Jan Ruysbroeck (1293-1381)
Presented on: Tuesday, June 28, 1983
Presented by: Roger Weir
The date is June 28, 1983. This is a fourth lecture in a series of lectures by Roger, where on the mistake century Knight's lectures and titled Jan rice Brook at Farwell, that Dame is spelled R U Y S B R O E K, who live 1293 to 1381, the adornment of the spiritual marriage
To begin introducing each week as a continuity, some record of the 14th century from one of the great classic sources of the 14th century. The Chronicles of WestStar for a SART chronicled, the 14th century from 1326 to 1400. And it has been a classic in English and French literature, both since its inception. And the interesting part about Westside is that he gives us the incredible tapestry of this century from the art side, initially, a person looking at the 14th century as the apex of the medieval world thinks of Europe as a smooth, bland, boring stew. And yet, as soon as you begin to look anywhere in the 14th century, everything is in motion. There are upheavals everywhere. There were revolts everywhere. All of the possibilities of human life have been turned on their side, if not upside down. And Europe reminds us in the 14th century of just a seeding chaos and frost aren't does us a great service because he gives us an overview of the entire century in terms of all the power struggles that were going on on the highest levels.
So it's like having the ACE reporter of time magazine covering in detail, all the events of the century. So the Chronicles of four SART are exquisite and they compliment what I'm doing here in this course, very rarely in the Chronicles, just plus art, go into the metaphysical into the inside of the century, but he covers adequately the outside. So each week now I'll give you just a couple of passages this week. I'd like to give you just two short paragraphs from WestStar. The relationship between England and France was paramount in this century and floss art very succinctly in a paragraph tells us why he says now showing the history that this Philip, the good King of France had three sons and a fair daughter named Isabel married into England to King Edward. The second. And these three sons, the eldest was named Lewis, who was the King of Navarre in his father's days and was called King Louis Hooten. The second had to name Phillip the great or the long. He was very tall. And the third was called Charles and all three were Kings of France after their fathers decrease DCS by right of secession each after the other, without having any issue of mail from their bodies, lawfully begotten.
So that after the death of Charles last King of the three, the 12 peers and all the barons of France would not give the realm to Isabel, the sister who was queen of England, because they said and maintain, and yet do that the realm of Francis so noble, that it ought not to go to a woman. And so consequently to Isabel, nor to the King of England, her eldest son and dos, England, and France in gendered, a death grip enmity to begin the 14th century, which lasted increasingly all the way through. And in fact, for many centuries afterwards, and this was the origin of it a little later on in four, sorry, the second paragraph on the order of st. George and its origin, the order of the garter, you know, there are, there is a major, uh, order and the garter and a minor, and there is a major, uh, emblem, which one can wear a talisman and then a minor. And then there is also a NEC chain Elias Ashmol in the 17th century, wrote a huge, beautiful tone on the esoteric nights, uh, orders in chivalry. And it's called the order of the garter, which is the primordial order of knighthood. Plus art gives us the origin of the first order in this season. The King of England took pleasure to, uh, new re Edify, the castle of Windsor, the, which was begun by King Arthur.
And there first began the table round. Do you see now how history has been transposed? Somewhat Windsor becomes important because it is said to be King Arthur's original palace and the table round was founded there. Of course, this is not true. However, they believed it at this time, whereby sprang the fame of so many noble Knights throughout all the world. Then King Edward determined to make an order and a brotherhood of a certain number of nights. In fact, I think there were 27, 27 nights, plus the King making 28, a full sequence order of a lunar cycle.
And it was to be called nights of the blue garter later on, of course the color became green and a feast to be kept yearly at Windsor on st George's day. And to begin this order, the King assembled together, Earl's Lords and Knights of his realm and showed them his intention. And they all joyously agreed to his pleasure. And then it goes on to say that he also invited Royal Knights and Earls from all over Europe, guaranteeing them safe passage to England, and it would put them up so that the order of the garter would penetrate wherever the Arthurian stories had gone. And in this way, the King of England sought to extend his mythological control over most of Western Europe. And so the English crown again, and again, was brought into play in the 14th century squabbles and always the feeling behind it. The rationale behind this involvement was that England had every right, not only to France, but to most of the metaphysical foundations of Germany and the Netherlands Flanders and Belgium and so on and so forth. So that this was of the utmost desire on their part. A second economic reason, lay behind King Edward, the thirds attempt. This was 1344 when the order of the garter was established.
Most of the textiles yen, the Belgium of that day Flanders and brought bond where a special weave that usually have a Scarlet Stripe running down through the fabric. And this was an, a special, tough wall that was all garnered from England, from the Highlands of Scotland, so that the cloth, the distinctive cloth of Flanders and brought bond, which brought in enormous revenues was based upon an English resource. And whenever there was trouble on the continent, the English King, in order to protect English, economic interests, as well as to force the Inforce, the spread of his mythological realm, what consider himself well advised to participate in any squabble that got out of hand on the continent at this time in the 14th century, there was an enormous democratic revolution. It was the first time probably in the history of the world that an enormous population of individuals had risen up to a point of being somewhat economically viable in and of themselves.
The crumbling of the old feudal realms and orders had been proceeding for about a century or two. And by the 14th century, this democratic revolution was gaining encouragement and nourishment from the upsurge of mystical religion. So that the two mystical religion encouraging the individual to not only break away from church institutions, but to break away from any kind of religious institution was coupled with a social revolution. So that from the 14th century on, in Western history, whenever there were mass movements, the whole idea of there being a religious basis to anarchy that the political philosophy of anarchy was not a wild, uh, amoral flailing about, but was in fact, a historical occurrence of great antiquity by the 19th century, of course, with the, uh, an article writings of Buchanan and Pruett home and so forth, the tradition was well established. And when we get to the 19th century, we'll see that the origins in the 14th century are absolutely paramount when the century ended.
All that remained of this accrued century of many popular victories was the simple, painful memory among the populace. What had begun in 1302 as a route of Knights upon a field of battle, not too far from Brussels. In fact, the number of Royal sponsored Knights killed was so great that the battle is called the battle of golden spurs. And the image was that so many Royal Knights lay dead on the field, that in the morning, the general populace could go out and collect thousands of golden spurs from the dead Knights. And of course this was money. This was trophy the battle of the golden spurs in 1302 set in motion by word of mouth, the confidence and encouragement across the face of Europe that popular uprisings were able to unseat the power to 30 of the old feudal orders. This of course led to a mad scramble for power and in the scramble for power.
All of the various factional elements of social life in Europe became focusing forces for groups of people to rally around. Most of the aristocracy, the Nobles rallied around each other for protection and felt that by their money and their power, they could eventually outlast any coalition from the peasant populations, which started off to great advantage because they were in overwhelming numbers available, uh, for any kind of fighting or any kind of organizing. But the aristocracy very wise, very sly. They encouraged the making of these minor guilds around the least little distinction. So that for instance, there were black leather tanners and there were white leather tanners. And probably if one went into a beige leather, there would have to be a separate Guild for that. So that the fractionating of the popular movement into bickering little fighting groups was, uh, taken very seriously by the aristocracy and for the first 20 or 30 years of the 14th century, this was encouraged silently, but steadily. In fact, the social emancipation of the early 14th century was based largely upon the spiritual independence of the individual. And so there was a collusion between the aristocracy of money and position and the church, because it was the church structure that stood to lose the most by the fractionating of its populations. And so they hunt for heretical sex or heretical doctrines proceeded a pace with this grinding up all of the popular revolutionary movements, the democratic revolutionary movements into ever smaller pockets of guilds.
We have mentioned, I think several times that 13, 10 is a date in the 14th century of paramount importance. This was the date of the council of Vienna. And it was important to realize that, to find a secure, a venue to hold this conference, they had to go to Vienna that it couldn't be done in Paris. It couldn't be done in cologne. It couldn't be done in England. They had to go as far field as Vienna. And of course this conference was so important that individuals, as far away as Raymond law from Spain and Meister, Eckhart from Germany, were in attendance there. And the great trial that came out of the council of Vienna was the heresy trial of the woman, Margaret per act. And her book, the mirror of simple souls was accused of the arch sin of pantheism. That is to say that the individual, how to achieve a kind of independence, which was asserted in the writing text of the mirror, simple souls that the individual could achieve a Junia Mystica with God.
In other words, the distinction between the individual and God disappeared. This was a partial excerpt taken out of Margaret Perrow's book, but it was in forest by the acquisition, by the council of Vienna as being a warning, a signal to the heretical movements of the day to the independent religious thinking people of the day that you cannot go this far. And we will find with our man tonight, John of Rosebrook, that he is careful in all of his mystical treatises to put a paragraph in stating explicitly that even at the point of cosmic integration and the UNICOM Mystica an individual soul remains distinct from God.
He even towards the end of his life, put in final paragraphs in his books, commending his work to the authorities of the church, hoping that if anything were misstated, that he would be corrected. The honor Roy's book lived to be 88 years old and suffered no heresy trials. He was said to be an ignorant peasant, but I think you can understand from what I say that he was wise beyond compare, there is I think no doubt that Meister Eckhart was extremely formative in controlling the meeting and the harmonizing of the groups known as the brethren of the free spirit and just in the same way. And perhaps to an even greater degree, Yon Rosebrook was responsible for the origins and development of that mystical group known as the brethren of the common life. And the brethren of the common life became extremely important as it Rose from time to time in European history, the Quakers, the Rosa crucial ones, many Pietist groups that actually founded the United States of America coming from direct lineages of the brethren of the common life.
So that when one looks for the great metaphysical grandfather, all of these communal religious movements, going back to a primordial Christianity, Christianity that even become so prime and Orgill. And so, uh, uh, unifying and it's aspect that an almost predates religious manifestations upon the earth beyond the Freud's buck is the man he's the root source. And so we need to go to his life to find out, uh, exactly how this began, but we must keep in mind that as the aristocracy, during the course of [inaudible] books, life began to assert its hedge money over the popular democratic movements. The medium of Xchange for themselves was money.
So that in a very real way, the notion of money as a binding medium of society owes itself to a polarized movement, to the integrative idea of shared religious spiritual experience. So that at the end of Roy's Brooke's life, Europe became polarized in a way which was almost delayed too. It's a fractionating and, and, uh, uh, fragmentation where money in terms of the world Caesar's coin was exactly balanced with the invisible inner experience that could not be objectified in any way. And yang of Rosebrook is really the individual for whom this invisible pole focuses itself. Now, the, the developments I could go into this, I guess I've, uh, uh, all sorts of notes on this, but I think I'll let that be and come directly to Yon of, uh, Roy's Brook.
He was born in 1293 and Roy's Brook is, uh, not too far outside of Brussels. And at the time that he was born, this was a mud hut village. His father is never mentioned. So I think we are to take it that, uh, Roy Brooke's father probably was a, uh, passing stranger or at best was someone who was undependable. So there was no mention whatsoever of his father, his mother, on the other hand, he knows the primordial image of femininity in his entire life. She was a dedicated individual and saw to it that young Jaan was at least encourage to have an experience of God in his own life. And up to the age of 11, he lived in this little mud hut village of Rosebrook. He was uneducated. He knew very little Latin until later on in life. He knew no Greek at all, but what was peculiar was at that time, the Royal game preserve very, very large.
A Virgin forest of the Sonia was, uh, all around the little village of Roy's Brock and spread into the mountains nearby. This primordial forest that was untampered with was the little playground of the boy. And it was there that he found his first lessons in the unfolding of the natural spirit. And in fact, he would spend almost all of his 88 years in that forest with just one little excerpt in Brussels, his mother wanting to have something a little better for him contacted a distant relative who was a fairly wealthy priest in Brussels. And, uh, this individual took in Yon when he was 11 years of age. And, uh, when he went there to this little house, um, he found that, uh, he could talk quite freely with his uncle and his uncle made sure that the religious images that young young Rosebrook was breaking up were showed their parallel in the scripture, so that as he grew, he began to realize that what he had experienced as a boy in the forest was in fact, an archetypical happening as we would talk now.
And he began to read the scripture, not with the mind towards finding classical commentaries, but with an eye towards verifying his own internal experience. By the time that Yon was 15, he was beginning to be somewhat of a prodigy. That is to say his renditions of his own spiritual experience were seen by the priest. And by those around him to be an extraordinary, a replay of basic religious situations, the boy of course, was given some lessons in Latin, uh, prepared for the priesthood, but he didn't become a priest until he was 24 years of age. And in all of this Yon went into his interior experience and then would read the scripture to see, uh, where and his own understanding he could find the parallels at this time, Brussels became the seat of a large number of religious refugee camps. The refugees especially came in from Germany and brought with them all kinds of at that time, heretical doctrines, various religious Sharpies, clever people were taking advantage of this population of people.
And among them was an extraordinary woman. And, uh, she always, uh, preached from a silver seat, a silver chair and her name was blow Mardin blow Mardian was one of these, uh, extraordinary women, very sharp minded, clever, capable, and fact of having a large repertory of spiritual experience. She had a lot of wealth. The idea of sitting on a silver seat was to assure people that she had power. She had connection, that sort of thing, Yon young Yon of Rosebrook hearing her one day recognized a subtle flaw and blow Mar dens, uh, rhetoric and speech. It was not a flaw of logic that he recognized, but it was a ring of mistruth. And the more he thought about it, the more he realized that he was the only person who understood why she was wrong, because her subtle arguments, her wonderful statements seem to be impeccable.
She was drawing great crowds of people. And so the young Yon Rosebrook took it upon himself to begin writing a little booklet, to describe why she was heretical. And he wrote a wonderful little booklet, which was called the book of the kingdom of God's lovers, because the parallels, the metaphors, the analogies that Lomar den used was the language of love. And she very frequently would go back to scripture, back to Solomon song back to the love literature of the wisdom section of the old Testament, but increasingly her style isle exposition would verge upon the notion that a free form physical love was almost a paradigm of the experience of God and therefore who could learn better about love than a woman who was able to teach it and experience it. And then she would craftily, uh, put this onto a metaphorical level onto a metaphysical level. And the adherence began to take a heat of this. And it began to spread.
It was very difficult for a young young of Rosebrook to write this book, but, uh, in it, uh, he, uh, was able to, uh, use his experience with his mother as a prototype of the basis of universal law, where it could be expressed, but that there was no physical interplay. Now his mother to retract just for a moment, his mother had come to Brussels to live with her son when he got to be about 15 or 16 years of age. But because he was living with a priest, she could not live under the same roof as the priest, so that she had to go to one of the popular places for women of the day called the beginnery, which was like a secular nunnery. Now, the begins where a religious heritage techs that had spread all over Europe and these communities of mainly secular individuals, but occasionally they would get the spirit to preach and they would go in and, uh, uh, either do a soap box, a stance, or they would speak out in churches and argue with the monks and the priests.
But the begins were both sanctified by the church as possibly a admissible orders and also condemned by the church as being a Virgin on the heretical sex, yada Roy's Buck's mother passed the last five or six or seven years of her life in one of these beginning communities and young Yana for ice Brooke would and visit her there all the time so that he had built up a tolerance of experience inside that was very refined over what was actually possible in a religious experience and what was not possible when he applied this to blow Mardin. It turned out that, uh, he wrote something on the, uh, um, uh, line like this.
He said, uh, Oh, how little, you know, the delight experienced by those who know something of the spirit of God, that there was in fact, a real progressive order to spiritual experience and that the stages were, uh, distinct and fact that there seemed to be three general stages to the religious experience and that the first one he called the active life and that in the act of life, a person could discover themselves as having the relationship with divinity on the level as he called it as being a servant of God, servant of God. And that as this active life began to take hold, the individual was transformed and began to move to a second stage, second level experience where one became a friend of God. And later on, of course, this stage named friends of God would become one of the great mass movements of spiritual health in the middle of late middle ages. Uh, Johann is taller, who we'll get to in two weeks was the great figure around the friends of God.
And of course later on the, uh, the experience of the friends society, uh, would come out of this sort of thing. The second stage of being a friend of God meant that the life that one was living was progressively interiorized. So that one began to experience on other worldliness and that this other worldliness would knit itself into patterns. And that these patterns would permit the experience in flashes from time to time are the third level and level of the unitive life, the life of contemplation well, and Yon Rosebrook would say one would become a son of God. So when would move from the servant to a friend to a son, and that initially the experiences of unification would be just pleading. One would just catch in oneself. The fact that there was a flash, a moment of unity, and that these would occur more frequently until finally, if one were, were to persevere the unit of life, the contemplative life would show that man was capable of this third act in his wonderful mystical book called the sparkling stone.
Young of Brooke writes this, the man who would live in the most perfect state of Holy church must be a good and zealous man, an inward and ghostly man, by this, he means the Holy ghost on the uplifted. And God's seeing man and an outflowing, then two, all in common. Now he means this to be a distinct, that one is God. See, and that the God's saying is from this third level of unity, that as long as a person still retained on affection for the world, one could just be a servant of God as one disengages from this affection for the world. And one enters into a friend of God, state one becomes capable of creating patterns, interior patterns. We're in God. Seeing is an occurrence that leads to this unification. And in this God, see there is an inflow of tremendous universal, as we would say today, energy Yon used the term light, this tremendous inflow of light to the extent that the light unifying itself would seem like a divine darkness.
And at the same time as this inflow was coming in, there would be a complimentary outflow of love to all beings and all creatures in common, so that he says an inward and ghostly man, an uplifted and God seeing man. And then outflowing man to all in common. Whenever these four things are together in a man, then his state is perfect. And through the increase of grace, he shall continually grow and progress in all virtues. And then the knowledge of truth before God. And before all men his in with blow Marden had matured Roy's book to such an extent that he became the center of a growing small population of, uh, religious people, especially, uh, monks in and around Brussels. And then one day his uncle had a religious revelation. It had something to do with the fact that as he already had lived a very pure life as a priest, that it could in fact be raised to an even higher level.
And that what was required was a mystical community going into a kernel of mystical community in companionship with his nephew, John of Rosebrook so that the uncle and the nephew, and a third friend of theirs, a man, uh, named Franco who was, uh, a couple of years younger than Rosebrook form together, a triad. And the three of them began to practice a very stringent kind of asceticism in Brussels. And as they parked their lives down, even further, they began to lead this common life of ascetic, almost like a yoga ashram, a sense of continuity. They began to envision for themselves that they should leave the city and go out into this great vast Virgin forest. And there set up a community.
The forest was ostensibly the property of royalty. So they wrote a letter to a hermit who had control of a place called Groningen doll, which means green Valley, Dutch droning down. And this small hunting lodge was the property of John. The second, who was the, uh, uh, Duke of Brabant at that time. And this hunting lodge actually came into their account. They were given free use of it for as long as they would live. And so the of them moved out there. Now, this was a very peculiar event. The forest had had many anchor rights during its long history. In fact, tracing back the old names of the forest. One always finds, uh, the names similar to that for the name of the son, the son in, or the zone in as far back as any European language would go. This primordial forest was always related to the sun.
It was a thick hair, heavily wooded for us with gigantic trees and thick overgrowth. But there were places where one could look out upon the Plains of Flanders so that one could see the fruitfulness of the earth from the dense forest. All one could go into the dense forest and be lost to this Wonderland of contemplation, rather like are a Yosemite or a giant forest stuff in Sequoia national park today here in California, a primordial Virgin forest that had never been cut. It never been lumbered. And even though there were anchors your rights in this from time to time at one time, I think the population was somewhat approaching a thousand anchor, right there had never been this kind of a concerted high powered religious community. Very soon, there were about 15 monks gathered around and yang of Roy's. Brooke was the Pryor of this monastery of this ashram, if you like, but he was not made the head of it.
The provost was this young Franco. And the reason for this is that Roy's drug at the time that they moved there, he was about 50 years of age. He had been a priest for 26 years. He had written six or seven books that had made him famous, but Roy Brooke, more and more had begun to effect the third step age of the religious life. That is to say in his outward physical appearance, he began to appear physically to the people that knew him as a peculiar species of human being. He was almost transcendent to that state that we would recognize within the varieties of human experience. One fabulous story that is told of him out of hundreds was that at one time, when he was lost in the forest, seemingly lost in the forest, he had not come back to the ashram at the appointed time.
It had gotten dark. And when it got dark in the 14th century, it was dark. Uh, candles were rare. People were poor. So you had Starlight and that was about it. They went frantically out canvasing the forest. And as the story has it, one of the monks side of the grow in the forest and called out to his companions and they converged upon this spot and they found the blessing, John of Roy's drug meditating under a very peculiar tree. It was a lime tree that does not grow naturally in this area of the world that had been obviously transplanted there by some Crusader had brought the line back and that this lime tree had been unnoticed until that time. And that the tree itself was glowing with an eerie phosphorescent type, right? That was coming from the meditating Sage. The monks waited until the Dawn and the Sage was through with his meditation. And when Roy's Brooke left, they consecrated the site and that lime tree was consecrated for centuries. In fact, for 500 years, various people would make pilgrimages there to that lime tree and various healing, uh, experiences were recorded of that lime tree. And, uh, in fact, uh, during the 17th century, a very wealthy, a woman painter and a woman named also Isabelle, by the way, please turn your cassette now. And we'll commence playing again on the other side, after a brief pause.
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Woman named also Isabelle, by the way, left a little monument there. The lime tree was said to have been cut down in the fabulous 19th century when human imagination could not believe in anything outside of the, uh, uh, Coke, uh, fields of the industrial revolution. Uh, but the author in 1923 of a French book on Yana, Rosebrook said that he himself had gone to the spot and that there were maybe a dozen little lime trees growing. And since that was the only lime tree he knew of and that part of Belgium, they were sure it certainly shoots from the roots of the original lime trees.
In other words, by the time he was 50 and they had moved into this Ash round, younger boys buck was a wonderful kind. He was the great mystical phage of Europe, not for his intelligence as master icon. Eckhart was not for his grand literary. Panorama is Dante was not like Raymond law with his incredible capacity to translate into a computer like a arraignment of endocrinopathies spiritual experience. But again like Saint Francis of Assisi Yon, Roy struck in himself deemed to manifest the divine power. He, in fact, I had a very peculiar capacity to become so involved in and his interior life that at one time is another legend said he was seen to be pulling up the vegetables along with the weeds and someone had to come and caution him that he was in fact, pulling up the vegetables along with the weeds as his theme spread various individually, what comes to visit him.
And in fact, some of the greatest mistakes that we will see study, what to visit Roy's Brock to see if their experiences were legitimate. They came in the Hindu way to have a Darshawn of the great Sage. One individual who came to him was a very wealthy, clever, uh, right. A man named Gerard the group, the group had been born the same year. Chaucer was born 1340. You've gone to the university of Paris and become a fabulous businessman. Uh, he has in done very well for himself in the world. And suddenly he was having all kinds of religious vision that didn't fit into the life that he was leading. He thought he was going crazy. And when he came to himself, he realized that he unbidden was being contacted by the defendant and that he had to consecrate himself to the religious life. He went to see Roz, Brooke and Ryan struck saw immediately the condition of Girard degree God within a month or so Roy's Brock had affected a transformation of the man's life.
The group went back to his native, uh, city. He came from, uh, the areas, um, uh, in Northern Belgium and towards in that area. And for four or five years preached openly and set in motion, the community of the brethren of the common life, and also, uh, the communities that were known as the leader, shame, uh, commune. And later on, one of the great members of this leadership, uh, commune history would be Thomas. Our campus had along with our campuses, great in the tacho Creasy, the imitation of Christ, he would write a life of Gerard Dick wrote because he wanted to show that indirectly Roy's Brook was the legitimate manifestation of the Holy spirit among men, and had bet they spiritual right to the group to make this religious community. And that he Thomas I campus himself being in that community was of the legitimate heritage of this mystical tradition.
Now all of this had to be covered up because you can understand now that they came very close to a heretical tack because Yana Royce was within an ACE of being a second Christ, not a Christ of the son of God, but an incarnation of the Holy spirit. And in fact, when he, uh, became aged in his eighties and he lived to be 88, yeah. Roy Brooks, facial features and physical characteristics were so pronounced that people would come into this Virgin forest, uh, on pilgrimages and calm just to encamp themselves around this small religious community, Jeff, to come and hear a few words from on of Royce drug. It was at this time that his writings began to have an enormous effect, uh, within the mystical communities of Europe, almost any country that we will examine throughout this course now we'll have had contact with the writings of Roy's book.
He is in fact, the primal found of mysticism in the 14th century, in this book, the sparkling stone, he takes the image of the sparkling stone, which is almost like the philosopher's stone, but the image comes from the apocalypse of John and, and um, one image. And the apocalypse, it is said that I will give you almost as a religious talisman to conduct you through the new age coming a small white stone, like a crystal, and this sparkling stone of Roy's. Brooke was the epitome of that tells men of the natural world that a person could hold in the Palm of their understanding and carry with them through the enormous transformations that were going on. And you have to see now in perspective that as European society was externally shredding itself to bets in the 14th century, it was internally producing through the tremendous pressures of the upheaval of the day and the heat of the interchange of the day, these kinds of spiritual diamonds, they were being mined. And Rosebrook is the center of the whole necklace of human experience in the 14th century of the sparkling stone and of the new name written in the book of the secrets of God. This is what boys broke in titles. This little section here of the sparkling stone and of the new name.
Very often the term new was used here among the brethren of the common life. The saying was that very often an individual would be told by someone anonymous to them that it was time for them to become a new person. And this would be often the way in which they would start somebody on the spiritual path. They had gone into religious experience themselves deep enough and comprehensive enough to be able to see, and other individuals that certain stage of development, where they were ready for the interiorization of their religious experience, ready to become friends of God. And so they would go up to them and they would murmur to them. Something like it is time to become a new person and then they would go away and they would leave that germ, that seed with the person. And of course, if you were ready, this would work on you at all. Through the 14th century, through most of it through 65 years, there was in fact, this grand great Sage hidden in this primeval forest to which one could go as sort of final proof.
And if you couldn't get to him, there were his books. And when he wrote in his book, the sparkling stone, so only about 25 page book of the sparkling stone and of the new name written in the book of the secret of God. It's the new name of you to your new name, someone else, someone you really are. And he wrote, and therefore the spirit of our Lord speaks does in the book of the secrets of God, which Saint John wrote down to him that overcome it. He says that is to him who overcome it and Congress himself, and all else will I give to eat of the hidden manner that is an inward and hidden savor and celestial jaw. And we'll give him a sparkling stone and in the stone, a new name written, which no man, Noah saving, he that received at that.
Now this is very, very close to many of the Gnostic doctrines of the third century. The idea that you have a secret name, which is known and having a celestial name, which you yourself now know, and the fact that you can collect and focus yourself, rally your energies around that new identity, that new name is proof to yourself on this end. And the fact that he who gave that name knew that name is proof on the other end. So that one becomes a friend of God in exactly the colloquial way. That one realizes that one belong to that family, that community, because they know who you are.
And so you can see that the poignancy of conversion by this method, by this technique, by this doctrine, by this way, was infinitely more powerful than by intellectual arguments, no matter how refined at the university of Paris, because it struck home in such a primordial way that only you yourself knew that it was true and that it was in fact comprehensively. So, and then of course the backup to all this was that there was a Roy Bruck available to follow this mystical thread all the way back to it. Later on in the sparkling stone Roy's book will say that there are six basic perfection that human beings may practice. And that in the practice of these six perfections, there is in fact, um, a basic unit chief for a man and these six perfections read to me for all the world, like the six prime meters of advanced Mahayana Buddhism. They have the same kind of rain and they have the same kind of experience behind them.
He says, here now three things was constituted. Good man. The first, which a good man must have as a clean conscience without reproach of mortal sin, or therefore whoever wishes to become a good man must examine himself and prove himself to become a good man with do discernment. And from that time onward, when he could first have committed sin and from all these sins, he may have purged himself according to the precept and the customer is the Holy church. In other words, one has to be able to go back to the beginning. Well, now, if it is so that there is a prime Orgill origin to sin, but the beginnings of those mortal sin go back and transcend the individual life. And one can with discernment, go back to that. Then you have to think that what on the Roseburg I could say is that you have to go back beyond the individual and that the individual not only can do this, that can go back to the very beginning of the human race within himself. So you just CERN that beginning and that origin and that he can then bring up to the present moment, intact the discernment and the unraveling of all the complications. This is implicit of why he has to watch himself.
Yes. The second thing that pertains to a good man is that he must in all things, be obedient to God and to Holy church and to his own proper convictions. And to each of these three, he must be equally obedient. And so he shall live without care and doubt and shall ever abide without inward reproach in all his deeds so that he could live without Karen doubt. And that is to say, there is a certainty, there is an integration of certainty within oneself where one doesn't have to consult rules and institutions and Papo bowls and all these other things, but he phrases in such a way that one should have a basis on God, the Holy church in one's own proper convictions. So that there's a triad there, a balance, but he is saying that end the relationship of this triad man, frees himself from the rules, which are imposed upon him.
Now, this was a heretical view that caused the burning at the stake of an indefinite number of people. In fact, was one of the points that blow my den had insisted upon that at a certain level of inner life, one was free from rules. One no longer had to, uh, tell the line that any action taken with a pure conscience was in fact, uh, all right, that could be purified. And in fact, there were many individuals, the free spirits in particular, in the 14th century, rather like the hippie movement of the 1960s, who felt that really, as long as you did not keep a response inside yourself to a condition, as long as you were free from a response that you could do anything you wanted and you were free from chain because the taint would just be a reaction on your part and involvement on your part so that there was a trick to spirituality.
And that the trick was to have the knack of having an indifference to all of the complication and involvement. And that was exactly the point that yamas Rosebrook said was the fault, the fatal flaw, because there is a complementarity to the spiritual integration because as it all flows in to where one cannot follow it in its unity, it also flows out to a universal love and application at the same time. So the third thing, which whose every good man is that en all his deeds he should have in mind above all else. The glory of God, that is to express this in his life, in the community, in the world. So that nature pulsates with the comprehension, all man's prismatic integration of God's energy, so that in walking through the forest and Rosebrook would often before he would write anything like Emerson, he would walk in for a couple of hours to experience the silence of the forest, and then the movement of the bird song and the movement of the sunlight and the leaves he would bring into connection interrelation with those perceptions, that equity nymity of his son of God's status. And in that together would be born the inspiration for what to write for that day. So that he often said, I have, I have never written anything without the direct inspiration of the Holy ghost, that the Holy spirit was always there and every word.
So that later on in the sparkling stone, he would write how we may become hidden sons of God and attain to the gods, seeing life, God viewing God, seeing life. But I still long to know how we may become hidden sons of God and may attain to the gods, seeing life. And as to this, I have apprehended the following, as it has been said before, we must always live and be watchful in all virtues and beyond all virtues must forsake this life and die in God for, we must die to sin and be born of God in the life of virtue. And we must renounce ourselves and die in God into an eternal life. And as to this ensues, the following instruction, we are born out of the spirit of God. We are sons of grace, our whole life, therefore is adorned with virtues.
And in this Roy's book is emphasizing that we come from this experience is prime or geology. The man who is sent down by God, from these Heights into the world is full of truth and rich in all virtues. And he seeks not his own, but the glory of him who sent him and handsy is Justin truthful in all things. And he possesses a rich and generous ground, which is set in the richness of God. Therefore he must always spend himself on those that have need of him for the living found to the Holy ghost, which is his wealth and can never be spent. He is a living and willing instrument of God with which God works whatsoever. He wills and house, whoever he Wells Roy's Brock constantly in all of this is emphasizing that the way in which this actually affects itself is that the image level of the mind is set aside so that there is a receptivity.
And he says, this is exactly where a heretical, intellectual misunderstanding of this technique. And this state comes in that there are many who think because they produce a vacancy of mine that this is the religious state, but he says, this is not. So at all is absolutely a flaw because it's by this amoral vacancy of mind that the ego is most pray to demonic influences that if they exactly this phony mirror of piety, which is always held out them to the world as this is the way to follow. And this is a very subtle way to, as we would say today, be blown out of the possibility of becoming a real friend of God. That in fact, he says, what happens is that as we learn to set aside all images, we attain a capacity for holding relationality in ourselves. And that this relationality becomes universal.
We realized because we are just participating in the making of this receptivity. We're not dominating. We're not doing it all ourselves, that it is coming to us as a gift of the universe. If you like a gift of the sun, if you like, remember st. Francis him two brothers, son, a gift of the primordial forest, it is a way in which man cooperates with the divine to create a chalice of the presence, which is a non image, receptivity of wholeness and unity, and that to consider this, they can see of mine that receptivity and that unity is exactly the fatal flaw. In fact, he says all the men who practice a false vacancy, this is like the people in the late sixties who used to say that they were a Zen masters, because they could have a state of no mind. And they could instantly put a karate chop on a cinder block and break it in half. And they would say, well, I've got to be attained. I didn't even think of that. Cinderblock well, it's ridiculous. [inaudible]
I love the men who practice a false vacancy behold, such folk by means of a one simplification, one fold. It's a telltale sign, a one full simplification, and a natural tendency are turned in upon the barrenness of their own being. And therefore they think he turned a life is and shall be not else. But then, then during state of beatitude without distinction, in order in holiness and reward, and what happens is, is that they reduce themselves down egotistical, just sort of a one dimension and thinking that that one dimension is in fact yet, or they label it yet. We're in fact, there's a multidimensionality that transcends the capacity of space and time to be a numerated. But the one dimensionality is that kind of flat vacancy and blindness, which just prepares them for all kinds of, uh, polarized motions, which we today would call, uh, getting swallowed by the archetype, getting manipulated by your complexes being led around by the invisible side of the neurosis.
He says, all such are so deep in error that they say, but the persons shall pass away into the Godhead and that not else shall remain in eternity, that the essential substance of the Godhead is this vacancy, this blankness, this nothing, and that all boys, his spirit shall be so simply absorbed with God in the essential blessedness that nothing shall remain beside it, neither willing or working, or the discerning knowledge of any creature whatsoever. Behold, these men have gone astray into the vacant and blind simplicity of their own being. And they seek for blessedness in bear nature, where they are so simply. And so ideally United with the bare essence of their souls. And with that we're in God always is that they have neither zeal nor cleaving to God, nor from, without North from within. And he goes on to say that this is the very essence of the perverted unlikeness of the divinity, and that when one is lost in this one dimensionality in this vacant mess, the only way then of being, uh, pulled out is to have this experience of the Unico Junia. Mystica that one then has to pursue this. You can't go back and just be an ordinary person in the world. You can't just be, even meeting the good penitent life of the servant of God. One then has to progress and go through and lead oneself through.
So Yon of Rosebrook when he was writing his various spiritual manuals and books and so forth, when he was asked to, um, create some kind of a, uh, lasting rule for himself, uh, for the monasteries and the monastic communities for the communities that would be in the cities and so forth, he began to focus the fact that if we have a rule based upon poverty on simplicity of life, we need to have this kind of emendation. The real allowance is now observed in accordance with such material, not without a basic text of experience. Poverty has become changed into as much opulence, magnificence and comfort as possible. Poverty is a G and is indeed extolled in words, but deeds are not in conformity. The spirit of penance and tall toil has quite languished for the brothers. Imagine themselves weak. They desire soothing and easy living doctrine becomes subtlety.
Idle, questionings, and novel discoveries were in the honor of God. And food for the soul are almost entirely, are almost absent. What happens he says is that when we make a spiritual mistake, we fall into an increasing Whirlpool of in new way where we become, uh, in a inner limbo, unable to actually affect anything. We find ourselves weak and to combat this week, does we seek increasing subtlety and cleverness of understanding. And as we become more and more subtle in our, and more and more clever way, uh, widen and deepen the hole that we're in and we make for ourselves and increasing limbo where we finally despair being able to do anything. And therefore we fall back upon this kind of blind or help me save me vacuity, which is exactly a spiritual health, because it goes neither one way or another. And he says, this is exactly what seems to be happening with so many religious people and his time in the 14th century, and that the heretical aspect of all this, it's not that it transgresses church doctrine, but that it puts you in a band, the human beings own self own capacity for spiritual understanding and discovery that this is in fact, the point and in the book of Supreme truth, when he is writing, he concludes that little booklet with, of the highest union without difference or distinction.
And he says, after this, after all of the stages of inward life development, after this, the union without distinction for you must apprehend the love of God. The love of God, not only as an outpouring of all good, and as drawing back again into the unity, but it is also above all distinction, all essential fruition in the bare essence of the Godhead and in consequence of this enlightened men to found within themselves and essential contemplation, which is above reason and without raising and a fruitage of tendency, which pierces through every condition and all being and through which they immerse in a waitlist ABAs of fandom, molest beatitudes. And in fact, the way in which the spiritual life navigates itself in this way list ABAs is with the divine love, because just as the Uniroyal Mystica produces the perception that one is free floating in the universe without ordinance, without orientation, without any kind of real objective guidelines, there needs to be the complementation to that realization of the divine love coming through and washing out into all the universe.
And only by perceiving that as one drops into the rest of oneself, one participates in the complimentary move of the activity of God. And what is God's activity love? He loves the universe. He loves the man he loves, and this divine love pouring out, pours out exactly at the same rate and the same comprehensive totality as the mistake drops into the abyss so that he compliments his motion, all metaphysical penetration with the realization. And so just as man's via, negativa, isn't imminent dropping into the inner of this of himself. It's complimented by the via Activa of God's love coming out to fulfill and reestablish that universe so that as he just engages himself from the contact of this world and goes into the interior life, he experiences the rising of God's love. So the, this world still remains real, but it's not real as dead objectivity, but as real, as a manifestation of God's love purely so that he is prepared for that discovery, that while none of this exists objectively, physically at all, it all does exist as a manifestation of God's love in truth. And that this saves, man, this is the salvation of man. Not that he is saved from being a worldly creature. That's paltry, that's petty. That's childish. Not that he has saved because he can immobilize his responses to this world. That's a neck,
That's a trick. You can teach that, but that he is saved from his own doubt and disbelief that it all is real forever needs to be saved from that. Well, there's a lot more, but I think we'll just do that.
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