Seeing Through the Spiderweb of Associations

If we could see without mechanical associations laid down in us we would really see what things or people are like. Unfortunately impressions fall on a network of associations and prevent us after a certain age from seeing the essential meaning of things.

We see life, as it were, through a thick network, a spiderweb, of associations, and in consequence we never really see anything or anyone. Most of these associations lead down to negative parts of centres.

This Work says that we must work on negative associations because so many impressions stimulate this negative part of us, which, if it is not separated from, shuts all Higher Centers and their influences off from us.

Maurice Nicoll, "On Trying to See Without Negative Associations” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 4, p. 1399)