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 […]
A man must relate himself to new forces, coming from that which he has not realized, through seeing things differently, through touching ideas that have transforming power and that can only be proved by his own experience of them and never evidentially by an appeal to the outer world of the sense. Maurice Nicoll (1884 – 1953)
The mystic ocean of existence is not to be crossed as something outside ourselves. It is in oneself. Maurice Nicoll (1884 – 1953)
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 […]
We have no right to believe that our ordinary level of consciousness is the highest form of consciousness, or the sole mode of experience possible to man. We cannot say that the range of the internal experience of oneself is necessarily limited either to dream-states or to ordinary consciousness. We have to consider the possibility, not only that there is […]
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)
I imagined that unity of being could be reached within the customary state of consciousness. I believed, in other words, that a radical change of being could take place as one was, merely through some adjustments. This is probably what most of us think, for we do not realize that in order to change anything in ourselves everything else must […]
The beauty lies in realizing that you have a right not to be negative, and without that realization you cannot remember yourself. All Self-Remembering has to do with the fact that you came down to this earth, and life here does not correspond with what you came down from, and something in you knows it — that is, has not […]
The creation of a permanent ‘I’ must take place somewhere beyond the sphere of self-love. It must be brought into existence through a series of acts which cannot be initiated by self-love and so cannot start from the admiration of oneself. And for this reason many things are necessary before such acts can be self-initiated. The whole standpoint must change. […]
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 […]
