The Nous and the Heart

The nous is the eye of the soul, the faculty by which a person knows God directly, and it is not the same thing as reason. Orthodox ascetical writing describes it as darkened by the passions and scattered among things, so that the work of the spiritual life is to gather it and bring it down into the heart, which in this tradition means the centre of the whole person and not the seat of emotion. A nous in the heart, attentive and unwandering, is what the fathers call prayer of the heart. The distinction matters because it is what separates Orthodox contemplation from thinking hard about God.