From Mechanical to Conscious: Understanding Our Reactions

Having begun to realize that we react to events mechanically, we have then to begin to realize that we can react to events less mechanically and so more consciously.

The point of the Work is to create a conscious place where we can be conscious of the quality of incoming impressions and so detect a typical event, and what would be our mechanical reaction to it before we react mechanically to it.

Maurice Nicoll, “Life As Events and Our Mechanical Reactions by Identifying with Them" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 4, p. 1256-7)