“These laws of the Work cannot remain forms of blind external obedience but become things that you acknowledge and understand and eventually will for yourself.” Maurice Nicoll
The True Nature of Obedience
“Obedience means ob-audere, listen to the depths, or listen from the depths, and it implies following in the footsteps of what you’ve heard from the depths. The early Quakers were masters of this, they would scan their heart for their leanings, for what the light within led them to, and when they had a clear sort of take on what the light within was leading them to, they put it in action.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Imaginal Wisdom School 8-2020, 39:30 0819 IWS Wednesday PM Teaching.
“Obedience rivets the will-to-greatness of the heart; The vow of obedience is the practice of silencing personal desires, emotions and imagination in the face of reason and conscience; it is the primacy of the ideal as opposed to the apparent, the nation as opposed to the personal, humanity as opposed to the nation, and God as opposed to humanity. It is the life of cosmic and human hierarchical ordering; it is the meaning and justification of the fact that there are Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones; Dominions, Virtues, Powers; Principalities, Archangels, Angels; Priests, Knights and Commoners. Obedience is order: it is international law; it is the state; it is the Church; it is universal peace. True obedience is the very opposite of tyranny and slavery, since its root is the love which issues from faith and confidence. That which is above serves that which is below and that which is below obeys that which is above. Obedience is the practical conclusion to that which one recognizes as the existence of something higher than oneself. Whosoever recognizes God, obeys. The universal formula of obedience is: Fiat voluntas tua: Thy will be done.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p112.
“The cross is the vow and virtue of obedience, i.e. the sign and formula of faith, as horizontal human respiration and vertical divine respiration united together.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p118.
Two Ways of Obedience: Understanding vs. Blind Obedience
“There are two kinds of obedience. If I try to obey in my passive state, unconsciously, I lose myself and cannot serve. But if I come to a more active state, I can voluntarily obey in submitting. This requires a state of conscious passivity in which only the attention is active and the functions are intentionally maintained in a passive state.” Jeanne de Salzmann, Reality of Being, p219.
“A servant, [Christ] says, obeys his master, not knowing what the master means. But a friend is one who understands and obeys through understanding, so [Christ] says: ‘Ye are my friends.’ They are his friends if they obey the order of Truth of which Christ spoke. To obey is to act beyond one’s own interests, to put something over and above them. A man cannot lose his soul if he only minds the things of men.” Maurice Nicoll, The New Man, p96
“These laws of the Work cannot remain forms of blind external obedience but become things that you acknowledge and understand and eventually will for yourself. Through perceiving their truth we give assent to them and through beginning to live according to them through our own assent and acknowledgement we make it possible for them to begin to change our Being.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p771
“The Work is not religion. It is not a doctrine. It is not a faith that demands a blind obedience and so holds the understanding captive. On the contrary it is a freeing and opening up of the understanding that can now develop, giving you a source of new and increasing meanings and insights as your physical life passes. But this can only take place when you begin to perceive the truth of what it teaches with your own understanding.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p1718
Obedience as Alignment with a Higher Will
“Real will is the ability to apprehend, to wrap one’s being around, that which one must do. Not out of compulsion, not out of ego programs, not out of like and dislike, but out of obedience to the divine moving through you, and obedience to God’s DNA for your own wholeness, if you want to put it that way. And to respond to that completely, fully, intuitively, and wholly.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Living Presence, 1:01:00 Chapter-7-Voluntary-Attention.
“For me, obedience comes right along with putting the mind in the heart. It’s like learning not to use the head to solve everything. But it’s sometimes to inter-abide in that state of not knowing as you put the mind in the heart.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Holding Our Planet 2024, 48:04 20 Thurs am Teaching.
Logion 64
Yeshua says…
A man was throwing a dinner party and when everything was prepared, he sent his servant out to call the guests.
The servant went to the first and said, “My master invites you.” But he replied, “I have set aside some funds for merchants who are coming this evening, and I will be placing orders. I beg to be excused from dinner.”
So he went to the second and said, “My master has invited you.” But he said, “I have bought a house which requires a day of my time. I am too busy to come.”
He went to another and said to him, “My master invites you now.” He replied to the servant, “My friend is getting married and I am to prepare the wedding banquet. I simply cannot come. I beg to be excused.”
He went to another and said, “My master calls you.” In reply he said to the servant, “I have just bought a farm and am about to pay taxes. I cannot come. Please excuse me. I must be off.”
The servant returned to his master and said, “The ones you invited to the dinner have all excused themselves.” And so the master said to the servant, “Then go to outsiders and strangers on the roads. Find folk there and bring them here to eat.”
Those busy buying and selling cannot get into my Father’s realm.
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)
Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being, Shambhala Publications, 2010
Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, Jeremy Tarcher, 1985
Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.
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