The Cloud of Unknowing

Clifton Wolters

• Publisher: Ixia Press
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780486829760
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: European Medieval History

A classic of Christian mysticism, this marvelous guide to the contemplative life originated with the reflections of an unknown 14th-century priest who believed that a "cloud of unknowing" separates people from God. This cloud, the writer maintained, cannot be penetrated by intellect but only by love.
The Cloud of Unknowing offers an approach to contemplative life that finds holiness at a level deeper than physical experience and beyond language or image. The author advises placing all thought and mental imagery behind a metaphorical "cloud of forgetting" while seeking to love the divine. Hidden from the infinite consciousness by a "cloud of unknowing," divine love can be reached through monologistic prayer: a single-word prayer, like a mantra, that assists in abandoning all extraneous thought. Seekers can thus attain an inner silence, where they may "be still and know the sacred."
The author's spiritual gifts, combined with humor and a straightforward approach, offer a view of divinity that never loses the common touch. Written in everyday language and edited by Clifton Wolters, a popular authority on mysticism, this venerable work can be understood and appreciated by any reader.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Notes
• Introduction to The Cloud of Unknowing
• Prayer
• Prologue
• Exhortation
• 1. The four stages of the Christian life and the call which came to one for whom the book was written.
• 2. An urgent call to humility and the work of contemplation.
• 3. The work of contemplation is the best of all.
• 4. It can be quickly acquired, though not by knowledge or imagination.
• 5. The Cloud of Forgetting must obliterate all things.
• 6. What this book is about.
• 7. How one has to deal with one’s thoughts, particularly those arising from curiosity and natural intelligence.
• 8. Questions arising: the suppression of intellectual curiosity and natural intelligence, and the distinction between the active and contemplative life.
• 9. In contemplation all remembrance, even of the holiest things, is more hindrance than help.
• 10. How to know if one’s thoughts are sinful, and if so whether they are mortal or venial.
• 11. Each thought and impulse must be evaluated, and recklessness in venial sin avoided.
• 12. This work destroys sins, and produces virtue.
• 13. Humility, perfect and imperfect.
• 14. Sinful man can only achieve perfect humility by way of imperfect humility.
• 15. The confuting of those who claim that perfect humility comes through the awareness of one’s sin.
• 16. Through this work the converted sinner who is called to contemplation more quickly attains perfection, and God’s forgiveness of sin.
• 17. The true contemplative does not concern himself with the active life, nor with what is said or done to him, nor does he refute his detractors.
• 18. To this day actives complain of contemplatives, as Martha did of Mary. Ignorance is the cause.
• 19. The author’s excuse for teaching that all contemplatives should fully exonerate actives who speak or work against them.
• 20. The goodness of God Almighty who answers on behalf of those who will not leave loving him.
• 21. The true exposition of this Gospel sentence ‘Mary hath chosen the best part’.
• 22. Christ’s wonderful love for Mary, type of the converted sinner called to contemplation.
• 23. God answers and provides for those who for love of him will not provide for themselves.
• 24. What love is, and how it is truly and perfectly summed up in contemplation.
• 25. At this time a perfect soul is not concerned with any one in particular.
• 26. Contemplation is very hard work apart from God’s special grace, or ordinary grace and long practice. What is the soul’s part, and what God’s, in contemplation.
• 27. Who should engage in this work of grace.
• 28. No one should presume to become a contemplative until his conscience has been duly cleansed from his sinful deeds.
• 29. A man must continually exercise himself in this work, enduring its suffering and judging no one.
• 30. Who can blame or judge the faults of others.
• 31. How the beginner should deal with his thoughts and sinful impulses.
• 32. Two spiritual stratagems which may help the beginner.
• 33. A sinner is cleansed in this work from his particular sins, and their punishment, but has no real rest in this life.
• 34. God gives his grace fully and directly; it may not be earned.
• 35. The three things the contemplative beginner must practise: reading, thinking, and praying.
• 36. A contemplative’s meditations.
• 37. His special prayers.
• 38. Short prayer penetrates heaven.
• 39. How the contemplative should pray, and what prayer is; what words are most suitable if a man prays vocally.
• 40. In contemplation a soul heeds neither vice nor virtue.
• 41. In everything save contemplation a man must use discretion.
• 42. In this way, and in no other, may men be really discreet.
• 43. A man must lose all knowledge and awareness of himself if he is to become a perfect contemplative.
• 44. The soul’s part in destroying this knowledge and self-awareness.
• 45. Certain errors to be avoided.
• 46. How to escape these errors, and to work rather with spiritual eagerness than with physical vigour.
• 47. Purity of spirit; a soul shows his desire in one way to God, and in a quite different way to man.
• 48. God is served with body and soul, and he rewards both; how to distinguish good consolations from evil.
• 49. Perfection is essentially a matter of a good will; all consolations in this life are unessential.
• 50. Pure love; some seldom experience consolations, but others often.
• 51. We must be very careful not to understand literally what is meant spiritually, particularly the words IN and UP
• 52. How presumptuous young disciples understand IN; the resultant errors.
• 53. Various unfortunate consequences follow those who are false contemplatives.
• 54. Contemplation makes a man wise and attractive, both in body and soul.
• 55. The error of those who fervently and without due discretion reprove sin.
• 56. Those who rely on their own intellectual resources, and on human knowledge rather than on the teaching of Holy Church, are deceived.
• 57. How presumptuous young disciples misunderstand UP; the resultant errors.
• 58. St. Martin and St. Stephen are not to be taken as examples of literal looking upwards in prayer.
• 59. Nor is the Ascension of Christ such an example. Time, place, and body must be forgotten in contemplation.
• 60. The high way, and the quickest, to heaven is run by desire and not feet.
• 61. All material things are subject to spiritual, and according to natural order are determined by them and not conversely.
• 62. How to know when spiritual working is beneath, or outside, or level with, or within oneself, and when it is above one and under God.
• 63. The faculties of the soul. Mind is the principal power, and embraces all the others.
• 64. The two other principal faculties are reason and will; how sin has affected their working.
• 65. Imagination is the first secondary faculty; how its working and obedience to reason has been affected by sin.
• 66. Sensuality is the other secondary faculty; how its working and obedience to will has been affected by sin.
• 67. A man who is ignorant of the soul’s powers and their manner of working may easily be deceived in spiritual understanding; how a soul is made ‘a god’ through grace.
• 68. Nowhere materially is everywhere spiritually; outwardly this work seems nothing.
• 69. A man’s outlook is wonderfully altered through the spiritual experience of this nothing in its nowhere.
• 70. Just as we come most readily to spiritual knowledge through the cessation of our natural understanding, so we come to the highest knowledge of God possible by grace through the cessation of our spiritual understanding.
• 71. Some only achieve perfect contemplation in ecstasy, and some may normally have it when they will.
• 72. One contemplative may not judge another by his own experience.
• 73. Moses, Bezaleel, and Aaron, in their concern for the Ark of the Covenant, are a helpful type of contemplation, which is prefigured by the Ark.
• 74. The subject matter of this book is not to be read, heard, or spoken about, unless the soul is sympathetic and determined to put it into operation: the prologue’s charge is repeated.
• 75. Signs by which a man may prove whether or not he is called by God to contemplation.