This great work of St Gregory Palamas is an exposition of a spiritual tradition that has been practised, tried and tested for over 1600 years. Palamas describes the difference between worldly and spiritual knowledge, the nature of illumination and how the action of the divine may be encountered within us.

It was written almost 700 years ago in support of the practice of hesychasm - the path of inner stillness, which originated in the fourth century - a practice that perhaps has greater relevance today than ever before. In an age when the West prefers to look East in search of a...