The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works (Penguin Classics)

Taking the warning at the beginning that it is not meant for those with a casual or shallow spirituality into account, this work is an immensely deep and timeless guide to any Christian seeking nearness to God. Even in instances where I might disagree with the author's theology on some point, The Cloud of Unknowing is thought provoking and inspiring. The other works placed with the Cloud help put it into context. It is important that anyone who wishes to follow the author's advise do so thoughtfully and carefully. Concepts such as the impossibility to truly KNOW God and the impossibility for the senses and the mind to come to Him, along with the necessity to rely to a certain extent on the heart and emotions can easily lead in non-Christian directions if the reader does not have a mature understanding of spiritual matters. No matter how strange his teaching may seem at times, the author was an absolutely orthodox Catholic. It is important to remember where the author is coming from in such lofty literature to keep things in context. That done, it is easy for me, an Evangelical Baptist, to say that this work is as applicable for me today as it was during the middle ages when it was written. I also want to say that I always try to buy Penguin editions of any classic work I may be looking for. Penguin combines annotated and informational style that lends context with affordability. As a student, I appreciate both.

This book offers many ideas on leading the spiritual life

I ordered this book as a suggested read. It is one of the books Marilyn Manson studied.I was very eager to get it but also hesitant as I am not as learned as he is. I do not believe in God or religion so wanted to see what it was about.It has a very long introductory which I tried to skip but did have to got back and read because I would have been lost if I hadn't.My second disappointment was the print in this particular issue is very teeny tiny! I had to use a ruler magnifier as well as my glasses to see it.The writings themselves: the first part is a background and explanation of the real text. These are writings that apparently Monks and people from the middle ages who wanted to become closer to God were studying. The second half are the actual prayers and meditations.I almost wish they had reversed the order of this book and let me read the prayers and meditations first. I hate having things explained to me before I read them because I like to make my own mind up and once you read interpretations one can't help but be influenced by that.The prayers and meditation guides are mostly the usual give up all vices and study the Word and meditate, instruction's you'd expect to be given to monks. In all fairness I have not finished this book and hope to come back and write another review.The book arrived quickly and in excellent condition, just jeers to the printing industry on how they are using uber small print now!

A very good read on spiritual contemplation. I learned a lot about the difference between me, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Are we and our institutions--individually and collectively--irredeemably mired in the flesh?"Not!", says the wisely anonymous author of Penguin Classics' "The Cloud of Unknowing and [Three] Other Works", all dealing with the flesh-to-Spirit path to spiritual perfection.The unknown author's recommendation that one pay particular attention to short words of one syllable (God, love, in, up, and so forth) is well taken, as is his insistence that one must read the entire text (to avoid misunderstandings) and indeed repeatedly re-read, in order to arrive at a proper understanding of all that the author would so dearly love to convey.I was greatly helped by including translator A. C. Spearing's Introduction in the cycle of readings.Your friend in Christ Jesus, John Douglas Adams.

I have been enjoying this treatise in various forms for the last thirty years. This edition is as good as any and can be kept at hand on our mobile phones.If I was to speculate as to the author's identity, well, who other than a Carthusian could have written such a work?Chapter 68 gives the climax and crux of the treatise. The first dozen or so chapters give the practical instructions. Simple and sublime.

There's a realm of Christianity that I never found in church. It's been around for about 2000 years. It's been secreted away and practiced in remote locations, and it's always been hard to find. If you're looking for that realm, here is a good introduction to it. This isn't exactly a guide to that realm, but if you read the Cloud of Unknowing, you can figure out the path, the technique on how to approach the mystic's God and find that experience.

This particular translation, in keeping with many regarding this, have found this to be the best of a blend of scholarly and yet readable. Understandably I have a few variant copies of different translations, all affording different issues regarding history, etc.Here, however, the conveyance is more readily experienced and understood. In particular "Mystical Theology". What is more is the price is outstanding.

Book cover different from the one shown in the picture

In this small collection of the Cloud Author's writings, Penguin Publishing have replaced the older translation of the same collection of mystical works translated by the late Anglican priest and expert on English medieval mysticism, Fr Clifton Wolters.This new translation of four key Cloud Author works (The Cloud of Unknowing, Letter of Privy Counselling, Letter on Prayer and Mystical Theology by Denys Areopagite) offers a new generation a more accurate and precise overview and affordable collection of the Cloud Author's best works.Other explorations and analyses of the Cloud Author and his theology can be found elsewhere. Suffice to say, the 'Cloud' is the author's masterpiece and remains widely used today, both by Christians of various kinds who use the Cloud as a guide for contemplative prayer or Christian meditation/Centering Prayer, as well as seekers from other religious traditions or even who don't practice or belong to any organised religion as a guide to the mysterious darkness of 'unknowing' which so often seems to conceal reality as it is.Regardless of who you are, the Cloud remains one of the greatest spiritual writers out of all the world's religious and philosophical traditions, and his beautiful works all repay in full the relatively small amount of time and money you need to invest to get this book and other versions.

There are a number of different translations of this, surprisingly perhaps, very English Medieval text, on the market. What it shares with Julian of Norwich, is in fact a kind of Englishness of spirit that is rarely acknowledged; you have to perhaps go back through the beautiful ‘Piers Ploughman’ to the Anglo Saxon ‘Dream of the Rood’, to recover that flavor. In fact it was Denys Turner’s brilliant book on Julian that prompted me to try it: and part of the power is in the language. Language in fact forms a key issue in the very readable and illuminating introduction, but it raises a perennial question: to what extent can a modern translator both access and replicate, the ‘sound’ of the original, and the language of Chaucer’s time is neither strange nor incomprehensible, it is just that it is unfamiliar.So what have we got? It opens a translation from Dionys the Aperogite, or ‘The Mystical Theology of St. Dennis,’ which establishes the basic conceptual foundation stone for the ‘Cloud.’ There are two approaches to understanding God: one is to take the kataphatic approach that the knowledge of God is revealed by what he has created, an approach adopted beautifully by many of the Psalms; the other approach, the apophatic approach, is that God is so totally unknowable that we cannot say anything about him; the former is affirmative, the latter, reductive. The approach of the latter is also found in Plotinus, and is perhaps exemplified in the approach of St. John of the Cross, with the Via Negato, which is not to suggest that they are mutually exclusive, and in fact the contrast has been likened to the Mary or Martha debate. ‘The Cloud’ which to describe over-simply, is a manual for the practice of contemplation, is followed by a text on perhaps more general advice. One has to bear in mind that what the religious - the author is believed to have been a Carthusian Priest, writing in English – and that raises questions, who remained anon, is that for the Medieval religious, the boundary between what we would call prayer and what we might call contemplation, did not exist; and they were only the guidelines established by the earlier Desert Fathers.One of the interesting things about ‘The Cloud’ is that in a way, it continues with a Platonic thread: from Plato, to Plotinus, to Proclus, to Denys – a Christian student of Proclus. Aquinas, concerned as he was about the purity of doctrine, was concerned about the Greek element he discerned in the writings of Denys, but that concern is no different from the concern of the early Islamic Theologians, as to the influence coming from outside of the prophetic tradition, which in their view really began with Adam. That is in a way, a by the way. This is a lovely translation that is as illuminating as it is perhaps practical, and its in a Penguin!

A very insightful read. I'm ready.

Looking forward to reading it when I've the time.