https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=xjkvl0rCmP8
talk a bit about prelest and spiritual deception. How might a proper symbolic worldview help an honest seeker discern what is true across a huge landscape of spiritual experiences? I think that we are surrounded by prelest and spiritual deception, and I totally agree. And I think it is probably important that I talk about that a little more. I haven’t been talking about it very much, just because it has been on the subject, but I do think that this might also be a problem for all of you guys that are really into psychedelics. I would say that, you know, I’ve never taken psychedelics, so I don’t want to speak without experience, but what I gather from what I hear is that it does seem to open people up to spiritual experiences. Now, the problem with having spiritual experiences is you need discernment, and one of the ways to have discernment is to be connected, to be connected to a hierarchy, to be connected to a clear path, a clear tradition, and to, you know, to hopefully to have a spiritual father or a confessor that can help you get through those types of experiences. Now, not everybody has access to that, but for sure, I think it’s important to understand that in the Christian tradition, the church fathers really warn against spiritual experiences. They’re not saying that they’re inauthentic, but they tend to say that you shouldn’t really try to grasp those experiences too much. That is, the purpose of the mystical life or the purpose of the spiritual life is to be united with God, is to be transformed, to be free from your passions, to be illumined with the fullness of the divine to the extent that that’s possible, and that is very different than a kind of mystical vision that you would have. You know, mystical visions can be helpful, and you know, in the Orthodox tradition, there are plenty of mystical visions which are used to interpret some of the tradition with those visions, but like I said, that’s not the point. The point is not to have these visions, and as we, and it’s important not to simply trust those visions, especially because, you know, if you don’t already, if you haven’t reached a certain spiritual level and you have these experiences, you don’t have the capacity to know what the wheat and what the chaff is. And when I, you know, and to be honest, when I hear a lot of the psychedelics people, especially the really famous ones, I hear a lot of chaos, and I hear, you know, when people talk about, what is it, the clockwork elves and all of that stuff, I don’t hear a lot of good stuff coming out of that, not in terms of spiritual transformation.