The First Conscious Shock: Awakening Beyond Sleep

The First Conscious Shock does not happen to one asleep. It is a conscious effort requiring special knowledge and self-observation and given in connection with the incoming impressions of life and a person's mechanical reactions to them. Roughly, it consists in seeing the object and seeing one's reactions to it simultaneously.

If the First Conscious Shock is applied, the Third State of Consciousness is touched. It is the creation of this Third State of Consciousness that forms the First Conscious Shock—that is, the first object of the work is to recover this lost state, namely, to make you remember yourself until eventually you do not merely have rare flashes of increased consciousness but can create in yourself increasing degrees of self-remembering by deliberate efforts. These efforts, which belong to the First Conscious Shock, gradually cause the machine to work more rightly. Many wrong functions, both in the psychic and physical spheres, then begin to disappear of themselves.

Maurice Nicoll, “The Idea of Transformation in the Work” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 1, p. 56-7)