Orthodox Spirituality by Fr. Dimitru Staniloae - A Commentary
Orthodox Spirituality - A Commentary on the work of Fr. Dimitru Staniloae (pdf)
An index to the individual blog entries:
Introduction
ii. The Aim
Part Two: Illumination
25. Facing the Abyss
29. Entering Within
Part Three: Perfection
Perfection: Deification
Can we really be deified? What does this mean? This is a central doctrine in the Orthodox faith and is called Theosis.
Fr. Dimitru says,
Man becomes more and more like God without identifying with Him. Man will continue to become like God forever, in an ever fuller union with Him, but never will he reach full identification with Him; he will be able to reflect God more and more, but he will not become what God is.The Holy Fathers emphasize that deification is by grace and not by man's own effort or nature. When deified man's nature remains the same. He does not become a source of divine energy, like God. He receives God's energies though grace. Man only reflects God's energies. He never assumes the role of the source.
We never receive the totality of God's energies. Through our efforts in preparation we make an ascent and as we grow spiritually God's energies descend on us granting us increased powers.
Fr. Dimitru concludes his book with the following thoughts:
The divine energies are nothing but the rays of the divine essence, shining from the three divine Persons. And from the time that the Word of Good too flesh, these rays have been shining through His human face.
It can also be said that the things of the world are images of the logoi of the divine Logos, which are at the same time energies. By creation God put a part of His infinite possibility of thought and of energy into existence, in the form specifically at the level of the understanding of human creatures. He did this to permit a dialog with God and towards union with Him.
The incarnation of the Word confirmed the value of man and of these images of reason and of energy measured by him. But it also gave man the possibility to see in the face of the man of the Logos, concentrated anew, all the logoi and divine energies. Thus final deification will consist of a contemplation and a living of all the divine values and energies conceived in and radiated from the face of Christ according to the supreme measure of man. But by this, in the face of each man, by the logoi and the energies gathered in him, the logoi and the energies of the Logos will be reflected luminously. Eternal bliss will be the contemplation of the face of Christ.
So all will be in God and we will see all things in Him, or God will be in all things and we will see Him in all things; and the unitary presence of God in all things will be real to the extent that all creatures gathered in Him remain real and unmingled in God
This is the eternal perspective of deification.
Reference: Orthodox Spirituality, pp 362 - 374
Friday, July 16, 2010
Perfection: The Divine LIght
The one who has purified himself of the passions and has reached a burning love for God on the steps of the virtues can attain the vision of the divine light...
Father Dimitru tells us that St. Simeon the New Theologian... and Gregory Palamas have described these three elements;
a) The light is a manifestation of love
b) This love is the work of the Holy Spirit
c) He that raises himself to this state of light or of culminating love forgets bodily sensation, produced by the world through the body, and even himself.
He says,
The intesity of this love, the blinding level of light with which it overflows, makes the body of the one who expereinces it totally transparent for others...
The bodily sense are overwhelmed. Fr. Dimitru writes,
The body and the world are not done away with but they become the medium by which the interior light is made known. A paradoxical thing happens. First, the exterior things are overwhelmed; secondly, a great love is poured out through them, to everybody. Light radiates from everything.
Saint Gregory Palamas says,
This is union: that all these things be one, that the person who sees no longer be able to distinguish between himself and that through which he is seeing, but he only knows this much: That it is light and he sees a light, distinct from all creatures.
Reference: Orthodox Spirituality, pp 358 - 361
Perfection: Divine Light - Knowledge Beyond Knowledge
The Divine Light is of a spiritual nature, fills the mind, and reveals the mystical realities of God.
The Light which is seen in pure prayer is beyond all that can be known through our senses and reason. In effect it surpasses knowledge. It is a higher knowledge (supra-knowledge) based on a relationship with God.
Saint Gregory Palamas says,
Because union surpasses the power of the mind it is higher than all mental functions and it isn't knowledge, and because it is a relationship of the mind and God, it is something incomparably higher than the power which ties the mind with things created, that is than knowledge. Such union with God is thus beyond all knowledge.... This union is a unique reality. For whatever name one gives to it––union, vision, a sense perception, knowledge, intellection, illumination––would not properly speaking apply to it, or else would properly apply to it alone.The divine light is often referred to as a vision (not based on the imagination which include apparitions and so forth) reached by a leap through the descent of Spirit.
Fr Dimitru Staniloae says,
The vision of the divine light is a vision and a knowledge [caused by] a divine energy, and received by man by means of a divine energy. It is a vision and a knowledge according to the divine way. Man sees and knows qualitatively as God, or "spiritually and divinely"...Saint Gregory Palamas gives us an analogy.
The light of knowledge may be compared to a lamp that shines in an obscure place, whereas the light of mystical contemplation is compared to the morning star which shines in full daylight.Reference: Orthodox Spirituality, pp 341-343
Perfection: The Divine Light is Spiritual
The light that is seen at the peak of pure prayer is not a physical light but a spiritual one. It radiates from the presence of Jesus Christ and enlightens our souls with His truth.
Saint Gregory Palamas writes describing the experience of Moses,
Because he was able to see, after he had surpassed himself and arrived in the darkness, he didn't see either by the senses or by the mind; so that light is self-visible and fills minds become blind in the sense of surpassing.... But when the mind is raised above all mental activity and is found without eyes in the sense of being surpassed, it is filled with a brilliance higher than all beauty; it is found in God by grace and has that self-visible light mystically and sees by the union above mind.Saint Gregory Palamas says,
Those who see it are able to penetrate by the power of Spirit in them beyond the pane of physical realities. They find themselves raised to an order of the Spirit. Their eyes are open and they seek a target somewhere outside. But this means only that the light from the order of spiritual realities has overwhelmed the surrounding realities; their senses have become full of the power of the Spirit. We might use a colorless comparison: For those who love each other, all nature is filled with the light which seems to radiate from the other.Reference: Orthodox Spirituality, pp 337 - 340
Perfection: The Mind and the Divine Light
What is the Divine Light?
Fr. Dimitru Staniloae says,
It is, from one point of view, simply the happy radiation of divine love, experienced in a more intensive form in moments of ecstatic focus on God.
The experience which characterizes this state could be expressed by three terms: love, a knowledge by experience, higher than conceptual; and the light which is the expression of joy.To attain this state is a journey. The mind finds itself through prayer. When the passions have been overcome and the mind is still, there is a descent of divine love which is often experienced as uncreated light. There is an ascent through purification and illumination and then the divine descent for our purification.
Saint Gregory Palamas describes it as follows:
The one who desires union with God... frees his soul as much as possible from every impure tie, and dedicates his mind to unceasing prayer to God, and by this becomes wholly himself; he finds a new and secret ascent to the heavens, an unapproachable ascent to the silence of the initiate, as someone might say. With an unspeakable pleasure, he submerges his mind in this deep night full of pure, full, and sweet quietness, of a true tranquility and silence and he is lifted up above all creatures. In this way, he completely goes out of himself and becomes wholly of God; he sees a divine light inaccessible to the senses as such, but precious and holy to pure souls and minds; without this vision the mind couldn't see by being united with things above it, only by its mental sense, just as the body's eye can't see without perceptible light.In the divine light the mind is enabled to see God directly and to find itself in union with Him. This is not a light which is beyond itself or higher,
Gregory Palamas again,
But seeing itself, it sees more than itself: it does not simply contemplate some other object, or simply its own image, but rather the glory impressed on its own image by the grace of God. This radiance reinforces the mind's power to transcend itself, and to accomplish that union with those better things which is beyond understanding. By this union, the mind sees God in the Spirit in a manner transcending human powers.
Reference: Orthodox Spirituality, pp 327 - 336
Perfection: Divine Love Brings Union of All
Fr Dimitru Staniloae wrties,
St. Maximus the Confessor says that first of all love unifies the individual man. It replaces anger, falsenss, gluttony, and all the tings in which man has taken part by bodily love himself. When these things no longer exist, no trace of wickedness can persist; in their place various kinds of virtues are introduced, which integrate the power of love. However, by this unification of the individual man, the unification of individuals between themselvs is also realized.While we are here on earth we only can experience love in short ecstatic moments, in relationship with another person or with God. Even when we are in an ecstatic relationship with God we forget all people. So how do we experience a union with all people?
Fr. Dimitru says,
It follows that only in peaceful everyday love, manifested in fact and in thought, in Christian love in a broad sense, can we experience more or less love for all men. My interests, my passions, contradictory opinions, as voluntary manifestations, no longer break the unity of nature between me and my neighbor. Every moment I judge things from the point of view of my neighbor with who I am connected; I replace my ego with his and give up mine. By doing this right along with various neighbors with whom I come in contact, the sentiment of my union, actual or virtual with anyone, is strengthened. On my part there is no longer a rift between me and them; I no longer see any such thing. If they do, I don't.
This steady behavior strengthens the sentiment of my unity with them and with God... The energy of my love for another, also nurtured by the effort of my will, but especially by these moments of ecstatic contemplation, is easily directed later toward other people. And everywhere I gain a steady disposition of love for anyone, a joy for all, a conviction that in each one I can discover the mystery of enchanting depths. I feel united virtually with everyone and with every concrete opportunity...
Love for others grows from the habit of love for God and especially fro living it as ecstasy on the culminating step of prayer...
...
We have the feeling that in the love of God as ecstasy, God has opened His heart to us and received us in it, just as we have opened our heart so that He can enter it. On the other hand, the coming back to God, to His heart, means to enter His home. God's "home", however, wants to include all people, because in His heart there is room for everybody, and when I enter it I must feel that by being there I am united with eveyone there. Coming back to God, we truly come back home where we belong to the supreme parental home, together with all the heavenly Father's children...
Reference: Orthodox Spirituality, pp 323 - 326
Perfection: Prayer Develops Love and Union with God
Fr. Dimitru Staniloae writes,
When we go forward by the Jesus Prayer, to mental prayer in the heart, we are sustained by love for Him. It grows continually, and fashions us, in a spiritual imaging of His spiritual image, according to His image. The we feel Him evermore united with our ego, in as "we" from which I can no longer leave without the danger of being lost. And not only do I receive in me the ego, the "I" of Christ, which makes me according to His image, but also His "I" receives mine in Himself––He accepts even my body in Himself, so that He includes me in His pure senses, in His pure actions. Thus all of us who believe become one "body" with Him and with each other, a fact which will become perfected in the future life.This union is reached by pure prayer addressed to Jesus. But until we are able to engage in this level of prayer we must strive to love our neighbors. We work on this, recognizing that true love of neighbor, love that never fails, cannot be reached without prayer and asceticism.
Love is an encounter with the infinite. If we experience this ecstatic joy between two people it is usually only for a moment. When we join in our love of God with prayer this state of joy can be prolonged.
Fr Dimitru writes,
We can spend a longer time in the intoxication of the love of God, as the height of pure prayer.... Prayer leads up to the "cessation" of the mind from every activity directed toward the limited. But the intoxication of the love of God descends all at once from above. ...as overflowing joy, which expresses the total absorption of your person in the other and of the other's in you, there is also a peaceful love, directed by rational consideration, which grows little by little. This is a preparatory condition for the other.So our efforts to love one another is also an important preparation for our union with God. As we learn humility, and learn to give ourselves selflessly for the good of others, we come closer and closer to God. As we eliminate our passions and perfect our prayer to the state where is descends into the depths of the heart in pure prayer, we experience the unlimited love of God, our total surrender out of our love for Him and His love for us. It is through prayer that love is perfected in us.
Reference: Orthodox Spirituality, pp 318 - 322
Perfection: Joined in Love
Fr Dimitru Staniloae writes,
In love I don't only live myself or by myself, but also my neighbor or by my neighbor, without his ceasing to be a subject independent from me. This means, nevertheless that I don't have him as an object of mine, as a part of my individuality, but in a free relationship.... he becomes more intimate to me than anything which I possess; I see him penetrating more deeply in me that anything, and I penetrate him more than anything which he has.There is a substitution of egos that takes place between two lovers. One ego takes the place of the other. There is no absorption of the other but a going out of oneself. The other becomes ones center of life.
This is the nature of our union with God. It is what is meant when Saint Paul says, "I live, and yet not I but Christ lives in me." When we love God we no longer possess our own life but now possess His life.
Christian love is the opposite of pride. We no longer think only of ourselves and are only satisfied when the other is also satisfied. Love is based on humility.
Fr. Dimitru wrties,
So love is realized when two subjects meet each other in a full, mutual experience, in their qualities as subjects, that is without the reciprocal reduction of each other to the state of objects, but revealing themselves to each other to the maximum, as subjects; nevertheless with all this they give themselves to each other with complete freedom. Love penetrates two subjects reciprocally in their intimacy... By love you penetrate into the intimacy of your neighbor... without annihilating or belittling him... The more I love him the more he reveals himself to me.This is the nature of our desired relationship with God, our union with Him. A mutual penetration of our love while not being assumed into him but free to act. We live in Him and He lives in us. Though this coupling in love we are able to voluntarily link our will with His. Our energies co-penetrate. His energy flows through us.
Next: Love demands asceticism and prayer.
Reference: Orthodox Spirituality, pp 310 - 316
Perfection - The Steps of Love - The Path to Union
Fr Dimitru Stanloae begins his discussion about the final stage of Orthodox Spirituality, Perfection by Union with God or by Deification, with a discussion on Love and Dispassion. To understand union with God it is first necessary to understand love. It is with love that we attain union with God.
What is love? What are its characteristics? Love involves an eradication of ego, the development of selflessness. Our self-centered actions come from the passions. These we first have to overcome. Love is about giving totally of oneself to another. We can't be preoccupied with our own needs and love others. Love only fully develops after we have freed ourselves of the control of passions and reached dispassion.
Love is central to our finding union with God.
Love is central to our finding union with God.
Fr. Dimitru Staniloae says,
We can't turn exclusively to God, as long as we are preoccupied in an egoistic way with ourselves.
Saint Diadochos writes,
Saint John the Evangelist says,He who loves himself, cannot love God. But he who doesn't love himself because of he overwhelming richness of the love of God, loves God, for such a person never seeks his own glory, but that of God. Because he who loves himself seeks his own glory, but he who loves God, loves the glory of Him who made him. since it is proper to the sensitive soul to always seek first the glory of God in all the commandments which he is carrying out, and secondly, to enjoy himself in his humility.
"He who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?" (1 John 4:20)Fr. Dimitru outlines three steps in love:
a) The tendency of natural sympathy from the state of nature fallen from grace. [This we all have as a seed within ourselves from our birth.]
b) Christian love, which uses this tendency and grows by divine grace and by self-efforts; this grows and becomes firm. It brings nature to a kind of fulfillment. [This we develop as we follow the Orthodox Way of Life.]
c) Finally, there is love as ecstasy or as a gift exclusively from above. This comes after a long preparation through the second and last for moments, that from the second it might gain new force and continue its growth. [This comes with pure prayer.]
Full love means a man's complete victory over himself.
Divine love is a total victory of egotism. It is gained through prayer after preparation through the activities of purification to rid ourselves of the passions. It is what we begin to experience as we are able to transcend reason and all concepts. We discover God's love within our hearts and this helps us develop our capacity for love of God and for our neighbor.
Saint Diadochos says,
When someone begins to richly feel the love of God, then he begins to love his neighbor too, with spiritual feeling.
Saint Diadochos adds an important adjective to our love of other, "with spiritual feeling." When we love another with "spiritual feeling" there is no separation between us. All our thoughts are about the other person. And the one loved has all their thoughts directed toward us. We are joined in selfless union. There is no separation. This is how we attain theosis. It is based on our love of God and His love for us. As we give up ourselves for Him, we find ourselves embraced in His divine love. We find the union we seek.
Fr Dimitru says of divine love,
Divine love is a drink, because it floods with its enthusiasm the worldly judgment of the mind and the feeling of the body. It moves the one who participates in it to another plane of reality. He sees another world, whose logic darkens the logic of everyday life; he receives the sense of other states, which overwhelm the feeling of bodily pains and pleasures.
It is through this divine love that the Apostles received on that day of Pentecost. With the descent of the Hoy spirit filling them with divine love based on their total love of Jesus Christ, they were able to spread the Word throughout the world while suffering rejection, imprisonment and torture. All the troubles they endured never weakened their effort because of the union they had with God. It was through divine love that they were able to bear all. This is the focus of the final stage of Orthodox Spirituality: Perfection.
More on love...
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Summary of the the Stage of Illumination
Part Two: Illumination
In the phase of Illumination we learn to gain a new kind of knowledge that goes beyond mental concepts. We first begin to see the divine intent in all things, discovering their truth and purpose, the logoi. In this we see the handiwork of God in all things. As we pursue this level of contemplation we begin to realize the limits of our knowledge and mentally classify our knowledge of God as not this or not that, but something beyond that is not subject to our normal powers of reason. We discover and enter the higher reaches of the mind that is above reason. Seeing that our conceptual knowledge is limited and inadequate we lose our ego-centered self and face an abyss of unknown. This involves a letting go of all our concepts and discovering the pure self deep within our being, in the heart. The way we bridge this abyss and enter into this mystical state and knowledge is thorough pure prayer. With our focus on Jesus, we enter into the chamber of the inner heart and rest in the stillness that we find there. We are bathed in knowledge that is higher and not subject to classification by concepts. We lack words to describe this kind of knowledge. We are now prepared to receive the gift of the Divine light and our union with God.
Reference: Orthodox Spirituality by Dimitru Staniloae
Reference: Orthodox Spirituality by Dimitru Staniloae
Illumination: Mental Rest or Stillness of the Mind
Fr. Dimitru outlines the characteristics of this standstill of mental activity:
1. This cessation is produced because the mind has reached the peak of all objects received by thought and has given up all understanding, no matter how well defined; it has realized that no definite thought whatsoever can see God... It realizes that its activity no longer has any purpose, but on the contrary, that it is harmful because it brings it down once again to finite things.
2.We can draw two conclusions: First, the experience of God by the motionless of the mind is superior to the consciousness gained by the affirmation or negative activity. Secondly, this shows that this inactivity ins't a simple inertia or insensibility, but an experience of the divine reality which it doesn't try to define further.
3. The mind has left all things behind, even its own function which it had directed toward these things. It finds itself now before the Master, at the end of the earth, looking intensely and astonished at the ocean of life which is contained in Him.
4. It has given up all things and stands motionless, praying that a vessel will be sent to bring it into the open sea, which will open the door for it. This reveals a state of great love before the divine infinity.
5. In the measure that the warmth of prayer has grown, so has the love, that it might reach its fullness in pure prayer, the highest step of prayer. This love also remains after the ceasing of pure but unlimited prayer; love will constitute together with the coming of the Spirit to help, the bridge of crossing from the coast of created land, to the vastness of the divine ocean.
6. The experiencing of the feeling of the boundless divine mystery, the state of boundless prayer and the warm firm love for God are other characteristics which distinguish this apophaticism from negative theology, in which the intellect is more active.
Finally, he again cautions us:
This experience isn't reached without a freedom from all cares, from those intended to produce pleasure, or from all that can cause pain or need. Now once that the feeling of this divine ocean is reached, it controls man with such charm, that he remains quiet in tasting it, unaffected by anything from the outside.
Reference: Orthodox Spirituality, pp 294 - 299
True Meaning of "Theology" - Wisdom from Elder Paisios
I interject this teaching by Elder Paisios into our series on Orthodox Spirituality to provide another perspective from a truly holy man about the meaning of "theology." He too emphasizes the need to ascesis as a prerequisite to being made aware of the Divine Energies of God. He has a way of putting very esoteric thoughts in such a simple and earthy manner.Elder Paisios of Mt. Athos on “Theology”:
Theology is the word of God, which is apprehended by pure, humble and spiritually regenerated souls, and not the beautiful words of the mind, which are craft ed with literary art and expressed by the legal or world ly spirit.
Just as a beautiful statue cannot talk, manufactured words are unable to speak to the soul of a man, except if the listeners are very worldly, and pleased simply by charming conversation.
Theology that is taught like a science usually examines things historically and, consequently, things are understood externally. Since patristic ascesis and inner experience are absent, this kind of theology is full of un certainty and questions. For, with the mind one cannot grasp the Divine Energies if he does not first practice ascesis and live the Divine Energies, that the Grace of God might be energized within him.
Whoever thinks that he can come to know the mysteries of God through external scientific theory, resembles the fool who wants to see Paradise with a telescope.
Those who struggle patristically become empirical theologians through the visitation of the Grace of the Holy Spirit. All those who have an external education, in addition to the internal enlightenment of the soul, may describe the divine mysteries and interpret them correctly, as did many Holy Fathers.
If, however, one does not become spiritually related to the Holy Fathers and wants to take up translating or writing, he will wrong both the Holy Fathers and himself, as well as the people, with his spiritual cloudiness.
Neither is it right for someone to theologize using someone else’s theology, because he will resemble an impotent man who adopts others’ children, presents them as his own and pretends to be the father of a large family. The Holy Fathers took the divine word or personal experiences from their hearts; they were the result of spiritual battles against evil and the fire of temptations, which they confessed humbly or, out of love, wrote down in order to help us. They never kept this love for them selves, acknowledging, likewise, that humility and all the divine gifts are of God.
Those who present the gifts of God as their own are the most insolent and most unjust of the world, for they wrong God and, even more, their own selves. In this way they cause themselves to be deprived of Divine Grace so that they won’t be judged as being more un grateful and so they won’t be destroyed due to their great vainglory.
Those who are grateful towards God for everything and constantly attend to themselves humbly and look after God’s creatures and creation with kindness, theologize and thus become the most faithful theologians, even if illiterate. They are like the illiterate shepherds who observe the weather in the countryside, day and night, and become good meteorologists.
Those who live simply, with kindness and good thoughts, and have acquired inner simplicity and purity, regard the supernatural very simply, as natural, for everything is simple to God. He does not use greater power for the supernatural and less for the natural, but the same power for everything. He Himself is very simple and His Son revealed it to us on earth with His holy simplicity.
When purity comes to man and simplicity with its fervent faith and devotion arrives as well, then the Holy Trinity takes up His abode within us. With this divine enlightenment one easily finds the keys to divine mean ings, so as to interpret the Spirit of God in a very simple and natural way, without causing an intellectual headache.
Depending on the purity or guile that one possesses, analogous interpretations are made, and one is benefited or harmed accordingly. Oftentimes, one may cause harm due to his inexperience, even if acting with good intentions. For example, a person does not know that white wine also exists apart from red, and pours red paint into it to seemingly make it better, and, in this way, poi sons people. But even if he is not inexperienced or deceitful, but works only from human justice and logic, he will once again wrong the Spirit of God, and, as a result, harm himself and others.
With human logic and justice we also hear the complaints of the laborers of the first and third hour in the Gospel, who believed that they were unjustly treated. God, however, the beholder of the hearts of men, with the subtlety of His divine justice, also rewarded the laborers of the eleventh hour for the anguish they suffered before finding work. God would have even given to the laborers of the eleventh hour a greater re ward, out of His divine righteousness, full of mercy and love, because the poor ones suffered greatly in soul and were more fatigued than those, who, for more hours, were exhausted physically. But we, wretched people that we are, cannot fit God’s divine justice into our limited mind, just as His infinite kindness cannot fit inside our limited love. Therefore, God’s love was limited to giving everyone the same agreed reward, so as not to scandalize more those who loved their self more than their fellowmen. If He told them: “I am not doing you wrong; we agreed on this amount…”. He meant that: “I am a boss with noble love and divine justice which you cannot understand” and not: “I am boss and 1 take no one into consideration”. For God is our Father and we are His children, and all people know of His fatherly love; He was crucified in order to redeem and restore us to Paradise.
If we could go out of our self (the love for our self), we would also escape from the gravity of the earth and see everything in reality, with a divine eye, clearly and profoundly. That is why it is necessary for one to leave the world for the desert, struggle with humility, repentance and prayer, be deserted by his passions, remove his spiritual “rusts” and turn into a good conductor in order to receive the Divine Grace and become a true theologian.
If we don’t remove the rust from our spiritual cables, we will constantly be short circuited, full of world ly theories, doubts and questions. Then we cease theologize, being found in a condition of worldliness, but will speak historically, or examine things legally and mathematically. Namely, we will examine how many nails were used to crucify Christ and how many soldiers were present when He was crucified without proceeding to the essence of things: that Christ was crucified for our own sins, in order to redeem us, and suffered more than all of the Holy Martyrs put together. Although He helped the Martyrs with His divine power, He did not employ His divine power for Himself at all and suffered terrible pains out of love, having both of His two hands and His two legs pierced with nails. Whether they crucified His two legs with one or two nails has no importance, inasmuch as both were nailed and He suffered the pain and drank the vinegar, that He might sweeten us again in Paradise, eternally close to Him, as our Loving Father.
(Taken from the Epistles of Elder Paisios)
