II. Knowledge of God through love

If love is the essence of the mysticism of The Cloud of Unknowing, and if contemplation is an act of love in the view of our author, what precisely does this mean? And what exactly is our author's teaching on love? The purpose of our present paper is to look into this teaching , which is not easy to analyse despite the book's simple style.

We shall start with the noetic dimension or aspect of love. While being thoroughly influenced by the Dionysian tradition of the so-called negative theology, our author is by no means simply following the currents of tradition, but distinguishes himself from the main stream of "via negative" by his characteristic consistent emphasis on the primacy of love in his whole approach to mystical knowledge. As a matter of fact, while insisting on following Dionysius' doctrine that "The most divine knowledge of God is that which is known by not knowing" (chapter 70), he takes great pains from the very outset to make it clear that love is the essence of any contemplative activities, for it is "by love that he (God) may be touched and embraced, never by thought" (chapter 6). A contemplative should make continuous efforts to lift his heart up to God with "a gentle stirring of love" (chapter 6), abandoning all discursive thought, putting aside even the most pious images, covering them over with a "cloud of forgetting" (chapter 9). At the height of his effort, when the contemplative is face to face with a "cloud of unknowing', it is again love that is called upon to make a break-through: "Yes, beat upon that thick cloud of unknowing with the dart of your loving desire and do not cease come what may" (chapter 6)

In the above paragraph we have quoted a few phrases of key importance: "gentle stirring of love", "cloud of forgetting", and "cloud of unknowing ". These are recurrent imageries in which the author's concept of love is subtly embodied, and hence it seems in order to allow ourselves to indulge in some exegesis of these phrases with a view to bringing out their significance in full force.

The idea of "gentle stirring of love" is repeated many times throughout the pages in various forms. It is referred to as "blind stirring of love", as "secret little love", as "naked intent of the will", as "blind outstretching", as "loving blind desire", and as "dart of loving desire''. It is re-echoed by Saint John of the Cross in The Living Flame of Love when he writes: "Oh, lamps of fire, in whose splendours the deep caverns of sense… were dark and blind".(5) According to our author, this "stirring" is founded on faith: "I prefer to abandon all I can know, choosing rather to love him whom I cannot know" (chapter 6), and this love is reflected symbolically in Mary who sits at the feet of Our Lord, all rapt in contemplation. This "stirring" is not something that can be acquired simply by means of human effort within the heart, rather, it is a response to God's call which is a divine gratuitous intervention. It is with this in mind that our author writes:

And so with great longing for him enter into this cloud. Or rather, I should say, let God awaken your longing and draw you to himself in this cloud while you strive with the help of his grace to forget everything else" (chapter 9).

Here, both passivity and activity are involved; passivity in terms of divine grace, and activity in terms of human will. On the human side, therefore, any "stirring of love" has to depend not only on the heart but also on the will. Finally, this "stirring" is "blind", because its origin is in darkness and its movement unconscious. But despite being "blind", it moves with love and is far superior to discursive reasoning, because the former goes directly to the essence and being of God while the latter cannot know God as He is in Himself. Hence our author insists:

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" (chapter 4).

The "blind stirring of love", therefore, marks the beginning of an emerging enlightenment.

When the "blind stirring of love" has begun working, leading to a knowledge which is known by love, the contemplative has to be careful not to smother this love with conceptual thinking and meditation. Instead, he must enter into a "cloud of forgetting" which, according to our author, is the abandonment of all images and concepts so as to allow the soul to love mystically. In other words, while admitting that meditations on the Passion of Christ, on Our Lady, and on the saints are good in themselves and are excellent for beginners, the author insists on the necessity of relinquishing them lest they would be an obstacle to the work of supra-conceptual love, or would constitute a barrier between the soul and God. This is not so much rejection of reasoning, memories and the material world as detachment from all these. Images and symbols in religious traditions are not to be rejected in themselves, but the contemplative wishing to reach God as He is must overcome any attachment to all such symbols. This is a process of liberation in which man is liberated from the sensible and conceptual to find access to the realm of union of love.(6) It is in this sense we are to understand our author when he says "fashion a cloud of forgetting beneath you, between you and every created thing" (chapter 5).

The third imagery is "cloud of unknowing". Our author teaches that mystical knowledge is obscure, knowing that He is without knowing what He is. In other words, contemplation can only be in the "cloud of unknowing".

For in the beginning it is usual to feel nothing but a kind of darkness about your mind, or as it were, a cloud of unknowing. You will seem to know nothing and to feel nothing except a naked intent towards God in the depths of your being. Try as you might, this darkness and this cloud will remain between you and your God. You will feel frustrated, for your mind will be unable to grasp him and your heart will not relish the delight of his love. But learn to be at home in this darkness"(chapter 3).

Here our author is obviously speaking about a psychological condition in which the human mind is dark from a lack of knowledge. On the one hand all memories of creatures have been abandoned, and on the other hand no distinct knowledge of God has been possible. However, the "cloud of unknowing" is only "between" man and God, and is penetrable by constant "stirring of love''. If it is a matter of "between", man is both separated from and at the same time connected with God. The separation in question is not a physical one, but is man's awareness of his own finite existence－an awareness that constitutes a separation. To overcome this awareness, man must allow himself to enter into a state of total unconsciousness, a condition of unknowing, whereby the medium 'leading to a deep experience of God who is beyond ordinary human knowledge is provided. So, in effect, the obscurity or darkness is not hopelessness. It is a condition from which enlightenment may in due course emerge. The process, however, entails the will beating upon the dark "cloud of unknowing" with a "dart of longing desire" (chapter 6). And when the soul ceases from any effort to comprehend the incomprehensible, he is capable of raising himself up to the Being of God Himself, and becomes "oned" with Him in an inexpressible fashion. The union, therefore, is essentially an act of love and of will. This idea of a combination of love and will, as Dom Justin McCann has pointed out, is a major modification of our English author on Dionysian teaching.(7) Dionysius maintains that love is the essential element leading to the union, but he does not go on to give any explanation about this union; our author, however, insists that the union of love is an exercise of the will.

Sufficient has been said about the noetic aspect of love as taught in The Cloud of Unknowing; just another quote to round off this section:

…he may touch you with a ray of his divine light which will pierce the cloud of unknowing between you and him. He will let you glimpse something of the ineffable secrets of his divine wisdom and your affection will seem on fire with his love (chapter 26).

5.E. Allison Peers, ed., The Complate Works of Saint John of the Cross, Wheathampstead, England, A. Clarke, 1974, Vol. III p. 16.

6.Cf. N. O' Donoghue, "'This Noble Noughting and This High Alling': Self-Relinquishment in the Cloud of Unknowing and the Epistle of Privy Counsel", Journal of Studies in Mysticism, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1979, pp. 1-4.

7.J. McCann, ed., The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Treatsies, Westminster, Maryland, The Newman Press, 1952 (6th and revised edition), pp. xii and xiv.