The Ascent of Mount CarmelChapter I. Two kinds of this night, corresponding with the division of the soul into higher and lower

In a dark night,
With anxious love inflamed,
O, happy lot!
Forth unobserved I went,
My house being now at rest.

His stanza describes the happy state of the soul at its departure from all things, from the desires and imperfections to which our sensual nature is subject because it is not ordered by reason. The meaning of it is this: in order to reach perfection, the soul has to pass, ordinarily, through two kinds of night, which spiritual writers call purgations, or purifications, of the soul, and which I have called night, because in the one as well as in the other the soul travels, as it were, by night, in darkness.

2. The first night is the night, or purgation, of the sensual part of the soul, treated of in this first stanza, and in the first part of this work. The second night is the night of the spiritual part, of which the second and following stanza speaks, and which I shall discuss in the second part of my work, so far as it relates to the soul’s activity therein, and in the third and fourth part, so far as it relates to its passive condition in it.

3. The meaning of the stanza then is, that the soul went forth, led of God, through love of Him only, and with that love inflamed, in the dark night, which is the privation of, and purgation from, all sensual desires in all outward things of this world; all the pleasures of the flesh, and all the satisfactions of the will. This is wrought in this purgation of sense, and for this reason is it said that the soul went forth, its house, that is the sensual part, being at rest—all its desires being at rest and asleep, and the soul asleep to them; for there is no going away from the pains and vexations of the desires till they be mortified and put to sleep.

4. The happy lot of the soul, then, lies in this unobserved departure which no carnal desire or aught else was able to hinder. And also in that this departure took place by night, which is the privation of all desire - wrought by God, a condition which is as night to the soul. The happy lot of the soul, then, consists in its being led of God into this night from which so great a blessing results, but into which it could not have entered of itself, because no one is able in his own strength to empty his heart of all desires, so as to draw near unto God. This is the meaning of the stanza. I now proceed to explain each line of it separately, and to discuss the subject of this book.