Evelyn Underhill · 33 of 40

IX. The Dark Night of the Soul · Part 3

The Dark Night, as we have seen, tends to establish itself gradually; the powers and intuitions of the self being withdrawn one after another, the intervals of lucidity becoming rarer, until the “mystic death” or state of total deprivation is reached. So, too, when the night begins to break down before the advance of the new or Unitive Life, the process is generally slow, though it may be marked—as for instance in Rulman Merswin’s case—by visions and ecstasies. One after another, the miseries and disharmonies of the Dark Night give way: affirmation takes the place of negation: the Cloud of Unknowing is pierced by rays of light.

The act of complete surrender then, which is the term of the Dark Night, has given the self its footing in Eternity: its abandonment of the old centres of consciousness has permitted movement towards the new. In each such forward movement, the Transcendental Self, that spark of the soul which is united to the Absolute Life, has invaded more and more the seat of personality; stage by stage the remaking of the self in conformity with the Eternal World has gone on. In the misery and apparent stagnation of the Dark Night—that dimness of the spiritual consciousness, that dullness of its will and love—work has been done, and the last great phase of the inward transmutation accomplished. The self which comes forth from the night is no separated self, conscious of the illumination of the Uncreated Light, but the New Man, the transmuted humanity, whose life is one with the Absolute Life of God. “As soon as the two houses of the soul [the sensual and the spiritual],” says St. John of the Cross, “are tranquil and confirmed and merged in one by this peace, and their servants the powers, appetites and passions are sunk in deep tranquillity, neither troubled by things above nor things below, the Divine Wisdom immediately unites itself to the soul in a new bond of loving possession, and that is fulfilled which is written in the Book of Wisdom: ‘While all things were immersed in quiet silence, and the night was in the midway of her course, Thy omnipotent Word sallied out of heaven from the royal seats’ (Wisdom xviii. 14). The same truth is set before us in the Canticle, where the Bride, after passing by those who took her veil away and wounded her, saith, ‘When I had a little passed by them I found Him Whom my soul loveth’ (Cant. iii. 4).”

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So far, we have considered the Dark Night of the Soul from a somewhat academic point of view. We have tried to dissect and describe it: have seen it through the medium of literature rather than life. Such a method has obvious disadvantages when dealing with any organic process: and when it is applied to the spiritual life of man, these disadvantages are increased. Moreover, our chief example, “from the life,” Madame Guyon, valuable as her passion for self analysis makes her to the student of mystic states cannot be looked upon as a satisfactory witness. Her morbid sentimentalism, her absurd “spiritual self-importance” have to be taken into account and constantly remembered in estimating the value of her psychological descriptions. If we want to get a true idea of the Dark Night, as an episode in the history of a living soul, we must see it in its context, as part of that soul’s total experience. We must study the reactions of a self which is passing through this stage of development upon its normal environment the content of its diurnal existence; not only on its intuition of the Divine.

As a pendant to this chapter, then, we will look at this “state of pain” as it expressed itself in the life of a mystic whose ardent, impressionable, and poetic nature reacted to every aspect of the contemplative experience, every mood and fluctuation of the soul. I choose this particular case—the case of Suso—(1) because it contains many interesting and unconventional elements; showing us the Dark Night not as a series of specific moods and events, but as a phase of growth largely conditioned by individual temperament: (2) because, being told at first hand, in the pages of his singularly ingenuous autobiography, the record is comparatively free from the reverent and corrupting emendations of the hagiographer.

From the 22nd chapter onwards, Suso’s “Life” is one of the most valuable documents we possess for the study of this period of the Mystic Way. We see in it—more clearly perhaps than its author can have done—the remaking of his consciousness, his temperamental reactions to the ceaseless travail of his deeper self: so different in type from those of St. Teresa and Madame Guyon. There is a note of virile activity about these trials and purifications, an insistence upon the heroic aspect of the spiritual life, far more attractive than Madame Guyon’s elaborate discourses on resignation and holy passivity, or even St. Teresa’s “dark ecstasies” of insatiable desire.

The chapter in which Suso’s entrance into this “Second Mystic Life” of deprivation is described is called “How the Servitor was led into the School of True Resignation.” Characteristically, this inward experience expressed itself in a series of dramatic visions; visions of that “dynamic” kind which we have noticed as a frequent accompaniment of the crisis in which the mystic self moves to a new level of consciousness. It followed the long period of constant mortification and intermittent illumination which lasted, as he tells us, from his eighteenth to his fortieth year: and constituted the first cycle of his spiritual life. At the end of that time, “God showed him that all this severity and these penances were but a good beginning, that by these he had triumphed over the unruly sensual man: but that now he must exert himself in another manner if he desired to advance in the Way.” In two of these visions—these vivid interior dramas—we seem to see Suso’s developed mystical consciousness running ahead of its experience, reading the hidden book of its own future, probing its own spiritual necessities; and presenting the results to the backward and unwilling surface-mind. This growing mystic consciousness is already aware of fetters which the normal Suso does not feel. Its eyes open upon the soul’s true country, it sees the path which it must tread to perfect freedom; the difference between the quality of that freedom, and the spirituality which Suso thinks that he has attained. The first of these visions is that of the Upper School; the second is that in which he is called to put upon him the armour of a knight.

“One night after matins, the Servitor being seated in his chair, and plunged in deep thought, he was rapt from his senses. And it seemed to him that he saw in a vision a magnificent young man descend from Heaven before him, and say, “thou hast been long enough in the Lower School, and hast there sufficiently applied thyself. Come, then, with me; and I will introduce thee into the highest school that exists in this world. There, thou shalt apply thyself to the study of that science which will procure thee the veritable peace of God; and which will bring thy holy beginning to a happy end.’ Then the Servitor rose, full of joy; and it seemed to him that the young man took him by the hand and led him into a spiritual country, wherein there was a fair house inhabited by spiritual men: for here lived those who applied themselves to the study of this science. As soon as he entered it, these received him kindly, and amiably saluted him. And at once they went to the supreme Master, and told him that a man was come, who desired to be his disciple and to learn his science. And he said, ‘Let him come before me, that I may see whether he please me.’ And when the supreme Master saw the Servitor, he smiled on him very kindly, and said, ‘Know that this guest is able to become a good disciple of our high science, if he will bear with patience the hard probation: for it is necessary that he be tried inwardly.’

“The Servitor did not then understand these enigmatic words. He turned toward the young man who had brought him and asked, ‘Well, my dear comrade, what then is this Upper School and this science of which you have spoken to me?’ The young man replied thus: ‘In this Upper School they teach the science of Perfect Self-abandonment; that is to say, that a man is here taught to renounce himself so utterly that, in all those circumstances in which God is manifested, either by Himself or in His creatures, the man applies himself only to remaining calm and unmoved renouncing so far as is possible all human frailty.’ And shortly after this discourse, the Servitor came to himself . . . and, talking to himself, he said, ‘Examine thyself inwardly and thou wilt see that thou hast still much self-will: thou wilt observe, that with all thy mortifications which thou hast inflicted on thyself, thou canst not yet endure external vexations. Thou art like a hare hiding in a bush, who is frightened by the whispering of the leaves. Thou also art frightened every day by the griefs that come to thee: thou dost turn pale at the sight of those who speak against thee: when thou doest fear to succumb, thou takest flight; when thou oughtest to present thyself with simplicity, thou dost hide thyself. When they praise thee, thou art happy: when they blame thee, thou art sad. Truly is it very needful for thee that thou shouldst go to an Upper School.”

Some weeks later, when he had been rejoicing in the new bodily comfort which resulted from his relinquishment of all outward mortifications, Suso received a still more pointed lesson on his need of moral courage. He was sitting on his bed and meditating on the words of Job “Militia est.” “The life of man upon the earth is like unto that of a knight”: “and during this meditation, he was once more rapt from his senses, and it seemed to him that he saw coming towards him a fair youth of manly bearing, who held in his hands the spurs and the other apparel which knights are accustomed to wear. And he drew near to the Servitor, and clothed him in a coat of mail, and said to him, ‘Oh, knight! hitherto thou hast been but a squire, but now it is God’s will that thou be raised to knighthood.’ And the Servitor gazed at his spurs, and said with much amazement in his heart, ‘Alas, my God! what has befallen me? what have I become? must I indeed be a knight? I had far rather remain in peace.’ Then he said to the young man, ‘Since it is God’s will that I should be a knight I had rather have won my spurs in battle; for this would have been more glorious.’ The young man turned away and began to laugh: and said to him, ‘Have no fear! thou shalt have battles enough. He who would play a valiant part in the spiritual chivalry of God must endure more numerous and more dreadful combats than any which were encountered by the proud heroes of ancient days, of whom the world tells and sings the knightly deeds. It is not that God desires to free thee from thy burdens; He would only change them and make them far heavier than they have ever been.’ Then the Servitor said, ‘Oh, Lord, show me my pains in advance, in order that I may know them.’ The Lord replied, ‘No, it is better that thou know nothing, lest thou shouldst hesitate. But amongst the innumerable pains which thou wilt have to support, I will tell thee three. The first is this. Hitherto it is thou who hast scourged thyself, with thine own hands: thou didst cease when it seemed good to thee, and thou hadst compassion on thyself. Now, I would take thee from thyself, and cast thee without defence into the hands of strangers who shall scourge thee. Thou shalt see the ruin of thy reputation. Thou shalt be an object of contempt to blinded men; and thou shalt suffer more from this than from the wounds made by the points of thy cross. When thou didst give thyself up to thy penances thou wert exalted and admired. Now thou shalt be abased and annihilated. The second pain is this: Although thou didst inflict on thyself many cruel tortures, still by God’s grace there remained to thee a tender and loving disposition. It shall befall thee, that there where thou hadst thought to find a special and a faithful love, thou shalt find nought but unfaithfulness, great sufferings, and great griefs. Thy trials shall be so many that those men who have any love for thee shall suffer with thee by compassion. The third pain is this: hitherto thou hast been but a child at the breast, a spoiled child. Thou hast been immersed in the divine sweetness like a fish in the sea. Now I will withdraw all this. It is my will that thou shouldst be deprived of it, and that thou suffer from this privation, that thou shouldst be abandoned of God and of man, that thou shouldst be publicly persecuted by the friends of thine enemies. I will tell it thee in a word: all thou shalt undertake, that might bring thee joy and consolation, shall come to nothing, and all that might make thee suffer and be vexatious to thee shall succeed.’”

Observe here, under a highly poetic and visionary method of presentation, the characteristic pains of the Dark Night as described by St. John of the Cross, Madame Guyon, De Caussade and almost every expert who has written upon this state of consciousness. Desolation and loneliness, abandonment by God and by man, a tendency of everything to “go wrong,” a profusion of unsought trials and griefs—all are here. Suso, naturally highly strung, sensitive and poetic, suffered acutely in this mental chaos and multiplication of woes. He was tormented by a deep depression so that “it seemed as though a mountain weighed on his heart” by doubts against faith: by temptations to despair. These miseries lasted for about ten years. They were diversified and intensified by external trials, such as illnesses and false accusations; and relieved, as the years of purgation had been, by occasional visions and revelations.

Suso’s natural tendency was to an enclosed life: to secret asceticism, reverie, outbursts of fervent devotion, long hours of rapt communion with the Eternal Wisdom whom he loved. At once artist and recluse, utterly unpractical, he had all the dreamer’s dread of the world of men. His deeper self now ran counter to all these preferences. Like the angel which said to him in the hour of his utmost prostration and misery, “ Viriliter agite!” it pressed him inexorably towards the more manly part; pushing him to action, sending him out from his peaceful if uncomfortable cell to the rough-and-tumble of the world. Poor Suso was little fitted by nature for that rough-and-tumble: and a large part of his autobiography is concerned with the description of all that he endured therein. The Dark Night for him was emphatically an “active night”; and the more active he was forced to be, the darker and more painful it became. Chapter after chapter is filled with the troubles of the unhappy Servitor; who, once he began to meddle with practical life, soon disclosed his native simplicity and lost the reputation for wisdom and piety which he had gained during his years of seclusion.

There was not in Suso that high-hearted gaiety, that child-like courage, which made the early Franciscans delight to call themselves God’s fools. The bewildered lover of the Eternal Wisdom suffered acutely from his loss of dignity; from the unfriendliness and contempt of other men. He gives a long and dismal catalogue of the enemies that he made, the slanders which he endured, in the slow acquirement of that disinterested and knightly valour which had been revealed to him as the essential virtue of the squire who would “ride with the Eternal Wisdom in the lists.”

Suso was a born romantic. This dream of a spiritual chivalry haunts him: again and again he uses the language of the tournament in his description of the mystic life. Yet perhaps few ideals seem less appropriate to this timid, highly-strung, unpractical Dominican friar: this ecstatic “minnesinger of the Holy Ghost,” half-poet, half-metaphysician, racked by ill-health, exalted by mystical ardours, instinctively fearing the harsh contact of his fellow-men.

There is no grim endurance about Suso: he feels every hard knock, and all the instincts of his nature are in favour of telling his griefs. A more human transcendentalist has never lived. Thanks to the candour and completeness with which he takes his readers into his confidence, we know him far more intimately than we do any of the other great contemplatives. There is one chapter in his life in which he describes with the utmost ingenuousness how he met a magnificent knight whilst crossing the Lake of Constance; and was deeply impressed by his enthusiastic descriptions of the glories and dangers of the lists. The conversation between the tough man at arms and the hypersensitive mystic is full of revealing touches. Suso is exalted and amazed by the stories of hard combats, the courage of the knights, and the ring for which they contend: but most astounded by the fortitude which pays no attention to its wounds.

“And may not one weep, and show that one is hurt, when one is hit very hard?” he says.

The knight replies, “No, even though one’s heart fails, as happens to many, one must never show that one is distressed. One must appear gay and happy; otherwise one is dishonoured, and loses at the same time one’s reputation and the Ring.”

“These words made the Servitor thoughtful; and he was greatly moved, and inwardly sighing he said, ‘Oh Lord, if the knights of this world must suffer so much to obtain so small a prize, how just it is that we should suffer far more if we are to obtain an eternal recompense! Oh, my sweet Lord, if only I were worthy of being Thy spiritual knight!”

Arrived at his destination, however, Suso was visited by fresh trials: and soon forgetting his valiant declarations, he began as usual to complain of his griefs. The result was a visionary ecstasy, in which he heard the voice of that deeper self to which he always attributed a divine validity, inquiring with ill-concealed irony, “Well, what has become of that noble chivalry? Who is this knight of straw, this rag-made man? It is not by making rash promises and drawing back when suffering comes, that men win the Ring of Eternity which you desire.”

“Alas! Lord,” said Suso plaintively, “the tournaments in which one must suffer for Thee last such a very long time!”

The voice replied, “But the reward, the honour, and the Ring which I give to My knights endure for ever.”

As his mystic consciousness grew, the instinct pressing him towards action and endurance grew with it. The inner voice and its visionary expression urged him on remorselessly. It mocked his weakness, encouraged him to more active suffering, more complete self-renunciation: more contact with the unfriendly world. Viriliter agile! He must be a complete personality; a whole man. Instead of the quiet cell, the secret mortifications, his selfhood was to be stripped from him, and the reality of his renunciation tested, under the unsympathetic and often inimical gaze of other men. The case of Suso is one that may well give pause to those who regard the mystic life as a progress in passivity, withdrawal from the actual world: and the “Dark Night” as one of its most morbid manifestations.

It is interesting to observe how completely human and apparently “unmystical” was the culminating trial by which Suso was “perfected in the school of true resignation.” “None can come to the sublime heights of the divinity,” said the Eternal Wisdom to him in one of his visions, “or taste its ineffable sweetness, if first they have not experienced the bitterness and lowliness of My humanity. The higher they climb without passing by My humanity, the lower afterward shall be their fall. My humanity is the road which all must tread who would come to that which thou seekest: My sufferings are the door by which all must come in.” It was by the path of humanity; by some of the darkest and most bitter trials of human experience, the hardest tests of its patience and love, that Suso “came in” to that sustained peace of heart and union with the divine will which marked his last state. The whole tendency of these trials in the “path of humanity” seems, as we look at them, to be directed towards the awakening of those elements of character left dormant by the rather specialized disciplines and purifications of his cloistered life. We seem to see the “new man” invading all the resistant or inactive corners of personality: the Servitor of Wisdom being pressed against his will to a deeply and widely human life in the interests of Eternal Love. The absence of God whom he loved, the enmity of man whom he feared, were the chief forces brought to play upon him: and we watch his slow growth, under their tonic influence, in courage, humility, and fraternal love.

Few chapters in the history of the mystics are more touching than that passage in Suso’s Life. “Where we speak of an extraordinary Trial which the Servitor had to bear.” It tells how a malicious woman accused him of being the father of her child, and succeeded for the time in entirely destroying his reputation. “And the scandal was all the greater,” says the Servitor with his customary simplicity “because the rumour of that brother’s sanctity had spread so far.” Poor Suso was utterly crushed by this calumny, “wounded to the depths of his heart.” “Lord, Lord!” he cried, “every day of my life I have worshipped Thy holy Name in many places, and have helped to cause it to be loved and honoured by many men: and now Thou wouldst drag my name through the mud!” When the scandal was at its height, a woman of the neighbourhood came to him in secret; and offered to destroy the child which was the cause of this gossip, in order that the tale might be more quickly forgotten and his reputation restored. She said further that unless the baby were somehow disposed of, he would certainly be forced by public opinion to accept it, and provide for its upbringing. Suso, writhing as he was under the contempt of the whole neighbourhood, the apparent ruin of his career—knowing, too, that this slander of one of their leaders must gravely injure the reputation of the Friends of God—was able to meet the temptation with a noble expression of trust. “I have confidence in the God of Heaven, Who is rich, and Who has given me until now all that which was needful unto me. He will help me to keep, if need be, another beside myself.” And then he said to his temptress, “Go, fetch the little child that I may see it.”

“And when he had the baby, he put it on his knees and looked at it: and the baby began to smile at him. And sighing deeply, he said, ‘Could I kill a pretty baby that smiled at me? No, no, I had rather suffer every trial that could come upon me!” And turning his face to the unfortunate little creature, he said to it, ‘Oh my poor, poor little one! Thou art but an unhappy orphan, for thy unnatural father hath denied thee, thy wicked mother would cast thee off, as one casts off a little dog that has ceased to please! The providence of God hath given thee to me, in order that I may be thy father. I wilt accept thee, then, from Him and from none else. Ah, dear child of my heart, thou liest on my knees; thou dost gaze at me, thou canst not yet speak! As for me, I contemplate thee with a broken heart; with weeping eyes, and lips that kiss, I bedew thy little face with my burning tears! . . . Thou shalt be my son, and the child of the good God; and as long as heaven gives me a mouthful, I shall share it with thee, for the greater glory of God; and will patiently support all the trials that may come to me, my darling son!’” How different is this from the early Suso; interested in little but his own safe spirituality, and with more than a touch of the religious aesthete!

The story goes on: “And when the hard-hearted woman who had wished to kill the little one saw these tears, when she heard these tender words, she was greatly moved: and her heart was filled with pity, and she too began to weep and cry aloud. The Servitor was obliged to calm her, for fear that, attracted by the noise, some one should come and see what was going on. And when she had finished weeping the Brother gave her back the baby and blessed it, and said to it, ‘Now may God in His goodness bless thee, and may the saints protect thee against all evil that may be!’ And he enjoined the woman to care for it well at his expense.”

Small wonder that after this heroic act of charity Suso’s reputation went from bad to worse; that even his dearest friends forsook him, and he narrowly escaped expulsion from the religious life. His torments and miseries, his fears for the future, continued to grow until they at last came to their term in a sort of mental crisis. “His feeble nature broken by the pains which he had to endure, he went forth raving like one who has lost his sense and hid himself in a place far from men, where none could see or hear him . . . and whilst he suffered thus, several times something which came from God said within his soul, ‘Where then is your resignation? Where is that equal humour in joy and in tribulation which you have so lightly taught other men to love? In what manner is it, then, that one should rest in God and have confidence only in Him?’ He replied weeping, ‘You ask where is my resignation? But tell me first, where is the infinite pity of God for His friends? . . . Oh Fathomless Abyss! come to my help, for without Thee I am lost. Thou knowest that Thou art my only consolation, that all my trust is only in Thee. Oh hear me, for the love of God, all you whose hearts are wounded! Behold! let none be scandalized by my insane behaviour. So long as it was only a question of preaching resignation, that was easy: but now that my heart is pierced, now that I am wounded to the marrow . . . how can I be resigned?’ And after thus suffering half a day, his brain was exhausted, and at last he became calmer, and sitting down he came to himself: and turning to God, and abandoning himself to His Will, he said, ‘If it cannot be otherwise, fiat voluntas tua .’” [840] The act of submission was at once followed by an ecstasy and vision, in which the approaching end of his troubles was announced to him. “And in the event, God came to the help of the Servitor, and little by little that terrible tempest died away.”

Thus with Suso, as with St. Catherine of Siena and other mystics whom we have considered, the travail of the Dark Night is all directed towards the essential mystic act of utter self-surrender; that fiat voluntas tua which marks the death of selfhood in the interests of a new and deeper life. He has learned the lesson of “the school of true resignation”: has moved to a new stage of reality: a complete self-naughting, an utter acquiescence in the large and hidden purposes of the Divine Will.

“Anzi è formale ad esto beato esse tenersi dentro alla divina voglia per ch’ una fansi nostre voglie stesse,”

says Piccarda, announcing the primary law of Paradise. Suso has passed through the fire to the state in which he too can say, “La sua voluntate è nostre pace.” The old grouping of his consciousness round “spiritual self” has come to its head and at last broken down. In the midst of a psychic storm parallel to the upheavals of conversion, “mercenary love” is for ever disestablished, the new state of Pure Love is abruptly established in its place. Human pain is the price: the infinite joy peculiar to “free souls” is the reward. We may study the pain, but the nature of the joy is beyond us: as, in the Absolute Type of all mystic achievement, we see the cross clearly but can hardly guess at the true nature of the resurrection life.

Hence Suso’s description of his establishment in the Unitive Way seems meagre, an anti-climax, after all that went before. “And later,” he says simply, “when God judged that it was time, He rewarded the poor martyr for all his suffering. And he enjoyed peace of heart, and received in tranquillity and quietness many precious graces. And he praised the Lord from the very depths of his soul, and thanked Him for those same sufferings: which, for all the world, he would not now have been spared. And God caused him to understand that by this complete abasement he had gained more, and was made the more worthy to be raised up to God, than by all the pains which he had suffered from his youth up to that time.”