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WEB 4 - ARCHIVE
Commentary 26 - Page 11 |
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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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For lay seekers For lay people with little time to spare on exercises, however, the classic bottom up sequence of approach to these steps may be impossible. Their time for prayer and special exercises is normally far too little, and their only possibility is to turn their whole way of life into a continuous exercise. This is a form of psychological method very different from the monastic method: in reality it operates from the top down, but it appears to begin at steps five and six. The reason for this difference between the appearance and the reality is that the efforts made by the student ... that is to say by his or her Personality, are psychological efforts initiated from these intermediate steps, while the actions of the real cause of the process - the real I itself - are for many years invisible to the student.
We have said earlier that the term psychological method comes from P.D. Ouspensky, who, between the two world wars, taught the highly simplified psychological form, developed by G. I. Gurdjieff, of what we have now identified as one stream of traditional Orthodox thought. (Although almost certainly with additions borrowed - in ways themselves traditional with the inner teaching -from other forms of inner tradition.) Between them, these two men from an Orthodox Christian world began to define some-thing that my investigations have proved fairly conclusively was based on or identical to - at least in large part - the forgotten psychological teachings of the early church. These teachings form part of the tradition I referred to earlier in the book, a means of healing human beings and restoring them to psychic and spiritual health. This method was one of the two practical supports of early Christianity which together made the early church so different from that of today. This form of the path, which begins not with external life, nor with the body, but with the psyche, is the true psychological method. It achieves similar or identical preliminary and final goals to those attained in yoga, although its methods are very different. The essence of the psychological method is that it acts psychologically, as has been said ‘from the top down,’ changing the action of the psyche before needing to make massive changes in the student’s lifestyle. The way of life of the student then becomes a matter not of obedience to rules but of personal choice, but that choice has to originate from a certain state of mind - sometimes called conscience - based on a change in the way of viewing the world which is attained only as a result of an inner change in the student’s psyche, a change of consciousness which is the goal of what has been described by certain sources as waking up. Such a method requires knowledge, and that knowledge must be understood through direct experience. It was this that led Evagrius to write: "Knowledge, the great possession of man. It is a fellow-worker with prayer, acting to awaken the power of thought to contemplate the divine knowledge." From the ordinary state of mind, this new way of viewing the world is so different in its goals and concerns that it appears remarkably impersonal, so that it has also been called objective reason. |
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