They do not respond to the stirring of God with a forsaking of themselves. Ruusbroec is answering the question why good men do not all attain the unmediated union. The answer is operational and uncompromising: they do not surrender. The stirring of God arrives — that is constant, not optional — but the soul that does not respond to the stirring with a forsaking of itself remains outside the inner chamber. The Sufi shaykhs say the same about jadhba, divine attraction — it is given to many, met by few. Hadewijch in the Brabantine Beguine tradition Ruusbroec inherits had said the same of minne — the love comes; what is rare is the lover who is willing to be undone by it.Hadewijch, Letters 5-9 on minne; on Sufi jadhba see ʿAttar, Mantiq al-Tayr (Conference of the Birds); cf. the Cloud of Unknowing ch. 18 on the responsibility of response.
They care more for particular methods and the greatness and multiplicity of good works than for the intention and love towards God. The second diagnostic. The soul that has substituted methods for love can produce many works without arriving at the inward chamber. The works look right; the inward orientation is wrong. The same pastoral observation runs through every contemplative tradition. Tauler said it tartly: 'There are pious people who carry their crucifixes about like burdens and complain how heavy God is.' The medieval Sufi shaykhs said the same about disciples who collected stations as collectors collect coins. The mistake is to treat the path as a curriculum to be completed.Tauler, Sermon 41; on the same diagnostic in Sufism, Ibn ʿAtaʾallah, Kitab al-Hikam, aphorisms 19-23.
They remain outward and manifold of heart. The Flemish phrase Ruusbroec is using is veelvuldicheid — manifoldness, multiplicity of heart — and it is the structural opposite of einvuldicheit, onefoldness. The diagnostic is precise. The soul that has not been simplified, that still has many strands of attachment running in many directions, cannot enter the inner chamber, because the chamber is one and the multiplied heart is not one. The same insight is in Eckhart's repeated insistence on becoming one and in the Cloud's instruction that contemplation is a work of the simple heart. The contemplative work, in part, is a simplification — not the addition of practices but the gradual loss of unnecessary divisions inside.On einvuldicheit / Einfaltigkeit see Eckhart, Sermon 14 (DW); Cloud of Unknowing ch. 3 on the work of the simple heart; on simplification as Ruusbroec's structural goal see Albert Ampe, Kernproblemen, vol. 2.