An introduction to religious and spiritual experience

The Dark Night of the Soul
The expression used is a reference to a work of that name by St John of 
the Cross, in which he recounts his spiritual purgation. This experience 
was that of a prisoner (R).
My time in HMP Woodhill saw the culmination of a lifetime of anger 
and hatred. Something was happening to my body/mind that was 
beyond my control – it felt like a poison coursing through me. I just felt 
dirty and corrupted internally. I had pains in my liver and kidneys. 
I had no appetite. I couldn’t taste the food I ate.
There was no joy in my life. I don’t mean fun or happiness, but the 
contentment of just being. I knew that if I continued the way I was 
going I would do irreparable damage to myself. 
In Taoism they believe that the energy of the emotions is stored in 
the major organs: anger in the liver; hate & impatience in the heart; 
worry/anxiety in the spleen; sadness/depression in the lungs; ear/stress 
in the kidneys. Too much of the particular emotion can damage the 
related organ and since all organs are interdependent, the whole body 
eventually fails. But they say the organs can be restored by developing 
their opposite emotions.
But if you have any dual concepts you will experience one or the 
other. I strove to attain a state of mind that transcended duality. I saw 
the ‘Me,’ the ‘ego,’ the ‘images’ that made up R as the cause.
The belief systems, the concepts and word associations that I was 
attached to . . . I let it all go. I stopped believing in them. I wasn’t born 
with them and I was determined not to die with them. I saw it all as 
‘worldly shit,’ garbage that I’d collected and been conditioned to on 
the way.
All of this just hit me whilst I was in this dark hole. The choice was 
quite simple: get myself out of it or stay in and probably die in it. All I 
know was that a stillness still existed within me, it was calling me 
somehow. I don’t really know ‘how’ I managed to get back in touch 
with it. I ceased thinking – literally. I lost my psychological memory 
(not factual memory).

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Types of Spiritual Experience
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I went into a deep meditative state that lasted many months where 
I didn’t know who I was. I had lost all concept of a past and future. 
Only a ‘Now’ existed. I can tune into the ‘now’ moment at will now, no 
matter what I’m doing. It’s like I’ve got a switch in my head to ‘tune 
out’ anything I don’t want in it.
I went through a period where I didn’t seem to have enough ‘energy’ 
to think, let alone speak and I went on a number of silences, lasting 
three to four months. I see those periods now as a recuperation period. 
I had to make space in my mind in order to heal inwardly.
I threw out everything that was of no use to me. I went back to the 
‘Empty Box’, the tabula rasa or the state of mind in Zen called mushin 
and I’ve been there ever since. The ‘Empty Box’ has grown in size since 
then and gets bigger every day. One day it will encompass the Universe. 
But ‘acceptance’ is the key, I feel, that gets the healing process going.
What was worse for me I think is that I should have known better. 
I’d been meditating for years beforehand reading about Buddhism and 
spiritual practices etc. and yet I’d turned my back on the path.
Most people walk down the path of self-destruction out of igno-
rance or habit, because they know no other way. But I’d chosen to self-
destruct because I’d started to hate everyone and everything around 
me. Acceptance is the water that douses the flames.
I’m not sure it would have happened the way it did if I had not 
known about meditation. But I’ve always been strong willed, deter-
mined. Adversity has been my life.
There was no question of me giving up, even if it came to my very last 
breath. It’s just something I have in me. It’s not a conscious thing. I think 
once a person has re-discovered that ‘sacred thread’ no matter how much 
they get lost in darkness, they will never lose sight of that sacred thread. 
Because the sacred thread is a part of us whether we like it or not. We’ve 
just go to be still enough to notice it, feel it, become one with it.
I don’t know what made me get the foothold on the path. Maybe my 
soul has been to the edge of insanity, and fell over into darkness, and it 
didn’t like it there. But only after it had punished the body by making 
it burn so the message sunk home did it allow it to pick itself back up. 
St John of the Cross would call the experience I went through ‘The 
Dark Night of the Soul’ I suppose.
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