Chapter 51

The Distinctive Mark of Contemplative Prayer — the Loss From Consciousness of Everything Surrounding

Contemplation is the captivation of the mind and all consciousness by some spiritual object so strong that all the external is forgotten, falls away from consciousness: mind and consciousness depart into the object being contemplated, so that they seem to be no longer in us. Here is an example: an elder was conversing with disciples and stopped, seeming to have forgotten himself. When later he came to himself, the disciples asked where he had been. — “I was,” he said, “on Golgotha, before the crucified Lord, — there, at the feet of the Magdalene.” — But this contemplation was only intellectual. Contemplative prayer is like this in the forgetting of all and captivation in the unseen world. Another example: an elder prepared his meal at the usual hour and stood to pray; but was seized into contemplative prayer and stood in it until the next day, when he came to himself. Saint Isaac the Syrian places as the distinctive mark of contemplative prayer precisely the loss from consciousness of all surrounding and captivation in the heavenly world. According to his witness, the mind has power over itself until this time, but when it enters contemplation or contemplative prayer, it has no power over itself whatsoever. (16, 44–45)