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{Download PDF} Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works Ebook FATHER SERAPHIM ROSE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Damascene Hieromonk | 1142 pages | 01 Sep 2003 | St Herman Press, US | 9781887904070 | English | United States Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works eBook - Hieromonk Damascene - Google Books The interview that follows is part one of the three part series, this one with Fr. If you would like information on the books published and distributed by St. Herman of Alaska Monastery, their website is. Now we take you directly to Fr. Kevin: Fr. Damascene, thank you first of all for being my guest on The Illumined Heart radio program. Seraphim Rose in his actual cell, which is now your actual cell. It looks like an old Russian forest, and the cell is about 12 by 10 feet. Damascene: Yes, it was hand built by Fr. Thank you for having us. Before we begin discussing your first and obviously pivotal and significant meeting with Fr. Seraphim Rose in , just a little bit about your background. You write that you were raised a Christian in the loose sense of the word. Damascene: Yes, I was raised in and out of Protestant churches growing up. My parents would take me to church sporadically. My best experiences of Christianity growing up and the most meaningful for me were at a YMCA camp near my hometown of Fresno where the Christian faith was imparted to me by the counselors. That was during the early 70s, during the Jesus Movement, when some of these young people were very much on fire with preaching the gospel and so on. So that was my most meaningful experience of Christianity. But in high school, I turned away from Christianity, partly through the influence of a zoology teacher who was very anti-Christian and very pro-evolution. I began to delve into other religions, and I started looking into Eastern religions. I got involved in Zen Buddhism. I was practicing Zazen meditation regularly. Then by the time I was in my first year of college, my foray into Zen Buddhism was really reaching a dead end. I really felt unfulfilled, empty inside, and I was looking for something more. I found it too superficial, too worldly. It lacked an ancient tradition, a mystical practice and discipline. Then I encountered Orthodoxy in college through a group of students on the campus who had an Orthodox fellowship, most of whom were converts. It was these students who invited Fr. Seraphim Rose to the campus. Among the students in that college student fellowship were Abbot Gerasim, our current Abbot of our monastery, and also Abbot Jonah of the Monastery of St. John in Manton. Kevin: You were about nineteen or twenty at that time when you first encountered Orthodoxy and Fr. Damascene: Yes, I remember. In fact they have been recorded and published—both of them. In fact my lovely Protestant, evangelical sister-in-law reads that book regularly. Were these lectures well-attended? Damascene: Yes. Of course the Orthodox people on the campus attended, but also Orthodox people from other parts of California came and other non-Orthodox people came for the lecture as well. I first encountered Orthodoxy in that class. Damascene: I was an undeclared major, but, yes, Religious Studies was my main subject, my main interest. Kevin: You were searching for something—the connection to the ancient Christian faith, the deeper, more mystical, experiential faith. I had been attending Orthodox services before meeting Fr. I would go to church with them, but I was still sitting on the fence. I had not made a final decision to become Orthodox. Kevin: Were you still involved with Zen right then? Were you going to these services and then going back and sitting Zazen, or did that end and you were now searching? Damascene: I was searching but I still had some baggage left over from the past and still kind of working through some of these things. The highest understanding of the absolute was an impersonal absolute. I was still working through that idea. He has revealed himself as I AM. That helped me, but I had still not worked everything through. Secondly, I had not found a spiritual father, somebody that could guide and led me into the faith. I had found peers in college, but I had not found a person I could look up to as a spiritual father. In Fr. Seraphim, I found both things that I was looking for—both a person who had experienced both Eastern religions, even Zen in particular, and also Orthodoxy. He spoke about Eastern religions and Zen as a person who knew about them and as a person who had been on the inside. I needed a person. Seraphim was that person. Also, in Fr. Seraphim, I found that spiritual father that I was looking for. I want to come back to the impersonal God, because you had a question or questions that you had asked Fr. We want to hear the answer to that. But I do have a question I want to ask first. Did these lectures hit you like a ton of bricks or was it an accumulation process where it started with these lectures where God was leading you and evolved, or were these lectures in your initial encounter with Fr. Seraphim world and life-changing from the get go, so to speak? I had already had some background and attended some services. The one really pivotal experience in my life, of course, was my first attendance of an Orthodox service. I had read some Orthodox books, but it was only in attending the Orthodox service that I sensed the otherworldliness, the ancientness, the antiquity, the mystical reality of the Orthodox Church and its worship. I had had these experiences, but meeting Fr. Seraphim and attending those lectures—it did hit me as a ton of bricks in the sense that at that point I made my final decision to become Orthodox. After meeting Fr. Seraphim, there was no turning back. I knew. In fact, I remember that night after I had attended the first lecture, when I first met him, I remember running to my friend on the campus. He was in the same dorm that I was, and I had met him my first day at Santa Cruz. He was a follower of Yogananda. Damascene: Yes, Self-Realization Fellowship. He was from a Catholic background. He was practicing the Korea yoga and I was doing my Zen. We were fellow-seekers on the path. We had both come from Christian backgrounds, but we were looking at Eastern religions. I remember that night, after Fr. You have to meet this man. Seraphim] had on me. Kevin: What was it about him that stood out so much? You mentioned that this was someone for you who knew the insides of some of the areas where you were struggling—the Eastern and the impersonal God. But he was a man, he was flesh and blood, what was it about him that stood out? Damascene: There were a few things. I wrote about this in Fr. In fact, many of my references of Fr. Seraphim are in the biography. I just talk in the third person and mention things he told me. Damascene: His life and works, right. A few things struck me. He was not putting himself forward. He was like a selfless person, a selfless servant. He was only imparting Christ. I remember he was sick at the time. He was sniffling, he was tired, but you had the sense that he was a man who was sacrificing himself, not just because he was sick, but it was the whole impression that he made. He was a man who had totally sacrificed himself for Christ. I was a spiritual seeker at U. Santa Cruz in , so you can imagine that I had already seen many different religious teachers. I had met Sufis, I had met Tibetan Buddhists. But Fr. Seraphim stood out, and also he stood out in terms of Christian people, because there was something very special about him. The second thing I sensed about him was that he had this tremendous wisdom, this piercing discernment that I had never encountered in anyone before. He just kind of cut through everything and gave a clear, insightful answer. He was without any extreme. He was very balanced. But besides that, I sensed that he had this wisdom from God. He was very humble, presenting things very clearly and simply for everybody. And I sensed that he was as intelligent as or more intelligent than any college professor I had, but he had this spiritual wisdom that I had never encountered with anyone. Kevin: Do you think he was of genius level mentality? Had it ever been tested? Damascene: Yes, I definitely say he was a genius. In fact, that was what he was known as in high school. He was a genius, but the amazing thing about it was that, when he became Orthodox, as he said himself, he said that he crucified his mind. He wrote on a level that everybody could understand, and he really avoided any kind of academic or high-sounding, academic prose. He was…. Damascene: Yes, actually at the end of his life, he was very encouraged by the fact that just the common man in America was becoming Orthodox. When he became Orthodox, when he was becoming Orthodox, in the 50s and early 60s, the only converts were intellectuals. They were the ones that kind of penetrated the ethnic barrier and get into there and learn other languages.
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