Guarding the Imagination by St Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain

Saint Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain 

What the Imagination Is and That It Produces the Same Passion as the Senses
Because I have already commented to you about the five external senses of the body, it is proper now to also comment briefly on the internal sense of the soul, that is, the imagination. 

Imagination is more refined than sense perception, but more coarse than the mind (nous*- see *nous below))and for this reason it stands between the mind and the senses, according to St. Gregory Palamas 1-see Notes below. The imagination is the map of the ruling mind, about which we spoke in the beginning, and upon which everything is recorded; 

it is the broad board on which things are painted; it is the wax on which things are imprinted. What things? All the things that we see with our eyes; all the things we hear with our ears; all the things we smell with our noses; all the things we taste through our mouths; and all the things we touch through the general sense of touch. 

According to the wise Vryennios who borrowed the saying from St. Maximos, "The body's world is the external objects, and the mind's are the thoughts." Aristotle called the imagination a common sense, because it alone contains all those images, all those sensations and dispositions which have entered from the outside through our five senses. He called it sense because the same passion and movement caused by all the external senses upon the soul is also caused by the imagination alone. 

In order to prove this [fact] many examples are brought forward by the metaphysicians, the physicians, the physicists and ethicists. I like to present my proof with this example only: Someone eats a lemon. Someone else stands by and sees him, and in seeing him he thinks that he too is tasting the sharp taste of the lemon so much so that the taste buds are affected in his own mouth.

Now, what is experienced by the observer can be experienced also by someone who is not observing the phenomenon of eating a lemon, but who is affected with a strong impression through the imagination. He who imagines strongly the sensation received by the one eating a lemon imagines himself to be eating a lemon also and gradually has almost the same reaction in his mouth. There is obviously a very close interplay between the external senses and those of the imagination which are affected by both one's physical and spiritual capacities.

This is the reason why, dear friend, knowing this you must guard your external senses from passionate objects, as we said before. At the same time, however, you must also guard the internal sense, that is the imagination, and not permit it to envision and remember passionate and shameful visions seen by the eyes, or the improper words heard by the ears, or the fragrances smelled by the nose, or the rich and delicious foods tasted by the mouth, or the soft things touched by the hands.

No, for what is the value of guarding the external senses and then not guarding the imagination, which possesses all the passionate impressions of the senses and causes through them the same passion and agitation to the soul? 

Joseph Vryennios has borrowed a quotation from St. Maximos to express this close relationship between the senses and the imagination: "As the body is capable of fornication with the body of a woman, the mind can also fornicate with the thought of the woman, through the imagination of that same body. A man imagines in his mind the form of his own body to be united with the form of the woman's body. The same is true with the other sins as well. Those things which the body does actively in the physical world, the mind also does in the world of thoughts"3. But why do I say that you must guard the imagination as you do the external senses? Actually, we must take greater care in guarding our imagination than our senses.

How does the Imagination Differ from the Senses?
The external senses are active only when external stimuli are present. The imagination however can open its "book" and reveal its sights and sounds, and so forth, even when the perceptible things are absent and man is alone enclosed within the walls of his home or in a far and isolated place. 

The imagination is a sort of very fine sense of touch, especially when a certain passion is invoked strongly. In fact it is often the imagination itself which prompts the external senses to enjoy some imagined passion and thus exercises a sort of influence over them. The imagination being itself a more refined sense than the external senses, as we said before, is consequently more rapid in movement, being able in a flash to impress and fashion passionate images of sin, and at the same time to attract the heart of consent. This is why greater care is needed to guard the imagination. 

St. Maximos said: "To sin in thought is so much easier than to sin in deed, as to wage war indeed is so much more difficult than to do so in thought"4. St. Basil also spoke about this when interpreting the passage in Job 2:5: "For Job said, 'It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts." The just Job was reasonable in considering the possibility and praying for hidden sin, since men have a tendency to readily fall into the sins of the mind. 

The activities of the body require both time and opportunity and toil as well as other persons to cooperate. The activities of the mind, however, are enacted in an instant, without toil, without burden and every time for them is appropriate to act"5. The imagination has a certain natural attribute and all the impressions it receives from the senses it wants to make them all visible so that it can see, as St. Gregory Palamas has noted 6.

For example, you hear, "Martha, Sophia." These are two simple sounds which have struck your eardrums and you have heard them. The imagination is not content to hear them as simple sounds, so it proceeds to fashion even the images of Martha and Sophia, thereby creating greater agitation and passionate pleasure in the soul. 

By the same token when you hear "kingdom of heaven" or "hell" or anything else that you have not actually seen before, you undergo a certain effort through the imagination to give them some visual form or image. Generally speaking, as we said in the chapter on sight above, the sense of sight sees things substantially; the imagination similarly makes visible what is imagined and in a sense represents them substantially. This is why imagination instigates a more serious war and a greater agitation. 

These then are the two natural consequences which follow one after the other: Namely, the effort one makes to imagine an object that is absent is the same effort one makes when it is present physically. Conversely, the less one tries to imagine a thing, the less one tries when it is physically present. 

Oftentimes the senses receive sense perceptions of things and simply leave them without curiosity. Later when one returns home, the imagination then remembers and describes with curiosity whatever the senses saw or heard or spoke in passing, and thus creates a greater war and agitation to the soul. 

The imagination, as soon as it receives and records the image of a beautiful person, can only with great difficulty wipe out that image, as we have noted in the chapter on sight. "The things we have suffered are the things we carry around with us through their passionate imaginations," as St. Maximos wrote 7. 

What is very strange is that we often imagine that person to be dead, while other times we touch with our hands the lifeless skull and the bones and yet our foolish and unreasonable imagination does not want to remember it as dead. It holds on to that first image that was impressed on the mind when that person was alive and does not cease to trouble us with it. And this can happen when we are awake or when we are sleeping. 

Also, the imagination not only records things, that is, receives images of things seen, but also recalls those images that have been forgotten, fashions other images on its own which it substitutes for others by adding or subtracting or changing. Thus it can change insignificant images insignificantly, both when we are awake and when we are asleep through our dreams, in which dreams, I suggest, you never believe. It is written: "For dreams have deceived many, and those who put their hope in them have failed" (Sir. 34:7).

From this we conclude that passionate imagination has greater power and authority over man than the senses themselves. Once someone is overcome by a passionate imagination he becomes altogether subservient to that imagination. Thus he may not be able to see even though he has the sense of sight; he may not hear even though he can hear; neither can he smell or touch. Having all his sense organs open, he appears to have them closed and totally inactive.

The Devil Is Greatly Related to the Imagination and for This Reason Uses It as an Organ of Deception

The devil has a very close relationship and familiarity with the imagination, and of all the powers of the soul he has this one as the most appropriate organ to deceive man and to activate his passions and evils. 

He indeed is very familiar with the nature of the imagination. For he, being created by God originally as a pure and simple mind without form and image, as the other divine angels, later came to love the forms and the imagination. Imagining that he could set his throne above the heavens and become like God, he fell from being an angel of the light and became a devil of darkness.

St. Dionysios spoke about this devil: "What is the evil in the devils? Irrational anger; unreasonable desire; and reckless imagination"8. St. Gregory Sinaite also wrote: "The devils were originally minds who fell from that immateriality and refinement and each of them received a certain material thickness"9. The devil uses the imagination as his organ. He deceived Adam through the imagination and raised up to his mind the fantasy of being equal with God. Before the disobedience Adam did not have the imaginative attribute, as St. Maximos noted:

"In the beginning, passion and pain were not created together with the body; nor forgetfulness and ignorance together with the soul; nor the ever changing impressions in the shape of events with the mind. All these things were brought about in man by his disobedience.

He who would remove passion and suffering from the body achieves practical virtue; he who would remove forgetfulness and ignorance from the soul has properly attained the natural vision; and he who would release the mind of the many impressions, has acquired the mystery of theology. 

For the mind of Adam at first was not impressed by the imagination, which stands between the mind and the thoughts, setting up a wall around the mind and not allowing it to enter into the most simple and imageless reasons of created beings. The passionate physical perceptions of the visible things are scales that cover over the clairvoyance of the soul and prevent its passage over to the authentic word of truth" 10

Adam, however, was able at first to be attached to the thoughts of the mind and to enter into them without the intermediary of the imagination.

The Lord Did Not Have Imagination
The new Adam, our Lord, did not have imaginations, according to the theologians. One of them, Georgios Koresios, wrote in his theological treatise on the Incarnation: "The Lord deserved merit not for his blessed vision and knowledge and the love that flowed from it, but for the knowledge that was poured upon him from God, and which was always active in Christ voluntarily and never interrupted by sleep or any other cause, as it happens in the mind of other men. 

The mind of Christ was completely independent of the imaginations which become a wall blocking our penetration into the immaterial realities of the spirit." Not only Adam but most persons who have ever fallen into sin and deceptions, into irrational superstitions and heresies and evil and corrupt doctrines, have all been deceived through the imagination. 

This is the reason why the holy Fathers call the devil a pantomime and an ancient painter, as we have seen especially in St. Chrysostom 11. St. Maximos has noted that the devils deceive men not only when awake but also when they are sleeping, but inciting them with the passions of the body through the imagination. This imagination is considered by the Fathers to be a bridge of the devils. 

St.Kallistos has written: "Imagination is like a multiform and many-head monster similar to the mythical Daedalos and Hydra, which the devil utilizes as a sort of bridge, as the saints have previously noted. These murderous villains communicate and unite themselves with the soul, making it into a hive of parasites, a place of passionate and fruitless thoughts"12. 

St. Gregory the Theologian said that imagination is the cause of both the consent and the act of sin. Do you see now, dear friend, how many evil things imagination brings about? I beseech you therefore, to guard your imagination as much as you possibly can so that no images harmful to the soul are impressed upon it, as they seek to enter through the senses. 

And if they have already entered, seek not to compromise with them or to give your consent in your heart, but run directly to God through prayer of the heart, which we are going to discuss in the following chapter. St. Syngletike has noted: "It is important not to give your consent to the imaginations. For it is written that if the spirit of the devil arises in you, do not leave the place of your heart, for such consent is tantamount to worldly fornication" (cf. Eccl 10:4) 13.

How Should Imagination Be Used and That We Will Be Judged by the Images Imprinted Upon It
I have referred to images harmful to the soul because there are other images which are permissible, as St. Kallistos noted. Such images include the contrition, the grief, and the humility of the heart; the meditations upon death, the future judgment, and the eternal punishments; the study and meditation upon creation and the Incarnation of the Lord; the phenomena of creation, the miracles, and the mysteries of the Lord's Incarnation - the birth, the baptism, the crucifixion, the burial, the resurrection, and so forth, as we have said before. 

Finally, it is permissible, when fighting against certain inappropriate and evil imaginations presented by the enemy, to use other appropriate and virtuous imaginations. 

Do not pay any attention to the shameful and fearful images of the foolish and irrational imagination and do not be frightened by them. Ignore them and consider them unworthy of your attention. They are empty playthings without any true substance. 

He who is used to ignoring the imaginations can also ignore the real things themselves that are depicted in the imaginations, as St. Maximos has noted: "He who conquers over the passionate fantasies will also be able to prevail over the realities they represent"14. 

Let me conclude this chapter and summarize what I have been saying. Know that if you impress upon the board and chart of your imagination beautiful and appropriate images, you will be praised on the day of judgment, when what each person imagines secretly will be revealed. But if you allow inappropriate and evil images to be recorded and to dwell in your imagination, you will then be condemned, as St. Basil has noted 15.

*Nous: The word 'mind' (nous) as used by St Nicodemos in  this text, does not refer to reason, discursive thinking or logical thinking, but to the organ of the soul by which it can 'know', that is directly apprehend, spiritual realities; not by drawing conclusions, but directly under the inspiration of divine Grace. The Greek language makes a distinction between nous (translated as 'mind' here) which is the spiritual organ of knowledge of the soul; and diania or 'reason' the organ of knowledge of the brain through the senses and discourse. Orthodox Christian anthropology affirms that man has both organs of knowledge. Thoughts, reason and the senses can interact with the nous, both in a positive and in a negative manner, and in that way affect the heart, the spiritual center of man.

Notes
1. Physical Chapters, ch 27

2. Third Century, ch 53

3. Third Century on Love, ch 53

4. First Century on Love ch 63

5. Homily on Guard Thyself

6. Physical Chapters, ch 6

7. First Century on Love, ch 63

8. Divine Names, ch 4

9. St Gregory the Sinaite, ch 123

10. Second Century of Theology, ch 75

11. Homily on Prayer

12. Philokalia, ch 64

13. Quoted in the Biography of St. Syngletike

14. The Centuries on Love, ch 63

15. Homily on Virginity

from A Handbook of Spiritual Counsel, p.146-p.152, by St Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain, Trans. by Peter Chamberas, Paulist Press New York 1989

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