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

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

God because of his exellence he may rightly be called Nothing.
Scotus Erigena

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

Blessed is he who has won
to the heart of the universe;
he is beyond good and evil.
But that is to much for ordinary humanity to attain; it is very good second best to know the gods of the country, to live the life of the country.
Virgil
(Georgics 11.490ff)

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

Of all forms and manners of knowledge
the soul must strip and void itself
so that there may be left in it no kind
of impression of knowledge, nor trace of aught soever,
but rather the soul must remain barren and bare,
as if these forms had never passed through it,
and in total oblivion and suspension.
St.John of the Cross

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

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

Christina Rosetti

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

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

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

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

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

The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of divine union. For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for until the cord be broken the bird cannot fly. So the soul, held by the bonds of human affections, however slight they may be, cannot, while they last, make its way to God.
St. John of the Cross

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

The soul, having entered the vast solitude
of the Godhead, happily loses itself;
and enlightened by the brightness of most lucid darkness, becomes through knowledge as if without knowledge, and dwells in a sort of wise ignorance."
Louis of Blois
(Spiritual Mirror ch.XI)

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

Do thou, in the intent practice of
mystic contemplation,
leave behind the senses and the
operations of the intellect, and all things
that the senses or the intellect can percieve,
and all things which are not and
things which are, and strain upwards
in unknowing as far as may be
towards the union with Him who is
above all being and knowledge.
For by unceasing and absolute
withdrawal from thyself and
all things in purity, abandoning
all and set free from all,
thou wilt be borne up to the
ray of the Divine Darkness
that surpasses all being.
Pseudo-Dionysius
Mystical Theology

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

The soul that is attached to anything,
however much good there may be in it,
will not arrive at the liberty of divine union.
For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird,
it matters not, if it really holds it fast;
for until the cord be broken
the bird cannot fly.
So the soul, held by the bonds
of human affections,
however slight they may be,
cannot, while they last,
make its way to God.
St. John of the Cross

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are Godīs bliss,
for in us
He enjoyeth without end.
Lady Julian

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

m

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

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

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

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

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

Jejune and barren speculations
may unfold the plicatures
of Truths garment but they
cannot discover her lovely face.
John Smith, the Platonist

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

The poem is called "High Flight";
it was written by John Gillespie Magee

Jr., who was killed in the
Battle of Britain at age 19.
It reads:

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds -- and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of -- wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hovering there,

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long delirious, burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

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

Palgrave
(Golden Treasury)