Change to Real

…A man or a woman who has never doubted himself or herself but who is always convinced of being right from his or her acquired psychology — i.e. from what they have been taught — is not suitable for this Work. Sooner or later such people will come up against the possibility of realizing that they cannot take themselves for granted as they have done hitherto but must alter their whole way of taking things, their whole way of judging things. Now if they cannot stand this, if, in short, they are completely fixed in their own acquired psychology, remember that nothing can be done with such people except to avoid any frontal attack on them.
— Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff & Ouspensky, Volume III, p. 796.

On Putting Feeling of “I” into the Work

We spoke recently about the Driver mounting the box of the Carriage. It has often been said in the Work that unless a man believes in Greater Mind it is impossible to do the Work. The Work teaches that there is a Conscious Circle of Humanity. The Conscious Circle of Humanity always through the ages has tried to awaken the Mechanical Circle of Humanity. But it cannot do this by compulsion. You may remember the idea of Man, one of the great sign-posts in the Work. The Work says that Man is created a self-developing organism, but to develop he must believe in Greater Mind. As you have probably already noticed, Nature, the external world, does not tell you anything. It is neutral. You can come to one conclusion or another about Nature. You can say God exists or you can equally well say that God does not exist. Why is there not clear evidence of Greater Mind? It was once said that suppose God were floating overhead on a cloud it would destroy the whole idea of God, who is invisible, and a spirit that only Truth finds in us. People would have to believe in God. People would be compelled by the evidence of their outer senses to acknowledge the existence of the higher. But since Man is created a self-developing organism, this would destroy his meaning. In other words, we have to come to our own conclusions through our own individual thinking. A man can only develop in the esoteric sense through his own individual understanding by work on his knowledge and Being. Otherwise he could not be self-developing….
— Maurice Nicoll, Ibid., p. 837.

Now are you all fully aware that although you live in visible bodies seen clearly and signal to each other as best you can, and usually very clumsily, you really live in your thoughts, feelings, moods, desires, ambitions, and so on, which are invisible? So you are really invisible, enclosed in a visible body. Do you see this yet? You may be heartbroken, as the saying is, and yet appear visibly cheerful. Why is it that people cannot take in the idea that they themselves live in their invisible side, known only to them through their own consciousness? So look at this vision: here we are visible to one another as physical bodies but almost totally invisible to one another in any real sense. So, being really invisible, you are therefore all alone — not lonely — but alone. This is one thing we have to grasp from height to depth of all the meaning it contains. It is the only thing that saves us from continual self-pity. It is no-one’s fault that you are not understood — for you are invisible and no-one can know you. Only you can know yourself. So the Work says: “Begin with trying to understand yourself.” Yes — a very big task. But it shifts effort to the right place. However, imagination steps in here to keep you fast asleep. It says: “Of course I know myself — of course I understand myself.” The answer is: “You do not and as long as you are under this illusion nothing will change for you. Everything will remain the same. You will go through the same troubles, the same unhappiness, and the same tragedies. There is only one way to change all that and that is to change yourself, change your own being and life will change. Try to change life and everything will be the same, even if you go to the uttermost parts of the Earth.”
     Now here we have one of the positive ideas of the work — namely, “To change things, to change his life, a man must first change himself. And in order to change himself he must find a teaching that will tell him how to do so. He must be willing to be taught new knowledge, new truth, and to begin to think in a new way. If he continues to think from the knowledge he has acquired, he will continue to think in the old way and then nothing will change. Only thinking in a new way can change a man.”
— Maurice Nicoll, Ibid., pp. 1114-1115.

You will understand by now that as long as the Personality, formed in us by our contact with manifest life, is active, then the inborn, real part of us, called Essence, cannot grow. A man, a woman, living only by the acquired side in themselves, the Personality, the social or business or professional side, cannot possibly have peace of mind, internal happiness, or a real centre of gravity. Why? Because the acquired personality, which controls them because it is active, is not really themselves, but outside themselves, and depends on how others behave to them in life. For this reason they must seek endless outer changes, excitements, varieties, and praise, congratulations, and so on, to keep up the fiction of themselves that they can take as themselves and that depends on outer life. Fictional Personality, for instance, marries Fictional Personality, and nothing is real, but all is a kind of pretence concealing so much tiredness. Now if you are for a moment conscious in Essence, everything is, as Gurdjieff said, richer, more vivid, more real. But no one can get back to Essence artificially. People try to do so by drugs, excitement, and so on, but this is not real. One has to pay beforehand to reach Essence aright. Relatively speaking, everything belonging to Essence is real and everything belonging to Personality is unreal. I say, on purpose, relatively real and unreal. We understand that Personality must be formed in us before Essence can grow beyond the stage it reaches through its own power of growth. And Essence can then grow at the expense of Dr. Nicoll or in your case at the expense of this fine man, this superior woman….
— Maurice Nicoll, Ibid., p. 1197.