THE DARK NIGHT OF THE MYSTIC

This is perhaps the most inexplicable phenomenon that every mystic knows in its ascensional pilgrimage towards the spiritual Reality: after reaching full purification, after attaining a high degree of enlightenment, shortly before crossing the mysterious frontier towards the definitive union with God - it goes through the so-called “Dark Night of the Soul”, a phenomenon in which John of the Cross and his great disciple, St. Teresa of Jesus were masters in the description of this phenomenon.

Psychologists say this phenomenon is a reaction to the weariness caused by the passage through the first two stages of evolution, of purification and enlightenment, which necessarily precede the Union.

However, the deepest reason is not only psychological but mystical or cosmic. In the transition to the ultimate union with the Infinite, there occurs the detachment of the tyrannical ego, the irrevocable death of the Adamic man, and that death is experienced as darkness, as a total eclipse of the personality of the Luciferlike ego which gives way to the resurrection of the Christlike man.

Moreover, there can be no genuine experience of the spiritual world without this “baptism of blood”, without the passage through the “red sea” of great suffering - and the definitive death of the ego is undoubtedly the greatest of sufferings. Suffering is the ultimate and supreme initiation factor. After a man has comprehended everything comprehensible, his ego has to be annihilated, reduced to zero, before he can see the Whole. If between the ego-conscious life and the super-conscious life of the Self did not exist separating it, the abyss of nothingness, of absolute annihilation, which reveals itself as suffering, could the subsequent union with God seem the product of some ingenious or brilliant activity of the ego. Still, after it has been reduced to zero, man can never consider the mystical nuptials of the soul with the divine Bridegroom as something deserved or produced by the ego’s personality.

For this mystical union to appear in all the splendour of truth of what it is in reality, that is, the purest grace of God - the great darkness must camp on the sanctuary’s threshold.

“Lest any man should glorify himself in Its presence.”

After passing through this thick darkness, the soul is adult and mature enough to enter the kingdom of God.

Here lies the dividing line between the merely devotional spirituality of certain poetic mystics - and the creative experience of a soul which, indeed, became excited by the vehement storms of God. Exists in genuine mystical experience, something profoundly tragic, almost deadly; the soul, coming to this last frontier between two worlds, knows and feels that it is a matter of life or death, that the moment of great crisis is at hand, of a supreme decision, from which there is no return... and such experience causes profound modifications also in the external life of man.

When, after this encounter with God, one returns to the society, in the beginning, it sees nothing, no longer comprehends the language of others, although sees and hears everything. The soul remains distant, far away... Then, forced to resume its daily life, has the impression of being in a kindergarten or a theatre of puppets... Why would all this rush around? Why this rampant hustle and bustle, on foot, by car, by plane? What do these human dolls want? Do they all have to do something important, or it is just the way of living the emptiness of life too hectic? Of course, they are victims of a collective hallucination, which they take very seriously! No one knows exactly why this hysteria in rushing everywhere; screams, laughs, cries, gestures, accumulation of money and more money... Do not they realize they are building a museum filled with zeros? These important men are like ants while facing its collapsed nest, starting to run wildly in all directions, without knowing why and for what.

“My kingdom is not of this world” - Would say that soul!

This is the voice that echoes, without ceasing, in the soul of the mystic who had his encounter with God. And if one were to offer him “all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them”, he would not bother to reach out to take these shadows and these puppets of rags, which forms the coveted target of the daily rampant hustle and bustle of a hectic and empty life, greed and wars of the profane.

His gravitational centre shifted...

His orbit is no longer geocentric, egocentric - became heliocentric, Theocentric, Cosmocentric...

He lost sight of the beaches and coastlines of the past and let himself be carried away by the jubilant waves of the seas of God...

Where?

Who knows?... It does not matter... God knows - and this is enough!

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The poem of John of the Cross narrates the soul's pilgrimage from its carnal dwelling to the union with God and represents the soul's struggles in detaching itself from the world and attaining the union with the Creator. The poem's main idea can be seen as the painful experience that people go through in their attempts to evolve spiritually to unite with God. The dark night seems to be the trance of the soul, a rite of passage into the great reality of intuitive spiritual reason, an end to glorification.

Probably this dark night is only a figure of speech or a concept that during the lifetime of John of the Cross was created and distorted due to the profound ignorance of the things of the spirit which existed in his time, and that formed sediment in the human mind to this day, ignorance that was fed by the church itself... blind leading the blind! Could not this dark night be the light of the dawn of the third heaven? A mystical ecstasy? A reality that is beyond our senses and mind?

Saint Teresa also experienced a similar experience. When she sought answers to her doubts about the afterlife, she would have told her fellow nuns: “If you only knew in what darkness I am immersed.”

Mother Teresa of Calcutta thus wrote: “In my soul, I feel that terrible pain of loss and I find no words to express the depth of that darkness.”

These experiences may help us identify and comprehend the state of abandonment that Jesus felt during the worst hours of his suffering, particularly from betrayal to crucifixion.

 

DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

1. On a dark night, kindled in love with a yearnings-oh, happy chance! I went forth without being observed, My house being now at rest.

2. In darkness and secure, by the secret ladder, disguised-oh, happy chance! In darkness and in concealment, My house being now at rest.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. Oh, a night that guided me, Oh, night more lovely than the dawn, Oh, a night that joined Beloved with lover, Lover transformed in the beloved!

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. I remained, lost in oblivion; My face I reclined on the beloved. All ceased and I abandoned myself, Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.