A. SP is a holistic practice of the Self, the goal of which is actual ontological transformation, transcension of man’s mode of being. This practice deals exclusively with man’s «energetic image», the configuration of all energies of a human being, and elaborates a special art of controlled and directed transformation of this image.
B. SP has progressive nature and discrete (ladder) structure: it is divided into clearly distinct steps, all the series of which is strictly ordered. Each step is a definite type of man’s «energetic image», and the series goes from the initial step corresponding to Spiritual Gate to the final one corresponding to a certain «higher spiritual state», or telos. According to the point A, the telos corresponds to a mode of being different from the usual empiric being, and it is not universal, but different for each SP.
C. The ladder of SP includes the group of lower steps, which basically correspond to processes and procedures of preparatory purification. The purification is also holistic, including necessarily corporeal, emotional and intellectual components.
D. The central block of SP solves the key problem of building-up the anthropological mechanism for the ascent to the telos. Such mechanism should provide the motive power for the ascent, which amounts to opening the access to the ontologically outer energetic factor. It is always realized as a certain analogue of the “ontological mover” in hesychast practice representing some refined school of meditation or prayer that includes special techniques of concentration of attention helping to guard the meditation from all disturbances. In its concrete form, however, the “ontological mover” is in no way universal, but very different for each SP.