Beelzebub's Tales To His Grandson- Gurdjieff's Magnum Opus

When talking to people who are interested in the school of conscious development and self awareness brought to the West by Armenian mystic G.I. Gurdjieff the question of what reading material would be good to start with arises. With many teachers and traditions starting with the source would make the most sense but with Gurdjieff this is sometimes discouraged. The first book in Gurdjieff's trilogy All and Everything, by the title Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, can not be overlooked as an invaluable source of his teaching, any one who is serious about working with his ideas will read this book many times throughout their lives, but as a starting point it may be just too heavy. Why, because the act of reading this book is an act of working with Gurdjieff's System directly, and requires quite a bit of attention, not the ordinary attention used in reading an ordinary book, so it may be better to wait until an individual knows they want to start working with Gurdjieff's Ideas before directing them to this book. There are other books that can serve as a good introduction. Of course, an explanation is due.

The Setting

Gurdjieff's book is a sci-fi scenario, with space travel and aliens visiting earth over the years. In this book these aliens are angels and other heavenly beings. He chooses Beelzebub, an Angel in exile for leading a rebellion against God , referred to as His Endlessness, to be the protagonist. In in this book he does resemble a devil in appearance but is not a malevolent being, simply having been rash in his youth, spending much time in exile near earth, which is at a far corner of the universe, and eventually being forgiven. Beelzebub finds himself in a space ship journeying back to his home planet and as they pass the Earth his grandson begins to question him about its people. This begins long storytelling session that covers the arising of humans on earth, the birth and destruction of civilizations, development in spiritual understandings along with confusion of believes, cosmic laws, and just about anything.

Beelzebub's Observations

In this narrative Beelzebub describes a detailed psychology (the inner structure of man- mind, body, and emotion) along with cosmology the (structure of the universe and its hierarchy of forces). The idea that mankind is subjected to cosmic forces which keep them asleep, i.e. not in a full state of consciousness, is Gurdjieff's message in this book as it is in his school. The idea that it is possible for humans to wake up and fully align the energies of mind, body, and emotion is stressed, and in this book that would mean to become like the other beings of the universe both angelic or not, they are all aliens to us. The fact that Gurdjieff chose a sci-fi story to embed his teaching in is ironic. He thought that fiction writers were self indulgent learned narcissists that belonged in a padded room, but perhaps he saw the sign of the times, and if he wanted people to read his material, something different was necessary, but one thing is for sure, this body of writing was not aimed at the general public because the way it is written ensures that.

Gurdjieff's Writing Style

Something that everyone can agree on who picks up this book is that it is not a light read. Gurdjieff writing style prevents one from plowing through this book like a novel. He gives new meaning to the phrase, run on sentence, employing nuances that caused Mark Twain to coin the term Parenthesis Disease- in his article The Awful German Language. It is not uncommon for an entire page to be one sentence with clause stacked on top of clause so one has to stretching their attention and short term memory to the max to stay informed about what is going on with the sentence. In addition to this, there is a whole new vocabulary introduced, after all Beelzebub is an alien being. Gurdjieff was raised in Armenia, which meant he started his boyhood with the multiple languages that surrounded his area. That coupled with his extensive travels means he was fluent in many languages and familiar with many more. The vocabulary words that he chooses for any one thing will be composed of syllables from multiple languages, Turkish, Kurdish, Greek, Armenian, Russian, Persian, Aramaic, English, French, German. I believe there could be some Hindi and Chinese Dialects in there as well. He uses these words to describe both simple every day things and complex cosmological and psychological subjects and does not redefine them often which means the reader needs to exercise their facility of memory to be able to follow the narrative.

This Book is Work

Gurdjieff referred to the act of self observation, remembering oneself in the present, and the intentional suffering involved in this process as Work, and Gurdjieff's tradition is referred to by those who practice it as The Work. There was from the beginning instruction on how to read Beelzebub. In the introduction he is very clear that one should read his books only in the order they were written if one wants to gain understanding. Beelzebub's Tales is the first in the series, the next book is Meetings With Remarkable Men- an autobiography of his travel and search to find ancient wisdom, and his last unfinished book, Life is Only Real, then When I Am, describes his contemporary struggle with the groups that he formed. In Beelzebub's Tales he mentioned that it should be read 3 times, once like an ordinary book, once out loud to one's self, and once out loud with a group. Reading the Tales out loud together is something that every serious Gurdjieff group does, with the understanding that everyone should sit up straight, cultivated stillness and a relaxed posture, and practice being aware of oneself and the sensation of the body while actively listening or reading the book. My first group even received some instruction on the practice of how to read out loud, where to pause for breath and how to hold the book and yourself while doing so. This came straight from one of Gurdjieff's students, Margaret Flinch who left us with a pronunciation guide, and and audio book recording of her reading the entire book. We were lucky enough to work with her for a while while she was still with us in our Austin group and in New York.

Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson by G.I. Gurdjieff

To Leave a Legacy Behind

Gurdjieff began writing after in near fatal car wreck near his center in Fontainebleau France. The fact that he recovered was nothing short of miraculous. Once he regained his senses he came to the conclusion that his students were not reaching the level of understanding required of them fast enough and he decided to shut down the institute and start writing. He moved to an apartment in Paris and quit teaching, at least he said he was going to stop teaching. The truth is he did not, he was always surrounded by people at his apartment, at cafes and restaurants, he changed the way he taught but never quit teaching. There were group readings and revisions of Beelzebub frequently, sometimes for many hours on end without break. He spent the rest of his life trying to get it published, among many other things, but people wondered if he really wanted to as he would do things to run off or turn away potential publishers. It was like an act, a drama that his students witnessed and later wrote about. He was known to have said that when Beelzebub's Tales is published he was going to go away. Students would ask where is was going, and that they would go with him. He would reply that where he was going they could not go with him. In 1949 he found a publisher and was said to have died a few days later at the age of 83. The book was published in 1950. This book and the groups he left behind are a testament to his life's work.