Becoming the Other

Suppose you have noticed that you are thinking of a person in a certain way, quite mechanically, as you always do, and these thoughts give you no force. Suppose even that you have become sufficiently sensitive to your inner life to realize that you are really losing force by thinking of this very person in this usual way.

Now suppose that you apply the Work to yourself at this moment and put yourself into this person's position or even go so far as to think that you are this person yourself and that you perhaps are like him. This will change your thinking, and then you will get into a higher part of the Intellectual Center and then suddenly you may find that you have force. You are thinking in a new way. Now this is an example of gaining force by applying the Work to yourself.

Maurice Nicoll, “The Meaning of Force in the Work" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 2, p. 714)