Ruysbroek reverts to the mystical tradition, partially broken by Eckhart, of arranging almost all his topics in three or seven divisions, often forming a progressive scale.  For instance, in the treatise “On the Seven Grades of Love,” we have the following series, which he calls the “Ladder of Love”:  (1) goodwill; (2) voluntary poverty; (3) chastity; (4) humility; (5) desire for the glory of God; (6) Divine contemplation, which has three properties—­intuition, purity of spirit, and nudity of mind; (7) the ineffable, unnameable transcendence of all knowledge and thought.  This arbitrary schematism is the weakest part of Ruysbroek’s writings, which contain many deep thoughts.  His chief work, Ordo spiritualium nuptiarum, is one of the most complete charts of the mystic’s progress which exist.  The three stages are here the active life (vita actuosa), the internal, elevated, or affective life, to which all are not called, and the contemplative life, to which only a few can attain.  The three parts of the soul, sensitive, rational, and spiritual, correspond to these three stages.  The motto of the active life is the text, “Ecce sponsus venit; exite obviam ei.”  The Bridegroom “comes” three times:  He came in the flesh; He comes into us by grace; and He will come to judgment.  We must “go out to meet Him,” by the three virtues of humility, love, and justice:  these are the three virtues which support the fabric of the active life.  The ground of all the virtues is humility; thence proceed, in order, obedience, renunciation of our own will, patience, gentleness, piety, sympathy, bountifulness, strength and impulse for all virtues, soberness and temperance, chastity.  “This is the active life, which is necessary for us all, if we wish to follow Christ, and to reign with Him in His everlasting kingdom.”

Above the active rises the inner life.  This has three parts.  Our intellect must be enlightened with supernatural clearness; we must behold the inner coming of the Bridegroom, that is, the eternal truth; we must “go out” from the exterior to the inner life; we must go to meet the Bridegroom, to enjoy union with His Divinity.

Finally, the spirit rises from the inner to the contemplative life.  “When we rise above ourselves, and in our ascent to God are made so simple that the love which embraces us is occupied only with itself, above the practice of all the virtues, then we are transformed and die in God to ourselves and to all separate individuality.”  God unites us with Himself in eternal love, which is Himself.  “In this embrace and essential unity with God all devout and inward spirits are one with God by living immersion and melting away into Him; they are by grace one and the same thing with Him, because the same essence is in both.”  “For what we are, that we intently contemplate; and what we contemplate, that we are; for our mind, our life, and our essence are simply lifted up and united to the very truth, which is God.  Wherefore