05 — On the Prayer of Jesus

The heart of his teaching: the method of the Jesus Prayer set out with patristic sobriety, and the long, urgent warning against prelest — the spiritual delusion that he believed had become the characteristic danger of his age, fed by imaginative and Western-mystical methods of prayer.

This section presents Brianchaninov’s treatment of the Jesus Prayer (On the Prayer of Jesus, drawn from The Ascetical Experiences): the disciplined, repentance-grounded method he taught, and the negative theology of prayer — what must not be done — that gives his teaching its distinctive caution.

Files

File Description
the-treatise-on-the-jesus-prayer.md The method of the Jesus Prayer: attention, the descent of the mind into the heart, repentance as the foundation, and the patristic sources
against-delusion.md The warnings against prelest; the critique of imaginative and Western-mystical methods; the two forms of delusion

See Also