Note 7 — Chapter III

Dionysius thus describes the mystical adept who has reached the summit of union:—‘Then is he delivered from all seeing and being seen, and passes into the truly mystical darkness of ignorance, where he excludes all intellectual apprehensions (τὰς γνωστικὰς ἀντιλήηψεις), and abides in the utterly Impalpable and Invisible; being wholly His who is above all, with no other dependence, either on himself or any other; and is made one, as to his nobler part, with the utterly Unknown, by the cessation of all knowing; and at the same time, in that very knowing nothing, he knows what transcends the mind of man.’—De Mysticâ Theologiâ, cap. i. p. 710. S. Dion. Areop. Opp. Paris, 1644.

So again he exhorts Timothy ‘by assiduous practice in mystical contemplations to abandon the senses and all operations of the intellect; all objects of sense and all objects of thought, all things non-existent and existent (αἰσθητὰ = οὐκ ὄντα, νοητὰ = ὄντα), and ignorantly to strive upwards towards Union as close as possible with Him who is above all essence and knowledge:—inasmuch as by a pure, free, and absolute separation (ἐκστάσει) of himself from all things, he will be exalted (stripped and freed from everything) to the superessential radiance of the divine darkness.’—p. 708.

About the words rendered ‘intellectual apprehensions’ commentators differ. The context, the antithesis, and the parallel passage in the earlier part of the chapter, justify us in understanding them in their strict sense, as conveying the idea of cessation from all mental action whatsoever.