The Work as a New Instrument: Forming a Whole Within

The Work forms in us a new instrument of reception, a new apparatus for receiving impressions, both from outside and from inside. The Work is actually a whole and complete organism which is given little by little, part by part, but all these parts are parts of a true whole.

If the Work is thus formed in you, you have a new thing, a new organized instrument, in you. Even a single part of the Work, if taken in with valuation and understanding, will begin to work a change in you because it will transmit new influences. But the whole of the Work must be formed in you. This can be thought of as another body—another organized thing in you—if you live the Work. Then it will control the person you were.

Maurice Nicoll, “Self-Observation” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 1, p. 217)