The Cloud of Unknowing

by William Johnston

  Should it seem that the way of prayer I have described in this book is unsuited to you spiritually or temperamentally, feel perfectly free to leave it aside and with wise counsel seek another in full confidence. In that case I trust you will hold me excused for all I have written here. Truly, I wrote only according to my simple understanding of these things and with no other purpose than that of helping you. So read it over two or three times. The more often you read it the better, for that much more shall you grasp of its meaning. Parts that seemed difficult and obscure at first may perhaps become obvious and clear as you read it again.1

  It seems to me that anyone whom grace has drawn to contemplation will not read this book (or hear it read) without feeling that it speaks of something akin to his own spirit. Should you feel this way and find it helpful, thank God with all your heart and for love of him pray for me.

  I sincerely hope you will do this. But I am very serious when I ask you, for the love of God, not to share this book with anyone else unless you are convinced he is a person who will understand and appreciate it. Read again the chapter where I describe the sort of person who ought to begin the contemplative work, and you will know what sort of person I mean. And if you do share it with another, please impress upon him the importance of reading it all the way through. Without doubt there are parts which do not stand alone but require the clarification and explanation of other parts. If a person reads only the one section and not those which complement and complete it, he may easily be led into great error. So please do as I ask. And if you feel that some parts need fuller clarification, let me know which they are and what you think of them and I will revise them as best I can, according to my simple knowledge of these things.

  I really do not want worldly gossips, flatterers and faultfinders, talebearers and busybodies, or the plainly curious—educated or not—to get hold of this book. I never intended to write for these folk and do not even want them to hear about it. I do not doubt that some of them may be fine people, perhaps even very fervent in the active life, but this book is not suited to their needs.2

  CHAPTER 75

  Of certain signs by which a man may determine whether or not God is drawing him to contemplation.

  I would like to make clear that not everyone who reads this book (or hears it read) and finds it pleasantly interesting is therefore called to contemplation. The inner excitement he feels may not be so much the attraction of grace as the arousal of natural curiosity. But I will give you some signs for testing this inspiration so as to find its real source.1

  In the first place, let a man examine himself to see if he has done all in his power to purify his conscience of deliberate sin according to the precepts of Holy Church and the advice of his spiritual father. If he is satisfied on this account, all is well. But to be more certain, let him see if he is habitually more attracted to this simple contemplative prayer than to any other spiritual devotion. And then, if his conscience leaves him no peace in any exterior or interior work he does unless he makes this secret little love fixed upon the cloud of unknowing his principal concern, it is a sign that God is calling him to this work. But if these signs are lacking, I assure you, he is not.

  I am not saying that those who are being called to contemplation will feel the stirring of love continually and permanently right from the beginning, for such is not the case. In fact, the young contemplative apprentice may often completely cease to experience it for various different reasons. Sometimes God will withdraw it so that he will not begin to presume it is his own doing, or that he can control it as he likes. Presumption like this is pride. Whenever the feeling of grace is withdrawn, pride is the cause. Not necessarily because one has actually yielded to pride, but because if this grace were not withdrawn from time to time pride would surely take root. God in his mercy protects the contemplative in this way, though some foolish neophytes will think he has turned enemy to them. They fail to see how true is his friendship. At other times God may withdraw this gift when the young apprentice grows careless and begins to take it for granted. If this happens he will very likely be overwhelmed with bitter pangs of remorse. But occasionally our Lord may delay in giving it back, so that having been lost and found again it may be the more deeply appreciated.

  One of the most obvious and certain signs by which a person may know if he has been called to this work is the attitude he detects in himself when he has found again the lost gift of grace. For if after long delay and inability to do this work he feels his desire for it renewed with greater passion and a deeper longing of love—so much so that (as I often think) the sorrow he felt at its loss seems like nothing at all beside his joy at finding it again—he need have no fear of error in believing that God is calling him to contemplation, regardless of what sort of person he is now or has been in the past. It is not what you are nor what you have been that God sees with his all-merciful eyes, but what you desire to be. St. Gregory declares that “all holy desires heighten in intensity with the delay of fulfillment, and desire which fades with delay was never holy desire at all.” For if a man experiences less and less joy when he discovers anew the sudden presence of great desires he had formerly pursued, his first desire was not holy desire. Possibly he felt a natural tendency toward the good but this should not be confused with holy desire. St. Augustine explains what I mean by holy desire when he says that “the entire life of a good Christian is nothing less than holy desire.”

  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.

  THE BOOK OF

  PRIVY COUNSELING

  FOREWORD

  My dear friend in God, this book is for you, personally, and not for the general public, for I intend to discuss your interior work of contemplation as I have come to understand it and you.1 If I were writing for everyone, I should have to speak in general terms, but as I am writing for you alone, I will concentrate on only those things which I believe to be most personally helpful to you at this time. Should anyone else share your interior dispositions and be likely to profit from this book also, all the better. I will be delighted. But it is you alone I have in mind right now, and your interior life, as I have come to understand it. And so, to you (and others like you) I address the following pages.

  CHAPTER 1

  When you go apart to be alone for prayer, put from your mind everything you have been doing or plan to do. Reject all thoughts, be they good or be they evil. Do not pray with words unless you are really drawn to this; or if you do pray with words, pay no attention to whether they are many or few. Do not weigh them or their meaning. Do not be concerned about what kind of prayers you use, for it is unimportant whether or not they are official liturgical prayers, psalms, hymns, or anthems; whether they are for particular or general intentions; or whether you formulate them interiorly, by thoughts, or express them aloud, in words. See that nothing remains in your conscious mind save a naked intent stretching out toward God. Leave it stripped of every particular idea about God (what he is like in himself or in his works) and keep only the simple awareness that he is as he is. Let him be thus, I pray you, and force him not to be otherwise. Search into him no further, but rest in this faith as on solid ground. This awareness, stripped of ideas and deliberately bound and anchored in faith, shall leave your thought and affection in emptiness except for a naked thought and blind feeling of your own being. It will feel as if your whole desire cried out to God and said:

  That which I am I offer to you, O Lord,

  without looking to any quality of your

  being but only to the fact that you

  are as you are; this, and nothing more.

  Let that quiet darkness be your whole mind and like a mirror to you. For I want your thought of self to be as naked and as simple as your thought of God, so that you may be spiritually united to him without any fragmentation and scattering of your mind. He is your being and in him,
you are what you are, not only because he is the cause and being of all that exists, but because he is your cause and the deep center of your being. Therefore, in this contemplative work think of your self and of him in the same way: that is, with the simple awareness that he is as he is, and that you are as you are. In this way your thought will not be fragmented or scattered, but unified in him who is all.

  Yet keep in mind this distinction between yourself and him: he is your being but you are not his. It is true that everything exists in him as in its source and ground of being, and that he exists in all things, as their cause and their being. Yet a radical distinction remains: he alone is his own cause and his own being. For as nothing can exist without him, so he cannot exist without himself. He is his own being and the being of everything else. Of him alone may this be said; and thus he is wholly separate and distinct from every created thing. And thus, also, he is one in all things and all things are one in him. For I repeat: all things exist in him; he is the being of all.1

  And since this is so, let grace unite your thought and affection to him, while you strive to reject all minute inquiry into the particular qualities of your blind being or of his. Leave your thought quite naked, your affection uninvolved, and your self simply as you are, so that grace may touch and nourish you with the experimental knowledge of God as he really is. In this life, this experience will always remain dark and partial so that your longing desire for him be ever newly enkindled. Look up joyfully, then, and say to your Lord, in words or desire:

  That which I am, I offer to you,

  O Lord, for you are it entirely.

  Go no further, but rest in this naked, stark, elemental awareness that you are as you are.

  CHAPTER 2

  It is not hard to master this way of thinking. I am certain that even the most uneducated man or woman, accustomed to a very primitive type of life, can easily learn it. Sometimes I smile to myself (though not without a touch of sadness), and marvel at those who claim that I write to you and others a complicated, difficult, lofty, and strange doctrine, intelligible to only a few clever and highly trained minds. It is not simple, uneducated folk who say this either; it is scholars and learned theologians. To these people in particular I want to reply.

  It is a great pity and a sad commentary on the state of those supposedly committed to God that, in our day, not just a few people but nearly everyone (excepting one or two of God’s special friends, here and there) is so blinded by a mad scramble for the latest theology or discoveries in the natural sciences that they cannot begin to understand the true nature of this simple practice; a practice so simple that even the most uneducated peasant may easily find in it a way to real union with God in the sweet simplicity of perfect love. Unfortunately, these sophisticated people are no more capable of understanding this truth in sincerity of heart than a child at his ABCs is able to understand the intricacies of erudite theologians. Yet, in their blindness, they insist on calling such a simple exercise deep and subtle; whereas, if they examined it rationally, they would discover it to be as clear and plain as the lesson of a beginner.

  Surely it is beginner’s fare, and I consider him hopelessly stupid and dull who cannot think and feel that he is; not how or what he is, but that he is. Such elemental self-awareness is obviously proper to the dumbest cow or most unreasonable beast. (I am being facetious, of course, for we cannot really say that one animal is dumber or more unreasonable than another.) But it is only fitting for a man to realize and experience his unique self-existence, because man stands apart in creation, far above all the beasts, as the only creature graced with reason.

  And so, go down to the deepest point of your mind and think of yourself in this simple, elemental way. (Others will mean the same thing, but because of their experience, speak of the mind’s “pinnacle,” and of this awareness as the “highest human wisdom.”) In any case, do not think what you are but that you are. For I grant that to realize what you are demands the effort of your intelligence in a good deal of thought and subtle introspection. But this you have done for quite a while with the help of God’s grace; and you understand to some degree (as much as you need to for the present) just what you really are—a human being by nature and a pitiful, fallen wretch through sin. Well do you know this. Yes, and probably you feel that you know only too well, from experience, the defilements that follow and befall a man because of sin. Fie on them! Forget them, I pray you. Reflect on them no further for fear of contamination. Instead, remember that you also possess an innate ability to know that you are, and that you can experience this without any special natural or acquired genius.

  So now, forget your misery and sinfulness and, on that simple elemental level, think only that you are as you are. I am presuming, of course, that you have been duly absolved of your sins, general and particular, as Holy Church requires. Otherwise, I should never approve of your or anyone else beginning this work. But if you think you have done your best in this matter, take up this work. You may still feel the burden of your sin and wretchedness so terribly that you are uncertain what is best for yourself, but do as I tell you now.

  Take the good gracious God just as he is, as plain as a common poultice, and lay him to your sick self, just as you are.1 Or, if I may put it another way, lift up your sick self, just as you are, and let your desire reach out to touch the good, gracious God, just as he is, for to touch him is eternal health. The woman in the Gospel testifies to this when she says: “If I but touch the hem of his garment I shall be healed.”2 She was healed physically; but even more shall you be healed of your spiritual illness by this lofty, sublime work in which your desire reaches out to touch the very being of God, beloved in himself.

  Step up bravely, then, and take this medicine. Lift up your sick self, just as you are, to the gracious God, just as he is. Leave behind all inquiry and profound speculation into your being or his. Forget all these qualities and everything about them, whether they be pure or defiled, natural or grace-given, divine or human. Nothing matters now except that you willingly offer to God that blind awareness of your naked being in joyful love, so that grace can bind you and make you spiritually one with the precious being of God, simply as he is in himself.

  CHAPTER 3

  No doubt, when you begin this practice your undisciplined faculties, finding no meat to feed upon, will angrily taunt you to abandon it. They will demand that you take up something more worthwhile, which means, of course, something more suited to them. For you are now engaged in a work so far beyond their accustomed activity that they think you are wasting your time. But their dissatisfaction, inasmuch as it arises from this, is actually a good sign, since it proves that you have gone on to something of greater value. So I am delighted. And why not? For nothing I can do, and no exercise of my physical or spiritual faculties can bring me so near to God and so far from the world, as this naked, quiet awareness of my blind being and my joyful gift of it to God.

  Do not be troubled, then, if your faculties rebel and plague you to give it up. As I say, it is only because they find no meat for themselves in this practice. But you must not yield. Master them by refusing to feed them despite their rage. By feeding them, I mean giving them all sorts of intricate speculations about the details of your being to gnaw on. Meditations like this certainly have their place and value, but in comparison to the blind awareness of your being and your gift of self to God, they amount to a rupture and dispersion of that wholeness so necessary to a deep encounter with God. Therefore, keep yourself recollected and poised in the deep center of your spirit and do not wander back to working with your faculties under any pretext no matter how sublime.

  Heed the counsel and instruction which Solomon gave to his son when he said:

  Worship the Lord with your substance

  and feed the poor with your first fruits.

  Thus shall your barns be filled with abundance

  and your presses run over with wine.1

  Solomon said this to his son but take it as addressed
to yourself, and understand it spiritually, according to the sense in which I, standing in his place, now explain it to you.

  My dear friend in God, go beyond your intellect’s endless and involved investigations and worship the Lord your God with your whole being. Offer him your very self in simple wholeness, all that you are and just as you are, without concentrating on any particular aspect of your being. In this way your attention will not be scattered nor your affection entangled, for this would spoil your singleness of heart and consequently your union with God.

  And with your first fruits feed the poor. Here he refers to the most important of all the special gifts of nature and grace bestowed on you at your creation and nurtured through the years until this moment. With these God-given gifts, these fruits, you are obliged to nourish and foster not only yourself but also all those who are your brothers and sisters by nature or grace. The most important of these gifts I call your first fruits. It is the gift of being itself, the first gift each creature receives. It is true, of course, that all the attributes of your self-existence are so intimately bound to your being as to be actually inseparable from it. Yet, in a sense, they would have no reality if you did not first of all exist. And therefore, your existence deserves to be called the first of your gifts because it really is. Your being alone shall be called your first fruits.

  If you begin to analyze thoroughly any or all of man’s refined faculties and exalted qualities (for he is the noblest of all God’s creatures), you will come at length to the farthest reaches and ultimate frontiers of thought only to find yourself face to face with naked being itself. And if you were to use this analysis to rouse yourself to love and praise your Lord God who gifted you with being, and such a noble being (as meditating on your human nature will reveal), think where it would lead you. At first you might say, “I am; I see and feel that I am. And not only do I exist but I possess all sorts of personal talents and gifts.” But after counting up all these in your mind, you could still go a step farther and draw them all together in a single all-embracing prayer such as this: