Monday, June 9, 2014

The End of All Understanding





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