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More than knowledge needed

Drawing on a vast knowledge of these earlier fathers, the Russian Saint Theophan the Recluse, describes the gestation that leads to the second birth in a way which shows more clearly the importance of knowledge (gnosis) in the process. "There will come a moment when the mental student of the word of God will be overcome by a desire to turn to its instructions, and will decide to follow them unswervingly. In such a case, all the previously accumulated information from God's word will serve as ready material for the formation of the inner man, just as the seed is fed by the elements surrounding that seed." 

This describes one form of the knowledge that leads to salvation, this is the tradition. This kind of knowledge tells us what to do, but to be saved it seems clear that we also need special knowledge about what we are and what the world is.

According to the majority of saints of the early church, including Saint Gregory Palamas, God is known by His  actions, which we find within the stillness of the inner life.

At the end of the 12th Century, Saint Gregory Palamas, faced with a new growth of rationalism, left his monastic life on Mount Athos to become a bishop in Thessalonica, where he entered the debate with 'Baarlam the Calabrian' and made the point that what we today call intellect was not sufficient means for knowing God,

that God could not be known by the head,

nor by direct observation,

but that He could be known by his effect on us;

by the activity He brings into being the presence of His energies

within the still heart of the knower...

"'Such a union of the divinised with the light that comes from on high takes place by virtue of a cessation of all noetic activity.' It is not the product of a cause or a relationship, for these are dependent upon the activity of the nous, but it comes to be as a result of a process leading to total abstraction, without itself being that abstraction." St. Gregory Palamas - 'The Triads'

The same view was formulated by Dionysius the Areopagite and others before him. It describes what Jacob Boehme describes as 'that in which no creature dwelleth', when he wrote:

"He who can throw himself into that in which no creature dwelleth shall hear the unspeakable words of God." Jacob Boehme - 'Dialogues on the super sensible life'

• This is the dhyana of Yoga, in icons it is the cave in which Christ is born.
• In secret tradition, it is the black water of life.

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Spiritual crisis of the West  

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