Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson: All and Everything, First Series

This is one of the best works of spirituality ever written. Gurdjieff admits in his forward ("The Arousing of Thought"'s Warning to the reader) that he tried conveying his "wiseacring" in a straightforward, "newsworthy" manner but found that it failed miserably. So, being enamored his entire life by both the form and content of the "1001 Nights", he tried another approach. The genius of his writing is that it not only imparts information to you the reader, but performs or enacts the "cosmic principles" he's discussing in the very way the sentences are constructed (which many people find extremely difficult, overloaded, and dense). But his book was intentionally composed in a rhythmic & musical fashion. The sentences have distinct cadences (many of them have multiple embedded clauses) which when read aloud, as Gurdjieff recommends, are apt to put one in a strange state of mind. It takes a while to acclimatize oneself to the rhythm, but once one does it becomes easier to intuit--with something other than the "intellectual center"--the ideas behind the words. His neologisms are also meant to dislocate, but they are simply combinations of Russian, Armenian, and newlyminted words.About the content: Gurdjieff's system is often lumped in with many other fads and gurus' elixirs under the moniker "new age". Which is ironic, considering that these ways of being are apparently thousands of years old. But what feel-good new age movement starts with the axiom that human beings are basically in varying degrees of a hypnotic state, possessing only a shred of what Western philosophies call free will? (and that shred only "awakens" sometimes in "peak experiences" when the three centers work together--mortal danger, sexual union, etc., when the ego drops away). Yet this axiom is not asked to be taken on "faith" by Gurdjieff. His is a hard-headed empiricism--indeed, he thought most of humanity incapable of "faith". He never claimed sagehood nor superhuman powers of himself, and was quite satisfied to turn people away and even shock them with behavior at odds with the European conception of a guru. One can only really grasp Gurdjieff's starting point--"Man is asleep"-- by either already being convinced of this truth, or by doing experiments in conscious attention to convince one such.

When Gurdjieff discovered that his institute would fall short of accomplishing his aims and his condition after a severe automobile accident forced - or bookmarked - a re-evaluaton of what he must do, he turned to writng and produced this "Magnum Opus." He remarked that it was a javalin hurled into the future. I have read the book 3 times, and portions repeatedly, and contrary to the remarks of certain reviewers, I and others giving favorable reviews are not gullible. It took me three decades to see this issue in its true light, and the more I understand, the more I see I have a long way to go. The book is a legominism, to use Gurdjieff's own technical term defined in the text. It exists on several levels, and on occassion I have been able to verify that for myself by the perceptivity of its deeper currents. Actually I will be the first to confess that you cannot tell much about this book by the reviews. The reviews - pro and con - tell much more about their authors than they do about this book. That should be expected. Even my own review reminds me of Beelzebub's description of our species as those unfortunate three-brained beings that breed and multiply upon the face of that ill-fated planet Earth. Gurdjieff held up a mirror, and reviewers - including myself - seem eager to show our faces in it. Without question this is the most important work ever written on the issue of stopping wars, and that singular observation alone among many other comparable ones is sufficient to validate Leary's comment that this is the most important work produced in the twentieth century. But because of its inaccessibility to many audiences, I would also include Ouspensky's account of Gurdjieff's teaching, "In Search of the Miraculous," on a par with it. Ouspensky's book may actually be more important immediately, but ultimately Gurdjieff's Beelzebub's Tales will emerge to its true stature among segments of our posterity. Gurdjieff knew and stated that there was no hope for current generations. Without this javalin hurled into the future, there would be no hope at all.

But the taste for this text is, in my opinion, very worth acquiring. The comparisons that come most readily are to Moby-Dick, The Faerie Queene, and to Blake at his best. But I've read this book three times in less than two years; the others only once. This book, my friend, can be addictive.Obviously, not everyone feels compelled to read difficult books again and again. If you don't feel up to reading 1,238 pages of legitimate weirdness (in a good sense) repeatedly, with full attention, then this book is probably not for you.However, I wholeheartedly recommend this book for the patient, the openminded, and the good-humored. You won't regret the effort. I agree with the reviewer below: Once you've finished this, you'll understand what it is you've taken in.It should also be noted that Gurdjieff's sense of humor is more subtle than one might think. He repeatedly toys with the expectations of his reader in ideosyncratic ways that might be easily missed without a heads-up.Cheers!

Gurdjieff's "Beelzebub Tales to His Grandson" is not your everyday type book. Its intentions are not to entertain, but to shock the reader into conscious awareness of the many mechanisms that control his/her own life. Ions after his fall from heaven we find Beelzebub completely transformed through experience into the wisest of beings. In a interplanetary mission to keep our galaxy in order, Beelzebub makes use of a delay to teach his grandson about many things of importance, and especially about those strange beings on the planet earth. The funny thing is that the reader becomes the grandson, and it is Gurdjieff whom teaches us about the reality of our unconscious "living". It is a book not intended to be an easy read, the book demands us to make great conscious efforts to understand the content and to keep alert. However, any effort put into the book is petty in comparison to the gain. "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson" gives us a choice to remain the automatons we are, or to take a step into realizing our potential as conscious beings. It is one of the most important books...ever.

The first page of the first chapter is enough to chase off the faint-minded; the series of dependent clauses alone could serve to tutor government and insurance attorneys on the use of detailed language. For those who are willing to take the Friendly Advice which appears a few pages prior, however, and persist, this "weighty tome" will reward them richly. No simple review can cover this work. It has stayed with me for 23 years with no diminution in its power to inspire hope, and cut -mercilessly- through cherished nonsense. When one considers that it is a tale of Universal and Terrestrial events told by a Significant Participant, it becomes easier to understand the long-time hold this book can have on even the widely-read. This book takes up a lot of space. What you take away from working your way through this masterpiece naturally depends on your experience and your ability to let it speak in the author's language. It's difficulty is more like that of listening to someone with a heavy accent; eventually, you can get used to it. You can laugh out loud, and you can gain insights, and you can come away with a certain humility. Some may feel as if they acquired a new friend; others may end up looking like a hunted man. Maybe it depends on how well one remembers. I've been through it twice. So far, Life has not invalidated it. I've never once seen it for sale as a used book.