Ruysbroeck Quotes

I must rejoice beyond the bounds of time … though the world may shudder at my joy, and in its coarsness know not what I mean.

Today is the winter solstice. The planet tilts just so to its star, lists and holds circling in a fixed tension between veering and longing, and spins helpless, exalted, in and out of that fleet blazing touch. Last night Orion vaulted and spread all over the sky, pagan and lunatic, his shoulder and knee on fire, his sword three suns at the ready-for what? I won’t see this year again, not again so innocent; and longing wrapped round my throat like a scarf. “For the Heavenly Father desires that we should see,” says Ruysbroeck, “and that is why He is ever saying to our inmost spirit one deep unfathomable word and nothing else.” But what is the word? Is this mystery or coyness? A cast-iron bell hung from the arch of my rib cage; when I stirred, it rang, or it tolled, a long syllable pulsing ripples up my lungs and down the gritty sap inside my bones, and I couldn’t make it out; I felt the voiced vowel like a sigh or a note but I couldn’t catch the consonant that shaped it into sense.

The depths themselves remain uncomprehended. This is the dark silence in which all lovers are lost.

When love has carried us above all things ... we receive in peace the Incomprehensible Light, enfolding us and penetrating us. What is this Light, if it be not a contemplation of the Infinite, and an intuition of Eternity? We behold that which we are, and we are that which we behold; because our being, without losing anything of its own personality, is united with the Divine Truth.

The Self is one, the same in every creature. This is not some peculiar tenet of the Hindu scriptures; it is the testimony of everyone who has undergone these experiments in the depths of consciousness and followed them through to the end. Here is Ruysbroeck, a great mystic of medieval Europe; every word is most carefully chosen: The image of God is found essentially and personally in all mankind. Each possesses it whole, entire and undivided, and all together not more than one alone. In this way we are all one, intimately united in our eternal image, which is the image of God and the source in us of all our life. Maya In the unitive experience, every trace of separateness disappears; life is a seamless whole. But the body cannot remain in this state for long. After a while, awareness of mind and body returns, and then the conventional world of multiplicity rushes in again with such vigor and vividness that the memory of unity, though stamped with reality, seems as distant as a dream. The unitive state has to be entered over and over until a person is established in it. But once established, even in the midst of ordinary life, one sees the One underlying the many, the Eternal beneath the ephemeral.

For no man understandeth what love is in itself, but such are its workings: which giveth more than one can take, and asketh more than one can pay.

Innaa lillayhi Wa Innaa Ilayhi Raaji'oon," prevelde Aïsha zachtjes voor zich uit. "wat zeg je?" vroeg Gillis nieuwsgierig. "Een gebed voor de doden. Zoals het hoort. Het betekent: Waarlijk wij behoren tot Allah, en tot Allah zullen wij wederkeren." Gillis was zzelf totaal niet gelovig, maar iets aan de manier waarop Aïsha dit had gezegd, deed hem begrijpen dat het gebed voor haar een emotionele betekenis had en dat hij hierop geen flauwe grappen moest maken.