The Driver Must Awaken

In the talks about the work itself, the ideas are given in their original form. But the object of the work-ideas is to make people think for themselves by means of them, for none of the ideas of the work can really take hold of a person unless he or she begins to think about them and tries to see what they mean individually, and begins to value them and think about life and its meaning and themselves from the standpoint of these ideas.

No one can be different from what he or she is now unless he or she begins to think in a new way. The work is to make us think and awaken our individual minds or what is called in this system the driver in us, which in the vast majority of people is fast asleep and remains fast asleep throughout life in spite of all troubles and disasters, one reason being that we prefer to live in the basement of ourselves, in the lower part of us—in the instinctive and moving centers—that is, in sensation, appetites, and muscular activity.

Maurice Nicoll, “Introductory Note to Commentaries on Work Ideas" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 1, p. 15)