Three-brained being, multiple 'I's

It became a “standard” to present the Reiki teaching together with an introduction to the chakras. For those of you who are not familiar with this, the chakras are described as wheels of energy forming the parts of the subtle energetic anatomy of man. Gurdjieff, when he started to introduce his teaching at the beginning of the 20th century, presented a model of the inner functioning of man that has a certain resemblance with the indian chakras system but which is actually different. One element that is similar to the chakras system is the number of centers which in both cases is 7. So far, the comparison stops here. To me, Gurdjieff model is more coherent and insightful to bring an understanding of the way man functions. It is truly a map that can help one understands oneself.

As was said, the system of centers presented by Gurdjieff is sevenfold. In this post, I will mainly focus on presenting three of them, which is more or less what Gurdjieff did at first with great ingeniosity, for it connects to other “ideas” that composed the whole teaching. “Ideas” that I intend to touch few words on in future posts.

The three centers I want to talk about can be acknowledged by anyone. They are what compose the fabric of our inner life : thinking, feeling, moving/sensing. These three elements are the means through wich we live our life. We have thoughts, emotions, sensations and movements. Unfortunately, these elements are not working in harmony towards one another and that is one of the reason why we bear much suffering and contradictions within. They actually run by themselves, in a mechanical way, by reacting to the influences of the outside world. It can be said these three centers have “minds” of their own. They have “independent” impulsions, reactions, towards the events that we have to face in the course of our life. Say we decided in our thinking, to wake up earlier the next morning to be able to have a longer meditation session, thoughts that brought with them a slight emotional response colored with enthusiasm, then the next morning when the alarm rings, we definetly don’t want to wake up and actually don’t. What happened ? Well, another “mind” took control of the situation that is not the same mind that decided the night before to wake up. This example shows how divided we are innerly without really being aware of it. We actually have multiple ‘I’s living inside of us due to the lack of harmony between the three fundamental aspects of our being. Those ‘I’s have their origin in one or the other center and combine or use the other two. And this without any form of consciousness or attention but mainly through mechanical reaction. One doesn’t acts, but reacts. And what reacts is one of the multiple ‘I’s that developed itself through one’s life and the situations one has had to go through. The only way to “see” this for oneself, so that it doesn’t remain just an information that we agree with, is self-observation over a long period of time. One has to recognize by “taste” how one or the other of these centers is at work in a given situation. That is, throughout one’s daily life. This is the object of work on oneself : first, acknowledging our inner divisions (the mess we call our inner life), then working towards unification.

This three-brained being model is really worth putting one’s effort to understand. Enounced by Gurdjieff almost a hundred years back, it matches today the discoveries made by science in the neurobiological field over the last fifty years with its three-fold brain description : reptilian brain, limbic brain and neo-cortex that developed in the course of evolution. And in the practical spiritual field, the alignment or unification of these three “brains” is probably the only way to reveal the most elusive, mysterious and quite not understood part of our being : Consciousness.

Resources :
Man - A Three-brained Being. Keith A. Buzzell. Fifth Press
Becoming Conscious With G.I Gurdjieff. Solange Claustres. Eureka Editions