(Deuteronomy 15: 9) is the same as the Delphic ‘Know thyself’. Unfortunately, this convergence of philosophy and faith in the matter of attentiveness has been forgotten. We are reminded about this in The Pilgrim: ‘Even the most elementary sages have recognized the value of silence. The philosophical school of the Neoplatonists, which embraced many adherences under the guidance of the philosopher Plotinus, developed to a high degree the inner contemplative life which is attained most especially in silence’ (250).
We can resolve the issue of unceasing prayer by noting something to which its belated critics do not always pay attention (calling it ‘technique’, ‘physiology’, ‘primitive’, ‘navel-gazing’, ‘an impoverishment of prayer’). Unceasing prayer in the sense of Psalms, 16: 8, ‘I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved,’ is an old and obligatory philosophical discipline (which can have a variety of methods), both of monastic and of non-monastic ascesis. Its encompassing of a person’s whole being, their body, mindfulness, breathing, the beating of their heart, cannot but bring about a real, rapid, and miraculous change in them, halting the issue of blood. (Mindfulness of the heartbeat and at the same time the heartbeat itself, as also breathing in the sense of a careful entering, a careful probing of matter, primal matter in the earthly forest, in which, moreover, it is impossible not to sense God’s presence. The heartbeat itself, the breathing becomes this forest, although pure mindfulness remains a separate Sophia unlike anything else – and thereby lets in everything else.) A different mission for a changed person is revealed, in effect the only true mission. Here any would-be criticism of unceasing prayer is simply fatuous and shows up the critic for someone who does not understand the issue.
But precisely because other habits than unceasing mindfulness have emerged and become ingrained, in the sense of growing accustomed to the bleeding (and the woman in the Gospel had not just accepted it, she wanted to be healed), because of the unfortunately widespread neglect of discipline, those who return to themselves, the mindful, may face problems. Just because the return to yourself in mindfulness is light and easy (‘Take my yoke upon you … for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light,’ Matthew, 11: 29, 30), it may take a long time for this new spirit to overcome old and ingrained habits.
We need to discriminate. The discrepancy between the promise that unceasing prayer is easy (just a few days of practice will be sufficient) and the lifelong commitment called for by monastic life is only superficially beguiling. Of course, mindfulness should come quickly and easily if it is to come at all. It does not have to be created through exercises: real mindfulness needs only to be recalled. It is of a kind with the way our breathing and rate of heartbeat are changed in the presence of something vast and awe-inspiring like mountains, the sky, beauty, and all the more so the beauty of a human with a body and heart, of humankind, of God incarnate in Jesus Christ. For unceasing prayer all that is needed is to notice where and who we are. Prayer is primal: it does not need practice, it is what we start with. Regrettably, editors excised from the original Pilgrim his clear protest against the notion that special preparation is needed before we can turn to God. There is a powerful section early in the manuscript where the Pilgrim states that, quite the contrary, without prayer it is not possible even to begin. ‘From all the prayers found in the Bible it is evident that they were offered for absolution of sins, and that no absolution of sins was needed prior to prayer.’11 This is accompanied by a quotation from the Bible: ‘And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you’ (Ezekiel, 11: 19). In any human situation, the first thing to do, the first priority, like clutching at the banisters, is to turn, if you have deviated, to unceasing prayer, to mindfulness. ‘[A]fter every fall and sinful wounding of the heart the thing to do is immediately to place it in the Presence of God for healing and cleansing.’12
It is monastic philosophy that seems most relevant to this primary, groundbreaking task, which is why the beginnings of Russian philosophy should be sought in The Pilgrim and in Vladimir Soloviov,13 to the extent that he, too, is a pilgrim. In the light of The Pilgrim and his unceasing, obligatory praying, most discussions on philosophical topics seem like homeless orphans.
Unceasing prayer, philosophy, and faith in each individual is ontology. The difficulties that the light yoke of work encounters, and the complications it produces, is biography.
Emerging into the presence of the divine is the beginning of the history of the real freedom conferred by the yoke, which is horror at our blindness, at our fear and penitential burden of guilt and shame, and amazement at how free we have become!
Who are people exposing when they pray? Primarily, of course, themselves, the I that is speaking; next, their neighbour, and what is closer to you than your breath, your heart, and that strange, unknown but so intimate thing, your body. Picture not thoughts about your body (‘See how filthy I am, how sensual’); picture not the positions of the body: praying, kneeling, prostrated on the ground, emaciated by fasting, exhausted by sleep deprivation, in the posture of a believer, making the sign of the Cross.
All such facilitating postures of the body are prescribed, defined by detailed rules and considered necessary until not flighty but pure prayer of the heart is achieved. When by the favour and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ you attain this, then, leaving behind many and varied doings, you will be united beyond words with the Lord in pure and not flighty prayer of the heart, without need of these facilitating devices.14
What is offered is just the body: see, the heart is beating, the blood invisibly circulating, the lungs breathing. Bid your thoughts farewell, abandon them; you no longer have need of them, or of your concerns about yourself, your body, about the world or about God. No one has need of them. You have no need of them if you are genuinely, honestly standing before God; no need even of other people’s thought, other people’s prayers. ‘When betimes prayer in all its purity comes to you of its own volition, you must in no way ruin it with your rules for verbal prayer’ (ibid.). Prayers are also a means: as penitential chains are for the body, so they are for the mind, for exercising it. When, however, real physical work begins, the building of a church, say, the chains should be set aside, your hands need to be free to work. In the same way, for the heart to work it should be equally free both of intentions and of prayers. Mindfulness means ‘keep your heart free from intention, even if it should seem good’ (ibid.).
Standing pure before God is like being undressed, naked before him. Oh, if silence meant only not to be speaking, not to be expressing our thoughts, it would be such a small matter, something everyone already does when seeking to conceal their thoughts. But it is more: we need to still our thoughts. ‘Retaining awareness while invoking Jesus Christ entails looking constantly into the depths of the heart and ceaselessly keeping thought silenced; even, I would say, trying to be empty of intentions that seem good, or of any other intentions, lest felonious thoughts be lurking beneath them.’15 As they assuredly will be, ready to rob us the minute we stray out of that pure mindfulness in which even our own thoughts surprise us and seem to belong to somebody else. The value of intentions is only that they, too, may be presented, offered, exposed.
Moving away from thoughts and intentions to pure mindfulness is also the teaching of an old school of philosophy (νοῦς). How is it that in our time it has survived only in the form of unceasing prayer, and virtually only in the monasteries at that? That is cause to be grateful to the Church and something that makes the Church indispensable. Is this discipline not now being diminished by being separated from the totality of human experience, the experience of other languages of faith, by becoming specialized and isolated from philosophy and the experience of poetry and music? And similarly, is secular culture not also diminished to the extent that it lacks understanding of the school of unceasing prayer, has not studied but has instead squandered it? It is as if the storehouses and their watchmen were in different places: the storehouses full of fabulous riches but unlocked; the guard incorruptible, competent and vigilant, only nowhere near the storehouses.
How are we to return the storehouses once more to their guards, and return the guards to their storehouses? Neither prayer nor faith can be perfect if the person praying has first decided to be this way or that, and only then to turn to God. There was good