“We are coming into a new aeon, a new age. Aeons lasts about two thousand years and then its truth wears out. Then it is necessary to find new truth whereby to live, with new meaning, because the old meanings no longer conduct any force.” Maurice Nicoll
Understanding Aeons
“Aeon does not refer to the three-dimensional world in passing-time. It refers to an order of existence belonging to what we are calling higher space. Aeon is not time, nor is it Time itself but some overshadowing Totality that comprehends All in itself.” Maurice Nicoll, Living Time, p122.
“The aeon is another name for the realm that surrounds this. Some of you will sometimes call it, will be more comfortable calling it the Imaginal, but the aeon is the realm they use.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2012 Gurdjieff for Christians, 1:05:52 08 Thursday Morning Teaching.
“The aeonian order is full form, unknown to us in time. Limited form is time; for it is like a single note of a composition in which we do not hear the remainder, but hear only another note (in succession in time) derived perhaps from another composition. The ‘word’ of God (logos) expressed in aeon is the full form, the full proportion and all possible ratios, the full meaning and relations of things; having infinite diversity within its form-for we must not think of form (idea) as fixed, as we think of three-dimensional form, but rather as musical form, ever-blending and transforming itself within its own proportions, combining variation within variation, without departing from its essential being -from what it is- and so remaining ‘ever the same’—or ‘ever in one’.” Living Time, p129.
“I think that what we can say is that holy time and probably all time is qualitative, not quantitative. It doesn’t flow in fixed linear increments that we call years and months and seasons and ages. The time and age can be lived through in a nanosecond. Or it can stretch to billions of years. And I think the law of seven is somehow involved in that part because a linear era will manifest for as long as it takes for the octagon of completions to run through from the initial impulse that started that one.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Holy Trinity Law of Three, 5:14 11-06 The Universality Of Christ.
Aeons in Spiritual Teaching
“Christ speaks in a parable [of the tares] of the end of the age. He uses the word aeon, which refers to a period during which certain possibilities and conditions exist. With the coming of Christ one of these periods began, and with it certain conditions for entry into the Kingdom of Heaven. Those who followed the teaching of Christ sincerely, from their hearts, and not merely externally, could gain the Kingdom of Heaven.” Maurice Nicoll, The Mark, p190.
“Christ explains that this parable is about the end of the aeon (not world as it is translated) … This explanation of the parable refers to the termination of a period of conscious selection. In each age there is the idea of selection – not blind but intelligent. Each age or period appears to bring about a different kind of selection. In another short parable Christ compares the Kingdom of Heaven in general to a fisherman using a net to catch fish. When they had got sufficient they selected the good and threw the useless away.” Maurice Nicoll, The Mark, p191.
“The phrase translated as ‘end of the world’ means ‘consummation of the age’. The destruction of the material earth is not meant. So far we have seen, in our attempt to understand something about the Kingdom of Heaven and the teaching concerning it, that men are sown on the earth differently, that they form the material for the Kingdom, that the true teaching about the Kingdom and how to reach it, which in its turn is sown upon men’s minds, becomes mingled with false views owing to the sleep of Man, and this so inextricably that a separation cannot be made until the ‘end of the world’—that is, until the ‘consummation of the age’. What does an age mean? An age is a period of time characterized by a particular teaching about inner evolution or the level of the Kingdom of Heaven. It comes to an end and a new form of the same teaching is then sown, adjusted to the prevalent conditions. A new harvest appears but always mingled with tares. A new reaping and a new separation is made, and the process is again repeated. Each form of the teaching about the Kingdom, from its inception to its culmination, is an age. Each action of the teaching is a selective action. Those who have, in any particular age, received the teaching about inner evolution and have followed it, thirty−, sixty− or one hundred−fold, are the harvest; and they attain ‘eternal’ life on the level of the Kingdom of Heaven. In this connection we must remind ourselves of Christ’s words: ‘In my father’s house are many mansions.'” (John xiv, 2.) New Man p211-212
“We are coming into a new aeon, a new age. An aeon lasts about two thousand years and then its truth wears out. Then it is necessary to find new truth whereby to live, with new meaning, because the old meanings no longer conduct any force, but esotericism has always known this, and has always taught new meanings. And so we have amidst us the beginning of a new formulation of the ancient teaching to give us new meaning for life.” Maurice Nicoll, Commentaries, p1415
Logion 36
Yeshua says...
Do not spend your time from one day to the next
worrying about your outer appearance;
what you wear,
and what you look like.
TS Eliot, Chorus I, The Rock
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.
Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll refer to Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Eureka Editions:2020) unless stated otherwise.
Quotations from the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)
Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll’s The New Man refer to Martino Fine Books, Eastford CT, 2019
Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll’s The Mark refer to Thomas Nelson & Sons, New York, 1954
Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.
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