Paul rose from the ground, seeing nothing

Surrexit autem Saulus de terra apertisque oculis nihil videbat (Acts 9): "Paul rose from the ground, and when his eyes were opened he saw nothing." I quote this in Latin because it comes from St Luke's account of St Paul. It says that Paul rose from the ground with open eyes, seeing nothing. The words can be read four ways. One is that when he rose he was staring wide-eyed at nothing, that nothing being God, since he would call the vision of God a nothing. Another reading is that when he got up he saw nothing but God. The third is that he saw nothing but God in all things. The fourth is that in the divine vision he saw all things as nothing. Before this he tells how light suddenly came from heaven and threw him to the ground.

Notice that he says the light came from heaven. According to our teachers, though heaven is full of light it does not shine. The sun is full of light and shines because of it. Our teachers teach that fire gives off no light at all in the simple, natural perfection of its highest state. Its nature is too pure for any eye to see in any way. It is so fine, so unlike the eye, that if it were right in front of us we could not be made to see it. And yet we do see it taken up by different things, such as a lump of coal or a piece of wood.

By the light of heaven we see the light that is God, which no human mind can reach. As St Paul says: "God dwells in light that no one can approach." He says, "God is light unreachable." There is no way in to God. No one still climbing, still increasing in grace and in light, has ever yet arrived in God. God is not a light that grows by degrees: we do not reach him by growing. While the growing is going on, God is not seen. When God is seen, it is in the light that is God himself. A master says: in God there is no more or less, no this or that. While we are on the way, we are not there.

He says, "A light from heaven shone around him." This means his whole soul was taken hold of. A master says that in this light all the powers of the soul are lifted up and raised to a higher power, both the outward senses we see and hear with and the inner senses we call thoughts. The reach of these and how deep they go is remarkable. I can think about things overseas as easily as things close at hand. Above thought comes the intellect that seeks. It goes looking around, casting its net here and there, gaining and losing. Above the seeking intellect there is another intellect that does not seek but rests in its pure, simple being within the light. And I say it is in this light that all the powers of the soul are lifted up. Senses rise into thoughts. How high, how deep these are, no one knows but God and the soul.

Our theologians teach, and it is a hard question, that angels know nothing of thoughts unless the thoughts take wing and rise up into the seeking intellect, and this seeking intellect rises further into the intellect that does not seek, which is the pure light in itself. This light holds all the powers of the soul. So he says, "The heavenly light surrounded him."

One master says that anything which flows out from itself is free from these lower things. God flows into all creatures without being touched by any of them. He does not need them. God is at work in nature, and nature's first work is the heart. For this reason some teachers would claim the soul is entirely in the heart and flows out from there as life into the other parts of the body.

This is not so. The soul is whole in each part. It is true that her chief work is in the heart. The heart, being in the middle, is protected on all sides, just as heaven is kept safe from outside influence and intrusion. It holds all things. It moves all things and is itself unmoved. Not even fire, high as it stands in its own highest state, can reach up and touch the heavens.

In the light that surrounded him he fell to the ground, and when his eyes were opened he saw, with open eyes, all things as nothing. And in seeing all things as nothing he was seeing God. Notice here what the soul says in the Song of Songs: "By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loves: I sought him and did not find him." She sought him in her bed, meaning that anyone who clings to anything short of God lies too narrow a bed. God's whole creation is all too small for him. She says, "I sought him all night long." There is no night without light, only the light is hidden. The sun shines in the night even though it is screened from view. By day it shines and outshines every other light. So it is with the light of God: it blinds and puts out every other light. Our hopes set on created things, all of these are night. What I mean is that nothing we find in any creature is more than a shadow and a darkness. Even the light of the highest angel, high as it is, does not light up the soul. Every light but the first light is darkness, is night. By it she cannot find God. "I rose and sought him everywhere, I went through the broad streets and the alleys. The watchmen" (the angels) "found me, and I asked them, 'Have you not seen him whom my soul loves?'" But they did not answer, perhaps because they could not grasp him. "It was but a little while after I had passed them that I found him whom my soul loves." This little, this small thing by which she missed him, has often been the subject of my teaching. The one for whom mortal things are not entirely trivial and as nothing will not find God.

"Having passed by a little," she says, "I found him whom I sought." When God pours into the soul and fills her, and you take him as a light, or a state, or a gift, or whatever you know about him, that is not God. We have to go beyond the little, let go of whatever has been added on, and know God as one. She says, "When I had passed by a little I found him whom my soul loves."

We are fond of saying, "him whom my soul loves." But he is far above the soul, and she does not even name her love. There are five reasons why she does not name him. One is that God has no name. Any name she gave him would need to be the right one, and God is beyond every name, no one can put him into words. A second reason is that in fainting away into God for love, the soul is aware of nothing but love. She imagines everyone experiences him this way. She is amazed that anyone could find him to be anything other than pure love. Third, she has no time to name him. Love leaves her no time for any other word.

Fourth, perhaps she thinks he has no other name than love. In love she speaks every name. She says, "I rose up, I went through the broad streets and the alleys. And when I had passed by a little I found him whom my soul loves."

"Paul rose from the ground, wide-eyed, seeing nothing." I cannot see what is one. He saw nothing, that is, God. God is nothing and God is one. Whatever has something is also nothing. What God is, he is altogether. As Dionysius says about this light, speaking of God: he is beyond nature, beyond life, beyond light. He will allow him to be neither this nor that, but makes him out to be something beyond them that I cannot name. Whatever can be seen, whatever can come within your grasp, is not God, because God is not this or that. Whoever says that God is here or there, do not believe him. The light that God is shines in darkness. God is the true light. To see it one has to be blind and to strip God bare of things. A master says: to argue about God by way of likeness is to argue falsely about him. But to argue about God by way of nothing is to argue soundly about him. When the soul is brought down to one and arrives there by letting go of herself entirely, she finds God there, as it were, in a nothing. It appeared to one soul, as in a dream, though she was awake, that she was pregnant with nothing, like a woman carrying a child, and in this nothing God was born, the fruit of the nothing. God was born in the nothing. So he says, "He rose from the earth, wide-eyed, looking at nothing." He had a vision of God in the place where there are no creatures. He saw all creatures as nothing because he had the whole being of creatures within him. He is the being that contains all beings.

There is another thing he means by saying, "he saw nothing." According to our masters, any perception of outside things brings with it some intrusion from them, some impression at least. To form an idea of a thing, a stone for instance, I do not take into my mind its coarsest part, that I leave outside. As it exists in the ground of my soul, where it is at its noblest and best, it is only a kind of idea. Things my soul perceives from outside carry something of the outside with them. My perception of a creature in God carries nothing but God alone, because in God there is nothing but God. When I see all creatures, I see nothing. He saw God where creatures are not.

A third reason why he saw nothing. Nothing was God. A master says: creatures in God are as nothing, because he holds in himself the whole being of creatures. He is the being that holds all beings. The master says: nothing less than God, however close it might stand to him, is without some trace of something foreign. The master says an angel knows himself and God without anything in between. In knowing other things there comes something from outside, some interference still, however small. If we are to know God it must be without anything in between, nothing foreign can come in the middle. When we see God in his own light it happens privately, safe from the slightest intrusion of created things. Then we know eternal life directly.

"Seeing nothing, he saw God." The light that is God flows and darkens every other light. Of this Job says: "He commands the sun not to shine, and he seals up the stars as with a seal." Wrapped in this light he could see nothing else. His whole soul was caught up, fixed on the light that is God to the exclusion of everything else, and this is a lesson for us, for while we are taken up with God we take little notice of what happens outside us.

Fourth, he saw nothing because the light that is God is pure, without mixture. This shows that what he saw was the true light, since there was nothing else there. By light he simply means that he saw nothing with his open eyes. His seeing nothing was itself his seeing the divine nothing. St Augustine says: when he saw nothing, he saw God. According to St Paul, whoever sees only by being blind sees God. As St Augustine says, God is the true light, the keeper of the soul, nearer to her than she is to herself, and for the same reason, when the soul turns her back on the things that pass away, God must shine into her. This soul knows neither love nor care, she has no thought of them. The soul who does not go out to things outside comes home to rest in her own undivided pure light. She has no love, no fear, no care. Knowledge is the basis, the foundation of all being. Love has no hold except through knowledge. When the soul is blind and can see nothing else, then she sees God, it cannot be otherwise. A master says: the eye at its clearest, having no color of its own, sees every color because, in its place in the body, it must be free of all color for us to see colors through it. In colorless things all colors are seen, even down in one's feet. God is something that holds everything within it. For God to be seen by the soul, she has to be blind. So he says, he saw the nothing whose light all lights are, whose being all beings are.

The bride says in the Song of Songs: "When I had passed by a little I found him whom my soul loves." The little she had passed was all creatures. Whoever does not put these behind him will not find God. And she also means that however small, however pure the thing by which I know God, it still has to go. Even the light that truly is God, if I take it where it plays on my soul, is something foreign to him. I must take it at its source. I cannot truly see the light that falls on the wall unless I turn my gaze to where it comes from. But if I take it at its source I lose its effect. I ought to take it neither where it falls, nor where it breaks out, nor yet

as brooding in itself; these are all mere modes. We must take God in modeless mode and unconditioned essence, for he is free from mode. St Bernard says: He who would know you, God, must measure you with no measure. May it please God that we attain that understanding which is wholly without mode and without measure. So help us God. Amen.