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 […]
The path of self-knowledge has this aim in view, for no one can know himself unless he turns inwards away from sense-perception, and unless he learns what to seek for. By oneself this is impossible. A man cannot get to know himself alone. His imagination stands in the way. There is no sufficient point in himself from which he can […]
If we could penetrate to the eternal reality of our own being we would find the one and only solution for every situation — in the right sense of our own existence — primarily in itself. Maurice Nicoll (1884 – 1953)
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 […]
To realize that you have not got something and that you need it, this is real asking. Maurice Nicoll (1884 – 1953)
Nor do we think that many of our insoluble difficulties, perplexities, and unanswered questions necessarily exist because of the kind of consciousness we naturally possess, and that a new degree of consciousness would either cause our awareness of them to disappear or bring about an entirely new relation to them. Maurice Nicoll (1884 – 1953)
