The Power of The prayer and the Healing
“But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind”. – James 1:6-8 (NIV)
This is the Bible message about Faith. For a Christian, God answers to his prayers when they are offered in faith. It sounds logical, because if one starts praying with a heart full of doubt, not being sure that God is capable of answering, will not receive an answer.This is how a true Christian should think about prayer and God’s help.
For the others, it exists Valery Slezin, Head of the laboratory of neuropsychophysiology of St Petersburg Research and development Psychoneurological Institute n.a. Bekhterev. He measured the power of prayer using an electroencephalograph. The subjects of his research were some monks and what he discovered through his study was that, during praying and meditation, an unusual phenomenon occurs in their brain: the complete “switch-off” of their cerebral cortex. It’s like those monks found some kind of deep and complete inner peace that cannot be disturbed by anything.
In fact, the state attained by those monks through prayer is hesychastic, which occurs when the mind is brought into the heart, reaching a State of absolute sobriety, without mental images and without temptations.
Hesychasm is an eremitic tradition of prayer in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and its practice is called hesychazo: „keeping the tranquility”. According to this doctrine, the Christian or the monk has to lead a life of peace and tranquility, keeping the body and the soul in perfect balance, in a contemplative state. The Hesychast permanently repeats the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner”, as a way to always remember God’s kindness and the man’s condition of sinner. The prayer has to be repeated ‘with the heart’, with intent, because is a real invocation of Jesus. Repeating the Jesus Prayer automatically and continuously, the Hesychast enters into mental state of nepsis (absolute sobriety and neutrality), where there are no more temptations, no more thoughts. The mind descents into the heart as a real phenomenon and not in the metaphorical way (this is what Valeri Slezin registered on the encephalograms). The mind into the heart is a communion between cognitive faculties and spirit. The consciousness is no longer encumbered by the spontaneous inception of images: the mind has a certain stillness and emptiness.
The goal of the hesychasm is to encounter God, through God’s Grace; it is the state of ecstasy which allows the divine world to be seen. The ecstasy is not a goal in itself, but a way to perceive God. The Hesychasts are saying that they have seen God as an Uncreated Light, and that it is not in their power to provoke the encounter, because God decides when to show himself. The ecstasy state is temporary; the Hesychast comes back between people and has to guard his mind to keep it pure.
The one practicing Hesychasm actually takes the medicine of pure prayer. The supreme peace – physical, moral and spiritual, is the real health. The Prayer of the Mind into the Heart (Oratio mentis) is by itself a way to prevent and to treat spiritual anxiety. The absolute inner calm (hysihia) is the place where any conflict, illness, or negative thing disappears.
The Hesychasts, like the Saints of the Church, are spiritually healed. Beside them, in the Church, there also are unhealed Christians, who do not know and do not understand what the healing is, and unhealed Christians, who have understand the healing and they are trying to attain it.
It is hard for a Christian to practice hesychasm, which is faith and prayer, and solitude and ascetics, too. But any Christian has the prayer and his strong faith. He has The Prayer of the mind into the heart, which is a prayer of a complete man. The prayer is not a mental activity, nor a physical one, but both. Even from the science’s perspective, the electrophysiology has demonstrated that the bio-currents emerge and multiply from praying, and act on the physical level in each cell and in each neuron. The true prayer, which comes with a whole heart, is able to heal the spirit and the body.
Even the in simple man, who owns the sense of sacred and prays constantly, a new form of superior energy is generated and is spread throughout the physiological system, carrying healing power. In this state the consumption of protein lowers.
Any Christian can receive healing through prayer, but not if he asks for the healing itself, but for the gift of understating what kind of healing he needs and what caused the need of healing.
