Let us return to the illusion everyone has that they are one. This illusion exists in each of you. It can only be discovered gradually by personal observation. Each of you ascribes to yourself the possession of individuality and not only individuality but full consciousness and will.
But as you know this system of ideas that we are studying teaches that you are not one, but many—that is, you are not one individual, but many different people—and also that you are not properly conscious but nearly always asleep in dreams, in imagination, in considering, in negative emotions, and so on, and as a result do not remember yourself and so, as it were, waste and destroy your inner life, and live in a sort of darkness and finally that you do not possess will but have many different wills which conflict with one another and act in different directions.
Maurice Nicoll, “On Additional Means of Self-Observation” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 1, p. 23).
Working Note: For Today’s Inner Effort
Orientation: Observe multiplicity instead of assuming unity.
What to Notice:
One ‘I’ making an aim, another abandoning it.
Mechanical imagination replacing self-remembering.
Negative states changing your sense of yourself.
Inner talking carrying you away without awareness.
Work Effort for Today:
Pause when a new ‘I’ takes control.
Observe the change without identifying.
Recall that you are asleep at that moment.
Sense the body briefly and return to observation.
Remember: Many ‘I’s speak in turn while you imagine yourself one.
