The ability of the nous of man to see God is not only its principal and higher ability, but it is also its central aim for which it was created by God. This, say the holy Fathers, was exactly the blessedness of Adam and Eve in Paradise: to see the Omniscient, Delightful, and Most Longed-for Face of their Visible and Invisible, their Approachable and Unapproachable Creator. God Himself is not only the invisible and inaccessible Essence of God, He is also the uncreated accessible divine energies.
We said that the nous constitutes the “eye of the soul”. Its function however is different from the bodily eye. Even though the bodily eye sees all visible things, it cannot see itself. The nous however operates with three movements, the “direct”, the “circular” and the “spiral”. It can also return to itself to see even its own self.
Let us simply look at what St Dionysios the Areopagite means when he talks about the movements of the nous. (On Divine Names, 4, 9 Pg. 3.705AB).
With the “direct” movement, the nous of man sees things and faces with perceptions or images or symbols which are created in the imagination or with different conceptions which the mind shapes. Since our nous remains still, with its “direct” movement it makes the nous perceptible, or sensual, or miserly, or pretentious, or flesh-worshipping, or technological, or crass, or bestial or evil. For example, the mind sees the creations of God – a man, a woman – and it is captured. It sees money and succumbs to it. It sees the technical aspect of a machine and it is enslaved by it, and it becomes submissive to that thing by which the senses are subjected.
The “direct” movement of our nous finally takes away its natural beauty and transforms it to a mundane and earthly nous, since it becomes attached and assimilates with the ugliness of the passions. The troparia from the 2nd ode of the
Great Canon describe this poetically:
With the lusts of passion I have darkened the beauty
of my soul,
and turned my whole mind entirely into dust.
With my lustful desires I have formed within myself
the deformity of the passions
and disfigured the beauty of my mind. l
What is the beauty of the mind? It is the first created grace with which the Creator beautified man. It is the reflection of the divine beauty and glory of the Person of God.
In Paradise, Adam and Eve were bestowed with a nous which saw God, not always, though, with the “circular” movement, but with the third which is called the “spiral” movement.
The circular movement of the nous is this: when the nous returns to itself, it finds Heaven of which the Lord says “the Kingdom of Heaven is within you”. 2 This energy is superior, and with it the nous overcomes and surpasses itself, or uses itself as a stepping stone in order to reach union and theoria and vision of God (through the energies of God).
St Gregory Palamas cites here an extract of St Basil the Great: “The nous which is not scattered outside itself (towards external and superficial things, symbols and images), returns to itself and through itself returns towards God”.
This “circular” movement of the nous is fixed, and it does not easily fall into error or deception of the devil. On the contrary, the nous becomes ensnared with the “spiral” movement (movement between direct and circular). With the “spiral” movement of the nous Adam and Eve saw God in creation and they glorified Him. The Evil One however, set his trap and drew the nous from the Creator to creation, to the fruit of the tree, and made them turn away from the Creator and forget His commandment. The fall of the nous of man before Christ was an idolatrous fall, starting from the “spiral” and ending up with the “direct” movement, a drift and turning towards creation. The hymnographer St Andrew of Crete writes poetically:
I looked upon the beauty of the tree and my mind
was deceived
and now I lie naked and ashamed.
(Great Canon, 2nd ode) 3
~ The Nous, Themes from the Philokalia, Number 2, 2nd Edition, Publications of the Holy Monastery of St Gregory Palamas, Koufalia, Thessaloniki, Hellas
1. The Lenten Triodion trans. by Mother Mary & Kallistos Ware London, Faber & Faber Ltd. 1984
2. Lk 17:21
3. The Lenten Triodion trans. by Mother Mary & Kallistos Ware London, Faber & Faber Ltd. 1984
