James Cowan, Desert Father: A Journey in the Wilderness with Saint Anthony, Shambhala, Boston, 2004.
James Cowan not only studied the life of Saint Anthony, he also literally followed in his footsteps in the Egyptian desert. Anthony was born in middle Egypt in 251 A.D. to parents who were prosperous farmers. At the age of 18, following the death of his parents, he heeded the admonition of Jesus, “If you be perfected, go sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” He was aware too of Jesus’ assurance to his followers to “not be anxious about tomorrow.” In Egypt, the neo-Platonic philosophers were at the height of their influence. Early Christian bishops were confronting the “heresies” of Gnosticism and Armenianism, Anthony, however, was more drawn to the apostles who had given up their worldly lives and goods to follow Jesus.
Jesus himself, of course, had removed himself from civilization to dwell in the wilderness. Just over two centuries later, Anthony became one of a new generation of Christian seekers to take to the desert. Other recluses there taught him how to fast, pray, and still his thoughts. For several years, he wandered, seeking out “geronte”, spiritual guides from whom he could learn more. Cowan brings this world of the desert of third century Egypt and Anthony’s story vividly alive. In Rome, the Emperor still ruled and the Roman Empire was still very much intact.
Cowan’s real focus is not Anthony himself but the path he chose to follow. He was among those who heeded the words from the Book of Isaac, “In a full stomach, there is no knowledge of God.” Two hundred years after Jesus, some of those who took their quest to live as he had seriously devoted themselves to asceticism, fasting, going without sleep, and most importantly of all, to prayer in their hermitages in the desert Even as they worked, these “anchorites” who had retreated from the world attempted to pray without ceasing. Many had experiences that went well beyond the usual bounds of reality. Anthony, for example, one day saw himself as if from outside himself. His consciousness seemed to no longer be confined within his body.
Anthony lived in a simple hut not far from a village. Eventually, however, he took up residence in an ancient Egyptian tomb in the desert where he locked himself in. The roof of the tomb had fallen out and it was open to the sky. The nights, except for the stars and moon, were pitch black. He lived on food and water brought to him by friends and later recounted being attacked by demons and all kinds of imagined vicious creatures in the darkness. Eventually he left the tomb to move to an abandoned fort beside the Nile. He remained there for years seeking, as Cowan writes, “to close the divide between the human and the divine.”
When Anthony’s friends, concerned for him, finally broke down the door of the fortress, according to his early biographer Athanasius:
“Anthony came forth as though from some shrine, having been led into divine mysteries and inspired by God…The state of his soul was one of purity, for it was not constricted by grief, nor relaxed by pleasure, nor affected by either laughter or dejection…He maintained utter equilibrium.”
The “old image of the crazed ‘starker’,” Cowan adds, “had been put to rest.” Instead, Anthony had “transformed himself into a living image of Christ.”
Those who had come to rescue him, and who subsequently travelled to visit him, were surprised and impressed and Anthony’s example inspired others to take up the solitary life far removed from society. From then on, monasteries began to develop in the mountains and desert. A new kind of society of spiritual aspirants, Cowan writes, was being born. During the fourth century, some seekers would take their ascetic practices even far further. In the Syrian desert, Simon Stylites the Elder would dwell for thirty-seven years atop a lofty column, not leaving it even once except to climb up to a an even higher column.
In his quest to fully understand Anthony, Cowan travelled to St. Anthony’s Monastery on Mount Colzim in the Egyptian desert. After leaving the fort, Anthony lived for over four decades in a cave above where the monastery was later built. The monastery was established a few years after his death in 356 and its church may be the oldest in Christendom. The monk’s of St. Anthony’s sought to enter into the state of hesychia, which meant stillness, tranquility, the silence of the heart. Cowan finds that, despite being at St. Anthony’s Monastery, he is unable to enter into this state of hesychia himself. This, he confesses, “made me feel inadequate,” like “someone who had been deprived of his (spiritual) heritage by an act of amnesia.”
The mystic hermits and monks of Anthony’s time, Cowan realizes, had delved far into the “inner workings of the spirit.” They sought, he writes, how “we might live and work in an altered state of consciousness wholly removed from the realm of appearances.” Before long, however, Cowan too is experiencing the effects of the “deep spirituality of the Egyptian desert”. Gradually, Cowan is introduced to the advanced stages of the path of the mystic hermit. He receives his own series of revelations from his time on Mount Colzim and the books in the monastery’s ancient library.
He heads further up the mountain to find the lone hermit “Lazarus”, an expatriate Australian who now lives in a cave. Anthony had called Mount Colzim his “inner mountain”. Lazarus too is dedicated to his ascent of his own “inner mountain” even as he also dwells simultaneously on the slopes of Mount Colzim. For both Anthony and Lazarus, Cowan realizes, the usual separations between inner and outer have, to an extent, dissolved.
Lazarus had once been a university lecturer in Melbourne. Like Cowan, he is a sophisticated man. The desert fathers, he tells Cowan:
“The Desert Fathers felt it was impossible to achieve a genuine spiritual understanding in the world. But in those days they saw the world as an objective reality. We know otherwise. Today we know that the so-called ‘world’ is a projection of our inner condition. To deny (worldly ‘material reality’) is to enter the true desert. That’s why I feel we must conjure up our own inner desert. Even here, on Mount Colzim, I’m much occupied with the question of this interior desert. It’s not for nothing that Anthony called such a place the ‘interior mountain’.”
At the end of his story, Cowan finally ascends even further up the mountain to Anthony’s cave. His account makes evident that he has climbed his own inner mountain as well during his sojourn in the desert.
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