Finding Real Aim in Self Transformations
Cynthia Bourgeault: You can’t move the plank you’re standing on!
Maurice Nicoll: You can’t change your level of Being from your current level of Being.
Albert Einstein: You can’t solve a problem from the same thinking that created it.
Maurice Nicoll says, “The object of esoteric teaching is to produce a profound change in the level of Being. There are many things in the Work that you cannot understand with your head but only with your heart. It takes two Centers to understand anything.” p627
“Esoteric knowledge is a special knowledge that we have to learn and gradually understand through an emotional development which gives us an emotional perception of its meaning. Our ordinary ideas, our ordinary knowledge, will not change our Being.” p628
So, what kinds of effort are required to change our Being?
Maurice brings in the real topic, which is Aim. We can never make aim unless we see that the Work is about our relationship to Higher Centers or Real Conscience. We must start from the Teachings about what to change in ourselves. Real Conscience would teach us if it were awakened, so we start with the Work ideas. To start from our own ideas of what we ought to do, we are bound to go wrong as we follow ordinary knowledge instead of the Teachings.
We behave in rigid, stereotyped ways, and so we tend to make rigid, stereotyped aims.” p628
Maurice says that a real aim depends on an emotional perception of something I dislike in myself which I wish to change. It requires a certain integrity of feeling that persists in spite of downfalls. From here M brings in a side note about “Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.” This refers to not letting Personality know what the deeper side—Essence—is up to. For this reason, “real aim must always be something you never quite put into words and let False Personality know about.” p630
Logion 62
Yeshua says…
I disclose my mysteries
to those ready for Mystery.
So keep secret from your left hand
what your right hand is doing.
Maurice offers a powerful summary and teaching:
“If we could make the Teachings first, then everything else would be added to us and we would find what really belongs to us in life, and what does not belong to us. It would mean that we began to live the Teachings in life. For this reason we should connect everything we do in life with the Teachings, even if artificially at first. You should not live the Teachings for a short time and then return to life as an antithesis. Gurdjieff said, ‘Bring all things into the Work. Do not go into life as a relaxation from the Work but connect your relaxation in life with the Work.’ Don’t divide yourself into life ‘I’s and Work ‘I’s which are at enmity with each other. The idea of Balanced Man is that he includes everything, but in the right place, in the right order, in the right arrangement. Unless you have an idea of a higher level of Humanity, the Conscious Circle of Humanity, then it will be difficult to make Real Aim.” p632
“We don’t remember ourselves, are not conscious, are full of internal considering, and spend our force on self-justifying and pretending to be what we are not. Imagination creeps into everything we say and do and think. We are asleep in life, carried along by mechanical reactions. How can such a puppet make an aim, save to be a greater puppet? Standing over this puppet is the Work, which tells us what kind of aim to make, and you can be sure that this aim is always against this puppet.” p633
M says that “the object of this Work is to put us in touch with Higher Centers.” p634 Our aim starts with the Work because it is coming from Conscious Humanity—from people who have reached Higher Centers. M concludes this talk with a caveat: “we always have to develop in the direction of our most unused side, the most despised side of ourselves, and not along the line of what we are best at. Remember, we have to become balanced.” p634
“When we begin to notice what puts us to sleep, we are nearer the possibility of making real aim. Aim is really a request to which we desire response.” p1059
Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll refer to Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Eureka Editions:2020) unless stated otherwise.
All quotations from the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)
All quotations from Cynthia Bourgeault are from The Vocabulary of Wisdom.
Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.
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