There are two kinds of people: the externally oriented, and internally oriented. All people are born externally oriented - they can't help it, they've got senses that are only stimulated by outside pressures, and only stimulated by internal pressures when something is very wrong. So, if a person is reasonably healthy, he can spend his entire life never even realizing he has an untapped inner world. We all know countless people like that.
Once a person chances upon the notion of an inner world, the real trouble begins, because that entire inner world can only be investigated by mind alone. Senses will not help you. Only mind can undertake that investigation. But, the problem is that the mind is ill-equipped to do what's necessary to see what's going on, because it continually - because it can't help it - confuses the external for the internal and vice versa.
The classic "work on yourself syndrome" is based upon trying to understand oneself, from the outside in. The Work - which is older than Gurdjieff, of course - is about trying to understand oneself, from the inside out.
The Work must proceed from inner to outer, and not from outer to inner. Thus, there is nothing to understand about the Universe, per se, but only about the mind. Understand what's going on therein, and everything else falls into place.
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