Understanding the Passions according to the Philokalia: Healing of the Soul and through the Science of the Fathers

Now that we have spoken a bit about asceticism and its goal, theosis or deification, it is appropriate I think to address the specifics of that path of conversion and transformation.  What is it that we must do on our part and with the grace of God on the path of return - to restore the image that has been sullied by our sin and to open ourselves up to the gift of becoming partakers of the divine nature made possible through Christ?  

Alphonse and Rachel Goettmann, in their wonderful book “Prayer of Jesus, Prayer of the Heart” describe this path beautifully; with an understanding arising from and obviously rooted in personal experience. It is perhaps the clearest description that I have come across and since the book is out of print I offer you the following lengthy excerpt:

“Rediscovering that which unifies us, rediscovering our first innocence leads us to become one with God to such an extent that there is no longer the consciousness within us of a differentiated self, distinct from God.  All that we know then is love, nothing else: the unique desire for the unique desired One which makes life a communion of love with the Creator and with all that He endlessly creates at each moment.

The opposite is our propulsion toward the exterior which kindles the multiplicity of desires and makes of life only hatred and division: ‘We devour ourselves reciprocally like serpents.  The communion of love is replaced by the hidden fear of death, and this death,’ says Maximus the Confessor, ‘is the cause of our turning love into destructive passions.’  The self is so closed in upon itself by this metaphysical anguish that the other, including God, is always, even unconsciously, a potential enemy. 

In a person whose spirit is cut off from God, the soul enters into a radical change of perspective and passes into a state of dualism.  Instead of living through God, of seeing in His light and with His eyes, the soul sees and lives through the self in an autonomous way.  This is a false self, nonbeing, the empirical existence where each act of affirmation of the self increases the dualistic tension between the self and God, between the self and others.  And as the self depends upon things to affirm it, the ditch never ceases to be dug and God Himself becomes an antagonistic and hostile being, a rival.  Little by little all relationships are falsified: with oneself, with others, with God, with the whole of creation.  This ontological denaturation brings to life in us a sort of predisposition to bad faith, where we constantly try to make things other than what they are, so that they serve our appetite for pleasure and power and our arbitrary impulses in every moment.  This is the ‘noisy tumult of the passions’ according to the patristic expression . . . 

Here is the beginning of decay.  Our existence is fractured and we plunge into internal contradictions that can only make us suffer.  A person who persists in walking with a broken leg will only suffer; and every desire comes out of this deep fracture which we carry within and which inevitably brings us to tragedy.  The great significance of true asceticism is found here: in discerning the motives behind our way of being and acting.

Where does my desire come from and where is it going?  That is the ground of asceticism, its primary matter, and the very place of our penitence.  Asceticism is a guardian over every interior and exterior movement.  Nothing is possible - no accomplishment, no happiness, no peace - as long as desire is turned in upon itself, egocentric and greedy!  There is no spiritual way or prayer which can be maintained without battling these passionate desires” (Goettmann, “Prayer of Jesus, Prayer of the Heart,” 120-121).

The Desert Fathers understood the word “passion” to mean all the egocentric desires through which the demon seeks to capture human beings.  These we must know along with their most subtle workings within us if we are to fully engage in the spiritual battle that confronts us.  Such knowledge and the hard won skill of recognizing evil in order to avoid it is so valuable that St. Isaac the Syrian stated: “He who sees his sin is greater than he who resurrects the dead.”  It is through this interior work that the passions are not destroyed but have their energy redirected and reordered toward God - to eternal Life.

The Goettmann’s aptly describe this purification of the passions as a kind of “‘homemade psychoanalysis,’ a therapy which attacks the roots of the illnesses of our being, not only to heal us on a human level, but to heal us for our union with God” (Ibid., 122).  Faith is the point of departure for the Desert Fathers from modern psychology; the goal is to share in the life and intimacy of the Holy Trinity and the Fathers see the full flowering of the personality not simply as a function of human needs and potentials.

This is exactly the approach to and understanding of the writings of the Fathers of the Philokalia presented by Hierotheos Vlachos in his masterful work “Orthodox Psychotherapy: the Science of the Fathers.”  He presents us with much different understanding of the word "Psychotherapy" than we often have in mind.

Psyche, Vlachos reminds us, comes from the Greek and means "soul".  In the Hebrew and Christian tradition the soul is the essence of one's existence.  It represents the whole living being of an individual person.  The soul in this sense is manifested through the body, the mind and other facets of the one's being.  When we speak of "Psychotherapy" then we mean the healing of one's soul.

There are great differences then between modern psychotherapy and Christian psychotherapy.  Contemporary psychotherapy focuses more on the mental and emotional dimensions of a person, thoughts, emotions and feelings; in particular by addressing the disorder and pathology that one may be experiencing in these dimensions.  But most modern psychotherapy does not see itself as facilitating growth of person in their relationship with God; that is, in the realization and expression of divine truth.  It hopes certainly to encourage more efficient living and functioning in the world.  And yet, its values and intentions often reflect those that prevail in the culture at the given time.  For example, modern psychotherapy often seeks to bolster one's capacity to gratify needs and desire and to achieve a sense of autonomous mastery over self and circumstance; that is, self-realization and self-fulfillment.

Christian Psychotherapy seeks liberation from disordered attachments and self-giving surrender to the power and will of God.  The manner in which personal growth and healing take place depend not on self-mastery but upon the grace of God.  The true healer, the Physician, is Jesus.  The root of our illness, the disorder and lack of integration we experience, our sickness of soul, comes from sin.  It is this we seek to remedy in and through our relationship with Jesus Christ (see “Orthodox Psychotherapy, pp 97-118).     

It has been said that the Desert Fathers have provided us with a map of the soul: 

“The passions and temptations which must inevitably beset any Christian were unearthed and described with almost scientific precision.  Pride, vainglory, lust - each passion was isolated and catalogued.  This ‘map’ of the Christian soul was then passed on from one generation of ascetics to another, each generation profiting from the discoveries of the previous ones.  Not only were the passions and temptations which afflict the soul unearthed, however, but a ‘system’ was developed to combat them.  This system was later to become know as ‘hesychasm’ or ‘prayer of the heart’” (Coniaris, “Philokalia: Bible of Orthodox Spirituality”, 148-149).

In future posts, we will consider how the Fathers of the Philokalia came to categorize the principle vices that give rise to these passions, how they manifest themselves and how they are remedied.  The Fathers had no illusions about human nature, its woundedness and through the insights born from their spiritual life we stand to gain a deeper understanding of the human person and the truth that peace of soul can be bought only at the price of a long struggle.

The Helmsman of the Spiritual Life: The Eye of the Heart

Before approaching themes of the Philokalia and the spirituality of the hesychast Fathers, it is helpful, and one might say absolutely necessary, to clarify how they use various words.  Indeed, over the years I have been most grateful for the wonderful glossary that the translators provided at the end of the first volume.  Without this aid, I dare say, the meaning of many of the Father’s sayings would be completely lost or at least severely truncated. The two other resources that have helped me the most are Bishop Hierotheos Vlachos’ “Orthodox Psychotherapy” (which offers the most refined distinctions regarding the terms the Fathers use of terms and to which I will return in later posts) and Anthony Coniaris’ “Confronting and Controlling Thoughts” and “The Beginner’s Introduction to the Philokalia.”  As a first step in understanding the Father’s use of the term “nous” (mind, intellect), I offer his very thoughtful and succinct reflections for your consideration.  One very quickly recognizes the significance of these distinctions for understanding philokalic spirituality and the ascetic tradition of the desert fathers.  Coniaris writes:

“Orthodox spirituality places great emphasis on the ‘nous’, or mind, and the thoughts, ‘logismoi’, that the mind produces.  It does so because everything we do begins in the nous or mind with the thoughts (logismoi).  ‘As a man thinks in his heart, so is he,’ we read in Proverbs.  So, let’s begin our study of confronting and controlling thoughts according to the Fathers of the Philokalia with a brief study, first of the nous (mind) . . . 

In an interview, Bishop Kallistos Ware offered the following definition of nous or intellect: ‘Nous, in particular, is a very difficult word to translated.  If you just say ‘mind’, that is far too vague.  In our translation of the Philokalia, we, with some hesitations, opted for the word intellect, emphasizing that it does not mean primarily the rational faculties.  The nous is the spiritual vision that we all possess, though many of us have not discovered it.  The nous implies a direct, intuitive appreciation of truth, where we apprehend the truth not simply as the conclusion of a reasoned argument, but we simply see that something is so.  The nous is cultivated certainly through study, through training our faculties, but also it is developed through prayer, through fasting, through the whole range of the Christian life.  This is what we need to develop most of all . . ., something higher than the reasoning brain and deeper than the emotions.’

Nous then is spiritual vision that enables us to recognize truth as soon as we see it.

An additional definition of nous comes from the book ‘Themes of the Philokalia - The Nous’.  ‘A nous that is pure and loves and does not offend God is similar to an eye that does not even accept the smallest dust particle.  It is from the nous that all the powers of the soul depend.  That is why the Lord tells us ‘if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.  But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.  Since the nous of contemporary man has fallen into the same sin as Adam and Eve, it has turned towards creation with an unrestrainable idolatrous and evil disposition.  In this way the nous of man, away from the vision of the glory of God, becomes either demonic or bestial.  The nous which is overcome by the passions and egoism is unenlightened, dark, short-sighted and feeble.’

Thus, purified nous, enlightened by God’s grace, is designed to be the eye of the soul.

The nous is also designed to presided over the person as the ‘hegemonikon’, the dominant leader or ruler of the personality.  Yet because of the Fall of man, the nous has been wounded and is now subject to disruption by epithymia, by the desires imposed by the powerful passions.  It is only by God’s grace and askesis, discipline, resistance, that man can be healed and come to prevail over the epithymia(desire) of the passions through the power of the Holy Spirit.  St. Hesychios states that the Fathers liken the intellect (nous) to the leadership of Moses: ‘The Fathers regard Moses the Lawgiver as an ikon of the intellect.  He saw God in the burning bush; his face shone with glory; he was made a god to Pharoah by the God of gods; he flayed Egypt with a scourge; he led Israel our of bondage and gave laws.  These happenings, when seen metaphorically and spiritually, are activities and privileges of the intellect hegemonikon.’

Like Moses, the nous (intellect) is called and empowered by God’s grace to be the dominant factor - the acropolis -ruling over the kingdom of the self.  It is the hegemonikon, the rudder that steers and directs the kingdom of self.  If the individual person allowed the hegemonikon to rule, spiritual harmony and progress would follow.  The hegemonikon is what Jesus calls ‘the eye’, which, if it is single, will fill the whole body with light.  Some consider the hegemonikon to be the ‘mind of Christ’ which we receive when we ‘put on Christ’ in holy baptism.  

The translators of the Philokalia themselves offer the following definition of nous (intellect):

‘Nous is the highest faculty in man, through which - provided it is purified - he knows God . . . Unlike the dianoia or reason from which it must be carefully distinguished, the intellect does not function by formulating abstract concepts and then arguing on the basis to a conclusion reached through deductive reasoning, but it understands divine truth by means of immediate experience, intuition or ‘simple cognition’.  The intellect dwells in the ‘depths of the soul’; it constitutes the innermost aspect of the heart. . . The intellect is the organ of contemplation, the ‘eye of the heart’.” 

In the future, I hope, by using other resources and the Fathers themselves, to clarify this understanding of the nous and to address how the nous is purified and healed.

Of Theology and Theologians: The Science of the Saints and the Fruit and Method of Spiritual Healing

I have always been struck by the patristic understanding of the nature of theology.   One of my earlier posts touched upon the necessity of “becoming theology”, stressing the need to assimilate the words and teaching of the scriptures and the fathers so that our very beings express their truth.  Here, however, I would like to expand upon this notion and address more directly how the Fathers understood the idea of theology itself.  In the glossary of the first volume of the Philokalia we are told that theology “denotes . . .more than the learning about God and religious doctrine acquired through academic study.  It signifies active and conscious participation in or perception of the realities of the divine world. . .  . To be a theologian in the full sense, therefore, presupposes the attainment of the state of stillness and dispassion,  . . . of pure undistracted prayer and so requires gifts bestowed on but extremely few persons.”  The present day idea of schools of theology where one pursues a degree abstracted from the absolute necessity of spiritual formation and the active pursuit of the life of holiness would have been completely foreign to the Fathers.  The study of the patristic texts and particularly those of the hesychast Fathers of the Philokalia reveals that theology is both a fruit and a method of spiritual healing through which one is brought into communion with God.

To enlarge on what has been said we do well to look to the teaching of the Holy Fathers relating to theology and theologians.  Bishop Hierotheos Vlachos in his work “Orthodox Psychotherapy” shows through the Fathers’ writings how theology is first and foremost a therapeutic science - principally a science that cures, that heals, the soul.  He writes:

“I think that we should begin with St. Gregory Nazianzen. . . [He] writes that it is not for everyone to theologize, to speak about God, because the subject is not so cheap and low.  This work is not for all men but ‘for those who have been examined and are passed masters in the vision of God and who have previously been purified in soul and body, or at the very least are being purified.’  Only those who have passed from praxis to theoria, from purification to illumination, can speak about God.  And when is this?  ‘It is when we are free from all external defilement or disturbance, and when that which rules within us is not confused with vexations or erring images.’  Therefore the saint advises: ‘For it is necessary to be truly at ease to know God.’

Neilos the Ascetic links theology with prayer . . . : ‘If you are a theologian, you will pray truly.  And if you pray truly, you are a theologian.’

St. John Climacus [writes]: ‘Total purity is the foundation for theology.’  ‘When a man’s senses are perfectly united to God, then what God has said is somehow mysteriously clarified.  But where there is no union of this kind, then it is extremely difficult to speak about God.’  On the contrary, the man who does not actually know God speaks about Him only in ‘probabilities’.  Indeed, according to patristic teaching it is very bad to speak in conjectures about God, because it leads a person to delusion.  This saint knows how ‘ the theology of demons’ develops in us.  In vainglorious hearts which have not previously been purified by the operation of the Holy Spirit, the unclean demons ‘give us lessons in the interpretation of scripture’.  Therefore a slave of passion should not ‘dabble in theology.’  

The saints lived a theology ‘written by the Spirit’.  We find the same teaching in the works of St. Maximus the Confessor.  When a person lives by practical philosophy, which is repentance and cleansing from passions, ‘he advances in moral understanding.’  When he experiences theoria, ‘he advances in spiritual knowledge.’  In the first case he can discriminate between virtues and vices; the second case, theoria, ‘leads the participant to the inner qualities of incorporeal and corporeal things.’

It must be emphasized that a theology that is not the result of purification, that is, of ‘praxis’, is demonic.  According to St. Maximus, ‘knowledge without praxis is the demons’ theology.’ 

In the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas it is those who see God who are properly theologians, and theology is theoria.  ‘For there is a knowledge about God and His doctrines, a theoria which we call theology. . . .’  Anyone who without knowledge and experience of matters of faith offers teaching about them ‘according to his own reasonings, trying with words to show the Good that transcends all words, has plainly lost all sense.’  And in his folly ‘he has become an enemy of God.’  

Thus, Vlachos tells us, theology is not abstract knowledge or practice, like logic, mathematics, astronomy, or chemistry . . .  .  A theologian who is not acquainted with the methods of the enemy nor with perfection in Christ is not only unable to struggle against the enemy for his own perfection, but is also in no position to guide or heal others.”