The Book of Mystical Chapters: Meditations on the Soul's Ascent from the Desert Fathers and Other Early Christian Contemplatives

To read any one of these ancient meditations—to repeat it to yourself, to explore its implications and its relevance to your daily life, to savor it—is to begin the soul's ascent on the path of mystical knowledge. Collected here are three hundred short meditations by Christian contemplatives from the second to the fourteenth centuries. Many were written by the Desert Fathers, the legendary monks who fled the decadence of city life to dedicate themselves to the life of the spirit in the deserts of Egypt and Palestine. The greatest of these teachers became experienced psychic guides, experts in mapping the stages of spiritual development, who taught and corresponded with disciples from all over Christendom. The meditations are arranged under three traditional headings (1) practice, geared primarily at developing sustained attention and discipline in the beginner; (2) theory, presenting guidance in overcoming obstacles that commonly arise in intermediate stages of spiritual practice; and (3) gnosis, reflections to be shared among the more spiritually advanced. From the Philokalia to Origen to Symeon the New Theologian, these ancient voices speak directly to the soul, as relevant today as they were centuries ago.