The Dark Night of the Soul Quotes

“This is a very interesting point, because all knowledge indicates man’s ignorance. Knowledge is assumed to be given to the ignorant, but as they grow further, they discover the ignorance in the knowledge itself. They find they have not found the answer. They have become learned, but not good; they have learned to be strong, but not to love; they have found many things, but they have not found God. And San Juan points out that when the knowledge becomes great enough, it so increases the confusion of the mind that it is even more difficult to find God.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Dark Night of the Soul: Man's Instinctive Search for Reality

“Thus, instead of gaining only an internal silence, in the common sense of the word, he gains also that strange dynamic silence which preceded creation, and from which all things come—the silence of the heart of God. This silence is the root of sound, and from it pours forth the fiat that fashioned the world. This is the dynamic silence of creation, the tremendous dramatic silence of new birth forever taking place- new worlds forever fashioning.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Dark Night of the Soul: Man's Instinctive Search for Reality

“And in this great struggle to survive as an individual entity, the soul burdens itself with all the errors and illusions of mortality. Thus it happens that though men believe in God and in a universe of infinite benevolence, they still live in fear and constant anxiety, being far more inclined to cling to this flesh to the last possible moment, than to take a chance of going into the unknown, even though they accept it intellectually as a better state.  Thus the struggle for the preservation of the known causes man’s greatest confusion, for it causes him to cling to the evils he now has, rather than to fly to others he knows not of.  There is a total lack of the true faith and insight that enable man to move out into space, realizing that this space is God, and that there cannot, therefore, be any evil thing in it. By faith, man should know that as surely as he himself exists, so surely is his existence essentially good, if he knows how to attain this goodness; and the evil of his existence is in his own fears and uncertainties. He is not really in danger of losing anything real, but only what he has fashioned himself, which has no foundation in reality.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Dark Night of the Soul: Man's Instinctive Search for Reality

“This surrender seems a very strange and difficult thing for us to understand. And yet, just as the life of man here in this world can suddenly be greatly altered by a strong affection, so his total life can be greatly and permanently altered by a supreme affection, which is the love of God as the embodiment or personification of man’s love of truth. He discovers, for example, that as this mystery unfolds within his own nature, what we call the end of knowledge is strangely and wonderfully attained in itself. Man becomes internally appreciative of true value.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Dark Night of the Soul: Man's Instinctive Search for Reality

“San Juan points out that the two great enemies of integration within man are his mind and his emotions.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Dark Night of the Soul: Man's Instinctive Search for Reality

“San Juan develops his wonderful commentary upon the seven poems that constitute the journey of the soul. He calls this “The Dark Night of the Soul” because he says every individual seeking an internal life must pass through a sphere of psychic darkness. The soul itself must go through a mystery of death and regeneration; a mystery of the detachment of itself from its own objective nature. It must die out of its own confusion and be born again into the grace of God. This long, dark journey of the inner self is one which each truth seeker must make in order to achieve his final end.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Dark Night of the Soul: Man's Instinctive Search for Reality

“San Juan points out the problem of disciplining the small child. He tells us, for example, that it is not reasonable or practical or good that the small child should simply do as it pleases. That it should have opportunity for self-expression is good, but that it should grow without discipline, means that ultimately it will place a heavy burden upon society. It is not good that the child should regard every restriction upon its action as a frustration. It must learn to recognize that many so-called frustrations actually are, or must become, voluntary sacrifices for the common good.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Dark Night of the Soul: Man's Instinctive Search for Reality

“San Juan points out that the life of mysticism begins with this great love which in itself overcomes all confusion, both of the soul and of the body. He says that the dark journey of the soul is man’s soul gradually striving toward its goal, which is the pure and complete power to love. For as the mind gives man the power of reason, so the psychic life gives him the power of perpetual emotional activity. It gives him the power to feel so great and inevitably an intensity that everything else is overwhelmed.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Dark Night of the Soul: Man's Instinctive Search for Reality

“which, according to San Juan, is the mystery of the great alchemistical transmutation; the attainment of the true stability of the psychic life. Without this internal stability, all other labor is in vain.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Dark Night of the Soul: Man's Instinctive Search for Reality

“The soul of man, therefore, is not something apart; something that must always be followed, and never be led. It is not something that cannot be denied, or to which the body, mind, and emotions must become servants. The soul itself must become a servant, and when the soul is in service to reality, it is enlightened. It is this conviction, this discipline, this gradual redemption of soul itself, which, according to San Juan, is the mystery of the great alchemistical transmutation; the attainment of the true stability of the psychic life. Without this internal stability, all other labor is in vain.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Dark Night of the Soul: Man's Instinctive Search for Reality