The theme of prayer is undoubtedly the most frequently discussed and most thoroughly developed theme in St Isaac of Nineveh. When reading his works, one not only receives a clear idea about how he and other members of the Church of the East prayed in his times: one also gains a detailed picture of the theory and practice of prayer in the whole of the Eastern Christian tradition.

            We have already had a chance to examine Isaac’s teaching on prayer in detail.[1] Now we shall speak mostly of the spiritual states, which, according to Isaac, are beyond the borders of prayer. The difference between prayer and these states is that, during pure prayer, one’s mind is full of different movements (zaw‘e, stirrings), such as the prayers for deliverance from trials, whereas in the beyond-the-borders state, the mind is free from all movements. There is pure prayer and ‘spiritual prayer’ (slota ruhanayta)[2]. The purity of prayer, according to him, means that the mind, when offering the movements of prayers, is not commingled with foreign thoughts and does not wander astray. As to ‘spiritual prayer’, it does not involve any movement of the mind. For ‘the saints  of the age to come do not pray with prayer when their intellects have been swallowed up by the Spirit, but rather with awestruck wonder they dwell in that gladdening glory. So it is with us, at the time when the intellect is deemed worthy to perceive the future blessedness, it forgets itself and all things of the world, and no longer has movement with regard to any thing’.[3]

            ‘Spiritual prayer’, which begins beyond the borders of pure prayer, is the descent of mind to a state of peace and stillness. In this state, every prayer ceases: 

In the life of the spirit... there is no longer any prayer. Every kind of prayer that exists consists of beauteous thoughts on the level of the soul, which arise in a person under the title of prayer. On the level and in the life of the spirit, there are no thoughts, no stirring; no, not even any sensation or the slightest movement of the soul concerning anything, for human nature completely departs from these things and from all that belongs to itself. Instead it remains in a certain ineffable and inexplicable silence, for the working of the Holy Spirit stirs in it, it being raised above the realm of the soul’s understanding.[4] 

            Thus for Isaac, ‘stillness’ (Šelya) and ‘spiritual prayer’ are synonymous: both terms denote complete cessation of the intellectual activity. Is this also a migration beyond the borders of every personal existence, a full loss of personal self-consciousness? The answer must be negative. In Isaac, ‘stillness of mind’ is not a synonym for unconscious and insensible oblivion: there is a positive element in Isaac’s ‘stillness’, the capture of the mind by God. ‘Stillness of mind’ is a state of extremely intense activity of the mind, which finds itself entirely under the power of God and is drawn into undiscovered depths of the Spirit: 

Once the intellect enters the realm of stillness, it ceases from prayer... As soon as the governance and the stewardship of the Spirit rule the intellect.., then a man’s nature is deprived of its free will, and is led by another guidance, and does not direct itself. Where, then, will there be prayer, when a man’s nature has no authority over itself, but is led whither it knows not by some other power?.. According to the testimony of Scripture, at such a time a man will not possess a will, nor will he know whether he is ‘in the body or out of the body’.[5] 

The question concerns, therefore, the absence of the movements and desires of the intellect, but not of the loss of personal existence: on the contrary, in the stillness of mind there is an intense personal communion of a human person with a personal God.

            The state of stillness of mind is related to ‘wonder’ and ‘contemplation’: beyond the boundary of pure prayer, according to Isaac, 

...There is awestruck wonder and not prayer. For what pertains to prayer has ceased, while a certain divine vision (te‘orya, contemplation) remains, and the mind does not pray a prayer... Prayer is one thing, and contemplation during prayer is another, even though each takes its inception from the other. For prayer is the seed, and the contemplation is the harvesting of the sheaves. Whence the reaper stands in ecstasy before the unutterable sight, how from the mean and naked seed which he sowed, such rich ears of wheat have suddenly burst forth before his eyes; then he remains entirely motionless in his contemplation.[6] 

            In Isaac’s teaching on stillness of mind, one can easily perceive the influence of Evagrius. In particular, Isaac develops the Evagrian notion of the intellect’s vision of its own luminous nature, as well as the teaching of the Areopagite on the ‘blessed unknowing’ that surpasses every human knowledge: 

When the intellect puts off the old man and puts on the new man of grace, and then it sees its purity to be like unto heaven’s hue,[7] which was also called the ‘place of God’ by the council of elders of Israel, when it was seen by them in the mountain.[8] Therefore, as I have said, one must not call this grace and gift spiritual prayer, but the offspring of pure prayer which is engulfed by the Holy Spirit. At that moment the intellect is yonder, above prayer, and by the discovery of something better, prayer is abandoned. Then the intellect does not pray with prayer, but it gazes in ecstasy on incomprehensible things which surpass this mortal world, and it is silenced by its ignorance of all that is found there. This is the unknowing  which has been called more sublime than knowledge.[9] 

            Spiritual prayer, according to Isaac, is participation in the age to come, the experience of paradise on earth. The experience of contemplation which the saints have in the future life is given to one in one’s earthly life through ‘spiritual prayer’: ‘The soul does not pray a prayer, but in awareness she perceives the spiritual things of that other age which transcend human conception; and the understanding of these is but the power of the Holy Spirit. This is noetic contemplation, not the movement and entreaty of prayer, although it has its starting-point in prayer’.[10]

            In Isaac’s teaching on spiritual prayer and stillness of mind are outlined all of the major themes of his mystical theology, themes such as contemplation, spiritual vision, wonder, ‘inebriation’, unknowing. Each of them will be discussed separately below.