"I am surrounded by smoke. I don't know whether I'm inside or outside. The smoke is pouring from a censor swinging from an unseen hand. The smoke becomes so thick I cannot see my hand before my face, and I begin to feel dizzy. I forget my name. Suddenly the censor begins to glow from within, as if red-hot. It stops swinging and suddenly bursts into a thousand brilliant pieces, with a thundering sound. The smoke and censor disappear, there is no sound, and I am surrounded by darkness, but am not afraid. I sense I am not alone, that God is with me even though I don't see. God is the darkness and I hear him calling my name, although there is no sound. Then I awake."

"What do you think it means?"

"I know, yet I don't know,as if I've forgotten; I cannot find words to say it. I have been trying to write what it means in letters to my students at home. Instead I find myself writing more and more of the contemplative life with God. The more I spend time in silence and solitude, the more I seem to understand what prayer means: to love God for himself alone, with the naked heart piercing the darkness. Ah, but forgive me brother, for indulging in my desire for God. Tell me more of your story."

"Well, I come from across a great sea. The mind of man has made it possible for all men everywhere to speak freely with each other, but we do not know how to share our great wealth with poorer brothers and sisters. The church seems corrupt, and yet men's souls hunger for Christ's friendship. I myself have tried many ways to find happiness and to secure favour with God. But it always comes to the same; I am a poor sinner who is made rich with God's grace. I desire to love God more purely. I thought a pilgrimage to the desert might clarify my soul."

"The emptiness of the desert mirrors our desire to be emptied by God."

"Yes, but I am also frightened. Unlike you in your dream, the darkness seems a void to me. It is a mystery how the God of Christ, of Incarnation, can be the darkness, or nothingness. It is through creation that Christ entered the world. I cannot perceive anything in this world without an image. This is a difficult thing to meditate on."

"God is both in the image and not in the image. We will never know God through our images, only get glimpses of him. But we can know God. With our heart putting aside ourselves, with our images, with our knowledge. All this has been tainted by the sin of Adam and becomes obstacles to our knowing."

"What you're saying is that we can know God without images, without mediation?"

"If God chooses to reveal himself. And he desires to do so. But we cannot force him. We can't even force ourselves. This shedding or emptying is not done with effort. And it can happen in an instant. All that is required is to lean into God's love and reach up with our love towards him. When we notice a thought or an image we just put it aside and keep looking into the darkness. I speak from my own experience and that of guiding my students."

"Forgive my impertinence, but it seems to me that to forget all created things, as you seem to be suggesting, is for me to forget all my experience. Yet my experience is all I have in the here and now."

"There is a time for all things, a time to be present here and now, in space and time, and a time to be present to Eternity, which is in God. God does not seek to extinguish your experience, but you must be willing to let go of all you know, in order to enter into the unknown. God is bigger than anything you could ever conceive of. By letting go of creation, you are opening yourself to that bigness. When your spirit is tied to nothing, then you are nowhere, which means spiritually you will be everywhere. What you fear is unbecoming. But the overwhelming spiritual light of God only blinds the contemplative temporarily, as he begins to see truly. Who is it then who is calling it 'nothing'? Our outer self, to be sure, not our inner self. Our inner self calls it 'All', for through it he is learning the secret of all things."