Dispassion
The Soul’s Rest in God
“Return unto thy rest, O my soul.” - Psalms 116:7
Ungodly men are in a perennial state of disquiet because the provocations of sin impel them to movements contrary to the Order of Nature and the Laws of God. There is “no rest for the wicked” because the thirst for sinful pleasures is unquenchable.
On the other hand, Dispassion is a condition of peace in a soul that has been liberated from the confusion and disorder of the passions. For this reason, the Fathers counsel us to strive earnestly for the spiritual gift of Dispassion in which inordinate pleasures are no longer desired. It is only in this pure state that the soul is truly free and finds its Rest in God.
“Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” - Matthew 11:28
Dispassion is the abstinence that uproots passionate thoughts from the mind and is also called purity of heart. When the intellect has not yet attained dispassion, it flies up to heavenly knowledge but is held back by the passions and pulled down to earth. The passions tie the intellect to material things and press upon it like a massive stone dragging it down to earth. However, when the intellect is in a pure state totally free from passions and conceptual images of worldly things, it proceeds undistracted to the contemplation of created beings and towards knowledge of the Trinity.
If you do not long for bodily pleasure, you have attained Dispassion. You have killed at a single blow all the passions and the principal source of all passions and the principal source of all sin and evil, namely, ignorance. You have become filled with that goodness which is stable and permanent and always remains the same, and in that goodness you stand reflecting the divine glory of the Lord.
When the intellect turns away from external things, and concentrates on what is within, it is restored to itself; it is united, that is to say, to the principle of its own consciousness, and through this principle naturally inherent it its own substance it devotes itself entirely to prayer. By means of prayer it ascends with all its loving power and affection to the knowledge of God. Then sensual desire vanishes, every pleasure-inciting sense becomes inert, and delectable things of earth cease to have any attraction.
When ceaseless prayer of the heart has led you out of desiring after things of the earth and when your thoughts fall asleep to everything lower than God, resting from foolish attachment to earthly things, you will be firmly grounded in the memory of God alone. Then love of God will arise like a helpmate within you causing you to rest from every earthly lust. For the cry of the heart born of prayer brings forth Divine love, the Divine love takes out discursive reason and prepares the mind for understanding what is hidden.
For the man who has seen the Kingdom of God within, having found it through pure prayer, everything outside loses its attraction and value. It is no longer unpleasant and wearisome for him to be within. When the mind reunites with the soul after being dispersed, it is filled with unspeakable sweetness and joy.
When the senses are stimulated by sensible beauty a man is spellbound by that beauty and forsakes the enjoyment of intelligible things. The intellect is then drawn down towards earthly things and God makes darkness His secret place. In his pursuit of sensory beauty, a man becomes unworthy to contemplate God and is deprived of immaterial realities.
The intellect that dallies with some sensible thing clearly is attached to it by some passion and unless it becomes detached from that passion it will not be free. The effect of spiritual reading and contemplation is to detach the intellect from form and matter and this gives rise to undistracted prayer. Freedom from sense perception pertains to the contemplative who loosens the natural bond linking the soul to the flesh and concentrates it on God.
The Four Types of Dispassion
The FIRST type of dispassion is complete abstention from the actual committing of sin. The SECOND is the complete rejection in the mind of all assent to evil thoughts. The THIRD is the complete quiescence of passionate desire in those who contemplate the inner essences of visible things through their outer forms. The FOURTH type of dispassion is the complete purging of the intellect of images.
If then, you have cleansed yourself from the committing of acts prompted by the passions, have freed yourself from mental assent to them, have put a stop to the stimulation of passionate desire, and have purged your intellect of even the passion-free images of what were once objects of passion, you have attained the four general types of dispassion. You have emerged from the realm of matter and material things, and have entered the sphere of intelligible realities, noetic, tranquil and divine.
There is scarcely any virtue in man unless it is first generated by the soul’s deliberate detachment from the senses. Likewise, there is scarcely ever any sin in man that is not first generated by the soul’s witless attachment to the senses for the sake of pleasure.
When the soul slackens its vigilance and is no longer strengthened by the fear of God, the pleasures which deceive it are many. For countless pleasures of the body surge to and fro attracting the eyes of the soul. These pleasures have a glittering and attractive appearance which, though deceptive, readily seduces those who do not have a great love for virtue and are not willing to endure hardship for its sake.
Just as the eye is attentive to sensible beauty and is fascinated by what it sees, so the purified intellect is attentive to intelligible realties and becomes so rapt by spiritual contemplation that it is hard to tear it away. The intellect is perfect when it transcends knowledge of created things and is united with God, having then attained a royal dignity it no longer allows itself to be pauperized or aroused by lower desires even if offered all the kingdoms of the world. When one’s intellect is completely pure, God reveals to him the visions that are granted to the ministering powers and angelic hosts.
When his mind is stripped of every passionate thought and is even a stranger to lusting after them, it freely soars above the heavens as it wills, reaching beyond the limits of the visible and the sensory. When the senses are completely closed, it is as if the mind floats above in the domain of the supersensory.
Prayer of the heart is a sweet rest of the mind and heart in God. Purity of heart is a heart free from every attachment, not only evil ones but even from those that we call innocent, because in truth these never can be fully innocent since the heart, which is made for God alone, leaves room for creatures.
How will such a heart thus divided succeed to enter fully into prayer? How can a heart that is accustomed to letting its thoughts and affections rest on the objects to which it is attached really rest in God unless it has killed off its initial attachments in order to carry itself to God and rest there as it did formerly on its deeply cherished attachments? Purity of heart is a gaze fixed on God, but how can this gaze of pure faith be sustained through the thick clouds of ideas and sensible images, when even one attachment fills the mind and the imagination?
When ceaseless prayer of the heart has led you out of desiring after things of the earth and when your thoughts fall asleep to everything lower than God, resting from foolish attachment to earthly things, you will be firmly grounded in the memory of God alone. Then love of God will arise like a helpmate within you causing you to rest from every earthly lust. For the cry of the heart born of prayer brings forth Divine love, the Divine love takes out discursive reason and prepares the mind for understanding what is hidden.
Quotes from The Philokalia
