Cloud of Unknowing
This edition of The Cloud of Unknowing has been adapted from the 1923 version which was written in a dialect of early modern English. The original text suffers from two flaws that this edition attempts to correct with as little intervention as possible. 1. Verb endings. Archaic verb forms are used. While this can occasionally be emphatic, it mostly interrupts the possible understanding of the text, and so forms have been edited to their contemporary word endings. 2. Mystical and magical sections. In the middle ages, there was a significant trend of magical reasoning and mysticism within Christianity, which was later removed. As such, large sections of the original text are magical spells - repeated chants or phrases which have lost their possible context and meaning. These sections have been significantly reduced. Please note that, even with these revisions, this is a complex mystical and gnostic work, like the Dao De Jing or the Niche For Lights. As such, it is a difficult but personally rewarding read. The Cloud of Unknowing is a work of Christian mysticism. It was penned in Middle English during the latter-half of the fourteenth century. Then, Christian mystics had come to arrive at many of the same conclusions as those from very different faiths, and Christianity had much in common with Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies. As a spiritual guide, The Cloud of Unknowing focuses on using contemplative prayer to know God, making a compelling case for why one should abandon trying to comprehend God's attributes or raison d'être--one's mind and ego--in favour of a knowledge which embraces the unknown. As described by the book's anonymous author, "We can not think our way to God. He can be loved but not thought." By embracing the unknown, it is believed that one might glimpse the nature of God, yet this understanding is also premised on the belief that "God's pedagogy is always personal." It is perhaps for this reason that prayer--poetically defined by the author as "a naked intent for God"--is understood to necessarily differ from one person to the next, suggesting that "If you want to find your soul, look at what you love."