On the Jesus Prayer (Part 5)

The following case, worthy of note, befell me. An Athonite hieroschemamonk who was in Russia collecting donations once paid me a visit. We sat in my reception cell, and he began to say to me: “Pray for me, father: I sleep too much, I eat too much.” As he said this to me, I felt a heat emanating from him, and so replied: “You do not eat too much, nor do you sleep too much; but is there not something extraordinary in you?” and I asked him to come into my inner cell. As I walked before him and opened the door to the inner cell, I prayed inwardly to God that He would grant my hungry soul to profit from the Athonite hieroschemamonk, if he were a true servant of God. Indeed: I noticed something extraordinary in him. In the inner cell we sat down again to converse, and I began to ask him: “Do me the kindness of teaching me about prayer. You live in the first monastic place on earth, among thousands of monks: in such a place and in such a numerous assembly of monks there must certainly be found great men of prayer, who know the mystery of prayer and impart it to their neighbors, following the example of the Gregorys of Sinai and Palamas, following the example of many other Athonite luminaries.” The hieroschemamonk immediately agreed to be my instructor—and, O horror! With the greatest ardor he began to impart to me the above-described method of enraptured, imaginative prayer. I see: he is in terrible ardor! His blood and imagination are inflamed! He is in self-complacency, in rapture over himself, in self-deception, in delusion! Having let him have his say, I began little by little, in the guise of a pupil, to set before him the teaching of the holy Fathers on prayer, pointing to it in The Philokalia and asking him to explain this teaching to me. The Athonite fell into complete bewilderment. I see: he is wholly unacquainted with the teaching of the Fathers on prayer! As the conversation continued, I said to him: “Look here, elder: if you are going to live in Petersburg, never take lodgings on the upper floor—be sure to take lodgings on the lower floor.” “Why so?” objected the Athonite. “Because,” I replied, “if the angels take it into their heads to snatch you up suddenly and carry you from Petersburg to Athos, and they carry you out from the upper floor and drop you, you will be killed: but if they carry you out from the lower floor and drop you, you will only be bruised.” “Imagine,” replied the Athonite, “how many times, when I stood at prayer, there came to me the vivid thought that angels would snatch me up and place me on Athos!” It turned out that the hieroschemamonk wore chains, slept almost not at all, ate very little, and felt such a heat in his body that in winter he had no need of warm clothing. By the end of the conversation there came to me the thought to proceed as follows: I began to ask the Athonite that he, as a faster and ascetic, put to the test upon himself the method handed down by the holy Fathers—consisting in keeping the mind during prayer wholly free from all fantasy, wholly absorbed in attentiveness to the words of the prayer, enclosed and contained, in the expression of Saint John of the Ladder, within the words of the prayer.197 In this, the heart ordinarily cooperates with the mind through the soul-saving feeling of grief over sins, as the Venerable Mark the Ascetic said: “The mind praying without distraction oppresses the heart: ‘and a heart contrite and humble God will not despise’ (Ps. 50:19).”198 “When you have tried it upon yourself,” I said to the Athonite, “inform me also of the fruit of the experience; for such an experience is unsuited to me personally because of the busy life I lead.” The Athonite gladly agreed to my suggestion. After several days he came to me and said: “What have you done to me?” — “What do you mean?” — “Well, as soon as I tried to pray with attention, enclosing the mind in the words of the prayer, all my visions disappeared, and I can no longer return to them.” Further in the conversation with the Athonite I no longer saw that self-assurance and that boldness which had been very noticeable in him at the first meeting, and which are usually observed in persons who are in self-deception, imagining themselves to be holy or to be in spiritual progress. The Athonite even expressed a desire to hear my poor counsel. When I advised him not to distinguish himself from the rest of the monks by his outward manner of life—since such distinguishing leads to pride199—he removed his chains and gave them to me.[1] A month later he came to me again and said that the heat in his body had ceased, that he needed warm clothing, and that he slept considerably more. In the course of the conversation he said that on Mount Athos many—even those enjoying a reputation for holiness—employ that method of prayer which had been employed by him, and teach it to others. No wonder![2] Saint Symeon the New Theologian, who lived eight centuries before our time, says that very few engage in attentive prayer.200 The Venerable Gregory of Sinai, who lived in the fourteenth century after the Birth of Christ, when he arrived on Mount Athos found that its numerous monasticism had no notion whatsoever of mental prayer, and occupied itself only with bodily struggles, performing prayers only vocally and aloud.201 The Venerable Nilus of Sora, who lived at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century, and who also visited Mount Athos, says that in his time the number of attentive men of prayer had diminished to the extreme.202 The Elder, Archimandrite Paisius Velichkovsky, moved to Mount Athos from Moldavia in 1747. He became thoroughly acquainted with all the monasteries and sketes, and conversed with many elders whom the general opinion of the Holy Mountain recognized as the most experienced and holy monks. But when he began to question these monks about the books of the holy Fathers who had written on mental prayer, it turned out that they not only did not know of the existence of such writings, but did not even know the names of the holy authors; at that time The Philokalia had not yet been printed in the Greek language.203 Attentive prayer requires self-denial, and few resolve upon self-denial. One who is enclosed within himself by attentiveness, who is in a state of bewilderment at the sight of his own sinfulness, who is incapable of verbosity and of effects and playacting in general, appears to those unfamiliar with the mysterious struggle as somehow strange, enigmatic, and deficient in every respect. Is it easy to part with the opinion of the world! And how is the world to know the ascetic of true prayer, when the very struggle is altogether unknown to the world? How different is the man in self-deception! He does not eat, does not drink, does not sleep, goes in winter in one cassock, wears chains, sees visions, teaches and reproves everyone with brazen boldness, without any order, without sense or meaning, with a blood-heated, material, passionate ardor—and on account of this grievous and ruinous ardor. A saint, and nothing less![3] The taste and inclination of human society for such persons has long been remarked: “You bear it,” the Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians, “if anyone enslaves you, if anyone devours you, if anyone takes from you, if anyone exalts himself, if anyone strikes you in the face” (2 Cor. 11:20). Further, the holy Apostle says that when he was in Corinth he could not conduct himself boldly and brazenly:[4] his conduct was marked by modesty, by “the meekness and gentleness of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:1[5]).[6] The greater part of the ascetics of the Western Church proclaimed by it as its greatest saints—after its falling away from the Eastern Church and the departure of the Holy Spirit from it—prayed and attained to visions by the method I have described—visions that were, of course, false. These pseudo-saints were in the most terrible demonic delusion. Delusion naturally arises on the foundation of the blasphemy by which heretics pervert the dogmatic faith. The conduct of the Latinist ascetics seized by delusion was always frenzied, on account of extraordinary material and passionate ardor.[7] In such a state was Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order. His imagination was so inflamed and sharpened that, as he himself affirmed, all he had to do was to will it and exert a certain effort, and there appeared before his gaze, at his pleasure, hell or paradise. The apparition of paradise and hell was not accomplished by the action of human imagination alone; the action of human imagination alone is insufficient for this: the apparition was accomplished by the action of demons, who joined their abundant action to the insufficient human action, combining action with action, completing action with action, on the basis of the human free will that had chosen and appropriated to itself a false direction. It is known that to the truly holy, visions are granted solely by the goodwill of God and by the action of God—not by the will of man or his own effort—granted unexpectedly, very rarely, in cases of special need, by the wondrous providence of God, and not as it might happen.204 The intensified ascetic struggle of those in delusion ordinarily goes side by side with deep depravity. Depravity serves as an assessment of the flame by which the deluded are consumed. This is confirmed both by the accounts of history and by the testimony of the Fathers. “One who sees the spirit of delusion in the apparitions it presents,” said the Venerable Maximus Capsocalyves, “very often falls subject to rage and anger; the fragrance of humility, of prayer, or of true tears has no place in him. On the contrary, he constantly boasts of his virtues, is vainglorious, and gives himself over always to evil passions fearlessly.”205[8][9]

Disciple. The incorrectness of this method of prayer and its connection with self-deception and delusion are clear; warn me also against the other forms of incorrect prayer and the false condition associated with them.

Elder. As an incorrect action of the mind leads to self-deception and delusion, so equally does an incorrect action of the heart. The desire and striving to behold spiritual visions with a mind not yet cleansed of the passions, not yet renewed and re-created by the right hand of the Holy Spirit, are full of senseless pride; equally full of such pride and folly are the desire and striving of the heart to enjoy holy, spiritual, and divine feelings when it is still altogether incapable of such enjoyments. As the impure mind, wishing to see Divine visions and being unable to see them, composes visions out of itself, by them deceives and beguiles itself, so also the heart, striving to taste Divine sweetness and other Divine sensations and finding them not within itself, composes them out of itself, by them flatters, beguiles, deceives, and destroys itself—entering the realm of falsehood, entering into communion with demons, submitting to their influence, subjecting itself to their power.

Of all the feelings of the heart in its fallen state, only one may be employed in invisible worship of God: grief over sin, over sinfulness, over the fall, over one’s own destruction—called weeping, repentance, contrition of spirit. This is attested by Holy Scripture. “If you had desired sacrifice, I would have given it; but in burnt offerings you have no delight” (Ps. 50:18): each heartfelt feeling separately, and all of them together, are not pleasing to You, as defiled by sin, as perverted by the fall. “The sacrifice of God is a broken spirit: a broken and humble heart God will not despise” (Ps. 50:19). This sacrifice is a negative sacrifice; with the offering of this sacrifice the offering of all other sacrifices naturally ceases: in the sensation of repentance all other sensations fall silent. In order for the sacrifices of the other feelings to become pleasing to God, it is first necessary for the good pleasure of God to shine upon our Zion, for the walls of our ruined Jerusalem to be rebuilt first. The Lord is righteous, all-holy; only righteous and pure sacrifices—to which human nature becomes capable after its renewal—are acceptable to the righteous, all-holy Lord. To defiled sacrifices and burnt offerings He shows no delight. Let us take care to be purified by repentance! “Then you will delight in righteous sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then they will offer bullocks upon your altar” (Ps. 50:21): the newborn feelings of the man renewed by the Holy Spirit.

The first commandment given by the Saviour of the world to all mankind without exception is the commandment of repentance: “From that time Jesus began to preach and to say: Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” (Mt. 4:17). This commandment encompasses, contains, and includes within itself all the other commandments. To those who did not understand the significance and power of repentance the Saviour said more than once: “Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” (Mt. 9:13). This means: the Lord, having taken mercy on fallen and perishing men, has given to all repentance as the sole means of salvation, for all are encompassed by the fall and by perdition. He does not demand, nor does He even desire, sacrifices from them—sacrifices to which they are not capable—but desires that they have mercy upon themselves, acknowledge their wretchedness, and free themselves from it by repentance. To these words the Lord added the terrible words: “I have come”—He said—“not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Who are called “the righteous”? Those unhappy, blind sinners who, being deceived by self-conceit, do not find repentance essentially necessary for themselves and therefore either reject it or neglect it. O misfortune! For this the Saviour renounces them, and the treasure of salvation is lost to them. “Woe to the soul,” says the Venerable Macarius the Great, “that does not feel its own wounds and imagines itself, on account of the great and boundless damage wrought by evil, to be entirely free from the damage of evil.[10] Such a soul is no longer visited and healed by the good Physician, as one that has voluntarily left its wounds without care, and imagines itself to be healthy and blameless. ‘Those who are well’—He says—‘do not need a physician, but those who are sick’ (Mt. 9:12).”206 Terrible cruelty toward oneself—the rejection of repentance! Terrible coldness, lovelessness toward oneself—the neglect of repentance. One who is cruel toward himself cannot but be cruel to his neighbor as well. One who has shown mercy to himself by accepting repentance simultaneously becomes merciful to his neighbor.[11] From this is visible the full gravity of the error: to take from the heart the feeling of repentance—the feeling commanded by God Himself, essentially and logically necessary for the heart—and to strive to unfold in the heart, contrary to all order, contrary to the establishment of God, those feelings which should themselves appear in the heart after purification by repentance, though in a wholly different character.207 Of this spiritual character a carnal person can form no conception: for the conception of a feeling is always based on feelings already known to the heart, whereas spiritual feelings are wholly alien to a heart familiar only with carnal and soulish feelings. Such a heart does not even know that spiritual feelings exist.

It is well known what a soul catastrophe arose for the Jewish scribes and Pharisees from their incorrect spiritual disposition: they became not only strangers to God, but frenzied enemies of Him—deicides. A similar catastrophe befalls ascetics of prayer who have expelled repentance from their struggle and strive to arouse in the heart love for God, striving to experience pleasure and rapture: they develop their own fallen state, make themselves strangers to God, enter into communion with Satan, and become infected with hatred for the Holy Spirit. This kind of delusion is terrible; it is equally destructive to the soul as the first, but less manifest: it rarely ends in madness and suicide, but it utterly corrupts both mind and heart. From the state of mind it produces, the Fathers named it “conceit” (mnenie).208 The holy Apostle Paul points to this kind of delusion when he says:[12] “Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind” (Col. 2:18). One possessed by this delusion imagines about himself, has composed a “conceit” about himself, that he possesses many virtues and merits—even that he abounds in gifts of the Holy Spirit. Conceit is composed of false concepts and false sensations: by this its very nature it belongs entirely to the realm of the father and representative of falsehood—the devil. The one who prays, striving to develop in the heart the sensations of the new man, and having no possibility of doing so, replaces them with sensations of his own devising—counterfeit ones—to which the action of the fallen spirits is not slow in joining itself. Having recognized his incorrect sensations—his own and the demonic—as genuine and gracious, he receives concepts corresponding to these sensations. These sensations, constantly appropriating themselves to the heart and growing stronger in it, nourish and multiply false concepts; naturally, from such incorrect struggle there form self-deception and demonic delusion—“conceit.” “Conceit does not allow that which is imagined to exist.”209—said Saint Symeon the New Theologian. One who imagines himself to be dispassionate will never be cleansed of the passions;[13] one who imagines himself to be filled with grace will never receive grace; one who imagines himself to be holy will never attain holiness. To speak simply: one who attributes to himself spiritual works, virtues, merits, and gifts of grace—who flatters and amuses himself with “conceit”—by this “conceit” bars the entrance into himself of spiritual works, Christian virtues, and Divine grace, and opens wide the entrance to sinful infection and to demons. There is no longer any capacity for spiritual progress in those infected with “conceit”: they have destroyed this capacity by offering up on the altar of falsehood the very first principles of human activity and salvation—the concepts of truth. An extraordinary inflation appears in those sick with this delusion: they are, as it were, intoxicated with themselves, with their condition of self-deception, seeing in it a gracious condition. They are soaked through and through with pride and arrogance, appearing, however, humble to many who judge by the face and cannot evaluate by the fruits—as the Saviour commanded (Mt. 7:16, 12:33), and still less by the spiritual sense of which the Apostle speaks (Heb. 5:14). The Prophet Isaiah vividly depicted the action of the delusion of “conceit” in the fallen archangel—the action that beguiled and destroyed this archangel. “You”—the prophet says to Satan—“said in your mind: I will ascend to heaven, I will set my throne above the stars of heaven, I will sit on a high mountain, on the mountains to the north; I will ascend above the clouds, I will be like the Most High. Yet now you will descend to hell and to the foundations of the earth” (Is. 14:13–15). One infected with “conceit” is rebuked by the Lord thus: “You say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing; not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked” (Rev. 3:17). The Lord urges the deluded to repentance; He offers to purchase from none other than the Lord Himself the necessary necessities of which repentance is composed (Rev. 3:18). The purchase is urgently necessary: without it there is no salvation. There is no salvation without repentance, and repentance is received from God only by those who, in order to receive it, sell all their property—that is, renounce everything that has been falsely appropriated to them by “conceit.”

Disciple. Have you happened to encounter those infected with this kind of delusion?

Elder. Those infected with the spiritual delusion of “opinion” are encountered very frequently. Anyone who does not have a contrite spirit, who attributes to himself any kind of merits or worthiness, anyone who does not hold unswervingly to the teaching of the Orthodox Church but reasons about some dogma or tradition arbitrarily, according to his own judgment or according to heterodox teaching—such a person is in this delusion. The degree of the delusion is determined by the degree of one’s deviation and obstinacy in that deviation.

Man is weak! “Opinion” inevitably steals into us in one form or another, and, giving substance to our “self”, drives away the grace of God from us. Just as, according to the observation of Saint Macarius the Great, there is not a single person completely free from pride, so there is not a single person who would be completely free from the influence of the refined delusion called “opinion”. It assailed the Apostle Paul, and was treated by means of heavy dispensations of God. “We do not wish you to be ignorant, brethren”, writes the Apostle to the Corinthians, “of the tribulation that came upon us in Asia—that we were burdened exceedingly, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life. But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead” (2 Cor. 1:8–9). For this reason one must watch over oneself with vigilance, so as not to ascribe to oneself any good deed, any praiseworthy quality or particular natural ability—even a gracious state, if a person has been raised to it—in short, so as not to acknowledge any worthiness as truly one’s own. “What do you have”, the Apostle says, “that you did not” “receive” from God? (1 Cor. 4:7) From God we receive both existence and re-existence, and all natural properties, all capacities—both spiritual and bodily. We are debtors to God! Our debt is beyond repayment! From such a view of ourselves there forms of itself for our spirit a state opposite to “opinion”—the state which the Lord called poverty of spirit, which He commanded us to have, and which He proclaimed blessed (Mt. 5:3). It is a great calamity to deviate from the dogmatic and moral teaching of the Church, from the teaching of the Holy Spirit, through any kind of rationalism! This is “the pride that exalts itself against the knowledge of God”. Such reasoning must be cast down and brought captive “into obedience to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5).

Disciple. Is there any connection between the first kind of spiritual delusion and the second kind?

Elder. A connection between these two kinds of delusion necessarily exists. The first kind of delusion is always joined to the second—to “opinion”. One who composes seductive images by means of the natural faculty of imagination, who combines these images through the power of fantasy into a captivating picture, who subjects his entire being to the seductive and powerful influence of this imagery—such a person inevitably and by unhappy necessity “supposes” that this imagery is produced by the action of Divine grace, and that the feelings of the heart stirred by the imagery are gracious feelings.[14]

The second kind of delusion—“opinion” in the proper sense—operates without the composition of seductive pictures: it contents itself with composing counterfeit gracious sensations and states, from which arises a false, distorted conception of the entire spiritual struggle in general. One who is in the delusion of “opinion” acquires a false view of everything surrounding him. He is deceived both within himself and without. Fantastical imagination acts powerfully in those deluded by “opinion”, but acts exclusively in the domain of the abstract. It either does not occupy itself at all, or rarely occupies itself, with picturing in the imagination paradise, the heavenly dwellings and chambers, celestial light and fragrance, Christ, the Angels and the Saints; it continually composes pseudo-spiritual states—an imagined intimate friendship with Jesus, an inner conversation with Him, mysterious revelations, voices, pleasures—and upon these it builds a false conception of oneself and of Christian struggle, building in general a false manner of thinking and a false disposition of heart;[15][16][17] it brings one at times into intoxication with oneself, at other times into agitation and rapture. These varied sensations arise from the action of refined vainglory and sensuality: from this action the blood receives a sinful and seductive movement that presents itself as gracious delight. Vainglory and sensuality, in turn, are stirred by pride—the inseparable companion of “opinion”. A terrible pride, resembling the pride of demons, constitutes the dominant quality of those who have made either kind of delusion their own. In those deluded by the first kind of delusion, pride brings them into a state of manifest frenzy; in those deluded by the second kind it likewise produces a mental impairment—called in Scripture the corruption of the mind (2 Tim. 3:8)—but it is less noticeable, clothing itself in the guise of humility, piety, and wisdom; it is known by its bitter fruits. Those infected with “opinion” regarding their own worthiness—especially their own holiness—are capable and ready for every intrigue, every hypocrisy, cunning and deceit, every wickedness. They breathe with irreconcilable enmity toward the servants of truth, and rush upon them with frantic hatred when those servants refuse to acknowledge in the deluded the state attributed to them and displayed before a blindly following world by “opinion”.

Disciple. And yet there do exist spiritual states produced by Divine grace—states in which spiritual sweetness and joy are tasted, states in which the mysteries of Christianity are disclosed, states in which the presence of the Holy Spirit is sensed in the heart, states in which the ascetic of Christ is granted spiritual visions?