In the late 16th century, a poor Spanish monk called St. John of the Cross wrote one of the classic works of Western spirituality: The Dark Night of the Soul. From Wikipedia:

Dark Night of the Soul narrates the journey of the soul from her bodily jail to her union with God. It happens during the night, which represents the hardships and difficulties she meets in detachment from the world and reaching the light of the union with the Creator. There are several steps in this night, which are related in successive stanzas.

John also wrote an exegetical tract on this poem, in which he explained it line by line, and gave additional information for people who were experiencing the Dark Night of the Soul. Psychologist Carl Jung called this “The Night Sea Journey” and Joseph Campbell picked it up in his Hero’s Journey model in “the Belly of the Whale” stage.

Having gotten past the threshold guardian, the hero finds him/herself in a place of darkness. It’s an ambiguous place of fluid dream-like forms.

In his treatise on the subject John of the Cross mentions the Book of Revelations, along with several other Biblical stories to illustrate the concepts he’s dealing with. I wish he’d talked more explicitly about Revelations though, because I think the concept of the Apocalypse actually becomes a lot more understandable when you view it in the context of the Dark Night of the Soul.

As I wrote yesterday, I think the Book of Revelations makes most sense as a

[…] depiction of the ongoing struggle of the individual Christian everywhere at all times. In times of trouble or doubt, they could turn to this book, and map its symbolism onto their outward life. In doing so, they can experience the psychological mystical transfiguration it implies. The Tribulation is their own struggle through life. The Second Coming of Christ is into their heart, and the New Jerusalem is the person who is made whole by parousia of Christ.

John of the Cross writes that the Dark Night of the Soul is a necessary transformation which comes to those whose spiritual imperfections must be purified before moving into the fullness of union with god. He lists several such imperfections, but I think this passage will be especially helpful in our discussion:

These persons likewise find it irksome when they are commanded to do that wherein they take no pleasure. Because they aim at spiritual sweetness and consolation, they are too weak to have the fortitude and bear the trials of perfection. They resemble those who are softly nurtured and who run fretfully away from everything that is hard, and take offense at the Cross, wherein consist the delights of the spirit.

This unwillingness to deal with spiritual difficulties I think pops up most readily in those who believe in the Christian Fundamentalist teaching of the Rapture. Most of them believe that when the end of the world comes with its time of great strife and Tribulation, that they will be spared from it. Jesus will lift them up to Heaven, and they won’t have to go through the intense turmoil and struggle that everyone else will.

It’s sort of a pussy way out, the more I think about it. What if any time something bad happened in your life you ran away and hid under your bed? This is really no different from the fantasy of getting lifted up to Heaven during the Rapture, and thereby skipping all the bad stuff that’s to come. Especially because the bad stuff is really just a transformation. It’s a passing away of the old and a rebirth into new life, the New Jerusalem.

The Rapturists basically claim that they are the most spiritually advanced people - God’s elect - and that therefore they will be spared. John of the Cross though says that these are the people who are most ripe for God to send them through the Dark Night of the Soul:

When they are going about these spiritual exercises with the greatest delight and pleasure, and when they believe that the sun of Divine favour is shining most brightly upon them, God turns all this light of theirs into darkness, and shuts against them the door and the source of the sweet spiritual water which they were tasting in God whensoever and for as long as they desired. […]

And thus He leaves them so completely in the dark that they know not whither to go with their sensible imagination and meditation; for they cannot advance a step in meditation, as they were wont to do afore time, their inward senses being submerged in this night, and left with such dryness that not only do they experience no pleasure and consolation in the spiritual things and good exercises wherein they were wont to find their delights and pleasures, but instead, on the contrary, they find insipidity and bitterness in the said things.

For, as I have said, God now sees that they have grown a little, and are becoming strong enough to lay aside their swaddling clothes and be taken from the gentle breast; so He sets them down from His arms and teaches them to walk on their own feet; which they feel to be very strange, for everything seems to be going wrong with them.

To me, entering into this spiritual darkness correlates pretty well with what is described in the Apocalyptic vision described in the Book of Revelations. Suddenly, the children of God are beset on all fronts by horrible tragedies and trials. Everything suddenly seems completely hopeless. Interestingly, the popular Christian Rapture-based fiction series, Left Behind, follows the stories of those people who are not taken up in the Rapture, but who remain on Earth to undergo the trials at the end of time. I’ve not read any of these novels, but John of the Cross has advice for those who undergo the Dark Night of the Soul:

The way in which they are to conduct themselves in this night of sense is to devote themselves not at all to reasoning and meditation, since this is not the time for it, but to allow the soul to remain in peace and quietness, although it may seem clear to them that they are doing nothing and are wasting their time, and although it may appear to them that it is because of their weakness that they have no desire in that state to think of anything.

The truth is that they will be doing quite sufficient if they have patience and persevere in prayer without making any effort. What they must do is merely to leave the soul free and disencumbered and at rest from all knowledge and thought […] contenting themselves with merely a peaceful and loving attentiveness toward God, and in being without anxiety, without the ability and without desired to have experience of Him or to perceive Him.

Put more simply, his advice is: RELAX! Take a chill pill. So stuff’s not going your way - so what? Is flipping out going to help? Certainly not. What you need to do is site back and allow the deep psychological changes symbolized by the Apocalypse take root in you. Of course they are not easy to go through, but they are necessary for transformation.

John of the Cross goes on to talk about the “benefits” bestowed upon those who undergo the Dark Night:

This is the first and principal benefit caused by this arid and dark night of contemplation: the knowledge of oneself and of one’s misery. [The soul becomes able to] recognize its own lowliness and misery, which in the time of its prosperity it was unable to see. […] From this arid night there first of all comes self-knowledge, whence, as from a foundation, rises this other knowledge of God. For which cause Saint Augustine said to God: ‘Let me know myself, Lord, and I shall know Thee.’

The gnostic Gospel of Thomas offers a similar message:

When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty.

In Joseph Campbell’s terms, this could be explained as the Ultimate Boon. This is the treasure which the hero has undergone all manner of hardships to attain. Now the task of the hero is to take this boon and return to the everyday world of light and make good use of it. It’s interesting to look at the Apocalypse from this light: as a rite of passage, or an initiation - rather than as the “end” or the descent into complete and utter chaos. Just like the soul passes through a night, there is another new day coming. It is a cycle which repeats endlessly through all things, and though it is difficult, it is nothing to fear.