The Work as Inner Integration

The Work is to integrate us. If we were integrated, understanding would replace our, at present, so unsatisfactory and dull, moody, inner life, which is so contradictory. Moments in which this inner work of connection is going on—because it will begin sooner or later in those whom the Work accepts—are full of very deep satisfaction.

Notice such moments. When they occur, the ordinary things that one usually attempts to get pseudo-satisfaction out of—such as vanity, which can be triumphant or knocked-out— almost disappear. One is emptied on one side and filled on the other.

Maurice Nicoll, “Another Note on Understanding" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 4, p. 1269)