Awakening to Higher Feeling: The Path of Separation from Lower States

It is only through a feeling of something higher that you can separate from something lower, and, after a time, when you have experienced what this means, you will do everything you can to keep the feeling of something higher alive in you at all costs and you will begin to hate those periods in which you are totally identified with external things.

Here we have a definite stage in the Work. We then know to a small degree what it is to be awake and by contrast we know what it is to be asleep, and for a long time this stage remains with us in such a way that we know that we are more awake and know that we are more asleep. Then it becomes a matter of inner choice, inner taste, and this stage inevitably lasts a long time.

For this reason it is necessary to find a person who will teach you the Work and keep reminding you about it, and such a person must know the Work and be constantly thinking about it and applying it.

Maurice Nicoll, "Self-Remembering" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 2, p. 602)