Dear friends,
Lately, I’ve been reading Evelyn Underhill’s masterpiece, Mysticism, as research for my next video essay. The book contains many accounts of mystics (mostly from the Christian tradition) who describe their experiences, challenges, and revelations in their own words. I was reading the chapter on the Dark Night of the Soul when I came across this line, which the German friar Henry Suso received from what he calls “Eternal Wisdom” in one of his visions:
“No one can attain divine exaltation or singular sweetness except by passing through the image of My human abasement and bitterness. The higher one climbs without passing through My humanity, the deeper one falls. My humanity is the way one must go, My Passion the gate through which one must penetrate, to arrive at that which thou seekest.”
(Buchlein der ewigen Weisheit, trans. 1910)
Suso’s own biography is a striking example of this. Born with the sensibilities of a mystic, a poet, and a metaphysician, he spent his early life confined in his monastery cell. A voluntary recluse, he spent his time in strict devotion and contemplation, receiving many visions and writing what would become some of the most popular works of the period. It was a life that suited him—introverted and socially awkward as he was. He also practiced punishing self-mortification (carrying a nail-studded cross on his bare back for years), seeking to transcend the needs of the body. People may not have understood him, or even liked him very much, but they respected him.
In his fortieth year, Suso received a vision which told him his brutal ascetic practices were no longer necessary. He rejoiced and cast his self-torture equipment into the river… Only to receive a further vision soon after, which told him that his true hardship was only about to begin. In another vision, he was invited into the “Upper School” of God, where apprentices study the supreme art: that of “Perfect Self-abandonment”.
