Breaking the Illusion of Self

All self-realization, all self-knowledge which is real, destroys the imagination of oneself—i.e. the False Personality. The result is an immense broadening of one's powers and not a weakening of them.

It is the False Personality that weakens us so much and renders us so brittle, so easily upset, so narrow, and so mean in our understanding, both of others and of ourselves.

Maurice Nicoll, “Work on Being" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 2, p. 705)