An introduction to religious and spiritual experience

Christian 
church services include prayers of penitence, intercession for 
others and ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ taught to his disciples by Jesus. Different 
denominations have different ways of praying, some with more formal 
prayers, some with none. Private prayer also varies in the same way.
Teresa of Avila (1515–1582) writes of different types of prayer, such as 
recollective prayer, in which God, and only God, is sought, but nothing 
else asked for. Teresa sees contemplative prayer as mystical, for it can only 
be initiated by God. In 
The Interior
Castle,
where the soul is likened to a 
castle with different mansions or rooms, she describes different levels of 
prayer. There is the Prayer of Quiet, in which thought is stilled, which 
ultimately leads on to the Prayer of Union in the seventh mansion. This is 
ecstatic prayer or rapture when the individual is no longer aware of indi-
viduality, but is caught up into a spiritual union with the divine. 
Contemplatives and meditators try to quieten their minds, shutting out 
the everyday world and in that inner silence, they may touch a greater 
reality. A Catholic nun might say she had communed with the Holy Spirit 

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or been with Jesus. A Tibetan Buddhist like the Dalai Lama would say 
that he had stilled his mind and achieved calm abiding.
Contemplation
Many mystics of the Middle Ages followed the path of contemplation, 
notably the anonymous author of 
The Cloud of Unknowing
, who also 
wrote 
The Book of Privy
Counselling
and translated 
Mystical Theology
by Dionysius the Areopagite. He was probably a member of a religious 
order, and his work gives guidance in spiritual development on the way to 
God through love. At the heart of the author’s teaching is the way of love, 
the focus in love on God, to the exclusion of all else. It is necessary to 
learn to ignore detractors and the initial frustrations even though at first 
one will feel, 
nothing but a kind of darkness about your mind; or as it were, a 
cloud 
of
unknowing
. You will seem to know nothing and to feel nothing 
except a naked intent toward God in the depths of your being. Try as 
you might, this darkness and this cloud will remain between you and 
your God. You will feel frustrated, for your mind will be unable to 
grasp him, and your heart will not relish the delight of his love. But 
learn to be at home in this darkness. Return to it as often as you can, 
letting your spirit cry out to him whom you love. For if, in this life, you 
hope to feel and see God as he is in himself it must be within this dark-
ness and this cloud. But if you strive to fix your love on him forgetting 
all else, which is the work of contemplation I have urged you to begin, 
I am confident that God in his goodness will bring you to a deep expe-
rience of himself.
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This summarizes the method of contemplation advocated by the 
author at the outset, and he explains just what is meant by the cloud 
of unknowing. He stresses that this is no literal cloud of darkness, but 
darkness in the sense of being in the dark about some matter, the absence 
of knowledge. It is this darkness of unknowing which separates man 
from God. Thinking is not the solution to this problem, it must be 
experienced,
For the intellect of both men and angels is too small to comprehend 
God as he is in himself.
Try to understand this point. Rational creatures such as men and 
angels possess two principal faculties, a knowing power and a loving 

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power. No one can fully comprehend the uncreated God with his 
knowledge; but each one in a different way, can grasp him fully through 
love.
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