Purity of Heart and Perception of Reality in Pavel Florensky

Abstract

In The pillar and ground of the truth, Pavel Florensky meditates on the anthropological potential of the mysticism of the heart as opposed to false mysticisms that generate a fragmented and distorted experience of life. The mysticism of the heart in one of its highest figures that arises in the sphere of christian asceticism points instead to the integration of the person, to a transfiguration of his perception by which he enters into relationship with a frequency of the real that resembles a sort of entrance to Paradise. Florensky's thought is a challenge to the lifestyle imposed on us by contemporary culture, which is related to those false mysticisms because of its logic centered on the will to control, the maximization of instrumental efficiency, dispersion, consumption, which causes the degradation of human life in isolation and the loss of enthusiasm for existence.