Have we said enough, and can we stop here? Or does our soul still feel
the pains of parturition? Let her, therefore, produce (activity),
rushing towards the One, driven by the pains that agitate her. No,
let us rather seek to calm her by some magic charm, if any remedy
therefor exist. But to charm the soul, it may perhaps be sufficient to
repeat what we have already said. To what other charm, indeed, would
it suffice to have recourse? Rising above all the truths in which we
participate, this enchantment evanesces the moment we speak, or even
think. For, in order to express something, discursive reason is obliged
to go from one thing to another, and successively to run through every
element of its object. Now what can be successively scrutinized in
that which is absolutely simple? It is, therefore, sufficient to reach
Him by a sort of intellectual contact. Now at the moment of touching
the One, we should neither be able to say anything about Him, nor have
the leisure to speak of Him; only later is it possible to argue about
Him. We should believe that we have seen Him when a sudden light has
enlightened the soul; for this light comes from Him, and is Himself. We
should believe that He is present when, as another (lower) divinity,
He illumines the house of him who calls on this divinity,[112] for it
remains obscure without the illumination of the divinity. The soul,
therefore, is without light when she is deprived of the presence of
this divinity, when illumined by this divinity, she has what she
sought. The true purpose of the soul is to be in contact with this
light, to see this light in the radiance of this light itself, without
the assistance of any foreign light, to see this principle by the
help of which she sees. Indeed, it is the principle by which she is
enlightened that she must contemplate as one gazes at the sun only
through its own light. But how shall we succeed in this? By cutting off
everything else.[113]