This book is a journey towards the highest summit of knowledge-ultimate truth. “The Truth man needs… is God himself.” In showing that this summit of truth is reached in contemplation, Thomas Merton offers a brilliant exposition of the doctrines of St John of the Cross, the sixteenth-century Carmelite mystic, poet and theologian who became a doctor of the Church. Mystical contemplation is symbolized as the “dark night of the soul” Which Moses experienced on Mount Sinai in his three visions of God as fire, cloud and darkness. “The paradox of contemplation…” Merton says, “is that God is never fully known unless He is loved…. Because he is without love, modern man is incapable of seeing the only Truth that matters.”