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WEB 4 - ARCHIVE
Commentary 19 - Page 6 |
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A Different Kind of ConcentrationAnother practical key to the whole process was given by Boris Mouravieff - not in his books, but in recently translated papers that describe the specific process of concentration I have described elsewhere. "The reader will perhaps be astonished if we tell him that the natural state of the intellect [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, prayer takes to wing and the student finds himself or herself on the Royal Road itself. 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, long-suffering; For bearing 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 charity, which is the bond of perfectness" ( Colossians 3:9-14.) This book, then, is a detailed study of a single Christian inner tradition in several different forms: in its written forms, some of them nearly two millennia old, and including the Gospels themselves; in its direct modern form that survives in the monasticism of the Eastern Church, and in perhaps less complete modern forms, as a lay teaching that in the recent past has taken on different terminology at different times. Accepting that these modern forms are incomplete, the book has also explored what elements in early texts or monastic practice would be needed to restore something like the original form of this Tradition, and the idea that there was in the psychology of the fourth way forms, not otherwise available to the West, which might serve as essential replacements for knowledge that has been lost, if ever there is to be a reawakening of spirituality in the Western world. |
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