The Cloud of Unknowing

by William Johnston

  That which I am and the way that I am,

  with all my gifts of nature and grace,

  you have given to me, O Lord, and you are

  all this. I offer it all to you, principally

  to praise you and to help my fellow Christians

  and myself.

  Thus you can see that by pursuing your meditation to the farthest reaches and ultimate frontiers of thought, you will find yourself in the end, on the essential ground of being with the naked perception and blind awareness of your own being. And this is why your being alone can be called the first of your fruits.

  So it is, that naked being takes first place among all your fruits, all the others being rooted in it. But now you have come to a time when you will no longer profit by clothing or gathering into your awareness of naked being, any or all of its particulars, by which I mean your fruits, upon which you have laboriously meditated for so long. Now it is enough to worship God perfectly with your substance, that is, with the offering of your naked being. This alone constitutes your first fruits; it will be the unending sacrifice of praise for yourself and for all men that love requires. Leave the awareness of your being unclothed of all thoughts about its attributes, and your mind quite empty of all particular details relating to your being or that of any other creature. For such thoughts will not satisfy your present need, further your growth, nor bring you and others closer to perfection. Let them alone. Truly these meditations are useless to you now. But this blind, general awareness of your being, conceived in an undivided heart, will satisfy your present need, further your growth, and bring you and all mankind closer to perfection. Believe me, it far surpasses the value of any particular thought, no matter how sublime.

  CHAPTER 4

  All this you can verify with the authority of the Scriptures, the example of Christ, and the scrutiny of sound logic. As all men were lost in Adam when he fell from the love which made him one with God, so all those, who, by fidelity to their own path in life, manifest their desire for salvation, will receive salvation through the Passion of Christ alone. For Christ gave himself, all that he was, as a perfect and complete sacrifice. He did not concentrate on the salvation of any one person in particular, but gave himself without reserve for all. With universal intent he made himself a true and perfect offering, giving himself without reserve so that all men might be united to his Father as effectively as he was himself.

  And no greater love can any other man have than to sacrifice his very self for the good of all who are his brothers and sisters by nature or grace. For the spirit is of greater dignity than the flesh and thus it is of greater value to unite the spirit to God (who is its life) by the sublime food of love than to unite the flesh to the spirit (which is its life) by the food of earth. Of course, it is important to feed the body but unless you nourish the spirit also, you have not done everything. Both together are good, but the first, by itself, is best. For a healthy body alone will never merit salvation; but a robust spirit, even in a frail body, will not only merit salvation but reach its full perfection.

  CHAPTER 5

  You have reached a point where your further growth in perfection demands that you do not feed your mind with meditations on the multiple aspects of your being. In the past, these pious meditations helped you to understand something of God. They fed your interior affection with a sweet and delightful attraction for him and spiritual things, and filled your mind with a certain spiritual wisdom. But now it is important that you seriously concentrate on the effort to abide continually in the deep center of your spirit, offering to God that naked blind awareness of your being which I call your first fruits. If you do this, as you may with the help of God’s grace, be confident that Solomon’s charge to feed the poor with your first fruits will be fully accomplished also, just as he promises; and all without your interior faculties having to seek or search carefully among the attributes of your being or of God’s.

  I want you to understand clearly that in this work it is not necessary to inquire into minute details of God’s existence any more than of your own. For there is no name, no experience, and no insight so akin to the everlastingness of God than what you can possess, perceive, and actually experience in the blind loving awareness of this word, is. Describe him as you will: good, fair Lord, sweet, merciful, righteous, wise, all-knowing, strong one, almighty; as knowledge, wisdom, might, strength, love, or charity, and you will find them all hidden and contained in this little word, is. God in his very existence is each and all of these.1 If you spoke of him in a hundred like ways you would not go beyond or increase the significance of that one word, is. And if you used none of them, you would have taken nothing from it. So be as blind in the loving contemplation of God’s being as you are in the naked awareness of your own. Let your faculties rest from their minute inquiry into the attributes of his being or yours.2 Leave all this behind and worship him with your substance: all that you are, just as you are, offered to all that he is, just as he is. For your God is the glorious being of himself and you, in the naked starkness of his being.

  And thus you will bind everything together, and in a wonderful way, worship God with himself because that which you are you have from him and it is he, himself.3 Of course, you had a beginning—that moment in time when he created you from nothing—yet your being has been and shall always be in him, from eternity to eternity, for he is eternal. And therefore, I will continue to cry out this one thing:

  Worship God with your substance

  and help all mankind with your first fruits.

  Then shall your barns be filled with abundance.

  The promise contained in these last words is that your interior affection will be filled with an abundance of love and practical goodness arising out of your life in God, who is your ground of being and your singleness of heart.

  And your presses shall run over with wine. These presses are your interior spiritual faculties. Formerly you forced and constrained them in all kinds of meditations and rational inquiry in an effort to gain some spiritual understanding of God and yourself, of his attributes and yours. But now they are filled and overflow with wine. This wine holy Scripture speaks of is accurately and mystically understood to be that spiritual wisdom distilled in the deep contemplation and high savoring of the transcendent God.4

  And how spontaneously, joyously, and effortlessly shall all this happen through the working of grace. Busy toil of yours is no longer necessary, for in the power of this gentle, blind contemplative work, angels will bring you wisdom. Indeed, the angels’ knowledge is specially directed to this service as a handmaid to her lady.5

  CHAPTER 6

  By its very nature, this practice makes one open to the high wisdom of the transcendent God, lovingly descending into the depths of a man’s spirit, uniting and binding him to God in delicate, spiritual knowledge. In great praise of this joyful, exquisite activity the wise man, Solomon, bursts out and says:

  Happy the man who finds wisdom

  and who gains understanding.

  For her profit is better than silver

  and better than gold is her revenue.

  She is the first and most pure of his fruits …

  My son, keep counsel and advice before you;

  They will be life to your soul

  and beauty to your mouth.

  Then you may go securely in your way,

  and your foot will not stumble.

  When you sleep you shall not fear

  you shall rest and your sleep shall be sweet.

  Be not afraid of the sudden terror

  nor of the power of the wicked falling upon you

  For the Lord will be at your side

  and he will keep your foot so that you be not taken.1

  Let me explain the hidden meaning of what he says here.

  Happy, indeed, is that man who finds the wisdom which makes him whole and binds him to God. Happy is he, who by offering to God the blind awareness of his own being enriches his interior life with a lovin
g, delicate, spiritual knowledge that far transcends all the knowledge of natural or acquired genius. Far better this wisdom and an ease in this delicate, refined interior work than the gain of gold or silver.2 In this passage, gold and silver symbolize all the knowledge of sense and spirit. Our natural faculties acquire this gold and silver by concentrating on things beneath us, within us, or like us, in their meditations on the attributes of God’s being or the being of creatures.

  He then goes on to tell why this interior work is better when he says that it is the first and most pure of a man’s fruits. And little wonder, when you realize that the high spiritual wisdom gained in this work freely and spontaneously bursts up from the deepest inner ground of his spirit. It is a wisdom, dark and formless, but far removed from all the fantasies of reason or imagination. Never will the straining and toil of the natural faculties be able to produce its like. For what they produce, be it ever so sublime or subtle, when compared to this wisdom, is little more than the sham emptiness of illusion. It is as distant from the truth, visible in the radiance of the spiritual sun, as the darkness of moonbeams in a winter’s night is from the splendor of the sun on the clearest day of high summer.

  Then Solomon continues. He advises his son to keep this law and counsel in which all the commandments and laws of the Old and New Testaments are perfectly fulfilled, with no particular effort to concentrate on any single one of them. This interior work is called a law simply because it includes in itself all the branches and fruits of the entire law. For if you examine it wisely, you will find that its vitality is rooted and grounded in the glorious gift of love which is, as the Apostle teaches, the perfection of the whole law. “The fullness of the law is love.”3

  I tell you, that if you keep this law of love and this life-giving counsel, it really will be your spirit’s life, as Solomon says. Interiorly, you will know the repose of abiding in God’s love. Exteriorly, your whole personality will radiate the beauty of his love, for with unfailing truth, it will inspire you with the most appropriate response in all your dealings with your fellow Christians. And on these two activities (the interior love for God and the outward expression of your love in relating to others) depend the whole law and the prophets, as the Scriptures say. Then as you become perfect in the work of love, both within and without, you will go on your way securely grounded in grace (your guide in this spiritual journey), lovingly offering your blind, naked being to the glorious being of your God. Though they are distinct by nature, grace has made them one.

  CHAPTER 7

  And the foot of your love shall not stumble. This means that when, with experience, this interior work becomes a spiritual habit, you will not easily be enticed or led away from it by the meddlesome queries of your natural faculties, though in the beginning it was difficult to resist them. We might express the same thing like this: “Then the foot of your love shall neither stumble nor fall on any sort of illusion arising from the insatiable seeking of your faculties.”1 And this is because, as I said before, in the contemplative work, all their inquisitive seeking is utterly rejected and forgotten lest the human liability of falsehood contaminate the naked awareness of your blind being and draw you away from the dignity of this work.

  Every particular thought of creatures that enters your mind, in addition to or instead of that simple awareness of your naked being (which is your God and your desire for him), draws you back to the business of your subtle, inquisitive faculties. Then you are no longer totally present to yourself or to your God, and this amounts to the fragmentation and scattering of any deep concentration on his being and yours. And so, with the help of his grace and the light of the wisdom that comes from perseverance in this work, remain whole and recollected in the depths of your being as often as you can.

  As I have already explained to you, this simple work is not a rival to your daily activities. For with your attention centered on the blind awareness of your naked being united to God’s, you will go about your daily rounds, eating and drinking, sleeping and waking, going and coming, speaking and listening, lying down and rising up, standing and kneeling, running and riding, working and resting. In the midst of it all, you will be offering to God continually each day the most precious gift you can make. This work will be at the heart of everything you do, whether active or contemplative.

  Moreover, Solomon also says in this passage that if you sleep in this blind contemplation, far from all the noise and agitation of the evil one, the false world, and the frail flesh, you shall fear no peril nor any deceit of the fiend. For without doubt, when the evil one discovers you at this work, he will be utterly confused, and blinded by an agonizing ignorance of what you are doing, he will be driven by a mad curiosity to find out.2 But never mind, for you shall graciously take your rest in the loving union of your spirit with God’s. Your sleep shall be untroubled; yes, for it shall bring deep spiritual strength and nourishment to renew both your body and your spirit. Solomon confirms this shortly after when he says, it is complete healing for the flesh. He simply means that it will bring health to all the frailty and sickness of the flesh. And well it might, for all sickness and corruption came upon the flesh when man fell from this work. But when, with the grace of Jesus (which is always the principal agent in contemplation), the spirit again rises to it, the flesh will be completely healed. And I must remind you that it is only by the mercy of Jesus and your own loving consent that you may hope to attain this. So I add my voice to Solomon’s, as he speaks in this passage, and I encourage you to stand firm in this work, continually offering God your wholehearted consent in the joy of love.

  Be not afraid of the sudden terror nor of the power of the wicked … Here the wise man says: “Do not be overcome with anxious dread if the evil one comes (as he will) with sudden fierceness, knocking and hammering on the walls of your house; or if he should stir some of his mighty agents to rise suddenly and attack you without warning.” Let us be clear about this: the fiend must be taken into account. Anyone beginning this work (I do not care who he is) is liable to feel, smell, taste, or hear some surprising effects concocted by this enemy in one or other of his senses. So do not be astonished if it happens. There is nothing he will not try in order to drag you down from the heights of such valuable work.3 And so I tell you, watch over your heart in the day of suffering, trusting with joyful confidence in our Lord’s love. For the Lord is at your side and will keep your foot so that you be not taken. Yes, he will be close by your side ready to help you.4

  He will keep your foot … The foot he speaks of here is the love by which you mount up to God, and he promises that God will protect you so that you are not overcome by the wiles and deceits of your enemies. These, of course, are the fiend along with his cohorts, the false world and the flesh.5

  See, my friend! Our mighty Lord, he who is love, he who is full of wisdom and power, he himself will guard, defend, and succor all who utterly forsake concern for themselves and place their love and trust in him.

  CHAPTER 8

  But where shall we find a person so wholeheartedly committed and firmly rooted in the faith, so sincerely gentle and true, having made self, as it were, nothing and so delightfully nourished and guided by our Lord’s love? Where shall we find a loving person, rich with a transcendent experience and understanding of the Lord’s omnipotence, his unfathomable wisdom and radiant goodness; one who understands so well the unity of his essential presence in all things and the oneness of all things in him1 that he surrenders his entire being to him, in him, and by his grace, certain that unless he does he will never be perfectly gentle and sincere in his effort to make self as nothing? Where is a man of sincerity, who by his noble resolve to make self as nothing, and high desire that God be all in the perfection of love, deserves to experience the mighty wisdom and goodness of God, succoring, sheltering, and guarding him from his foes within and without? Surely such a man will be deeply drenched in God’s love and in the full and final loss of self as nothing or less than nothing, if less were possible; a
nd thus he will rest untroubled by feverish activity, labor, and concern for his own well-being.

  Keep your human objections to yourselves, you halfhearted folk! Here is a person so touched by grace that he can forsake himself in honest and unreserved self-forgetfulness. Do not tell me that by any rational appraisal he is tempting God. You say this only because you dare not do so yourselves. No, be content with your own calling in the active life; it will bring you to salvation. But leave these others alone. What they do is beyond the comprehension of your reason, so do not be shocked or surprised by their words and deeds.

  Oh for shame! How long must you go on hearing or reading of all this without believing and accepting it? I refer to all our fathers wrote and spoke about in times past, to that which is the fruit and flower of the Scriptures. Either you are so blind that the light of faith can no longer help you to understand what you read, or you are so poisoned by a secret envy that you are unwilling to believe such a great good might come to your brethren and not to you. Believe me, if you are wise, you will watch out for your enemy and his insidious ways; for what he wants is to have you rely more on your own reason than on the ancient wisdom of our true fathers, the power of grace, and the designs of our Lord.