Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky: Volume 2

The second volume of Maurice Nicoll's Psychological Commentaries, collecting weekly talks given at Birdlip, Quaremead, and Ugley from January 1944 through September 1945. A significant portion of this volume is devoted to the enneagram, treated across fourteen consecutive commentaries — one of the most sustained expositions of the symbol in Fourth Way literature. The volume also contains extended series on will, self-love, the doctrine of 'I's, loss of force, internal considering, and the cognitive power of emotions. The opening commentary on force sets the practical tone of the whole: a man cannot awaken without force, and the Work is largely concerned with understanding how force is lost mechanically and how it can be conserved and created through self-remembering. Throughout, Nicoll moves between the cosmological framework of the system and the immediate texture of inner life, offering commentaries on memory, conscience, entropy and effort, buffers, recurrence, and what the Work teaches about war — the last written during the final year of World War II and reflecting on how inner work relates to the outer catastrophe of the time.