Paths to Contemplation - 47

Contemplation and the erotic

One of the greatest poets of the Spanish language was John of the Cross, a contemporary of Teresa of Avila, and like her, an authority on the spiritual life.  He wrote poetry that expressed his own experiences with both the Night of the Senses and the Night of the Soul.  Later, when he was asked to explain the meaning of his poetry, he wrote commentaries on his poems.  The ASCENT OF MOUNT CARMEL deals with the Night of the Senses, and THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL with the Night of the Soul.  Susan Muto, an English writer on spiritual matters, authored two books with the same title as John’s, expressing John’s teaching in contemporary English.

John’s poetry is frequently erotic in its imagery.  Consider, for example, the following verse from THE SPIRITUAL CANTICLE:

Where have you hidden.

Beloved, and left me moaning?

You fled like a stag

After wounding me;

I went out calling you and you were gone.

Or these from THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL:

Upon my flowery breast, 

Kept wholly for himself alone,

There he stayed sleeping, and I caressed him, 

And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.

It should not surprise us that the line between eroticism and mysticism is often thin.  The    soul is the beloved of God.  God draws the soul to himself as a lover his beloved.  The pleasure and ecstasy of carnal union between two persons who are deeply in love is but an analog, though a pale one, of the union of God with the beloved soul.

The instinct for God and the sexual instinct are two of the most powerful human drives, and they are not unrelated.  All normal humans yearn to be loved and to feel the warmth and joy of intimate companionship that has its most complete fulfillment in loving intercourse.  To feel the intimate embrace of God, to begin to know God as God knows us, is an experience that our carnal natures, which cannot know God directly, can only associate with sexual representations.

This should not scandalize or even surprise us.  Divine mysteries have their analogs in nature.  Human birth, growth and death is an analog of the spiritual life as we are born into God, grow to spiritual maturity and, ultimately, die to self that we might live most completely in God.  The heavens reveal the glory of God, and human beings are created in the image of God.  We come to know about God through God’s glory reflected in his creations.  The elements, such as bread and wine or oil, used in many religious celebrations are but symbols of a deeper reality that these elements represent.   There is a close relationship between the natural and the supernatural, between creation and its Creator.  We would be more surprised if such a relationship did not exist than that ideal carnal love is but a analog of  union with God.  It is not without reason that the highest state of union with God in this life is known as “spiritual marriage.”