Feeding the Work vs. Being Fed by theWork

All Work knowledge is to make you know in a different way. Some of you try to keep this Work alive in the present circumstances; others make not the slightest endeavor to do so. In fact, some of you think that the Work should be fed to you without your doing anything to earn it. This Work is about a new way of knowing because it is a new knowledge and you must all pay for it by effort.

To know differently, to know in a new way, means that you can take everything quite differently, have quite a different relationship to things and people. However, one has to pay for this new knowing. If you expect to be given it all once a week you are making a great mistake. You are making a great mistake if you think that once a week for a few minutes you will be given understanding of this Work.

Maurice Nicoll, “Unknowing" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 5, p. 1759)