"Let this record replace the eyes of our fellow ascetics." According to Antony, the act of writing gives us the impression of being in public, in front of an audience. We can also discern the therapeutic value of writing in a passage in which Dorotheus of Gaza reports that he felt "help and relier• 78 by the mere fact of having written to his spiritual director.
Another interesting psychological point: Plato and Zeno had remarked that the quality of our dreams allows us to judge the spiritual state of our soul.79
We find this observation repeated by Evagrius Ponticus80 and Diadochus of Photice.81
Finally, prosoche implies self-mastery. That is, it implies the triumph of reason over the passions, since it is the passions that cause the distraction, dispersion, and dissipation of the soul. Monastic literature insists tirelessly on the misdeeds of the passions, which were often personified in demoniacal form.
Many recollections of ancient philosophy were preserved in monastic exercises of self-mastery. For instance, we find Dorotheus of Gaza, like Epictetus, advising his disciples to begin by training themselves in little th,ings, so as to create a habit,82 before moving on to greater things. Similarly, he advises them to diminish the number of their sins bit by bit, in order to defeat a passion.u We find Evagrius Ponticus proposing that one passion ought to be combated by means of another - fornication, for instance, by the concern for one's good reputation - as long as it remains impossible to combat the passion directly by the virtue which is opposed to it. This was the method already KUl(Ke11tcJ by Cicero in hiK 1i11rn/a11 Disp"tations.84
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Spiritual Exercises
We said above that Christianity's acceptance of spiritual exercises had introduced into it a certain spiritual attitude and style of life which it had previously lacked. As an example, let us consider the concept of exercises as a whole. In the very process of performing repetitious actions and undergoing a training in order to modify and transform ourselves, there is a certain reflectivity and distance which is very different from evangelical spontaneity.
Attention to oneself - the essence of prosoche - gives rises to a whole series of techniques of introspection. It engenders an extraordinary finesse in the examination of conscience and spiritual discernment. Most significantly, the ideal sought after in these exercises, and the goals proposed for the spiritual life, became tinged with a strong Stoico-Platonic coloration; that is to say, since by the end of antiquity Neoplatonism had integrated Stoic ethics within itself, that they were deeply infused with Neoplatonism. This is the case, for instance, in Dorotheus of Gaza, who describes spiritual perfection in completely Stoic terms: it is the transformation of the will so that it becomes identified with the Divine Wilclass="underline"
He who has no will of his own always does what he wishes. For since he has no will of his own, everything that happens satisfies him. He finds himself doing as he wills all the time, for he does not want things to be as he wills them, but he wills that they be just as they arc.85
The most recent editors of Dorotheus compare this text with a passage from the Manual of Epictetus: "Do not seek to have everything that happens happen as you wish, but wish for everything to happen as it actually does happen, and your life will be serene." Rb
Spiritual perfection is also depicted as apalheia - the complete absence of passions - a Stoic concept taken up by Ncoplatonism. For Dorotheus of Gaza, apatheia is the end-result of the annihilation of one's own wilclass="underline" "From this cutting off of self-will a man procures for himself detachment [aprospatheia], and from detachment he comes, with the help of God, to perfect apatheia." R7
We may note in passing that the means Dorotheus recommends for cutting off self-will are wholly identical to the exercises of self-mastery of the philosophical tradition. In order to cure curiosity, for instance, Plutarch advised people not to read funeral epitaphs, not to snoop on their neighbors, and to turn their backs on street scenes.RR Similarly, Dorotheus advises us not to look in the direction where we want to look; not to ask the cook what he's preparing for dinner; and not to join in a conversation we find already underway.89 This is what Dorotheus means by "cutting off self-will."
It is with Evagrius, however, that we can see most clearly just how closely Christian apatheia can be linked to philosophical concepts. In Evagrius'
Praktikos, we find the following definition: "The K inicdom of Heaven is apalheia of the soul along with true knowlcd1o1c of c1d111 in1o1 1 hi n1i111. '""1 When
Ancient Spiritual Exercises
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we turn to comment on a formula such as this, we find how great is the distance separating such speculations from the evangelical spir)t. As we know, the evangelical message consisted in the announcement of an eschatological event called "the Kingdom of Heaven" or "the Kingdom of God. " Evagrius begins by differentiating between the two expressions, and interpreting them in a highly personal way. Enlarging upon the Origenist tradition,91 he considers that the two expressions designate two inner states of the soul. More precisely, they designate two stages of spiritual progress: The Kingdom of Heaven is apatheia of the soul along with true knowledge of existing things.
The Kingdom of God is knowledge of the Holy Trinity co-extensive with the capacity of the intelligence and giving it a surpassing incorruptibility .92
Two levels of knowledge are distinguished here: the knowledge of beings and the knowledge of God. We then realize that this distinction corresponds exactly to a division of the parts of philosophy which was well known to Origen, and is attested in Platonism at least since the time of Plutarch.93 In chis division, three separate stages or levels of spiritual progress are distinguished, which correspond to the three parts of philosophy: ethics - or
"practics,'' as Evagrius calls it - physics, and theology. Ethics corresponds to initial purification, physics to definitive detachment from the sensible world and contemplation of the order of nature; finally, theology corresponds to contemplation of the principle of all things. According to the Evagrian schema, however, ethics corresponds to praktike, physics to "the Kingdom of Heaven," which includes the true knowledge of beings, and theology corresponds to "the Kingdom of God," which is the knowledge of the Trinity. In Neoplatonic systematization, these degrees also correspond to degrees of virtue. According to Porphyry,94 the soul begins by utilizing the political virtues to dominate the passions via the state of metriopatheia. It then rises to the level of the kathartic virtues. These virtues begin to detach the soul from the body, but do not yet do so completely; this is only the beginning of apatheia. Not until the level of the theoretical virtues does the soul attain to full apatheia and perfect separation from the body. It is at this level that the soul is able to contemplate the forms within the divine intellect, which are the moqels for the phenomenal world.95 This level, characterized by apatheia and the contemplation of existents, corresponds to Evagrius' "Kingdom of Heaven." According to Evagrius, the soul now contemplates the multiplicity of physeis ("natures"; hence the denomination "physical"): on the one hand, the intelligible forms, and on the other the logoi of sensible bcings.''6 The final stage, noetic in nature, is the contemplation of God llim11c:lf. Thu11, Ev11griu11 !IUm11 up his thought in these terms: "Christianity is