Mind/Body

Gurdjieff taught, and left it for us to verify by our own experience, that we have 3 brains!

Head brain,
Feeling (emotional) brain
Moving/instinctive brain.

Lifting weights connects the thinking center (brain) to the moving center (brain) thus allowing a fuller perception and intelligence.
The connection is more powerful if the movements are done with conscious sensation of the body, consciously.

ref: In Search of the Miraculous, chapter 6, page 107 "The most complete knowledge of a given subject possible for us can only be obtained if we examine it simultaneously with our mind, feelings, and sensations."

Quotes from In Search Of The Miraculous: Fragments Of An Unknown Teaching -2

Quotes from In Search Of The Miraculous: Fragments Of An Unknown Teaching.
(Page/Paragraph/Sentence)

Centers

348/0/3
"It means that a definite work of the thinking center is connected with a definite work of the emotional and moving centers…Everything is connected and one thing cannot exist without the other."

348/3/3
Often therefore, the sole possibility of making the other enters work in a new way is to begin with the moving center; that is with the body."

362/4/2
"You must understand that a man's will can b e sufficient to govern one center for a short time. But the other two centers prevent this. And a man's will can never be sufficient to govern three centers."

Octaves

130/3/2
"We neither understand nor see what is going on around and within us, either because we do not allow for the inevitability of descent when there is no ascent, or because we take descent to be ascent. These are two fundamental causes of our self-deception."

134/1/
"The possibility of artificial, that is, specially created, 'additional shocks' gives a practical meaning to the study of the law of octaves and makes this study obligatory and necessary if a man desires to step out of the role of passive spectator of that which is happening to him and around him."

134/2/
"The 'man-machine' can do nothing. To him and around him everything happens. In order to do it is necessary to know the law of octaves, to know the moments of the 'intervals' and be able to create necessary 'additional shocks.'

135/3/
"You must understand and feel this law in your selves. Only then will you see it outside yourselves."

Shocks

193/1/4
"The second volitional 'shock' and transmutation become physically possible only after long practice on the first volitional 'shock,' which consists in self-remembering, and in observing the impressions received. … Right development on the Fourth Way must begin with the first volitional 'shock' and then pass to the second 'shock' at mi 12."

Centers/Energy

193/4/1
"The centers of the human machined work with different 'hydrogens.' This constitutes their chief difference."

195/5/1
"The thinking or intellectual center is the slowest of all the three centers we have examined up to now."

194/1/3
"The intellectual center is never able to follow the work of the moving center. We are unable to follow either our own movements or other people's movements unless they are artificially slowed down. Still less are se able to follow the work of the inner, the instinctive functions of our organism, the work of the instinctive mind which constitutes, as it were, one side of the moving center."

194/6/0
"It is the lower centers that are undeveloped." And its is precisely this lack of development, or the incomplete functioning, of the lower centers that prevents us from making use of the higher centers."

194/12/3
"But in ordinary conditions the difference between the speed of our usual emotions and the speed of the higher emotional center is so great that no connection can take place and we fail to hear within us the voices which are speaking and calling to us from the higher emotional center."

196/0
"Thus in order to regulate and accelerate the work of the lower centers, the primary object must consist in freeing each center from work foreign and unnatural to it, and in bringing it back to its own work which it can do better that any other center."

196/3/0
"In order to regulate and balance the work of the three centers whose functions constitute our life, it is necessary to learn to economize the energy produced by our organism, not to waste energy on unnecessary functions, and save it for that activity which will gradually connect the lower centers with the higher."

Energy

179/3/1
"---every normal man has quite enough energy to begin work on himself. It is only necessary to learn how to save the greater part of the energy we possess for useful work instead of wasting it unproductively."

179/4/
"Energy is spent chiefly on unnecessary and unpleasant emotions, on the expectation of unpleasant things, possible and impossible, on bad moods, on unnecessary haste, nervousness, irritability, imagination, daydreaming, and so. Energy is wasted on the wrong work of centers; on unnecessary tension of the muscles out of all proportion to the work produced; on perpetual chatter which absorbs an enormous amount of energy; on the 'interest' continually taken in things happening around us or to other people and having in fact no interest whatever; on the constant waste of the force of 'attention;' and so on, and so on.

179/5/0
"In beginning to struggle with all these habitual sides of his life a man saves an enormous amount of energy, and with the help of this energy he can easily begin the work of self-study and self-perfection."

Quotes from In Search Of The Miraculous: Fragments Of An Unknown Teaching.

Quotes from In Search Of The Miraculous: Fragments Of An Unknown Teaching.
(Page/Paragraph/Sentence)

Imagination:
220/2/1
"In reality Kundalini is the power of imagination, the power of fantasy, which takes the place of a real function. When a man dreams instead of acting, when his dreams take the place of reality, when a man imagines himself to be an eagle, a lion, or magician, it is the force of Kundalini acting in him.

Energy

179/3/1
"---every normal man has quite enough energy to begin work on himself. It is only necessary to learn how to save the greater part of the energy we possess for useful work instead of wasting it unproductively."

179/4/
"Energy is spent chiefly on unnecessary and unpleasant emotions, on the expectation of unpleasant things, possible and impossible, on bad moods, on unnecessary haste, nervousness, irritability, imagination, daydreaming, and so. Energy is wasted on the wrong work of centers; on unnecessary tension of the muscles out of all proportion to the work produced; on perpetual chatter which absorbs an enormous amount of energy; on the 'interest' continually taken in things happening around us or to other people and having in fact no interest whatever; on the constant waste of the force of 'attention;' and so on, and so on.

179/5/0
"In beginning to struggle with all these habitual sides of his life a man saves an enormous amount of energy, and with the help of this energy he can easily begin the work of self-study and self-perfection."

130/3/2
"We neither understand nor see what is going on around and within us, either because we do not allow for the inevitability of descent when there is no ascent, or because we take descent to be ascent. These are two fundamental causes of our self-deception."

195/5/1
"The thinking or intellectual center is the slowest of all the three centers we have examined up to now."

194/1/3
"The intellectual center is never able to follow the work of the moving center. We are unable to follow either our own movements or other people's movements unless they are artificially slowed down. Still less are se able to follow the work of the inner, the instinctive functions of our organism, the work of the instinctive mind which constitutes, as it were, one side of the moving center."

194/6/0
"It is the lower centers that are undeveloped." And its is precisely this lack of development, or the incomplete functioning, of the lower centers that prevents us from making use of the higher centers."

194/12/3
"But in ordinary conditions the difference between the speed of our usual emotions and the speed of the higher emotional center is so great that no connection can take place and we fail to hear within us the voices which are speaking and calling to us from the higher emotional center."

196/0
"Thus in order to regulate and accelerate the work of the lower centers, the primary object must consist in freeing each center from work foreign and unnatural to it, and in bringing it back to its own work which it can do better that any other center."

196/3/0
"In order to regulate and balance the work of the three centers whose functions constitute our life, it is necessary to learn to economize the energy produced by our organism, not to waste energy on unnecessary functions, and save it for that activity which will gradually connect the lower centers with the higher."

188/3/0
"It has been explained before that in ordinary conditions of life we do not remember ourselves, we do not remember, that is, we do not feel ourselves, are not aware of ourselves at the moment of a perception, of an emotion, of a thought or of an action."

Effort

232/8/2
"Only super-efforts count."

232/10/0
"…it is better to die making efforts to waken than to live in sleep."

282/1/1
"When self-deceit is destroyed and a man begins to see the difference between the mechanical and the conscious in himself, there begins a struggle for the realization of consciousness in life for the subordination of the mechanical to the conscious. For this purpose a man begins with endeavors to set a definite decision, coming from conscious motives, against mechanical processes proceeding according to the laws of duality. The creation of a permanent third principle is for man the transformation of the duality into the trinity."

Symbols

282/5/2
"… a symbol can never be fully interpreted. It can only be experienced, in the same way for instance, as the idea of self-knowledge must be experienced."

Self Observation

107/3/3
"The most complete knowledge of a given subject possible for s can only be obtained if we examine it simultaneously with our mind, feelings, and sensations."

117/1/5
"Both consciousness and the different degrees of consciousness must be understood in oneself by sensation, by taste. No definitions can help you in this case and no definitions are possible so long as you do not understand what you have to define."

117/6/2
"… you do not remember yourselves. You do not feel yourselves; you are not conscious of yourselves. With you, 'it observes' just as 'it speaks,' 'it thinks,' 'it laughs.' You do not feel: I observe, I notice, I see. Everything still 'is noticed,' 'is seen.' … In order to really observe oneself one must first of all remember oneself."

118/0/3
"only those results will have any value that are accompanied by self-remembering. Otherwise you yourselves do not exist in the your observations."