Forgotten Teacher of the Fourth Way

A look at Gary Lachman's engaging new book on Maurice Nicoll

“On November 4, 1922, Maurice Nicoll, the prestigious Harley Street physician, author and, until only recently, British lieutenant of the psychologist C.G. Jung – second only to Sigmund Freud in fame - arrived at the Prieuré des Basses Loges, in the forest of Fontainebleau, just outside of Paris. With him was his young wife, his infant daughter, her nanny, and two goats. His sister-in-law had gone ahead to help prepare the way; the goats were brought along to provide milk for the child.

“The thirty-six year old Nicoll had sold his successful London practice and borrowed against the inheritance he expected from his father, the eminent journalist and political thinker William Robertson Nicoll, in order to secure a place for the family at the newly opened Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, a centre offering a unique educational experience.

“This had only recently been established at the Prieuré – after misfires in Berlin and London - by the redoubtable G.I. Gurdjieff, a mysterious teacher of esoteric knowledge and uncertain origin – was he Greek, Armenian, Russian? -  who had emerged from the chaos of a collapsed Russia, bringing a message like nothing Nicoll had encountered before. It was stark, unsentimental, at times brutal. But according to Nicoll, it was what he needed.”

So begins the Introduction to Gary Lachman’s latest book, Maurice Nicoll – Forgotten Teacher of the Fourth Way.

“For years Nicoll had been searching for a doctrine that could satisfy the conflicting demands of his head and heart, his body and soul, his scientific intellect and his religious faith, his sexuality and spirituality, a tussle not unfamiliar to many. Jung had taken him some way along that path, but as Nicoll explained in a kind of “Dear Carl” letter, when he told his mentor that his allegiance had shifted, he needed someone to force him there.

“The man into whose hands he was placing himself and his family would do just that. Nicoll had met him only briefly – if sitting in a tense silent room for an uncomfortable time because none of those present had the courage to ask the guru a question could constitute a meeting. But it was enough for the still impressionable doctor to feel he had been in the presence of power. He was, and he would feel it soon enough.”

So, who was the redoubtable Gurdjieff, and what was his teaching, the Fourth Way?

In late 1921 Nicoll had attended a lecture given by P D Ouspensky, Gurdjieff’s chief disciple, at the Quest Society in Kensington Town Hall, London.

“There he heard for the first time that he, and everyone else in the room, was “asleep,” was only a “machine,” that he was living mechanically, and that he possessed  no stable, single, unified “I,” as Gurdjieff’s austere doctrine insisted. Nicoll was, we could say, electrified. Not everyone was happy about these grim tidings, which seemed to offer small prospect to, as Ouspensky told them, “awaken.” But Nicoll knew he had come across a knowledge unlike any he had ever suspected.”

Nicoll was so excited by what he had heard that he rushed home to tell his wife, who had only recently given birth. Forgetting about the baby, he insisted she come and listen to Ouspensky as well.

“She did, and became as fervent an apostle as her husband. For the next three decades, both husband and wife became students and then teachers of “the Work,” a name for the practical side of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky’s demanding system.”

The Fourth Way is so demanding because it combines the three established spiritual "ways" or "schools": first, that of the fakir, who works on the body; second, that of the monk, who works on the emotions; and third, that of the yogi, who works on the mind.

“Gurdjieff insisted that these paths, although they may intend to seek to produce a fully developed human being, tend to cultivate certain faculties at the expense of others. The goal of religion or spirituality was, in fact, to produce a well-balanced, responsive and sane human being capable of dealing with all eventualities that life may present. Gurdjieff therefore made it clear that it was necessary to cultivate a way that integrated and combined the traditional three ways.” — Wikipedia

Gurdjieff once referred to his system as “esoteric Christianity,” and Nicoll would go on to write extensively about the inner meaning of the gospels, presenting in The New Man and Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, “his particular approach to the body of ideas and practices he learned from his years with his teachers in the Work.”

But why is Nicoll a “forgotten teacher” of the Fourth Way? Lachman explains.

“He is not the unpredictable, startling “crazy guru” that Gurdjieff is often depicted as being – although how much of this was “acting” on Gurdjieff’s part is, as always with that remarkable man, unclear.

“He was also not the dry logician, the stern taskmaster of the Work, the “Iron Man,” that Ouspensky, initially a gentle, poetic soul, became after his years with Gurdjieff. Nor was he a flamboyant esoteric mover and shaker in the style of Ouspensky’s other long-term student, J. G. Bennett, who took the Work in some rather messianic directions. Nor was he like his friend Kenneth Walker, who did not set up shop as a teacher of the Work, but who produced excellent introductions to its ideas.

“Nicoll did not present himself in any public way as a follower of the Work; he did not, as Walker and Bennett did, produce accounts of his time with Gurdjieff or Ouspensky. He kept to the background and word about his work travelled by way of mouth; we can say that he was one of those whom I have called secret teachers.”

Lachman suggests that “Nicoll has in some ways been side lined by the “purist” strain of the Gurdjieffean tradition.”

“Adding Jung and Swedenborg, as well as other ideas coming from the Hermetic and Gnostic traditions, to his teaching of the Work, may have put Nicoll beyond the “genuine” Gurdjieffian pale.”

But for me, at least, this is what makes Maurice Nicoll – Forgotten Teacher of the Fourth Way – such a fascinating read.