One of the ways in which the mediaeval contemplatives from the Low Countries seem very contemporary is in John of Ruusbroec’s teaching on his own contemporaries who were promoting meditative acts of self-emptying. Ruusbroec rejects this outright. It’s not Christian prayer, he says over and over again.

Back when I first started this blog, this was one of the primary errors about Christian contemplation that I thought needed to be clarified. There were so many people who thought that Eastern meditation and a bunch of analogous phenomena were Christian prayer. These people still exist, but their influence, the liberal influence, seems to be waning. There are more pressing concerns nowadays, with prayer taken to be a kind of aestheticism in some circles.

That said, I still think meditative self-emptying is a very important topic. The confusion hasn’t completely gone away. And for my own personal story, I find it useful to come back to this discussion. When I was at the seminary, one of the less egregious ways that I encountered clerical abuse was in being practically forced to practise some kind of meditative self-emptying and call it a sufficient substitute for times of prayer. I am completely convinced that, alongside Marcel Văn, the heavenly friend who protected me from danger here was my buddy Ruusbroec.

So what is Ruusbroec’s own teaching on meditative self-emptying? He discusses it in three separate works.

The Spiritual Espousals

An early synthesis typically regarded as a masterwork, The Spiritual Espousals treats of meditative self-emptying at greater length than Ruusbroec’s other compositions. First, the blessed starts with a description of the phenomenon:

Consider now the way in which a person practices this natural rest. It consists in sitting quietly in a state of idleness, without any interior or exterior exercises, in order to find rest and have it remain undisturbed.[1]

We should, I think, find this to be a remarkable parallel to forms of meditative self-emptying that we know in our own world today. I’ve tackled contemporary manifestations once or twice myself. And as already noted, I have some enforced first-hand experience with the matter. Ruusbroec, in the very next sentence after his initial description, warns us not to be drawn in by its goodness:

But it is not lawful to practice this kind of rest, for it produces blind ignorance in a person and makes him sink down into himself in inactivity. Such rest is nothing other than a state of empty idleness into which a person falls and in which he becomes forgetful of himself, of God, and of all things as regards any activity. This kind of rest is contrary to that supernatural rest in which a person possesses God, for the latter is a loving immersion of oneself characterized by a simple act of gazing in incomprehensible resplendence. This rest in God—which is always sought actively with fervent desire, found in blissful inclination, eternally possessed in a loving immersion of oneself, and still sought even when already possessed—this rest is raised as high above merely natural rest as God is raised above all creatures.[2]

In other words, we ought not to practise meditative self-emptying, because it is not prayer, which has God and neighbour for object. It is no substitute to experience tranquillity. Because whatever tranquillity comes with prayer, it is not because we are emptied altogether, but merely because we are “empty” of ourselves by having become “full” of others. Rest that is found in God is by “inclination”—desire, love. We go out of ourselves. That makes a huge difference.

Ruusbroec continues. He specifies that meditative self-emptying entails being “deceived,” and he further clarifies that the ability to empty oneself is constitutive of human nature, not part of a spiritual dynamism that involves grace:

For this reason all those persons are deceived who have the intention of immersing themselves in this blissful natural rest, neither seeking God through desire nor finding him in blissful love. The rest which they possess through consists in an emptying of their inmost being, something to which they are inclined by both nature and custom. One cannot find God in this state of natural rest, but it does bring a person into that state of emptiness which can be attained by pagans in Jews, and all persons, no matter how evil, provided only that they live in in sins without suffering the reproaches of conscience and can empty themselves of images and all activity.[3]

Of course, we might object today that salvation and grace can be given by God outside the visible structures of the Church, but Ruusbroec’s main point would stand even then. This meditative self-emptying is merely natural.

Since it is natural, it is not in itself wrong. What is written into our nature is not evil. This is something that I have written about myself, much to the chagrin of some readers who criticized me. However, the essential naturalness of it does not eliminate problems in the existential state. To practise meditative self-emptying means to choose to spend our time on it. And any mental thought we give to thinking of this as our telos or as our acts of prayer is greatly deceived.

Ruusbroec says all these same things that I have just said. Meditative self-emptying is natural, has some good fruits, is not intrinsically sinful, but is a horrendous deception:

The rest which one attains in this state of emptiness is both satisfying and deep. In itself it is not sinful, for it arises naturally in everyone whenever he empties himself of activity. But if a person seeks to practice and possess it without performing works of virtue, then he falls into spiritual pride and a state of self-complacency from which hardly anyone ever recovers. Such a person sometimes thinks that he has obtained and become what he will in fact never attain. When a person thus possesses this state of empty rest and considers all loving devotion to be an obstacle, he remains resting upon himself and is living contrary to the first mode which unites a person with God; this is the beginning of all spiritual error.[4]

It is by reason of this grave “spiritual error” that Ruusbroec comes down hard on practitioners of meditative self-emptying. He will never let go. Always, he will speak harshly of them. Belief in the great deception of meditative self-emptying is a belief fully compatible with thinking that the practice is essentially natural, fruitful, and non-sinful, because existentially speaking, in all its manifestations as yet seen, this practice ends in a spiritual error of epic proportions. We have no right to attribute the practice to the demonic or to slander it as contrary to nature. Yet we are simultaneously bound to assert the radical newness of the Gospel.

Having established as much, Ruusbroec continues specifying the nearly incorrigible spiritual error:

Those guilty of this deviation are, in their own estimation, contemplatives. They think they are the holiest persons alive, but in fact they live in a way that is contrary to and unlike God, all the saints, and all who are good.[5]

If people begin to think this of themselves, then how can you convince them of their utter poverty in evangelical terms? That is the problem. Ruusbroec adds:

Because of the natural rest which they feel and possess within themselves in a state of emptiness, they conclude that they are free and are united with God without intermediary. They also believe that they are above all the practices of the holy Church, above God’s commandments, above the law, and above all virtuous works which might be practiced in any manner, for they consider this state of emptiness to be so great a thing that it must not be disturbed by any works, however good they might be, since the emptiness is nobler than all virtue. They therefore live in a state of pure passivity without performing any activity directed either to God or neighbor, just as if they were a tool which is itself idle and awaits the time when its master wishes to work, for if they did anything themselves, then God would be hindered in his own work. For this reason they are empty of every virtue, so empty that they have no wish either to praise or thank God.[6]

The process of falling this far makes a lot of sense. We can easily appreciate why, even if Ruusbroec asserts the essential naturalness, fruitfulness, and non-sinfulness of meditative self-emptying, he nonetheless opposes it as one of the greatest deceptions of the age. Its logical conclusion, on the existential plane, is very different.

Accordingly, consideration of meditative self-emptying in the Spiritual Espousals finishes with a denunciation whose sharpness is almost impossible to minimize or forget:

These are all wicked persons, the worst alive, and are to be avoided as much as the enemy from hell… They are all precursors of the antichrist, preparing for him the way that leads to all unbelief, for they… wish to be contemplatives without focusing their gaze in love and to be the holiest persons alive without performing the works of holiness.[7]

These are the words, I repeat, of the pre-modern Christian teacher who perhaps gave the most space to the naturalness, fruitfulness, and non-sinfulness of meditative self-emptying in his writings. Yet, because of the existential position of every human undertaking, Ruusbroec is fiery about its being a grave, deadly enemy of Christian contemplation.

Mirror of Eternal Blessedness

The second of Ruusbroec’s works that targets meditative self-emptying is the Mirror of Eternal Blessedness, a shorter treatise written for a Poor Clare in 1359. At twenty years’ distance from the Spiritual Espousals, Ruusbroec remains adamant that meditative self-emptying is a deadly spiritual error.

This time, the initial talk of meditative self-emptying occurs in the context of explaining the goodness of all Christian states of life that involve charity:

I say the same concerning all who live outside religious orders if they maintain a state of being turned inward to God in unity with him and if they turn outward to their fellow Christians in works of charity in every necessary way. All such persons are nobler, more advanced, and nearer and more like our Lord than those who merely turn inward in contemplation without turning outward in works of charity, provided that the former have mastered themselves and that their neighbor stands in need of them. Those who wish only to turn inward in contemplation and so leave their neighbor in need do not live a recollected and contemplative life but are deceived to the core of their being. Above all things, beware of such persons.[8]

Again, the deception is a tranquillity that turns one aside from the lived, existential anguish of charity, reaching out to God, who infinitely exceeds us, as well as our neighbour whom we need and whom we must serve. Ruusbroec says: “Above all things, beware of such persons” who practise meditative self-emptying. Strong words—but of course, we have heard stronger from him already.

Next, discussing those who “have discovered within themselves a formless state above reason,”[9] Ruusbroec returns to his invective:

Pay close attention, for this is probably the most foolish and perverse opinion that has ever been heard since the creation of the world, and yet through this and similar opinions many persons, who appear to be spiritual but who are more wicked than the devil, have gone astray.[10]

Up until now, we have a flurry of condemnations: wicked persons, the worst alive, more wicked than the devil, precursors of the antichrist, who are to be avoided as much as the enemy from hell, for they hold the most foolish and perverse opinion that has ever been heard since the creation of the world. Of course, taken together, some of these superlatives contradict one another (for I have trouble seeing even the antichrist as more wicked than the devil). But the emphasis is clear. Even decades after his first major splash in the world of spiritual writing, meditative self-emptying is given the same acerbic treatment.

Little Book of Clarification

Written towards the end of his life to clarify a less well-known work anterior to the Spiritual Espousals, the work that also goes by the names Samuel, Book of Supreme Truth, and Little Book of Enlightenment has some gems on our present topic, too.

One long passage is worth quoting without a break, for it starts with a clear description and moves on to combining description sentences with rapid and effective rebuke:

These persons have turned inward to the bareness of their being by means of an undifferentiated simplicity and a natural inclination, with the result that they think eternal life will be nothing other than a purely existing, blessed state of being which has no distinctions of order, holiness, or merit…

These persons have gone astray into the empty and blind simplicity of their own being and are trying to become blessed in their bare nature, for they are united in so simple and empty a way to the bare essence of their soul and to God dwelling within them that they have no ardor or devotion to God, whether exteriorly or interiorly. At the highest point of their introversion they feel nothing but the simplicity of their own being. dependent upon God’s being. They take this undifferentiated simplicity which they possess to be God himself, because they find natural rest in it. They accordingly think that they themselves are God in the ground of their simple oneness, for they lack true faith, hope, and love. Because of this bare emptiness which they experience and possess, they claim to be without knowledge and love and to be exempt from the virtues. They therefore strive to live apart from conscience, however much evil they do.[11]

These thoughts bring us back to the Spiritual Espousals, with its insistence that “bare nature” and psycho-spiritual “introversion” are involved. This leads to a serious error. They confuse the resulting psycho-spiritual tranquillity for an undisturbed sea of divine being. Such an error need not be necessary, if we think of things in their essential nugget. Nature is not itself deceptive. But insofar as a person accustomed to Christian teaching must twist the evangelical spirit in order to practise meditative self-emptying, the error is catastrophic.

Ruusbroec adds further denunciation of the behaviour of practitioners of meditative self-emptying:

Such people think that they are wiser and more astute than anyone else, whereas in fact they are the dullest and coarsest persons alive… They have united themselves to the blind and dark emptiness of their own being, believing that there they are one with God and that this is their eternal beatitude. In turning inward they have attained this state through their own will and natural inclination, but as a result they think that they are above the Law and the commandments of God and of the holy Church, for they experience neither God nor any otherness above this essential rest which they possess. The divine light has not revealed itself in their darkness because they have not sought it through active love and supernatural freedom.[12]

So, their spirit being so misled and confused, while setting itself up as a teacher and guide, we have but one course to follow:

You should shun and flee from these persons as the mortal enemies of your soul, however holy they seem to be in their conduct, their words, their dress, or their appearance, for they are the devil’s emissaries and the most nefarious people alive for simple, unexperienced [sic] persons of goodwill.[13]

To our ever-growing list, we can now add “mortal enemies of our souls” and “the devil’s emissaries” to the titles applied by Ruusbroec applies to practitioners of meditative self-emptying.

Finally:

[Y]ou should beware of those deceived persons who—by means of their empty, imageless state and through a bare, simple act of gazing—have found in a natural way God’s dwelling within them and have wished to become one with God without his grace and without the practice of virtue, in disobedience toward God and the holy Church. With all their perversity of life, which I have previously described, they wish to be sons of God by nature.[14]

Conclusion

I wasn’t aware of the teaching of John Ruusbroec when I was forming my own ideas about our contemporary schools of meditative self-emptying. What I had in mind was primarily the teaching of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, alongside the philosophical explorations of Jacques Maritain. But when I came across Ruusbroec’s ideas and gave them careful attention, I found them to be saying what I had already intuited and developed.

For Ruusbroec, meditative self-emptying is a capacity of nature within us. As such, it is not intrinsically sinful; indeed, it is able to bear fruit in our lives, bestowing that particular kind of tranquillity and focus that its practitioners often boast of.

Yet the essential naturalness of the act and habit can only be realized by a person in an existential situation. And for the Christian, that existential situation is one where an evangelical message constantly proclaims a different, greater peace, found in intentionality towards God and neighbour. A void of intentionality and the call to be lost in another thus end up, here and there, now and then, in conflict.

Thus, it is no surprise that those who practise meditative self-emptying, call it the name of prayer, and consider it to be contemplation, fall into a terrifying error. They think they have arrived at Christian perfection, or at least caught glimpses of it, when they have found something else entirely. And it is this misdiagnosis of the telos of Christian living which merits a slew of invectives from Ruusbroec, which it is not necessary to reproduce again. The point has already been well made.

The cause of the abusive language is simple. Ruusbroec, in his day, saw meditative self-emptying as the threat to prayer. I think this was the case in our day, too—or at least it was a decade to some decades ago, when the liberal relativism was in full swing. Aestheticism and aesthetic relativism supported by consumerism and indifference to God’s creation might be lurking as a greater danger in the present century—but that’s a story for many other days.

[1] John Ruusbroec, Spiritual Espousals II.4.C, in The Spiritual Espousals and Other Works, trans. James A. Wiseman (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1985), 136.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid., 137.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., 139.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid., 140–141.

[8] Mirror of Eternal Blessedness II.B, in The Spiritual Espousals and Other Works, 226–227.

[9] Ibid., 229–230.

[10] Ibid., 230.

[11] Little Book of Clarification I.B, in The Spiritual Espousals and Other Works, 254.

[12] Ibid., 255.

[13] Ibid., 256.

[14] Ibid., Concl., 269.