Table of Contents
Nicoll on Eternity, Time, and Self-Remembering
Here are 9 points on eternity, time and self-remembering from Nicoll’s teachings – taken from his Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.
9 Points on Eternity
Maurice Nicoll’s five volumes of commentaries often discuss eternity, especially in relation to time and self-remembering.
Here are 9 key points about his ideas on eternity, time, and self-remembering.
See also:
1. Eternity and Time are Incommensurable
Eternity and time are different dimensions that cannot be measured against one another.
Just as length cannot equate to breadth, no amount of time can create eternity.
This is a different concept of eternity from that often understood to be the case – that eternity is “sometime” in the distant future.
2. Eternity and “Now”
Eternity and time meet in “now”.
The feeling of the existence and meaning of a direction, represented by a vertical line, gives a deep sense of “now”.
This feeling is sometimes called the feeling of eternity and marks the beginning of the feeling of Real ‘I’.
Nicoll refers to “living time” and explains that our lives lie in the invisible dimension of time, not confined to the snapshots our senses register. He emphasizes that the past is living in its own present and is constantly changing.
3. Vertical Aim
All teachings in the Gospels concern ascending a vertical line, which represents aim and the possibility of becoming a conscious person.
This vertical line embodies inexhaustible meaning, unlike normal life, and a “vertical aim” is never fulfilled like a “life-aim”.
(A “life-aim” is taken to be an aim we might have in the horizontal direction of time.)
4. Self-Remembering and Eternity
Self-remembering, or the feeling of oneself in the present, is the direction of eternity.
Real ‘I’ is in eternity, not in time, and self-remembering lies outside time and personality.
Experiencing eternity is a different taste from experiencing time.
5. Eternity Enters Time
Eternity enters every present moment in moving time, at right angles to it.
This is why, in a state of self-remembering, one sometimes feels eternity, and why some things in the past stand straight out of time.
6. Esoteric Teaching and Eternity
Esoteric teaching possesses the quality of eternity and can develop essence, which is eternal.
Throughout time, esoteric teaching remains the same, speaking always of eternal life.
7. Time-Body and Eternity
The time-body is the entirety of one’s life from birth to death, existing in the fourth dimension of time. It encompasses all thoughts, feelings, sensations, movements, perceptions, and actions.
The time-body can be changed by work on oneself. By observing oneself, seeing where one is identified, and working on oneself from esoteric ideas, one may be able to shift to another level of time, altering everything in the past.
The time-body is only halted by the feeling of “now”. Every “now” is eternal.
We do not typically see time or our time-bodies due to our limited senses.
The time-body contains all details of one’s life apart from memory. Memory, as experienced in our normal state, is slight and often faulty.
8. The Divine and Eternity
In order to understand more of what is in the vertical, one must eliminate time in their thoughts, to reach a higher level that actually exists.
The Divine, whatever that might be, is not in time but in eternity, outside time, and has nothing to do with time.
9. Essence and Eternity
A growth of Essence means an eternal change and not a temporal change.
Any change in Essence has taken place in what is vertical to and above time.