The Christian Inner Tradition in the first seven centuries of the Church was very different from Christianity as we know it today, especially as we find it in the West. Essentially, it is based on the psychological and mystical teachings taken from the ancient form of Christianity we most often know as 'Patristic', the Christianity of the 'early fathers' - the saints formed in large numbers by the teachings of the early church; saints formed in response to the teachings of saints. What is the reason for the difference between that church and the churches today? Small changes, made in the year 800 to the doctrine afterwards followed by the Western churches, made those teachings less effective. Once it seems to have been effective with almost anybody who was honest with themselves, but it later became less effective, and then only with those who would have been transformed even without the help of the Church. Since then the same kind of change has gradually penetrated into the Eastern church, but there the damage is not complete. Some communities inn the monas6tic republic of Mount Athos maintain the original teaching , and elsewhere in that church certain individual teachers, known as elders, and often entirely outside the clergy, continue to prove and transmit the reality of the ancient form. Beginning with Robin Amis' first visit to Athos in 1982, the work of Praxis Research Institute is based on the recognition that the small changes made to doctrine in 800 AD, acting through processes we now at least partly understand, have led to disproportionately large changes in the effectiveness of the Church in the West. | 
