(7) The whole Being of God is contained in God alone. The whole of humanity is not contained in one man, for one man is not all men. But in God the soul knows all humanity, and all things at their highest level of existence, since it knows them in their essence. Suppose any one to be in a beautifully adorned house: he would know much more about it than one who had never entered therein, and yet wished to speak much about it. Thus, I am as sure, as I am of my own existence and God's, that, if the soul is to know God, it must know Him outside of time and place. Such a soul will know clearly how near God's kingdom is.

(59) And where then would or should the soul of man rather be, than with its King and Redeemer JESUS CHRIST? For near and afar off in God is one thing, one comprehensibility, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, everywhere all over.

(25) And though indeed that is united with thy heaven as one body, and so together is but the one body of God, yet thou art not in that very place which is become a creature, aloft, many hundred thousand miles off; but thou art in the heaven of this world, which containeth also in it a deep, such as is not of any human number (or is not circumscriptive).

(66) But the holy God is hidden in the centre of all these things in his heaven, and thou canst neither see nor comprehend him; but the soul comprehendeth him, and the astral birth comprehendeth but half; for the heaven is the partition between love and wrath. That heaven is everywhere, even in thyself.

(56) Where, now, would the soul of man rather be at the day of regeneration, than in its father, that is, in the body which has generated it? [Note, Christ's not being ascended to his Father]

(41) For the conversation of the holy soul is in heaven, and though indeed it converseth in the body on earth, yet it is always continually with its Redeemer JESUS CHRIST, and eateth as a guest with him. Note this!

(49) Now if God was there then, who has thrust him out from thence or vanquished him, that he should be there no more? But if God is there, then he is indeed in his heaven, and, moreover, in his Trinity.

(58) Now God is the same in one place as he is in another; God is everywhere the Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost.

(46) For the word is in thy heart [Deut. xxx. 14], [Rom. x. 8], and qualifieth or uniteth with the soul, as if it were one being; and if thy soul stands in the love, then it also is one being. And, thou may say, that according to thy soul thou sittest in heaven, and livest and reignest with God. [Understand, according to the spirit of the soul, with the image out of the animated or soulish fire.]

(3) Everything settles in its own appropriate place; now God's proper place is that of oneness and holiness; these come from sanctification; therefore God must of necessity give Himself to a sanctified heart.

(11) If, then, abstracting all that belongs to bodies and things called incorporeal, we cast ourselves into the greatness of Christ, and thence advance into immensity by holiness, we may reach somehow to the conception of the Almighty, knowing not what He is, but what He is not. And form and motion, or standing, or a throne, or place, or right hand or left, are not at all to be conceived as belonging to the Father of the universe, although it is so written.

(7) The Father and the Son have one Will, and that Will is the Holy Ghost, Who gives Himself to the soul so that the Divine Nature permeates the powers of the soul so that it can only do God-like works. Just as a spring, which perpetually flows and waters the roots of the flowers, so that the flowers bloom and receive their colours from the water of the spring, so the Godhead imparts Itself to the capacities of the soul that it may grow in the likeness of God. The more that the soul receives of the Divine Nature, the more it grows like It, and the closer becomes its union with God. It may arrive at such an intimate union that God at last draws it to Himself altogether, so that there is no distinction left, in the soul's consciousness, between itself and God, though God still regards it as a creature. Wherefore let yourselves not be misled by the light of nature. The higher the degree of knowledge which the soul attains to in the light of grace, the darker seems to it the light of nature.

If the soul would know the real truth it must examine itself, whether it has withdrawn from all things, whether it has lost itself, whether it loves God purely with His love and nothing of its own at the same time, so that it may not be separated from Him by anything, and whether God alone dwells in it. If it has lost itself, it is as when the Virgin Mary lost Christ. She sought Him for three days, and yet was sure that she would find Him. All the while Christ was in the highest class in the school of His Father, unconscious of His mother's seeking Him. Thus happens it to the noble soul which goes to God to school, and learns there what God is in His essence, and what He is in the Trinity, and what He is in man, and what is most acceptable to Him. St Augustine saith that the righteousness of God in the Godhead and in the Trinity and in all creatures is the source of the chief joy which is in heaven. God in human nature is a lamp of living light, and "the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not." The darkness must ever more flee the light, as the night flees day.

Thus the soul learns to know God's will. St Paul saith, "This is God's will, our sanctification." And this is our sanctification, to know what we were before time; what we are in time, and what we shall be after time. Thus the soul loses itself in these three, and recketh naught of the body, till it comes to it in the temple, and obeys it without murmuring. The Father is a revelation of the Godhead, the Son is an image and countenance of the Father, and the Holy Ghost is an effulgence of that countenance, and a mutual love between Them, and these properties They have always possessed in Themselves. The Three Persons have stooped out of pity down to human nature, and the Son became man, and was the most despised man on the earth, and suffered pain at the hands of the creatures whom He Himself created with the Father, through Whose will He became man. Thus was Christ till His death, and when He rose from the dead then was seen the most despised of all men united with the Godhead in the Person of Christ.

(52) Behold! he, in whom it should be thus, whatever he had within, or did without, would be all of God, and the man would be in his life a follower of Christ more truly than we can understand or set forth. And he who led such a life would go in and out through Christ; for he would be a follower of Christ: therefore also he would come with Christ and through Christ unto the Father. And he would be also a servant of Christ, for he who cometh after Him is His servant, as He Himself also saith: “If any man serve Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be.”55 And he who is thus a servant and follower of Christ, cometh to that place where Christ Himself is; that is, unto the Father. As Christ Himself saith: “Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am.”56 Behold, he who walketh in this path, “entereth in by the door into the sheepfold,” that is, into eternal life; “and to him the porter openeth”;57 but he who entereth in by some other way, or vainly thinketh that he would or can come to the Father or to eternal blessedness otherwise than through Christ, is deceived; for he is not in the right Way, nor entereth in by the right Door.

(63) And in this heaven dwelleth the man that feareth God, even with and in the living body; for that heaven is as well in man as in the deep above the earth. As is the deep above the earth, so is man also, both in love and wrath, till after the departure of the soul; but when the soul departeth from the body, then it abideth either in the heaven of love only, or only in the heaven of wrath.

(24) Moreover there are yet other ways to the lovely life of Christ, besides those we have spoken of: to wit, that God and man should be wholly united, so that it can be said of a truth, that God and man are one. This cometh to Pass on this wise. Where the Truth always reigneth, so that true perfect God and true perfect man are at one, and man so giveth place to God, that God Himself is there and yet the man too, and this same unity worketh continually, and doeth and leaveth undone without any I, and Me, and Mine, and the like; behold, there is Christ, and nowhere else. Now, seeing that here there is true perfect manhood, so there is a perfect perceiving and feeling of pleasure and pain, liking and disliking, sweetness and bitterness, joy and sorrow, and all that can be perceived and felt within and without. And seeing that God is here made man, He is also able to perceive and feel love and hatred, evil and good and the like. As a man who is not God, feeleth and taketh note of all that giveth him pleasure and pain, and it pierceth him to the heart, especially what offendeth him; so is it also when God and man are one, and yet God is the man; there everything is perceived and felt that is contrary to God and man. And since there man becometh nought, and God alone is everything, so is it with that which is contrary to man, and a sorrow to him. And this must hold true of God so long as a bodily and substantial life endureth. Furthermore, mark ye, that the one Being in whom God and man are united, standeth free of himself and of all things, and whatever is in him is there for God’s sake and not for man’s, or the creature’s. For it is the property of God to be without this and that, and without Self and Me, and without equal or fellow; but it is the nature and property of the creature to seek itself and its own things, and this and that, here and there; and in all that it doeth and leaveth undone its desire is to its own advantage and profit. Now where a creature or a man forsaketh and cometh out of himself and his own things, there God entereth in with His own, that is, with Himself.

(18) Now some of the things said should bear a sense peculiar to themselves. So understand, for instance, what I'm going to say. All are in God, [but] not as lying in a place. For place is both a body and immovable, and things that lie do not have motion. Now things lie one way in the bodiless, another way in being made manifest. Think, [then,] of Him who doth contain them all; and think, that than the bodiless naught is more comprehensive, or swifter, or more potent, but it is the most comprehensive, the swiftest, and most potent of them all.

(3) Above thyself thou art: for why, thou attainest to come thither by grace, whither thou mayest not come by nature. That is to say, to be oned to God, in spirit, and in love, and in accordance of will. Beneath thy God thou art: for why, although it may be said in manner, that in this time God and thou be not two but one in spirit—insomuch that thou or another, for such onehead that feeleth the perfection of this work, may soothfastly by witness of Scripture be called a God—nevertheless yet thou art beneath Him. For why, He is God by nature without beginning; and thou, that sometime wert nought in substance, and thereto after when thou wert by His might and His love made ought, wilfully with sin madest thyself worse than nought, only by His mercy without thy desert are made a God in grace, oned with Him in spirit without departing, both here and in bliss of heaven without any end. So that, although thou be all one with Him in grace, yet thou art full far beneath Him in nature.

(67) Now when thou worshippest or prayest to the holy God in his heaven, then thou worshippest or prayest to him in that heaven which is in thee, and that same God breaketh through in thy heart with his light; and in his light the Holy Ghost breaketh through, and generateth thy soul to be a new body of God [or new divine body] which ruleth and reigneth with God in his heaven.

(3) I visited a bodily dwelling. I cast out the one who was in it first, and I went in. And the whole multitude of the rulers became troubled. And all the matter of the rulers as well as all the powers born of the earth were shaken when they saw the likeness of the image, since it was mixed. And I was the one who was in the image, not resembling him who was in the body first. For he was an earthly man, but I, I am from above the heavens. I did not refuse them even to become Christ, but I did not reveal myself to them in the love that was coming forth from me. I revealed that I am a stranger to the regions below.

(85) Thou seest, also, how heaven is in a holy man; and that everywhere, wheresoever thou standest, goest or liest, if thy spirit does but qualify or cooperate with God, then, as to that part, thou art in heaven, and thy soul is in God. Therefore also saith Christ, [John x. 28, 29] My sheep are in my hands, no man can pull them away from me.