The Spiritual Crisis (short article)

[Alexander]

A short article comparing the spiritual crisis in different traditions.

The spiritual crisis is rarely written about, but based on my experience it seems to be a requirement on the path to enlightenment. From one point of view, it is the means by which the self is transformed. In India they describe the fire or "tapas" of the ascetics; the alchemists describe the furnace of the crucible; while the Christian mystics describe the "nights of the spirit."

History's greatest psychologist of the spirit, John of the Cross, is famous for two works he wrote, The Ascent of Mt. Carmel and The Dark Night of the Soul, that describe the spiritual crisis. John of the Cross divides the crisis into two stages - the "night of sense" and the "night of spirit" - corresponding to these two works respectively.

In The Ascent of Mt. Carmel, John of the Cross describes the first phase, the "night of sense," which consists of one becoming detached from sense objects and the passions. In The Dark Night of the Soul, John of the Cross describes the second phase, the "night of spirit," which consists of one's movement toward true perfection and self-annihilation.

I recommend reading these works for more insight into this; but here I wanted to take a moment to compare John of the Cross' teachings to a few others.

First, what John recounts has been my experience. I went through these two stages precisely as John recalls, and based on this I feel he is describing something universal to the inner life. His description paralleling my own experience is one of the reasons why I have always praised him.

In my own writing I have adopted his model, with "The Orientalist" for example referring to two transformations, and with "Emily" effectively being a narrative version of someone going through the first transformation.

If we examine the writings of others, there are additional corollaries. Evelyn Underhill, in her tome Mysticism, shows her own fondness for the system of John of the Cross. She uses the traditional Christian model of the inner life (Purgation, Illumination, and Union) but adds the "Dark Night" as a stage between the latter two. (Purgation, of course, being a synonym for the "night of sense.")

For those familiar with Carl Jung, he describes the process of "individuation" and the conflict one must go through with the shadow self in order to arrive at the state of transformation. Jung would say that we accept false narratives of ourselves, and only by confronting the realities of the unconscious can we come to peace and completion. Here I can again say that what Jung recounts has been my experience. Here I feel Jung's model is simply a different formulation of a process very similar to John of the Cross' "night of sense."

Beyond these examples, we can see additional descriptions of the spiritual crisis in Teresa of Avila's Way of Perfection and Inner Castle. The great tome The Ladder of Divine Ascent by John Climacus presents still another clear explication of the spiritual crisis - with perhaps a core focus on the first stage. Beyond these, we can also cite the "metanoia" of Christ and John the Baptist as an allusion to a transformative experience that leads to a "new birth." The Sufis describe the process of "opening the heart," while P. D. Ouspensky describes the transition one makes between being "man no. 4" and "man no. 5."

Having stated all the above, it then seems the spiritual crisis is conspicuously missing in some other contexts - namely, in Hinduism and Buddhism. Indeed, it seems that while the western mystics have a deep humility when recounting their personal struggles, the eastern mystics seem more averse to sharing these personal travails and instead dehumanize the process.

Despite that, we can still find some traces of the spiritual crisis in the east. I think for example of the teaching of "dukkha" in Buddhism; or of Siddhartha's turmoils as an ascetic in the wilderness. I also think of the "death experience" of Ramana Maharshi, portraying a clearly acute period of stress; along with the "pratyahara" or sense withdrawal stage of Patanjali.

In regard to my contemporaries, Jeff Brooks relates that he has experienced a crisis that has accompanied every stage of his spiritual growth; while Michael Hawkins has recounted his own traversal of many transformations through the years. The experiences of these mystics parallel my own.

[Jhanananda]

Good writing on a cross cultural perspective on the spiritual crisis, but at one point you claim Buddhism doesn't have it, then you write it does in a description of Siddhartha's night of enlightenment, so you are contradicting your writing.

You also start with few people write about the spiritual crisis today.  This I agree with, and should serve as a critique of contemporary contemplative literature.  Considering few writers write anything about the fruit of the contemplative life we can conclude that the reason why is because none of them have gone through the spiritual crisis, so we should use the spiritual crisis as proof of whether a contemplative has gone to any depth at all.