C. Often combined with the sense of sin and the “absence

of God” is another negation, not the least amazing and dis- tressing part of the sufferings of the self suddenly plunged into the Night. This is a complete emotional lassitude: the disappearance of all the old ardours, now replaced by a callous- ness, a boredom, which the self detests but cannot overcome. | It is the dismal condition of spiritual es#uz which ascetic writers know so well under the name of “aridity,” and which . psychologists look upon as the result of emotional fatigue. To a person in this state, says Madame Guyon, “ everything becomes insipid. She finds no taste in anything. On the contrary every act disgusts her.”2 It seems incredible that the eager love of a Divine Companion, so long the focus of her whole being, should have vanished: that not only the tran- scendent vision should be withdrawn, but her very desire for and interest in that vision should grow cold. Yet the mystics are unanimous in declaring that this is a necessary stage in the growth of the spiritual consciousness.
“When the sun begins to decline in the heavens,’ says Ruysbroeck, “it enters the sign Virgo; which is so called because this period of the year is sterile as a virgin.” © This is the autumn season in the cycle of the soul, when the summer heat grows less. “It completes the yearly travail of the Sun.” “In the same manner, when Christ, that glorious - sun, has risen to His zenith in the heart of man, as I have taught in the Third Mode, and afterwards begins to decline, to hide the radiance of His divine sunbeams, and to forsake man; then the heat and impatience of love grow less. Now that occultation of Christ, and the withdrawal of His light and heat, are the first work and the new coming of this Mode. Now Christ says inwardly to man, Come forth im the manner
= §* Noche Escura del Alma,” oc. cit. * «Les Torrents,” pt. i. cag. vit.
468 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM
which I now show you; and man comes forth and finds himself to be poor, miserable, and abandoned. Here all the storm, the fury, the impatience of his love, grow cool: glowing summer turns to autumn, all its riches are transformed into a great poverty. And man begins to complain because of his wretchedness: for where now are the ardours of love, the intimacy, the gratitude, all the pleasures of grace, the interior consolation, the secret joy, the sensible sweetness ? How have _all these things failed him? And the burning violence of his love, and all the gifts which he received? How has all this died in him? And he like some learned clerk who has lost all his learning and his works . . and of this misery there is born the fear of being lost, and as it were a sort of half-doubt: and this is the lowest point to which one can fall without despair.” !