The way of nothing: is the denial of every desire a contempt for creation and for the self, or the only road on which a creature comes to have all things in God?

John of the Cross, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

John of the Cross answers

To deny a desire is not to despise its object. The creature is good, and what blinds is the soul's resting in it. The Ascent of Mount Carmel reasons from a premise, and the whole way of nothing hangs on that premise: love begets a likeness between the lover and the thing loved. So the soul that fastens its affection on a creature is made equal to it, and more than equal, for love not only levels but subjects the lover to what he loves.1

God has no likeness to any creature, and two contrary qualities cannot dwell in one subject. The love of creatures is darkness in the eyes of God, and light has no fellowship with darkness, so the pure light of divine union cannot possess a soul that has not first cast that love away.2 Nothing is hated in this. The soul simply cannot be two things at once.

All things in heaven and earth are nothing in comparison with God, and a soul made like them is further from the Creator than darkness is from light.3 Now consider why the road is so strait. The pathway up the mountain of perfection ascends, and those who climb it must carry nothing that presses them downward.4 Hence the doctrine of our Lord, that whoever would follow Him must deny himself, take up his cross, and lose his life in order to save it.

Many persons think it enough to leave the world and correct their excesses, or to keep a certain degree of virtue, prayer and mortification. They do not reach this poverty and spiritual pureness, because they nourish and clothe their natural self with consolations instead of denying it in all things for God.5 Such souls run from dryness and distaste, which are the real spiritual cross, and seek sweetness in God; this is spiritual gluttony and not self-denial.

True spirituality inclines to bitterness rather than sweetness, to want rather than possession.6 The nothing is therefore never the end. It is the way to the All. Cleanse your soul of strange possessions and desires and you will understand all things spiritually; restrain your heart from setting itself on them, and you will rejoice truly in them and understand them with certainty.7

All people will be your servants and all things will minister to you, if you will forget them and yourself.8 The man who has set his heart upon nothing finds fulness everywhere.9 So the detached soul has more joy in creatures than the attached, because it rejoices in what they are and not in owning them. Nor does the nothing make the self a thing of contempt.

The poor that are naked shall be clothed, and the soul that strips itself of all its desires, likings and dislikings, God will clothe with His own purity, His own joy and His own will.10 What dies is the grip of a will that clings to everything, which is why I say our vain concupiscence is like dry-rot: it wastes what is sound, in the good as in the bad.11

Even spiritual delights sought for themselves, or clung to eagerly, disturb the way of virtue.12 Self-denial is the sum and root of virtue, and where it fails every other way is beating the air, whatever profound meditations and communications one may have.13 The goods of God, being beyond all measure, can be held only by an empty and solitary heart.14

The position in brief

Love makes the lover like what he loves, and the soul that rests in a creature is levelled to it and subjected by it; God has no likeness to any creature, so the soul cannot be united with Him while it rests in anything else.15 Hence the night of sense: every voluntary desire for what is not God, however slight, is to be denied, because a bird held by a thread is as bound as a bird held by a rope.

The desires denied are the voluntary and possessive ones; desire itself is purified and turned to God, not destroyed. The nothing is not the end but the road to the All, and the detached soul has more joy in creatures than the attached, because it rejoices in their truth and not in owning them.1617

Sources

  1. Love begets a likeness between the lover and the object of his love... love not only levels, but subjects also the lover to the object of his love.
    The Ascent of Mount Carmel
  2. Darkness, which is the love of creatures, and light, which is God, are unlike and contrary to one another... The light of the divine union cannot, therefore, dwell in the soul if these affections are not cast away.
    The Ascent of Mount Carmel
  3. the vileness of the creature is further removed from the greatness of the Creator than darkness is from light. All things in heaven and earth are nothing in comparison with God.
    The Ascent of Mount Carmel
  4. this pathway up the lofty mountain of perfection, in that it ascends upwards and is strait, requires that those who climb it should carry nothing with them which shall press them downwards
    The Ascent of Mount Carmel
  5. they do not rise to this detachment, and poverty, or self-denial, or spiritual pureness... because they nourish and clothe their natural self with consolations, instead of detaching themselves therefrom, and denying themselves in all things for God.
    The Ascent of Mount Carmel
  6. true spirituality seeks for bitterness rather than sweetness in God, inclines to suffering more than to consolation, and to be in want of everything for God rather than to possess
    The Ascent of Mount Carmel
  7. If you will cleanse your soul of strange possessions and desires, you will understand all things spiritually; and if you will restrain yourself from setting your heart upon them, you will rejoice truly in them, and understand them certainly.
    The Living Flame of Love, with Letters, Poems and Minor Writings
  8. All people will be your servants, and all things will minister to you, if only you will forget them and yourself.
    The Living Flame of Love, with Letters, Poems and Minor Writings
  9. he who has set his heart upon nothing, finds fulness everywhere.
    The Living Flame of Love, with Letters, Poems and Minor Writings
  10. The poor that are naked shall be clothed: and the soul that will strip itself of all its desires, likings, and dislikings, God will clothe with His own purity, His own joy, and His own will.
    The Living Flame of Love, with Letters, Poems and Minor Writings
  11. Such is the nature of our vain concupiscence that it clings to everything: like the dry-rot, which wastes away what is sound, it has its way both in what is good and what is bad.
    The Living Flame of Love, with Letters, Poems and Minor Writings
  12. Not only do temporal goods, the delights and the tastes of sense, hinder and thwart the way of God, but spiritual delights and consolations also, if sought for, or clung to eagerly, disturb the way of virtue.
    The Living Flame of Love, with Letters, Poems and Minor Writings
  13. If you fail in the practice of self-denial, which is the sum and root of virtue: every other way is but beating the air, and you will make no progress, notwithstanding most profound meditations and communications.
    The Living Flame of Love, with Letters, Poems and Minor Writings
  14. The goods of God, which are beyond all measure, can be contained only in an empty and solitary heart.
    The Living Flame of Love, with Letters, Poems and Minor Writings
  15. So the love which grows out of sensuality ends in sensuality; that which is of the spirit ends in the spirit of God, and makes it grow. This is the difference between these two loves, that men may distinguish between them. DISORDERLY APPETITES 132.
    The Living Flame of Love, with Letters, Poems and Minor Writings
  16. For this reason shall this union be called the union of likeness, as the other is essential or substantial union; this latter one is natural, the other is supernatural, which takes effect when two wills, the will of God and the will of the soul, are conformed together, neither desiring aught repugnant to the other.
    The Ascent of Mount Carmel
  17. Remember, then, that all pleasure, joy, and affections come into the soul through the will and the desire of those things which seem good, befitting, and pleasurable, because they seem to be pleasing and precious; now the affections of the will are drawn to them, and the will hopes for them, delights in them when it possesses them, and dreads the loss of them.
    The Living Flame of Love, with Letters, Poems and Minor Writings

Where the argument is made

  • Ascent of Mount Carmel I.3-12 on the desires and the evils they cause (I.4 on love begetting likeness, I.11 on the bird held by a thread), I.13 on entering the night of sense and the sentences of the nothing and the All
  • Ascent III.15-44 on the joys of the will in temporal, natural, sensible, moral, supernatural and spiritual goods, especially III.19 on the greater joy of the detached (Lewis's numbering of Book III)
  • Dark Night I.1-7 on the spiritual vices of beginners
  • the Precautions, especially the first, on an equal love and an equal forgetfulness of all, kindred included
  • the Counsels to a Religious
  • Letter X (Lewis's numbering) to a spiritual son on employing the whole will in God
  • the letters of 1591 on being set aside

How the argument was received

His most quoted and most resented teaching; the modern scholarship reads it either as the ascetic extremity that has kept him unread or, now more often (Turner, Hole, Luévano), as a doctrine of desire transformed rather than destroyed.