I wish to suggest that the chief idea of Maurice Nicoll’s Living Time (first published in 1952, but completed earlier) may be not time, but rather that by a certain change in one’s thought we may experience our lives in a way which correspond more closely to reality. That is, we are living under the influence of illusions, but these can – to some degree – be shed. This is the point of contact between this book and not only his other writings, but his entire life as a teacher. I shall just consider the opening pages. I use the 1971 fifth impression published by Stuart & Watkins in London – other editions have other pagination.

In his “introductory note,” Nicoll opens: “Plato says that to become a spectator of Time is a cure for meanness of soul.” (viii) I missed the significance of this the first times I read this. “Meanness of soul” does not seem a burning issue, but I think I see now why Nicoll opened with this: noy only is Plato the great philosopher who coined the Allegory of the Cave (which Nicoll often cites), an allegory concerning the illusions we live under, but in this short sentence are these ideas: (1) if we can observe the passing of time by separating ourselves from our experience (2) we see not only time but all of existence somewhat more as it is, and (3) our souls (all our psychic faculties), presently diseased, can be healed. Nicoll is alluding here to Plato’s Timaios, a dialogue which was clearly a major influence on this book.

Nicoll continues: “We live in a narrow reality, partly conditioned by our form of perception and partly made by opinions that we have borrowed, to which our self-esteem is fastened. We fight for our opinions, not because we believe them but because they involve the ordinary feeling of oneself. … All ideas that have a transforming power change our sense of reality. They act like ferments.” (vii)

Then, in the first chapter, “Invisibility of Oneself” he hones in on the significance of ideas. But first, he approaches by way of the concepts of visibility and invisibility, which also feature in the Timaios. “We can all see another person’s body directly.” But – “The person himself is invisible. We see the outside of a person much more comprehensively than the person can himself. He does not see himself in action, and if he looks in a mirror he changes psychologically and begins to invent himself. He appears very distinct and visible, very definite and clear to eye and touch, although he is not so to himself. We are distinct and clear to him, appearing to have a very real and solid existence, but to ourselves it does not seem that we have this real and solid existence.”

“Because we see the visible side of people plainly and they see ours plainly, we all appear much more definite to one another than we do to ourselves.” (1)

This is a critical matter to which he often returns in his work: it helps to explain the extraordinary influence other people have over us, and why we are so often suggestible before them, at war, afraid, deeply hostile to others. Related to this, he states: “The whole world might see and hear you. But only you can know yourself.” (2) As he shall say, this means we have a non-delegable duty to work on ourselves.

In terms which are redolent of both Ouspensky and Bennett, he writes: “We do not understand that life, before all other definitions of it, is a drama of the visible and invisible.” (3) He returns to this in various ways, e.g. “… man himself is essentially invisible.” (14)

But here is his positive contribution to a way forward: “The reason why we do not grasp it is because it is an idea. In this book, which is about one or two ideas, I mean by the term something which has the power of altering our standpoint and changing our sense of things. … We … do not conceive the possibility that the psychological world, or inner world that we know as our thought, feeling, and imagination, may have also a real structure and exist in its own ‘space’, although not that space that we are in touch with through our sense-organs.”

“Into this inner space may come ideas. They may visit the mind. What we see through the power of an idea cannot be seen when we are no longer in contact with it. We know the experience of suddenly seeing the truth of something for the first time. At such moments we are altered and if they persisted we would be permanently altered. But they come as flashes with traces of direct knowledge, direct cognition.”

“The description of the idea that we are invisible is quite different from the realisation of it: only in thinking in different ways about this invisibility of everybody and ourselves we may attract the idea so that it illuminates us directly.”

So at this early point we have the basic thesis: ideas come to us from the invisible world, and can bring us closer to reality, and this reception of life-transforming ideas can be encouraged by “thinking in different ways.” In his other works, he shall insist time and again that this is what Christ meant when He spoke of metanoia, which Nicoll does not hesitate to say is wrongly translated as repentance (although it might be contended that the translation as “repentance” is inadequate or lacking more than outright incorrect.)

The way forward is through deeper understanding: “The seen world is real but does not embrace reality. It is built out of invisible realities which surround it on every side. The visible world is contained in a much greater invisible world (invisible to us) and we do not lose one by studying the other but enlarge one into the other.” (11)

This study is possible because although we tend to study only appearances, we also have  inner experiences such that: “…  man is a certain ratio between visible and invisible.” (19-20) In this situation, our thought is critical:

“Through the standpoint of naturalism, he cuts himself off from all possibilities of inner change. He must relate himself to the ‘world of ideas’ before he can begin to grow. That is, he must feel that there is more in the universe than is apparent to the senses. He must feel that other meanings are possible, other interpretations, for only in this way can his mind become ‘open’. There must have come to him the feeling of something else. He must have wondered what he is, what life can possibly mean, what his existence means. ” (20-21)

From this point, the entire book can be seen as one massive idea: an exhortation to conscious evolution.