The Beginning of the Work

The Work teaches we can awaken, we can remember ourselves, we can change ourselves. How then is all this possible? It is only possible by following what the Work teaches. The Work begins with self-observation whereby gradually we may realize how we are machines and how we react mechanically to everything.

When we begin to realize that we react mechanically to everything and have always been taking these mechanical reactions as 'I' and thinking that we are doing, then we begin to realize that we are really mechanical and that that gift we are given as distinct from animals and pure machines is that we can increase consciousness through observing that we are machines and that all our lives up to now have been mechanical —a series of petty, personal, sensitive, mechanical reactions to everything. Just at this point comes in the whole idea that we can cease to be a machine. This entry of another consciousness of yourself is the beginning of the Work. Such a person no longer takes themselves for granted.

Maurice Nicoll, "Commentary on One’s Level of Being" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 3, p. 847)