The stages of purification and illumination are being offered by God free of charge to all of those who want. He does not discriminate against anybody. If we really want, we can pass through the first and reach the second stage. All what’s needed is our honest repentance and our will to start trying to purify our soul, our nous, our heart, cooperating with the Grace of the Holy Spirit. As soon as we do that, we are definitely going to get to the state of illumination.

Illumination is nothing else but what we call “pre-tasting of Paradise”; a person in this state feels he/she is already in Paradise, right now, because the Church is actually “the Paradise on earth”. Once illumined, we can feel already being in Paradise, because the Church is truly the “Paradise on earth”. A real member of the Church is the one who lives already in Paradise now, at the present; it is the person who has reached the state of illumination and hence became a temple of the Holy Spirit!

Concluding, who is after all to be considered a “normal” Orthodox believer?

Is it necessarily anyone who is baptized, but has not yet been purified? Obviously not.

Is it maybe the one who is already purified and illumined? Yes, indeed!