Chapter 102

Spiritual Sensuality From Intensifying Attention to Warmth

Deep prayer to the Lord arouses warmth. The experienced fathers distinguish strictly between bodily warmth, simple, arising from the concentration of one’s powers toward the heart by attention and effort; bodily warmth, carnal, which sometimes attaches itself there and is maintained by the enemy; and spiritual warmth, sober, pure. It is of two kinds: natural, from the union of the mind with the heart, and grace-filled. Experience teaches how to distinguish each. This warmth is sweet, and it is desirable to maintain it, both for the sake of this sweetness itself, and because it imparts a good disposition to the entire interior life. But whoever strives to maintain and intensify this warmth for its sweetness alone will develop spiritual sensuality in himself. Therefore, the sober ones strive, passing by this sweetness, to establish themselves in standing before the Lord alone, with complete devotion to him, as if placing themselves into his hands; but they do not rest on the sweetness proceeding from the warmth and do not fix their attention upon it. But it is possible to become attached to it by attention, and resting in it as in warm comfort or clothing, to maintain it alone, not extending one’s thoughts higher. The mystics [in delusion – Ed.] went no further than this; this state was considered their highest: there was complete mindlessness, sunk in some emptiness. Such is the state of contemplation of the mystics. It has nothing in common with the state of contemplation that existed among the great fathers, the sober ones. (16, 219–220)