Cloud of Unknowing

Written in the fourteenth century and long established as a classic of English devotional literature, The Cloud of Unknowing is an invitation to enter into a place of spiritual darkness, a place where the individual assiduously works at a loving and contemplative relationship with God. The writer, whose identity is unknown, presents us with a fundamental paradox - the paradox of active passivity - that the individual must grasp in order to cultivate this relationship. And his profundity is matched by the resourcefulness of his style, as he wryly punctures pretensions to excessive ascetism, readily anticipates his reader's questions, and does not flinch from consideration of the many difficulties that may accompany the unlearning of ingrained mental habits. His mode of address ranges from the charitably stern to the rapturously appreciative, and the result is a treatise that takes the reader to the furthest limits of contemplative experience.