On Dark Night of the Soul

I picked this up because I believed I was undergoing the dark night of the soul. Funnily enough, I now know that I’m not. The phrase gets thrown around to describe depressive episodes in which there seems to be no light — what we’d once have called a plain old spiritual crisis. But in St. John of the Cross’s own usage, the “dark night of the soul” refers to a specific stretch on the path of spiritual ascent within a mystical tradition.

The book is interesting in that it is a commentary on a poem St. John wrote himself. Here is the poem in full:

On a dark night, Kindled in love with yearnings—oh, happy chance!— I went forth without being observed, My house being now at rest. In darkness and secure, By the secret ladder, disguised—oh, happy chance!— In darkness and in concealment, My house being now at rest In the happy night, In secret, when none saw me, Nor I beheld aught, Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart. This light guided me More surely than the light of noonday To the place where he (well I knew who!) was awaiting me— A place where none appeared. Oh, night that guided me, Oh, night more lovely than the dawn, Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover, Lover transformed in the Beloved! Upon my flowery breast, Kept wholly for himself alone, There he stayed sleeping, and I caressed him, And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze. The breeze blew from the turret As I parted his locks; With his gentle hand he wounded my neck And caused all my senses to be suspended. I remained, lost in oblivion; My face I reclined on the Beloved. All ceased and I abandoned myself, Leaving my cares forgotten among the lillies.

What the poem describes is the mystic, through contemplative prayer and meditation, beginning to feel closer to God and to undergo mystical experiences — which I find fascinating. Many mystics grow satisfied with their progress and, counterintuitively, develop vices, egoism being perhaps the most severe. But those who stay on the path eventually reach a point where the experiences stop and it feels as though God is no longer present, and it is this stage that is the “dark night of the soul.” St. John holds that the darkness comes from a period of purgation: to experience God in full presence one must be purified of one’s vices, and the dark night is when the most intense purgation occurs, when it’s easiest to slip backward rather than ascend.

What matters most to the mystical experience is the work of “unlearning,” or “unknowing” — a slow process that lets the subject/object distinction (in the language of Richard H. Jones’s An Introduction to the Study of Mysticism) dissolve into a sense of wholeness with God. In that light the dark night is really a positive experience, however painful in the moment.

I’m not sure I got as much from this as I would have had I explored further first, experientially included. I’ll have to return to it; it’s a challenging text.