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WEB 4 - ARCHIVE
Commentary 8 - Page 2 |
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The story continues The story continues to our present time. In the 18th Century, Pierre Caussade, the French spiritual director of a community of nuns, made what as far as I know was the only mention of this term for several centuries, in his classic book Abandonment to Divine Providence, when he wrote:
In fact, the Inner Tradition still survives today, and was still strong at the Time of Saint Gregory Palamas in the middle of the 14th Century, although by then it was beginning to be driven underground. It was with this early change in the church’s emphasis that the inner tradition went underground. Today, spiritual seekers are still 'marginalized' even by the Eastern churches for believing in an inner tradition, yet we now have clear evidence that this same unwritten tradition still lies hidden within the monasteries and hermitages of the Orthodox churches, and has for centuries shaped the interpretation and expression of the written doctrine of that group of churches and maintained their vitality. This situation is made worse by certain special problems that arise when we attempt to investigate unwritten traditions by modern methods, problems amply demonstrated by an English scholar who rejected certain conclusions about an unwritten tradition on the grounds of a lack of documentary evidence. In fact, there is ample evidence for those who know where to look that this unwritten Christian tradition has always been specifically concerned with waking the consciousness of the heart as described by Boris Mouravieff in his book Gnosis: "We will perhaps be surprised to learn that the natural state of our heart is precisely to be aflame. But in the contemporary fallen man who is now considered normal, the heart no longer burns. In the best examples, a fire smoulders in the ashes. " Said Boris Mouravieff in Volume II of the book. More important, he then said: "This result of the Fall, and of man's identification with his Personality, can be corrected." (Boris Mouravieff, Gnosis Vol.II Chap 2.)
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