Johannes Tauler quotes
Johannes Tauler was a German mystic and theologian, associated with the Dominican Order. His sermons became highly influential in the development of Christian mysticism during the Middle Ages. He inspired generations of spiritual seekers through his teachings on inner transformation and the direct experience of God. Here are 50 of his quotes:
It is something like fire working on wood; the heat draws out all the moisture, the greenness and the heaviness. It grows warm, begins to glow, becomes more like the fire itself. As the wood slowly takes on the likeness of fire, the dissimilarity between the two grows less until finally, in a rapid movement, the fire takes from the wood its own substance; the wood becomes fire and loses at the same time its separateness and inequality, since it has become fire. No longer merely like fire, it has become one substance with the fire. Likeness is lost in union.
Johannes Tauler
So you must be silent.
Then God will be born in you,
utter his word in you and you shall hear it;
but be very sure that if
you speak the word will have to be silent.
If you go out, he will most surely come in;
as much as you go out for him
He will come in to you; no more, no less....
Johannes Tauler
God is pure Being, a waste of calm seclusion...much nearer than anything is to itself in the depth of the heart, but He is hidden from all our senses. He is far above every outward thing and every thought, and is found only where thou hidest thyself in the secret place of thy heart, in the quiet solitude where no word is spoken, where is neither creature nor image nor fancy. This is the quiet Desert of the Godhead, the Divine Darkness-dark from His own surpassing brightness, as the shining of the sun is darkness to weak eyes, for in the presence of its brightness our eyes are like the eyes of the swallow in the bright This is the quiet Desert of the Godhead, the Divine Darkness-dark from His own surpassing brightness, as the shining of the sun is darkness to weak eyes, for in the presence of its brightness our eyes are like the eyes of the swallow in the bright sunlight sunlight.
Johannes Tauler
If one would a It is impossible for us in words to describe the ineffable dignity of the soul and we cannot in any way comprehend it prepare an empty place in the depths of the soul
there can be no doubt that God must fill it at once.
If there were a void on earth the heaven would fall to fill it....
Johannes Tauler
It is impossible for us in words to describe the ineffable dignity of the soul, and we cannot in any way comprehend it. If we had here with us a human being in his primal nobility, pure as Adam in paradise in his natural state apart from grace, his simple nature unadorned - that person would be so luminous and pure, so ravishing and richly favoured by God that no one would be able to comprehend his purity nor with his reason conceive of it.
Johannes Tauler
The soul has a hidden abyss,
untouched by time and space,
which is far superior to anything
that gives life and movement to the body.
Into this noble and wondrous ground,
this secret realm,
there descends that bliss of which we have spoken.
Here the soul has its eternal abode.
Here a man becomes so still and essential,
so single-minded and withdrawn,
so raised up in purity,
and more and more removed from all things. . . .
This state of the soul cannot be compared to what it has been before,
for now it is granted to share in the divine life The soul has a hidden abyss, untouched by time and space...Here the soul has its eternal abode itself.
Johannes Tauler
Next the soul must go out.
It must travel away from itself,
above itself....
There must be nothing left in us
but a pure intention towards God;
no will to be or become or obtain anything for ourselves.
We must exist only to make a place for God,
the highest innermost place,
where He may do His work;
there, when we are no longer putting ourselves in His way,
He Unity is strength can he born in us.
Johannes Tauler
