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As a result, in the last century or two, certain people began a policy of restitution: of opening up again truths that had been too well hidden, of inserting into the thought-structures of the Western world valuable insights which are every person's birthright but had been hidden for far too long, and of first understanding and then expressing these ancient truths in new forms suited to the thinking of a new time - new forms that effectively resolve some of the impasses of modern thought, especially in the fields of philosophy and psychology, and are already beginning to restore an ancient clarity to the long-confused field of Christian spiritual development.

The approach developed in Praxis Research Institute’s studies over almost twenty years has been to investigate certain teachings of the early church that have been unknown or ignored in the Western world. We have been particularly concerned with teachings that appear to offer a resolution to the 'human dilemma', first working pragmatically to find a ‘way through the maze,’ then to support what has been found in this way with in-depth research. Over the years we have built up a ‘fund’ of knowledge and techniques both by ‘field-research’ on the Malinowski model into Eastern monasticism, and by applying classical Western methods of spiritual search to this situation, allowing the lessons of Eastern therapeutic methods to modify the process as necessarily.

Taken as a ‘pilot study’, this has allowed many conclusions to be drawn, including:

1. That both Christian and non-Christian methods of interior prayer or of similar meditation methods can lead fairly quickly to inner stillness. This is a major factor in the early church concept of psychotherapy promoted by Greek Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos, which is said in Greece to be used ’to cure the harmful effects of religion.’ (Prof. John Romanides.)
2. That in the long-term this process fails, because in individuals formed by Western methods and Western media, especially those in families similarly formed, there occurs an excessive build-up of activities in the psyche, making the activities stronger than the faculties supposed to integrate them.
3. That in most Western-educated people their thought is associatively structured, and this and other characteristics lead to a competitive ethic in which ways of thought – Gregory Palamas put it that ‘every word fights every other’ - lead in time to a build-up of hyperactivity in the psyche which makes continuation of the prayer impossible. This hyperactivity, which is often now manifesting as early as adolescence, appears to the subject to be in opposition to their inner purpose, but that opposition is then seen as occurring outside the subject, in the world. To outside observers, it appears as egotism.
4. That where this build-up is not too large, and motivation is strong, the Eastern Christian monastic model, where that has remained unchanged for more than a thousand years, can still provide a solution, particularly in the form where the monk goes on to become a hermit.

Lost Truths

Truths Page 1

Truths Page 2

Truths Page 3

PRAXIS PAST

praxis web 4 ARCHIVES

including most of the text articles from praxis Web 4. Main texts are listed with simple descriptions under CONTENTS and more fully under ABSTRACTS

* CONTENTS

* ABSTRACTS

A New Vision

The Ark

A Different Christianity

Philosophers of God

St. Gregory Palamas

Cross-fertilisation

Abstraction & attention

Lost Doctrines

Lost Christian truths

The Royal Road