“Real Will comes from above, from a higher level. … Real Will means great meaning and great understanding and great flexibility.” Maurice Nicoll
A Force That Draws Things Together
“Real Will is a force that draws things together into an enlargement of meaning.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p492.
“Will is something that finds right solutions. It unites separate things, it arranges in right order, and so creates something new. It contains the idea of new possibilities. It is not mere denial, mere negation, mere stopping of everything, but the reaching to a new combination, or a new attainment. It has to do with the certainty that a solution is possible, and with a certain kind of active patience towards the at-present unsolved situation, where one does not as yet see the next connection. I say a certain kind of active patience because it has nothing to do with resignation.” Commentaries, p482.
Not Will Power
“Maurice Nicoll, one of the wonderful work commentators, said that Will has nothing to do with will power. … Real Will pulls you, maybe like walking on a moving walkway so that your own efforts are going in the direction and are amplified but every time that you can intend a piece of conscious labor, start it intentionally and, if it has limited time, if you say I will do this for this time, end it intentionally. When it’s over it strengthens that reservoir of will within you. So those are some of the basic basic teachings about conscious labor.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2012 Gurdjieff for Christian Contemplatives, 23 Sunday Morning Teaching.
“What we call our will is the resultant of many wills, many different desires. But Real Will cannot be a resultant, for Will in a real sense is Master and is above the desires of life and all life-‘I’s.” Commentaries, p485.
The Subtle Energy Triad
“The big three to work with when you’re working with subtle energy, with psychic force, are love, understood as an energy, as a creative and transforming energy, attention, and will.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont Dec 2019 Gurdjieff-Teilhard, 27:06 14 – Thursday Morning Teaching.
Patience as Mother of Will
“Gurdjieff said: ‘Patience is the Mother of Will.’ That is, Will, passing through patience as Third Force, attains what it wants.” Maurice Nicoll, Commentaries, p1017
The Marriage of Truth and Good
“If we value the Work, if we feel love for it, we will will our knowledge of the Work, and from that do it. The sign of this stage being reached, or rather beginning to be reached, is that the feeling of I changes. This shifting of the feeling of I makes it possible for being to change. But the will must enter the knowledge of the Work, and if you have love towards the Work, it can only be will for good or good-will. Then you will have a lamp and oil in it.” Maurice goes on to say that a person may have knowledge of the Work and even see the truth of it and not will it. “In this case the union or esoteric marriage between truth and good will not take place. You will have a lamp but no oil.” Commentaries, p1502.
“When a man begins to see the good of some truth he had been taught, then a union between what he knows and what he is begins to take place. This is because a man is unable to will anything unless he feels it to be good. Merely to see a thing is true is not enough. He must will the truth and for this to be possible he must see the good of the truth, the good of the knowledge he has been taught. Truth then becomes internally connected with him, so is made living. Then the more good he sees in it, the more will the truth grow, and develop: and the more truth he sees, the more will the good he sees in it grow.” Maurice Nicoll, The Mark, p80.
Coming from Above
“Real Will—that is, Master—comes from above, not from life and its level of interests. If you have no above in you, in your thought and outlook, there is no chance of touching Real Conscience or Real ‘I.’” Commentaries, p486.
“All the stuffing we stuff ourselves up with, all must begin to weaken under the guidance of the Work—by uncritical and remembered self-observation. Something then awakens … a tiny thing. It emerges from … life and one’s ideas of life and of oneself in life. This is the point. If it really wishes to, this tiny thing, this grain of mustard seed, can attract a trace of Real ‘I.’ Real ‘I’ comes down from above, but only when there is something to come down to.” Commentaries, p488.
Infinitely Flexible and Discerning
“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.” Commentaries, p490.
“Differentiation—seeing many differences where one saw none, or where one saw only opposites, is the beginning of the growth of Will. … Real Will means great meaning and great understanding and great flexibility and a great amount of going against what you thought best. This requires the active patience that the Work demands. Patience of this sort is called in the Work the Mother of Will.” Commentaries, p491.
Logion 20
His students said to him,
“Tell us about this kingdom of yours in the heavens.
What is it like?”
Yeshua answered them,
“Let me compare it to a mustard seed,
the smallest of all seeds.
When it falls into prepared ground,
it grows into a great tree
capable of sheltering the birds of the sky.”
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 Mark refer to Thomas Nelson & Sons, New York, 1954
Read the Impression on Meditations on the Tarot.
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