Hesychasm as a Practice of Mystical Theology

The article shows that the era of the Middle Ages was a time of intensive spread of mysticism in the status of a religious and philosophical doctrine, which recognized the existence of a supersensible dialogue between the soul of man and God. Super-mental contemplation and feeling for the mystic is a real opportunity to comprehend the Absolute. Unification with the divine and the transcendent for the mystic is the goal of spiritual search for hidden truth. The author interprets mysticism as a sacred religious practice. Its goal is supersensual communication and unification with God in an ecstatically experienced revelation. The features of mystical experience are indicated (irrationality, intuitivism, paradoxicality, symbolism characteristic of mystical experience). It is shown that the apophatic theology of mysticism was formed within the boundaries of the Christian tradition. It is also shown that the condition of the knowledge of God is the departure from the sphere of the rational, spiritual experience, austerity. The specificity of Hesychasm as a theological mystical teaching is revealed, the status of Hesychasm in the horizon of spiritual asceticism is indicated. The stages of the historical path of Hesychasm, dating back to the emergence of monasticism and associated with specific types of austerity (societal, hermit, skete, idiorrhythmic, etc.), are indicated. The stages of the spiritual practice of Hesychasm are designated and analyzed: repentance - struggle with passions - hesychia - "bringing the mind to the heart" - dispassion - pure prayer - contemplation of the uncreated Light - transformation and deification. The role of apatheia and amerimnia in the spiritual experience of Hesychasm is revealed. Loneliness is called a prerequisite for a tacit prayer; a prayer is the way to overcome it; one can hear God only in the silence of the heart. The nature of the psychosomatic method laid down in the basis of the tacit prayer is characterized, the figurative symbolism of mystical experience realized through the practice of "doing a prayer" in Hesychasm is analyzed. The similarity of the ideas of mystical experience in the practice of Hesychasm (Gregory Palamas) and the mystical theology of Meister Eckhart is shown: holism (the whole psychosomatics is involved in the experience), energeticism (the unity of God and man is defined as active), per-sonalism (in the mystical experience the personality preserves itself).

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