|
WEB 4 - ARCHIVE
Commentary 26 - Page 10 |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
HOME . PRAXIS NOW . PRAXIS PAST . CLASSES . EVENTS . BOOKSHOP . WHAT'S NEW . REGISTER . LOGIN |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
PRAXIS NOW
Darkness of
the psyche The Hermit's Message
Way of Theosis Psychological method Prayer of the heart
praxis studies
Introductory studies
LOGOUT |
More about the Psychological Method Underlying my belief in the availability of a solution is another basic fact that becomes apparent only after long study of these ideas: this is the fact that the psychological ideas of the early fathers form a genuine science, not simply a single system or doctrine, but something much larger. One of the characteristics of a science, in this sense, is that it provides a resource, a seed-bed of techniques from which differing solutions can be drawn for different needs. Thus there are certain key concepts on which what I call the psychological method is based. Many of these are held in common by Christianity and the great Eastern faiths. One fundamental resource of this inner science is described in volume I of his Gnosis, where Boris Mouravieff lists eight methods or forms of ascesis or spiritual exercise. These categories are based on a division of our experience of ourselves into eight categories which are in agreement with those in the Indian system known as the Eightfold Yoga, described by Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras. These categories are precise, and observably apply to all normal human beings, (or at least all those who possess the potential for inner development), and they therefore appear to form a suitable frame-work for the study of any kind of development method in any human culture. Following this, it can be said that all exercises, if their purpose is the transformation of the human organism, act in one or other of these eight categories, apart from certain methods such as Prayer of the Heart which have the capacity, when performed to the full, of embracing or acting within two or more of the classes either sequentially or at the same time. Mouravieff describes these categories, in complete agreement with doctrines of Yoga, as:
In classical Raja Yoga, the student utilizes these methods sequentially, giving the idea that the eight classes can be regarded as eight steps taken from the bottom up, that is, beginning with the coarsest and most external, and ending with the innermost and most subtle. As a science, however, the same framework is used even in India in other ways. It also serves very well to describe the monastic method of the Eastern Church, as described by Boris Mouravieff, although superficially there seems to be a difference between this and yoga in that the Christian monastic tradition seems to deal with the earlier categories all together, while Indian methods take them more strictly in sequence. |
BARBARIAN
PRAXIS PAST
A New Vision The Ark Text List SITE INFO Recent site changes Search Site |
||||||||||||||||||||
