The Purpose of the
Book “Look,” [Elder Paisios] said, “the devil
doesn’t want people to know that he exists, because it’s easier for him to
fight them if they’re unaware of his existence.
You don’t protect yourself from an enemy unless you realize he exists. But once you’ve detected him, there’s no
reason for him to hide, so he then fights you out in the open.” (52) |
Elder Paisios on
Man’s Love Towards Man
“Man
is worthy of being loved just because he’s in the image of God. It doesn’t matter at all if he’s good or bad,
moral or sinful. Man is worthy of being
loved for what he is. Christ loved and
sacrificed Himself for sinful, corrupt people.
I came not to call the righteous,
but sinners to repentance (Matt. 9:13).
We should be the same way: we should love everyone without making any
distinctions. Just like the sun rises on
everyone, intelligent and unintelligent, good and evil, beautiful and ugly, our
love should be like the love of God – love that’s like the sun and shines on
His whole creation without making distinctions” (Elder Paisios) (83)
The Author’s
Impression of Elder Paisios
I
had the elder in mind. I recalled the
many miracles he had worked, such as the time he had taken by the hand a man
paralyzed from birth and enabled him to walk around the room. The elder had told me many details of my own
life that even I had forgotten. He would
feed wild bears by hand, for nature was obedient to him. He saw and conversed with saints, angels, and
the Virgin Mary. He could be in a
distant location without having traveled. (92)
Elders, Saints an
the Orthodox Tradition
They
wrote about how they lived with God, how and why one loses intimacy with Him,
and how one can find it once more, in a fuller, purer, and more blessed
way. I was astonished by the fact that
their views and experiences were the same, though they were separated by as
many as fifteen hundred years, and I asked Father Christos about this. He told me that this is what is meant by
“Orthodox tradition.” As I would come to
discover, the ascetic and hesychast was a living link in that living
tradition. I would realize that he had
been able to clarify the issues that these texts raised because he lived as
their authors did and had the same experiences of Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever. (107)
God and Man
Later, the elder would tell me
that, if God does not help man spiritually, it is impossible for man to
approach the truth, and that this is why Christ came into this world. (120)
The Comparative “Caliber” of Elder Paisios
I
couldn’t consider the elder to be a member of an inferior faith, as all the
groups influenced by Eastern religions portrayed Christianity to be, because I
had never encountered anyone of his caliber with whom to make a comparison. (147)
Differences in “free
will” (pt. 1 of 5)
Suddenly,
while I was watching him [Babaji] come down the stairs, I lost consciousness
for an indeterminate period of time. I
was standing there but my mind and self-consciousness had been seized and taken
somewhere else. (148)
Differences in “free
will” (pt. 2 of 5)
Babaji’s
eyes roved around the room and at a certain point our eyes did in fact meet,
although he wasn’t looking at me purposely.
As soon as this happened, I lost all contact with my surroundings and
fell into an ecstasy. It was as though I
was looking into my chest, and in that inner darkness I saw my own heart in the
most lurid colors and engulfed in flames.
The very next moment I regained consciousness and realized what had
taken place. I was quite impressed and
continued to watch him carefully. (155)
Epistemological
thoughts between Hinduism and Orthodox Christianity
I stood there wondering which of these two
utterly divergent perspectives was, in fact, correct. I needed to find a criterion by which to
determine what this teacher of teachers really was: if I could only find the
proper set of scales, I would weigh him in the balance in order to discern
whether he was a sorcerer or a saint. I
somehow had to find a gauge that would indicate if he was a god or a devil.
(157)
Wrestling with Elder
Paisios
I
couldn’t help being sceptical (sic)
about the high spiritual level of a teacher who would resort to violence in
order to protect his wallet. In fact, I
found such an idea downright amusing when I recalled a similar incident
involving Elder Paisios. There was a
young man who had grown up around a Buddhist monastery and spent a lot of time
around the elder. Even though the elder
was kindly trying to help him, the young man decided that he wanted to test the
elder’s strength, and he grabbed Father Paisios from behind and tried to crush
his frail body with his muscular arms.
Irreverently, he said, “Hey, let’s see if Saint Arsenios can help you
now!”
As
the elder told me later, “As soon as I heard him say that I felt as though he
had uttered blasphemy. I moved my hand
slightly, like this, and immediately saw him cast six feet away and slammed
against the wall. He afterwards came
over and made a prostration, and I told him to ask forgiveness of the
saint.” From this example, I concluded
that God protects spiritual people in a spiritual way, and not with their own
use of the martial arts, which (apart from being potentially injurious) hardly
reflects the character that befits a saint. (176)
Differences in “free
will” (pt. 3 of 5)
Suddenly, I became aware that I was jerking
my head back and forth, as though I were trying to rid myself of something that
had sat on top of it. I rubbed my eyes
vigorously in order to awake from this condition. In the meantime, the crowd became alarmed and
recoiled from me in fear, and many even fled the group. I felt sure it was the work of the yogi. Nevertheless, when I came to, I looked at him
indifferently and though, “You huckster, you’re nothing to write home
about.” To me, he seemed to be showing
off. I blamed him, but I wasn’t angry
with him: I had lost all interest in him and his powers. Shortly thereafter, I returned to my hotel
and went to sleep.
When
I later reflected on what had taken place, I realized that I couldn’t tell when
I had lost control over my senses. I
didn’t know when this state had begun, how long it lasted, or what I did while
I was in it… (184-185)
Differences in “free
will” (pt. 4 of 5)
The
whole time the mantra “
Differences in “free
will” (pt. 5 of 5)
I felt as though someone had stolen the keys
to my consciousness, hypnotizing me from a distance while I was asleep and
breaking into the house of my soul. (198)
Contours of Divine
Knowledge
I knew then that these are not matters to be
judged by the intellect, which can hardly comprehend them. Instead, they are the province of a divine
knowledge born in the heart, which is much more certain and profound than what
usually passes for knowledge. (230)
Elder Paisios in the
Light of the Transfiguration
One
day some time later, when I was leaving Elder Paisios’s cell, I recalled
something that was troubling me and I mentioned it to him: “Elder, that yogi,
Niranjan, was able to produce a light.”
“What kind of light?” he asked.
“Once, when we were all sitting around him, his body suddenly started to
give off a golden-yellowish light in the form of a continually expanding
sphere, which eventually engulfed us all.
I wasn’t the same afterwards – It altered my way of thinking. What was that light?”
Without
saying a word, the elder gently lifted up his hand and placed it on my
head. Suddenly, the entire yard was flooded
with a light that welled forth from the elder and could be seen in all
directions. It was as powerful as a
flash of lightning, but it was continuous, showing no sign of passing away. Although it was intense, it didn’t hurt my
eyes. On the contrary, I couldn’t get my
fill of looking at this sweet, immaterial, noetic light. And, although the light was supernatural and
rare – not like a white light, but more like glass, or water – there was still
something so very natural about it that it didn’t startle me, but instead
granted me a profound sense of joy. This
light was all-embracing and intoxicating yet it left my movements peaceful and
my mind extremely lucid. Although I was
absorbed by the vision of this light, I continued to see my natural surroundings. My five senses continued to function
normally, while alongside of them another sense, a spiritual kind of vision,
had begun to function as well. Although
it was around noon and the sun was shining brightly, when the immaterial light
began to emanate from Father Paisios, the sun’s light seemed weak by
comparison, like that of the late-afternoon sun.
I
didn’t say a word, but I understood many things. Afterwards, when I reached the Monastery of
Koutloumousiou, the monks could see that I was deeply changed and asked me,
“You’re coming from Elder Paisios, aren’t you?”
I nodded my head. The experience
left a mark on my soul that I can still feel twenty years later, even though
the intensity of my feelings waned within a few days. It left my soul with a sweet peace, which
deeply changed me in a mystical, hidden way.
Truly,
if I had remained ignorant of the light that came forth from the elder, I would
have remained impressed by the enchanting light of the yogi – which was, in
fact, truly remarkable. But after my
experience, I naturally made the comparison between the light of Niranjan and
the light of the elder. These two lights
were as vastly different as an old piece of tin differs from a bar of solid
gold, as falsehood differs from truth, and as man differ from God. The elder’s invincible light not only
surpassed the light of the yogi, but it utterly prevailed over it. I had already heard so much from the elder
about the light of the yogis, but words just weren’t sufficient to grant me
true understanding, so he had granted me this spiritual gift so that I could
understand the difference by experience.
Once,
when I was speaking with the elder about the lights that one sees during
meditation, he told me, “We don’t want to see those kinds of lights, so we turn
away from them. When I was at the
hermitage of Saint Epistimi in the Sinai desert, I would leave my cave at night
and go to pray at the neighboring peak, from which I could see the monastery. I would hold a lighter in my hand that I would
light every so often so that I could see where I was walking on the rocks. One night, when I had walked a few steps from
the cave, there appeared a light as
bright as a spotlight that illumined the whole region as though it were
day. I realized that it was from the
evil one and said to myself, “I don’t want to see that kind of light,’ and I
returned back to the cave.
As
powerful as my experiences with the elder were, his words were of great value
as well. Of course, I can do no more
than express what I understood of his words, along with the writings and spoken
teachings of other spiritual strugglers.
From these, I gathered that the spiritual phenomena I had experienced
were a result of the natural receptivity of the human soul to both divine grace
and demonic influence. On this plane,
all depends upon a person’s free will, in accordance with which he opens the
gateway of his soul to Christ or to the devil.
When people trample on their conscience, the law written in their hearts by God in order to guide them
towards the good, they alienate themselves from Him, the source of goodness and
light. Their minds grow dark and they
commit sins that give the devil the “right” to linger around them – and this is
how people find themselves under demonic influence.
If
they continue further along this path, the evil spirits will enter them and
they will become demonically possessed.
But the elders on
In
any event, when a person has become open to demonic influence, the devil can
indeed grant him, or rather exercise through him, the considerable power the
devil naturally posses as a spirit.
Thus, such a man might gain great physical capabilities, such as were
possessed by the man who had an unclean spirit in the country of the Gadarenes,
who was able to break his chains into pieces.
He might be able to alter his appearance, to speak with peculiar voices,
to cause himself to levitate, or to make lights or different objects to
appear. He may seem to be able to
foretell events, and he may be able to reveal a person’s hidden sins, amazing
and frightening his hearers with knowledge of the past. Moreover, acting through the demons, such a
man can exploit others; imaginations in order to form images and sounds in
their minds, and can also bring about striking physical effects, such as
cracking a mammoth tree or shattering a large boulder. I knew these phenomena well.
Nevertheless,
the elder told me, Christ has bound the devil, so that he cannot wreak all the
havoc that he desires. “The most
insignificant demon has such power that he could make the entire earth collapse
with a stroke of his tail, but God does not allow it.” On another occasion he said, “Suppose the
president were speaking on the balcony before a crowd of thousands watching him
from below. If God permitted the devil
to appear on that balcony for just one moment, they would all drop dead from
fear.”
And
yet, despite the terrifying visage of the devil in his true form, a person who
has opened his soul to the devil’s power may appear to be quite virtuous. The elder referred to a passage from the New
Testament: For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves
into the apostles of Christ. And no
marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his
ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end
shall be according to their works. (II Cor. 11:13-15)
On
the other hand, when someone approaches God by keeping His commandments and
participating in the Mysteries of Christ, God comes to abide in that person’s
soul. With the keeping of Christ’s
commandments, man shows his love for God, and when a man loves Christ, he will
keep his words, and His Father will love him, and They will com to unto him,
and make Their abode with him (cf. John 14:23). Then
man’s soul is so closely united with God that he and God become one: He that is joined unto the Lord is one in
spirit (I
Cor. 6:17). Thus, man’s soul experiences theosis and acquires by grace those
traits that are God’s by nature: immortality, light, glory, knowledge of the
future and the past, dominion over matter, authority over illness, and much
more. But we all, with open face
beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image
from glory to glory (II Cor. 3:18). In
such a person, the light of Christ that is present in his soul is so intense
that it also illumines his body, so that when that person so wills for reasons
he knows best, he can reveal his soul’s glory to others. He does so even as Christ revealed His divinity
to His three disciples on Mount Tabor: Jesus
taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high
mountain apart, and was transfigured before them: and His face did shine as the
sun, and His raiment was white as light (Matt. 17:1-2).
In
time I realized that Father Paisios could also be numbered in the company of
these God-bearers. By his words, deeds,
and life, he manifested the light of Christ – and, when there was a need, he
also manifested it in a special, supernatural way. (258-263)
The Difference
Between the Jesus Prayer and the Yogi Mantras
(282-285)
Now
consider how the yogis view the mantra.
First of all, thee are many mantras, and each refers to one of the many
gods of the Hindu pantheon such as
What
constitutes the infinite distance separating the Christian Jesus Prayer from
the Hindu mantra, however, is that which lurks behind the name of the god being
invoked in a mantra and invited into the soul.
Through the mouth of the Holy Prophet David, God declares, All the gods of the nations are demons (Ps. 95:5) – in other words, behind the
names
Another
significant difference between the Christian Jesus Prayer and the Hindu mantra
is the diametrically opposed viewpoints of the two faiths regarding techniques
and the human subject. I recall a
conversation I had with Niranjan after he had given me permission to begin to
practice some supposedly powerful yoga techniques. I said to him, “It’s fine practicing the techniques,
but what happens to the human passions of greed, lust for power, vainglory, and
selfishness? Aren’t we concerned about
them?” “They disappear,” he replied,
“through the practice of the techniques.”
“Do they just disappear like that, on their own?” I asked.
“Yes, they disappear automatically, while you are practicing the
techniques.”
What
an astonishing assertion: physical exercises can wipe out the inclinations that
a person’s soul acquired in life through conscious choices. But, in reality, man, as a self-determining
and free moral agent, can change the conscious aspect of his personality and
his moral sense only by the use of his own free will to make conscious
decisions in real-life situations. Any
external means to automatically induce such a change in a person’s
consciousness without his consent circumvents man’s free will, obliterates his
volition, and destroys his freedom, reducing man to a spineless puppet
manipulated by a marionettist’s strings.
Hinduism’s relentless insistence on properly performed techniques with
automatic results degrades man by depriving him of his most precious quality:
the self-governing free will. It
restricts the boundless human spirit within a framework of mechanical methods
and reflexes.
Orthodox
Christian Faith, on the contrary, recognizes and honors the gift of human
freedom as a divine trait. This
recognition and approach help man to be actualized as a free being. Precisely on account of the human freedom to
choose, man’s often-unpredictable responses can’s be limited to the mechanical
reflexes of a closed system, but can innovatively turn in any spiritual
direction that he, as a free subject, wills.
This is why Orthodoxy is not adamant about techniques and methods. In freedom and with respect, Orthodoxy seeks
the human heart, encouraging the individual to do what is good for the sake of
the good, and pointing out the appropriate moral sense of the soul before God,
which an individual can hen freely choose to embrace.
Genuine
spiritual development entails a deepening familiarity with God and with one’s
own self, acquired through moral choices that a person freely makes in the depths of his heart. Spiritual progress is a product of man’s way
of relating to himself, to his fellow man, and to God by the good use of his
innate moral freedom. This is why Christ
calls out, If any man wills to come after
Me, let him freely deny himself (Matt. 16:24) – that is, without being
deceived, without being psychologically compelled, and without being forced,
all of which are inappropriate to the spiritual nobility of the Christian life.
Father
Porphyrios had a small parrot that he taught to pray in order to illustrate the
absurdity of some Christians’ empty repetition of the words of prayer, as well
as the ridiculousness of the opinion commonly presented in Eastern religions
that someone can make moral advances by physical exercises or breathing
techniques. Every so often, the parrot
would mechanically say, “Lord, have mercy.”
The elder would respond, “Look, the parrot can say the prayer, but does
that mean that it is praying?” Can
prayer exist without the conscious and free participation of the person who
prays?” (282-285)
Who is Elder
Paisios?
“My
child, I’m just a human being. I pray to
Christ and he replies. If His grace
abandoned me, I’d be just another bum on the streets of Omonia” (