In Book Three, the final book of the Adornment, Ruysbroeck unveils the summit of the spiritual journey: the God-seeing life. Here, the soul passes beyond all images, virtues, and selfhood into the direct, unmediated vision of God. This contemplative union unfolds in stages, from the soul’s loving response to God through virtue and desire, to being drawn into the eternal birth of the Son in the soul, and finally to participation in the hidden unity of the Divine Essence. Ruysbroeck describes how only those purified by virtue, consumed with love, and surrendered in utter inwardness can be lifted into this superessential vision. There, in divine darkness, the soul sees the uncreated light and becomes one with it, not by knowledge or effort, but by God’s own act.
This eternal beholding is no static moment but an unceasing procession of divine life and love. The Father eternally begets the Son in the soul, and the Holy Spirit breathes forth as their mutual love, drawing the soul into an ever-deepening fruition. In this union, all distinctions, between Creator and creature, between the Persons of the Trinity, are gathered into the abyss of the divine Unity, where the soul loses itself in love. What remains is a still, radiant silence where the soul, now free from every image and mode, dwells in blessedness. This is the culmination of the spiritual marriage: to see and be seen in God, to live in the eternal Now of divine life, tasting at last the formless glory of Love itself.
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Chapter 1 discusses three ways to enter into The God-Seeing Life. The inward lover of God, who holds God in fruitive love, embraces himself in active love, and lives a life marked by virtues, is led into the God-seeing life through these three elements. Such a person may be chosen by God to be lifted into a higher state of superessential contemplation. This contemplation is beyond human understanding and cannot be attained by effort, knowledge, or subtlety. Only those whom God unites with Himself in spirit can see God in this way.
In the essential unity of God, the three Persons of the Trinity eternally behold, love, and have fruition in an embrace of divine love. All inward beings are one with God in this unity, immersed in love, sharing the eternal bliss of God. And, the Father is the origin in this unity of every work in heaven and on earth, and He speaks in our depths: Behold, the Bride groom cometh; go ye out to meet Him.
These words open onto that superessential contemplation which is the source of all holiness. No one can really understand them in any creaturely way since that is far below their Truth. Only the one who is united with God, for to comprehend God as He is in Himself, is to be God with God, without intermediary, and without any otherness that can become a hindrance. Such a person has died to himself and lives in God. He has turned his gaze to the Hidden Truth that reveals Itself without intermediary, in one unique abysmal word in which He utters Himself in the hiddenness of our spirit. This is the birth of the Son.
To enter this God-seeing life, three things are necessary. First, a person must be perfectly ordered in virtues, inwardly empty, and free from all distractions. Second, they must cleave to God with unquenchable love and intention, like a fire that never dies. Third, they must lose themselves in a waylessness and darkness where all self-consciousness ceases, entering into the manifestation of God and eternal life. In this divine darkness, the soul sees an incomprehensible light (the Son of God) and becomes united with God’s own brightness. This divine light, given to the simple sight of the spirit, transcends all gifts and creaturely activities. The contemplative, in his emptiness and spiritual nakedness, becomes one with the light by which he sees, achieving a state of blessedness and eternal life.
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Chapter 2 emphasizes that the eternal birth of God in the spirit is a ceaseless process, wherein the soul continually beholds and is transformed by the ever-new presence of God.
In the God-seeing life, one experiences the constant birth of God’s presence in the soul as a perpetual enlightenment, an unceasing renewal and an uninterrupted manifestation of the Divine Light. The Bridegroom, who symbolizes Christ, is always coming anew into the soul, bringing an ever-fresh illumination that transcends time. This coming is both instantaneous and eternal, constantly bringing new joy and delight. The soul’s spiritual “eyes” are opened wide to receive the endless revelation of God’s presence, never to close again.
In this state, all earthly actions and virtues cease because God alone works in the innermost nobility of the spirit. Here, the soul is absorbed in an eternal act of seeing and being illuminated by the Divine Light. The spirit, in receiving this unending divine coming, becomes one with the Light itself, finding all blessedness in this divine unity. This ongoing process of receiving and becoming is what constitutes the eternal life and joy of the soul.
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Chapter 3 explores the most profound depth of union with God in which the soul, called to go out in eternal contemplation and fruition, shares all riches that are in God by nature, by way of the unmeasured love of the Holy Ghost. Through this love, we are dead to ourselves, and go forth in waylessness embraced by the Holy Trinity in the superessential Unity where the Father dwells in the Son, and the Son in the Father, and all creatures in both, beyond the distinction of the Persons which are the fruitfulness of the Divine Nature. It is here that an eternal going out without beginning begins: the Father generates the Son in perfect self-understanding and in this eternal generatioin, all creatures were conceived in God as ideas distinct from Himself, but not fully other. Thus, we exist eternally in God before being created in time, and our eternal being is like God’s being, having immanence in the Divine Essence without distinction. In the birth of the Son, our being obtains an outflowing and distinction according to the Eternal Idea.
Both our eternal indwelling in God’s essence (being in God before creation), and our eternal outflowing in distinction (through the Son as divine ideas), makes us so like God that He can eternally reflect Himself in us. We may appear “other” than God, but in the eternal Image (the Son), our likeness remains one with God. God sees Himself and all creation in this one eternal act of seeing – no before or after, just now. This eternal Image is both God’s own reflection and also our true self. We are made after this eternal Image and are called to go out from ourselves and return and unite with it in love and bliss, because it is our “proper life.”
The bosom of the Father is our ground and origin, from which we begin to exist. From the Father shines forth the eternal brightness, the Son, in whom the Father knows Himself and all that lives in Him. Everything in the Father, except His Fatherhood, remains unmanifested in Himself, yet is given to the Son and made manifest through Him. Our eternal Image remains hidden and wayless in the Father, but is revealed through the Son’s radiant Light. Those raised into the God-seeing life become one with this Divine Light, recognizing their uncreated essence as rooted in the same onefold ground. This leads them beyond created being, reason, and distinction into a contemplative union, where they are transfigured by and into the Divine Light itself.
God-seeing men follow the Eternal Image in which they were created, seeing God and all things, without distinction, in a simple seeing, in the Divine brightness. This is the noblest contemplation to which one can attain, leaving man master of himself and free. Each loving introversion increases his soul’s nobility beyond understanding. This gazing at the Divine Light lifts the soul beyond all virtue and merit. We now possess the reward after which we strive and participate in a heavenly life. Freed from earthly exile, the soul is more fully capable of receiving God’s brightness.
This path of contemplation is a transcendent “way above all ways,” where the soul is transformed in Divine radiance. In love, the soul goes out beyond itself, tasting God’s inexhaustible richness in a secret, inward union where it becomes like God.
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Chapter 4. When the inward, God-seeing person reaches their Eternal Image and enters the bosom of the Father through the Son, they continually receive the Eternal Birth in each moment, and are continually enlightened in a Divine contemplation. This is the final stage: a loving meeting, and our blessedness.
The Father, as the living ground, is always turned toward the Son (His Eternal Wisdom); and the Son, in turn, is always turned back toward the Father. Out of this mutual turning flows the Holy Spirit, their mutual love, who shares their nature. This love is so profound that all creation must remain silent before it, for it surpasses all understanding. Yet the soul that is above itself and is united with God sees without measure, as God does, the riches in the unity where it possesses itself according to its uncreated essence.
This rapturous union between Father and Son is continually renewed within us: the Father endlessly gives Himself to the Son, and the Son to the Father, in a perpetual exchange of love. Just as the Father forever beholds all things in the Son’s birth, so too are all things constantly loved anew by both Father and Son through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, who embraces us in this eternal love.
This loving embrace is both fruitive and wayless. The abysmal waylessness of God is so unconditioned that it swallows up every Divine way and activity, as well as the attributes of the Persons, and brings about Divine fruition in the abyss of the Ineffable. Here the soul dies in fruition and dissolves into the pure, formless simplicity of God’s ineffable oneness, where all Divine names, images and distinctions lapse in waylessness and without reason. In the unfathomable abyss of divine simplicity, all distinctions fall away. Everything is gathered into fruitive bliss, an abyss that only the Essential Unity can comprehend. All that live in God, even the Persons of the Trinity, yield to this stillness where nothing remains but eternal rest in the outpouring of Love. This “wayless being” is what contemplative souls chose above all else -a dark, radiant silence where they lose themselves completely. To approach it, we must let go of everything and surrender to the vast, unknowable sea of God.
Ruysbroek ends his work with a prayer, “May we possess in fruition the essential Unity, and clearly behold unity in the Trinity; this may Divine Love, which turns no beggar away, bestow upon us. Amen.”