The Role of Aim in the Work: Overcoming Imaginary 'I'

The Work explains to us that we must have an AIM. It says that without an AIM we cannot do the Work. We can listen to it, attend meetings, sit looking at the diagrams on the board, but this will not be the same as doing the Work. And unless we do the Work we will never understand what it is all about.

This peculiar relationship to ourselves, that we call I, however, and conceive to be really and truly us, does not permit us to have personal aim in the Work. Personal aim implies some aim you have about yourself. It is about changing yourself—about changing something you have observed in yourself. But the existence of Imaginary 'I', which is the Work formulation for this peculiar relationship we have to ourselves that we call I, prevents us from having any intelligent aim about ourselves. It acts as a powerful hypnotic.

Maurice Nicoll, “Aim and Imaginary ‘I’” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 5, p. 1662)