Guarding the Thoughts

St. Nilus of Sora’s most original and influential contribution to Russian spiritual writing is his precise account of the rise of an evil thought through its stages — from the first involuntary suggestion to the settled passion — and of the method of nepsis, watchful guarding of the heart, by which the thought is to be met and defeated at each step. Drawing on John Climacus, Hesychius and Philotheos of Sinai, and Gregory of Sinai, but rendering the analysis with a clarity of his own, Nilus mapped the inner battlefield of the monk with a psychological exactness that has fed Russian ascetic literature ever since. This file sets out that map.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (hesychast; “Non-Possessors”)

Nepsis: The Guarding of the Heart

The presupposition of Nilus’s whole teaching on the thoughts is that the spiritual battle is fought in the mind and the heart, and that it is won or lost in how the monk handles the thoughts (logismoi or, in his Slavonic, pomysly) that continually arise within him (Nil Sorsky, Ustav; trans. Maloney 2003; Maloney 1973; Špidlík 1986). The discipline that guards this inner battlefield is nepsis — watchfulness, sober vigilance, the attentive guarding of the heart that catches each thought as it appears and judges it before it can take root (Nil Sorsky, Ustav; trans. Maloney 2003; Maloney 1973). Nepsis is the inseparable companion of the prayer of the heart: the invocation of the name keeps the mind occupied with God, and watchfulness keeps the intruding thought from displacing him (see The Prayer of the Heart).

Nilus’s deep point is that a thought is not yet a sin. The mere arising of a temptation in the mind is involuntary and unculpable; sin enters only as the will engages with the thought. The whole art of nepsis is therefore to intervene early — to recognize and reject the thought before the will has consented to it — because a temptation caught at its first appearance is easily expelled, while one allowed to grow becomes a tyrant (Nil Sorsky, Ustav; trans. Maloney 2003; Maloney 1973; Špidlík 1986). To make this discipline teachable, Nilus sets out the stages by which a thought develops.

The Stages of a Thought

Following the Sinaite and Athonite analysis (especially John Climacus and Philotheos of Sinai), Nilus distinguishes the successive stages through which an evil thought passes on its way from suggestion to settled passion. The classic schema he transmits runs through five principal stages (the precise number and naming vary slightly in the tradition, but Nilus’s account follows this progression) (Nil Sorsky, Ustav; trans. Maloney 2003; Maloney 1973; Špidlík 1986):

  1. Prilog (the suggestion / prosbolē) — the first, involuntary appearance of the thought in the mind, a bare suggestion presented by the senses, the memory, or the enemy. It is not yet sin, because the will has not engaged it; it simply presents itself. At this stage it is most easily rejected, and the watchful monk meets it at once with the prayer of the name and turns away (Nil Sorsky, Ustav; trans. Maloney 2003; Maloney 1973).

  2. Sochetanie (the coupling / syndyasmos) — the mind begins to entertain the thought, to converse with it, to dwell on it with a certain interest, even if it has not yet consented. Here the danger grows, for attention is the doorway of consent. The monk must break off the conversation and return to prayer (Nil Sorsky, Ustav; trans. Maloney 2003; Maloney 1973; Špidlík 1986).

  3. Slozhenie (the assent / synkatathesis) — the will consents to the thought, inclines toward it, takes pleasure in it. At this stage the inner sin is committed, even if no outward act follows; the heart has yielded. To withdraw now requires repentance and a deliberate turning back (Nil Sorsky, Ustav; trans. Maloney 2003; Maloney 1973).

  4. Plenenie (the captivity / aichmalōsia) — the thought takes the mind captive, dragging it where it will, so that the monk is no longer master of his own attention but is swept along by the passion’s force. The will, having consented, is now in bondage (Nil Sorsky, Ustav; trans. Maloney 2003; Maloney 1973; Špidlík 1986).

  5. Strast (the passion / pathos) — by long repetition and surrender the thought becomes a settled passion, a fixed disposition of the soul, a habit that rules the person and reasserts itself continually. At this stage the cure is long and hard, requiring sustained ascetic labor, confession, and the grace of God (Nil Sorsky, Ustav; trans. Maloney 2003; Maloney 1973; Fedotov 1966, vol. II).

The Lesson of the Stages

The pastoral and ascetic lesson of this schema is the one Nilus drives home throughout: fight the thought early. The thought is weakest and most easily defeated at the stage of prilog, when it is only a suggestion; with each further stage it gains strength and the monk’s freedom diminishes, until at the stage of strast it has become a ruling passion that can be uprooted only with great difficulty (Nil Sorsky, Ustav; trans. Maloney 2003; Maloney 1973; Špidlík 1986). Watchfulness, therefore, is everything: the monk who keeps sober guard over his heart, who recognizes the first suggestion for what it is and turns at once to the prayer of Jesus, never lets the thought reach the stages where it can enslave him. The whole strategy is preventive — to win the war at the frontier of the mind rather than in the captured interior.

The Weapons of the Warfare

Against the thoughts at every stage Nilus prescribes the weapons of the tradition. The chief of them is the prayer of the name of Jesus, which both expels the intruding thought and unites the mind to God (see The Prayer of the Heart). Beside it stand counter-thoughts drawn from Scripture (the practice of antirrhēsis, answering the temptation with a word of God, as the Lord answered Satan in the wilderness — cf. Matthew 4:1–11), the remembrance of death and judgment, the cultivation of humility (the surest defense, especially against pride and vainglory), compunction and tears, and the opening of the thoughts to a spiritual elder, which strips the secret temptation of its power by bringing it into the light (Nil Sorsky, Ustav; trans. Maloney 2003; Maloney 1973; Špidlík 1986). This last — the manifestation of thoughts to an experienced guide — is one reason Nilus’s contemplation requires the skete with its elder rather than the unguided solitude of the unprepared (see The Skete as a Third Way).

Discernment and Mercy

What keeps Nilus’s analysis of the thoughts from becoming a grim and crushing legalism is the discernment and mercy that govern it. He insists that the warfare be waged with measure, adapted to the strength of each soul, and without the despair that the enemy himself sows; he understands the weakness of human nature from within; and he constantly recalls the struggling monk to the boundless mercy of God, in which no sincere repentance is ever refused (Nil Sorsky, Ustav and Letters; trans. Maloney 2003; Fedotov 1966, vol. II; Maloney 1973). The precision of his psychology serves not condemnation but liberation: a monk who understands the stages of a thought is not paralyzed by them but freed, because he knows where and how to fight. This humane and discerning realism — the gift of Isaac the Syrian and Climacus refined by Nilus’s own experience — is why his analysis of the thoughts has remained, for five centuries, a living instrument of the Russian spiritual tradition (Fedotov 1966, vol. II; Maloney 1973; see The Modern Rediscovery).

See Also

References

  • Maloney, George A., S.J. Russian Hesychasm: The Spirituality of Nil Sorsky. The Hague: Mouton, 1973. (Nilus’s analysis of the stages of a thought, the discipline of nepsis, and the weapons of mental warfare.)
  • Goldfrank, David M., trans. and ed. Nil Sorsky: The Authentic Writings. Cistercian Studies 221. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 2008. (Translation of the Ustav on the thoughts and their stages.)
  • Maloney, George A., S.J., trans. Nil Sorsky: The Complete Writings. New York: Paulist Press, 2003. (The Ustav and Letters on the guarding of the thoughts.)
  • Špidlík, Tomáš. The Spirituality of the Christian East. Trans. Anthony P. Gythiel. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1986. (The stages of a thought — prosbolē, syndyasmos, synkatathesis, and the rest — in the Greek ascetic tradition Nilus transmits.)
  • Fedotov, Georges P. The Russian Religious Mind, Vol. II. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966. (The psychological precision and the mercy of Nilus’s teaching on the thoughts.)
  • Nil Sorsky. The Ustav (Skete Rule) and Letters, in Maloney, Nil Sorsky: The Complete Writings. New York: Paulist Press, 2003.