Views from Mount Athos

Searching for forgotten Christian knowledge of man among the monks of Mount Athos, the Holy Mountain of Northern Greece... "Jesus said: 'Let him who seeks not cease seeking until he finds, and when he finds, he will be troubled, and when he has been troubled he will marvel, and he will reign over the All.'" (Gospel According to Thomas)

DEDICATION: Spiritual men seek among the centuries-old forests of Athos for ten or a dozen holy men who are sanctified to replace a similar number in the hidden corners of Athos' forests and mountains. When these secret-saints die, it is said, ten or twelve new saints are formed, although at any time, only two of them become publicly known. I was blessed to meet one of them on a number of occasions, sometimes being able to find a translator of his Greek, sometimes being forced to learn through the language of love without detailed interpretation. Both ways, it seemed to me that I learned then 'by heart', not just in words, but in new understanding. - Robin Amis

BACK COVER: Exploring the Holy Mountain is exploring oneself... Over the past several decades there have been numerous accounts written by travelers and pilgrims to Mount Athos in Northern Greece. Since its beginnings as a monastic republic before the 10th century AD, this narrow peninsula which protrudes for 50 kilometers into the Aegean Sea has captured the imagination of hundreds of writers, scholars, and pilgrims. To this day, there is a constant stream of visitors to its monasteries, which allow their doors to open to a limited number of visitors each day in order to preserve their time-honored way of life, and to protect it from tourism as well as curiosity-seekers looking for the new or exotic in their travels.

Robin Amis began writing this book in the early '80's, when he first started visiting the Mountain regularly - visits which now total over 60. His first impressions of what he found there are encapsulated in this account of keenly observed descriptions of landscape and monasteries interspersed with deeply learned 'lessons' - truths brought home to the author by circumstances which so often evoked an inner response.

It is these revelations which tie the book together - and as in all true revelations, they do not follow a logical sequential pattern - they come 'out of the blue', surfacing when another relevant memory calls them up into consciousness out of the depth of our being. This book, then, could really be called an 'inner journey', for which external details provide a kind of scaffolding on which to hang the various insights that keep on emerging all the way from the beginning of the book to its end.

Views From Mount Athos, may be regarded as a 'travel book' - but it is also a many-layered journey - spiritual, philosophical, and psychological as much as physical. As Robin walks the narrow paths of the mountain from monastery to monastery, he finds himself increasingly detached from the noisy world of the West and travels the mountain tracks within himself. Among his guides on this journey was the blessed Elder Paisios (now Saint Paisios), from whom he learned the 'wisdom of the heart'.

Though published near the end of his life, this book is actually his first; the manuscript lay forgotten for over twenty years while he developed his understanding of spiritual life for lay people in the modern world, expounded notably in his A Different Christianity: Early Christian Esotericism and Modern Thought (Praxis Institute Press, 2003).