It should be noted here that, in the higher stages of contemplation, all thoughts and feelings, even the holiest, must be counted as distractions, if they hold back the higher will from its blind beating against the cloud. Like Eckhart, like St. John of the Cross, and indeed like all the great mystics of the Dionysian tradition, our author is emphatic on this point. ‘Weep thou never so much for sorrow of thy sins, or of the passion of Christ, or have thou never so much thought of the joys of heaven, what may it do to thee? Surely, much good, much help, much profit, and much grace will it get thee. But in comparison of this blind stirring of love, it is but little that it doth, or may do, without this.
This by itself is the best part of Mary, without these other. They without it profit but little or nought. It destroyeth not only the ground and the root of sin, but also it getteth virtues. For if it be truly conceived, all virtues shall be subtly and perfectly conceived, felt and comprehended in it, without any mingling of thine intent … For virtue is nought else but an ordered and measured affection plainly directed unto God for himself.’ Discursive meditations on the passion are profitable at an earlier stage of the contemplative life; for those who are far advanced along the road of perfection, they are distractions interposed between the soul and the dark cloud of godhead.
The same is true of meditations on one’s own sins. Our author takes it for granted that his pupils have confessed and been absolved of their old sins and are doing their best to live virtuously as ‘perfect followers of Christ.’ For those who have reached this state, a constant dwelling upon past offences and present shortcomings is not merely of no special profit, it actually tends to increase their egotism-and egotism is nothing but the root of evil, the settled propensity to sin. Like the idea of God, the idea of sin must not be analysed by the contemplative. ‘Hold them all whole these words; and mean by sin a lump, thou knowest not what, none other thing but thyself.’ Sin is the manifestation of self. Men commit evil and suffer misery, because they are separate egos, caught in time.
“I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste; my taste was me.
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse;
Self yeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.”
This anguish at being a separate, God-excluding self is the final act of repentance for the ultimate sin. ‘Thou shalt find, when thou hast forgotten all other creatures and all their works -yea, and also all thine own works -that there shall remain yet after, between thee and thy God, a naked knowing and a feeling of thine own being.’ This knowing and feeling of our own being is the trespass which cannot be forgiven unless and until we work to have the unitive experience of God. Conversely the knowing and feeling of self ‘must always be destroyed, were the time be that thou mayest feel verily the perfection of this work.’ How may this sense of separate individuality be destroyed?
Only by ‘a full special grace full freely given by God, and also a full according ableness on thy part to receive this grace … And this ableness is nought else but a strong and a deep ghostly sorrow …. All men have matter of sorrow; but most specially he feeleth matter of sorrow that knoweth and feeleth that he is. All other sorrows in comparison with this be but as it were game to earnest. For he may make sorrow earnestly that knoweth and feeleth not only what he is, but that he is. And whoso never felt this sorrow, let him make sorrow; for he never yet felt perfect sorrow.’
When he has sorrowed for the sin of his separate individuality, the contemplative must take the unanalysed sense of his own being and annihilate it in a sense of the being of God. He must work until the blind stirring of love, the beating against the cloud of unknowing, the naked intent to be made one with God as he is in himself, have actually taken the place of his sense of self, so that when he knows and feels his own being, he knows and feels as much at least of the being of God as he has been able to experience through the veils of the divine darkness. Such, in briefest summary, is the teaching of The Cloud of Unknowing, a teaching which, as I have said before, is the same in every essential as that of all the great masters of the Dionysian tradition.
In the years that immediately followed his conversion, Benet of Canfield made himself familiar with this tradition, and when he himself came to teach the art of mental prayer to others, he remained in all points but one its faithful continuator. Father Benet did most of his teaching by word of mouth or by means of manuscript instructions specially prepared for each of his pupils. Early in the fifteen-nineties, however, he composed a fulllength treatise on mystical practice and mystical theology. Manuscripts of this were communicated to selected individuals and religious communities, and many copies of the book were made, generally without the friar’s authorization.
Finally, in the first years of the new century, a pirated version of the work, very inaccurate and with additions by some other hand, found its way into print. In defence of his doctrine, Father Benet was compelled to publish the book as he had written it. Under the title, The Rule of Perfection, reduced to the sole point of The Will of God, it appeared first in French, then in the author’s Latin translation, published at Cologne in 1610. Several editions were called for, and it was translated, in part, into English (1609) and in its entirety into Italian (1667). In spite of its considerable contemporary success, The Rule of Perfection was, within a hundred years, completely forgotten and is very hard to come by, in any edition or language.
All mystics are agreed that knowledge of ultimate reality comes only to those who have killed out the Old Adam and conformed the personal will to the will’ of God; conversely, that killing out of the Old Adam and the conforming of the personal will to God’s will can only be consummated by those who are in process of acquiring the knowledge of ultimate reality. Some mystics have laid the greatest stress upon one aspect of this double, reciprocating process; some upon the other. Father Benet was one of those to whom it seemed best and most natural to emphasize the voluntary aspect of enlightenment.
As the title of his book implies, he was primarily concerned with a technique for the daily and continuous losing of one’s personal life in order to gain divine life, for eliminating the personal will in order to make room for the will of God. His aim was to show how everyday, active life could be made to subserve contemplation, and how the spirit of contemplation could be made to animate and transform active life. In all its editions his book was preceded by an engraved frontispiece, certainly conceived and perhaps (for it is of a touching incompetence and amateurishness) actually executed by Father Benet himself. The lower part of this engraving shows the Saviour at prayer in the Mount of Olives, with the disciples asleep in the background and, in the sky, an angel presenting a chalice.
Below are inscribed the words, Non mea voluntas sed tua fiat.9 The upper Part of the engraving is filled by an elaborate circular diagram, curiously like one of those symbolic mandalas, into which the Buddhists contrive to cram such a wealth of doctrinal significance. Facing the frontispiece is a page of print, in which Father Benet has explained the significance of his diagram. ‘This figure in the form of a sun represents the will of God. The faces placed here in the sun represent souls living in the divine will… . These faces are arranged in three concentric circles, showing the three degrees of this divine will. The first degree signifies the souls of the active life; the second, those of the life of contemplation; the third, those of the life of super-eminence.
Outside the first circle are many tools, such as pincers and hammers, denoting the active life. Inside the third circle is Jehovah. But round the second circle we have placed nothing at all, in order to signify that in this kind of contemplative life, without any other speculations or practices, one must follow the leading of the will of God. The tools are on the ground and in shadow, inasmuch as outward works are of themselves full of darkness. These tools, however, are touched by a ray of the sun, to show that works may be
