How to Stop Losing Force: The Role of Conscious Engagement

One cause of losing force is through not being in the right center for what you are doing. This is comparatively easy to study in yourself provided you know something of the work of different centers in yourself. For instance, if you are day-dreaming and trying to do some job that you dislike very much you will be losing force all the time. Why? You should discuss this amongst yourselves.

If on the contrary you are in the right center and really engaged in something to which you are giving your attention—in which perhaps even all centers are assisting—then you will not lose force but tend to gain force or to conserve it, because you are acting more consciously. You know what it is to do your daily work mechanically and the difference if you do it more consciously. In the one case, you get no impressions: in the other case, you get some impressions.

Maurice Nicoll, “A Further Note on the Study of Loss of Force” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 2, p. 377)