TWO
The Four Signs of a Dark Night of the Soul
–1–
Heather woke up one morning to find a letter on her pillow: her husband was leaving her for another woman.
I’ve known Heather since I was 14. We went to the same high school together. Even back then, I knew she was someone who would devote herself to her family and to whomever was lucky enough to be in her life.
Heather now had three children, one of whom was still living at home. She had given up a career as a journalist to raise them.
I came to visit Heather at her home just after 11am. She was still in her pyjamas. She looked thin. Her eyes were swollen and red, like she had been crying. I made her a soothing cup of camomile tea and we went into the living room.
Heather was normally meticulously tidy, but there were dirty cardboard pizza boxes and chocolate wrappers on the floor and coffee table. I cleared up.
“Why is this happening to me?” Heather kept saying. She began questioning all the decisions she had made in her life.
“Maybe I gave up too much to have a family,” she said at last. Her voice was filled with regret. I could sense her deep pain; she was tormented.
“Things will get a bit easier. Just give it some time,” I offered softly.
“I think it’s too late for me to start again. At my age, I’m not sure anyone will find me attractive. If only I could have my old life back.” Heather broke down crying.
“Are you all right, mum?” It was 13-year-old Theo, who had heard the commotion and decided to investigate.
“Just leave me alone! I told you to stay in your room,” Heather snapped, before checking herself. “I’m sorry, Theo. I’m sorry. It’s been really difficult…”
Theo retreated.
“I just don’t know who I am anymore,” Heather said by way of explanation, holding her head in her palms. “I feel completely lost. Sometimes I wish I could just die.”
The things Heather used to love doing—eating out, going on country walks, taking photos, spending time with her friends—no longer made her happy. Life seemed repetitive and pointless.
Months passed, and Heather’s family, who were sympathetic and supportive at first, struggled to understand why she couldn’t just pick herself up and forge ahead with life. Irritable, embittered and dispirited, she had become difficult company and would often snap at her family. Preferring isolation, she avoided them.
Heather was experiencing a dark night of the soul.
I knew there was little I could do to help Heather, except listen and try to understand. And in making the effort, I noticed surprising parallels to my own experience of crisis. Although Heather’s circumstances were different to mine, the symptoms of her dark night were strikingly similar. These were also the same symptoms Arjuna describes in the Bhagavad Gita.
A dark night of the soul can arise in many ways, and it can pass quickly or last for many years. Nonetheless, the sages and seers of India recognized that the dark night experience itself, the dissolution of our world, has certain shared features. If we examine Arjuna’s crisis closely, we find four main symptoms:
1.     Suffering associated with the three phases of time
2.     The revealing of our dark side
3.     A strong impulse to retreat from life
4.     Complete helplessness
–2–
I awoke in the middle of the night with a start. A sharp pain swept across my foot, like an electric charge. I looked about and saw nothing. Had I just been bitten by a rat or maybe even a serpent?
I was in India, and like the other monks, I slept on a thin straw mat on the floor. I tried to go back to sleep, but was bitten again. My foot throbbed with pain. I lifted my straw mat, and out scurried a small millipede. It made for the bathroom drain, faster than anything I had ever seen. My foot was beginning to swell and lose sensation.
There’s a type of millipede in India that is extremely poisonous. If it bites you, the pain is so intolerable that people have been known to put their arms or legs in boiling water out of sheer desperation.
During my own dark night experience some years later, I went through acute suffering. I remember thinking that I would rather be bitten repeatedly by hundreds of millipedes than go through what I was experiencing. The suffering of a personal crisis can feel unendurable.
In the case of such inner torment, there’s usually no visible accident scar, no lost limb, no debilitating disease. Without an obvious cause for your ordeal, there’s a social expectation that you merely get on with life. The lack of validation of your experience by others can cause the suffering to feel all the more acute.
Suffering related to the three phases of time is the first main feature of a dark night experience. Fear is suffering related to how our story will unfold in the future. Lamentation is suffering related to how that story has unfolded in the past. And confusion is suffering related to the present. It arises from identifying so resolutely and ardently with our story, even as it falls apart.
During Arjuna’s crisis on the battlefield, he is overcome by these three types of misery. Perceiving signs of a terrible reversal, Arjuna fears the future. He laments the past, his troubled eyes full of tears. Turning to his friend Krishna, he confides just how utterly confused he is.4 Arjuna’s mental anguish is so intolerable that it manifests outwardly as an overwhelming panic attack in front of all the kings of the earth: his body begins to tremble, his mouth dries up, the hairs on his body stand on end, and his skin feels as if it is burning. Arjuna has trouble even standing.5
In a dark night experience, most of our suffering stems from our attachment to our personal narrative, even as it disintegrates. The central character of our story, the illusory ego, now faces annihilation in some form and is fighting fiercely for its own survival. As we resist the destruction of our world, we react to events in the present through an identity strongly defined by the past. This is, of course, a natural and very human response to what is a type of death.
–3–
When refining gold at high temperature, all the impurities in the gold separate into a layer on the surface of the molten metal. Called dross, this mass of solid impurities can then be removed, leaving pure, refined gold.
Similarly, ghee, a form of clarified butter, is prepared by simmering butter on a medium-low heat. In the process, solid white froth separates from the butter, and is skimmed and discarded. This yields a clear liquid resembling molten gold, used for thousands of years in traditional Ayurvedic medicine.
A dark night of the soul is a period of purification and transformation. Like the process of refining gold or making ghee, parts of us that may have remained concealed from others, and even from ourselves, rise to the surface during a dark night experience. This is the second main feature: the revelation of our dark side.
During a dark night, we may become intensely irritable, angry, impatient or resentful. We may fall into guilt, self-pity and even self-loathing. This is often our response to the suffering we’re experiencing. We may even feel hatred towards those who we believe contributed to our crisis.
We all have a dark side, an “ungodly” side, which only those closest to us may know. Sometimes the dissolution of our world can reveal things about us that surprise even ourselves. We suffer the death of who we thought we were, while encountering those parts of us we have kept hidden—qualities, behaviours and motivations that may be difficult for us to acknowledge. In a dark night, we come face to face with what we can no longer hide.
Some, for instance, become aware of how much anger they carry. Others must face the unbearable truth that ultimately, they don’t really care about others. These inner revelations can be difficult to acknowledge or bear. In my case, following the breakdown of my first long-term relationship, I realized how selfish I was capable of being, how oblivious I had been to the suffering of others. It was one of the most important moments of clarity in my life. I wept with shame and contrition. I longed for forgiveness.
During his dark night, Arjuna must face his own dark side. As his older brother Yudhishtira explains later in the Mahabharata, Arjuna’s main weakness was his intemperate pride in his own ability as an archer and the vain belief that no one could ever match him.6 Indeed, Arjuna’s own teacher, Drona, had promised his pupil that he would make him the greatest archer that ever walked the earth.
However, during his public meltdown on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, Arjuna, celebrated by the name “Holder of the Bow”, struggles even to keep hold of his weapon. By the end of Chapter 1 of the Bhagavad Gita, he has deliberately cast aside his bow and arrows, his mind tormented by sorrow. He is broken, a feeble shadow of his former self.
It can’t get much worse than this for a renowned warrior, famous as the “Scorcher of the Enemy”, “Hero of the Kurus” and “Tiger Among Men”. With Duryodhana and all the kings of the earth looking on in disbelief, the previously undefeated warrior now breaks down into tears.7
Surrounded on all sides by warriors and kings, and in plain sight of his nemesis, Karna, son of the sun god, Arjuna would have been all too painfully aware of his previous arrogant boasts about his prowess in battle and his proud warrior’s promises.
What would Duryodhana and the great archer Karna have been thinking? What would all the kings of the earth have been saying at that moment?
Krishna reminds him: “People will certainly speak of your undying infamy, and for a person of high repute, such infamy is worse than death. The great chariot warriors will think you have withdrawn from battle out of fear, and those who previously held you in high regard will come to take you lightly. Your enemies will say many unspeakable things about you, disparaging your ability. What could be more painful than this?”8
Defeated in front of all his enemies, even before a single arrow has been shot, Arjuna would certainly have been looking directly into the eyes of his own demons.
–4–
In her dark night of the soul, Heather had stopped cleaning her home. She struggled to feed herself or her family. All the things she used to love doing no longer made her happy—and she didn’t know why. If you remember, Heather just wanted to disappear, to exit life. She even contemplated suicide.
This is the third main feature of a dark night experience: a strong impulse to retreat from life. This impulse is partly the result of acute suffering and partly due to a loss of personal direction, leading to paralysis. When the ego is being destroyed, the result is often intense angst and a strong desire to disengage from life. It can extinguish even the desire to remain alive.
Like Heather, Arjuna’s immediate and natural impulse during his dark night is to retreat from the field of engagement. He wants to escape his troubles at Kurukshetra. In front of all the Kurus, the “Hero of the Kurus” wants to flee from the battlefield of the Kurus.
Questioning the purpose of remaining alive, Arjuna considers rushing at the opposing army unarmed to be slaughtered by the sons of Dhritarashtra, without resisting.9 In my own dark night experience, I remember wanting to retreat too; but there was nowhere to go. “If I could just die,” I thought, “that would be a welcome relief.”
Arjuna casts aside his weapons and wonders whether he should take up life as a beggar. Never mind what people will say about him.10 Retreating from the field of battle in this way is also a form of suicide for Arjuna; it is the killing of his reputation and of his identity as a heroic Kuru. More than this, it is the abandonment of his purpose or calling as a warrior, symbolizing the death of the human spirit.
–5–
On the east coast of India, in the Bay of Bengal, lies the sacred city of Jagannatha Puri. The ocean along the shores of Jagannatha Puri can be perilous, especially at certain times of the year. Powerful rip currents can drag even the best swimmers out to sea. I’ve never seen an ocean behave so wilfully, and with such unpredictability and ferocity.
Gaura, a tall and handsome monk, was a strong swimmer. When we went to bathe in the ocean, he would dive into the tumbling waves, unafraid. But on one such dive, the ocean waves suddenly receded and Gaura landed badly on his neck. Gaura disappeared out of sight, until a pilgrim spotted his body bobbing up and down like a corpse, tossed this way and that by the incoming waves.
Gaura couldn’t move; he couldn’t feel; he could barely breathe. He was rushed to the local hospital, which resembled a medieval dungeon filled with the cries of patients clinging to life. This was the only medical facility for miles.
As Gaura fought to remain alive, his inner world was hurled into chaos and confusion. Gaura experienced the same symptoms as Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra—suffering associated with the three phases of time, the revealing of one’s dark side, a strong impulse to retreat from life, and complete helplessness.11
When our inner world collapses, we’re entirely powerless, like a shell tossed about in the waves of the ocean. It’s an inner helplessness. In Gaura’s case, this helplessness also manifested physically: the accident left him paralyzed from the chest down.
During my own dark night experience, I felt I would never find my way out. Darkness extended in all directions. There was no light in the distance to give me hope, no landmark or distant star to guide the way. My strength and skill could not rescue me. I found myself utterly helpless and alone.
I had studied the wisdom of ancient India for some years. But in my dark night, all my book knowledge couldn’t help me. I realized how little, if anything, I actually knew. The experience was deeply humbling. This complete helplessness is the fourth main feature of a dark night experience.
The dark night breaks down and defeats even the strongest of us. Remember, Arjuna is the most powerful warrior of his time, but he faces a humiliating, public impasse. There’s absolutely nothing he can do about it.
The reversal on such a public stage is so pitiable to see that even Krishna at first tries to make Arjuna snap out of it. He urges Arjuna to pull himself together: “From where does your bewilderment come at this time of crisis? Don’t yield to this pathetic weakness. It doesn’t befit you, Scorcher of the Enemy. Stand up!”12
But Arjuna can’t snap out of his crisis, however much he wants to. On the battlefield at the onset of war, when prowess is most needed, the powerful Arjuna suddenly finds himself utterly powerless.
Nothing Arjuna knows can help him. He has studied under the wise brahmin Drona and assimilated knowledge from his older brother Yudhishtira, from his grandfather Bhishma and wise uncle Vidura, and from numerous sages and seers. But in his dark night, Arjuna finds himself stripped of all strength and clarity. The mighty warrior, “Scorcher of the Enemy”, now finds himself scorched by the flames of despair. He feels utterly helpless.13
A dark night of the soul is a true life crisis. A temporary setback in our life allows us to remain within our existing paradigm of thought and attitude. A life crisis is different: it’s a position of utter vulnerability, when we experience and acknowledge our own complete helplessness.
Most people will have at least one dark night experience in their life; some may go through several. That the struggles of despair we each go through should have the same symptoms as those described several thousand years ago in India’s yoga texts is astonishing. If these texts accurately describe the dark night experience, might they also hold the secret for navigating such experiences? Might these ancient texts contain a “map” for traversing the dark landscape of the underworld?