The point of Dionysius is that since the human senses and intellect are incapable of attaining to God, they must be “emptied” of creatures or purified in order that God may pour his light into them. In this sense they are in complete darkness in regard to created things but they are at the same time filled with light from God. Hence, we can say that “The Divine Darkness is the unapproachable light in which God is said to dwell.” When the faculties are emptied of all human knowledge there reigns in the soul a “mystic silence” leading it to the climax that is union with God and the vision of him as he is in himself.
Such is the doctrine that flows through the apophatic mystics to the time of St. John of the Cross. The fundamental point is that our ordinary faculties, sensible and intellectual, are incapable by themselves of representing God to us; that is why their ordinary use must be abandoned. God is above anything we can picture in our imagination or conceive in our mind. The fourth and fifth chapters of Dionysius’ Mystical Theology give a formidable and detailed catalogue of the things God is not like. First of all, no sensible thing resembles God, so that “we remove from him all bodily things, and all these things that pertain to body, or to bodily things—as is shape, form, quality, quantity, weight, position, visibility, sensibility … For he is neither any of these things nor hath any of these, or any or all these sensible things.” Again, he is like nothing we can conceive in our mind—and once again there follows the remarkable catalogue of the spiritual things that God is not like. Such is the negative theology that underlies apophatic mystics.
In his translation of the Mystica Theologia the English author makes some additions to the original text. Chief among these is his insertion of love as the most important element in contemplative prayer. In this he advances on Dionysius and probably follows an earlier writer, Thomas Gallus, whose commentary he must have used. I have already spoken at length about the English author’s emphasis on love but let me quote one more passage in The Cloud where we find a Dionysian stress on the inadequacy of knowledge joined to a new and powerful stress on the centrality of love:
Try to understand this point. Rational creatures such as men and angels possess two principal faculties, a knowing power and a loving power. No one can fully comprehend the uncreated God with his knowledge; but each one, in a different way, can grasp him fully through love. Truly this is the unending miracle of love: that one loving person, through his love, can embrace God, whose being fills and transcends the entire creation. And this marvelous work of love goes on forever, for he whom we love is eternal. (this page)
In this way the English author, starting from a Neoplatonic framework, has entered more and more deeply into a contemplation that is filled with Christian love. In some ways, indeed, his whole work can be considered as a hymn to love like that of the great Spaniard who sang, “O living flame of love, that tenderly wounds my soul in its deepest center!”
Throughout this introductory essay I have stressed the author’s doctrine of love not only because it is the key to all his thinking but also because it is particularly relevant for our day, when science is exploring “altered states of consciousness” that are not unlike the states toward which the mystic points. No need to speak here of biofeedback, mind control, drugs, and other techniques for leading people beyond thought to the silent, intuitive consciousness. What distinguishes the contemplation taught by the English author and the other Christian mystics is the centrality of love. Motivated by love, it is a response to a call which issues in mutual agape—and any change of consciousness is no more than a consequence of this naked intent of love.
Historical Background
By now my reader is surely anxious to learn more about this author. But unfortunately external evidence is minimal and little can be said. No doubt the best way to know him is by reading his works, where, if anywhere, the style is the man. No one has succeeded in putting a name on him, though many attempts have been made; nor do we know to what religious order he belonged, if indeed he was a religious. So successful was his humble desire to remain anonymous. Manuscripts of his works, however, are rather numerous, the oldest dating back to the beginning of the fifteenth century. Since the author seems to have known the work of Richard Rolle and since Walter Hilton seems to have known him, historians conclude that he wrote in the late fourteenth century. This is corroborated by his style, which, moreover, indicates that the treatises were written in the northeast Midlands.
He belongs to a century made famous in the annals of spirituality by the names of Richard Rolle, Juliana of Norwich, and Walter Hilton in England; by Meister Eckhart, John Tauler, and Henry Suso in Germany; by Jan van Ruysbroeck in Flanders; by Jacopone da Todi and Catherine of Siena in Italy. This is an age associated with the names of Angela de Foligno and Thomas à Kempis. It is an age when, in spite of troubles and rumbling presages of a coming storm, Europe was deeply religious: faith penetrated to the very hearts of the people and influenced not only their art, music, and literature, but every aspect of their lives. Merry England was saturated with a religious faith that breaks forth in Piers Plowman and the Canterbury Tales. Chaucer may laugh good-humoredly at the foibles of nuns and friars, but he accepted the established religion with an unquestioning mind. Such was the society in which the author of The Cloud lived and wrote: both he and his public took for granted a Church, a faith, and a sacramental life that are no longer accepted without question by many of his readers today.
He was, then, a thoroughgoing medieval, steeped in the spirit of his time and imbued with its tradition. So many of his words, phrases, and ideas are also found in The Imitation of Christ, in the De Adhaerendo Deo, in the writings of the Rhineland mystics, and in the other devotional treatises of the time that one immediately sees him as part of a great current of medieval spirituality. He was aware, too, of what was being said and thought throughout Christendom, for there was no splendid isolation at that time; English monks and scholars were frequenting the great centers of learning throughout Europe.
If proof were needed of his traditionalist character, one has but to mention his constant reference not only to the Scriptures but also to Augustine, Dionysius, Gregory, Bernard, Aquinas, Richard of St. Victor, and the rest. Modesty and fear of vanity forbid him from quoting these authors at length, but he cannot escape referring to their works and reflecting their thought. And again, the wealth of tradition underlying his writings breaks through in the figures and illustrations that fill his pages. The “cloud of unknowing” itself, the Martha-Mary motif, the picture of Moses ascending the mountain, the notion of the soul as a mirror in which one can see God, the comparison of mystical prayer to sleep, the “naked intent of the will,” the “chaste and perfect love of God,” “the sovereign point of the spirit”—all these are pregnant with tradition, used by so many Christian authors that it is well-nigh impossible to state categorically from whom the English author is borrowing or from whom he chiefly draws his inspiration.
But when one comes to study this author in his historical setting, there arises another point that here deserves mention; namely, his striking similarity to St. John of the Cross. Quite a few commentators have adverted to this, the English author being spoken of as a St. John of the Cross two centuries before his time. For it is true that almost every detail of his doctrine is paralleled in the later Spanish mystic—and not only the doctrine but even the words and phrases are in many cases identical. How account for this remarkable affinity?
It is not impossible that the Spanish mystic read the Latin translation of The Cloud which may have been circulating on the European continent of his day. However this may be, it seems clear that both writers belong to the same spiritual tradition. Through their pages speak Augustine, Dionysius, the Victorines, Tauler, Ruysbroeck, and the rest; and we know, moreover, that both were unrelenting Thomists. So it is the great stream of a common tradition that has formed the minds of these two men, both being part of a mystical current that has flowed through Christian culture, breaking down
the barriers of space and time separating fourteenth-century England and sixteenth-century Spain; nor have its surging waves lost their power in the twentieth century.
In the notes I have given a list of cross references to the works of St. John of the Cross. These are not meant to be exhaustive but I think they are sufficient to show that both writers belong to the same tradition and perhaps they will help refute the theory, sometimes advanced, that the English author was a rebel, an outsider to tradition, a suspect and heterodox innovator. Nothing could be further from the truth. He is a most representative Western mystic, a reliable guide in the twentieth as in the fourteenth century; and his counsel will be of great value both to those who follow traditional prayer and to those who practice transcendental meditation or the other contemplative forms recently introduced from the East.
This Edition
Finally let me say a word about this edition, which is an effort to make the author’s thought available and intelligible to the modern reader, particularly to the modern reader who would like to practice the kind of prayer that is here described. I have used as a basis the very excellent critical text of Professor Phyllis Hodgson: “The Cloud of Unknowing” and “The Book of Privy Counseling,” edited from the manuscripts with introduction, notes and glossary, Oxford University Press, 1944 (reprinted 1958). Only once have I departed from this text. This is at the end of The Book of Privy Counseling. My last paragraph is not found in Professor Hodgson’s edition. It is found, however, in some late manuscripts and I have included it in my edition simply because I feel that without it the book ends rather abruptly.
For Scripture quotations I have used the Douay version where the author’s exegesis seemed to demand it. Otherwise I have used more up-to-date translations.
The title The Book of Privy Counseling I have retained as it is, partly because I feel that it is better not to tamper with the title of a classic and partly because it is more or less untranslatable. Besides, the word “counseling,” as I have already pointed out, is meaningful for the people of our day. As for the word “privy,” it implies both that the letter is not for everyone but only for those who will understand, and also that the contents are intimate and confidential. I think that both of these meanings are best retained by preserving the original word.
The chapter divisions in The Book of Privy Counseling are my own. The original text is all of a piece and has no chapters. I thought, however, that this edition would be more readable if the text were divided more or less in the same way as The Cloud.
Let me then conclude my part by making my own the words of the author: “My dear friend, I bid you farewell now with God’s blessing and mine. May God give you and all who love him true peace, wise counsel, and his own interior joy in the fullness of grace. Amen.”
WILLIAM JOHNSTON
Sophia University, Tokyo
September 1973
A Book on Contemplation called
THE
CLOUD OF
UNKNOWING
which is about that cloud within
which one is united to God
PRAYER
O God unto whom all hearts lie open
unto whom desire is eloquent
and from whom no secret thing is hidden;
purify the thoughts of my heart
by the outpouring of your Spirit
that I may love you with a perfect love
and praise you as you deserve. Amen.
FOREWORD
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Whoever you are possessing this book, know that I charge you with a serious responsibility, to which I attach the sternest sanctions that the bonds of love can bear. It does not matter whether this book belongs to you, whether you are keeping it for someone else, whether you are taking it to someone, or borrowing it; you are not to read it, write or speak of it, nor allow another to do so, unless you really believe that he is a person deeply committed to follow Christ perfectly. I have in mind a person who, over and above the good works of the active life, has resolved to follow Christ (as far as is humanly possible with God’s grace) into the inmost depths of contemplation. Do your best to determine if he is one who has first been faithful for some time to the demands of the active life, for otherwise he will not be prepared to fathom the contents of this book.
Moreover, I charge you with love’s authority, if you do give this book to someone else, warn them (as I warn you) to take the time to read it thoroughly. For it is very possible that certain chapters do not stand by themselves but require the explanation given in other chapters to complete their meaning. I fear lest a person read only some parts and quickly fall into error. To avoid a blunder like this, I beg you and anyone else reading this book, for love’s sake, to do as I ask.
As for worldly gossips, flatterers, the scrupulous, talebearers, busybodies, and the hypercritical, I would just as soon they never laid eyes on this book. I had no intention of writing for them and prefer that they do not meddle with it. This applies, also, to the merely curious, educated or not. They may be good people by the standards of the active life, but this book is not suited to their needs.
However, there are some presently engaged in the active life who are being prepared by grace to grasp the message of this book. I am thinking of those who feel the mysterious action of the Spirit in their inmost being stirring them to love. I do not say that they continually feel this stirring, as experienced contemplatives do, but now and again they taste something of contemplative love in the very core of their being. Should such folk read this book, I believe they will be greatly encouraged and reassured.1
I have divided this work into seventy-five chapters. The last one deals more specifically with the signs which indicate whether or not a person is being called to contemplative prayer.
INTRODUCTION
My dear friend in God, I beg you, stay alert and attentive to the way you are progressing in your vocation. And give thanks to God for this calling, so that with the help of his grace you may stand firm against all the subtle assaults of enemies who will harass you from within and without and so that you may come to win the reward of life unending. Amen.
CHAPTER 1
Of the four degrees of the Christian life; of the development of his vocation for whom this book was written.
My dear friend in God, I would like to pass on to you what I have roughly observed about the Christian life. Generally, it seems to progress through four ascending phases of growth, which I call the Common, the Special, the Singular, and the Perfect. The first three may, indeed, be begun and completed in this mortal life, but the fourth, though begun here, shall go on without ending into the joy of eternity. Do you see that I have arranged these stages in a definite sequence? This is because I believe that our Lord in his great mercy is calling you to advance by these steps. I discern his call to you in the desire for him that burns in your heart.
You know yourself that at one time you were caught up in the Common manner of the Christian life in a day-to-day mundane existence along with your friends. But I think that the eternal love of God, which had once created you out of nothing and then redeemed you from Adam’s curse through the sacrifice of his blood,1 could not bear to let you go on living so common a life far from him. And so, with exquisite kindness, he awakened desire within you, and binding it fast with the leash of love’s longing, drew you closer to himself into what I have called the more Special manner of living. He called you to be his friend and, in the company of his friends, you learned to live the interior life more perfectly than was possible in the common way.
Is there more? Yes, for from the beginning I think God’s love for you was so great that his heart could not rest satisfied with this. What did he do? Do you not see how gently and how kindly he has drawn you on to the third way of life, the Singular? Yes, you live now at the deep solitary core of your being, learning to direct your loving desire toward the highest and final manner of living which I have call
ed Perfect.2
CHAPTER 2
A short exhortation to humility and to the work of contemplation.
Take courage, now, and frail mortal though you are, try to understand yourself. Do you think you are someone special, or that you have deserved the Lord’s favor? How can your poor heart be so leaden and spiritless that it is not continually aroused by the attraction of the Lord’s love and the sound of his voice? Your enemy will suggest that you rest on your laurels. But be on your guard against this treachery of his. Do not be deceived into thinking that you are a holier or better person because of your great calling or because you have progressed to the Singular way of life. On the contrary, you will be a most pathetic and culpable wretch unless, with God’s grace and proper guidance, you do all in your power to live up to your calling. Far from being conceited, you ought to be all the more humble and devoted to your heavenly Lord when you consider that he, the Almighty God, the King of kings and Lord of lords, has stooped so low as to call you. For out of all his flock he has lovingly chosen you to be one of his special friends. He has led you to sweet meadows and nourished you with his love, strengthening you to press on so as to take possession of your heritage in his kingdom.
I urge you, then, pursue your course relentlessly. Attend to tomorrow and let yesterday be. Never mind what you have gained so far. Instead reach out to what lies ahead. If you do this you will remain in the truth. For now, if you wish to keep growing you must nourish in your heart the lively longing for God. Though this loving desire is certainly God’s gift, it is up to you to nurture it. But mark this. God is a jealous lover. He is at work in your spirit and will tolerate no meddlers.1 The only other one he needs is you. And all he asks of you is that you fix your love on him and let him alone. Close the doors and windows of your spirit against the onslaught of pests and foes and prayerfully seek his strength; for if you do so, he will keep you safe from them.2 Press on then. I want to see how you fare. Our Lord is always ready. He awaits only your co-operation.
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