THE DISCIPLE said to the Master: How may I attain to the supersensual life, that I may see God and hear him speak?

  The Master said: If thou canst raise thyself for a moment thither, where no creature dwelleth, thou shalt hear what God saith.

  The Disciple said: Is that near or far?

  The Master said: It is in thee, and if thou canst be silent and cease, for an hour, from all thy willing and brooding, thou shalt hear unspeakable words of God.

  The Disciple said: How may I hear, if I cease from all willing and brooding?

  The Master said: If thou wilt cease from all brooding and willing of thine own, then the eternal Hearing and Seeing and Speaking shall be revealed in thee, and shall discern God through thee. Thine own hearing and willing and seeing hinders thee, that thou canst not see nor hear God.

  The Disciple said: Wherewith shall I hear and see God, seeing he is above nature and the creature?

  The Master said: If thou keepest silence, thou art what God was before nature and the creature, and out of which he made thy nature and creature. Then shalt thou hear and see with that wherewith God, in thee, saw and heard, before thine own willing and seeing and hearing did begin.

  The Disciple said: What doth hinder me that I cannot attain thereunto?

  The Master said: Thine own willing and hearing and seeing, and because thou dost strive against that whence thou hast proceeded. With thine own will thou separatest thyself from God’s willing, and with thine own seeing thou seest only in thy willing. And thy willing stoppeth thine hearing with the obstinate concupiscence of earthly, natural things, and leadeth thee into a pit, and overshadoweth thee with that which thou desirest, so that thou canst not attain to the supernatural, and supersensual.

  The Disciple said: Seeing I am in nature, how can I pass through nature into the supersensual deep, without destroying nature?

  The Master said: To that end three things are requisite. The first is, that thou shouldst surrender thy will unto God and let thyself down into the deeps of his mercy. The second is, that thou shouldst hate thine own will, and not do that whereunto thy will impelleth thee. The third is, that thou shouldst bring thyself into subjection to the Cross, that thou mayest be able to bear the assaults of nature and creature. If thou doest this, God will in-speak into thee, and will lead thy passive will into himself,—into the supernatural deep, and thou shalt hear what the Lord speaketh in thee.

  The Disciple said: It were necessary that I should quit the world and my life, in order to do this.

  The Master said: If thou leave the world, thou wilt come into that whereof the world is made. And if thou losest thy life, and comest into impotence of thine own faculty, then shall thy life be in that, for the sake of which thou didst leave thy life,—that is in God, whence it came into the body.

  The Disciple said: God has created man in the life of nature, that he may have dominion over all creatures upon the earth, and be lord of everything in this world. Therefore, surely, he ought to possess it for his own.

  The Master said: If, in the outward alone, thou governest all animals, then thou art with thy will and thy government according to the manner of beasts, and exercisest only a symbolical and perishable dominion, and bringest thy desire into the beastly Essence wherewith thou wilt become infected and entangled, and acquire the nature of a beast. But if thou hast left the symbolical way, thou shalt stand in the supersymbolical and shalt reign over all creatures, in the ground out of which they were created. And then nothing upon earth shall harm thee, for thou wilt have relations with all things, and nothing will be foreign from thee.