An Explanation of Brain Systems
Brain Systems will soon be made available in its entirety to view online. Until then you can download the PDF in its original form.
Download the Brain Systems Main Paper
Some Inevitable Questions
Why has Brain Systems become so central? Most of the papers listed for sale on this web site note a reference to Brain Systems as they are described in their summary. Some refer outrightly to specific concepts which appear in that paper. Others refer, cryptically, to the use of nomenclature originating in that paper.
Why has something like this been introduced within the context of a web site with its stated focus on Fourth Way ideas? Perhaps the whole affair is no more than the pathetic tatter of an old man obsessed with this certain topic, a last, desperate attempt for importance or, even, relevance as he delves into something that neither Mr. Ouspensky nor Mr. Gurdjieff ever intended to become so serious. After all, the sheer number of topics held in Mr. Gurdjieff's lectures is legend to the well read. Apparently every single one of them has the essential materiality to have become an alternate point of concentration for this old man.
A Little History
A certain Fourth Way class in San Diego was comprised, coincidentally, of young students. All were between eighteen and twenty-one years. As that school approached its work on centers, and especially, on the process of recording attention, it became clear that a written accessory to the material in Mr. Gurdjieff's lectures would be helpful.
Having completely accepted this additional task and having begun in a sincere way to create this "extra material" about centers, the paper was begun. Only then did these uninhibited young students began to ask a number of troubling questions. Having set the creation of this paper, the first such undertaking of any magnitude in this school, as an aim, these disrespectful questions quickly actualized themselves into an unanticipated consequence, not for the overall intention of the paper, but very directly on its scope. A nicely scheduled discussion of Mr. Gurdjieff's and Mr. Ouspensky's lectures on the subject would fall short of the robust understanding these energetic young students expected.
It was decided that the project of this paper would be quickly expanded to address these questions of theirs. All that was simple enough for a dedicated Fourth Way teacher, but in no time calamity struck. These "rotten little questions" were not going to be answered with a bit of clever research and a few passive, incomprehensible hypotheses, employed as clever distractions. This Fourth Way teacher was jerked unceremoniously away from his typewriter and cast into an abyss where he was forced to consider all types of new thoughts. He had already inspired in these students a real determination to enjoy the benefits of recording attention, and now he would "pay the piper."
The Questions of the Young Students
Both Mr. Ouspensky and Mr. Gurdjieff had provided descriptions of certain centers and their corresponding actions. Additionally, the idea of five centers, each divided into three more specific categories of action, and, in fact, each of these fifteen entities also divided into three similar, yet more resolved components, ad nauseam, was a very clear statement that there existed many more than the centers and sections of centers which were discussed in Fourth Way literature. What was the nature and purpose of those not included in these descriptions? How would the student work at recording attention with only this "bit of the full palette?"
A decision was made that the fifteen elements of the lower centers would comprise the limit of this now, very out-of-control paper. Everything that could be used was scoured from In Search of the Miraculous, The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution, and authors such as Kathleen Speeth and Helen Palmer, and others. Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson contributed. There were honest contradictions and other paradoxes.
As this more complete model of the idea of centers began to take form, it became clear that some additional structures of a similar nature would be required to fully explain a more complete environment of its working process to these bothersome students. New concepts were added as they seemed to place themselves into the status of conceptual necessities.
These ideas, for example, included such things as: [ESS] the Experiential Sensation System; [RPC] the Reality Process Center (not to be confused with a "Center" center); [RMS] the Resonant Memory System; the Objective Factors Gate; [SYM] the Conceptual Symbolizer, the Input and Output Sequencers and more. All of these components would have to be integrated into the complete idea in a way which might allow Gurdjieff's centers to actually perform the tasks attributed to each one. These seemingly awkward necessities became the feedstock which would test the completeness of Brain Systems.
The discussion of centers in these Fourth Way books was not a brief "shot in the dark." Counting pages, paragraphs or concepts, establishes that both primary authors had obviously devoted significant thought effort to this concept. It was an idea important to them, and it was an idea which had clearly captured their thoughts. Because of the date of their authorship, certain technology now easily known, was out of their reach. There are no "Edison phonograph scrolls" in Brain Systems.
Further, it was clear that these students might require a new language, one which was more suited for the ideas and the thought-tasks inherent in recording attention. The fifteen centers were plunged into convenient abbreviation. Ii represents the intellectual part of the intellectual center; Se, the emotional part of the sex center; Em, the moving part of the emotional center, and so on through all fifteen parts. These terms are now used, years later, quite casually in this present school, and all students know precisely the full meaning, purpose and description of the component so noted. In many cases this is the "nomenclature" cited in the summaries of papers listed on this web page.
As the demands of these youthful tormentors continued to spread far and wide, they began to insist that this new model of centers also accommodate, logically, other subjects mentioned by Mr. Gurdjieff in his lectures, issues such as personality, negative emotion and the manifestations of Triamazikamno, the threefold way, within this same context, that is, within the new model contained in this paper.
It was their constant demand that: (a) "What was good for the goose was good for the gander." If this expansion of Mr. Gurdjieff's ideas were to be acceptable, it could not imply arbitrarily inflicted inconsistencies between his thoughts on centers, as interpreted in the paper, and his thoughts on other things contained in his lectures; and (b) There was no "glass ceiling" on the work of Mr. Gurdjieff which would preclude further expansion and investigation of the core thoughts he presented. As modern students, we inevitably enjoy access to all sorts of things, for example, Higgs' Bosons and a modern PC with its operating system, but this advantage will never provide us legitimate authority to abandon his amazingly timeless insight.
It is fairly clear, when we examine these ideas carefully, that Mr. Gurdjieff could "think" his way into our present future, if not detail by detail, certainly in a way which encompasses astounding understanding. Can anyone suggest that the production of high hydrogens from being foods or the labyrinth of the period of dimensions is somehow dated? Somehow less exciting now than it was then?
An Invitation
The enneagram below gives an account of the experiences of students who have used Brain Systems for further understanding in their work on recording attention. The main paper is accompanied by three appendices: Notes on Conscience, More About Centers and The Process of Recording Attention. The price of these papers is intentionally modest. Review the enneagram. Hold it in mind that you might possibly have a place in the transformative process it describes.
Every labor pays a wage!
