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WEB 4 - ARCHIVE
Commentary 18 - Page 2 |
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The Tradition, continuedThis tradition is not known in the Western world except as a few rare flowerings of a mysticism inexplicable except in terms of itself. After spreading for almost a thousand years, it was almost forgotten even in the East. It still remains hidden some places within monasticism, but it is not monasticism as we know it in the West today. [ C 1100AD] It existed in Western Europe as the Saint Denys tradition. emerged from it. [mid 14th c.] Just before the reformation, it inspired the "Brothers of the Common Life" and ensouled the Devotio Moderna, and is said to have gone underground in the tunnels of Monte Cassino. Pierre Caussade [ 1675-1751] taught it and named its Royal Road in his writings. [ C 1921] Despite vehement disagreement, 'circumstantial' evidence from several different directions supports the idea that this is the 'esoteric Christianity' from which Gurdjieff and Ouspensky drew their truncated teachings. This idea is supported by the fact that its teachings are more practical and inwardly more demanding than those of any Western church. In its full form it is distinctively Christian, and through it Christ brings redemption that can be experienced today as two thousand years ago. It links with Christ's teaching of the strait and narrow way, and with methods of prayer of the heart going back to the early centuries of the church. Three centuries ago it had been almost entirely lost. [ C 1770 AD] Then a team of monks began a study process to discover the original meaning of certain badly corrupted texts. Using this, one Russian, Paisious Velitchkovsky, rediscovered the keys to this method. Parts of what he discovered forms the basis of the texts now known as the Philokalia; now in at least three primary editions - one Greek and two Russian - which collect together many of the most important components of that part of the tradition which can be put in written form. Since then, unpublished sources tell us that men have laboured in secret to obtain other lost elements of this ancient teaching. [ C 1885] Coincidences of timing, among other factors, suggest that they included Saint Theophan the Recluse, who produced an expanded Russian Philokalia at the end of the last century. Saint Theophan researched early Christian sources in Syria and Egypt and was later directly responsible for reformulating the written teachings of the tradition in 19th Century terms, many of which remain meaningful in our times. [ C 1958] Further parts of that teaching were published in French by Boris Mouravieff. In 1990, Mouravieff's three-volume work Gnosis was translated and published in English by Praxis. The tradition lives on.
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