These reflections approach one of the most psychologically violent passages in the Gospels — the command to "hate" one's own family and life — not as moral instruction or hyperbole, but as a precise description of the inner conditions required for a fundamental shift in the organization of consciousness. What follows is an independent meditation drawing on the esoteric interpretive tradition Nicoll worked within, but extending it into territory he did not map: the strange parable of the unfinished tower as an image of premature spiritual ambition, and what it means to calculate one's inner resources honestly before attempting transformation.

First reading

1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1

Whether therefore you eat, or drink, or whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God.

Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God:

Even as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved.

Be you followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.

Gospel

Luke 14:25-33

And there went great multitudes with him: and he turned, and said unto them, If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.

For which of you, intending to build a tower, sits not down first, and counts the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?

Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish.

Or what king, going to make war against another king, sits not down first, and consults whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that comes against him with twenty thousand?

Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an ambassage, and desirs conditions of peace.

So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaks not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.

— Interpretation —

Let us begin with Paul, because Paul says something that at first appears to be the opposite of what Christ says in today’s Gospel. Paul says: “I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit.” He says: “Give none offence.” And then Christ, whom Paul claims to follow, turns to the great multitudes and says something so offensive, so deliberately wounding, that we must stop and ask what kind of teaching this is.

“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”

Now it is clear that this is not instruction in how to behave externally. Paul himself demonstrates that the outer conduct of a person moving toward higher being may appear smooth, accommodating, even gentle. The hatred Christ speaks of is not directed outward. It is directed inward — at something in oneself. And what it is directed at is very specific. It is directed at the entire system of identifications through which we derive our sense of existing.

Let us think about this carefully. A man feels that he exists because he is someone’s son, someone’s husband, someone’s father. He feels he exists because of his position, his family, his name, his story. All these things — and they include the body itself, the “life” that is mentioned last — form a web of mechanical identity. They are the First Man. They are not evil. But they constitute the ground on which the ordinary “I” stands. And Christ says, in effect: you cannot come to where I am while you are standing on that ground. You must be willing to lose your footing entirely.

This is not cruelty. It is accuracy.

And then, immediately after this shattering statement, Christ does something remarkable. He does not say: “Now, abandon everything and follow me.” He says the opposite. He says: sit down. Think. Count the cost.

The parable of the tower is extraordinary, and I do not think it has been sufficiently understood. A man intends to build a tower. He begins the foundation. But he has not calculated whether he has enough to finish. And so the tower stands half-built, and everyone mocks him.

What is this tower? It is the new inner life. It is the attempt to build something vertical in a man — something that connects what is below with what is above. And the warning is this: do not begin this work lightly. Do not begin it on the strength of enthusiasm, or emotional excitement, or the intoxication of hearing great ideas. Because the work of inner transformation is not accomplished by a single moment of insight. It requires sustained effort, over years, against everything in one’s mechanical nature that will resist it.

The man who begins and cannot finish is worse off than the man who never began. This is a genuine esoteric principle. A half-built tower is more exposed to the elements than no tower at all. A person who has glimpsed higher meaning and then falls back into sleep is subject to a peculiar kind of suffering — the suffering of knowing what is possible and being unable to reach it. The “mocking” is not from other people. It is from one’s own inner multiplicity, the many small “I’s” that say: you see, you are no different, you cannot change, it was all imagination.

And then comes the parable of the king going to war. He has ten thousand. His enemy has twenty thousand. Can he win? And if not, he must make peace while the enemy is still far off.

Who is the enemy with twenty thousand? It is the whole force of mechanical life — the habits, the identifications, the self-love, the imagination, the vanity, the fear. These forces outnumber, two to one, whatever a man can bring to the work of awakening. And so the teaching says: know this. Know that you are outnumbered. Make peace — which means, do not fight mechanically against your mechanicalness. Do not try to destroy your first nature by force. That is not what is asked.

What is asked is renunciation of a different kind — “whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath.” All that he hath. Not all that he is. What he has are his identifications, his pictures of himself, his certainties. These must be given up, not once, but continuously.

And now we can see why Paul’s words are not contradictory. Paul does not seek his own profit. That is, he has ceased to act from the motive of the First Man. He pleases all men — not from weakness, but because he is no longer defending a territory. There is nothing to defend. The tower, in him, has been built. And a completed tower does not need walls around its base.

The cost has been counted. The cost is everything. And everything, rightly understood, is nothing that was ever truly yours.

Photo by Billy Freeman on Unsplash

Scripture: King James Version