They have lifted up their intellect, prepared by the eternal Living One for reception of such things, and they have put it in a place preserved from alien sensations where hosts of angels of light hover over in unceasing movement, in an ineffable world (L40) 

     He was so illuminating my mind for many days with His holy light that nothing was visible to me except the brilliance of His holy light. Therefore I was standing in fear of walking lest I should strike a rock or a stone or a piece of wood and fall and be injured; since through the splendour of the living light the serene sphere was in my view and I could see nothing of the things here below. (D5) 

      Thus Christ the merciful transforms my experience in every way, for after my transformation I do not know whether I am the person I was before or not, in that my Lord has altered my thoughts, my knowledge, and my bodily constitution, and made me into a different person in place of the one I had been; likewise I have been altered in the eyes of my soul. 

                                                           

     You ask me how I am. I don't know what to answer considering the ups and downs that I experience. Sometimes I am full of Life and sometimes death seems to rage against me in all my members. Sometimes I kill life and sometimes it is the dead who bring me down. Sometimes I am cut off from everything through union with the Lord and sometimes I am a mixture of everything. It is a wonder for me that the Spirit of Life so lends Himself to alienation that the dead can so exercise power. But He allows this to happen in order to warn us, so that we should not breath in the odour of the dead with any longing. (L37) 

     When the remembrance of the mystery that is to come arises in my intellect, my heart becomes fervent and my intellect is inflamed for the time when it will be held worthy of that glorious vision of the Eternal Living One and will delight in its blessing. (L40) 

     One of the brothers was saying to me: “At first, because my intellect was not accustomed to it, when the light of the Holy Trinity was appearing in it to unite with it in imperceptible simplicity, deprived of understanding because of stupefaction at the light of Life; when it perceived the radiance unifying it, it was overcome with fear that it might never again return to itself.” 

     But when the brother became accustomed to the beatitude beyond all blessings and received the experience of its ineffable delight, and felt the strength which he acquired by it against the passions and against the demons: he saw the splendour of his intellect which on account of the beatitude became like God and he saw the familiarity he partook with Him in everything as a son to a father. (L40)

     I have no tears of supplication, Lord; I have no contrite heart for seeking thee; I have not the repentance and compunction that turns sons back to their inheritance; my intellect is darkened through the things of this world and has not the strength to lift its gaze towards thee with moaning; my heart has grown cold through a multitude of evils and cannot become warm through tears of love. O Christ, treasure of all goodly things, grant me perfect repentance and an aching heart that comes out in love to seek thee. (D4) 

     And all remains within him and he abides above all in a place of wonder and astonishment where there is no vibration and no motion, not bodily, not even belonging to the spirit, because he is joined in a union higher than any union, not even cognizant that he is in it. (L40) 

       Happy the man who can remember his passage through you, O world, having weaned his appetite away from your good things to receive instead a blessing for himself, nor can he part with his blessings: that is, a man born of the Lord. (D3) 

     To those on whose intellect the Spirit of Life has been breathed by Jesus, the Only Begotten Word, our incorporeal Sun, a sight has been given them by Him unimpeded by anything. Just as the physical eye has power over all that is in existence because the created sun has the power to pass by with it’s radiance, so also it is for the spiritual eye which has obtained sight from Christ by means of purity, in that God is its Sun and He is stretched over all.  (L40) 

     Any one who wishes to see God achieves purity of heart by constant remembrance of God, and then by the cleansing the eyes of his intellect he sees the Lord continuously. What happens to a fish when it experiences dry land is the same as what happens to the intellect when it returns from the knowledge of God to be absorbed in remembrance of the world; for in so far as a man is deprived of human society and business, to that extent he is deemed worthy of speech and familiarity with God in his mind. (D3) 

     O Mercy, how You abound! He who was scattered and dissipated, You have made recollected and unified. Who will bring him back to himself if not He who by his sign gathering all together into one, summons those who are spread like particles of glass in the sand? 

       If you are a friend of God, why have you divinized yourself falsely and created what He did not create? Pass on a little from here, that you might accomplish what is beautiful. If there is a shadow in your place and your world is temporal, stand at the foot of the mountain and be ashamed that you did not give up this world and did not receive the Eternal One. Persevere yet a little in the place that is difficult for you, if the light does not yet shine from the lamp of your ascetic life. (L39)

     Woe to me if I abode alone by myself and am not found at one with the Unique! Woe to me if a shadow is found in my Sun and if I only see what is in front of my face and not what is within me. (L39) 

     If your labour wearies you, you have not seen any fruit; if hunger afflicts you, you have not tasted the Bread of Life; if thirst torments you, the Source of Life is far from you; if in your paradise stands the One who tests freedom, you yourself stand naked and ashamed for you have no shelter under the Tree of Life: go within yourself that you may see all which is outside and put out what is within, that the familiar ones driven out may enter for rest. Then the Builder will dwell with joy in his house (L39)

    Blessed is the one whose soul is moistened with the sweetness of his God and even his bones receive their marrow from Him! Who will explain this blessing? Not even the spiritual beings are able. Blessed is the one to whom is revealed the place to which he is travelling and who burns with desire for it. Blessed is the one who knows the place of understanding and who perceives that there are no intelligent ones there: he understands a great mystery! (L38) 

     (Pt2) O the unexplainable mystery! Neither can my hand put my intended meaning to writing. I wish the Creator of this mystery himself would explain it to you... For if man reaches this degree he does not pray for those who asked him to pray, rather mercy alone moves him to pity toward all who are in need. It is the Spirit, who is in him and is one with him, who heals their ailments and satisfies their needs...

     At the time when this gift is active within man, even if the whole creation turns into noise and tumult, it cannot force him to come to himself or return out of his rapture or ecstasy. (D)

      

     There is no human weakness, nor prayer nor supplication nor petition nor thoughts nor movements nor the moving of human life nor a mention of things which are or which shall be. Instead he (the praying person) is united with the Spirit of the Son who speaks with him, and he knows within himself that he is God's son. Like a son he speaks to his Father with intimacy, and so becomes not like one who prays but like one who receives prayer. (D)

     Blessed is the one whose treasure is within him and who is not nourished from outside. Blessed is the one whose sun rises from within, blocking the powers of sight which perceive the external sun, powers which hinder those powers which perceive the interior sun. Blessed is the one whose hearing is closed to amusing sounds and he inclines to hear the stirrings of the fiery ones and the utterance of their crying “Holy”. (L38) 

     Rejoicing in God makes one forget the weakness of faultfinders and of oneself and makes one exult to proclaim openly the secrets and gifts of Grace, as you learn plainly from St Paul, who declares concerning himself that he searched the deep things of God through the Spirit and knew hidden things, he and his like, possessing the mind of Christ through Christ, beholding the glory of God with unveiled face and being transformed into his likeness by the Lord the Spirit; and that God shone forth in their hearts that they might be illuminated in his knowledge, to see hidden things and to know things to come. (D Intro) 

     They die and are radiant because death shows them the face of their Lord and they do not remember the life ending in death. (L37) 

                                                               St. John of Dalyatha

      Indeed, because the Rebel who opposes us fights by means of pride and wishes to conquer wrongfully by arrogance, our victorious King arms us with weapons of humility. For without the invincible strength of humility no one conquers. Humility abases the pride of the deceitful one, and makes him be trampled under the feet of the gentle and kind.  

     The heavens and the earth and all that is in them are full of God; that he passes through all and that his Nature is stretched out through all the natures, like the sun in the air. (L50) 

     (Pt2) Revelling in its mighty flood and exulting: hiding itself in the light, with its essence effervescing with love and joy; floating around endlessly; penetrating into its glory and being changed into the likeness of its wondrous spendour. There it sees the angels of light shining ineffably and is extended with them and in them and it sanctifies in ecstasy. (D22) 

     There are times when the Spirit, the guide of the mind, draws it away and baptizes it in a sea of essential light. One person told me: When the Father's Mercy shines forth upon me and carries my mind off into this glorious sight, before it is swallowed up in ecstasy and non-knowledge and is stupefied, I see my mind diverting itself in the sea of life, swimming in the waves of light, plunging and surfacing, inhaling the odour of life, and being wonderstruck; rising and sinking, and being made radiant. (D22) 

     They are no longer in this world, but in God. Nor are they workers of the flesh but of the Spirit. Their mind does not think of the world, but their impulses originate in God, in silence and great wonder. (L47) 

      O Good One who has never been angry, who by thy kindness bears with all our faults in tranquility without vexation, fill our hearts with thy tranquility and love without distinction, and the Evil One will be unable to disturb it. (D10) 

     As regards speaking about the manner of God’s revelation in sanctified minds, it is not permitted to the tongue. But the explanation of this great mystery is placed in purified and luminous minds and is immersed in silence, because it is in this place of wonder that God makes himself known to those who love Him. (L1)

     (Pt3) Then it is enlightened sublimely and it penetrates deep into the holy sublimely bright light and is engulfed in the glory of its sight and it marvels; and everything is removed from its sight, as though non-existent, and it forgets itself, being united with the light of the glorious majesty, and it is ravished by its wondrous beauty and it beholds the glorious Persons by knowledge, or rather by non-knowledge, higher than all knowledges and knowers. (D22) 

     (Pt2) Then it is expanded with the holy divine light, notably with all the simple spiritual beings; and it sees them as they are and is with them in vision, in unity, and in likeness, and in their sanctifying, which is ecstasy and unceasing stillness springing up in a lively fiery impulse in universal life. This is the contemplation of intellectual natures. (D22) 

     When the divine light has dawned in the soul and united with it, it passes intellectually through all creations, heaven and earth, mountains and seas, human beings and all material bodies, and sees them as they are, in proportion to its cleansing. This is the contemplation of bodies. Because a person is enlightened in each one of these they are called outward intelligences (or "meanings"). (D22)