Could You Bear to See Yourself as Others Do?

Awakening is not quite pleasant. One suffers and also is so very glad. You feel you are at last doing what you wanted, but had forgotten. Now, in connection with self-knowledge, I return again to self-observation. Self-knowledge begins with self-observation. If you cannot observe a thing in yourself you can have no knowledge of it. If you have no knowledge of it, you are identified with it. You cannot draw force out of something in yourself if you do not know by observation that it exists in you.

Do you grasp this clearly? Others may and do have knowledge of it. But you haven't. It is not included in your meagre erroneous conscious inventory of yourself. Do you realize that your own consciousness of yourself is not by any means the same as the consciousness of yourself possessed by another person. I am afraid the two would not tally. As you are, you could not bear to become conscious of what others are conscious of in you. It would be far too strong medicine— even if only one friend was concerned.

Maurice Nicoll, "Commentary on Doing the Work" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 5, p. 1683)