The purification of the soul is the first step in the long road to the rewards of ecstasy. At first, the obstacles that prevent the attainment of perfection are the sinful occupations of the mind and the lingering enjoyment of human relations, emotional attachment, and minor pleasures and comforts. The necessary beginning must then be a constant self-denial and deprivation of all possible material pleasure: a life of alert asceticism. This is the stage of purification, in a sense a preliminary state, but also a road to be traversed constantly and consistently both before and after the attainment of perfection. In perfection there would be no more need of striving, but perfection is momentary, and attachment to the delights of a special kind of thought or knowledge can become imperfection. Since every possible thought is merely an approximation to the divine, there is no way but the pursuit of a complete void, in which the soul must know nothing and be nothing. In the last stage of perfection, the soul must be free from everything no matter how spiritual it may seem, since everything because it exists is a creature and not the creator.

This first Way of Purification, the Purgative Way, leads to peace, in the same way as the second, the Illuminative Way, leads to truth, and the third, the Unitive Way, leads to love. If these metaphors clearly referred to three successive stages, it would be easy to explain and understand the process of mystical inquiry. But, from the very beginning, even in the first way of purification that seems clearly preliminary, the process is a continuum in which the truth of contemplation as well as the delight of union are prefigured in the joy of darkness, and, at the same time, the ultimate union requires the constant watchfulness of purification. The three ways overlap and “the exercises prescribed are needed simultaneously at every stage of the spiritual life. The first is concerned with the expulsion of sin, the second with the imitation of Christ, and the third with the ‘reception of the Bridegroom.’ In the first two the soul is predominantly active, in the third predominantly passive, and…in the last, meditation scarcely exists, having become unnecessary.

‘San Juan de la Cruz’ by Brazilian Philosophy professor, naturalized United States citizen, Bernard Gicovate