Intelligence of mind centres

The meeting started with a reading of the different kinds of intelligence of our mind centres, as described by Nicoll in his Psychological Commentaries, Volume 2, page 392.

Dr. Nicoll explains that all our mind centres can be described as functions that have much in common by having their own ‘centre of gravity’, but at the same time, each has its own peculiar characteristics and its own kind of intelligence.

We find when we observe ourselves that we have four separate mind centres that we can recognise in ourselves. We have an intellectual centre that directs our intellectual or thinking functions. An emotional centre that controls our emotions and feelings. A moving centre that controls all external body movements such as walking, writing and speaking. And an instinctive centre that includes all the metabolic activity of the body such as breathing, digestion and blood circulation.

However, Dr Nicoll writes: "When it is said in this system that each centre has its own intelligence, it does not mean that each centre has the same kind of intelligence. . . . They should be like 3 brothers who live in harmony, each one good at something, and each one capable of helping the others to a small extent."

(Read more on this from the book itself. An electronic version of this book is available from the link on the right.)

The reading was followed by a discussion on the right and wrong working of centres and the important part each ‘mind centre’ plays in our psychological anatomy.

Time, Recurrence and Events

The meeting started with a reading from Maurice Nicoll’s Psychological Commentaries, on The Idea of Time, Recurrence and Events, Vol. 2, p. 425

This was followed by a discussion of some of the questions discussed about the experiencing of events in time.

Most of us think of the events of the day as happenings in periods of ‘linear time’, that is; the events we experience appear to happen as moments in an extended time-line, divided into days, hours, minutes and seconds, with one moment following another.

However, many modern scientists, philosophers and esoteric teachers, tell us that time can also be composed of events that can recur in ‘psychological time’ and that we experience life in two dimensions. We have a personal world of our own thoughts and feelings and a world that we share with other people, who also have their own personal world.

When we view time from a psychological perspective, we can observe our day in ‘psychological time’ which is composed of many kind of events, some happy some depressing, and although some may be important, there are many that are trivial, and in fact are wasting our time if they succeed in gaining our attention.

Events cluster round our line of Time that we call a day and are constantly seeking our attention and intruding in our thoughts and feelings. However when we recall events in ‘psychological time’ we can expand the useful experiences of a positive event, and minimise or discard trivial events that are unimportant.

In the outer world of realities that we share with other people, we have very little control of most of the events that happen to us, events that may place us in an intolerable situation. But in our inner personal world, when we observe events objectively, we can do something to improve our situation.

In ‘psychological time’ we can make an event take more, or less, or all of our time. An event that may have occurred in a very short period of linear time can expand in psychological time and occupy your mind for a much longer period. We can then decide what events we are you going to ignore or minimise, and which events we are going to accept, identify with and maximise, the choice is ours.

Knowledge and Being

The meeting commenced with a reading on ‘knowledge and being’ from ‘In search of the miraculous’ Chapter 4. p64. where Ouspensky explains the importance of understanding the relationship between knowledge and being. For the level of being to grow it needs not only knowledge, but knowledge with the understanding that comes with personal experience.

Ouspensky quotes Gurdjieff as saying: "In right evolution the line of knowledge and the line of being develop simultaneously, parallel to, and helping one another. But if the line of knowledge gets too far ahead of the line of being, or if the line of being gets ahead of the line of knowledge, man's development goes wrong, and sooner or later it must come to a standstill."

(Read more on this from the book itself. An electronic version of this book is available from the link on the right.)

For the level of being to grow it needs not only knowledge, but knowledge with the understanding that comes with personal experience.

More on the Enneagram

We began the session with a demonstration of how to draw the enneagram, which each person did. This helps internalise the symbol which is important as many of the concepts in the Work relate to it. The images below are from Maurice Nicoll's Commentaries, Volume 2.

The notes of the musical scale were placed around it, and this led to a discussion of some aspects of harmony.


The position of the first shock (point 3) may be associated with the return to the median "mi" from a suspended fourth "fa".


We also discussed the analogy from the seven days of creation in the Old Testament and the Koran, with the corresponding points of the evolution of consciousness in the enneagram.

The processing of experiences (self-observation) was compared with other shock points such as breathing and eating.

It was agreed that the diagrams would be brought back to future meetings for reference.

Five people attended the meeting.

Center of Gravity of Ideas

The meeting started with reading from Ouspensky’s ‘The Fourth Way’, Chapter XII on the need to look for the centre of gravity of some of the ideas we have been studying.

Some ideas can be more or less important than others. As Ouspensky explains, "We must understand that, before acquiring new knowledge, we must realize our limitations and the fact that our limitations are really limitations of our being."

This lead to the question being discussed, of what types of men there are from the point of view of having the possibility of changing their beingness.

Gurdjieff considers four divisions of man from the point of view of the possibility of changing being. He called them snataka or householder, tramp, lunatic and hasnamuss.

(Read more on this from the book itself. An electronic version of this book is available from the link on the right.)

This reading lead to a most interesting discussion.

The Ray of Creation

The meeting started with a continuation of some of the many questions discussed at our previous February meeting.

The questions discussed were mostly about the ray of creation, the law of three and the law of seven, and how the principle of scale shows that our planet earth is almost at the bottom of our particular ray of creation, which is not a good place to be. Also most people have not thought about whether there are better or worse places in the universe and do not realise that they are in almost the worst place in our ray of creation.

Gurdjieff also explained that the musical major scale possesses a symbolic representation of the law of seven which illustrated the regular pattern of occurrence of tones and semitones within each octave of the major scale.

When we set ourselves a goal, our actions relate to the same sequence of the notes of the ascending octave, but start to deviate away from our intended purpose at the place where the semitones in the major scale occur; this is the way things usually happen in life.

If we want to achieve our intended purpose, one must be aware of what is happening at these moments where the semitones occur and make an extra effort to keep things going in the direction we originally intended.

Four States of Consciousness

The meeting started with a reading from Ouspensky’s ‘The Fourth way’, Chapter 5, and discussed the idea in the work that with certain knowledge and efforts a man can improve and develop himself and become a more conscious being.

In the waking state a man’s reality differs very little from his sleeping state and very few are sufficiently interested in becoming more conscious, but those who do can observe for themselves that when we are in the waking state, most of our behaviour is mechanical and we do not possess ‘self-consciousness’. This realisation of our lack of awareness is the first step in acquiring self-consciousness.

The next step is to realise that we do not know ourselves or how our mechanical way of thinking controls our actions. Knowing these facts can lead us to study methods of self-study such as ‘self-observation’ noting whether the type of impression that we observe is a thought, a feeling’ or other kind of sensation’ and evaluate if they are useful or harmful to us.

(Read more on this from the book itself. An electronic version of this book is available from the link on the right.)

This led to a discussion of four states of consciousness, sleep, waking state, self-consciousness, and objective-consciousness, and the relative differences between them.








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