When Life Becomes the Teacher

When life becomes one's teacher, then the highest work is reached. And then you are right in the track of the Fourth Way. But it is difficult—Oh, how difficult!—and requires much and long work on oneself and patient understanding. You must, as it were, be able to suffer all things at the hands of men and yet keep on working.

But if you externally consider a person in life, feeling superior, and so feeling a constant judgment and showing it openly, you are not working. That is not the way of the Fourth Way. To become passive in the Work sense to another person requires very great inner work.

Maurice Nicoll, "Internal Considering and External Considering: VI” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 1, p. 271 )