“These expressions we have used are strong. But even so they do not adequately express the descent of our body from the height of the spiritual condition to the fleshly condition. One must cleanse oneself by careful repentance, one must feel at least to some degree the freedom and height of the spiritual condition, in order to acquire an understanding of the miserable condition of our body, the condition of its deadness caused by estrangement from God.
“In this condition of deadness, by reason of their extreme crudeness and coarseness, the bodily senses are incapable of communion with spirits, they do not see them, do not hear them, do not sense them. Thus the blunted axe is no longer capable of being used according to its purpose. The holy spirits avoid communion with men who are unworthy of such communion; while the fallen spirits, who have drawn us into their fall, have mingled with us and, so as the more easily to hold us in captivity, strive to make both themselves and their chains unnoticeable to us. And if they do reveal themselves, they do it in order to strengthen their dominion over us.
“All of us who are in slavery to sin must understand that communion with holy angels is unnatural to us by reason of our estrangement from them by the fall; that what is natural to us, for the same reason, is communion with the fallen spirits, to whose rank we belong in soul; that the spirits who appear sensuously to men who are in a state of sinfulness and fall, are demons and not in the least holy angels. ‘A filthy soul,’ said St. Isaac the Syrian, ‘does not enter the pure realm and is not joined to holy spirits’ (Homily 74). Holy angels appear only to holy men who have restored communion with God and with them by a holy life.3
3. Contact with Fallen Spirits
“Although the demons, in appearing to men, usually assume the appearance of bright angels in order to deceive the more easily; although they also strive sometimes to convince men that they are human souls and not demons (this manner of deception at the present time is in special fashion among demons, due to the particular disposition of contemporary men to believe it); even though they sometimes foretell the future; even though they reveal mysteries — still one must not trust them in any way whatsoever. With them truth is mixed with falsehood; truth is used at times only for a more convenient deception. Satan is transformed into an angel of light, and his ministers as the servants of righteousness, said the Apostle Paul (II Cor. 11:14,15)” (Bishop Ignatius, Collected Works, vol. III, pp. 7-9).
“A general rule for all men is by no means to trust the spirits when they appear in sensuous form, not to enter into conversation with them, not to pay any attention to them, to acknowledge their appearance as a great and most dangerous temptation. At the time of this temptation one should direct one’s mind and heart to God with a prayer for mercy and for deliverance from temptation. The desire to see spirits, curiosity to find out anything about them and from them, is a sign of the greatest foolishness and total ignorance of the Orthodox Church’s traditions concerning moral and active life. Knowledge of spirits is acquired quite differently than is supposed by the inexperienced and careless experimenter. Open communion with spirits for the inexperienced is the greatest misfortune, or serves as a source of the greatest misfortunes.
“The Divinely-inspired writer of the book of Genesis says that after the fall of the first men, God, in pronouncing sentence on them before banishing them from paradise, made for them garments of skins, and clothed them (Gen. 3:20). The garments of skins, in the explanation of the Holy Fathers (St. John Damascene, Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book 3, ch. 1), signify our coarse flesh which, at the fall, was altered: it lost its subtlety and spiritual nature and received its present crudeness. Although the original reason for this change was the fall, still the change occurred under the influence of the Almighty Creator, in His unutterable mercy towards us, and for our great good. Among the other consequences, profitable for us, which come from the condition in which our body now is, we should indicate this one: through the crudeness of our body we have become incapable of the sensuous perception of the spirits into whose realm we have fallen.... The wisdom and goodness of God have placed an obstacle between men, cast down to earth from paradise, and the spirits who had been cast down to earth from heaven; this obstacle is the coarse materiality of the human body. Thus do earthly rulers separate evil-doers from human society by a prison wall, lest they harm this society according to their own desire and corrupt other men. (St. John Cassian, Conference 8, ch. 12.) The fallen spirits act on men, bringing them sinful thoughts and feelings; but very few men attain to the sensuous perception of spirits” (Bishop Ignatius, pp. 11-12).
“The soul, clothed in a body, closed off and separated by it from the world of spirits, gradually trains itself by the study of God’s law, or, what is the same thing, by the study of Christianity, and acquires the capability to distinguish good from evil (Heb. 5:14). Then the spiritual perception of spirits is granted to it, and, if this is in conformity with the purposes of God Who guides it, the sensuous perception of them also, since delusion and deception are for it now much less dangerous, while experience and knowledge are profitable.
“At the separation of the soul from the body by visible death, we again enter into the rank and society of spirits. From this it is evident that for a successful entry into the world of spirits it is essential to train oneself in good time in the law of God, that it is precisely for this instruction that there has been furnished us a certain amount of time, determined for each person by God for his pilgrimage on earth. This pilgrimage is called earthly life.
4. The Opening of the Senses
“Men become capable of seeing spirits by a certain alteration of the senses, which is accomplished in a way that is unnoticeable and inexplicable to a man. He only notes in himself that he has suddenly begun to see what before this he had not seen and what others do not see, and to hear what before this he had not heard. For those who experience in themselves such an alteration of the senses, it is very simple and natural, even though not explainable to oneself and others; for those who have not experienced it, it is strange and not understandable. In the same way, it is known to all that men are capable of being immersed in sleep; but what kind of phenomenon sleep is, and in what way, unnoticed to oneself, we pass over from a condition of wakefulness to a condition of sleep and self-forgetfulness — this remains a mystery for us.
“The alteration of the senses by which a man enters into sensuous communion with the beings of the invisible world is called in Sacred Scripture the opening of the senses. The Scripture says: Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way, with his drawn sword in his hand (Numbers 22:31). Being surrounded by enemies, the Prophet Elisha, in order to calm his frightened servant, prayed and said: Lord, open his eyes that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha (IV Kings 6:17-18).” (See also Luke 24:16-31.)
3
However, in rare cases, for some special purpose of God, holy angels do appear to sinful men and even to animals, as Bishop Ignatius notes below.