There are so many references to the Light of Consciousness in Maurice Nicoll’s teachings that it must be of key importance.

Only the Light Can Cure You

“The Work begins with self-observation. If you cannot observe a thing in yourself you cannot change it. Always remember this. Only the light can cure you—and the light means the light of consciousness. So try to become aware of attitudes in yourself.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p1174

“The object of self-observation is to let a ray of light into oneself. The next thing is that when light is let in in this way many things begin to change of themselves. It is the light of consciousness that begins to change things. For this reason it is said in the Work that the light will cure us. We all think we can cure ourselves. I think perhaps I understood that we could not cure ourselves but that there was something that could cure us if we could gradually reach it. The next thing I understood much later was that no light could be in me unless at all costs I kept this Work alive in myself, all the ideas, all the thoughts, all the memory of it, and that this was my task, because by doing this I might be able to increase the light, and so, instead of taking thought for myself, I had to take thought for the Work, and everything else would follow at the right time. Then I understood better what it meant that we should not work for results. So our task is always to increase the light of the Work in ourselves and to keep it alive amongst ourselves.” Commentaries, p560

“The Third State of Consciousness—that is, Self-Awareness. This is where the light of consciousness will cure you.” Commentaries, p830

Consciousness Is Light

“Consciousness is light. What we are not properly conscious of is dark to us—i.e. in obscurity. A great deal of work has to be done for many years just exactly on this point. This is a very useful place to work on because it brings into the light of consciousness, through self- observation, knowledge of yourself that contradicts the pictures of yourself that have hitherto had power over you.” Commentaries, p929

“Now on the practical side—all this Work is about making what lies in your Being more and more conscious—that is, bringing out into the light of consciousness what has always acted mechanically in you so far and perhaps spoilt your life.” Commentaries, p1049

Robbing Things of Their Power

“Now things exist and have power over us because we are not properly conscious of them. The more unconscious a thing, the more power it exerts on us and the more mechanical our behavior. To bring a thing up into the light of Consciousness is to rob it of its power. For this, long self- observation is needed and much patience with oneself.” Commentaries, p1108

“It is from attitudes that we argue. To argue is not to understand: to understand is not to argue. No one was ever changed by arguing. But we must try to make attitudes conscious and not argue. To make an attitude conscious is to deprive it of its power over you. Whatever comes into the light of consciousness is deprived of its power.” Commentaries, p1171

“A person is unconscious that it is a picture that controls him or her. A thing in you that you are unconscious of has great power over you like an invisible magnet. I repeat that the remedy is the light of consciousness. This Work is based on increasing the light of consciousness. It is about our becoming more conscious—we who live in darkness—by self- observation and long work on ourselves.” Commentaries, p1581

Illuminating the Past

“This light of consciousness is shed also into the past, into the time-body, and from what we are conscious of now we can see as having acted on us in the past, as having misled us, simply because we were accepting ourselves and our minds as we were brought up, without even thinking who we were or where we were going. Remember that every stage of slightly increased consciousness begins to alter us and the past. The past is living in us.” Commentaries, p551

“To observe that one has, say, been a nuisance to other people, to catch a real God-given glimpse of it, is to begin to observe oneself sincerely and such a form of consciousness can change both the future and the past. It is the light of consciousness: and only this light can cure us.” p1332

Bringing Together Opposites

“When I said to you that you must bring the dark side—the side not conscious to you—into the light of Consciousness, and not imagine that what you admit to Consciousness is all of you, I was speaking of this bringing together of opposites in yourself—of contradictions not acknowledged or even noticed.” Commentaries, p1112

“You have inner contradictions in you that are eventually bound to lead to a fall, like the house divided against itself, which cannot stand. The two sides of the contradictions must be brought together often into the light of consciousness. There is no other remedy. The remedy is precisely simultaneous light—not light on one and then on the other.” Commentaries, p1601

Inner Silence

“There is something called in the Work “inner silence”. Different ‘I’s … wish to say now this and now that, as the light of consciousness touches them, and wakes them to momentary life. To a limited extent one may permit them to speak, provided one has a distinct idea that neither side is right. Inner silence means being silent in oneself. It means not taking sides in yourself and so being silent.” Commentaries, p334

Killing the Snakes

“What kinds of jealousy can we observe and slowly drag, as it were, struggling like snakes, into the light of consciousness which kills them?” Commentaries, p1499

“One way to attack the self-love is through self-observation. One or two of the stupid inventions of the self-love about oneself may be noticed. They may be brought gradually into the light of consciousness. Self-observation lets in light. Light illumines ridiculousness.” Commentaries, p1604

The Collapse of the Fictitious

“An increase of consciousness of oneself is always at the expense of one’s imagination of oneself, of one’s vanity, at die expense of Imaginary ‘I’, at the expense of all the pictures treasured by the False Personality. For this light of consciousness, which illuminates things in us, seeks eventually to bring about the collapse of everything fictitious and unreal so that a new person can develop.” Commentaries, p1598

“Now as regards this inner man in you: when your consciousness of yourself has increased enough for you to see better what you are like underneath the illusions of the self-love, then, for the first time you may see why Christ so often and so harshly said: “thou hypocrite.” This had no real meaning to you before. You could not seriously believe you were the hypocrite. You could not—without any extra light of consciousness to help you.” Commentaries, p1610

Increasing Contact with the Light

“Of this light of consciousness we receive a very little. We are nearly blind. Now it is not the light that is to be increased but our contact with it. The receptive point of consciousness has to be changed. Then more consciousness is received. We have to begin work with the small consciousness we have. We seek not to squander it in identifying. But people throw away even the small consciousness they have. To awaken is to become more and more conscious by letting in consciousness into dark places. So it is said that self-observation lets light into the darkness within us.” Commentaries, p1526

Second Shock

“To observe oneself, to notice what is going on in oneself, to separate oneself from useless states and begin to see one’s pictures, to remember one’s aims, to struggle against being identified with every mood and thought—and so on—all this belongs to the second shock, whose object is to increase the light of consciousness so that we become conscious of ourselves to start with.” Commentaries, p406

Facts of Being

“This Work is not based on sensual thinking. It is not about things you can perceive with your five senses. You cannot weigh and measure it or examine it with a magnifying glass or a microscope. The direction is inwards, towards the inner parts of centers. The order of truths it teaches are not of the same order as scientific truth. It is not about facts of the senses. It has to do with facts of your being and with bringing these facts into the light of consciousness, which leads to Change of Being.” Commentaries, p1702

“If you could make some of the things belonging to Personality conscious to yourself by observing them standing in a growing sharpness to the insight and not obscurely as through a mist, those elements would become less and less active as the directed light of consciousness fell more and more fully on them. Yes, we have heard all this many times already. I know we have. But have you taken it in yet?” Commentaries, p1664

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Logion 24
His students said to him,
"Take us to the place where you are,
since we are required to seek after it."
He answered them,
"Whoever has an ear for this should listen carefully!
Light shines out from the center of a being of light
and illuminates the whole cosmos.
Whoever fails to become light is a source of darkness."

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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)

Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.