Maurice Nicoll comments on the meaning of resist not evil and turn the other cheek, in the context of Will and Willing.
“Instead of referring everything to the idea of fairness and justice it is far better to will what you have to do in everything and try to awaken from your negative emotions. That will give you freedom and inner peace. Kicking against the pricks will make you more negative and therefore less and less free. This paper is about two ways of taking the events of life. One is that you do not identify with them; the other is to will them.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p1316.
“You all probably have heard that extraordinary esoteric remark attributed to Christ: ‘Resist not evil.’ It has many remarkable meanings. One is to will what you think evil, what you think you dislike, what you think should not be. You think you may die. Will it—and you will no longer be afraid. To object to everything is easy. To will what you object to is another thing. If you object to everything you will internally consider all day. You will make internal accounts against everyone. But if you will the existence of someone you object to, everything will change—miraculously. If you will what happens to you, you will gain force. If you object to what happens to you, you will lose force. This Work is about how to gain force.” Commentaries, p1118
“I was talking to some people about this idea of willing what happens to you and one person said: ‘Don’t you think it applies to the smallest things, willing to wash the dishes, to do the stove?’ For example, if you have children, you have to will their existence. Suppose you have practically no money, you have to will the fact that you are a poor man. As another example, I will give you this. Say you are sneezing —try to will yourself to sneeze. This is for discussion. If you make a thing more conscious it is less liable to upset you. So we are told in this Work that we must bring a more conscious attitude to the whole of our lives—to will what is inevitable.” Commentaries, p1390
“Today I only wish to speak of what a new will can and does mean. Will is connected both with what we like and what we love. What a man loves he wills and what he wills he does, either openly or secretly. If restrained, he does it in imagination, which spiritually— that is, psychologically—is the same. I mean that there is no new will formed. A new will would mean to go in a new direction. But as you cease to like or love something —such as yourself—you will less and less will it. Now by observation you may come to dislike a part of yourself, something in yourself. Then you will not will it as you did when you did not clearly see it.” Commentaries, p1595
“As long as your self-love remains the undetected, unexplored, prehistoric jungle that it is, you unknowingly let it will all of you, being ignorant of the enemies, the evil ‘I’s, it conceals, not being conscious of what is in the jungle. Amongst other tilings, that will mean that you openly or secretly always want your own way. This is will from self-love. This is undiscriminating willing, and really means that all things in this jungle, all calling themselves by your name—even man-eaters—feed their own wills. Some scream with rage if prevented.” Commentaries, p1595
“We seek the gift of a new quality of will, which does not know resentment. To have a will characterized by absence from resentment would be to become a New Man—that is, another kind of man. Such a man, for instance, would move through the criss-cross confusion of jealousies and ambitions and the tangle of human relations in general without losing force.” Commentaries, p1608
“Real will comes from above, from a higher level. What does higher mean? Where we see one thing at our level, at a higher level a million things exist. We imagine Will as inflexible but we have to conceive that Real Will is infinitely flexible and discerning and ultimately contains all things and so has direction towards fullness. This was called in the Gospels πλήρωμα—fullness of all meaning. However, I will try to explain it in this way. Real Will is full of new meaning. It is not the absence of things, the negation and denial of doing things. Its real nature does not consist in the words: “I will not”. “I will understand more” is a better formulation.” Commentaries, p490
“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’.” Commentaries, p1610
“Will defined as the capacity to choose and to act meaningfully and not reactively is the power of the will.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Living Presence, 57:06 Chapter-7-Voluntary-Attention
“Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called ‘the love of your fate.’ Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, ‘This is what I need.’ It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment–not discouragement–you will find the strength is there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow.” Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living.
Logion 95
Yeshua said:
If you have money,
do not lend it with interest,
but give it to the one
who will never pay you back.
Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll refer to Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Eureka Editions:2020) unless stated otherwise.
Quote from the Gospel of Thomas from Jean-Yves Leloup, The Gospel of Thomas, Inner Traditions, 2005
Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.
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