On Entering into The Presence of God

Garrigou-Lagrange continues explaining the result of the purification of the soul, in the Dark Night leading to the Illuminative State. This state leads to an almost constant awareness of the Presence of God. This Illuminative State is an active state of doing and being, which will lead to the Unitive State.

After the passive purification of the spirit, which is like a third conversion and transformation, the perfect know God in a quasi­experimental manner that is not transitory, but almost continual. Not only during Mass, the Divine Office, or prayer, but in the midst of external occupations, they remain in the presence of God and preserve actual union with Him.

Here, following, is a real sign of the Illuminative State-the absence of talking and thinking about the self. 
Formerly, the ego held one back in a constant state of focusing on the self. Now, in this liberation of purity of heart, one thinks of God and talks of God. The entire focus of one's life is now the Trinity.

The matter will be easily understood by our considering the egoist's contrary state of soul. The egoist thinks always of himself and, without realizing it, refers everything to himself. He talks continually with himself about his inordinate desires, sorrows, or superficial joys; his intimate conversation with himself is endless, but it is vain, sterile, and unproductive for all. The perfect man, on the contrary, instead of thinking always of himself, thinks continually of God, His glory, and the salvation of souls; he instinctively makes everything converge toward the object of his thoughts. His intimate conversation is no longer with himself, but with God, and the words of the Gospel frequently recur to his mind to enlighten from on high the smallest pleasurable or painful facts of daily life. His soul sings the glory of God, and from it radiate spiritual light and fervor, which are perpetually bestowed on him from above.

One has moved beyond the senses. One is illumined.

The reason for this state is that the perfect man, unlike the beginner, no longer contemplates God only in the mirror of sensible things or of the Gospel parables, about which it is impossible to think continually. Neither does he, like the proficient, contemplate God only in the mirror of the mysteries of the life of Christ, a prayer that cannot last all day long; but, in the penumbra of faith, he contemplates the divine goodness itself, a little as we see the diffused light that always surrounds us and illumines everything from above.

This light is the light of the Bride's joy in discovering, or rather, in letting the Bridegroom discover her. The light of grace and the Presence of God changes the view of life and death. All things are seen in a different light, literally, both physically and spiritually. The "yes" of the Dark Night's journey changes into the "yes" of accepting the light, the Light, Who is Christ.

All events are seen in this light as from the Hand of God, including suffering. God's Will becomes obvious and God's Presence is a daily sustenance, underneath sorrow and pain, or grace and glory.

According to the terms used by Dionysius the Mystic and preserved by St. Thomas,(1) this is the movement of circular contemplation, superior to the straight and the oblique movements. The straight movement, like the flight of the lark, rises from a sensible fact recalled in a parable to a divine perfection, from the sight of the prodigal son to infinite mercy.

The oblique movement rises, for example, from the mysteries of the childhood of Christ to those of His passion, of His glory, and finally to the infinite love of God for us. The circular movement is similar to the flight of the eagle, which, after soaring aloft, delights in describing the same circle several times, then hovers seemingly motionless in the light of the sun, scrutinizing the depths of the horizon.

Here it is a question of a knowledge of the radiating goodness of God. The soul sees now in a quasi-experimental manner that everything God has done in the order of nature and that of grace is intended to manifest His goodness, and that if He permits evil, like a dissonance, it is for a higher good, which is glimpsed at times and which will appear on the last day.