What is Meditation

Meditation Techniques

Spiritual Inspirators

 

Western  Mystics

thomasindex.jpg (13234 bytes)

For people who do
not believe in god:
Replace the word 'god'
with 'consciousness' or
any other word that
could describe a sense
of the mysterious.

"The
most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."

Albert Einstein
.

 

 

 

MYSTICS FROM THE WEST - QUOTES

Meditation is not only an Indian phenomenon.

In the West, we had a vibrant mystical tradition as well, but it is now almost extinct.

Listen to this quotation from C. G. Jung:
 
"The Goal of eastern practices is the same as that of Western mysticism: The focus shifted from the "I" to the self, from man to God... The wisdom and mysticism of the East have, therefore, a very great deal to tell us, provided they speak in their own inimitable speech.
 
They should remind us of what we posses in our own culture of similar things and have already forgotten, and direct our attention to that which
we put aside as unimportant, namely the destiny of our inner man."

Foreword to Heinrich Zimmer´s  "Der Weg zum Selbst"

Since the mystical experience is timeless, it transcends history. Mystics connect in a silent brotherhood regardless of centuries and geography.

"Theologicans may quarrel, but the Mystics
of the world speak the same language."
Meister Eckhart

Meister Eckhart   1260-1328


Doctor Ecstaticus


Whoso is unable to follow this discourse, let him never mind.
While he is not like this truth he shall not see my argument.

A Tribute to Meister Eckhart
My first western mystical love was Meister Eckhart.

At that time, I had not yet met any divine inspirators in flesh and blood. So, I sat with Doctor Ecstaticus in the space between the words of books.
 
I intuitively chose these quotes after reading everything available on Eckhart. When I was 25, I made this intuitive drawing imagining how dear Doctor Ecstaticus would look:
 
Meister Eckhart's teachings captivated me before I encountered any living spiritual guides. His words resonated deeply, filling the gaps between the lines of his books.
 
At 25, inspired by his profound wisdom, I created a drawing that embodied my vision of Doctor Ecstaticus. This artwork was a blend of my imagination and the essence of Eckhart’s mystical teachings.


 

All creatures contain one reflection: one, that is the denial of its being the other; the highest of the angels denies he is the lowest. 

God is the denial of denials.


۞

When a man delights to read or hear about God,
that comes of divine grace and is lordly entertainment for the soul.
To entertain God in one's thoughts is sweeter than honey.


۞

Merchants go when the truth appears,
for the truth needs no merchanting.

Behold thy temple cleared of merchants.

۞

He who seeks God in some way (read meditation technique or ritual),
grasps the way and loses God, who dwells in the way. But he who seeks God without a way, grasps God and lives with the Son.

 

۞

Had I a God whom I could understand, 
I would no longer hold him for God.

۞

Man has to seek God in error and forgetfulness and foolishness.

۞

It must be understood that this is all the same thing:
knowing God and being known by God,
and seeing God and being seen by God
 
۞
 

If a man's spirit were always joined to God in the same Power,
he could not age.
 
For the now wherein God made the first man and the now
wherein the last man disappears and the now I speak in, all are the
same in God where there is but now.

۞

The man in Truth has motion taken from him
and all things stand intrinsic in him.
Nothing new comes to him from future things nor yet
by accident for he dwells in the now
ever new and unceasingly renewed.

۞

The happenings of a thousand years ago, days spent millenniums since,
are in eternity no furtheroff than is this moment I am passing now; the day to come a thousand years ahead or in as many years as you can count, is no more distant in eternity than this very instant I am in.

۞


We feel an inkling of the perfection and stability of eternity,
for there is neither time nor space, neither before nor after,
but everything present in one new,
fresh-sprinkling now where millenniums last no longer
than the twinkling of an eye.

۞

The happiness he (Christ) brought was our own.

۞

To one who even for an instant has seen into this ground,
a thousand ducats of red beaten gold are worth no more than a false farthing.

۞

We might question life for a thousand years: Why dost thou live?
It would only say, if it replied at al: I live because I live.
For life lives in a ground of its own, wells up out of its own.
It lives without a cause for it lives itself.

۞

Things are all made from nothing;
hence their true source is nothing.
 
۞

But God is truth, and things in time,
the things that God created, are not true.

۞

There all too few who are fully ripe for gazing in God's magic mirror.

۞

Aye, in this power is such poignant joy, such vehement, immoderate delight as none can tell nor yet in truth reveal. I say, moreover, if once a man in intellectual vision did really glimpse the bliss and joy therein, then all his sufferings, all God intends that he should suffer, would be a trifle, a mere nothing to him, I say more; it would be pure joy and pleasure.


۞

A life of rest and peace in God is good;
a life of pain in patience is still better;
but to have peace in a life of pain is best of all.

 

۞


The more we can impute to Him (God) not-likeness,
the nearer do we get to understanding Him.

۞
 
In unknowing knowing shall we know God.
 
۞

Verily I say, the soul will bring fourth Person if God
laughs into him and she laughs back to him.
 
۞

God is beyond all name, none can express him.

۞

Seeing nothing he saw God.
The light which is God is flowing and darkening every light.

۞

The body is much rather in the soul than the soul is in the body.

۞

God is the Word which pronounces itself.

۞

God's exit is his entrance.
He broke in to let us out.

۞

God is simple presence, a stay-at-home in himself

۞

Real knowledge, even in this body, is intrinsically so delightful
that the sum total of created things is nothing to the joys of pure perception.

۞

Dedicate all acts to God.

۞

I am certain as I live that nothing is so close to me as God.
God is nearer to me than I am to my own self; my life depends upon God's being near me, present in me. So is he also in a stone, a log of wood, only they do not know it. If the wood knew of God and realized his nearness like the highest of the angels does, then the log would be as blessed as the chief of all angels.

۞

A life of rest and peace in God is good;
a life of pain in patience is still better;
but to have peace in a life of pain is best of all.

۞

If we are more conscious of God being in a quiet place,
that comes of our own imperfection and is not due to God,
for God is the same in all things and all places.
 
۞

God is near to us, but we are far from him.
God is in, we are out;
God is at home, we are strangers.

 ۞

I never  give God thanks for loving me,
because he cannot help it.

۞

This spirit knows no time nor number:
number does not exist apart from the malady of time.

۞

He rejoices all the time who is rejoicing above time and timelessly.

۞

Divine light is so overwhelming that the soul is unable to bear it
unless it is tempered in the angel's light and so conveyed into the soul.
He (God) enlightens her therefore by reflection. The angel conveys his own knowledge to the soul and strengthens her in this way to bear the light of God.

۞

The God-and-Man has prepared this supper, the ineffable man who is wordless...The moral is that those who live the life of the five senses never taste this food.
 
۞

Where is Christ sitting? He is sitting nowhere; he is nowhere.
If ye seek him anywhere ye shall not find him.

۞

God like forgiving big sins more than small ones.

۞

The spot I am standing on is small, but it must disappear.

۞

Were I wholly that I am I should be God; there would be for me neither time nor place nor change. There is nothing so easy to me, so possible, as to be God. To stay quiet requires no work.


۞

Flee away and hide thee from the rush of inner thoughts
which cause such great disquiet.

۞

The really virtuous man does not want God.
What I have I want not.
not

۞


To be undivided you must be free from not.

۞

Beware lest ye take yourself as either this or that.

۞

But now I say: it is neither this nor that.
Yet it is somewhat...

It is of all names free, of all forms void:
exempt and free as God is in himself.

۞

God is such that we apprehend him better by negation than by affirmation.


۞

To call a man enlightened as we sometimes do, means little.

۞
 
My firm conviction is that everything a good man sees must better him.

۞

God enjoys himself in all things.

۞

Grace is to God as the shine to the sun.

۞

The greatest happiness in earth or heaven lies in the likeness to God.

۞

God is creating the  whole world now this instant.


۞

Here the soul is pregnant without form or image.


۞

To gauge the soul we must gauge it with God, 
for the Ground of God and the Ground of the soul 
are one and the same...The highest part
of the soul stands above time 
and know nothing of time.

۞

It is permissible to take life's blessings with both hands,
 provided thou dost know thyself prepared in the opposite 
event to leave them just as gladly.


۞

When the soul beholds God purely, it takes all its being and its life
and whatever it is from the depth of God; yet it knows no knowing,
no loving, or anything else whatsoever. It rests utterly and completely
within the being of god, and knows nothing but only to be with with God.
So soon as it becomes conscious that it sees and loves and knows God, 
that is in itself a departure.


۞

The Godhead gave all things up to God.
The Godhead is poor,
naked and empty as though it were not;
it has not, wills not, 
wants not, works not, gets not.
It is God who has the treasure
and the bride in him, the Godhead is as void 
though it were not.


۞

Men should not think so much of what they 
ought to do, as of what they ought to be.
Think not to lay the foundation of thy 
holiness upon doing, but rather upon being.
For works do not sanctify us,
but we should sanctify the works.
Whoever is not great in his essential
being will achieve nothing by works,
whatever he may do.

۞
 
God needs me 
as much as I need him.
 
۞
 
Let no one be affrighted at my sayings that God loves none beside himself... He purposes to lure us to himself, to get us purged and take us to himself, so that with himself he may love himself in us and in him.

۞

The Spirit knows no time nor number; number does not exist apart from the malady of time.

۞

Love is incompatible with fear and pain, for the waxing of love is the waning of fear, and when love is perfect all fear is gone. But at the beginning of the virtuous life fear is of use to man, providing him a thoroughfare for love.
 
۞

To rest in the illusion means delay in the attainment of real oneness.

۞

Know then that my soul is as young as when I was created, aye, much younger. And I tell you, I should be ashamed were she not younger to-morrow than to-day.

۞

There is one power in the soul to which all things are alike sweet;
the very worst and the very best are all the same in this power which takesthings above here and now. Now meaning time and here meaning place.

۞

A man must be so true to God that nothing whatever can gladden him or sadden him. He must see all things in God, as they are there.

۞

There is one power in the soul and that not merely power but being; and not merely being; it radiates life, and is so pure, so high and so innately noble that creatures cannot live in it;none but God can abide therein. Nay, even God cannot enter there in any guise:
God is only there in his absolute divinity.

۞

The just man serves neither God nor creature: he is free; and the more he is just the more he is free and the more he is freedom itself.  Nothing created is free.

۞

The tendency is ever towards self-repetition, towards the preservation of the species: it is every man' s intention that his work should be himself.

۞

He (God) never destroys without providing something better.

۞

I sometimes seem to like one better than another, and yet I have the same goodwill towards that other person whom I have never seen, only, by asking more of me, this one enables me to give him myself more. God loves creatures all alike and fills them with his being. And we too should pour forth ourselves in love of all creatures.

۞

But now we change our ground and declares withal, that a person in this poverty has gotten all he was when he lived not in any wise, not to himself. nor truth, nor God, he is so quiet, so free of any kind of knowledge, that no idea of God is alive in him.

۞


I sometimes say, if a man who seeks nothing finds nothing, what has he to complain? After all, he has found what he sought.

۞

Creature comfort is imperfect, it has innate defect.
But Gods comfort is complete, with no shortcoming..

۞

God is foolishly in love with us, it seems he has forgotten heaven and earth and his happiness and deity, his entire business seems with me alone, to give me everything to comfort me; he gives it to me suddenly, he gives it to me wholly, he gives it to me perfect,
he gives it all the time and he gives it to all creatures.

۞

Here there is no before nor after; everything is present, and in this immediate vision I possess all things. This is the perfection of time, and I am perfect and I am truly the only Son and Christ.

۞

God's content is too subtle for renewal.

۞

God's delights so in this likeness that he pours out his whole nature, his whole substance into it, in his own self.
The joy and satisfaction of it are ineffable. It is like a horse turned loose in a lush meadow giving vent to his
horse-nature by galloping full-tilt about the field: he enjoys it, and it is his nature.

۞

The only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won’t let go of your life: your memories, your attachments.
They burn them all away, but they’re not punishing you, they’re freeing your soul. If you’re frightened of dying and you’re holding on,
you’ll see devils tearing your life away. If you’ve made your peace, then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth.


۞

A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves!
Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.

۞

Theologicans may quarrel, but the Mystics
of the world speak the same language.

۞

When the Soul wants to experience something
she through out an image in front of her
and then steps into it.

۞

I am what I wanted
and I want what I am.

۞

 God is greater than God

۞

The outward man is the swinging door
The inner man is the still hinge.

۞

If the only prayer you say is thank you, it is enough.

۞

Thus, what you have sought before, now seeks you; what once you persued, now persues you; what once you fled, now flees you.
Everything comes to him who truly comes to God, bringing all divinity with it, while all that is strange and alien flies away.


۞

But if a man does well; God is really in him, and with him everywhere, on the streets and among people, just as much in church, or a desert place, or a cell.

۞

We should take care to follow him intelligently, for he is much more intent on our love than on our actions. We are always to follow him in our own way. But how? The manner and the method must be settled in each situation individually. As I have often said, I regard intelligent action as far better than literal actions.
 

۞

... for the deeper the valleys go,
the loftier the heights that rise above them,
the deeper the well, the higher too:
for depth and height are the same thing.

 

۞

For you will have peace to the extent that you have God, and the further you are away from God the less you will be at peace. Anything that is at peace has God in it to the extent that it is at peace. Thus you may measure your progress with God by measuring your peace or the lack of it.

۞

God is not found in the soul by adding anything
but by a process of subtraction.

۞

God is in all things, urging us to give up our will.
 

۞

Those who do not know this way will laugh and mock at me and I shall pity them. They like to look at eternal things and consider divine works and to stand in the light of eternity, while their hearts still flutter about in yesterday and today, in space and time.
 

۞

"Sometimes I have used this illustration. When an artist makes a sculpture out of wood or stone, he does not put his idea into the wood but, rather, he chips away the material that has been hiding it. He does not impart something to the wood but cuts the covering away and removes the tarnish so that what was hidden there may shine. This is 'the treasure hid in a field' of which our Lord speaks in the Gospel."

(This passage seems to reflect a similar idea attributed to Michelangelo, but here it is used by another author who references the concept in a broader spiritual or philosophical context. This supports the idea that the metaphor was used by multiple thinkers, including Meister Eckhart.)


 

۞

God says: "I am the first and the last." There are no distinctions in God and no differences between the divine persons, since they are to be regarded as one in nature. The divine nature is Oneness and each person is One, the same One in nature. The distinction between being and existence is referred back then to the One, where they are the same thing. When that oneness is no longer in oneself, then division has crept in. Since we find God in oneness, that oneness must be in him who is to find God. Our Lord says that "a man went out." Neither the One, nor being, nor God, nor rest, nor blessedness, nor satisfaction is to be found where distinctions are. Be therefore that One so that you may find God. And of course, if you are wholly that One, you shall remain so, even where distinctions are. Different things will all be parts of that One to you and will no longer stand in your way. The One remains the same One in thousands of thousands of stones as much as in four stones: a thousand times a thousand is just as simple a number as four.
 

۞

I shall offer still another explanation of what an aristocrat is. I say that when a man looks at God [in soul and spirit], he knows it and knows that he is the knower. That is to say, he knows it is God he is looking at and knows that he knows him. Now some people wish it to appear that the flower, the kernel of blessing is this awareness of the spirit, that it is knowing God. For if I have rapture and am unconscious of it, what good would it do and what would it mean? I cannot agree with this position.

۞

For granting that the soul could not be happy without it [consciousness of its own processes], still its happiness does not consist in that; for the foundation of spiritual blessing is this: that the soul look at God without anything between; here it receives its being and life and draws its essence from the core of God, unconscious of the knowing-process, or love or anything else. Then it is quite still in the essence of God, not knowing at all where it is, knowing nothing but God.

۞

"The teachers praise love, and highly too, as St. Paul did, when he said: 'No matter what I do, if I have not love, I am nothing.' Nevertheless, I put disinterest higher than love. My first reason is as follows. The best thing about love is that it makes me love God. Now, it is much more advantageous for me to move God toward myself than for me to move toward him, for my blessing in eternity depends on my being identified with God. He is more able to deal with me and join me than I am to join him. Disinterest brings God to me and I can demonstrate it this way: Everything likes its own habitat best; God's habitat is purity and unity, which are due to disinterest. Therefore God necessarily gives himself to the disinterested heart."

۞

God does not see through time, nor does anything new happen in his sight.

 

۞

Take an illustration. A door swings to and fro through an angle. I compare the breadth of the door to the outward man and the hinge to the inner person. When the door swings to and fro, the breadth of the door moves back and forth, but the hinge is still unmoved and unchanged. It is like this here.
 

۞

Now I ask what the object of pure disinterest is. I reply that it is neither this nor that. Pure disinterest is empty nothingness, for it is on that high plane on which God gives effect to his will.
 

۞

When a person learns the cause of anything, he soon grows tired of it and looks for something else to work out, and is constantly uneasy until he knows all about that, and thus he lacks
steadfastness. Only this unknown knowledge keeps the soul steadfast and yet ever on the search.
 

۞

God despises ideas.

God acts without instrumentality and without ideas. And the freer you are from ideas the more sensitive you are to his inward action.
 

۞


Not only the Son of the heavenly Father is born in the darkness which is his own, but you, too, are born there, a son of the sameheavenly Father, and to you also he gives power. Now see how great the profit is!
 

۞

May God, newly born in human form, eternally help us, that we frail people, being born in him, may be divine. Amen.
 

۞

For creatures are only God’s footprint

۞

Reject it and you reject all goodness and blessing; but given the birth of God, whatever comes your way will bring with it unsullied reality and stability. Whatever you try to get without it will come to nothing, try how you will. It alone gives blessing. All else corrupts. Moreover, in this birth you will have a part in the divine stream [that flows into life] and will share its benefits. But the creature in which God’s idea is not to be found is not eligible [to these
benefits]. It is the soul that is especially designed for the birth of God….
 

۞


Angelus Silesius    
1624 – 1677


I know that without me 
God cannot live an instant.

 

Lady Julian  1342 - ?



We are God´s bliss, for in us
He enjoyeth without end.

 

Scotus Erigena      800-880



God because of his excellence 
he may rightly be called Nothing.

 

Pseudo-Dionysius   345 - 407



God is The absolute No-thing 
which is above all existence 

۞

Do thou, in the intent practice of mystic contemplation,
leave behind the senses and the operations of the intellect, 
and all things that the senses or the intellect can percieve,
and all things which are not and things which are, 
and strain upwards in unknowing as far as may be
towards the union with Him who is above all being and knowledge.

For by unceasing and absolute withdrawal 
from thyself  and all things in purity, abandoning
all and set free from all, thou wilt be borne up to the
ray of the Divine Darkness that surpasses all being.

Mystical Theology

۞

No monad or triad can express the all-transcending hiddenness
of the all-transcending superessentially superexisting superdeity.

۞

There is that most divine knowledge
of God which takes place through ignorance,
in the union which is above intelligence,
when the intellect quitting all things that are,
and then leaving itself also,
is united to the superlucent rays,
being illuminated thence and
therein by the unsearchable depth of wisdom.
 

Plotinus   205–270


 
One that seeks to penetrate the nature of the Divine Mind must see
deeply into the nature of his own soul, into the Divinest point of himself.
He must first make abstraction of the body, then of the lower soul and emotions and every such triviality, of all that leans towards the mortal. What is left after this abstraction is the part which we describe as the image of the Divine Mind, an emanation preserving some of that Divine Light.

 

Richard of St. Victor  1123 - 1173

The soul utterly puts off itself and puts on divine love; 
and being conformed to that beauty which it has beheld, 
it utterly passes  into that other glory.

 

Christina Rosetti  1830 - 1882


Lord, we are rivers running to Thy sea,
Our waves and ripples all derived from Thee,

A nothing we should have,
a nothing be Except for Thee.

 

Bishop Ullathorne  1880 -



Let it be plainly understood
that we cannot return to God unless
we enter first into ourselves.
God is everywhere but not everywhere to us.
There is but one point in the universe
where God communicates with us,
and that is the center of our own soul.
There He waits for us.
There He meets us; there He speaks to us.
To seek Him therefore we must
enter into our own interior.

 Groundwork of Christian Virtue
 

St. John of the Cross 1542 -1591



Of all forms and manners of knowledge
the soul must strip and void itself
so that there may be left in it no kind
of impression of knowledge, 
nor trace of aught soever,

but rather the soul must remain barren and bare,
as if these forms had never passed through it,
and in total oblivion and suspension.

۞

The soul that is attached to anything,
however much good there may be in it,
will not arrive at the liberty of divine union.
For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender 
and delicate thread that holds the bird,
it matters not, if it really holds it fast;
for until the cord be broken
the bird cannot fly.

So the soul, held by the bonds of human affections,
however slight they may be, cannot, while they last,
make its way to God.

۞

 

St Theresa 1515 - 1582

Beside me on the left appeared an angel in bodily form . . .
He was not tall but short, and very beautiful;
and his face was so aflame that he appeared to be
one of the highest ranks of angels, who seem to be all on fire . . .
In his hands I saw a great golden spear,
and at the iron tip there appeared to be a point of fire.
This he plunged into my heart several times so that it penetrated my entrails. When he pulled it out I felt that he took them with it,
and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God.
The pain was so severe that it made me utter several moans.
The sweetness caused by this intense pain is so extreme
that one can not possibly wish it to cease, nor is one's
soul content with anything but God. This is not a physical but a spiritual pain, though the body has some share in it -- even a considerable share.

It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place
between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness
to make him experience it who may think that I am lying.
 
Chapter XXIX; Part 17 Teresa's

۞

Spiritual marriage is like rain falling from the sky 
into a river, becoming one and the same liquid, 
so that the river water and the rain cannot 
be divided; or it resembles a streamlet flowing 
into the ocean which cannot afterward 
be dissevered from it.

 

St. Bernard



God who in his simple substance, is all everywhere equally, nevertheless,
in efficacy, is in rational creatures in another way than irrational, and in
good rational creatures in another way than in bad. He is in irrational creatures in such a way as not to be comprehended by them; by all rational ones, however, he can be comprehended through knowledge; but only by the good is he to be comprehended also through love.

۞

Grace is necessary to salvation,
free will equally so,
but grace in order to give salvation,
free will in order to receive it.
Therefore we should not attribute
part of the good work to grace
and part to free will; it is performed in
its entirety by the common and inseparable
action of both; entirely by grace by the common 
and inseparable action of both; entirely by grace,
entirely by free will, but springing from
the first in the second.

۞

Who is God?
I can think of no better answer than,
He who is.
Nothing is more appropriate
to the eternity which God is.
If you call God good,
or great or blessed, or wise
or anything else of this sort,
it is included in these words,
namely, He is.

۞

God who in his simple substance,
is all everywhere equally, nevertheless,
in efficacy, is in rational creatures
in another way than irrational,
and in good rational creatures
in another way than in bad.
He is in irrational creatures in such
a way as not to be comprehended
by them; by all rational ones,
however, he can be comprehended
through knowledge; but only by
the good is he to be comprehended
also through love.

۞
 

Jacob Boehme  1575 - 1624



When thou standest still from the thinking of self and the willing of self;
when both thy intellect and will are quiet and passive to the expressions
of the eternal world and spirit, and when thy soul is winged up and above that which is temporal, the outward senses and the imagination being locked up by holy abstraction, then the Eternal Hearing, Seeing and Speaking will be revealed in thee, and so God appeareth in thee and whispered to thy spirit. Blessed art thou, therefore, if thou canst stand still from thy self-thinking and self-willing and canst stop the wheel of thy imagination and senses.


۞

Thou shalt do nothing but forsake thy own will,
whiz. that which thou callest "I" or "thyself".
By which means all thy evil properties
will grow weak, faint and ready to die;
and then thou wilt sink down again into that one thing,
from which thou art originally sprung.

Discourse between Two Souls

۞

 

 St. Augustine 354-430



The highest spiritual state of the soul
in this life consist in the vision
and contemplation of truth,
wherein are joys, and the full enjoyment
of the highest and truest good,
and a breath of serenity and eternity.

۞

What a man loves a man is.

۞

Because the soul is greedy, because she wants to have and hold so much, therefore she reaches into time and; snatching at things of time and number, loses what she already has.
 

Francis Turner Palgrave 1824–1897



This man is freed from servile bonds
Of hope to rise, or fear to fall;
Lord of himself, though not of lands
And having nothing, yet hath all.

Golden Treasury
 

Dionysos - the Areopagite - 25 -



God is invisible from excess of light.
He who perceives God is himself in darkness.
God´s all-pervading darkness
is hidden from every light and
veils all recognition.
And if anyone who sees
God recognizes and understands
what he sees, then he himself
hath not seen Him.

 

Virgil 350 - ?



Blessed is he who has won
to the heart of the universe;
he is beyond good and evil.
But that is to much for ordinary 
humanity to attain; it is very good 
second best to know the gods of the country,
to live the life of the country.

 - Georgics 11.490ff
 

Boethius 480 - 525



In other living creatures, 
ignorance of self is nature;
in man it is vice.
 

St. Ansel

I cannot seek Thee 
except Thou teach me,
nor find Thee 
except Thou reveal Thyself.
 

John Smith - the Platonist

Jejune and barren speculations
may unfold the pictures
of Truths garment but they
cannot discover her lovely face.
 

Louis of Blois

The soul, having entered the vast solitude
of the Godhead, happily loses itself;
and enlightened by the brightness of most lucid darkness,
becomes through knowledge as if without knowledge, 
and dwells in a sort of wise ignorance.


(Spiritual Mirror ch.XI)

William Law

 

To find or know God in reality by any outward proofs, or by anything
but by God Himself made manifest and self-evident in you, will never be your case either here or hereafter. For neither God, nor heaven, nor hell, nor the devil, nor the flesh, can be any otherwise knowable in you or by you, but by their own existence and manifestation in you. And all pretended knowledge of any of these things, beyond and without this self-evident sensibility of their birth within you, is only such knowledge of them as the blind man hath of the light that hath never entered him.
 

۞

Though God is everywhere preset, yet He is only present to thee in
deepest and most central part of thy soul. The natural senses cannot
possess God or unite thee to him; nay, thy inward faculties of understanding, will and memory can only reach after God, but cannot be the place of His habitation in thee. But there is a root or depth of thee from whence all these faculties come forth, as lines from a center, or as branches from the body of the tree. This depth is the unity, the eternity - I had almost said the infinity of thy soul; for it is so infinite
that nothing can satisfy it or give it rest but the infinity of God.

Taken from Perenial Philosophy - Aldous Huxley
 

 

Peter Abailar

However long you exert yourself in dialectic,
you will consume your labour in vain, unless grace
  from heaven makes your mind capable of so great
  a mystery. Daily practice, can, indeed, furnish 
any mind with knowledge of the other science, 
but philosophy is to be attributed to 
divine grace alone, and, if this grace
does not prepare your mind inwardly,
your philosophy merely flogs the air
outside to no avail.

 

Hooker

Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to
wade far into the doings of the Most High;
whom although to know be life and joy to make
mention of his name, yet our soundest knowledge
is to know that we know him not as indeed
he is....our safest eloquence concerning
him is our silence.