Hesychasm

"83. Psalmody calms the passions and curbs the uncontrolled impulses in the body; and prayer enables the intellect to activate its own energy."

"84. Prayer is the energy which accords with the dignity of the intellect; it is the intellect's true and highest activity."

"114. Never try to see a form or shape during prayer."

"115. Do not long to have a sensory image of angels or powers or Christ, for this would be madness: it would be to take a wolf as your shepherd and to worship your enemies, the demons."

"118. Blessed is the intellect that, undistracted in its prayer, acquires an ever greater longing for God."

"119. Blessed is the intellect that during prayer is free from materiality and stripped of all possessions."

"120. Blessed is the intellect that has acquired complete freedom from sensations during prayer."

"121. Blessed is the monk who regards every man as God after God."

"122. Blessed is the monk who looks with great joy on everyone's salvation and progress as if they were his own."

"124. A monk is one who is separated from all and united with all."

"125. A monk is one who regards himself as linked with every man, through always seeing himself in each."

"126. The man who always dedicates his first thoughts to God has perfect prayer."

"142. Do you have a longing for prayer? Then leave the things of this world and live your life in heaven, not just theoretically but in angelic action and godlike knowledge."

"153. If when praying no other joy can attract you, then truly you have found prayer."

"The philosopher must be above all a free man, and not a slave of the passions."

"Philosophy is a state of moral integrity combined with a doctrine of true knowledge concerning reality."

"One was not rich while another was destitute, nor did one overeat while another starved. The generosity of those who were well off made good what others lacked, this willingness to share eliminating every anomaly and establishing equality and fairness - though even then inequality still existed, produced not as it is now by the mad struggle for social status, but by a great desire to live more humbly than others. Envy, malice, arrogance and haughtiness were banished, along with all that leads to discord."

"Why do we cling to money and possessions, and disperse our intellect among a host of useless cares? Our preoccupation with such things diverts us from what is more important and makes us neglect the well-being of the soul, leading us to perdition."

"By crouching a little we are able to spring upwards; and in the same way our faculty of discrimination, after stooping to attend to the needs of the body, can once more look upwards unimpeded, separating itself from all worldly thoughts."

"Men ... have been given legs that bend: in this way they can descend sometimes to fulfill the needs of the body, and at other times ascend to fulfill those of the soul."

"We should turn our attention to material things only in so far as some necessity forces us to do so. But always to be creeping on the ground in search of pleasure is defiling and degrading for someone with experience of spiritual knowledge."

"When bodily concerns predominate, everything in man is asleep: the intellect, the soul and the senses."

"Who, when asked, will refuse to give what is needful to one who lives a holy life?"

"How was Moses able to withstand Pharaoh when he had nothing but holiness to give him courage (cf. Exod. 5)? ... A solitary prophet once censured a king for his unlawful acts, when the king had his whole army with him. ... These holy men achieved such things because they had resolved to live for the soul alone, turning away from the body and its wants. The fact of needing nothing made them superior to all men. They chose to forsake the body and to free themselves from life in the flesh, rather than to betray the cause of holiness and, because of their bodily needs, to flatter the wealthy."

"But, as for us, when we lack something, instead of struggling courageously against our difficulties, we come fawning to the rich, like puppies wagging their tails in the hope of being tossed a bare bone or some crumbs. To get what we want, we call them benefactors and protectors of Christians, attributing every virtue to them, even though they may be utterly wicked."

"We should not flatter, because of our needs, those who value highly the very things it is our vocation to despise."

"By our free choice we abandon our own wishes and thoughts and do what God wishes and thinks. If we succeed in doing this, there is no object, no activity or place in the whole of creation that can prevent us from becoming what God from the beginning has wished for us to be: that is to say, according to His image and likeness, gods by adoption through grace, dispassionate, just, good and wise."

"Woe is me, unhappy that I am! What shall I do? I have sinned greatly; many blessings are bestowed upon me; I am very weak. Many are the temptations: sloth overwhelms me, forgetfulness benights me and will not let me see myself and my many crimes. Ignorance is evil; conscious transgression is worse; virtue is difficult to achieve; the passions are many; the demons are crafty and subtle; sin is easy; death is near; the reckoning is bitter. Alas, what shall I do? Where shall I flee from myself? For I am the cause of my own destruction."

"Stillness is an undisturbed state of the intellect, the calm of a free and joyful soul, the tranquil unwavering stability of the heart in God, the contemplation of light, the knowledge of the mysteries of God, consciousness of wisdom by virtue of a pure mind, the abyss of divine intellections, the rapture of the intellect, intercourse with God, an unsleeping watchfulness, spiritual prayer, untroubled repose in the midst of great hardship and, finally, solidarity and union with God."

"The rays of primordial Light that illumine purified souls with spiritual knowledge not only fill them with benediction and luminosity; they also, by means of the contemplation of the inner essences of created things, lead them up to the noetic heavens. The effects of the divine energy, however, do not stop here; they continue until through wisdom and through knowledge of indescribable things they unite purified souls with the One, bringing them out of a state of multiplicity into a state of oneness in Him."

"The Spirit is light, life and peace. If consequently you are illumined by the Spirit your own life is imbued with peace and serenity. Because of this you are filled with the spiritual knowledge of created beings and the wisdom of the Logos; you are granted the intellect of Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 2:16); and you come to know the mysteries of God's kingdom (cf. Luke 8:10). Thus you penetrate into the depths of the Divine and daily from an untroubled and illumined heart you utter words of life for the benefit of others; for you yourself are full of benediction, since you have within you Goodness itself that utters things new and old (cf. Matt. 13:52)."

"One day, as he stood repeating more in his intellect than with his mouth the words, 'God, have mercy upon me, a sinner' (Luke 18:13), suddenly a profuse flood of divine light appeared above him and filled the whole room. As this happened the young man lost his bearings, forgetting whether he was in a house or under a roof; for he saw nothing but light around him and did not even know that he stood upon the earth. He had no fear of falling, or awareness of the world, nor did any of those things that beset men and bodily beings enter his mind. Instead he was wholly united to non-material light, so much so that it seemed to him that he himself had been transformed into light. Oblivious of all else, he was filled with tears and with inexpressible joy and gladness. Then his intellect ascended to heaven and beheld another light, more lucid than the first. Miraculously there appeared to him, standing close to that light, the holy, angelic elder of whom we have spoken and who had given him the short rule and the book."

"Then sit down in a quiet cell, in a corner by yourself, and do what I tell you. Close the door, and withdraw your intellect from everything worthless and transient. Rest your beard on your chest, and focus your physical gaze, together with the whole of your intellect, upon the centre of your belly or your navel. Restrain the drawing-in of breath through your nostrils, so as not to breathe easily, and search inside yourself with your intellect so as to find the place of the heart, where all the powers of the soul reside. To start with you will find there darkness and an impenetrable density. Later, when you persist and practise this task day and night, you will find, as though miraculously, an unceasing joy. For as soon as the intellect attains the place of the heart, at once it sees things of which it previously knew nothing. It sees the open space within the heart and it beholds itself entirely luminous and full of discrimination."

"When candle wax is far from the fire, it is solid and can be grasped, but when you put it in the fire it melts, and there it burns in the flame and catches fire and becomes all light and so finds a perfect end in the fire. There is no way for it not to melt in the fire and pour out like water. So too, while man's intellect is by itself, without encountering God, it thinks that everything is solidly in its power. But when it draws near, as it were, to the fire of Divinity and the Holy Spirit, it is completely dominated by that divine light and become all light, and there within the flame of the All-Holy Spirit it is set aflame and softened by divine perceptions. And in that fire of Divinity, there is no way for it to consider it own concerns and desires."

"Anyone who considers himself guilty before God and repents must believe that the reproach and contempt of others towards him is just and to be endured."

"Some people, because their minds have gone so long without nourishment, lose their desire to eat and so do not notice the harm they are suffering."

"Famine means being deprived of and desiring necessary food. But there is something worse and more wretched than this famine: when someone is deprived of the necessary means of salvation and does not perceive his misfortune, having no desire to be saved."

"Thanksgiving for the benefits received from God is made acceptable by humility and not looking down on those who lack them. It is rendered unacceptable, however, by being conceited, as if those benefits resulted from our own efforts and knowledge, and by condemning those who have not received them."

"Anybody who thinks he is something great, even before God, is rightly abandoned by God, as one who thinks that he does not need His help."

"Let us take off our life’s complex covering of rapacity and greed, since it is ugly in God’s sight and condemned, and let us put on, as the elect of God, compassion, humility, modesty and meekness."

"Anyone who states that God should not have made those people who will be punished, is also saying that He should not have made those who will be saved, or any rational and free beings at all."

"How can someone have the freedom to choose and the power to act freely, unless he were able to be evil, should he so wish?"

"Do you see? There exists a kind of knowledge that is without love. It does not purify the psyche in any way, but kills it, as it lacks the love that is the head, the body, and very root of all virtue."

"The summit of evil, the crime most natural to the devil, pride, was born of knowledge. But if this is so, how can it be possible that all the passions result from ignorance? Does knowledge purify the psyche? Paul says: Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up (1 Corinthians 8:1)."

"A great teacher has said that after the fall our inner being naturally adapts itself to outward forms. When, then, someone is striving to concentrate his intellect in himself so that it functions, not according to the direct form of movement but according to the circular, delusion-free form, how could he not gain immensely if, instead of letting his gaze flit hither and thither, he fixes it upon his chest or his navel as upon a point of support? Outwardly curling himself – so far as is possible – into the form of a circle, in conformity with the mode of action that he tries to establish in his intellect, he also, through this same position of his body, sends into his heart the power of the intellect that is dispersed outwardly when his gaze is turned outward. If the power of the noetic demon resides in the navel of the belly, since there the law of sin exercises its dominion and provides him with fodder, why should we not establish there also the law of the intellect that, armed with prayer, contends against that dominion (cf. Rom. 7:23)? Then the evil spirit expelled through our baptism – 'the water of regeneration' (Tit. 3:5) – will not return with seven other spirits more wicked than himself and again take up residence in us, so that 'the last state is worse than the first' (Luke 11:26)."

"As the separation of the soul from the body is the death of the body, so the separation of God from the soul is the death of the soul. And this death of the soul is the true death."

"The soul completely dominated by its desire for spiritual instruction is never sated.It is because of this that Wisdom says of herself, 'Those who eat Me will still be hungry' (Eccles. 24:21); while the Lord, who has instilled this divine desire in the soul, says of Mary who chose 'what is best' that it will not be taken away from her (cf. Luke 10:42)."

"Blessed is the one who has reached the knowledge that cannot be abolished (beyond what cannot be, it cannot be gone)."

"Überschauen wir diese Ausführungen, so kann kein Zweifel bestehen, daß die Mystik des Evagrius in ihrer völlig konsequenten Geschlossenheit dem Buddhismus wesentlich näher steht als dem Christentum."

"Once there was a meeting at The Cells about some matter and Abba Evagrius spoke. The priest said to him: “Abba Evagrius, we know that if you were in your homeland you would probably have been a bishop and the head of many [clergy]; but now you are living here as an alien.” He was pricked in his conscience but not disturbed. Nodding his head, he said to him: “It is true, father; nevertheless, ‘I have spoken once; I will add nothing the second time’” (Job 40:5)."