Source Text
Associatively, my mind was drawn to the many external changes that had taken place in our world since Gurdjieff’s death in 1949.
Gurdjieff’s many references to time, its relativity and its primary role in “the forced need to create our present existing ‘Megalocosmos’,”4 gives it a significance equal to his other conceptions (e.g., Etherokrilno and Kundabuffer).
In a fundamental sense, we have come to understand the concept of the merciless Heropass as the Infinite Potency for All Possible Motions.7
The primordial gulf that separates them derives from Gurdjieff’s insistent and balanced incorporation of the physical, emotional and intellectual aspects (i.e., the material, being-values and purposes) of this new perspective into one harmonious whole. Science, claiming no competence in the arenas of human values and purposes, is nonetheless the potent force carrier of these new motions with respect to the material world and a major qualifying influence on mankind’s philosophical and spiritual views on the Universe.
While the capacity to form resonant representations, or images, of portions of the matter/vibrations external to a creature’s body can be understood as one of the crowning achievements of brained life, this capacity has one focal vulnerability–namely, that the image created by the brain must be taken as real–otherwise its survival value would be nullified.11 This imperative–to trust that an image is real–can be traced in neural, ganglionic and reflexive elaborations throughout one-, two- and three- brained life. For approximately the past two and a half million years (est.), it has continued to be both a life-saving and enabling imperative for three brained beings as well; deeply entwined and essentially unalterable within the sensory-reflexive-motor pathways of the brain.
Since 1950, the survival-created vulnerability of the brain has been explored and/or exploited by any person or group with a message. The prefabricated image has become a neurological ‘Trojan horse’. We have only fragmentary understandings of how our human brain processes a television signal. In view of the strands of evidence (see below) that point out the differences in the form and sequence of the neural processing of a TV signal from the neural processes taking place in reading, conversation and physical activity, the indifference and dismissive attitude of the research community is astonishing.
~ The sensitivity (vulnerability) of the limbic (second) brain to facial image is known. ~ The nullification of the alerting reflexes of pupillary change, lens accommodation and eye scanning movements is known.
To plunge our brain into a sea of unreal, titillating and unfulfilled images goes beyond a failure to ask questions; it invades, it expands into activities that include arrogant manipulation and profiteering. Each of our brains (the ‘physical’, ‘feeling’ and ‘thinking’) needs to be fed. The quality and quantity of its food and the timing of its introduction are critical. Food for a brain (as a sensory-associative-memory-motor-neural mechanism) is not at all the same as it is for the rest of the body. The brain lives on neural impulses, from perceptions to impressions. Each of our three brains has a large arena of impressions that are appropriate to it alone.
They are vulnerabilities of the first (physical/core/reptilian) and second (limbic/emotional/mammalian) brains in particular, as the foundation of self-confidence and of a normal sense-of-self derives from the normal development of these brains.
Gurdjieff’s teaching, his wholed manifestation of Work, is a harmoniously integrated vehicle for such an inward-outward journey. It is neither the wisdom of the East nor the science of the West but a remarkable synthesis-in-law of both~and more.
AI Summary
Man — A Three-Brained Being by Keith Buzzell presents key insights from the Gurdjieff tradition. The 10 passages above capture the essential teachings.
Core Themes:
- [To be expanded]
Key Passages: Highlights 1, 3, and 10 are particularly representative.
This entry was generated from Readwise highlights. Expand with additional context as appropriate.