from works by the author of
The Cloud of Unknowing

He cannot be comprehended by our intellect or any man’s – or any angel’s for that matter. For both we and they are created beings. But only to our intellect is he incomprehensible: not to our love.

All rational beings, angels and men, possess two faculties, the power of knowing and the power of loving. To the first, to the intellect, God who made them is forever unknowable, but to the second, to love, he is completely knowable, and that by every separate individual.

The lower part of the active life consists of good, straightforward acts of mercy and charity. The higher part (which is the lower part of contemplative living) is made up of various things, for example, spiritual meditation, an awareness of one’s own wretched state, sorrow and contrition, a sympathetic and understanding consideration of Christ’s passion and that of his servants, a gratitude which praises God for his wonderful gifts, his kindness and works in all parts of his creation, physical and spiritual. But the higher part of contemplation – at least as we know it in this life – is wholly caught up in darkness, and in this cloud of unknowing, with an outreaching love and a blind groping for the naked being of God, himself and him only.

We said of humility that it was mysteriously and perfectly summed up in this little, blind loving of God, beating away at this dark cloud of unknowing, all else buried and forgotten. We may say this, however, of all the virtues, and in particular of charity. For charity is nothing else than loving God for himself, above all created things, and loving men in God just as we love ourselves.

And yet, maybe, they imagine it to be the fire of love, lighted and fanned by the grace and goodness of the Holy Ghost. [...] For hot on the heels of false experience comes false knowledge in the school of the fiend, just as true experience is followed by true knowledge in the school of God. For I tell you truly that the devil has his contemplatives as God has his.

The fiend will deceive some men in this way; in a most remarkable fashion he will set them on fire to maintain the law of God and to destroy sin in all other men. He will never tempt them with anything that is openly evil. He makes them like those busy eccesiastics who watch over every condition of our Christian life, as an abbot does over his monks. For they do not hesitate to reprove us all for our faults, just as if they had the cure of souls. For the sake of God they think they dare not do otherwise than declare the faults they see. They say they have been moved to do so by fervent charity, and by the love of God that is in their hearts. But they lie. It is the fire of hell which is welling up in their minds and imaginations.

Your soul has within itself, as part of the natural order, these faculties: the three major ones of Mind (which includes Memory), Reason, and Will, and two minor ones, Imagination and Sensuality.

Reason is the faculty by which we distinguish evil from good, bad from worse, good from better, worse from worst, better from best. Before man sinned his reason presumably would have done all this by light of nature. But now it is so blinded by original sin that it cannot do so unless it is enlightened by grace.

Will is the faculty by which we choose good after it has been approved by reason, and by which we love God, desire God, and, ultimately, with complete satisfaction and consent, dwell in God. Before man sinned his will could not go wrong in its choice, its love or any the of the things it did, because, then, it was able by nature to understand each thing as it really was. But it cannot do this now unless it is anointed with grace.

Imagination is the faculty by which we can picture anything, past as well as present. Both it, and the means by which it works, are contained in the mind. Before man sinned, imagination was so obedient to its master, reason, that it never pictured anything that was perverted or fantastic, physically or spiritually; but not so now. For if it is not restrained by the light of grace in the reason, it will never cease, waking or sleeping, to suggest diverse and perverted ideas about the world around us, or some hallucination, which, after all, is only a spiritual idea conceived in material terms, or a material one conceived in spiritual. And this is always counterfeit and false, and akin to error.

Sensuality is the faculty of our soul which affects and controls all our bodily reactions, and through which we know and experience the physical creation, both pleasant and unpleasant. It has two functions, one which looks after our physical needs, and one which provides for our physical appetites.

Before man sinned, sensuality was so obedient to will, its master as it were, that it never led it into perverted physical pleasure or pain, or any pretended spiritual pleasure or pain, induced by the enemy of souls into our earthly minds. But it is not so now. Unless it is ruled by grace in the will, so that it is prepared to suffer humbly and wholly the consequences of original sin (which it feels when it is deprived of its wonted pleasures, and can only have those irritating things that are so good for it!), and unless it will control both its strong desires when it has its wonted pleasures, and its greedy delight when the improving irritations are gone, it will wallow, like some pig in the mire, so wretchedly and wildly in all the wealth of the world, and the filth of the flesh, that the whole of its life will be animal and physical rather than human and spiritual.

Whenever your mind is occupied with anything physical, however praiseworthy, you can be said to be ‘beneath’ yourself, and ‘outside’ your soul. And whenever you feel your mind engaged in the subtleties of the soul’s faculties, and the way they work spiritually (such as vices or virtues, in yourself or in any other spiritual creature, and on the same natural level as yourself), in order that you might get to know yourself better, and to further your perfection, then you can be said to be ‘within’ yourself, and to have found your proper level. But whenever you feel your mind engaged, not in any physical or spiritual matter, but solely with God as he is (as the working out of the teaching of this book would prove) then you can be said to be ‘above’ yourself, and ‘beneath’ God.

Look up cheerfully and tell your Lord, either aloud or in your heart, ‘What I am, Lord, I offer you, for it is yourself’. And keep in mind, simply, plainly, and unashamedly, that you are as you are, and that there is no need to inquire more closely.

So you must get down to the basic essentials of thought (some people, remember, consider it the most sophisticated!) and think of yourself in the simplest way (again, some think it is the wisest), not what you are, but that you are.

What I would say is this: I think what is going to help you most when you start your prayer – and it doesn’t matter whether it is long or short or what – is to make quite sure that you are certain that you will die by the time it is ended, that you will finish before your prayer does!

But dread is no good as a foundation for anything unless it is for even more dread, the kind that sinks down into deep depression. So you must link your original idea with this further thought: you are to believe that if through the grace of God you can clearly speak the words of your prayer and bring it to its conclusion, or if you do die before you reach the end having done what you could, then God will accept it as full payment for all your neglect from the time your life began up to that very moment.

All this business of reverent dread which I spoke of earlier, when it has been caused by these two thoughts of dread and hope, can well be likened to a tree full of fruit. Of this tree dread is the part that is in the earth, the root, and hope is the part above, the tree and the branches. When hope is steadfast and sure it is the trunk: when it moves men to deeds of love, it is the branches. But always the fruit is this reverent affection. Too, as long as the fruit is attached to the tree it always shares in the fresh smell of the tree. But after a while, when it has been picked and is fully ripe, it loses its tree smell, and is food fit for a king. [...] So get ready to pick this fruit from its tree and to offer it up to the King of Heaven on high. Then you will be called God’s own child, who loves him with a pure love, for his own sake, and not for what he gives.