31
When our
mind begins to perceive [spiritually] the consolation of the Holy Spirit, then
Satan also consoles the soul in a certain sweet-seeming sense[1]
when in the nocturnal times of stillness one comes as it were to the edge of a
very light sleep. If at that time the
mind be found to be keeping the holy name of the Lord Jesus in extremely warm
remembrance and if it make use of that holy and glorious name as a weapon
against the deception,[2]
then the deceiver departs from his ruse and henceforth is inflamed towards a
substantial war of the soul.[3] Whence, knowing the deception of the Evil One
exactly, the mind progresses further in the experience of discernment.
32
The good
consolation occurs while the body is alert or even at the hint of a sleep which
is going to come, when in the warm remembrance of God one has as it were
adhered to his love;[4]
but the consolation of deception ever occurs when the contender has come, as I
said, into a certain light sleep with a moderate remembrance of God.[5] The first, as clearly being from God, wishes
to console the souls of the contenders for piety in a great outpouring of the
soul towards love; the second, since it is accustomed to fan the soul in a
certain wind of deception, attempts to steal by means of the sleep of the body
the experience of the healthy mind concerning the memory of God. Therefore, if the mind be found, as I said,
to have been remembering the Lord Jesus[6]
attentively, it disperses that sweet-seeming breeze of the Enemy and rejoicing
it is stirred to war against the Enemy,[7]
having as a second weapon after Grace the boast that comes from experience.
33
If while he who is set into activity by Divine
Grace is alert or coming into sleep in the way that I have said[8]
the soul is kindled by a movement without doubt and without fantasy towards the
love of God, drawing as it were the body towards the depth of that unspeakable
love, the soul conceiving nothing else at all except that only towards which it
is being stirred, it must be known that the activity is of the Holy
Spirit. For being completely seasoned by
that inexpressible sweetness, the soul is then able to conceive nothing else at
all since it rejoices with a steadfast joy.
If, then, there is any doubt at all or if the mind conceives some sordid
thought when it is set into activity or even if it makes use of the holy name
towards defence from evil and not only towards the love of God now,[9]
one must deem that the consolation is from the Deceiver in an outward
appearance of joy; and that joy is without attribute and completely disordered,[10]
the Enemy wishing the soul to commit adultery.
For when the Enemy sees the mind boasting exactly of its own [spiritual]
sense[11]
then with certain good-seeming consolations, as I have said, it provokes the
soul so that the soul being dispersed by that empty and very wet sweetness [and
the Enemy being] unrecognized,[12]
there occur the intercourse of the Treacherous One [with the soul].[13] Therefore from this we will know the spirit
of truth and the spirit of deception.
Nevertheless, it is impossible for one to taste the divine goodness in
[spiritual] perception or to make trial perceptibly of the bitterness of the
demons unless one gives assurance to oneself that Grace has come to dwell in
the depths of the mind whereas the evil spirits linger around the limbs[14]
of the heart,[15]
which very thing the demons do not at all ever wish to be believed by men, lest
the mind, having learned this exactly, arm itself against them with the
remembrance of God.
34
One thing
is the love which is natural to the soul and another thing is the love which is
added to it by the Holy Spirit. For when
we wish, the love from our own will is stirred proportionately, and for that
reason it is easily plundered by the demons whenever we do not control our own
inclination with violence[16]. The other love, however, so much enkindles
the soul towards the love of God that in a certain limitless simplicity of
disposition all the parts of soul then fasten on in an unutterable way to the
goodness of the divine longing. For
having then become as it were pregnant by the spiritual activity,[17]
the mind gushes out a sort of fountain of love and joy.
35
Just as
when it is agitated the sea has the nature to give way to the oil poured upon
it, the storm being defeated by the nature of the oil, thus also our soul
gladly becomes serene when it is fattened by the goodness of the Holy Spirit. Rejoicing, it is defeated according to the
saint who says: ‘Yet be submissive to God, O my soul,’ in that dispassionate
and unutterable goodness overshadowing it.
On account of this, therefore, as many irritations as are then contrived
by the demons against the soul it remains without anger and full of every
joy. One comes to this very thing or
remains in it if one unceasingly sweetens his soul in the fear of God. For the fear of the Lord Jesus bears a
certain kind of purification to those who are engaged in ascetical struggles:
‘For the fear of the Lord is pure, remaining to the Ages of Ages.’
36
Let no one
hearing ‘sense of the mind’ hope that the glory of God will be seen by him
visibly. For we say that it is sensed,
when one might have purified the soul, in a certain unspeakable taste of divine
consolation, not that one of the invisible things physically appears[18]
to it, for now we walk by faith and not by visible form[19],
as says the blessed Paul. Therefore, if
there should appear to one of the contenders in asceticism a light, or some
figure[20]
having the form of fire, let him by no means accept the vision of this
sort. For it is a clear deception of the
Enemy, which very thing having suffered from ignorance many have departed from
the road of truth. We know that insofar
as we sojourn in this corruptible body we are abroad from God, that is to say,
we are not able to see visibly either him or one of his Heavenly wonders.
37
The dreams
that appear to the soul in the love of God are undeceiving accusers[21]
of the soul that is in any way healthy.
Wherefore they[22]
are neither transformed from one shape to another,[23]
nor do they suddenly shake the [spiritual] sense, nor do they laugh or suddenly
take on a gloomy air, but they approach the soul with every clemency,
completely filling it with every spiritual gladness. Whence, once the body has awoken the soul
seeks the joy of the dream with great longing.
But the fantasies of the demons are the opposite in every respect. For they[24]
neither remain in the same shape nor show for very long an undisturbed
form. For what they do not have from
their free will but make use of only from their own deception is unable to
suffice them for very long; moreover, they also say grandiose things and very
often threaten, often shaping themselves into the appearance of soldiers;
occasionally they chant to the soul with shouting. Whence, once it has been purified,
recognizing them clearly the soul that has been subjected to the fantasy wakes
the body; and there is also the case where it even rejoices at having been able
clearly to recognize the ruse of the demons.
For which reason, having rebuked the demons in the very dream, the soul
moves them to a great anger.[25] Yet there is also the case where the good
dreams do not bear joy to the soul but create in it a sweet sorrow and painless
weeping. This occurs to those who make
great progress in humility.
38
We
ourselves have said what we have heard from those who have come to experience:[26]
the discernment of good from bad dreams.
For the sake of great virtue, however, let it be sufficient for us not
to be in any way persuaded by any fantasy at all. For dreams are for the most part nothing
other than the mental phantoms of deluded thoughts or again, as I said, the
mockeries of demons. So if there would
sometime be sent to us a vision from the goodness of God and we did not accept
it, our most longed-for Lord Jesus would not grow angry with us on account of
this. For he knows that we come to this
on account of the ruses of the demons.
For the aforesaid discernment is exact but it happens that through the
plundering of something imperceptible the soul which has been made filthy—no
one is found to be exempt from this, I think—loses the trace of exact
discernment and believes in things which are not good as if they were good.
39
As an
example for us of this thing, let there be the servant hailed by night by his
master from in front of the enclosing walls of the house after a long absence
abroad. To whom the servant absolutely
refused the opening of the doors. He was
frightened lest the similarity of voice, plundering him, prepare him to become
the betrayer of those very things that were entrusted by the master. With whom his lord did not get angry once it
had become day but found him worthy of many praises, for the servant thought
that even the voice of the master was a deception, not wanting to lose any of
his master’s goods.
40
It must not
be doubted that when the mind begins to be set constantly into activity by the
divine light it becomes somewhat transparent so that it richly sees its own
light; and [one must not doubt that] that this word will come to pass when the
power of the soul has subjugated the passions.[27] That everything appearing to the mind with
visible shape[28],
either as light or as fire, occurs through the evil art of the Enemy, the
divine Paul teaches us clearly, saying that he[29]
is transformed into an angel of light.
Therefore one must not undertake the ascetical life with this hope, so
that Satan not find the soul ready for plunder on account of it, but [we must
undertake the ascetical life] only so that we arrive at loving God in every
[spiritual] perception and inner spiritual assurance[30]
of heart, which very thing is the ‘with the whole heart and with the whole soul
and with the whole intellect’. For he
who is set by divine Grace into activity towards this departs from the world
even if he should be present in the world.
[1] I.e. a false spiritual sense.
[2] This appears to be the first explicit reference to the Jesus Prayer
in history.
[3] Because the Devil cannot accomplish his goal indirectly with a
false consolation he engages in direct combat with the soul.
[4] I.e. adhered to the love of God.
It is not clear to us whether or not the author is drawing a parallel
with someone on the verge of sleep embracing his loved one in the marriage bed.
[5] This is a remark on the intensity of the practice of the Jesus
Prayer at the time of the consolation.
In the case of a genuine consolation, the practice is intense, but in
the case of a demonic consolation it is only moderate.
[6] Rutherford drops ‘Jesus’ based on two early manuscripts.
[7] In this case, the Jesus Prayer as it were ‘picks up speed’ to
attack the Devil with a zeal born both of Grace and personal experience while
at the same time becoming focused as a weapon on the temptation.
[8] The grammar is tortuous here, this clause (in the Greek, phrase)
having an inexplicable change of grammatical gender which prevents it from
referring to the soul.
[9] The soul praying the Jesus Prayer turns automatically and without
conscious intervention from a love directed solely to God in the Prayer, to an
attack focused on the interloper—still by means of the Jesus Prayer. There is no conscious intervention of the
ascetic in this movement, it being a spiritual movement of the soul beyond his
conscious intervention. When it happens,
it is a sure sign that the consolation is demonic in origin.
[10] Recall that the author has just discussed the sure taste of things
spiritual by the spiritual sense. Here
he gives the taste of the false consolation as discerned by the spiritual
sense.
[11] I.e. when the Devil sees that the mind possesses exact spiritual
discernment.
[12] There is another grammatical problem here since ‘unrecognized’ is
dangling. To convey what seems to be the
sense of the passage we have been obliged to supply ‘[and the Enemy being]’,
also changing the case of ‘unrecognized’.
[13] This is a spiritual intercourse of the Devil or demon with the
soul—a spiritual mixing of the two.
However the phrase ‘very wet sweetness’ might hint at a nocturnal
emission.
[14] As the author will develop later, he means the more external parts
of the heart taken as both a physical and spiritual organ.
[15] As the author develops later, this occurs only in Baptism.
[16] This is the violence of the Gospel not violence actionable in law. This sentence is interesting for its
psychology of natural affection: the author states that natural affection is
closely related to our intention: we choose to love someone or at least
acquiesce in our inclination to love them.
Moreover, the author teaches, rather than encouraging such natural
affection, which is easily subverted by the demons, we must forcibly restrain
the inclination with a view to attaining to the Gospel love added to us by the
Holy Spirit. Recall that ‘particular
friendships’ are forbidden in the monastery.
They are an example of natural rather than Gospel affection; they are by
their very nature relationships exclusive of others that can lead to all manner
of evil—the plundering by the demons the author speaks of.
[17] I.e. the activity of the Holy Spirit. This is a metaphor: ‘as it were’.
[18] I.e. with the bodily senses.
[19] ‘Visible form’: Greek: eidous.
[20] Greek: schema.
[21] Greek: kategoros.
‘Accuser’ is the denotation of this Greek word but the context makes the
reading difficult.
[22] I.e. the personalities in the dream.
[23] The author is clearly paraphrasing Evagrius here.
[24] I.e. the demons.
[25] I.e. in the dream itself the mind converses with the demons—fallen
angels with actual personality—and by reproaching them provokes them to great
anger.
[26] The author’s discussion of dreams seems to draw heavily on
Evagrius.
[27] Cf. Evagrius: Logos Praktikos, 64 and Peri Logismon, 40.
[28] ‘Visible shape’. Greek: schema.
Schema means ‘shape,
form or figure’.
[29] I.e. Satan.
[30] ‘Inner spiritual assurance’.
Greek: plerophoria. So
elsewhere.