| Title | : | All and Everything: Beelzebubs Tales to His Grandson: First Series |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | - |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1950 |
All and Everything: Beelzebubs Tales to His Grandson: First Series Reviews
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Gurdjieff went against the grain of common Western thinking.
He didn't believe individual human beings have a soul...
Instead, he thinks we must GROW a soul. And that process is in and by itself excruciatingly painful.
That, as Yeats said “is no country for old men.” But if we put every ounce of our moral fibre into this task of maturing spiritually, we CAN do it.
We do it by putting our myriad frustrations with the one-size-fits-all pat formulas we are being given to Get Out Of A Hopeless Box TO WORK. Our very ANGER with spiritual truisms is the SHOULDER WE PUT TO THE WHEEL.
And, BTW, this long and arduous process of putting our ALL into our lives - something Jesus taught too - is also, according to Paul of Tarsus, the way not to GROWING a soul, but the Way to Resurrection.
It’s a fine point, but being Catholic, I agree with it in spades.
But most people my age believe modern life’s prevailing current in retirement goes against our own direction. We want to slow down, think things through...
But life’s not ready to slow down, and it tells us so, in no uncertain terms. You must act and think swiftly - and that can involve Pain for us. We have to FIGHT that pain Positively.
And in fighting, our Minds are made Sharper.
Many folks who get to their Seventies wonder where the much-ballyhooed wisdom of Old Age is for them... when all their memories are dust and ashes.
That’s a no-brainer for George Gurdjieff: cause you have to EARN wisdom while you can! You have to GROW it early.
Work HARD.
“Make hay while the sun shines” refers not only to wealth and wellbeing, but Wisdom as well. That way you WON’T slow down mentally as you age. Like a couch potato...
Come on you little fighter -
No need to get uptighter...
So what if it’s Raining Again? Fight BACK.
Wisdom can’t be bought. It is alloyed from the base metals of our own good qualities forged in a Crucible of Fire.
AND that Crucible can give us anguish and dread and the whole range of Negative Emotions as well as Strength - like Shadrak, Meeshak and Abednigo must have felt in the Babylonian Furnace.
True joy comes at a great price.
Why?
Because - and here Gurdjieff would agree with Rilke - True Beauty’s just the Beginning of a Terror we’re only Starting to See. The terror of standing on our own feet.
So wisdom’s a very tall order indeed.
God, he says, is Endless. So, as well, may seem His trials...
But, says Gurdjieff, if we -
Like the old people who have impressed us in our lives -
Have eaten our Black Bread early on in life -
Chances are much better we’ll be happier at its end.
But, late in his restless life, Gurdjieff seems to have wanted much more than his lonely Black Bread.
And so, unfortunately, exclusively fed his Beast:
As Charles Williams infers guardedly in his last novel, All Hallow’s Eve. -
Part of Gurdjieff's spiritual philosophy was the importance of cultivating a clear, focused mind, staying psychically awake, and giving your undivided attention to whatever activity you happened to be undertaking. That's why Gurdjieff wrote "Beelzebub's Tales" in the manner he did.
This is not light summer reading by any means. If you don't completely and intensely immerse yourself in this book and its utterly bizarre world, you'll get lost somewhere in the first paragraph. And you'll probably give up in frustration after the first few pages.
I'm not kidding. Dense sentences bursting with clauses and asides go on for line after line after line. You'll stumble across invented words that aren't defined until several chapters later. Eventually, just getting through the book becomes a battle of wills against Gurdjieff. Will you prevail, or will the book?
If you make it to the end, he probably would have welcomed you as a student of the Fourth Way. If you don't, well, there are certainly other ways to achieve inner harmony that aren't so mentally draining. I mean, I love a good challenge, and I tip my hat to Gurdjieff for creating such a dense thicket of a book, but this is truly only for a select few, with lots and lots of patience. -
At the beginning of Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, Gurdjieff discloses his purpose in its writing: "To destroy, mercilessly, without any compromises whatsoever, in the mentation and
feelings of the reader, the beliefs and views, by centuries rooted in him, about everything existing in the world."
To that end, Gurdjieff wrote one of the most baffling, infuriating, virtually unfathomable tomes on this or any other planet. At the same time, this book is illuminating,revelatory, humorous, and, at times charged with emotional energy that transmits itself to the reader. It is hard to remain merely curious about the Gurdjieff work. One tends to either reject it after a superficial overview, or delve into its life-changing depths.
Gurdjieff's ideas about the transformation of Man, the effects of that transformation upon the fate of this planet are just as vital as when he proposed them over half a century ago. If anything, these ideas are more relevant in the face of our present-day reality in this constantly shifting, ever-changing world. -
Beelzebub's Tales is a massive 1200 page epic which is equivalent to de Toqueville's Democracy in America in scope and practice. Gurdjeiff writes Beelzebub as an extraterrestrial astronaut who describes his experience with the strange and illogical inhabitants on the planet Earth. He describes every facet of human life and even details the odd beliefs held by specific cultures. Written in a style which prevents passive reading, it is a difficult volume to read through but truly rewarding and worth the effort.
One example which stood out was Beelzebub's description of the need of every American to go to Europe and how they romanticize over Paris and other European cities. The most hilarious portion of this example is Beelzebub's conversation with an American in Paris who is teaching American tourists how to dance the foxtrot. This particular American was unable to be successful in his business teaching Americans how to dance the foxtrot in New York... but because everyone wanted to go back to the US after traveling in Paris and tell their friends that they learned the foxtrot in France, this entrepreneur was making tons of money.
There are more tidbits of wisdom, humor, insightfulness and advice throughout the epic than can ever be divulged in a short review. In fact, Gurdjeiff's closest pilgrims do not initiate discussion about Beelzebub's Tales because the experience that each individual has with the book is considered beyond language, and it truly is.
The first book in Gurdjeiff's All and Everything series, his goal in the writing of this book was to remove all the many years of false experiences and hardened opinions of potential readers. I can definitely exclaim that his goal was actualized in this work. -
I read Gurdjieff’s magnum opus, Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson or An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man when in my early twenties under the tutelage of Robert Schectman, a student of Christopher Fremantle who was a student of Gurdjieff himself. I made an index of all the neologisms and special terminology Gurdjieff placed in the book and mastered the content thoroughly after reading it 8 times. The main theme that surfaces throughout the book is the core insanity of humanity underlying its penchant for creating wars. Gurdjieff turns history on its head and makes it clear that as a species we have a serious defect, suggestibility, that leads to all manner of personal and collective insanity, including war and environmental catastrophe. I was also a psychology student during those years and had just come out of the collective insanity of the Vietnam war, which, like all wars, is about the rich and powerful sending the poor to kill and be killed on the battlefield for political ideologies and financial interests. Gurdjieff struck a chord among many of us in those years who were hungry for more than the morally bankrupt social order had to offer. Little has changed since that time, and since the beginning of human history in antediluvian times. We may, in fact, be a hopeless cause and will continue down the path of our inevitable self-destruction, taking most of life on Earth with us. Gurdjieff would insist, however, that it is precisely during such trying times that those committed to personal and social transformation have the opportunity to make rapid progress in becoming liberated and growing into the higher worlds of the soul dimension. Although I was once involved with the Gurdjieff Foundation, my educational training released me from being subject to authoritarianism of any kind, which is still quite prevalent in these types of groups, and develop the courage to stand on my own, which Gurdjieff himself sought to awaken in his students. The 1931 edition has recently been released and provides a less abstruse presentation of the core ideas. Much of it makes more sense once one avails oneself of other living initiatory streams of transmission, such as that offered by certain indigenous cultures who have managed to preserve their ancient cultural knowledge, including the Mazatecan people of Central Mexico. Those who know of what I speak will find the esoteric knowledge encoded in Beelzebub’s Tales readily accessible through direct observation and experience.
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This was the last work of fiction I read in that nebulous time after going nuts, dropping out of undergraduate, and finally spending a few months wandering homeless through suburban and metropolitan Atlanta, but before being plucked up off the street (thanks to a very lucky recommendation from a professor I'll forever owe) to lead the development team at what would become Reflex Security. Eight years later, I'm rocking graduate school, as advanced professionally as anyone my age, and need likely never worry about money again. In a few thousand days, many things can will and must change; never do we step into
the same river twice, and never does it recognize the morning bather. How much of this change can we shift, set into motion, guide or manage? What is our own, what are we, what is? -- these questions power Gurdjieff's abstruse, operose work, one which I wish I'd read at a less demoralized and vitiated time in my life. Desmond Bernal wrote in
The World the Flesh and the Devil that "There are two futures, the future of desire and the future of fate, and man's reason has never learnt to separate them." Gurdjieff wants to partition the space, and comes at the problem from any number of directions. I need reread this one sometime soon. -
This is a review of printings that remain faithful to the 1950 Edition.
Gurdjieff reveals candidly in the opening pages of Beelzebub's Tales that this First Series of his writings is for the real consciousness buried within us and is intended to "destroy without mercy" the conceptions and views that have become so firmly rooted because of centuries of people living abnormally. He shows us with compelling exactness our place in the universe, our responsibility as human beings and why, despite the best efforts of sacred messengers sent to us from above, we remain tragically separated from what is most essential to the aim of human existence.
While helping us to see the harsh truth about ourselves, Gurdjieff does not leave us in the lurch. He leads us back out of the darkness and, as a kind grandfather, guides us patiently toward the light, at every step carefully watering seeds of consciousness that lie buried deeply inside us. On the long journey toward discovering Beelzebub's most subtle lessons, we are helped to feel our smallness and our partiality and to see that if we wish for real understanding, the mind alone, no matter how adroit, will never be enough.
Gurdjieff warned us in his introduction not to expect the kind of literature to which we are generally accustomed. As we try our best to penetrate to the core of Beelzebub's Tales, it turns out that we, instead, are being penetrated. The Great Beelzebub, telling stories to his grandson, leads us to rediscover in the depths of ourselves, God's quiet representative.
It became fashionable in some circles after the publication of Beelzebub's Tales, and has become even more popular of late among various people, to give commentaries, interpretations and explanations for everything Gurdjieff wrote in his book. Perhaps it's more a disease than a fashion. Interpretations and explanations are for the ordinary mind, what Gurdjieff calls, in his introduction to Beelzebub's Tales, the "fictitious consciousness." In my view, explanations that purport to render the hidden meaning of Beelzebub's Tales are not at all what Gurdjieff intended for his writings. He specifies that he was writing in a certain way to reach the subconcious. He did not explain the meaning of the book. If Gurdjieff had wanted his books explained for the benefit of the intellect, he certainly could have done that himself, and much better than anyone who has ever purported to render meanings. But in fact Gurdjieff did the exact opposite of that. It has always seemed strange to me that people who have taken up the occupation of rendering commentaries and explanations of Beelzebub's Tales, have missed that obvious point.
Anyone who approaches Beelzebub's Tales with an attitude of openness is likely to receive substantial help, though the exact manner in which one is worked on by this remarkable influence may remain something of a mystery. Familiarity with the Gurdjieff work is not necessarily a prerequisite to receiving the book's special gifts. If there is a preparation that may allow one to hear better, perhaps it is only the deep wish to be oneself, the wish to live as a normal human being. -
This is a very easy book to read. Any 12 year old immorally imbibing too much hashish could read this. Have you ever not understood a word of a hip hop artist then suddenly you catch his rhythm and hear his every word? Once you get the rhythm it is easy.
But just then - as Mike commented below about the rabbit holes - you quite quickly see this is a truly “monumental journey of a legomonism” revealing in all directions (and deeper than imaginable) a so thorough summary of: near all religions, scientific discoveries, cosmologies, chronologies, histories, archaic geographies, etc., etc., ever known to man.
And it is all wrapped up in a flowing conversational narrative of a few individuals floating inside a sci-fi story of time travel.
It is marvelous! And it is the way things will be wrote in the future as our consciousness expands hopefully to more than just sound bytes.
This book is in my top 7 for life.
[By the way, if it has countless gems of deeper wisdom you notice enshrouded in it only after reading it several times in different states, then this is not because it is hard to read but only because of the level of being of the author and, as he mentions twice in MRM: there is an archaic manner of speaking he rediscovered (though any of us who have read works before 1000 BC all know of it). It is one where every sentence is a multi-valent, multi-fauceted diamond that means several things in several fields of knowledge at once. One sees this too in most the Hindu texts. It is a lost art and he is just one of 5 maybe in this millenium who picked it back up.] -
The first 3/4 of the book were filled with fascinating insights that had me thinking about things in a different way. Before I read this book I re-read Meetings With Remarkable Men and I read Views From the Real World. I have also studied the enneagram quite extensively. As I read Beelzebub I diligently compiled a dictionary of all his special terms for things which I had to refer to constantly. Once he finished his version of the history of the world and commenced with a philosophical discussion in the last 1/4 of the book I got completely lost and could not understand it no matter what I did. There are no 4th way groups in my area (I am teaching in China) and I don't know if I will ever be able to understand this part of the book. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know
UPDATE 9/10/2014
I just finished the last quarter of the book after taking a six month break and this time it made sense to me and I was able it read it. At first I had to consult the dictionary I made of all his special terms but eventually I was able to read it without consulting it. I loved the book and I am looking forward to reading it two more times as he suggests. -
I have only read book one of this work, out of three, book one is the only having been translated into Greek. I plan to read the other two books of this work in English, later in the future.
The author has consciously and diligently tried to achieve what he said is his intention: to make us question everything that we know.
He is using a science fiction format (or is it not 100% science fiction?). To judge this work I need to first read all three parts, I also plan to read first part for a second time, may be even a third, as the author suggested.
Gurdjieff tries to depict human civilization in a way that everything has gone terribly wrong, human race having failed almost completely in most aspects of life- as- it- should- be, (humanity) having destroyed all efforts to correct this. My reservation here is that all this "failure" may be part of the tragic but deep destiny of Man. Certainly though i cannot ignore that human foolishness may be equal to human greatness....
Gurdjieff's thought certainly has revolutionary metaphysical, theological and philosophical implications. But, again, I first need to read the whole work to properly judge. -
Por lo general cuando leemos un libro, por anticipado tenemos una expectativa sobre el tema, de tal forma que al irlo leyendo esta expectativa o se va satisfaciendo y nos gusta el libro, o la expectativa cae y no nos gusta el libro. Al ver opiniones de los lectores acerca del libro, algunas lo califican como un gran libro, mientras que otras lo califican como un libro incomprensible y sin sentido. Justamente Gurdjieff inicia en el prólogo una serie de advertencias para leer este libro. No se trata de un libro común. Es un libro que requiere, como Gurdjieff lo indica, hacer a un lado nuestros conceptos pre-establecidos, y abrir o limpiar nuestra mente para comprenderlo.
La historia es profundamente alegórica, con una estructura de escritura que requiere de una gran atención, con párrafos muy largos, redactados en frases que mezclan muchos conceptos a la vez. Se podría decir que es un libro que reta nuestra capacidad, no necesariamente de lectura, sino más bien reta la manera en como usualmente (o mecánicamente como diría Gurdjieff), estructuramos nuestra percepción y con ello nuestra comprensión de la realidad.
Es un libro de más de 900 páginas, donde cada frase y cada párrafo están lleno de un contenido profundo, escrito de forma alegórica, salpicada con toques de un buen sentido del humor, y con una redacción extraña, que nos lleva, si lo permitimos, a tomar conciencia de lo que sucede en cada momento.
Aunque la historia es interesante y por momentos divertida, eso no es lo más importante; fácilmente nos podríamos dejar llevar por juicios u opiniones estereotipas, cuando la vemos solo como la historia de un extraterrestre que le cuenta historias a su nieto sobre los humanos que viven en el planeta tierra. En realidad la historia que cuenta es un telón de fondo para hablar sobre lo importante: “el todo y todas las cosas”.
Desde las perspectivas que se podría analizar esta obra, y que seguramente hay muchas, la que a mí más me interesó es la del “extraño psiquismo del hombre en la tierra”, y el porqué de su naturaleza auto-destructiva, su comportamiento mecánico, su falta de conciencia, el estado hipnótico o dormido en el que vive y que ha vivido por miles de años a lo largo de su historia. La atribución de este extraño psiquismo al tan infortunado órgano kundabuffer que nos fue implantado hace miles de años y luego retirado, con las consecuencias de que su influencia permanece aún después de retirado, es también una alegoría profunda. Quedo implantado en nosotros la tendencia a permanecer dormidos, mecánicos para no ver la realidad, que podría ser insoportable, si no estamos preparados para ello.
Sin embargo Gurdjieff plantea con optimismo, pero con un realismo objetivo que hay manera de superar estas terribles consecuencias y vivir plenamente en conciencia. Pero esto requiere mucho esfuerzo y trabajo, y también una aceptación realista de que no todos tenemos la disposición genética o la fuerza de voluntad para “el trabajo”.
Tratándose de una gran obra, hay mucho que decir, mucho que aprender, mucho que comentar, y que no cabe en una breve revisión o comentarios. Pero un breve comentario sería: se trata de una obra muy importante para entender nuestra naturaleza humana, nuestra realidad, nuestra disposición y actitud frente a la vida misma. Y como tal, al ser tan diferente a lo que estamos acostumbrados, puede resultar chocante, incoherente, fantasiosa, justo porque de eso se trata, de despertar y vernos a nosotros mismos y la realidad como es, con aceptación, con objetividad. Es un choque contra lo que estamos acostumbrados, porque justo de eso se trata. Ya con solo esto, es motivo suficiente para recomendar su lectura, pues definitivamente nos aportará algo muy positivo y bueno, siempre y cuando, estemos en la actitud y disposición de realmente quererlo. -
As indicated elsewhere, reading Colin Wilson's The Outsider when I was 21 changed my life - or at least propelled me onto a spiritual path. When I worked in Bradford (age 22) I joined a Gurdjieff Group and we studied this book. If you read it as an 'ordinary' book it will probably not make much sense. It is a representive of 'esoteric' knowledge. If you are dissatisfied with the conventional avenues to self -knowledge, the book may make sense. However, even then, it will appear frustrating unless you are open to completely re-examining your life.
Colin Wilson wrote a very readable book about Gurdieff, which is a good introduction to his ideas. -
As has been said, you must be gifted this book. It was given to me by a Gurdjieffien. It has taken several years to read. It's so many things, including a way of being. Also, Gurdjieff was a rug dealer.
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I rate this book a "5" for what it is - not because it's a real page turner. To call it even readable would be misleading. Cormac McCarthy has nothing on Gurdjieff when it comes to exhaustingly long sentences. CMC could blur the line betwixt sentence and paragraph. GIG starts there. One would not pick up, for example, the Garland (Flower Ornament) Sutra, turn to page 1, and begin. "Grandson" is the spewing of one of the great minds of the modern age. It is unique. It is a spectacle. It is a 10/5. And - like the aforementioned Buddhist Sutra - I can not say with any confidence, "Look elsewhere Seeker. Enlightenment is not to be found within these pages." (Hell, as a three-brained being afflicted by the Organ Kundabuffer, I can't say anything with confidence...)
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Easily one of the toughest-to-read books I have picked up so far. But it was so worth it.
Not often do you find a book where almost the entire first chapter is about the author trying to warn you about reading the remainder of the book only if you're 'ready' for it!
In this very chapter, he also says that his grandmother said to him once, "Eldest of my grandsons! Listen and always remember my strict injunction to you: In life never do as others do." He sure did live up to that in this book! -
I will spare myself from the deductive process of writing down my reflections, that is not what this work is intended for.
If you ever find this on your path, you will know what to do with it. -
An alien, guilty of an unnamed crime, is banished from the center of the universe to live on mars for millenia. After dilligently serving his sentence, he is permitted to return to his home planet. The alien tells his grandson about his life on mars, where he often observed the humans of earth - a race of delusional insane beings who are completely out of harmony with all existence.
This book was written in a strange way that requires the reader to "actively mentate" while reading. Very challenging for me to read, but was funny and sometimes very enlightening. -
Gurdjieff's work is some of the most valuable among the entire western "occult" tradition. This is a man who sold sparrows, painted yellow, as American Canaries, after all.
Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson is structured, from the ground up, to break habitual patterns of thought, especially with regard to how we read text. It is, in a very rea"l way, one of the first truly 'postmodern' works of art.
"Once upon a time a certain Russian, who in external appearance was to those around him a simple merchant, had to go from his provincial town on some business or other to this second capital of Russia, the city of Moscow, and his son, his favorite one – because he resembled only his mother – asked him to bring back a certain book.
When this great unconscious author of the "all-universal principle of living" arrived in Moscow, he together with a friend of his became – as was and still is usual there – "blind drunk" on genuine "Russian vodka."
And when these two inhabitants of this most great contemporary grouping of biped breathing creatures had drunk the proper number of glasses of this "Russian blessing" and were discussing what is called "public education," with which question it has long been customary always to begin one's conversation, then our merchant suddenly remembered by association his dear son's request, and decided to set off at once to a bookshop with his friend to buy the book.
In the shop, the merchant, looking through the book he had asked for and which the salesman handed him, asked its price. The salesman replied that the book was sixty kopecks.
Noticing that the price marked on the cover of the book was only forty-five kopecks, our merchant first began pondering in a strange manner, in general unusual for Russians, and afterwards, making a certain movement with his shoulders, straightening himself up almost like a pillar and throwing out his chest like an officer of the guards, said after a little pause, very quietly but with an intonation in his voice expressing great authority:
"But it is marked here forty-five kopecks. Why do you ask sixty?"
Thereupon the salesman, making as is said the "oleaginous" face proper to all salesmen, replied that the book indeed cost only forty-five kopecks, but had to be sold at sixty because fifteen kopecks were added for postage.
After this reply to our Russian merchant who was perplexed by these two quite contradictory but obviously clearly reconcilable facts, it was visible that something began to proceed in him, and gazing up at the ceiling, he again pondered, this time like an English professor who has invented a capsule for castor oil, and then suddenly turned to his friend and delivered himself for the first time on Earth of the verbal formulation which, expressing in its essence an indubitable objective truth, has since assumed the character of a saying.
And he then put it to his friend as follows:
"Never mind, old fellow, we'll take the book. Anyway we're on a spree today, and if you go on a spree then go the whole hog including the postage." " -
The quote on the back of my 3-volume boxed edition says it best: "lumbering into space like some great, flying cathedral".
To read this you must forget everything you expect from a modern novel and just dive in. A heady mix of "Paradise Lost", "Shikasta" and the Marx Brothers. The intro is tough, but once the Tales begin to work their magic you will see what Mr. Gurdjieff is trying to do. Wake you up. Worth it for the lingo alone. -
Essential primer on the works of de Selby.
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Very difficult book to read, but very very interesting point of view on the problems of modern society.
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Long winded? Yes. Intentionally convoluted? Yes. Made up words that may or may not be defined? You betcha. Tangents, inside musings, inside side tracks? Yes. This book has it all.
Gurdjieff’s masterpiece is framed as an alien named Beelzebub on a spaceship with others including his grandson Hassein as they take him home after being formerly exiled to earth’s solar system. Hassein asks him questions about his studies and his experiences on Earth, Mars, and Saturn and the beings that lived on each planet. While he does discuss his best friend who is a giant bird that lives on Saturn, most of the book is about his observations and critiques of humanity.
Even after reading several books by authors about Gurdjieff’s teachings, I still feel like I was unprepared for this. He is quoted as saying he intentionally wrote it difficult as he believed people would not appreciate and take in knowledge unless they worked for it. He succeeded in making it difficult.
There are a few themes of of areas he discusses where he critiques and points out the absurdities of society, culture, art, different cultures, religions. He also explains his more scientific theories on astronomy, physics, and cosmology. Lastly, he explains what he most well known for, he description of the problems and solutions of human psychology. I have to admit, I enjoyed the psychological topics the most and had difficulty understanding or appreciating his scientific theories.
An objective of the book he explicitly stated was to shock the reader as to the absurdity of humanity and our shared collective subjective world. He uses an alien as the main character to allow the reader to have distance between themselves and humanity and try to look at things more objectively. I think he succeeds in that, as the fresh perspective he brings allows one to see things in a new light.
Some highlights are that ancient humans had an organ added to their bodies to avert a cataclysm which was later removed. However the damage was done to their decedents, with the side effects that we experience envy, hatred, and cannot perfect ourselves like other beings. This is the cause for most of humanity’s problems. The fix for this is to keep in mind the inevitability of one’s own death and the inevitable death of every person you will ever meet.
Despite all this, I did enjoy the book, however his ideas are more clearly and thoroughly explained by Ouspensky.
