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Rating: 
Summary: An exceptional revelation of a transformative discipline
Review: See review of hardcover copy listed with Amazon.co
Rating:
Summary: In Praise of A Different Christianity
Review: This book makes a complex matter approachable to the modern reader. I recommend it without reserve. I have attended the Greek Orthodox Church all my life and was shocked and humbled at what I did not know. Post-graduate Sunday School at its best; anyone who has ANY relation to Christianity, close or distant - (nearly everyone in our society) should read it. It will put an entirely new-old angle on how one considers the term "Christian" - and how Christianity has evolved since its first conception.
Rating:
Summary: In Praise of A Different Christianity
Review: This book makes a complex matter approachable to the modern reader. I recommend it without reserve. I have attended the Greek Orthodox Church all my life and was shocked and humbled at what I did not know. Post-graduate Sunday School at its best; anyone who has ANY relation to Christianity, close or distant - (nearly everyone in our society) should read it. It will put an entirely new-old angle on how one considers the term "Christian" - and how Christianity has evolved since its first conception.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent intro to Orthodox mysticism
Review: This is a fine introduction to Christian mysticism within the context of the Greek Orthodox monastic tradition and Robin's attempt to find a way to make it applicable to those of us in the workaday world. He also does a decent job on explaining the psychological aspects of mysticism, something that is usually missing from most works in Christian mysticism. However if you are looking for a how-to book this is not it. Though I must quibble with the way he defines metaonia ie., "change of mind" as something else. *One big gripe though* I would have given it 5 stars if the author was not so insistant in reminding the reader Gurdjieff's teaching were from taken from the Greek Orthodox tradition. They weren't. Get "In Search of the Miraculous" and a volume of the Philokalia and compare them. The differences are obvious in aim, method and teaching. It is well documented that the bulk of Gurdjieff's teachings derived from his time spent with the Sufis, along with the Buddhists and yogis. He reformulated them to reach Europeans who were soaked in existenialism like Ouspensky and Nicoll. In fact the the mystical teachings of the Orthodox Church are aimed at monks not householders or married folks. Just read the Philokalia or the writings of St. Theophan the Recluse that Amis uses to support his this. The writings of St. Theophan are not aimed at laity, in fact if a modern person followed them they'd lose their sanity. Gurdjeiff even on his death bed advised his students to travel to the far east not Mt. Athos. Even though Amis claims otherwise he presents no proof of it. Though one can truthfully state that G. was well schooled on Orthodox theology he never claimed that it presented a complete spiritual path. An example would be G's concept of us as a "three brained being" is clearly Sufic not Christian. Amis also raises the idea that a secret brotherhood in Eastern Christianity kept alive esoteric teachings is betrayed by the fact that he has no evidence for them nor does the Orthodox condone it. To me Amis does a disservice to himself and to the reader by making up a fake history to support his claim that the Fourth Way is inner Christianity. The Church would consider G's teaching a heresy at the very least. Though it can be used as such as it would form the "how to" part of Christianity. The Orthodox maintain that Eastern Christianity is perfect and needs no occult practices. I'd also recommend the following books which can help with the how-to aspects of what Amis is writing about. The Mystical Theology of the Orthodox Church - Vladimir Lossky Living the Mindful life - by Charles Tart Living Presence - Edmund Helminski
Rating: 
Summary: Discoveries
Review: Why four stars? First of all because the book has a great deal of good content and because it repeats many of the things from different 'angles' making them this way easier to understand. I dropped the one star only for Robin's insistence on, in my view, unnecessary quotes from Boris Mouravieff.
I would like to pay attention to just one of the many discoveries made by Robin Amis.
This gem is in the early part of the book, page 44, in a chapter called 'The Fathers of the Church':
"The fate of the written knowledge is one story. For far more than a thousand years after it was written down, printing did not exist. For an even longer time, modern book distribution and other forms of communications did not exist. Until now, the texts of this tradition have remained little known in and wholly unassimilated by the West. Much of that knowledge was preserved in writing only in the Alexandrian and Syrian churches. Some but not all of this reached the Greeks through Clement of Alexandria, Origen and the saints known as the Cappadocian Fathers. More written knowledge from these Middle Eastern sources reached Russia about a century ago. Some rached the West from Russia and Greece in the first twenty years of this century [20th], normally in obscure scholarly translations laden with Greek and Latin that made them wholly inaccessible to the majority of men and women."
"But this - which forms a true discipline in the widest sense of the term - has never in two thousand years been generally available in complete form. The unwritten teachings have been even more inaccessible."
The above thoughts make me ask the following:
What do we know about the 'original teachings of Christianity'?
Who decided what these were?
What were the important criterions and what were the changes to the earlier message?
If the Christian teaching is only now available to the 'people' and it is not received by them, it confirms that Christianity has failed and that instead of a Way it has become a religion and that a correct 'judgement' of what religion is, was that of Karl Marx, who said that it was the opium of the people?
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