William Johnston Books

Originally written in Middle English by an unknown mystic of the fourteenth century, The Cloud of Unknowing represents the first expression in our own tongue of the soul's quest for God. A literary work of great beauty in both style and message, it offers a practical guide to the path of contemplation. The author explains how all thoughts and concepts must be buried beneath a 'cloud of forgetting,' while our love must rise toward God hidden in the 'cloud of unknowing.' William Johnston — an authority on fourteenth-century spirituality and on the writings of this unknown author — provides a substantive and accessible introduction detailing what is known about the history of this text and its relevance throughout the ages. Also included here is the author's other principal work, The Book of Privy Counseling — a short and moving text on the way to enlightenment through a total loss of self and consciousness only of the divine.In a new foreword, Huston Smith shows The Cloud of Unknowing as a highly relevant text for today's spirituality, containing essential elements from the varieties of religious experience.

From the earliest centuries there has existed a Christian theology of mysticism, defining the state which Bernard Lonergan called a "being in love with God." St. John of the Cross wrote such a theology for the sixteenth century, calling it "the science of love." Now, William Johnston, one of the great spiritual writers of our time, attempts to do the same for the twenty-first century.

Čtenáře se zájmem o východní mystiku a mezináboženský dialog osloví tato kniha dopisů W. Johnstona jeho přátelům z různých koutů světa. Tato korespondence zve k novému niternému vnímání Boha, k objevení nové mystiky, jež je vyjádřena současným jazykem a ovlivněna moudrostí východních náboženství. Kromě jiného se autor dotýká témat jako kontemplativní život pro lidi v manželství, láska a intimita, modlitba a probuzení, hnutí New Age, otázka misií, alternativy nenásilí.