The heavens declare the glory of God; and the
firmament proclaims [H]is handiwork. Day pours out the word to day, and night
to night imparts knowledge (Psalm 18: 1–2).
Both the
Fathers of the Church and modern behavioral scientists have long inquired into
the psycho-spiritual process of knowing. Both sources suggest the strong
effects that images and our interaction with the natural world have on this
process. Through experiencing the important role of icons in prayer and
everyday life, the Orthodox Christian gains a practical understanding of the
relation between the body, soul, and spirit and how sense perception can help
or hurt us in our journey to perceive God’s living presence.
Perception and the makeup of the creature
The focal point is the spirit
God
created mankind of not only body, but also soul and spirit . Consider the
spiritual meaning of God’s creation of mankind as recounted by the writer of
Genesis (2:7): “...then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”
We can consider that the word ‘spirit’ as describing the soul. As Solomon, the
son of King David and the writer of Ecclesiastes writes (12:7): “...the spirit
returns to God who gave it.” The prophet Zechariah, almost 500 years later,
during the time when the Jews were under the captivity of the Persians in
Babylon, said: “Thus says the Lord, who stretched out the heavens and founded
the earth and formed the spirit of man within him.” (12:1). St. Paul tells the
Corinthians “If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body” (1Cor
15:44).
The
implications of man being made as body and soul-spirit were not lost on the
Fathers of the Church. They recognized the differences in knowing or perception
between these elements of the creature person. Significantly, the Fathers
distinguish between sensation and reason, which come from the body, and
spiritual knowledge or perception, which come from the soul and leads us to
God. Ilias the Presbyter tells us: “...sense perception is involved with
practical and material realities...” (Philokalia III). St. Gregory Palamas
(Philokalia IV) notes: “since this faculty [sense perception] is united to our
reason we have invented multifarious arts, sciences and forms of knowledge.”
Knowing
with the mind-body
Modern
science has expanded our understanding of the physical body-mind knowing
process (Morelli, 2006). Psychologists readily make a distinction between
sensation and perception. Weiten (2007) notes: “Sensation involves the
stimulation of sense organs, whereas perception involves [the] selection,
organization and] interpretation of sensory input.” The scientific observation
underscores how God gives us neuro-physiological processes that underlie
sensation and perception as the way we know and understand His created world.
As discussed below, by understanding how these processes function, we can
better appreciate how mental-physical knowing either facilitates or hinders
spiritual knowledge or spiritual reason.
Capacity
of working consciousness
One
important discovery made by research psychologists is that the average
individual has seven slots, plus or minus two, in which to store information at
any one time. The initial study conducted some years ago by George Miller
(1956) had the whimsical title: The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two:
Some Limits on Our Capacity to Process Information.i When the capacity of
working consciousness is filled, new information is either not stored or
replaces the information currently in store. Applying these findings to prayer
and spiritual perception, ideally one’s working consciousness is focused on
that which is Godly. Sensory distractions, however, can interfere and replace
centering on the Divine with centering on what makes up the natural world.
Ilias the
Presbyter points out, “When the intellect has been drawn down from the realm
above [God] it will not return thither unless it is completely detached from
worldly things through concentration on things divine” (Philokalia III). St.
Diadochos of Photiki indicates: “While the intellect tries to think continually
of what is good, it suddenly recollects what is bad, since from the time of
Adam’s disobedience man’s power of thinking has been split into two modes
(Philokalia I).
St.
Anthony the Great tells us: “Man is attacked by his senses through the soul’s
passions. The bodily senses are five: sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch.
Through these five senses the unhappy soul is taken captive when it succumbs to
its four passions...self-esteem [narcissism], levity, anger and cowardice”
(Philokalia I). Based on this teaching, those striving for spiritual knowledge
work at focusing on the things of God so that we choose as much as possible
that what passes through our senses is Godly. St. Anthony tells us: “the eye
perceives the visible; the intellect apprehends the invisible” (Philokalia I).
Icons: An aid or hindrance to spiritual
perception?
True icons that aid spiritual perception:
Focusing on the kingdom of God
In the
Orthodox Church icons are considered windows or doors to heaven, rather than an
opportunity to contemplate nature. The ethos of the icon can be captured by the
first verse of the prayer before the Cherubimic Hymn said during the Holy
Saturday Vesperal Divine Liturgy: “Let all mortal flesh keep silence and in
fear and trembling stand pondering nothing earthly minded.” The perception
engendered by icons must be of the spirit, not what can be perceived by the
body or what is of nature. In this sense, icons can enhance spiritual
perception and point us to the kingdom of God.
For
example, consider the following two examples of Byzantine icons:
We can
also consider a Byzantine icon of a much later period which can aid us in
contemplating the transcendence and power of the Godhead:
When
gazing at the Trypitich of the Passion (below), who cannot share in the sorrow
of the Theotokos and the Beloved Disciple and cry out in their hearts as they
sing at Great Vespers on Holy Friday: “Glory to thy condescension, O Lover of
mankind?”
Cultivating
spiritual perception
Evdokimov
(1998) cites Our Lord’s words: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and
become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt
18:3), explaining that these words were taken literally by the Desert Fathers.
He reminds us of the instruction given to us by St. Isaac of Syria (Seventh
century AD): “When you prostrate yourself before God in prayer, become in your
own judgment like an ant, a worm, or a beetle. Do not speak before God as a man
who knows anything, but stammer and approach [H]im with a childlike spirit.”
Evdokimov interprets this as follows: “[w]e must read the desert Fathers
iconographically, just as we might contemplate an icon.”
Iconographer
and theologian Leonid Ouspensky (1978) describes the intent of the iconographer
in rendering a less-than-realistic model: “The unusual details of appearance
which we see in the icon—in particular in the sense organs: the eyes without
brilliance, the ears which are sometimes strangely shaped—-are emphasized in a
non-naturalistic manner, not because the iconographer is unable to do
otherwise, but because their natural state is not what he wants to represent” [emphasis
added].
The
theologian goes on to explain: “The icon’s role is not to bring us closer to
what we see in nature, but to show us a perception of the spiritual
world...This non-naturalistic manner of representing in the icon the organs of
sense conveys the deafness, the absence of reaction to the business of the
world, impassiveness, detachment from all excitement and, conversely, the
acceptance of the spiritual world by those who have reached holiness.”
False
icons: Paintings focusing on nature
Now let
us consider what Ouspensky refers to as the pseudo-icon period, that is, the
paintings that infiltrated the Eastern Church during the Western Church
incursion which started under the reign of Tsar Peter I (1689–1725 AD). How
could this happen? Peter I started a cultural revolution based on what he
considered Russian backwardness compared to the more progressive West.ii
Ouspensky (1992) summarizes: “The Orthodox icon was accused of being
“old-ritualist,” while the humble imitation of Roman Catholicism was accepted
as Orthodox and, as such, is obstinately defended even now by many members of
the hierarchy and the faithful.” [emphasis mine]
This
Russian practice continued into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and
even extended into the churches under Russian jurisdiction in the diaspora,
such as in North America. The influence of this pseudo-icon trend even reached
Orthodox Churches in the Holy Land, Lebanon, and Syria. Ouspensky continues:
“The abrupt changes under Peter I only accelerated the process of
desacralization championed by [pseudo-iconographers] Ushakov and Vladimirov...”
Below are examples of such pseudo-icon paintings:
Commenting
on such paintings, St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco, whom we commemorate
as the Wonderworker, said of the Western influence on the Russian Church: “It
also wrought horrible moral damage...[an] alien influence touch[ing]
Iconography as well. Images of the Western type began to appear, perhaps
beautiful from an artistic point of view, but completely lacking in sanctity,
beautiful in the sense of earthly beauty, but even scandalous at times, and
devoid of spirituality. Such were not Icons. They were distortions of Icons,
exhibiting a lack of comprehension of what an Icon actually is.” iii
Seeing
the naturalistic beauty in a face, or bodily features or even the natural world
would surely distract us from the inner stillness for which our spiritual
fathers tell us to strive.
Use
of the focused attention of our mind to aid spiritual perception
True Byzantine
icons focus us on the presence of God so that limited human working
consciousness is not filled up with the elements of nature, but is now detached
to be in the silence that can contemplate heavenly reality (Ouspensky, 1992).
Spiritual perception may be aided by a common, normal everyday experience
called dissociation, or splitting mental processing into two simultaneous
streams (Hilgard 1992, Spiegel, 2003).
For
example, all of us at times have been in a state of ‘focused attention,’ that
is, concentrating on an object or activity to the point that we become less
responsive to what is occurring around us. Our consciousness is focused on
something else other than the reality of God’s presence. Evdokimov (1998)
reminds us: “Familiarity with icons purifies the imagination, teaches “the
fasting of the eyes” in order to contemplate beauty chastely...the image of God
delights us.”
St.
Diadochos of Photiki tells us: “No one, however, can come to fear God
completely [with the soul purified and made malleable] unless he first
transcends all worldly cares; for when the intellect reaches a state of deep
stillness and detachment, then the fear of God begins...purifying it with full
perception from all gross and cloddish density, and thereby bringing it to a great
love for God’s goodness”iv (Philokalia I).
Research
on the limited capacity of working consciousness, cited above (Miller, 1956),
well explains this. If our minds are filled with non-Godlike, naturalistic
elements, even on a human level, they will displace our focus on God.
The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your
eye is sound, your whole body but if your eye is not sound, your whole body
will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is
the darkness! "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the
one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve God and mammon (Mt 6:22–24).
By Fr. George Morelli
Source: http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/view/Cultivating-spiritual-perception
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