The Brethren also asked Abba Haggadah, amongst all good works, which of the virtue is required the greatest effort? He answered, Forgive me, but I think there is no labor greater than that of prayer for God. For every time a man wants to pray, his enemies and demons want to prevent him, for they know that it is only by turning him from prayer that they can enter his journey. Whatever good work a man undertakes, if he perseveres in it, he will attain rest, but prayer is warfare to the last breath. Well, that's pretty strong. I'd like to read another quotation to contrast to that. This is from a fellow who writes on TM. The name of the book is The Seven States of Consciousness. He's talking about the moral issue. Now, I don't quote this simply in ridicule. It's a problem that has to be solved. The Maharishi's basic insight depends on a basic postulate of the Upanishads, indeed

[01:08]

of all interiorly oriented religions, that the state of pure awareness is, in its own nature, blissful. When you arrive at the center, as it were, at a state of pure consciousness, it's an untroubled, unclouded, blissful, extremely joyful state. If this is true, Maharishi argues, that movement toward it must be natural. It is to be reached not by control but by letting go, not by concentrating the mind but by letting it expand. That's the principle of TM, that you move toward the center by delight, by pleasure, actually. Of course, it's not only in TM. In TM, it's kind of unilateral. I mean, that seems to be the principle. And the other principle of effort, of difficulty, and so on, doesn't seem to be present at all. It certainly can't be all that way. We must recognize difficulty and effort in meditation. Anyway, that's the way it's widely presumed. Thus, the principle which underlies transcendental meditation is that one does not try to gain

[02:13]

a state of pure awareness but allows oneself to be drawn in that direction naturally. Bliss, joy, pleasure, supplies the motive power that draws the attention inward as gravity draws matter toward the center of the world. The attention is constantly searching for happiness. In cybernetic parlance, it is a scanning mechanism looking for happiness in the external world for the sense of security. But since the external world is, as Heraclitus pointed out, in a constant state of flux, the happiness which the mind discovers there can never be permanent. The inner pure awareness is permanent happiness, however. And therefore, if the attention is once pointed toward it, no deviation will occur. The passage of the attention from the superficial level of the objective world through the various intermediate regions of the mind to the innermost layer of all the self is the process of transcending in transcendental meditation. And this you do through the mantra.

[03:15]

That's quite a contrast between those two. How do they deal with that? I don't know. You just go back to the mantra. They don't consider it to be true. Evidently not. Which is true. Which is the same thing that you use in the semantra. But what's striking is that the difference in the degree of difficulty or the way, the kind of presentation of this being a basic struggle, and essentially a struggle, and this being essentially completely without struggle, just a matter of letting go into following a greater attraction, just like that. Two views of the spiritual life. Two views of prayer and meditation. Of course, one is talking about prayer and the other is talking about meditation. Remember that, excuse me, you remember that section in The Cloud of Unknowing? Chapter 26. We were talking about this last Sunday, the Sunday before.

[04:28]

Chapter 26, I recall. And he talks about this work of his, this meditation in The Cloud of Unknowing as a work, and he says it's a hard work, too. He said, Work very hard now for the present and beat upon this high cloud of unknowing, then rest after it. So this is hard. A difficult task indeed, as he has, who commits himself to this work. In fact, it will be exceedingly difficult unless he either has a very special grace or has been accustomed to the work for a long period of time. And then he goes on. Now, I ask you, in what does this difficult task consist? Why is it so hard? Certainly not in that devout stirring of love that is continually brought in his will, not by himself, but by the hand of Almighty God. Sounds a little bit like the Maharishi, doesn't it? Well, here he's talking about a movement towards something else, and the Maharishi was talking about a movement towards the center of the human being, right? So it's like gravity being drawn down towards the earth. But you can look at what the author of the cloud is saying in those terms, too, even though he's talking about using the word special.

[05:34]

For God is always ready to bring this work to pass, and each soul is disposed to carry it out. When a person does whatever is his power, and has done so for a long time, how do they carry on the work? Whatever is in his power, sure. But I ask you, in what does this difficult task consist? So that's our problem, between those two views. Certainly it consists in treading down the remembrance of all the creatures that God has ever made, and in holding them beneath the cloud of forgetting of which we have spoken before. So the difficulty is with the distraction. The difficulty is clearing the mind. All the difficult work is contained in this, for this is man's fundamental struggle with the help of grace. And the other mentioned above, that is to say the stirring of love, that is the work only of God. Now, he says the stirring of love, and Maharishi says, or whoever is editing, says it's the movement of delight, the movement of the mind towards the center, or towards pure consciousness, under the power of the attraction to pleasure, to delight.

[06:39]

Even though the spatial metaphor is different, the two are not necessarily what are called for. Go on with your work, therefore, and surely I promise you that he shall not fail in his. But still there remains a contrast between the effortless way and the effortful way. And Agatha is saying this is the hardest thing in the world. And the author of the class is saying that this is really man's fundamental struggle. And the other view is saying, well, this is just what you've got. It's just like gravity. They talk about it in a very ascetical way. They talk about benefits of it in the same way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think if you look at the way they live, I mean, it's terrific. Zen people, Tibetan Buddhist people, and so on.

[07:44]

I really don't make any distinction between the two states. I don't make an alignment with those other schools. I make a distinction. Options. Yeah. Not only terms that he can understand, but he's presenting it almost in the way that advertising presents a product, you know? What's a comparable thing? A product that might be sold as having only virtues and no problems. Only virtues and no defects. They're promising instant satisfaction. But the thing is going to do it. You don't have to do anything. The technique is going to do it. Just that nature is going to do it. Or you have to just buy it. But there's another element, too, there, which is going to happen. In number four here, the sayings of the father, the same chapter, Abba Avagrius said, If your soul grows weak, pray. As it is written, pray in fear and trembling, earnestly and watchfully.

[08:47]

We ought to pray like that, especially because our unseen and wicked enemies are vehemently trying to hinder us. You get an emphasis on the demons and standing, especially in the way of prayer in the desert forest. That's what Agaton said there, too. He said it's a struggle because there's somebody opposing you. There's something getting in the way of your prayer, which is not just natural. And if you look at Avagrius and his work on prayer, there's a whole cluster. In fact, that's kind of a basic principle in the whole thing, but quite a few, especially strong ones. And his chapters on prayer, numbers 46, 47, 49, 50. Page 62 and 63. The devil so passionately envies a man who prays that he employs every device to frustrate that purpose. Thus he does not cease to stir up thoughts of various affairs by means of the memory. He stirs up all the passions by means of the flesh. In this way he hopes to offer some obstacle

[09:49]

to that excellent course pursued in prayer on the journey towards God. When the demon has done all that he can and still finds that his efforts to prevent the prayer of the virtuous man are unavailing, he will let up for a time. But again, after a while, he avenges himself on this man of prayer, for he will either engender the man's anger or provoke him to some unreasonable pleasure. 49. This is the strongest one. Every war be fought between us and the impure spirits is engaged in for no other cause than that of spiritual prayer. So prayer is the center of the spiritual warfare. This is an activity that is intolerable to the devils. They find it so hostile and oppressive. To us, on the other hand, it is both pleasant in the highest degree and spiritually thoughtful. And in his last words, he reminds us of a minor issue. He says it's pleasant in the highest degree. In other words, this is a work that is congenial to us,

[10:50]

that agrees with our deepest nature, because Evagrius would say that prayer... ...is the highest activity of the intellect. Now, the Maharishi might say that meditation is the realization of the Self, or something like that, the activity of the Self. But they're talking about the same thing, basically. They're talking about the core, the center of man. And prayer or meditation is congenial to that. It's its most joyous activity. But there's something in the way, which Evagrius brings out, in which the Maharishi doesn't. And Evagrius attributes it to the demons. The author of The Cloud attributes it to our sinfulness. If you read on there, he talks about all the purification that we have to go through. And it's the junk that's in us that gets in the way of this joyful activity, which is the stirring of love. The reason why we have to fight in order to clear the space for it. It's an activity that's intolerable to them, Evagrius says. Why do the demons wish to commit acts of gluttony, wish us, actually, to commit acts of gluttony,

[11:51]

impurity, avarice, wrath, resentment, and the other evil passions in us? Here is the reason. That the spirit in this way should become dull and consequently rendered unfit to pray. For when man's irrational passions are thriving, he's not free to pray and to seek the word of God. You see, his vision of Christian life is sort of centered in contemplation, so that contemplation is the way in which man realizes his end, already in this life. And this is the thing that provokes, for some reason, the envy of the devil. And so the devil opposes it, and that's where man's struggle comes from, in Evagrius's terms. It may seem like it was very far into our minds, that conception of the devil. There was something in him. And a very strong envy, not only in Evagrius, but in those of his brothers. So I don't know where the demons are in TM. Maybe they're waving people by. Go on! Like a coachman in the first place.

[12:56]

Well, that's the thing, you see. It doesn't have anything to do with God. It doesn't have anything to do with God. It's man's thing. It's all right. I mean, they've got no reason to get in the way. If we look at it that way, from the point of view of demonology, there's no threat to them. In fact, it's kind of good, because it tends to be idolized. It tends to turn into a religion, whereas it's not a religion. Or at least it's not a religion in our sense. It's not theistic. But it tends to be a final coin for a man. You see, when he gets into that kind of meditation, he thinks he's found it. This is the center. This is creative intelligence. This is the goal. And so he stops there. And it's a perfect kind of blind out, because he's in bliss, a certain kind of bliss. And he thinks that's the way it is. But very often, the human doesn't change his life. He doesn't have a moral code to go with it. That's it. So he can be a third wheel already, and he does, you know. So he doesn't change his life. That's the other aspect. From one point of view, he's got this goal which is short of the goal.

[14:09]

In other words, he can turn into an idol, like that fellow said in his article. Meditation itself can be an idol, because it's a satisfying activity, which remains short of God, but it's an image of God. Because what a person is doing is enjoying the image of God, which is himself. He's enjoying, as it were, the light which comes not from God, but from the image. Or it comes from God, but filtered, reflected in the image, instead of going through the image to God. And secondly, he doesn't have to face the dark side of his life, because he's already there. So he doesn't have to go through all of that stuff, until he's in some sort of refuge from facing the other side of his life. So those are two aspects of inadequacy, which is true, I think, of TM, and also in some degree of it. True of meditation techniques that don't get people to God, or that tend to satisfy them prematurely. Now, a lot of those things are good. I don't think there's anything wrong with TM. It's only the sort of the way

[15:13]

that it prevents going further, in those two ways. The way that it satisfies a man before he should be satisfied, leaving him short of God, and offering him an alternative from converting his heart, from going through the dark part of his life, and really changing himself and being transformed. It's a short circuit. But the mantra in itself can be dangerous. Yeah, that's another aspect, which has always been difficult for me. The two things, the little initiation service there, which has really a religious significance, and the mantra, which is, I think, a religious term, if not the name of a deity, at least it's one of the Hindu, and not a Christian, not a theistic, religious significance. So that, for me, has always been... Most people can take that in their stride, but I see it as a difficult relationship. Anyway, I don't want to make a big digression on TM.

[16:16]

But TM is a kind of a very clear example of a certain direction of spirituality in America, and in the West in general. Spirituality, which is basically humanistic, or which may be connected with the East in an Eastern context, but which is a very different path from Christianity. And it's very questionable whether it can be integrated with Christianity, whether it's not just a decision, this or that. It's not simply a decision, one or the other, and not a Christian integration. Because often you find you're getting into a worldview in everything which is contrary to that of reparation. I don't know much about TM, so I won't say too much about it. Yeah, yeah. It's all one piece, somehow. You wouldn't think so, but the meditation itself seems to lend itself to this sort of a cosmology, to this sort of a philosophy. That's the way.

[17:18]

It's very difficult to detach something, actually, from the context in which it grew up. Like the Jesus prayer, for example. Yeah. The Sardinians would say, the person didn't believe, and this particular person didn't believe in the Jesus prayer, and he's a Christian. But the one in the prayer is a particularly concurrent. Sure, sure. But the Jesus prayer belongs, really, in its whole context, in its whole context of faith, of theology, spirituality. And if it's out of that context, it may bring the context. You see, by converting the person, it may bring the context of God, or it may not. It may just be used as a technique and, therefore, not really have the frustratedness in its purpose. Okay. To continue with the sayings of the fathers in this speech. I don't think I've, I guess I've never heard of a lot of issues. Avagrius also said,

[18:20]

when a contrary thought enters the heart, do not cast around here and there in your prayer, but be simply penitent, and so you will sharpen your sword against your assailant. He's always talking in terms of the battle, sort of. The idea, don't think about the thought. There's also a principle in centering prayer. Don't think about the distraction or the temptation, but simply return to the center. Now, in centering prayer, you return to the center by repeating your prayer word, right? Here, you would return to the center by an act of penitence, by contrition. This is very typical of the earliest, you know, the notion of penitence or penthos, or contrition being a remedy for everything. And that gets you automatically back to the center. You can do that. We can't always connect with that so easily, so we have to do something else. For instance, the Jesus prayer. Now, if you use the Jesus prayer, that would be both, you see, because it's both a prayer word. It's a repeated prayer.

[19:21]

And the Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, I'm sinning. So it puts you right back in that position of penitence or contrition. So it has those two sides to it. Number six. Epiphanius, the bishop from Cyprus, was told this by the abbot of this monastery in Palestine. By your prayers we have kept our rule. We carefully observe the offices of terse, sex, known, and vespers. It was Benedictine. Epiphanius rebuked him and said, Then you are surely failing to pray at other times. A true monk ought to pray without ceasing, but always to be singing psalms in his heart. It seems to me that Cassian remarked about the lukewarmness of the monks in Palestine as compared to those in Egypt. Because in Egypt the idea was unceasing prayer. And the hours of the day were not the times when you pray, but the times when you pray together in a special way, as opposed to in a formal way where you have to pray all the time. This often happens. That's what happens in monasticism. Just like we found with God coming to my assistant

[20:21]

for my case development. It ends up as a sort of decoration in the beginning of the divine office, whereas it was supposed to be the unceasing prayer of the heart in the beginning. You've got those two extremes. Unceasing prayer and formal liturgical prayer. And then the monk feels, Well, if I've done the divine office, I've really done the basic thing in the monastic life and I do what I want to do. That's sort of the wide spectrum. Number eight is Joseph of Benefice. Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, Abba, as far as I can, I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and I meditate. I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do? Remember the gospel of Henry J. Sandberg? He was like a rich young man. He'd done all this stuff.

[21:22]

Give me another thing. Give me something to do this week. And then the old man stood up and stretched his hands for a third, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire and said to him, If you will, you can become all flames, Sister Benedicta. In Greek, I think it says that you can become fire. He didn't mean you can have a mystical experience or something like that. He meant that you can be turned into prayer. In another dimension, it reminds us of what Epiphanius says here. Don't just pray at those times. He said pray all the time. So here, Abba Joseph is saying, don't just do those things, but turn into prayer. Don't just pray sometimes and then do this and then do that. Those things are not really the point. The point is to be transformed into this movement towards God. He says you're able to do this. He says you're able to do this because I'll show you because I've done it. The significance of that vision. If you will,

[22:23]

you can become fire. If you will, the idea of the liberty of the will, the fact that the whole thing is right there is just in wanting it. It's a question of wanting it more and more until you've got it. When you really want it with your whole heart, somewhere you've got it because you've been changed, you've been transformed. Man's freedom to do that. There's another quote that says somewhere, if a man really wants to, in one day, he can reach God. Start really early in the morning and you just want real hard all day, by five, six o'clock, sure enough. There's usually a catch in those. Like moving the mountain, I don't know if anybody ever did it. She tried, but she didn't qualify because she had a hidden reservation. I knew it all the time. Then there's this good story about the Yukites, the ones who thought that because they were told

[23:24]

to pray all the time that they shouldn't work. You can read that one. And then Lusha said, who prays for you while you're asleep? That's a wonderful story. It's not the only one, there are several. The other one's about how the pomegranate fell. If you can find it, not all of them, but some of them you'll find, especially in this chapter, I noticed a couple that were not in her book. Most of them are. They might be getting a very deep one on the sections on prayer. Only this as far as I know. I don't know of any other one in preparation. Father Adam showed me a list and the book was going to be put together. I don't know what it is. Maybe he showed me that. I don't think it's...

[24:25]

I don't think it's the whole thing. It's hard to know. I wish there'd be a print list that would put these things so that you can look at them if you didn't do it already. Now some of them are missing in the book. She's probably got some other ones. The trouble is you can't find them because they're scattered around. Some other ones are there. There's one, two, three, and six. Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, that's all. Four, five are missing. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. Some brothers asked Abba Macarius, How should we pray? And the old man said, There's no need to talk much in prayer. Spread out your hands often and say, Lord, have mercy upon me, as you will and as you know. But if war presses into the soul, say, Lord, help me. He knows what is best for us and has mercy. This one is commented on. I think I put it elsewhere in that book. We were talking about the short prayers

[25:27]

among the monks. And these are Macarius' short prayers. One is help me and the other is have mercy on me. Have mercy on me as you will and as you know. Probably most of the time he just said have mercy on me. The other one is help me in an emergency. That's beautiful. Have mercy on me as you will and as you know. We get the idea from reading these sayings of the fathers that their prayer was very much a very simple prayer of petition. And the petition in the end was a prayer of compunction. Have mercy on me, O sinner. Very much like the Jesus Prayer. It always seems to end up there. We don't get the idea of them as simply sitting in meditation. I think they did. I think they did. But they couldn't have been doing this all the time. It's just too much. I think probably that sometimes

[26:29]

they just sat in quiet meditation but they hardly had a language for it. They talked about hezekiah, about quiet. They knew what that was. But they weren't doing anything. So maybe they didn't have any words for it. They had their reading, the reading of the scriptures. Those of them who could read. But in between, maybe they just didn't have language for it. So maybe they just called it hezekiah. It's being quiet. It's being alone. It's a solitude. There's no word for it. They didn't call it mental prayer. They didn't talk much about contemplation until you get to the Bibles. They said it. I think the same thing happened later. People hear a form of prayer mentioned and they start to read it. It happens that maybe other people start reading it, but they don't know the word. It can be. Sure. Until you know what it is, you don't have access to it.

[27:30]

That's right. Because we don't have any language for our interior life. We don't know. Not until we learn a very special language. We don't know. We don't have any way to discuss what's going on inside of us. It's a very crude word. They said of Abba Sisoes that unless he soon lowered his hands when he stood up to pray, his mind was snatched up into the heavenly places. There's this parallel between the body and the spirit. The spirit tends to go where the body is pointed. It's elevating in the hands. Something has been rediscovered by the charismatics. Very significant. Because the posture, the way of using the body influences the spirit very much. You see it more in the Eastern use of genuflections and so on. Attitudes of humility, frustration, genuflections, repeated hundreds of times. But also in this way. If he happened to be praying with another brother, he quickly lowered his hands and ended the prayer so that his mind should not be wrapped to remain in prayer too long for his brother. Because he might forget himself. An old man used to say,

[28:31]

number 12, constant prayer soon cures the mind. Isn't this beautiful? Constant prayer soon cures the mind. We talk about healing prayer a lot, but maybe the most healing prayer is a person's own prayer, depending on how he prays and what he prays for. I think especially prayer to the Father has that quality. To pray out from under one's problems, as it were, and through one's problems. Gradually to come to understand what one's illnesses, one's hang-ups, one's neuroses, one's problems are. And to pray through them and out from under them and around them to God. And I think that the prayer itself, the power of the prayer itself, and the grace that's coming the other way during the prayer, gives it. I think of this lady

[29:33]

when we drove a bus along. And then for all the people you would find all sorts of people that you could judge, you know. And then she, this was Mary, she went into and was praying all the time and it was good. And silently, she was discovering more and more love instead of judgment coming out, and she was really purified. And it was good. It's evident, yeah. And I do a lot of professional judgment. But that's a way of not giving in to one's sick tendencies. It is not just feeling it. You have to bear it. You'll find a lot of people in the country. There's a comparable thing in Mark's conception of quiet in book two, number 16, about the three brothers

[30:34]

who went different ways, wanted to be monks. And one of them went out into solitude and the other two sort of failed. And they went out to see him finally and to ask him who was making out. And he was silent for a little and poured water into a cup. And he said, look at the water. And it was cloudy. And after a little he said again, now look, see how clear the water has become. And when they leaned over the water they saw their faces as in a glass. And then he said to them, so it is with the man who lives among men. He does not see his own sins because of the turmoil. But when he is at rest, especially in the desert, then he sees his sins. We've got the same image used for two different situations and to prove two different points here. One, the necessity of purification, to see God. The curious thing there is in this saying in our section on prayer, no one can see his face reflected in muddy water and the soul cannot pray to God with contemplation. What have those two got to do with it? You're not looking at your own face when you pray to God.

[31:34]

Or are you? It's a curious and mysterious image. If he was talking about the face of God, that would be something else. But he said you can't see your own face reflected in muddy water. Maybe that he's using it in a very cruel way. And the other fellow said that you can't even see the harmful thoughts unless you get out of it, out of the crowd. One of them makes the end of the thing, prayer to God. The other makes the end of the thing, seeing your sins. Okay, that's enough of those problems. So, what they seem to mean by prayer is prayer. They're not talking there about

[32:36]

kind of quiet meditation. Often a prayer of petition and very often a prayer of compunction, of contrition. Asking God for mercy or for help. It seems to be a pretty clear picture very close to what Cashman's talking about. We don't find exactly his technique of repeated short prayer like that, God come to my assistance, Lord make haste to help me. But his house here says it's implicit in the prayers of Albert Macarius there in number 10. It's quite a ways from the more, you could say the more refined things of of centering prayer for the God of unknown. We've seen more of the sense of more interior subtlety or interior analysis too.

[33:37]

You find that sort of thing more in Evagrius than you do in other different fathers of those. Evagrius is talking about prayer too. And he's the one who starts talking about contemplation as well. Now for him pure prayer and contemplation are about the same thing, just as they are for Cashman. And he connects with that pure prayer with contemplation in a state of tranquility. And it's when he talks like that and when Cashman talks like that that we get maybe the closest link with what we think of as deep meditation or prayer of quiet or something like that. The notion of quiet, of tranquility, even in a sense of apathia as Evagrius talks about, not as a continual state but as a state of prayer. And things like centering prayer

[34:40]

or the prayer of the cloud or the prayer of simplicity or quiet or a lot of the Eastern types of meditation. For some reason the way the language comes out they're talking about quite an active kind of prayer. Maybe because that's the way the scriptures have it too. Evagrius talks about this thing of pure intellect. He talks about prayer as the highest activity of the intellect and pure prayer would be that of a purified intellect Now he doesn't talk about the heart, Cashman talks about the heart. So Cashman nearly translates Evagrius his intellect into the heart core or moose more or less. So there's quite a shift in between the two. And in doing that Cashman sort of Christianizes

[35:43]

and somewhat de-Platonizes Evagrius. Evagrius again talks about the angelic vision of the state. They're becoming more and more kind of angels. Yes. Evagrius is very much in that direction. Most of the early fathers have been taught in those terms. Cashman gets to it. Cashman is not as much of an intellectualist as Evagrius is. With the cloud of unknowing we were talking about that in Sunday chapter I won't say a whole lot about it but it's interesting sort of to compare with what we've been talking about. What's the basic act of prayer or meditation of the cloud of unknowing? It's that pressing with a blind stirring of love against the cloud of unknowing

[36:43]

which stands between oneself and God. This is a movement that takes place in the heart. Notice the Desert Fathers certainly don't talk in those terms. They talk in more external and more rough terms. They talk on what behavioristic that we could say. They don't talk about a blind stir. They don't have that kind of psychology. It hasn't developed yet. They don't talk about a cloud of unknowing. Doubtless they experienced it. You get that apophatic theology and spirituality coming out in Gregory of Nyssa already in origin. Gregory of Nyssa in the oral tradition. Dionysius later on somewhere in St. Thomas Aquinas and finally Eckhart very strongly. Now the cloud is influenced by Eckhart and Thaler. Which is very significant.

[37:46]

If you read the cloud and read Eckhart you see where it's coming from. That God is being in the darkness of unknowing, in totality with the blind. Eckhart talks a lot about the nothing too. Eckhart wrote before the cloud did he? Yeah, just a little while before the cloud. I don't know if there's probably no direct... In fact maybe the other Eckhart might not have even read Eckhart but he probably would have read Thaler or others. So how does the work about the cloud of unknowing compare to Cassian? Or with Cassian's Confidence 10 It's still a pretty active prayer

[38:52]

of blind stirring. And yet as you read the clarity it seems to get more and more refined. He says hide your desire from that. It should not be a crude stirring of the body or of the emotions but a very delicate subtle thing. And finally it turns out that the stirring itself in its root is purely supernatural. So it gets extremely refined. He doesn't talk much about this staying and beholding the cloud. There seems to be this emphasis all the time on the word. Maybe that's a paradox. An apocryphatic prayer, a prayer of emptiness, of darkness, of nothingness which emphasizes that emptiness so much and that depth of emptiness. And at the same time an active prayer of this blind stirring of the word itself, the real contrast between the two sides. That's part of the wishes of the apocryphal. The depth dimension, the darkness of the apocryphatic,

[39:54]

the mystery dimension and also the dimension of the activity of the heart and the time vision of the heart. A man sort of gathering a whole of himself into this movement of prayer towards God. All of his desire and gathering to that desire, which is a very delicate desire. Like a mercantilism. A desire which is so great that it's no desire because it's so great that it can't be felt. It's not here or there but it's everywhere. The whole person sort of turns into desire and yet he can't feel it. Because it's not just here, it's not just this, it's not just that. So he may just feel an emptiness. And yet he's completely charged with this movement towards God. It's like that. A very delicate, blind spirit. It's active and yet mostly it's passive and patient in the sense that you get the idea that you've got to do this for your whole life, for a long time and really what you're doing is not pushing your way through anything or entering anything. Really you're waiting more than anything else.

[40:55]

You're waiting for something to break through to you from the other side. It seems to turn out that way. A certain thing that you find, Karl's point pretty strongly, maybe not with the passages that we read, but the idea of having the sense of yourself as sort of a lump of sin and working through the sense of yourself to the sense of God. But the sense of yourself not as sometimes you hear a beautiful, glowing image of God now becoming transparent to the light of God. That's not a lump of sin. The sense of yourself as being something that you want to get out of. He says the greatest suffering of all is just this sense of yourself and not being able to get out of the sense of yourself in order to have the sense of God. The feeling of yourself versus the feeling of God. But you've got to work through this feeling of yourself to get to God. Is that, once again, an idea of working through as opposed to feeling? Now, what would you say if you followed the P.M. philosophy? You'd say yourself is really the one

[41:56]

perfectly blissful mind or center. So it's not a question of working through a sense of your misery. The feeling of yourself is separated from God. Simply getting through the very superficial layer might be a problem, a negativity. And then you're in touch with yourself which is itself God. And the difficulty is that there's a lot of truth in that. And that's where our true self is. But there's no snap to get through that. Now, where do you find that other aspect, that second element in the Desert Flower? It's in the notion of compunction. The notion that prayer is always being a prayer of compunction. Of not simply letting yourself go into God's blessings. As if the person is always trying to separate himself from God. But he's not separating himself from God. He's recognizing where he is. Knowing that when he does that, God will bring him closer to himself.

[42:56]

You pray when he writes about Christian mysticism and how it is distinguished from other kinds of mysticism. It emphasizes this two-fold movement. In Christian mysticism, you not only have a movement towards God, but you have a movement away from God. The creature knows that he really is not worthy. The creature knows that somehow, in his core, he's separate from God. That he is not just a piece of God, not just a manifestation of God's reality. He's also a separate and sinful thing. It's not very strong in the Desert Flowers, even if they don't use that language. You know, they're philosophical. But we're talking, I guess, more about ways and techniques and methods and all that going on in philosophy. Is it sort of going back in order to go forward? Is that what you're saying? It's as if, in order to reach God, as if you didn't move straight towards him. But you move back into yourself, knowing that when you get to the center of yourself,

[44:00]

that God himself will unite you with him. But in order to get to the center of yourself, where God dwells, you have to go through all of the negativity, which is your sinfulness. Your perfection. Sorry, because we're using physical metaphors. We're not completely covering it. It's as if, what it looks like on the surface of it, is as if you, in order to get to God, you have to pull away from him. Really, you're not pulling away from God. You're not allowing your superficial level, your ego level, to grab at God. You're not allowing your ego, your self-centered self, to grab at God, like Adam grabbing the fruit of the tree. But you're returning to the truth, to the state of truth, in order that God may do it. Knowing that when you really arrive at the truth of yourself, that you will find God. That God will benefit you. So, in order...

[45:02]

The first way that we're moved to go is just to go by instinct, to move straight after what we want, right? The second way is by obeying the word of God. What does the word of God tell us? Take your shoes off quickly, don't come any closer. Like that. Or don't eat that fruit. So the second way is by faith, or by moving towards the truth. Knowing that in moving towards the truth, the truth being really the word of God, that we're going to get there. Two ways. Either you grab, you reach out and you grab what you want, or you go to it according to the word of God. What God tells us about himself, about us, and about the way to it. Yeah, because purgatory is just one aspect or one manifestation of this whole business of purification. Of the separation between. What you have to go through in order to get to God. That's our traditional Catholic

[46:03]

expression of it, the belief in purgatory. Because people didn't have a clear belief about doing it in this life. About the purification in the contemplative life, or in the ascetical life. We sort of lost that. The purgatory is still that. And it must be basically the same process. In the cloud, what we should compare, maybe, is the word of prayer. Because if we're talking about Cassian, or if we're talking about Centering Prayer, if we're talking about TM, it's a question of a word. It's in chapter 7, chapter 36, 37, 38, and 39. I'll read from chapter 37. When these prayers

[47:07]

are in words, as they very seldom are, those who are doing the work, he says, these prayers are very seldom in words. So that's the first thing to realize, is that it's not a technique that you use all the time. You use it sometimes, when you need it. So it's not the same as a mantra technique to which you were nailed. I don't know if any of you have read those articles by Fr. John Bain in Cistercian Studies. He learned his mantra from an Indian guru way back, and then sort of rediscovered Christian care by beginning to use the mantra in the Christian form much later. I thought there were only two articles, but there are three, and I read the third of them the other day, and I find that he insists on keeping to the mantra throughout your whole time of meditation. In other words, that is your meditation. Just get to that mantra. And if you stop saying it, you've gone wrong, you've gone off the track. And I think that's unusual in Christian anything. I think maybe it's not best. Because if you get into something better, why should you keep on with the word? The word is only a means. It shouldn't be an

[48:08]

endowed or an absolutely necessary thing. That's what most of the teachers say. Whether it be the Jesus Prayer or the Word. When these prayers are in words, as they very seldom are, the prayers of the Word, they are only in very few words. In fact, the fewer the better. Indeed, if it is but a little word of one syllable, it seems to me to be better than a word of two syllables or more. Or the main, like Maranatha. This is in accordance with the work of the Spirit. For a spiritual worker should always be at the highest and ultimate point of the Spirit. Now there's simplicity there. You can see this is so by an example from nature. And if you're in trouble, you use a little word of one syllable, like fire or help. And just as this little word fire stirs and pierces the ears of the hearers much more quickly, so does a little word of one syllable do the same when it is not only spoken or thought, but secretly intended in the depth of the Spirit. It doesn't really have to be. He's saying it is. It's not only spoken or thought. It comes from the heart. This depth is height, for spiritually all is one, height and depth, length

[49:11]

and breadth. It pierces the ears of the Almighty God more than does any salt or thoughtlessly mumbled in one's teeth. This is the reason it is written that short prayer pierces heaven. Well, does it pierce God, the earth, or does it pierce our own heart? Really, it's probably the reason that psychologically it's effective. A short prayer is something that in some way you can put a lot of energy into. You can put your whole self into it. Whereas the Psalter is very difficult to conserve that kind of intensity of tension throughout or even frequently. You get distracted and your energy, your attention gets dispersed. And not so with a short prayer. It's rather a jump. But that too can lead to problems. So then he says, take a word like God. There's a problem. The Protestants always come up with what Jesus said. Lord, Lord.

[50:11]

The Protestants always bring that up when this thing is discussed. So what's the answer to that? There's a question of doing the will of the Father. And therefore trying to convert one's heart. Actually, the argument is not with... The essence of the thing here is not on the repetition of the word as it were. It's on what's taking place in your heart. Now, if your heart is being transformed by means of this word, this means, well, that's what counts. Then you will be able to do the will of the Father. Otherwise not. And what one is trying to do is convert his own will to the will of God through the use of this word. What is Jesus talking against? What's he speaking against? Is he speaking about this kind of practice of prayer of the heart? Or is he speaking about an external ritualized kind of prayer which trusts in the words that are spoken? Right? Which trusts in what's done

[51:17]

liturgically, merely, without any interior correspondence, without anything going on in the heart. Right? Or where prayer is separated from life. One of those two things. Either prayer is exterior and not interior, or prayer is wonderfully noble but the life just doesn't go anywhere. Well, this prayer of the heart should not fall under either one of those conditions. It can possibly fall under the second one but then there's something wrong with it. But how about the TM example? What would that be considered? TM doesn't really enter there because it's a whole different program, I think. In that it's not a prayer. It's not saying, Dominate, Dominate. It's not saying, Lord, Lord. It is not a prayer. So, I think those words of Jesus are missing. Other words of Jesus are probably missing. In the difference of a moment of prayer. If I do it in the will of my father,

[52:17]

that would have had a place to do it. It's not he who does anything that would be fulfilled by myself. It's not he who, to paraphrase Jesus' word like this, it's not the one who dwells interiorly in his center, in his soul, or whatever. Not the one who is the being of his own, but it's the one who does it in the will of his father. In other words, your meditation is worthless unless you do it in the will of your father. Unless meditation changes life as well. Didn't we spend hours in meditation? Okay, now that's a rough one. Because it would seem to put in crisis the whole of the contemplative life. Because what Jesus says there is you've got to feed the hungry, you've got to visit the sick, and those in prison, you've got to clothe the naked, and all those things. So you have to balance it off with other statements of Jesus in the Gospel. For instance, Martha and Mary.

[53:18]

Martha you're worried over many things, but Mary has chosen a better part. Now Mary is just listening to the Lord, and looking to the Lord, to the contemplative position. So it's dangerous when you take any one statement of Jesus and try to make a whole philosophy out of it. But what he's saying there is, he's saying it even to contemplatives, that if they are not aware and concerned in their hearts of the needs of man, that they won't be saved. They're going to suffer. He doesn't say that, but you can make up your mind. That's pretty harsh. But very often you see one parable will illustrate one point. And if you take it all by itself, it seems very one-sided, but that point comes across very strongly. Then there's another place, another parable, or episode in the Gospel where he brings in the balancing point. No, but there are commandments

[54:19]

to do with Jesus. There's the Jesus commandment and then St. Paul especially. It's not a work alongside of other works. Prayer is not one thing that you do which is to be weighed along with other things, but prayer is sort of the heart or the breathing or respiration from which the other works come. So in other words, no matter what the person has done, whether it's feeding the hungry or whatever, he's wrote that prayer in his heart. Now the degree to which he'll be able to do that is determined by what he's doing in that situation. And both of them have embraced this with him. And he embraces this with him in the Gospel. So they're just two different levels. And some people are called to give their whole attention to that second level. But the only way in which that's valid is if, when they are called upon to do it, they can also express charity on the first level towards their fellow men. They won't be called upon to do it so frequently. But when they are called upon, they've got to give the same response. Otherwise, their prayer couldn't be valid either. But not everybody is called to the same

[55:24]

to the same kind of actions. Jesus says somewhere else, In other words, your prayer has some kind of effect there. And perhaps there are those who pray and those who go and harvest. The thing is that we'd like to generalize and we'd like to set something up that would give us general rules that apply to everybody. But by definition, you can't have general rules that apply to everybody because everybody doesn't do the same thing. And that's our trouble. So the Holy Spirit has to compliment and interpret the words of the Gospel for each of us. There's an interior part. And that's something that we'll be talking about some day. For instance, the words that you've brought up,

[56:25]

that could be your passage to discuss them. Either a word that confirms you, that helps you, or a word that threatens you. Okay, I guess that's enough for today. Next time we can still continue with this a bit more because there's a lot of interesting things to be done. Before we go to our thing about summing up passion. The next time I'd like to talk a little about centering prayer, a little about the whole mantra business, and about the dimensions of meditation. I'm trying to synthesize the whole thing as much as I can.

[57:00]

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