Maurice Nicoll
Amwell House
NOTE AT CHRISTMASTIME 1948

Throughout known history, various attempts have been made to awaken Man to the mystery of his existence. So strong, however, is the external man, the man formed by contact with external life via the senses—in short, the acquired Personality—that these attempts eventually become useless and must give way to other attempts always with the same aim. Man asleep takes for granted both his own existence and the existence of the Universe. This keeps him in bondage to the external world, to Nature and its laws. Such a man, if he thinks at all, believes that Nature created itself somehow or other, in remote ages— a strange idea if you come to reflect on it. Now as a result of this great power of hypnotism that external life exerts, Man’s real essential part cannot develop. Essence, although not developed, and in so many ways childish, is the real man or woman and cannot grow as long as the part of Man turned outwards to life dominates them. As said, people take this mystery of their own existence and the Universe for granted. It is only when one begins to feel and ponder this mystery that it may become possible to awaken from sleep. This capacity is called Magnetic Centre. If a man feels mystery in all things, if he feels that nothing has been explained, if he can see that there are life- influences in the world, such as the Financial Times, and distinct from them other influences, such as the Gospels, then he begins to feed, nourish, cause to grow, his inner essential side—that is, his Essence. Small children, as Essence, wonder. They are soon given answers that stop them. Then the hard coating of Personality forms itself. When a man dies his Personality breaks up and, if hard places are in it, with pain. Essence returns and is re-born. If there has been no growth of Essence, of the inner man, the life will be the same because, as you know, your being attracts your life. Change Essence, and your life cannot be the same. Remember this: your Personality is not you. What is really you lies behind it. For, behind all the manifestations of the Personality and especially the False Personality, which is what is least you, and is the cause of most useless suffering in the pain-factory of this world, there lies something that is really you. This is called Real I. Being born on this planet, we have to win this goal by self-observation, by not identifying. It is not given. By shedding, by taking off, by stripping off the outer coats of yourself that you have taken as yourself, and starting with the False Personality that seeks to keep up nothing but a fiction of yourself, a distortion, often very expensive literally to keep going, and always a great expense psychologically, then you begin to move towards Real I. This inner journey is called the Work or the Way or simply Esotericism.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Eureka Editions:2020) Vol 4, p1255

“Those who follow the ‘star’ must learn a lesson once and for all: not to consult Herod and the ‘chief priests and scribes of the people’ at Jerusalem, but to follow the ‘star’ that they have seen ‘in the East’ and which ‘goes before them’, without seeking for indications and confirmation on the part of Herod and his people. The gleam of the ‘star’ and the effort to understand its message ought to suffice. Because Herod, representing the anti-revelatory force and principle, is also eternal. The time of Christmas is not that of the nativity of the Child alone; it is also the time of the massacre of the children of Bethlehem—the time where autonomous intelligence is driven to kill, i.e., to strangle and push back into the unconscious, all the tender flowers of spirituality which threaten the absolute autonomy arrogated to itself by intelligence.” Meditations on the Tarot, From the chapter on the Sun card XIX, p533-34.

Logion 28
Yeshua says...
I stood to my feet in the midst of the cosmos,
appearing outwardly in flesh.
I discovered that all were drunk
but none were thirsty,
and my soul ached for the children of humanity,
for their hearts are blind.
They cannot see from within.

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.