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Fourth Way
Maurice Nicoll : Forgotten Teacher of the Fourth Way by Gary Lachman
£25.00
A biography of the influential teacher of the Fourth Way In 1922, Maurice Nicoll (1884-1953) abandoned his successful London psychiatry practice and his direct studies with Carl Jung to move his family just outside of Paris to the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, a center recently opened by philosopher, mystic, and spiritual guru G.I. Gurdjieff, the founder of the esoteric system that became known as the “Fourth Way.” Nicoll went on to become one of the most passionate teachers of the Fourth Way, committing the final three decades of his life to teaching “The Work” in his own unorthodox style. In this revealing biography, Gary Lachman draws on recently uncovered diaries to explore the unusual, syncretic approach Nicoll brought to his teaching of the Fourth Way.
He shows how Nicoll is unique in having Jung, Gurdjieff, and Ouspensky as teachers and to have known each of these important figures in esoteric history personally, yet—as Lachman reveals—Nicoll was not a blind devotee by any stretch. The author shows how he incorporated elements of Jungian psychology and Emanuel Swedenborg-inspired mysticism into his exploration and teaching of both Gurdjieff’s and Ouspensky’s ideas, as well as into his best-known work, Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. Lachman reveals the unorthodox side of Nicoll in fuller detail than ever before through excerpts from recently shared diaries, in which Nicoll included detailed accounts of his own solitary “self-sex” erotic experimentations to reach visionary states, along with recordings of his dreams and other personal and mystical reflections.
The social details of Nicoll’s life are also examined, including vivid portraits of the occult scene in the early-to-mid-20th century and the communal living situations in which Nicoll sometimes resided. Drawing on his familiarity with hermetic practices and his own experiences with “The Work,” Lachman comprehensively explores the significance of Nicoll and the novelty of his thought, offering a profound, needed, and sympathetic but critical study of this man so instrumental to the development and legacy of the Fourth Way.
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Psychological Commentaries On the Teaching of G. I. Gurdjieff and P. D. Ouspensky by Maurice Nicoll
£500.00
Volumes 1 and 2, sold as set.
Privately Printed for Subscribers Only, London, 1949
Hand-numbered copy number 146 [for both volumes] of edition limited to 200 copies
Hardbound in dark blue cloth with gilt lettered spines, marbled endpapers, 10 x 6.5 inches, 777 pages total.
Condition:
Clean, unmarked text pages, firm binding, strong fading to lettering on spine of both volumes, slight rubbing and soiling to covers, mild dust soiling to edges of text block, owner's name in ink on upper corner of first title pages - in all good copies of this rare set.
Psychological Lectures 1934-1940 by P. D. Ouspensky
£350.00
90 pages, hardbound in blue boards with gilt lettered spine, gilded top edge, 19 x 0.9 x 27 cm.
First Edition published in limited edition of 125 copies for private circulation by The Historico-Psychological Society, London [1940].
Condition: Clean, unmarked text pages, firm binding, strong eraser markings and resulting paper thinning of upper corner of front endpaper - in all a very good copy of this extremely scarce first edition.
Information from a later edition:
"Designed to be read aloud at weekly meetings of small groups of people interested in the work, they are almost a basic primer of Gurdjieff's psychological ideas on consciousness and spiritual development. They were constantly revised as new groups came into existence and took their final form only after Ouspensky moved from London to New York, where he continued to teach from 1941 to 1947.
The psychology Ouspensky sets forth in these introductory lectures has existed in one form or another for thousands of years and, unlike modern psychology, studies man from the point of view of what he may become. Once a man realizes how little control he has over his reactions to external circumstances and internal stimuli, he may wish to find a way to become free of this mechanical way of living. Ouspensky describes how a man must work simultaneously on his knowledge and his being to find inner unity and why although his development depends on his own efforts, this is very difficult to achieve without guidance from a school."
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