Gut Feelings

In Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson, the magnum opus of the extraordinary Greek/Armenian mystic G.I. Gurdjieff, the central character, Beelzebub refers to the unfortunate inhabitants of Earth — us — as “three-brained beings”. This is in alignment with Gurdjieff’s division of the human organism into three parts: the intellectual center, emotional center, and ‘moving’ or ‘instinctive’ center.

The emotional ‘brain’, on this view, is distributed throughout our middles, with a particular concentration in what we call the ‘solar plexus’.

I was reminded of all this when I saw this article the other day.

For our other mentions of Mr. Gurdjieff in these pages, have a look here, and for related posts try our ‘Inner Work‘ category.

4 Comments

  1. G.I. Gurdjieff? I didn’t know Gurdjieff was a G.I.! I guess that makes him a regular joe.

    Jeffery Hodges

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    Posted January 12, 2012 at 4:35 pm | Permalink
  2. Dr. Strangelove says

    Yet another example of how old-wives tales, ancient parables, and other non-scientific pieces of knowledge actually are perceiving aspects of the world that we later come to understand through science. When confronted with a problem, often the best strategy is not to try to come up with a theory on one’s own but to look at ancient parables that deal with the issue at hand and try to test the theory with the scientific method.

    A small aside, any idea why Gurdjieff recommended reading Thus Spake Zarathustra? I would recommend it to everyone but I’m curious as to why a mystic would recommend it.

    Posted January 12, 2012 at 4:48 pm | Permalink
  3. Malcolm says

    DS, I don’t know how much familiarity you have with the Gurdjieff system of inner work, but there are a great many parallel lines in it and in the call to awakening in Zarathustra. (I suppose that would make for an interesting post, one of these days.)

    Here’s a tiny example, but typical:

    “Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there stands a mighty ruler, an unknown sage — whose name is Self. In your body he dwells; he is your body.

    There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom.”

    – Thus Spake Zarathustra, Penguin edition, p. 34-5

    Gurdjieff was a rather unusual mystic.

    Posted January 12, 2012 at 6:12 pm | Permalink
  4. Das ist gut.

    Posted January 13, 2012 at 1:09 am | Permalink

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