NOUS, NOETIC ENERGY & HEART, ACCORDING TO OUR HOLY FATHERS

APPENDIX

NOUS, NOETIC ENERGY & HEART, ACCORDING TO OUR HOLY FATHERS

Our nous has to be in our heart.

The nous is the priest, and the heart is the inner altar of man, and it should be devoted to God.

The human nous, according to our Church Fathers, has to be inside us, in our heart, and should be praying there ceaselessly (be officiating, conducting a ceaseless Divine Liturgy in the inner altar of the human heart).

The nous is not supposed to be scattered outwards through the senses, but ought to “come to oneself” (or to one’s senses, like the prodigy son).

This means that the energy of the human nous, which is scattered through the senses into the environment, has to return to the essence (ousia) of the nous, which is located inside the human heart.

We point out here the following facts about what we discern in the human soul:

1. essence, which is located in the heart (and is called “deep heart”) and
2. energy (which is called noetic energy).

The noetic energy is operating in the heart of the spiritually healthy as noetic ceaseless prayer (nous), and in the brain as intellect (logic).

Then, when this returning of the nous to the heart is completed, the nous, through itself, “ascends to the meaning of God”. Then, the noetic energy functions properly. Then, the nous, according to our Holy Fathers, functions/operates naturally (by the laws of nature, κατά φύσιν).

In Patristic Theology, a book containing his main points from his university lectures, Fr. John Romanides teaches: “The curing of the human soul is the main concern of the Orthodox Church. The Church was always healing the human soul. She found out (by examining the Hebrew tradition and from Christ Himself and the Apostles) that there is something operating within the space of our physical heart, which our Holy Fathers called nous.

So, they took the traditional nous, which used to mean the intellect (doiania) and logos (word) and differentiated: they named nous the noetic energy that operates inside the heart of a spiritually healthy person. We do not know when this differentiation took place, because there are some Church Fathers, who use the same term, nous, when they talk about logic (the intellect) and about the noetic energy as well, when it comes down and operates in the space of the heart.

So, through this perspective, the noetic energy is the one and only energy of the human soul, which operates as logic, when it is in the human brain, and simultaneously operates as nous in the human heart. In other words, the same organ, the human nous, prays ceaselessly in the heart (only in people who have acquired the ceaseless noetic prayer) and, at the same time, solves mathematical problems or anything else, by operating in the human brain.”

The returning of the nous to the heart and the returning of the energy to the essence are many times mentioned in the works of our Holy Fathers. St. Basil the Great says that the nous who is not scattered outwards and is not diffused by the senses out into the world, returns to itself and, through itself, it ascends to the meaning of God. And, after that, peripherically glown and from within by the beauty of God, by the Divine Grace, by the uncreated Light of God, this nous has no earthly concern anymore and even forgets about the physical needs for survival. In other words, such a person neither worries stressfully about their food provisions; neither cares about what clothes to wear.

The returning of the human nous from its diffusion (scatter) to the heart, which is the returning of the noetic energy back to its essence, is the cure of the nous, its restoration to its natural function.

Then, our heart gets purified by practicing the ceaseless noetic prayer in the heart, and inside this purified heart comes the Blessed Dweller, the All-Holy Spirit, with His fruit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering etc. When this happens, all previously present negative consequences of our sinfulness disappear: our selfishness, the sorrow caused by the selfishness, and depression as well!