The Cloud of Unknowing is a practical spiritual guidebook thought to have been written in the 14th century by an anonymous English monk who counsels a young student to seek God not through knowledge, but through love. "Our intense need to understand will always be a powerful stumbling block to our attempts to reach God in simple love, and must always be overcome," he writes. "For if you do not overcome this need to understand, it will undermine your quest. It will replace the darkness which you have pierced to reach God with clear images of something which, however good, however beautiful, however Godlike, is not God."

The book, which draws on the mystical tradition of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, has reputedly inspired generations of mystical searchers from St. John of the Cross to Teilhard de Chardin. It has been described as Christianity with a Zen outlook, but has also been derided by some as anti-intellectual.

The practical prayer

"And so I urge you, go after experience rather than knowledge. On account of pride, knowledge may often deceive you, but this gentle, loving affection will not deceive you. Knowledge tends to breed conceit, but love builds. Knowledge is full of labor, but love, full of rest."

References

• The Cloud of Unknowing : and The Book of Privy Counseling (Image Book Original) (Paperback), ed. William Johnson. ISBN 0385030975

Other uses

• Don DeLillo borrowed this book's title for one of his sections in Underworld (novel).
• The Cloud of Unknowing is also the title of an unrelated theatrical film directed by Richard Sylvarnes and released in the autumn of 2004. Die Wolke des Nichtwissens