Natural knowledge in the memory consists in all the kinds of knowledge that the memory can form concerning the objects of the physical senses—hearing, sight, smell, taste, and touch. The soul must empty itself of all these forms of knowledge and strive to lose their imaginary achievements, so that there may be left in it no impression of knowledge or the trace of anything at all.  Rather, the soul must remain barren, as if those forms had never passed through it, and in total forgetfulness and suspension.

This cannot happen unless the memory is reduced to nothing in all its forms in order to be united with God.  It cannot happen except by a total separation from everything that is not God.  God does not come under any definite form or kind of knowledge in dealing with the night of the understanding.  Christ says: No one can serve two masters.  So the memory cannot be united both with God and with knowledge.  Since God has no form or image that can be comprehended by the memory, then when the memory is united with God it remains without form.  Divine union empties its imagination, sweeps it clean of all forms of knowledge, and raises it to the supernatural.

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The operations of the soul in divine union are from the Holy Spirit; the actions of such souls are only those that are seemly and reasonable.  God’s Spirit teaches them what they ought to know and causes them to be ignorant of what they ought not to know, to remember what they have to remember, and to forget what they should forget.  It makes them love what they have to love, and not to love what does not pertain to God….  This spiritual person needs habitually to practice caution: Everything that he hears, sees, smells, tastes, or touches, he must be careful not to store up or collect in his memory, but he must allow himself to forget them immediately.

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The first evil (through memory) and, which comes from the world, consists in the souls subjection, through knowledge and reflection, too many kinds of harm, such as falsehoods, imperfections, desires, opinions, loss of time, and many other things that breed impurity in the soul…..The soul is free from all these things if the memory enters into darkness with respect to every kind of reflection and knowledge.

Imperfections meet the soul at every stop if it sets the memory on what it has heard, seen, touched, smelled, and tasted.  If it does, some sort of feeling has to cling to it, whether pain, fear, hatred, vain hope, or vain enjoyment…..Many occasions of judging others will also come, since in using its memory, the soul cannot fail to discover the good and the bad in others…..  There is no one who can completely free himself from all these kinds of evil, except by blinding the memory and leading it into darkness with regard to all these things.

Let the soul, then, remain “enclosed,” without anxieties and troubles; and the One who entered in physical form to his disciples when the doors were shut and gave them peace, though they neither thought that this was possible nor knew how it was possible, will venture spiritually into the soul without its knowing how he does so, when the doors of its faculties—memory, understanding, and will—are enclosed against all things.  He will fill them with peace coming down on the soul, as the prophet says, like a river, taking it from all the misgivings, suspicions, disturbances, and darkness that caused it to fear that it was lost or was or was on the way to being so.  Let it not grow careless about prayer, and let it wait in detachment from the world and in emptiness, for its blessings will not be long in coming.

–St John of the Cross ‘Ascent of Mount Carmel’ presented by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

St John of the Cross Adoring