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WEB 4 - ARCHIVE
Commentary 26 - Page 12 |
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Darkness of
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Way of Theosis Psychological method Prayer of the heart
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A METHOD FOR TODAY To consider the psychological method today, we must take into account the actions of the recent teachers to whom we have referred, although, while the results of these modern teachers were sometimes remark-able, they did not equal those produced by the early church. Why do I say this: because some-one who grew up in his household reports that, when Ouspensky returned to England in 1946 after six years of war, looked at his English students, and, after a few meetings at which nobody had the kind of real questions that arise when people practice such ideas, said that his teaching had failed, and that it was time to start again from the beginning. The enigmatic and highly capable Gurdjieff, who appeared to be an eccentric teacher of the disciples of an eccentric age, died later than his pupil Ouspensky, but also admitted failure. He did not leave visible behind him anyone of comparable knowledge or ability. "Je vous laissez dans les beaux draps," he said to his students on his deathbed, "I leave you in a fine old mess." And he advised certain of them, after his death, to go to Mount Athos and to make contact with the inner tradition which was hidden there. The visit was made, but the contact proved more difficult than was expected, as the deeper parts of that inner tradition remain effectively hidden from untrained eyes. Contact with the tradition had to wait almost another thirty years. The parallels between these two endings are too strong to be ignored. But so was the work of these men too significant to be ignored. Because of Gurdjieff’s novel way of explaining things, because of his flamboyant and apparently egotistical style of teaching that made it too easy to judge him a charlatan and so avoid the searching questions raised by his very existence, and because he disguised or left out certain Christian dogmas whose origin, if admitted, would have been unacceptable to his students, nearly every committed Christian has ignored him. But he is a historical fact, and his influence is indirect as well as direct. The lesson of these teachers, indeed, is not that they were in any way inadequate; far from it, they were the best of their times. Indeed, one of the things that triggered the investigation that led to this book was this almost ignored claim of Gurdjieff to a Christian origin for his system. Further confirmation of the relation (not identity) between the teachings lay in the fact that the Philokalia, the great compendium of teachings of the early Fathers that has driven Eastern monasticism since the sixteenth century, and which has waited until now to be proven, was translated into English as a direct result of Ouspensky’s friendly contact with a hermit on Mount Athos, Father Nikon. After Ouspensky’s death, certain of his students made contact with that hermit, and this contact with the mainstream had considerable effect on Western spirituality, since it was this that led directly to Gerald Palmer’s translation into English of parts of The Philokalia. The idea came from Father Nikon in conversation with Palmer, once a student of Ouspensky. Palmer’s co translator in this, also co translator of the Art of Prayer and Unseen Warfare, was Madam Kadloubovsky, who for many years was Ouspensky’s secretary. |
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