Next,
the aspirants, persisting in more ardent surrender, are taken up into simple
awareness itself, and leaping beyond all sensible things, they pass as if from
sleep to wakefulness, from hearing to sight. And, there, those things that are
seen cannot be revealed because they are beyond all hearing and beyond all
instruction by voice. For there, incomprehensibly heard, as the end of all
speech, is Love, blessed forever, the end of all understanding, because Love is
truth, and the end of all sense, because Love is life, and the end, finally, of
all being, because Love is being itself, and the perfection of every creature.
Such
things are shown in stages to one who submits to Love by unshakeable trust at
the heart. For if the trust is great, it unites the aspirant with Love, so that
the aspirant transcends all that is not in union with Love Itself. Without
Love, trust is not living but dead, and not trust at all. None of the wise of
this world can grasp true happiness if they do not know Love. None can see
anyone happy except with you, Love. For everyone of happy spirit subsists in
your Spirit, as the vivified in the vivifier. And thus in you the finite is
united to the infinite and to that which cannot be united, and the incomprehensible
is seized by an eternal fruition, which is a most joyous and inexhaustible
happiness.
~
On Learned Ignorance
Nicholas
of Cusa
1401
to 1464 CE
