The third sort, which is as perfect Contemplation as can be had in this life, consisteth both in knowing and affecting; that is, in knowing and perfect loving of God, which is when a man’s soul is first reformed by perfection of virtues to the image of Jesus, and afterwards, when it pleaseth God to visit him, he is taken in from all earthly and fleshly affections, from vain thoughts and imaginings of all bodily creatures, and, as it were, much ravished and taken up from his bodily senses, and then by the grace of the Holy Ghost is enlightened, to see by his understanding Truth itself (which is God) and spiritual things, with a soft, sweet, burning love in God, so perfectly that he becometh ravished with His love, and so the soul for the time is become one with God, and conformed to the image of the Trinity. (John Climacus)

Knowing and feeling are very different yet complementary. When we both know something and feel it too there is a wholeness and full comprehension that is well beyond intellectual understanding alone or experience alone.

John compares such wholeness to being ravished. This is to be seized violently and to be overwhelmed. In both English and its Latin root ravish often means to be raped. In the Greek it as often means to forcibly seize or claim another for oneself.

Among us to be ravished is typically one-sided. We are raped or raping, and in either case there is a misuse of power and a perversion of intimacy.

In relationship with God power yields to mutual desire. There is violence, as when a thunderhead releases its torrent or an earthquake rips open its faults. But with God each of us opens to the other, each seizes the other in passionate embrace.

Passion always involves suffering. No matter how intimate or how mutual, in this life we remain separate and from that sliver of separation arises the compassion of both knowing and feeling the wholeness - and profound otherness - of our relationship with God.