A person endowed with such consciousness seeks to purify and rectify his intentions at every instant. He is constantly on the lookout for signs within himself of any motive for action other than the will to do good. Such self-consciousness is not, however, merely a moral conscience; it is also cosmic consciousness. The "attentive" person lives constantly in the presence of God and is constantly remembering God, joyfully consenting to the will of universal reason, and he sees all things with the eyes of God himself.
Such is the philosophical attitude par excellence. It is also the attitude of the Christian philosopher. We encounter this attitude already in Clement of Alexandria, in a passage which foreshadows the spirit which was later to reign in philosophically-inspired monasticism: "It is necessary that divine law inspire fear, so that the philosopher may acquire and conserve peace of mind
[ amerimtiia ], by dint of prudence [ eulabeia] and attention to himself [prosoche], and that he may remain exempt from sins and falls in all things." JO For Clement, the divine law is simultaneously the universal reason of the philosophers, and the divine word of the Christians. It inspires fear, not in the sense of a passion - which, as such, would be condemned by the Stoics -
but rather in the sense of a certain circumspection in thought and action.
Such attention to oneself brings about amerimnia or peace of mind, one of the most sought-after goals in monasticism.
Attention to oneself is the subject of a very important sermon by Basil of Caesarea.31 Basil bases his sermon on the Greek version of a passage from Deuteronomy: "Give heed to yourself, lest there be a hidden word in your heart." 32 On this basis, Basil develops an entire theory of prosoche, strongly influenced by ·the Stoic and Platonic traditions. We shall return to this point later. For the moment, let us simply note that Basil's reason for commenting on this particular passage of Deuteronomy is that, for him, it evokes a technical term of ancient philosophy. For Basil, attention to oneself consists in awakening the rational principles of thought and action which God has placed in our souls.33 We arc to watch over 011rselves that is, over our 11piri1 and our
-
soul - nnd nol over th111 which i11 mm (our body) or 1 hn1 whkh iN rllmul 11/11mt
Ancient Spiritual Exercises
1 3 1
us (our possessions).3'1 Thus, prosoche consists i n paying attention to the beauty of our souls, by constantly renewing the examination 06 our conscience and our knowledge of ourselves.35 By so doing, we can correct the judgments we bring upon ourselves. If we think we are rich and noble, we are to recall that we are made of earth, and ask ourselves where are the famous men who have preceded us now. If, on the contrary, we are poor and in disgrace, we are to take cognizance of the riches and splendors which the cosmos offers us: our body, the earth, the sky, and the stars, and we shall then be reminded of our divine vocation.36 It is not hard to recognize the philosophical character of these themes.
Prosoche or attention17 to oneself, the philosopher's fundamental attitude, became the fundamental attitude of the monk. We can observe this phenomenon in Athanasius' Life of Antony, written in AD 357. When describing the saint's conversion to the monastic life, Athanasius simply says: "He began to pay attention to himself." 38 Antony himself, we read later, is supposed to have said to his disciples on his deathbed: "Live as though you were dying every day, paying heed to yourselves fprosechontes heautois] and remembering what you heard from my preaching." 39
In the sixth century, Dorotheus of Gaza remarked: "We are so negligent that we do not know why we have gone ou t of the world . . . That is why we are not making progress . . . The reason for it is that there is no prosocke in our hearts." "° As we have seen;• attention and vigilance presuppose continuous concentration on the present moment, which must be lived as if it were, simultaneously, the first and last moment of life. Athanasius tells us that Antony used to make no attempt to remember the time he had already spent at his exercises, but rather made a brand new effort every day, as if starting afresh from zero.42 In other words, he lived the present moment as if it were his first, but also his last. We also saw that Antony told his disciples to "Live as though you were dying every day." 43 Athanasius reports another of Antony's sayings: "If we live as if we were going to die each day, we will not commit sin." -H We arc to wake up thinking it possible that we may not make it until the evening, and go to sleep thinking that we shall not wake up.45
Epictetus had spoken along similar lines: "Let death be before your eyes every day, and you will never have any abject thought nor excessive desire." 46
In the same vein, Marcus Aurelius wrote: "Let your every deed and word and thought be those of one who might depart from this life this very moment." 47 Dorotheus of Gaza also established a close link between prosocke and the imminence of death: "Let us pay heed to ourselves, brothers, and be vigilant while we still have time . . . Look! Since the time we sat down at this conference we have used up two or three hours of our time and got that much nearer to death. Y ct though we see that we are losing time, we are not afraid l " 48 And again: "Let us pay heed to ourselves and be vigilant, brothers.
Who will l(ivc UK hack the present time if we w111nc it?" 4'1
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Spiritual Exercises
Attention to the present is simultaneously control of one's thoughts, acceptance of the divine will, and the purification of one's intentions with regard to others. We have an excellent summary of this constant attention to the present in a well-known Meditation of Marcus Aurelius: Everywhere and at all times, it is up to you to rejoice piously at what is occurring at the present moment, to conduct yourself with justice towards the people who are present here and now, and to apply rules of discernment [emphilotekhnein] to your present representations [phantasia1] , so that nothing slips in that is not objcctive.50
We encounter the same continuous vigilance over both thought and intentions in monastic spirituality, where it is transformed into the "watch of the heart," si also known as nepsis 52 or vigilance. We are not dealing here with a mere exercise of the moral conscience. Rather, prosoche relocates man within his genuine being: that is, his relationship to God. It is thus equivalent to the continuous exercise of the presence of God. In the words of Plotinus' disciple Porphyry: "Let God be present as overseer and guardian of every action, deed and word!" s3 Here we have one of the fundamental themes of philosophical prosoche: presence both to God and to oneself.
"Have your joy and your rest in one thing only: in progressing from one action done for the sake of others to another such act, always accompanied by the remembrance of God." 5� This Meditation of Marcus Aurelius has to do, once again, with the theme of exercises involving the presence of God. At the same time, it introduces to us an expression which was later to play an important role in monastic spirituality. The "remembrance of God" is a perpetual reference to God at each instant of life. Basil of Cacsarca links it explicitly with the "watch of the heart": "We must keep watch over our heart with all vigilance . . . to avoid ever losing the thought of God." ss Diadochus of Photicc often evokes this theme. For him, the remembrance of God is entirely equivalent to prosocl1e: "Only they know their failures who never let their intellects be distracted from the remembrance of God." 56 "Since then [i.e. since its fall], it is only with difficulty that the human intellect can remember God and His commandments."57 We are to