SOURCE: Johnston, William. Introduction to “The Cloud of Unknowing” and “The Book of Privy Counseling,” edited by William Johnston, pp. 7-32. Garden City: Image Books, 1973.

[In the following essay, Johnston explains why the author of The Cloud of Unknowing rejects conceptualization and thinking, particularly about one's self; describes the Dionysian aspects present in the work; and considers its historical background.]

Recent times have witnessed a revival of interest in Western mysticism. It is as though the West, long exposed to Zen and Yoga and the spiritual systems of the East, now searches for its own tradition and its own spiritual heritage. Strangely enough, the interest in mysticism is not just academic. It is also practical. Many people are anxious to read the mystics in order to practice the doctrine they teach and to experience the states of consciousness they depict. In short, interest in Christian mysticism is part of a widespread craving for meditation, for contemplation, for depth—a desire to get beyond the changing phenomena and the future shock and the global village into a deeper reality that lies at the center of things. Mysticism is no longer irrelevant; it is in the air we breathe.

In such a climate, those in search of a mystical guide could do no better than turn to the anonymous fourteenth-century author of The Cloud of Unknowing. Here is an Englishman, at once a mystic, a theologian, and a director of souls, who stands in the full stream of the Western spiritual tradition. A writer of great power and of considerable literary talent, he has composed four original treatises and three translations; and in this book his two principal works, The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counseling, are rendered into modern English from the original texts. I believe that the reader who surrenders himself to the author's mystical charm will find in their very perusal a truly contemplative experience.

The two books complement each other. The Cloud is well known as a literary work of great beauty in its style as in its message. Widely read in the fourteenth century when it was written, it has never lost its honored place among the spiritual classics of the English language. The Book of Privy Counseling, on the other hand, is less famous. It is the work of the author's maturity; and, as so often happens, the older writer has lost some of the buoyant charm of youth. This makes his later work more difficult reading; but any loss of charm is more than compensated for by a theological precision, a spiritual depth, and a balanced authority that have come with years of profound experience. Now he is self-confident, convinced beyond all doubt that, whatever anyone may say to the contrary, the contemplation he teaches is of the highest value. This later book is in many ways a book of counseling as we understand this word today. It is the work of a man who is friendly, anxious to give help and counsel—a man endowed with keen psychological insight, who knows the human mind, who is aware of man's tragic capacity for self-deception and yet is endowed with a delicate compassion for those who suffer as they struggle to remain in silent love at the core of their being. But his counseling, it must be confessed, is not the non-directive type about which we today hear so much. Rather is it authoritative—the guidance of a man who has trodden the mystical path himself and offers a helping hand to those who will hearken to his words. If this edition now offered to the public has any unique value, it may be because of the inclusion of The Book of Privy Counseling.

PRACTICAL GUIDE TO CONTEMPLATION

The two treatises, then, are eminently practical. They guide the reader in the path of contemplation. While there is an abundance of books teaching meditation of the discursive kind, not so many teach the contemplative prayer that goes beyond thought and imagery into the supraconceptual cloud of unknowing. And it is precisely this that the English author is teaching. In his rejection of conceptualization he is as radical as any Zen Buddhist. All thoughts, all concepts, all images must be buried beneath a cloud of forgetting, while our naked love (naked because divested of thought) must rise upward toward God hidden in the cloud of unknowing. With the cloud of unknowing above, between me and my God, and the cloud of forgetting below, between me and all creatures, I find myself in the silentium mysticum about which the English author read in the work of Dionysius.

If The Cloud is radical in its rejection of conceptualization, even more so is Privy Counseling, the opening paragraph of which contains words that set the theme for the whole treatise: “Reject all thoughts, be they good or be they evil.” This is pretty stark. God can be loved but he cannot be thought. He can be grasped by love but never by concepts. So less thinking and more loving.

The meditation that goes beyond thought is popular in the modern world, and it is for this reason that I find these two books particularly relevant today. As for the way of getting beyond thought, the English author has a definite methodology. After speaking of good and pious meditations on the life and death of Christ, he introduces his disciple to a way that may well be attractive also to the modern reader, namely the mantra or sacred word:

If you want to gather all your desire into one simple word that the mind can retain, choose a short word rather than a long one. A one-syllable word such as “God” or “love” is best. But choose one that is meaningful to you. Then fix it in your mind so that it will remain there come what may. This word will be your defense in conflict and in peace. Use it to beat upon the cloud of darkness above you and subdue all distractions consigning them to the cloud of forgetting beneath you. Should some thought go on annoying you, demanding to know what you are doing, answer with this one word alone. If your mind begins to intellectualize over the meaning and connotations of this little word, remind yourself that its value lies in its simplicity. Do this and I assure you these thoughts will vanish. Why? Because you have refused to develop them with arguing.

(p. 56)

As can be seen, the little word is used in order to sweep all images and thoughts from the mind, leaving it free to love with the blind stirring that stretches out toward God.

In Privy Counseling the author speaks of two clear-cut steps on the way to enlightenment. The first is the rejection of all thoughts about what I am and what God is in order to be conscious only that I am and that God is. This is what I would like to call existential prayer because of its abandonment of all essences or modes of being. But it is only the first step. The second step is the rejection of all thought and feeling of my own being to be conscious only of the being of God. In this way the author leads to a total self-forgetfulness, a seemingly total loss of self for a consciousness only of the being of him whom we love. This is interesting doctrine. How can we twentieth-century men who talk so much about personality accept it?

THE LOSS OF SELF

Let me first say that this problem of the loss of self is extremely relevant in the religious climate of today, a climate that is largely dominated by the meeting of the great religions in a common forum and a fascinating dialogue that historian, Arnold Toynbee, has not hesitated to call the most significant event of the century. In this East-West religious encounter and exchange, the central problem on which all discussion finally focuses is that of the existence and nature of the self. Can a highly personalized religion like Christianity find common ground with an apparently self-annihilating system like Buddhism? This is a problem that has constantly come to the fore in ecumenical meetings I myself have attended. Anyone confronted with it would do well to listen to the wisdom of this English author. Steeped in the Christian tradition, he speaks a language that Buddhists understand. He is indeed a great spokesman for the West.

Let us consider some of the passages in which he justifies his advice to forget one's own being.

In The Cloud he claims that to feel one's own existence is the greatest suffering possible to man:

Every man has plenty of cause for sorrow but he alone understands the deep universal reason for sorrow who experiences that he is. Every other motive pales beside this one. He alone feels authentic sorrow who realizes not only what he is, but that he is. Anyone who has not felt this should really weep, for he has never experienced real sorrow.

(p. 103)

This is a remarkable passage. It might seem like a rejection of life and of existence, were it not for the author's explicit statement that this is not his meaning:

And yet in all this, never does he desire to not-be, for this is the devil's madness and blasphemy against God. In fact, he rejoices that he is and from the fullness of a grateful heart he gives thanks to God for the gift and the goodness of his existence. At the same time, he desires unceasingly to be freed from the knowing and feeling of his being.

(p. 104)

It is clear that the author is not advocating self-annihilation; nor is he denying the ontological existence of the self. Rather is he saying that there is an awareness of self that brings joy and gratitude; and there is awareness of self that brings agony. What awareness of self causes this great sorrow?

It seems to me that Christian mysticism can be understood only in the light of the resurrection, just as Buddhist mysticism can be understood only in the light of nirvana. Until the resurrection, man's personality, his true self, is incomplete. This holds even for Christ, of whom Paul says that “he was constituted Son of God by a glorious act in that he rose from the dead” (Rom. 1:4). In other words it was through the resurrection that Christ was perfected, finding his true self and ultimate identity. Until this final stage, man is inevitably separated from his end. And not only man but the whole universe, which is groaning in expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.

This imperfect state of incompleteness, isolation and separation from the goal is the basic source of man's existential anguish—anguish that arises not because of his existence but because of his separated existence. Sorrow for this separation, says the author, is much more fundamental and much more conducive to humility than sorrow for one's sins or anything else. Hence the anguish running through the writings of the mystics and reflected in the agonized cry of a St. John of the Cross: “Whither hast thou hidden thyself, O my beloved, and left me to my sighing?” Here the mystic is separated from the beloved whom he has inchoately experienced; and he longs for completion, for union, for the goal. If this means death, joyfully will he die—“Break the web of this sweet encounter.” As if he were to say, take away the veil that separates me from my beloved and my all. Clearly the anguish is that of separation and incompleteness at the level of existence. One can experience one's incompleteness emotionally or economically or culturally or sexually; and all this is painful. But how terrible to experience it at the deepest level of all, that of existence! For all these other sorrows are partial experiences of one root experience of existential contingency. And this, I believe, is the sorrow of the man who knows not only what he is but that he is.

All this is not far removed from the anguish of the existentialist philosophers about which we at one time heard so much. Their agony was not necessarily theistic. Rather did it come from a radical sense of man's insufficiency, contingency, incompleteness, mortality, summed up in Heidegger's terrible definition of man as “being-to-death.” Here again it is not precisely existence that causes the trouble, but limited existence. Man, faced with the prospect of extinction, is not in control of his own destiny.

So much for the existentialists. With the English author it is mainly in Privy Counseling that the notion of separation with all its suffering is stressed. But now his language is more precise. The suffering of man is not that he is but that he is as he is; and the author makes his existential prayer: “That which I am and the way that I am … I offer it all to you.” (p. 156) Now he has made it abundantly clear that the problem is not existence itself but limited existence, and so he has no need for further explanation.

At the beginning of his treatise he makes a statement that echoes through the whole work: “He is your being and in him you are what you are.” Lest this sound pantheistic, the author quickly adds, “He is your being, but you are not his,” as if to remind us that while God is our being we are not God. But having made this distinction he keeps stressing that the great suffering and illusion of man is his failure to experience that God is his being. Rather does he experience his being apart from God. The whole aim of his direction is to lead us to the experience that “he is your being and in him you are what you are.” It is not in isolation, not in separation from the totality that man finds his true self; but only in God. The knowledge and feeling of any self other than this must be destroyed.

This leads to the inexorable law that the incomplete self must die in order that the true self may rise. “Unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground dies, itself alone remains; but if it dies it brings forth much fruit.”

In this context we can perhaps understand the author's relentless assertion that the thought and feeling of self must be annihilated. Yet this annihilation is less terrible because it is the work of love: “For this is the way of all real love. The lover will utterly and completely despoil himself of everything, even his very self, because of the one he loves. He cannot bear to be clothed in anything save the thought of his beloved. And this is not a passing fancy. No, he desires always and forever to remain unclothed in full and final self-forgetting.” (p. 172) If we love, death will inevitably follow and self will be forgotten with terrible finality. But it will be a joyous death. Let me say a word about the connection between love and death.

In the Thomistic philosophy to which the English author is so faithful, love is “ecstatic” in that it takes us out of ourselves to live in the thing we love. If we love money, we live in money; if we love our friends, we live in them; if we love them in God, we live in God. This means that in love there is a real death, as St. John of the Cross (again a thoroughgoing Thomist) expresses in his enigmatic words: “O life, how canst thou endure since thou livest not where thou livest?” Is this because his life, no longer in his body, is palpitating in the one he loves? And he wonders how this life can continue. For death is an inevitable consequence of ecstatic love.

The dilemma is terrible. If man refuses to love, his separated self remains in its agonized isolation without ultimate fulfillment, even though ontologically God is in his being. If he loves, he chooses death for the separated self and life for the resurrected self. And it is the resurrected self that is at work in contemplation, which will never cease. “For in eternity there will be no need for the works of mercy as there is now. People will not hunger or thirst or die of the cold or be sick, homeless and captive. No one will need Christian burial for no one will die. In heaven it will no longer be fitting to mourn for our sins or for Christ's Passion. So, then, if grace is calling you to choose the third part, choose it with Mary.” (p. 76)

This brings us to the question of the relationship of the true self to the all. The author writes that there is a total union (“He is your being”) and yet it is not total because I am not God's being (“You are not his”). A strict Thomist of the fourteenth century, he would probably have explained this according to the Platonic notion of ideas in the mind of God—that creation exists from eternity in his mind, so that there is a total unity side by side with variety. To experience this would be “chaste and perfect love” in which one is united with God “blindly”; that is to say, without thoughts or feelings or images of any kind, experiencing oneself in God and through God. St. John of the Cross seems to be getting at this when he says that at first we experience the Creator through his creatures, but at the summit we experience creatures through the Creator.

Yet I myself believe that this metaphysic is less meaningful to modern man than the dynamic approach of Teilhard de Chardin. This is more biblical, giving centrality to the risen Christ Omega as well as to the resurrection of all men. It sees the ultimate eschatological union as a total indwelling of God in man and man in God and all in Christ going to the Father in accordance with the words of Jesus in John 17. As for the paradox that all is one and not one, Teilhard answers with a principle that runs through all his work: in the realm of personality, union differentiates. When I am most united with God, I am most myself. Here union is clearly distinguished from annihilating absorption: it is in union with the other that I find my true self. Incredible paradox? Yet we explain the Trinity in some such way. And does not the principle that union differentiates apply also to human unions and interpersonal relationships? In the deepest and most loving union with another, far from losing ourselves we discover our deepest selves at the core of our being. If this is true of human relationships, it must also apply to the most intimate union of all: that of Yahweh with his people.

I have attempted to explain the author's position on the loss of self, which is an integral part of his direction and a relevant problem in the modern religious scene. But I must quickly confess that the author is reluctant to offer explanations and probably does so only as a concession to the learned divines who may read and criticize his book. How often he remarks that “only he who experiences it will really understand.” If there is a problem, it exists only at the verbal or metaphysical level, while at the level of experiential love it is simply a non-problem since then one knows existentially what it is to lose self and find self at the same time. The whole endeavor of the author is not to explain (for no explanation is possible) but to lead the disciple to a state of consciousness where he will see it for himself. “And so I urge you: go after experience rather than knowledge. On account of pride, knowledge may often deceive you, but this gentle, loving affection will not deceive you. Knowledge tends to breed conceit, but love builds. Knowledge is full of labor, but love, full of rest.” (p. 188) This is like the Zen Buddhists, who without explanation, insist that you must simply sit in meditation.

THE PLACE OF CHRIST

Another point that is crucial in these two books as in the works of all the Christian mystics concerns the place of Christ. Briefly the problem is this: Christian theology, following the New Testament, situates Christ at the very heart of prayer—Christ the man, the Incarnate Word. But how does Christ the man fit into this imageless, supraconceptual void? Where is Christ when I am between the cloud of unknowing and the cloud of forgetting? This is quite a dilemma; yet I believe that the author of The Cloud can truly be called Christocentric.

Let me say first that we can consider Christ in his historical existence or in his risen existence. In either case it is, of course, the same Jesus; but the mode of existence is quite different. About the historical Christ we can have thoughts and ideas and images, just as we can picture the villages through which he walked; but of the risen Christ we can have no adequate picture. This is stated categorically by St. Paul who, when asked what the resurrected body looks like, retorts (if I may translate him into modern jargon), Don't ask stupid questions! “But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ You foolish man! … For not all flesh is alike, but there is one kind for men, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish.” (I Cor. 15:35-38) So there are many ways of existence and the resurrected way is different from that we now enjoy.

Now the Christian, following St. Paul, does not pray just to a historical figure but to the now existing risen Christ who contains in himself all the experience of his historical existence in a transformed way, as he indicated by showing his wounds to his disciples. As for the way of talking about the Christ who lives in our midst today, Teilhard de Chardin, influenced by the later Pauline epistles, speaks of “the cosmic Christ” who is co-extensive with the universe. By death the body is universalized, entering into a new dimension and into a new relationship with matter. It is in this dimension that the risen Christ is present to us. This is a dimension that we too enter by death; but in life also we can somehow touch it by love in the cloud of unknowing.

The English author is, I believe, speaking about the cosmic Christ, though he does not have this terminology. In fact he makes a brilliantly orthodox union of the historical and the risen Jesus in the Mary Magdalene motif, which obviously appeals greatly to him:

In the gospel of St. Luke we read that our Lord came to Martha's house and while she set about at once to prepare his meal, her sister Mary did nothing but sit at his feet. She was so intent upon listening to him that she paid no attention to what Martha was doing. Now certainly Martha's chores were holy and important … But Mary was unconcerned about them. Neither did she notice our Lord's human bearing; the beauty of his mortal body or the sweetness of his human voice and conversation, although this would have been a holier and better work … But she forgot all this and was totally absorbed in the highest wisdom of God concealed in the obscurity of his humanity.

Mary turned to Jesus with all the love of her heart, unmoved by what she saw or heard spoken and done about her. She sat there in perfect stillness with her heart's secret, joyous love intent upon that cloud of unknowing between her and her God. For as I have said before, there never has been and there never will be a creature so pure or so deeply immersed in the loving contemplation of God who does not approach him in this life through that lofty and marvelous cloud of unknowing. And it was to this very cloud that Mary directed the hidden yearning of her loving heart.

(p. 71)

From the above it is very clear that entering the cloud does not mean abandoning Christ. Jesus is present; he is the divine center to which Mary's love is directed. But she has no regard for clear-cut images of his beautiful mortal body, no ears for the sweetness of his human voice. She has gone beyond all this to a deeper knowledge, a deeper love and a deeper beauty. Here in practice is the paradox of a contemplation that is at once Christocentric and imageless.

Examples of this imageless approach to the man Christ abound in the English author; nor is it necessary here to quote his reference in Privy Counseling to Christ who is at once the porter and the door. Or his interesting interpretation of the ascension of Christ, who has to go (“It is expedient for you that I go”) lest the disciples become so attached to his historical body that they cannot love his glorified body. As I have said, our word “cosmic” is not there; but the idea is inescapably present.

With the realization that Christ is co-extensive with the universe, a whole cosmic and social dimension enters into contemplation. Christian mysticism can never be selfish preoccupation with one's little ego; it must be an opening to other people and to the universe. Once again, the English author explains this in the cosmology of his day.

For when you fix your love on him, forgetting all else, the saints and angels rejoice and hasten to assist you in every way—though the devils will rage and ceaselessly conspire to thwart you. Your fellow men are marvelously enriched by this work of yours, even if you may not fully understand how; the souls in purgatory are touched, for their suffering is eased by the effects of this work; and, of course, your own spirit is purified and strengthened by this contemplative work more than by all others put together.

(pp. 89-90)

No corner of the universe is untouched by this exercise of love. Put in Teilhardian terms we might say that the noosphere is built up by this contemplative exercise; or that fresh impulse is given to the thrust of consciousness in its movement toward Omega. It is, of course, a great paradox that we should help people precisely by forgetting them: “Therefore, firmly reject all clear ideas however pious or delightful. For I tell you this, one loving blind desire for God alone is … more helpful to your friends, both living and dead, than anything else you could do.” (p. 60) This is something known only to experience through faith.

The increasingly cosmic and social dimension of contemplation is stressed in Privy Counseling where this work is described as a development from “bodiliness” to “ghostliness”; and I have translated these words as the Pauline “flesh” and “spirit.” For Paul, of course, flesh is not the sensual, Platonic flesh; it is not the instinctual part of man. Rather does it mean man rooted in this world; and when Paul uses it in a pejorative sense, it means man seeing only this world and blind to anything beyond it. On the other hand, the spiritual man is the man open to the universe and under the influence of the Spirit. Hence growth in contemplation, a growth toward spirit, is a development toward cosmic consciousness so that the contemplative puts on the mind of the cosmic Christ and offers himself to the Father for the salvation of the human race. Here, indeed, is the very climax of the author's thought, couched in the beautiful prayer of Privy Counseling:

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.

(p. 156)

This is truly the peak-point when the contemplative together with Christ offers himself to the Father for the human race. Now he has put on the mind of Christ so completely that, in a sense, only the Father remains. It is Christ within who prays and offers himself to the Father—“I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me.” And, of course, the whole prayer is eminently Trinitarian and bafflingly paradoxical. There is one God, who is my very existence. And yet my existence is somehow distinct and I can offer it to him.

In this Christology, however, some readers may be perturbed by the author's use of the Bible. Here, as in Privy Counseling and throughout his works, his apparent twisting of Scripture to illustrate and prove his point may bring a smile to the lips of the modern exegete. Yet this approach is typical of the mystics from Origen to John of the Cross. And it is, I believe, legitimate, and even helpful to the modern exegete.

That there is a distinctively contemplative approach to Scripture was indicated by Vatican II when it wrote: “For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words handed down. This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers who treasure these things in their hearts through the intimate understanding of spiritual things they experience.” (Document on Divine Revelation, Chapter 2, 8) Growth in understanding comes from the mystics who, so to speak, live the Scriptures from within. If it is true, as Paul says, that no one can understand the spirit of a man except his own spirit, how true, too, that no one can really understand the Scriptures (however much his exegesis) except he who possesses the Spirit that composed them. The contemplative approach to Scripture complements the exegetical and is, I believe, coming more and more to the fore today.

PRIMACY OF LOVE

From what has been said it will be clear that in the English author the central place in the contemplative exercise is allotted to love. That love is the essence of the whole thing is unequivocally stated again and again in words like the following:

For in real charity one loves God for himself alone above every created thing and he loves his fellow man because it is God's law. In the contemplative work God is loved above every creature purely and simply for his sake. Indeed, the very heart of this work is nothing else but a naked intent toward God for his own sake.

(p. 80)

So the very heart of this work is love, which the English author refers to as a “secret little love,” a “naked intent of the will,” a “blind outstretching,” a “gentle stirring of love,” “this work,” or simply as “it.” It should be noted, however, that he uses these expressions for an activity that includes knowledge or consciousness of some kind. For purposes of analysis it is possible to speak of knowledge and love in contemplation; but the activity the author speaks of is a blend of both, a completely simple experience arising in the depth of the contemplative's heart: in the last analysis it is indescribable, as the author declares when he says that “Whatever we may say of it is not it, but only about it.” (p. 169) He has no doubt, however, that its predominant element is love and it is upon this that he puts all the emphasis. The practice of unknowing with its treading down of all distinct knowledge beneath the cloud of forgetting is no more than preparation for the cultivation of this blind stirring that is the most important thing in life. This is reiterated many times, as, for example, in such words as the following:

And so to stand firmly and avoid pitfalls, keep to the path you are on. Let your longing relentlessly beat upon the cloud of unknowing that lies between you and your God. Pierce that cloud with the keen shaft of your love, spurn the thought of anything less than God, and do not give up this work for anything. For the contemplative work of love by itself will eventually heal you of all the roots of sin.

(p. 63)

This, a typical passage, shows how the business of forgetting is relegated to a secondary place, being no more than a means of making room for the “keen shaft of … love,” which, however, is accompanied by a deep consciousness of God. Instances could be multiplied where the author waxes enthusiastic about the little love that comes to dominate in the mystical life. “Your whole personality will be transformed, your countenance will radiate an inner beauty, and for as long as you feel it nothing will sadden you. A thousand miles would you run to speak with another whom you knew really felt it, and yet when you got there, find yourself speechless.” (pp. 182, 183) As the contemplative enters more deeply into the cloud, love comes to guide him, teaching him to choose God, who cannot be thought or understood or found by any rational activity. As it grows stronger, it comes to take possession of him in such a way that it dominates every action. It orders him to choose God, and if he does not follow its command it wounds him and gives him no peace until he does its bidding. This is beautifully illustrated in a passage from another work of the author which does not, unfortunately, appear in this book. Let me quote from An Epistle of Stirrings about the dynamic quality of the blind stirring of love:

Then that same that thou feelest shall well know how to tell thee when thou shalt speak and when thou shalt be still. And it shall govern thee discreetly in all thy living without any error, and teach thee mystically how thou shalt begin and cease in all such doings of nature with a great and sovereign discretion. For if thou mayest by grace keep it in custom and in continual working, then if it be needful to thee for to speak, for to eat in the common way, or for to bide in company, or for to do any such other thing that belongeth to the common true custom of Christian men and of nature, it shall first stir thee softly to speak or to do that other common thing of nature whatso it be; and then, if thou do it not, it shall smite as sore as a prick on thine heart and pain thee full sore, and let thee have no peace but if thou do it. And in the same manner, if thou be speaking or in any such other work that is common to the course of nature, if it be needful and speedful to thee to be still and to set thee to the contrary, as is fasting to eating, being alone to company, and all such other, the which be works of singular holiness, it will stir thee to them.

From the above it can be seen that the blind stirring of love eventually develops into a bright flame, guiding the contemplative's every choice. It stirs him softly and sweetly to act; but it also impels him to do God's will with a certain inevitability against which it is useless to struggle: he seems to be in the grip of something more powerful than himself that he must obey at the risk of losing interior peace when it smites upon his heart. That this is the guidance of God himself is indicated in The Cloud where the author speaks of the guiding action of God in the very depths of the soul to which no evil spirit can penetrate and on which no reasoning can make impact. And this, I maintain, is the very apex of Christian morality. No longer fidelity to law but submission to the guidance of love.

Moreover it is precisely this love that gives wisdom, the truest knowledge. Indeed the meditational process taught by the English author could be described in three stages. First there is the clear and distinct knowledge brought by discursive meditation. This is abandoned for the guidance of love. Then this love finds wisdom. In yet another work, A Treatise of the Study of Wisdom, the author describes this process with a traditional simile. As a burning candle enlightens both itself and the objects around, so the light of love enables us to see both our own wretchedness and the great goodness of God:

As when the candle burneth, thou mayest see the candle itself by the light thereof, and the other things also; right so when thy soul burneth in the love of God, that is when thou feelest continuously thine heart desire after the love of God, then by the light of his grace which he sendeth in thy reason, thou mayest see thine unworthiness, and his great goodness. And therefore … proffer thy candle to the fire.

(S.W. [A Treatise on the Study of Wisdom] 43:8)

A similar doctrine is taught by Aquinas, who holds that a great love of God calls down the Spirit, according to the promise of Christ at the Last Supper that if anyone loved him he would be loved by the Father, who would send another Paraclete: progress in charity, then, means progress in wisdom. This kind of wisdom is, I believe, apparent in human relations where love can discover beauty and potentiality that reason alone cannot find.

And so the author stands in the stream of tradition that regards mysticism as a love affair between the bridegroom and the bride, between Yahweh and his people. It is here that the deepest significance of Western mysticism is to be found.

DIONYSIUS

This Englishman belongs to a tradition known as “apophatic” because of its tendency to emphasize that God is best known by negation: we can know more about what God is not than what he is. Influenced by Neoplatonism, it is a doctrine that owes much to Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius the Areopagite. To this latter the author of The Cloud acknowledges his debt at the end of his book: “Anyone who reads Denis' book will find confirmed there all that I have been trying to teach in this book from start to finish.” (p. 139) That these words are sincere is proved by the fact that the English author made a translation of Dionysius' Mystical Theology, which goes by the name of Hid Divinity. Yet recent scholars have pointed out that he was less Dionysian than he himself supposed. One reason for this is that no medieval could get an objective view of the writings of the Areopagite. Only comparatively recently was it established with certainty that Dionysius was a Syrian monk of the early sixth century; for the medievals he was St. Paul's convert writing to Timothy with an authority close to that of the Scriptures themselves. His writings had influenced not only the Greek mystics, notably Maximus the Confessor in the eighth century, but also after the translation of John Scotus Erigena in 877 they made an incalculable impact on the whole Latin Church. Commentaries were multiplied; Albert, Aquinas and Bonaventure received Dionysian influence; even Dante sang the praises of the Areopagite. Consequently, the Dionysius who came to the author of The Cloud, like the Aristotle who sometimes comes to modern Thomists, was overlaid with a tradition that no medieval would have recognized. And it was this embellished Dionysius that influenced the English author. Moreover, he makes no secret of the fact that he will not follow the “naked letter” of Dionysius' book; he intends to interpret it himself and to make use of other interpreters. He almost certainly did not read the original text of Dionysius but used the Latin translation of Joannes Sarracenus together with the commentary of Thomas Gallus, Abbot of Vercelli.

Yet, granted that Dionysius has been somewhat embellished in the years that elapsed between the sixth century and the fourteenth, it still remains true that his basic ideas are fundamental to the thought of the author of The Cloud. I shall, therefore, first briefly set forth his doctrine.

According to Dionysius, there are two ways in which man can know God: one is the way of reason (λόγος): the other is the way of mystical contemplation (μυsτικὸν θέαμα). Rational knowledge of God is obtained through speculative theology and philosophy; but mystical knowledge is greatly superior to this, giving a knowledge of God that is intuitive and ineffable. Hence, it is called “mystical” or “hidden.” Dionysius speaks much of the transcendence of God, stressing the fact that by reasoning we know little about him; but he never denies the power of discursive reason to give some knowledge of God, merely emphasizing the superiority of mystical knowledge.

In fact, he teaches two ways of knowing God by reason—one affirmative and the other negative. We can affirm of God all the good that can be affirmed of his creation, saying that he is holy, wise, benevolent, that he is light and life. All these things come from God, so we can affirm that the source possesses their perfections in a higher way. But (and this is the point stressed by Dionysius) there is also a negative way of knowing God, since he is above all his creatures. He is wise, but with a wisdom different from that of men; his beauty, goodness, and truth are different from those we know. So, in a sense, God is unlike anything we know: we must keep in mind that the ideas we have of him are totally inadequate to contain him.

But there is yet a higher way of knowing God. “Besides the knowledge of God obtained by processes of philosophical and theological speculation, there is that most divine knowledge of God which takes place through ignorance”; in this knowledge the intellect is illuminated by “the insearchable depth of wisdom.” Such knowledge is not found in books nor can it be obtained by human effort, for it is a divine gift. Man, however, can prepare himself to receive it; and this he does by prayer and purification. Here is Dionysius' advice:

Do thou, then, in the intent practice of mystic contemplation, leave behind the senses and the operations of the intellect, and all things that the senses or the intellect can perceive, and all things which are not and things which are, and strain upwards in unknowing, as far as may be, towards the union with Him Who is above all things and knowledge. For by unceasing and absolute withdrawal from thyself and all things in purity, abandoning all and set free from all, thou shalt be borne up to the ray of divine darkness that surpasseth all being.

(De myst. theol., I, 1)

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.

(p. 50)

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.”