Gospel on Delusion

Schema-archimandrite Abraham (Reidman). "Good part. Conversations with cloisterers. Conversation 44. About delusion".

Schema-archimandrite Abraham (Reidman)

Today I would like, based on the Gospel, to hold a conversation about delusion. At first glance, it seems that nothing is said about it there, but this is only at first, superficial, glance. If we delve into the Gospel, remember its entire content and think a little, then we will find several passages in which (though without using the word "delusion") a false spiritual state is spoken of, which is quite natural, because the Gospel is the source of truth, and such an important subject as delusion must be mentioned in it. First of all, a false spiritual state, an attempt to deceive the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, is spoken of in the Gospel when it tells about the temptation of the Savior in the wilderness. Many holy fathers, comforting and encouraging us in our spiritual warfare, remind us that even Jesus Christ Himself experienced warfare from the devil.

But if the devil comes to us mostly through thoughts, since we are fallen beings and our mind, damaged by the fall, became accessible for satanic suggestions, then the Lord Jesus Christ, as a sinless man, could not be tempted in this way. The devil-tempter (and the evangelist calls him namely "the tempter") approached Him personally, because he could not tempt His mind, and, seducing Him, tried first of all to awaken the desire for vain glory in the Lord, the desire to visibly prove His spirituality, His Divine origin. Of course, one can consider these temptations of the Savior in the wilderness from different points of view: one can say that the devil tempted the Lord with thoughts of gluttony, glory and power, but one should pay attention to such words of the tempter when he approached the Lord: "If you are the Son of God..."- that is, the devil tried to convince the Savior of the need to glorify Himself with miracles - first by turning stones into bread, and then by throwing himself off the pinnacle of the temple in front of everyone and remaining unharmed. Finally, he already in the most frank way demanded worship for himself, promising the Lord all the kingdoms of the world for this, shown, as it is said in the Gospel, in a moment of time.

Mysticism and delusion

Prof. A.I. Osipov. "Mysticism and delusion". Lecture at the Moscow Theological Academy, 5th year, 22.01.2007.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7DAVTgCc4A

Prof. A.I. Osipov

I believe that we can start the second semester with a topic that is both urgent, and useful, and necessary for us both in personal terms and in the terms of our communication with other people. I am referring to mysticism. This word is very often used, we hear it, we read about it, we observe different attitudes towards it, but it is very important to get acquainted a little with what it is, and especially with what mysticism relating to the Christian sphere of life is. Well, the word mysticos is more or less clear to you, it is connected with mysteries, with mysteriousness that goes beyond the boundaries of the empirical world, not just with the secrets of nature which physicists and chemists discover to us, as well as astronomers do, but which go beyond the boundaries of the natural world, i.e. it is connected in some way with the spiritual world. Mankind, if we turn to its history, always knew that the other world exists, and not just anywhere, but here, namely in this place. At what point? At any point. If some skillful person managed to pull apart our space, we would see that there was another world. Paul the apostle in one place writes so that now we see it through a glass — that world, through a glass, darkly, i.e. divinatory, and you know that since ancient times people were telling fortunes, and fortune-telling was often associated with mirrors. So, through a glass, darkly, conjecturally, he says face to face that when we throw off these coats of skins, this is our body, our flesh, then, without this barrier, the soul begins to see that world, as it is. Now, these coats of skins do not allow us to see it. Sometimes there are some glimpses, they are very interesting. People have always wondered: what is there? The more so, as numerous facts testified that this world is amazing. In this world, both the past and the future already exist. It is that world where one can see what was in the past. In that world, if you suddenly get there, you can find out what will happen - with a single person, or with people, with someone’s family, tribe, with the world in general, after all. It turns out to have everything already. At least, everything can be seen. How can this be seen? How to understand this? Whole theories were formed about this. Whole religious doctrines tried to make it clear. But the fact itself that the penetration into that world reveals to a person what is not visible here remained for granted during the whole history of the human mind. I say ‘the whole history’, because I will tell you that even this age of the Enlightenment, I say this is the 18th century, the century of subsequent atheism, it itself inflicted a purely intellectual, maybe, blow to this belief, but the vast majority of the world population preserved their belief in the mystical world. The only question that arose was how to get there, in that world, because it was very interesting. Not just interesting but sometimes even important - after all, having learned what would happen, one might take the appropriate steps.