Интересное утверждение в одной статье на английском языке об исихазме, что то, что уже долгое время на русском и английском имеется в виду под словом "фантазия" (fantasy) или воображение на греческом в исихастской литературе обозначало слово "eikasia" (слово родственное "eikona" - "икона"). В свою очередь греческое слово "phantasia" якобы обозначает умное (noetic) "внутренное чувство". Пока "eikasia" является силой рассудка (dianoia) воспроизводить конкретные образы, "phantasia" является силой ума (nous) быть в действительности.
"For our purposes here, we need only to discuss the cognitive powers of the soul. According to all the traditions under consideration, behind the five senses there is one common inner sense. This common inner sense is the phantasia (this is not to be confused, as it is in modem times inexperienced with the interior life, with imagination or eikasia, phantasia is the noetic power to make present through one's own power to be present while eikasia is the dianoetic power to imagine in terms of concrete images as opposed to abstract concepts) in the Hesychast tradition (the Latin west calls it the 'sensus interior')"
Hesychasm: Orthodox Spirituality Compared and Constrasted with Other Religious Traditions http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7282&lofi=1Далее искажение и смешение этих понятий автор статьи объясняет тем, что из за инославием искаженным взглядом смотря и толкуя исихастские тексты произошло искажение понятия, которое имелось под греческим словом "phantasia".
Due to the influence of heterodox Byzantine humanists with heterodox views of Hesychasm, there develops a misguided and increasingly wrongly motivated Renaissance quest to re-discover the missing phase leads to the distortion of phantasia into fantasy. The demise of the concept of impressed species in the period of transition from the late middle ages and Renaissance to the modem era reflects a decline in the practical and theoretical knowledge of both intellection and contemplation in the errant and schismatic Roman Catholic Religious Organization [RCRO].
В другом месте я нашел описание автора о его личном опыте в монастыре, где интересеные детали проявления phantasia и eikasia:
In one monastery (also labs, personally, I suspect the spiritual bona fides officially authorized of monks in a monastery from age 15), I was doing my usual struggle to attend, meditatively, to the task assigned to me. The Father, who turned out not to be the abbott nor priest (in Orthodoxy, the authority of the spirit does not run through "official" channels) in this monastery, made my meditative task more difficult as I was learning how to do the assigned task mindfully. He came up one day to tell me to keep the focus but now, in addition, begin to recite the Psalms. And if I did not know them, since the Psalter is recited each week, to memorize them in my "time off". I was to do the tasks assigend with a meditative attention that after many struggles revealing my inner deceptions, lies to myself, false identification with various roles I invested too much of me in, that is, the first painful experience in self knowledge was a direct, experiential knowledge of one's inner hypocrisies, not to feel guilty or emotionally repentant (self-condemning), but a real metanoia (it happens of itself under guidance, mostly), a sober view of oneself from the outside. So, I complained that I was just getting ahold of the mindful attention factor. The father, who previously showed up at spiritually embarrasing moments when I was beginning to react as if he knew me on a timer, said, "there is no mastery, you climbed a step, the ascent does not get more easy but more steep." So, I add the additional instruction with great struggle thinking I was losing ground (which we never have, really). Almost a year later, in my assigned task with the additional "burden" to recite the Psalter, with legs and shoulders and, well everything aching in pain, it suddenly disappeared. My attention was 360, bodily, graceful, all movement a well lighted grace. I enjoyed the entire bliss of the exprerience. I noticed it was fading. I tried to re-capture it. I failed. Almost to the second this was happening, the monk who was the piritual father of the monastery, appeared. He said, "You went for the happy, not for the attention. We call this the temptation of "beauty". Later it was explained that the light was phantasia lit up within for a brief second; the hedonistic bliss was an after-glow of that that fueled eikasia to "counterfeit" the experience. The counterfeit is the spiritual high - the bliss.
Then, nous must take a turn within nous to increase nous.
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/neoplatonism/conversations/topics/4544и ниже о разнице и функциях phantasia и eikasia
In Hesychasm, phantasia is the receptivity of nous. The five senses are the mono-media "outposts" of nous. The receptivity of nous, that is phantasia, is how we have a multi-media "experience". Three closely related terms, according to Hesychasm, are phos, phantasia, phainomenon, phantasm. With qualifications, think of phantasia as the inner common sense; ordinary and mundane function of phantasia is nous's ability through its outposts to have the richly-textured experience we have. So, in a way, phantasia is the capacity to have a living, lived-through, been there and done that, experience. So, phantasia is, in Hesychasm, the nous's power of receptivity as a multi-media power to have an experience. Phantasia has to do with integral perception. Thus, it is an aspect of nous.
Eikasia, on the other hand, is tied to memory. It re-combines images of the past from past perceptions, memory, and emotions. It is not perceptive but something else. In its normal function, and according to Hesychast teaching, it is anything but not normal in our lives. So giving examples of it, which I promise to do, are its ordinary and not normal functions.
Normally, eikasia, based on memory (important to note that memory can be faulty because we do not want nor can bear all we preceive through nous and phantasia and that is why imagination -- eikasia -- is one of the first things one must struggle against), is the imaging power (sight, sound, feeling, emotion, memory, smell, hearing) that produces the capacity of imitative vicarious experience (I attend the theatre and forget me as I imitatively and vicariously have an experience of the play's drama because I am drawn into it, or consider, a really good novel you could not put down, eikasia, the imaginative faculty, based on past experience, that allows one to imitatively and vicariously experience).
John, you asked about sources and a systematic presentation. In my reply, promise, cross, hope to die, I hope to be able to convey why there is a pathological connection between authentic philosophy as lived under guidance where ideas are presented as avenues of self-exploration or encounter (not often pleasant, purgation has several functions, one is revealing the internal shit, turning it up, to make fertile ground, phos or illumination is not a more advanced stage -- sort of -- but that light that makes purgation work, fruitful, and of course, neither purgation nor phos/illumination works unless there is, already, in some sense, union with the divine -- syneidesis is that in embryonic form).
The "systematic unity" is, really, potentially you. All this philosophy, inward is sort of a cheap escapism, is about you and the you (or I -- same human boat) you are meant to become. Conscience! Authentic philosophy, under authentic conditions of transmitting it, presents ideas as fragments (concepts are really introduced after the fact, after the experience). The "systematicness" (ugly word) is our own personal appropriation of reality within which we become whole and integral and one. System is being one; and in that, I must confess, there is a 2 decade long politics about my book from Hesychasts as being "falsely systematic". For reasons I will explain, I now have a go ahead. I will explain that also.
The teaching is very indirect and subtle. For example, the access to some monasteries is really frightening. It is a test of character. It is also a prognosis of how one needs help climbing that invisible mount of ascent. Or, who you are in a bank line or a fast food drive through or in rush hour traffic -- contrary to your positive self-images (eikasia in its statistically average function as "false normal") -- is the raw material, prima materia, the crap and shit you, we, all of us, are, "normally" we have to first learn to acknowledge in order for it to become fertile soil. It is not possible through books nor alone. Someone has to be, so to speak, the objective other person who is an advocate of one's conscience. That is the primitive phos (illumination) in purgation. The first step in self knowledge is an experiential encounter with the BS and Vain and Fearful and Needy false self one is in actuality most of the time in order to seprate from that
(dispassion as a move into phos).
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/neoplatonism/conversations/messages/4328Briefly, to be followed up more, the phantasia in Hesychasm is noetic, the "matter of the nous" rooted in the kardia while eikasia is dianoetic, related to memory is in the head. Phantasia as receptivity of nous has syneidesis as its template for authentic receptivity (theoria - contemplation) with the idea that syneidesis (conscience) grows into sophia (wisdom) re-ording the soul (psyche). In the beginning, the soul's powers are in mutual conflict and disorganization. So the beginning phases of contemplation struggles with maintaining a noetic focus that eikasia seeks to undermine as well as dianoetic temptation to analyze. In Hesychasm, allied to memory, both the dianoia and eikasia reflect the past while nous, the heart (kardia), conscience (syneidesis), and phantasia are of the potential future. The spiritual struggle is not necessarily framed as body vs spirit. Rather, it is one's past as your embodied habits vs. your future potential.
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Briefly, to be followed up more, the phantasia in Hesychasm is noetic, the "matter of the nous" rooted in the kardia while eikasia is dianoetic, related to memory is in the head. Phantasia as receptivity of nous has syneidesis as its template for authentic receptivity (theoria - contemplation) with the idea that syneidesis (conscience) grows into sophia (wisdom) re-ording the soul (psyche). In the beginning, the soul's powers are in mutual conflict and disorganization. So the beginning phases of contemplation struggles with maintaining a noetic focus that eikasia seeks to undermine as well as dianoetic temptation to analyze. In Hesychasm, allied to memory, both the dianoia and eikasia reflect the past while nous, the heart (kardia), conscience (syneidesis), and phantasia are of the potential future. The spiritual struggle is not necessarily framed as body vs spirit. Rather, it is one's past as your embodied habits vs. your future potential.
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Another way of indicating the difference between phantasia and eikasia is that images are broken and fractured light; still, light.
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I add, tied to memory, dianoia and eikasia (before brought back on line -- imagine a computer shut down in order to restore function - that is the beginning steps of contemplation) are part of how the light is broken and fractured. Eikasia, until restored, is of a past that drags us down; phantasia, when awakened, is the future freedom we may become. Haunted by the past and nonattentive to the present, like conscience being a small voice and our five senses being decieving and our extra-sensory perceptions being dormant or deceptive, phantasia as receiving the light (phos) is broken light refracted, fractured, and broken by eikasia. It is a case of future entrapped by the past. In the Hesychast tradition, contemplation is clarifying nous, brightening phantasia, and making future psychically within more real than the past so the light is not broken nor fractured. With that, all faculties, including memory, eikasia, and dianoia begin to serve the light revealed by nous.
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/neoplatonism/conversations/topics/4256
