Maurice Nicoll
Osho on Gurdjieff Disciple Maurice Nicoll – Gurdjieff’s sly man is the man who has a knack for finding the right door when there are thousands of similar doors all around. It is true that Gurdjieff was a difficult man, almost impossible to cope with. One of his disciples, Nicoll, was traveling with Gurdjieff in America. In the middle of the night, they went aboard a train, and Gurdjieff, although not drunk, started behaving like a drunkard, utterly drunk.
The disciple said, “What are you doing, Master?” Gurdjieff hit Nicoll, and he said, “Who are you? I have never seen you before.” He woke up the whole train, because he was stumbling from one compartment to another compartment, shouting obscenities, waking people who were asleep, throwing their bags out of the train.
Finally the train was stopped; the driver and the conductor came in. But Gurdjieff was a very strong man, solid rock, and nobody dared to catch hold of him; he might throw the man out of the window! And Nicoll, poor man, was trying to tell the people that he is a great master!
The people started looking at Nicoll and they thought, “You are mad. He is a drunkard and you are mad. He is a great master? — in the middle of the night waking strangers, throwing their things around, shouting obscenities, speaking strange languages!” Somehow Nicoll persuaded the conductor and the driver, “He is a famous master, but what to do? This is his way.”
They agreed to let him stay on board only if Gurdjieff and Nicoll went into the compartment and they locked it from the outside. Then whatsoever they wanted to do inside they could do — the great master and the great follower — “But don’t disturb the whole train.” As the door was locked, Gurdjieff relaxed, laughed, and he asked Nicoll, “How was the scene?”
Nicoll was perspiring in the air-conditioned compartment. He said, “The scene? You almost killed me. They thought I was mad, and I knew perfectly well you were not drunk, because up to then you were absolutely alright. And suddenly…?” Gurdjieff said, “It was a test for you, whether you can stay with me if I behave in such a manner. Can you still see the master in me?”
Nicoll said, “I am ready to go to hell with you. Whatever you do, there is a deep trust in me that it must be for something good. I knew it all the way, but what to do with the passengers, the conductor, with the driver? The whole crowd was against me, and I am not so strong a man as you are.”
Osho on Maurice Nicoll – It was very difficult to be a disciple of Gurdjieff; he made it almost impossible. And he was really a hard taskmaster. And one can tolerate things if one can see some meaning in them, but with Gurdjieff the problem was that there was no obvious meaning.
This man’s name was Nicoll. Gurdjieff said, “It is not so easy to become my disciple.”
Nicoll said, “It is not so easy to refuse me either. I have come to become a disciple, and I will become a disciple. You may be a hard Master, I know; I am a hard disciple!” Both men looked into each other’s eyes and understood that they belonged to the same tribe. This man was not going to leave.
Nicoll said, “I am not going. I will be just sitting here my whole life until you accept me as a disciple” and Nicoll’s case is the only case in which Gurdjieff accepted him without bitching; otherwise, he used to be so difficult. Even for a man like P.D. Ouspensky, who made Gurdjieff world-famous — even with him Gurdjieff was difficult.
Osho on Maurice Nicoll – Nicoll was a disciple of Gurdjieff, and unlike Ouspensky, he never betrayed, he was not a Judas. A true disciple to the very last breath and beyond it too. The commentaries of Nicoll are vast — I don’t think anybody reads them — thousands and thousands of pages. But if one takes the trouble one is immensely benefited. In my opinion Nicoll’s COMMENTARIES should be considered as one of the best books in the world.