Going through slowly is the way to go. When I got my set of these commentaries back in 1999 I only allowed myself to read one per week. I couldn't find folks interested in following along with me either, so I have an idea how you feel (how nice it would be to have a local group of folks to read a commentary each week and discuss it together).

Hello, I was also looking for some discussion group for Nicoll's Commentaries these days, and failed after several google searching, and really nice bumpping into your post. I had read the first three volume thoroughly, and now pick something here and there in the book to remind me something especially when I feel resonate with some 4th way theme. These days I concern more about "make personality passive", sometimes reading Nicoll's commentary give me a taste of it, but I guess there is a lot to explore on this topic, to learn more, and to deep the understanding, to get the essence a bit more active...or something developped by Nicoll himself, in my view, such as "Psychological thinking", etc.
I find that any theme of the 4thway are interdependent, interconnected, so I don't mind to take any commentary to begin with.

I just set up a group on tribe "Maurice Nicoll's online reading group", hope that we have a place to focus on Nicoll's Commentaries :)

A note on "attention." [Miraculous/Chapter Six] introduces some suspicious ideas preliminary to "recording attention." Reflecting on this task, the concept of "a point of attention" becomes increasingly necessary. Centers fire individually. The record of their firing, when the student seeking to observe them first enters the fray, develops itself into a sort of intellectual center model containing bits of the process. System speed as this progresses is immense, making these preliminary observations always reflections of past efforts.

The "point of attention" makes each center action discrete, but produces a data stream not unlike the path of shot from a 12 gauge in a dark room. There are a myriad of models present and active, each being serviced to provide, among many other things, the introduction of the bearer's individuality into the growing model as it is groomed by center activities. The final correlation which results from this "grooming" appears discrete as it is completed, but only because the final intellectual testing of it has already been made coherent by the natural specificity of the inquiry. Viewed in its raw form, the observation might be of interest, but not particularly so with respect to the work of recording attention.

The more beneficial form of this field of self-observation relies on "accompanying the point of attention" as center activity changes in real-time as this provides a guide not for general center activity observation, but rather for sensations of the centers firing as this element of the model is developed. These sensations flow openly in the mechanical and intellectual parts of the instinctive system [still the host to the process]. They can be accessed [not interpreted] as sensations in the experiential area prior to the entry point of the mechanical part of the intellectual center which normally transports impressions to the working area.

How rough is this? A bit. Sensations in the experiential area are fairly straightforward. We all perform this mindlessly for every impression. Associating oneself with an active point of attention takes practice.

We may be attracted to "post considering" of concepts, that is, we may seem to be more comfortable with ideas after they pass through the "wood chipper" of simplistic conversions. Think of the pre-digested food mother birds provide their young. Somehow, we insist, all the essential substance of the idea remains available to us. Gurdjieff's lecture on centers and recording attention may have already been as simplified as he desired it to be in the form in which we find it. Mr. Ouspensky may have included a bit of his own motivated influence in the form we see.

[Primary and secondary models of communication transmission] But what if Gurdjieff's idea really isn't so simple? How can we be willing to, once again, submit ourselves to the "...very hard work...for a...very long time...etc." idea as some sort of reasonable alternative to rolling up our sleeves and turning on our "main engines?" This may be a logical extension of contemporary religious mythology's premise that a human man cannot comfortably enjoy a rational concept of an incomprehensible deity, or that, if he were to hold such a possibility as relevant to himself, he would be teetering on the very edge of the slippery slope of arrogance and presumption. We all know the inevitable wages of such sinful hubris.

The function and meaning of a human system [Especially when it is one's OWN human system!] is not incomprehensible. It is also probably not so simple that we can encounter its full experience as easily as stubbing a toe in the darkness. Yet, perhaps our "factory design specifications" don't actually include such a ponderous lack of confidence! Do we expect to "nibble" our way through to the promise of the Fourth Way taking neither risk nor action? Would such an approach be consistent with the path of the Sly Man? Mr. Gurdjieff already did a good part of the "heavy lifting." Was his work any less than a sincere invitation to continue?

Heh, heh, heh! I purchased this copy of Gurdjieff's lecture in a used book store for about three dollars [US]. Then I read it. Then I considered what I had read. THEN, I thought, "I ought to try this!" Afterwards, I naturally began all sorts of "considerings" about its meaning, its purpose, the nature of its mechanism and the implications of such an understanding on my own model of myself.

That's a pretty good deal for three bucks!

If you e-mail bradfordgurdjieffsociety@lgooglemail.com you may get a very reasonable reply. If you are willing to talk and if you ask the correct question then you may talk in the real world to a member of a group with direct descendency from Rina Hands. Be carefull what you seek aas You may receive it.