Prelest (Spiritual Delusion)

Plani in Greek, prelest in Russian: the state of a soul that has mistaken its own imagination, or the suggestion of a demon, for the grace of God. The fathers treat it as the characteristic danger of the spiritual life, and they consider it more dangerous than open sin, because the deluded believe themselves to be advancing. Its marks are a taste for visions, certainty about one's own progress, contempt for others, and an unwillingness to be corrected. Its remedies are the same everywhere in the tradition: obedience to a spiritual father, the refusal to accept any vision or sensation whatever, and self-reproach. This is why the bodily method of the Jesus Prayer is never taught alone, and why a beginner is told to attend to the words and nothing else.