjoyment, to go forth in good works, and to remain always united to the Spirit of God. Just as we open the eyes of the body, see, and shut them again, so quickly that we hardly notice what we have done, even so we die in God, we live out of God, and we remain always one with Him.”

Next we have The Book of the Seven Castles, called by Laurentius Surius De Septem Custodiis, Opusculum longe piissimum. It is not without resemblance to the Castle of the Soul, by Saint Teresa of Avila, which has also seven dwellings, of which prayer is the door. The hermit of the forest of Soignes sends this work, with the Mirror of Eternal Salvation, “To the holy Clare, Margaret van Meerbeke, of the convent of Brussels,” and so the counsels on which he touches in the prologue have a slight note of pitying sadness. For instance, he teaches her in what way she shall go to the window of the convent parlour, shutting out from her eyes the face of man; and speaks of the joy of pain and the care of the sick, with pale counsels for the sick-ward. Then there rise the seven spiritual castles of St. Clara, the doors of which are closed by divine grace, and must no more be opened to look into the streets of the heart. Let us hear what follows, still on the subject of love:—

“And the loving soul cannot give itself wholly to God, nor perfectly receive God, for all that it receives is but a little thing as compared with that which it lacks, and counts as nothing in its eager emotion. And so it is disturbed, and falls into impatience, and into the strong passion of love; for it can neither do without God nor have Him, reach His depth nor His height, follow nor forsake Him. And this is the storm and the spiritual plague of which I have spoken; for no tongue can describe the many storms and agitations which arise from the two sides of love. For love makes a man now hot, now cold; now bold, now timid; now joyous, now sorrowful; it brings him fear, hope, despair, tears, complaints, songs, praises, and such things without number. Such are the sufferings of those who live in the passion of love; and yet this is the most spiritual and the most useful life which man can live, each according to his own capacity. But where man’s method fails and can reach no higher, then God’s method begins; where man, by his sufferings, his love, and his unsatisfied desires, entwines himself with God and cannot be united to Him, then the Spirit of our Lord comes like a fierce fire which burns and consumes and swallows up all things in itself, so that the man forgets his inward exercises, and forgets himself and feels just as if he were one spirit and one love with God. Here our senses and all our powers are silent, and they are calmed and satisfied, for the fountain of divine goodness and wealth has flowed over everything, and each has received more than he can desire.

“Next comes the third method, which we attribute to our heavenly Father—that in which He empties the memory of forms and images, and lifts up our naked thought to the ultimate source, which is Himself. There man is fixed firmly at his beginning, which is God, and is united to Him. And there is given to him strength and freedom to work inwardly and outwardly by means of all the virtues. And he receives knowledge and understanding in all exercises which are according to reason. And he learns how to receive the inward working of God and the transformation of the divine methods, which are above reason, even as we have already said. And above all divine limits, he will understand by the same boundless intuition, the boundless essence of God, whose being is without limitation. For one cannot express it by words, nor by works, nor by methods, nor signs, nor similitudes, but it manifests itself spontaneously to the simple intuition of pure and naked thought.

“But we may place on the road signs and similitudes which prepare man for the sight of the Kingdom of God, and you shall imagine this essence like the glow of a boundless fire, in which everything is silently consumed—a red and motionless conflagration. And so it is with the calm of essential love, which is the enjoyment of God and of all the saints, above all limitations, and above all the works and all the practices of virtue. This love is a wave, boundless and calmed, of riches and joys, in which all the saints are swallowed up with God in an unlimited enjoyment. And this joy is wild and lonely like a wandering, for it has neither limit, nor road, nor path, nor rest, nor measure, nor end, nor beginning, nor anything which one can show or express by words. And this is the pure blessedness of all of us, this divine essence, and our super-essence, above reason and without reason. If we desire to experience it, our spirit must go forth into it, above our created essence, towards that eternal centre in which all our lines begin and end. And in this centre these lines lose their name and all distinction, and are united to this centre, and become that same unity which the centre itself is; and nevertheless in themselves they always remain as converging lines.