Two Problems With The Dark Night of San Juan de La Cruz

Two problems with the Dark Night of San Juan de la Cruz
San Juan de la Cruz (Saint John of the Cross) is perhaps the first person ever
to write systematically about a phenomenon which he called “the dark night
of the soul.” I contend that this so-called “dark night” is a natural archetypal
spiritual phenomenon which appears in a number of spiritual traditions in one
form or another.
In this essay I am immodestly taking issue with the great San Juan. I will
claim that for the reasons I give, he may have failed to describe how to make
use of the complete potential inherent in this archetypal spiritual treasure.
San Juan very effectively presents the psychological brutality of the Dark
Night, but notably he also gives the reader the assurance that final salvation
from the Dark Night, and final salvation after life, can both be finally
obtained. These two natural human desires, wanting to escape death and
meaninglessness, are closely related psychologically.
The archetypal Night is a common experience for the mystic of any authentic
tradition; it results after attaining freedom from the conventional and
restrictive ways which human beings normally employ to give meaning to
their lives and cope with fear of death. Radically freed from the limitations of
these mental devices, the mystic’s cognitive and emotional defenses crumble,
and she obtains a raw experience of the death fear and the consequent fear of
meaninglessness. The Night is an undiluted experience of disabling terror

before these daunting foes. In the night the mystic fears that her existence and
her world have become completely absent of meaning and all is unsavable.
According to Juan, true deliverance and mystical ecstasy come after

experiencing and surviving the night. His work ingeniously and clearly
details the process that occurs and the mystical know-how needed to deal
with the dark night.
But with Juan’s inclusion of a firm assurance of an ultimate deliverance from

the Night, that is to say the existence of a hereafter1, the mystic who is
experiencing the Night may say to herself: “Well, Juan went through this
horror; he felt as hopeless as I do now, and he successfully was delivered
from it by a Supreme Force. So even though I cannot completely believe it
now while I am enduring this exquisitely painful suffering, there is ultimately
assurance of a final escape for me. I have hope here now, because Juan who
speaks with the
authority of someone who has been in this very same emotionally distraught
condition, assures me that if I maintain fortitude, the night will pass and I will
be finally delivered.”
Problem number one:
The potential problem for the hope-retaining mystic is that she might
indefinitely fail to achieve her aim; she might indeed not experience ecstatic
deliverance during her life, or for that matter ever. She may get stuck
endlessly
patiently waiting in the Night because of being attached to the hope of

ultimate escape; the problem here is that this "patience" actually amounts to a
refusal to surrender and completely let go of all hope. In my experience the
devastating power of the Night is most effectively reigned in only after one
has undergone a complete lack of hope, a full letting go of any faith that there
is a means of escape.
It seems that one cannot fully climb out with a sense of spiritual wholeness
until one holds nothing back, and is purged of the idea that one can be certain
of finally getting out.
If one simply waits hopefully during the dark suffering, hopeful that one will
get out some day, that one will ultimately be saved, this continual not yet
fulfilled hope may endure to the extent that one ends up spending one’s entire
life in misery. The misery results from not fully believing, on a subconscious
level, that one will be saved, but yet consciously attempting to assure oneself
that one will.
In this case we could say that one is punished (punished by oneself) for not
allowing oneself to consciously have honest doubts.
Problem number two:
By religiously adhering to San Juan’s paradigm, retaining hope in a hereafter,

a mystic might fail to notice an alternative path, one that might prove to be
more auspicious. This alternative way is to provisionally assume that it is
quite possible that there will never be an escape from what will be ultimate
doom. In other terms, the provisional assumption made in this case is that
there might not exist a “finally saving God.”
Strangely enough, even with this gloomy possibility kept in mind, despite the
quite reasonable assessment of hopelessness, one is able to discover that one
can, profitably surrender to an encounter with something one discovers in the
ground of our being. This discovery is love. In Book Two, Chapter 24,
section 3 of “Dark Night of the Soul,” San Juan tells us the when the desires
and natural faculties (domésticos de potencias) have been put to sleep
(poniéndolos en sueño) the soul experiences an ecstatic possession by love
(posesión de amor). I submit that the natural existential desire to live forever
is one of the most important desires to put to sleep.
One might call this archetypal phenomenon the love dynamic. A person can
decide to surrender to this love without needing to count on any kind of
future benefit for so doing; one can surrender to it and experience the
profound immediate joy of it, joy for no provably rational reason. In this case
one is surrendering to unconditional love, not out of hope, but purely for the
intense pleasure derived from the immediacy of the experience. It is hard to
surrender everything which I had willed my future to be, most importantly
my own
continuing existence; but if I choose to, the immediate reward is an

astonishingly compelling sense of ecstasy. It is compelling enough to keep
many of us quite satisfied with our lives.
This unreasonable surrender to love appears to be a more profound surrender

than a surrender that retains a degree of future oriented hope. And perhaps
this comprehensive surrender is the reason it turns out to be a more intensely
ecstatic experience for some of us. Having the threat of meaninglessness and
doom constantly available appears to paradoxically increase the endurance
and intensity of ecstasy.
The intensity of mystical ecstasy seems to be more effectively prolonged to
the extent that the mystic stays always near the threat of the Dark Night,
continually remaining an inch away from the hell of nihilism With the
constant threat of damnation available, some of us inexplicably do quite well,
or at least have done so far. We tend to fall in love with everyone and
everything we meet. Amazing grace! By the way, I am not claiming that there
is no afterlife, only that for the time being none is apparently needed for those
of us who radically surrender.
1. San Juan de la Cruz, The Dark Night (La Noche Oscura) Book Two,
chapter 23, section 10: “…; Because these spiritual visions more often are
those of the other life than this one, when they are seen they prepare one for
the one to come (the life hereafter) (“…; porque estas visiones espirituales
más son de la otra vida que de ésta, y, cuando se ve una, dispone para otra.)

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Two problems with the Dark Night of San Juan de la Cruz

meaninglessness. The Night is an undiluted experience of disabling terror

According to Juan, true deliverance and mystical ecstasy come after

But with Juan’s inclusion of a firm assurance of an ultimate deliverance from

Problem number one:

patiently waiting in the Night because of being attached to the hope of

By religiously adhering to San Juan’s paradigm, retaining hope in a hereafter,

continuing existence; but if I choose to, the immediate reward is an

This unreasonable surrender to love appears to be a more profound surrender

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