Who brought sin into the world, O Lord, so that the whole world fell sick and became food for death?
The mind is the gate through which sin entered. Through the mind a drop of poison fell into the heart and into the soul.
Separated from virginity and light, not triune but solitary, the mind separates itself from the Holy Triad, and stands as a fourth — nonexistent. And it thinks what is earthly, and not what is divine.
Separated from the virginity of the soul and the holiness of the heart, the mind is a shadow of the Son of God, the inverse of Wisdom. This dark shadow spreads its darkness over the soul and over the heart. And when all three are wrapped in darkness and grow moldy, then an unholy Triad is formed, a shadow of the Holy Triad, just as the nonexistent is the flickering shadow of the existent.
What is the first sin of the mind, O Lord, by which torment and suffering were brought into the whole race of man?
The first sin of the mind is self-delusion, the second pride. Nailed by the senses to the nonexistent, the mind takes the nonexistent as existent.
Self-delusion looks upon the image of the moon on the lake as upon the real moon, and rushes to catch it in the water.
Self-delusion sees a rope as a serpent, and flees from it.
The self-delusion of a dog sees a dog in the water, and drives the real dog to bark at its own shadow.
Self-delusion about the shifting ashes of this world drives the mind to ascribe real being to this world, and shrouds it in forgetfulness of the truly real world.
Truly, the self-delusion of the mind is the first sin. This first sin enters into marriage with pride, and from that marriage are born all sins and all evils, from which come torment and suffering.
How does pride appear straightway after self-delusion, O my Lord?
Discoverers of the new and the hitherto unknown are always filled with pride.
The self-deluded mind discovers for itself something new and hitherto unknown; ah, if only it knew that it is discovering its own grave! Self-delusion discovers to it the unreal world as real. Ah, how this discovering becomes for it a ruinous covering! Discovering to it the unreal world as real, self-delusion covers from it the real world and presents it as unreal.
O my Lord, the only Existent One, save my mind from these two hellish sins.
O my Truth, save me from the wicked self-delusion of my mind.
O Master and Giver of all that I am and have, deliver me from pride, the perdition of the senseless and the foolish.