The Light Will Cure Us

Remember that it is said that self-observation must be uncritical. Self-observation must not be critical any more than a light that you flash over a dark room is critical of what it falls on. The object of self-observation is to let a ray of light into oneself. When light is let in in this way many things begin to change of themselves.

For this reason it is said in the Work that the light will cure us. Have you ever thought what it means, this extraordinary phrase: "the light will cure us"? When I first heard it said to me by Gurdjieff it had such an emotional effect upon me that I was unable to speak to anybody for some time afterwards. I think perhaps I understood that we could not cure ourselves but that there was something that could cure us if we could gradually reach it.

Then self-observation is no longer some theoretical thing that one must try to do because one is told to do it, but it becomes a constant accompaniment to one's life. It becomes something that does not interrupt but accompanies. And when this accompaniment ceases, one knows instantly that one is asleep.

Maurice Nicoll, “Futher Notes on Deeper Self-Observation" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 2, p. 559-560)