St Gregory Palamas on the Nous, notes for Holy Trinity Faith Study Group

Forgive me if this seems catechetical  and rather introductory, but many people are new to the teaching of the Church regarding communion with God.  A particular teaching of the Church is that it preserves the biblical distinction between heart and head.  Man  is holistic.  Our whole body, soul and spirit are to be sanctified (I Thes.5:23). We have consciousness of the world through our body,  of ourselves through  our soul,  and of God through  the heart, or to use the biblical word  with a patristic baptismal  name,  the nous.  This is a word which derives from  νοιεῖν, to see. We see God not with imagination but by a spiritual  faculty the Fathers denominate the eye of the soul.  Rationalist will never find adequate proof of God.  Only direct experience of His grace suffices.  However,  this experience is only the result of painful repentance, though not exclusively.

St.  Gregory's argument for much  of this second  question  from a disciple of his, of which I will excerpt a portion,  concerns how the nous  is to  enter into  union with God's grace, His love.  Now, a word before reading.  His prose is very dense.  There is no such thing as a simple sentence.  Bear with the long  clauses.  It is the only way to translate patristic Greek, apart from  paraphrasing. My goal  is to post the whole Triad  up, in it's entirety, once I finish  the translation. It is a treasure that merits wider reading, especially since it is nearly dogmatic. The extant translation of this is deficient and a poor paraphrase,  not that mine is stellar. NB  the last sentence.  The grace will not abide unless we give ourselves continually to the Lord, our entire occupation is to be in His school of stillness in Him,  hesychia.

Note on translation: if this is copied please attribute the source,  as these do not exist elsewhere in English, and it is a labor of love.

                                               Gregory Palamas Triad  one excerpt                                                          
But the wicked one, wickedly when he pulls the bed from under us (from the best things) always manages to slip away,  and pleasure fills our souls and binds with nearly unbreakable bonds those who love irrationally.   Pleasure suggests that we spend both a long length of time on pursuits  and a multitude of things to know, as for some it is riches or  fame  for the infamous or fleshly pleasures, with the result that, by the inquiry of these things through their entire life, since they retire themselves from other matters, we will not  then fortify the soul to hold fast  to purifying paidia, whose true beginning is the fear of God, from which entreaty is begotten from continual compunction and the guarding of the evangelical  oracles, but when reconciliation toward God  has happened through these, the fear is transformed into love,  and when the pain of prayer  has been carried over into joy of illumination, the flower blossoms.

The knowledge of the mysteries of God is the fragrance of this knowledge transmitted to him that bears it. This paideia and true knowledge, of which not even the beginning, namely, the fear of God, someone strengthened in the love of empty philosophy and wrapped up twisted in their turns of argument and theories, isn’t even able to find room for.  

For how would it enter entirely into the soul,  and how, after it entered, would it be able to  stay near, overtaken and given boldness to leave  because it is made nervous by every strain and sort of reasoning,  unless the entire occupation one’s free time may  be ordered in accord with God since it has said rejoice in all things, so that  the entire love of this person may become according to the commandment?