Theologia Germanica Transliteration

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Theologia Germanica

a thought by thought paraphrase by Rev. Benjamin Fecher

Lent 2014

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CHAPTER I

In reality there is that which is perfect and complete, and that which is imperfect and partial. The imperfect and partial will be done away with when the perfect and complete comes.

St Paul says, “ ...when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.” It is important to know what “the partial” (and imperfect) consists of, and what “the complete” (and perfect) consists of.

“The Complete” and Perfect is a Being, God, who has comprehended and included all things in God’s own self and in God’s Substance. There is no true Substance without God nor in addition to God. Indeed, all things have their substance only in God. God is the very Substance of all things and although in God’s own self God is unchangeable and immoveable, God changes and moves everything else. But the partial, the imperfect, is that which has as its source the Complete and Perfect and it springs forth from the Complete and Perfect like brightness and visible appearance flows out from the energy of the sun or from a candle, so that it looks, at least to some degree, like an object. The partial and imperfect things are creatures and as created things they are distinguished from the Complete and Perfect, which is their source. Likewise, the Complete and Perfect is none of these partial, imperfect things. Partial, imperfect things can be comprehended, known, and expressed, but the Complete and Perfect cannot be comprehended, known or expressed by any creature in its creatureliness. Therefore we cannot finally name the Complete and Perfect, since naming consists of conceiving, knowing, apprehending and expressing.

“ ...When the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.” But when does the Complete come? I say, when, as much as possible, it is known, felt and tasted in and by the soul. The fact that it is not readily apparent to us is not due to any lack or imperfection in the Complete. It is due entirely to our lack. For example, the sun lights up the world, but the blind person cannot see it. It is not the fault of the sun, but of the eyes of the blind person. The intended purpose of the sun is not to hide its brightness, but to illumine and heat the earth. God, the Highest Good, who intends that the sun shines to bless all on the earth, wills even more not to hide God’s Own Self from any soul prepared to receive God. Such a soul is attracted not by created things, but is attracted to God. For to the exact degree that we are unattached to created things we are able to be attached to the Creator. No more. No less. Just like, in order to concentrate on what I see, my eyes must be focused and my attention free from distractions. Any place that heat and light enters in, darkness and cold disappear.

Someone might say, “This seems like a contradiction. The Complete and Perfect cannot be known or apprehended by any creature, yet the soul is a creature. So how can the Complete and Perfect be known by the soul?” Answer: we claim that it cannot be known by the soul as a creature. It is impossible for creatures according to their creature-nature and qualities. The creature-nature is that which causes the creature to say “I” and “Myself”. In order for the Complete and Perfect to be known, the indwelling creature-nature, creature-qualities, the I, the Self, and so on, must be lost and done away with. This is what St Paul means by saying, “ “ ...when the complete comes,” (that is, when the Complete and Perfect is known) then, “the partial” (the creature-nature, qualities, the I, the Self, the Mine) will be valued as useless and counted as nothing. As long as we invest energy and value into these things, hang on to them with love, joy, pleasure or desire, the Complete and Perfect remains unknown to us.

Someone might also say, “This also seems like a contradiction. On the one hand, you say there is no true Substance without God, or in addition to God; but on the other hand you say something flows out from God (the Complete and Perfect). Isn’t that which flows out from the Complete and Perfect a thing along side the Complete and Perfect?”

Answer: There is no true Substance without God and all things have their substance only in God, the Complete and Perfect. What flows out of the Complete and Perfect is not a thing in its own right, but is a thing entirely contingent for its substance upon its source.

CHAPTER 2

What sin is and how we must not attribute any good thing to ourselves, because all good belongs only to the true Good.

Scripture, the Faith, and the Truth all agree that Sin is only this: that a creature turns away from the unchangeable and gives itself over to the changeable. It turns away from the Complete and Perfect toward that which is “partial” and imperfect. Usually it turns to its own self. This is precisely how a creature goes astray, by claiming for itself anything truly good, like Life, Knowledge, or Power. The straying creature thinks or believes that it consists of, possess or generates of itself that which is truly good. This is what the devil did. The devil’s fall was that he claimed something of value for himself as if something, in any degree at all, was due to him, as an I, a Me, or a Mine. And this sad situation has not changed.

Chapter 3

How the fall of all humankind must be amended in the same way Adam’s was.

Adam’s fall was just like the devil’s. People say Adam fell and was lost because he ate the apple. I say it was because of his claiming something for his own, because of his I, Me, Mine and the like. If he had claimed nothing for his own, but had eaten seven apples he would not have fallen. But as soon as he claimed entitlement, claimed something his own, he fell. In this case he would have fallen even if he had never touched an apple. Adam’s fall is so serious that all humankind together could never have amended it or brought him back from going astray, and yet I, myself, have fallen a hundred times more often, more deeply, and have gone astray a hundred times further then Adam. How can my fall be amended? It must be healed exactly like Adam’s was. Who brought Adam’s healing about and in what way was it brought about? Pay close attention: no human being could do it without God, and God refused to do it without human participation. So, God took onto GodSelf human nature and human personhood and was made human. And human personhood was made divine. This is how healing was brought about for Adam and the same thing must happen for my healing. I cannot do the work without God and God will not do it without my participation. If the healing is to take place in me God must be made human by taking into GodSelf all that is in me, everything that has to do with me, so that there is nothing left in me that strives against God or hinders God’s work in any way. If, in this way, God made divine every person in the world or every person that has ever been in the world, but God did not do this work in me, my fall and my alienation would never be healed or overcome. I can only be healed when it happens in me. I can do nothing to prompt or to bring about this healing and restoration. I can simply yield to God so that God can do everything that needs to be done in me, and for my part, I can simply accept God, God’s work, and God’s divine will to be done. But I do not yield to God and accept God’s work to be done in me. Instead, I credit myself to be my own. I say, “I”, “Me”, and “Mine”. In this way I hinder God’s work in me so that my fall and alienation remain unhealed. It all comes from my insistence that I have some degree of personal autonomy.

CHAPTER 4

Here is how a person falls and alienates herself by dishonoring God when she claims that any truly good thing originates in herself.

God says, “I will not give my glory to another.” In other words, praise, honor and glory belong to God alone. But if I think that I have any claim on anything truly good, if I think I am to some degree truly good, or if I have the power to know or bring about something truly good, or if I, in any way, consider that some thing of true value is my own or some credit is due me, then I am grabbing some degree of honor and glory for myself. And then I do two evil things at once: First, I fall and alienate myself, as mentioned above: Second, I violate God’s honor, by trying to take as my own what belongs only to God. For anything and everything that warrants being called good belongs to the True, Eternal Goodness, that is, to God alone. Anyone who credits it to herself is fundamentally wrong and therefore against God.

CHAPTER 5

Here is how we are to understand it when we hear that we should become devoid of things like will, wisdom, desire, and knowledge.

People say that we ought to be without will, wisdom, love, desire and so on, but this cannot mean that there is no human knowledge or that human persons are not to love God, or desire, praise or honor God. That would be a terrible loss of humanity. It would turn humans into beasts and make them like brutes that have no capacity to reason. What it means instead is that human knowledge should be so clear and perfect that the person readily acknowledges that he neither has any goodness nor can claim any goodness through action. The person cannot claim to be the source or author of any knowledge, wisdom, or art. The person’s will, love, and good works do not originate from the person’s self nor do they come from any created thing. Instead, all these are of the eternal God and spring from the eternal God. This is what Christ means when he says, “...apart from me you can do nothing.” Paul also says, What do you have that you did not receive?” by which he means, of course, nothing. Going on Paul says, “And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?” Again Paul says, “Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God...” When someone properly understands himself in this way, the person’s self and created things are no longer captivate the person’s attention and the person does not claim anything for himself. In fact, the less a person considers this knowledge to be his own the more complete it becomes. The same thing applies to the will, love, desire and so on. The less we claim these things and attribute them to ourselves the more perfect, noble and Godlike they become. Conversely, the more we attribute them to ourselves the less perfect, pure and excellent they become.

You can see that it is in this way that we are to consider ourselves without will, wisdom, love, desire and so on, and in this way we must claim nothing for ourselves. When we relinquish in this way, then we will actually have the best, fullest, clearest and most excellent knowledge that a person can have. And we will also have the most excellent and pure love, will, and desire; because then all these things are God’s alone. It is far better that they should be God’s rather than any creature’s. My situation of crediting anything truly good to myself, as if I myself were truly good, or had done or had the potential to do something truly good, or could even know or figure out what truly good is, all this is sin and the product of sin and it is utter foolishness. If I knew the truth properly I would know that I am not truly good, nor am I the source of it, nor do I have any claim to it, nor do I know and understand it, nor can do it. In fact, if I knew the truth properly I would have no need to claim anything for myself at all.

It is better that we know God or God’s works, at least to the extent we can from within our limited capacity; it is better that in our limited way we love, praise, and honor God; in fact, it is even better if a person vainly imagines that he is offering worthy love and praise to God when, in reality he is not; all this is better than if God were to be altogether un-loved, unpraised, unknown, and unhonored. Because when our ignorance and deluded imagination is turned toward understanding and true knowledge we automatically stop claiming anything for ourselves. Then a person says, “Look what a poor fool I was, thinking that it was me, when in reality it was God all along.”

CHAPTER 6

The best and most excellent should be loved above everything else simply because it is the best.

Master Boetius said, “It is of sin that we do not love that which is best.” He is right. We should hold as dearest and most valuable whatever is best. Our love of it should not be contingent on its helpfulness or unhelpfulness, advantage or liability, gain or loss, honor or dishonor, praise or blame. None of this should be considered. Whatever is truly most excellent and best should also be held dearest, and for no other reason than that it is the most excellent and best.

According to this one can order both one’s internal life and one’s external life. With regard to the external life we can see that one created thing is better than another, according to how much the Eternal Good manifests itself and works more in one thing than in another. The best created thing is the thing in which the Eternal Good most manifests itself, out from which it shines, through which it works and is most known and loved. Conversely, that in which the Eternal Good is least manifested is the least good. So, when we interact with created things, associate with them and notice the variety of their qualities, the best things must always be the most precious and valuable to us. We must embrace them and unite ourselves with them. Above all, we must value, embrace and unite ourselves to those things we call divine and attribute to God, things like, wisdom, truth, kindness, peace, love, justice, and so on. In this way we properly order our external selves. And we must avoid and flee from anything contrary to these virtues.

But if, somehow in one’s internal life, one were to make a leap and spring into the Complete and Perfect, then we would discover a taste of the Complete and Perfect and we would experience how infinitely better and more excellent it is than all that is imperfect and partial: we would experience how far the Eternal is above the temporal and all that passes away, and we would see how much more valuable the fountain and source is than that which flows from the fountain or ever could flow from it. With such a marvelous taste in our mouth the imperfect and partial would become as nothing to us and utterly tasteless. Now, be assured of this: everything said here must come about if we are to love that which is most excellent, highest and best.

CHAPTER 7

With the Eyes of the Spirit a human person looks into Eternity and into Time, but to the degree a person focuses on the one he cannot focus on the other.

In the past it has been written and said that Christ had two eyes, a right eye and a left eye. In the beginning, when Christ’s soul was created that soul fixed her right eye on eternity and on the Godhead, and she remained completely focused on and participated fully in the joy of the divine Essence and Eternal Completeness and Perfection. And in this way, she remained unmoved and undisturbed by all misfortunes, drudgery, suffering, misery, and pain that ever happened to the external person. With the left eye, Christ’s soul saw creaturely matters and fully experienced them. From this creaturely position the soul of Christ discerned and distinguished among created things, determining which were better and which were worse; which were excellent and which were shabby, and Christ arranged his external life according to this discernment.

In like manner, Christ’s inner life, according to the right eye of Christ’s soul, stood in complete exercise of his divine nature, in perfect blessedness, joy, and eternal peace. But Christ’s external person, according to the left eye of Christ’s soul, stood fully with him in suffering, seeing him through all drudgery and misery. All this happened in such a way that the inward, right eye was in no way negatively affected or influenced by whatever suffering, drudgery and misery happened to his outward person. It has been said when Christ was tied to the whipping post and scourged and when he was hung on the cross, it was according to his external person, while his inner person, his soul according to the right eye, stood in full possession of divine joy and blessedness, exactly as it did after his ascension, or as it does now. Likewise his external person, his soul according to the left eye, was in no way buffered or influenced by the inward eye, as it experienced, considered and processed the external things that pertained to it.

The created soul of a human person also has two eyes. One is the power to see into eternity. The other is the power to see into the arena of created things, the temporal arena, the arena that consists of noting and evaluating differences in created things and then exercising the power of managing matters that pertain to biological life and that arrange such matters for the best. But the two eyes of a person’s soul cannot function at the same time. If the right eye focuses on matters of eternity the left eye must close itself and refrain from working as if it were dead.

If the left eye is functioning properly, attending to matters that have to do with time and created things, the right eye cannot be properly focused on eternal matters. So, one must choose one or the other, but not both; for, “no one can serve two masters”.

CHAPTER 8

Here is how a person’s soul can experience an actual foretaste of eternal blessedness even while that soul remains in the person’s body.

Someone has asked if it is possible for a person’s soul to reach so high as to actually catch a glimpse of eternity and receive a foretaste of eternal life and eternal blessedness. It is common to answer no to this question, and in fact, no is the right answer in a certain sense. The soul can certainly have no experience of eternity as long as it is focused on the body and caring for the body, or when it is focused on and distracted by creaturely matters and concerns which pertain to time. In order for the soul to see into eternity at all, she must be pure. There can be no creaturely attachments, images or preconceived notions. Above all the soul must be rid of any claim on herself. Many say it is impossible to realize such a state, but St Dionysius maintains it is possible. He says so in his Epistle to Timothy: In order to behold the hidden things of God you must forsake sense and the things of the flesh, and everything that senses apprehend, and all that is within the power of reason, all that reason can comprehend, know, and understand, and instead, invest in utter self-abandonment so that you know nothing of reasonable and sensual matters and enter into union with the One who is and who is above all existence and all knowledge. St Dionysius would not have taught us and encouraged us to realize this if he had thought it impossible. And you should be further aware that one of our contemporary masters has spoken to this passage from Dionysius and has said that it is possible. In fact, it may happen to a person so often that he or she becomes accustomed to it and is able to experience eternity whenever she or he wants. It is common knowledge that at first something might be very hard, strange, and seem impossible, but if a person puts all his strength and energy into it and perseveres, it can become simple and easy, even though at first it seemed entirely out of reach. After all, there is no sense trying anything unless there is reason to believe it can produce a good outcome.

A single one of these excellent glances into the eternal is better and more God-pleasing than anything that can be done by any creature on its own creaturely power. The instant a person turns himself in spirit; the instant he whole-heartedly and with all the powers of his mind enters the mind of God (which is above and beyond all time); in that instant, all that the person has ever lost is restored. If a person did this a thousand times a day, each time would be a fresh, whole, genuine union. And this precious and divine work would be the fullest and most true union that is possible in this present time. The person who experiences this asks for nothing more because he has found the kingdom of heaven and has experienced eternal life on earth.

CHAPTER 9

It is far better and more to a person’s advantage to know what ultimate purpose God has for him or her than if he or she were to know God’s ultimate purpose for every creature ever created or that ever would be created. Blessedness is only in God. It is not found in any created thing or in any works.

Know that it is absolutely true that no virtue or goodness, not even the Eternal Good that is God’s Own Self, can make a person virtuous, good or happy as long as it remains outside the soul. And it remains outside the soul as long as the person is attending to external things, using the senses and reason, instead of turning inward to the person’s own self, so that, focused there, she can learn to understand her own life and who and what she is. The same thing is true about sin and evil. No sin or evil can ever make us evil as long as it remains outside us; that is, as long as we do not commit it or consent to it.

So even though it is good and helpful for us to learn about and be aware of what good and holy persons have done, and suffered, and how God has worked in and through them, it is a thousand times better for us to learn, be aware of, and understand who we are, what our own life is, what God is doing in us, what God wants from us, in what way God will use us and not use us, and what God’s purpose is for us. Certainly to thoroughly know oneself is above all accomplishments, for it is the highest accomplishment one can achieve. If you know yourself well, you are better and more praiseworthy before God than if you do not know yourself, yet understand all the physical sciences and all psychology and had, condensed in yourself, all the skill of all persons in heaven and on earth. As the legend goes, a voice from heaven said, “Human, know thyself” Another proverb that remains true says, “No matter how good going out might be, staying home would be that much better”.

Further, we should all learn that eternal blessedness is in one thing only and in nothing else besides that one thing. If a person or a soul is ever going to be made blessed that one thing must be in the soul. And what is that one thing? It is Goodness or that which has been made good. It is not this particular good thing or that particular good thing, as if we could point to it, name it, or even recognize it. It is all and it is above all good things.

On top of that, this Goodness does not even need to enter the soul, because it is already there, but it is not realized or recognized. So, when we talk about coming to it we mean, of course, that we should seek it, feel it, and have experience with it. Now take note: because Goodness itself is One, unity and singleness is better than variety. The quality of blessedness does not consist of much and many. It is in One and oneness. In other words, blessedness is not in any created thing nor in the product of any created thing. It is in God alone (who is One) and in whatever God does. So, I must seek and expect blessedness from God alone or from what God does, and set aside expecting anything of divine value from the multiplicity of created things and persons, beginning with my own self (as one among a multiplicity). And all the great things God has done or ever will do among the multiplicity of created things nor even God’s Own Self in all Its goodness can never make me blessed as long as they remain outside me, (as among a multiplicity). I participate in blessedness only in as far as they exist, are done, loved, known, experience, recognized and felt within me.

CHAPTER 10

A whole and perfect person has no other desire than to be to God just how God is to human beings, and such a person has lost the fear of hell and the hope of heaven.

When persons are enlightened with the true light they see that everything they might desire or choose is nothing special, but is the same as what any and all persons, as creatures, have ever desired, chosen or known. So, they renounce all their desire and choice, and commit and commend themselves and all things to the Eternal Goodness, God. They still have a desire to progress and get closer to the Eternal Goodness. That is, they still want to grow toward a clearer knowledge, a warmer love, a more confident assurance, and a more perfect submission and obedience. Really, the attitude of each enlightened person could easily lead her to say, “I would gladly be to God and do for God what God is and does for human persons.” In fact, these persons are always afraid they themselves are not enough this way, and they deeply long for the salvation of all persons. Instead of taking any personal credit for these thoughts and longings, such persons are well aware that these desires do not originate in human persons, but only proceed from God, the Eternal Goodness. For if a thing is good, no creature can take credit for it or own it, because all good belongs only to the Eternal Goodness.

These persons are in a state of freedom, because they have lost the fear of pain or hell and have lost the hope of reward or heaven. Instead, they are in complete submission to the Eternal Goodness in the perfect freedom of fervent love. This posture was perfected in the mind of Christ and is also perfected in his followers, in some more and in some less. It certainly produces grief and shame to think that the Eternal Goodness never stops graciously guiding and drawing us, but we, for our part, will not give in to it. I ask, what is better and more excellent than true poverty of spirit? Yet when we see it or are offered it, we disdain and reject it, choosing instead to seek ourselves and to acquire what is to our own advantage. We always want to feast on the good life, with a large helping of pleasure and enjoyment. When we get it we are pleased and think life is as it should be. But in reality we are not even close to a true, whole and perfect life. We can tell because when God directs us toward something better, namely, to the complete loss and abandonment of our own things, both spiritual and natural; when God withdraws the joy of God’s comfort, we are troubled, moved toward panic and despair and can do nothing to help ourselves. We start to forget God, give up on prayer and devotion, and begin to think we are lost forever.

This is a terrible mistake and it points to a terrible situation. Because those who truly love God, continue loving God, or the Eternal Goodness, regardless of circumstances, whether they have what they want or do not have it, whether they experience pleasure or bitterness, whether they hear good news or bad news, and so on. None of these things matter to those who truly love God because they are interested in only one thing: God’s honor, not their own, whether spiritual or natural. That is why these true lovers of God are firm and unflappable in all matters and in all circumstances. This is the standard by which to measure how you actually stand in relationship to God, your Creator and Lord.

CHAPTER 11

This is how a person who is in proper relationship with God, while still in temporal reality, visits hell and while there, finds no consolation, and how this same person is brought out of hell and is carried into Heaven and there cannot be troubled.

Christ’s soul descended into hell as a matter of necessity, before it ascended into heaven. The same thing must happen to a person’s soul. It happens like this: when a person truly sees himself as he really is and realizes the ramifications, the person discovers himself to be perverse and despicable and therefore undeserving of any of the comfort and kindness already received from God or from God’s creatures. This person falls into such deep humiliation and such a sense of self-nothingness, that he or she considers himself or herself unworthy to take up space on earth or to consume resources. Indeed, it seems reasonable for each and every part of God’s creation to rise up against this person, to torment and punish, in order to avenge their creator. Even then, he would not be worth the effort. From this vantage point the person appears to himself to be utterly lost and condemned to the lowest pit of hell and this punishment seems proper and just; actually too little, compared the egregious quality and variety of the offenses he has so frequently committed against his Creator God. Again, from this point of abject humiliation, the person will not presume to even desire any consolation or release from God or from anything or anyone in all creation, but instead this person willingly remains unconsoled and unrelieved, not grieving over the condemnation and suffering because it is just, right, and in no way contrary to God’s will, but in accordance with it. So, to this person’s own eyes the sufferings are right and he has no argument against them. The only thing that causes this person grief is his own guilt and perversion, because the guilt and perversion is what is wrong. They are the things that are against God’s will. They are the entire reason for this suffering.

This is true repentance for sin. Those who experience this hell now, in this temporal reality, subsequently enter the Kingdom of Heaven. That is, they get a foretaste of it and that foretaste is far beyond any and all delight or joy possible in this temporal reality. While they are in this hell they are inconsolable. Neither God nor any created thing can console them, as it is written, “In hell there is no redemption.” One person who was in this state said, “ Let me die. I am living without hope. I am condemned from the outside by justice and from the inside by my own thoughts and judgments. I even have to insist that no one prays for my release.”

God has not abandoned the person in this hell. God is, however, acting on the person so that he will no longer desire or pay attention to anything but the Eternal Good. The person, in this way is empowered to realize that nothing is as excellent and surpassing of all good “things” as having ability to desire and attend to the Eternal Good. This alone is inexpressible bliss, comfort, peace, rest, and satisfaction, beyond anything one could dream up to seek after. When the person has this realization nothing else matters, because now this person has tasted all that could be desired, valued or sought. Now this person is no longer concerned about himself nor about making things his own. The only thing this person wants is to honor God above all else. And in this way the person is made to share in every possible bliss, peace, rest, and comfort. Indeed, from now on this person is in the Kingdom of Heaven.

This hell and this heaven are two good and safe paths to travel in this temporal reality and the person who truly discovers this is blessed.

For this hell shall pass away

But Heaven shall endure for aye

Nevertheless, when one is in this hell it is impossible to be comforted. The person cannot believe he will ever be comforted or relieved. And again, when this person is in heaven nothing can trouble him and he believes that no person or thing ever can again, although in reality after this hell he may be comforted and relieved, and likewise, after this heaven he may be troubled and left without consolation.

This hell and heaven can be in no way anticipated. One cannot know when they will come, or where they come from, or when they will go away. The person is completely powerless. The person cannot act to bring them about or make them go away, or even to inch toward them or away from them. As it is written, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.” But when the person is in either of these two states everything is fine with him because he is as safe in hell as in heaven. As long was a person lives on earth it is possible for him to pass often from one to the other. It can happen in a single day. And the person has no power in the matter. But if a person is in neither of these two states he is paying attention to external, created things (changeable things, rather than Eternal, foundational things), so that his attentions are fragmented and he cannot know himself. That is why it important for one to carefully store the memory of these states in one’s heart.

CHAPTER 12

How to touch the true inward peace which Christ left his disciples on his last night with them.

Many people say they have no peace or rest. Instead, they say they have so many troubles, afflictions, miseries, and crosses to bear, they cannot imagine getting through it all. But anyone who is willing to see things as they truly are, and take earnest notice, understands clearly that peace and rest are not to be found in the outward life. If peace and rest were to be found in the outward life then the Evil Spirit would also have peace when things were going according to his will. And that cannot possibly be true, as the prophet says, “There is no peace, says my God, for the wicked.” So, we must be careful to stop, think, and then perceive rightly, what the peace is that Christ left to his disciples when he said to them on the night of his betrayal, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” Obviously Christ did not mean a bodily or outward peace, since his beloved disciples, all his friends, and his followers have, from the beginning, always suffered tremendous affliction, persecution and often, even martyrdom, just as Christ said, “In the world you face persecution.” The peace Christ meant is the true inward peace of the heart, that begins here in this life and lasts into eternity. That’s why, when speaking of the peace he gives, he said, “I do not give to you as the world gives.” Because what the world gives is false and the gifts of the world are deceptive. The world promises much but delivers little. Besides, no one who lives on earth always has rest and peace, avoiding all troubles and crosses. Nobody has everything according to their own will. No matter what you do there is always something to suffer. As soon as you deal with one problem two more can come in its place. So, just let them come and deal with them when they do, but seek only the true peace of heart which cannot be taken away from you. When you do this, you can overcome any and all attacks.

So, Christ meant the inward peace that can break through all attacks, crosses of oppression, misery, humiliation, and anything else of that sort that might come, so the person can be joyful and patient during any of it, just like his beloved disciples and the followers of Christ.

Whoever will, in love, offer their complete diligence and effort to this peace will certainly come to know the true eternal peace, that is God’s own Self, at least as far as it is possible for a creature to know God. And to the degree the person knows God what was bitter before will now become sweet and the person’s heart will be strong and steadfast in all circumstances, regardless of any change. And after this life the person will gain peace eternally.

CHAPTER 13

This is how a person might try to get beyond metaphors too soon.

Tauler says, “Currently, there are people who give up using metaphors and symbols too soon, before they have gleaned from them all the truth and instruction they can offer.” Since they give them up too soon they are barely able to come to understand the truth correctly, if they are ever able to at all. These people are unwilling to follow anyone and instead, “lean unto their own understanding”. They want to “fly before they are fledged”. They would gladly go straight up to heaven in one flight, even though Christ himself did not do this after his resurrection, but remained a full forty days with his beloved disciples. No one can be made perfect in a day. You must start by denying yourself and willingly giving up all things for God’s sake, including your own will and all natural inclinations. You must separate yourself and purify yourself from all sin and evil. Then you must take up the cross and follow Christ. You must also learn from the example of devout and perfect servants of God and be open to their instruction, accept their criticism, counsel, and teaching, instead of following your own guidance. It is in this way the work can take root and yield good results. When you have broken loose from the “gravitational pull” of all temporal and created things, you might be able to become whole and single-minded in a life of contemplation. Because you can only have one or the other, not both.

CHAPTER 14

These are the three stages by which one is lifted upward until she attains wholeness and perfection.

You can count on this: no one can be enlightened unless she is first cleansed, purified and stripped. Likewise, no one can be united with God without first being enlightened. So, there are three stages: first, the purification, second, the enlightenment, and third, the union. Purification is the starting point for those who are repenting. It is brought about in three ways: contrition and grief for sin, complete confession of sin, and whole-hearted amendment of life. Enlightenment is what happens as persons grow. It also comes about in three ways: rejection and avoidance of sin, practice of virtue and good works, and willing endurance of any and all temptations and trials. Union is what happens in those who are complete and perfect. Again, this happens in three ways: pureness and singleness of heart, love, and contemplation of God, the Creator of all things.

CHAPTER 15

This shows how all persons are dead in Adam and are made alive again in Christ. It also shows true obedience and disobedience.

Whatever fell and died in Adam was raised again and made alive in Christ. Conversely, whatever sprang up and was made alive in Adam fell and died in Christ. What am I talking about? True obedience and disobedience. What is true obedience? I say it is this: that a person is completely free by virtue of having let go of herself, of the I, Me, Self and Mine and anything that pertains to personal ownership or credit in all matters. This person no longer seeks or considers herself, as if she did not even exist. She would be as unconscious of credit due her as if someone else had done the work and not her. She would consider all things in this temporal, created world in the same way. You might well ask, “So, what, then, is there that we may account as something real and valuable?” Nothing but what we may call God. This alone is obedience and this alone is credited in a blessed eternity as obedience. In eternity nothing is sought, thought of, or loved, except this one thing alone.

And here is what disobedience is: when a person tries to be a self-made person and thinks that she is and takes credit for it, that she knows and can bring about things of value, that she seeks herself and her own ends in the things around her, and she pays devoted attention to herself and loves herself. Human persons are created for true obedience and are fundamentally obligated to offer it to God. This true obedience fell and died in Adam, and rose and lived in Christ. Christ’s human nature was completely emptied of self and was disentwined from all created things in a way that no other human ever was. In his human nature Christ was nothing but “a house and habitation of God.” As a human person Christ claimed nothing of his own. He claimed neither that which was in him that belonged to God, nor that living human nature that was a habitation of God. His human nature did not take for itself the Godhead who dwelled in him, nor anything the Godhead willed, did or left undone in him. Neither did he imagine he created his own human nature or credit to himself anything that nature did or endured. In Christ’s human nature there was no claiming of anything or seeking after or desiring anything at all except that Godhead was properly offered what was owed to the Godhead. And even this very desire Christ did not credit to himself.

No more can be said or written on this matter since it is unspeakable. It never has been fully uttered and it never will be, because it can only be spoken or written by the One who knows its ground and indeed who is its ground; God’s Own Self, who alone can do all things well.

CHAPTER 16

This chapter tells us what the old human is and what the new human is.

When we read about the old human and the new human we need to understand to what each term is referring. The old human is Adam and disobedience, the self, the me, and so on. But the new human is Christ and true obedience, giving up on oneself and denying oneself all temporal things, and seeking the honor of God in all matters. When we read or talk about dying or perishing and so on, it refers to the old human nature which needs to be destroyed. The old human nature should cease trying to appropriate to itself anything, spiritual or natural. When this all comes about in a true and divine light a new human nature is born. Similarly, this is what it means that a person should die to himself; he should die to earthly pleasures, consolations, joys, appetites, to the I, the self, and to everything which is part of the old human nature and to which the old nature is contented to cling, which it values, and which it considers reliable. If the person is to be brought properly into a new way of thinking and being, according to the truth, all of that must die and be gotten rid of, whether it is the person himself, or any created thing.

It is this to which Paul exhorts us when he says, “...put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, ... clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” The person who lives to himself, according to the old human nature is both called a child of Adam and really has Adam as his progenitor, no matter how diligent he is in ordering his life. He is still a child and brother of the Evil Spirit. On the other hand, the person who lives in humble obedience according to the new human nature is Christ and is the brother of Christ, having the same progenitor, that is, being a child of God.

When Christ speaks of being born again in saying “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” he is referring precisely to when the old human nature dies and the new human nature is born. Paul means the same thing when he writes, “for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” They are saying all who remain in the same pride as Adam, locked in the same temporal, “natural” concerns and in disobedience, are already dead in soul and cannot ever be made alive except in Christ. This is why I say that as long as a person is an Adam, or has Adam as his progenitor he is without God. Christ says, “Whoever is not with me is against me...” Whoever is against God is dead before God. So, it follows that all Adam’s children are dead before God. But whoever stands with Christ in complete obedience is with God and lives. When the creature turns away from the Creator that is sin, as already asserted, and what we have just said agrees with that assertion.

The person who is in disobedience is in sin and the only way sin can be atoned for or healed is by returning to God, and returning to God only happens through humble obedience. As long as a person continues in disobedience her sin will never be blotted out no matter what she does. Whatever she does will have absolutely no advantageous effect. Because disobedience is itself sin. But when a person enters into the obedience of faith, all is entirely healed, blotted out, and forgiven. This is true to the extreme extent that if the “Evil Spirit himself” could come to true obedience he would become an angel again and instantly all his sin and wickedness would be blotted out and forgiven. And if an angel could fall into disobedience he would immediately become an evil spirit even if he did no new deeds.

If it were possible for a person to renounce herself and all things and to live as completely and purely in true obedience as Christ did in his human nature, she would be without sin. She would be at one with Christ. She would be by grace what Christ was by nature. But we are told this cannot be achieved. We are told also “There is none without sin.” Be that as it may, this much is certain; the nearer we are to perfect obedience the less we sin, and the further we are from perfect obedience the more we sin. Put briefly, whether a person is good, better or best of all, or bad, worse or worst of all; whether the person is sinful or saved before God, it is entirely a matter of obedience. This is why it has been said: the more the self and the me, the more the sin and wickedness. Likewise, the more self-seeking and selfishness diminishes and the self, I, me, and mine decreases in a person the more God’s I, that is, God’s Own Self increases in the person.

Now, if all humankind lived in true obedience there would be no grief or sorrow. All persons would be in harmony with each other and there would be no one to trouble or harm another. No one would lead a life or do any deed contrary to God’s will. So from where could grief or sorrow come or what could cause it? But as it now sadly stands, each person, indeed the whole world is ensconced in disobedience. If a person was simply and completely obedient the way Christ was, then all disobedience would be to that person a sharp and bitter pain. But at the same time, if everyone in the world was against this same person it would not shake or trouble him, because while in this obedience the person is one with God, and God’s Own Self is one with this obedient person.

Any and all disobedience is contrary to God, but nothing else is. Truly no thing is, of itself, contrary to God; not any created thing or the works of any created thing, nothing we can name or think of is contrary or displeasing to God, except the disobedient person. In other words, everything that is, is delightful to God and considered good by God except the disobedient person. But the disobedient person is so displeasing and abhorrent to God and causes God such profound grief that if human nature could die a hundred deaths God would willingly suffer them all for the sake of one disobedient person, so that disobedience might be killed in that person and obedience might be born again.

Even though no person can be as single-minded and perfect in obedience as Christ was, still it is possible for every person to grow close enough to it that he or she might properly be called Godlike and a “participant...of the divine nature.” The nearer the person comes to this obedience the more Godlike and divine she becomes and the more she hates any disobedience, sin, evil and unrighteousness, and the more trouble they cause her. Disobedience and sin are identical. There is no sin but disobedience and everything done from disobedience is entirely sin. So, the only thing we must do is keep ourselves from disobedience.

CHAPTER 17

How we are to take no credit for what we have done well, but we do blame ourselves for what we do wrong.

There is a report that some people wrongly think and smugly assert that they are so completely dead to self and have so completely left self behind that they have achieved and live in a state in which they suffer nothing and are unflappable, just as if the whole human race were living in true obedience or as if created things had no power to influence them. These people claim that their minds are in such balance at all times that nothing disturbs them, whether things go well or badly. This is untrue, although it could be true if, as stated above, all humanity were brought into true obedience. Until then cannot be.

This could raise the question: Are we not to separate ourselves from the influence of all things, and claim nothing for ourselves, either good or evil? My answer is this: No one should claim goodness to himself because that belongs to God and to God’s Own goodness alone. But certainly we want to affirm the person who is able and ready to be a dwelling, a tabernacle, of the Eternal Goodness and Godhead in which God can exert God’s power and will, and can work unhindered. We certainly count such a person as worthy of everlasting blessing and reward. But if anyone wants to use this line of thinking as an excuse for sin, by refusing to attribute any evil to herself, but instead to blame it on the Evil Spirit, this person has no warrant at all to do so. No person has any ground for trying to make herself out to be pure and innocent. This is what our first parents, Adam and Eve, did when they each tried to blame the other for the guilt of their own sin. It is clearly written, “There is none without sin.” So I say let there be disgrace, shame, ruin, affliction, and eternal damnation to the person who is able, ready, and willing to be a tool of the Evil Spirit, of lies, falsehood, untruthfulness, perversity or any other evil thing. Let no one be ready and willing to assist any such evil to achieve its will and pleasure, to promote its message and work and to be for such to take up residence.

CHAPTER 18

How the life of Christ was the best and most excellent life that ever was or ever can be and how a carefree life of false freedom is the worst life that can be.

We should know and believe for certain that there is no life as excellent, good and well pleasing to God as the life of Christ, and yet, to nature and selfishness it is the bitterest life. To nature, the self, and the me, the carefree life of freedom is the sweetest and most pleasant life, but it is not the best, indeed, in some people it can become the worst. But even if Christ’s life is the most bitter of all, it is still preferable to everything else. Here is how you can know this is true: There is an inward sight that has the ability to perceive the One True Good and to distinguish that it is not a thing among other things. St Paul is talking about the One True Good when he writes; “when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. He means the Complete and Perfect is beyond all the fragments; that everything which is partial and imperfect is nothing compared to the Perfect. So, all knowledge of the parts is swallowed up when the Complete is known and where the One True Good is known it is so fully desired and loved that all other love, even the love with which the person loved himself and other things, fades to nothing. At the same time, the inward sight also sees what is best and most excellent in every single thing, and loves the thing in the One True Good and completely for the sake of the One True Good.

When one has this inward sight one sees that Christ’s life is certainly the best and most excellent life. It is therefore the most preferable life, which one willingly accepts without question or complaint, enduring whatever comes with it regardless of whether or not it offends nature or other people, or even whether the person herself likes or dislikes it, finds it difficult or easy. So, wherever the perfect and true Good is known the life of Christ must also be led until the death of the body. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deceived. Anyone who says otherwise lies. And anyone who does not have the life of Christ in him will never know the the true Good or the eternal Truth.

CHAPTER 19

How we cannot come to the true Light and Christ’s life by questioning, reading, natural intellect or reason, but only by truly giving up ourselves and our attachment to all created things.

No one should imagine that we can reach this true light and perfect knowledge or the life of Christ, by thorough questioning, by what someone tells us, by reading, studying, reasoning or great learning. In fact, as long as a person values these things or anything at all, whether it is the person’s own self or anything God has created, or as long as a person does anything or tries to achieve any purpose for the sake of his own preferences, desires, opinions, or results, he does not approach or reach the life of Christ. Christ said this himself: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” “...whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. And “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Christ means, “whoever does not abandon and separate herself from everything can never know my eternal truth or come to experience my life.” And even if Christ had not said this we would still know because the truth itself makes it evident. As long as a person is clinging to the elements and fragments of this world (and above all to her own self) and as long as she continues to interact with them as if they were of high value she is blinded, deceived and sees that nothing is good except what is most convenient and pleasant to herself and what advances her own goals. Obviously she understands that these things are the highest good and she loves them most of all. So, she can never come to the truth.

CHAPTER 20

Since the life of Christ is repugnant to our fallen human nature and to the self, it is natural for us to avoid it and choose a more convenient and carefree life.

Because the life of Christ is bitterly contrary to our fallen human nature, to the self, and the me, each of us possesses a natural abhorrence to it, and think it is evil, unjust and foolish. (This is because to be in the true life of Christ, the self, the me and our fallen human nature must be gotten rid of, forgotten and die altogether.) So, in our fallen human nature, we reach for a life that is most comfortable and pleasant; a life which we blindly believe is the best life possible and we value it as such. To our fallen human nature the most comfortable thing possible is a carefree life. So, it is that to which we naturally cling, enjoying our own powers and focusing all our attention on achieving and protecting our own peace and comfort. This happens most of all where there are tremendous gifts of intellect and reason. Intellect and reason has its own power of impressive understanding so that it easily confuses itself with the true Eternal light and claims itself to be so. Its power for ever increasing understanding and knowledge seems like the true Eternal light, deceiving both itself and others, especially since we are all inclined to be impressed with its power and with commanding its power. The deception is the greatest when our inclination is paired with ignorance.

CHAPTER 21

How a friend of Christ in her outward behavior willingly fulfills what must be done of necessity and what ought to be done for duty, but is unconcerned about the rest.

Someone might well ask, what is the state of a person who follows the true light to the utmost of her ability? I answer that this question can never be properly answered because the person who is not completely engaged in following the true light could not understand the answer and the person who is, knows the answer already, but cannot articulate it because it is beyond human ability to express. So, if anyone really wants to know the answer to the question, she must, herself, completely engage in following it. This is the only way to enter this ineffable reality and to discover for oneself what has never been uttered by human lips. Nevertheless, this person has freedom to move around in and interact with this world so long as the movements and interactions are in keeping with what is necessary or what ought to be done; but not when they are merely a matter of what the person wills. Often persons create for themselves many must-be’s and ought-to-be’s that are false. Here is how you can see it: when a person is, by pride, covetousness, or some other evil disposition motivated to do this or that or to leave this or that undone, and yet the person claims that it was necessary or right to do it or not do it. The same is true if a person is either driven to or restrained from any given thing because she wants to look favorable to others or because she is motivated by love, friendship, enmity, the lusts and appetites of the body, and yet claims that it must be so or it ought to be so. This is utterly false. If we had only the must-be’s and ought-to-be’s that God and the Truth show us and toward which they compel us we would truly have less to manage and do than we have now. We create for ourselves much difficulty and anxiety from which we might well be spared and above which we might well be raised.

CHAPTER 22

How sometimes the Spirit of God or other times the Evil Spirit may may possess and gain mastery over someone.

It is written that there are times when the Devil and his spirit enter a person and take possession to the extent that the person knows neither what he does nor leaves undone because the Evil Spirit so dominates this person using him to do or leave undone by, with, or through him whatever the Evil Spirit wants. In a sense- but a different sense- it is certainly true that the whole world is subject to and dominated by the Evil Spirit: by lies, deception, various vices, and other evil ways, all of which come from the Evil Spirit.

If a person would be possessed in a similar way by the Spirit of God, so that he does not know or take note of what he does or leaves undone, but is completely in the power of God’s Spirit, doing God’s will and work in all that he does or leaves undone then this person is one of whom St Paul says, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.” and again, “...you are not under law but under grace.” and to whom Christ speaks, saying, “...it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”

I am afraid that for every one who is truly possessed by God’s Spirit there are a hundred thousand or an innumerable multitude possessed with the Evil Spirit. That is because fallen humans have more in common with the Evil Spirit than with God’s Spirit, since the self, the I, the me, and so on, belong to the Evil Spirit. So then, the person in whom these things reign is an Evil Spirit. This can all be summarized in this brief exhortation: “Be simply and completely stripped of self.” The point to this other verbiage is to support and articulate the matter in a more fleshed out way.

People say, “I am in no way prepared to undertake this work so, I guess it cannot be done in me.” In this way they make an excuse for themselves bringing about the condition they predict, being neither ready, nor open to being made ready. If one would look for nothing but finding in all things opportunities for the preparation and if one dedicated one’s whole mind to seeing how he or she might become prepared God would certainly prepare that person, because God offers as much care, earnestness, and love preparing a person as God does to pouring God’s Spirit into the person who is prepared.

There are also practices for doing this, as the saying goes, “To learn an art you do not already know there are four things needed.” The first and most essential is a great desire, diligence and constant concerted effort to learn the art. Without this the art will never be learned. The second is an example from which you may learn. The third is to pay close attention to the master, watch what the master does, be obedient to, trust and follow the master in all things. The fourth is to do the work yourself, and practice it with persistent effort. Where any of these four are missing the art will not be learned or mastered. It is the same with this preparation. Whoever has the first, a diligent, constant, persevering desire, will also look for and find everything needed. But a person who does not have the earnestness, diligence, love and desire will not really seek and consequently will not find, but will remain unprepared and never reach the goal.

CHAPTER 23

Whoever wants to submit to God and be obedient to God must be ready to bear with all things, including whatever God or any other creature demands. One must be obedient to them all regardless of what one has to do or endure.

There are those who speak of other ways of preparing for and walking in the True Light. They say we must lie still under God’s hand, be resigned, obedient, and submit to God. This is of course true, since all these things would be already happening in the person who is doing everything in his or her power toward this end. But if a person should lie still under God’s hand and is willing to do so, then, he or she should and indeed must also lie still under all things, whether they come from God or from any other creature. Nothing excepted.

Whoever wants to be obedient, resigned and submissive to God must also be obedient, resigned, and submissive to all things, because it is in keeping with being obedient to God. This means not having a spirit of resistance, but having a pliable, willing spirit that forebears things in silence, resting on the hidden foundations of one’s soul, and having a secret inner patience that allows one to be able to take all chances or bear all crosses willingly, no matter what happens; all the while neither asking for nor desiring any compensation, rescue, or revenge, but instead, crying out, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing” in loving, sincere humility.

This is a good path toward that which is best. An excellent, blessed preparation is the farthest goal one can reach in this present time. This is the splendid life of Christ, since this is the path he took, perfectly and completely to the end of his bodily life on earth. So, there is no other way, certainly no better way to prepare for the joyful life of Jesus Christ than to mimic this course to one’s utmost. What that consists of we have already mentioned. In fact, all we have said and written here or anywhere else encourages this path toward this end. What the end turns out to be no one knows or can say. But if anyone wants to know it let that one follow my advise by mimicking Jesus Christ in his humble life; Let that person strive toward it with unwearied perseverance and without doubt. Then he or she will come to the end that endures eternally. For “...the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

CHAPTER 24

There are four things necessary before anyone can receive divine Truth or be possessed with the Spirit of God.

Besides what we have already mentioned there are still other ways to Christ’s splendid life, that is, life in which God and human personhood can be so completely united that it can be said authentically that God and a human person are one. This is how: Truth has absolute influence at all times so that, true, complete God, and true, complete human personhood are at one. The human personhood yields completely to God in such a way that God’s Self is completely there and so is the human person. This unity works continually so that in everything that is done or not done the I, the self, the me, or the mine, is never asserted. This union alone is Christ. Since true and complete human personhood is present, there is genuine perceiving and feeling of pain, pleasure, liking, disliking, sweetness, bitterness, joy, sorrow and anything that can be perceived or felt either inwardly or bodily. Since God becomes human, God is able to perceive and feel everything human personhood can experience, like love, hatred, evil, good and so on. God has the complete and genuine experience of a human person who is not God, so that everything that a human person feels and notices, such as pleasure or pain, especially pain that strikes the very core of a person, caused by a deeply personal violation, all this God experiences as a human when God is united with human personhood. In this union everything that is contrary to God or to human dignity is perceived and felt. But since, in this union, the human person humbly becomes nothing, in order that God is everything, so everything that is sorrowful and contrary to human personhood also comes to nothing. In this way God must continue to come to hold first place as long as bodily, temporal life endures.

It is also the case that the person in whom God and the human person are united stands free of himself and of all things. Whatever is in him is there for God’s sake and not for the sake of the human person’s self or for the sake of any created thing.

God, by definition, is incomparable so that one cannot rightly speak of God as having this or that quality, or a “self” or a “me”. These are all attributes and properties of a created being. On the other hand, by definition it is characteristic and natural for the creature to enjoy this or that quality, to preserve itself, be concerned about all matters effecting it, and to pursue what is advantageous and profitable according to its own desires in all that it does or leaves undone. But when a creature or human person comes out of himself and abandons his own concerns God enters and fills with GodSelf.

CHAPTER 25

The Evil Spirit sows a seed that produces two evil fruits, sisters of each other, who love to live together. One is spiritual pride and high-mindedness and the other is false, lawless freedom.

After a person has diligently walked in the way that leads to the truth, and sparing no effort, has disciplined herself, she will start to think that she has achieved the goal and is, by now, quite dead to the world, and has abandoned herself to God alone. That is when the devil comes to sow his seed in this person’s heart. This seed produces two fruits; one is spiritual fulness or pride, and the other is false, lawless freedom. These are two sisters who love to be together. It starts like this: the devil puffs the person up so that she thinks she has reached the highest point and has become so familiar with the divine that she no longer needs scripture, teaching, nor anything else, because she has risen above any need. Then the person experiences a false peace and sense of self-satisfaction. This is the beginning of her false, lawless freedom. She will think to herself, “I have attained a spirituality more profound than other people. I know more and understand more. So, since I have attained a proper understanding of what is best it is reasonable and just that all created things, especially all people, should serve my ends, yield to my will, and submit to my influence.” As the person thinks this she also desires it, expects it, and gladly takes it from all created things, especially from other people. She thinks she is well worthy of it; that it is owed her. From this high vantage point she regards other persons as if they were simply part of the herd, while she herself stands above, worthy of every advantage to her body, her life, and her nature, deserving of any and all joy and pleasure, even leisure time and amusement. She seeks all these things and capitalizes on them at every opportunity. Even so, whatever is done or can be done for her seems too little and paltry since she is worthy of even greater honor. She will call those who serve her ends, good people, truth-tellers, true lovers of the poor and of all humanity; even if these same people are out and out thieves and murderers. She will nevertheless praise such persons, seek them out, and join them in whatever they do. On the other hand, any persons who do not order themselves according to her will and whoever does not allow her influence is ignored, or even blamed and maligned, regardless of how holy the person actually is, even if the person is as holy as St Peter himself. Because she is proud she ignores the admonitions, order, laws and precepts of the Holy Christian Church along with the sacraments. Instead, she mocks both them and all persons who observe them and hold them in reverence. This is the interplay of these two sisters, sprung from the devil’s seed.

Finally, since the person with this unadulterated pride assumes to know and understand more than everyone else she decides to hold forth more than others, assuming that her opinion alone is best, that it should be considered and adopted. She believes that those who hold an opinion contrary to hers are foolish and wrong, and she holds them in contempt.

CHAPTER 26

Concerning poorness of spirit and true humility, by which we can discern the true, lawful, and free persons whom the truth has made free.

Poorness of spirit, true humility, is a very different thing. It is different because a person discovers and realizes the truth, that of himself and of his own power he is nothing, has nothing, and is capable of nothing, except weakness and evil. So, that person finds himself completely unworthy of everything that has ever been been or ever will be done for him, by God or by any thing in creation. He knows himself to be a debtor, not only to God, but also to every created thing in God’s stead. And he knows he is to serve them, work for them, and bear with them. For this reason he does not stand up for his own rights, but in the humility of his heart he says, “It is just and reasonable that God and all God’s creatures should be against me, that they should have rights to me and over me. And for my part I should be against no one nor have rights to anything.” With this self-understanding the person does not crave or beg for anything from God or God’s creation except the most basic necessities. And even then he modestly regards them not as his right or due, but as a favor. He will not attend to or gratify his body or natural desires except as necessity demands and he will not allow others to help or serve him except when circumstances force him to, and then he accepts the help with trembling because he has no right to anything and thinks he is unworthy of anything. In fact, his own talk, articulation, ways, and works seem like empty foolishness. So, he does not expound much, nor take it upon himself to admonish and rebuke another person except when compelled to by love or faithfulness to God and even then he does it with trepidation and as little as possible.

From the perspective of this humble spirit a person comes to see and appropriately understand how all persons are curved in on themselves and inclined toward evil and sin. On account of this it is necessary and helpful to have order, customs, laws, and precepts as a way of correcting people’s blindness and foolishness and as a means of constraining and containing vice and wickedness. Without such laws humans would cause more trouble and be more ungovernable than animals. Indeed, few persons have attained knowledge of the truth without having started by observing religious practices and disciplines, devoting themselves to such laws until they learn a better way.

This is why someone who is poor in spirit and has a humble mind does not make light of law, order, precepts, and holy customs, or those who observe and cling to them. Instead, these poor in spirit cry out with loving compassion and gentle heartache, “Almighty Father, You who are Eternal Truth, I pour out to you my lament and I know it saddens Your Spirit too, that through the blindness, frailty and misery of human persons what was never intended or needed has become necessary and must be.” Because those who are complete are under no law.

Order, laws, precepts, and such are merely an admonition to those who understand nothing better and fail to perceive the source from which all law and order is ordained. Those who are whole and complete accept the law along with those persons who know and understand nothing better, and in solidarity, sit under it with them, and practice it themselves in the hope that these others might be restrained, saved from evil ways and, if possible, brought to something higher.

Everything we have said about poverty of spirit and humility is certainly true and we have conclusive evidence in the pure life of Christ. He both practiced and fulfilled every work of true humility and every other virtue, all of which radiate out from his holy life. If that were not enough, he says directly, “...learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls…” He neither treated the law and commandments as trifles, nor did he spurn them or those under them. On the contrary, he said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” A bit further on he says keeping the commandments is not enough. Instead, we must press forward to what is higher and better. He says, “...unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” The law forbids evil works, but Christ forbids evil thoughts. The law allows us to take revenge on our enemies, but Christ commands us to love them. The law does not forbid the good things of the world, but Christ encourages us to count them as nothing. Christ ratified everything he said with his own holy life; since there was nothing that he taught that he did not also fulfill by doing. He sat under the law and kept it to the end of his mortal life. St Paul points to this when he says, “[Christ was]... born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law...” This means Christ intended to bring them to something higher and nearer to himself, as he also says, “...the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve....”

In a word, we find nothing in Christ’s life, words, and works other than the true, pure humility and poverty we have just spelled out. And it will be the same in a person who is a true follower of Christ, in whom God dwells. That is how it should be and indeed must be. But Christ is absent where there is pride, a haughty spirit, and a blithe, insouciant mind. These are not part of a true follower of Christ.

Christ said:“I am deeply grieved, even to death...” He was referring to his bodily death and he meant that since the time Mary gave birth to him until his death on the cross he never had a joyful day. He experienced nothing but contradiction, trouble and grief. So, it is just and reasonable that the servants be like their master. Christ also says, “blessed are the poor in spirit” (that is, those who are truly humble) “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” This is precisely what we find where God is made human. It is intrinsic to Christ and to his true followers, as long as this mortal life lasts, that they have an authentic humility, a poorness of spirit, an unassuming disposition, and a heart that grieves over secret sorrows. Again we say, anyone who thinks otherwise is deceived and deceives others. This is why fallen nature and the “self” avoids the life of Christ and clings instead to a life of false freedom and ease, just like we have already said.

Right away an Adam or Evil Spirit rushes forward to justify and excuse herself saying, “It sounds like you want to say Christ had no self at all, and yet he often spoke of himself and even glorified himself in certain things.” Answer: when the truth is at work in a person so that she appropriately has a will toward something, and endeavors to bring it about, it is entirely for the purpose of demonstrating and manifesting the truth. This is the will that was in Christ and the reason all his words and works were necessary. Whatever Christ did he did because it was the best thing to do, but he took no more pleasure or personal credit for it than anything else that happened. Will someone now say, “So, then there was a personal motivating will in Christ?” I answer, if you ask the sun, “Why do you shine?” the sun would say, “I must shine. I cannot do otherwise because it is my nature and property to shine. The light I give off is not of myself. I do not call it my own.” This is how it is with God and Christ and all who are godly and belong to God. They do no willing, working or desiring except for the one purpose: goodness as goodness, for the sake of goodness. There is no other motive.

CHAPTER 27

How we are to understand Christ’s command that we forsake all things; and what it is like to be in union with the divine will.

By what has already been said you must surely understand that when we, along with Christ, say that we ought to resign and forsake all things we hardly intend a person should do nothing or be utterly aimless. A person must be actively engaged in living well as long as the person lives. The point we are making is that a person can do nothing at all to bring about union with God. It is entirely outside a person’s power of perceiving, knowing, working, or abstaining from work. It is beyond the reach of all the powers of creation put together.

So, what is this union? It is when, in reality, we are purely, simply and completely at one with the One Eternal Will of God; or put another way, we are devoid of will so that the created will flows out to the Eternal Will and is swallowed up and lost in it so that the Eternal Will alone moves and shapes whatever is in us. You can see what helps further this along; nothing in creation. No works, discipline, words or anything else that is the product of creation. This, and nothing else, is what it means to renounce and forsake all things; that we must not imagine or construe that any words, works, discipline, knowledge or anything else in the created order can help us or serve to move us toward union with God. Instead, we must simply tolerate and accept things for what they are and enter into union with God. Of course outward life still goes on as long as we live and we must participate as necessary; specifically, we must sleep, wake, move around, stand still, speak, be silent and all things like this.

CHAPTER 28

After union with the Divine Will the person is inwardly immoveable but remains outwardly affected by outward circumstances.

When the union has truly occurred and is established the person is from then on internally anchored in the union, but God continues to allow the outward life of the person to be tossed about by outward circumstances according to how things naturally go in the world. In this way the outward person can authentically claim, “I have no will to be or not be, to live or die, to know or not know, to do or to leave undone; instead I am ready for whatever comes or whatever is necessary; I am ready to obediently respond regardless of what I must do or suffer.” This is how the outward person has no personal motivation or purpose except to appropriately participate in promoting the Eternal Will. So, the inward person will remain steadfast, but it is necessary that the outward person respond to circumstances. If the inward person were to give a reason for the actions of the outward person the reason would be only that the action was a necessary and desirable response to circumstances ordained by the Eternal Will. This is how it is when God dwells in a person, which is exactly what we see in Christ. This union is produced by Divine light and it lives in the beams of Divine light. There is no spiritual pride or derisive spirit. There is boundless humility, lowly broken-heartedness, an honest, blameless walk, justice, peace, contentedness, and indeed everything virtuous. Where these are missing, as we have said, there is no right union, since, just as nothing in creation has the power to bring about or promote this union, so nothing has the power to frustrate and hinder it except one thing: the person himself and his self will. Make no mistake, this is what really damages a person.

CHAPTER 29

No one can achieve such a profound spiritual level this side of death that they are not affected by outward circumstances.

There are some who say that a person both should and is able to rise above being influenced or affected by outward circumstances just like Christ was after his resurrection. They try to establish and verify this by Christ’s words, “I will go ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see me.” And again, “...a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have…” They interpret these passages as if Jesus, speaking to his disciples, meant, “as you have experienced me and been my followers in my mortal body you should do and be the same as me as I go before you to Galilee; that is, you should live in such a state that nothing has the power to influence or afflict your soul just like the state you will be in after your bodily death. You can see that I have flesh and bones yet no longer suffer, and it should be the same with you. You should cease to feel outward things including bodily death.”

Here is my answer to this: Christ does not mean that a person could or should enter this state unless that person had already undergone life and suffering as Christ did. Christ did not achieve his resurrected state prior to his natural death and everything that accompanies it. Neither then, should any person think she will achieve it as long as she is mortal and prone to suffering. If such a state were the best, most excellent state to be in and if it were actually possible to achieve it in this present time Christ would have achieved it. Christ’s life is, after all, the best, most excellent, most worthy and desirable life in God’s sight that ever was or ever can be. So, if it was not this way and could not be this way for Christ it will never be this way with any person. Such a life is by no means the most desirable even though some people claim that it is.

CHAPTER 30

The way in which we are beyond and above all custom, order, law and principles.

Some claim that we both can and should outgrow all virtues, order, laws, principles, and proprieties, so that we count them as nothing and leave them behind. There is some truth in this and also some falsehood. Notice this: Christ was greater than his own life and was above all virtue, propriety, ordinances and so on; but so also is the Evil Spirit. But there is a big difference between these two. Christ was above them like this: nothing was forced on him; not what he said, or did not say, did or did not do, nothing in all his experience was forced on him, and he had no need of any of his experiences, good or bad, and he did not personally profit from them. This is also how it is, and was, with all virtue, law, order, decency, and so on; everything that can be gained by them is already perfected in Christ. This is the sense in which St Paul’s saying is a realized truth, “all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. [and they] “are not under law but under grace.” This means no one needs to teach children of God what they need to do or not do because their master, the Spirit of God, will teach them everything they need to know. In the same way, children of God do not need other persons to give them precepts or laws, or command them to do right and not do wrong because the same admirable master who teaches them what is good or not good, higher or lower, who, indeed, leads them into all truth, also rules in them and encourages them to hold fast to what is good, let the rest go, and keep on listening to their master’s guidance. So, there is no need for them to wait on any law to teach or command them. Another way in which they need no law is that by keeping a law they gain no advantage or reward. That is because any help they might have from the counsel, teaching or effort of any thing in the created order which could conceivably advance them toward eternal life they have already received. This is the sense in which we may rise above all law and virtue and above the works, knowledge and power of anything in the created order.

CHAPTER 31

We are not to leave behind the life of Christ, but practice it diligently and walk in it until death.

The other claim they make is utterly false and a lie. That claim being, we ought to reject and leave behind the life of Christ, along with all laws, commandments, customs, order, and so on, that we should ignore them, make light of them, and count them as nothing. Now, some might say, “Since neither Christ nor anybody else ever gains anything by living a Christian life, by disciplined practice, or by following principles, and since none of these can be worked to their advantage in view of the fact that they already have anything that can be gained from them, why not, from then on forget about them and avoid them altogether? Do they really need to have rules and follow them?

To answer this properly we have to think carefully. There are two kinds of light; one is true, the other, false. The true light is that Eternal Light which is God, or the created light - also divine - called grace. These are both true light. The false light is Nature or results from Nature. But why is the first light true and the second light false? This is something one can more easily perceive than talk about. It is not appropriate to talk about God, in God’s Eternal, essential, God-hood, as having attributes like; will, knowledge, manifestation, or anything we can conceive of, give name to, or speak about. But the entity we refer to with the word “God” exhibits the properties of expressing GodSelf, knowing and loving GodSelf, and even revealing God to GodSelf - all this entirely independent of anything created. This all resides solidly in God as God actually is, without God doing anything, and prior to anything having been created. It is out of this expressing and revealing of GodSelf to GodSelf that comes the distinction of persons. But when God becomes human, or when God dwells in a godly person and that person has become a “participant of the divine nature”, something resides in the person that is only God and belongs only to God, and in no way becomes the possession of the person. Even without the person it would reside in God’s very Self as God’s gushing essential Godhood, but it would not be manifested and God would not do anything to turn it into an action. God, however, wills it to be expressed and made effective in action, for that is its purpose. What is the alternative? That it should lie idle? Where is the benefit in that? It would be as useless as if it had never been at all; or even worse, it would have existed, but been utterly futile. And both God and nature abhors futility. As it stands, God wills it to be expressed and made effective in action which cannot happen (and should not) without a creation. Indeed if there were no creation, works, and a world full of real things what would God be? What would God do? Whose God would God be? We must stop this line of speculating so we do not stumble along, and perhaps get lost and never find our way back.

CHAPTER 32

God is a true, simple, perfect Good, a light, a comprehending agent, and all virtues. We therefore ought to love God the most since God is highest and best.

To begin with a summary: I want you to understand that if we say God is good, we mean God is goodness as goodness itself, not as this or that particular good. You can see what I mean by considering that if something is sometimes here and sometimes there is not everywhere, nor is it above and beyond all things and places. Likewise if something is today or tomorrow it is not always, nor at all times, nor comprehensively above and beyond all time. Likewise again, what is some particular thing, this or that, is not all things nor comprehensively above all things. So, if God were some particular thing God would not be all in all and comprehensively above all, which God certainly is. Neither then, would God be perfect completeness. As it stands, God is, but God is not some thing in particular, which a creation, being a creation, can naturally conceive of, perceive, name or express. So, when if we say God is good we do not mean God is this or that good, because then God would not be the sum of all good, nor would God be the One Perfect Good, which God certainly is. Not only is God the One Perfect Good, God is also a Light and Comprehending Agent, the property of which is to radiate, illuminate, and to comprehend information. When we say God is a Light and a Comprehending Agent we mean God gives illumination by which to perceive and also is a perceiving agent that receives what is illuminated. All this giving and perceiving of light happens in God without anything ever having been created. And it happens not as an endeavor, undertaken and completed, but as a foundation and a gushing source. In order for this foundational, gushing source to flow into an actual accomplishment there must be created things through which it can flow to bring about the accomplishment. Take note: wherever this Light and Comprehending Agent is working in any person this Light and Comprehending Agent keeps on perceiving, knowing and teaching what itself is; namely, that it is good in itself and not some particular good thing. It knows and teaches people that it is a true, simple, complete Good, but is not a particular special good. Instead, it comprehends every kind of good.

Since we have said that this Light teaches the One Good, it is appropriate to ask, what is the content of the teaching about it? This is important. In the same way God is the one Good, Light, and Comprehending Agent, God is also Will, Love, Justice, Truth and all virtues. But in God these things (which we differentiate) are all one Substance and they do not come out of God to become accomplishments without created beings. Rather, they remain in God as Substance and as a gushing source without becoming an endeavor or accomplishment. But whenever the One, (who is simultaneously all these various things) apprehends a person, possesses, directs, and makes use of her, so it is possible for the One to perceive in this person some degree of the One’s own divine essence (in so far as that divine essence consists of Love and Will) and in the act of perceiving in her the One’s own divine essence the One both learns and teaches of the One’s Own Self, since the One is Light and the Comprehending Agent, and wills nothing but the One’s Own essence.

The person in whom this happens no longer wills or loves anything except that which is good, and precisely for the reason that it is good and for no other reason; not because it is this thing or that thing, or because it pleases or displeases some other being, or because it is pleasant or painful, or bitter or sweet, or because of any other qualifications. The person neither seeks nor credits such things. Indeed, she does nothing for her own sake or in her own name because she has given up all self, “me” and “mine”, “we” and “ours”. Those impulses have diminished. She no longer speaks in terms like, “I love myself,” or “I love this, or that,” and so on. And if you were to ask Love, “What do you love?” Love would answer, “I love Goodness.” If you ask “what is it about Goodness that you love?” Love answers, “simply because it is good and in the interest of Goodness.” From this perspective it is proper and just to say if there were something better than God then one must love that better than God. Again, from this perspective God does not love GodSelf as God’s Self, but as Goodness. If there was something better than God and God was aware of it God would love that rather than God‘ Self. This is how the “self” and the “me” are completely stripped away from God and apply to God only in so far as they are necessary for God to be a Person.

Everything just said must take place in a Godlike person, in one who is truly a “participant of the divine nature,” otherwise the person would simply not be a true participant.

CHAPTER 33

When a person is made truly Godlike her love is pure and single-minded, and she loves all created things and does her best for their sake.

It follows from what has been said above that the love of a truly Godlike person is pure, single-minded, and full of kindness to such an extent that she sincerely loves all human beings and all created things, wishing them well, doing good to them, and rejoicing in their welfare. It does not matter what these others do to this person, if they do her wrong or kindness, if they love or hate her, indeed even if they could kill her one hundred times over and she came to life again each time she could not help but love the very person who had so often killed her. No matter how wicked, unjust or cruel the other had been to her, she could not help but wish the other well and do it for the other, showing all the kindness in her power, if only the other would take hold of it and receive it. Christ bears witness to this and is the confirmation for it in the way he responded to Judas’ betrayal of him. Christ called Judas “friend” saying, “Friend, do what you are here to do.” It is just as if Christ had said, “You hate me and are my enemy, but I love you and am your friend. You want me to suffer. You do the worst you can to me and you are glad when I suffer, yet I I want you to have all goodness and would gladly give it to you and do it for you, if you would only take hold of it and receive it from me. As though God in human nature were saying “ I am pure, simple Goodness, and as such I cannot will, desire, give, do or rejoice in anything but goodness. If I were to pay you back for your evil and perversity I must do it with goodness because I am nothing but goodness and I have nothing else to give except goodness. Just so, God, in the person who is made a “participant in God’s nature”, neither desires revenge nor acts vengefully for all the wrong that is done or ever could be done to God. This is what we see in Christ when he says, “Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”

In the same way, it is a constituent characteristic of God that God does not constrain by force anything to be done or not done. God allows every person to do or leave undone according to the person’s own will, regardless of whether it is good or bad. God resists no one. We can also see this in Christ who did not resist or defend himself when his enemies took him into custody. Even when Peter would have defended him Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword back into its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?” So, a person who is made a participant in the divine nature can neither oppress nor harm anyone. It cannot enter her mind or be any part of her intent or desire that she should cause pain, harm or distress, by doing or not doing, by speech or silence.

CHAPTER 34

If a person is to succeed in attaining what is best he must renounce his own will and whatever helps him accomplish his own will is the worst thing for him.

Some might say, “Since God wills, desires and does the best that can be be done for each person, God ought to help each person by ordering matters to work out in favor of that person’s will, so that person’s desires are fulfilled, making one person a Pope, another a Bishop, and so on. Let us be clear; whoever helps a person to his own will helps him to the worst possible thing. Because the more a person follows after his own self-will the more that self-will grows in him and the farther off he moves from God, the true Good; for nothing burns in hell but self-will. That is why the saying asserts, “Put off your own self-will and there will be no hell.” God is perfectly willing to help a person and bring a person to that which is best in itself and therefore the best of all possibilities for the person. In order to bring this about, the person’s self-will must be eliminated, just as we have been saying. God would gladly help and direct people toward this, because as long as a person seeks his own good he does not seek what is best for him and he will never find it. For the highest good for a human being would be and truly is not that he should seek himself, his own advantage or his own ends in any respect, neither in spiritual matters or material, but the person should pursue only to praise and glorify God and God’s holy will. This is what God teaches us and toward which God admonishes us. Whoever, then, wants God’s help toward what is best overall and what is best for the particular person should pay diligent attention to God’s counsels and teaching, and obey God’s commandments. This is absolutely the only way a person will have God’s help and indeed has it already. Here is precisely what God teaches and admonishes people to do: forsake the self and all things and pursue God only.

“Those who love their life…” that is, the one who loves his own self and guards and protects it, “will lose it”; that is, the person who seeks himself and his own advantage in all matters, will, in the very seeking of himself loses his soul. “But those who hate their life for my sake will keep it for eternal life.” that is, the one who casts aside his own self and all matters concerning himself, who gives up his own will and fulfills God’s will, this person’s soul is preserved into Eternal Life.

CHAPTER 35

There is a deep, authentic humility and poverty of spirit in a person who is made a “participant of the divine nature.”

Additionally, in a person who is made “a participant of the divine nature” there is a thorough and deep humility, and if that is absent the person simply is not “a participant of the divine nature”. Christ taught this in words and fulfilled it in deeds. The reason this humility springs up in a person is because she sees in the True Light (which is seeing reality) that Substance, Life, Perception, Knowledge, Power and everything associated with these things all belong to the True Good and not to the created being herself. Instead, the created being herself is nothing and has nothing and as soon as she turns away from the True Good, either in her will or in her works, nothing is left but pure evil. So it is true to the most precise extent that a created thing, as a created thing, has no value in itself, no right to anything, no claim over anything or anyone, (neither God nor fellow created beings) and so it should give itself completely over to God, submitting utterly to God because that is in keeping with reality. This matter is the most important and consequential of all.

Now, if we both ought and desire to be obedient and submissive to God we must also submit to whatever we receive at the hands of any thing God created, otherwise our submission is false. This assertion flows from true humility and from the reality of God’s right to our obedience. If this were not exactly as it ought to be and in complete agreement with God’s justice, Christ would not have taught it in his words nor fulfilled it in his life. God is genuinely manifested in this. It is truly so, that according to God’s truth and justice, the truly humble creature will be subject to God and to all created things, and no person or thing will be subject or obedient to her. God and all created things have a right over her and to her, but she herself has a right to nothing: she is a debtor to all. Nothing is owing to her, so that she is ready to accept all things from others and if necessary do all things for others. It is from this that poverty of spirit grows, of which Christ spoke saying, “blessed are the poor in spirit…” (that is to say, the truly humble) “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Christ taught all this and fulfilled it in his life.

CHAPTER 36

Sin alone and nothing else is contrary to God. Here is what Sin is and what a sinful act is.

Along with what was said above one must keep in mind that when anything is deemed contrary to God, or when something is called hateful or grievous to God, rest assured that no created thing is contrary to God, or hateful or grievous, at least not in as much as it is alive, has the ability to know, to do, to produce moral obligation and so on. None of this is contrary to God. It is altogether good and is an act of God for an evil spirit or a human being to exist, to be alive, etc… because God is the Being of all that exists, the Life of everything alive, and the Wisdom of all the wise. Certainly, all things have their being more truly in God than in themselves. And this is also the case with all their powers, knowledge, life, and so on. If this were not so, God would not be all good. But since it is so, all creatures are good. Since whatever is good is agreeable to God, and God wants it, it cannot be contrary to God.

What, then, is left which is contrary and hateful to God? Nothing but Sin. What is Sin? Note: Sin is only this and nothing else; that the created being wills something other than God wills; wills something contrary to God. Each of us can see this in our own selves, because whoever wills something other than what I will is my enemy, but anyone who wills the same thing as me is my friend and I love that person. This is also the case for God. Willing something other than God Wills is Sin and is contrary to God. It grieves God and is hateful to God. Again, whoever wills, speaks or is silent, does or leaves undone anything other than what I will is contrary to me and an effrontery to me. It is also this way with God. When someone wills anything other than God wills or contrary to what God wills anything he does or leaves undone, in fact, anything at all that proceeds from this person is contrary to God and is Sin. Any will that wills anything other than God is against God’s will. As Christ said, “Whoever is not with me is against me…” This how a person can see plainly if she is without sin or not, is committing sin or not, what sin is, and how sin must be rectified and healed. This contradiction to God’s will is what we mean when we talk about disobedience. And so, the Adam, the “I”, “self”, “self-will”, Sin, the “old person”, turning away from God, and abandoning God, all mean one and same thing.

CHAPTER 37

In God, as God, there can be no grief, sorrow, displeasure nor anything like these, but but there can be in a person who is “made a participant of the divine nature.”

In God, as God, there is no sorrow, grief or displeasure, yet God is grieved on account of human sins. Since grief cannot occur in God without a creature, it occurs when God becomes a human person, or when God is living in a God-like person. Then sin is so revolting to God and grieves God so deeply that God would willingly suffer agony and death if the sins of just one person might be cleansed. If someone were to ask God if God would rather live and sin remain or if God would die, and thereby destroy sin, God’s answer would be. “I would rather die a thousand times.” For one person’s sin is more revolting and grievous to God than God’s own agony and death. And if this is the case with just one person’s sin what must all persons’ sins together do to God? You can see the tremendous grief human sin causes God.

Accordingly, when God is made human or when God lives in a truly God-like person sin is the only thing that is revolting and the only thing bemoaned, because everything that exists and occurs without sin is as God would have it be, and indeed belongs to God. But it is fitting and necessary that a truly God-like person will mourn and be sorrowful on account of sin until death, even if the person would live until the day of judgment or forever. It is this situation that caused the hidden anguish of Christ to come about; the suffering no one can know or utter except Christ Himself, and that is why we call Christ’s suffering a mystery.

This attribute of God’s is something God wants to have and God is pleased when it is in a person, because it is God’s Own. It belongs to God and not to the person. A person can not make sin be revolting to herself. So when God finds this grief over sin God loves it and values it more highly than anything else, because it is utterly the saddest and most bitter thing a person can endure.

It is the true Light that teaches us everything written here about this divine attribute, which God wants persons to possess so that it can be put into action in a living soul. This True light also teaches the person that the Godlike sorrow at work in her is not to be counted as hers any more than if she were not there at all. She senses that this sorrow was not produced in her heart by her own self and that it is not her’s at all, but belongs entirely and only to God.

CHAPTER 38

We are to take on the Life of Christ motivated by Love, not by reward, and we must never become careless about it or cast it off.

When a person has been made a participant of the divine nature, the best, most excellent life has been fulfilled in him: the most worthy life in God’s eyes that has ever been or ever can be. And from that eternal love that loves Goodness as Goodness and for the sake of Goodness a true and excellent Christ-like life is so profoundly loved that it will never be forsaken or cast off. When a person has tasted this life he would never want to part with it, even if he lived until Judgment Day. He would rather die a thousand deaths and endure in himself all the sufferings that ever visited any and all creatures, than to fall away from this excellent life. He would not exchange it for an angel’s life, even if he could.

This is how we answer the question, “What good does it do someone to put on Christ’s life if it serves no end and the person gets nothing more out of it than he already has?” This life is not chosen because it serves any end or because of something one can get out of it. It is chosen for love of its excellence and because God loves it and values it so highly. Anyone who says he has enough of it and wants to be done with it has never experienced or known it, because anyone who has truly experienced and known it can never give it up. And anyone who has put on the life of Christ intending to win something or deserve something because he has, has taken it up as a mercenary not out of love and therefore does not have it at all. If someone does not take it up for love he in no way has Christ’s life in him, although he may certainly be thoroughly deceived, imagining he has put on Christ’s life. Christ did not live the life he lived for the sake of reward, but only out of love. And this love makes a life like Christ’s light and takes away all its hardships so that it becomes sweet and is endured gladly. But to the one who who does not put it on from love but does so imagining a reward, the life is utterly bitter and wearisome and the person would gladly be rid of it. It is a clear sign of a mercenary or hireling that he wishes his work was done and over with. But the one who truly loves the life of Christ is not offended by its toil nor suffering nor how long it lasts. That is why it is written, “To serve God and live for God is easy to the one who does it.” This is certainly true for the one who does it from love, but to the one who does it with the expectation of reward it is difficult and wearisome. This is the same for all virtue and good works and with all order, laws, obedience to rules and the like. But God rejoices more over one person who truly loves than over a thousand mercenaries and hirelings.

CHAPTER 39

God wills to have Order, Custom, Criteria for Evaluation and other such things in created beings, since those things have no reality without created beings; and there are four types of persons who, each relate differently to Order, Custom, and Law.

As some accurately assert, God is above all custom, standards, and order, and yet gives to all things their custom, standards, order, qualification, and so on. Here is how one should understand this. God wills that all these things should exist, but they cannot exist in God’s Own Self without the created being, because in God’s Own Self these categories: order or disorder, custom or chance, and so on, have no meaning or place. Still, God wills these things both, to be and to be activated, since any word, work, or change must be understood according to evaluative criteria: either order or disorder, or suitability or unsuitability. Obviously, suitability and order are better than unsuitability and disorder.

But you must also note this: there are four types of persons who each relate differently to order, laws, and customs. Some keep them, not for God’s sake nor even to serve their own ends but from constraint. These persons have as little as possible to do with them and consider them a burden and heavy yoke. A second type obey for the sake of reward. These people know nothing other than or better than laws and rules. They think by keeping them they can obtain the kingdom of Heaven and Eternal Life, and they think, indeed, there is no other way to obtain the kingdom of Heaven and Eternal Life. They think the person who attends to and keeps many rules is holy and any one who fails to keep even the smallest rule is lost. This type of person is extremely earnest and they work diligently, but they find the work wearisome. The third type of persons are wicked and false-hearted. They think, and assert, that they are already whole and complete, that they need no rules and consider rules scoff-worthy.

The fourth type of persons are enlightened by the True Light. They do not observe rules for the sake of reward. They neither desire nor expect to to gain anything by keeping rules. Everything they do is for love alone. These people are not anxious and in a hurry to accomplish as much as possible as quickly and thoroughly as possible, like the second type of person. Instead, they do things in peace and in due time. If some small matter is neglected they do not think themselves lost, because although they know that order and suitability is better than disorder, and for that very reason they choose to behave in an orderly way, yet, they also know that salvation is not contingent on their own orderly behavior, so, they are less anxious than others. These people, however, are judged and blamed by both the other parties, for the mercenaries say they neglect their duties and accuse them of being unrighteous, and so on, while the others, (that is, the Free Spirits) hold them in derision, accusing them of clinging to paltry rudiments of spirituality. But the enlightened persons continue in the middle path, which is also the best path, because someone who loves God is more precious to God than a thousand, mercenaries or hirelings, and so are the things they do.

Furthermore, it is important to note that to receive God’s commands, counsel, and all God’s teaching is the privilege of the inward person after she is united with God. And from that union the outward person is without fail taught and ordered by the inward person so that there is no need for outward commandments or teaching. The commandments and laws of human origin have to do with the outward person. They are essential for those who know nothing better. Otherwise they would not know what to do or refrain from doing and they would sink to the level of beasts.

CHAPTER 40

A clear description of the False Light and the things that are appropriately categorized with it.

I have already asserted there is a False Light and now I will tell you more specifically what it is and which things are appropriately categorized with it. Everything that is contrary to the True Light belongs to the False. Anything that belongs to the True Light, by necessity neither aims nor gives consent to deceive or wrong anyone or anything. And it cannot, itself, be deceived. But the False Light is deceived and is a delusion and it deceives others along with itself. For God deceives no one and God wills that no one ever be deceived, and it is same with God’s True Light. The True Light is God, that is to say, it is divine, but the False Light is nature or natural. It is intrinsically characteristic of God that God is neither this thing nor that thing, and in the person whom God has made to be a participant in the divine nature, God never wills, desires or seeks anything except Goodness as Goodness and for the sake of Goodness. This is the sure indication of the presence of the True Light. But to creatures and to nature it is intrinsically characteristic to be something in particular, and to intend and to seek particular things, not simply seeking or intending what is good without any other reason. And just as God and the True Light have no part in self-will, selfishness, or self-seeking, so the I, the Me and the Mine are all constituent of what is natural and the false light, because in all things what is natural and false light seeks itself and its own ends rather than seeking Goodness for the sake of Goodness. This is its property; it is the property of nature and of animality in each of us.

Now notice how it first comes to be deceived; It neither desires nor chooses Goodness as Goodness and for the sake of Goodness, but instead, it desires and chooses itself and its own ends — this rather than the Highest Good. This is an error and is the first deception.

Secondly, it imagines itself to be something it is not. It imagines itself to be God, but it is really nothing more than nature. Yet since it imagines itself to be God it claims for itself that which belongs only to God; and not just that which is God’s when God becomes human, or when God dwells in a Godlike person, but worse — it claims for itself that which belongs to God as God is in eternity, quite apart from any creature. It is said, God needs nothing. God is free. God is not bound to work at all. God is apart by GodSelf, above all things and so on. And all of this is true. God is also unchangeable, unmoved by anything, is without conscience, and anything God does is right. “That’s how I will be,” says the False Light, “ because the more like God one is the better one is. Therefore I will be like God and I will be God and will sit and go and stand at God’s right hand.” This is also just what Lucifer the Evil Spirit said. Now God in Eternity is without contradiction, suffering, and grief. Nothing can hurt or disturb God in Eternity no matter what happens. But when God is made human it is a very different matter.

Simply put, anything that can be deceived by this False Light is deceived. Since everything that can be deceived by it is deceived, including everything that is nature or is a created being, indeed anything that is not God nor comes from God, and since this False Light is itself nature, it is then possible for it to be deceived. So, it becomes deceived by itself in this way: it climbs and rises so high that it imagines itself to be above nature. It imagines it is impossible for nature or any created being to be so high as itself. This is the way it comes to believe itself to be God. This is the way it claims for itself all that belongs to God, especially that which is God’s as God is in eternity rather than when God is made human. It believes and asserts itself to be above all works, words, customs, laws, and order, and above the life that Christ led in the body, the life which Christ has in his holy human nature. Following this line of thought, it claims to remain unmoved by the the works of any created thing, whether the works are good or evil, against God or not, it is all the same to it. It keeps itself aloof from all things, just like God in eternity, and attributes to itself all the things that no created thing can possess, things which belong to God alone, vainly imagining that these things belong to itself. It even believes itself well worthy of all this, and thinks it is just and right that all created things should serve and honor it. So it sees nothing left to contradict it or to cause it suffering or grief, except physical, animal perceptions and whatever grows out of those perceptions. All that remains until the body dies. Furthermore, the False Light imagines and claims that it has moved beyond Christ’s life in the flesh to be like Christ after his resurrection, so that outward things have lost all power to touch it or cause it pain. There are many other strange notions, and false conceits that bloom and grow out of this thinking.

Since the False Light is nature it possesses the property of nature. The property of nature is to seek itself, and in all matters pursue its own self interest, seeking what is most expedient, easy and pleasant to nature and to itself. Since it is deceived, it thinks and asserts that the best thing anyone can do is to seek and do what is best for that one’s self. It refuses to understand any Good but its own sense of Good, which, of course, it thinks is Good. So if one were to talk about the one, true, everlasting Good, the Good which is neither this nor that particular thing, it would consider it contemptible nonsense. This is completely reasonable because nature cannot reach beyond itself. The False Light is merely nature and that is why it cannot reach beyond itself.

Further, this False Light asserts it moved beyond conscience and any sense of sin, so that whatever it does is right. Indeed one false Free Spirit, who was in this error claimed that if he had killed 10 people he should have as little sense of guilt as if he had killed a dog. Briefly: this false and deceived Light, being nature itself, acts according to itself when it avoids everything that is harsh and contrary to nature. And since it is so utterly deceived that it thinks itself to be God, it is ready to swear by all that is holy that it truly knows what is best and that in both belief and practice it has already reached the very summit. This is the reason that it cannot be converted or guided to the right path. In this it is just like the Evil Spirit.

Going further, in so far as this Light imagines itself to be God and takes God’s attributes onto itself, it is Lucifer the Evil Spirit; but in so far as it counts as nothing the life of Christ and any other things that belong to the True Light, things which have been taught and fulfilled by Christ, it is the Antichrist, because it teaches contrary to Christ. And just as this Light is deceived by its own cunning and discernment so everything that is either not God nor of God is deceived by it, that is, everyone who is not enlightened by the True Light and its love. Everyone who is enlighten by the True light can never after be deceived, but anyone who is not and who chooses to walk by the False Light is certainly deceived.

The result of all this is that everyone who does not have in them the True Light is turned in on themselves. They over estimate their own power and value. They strive to bring about their own ends in all matters. And they consider whatever is pleasant and convenient to them to be the best. And they consider to be the wisest of teachers anyone who teaches what agrees with their assessment of what is best, and helps them to attain it. The False Light teaches this very doctrine and shows them all the means for them to attain what they desire so, since they do not know the True Light they follow the False Light. In this way both they and the False Light are deceived together.

It is said that when the Antichrist comes anyone will follow him who does not have the seal of God in his forehead, but whoever has the seal of God will not follow Antichrist. This agrees with what has been said so far. It is certainly true that it is good for a person to desire and come by her own good. But this cannot happen as long as a person is seeking and intending her own good. If a person is to find and come by her own highest good she must lose it in order to find it. This is what Christ said: “Those who love their life will lose it.” This means the person will abandon the desires of the flesh and die to them. She will refuse to obey her own will and the lusts of the body, and instead obey the commands of God, and of those in authority over her. She will not look for her own advantage in either spiritual or natural matters, but seek only the glory of God in all matters. Anyone who loses her life in this way will find it again in Eternal life. That is to say, any goodness, help, comfort, and joy which are in created beings, whether in heaven or on earth, the true lover of God finds already comprehended in GodSelf, in fact, unspeakably more — indeed as much more excellent and complete as God the Creator is better, more excellent, and complete than God’s creatures. Unfortunately, the False Light is deceived by the excellences that are in God’s creatures, because in all things it fails to seek anything but itself and those things which belong to it. This is why it never comes to the right way.

The False Light also says that we should be without conscience or a sense of sin, that it is weakness and foolishness to have anything to do with them. To support this they say that Christ was without conscience or any sense of sin. We answer back that Satan is also without them and is not better because of it. Look carefully at what a sense of sin is. It is our perception of how the will of human persons has turned away from God. (This is what we mean by sin.) And it the fault of human persons, not God, since God is guiltless of sin. Is there anyone, except Christ alone, who knows himself or herself to be free from sin? Hardly any other person would claim this. So the only one who is without a sense of sin is either Christ or the Evil Spirit.

To summarize: where ever the True Light is, there is the true, just life that God loves and values. This is true even if the person’s life is not as perfect as Christ’s, because it is nevertheless modeled and built after Christ’s. The person loves Christ’s life, and everything that is in keeping with decency, order, and all other virtues, while all Self-will, I, Mine, Me, and the like, is sloughed off. The person intends and pursues nothing but Goodness for the sake of Goodness and as Goodness itself. But where the False Light is, people begin disregarding Christ’s life and all virtue, and instead, pursue and strive for what is convenient and pleasant to nature. A false, licentious freedom arises from this, so people stop caring about or paying attention to things of value. The True Light is God’s seed and it brings forth the fruits of God. The False Light is the Devil’s seed and where it is sown the fruits of the Devil grow, in fact, the Devil Himself grows. You will be able to understand what has been said if you take it as seriously as it deserves.

CHAPTER 42

The one who is genuinely to be called a participant in the Divine Nature is illuminated with the Divine Light and inflamed with Eternal Love, because Light and Knowledge are worthless without Love.

If anyone asks, “What is it to be a participant in the divine nature or to be a Godlike person?” we answer like this: it is the person who is impregnated with or illuminated by the Eternal or divine Light and inflamed or consumed with Eternal or divine Love. We have already described the nature of the True Light.

But you must understand that this Light and knowledge are worthless without Love. The point is clear if you consider that although a person can know plainly what virtue and perversity are the person is not virtuous if he does not love virtue. Instead he follows the lure of perversity. But if the person loves virtue he pursues it. He is an enemy of perversity and does not engage it and detests it in others. The person loves virtue so much that even if he were allowed to forgo it, he would not do so. He would continue to practice every virtue even if there were no reward attached to it. He would do it simply out of love for it, because to such a person, virtue is its own reward. The person is content with that reward and would not trade it for any treasure or riches. A person in this state is genuinely virtuous and would not exchange virtue even to gain the whole world. Indeed, he would rather die a miserable death.

This same thing is true with the matter of justice. Many a person who knows full-well what is just or unjust will neither be just nor become just. This is because such a person does not love justice, so he engages in perversity and injustice. If this person loved justice he would not do a unjust thing because he would be revolted by it and feel such indignation toward it anytime he saw it that he would suffer anything to bring it to an end and all persons might become just. Such a person would rather die than do an injustice, all because, and only because he loves justice. To this person justice is its own reward and justice rewards him with justice. This person would rather die a thousand deaths than live as an unjust person. It is the same with truth. The person might know full well what is true or what is a lie, but if the person does not love truth he is not a true person. But if the person loves truth then it is same with truth as it is with justice. The fifth chapter of Isaiah says this about justice: “Ah, you who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”

From this we can see that knowledge and light are of no benefit without Love. We can see this in the Evil Spirit; he perceives and knows good and evil, right and wrong, and so forth, but since he does not love the good he sees he fails to become good as he would if he had any love for the truth and the other virtues he sees. It is certainly true that Love must be guided and informed by Knowledge, but if the Knowledge is not followed by Love it achieves nothing. It is the same with God and divine things. A person might know much about God and divine things, he might even imagine that he sees and understands what God is in GodSelf, but if he does not have Love he will never become Godlike or participate in the divine nature. On the other hand, if there is genuine Love accompanying the knowledge, the person cannot help but cling to God and forsake everything that is not God or of God. He will loath it, fight against it and consider it a cross and a sorrow.

And this Love makes a person so one with God that the person can never-after be separated from God.

CHAPTER 43

A question: Is it possible to know God and yet not love God? And, there are two kinds of Light and Love — a true and a false.

Here is an honest question: Two things stated seem to contradict each other. First, we say if someone knows God but does not love God that person cannot be saved by her knowledge. This sounds like it is possible to know God but not love God. Yet, we also say in another place wherever God is known, God is loved, so that anyone who knows God must certainly love God. How can these thoughts be reconciled? In this matter, you have to bear in mind one thing. We have spoken of two Lights — a True and a False. In the same way there are two kinds of Love, a True and a False. And each kind of Love is guided by its own kind of Light or Reason. The True Light makes True Love, and the False Light makes False Love, because whatever each particular Light regards as best is what it advocates to Love as best and it commands Love to love that thing. And Love obeys and fulfills the command.

As we have asserted already, the False Light is natural and is Nature itself. So, every property that belongs to nature also belongs to the False Light; things like: the Me, the Mine, the Self, and so on. It follows that this Light is deceived in itself and is therefore false, since no I, Me,or Mine, ever came to the True Light or Knowledge undeceived, except once, namely, when God made the human person. And if we are to come to the Simple Truth, the I, Me, Mine, and so on, must be gone and die off. In particular the natural Light has the inclination to know or learn as much as possible; and it delights and glories in its discernment and knowledge. It always longs to know more and more, never arriving at a goal or finding satisfaction. The more it learns and knows the more it delights and glories in what what it learns and knows. When it achieves such a height of knowledge that it thinks it knows and comprehends all things, then, perched on this pinnacle of delight and glory it considers Knowledge to be the best and most excellent of all things and, consequently it teaches Love to love knowledge and discernment as the best and most excellent of all things. When it comes to this, knowledge and discernment become more loved than that which is discerned, because the false, natural Light loves the knowledge and powers, which are itself, more than that which is known. In fact, if it were possible that the false, natural Light could understand the simple Truth, as it is in God and in truth, it still would not abandon its own property, that is, it would not give up itself and its own things. This, then, is the sense in which there can be knowledge without love; without loving what actually is, or without loving that which can be known.

This Light achieves such a lofty height that it futilely thinks it knows God and the pure, simple Truth, and that its self-love is actually participating in God. Now, it is true that God can only be known by God. And since this Light is futilely confident it understands and knows God it also understands itself to be God. It presents itself as God, wants to be accounted as God, thinks of itself as being above all things and comprehending all things, as well worthy of all things, as having a right to all things and as having grown beyond the need for things such as commandments, laws, virtues. It even considers itself to be beyond Christ and a Christian life. It counts these things as irrelevant because it does not think it is merely Christ, but thinks it is the Eternal God. It rejects Christ’s life because it is distasteful and burdensome to nature. Nature wants nothing to do with Christ’s life. On the other hand, to be God in eternity, rather than a mortal human, or to be Christ as he was after his resurrection is easy, pleasant and comfortable to nature and consequently, nature regards it to be the highest value. See how with this false and deluded Love something can be known without being loved, because the seeing and the knowing is more loved than the thing which is seen or known. There is also a kind of learning that is called knowledge. It is when a person acquires information through hearsay, reading, or through great acquaintance with Scripture and then they imagine themselves to know much. They call it knowledge when they can say, “I know this or that.” If you ask, “How do you know it?” they answer with something like, “I have read it in the Scriptures.” This is what they call understanding and

knowing. But it is not knowledge, rather, it is belief. And there are many things that are known, seen, and loved with only this sort of knowing.

There is still another kind of love that is especially false, and that is when something is loved for the sake of a reward. For example, when justice is loved, not for its own sake, but in order to obtain some other thing than justice itself. And when a created thing loves other created things for something they have or loves God for the sake of something that actually belongs to itself this is all false Love. This Love properly belongs to nature, since nature as nature can neither feel nor know any other love than this. If you look closely at it, nature as nature loves nothing but itself. In this way something can be perceived to be good but still not loved.

But true Love is is taught and guided by the true Light and Reason. This true, eternal, and divine Light teaches Love to love nothing but the One true and Perfect Good simply for the sake of the Perfect Good, not for the sake of a reward or in the hope of obtaining anything: simply for the love of Goodness, because it is good and has the right to be loved. And all that is seen with the help of the True Light must certainly also be loved by the True Love. The Perfect Good which we call God cannot be perceived except by the True Light, therefore God must be loved whenever God is seen or made known.

CHAPTER 43

How we can know a person who is made a participant in the divine Nature, what is characteristic of such a person and what are the indications of the False Light and a False Free-Thinker.

Take further notice that when the True Love and True Light are in a person the prefect Good is known and loved for its own sake and as itself, but not in such a way that it loves itself of its own self or as its own self. The one True and Perfect Good can and certainly will love nothing else in itself but the one true Goodness. And since the one true Goodness is itself, it must love itself, but not because it is its self. And the love with which it loves does not originate in its own self-ness. Instead, it comes about like this: the One true Good loves the One Perfect Goodness, and the One Perfect Goodness is loved from the One true and Perfect Good. This is the meaning of the saying, “God does not love GodSelf as God’s self.” Because if there was something better than God, God would love that rather than GodSelf. In this True Light and True Love there is no I, Me, Mine, You and Yours; No designations like these can remain or be meaningful, since the Light perceives and knows that there is a Good which is all Good, above all Good, and encompasses all good things as its own substance. Indeed, without that One Good there is no good thing. So, where this Light is the human person’s goal and aim is not this or that particular thing, nor does it have to do with any designations such as “me” or “you”. The goal and aim are only the One, who is neither “I” nor “you”, nor this nor that, but who is rather above and beyond all “I” and “you”, this and that. In God all Goodness is loved as One Good, according to the saying, "All in One as One, and One in All as All, and One and all Good, is loved through the One in One, and for the sake of the One, for the love that man hath to the One.”

So you see, in such a person all thought of “self”, all self-seeking, self -will and everything that comes from them must be totally lost, surrendered and given over to God, except in as much as they are necessary to make up a person. Anything that happens in a person who is truly Godlike, whether the person herself does it, or it is done to her; everything is done in this Light and Love. Everything comes from it and through it, and has only this Light and Love as its aim. And there is a contentedness and quietness in her so she has no desire to know or have any thing more or less, to live, die, exist or not exist, or any other such desires, because all these things become one and alike to her and she has nothing about which to complain except sin. And we have already described what sin is, namely, to desire or will anything except the One Perfect Good and the One Eternal Will, or to will will anything apart from or contrary to them, or to wish to have a will of one’s own.

All things that proceed from sin like; lies, fraud, injustice, treachery and general iniquity, indeed everything we call sin, come from persons having another will than God and the True Good; for if there were no will but the One Will no sin could ever be committed. So all self-will is sin and all sin springs from self-will and this is the only thing about which a truly Godlike person complains. Yet this one thing is so painful and egregious that the person would die a hundred deaths in agony and shame rather than endure it. Nevertheless the person must endure it until death. And where this pain and grief are missing it is certain that the person is not Godlike nor a participant in the divine nature.

Since in this Light and Love all Good is loved in One and loved as One, and as the One in all things and loved in all things as One and as All, all the things that are genuinely and commonly spoken well of must also be loved; things like, virtue, order, justice, truth, propriety, and so on. And in like manner, everything is loved and praised that is possessed by God, since it is the true Good and is characteristic of God. Everything that is without this Good, or is contrary to it, is a sorrow and a pain, is truly sin, and is hated as sin. The person who lives in the true Light and true Love has the best, most worthy, and excellent life that ever was or ever will be, and therefore cannot but be loved and praised above any other life. This was and is in Christ to the most perfect degree, otherwise he would not be the Christ.

It is the love with which a person loves this excellent life and all goodness that makes her able to endure everything she is called on to do , to go through, or to suffer; indeed anything that is necessary, she can tolerate willingly and with proper dignity no matter how hard it may be to nature. This is the reason Christ says “my yoke is easy and my burden is light” This comes from the love that loves this most excellent life. We can see it in the beloved Apostles and Martyrs. They willingly and gladly suffered everything that was done to them and never asked God that their suffering and tortures be made shorter, lighter or fewer, but only, that might remain steadfast and endure to the end. Truly, everything that is produced by divine Love in a truly Godlike person is so simple, plain and straightforward she could never articulate in speech or in writing an account of her motivations other than to say it is simply so. And anyone who does not have the divine Love cannot even believe in it, so how could such a person come to know it?

In similar manner, the life of the natural person is also impossible to articulate in speech or in writing because the nature of such a person is so active, subtle, and cunning, so complex and multi-variant;

and it continually seeks after and invents so many twists and turns and falsehoods for its own ends that it is impossible to account for the person’s motives.

Since all falsehood is deceived and all deceptions begin in deception it is the same with the false Light and Life, for, as mentioned earlier the one who deceives is also deceived. And in this false Life and illuminated by this false Light one sees everything that belongs to and is characteristic of the Evil Spirit, so much so that they cannot be discerned or distinguished from one another. So the false Light is the Evil Spirit and the Evil Spirit is the false Light. Here is how we can think about this: The Evil Spirit thinks himself to be God, would gladly be God, or at least be thought of as God, and is in this thinking so deceived that he does not even know he is deceived. It is exactly the same with this false Light, and the Love and Life that come from it. Again, just as the Devil would gladly deceive each and every person, lure them to himself and to his works, and use as much art and cunning as necessary to make them like himself so it is with the false Light. And just as no one can turn the Evil Spirit from his own way, so no one this deceived and deceitful Light from its errors. The cause of all this for both of these two, the Devil and Nature, is that in their futile thinking they are confident that they are quite well and convinced they are in no way deceived. This is the worst and most damaging delusion. And in this way the Devil and Nature are one. Where nature is conquered the Devil is also conquered and where nature is not conquered neither is the Devil. So, no matter whether we are talking about the outward life in this world or the inward life of the spirit the false Light continues in its state of blindness and falsehood so it is both derived itself and it deceives others whenever there is opportunity.

From what has been said you can extrapolate so that you understand and perceive more than has been said. Whenever we speak about the “Adam”, disobedience, “the old person”, self-seeking, self-will, self-serving, the “I”, “Me”, “Mine”, nature, falsehood, the Devil, and sin, it is all one and the same thing. They are all contrary to God and remain without God.

CHAPTER 44

Nothing is contrary to God but Self-will, and the person who seeks his own good for his own sake will not find it. Also a person on his own can neither know nor do anything good.

One might ask, is there anything at all that is contrary to God to the true Good? I say, No. Indeed, there is nothing at all without God, except to will things other than what the Eternal Will wills, or to will things contrary to the Eternal Will. Of course, the Eternal Will wills that nothing is loved or willed except the Eternal Goodness. And where such contrary will or love exists, then there is something contrary to God, who is the Eternal Will. In this sense it is true that if someone is without God that person is contrary to God, but in reality there is no Being that is actually contrary to God or the True Good. We need to understand it as if God said, “ Anyone who wills without me, or wills something other than what I will, or something contrary to what I will, wills contrary to me, because my will is that no one would will other than what I will, and that there be no will without me and without my will. This is because just as without me there is no Substance, Life or any created thing, so there should be no will apart from me and without my will.” Truly, just as all beings are one substance in the Perfect Being, and all good is one in the One Being, and so on, and none of these can exist apart from that One, so shall all wills be unified in the One Perfect Will and there shall be no other will apart from that One. Anything otherwise is wrong, contrary to God, and to God’s Will, and is therefore sin. All will apart from God’s Will (that is, self-will) is sin and everything done from self-will is sin. As long as a person pursues his own will and his own highest good he will never find it, simply because it is his and he does it for his own sake. Because as long as he does this he is not seeking his own highest Good, so how can he hope to find it? As long as he does this, he seeks himself and he imagines he himself is the highest Good. But he is not. So anytime he seeks himself he is not seeking the highest Good. But anyone who seeks, loves, and pursues Goodness as Goodness for its own sake, making nothing but Goodness for its own sake his goal, simply for the love of Goodness and not for the love of the “I”, “me,” “mine,” “self” and so on, he will surely find the Highest Good. Because then he is seeking it properly. Any other way of seeking it is an error. This is the way in which the true, Perfect Goodness seeks, loves, and pursues itself and therefore finds itself.

It is profound foolishness when a person or any created being thinks he knows or can accomplish anything from his own resources, especially when he thinks he can know or fulfill anything good in such a way that he then deserves abundance from God or can persuade God. If the person could understand properly he would know such thoughts are an insult to God. But the True and Perfect Goodness has compassion on foolish simple persons who know no better, and arranges things to turn out the best for him, giving him as much of the good things of God as he is able to receive. Still, as we have mentioned earlier, he will neither find no receive the True Good as long as he remains unchanged, because unless the “self” and the “me” are gone he cannot find it or receive it.

CHAPTER 45

Where there is a Christian Life Christ dwells and how Christ’s life is the best and most admirable life that has ever been or ever can be.

Whoever knows and understands Christ’s life knows and understands Christ himself. Likewise, whoever does not understand Christ’s life does not understand Christ Himself. Anyone who believes in Christ certainly also believes that Christ’s life is the best, most excellent life possible. Anyone who does not believe this does not believe in Christ Himself. And to the degree that a person’s life is in harmony with Christ, Christ resides her. But if she is missing one, she is also missing the other. For where the Life of Christ is, there Christ is also. And where the life of Christ is absent Christ is absent. And when a person has Christ’s life she can say along with St Paul, “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” This is the best, most excellent life because God dwells in the person who has it. How could there be any better life? When we speak of obedience, the new person, the True Light, the True Love, or the life of Christ we are speaking of all the same thing. It is all one. Where ever one of these is present they are all there. Where any one is lacking none of them are there, because they are all one in truth and substance. So, let us cling with all our might to whatever brings about the new birth and makes alive in Christ — this— and nothing else. Indeed, let us renounce and flee from anything that may hinder it. Whoever has received this life from the Holy Sacrament has truly and genuinely received Christ. The more of this life she has received, the more of Christ she has received, and the less she has received, the less of Christ she has received.

CHAPTER 46

Complete satisfaction and authentic rest are found only in God, rather than in any created thing. If a person wants to be obedient to God he must also be quietly obedient to created things. And a person who endeavors to love God must love all things in One.

The saying is true: whoever is content to find all her satisfaction in God has enough. And anyone who finds satisfaction is anything, whether it is this particular thing or that particular thing, does not find satisfaction in God. Whoever finds satisfaction in God finds it in nothing else, but only in what is neither “this” nor “that” but finds it in All. For God is One and must be One, and God is All and must be All. What is, and yet is not One, is not God. And what is, and yet is not All or is not above and encompassing All, is also not God, because God is One and is above One. God is also All and is above All. The person who finds full satisfaction in God receives all her satisfaction from One source and from One only as One. A person cannot find satisfaction in God unless, to her, all things are One, and One is All, so that something and nothing are alike. And anywhere this may be found to be the case there would be nothing but true satisfaction.

Continuing along this line, whoever commits herself completely to God, and to obedience to God must also give herself over to all things and be willing to suffer them without resisting, defending herself or expecting comfort. Whoever does not submit herself in this way to all things in One as One does not submit or give herself over to God. Christ himself is our model for this. Whoever is ready and willing to lie still under God’s hand must also lie still under all things in One as One, and in no way personally oppose any suffering. Christ was a person who acted in this way. Anyone who bristles against affliction and refuses to endure it is in fact fighting against God. That is to say, we may not resist anything as if our hearts were declaring war against it. This include both our will and our deeds. We can, however, certainly prevent affliction, avoid it or run from it without committing a sin.

Anyone who is loves God, or wants to love God, loves all things in One as All, One and All,

and One in All as All in One. Anyone who loves some particular thing in a way other than loving it in the One and for the sake off the One is not loving God, because she is trying to love something that is not God. Therefore she loves it more than God. Anyone who who loves a particular thing more than God or even along with God does not love God, because God will be only be loved alone and indeed, can only be loved alone. Truly nothing is worthy of being loved but God alone. And when the true divine Light and Love live in a person that person loves nothing else but God alone, because that person loves God as Goodness and for the sake of Goodness, and all Goodness as One, and one as All, because in reality All is One and One is All in God.

CHAPTER 47

A question: if we are to love all things are we also supposed to love sin?

In light of what I have said, someone may ask the question, “If we are to love all things, are we also love sin?” I answer: No. When I say “all things” I mean all Good; and all that is, is good in so far as it has Being. Even the Devil is good in so far as he has Being. In this sense nothing is evil or not good. But sin is to will, desire or love anything other than what God loves, wills and desires. Willing is not Being and therefore it is not good. Something is good only in so far as it is in God and with God. All things have their Being in God, more truly in God than in themselves, and so all things are good in as much as they have a Being. If it were possible for something not to have its Being in God, it would not be good. But look, the willing and desiring that is contrary to God is not in God, for God cannot will or desire something contrary to GodSelf or other than GodSelf. That is how it can be evil or not good; in fact, it is altogether nothing.

God also loves works, but not all works. Which ones then? The ones done from the teaching and guidance of the True Light and the True Love. Whatever is done from these and in these is done in spirit and in truth. And whatever is done in spirit and truth is of God and God is well pleased by it. But whatever is done from the false Light and the false Love is entirely of the Wicked One; specifically, anything that happens, is done or left undone, anything is the devised or suffered from any other will, desire or love than God’s will, desire or love. This does happen, and it happens without God, is contrary to God, is utterly contrary to good works and is altogether sin.

CHAPTER 48

The way in which we must believe certain Things of God’s Truth before we can ever come to a true Knowledge and Experience of them.

Christ said, “…the one who does not believe,” or will not or cannot believe, “will be condemned.” This is certainly true, because in this present life a person has no knowledge and cannot attempt to gain it unless he first believes. Whoever tries to know before believing can never come to true knowledge. We are not talking about the tenants of the Christian faith since everyone believes them and they are common to every Christian person whether sinful or saved, good or wicked; and these tenants must believed to begin with because without such articulation one could never come to know them. But we are speaking here of a certain Truth that it is possible to know by experience, but which you must believe in before you can know it by experience. Otherwise you will never come to know it truly. This is the faith Christ is speaking of in this saying.

CHAPTER 49

About Self-will and how Lucifer and Adam fell away from God through Self-will.

It has been said that there is nothing so much in hell as self-will and this is certainly true, because there is nothing there besides self-will, and if there were no self-will there would be no Devil and no hell. When it is said that Lucifer fell from Heaven and turned away from God and so on, it means nothing other than that Lucifer insisted on having his own will and would not be at one with the Eternal Will. The same thing was true about Adam in Paradise. When we speak of Self-will we mean to will something other than the One and Eternal Will of God wills.

CHAPTER 50

The way in which this present time is a paradise and the outer court of Heaven and how in this Paradise there is only one forbidden tree, namely self-will.

What is paradise? All things that are; since everything that is, is good and pleasant and it is certainly appropriate therefore to call it a paradise. It is also said that paradise is an outer court of Heaven. In the same way this world is truly an outer court of the Eternal, or of Eternity, especially anything in Time or any temporal thing that either manifests or reminds us of God in Eternity, since created beings are a guide and a path to God and Eternity. In this way this world is an outer court of Eternity and can aptly be called a paradise since that is exactly what it is. In this paradise everything is lawful except one tree and the fruit of that one tree. That is, of all that exists, nothing is forbidden or is contrary to God but one thing alone: Self-will or willing things to be another way than the Eternal Will would have them. Keep this close in mind. God told Adam, meaning every person, “Whatever you are, whatever you do or leave undone, anything that happens, is lawful and it is not forbidden as long as it is not done according to your will or for the sake of your will, but only for the sake of and according to my Will. But everything that done from your own will is contrary to the Eternal Will.”

It is not that every work which is done according to a being’s will is, in itself, contrary to the Eternal Will, but only in so far as a work is done from a different will, or as it from something other than the Eternal and Divine Will.

CHAPTER 51

Why God created Self-will since it is so contrary to God.

Someone is bound to ask: “Since this tree, meaning Self-will, is so contrary to God and to the Eternal Will why did God create it and set it paradise?

Answer: Any person or being that desires to plumb the depths of God’s secret counsel and will, so as to understand them, and would gladly know why God does this, that or the other thing, desires the same thing that Adam and the Devil desired. This desire is seldom from any other motive than sheer pride: the delight of knowing and glorying in having appropriated the knowledge to the self. As long as this desire lasts the truth can never be known and the person is in the same position as the Devil and Adam. A truly humble, enlightened person does not desire that God should reveal God’s secrets. She does not ask things like, why God does this or that, or why God allows this or that or prevents this and that. Instead, a truly humble, enlightened person wants to know only how she may please God and become as nothing to herself, with no will of her own, so that the Eternal Will may live in her, fully possess her without being disturbed by any competing will, and how the Eternal Will may receive everything to which it is entitled by and through her will.

There is, however, another answer to this question. The most excellent and delightful gift bestowed on any creature is perceiving, or Reason, and Will. These two, Reason and Will, are so bound together that wherever the one is so is the other. If it were not for these two gifts there would be only animals that act out of self-preserving instinct rather than sentient beings able to reason and decide. This would be a great loss because then God would never get the honor due God and God would not see GodSelf and God’s attributes manifested in deeds and endeavors. That would mar perfection and subtract from what ought to be. Now, notice, Perception and Reason are created to go along with Will in order that they may instruct both the will and themselves in such a way that neither will nor perception exists unto itself, for the sake of itself, or in order to obey itself. They are not intended to seek their own advantage, nor make use of themselves for their own ends and purposes. They belong to God from whom they proceed. Their purpose is to submit to God and flow back into God, which means becoming to themselves as nothing, that is, in as much as they have self-hood.

Here we must consider the Will itself more specifically. There is an Eternal Will which is in God, and is a first Principle, a foundational matter on which everything else is based, which is before all works and before anything is realized. Human beings (and other created beings) have this same will so that they will certain things and then bring those things to pass. It is characteristic of the Will to will something. What other purpose could it have? It would be futile unless it had some work to do and it must have a created being in order to do the work. So there must be creatures and God wills to have them for the very purpose that the Will can be realized through their means and work since in God the Will is necessarily without work. Therefore the will in the created being, which we call a created will, is just as much God’s as the Eternal Will. The created being does not own it.

Now, since God cannot exercise God’s will, work and cause changes without created beings, God is pleased to do so in and with created beings. The will, then, is not given so that it can be exerted by the created being, but only by God who has every right to work out God’s will by means of the will in a human person. It is remains God’s. And this is how it should be completely and totally with each and every created being: the will should be exerted only by God rather than by the person. In this way it would not be self-will nor would any being will something other than God wills, because God, rather than the being would move the will. In this way the will would be one with the Eternal Will and would flow out into it, even though the human person would retain the sense of liking and disliking, pleasure and pain, and so forth. For whenever the will is exerted there must be a sense of liking and disliking. If things go according to a person’s will the person likes it. If not, then the person dislikes it. And this liking and disliking are not produced by the person, but by God. For whatever the will’s source is, is also the source of the liking and disliking. Since the source of the will is God, rather than any human power, the liking and disliking also come from God. But nothing is found worthy of complaint except what is contrary to God. In like manner, there is no joy except for God and everything that belongs to God and is of God. Again, as with the will, so with perception, reason, gifts, love and all the powers human persons possess; they are all of God, not of human origin. So, whenever the will is totally surrendered to God the rest are in the same way, certainly also surrendered to God. Then God would have what rightfully belongs to God and the person’s will would not be the person’s own. You can see from this that God created the will, but not so that it should be self-will.

But here is what happen: the Devil or Adam, (that is, false nature) comes along and appropriates this will, making it his own and using it for himself and his own ends. This is wrong and a perversion. It is the bite Adam made in the apple. It is forbidden because it is contrary to God. And as long as there is any self-will there can never be true love, true peace or true rest. We can see it played out in both the Devil and in humankind. Whenever this self-will is working, in either time or Eternity, there can never be true blessedness, that is, as long as human persons exercise ownership of the will. If it is not surrendered in this present time, but carried over into eternity, we can foresee that it will never be surrendered, and just as surely there will never be contentment, rest or blessedness. This is what we see in the Devil. If there were no reason or will in created beings, God would remain forever unknown, unloved, un-praised, and unhonored, and all created things would be utterly worthless since they would be of no advantage to God. This is the answer to the initial question. And if anyone were to led to amend his or her ways because of all this I have written, (which is actually succinct and advantageous in God) it would be well-pleasing to God.

When a thing is free no one can call it his or her own. If someone does they commit a wrong. In the whole realm of freedom nothing is as free as the will. Anybody who tries to own it rather than allowing it to remain in its excellent freedom, in its free dignity, and to exercise its complete freedom does a terrible wrong. This is what the Devil, Adam, all who follow them do. But the person who leaves the will in its excellent freedom does right and this is what is done by Christ and all who follow him. Anybody who robs the will of its excellent freedom by appropriating it will necessarily receive the reward, which is to be burdened with cares and troubles, with discontent, disquiet, unrest, and all manner of wretchedness. And all this will last through time and eternity. Contrariwise, anybody who leaves the will in its freedom has content, peace, rest, and blessedness in time and in eternity. Wherever there is a person in whom the will is not enslaved, but continues in excellent freedom there is a truly free person who is not in bondage to anyone. It is of such persons that Christ is referring when he said,“the truth will make you free.” Immediately afterward he says, “if the Son makes you free you will be free indeed.”

Understand also, that when the will has its freedom it can do its proper work, namely, willing. And whenever it chooses with no hinderance whatever it wills it always chooses what is best and most excellent, while hating everything that is not good and most excellent, considering it offensive and grievous. The more free and unhindered the will is the more it is pained, afflicted and grieved by evil, injustice, iniquity, and everything that is a perversion and sin. We see this in Christ whose will was the purest, least bound and unfettered of any person who has ever lived. Likewise in his human nature he was the most free and single-minded of all created beings and yet he felt the deepest grief, pain, and indignation at sin that any created being ever experienced. But when people claim freedom for their own as a way of avoiding sorrow or indignation at sin and what is contrary to God, but instead assert that we should be unconcerned and carefree and we should in this present time be like Christ was after his resurrection; — this is no true freedom springing from the true divine Light. It is a natural, unrighteous, false, and deceitful freedom that springs from a natural, false, and deluded light.

If there were no self-will there would be no ownership. In heaven there is no ownership. That is why true satisfaction, true peace and all blessedness is there. If anyone in heaven took it upon herself to call something her own she would be thrust out and directly into hell. She would become an evil spirit. In hell everyone will have self-will and that is why there is all manner of misery and wretchedness. It is the same here on earth. If someone in hell would give up self-will and claim no ownership of anything she would leave hell and go to heaven. Now, in this present time human persons are set between heaven and hell and may turn toward whichever one the person wills. The more a person has of ownership the more that person has of hell and misery. The less a person has of self-will, the less of hell and the nearer that one is to the Kingdom of Heaven. If a person could be completely rid of self-will and stand up free and without restraint in God’s true light and if she could persevere in it, this person would be certain of the Kingdom of Heaven. But that person is a slave who has something or seeks something or longs for something of her own. And the person who has nothing of her own, seeks nothing, and longs for nothing of her own is free, unrestrained, and in bondage to no one.

Everything said here Christ taught in words and fulfilled in deeds for his 33 years. He taught it to us succinctly, when he said “follow me.” But whoever wants to follow him must forsake all things, because he himself, renounced all things more completely than anyone ever has. Also whoever wants to come after him must take up the cross. And the cross is nothing other than Christ’s life, because to fallen nature Christ’s life is a bitter cross. So Christ said, “whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me and cannot be my disciple.” But in false freedom, fallen nature is deceived into thinking it has already forsaken all things, even though in reality it wants nothing to do with the cross, since it is convinced it has already grown beyond the cross and no longer needs it. But if fallen nature had ever truly tasted the cross it would never part with it again. Anybody who believes in Christ must certainly believe everything written here.

CHAPTER 52

How we are to understand the 2 sayings of Christ: “No one comes to the Father except through me” and “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me”

Christ says: “No one comes to the Father except through me.” Now take notice of how we must come to the Father through Christ. A person uses everything within his power to keep a vigilant watch over himself and everything that is his, inside and out, and directs, governs and guards his heart so that no will, desire, love, longing, opinion, or thought can spring up in his heart and find a home there, except those that are proper for God and which would seem fitting if GodSelf were made human. And when this person becomes aware of any thought or intention rising up within him that does not belong to God and is not fitting for God he resists it,and roots it out as quickly and thoroughly as he can.

This is the rule by which he must order his outward behavior, whether he works or not, speaks or keeps silent, is awake or asleep, stands still or goes somewhere. In short: in all that he does, whether it has to do with his own business or his interaction with other persons, he must keep diligent guard on his heart lest he does something, becomes distracted by something, or allows something to spring up and live in or near him, or lest something be done in him or through him that would be contrary to and inappropriate for God and would seem unfitting if GodSelf were made a human person.

You see, of the person in whom all this is true, whatever the person has in them or does as outward action would be of God. Such a person would in his life be a follower of Christ more fully than we can understand or express. For if person lived such a life all his acts and movements would be through Christ because he would be a follower of Christ and he would also come with and through Christ to the Father. Such a person would be a servant of Christ since whoever follows after Christ is his servant as Christ himself says: “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.” And a person who is this kind of servant and follower of Christ will certainly come to the place where Christ is, that is to the Father. Christ himself also says, “Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am…” See, the one who walks this path, “enter[s] the sheepfold by the gate,” that is they enter into eternal life, and “the gatekeeper opens the gate for [this person] But anyone enters some other way, that is, if they have the futile desire to come to the Father or Eternal blessedness in some way other than through Christ, indeed if a person even thinks it is possible, that person is sadly deceived because they are simply on the wrong path and they are not entering through the right door. So the gatekeeper will not open the door, because the person is a their and a murderer. Which is exactly what Christ says. You can decide for yourself if a person can be in the right way and enter by the right door if he is living in lawless freedom or license, or in disregard of ordinances, of virtue or vice, order or disorder and so on. We do not see any of this in Christ of in his true followers

CHAPTER 53

Consider, now the other saying of Christ. “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me”

Christ has also said ““No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me” Notice here how I understand the word Father. The Father is the Perfect, Simple Good, which is All, and above and beyond All, without which there is no Substance and besides which there is no other Substance than this Perfect Simple Good. Without it there is also no true Good nor any good works which have been done or ever will be done. Since the Perfect Simple Good is All it is also in All and above All. It is utterly incomprehensible to created beings in their creatureliness and can in no way be understood by them. Anything which a created being can conceive of or understand (in its creatureliness) is necessarily another created thing, a thing in particular. But the Simple Perfect Good is not a created being nor a thing in particular which a created being can understand, comprehend or name. If it was it would not be the All. It would not be the incomparable One. And it would therefore not be Perfect. But look what happens! When the Perfect, unnamable, Good flows into a Person, a Person capable of bringing forth, and this Person does bring forth the Only Begotten Son within whom is the very Person who brought forth the Son, we call that Person the Father.

This is how the Father draws persons to Christ. When a flash or glimpse of the Perfect Good is discovered or revealed in a person’s soul that soul produces a yearning to move toward the Perfect Goodness and to unite with the Father. The stronger the yearning grows the more it is revealed to the soul. The more it is revealed the more the soul is drawn toward the Father and the more the soul’s desire is excited. In this way the soul is enlivened and drawn into a union with the Eternal Goodness. It is the Father who is doing the drawing. In this way the soul is taught by the Father that the only way to enter into union with the Father is through the life of Christ. So, now the soul begins putting on the life of Christ about which we have already spoken.

Now, look at the meaning of these two sayings of Christ. The one, “No one comes to the Father except through me”; that is through living my life, as it has been explained above. The other saying, “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me” that is, no one imitates my life or follows me unless the person is moved to do so and is attracted by my Father — the Perfect, Complete, and Simple Good. St Paul writes about this Good, saying “when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.” He means, to the soul in which this Perfect, Complete Good is known, felt, and tasted, (to the degree that it can be in this present time) all created things are counted as nothing compared to this Perfect Complete One. And this is completely true since without the incomparable Perfect One there is neither true Good nor true Substance. So then anyone who has, knows, or loves the Perfect One has and knows all goodness. What else could such a person want? Of what value is everything that “is partial” to such a person when all parts are united in the Perfect, in One Substance?

What has been said so far concerns the outward life and is a good path to access the true inward life, but the inward life begins after this. Once a person has tasted that which is perfect, at least as much as it is possible in this present time, all created things including the person herself become as nothing to her. When she truly perceives that the Perfect One is All and above All, she will necessarily be attracted to follow after the Perfect One and she will ascribe all that is good, such as Substance, Life, Knowledge, Reason, Power, and so on, to the Perfect One alone rather than to any created thing. And as a matter of course will also never afterward claim anything for her own that we can call good, neither Substance, Life, Knowledge, nor Power. Nothing she does or refrains from doing amounts to any such good. This is how the person becomes so poor that she is nothing to herself, just as all created, partial things become as nothing to her. This is when there begins in the person a true inward life, in which from then onward God Own Self lives in the person so that there is nothing left in the person except what is God’s or is of God. There is nothing left that presumes anything to itself. This is how, in a human person, GodSelf alone, the One Eternal Perfectness, lives, knows, works, loves, wills, does, and refrains from doing. And this is exactly as it ought to be in a person. When it is not things are amiss with the person and she still has far to travel.

Additionally, a good way to access this internal life is to always regard what is best as most precious, and in all circumstances prefer what is best, hold fast to it and unite oneself with it. First of all as this pertains to created beings. But what is best in creatures? Beyond any doubt, it is that in which the Eternal Perfect Goodness and everything associated with it shines most brightly, works most powerfully and is most intimately known and loved. And what is it that so clearly is of God and belongs to God? I say it is anything we, in justice and truth, call good or could potentially call good.

So in the realm of creation, after a person, with singleness of heart, is steadfastly devoted to the best she can perceive, she comes to what is better and better until finally she finds and experiences that the Eternal Good is a Perfect and Complete Good, far above all created good, to which quantity and measure have no relevance or meaning. The only way to treat what is best as most precious to us and the only way to follow after it is if we love the One Eternal Good alone and esteem it above everything else. We must hold fast to God alone and unite as closely with God as we are able. And if we ascribe all goodness to the One Eternal Good, as we truly and rightly should, then we should just as truly and rightly ascribe to the One Eternal Good our entire course, the beginning, middle and end of it, so that nothing is left that can be ascribed to a human or any other created being. This is truly how it should be, no matter what anyone may say.

This is the path toward a true inward life. what could further happen to or might be further revealed to the soul and what one’s soul’s life might be then on no one can say or guess. Such things have never been uttered by human lips or conceived of in a human’s heart.

In this lengthy discourse we have concisely included all the things which ought truly and rightly be fulfilled, namely, that a human person should claim nothing for her own, and should neither crave, will, love or aim toward anything but God alone and the things that are like God, that is to say, the One, Eternal, Perfect Goodness.

But if a person is not this way, that is, if a person takes something for herself, or wills, purposes, or craves any particular thing, no matter what it is, other than, or along side of, the Eternal and Perfect Goodness which is God, that person has gone too far and has caused a great injury and the person is hindered from a complete life so that she can never reach the Perfect, Complete Good unless she first forsakes all thing, beginning with herself. No person can serve two masters who are contrary to one another. To have the one you must let the other go. So it is, if the Creator is to enter in, the creature must go. This is certain.

CHAPTER 54

A person must not seek what is his own in either spiritual or natural matters, but must seek only the honor of God, and a person must enter into Eternal Life by the right Door, namely by Christ.

It is a high enough aim, if such an aim is even possible, for a person to try to be to God as a person’s own hand is to himself. This is my faithful advice which I will certainly stand by. I mean, let a person work and wrestle with all his might to obey God and God’s commandments so thoroughly, at all times and in all matters, that there is nothing in the person, spiritual or natural, that opposes God. In this way let this person’s whole soul and body with all their faculties are ready and willing to do and be what God has created them to do and be; as ready as a person’s hand to do the will of its owner. The hand is so completely in the person’s power that in the twinkling of an eye he moves it any direction he wills. And when we find that we are not as obedient as the hand we must give our total effort to amend our state; And we must do this from love not fear so that in every single thing we seek and aim for the glory and praise of God alone. We must not seek our own advantage in spiritual or natural matters. It must be this way if it is going to be well with us. Indeed every creature rightly and truly owes this to God. Human beings especially owe this to God since God ordained that all creatures be subject to and servants of human beings. Humans then, certainly ought to be subject to and servants of God alone.

When a person has come as far as all this, and has worked so well that he begins to think and have confidence that he is standing firm, then he should beware of the Devil who can slop pollution and bad seed on a person’s heart. Nature will try to take its own comfort, rest, peace, and delight in the prosperity of his soul. This is how he will fall into a foolish, lawless freedom and licentiousness which is completely alien to and at war with a true life in God. And this is what will happen to the person who has not entered or has refused to enter by the right Way and right Door (which is Christ as we have already said) but instead has imagined could or would come in any other way to the highest truth. This person might believe that he has attained the highest truth, but he is wrong.

Our witness to this is none other than Christ who declared, “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit.” A thief because he has robbed God of the honor and glory that belong to God alone and has taken them to himself, since he intends and seeks his own advantage. A murderer because he slays his own soul by taking away the soul’s life, which is God. For just as the body lives by the soul, the soul lives by God. He also murders all who follow his doctrine and example. For Christ says, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.” and again Christ says “Why do you call me ‘Lord? as if he were saying it will be of no benefit to you in Eternal life. Again Christ says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” And he also says, “If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” And what are the commandments? “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” These two commandments comprehend all the others.

There is nothing more precious to God or more profitable to human persons than humble obedience. In the eyes of God one good work done from true obedience is of more value than a hundred thousand done from self-will, which is contrary to obedience. The person who has this obedience need have no dread of God because such a person is on the right path and following Christ.

May Jesus Christ our Lord, who gave up his will to his Heavenly Father help us also to deny ourselves, give up our own wills, forsake and renounce everything for God’s sake, die to ourselves and live to God and God’s will alone. To our Lord Jesus Christ be blessing forever and ever. Amen.

The End