Nothing is without beginning, and since nothing is without beginning God could make us from nothing better than nothing, like himself. Alone God’s power did make the soul, so she like him is free from matter. And soul could have no homelier road into divinity than by way of nothing to nothing, for nothing unites like natural affinity. But St John Chrysostom declares that none can take it till his outward and his inward senses are focussed to clear vision of the Deity.
The naught we were before we were created was indigent of naught.. Moreover of itself it could do absolutely naught and naught withstood creatures ; all but the power of God ; it was this caused naught to stir when God made all things from naught. Now we have got to be more motionless than naught. — ‘ But how ? ’ Mark how. God gat the soul the mistress of herself, not overriding her free will nor once exacting from her aught that she will not ; so whatever in this body she elects of her free will she is free to carry through. Say she chooses to need nothing and to be more motionless than naught, then assembling all her powers into her free will so as not to be hindered by herself or any thing, she centres herself in the motionless God who was n’er moved by any act done by the blessed Trinity nor is not indigent of any thing the blessed Trinity has ever wrought. To reach this point of needing naught and being more immutable than naught, soul must be sunk so deep in the bottomless well of the divine naught that nothing can draw her thereout to spend herself on mortal things, but there she steadfastly abides ; as the heavenly Father is everabiding in his nature without let or hindrance so the soul abides therein without let or hindrance, as far as that is possible to creature.
— ‘ Pray, Sir, how should it be impossible seeing that the soul was created to that end ? ’ — Because, you see, if she does stoop to baser things to let herself be satisfied with these, then that which is above her is beyond her reach, whereas God keeps no secrets from the soul whose lofty nature is equal to the quest. Up, noble Soul ! Out of thyself so far thou never comest in again and enter into God so deep thou never comcst out again : there stay nor ever deign to stoop to creature ; and burden not thyself with things made clear to thee, nor wander among objects presented to thy mind, nor be not hindered from achievement by any service. Steadfastly pursue thy simple nature and the unnecessitous nothingness, seeking no other place than this unnecessitous naught. God who made thee out of nothing, he in his unnecessitous nothingness and immovableness shall hiipsclf be thy place. There thou shalt be more immovable than nothing.
They that serve God for gain with outward works reap their reward in creatures, such as heaven and heavenly things. But they that serve God by interior acts are rewarded with the uncreated, namely, the works of the blessed Trinity.
Mark this. No fire no light, no earth no life, no air no love, no water no place. Ergo, God is not light nor life nor love nor nature nor spirit nor semblance nor anything we can put into words. God flows into (iod and God flows out of God and God knows himself God in himself and knows himself God in his creatures in general and he knows himself God in the nobte soul in particular. The Father is almighty in the soul, the Son allwise, the Holy Ghost all-loving, loving all creatures with the same love. But he manifests as different and the soul is destined to know things as they are and conceive things as they are when, seized thereof, she plunges into the bottomless well of the divine nature and becomes so one with God that she herself would say that she is God. The soul withdrawn into herself till nothing made or named takes shape in her and she is bare as God of any name, gathers herself up above herself into her (iod and takes herself cum God for God. God is not black nor white, nor large nor small, he has no place nor any past nor future time, and the soul is like him only in so far as she can project herself above all creatures.
The soul is a creature receptive to everything named, but the nameless she cannot receive until she is gotten so deep into God that she is nameless herself. And then none can tell if it is she that has gotten God or God has gotten her. Dionysius says,
‘ God has conceived himself in her, so utterly absorbing her that she is now no longer self but God.’ And the soul’s inferior powers have distinction of person, love uniting the persons not the essence. The soul is destined to this knowledge when, on the ebb-tide of God’s glory, she is borne back into the bottomless ground of the fount whence she flowed forth and finds she is not from herself.
The highest boon, the chief good of the soul, is not from herself. Christ himself declared he was not from himself. The truest thing we have is our intuition of not being from ourselves and that we ourselves are not of ourselves.
God has done all things for himself and he has made the soul like to himself, over all things, under all things, in all things, out of all things and withal abiding in herself impartibly. But she is noblest keeping to the desert wherein she is naught and there is nothing doing. St Dionysius prays, ‘ Lord, lead me into the desert where thou art formless that in thy solitude I may lose all form.’ The soul is in all things in her subtile nature wherein she inhabits all things without affecting them or being affected by them. Thus transcending things she cries, ‘ Lord, fetch me into thy Godhead where thou art naught, for what is aught I deem to be not God.’ The soul is over all things in her freedom ; she knows none can compel her, not even God himself. Surrendering her free will to God she plunges into her own emptiness, beseeching, ‘ Lord, take me into the gloom of thy Godhead that in thy dark I may lose all my light, for nothing that can be revealed do I account as light.’ She is out of all things in her power of understanding, whichp makes her so elastic she is able to hold God as well as all his creatures. Embodying God thus she is more God than her own self. This is hers by grace. Aught of God is God entire and aught of him holds his whole being. This he is in the lowliest as much as in the loftiest nature. A small bung stops the barrel no less well than the biggest.
Comprehension belongs to his paternal power. He grasps himself in himself in all creatures and grasps himself in his countenance whereto he admits no creature and whereinto no creature can get. And this comprehension he veils in a cloud of distortion so that no creature can grasp him as he grasps himself. What the soul grasps in the light she loses in the darkness. Yet she makes for the cloud, deeming his darkness better than her light. There she suddenly loses her light and herself in his darkness.
The soul cries in the Book of Love, ‘ No one is my God and I am no one’s soul, and nothing manifest to me do I take for God. I flee from God for God’s sake.’ St John says, ‘ God is love.’ But theologians argue that if he means the love wherewith the soul loves
God, this is not true. Were that love God, wherewith the soul can love, it would not fail her as it does. This is a natural love, the virtue. But suppose her will is turned toward God, then Gk)d draws love from nothing and pours it into the virtue, so her love is both nature and grace. In grace God gives himself to the soul and the Holy Ghost unites with her love, and the love which is the Holy Ghost is God, and the love which is grace is the nature which unites the soul with God, and in this union the soul is absorbed into God and loves God with his own love in God, which in herself she cannot do.
The Father is the revelation of all things and the Son is the image of all things and the Holy Ghost is the fulfilling of that order. Philosophers say that things in contact with God are not God but his works. The soul is self-motive before she is moved and her being moved is the work of God, the soul being the agent while the work itself is creature. The power whieh perfects the soul, which sweeps her out of herself without her aid or abetting, is God. I can touch the minster, not carry it off. That we attribute to God matter and fonn and work is due to our gross senses. Theologians tell of the light which gives no light, which has no form nor matter and is yet a creature. To know God as he is we must be absolutely free from knowledge. Thus St Augustine says, ‘ Lord, I know not what I love in thee if it be not light.’ As God is timeless and modeless so he is also nameless. St Paul says, ‘ There be many that run but one receiveth the prize.’ All the soul-powers run but pure nature alone receives the crown, for, according to Dionysius, this race is nothing else than the flight from creatures to unite with their creator. Atoned wilji her creator the soul has lost her name for she herself does not exist : God has absorbed her into him just as the sunlight swallows up the dawn till it is gone.
Tell me, where is the soul’s abode ? — Upon the pinions of the wind. The pinions are the powers of divine nature. The wind is the waging of the powers of the soul’s divine nature. When he thrusts her sins under her eyes she sinks down into him like a fish in the sea. All creatures lose their names on entering human nature. Hence Christ’s exhortation, ‘ Preach the gospel to all creatures/ He meant only human beings.
Observe when a man is all creatures. When he has the power of them all. When a man, knowing with his outward senses all corporal things, detaches himself from them and abides therein without attachment ; when, knowing with his interior senses all spiritual things, he detaches himself from these and abides therein without attachment, then at length that man is all creatures ; then, not till then, that man has come to his own nature and is ready to go into God. If we fail to find. God it is because we seek in semblance what has no resemblance. The scriptures tell us more of his unlikeness than his likeness. Origen says the soul’s quest of God comes by self-observation. If she knew herself she would know God also. If she pictures herself or pictures her God that comes of over-defining. On merging into the Godhead all definition is lost.
Dionysius says to Timothy, ‘ Friend Timothy, if thou dost view the spirit of truth, pursue it not with mortal senses. It is so swift, it comes rushing.’ God must be sought in estrangement, forgetfulness and non-sense ; for the Godhead has in it all things in posse without the least likeness to anything. The supremely pure splendour of the impartible essence illumines all things at once. According to Dionysius, beauty is order : symmetry with supreme lucidity. In this sense the Godhead is the beauty of the three Persons. And it behoves the soul to order her lower powers to her higher and her higher ones to God ; the outer senses to the inner and the inner ones to reason ; thought servant to intelligence, intelligeiKie to will and her will to their unity, then the soul will be a unity with nothing flowing into her except pure deity as it is proceeding from itself. Concerning this St Dionysius says the soul has flung her faculties into her pure being and only her chief power remains at work. And one doctor says that when the chief power takes command the rest all enter into it losing their own activities, so now behold the soul in her proper order and in her pure nature, her pure nature being her exalted light-nature which is potentially all things.
Th Godhead flows into the Father, into the Son and the Holy Ghost, into itself in eternity and in time into creatures. It gives to each as much as it can hold : to stones existence, to the trees their growth, to birds their flight, to beasts their pleasures, to the angels reason and to man free nature. God was made man and took upon himself by grace the nature of all things in time even as in eternity he has them all by nature. St Paul says, ‘ Christ is to me all things.’ One Person with two natures. Each seems all things to each. It is a play of the light and reflection of his own nature. God’s being is first being, flowing being, fixed being, initial being and final being.
From essence in general emanates power and work. The three Persons are in this respect the storehouse of divinity, and the three Persons descend into the essence of the soul by grace, and the Persons bring divine nature into the soul in their train, one nature coursing through the other. The higher powers of the soul flow out of the essence of the soul as the three Persons issue from the Godhead, And when God pours his grace into the soul he pours it into the essence of the soul, for into the essence of the soul no fleck can fall let her powers do what they may. The higher powers of the soul draw their seeming from the essence of grace in the essence of the soul, and her chief power transcends the lower ones in nature.
Mind big with the conception of God’s nature is the corollary of Christ’s Person in human nature. When the soul is absorbed into God’s nature her sins and shortcomings are stripped off and she becomes God, divine in nature ; she enjoys divine nature in herself just as the Father does in him. She gets it not from her own nature : she takes divine nature from God into her nature. She receives perfection and power. Hence the words of St Paul, ‘ I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me.’ Wisdom springs up in understanding ; it begins in understanding and ends in desire and has neither heart nor thought. As St Dionysius says, ‘ When the soul, finding this outlet, has a footing in eternity and in time in her own understanding, therein she shall return into the flow where God is flowing back into himself, and does not flow away.’
God is flowing back into himself, recking no more of creatures than he did when they were not. And the soul shall do the same. She shall with her humanity conceive the Person of the Son and with the Person of the Son she shall apprehend the Father and the Holy Ghost in both and them both in the Holy Ghost ; and with the Person of the Father she shall grasp his impartible nature and in his nature discerning the abyss she shall flow into the void bereft of matter and of form. Form, matter, mind and mode she loses in the unity for she herself has come to naught : God isoing all her work, he preserves her in his being and leads her in his power into his naked Godhead. She flows with his deity into all that God is flowing in. She is all things’ place and has herself no place. This is the spirit of wisdom which has neither heart nor thought.
Soul flowing in the Deity is so nearly God that in the power of the Father she receives divinity, (she) by grace as the Father does by nature. St Paul says, ‘ In one image shall we go from glory to glory.’ Meaning that we shall receive the impartible Godhead with all that flows therefrom and shall therein conceive the Deity as the Deity conceives itself. Her will and God’s will shall be one, and wherever God has gotten himself there she is with God. To this none may attain while in this body except God grant his best gift to the soul, namely, the vision of God which confirms the soul in the Trinity and in the image of the Godhead.