The Acid Diaries (Christopher Gray) / quote 121 of 125
The dark night of the soul
Several times already I’ve referred to Evelyn Underhill’s analysis of individual religious evolution, but largely only in relation to the stages of Conversion, Purgation, and Illumination. But these constitute only the introductory steps to a full spiritual life (which Underhill calls “the first religious life”) and are followed in fully mature cases by two further dimensions of a much more profound and dramatic nature: The Dark Night of the Soul and Unity with God. “The Dark Night of the Soul” was the term coined by St. John of the Cross to describe the spiritual devastation recorded by many of the world’s mystics immediately before their final awakening. Without warning a great, apparently integrated contemplative is split in two by the insight that all their spiritual “attainments” are without the slightest value. They are vanity, pure vanity. If anything, they are spiritually pernicious. From feeling they were on the verge of finally dissolving into God, such a person becomes tortured by feelings of the most intense worthlessness.