"A few years ago people were accustomed to speak about working on oneself in terms of the difference between 'working from within' and 'working from without'. "Inner Christianity is not only an alternative spiritual method in the sense that it builds defences against the pressure of the world into the individual psyche instead of depending on the walls and organisation of a monastery, but it achieves this by exactly the method which originally gave rise to the idea of working from within: it functions through the transmission of spiritual energies that appear to arise inside the individual, yet not only do they bring stillness to our inner life, but they also have the surprising effect of making us more inwardly visible to ourselves. "These energies are therefore both the cause and the result of the whole process of spiritual growth." |
A practical tradition
There is an ancient alternative to modern ways of teaching morality; this is an ancient ascetic tradition, but we need not associate this with hair-shirts and unpleasantness. To say it is an ascetic tradition is simply a way of saying that it is a practical tradition, not simply theoretical, it is a Christian tradition that has remained sufficiently unchanged to reveal that in general, over 2000 years and through a spread of many thousand miles, Christian beliefs have changed to fit into contemporary ideas – themselves sometimes long ago forgotten. The tradition to which I refer was formed from a special kind of personal experience; experience built-up by the effort to fulfil the disciplines of their church, so that, in a God-given reciprocity, the teaching of the church formed the experience from which it continued to be drawn. The doctrines of today's churches are different from this. They reflect the preconceptions of a democratic age which demands that they are based on experiences accessible to everyone which, in practice, means experiences accessible without effort. The result is a different, outer shell of the original inner Christianity; one that does not agree with or form inner meaning and experience.
Praxis is the result of an investigation into that original inner experiential core of Christianity, and now teaches that lost inner tradition. This is a practical tradition. It produces practical results and these results will be experienced. Therefore it is an experimental tradition of Christianity, in the sense that if properly put into practice it produces predictable personal experience, and in this it differs from many Christian teachings which - over the years - have departed from experience.
In this experimental Christianity - for that is what it is - the matter of the experiment and the cornerstone of most of the teaching is personal experience. In our studies we must link any idea to personal experience, and until we have made that link each of the ideas of the teaching are kept - classified as ‘I don’t yet know.’ This is not an indoctrination, it is an invitation to participate in an investigation, and it is a test in this investigation that nothing found will conflict with common sense.
There is one key exception to this general rule, since that experience will show that there are things we cannot discover by ourselves - this will reveal a hole that experience cannot fill in the ordinary way: we have to learn for ourselves how that is filled. The essence of the tradition is that nobody can tell you about God except God Himself.
Even more; it is a test of correct interpretation that the tradition as understood is internally consistent. Internal inconsistency and incoherence reveals either wrong teaching or a misunderstanding of the teaching.
“And when he had entered the house, and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable.
“And he said to them, "Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a man from outside cannot defile him,
"since it enters, not his heart but his stomach, and so passes on?" (Thus he declared all foods clean.)
“And he said, "What comes out of a man is what defiles a man.
“For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery,
“coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.
“All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man." (Mark 7:17-23.) |
