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WEB 4 - ARCHIVE
Commentary 15 - Page 3 |
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A Different Kind of Concentration Boris Mouravieff wrote: "The reader will perhaps be astonished if we tell him that the normal state of the nous is the state of concentration. Habitually, man must make an effort in order to concentrate, and he does not know that concentration is possible other than on selected objects. Now the natural state of the intellect, concentrated, as we said, is concentrated on the whole of the being of the man, to put it a different way, he concentrates on his presence in himself. "Normally, a man should only make his intellect leave this state, as a Knight draws his sword, for a specific end. Afterwards, the intellect must return to this state of concentration like a sword returned to its scabbard. And just as a Knight will not hold his sword by the blade, the student must not use his intellect in the wrong way, losing the initiative, but he must dedicate it to the service of the I, that is to say, to the whole man." An understanding of this possibility of this different kind of concentration is essential to the success of the psychological method. If this is made the cornerstone of the magnetic centre, the culmination of our diakrisis, which is then far from being a headless axe, prayer and contemplation take to wing and the student finds himself or herself on the Royal Road. Then we will be able to say with Saint Paul: "Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him: Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all. Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. And above all these things put on Love, which is the bond of perfectness." ( Colossians 3:9-14 ) Christian teaching must become Christian living "And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers," ( 1 Corinthians 12:28. ) If the early Christian form of paedia was the emotionally civilizing element that gave Western civilization its strength, as I believe, then the restoration of the necessary elements of this lost emotional education would depend on restoring to active use the main elements of the long-lost Christian paedia, with the addition of corrective elements appropriate to our times. To do so would require teachers who were themselves emotionally educated, something that would require inner knowledge, and when we think what kind of esoteric knowledge this might require, we should remember that Evagrius wrote, "The ascetic life is the spiritual method for cleansing the feeling part of the soul." ii It can be said that emotional education always requires some kind of practice. Both these statements link with what we have said earlier about the survival of esotericism in certain monasteries. At the same time it is clear that on an informal level some survival of this emotional education exists in certain churches, in ideas such as that of 'taking up one's cross.' But the problem is how to go beyond the idea to the reality of such a teaching. ..................................... I) Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart, Kadloubovsky and Palmer, trans., London: Faber and Faber, 1951, p. 158. ii Evagrius of Pontus, The Praktikos v78. The original translation has affective, for which we have substituted feeling. |
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