The Cloud of Unknowing (Middle English: The Cloude of Unknowyng) is an anonymous work of Christian mysticism written in Middle English in the latter half of the 14th century. The text is a spiritual guide on contemplative prayer. The underlying message of this work suggests that the way to know God is to abandon consideration of God's particular activities and attributes, and be courageous enough to surrender one's mind and ego to the realm of "unknowing", at which point one may begin to glimpse the nature of God.
History
The Cloud of Unknowing draws on the mystical tradition of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Christian Neoplatonism, which focuses on the via negativa road to discovering God as a pure entity, beyond any capacity of mental conception and so without any definitive image or form. This tradition has reputedly inspired generations of mystics, from John Scotus Eriugena, Nicholas of Cusa, and John of the Cross. Prior to this, the theme of The Cloud had appeared in the Confessions of St. Augustine (IX, 10) written in AD 398. Concerning the placement of The Cloud of Unknowing in the trends of the Catholic Church at the approximate time of its writing, the work joins a broader medieval movement within Christianity toward a religious experience of a more individual and passionate view of relationship with God.
The author is unknown. The English Augustinian mystic Walter Hilton has at times been suggested, but this is generally doubted. It is possible the author was a Carthusian priest, though this is not certain.
A second major work by the same author, The Book of Privy Counseling (originally titled Prive Counselling), continues the themes discussed in the Cloud. It is less than half the length of the Cloud, appears to be the author's final work, and clarifies and deepens some of its teachings. In this work, the author characterizes the practice of contemplative unknowing as worshiping God with one's "substance," coming to rest in a "naked blind feeling of being," and ultimately finding thereby that God is one's being. Experience, in keeping with the mystical tradition, is considered the ultimate means by which a Christian can and should relate to God, and the practice of contemplation in The Cloud is thus focused on the experience of God by the contemplative. This relationship between God and the contemplative takes place within continual conflict between the spirit and the physical. God is spirit in the purest sense; therefore, no matter how intense one's desire or how fervent one's love, the movement toward God by body-bound contemplatives will ever be halted by the cloud of unknowing that hides God from our understanding and prevents the fullest and truest experience of God's being. The object of the contemplative experience is to know God, as much as possible, from within this cloud of unknowing.
Contents
The Cloud of Unknowing is written specifically to a student, and the author strongly commands the student in the Prologue, "do not willingly and deliberately read it, copy it, speak of it, or allow it to be read, copied, or spoken of, by anyone or to anyone, except by or to a person who, in your opinion, has undertaken truly and without reservation to be a perfect follower of Christ."
The book counsels the young student to seek God, not through knowledge and intellect (faculty of the human mind), but through intense contemplation, motivated by love, and stripped of all thought. Experience of a "cloud of unknowing" is introduced Chapter 3:
This is brought about by putting all thoughts and desires under a "cloud of forgetting," and thereby piercing God's cloud of unknowing with a "dart of longing love" from the heart. This form of contemplation is not directed by the intellect, but involves spiritual union with God through the heart:
As one pursues the beating of the cloud of unknowing as compelled by spiritual stirrings of love in the heart, the intellect and sinful stirrings will often pull the contemplative's focus away from God and back to the things of physical world and of the self. The author thus enjoins the contemplative to "vigorously trample on [any new thoughts or sinful stirrings] with a fervent stirring of love, and tread them down beneath your feet. And try to cover them with a thick cloud of forgetting, as if they had never been done by you or anyone else on earth. [...] Push them down as often as they rise."