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St. John Climacus describes the spiritual life under the reassuring figure of scala paradisi. The heavenly powers aid human efforts. The angels who go up and down “Jacob's ladder” accompany man on this journey in which he receives charisms. St. Cyril of Jerusalem enumerates some of them: “For one, the Spirit strengthens his temperance, to another he teaches what concerns mercy, to still another how to fast, and in short, to practice the exercises of the spiritual life.”22.1
The import of these words is that the spiritual life is entirely and at once charismatic. Above all, the spirit of discernment shows how not to confuse the end with the means. Evagrius shrewdly notes that the worst error would be to make a passion out of the struggle against passion. “Prayer, fasting, vigils, and every other practice... are only indispensable means to attain the acquisition of the Holy Spirit,” teaches St. Seraphim.22.2 Here the end is stated very precisely. St. Isaac adds that the simplicity of God unites but the complexity of evil disperses.22.3
The Sixth Ecumenical Council noted this dispersion and affirmed that “sin is the sickness of the soul”; it directed its attention to a therapeutic ascesis.
That is why St. Paul,22.4 in praying very particularly for the spirit of discernment, had in mind the axiological function of appreciation, a spiritual prophylactic that renders a man capable of distinguishing and of making decisive choices. Here an obstacle arises: every conscious command arouses a secret resistance from the subconscious and this paralyzes the will. St. Paul remarks: “For I do not understand what I do... For I do not the good that I wish, but the evil that I do not wish, that I perform.” He discovered the interior law that fights against the law of understanding; he thus formulated the law of irrational resistance that comes from the subconscious.22.5
The Bible knows well the impenetrable lower depths of the human being. “More tortuous than all else is the human heart, beyond remedy; who can understand it? I, the Lord, alone can probe the mind and test the heart,”22.6 which means the human ego and the obscure sphere that surrounds it. The Gospel judges a man by the contents of his heart, by the object of his desires, by his Eros. “It is from the heart that man draws good things and bad.” The possibilities are in one direction or the other.
The great masters of ascesis were perfectly clear on the role of the subconscious. Evagrius teaches: “Many passions are hidden in our soul, but escape our attention. It is temptation which, coming suddenly, reveals them.”22.7
“Depth psychology” very fortunately comes to give scientific substance to ascetic art and to aid man to understand himself. It analyzes the dynamism of affectivity, the obscure zone of the unconscious, the irrational root of the soul where the instinct of “the will to live” is active. Jarred by the real, subject to a social censure, this interior world is remodeled; a part of its vitality is repressed; reflexes of inhibition and compensation are elaborated. A mysterious and hidden life flows on beneath the threshold of consciousness, ceaselessly exercising its pressure. The person's health depends on the balance between the conscious and the subcon- scious, on the mind's capacity to project its light there, on integration with its “shadow”.
Obscure and malevolent powers utilize man's psychic elements. In this sense Jung mentions a resemblance between complexes and demons. Ascetics counsel exercising the attention and discerning in the interior chaos of a soul the nature of the elements at work--animal, rational, or affective--and likewise they advise distinguishing between an interior or exterior cause, whether it is simply biological or more complex and moral. Thus Evagrius (in his Antirrheticos) specifies the somatic cause of gluttony and of lust, representing as they do perversion of the instincts to live and to survive. For St. Gregory Palamas, the passions coming from nature are less grave, and express only the weight of matter due to a failure to spiritualize it. In the 14th century, long before Freud, he spoke of sexual manifestations among very small children as natural manifestations. Sin and passions that are dangerous come from the mind.
The perverted will turns away from the original direction of the heart in order to seek the absolute in idols (the capital vices or passions that have been hypostasized); it throws itself into the cult of the ego with its self-love and its will to power, making of it an infernal self-idol. The transvaluation of values (Umwertung), the method practiced by the Viennese school, is used to unmask these idols in order to make the true absolute evident.
Psychology is in harmony with ascesis; it observes that too detailed memories of the past, too long a time of thinking about them, risks doing more harm than good. The Freudian method of introspection and of reducing the present to the past alienates man. It has been completed and surpassed by the Jungian method of prospection that leads to the construction of the future. Jung teaches the forging ahead that is formulated in the words of St. Paul: “Forgetting what is behind, I strain forward to what is before, I press on toward the goal.”22.8
What is important are the present inclinations that permit a man to take cognizance and true measure of himself. Vigilance of mind, a guard over the heart, the invocation of the name of Jesus, are the charisms that restrain and stop all interior colloquies with an evil suggestion before it becomes a tacit consent, or a passion that makes the soul captive. We must descend to the irrational roots of the soul, toward the clear or cloudy source in the imagination, and surprise its exact nature.
Psychoanalysis and ascesis have indeed understood this, and they search into the twisting ways in order to bring to them the light of the mind. This is because one cannot act on the subconscious by commands, for it is opposed to every direct order. One enters there most efficaciously by the imagination; one then discovers the great power of images.22.9
Indeed, in the face of the natural powerlessness of man to fulfill the Old Testament law and to submit to the prohibitions of the decalogue, the New Testament offers the grace of the beatitudes; even more, in order to arouse and sustain man's acts, grace operates by positive suggestions under the form of invitations and appeals. These suggestions are reinforced by “beautiful images”, by the “absolute desirability” of the New Jerusalem that unfolds before our eyes in the grandiose description in the Apocalypse.
It is before all else the reconstruction of the imago Dei, of its initial form, tending toward God, as a copy toward its original. We can see the importance of the biblical notion of “image”. By its nature of being an image, this structural form can be seized by the imagination, and consequently, only the imagination can penetrate subconscious and structure it in “the image of God”.
The imagination always tends toward the incarnation of its images. To the suggestive power of art can be added the living language of symbols of sacred art. According to Jung: “Only the religious symbol sublimates totally.” We say, “the symbol of faith”, since the Credo, said liturgically, leads us beyond images and even symbols; it brings us into the presence of the persons invoked, there where the relations between the human I and the divine thou are made concrete. If Kant's categorical imperative is powerless, since it is abstract and impersonal, the Gospel, on the contrary, reveals the living person of Christ, the source of charismatic imperatives.
Origen had commented on the words of St. Paul, “until Christ is formed in you”,22.10 seeing in them the act of “imagining” Christ in the hearts of his disciples. The German word ein-bilden is very expressive here and designates the essence of the activity. Once his image is formed in the soul, the person of Christ in return forms the soul and transforms it into his own type: “It is no longer I that live, but Christ who lives in me.” In the end the soul appears really Christified.
Ascesis thus constitutes an immense project of sublimation.22.11 However, we must understand this in the sense of a tension toward sublimissimum, toward the Most High. It refines the imagination and practices fast of the eyes and spiritual hearing. Man ceaselessly collects innumerable images that surround him and invade him from within. He constantly undergoes suggestions coming from speeches, scientific formulas, political slogans, artistic forms,22.12 human faces and cosmic landscapes. If everything in existence concurs in suggesting, in exercising a pressure on the soul, in impressing it, the “theodidacts”,22.13 those “taught by God”, receive the strongest suggestion, for it is God who suggests by the creative images of his wisdom. Here the attention of the mind is required; Abbot Philemon tells us: “By your imagination look within your heart,” for “the pure heart sees God as in a mirror”.22.14
The purification of the heart comes above all from the liturgy where rite, dogma and art are closely bound together. Its images are symbols that lift our gaze to the level of the invisible presence of divinity. According to St. John Damascene, the icon is not a representation of the visible, but an apocalypse, a revelation of the hidden. Its power is maximal by reason of its opening upon the transcendental that has no image. The gaze thus purified and rendered watchful can now descend and scrutinize the interior of the soul and manifest it. “He who manifests his thoughts is soon cured; he who hides them makes himself sick.” “It is an evident sign that a thought is from the demon when we blush to disclose it to our brother.”22.15
John of Lycopolis expresses the tradition in ceaselessly returning to the need for watchful attention. “Judge your thoughts piously before God; if you cannot do this, ask one who is capable of discerning them.”22.16
Such openness of soul and charismatic attention to what takes place within hinder the formation of complexes; wounds that are detected or declared do not grow worse.
Exterior behavior is always symptomatic of the inward state, and their intimate correspondence conditions and justifies corporal ascesis; but this relationship limits ascetic restraint to what is strictly necessary as an instrument to ward off enervating comfort and the tyranny of habits. The ideal state has the very paradoxical name of apatheia which means “impassible passion”, and designates a very impassioned state, for it is a question of awakening the spirit from its sluggishness and making man wide awake, neptikos. It needs a whole life to live what faith affirms once for all, and it is for this reason that the spirit is watchful. St. Teresa of Avila said energetically that we should “neither creep, nor advance like a frog, nor walk with chicken steps”. “What must one be? One must be a fire,” notes St. Exupery.22.17
Ascetic impassibility then is not insensibility. Neither does it seek to resemble those whom Bernanos called “the stoics with dry eyes”, nor to cultivate delight in bloody mortifications and in the groanings of the flesh. By lack or by excess, the two destroy the balance, and manifest an ascesis that is illusory and “without fruit”.22.18 With ascetics, the capacity to become impassioned indicates their inward dynamism, which must be oriented, not suppressed. It receives its value from the goal to be attained, and this suppresses art for art, science for science, and above all, ascesis for ascesis. “The perfect soul is one whose passions are turned toward God,” whose energies are directed toward divine love of men. This is why Diadochus says: “Woe to the knowledge that does not turn to loving.” The state of the passions is centered on the one passion par excellence, evangelical charity, “ontological tenderness” toward every creature of God; this is the fundamental charism. “What is a charitable heart?” asks St. Isaac the Syrian. “It is a heart inflamed with charity for the entire creation, for men, birds, beasts, evil spirits, all creatures... moved by an infinite pity that is awakened in the hearts of those who are like to God.”22.19 Such a passionate ]over “does not condemn either sinners or the children of this world... He desires to love and venerate all without any distinction”, for “after God he esteems all men as God himself”.22.20 St. Symeon, following St. Paul, certainly speaks of himself when he confesses: “I know a man who would desire the salvation of his brothers with such ardor... that he would not even wish to enter the kingdom of heaven if in so doing he would have to separate himself from them.”22.21
On a certain level, oral prayer gives place to contemplative prayer, in which the heart opens itself in silence before God. “When the Spirit comes, we must cease praying,” St. Seraphim teaches. It is “the silence of the spirit” (hesychasm). The more alert the soul is, the more peaceful it is. In the counsel given by St. Seraphim to seek above all interior peace, the latter designates the hesychasm in which man becomes the place of God. If “the Word came forth from the Father in silence”,22.22 silence teaches men to give up their thoughtless chatter, and then the silent man becomes “a source of grace to the one who listens to him”.22.23
The current opposition between adherence to the world and leaving the world is spatial. The basis of the problem is in the vertical dimension. “When you pray, enter into thy chamber and close the door.” It is not a question of the place, but of a closed door. In this way El Greco used to seek colors in the depths of his soul, and looking for inspiration, he used to draw all the curtains of his studio and of his soul. We must know how to make a place for silence, for recollection; without these moments, charged with interior dynamism, the spiritual life risks being dissolved in sterile agitation. When we attain to a certain maturity, the prayer of Jesus teaches us to have these moments, even in public places, and to be efficacious for others by our silence.
In these pauses of recollection, the masters of the spiritual life strongly counsel against the states of ecstasy that belong only to inexperienced beginners. In his progress, a man ought to aspire to constant awareness of the invisible presence of God and to turn aside relentlessly from every visual or sense phenomenon, all curiosity, all seeking for “the mysterious”. Evagrius strenuously insists on this: “Do not strive during prayer to discern any image or figure... otherwise you risk falling into madness.”22.24 Gregory the Sinaite (15th century) advises: “Be watchful, friend of God. If you see a light, or some image, or an angel, refuse to accept it... When it seems to your spirit that you are drawn to the heights by an invisible force, do not allow this and force yourself to work.”22.25 As long as one can resist or oppose an apparition, it is a sign that the phenomenon does not come from God. What comes from God comes in an irresistible way. All the teachers strongly insist on the extreme sobriety of what is spiritual and its lack of any materialization.
“If you see a young novice mounting by his own will to heaven, seize him by the feet and throw him on the ground, because his action would be of no value to him.”22.26 Satan disguised as an angel of light came one day to a hermit to assure him of his spiritual progress. The hermit contented himself with saying, not without humor: “You must be making a mistake, it is to another person that you have been sent; I have not made any spiritual progress.”22.27
Unusual phenomena may disturb novices, but they have no connection with the spiritual life. The latter is always oriented toward the interior. “If you are pure, heaven is within you, and it is within you that you will see light, the angels, and the Lord of the angels.”22.28
This entrance of the soul into itself is opposed, however, to any passive quietism. St. John Climacus insists on the dynamism of the spirit: “The one who keeps his fervor to the end does not cease to add, even to the end of his life, fire to fire, ardor to ardor, zeal to zeal, desire to desire.”22.29 “The Lord triumphs always, when he fights with Christian athletes. But if these are overcome, it is clear that they have deprived themselves of God by their unreasonable will.”22.30 The dynamism of the will is indeed required, for “God does nothing by himself alone”, St. Macarius declares.22.31 To a monk who had asked Anthony to pray for him, the abbot answered: “Neither shall I have pity on you, nor will God, if you do not put yourself seriously and particularly to prayer.”22.32
The spiritual life then has nothing unconscious or passive about it. The soul's attention develops sensitivity to signs and warnings. A sluggish spirit lets these constant appeals pass by. Vigilance, on the contrary, fosters repentance which is an active manner of listening ceaselessly to the words: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
The giving up of repentance marks the cessation of the spiritual life and is accompanied by the fearful state called “the insensibility of a petrified heart”. We must distinguish this from the “withdrawal of God” or “desolation”, which the divine Teacher uses to teach the soul to be more humble. This dereliction is medicinal, notes Origen, and St. Macarius says: “Grace is taken away in order that we may seek it more.”22.33 Is not the sphere of the trial the very field of freedom? Once when St. Anthony had overcome his distress, he asked: “Where wert thou, Lord, during this time?” He received the answer: “Nearer than ever to thee.”22.34
“We shall not be accused,” says St. John Climacus, “of not having performed miracles... but we shall surely have to answer to God for not having wept ceaselessly for our sins.”22.35 Repentance meditates constantly on man's refusal of crucified love. It is a question here of tears, not of the soul but of the spirit. They are considered a charismatic gift; they mingle with the tears of joy and continue the purifying waters of baptism. “Blessed are they who weep for they will be comforted.” Such a repentance, according to St. John Damascene, is “the return to God from captivity”22.36 and also “the salutary trembling fear before the door of the kingdom”.22.37
Evidently repentance is a form of humility. The two are not all “virtues” but a permanent state of the soul. Only their power can cure egocentric idolatry, self-love, pretensions, or inferiority complexes. Humility teaches “to be as if one were not”. and “not to know what one is”. “To bow down before the divine majesty is the highest victory,” St. Bernard remarks profoundly.22.38 The love of God excludes all self-complacency. When St. Anthony asked to be shown a model of piety, an angel led him to a very humble man. In his prayer, this man used to present before God all men, thinking that there existed no one who was as great a sinner as himself. Abbot Sisoes on his deathbed, already fully enlightened and surrounded by angels, sighed: “I have not even begun to repent.”22.39 “Perfection,” declares St. Isaac, “is the depth of humility.”22.40
In his Letters to the Ashram, Gandhi correctly opposes humility to inertia: “True humility requires... the most arduous and constant effort.”22.41 Humility, for Baudoin the psychologist, has a biological role and a function of adaptation; it puts us in our place.22.42
Humility lives “the communion of sinners”, this other aspect that is inseparable from “the communion of saints”. While he was dying, a fool in Christ said: “That all may be saved, that the whole world be saved.” Another, at the end of a life of scorn and persecution, affirmed that he had not met a truly bad man.
Today, in countries where life is placed under the sign of the cross and silence, humility becomes the spirituality of martyrs. Its grandeur shines forth in its astonishing hymns of praise. It gives thanks to God even for suffering and persecution, even placing the demons in the hands of God. Having reached the end of what is supportable, man can only say: “Glory be to God,” and redouble his prayer for the living and the dead, for the victims and the executioners. It is then that he espouses the heart of God and understands the ineffable.
Christ has come to “awaken the living and change death into a sleep of expectation”, into vigils of the spirit. The living are on the other side of death and the dead are the living; such is the joyous revelation of Christian faith, its royal charism.