The Gentle Witness: Understanding the Observing 'I'

The Observing 'I' in the sense of the Work does not take sides with anything. It merely records what you are doing, what you are saying, at different moments, through the action of different 'I's, and does not say that this is better or this is worse. Observing 'I' is not shocked by anything, it is not a kind of Grandmama or Grandpapa in you, but it is quite pure and simple.

It will have its own uncritical, gentle memory of all the different sides of you... We have to acknowledge and accept all sides of ourselves, because only through the acknowledgement, the acceptance, the consciousness of all sides of ourselves can we advance at all.

Maurice Nicoll, "Commentary on Observing 'I': On Seeing Contradictions in Ourselves" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 2, p. 722, 724)