“Simplicity is the loving inclination of the soul elevated by God, Who efficaciously drawn it into His own heart. There He reduces all its faculties to unity of spirit, that it may live there, in a n abstract, simple and essential condition, without sensible desire to reason or think of order or disorder. It is continually lost in the eternity of God.”

— John of St. Samson

From, Light on Carmel: An Anthology from the Works of Brother John of Saint Samson, O.Carm.

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John of St. Samson 48

1571–1636

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“And there you In a new embrace, with a new torrent of eternal love: all the elect, angels and men, from the last to the first are embraced It is a living and fruitful unity, which is the source and the fount of all life All creatures are there without themselves as in their eternal origin, One essence and one life with God These enlightened people are lifted up with free mind above reason…To the summit of their spirit Their naked understanding is penetrated with eternal clarity as the air is penetrated by the light of the sun. The bare elevated will is transformed and penetrated with fathomless love, just as iron is penetrated by the fire [God] gives Himself in the soul’s essence…Where the soul’s powers are unified…And undergo God’s transformation in simplicity. In this place all is full and overflowing, for the spirit feels itself as one truth and one richness. And one unity with God All spirits thus raised up Melt away and are annihilated by reason of enjoyment in God’s essence They fall away from themselves and are lost in a bottomless unknowingWith God they will ebb and flow, and will always be in repose…They are drunk with love and have passed away into God in a dark luminosity must accept that the Persons yield and lose themselves whirling in essential love, that is, in enjoyable unity; nevertheless, they always remain according to their personal properties In the working of the Trinity. You may thus understand that the divine nature is eternally at rest and without mode according to the simplicity of its essence. It is why all that God has chosen and enfolded with eternal personal love, he has possessed essentially, enjoyably in unity, with essential love.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Little Book of Enlightenment (c. 1364)

“I do not wish a love which may be described as for God, or in God. I cannot see those words, for and in, without their suggesting to me that something may intervene between God and me; and that is what pure and simple love, by reason of its purity and simplicity, is unable to endure. This purity and simplicity is as great as God is, for it is his own”

Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510) Italian author and nurse

Source: Life and Doctrine, Ch. XVIII

“Christ prayed that He should be in us, and we in Him. This we find in many passages in the Gospel. And this is the union that is without intermediary, for the love of God is not only out-flowing, but it is also drawing into unity. And those who feel and experience this become interior, enlightened men. There the faculties are raised above all practices to the bareness of their very essence. There the faculties become simplified above reason in their essence and because of this they are filled and overflowing. For in this simplicity the spirit finds itself united with God without intermediary. And this union, together with the exercise, which is proper to it, will endure eternally, as I have already said.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Little Book of Enlightenment (c. 1364)

“And though the union is without intermediary, The manifold works that God does In heaven and earth are, however, Hidden from the spirit. For though God gives Himself as He is with a clear distinction, He gives Himself in the soul’s essence, Where the soul’s powers are unified Above reason And undergo God’s transformation In simplicity. In this place all is full And overflowing, for the spirit feels itself As one truth and one richness And one unity with God.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Little Book of Enlightenment (c. 1364)

“These same interior, enlightened persons Have the love of God before them in their inward vision Whenever they want, as drawing or calling in towards unity. For they see and feel that the Father with the Son by means of the Holy Spirit stand embraced with all the elect and are brought back with eternal love into the unity of their nature. This unity is constantly drawing or calling in all that has been born out of it naturally or by grace. And therefore these enlightened people are lifted up with free mind above reason to a bare vision devoid of images (The imageless place of spirit vision). There lives the eternal invitation of God’s unity, and with imageless naked understanding they go beyond all works and all practices and all things to the summit of their spirit. There their naked understanding is penetrated with eternal clarity as the air is penetrated by the light of the sun. The bare elevated will is transformed and penetrated with fathomless love just as iron is penetrated by the fire. And the bare elevated memory finds itself caught and established In a fathomless absence of images. Thus the created image is united threefold wise above reason to its eternal image, Which is the source of its being and of its life.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Little Book of Enlightenment (c. 1364)

“There, the Father with the Son and all the beloved are enfolded and embraced in the bond of love, that is to say, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. It is this same unity, which is fruitful according to the bursting-out of the Persons and in the return, an eternal bond of love, which can nevermore be united. And all those who know themselves to be bound therein must remain eternally blissful. They are all rich in virtues and enlightened in contemplation and simple where they rest enjoyably, for in their turning-in, the love of God reveals itself as flowing out with all good and drawing in into unity and is superessential and without mode (method or system) in an eternal repose. And so they are united to God, by intermediary, without intermediary, and also without difference.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Little Book of Enlightenment (c. 1364)

“He whose soul is charged with awareness of God earns his inner livelihood by a passionate desire to pour his life into the eternal wells of love. … We do not live for our own sake. Life would be preposterous if not for the love it confers.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

"The Holy Dimension", p. 333
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
Context: He whose soul is charged with awareness of God earns his inner livelihood by a passionate desire to pour his life into the eternal wells of love. … We do not live for our own sake. Life would be preposterous if not for the love it confers.
Faith implies no denial of evil, no disregard of danger, no whitewashing of the abominable. He whose heart is given to faith is mindful of the obstructive and awry, of the sinister and pernicious. It is God's strange dominion over both good and evil on which he relies. … Faith is not a mechanical insurance but a dynamic, personal act, flowing between the heart of man and the love of God.

“The Spirit of God now speaks within our own spirit in its hidden immersion: ‘Go out, into a state of eternal contemplation and blissful enjoyment after God’s own manner.’ All the richness which is in God by nature is something which we lovingly possess in God –and God in us– through the infinite love which is the Holy Spirit... There the spirit is caught up in the embrace of the Holy Trinity and eternally abides within the superessential Unity in a state of rest and blissful enjoyment. In this same Unity, considered now as regards its fruitfulness, the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, while all creatures are in them both.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

James A. Wiseman, Jan Van Ruusbroec (Classics of Western spirituality, 1985), p. 148
The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

“Hereafter follows the “unity without difference,” For the love of God Is not only to be considered as flowing out With all good and drawing in into unity, But it is also above all distinction In essential enjoyment according to The bare essence of the Divinity. And for this reason enlightened people Have found within themselves An essential inward gazing Above reason and without reason, And an enjoyable inclination Surpassing all modes (methods or systems) And all essence, Sinking away from themselves Into a modeless abyss of fathomless beatitude, Where the Trinity of the divine Persons Possess their nature in essential unity.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Little Book of Enlightenment (c. 1364)

“And for this reason all creatures are there without themselves as in their eternal origin, one essence and one life with God. But in the bursting-out of the Persons with distinction, so the Son is from the Father and the Holy Spirit from them both. There God has created and ordered all creatures in their own essence.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Little Book of Enlightenment (c. 1364)

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John of St. Samson 48

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