(2.) Maurice Nicoll 1 - Letter to Mr. Bush [1.b] - p.4-8
This is number 2.) of our sequential postings from Volume 1 of Maurice Nicoll’s Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.
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The other day, at a meeting here, the following lines were read: "Let us take the Sermon on the Mount and try to understand what it means. As was said before, in the last talk, "religion"—as it is called—that is, as the psychological ideas taught by Christ about the individual evolution of man and his transformation into a new man are usually called—is concerned with the development of essence after personality has been formed. A man in whom a rich personality has been formed by experience, education and interests, is a "rich man" in personality. But essence remains poor. For it to develop, personality must become
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passive." This was not understood, but it is very important that everyone in the work should understand what this paragraph means. It means that religion in the real sense—and we only know Christianity ourselves—refers to the third stage of a man, the making of personality passive so that essence can grow. I must repeat again that the inner meaning of the Gospels has nothing to do with life. Their teaching starts at the point where personality has been formed already in a man and refers to this third stage of possible development. A man must first of all become developed as regards personality by the action of life. This work is sometimes called a second education. It is for those who are looking for a second education. The first education is an education that life gives us; and this is absolutely necessary. The better a person is educated by means of life, the more he learns, the more intelligent he is, the more experienced he is, the more he knows about people, and about affairs, the more he knows about manners, the better he can express himself, the more he is able to use the different sides of life, the better for him. This is the first education. This forms personality. We have said before that man consists of different centres and each of these has different parts; these centres and parts should be well furnished and the better furnished they are with inscriptions on rolls, the better for him. But a point comes in a man's development where, as was said before, he feels empty, and it is at this stage that the teaching of the Gospels and all this work comes in. I do not know whether any of you have ever thought about this very deeply. But it is quite possible that some of you who have done your duty in life often wonder what it is exactly you are doing, what the meaning of it all is. Speaking in this personal way for a moment I would like to ask you this question: Do you think that life and the meanings that it affords us are enough and have you felt that in some way life does not quite give you what you expected? I am not saying that life is meaningless; it has obviously many meanings. But have any of you come to the point of feeling a certain meaninglessness even in those interests that you follow and try to hold on to? Why I am saying this is because if life afforded us our full meaning then there would be no point, in fact, no meaning, either in what the Gospels talk about or in what this system talks about. If you are quite content with the meanings that life affords, quite self-satisfied, then there is no point in trying to understand what this system teaches, and, let me add, there is no point in your trying to understand what Christ's teaching really means. Now, if man were nothing but a well-formed personality and this were his end, then we might very well believe in all those doctrines of humanitarianism and other scientific ideas that say that man is nothing but a creature turned towards external life and having to adapt himself as intelligently as possible towards it. But if you have followed what has been said in this letter about the idea of man in this system you will see that the development of personality is merely a stage, and an absolutely necessary stage, towards a further stage. It is directly comparable with the formation
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of a mass of food round a seed, as in the case of a nut. The nut has an essential part in it—namely, the seed itself that can grow—but it cannot grow until it is surrounded by a mass of nourishing material, just as an egg has a seed in it surrounded by a mass of yolk, and so on. Take the latter example: how can a chicken grow unless it has all the substances surrounding it for it to feed on? And remember that it grows inside the egg-shell and finally emerges a complete chicken and this complete chicken has been made out of the substances that the living germ has attacked and eaten. Now the fate of acorns is one thing, but the fate of oak-trees is a different thing, and, as was said, man surrounded by personality resembles an acorn and suffers, as it were, the same fate as the acorn, unless he begins to grow, and growth in a man corresponds to what we are calling the third stage in a man after personality has been formed round essence. If we take man at this second stage where essence is surrounded by personality he is just like an acorn, maybe a larger or a smaller acorn, but nothing but an acorn. He is perhaps very important; he has learnt many things; he feels he knows; he is, in short, full of personality, and that is his level, and at that level he suffers, not really a proper human fate, but the fate of an undeveloped organism, the fate of a person who is not yet fully-grown, just as an acorn is not a fully-grown tree. And unless we understand very clearly about this third stage—namely, the development of an acorn into a tree by its living essence or seed feeding on the substances formed round it—we shall never understand, as I said before, what this work is about, nor shall we understand what the Gospels are about. You have already heard that man is a self-developing organism and is created as such. But now you can see that his development is not continuous. It must be interrupted by the formation of personality. I would be very glad if you all can understand this question of essence and personality up to this point. Later on, we will talk about what it means to develop essence at the expense of personality in more detail, but already you know a few points about this development. But let me ask you once more before I end this letter: have any of you ever thought what the Sermon on the Mount means? Do you seriously mix it up with the second stage of man's development or have you already got some sense of scale? Do you not understand that the Sermon on the Mount, about being humble and so on, has nothing to do with ordinary life but applies to this third stage of a man when he comes to the point of feeling empty, since personality does not satisfy him and he wishes to find new meaning for his own existence? I will try later on to write to you in more detail.
I hope now that you understood what I called at the beginning of this letter the extraordinary situation of man on this earth in regard to his development. He is born with essence and that is real and is the living germ in him, but it can only develop by itself to a very small extent. Personality must then form itself around essence and essence has no chance to grow further unless this personality forms itself round essence. But if a man remains in that state which we have called the
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second stage—namely, in which personality is now active in him—he is not yet a man and is comparable with an acorn or a seed that has formed around itself nourishment for its eventual development. The third stage of a man is when he comes to make his personality passive so that the essence in him can grow. And there are, as it were, three forms of teaching that a man meets with in consequence. As essence, as a little baby, he hears simple ideas from his mother, and as we shall see later these simple ideas are important. Then he passes into life and learns the opinions of the period of the world he happens to be born into. This is his second stage; in this stage he takes up memory systems, correspondence courses, passes examinations, and so on. Personality is being formed. But there exists in this world a very strange class of teachings, one of which is clearly exemplified in the Gospels. What is their place? What are they about? They belong to the third stage of a man's development, to the new growth of essence that can now take place at the expense of personality. Unless we grasp this, we cannot understand either this system or the Gospels. They belong to this third stage which is defined by Christ when he says to the rich man: "Go, sell that thou hast, and give to the poor." And we must remember that the "poor" in us is this poor development of essence and the "rich man" is personality. Now you perhaps understand better what the phrase in this work means which says that man is unfinished or incomplete. He is unfinished exactly as an acorn is unfinished. At the second stage when personality has formed itself round him he is incomplete just like an acorn and in an exactly similar sense. If you have understood something of what all this means you will be in a much better position for me to talk about what false personality means and will be able to understand what it means to try to go against false personality. '
And now I wish to add one word more, even at the risk of your feeling that I am repeating myself too much. Do you really begin to understand some of the implications of this idea about essence and personality? Can you begin to see what it means? What does it mean? No matter what form of education you have in life, what political colour you belong to, it can only form personality in a man. You may arrange for the best possible teaching of science, economics, history, literature, etc., but it will only form in a man personality; it cannot lead him to his real eventual development. And so perhaps now you understand more clearly why there exist, in life, two kinds of influences acting on a man, as all you older people in the work remember. One kind of influences are called A influences: these are created by life and they are forms of education that belong to the period that we are brought up in, all the viewpoints that belong to the particular age in which a man is born. These are A influences and form personality in him. But there are also, as we can see for ourselves even today, other influences which are ageless. For us the Gospels and their teaching are the chief example. These, as you know, are in this system called B influences and these hold good for any age because they are always about the same thing
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—namely, this third stage of development of a man, in which essence begins to grow at the expense of personality. Unless we really understand this apparent paradox we will never get a very clear idea of the place of this system. It begins at the end of the second stage, when personality has been formed and a man has tasted life and seen what things are like and feels dissatisfied and begins to seek for something additional, for something that will make him understand better, something that will help him and give him a direction and eventually complete him.
Yours,
MAURICE NICOLL