John Roysbrook,
The Little Book of Enlightenment,
Chapters 12 and 13 Hereafter follows the unity without difference.
For the love of God is not only to be considered as flowing out with all good and drawing into unity,
But it is also above all distinction and essential enjoyment according to the bare essence of the divinity.
And for this reason enlightened people have found within themselves an essential inward gazing above reason and without reason,
And an enjoyable inclination surpassing all modes and all essence,
Sinking away from themselves into a modeless abyss of fathomless beatitude,
Where the trinity of the divine persons possess their nature in essential unity.
See here that beatitude is so simple and so without mode that therein all essential gazing,
Inclination,
And distinction of creatures passes away.
For all spirits thus raised up melt away and are annihilated by reason of their enjoyment in God's essence,
Which is the super-essence of all essence.
There they fall away from themselves and are lost in a bottomless unknowing.
There all clarity is turned back to darkness.
There where the three persons give way to the essential unity and without distinction enjoy essential beatitude.
This beatitude is essential to God alone,
And to all spirits it is super-essential.
For no created essence can be one with God's essence and perish of itself,
For then the creature would become God,
Which is impossible.
For the essence of God can neither diminish nor increase,
Nothing can be taken from him,
Neither can be added to him.
Nevertheless,
All loving spirits are one enjoyment and one beatitude,
With God without difference.
For the blessed essence which is the enjoyment of God himself and all his beloved is so plain and simple that there is neither father,
Nor son,
Nor holy spirit according to personal distinction,
Nor any creature.
But there all enlightened spirits are raised out of themselves into an enjoyment without mode that is overflowing above all fullness that any creature has ever received or may receive.
For there all the elevated spirits and their super-essence are one enjoyment and one beatitude with God without difference.
There the beatitude is so simple that no distinction can enter into it evermore.
Christ desired this when he prayed his heavenly father that all his beloved should be brought to the perfect union,
Just as he is one with the Father in enjoyment by means of the Holy Spirit.
Thus he prayed and desired that he in us and we in him and in his heavenly father should become one in enjoyment by means of the Holy Spirit.
And that,
I think,
Is the most loving prayer that Christ ever made for our beatitude.
But you should also note that this prayer was threefold,
As St.
John has shown us in the same Gospel.
For he prayed that we might be with him,
That we might behold the glory which his Father has given him.
Because of this I said in the beginning that all good people are united with God by means of the grace of God and their virtuous life.
For the love of God is always flowing into us with new gifts.
And those who take heed of this are filled with new virtues and holy practices and with all good things,
As I have said to you before.
This union,
With fullness of grace and glory in body and soul,
Begins here and lasts eternally.
Next Christ prayed that he should be in us and we in him.
This we find in many passages in the Gospel.
And this is the union that is without intermediary.
For the love of God is not only outflowing but is also drawing in into unity.
And those who feel this and experience this become interior and enlightened.
Their higher faculties are raised above all practices to the bareness of their essence.
There the faculties become simplified above reason in their essence and because of this they are filled and overflowing.
For in this simplicity the spirit finds itself united with God without intermediary.
And this union,
Together with the exercise which is proper to it,
Will endure eternally.
Then Christ further prayed the highest prayer.
That all his beloved should be brought to perfect unity,
Even as he is one with the Father.
Not as one as he is one single substance of divinity with the Father,
But as one in the same unity where he is without distinction.
One enjoyment and one beatitude with the Father in essential love.
Christ's prayer is fulfilled in those,
United to God in this threefold manner.
With God they will ebb and flow and will always be in repose,
Possessing and enjoying.
They will work and endure and rest in the super-essence without fear.
They will go out and in and find nourishment both within and without.
They are drunk with love and have passed away into God in the dark luminosity.
