How to Correct the Imagination and Memory

Having spoken of the governance of the external senses, we must now speak also of how to manage the imagination and memory, because—in the opinion of nearly all philosophers—imagination and memory are nothing other than the imprinting of all those sensory objects which we have seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched. One may say that imagination and memory are one interior general sense, which imagines and remembers everything that the five external senses have previously perceived. And in a certain manner the external senses and sensory objects resemble a seal, while the imagination resembles the imprint of that seal.

Imagination and memory have been given to us so that we might make use of their services when our external senses are at rest and we do not have before us those sensory objects that have passed through our senses and been imprinted in them—in the imagination and memory. Being unable always to have before us the objects that we have seen, heard, tasted, smelled, and touched, we summon them before our consciousness by means of imagination and memory, in which they have been imprinted, and thus we examine and consider them as though they were externally present to us.

For example, you once visited Smyrna and then departed from it again and no longer see it with the external sense of your eyes; yet when you wish, you picture Smyrna to yourself by your interior sense, that is, by imagination and memory, you picture it and survey it again as it is, in its own appearance, size, and layout. This does not mean that your soul goes out from you and passes to Smyrna, as some ignorant people suppose; rather, you see within yourself the image of Smyrna that has been imprinted in you.

This imagining of sensory objects causes much trouble and many disturbances to those who strive always to remain with God, for it draws attention away from God and brings it to vanity—and among vanities, to what is sinful—and thereby disturbs our interior good disposition. We suffer from this not only when awake, but also during sleep, from which the impression not infrequently continues for more than one day.

Since imagination is an irrational power operating for the most part mechanically, according to the laws of the association of images, while the spiritual life is a mode of pure freedom, it is self-evident that its activity is incompatible with this life, and I am impelled to offer you some guiding remarks on this subject.

1) Know that since God is beyond all senses and all that is sensory, beyond every form, color, measure, and place—being entirely without image and without visible form, and though He is everywhere, yet is above all things—He is also beyond all imagination. “No imagination has any place in relation to God, for He is beyond every thought and remains above all things” (Ignatius and Callistus, ch. 65, toward the end, in the Philokalia). From this it follows of itself that imagination is a power of the soul which by its very nature has no capacity to abide in the realm of union with God.

2) Know that Lucifer, the first among the angels—who was formerly above all irrational imagination and beyond every form, color, and sense, being a mental, immaterial, formless, and bodiless mind—when he subsequently began to fantasize and filled his mind with images of equality with God, fell from that formless, imageless, passionless, and simple immateriality of the mind into this multiform, composite, and coarse imagination, as many theologians hold; and thus, from a formless, immaterial, and passionless angel, he became a devil—as it were material, multiform, and passion-driven. But what he became, so also became his servants, all the demons, concerning whom we read in Gregory of Sinai the following judgment: “They also were once minds, but having fallen from that immateriality and subtlety, they acquired a certain material coarseness, becoming embodied each according to his rank, degree, and actions which characterized him. As a result they, like men, having lost the angelic sweetness, were deprived of divine enjoyment and were condemned to find satisfaction in earthly things, just as we—having become, as it were, material through habituation to material passions” (ch. 123 in the Philokalia). For this reason the devil is called by the holy fathers the painter, the multiform serpent, one who feeds on the earth of passions, the fantasizer, and other similar names. And the Word of God depicts him as an embodied dragon, with a tail, ribs, neck, nostrils, eyes, jaws, lips, skin, flesh, and other such members. (See concerning this in chapters 40 and 41 of the righteous Job.) From all this understand, beloved, that since the multiform fantasy is the invention and offspring of the devil, it is for him supremely desirable and useful for our destruction. The holy fathers rightly call it the bridge through which soul-destroying demons pass into the soul, mingle with it, and make it a hive of drones, a dwelling of terrible, evil, and God-opposing thoughts, and of every kind of unclean passion, both of soul and body.

3) Know that, according to St. Maximus, the great theologian, the first-formed Adam was also created by God as non-imagining. His mind, pure and formless, being in its very activity a mind, did not itself take on form or image from the action of the senses or from the images of sensory things; but without employing this lower power of imagination, and without imagining any outline, form, dimension, or color of these things, by the higher power of the soul, that is by intellect, it contemplated purely, immaterially, and spiritually the pure ideas of things alone, or their intelligible meanings. But the man-slaying devil—who himself fell through fantasizing about equality with God—led Adam also to the point where he began to fantasize in his mind about equality with God, and fell by this fantasy of his; and for that he was cast down from that intellectual, angel-equal, pure, rational, and imageless life into this sensory, composite, multiform life submerged in images and fantasies—into the condition of irrational animals. For to be submerged in images, or to live in and under their influence, is the property of irrational animals, not of rational beings.

After man had fallen into such a state, who can say into what passions, into what wickedness of character, and into what errors he was led by his imaginary fantasy? He filled ethics with various delusions, physics with many false doctrines, and theology with unseemly and absurd dogmas and fables. And not only the ancients, but also more recent thinkers, wishing to philosophize and to speak of God and of the divine, simple, and imageless mysteries inaccessible to fantasy (for in this labor the higher power of the soul—the intellect—must work), and having approached this task before they had purified their mind of impassioned forms and imaginary images of sensory things, found falsehood instead of truth. And, what is especially calamitous, they have clasped this falsehood of theirs to the embrace of soul and heart and hold it fast as a truth expressing reality. And so, instead of theologians they have appeared as fabulists, having given themselves over, according to the Apostle, ”to a reprobate mind” (Rom. 1:28). (See on this Isaac the Syrian at the end of his letter to St. Symeon, Discourse 55.)

And so, my brother, if you desire to be freed from such errors and passions easily and readily, if you seek to escape the various snares and wiles of the devil, if you long to be united with God and to attain the divine light and truth, enter manfully into battle with your imagination and fight against it with all your powers, in order to strip your mind of every form, color, and outline—and in general of every imagination and memory of sensory things, whether good or bad. For all such things are a defiling and darkening of the purity and brightness of the mind, a coarsening of its immateriality, and a channel by which the mind becomes passion-ridden—since almost no passion, whether of soul or body, can approach the mind except through the imagination of the corresponding sensory things. Strive, then, to keep your mind colorless, imageless, formless, and pure, as God created it.

But you cannot achieve this in any other way than by returning your mind into itself, enclosing it in the narrow place of your heart and the whole inner man, and teaching it to remain there inside without departing—now in secret prayer, mentally exclaiming: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me; now attending to yourself and examining yourself; and above all, contemplating God and resting in Him. For just as a serpent, when it must shed its old skin, goes and forces itself with effort through some narrow passage, as naturalists say, so the mind, forcing itself through the narrow ways of the heart and of the interior prayer of the heart, strips off the garment of imagination of sensory things and of harmful sensory impressions, and becomes pure, bright, and fit for union with God—by reason of the likeness to Him which it thereby receives. Again, just as water, the more it is constrained in narrow channels, the more powerfully it presses and the more swiftly it rushes upward, so the mind, the more it is constrained by secret interior attention and self-watchfulness, the more refined and powerful it becomes and, surging upward, the more inaccessible it becomes to every passion and every assault of thoughts, and to every image of things—not only sensory but even mental—since in that case these remain outside and cannot enter within. I will offer yet another comparison, still more apt. Just as the rays of the sun, being dispersed in the air and separated from one another, are less bright and less warm, but when concentrated to a single point by means of certain lenses, they give a blinding light and a burning heat—so also the mind, being gathered in the center of the heart by self-attention and secret interior practice, becomes luminous and burning, dispersing the material and passionate darkness and scorching and annihilating all images and movements of the same kind.

This is the first and principal method of managing imagination and memory, which you, beloved, must hold to without interruption. By it you will not only correct these powers of the soul, but will also erase from them all traces and remnants of previously received impressions and images of sensory things that arouse and nourish the passions. But the more effective and fruitful this method is, the more laborious it is; and the more laborious it is, the fewer today there are who wish to employ it—not to say, the fewer who believe in its power, especially among the learned and the teachers, not only secular but also spiritual—who, not wishing to trust the teaching of the Holy Spirit and of so many holy fathers who point out this method in the most precious of all books, the Philokalia, are justly deprived of the fruits of the Spirit which many unlearned and even illiterate people are counted worthy to receive. For, in the words of the Savior, God ”has hidden them from the wise and prudent, and has revealed them… to babes” (Lk. 10:21); because those who do not believe in the power of this interior work and do not take it up can by no means understand how beneficial it is, according to the word of the prophet: ”if you will not believe, surely you shall not understand” (Is. 7:9).

When you see that your mind is growing weary and can no longer hold itself within the heart in interior mental prayer, then employ the second method for this purpose, namely allow it to go out and find room in divine and spiritual reflections and contemplations—both those which Holy Scripture imparts, and those to which the creation of God gives occasion and inspiration. Such spiritual reflections, being akin to the mind in their subtlety and immateriality, do not cause it to become coarse or to be enclosed in the exterior; but on the contrary, having satisfied in measure its thirst for free movement in its own domain, by their content they dispose it more quickly to return again into the heart, to union with God through plunging itself into the mental memory of Him alone. This is why the divine Maximus says that “a single practice of action cannot make the mind free from passion if it does not also devote itself to various spiritual contemplations.” Guard yourself, however, from dwelling on the physical side alone of God’s creations, material objects, and animals, while you are still passion-ridden. For in that case the mind, not yet being free from impassioned gazing upon sensory things, instead of passing through them to the spiritual and immaterial thoughts hidden within them, will be carried away by their outward beauty and showiness and, having been sweetened by it, may receive false doctrines about them and impassioned attachments to them—as St. Maximus explains—as has happened to so many and so many natural philosophers.

Or employ a third method for providing rest and repose to your mind, namely: take up meditating on the mysteries of the life and suffering of the Lord—on His birth in the cave, circumcision, presentation before God at the Meeting, baptism in the Jordan, forty-day fast in the desert, His preaching of the Gospel, His manifold miracles, the Transfiguration on Tabor, the washing of the disciples’ feet and the giving of the mysteries at the Supper, His betrayal, His suffering, the cross, the burial, the Resurrection and the Ascension into heaven, on the varied torments of the martyrs and the long, strict ascetic labors of the venerable fathers.

Likewise, for the contrition of your heart and the awakening of repentant feelings, you may also reflect on the mystery of the awesome hour of death, on the terrifying day of Judgment, on the various forms of eternal torment—such as the oceans of unquenchable fire, the dark dungeons of the underworld, the gloomy tartaruses, the undying worms, the cohabitation with demons; reflect also on the rest and inexpressible joys of the righteous, on the Kingdom of Heaven, eternal glory and unceasing blessedness, on the voice of those who celebrate, on the most perfect union with God there, on the everlasting togetherness and dwelling with the angels and all the saints.

If you, brother, paint upon the parchment of your imagination such thoughts and representations, you will not only be freed from unseemly memories and evil thoughts, but will also obtain great praise on that day of Judgment for such a labor, as St. Basil the Great foretells to you in his discourse on virginity, saying that “every person living in this body resembles a painter drawing some image in a hidden place. Just as this painter, when he has finished the picture and brought it out of its hidden place for exhibition, is praised by spectators if he has chosen a good subject for it and has rendered it well, and on the contrary is criticized if he has both chosen a bad subject and rendered it poorly—so every person, when after death he stands before the judgment of God, will be praised and blessed by God, the angels, and the saints if he has adorned his mind and imagination with bright, divine, and spiritual images and representations, and on the contrary will be put to shame and condemned if he has filled his imagination with impassioned, shameful, and base pictures.” And St. Gregory of Thessalonica expresses wonder at how, through the action of sensory things upon the soul by means of imagination, there is established either the mental light that provides eternally blessed life, or the mental darkness that leads into the gloom of hell (Greek Philokalia, p. 969).

Know, however, that what I want to say to you is not that you should always occupy yourself with these thoughts alone—no; employ them only from time to time, while your mind, wearied from holding itself in the confines of the heart, is resting. When it has rested, bring it back into the heart again and make it hold itself there without fantasies and images, in the heart’s memory of God. For just as all shell-dwellers and crustaceans find rest nowhere but in their shells, in which they take shelter as in a home, so the mind naturally finds rest nowhere so much as in the chamber of the heart and the inner man, where, sheltering as in a fortress, it successfully wages war against the thoughts, enemies, and passions likewise hidden there within—although most people do not know this.

That passions and thoughts are hidden within us, in the heart, and from there come forth and do battle with us—this is not my own idea. Hear what the Lord says: ”out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witnesses, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man” (Mt. 15:19–20). And that our enemies the demons lurk around the heart is not something I have devised. So the holy fathers teach. Of them, St. Diadochus explains this with the greatest clarity, saying that before Holy Baptism the divine grace moves a person toward good from without and Satan lurks in the depths of the soul and heart; but after a person receives Holy Baptism, the demon hovers outside the heart, while grace takes up dwelling within (Philokalia, pt. 4, ch. 76). Yet even after Baptism, he says further on (ibid., ch. 82), our enemies are permitted to be in the depth of our body, as it were on the surface of the heart, for the testing of our free will, and from there they smoke up the mind with the moisture of fleshly pleasures. In agreement with this, St. Gregory the Theologian also teaches, interpreting the Lord’s words about how an unclean spirit goes out of a person and returns to him for his even greater harm (Mt. 12:43–45)—that this happens to the baptized when they neglect abiding in the heart. “Expelled by Baptism,” he says, “the unclean spirit, not loving to be homeless, seeks rest, wandering here and there; and, finding none, returns to the house from which it came out, because it is shameless. If it finds that Christ, held there by the attention and love of the baptized, has settled and abides in the place from which it was expelled—that is, in the heart—then, repelled again, it departs without success. But if it finds in someone its former place empty, occupied by no one, through the absence of attention to the Lord and memory of Him, it enters in haste, with greater malice than before. And the last state of that person is worse than the first” (Discourse 40). I have deliberately expanded on this in order the more powerfully to dispose you to remain without departing inside the heart with memory of the Lord Savior and prayer to Him, if you desire always to appear victorious in the disturbances of thoughts and impassioned stirrings breathed upon the heart. When you are there with the Lord, the enemy will not dare to draw near.

Above all else, I tell you, keep watch over yourself and do not let your imagination and memory dwell on what you have previously seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched—especially whatever was shameful and indecent in these experiences. This is where our warfare is most intense, and it is harder and more relentless than the warfare with the senses themselves or with their use. Every person engaged in this struggle knows this from experience. To manage what one takes in through a given sense—whether to perceive something tempting or not—is comparatively easy; but once something has been perceived, managing the imagination and memory of it is very difficult. For example, whether to see a certain face or not, or whether to look at it with passion or without passion—this is not so very hard and does not present a great battle; but after you have seen it and looked at it with passion, it is no longer easy, and it requires a great battle and no small effort to drive the image of that face from your memory. The enemy can toss your soul about like a ball, shifting your attention from one memory to another, stirring up desires and passions beneath them and holding you in a state of passion. This is why I say to you: keep watch, and above all guard your imagination and memory.