Maurice Nicoll

Nicoll was born at the manse in Kelso, Scotland, the son of William Robertson Nicoll, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland and renowned man of letters. From 1903 to 1906 Nicoll studied science at Gonville & Caius College in Cambridge University earning First Class Honors in the Natural Science Tripos. From 1906 to 1910 he attended St. Bartholomew's Hospital qualifying in medicine as a surgeon and neurologist.[1] He served as ship's-surgeon for a brief stint to and from Buenos Aires before proceeding to tour the European hotbeds of the New Psychology, Vienna, Berlin, and finally, Zürich, where he met and became a close friend and colleague of C.G. Jung in 1912.

Jung legitimised Nicoll's belief in the mind-body dynamic by curing him of a stammer.[1] Nicoll spent the next decade with his father-figure even making Jung godfather of his only child, Jane, in 1921.[1]

In 1917 Nicoll published his first non-fiction monograph, Dream Psychology, the "First didactic presentation of Jung's psychology," according to the Jungian scholar Sonu Shamdasani.[2]

In addition to his personal friendship with Jung, from 1912 through 1921 Nicoll published a number of articles on Jung's theories in professional journals, so it would not have been out of character for Nicole to have served as a Jungian proxy at his Harley Street, London, medical practice. Following his service as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps during WWI, where he first treated the wounded at the Gallipoli, Suvla Bay offensive, and after recovering from dysentery, he arrived with the 32nd Field Hospital of the 10th Irish division and did the same at the Siege of Kut, in Mesopotamia.[3]

In October 1921 he met P.D. Ouspensky, a student and then a teacher of George Gurdjieff's Fourth Way.[3] Despite the recent birth of his only child, Jane, the following spring Nicoll sold his Harley Street medical practice within a month after meeting the “Tiger of Turkestan” (Gurdjieff’s nickname),[4] and by that fall he, his wife Catherine, Jane, and the child's nanny arrived at the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man outside Paris.[5] In the summer of 1923, when Gurdjieff closed down his institute, Nicoll joined Ouspensky's group. In 1931 he followed Ouspensky's advice and started his own study groups in England. Many of these talks were recorded verbatim and documented in a six-volume series of texts compiled in his book series Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.

Nicoll is best known as a teacher and practitioner of the Fourth Way or esoteric Christianity of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, but as his authorised biographer Beryl Pogson notes he privately read Swedenborg and the Gospels.[1] In fact, his synthesis of the aforementioned esoteric Christianity with the New Christianity as especially expounded by Swedenborg in his multi-volume exegetical work Arcana Coelestia resulted in what could be described as a mystical Christianity unique to the Fourth Way tradition if not all of Christian mysticism.

His early tutelage under Jung led to a lifelong interest in and self-application of dream interpretation.[6] His associated reflections on Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Alchemy, Sufism, Greek philosophy, Jakob Böhme, William Blake, along with variety of Indian and Chinese traditions (not to mention an assortment of individuals throughout history who have commented on consciousness) are as a whole present in Living Time and the Integration of the Life (completed by WWII but not published until 1952); yet both his published works and private papers have for the most part been publicly commented upon only infrequently.

• Works by Maurice Nicoll at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Maurice Nicoll at Internet Archive
• Works by Maurice Nicoll at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• The New Man An Interpretation of Some Parables and Miracles of Christ