Why People Cannot Understand the Work

For most people, even for educated and thinking people, the chief obstacle to their attaining the state of consciousness called Self-Remembering lies in the fact that they think they possess it already. They think that they remember themselves in everything they do and in everything they say, and they not only think that they are conscious at every moment and aware of themselves but believe that they are conscious of their inner lives also and fully aware of all the thoughts and emotions that pass through them in a continuous stream.

And because they think they always remember themselves and act and speak with full consciousness and are fully aware of everything they say and do, they believe that they have real will and a permanent unchanging 'I' and that they have the ability to do—as, for example, that they can change themselves if they really wish to, or change their lives, or change other people, or do just as they like. But of course they cannot change themselves or their lives or other people or do just as they like, because they do not possess any real will, but many contradictory wills, nor have they any permanent 'I' but many changing 'I's and when they are doing something it is not from conscious will and conscious choice but from what only can happen at that moment to them.

Maurice Nicoll, "On Hydrogens: IV - The First Conscious Shock" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 1, p. 197)