Gurdjieff’s Active Mentation or Three-Centered Thinking

For years I’ve wondered what is meant by Gurdjieff’s “active mentation,” or “three-centered thinking.” That is, thinking with all three centers: the mind, the emotions and the body.

The Setup

Here is an example of what might be called active mentation: It began with working on a new morning exercise concerning Gurdjieff’s Law of Three. His invocation of that law is “Holy Affirming (active), Holy Denying (passive), Holy Reconciling; Transubstantiate in me for my Being.”

In this exercise, the cranium becomes associated with Holy Affirming, the pelvis and spine with Holy Denying, and the rib cage with Holy Reconciling. I am not giving the whole of the exercise here, just the perceptions that played a part in my “active mentation.”

As you may be aware, I’ve been ruminating on Gurdjieff’s concept of Solioonensius and Bennett’s use of the term “demiurge.”

Mentation Begins

While jogging the other day, I came across a beautiful pale green tree frog on the edge of the road. Turning back, I went to see if it was truly dead, thinking of placing it in the grass to let it die there. Too late, so sad. Before I continued my run a thought occurred to me.  Should I make the sign of the cross over it to at least mark it’s passing? Then I wondered if the Church would consider that sacrilegious?

Jogging on, I thought about the sign of the cross. I remembered morning sittings on my course at Sherborne. I’d begun to cross myself internally at the end of these morning exercises. Not having grown up in the Catholic church, I was curious at the time that something in me wanted to do that.

The other day, thoughts and experiences began to coalesce in me. My thoughts about Higher Powers, their role in human affairs and our role with them. Experiences with the new exercise I’ve been working on. In the exercise, I find energy moves upwards from my cranium into the heavens, and downwards from my pelvic girdle into the earth. The energy radiating from my rib cage feels like it’s connecting the two. The result was an ah-Ha moment. It came to me that the vertical gesture of the cross, the line that goes from head to belly, connects Holy Affirming with the mundane, Holy Denying. The horizontal gesture, the line across the breast, represents Holy Reconciling—the feeling center.

Active Mentation Exemplified

To me, what Gurdjieff calls “active mentation”—is exemplified by my three-centered experience. While jogging (moving center) I was cogitating on work-related thoughts (thinking center). Then I noticed the poor little frog and felt sorry for it (feeling center). The mental image of making the sign of the cross became informed by my experience of energies from morning exercise. Now when I make the sign of the cross, I think and feel Holy Affirming as I touch my head, Holy Denying as I touch my abdomen, and Holy Reconciling as I cross from left shoulder to right. Heaven is brought to Earth through being human. A gesture becomes imbued as three-centered due to the result of Active Mentation.