God is spirit, the soul is spirit; they communicate themselves to each other in the spirit - not by words of language, but by spiritual communications, which however are more understandable than the most skillful eloquence in the world.
God makes himself known to the soul through inner movements which the soul perceives and understand to the extent that it is free from earthly ideas; (...). God communications are infallible when the soul is empty of all images and stands in the forgetfullness of all created things; but they are dubious when the soul is working through imaginations and is seeking sentimentalities or anything else that is not God, bare of all else. Even the saints have committed spiritual vanities in this point through visions, voices, ecstasies, and other sentimentalities (...).
God is pure spirit; the purified soul transforms itself into him and needs no words and no looks to perceive him, any more than we need the eye or the tongue in order to perceive our own idea (...).
I am pure nothing; but God is everything in me. He teaches me, he works, he speaks in me, without nature contributing more than the mere tool, as a brush contributes to the art of a beautiful painting. Buber, Ecstatic Confessions, P.121.
Last updated: 1999/04/05