32. Of What Kind He Ought to Be Who Should Be Endowed with the Glft of Understanding : and of Four Things Which Hinder Him, and of the Same Number of Things Which Exclude Him. Now That This Gift Can Be Possessed by Man, and He in Turn by It, It Must Needs Be That He May Be Endowed with These Four Things. He Who Desires to Be Enlightened Will Be Bound to Pass Beyond and Be Carried Away Into the Superessential Substance of God. for Thence in the Simplicity of the Deep Itself He Will Experience the Boundless Light of God, and Thus He Will Penetrated Entirely by the Light of Truth, Inundated and Recreated. for This Light Generally Pours Forth Its Own Rays Upon All the Pure and Enlightened, in Accordance with the Dignity of Each One ; and Relying Upon It, They Have Power to Bend the Sharp- 168 Ness of the Mind Without Intermission Upon the Fruitful Countenance of God, and to Contemplate It. for They Will Ever Most Faithfully Contemplate That Which They Enjoy, They Themselves Having Been Lost Very Far Away. for When the Beloved Shall Have Departed to a Distance, This Very Thing Causes the Mind's Eyes to Incline to the Supreme Happiness Continually. Nevertheless in the Meantime the Beloved Is Held and Possessed by the Beloved in the Unity of the Divine Solitude. and Thus Shall We Ever Remain, and Our Life Will Continually Be in a State of Desire Before the Abyss of the Highest. There Are Four Other Things Which If They Are Well Considered, Will Be Seen to Hinder the Gift of Understanding ; Those Who Always Meditate with Closed Eyes, So That They Can Enjoy the Superessential Substance of God Have No Power to Be Enlightened, Because They Do Not Incline to the Simplicity of the Divine Light. and This Is to Them a Hindrance, So That They Are Unable as Do the Cherubim, to Know the Beloved So Excellently : They Desire Indeed to Search Into the Countenance of the Divine Majesty, But Fail on Account of This Very Thing. Finally There Are Four Other Things Which Can Be Mentioned, and Which Exclude the Gift of Understanding. He Who Seeks for the Taste and Delights of Earthly Things Is Unable to Attain to the Surpassing Fruition of God. in Neither Is He Capable of the Divine Illumination, Since He Is Oppressed and Laden with the Shadows of Transient Things. and Scarcely Even Will He Be Able to Rise Up Again Because Snatching at the Joys of Meat and Drink, He Leads a Life Given Up and Devoted to Gluttony. These Things, as I Have Said, Ruin a Man and Deprive Him of Eternal Happiness