Dark Night Of The Soul

St. John of the Cross

Paragraph 14-Profound Humanness

The extremity of all profound and complex interior happenings the poet terms "the dark night." This is an event involving the fruition of selfhood. It has to do with the final meaning of life, with the fulfilling of the relation to the final mystery over against us. It is that happening in which all and the last naiveté and temporal hope is exploded. It is where all and the last reductionisms and escape mechanisms are overcome. It is through these purgations that the ultimate acknowledgment of reality is actualized. 1'he "dark night" is the painful process of the depth awareness of final givenness of life and of full realization of the self.

Paragraph 15-Double Darkness

This happening involves at the same time both the understanding and the will. Here we are concerned only with the understanding. In the understanding the heart of the matter rests in the assault of our being with a totally alien image, termed by the poet the "dark contemplation." This impact is experienced as a thick darkness for two paramount reasons. First because the intruding image is the image of the "nought," or rather the image that the nought is in everything, it is the illumination that there is nothing real save the all­present mystery. Secondly the darkness is the painful, life­or­death conflict between the "dark image" and the familiar and established images of meaning we already possess. Let us now enlarge on this interior darkness.

Paragraph 16-Nothings Shadow

The first meaning of the darkening of the understanding reminds us "man does not live by bread alone." We live out of the images of our relationships which provide the meaning and content of our lives. They are like a light, that enables us to understand what we do and what we suffer. They illuminate our situation and stimulate our motivities. We are early impregnated with such images by the society of which we are a part. And hence, they come to us as both natural and rational. This is our "natural intelligence," so­called, which guides and judges and delights us. It is our internal world, the content of our consciousness. Now into this established, comfortable, secure universe of meaning a strange, imposing, powerful image intrudes. This is termed the dark image and the question is why it is experienced as dark. In this direct apprehension of the darkness there are three reasons: first, the image is contentless; second, it over­shadows the naturalized images; and third, it is in its own nature, overwhelming.

First then the image is diametrically alien to our established world. Though the assault comes as authority, power, finality, and awesomeness, in itself the image is contentless. The reason is that reality ever remains a mystery. This is not however simply the consciousness that mystery is ever at the edge of life. Of this the victims of the dark night have long been aware. The present assailing image is that the mystery is in everything. The mystery is in all and all is in the mystery. That is, the "nothingness" is ceaselessly present in each and every thing. It is present in every situation and object, past, present and future. It is unavoidable and unescapable. The presence of the image conveys that to live is necessarily to live with the mystery and to live with the mystery is to live with all things. To care about the mystery is to care about everything. To be offended by the mystery is to hate all things. It feels like unreduced contentlessness. Later we may appropriate this alien image as the blinding light of just the way life is in its profundity. In its assault it comes only as thick darkness-totally strange and foreign to our natural, rational, familiar world of meaning.

The second direct cause of the darkness is that this strange image is also consumingly imposing. Its unlimited impressiveness overcomes or better, overshadows the total established image systems within us. Its very presence renders them somehow inadequate. It does something like humiliates them. Because this over­towering image is the image of the irrational, and not simply the irrational at the edge but the "irrational in all things," it smugly intrudes itself into our world which is absolutely circumscribed by reason. Its impressiveness implies that the rational is vulnerable. It silently asserts that there is a concealed "nought" in every reasonable construct; that reality itself is always beyond both reason and the natural. Its imposing presence accuses rationality of having a master beyond itself. It is the image o absurdity and it is a double absurdity. First it is the absurdity of reason's limits. Second, it is the absurdity within all of reason's manifestations. It is this almost overbearing image of ever­present absurdity that breathes the dark shadow over our "natural" understanding. What we behold within, is not the light of the final mystery in everything but rather the dark cloud it creates over our humiliated internal, rational universe in which we have always lived and had our being.

Lastly the dark image, as we have seen, is both strange and imposing. It is also directly overwhelming-a strong and powerful force in our consciousness. So much so that its intrusion feels like a full scale assault. This obviously indicates that the dark image is not only not self­initiated, but that we are also vehemently opposed to it. The implication here is two­fold: that it is occasioned by the fates of history, and that it is hiddenly assented to by our being. Ir. brief, there is an external circumstance and an internal capitulation. The occurrence is some happening relating to innocent suffering and the impartiality of reality. It is the sudden, concrete and absolutely un­understandable happening that becomes transparent, unveiling "the nothing in the all." The fact that such occurs when all is well and sure and full, complexes the interior trauma. That is, it adds to the force of the strange image. Interiorly its felt force is a matter of something like sabotage. There is somehow a negative or irrational assent of our being to the enemy. This is due to the hidden "naught" in all our domesticated rational images-the source of the third kind of direct darkness. Hence we arc over­whelmed, conquered, due to both external and internal reality. The effect is a sense of thick darkness.

In sum, we have described how this image of "the nothing in the all," once it assails our being, stuns, beclouds and vanquishes our so­called "natural intelligence'' and is therefore called by the poet "the dark image." A "wholly other world" has suddenly emerged out of "nothing" right in the midst of our every­day world. And it itself is nothing: like mystery is nothing; like freedom is nothing; like passion is nothing; like endlessness is nothing. It is like a montage, where something that is not there appears in the midst of the complex of images that renders them each and all un­seeable. It is like gazing at the brightness of the sun and seeing only the pitiful weakness of our own bodies because the darkness is in the eye itself. It is like having a nightmare in which we are inundated by we know not what, all we are is consumed by what is not there, and we are left floating in a non­existent space of dark nothingness, suddenly discovering we are awake and it is bright daylight. It is a dark image, indeed.

Paragraph 17-Mental Affliction

The second paramount reason for the darkness in the understanding is the painful affliction, the suffering and grief occasioned by the strange, imposing, over­powering dark image. Though related to it, this suffering is not the pain of the deadly battle going on in the will. This grief is in the understanding, related to the propensity for meaning, self­esteem and integrity. The intruding image means that two absolute contraries exist in one mind; the universe of the self and the world of the "wholly other." Such contraries cannot co­exist. One must capitulate and prostrate itself before the other. Before the purity, power, finality and awesomeness of the assaulting force, the natural understanding submits with a painful sense of unworthiness, weakness, rejection and wretchedness. This is the suffering grief which is experienced as a second darkness. It is an indirect form of darkness. That is, it is the darkness of the affliction occasioned by the darkness itself. The understanding is confused by what is happening. It is quite beyond the understanding of the understanding. It is like the mind is out of its mind-a sense of madness. This is the dark painful affliction of the "natural intelligence." Let us look at the four concrete kinds of pain that comprise this suffering.

Paragraph 18-Humiliating Unworthiness

The first pain is a deep sense of humiliation. The quality in the dark image that occasions this grief is that of purity. This means that it comes to us as reality-the way things are. It appears to be the plain and single truth. Aware that our "natural and reasonal world" is antithetical to this dark light, we can only believe, with excruciating pain, that we have been living unknownedly, in unreality. It is like suddenly feeling unqualifiedly impure. It is a deep sense that we are revoltingly unclean. We feel that our world of meaning is ontologically disrelated to reality. We feel as if we are self­betrayed, duped by ourselves, we have let being itself down. It is as though we have set ourselves against the truth. All reality must be offended, repulsed, and affronted by our very existence. It seems as if we have be cm cast out of the presence of Being. It is the suffering and grief of the sense of unmitigated unworthiness; a deep and painful humiliation. We are wrought with agonizing self doubt and feel that our colossal failure means that we can no longer be trusted, indeed we cannot trust ourselves. We are no longer capable of responsibility for our own lives. The greatest suffering is the feeling that this is permanent, the way it will be forever. All the rich meanings of life seem to be gone forever. This is the dark pain of abject humiliation. It is a humiliating sense of unworthiness.

Paragraphs 19­20-Abasing Weakness

The second pain is an intense sense of inadequacy. The quality in the dark image that causes this feeling of weakness is that of power. It somehow comes to us as overpowering might. Before this display of strength and force we seem to totally collapse. Sometimes this assault of power is so great and our sense of weakness so deep that we sort of swoon away. Indeed it is so painful to us that death itself would be a welcome relief. All this is to say that this image of "nothing in everything" comes as an immense weight. It is like being underneath an unbearable burden. Hitherto we have grasped ourselves as towers of strength and quite able to bear the weight of life. Now we feel ourselves to be impotent and feeble as children. Our strength has invisibly seeped away. Our abasing image of ourselves is that of a hopeless weakling. A slightest touching of our lives and seem to fade away. Furthermore, deep within, we feel ourselves being brutally and unjustly oppressed in some invisible manner. The pain and grief is further intensified by an awareness that there is no help. All possible assistance seems to have vanished along with everything else. It is as if there is not even anyone to pity us; not even being-in-itself. All of this is quite beyond the understanding. This abasing weakness is a dark grief. It is as though we can no longer stand living with so weak a human being.

Paragraphs 21­22­23-Abject Rejection

The third pain is a creeping sense of doom. It is a sense of just fading away; of slowly but surely perishing. It is like being rejected so completely that there is no memory of our ever having been. The quality of the dark image that is the agent of this feeling of certain death is the quality of finality. It comes to us here as a devouring beast from which there is no escape. It is the limits before which we radically experience our contingency, our fragility, our mortality. We sense that this image of nothingness is stripping us of ourselves and recasting us into its own image of nothingness. It is as if if we are just melting away, perishing before our very eyes, as though if we are being absorbed into a deep and final nothing. It feels like a cruel and miserable interior death. Though the sense of abandonment is associated with all four of the dark griefs it is especially intense with this pain of death It is a feeling of ultimate rejection. It seems as if we are forsaken by all our friends; indeed we feel as if all creatures somehow think of us as an abomination. We can not stand even ourselves. But it is more than all this. It is as though "being­itself" has turned forever against us. In this affliction we feel not only as if if we have been absorbed into the tomb of earth but cast into the very flames of hell. It is a sense of being utterly and irretrievably forsaken. It is as if we are the victims of a total and relentless hatred. It is as if we arc being brutally chastened in the darkness. Worst of all there seems to be absolutely no escape and no hope of any different future. The dark pain of abandonment is unbearable and we painfully believe that it will be forever.

Paragraphs 24­25­26-Final Wretchedness

The fourth pain is maybe chief of all. It certainly is the most complex and the most difficult to communicate. It is a shocking sense of our own wretchedness. The quality of the dark image which elicits this is that of awesomeness. Before this majesty, we become painfully aware of our own contingency plus the awareness that we have miserably failed in handling the givenness of our lives. Concretely this affliction is first of all the experience of extreme emptiness. It is a feeling of being drained dry; a sense of extreme aridity. It is as if everything has moved out of the mind. Everything is vacant as if we have gone away from ourselves. The faculties are not functioning right. Memory, sense mechanisms, reasoning powers appear to be out of operation. We can not understand it and we just can not believe it. Secondly we feel all burnt out, down inside. It is as though a strange fire has been consuming us. A hot inward torment has left nothing behind. Everything familiar and cherished seems to be burnt over, indeed consumed. Thirdly this pain of our wretchedness is the. sense of the complete undoing of ourselves. We have nothing left to stand on. The deeps are overwhelming our being. It is as if a madness has taken over. We are out of our minds or rather our mind has totally deserted us. It is as if perdition has even now opened before our very eyes. This grief is so tormenting, so white hot, that we feel that if it continued very long at any given time it would truly annihilate us. It is a wretchedness beyond our description. This dark night renders us humiliated, weak, abandoned, and wretched, and the greatest of these is wretchedness. Such is the dark grief occasioned by the dark image in the dark night.

DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

St. John of the Cross

Paragraph 60-Transparent Love

There is such in life that poets term a "fire of love," that in turn enkindles deep within our beings a strange love. A love seemingly without object. A transparent love which totally attaches all of our being to the final mystery of life; to that mysterious "naught that is in all;" to the incomprehensible "nothingness that is in everything. " So the love of this nothing is the love of all things and the love of all things is the love of the nothing. Hence this strange love is called a universal benevolence-the burden of everlastingly caring for each and every thing within the mystery of life itself. This is the strange passion for the Mystery, the transparent love enkindled within us by that equally strange "fire of love." Now what is the "fire of love?" It is that which everyman knows, with more or less consciousness, is lurking behind every place of hiding, waiting, ready to pounce, around every turning place. It is the awe. The "fire of love" is the intrusion of the profound reality of fear and fascination; which occurs in the presence of the Mystery whether we are clearly aware of that presence or not. In sum, a radical alteration in the defining attachments of our being is occasioned by the impactment of the awe, in the presence of life's mystery. Of course, in the actual happening, these matters are not at the beginning understood in such a fashion. The comprehension comes much later and within the process itself. Actually at the moment of intrusion the awe is experienced as a sudden, keen, deep wound. It is like a fire burning way down inside. The dread dynamic of the awe seems to be consumingly potent. It is sheer pain. And this is complexed by the fact that the victims arc quite without understanding of the meaning of it all. Still, in this darkness there is a faint and feeble intuition that this pain somehow relates to the profound deeps of reality.

Paragraph 61-Blind Affection

This affection enkindled within by the presence of awe appears to have no object even as the awe itself seems to be without source. Awe simply shows up. We are just suddenly in it. It is because the subject of the awe is the "Nothing." It is the nothing that is present in all, yet remains naught. Wherever this final nothing or the mystery is present, awe is present. This is so, regardless of any images the understanding may or may not have relative to the mystery. In brief, here is a profound indicative of humanness. The source of consciousness itself is found in this experience of fear and fascination before the naught. It is this awe that fosters this frail blind affection, and occasions this embryonic unconscious attachment to the mystery. The way it happens is that in the midst of the dread pole, the pole of fascination emerges. Fascination in the midst of dread breathes a warmth within us. Out of the very pain of the wound rises an enticement. It is important to note that this fascination is a pure given and that the frail affection it elicits is passive. That is, they both happen without intent. Of course, here there is something like a submission of oneself to them. It is a kind of rudimentary consent of our being. The ground of this consent is found in the above mentioned relation of consciousness to awe, and this consent is the fine point of the. enkindlement, thc birth of the transparent affection. Though at this moment we have no understanding of the matter, this is the faint beginning of what will develop later into the absolute attachment of our total being to the invisible source of the awe, that is the mystery. Now as this blind attraction develops, the wound to our being increases along with intensification of the pain. It is because the growing affection more and more cuts off the past attachments which have hitherto defined us, along with their accompanying delights. This is the pain and it continues to increase as the attraction to the mystery grows.

Paragraph 62-Rudimentary Frustration

As indicated above, the transparent affection for the "nought," born in the complex interior happening referred by the poet as "the dark night," necessarily frustrates the habitual or established inclinations of our being. This means these past attachments are being weaned from their objects. The normal relations in life which provide meaning, delight, and define our being have been put into question! Our relations to our family, children, nation, ideas, religion, work, friends and the like are somehow drying up. Of course, all of this comes from the mystery; that is, it is initiated by the awe occasioned by the final mystery. Furthermore, though it will be understood only later, it is directed toward the grounding of all meaning, security and desire in that mystery. This happening is the beginning of the turning of the self from its dissipation among the many concrete goods and delights of life and focusing it entirely upon the final "nothingness." It is preparation for the re­collection of all the drives of the self toward the final reality of existence. We are no longer in the service of life's many attachments. Here in brief, right in this frustration of our familiar propensities, is the beginning of the union of all faculties, desires and energies in relation to the mystery. The very beginnings of such frustrations are strangely and secretly providing the strength for this radical reconstruction to come.

Paragraph 63-Painful Profundity

The above gives some indication of just how profound, how deep, how radical this interior kindling of the transparent affection is. It is nothing less than the uncovering and the initiation of the re­establishment of the self's primordial attachment to the "nothingness that is in everything." To repeat the above paragraph, all drives, abilities, intents, desires, and capacities of one's being are being invisibly drawn together, and concentrated in one single direction. All habits and propensities are undergoing extreme metamorphosis. They are being reclaimed from the "many" by the "one." They are being profoundly re­oriented toward final reality, the ground of existence, the mystery of being. This is the start of a journey at the core of our being that will finally mean a return to authenticity and reality. Once again, it must be remembered that these intellectual awarenesses are not known in or during the happening itself. Such images arc given only later, sometimes much later. The understanding is after the event.

Paragraph 64-Internal Warfare

The profundity of this metamorphosis in the self indicates something of the extreme intensity of it. Let us rehearse it all again. The intrusion of the awe, by enkindling the transparent affection, touches and painfully wounds our interior being by uprooting all its habitual inclinations and corralling every propensity into a single focus before an unknown object. Furthermore, this transpires in dark ignorance as to the meaning of it all. Actually we are racked with painful doubt as to whether there is or ever can be such meaning. How will our "interior" respond to all of this? The poet says that it will howl like starving dogs. The established propensities being cut off suffer pains of hunger with not the slightest idea of where or how they arc to be relieved. The touch of this little unenlightened affection for the mystery begins to dry up all other affections. This new and different thirst tends to render arid all previously cherished desires. In truth, down inside an Armageddon is waging. A cruel all­out war to the finish has been declared. It is war between the many natural inclinations and the one alien desire. In a thousand ways, with eagerness and power this "mystery affection" struggles against the established attachments. The latter, hungry and threatened with extinction, fight back with ferocious passion. It is the sell turning on self and turning on self again and yet again. And it is unto death. The hungry groans are the cries of pain from the field of battle.

Paragraph 65-Fathomless Yearning

Beyond the miseries of this internal Armageddon there is yet another painful grief: an insatiable, objectless yearning. It points to the deepest human restlessness; to the foundational turmoil in Everyman; to the tension that defines consciousness itself. Again, it all rests on that strange, awe­inspired affection for the unknown. Small and feeble as it is in the beginning, it renders all attractions, all delights, all relationships sterile. Every thought and desire that revolve within, appears somehow wanting. Every affair and situation we find ourselves in is stale and lifeless. Life itself appears dried up. An unfathomable emptiness has opened. The result is the objectless yearning. It comes as a wound upon a wound, deep and vital. It is a blind, compelling longing beyond all familiar relationships. Day and night it consumes our being. We cannot sleep, yet we wish for the darkness. In between is full of sorrow, ceaseless suffocation. Time has turned into grief. We can no longer live with ourselves or anyone else. Our affliction seems beyond cure or hope of consolation. There is more. This suffering is complexed further in two ways: first, by the painful lack of any understanding of it. There is no image of meaning, only darkness. Secondly, the awe keeps coming, stimulating the alien affection that occasions it all. Ilere is a "wondrous fear" that endlessly opens the wound. A maddening yearning without object and be yon(l any rational understanding, being constantly fed by an invisible external force: this is thc second misery.

Paragraph 66-Compulsive Waiting

There is still another level to this strange grief. It has to do with a compulsive hopeless waiting. Though this is related to the yearning it is quite a distinct affliction. Born of that strange affection, it is a firm expectation that the resolution to all our misery will appear at any moment. As a result we are paralyzed. We cannot do this, for we have no time; we cannot do that, because we must ever be ready for the coming of what we are waiting for. Everything is just waiting, both day and night. There is not one tiny moment of "at ease." Worst of all, it is a waiting for nothing; waiting for we do not know what. Once again it must be remembered that this "compulsive waiting" was occasioned by the strange objectless affection born of the awe without a source. So here we are objectlessly waiting. And it is hopeless and we can not seem to help it. We just wait. Furthermore, there develops a strange inversion which complexes this dark affliction. If perchance it is absent for a moment we de e ply miss it. All the pain and frustration have oddly become to us a strengthening companion. When it goes away, in our frustration we become doubly lonely, empty, weak and immobile. Now we are just waiting for the waiting itself. It is a deadly trap. We are dying with it; we are dying without it. It is misery either way once that alien affection has taken root within our being. Of all the miseries-internal conflict, cadless yearning, and hopeless waiting-perhaps this last is most miserable of all.