Page:Isaac of nineveh mystical treatises.djvu/16

 cause of its lack of experience, even though it be in no affected state; and whether the mind is not distressed by the unseen touch of the stamps of the imaginations, in view of its excessive radiance in God, which is wont to cut off vain recollections.

The short descriptions of this chapter are sufficient for a man’s illumination if he be quiet and intelligent; and they outweigh many books.

Bodily fear is strong in man, so strong that it often withholds him from praiseworthy and honourable things. But when it is face to face with psychic fear it is absorbed by it as coldness by the force of a flame.

The soul whose nature is not greatly solicitous for the gathering of possessions, does not require great diligence in order to find within itself impulses of wisdom unto God. For freedom from connection with the world will naturally set in motion flashes of intuition from which it can exalt itself unto God and remain in ecstasy.

When the waters from without do not enter the fountain of the soul, its natural waters will arise, viz. the wonderful intuitions which are moving towards God at all time.

As often as the soul is found not to be in this state, it has either found a starting point in foreign recollections, or the senses have caused it to be troubled by the touch of [outward] things, when the senses are fenced in by solitude without a break and recollections have grown dim by its helpful influence—then thou wilt see what the nature of the deliberations of the soul, and what the nature of the soul is, and what treasures are collected in it. These treasures arc incorporeal intuitions which arise from the soul without care or labour being spent on them. Nay, a man does not even know that such deliberations could arise in human nature, nor does he know who was his teacher, or how he has found that which he cannot describe to his companion, or who has been his guide towards that which he has not learned from another.