Mysticism explores the nature of reality, beginning with the individual struggle for a clear vision of reality and leading to the transformed consciousness arising from that vision. This fourteenth-century manual was written by an unknown monastic as a guide for a young person starting on the path to a contemplative life. It states that a "cloud of unknowing" separates people from God, and that this cloud cannot be penetrated by the intellect--only by love. Unabridged republication of A Book of Contemplation the Which is called The Cloud of Unknowing, in the Which a Soul is Oned with God, originally published by J. M. Watkins, London, 1912.