The Soul

Our soul is a unique reality, yet possessing multiple powers.  It uses as an instrument the body, which by nature co-exists with it.  But as for that power of the soul we call mind, what instruments does that use in its operations?  No one has ever supposed that the mind has its seat in the nails or the eyelids, the nostrils or the lips.  Everyone is agreed in locating it within us, but there are differences of opinion as to which inner organ serves the mind as primary instrument.  Some place the mind in the brain, as in a kind of acropolis; others hold that its vehicle is the very centre of the heart, and that element therein which is purified of the breath of animal soul.

We ourselves know exactly that our rational part is not confined within us as in a container, for it is incorporeal, nor is it outside of us, for it is conjoined to us; but it is in the heart, as in an instrument.  We did not learn this from any man, but from Him who molded man, who showed that “it is not what goes into a man that defiles a man, but what goes out by the mouth,” adding “for it is from the heart that evil thoughts come.”  And the great Macarius says also, “The heart directs the entire organism, and when grace gains possession of the heart, it reigns over all the thoughts and all the members; for it is there, in the heart, that the mind and all the thoughts of the soul have their seat.”

Thus our heart is the place of the rational faculty, the first rational organ of the body.  Consequently, when we seek to keep watch over and correct our reason by a rigorous sobriety, with what are we to keep watch, if we do not gather together our mind, which has been dissipated abroad by the senses, and lead it back again into the interior, to the selfsame heart which is the seat of the thoughts?  This is why the justly name Macarius immediately goes on to say, “It is there one must look to see if grace has inscribed the laws of the Spirit.”  Where but in the heart, the controlling organ, the throne of grace, where the mind and all the thoughts of the soul are to be found?

Can you not see, then, how essential it is that those who have determine to pay attention to themselves in inner quiet should gather together the mind and enclose it in the body, and especially in that “body” most interior to the body, which we call the heart?

St. Gregory Palamas, The Triads