Chapter 185

One Must Cast Out All Images

You ask about prayer. I find from the fathers that when praying, one must cast out all images from the mind. I try to do this, striving to stand in the conviction that God is everywhere, and here too, where I am, where my thought and my feeling are. I am not wholly successful in freeing myself from images, but they increasingly fade away. Perhaps there is a term when they will disappear entirely.

In the fixed prayers there are many images depicting God; from this we may suppose that having such representations is not sinful. But it is better to strive toward a thinking of God that is closer to what he truly is. When prayer of feeling appears, images disappear, and only the feeling itself remains in power. Noetic prayer hardly separates itself from images and pictures. But effort can overcome all things.

(Letter 1150. Volume 7, p. 153)