“In the encircling light he fell to earth, and his eyes being unsealed he, open-eyed, beheld all things as naught.’ And beholding all things as naught he was beholding God. Mark here what the soul says in the Book of Love: ‘ By night in my bed I sought him my soul loveth : I sought him and I found him not.’ She sought him in her bed: meaning to convey that any- one cleaving to aught below God has too narrow a lie. God’s entire creation is all too confined. Quoth she, ‘I sought him all night through.’ There is no night without the light: only, it is veiled. The sun is shining in the night albeit screened from view. By day it shines, eclipsing all the other lights. So does the light of God ; it blinds and puts out any light. Our creaturely expecta- tions, all these are night. What I mean to say is, that nothing we find in a creature is more than a shadow and dark. Even the highest angel’s light, exalted though it be, illumines not the soul. All but the first light is darkness, is night. By it she cannot find God. ‘I rose and sought him all about, I scoured the broadways and the alleys. The watchmen (angels) found me, and I questioned them, ‘‘ Saw ye not him whom my soul loveth ?”’’ But they answered not ; peradventure they could not apprehend him. ‘It was but a little that I passed and I found him my soul loveth.’ The little, the trifle, that she missed him by has often been the burden of my teaching. He to whom mortal things are not all trivial and as naught withal, that man shall not find God. ‘Having passed by a little,’ she says, ‘I found him whom I sought.’ When God pours into and informs the soul and thou takest him as a light or a state or a boon, whatsoever thou knowest about him, that God is not. We have to transcend the little, discard the adventitious and perceive God one. She says, ‘ When I had passed by a little I found him my soul loveth.’
We are very fond of saying, ‘him my soul loveth.’ But he is far away above the soul, nor does she name her love. There are five reasons why she names him not. One is that God is nameless. Any name she gave him would have to be well chosen. God is beyond all name, none can express him. A second reason is that on swooning away into God for love, the soul is conscious of nothing but love. She fondly imagines that everyone knows him like that. She is amazed that any wight should find him aught but love alone. Thirdly, she has no time to name him. Love
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does not leave her any time to use another word. Fourthly,
perchance she weens he has no other name than love. Inloveshe. pronounces allnames. Quoth she, ‘I rose up, I went through the broad streets and the alleys. And when I had passed a little I
found him my soul loveth.’
‘Paul rose from the ground wide-eyed, beholding nothing.’ I cannot see what is one. He saw nothing, to wit, God. God is naught and God is one. What aught is is naught as well. What God is is he altogether. As Dionysius says about the light: speaking of God he says, He is supernatural, supervital, super- luminous ; he will allow him neither this nor that, but makes him out to be I know not what that far transcends them. Aught seen, aught that may come within thy ken, that God is not; for why, God is not this nor that. Whoever says that God is here or there, credit him not. The light which God is shines in darkness. God is the true light : to see it one has to be blind and strip God naked of things. A master says, To argue about God from any sort of likeness is to argue falsely about him. But to argue about God from naught is to argue soundly withal. When the soul is reduced to one and is gotten therein by discarding herself altogether, there she finds God, as it were, in a naught. It appeared to one soul as in a dream (it was a waking dream), to be big with naught like a woman with child, and in this naught God was born, the fruits of the naught. God was born in the naught. Therefore he says, ‘He arose from the earth wide-eyed, gazing at naught.’ He had a vision of God where there are no creatures. He beheld all creatures as naught for he had the whole essence of creatures in him. He is the all-containing essence.
Another thing he means by saying, ‘he saw naught.’ Accord- ing to our masters, any perception of externals entails some inroad by them, an impression at the least. ‚To get some idea of a thing, a stone, for instance, I do (not) take into my mind the grossest part of it; that I leave outside. As it exists in the ground of my soul where it is at its noblest and best, it is merely a type (or idea). Things perceived by my soul from without contain an outside element : my perception of creature in God contains nothing but God alone, for in God there is nothing but God. When I see all creatures I see not. He saw God where creatures are not.
In the third place, why he saw naught. Naught was God. A master says, Creatures in God are as naught for he has in him the whole essence of creatures. He is the being that contains all beings. The master says, Nothing inferior to God, however nigh it might be to him, but has some alien taint. The master says an angel knows himself and God without means. Into other things he knows there comes an outside element, some interference still,
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however slight. If we are to know God it must be without means, nothing foreign can come in between. When we do see God in his light it happens in private, safe from the slightest intrusion ‘of creaturely things. Then we have immediate knowledge of eternal life. “ Seeing nothing, he saw God.’ The light which is God is flowing _ and darkening every light. Concerning it Job says, ‘He com- manded the sun not to shine and sealeth up the stars as it were with a seal.’ Enveloped in this light he could see naught beside ; his whole soul was distraught, intent upon the light that is God . to the exclusion of all else; and this is a lesson to us, for what time we are busy with God we mind little what goes on without. Fourthly, he saw naught since the light which is God is un- mingled, free from admixture. It shows it was the true light he beheld for there was nothing there. By light he simply means that he saw nothing with his open eyes. In that he saw not, he saw the divine naught. St Augustine says, When he saw nothing, he saw God. According to St Paul, ‘ Whoso only seeth being blind, he seeth God.’ As St Augustine hath it, ‘ God is the true light, preserver of the soul, more nigh to her than she is to herself, and by the same token, when the soul turns her back on things becoming, then God must needs shine into her. This soul knows neither love nor care, she is unmindful of them. The soul that fares not forth to outside things comes home to stay in her im- partible pure light. She does not love nor does she fear nor care withal. Knowledge is the basis, the foundation of all being. Love has no hold except in knowledge. When the soul is blind and can see naught beside, then she sees God, it is inevitable. A master says, the eye at its clearest, without any colour, sees every colour; not just as a colourless thing in itself, but in place in the body it has to be void of all colour for us to see colours. In colourless things all colours are seen, aye, though it be down in one’s feet. God is something all-embracing. For God to be seen by the soul she has to be blind. Accordingly he says, ‘ He saw the naught whose light all lights are, whose being all beings are.’ The bride says in the Book of Love: ‘When I had passed by a little I found him my soul loveth.’ The little she had passed all creatures were. Whoso putteth not these behind him shall not find God. And eke she would imply that however small, however pure a thing I know God by, yet it must go. Even the light that verily is God, if I take it where it plays upon my soul is foreign to him. I must take it at the source. I cannot really see the light that shines upon the wall unless I turn my gaze to where it comes from. But if I take it in its cause I am robbed of its effect. I ought to take it neither where it falls nor in its eruption nor yet
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as brooding in itself; these are all mere modes. We must take God in modeless mode and unconditioned essence, for he is free from mode. St Bernard says: He who would know thee, God, must mete thee with no measure. Please God we may attain that understanding which is wholly without mode and without measure. So help us God. Amen.
And Behold There Was a Man... Simeon
Et ecce, homo erat in Jerusalem, cui nomen Simeon ete. (Luc. 235). St Luke relates in his gospel that ‘ when the days were accom- plished Christ was brought to the temple. And behold there was a man in Jerusalem, Simeon by name, who was just and God- fearing, waiting for the consolation of the people of one and the Holy Ghost was in him.’
‘And behold.’ This particle et in Latin sh joining, binding or locking together. , Things fast bound or locked together are described as in union. Here I refer to the soul being bound, knit, united to God. According to our doctors, union postulates likeness. There is no union without likeness. Binding or knitting together, that is the meaning of union. Nearness to me does not constitute likeness : my sitting by someone or in the same place, for example. As St Augustine says, Lord, when I found myself afar from thee it was not from the remoteness of the place, it came of thy unlikeness wherein I found myself. One master says, people living and working wholly in time never agree, they never come together. According to our doctors, a thing whose life and work is in eternity and a thing whose life and work is here in time require a go-between. Where there is knitting and binding together | there must be some likeness. The union of God and the soul is a matter of likeness. Where no difference exists there must be identity; not merely union in mutual embrace, but one; not merely likeness, but the same. Wherefore we say that the Son is not like the Father but he is his image, he is one with the Father.
One of our best doctors says that an image in stone or on the wall, with no foundation to it, taken simply as a form, is the same form as his whose form itis. For the soul passing into her exemplar wherein is no alien thing, only her form wherewith it is one, this doctrine holds good. Having gotten the form that is divine we behold God, we find God. In separation God is not found. On passing into her exemplar and finding herself in that image alone, in that same image the soul finds God and the finding of herself and God, which is all the same act and is timeless, is the finding of God. So far as she is therein so far she is one with God. He means:
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as far as a man is at the stage where his soul is the divine image. Then so far as he is he is divine. So far therein so far in God, not annexed, not united but one and the same.