Missing the Mark Maurice Nicoll

Missing the Mark Maurice Nicoll

Maurice Nicoll was a psychologist and a student of Jung, Gurdjieff, and Ouspensky. He started his own Fourth Way Group in England. He wrote a five volume set called Psychological Commentaries is which he discusses the teachings from a practical standpoint. He maintains that Gurdjieff looked at the Fourth Way as an aspect of Esoteric Christianity. In many of his Commentaries, Nicoll shows the relationship between the Work and Esoteric Christianity. His books The Mark, and The New Man give a detailed explanation of how Esoteric Christianity can be applied to man today.

Nicoll states, "The central idea of the Work is self-change, and the central teaching of the Work is that man is an unfinished creation, a self developing organism, one whose only task is to complete itself." He maintains that Jesus did not come to preach morality, but to instruct man on what he needed to do to complete himself.

In order to complete your self, you must have an aim that you are working toward. It must be a Work aim, not a life aim. A life aim like earning lots of money, or becoming a famous author reinforces self-love and vanity. Life aims will not help in self-completion. There are small aims like cooking an excellent Thanksgiving dinner for the family. Though this seems like a practical aim not connected with the Work, it can be a Work aim if you practice non-identifying and external considering as you try to reach the aim. There are larger aims like Self Remembering. An aim like Self Remembering is one that you must work on for your whole life.

Nicoll maintains that the only sin in life is missing the mark. If you have no aim in life, then you cannot sin. He illustrates this with a practical example. Suppose you are to meet someone for coffee at eight A. M. If you have to walk five blocks to keep your appointment, it would be a sin to stop at the newspaper stand and glance over the paper. Stopping at the stand would make you late for your appointment. There is no sin in reading over the newspaper unless it interferes with your aim.

As a psychologist Nicoll naturally applies concepts of psychology to the Work. He maintains that to understand the work, we must think in a new way. You have to go beyond sensual thinking. Nicoll calls this new way of thinking psychological thinking. We have to admit that it is the unknown that stands behind and supports the visible world. You cannot Remember Yourself if you think that you are just your body and your senses. The self that we must remember is the invisible self that comes down from a star. It is our essence that makes us unique individuals. It is what relates us to the spiritual world and to the cosmos.

He maintains that the word repent that is used in the Bible many times is misinterpreted. It comes from the Greek work mentanoia. Most biblical scholars interpret this to mean to be sorry, or ask forgiveness for your sins. Nicoll holds that metanoia means to go beyond the physical. It means to think in a new way. In order to understand our selves we have to think in a new way, we have to go beyond sensual thought and think at a higher level.

In his Commentaries, Nicoll stresses that you must apply the teachings of the work to your self in order to reach a higher level of yourself. It is not enough to learn Work terms like self -observation and Self Remembering. You must observe your daily actions. You have to catch your self doing things that drain force. You have to remember your self at least two or three times a day. Without practice you will remain at the second level of consciousness.

He stresses that one of the main reasons for our sleep is that we lose all of our energy through the expression of negative emotions. According to Nicoll, it is the not sex instinct or the urge for power that dominates man’s life, but it is negative emotions. We are always negative. He maintains that we have the right not to express negative emotions. It is not that we must not express them, that we are commanded to non-expression. But, it is our right as human beings not to express negative emotions and eventually be free of the negative feelings altogether.

Under certain conditions we can control the expression of negative emotions if it serves our self-interest. You may feel intense anger at your boss for his critique of a project that you finished. However you will not express this anger for fear of losing your job. You may be angry with the driver who just cut you off, but you will not express this anger because doing so might cause an auto accident. You may want to punch a stranger in the face because he insulted your wife, but you restrain your self out of fear of being arrested.

Negative emotions arise, but if we are conscious of them we can control our expression of them with concerted effort. The next step is to discover the reason for or the source of negative emotions. Once we begin to practice self-observation we can see that many of our negative feelings come from habitual reactions to situations that are unflattering to our self-love. Others come because of conditioned fear of situations. Once we learn to curb our self-love, and become aware of our conditioning we will cease to feel negative so much of the time.

In his book the Mark, Nicoll maintains that the Jesus came to instruct man in how he could complete himself. He came to bear witness to the Truth. The Truth is that man is asleep, but can awaken with sustained effort. The purpose of life is to reach the level of life that was intended for completed man or woman. Man is in part a material being, but this is only a minor part of the totality of man. The inner self, the soul or essence is the real man and it is this aspect that man must grow in order to complete himself. Jesus asked, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”

One of the most interesting parts of The Mark is a section called The Parable of the Sower. Nicoll explains that man is a seed sown on the earth. At the same time, the Work is sown on the earth as seeds. And, some seeds fall along the wayside. These are the people who are too involved in the way of the world to even hear the Work. These are men who are totally governed by their senses, sensual man. Other seeds fall among the rocky places. These are men who have knowledge of the Work, but it doesn't penetrate into their being. This is theoretical man. The third category is those who fall upon the thorns. They understand the Work, but their emotional center is tied to life. This is man governed by negative emotions. Then, there are other seeds that are sown upon good ground. These are men who are born again in spirit.

And, if we don't awaken, we cannot die. And if we don't die, we cannot be born again. And the whole meaning of Man's life on this earth comes with his rebirth. And, this rebirth is into a higher level of consciousness.

If we take our body as our self, and feel that the material needs of life is all that we must strive for, we are missing the mark. If we miss the mark our life will be meaningless.