The Obscure Night of The Soul: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Obscure Night of The Soul, credited to Saint John of the Cross, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Obscure Night of The Soul by Saint John of the Cross. (Translated by David Lewis.) Read in English by Ed Humpal The Obscure Night of the Soul, better know today as The Dark Night of the Soul, is the distilled teaching of St John of the Cross, who reintroduced and revolutionized Christian Contemplation in the 16th Century. The text remains in print until this day, and has been an inspiration to seekers for centuries. St John's method is known as the Via Negativa, defined in Wikipedia as "a type of theological thinking that attempts to describe God, the Divine Good, by negation, to speak only in terms of what may not be said about the perfect goodness that is God...In brief, negative theology is an attempt to clarify religious experience and language about the Divine through discernment, gaining knowledge of what God is not (apophasis), rather than by describing what God is. The apophatic tradition is often, though not always, allied with the approach of mysticism, which focuses on a spontaneous or cultivated individual experience of the divine reality beyond the realm of ordinary perception, an experience often unmediated by the structures of traditional organized religion or by the conditioned role-playing and learned defensive behavior of the outer man." - Summary by Ed Humpal and Wikipedia

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Obscure Night of The Soul
• Author credits: Saint John of the Cross
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 40
• Listed recording duration: 5:01:48

Catalogue topics

• meditation
• st john of the cross
• the dark night of the soul
• catholic theology
• christian contemplation

Opening tracks: first 24 of 40

1. 01 - Argument and Stanzas — 3:57
2. 02 - Book I, Chapter 1, Imperfections of Beginners — 5:54
3. 03 - Book I, Chapter 2, Imperfections of Pride — 9:35
4. 04 - Book I, Chapter 3, Imperfections of Avarice — 4:30
5. 05 - Book I, Chapter 4, Imperfection of Luxury — 7:42
6. 06 - Book I, Chapter 5, Imperfections of Anger — 2:36
7. 07 - Book I, Chapter 6, Imperfections of Spiritual Gluttony — 8:33
8. 08 - Book 1, Chapter 7, Imperfections of Envy and Spiritual Sloth — 4:48
9. 09 - Book I, Chapter 8, Explanation of "The Obscure Night." — 5:21
10. 10 - Book I, Chapter 9, Signs that One is Walking in this Night — 11:33
11. 11 - Book I, Chapter 10, Conduct upon Entering this Night — 6:51
12. 12 - Book I, Chapter 11, Explanation of the Second Line of the Stanza — 7:22
13. 13 - Book I, Chapter 12, Benefits of the Night of Sense — 12:37
14. 14 - Book I, Chapter 13, Other Benefits of the Night of Sense — 10:12
15. 15 - Book I, Chapter 14, Explanation of the Last Line of the First Stanza — 6:06
16. 16 - Book II, Chapter 1, The Second Night, That of the Spirit — 4:37
17. 17 - Book II, Chapter 2, Imperfections of Proficients — 5:07
18. 18 - Book II, Chapter 3, Introduction — 4:14
19. 19 - Book II, Chapter 4, The Second Stanza, Spiritually Explained — 2:44
20. 20 - Book II, Chapter 5, Obscure Contemplation is Pain and Torment for the Soul — 8:21
21. 21 - Book II, Chapter 6, Other Sufferings in this Night — 8:52
22. 22 - Book II, Chapter 7, Trials of the Will — 11:18
23. 23 - Book II, Chapter 8, Trials of the Soul — 6:23
24. 24 - Book II, Chapter 9, How this Night Enlightens the Mind While It Brings Darkness Over It — 12:36

Listen to this recording

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.