The Eye as the Body’s Lamp

Now things exist and have power over us because we are not properly conscious of them. The more unconscious a thing, the more power it exerts on us and the more mechanical our behaviour. To bring a thing up into the light of Consciousness is to rob it of its power. For this, long self-observation is needed and much patience with oneself. We observe—but not fully. Full self-observation takes time—years—one life-time perhaps.

This Work, which comes from an unknown source, can be called esoteric Christianity. If we really understood what the Gospels were saying, we would see it is just what the Work says. As an example bearing on what we have just been saying about the dark side of us and the necessity of becoming more conscious, I will take the parable about the eye being the lamp of the body. Christ says: "The lamp of the body is thine eye; when thine eye is single, thy whole body is full of light, but when it is evil thy body is full of darkness.” (Luke 11;34)

Maurice Nicoll, "Notes on Self-Observation" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 3, p. 1108)