The Work of Inner Taste

The one thing that can tell us when we ourselves are negative is that faculty that the Work calls inner taste. We can think of this as the beginning of Real Conscience. For a long time people enjoy their negative states, enjoy the taste of them.

It may take many years before a person begins to dislike being negative even slightly. He or she then begins to taste them—to know the taste of them—and so to recognize them by this inner organ of taste which is not turned towards outer life but towards one's inner world.

Maurice Nicoll, "On Work on Negative Emotions” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 2, p. 708)