Hesychasm—the Path to Theosis

Igumen Peter (Pigol), Abbot of the Athonite Metochion in Moscow

 

 

The foundation of Orthodox spiritual life is our Lord Jesus Christ, Who came to earth for the salvation of mankind and did everything necessary to accomplish it. He established His Church, where her faithful children grow and mature for eternal life in the Kingdom of God. Therefore, any question concerning the Church of Christ, her existence or her history, should be considered and studied in the context of this eternity, which the Church exists to enable us to attain.

Our own lives, too, and all the events taking place in the world should be evaluated from this same perspective, since, in essence, every expression of the human spirit and every human action, undertaken in the exercise of our God-given freedom, contributes either to salvation or to condemnation.

Two paths always lie open before man: the path of life and the path of death. This was already stated in the Old Testament: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Choose life, that both you and your descendants may live.” [1] Some surviving works of early Christian literature begin with a reminder of this. [2] If a person is not walking the path of life, he is walking the path of death.

When the Lord Jesus Christ came to earth, He said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.” [3] Yet life in Christ, as the fulfillment of His Gospel commandments, takes on particular forms in the course of history. Striving to live according to the Gospel, people seek the conditions in which they can attain the fullness of life in Christ. Thus, for example, particular forms of asceticism developed over time, finding expression in cenobitic monasticism, life in a skete, and the eremitic life. Yet all these forms of asceticism share a single spiritual essence and are built upon the same principles—the principles of the Gospel.

Thus, when speaking of hesychasm, we must remember that it is a historical phenomenon. Although it emerged under the name hesychasm in the fourteenth century, this form of asceticism was not new to the life of the Church. It had existed from the beginning of Christianity and gradually developed into a coherent system, influencing every aspect of human life and activity, sometimes openly and sometimes imperceptibly.

Scholarly interest in hesychasm arose at the turn of the twentieth century. Yet serious research into it as a phenomenon and as a teaching began only in the second half of the twentieth century. Scholars and theologians from several countries published substantial studies presenting interesting scholarly observations and conclusions. However, to assess this spiritual phenomenon correctly, one must avoid a number of common errors typically made by secular scholars.

Here is the most significant of these errors, to which particular attention should be paid.

Although hesychasm is a phenomenon deeply rooted in the inner life of the Church and historically developed within her bosom, it is often considered apart from the Church and solely from a rationalistic standpoint. The ecclesiological approach—that is, the Church’s approach—which can be adopted only by someone who has entered the Church and become rooted in her life, is completely ignored.

Researchers living outside the Church’s tradition study hesychasm solely in terms of human capabilities and take no account whatsoever of the action of God’s grace—nor are they able to do so. They pay attention only to the outward form of the hesychasts’ lives and ascetic struggles, and believe that the very essence of the teaching of hesychasm lies in these outward practices and particular methods of asceticism.

Yet outside the Orthodox tradition, it is impossible to study and comprehend this phenomenon in all its fullness, to enter into contact with it, and still less to put it into practice in daily life and, through it, cultivate spiritual fruits of grace.

Hesychasm is a form of asceticism encompassing every aspect of the human spirit’s expression; it is a teaching on the whole of ascetic life. The term itself derives from the Greek word “hesychia” (ἡσυχία), which means “rest,” “silence,” or “detachment.” Thus, “hesychast,” rendered in Church Slavonic, means “one who practices sacred stillness.” This was the name given in the fourteenth century to ascetics who pursued their ascetic struggles in accordance with this teaching.

The spiritual and cultural movement of the same name also dates to this period. It arose through the lives, ascetic struggles, and activities of these ascetic elders—the hesychasts. This movement, in fact, initiated the spiritual and cultural flowering known as the Renaissance, thereby exerting a powerful and far-reaching influence on Christian society in both East and West.

Following the well-known theological disputes between the Barlaamites and the Palamites, [4] the West completely rejected the hesychast teaching, thereby renouncing the heritage of the ancient Church, and followed its own spiritual path. The result was the so-called Western civilization, founded on Western humanism. Byzantium, however, the South Slavic countries—Bulgaria, with its well-known hesychast centers in Paroria [5] and Tarnovo, and Serbia—and Romania experienced a great spiritual and cultural flowering under the influence of the hesychasts. In Serbia and Bulgaria, this was also accompanied by a strengthening of state power.

From Byzantium and the Balkans, the hesychast movement was passed on to Rus’ in the same fourteenth century, where well-known hesychast centers also arose. The earliest of these was the Holy Trinity Monastery of Venerable Sergius of Radonezh. Although the term hesychasm itself was not used, the teaching and methods practiced there were hesychastic. Another such center was the skete of Venerable Nilus of Sora († 1508), where the elders pursued their ascetic struggles in strict accordance with the hesychast foundations of spiritual life. Indeed, in every generation of Christian ascetics, there have always been holy fathers who systematized the teaching on spiritual practice, interpreting it through their own experience and presenting it to the world in accessible concepts and forms, explaining it as clearly as possible.

The fourteenth century was a period in which the hesychast teaching on spiritual life flourished. At that time, it effectively represented the quintessence of all Orthodoxy.

The second error in the study of hesychasm is literalism, a literal approach that consists in the following reasoning: since hesychasm is a teaching on contemplation, it must therefore be studied as a separate phenomenon, in the abstract, without connecting it to ordinary monastic ascetic life. This has given rise to the false view that there are two separate paths of asceticism, with little connection between them—the path of the active life and the path of contemplation. Then follows the paradoxical conclusion that the active way of life belongs exclusively to communal monasteries and cenobia, while contemplation belongs to life in a skete.

Such an assertion lacks elementary logic. After all, hesychasm is usually spoken of as the summit of monastic spiritual practice, and reference is made to the spiritual fruits acquired by hesychast ascetics... Yet none of this is given all at once or suddenly, without growth, without passing through the initial stages, without a gradual ascent to the summit of this practice, where the gifts of the grace of the Holy Spirit are acquired.

Yet these very heights are considered in isolation by some researchers, who regard hesychasm as contemplation alone, without the arduous path that must first be traveled to reach this summit.

What, then, is this height, and why have those who attained it come to be called “contemplatives”?

It is because the hesychasts, receiving the grace of the Holy Spirit through their spiritual practice, contemplated the uncreated Divine energies in the form of the light of Tabor, which the disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ saw during His Transfiguration on Mount Tabor. These ascetics received such consolation from God at the appointed time, when they had matured spiritually to the measure of the stature of Christ.

Such consolation was granted to them by the Lord neither at their own will nor because, through ascetic exercises, they had attained such a blessed state that they could contemplate the light of Tabor whenever they wished. This consolation is given by God only when He is pleased to grant it. This is a mystery of God’s Providence.

Yet the acquisition of the grace that the Lord gives a person also depends on that person, because the Lord does not save us and bestow gifts upon us without our participation; active effort on our part is necessary here. Whether or not to grant the grace of the Holy Spirit—that is, the higher spiritual gifts—depends, however, on God, Who Himself “has done whatever He pleased.” [6] No one can dispose of Divine grace at will. There is a certain mystery in this, too. And here researchers often make yet another error.

Those who have no understanding whatsoever of the grace-filled life of the Church say that, through particular exercises and training, hesychasts attained certain states similar to those attained, for example, by yogis and other Eastern ascetics. Parallels are drawn between them and the hesychasts, and sometimes they are even equated.

This is an entirely false view. The teaching and practice of the hesychasts have no connection whatsoever with the practice of Indian yogis and followers of other Eastern teachings. And vice versa.

Nor should researchers be perplexed by the fact that, at certain times during prayer, hesychasts use a particular bodily posture or other physical actions to help gather their attention and concentrate... These outward techniques are indeed employed and are intended to assist the human spirit, since man is a psychophysical, or spiritual and bodily, being, whose spirit and body are connected and influence one another. Hesychasts have always taken this connection into account, but these spiritual and bodily exercises were of secondary importance and by no means central to hesychast practice. One might even say that hesychasts attached no particular importance to them, using outward techniques as an aid.

The first matter to which hesychasts attached particular importance in their practice was a person’s attention.

If we recall the account of the Fall set forth in the Book of Genesis [7] and carefully trace all its stages, we will discover some very important points that must be clearly understood, because our spiritual orientation and our subsequent attitude toward everything taking place in the world and in human society depend on this.

Let us try to identify the most significant moment of the Fall.

God settled the first human beings in Paradise and endowed them with certain capacities that depended on their close bond with the Creator. This bond was expressed above all in the fact that they could not even conceive of themselves apart from God. All the powers of human nature, of the human soul, were in harmony and directed toward their Creator, Who was the natural center of all Adam and Eve’s aspirations and desires. The entire meaning of their lives lay in God alone. Through this union, they possessed capacities that were meant to develop and advance toward greater perfection. These capacities and gifts are illustrated by the naming of the animals, which the Lord brought to Adam so that he might give each of them a name. To give a name is to identify a creature’s most essential characteristic—that is, to penetrate to the very essence of a phenomenon and name the creature’s logos. The first man perceived the logoi of creatures and identified created beings because he viewed all that exists in the Divine light.

But God had given man one commandment: not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

When Eve was near the forbidden tree, the enemy of mankind began, through the serpent, to suggest doubtful thoughts to her, seeking to take possession of her mind and interest her in something other than God. And he succeeded. After these suggestions, Eve suddenly saw that the fruit of the tree was “pleasant to the eyes and desirable.” [8] The object of her desire had changed: it was no longer the Lord, but the forbidden fruit. Here lies the most significant and important moment of the Fall: Eve’s attention was redirected; she shifted it from God to the forbidden fruit. There occurred what we would now call a reorientation of values. This, in fact, brought about her separation from God. And as a consequence came the Fall itself—the plucking of the fruit, fear, falsehood, the refusal to acknowledge one’s own guilt... This, in turn, led further “downhill” to all the tragic consequences with which we now contend: the corruption of human nature and death as a consequence of that distortion. Human beings suddenly discovered that they and the world around them were outside the grace of God. Through this rupture, the enemy of mankind—the devil—gained the power and ability, above all, to unsettle man’s faculty of thought, to influence him and his attention, and to keep him in this state apart from God.

This is why hesychasts insist so strongly on the reverse process—redirecting attention from the sinful world to the Divine world. Both our mind and our attention must be in God; we must remember God unceasingly and constantly walk before Him. “Seek nothing here on earth except God and the salvation of your soul,” say the ascetic elders. [9]

Venerable Gregory of Sinai, who revived this inner practice in the fourteenth century, was one of the pillars of hesychasm and an initiator of the spiritual and cultural flowering of that period. He speaks of this as follows: “Those who fulfill the commandments characteristically prefer above all else the greatest, all-embracing commandment concerning the remembrance of God, which says: ‘Always remember the Lord your God.’ [10] Through violating it, human beings perished, and through it they can be saved. Forgetfulness of God eradicates the remembrance of Him at its root and, by obscuring the commandments, thus leaves a person utterly naked spiritually.” [11] This commandment underlies all hesychast spiritual practice. It is one of the defining and foundational elements of the teaching.

To fulfill this commandment, attain attentiveness, keep one’s attention fixed on God, and return to the blessed state lost at the Fall is possible only with God’s help. If this could be accomplished without Divine participation, there would have been no need for the Lord Jesus Christ to come to earth. At the beginning of this article, we quoted the Savior’s words: “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.” And in the Acts of the Holy Apostles it is said: “There is no other name under heaven,” apart from the name of Jesus Christ, “by which we must be saved.” [12]

For man’s salvation—or, more precisely, his healing and the restoration of the wholeness he lost at the Fall—the help of grace is necessary. This help is given to man through the Savior’s coming and through the fruits of His redemptive work, which we make our own within the bosom of the holy Church. The return to God begins with entry into the Church of Christ through the Mystery of Baptism. This is why particular importance has always been attached to the Mystery of Baptism, and why the hesychast fathers focused so closely upon it. When an ascetic began his ascent under the guidance of experienced hesychasts but failed to attain the proper results that were already expected, the question of the validity of his Baptism would always arise. What if he had never been baptized, or his Baptism had been performed incorrectly?

During the Mystery of Baptism, the grace of the Holy Spirit is sown within a person. This grace is the foundation for man’s rebirth. Like the leaven in the Gospel, which must leaven the whole batch, [13] it must regenerate and transform him. With the help of this grace, a person can put off the old man with his passions and put on the new, [14] becoming a new creation in Christ. [15] For this reason, in the Orthodox Church’s tradition, the Mystery of Baptism has always been performed with great care, with full immersion, the correct sacramental formula, and so forth. Particular importance has likewise been attached to the Mystery of Chrismation—the reception of the “seal of the Holy Spirit.”

There was an occasion in the history of the hesychast movement when Patriarch Kallistos of Constantinople, a disciple of Venerable Gregory of Sinai, learned that in Bulgaria Baptism was being performed with a single immersion, and Chrismation with myrrh taken from the myrrh-streaming relics of the holy Martyr Barbaros, rather than with chrism consecrated in the patriarchal cathedral. He sent a letter directing that these errors be corrected and suspended those responsible from serving.

As already noted, the Fall brought about a distortion of human nature, which led to an inclination toward evil and a disordering of the powers of the soul. From this arose attachments to things that lead man away from God, followed by dependence on temporary harmful habits and their development into sinful passions, which became, as it were, man’s second nature. They became so intertwined with his nature that uprooting them became a very painful process, and man can no longer free himself from them by his own strength, without the help of grace. Sinful passion became the negative principle through which demonic power acts upon man. Sinful passions therefore impede the ascent to God. Consequently, the struggle against the passions is one of the chief components of the hesychasts’ teaching on the ascetic path of ascent to God.

The hesychasts clearly divided the entire course of man’s life in Christ into two periods.

The first period begins with Baptism—entry into the Church. The ascent to God then proceeds through purification from sinful passions and the acquisition of Christian virtues, by the power and action of the Mysteries instituted by the Lord, chiefly the Mysteries of Repentance and Communion, and with the help of the ascetic exercises carefully developed by the hesychasts. This ascetic path is called “action,” or the “active path,” in Greek πρᾶξις (praxis).

The second period is contemplation, in Greek θεωρία (theoria). [16]

Without the initial period, it is impossible to enter into the contemplation that leads one up to God. This is obvious and clear.

Venerable John Climacus taught: “Let no one subject to irritability and self-exaltation, hypocrisy and the remembrance of wrongs ever dare to see even a trace of stillness.” [17] If we turn to hesychast sources, above all to the writings of Venerable Gregory of Sinai, we will find confirmation of this. [18] Ascetics who lived not long before our own time affirm this as well. The Athonite elder and spiritual father, Hieroschemamonk Ieronymos (Solomentsov), advised “first learning in a cenobitic monastery to overcome the passions and thoughts, and then, armed with an elder’s blessing, going into the wilderness, following one’s guide’s counsel in everything.” [19]

The Russian scholar and researcher of ancient manuscripts, Archimandrite Porphyry (Uspensky), discovered a fourteenth-century manuscript in Iviron Monastery directly related to hesychast practice. It is an outline that hesychasts compiled for themselves, marking out the milestones and stages of their ascent so that they could always keep it before them as a reminder. This manuscript, which Father Porphyry published in Greek, [20] sets out the fundamental principles of hesychast practice.

The hesychasts themselves set out four principal tasks:

The 1st task, for beginners, is to weaken the passions;

The 2nd task, for those making progress, is to engage in psalmody;

The 3rd task, for those who have advanced, is to persevere in prayer;

The 4th task, for the perfect, is to abide in contemplation.

Anyone who has set foot on this path is already a hesychast, provided he has the proper orientation and remembrance of God, together with the desire to attain union with God, or theosis—to become god by grace.

Thus begins the “gradual”—step-by-step—ascent to God. The first step has already been discussed: it is Baptism and everything connected with weakening and uprooting the passions.

The second practice is psalmody, to which great importance is also attached. This is primarily because the Psalter is a book of Holy Scripture. Our Lord Jesus Christ testified to the purifying power of Holy Scripture: “You are already cleansed through the word which I have preached to you.” [21] “Even if you do not understand the power of the Divine words, at least accustom your lips to pronounce them,” teaches Saint John Chrysostom. “The tongue is sanctified by these words if they are spoken with zeal.” [22] That is, these words act beneficially and directly upon the soul of any person, even if he neither understands nor assimilates their content. The Psalter reiterates God’s commandments, which are so necessary for a righteous life. Saint Athanasius said: “In the words of this book, the whole of human life is measured and encompassed, every state of the soul, every movement of thought.” [23] Thus, in studying the Psalter, a person finds answers to all the questions of his life. And because the Psalter has a purifying effect upon the soul, a beginner, immediately upon entering the monastery, was instructed to learn several psalms and to read the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament regularly. In time, the entire Psalter was learned by heart.

The psalmody practiced by the hesychasts is a manner of reading the Psalter that helps keep one’s attention on the words of the prayer. According to the teaching of the holy fathers, the mind must be kept “without color” and “without images” and enclosed within the words of the prayer. Certain outward techniques were used to achieve this. Care was taken to keep the reading itself steady and uninterrupted, because, through the action of the devil, the mind is often distracted during the pause between spoken words. This method of continuous, even reading, without vocal emphasis, helps keep the mind attentive.

The third practice is to persevere in prayer. This is the inner practice of prayer, above all the Jesus Prayer, in which the mind is enclosed not within the words of the psalms, but within the words “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” When attention is held within these words and concentrated in the heart, and thus raised to God, this becomes a prayerful cry that burns away the passions still remaining at this stage and raises a person to the state of contemplation.

The state of contemplation—the fourth practice—is attained when the stage of dispassion is reached, and it is characterized, according to the holy fathers, by the gift of tears. This first gift is given as a sign that the sinful passions no longer have power and have been replaced by Christian virtues. Virtue then becomes a quality of the soul, which is precisely what is required of anyone who desires to attain theosis, receive his portion in the Kingdom of God, and inherit the life of the age to come, concerning which Holy Scripture says: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him.” [24]

 

NOTES

1. Deut. 30:19.

2. See, for example, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (Didache), in Early Christian Fathers of the Church: An Anthology. Brussels, 1978, p. 16.

3. John 14:6.

4. Barlaamites—followers of the monk Barlaam of Calabria (a region in southern Italy where Orthodoxy endured for a long time), who, drawing on the teachings of Abelard and Thomas Aquinas, disseminated ideas of rationalism and agnosticism in Byzantium. Condemned by the Councils of Constantinople in 1341, 1347, and 1351, he departed for Italy, embraced Catholicism, taught Petrarch and, through him, Boccaccio, received episcopal rank, and successfully propagated his views, thus becoming one of the ideologists of the European Renaissance. Palamites—followers of Saint Gregory Palamas († c. 1360), an Athonite monk and later Archbishop of Thessalonica, who articulated the teaching of the hesychasts in clear and precise theological concepts. The central question in the hesychast disputes between the Barlaamites and the Palamites, in which Western and Eastern worldviews clashed, concerned the possibility of man knowing the unknowable God and of a real, rather than abstract or imaginary, encounter with Him face to face. Drawing on the spiritual experience of the apostles who witnessed the Lord’s Transfiguration and of subsequent Orthodox ascetics, the Palamites demonstrated the possibility of partial knowledge of God in His energies (operations).

5. Paroria—a region in northern Thrace, close to the border between Byzantium and Bulgaria.

6. Ps. 113:11.

7. Gen. 3:1–24.

8. Gen. 3:6.

9. The Great Watch: The Life and Works of the Athonite Elders of Blessed Memory, Hieroschemamonk Ieronymos and Schema-Archimandrite Makarios. Book 1: Hieroschemamonk Ieronymos, Elder and Spiritual Father of the Russian Monastery of Saint Panteleimon on Mount Athos. Moscow, 2001, p. 520.

10. Deut. 8:18.

11. Venerable Gregory of Sinai. Works. Moscow, 1999, p. 12.

12. Acts 4:12.

13. See the Gospel according to Matthew: “He told them another parable: The Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and put into three measures of flour until the whole was leavened” (Matt. 13:33).

14. See the Epistle to the Colossians: “But now put away all these: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and filthy language from your mouths. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man, who is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of his Creator” (Col. 3:8–10).

15. See the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (2 Cor. 5:17).

16. θεωρία—this Greek term encompasses such meanings as observation; contemplation, reflection; teaching, theory.

17. Venerable John Climacus. The Ladder. Sergiev Posad, 1908, p. 237.

18. See, for example: Venerable Gregory of Sinai. Works, pp. 48, 65, 86–87.

19. The Great Watch, p. 486.

20. Bishop Porphyry (Uspensky). The Christian East. Athos: A History of Athos. Saint Petersburg, 1892. Part 3, section 2, pp. 609–615.

21. (John 15:3).

22. Quoted in: Igumen Peter (Pigol). “The Psalter in the Life of Orthodox Christians,” Danilov Monastery Herald. Moscow, 1991, no. 1, pp. 50–51.

23. Spiritual Conversation. 1872, no. 27, p. 40.

24. 1 Cor. 2:9.

 

Russian source: Философские науки [Philosophical Sciences], 2005, No. 2, pp. 59-71.