~Maurice Nicoll
Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky
The object of this Work is to make us conscious in ourselves and to ourselves, to what is going on in us, to the vast inner traffic of thoughts and feelings that lies within, in the psychic invisible realm as distinct from the vast outer physical world of things and people that the senses reveal to us. Here, in this inner world, and in what we select and reject in it, lies the key to the Work, and so to evolution.
You all know how to reject and select things in the outer world. You discard useless things from your business and cling to useful things. It is the same idea. Suppose, by long observation, you notice that 'I's create moods, thoughts and feelings, that depress you, that eat you, that make you despondent, or negative, or suspicious, or evil-minded. Then what are you going to do?
Are you going to give such moods, such states, full approval? Are you going to regard them as you? Why should you? If it is pouring with rain, do you remain in it or separate from it ? Are you going to practise non-identifying with these bad inner states, not going with them, not listening to them? But if you cannot see you are many and insist on regarding yourself as one, then you can do nothing with regard to your inner life.
What is this Work about? It is to open us to new and better influences coming down from the Ray of Creation. What is life? It is a machine under certain influences that nourish the Moon. You see it at work now. Notice it. Think what it is like. It is not an exceptional state of things that prevails now. It is the ordinary state of things, of life. But the Side-Octave from the Sun comes down to us carrying the possibility of new influences.