Some Questions on the Jesus Prayer

We have received a very charming email from a woman we will call Janice Gaines. She is considering becoming Orthodox and has some questions. Here is the anonymized email, slightly edited for style:

Dear Orthodox Monk:

Providence has been indeed Divine these past few months.

Long, super long, very long story short: Orthodox Christianity has this born and raised Roman Catholic, though lapsed for decades, seriously interested and in consideration of conversion.

My journey has been fortuitous as it has led me to on-line places and videos rich with information, tradition, music, and serenity.

Finding your blog, quite by accident, earlier this evening had me reading page after page after page and finding a treasure trove of answers, further reading materials, meticulous writing (style), and a sense of humour I very much appreciate.

I am considering you, and of course, your blog, my blessing for the day.

Dear Orthodox Monk, I do have a question regarding the Jesus Prayer: In my on-line travels, logging thousands of pages already, I recall an older, mentor monk speaking about the Jesus Prayer being ‘dangerous’ for a novice (monk).

How can a prayer, especially one so tender, offered by a sinner to the Lord Jesus Christ, and begging His mercy, be considered dangerous?

If the Prayer is ‘dangerous’ on the lips of a novice, am I ‘safe’ in its recitation?

My Russian pronunciation is improving by leaps and bounds and I have found the greatest comfort in chanting the Jesus Prayer along with the Valaam Monastery Choir's twenty-one minute video (YouTube)—switching the last syllable to the feminine of course.

Too, in the pages of your blog, a young man remarked that in Greek Orthodoxy, the Jesus Prayer, at least to him, was considered a great ‘secret’ he feared would become trademarked if the true power of the Prayer were known.

I am confounded, dear Orthodox Monk, and I hope you will illuminate.

With sincere appreciation for your learned responses and the time and effort you expend on your blog, I thank you for considering my question for a reply.

God bless you.

Janice

Let us take the questions about the Jesus Prayer first. There are a number of stages in the practice of the Jesus Prayer, from simple group recitation perhaps with a YouTube video 20 minutes once or twice a day, to 24-hour a day, 7-day a week recitation in solitude a cave. At the latter stage the recitation is automatic even in sleep; the Prayer is repeated with the mind in the heart; the practitioner may be practising breath control. It should be clear to Janice that this advanced form of the Jesus Prayer is dangerous for the novice monk—and perhaps even for the advanced monk. So there is a spectrum of practice of the Jesus Prayer and cautions have to be understood in the context of where on the spectrum of practice the cautioner is positioning the practitioner. Moreover, no one can say where precisely on the spectrum the Jesus Prayer ceases to be safe and becomes dangerous. Many factors concerning the person praying enter into question—their personal history, their ecclesiastical situation, their medical health, whether they have a guide, whether they are leading a moral life, whether they go regularly to confession and communion, their family and work and economic situation and so on. For a healthy individual, there is much less danger repeating the Jesus Prayer 20 minutes a day than repeating it all the time in solitude. Similarly, risk in practising the Jesus Prayer is reduced for a member of the Orthodox Church without mental health problems who is leading a moral life. Similarly for someone who is getting along with their family, has a job they like, is economically self-sufficient and is generally not under stress.

We might make some remarks on factors that enter into the question of dangers of the repetition of the Jesus Prayer. However, we can only issue general guidelines; Janice needs a personal guide if she wants personal guidance.

There are several reasons why the Jesus Prayer might become dangerous. First of all, it is the repetition of a short sentence. The repetition itself necessarily stresses the brain. If there are genetically-based mental illnesses involved that stress might precipitate a crisis. This should be clear. But risk is increased if the person is under stress. This should also be clear.

Moreover, the formula of the Jesus Prayer is a formula which in Roman Catholic parlance is an act of repentance or contrition. In the healthy individual, no problem. But in a person with emotional problems, such an emphasis on repentance and contrition might provoke an emotional crisis—or, more likely, exacerbate an existing emotional crisis or condition.

Next, the Jesus Prayer is a prayer that arises out of Orthodox Egypt in the 4^th Century. It is very heavily contextualized by that fact in its historical development. Decontextualizing the Jesus Prayer—say by treating it one form among many of yoga—is fraught with spiritual and emotional and intellectual danger. It behoves Janice to make an effort to understand the Jesus Prayer from an Orthodox point of view, so that she prays it in an Orthodox way. This is indeed a general caution for all those practitioners, such as Eastern-Rite Catholics, Western-Rite Catholics, Protestants and others, who practise the Jesus Prayer ‘without the Orthodox mumbo-jumbo.’

And here we might remark on the trademarking of the Jesus Prayer that Janice alludes to. We don’t recall the passage in the blog she is referring to but the problem is that in America everyone wants the ‘quick fix,’ the easily used and marketed product. That seems to be what the person was referring to. However, the problem is that because of the contextualization of the Jesus Prayer in Orthodox tradition such a packaging is necessarily going to bastardize the practice of the Prayer. On the one hand, the purchaser gets watered-down adulterated goods; on the other hand the adulterated goods might be (spiritually) dangerous or even poisonous.

In this regard we might make a remark in passing that one ordinarily prays the Jesus Prayer in their native tongue. While we laud Janice on her studies of Russian and on her repeating the Jesus Prayer in Russian (necessary if she is going to be repeating it along with a video from Valaam Monastery), she should understand that in Elder Sophrony (Sakharov’s) monastery in Essex (Monastery of St John the Baptist, Tolleshunt Knights), the Prayer is repeated in a group setting in English even though Elder Sophrony was Russian, Athonite and a disciple of St Silouan the Athonite, also Russian.

Next, ultimately the practitioner of the Jesus Prayer is entering into conflict with the powers of darkness in a battle over their own soul. This is not the sort of language that is popular but it is the Orthodox tradition. Elder Sophrony’s book St Silouan the Athonite is good on this. The problem here is that the foolhardy practitioner might out of pride or conceit enter into battle without the support of the Great General, the Holy Spirit. Another metaphor might be that until you know how to swim, don’t jump in the deep end. So this is a caution saying that if you head for the more advanced end of the spectrum of practice before you are ready, you are in great danger: the downside risk is losing the battle and being possessed by a demon.

Next, because the advanced practitioner is entering into spiritual battle, their free will necessarily comes into play. An advanced practitioner of the Jesus Prayer is continually making choices as they deal with their ongoing thought processes in a conscious psychological state where they are faced with accepting or rejecting thoughts that come to them. They might make a mistake. Hence, before they enter into such an intense interior battle, they have to have their judgement trained.

Finally, advanced practitioners of the Jesus Prayer have visions. They might be real. So far so good. But they might be temptations. If the practitioner accepts the temptation, disaster. Again, St Silouan the Athonite is good on this. After an authentic vision of the risen Christ, St Silouan was over the years twice deceived by false visions while praying the Jesus Prayer in an advanced way.

Now let us turn to the broader issue of Janice’s possible conversion to Orthodoxy. First of all, a rule of thumb is that if she decides to remain Roman Catholic then she should practice a Roman Catholic form of spirituality. It simply doesn’t work to transplant an Orthodox tradition into Catholicism.

We would certainly encourage Janice to become Orthodox, but we would like to make the following remark. Orthodoxy, unless the person is drawn by the Holy Spirit, is a closed book. Even pious members of non-Orthodox Christian denominations can’t get past the surface of Orthodoxy, the ritual. They don’t see anything there beyond the ritual. Only from the inside of Orthodoxy is the mystagogy that is embedded in the ritual alive. And ultimately that is what Janice wants.

However, to make a genuine conversion to Orthodoxy, Janice must find Orthodoxy. This is not as easy as it might seem, there being in the United States a plethora of jurisdictions with all kinds of different issues—from rampant secularism to conservative ritualism and formalism. Janice has to pray for God to guide her steps.

A Comment on our Post ‘A Charismatic Question by Email’

We have received a comment on our post ‘A Charismatic Question by Email’. We think that it is worth discussing this comment by ‘Commodus Firmus’ in a blog post. We have edited the comment for clarity.

Hi, the use of the name of Jesus is never in vain and what seems out of place and incompatible today might be a perfect fit tomorrow. If anyone wants to use the Jesus Prayer only good will come of it.

I grew up in Greece. On the one hand, I was steeped in Orthodoxy and the Jesus prayer from a very early age (I discovered the prayer when I was 8-10 and then when I was around 13 I tried it for the first time).

On the other hand, however, the institutionalized Orthodox Church of Greece (as a social structure) was so irrelevant and so unsuccessful in communicating its message that it was (and for many is) just repulsive. For years I was just one more ‘nominal Christian’. The Jesus prayer was the only indication that underneath the rather repulsive visible institutionalized ‘state religion’ there might be hiding a ‘pearl of great price’.

Then I met Protestants—some (nominally) still Greek ‘Orthodox’ but with evangelical tendencies—and also Pentecostals. In sharp contrast to the state church, these people looked as if they practiced what they preached and they taught me to read the Bible too. I was still trying the Jesus prayer every now and then, never ‘breaking’ its secret yet on every occasion I was left with the impression that there is a secret in this short repeated prayer. So I always returned to it. First every 2-3 years, then every 1-2 years, then even more often, until 30+ years after I discovered the Jesus Prayer it became a regular part of my life and returned my heart to the Orthodox Church. I still feel ashamed of the quality of leadership of the Orthodox Church—but then, am I any better? Yet every time some (over?)zealous Orthodox—seemingly out of petty antagonism—speaks ill of other denominations it pains my heart because I learned good things from them. Wasn’t it the Lord who said, ‘from their fruit you will know them’? Well, they are not perfect. It pains my heart too to see some of the doctrinal errors of the non-Orthodox, yet I see the good fruit as well and close my mouth.

The bottom line of all this: If some people want to practice the Jesus prayer, let them practice it—even help them to practice it—be they atheists, Buddhists or Protestants or whatever. The Name of Jesus has a power of its own to work unexpected wonders in the hearts of those praying, no matter who or what they are. Thank God no one has copyrighted the Jesus Prayer and no one has trademarked it! If fact I sometimes think that it works a ‘secret operation’ to bring people back to Orthodoxy. I don’t fear that the Jesus Prayer is something people can exploit commercially but see it more as a cornerstone that can be the foundation for the return [to Orthodoxy? to Jesus?] of those who will put their trust on it or a stumbling block that will crush those who will try to exploit it.

This comment is interesting for its clear expression of a person who although nominally Orthodox is a Protestant in spirit.

Back Beat 4

The easiest thing to do is to respond to specific passages of Alice’s two emails.

Thank you again for your answer. I was very relieved and happy to hear your wise words and I am very grateful for you for answering my questions. If you still have time to help me in my journey I would be most grateful but I understand completely if this subject has taken too much of your time.

The problem is not so much our time, although we often delay because we are preoccupied, but the issue of our not being the appropriate person to answer some of the questions we receive, and the Internet not being the appropriate place to solve intensely personal issues—not to mention that some of the issues raised in this and other emails are actually quite difficult.

I know that one of the reasons that I have thoughts that music is somehow sinful and does not lead to God and maybe even leads people to idolatry, is that I am not yet a member of the Orthodox Church. Because of that I have no one to rely on in regard to questions like this. It would really mean a lot to me if I could find some spiritual father who could help me with my spiritual life. But this is a question of me, not of you I suppose.

Spiritual direction, counselling and fatherhood have to happen face-to-face; they can’t happen—for a variety of reasons, including the lack of confidentiality in email—over the Internet. Admittedly it is hard to find a good Orthodox spiritual father at any time, and especially in countries that have only a minority Orthodox population. However, it is impossible to engage in a serious personal discussion by email: in the very nature of things there is a great deal of filtering that goes on so that it is very hard to get a sense of who exactly the stranger is who has approached you by email. This is true not only of Alice but of all our interlocutors who approach Orthodox Monk. We, Orthodox Monk, really do not feel that we are getting a full image of anyone who sends us an email. Perhaps a great saint with gifts of clairvoyance might be able to handle such a ministry but we cannot. Hence we discourage our blog readers from expecting us to guide them. Alice quite rightly and quite sensibly does not expect that from us but we want to say this clearly for the sake of all of our respected blog readers.

As you probably understand, the Internet is full of all sorts of stuff and sites like this list of the passions by St Peter of Damascus, where ‘flute-playing’ is listed as one of the passions. This does not make me feel comfortable in the least.

As we understand it, in pagan times music was used in pagan rituals which verged on debauchery, apart from the fact that they were devil worship. Flute-playing was part of that. So when we see flute-playing in such a list as this we are really encountering an ancient attitude to pagan ritual. It might be similar today to consider what a pious Orthodox reaction might be to heavy metal with satanic lyrics. However, we doubt that playing a Bach partita on the violin is to be considered in the same light.

The only thing I’ve understood is that in Orthodox Church the Tradition and the Holy Canons are not understood in legal terms but more as a guide to Christian life and ascesis.

It’s a little more complicated. While Roman Catholicism developed in a very legalistic way, especially in the work of Thomas Aquinas, and while Tradition is properly defined in the Orthodox Church as the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church, we cannot completely relativize the canons. However, we can certainly look at what they were intended to accomplish when they were formulated and consider whether the same conditions obtain today. We personally think that in cases where there is not a serious moral issue—say, abortion—then a case can be made for flexibility in the application of the canons given different circumstances today. Certainly if there is a canon of Hippolytus that one should not baptize a music teacher (we do not know), surely today one would be flexible if someone approached for baptism who was teaching little kids to play the violin so they could play Bach.

I hope I have understood this correctly. I might also answer to this that I might possibly understand this better as a member of the Church.

It is true that some things we understand better having entered the Church.

As for my questions, if you have time I would like to ask you what the difference is between the sentiments and the passions. You wrote about the sentiments, how we Westerners are used to thinking of Christianity as being only about the sentiments. Are emotions and passions the same thing?

We think that this is important. In the West, since the day of Thomas Aquinas especially, one thinks that there is only the intellect and the emotions. In the Orthodox spiritual tradition there is the intellect and the emotions and the heart as the spiritual centre of the person. In the West, if one is not intellectual he is emotional—in the good or neutral sense. In the Orthodox Church when one is spiritual he is not necessarily either intellectual or emotional. This issue crops up in the practice of the Jesus Prayer, since in the Orthodox Church the Fathers speak of bringing the mind into the heart there to practice the Jesus Prayer. In terms of Western received psychology this makes no sense whatsoever and can only be interpreted as an emotional or sentimental practice of the Jesus Prayer with a mental concentration on the region of the heart. But that is not what is meant. What is meant is that the person enters consciously into the heart as into their spiritual centre, not their emotional centre. Now the person who brings the mind into the heart does not cease to have an intellect and emotions, and these are harnessed to the practice of the Jesus Prayer in the spiritual centre of the person.

The connection between the sentiments, or emotions, and the passions is this. The passions are the emotions directed towards vice, not virtue. The goal of the ascetic is to purify his emotions so that his emotions are directed to the virtues not to the vices. For every emotional drive in a person, there is a virtue and there is a vice. Fallen man has his emotions directed to the vices; the goal after baptism is to work to direct our emotions to the virtues. This is called ‘purifying the passions’.

Now when we say that Western music concentrates on the sentiments or emotions, what we mean is that Western music does not appeal to the spiritual part of the person centred in the heart as described briefly above, but to the emotions. In particular, demonic music works on the emotions to direct them to the vices, whereas healthier music works on the emotions to direct them towards virtue, or at least towards a greater serenity or even an Aristotelian tragic catharsis. Spiritual music would work more on the spiritual part of the person, so as to harmonize with raising the mind to God, either through the services of the Church or through the Jesus Prayer, or through prayer in a more general sense.

I quite often have the feeling that good music can teach us a small bit of truth. It is not the Truth but it can at least maybe lead people closer to Truth.

As Fr Seraphim Rose of Platina wrote, music can warm the soul; as St Barsanuphius of Optina wrote, ‘When you have children, teach them music. But of course real music—angelic music, not dances and songs. Music assists the development of spiritual perception. The soul becomes refined. It begins to understand spiritual music as well.’ I also think that Theophan the Recluse also said things similar to this. Of this, however, I am again not fully sure.

While this should be understood in light of what is said just above, it should be recognized that in its main outlines 19^th Century Russian religious music was actually Western classical romantic music.

Perhaps I am not totally wrong in thinking that this means ‘good music’, which nowadays (maybe not at the time of Fathers?) can also be instrumental music or songs not specifically composed for liturgical use in the Church. The exhortation of St Basil to young men concerning Greek literature comes to mind as it says ‘There is also good music that David, the Sacred Psalmist, used.’ Tradition also reports that Pythagoras, by changing the melodic scale of the flautist that was leading a merry-making, changed the mood of a drunk crowd so that they became ashamed and went back home. (Quotations not exact but in my own words since I don't have the source here at the moment)

This should make sense in light of what is said above. It doesn’t surprise us that changing the melodic scale of the flute would change the mood of the drunken crowd. That is what we would expect.

I’m the most grateful for you for letting me write these words to you. I don't remember whether I told you before but I suffer from panic attacks and from depression and I see a therapist for that condition. I know that one of the reasons behind all these doubts is that condition. That and a promise I once made to God, during one of my first panic attacks, that if this terrible feeling goes away, I will do for God anything He wants me to do. For this I am at the same time both afraid (for not doing what He wants from me) and not afraid (since I trust that He will lead me if I try to find His meaning for my life).

We are not professionally qualified to address this condition.

I just wanted to say that so that I can be honest. I am not crazy and I hope that you will not worry about me; I just hope that maybe someone like me and with questions like me, will find at least some answers while reading your lovely blog.

...

When I wrote to you about suffering from panic attacks and depression, if it somehow is needed or helpful for your answer, I really don’t mind if you mention it. I just meant that perhaps that is not what your blog is all about if I’ve understood rightly. I had the feeling that your blog is more about issues that are of a more universal type than personal problems such as my health.

This is quite true for the reasons given above.

Still, at the same time I have the feeling that somehow it is because of pride that I won’t give up thinking all the time about music and questions about its dangers in regard to my becoming a member of the Orthodox Church and in regard to my wish to get a bit closer to God. I sometimes feel that if even God Himself were to say to me that no one is going to tell me to stop being a musician and a music teacher, I would not believe Him.

This is something that should be discussed face-to-face with the priest.

This is actually the feeling I get when I pray for God to help me [that no one is going to tell me to stop]. But again, I am not sure about the answers I receive in prayer and for that reason I seek outside assistance on the matter. My prayer answer is a feeling I get that somehow my place in the world is in music. For that I seek to find help from the Church, to find trust and not to get lost in my own thoughts and feelings.

Alice quite sensibly does not want to rely on her own discernment, and God will respect her for that, but as we pointed out the Internet is not the appropriate venue; a face-to-face meeting with a priest is the appropriate venue. For that reason we cannot go into as much detail as a priest might.

We hope that all goes well in your life, Alice. May God bless you.

Aspects of the Orthodox Monastic Vocation

We have received an email from Gordon Philips (not his real name) from London, UK (not his real address). The email reads:

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Just came across your blog this evening. Here is my question, please forgive my long-windedness!
My son expressed an interest in monasticism at a very young age and I laughed about it, thinking, “You don't know what a monk is...” However, one of my closest friends, a Serbian priest, who is quite a kidder himself, chastised me for laughing at this. I was taken aback at the time when he said, “You don't know what God has put into his heart, even at such a tender age! Never laugh at such things.” This having been said, my son is now 13 and we are looking at high school, preparing for college, etc. The other day, he told that he saw himself being part of the clergy. His mother and I are both professional musicians, so I had hoped that he would make the most of his talents; I also hoped he would be chanting with me in the strana more... however, each time he tells me he wants to visit the monastery, I remember the little boy saying, “I want to be a monk.” I know that the Lord calls whom He calls, but what would you recommend I do as a father to neither artificially promote this nor inhibit it?

To which we replied:

Our policy is only to discuss emails we receive publicly on the blog after removing all identifying information. Is this acceptable to you? Thank you very much.
Orthodox Monk

We received a positive reply.

Now we believe that Gordon is not a member of the Orthodox Church. So the first issue is, ‘How could your son become a Christian monk, or even a Christian priest, without first being a member of a Christian church which has a monastic or priestly order?’ And if you are not Orthodox, how will you prompt your son to become a monk or priest in the Orthodox Church? If it’s good enough for your son, isn’t it good enough for you and the rest of your family? Or is it all the same? A Christian cafeteria? The Orthodox Church makes claims about being the true Church founded by Jesus Christ on Pentecost; properly it does not treat all Christian denominations as being on the same dogmatic plane. Your Serbian Orthodox priest friend certainly knows this—if he is following the teachings of the Serbian hierarchy—and certainly can explain these matters to you and even to your son.

So the first issue is to clear up the confusion surrounding your present Church affiliation and your own dogmatic beliefs. And saying, ‘We don’t have any dogmatic beliefs; we only have Jesus’ is a dogmatic belief in itself, and indeed not one that the Orthodox Church holds. If this is your position, sending your son blithely to the Orthodox Church to become a monk while believing ‘It’s all the same whether he’s Protestant or Orthodox’ is going to be a personal disaster for you and the son and the rest of the family. Because it’s just not going to work and he’s going to wonder why you prompted him to go down such a treacherous and slippery path. Because when he wanders off to become a monk he’s ultimately going to encounter the teachings of the Orthodox Church and he’s going to be split between what you taught him and what he suddenly grasps is the historical dogmatic position of the Orthodox Church. This could cause serious damage to him, and in consequence of his distress, to the Orthodox Church. We could foresee an evolution where in his anger and despair the son ended up a Tibetan Buddhist monk.

So what’s the solution? After your Easter and after Orthodox Easter, have a serious conversation with your Serbian Orthodox priest friend about what it means to become Orthodox.

Would it make any sense to try to keep your son Protestant, avoiding discussion about monasticism and ridiculing his interest in monasticism or otherwise trying to keep him within the orbit of your own confession (which we understand to be anti-monastic in its historical origins)? This has never worked; it has only led to martyrdom and distress and family explosions.

Start with your position vis à vis the Orthodox Church.

Let us now continue with an email from John Collins (not his real name) from Paris, France (not his real address). The email reads [material in square brackets added by Orthodox Monk]:

Hello Orthodox Monk,
I honestly stumbled upon your blog and have read a few of your entries. Last April, I entered into the Roman Catholic Church and arrived there from Reformed Protestantism from Atheism. During that time, I have tried to find a spiritual director and have found it to be a challenging endeavor because of my desire for doctrinal orthodoxy. I suffer from OCD [Obsessive Compulsive Disorder] and as I became more committed to Christ and the Church, I found this to have manifestations of scrupulosity [in Roman Catholic spiritual theology, scrupulosity is an over-attention to minor details, something clearly related to OCD]. I eventually acknowledged this as being unhealthy and began seeing a Catholic psychologist who would be able to help me through psychotherapy to navigate these manifestations. Several months ago, I was encouraged by a dear friend (who I consider to be of solid doctrinal mooring) to speak with a priest at my local parish because she understood him to be doctrinally sound. I did so, and explained to him my mental state and the recent manifestations of my OCD, after which he recommended a book to me, Into the Silent Land by Martin Laird. In this book, Fr. Laird seeks to reconcile the concept of contemplative prayer with the spirituality of Western mystics and the Hesychastic tradition. His emphasis is on silence coupled with a detachment from the recursive “videos” we play in our heads. I have taken the advice of my priest and the book and have attempted to daily practice this silence while utilizing breathing techniques and repetition of the phrase, “Lord Jesus Christ.” I have experienced profound peace of mind and have had experiences of profound pleasure while doing this. I am concerned, however, that because much is made in your posts about the contradiction between Thomistic spirituality and the traditions of the Eastern Churches, that I am not faithfully honoring the Roman Catholic Church. I am also concerned that I have a sort of patchwork bastardization of The Jesus Prayer and Hesychasm and could be potentially causing myself serious spiritual damage. If you find you have the time at some point, your thoughts and insights would be much appreciated. May God bless you in your walk with Him.
John

To which we replied:

Our policy is only to reply to emails publicly on the blog after removing all identifying information and, perhaps, correcting for grammar, syntax, spelling and style. Is this acceptable to you?
Orthodox Monk

We received a positive reply.

Now we had never heard of Fr. Martin Laird, OSA, Associate Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University, Villanova PA, USA. This site seems to indicate that Professor Laird teaches a form of Centering Prayer, founded by Fr. Thomas Keating OCSO and related to the system of the late Dom John Main, OSB. We discussed the system of John Main in post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4, post 5, and post 6 in the order given.

From the little that John Collins writes and the little we’ve seen in the last few minutes browsing the Internet for information on Professor Laird and his system, we would think that what Professor Laird is teaching might or might not be good and might or might not be suitable for members of the Roman Catholic Church but it’s a bastardized form of Hesychasm if any claim is being made to a connection to the tradition of the Orthodox Church called Hesychasm.

So this brings us back to the email above from Gordon Philips, which discusses his son’s interest in monasticism. What is monasticism? What connection does it have to the things that Professor Laird is teaching? In other words, do we go to the monastery to practise a form of Centring Prayer with greater assiduity? Now, clearly, in his email John Collins has expressed no interest in becoming Orthodox and no interest in becoming a monk. So we’re not suggesting that that’s why he’s interested in Professor Laird’s system. Quite the contrary, he’s interested in it because of his problem with OCD.

But here’s the point. In America today there is such spiritual confusion that we don’t know why we go to a monastery. We don’t even understand what sound doctrine means as a concept—much less where we might find sound doctrine. And that extends right up to spiritual practice. We think that we can abstract a few key concepts from Evagrius and package them into a system for modern Americans thirsting for God.

John Collins writes: ‘I have experienced profound peace of mind and have had experiences of profound pleasure while doing this [i.e. practising Laird’s system of contemplative prayer].’ Now we’re not God and we can’t judge another person’s experience and we don’t doubt at all that John Collins has had those experiences. But we wonder whether they have anything to do with what the Orthodox understand to be the pursuit of God in the Hesychastic tradition.

In this we would suggest that John Collins very carefully read the Gnostic Chapters by St. Diadochos of Photiki together with our commentary (look for Diadochos under ‘Topics’ in the right margin of the blog.). We have passed our translation over to someone else and he has improved it, but John Collins will we hope be able to find something relevant in our own translation and commentary. The main thing is that St. Diadochos is very clear that spiritual experiences that involve the senses are suspect. This would take a long time to develop analytically and Professor Laird might object; however we would be willing to debate him on the matter.

There is something quite different going on with the Jesus Prayer in the Orthodox Church than what we understand Professor Laird to be teaching.

John Collins wants our advice what he should do. Well, he’s got a Roman Catholic priest; he’s got a Roman Catholic psychotherapist. Where’s Orthodox Monk going to fit into all of that? We’re not knocking it—John is being very prudent and very careful; we felicitate him—but how many advisors can a man have? That having been said, our own view is that if John Collins wants to be Roman Catholic he should stick to a traditional Roman Catholic method of prayer. There are Carmelite third orders; there are Cistercian monasteries; and so on and so forth. He should leave these syncretistic Roman Catholic systems based ultimately on a faulty understanding of the relationship between Christianity and Oriental religions (vis à vis contemplation) and stick to something Roman Catholic. But if he’s interested in the Jesus Prayer in and of itself, then he should start with a conversation with an Orthodox priest about what the Orthodox Church teaches. In other words, if he wants to be Roman Catholic he should leave this stuff alone but if he wants to get involved with the Orthodox aspects of it for their own sake then he should consider becoming Orthodox.

But this again returns us to Gordon Philip’s email. Let us look at what is implied by the above about the spiritual atmosphere of American Christianity. Religion among many American Christians has become experience-orientated. Whence Pentecostalism and the charismatic renewal; whence Centring Prayer and similar. Now there is nothing intrinsically wrong or even remarkable with this shift in cultural mood. But an over-emphasis on experience leads to an indifference to dogma—so-called cafeteria Catholicism extended to an experiential cafeteria Christianity. And it leads to an approach to religion and even monasticism as the pursuit of one more experience. But as Diadochos teaches, such a path is fraught with serious danger. The cultivation of spiritual experience received by the senses (and this is technical terminology in Diadochos) leads to opening oneself to false spiritual experience.

Much of what is happening on the Christian Right in America can be understood on this plane: spiritual experience that is not based in spiritual reality. To give an indication of just how serious this can get, before he announced his candidacy for President, Rick Perry was given a prophecy that seemed to say that he was called to be President of the United States of America, and his wife was later recorded on video as strongly encouraging other Christian candidates for President to drop out of the Presidential race because Rick had the true and real anointing to be President. Moreover, it seemed to us that Mrs. Perry was conflating ‘Christian’ with ‘conservative’—i.e. it seemed to us that the two words were synonymous in her mind. For better or for worse Rick ultimately dropped out of the 2012 Presidential campaign. The prophecy? Well, maybe it was misunderstood. This is the road of spiritual experience without discernment: fraught with serious and present danger.

To return to a more personal level, if Gordon Philip’s son is formed psychologically (i.e. raised by his parents) with this or a similar point of view and goes to an Orthodox monastery, two things are possible. One he won’t be able to hack it because they don’t pray in tongues (we’re being a little sarcastic but the point is valid); or two they will pray in tongues and the son will waste his life and soul in spiritual deception.

It is important to realize that in the Orthodox Church, monasticism and spiritual experience are grounded in Orthodox dogma and participation in the Orthodox mysteries (sacraments) starting with baptism. And there are two thousand years of the experience and teaching of Saints and Fathers of the Church that inform Orthodox monasticism’s understanding of these matters.

Let us now look at another email, from Ronald James (not his real name) from Ajax, Kansas (not his real address). The email reads:

Hello
I suppose all I want to ask is, How does someone know if they should become a monk?
I have had thoughts about it and mentioned it to my spiritual father and he advises me. I am obedient to him, is that all I can do? Will I know if it is what I am called to? Thoughts that go through my head are things such as if I'm not married by the time I'm 30 then that's when I should become a monk, or I shouldn't waste another moment and seek it out as soon as possible.
I suppose my mixed up thoughts are a sign that it is either not for me or I am not ready.
Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.Wishing you a glorious and fruitful Lent.
Confidentially,
Ronald James
Ajax, Kansas

To which we replied:

Our policy is to answer emails only publicly on the blog after we have removed what we think are all identifying marks that would tie the email to a specific person, also correcting the email for what we think is good grammar and spelling. Is this acceptable?
Orthodox Monk

To which Ronald replied positively. So we put his email in the hopper for processing.

And here’s what we thought. Ronald writes: ‘Thoughts that go through my head are things such as if I'm not married by the time I'm 30 then that's when I should become a monk, or I shouldn't waste another moment and seek it out as soon as possible.’ Now this is a dead give-away that Ronald is being tempted. This is not the form of a vocation but the form of tempting thoughts (Evagrius again). This does not exclude a vocation but it is not how a vocation works. So the Devil is up to something in putting these ideas about monasticism into Ronald’s head. By definition the Devil is up to no good, so there’s something wrong here with this enticement to monasticism. As we said, this does not exclude a vocation but this is not it. Ronald should confess the thoughts to the confessor and be strictly obedient to the confessor. If the confessor makes a mistake, God will protect Ronald, especially if he does have an underlying vocation that the Devil is monkeying about with.

Then we got this second unexpected email from Ronald:

Hello
I am writing a second email regarding a separate topic. I feel that I am alone in my sin.
Last week I was off work for the whole week so that I could attend the daily services of my parish. First week of Lent is such a crucial time. The week went well and I did much reading. On Sunday on the way home from church I started having thoughts of monasticism. Yesterday was my first day back at work and in the “real” world. I work in a supermarket and I found myself looking at every single pretty woman that came into the store. I don't think I had an actual improper thought. Later that night I had to send an email to my brother using the family computer (my old computer from university) and I had a thought about some pornographic videos I had downloaded years and years ago. I did a search of the computer’s content and found them. I ended up committing the sin of self abuse and then I cried. My question is this. This sin, before I returned to my Father's house, was part of my every day life. This has made it very difficult for me to reject the thought of doing it. All this and the fact I even had thoughts of monasticism the day before make me very sad. I suppose I want advice on how to combat such a deep rooted passion that I was so mindlessly committing on a regular basis less than two years ago. Also I suppose I also want to know what would happen if a monk committed this sin? Is it something that would never happen? Please please please post this email.

First of all, one such instance of this particular sin does not preclude, exclude or forbid a subsequent monastic vocation, or even, for that matter, a priestly vocation. However, putting the two emails together we have the following remarks. Ronald is clearly going to have to spend some years stabilizing his moral life before he even considers a monastery. He is going to have to learn to live in chastity as a lay member of the Orthodox Church. We realize that this can be difficult, especially if there is a previous history of enslavement to a passion. However, we believe that with Christ’s help all things are possible and doable. Usually an isolated sin like this occurs—if we understand St John of Sinai in the Ladder of Divine Ascent correctly—because of pride. That of course would lead to the question of whether pride and vainglory entered into Ronald’s concentration on the spiritual in the first week of Lent. We don’t have an answer to this; this is something that he should discuss seriously with his confessor. In the years that Ronald will have to live as a maturing Orthodox layman, he will have to assess with his confessor how well he can control his urges. If he cannot control his urges, no visions or voices or dreams or whatever can constitute a vocation to the monastic life: he must get married. This is not something that should distress Ronald. He should in such a case have the humility to recognize that God has not called him to the monastic life and that he is called to marriage. Moreover, as we pointed out a single fall such as Ronald documents is not in itself a barrier to a monastic vocation. However, the question has to be raised—and will be raised in the monastery when he presents himself as a postulant—whether Ronald can control himself in a vocation to life-long chastity. Monks retain free will and can be tempted, although the consequences of a sin against chastity for a monk under vows can be dire, as St John of Sinai documents in the Ladder. As the service of tonsure itself says, better not to vow than to vow and not to fulfill. You’re better off being a moral married layman and going to Heaven than an immoral tonsured monk and going to Hell.

So let us go back again to Gordon Philip’s email about his son wanting to be a monk. We can see that becoming an Orthodox monk is a serious business, one not to be trifled with. Gordon and his son should think about what an Orthodox monastic vocation entails. It is not a matter of practising Centring Prayer with greater dedication. It is a matter of being an angel of God. It’s a serious business. As the Gospel says, you must count the cost.

Here is what we said on the topic some years ago; since we think it's very relevant to the emails we are discussing today we repeat it below in full:

The central problem of the monastic life is the nature of the passions, the nature of the battle against the passions and the nature of dispassion. This has nothing to do with the proper way to meditate.

When the modern reader reads the Ladder, he is ‘freaked out’ by the severity of the Prison. What we should understand is that the passions are very deeply rooted in the human person, that their eradication is very difficult and that the spiritual damage sin does to a Christian is greater than realized.

Why would anyone become a monk? After all, he could, presumably, repeat ‘Maranatha’ twice a day in the married state.

The angel is the light of the monk and the monk of the layman. The ideal of the monk is the angel; the ideal of the layman is the monk.

In the monk, the movement from passion to dispassion—in Western terminology, the ‘conversion of morals’: the passage of the soul through the purgative stage, then the illuminative stage, then into the unitive stage of the mystical life—is a passage, ideally, from an ordinary human condition to the condition of an angel. This is explicit both in Evagrius’ Monk and in St John’s of Sinai’s Ladder.

It is not by accident that in the late step of the Ladder that discusses Hesychasm, the Hesychast is described as ascending through the angels until he reaches the Seraphim.

Consider again St John’s definition of the monk:

1, 10 A monk is the order and condition of the bodiless powers accomplished in a material and sordid body. A monk is he who has only the commandments and words of God in every time, place and thing. A monk is continual violence to nature and a faultless guard of the senses. A monk is a purified body, a cleansed mouth and an enlightened mind. A monk is a soul full of pain that is occupied in the uninterrupted memory of death both awake and sleeping.

Contrast this to the instructions that St John gives to laymen:

1, 38 I heard some men who were settled in a negligent state in the world asking me: ‘How can we, living together with spouses and surrounded by public cares, follow the monastic state?’ I replied to them: ‘All things good that you can do, do. Revile no one. Steal from no one. Lie to no one. Be arrogant with no one. Hate no one. Do not separate yourselves from the services of the Church. Be sympathetic towards those in need. Cause scandal to no one. Do not approach the portion of another and be satisfied with the wages that your wives can give you. If you do thus, you are not far from the Kingdom of the Heavens.’

St John views the monastic state as violence to human nature so as to attain to what is above human nature, the angelic state. He views the lay state as a matter of attending Church and living a just life. This is very similar to Jesus’ advice to the rich young man: If you want to inherit eternal life, keep the commandments. You have done all these since your youth? Then if you want to be perfect, sell all that you have, give to the poor and come follow me. St John of Sinai is emphatic that it was not for the sake of baptism but for the sake of the monastic vocation that the rich young man was called upon to sell his possessions and give to the poor.

The monastic calling is a calling of perfection. The monk works at eradicating his passions so as to become angelic. Here we understand ‘passion’ to be an emotional tendency to sin founded on a pleasure of the senses. Our Episcopalian reader is right: it is our desires that are at the root of the passions; and we cure our passions by refusing desire. However, in the classic analysis of the Orthodox monastic Fathers (articulated originally by Evagrius but enunciated by many other Fathers, especially including St John of Sinai), it is the demons that excite the passion, awakening desire in us. In the practice of the Jesus Prayer, the inception of a tempting image in the mind is due to the demon that has approached and excited our passion, our desire. This is true of any of the eight passions. It would be impossible to understand the School of Sinai, especially St Hesychios, St John of Sinai’s disciple, without understanding this analysis.

The ‘fundamental theorem’ of this school, recapitulated by St Maximos the Confessor in his ascetical writings, is that you cannot see God before you have eradicated your passions. In the Monk, Evagrius says this:

61 The mind will not advance nor depart that good departure and come to be in the land of the bodiless [powers] if it has not corrected what is within. For the disturbance of the familiar [parts of the soul] is accustomed to return it to those things from which it has departed.1

What Evagrius is saying is that the monk will not be able to enter into the illuminative stage of the mystical life (here identified with ‘the land of the bodiless powers’, i.e. the condition of the angels) until he has passed from his impassioned state to a state of virtue. That is what it means to have ‘corrected what is within’. The ‘disturbance of the familiar parts of the soul’ is the disturbance the monk experiences in his consciousness due to passions that he has not yet eradicated. Evagrius is saying plainly that a person who enters into contemplation before he has got rid of his passions will be obliged to return to the earth, to his impassioned reality, because of disturbances of soul caused by his uneradicated passions.

It is not easy for us to eradicate the passions.

In the doctrine of St John of Sinai in the Ladder, the layman does not attempt to eradicate his passions; he attempts to live a just life. We might say a virtuous life.

But someone might object: well, that’s just what Evagrius says in the precondition for me to enter into contemplation.

Not quite.

Evagrius has a doctrine of purity from the passions, and of virtue, that goes far deeper than anything that could be expected of a layman. The virtuous layman continues to have a residue of the passions within. Indeed, in his married state he can work on a complete eradication of the passions only if he voluntarily accepts to live with his wife in chastity. But that is not a condition for his salvation and it is not imposed on him by the Church.

When we are discussing the eradication of the passions we must understand that the ideal is the monk who has become the equal of an angel: he no longer has any passions at all. He has a complete accession of virtue.

Most monks start off in the coenobium. The Ladder itself is intended for coenobites and not for Hesychasts, even though its author was a Hesychast for forty years. If we think that the Ladder is severe even though it is only for coenobites, we should consider the standard that St John of Sinai is setting for Hesychasts. Absolute purity, including in thought.

The steps of the Ladder are intended to purify the coenobite of his passions. They prescribe largely external means. By and large they do not enter into the issue of purifying the coenobite in his thoughts. That is reserved for the Hesychast.

Now it might be thought that St John of Sinai was ignorant. He didn’t know that with an oriental method of meditation with a Christian mantra he could enter into direct contact with God, surpassing self, in the married state.

However, poor old St John is the originator of the following remark: ‘The practice of stillness (hesychia) is the constraint of the immaterial mind in the material body, a most remarkable thing.’ He is the originator of this statement: ‘Let the Jesus Prayer cleave to your breath and you will know the benefits of stillness (hesychia).’ He has some very explicit instructions on the practice of Hesychasm. He was a Hesychast for forty years. But, strange thing, he doesn’t think that the Jesus Prayer is going to do everything in no time flat for the layman or for the monk in the coenobium. How could he be so deluded?

Eradicating our passions in our actions, which is the task of the coenobite, is hard. It requires ascesis. That is why a layman might choose to become a monk: he might decide he wants to become perfect and that he will take the hard road.

Eradicating our passions in our thoughts, which is the task of the hermit or Hesychast, is even harder. It is for those few monks who are able to carry through the Hesychast program.

Again let us quote this passage from Evagrius:

40 The mind would not be able to see the place of God in itself not having become higher than all [mental representations] which are in [sensible] objects. It will not become higher, however, if it does not unclothe itself of the passions, which are what, by means of the mental representations, bind it together with the sensible objects. And the passions it will lay aside by means of the virtues; the mere thoughts, then, by means of spiritual contemplation; and this [i.e. spiritual contemplation], again, when, during the time of prayer, that light shines upon the mind that works in relief the place which is of God.2

Starting from Evagrius and continuing with St John of Sinai and the other members of the School of Sinai, the precondition of having ‘that light shine upon the mind that works in relief the place which is of God’—of being divinely illuminated—is complete purification from the passions even in thought. Hence, normally in the Orthodox tradition, it is only the Hesychast who has this experience. This is at the heart of the Hesychast controversy on Mt Athos in the 14th Century.

Part of the Hesychast program in the Orthodox tradition is the repetition of the Jesus Prayer, but there is much more to the Orthodox tradition of Hesychasm than just the repetition of the Jesus Prayer. The tradition contains explicit instructions for combating the passions in thought so as to attain to that complete purification from the passions even in thought which is necessary for divine illumination. The end-result is called by St John of Sinai dispassion.

When he is addressing coenobites, St John of Sinai changes somewhat the traditional formulation of the goal of the monk. He makes the goal of the coenobite deep humility, not divine illumination. He leaves divine illumination to the Hesychast in the cave.

This should make us realize not only just how difficult the monastic vocation is, but just how difficult is the further vocation of the monk to Hesychasm.

1The Psychological Basis of Mental Prayer in the Heart, Fr Theophanes (Constantine), Vol. II, The Evagrian Ascetical System, p. 27. 2006. Mt Athos, Greece: Timios Prodromos.

2The Psychological Basis of Mental Prayer in the Heart, Fr Theophanes (Constantine), Vol. II, The Evagrian Ascetical System, p. 178. 2006. Mt Athos, Greece: Timios Prodromos.

The Jesus Prayer in the Roman Catholic Church Revisited (Updated Twice)

A reader has sent us an email concerning the Jesus Prayer.  We will call our reader Felix Courtney-Smith, not his real name.  Mr Courtney-Smith has accepted that we discuss his email on the blog.  Here is what he says, slightly edited:

I recently read your post about the Jesus Prayer and Hesychasm in the Eastern Rite Catholic Church.

I was looking up the Jesus prayer because a song writer I like was getting ready to publish a song based on it on his next album. He quoted Pope John Paul II as saying ‘The Church must come to breathe the Spirit of God with both lungs (Eastern and Western)’.  It is a saying I've heard often and you may not be aware of it but there seems to be a growing resurgence and appreciation of Eastern theology within the Western church.

I was wondering if you could take some time to explain to me more fully what the concept of 'bringing your mind into your heart' means to you.  You stated that the concept is at odds with 'Thomistic psychology' which I must admit some ignorance of, at least under that term. However the explanation of it that you gave seems perfectly compatible with Franciscan spirituality as well as the writing of St. John of the Cross, St. Thérèse of Lisieux and a somewhat new and mildly controversial practice promoted by the United States Catholic Bishops known by the name 'centering prayer'.

I was at a loss as to what the incompatibility that you see and what you mean by ‘bringing the mind into the heart’?

Do you believe your mind to have physical existence? By heart do you mean the red pulsating organ that physicians operate on?  Or (as I assume) are you referring to some kind of conceptual constructs?  Can you define or describe those constructs so as to explain what you mean by ‘bringing your heart into your mind’?

The idea of a repeated prayer that helps to keep one in constant union with Christ is one familiar to me both from recommended practices taught in various books—either the name Jesus repeated always or the phrase ‘Jesus have mercy on me’—and from various Roman Theologians such as Dietrich Von Hildebrand.

In any case I would like to understand what the differences are that you see between these two traditions on this topic (if you have the time and are willing to assist me).

Thank you sir,

Felix

Let see if we can address the issues.  There is both a simple answer and a very complex answer.

The simple answer is that Mr Courtney-Smith would do well to use the right hand margin of this blog, where the labels are, clicking on ‘Jesus Prayer’ and reading all the entries in chronological order, from the oldest to the newest.  In that series there is a set of posts entitled Jesus Prayer 1 through Jesus Prayer 7 that addresses some of his issues and also contains a small reading list.

Also there is a series of posts that constitute a dialogue with an Episcopalian who was practising the form of Centering Prayer taught by Dom John Main, OSB.  The first post, dated December 16, 2006, is here.  The reader should use the archive facility in the right hand margin and starting with the post indicated read each newer post until the dialogue finishes.

Finally the post that the reader originally cited contains links to a polemic with the Byzantine Catholic Forum.  That would handle the ecclesiastical – theological issues.

Let’s see if we can now approach directly the issue that Mr Courtney-Smith is raising.

First of all, best wishes to his song-writer friend.

Next, we have never heard of Dietrich Von Hildebrand.

Next, we are aware of Pope John-Paul II’s dictum.  However, although Pope John-Paul II is fast-tracked for canonization in the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox laity is as a whole indifferent.  He is not looked at favourably, especially in Russia where his missionary actions were considered to be very aggressive.

Next, the very fact that Mr Courtney-Smith can’t make sense of what we might intend by ‘bringing the mind into the heart’—although it must be admitted that Orthodox often have difficulties with the concept—is an indication of what the problem is.

First of all, our mind is our consciousness.  The idea of bringing the mind into the heart suggests that we can move our consciousness around, in particular making it descend to the physical region of the heart.  The portrait of human faculties delineated by St Thomas Aquinas in the Summa simply does not foresee this.  This is what we meant when we said that the practice was incompatible with St Thomas’ philosophical psychology.  There is simply no provision in St Thomas for what the Orthodox Philokalic tradition teaches concerning the Jesus Prayer.

Moreover, St Thomas has a very restricted view as to what philosophically intuitive functions the human mind has, restricting human intuitive cognition to very simple axioms of logic.  But the Jesus Prayer is based on intuitive cognition.

The result is that someone coming out of the Roman Catholic tradition thinks that apart from reason there is only emotion.  That is why Roman Catholic spirituality tends to be either intellectualistic or sentimental.  But the tradition of the Orthodox Church in the Jesus Prayer depends on intuitive cognition and eschews sentimentality.  This is not to deny the role of Grace, but it is to suggest that the two traditions have different understandings of how the human person interacts with Divine Grace on the level of philosophical psychology.

Moreover, while Mr Courtney-Smith thinks that the practice of the Jesus Prayer must be consistent with St John of the Cross, St Thérèse of Lisieux and the Franciscans, we doubt this.  St John of the Cross was a scholastic in psychology; St Thérèse was a 19^th Century French mystic who would have been following the spirituality of the Discalced Carmelites, derived from St John of the Cross and St Theresa of Avila.  And we simply don’t think that the Franciscans bring their mind into their heart.

The Jesus Prayer is not only a matter of the repetition of a pious, repentant formula.  There is more to it.

It is true that St John Cassian, who transmitted the Philokalic tradition in part to the West, would have had some indirect influence on St John of the Cross.  But by the time the texts of Cassian would have reached St John of the Cross, they would have been reinterpreted in conformity with Roman Catholic scholastic understandings of the human person.

Where we can find a discussion in context of bringing the mind into the heart is in the Philokalia and in the Ladder of Divine Ascent of St John of Sinai.  Also there is Elder Sophrony’s recent book on St. Silouan the Athonite.  There are texts in the Philokalia, such as of St Gregory of Sinai (14^th Century), which discuss how to force the mind into the heart when it doesn’t want to descend on its own.  We are not recommending that anyone take up this practice of forcing, but we want to point out just how important the concept of bringing the mind into the heart is to the spirituality of the Orthodox Church.  However, precisely because the Roman Catholic tradition doesn’t foresee a basic aspect of this form of Orthodox Spirituality—intuitive cognition—Roman Catholic translations of Orthodox spiritual texts tend to present the texts in a sentimental light and are therefore to be avoided if one wants to understand how the Orthodox themselves view the Jesus Prayer.

It should be understood that the repetition of the Jesus Prayer is only the beginning of the spiritual road of the Philokalia.  The other part is the battle against tempting thoughts.  But this is an aspect of the Jesus Prayer that we dare say is completely ignored in Roman Catholic renditions of the practice.  For an understanding of the Jesus Prayer at this level, we would suggest the Ladder of St John of Sinai and St Diadochos of Photiki.  Our own translation of St Diadochos can be found in the archives for August, 2008.  Our commentary on his text can be found in the archives for March, April and May, 2009.

Briefly, the practice of the Jesus Prayer as found in the Orthodox Church begins with the repetition of the formula, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner’—although other formulas are in use—and proceeds to the continuous oral repetition of the formula.  Then the practitioner proceeds to the silent repetition of the formula with the consciousness in the head.  Then the consciousness is gradually brought into the physical region of the heart (this takes a number of years of practice of the Prayer under the guidance of an experienced practitioner).  Then at some point, through Grace, the Prayer should begin to be repeated automatically in the heart.  St Diadochos discusses in his 5^th Century work the repetition of the Prayer even in sleep.

As the consciousness becomes more focused because of the repetition of the Prayer the practitioner becomes more aware of tempting thoughts that intrude into the consciousness.  The practitioner of the Prayer begins to combat the intrusive tempting thoughts under the guidance of his spiritual teacher.  This is the mental ascesis that is so important a part of the tradition of the Jesus Prayer.  St Diadochos has much on this aspect of the Prayer.

Hence, the Jesus Prayer begins with the oral repetition of the Jesus Prayer and ends with the conscious automatic repetition of the formula in the heart, all the while the practitioner keeping the consciousness clear of tempting thoughts.

We are of the opinion that none of this is foreseen in Roman Catholic spiritual practice.

May God bless you.

UPDATE 2011/02/18:

Mr Courtney-Smith replies as follows (see his comment below the post):

Mr Courtney-Smith writes:

You encouraged me to read so I read many pages of the suggested material on this blog. I also did a search for the phrase ‘mind into heart’ and read the very few places the phrase actually occurs in context.

Still I find there is no answer provided to what seems a simple enough question.

You have said it is important to ‘move one’s mind into one’s heart’. (Am I correct?)

To which I simply wanted to ask the question:  “What do you mean?”

You said “we can move our consciousness around, in particular making it descend to the physical region of the heart”

I am asking sincerely, because in truth I am fully ignorant as I hope you will see.

Do you mean to suggest that it is your belief that it is possible to measure (in feet or cm) the distance of my consciousness from my eyes or heart or finger, or some other part of my body?

If I take the literal meaning of your words, that is what I would take them to mean. What do you mean?

I'm trying to be as specific as possible because I don't know what language you speak natively and subtleness can be easily lost in translation.

To me doing something 'physically' implies a change is some material the can be measured as a function of the physically properties of the object changed.

How do you mean the word physically?

These are reasonable questions.  First of all, our native language is not in issue.  What is in issue is a conceptual confusion.  Wittgenstein wanted to show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle of conceptual confusion; Orthodox Monk wants to show Mr. Courtney-Smith the way out of the conceptual confusion in his head and into his heart.

Mr Courtney-Smith seems to have been trained in the physical sciences, possibly chemistry.  We would think that the only possible way to study the Jesus Prayer and the descent of the mind into the heart would be to have a practitioner from Mt Athos, if one could be found, to leave his cave and go to MIT to be studied in MIT’s program for studying meditation.  There they use a functional nuclear magnetic resonance imaging machine to study the parts of the brain that are active during various stages of meditation.  Presumably the practitioner would not be distracted by the machine environment and would bring his mind into his heart while the scholars studied what was happening to his brain function.  How the practitioner would signal that his mind was now into his heart is unknown to us, so we don’t know how the scientists would calibrate their images of brain function against the Athonite cave-dweller’s subjective experience.  Let’s suppose that it could be done.  We don’t know what would be found, but we are interested.  Orthodox Monk is an amateur but he would be delighted to go to MIT from his igloo in the Arctic for such a test.

Now while the Athonite cave-dweller was lying in the functional NMRI machine and bringing his mind into his heart, what would he understand?  Surely he would subjectively understand that his mind was in his heart.  What would that mean? Mr Courtney-Smith asks with exasperation.  Well, let’s see if we can explain on the basis of our amateur understanding.

Since our mind is our consciousness, we can focus it on a point.  Let us start with our finger.  I can concentrate on my finger.  Or I can concentrate on the mountain in the distance.

Now, remember that the Jesus Prayer is being repeated.  It is a fixed formula.  This has the effect of concentrating our mind on the words of the Prayer.  It’s a bit like karate.  The student of karate learns to concentrate on his fist the instant his fist makes contact with his opponent, so that all his mental energy is focused on the actual blow.

(Incidentally this is why you shouldn’t be doing the martial arts when you are doing the Jesus Prayer: they’re both tapping into some of the same human potentialities, but at cross purposes.  This is true even of the ‘soft-style’ martial arts, perhaps even more so because the soft-style martial arts are more systematically training the practitioner in a form of oriental meditation.  The principle, apart from dogmatic issues, is not to mix two forms of meditation.  Moreover, although we have defined the mind to Mr Courtney-Smith as the consciousness with which we experience reality, it should be understood that the mind is also the created spirit of man, the highest part of the soul.  It is with the mind that we apprehend spiritual realities, using the mind’s potential for intuitive cognition.  The problem is to encounter Orthodox spiritual realities; the danger is that we might encounter Satan masquerading as an angel of light.  Moreover, in our original reply to Sarah Jones, we recommended that she have a quiet time apart from prayer where ideally she would be working with her hands.  Our reasoning is that the practice of a handicraft, well-attested in the ascetical tradition, helps train the mind.)

So instead of concentrating on my finger, or even on the karate blow I am landing, I concentrate on the words of the Jesus Prayer.  But since the repetition of the Jesus Prayer is focusing my consciousness like a flame from a gas jet, and since I have an orientation in space and time, as I advance in the oral repetition of the Jesus Prayer, my consciousness is naturally focused on my tongue and mouth—after all that is where I am articulating the Jesus Prayer all day long.

Now let us say that I advance to the silent repetition of the Jesus Prayer.  Given the preceding, it should be clear that the silent words of the Jesus Prayer will present themselves as physically located in my head—that’s where we think and that is where our thoughts present themselves to us in consciousness.  Our mind has ascended from our mouth to inside our head.  So far we are sure that Mr Courtney-Smith is following.

Now the next stage is to integrate the silent repetition of the Jesus Prayer with the breath.  One mentally articulates the first half of the formula with the intake of the breath; one mentally articulates the second half of the formula with the outtake of the breath.  Now since the breath is descending into the lungs, the effect of this is that the gas jet of consciousness is going to follow the words of the Prayer into the lungs and then out of the lungs again.

The next stage is to bring the mind into the heart.  Here, the subjective experience is that there is a ‘road of descent’ into the heart that has been mapped by combining the silent repetition of the Prayer with the breath and that there is a place where the consciousness unites with the heart, taken to be the spiritual centre of the person.  The fathers place this spiritual centre in the region of the physical heart.  This is where the results of the functional NMRI would be interesting, although all it would show would be what the brain is doing at that moment, not what the heart is doing.  We suppose that they might also hook up an electrocardiograph to the practitioner of the Jesus Prayer, but we don’t know what it would show.  What the practitioner experiences subjectively is that his gas jet of consciousness is now centred in the region of his physical heart and that he is deep inside himself.

Mr Courtney-Smith wants to know what can be measured.  Hard to say since we are dealing with consciousness and with subjective experience.  Is it a mere fantasy?  No.  Without going into details, a Staretz can tell a disciple exactly where the disciple is silently praying the Jesus Prayer (in the heart?  in the head?) and could probably even tell him what formula he was using in his silent prayer—and sometimes even at a distance.  This is not just some Athonite mumbo-jumbo, self-hypnosis or whatever.  There is an objective dimension, but as with all religious experience it isn’t easily susceptible to scientific measurement.

Moreover, St Silouan the Athonite (†1938) attests that he was given the automatic repetition of the Jesus Prayer in the heart as a gift while he was praying before an icon of the Mother of God.  So we can see that there is also an element of the Grace of God in the practice of the Prayer.  See St. Silouan the Athonite by Arch. Sophrony (Sakharov).

Now to make things clear we have presented the above as a method of meditation.  Recall that in a previous post, Sarah Jones wanted to know about mechanical repetition of the Jesus Prayer and the danger of delusion.  Here we can see more clearly what the danger is.  Let us suppose that we are following the above schema (and it is schematic for ease of presentation) without being a committed member of the Church—the Orthodox Church.  Sarah quoted to us in her email a passage that suggested that there is a serious danger of falling into delusion, the deception of the Devil, if we do the above in a mechanical way.  We agree.

The descent of the mind into the heart is not only a phenomenon with spatial attributes but it is also a conscious penetration into the psychological regions of our personality that are usually called the unconscious or subconscious.  The result is that descending with the mind into the heart brings about an encounter with personal subconscious repressed material.  This material initially presents itself as an image that invites one to commit sin (of any number of kinds).  The ascetical Fathers discuss this sort of thing.  It is possible to force your mind into your heart before you are ready but you won’t have the strength to combat the tempting material you will encounter on the way.  You can go mad.

We have presented this in terms of natural psychology but at this level the ascetical tradition speaks of temptations from the demons.  This encounter on the road to the heart is also a spiritual phenomenon.  Recall that the gas jet of consciousness is our created spirit and that its capacity for intuitive cognition enables us to encounter spiritual realities.  The problem is that we are going to have to battle against demonic spiritual realities on the way to God.

To return to the issue of mechanical repetition, while the Jesus Prayer is being prayed in the above way, in the normal Orthodox case it is also ‘meant’ or ‘intended’.  As members of the Church we are engaged emotionally, psychologically and spiritually with the meanings or concepts contained in the words of the Prayer (‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’) in the way people understand when they say ‘he is praying from the heart’.  This is of course a different sense from what we mean by ‘bringing the mind into the heart’.  The repetition of the Prayer becomes an emotional, psychological and spiritual encounter, although there is equally a danger if too much emphasis is placed on emotion—that could lead to emotional exaggeration, and its attendant imbalance of personality.  Moreover, the Philokalia and all the other writings on the Jesus Prayer assume that the practitioner of the Jesus Prayer is a member in good standing of the Orthodox Church, regularly going to confession and when permitted to communion.  The Jesus Prayer is a part of the life of an engaged member of the Church.  Moreover, it is assumed that there will be a guide.  In this see Way of the Pilgrim, trans. by French.  Of course it is not clear if that book and its sequel is really a narrative of what actually happened, or else a literary creation in the form of autobiography.

We are not suggesting that anyone take up the Jesus Prayer without a guide.  We are merely trying to clarify how it is prayed.

UPDATE 2 2011/02/18:

Mr Courtney-Smith has again replied with a comment:

Interesting. Thank you very much, that actually makes quite a bit of sense to me.

The description you give of the subjective experienced has strong parallels to the descriptions found in The Dark Night of the Soul [by St John of the Cross] which is the only book of its type I have ever fully read.  To my recollection however The Dark Night does not give any specific instruction on how or what one should contemplate (other than God).  So I can see how this information seems to make a nice complement too it.  Inasmuch as they both describe meditation and its effects.

I looked up the Philokalia as I had never heard of it before. It seems like something that would be interesting to read. Although perhaps, like The Dark Night, it might be of limited value to me as I am not called to monasticism (at least not at this time).  How many pages is it?

Also, since you mentioned it, could you explain why grace being created or non-created is relevant to the topic of ‘bringing one’s mind into one’s heart’?  I don't see the connection.

Of course that is quite probably because the only definition of grace I was ever taught was ‘a gift freely given from God’.

It seems the purpose of prayer and meditation is closer union with God through Jesus, and I don't think there is any debate about the facts that Jesus is both uncreated Godhead and created Man.

Certainly we receive Jesus in the sacrament of Holy Communion (and this is all of him created and uncreated).

Isn't it the same being encountered in the sacrament but in deeper measure that the mystic hopes to encounter?

Let us give brief answers to the above.  The full extent of our knowledge of the theology of St John of the Cross is found in this post.

The Philokalia is, in the standard Greek edition, a five-volume work of texts on the Hesychastic tradition (what we’ve been discussing) that go from the 4^th Century to the 18^th (we believe).  The texts are arranged in chronological sequence.  His Eminence, Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware), was chief editor of an English translation published by Faber & Faber.  There is a good introduction.  Only the first four volumes of the English translation have been published.  We imagine that the five volumes of the English translation together would come to around 2000 pages.  The unpublished 5^th volume is the one that contains material on forcing the mind into the heart; perhaps there was a fear that such information might be dangerous for the immature reader, we don’t know.  There is no canon of the Philokalia: it is a literary compilation that is witness to an oral tradition in the Orthodox Church.  There are editions of the Philokalia in Old Church Slavonic (liturgical Russian) and Romanian which are much longer than the Greek Philokalia.  This simply means that the various editors had access to much more material they thought suitable for inclusion in their edition.  The texts are written by the ascetical Fathers of the Orthodox tradition, so they are definitely at the level of St John of the Cross or St Theresa of Avila—i.e. not introductory.

At the level at which we have been discussing the Jesus Prayer in this post, the uncreated nature of Grace has nothing to do with it.

The uncreated nature of Grace is addressed by St Gregory Palamas (14^th Century), who was a practitioner of the Jesus Prayer.  The issue has to do with the nature of light that Hesychasts experience: is it the uncreated effulgence of God or something else?  That is, the issue has more to do with the end of the Hesychastic road not with the basic practice as we have been describing it.

While we understand what Mr Courtney-Smith intends by ‘uncreated Godhead’, it is more proper to say that Jesus is true God and true Man, where as God he is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.  It should also be pointed out that the person of Jesus Christ is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.  That person took on a complete human nature.  But that human nature has never subsisted in a person other than the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.  To say otherwise is to fall into a Nestorian Christology.

It is certainly true that in the Orthodox Church it would be a perverse reading of Hesychasm indeed to say that there was something different about what the Orthodox Hesychast experiences receiving Holy Communion and what he experiences practising the Jesus Prayer.