On spiritual delusion
A man who boasts of his own virtue proves by this very thing that he has no true virtue. Inward contentment of heart is a sign of his folly.
Pride is such a skilful painter that it steals your ugliness away from every side, does not even let you remember it, and meanwhile paints your portrait with such beauty that it gives wings to your self-satisfaction. Therefore, because of hindrance and failure on every side, I have laid this down in my heart: from the first day of my departure until my end I will keep my sight within these bounds — that I have always been in error and until death I shall be in error, and I will lean only upon the abyss of God’s goodness.
If you think yourself greater than anyone, you are loathsome before the Lord. Often do not believe even what you have seen with your own eyes and heard with your own ears — both the one and the other may be deceiving you.
If you see a man who takes counsel with no one and does not carry out the advice he is given, then expect that in a short time he will fall into delusion.
Hell is crammed with proud virgins; what God needs is a humble person.
Spiritual rapture is the lot of the perfect. It is given us by God only when we need it. Otherwise it would be for us like a knife or fire in the hands of an infant.
Everything granted by God turns to evil for us if in it we seek not God’s glory but our own.
Instead of being united to God, people grow proud, fall into delusion, judge others and set themselves on a level with the saints. Some even think themselves saints. God allows them, as a punishment and to bring them to their senses, to commit some shameful sin, by the weight of which they often come to themselves, repent and are set right. But often even this does not help them, and they perish for ever.
Fear the temptation that comes from an immoderate desire for a holy life. You may want to surpass everyone in asceticism, to fast extremely strictly, to live a contemplative life in absolute solitude. Fear these temptations, which hide behind righteous thoughts. Do not fall into their trap; it will destroy you.
A sinner can repent easily, but repentance is hard for one whom the devil has deceived — so long as the deceiving devil is not exposed and brought to light. When his cunning is revealed, the evil one can hide no longer.
Remember two thoughts and fear them: the first, which tells you that you are a saint, and the second, which tells you that you will perish. Both these thoughts are from the evil one; there is no truth in them. Rather think thus: I am the greatest of sinners, but God is merciful, He loves people greatly and will forgive me my sins.
People fall into delusion through inexperience or through pride. If it is from inexperience, God heals it easily; if it is from pride, the soul will be tormented for a long time until it learns humility. And when it has learned humility, then God heals it. The fathers say that at a vision sent by the evil one the soul is troubled; but only a humble soul, one that does not consider itself worthy of a vision, feels the working of the devil and is frightened and shudders. Whereas a deluded person may feel neither fear nor disquiet, because he desires visions and thinks himself worthy of them, and therefore the devil deceives him easily. When we weep for our sins and humble the soul, we have no visions and do not desire them; but when we abandon mourning for our sins and humility, then they may carry us away.
The devil tries to cast a man into delusion by false visions before his death and so to destroy him. Therefore at such visions feel your own nothingness and say boldly to the evil one: “Depart, accursed one, into the outer darkness, for I need neither visions nor anything else but the good favour of my Lord and the intercession of the All-holy Theotokos.” Even if you think these visions are from God, still try to put them away as best you can. Do not think that by your unworthiness, in rejecting these visions, you will anger God. If the vision is truly from God, He Himself knows how to convince you, and will not count this an offence, because He knows that you were on your guard. He who gives grace to the humble will not take it away for a deed done out of a sense of humility.
Father Cherubim asked Father Anthony, an elder of the Kavsokalyvia skete, whether anything supernatural had ever happened in his life. The venerable father answered: “My son, know that such supernatural things happen very rarely; but if they ever do happen, the sign of their genuineness will be that the one to whom it was revealed keeps it wholly secret, like something precious, like a gift of God. He will never speak of it, and avoids every hint or slight gesture that would show and disclose this gift of God. If on the Holy Mountain you meet a man who announces such a gift of God, doubt that it is genuine. Since I came to the Holy Mountain I have met many worthy fathers, ascetics and men of the deepest humility. God whispered secretly in our hearts that, because of their manifest holiness, they possessed many heavenly visions and revelations. Yet they never let a word about it escape them. Instead they often repeated that they were sinners and were waiting for mercy from God. So too in the lives of the holy fathers we find that they avoided disclosing such a gift. Even the holy Apostle Paul, though he was the chief of the apostles, did not ascribe to himself the rapture to the third heaven, but said wisely and with discernment: ‘I knew a man.’ You have probably read the life of Andrew the Fool for Christ. Because of his great holiness and humility, heavenly things were not distinguished by him from the things of everyday life, but often interwove with one another. Being on earth and performing his follies, he could at the same time behold the heavenly world. This he always kept secret; the only one to whom he disclosed it was his spiritual father. And that so as to be under his control, lest he fall into the devil’s delusion. Only a little of his visions did he reveal to Epiphanius, his faithful disciple. Therefore, my son, I say to you again: never take an interest in such things. Seek only the mercy of God, and you will be saved.”
Delusion is the damaging of human nature by falsehood. Every person is in a state of delusion, brought about by the fall of our first parents. We are all in delusion. To know this is the greatest protection against delusion. The greatest delusion is not to consider oneself to be in delusion. We are all deceived, all beguiled, all in falsehood; we all need to be set free by the truth. The Truth is our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us make this Truth our own by faith in Him, let us cry out to this Truth in prayer, and it will lead us out of the abyss of demonic deceptions.
As wrong action with the mind leads us into deception and delusion, exactly the same happens with wrong action of the heart. The desire to see spiritual visions, and the striving after them with a mind that is not cleansed of the passions, not renewed and restored by the Holy Spirit, is full of senseless pride. Filled with the same pride and lack of discernment is the heart’s desire and striving to delight in holy, spiritual, divine feelings when it is not yet at all ready for such delight. Just as an uncleansed mind that wishes to see divine visions but has no means of doing so invents visions for itself and deceives itself by them, so also the heart: when it tries to experience divine sweetness and other divine feelings and does not find them in itself, then it invents them itself, is deceived by them and destroys itself, for it enters the realm of falsehood and communion with the demons, submits to their action and becomes enslaved to their power.
To make progress in prayer and to escape delusion, self-denial is needed, which teaches us only to collect our attention during prayer. Then the labour of prayer becomes easier and lighter, and so do the temptations that always accompany ascetic struggle. But if someone tries prematurely to discover the working of grace in himself, upon such a one — as St Nilus of Sora says, in agreement with the other holy fathers — heavy demonic temptations beyond his strength will be allowed. At the root of such a striving lie unrecognised arrogance and self-conceit, which seem to him to be zeal.
Until the working of the Holy Spirit is manifested in the heart, the subtle working of the blood either remains entirely unexplained or is little understood, and may even be taken for the working of grace if due caution is not shown. This caution consists in this: that until the time of cleansing and renewal by the Holy Spirit, no feeling of the heart should be held to be right except the feeling of repentance, the sorrow for sins that is steeped in the hope of mercy. Of the fallen nature God accepts only one single sacrifice of the heart, only one feeling, one state: “Sacrifice to God is a broken spirit: a broken and humbled heart God will not despise” (Ps. 50:19).
We must pay special attention to the working of vainglory in us, whose action upon the blood is very hard to notice and to understand. Vainglory almost always works together with a disguised passion of fornication and gives a person the most refined of sinful pleasures. The poison of this pleasure is so subtle that many take the delight given by vainglory and the passion of fornication for the consolation of conscience, even for the working of divine grace. The ascetic deceived by this delight falls little by little into a state of delusion: taking this condition for a state of grace, he gradually comes wholly under the power of the fallen angel.
The humble ascetic is content that he has been counted worthy of the remembrance of God. He considers this a great mercy of the Creator toward a beggarly and helpless creature — man. He does not consider himself worthy to receive grace, and does not seek to discover its working in himself, for he knows from the holy fathers that the beginning of such seeking is in vainglory, from which delusion and falling arise.
So that you do not fall into delusion during the prayer of the mind, allow in yourself no imagining, no image and no apparition.
If anyone, with a self-assurance founded on self-conceit, tries to attain high states of prayer, and has acquired not true but satanic zeal, the devil will easily entangle such a one in his own net, as his servant.
The books of the fathers, especially those which teach true obedience, watchfulness of mind and stillness, attention and the prayer of the mind — that is, the prayer performed by the mind in the heart — are suited to the monastic order alone, and not to every Orthodox Christian in general. The God-bearing fathers, in handing down the teaching on this prayer, affirm that its beginning and unshakeable foundation is obedience, from which true humility is born, and humility guards the one who labours in prayer from every delusion that follows self-will. True monastic obedience and the complete cutting off of one’s own will and judgement are impossible for lay people… So dangerous is this work — prayer that is not merely of the mind but is performed by the mind in the heart with art — that even true obedients (those who have not only cut off but wholly put to death their own will and judgement before their fathers, the true and most experienced teachers of this prayer) live always in fear and trembling lest in this prayer they fall into some delusion, though God constantly protects them for the sake of the true humility they have gained by God’s grace through true obedience. How much more do lay people, who live without obedience, if they begin such prayer merely by reading such books, face the danger of falling into some delusion, which threatens all who begin the labour of this prayer by their own will. The saints called this prayer the art of arts; who can learn it without an artist, that is, without an experienced teacher?
That form of prayer which is described in the Philokalia must be performed together with a spiritual father who knows the work, before his eyes. If anyone undertakes this work alone, by the description only, he will not escape delusion. Only the outward side of the work is described here, while what the spiritual father adds to it to fill out the inward structure is not shown. One who performs such labour without a guide is naturally left with the outward labour alone; he strictly carries out what concerns the position of the body, the breathing and the looking into the heart. And since such methods can naturally bring a man to a certain degree of collectedness of attention and warmth, then, having no trustworthy judge to tell him the worth of the changes taking place in him, he comes to the thought that this is the very thing he is seeking, that is, that he has been illumined by grace, when it is not so, and thinks that he is clothed in grace when he is without grace. This is precisely the delusion which will afterwards twist the whole of his life to come.
A man can lose his mind from the Jesus Prayer if, while performing this prayer, he does not abandon the sins and sinful habits which his conscience condemns.
Do not be beguiled by inward sweetnesses; without the cross they are unsteady and dangerous. Consider every person better than yourself. Without this thought, even if someone works a miracle, he will still be far from God. The life of the nun Magdalina
A certain man named Malpas, a native of Edessa, at one time became the inventor of the heresy of the Euchites. He led a lofty life, endured heavy toil and afflictions. It is said that he was a disciple of the blessed Julian (called Saba), and travelled with him for a short time in Sinai and Egypt. Malpas saw the great fathers of that time; he saw the blessed Anthony the Great and heard from him mysterious words about the purity of the soul and about salvation, and heard a detailed discourse about the passions. In this conversation Anthony the Great explained that the mind, after being cleansed, contemplates spiritual mysteries, and that the soul can attain dispassion by grace after it has been freed by the keeping of the commandments from its old passions and has regained the health of its original nature. And when Malpas, in the flowering of his youth, heard these words, he was kindled like fire and returned to his own city. And since the passion of love of glory had been lit in him, he chose the dwelling of a hermit and gave himself to labour, to merciless hardships and to unceasing prayer.
When the passion of love of glory flared up in him beyond measure — that is, when he was given the hope of receiving those high gifts of which he had heard — he did not perceive the devil’s wiles, lies and craftiness, by which he snatches away the strong to their destruction. Malpas had not learned the art of withstanding the enemies of truth; he set his hope on labour, hardship, poverty, ascetic struggle and patience, when he had not acquired the most ancient weapons for the fight with the evil one — self-abasement, humility, contrition of heart. He forgot even the Scripture which says: when you have done the work, kept the commandments and borne the hardship, count yourselves unprofitable servants. On the contrary, a self-assurance founded on his own labour inflamed him; he burned with the desire to receive that high gift of which he had heard. And then, after a long time, when the devil noticed that he had no humility and thirsted only for visions in order to test the mysteries of which he had heard, he appeared to him in shining light and said: I am the Comforter, sent to you from the Father to make you worthy of the visions you strive after as the reward of your deeds, to grant you dispassion and to give you rest from labours henceforth. In return the treacherous enemy demanded worship. Malpas, made a fool, did not sense the evil one’s warfare; he received him at once with joy, worshipped him and in that same instant came under his power. And the enemy, instead of a divine vision, filled him with demonic fantasies, made him abandon labour for the truth, puffed him up and beguiled him with the vain hope of dispassion, saying: now you need neither works, nor the affliction of the body, nor the fight with passions and thoughts; and afterwards he made him the heresiarch of the Euchites. When these heresiarchs multiplied and their abominable and false teaching came to light, the bishop of that time drove them out.
“I remember one woman, greatly afflicted, whom no one among people helped. The Lord willed to help her and sent her a certain vision. After this vision the devil suggested this to the woman: ‘Who knows, perhaps God counted you worthy of such a vision only because He wants to lay the greatest mission upon you.’ The woman believed the thoughts suggested by the devil and was caught in the evil one’s snare. But God had mercy on her again — she was given a revelation in which an unseen voice counselled her: ‘Write a letter to Father Paisios and describe in it all the visions you have ever had.’ The woman described everything and sent me the letter. She really had had visions, but all of them from the devil. Only the first and the last were from God. In the end the poor woman believed me and was able to tear herself free from the trap the devil had set through delusion.”
Father Paisios used to tell how once an unbridled sinner came to him and said: the Theotokos has appeared to me. The “Theotokos” had said to him: “My child, announce to the people that Thessalonica will sink into the sea and everyone will drown.” He burst out: “O All-holy One! If people are in danger of drowning, I will save them like Moses!” And the “Theotokos” gave him both a “blessing” and a sign in confirmation that she had laid this “great mission” upon him: “My child, I entrust the whole world to you. Go to Veria, to such and such a man. He will give you a cross, so that you may baptise and save the world.” And in Veria the devil, in the form of the Theotokos, appeared to that man too and commanded him: give a cross to such and such a man. And so one deluded man gave to the second deluded man, a false messiah who had come to him, a cross for the salvation of the human race. Happily, the saviour of mankind came to Father Paisios for a blessing and told him everything. “The poor man was already spiritually ill,” the venerable father recalled; “instead of going to a spiritual father and repenting, he found the devil and was caught in his trap for good.”
“A man must never ask for the vision of the divine light, for revelations, gifts and the like. Of God we must ask only one thing — that He grant us repentance. Then the merciful Lord will give us everything we need. Once, when I was living on Mount Sinai in the cave of St Epistimi, the devil wished… to do me a service. Near my cell there were three or four steps, and at night I used to light them with a lighter. One time I tried to light the lighter, but in vain. Suddenly a strong column of light, bright as a searchlight, fell on me from one of the rocks. ‘No,’ I said to myself, ‘I must keep away from such searchlights,’ — and I turned back. The light vanished at once.”
Some deluded people spread their ideas within the bosom of the Church. Therefore there is a great danger that their followers, when they learn that what they believed was delusion, may go astray and fall away from the Church. If a man repents sincerely and is freed from delusion, he must humble himself and tell his followers that they are in error. Let him try to bring them out onto the right path. But if a deluded person is exposed and does not want to leave his delusion, then his followers should be warned gently and tactfully. A layman who obeys his own thought goes out of his mind. A monk falls into delusion. A monk should take no pills; his pills are repentance and humility. As for psychotropic medicines, they are sometimes useful. After taking them the deluded person feels tired, is overcome with drowsiness, his appetite grows, and he now perceives himself not as a bodiless angel but as a person in the flesh. When a person falls into delusion, he follows his own thought. Therefore there is no other means of bringing him to his senses but one: he must himself feel the dreadful state into which he has fallen, acknowledge it, submit to his spiritual father, never believe his own thought and unceasingly ask the Lord for mercy.
