The Mark

by Maurice Nicoll

Essays discuss our spiritual existence, the nature of truth, the meaning of life, human will, and individual growth

Genres: Religion, Philosophy, Christianity

219 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Maurice Nicoll (19 July 1884 – 30 August 1953) was a British psychiatrist, author and noted Fourth Way teacher. He is best known for his Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, a multi-volume collection of talks he gave to his study groups.
Nicoll was born at the Manse in Kelso, Scotland, the son of William Robertson Nicoll, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland. He studied science at Cambridge before going on to St. Bartholomew's Hospital and then to Vienna, Berlin, and Zurich where he became a colleague of Carl Gustav Jung. Jung's psychological revelations and his own work with Jung during this period left a lasting influence on Nicoll as a young man.

After his Army Medical Service in the 1914 War, in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia, he returned to England to become a psychiatrist. In 1921 he met Petr Demianovich Ouspensky, a student of G. I. Gurdjieff and he also became a pupil of Gurdjieff in the following year. In 1923 when Gurdjieff closed down his Institute, Nicoll joined P.D. Ouspensky's group. In 1931 he followed Ouspensky's advice and started his own study groups in England. This was done through a program of work devoted to passing on the ideas that Nicoll had gathered and passed them on through his talks given weekly to his own study groups.

Many of these talks were recorded verbatim and documented in a six-volume series of texts compiled in his books Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.

Nicoll also authored books and stories about his experiences in the Middle East using the pseudonym Martin Swayne.

Though Nicoll advocated the theories of the Fourth Way he also maintained interests in essential Christian teachings, in Neoplatonism and in dream interpretation until the end of his life.

Reviews

[Cynthia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another profound book by this author

I highly recommend this one, too

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very perceptive and deep presentation of parables from the Bible. An excellent opportunity for the reader to gain insight into a meaning that lies beyond the literal words.

[Y · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nicoll provides interpretations of the gospels and particularly Jesus’ parables from a psychological/Fourth Way perspective. One point he stresses is the meaning of the Greek word metanoia, often translated as repent but he says means more of renewing one’s mind. He gets very technical with the symbolism discussed, as he uses the gospels as symbolic explanations of psychological information.

In the gospels, Jesus often is speaking metaphorically or symbolically and both his followers and opponents misunderstand him, taking everything literally. Nicoll says this is to highlight the different types of men and we should adjust our thinking to see the underlying meanings.

[&]

“…heaven is not a place above and hell not below space. Heaven and Hell are within a man, so we notice that the conception of the kingdom lay first in the future in time, then as being present in time and space, and finally as being in a man himself apart from external time and space.”

[Bruce Deming]

Unrated. I haven't read this but wished to make note of it to myself. I remembered looking in the book seeing the definition of "Sin" which seemed out of the dictionary and a good usable one, though I didn't read much more at the time.

A note to myself not a review.