Every further stage of ourselves is within us, above us. Below us lies what we are already, what we have done before. Below us, behind us, is the passive surrender to things, the inertia of the past, the habits of years, and the passive, sensual mind — the mind of the senses — with its sole belief in appearances and […]

Whatever forms Christianity assumed in later times, however distorted it became, it must be remembered that its introduction was heralded by John the Baptist preaching change of mind as the first step towards “eternal” life. And this change of mind was connected by him with the teaching on the Kingdom of Heaven — an idea so difficult to grasp and […]

Everything is wrong in the world, everything in a state of confusion, because man has not this truth, and so remains unfinished. Maurice Nicoll (1884 – 1953)

Man cannot understand more because he is in a state of inner disorganization. The quality of his consciousness is too separative and coarse. Yet he starts out in his investigations of the universe without any idea that he will be unable to penetrate beyond a certain point because he himself is an unsuitable instrument for this purpose. Maurice Nicoll (1884 […]

Man has inner necessities. His emotional life is not satisfied by outer things. His organization is not only to be explained in terms of adaptation to outer life. He needs ideas to give meaning to his existence. There is that in him that can grow and develop — some further state of himself — not lying in “tomorrow,” but above […]

Along this sham path life is chiefly a dressing-up, an emptiness, a make-believe, in which we seek to be like something rather than really to be something. In this sense, then, no one is really doing. Maurice Nicoll (1884 – 1953)

The notion that we are not awake, that we are not at a level of consciousness where we can understand anything rightly, and where it is impossible to know or have anything real, and where we cannot be in control of ourselves because we are not conscious at the point where control would be possible — is found throughout Platonic, […]

Without this effort we fall every moment, prone and lifeless, into the overwhelming stream of time and event, and the circle of our reactions. For at every moment we can sink down into our habitual state of consciousness — where no integration is possible — where, indeed, we are, and can only be, divided up into innumerable little contradictory parts, […]

We know that when the rich man asked how he could gain eternal life the answer was: “If you will be perfect follow me.” The meaning, in the Greek, is to reach one’s goal. “Sin” meant, in the original, “missing the mark.” The psychological idea emerges quite clearly when we consider the real meaning of these two words. The goal […]