The Spiritual Tradition in Eastern Christianity
Ascetic Psychology, Mystical Experience, and Physical Practices
Bradford D.T., Leuven: Peeters, 2016
Description
The Spiritual Tradition in Eastern Christianity is a comprehensive survey of the means, goals, and motivations of the ascetic life as represented in texts spanning the fourth and the nineteenth century. Contemporary examples are also included. The main themes are the dynamics of the soul, the disabling effects of the passions, mental and physical ascetism, the desirable condition of dispassion, and the experience of deification. A variety of topics are addressed, including hesychast prayer, religious weeping, the spiritual senses, dream interpretation, luminous visions, the holy ‘fool’, ascetic demonology, and pain in ascetic practice. Typical ascetic and mystical experiences are interpreted from the psychological and the neuroscientific perspective. Comparative analyses based on Sufism, Vedantic mysticism, and especially early Buddhist psychology highlight distinctive features of the Christian ascetic life. Major figures such as Evagrius Ponticus, Maximos the Confessor, Isaac the Syrian, and Symeon the New Theologian receive extensive individual consideration.
(Text from the publisher)
Table of contents
Preface
Chapter 1 – The Powers of the Soul
1.1 The Incensive Power
1.2 The Desiring Power
1.3 The Intellect
1.4 Image and Archetype
1.5 Brightly Shining Mind
Chapter 2 – The Heart
2.1 Spiritual Anatomy
2.2 Hesychast Prayer
2.3 Four Phases of Prayer
2.4 Intracorporeal Space
2.5 Posture and Respiration
2.6 Attention
2.7 Two Patterns of Autonomic Arousal
2.8 Parallels in Other Traditions
2.9 The Influence of Sufism
Chapter 3 – The Luminous Presence
3.1 Properties of the Luminous Presence
3.2 The Hesychast Controversy
3.3 Divine and Demonic Visions
3.4 Four Kinds of Luminous Visions
3.5 Focal-Extracorporeal Light
3.6 Global-Extracorporeal Light
3.7 Corporeal Light
3.8 Intracorporeal Light
3.9 A Complex Visionary Experience
3.10 Chromatic Visionary Light
3.11 Visionary Light and Divine Omnipresence
Chapter 4 0 Sleep, Dreams, and Prayer
4.1 Prayer During Sleep
4.2 Sleep Deprivation
4.3 Dream Interpretation
4.4 Visions and Revelations While Asleep
4.5 Illustration of Prayer While Dreaming
4.6 Illustration of Mystical Experience While Asleep
4.7 Dreamless Sleep and Mystical Experience
Chapter 5 – The Spiritual Senses
5.1 Spiritual Perception
5.2 Sensory Perception
5.3 One and Many
5.4 Mystical Synesthesia
5.5 Spiritual Odor
5.6 Smell and Demonic Entrapment
Chapter 6 – The Passions
6.1 Eight Dispositions
6.2 The Five Hindrances
6.3 The Constructing Activities
6.4 The Demons
6.5 Anchorite and Cenobite
6.6 Psychotherapy of the Passions
6.7 Illustration of Evagrian Psychotherapy
6.8 Demons, Delirium, and Migraine
Chapter 7 – Stillness and Dispassion
7.1 The Delicacy of Stillness
7.2 Nipsis and Attention
7.3 Nipsis and Emotion
7.4 Nipsis and Memory
7.5 The Permanence of Dispassion
7.6 A Dispassionate ‘Fool’
Chapter 8 – Acedia
8.1 Depleted Fervor
8.2 Acedia and Physical Symptoms
Chapter 9 – Pride and Vainglory
9.1 Vainglory and Social Display
9.2 Clothing and Other Possessions
9.3 Vainglory and Cognition
9.4 A Psychosis of Pride and Vainglory
Chapter 10 – Fornication
10.1 Morbid Defluxions
10.2 Intoxication and Sexual Fantasy
10.3 Fornication and Sense-Desire
Chapter 11 – Gluttony
11.1 Diverse Expressions of Gluttony
11.2 Fasting
11.3 A Syndrome of Ascetic Fasting
11.4 The Precedence of Gluttony over Fornication
11.5 The Desire for Immortality
Chapter 12 – Physical Practices
12.1 Surface and Depth Interventions
12.2 Discomfort and Pain
12.3 The Prostration
12.4 Face, Eyes, and Gaze
Chapter 13 – Evagrius on Impassioned Mental Activity
13.1 Thoughts
13.2 Illustration of Objective Perception
Chapter 14 – Images of Bodily Corruption
14.1 The Buddhist Meditation on Foulness
14.2 The Ascetic Utility of Raw Emotion
Chapter 15 – Maximos on Impassioned Mental Activity
15.1 Conceptual Images
15.2 Illustration of Objective Perception
Chapter 16 – Religious Weeping
16.1 Tears
16.2 Weeping
16.3 Isaac the Syrian on Tears
16.4 Permanent Autonomic Change
Chapter 17 – The Body in Dreams and Fantasy
17.1 The Imaginal Body
17.2 A Principle of Mental Transformation
Chapter 18 – The Deified Body
18.1 The Flesh
18.2 Weightiness
18.3 Illusory Movement
18.4 Weightiness and Cosmology
Chapter 19 – The Remembrance of Death
19.1 Fear and Love
19.2 An Imaginal Practice
19.3 The Thought of Death
19.4 Change in the Practice
19.5 An Imitation of Christ
Chapter 20 – Three Forms of Mystical Experience
20.1 Near-Absorption
20.2 The Ecstatic Vision
20.3 The Imageless Grasp
20.4 Mystical Experience in Temporal Perspective
Chapter 21 – Maximos on Dispassion and Deification
21.1 Eros
21.2 Preliminary Dispassions
21.3 Advanced Dispassions
21.4 Inhibition of Perceptual Experience
21.5 Deification
References
Appendices
Appendix A: Sources and Terms
Appendix B: Ascetic Theologians
Appendix C: Biographical Chronology of Symeon the New Theologian
Appendix D: Visionary Mysticism in Symeon the New Theologian
Appendix E: Deification and Cognitive Inhibition in Maximos the Confessor
Index
Link
https://poj.peeters-leuven.be/content.php?url=issue&journal_code=SIS&issue=0&vol=26
