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The Bishop of the Florida Conference, United Methodist Church, Bishop Timothy Whitaker, in writing on spiritual reading, refers to an image given by St. Gregory of Nyssa (4th Century), one of the early theologians of the Church and Bishop of Nyssa, in Cappadocia:
Imagine a sheer, steep crag, of reddish appearance below, extending into eternity: on top there is this ridge which looks down over a projecting rim into a bottomless chasm. Now imagine what a person would probably experience if he put his foot on the edge of this ridge which overlooks the chasm and found no solid footing nor anything to hold on to. This is what I think the soul experiences when it goes beyond its footing in material things, in its quest for that which has no dimensions and which exists for all eternity. For here there is nothing it can take hold of, neither place nor time, neither measure nor anything else; it does not allow our minds to approach. And thus the soul, slipping at every point from what cannot be grasped, becomes dizzy and perplexed and returns once again to what is connatural to it.
(e-review, April 17, 2005, no. 19)
Bishop Whitaker proceeds with his commentary on the experience St. Gregory speaks of:
It is this dizziness of soul that causes many of us to shrink back from following the saints in their journey to God. Yet, courage is required to ascend the heights. God summons us as God summoned Moses, "Come up to me on the mountain ... " (Exodus 24:12). While we may not approach "the thick darkness where God was" (Exodus 20:21) like Moses and the saints, it is important to know that the mountain is there.
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The early mystical theologian Dionysius the Areopagite (ca. 500 CE), in Mystical Theology, wrote of this awe-filled Place of Divine Darkness and what is entailed in experiencing it:
Let this be my prayer; but do, dear Timothy, in the diligent exercise of mystical contemplation, leave behind the senses and the operations of the intellect, and all things sensible and intellectual, and all things in the world of being and nonbeing, that you may arise by unknowing towards the union, as far as is attainable, with it that transcends all being and all knowledge. For by the unceasing and absolute renunciation of yourself and of all things you may be borne on high, through pure and entire self-abnegation, into the superessential Radiance of the Divine Darkness.
(Trans. By Editors of the Shrine of Wisdom, 1923)
By entering this Place from which we seek retreat from dizziness of soul, Dionysius teaches that we experience the Mystery of the Trinity:
…what is within It [i.e., God] which is called Paternity [i.e., Father, Mother, Source], what Filiation [i.e., Word, Jesus Christ], and what is signified by the name Spirit [i.e., holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, Spirit of Christ]; how from the uncreated and indivisible Good, the blessed and perfect Rays of its Goodness [i.e., the Trinity, the three Divine Principles] proceed, and yet abide immutably one both within their Origin and within themselves and each other, co-eternal with the act by which they spring from it;…
By Divine Paternity all things abide in God, and God abides in all things. This is the Prior Union of which I often speak, and our being One with God. By Divine Filiation all things proceed from God, and God proceeds into all things. By Divine Spiration God returns, and all things return into God.
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