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埃克哈特談靈魂暗夜
問：您是否經歷過靈魂暗夜？您的教導總是對經歷這樣的困難時刻很有幫助。您能否談談這個主題？
埃克哈特：“靈魂暗夜”這個說法從很早的時候就有了。是的，我也曾經經歷過靈魂暗夜。這個詞語是用來描述，你可以稱之為，一次生命的表面上的意義的坍塌……一種深深的無意義感在你生命中的爆發。在某些情況下，那個內在的狀態與我們常說的抑鬱很接近。什麼事都變得沒意思，生活毫無目標。有時它是被某件外在發生的事所引發，也許是外在的層面發生的某個災難。某個與你親近的人的逝世可能會引發它，尤其是過早的死亡，比如如果你的孩子死去。或者你辛苦構建了你的生活，你賦予了它意義 – 然後這些你賦予的意義，比如你從事的活動，你的成就，你要去的地方，你認為重要的事，這些你賦予你的生命的意義，因為某個原因，坍塌了。
如果某件事發生，令你再也無法將它解釋過去，某個災難降臨，似乎使你過去的生活的意義變得蕩然無存，靈魂暗夜可能會在這樣的時候發生。其實真正坍塌的是關於你的生活的整個概念框架，是你的頭腦賦予它的意義。就這樣，這個發生導致了一個黑暗之處。但是人們走入了這個黑暗的地方，然後，有一種可能性產生了，你也許能從這暗夜中走出，而進入一種全新的意識狀態。生命再一次有了意義，但它已經不再是一個你可以斬釘截鐵地解釋的概念性的意義了。人們已經從對現實的概念性解讀中醒了過來，它已然瓦解，通常這就是那新生命意義的所在。
他們醒過來，進入了某個更深的東西，它不再基於你頭腦中的概念。那是某種更深的目的感，或是一種與更大的生命的連接感，它再也不依賴於任何詮釋或是概念性的東西。它是一種重生。靈魂暗夜是一種死亡，你死去了。死去的是那個基於小我的自我感。當然，死亡總是痛苦的，但其實並沒有什麼真的東西死去 – 只除了一個虛幻的身份。現在，那些經歷過這個轉變的人們很可能已經認識到，他們必須經歷這個過程，從而帶來一次靈性的覺醒。靈魂暗夜常常都是覺醒過程中的一部分，舊的我死去了，新的我誕生了。
奇跡課程的第一課中說：“我在這間房間裡看到的任何東西都毫無意義”，它叫你環顧房間的四周，對你看見的任何東西說“這個毫無意義”，“那個毫無意義”。這樣的一堂課究竟是什麼目的？這有點像是重塑靈魂暗夜中可能發生的情況。它是對頭腦製造出來的意義，概念性的意義，關於生命……對你以為你明白“這一切是怎麼回事”的全然瓦解。練習奇跡課程，就是對人類頭腦所投射出來的意義的主動放棄，你故意不斷地說著：“我不知道這意味著什麼”，“這個毫無意義”。你將黑板擦拭乾淨了。在靈魂暗夜，它瓦解了。
你注定要來到一個概念變得毫無意義的所在。或者你可以稱之為一種無知的狀態 – 在那裡，事情失去了你原來賦予的意義，那些意義都是受限的，與文化背景相關的等等。然後你就可以看著這個世界，而不再強加任何頭腦製造的關於意義的框架。當然，這看上去就像是你不再瞭解任何事。這就是為什麼當它發生在你身上的時候，你並沒有真正有意識地擁抱這個發生，反而，它會讓你感到如此恐慌。它的發生可以帶來靈魂暗夜。去作為一個天真無知的臨在遨遊這個宇宙，而不再總是不由自主地在頭腦裡詮釋它。你看著事情，看著人們，等等，帶著一種活生生的感覺。經由你自己的活生生，你感受著這個活力，但你不再總是試圖將你的體驗歸入一個概念性的框架裡。
Eckhart on the Dark Night of the Soul
Q: Have you ever experienced the dark night of the soul? Your teachings have been so helpful through this difficult period. Can you address this subject?
ET: The “dark night of the soul” is a term that goes back a long time. Yes, I have also experienced it. It is a term used to describe what one could call a collapse of a perceived meaning in life…an eruption into your life of a deep sense of meaninglessness. The inner state in some cases is very close to what is conventionally called depression. Nothing makes sense anymore, there’s no purpose to anything. Sometimes it’s triggered by some external event, some disaster perhaps, on an external level. The death of someone close to you could trigger it, especially premature death, for example if your child dies. Or you had built up your life, and given it meaning – and the meaning that you had given your life, your activities, your achievements, where you are going, what is considered important, and the meaning that you had given your life for some reason collapses.
It can happen if something happens that you can’t explain away anymore, some disaster which seems to invalidate the meaning that your life had before. Really what has collapsed then is the whole conceptual framework for your life, the meaning that your mind had given it. So that results in a dark place. But people have gone into that, and then there is the possibility that you emerge out of that into a transformed state of consciousness. Life has meaning again, but it’s no longer a conceptual meaning that you can necessarily explain. Quite often it’s from there that people awaken out of their conceptual sense of reality, which has collapsed.
They awaken into something deeper, which is no longer based on concepts in your mind. A deeper sense of purpose or connectedness with a greater life that is not dependent on explanations or anything conceptual any longer. It’s a kind of re-birth. The dark night of the soul is a kind of death that you die. What dies is the egoic sense of self. Of course, death is always painful, but nothing real has actually died there – only an illusory identity. Now it is probably the case that some people who’ve gone through this transformation realized that they had to go through that, in order to bring about a spiritual awakening. Often it is part of the awakening process, the death of the old self and the birth of the true self.
The first lesson in A Course in Miracles says “Nothing I see in this room means anything”, and you’re supposed to look around the room at whatever you happen to be looking at, and you say “this doesn’t mean anything”, “that doesn’t mean anything”. What is the purpose of a lesson like that? It’s a little bit like re-creating what can happen during the dark night of the soul. It’s the collapse of a mind-made meaning, conceptual meaning, of life… believing that you understand “what it’s all about”. With A Course in Miracles, it’s a voluntary relinquishment of the human mind-made meaning that is projected, and you go voluntary into saying “I don’t know what this means”, “this doesn’t mean anything”. You wipe the board clean. In the dark night of the soul it collapses.
You are meant to arrive at a place of conceptual meaninglessness. Or one could say a state of ignorance – where things lose the meaning that you had given them, which was all conditioned and cultural and so on. Then you can look upon the world without imposing a mind-made framework of meaning. It looks of course as if you no longer understand anything. That’s why it’s so scary when it happens to you, instead of you actually consciously embracing it. It can bring about the dark night of the soul. To go around the Universe without any longer interpreting it compulsively, as an innocent presence. You look upon events, people, and so on with a deep sense of aliveness. Your sense the aliveness through your own sense of aliveness, but you are not trying to fit your experience into a conceptual framework anymore.
