Cloud of Unknowing, The by ANONYMOUS

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The Cloud of Unknowing (Middle English: The Cloude of Unknowyng) is an anonymous work of Christian mysticism written in Middle English in the latter half of the 14th century. The text is a spiritual guide on contemplative prayer in the late Middle Ages. The book counsels a young student to seek God, not through knowledge and intellection (faculty of the human mind), but through intense contemplation, motivated by love, and stripped of all thought. This is brought about by putting all thoughts and desires under a "cloud of forgetting", and thereby piercing God's cloud of unknowing with a "dart of longing love" from the heart. This form of contemplation is not directed by the intellect, but involves spiritual union with God through the heart. (Summary by Wikipedia)

40 minutes 27 seconds
00 - Introduction
7 minutes 30 seconds
01 - Prologue and the First Chapter - Of four degrees of Christian men's living; and of the course of his calling that this book was made unto.
3 minutes 16 seconds
02 - The Second Chapter - A short stirring to meekness, and to the work of this book.
3 minutes 21 seconds
03 - The Third Chapter - How the work of this book shall be wrought, and of the worthiness of it before all other works.
14 minutes
04 - The Fourth Chapter - Of the shortness of this word, and how it may not be come to by curiosity of wit, nor by imagination.
3 minutes 43 seconds
05 - The Fifth Chapter - That in the time of this word all the creatures that ever have been, be now, or ever shall be, and all the works of those same creatures, should be hid under the cloud of forgetting.
2 minutes 16 seconds
06 - The Sixth Chapter - A short conceit of the work of this book, treated by question.
5 minutes 59 seconds
07 - The Seventh Chapter - How a man shall have him in this work against all thoughts, and specially against all those that arise of his own curiosity, of cunning, and of natural wit.
9 minutes 15 seconds
08 - The Eighth Chapter - A good declaring of certain doubts that may fall in this word treated by question, in destroying of a man's own curiosity, of cunning, and of natural wit, and in distinguishing of the degrees and the parts of active living and contemplative.
4 minutes 27 seconds
09 - The Ninth Chapter - That in the time of this work the remembrance of the holiest Creature that ever God made letteth more than it profiteth.
4 minutes 55 seconds
10 - The Tenth Chapter - How a man shall know when his thought is no sin; and if it be sin, when it is deadly and when it is venial.
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