Unification

Kallis­tos (Ware) Bishop of Diok­leia

As soon as we make a se­ri­ous at­tempt to pray in spirit and in truth, at once we be­come acutely con­scious of our in­te­rior dis­in­te­gra­tion, of our lack of unity and whole­ness. In spite of all our ef­forts to stand be­fore God, thoughts con­tinue to move rest­lessly and aim­lessly through our head, like the buzzing of flies (Bishop Theo­phan) or the capri­cious leap­ing of mon­keys from branch to branch (Ra­makr­ishna). To con­tem­plate means, first of all, to be pre­sent where one is - to be here and now. But usu­ally we find our­selves un­able to re­strain our mind from wan­der­ing at ran­dom over time and space. We re­call the past, we an­tic­i­pate the fu­ture, we plan what to do next; peo­ple and places come be­fore us in un­end­ing suc­ces­sion. We lack the power to gather our­selves into the one place where we should be - here, in the pres­ence of God; we are un­able to live fully in the only mo­ment of time that truly ex­ists - now, the im­me­di­ate pre­sent. This in­te­rior dis­in­te­gra­tion is one of the tragic con­se­quences of the Fall. The peo­ple who get things done, it has been justly ob­served, are the peo­ple who do one thing at a time. But to do one thing at a time is no mean achieve­ment. While dif­fi­cult enough in ex­ter­nal work, it is harder still in the work of inner prayer.

What is to be done? How shall we learn to live in the pre­sent, in the eter­nal Now? How can we seize the kairos, the de­ci­sive mo­ment, the mo­ment of op­por­tu­nity? It is pre­cisely at this point that the Jesus Prayer can help. The re­peated In­vo­ca­tion of the Name can bring us, by God’s grace, from di­vid­ed­ness to unity, from dis­per­sion and mul­ti­plic­ity to sin­gle­ness. "To stop the con­tin­ual jostling of your thoughts", says Bishop Theo­phan, "you must bind the mind with one thought, or the thought of One only".

The as­cetic Fa­thers, in par­tic­u­lar Barsanuphius and John, dis­tin­guish two ways of com­bat­ting thoughts. The first method is for the "strong" or the "per­fect". These can "con­tra­dict" their thoughts, that is, con­front them face to face and repel them in di­rect bat­tle. But for most of us such a method is too dif­fi­cult and may, in­deed, lead to ac­tual harm. Di­rect con­fronta­tion, the at­tempt to up­root and expel thoughts by an ef­fort of will, often serves merely to give greater strength to our imag­i­na­tion. Vi­o­lently sup­pressed, our fan­tasies tend to re­turn with in­creased force. In­stead of fight­ing our thoughts di­rectly and try­ing to elim­i­nate them by an ef­fort of will, it is wiser to turn aside and fix our at­ten­tion else­where. Rather than gaz­ing down­wards into our tur­bu­lent imag­i­na­tion an con­cen­trat­ing on how to op­pose our thoughts, we should look up­wards to the Lord Jesus and en­trust our­selves into his hands in­vok­ing his Name; and the grace that acts through his Name will over­come the thoughts which we can­not oblit­er­ate b our own strength. Our spir­i­tual strat­egy should be pos­i­tive and not neg­a­tive: in­stead of try­ing to empty our mind of what is evil, we should fill it with the thought of what is good. "Do not con­tra­dict the thoughts sug­gested by your en­e­mies", ad­vise Barsanuphius and John, "for that is ex­actly what they want and they will not cease from trou­bling you. But turn to the Lord for help against them, lay­ing be­fore him your own pow­er­less­ness; for he is able to expel them and to re­duce them to noth­ing".

The Jesus Prayer, then, is a way of turn­ing aside and look­ing else­where. Thoughts and im­ages in­evitably occur to us dur­ing prayer. We can­not stop them by a mere ex­er­tion of our will. We can­not sim­ply turn off the in­ter­nal tele­vi­sion set. It is of lit­tle or no value to say to our­selves "Stop think­ing"; we might as well say "Stop breath­ing". "The ra­tio­nal mind can­not rest idle", says St. Mark the Monk, for thoughts keep fill­ing it with cease­less chat­ter. But while it lies be­yond our power to make this chat­ter sud­denly dis­ap­pear, what we can do is to de­tach our­selves from it by "bind­ing" our ever-ac­tive mind "with one thought, or the thought of One only" - the Name of Jesus. We can­not al­to­gether halt the flow of thoughts, but through the Jesus Prayer we can dis­en­gage our­selves pro­gres­sively from it, al­low­ing it to re­cede into the back­ground so that we be­come less and less aware of it.

Ac­cord­ing to Eva­grius of Pon­tus (+399), "Prayer is a lay­ing aside of thoughts". A lay­ing aside: not a sav­age con­flict, not a fu­ri­ous re­pres­sion, but a gen­tle yet per­sis­tent act of de­tach­ment. Through the rep­e­ti­tion of the Name, we are helped to "lay aside", to "let go", our triv­ial or per­ni­cious imag­in­ings, and to re­place them with the thought of Jesus. But, al­though the imag­i­na­tion and the dis­cur­sive rea­son­ing are not to be vi­o­lently sup­pressed when say­ing the Jesus Prayer, they are cer­tainly not to be ac­tively en­cour­aged. The Jesus Prayer is not a form of med­i­ta­tion upon spe­cific in­ci­dents in the life of Christ, or upon some say­ing or para­ble in the Gospels; still less is it a way of rea­son­ing and in­wardly de­bat­ing about some the­o­log­i­cal truth such as the mean­ing of ho­moousios or the Chal­cedon­ian De­f­i­n­i­tion. In this re­gard, the Jesus Prayer is to be dis­tin­guished from the meth­ods of dis­cur­sive med­i­ta­tion pop­u­lar in the West since the Counter-Re­for­ma­tion (com­mended by Ig­natius Loy­ola, Fran­cois de Sales, Alphon­sus Ligouri, and oth­ers).

As we in­voke the Name, we should not de­lib­er­ately shape in our minds any vi­sual image of the Sav­iour. This is one of the rea­sons why we usu­ally say the Prayer in dark­ness, rather than with our eyes open in front of an icon. "Keep your in­tel­lect free from colours, im­ages and forms", urges St. Gre­gory of Sinai; be­ware of the imag­i­na­tion (phan­ta­sia) in prayer - oth­er­wise you may find that you have be­come a phan­tastes in­stead of a hesy­chastes! "So as not to fall into il­lu­sion (pre­lest) while prac­tis­ing inner prayer", states St. Nil Sorskii (+1508), "do not per­mit your­self any con­cepts, im­ages or vi­sions". "Hold no in­ter­me­di­ate image be­tween the in­tel­lect and the Lord when prac­tis­ing the Jesus Prayer", Bishop Theo­phan writes. "...The es­sen­tial part is to dwell in God, and this walk­ing be­fore God means that you live with the con­vic­tion ever be­fore your con­scious­ness that God is in you, as he is in every­thing: you live in the firm as­sur­ance that he sees all that is within you, know­ing you bet­ter than you know your­self. This aware­ness of the eye of God look­ing at your inner being must not be ac­com­pa­nied by any vi­sual con­cept, but must be con­fined to a sim­ple con­vic­tion or feel­ing". Only when we in­voke the Name in this way - not form­ing pic­tures of the Sav­iour but sim­ply feel­ing his pres­ence - shall we ex­pe­ri­ence the full power of the Jesus Prayer to in­te­grate and unify.

The Jesus Prayer is thus a prayer in words, but be­cause the words are so sim­ple, so few and un­vary­ing, the Prayer reaches out be­yond words into the liv­ing si­lence of the Eter­nal. It is a way of achiev­ing, with God’s as­sis­tance, the kind of non-dis­cur­sive, non-iconic prayer in which we do not sim­ply make state­ments to or about God, in which we do not just form pic­tures of Christ in our imag­i­na­tion, but are "oned" with him in an all-em­brac­ing, un­medi­ated en­counter. Through the In­vo­ca­tion of the Name we feel his near­ness with our spir­i­tual senses, much as we feel the warmth with our bod­ily senses on en­ter­ing a heated room. We know him, not through a se­ries of suc­ces­sive im­ages and con­cepts, but with the uni­fied sen­si­bil­ity of the heart. So the Jesus Prayer con­cen­trates us into the here and now, mak­ing us sin­gle-cen­tred, one-pointed, draw­ing us from a mul­ti­plic­ity of thoughts to union with the one Christ. "Through the re­mem­brance of Jesus Christ", says St. Philotheus of Sinai (ninth-tenth cen­tury), "gather to­gether your scat­tered in­tel­lect" - gather it to­gether from the plu­ral­ity of dis­cur­sive think­ing into the sim­plic­ity of love.

Many, on hear­ing that the In­vo­ca­tion of the Name is to be non-dis­cur­sive and non-iconic, a means of tran­scend­ing im­ages and thoughts, may be tempted to con­clude that any such man­ner of pray­ing lies al­to­gether be­yond their ca­pac­i­ties. To such it should be said: the Way of the Name is not re­served for a se­lect few. It is within the reach of all. When you first em­bark on the Jesus Prayer, do not worry too much about ex­pelling thoughts and men­tal pic­tures. As we have said al­ready, let your strat­egy be pos­i­tive, not neg­a­tive. Call to mind, not what is to be ex­cluded, but what is to be in­cluded. Do not think about your thoughts and how to shed them; think about Jesus. Con­cen­trate your whole self, all your ar­dour and de­vo­tion, upon the per­son of the Sav­iour. Feel his pres­ence. Speak to him with love. If your at­ten­tion wan­ders, as un­doubt­edly it will, do not be dis­cour­aged; gen­tly, with­out ex­as­per­a­tion or inner anger, bring it back. If it wan­ders again and again, then again and yet again bring it back. Re­turn to the cen­tre - to the liv­ing and per­sonal cen­tre, Jesus Christ.

Look on the In­vo­ca­tion, not so much as prayer emp­tied of thoughts, but as prayer filled with the Beloved. Let it be, in the rich­est sense of the word, a prayer of af­fec­tion - al­though not of self-in­duced emo­tional ex­cite­ment. For while the Jesus Prayer is cer­tainly far more than "af­fec­tive" prayer in the tech­ni­cal West­ern sense, it is with our lov­ing af­fec­tion that we do right to begin. Our inner at­ti­tude, as we com­mence the In­vo­ca­tion, is that of St. Richard of Chich­ester:

O my mer­ci­ful Re­deemer, Friend and Brother. May I see thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, and fol­low thee more nearly.

With­out deny­ing or di­min­ish­ing the clas­sic teach­ing of the Hesy­chast mas­ters on the Jesus Prayer as a "shed­ding of thoughts", it has to be ac­knowl­edged that over the cen­turies most East­ern Chris­tians have used the Prayer sim­ply as an ex­pres­sion of their ten­der, lov­ing trust in Jesus the Di­vine Com­pan­ion. And there is surely no harm in that.