Acting from Work-Ideas

When we are introduced to the Work and after many years begin to feel there may be something in it, we are close to the possibility of acting from the Work-ideas instead of those ideas that have been laid down in us automatically, and a person awakening to the Work and evaluating it will begin to think in a new way—that is, to undergo metanoia.

Now to think in a new way means that you have new associative paths in your brain. The mind, working through the brain, is capable of infinite development, and its basis lies in the fact that we have these enormous tracts unused in the frontal lobes. If we connected the frontal lobes with the truth of esotericism we would no longer be people who are dependent on the few small associative paths in the brain. So the Work emphasizes that we have to think in a new way, which means, neurologically speaking, in terms of the physical brain, to lay down an entirely new set of associations in dealing with ourselves and with life.

Maurice Nicoll, "The Work Idea of Mechanicalness" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 4, p. 1432)