On the Jesus Prayer (Part 6)

Elder. They undoubtedly exist, but they exist only in Christians who have attained Christian perfection—who have first been cleansed and prepared by repentance. The gradual action of repentance in general, expressed through all the forms of humility and especially through prayer offered from poverty of spirit and from weeping, gradually weakens the action of sin in a person. This requires considerable time. And it is granted to true, sincere ascetics by the Divine providence, which watches over us without ceasing. The struggle with the passions is extraordinarily beneficial: it leads, more than anything else, to poverty of spirit. For the sake of our substantial benefit, our Judge and God “bears long” with us and does not quickly “avenge” (Lk. 18:7) our adversary—sin.[1] When the passions have greatly weakened—which takes place most often toward the end of life—then little by little spiritual states will begin to appear, differing infinitely from the states composed by “opinion”. First, gracious weeping enters the chamber of the soul, washes it, and whitens it for the reception of the gifts that follow upon weeping according to the ordering of the spiritual law. A carnal person can in no way, by any means, even imagine spiritual states;[2] he cannot have the least conception even of gracious weeping: the knowledge of these states is acquired only through experience. Spiritual gifts are distributed with Divine wisdom, which watches to see that the rational vessel destined to receive a gift can sustain without harm to itself the power of the gift. New wine bursts old wineskins! (Mt. 9:17). It is observed that in the present time spiritual gifts are distributed with the greatest moderation, in proportion to the spiritual enfeeblement that has encompassed Christianity in general. These gifts meet almost exclusively the need of salvation. “Opinion”, by contrast, scatters its gifts in boundless abundance and with the greatest haste.

The common mark of spiritual states is deep humility and humble-mindedness, joined with the preference of all one’s neighbours over oneself, with a disposition of evangelical love toward all, with a striving toward obscurity and withdrawal from the world. “Opinion” has little place here: for humility consists in the renunciation of all personal worthiness, in the essential confession of the Redeemer, in the gathering of all hope and support in Him—whereas “opinion” consists in the appropriation to oneself of gifts given by God, and in the fabrication for oneself of non-existent worthiness. It is joined to self-reliance and to a cold, superficial confession of the Redeemer. God is glorified for the sake of glorifying oneself—as He was glorified by the Pharisee (Lk. 18:11). Those possessed by “opinion” are for the most part given over to sensuality, notwithstanding that they attribute to themselves the most exalted spiritual states unprecedented in correct Orthodox asceticism; a few of them refrain from gross subjugation to sensuality—they refrain solely by reason of the preponderance in them of the sin of sins: pride.

Disciple. Can the spiritual delusion called “opinion” give rise to any tangible, visible and unhappy consequences?

Elder. From this kind of delusion have sprung ruinous heresies, schisms, godlessness, and blasphemy. The most miserable visible consequence of it is a wrong and harmful activity—harmful both to oneself and to one’s neighbours—an evil which, despite its clarity and extent, is little noticed and little understood. Calamities also befall those practitioners of prayer who are infected by “opinion” that are obvious to all, but rarely: for “opinion”, while bringing the mind into the most terrible error, does not bring it to frenzy, as disordered imagination does. — On the island of Valaam, in a remote hermitage in the wilderness, there lived a schema-monk Porphyrius, whom I myself saw. He engaged in the ascetic struggle of prayer. What kind of struggle it was I cannot say with certainty. Its incorrectness may be guessed from the schema-monk’s favourite reading: he held in high esteem the book of the Western writer Thomas à Kempis, On the Imitation of Jesus Christ, and was guided by it. That book is written out of “opinion”. One evening in autumn, Porphyrius visited the elders of the skete, from which his hermitage was not far distant. When he was taking leave of the elders, they warned him, saying: “Do not think of crossing on the ice: the ice has only just formed and is very thin”. The hermitage of Porphyrius was separated from the skete by a deep inlet of Lake Ladoga, which had to be skirted on foot. The schema-monk replied in a quiet voice, with an outward show of modesty: “I have already become light.” He departed. After a short while a cry of despair was heard. The elders of the skete were alarmed and ran out. It was dark; it was not soon that they found the place where the disaster had occurred, nor soon that they found means to retrieve the drowned man: they pulled out the body, already abandoned by the soul.

Disciple. You say of the book “The Imitation” that it is written out of a state of self-delusion; yet it has a multitude of admirers even among the children of the Orthodox Church!

Elder. It is precisely those admirers, in their rapture over its merits, who betray what those merits are without realising it. In the preface of the Russian translator to the book “The Imitation”—the edition of 1834, printed in Moscow—it is said: “A certain highly enlightened man—a Russian, an Orthodox Christian—used to say: if my opinion were needed, I would boldly place Kempis on the Imitation of Jesus Christ next after Holy Scripture.” In this so decisive verdict, a heterodox writer is given complete preference over all the holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church, and one man’s own view is accorded preference over the determination of the whole Church—which at holy Councils recognised the writings of the holy Fathers as God-inspired, and bequeathed their reading not only for the edification of all her children, but also as a guide in resolving questions of the Church.[3] In the writings of the Fathers is preserved the great spiritual, Christian, and ecclesial treasury: the dogmatic and moral tradition of the Holy Church. It is evident that the book “The Imitation” brought the aforementioned man into that disposition from which he expressed himself so rashly, so erroneously, so sorrowfully. This is self-delusion![4] This is spiritual delusion! It was formed from false conceptions; false conceptions were born from incorrect sensations communicated by the book. Within the book there dwells, and from the book there breathes, the anointing of an evil spirit that flatters its readers, intoxicating them with the poison of falsehood sweetened with refined seasonings of pride, vainglory, and sensuality. The book leads its readers directly to communion with God without prior purification through repentance—which is why it arouses particular sympathy in passionate people, who are unfamiliar with the path of repentance, unguarded against self-delusion and spiritual delusion, untaught to a right manner of life by the teaching of the holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church. The book produces a powerful effect upon the blood and the nerves, stirring them—and for this reason it pleases especially those enslaved to sensuality; one can enjoy the book without renouncing the coarse pleasures of the senses. Pride, refined sensuality, and vainglory are presented by the book as the action of Divine grace. Having sniffed their own sensuality in its refined action, carnal people go into rapture over the pleasure and intoxication afforded them effortlessly, without self-denial, without repentance, without the “crucifixion of the flesh with its passions and lusts” (Gal. 5:24), with a flattering of their fallen state. Led by their own blindness and pride, they pass joyfully from the bed of a beastly love to the bed of a more criminal love—the love that reigns in the brothel of rejected spirits. A certain person who, by earthly station, belonged to the highest and most educated society, and in outward appearance to the Orthodox Church, expressed herself thus concerning a Lutheran woman who had died and whom this person considered a saint: “She loved God passionately; she thought only of God; she saw only God; she read only the Gospel and “The Imitation”, which is a second Gospel.” These words express precisely the state into which the readers and admirers of “The Imitation” are brought. — Essentially identical with this phrase is the saying of the celebrated French writer Madame de Sévigné about the celebrated French poet, Racine the Elder.[5] “He loves God”, Madame de Sévigné permitted herself to say, “as formerly he loved his mistresses.” The well-known critic La Harpe, who was first an atheist and then passed over to a Christianity incorrectly understood and perverted by him, approving of Madame de Sévigné’s expression, said: “It is with the same heart that one loves the Creator and the creature, though the effects differ as widely as the objects.” Racine passed from debauchery to the spiritual delusion called “opinion”. This delusion expresses itself with full clarity in the poet’s last two tragedies:[6] in “Esther” and “Athaliah”. Racine’s lofty Christian thoughts and feelings found ample place in the temple of the Muses and Apollo—in the theatre they aroused rapture and applause.[7] “Athaliah”, considered Racine’s greatest work, was performed forty times in succession. The spirit of that tragedy is one with the spirit of “The Imitation”. — We believe that in the human heart there is a beastly desire introduced into it by the fall, which stands in correspondence with the desire of the fallen spirits; we believe that there is also in the heart a spiritual desire—with which we were created—by which God and neighbour are loved naturally and rightly, which stands in harmony with the desire of the holy Angels.[8] In order to love God and in God one’s neighbour, it is necessary to be cleansed of the beastly desire. This cleansing is accomplished by the Holy Spirit in the person who expresses by his life the will to be cleansed. Properly speaking, it is desire and the other powers of the soul that are called “heart” in the moral sense—not the bodily organ, the heart. The powers are concentrated in that organ, and by common usage the name has been transferred from the organ to the assembly of powers.[9]

In contrast to the sensation of carnal people, spiritual men, having caught the scent of evil disguised as good, immediately feel repulsion from a book that emits such a smell. To Elder Isaiah—a monk who had lived in stillness at the Nikiforova Hermitage, who had made progress in mental prayer and been granted a gracious overshadowing—a passage from “The Imitation” was read aloud.[10] The elder immediately perceived the significance of the book. He laughed and exclaimed: “Oh! This is written out of opinion. There is nothing true here! Everything here is contrived! Just as the spiritual states appeared to Thomas and as he supposed about them, not knowing them by experience, so he described them.” Spiritual delusion, as a misfortune, presents a sorrowful spectacle; as an absurdity, it is a laughable spectacle. The archimandrite Theophan of the Kirillo-Novoezersky Monastery, known for his strict life, who engaged in simple-hearted and almost exclusively bodily ascetic struggle and had only a very moderate conception of the soul’s ascetic struggle—he at first offered to those who consulted him and lived under his guidance the reading of the book “The Imitation”; a few years before his death he began to forbid its reading, saying with holy simplicity:[11] “I formerly considered this book beneficial to the soul, but God has revealed to me that it is harmful to the soul.” The same opinion of “The Imitation” was held by the hieroschemamonk Leonid, known for his active monastic experience, who laid the foundation for moral uprightness at Optina Hermitage. All the aforementioned ascetics were personally known to me. — A certain landowner, raised in the spirit of Orthodoxy and intimately acquainted with what is called high society—that is, the world in its upper strata—once saw the book “The Imitation” in the hands of his daughter.[12] He forbade her to read the book, saying: “I do not want you to follow the fashion and play the coquette before God.” The most accurate assessment of the book.

Disciple. Are there yet other kinds of spiritual delusion?

Elder. All the particular kinds of self-delusion and delusion by demons belong to the two principal kinds described above, and arise either from the incorrect action of the mind or from the incorrect action of the heart. Especially extensive is the action of “opinion”. Not without reason is the soul’s disposition of those monks ascribed to a state of self-delusion and spiritual delusion who, having rejected the exercise of the Jesus Prayer and of the mental work in general, content themselves with external prayer alone—that is, with unfailing participation in the church services and unfailing performance of their cell rule consisting exclusively of psalmody and vocal oral prayers. They cannot escape “opinion”, as the aforementioned elder Basil explains in his preface to the book of Saint Gregory of Sinai, citing above all the writings of the Venerables Gregory and Symeon the New Theologian. The mark of the “opinion” that has crept in is revealed in ascetics when they think of themselves that they lead an attentive life, frequently from pride despise others, speak ill of them, and consider themselves worthy, in their own opinion, to be shepherds of sheep and guides of them—resembling a blind man who takes upon himself to point the way to other blind men.[13][14]