Yes, this is it exactly, but I would sooner take these references to Roman Catholics and Protestants in the first place as just rhetorical foils against which to positively affirm the Orthodox teaching on God's Uncreated Energies and Grace immediately present in and upholding Nature, essentially distinct from Nature, but not apart or far-removed from Nature as if separated by a gap, rather than run the risk of generating the caricatures of Western positions to which the conventional Orthodox slant seems so regularly oriented. This intimate, Orthodox, epiphanic, "theosophical" (as I like to distinguish it from the "rationalistic") relationship of God to Creation is beautifully described in that book by S. A. Mousalimas, The Transition from Shamanism to Russian Orthodoxy in Alaska previously mentioned. As Maximos Aghiorgoussis describes this relationship between the Creator and the creature, "The energies of God, being present in the creation, keep the creation in being and govern it to achieve its goal, *theosis*. There is nothing such as an `independent nature' in the theology of the Greek Fathers. `Nature' always depends on `supernature,' God. God's grace (energies) is necessary in order for the `nature' to continue to be authentic. Nature deprived of grace is no longer true, authentic nature. It moves towards inauthentic existence. The only authentic existence for nature is for it to be dependent on the energies of God. It is from these energies that creation has both its `being' and its `well-being,' let alone its `eternal being,' in communion with the eternal God" (p.31 of Maximos Aghiorgoussis, Christian Existentialism of the Greek Fathers: Persons, Essence, and Energies in God, The Greek Orthodox Theological Review... I have a copy of this article but without the specific reference details. Paper delivered to the Boston Theological Society on Dec. 13, 1977). "Supernature" here is not some intermediary created or semi-created entity hovering scarily between God and creation. Whatever "supernature" might have become in the West, in Orthodox Holy Tradition it is resolved back into the Uncreated and the created only. Although I gather that there can be found checks and balances and subtleties in the Western Scholastic tradition by which these theological difficulties can be overcome, this strange (to the Orthodox) notion of "created grace" does perhaps symbolize a certain failure on the part of some Western Christians to clearly determine the "level" at which the "dividing line" between God and the world has been placed. This key issue is very helpfully addressed by Christos Yannaras in his paper, Scholasticism and Technology, in Eastern Churches Review, Volume 6, 1974. Fr. George A. Maloney, S.J., a Byzantine-rite Roman Catholic scholar, looks at it this way: "The West has suffered from the thought categories taken from neo-Platonism by Augustine and inserted into Western theology and spirituality. But when Western schoolmen no longer were mystics like the earlier theologians who could discourse on contemplation and never separate it completely from God as Life, theology fell into a rationalization of man's anthropomorphic view of God. It forgot to view God from God's view as revealed in Holy Scripture and as commented on by the early Fathers in their view of salvific history through God's revealed Word..Grace all too often became a "thing" to be amassed and stored up in some heavenly bank as security against the day of reckoning, instead of the Trinity living its uncreated energies within us, working dynamically to divinize us and through us to bring the Incarnation and Redemption to the world" (George A. Maloney, S.J., A Theology of Uncreated Energies, Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Marquette University Press, 1978 [The 1978 Pere Marquette Theology Lecture], pp.113-114). Well, at least I have let a Roman Catholic say it here. He said it, and I have reported it for thoughtful consideration. To what degree individual Roman Catholics and Protestants (and Orthodox) actually do perceive the pervasive presence of the Uncreated Energies in reality roundabout them I cannot say, but I do have the impression that they will be seeing more clearly if they can make it through the works of Charles Williams! Now the Evangelical, Watchman Nee, arguably quasi-gnostic in his theology, was perhaps wise in his time and situation to warn against the dangers of unleashing the so-called "latent power of the soul" (see his book by this name), but, here, for us, with the Holy Tradition and a good Spiritual Director (and/or the Pilgrim) to keep us on track, we can proceed with courage to let open our heart-doors of perception (II Corinthians 3:18). Calvinist Reformational Christians in the tradition of Dooyeweerd and Diemer are in a good position to know whereof we speak.

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>"Western" thought forms. Williams is describing something which transcends
>even modern the "New Age" (Spiritual-Emergence) methods of Psychiatry (or
>Shamanism) (with which Orthodoxy has a certain transforming affinity).

The symptoms may be similar, but I suspect that the therapeutic intervention, modalities employed, and the goal of treatment are quite distinct from, say, psychosynthesis or other "transpersonal" therapies (with the possible exception of Victor Frankl's logotherapy). >>