“Gott ist ein lauter Nichts, ihn rührt kein Nun noch Hier; Je mehr du nach ihm greiffst, je mehr entwind er dir.”
To this dialectical use, by the intellect, of negation as a mode of passage towards a higher kind of affirmation, there is correlated the subtlest of moral counterparts in the sphere of the personal will. Since denial of the finite self and its wants, since asceticism of some sort, is found in religious experience to be the only doorway to the larger and more blessed life, this moral mystery intertwines and combines with the intellectual mystery in all mystical writings.
“Love,” continues Behmen, is Nothing, for “when thou art gone forth wholly from the Creature and from that which is visible, and art become Nothing to all that is Nature and Creature, then thou art in that eternal One, which is God himself, and then thou shalt feel within thee the highest virtue of Love. … The treasure of treasures for the soul is where she goeth out of the Somewhat into that Nothing out of which all things may be made. The soul here saith, I have nothing , for I am utterly stripped and naked; I can do nothing , for I have no manner of power, but am as water poured out; I am