From Ascent to Appearing: Rereading the Path of the Soul
The mystical tradition in Christianity stands as one of the most powerful witnesses to the limits of conceptual thought and the longing of the soul for something that cannot be captured by language. From Dionysius the Areopagite to John of the Cross and Meister Eckhart, the mystics speak of a union with God that occurs beyond the intellect, beyond the senses, beyond even the will. God is not grasped but encountered in silence, in darkness, in the unknowing that transcends all names.
And in this, something essential is unveiled: God is not an object among others, nor a being with whom one might form a relationship like any other. God is beyond being, or more precisely, the very ground of what appears — the eternally appearing of Being itself. The mystic intuits that true union does not occur by effort or acquisition, but by a letting-go that reveals what always already is. The will is not the agent of salvation; its silence is the condition for what appears beyond it.
Yet here too, as in other spiritual paths, a profound contradiction lies hidden in the very structure of the mystical ascent. The soul is said to move from separation to union, from distance to nearness, from a state of ignorance or impurity toward divine clarity and presence. The journey is described in terms of purification, detachment, ascent, or becoming one with God.
But this movement — this “becoming”— presupposes a time when the soul was not yet united, a prior state of separation or distance, a condition in which God was absent or hidden. This implies that the soul could be outside of God, or that God could fail to appear — that what-is might not be, or might pass into Being from non-being.
Here emerges again what Severino identifies as contraddizione C: the claim that Being can become non-being, or that something not-yet can come to be. If God is eternal, and if the soul is real, then neither can come into or go out of Being. The soul cannot “become one” with God because it is eternally not separate. Union is not a goal; it is a condition always already fulfilled — even when it does not yet appear as such.
This does not mean that the language of purification and detachment is empty. It reflects the necessary appearing of contradiction, the soul’s experience of division and longing as a real moment within the totality of Being. The mystical path is not a lie; it is a stage in the unveiling. It points beyond itself, not through effort, but by exhausting the illusion of becoming. The darkness of unknowing, the silence of the will — these are not precursors to union, but appearances of the eternal in the very heart of finitude.
The mystics speak truly when they say that God cannot be possessed, that no concept reaches Him. But they often fail to realize what this impossibility implies: that God does not come, that union does not happen. Rather, God is, and the soul is in God, irrevocably, eternally — whether or not this is yet known.
Thus, the mystic path — with its purgations, its nights, its visions and darkness — prepares the soul to see what it could never attain: that it has never been separate, that it has never “approached” God, because it is eternally grounded in the structure of Being. Not by ascent, but by the dissolution of becoming, the truth appears.
In this light, the mystical journey is not a climbing toward a distant God, but the necessary unveiling of what has always been. The fire of purification, the silence of the night, the ecstasy of union — all appear not as stages toward fulfillment, but as eternal expressions of the already-fulfilled. The soul does not become divine — it always was, and its longing was the echo of a truth it had never lost.
What remains, then, is not a path to walk, but a truth to appear: that God is eternally appearing, and the soul is eternally within that appearing. There is no separation, no becoming — only the gradual dissolution of the illusion of distance, and the recognition of what cannot not be.
It Is What It Is 
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