The Roots of Christian Mysticism Session 5
Selected texts for Dr. Marcus Plested's "The Cappadocians" talk, The London Christian Meditation Centre, St Mark's, Clerkenwell, 11 October 2005

1) For nothing seemed to me so desirable as to close the doors of my senses, and, escaping from the flesh and the world, collected within myself, having no further connection than was absolutely necessary with human affairs, and speaking to myself and to God, to live superior to visible things, ever preserving in myself the divine impressions pure and unmixed with the erring tokens of this lower world, and both being, and constantly growing more and more to be, a real unspotted mirror of God and divine things, as light is added to light, and what was still dark grew clearer, enjoying already by hope the blessings of the world to come, living amongst the angels, even now being above the earth by having forsaken it, and stationed on high by the Spirit. (St Gregory the Theologian: Oration 2)

2) A woman knows she has conceived when she stops losing blood. So it is with the soul, she knows she has conceived the Holy Spirit when the passions stop coming out of her. But as long as one is held back in the passions, how can one dare to believe that one is sinless? Give blood and receive the Spirit. (Sayings of the Desert Fathers: Longinus 5)

3) Those who pass through the mystical water in baptism must put to death in the water the whole phalanx of evil – such as covetousness, unbridled desire, rapacious thinking, the passion of conceit and arrogance, wild impulse, wrath, anger, malice, envy, and all such things. Since the passions naturally pursue our nature, we must put to death in the water both the base movements of the mind and the acts which issue from them. (St Gregory of Nyssa: Life of Moses II.125)

4) But if the wood be thrown into the water, that is, if one receives the mystery of the resurrection which had its beginning with the wood (you of course understand the cross when you hear the wood), then the virtuous life, being sweetened by the hope of things to come, becomes sweeter and more pleasant than all the sweetness that tickles the sense with pleasure. (St Gregory of Nyssa: Life of Moses II.132)

5) The person who would approach the contemplation of Being [i.e. God – the source of all being] must be pure in all things so as to be pure in soul and body, washed stainless of every spot in both parts, in order that he might appear pure to the One who sees what is hidden and that visible respectability might correspond to the inward condition of the soul. (St Gregory of Nyssa: Life of Moses II.154)

6) The contemplation of God is not effected by sight and hearing, nor is it comprehended by any of the customary perceptions of the mind. For ‘no eye has seen, and no ear has heard’, nor does it belong to those things which usually enter ‘into the heart of man’ (1 Cor. 2:9). He who would approach the knowledge of things sublime must first purify his manner of life from all sensual and irrational emotion. He must wash from his understanding every opinion derived from some preconception and withdraw himself from his customary intercourse with his own companion, that is, with his sense perceptions which are, as it were, wedded to our nature as its companion. When he is so purified, then he assaults the mountain. (St Gregory of Nyssa: Life of Moses II.157)

7) No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the Splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Them than I am carried back to the One. When I think of any One of the Three I think of Him as the Whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking of escapes me. I cannot grasp the greatness of That One so as to attribute a greater greatness to the Rest. When I contemplate the Three together, I see one great flame, and cannot divide or measure out the Undivided Light. (St Gregory the Theologian: Oration 49)

8) He bears all me and mine in Himself, that in Himself He may exhaust the bad, as fire does wax, or as the sun does the mists of earth; and so that I may partake of His nature by union with him […] [At the last day] we shall be no longer divided (as we now are by movements and passions), containing nothing at all of God, or very little, but shall be entirely godlike […] (St Gregory the Theologian: Oration 30)

9) For leaving behind everything that is observed, not only what sense comprehends but also what the intelligence thinks it sees, the mind keeps on penetrating deeper until by its yearning for understanding it gains access to the invisible and incomprehensible, and there it sees God. This is the true knowledge of what is sought; this is the seeing that consists in not seeing, because that which is sought transcends all knowledge, being separated on all sides as by a kind of darkness. (St Gregory of Nyssa: Life of Moses II.163)

10) Imagine a sheer, steep crag, of reddish appearance below, extending into eternity; on top there is a ridge which looks down over a projecting rim into a bottomless chasm. Now imagine what a person would probably experience if he put his foot on the edge of this ridge which overlooks the chasm and found no solid footing nor anything to hold onto. This is what I think the soul experiences when it goes beyond its footing in material things in its quest for that which has no dimension and which exists from all eternity. For here there is nothing it can take hold of, neither place nor time, neither measure nor anything else; it does not allow our minds to approach. And thus the soul, slipping at every point from what cannot be grasped, becomes dizzy and perplexed and returns once again to what is connatural to it, content now to know merely this about the Transcendent, that it is completely different from the nature of things that the soul knows. (St Gregory of Nyssa: Commentary on Ecclesiastes 7)

11) This truly is the vision of God: never to be satisfied in the desire to see him. But one must always, by looking at what he can see, rekindle his desire to see more. Thus no limit can interrupt growth in the ascent to God, since no limit to the Good can be found nor is the increasing of desire for the Good brought to an end because it is satisfied. (St Gregory of Nyssa: Life of Moses 239)

12) Let us change in such a way that we may constantly evolve towards what is better, being ‘transformed from glory to glory’ (II Cor. 3:18), and thus always improving and ever becoming more perfect by daily growth, and never arriving at any limit of perfection. For that perfection consists in our never stopping in our growth in good, never circumscribing our perfection by any limitation. (St Gregory of Nyssa: On Perfection)