BODY AND SPIRITUAL COMPOSITION OF A HUMAN
The Teachings of the Holy Fathers Orthodox Church talking about human nature as about the tripartite composition of the spirit, soul and body - the so-called trichotomism. However, there is another view of human nature: as a combination of soul and body (dichotomism). The Orthodox Church accepts both of these teachings. The Catholic West has always recognized only dichotomy. In Orthodoxy, there were dichotomists among the Fathers and Doctors of the Church: St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Basil the Great, Blessed. Theodoret, blessed Augustine, Rev. John of Damascus. But there were also trichotomists: Tertullian, St. Justin the Philosopher, St. Efrem Sirin. In the 20th century, most Russian Orthodox authors tended towards trichotomism.
Dichotomists see in the "spirit" the highest ability of the rational soul, the ability through which a person enters into communion with God. “The human soul,” says St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, “as a spirit created by God, cannot find pleasure, rest, peace, consolation and joy in anything else, as soon as in God, from whom it was created in His image and likeness; and when she is separated from Him, she is forced to seek pleasure for herself in creatures, and to feed herself with various passions, like horns, but she does not find proper rest and consolation, and so she should die from hunger, for the spirit needs to eat spiritual food. That is, the spirit must find its food in God, live by God; the soul must be nourished by the spirit; the body must live by the soul—such was the original arrangement of the immortal nature of man. The stricken spirit, departed from God, instead of giving food to the soul, begins to live at the expense of the soul, to feed on what we usually call “spiritual values” in a worldly way ( fiction, music, spectacles); the soul, in turn, begins to live the life of the body. When the spiritual prevails over the higher (spiritual), a person begins to fall, but when the spiritual prevails, it enriches and directs the entire human composition to God. According to the teaching of the Orthodox Church, a person “consists of an immaterial and rational soul and a material body” (Orthodox Catechism).
The idea of the human soul as an essence, special and incomparably superior in its significance to everything sensible, penetrates all the frank teaching about man of the Old and New Testaments.
Speaking in the Book of Genesis (ch. 2) about the creation of man, the God-seer Moses gives details that largely explain the mysterious duality of the human being: And God created man, dust from the face of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.(Gen. 2:7). God created the body of man from the earth - this is the material world in man, breathed into him the spirit of life - this is the spiritual world in him. The creation of man is the creation of a living being, by which the visible and invisible are brought into unity.
The bodily-spiritual composition of a person is confirmed by other places of Holy Scripture. Job, addressing his comforting friends, says: Be silent, let me speak, and rest from anger, earthing my flesh with my teeth, but I will put my soul in my hand(Job 13:13-14). The psalmist David cries out before God: Moreover, my flesh will also dwell in hope, as if you would not leave my soul in hell, below, give Your reverend to see destruction(Ps. 15:9-10). Ecclesiastes on the death of man: And the dust will return to the earth, as if, and the spirit will return to God, Who gave him(Eccl. 12:7).
In the New Testament we read the words of Christ the Savior Himself: Fear not those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul; Fear more than the Mighty and destroy both soul and body in Gehenna(Matt. 10:28) - from which it is clear that a person consists of a body and a soul. The Apostle James writes: Just as the body without the spirit is dead, so is faith without deeds dead.(James 2:26). The apostle Paul also teaches: May the God of peace Himself sanctify you who are all perfect (in everything): and your spirit and soul and body are all perfect at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, may(1 Thess. 5:23). Glorify God in your bodies and in your souls, which are God's(1 Cor. 6:20).
Everything that is best and most perfect is concentrated in the human body. visible world so that it truly is a small world in the great world of God. But the body with its organs constitutes only the external, visible side of the human composition, while the invisible and spiritual side is the soul - a being completely different from the body, towering above it and above all visible nature with its perfections and advantages. It is the breath of God and has not an earthly nature, but an extramundane, heavenly one. It is the highest and most excellent part of man.
SOUL
Godlike soul- a simple, incorporeal, rational, free, life-giving creature. As a simple being, it is indivisible; as an incorporeal being, it is invisible; as a life-giving being, it is immortal.
The Monk John of Damascus gives the following definition of the soul: “The soul is a living, simple, incorporeal essence, by its nature invisible to bodily eyes, immortal, thinking and rational, not having a definite form - uses the organic body and gives it life, and growth, and feeling , and the force of birth. The soul is free, has the ability to desire and activity; it is changeable in regard to the will. All this the soul received from the grace of the Creator (Creator), from whose grace it received both being and a special kind of nature.
St. Gregory the Theologian teaches thus: “The soul is an intellectually contemplative being, eternally abiding, the image and breath of Almighty God, a particle of the Divine (of course, not in own meaning this word), a jet of invisible Deity and infinite light. Divine and inextinguishable light, enclosed in a cave (in the body), but Divine and inextinguishable.
"Animal beings are four different kind: some of them are immortal and inspired - what are the Angels, others have a mind, spirit, soul, body and breath - what are people, others have breath and soul - what are animals, and others only life - what are plants in which life is without a soul, without breath, without mind and immortality” (St. Anthony the Great).
“The nature of the human soul, in contrast to the nature of the angels, has a life-giving spirit and, through its activity, animates the earthly body connected with it” (St. Gregory the Theologian).
“People have a rational soul, but animals have a feeling soul” (St. John Chrysostom).
St. Ephraim the Syrian says that our soul is the most beautiful and superior to all creatures, the creation most beloved by God, sealed with the mystery of His grace and wisdom.
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The soul is a being immaterial, simple. This is what the Word of God teaches when it calls the soul a spirit: The Spirit itself will obey our spirit, as we are a child of God(Rom. 8:16); Who is the message from a person, even in a person, is like the spirit of a person living in him: so also no one knows God, just the Spirit of God(1 Cor. 2:11).
The soul cannot be seen with bodily eyes, cannot be touched, felt by any bodily senses: the soul is a spiritual nature, an incorporeal force.
St. Maximus the Confessor refutes the opinion about the corporality of the soul as a spirit - the image of God, as follows: “If the soul is a living body, then something must move it from within. Then we have to assume that there is a soul in the soul. If, however, they say that God moves us, then they will have to recognize the Divinity as the cause of those inappropriate and shameful movements, of which, as we know, there are a lot. If any addition and decomposition is appropriate only in bodies, then the soul is not a body, since it does not participate in anything of the kind. As an image of the mental, we call it mental, but as an image of the immortal, and incorruptible, and invisible, we recognize these qualities in it too. As an image of the incorporeal - and incorruptible, that is, alien to any materiality.
So, the soul, like the angels, is a certain substance, but incorporeal and immaterial.
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Soul is a being free. The idea of the freedom of the human soul is expressed in countless places in Holy Scripture. First, in all those places where commandments are given to man and obedience to the law of God is required of him; secondly, where various rewards are offered to a person for the fulfillment of the commandments, and especially eternal bliss; finally, where for the violation of the commandments, various punishments, temporal and eternal, are predicted to the guilty.
For example: Life and death are given before your face, a blessing and an oath: choose the life, may you and your seed live(Deut. 30, 19); If you do not want to serve the Lord, choose for yourself today whom you will serve(Josh. 24:15); Create man yourselves from the beginning, and leave him in the hand of will: if thou wilt, keep the commandments, and do the faith of good will(Sir. 15, 14-15); If you want to go into the stomach, keep the commandments(Matthew 19:17).
The Holy Fathers and teachers of the Church proved the freedom of the human soul by the fact that we have consciousness of our freedom, that freedom is an inalienable property of a rational being and distinguishes man from lower animals, that only by free obedience and service can we please God, and without freedom there is no religion. , no morality, no merit.
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Like the spirit of the soul of man immortal. The soul has its own rational, spiritual life, which can be clearly distinguished from the life of the body. Therefore, the soul, as a spirit, does not disintegrate with the body during the disintegration of the body, but remains immortal.
SOUL AND BODY
According to St. Gregory Palamas, the soul, created together with the body, is everywhere in the body, and not only in certain place body as containing and transcending the body. St. John of Damascus has a similar idea: “The soul unites with the whole body with everything, and not part with part, and is not contained by it, but contains it, like fire with iron, and, staying in it, produces its own actions.”
“The body is not stronger than the soul,” says St. Irenaeus, “since the soul inspires and animates, and regenerates, and builds the body; the soul possesses the body and rules over it. The body is like an instrument, and the soul takes the place of artists… Giving life to the body, the soul itself does not cease to live.”
“Despite its invisibility,” writes St. Gregory of Nyssa, “the soul is a being completely different from the body, acting in and through it and observing and knowing through its organs. This mental process, which takes place internally, testifies to the existence of a higher, spiritual power in the body.
So, the body often lies on the ground, and the person imagines and contemplates what is in heaven. The body often rests, is silent, and the person is inwardly in motion and contemplates what is outside of him, moving and moving from country to country, meeting with acquaintances. The body is by nature mortal, but man contemplates immortality; the body is temporary, but man imagines the eternal. The body itself will think nothing of the kind, because it is mortal and temporary. There must be something else that would think of an opposite and unnatural body. And this is a rational and immortal soul - mind - spirit.
“It is natural for the eye to look and the ear to listen; why do they turn away one and choose another? Who turns the eye away from sight? Or who closes the hearing for hearing? Or who keeps from the natural inclination the taste, which is by nature meant to be eaten? Who forbids anything else to be touched by a hand that is by nature active? Who does this contrary to what is natural to the body? Or why the body, turning away from what is required by nature, leans on the advice of another (that is, the mind) and is curbed by its wave? All this proves nothing else than a rational soul dominating the body.
The body does not move itself, but is set in motion by another, just as a horse does not harness itself, but is forced by the one who owns it. Therefore, laws are given to people - to do good and turn away from vice; for the dumb, deprived of reason and thinking, the bad remains indistinct, and the good remains indifferent” (St. Athanasius the Great).
“Man is a being formed by the unity of body and soul (spirit), and without a body he would not be a man, but an Angel, just as with one body without the Divine Spirit he would be an animal, not a man. The body is an instrument of the soul, a kind of garment and covering for the soul” (Saint Cyril of Alexandria).
St. Gregory the Theologian explains that the soul and body during the life of a person are most closely related to each other by the manifestation of the wisdom of God, providentially establishing this union. According to the saint, the soul is connected with the body so that in the struggle and battle with the body we constantly turn our eyes to God ... so that we know that we are at the same time great and insignificant, earthy and heavenly, mortal and immortal. The soul is united with the body so that if we decide to be proud of the image of God in us, our earthly nature would humble us. The body is perishable and short-lived, but the soul is Divine and immortal and, being the breath of God, is united with the body for testing and ascent to the likeness of God.
SPIRIT AND SOUL
The Apostle Paul, wishing to designate the spiritual nature of man as opposed to the bodily, calls it either the soul or the spirit (1 Cor. 6:20; 5:3-5). But he also has places in the Epistles where he distinguishes the soul and spirit as two sides of the same spiritual nature of man, or specifically designates the spirit in the soul as its highest ability: For the word of God is alive, and active, and sharper than any sword, sharper than any sword, sharper than any sword, and passing even to the division of the soul and the spirit, the members and the marrow, and judging by the thought and thought of the heart(Heb. 4:12); And your spirit and soul and body are perfect at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, may(1 Thess. 5:23). Here, by spirit is meant a separate and independent of the soul substance, the inner, innermost side of the soul. The relation of the soul and spirit is put in parallel with the relation of the compounds (members) and the brain to the body; but just as the latter constitutes the inner part of the same bodily being, or the content in relation to the containing one, so, obviously, the spirit is conceived by the apostle as the innermost part of the spiritual being of man. For the apostle, the spirit means that special high structure of the innermost part of the soul, which is created under the influence of the grace of the Holy Spirit. St. Gregory of Nyssa also admitted in man, besides the body, a sentient soul, similar to the soul of animals, and a soul that animals do not have - a spirit.
The spirit is given by God as a life-giving principle in order to control the soul and body. In other words, the spirit is the life force of man as an immortal being; scientists call it that: vitalistic (life) force.
In animals, the soul, together with the body, was produced by the earth: And speech God: let the waters bring forth the reptiles of the living souls ... And the speech God: let the earth bring forth the living soul according to its kind, the four-footed and creeping things, and the beasts of the earth according to their kind. And be a taco(Gen. 1:20-24).
And only about man it is said that after the creation of his body from the dust of the earth, the Lord God I will blow into his face the breath of life, and be a man I live in my soul(Gen. 2:7).
The Monk Seraphim of Sarov taught that words I will blow into his face the breath of life mean that "God did not create only flesh for Adam from the earth, but together with it he gave the soul and the spirit to man." “The body and soul of man were created at the same time, together, and at that very moment they breathed in (how they breathed in - this is inexplicable) a god-like spirit, so that man immediately appeared in all his greatness and was perfect in soul and body” (St. John of Damascus).
“In ordinary human knowledge, once you know an object well, you often know it well for the rest of your life, without clouding your knowledge of it.
But not so in faith. Once you know, feel, touch, you think: it will always be so clear, tangible, we love the object of faith for my soul.
But no: a thousand times it will darken for you, move away from you and, as it were, disappear for you, and that you loved before, than you lived and breathed, then at times you will feel complete indifference, and sometimes you need to clear your way with sighs and tears. to see it, grab it and hug it with your heart.
This is from sin, that is, from the continuous attacks on us by the evil spirit and its constant enmity towards us.
Saint righteous John Kronstadt
ABOUT THE FIGHT AGAINST THE "EVIL SINS"
or how to get rid of the passions leading to the death of the soul
The main vices of our soul according to the definition of the holy fathers
Patristic asceticism, in its centuries-old experience, developed the doctrine of the passions as the source of sin.
The ascetic fathers were always interested in the primary source of this or that sin, and not in the most evil deed already carried out. This latter is only the product of a sinful habit or passion deeply rooted in us, which ascetics sometimes call "evil thought" or "evil sin." In their observation of sinful habits, "passions" or vices, the ascetic fathers came to a number of conclusions, which are very finely elaborated in their ascetic writings.
There are a lot of these vices or sinful states. The Monk Hesychius of Jerusalem affirms: “Many passions are hidden in our souls; but they only convict themselves when their causes appear before our eyes.”
The experience of observation and struggle with passions made it possible to bring them into schemes. The most common scheme belongs to St. John Cassian the Roman, who is followed by Evagrius, Nile of Sinai, Ephraim the Syrian, John of the Ladder, Maximus the Confessor and Gregory Palamas.
According to these saints, all the sinful states of the human soul can be reduced to eight main passions: 1) gluttony, 2) fornication, 3) avarice, 4) anger, 5) sadness, 6) despondency, 7) vanity and 8) pride.
It is appropriate to ask why the Fathers of the Church, who are alien to any scholastic dryness and schematization, so stubbornly insist on these eight sinful vices in our soul? Because by my own observation and personal experience, tested by the experience of all ascetics, they came to the conclusion that the above eight "evil" thoughts or vices are the main activators of sin in us. This is the first. In addition, in these ascetic systems of passions there is a great internal dialectical connection. “The passions, like links in a chain, hold on to one another,” teaches St. Isaiah of Nitria (“Philokalia,” Volume I). “Evil passions and impiety are not only introduced one through the other, but are similar in essence to one another,” confirms St. Gregory Palamas (Conversation 8).
This dialectical connection has been verified by all ascetic writers. Their passions are listed in this order, because genetically passion from passion has its hereditary origin. The writers mentioned above beautifully tell in their ascetic creations how from one sinful habit another imperceptibly arises, or better, how one of them is rooted in another, itself giving rise to the next one.
Gluttony is the most natural of passions, as it arises from the physiological needs of our organism. Every normal and healthy person feels hunger and thirst, but if this need is not in moderation, the natural becomes "supernatural", unnatural, and therefore vicious. Gluttony, that is, satiety and immoderation in nutrition, naturally excites carnal movements, sexual impulses, which lead, in case of incontinence, that is, in a non-ascetic mood, to passion. fornication from which all kinds of fornication thoughts, wishes, dreams, etc. are generated. To satisfy this shameful passion, a person needs means, material well-being, an excess of money, which leads to the generation of passion in us. love of money, from which all the sins associated with money originate: extravagance, luxury, greed, stinginess, love of things, envy, and so on. Failures in our material and carnal life, failure in our calculations and carnal plans lead to anger, sadness and sadness. From anger, all “communal” sins are born in the form of irritability (in secular terms called “nervousness”), intemperance in words, quarrelsomeness, abusive mood, anger, and so on. All this can be developed in more detail and in depth.
There is another subdivision in this scheme of passions. The passions just named can be either carnal, that is, in one way or another connected with the body and our natural needs: gluttony, fornication, covetousness; or spiritual, the origin of which must be sought not directly in the body and in nature, but in the spiritual sphere of man : pride, sadness, despondency, vanity. Some writers (for example, Gregory Palamas) therefore refer to carnal passions, if not more condescendingly, then consider them to be more natural, although no less dangerous than the passions of a spiritual order. The division into "dangerous" sins and "petty" sins was fundamentally alien to the fathers.
In addition, ascetic writers distinguish in these schemes passions that originate from vices, from evil directly (three carnal passions and anger), and originating from virtue, which is especially dangerous.
Indeed, having freed himself from a centuries old sinful habit, a person can become proud and indulge in vanity. Or, on the contrary, in his striving for spiritual perfection, for even greater purity, a person uses certain efforts, but he does not succeed, and he falls into sadness (“I am not according to God,” as these saints say) or else a more malicious sinful state of despondency, that is, hopelessness, apathy, despair.
Passions open and secret
A division into open and secret passions can be accepted. vices gluttony, lust for money, fornication, anger very hard to hide. They break through to the surface at every opportunity. And passions sadness, despondency, sometimes even vanity and pride, can easily disguise themselves, and only the experienced look of a thoughtful confessor, with great personal experience, can reveal these hidden diseases.
Subtle psychologists, ascetic fathers, know from their experience that the danger of passion lies not only in the fact that it has penetrated into the soul of a person, but also in the fact that it then rules over a person through habit, through memory, through an unconscious attraction to that or some other sin. “Passion,” says St. Mark the Ascetic, “arbitrarily revived in the soul by deed, then arises in its lover by force, even if he did not want it” (“Philokalia”, Volume I).
Demons of bodily passions and demons of spiritual passions
But the monk Evagrius teaches us this: “What we have a passionate memory of, we first in fact perceived with passion, about which we will later have a passionate memory” (ibid.). The same ascetic teaches that not all passions possess a person equally for a long time. Demons bodily passions more likely to move away from a person, as over the years the body ages and physiological needs decrease. Demons spiritual passions“Until death, they stubbornly stand and disturb the soul (ibid.).
The manifestation of passionate inclinations is different: it may depend either on an external excitatory cause, or on a habit that has taken root in the subconscious. Here the same Evagrius writes: “A sign of the passions operating in the soul is either a spoken word or a movement made by the body, from which the enemy learns whether we have their thoughts in ourselves, or have rejected them” (ibid.).
Different ways of healing vicious passions
Just as the causes and stimuli of passions, bodily or spiritual, are different, so must be the healing of these vices. “Spiritual passions originate from people, and bodily passions from the body,” we find in the teachings of this ascetic father. Therefore, “the movement of carnal passions is stopped by abstinence, and of the soul - by spiritual love (ibid.). Approximately the same is said by the Monk John Cassian the Roman, who especially subtly developed the doctrine of the eight main passions: “spiritual passions must be healed by simple healing of the heart, while carnal passions are healed in two ways: both by external means (i.e., abstinence), and by internal ones” (“Philokalia ", Volume II). The same ascetic teaches about the gradual, so to speak, systematic treatment of passions, since all of them are in an internal dialectical connection with each other.
“Passion: gluttony, fornication, love of money, anger, sadness and despondency are interconnected by a special kind of affinity, according to which the excess of the previous gives rise to the next ... Therefore, they must be fought against in the same order, moving in the fight against them from the previous to the next. To conquer despondency, sadness must first be suppressed; in order to drive away sadness, one must first suppress anger; in order to extinguish anger, one must trample on the love of money; in order to expel the love of money, it is necessary to tame the prodigal passion; to suppress this lust, gluttony must be curbed” (ibid.).
Thus, one must learn to fight not with evil deeds, but with the evil spirits or thoughts that give rise to them. It is useless to struggle with an already accomplished fact. The deed is done, the word is said, the sin, as an evil fact, has already been committed. Nobody is able to make the former non-existent. But a person can always prevent such sinful phenomena in the future, as soon as he take care of yourself, carefully analyze where this or that sinful phenomenon comes from and fight against the passion that gave rise to it.
Therefore, when a person repents that he often allows himself to get angry, scold his wife, get annoyed with children and colleagues, it is necessary, first of all, to pay attention to the rooted passion of anger, from which these cases of irritability, swearing, "nervousness" and so on. A person who is free from the passion of anger is by nature good-natured and good-natured and does not know these sins at all, although he may be subject to some other sins.
When a person complains that he has shameful thoughts, dirty dreams, lustful desires, then he needs to fight in every way with the prodigal passion rooted in him, probably from childhood, leading him to impure dreams, thoughts, desires, views, and so on.
In the same way, frequent condemnation of neighbors or mockery of other people's shortcomings indicate a passion for pride or vanity, which gives rise to such conceit, leading to these sins.
Disappointment, pessimism, bad mood, and sometimes misanthropy also come from internal causes: either from pride, or from despondency, or from sadness that is not “according to Bose,” that is, not saving sadness. Asceticism knows saving sadness, that is, dissatisfaction with oneself, one's own inner world, its imperfection. Such sadness leads to self-control, to greater severity towards oneself. But there is also such sadness that comes from human assessments, from life's failures, from not spiritual, but spiritual motives, which taken together is not saving.
A spiritual and charitable life is not made up of “good deeds”, that is, not of facts of a positive content, but of the corresponding good moods of our soul, of what our soul is alive with, where it aspires to. From good habits, from the right mood of the soul, good facts are also born, but the value is not in them, but in the very content of the soul.
Repentance and confession are our helpers in the fight against sinful passions. The difference between the Orthodox understanding of confession and repentance from the Catholic
Thus, not good deeds in their real concreteness, but a virtuous state of mind, a general desire for holiness, for purity, for likeness to God, for salvation, that is, deification - this is the aspiration Orthodox Christian. Not sins, as concrete evil facts realized separately, but the passions, vices, crafty spirits that gave rise to them - this is what and what must be fought against. Those who come to confession should have a feeling sinfulness, that is, a painful state of his soul. Repentance consists in a determined desire to free ourselves from the sinful states that captivate us, that is, the aforementioned passions.
It is extremely important to cultivate in oneself not a legal understanding of good and evil, but a patristic one. “Virtue is that mood of the heart when what is done is truly pleasing,” teaches St. Mark the Ascetic (“Philokalia”, Volume I). He also says: “Virtue is one, but it has manifold deeds” (ibid.). And Evagrius teaches that “an active life (that is, the practice of virtues) is a spiritual method for purifying the passionate part of the soul” (ibid.). One should not think that “deeds in themselves are worthy of hell or the Kingdom, but that Christ rewards everyone as our Creator and Redeemer, and not as the Measurer of things (ibid.), and we do good deeds not for the sake of retribution, but to preserve what is given to us. purity" (ibid.). Finally, one must learn to expect not a legal reward, but to acquire the grace of the Holy Spirit, to make one's soul His abode. All the Fathers of the Church taught about this, and especially St. Macarius of Egypt, and in our time, St. Seraphim of Sarov. Otherwise, good deeds for the sake of a reward, according to Evagrius, turn into a fishery (“Philokalia”, Volume I, compare: St. Hesychius of Jerusalem, - “Philokalia”, Volume II).
Figuratively speaking, the Orthodox understanding of confession and repentance differs from the Catholic one precisely in this point. Roman jurisprudence and pragmatism had an effect here as well. The Latin confessor during confession is much more of a judge; whereas the Orthodox is par excellence a healer. Confession in the eyes of the Latin confessor is most of all a tribunal and an investigative process; in the eyes of an Orthodox priest, this is the moment of medical consultation.
In the Latin practical manuals for confession, the priest is instilled with just such a view. Their confession is made within the framework of logical categories: when? who? with whom? how many times? under whose influence? etc. But always the most important thing in the eyes of a Western confessor will be sin as evil deed as a fact, as an act of sinful will. The confessor pronounces his judgment on the perfect negative fact, which requires its retribution according to the rules of the canonical code. Orthodox confessor On the contrary, it is not sinful facts that are more important, but sinful states. He, as a healer, seeks to discover the roots of this disease, to open a deeply hidden abscess, as the source of any external act. He does not so much pronounce judgment as he gives healing advice.
The legal point of view permeates Latin theology and their church life in every direction. Proceeding from sin or virtue as an evil or good deed, they put their logical emphasis on this perfect reality. They are interested amount good or bad deeds. In this way, they arrive at a sufficient minimum of good deeds, and from this they derive the doctrine of the merits of super-duties, which at one time gave rise to the well-known doctrine of indulgences. The very concept of "merit" is purely legal and Orthodox writers are completely unusual. Latin jurisprudence adopted a formal understanding and quality moral deeds. They introduced into their moral theology the doctrine of the so-called "adiaphors", that is, indifferent deeds, neither evil nor good, which through our scholastic textbooks gradually penetrated into the minds of seminarians and priests. From there, the point of view of the sanity and insanity of sin, the doctrine of the clash of duties and other manifestations of the ethics of the law, and not the ethics of grace, penetrated to us in the textbooks of moral theology.
It is possible to schematize what has been said in another way. For Western consciousness, the paramount importance is in logical schemes, in the legal understanding of sin and virtue, in the headings of moral casuistry. Orthodox consciousness, brought up on the tradition of patristic antiquity, is based on the experience of the spiritual life of ascetic writers, who approached sin as a spiritual weakness and therefore sought to heal this weakness. They are more in the categories of moral psychology, deeply pastoral psychoanalysis.
During confession, one must try in every possible way to penetrate into the "depths of the soul", into the hidden areas of the human underground, the subconscious, unconscious sinful habits. It is necessary not to denounce sins, that is, not to denounce oneself for a given act and judge for a committed deed, but to try to find where the root of all sins lies; what passion in the soul is the most dangerous; how to easily and effectively eradicate these old habits.
It’s good when at confession we list all our committed deeds, or, perhaps, according to an old childhood habit, we read them from a note so as not to forget some sin; but attention should be paid not so much to these sins as to their internal causes. It is necessary to awaken the consciousness of one's general sinfulness, in the presence of consciousness of this or that sin. According to the apt expression of Father Sergius Bulgakov, one should pay attention not so much to the "arithmetic of sin" as to the "algebra of sin".
Such a recognition of our spiritual ailments and their healing is incomparably more correct than the enumeration of sins, the sinful actions of people, accepted by the Latins. To fight only against the sins revealed in actions would be as unsuccessful as cutting off the weeds that appear in the garden, instead of uprooting it and throwing it away. Sins are the inevitable growth of their roots, that is, the passions of the soul... In the same way, it is impossible to comfort myself with the fact that I allow relatively little sinful deeds: it is necessary to cultivate in oneself constant good inclinations and dispositions, in which lies Christian perfection or salvation.
Will a Christian be saved by faith or good works?
Decalogue Old Testament forbids sinful deeds, and the beatitudes of Christ are offered not by deeds, but location; unless peacekeeping can be called a deed, but it is accessible only to those believers who have saturated their souls with heartfelt benevolence towards people. The endless debate among European theologians about whether a Christian will be saved by faith or good works reveals in both camps a general misunderstanding of our salvation. If these theologians do not want to learn the correct understanding from the Savior, then the Apostle Paul portrayed it even more clearly: “There is spiritual fruit - love, joy, peace, long-suffering, goodness, mercy, faith, meekness, temperance.” Not deeds, not deeds in themselves are valuable in the eyes of God, but that constant mood of the soul, which is described in the above words.
On the Gradual Development of Sin in Us
The second theme to be developed in the question of various sins is that of the gradual development of sin in us. The holy ascetic fathers left us in their writings many valuable observations on this subject as well.
A very common misconception among Christians who come to confession is that this or that sin “somehow”, “suddenly”. "from somewhere", "for no apparent reason" took possession of the will of the sinner and forced him to commit this particular evil deed. From what has just been said about the patristic teaching about sins as manifestations of bad habits or passions that nestle in our soul, it should be clear that “for no reason” or “from somewhere” sin does not appear by itself in the human soul. A sinful act, or a negative phenomenon of spiritual life, has long since penetrated into our hearts under one influence or another, imperceptibly strengthened there and built its nest, turning into a “wicked thought” or passion. This act is only a growth, a product of this passion, against which spiritual warfare must be waged.
But asceticism also knows something more and calls for a more effective struggle. For the purpose of spiritual hygiene, or, better, spiritual prophylaxis, the ascetic writings offer us a finely elaborated analysis of the gradual origin and development of sin in us.
In the works of such renowned spiritual writers as St. Ephraim the Syrian, St. John of the Ladder, St. Hesychius of Jerusalem, St. Mark the Ascetic, St. Maximus the Confessor and others, based on their own observation and experience, such a description of the origin of sin is given: first of all, sin does not originate on the surface of the body, but in the depths of the spirit. The body, in itself, is not to blame and is not the source of sin, but only an instrument through which this or that sinful thought can manifest itself. Every sin does not begin suddenly, not automatically, but through a complex process of internal maturation of one or another crafty thought.
What is the devil's "appliance"
Our liturgical books, especially the Octoechos and the Lenten Triodion, are filled with prayers and hymns for liberation from the diabolical "attacks". “Prilog” is an involuntary movement of the heart under the influence of some external perception (visual, auditory, gustatory, etc.) or an idea that comes from outside to do this and that. This arrow of the Devil, or, in the expression of our asceticism, "attachment" or "attack", can be very easily driven away. Without dwelling on such a sinful image or expression, we immediately push them away from us. This "attachment" dies off as instantly as it appeared. But one has only to linger on it with thought, to become interested in this tempting image, as it enters deeper into our consciousness. There is a so-called "combination" or "combination" of our thought with the "attachment". Fighting in a fairly light form can also be carried out at this stage of development, although not as simply as in the first stage of "fighting". But having not mastered the “composition”, but having paid attention to it and seriously reflecting on it and inwardly considering the outlines of this image that we liked, we enter the stage of “attention”, that is, we are almost in the power of this temptation. Anyway, mentally we are already captivated. The next step after it in the language of ascetics is called “pleasure”, when we internally feel all the charm of a sinful action, build ourselves images that excite and captivate us even more, and not only with the mind, but also with the feeling, have given ourselves over to the power of this evil thought. If a decisive rebuff is not given at this stage of the development of sin, then we are already in power. "wishes" behind which only one step, and perhaps only one moment, moves us away from doing this or that bad deed, be it the theft of someone else's thing, eating a forbidden fruit, an offensive word, a blow with a hand, etc. Different ascetic writers call these different levels differently, but the point is not in the names and not in more or less elaboration. The fact is that sin does not come to us “suddenly”, “out of nowhere”, “unexpectedly”. It goes through its “natural” stage of development in the soul of a person, more precisely, originating in the mind, it penetrates into attention, into feelings, into the will, and, finally, is carried out in the form of one or another sinful act.
Here are some useful thoughts about the passions and about the struggle with them, found in the holy ascetic fathers. “Prilog is an involuntary remembrance of former sins. Whoever is still struggling with passions tries to prevent such thinking from becoming a passion, and whoever has already conquered them drives away his very first attack” (“Philokalia”, Volume I). “Attack is an involuntary movement of the heart, not accompanied by images. It is like a key, it opens the door to sin in the heart. That is why experienced people try to seize it at the very beginning,” St. Mark the Ascetic teaches. (ibid.). But if the preposition itself is something that has come from outside, then it still finds a certain weak spot in a person, which is the most convenient way to go. Why does the same St. Mark teach: “Don't say: I don't want to, but the adjunct comes by itself. For if not the very pretext, then you truly love its causes” (ibid.). This means that in our heart or mind there is already some reserve of the previous sinful habits, which react more easily to "additions" than those who do not have these habits. Therefore, the means of struggle is the constant purification of the heart, what the ascetics call “sobriety”, that is, constant observation of oneself and the effort not to let the “pretense” enter our mind. purification, or "sobriety" is best accomplished by unceasing prayer, for the simple reason that if the mind is occupied with a prayerful thought, then at the same moment no other, sinful thought can control our mind. Therefore, St. Hesychius of Jerusalem teaches: “Just as without a large ship it is impossible to cross the depths of the sea, so without the invocation of Jesus Christ it is impossible to expel the adjunct of an evil thought” (“The Philokalia”, Volume II).
Righteous John of Kronstadt on the fight against the spirits of evil
“Oh, how mournful, how hard, how hard earthly life! - wrote the holy righteous John of Kronstadt. - From morning to evening, every day it is necessary to wage a heavy battle with the passions of the flesh, fighting on the soul, with the principalities, rulers and rulers of the darkness of this world, spirits of wickedness in high places and (Eph. 6:12), whose craftiness and deceit are immeasurably evil, hellishly skillful, unsleeping…”
The Kronstadt shepherd also gives us a weapon to fight passions:
“If your heart is troubled by the spirit of some kind of passion, and you lose your peace, become embarrassed, and words of discontent and enmity towards your neighbors fly from your tongue, do not hesitate to remain in this state that is detrimental to you, but immediately kneel down and confess before the Spirit Your sin is holy, saying from the bottom of your heart: I offended You, Holy Soul, with the spirit of my passion, the spirit of malice and disobedience to You; and then from the bottom of your heart, with the feeling of the omnipresence of the Spirit of God, read a prayer to the Holy Spirit: “King of Heaven, Comforter, Soul of Truth, Who is everywhere and fills everything, Treasury of the good and giver of life, come and dwell in me, and cleanse me from all filth, and save, Blessed, my passionate and lustful soul”- and your heart will be filled with humility, peace and tenderness. Remember that every sin, especially passion and addiction to something earthly, every displeasure and enmity against your neighbor because of something carnal, offends the All-Holy Spirit, the Spirit of peace, love, the Spirit that draws us from the earthly to the heavenly, from the visible to invisible, from the corruptible to the imperishable, from the temporal to the eternal, from sin to the holy, from vice to virtue. Oh, Holy Spirit! Our Steward, Our Educator, Our Comforter! Preserve us with your power, Holy Holy One! Soul of our Father in heaven, plant in us, nurture in us the Spirit of the Father, that we may be His true children in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
(according to the teachings of the holy fathers of the "Philokalia")
Much has already been said above about people's abilities for spiritual perception, and about the fact that we have an inner, spiritual hearing. Christians are well aware that thoughts, just like images, come from God, the enemy, and from the person himself. Saints and ordinary Christians can hear the Voice of God and revelations from Him (theme "On the mysterious actions of God"). Here are some quotes about it:
Theophan the Recluse (The Way to Salvation): “Those who have reached (to be the temple of the living God) are the mysteries of God, and their state is the same as the state of the Apostles, because they also know the will of God in everything, hearing, as it were, a certain voice, and they, Having perfectly united their feelings with God, they secretly learn from Him His words.
Luke Krymsky (Spirit, soul and body): “For the holy prophets, it was also possible to directly hear the words of God and perceive them with the heart. "And he said to me: Son of man! All my words that I will speak to you, receive in your heart and hear with your ears" (Ezek. 3,10). "My heart says from Thee: Seek My face; and I will seek Thy face, O Lord" (Ps. 26:8). The prophet Jeremiah tells of his calling as a direct conversation with God. The prophet Ezekiel, describing his extraordinary vision of the glory of God, continues: "Seeing this, I fell on my face and heard the voice of the Speaker, debt consolidation pros and cons and He said:" son of man, stand on your feet, and I will speak to you ". And while He was speaking to me, a spirit entered into me and set me on my feet, and I heard him speaking to me" (Ezek. 2, 2)."
Schiigum. Savva (Experience in building a true worldview): “A soul that has been cleansed of passions and accustomed to unceasing prayer has an (inner) ear so refined that it constantly perceives the voice of God.”
Metropolitan Trifon Turkestanov (Akathist “Glory to God for everything”, Ikos 10): “... Sharpen my hearing so that in all minutes of my life I hear Your mysterious voice and cry out to You, the omnipresent: ... Glory to You for indicating the secret voice, glory to You for the revelation in a dream and in reality ... ".
The holy ascetics could also hear demons.
Ephraim Sirin (Tombstone): “I once heard that death and Satan argued among themselves who, which of them has more power over a person. Death pointed to its power, with which it conquers all. Satan points to his wickedness, with which he leads everyone into sin.
Basically, we, sinners, are constantly in our thoughts and listen to thoughts from enemies, often not even suspecting that these are thoughts from them. This is discussed in detail in the topic “On Prelest”, the chapter “The impact of the enemy on mental strength person." But there are times when a person clearly realizes that this thought and “voice” does not come from him, and it is this action that is called auditory hallucination in science.
When considering acute auditory hallucinations, let us pay special attention to the content of the conversations of "voices". The following quote was quoted above: “The content of the hallucinations is a discussion or commentary on the behavior of the patient, reproaches for drunkenness, a discussion of his family affairs. Sometimes the voices are imperative (imperious) in nature, they threaten with reprisals, they order to give money, throw themselves under a tram, hang themselves, etc. In a number of cases, the voices argue among themselves: some accuse, others justify; some threaten, others protect; some order to commit suicide, others warn against it. Heard quarrels with defense and accusations are an image of ordeals, when demons and angels argue about the soul. This can be read in the stories of St. Theodora about ordeals.
As for the imperative character, this is how demons always act when they want to bring the soul to suicide.
Ignatius Brianchaninov: "Only one of the sins - suicide - is not subject to healing by repentance, but each of them mortifies the soul and makes it incapable of eternal bliss."
Nikolai Serbsky (Symbols and Signals, ch. 12): "The feeling of extreme despair, directing a person's thoughts to suicide, is a clear signal that an evil spirit - the spirit of despondency - has taken possession of the soul of this person."
Sometimes demons inspire a person to commit murder, while they can become visible, but often they only inspire such thoughts.
Otechnik (Ignaty Brianchaninov): “It was said about a certain brother that he lived as a hermit in the desert and for many years was seduced by demons, thinking that they were angels. Sometimes his father according to the flesh came to him. Once a father, going to his son, took an ax with him with the intention of chopping wood for himself on the way back. One of the demons, warning the coming of the father, appeared to his son and said to him: “Behold, the devil comes to you in the likeness of your father with the aim of killing you, he has an ax with him. You warn him, pull out the ax and kill him." The father came, according to custom, and the son, seizing an ax, stabbed him and killed him. Then the unclean spirit immediately attacked this hermit and strangled him.”
Moral Theology (sins against the 6th commandment, sin - killing someone or only an attempt on someone's life in temporary unconsciousness): mental disorder from prolonged insomnia, loss of all consciousness while intoxicated: all this, with the special violence of the enemy, the devil, leads some to homicide, which is still distinguished by special cruelties. Suppose a person cannot be blamed for his painful and completely unconscious state in which he commits a terrible sin; for example, even in sound sleep sanity is destroyed (the sleeper is not responsible for the harm that has occurred around him); and even more so, a painful dream cannot be imputed. However, those causes are often to blame that gradually disposed a person to an unconscious state: and drunkenness in this case is not at all recognized as a cause that would destroy sanity. Yes; a person comes to a state of temporary unconsciousness more from his own sins and vices. Moreover, at this time (as in a dream), he mostly burps with what in a healthy state occupied him (for example, a devout one, and in a fever whispers more prayers, and a robber raves about murders) ... - A Christian has an angel from God - the guardian, who in the moments of his unconscious crime would not have departed from him if he had not previously removed this good spirit from himself with his ungodly deeds. - All this leads to the conclusion that in unconsciousness he committed homicide or attempted such a crime , when it comes to memory and consciousness, it must bring deep contrition before God. - You, Christian, pray to God first that you will not be yearly free credit report in any disorder of mental abilities, and then - so that the guardian angel will not retreated from you even in moments of unconsciousness!
Hearing the voice of the enemy is well known to those Christians who have been attacked by the enemy with blasphemous thoughts.
John of the Ladder (Ladder, ch. 23): “Often during the Divine Liturgy, and at the most terrible hour of the celebration of the Mysteries, these vile thoughts blaspheme the Lord and the holy Sacrifice being performed. From here it is clearly revealed that these impious, incomprehensible and inexplicable words within us are not spoken by our soul, but by a God-hating demon who was cast down from heaven because he attempted to blaspheme God there too.
(You can also read about them in the topic "About charm")
We also note that the patriarchs contain many examples of what demons do invisibly to humans. It can be not only screams and whispers, but also other actions.
The life of the desert fathers: “Once the demons told St. Macarius of Egypt that not a single meeting of monks can do without them. Come, look at our deeds... God forbid you, unclean demon! Macarius exclaimed. And, starting to pray, he began to ask the Lord to reveal to him whether there was any truth in the words of the devil. Coming to the celebration all-night vigil asked the Lord for the same. And now he sees ... The Ethiopians scattered around the church, jumping up to each monk, seemed to be flirting (during the reading of the psalms). Whom with two fingers close their eyes, and he began to doze; they put a finger in the other’s mouth, and he yawns ... The reading ended, and the brethren fell down to pray before God, then the image of a woman suddenly flashed before one, in general, one thing, then another ... And only evil spirits they will present something, like actors in the theater, this will enter the heart of the one who prays and give rise to thoughts ... then by force, and no longer dared to stop, nor to pass by near such. But to other, weaker brethren, they jumped on their necks and on their backs: apparently, they prayed inattentively. Seeing this, St. Macarius sighed and shed tears. After the end of the prayers, he called each brother separately, and it turned out that everyone was thinking about what the elder had seen.”
On hypnagogic hallucinations and the teachings of the Holy Fathers on this subject
Finishing the conversation about visual and auditory hallucinations, let's say that along with what was said above about hallucinations, there is another type of hallucinations - hypnagogic. Let's briefly consider its essence.
A textbook on psychiatry: “Hypnagogic hallucinations are visual illusions of perception that usually appear in the evening before falling asleep, with your eyes closed (their name comes from the Greek. hypnos - sleep), which makes them more related to pseudohallucinations than true hallucinations (there is no connection with the real situation) . These hallucinations can be single, multiple, scene-like, sometimes kaleidoscopic (“I have some kind of kaleidoscope in my eyes”, “I now have my own TV”). The patient sees some faces, grimacing, showing him the tongue, winking, monsters, bizarre plants. Much less often, such hallucinations can occur during another transitional state - upon awakening. Such hallucinations, also occurring with closed eyes, are called hypnopompic. Both of these types of hallucinations are often among the first harbingers of delirium tremens or some other intoxicant psychosis.
A textbook of clinical psychology: “Hypnagogic hallucinations, which, along with hallucinations of the imagination and pseudohallucinations, are classified as incomplete, are also more common in children than true hallucinations. Hypnagogic hallucinations are understood to be predominantly visual images spontaneously arising during falling asleep, which are projected into the dark field of vision of the closed eyes or into the external unlit space with the eyes open. Their content can reproduce individual impressions and images perceived by the child during the day. Such hallucinations are often observed in healthy, especially impressionable children, children with pronounced eidetism. Pathological hypnagogic hallucinations are not associated with images of everyday experiences, are unusual, often fantastic and are accompanied by the affect of fear.
A textbook on psychiatry: “Children and adolescents can also have pseudohallucinations, and often in the form of hypnagogic ones. The latter occur most often against the background of the disease, especially proceeding with clouding of consciousness in the form of oneiroid (schizophrenia, infections, including intracranial; intoxication). A 3-year-old girl, already put to bed, suddenly jumped up and started hitting herself with her fists on the head, crying and shouting, “These terrible guys are in my head again, I just can’t drive them away.” Pseudohallucinations in the form of hypnagogic (before going to sleep when falling asleep) can occur in children and adolescents without any psychosis, but in the presence of such features as emotional lability, impressionability, increased suggestibility.
A textbook on neurophysiology: “During the period of falling asleep, mental activity is very diverse. Often there are so-called hypnagogic hallucinations. This type of hallucination is like a series of slides or pictures. In contrast, dreams are more like films. It is noted that hypnagogic hallucinations occur only when the dominant waking rhythm disappears from the EEG (EEG slow waves and separate flashes of the alpha rhythm).
Because It was said above that hallucinations can occur during falling asleep or before waking up, so we consider it necessary to talk about sleep and the state of drowsiness.
Theophan the Recluse (Inscription of Christian morality): “Dreams are spontaneous movements of the imagination in a dream of the body with a lack of self-consciousness and self-activity of the will. In the course of dreams, three degrees are distinguished: “delusion” - during drowsiness, the actual “dream”, or sleepy dreaming, during the perfect sleep of the body, and “secret sleep”, unremembered, during the dead sleep of the body. In their production, the life of the heart with images dominates. When the power of the soul over itself is lost, then the images of the imagination, as if escaping from some rivets, fill the entire region of the soul. Here, images of different times and places, present and past, good and bad, mix and match according to laws that cannot be known. The personality of the dreamer himself is lost: he is inserted into the dramas imagined by the imagination as an external person and undergoes strange transformations: now he rejoices, now he suffers, now he rises, now he is put to shame, and so on. Since the soul loses its self-activity in a dream, it is even more strongly influenced by another world than in reality, and the good - the influence of the good, the thin - the evil. ... Between these dreams, three kinds are distinguished. Some are "disorderly", about which Sirach writes: "like one who hugs a shadow or chases after the wind, so he believes in dreams" (Sir. 34:2). Others are "intelligible", which in a person who is beginning to regain consciousness are invested by God or the Guardian Angel. About them, Job says that during sleep and in night visions, when sleep embraces a person, when he sleeps on a bed, God opens his ear and, having taught him, seals it in order to lead a person away from a bad deed, to remove pride from him. and to keep his soul from the grave (Job 33:15, 16, 17). Third, finally, there are special dreams of large payday loans - "Divine, prophetic." God Himself speaks of them: “If a prophet of the Lord comes to you, then I reveal myself to him in a vision, I speak to him in a dream” (Numbers 12:6). Dreams are like the heart. For the most part, they can be considered witnesses to our moral state, which is not always seen in a waking state. In a careless person, devoted to passions, they are always impure, passionate: the soul there is the plaything of sin. For a person who has converted and is zealous for the purification of his heart, they are either good or bad, depending on what he takes advantage of, and sometimes how he falls asleep. Here he is subjected to frequent attacks by demons, which sometimes strongly tempt the inexperienced, as Saint Ladder remarks.
Ignatius Brianchaninov (v.5, ch.46): “We need to know and know that in our state, not yet renewed by grace, we are unable to see other dreams, except for those made up by the delirium of the soul and the slander of demons. Just as during a state of cheerfulness, thoughts and dreams constantly and unceasingly arise in us from a fallen nature or are brought by demons, so during sleep we see only dreams through the action of a fallen nature and through the action of demons.
Evfimy Zygaben (Explanatory Psalter, ps. 118, st. 147, footnote): “The timeless (midnight) is especially accompanied by the strongest attacks from mental enemies: because darkness itself contributes to every vile and nasty and indecent action ...”.
As mentioned above, before deep sleep, a state of drowsiness occurs. Many people in a drowsy state had various revelations (you can read about this in the Lives of the Saints). And here are examples of how this happened with ordinary people:
Trinity leaflets from the Spiritual Meadow: “The ever-memorable archbishop. Vologda Nikon (+1919) recalled his own mother, and distinguished a remarkable detail related to the circumstances of his birth. “My mother,” he said, “when she was relieved of her burden, she suffered for a long time and was close to death. In these difficult moments of her torment, she began to fervently pray to St. Nicholas, asking for his holy help. : from the icon of St. Nicholas, which was in the corner casket, came the living St. Nicholas. He, approaching the suffering, meekly said: "Calm down! By God's permission, you will be easily relieved of the burden as a boy this very minute. Call him by my name Nikolai," and became invisible. After that, my mother was immediately relieved of the burden by me and asked me to be called Nikolai at baptism.
Trinity leaflets from the Spiritual Meadow: “On the day of the discovery of the relics of St. Seraphim of Sarov, Fr. Archimandrite Kronid, - I, having come from the early liturgy and in sorrow from overwhelmed thoughts, forgot myself in a half-drowse and then I can’t even give myself an account of whether it was half asleep or in reality, I only see from the front door of my cell 1000 dollar loans fast coming to me prep. Seraphim. I fell on my knees before him and in weeping and sobbing began to ask him, saying: "Help me, the Pleasant of God, in torment from thoughts." And in response I hear his gentle, fatherly voice: "Believe, undoubtedly, in the Lord and God and our Savior Jesus Christ, who came into the world to save the suffering. Read the Holy Gospel daily, be meek and humble, and you will find peace for your soul." Coming to my senses after these words of consolation; I saw myself sitting on the couch and felt great joy within me. After this phenomenon, I will not say that thoughts disappeared, but I became stronger in the fight against them and was not as embarrassed by them as before.
Let us note that in Christian teachings, a soul that is in slumber is considered to be a soul that lives in sins, in negligence and carelessness about its salvation, as well as in despondency.
Gregory of Nyssa (Explanation of the Song of Songs, conversation 11): “(it is necessary) to always be awake with your mind, as if a seducer of some soul and a prophet of truth, driving away drowsiness from the eyes, I understand that drowsiness and that dream, by which these dreamy representations: bosses, wealth, dominance, arrogance, charm of pleasures, love of glory, addiction to pleasures, ambition ... "
Theophan the Recluse (Interpretation of Psalm 118, v. 28): “... when the soul is dormant, sin does not sleep, but, creeping up, tries to captivate it and attract it to itself. “The beginning of sleep, he says, is slumber, and the beginning of falling is the disintegration and relaxation of the soul by despondency. As a slumbering one is drawn to sleep, so a morally weakened one is drawn to sin.
Based on the foregoing, it is quite natural that alcoholics have disturbed sleep, an exhausted body, and in drowsy states they may have hallucinations, or visions and hearings of demons.
On fear during alcoholic psychosis in the teachings of the Holy Fathers
The question of fears must be considered from three points of view: the first is the fear of the sinner (it will be discussed in the section “On the hidden spiritual causes of drunkenness”), the second is the fear of withdrawal (i.e., when refraining from drinking alcohol) and the third is fear of hallucinations.
Consider the second fear. It was said above that basically psychoses occur when a person is in abstinence from alcohol intake. Recall what happens to a person emotionally: “The harbingers of delirium (a prodelirium state) last for several hours. Usually in the evening, the anxious and melancholy mood characteristic of abstinence is replaced by affective lability: depression alternates with euphoria, anxiety with apathy. Agitation, restlessness, talkativeness are combined with an influx of vividly presented colorful memories. Illusions appear: hanging clothes are mistaken for a person, someone's faces are seen in patterns and spots ... Then complete insomnia sets in. Anxiety, anxiety and fear are on the rise. The main symptom of delirium appears - vivid visual hallucinations.
Such emotional states with the suggestion of thoughts about drinking come from demons in order to prevent a person from recovering from the passion of drunkenness.
Theophan the Recluse (The Way to Salvation): “But there is something that comes directly from Satan. From him there is a certain indefinite timidity and fear, which disturbs the soul of a sinner at any time, and even more so when he thinks about good. This is almost the same as the master threatens the servant when he starts doing something not according to his will and plans.
Experiencing such a demonic action, the soul wants to get rid of these sensations, and resorts to a well-known method - to take alcohol and “relax”. And this was what the enemy of the human race needed.
As for fear directly during hallucinations, a quote was previously given that hallucinations (in particular, “pseudo”) differ from ideas produced by the soul in that they do not depend on the will of a person, are obsessive, violent and have completeness and formalization of images. This observation is consistent with the teaching that spiritual forces influence a person regardless of his will and this causes a strong fear in a person. Here is what the saints say about it:
Ignatius Brianchaninov (Conference of the Soul with the Mind): “The blood is agitated, the imagination is inflamed from some action that is alien to me, hostile, and I see seductive images coming to me, leading me to dream of sin, to delight in destructive temptation. I don’t have the strength to run away from seductive images: involuntarily, forcibly, my painful eyes are chained to them.
In general, causing fear in a person for an enemy is a kind of fun.
Nicodemus the Holy Mountaineer (Invisible Warfare, part 2): “Our enemy the devil rejoices when the soul is embarrassed and the heart is in anxiety. Why does he contrive in every possible way to revolt our souls.
Athanasius the Great (Life of Anthony the Great, p. 28): “The demons, having no power, seem to amuse themselves at the spectacle, changing their disguises and frightening children with many ghosts and ghosts”
Athanasius the Great (Life of Anthony the Great, p. 37): “... demons, when they see people in fear, all the more multiply the ghosts to bring them into greater horror, and advancing, they are already cursing, saying: “fell down, bow down to me” (Matt .4, 9)".
Athanasius the Great (Life of Anthony the Great, item 36): “... the invasion and vision of evil spirits is outrageous, with noise, voices and cries, like a violent movement of poorly educated young people or robbers. From this, fear, confusion, confusion of thoughts, sadness, hatred of ascetics, despondency, sadness, remembrance of relatives, fear of death, and, finally, an evil wish, neglect of virtue, moral disorder, immediately occur in the soul.
So, with psychoses arising from alcoholism, namely delirium and hallucinosis, phenomena occur that are the fruit of sin, which allows enemy spirits to act openly before the sinner. The same disease processes that occur in the human body are also the fruit of sin.
Holy Fathers on the Human Soul
The Holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church speak enthusiastically about the human soul, in beautiful expressions they describe its greatness and extraordinary beauty.
Saint Gregory the Theologian:
The soul is an intellectually contemplative being, eternally abiding, the image and breath of the Almighty God, a particle of the Divine, (of course, not in the proper meaning of this word), a stream of invisible Divinity and infinite light, Divine and unquenchable light enclosed in the body, as in a cave.
The soul is nature animating and moving; mind and mind are related to the soul.
Saint Macarius the Great:
The soul is a clever, full of all beauty and truly wonderful creation of God. The soul is a very refined body. A creature of a special kind.
(He calls her a body solely to show her difference from God, in comparison with whom she is, as it were, of a coarser nature).
The soul is a great and wonderful thing. When creating her, God created her in such a way that no vice was put into her nature.
This creation is smart, majestic, marvelous - the image and likeness of God, having an unparalleled close relationship with God, without the slightest, however, communication between their beings (God has communication with worthy souls, but only not significantly, but gracefully), - endowed with all perfections inherent in the spirit, and, due to its extreme subtlety, movable, fleeting, elusive.
Saint John Chrysostom:
The soul is a rational and spiritual nature, fast-moving, incessantly in activity, dearest to the whole world, of unparalleled and indescribable beauty, an essence that has an affinity with the heavenly - by no means, however, of a Divine nature, but akin to heavenly and incorporeal beings.
The human soul is so magnificent that it is incomparable with any natural beauty. If it were possible to see the beauty of the soul with bodily eyes, then no earthly beauties could compare with it. But it can only be seen with sincere, enlightened eyes.
Rev. Ephraim the Syrian:
Our soul is the most beautiful and above all creations, the creation most beloved by God, sealed with the mystery of His grace and wisdom.
Saint John of the Ladder:
The whole world is unequal to the soul; the world passes away, but the soul is incorruptible and will remain incorruptible.
Saint Cyril, Archbishop of Jerusalem:
The soul is an excellent work of God, created in the image of the Creator. She is immortal, She is a living, intelligent and incorruptible being. The soul is free and has the power to do what it wants.
Saint Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow:
The soul is an invisible subtle force; being spiritual and immortal.
But the image of God in the human soul is manifested not so much in these two of its qualities (spirituality and immortality), but in its strengths and abilities. Namely: the mind, the gift of speech, freedom, memory and reason. The word is the organ of the mind, and the image of God must be reflected in it.
The beginning of the Word is in heaven, above heaven, in eternity, in God (John 1:1). And the dignity of the word Divine is "God is the Word." The Son of God did not find a better name in human language to express his Divine properties, as the name Word: "His name is called the Word of God" (Rev. 19, 13).
The Word has an omnipotent (all-doing) power: "All that was" (John 1, 3).
And in the word of man there must be some image of the Word of God and His power. And indeed, the word placed man on the ladder of creation above everything earthly - it united people into societies, created cities and kingdoms; knowledge, wisdom, law lives and moves in the word; the word forms and spreads virtue; the word in prayer ascends to God, converses with Him.
Freedom is the ability to reasonably choose a useful and necessary thing; it is the active ability of a person not to be enslaved to sin and to choose the best in the light of God's truth.
(This sees the image of God in the soul of man).
Saint John of Damascus:
The soul is a free entity, endowed with the ability to will and act, changeable in will, having a mind, not as something different from it, but as the purest part of itself. For as the eye is in the body, the mind is in the soul.
The soul is connected with the whole body and embraces it like fire iron.
The soul is a living, simple, incorporeal entity, by its nature invisible to bodily eyes, immortal, verbally intelligent, formless, acting through the organic body and giving it life and growth, feeling and the power of birth.
The soul is an intelligent spirit, always moving, convenient to good or evil will.
Blessed Augustine:
The soul is a created, invisible, rational, incorporeal, immortal, most god-like nature, having the image of its Creator.
He also says that it is the soul that shows the image of God in man (Man is created in the image of dominion, domination and autocracy).
Hieromartyr Irenaeus of Lyons:
The soul was created by God and has a form characteristic of its nature, different from the angelic being. She got her appearance from her closest contact with the body.
The kind of soul is a display inner man and so it varies from person to person.
Saint Andrew, Archbishop of Crete, defines the soul as the mind that sees God.
Holy Righteous John of Kronstadt:
Our soul is, so to speak, a reflection of the face of God; the clearer, the greater this reflection, the brighter, calmer it is; the smaller - the darker, more restless. And as our soul is our heart, it is necessary that in it all the truth of God be reflected through feelings, through gratitude, and there was no reflection of lies at all.
The soul is part of the spiritual world. God is reflected in a pious soul, like the sun in a drop of water; the purer this drop, the better, clearer the reflection, the more cloudy - the duller, so that in a state of extreme impurity, blackness of the soul, the reflection (of God) ceases, and the soul remains in a state of spiritual darkness, in a state of insensibility.
Our soul is as simple as thought and as fast as lightning.
The soul of a pious person is a precious spiritual treasury.
Our soul is called a soul because it breathes the Spirit of God, that is, it is so called from the Life-Giving Spirit.
Saint Theophan the Recluse:
The soul is a real, living force, although intelligent, purely spiritual.
With its, so to speak, physical side, it arranges the body, animates it, moves and acts through it, and with the other side, the higher one, at the same time it is aware of itself, freely acts, contemplates the heavenly, reflects on the earthly and strives for the Divine and eternal.
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