CHAPTER I.

The Second Night ; that of the spirit. When it begins.
{The soul, which God is leading onwards, enters not into the union of love at once when it has passed through the aridities and trials of the first purgation and night of sense ; yea, rather it must spend some time, perhaps ✓ years, after quitting the state of beginners, in exercising |itself in the state of proficients. In this state — as one released from a rigorous imprisonment — it occupies itself in divine things with much greater freedom and satisfaction, and its joy is more abundant and interior than it was in the beginning before it entered the night of sense ; its imagination and faculties are not held, as hitherto, in the bonds of meditation and spiritual reflections ; it now rises at once to most tranquil and i loving contemplation, and finds spiritual sweetness ^without the fatigue of meditation.
p2. However, as the purgation of the soul is still somewhat incomplete — the chief part, the purgation of
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CHAP. I.] OF THE SOUL.
the spirit, being wanting, without which, by reason of the union of our higher and lower nature, man being an individual, the purgation of sense, however violent it may have been, is not finished and perfect — the soul will never be free from aridities, darkness, and trials, some- times much more severe than in the past, which are, as it were, signs and heralds of the coming night of the spirit, though not so lasting as that expected night ; for when the days of the season of this tempestuous night have passed, the soul recovers at once its wonted serenity. It is in this way that God purifies some souls who are not to rise to so high a degree of love as others^ He admits them at intervals into the night of con- templation or spiritual purgation, causing the sun to shine upon them, and then to hide its face, according to the words of the Psalmist: 4 He sendeth His crystal/ that is contemplation, 4 like morsels/* These morsels of dim contemplation are, however, never so intense as is that awful night of contemplation of which I am speaking, and in which God purposely places the soul, that He may raise it to the divine union.
3. That sweetness and interior delight, which pro- ficients find so easily and so plentifully, come now in greater abundance than before, overflowing into the senses more than they were wont to do previous to the purgation of sense. The senses now being more purej
* Ps. cxlvii. 17.
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can taste of the sweetness of the spirit in their way with greater ease. But as the sensual part of the soul is weak, without any capacity for the strong things of the spirit, they who are in the state of proficients by reason of the spiritual communications made to the sensual part, are subject therein to great infirmities and suffer- ings, and physical derangements, and consequently weariness of mind, as it is written : 4 the corruptible body . . . presseth down the mind.** Hence the com- munications made to these cannot be very strong, intense, or spiritual, such as they are required to be for the divine union with God, because of the weakness and corruption of the sensual part which has a share in them.
4. Here is the source of ecstasies, raptures, and dislocation of theToneS^wbich^always happen whenever these communications^are not purely spiritual ; that is, granted to the mimTalone, aS In the case of the perfect, already purified in the second night of the spirit. In these, raptures and physical sufferings have no place, for they enjoy liberty of spirit with unclouded and unsuspended senses. To make it clear how necessary it is for proficients to enter into the night of the spirit, I will now proceed to point out certain imperfections and dangers which beset them.
* Wisd. ix. 15.
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OF THE SOUL.
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