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WEB 4 - ARCHIVE
Commentary 11 - Page 1 |
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INNER CHRISTIANITY
Darkness of
the psyche The Hermit's Message
Way of Theosis Psychological method Prayer of the heart
praxis studies
Introductory studies
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TOWARDS A CHRISTIAN PSYCHOTHERAPY FOR THE WESTThe therapeutic use of Christian self-knowledge, its links with and differences from 'Orthodox Psychotherapy'Starting nearly two thousand years ago, the mystical fathers of the early church developed their own special form of psychological knowledge. Saint Gregory Palamas, writing about this more than a millennium after it first began to be used, primarily to prepare people for a spiritual life, still described this knowledge in Saint Paul's term as the 'Philosophy of God,' just as it had been defined more than 1200 years before. (Ref:) In essence, this psychological knowledge has the same origin as what is now sometimes known as Esoteric Christianity, and more recently as Christian Psychotherapy. Attempts to describe any of these things in a purely intellectual way always break down: they cannot be made to fit into ordinary modern thought, because the emphasis or balance underlying people's habits of mind in those days was essentially different from how we think today. Yet in certain important ways this different kind of psychology was and is surprising like modern science. It was based on observation ... to be more exact, on self-observation or a kind of scientific introspection. Practising this carefully, intelligently, and at length, leads to the formation of disciplines which enabled its practitioners to verify their observations, and these in turn led to the emergence of definite criteria, the rules of which can still be applied today, and its own consensus, albeit one that was not centred on discursive intellect, as it would be if developed under the influence of modern thought. This apparent lack was in fact why, within its own milieu, the method succeeded. But it solved the problem of the investigation of inner realities by ways that, although sound, differed from modern psychological science. Due to the inaccessibility of their subject matter, and because their faith was underpinned by direct experience of its reality, they were forced to face up to the impossibility of immediate and indiscriminate demonstration through the senses. In Volume 1 of St. Gregory's Triads, and particularly in the third part, Palamas' describes certain of the illuminatory experiences which conveyed that certainty with a precision and clarity only possible for a philosopher fully trained in classical method. |
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