Modern humanity at this point in time has quite a lot of different types of evidence of the existence of worlds different from the visible world of forms - the material plane of planet Earth. The existence of other worlds gradually becomes a stable picture of the world. Interest in “other” worlds, as well as in issues of interaction with such worlds, as a rule, comes down to thinking about what qualities or paranormal abilities a person must have in order to “see”, feel, interact with such a different world, as well as with its representatives, there are also plenty of opinions and points of view on this matter on how to develop the ability to “see, hear, feel.” There has been a strong public opinion among “knowledgeable” people that in order to possess paranormal psychic abilities at the first stage it is necessary to develop, develop, etc. Sensitivity to the perception of the subtle world.
For many practitioners, energetic, spiritual, yogic, etc. With practice this works, but many don’t. But even those who manage to develop some extraordinary abilities, that is, those that not everyone living today has, sooner or later hit the ceiling, they suddenly understand that there is a limit to the development of these abilities, and then a certain level human development, practices that focus on ability are doomed to failure. A reasonable question arises: what to do next and what to do for those who really want to “open their third eye,” but never want to open it?
Let's start with the fact that many people still have a persistent misconception about the purpose of a person, his essential definition, his abilities and capabilities, and, accordingly, about the need for their development, disclosure, etc.
One of the basic statements of the Esoteric teaching says:
“Man is, first of all, a Soul that exists “eternally,” and also follows the path of evolution and can periodically be reincarnated in new physical bodies, which it organizes for itself according to a certain order and template, from the cells of genetic parents, taking into account all previous accumulated experience and previous existence."
The esoteric model determines the interaction of planet Earth and man:
1. Planet Earth has its own consciousness and is a single living organism.
2. Everything that exists inside the consciousness of the Earth exists on the planet.
3. Any object on Earth has its own consciousness and, including humans, is a multidimensional energy-informational object.
Let us consider such a multidimensional interaction using the example of a Simplified model of interaction between human Mental Bodies and Consciousnesses.
Simplified Model of Consciousness and Mental Bodies:
The external signal arrives at the "Antenna" and then to Mental Body Sahasrara. Provided that a person has an Active Consciousness “Super-I” (Higher Self), this Signal is processed by this Consciousness.
The unprocessed part of the “Signal” that passed through the Mental Body of Sahasrara enters the Worldview “filter” - the Subconscious, located on the Mental Body of Ajna.
If a person has an active “not-I” Consciousness, then this “Signal” is processed by him and launches the 3rd Eye - the second System of Perception of the World. The unprocessed, not accepted part of the “Signal” from the Mental Body of Ajna enters the Mental Body of Vishuddha, which includes Consciousness - the translator of the Signal, which turns the received Signal into our 3-dimensional world and the Mind - which analyzes the received images.
If a person has an Active “I” Consciousness, then it processes the part of the “Signal” received by it using the 1st Perception System and builds Conscious Behavior.
If the “I” Consciousness is not active, then part of the Signal enters the Mental Body of Anahata - “Animal Consciousness” and builds Emotional Behavior.
From this diagram it is clear that each Active “upper” - higher frequency Consciousness “intercepts” the Signal and takes control over itself.
Therefore, by developing our higher frequency states of Consciousness, we fundamentally change ourselves, our perception of ourselves and the world, our behavior, our capabilities, etc.
The esoteric model of the Universe tells us about the principle of consciousnesses embedded in each other - the Matryoshka principle. Such a doll shows that human consciousness is invested (absorbed) into another similar consciousness, which subsequently enters the next more expanded similar consciousness and so on ad infinitum.
Man is, first of all, consciousness, and he is inside the consciousness of planet Earth. The planet is also, first of all, consciousness, and it is located inside consciousness solar system, which is inside the consciousness of the Galaxy and so on.
Man is a multidimensional energy-informational structure of living consciousness; God “embedded” 7 basic abilities in every person:
1. clairsentience (tactile sensations)
2. spiritual clairvoyance
3. claircognizance
4. clairaudience
5. clear sense of smell
6. clear physical vision
7. Clear recognition of taste sensations
U modern man Basically, 5 basic abilities are clearly manifested through the senses and therefore another misconception lies in the definition of his abilities. Many people confuse the concepts of “Sensuality” and “Sensitivity”.
Spiritual Vision and Sensitivity
Sensuality is an ability human psyche respond to external influences and experience the influence of external objects, which are realized with the help of the senses, the ability to experience emotional states, penchant for carnal pleasures.
The ability of the human spirit (sensuality) to perceive the surrounding reality with the help of the senses is a condition for obtaining cognitive experience and a person’s practical attitude towards the world.
The presence of sensory abilities in a person determines for him, like any other living organism, a guideline and successful actions in the world around him.
Sensitivity- this is a property of humans and animals sense irritating signals from the external environment and from one’s own tissues and organs: tactile (touch), pain, temperature, muscle-bone, etc.
We hope the difference is obvious! This is precisely where all the answers to questions related to paranormal, extrasensory and other “other” abilities in humans lie.
A person is a “system” and his self-development, transformation of consciousness, transmutation of the physical body must occur comprehensively, in a system of multidimensional spiritual development and the harmonious entry of the Spirit, Soul and transformation of the Personality into individuality. We invite you to begin not only to receive, study, and memorize knowledge, but also to apply it, practically developing your abilities of Feeling Knowledge in the World of New Energies ***
Conscious management of attention gives a person the opportunity to more effectively identify, compare and, if necessary, eliminate external and internal factors that lead to a state of balance, which is important for qualitatively increasing the level of development of a person’s personality. You can learn about the mechanisms of attention and the ability to consciously control it in the practice “Development of the Soul: Human Attention. The role of attention in life."
Man is less protected for sensory vision than for spiritual vision of the spirit. Saint Tikhon of Voronezh said a lot about blindness of spirit in his cell letters. What kind of blindness of spirit is this? " What kind of blindness of spirit?“- the sages of the world may ask and, without expecting an answer, they will call all this idle talk. And this blindness is such that it can be called death. Jesus said: " I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard this and said to Him: “Are we also blind?» The absence of blindness is not a sign of vision. Fallen people, who did not want to admit their blindness, remained blind, and those born blind, who recognized their blindness, received their sight in the Lord Jesus Christ. Blindness is in our minds and hearts. For this reason, our mind cannot distinguish between spiritual sensations and spiritual and sinful sensations, especially when the latter are not very gross.
Because of the blindness of the spirit, all our activities become false. And the Lord called the scribes (scholars) and Pharisees blind leaders who do not enter the Kingdom of Heaven and do not allow man to enter it. With true spiritual achievement, the grace of God, planted in us through Holy Baptism, begins to heal us little by little from spiritual blindness through tenderness. In contrast to blindness, we begin to enter a state of seeing. In the state of vision, the viewer is the mind, and it is called mental.
The state of spiritual vision is brought about by the Holy Spirit, and it is called spiritual. This is what distinguishes it from contemplation. Anyone can contemplate, whenever they want. Vision is inherent only to people who purify themselves through repentance, and it comes not by the will of man, but from the touch of the Spirit of God to our spirit, that is, by the all-holy power of the All-Holy Spirit.
The doctrine of spiritual and mental visions is well expounded by the Holy Martyr Peter, Metropolitan of Damascus. Tenderness is the first spiritual sensation delivered to a heart overshadowed by Divine grace. From spiritual sensation comes spiritual vision, and as the 33rd Psalm of the Holy Scripture says, “Taste and see how good the Lord is! Blessed is the man who trusts in Him." From doing with compulsion, warmth is born that kindles in the heart. Doing this helps our mind and heart to see, and deep down it is called seeing. These visions give birth to the warmth of the soul and heart. From this warmth an abundance of tears is born.
As long as sensation exists, vision continues. If the sensation stops, the vision will stop. The gateway to spiritual vision is humility.
Vision is the reading and acceptance in the spirit of the New Testament. With the cessation of tenderness, communication with the New Testament ceases. Instead of humility remaining in the soul, which does not resist evil, there appears justice, which extirpates " an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth" We involuntarily move from the New Testament to the Old.
The first spiritual vision is the vision of one’s sins, which are hidden behind oblivion and ignorance. From the vision of our fall we move on to the vision of our being struck and the reasons for its fall. Then the world of fallen spirits gradually opens up. The seductive and deceptive view of earthly life, which seemed endless, and its visible facet - death, is taken away. In the Gospel, as in a mirror, we clearly see our fallen nature, and the fall of humanity, and evil spirits. In order to distract us from living according to the Gospel commandments, from spiritual vision, from liberation from the slavery of passions, from the resurrection of the soul, in order to keep us in blindness, in death, in captivity within ourselves, fallen spirits wage a fierce struggle. Cunning and malice are characteristic of fallen spirits.
Fallen spirits were created good, alien to evil, but through their arbitrary fall they internalized evil and became alien to good.
It was said above: the fall of people consists in mixing good with evil, the fall of demons is in the complete rejection of good, in the complete assimilation of evil.
“I recognize all Your commandments as just: I hate every way of lies,” says the Holy Spirit about His guidance of man to salvation, and the opposite - the spirit of malice - opposes any commandment of the New Testament, hates every God-pleasing life.
According to the Gospel commandments, fallen spirits are recognized, a sense of seeing them and fighting them is acquired. Fallen spirits act on us with various thoughts, various “dreams” and touches.
All these actions are mentioned in the Holy Scriptures. Demonic daydreaming has a harmful effect on the soul and leads to sin. The touches of demons arouse carnal passions and give rise to diseases that are not affected by ordinary human healing. “Let us beg God to reveal our passions to us and grant us healing from them. So that He would reveal our sins and grant us true repentance. He revealed to us the fall of humanity, its redemption by the God-man, the purpose of our earthly journey and the eternity awaiting us either in endless pleasures or in endless torment, prepared us and made us capable of heavenly bliss, in order to remove those seals from us and destroy those manuscripts according to which we must be cast into the dungeons of hell! Let us ask God to grant us purity and humility, the fruit of which is spiritual reasoning, accurately distinguishing good from evil. Let us ask God to grant spiritual vision of spirits, through which we could discern them in the thoughts and dreams they bring to us, break off communication with them in our spirit, throw off their yoke, and get rid of captivity.
In communication with fallen spirits and in their enslavement lies our destruction.
Let us refrain from striving for sensual visions of spirits, in an order not established by God. We do not need a sensual vision of spirits to complete our difficult earthly journey. For this we need another lamp, and it has been given to us.” " Your word is the lamp of my night, but I do not forget Your law“- it is said in Psalm 119, verse 105. In due time, appointed by the one God and known to the one God, we will certainly enter the world of spirits. This time is not far from us!
« May the All-Good God grant us to spend our earthly life in such a way that, even during it, we break off communion with fallen spirits and enter into communion with holy spirits, so that, having left the body (temple), we are numbered among the holy spirits, and not among the rejected spirits. Then, in indescribable joy, we will see both the ranks of holy angels and the ranks of holy men in their wonderful miraculous abodes, at their eternal spiritual holiday.Then we will recognize and see the fallen cherub with his dark hordes, then the God-given vision of demons will satisfy our curiosity, without any danger for us, as sealed by the finger of God in immutability and inability to be seduced and damaged by evil».
Introduction
Starting to explain, to the best of my limited understanding, the inherent vision of created spirits in man, I find it necessary to expound the doctrine of man’s extreme blindness, which he acquired through the fall. Most people are alien to any concept of this blindness; they do not even suspect its existence! Most people are alien to any concept of spirits, or have only a theoretical, the most superficial, most obscure and indefinite concept about them, almost amounting to complete ignorance.
IN modern society In human life, mainly in educated society, many doubt the existence of spirits, many reject it. Even those who recognize the existence of their soul, recognize its immortality or its existence after death, recognize it as spirit [Have also heard the rejection of the existence of the soul! Thus, the intellectuals claim that in us there is an incomprehensible vital force, not yet unraveled by science, like in all animals, acting only during the life of the body and dying with it - that we are in no way higher than other animals; that we recognize ourselves as superior to them only because of our pride. This judgment belongs to those who, according to the proverb, do not hear the soul within themselves! of course, due to the prevailing carnal state, and the whole person becomes flesh (Gen. 6:3)]. A strange combination of mutually contradictory concepts! If souls exist after their separation from bodies, then this already means that spirits exist. If the souls of villains do not die along with the souls of virtuous people, this already means that there are both good spirits and evil spirits. They exist! Their existence becomes quite clear and obvious to those who have engaged in a correct and detailed study of Christianity. Those who reject the existence of spirits certainly at the same time reject Christianity. For this reason, the Son of God has appeared, says the Holy Scripture, so that he may destroy the works of the devil, and through death he will abolish him who has the power of death, that is, the devil (1 John 3:8; Heb. 2:14). If there are no fallen spirits, then the incarnation of God has neither reason nor purpose.
The existence of spirits remains a dark subject for those who have not studied Christianity, or have studied it superficially, to the letter, while the Lord Jesus Christ commanded and established the teaching of Christianity and its preaching and the observance of Christian commandments (Matthew 28: 19-20). The Lord commanded the study of Christianity, both theoretical and practical, connected these two studies with an inextricable connection, and commanded that theoretical knowledge should certainly be followed by practical knowledge. Without the second, the first has no purpose before God! Without the second, the first cannot bring us any benefit! (Matthew 7:21-23) - The second serves as proof of the sincerity of the first, and is crowned with the overshadowing of Divine grace (John 14:21-24). The first can be likened to a foundation, the second to a building erected on this foundation. A building cannot be erected unless the foundation is first laid, and laying the foundation remains a useless labor unless a building is erected on the foundation. - The results of human sciences and the method for achieving these results remain inaccessible to the concept of people who have not studied science: the results and the method of achieving them in the science of sciences, in the science that came down from heaven, given to humanity by God, in the science that completely changes man, transforming him from the carnal and the spiritual in the spiritual, in Christianity, all the more remain inaccessible to those who have not studied it legally, according to the method established by God. It is unreasonable for some to demand that the results of the study of Christianity, its lofty and deep mysteries be completely clear to them without any study of Christianity! Do you want to know the secrets of Christianity? - Study it.
School teaching, literally, is not only very useful, but also necessary, as it provides accurate and detailed knowledge about Christianity according to the teachings of the Orthodox Church. For eighteen centuries, efforts have been made against Christianity in order to overthrow it; especially now, countless false teachings are being made: now, more than ever, there is an urgent need for a thorough preaching and study of Christianity. But theoretical study requires that it must be accompanied and followed by active teaching. “The law of freedom is honored by doing the commandments” (St. Mark the Ascetic on the Spiritual Law, chapter 32, Philokalia, part 1). A Christian scribe must learn the Kingdom of Heaven not only from hearing sermons about it, but also through experience (Matthew 13:52). Without this, the teaching in its letter will become exclusively human teaching and will serve only for the development of fallen nature. We see sad proof of this in the Jewish clergy, contemporary with Christ. Teaching according to the letter, when left to its own devices, immediately gives rise to conceit and pride, and through them alienates one from God. While appearing outwardly to be knowledge of God, in essence it can be complete ignorance, a rejection of Him. While preaching Faith, you can drown in unbelief! Mysteries that are open to unlearned Christians very often remain closed to the most learned men, who are satisfied with the mere school study of Theology, as if the science is one of the human sciences (“Those who have renounced the world, although they do not know the alphabet (alphabet), are the wisest, enlightened by God’s light , more than those who know all Scripture, but seek to be glorified in this world, for the Holy Scripture was given to us for the sake of our salvation and the glorification of the name of God: for this reason we must read it, and study and heed it. And when for the sake of our glorification we read and strive. know: it will not only not be beneficial, but will also be harmful to us." Saint Tikhon of Voronezh, volume 15, letter 32). And this is precisely the character given to Theology throughout the heterodox West, both papal and Protestant. Due to the lack of experimental knowledge of Christianity, in our time it is very difficult to hear the correct, thorough teaching about the vision of spirits, so necessary for every monk who wants to engage in spiritual feats in the field of spirits, to which we belong with our soul, with whom we must share eternal bliss and eternal torment (Matt. 22, 30; 25, 41).
The vision of spirits is purely. There is a sensual vision of spirits, when we see them with our sensual, bodily eyes, and there is a spiritual vision of spirits, when we see them with our spiritual eyes, mind and heart, purified by God’s grace. In the ordinary state of fall, in which all humanity finds itself, we do not see spirits either sensually or spiritually; we are stricken with extreme blindness. For the blind different colors and the objects of the sensory world do not seem to exist: so for those blinded by the fall, the spiritual world and spirits seem to not exist. Our failure to see something does not in any way serve as a sign of its non-existence.
Alas! Alas! I interrupt the Word by crying. The land of Israel was brought down by the sword, it became desolate! the tongue, gathered from many pagans, diminished and became weak to the extreme (Ezek. 38:8, 12). “How not to cry,” said the Monk Isaac the Great, a desert dweller of Egypt: “Where will we go now? Our fathers have died. Previously, we lacked handicrafts to hire boats in which we traveled (along the Nile River) to the elders. Now we are orphans, because then I cry." (Alphabetical Patericon and memorable legends about Isaac the Great, presbyter of the Cells. - Cells was the name of a separate desert adjacent to Mount Nitria). Save me, Lord, for I have become impoverished, the venerable one, for the truth has fallen away from the sons of men. A vain verb every one to his sincere: flattering lips in the heart (Ps. 11: 1-3). If Isaac the Great, in his contemporary high state of monasticism, mourned the debasement of his elders, then what kind of work does it take for a monk of our time, who truly wants to be saved, to find the advice that is so necessary in his difficult feat? Evil men and sorcerers (that is, all deceivers in general who have entered into explicit and implicit communication with Satan) prosper in the worst way, deceiving and being deceived (2 Titus 3:13), the Apostle predicts, speaking about the last days of the world. This prediction is being made before us. I often told the unanimous brethren, during private conversations, what I now consider myself obligated to put down with pen and paper. It would not be for me, who is in slavery to sin, to instruct the brethren! in deep silence and solitude I should mourn my sad state of mind. But I am forced to speak and write for edification, so as not to leave my neighbors and those who love me in the Lord without any edification. “It is better,” said Pimen the Great, “to eat unclean bread and have food than to remain without bread at all” (Alphabetical Patericon, sayings of the Venerable Pimen the Great). With such a view of myself and the surrounding circumstances, I am writing a Word on the vision of spirits, recognizing correct knowledge of the vision of spirits as essential and necessary for ascetics who will have to fight not against blood and flesh, but against the principles, and against the authorities, and against the rulers of the darkness of the age. this, to spiritual wickedness in high places (Eph. 6:12). This knowledge is necessary. The spirits of evil wage war against a person with such cunning that the thoughts and dreams they bring to the soul seem to be born within itself, and not from an alien evil spirit, acting and at the same time trying to hide (Venerable Macarius the Great, Homily 7, chapter 31). To fight the enemy, you must definitely see him. Without a vision of spirits, the struggle with them does not take place: there can only be fascination with them and slavish obedience to them. Calling on Divine grace to help my feeble-mindedness, I will first talk about the sensual vision of spirits, about its unnecessaryness and danger, then about the spiritual vision of spirits, about its necessity and benefit.
1. About the sensual vision of spirits
Before the fall of man, his body was immortal, alien to ailments, alien to his real plumpness and heaviness, alien to the sinful and carnal sensations now characteristic of him (Venerable Macarius the Great, Homily 4). His feelings were incomparably subtler, their action was incomparably more extensive, completely free. Clothed in such a body, with such sense organs, a person was capable of a sensual vision of spirits, to the category of which he belongs in soul, was capable of communicating with them, of that vision of God and communication with God, which are akin to holy spirits (Gen. Ch. 2 and 3). The holy body of a person did not serve as an obstacle for him, did not separate him from the world of spirits. Man, clothed in a body, was capable of living in paradise, in which only the Saints are now able to abide with their souls alone, into which the bodies of the Saints will ascend after the resurrection. Then these bodies will leave in the coffins the plumpness that they acquired during the fall; then they will become spiritual, even spirits, according to the expression of the Monk Macarius the Great (Homily 6:13), revealing in themselves those properties that were given to them at creation. Then people will again enter into the ranks of holy spirits and open communication with them. We see an example of a body that was both body and spirit in the body of our Lord Jesus Christ after His resurrection.
Both the soul and body of man were changed by the Fall. In the proper sense, the fall was also death for them. The death we see and call, in essence, is only the separation of the soul from the body, which had already been killed by retreat from them. true life, God. We are born already killed by eternal death! we do not feel that we are killed, due to the general property of the dead not to feel their mortification! Ailments of our body, submission to its hostile influence various substances from the material world, its fatness is a consequence of the fall. Due to the fall, our body entered into the same category with the bodies of animals; it exists through the life of animals, the life of its fallen nature. It serves as a prison and a coffin for the soul. The expressions we use are powerful! but they still do not sufficiently express the descent of our body from the heights of a spiritual state into a carnal state. We need to cleanse ourselves through thorough repentance, we need to feel at least to some extent the freedom and height of our spiritual state in order to acquire an understanding of the disastrous state of our body, the state of its deadness caused by alienation from God. In this state of deadness, due to extreme fatness and coarseness, the bodily senses are incapable of communicating with spirits, do not see them, do not hear them, do not feel them. Thus, a blunted ax is no longer capable of being used for its intended purpose. The holy spirits avoided communicating with people, as unworthy of such communication; the fallen spirits, who carried us into their fall, mixed with us, and in order to more conveniently keep us in captivity, they try to make themselves and their chains invisible to us. If they open themselves, they open them in order to strengthen their dominion over us. All of us, who are in the slavery of sin, need to know that communication with the holy Angels is uncharacteristic of us due to our alienation from them by fall, that it is characteristic of us, for the same reason, to communicate with rejected spirits, to the category of which we belong in soul - which is sensual The spirits that appear to people who are in sinfulness and fall are demons, and not holy Angels. “A defiled soul,” said Saint Isaac of Syria, “does not enter the pure kingdom, and is not united with the spirits of saints” (Homily 74). Holy Angels appear only to holy people who have restored communion with God and with them through a holy life. Although demons, when appearing to people, most often take the form of bright Angels for the most convenient deception; although they sometimes try to convince them that they are human souls and not demons (this image of seduction is currently in particular fashion among demons, due to the special disposition of people to trust it); although they sometimes predict the future; although they reveal secrets, they should not be entrusted to them. For them, truth is mixed with lies, truth is used at times only for the most convenient deception. Satan is transformed into an Angel of light and his servants are transformed as servants of righteousness (2 Cor. 11; 14:15), said the holy Apostle Paul.
Saint John Chrysostom, in the second conversation about the beggar Lazarus and the rich man, narrates what happened in his time: “The demons say: I am the soul of such and such a monk. Of course: I don’t believe this precisely because the demons say it. They deceive those who listen to them. For this reason, Paul commanded the demon to remain silent, although he spoke the truth, so that he would not turn this truth into an excuse, would not subsequently mix lies with it, and would not attract confidence to himself. The devil said: these men are the servants of the most high God, who proclaim. the path of salvation for us (Acts 14:17): The Apostle, upset by this, commanded the inquisitive spirit to come out of the girl. And what did the evil spirit say when he said: “These men are servants of the highest God?” But since the majority of those who do not know cannot thoroughly judge? what is said by the demons - the Apostle decisively rejected any trust in them. You belong to the number of the rejected, the Apostle says to the demon: you do not have the right to speak freely; be silent, it is not your business to preach: this is not yours to steal. shut up, outcast. So Christ, when the demons said to Him: “We know You who You are” (Mark 1:24), very strictly forbade them, thereby prescribing a law for us, so that we should not trust the demon under any pretext, even if he said that fair. Knowing this, we must resolutely not trust the demon in anything. If he says something that is fair, we will run and turn away from him. We must learn healthy and saving knowledge not from demons, but from Divine Scripture." Further in this conversation, Chrysostom says that the souls of both the righteous and sinners, immediately after death, are taken from this world to another, one to receive crowns, the other to executions. The soul of the poor Lazarus, immediately after death, was lifted up by the Angels into the bosom of Abraham, and the soul of the rich man was cast into the fire of hell. and the deception of the devil,” adds the great Saint. It is not the soul of the deceased who cries out this, but a demon who is pretending to deceive his listeners."
Demons do not know the future, known to the One God and to His rational creatures to whom God was pleased to reveal the future; but just as smart and experienced people, from events that have happened or are happening, foresee and predict events that are about to happen: so cunning, experienced crafty spirits can sometimes assume with certainty and predict the future (Vita sanct. Pachomii, cap. 49, Patrologiae, Tom 73). They are often wrong; very often they lie and with unclear messages lead to bewilderment and doubt. Sometimes they can foretell an event that is already intended in the world of spirits, but has not yet been fulfilled among people: so before temptations befell the righteous Job, and the allowance of these temptations had already been decided in the council of God and was known to the fallen spirits (Job. 1); so it was decided at the court of God, known to the holy heavenly powers and rejected angels, handed over to the execution of the evil spirit, the death in the battle of the king of Israel Ahab, before the king set out on a campaign (1 Kings 22, 19-23); This is how the devil predicted to Saint John, Archbishop of Novgorod, the temptation that he subsequently brought upon him (Cheti-Menaion September 7th). There were cases when holy angels appeared to sinners, but this happened according to the special vision of God and extremely rarely: so to the false prophet and sorcerer, i.e. a holy angel appeared to a person who was in special close communication with demons (Num. 22). Exceptional cases, according to the special vision of God, should not have any influence on the general rule for everyone (St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 1). The general rule for all people is not to trust spirits in any way when they appear in a sensual image, not to enter into conversation with them, not to pay any attention to them, to recognize their appearance as the greatest and most dangerous temptation. During this temptation, we must direct our thoughts and hearts to God with a prayer for mercy and deliverance from temptation. Those who want to see spirits and curiosity to learn something about them and from them is a sign of the greatest recklessness and complete ignorance of the moral and active traditions of the Orthodox Church. The knowledge of spirits is acquired in a completely different way than what an inexperienced and careless examiner assumes. Open communication with spirits for the inexperienced is the greatest disaster, or serves as a source of the greatest disasters.
The divinely inspired writer of the Book of Genesis says that after the fall of the first people, God, having pronounced judgment on them, even before their expulsion from paradise, made them garments of leather and clothed them (Genesis 3:21). Leather vestments, according to the explanation of the Holy Fathers (St. John of Damascus. An exact exposition of the Orthodox faith, book 3, chapter 1), mean our coarse flesh, which, during the fall, changed: it lost its subtlety and spirituality, and received its real plumpness. Although the initial cause of the change was the fall; but the change took place under the influence of the Almighty Creator, through His ineffable mercy towards them, to our greatest good. Among other beneficial consequences for us that flow from the state in which our body now finds itself, we must point out that by allowing our bodies to become fat, we have become incapable of sensually seeing the spirits into whose region we have fallen. Let's explain this. We have acquired, as it were, a natural attraction to evil. This attraction is natural to fallen nature: this attraction is like the attraction of demons to evil: a person’s thoughts are diligent about evil from his youth. But good and evil are mixed in us: we are sometimes attracted to evil, then, leaving this desire, we are directed towards good. Demons, on the contrary, are always and completely directed towards evil. If we were in sensual communication with demons, then in the shortest possible time they would completely corrupt people, constantly instilling evil, clearly and constantly promoting evil, infecting with examples of their constantly criminal and hostile activities to God. It would be all the more convenient for them to do this, since fallen man is naturally drawn to evil, that fallen man is subordinate to demons, submitting to them arbitrarily. In the shortest possible time, people, having succeeded in evil, would have become demons; repentance and rising from the fall would be impossible for us. The wisdom and goodness of God placed a barrier between people cast down to earth from paradise, and spirits cast down to earth from heaven - the gross materiality of the human body. So earthly governments separate evildoers from human society with a prison wall, so that they do not arbitrarily harm society and corrupt other people (Venerable Cassian Interview 8, chapter 12). Fallen spirits act on people, bringing them sinful thoughts and sensations; Very few people achieve a sensual vision of spirits.
In the multiplication of mankind in its present state of fall, the body brings to the soul a very similar service to that service which the swaddling clothes perform for the newborn body. The baby's body, wrapped in swaddling clothes, receives correctness; without the swaddling clothes, its members, due to their softness, could take on ugly forms: so the soul, clothed in a body, closed and separated by it from the world of spirits, gradually forms itself by studying the law of God, or, what is the same , the study of Christianity, and acquires the ability to distinguish good from evil (Heb. 5:14). Then she is granted a spiritual vision of the spirits and, if it turns out to be consistent with the goals of the God guiding her, a sensual one, since deception and seduction are much less dangerous for her, and experience and knowledge are useful. When the soul is separated from the body by visible death, we again enter into the ranks and society of spirits. From this it is clear that for a successful entry into the world of spirits, it is necessary to educate ourselves in good time by the law of God, and that it is for this education that we are given some time, determined by God for each person to wander the earth. This wandering is called earthly life.
People become capable of seeing spirits through a certain change in their senses, which occurs in an inconspicuous and inexplicable way for humans. He only notices in himself that he suddenly began to see what he had not seen before and what others do not see - to hear what he had not heard before. For those who have experienced such a change in feelings, it is very simple and natural, although inexplicable to themselves and to others; for those who have not experienced it, it is strange and incomprehensible. So everyone knows that people are capable of falling into sleep; but what kind of phenomenon is sleep, how, imperceptibly for ourselves, we move from a state of vigor to a state of soporific and self-forgetfulness - this remains a mystery to us. The change in feelings, in which people enter into sensory communication with beings of the invisible world, is called in the Holy Scriptures the opening of the senses. God opened, says the Scripture, the eyes of Balaam, and the sight of the Angel of God stood in the way, and the sword was drawn in his hand (Num. 22:31). Surrounded by enemies, the prophet Elisha, in order to calm his frightened servant, prayed and said: Lord, open the eyes of the boy now, that he may see. And the Lord opened his eyes, and saw: and behold, a mountain full of horses, and a chariot of fire, round about Elisha: and He came down to him: And Elisha prayed to the Lord, and said: Smite this tongue with blindness. And strike them with blindness according to the word of Elisha... and take them to Samaria. And when she came down into Samaria, Elisha said, O Lord, open their eyes, that they may see. And the Lord opened their eyes, and they saw (2 Kings 6:17-20). When the two disciples walked with the Lord along the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus, they kept their eyes on it, the Evangelist narrates, but did not know Him, the Lord. When they came to spend the night, then, at the breaking of bread, the eyes of dumbness were opened, and they recognized Him (Luke 24: 16-31). From the above passages of Holy Scripture it is clear that the bodily senses serve as doors and gates into the inner cell where the soul resides, and that these gates open and close at the behest of God. Wisely and mercifully, these gates remain constantly enclosed in fallen people, so that our damned enemies, fallen spirits, do not invade us and destroy us. This measure is all the more necessary because, after the fall, we are in the region of fallen spirits, surrounded by them, enslaved by them. Not being able to break into us, they let us know about themselves from the outside, bringing various sinful thoughts and dreams, with them attracting a gullible soul into communication with them. It is not permissible for a person to remove the gaze of God, and by his own means, by God’s permission, and not by the will of God, to open his feelings and enter into obvious communication with spirits. But this also happens. It is obvious that by one’s own means one can achieve communication only with fallen spirits. It is unusual for Holy Angels to take part in a matter that does not agree with the will of God, in a matter that is not pleasing to God. What attracts people to enter into open communication with spirits? Those who are frivolous and ignorant of active Christianity are carried away by curiosity, ignorance, and unbelief, not realizing that by entering into such communication they can cause themselves the greatest harm; people who have given themselves over to sinfulness and have departed from God enter into this fellowship for the most vicious motives and for the most vicious purposes.
What happens to us according to God's providence is always filled with the greatest wisdom and goodness, it is done out of essential necessity for our essential benefit, and not at all to satisfy our curiosity, or any other petty, unworthy of God, impulse of ours. For this reason, the usual order and course are very rarely violated; It is very rare that a person is introduced into the sensory vision of spirits. It is pleasing to God that His servant should constantly remain in the greatest reverence before Him, in unconditional submission to Him, in unconditional devotion to His most holy will. Any violation of these relationships is unfavorable to God, and places the seal of God’s wrath on us (Reverend Isaac of Syria, Homily 36). Those who frivolously attempt to violate the order established by God and willfully invade what God has hidden from us are recognized as tempters of God, and are expelled from His presence into pitch darkness, in which the Light of God does not shine. Let us give a few examples that will explain to us with what saving precaution for us, for the purpose of our greatest spiritual benefit, God allows us the sensory vision of spirits. In Africa (Africa was the name given to the Carthage region in the Roman Empire. See Cheti-Menaion, the life of the holy martyr Artemios, on the 20th day of October) there was a publican named Peter, a most hard-hearted man, who gave alms to a beggar once during his entire life, and then not by motion compassion, but by passion for anger. When Peter was carrying a large amount of bread, the beggar began to persistently ask him for alms: Peter, angry and unable to hit the beggar with anything else, threw bread at him. Two days after this incident, Peter fell ill; the disease intensified; the patient was very exhausted and seemed to be approaching death. In this situation, his eyes were opened: he saw scales in front of him; On one side of them stood dark demons, on the other - bright Angels. The demons, having collected all the evil deeds committed by Peter during his life, put them on the scales. The light-bearers, not finding any good deeds to contrast them with the evil deeds of Peter, stood in despondency and said to each other in bewilderment: “We have nothing here except one bread, which Peter gave to Christ two days ago, and that reluctantly." They put the bread on the other scale, and it immediately began to pull the first one. Then the light-like men said to the publican: “Go, poor Peter, add some bread to this, so that the dark-shaped murins do not kidnap you and throw you into eternal torment.” Peter recovered, became unusually merciful to the poor brethren, exhausted all his very significant property on them, gave freedom to the slaves, and, having moved to Jerusalem, sold himself as a slave to one of the pious inhabitants of the Holy City, so that through humility he would become even closer to God, to whom he had already got used to almsgiving. Peter was honored with great spiritual gifts (Cheti-Minea, September 22 days).
In the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery there was a monk Arefa; he had significant wealth, and kept treasure in his cell, being extremely stingy not only to the poor, but also to himself. Thieves robbed him at night. Arefa fell into depression and almost committed suicide; began to search for stolen property and expose many innocent people to trouble. The brothers begged him to stop such searches and cast their sorrow on the Lord (Ps. 54:23); but he did not want to hear admonitions, he answered them cruelly and rudely. A few days later, Arefa fell into a serious illness and approached death. The brothers gathered to him; he lay as if dead, saying nothing; then suddenly, out loud to everyone, he began to cry out in a loud voice: “Lord have mercy! Lord forgive! Lord, I have sinned! The property is yours! I don’t regret it!” He immediately recovered, and thus told the brethren about the reason for his exclamations: “I saw,” he said, “that angels and a regiment of demons came to me. They began to argue about me about my stolen wealth. The demons said: “He is on this occasion.” He did not give praise to God, but grumbled, and therefore he is ours, and must be betrayed to us." The angels said to me: "Unhappy man! If you, when the theft happened from you, had brought thanks to God, then the theft of your property would be counted as alms to you, like Job. When someone gives alms, it is great before God, because the giver does so out of his good will; to the one who endures the violent abduction with thanksgiving, the temptation inflicted by the devil is imputed to a good will. The devil, although he plunges a person into blasphemy, arranges for the theft of his property; but a person who thanks God, surrendering everything to God, acts in the same way with a merciful giver." When the Angels told me this, I exclaimed: "Lord, forgive me! Lord, I have sinned! the estate belongs to You; I don’t regret it!” - then the demons disappeared, and the holy Angels rejoiced and, having exchanged the stolen money for me as alms, they left. After this vision, Arefa changed both in his way of thinking and in his character, leading the most virtuous, ascetic life, growing rich in God: he was honored with a blessed death, and he testified his bliss by the incorruption of his relics: they rest in the caves with the relics of the other reverend Fathers, to whose rank Arefa was rightly numbered by the Holy Church (Cheti-Minea of October on the 24th day).
In the same Kiev-Pechersk Lavra lived the blind elder Theophilus, who was constantly immersed in repentance and, due to constant tenderness, constantly shed copious tears, which is recognized as a sure sign of a holy soul that moved into eternity with his thoughts even during his stay on earth (Rev. Isaac of Sirius, Word 65). Theophilus wept over the vessel and collected a significant amount of tears into it. This was a consequence of a subtle conceit that he did not understand, so harmful to the soul for an ascetic who should not give any value to his exploits, completely leaving their assessment to God. (Phil. 3, 12-14). Three days before his death, Theophilus received his sight, as was predicted to him by his mentor, the Monk Mark. Realizing that the time had come to move into eternity, Theophilus redoubled his crying and, bearing in mind the tears he had accumulated in the vessel, begged God to accept his tears. Suddenly an angel appeared before him with a fragrant vessel and said to him: “Theophilus, it is good that you prayed and cried; but in vain you boast of the tears you collected in the vessel. Here is a vessel, much larger than that, filled with your own tears, which you poured out.” with fervent prayer, and wiped it either with your hand or with a handkerchief, or left it to fall to the ground and your clothes. I gathered them at the command of my Master and Creator, and now I am sent to tell you the joy of resettlement to the One who said: Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted (Matthew). 5, 4. Chetyi-Minea December on the 29th day).
From the events presented here it is clear general character manifestations of spirits, arranged by the providence of God. According to God, spirits appear only in times of extreme need, for the purpose of saving and correcting people; are in such a way that their occurrence cannot have harmful consequences. Peter and Arefa were pulled out of the abyss of sin by fear from the competition they saw between angels and demons, and Fephil, whose deficiency lay not in his way of life, but in his way of thinking, was instructed in humility and together informed of the bliss awaiting him. He could not be exalted by the appearance of an Angel and the promise of bliss, because at the same time his deficiency was revealed to him and salvation was announced before his death, as a gift bestowed solely by the grace of God. Only the most perfect Christians, mainly monks who were honored to see with the eyes of their souls, had the world of spirits opened to them; but there were very few such Christians even in the most flourishing times of monasticism, according to the testimony of Macarius the Great (Conversation 8, chapter 6). The property of all visions sent by God, notes Saint John Climacus, is that they bring humility and tenderness to the soul, filling it with the fear of God, the consciousness of its sinfulness and insignificance. On the contrary, the visions into which we arbitrarily invade, in opposition to the will of God, lead us into arrogance, into conceit, and bring us joy, which is nothing more than the satisfaction of our vanity and conceit that we do not understand (Ladders Word 3, about dreams). Demons, most often appearing in the form of Angels, try to flatter a person with praise, to amuse his curiosity and vanity; then they conveniently plunge him into self-delusion and cause him severe, more or less obvious, mental harm.
The idea that there is anything especially important in the sensory vision of spirits is erroneous. Sensory vision, without spiritual vision, does not provide the proper concept of spirits, it provides only a superficial concept of them, which can very conveniently convey the most erroneous concepts, and these are the ones that most deliver to those who are inexperienced and infected with vanity and conceit. Only true Christians achieve a spiritual vision of spirits, while people of the most vicious lives are most capable of a sensual vision. Who sees spirits and is in sensual communication with them? Magi who renounced God and recognized Satan as God (The Holy Apostle Paul defined the meaning of a sorcerer this way; full of all deceit and all evil deeds, the son of the devil, the enemy of all righteousness (Acts 13:10). By reading the Chetia Menaion you can get a sufficient understanding of the Magi ); people who gave themselves up to passions and, in order to satisfy them, ran to the Magi, through them entered into clear communication with fallen spirits, which is done under the indispensable condition of renouncing Christ (Cheti-Menaia, see the life of Basil the Great on January 1, The Tale of Theophilus, the Fallen and repentant, June on the 23rd day); people exhausted by drunkenness and depraved life; ascetics who have fallen into conceit and pride; very few are naturally capable of it; Very few spirits appear in connection with some special circumstance in life. In the last two cases, a person is not subject to censure, but must make every effort to get out of this situation, as it is very dangerous. Nowadays, many allow themselves to enter into communication with fallen spirits through magnetism, and fallen spirits usually appear in the form bright angels, they seduce and deceive with various interesting tales, mixing the truth with lies - they always cause extreme mental and even mental disorder. The use of magnetism is a branch of sorcery. With him there is no obvious renunciation of God, but undoubtedly there is a hidden renunciation, since at the present time in general the devil is very much covering his nets, being more concerned about destroying the essential than the external. Leaving without any attention to the decrees of God, without carefully inquiring whether what is being undertaken is pleasing to God, whether it is in accordance with the will of God, the frivolous tester of the mysterious blindly entrusts himself to the action of magnetism, without any precaution enters into communication with spirits, believes in them and entrusts himself, acts under their guidance. What is this if not a retreat from God?
It happened that, according to the special vision of God, holy spirits appeared to people with a vicious life, and even to idolaters. The appearance of the holy Angels to them did not bring any benefit to these people; Yes, it was not arranged for their personalities, and therefore did not serve as a sign of their dignity. The Holy Scripture narrates that at the time when the Patriarch Jacob secretly left Mesopotamia from his father-in-law Laban, an idolater, and Laban set off in pursuit of his son-in-law, God (here we must mean the Angel of God: the messenger is named after the Sender) came to Laban the Syrian on the night dream, and said to him: Be careful that you do not speak evil to Jacob (Gen. 31:24). God appeared to the idolater Laban not for Laban, but in order to bring salvation to Jacob. The idolater remained an idolater, despite the fact that he saw God face to face and talked with Him. Sense vision was of no use because it was not preceded by knowledge. Having seen the true God, the idolater does not cease to recognize his idols as gods; he says about them: what have you stolen, my gods? (Gen. 31, 30).
The idolater, false prophet and sorcerer Balaam clearly saw the holy Angel on the way and talked with him; at the inspiration of this Angel, he pronounced a true prophecy, a divinely inspired prophecy about the people of Israel, but this did not bring him any benefit: he continued in his wickedness, dared to act hostile to the determination of God, and was executed with the enemies of God (Num. 22; 23, 24, 31 ).
Saul, the king of Israel, who clearly did not apostatize from God, but often violated the commandments of God, which was imputed to him as apostasy (1 Sam. 15; 22, 23), completed his iniquities by communicating with a sorceress. He knew there was magic grave sin, for he put to death all the magicians in the land of Israel; but, carried away by his behavior, he decided to take an action that was clearly repugnant to God. Wanting to know what the outcome would be of the battle he intended to enter into with the Philistines, Saul asked the sorceress to summon the soul of the deceased prophet Samuel from hell to confer with him. The sorceress performed this. The prophet, who appeared at her call from the underground dungeons, predicted the king's defeat and death in battle. Saul, instead of plunging into repentance, fell into despair; The appearance of the prophet and the foreknowledge of the future, instead of benefit, brought him the greatest harm (1 Samuel 28. - See the different opinions about this in the Fourth Menaion, March 11, in the life of the Hieromartyr Pionius, presbyter of Smyrna, and in the notes to this life. Could appear To Saul, a demon in the form of a prophet, and at random pronounce a prophecy based on previous true prophecies and on the progress of the case; Samuel himself could appear, by God’s permission, for the Old Testament righteous before the coming of Christ were kept in hell and were under the power of the devil, although not. to the same extent as sinners and wicked people). The army of pagan Syrians, which entered the land of Israel, suddenly saw a regiment of holy Angels and fled (Kings 7:6). Holy Angels and deceased righteous people often stopped barbarians and robbers from attacking the homes of the saints of God with similar phenomena (See the life of the Venerable Macarius of Zheltovodsk, June 15, Chetya - Menaion). Let those who have seen sensually spirits, even holy angels, not imagine anything about themselves: this vision, in itself, does not at all serve as evidence of the dignity of those who have seen: not only vicious people are capable of it, but also the most dumb animals (Num. 22, 23 ).
The Holy Fathers preferred all spiritual vision to sensory vision. The great mentor of monks, Saint Isaac of Syria, said: “He who is worthy to see himself is higher than he who is worthy to see Angels, for the latter enters with bodily eyes, and the former with spiritual eyes” (Homily 41). Those venerable monks who were vouchsafed abundant spiritual vision were abundant in spiritual reasoning and other sublime gifts of the Holy Spirit; poor were those reverend Fathers who, for their simplicity and purity, were awarded only a sensual vision of spirits. The Monk Daniel of Skete tells about a certain elder of a very strict life, who lived in lower Egypt, that he said out of ignorance: “Melchizedek, king of Salem, mentioned in the book of Genesis (Gen. 14, 18), is the Son of God.” This was conveyed to Blessed Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria. Cyril invited the elder to his place, who performed signs, to whom God revealed what the elder asked. The archbishop acted very wisely. He said to the elder: “Abba! pray for me. One thought tells me that Melchizedek is the Son of God, and another thought says: no! He is a man and a bishop of God. I hesitate which of these thoughts to believe. For this reason, I invited you . Pray to God that God will reveal this to you by revelation." The elder, trusting in his residence, answered with determination: “Give me a period of three days: I will ask God about this, and I will tell you who Melchizedek is.” After three days, the elder came to the archbishop and said to him: “Melchizedek is a man.” The archbishop answered: “How did you know this, father?” Elder: “God showed me all the patriarchs, from Adam to Melchizedek. At the same time, the Angel said to me: here is Melchizedek. Be sure that this is so.” Returning to his cell, the elder himself preached to everyone that Melchizedek was a man, and not the Son of God. Saint Cyril rejoiced over the salvation of his brother, who, despite the fact that he performed signs and received revelations from God, was in communion with the holy Angels and the souls of departed Saints, perished from assimilating blasphemous thoughts, not understanding his spiritual distress (Prologue, February 23). A similar thing happened to some holy presbyter in the first centuries of Christianity. Due to his purity and gentleness, during the service of the Divine Liturgy, he was constantly vouchsafed to see an Angel who stood near him. A wanderer deacon visited the presbyter. The presbyter invited the deacon to perform a bloodless sacrifice. When they began to perform sacred services, the deacon noticed to the presbyter that during his prayers he was uttering words that contained heretical blasphemy. The presbyter was struck by the remark. He turned to the Angel, who was present here, and asked him: “Are the words of the deacon fair?” The angel answered: “fair.” “Why,” objected the presbyter, “didn’t you tell me this when you were with me for so long?” “It pleases God,” answered the Angel, “that men should be taught by men.” Constant communication with the Angel did not prevent the saint from falling into a fatal error.
Seeing spirits with the sensual eyes always brings more or less harm to those people who do not have spiritual vision. Here on earth, images of truth are mixed with images of lies (St. Isaac of Syria, Homily 2), as in a country in which good and evil are mixed, as in a country of expulsion of fallen angels and fallen men. The God-Man descended into this country to save people; into this country, before the incarnation of God the Word, holy Angels descended to people as fallen beings, but who had received the promise of salvation; into this country, after the incarnation of God the Word, holy Angels descend to help people working out their salvation: but in this same country people who arbitrarily remain in their fall also permanently live. fallen angels, hardened and confirmed in their fall, in enmity towards God. Just as people who have loved their fall, their sinfulness, use all measures to attract all people in their direction: so fallen spirits are especially concerned about this. They carry out the work of destroying people with incomparably greater success than the most malicious people. The damage to people lies in the mixture of good and evil in them; the damage of fallen spirits consists in the complete predominance of evil, with a complete absence of good. The abilities of fallen spirits are far superior to the abilities of fallen people, who are bound in their endeavors by the very heaviness and whiteness of their bodies. Demons flow freely and quickly around the universe, and freely do things that are completely impossible for humans (Job 1:7). People must, inevitably, be satisfied with the experience in evil that they acquire during their short earthly life; their evil intentions are destroyed by themselves at the hour when they involuntarily leave the field of earthly life, being called for the judgment of God and into eternity. Demons, on the contrary, were allowed to remain on earth from the time of their final fall (Gen. 3:14) until the end of the world: anyone can easily imagine what experience in creating evil they acquired over such a long time, given their abilities and constant maliciousness, not at all dissolved by any good aspiration or passion. If they pretend to be well-intentioned, then this is only with the aim of more accurately succeeding in evil intentions. They are generally incapable of good intentions. One who sees spirits sensually can easily be deceived into his own damage and destruction. If, when seeing spirits, he shows trust in them, or gullibility, then he will certainly be deceived, will certainly be carried away, will certainly be sealed with the seal of seduction, incomprehensible to the inexperienced, the seal of terrible damage in his spirit, and the possibility of correction and salvation is often lost. This has happened to many, many people. This happened not only with the pagans, whose priests were for the most part in open communication with demons; This happened not only to many Christians who did not know the secrets of Christianity, and for some reason entered into communication with spirits: it happened to many ascetics and monks who did not acquire a spiritual vision of spirits and saw them sensually.
Christian asceticism alone provides the correct, legal entry into the world of spirits. All other means are illegal and should be rejected as obscene and harmful. The true ascetic of Christ is brought into vision by God Himself. When God leads, then the ghosts of truth are separated, in which lies are clothed from the truth; then the ascetic is granted, firstly, a spiritual vision of spirits, which reveals in detail and with accuracy the properties of these spirits. After this, some ascetics are granted a sensual vision of spirits, which supplements the knowledge about them gained by spiritual vision. Evil spirits are bound in their actions towards the ascetic of Christ by the power and wisdom of the God who guides him, and, despite the fact that they breathe the most special malice against the servant of God, they cannot cause him the evil that they would like. The misfortunes they inflict contribute to his prosperity (Venerable Macarius the Great, word 4, chapter 6,7).
A detailed, essential teaching about the spirits of evil is expounded by the Monk Anthony the Great in the teaching that he delivered to his disciples. The Great One borrowed this teaching from his own holy experiences, from his abundantly blessed state; it is attested by the Holy Scriptures. Anthony had a vision of spirits, both sensual and spiritual. By self-mortification, by a deeply silent life, by living in heaven (Phil. 3:20), where the Holy Spirit who dwelt in him elevated him, Anthony, while still in the body, already seemed to belong to the spirits (Maronite month book. Sancti Antonii magni opera, Patrologiae Graecae, Volume 40, page 960). He was constantly either in communion with the holy Angels or in the struggle with demons (Cheti-Minea, the life of St. Anthony the Great, the story of Zerefer. “Great and perfect father, St. Anthony, perspicacious, overcame demonic temptations, who cares nothing Their deceit is imputed: and many times sensual hairs and angels and demons have seen." The instruction was delivered to hermits - monks who were very successful, such as the disciples of Velikago. The sensual vision of spirits is part of the hermit's life; Demons fight with communal monks most invisibly, bringing them sinful thoughts, dreams, sensations, very rarely appearing sensually. Anthony the Great, having sufficiently taught Paul the Simpleton the monastic life, arranged for him a hermit’s cell at a considerable distance from himself, and brought his holy disciple into it, saying to him: “Behold! By the grace of Christ, who gave help, you have learned the monastic life: from now on remain alone in order to gain experience in fighting demons" (Historia Lavsaika cap 28. Patrologiae Graecae, Volume 34.)
“The Scripture commands,” said Anthony the Great (Patrologiae Graecae. Volume 26. Vita S. Antonii pag. 873, 874-907, 908), “that we guard our hearts with all care (Proverbs 4:23). We have terrible enemies and insidious, that is, crafty demons, we have a battle with them, as the Apostle says: our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but against the rulers and authorities, and against the rulers of this world, the spiritual wickedness in high places (Eph. 6:12). there are many of them in the air that surrounds us; they are not far from us; there is great disagreement between them. Others who surpass us in spiritual success can say a lot about their nature, but we have a special need to know the intrigues they use against us.”
"Firstly, we must be convinced that demons are called demons not because they were created in the present dispensation. God did not create anything that in itself would be evil. Demons were created good. Subsequently, having fallen away from the heavenly wisdom, cast down to earth, they deceived the pagans with ghosts. Flaming with hatred for us Christians, they use all means to deny us access to heaven, so that we do not ascend to where they fell. Intensified prayer is needed, a great feat is needed, so that those which they are, having received the grace of reasoning through the action of the Spirit, they could recognize them. Some of them are less evil, others are more evil; different ways arrange for us to fall and perish. Their cunning is varied; There are a variety of techniques for preparing intrigues (see another reading). Of course, the blessed Apostle and his followers knew this with accuracy. Let us not understand his (Satan’s) plans (2 Cor. 2:11). We must instruct each other, borrowing knowledge from the temptations that we were subjected to from demons; That’s why I, as someone who has acquired some experimental knowledge about spirits, am telling you, my children.”
“If the demons see that one of the Christians, especially the monks, begins to struggle and succeed, then they approach him and immediately begin to put obstacles in his path. These obstacles are sinful thoughts. One should not be confused and bewildered by suggestions brought to them: they are immediately destroyed by prayers, fasting and faith in the Lord. But having been repulsed, the demons do not stop fighting: they maliciously and insidiously approach again, not having time to deceive the heart through secret action through lusts, they approach in a different way and try to lead. frightened by empty ghosts, taking various forms, now women, now animals, now reptiles, now the greatest giants, now many warriors. But even these ghosts shown by them should not be feared: having no meaning, they instantly disappear if anyone tries. protect themselves with faith and the sign of the cross. However, they are daring and extremely shameless: defeated in one method of struggle, they resort to another. They present themselves as gifted with prophecy, capable of predicting the future. They stretch like a ghost to such a height, with a great volume in width, that they seem to touch the roofs of houses. This is how they act with the goal of seducing with wonders those whom they could not seduce with their thoughts. If even during this attempt they find a soul strengthened by faith and hope, then they finally bring their boss with them” (see another reading).
Anthony said that he often saw the devil as the Lord revealed him to Job in the following words: His eyes are the vision of the star. From his mouth come forth like burning candles, and are placed like sparks of fire. From his nostrils comes the smoke of a furnace of coals burning with fire. His soul is like coals, and like flames come from his mouth (Job 41:9-13). “Appearing like this, the prince of demons, eloquent and aged in evil, tries, as I said, to bring terror, for which the Lord accuses him, saying again to Job: he counts iron as chaff, copper as rotten wood, and the sea as a peacemaker, and the Tartar of the abyss, like a captive, counted the abyss as a passage (as a place of walking) (Job 41; 18, 22, 23); With my hand I will take both like a nest and like an abandoned egg (Is. 10:14). Thus, the demons boast and promise to do this and that in order to deceive the ascetics of piety. We, believers, should not be afraid of their ghosts, we should not listen to them. proclamations. They always lie, they never say anything true. Although the devil boldly expressed so many things about himself, the Lord took him out like a snake on a hook, put a bridle on him, like a working animal, chained him in an iron hoop, like a runaway slave, and tied him up. there is a ring in his nostrils and lips. He is bound by the Lord like a sparrow, and handed over to us as a playground. Together with him, his accomplices, demons, like scorpions and snakes, were cast down, trampling upon us Christians. The proof of this is that we, by the very way of our life, fight the devil - and he who boasted of drying up the sea and embracing the universe can no longer resist our asceticism, cannot forbid me, who speaks against him. Let us not pay any attention to his words, because he is constantly false! Let us not be afraid of his ghosts, which, of course, have no meaning! The light shown by demons is not true: rather, it is an omen and foreshadowing of the fire they have prepared: they intensify to appear to people in the flame in which they will burn. Exactly - they appear, but they will disappear immediately, without harming any of the believers, in the thing itself revealing only the image of the fire into which they will be plunged. We should not be afraid of them for any reason: the grace of Christ made all their attempts against us futile."
The great Egyptian hermit describes grandeur, extraordinary promises proclaimed by demons in order to seduce and deceive people, as well as monstrous ghosts represented by demons, their incredible and vain threats. By various means, demons try to entice people into submission to themselves, appearing to them sensually. An attentive doer of Christ’s commandments can observe exactly the same action of demons when they invisibly approach the soul and try to influence it with thoughts and dreams. Wanting to incline a person to voluptuousness, they present to him in his imagination seductive animal images and numerous means to satisfy carnal lust. Wanting to seduce with vanity, they present earthly prosperity in a seductive picture. Wanting to shackle with love of money, they represent a long and painful old age, as well as the pretexts on which this vice is based. In a word: they seduce and threaten - by all means they try to steal faith in God, to distract people under their leadership. To those who submit to demons, they act cruelly, act like worst enemies, who offered everything with one intention, with the intention of causing all kinds of harm. Those who are inclined to seek glory are sometimes struck by weakness immediately after the spoken obedience of flattery - sometimes they seem to be satisfied for a long time in order to be plunged into a difficult situation, into a disastrous abyss. When the right hand of God leaves a person for his constant and deliberate enslavement to passion: then the demons plunge him into all types of humiliation. This is what they do with both the money-lover and the sensualist. They seduce with sinful pleasure in order to pour out their mortal bitterness into those who obey them; They deceive with an abundance of blessings, so that a person, having renounced his trust in God, who protects man from the onslaught of disasters and in the onslaught of disasters, deviates towards the measures of self-preservation offered to demons, and falls into disasters, the most confusing, inextricable.
“Demons are crafty; they are capable of taking on different images and forms. They often appear to sing psalms, while remaining invisible, and remember the words of Scripture. Very often, when we read, they immediately repeat what they read, like an echo. When we sleep, they excite us to prayer, so as not to allow us to completely calm down to sleep. Sometimes, assuming the appearance of monks, as if they were the most pious, they enter into conversation in order to deceive with the ghost of clothes and images, and to captivate the deceived, when they should not listen to whether they excite them. to prayer, whether they exhort us not to eat anything at all, whether they accuse us and accuse us of sins that they know we are guilty of. They do this not for the purpose of piety or virtue, but in order to lead the simplest to despair. They represent an ascetic life. useless, instilling disgust towards monastic life as unbearably painful; they act with the aim of creating all sorts of obstacles to this life." (see other reading)
"The prophet sent by God announces the disastrous state of the demons, saying: Woe to him who makes his girlfriend drunk with muddy corruption (Habak. 2:15). Such suggestions and thoughts incite the path leading to salvation. When the demons spoke the truth, they spoke the truth when they spoke : You are the Holy One of God (Luke 4:41). - The Lord shut their mouths and commanded them to be silent, so that they would not mix their wickedness with the truth, and to teach us a decisive distrust of demons, even if they spoke the truth indecently to us. who have the Holy Scripture and the freedom granted by the Savior, learn from the devil, who did not maintain his own rank and changed in mind, falling from the spiritual to the carnal. For this reason, when the devil attempts to speak, Scripture forbids him to do so. in the following words: God said to the sinner: You will tell My justifications of all things, and you will accept My covenant with your lips (Ps. 49:16). In order to deceive the simplest, they resort to all sorts of means, to all kinds of pretense, they talk a lot, make noise, cause confusion, knock, laugh excessively, whistle. If no attention is paid to them, then they finally begin to cry and sob like defeated people."
“The Lord, as God, shut the mouth of the demons; but we, the taught saints, must imitate them, be like them in courage. They, seeing something like this, exclaimed: “When the sinner stood up before me, I was dumb and humbled, and kept silent from good things (Ps. 38, 2). And again: I am deaf and do not hear, and I am dumb and do not open my mouth; I am like a man who does not hear (Ps. 37:14). We must not listen to them in anything, even if they encourage us to pray, even if we teach them to fast. On the contrary, we will firmly adhere to the regulations of our life, so as not to be deceived by their actions, which are all filled with malice and malicious intent. They presented themselves as attackers, even if they threatened to kill them: they are weak, they can only threaten, they cannot do anything more."
The prudent and cautious behavior prescribed towards demons during their sensory appearance must be strictly observed even when they act with thoughts alone. Acting with thoughts, they try, as with a sensory phenomenon, to defile and pervert every virtue with their admixture, in order to shake and overthrow the ascetic, in order to shake and overthrow in him moral concepts, concepts on which truly pious living is based. Demons induce the monk to impose on himself immoderate fasting, immoderate vigil, burdensome prayer rules, excessive poverty in clothing, excessive zeal for bodily labor, in order to lead him to arrogance, or, having exhausted his strength and health, to make him incapable of pious deeds. They try to strengthen the godly sadness of the one crying about sins and turn it into disastrous sadness, mixing with repentance of sins hopelessness in receiving forgiveness; from hopelessness to despair. Presenting love for one's neighbor as a plausible excuse, they teach them to often leave their cells to visit the brethren, and to constantly receive and invite visitors to their cells. This prevents you from crying and other soul-healthy activities that are possible only in the lap of solitude and silence; by this they are drawn into absent-mindedness, from which the mind is darkened, and defeat by temptations becomes very convenient. Into confession true faith, into this foundation of human salvation, demons try to introduce their admixture and transform the holy Faith into malice or heresy - thereby destroying the entire meaning of Faith. What is heresy? Heresy is an admixture with the frank knowledge of God, a teaching borrowed from carnal wisdom, common to apostate spirits and apostates to men. Revealed knowledge of God is taught by God Himself; it does not tolerate any admixture; it is completely rejected both by direct negation and by admixture. Such an admixture is a disguised denial.
“Having said so far briefly about this subject, I will not stop to say in more detail: such a story will lead you to the strictest vigilance over yourself. With the coming of the Lord to earth, the enemy fell, his forces were crushed. Like an overthrown tyrant, unable to do anything, he cannot remain in any way calm, and at least threatens with words. Each of you should know this; each of you, on the basis of this knowledge, can despise demons if they were bound by such bodies as we are bound, then without a doubt you could say: “ we don't find people because they are hiding; if we found them, we would harm them; We could also, having closed the doors, hide from them, just as they hide from us." But their position is not at all like that: they can enter with the doors locked, they can, both they and their boss the devil, act freely in air space - are ready to cause evil and harm; the devil, as the Lord said, was a murderer from time immemorial (John 8:44), we live, even in opposition to him we established our residence: from this it is clear that demons. They have lost all power. The place does not serve as an obstacle to their intrigues; they have no guarantee that they would spare us because of their love for us, to take care of our correction. On the contrary, they are malicious, and do not try so hard for anything. in order to harm the devotees of virtue and piety. They do nothing only for the reason that they cannot do anything, they can only threaten; they cannot refrain from evil, they are eager to cause us any harm, having a completely directed will to this! we have gathered and speak against them; they know that according to our success they become exhausted. They probably would not have allowed any Christian to live if they had the power to do so: a pious life according to God is abominable for a sinner. Having no strength, they are tormented by the sight that they cannot fulfill any of their plans. Let us be convinced that we should not be afraid of them at all. If only they had any power; then they would not have approached with noise, in different ghosts, they would not have arranged forks, changing the images: one of them would have been enough to fulfill what he wanted and what was possible for him. He who has the power to kill does not approach in an empty ghost, does not terrify with noise and rebellion, but acts freely according to his power. On the contrary, demons, having no power, put on a kind of theatrical performance, changing their appearance and terrifying children with noise and their ugly faces: for this reason they deserve contempt as weak. The true Angel, sent by the Lord against the Assyrians, did not need any noise, nor a striking situation, nor knocking, nor splashing of hands: calmly acting according to the given authority, he killed one hundred and eighty-five thousand soldiers in a very short time (2 Kings. 19, 35). Those who have no power - such as demons - only try to terrify with vain ghosts."
“Perhaps someone, based on the story of Job, will ask in refutation of what has been said: why was the devil, armed against this righteous man, able to do everything: he took away property, and killed children, and struck himself with stinking leprosy? (Job 1, 15-22; 2, 1-17). Let the questioner know that this was not done by the power of the devil, but by the power of God, who handed Job over to the devil for temptation, and precisely because he could not do anything, he asked permission to do what he did. This event serves as the basis for great contempt for the enemy, who, although he wanted, does not have the opportunity to act against one righteous person: if he had, he would not have asked. But he asked, he asked more than once, he asked twice: this exposes his weakness. and powerlessness. It is not surprising that he could not do anything to Job when he could not harm his flocks, without the permission of God, even over the pigs he had no power: because the demons asked the Lord, as it is written in the Gospel, saying: commanded us to go into the herd of swine (Matt. 8; 8, 31). If they have no power over swine, much less over men, created in the likeness of God."
“We must fear God alone: we must despise demons and not be at all afraid. The more persistently they act against us, the more zealous we must be in asceticism. The great weapon against them is pure life and faith in God. There is no doubt that they are afraid of fasting, vigils, prayers, meekness, heartfelt silence, contempt for money and vain glory, humility, love for the poor, mercy, goodness, and most of all, piety in Christ (by piety in Christ we mean strict Orthodoxy, united by strict living according to the commandments of the Gospel), when these virtues are seen in ascetics. For this reason, they make every effort so that no one tramples on them: they know the grace that the Savior gave against them to those who believe. Behold, I give you power to tread on the serpent and the scorpion, and on all the power of the enemy" (Luke 10:19). ).
“So, if demons predict the future, no one listens to them. Often they foretell the coming of the brethren several days in advance, and in fact the brethren come. The demons do this for nothing other than to inspire confidence in those who listen to them in order to gradually subjugate them to their influence and destroy them. For this reason, we should not listen to them, we should reject their words when they speak, because we do not need them at all. What is surprising is that they, having bodies lighter than human bodies (Patrologsiae Graecae T.24. S.Athanasii. T.2.Vita S. Antonii. pag. 889-890. - Ei Ceptoteroiz kromenoi pomati mallon twn anqropwn, etc.), and When they see someone setting out on the road, they come first and announce him? In this way, those riding on horses can warn pedestrians: in this regard, they are not at all worthy of surprise. They do not know anything that has not yet happened. or, they notify about this by running across hastily. So they announce to many what is happening between us, that is, that we have agreed, that we are conspiring against them, before any of us, leaving here, could retell it. Of course - any agile boy could do this, warning the one walking slowly. What I said should be understood this way. If someone is preparing to travel from Thebaid or from some other country, they do not know whether he will go or not. When they see that he has gone, they run forward and herald his coming, and after a few days he definitely comes. It happens that those who set off on a journey return back: then the demons turn out to have lied" (see another reading).
“In the same way, they often chatter about the profit of water in the river: seeing that heavy rains have fallen in Ethiopia, and concluding from this that the river will overflow its banks, they, before the water reaches Egypt, hastily come running and announce the coming flood. This could also be proclaimed by people if they had the ability for rapid movement that demons have. How did David’s bodyguard (2 Sam. 18:24), having ascended to a high place, see the coming person more quickly than the one who stood below; also how that one of the messengers who warned the others by his arrival announced before them not about what had not yet happened, but about what had begun to happen: in this way the demons warn by announcement, solely for the purpose of deception, if by providence. God’s circumstances will turn out differently, the water will not arrive, or the travelers will not come, then the demons will turn out to be lying, and those who believed them will be deceived” (see another reading).
"This is how the oracles (oracles) of the pagans began in ancient times; this is how the pagans have been deceived by demons since ancient times. But the deception has come to an end. The Lord came and overthrew the demons and their tricks. They know nothing on their own, but, like thieves, they say what they see from It would be more correct to say: they do not so much predict as they predict. For this reason, even if they told the truth, experienced and skilled doctors, having studied any disease in many patients, very often predict the consequences. her; and also helmsmen and farmers, constantly monitoring the state of the air, predict clear and cloudy weather: but these predictions are not attributed to Divine revelation, but to experience and clarity. For this reason, no one is surprised if demons, perhaps, are based on this. With such intelligence, they will say something fair; let no one be influenced by their attention to them. What benefit can there be for those who hear if they find out what is going to happen in a few days? or what is the need to know this, if you can find out fairly? Such knowledge does not bring any progress in virtue, does not serve as evidence of holiness. None of us are called to judgment for ignorance of the future; none of those who have received this knowledge are recognized as blessed; everyone will give an answer at the trial as to whether he kept the faith and fulfilled the commandments exactly.”
“We do not undertake many labors for this purpose, we do not spend our lives in exploits in order to foreknow the future, but in order to please God with virtues. We must be diligent in prayer not in order to receive foreknowledge of the future; this is not the reward of asceticism: we must ask the Lord , so that He will help us gain victory over the devil. If we certainly want to acquire foreknowledge of the future, then for this we will acquire purity of mind. I have the conviction that the soul, having been cleansed and ascended to a natural state (the Holy Fathers call the natural state the state in which people are). created, they call the state of fall inferior), becomes perspicacious, and, by the action of Divine revelation, can see further and more hidden than what the devil sees. Such was the mind of Elisha, who saw the actions of Gehazi (2 Kings 5:26) committed in. far away, he also saw the heavenly army sent to protect him" (Elisha) (2 Kings 6:17).
“So, if demons come to you at night and begin to talk about the future, telling about themselves: we are angels, then do not believe them. They lie. If they praise your residence and call you blessed, then do not listen to them, even do not look at them, but immediately mark yourself and your home with the sign of the cross, turn to prayer, and you will see - they are timid, and are extremely afraid of the sign of the cross: because the Savior deprived them of their strength with the cross, and handed them over to shame. act persistently and shamelessly, jumping and changing the images of your vile faces - do not be afraid, do not be horrified, do not trust them, as if they are good, you can very soon distinguish, by the grace of God, the presence of good spirits from the presence of evil ones. confusion in the soul. For the Angel will not cry, lower will weaken, lower will hear his voice outside (Is. 42: 2): he is so pleasant, so much good that from the sight of him there is joy, joy, delight in the soul. This is because. Co-present with the holy Angels is the Lord, Who is our joy, and the power of God the Father. The thoughts of the soul are calm, free from confusion; embraces her desire for Divine, future blessings; she would like to remain in them forever, and leave here with the holy angels. If anyone, like a person, is afraid of the appearance of the holy Angels, then they immediately take away this fear with their goodness. This is what Gabriel did regarding Zechariah (Luke 1:13); This is what the Angel did, who appeared to the women in the tomb of the Lord (Matthew 28:5), and the one who said to the shepherds mentioned in the Gospel: do not be afraid (Luke 2:10). Fear in those who have seen it will not be born from the indignation of the soul, but from the presence and contemplation of the excellent dignity of beings. These are the signs of the vision of holy angels."
“On the contrary, the invasion and apparition of evil spirits is accompanied by noise, knocking, sounds and screams, similar to the chaos that ill-bred youths and robbers create. Their presence causes fear in the soul, confusion and bewilderment in the thoughts, melancholy, disgust from achievement, laziness, despondency, memories of relatives, fear of death, then sinful lusts, cooling of jealousy for virtues, moral disorder. And so, if you see someone appearing, you will be overcome by fear, but this fear will immediately be taken away, and indescribable joy and joy will take its place. , notification, renewal of the soul, peace of thoughts and other things mentioned above, strength of the soul and love for God; then be calm and pray; joy and such a state of the soul serves as a sign of the presence of holy spirits. So Abraham, seeing the Lord, rejoiced (Deut. 13:4) So John, leaping with joy when the Mother of God said greetings, if any phenomenon appears to you, accompanied by noise, knocking and an environment according to the custom of the world, with the fear of death and with the above signs, know that evil spirits have come. ".
“And let the following serve as their sign for you. If fear does not recede from the soul, then this is a sign of the presence of enemies. Demons do not take away fear in any way, just as the Archangel Gabriel took away fear when he appeared to Mary and Zechariah, and the Angel who appeared to the wives in the Holy Sepulcher On the contrary, the demons, seeing that the person was afraid of them, intensified the ghost in order to strike them with great fear, and to scold them, having begun to worship themselves, they said to the frightened ones: Prostrate yourself and render worship. Thus they deceived the pagans, and were recognized by them as gods. The Lord does not allow us to be deceived by demons. When the devil approached the Lord with such ghosts, the Lord forbade him with the following words: follow me, Satan, for it is written: You will worship the Lord your God, and therefore we must serve Him alone. to despise more this crafty one who takes upon himself different kinds. What was said to the devil by the Lord was said for our sake, so that the demons, hearing these words from us, would be crushed by the power of the Lord, who forbade them with these words.”
“One should not be vain about the grace-filled power of casting out demons, one should not be exalted by the grace-filled gift of healing diseases. The one who casts out demons does not deserve surprise, nor contempt for the one who does not cast them out. Let us, who wish to speak correctly about a monk, study the image of his feat. Performing signs is a matter of the Savior, and not ours: that is why He said to His disciples: Do not rejoice in this, for the souls obey you, but rejoice, for your names are written in heaven (Luke 10:20). evidence of our virtue and godly life, and the power of casting out demons is the gift of the Savior. For this reason, he was famous for working miracles, and not for virtue, and who said: Lord, Lord! created? He answered: Amen, I say to you: I do not know you (Matthew 7:22-23). The Lord does not know the ways that the wicked walk. (1 John 4:1), as Scripture teaches us."
“Now I wanted to shut up and no longer continue the conversation; but so that you do not think that what I said was said at random, and are convinced that I told from knowledge acquired by experience, I become as if senseless (2 Cor. 12, 11 ), continuing the word. The Lord, who hears what I say, knows the purity of my heart’s intention, that not for my own sake, but for the sake of your love and your edification, I begin the story of the demonic intrigues known to me from experience. How many times have the demons called me blessed, and I. I cursed them in the name of the Lord! How many times did they foretell to me the profit of water in the river, and I answered them: what do you care about this? taking the form of horses, beasts and snakes, they filled my house. Then I repeated the saying of the Psalm: These are on chariots and these on horses: we will call in the name of the Lord our God (Ps. 19:8). thus the Lord drove them away. One day, at night, they came to me, making an apparition of light and saying: Anthony! we came to you and brought light; I closed my eyes and began to pray, and immediately the light of the wicked went out. After a few months they came, singing psalms and pronouncing sayings from the Holy Scriptures; I am as if I were deaf and did not hear (Ps. 37:14). It happened that they shook my home; I, without being embarrassed, remained in prayer. After that they came again, knocking, whistling and dancing; but seeing that I was praying and lying down performing psalmody with my mind, they immediately began to cry and sob as if they had lost their strength, and I sent out praise to the Lord, who had curbed and perverted their insolence and ferocity.”
“One day a demon appeared to me as a ghost of extraordinary size and dared to say: I - God's power, I am God's providence: I can give you good; What do you want? But I, calling on the name of Christ, breathed on him, and attempted to subject him to beatings; in fact, it seemed to me that I had subjected him to beatings! (a person, when seeing spirits - since this state is outside the usual order - cannot immediately give himself a true account of whether what he sees is actually happening, or is it just a vision. Acts 12:9) Immediately this giant, with all his demons, disappeared. - One day, while I was fasting, the devil came to me, taking on the image of a monk; he seemed to be holding loaves of bread in his hands, and made me the following proposal: Stop your great fast and taste the food: because you are a man, and you are in danger of falling into illness. Realizing his cunning, I stood up to pray: unable to bear it, he disappeared and entered through the door like smoke. How many times has the devil presented me with a ghost of gold in the desert so that I would at least touch it or look at it! But I resorted to the weapon of psalmody, and the ghost disappeared. Many times they beat me severely and covered me with wounds; but I exclaimed: Nothing will separate me from the love of Christ! (Rom. 8:35). Then they rushed at each other and struck each other. But I tamed and drove them away: this was done by the Lord, who said: I saw Satan like lightning falling from heaven (Luke 10:18). My children! remembering the saying of the Apostle, transforming this on yourself (1 Cor. 4:6), so that you learn not to lose heart while pursuing the field of asceticism, and not to be afraid of the ghosts of the devil and his demons.”
“I told this as if it were senseless, listen to the following, so that you may live without fear or stumbling. Believe my truthful legend. One day someone knocked on the door of my secluded dwelling. I went out: a giant of the highest stature stood before me. I asked him: “Who are you? I am Satan,” he answered. “Why did you come here?” He answered: “The monks accuse me in vain, and all the Christians do not stop cursing me for an hour.” because you are pursuing them and do not give them peace. Not I, he objected to this, but they themselves are embarrassing themselves, and I have completely lost all my strength. Don’t they read: The enemy has run out of weapons in the end, and you have destroyed the cities ( Ps. 9, 7). In my possession there is no place left, no country, no city. Christianity has been adopted everywhere, and now the deserts are filled with monks. Let them not blame me in vain. I told the demon: You are a lie, you always remain a lie, and you never tell the truth. But now you involuntarily told the truth: because Christ, by His coming, weakened you, cast you down and exposed you. The demon, hearing the name of the Savior, and not tolerating the fire emanating from this name, disappeared."
“If the devil himself admits that he has no power, then, of course, he is worthy of our contempt, and his demons are worthy of contempt. The enemy with his dogs resorts to intrigue, and we, knowing his weakness, must despise him. Let us not bother of our mind, we will not consider the reasons for fear, we will not allow ourselves to internalize thoughts of fear, saying: Lest the demon, having attacked me, overthrow me, and then strike me to the ground or, as it were, with a sudden attack! did not frighten me! Let us not allow ourselves such thoughts; let us not allow ourselves to be sad, as if we must perish. On the contrary, let us be more and more strengthened in faith, filled with joy, as we must inherit salvation, keeping in mind that the Lord, who converted us, is with us. flight and crushing the demons. Let us also think and constantly remember that as long as the Lord is with us, the enemies cannot do us any harm. When they come to us, they act towards us according to how they find us, and adapt their ghosts to us. thoughts with which we will then be enveloped. If they find us in fear and confusion, then they will invade this state of ours, like thieves who have found some place that is not guarded by anyone. What we ourselves think, they try to present in an exaggerated form. If they see that we are frightened and trembled, then, according to our state of fright, they imagine ghosts and insurance, and the unfortunate soul is actually punished for its internal state. If they find us rejoicing in the Lord, reflecting on future blessings, confirmed in the thought that everything is in the right hand of God, that demons are completely weak in relation to Christians, that they do not have the slightest power in anything; if, I say, they find a soul protected by such weapons, then they will retreat from it with shame. The enemy found Job so armed and retreated from him; He found Judas without this weapon and carried him into enslavement. If we want to despise the enemy, then let us remain carefully in Divine thoughts, let the soul constantly remain in the joy produced by hope in God. Then we will attribute the shameful performances of demons to smoke; we will see that they are running away from us rather than pursuing us: because, as I said above, they are extremely cowardly; They are constantly kept in awe by the fire of Gehenna, which they expect and prepare for them.”
“And you need to know the following for your safety. When any vision presents itself, do not allow yourself to be frightened, but whatever this vision may be, courageously ask it first: Who are you and where are you from? If it is the appearance of the saints: then they will calm you, and your fear will turn into joy. If the phenomenon is the devil, then, having encountered firmness in the soul, it will immediately come to hesitation: because the question: Who are you and where are you from? Having made such a question, Joshua. became convinced of the truth (Joshua 5:13), and the Angel did not hide from Daniel" (Dan. 10:20).
Those of the ascetics who have not acquired the gift of reasoning with spirits, have not examined their fall in themselves, have not understood that Christ for a Christian is everything that must reject the very goodness of fallen nature and renounce their souls, who for this reason are capable of greater or greater conceit. to a lesser extent, they were subjected to great disasters and death itself from the sensual manifestation of spirits that followed due to the exhaustion of the flesh by bodily exploits and the conceit that had crept into the soul. When spirits captivate or trap a person in the secrets of his heart and mind: then they conveniently act outside. A person trusts a lie, thinking that he trusts the purest truth. The Monk Isaac of Syria narrates: “A certain Asinas, a native of the city of Edes, the author of many trilogies that are sung to this day, led a high (apparently) life. He recklessly imposed on himself the most difficult feats with the (secret) thought of gaining fame. He was deceived by the devil: he brought from his cell, he placed him on the top of a mountain called Storium, and, having previously received his consent, showed him an image of a chariot and horses, and said: God sent me to take you to paradise, just as Asinas fell into deception in his infancy, and ascended. onto the chariot: then this whole dream collapsed, he fell from a great height, fell to the ground, and died a death worthy of crying and at the same time laughter" (Homily 55).
Obviously: Asinas died due to a lack of spiritual knowledge about fallen spirits, about the mystery of the redemption of humanity by the God-man. With this knowledge, there is no place in a person for conceit, on which execution and seduction were based. Two Kiev-Pechersk hermits, Saints Isaac and Nikita, were subjected to a terrible disaster and for the same reason: a demon appeared to the first in the form of Christ, to the second - in the form of an Angel (Cheti-Minea, life of the Venerable Isaac, February 14, life of the Venerable Nikita, January 31) . The words of the Holy Apostle Peter are quite true: your adversary is the devil, like a roaring lion he goes about seeking someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8). He devours the weak and infants according to spiritual intelligence; He is not ashamed to attack the great saints of God, hoping to deceive them and bring them down into moments of spiritual slumber or insufficient vigilance over oneself. The means that the devil used so successfully against Asinas, he wanted to use to crush the Monk Simeon the Stylite. From Asinas he extracted preliminary consent; He wanted to catch the stylite by surprise - to destroy him, taking away both the time and the opportunity to examine the prepared deception. He was transformed into a bright Angel - he appeared with a chariot and horses of fire to Simeon, who stood on an elevated pillar. “Hear, Simeon!” he said. The God of heaven and earth sent me to you, as you see, with a chariot and horses, to take you to heaven, like Elijah: you are worthy of such honor for the holiness of your life. Your hour has already come, in which you must reap the fruits of your labors, and receive the crown of kindness from the hand of the Lord. Go without delay, servant of the Lord, so that you may see your Creator, may you worship your Creator, who created you in His image, may the angels and archangels, the prophets, the apostles, see you. martyrs who want to see you." When the tempter said this and similar things - demons are verbose and pompous - the monk did not understand that he was dealing with a seducer. The character of the Saint had a special simplicity and inclination towards unquestioning obedience, as can easily be seen from a careful reading of his life story. Simeon said in response, turning to God: “Lord, do you want to take me, a sinner, to heaven?” With these words, he raised his leg to step into the chariot, and with his hand he made the sign of the cross on himself, from which the devil and the chariot and horses instantly disappeared (Cheti-Minea, September 1). It goes without saying that, because of this temptation, Simeon plunged even more into humility, became even more afraid of conceit, which, hidden to the smallest extent, almost destroyed him. If the saints were in such danger of being deceived by evil spirits, then for us this danger is even more terrible. If the saints did not always recognize the demons who appeared to them in the form of saints and Christ Himself: then how is it possible for us to think of ourselves that we unmistakably recognize them? One means of salvation from spirits is to resolutely renounce visions of them and communication with them, recognizing oneself as incapable of such vision and communication.
The holy mentors of Christian asceticism, enlightened and taught by the Holy Spirit, comprehending the beneficent and God-wise reason why human souls during their stay on earth are covered with bodies, as if veils and coverings, command pious ascetics not to entrust themselves to any image or vision if they suddenly present themselves , do not enter into conversation with them, do not pay attention to them. During such phenomena they command us to protect ourselves with the sign of the cross, to close our eyes and, in the decisive consciousness of our unworthiness and inability to see the holy spirits, to pray to God to cover us from all the intrigues and deceptions that are cunningly placed on people by the spirits of malice, infected with incurable hatred of people. . The fallen spirits hate the human race so much that if they had been allowed to invisibly restrain them by the right hand of God, they would have destroyed us instantly (Venerable Macarius the Great, conversation 25, chapter 3). The teaching about the above-mentioned caution and about saving distrust of the manifestations of spirits is accepted by the entire Church: it is one of her moral traditions, which her children must carefully and carefully preserve. Saints Xanthopoulos say: “Never accept if you saw anything sensually or with your mind inside or outside you, even if it were the appearance of Christ, or an Angel, or some Saint, or a dream of light; but remain not believing it and being indignant about this" (Chapter 73. Kindness, part 2). In the Prologue we read the following instruction about this: “The devil appeared to a certain monk, transformed into a bright Angel, and said to him: I am Gabriel; sent by God to you.” The monk answered: “Look: you were sent to someone else: because I, living in sins, am not worthy to see the Angel.” Ashamed by this answer, the demon immediately disappeared. For this reason, the elders say: if an Angel really appears to someone, do not accept him, but humble yourself, saying: I, living in sins, am not worthy to see the Angel. A certain elder said about himself: While I was staying and asceticizing in my cell, I saw demons in reality, but did not pay any attention to them. The devil, seeing that he was defeated, one day came to the elder (transformed and in great light), saying: I am Christ. The elder saw him, closed his eyes and said: I am not worthy to see Christ, who Himself said: many will come in My name, saying, I am Christ: and they will deceive many (Matthew 24:4). The devil, hearing this, disappeared; the elder glorified God. The elders said: do not want to see Christ or an Angel sensually, so that you do not completely go crazy, accepting a wolf instead of a shepherd and giving worship to your enemies, demons (such worship was given to the devil, who appeared in the form of Christ, by the Monk Isaac of Pechersk and suffered terribly). The beginning of the deception of the mind is vanity: the ascetic, carried away by it, attempts to imagine the Divine with images and likenesses. And you should know that sometimes demons are divided into parts: first some come in their own form, then others - in the form of Angels, as if to help you" (April on the 22nd day).
The Monk Gregory of Sinaite, in his instructions to the silent man, says: “I want you to have an accurate understanding of delusion, so that you can be protected from it, so that you, in ignorance, rushing (toward a lie covered with the guise of good), do not receive the greatest harm and do not destroy of your soul. The autocracy of man (free will) conveniently bows to communication with those who are resistant (with fallen spirits), especially the autocracy of those who do not have spiritual knowledge (mind), as those who are under the constant influence of their (spirits). , spreading networks of thoughts, ditches of falls and dreams of destruction: for their city (the mind and heart of the new and self-initiated) is in the possession of the barbarians. And one should not be surprised if someone was deceived, or went crazy, accepted or is accepting delusion, or sees something contrary. the truth, or speaks inappropriately out of inexperience and foolishness. It is not surprising if someone new is deceived by deception and through many works: for this happened to many ancient and modern ascetics... You will not accept anything if you see something sensually or mentally, externally or internally. yourself, whether it be the image of Christ or an angel, or some Saint, or if the light is dreamed and depicted by the imagination in the mind: for the mind itself is inherent in dreaminess by nature, and it conveniently composes the images it desires, which is usually not strictly attentive to oneself, and with what they harm themselves. Often what God has allowed to bring about the crown has harmed many: for it is pleasing to God that our autocracy should be tested where it bends. If someone accepts, without questioning those who know, what he sees with his mind or senses, he is conveniently seduced, or prone to delusion as a gullible person. No little work is required in order to achieve the exact truth and become pure from everything that is contrary to grace: for the devil usually shows his charm to beginners in the form of truth, transforming his evil cunning into something spiritual. Why, whoever wants to achieve pure prayer in silence must walk in a lot of trembling and weeping, always crying about his sins, grieving and fearing, lest he fall away from God and suffer excommunication in this or the next century. The devil, when he sees someone living mournfully, does not stay there, fearing the humility brought by crying. If someone, driven by conceit, dreams of achieving something high, and has acquired jealousy that comes from Satan, and not the true one, Satan conveniently entangles him with his nets, like his servant. For this reason, a great weapon is to combine crying with prayer. .. Those who live impudently and are led by their own understandings are conveniently damaged... A person needs a lot of reasoning (i.e., spiritual reason) in order to acquire the distinction between good and evil. Do not give in quickly and frivolously to phenomena, but, being heavy, hold on to the good through many trials, and reject the evil: for you are obliged to test and reason, and then believe (that which turns out to be worthy of faith). Know that the effects of grace are obvious. The devil, although he is transformed, cannot give them; cannot give meekness, nor quietness, nor humility, nor hatred of the world, does not quench sweets and passions, which is all the action of grace. The actions that flow from the devil are arrogance, arrogance, insurance and all types of malice. From the action (performed on your soul) you can recognize the light that has arisen in your soul, whether it is from God or from Satan" (the last of the very useful chapters of St. Gregory of Sinaite. Philokalia, part 1).
In general, thoughts, heartfelt sensations, and sensory manifestations of demons are known by their fruits, by the effect they produce in the soul, just as the Savior said: By their fruits you will know them (Matthew 7; 16, 20). Confusion and bewilderment are sure signs of demonic thoughts, sensations and phenomena. But even by these signs the tempter can be recognized only by those who have trained the senses of their spirit over a long period of time to distinguish good from evil (Heb. 5:14). The Monk Elezar of Anzor was once visited (as it were) by the holy Apostle Paul and told him some mysterious teaching. The next day, exactly the same phenomenon appeared to the monk. “I spat in his face,” writes Elezar in his notes, “and said to him: go away, seducer, with your deceptions! Because I felt him in my heart.” Here is an example of the action of feelings trained to distinguish between good and evil! In the same way, the Monk Pachomius the Great denounced the devil, who appeared to him in the image of Christ (life of the Monk Pachomius the Great, May 15th day). But for the inexperienced and beginners, the only way to avoid deception, damage and destruction is a decisive renunciation of any vision, due to a complete inability to make a correct judgment about it.
What is the reason for the terrible hypocrisy of spirits, terrible hypocrisy both in its beginning and in its consequences? The reason is obvious. We can consider it most clearly in ourselves: because man participates in the fall of the rejected angels, and if he follows the evil suggestions brought by them, arising from the fallen nature, then he becomes like a demon. Among the properties of our fall, we notice the desire to hide the crime and justify ourselves that accompanies all human lawlessness. This is what Adam and Eve did after breaking the commandment of God (Gen. 3); This is what their firstborn Cain did after killing his brother Abel (Gen. 4). The further a person is from correction and virtue, the stronger and more subtle is his desire to cover himself with hypocrisy. Intentional, desperate villains are usually also the most unscrupulous hypocrites. Covered in the mask of hypocrisy, covered in the mask of virtue and holiness, they prepare and commit the greatest atrocities. The more skillfully the mask is composed, the more successfully the crime is carried out. The fallen angels also hide behind the mask of hypocrisy. They are desperate, constant, incorrigible villains who commit evil, most often taking the form of bright angels, prophets, martyrs, apostles, Christ Himself. They try to conform to circumstances, to a person’s way of thinking, to inclinations, to the impressions they have received. To some ascetics they present piles of gold and silver, as well as other items of luxury and earthly splendor, in order to find an echo of the dream in the spiritual passion of greed and covetousness, if it is hidden in the soul; For a similar purpose, other ascetics are presented with meals with abundant food and drink; in others, vast halls resounding with music, with crowds of people playing and dancing; others appear in the form of women who arouse lust with their own beauty and artificial adornment. When the fallen angels want to overthrow someone with fear: then they appear in the form of animals, in the form of executioners, in the form of prison and city guards, in the form of warriors with sparkling weapons, with flaming torches, - mainly in the form of persons who have ever excited Ascetics have fear. They tried to seduce others with singing, as if angelic, - with harmonious music, as if heavenly. They tried to mislead others with voices and prophecies, as if divine. To others they appeared in the form of absent relatives and acquaintances; they appeared to others in some form characteristic of humans, persuading those who saw them not to doubt them, not to think that they were rejected spirits, trying to assure them that they were human souls whose fate had not yet been decided, and who for this reason were wandering on the earth, having found no shelter; at the same time, they exude some kind of an interesting fairy tale, capable of arousing curiosity in the frivolous and attracting their trust to lies, presenting it as the purest and most holy truth. The latter method of seduction is especially used by spirits in our time. Wandering souls are also trusted by those who do not believe in the existence of evil spirits. This is what evil spirits need: thieves and murderers can then commit and undertake all the atrocities when those against whom their malice is directed do not even believe their existence. “Everywhere,” says the Venerable Macarius the Great, “the enemy’s intrigues, deceptions and evil actions should be very carefully noted. For just as the Holy Spirit through Paul brings all things to everyone and gains them all (1 Cor. 9:22), so also the evil spirit through He tries to be evil to everyone, so that he can bring everyone down to destruction" (word 7, chapter 7).
Man arbitrarily rejected communication with God and the holy Angels, arbitrarily entered into communication with evil spirits, in the same category with them, in the category of beings rejected by God, hostile to God, and submitted to evil spirits. Salvation for fallen man was granted to Tuna by God; but one is left to one's choice to accept or reject this salvation. He was given the opportunity, given the grace-filled power to break free from the ranks of fallen spirits, to overthrow their yoke; but left to their own devices and remain in the same state of communication with them, enslavement to them. For people, either captivity or struggle are inevitable. A pious feat is nothing more than the active acceptance of salvation, as a manifestation of our will, shown and proven by experience itself, by life itself. It is very natural that fallen spirits try to keep us in their captivity and communication when we want to break communication and free ourselves from captivity; and we need to prove our sincere desire to overthrow their yoke by putting into action all the means in our power to do so. Entering asceticism into the world of spirits to acquire freedom, we meet, firstly, with fallen spirits. Although the Divine grace given to us at Holy Baptism secretly guides us, helps us and fights for us, without which the struggle with spirits and liberation from their captivity is impossible; however, at first we are surrounded by them, and, due to the fall, being in communication with them, we must forcibly for ourselves and for them be torn out of this communication. Due to the fall of our nature, good and correct thoughts and sensations are mixed in us with evil and false thoughts. Due to confusion with the latter, the former are also obscene. Fallen spirits try to keep us in the state of our fall, in which we are necessarily enslaved by them, and therefore bring us sinful thoughts and dreams, the kind that our fallen nature sympathizes with and enjoys, or those in which evil, rejected even by the fallen nature, covered with the guise of goodness and truth. Acting in this way, through thoughts and dreams, spirits act in exactly the same way when they begin to appear sensually. The general order of monastic Christian asceticism is that the monk, upon entering into the ascetic endeavor, is met and surrounded by fallen spirits, who first act against him with thoughts and dreams, and then in a sensual way. This is clearly evident from the lives of Anthony, Macarius, Pachomius the Great, Mark Francesco, Mary of Egypt, Andrew Christ for the Fool's sake, John the Long-Suffering and all other holy ascetics. First, they had to struggle with thoughts, dreams and sensations that were clearly sinful and covertly sinful; After a long time, after many and constant efforts, holy thoughts and sensations were sent down to them. When they achieved a sensual vision of the spirits, they were first met by hordes of rejected angels, and then, after a fierce struggle, the holy Angels approached them and entered into communication with them, as with those who had actively rejected the first communication and had actively shown the ability for the second communication. This order in asceticism was revealed by the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, who accepted all our weaknesses, except sin: first the tempter the devil appeared to Him in the desert, then, after the devil was defeated by the Lord, the holy angels approached the Lord and His servants (Matthew 4). , 11), says the Gospel.
For young monks who had not acquired sufficient knowledge of spirits from invisible warfare with them in thoughts and sensations, experienced teachers of monasticism forbade the intense feat of fasting, vigil, and seclusion, during which feats spirits soon begin to appear sensually, and can conveniently deceive the ascetic to his damage and destruction ( Ladder, word 27; Saint Nila Sorsk, word 11; Prologue, January 9, about a monk seduced by demons; life of Saint Nikita of Pechersk, Chetya-Minea, January 31). Very few, even among monks, are capable of openly fighting demons; those who have acquired detailed knowledge about spirits in invisible warfare with them are capable, have trained their heartfelt feelings to distinguish between good and evil through spiritual sensation, whose feat is overshadowed by Divine grace (Reverend Neil Sorsky, Homily 11; other teachers of Christian asceticism also reason this way). The only correct entrance to the sensory vision of spirits is Christian prosperity and perfection. God Himself introduces into this vision those who must ascend into it. He who intrudes into the sensual vision of spirits spontaneously acts incorrectly, illegally, contrary to the will of God: it is impossible for such a person to avoid deception and the self-delusion and damage that follows deception. Its very intention is based on deception and self-delusion.
2. About the spiritual vision of spirits
Much less embarrassing for a person is the limitation of his sensory vision, blindness in relation to primitive vision, produced by the fall, than the blindness of the spirit produced by the same fall (St. Tikhon of Voronezh speaks a lot about the blindness of the spirit in his cell letters, volumes 14 and 15). What kind of blindness of spirit is this? what kind of blindness of spirit? the sages of the world will ask in particular, and, without waiting for an answer, they will immediately call the announcement of the blindness of the human spirit, of its mortality, idle talk and absurdity. Such is this blindness! it can unmistakably be called death. Food and we are blind? (John 9:41) - the blind and arrogant Pharisees said to the Lord. Not feeling blindness is not a sign of sight. Fallen people, who did not want to acknowledge their blindness, remained blind, and those born blind, who recognized their blindness, received their sight in the Lord Jesus Christ (John 9; 39, 41). Let us try, in the light of the Holy Spirit, to discern the blindness of our spirit.
Our mind and heart are stricken with blindness. Because of this blindness, the mind cannot distinguish true thoughts from false ones, and the heart cannot distinguish between spiritual sensations and spiritual and sinful sensations, especially when the latter are not very gross. Because of the blindness of the spirit, all our activities become false, just as the Lord called the scribes (scholars) and Pharisees foolish and blind (Matthew 23), blind leaders who do not enter the kingdom of heaven and do not allow people to enter it.
With true spiritual achievement, the grace of God, planted in us through holy Baptism, begins to heal us little by little from the blindness of the spirit through tenderness. In contrast to the state of blindness, we begin to enter into a state of seeing. Just as in the state of vision the viewer is the mind, then vision is called by the Holy Fathers mental vision, that is, mental. Since the state of vision is brought about by the Holy Spirit, vision is also called spiritual, being the fruit of the Holy Spirit. This is how it differs from contemplation. Contemplation is common to all people; Every person engages in contemplation whenever he wants. Vision is characteristic of those who purify themselves through repentance; It does not appear to the arbitrariness of man, but from the touch of the Spirit of God to our spirit, therefore, according to the all-holy will of the All-Holy Spirit. The doctrine of spiritual or mental visions is set forth with particular clarity and detail by the Hieromartyr Peter, Metropolitan of Damascus. (Philokalia, part 3).
Tenderness is the first spiritual sensation delivered to the heart by Divine grace that has overshadowed it. It consists of tasting Godly sorrow, dissolved by grace-filled consolation, and opens before the mind a spectacle that has never been seen before. From spiritual sensation comes spiritual vision, as the Holy Scripture says: taste and see (Ps. 33:9). The vision intensifies the sensation. “From doing with compulsion, immeasurable warmth is born, kindling in the heart from warm thoughts new to the mind. Such doing and storing refines the mind with its warmth and gives it the ability to see. From this, warm thoughts are born, as we said, in the depths of the soul, which is called Vision. These visions give birth to the warmth that gave birth to him. From this warmth, growing from the grace of the Vision, an abundant flow of tears is born" (St. Isaac of Syria, beginning of the 59th word). As long as sensation lasts, so does vision. With the cessation of sensation, vision ceases. It comes unknown, it goes unknown, not depending on our arbitrariness, depending on the dispensation. The gate to spiritual vision is humility (saying of St. John Kolov, Alphabetical Patericon). The constant presence of tenderness is accompanied by constant vision. Vision is the reading and acceptance in the spirit of the New Testament. With the cessation of tenderness, communication with the New Testament ceases, and communication with the Old Testament begins; instead of the predominance in the soul of humility, which does not resist evil (Matthew 5:39), there is justice, which strives to tear out an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth (Matthew 5:38). For this reason, the Monk Sisoes the Great said with lamentation: “I read the New Testament, but return to the Old” (Alphabetical Patericon). Anyone who wants to constantly remain in tenderness and spiritual vision must take care of constantly being in humility, driving out self-justification and condemnation of others, introducing humility through self-reproach and the consciousness of one’s sinfulness before God and people.
The first spiritual vision is the vision of one’s sins, hitherto hidden behind oblivion and ignorance. Having seen them through emotion, the ascetic immediately receives experimental knowledge of the previous blindness of his spirit, in which what exists and existed seemed completely non-existent and non-existent. This existing thing, when tenderness recedes, again disappears into oblivion, and again appears non-existent. When tenderness appears, it appears again. The ascetic moves experimentally from the consciousness of his sins to the knowledge of his sinfulness, with which his nature is infected, to the knowledge of passions or various ailments of nature. From the vision of his fall, he moves on to the vision of the fall that embraces all human nature. Then the world of fallen spirits gradually opens up to him; he studies them in his passions, in the struggle with them, in the thoughts, dreams and sensations brought by spirits. The seductive and deceptive view of earthly life, which hitherto seemed endless to him, is taken away from him: he begins to see its edge - death; he begins to admire, that is, to be transported in spirit, by a feeling to the very hour of death, to the hour of God’s impartial judgment. From his fall, he sees the need for a Redeemer, and by applying the commandments of the Lord to his ailments and seeing the healing and life-giving effect of these commandments on ailments and on the suffering soul, he acquires a living faith in the Gospel, as if in a mirror, he sees even more clearly his fallen nature, and the fall of humanity, and the evil spirits. Limiting ourselves to counting these visions as essentially necessary and quickly becoming accessible to the diligent monk; Let us conclude the calculation with the words of the Venerable Maximus the Confessor: “it is impossible for the mind (i.e., the spirit) to achieve dispassion from one activity (i.e., from physical feats alone), if many and different visions do not accept it” (monks Callistus and Ignatius on silence and prayer, chapter 68, Philokalia, part 2). The word “accept” shows that these visions are not contemplations, arbitrary states or creations of the mind; You can translate the word “accept” with the word “visit”.
It is very natural for our spirit to acquire dispassion, when the sensations of fallen nature are replaced by spiritual sensations that follow and accompany tenderness, and the mind of fallen nature is replaced by spiritual mind, formed from concepts delivered by spiritual visions. In order to distract from living according to the Gospel commandments, from Christ-imitating humility, from tenderness, from spiritual vision, from liberation from the slavery of passions or from dispassion, from the Resurrection of the soul, in order to keep fallen spirits in blindness, in death, in captivity. They wage a fierce battle with the ascetics. In this battle they exhaust all their inherent malice, all their characteristic cunning. Cunning and malice are called here characteristic of fallen spirits, not because they were given to them at creation - no! fallen spirits were created good, alien to evil, as we already know from the teachings of Anthony the Great - because through their arbitrary fall they internalized evil and became alien to good. We repeat what was said above: the fall of man consists in mixing good with evil; the fall of demons is in the complete rejection of good, in the complete assimilation of evil (Ladders, word 4, chapter 35; all the Holy Fathers are of the same opinion). Having been directed towards all your commandments, I have hated every path of unrighteousness (Ps. 119:128), says the Holy Spirit about His guidance of man to salvation: so, in contrast to this, the spirit of malice opposes every commandment of the New Testament, hates every way of living a life pleasing to God. But in this opposition to the Gospel commandments, in promoting all sinful inclinations, fallen spirits are studied by the ascetic of piety, seen by him, recognized through the knowledge of spirits acquired by this means; sensory vision of spirits, if allowed, only replenishes knowledge. This is exactly how knowledge about a person is obtained: essential knowledge of a person is acquired by studying his way of thinking and feeling, his way of acting; The more detailed such study is, the more definite the knowledge becomes. This knowledge is replenished by face-to-face acquaintance; Personal acquaintance alone has almost no significance in relation to the essential knowledge of a person.
Fallen spirits act on us with different thoughts, different dreams, different touches. In these actions they are seen and studied. All these actions are mentioned in the Holy Scriptures. The Holy Gospel depicts the devil as first putting into the heart of Judas Iscariot the thought of the tradition of the God-man (John 13:2), then ascending into Judas (John 13:27). It is clear from the Gospel that Judas had an inclination towards the love of money (John 12:6) and, contrary to the commandments of the Lord, began to satisfy the desires of this passion, hiding behind a plausible, but essentially crafty concern for the poor. Based on this passion, the devil began to instill in him the idea of betrayal; when Judas internalized the devil’s thought and decided to carry it out, then the devil completely prevailed over him. “Look,” says blessed Theophylact, “Satan has ascended into him, that is, he has ascended into his very heart and embraced his soul. Previously, he chilled him from the outside with the passion of love of money: now he has finally taken possession of him.” It is scary to agree with the devil’s thoughts: for such agreement, God retreats from man, and man perishes. This happened to Ananias and Sapphira, mentioned in the Apostolic Acts, who, at the suggestion of the devil, agreed to lie before the Holy Spirit, and immediately after the crime were struck with death. Ananias, - said the holy Apostle Peter, - why would Satan fill your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit, and hide from the price of the village? (Acts 5:3). That the devil tempts man with dreams is evident from the devil’s temptation of the God-man: the devil showed the Lord all the kingdoms of earth and their glory in the hour of time (Luke 4:5), that is, in a dream. Our mind has the ability to think and the ability to imagine; through the first he assimilates concepts about objects, through the second he assimilates images of objects. The devil, based on the first ability, tries to convey sinful thoughts to us, and based on the second ability, he tries to capture us with seductive images. “Just as a small and kindly child,” says Saint Hesychius, “seeing some magician, has fun and follows the magician out of kindness: so our soul, simple and kind, being created this way by the All-Good Master, is amused by the dreamy pretexts of the devil, - being deceived, it cleaves to evil, as if to good, and mixes (combines) his thoughts with the dream of a demonic reason" (A Word on Sobriety, chapter 43, Philokalia, part 2). Demonic daydreaming has a very harmful effect on the soul, arousing in it special sympathy for sin. Appearing often, it can make an indelible, detrimental impression. We read about how the devil acts on a person through touch in the book of Job (Job, chapters 1 and 2) and in the Gospel story about a woman who was bound by Satan with a special strange illness (Luke 13; 10, 16). From the touches of demons, carnal passions are aroused and diseases are caused, which are not affected by ordinary human healing. - All these images of demonic aspirations on a person can be studied by reading the lives of the Saints and the works of the Fathers, mainly compiled for the edification of monks. But learning from reading is very insufficient: for satisfactory knowledge, learning by experience is necessary. When the human spirit begins to be purified by Divine grace, then it gradually moves from the knowledge of spirits to their spiritual vision. This vision is accomplished by the mind and heart, bestowed by the Holy Spirit. It is natural to a renewed mind and heart: so sensual vision is natural to the sensory eye, which sees not because of learning, but according to a natural property, and does not see only due to an illness that prevents natural action or its cessation.
Spiritual vision of spirits is accomplished with the mind and heart. The heart reproves the evil spirits; the mind is insufficient for this: it cannot distinguish by its own forces the images of truth from the images of lies covered by images of truth. Spiritual reasoning is based on spiritual sensation, as Saint Isaac of Syria said: “Spiritual intelligence is the sensation of the eternal life” (Homily 38), or as two disciples testified about their sensation and the meaning of this sensation during a conversation with the Lord, whom they did not recognize with sensual eyes, nor according to mental considerations: isn’t our heart grieving when (the Lord) said nama on the way, and when he spoke nama in the scriptures (Luke 24:32). This heart, which testified with fidelity about the Lord, also testifies with fidelity about the spirits, and tempts them, whether they are from God (1 John 4:1), or from the kingdom of darkness and hostility. A heart purified by repentance and renewed by the Holy Spirit is capable of such testimony; but a heart captured by passions and demons is capable only of false and erroneous testimony. For this reason, the Monk Barsanuphius the Great said to a monk who asked him how to distinguish between thoughts coming from God, from nature and from demons: “What you are asking about applies to people who have reached a great measure (spiritual age). If internal the eye will not be cleansed by many healings, then it cannot get rid of thorns and thistles, and gather a bunch of grapes that strengthen and gladden the heart. If a person does not achieve this measure, then he cannot discern (these thoughts), but will be mocked by demons and fall into trouble. deception by believing them: because they change things as they want, especially for those who do not know their wiles" (answer to question 59). Further in this message, the Great Father says: “Thoughts originating from demons are, first of all, filled with confusion and sadness, and they drag after themselves hiddenly and subtly: for enemies dress in sheep’s clothing, that is, they instill thoughts that are apparently right, but inwardly they are wolves predators (Matthew 7:15), that is, they delight and seduce the hearts of the gentle (Rom. 16:18) with what seems good, but in fact is evil - The light that comes from demons subsequently turns into darkness. Whatever you hear. , or think, or see, and at the same time, even if your heart is troubled by a hair, all this is from demons.” In another message, the Great One said: “Know, brother, that every thought that is not preceded by the silence of humility does not come from God, but clearly from the left side. Our Lord passes with quietness; nevertheless, the enemy happens with confusion and rebellion. Although (demons) are shown clothed in sheep's clothing, being inwardly ravenous wolves, they are revealed through the confusion they cause, for it is said: by their fruit you will know them (Matthew 7:15-16). May the Lord enlighten us all, so as not to be carried away by their (imaginary) truth" (answer to question 21).
Let us conclude our Word with the spiritually wise instruction of the Venerable Macarius the Great: “A lover of virtue should take great care to acquire reasoning, so that he can fully distinguish good from evil, so that he can study and understand the various demonic intrigues with which the devil has the custom of corrupting the mind under the guise of good ideas. Useful be always careful to avoid dangerous consequences. Out of frivolity, do not quickly succumb to the suggestions of spirits, even if there are Heavenly Angels, but remain unshakable, subjecting everything to the most careful examination, and then accept what you see as truly good, and reject what turns out to be evil. The actions of God’s grace are not implicit, which sin, even if it has assumed the appearance of good, cannot in any way give. Although, according to the Apostle, Satan is transformed into the Angel of Light (2 Cor. 11:14) in order to deceive a person, but if. and presented bright visions, then, as it is said, he cannot at all give good action, which serves as a clear sign of it. He cannot teach either love for God and neighbor, or meekness, or humility, or joy, or peace, or curbing of thoughts. , neither hatred of the world, nor spiritual peace, nor lust for heavenly gifts, below can tame passions and lusts, which is a clear action of grace, for it is said: spiritual fruit is love, joy, peace, etc. (Gal. 5:22). On the contrary, he can conveniently convey pride and arrogance to a person, as he is very capable of this. So, you can recognize the intelligent light that has risen in your soul by its action, whether it is from God or from Satan. However, the soul itself, if it has sound reasoning and can distinguish between good and evil, immediately becomes clear to both through rational feeling (spiritual sensation). Just as vinegar and wine are identical in appearance, but by taste the tongue immediately recognizes the difference between them, revealing what is vinegar and what is wine: so the soul, with its own strength, its spiritual feeling, can really distinguish between the gifts of the Good Spirit and the dreams of the evil one.” (word 4, chapter 13). The heart, overshadowed by Divine grace, is resurrected into spiritual life, acquiring a spiritual sensation unknown to it in the state of fall, in which the verbal sensations of the human heart are killed by mixing with bestial sensations. Spiritual sensation or feeling is rightly called. reasonable: because its giver is the Holy Spirit, Light and Life, and the Living Source of the Intelligent, the Spirit of Wisdom, the Spirit of Reason, God and the Creator of God (the third stichera is self-concordant at Vespers on Pentecost). Taste and see (Ps. 33:9), we repeat the saying of the Holy Scriptures that we have already cited. Spiritual vision, from which spiritual reasoning, comes from spiritual sensation (On spiritual sensation, see conversation 8, St. Macarius the Great and 1 Word of St. Simeon the New Theologian). Those who are perfect, says the Apostle, eat solid food; those who have senses are trained by long training in the discernment of good and evil (Heb. 5:14). So spiritual discernment is the property of perfect Christians; those who have significantly succeeded in pious deeds participate in this good; it is alien to beginners and inexperienced people, even if they are old in physical age.
What should newbies do? - By entering into monasticism, they at the same time enter into a struggle with spirits; What rules should they follow so as not to become a victim of their ignorance, a victim of the malice and deceit of spirits? - Holy Fathers Orthodox Church answer this question like this: “We achieve true reasoning only through true humility, which consists in revealing to the Fathers not only what we do, but also what we think - so that we do not believe in anything our own thoughts.” , but in everything they followed the words of the elders and recognized as good what they approved. This action not only keeps the monk in true reasoning and on the right path, but also protects him from all the snares of the devil. demonic seduction, for before anyone is granted the gift of reasoning, the very fact that he reveals and reveals his thoughts to his fathers fades them and takes away their strength, just as a snake, drawn from a dark hole into the light, tries to run away and hide: so are evil thoughts. , having been discovered by sincere confession and their announcement, they try to run away from the person" (Venerable Cassian the Roman, Homily on Reasoning, Philokalia, part 4). The revelation of thoughts and the guidance of the council of successful fathers and brothers was the common work of ancient monasticism. It is the tradition of the Apostles: confess to each other, says the Apostle James, your sins, and pray for each other that you may be healed (James 5:16); and the Apostle Paul will tell about himself that he was most carefully engaged in the edification of every Christian, tried to raise everyone to Christian perfection, that this is how the grace of the Holy Spirit acted in him (Col. 1: 28-29). The holy mentors of ancient monasticism acted similarly: being vessels of the Holy Spirit, they quickly raised their disciples to perfection, making them temples of God. This can be fully verified from their writings that remain for us. It was not gray hair, not the number of years, not earthly learning, but communion with the Holy Spirit that raised the level of mentor and attracted the hearers of the word to to the speaker the Word God's word, not our own, human word. “It is good,” says the Monk Cassian in the above speech, “not to hide your thoughts from your fathers, as I have already said; however, they should not be revealed to anyone but to spiritual elders who have the gift of reasoning, beyond their years and gray hairs. Many, having trusted in old age and having confessed their thoughts, they did not receive healing, but fell into despair from the lack of skill of those who accepted confession.” The Monk Abba Moses of Skete asked for advice from the young Zacharias, who lived in Skete. Zechariah fell at the feet of the elder and said to him: “Father, are you asking me?” The elder answered him: “Believe me, my son, Zechariah, that I saw the descent of the Holy Spirit on you, and therefore I find it necessary to question you” (Alphabetical Patericon). The revelation of thoughts and living under the guidance of spirit-bearing fathers was considered so necessary by the ancient monks that the monks who rejected this work were considered to be outside the path of salvation (Abba Dorotheos, the teaching about not abandoning your mind). With the gradual weakening of Christianity, monasticism also began to gradually weaken; the living vessels of the Holy Spirit began to diminish; many hypocrites, in the form of self-interest and the acquisition of human glory, began to pretend to be holy and spiritual, to attract inexperienced people to themselves with a skillfully constructed guise, to damage and destroy them. Already Simeon the New theologian, who lived in the 10th century after the birth of Christ, said: “Study the Divine Scripture and the writings of the Holy Fathers, especially active ones, so that with their teaching, comparing the teaching and behavior of your teacher and elder, you can see them (these teachings and behavior) how to understand in a mirror; to assimilate what is in accordance with Scripture and to recognize and reject what is false and evil, so as not to be deceived. Know that many deceivers and false teachers have appeared in our days" (Chapter 33. Philokalia, part 1) . Over time, the spirit-bearing teachers became more and more diminished, as the later Holy Fathers painfully recounted. “Nowadays such mentors have become extremely impoverished,” said the Monk Nilus of Sorsky, who lived in the 15th century (Preface to the charter). With the scarcity of mentors, the holy fathers, at the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who thought opportunely and insightfully about the spiritual needs of monks in recent times, compiled many edifying works, the totality of which satisfactorily defines the monastic feat (This idea is found in the life of Elder Paisius Velichkovsky, the most skillful mentor of monks, who died at the end 18th century. His life and writings were published by Optina Pustynya in 1847). These holy scriptures fulfill to some extent the lack of living organs of the spirit. The later fathers more often offer for guidance the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the fathers, as the New Theologian proposed them, without rejecting very careful advice with modern fathers and brethren, with all possible distance from wandering and from acquaintance outside and inside the monastery, with careful maintenance of the spirit in thoughts and feelings of humility and repentance. The monastic success achieved by this work is very difficult and very inert; but this is a work given by God to our time, and we are obliged to reverently use the gift of God given to us for salvation. The inertia of success and the multitude of stumblings involuntarily humble our spirit, so prone to vanity and exaltation, provide precious knowledge of our weaknesses, and lead to trust in the sole mercy of God. Such hope will not put you to shame (Rom. 5:5). Why were we not given the fiery wings of ancient monasticism, with which it flew across the sea of passions with speed and strength, as was revealed to one of the great ancient fathers? (Alphabetical Patericon, in the life of St. John Kolov) - these are the destinies of God, exceeding our understanding; studying them is forbidden to us: it would be a vain labor, an arrogant and criminal undertaking (Similarly in the life of Anthony the Great), as His judgment was not tested, and His ways were not explored. Who understands the mind of the Lord? or who will be His adviser? To him be glory forever. Amen. (Rom. 11:33-36).
Conclusion
Called by the mercy of God to monastic life, let us use all diligence to acquire knowledge and spiritual states that are essential for our salvation. Let us not be satisfied with empty curiosity, vain and useless curiosity. It is terrible to allow yourself to be frivolous in a holy feat: the fruit of such frivolity can be serious, intractable damage, and often even death. Let us try to gain poverty of spirit, crying, meekness, hunger for heavenly truth. Let us beg God to reveal our sins to us and grant us true repentance! Let us ask God to reveal our passions to us and grant us healing from them! Let us beg God to reveal to us the fall of humanity, its redemption by the God-man, the purpose of our earthly wanderings and the eternity awaiting us either in endless pleasures or in endless torment, so that He prepares us and makes us capable of heavenly bliss, so that He removes those seals from us and destroys those manuscripts according to which we must be cast into the dungeons of hell! Let us pray to God to grant us purity and humility, the fruit of which is spiritual reasoning, accurately distinguishing good from evil! Spiritual reasoning unmasks the action of our passions, which often appears to the inexperienced and passionate as an action of the highest good and even an action of Divine grace; spiritual reasoning tears off the mask from fallen spirits, with which they try to cover themselves and their machinations. Let us ask God to grant us a spiritual vision of spirits, through which we could see them in the thoughts and dreams they bring, break communication with them in our spirit, throw off their yoke, get rid of captivity! Our destruction lies in communicating with fallen spirits and enslaving them. Let us refrain from ignorant, harmful desires and desires for sensual visions, outside the order established by God! With humility and reverence let us follow the teaching of the Holy Fathers and the tradition of the Orthodox Church! Let us reverently submit to the decree of God, who covered our souls with thick curtains and shrouds of bodies during our earthly journey, separated us with them from the created spirits, and shielded and protected us with them from the fallen spirits. We do not need a sensual vision of spirits to complete our earthly, arduous journey. For this we need another lamp, and it is given to us: The lamp of my feet is Your law, and the light of my paths (Psalm 119, 105). Those who travel under the constant radiance of the lamp - the Law of God - will not be deceived either by their passions or by fallen spirits, as Scripture testifies: There is peace for many who love Your law, and there is no temptation for them (Psalm 119, 165). This lamp reveals all the secret and obvious dangers on our path; reveals not only our fall, not only fallen spirits, but also the very miracles of God: even more than mine enemy hast made me wise through Thy commandment, says the Prophet. Turn away from me, you wicked ones! there is no place for you because I am constantly practicing in studying the law of my God. His law is my teaching throughout the day and throughout the night, throughout my entire life, which I can rightly call day, as illuminated by the law of God, and I can rightly call night, because of the predominance of darkness over human society emanating from the ruler of the world (Psalm 118; 98,115,97). The commandment of the Lord is bright: it enlightens the eyes of the mind (Psalm 18:9): sin, pretending to be virtue, and a dark demon, taking on the guise of a bright Angel, cannot hide from them.
In due time, appointed by the one God and known to the one God, we will certainly enter the world of spirits. This time is not far from each of us! May the All-merciful God grant us to spend our earthly life in such a way that even during it we break off communion with fallen spirits and enter into communion with holy spirits, so that on this basis, having stripped off our bodies, we are numbered among the holy spirits, and not among the rejected spirits . Then, in indescribable joy, we will see both the ranks of holy Angels and the ranks of holy men in their wonderful abodes not made by hands, at their eternal spiritual holiday. Then we will recognize and see the fallen cherub with his dark hordes: then God will grant the sight of demons - these most unfortunate creatures, will completely satisfy our curiosity about the Lord, without any danger for us, as sealed by the finger of God in immutability and incapacity for seduction and damage by evil. Amen.
Have a spiritual vision is to have a vision of a situation or a person as a whole. The opposite is the concept of material (limited, linear) vision.
To better understand these two visions, think that you need to go somewhere and you need to choose a road to get there. The material vision will be only that part of the road that you see without leaving the car, as far as your eye is able to perceive it.
If you were flying in a helicopter, you would have a "spiritual" vision of the road because you would see the entire road as a whole. You would be able to see from afar any congestion that might occur due to an accident or repair work. And this would allow you to immediately choose the right path.
Article by Liz Burbo: Having Spiritual Vision
Spiritual vision takes into account all the components of the situation, that is, what may be happening within a person, his environment, as well as everything that is happening in his professional and personal life. It means having a global vision without focusing on your beliefs, your assumptions, your experiences.
There are three very effective ways development of spiritual vision. The first way is to take responsibility, which means asking yourself what it is inside of you that attracts such behavior from another person. To find the answer quickly, ask yourself the question, what are you accusing this person of, are you condemning him, what is he like? If you answer that he is indifferent, self-centered, that is, an egoist, ask yourself a second question: at what point would this person have or might judge you for the same thing? By doing this, you recognize that you are the sole creator of your life, and that everything you attract to you is a reflection of what already exists within you. The purpose of this exercise is not to make you feel guilty, but to realize that there is something in you that you do not want to acknowledge and ACCEPT.
Once you get past this stage, it will be easier for you to put into practice the second method - understanding the motivation of the other person. So, when you find yourself in a situation where you could be judged for something that you judge someone else for, realize what your intention was in that situation. Your intention wasn't necessarily bad. Remember that what we reap from other people is influenced by our intentions towards the other person. We don't always reap the same actions from other people, but the intentions are always the same. This is one of the spiritual laws. In addition, it is important to see the motivation behind the action, that is, what preceded such behavior.
These considerations will lead you to the third remedy: true communication, which takes place in true acceptance without blame. In a conversation with this person, tell him about your experiences, and also share the answers you received from the previous two steps. You can also ask him when he might have judged you in the same way, and learn more about his intentions when he acts indifferent towards you. I can guarantee you that if there is no blame on your part, it will be easy for him to open up and talk about his experiences. Plus, it will help you learn a lot about the other person you think you know well.
I call this vision “spiritual” because it allows you to be in acceptance, which is a unique means of living in love and acceptance of yourself and others. If you limit yourself only to the material aspect, you will attract dissatisfaction and experience various emotions, and your mind will take over, imagining many unrealistic situations. Material vision comes from the head, and spiritual vision comes from the heart.
So, when you are tired of suffering from your emotions, remember that you simply forgot to look at the situation with a spiritual gaze, opening the eyes of your heart.
Tuesday, 13 January 2015One who always regards living entities as spiritual sparks qualitatively equal to the Lord understands the true nature of things. What could confuse or disturb such a person?
Ultimately, our anxiety is caused by the fact that we do not see a living being, but only its body. If you look at me, you will see my body. Our eyes are made of water, earth, air... These eyes are able to perceive material energy, so I can see what kind of body you have: male or female, young or old, etc. But to actually see you, a different type of vision is needed.
IN Sri Isopanishad, It is said that a wise person sees that the living entities are part and parcel of the Supreme Lord, qualitatively equal to Him, and that such a person has no reason to worry. In the material world everyone is restless due to lack of spiritual vision. When we talk about vision, we understand that it happens material And spiritual .
Material vision is of two types.
First type- this is a vision through raw feelings: vision, hearing etc.
But there is also another material feeling, second type material vision - speculative reasoning. It is based on gross sensory perception. Through gross feelings, information enters the mind, and then, based on it, a person reasons about what is true and what is not. But the results of mental constructions cannot be spiritual, since they are based on the perception of material senses. This process of acquiring knowledge is called “bottom-up”. Following this process, a person who wants to understand something (for example, a scientist) examines it very carefully with his eyes, perhaps armed with some kind of extension in the form of a microscope or telescope, and then begins to wonder what it all means.
Thus, our speculative constructions are based on material sensory perception, and the conclusions we come to ultimately depend on the capabilities of our senses. But since our material senses are limited, our conclusions will always be imperfect. In other words, our senses are imperfect, so all our knowledge gained through sense perception will also be imperfect. Nevertheless, relying on the power of our gross feelings and subtle feelings - speculative reasoning - we try to ascend to the Absolute Truth, to enter the spiritual dimension. This is what people usually try to do. They receive some information with the help of their senses and based on it they make some conclusions, trying to climb to the Absolute Truth, and the conclusions they come to are called “truth”.
Spiritual Vision- other. It is not obtained through investigation with the help of material senses and subsequent speculative reasoning. The spiritual vision described in this mantra Sri Isopanishad, is received by those who want to see the Truth. Because there is a desire in his heart to see the Truth, The Absolute Truth reveals itself to this person.
This is the essence of the fundamental difference between the ascending and descending ways of obtaining knowledge.
He who himself wants to be a master does not want to acknowledge the existence of a conscious, active, decision-making, compassionate and loving Supreme Being. Even if they recognize “the Most High,” they do not agree that He is a person. They don't recognize that the Almighty can decide to show me something and actually show it to me. They think it is the result of their own efforts.
In other words, generally people think that God, or the Absolute Truth, is impersonal or inactive, that the Absolute Truth cannot decide to reveal Himself to me - that everything depends on me, it is I who must climb up to It. If God exists, he is like the sky. God is an ocean of light, that's all. He has no consciousness, He cannot make a decision. When you say “make a decision,” you are talking about an individual.
Thus, most people are not ready to accept the existence of the Supreme Personality. To recognize the Supreme Personality for them means to put themselves in a subordinate position, and we all want to be masters. Once I accept the existence of the Supreme Personality, I will put myself in a position where I am no longer the master, and this will jeopardize my present position. All my life I have been trying to be a master, and now I have to accept this nonsense that there is a Supreme Master? I can accept God and all that, but only if God is inactive and impersonal. As soon as I accept that the Absolute Truth is a person, as soon as I accept the Personality of Godhead, I will have problems with my dominance, because if there is a Supreme Person, the Supreme Lord, then I am no longer the supreme person, so I have to start thinking about , whether my actions and my entire way of life are pleasant to someone else - the Supreme Personality, since my task is to coordinate my will with His will. In other words, once I accept the Supreme Personality, I cannot be happy unless I align my will with His will. And if I don’t want to give up my dominance, if I don’t want to coordinate my will with the will of God, if I also want to be God myself, to be at the center of everything, the person around whom everyone and everything revolves, the most important person in my life, and everyone else and the whole world should serve my pleasure, then there is no question that I can accept the existence of the Supreme Personality, because I do not want this.
People once said about Jesus Christ: “How does he know the Scriptures without studying?”
And he answered: “My teaching is not mine, but of Him who sent me; whoever wants to do His will will know about this teaching, whether it is from God, or whether I am speaking on my own behalf.”
And then he said: “Didn’t Moses give you the law? and none of you walks according to the law"(John 7.15-17, 19).
Obviously, they did not want to “do the will of God,” and therefore did not recognize Jesus as His representative.
Thus, one who accepts the Supreme Personality of Godhead acknowledges: “The Supreme Personality can reveal to me whatever He wants—everything that He wants me to know—and do it much faster than I could find out on my own.” something about God. The Absolute Truth can reveal itself to me in its entirety in less than a second.” This is the thinking of one who understands the Personality of Godhead. He stops trying to climb into the kingdom of God, explore and reason based on the results of his research, and tunes in to receive the information that descends to him.
Usually a person is trying to find the truth, or he is trying to realize the Absolute Truth. He is busy searching - searching, searching... But the Absolute Truth is not a piece of gold hidden somewhere, just lying there waiting to be found. The Absolute Truth is active and personal. If She doesn't want you to find Her, She will become invisible and you won't find Her. In other words, you can never find Her this way. Once you accept the existence of a Supreme Person, you accept that there is another being with a will of its own. I may think I want to find Him, but He may not want to show Himself to me. I may lack the qualities needed to see Him.
In other words, this is where the will of another person comes into play, and this always complicates matters somewhat. If I alone decide everything, it is easy - I am dealing with myself - but as soon as another person appears in your life, everything becomes very complicated. It's like when a woman has a child or someone gets married, life becomes much more difficult. You allow another person into your life. For example, your child says: “I want this, I want that.” You have never had anything like this before - you didn’t have a child and didn’t have such problems. But he is a different person. As soon as another person appears, you have to deal with her will, her desires.
In the case of a child, you can gradually force him to align his will with yours, because you are greater. You can say “shut up” or lock him in his room and be on your own again. But the Supreme Personality is in control of everything, and you cannot even open your mouth before Him. You are small. It is you who will need to coordinate your will with His.
That is why most people do not want to accept the Supreme Personality - they themselves want to be the supreme person. They want to be chief enjoyer. They want, to be served, want to be Mr.. In fact, many people believe that one who has achieved spiritual realization becomes a master - realizes that he is something like God, and everyone else does his will.
But in reality this is not the case. "Spiritual teacher" means "heavy." Guru, The literal translation of the word “guru” is “heavy.” Why is it heavy? This comparison is that he is like a tree with a huge amount of fruit. But its fruits are the fruits of love for God. When a person actually achieves spiritual realization, he has many fruits of love for God, he becomes one who loves God with pure love, when he no longer has his own will and he simply fulfills the will of the Supreme Personality when his will is completely harmonized with the will of the Supreme Personality. Such a person is called a "guru" or " spiritual teacher", and he is given respect as the representative of God.
Anyone who thinks, “Guru is one who has attained the position of supreme personality,” is mistaken. Sometimes people begin to lead a so-called spiritual life, but they do not give up the desire to be a supreme person. They still want to be her. They bring this desire with them, so when they hear about the Supreme Personality, they immediately begin to feel uncomfortable. Why? Because "Supreme Person" means that you are not supreme, and immediately you become envious, take God as your competitor. You are not against the idea of God, but only if He is not a conscious being who is able to make decisions, love you and whom you can love, who has his will, perhaps different from yours. They don't like this idea of God.
Nowadays the popular idea is that I am God, the Supreme Personality, and I just need to realize this through meditation. If I meditate long and hard enough, I will break through this illusion and realize that I am the Supreme God. But this is the last trap of Maya (illusion).
Maya has two traps.
The first is to think that I am the material body or material mind. And often people understand that they are neither body nor mind, but spirit - life force, not matter.
But, unfortunately, they fall into Maya's last trap - n they begin to think that they are the Supreme Lord. They begin to meditate: “All living beings come from me, I am everywhere, I am everything, I am the Cosmos, I control the Cosmos, I send the fog and I dispel it. Of course, I didn’t know that now I would send fog, in fact, I thought that I would send something else, but I must have wanted it to be the way it is now, because that’s the way it is” - and to that similar.
Therefore it says very specifically:
One who always regards living entities as spiritual sparks qualitatively equal to the Lord understands the true nature of things.
Qualitatively equal. An example is a drop of water from the ocean. A drop of ocean water has the same quality as the entire ocean - the same percentage of salt. But a drop of water cannot be compared to the ocean. A tiny living being cannot be compared to the Supreme Living Being.
Although we have the same quality, in quantitative terms we are much smaller and we have much less strength.
And how does this manifest itself? The fact that we, a living being, have fallen under the influence of ignorance, and therefore we seek knowledge. The living entities become enclosed in a material body. The Supreme Being is never trapped by the material body. The Supreme Personality is the one who controls, and we living entities, part and parcel of the Supreme, are those who are governed by. We are all under control. None of us can claim to be the one in control.
Thinking of yourself that you are the Supreme Lord is the last trap of illusion. Our essence is spiritual, but we are not the Supreme Spirit. We are not omnipotent. Twenty minutes ago I was meditating: “I am God, I am God,” and now I am standing at an intersection because the light is red and cars are rushing past at breakneck speed. What kind of God am I? It is ridiculous to meditate “I am God” and then stand at an intersection because the light is red.
These people do not ask the question: “If I am God, why am I not omnipotent?” But if you ask them, they will answer: “It is because you are in illusion.”
- But if I am God, how can I be in illusion?
- Because you forgot that you are God.
- If I am God, how could I forget? Doesn't "God" mean "almighty"? If I am God, how could I forget that I am God?
- You wanted to forget.
- If I wanted to forget, now I want to remember. Why am I still in illusion?
“Well, you probably don’t really want to remember.”
- Who are you?
- I am also God.
- Are we equally Gods?
- Yes. Equally.
- But then there is no God. Equally... is there a Supreme God?
- No. We are all Gods equally. But in reality it is all one God. We are not really individuals. We just pretend that we are individuals. It's all one, and we just pretend that we are separate from each other.
- Oh, we pretend that we are separate from each other. Why are you a teacher? Why are you a guru?
- Because I realized that I am God and you are not.
A man in India was asked, “What is the difference between a guru and a disciple?” He replied: “The guru has realized that he is God, but the disciple has not yet realized it. I realized that I am God, and you are not yet.” - “Yes, but, in my opinion, you just said that I am you, and you are me, there is no difference, there is no individuality. Therefore, if you have realized that you are God, then why did I not realize it at the same time?” They don't have an answer to this question.
This is a wrong idea: “I am God.” We are all little gods. We are all spiritual souls, not a material body. I am not a body - not white, not black, not a woman, not a man, not a person, not an animal... All living beings are integral parts of God.
Here, in Sri Isopanishad, the devotee of God remembers this mantra and is thus purified, realizing that all living beings are part and parcel of God, children of the Supreme Being. And nothing can disturb such a person. He doesn't envy anyone. The impersonalist, for example, thinks, “I am God,” and is constantly restless because he is constantly losing control of “his creation.” All he can do is explain to himself: “It turned out this way because I must have wanted it.” But this does not help get rid of anxiety.
And one who identifies himself with the body is even more worried. He is constantly afraid of death, is attached to the material world and is afraid of losing something or not getting something. Such is the life of a materialist.
Thus, in Sri Ishopanishad contains information descending from the spiritual dimension. “Mantra” means “information in the form of sound descending from the spiritual dimension,” descending knowledge. In this way we receive information about the Absolute Truth from the Absolute Truth, which descends and reveals itself to us. This means that she is not “it,” but He: God is a person making a conscious effort to reveal Himself. This clearly indicates that He is a person. And "He" also means that He is sovereign, that there is really only one man, in the sense of "ruler." Everyone else is subject. All living beings are, in fact, subordinate, whether we are temporarily in female or male bodies, we are, in fact, in a subordinate position. In this sense, no one is a man except the Supreme Personality. We are all meant to be subservient servants, not masters. Our natural position is to serve. The idea that our natural position is to exploit, that we should try to be masters of material nature or other living entities, is wrong. God owns everything and everyone - all living beings - as stated in the First Mantra Sri Isopanisad:
Everything living and non-living in the universe is under the control of the Lord and belongs to Him.
Living and non-living. I'm alive. I am an active living being, and now I am in the realm of temporary inanimate energy - matter. All material things belong to God. All this matter was here before I came here, and it will all remain here after I leave. And all living beings are animated energy, living beings are children, or part and parcel, of God. They belong to Him. So if I think that any living entity belongs to me, be it my wife, husband, children, dog or anyone, if I think “he is mine” or “she is mine”, that is actually an illusion. Because this person belongs to God. I do not belong to you and you do not belong to me, but we all belong to God. And all inanimate energy belongs to God.
Thus, a wise person sees everything in unity in the sense that all energy belongs to God, therefore he sees God everywhere because God's energy is everywhere. Everything belongs to Him.
And he uses all energies in His service. This is called "devotional service" or bhakti yoga, or karma yoga. When a person understands that the Supreme Being is the owner of everything, he begins to realize that everything he has belongs to God, and therefore he uses it all for the glorification of God or in the service of God. It is called karma yoga.
“Karma” means “action”, “yoga” means union with God. Therefore, actions in connection with God, based on a connection with God in love, the purpose of which is to please God, to fulfill His will, are called karma yoga.
Karma yoga based on the following information or knowledge:
I am spirit soul, not material body.
All living entities are part and parcel of the Supreme Living Being. We all belong to Him. And,
All inanimate energy, material energy, belongs to the Supreme.
Understanding this, I engage in devotional service. In other words, I have jnana, knowledge. And then I act on it.
So I should have the following knowledge:
I exist. I am the spiritual soul, I am eternal, I am not matter.
I am part and parcel of the Supreme Soul.
All living entities are in the same position as me—they are also part and parcel of the Supreme. They belong not to me, but to him. And all material energy also belongs to Him.
I am like a man who found a wallet with money. If I am ignorant, I think, “Now this is my wallet, I will enjoy.” Even if there is a card with the owner’s name and phone number, I still think: “This is mine.” This is the influence of ignorance. But the one who is reasonable understands: “This belongs to someone else,” and returns the wallet to the owner.
There is a comparison that characterizes three types of people. Let's say three people are walking down the street and each of them finds a hundred dollar bill.
The first one will immediately think: “Oh, I will enjoy it!” - and immediately begins to think about what he will buy with this money for his pleasure. Such a person can be compared to an ordinary person materialist.
The second is compared with yogi, which doesn't want to disturb his peace. As he walks past a hundred dollar bill, he thinks, “I don’t even want to look, I don’t want to get involved, it’s karma”—something like that.
And the third person picks up the money, finds the owner and returns it to him. It can be compared with bhakta, or devotees of God. He is not interested in his own peace, his own salvation, getting rid of pain or possible troubles; he understands: “This belongs to God, let me return it to Him - I will use it in His service.” He does not look at money as a source of pleasure, and he also does not try to stay away from it, thereby displaying false renunciation. Instead, he uses everything he can - be it a million dollars, or some of his abilities, or his mind, or his professional skills (writing articles, working on a computer - whatever) - about He understands that all this belongs to God, and uses and redirects it to serve God.
Most people use material energy, including their strengths, abilities, gifts, etc., for your own material pleasure; the main thing in their life is themselves, their pleasure.
Then there is another type of people - much less of them - who, having failed in their attempts to enjoy the material world and tired of such a life, trying to get away from him. They don't want to participate in anything. And they are making great efforts in this direction. They try to give up everything, but everything continues to cling to them. They try to give it up and it comes back and they try again to give it up but gradually they get drawn back into all this activity and they don't like it and they try to give it up again. For example, they fast and then they break out and they eat, eat, eat for a whole week and then feel guilty: “I have to renounce the world. I got sucked in again,” and they start all over again. They bounce on their buttocks, trying to awaken kundalini. Do pranayama very diligently - they really make great efforts to renounce everything and rise above it, and they begin to feel peace and some kind of bliss again, but before they know it, life sucks them in again and they have to start all over again. And mostly people fall into one of these two categories.
But a devotee is one who truly works on a spiritual level, understands: “First of all, I don’t own anything, so I can’t use it for my pleasure. I simply take what is necessary to keep this body in good condition to be able to serve, and whatever else I have I use in the service of God.” And he also understands: “Since I do not own anything, I cannot renounce anything.” Someone may say: “I gave up this, I gave up that. I had a yacht and a big house, and I gave them up and now live simply. I gave up everything,” and he may really like that he “gave up everything,” and he may want to give up something else, believing that he still has some property. But in reality, how can you give up something that doesn't belong to you? A bank teller is constantly dealing with money, money, money, but for him there is no question of giving it up - because it is not his. It is an illusion to think that you once owned something. How can you refuse this?
Saints of all times advise us not to make false attempts to be “renounced” and “spiritual” and not to try to be the master of the material dimension, to enjoy the material world, but to unite our will with the will of the Supreme Personality, which means to use all our abilities, capabilities, all our property, great or small, in His service. Whether we have much or little, God doesn’t care, because we offer it all to Him. What matters is that we offer it. It is not the quantity that is important, but the quality - the consciousness with which this is done.
In fact, the natural original position of a living being is serve the Supreme Lord with love. When one returns to this state of devotional service, or bhakti yoga, he regains previously lost qualities necessary to enter the kingdom of God; in other words, no longer receive material bodies. This is no longer necessary, because reincarnation, the transmigration of the soul, is caused by the desire of the individual to be the master of the material world. Nature is arranged in such a way that a living being who desires material pleasures, leaving the gross physical body, receives another and has the opportunity to continue his attempts to enjoy. But they are full of suffering - birth, illness, old age and death cause great suffering. It is not natural for an eternal living entity to be in the temporary material world. This is not where we should be. Our natural dimension is the immaterial, the immaterial world.
In this way, when we are freed from the desire to be a master, when we are no longer envious of the Supreme Personality and we no longer have material desires and our only desire is to serve the Supreme Personality, we we regain the right to be in the kingdom of God again. Then we no longer have the need to receive a material body. And this is actually the natural state of a living being, and it is called religion. Religion is not something you join or change. Religion is the natural primordial state of a living being. In this state, the living entity lovingly serves the Supreme Living Being.
