The Onlooker and Real I

Now every expansion of consciousness leads to a development of intelligence, leading to more consciousness of ourselves and of other people connected with us. This is a development, a growth of intelligence, and if we practice this long enough and undergo all the temptations, all the attacks of 'I's in us that do not wish the Work and hate it, if we defend the Truth of the Work and are passive to attacks on it, then after a time we will become aware of this Intelligence that I spoke of that is behind everything that you do and is at present an Onlooker, quite uncritical, quite impersonal.

This, as I said, means that you are approaching Real I, behind which God lies—i.e. the God that belongs to our level of Being and is Divine in comparison with our own level. Each higher note in the Octave of the Ray of Creation, when we try to ascend it as by a ladder, is divine to us as we are and therefore God to us. If you will handle the Ray of Creation intelligently in yourselves psychologically, you will see what I mean.

Maurice Nicoll, “The Ray of Creation" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 4, p. 1388)