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The Roman Catholic teaching of created saving grace arises not only from an erroneous idea of redemption but also from heretical teachings about God. The Greek Fathers teach that there is a distinction without a void between the uncreated divine essence and the uncreated divine energies, and they believe that the worthy partake only of the uncreated energy of God because the divine essence is incommunicable. In the West, on the other hand, they generally identify the uncreated essence with the uncreated energy of God, stating that God is actus purus. For this reason, Roman Catholics do not believe in the true communion of the uncreated divine energies because this would mean the divine essence is communicable to creatures. Therefore, in order to avoid pantheism, i.e., true communion of the divine essence by creatures, they teach that the communicable, saving divine grace in the world is created. Despite this, the Latins teach that there is also a relative communion of the divine essence by the saved and that the Saints enjoy eudaemonia in a vision of the divine essence, a teaching unacceptable to the Greek Fathers. Since the Roman Catholics believe that in the sacraments they commune created graces for their salvation, the rejection of such concepts by the Protestants should not seem strange, since for them the kindness of God suffices for salvation.

Man in the Western scholastic tradition does not participate personally in the truth of the cosmos. He does not seek to bring out the meaning, the logos of things, the disclosure of the personal activity of God in the cosmos, but seeks with his individualistic intellect to dominate the reality of the physical world. This stance truly forms the foundation of the entire phenomenon of modern technology.

I myself am Eastern Orthodox, though I was raised as a Protestant. There are any number of reasons for this choice—ranging from the doctrinal to the liturgical—but by far the most important is the fact that Orthodoxy is alone among the Christian possibilities in offering its adherent the ancient treasures of a contemplative method, in the form of Hesychasm. Not that there aren’t Catholic and even Protestant mystics and sages, to say nothing of saints. That’s not in question. But which of them is able to tell the rest of us how to attain to his vision, let alone transformation? Where is there a step-by-step, practical guide to theosis outside the Christian East? So yes again, I strongly recommend you investigate the Orthodox Church. I do not know where you live, nor what the possibilities are in your area. Needless to say, man being man, Orthodoxy is no more immune than any other religion to local variations, and indeed deformations, along what Schuon would have called “the human margin”. Perhaps I should add this as well, though it should go without saying: the Orthodox are by and large no more open to perennialism than are other traditional Christians. Nor should, or need, they be so long as they are seriously seeking to follow their own Way to God. The majority of men are so made that they cannot make concerted spiritual efforts unless they are first convinced that their Way is, if not alone true, then at least the best. Do not waste your time being surprised by this, or trying to turn conversations with the priests you may meet into interfaith dialogues. As I have pointed out before in this forum, one goes to Church after all, not as an exercise in comparative religion, but in order to be nourished and in time transformed by the God-given sacramental Mysteries. Moreover—and note well, for this is extremely important—having recourse to those Mysteries, by virtue of an initiatic affiliation with the Church, is the sine qua non if you wish to engage in the methodical use of an Invocation like the Jesus Prayer. You can certainly say this Prayer from time to time for brief periods and in a more or less devotional way. But if you wish it to be the centerpiece of a full-fledged method, you need to have the guidance of a wise elder (the Greek geron and Russian starets), and such guidance presupposes membership in the Church.

These are the centuries of the acme of Scholastic rationalism, the first philosophical system in history that organized knowledge as a complete corpus, that is, as a closed and dogmatic ideology. It interpreted the whole of physical and historical reality in a definitive and final way and set out this interpretation systematically with “axioms,” “principles,” and “laws” of rationalistic positivity. This totalitarian ideology found its political expression in the theocratic vision of the papacy’s claim to universal jurisdiction, in the concentration of all authority—political, spiritual, legislative, and juridical (the plenitudo potestatis)—in the hands of the Roman pontiff. With the Summa theologiae (1266-72), Thomas Aquinas introduced the principle of papal infallibility, thus establishing the axiom of an infallible leadership, the visible representation of a dogmatic authority not susceptible of rational doubt. Earlier, in April 1233, Pope Gregory IX had instituted the Holy Inquisition. And in 1252 Pope Innocent IV introduced torture as a method of examination in the trials of heretics, thus completing the model for all later totalitarian regimes for neutralizing opponents. Within two centuries we had a full development of the rationalistic positivity of knowledge, together with the directly utilitarian exploitation of this objectivized and self-sufficient knowledge through the creation of authoritarian structures of sociopolitical “effectiveness."

The realm Y is that of Individualities, Saints and entities of that order, charged with missions on different levels. By contrast, the realm of level SI is a vast reservoir of psychic (psjehique) entities that have no contact with the higher plane, including amongst them disincamate Personalities, who normally remain there to await their second Death32—the negative equivalent of the second Birth. This usually occurs on the fortieth day after death of the physical body. Orthodox Tradition expressly warns seekers against contacts with this realm which is so dangerous and full of the worst illusions. In monastic esoteric practice, special prayers are said toward off influences of this kind, particularly those visions that so often result from researches into certain teachings, even if well intentioned. These prayers are meant to avoid a fall into a mystical trap which manifests in the following way. It often happens that entities belonging to the SI domain seek contact with humans — more particularly with those who wish to establish a contact with the beyond. The aim of these entities is to interfere in terrestrial life; to draw on vitality and so gratify unsatisfied desires that they have carried beyond their physical life. The power of intervention of these entities is a function of the credulity they meet. The Orthodox Tradition classifies them in the category of little devils or imps (diablotins). The yearning to experience 'miracles', 'visions' etc., creates an atmosphere favourable for their appearance, which can assume various forms, sometimes perceptible to the senses. To give themselves importance, these apparitions take the names of illustrious men as well as those of Saints and Archangels; they even go so far as to borrow the names and even the appearance of the Virgin Mary or of Christ Himself. The Philokalia and the Doctrine contain many descriptions of this kind of case.

"The group often called the Fourth Way, which was initially led by G. I. Gurdjieff and P. D. Ouspensky, also has an interesting place for the Jesus Prayer and hesychasm in its system of thought. Gurdjieff was notoriously evasive about the sources for his writings and spiritual instructions and, consequently, he does not often speak directly about these practices as an infl uence. Since Ouspensky’s writings are the more systematic in relation to Gurdjieff’s, the practices appear more in these writings. In one text, Tertium Organum: A Key to the Enigmas of the World, Ouspensky speaks of the Philokalia and quotes from it based on selections from a book entitled Superconsciousness and the Paths to its Attainment by M. V. Lodizhensky who claims to have introduced an enthusiastic Tolstoy to the Philokalia (Ouspensky 1922: 285–8, 286–7f.). In the chapter ‘What is Yoga?’ from his book A New Model of the Universe, Ouspensky criticizes spiritual exercises within Catholicism, such as those of Ignatius of Loyola, as ‘nothing but manuals for creating hallucinations of a definite and stereotyped character’, insisting, rather, that ‘the most interesting work on religious practice are to be found in the literature of the Eastern Orthodox church’ (Ouspensky 1971: 235).

A woman's jealousy is doubly tyrannical and repulsive. Women are, therefore, particularly prone to demonism. There are demonic women— a most unpleasant and terrifying phenomenon. There is something distinctly unequal between the love of woman and that of man. A man's love is partial, that is to say, it does not engulf his whole being. The love of woman, on the other hand is more whole-hearted: she is, therefore, liable to be lost in and possessed by love. Her love can be envenomed, perilous and deadly; it is full of magic power; it is relentless, obdurate, pitiless, and despotic. It becomes particularly unbearable in view of the tragic disparity between the concrete woman and her ideal image conjured up by man's imagination. A woman's beauty is, more often than not, deceptive: she is inclined to lie more than man—in her appearance, in her behaviour and in her words. Her lying, however, is largely a form of self-defence, due, in a measure, to having been deprived of some of the most elementary rights ever since the patriarchal system prevailed over the matriarchal. Yet a woman's love may rise to remarkable heights. Such is the love of Ibsen's Solveg or of Marcel Jouhandeau's Veronique. This is love redeemed by and redeeming others in eternal purity and

...the task of philosophy consists in teaching men to submit joyously to Necessity which hears nothing and is indifferent to all. [...] It is necessary to choose: if you wish to be an empiricist, you must abandon the hope of founding scientific knowledge on a solid and certain basis; if you wish to have a solidly established science, you must place it under the protection of the idea of Necessity and, in addition, recognise this idea as primordial, original, having no beginning and consequently no end – that is to say, you must endow it with the superiorities and qualities that men generally accord to the Supreme Being. As we have seen, that is what was done by Aristotle, who thus deserves to be the consecrated pope or high priest of all men who think scientifically.

Whatsoever is not of faith is sin. As for the philosophy that does not dare to rise above autonomous knowledge and autonomous ethics, the philosophy that bows down will-lessly and helplessly before the material and ideal “data” discovered by reason and that permits them to pillage and plunder the “one thing necessary” – this philosophy does not lead man towards truth but forever turns him away from it.

Many philosophers, especially among the moderns, are hypnotised by facts quite as much as are the scientists. To listen to them, one would think that the fact by itself already constitutes truth. But what is a fact? How is a fact to be distinguished from a fiction or a product of the imagination? The philosophers, it is true, admit the possibility of hallucinations, mirages, dreams, etc.; and yet it is rarely recognised that, if we are obliged to disengage the facts from the mass of direct or indirect deliverances of the consciousness, this means that the fact by itself does not constitute the final court of judgement. It means that we place ourselves before every fact with certain ready-made norms, with a certain “theory” that is the precondition of the possibility of seeking and finding truth. What are those norms? What is this theory? Whence do they come to us, and why do we blithely accord them such confidence? Or perhaps other questions should be put: Do we really seek facts? Is it facts that we really need? Are not facts simply a pretext, a screen even, behind which quite other demands of the spirit are concealed? [...] Experience and fact irritate us because they do not give us knowledge. It is not knowledge that fact or experience brings us. Knowledge is something quite different from experience or from fact, and only the knowledge which we never succeed in finding either in the facts or in experience is that which reason, “our better part,” seeks with all its powers.

The historians would like to believe that they do not judge at all, that they are content simply to relate “what happened,” that they draw from the past and set before us certain “facts” that have been forgotten or lost in the past. It is not the historians who pronounce “judgement”; this rises of itself or is already included in the facts. In this respect the historians do not at all distinguish themselves, and do not wish to be distinguished, from the representatives of the other positive sciences: the fact is, for them, the final and supreme court of judgement; it is impossible to appeal from it to anyone or anything else.

Without a divine transcendent nature of knowledge, eternally inexhaustible in its manifestation of light and power, we would soon finish the work of knowing the truth. That would mean, however, that it is limited and that the thirst of our nature to know is finite. But we see that it can’t be so. Our nature in this case would reach an insupportable boredom and our immortality itself would be without purpose. Reincarnations were invented as some kind of palliative for this boredom.

These observations throw light on and enlarge the meaning of the holy Fathers’ concept of creation, as a symbol from which divine logoi, which have their origin in the divine Logos, can be extracted. But the question arises: Is the extraction of these logoi from nature and their relationship with the divine Logos realized by the discursive method of forming notions and deductions from the things which are seen, and then discovering their first cause, or is it realized by a faster intuition? Thomistic scholasticism doesn’t admit another way of knowing the logoi of things and of God in the world except the discursive-deductive, which according to it, is the only way of knowledge. The holy Fathers and more recent Orthodox theologians sustain that the penetration into the spiritual depths beyond the natural world can’t take place by the rational way. A symbolical knowledge of the world, distinct from the rational, corresponds with the symbolic structure of the world. The categories of reason define, that is set limits, and distinguish one thing from another. Thus they are applicable only to the limited realities which differ from one another. As the divinity is infinite, inexhaustible, it can’t be the object of rational determinations. Reason fits only the natural world, not the spiritual.

That evening Father Vasily told us that he had received a letter from Father Ivan Kozlov of the Chembarsk District of Penzensk Province, asking that Father Pavel give his opinion concerning incidents of the kind described in the sermons of Grigory Diachenko: namely in Moscow sometime in the 17th century, people began to hear knocking, a loud racket, and other disturbances coming from an almshouse. The one knocking called himself by the name of a Boyar’s son who had recently died. It was noticed that all these spiritual shenanigans were absolutely in keeping with the character of this Boyar’s son, for he had been very unruly. How should one view these incidents? This is what Father Pavel said: “Final death comes to a man much later than the moment of death attested by the physicians, for a man has a number of other bodies besides the body in the strict sense of the word, the physical body; he also has an etheric body, an astral body, a mental body, etc. Final death comes around the fortieth day, when (according to the Holy Fathers) the heart decays. So that when a man dies, his astral shells remain in the world and can be possessed by evil spirits who, so to speak, galvanize the astral corpse, much in the same way that it is possible to send one ’s energy into a corpse and make it move (as in the case of the false vivification of corpses by yogis). The evil spirit thus has reason to call itself by the dead man’s name. We therefore see in these shenanigans the manifestation of a man’s character and that his corpse is an agent acting under the influence of outside powers.

Western Christianity has long been familiar with stigmatization—hemorrhaging through the skin and wounds developing under the influence of the intense contemplation of Christ’s wounds. Even though stigmatization can be induced by hypnosis (though I do not wish to give it such a cheap explanation), there is undoubtedly a profound difference between hypnosis-induced stigmatization and the stigmatization experienced by Francis of Assisi. Stigmatization does not exist in Orthodoxy, and it exists among Catholics because they base their psychic life on imagination.4 Psychologically, imagination—the vivid sensuous representation of certain images—creates favorable conditions for the development of stigmatization, whereas Orthodox asceticism requires the expulsion of these vivid sensuous representations.

Psychic trauma, wound of the soul, this term of contemporary psychopathology is a term borrowed from asceticism. “Heal the wounds of my soul” is a common expression in asceticism. Sin is viewed as a wound of the soul, and in order to restore a person’s equilibrium it is necessary that heaven itself heal the wound and extract the splinter. It is clear that the soul is most subject to injury in childhood, when it has not yet acquired a protective shell; words of abuse, instances of fear, etc. can produce injuries not only in the soul but also in one ’s spiritual life. Therefore one can see a particularly serious and tragic meaning in the Savior’s words about anyone who offends children. At first glance it might appear that evil thoughts pass by without leaving any trace in the child. But these may be the most frightening words in the whole Gospel. And it is clear that the offence is not a momentary state but a preparation for psychic and perhaps spiritual ruin, in which the child himself is perhaps not to blame.

Both sitting and kneeling indicate an incapability of active self-determination. The Greeks considered it indecent to sit or kneel, while the Romans actually recommended sitting; here we have activity and passivity. This explains the sharp distinction between clergy and laity in Catholicism: the former act, while the latter observe; meanwhile in Orthodoxy everything belongs to the clergy. In Catholicism the lay person must be like a corpse; he must be totally in the hands of the father confessor; whereas in Orthodoxy a person can develop in his astral sphere and be born spiritually, but he must move by himself. Meanwhile, in Catholicism everything is opposite to this: everything is directed toward weakening the spirit and making a person passive. The organ, especially when a person is at rest, submerges him into in a dreamy state and facilitates the development of imagination; and imagination leads not to active attention but to lack of vigilance and spiritual delusion. One must do what one is commanded to do, without taking into account the internal process of life. All of a person’s behavior is constrained. Psychic and external life lies under infinite constraint.