From False Personality to Real I

You no longer take your being for granted but have become conscious of so many things in your being which were in darkness to you before and which you blamed others for, that you no longer judge from one harsh intractable angle nor are you continually putting people, even those you love, in prison. Everything broadens and becomes much wider, clearer, and so less and less violent in you.

Harmony, balance, begins to replace the tensions of the opposites that existed before. Life then becomes your teacher because the conscious assimilation of impressions on the broader consciousness has replaced the mechanical reactions to them that formerly governed you. You are objective to yourself.

So the Work teaches: "Observe yourselves uncritically and become more and more conscious of what is in your being and so become more and more objective to yourselves." As you know already, this will gradually dissolve the Imaginary 'I', the False 'I', the False Personality, that one has hitherto taken as oneself—in my case, Nicoll —and has nothing to do with the true center of gravity of yourself called Real I.

Maurice Nicoll, “Number 4 Man in Recurrence" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 4, p. 1247)