Imaginary ‘I’ and Complete Self-Observation

We have then slowly and painfully to come to the realization that, as we are at our level, we have nothing that we can call I. It is pure imagination to speak as if we have. So we have only Imaginary 'I'—that is, we imagine we have a real, permanent, unchanging I. But we have not. It is a terrible blow to one's pride to begin to see this psychological truth which our external senses contradict. Some ignore the very idea as preposterous.

Try, therefore, to observe your 'I's. Try to see that it is 'I's thinking and feeling that are inducing these recurring moods and thoughts from which you suffer. The Work will look after your good 'I's. But, as regards your bad 'I's, the way of release is in stripping and skinning them, in tearing from them the precious feeling of I that you have been so foolishly squandering, allowing them to steal it from you all this time, and without which they would be formless.

But incomplete observation will not free you. Gradually your observation must become complete observation so that all the feeling of I is withdrawn from them. Then they vanish. You are released from possession by them.

Maurice Nicoll, "Note on Certain ‘I’s" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 5, p. 1554)