Teaching about the Jesus Prayer according to the works of St. Theophan the Recluse

The works left by Saint Theophan the Recluse on the practice of the Jesus Prayer are all the more important for us today because they are addressed to people who are in a situation much like our own. The last third of the 19th century was the time when secularization in Russia entered the phase that came to its logical conclusion at the beginning of the 20th century. Thus, Saint Theophan faced a dual task: to present the patristic teaching, oriented towards man in general, in such a way that it was oriented towards a person living in a modern situation. Let's try to briefly describe this situation and how St. Theophan dealt with the indicated problem. The revolution that took place in the Western worldview at the turn of the 16th-17th centuries and received in finished form by Russia during the era of Peter the Great's reforms can be described as the impossibility of modern man to live in the open world. If the individual of the Middle Ages saw the meaning of knowledge in the solution to the world created by God, then from now on knowledge is recognized as the correspondence of the results of scientific experiments to the predetermined rational world of logic or mathematics. The “Cartesian” and “Kantian” person is not able to go beyond his own limits; in the sphere of the knowledge of God he is limited only to the minimum of experience that his own reason provides him. Reason, we note, is limited in its own capabilities after the Fall. Of course, this situation had, especially in Russia, many subvariants - from Spinoza’s acosmism to Feuerbach’s man-theism, but it retained the main feature for our topic - the affirmation of the fundamental impossibility for a person of a living ontological connection with the Absolute. It cannot be said, of course, that in Russia this impossibility was shared by everyone, but here we are precisely faced with a gap between the consciousness of a person in the post-Petrine era and the living experience of his faith. Having thus outlined the context of the teaching of St. Theophan, let us turn to its text itself. As is known, Saint Theophan the Recluse took up exegesis of the Holy Scriptures after his retirement with the right to stay in the Vyshenskaya hermitage of the Tambov diocese in 1866. In 1872, simultaneously with the departure of the saint into complete seclusion, the first of a number of interpretations by Bishop Theophan on the Epistles of the Apostle Paul appeared. Throughout the 70s and 80s, Saint Theophan published interpretations of the 13 epistles of the Apostle. Speaking about the characteristic features of the interpretations of St. Theophan, it should be noted that he wrote, counting on a non-theological reader, following his usual plan: an isagogical introduction and a post-verse interpretation, free from a predetermined theological task. Or rather, there is such a task - to overcome the gap created in the doctrine of the knowledge of God by new times. This is how it looks in the Commentary on the Epistle to the Colossians: “Renewal of life is again the entry into living communion with God through the rejection of self-indulgence, sensuality and love of creatures. He who remains in this order of life will walk in newness of life, and then seek the highest. To seek the highest is therefore to strive with all our might to always remain in living communion with God. For what is greater than God? 1. The question, which sounded rhetorical to Saint Theophan himself, was not so obvious to his European contemporaries. The answer to the way to restore such a living connection is for St. Theophan, as for the entire patristic tradition, Orthodox Christology: “Through the Lord Jesus Christ, the communion of the soul with God, interrupted by the fall, is restored. Entering into communication with the soul again, God inhabits it and, reviving it and controlling all its movements, returns to it its lost well-being. And behold the kingdom of God" 2. This is the task facing man. Its current situation is characterized by “decrepitness,” that is, intermediate between the heavenly ancestral and future “newly created” states. The main features of this dilapidation are that in man now “there is a quality of self-indulgence, forcing him to use all his efforts to create earthly well-being, which is based in sensual pleasures, turning everything else into means to this... People with the character of the old man live together, and each one wants and seeks to establish his own well-being. Why are clashes inevitable, from which irritation and all the passions and matters of hostility between people generated by it? Their basis lies in selfhood” 3. The theme of selfhood leads us, following St. Theophan, into that area of ​​Orthodox anthropology from which the actual work of prayer begins. This is the topic of self-knowledge and knowledge of the human soul in general, i.e. “notice of what is happening in the soul, through consciousness or inner feeling” 4. Without awareness of the current situation and a sober assessment of it, no outward movement in acetic practice is possible. The first themes with which self-knowledge is connected are the theme of the finitude of the human being and the theme of his freedom. Both topics are interconnected. Created man, by definition, has a beginning, but his finitude does not necessarily follow from this definition. Only the freedom of a created being paradoxically introduces both the theme of his mortality (after the freely committed Fall) and the theme of his transformation into a new creation, over which death no longer has power, thereby opening the eschatological context. It is interesting to note in this regard that Saint Theophan deliberately reduces the doctrinal meaning of the First Epistle to the Thessalonians to eschatological issues when, for example, he writes about the Apostle’s warning to the Thessalonian Christians about the coming dangers that are always ready to meet them for the Gospel on the path of Christ (1 Thess. 3:4). It is here that the apostle speaks of the time for which one must endure all difficulties - the time in which the Lord will come again to complete His victorious kingdom in humanity, which He Himself commanded to expect every hour. “This point of teaching,” Saint Theophan emphasizes here, “subsequently served as a reason for embarrassing bewilderments. But in itself it is not a cause of fear, but a desired and much-comforting object of the deepest aspirations that animate Christians in a difficult life” 5. Readiness to meet the Day of the Lord (the possibility of determining the exact hour of the arrival of which the Lord Himself fundamentally rejected) lies in “a completely godly life, regarding which the most detailed commands were given by the Apostle on behalf of the Lord (see 1 Thess. 4:2). How one should walk and please God, depicting this took most of the apostle’s time and labor. For the main thing in this is not only to proclaim, but also to establish the order of a new life in the spirit of a new faith” 6. This is the meaning of this message as interpreted by St. Theophan. One of the means of being prepared to meet the Day of the Lord “in the spirit of the new faith” is heartfelt prayer. Prayer in general and the Jesus Prayer in particular, according to the thought of St. Theophan, proceeds in the context of human freedom and its direction - either towards finitude, death, or towards the desired rebirth, transformation. If we have the second direction, then this indicates a person’s active disagreement with the current dilapidated reality and the desire to change it. Here is the beginning of the prayer feat. Attention during prayer is necessary precisely because of the activity of the person himself on his path from the periphery of existence to its center. This center in Orthodox anthropology is traditionally the heart. When the heart feels and participates in prayer, then the thoughts of the person praying will be based on these feelings: “When you pray with feeling, where is your attention, if not in the heart? A feeling always attracts attention. There is a busy market in my head. You can’t pray to God there.” 7 Such “recapitulation”, distrust of rational activity, is quite obvious not only in the context of the contemporary pan-European worldview of St. Theophan, but also in the monastic tradition in general. “Strive for this,” Abba Evagrius bequeaths, “so that during prayer your mind becomes deaf and dumb, and then you will be able to pray” 8. The focus of personal communication – the creature and the Creator – is the praying heart. In the words of St. John Climacus, “prayer by its nature is communication,” 9 but communication, of course, is uneven. There is a certain asymmetry in the synergy established between the ascetic and his Creator: human efforts are important, but not decisive. God’s answer in this unique dialogue is one – this is His grace, which dwells precisely in the human heart. What are the means of preparation for receiving this grace? This is a special feat of reorganizing the soul into a state of openness, preparedness for grace. In patristic language, this feat bears the special name “bringing the mind into the heart.” Up to this point, the brain and heart activities occur separately. With such separation, the heart “no one watches, and worries and passions come upon it,” says St. Theophan, the mind is occupied with the external world and is fragmented by the multiplicity of things. But even if the mind is directed to God or to the inner reality, it cannot overcome its lack of concentration and fragmentation: “The mind wanders around the universe,” “thoughts swarm in the head like mosquitoes,” “thoughts spread out on their own.” “The mind, remaining in the head, by itself wants to settle everything in the soul and manage everything... it chases after everything and only suffers defeats” 10. The only way out is the descent of the mind into the heart, and the latter, of course, should be understood not physiologically or even psychologically, but as the fundamental unity of the entire composition of a person - his body, soul and spirit. Attention, which has already been mentioned, is the first condition on this path. A mind that remains unattended will not only not reach its goal, but will also be thrown back, as it will encounter a powerful pressure of the imagination, that is, in fact, with the very force that is to blame for absent-mindedness. “We must safely pass it (imagination - I.A.),” warns Saint Theophan, “in order to safely get to the real place inside. By carelessness, you can get stuck on it and, staying there, be sure that you have entered inside, whereas this is only an external vestibule... But that would be nothing; but this state is almost always accompanied by self-delusion, and from it visionaryism develops with its disastrous consequences” 11. In other words, not yet having tasted the true experience of prayer, a person already stops and changes the direction of his work - he already accepts the conditions of Communion with God as its fruits. “It is known,” continues Saint Theophan, “that all the concern of zealots for spiritual life is directed towards putting themselves in a proper relationship with God. The simplest law for prayer is not to imagine anything, and having gathered your mind in your heart, become convinced that God is near, sees and listens, and in this conviction fall to Him, terrible in greatness and close in benevolence to us.” 12 Saint Theophan especially warns against imagery in prayer: “We must try in every possible way to pray without images of God. Stand in your heart with faith that God is right there, but don’t imagine how it is.” A logical question arises: if the imagery of human thinking, “thought form,” is a natural property of human created existence, then how is it possible to avoid this imagery in prayer? In other words, does the mind remain a mind after descending into the heart? Here Saint Theophan makes an interesting distinction between thinking about God as thinking about God and prayer as Communion with God: “There is nothing bad or dangerous in representing Divine objects under the images as they are presented in Scripture; We cannot reason about them any other way than by putting concepts into images, but we should never think that in reality this is how these images appear, and even more so dwell on these images during prayer. During pious reflections, or during contemplation of God, this is appropriate, but during prayer it is not.” 13 The explanation for this danger is obvious - it is connected with the direction of prayer work. “Images,” explains Saint Theophan, “keep attention outward, no matter how sacred they may be, but during prayer attention must be inward, in the heart; concentration of the mind in the heart is the starting point of proper prayer” 14. The danger also lies in this, the saint warns, that since this soaring or flying of the mind in the heavenly regions is easy and, due to the connection of the heart with the imagination, immediately leaves a trace of its influence in the relaxation of the senses, then the one who does this immediately begins to dream about the success of his work and about his perfection. After fantasy and daydreaming, the next enemy of the mind on the path to the heart is... the mind itself! More precisely, Saint Theophan clarifies, the reasoning and thinking power of the mind. This step must also be bypassed, otherwise the second wrong way of prayer will occur, the distinctive feature of which is that the mind, remaining in the head, itself wants to settle everything in the soul and manage everything, but nothing comes of its labors. He chases after everything, but cannot overcome anything, and only suffers defeats. So, dreamy and mental-head prayers are not actually prayer, but in a certain sense they even act as obstacles to true prayer, i.e. smart-hearted. The main thing that a Christian must constantly take care of is that his heart is “well-disposed towards the Lord and towards everything” that he encounters in the work of salvation, for, without a well-disposed spirit, a person is not able to benefit the soul, although apparently participating in good deeds. And it may happen that a Christian, forgetting this essential spiritual rule, is very punctual in all visible deeds of Christian piety, but does not succeed in spiritual life. Saint Theophan compares this behavior of a Christian to a tree that has no root 15. But in order for external piety to acquire meaning and strength, Saint Theophan draws attention to internal work, without which Christian life will remain fruitless: “There is no price for internal work, and nothing should be preferred to it... Actions are not the main thing in life, the main thing is the mood of the heart, turned towards God” 16. Thus, both the mental and spiritual powers of the person praying are concentrated in the heart. Their connection must be fundamentally stable: “The mind stands in the heart without origin... and does not want to come from there. You need to connect the mind with the heart... and you will receive a rudder to control the ship of the soul - a lever with which you will begin to set in motion your entire inner world" 17. However, the fruits of prayer are possible even before achieving such complete stability, for the improvement of the “inward abiding of the mind” (in the terminology of St. Theophan) depends on the perfection of the three mental and three bodily activities that produce it, namely, the attention of the mind with turning inward to the eyes, the alertness of the will with the tension of the body, and the sobriety of the heart with the beating of pleasure and peace of the flesh. “In full light,” emphasizes Saint Theophan, “it will appear when purity of mind from thoughts, purity of will from desires, purity of heart from addictions and passions is acquired. But even before that time, it is still an inward abiding, although imperfect, immature, not continuous” 18. But what then is the situation with the bodily powers of man? Is it possible to unite them with the spiritual and mental forces that reside in the heart? Here we, in fact, come to the Jesus Prayer. The unceasing activity of the mind brought together in the heart is unceasing prayer, for the heart can now be directed only to God. “Thanks to inseparability from attention, prayer can become truly unceasing, can achieve high spiritual concentration and strength, realizing a more perfect type and level of prayer work,” writes a modern researcher of hesychasm. “But on the way to this level, another problem arises: special requirements arise both for the content (textual) side and for the external form, the rhythmic organization of prayer” 19. Thus, the point is that attention and prayerful tension require a brief but succinct expression of prayer, which can only be the invocation of the name of Jesus. Continuous prayer should be, in the words of St. Theophan, a “short prayer,” but at the same time it should retain the essence and meaning of all prayerful work. The mutual combination of mind and heart in doing the Jesus Prayer is for experienced people one of the great difficulties of this doing, which entails, in an inept manner of action, great irregularities in this doing, which are discussed in detail by the instructors of such doing. That is why constant monitoring and advice from an experienced leader is required here. “That the mind,” continues Saint Theophan, “after several prayers runs away from the heart and lags behind the memory of God, is due to weakness of attention and indifference to prayer. The soul does not value prayer and is in a hurry to get rid of it as quickly as possible, muttering it somehow. Seek the fear of God and with it begin to pray, and pray, paying attention to the meaning of the words of prayer. Short prayers and the Jesus Prayer are then used to instill in the heart a feeling for God and thereby attract attention. But if we are careless about prayer, we will never succeed in it. Remember also that prayer alone is not perfect, but together with all the virtues. As virtues improve, prayer also improves” 20. These main virtues necessary for successfully completing the Jesus Prayer are: fear of God, chastity, humility, contrition, mortification of the flesh, patience, love. Doing the Jesus Prayer requires a lot of attention, patience, and consistency from the very beginning. Attention is scattered - it is necessary to collect it; thoughts persistently squeeze into the consciousness, irritate the imagination - it is necessary to eliminate them; passions arise and stir the heart - they must be pacified; the seeming futility of the doing itself brings despondency, causes boredom - one must endure and pray. By mistake, by ignorance, by arbitrariness, by self-delusion, false steps are taken, we must repent and correct them. And under all these circumstances, one must humble oneself, not grumble, not stop praying, and place all one’s hope in God’s help. Such a state, warns Saint Theophan, can last not months, but years, until, finally, a constant flame of grace-filled, self-motivated prayer warms up in the heart. So, in addition to attention and keeping the mind in the heart, Saint Theophan emphasizes another important component of the correct execution of the Jesus Prayer. This is the ethical side of doing, the correct moral structure of the ascetic. It is no coincidence that most of the works of Saint Theophan himself are devoted to precisely this side of Christian doctrine. This emphasis is quite understandable, since it points to the danger of false spiritualism, which can lead to the self-seductive tranquility of the ascetic, for whom the ordinary commandments seem to be something already passed and achieved long ago. The ancient monastic maxim “to the extent of life there is knowledge” best reflects this situation. And finally, the most important aspect of the Jesus Prayer, which Saint Theophan constantly emphasizes, is its, so to speak, “instrumentality,” a purely ministerial purpose. We must not forget for a minute that the Jesus Prayer is only a means of Communion with God, but not the goal. Accordingly, its fruits are only accompanying conditions for this paradoxical dialogue. Saint Theophan never tires of reminding us of this. For example: “The fruit of prayer is concentration in the heart and warmth. This is a natural action. Anyone can achieve this. And this prayer can be performed by anyone, not only a monk, but also a layman. This is not some kind of lofty matter, but a simple one. And the Jesus Prayer, alone in itself, is not miraculous, but like any other short prayer, verbal and, therefore, external. But she can turn into smart and warm... all naturally. What is from grace must be expected, but it cannot be taken in any other way. What they wrote to you, that you must first purify passions, refers to high, contemplative prayer; and this is a simple prayer... which can, however, lead to high prayer” 21. Saint Theophan does not tire of repeating the same thing in letters to private individuals: “They say about the fruits of this prayer (Jesus’ prayer - I.E.) that there is nothing higher than this in the world. Illegal. The talisman has been found! Of the fruits, nothing belongs to the verbal composition of prayer and its speaking. All fruits can be obtained without this prayer, and even without any verbal prayer, - through one aspiration of the mind and heart towards God” 22. The recognition is amazing! Not limiting himself to emphasizing the service nature of the Jesus Prayer, Saint Theophan does not consider it the only way to receive the corresponding fruits. And here one cannot help but see a peculiar premonition of those disputes about the methods, fruits and meaning of the prayerful invocation of the name of Jesus that shook Russian monasticism at the beginning of the last century. This is worth dwelling on in more detail. Let us recall that in the text that laid the foundation for the so-called. imyaslavsky disputes, “On the Caucasus Mountains” by Schemamonk Hilarion, there are abundant extracts from the works on the Jesus Prayer, edited by St. Theophan. Among them is “Invisible Warfare” by Nicodemus the Holy Mountain, from which the explanation of the name of this prayer is quoted: “This prayer is called Jesus Prayer because it addresses the Lord Jesus, and is verbal in composition, like any other short prayer. It is and should be called intelligent when it is elevated not by words alone, but also by the mind and heart, with the consciousness of its content and feeling, and especially when, through long, attentive use, it so merges with the movement of the spirit that they are seen alone and inherent within, but there are no words. Any short prayer can ascend to this level. The Jesus prayer has the advantage because it unites the soul with the Lord Jesus, and the Lord Jesus is the only door to communion with God, to which prayer strives to achieve... Therefore, the one who acquires it acquires for himself all the power of embodied economy, which is our salvation” 23. In addition, the entire 28th chapter of this book is, in fact, an extract from “The Path to Salvation” on the topic of the inward abiding of the mind in the heart. The topic of imyaslaviya, imyaslavsky disputes, requires, of course, a separate, detailed discussion. Here it is important to point out the fact that the movement itself could not develop within the strict framework of theology itself, in terms of which the polemics could have arisen. Let's illustrate this with one example. In May 1914, Anthony Bulatovich set the condition for the union of the name-slavers with the Church, “the confession of the Divinity and Divine Power of the Name of God and the Name of Jesus Christ, understood spiritually” as “a private opinion existing in the Orthodox Church” 24. If it were really possible to agree with this, the dispute could not continue in the field of theology in the forms inherent in this type of thinking, but would move into the language of religious thought - a broader concept and not connected, of course, with the forms of dogmatic theology. Bulatovich himself brought the imyaslav problem into the incomparably broader context of Russian religious and philosophical thought as a component of the entire Russian culture of the early 20th century. After such a transition, of course, all the theological objections of opponents of imiaslaviya immediately turn out to be useless, since Bulatovich’s supporters can always declare these objections unsuitable in a religious-philosophical discussion as theological calculations. Namely, it was the latter that happened after name-glorification turned out, “thanks to” such a transition, built into the powerful ideological paradigm of the Russian “Silver Age”. Defenders of name-glorification from this environment (Berdyaev, Ern, S. Bulgakov before accepting the priesthood) hardly thought about the subtleties of “being inside the mind” and paying attention to the heart. Or rather, they thought no more than about other issues of the new religious consciousness. It seems that these words of St. Theophan are applicable precisely to these people: “After all, it would be something amazing: without practicing a task, to have knowledge, success and experience in it. Our strengths develop in what ways we exercise them. It is clear that without working in the matter of our internal education, that is, without caring about preserving the mind, guarding the heart and internal unceasing prayer, we cannot have these excellent qualities in ourselves, as we are completely unfamiliar with these matters” 25. Of course, Saint Theophan recognizes the special effectiveness of the Jesus Prayer, since “it is stronger than all others only by the omnipotent name of Jesus, the Lord, the Savior, when it is called upon with full, warm, unwavering faith - that He is nearby, sees and hears everything, and listens wholeheartedly to what is asked - and is ready to fulfill and grant what is asked” 26. In the recently published letters of St. Theophan we read: “Strength is not in the words of prayer, but in the spiritual mood - the fear of God and devotion to God, and in constant attention to God, and mental standing before Him. The Jesus Prayer is only a guide, and not the very essence of the matter” 27. And then there is an instruction about how carefully you need to approach the comparison of human powers and God's grace: “Commit yourself to live in the memory of God and walk in the presence of God - and this will lead you to a good end. Nevertheless, from the grace of God, without the grace of God, nothing spiritual can be acquired in any other way. As grace pours into the heart, then everything will go as it should be” 28. If the goal of the Jesus Prayer, like any other, is Communion with God, then one should remember that no “autonomous navigation” is possible here: only church communication allows one to reach the desired state. “Every true Christian,” writes Saint Theophan, “must always remember and never forget that he needs to unite with the Lord Savior with his whole being, he must let Him, the Lord, dwell in our mind and heart, it is necessary to begin to live His most holy life. He accepted our flesh, and we must accept both the flesh and His all-holy Spirit - accept and keep forever. Only such a union with our Lord will bring us that peace and that favor, that light and that life that we lost in the first Adam, and are now returning from the person of the second Adam - the Lord Jesus Christ. And for such a union with the Lord, after communion of His Body and Blood, the best and most reliable means is the mental Jesus Prayer, which reads like this: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me!” 29. Let us recall in this regard the translation principles of St. Theophan, who deliberately omitted those passages from the works of the Fathers of the Philokalia that spoke in detail about the psychosomatic method of the Jesus Prayer. Here we see a kind of chastity and tact of Saint Theophan in conveying to his contemporaries what could not only not benefit them, but also involuntarily harm them. If the Jesus Prayer is a means to Communion with God, then what are its results? Here follows a peculiar transition from the “praxis” of asceticism to “theory”. Through bringing the mind into the heart, the unceasing Jesus Prayer and the acquisition of grace, dispassion is achieved, i.e. not victory over this or that passion, but liberation from passions. This stage is the last one before the mystical contemplation of God, i.e. the theory itself. Dispassion is at the same time, Saint Theophan emphasizes, a necessary condition for such contemplation, because according to the Beatitudes, “those who are pure in heart will see God.” Theory itself, as the limit of the spiritual path, includes deification, pure prayer and contemplation of the uncreated light 30. It is important to remember that such a division is possible only logically, but not in a temporal order. These are not steps in achieving deification, but an inextricable whole. Since the path in the theory is completed, the Jesus Prayer itself as a kind of movement is impossible, but remains as pure prayer, as a certain highest, ultimate form of prayer life. In this, Saint Theophan inherits the hesychast tradition. “There comes,” said the Monk Isaac the Syrian, “a certain contemplation (actually “theory”), and the mind does not pray through prayer... Prayer is another thing, and contemplation in prayer is another thing” 31 . Contemplation of the uncreated light is now a synchronous action, even going beyond the limits of time. Here is the highest limit of the Jesus Prayer. Now we involuntarily return to the question with which we began this topic: how important is the very method of its transmission in the chain of tradition? St. Gabriel (Zyryanov, †1915) argued that if St. John of Sinai had created his “Ladder” in the 20th century, he would have written it completely differently. The steps of the ladder remain unchanged, however, the ways in which one can not only put a modern person on them, but at least tell him about its very existence, of course, vary from century to century. “The basis of St. Theophan’s instructions on prayer is such a difficult requirement for modern man - to have a sincere living faith that he stands before the face of the omnipresent and omniscient God, Who sees his heart. This is difficult because modern man is accustomed to living either in the realm of abstract concepts or in the realm of sensory objects. To feel God as a living Person, to Whom you can turn with your prayers and needs, means realizing in your heart that spark of living faith that St. Theophan so often speaks of,” wrote one of the admirers of the Vyshensky recluse in the last century 32 . If this fire is in a person, then he will have the desire, patience, and perseverance to do the Jesus Prayer. He will be prompted to it by the prayerful fervor and faith of his heart. Interpretation of the Epistles of St. Apostle Paul to the Colossians and Philippians. M., 1998. P. 158. Georgy (Tertyshnikov), archimandrite. Saint Theophan the Recluse and his teaching on salvation. M., 1999. P.213. Saint Theophan the Recluse. Interpretation of the Epistles of St. Apostle Paul to Thessalonians, to Philemon and to the Hebrews. M., 1998. P.10. Saint Theophan the Recluse. Collection of letters. In 2 vols. M., 2000. P.117. Works of Abba Evagrius. M., 1994. P.78. Our Reverend Father John, Abbot of Mount Sinai, Ladder. Sergiev Posad, 1908. Word 28.1. Smart doing. About the Jesus Prayer. On Sat. "Prayer". M., 2003. P.126. What is the Jesus Prayer according to the tradition of the Orthodox Church. On Sat. "Prayer". M., 2003. P.177. Compare: Saint Theophan the Recluse. Collection of letters. P.169. Saint Theophan the Recluse. Collection of letters. P.184. Smart doing. About the Jesus Prayer. P.114. Hilarion, schema-abbot. On the Caucasus mountains. St. Petersburg, 2002. P.315. Khoruzhy S.S. On the phenomenology of asceticism. M., 1998. P.112. What is the Jesus Prayer according to the tradition of the Orthodox Church. P.172. Saint Theophan the Recluse. Collection of letters. T.1. P.17. Hilarion, schema-abbot. On the Caucasus mountains. P.290. Smart doing. About the Jesus Prayer. P.33. Saint Theophan the Recluse. Collection of letters. From unpublished. M., 2001. P.7. Smart doing. About the Jesus Prayer. P.113. Compare: Sidorov A.I. Treatise “The Method of Sacred Prayer and Attention” and its place in the tradition of hesychasm. In: Theological Bulletin, No. 2. M., 1996 and Khoruzhy S.S. On the phenomenology of asceticism. Quoted from: Khoruzhy S.S. On the phenomenology of asceticism. P.158. what is the Jesus Prayer according to the tradition of the Orthodox Church. P.355.