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“Thou shalt not steal” is obvious, but the psychological meaning is far deeper. To steal, psychologically, means to think that you do everything from yourself, by your own powers, not realising that you do not know who you are or how you think or feel, or how you even move. It is, as it were, taking everything for granted and ascribing everything to yourself. It refers to an attitude. But if a man were told this directly, he would not understand. So the meaning is veiled, because if it were expressed in literal form no one would believe it, and everyone would think it mere nonsense. The idea would not be understood – and worse still, it would be taken as ridiculous. Higher knowledge, higher meaning, if it falls on the ordinary level of understanding, will either seem nonsense, or it will be wrongly understood. It will then become useless, and worse. Higher meaning can only be given to those who are close to grasping it rightly. This is one reason why all sacred writings – that is, writings that are designed to convey more than the literal sense of the words – must be concealed, as it were, by an outer wrapping. It is not a question of misleading people, but a question of preventing this higher meaning from falling in the wrong place, on lower meaning, and thereby having its finer significance destroyed. People sometimes imagine they can understand anything, once they are told it. But this is quite wrong. The development of the understanding, the seeing of differences, is a long process.

The object of the parables is to give a man higher meaning in terms of lower meaning in such a way that he can either think for himself or not. The parable is an instrument devised for this purpose.

For that reason, Christ said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John XIV, 6). This inner evolution is psychological. To become a more understanding person is a psychological development. It lies in the realm of the thoughts, the feelings, the actions, and, in short, the understanding. A man is his understanding. If you wish to see what a man is, and not what he is like, look at the level of his understanding. The Gospels speak, then, of a real psychology based on the teaching that Man on earth is capable of a definite inner evolution in understanding. The Gospels are from beginning to end all about this possible self-evolution. They are psychological documents. They are about the psychology of this possible inner development – that is, about what a man must think, feel, and do in order to reach a new level of understanding. The Gospels are not about the affairs of life, save indirectly, but about this central idea – namely, that Man internally is a seed capable of a definite growth. Man is compared with a seed capable of a definite evolution. As he is, Man is incomplete, unfinished. A man can bring about his own evolution, his own completion, individually. If he does not wish to do this he need not. He is then called grass – that is, burned up as useless. This is the teaching of the Gospels. But this teaching can be given neither directly nor by external compulsion. A man must begin to understand for himself before he can receive it. You cannot make anyone understand by force, by law. But why cannot this teaching be given directly?

The outer side of a man is organised by life and its demands, and is according to his position and capacities. In a sense, it is artificial: it is acquired. But it is only the inner, unorganized side of a man which can evolve as does a seed by its own growth, from itself.

A man evolves internally through his deeper reflection, not through his outer life-controlled side. He evolves through the spirit of his individual understanding and by inner consent to what he sees as truth.

But this re-birth or second birth belongs to the man in himself, the private, secret man, the internal man, not to the man as he seems to be in life and thinks himself to be, the successful man, the pretended man. All the latter belongs to the outer man, what the man appears to be, not what the man is inwardly. It is the inward man that is the side of re-birth.

The “sacred” idea of Man – that is, the esoteric or inner idea – is that he possesses an unused higher level of understanding and that his real development consists in reaching this higher possible level.

“Everyone that drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up into eternal life.” (John IV, 13-14.)

What then is this water, this living water? In the ancient language water means Truth. But it means a special kind of Truth, a special form of knowledge called “living Truth”. It is living Truth because it makes a man alive in himself, and not dead, once the knowledge of it is assented to and applied in practice.

a man is calleddead who knows nothing about it. It is knowledge that is true only in reference to the reaching of this higher level of inner evolution awaiting everyone.

AI Summary

The New Man by Maurice Nicoll presents key insights from the Christian Mysticism tradition. The 10 passages above capture the essential teachings.

Core Themes:

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Key Passages: Highlights 1, 3, and 10 are particularly representative.

This entry was generated from Readwise highlights. Expand with additional context as appropriate.