It is 11:28 AM Wednesday morning in the flow. Beth took Louisa for a car ride hoping she will fall asleep in the baby car seat. I have been wandering the house and reading Hugh of Balma "The Roads To Zion Mourn".
I will quote something I read this morning in "The Roads To Zion Mourn". I was thinking this morning that if I was a Professor of Reformed Theology at a Reformed theological seminary I would require every seminary student to read the book "Carthusian Spirituality: The Writings Of Hugh Of Balma And Guigo De Ponte" [The Classics Of Western Spirituality].
"Since every form of apprehending discussed earlier is outside the mystical upsurge, in that upsurge one should be unknowing, that is, one should pull back [
rescindere] the eye of the intellect altogether, for in this upsurge the intellect always aims to apprehend that toward the
affectio strives. Therefore the greatest adversary for this upsurge is the intellect's passionate clinging to the
affectus, an adherence that must be peeled back [
rescindi] with great effort. The causes of this are mentioned above because one apprehends by phantasms, or by description and delimitation. How the clinging intellect can be pulled back is stated in
On Mystical Theology, where it says
rise up unknowing. Uplifting is a vehement thrust of the
affectus that leaves the intellect behind. The upsurge is never purely affective unless the eye of the intellect is completely withdrawn [
rescindatur], something stated at the outset of
On Mystical Theology.
99. When altogether ignorant by virtue of having vacated every cognition, the human spirit is united all the better because knowledge that is elevated above the mind knows nothing. This unknowing is the necessary condition for the most elevated form of apprehending, for all speculative cognition disappears in an upsurge that is unknown to the intellect, and speculative cognition
must be left behind if one desires to proceed to knowledge above the mind. The more the intellect mixes herself into the
affectus in this upsurge, the more impure is the upsurge; the more total the blindness of the intellective eye (which blindness only comes about by great toil and effort), so much more free and incomparably exalted is the upsurge of the affective eye's own extensions." pg. 149 Hugh of Balma
contemplative
