Whoever is inclined to do worldly things is, as it were, awake, but he who seeks inward rest eschews the riot of this world and is, as it were, asleep. Yet first we must know that when sleep is described figuratively in holy Scripture, it is understood in three senses. Sometimes we have used “sleep” to express the death of the body; sometimes “sleep” represents the grogginess of neglect; and sometimes “sleep” signifies tranquility of life. Earthly desires have been tramped underfoot.… What is denoted by the word bones but strong deeds? The prophet refers to the same thing when he writes, “He keeps all their bones.” In addition, it often happens that the things that people do are often reckoned to be of some account, largely because they do not realize how keen is God’s inward discernment. However, when transported on the wings of contemplation, they behold things above. Somehow, they melt away from the security they felt in their presumption and quake all the more in the sight of God, ...
58. ‘A spirit passes before our face,’ when we are brought to the knowledge of invisible things, and yet see these same not stedfastly, but with a hasty glance. For not even in the sweetness of inward contemplation does the mind remain fixed for long, in that being made to recoil by the very immensity of the light it is called back to itself. And when it tastes that inward sweetness, it is on fire with love, it longs to mount above itself, yet it falls back in broken state to the darkness of its frailty. And advancing in high perfection, it sees that it cannot yet see that which it ardently loves, which yet it would not love ardently did it not in some sort see the same. Thus the spirit is not stationary, but ‘passes by;’ because our contemplation both discloses to us, that pant thereafter, the heavenly light, and forthwith conceals the same from us failing from weakness. And because in this life, whatever degree of virtue a man may have advanced to, he still feels the sting of c...
That they may shew that they have been made acquainted with incomprehensible mysteries, they relate, not that ‘a spirit’ stood still, but that it ‘passed by before their face.’ And they pretend that they beheld a countenance they knew not, that they may prove themselves to be known to Him, Whom the human mind is not equal to know. And here it is further added;
An image was before mine eyes, and I heard the voice as it were of a light breath of air.
49. Heretics often picture God to themselves by a sensible form [imaginaliter], seeing that they are unable to behold Him spiritually. And they tell that they hear His ‘voice as of a light breath of air,’ in that for the obtaining the knowledge of His secret things, they delight to have as if a particular freedom of intercourse with Him. For they never teach the things, which God reveals openly, but such as are breathed into their ears in a secret manner. All this, then, we have said, to indicate what we are to look for in the words ...
