The Harried Mystic

Russian Orthodoxy was a nursery for remarkable and controversial mystical practices. One sect, later declared heretical by the Russian Orthodox Church, is known as the “Name Worshippers”.

Their adherents, with early prominent members also making significant contributions to the mathematics of infinity and set theory, held to a discipline of continuously repeating aloud, or inwardly, the name of Jesus. This has connections to the Hesychast tradition and the “Prayer of the Heart” of the Philokalia: ” Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.”

The Western manifestation of such a practice is the Rosary, albeit the prayers recited are greater in number and the process more involved. Hesychasm was bound to run afoul of the Orthodox Church.

Many mystical movements and the mystics themselves have historically been punished or censored in one fashion or another. Meister Eckhart, and extraordinary mystical preacher, was misunderstood and found himself in trouble with the Church. The list is fairly lengthy and includes teachers and adepts among us today.

The rejection is, however, understandable, as the mystic speaks a transcendent language that goes underneath and beyond canonical interpretations, formalisms, and dogma. They speak from a direct lived experience of the scared. Their language is consequentially more often richly metaphorical and visual, sensual, and appears to cut through the many distinctions and debates of exotericism.

There is great value in Hesychasm fro us today in the practice of continuous repetition of simple mantra. It is also a matter of spiritual taste whether this approach will bear fruit for you, but I, for one, find it remarkable in its effects.

Having practiced the “Prayer of the Heart” for many years, I find myself reciting it automatically as a centering prayer, and especially in times of great trouble or stress. In undergoing medical procedures, I catch myself reciting it, or, more correctly, I find it being recited within me.

Some object to the prayer as it appears to place emphasis on one’s identity as a sinner. It’s important to discriminate between the Eastern Orthodox and western meanings of “sin.” In the west, sin is all about mistakes for which one needs to seek forgiveness and attached to which there is a piper to pay. The attributions of sin are more judgmental, and punitive in character.

Here, again the East excels in seeing farther and in more nuanced ways. Sin, for Orthodoxy, is illness. It is recognition that one is in need of re-balancing, healing, and the restoration of a wholesome spirit by the Grace of the Beloved.

How wonderful is that?

It doesn’t surprise me that the Russian mystics of the Name Worshippers would also be tied to the mathematics of the Infinite. The two speak to each other in intimate ways. In these instances, their math was an outer sign of an inner spiritual grace.

© Brother Anton and The Harried Mystic, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.