Desert Fathers and Searching the Depths of the Unconscious: Descending with the Mind into the Heart

In a number of previous posts, I have already mentioned, albeit in a cursory fashion, the importance of the Heart in Philokalic Spirituality.  Yet, one cannot emphasize enough the significance and centrality of its place in the writings of the desert fathers.  Therefore, having a clear notion of how they define the Heart and its place in the spiritual and ascetical life is imperative for anyone wishing to approach the study of the Philokalia.  

The Heart is not simply a physical organ but rather the very epicenter of one’s identity as a person, one’s capacity to know, love and choose.  St. Maximus explains this as follows: “The mind’s aim is to have knowledge of God.  The sensation’s aim is to desire and love God, and the volition’s aim is the will to do what God commands.”  For this reason, the Heart has often been called “The Lord’s Reception Room.”  

Yet, given the fact that it encompasses all of the above mentioned faculties through which we are receptive to and engage God and the things of the world, Anthony Coniaris reminds us that it can also be the reception room, the abode, of demons, sin and evil.  As one familiar with modern psychology, in particular psychoanalytic thought, I found Coniaris‘ comparison of the Heart to the Unconscious to be of great interest and perhaps a helpful means to understand this central concept of the fathers’ thought.  He writes:

“In the heart, or the unconscious, are buried all the things we ever did (now forgotten) as well as all the passions we have inherited.  Jesus spoke specifically to this truth when He said, ‘Out of the heart’, the unconscious (not the conscious mind), ‘proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, murders . . .things which defile a person’ (Mark 7:21-23).  Yet out of the same unconscious mind, buried in the heart, we have also inherited many good things as well, such as the voice of conscience, the knowledge of God, a sense of right and wrong, etc.” (58)

While it is beyond the scope of this present post and while the nuances and distinctions about the unconscious that modern psychoanalytic thought makes might be quite different, Coniaris’ observation and comparison is astute and the similarities between the Heart and the Unconscious are indeed numerous and worthy of exploration.  Indeed, the fathers could rightfully be called the first psychoanalysts, seeking through prayer, ascetical practice and the solitude of the desert to enter into the depths.  They understood and respected the mystery of the human person, the contradictions found within and the value of becoming more conscious of both the integrating and disintegrating factors that establish personal identity for good or ill.  This is captured well by noted philosopher, religious writer and co-translator of the Philokalia, Philip Sherrard:

“ The receptacle of grace, the ‘place of the presence of divine life, is where we encounter God and in union with God become integrated and transfigured beings.  The art of the spiritual life is therefore to become conscious of the ‘treasure hidden in the heart‘ - to become conscious of the real but un-apprehended presence of God in the heart; and this art is effectuated by inducing the intellect, freed from extraneous thoughts and images, to ‘descend’ into the heart and so become conscious of the divine presence hidden there.”  

Again, while perhaps the nuances of an analytic understanding and exploration of the unconscious and the purposes of such an exploration may differ greatly, both appreciate the mystery and complexity that is the human person.  St. Macarious describes it insightfully: 

“Within the heart there are unfathomable depths.  There are reception rooms and bedchambers in it, doors and porches, and many offices and passages.  In it is the workshop of righteousness and of wickedness.  In it is death; in it is life . . . The heart is Christ’s palace: there Christ the King comes to take rest, with angels and the spirit of the saints, and he dwells there, walking within it and places his Kingdom there.” (60)

While appreciating the mystery of the human person, it should be clear even from the one reference above that these masters of the inner life had a different end in view with the descent of the mind into the heart.  Their goal was not a psychological integration or to create an emotional narrative through which they might understand their thoughts and feelings.  These are certainly valuable and may take place in the course of one’s spiritual life, but it simply wasn’t in their purview.  Their end, in light of their faith, was not integration so much as transformation through of rediscovery of the grace of Baptism and the Holy Spirit dwelling within us.  To descend with the mind into the heart is, most importantly, to discover there the kingdom of God.  Through great ascetic effort and the struggle of prayer one seeks to reach a state which is free from all disturbance and there to encounter the God who dwells within.  This encounter is what transforms, illuminates and purifies.  The healing that is sought is that of the whole person by “tending to the inner flame of the Holy Spirit which burns before the image (icon) of God in the chapel of our heart.” (114)

All quotes taken from “A Beginners Introduction to the Philokalia” by Anthony Coniaris

The Asceticism of the Desert Fathers and the Unconscious: the projection of the enemy within and the cleansing of the heart

I have always thought of the desert Fathers as the first depth psychologists.  From experience, they came to know and understand the dark underground of the human heart and the obscure workings of the unconscious.  As one who has had the opportunity to study psychoanalysis, I have become even more convinced of the Fathers great psychotherapeutic shrewdness and their ability to see and understand what lies beneath.  

Paul Evdokimov in his work The Struggle with God captures beautifully not only this shrewdness but what the Fathers struggle has brought and continues to bring to us today.  He writes:

“The ascesis of the desert is a vast psychoanalysis followed by a psychosynthesis of the universal human soul.  Origen, the brilliant commentator, compares the desert to Plato’s cave.  The desert with all its arsenal of phantasmagoria was a theater of shadows, a spectacle for men and angels; only the shadows did not reflect the reality outside the cave.  They were the projection of the world inside man.

The Gospel speaks of the possessed, of disturbing elements and of the perversity of the human heart.  The abysses we discover are haunted; there are secret places where evil powers are crouching and they rule us if we are ignorant or heedless.  Ascesis cultivates our attention and begins by an experimental phenomenology of our human interior.  It was necessary to materialize and personalize the perverted elements of a being, the hateful ego with its self-love, the doubter and demoniacal counterpart.  Above all, it was necessary to extirpate them, to vomit them, and to objectify them, in order to look them in the face as detached and exteriorized.  This objectification creates a distance, permits the projection of all interior elements as on a screen (Plato’s cave of shadows) under the form of monsters, wild beast and demons.  This operation requires a very precise conviction of the reality of the enemy, in order to cut every bond and communion with him.

The Fathers of the desert have carried out this operation once for all and in the place of all.  ‘He who has seen himself such as he is and has seen his sin is greater than he who raises the dead.’  They have shown man naked, and they have put a face and name on every obscure element of evil.  The hidden play, both human and demoniacal, is demonstrated and brought to light.  After this demonstration, the man going to confession knows what he has to do and what is going to happen.  Each time he reproduces the experience of the desert Fathers.  He can look within himself, but now without being troubled by the unknown.  In order not to remain in a stifling tete-a-tete with his sins and with himself, he can discern their elements and exteriorize them by confession.  Here only Christ, the absolute innocent and the absolute victim, can bring about the unique living transference, ‘by canceling the decree against us.’

. . . humanity was different before the incarnation from what it is now.  One can say also that human consciousness was different before the ascesis of the desert from what it was after.  Just like the event of pentecost, this ascesis has modified the dominant energies of the psyche and has renewed the human spirit.

The therapeutic effect formed by ‘the desert’ in the profoundest depths of the human spirit is universal.  It represents the collective vomit, the objectification and the projection on the outside of the original and the accumulated impurity.  This is perhaps the meaning of the words of St. Paul, ‘to add to the suffering of Christ’, something that the innocent Christ could not do in the place of man; only the sinner, the man of the desert, could do it in the place of all and with a universal significance.  From a positive point of view, it was the formation of the ascetic archetype of man.  It pre-formed ‘the violent’ in order to fight evil and the evil one inside and outside of man.’ (pp. 103-104)

This is perhaps the most compelling understanding of the nature of desert asceticism that I have ever read.  More later . . .