Satsang with Mooji If you think that you can make it, can you [...] make it, YI YI [...] He is the Lord of all the worlds.

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He is the Lord of all the worlds. He is the Lord of all the worlds. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus.

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Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, have mercy. Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, have mercy. Love of my Jesus, love of my Jesus, love of my Jesus. It has been said that the spiritual life is like mountaineering. The first time you go up the mountain as a beginner, you should follow a known route and you should have someone with you

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as companion and guide, someone who has been up before and who knows the way. To serve as this kind of companion and guide is precisely the role of the spiritual father, of him whom the Greeks call Geron and the Russians, Starets. The title in both languages has the same meaning, old man or elder. Old, not primarily in years, but in spiritual experience. Because you can be young and yet wise, you can be an old man, but a fool. In the sayings of the Desert Fathers, dating from the fourth and fifth centuries, we see very clearly emphasized the importance of the spiritual father.

[06:09]

The founder of Christian monasticism, Saint Anthony of Egypt, says this, so far as possible, For every step that a monk takes, for every drop of water that he drinks in his cell, he ought to entrust the matter to the old man, lest perchance he makes a mistake in what he does. And Antony goes on to issue this warning. I know of monks who fell after much toil and lapsed into madness because they trusted in their own work and despised the commandment of him who says, ask your father and he will tell you. and elsewhere it is said in the sayings of the Desert Fathers, if a man has faith in another and gives himself up to him in full submission, he has no need to attend to the commandment of God, but he needs only to entrust his entire will into the hands of his father.

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Then he will be blameless before God, For God requires nothing from beginners so much as self-stripping through obedience. If you move from primitive Egyptian monasticism 1,500 years later to Russia in the 19th century, you will find exactly the same. Here is a statement by one Russian 19th century layman, Ivan Kirievsky. There is one thing more important than all possible books and ideas, the example of an orthodox starets before whom you can lay each of your thoughts and from whom you can hear, not a more or less valuable private opinion, but the judgment of the Holy Fathers.

[08:31]

God be praised, such Stasi have not yet disappeared from our Russia. In looking at this figure of the spiritual father, the Starets, we ask first of all Who appoints a starets? Who gives him authority? And the answer to this would be very simple. The spiritual father is appointed and ordained by the hand of God and not by the hand of man. The spiritual father, in other words, belongs to the Church as a happening rather than to the Church as an institution.

[09:35]

He is essentially a charismatic and prophetic figure, accredited for his task by the direct action of the Holy Spirit. When I use the word charismatic like this, I ought rarely to put it in quotation marks, in inverted commas, because in the New Testament, as you will realize, charisma means simply a gift of the Holy Spirit and a member of the ordained priesthood With the laying on of hands, he also has received the charismata of the Holy Spirit. He is a charismatic in the New Testament sense, just as much as the person who speaks with tongues. But I use it in the modern sense in inverted commas. Some of you may know the story of the man who, when he preached, at the beginning of his sermon, he always lifted his hands like this.

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And at the end, he did that. And after a time, some of his congregation said, what does this mean? Well, he said, actually, the sermons I preach are not my own. They're written by other people. And those are the quotation marks. So when I use the word charismatic, I should do this and this. Now, obviously, there is no sharp line of division in the life of the Church between the charismatic and prophetic on the one side and the institutional on the other. They overlap. One grows out of the other. And so it is precisely in the case of the Starets. We have a related function within the institutional life of the church. And that is the function of the confessor priest, the priest who has a blessing to hear confessions and within the sacrament of confession to offer advice.

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In our Eastern Orthodox Church, Right to hear confessions is not given to every priest automatically by ordination. If you look in the service books, you will find that there is a special additional ceremony for the blessing of a confessor by the bishop. And it is only if you have been blessed by the bishop that you have the right to hear confessions. And at any rate, in Greece today, I would have said it is a minority of priests who have this blessing, perhaps only one-fifth out of the total number of the priests. Now, this is something belonging to the institutional church. But clearly, just because a man has received a blessing from his bishop to hear confessions, he is not thereby automatically turned into a starex, into a spiritual master in the fullest and richest sense.

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The ministry of the spiritual father, of the starex, while it overlaps with that of the confessor priest is at once wider and deeper. It is wider because many spiritual fathers are not priests. This has always been an accepted fact in the Eastern Christian tradition that people may be called to this ministry without having received ordination. The Starets may be a lay monk, not in holy orders, or he may be a lay man, he may be a nun or a woman. The time at the Ministry of the Starets is obviously deeper because only very few confessor priests can claim to speak with the insight and authority of the true Starets.

[14:20]

If the starets is not appointed by the bishop or ordained, what happens? The answer is he is simply recognized by the Christian people, by the spirit-filled community of God. At particular times and in particular places, it becomes clear to the community that this or that person has the grace of the Holy Spirit to give spiritual counsel. And quite freely and spontaneously, others begin to come to that man or woman. Sometimes it happens that an existing starets will appoint his own successor.

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He will designate among his disciples one who is to take his place. But here again, there is no official confirmation by the authorities of the church. This is not a matter which they can regulate. Notice that the initiative usually comes from the Christian community. It would be perilous presumption for a man to rise up and say, I am a Starets, let others come to me. Usually the spiritual father makes no kind of claim like that. He is just there and the others come. And what the Spirit says to him, that he tells to the people who come. But he doesn't make claims for himself to be a master and a leader.

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But though the Starets is not ordained, he must be prepared And if we look through the centuries at the Christian East, we discover a classic pattern of preparation. And this pattern could be called a double movement of flight and return. We can see this very clearly in the lives of two great spiritual fathers, Saint Anthony of Egypt, whom I've already quoted, who died in 356, and Saint Seraphim of Sarov in Russia, who died in 1833, and who heard the other evening, the evening meal, an extract from a conversation that St. Seraphim had with one of his spiritual children, Nicholas Motovilov.

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St. Anthony's life falls very clearly into two halves, with his 55th year as the watershed. From the age of about 18 until 55 is his time of flight, of retreat and solitude. He goes out from his village community into the desert. And as the years go by, he goes further and further into the desert, finally spending 20 years in a deserted fort, meeting nobody at all. Then, when he is 55, he comes out from his retreat. The door to the fort is broken down by other people, in fact, and then he comes out. And for the remaining 55 years of his life, he makes himself available to others. He never makes any claim to authority, but he is simply there if others wish to come.

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And they come in enormous numbers, so that, as his biographer says, he became a physician given by God to Egypt. Antony, incidentally, was a layman, never ordained to the priesthood. Saint Seraphim follows a very similar path. He goes into the monastery, spends 15 years in the ordinary life of the community. Then he withdraws for 30 years of solitude, almost total silence. First part of it spent in a hut in the forest. At one point he spent a thousand days on the stump of a tree and a thousand nights of those days on a rock, devoting himself to continual prayer. The abbot becomes not very happy about this life in the hut, so he tells Saint Seraphim to come back to the monastery.

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He immediately returns the same day as he receives the message that he is to come back. But then he lives in the monastery, enclosed in his cell, and he doesn't come out even for the church services. Each Sunday, the priest goes to his cell to give him communion. He comes to the door of his cell and receives communion. Though he was a priest, he didn't celebrate the liturgy. But then, the last eight years of his life, he opens the door of his cell. And he receives the people who come. And he heals the sick. He advises those who are in perplexity. And in general, he is available to all who ask for him. Now, without this kind of intense ascetic preparation, without this radical flight into solitude, this dwelling in silence, neither St.

[21:04]

Anthony nor St. Seraphim could have acted as a guide and physician to others. Saint Seraphim said once, acquire inward peace, and a multitude of men around you will find their salvation. This is what is important. Acquire inward peace. Don't have a program. Don't have special preaching. Just have inward peace, and then the people around you will find salvation. not so much through anything that you do or say, but through what you are. That is the rule of spiritual fatherhood. Establish yourself in God. Then you can be an instrument of God's grace to your fellow man. May I quote here some words of Saint Isaac the Syrian,

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very much loved by the Eastern Church. Enter eagerly, he says, into the treasure house that lies within you. And so you will see the treasure house of heaven, for the two are the same, and there is but one single entry to them both. The ladder that leads to the kingdom is hidden within you and is found in your own soul. Dive into yourself, and in your soul you will discover the steps by which to ascend. The Starets is one who has discovered the treasure house within the heart, who has climbed the ladder, who knows the inner kingdom, not from hearsay, not from books, but from personal experience. Personal experience.

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He is someone who lives fully and entirely in this world, but at the same time, he lives also in another world. And in virtue of this double citizenship, his vision possesses a unique clarity and depth. For he sees each person and each object with the eyes of the Holy Spirit. And in the light of the age to come, he sees each man as God sees him. And so he can perceive in the hearts of those who come to him for guidance, potentialities of which they themselves are unaware. And he can not only perceive those potentialities, but by his perception he can help to make them a reality. This point, that the Starets, the spiritual father, helps people primarily by what he is, comes out in many stories in the sayings of the Desert Fathers.

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Let me quote two. Once the patriarch of Alexandria visited the monks in the desert, and they all gathered together, and with them came their great spiritual father, Abba Pambo. And the monks said to Abba Pambo, say something to the patriarch so that he may be edified. And Abba Pambo sat and said nothing at all. And they were embarrassed. The patriarch had come all this way to meet their great Abba, and he wouldn't speak to the patriarch, to the archbishop. So they asked him again. And finally, Abba Pambo said, If the patriarch is not edified by my silence, neither will he be edified by my speech. There's another story told of Abba Anthony, how three monks used to come and visit him once a year.

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And two of them always had great lists of questions to ask. And he answered. The third monk sat and said nothing. And so it happened year after year. And finally, St. Anthony turned to the third monk and he said, you have been coming all this distance, all these years. Do you not have any questions? And the third monk answered, Abba, it is enough for me just to look at you. Now here we might ask two questions. In the case of St. Anthony and St. Seraphim, the flight from the world was outward and geographical. They moved from one spot to another and lived in external solitude. Does it have to be always like that?

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And the second question would be, in the case of St. Anthony and St. Seraphim, the flight comes first. in time and the return comes second. Does it have to be always like that? May it not sometimes be the other way round? May it not sometimes be that these two stages are simultaneous? We must answer to both those questions, yes, it may be so. The real flight is not from one place to another, but into the heart. The real solitude is not dwelling in a place where there are no other men, but learning in the heart to stand before God. And there are certainly many spiritual fathers

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who have never been into outward solitude, but who have learnt to make the inward journey. And to the second question, we should also say, yes, surely it is often simultaneous. I think of one example from 19th century Russia. I quoted St. Seraphim. But I could quote another great spiritual father in Starets, Bishop Ignaty Bryancheninov. He started life trained as an army officer, and then he went as a young man into the monastery. And the emperor had known him as a cadet, and came to the staff college and didn't find Ignatie. And he said, where is he? And they said, he's become a monk. And in 19th century Russia, for someone of good family like that to become a monk was quite extraordinary.

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And the emperor said, send him back to me. So they found that Ignatie had gone off to be a monk in a little hermitage. But he'd only had time to spend about a year there. And the emperor said to Ignatie, I shall make you abbot of monastery here in the imperial capital. And so he had to be there in this fashionable monastery, receiving constant social calls, administering a large community for 26 years. Then he was made bishop, and he had to be bishop for four years. At the end of four years, he resigned. and he went and became a hermit for the last five years of his life. So there was the exact reverse from St. Seraphim, but he also was a true Starets. But during his time as abbot and bishop, he must have learned to do the inward journey.

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And I think something similar on a very much lower level happens to a great many of us. Under pressure of outward circumstances, without realizing what is happening, we become launched on a career of teaching or preaching or pastoral counseling, although we lack any deep knowledge of the desert and its creative silence. Then by slow stages, we become conscious of our inadequacy. of the impossibility of healing the wounds of the world simply by a practical program, by philanthropic feeling and a little amateur psychoanalysis. It is not enough. We cannot meet people's needs. And there is the hopeful beginning, when we realize our total inadequacy, our uselessness before all these practical tasks that have been more or less pushed upon us.

[30:54]

We didn't perhaps ask for them, but there we are, and we've got to do something. And that perhaps is the moment when we start the inward journey. And that is not necessarily wrong. That also is a way in which the Holy Spirit can lead people to spiritual fatherhood. What are the gifts? What are the gifts of the spiritual father? May I mention three gifts in particular? First is the gift of insight and discernment. In Greek, diakrisis. The ability to see the secrets of another's heart. Cardiognosia. To understand things which even the other doesn't know.

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This gift of insight is luative. It's even been described to me as sanctified clairvoyance. Such statements could be misleading. Certainly, this gift is intuitive in the sense that it's not the result of intellectual calculation, of a conscious process of discursive reasoning. But on the other hand, neither is it the result of some exceptional psychic power. It's not a kind of telepathy or extrasensory perception in the psychic sense. It's not a psychic gift. It is a spiritual gift. It's not the fruit of some occult endowment. It is the fruit of grace, and it comes from concentrated prayer and ascetic struggle. Because he has this gift of insight, the Starets has the ability to use words with power, to use words with power.

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As each person comes before him, the Starets knows immediately and specifically what it is that this person needs to hear. We today are surrounded by so many words, spoken words on the radio and television, written words in newspapers, duplicated memoranda, advertisements, government forms, and business correspondence. I often feel that two of the great trials of our present civilization are the duplicating machine and the photocopier. If members of committees had to write out everything in longhand, then they would choose their words more carefully. Now, the starets is one who speaks words with power. Not all these words from duplicators, which are usually not words of power at all.

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He uses few words, sometimes none at all. But by these few words, or by his silence, He is able to open a man's spiritual eyes, to alter his whole way of looking. At Bethany, Christ used only three words, Lazarus, come out. But these three words, spoken with power, were enough to bring back the dead to life. How many words that come out of duplicators and photocopiers can bring back the dead to life? We need to rediscover the power of the spoken word because we have trivialised language. We need to rediscover silence. not just as a pause between words because we're tired.

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We need to rediscover silence as a primary reality of existence, as a positive value. Most teachers and preachers talk far too much. The truth directs is distinguished by his economy of language. Saint Isaac of Assyria says, silence is the symbol of the age to come. And because the starets lives in the age to come, as well as in this present age, he is silent. And when he speaks, his word has power because it is a word out of silence. The chief way in which the Starets exercises his gift of spiritual discernment is through the practice known as disclosure of thoughts. In primitive monasticism, the young monk would go every evening to his gheron, and he would tell his gheron the thoughts that he had had during the day.

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This is not a confession of sins. It's not something juridical, a way of getting absolution in a legalistic sense. It is simply that the novice brings himself before his Geron and the Geron listens. And he need not say anything at all because just by listening he may enable the disciple to understand And the disciple mentions many things which might seem purely guiltless, but it may be that the spiritual father will see dangers. He will see significant signs which the other won't understand. And the spiritual father can not only listen, but take the initiative. St. Seraphim of Sarov often had thousands of people coming to him in a single day. So he had to be rather quick.

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And often when people came in, before they'd asked their question, before they disclosed their thoughts, he gave them the answer. And sometimes he didn't answer the question they'd come to ask. the thoughts they'd come to bring, but something entirely different. He answered the question which they ought to have been asking. This, I think, is exceptional, but it can happen. I remember a case with a friend of mine who knew very well a Russian monk on Mount Athos. and my friend was a member of parliament in England. And when this Russian monk came to visit him in England, various people, fairly high rank in the civil service, came to see him. And he treated them usually very briefly. The length of time he gave to people was often in inverse proportion to their worldly importance.

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And when one particularly important man of responsibility in the civil service came to him, All the Russian monks said to him is, what political party do you belong to? And he was absolutely astonished, because he had not expected a Starets to ask him about politics. And he said, well, I've never made up my mind. That's right, said Father Nikon. You'll never make your mind up about anything. And the interview was at an end. Saint Seraphim used to say this, that when people came to him, he did not try to work out first what he was going to answer them. He didn't try to think out a solution. He simply prayed to the Holy Spirit. He simply put this person in front of God. And then he said what he heard from the Holy Spirit.

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And if he didn't hear anything, and this may often happen with the Starets, then he would not say anything. The Starets does not claim to have an answer to everything. He can only speak what God gives him to speak. In St. Seraphim's eyes, The relationship between the spiritual father and his child was stronger than death. And he therefore urged his children to continue their disclosure of thoughts to him, even after his departure to the next life. These are the words that were written by his own command on his tomb. When I am dead, come to me at my grave, and the more often the better. Whatever is on your soul, whatever may have happened to you, come to me as when I was alive, and kneeling on the ground, cast all your bitterness upon my grave.

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Tell me everything, and I shall listen to you, and all the bitterness will fly away from you. And as you spoke to me when I was alive, do so now, for I am living, and I shall be forever. The second gift of the starets is the ability to love others, to make others' sufferings his own. If you had discernment, the ability to see inside people's hearts, and you didn't love them, that would not be something from the grace of God. It would be something demonic. Therefore, it is essential that the spiritual father should not only see into men's hearts, but that he should see with compassion.

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Bear one another's burdens, says St. Paul, and so fulfill the law of Christ. The starets is par excellence someone who bears others' burdens. A primary feature is the wideness of his heart, his readiness to embrace within himself the distress and the bitterness of others. A starets Dostoevsky rightly observes in the Brothers Karamazov is one who takes your soul, your will, into his soul and his will. It is not enough for the starlet simply to offer advice in a spirit of disinterested detachment. He's also required to take up the soul of his spiritual children into his own soul, their life into his life. And as was said yesterday, when he has done that, he can never send them away again from his heart.

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It is his task to pray for his children. Great importance has always been attached in the Christian East to the prayers of the spiritual father. This is more important than any words of advice he gives. It is his task to make his own the sorrows and sins of his children in God. to take their guilt upon himself and to answer for them at the Last Judgment. And that is quite a lot to do, so be careful not to claim to be a spiritual father unless you can do that. Unless you can stand before God at the Last Judgment and answer for the sins of your spiritual children. To illustrate this theme of love and bearing others' burdens, may I read you a few extracts from a 6th century text, The Answers of Varsanufis and John.

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They were two old men in the desert of Gaza, and we have nearly 900 of the answers which they gave, and we have the questions as well, to their spiritual children. It's one of the primary documents for understanding how spiritual direction is given in the Christian East. Here are a few remarks taken at random from Varsanufius to his children. As God himself knows, there is not a second or an hour when I do not have you in my mind and in my prayers. I care for you more than you care for yourself. I would gladly lay down my life for you. And he had this prayer to God, oh master, either bring my children with me into your kingdom or else wipe me out of your book. The spiritual father goes into the kingdom with his children or he does not go at all.

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And he constantly stresses this theme of bearing other people's burdens. I am bearing your burden and your offenses, he writes. I take upon myself the burden of the handwriting that is against you. And I will not abandon you, either in this age or in the age to come. See, I have taken from you the weight and burdens of the debt that you owed. Here, of course, we would have to add a qualification. The spiritual father can only bear your burden if you also are struggling. He cannot do it if you don't care. And this is shown very well in a story of Antony of Egypt. A brother came to him and said, pray for me. And the old man replied, I will not take pity on you, neither will God take pity on you, until you make some effort of your own.

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A third gift of the spiritual father is the ability to transform the environment, both material and non-material. He helps his disciples to see the world as God created it, the world as it was before the fall, and as God wishes it to be again. Here I think of the words of William Blake. If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything will appear to man as it is, infinite. The starets is someone in whose case the doors of perception have been cleansed. And so he sees the infinity in things. He sees things in the glory of God, in the light of the transfiguration, and he helps others to see it as well.

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For the starets, there is nothing mean or trivial except the devil. All else he sees, of infinite value because it is the work of God. And in the end, perhaps even the devil will return to the divine glory. So even he is not perhaps utterly trivial. If he was utterly trivial, he wouldn't exist. In thus manifesting the glory of God's universe, the Starets fulfills a function similar to the painter of icons. Yet he fulfills it not by painting with line and color, but by living. And you'll find a whole series of spiritual fathers in the Christian East who emphasize this sense of reverent awe before the creation of God.

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What is a merciful heart, inquires Saint Isaac the Syrian. It is a heart that burns with love for the whole of creation, for men, for the birds, for the beasts, for the demons, for every creature. When a man with such a heart as this thinks of the creatures or looks at them, his eyes are filled with tears. An overwhelming compassion makes his heart grow small and weak, and he cannot endure to hear or see any suffering, even the smallest pain inflicted upon any creature. Therefore, he never ceases to pray with tears, even for the irrational animals, for the enemies of truth, and for those who do him evil, asking that they may be guarded and receive God's mercy. And for the reptiles, also, he prays with a great compassion, which rises up endlessly in his heart until he shines again and is glorious like God.

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And if you live in the desert among venomous snakes and other such creatures, there are crocodiles in the river. It may not be so easy to pray with great compassion for the reptiles. You can find the same sense of the unity of God's creation very well expressed by Dostoevsky, by the figure of the Starets Zosima in the Brothers Karamazov. Brethren, says Father Zosima, have no fear of men's sin. Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of divine love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in all things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day, and you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.

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And this kind of all-embracing love transfigures its object. If you love things like that, then for you they will be full of glory. And not only for you, but for other people as well. And an example of the way in which the Starets can transfigure things is seen in the story of St. Seraphim that was read to us at dinner two nights ago. His conversation with his disciple, Nicholas Motovilov. And may I remind you of the key text in this. Motovilov has asked, how can I be certain that I am in the Holy Spirit? And the narrative continues. Then Father Seraphim took me very firmly by the shoulders and said, my son, we are both at this moment in the Spirit of God. Why don't you look at me?

[51:55]

I cannot look, father, I replied, because your eyes are flashing like lightning. Your face has become brighter than the sun and it hurts my eyes to look at you. Don't be afraid, he said. At this very moment, you yourself have become as bright as I am. You yourself are now in the fullness of the spirit of God. Otherwise, you would not be able to see me as you do. But why, my son, do you not look me in the eyes? Just look, and don't be afraid. The Lord is with us." After these words, I glanced at his face, and there came over me an even greater reverent awe. Imagine, in the center of the sun, in the dazzling light of its midday rays, the face of a man talking to you. You see the movement of his lips, the changing expression of his eyes. You hear his voice. You feel someone holding your shoulders.

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Yet you do not see his hands. You do not even see yourself or his body, but only a blinding light spreading far around. for many yards, lighting up with its brilliance the snow blanket which covers the forest glade and the snowflakes which continue to fall unceasingly." Now, in that remarkable passage, you can see something of the rich possibilities in the relationship between the spiritual father and his son. The spiritual father can do more, much more, than offer verbal advice, introduce his disciples to techniques of prayer. He can also, by God's grace, reveal to others the glory of the kingdom and the mysteries of the age to come. Now, these are the gifts of the spiritual father, the Starets. But what of the spiritual child?

[53:59]

What has he to contribute to this mutual relationship? Briefly, what he offers is his free and willing obedience. Note that the obedience must be offered freely. This is very vividly expressed in the orthodox monastic profession. The key act of submission is the tonsuring, when the abbot takes scissors and cuts your hair in the sign of the cross. And to cut somebody's hair like that is a sign of authority over them. But the way this happens is very revealing. The scissors are placed on the Book of the Gospel. And the abbot stands one side and the novice stands the other. And the novice picks up the scissors from the book of the gospels and gives them to the abbot.

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But the abbot does not cut his hair. He throws the scissors down and the novice must pick them up again. This must be done three times and only then will the abbot cut his hair. so that no one can say, they have taken away my freedom, they have destroyed me in the monastery. It was you who came and you who said, cut my hair. You who brought your freedom as a gift. They merely accepted that gift. But when they accepted it, things could not be the same. And you cannot take your gift back if you have rarely offered it. This theme of deep obedience, voluntary but deep obedience, comes out again and again in the sayings of the Desert Fathers.

[56:08]

One story is told of a model of obedience, a young monk called Ma. who was a copyist of manuscripts. And when his spiritual father called him, so quickly did he come that he didn't even finish the circle of the letter O that he was writing. And on another occasion, he was walking with his spiritual father. And in the distance, they saw a very small pig. And the spiritual father said to him, Mark, do you see that large buffalo? Mark immediately said, yes, father. Do you see its horns? Yes, father. They are very powerful. This is to be the situation of the disciple. Not to say you need a pair of spectacles. Another spiritual father told his disciple to go out and steal things from people's houses, and he went out and stole them and brought them to his ava.

[57:20]

I'm glad to say the spiritual father gave them back afterwards. Another case, very revealing. A man who was married and had three children came to a spiritual father to be a monk. And in his disclosure of thoughts, he told him everything, except for the fact that he had been married and that he had three children. Several years passed, and then the youngest son of this man came to him. And this virtual father said, who is this? This is my youngest son. Oh, said this virtual father, you have children. Yes, he said. Well, said the spiritual father, you are to take your youngest son and you are to cut his throat. So the man who had learned obedience went away and got a knife from the kitchen and was just about to cut the throat of his son. But then the spiritual father sent another monk to him and said, you are not to cut his throat.

[58:28]

And the man said, but my spiritual father has told me to cut his throat. Well, said the other monk, your spiritual father tells you now not to cut his throat. All right, he said, then I won't. This is the kind of obedience, the gift that you offer. But you have to add a qualification. Most of the spiritual fathers in the tradition of the Christian East show a very great gentleness. They are not concerned to break people. They are concerned to make them grow. And not to make them grow, but to help them to grow. To help them to see. Not to force them to look at things, but to help them to see by themselves. And so, most spiritual fathers in the Christian East do not impose any rule of life. This is very evident in the correspondence of Varsanuffius.

[59:32]

People write to him and they want a simple answer. They say, give us a canon, a rule of life, things that we must do in obedience to you. And this is what he answers. I do not want you to be under the law, but under grace. I have never imposed chains upon anyone. We do not force men's free will. We sow in hope. For our Lord did not compel anyone, but he preached the good news. That I think is very important. Our Lord did not compel anyone, but he preached the good news. And this is what the spiritual father does. He preaches the good news. And now, in conclusion, I want to mention two Orthodox spiritual fathers whom I've had the happiness of meeting myself.

[60:40]

Very different examples, but to very briefly describe their characteristics. The first was a monk on Patmos in the monastery to which I belong, Father Amphilochios, who died in 1970. He had been abbot, then he had resigned, and in his later years he founded a convent for women and he lived near there as their spiritual father. And what most distinguished his character was an extreme gentleness and a feeling of tranquil but triumphant joy. And he was deeply anxious that people should not look on life in Christ, on religious obedience, as a burden, something to be carried with resignation but without joy. He insisted that you must be joyful as a Christian.

[61:43]

And he was deeply opposed to all inner violence and spiritual cruelty. One of his last words before he died was to the abbess of the convent. He said, don't be too hard on the sisters. It would be very sad if after they'd renounced everything to enter the convent, they should then be unhappy when they got here. And to myself he insisted, when I was to return to England from Patmos as a newly ordained priest, that I must not be afraid of anything in the world. There's nothing ever to be afraid of. He also told me that I was not to cut off my beard and go about in a black suit and clerical collar like the other Greek priests in the West. That I follow. My second example is a Russian, Archbishop John Maximovich.

[62:51]

who I knew when he was in Western Europe. He was originally in Shanghai, then he was in Western Europe, then he came to America and he died in San Francisco in 1966. He was a small man, little more than a dwarf in height, with a tangled beard and hair, and with a marked impediment in his speech. And he possessed more than a touch of the fool in Christ. For the last 40 years of his life, he never laid down to sleep on a bed. He used to pray and write letters at night and do his work as a Bishop during the day. And on the whole, he slept at diocesan meetings. As soon as they began to argue about money, he closed his eyes.

[64:02]

One occasion, he said he came to the city of Marseilles in the south of France, and there many years before, a king of Yugoslavia had been assassinated as he landed in the harbour. And Archbishop John said to his priests in Marseilles, this was an orthodox king who died in a very terrible way, we must go to the place where he was assassinated and we must hold a memorial service for the rest of his soul, repose of his soul. And they all said, you can't do that, it's down in the harbour and it happens to be at a crossroads just where the tram lines intersect. when he said, if you won't come, I shall go there. So he went next morning about 8.30 in the middle of the rush hour with a broom and a carpet and a little bag. And first he swept in the exact place with the broom, then he laid the carpet down, then he got out his vestments, lit candles and the censer, and then he celebrated the memorial service alone.

[65:15]

This had a fairly devastating effect on the traffic, but he continued until it was over. And afterwards, I think they felt ashamed that they had not had the courage to come with him and pray in this place. He used to go around Paris barefoot, and some of the more conventional members of his flock thought that this kind of person was unsuited to be a bishop. and they were scandalized by his behavior. I remember one occasion in London when he came to the monastery and there were many people and priests waiting to start vespers with him. And he wanted to meet the children first and he got down on all fours and played with the children for some time and they had to wait until he'd finished before he would begin the service. But he could be very effective on the practical level. After he left Shanghai, in the late 40s with many thousands of his Russians. They went to the Philippines and they had nowhere to go.

[66:20]

They were living there in tents on the seashore. And he went to Washington and he argued with the people. He couldn't speak English, but he argued with the committees and the offices in Russian. And in defiance of all the regulations, in defiance of the quota system, he persuaded the authorities to accept thousands of Russians from the Philippines into the United States, and all the other people who had positions in civil service and tried to help had utterly failed to get anything, but he managed. So perhaps the fool in Christ can be very effective also on the practical level. He in particular prayed for people. This was what he thought was the chief thing a bishop should do, not administer but pray for people. When he celebrated the liturgy, it would take four or five hours sometimes because he prayed for everybody by name. One example I remember being told by a monk in Jordanville, a holy trinity monastery near here.

[67:26]

He used to come there once a year. And as he left one year, a monk gave him a little slip of paper with four names of people who were ill and asked him to pray. Archbishop John must have had thousands upon thousands of these sort of slips each year sent to him. When he came back a year later, he immediately beckoned to the monk and he delved into his casket. He always looked very extraordinary because he carried a large bag of earth from Jerusalem because he wished wherever he died to be buried in the earth of the Holy Land. And so this made him the And when he got wet in the rain, it must have been very difficult. Anyway, he delved into his cassock, and he produced the identical slip of paper, now very much battered and torn. And he said, yes, I've been praying for your friends, but these two pointing at the names are now well again, and these two have died.

[68:30]

And so it was. But this is how you must pray if you wish to have spiritual fatherhood. Another time, this I was told by a monk, priest, now a bishop who lives in Holland, he was sitting up one night in anxiety over the problems of his community. He just did not see how they could keep going, how they could pay to repair the church and heat it. And about three o'clock in the morning, the telephone rang. And it was Archbishop John who was the other side of the world. And he said, don't you think it's time you went to bed? You won't do any good by worrying. And this is what the spiritual father should do, to have all the concerns of his spiritual children in his heart, wherever he may be. This is what it means when Vasanufia says to his spiritual children, I care for you more than you care for yourself.

[69:35]

Rabbi Green has asked to make a comment. I haven't said anything here yet because I kind of feel that the subtitle of this symposium should be, How to Leave Your Baggage at Home. And I felt sometimes that we carry too much baggage with us, and so I didn't want to say, here's my baggage, you know. We have the same thing, and it looks this way in Chassidism, and so I've kind of left the baggage, tried to leave the baggage home. travel light, you know, travel light. But a couple of things, I want to thank Father Callistos especially for his talk because so many things he says are important to me for understanding where I come from. I wanted to offer a couple of definitions of the spiritual master as we know them in Judaism. One comes from before Hasidism actually from a man we call the Ariya Kadosh, Isaac Luria, he's called the Holy Lion. He says it this way,

[70:42]

You know 600,000 Jews came out of Egypt, and according to mystical reckoning there are thus 600,000 souls in every generation. And there are also, according to mystical reckoning, 600,000 letters in the Torah. The Torah contains 600,000 letters as the Kabbalists count. You have to count the special way. That means that every soul in Israel has his own letter of the Torah to which he relates. So one might be the Bet of Breshit, you know, the I of in the beginning, and somebody else will be the I of I am the Lord your God, and so on. So everyone has his own letter, but of course the Torah is one, because it's the name of God, so every letter contains the whole Torah. So actually there are 600,000 different Torahs. Every man has his own. Now, the Arya Kadosh says when we study Torah, in life, we study the common Torah that we all have together. After death, when the soul goes to heaven, each soul learns its own Torah of the 600,000 teachings.

[71:45]

But, he says, at night when a person sleeps, the soul ascends to heaven, as you know, And at night, on certain nights when a person sleeps in a certain holy way, he will learn a verse or two from his own Torah during his sleep. Sometimes late at night, the Arya Kadosh would call one of his disciples into him and say, tonight your soul is going to be learning this verse and this is going to be its interpretation. I think that's so important for definition of spiritual master, because it defines the master in terms of relationship. It's not that he knows the esoteric Torah that nobody else knows, but he knows this disciple's Torah, because he knows this disciple's soul and stands in that relationship to it. And that's the meaning of his esoteric knowledge, that relationship. A second model, comes from a controversy.

[72:48]

There was a man at the time of the Baal Shem Tov named Reb Nachman Kosofer, Nachman from the town of Kosov. And he had a funny habit. He lived off in a village by himself and his disciples lived in the town. And he would send them little pieces of paper saying, you know, Shmuel, this was your sin, you did this and you have to repent for it in the following way. And the Baal Shem Tov and the other masters got together and they stopped him from doing it because they said no prophesying is allowed. A generation later comes Rabbi Zosha who is one of the great Hasidic heroes and he has the ability to look at a man and see in his face and in his forehead what that man's sins are. But Zosha will never tell a man what his sins are. Zusha, when he meets a person, will then, after a while, go off into a corner of the room and begin praying. And as he prays, he confesses his sins and he says, Zusha, you did this, Zusha, you're so terrible, you did this, Zusha, you did this. And as he says it, he lists all the sins that he saw in that man.

[73:52]

And so the man understands. Now, there are two important differences which make Zusha kosher, while Nachman Kassever wasn't. First, He does it not long distance, but he does it by looking in that man's face. You see, that's a statement of relationship again. And also, he does it in such a way that he is taking that sin upon himself, as Father Callistos said also in the Russian tradition. He takes that sin upon himself, not because we have a tradition of vicarious atonement, but because all of us are one. And if that man sinned, then I, Zusha, have done that sin and have participated in that. Because Zusha is one who knows that all sins, that all souls were there from the beginning and all souls are one from the beginning. That goes along with something else Father Callistos reminded me of.

[74:57]

The Zohar, which is our great book of Kabbalah, says that There were three people who were leaders of their generation, and they were three different characters. Noah was the leader of his generation. God says to Noah, I'm going to destroy the whole world with a flood, but you're a good guy. I'm going to save you. Noah says, all right. He goes and builds an ark, no protest, no fight. It's fine. He goes and saves himself and his family. Abraham is the leader of his generation. God says to him, I'm going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham says, no, you're not. stands up to him and he struggles for Sodom and Gomorrah and you remember the bargaining there and Abraham gets him down to if there are 10 righteous men in the city and he brings him down from 50 and then Abraham gives up and he can't he can't do anything else. Then Moses was the leader of his generation and God says to him that people of Israel are wicked they made a gold calf I'm gonna wipe them out and Moses says to him over my dead body you're gonna wipe them out You remember, he says, and the, was it St.

[76:01]

Therafim who quoted that, if not, wipe me out of your book, you know, wipe me, you have to wipe me out first if you're going to wipe them out. And that's the leader of the generation. Finally, a Jewish spiritual teacher whom I find very important, maybe most important, the Nachman of Bratslav. Nachman Bratslaver becomes a master because He knows the underside of what it means to be a human being. The disciples of the Masters, you know, write their lives, saints' lives. The life of Rabbi Nachman by his disciples is unlike any other saint's life. No miracles, first of all, no miracles. And secondly, they tell you constantly what terrible suffering he went through. And now every time he tried to serve God, he would fall down to the bottom of the pit and have to begin all over again. And he was constantly struggling. And he knew what doubt was. He knew moments when there was no God.

[77:01]

He knew moments of emptiness. He knew moments when he felt nothing. And then he had to work from the bottom up again. And this would happen to him not once in a lifetime, but several times a day. And finally, when they conclude the biography of Nachman, they say, he is our teacher. because of no miracles that he performed, but only the miracle that he remained alive and remained a human being and learned how to serve. And that was the miracle that makes him one who can be your Master. And I find in a world where doubt is real and in a world where emptiness is real, the Mastership, that kind of Mastership, is somehow a very important kind of Mastership for us. So those are some of the things that I thought might be valuable in connection. And I thank you. Father, would you answer one of the written questions in between? We'll have other speakers then. But I have to look at the question. Yes. This is a very short question.

[78:05]

It is basically a two-word question. Spiritual mother, spiritual father. In the sayings of the Desert Fathers, I think you'll find about a hundred men and about four women among the desert fathers. So there are also desert mothers, though not very many of them. But in that sense, yes, there are spiritual mothers. Can we then speak of God as mother? In the Syriac tradition, yes. The Holy Spirit is called mother by the early Syriac fathers. God our father, they say, and the Holy Spirit our mother. Unfortunately, spirit in Greek is a neuter word, and in Latin it is masculine.

[79:14]

But I believe in Semitic languages, it can be feminine. And therefore, we in the West do not have this idea of the Holy Spirit as mother. But whether we say father or mother, we are using analogies. We cannot describe it exactly. And why should we not use the analogy of mother as well as father? May I answer now one of the questions you sent in? I've lost a bit of paper, but it said this. Why did I not give any examples in my talk of spiritual mothers? All my examples were chosen from men, which is quite true. I hadn't in fact noticed it consciously. So I will now give you one example. of a woman who came to be a Starets.

[80:17]

This was at the time of the revolution in Russia, and in a particular village there was a woman living in the great house, the local landowner, and she was a widow. And she had always treated her people kindly. And so when the revolution happened, they left her in the big house and did nothing against her. But the local party members came from the nearby town and they smashed up her house and burnt it down. So then the village people took her in and gave her a little hut in the village to live in. And there she went on living. And gradually, all the village people, after she came to live among them in the hut, as they did, they used to come to her for advice. And then the priests from the nearby villages used to come to her and to ask, what must we do now?

[81:20]

The churches are being closed and we're all being taken off to the prison camps. What must we do? and other problems in this totally new situation in Russia. And the local village priest objected very deeply to this. He saw this action that people were going to this woman for advice as an infringement on his own prerogatives. And here we see very clearly how inner insecurity makes you afraid, makes you assert your own claims. And he thought his position as priest was being destroyed by this, until eventually he went to see her himself to complain. And after that, he was entirely changed. He came out of the hut where she lived on his knees, and he afterwards sent everybody to her.

[82:22]

Whenever people came to him for advice, he said, I cannot give you any answers. You go and ask her. So there is one example of a woman acting as a spiritual mother. Baba Ram Das wishes to speak. I found your remarks very useful. I feel that Astaritz is Astaritz, and I heard my guru being talked about through the entire presentation. There is a subtle place in which I can see in him that he is both within the institution and outside of it, in that there seems to be an institution around him, but he himself doesn't seem to be at all part of it. And I think you can recognize that one, too. One question, I have three remark questions. One concerns, when you said the Starets brings the sins or burdens of his disciples to judgment, a judgment day, and he must be ready to something or other.

[83:30]

I'd like to know what that readiness means. The second question, or rather, You raised a point that you put in, I thought, somewhat gratuitously, and I find I don't understand why you had to do it, which concerned making such a heavy dichotomy between what you called psychic or occult and grace. I thought you were tending to take what would be called science and derogating it in some way unnecessarily, which would be the way of understanding states of consciousness in relation to grace, which I think is a very, if it's done with humility, is a very reasonable approach to understanding grace. The third thing may be too gross or big a question to raise for you. It's because of my love for the Jesus prayer, and I guess it's my interest in a very simple statement about the word mercy, but that may be something I have to ask you on the side, because that may be too big for you to deal with at this time.

[84:41]

Thank you. Thank you very much for those questions. First, the place of the starets at judgment. I said that he would answer for his spiritual child. In order to be brief, I was using here rather oversimplified picture language. as if the last judgment was a law court with God sitting as the judge and the person sitting there as the defendant and the spiritual father must come and sit with the dependent and that then God as judge will say, now what have you got to say for all these things that this man did?

[85:45]

Obviously, I do not want that picture to be taken literally. The judgment is not an external event reserved for the last day. It is something going on all the time. We are, each of us, being judged at every moment by our responses, by our failure to grow, by our failure to see. And in the same sense, we are each of us sharing here and now in eternal life. Each time we do respond, each time we do see. What I meant is that throughout this process, the spiritual father stands with his spiritual child. that he does not stand apart and say, here is some advice, you may take it or not as you like, that's your responsibility.

[86:50]

No, it is also the spiritual father's responsibility. Once he has accepted that person as his child, and if the child fails to grow and fails to see and is in that sense being judged, then the question is that the spiritual father is also involved in this failure. because the spiritual father is in a relationship, as was stressed, in a relationship with his child. And he is responsible because they are both one. And what I meant is that throughout this process, the spiritual father is with his child. And therefore, at the last day, at the second coming, When all things are made plain, and all that is now concealed will be clear, then the spiritual father will be with all his children, involved in all their situations, which are then made plain.

[87:58]

That is the idea that I had in mind. I am sorry if I seemed to draw too sharp a distinction between the psychic and the spiritual, or between nature and grace, because certainly one must not make a dualism or dichotomy here. I did want to emphasize that the qualification for the spiritual father is not that he should have special psychic gifts. Though if he does, these can certainly be taken up into God and used. because such gifts exist, and you may use them, if you wish, diabolically, or you may use them for God's grace. But many spiritual fathers have no such special gifts, and their insight is the fruit of prayer.

[89:00]

This was all that I was wishing to say. An example of spiritual gifts divorced from sanctity, an example of a false Starets would be a figure whom all of you have heard about in the last days of Russia, Rasputin, who undoubtedly had gifts of healing when he went and prayed and laid hands on the tsar's son. The haemophilia was improved and the pain stopped and the doctors could do nothing. There seems to be very strong evidence that this happened. But in the case of Rasputin, this gift of healing was not related, apparently, to any great sanctity of life. Not that he was insincere. I think he was a tortured person, utterly divided and fragmented within himself.

[90:02]

And he could not be a real Starets because he had not obtained even a partial reintegration of himself in God. Therefore, he was a false Taretz, but he had this gift of healing, which was not apparently a spiritual gift. It was a kind of black grace. And so this was why I wished to emphasize the distinction, though I would not want to make a sharp division. I think it would be hard for me to say briefly the meaning of mercy. But as I say the Jesus Prayer, this expresses to me the fact, first of all, that I am a sinner, that I am broken, that I need to be healed. And it expresses, secondly, the fact that even though I am broken and in this state, even now God accepts me.

[91:13]

I am accepted by God, and if I will only accept the fact that I am accepted, then I can become whole. That is one very small part of, to me, the meaning of mercy. Noon is a high point and we have reached a high point, so let us just conclude by rising for the silent prayer. you.

[92:47]

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