“The higher creates the lower on every successive level in the Great Chain of Being.” Maurice Nicoll

Recognition of Higher and Lower

“All esotericism begins with the idea that there is something higher. Exoteric systems, such as religions, say that this something higher is God, which people of sensory understanding take as something outside them, in the sky, so to speak. Esoteric systems say that this ‘something higher’ is in you—not outside you in the visible world—but within you as a higher possible and existing level of yourself, not yet attained, but there already. Christ said: ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.'” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p1276

“A higher intelligence is not comprehensible to a lower one. The higher can understand the lower but not the lower the higher.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p393

“Man lives by meaning. This Work transmits more and more meaning in proportion as the mind is cleansed from this dirt of wrong thinking and feeling, for it opens out. To think upside down is silly. It is to explain the higher by the lower.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p1541

The Lower Cannot Explain the Higher

“When you see the explanation of an organic whole, such as the human body, solely in terms of its small constituent parts, and cannot understand that a thing must be related in all its parts and that they could not have arisen by chance, your mind is shut to all higher meaning. You then explain the higher by the lower. You explain a motor-car by its nuts and bolts and so on and not by the idea behind the motor-car that has related all its different parts together.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p346

“Spiritual adultery is therefore the exchange of a higher moral and spiritual value for a lower moral and spiritual value. It is, for example, the exchange of: the living God for an impersonal divinity; Christ crucified and resurrected for a sage deep in meditation; the Holy Virgin-Mother for Nature in evolution; the community of saints, apostles, martyrs, monks, confessors, church doctors and virgins for a ‘community of geniuses’ of philosophy, art, science, etc.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p299.

The Danger of Mixing Higher and Lower

“Things belonging to higher and so more conscious parts of centers must not be allowed to mix themselves up with what belongs to lower mechanical parts. This is the real meaning of profanity. Profanity is mixing higher and lower. It destroys the proper order of parts of centers. It messes up and destroys the very complex and delicate machine in a man, each of whose parts has a definite and distinct function.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p176 

“When thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.”

“In the above passage not ‘letting the left hand know what the right hand doeth’ refers to two levels in Man which must be made distinct. Notice that you must not let the left hand know what the right does, not the other way round. Man at his ordinary level … means a man sunk in his own self-love and vanity, and a creature of the senses. The right hand means a higher or the beginning of a higher level of understanding. He must not mix these two levels—that is, he must not let his left hand know what his right hand does. The left hand is the lower level dominated by self-love. What a man does from a higher level must be kept away from a lower level.” Maurice Nicoll, The New Man, p89-90.

The Relationship Between Higher and Lower in Transformation

“The higher creates the lower on every successive level in the total Chain of Being. Nothing creates itself. All created things receive meaning according to their level of being, which determines their receptivity of meaning.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p1541

“The higher acting on the lower can only transform the lower to a stage beyond what it was, but not up to the level of the higher. And the lower cannot reach its next stage save by the influence of something higher than both.

“You notice that the higher must exist before the lower can undergo transformation. This is not difficult to grasp, once the Ray of Creation in its naked meaning is emotionally perceived and privately acknowledged, for in it the higher forms the lower so that, if the lower seeks transformation, the higher is there awaiting it.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p433-434.

The Nature of Meaning in Relation to Higher and Lower

“Meaning is not explanation, it’s resonance” Cynthia Bourgeault, Vocabulary of Wisdom.

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Logion 67
Yeshua says…
If you come to know all,
and yet you yourself are lacking,
you have missed everything.

Logion 83
Yeshua says…
Images are revealed to humanity
while the light within them is hidden
by the brilliance of the Father’s light.
It is God who is being revealed,
but the image of God
remains concealed by the blaze of light.

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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. 

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

Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, Jeremy Tarcher, 1985

Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.