The Magic of Self-Observation: Transforming Impressions

Now if you have cleared a portico, a hall, a space in yourself by self- observation so that you can see a negative impression coming in and are able not to let it enter freely, not to identify with it, not let it go where it wishes, not say 'I' to it, then you keep clear of the mechanical result of that impression. This is magic. This place is what all must make in their inner world.

When you realize that outer life and people and things come in only as impressions, via the senses, then if you have made this inner space or clearing in yourself, you can allow to enter and accept some of these impressions and reject others. This is taking impressions in consciously. This is called the First Conscious Shock— when a man, a woman, begins to be a man, or woman, for the first time—whatever they are mechanically in life. This is the beginning of being Conscious Man and Conscious Woman.

Maurice Nicoll, “Note on Taking in Negative Impressions” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 3, p. 1002)