A Pebble on the Beach

“The Mystic ocean of existence is not to be crossed as something outside ourselves. It is within.”

“The movement of this Work is psychologically inwards, at first. Later it is both inwards and outwards.”

Above; the two short paragraphs in inverted commas, are quotations by Maurice Nicoll (19th July 1884 to 30th August 1953), a psychologist, sanctioned by P D Ouspensky (author of ‘In Search of the Miraculous / Fragments of an Unknown teaching) to form a Fourth Way teaching group in England. He was a direct early pupil, and supporter of G I Gurdjieff (on the recommendation of P D Ouspensky) at The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, based at the Chateau de Fontainebleau, near Paris in France, which opened in October 1922, the same month that T S Elliot’s naturalist poem ‘The Wasteland’ was first published in England. Earlier still; Maurice Nicoll had been a pupil, and remained a friend of C G Jung, an important figure in the development of psychoanalysis, dream interpretation, synchronicity, and the numinous.

Both G I Gurdjieff and P D Ouspensky undertook a long search for meaning in their formative lives, the early stages of which for G I Gurdjieff were conducted with a group called the Seekers of Truth. P D Ouspensky failed to find this meaning until he met G I Gurdjieff in Moscow in 1915 through a news item in a paper for a proposed ballet called ‘The Struggle of the Magicians.’ Maurice Nicoll returned to England and P D Ouspensky after his stay in France, later forming his own teaching group, accompanied by his own writings from meetings which were recorded in ‘Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of G I Gurdjieff and P D Ouspensky.’ Towards the end of G I Gurdjieff’s life he received pupils at his flat in Paris before and after the second world war, an example of which would be Katheryn Hulme; who wrote about her experiences with G I Gurdjieff in a book called ‘Undiscovered Country.’ When G I Gurdjieff died on the 29th October 1949 he left his teachings under the direction of Jeanne de Salzmann. Early and late pupils, situations, states of the world and changes in leadership and the global spread of the Fourth Way, have lead to different inflections being placed on the teachings. The key to finding the inflection that is for you, is to perhaps follow the advice of G I Gurdjieff; “Do not believe anything until you have verified it for yourself.” Line 266 of the poem A Scapeshifter says “Different inflections; changing perceptions” which corresponds with line 266 in The Wasteland “The River sweats.”

The poem A Scapeshifter uses T S Elliot’s poem The Wasteland as a template, to celebrate the anniversary of 100 years since its publication in 2022; line 40 is as follows “Ballet of Russians and the Struggle of the Magicians” which corresponds to a line in The Wasteland “Living nor dead, and I knew nothing.” T S Elliot, at the time of the publication of ‘The Wasteland’ and his struggle with his religious sensibilities, was leading people into ‘The Wasteland,’ something he tried to atone for in his later poetry, beginning with Ash Wednesday after his conversion, and going onto and through The Four Quartets. G I Gurdjieff was trying to prepare people to wake up and discover they are not only in The Wasteland, but also identified with its denizens. By way of the sly man; G I Gurdjieff was showing people who were prepared to work for it, how to acquire and use the tools of a timeless teaching to act as a compass for a Way out of The Wasteland, and by doing so; preparing his pupils to have an understanding of how to pass on and preserve the The Fourth Way teaching as system for its time.

The Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of G I Gurdjieff and P D Ousoensky by Maurice Nicoll, run into five volumes with an index volume, and can be prohibitively expensive to procure. An excellent contemporary summary of these writings can be found in books by Rebecca Nottingham called ‘The Work’ and ‘Finding the Divine Within.’ There is also a small book of essential excerpts from The Psychological Commentaries on the teachings of G I Gurdjieff and P D Ouspensky called ‘Gems of Wisdom’ by Maurice Nicoll. There is a biography of Maurice Nicoll, first published in 1961; called ‘Maurice Nicoll A Portrait, written by his assistant Beryl Pogson. There is also a book called ‘Centenary Fragments’ compiled by Lewis Creed published in 1995 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Beryl Pogson. On the back of this book is a picture of Beryl Pogson and above it a quotation by G I Gurdjieff; “I have good leather to sell to those who want to make shoes out of it.”