Talks on Beelzebub's Tales
See review by Pierce Butler
Paperback • 152 pages •
New Edition! Back in print after three years.
New Material Added.
New Foreword by Anthony Blake, author of The Intelligent Enneagram.
When Bennett first read All and Everything: Beelzebub's
Tales to His Grandson in 1948, he was convinced that it
would have a powerful impact on all who came across it.
He regarded it as a work of superhuman genius, containing
expressions of reality which, by their very nature, were bound
to make severe demands on any reader.
With Gurdjieff's approval, he undertook a series of lectures in
London, between 1949 and 1974, focusing on the essential
meaning of Beelzebub's Tales. Those talks have been
collected here.
More than commentaries, these "talks" are an invitation
into the deeper meanings of Gurdjieff's enigmatic "tales"
to his grandson.
Given during the last year of Gurdjieff's life and into
the 1950s, this collection of talks by JG Bennett was
compiled and arranged soon after the last years of
Bennett's life by his student and close associate,
Anthony Blake. Now, thirty-years after that initial
compilation, Blake, an accomplished author and
acknowledged philosopher, gives us, in his compelling
new foreword, many remarkable and contemporary insights
into the visionary message of Gurdjieff's three series of
writings, All and Everything, for which
Beelzebub's Tales is the first.
Although Bennett's talks - given with the approval
and encouragement of Gurdjieff - were intended by Bennett
to be a companion to reading and understanding Gurdjieff's
masterwork, Anthony Blake's timely new foreword allows
even those unfamiliar with Gurdjieff's Tales to
begin a journey into the depth of its meaning.
"[A strong] contradiction in Gurdjieff's
writings is that, while claiming contemporary humans are
almost entirely mechanical and living in illusion, he
also claimed that his writings of themselves could
destroy their illusions. This is at face value absurd.
But, this kind of absurdity is one of the main themes of
[Beelzebub's Tales]. Just as he once claimed that
two hundred conscious men and women could prevent war on
earth, so it might be that we need to understand a deep
and far-reaching principle, that conscious influences
could change things in a way that is qualitative rather
than quantitative. Bennett says some interesting things
in his talks about this, when he argues for the power of
ideas.
"The value may be that the whole thing is an apparatus
for transmitting a signal, a signal that summons those
able to respond and shows them how to wake up and assume
their true destiny."
_Anthony Blake,
from his new foreword in Bennett Books new edition
of JG Bennett's Talks on Beelzebub's Tales.
J.G. Bennett=Author
Review by Pierce Butler
DESCRIPTION: This is a collection of
JG Bennett's writings about All and Everything
(Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson) dating from
two different periods of his life: from 1950 at Coombe
Springs when the memory of working intensely with Mr.
Gurdjieff was still fresh; and from 1974 when he was
engaged in another experiment in communal work at
Sherbourne House.
Tony Blake's introduction points out the essentially
modern form of All and Everything, locates it
among the works of modernist writers like Joyce and
Beckett, and establishes connections with remote sources
like the Mathnawi of Jelalludin Rumi. Bennett's
approach to the book is based on Gurdjieff's conception
of understanding, a process that involves feeling and
sensing as well as thinking. The complexity of All
and Everything is intended to activate in the reader
a certain kind of inner effort, and Bennetts's writings
are invaluable for their recognition of what is required
in order to engage with this complexity. Although the
editor believes that All and Everything is a
"mythological text" that baffles traditional
exegesis, his organization of Mr. Bennett's writings
under 4 main subheadings (History, Cosmology, Cosmogony,
and Work) corresponds roughly to the traditional stages
of biblical exegesis: historical, allegorical, anagogical,
and moral.
Bennett begins by clarifying a central theme or imperative
that animates the book: the awakening of human beings to
the sense and meaning of the own existence and the
acceptance of the necessity for conscious labor and
intentional suffering as an integral part of a responsible
life.
The writings on "History" deal with the
approach required by the difficulties of All and
Everything and with Gurdjieff's intention in writing
it. Reflections on Gurdjieff's representation of human
history lead to a discussion of the lessons about the
historical process that his book contains. In
"Cosmology," Bennett outlines Gurdjieff's
conception of creation and the fundamental cosmic
processes that underlie evolution. "Cosmogony"
deals with creation in more detail, describing the
fundamental cosmic laws and the changes in their
functioning that lead to a cosmos dependent on reciprocal
maintenance - and to the possibilities of self-perfecting
for three-brained beings. Part of Gurdjieff's intention
is to impress upon the reader that we live in a world
pervaded by uncertainty and that uncertainty - and the
intelligence it calls into play - is the necessary
condition of personal transformation.
The writings on "Work" discuss the rationale
and the methods of the inner work presented in
Beelzebub. Of particular interest is the concept
of djartkolm - waking up - which can be brought about
artificially through external means or as a result of
one's own intentional efforts. In the essay on
Being-Partk-Dolg-Duty (which is virtually identical to a
talk recorded by Bennett under the title "Conscious
Labor & Intentional Suffering"), he returns to one
of the central ideas of All and Everything;
service to future humanity by work on oneself in the
present.
QUOTATIONS:
--"Gurdjieff's elaborate symbolism, uncouth
neologisms, and changes of terminology were not adopted
to mislead and distract his followers, but to ensure that
they would make the effort to discover the meanings for
themselves."
--"To change myself is a practical objective; to
change the world is not merely an unrealizable ideal, it
is a violation of universal laws."
--"Nothing can be done by outward force - everything
can be done by inner strength."
--"The spiritual world begins from the whole,
whereas the material world begins from the part."
--"Life...has the peculiar power of bridging the gulf
between the separate atomic world of physical phenomena
and the universal world beyond individuation...life is the
bridge and we are part of life."
--"The price for something new to come into the
world is uncertainty, danger, and insecurity."
--"Evil is...not something fighting against good, but
that which has to be rejected in order to allow the good
to fulfill itself."
--"If we use our creative power for ourselves, it
destroys us. If we sacrifice ourselves in order to serve
the creative power, then it creates us."
--"Any view of human existence that denies or
weakens the reality of the choice between life and death
defrauds man of the very knowledge that can set him
free."
--"Air can be for us a representation of the
limitless compassion by which everything is supported.
In reality, air is that compassion; it has the qualities
we ascribe to it not by virtue of our thinking but in a
way far more concrete than we can imagine."
--"Conscious labors must always come under the
requirement of acting without regard to the fruits of
action...it is only when we do what has to be done simply
because it has to be done that work can liberate us from
our own egoism."
--"Our minds cannot grasp that we can be, at one and
the same time, unique individuals with unique individual
wills and also be sharers in the collective will of human
society or life and even the will of the source of
everything existing, the will of God."
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Part One: The Arousing of Thought
Prologue: remembering Mr. Gurdjieff as a
teacher in Paris
A Study: use of symbol, myth, and verbal formulae;
outline of humans' place in the universe and the
opportunity offered by the acceptance of responsibility.
Part Two: History
Glimpses of the Truth: the need to engage
actively with Mr. Gurdjieff's book and to make an effort
that is not exclusively intellectual in order to benefit
from it.
The Arousing of Thought: Gurdjieff's intention in writing; necessity to reject the fatal suggestibility of the "three-brained beings" and to take a stand on the basis of one's own efforts and understanding; the teacher is necessary, but only the student can do the work; the necessity of unremitting struggle in the realistic hope of achieving transformation.
The Scenario: summary of the "action" of All & Everything; the force of ideas; cosmological underpinnings - the threat to the Universe of the "merciless Heropass" and the implications of the solution, "mutual feeding," for the existence of beings capable of conscious action.
Beelzebub as Historian: Gurdjieff's representation of history; Sumerian and Babylonian civilizations; war and Solioonensius.
The Reconciling Force in History: pernicious nature of dualism in religion and government; necessity of understanding the role of the reconciling force in world affairs; episodes in All & Everything illustrate wrong and right ways of influencing events; force of ideas superior to material resources; only inner conscious work can produce external change.
Part Three: Cosmology
Harnelmiatznel-Blending: application of the principle of harnelmiaztnel ("the higher blends with the lower to actualize the middle") to existence of life on earth; three levels: life, that which is below life, that which is beyond life. What is life for?
The Significance of Evolution: 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Is the universe running down? Insights from Zoroastrianism.
Harnelmiatznel-Transformation of Substance: alternation in the functioning of the Law of Three, one of the two universal laws, gives rise to reciprocal maintenance of everything that exists. Various analogies: the process of digestion, sexual procreation, the development of an esoteric school.
Theomertmalogos, Energies, and Etherokrilno: difficulty of understanding the spiritual realm. Explanation in terms of energies, worlds, centers, levels of consciousness. Gurdjieff's representation of creation. Three forces. Privation: separation from the Source. The role of life and consciousness in the cosmic scheme.
Part Four: Cosmogony
Holy Planet Purgatory: diminution of possibilities of Sun Absolute; introduction of renewal and hazard; uncertainty and intelligence; changes in the working of Laws of Three and Seven; Autoegocrat to Trogoautoegocrat; theomertmalogos as reconciling force; development of suns and planets; three-brained beings; psychological meaning of purgatory; possibility of self-perfecting.
Merciless Heropass: origins of Gurdjieff's cosmology in Zoroastrianism; dualism vs. the concept of a single source; Heropass and Zurvan; Buddhism vs. Gurdjieff's concept of self-renewal.
Law of Sevenfoldness: two views: qualities vs. process; need to unify views in experience; stages in artistic creation, in inner work; importance of "taste" in understanding the stages.
Part Five: Work
Work on Oneself: first liberation is the realization of one's own nothingness; test of real teaching; necessary to avoid asceticism; Law of Three applied to work upon oneself; roles of the three centers in work triad.
Conscience: conscience the sole hope of humankind; distinction between conscience and morality; conscience excluded from consciousness; awakening of conscience through conscious labor and intentional suffering.
Union with the Source: possibility of "accelerated results" of efforts; why is salvation possible only for the few?
Sacred Askokin, Abrustdonis, and Helkdonis: three products of conscious work; askokin associated with a cosmic purpose, helkdonis with purification of individual being; editor's note: abrustdonis represents second being food - air - in unpublished version of All and Everything.
Djartklom: striving to reblend of 3 elements of Okidanokh; spontaneous waking up; remorse of conscience; artificial djartklom; wish to work; samadhi.
Being-Partk-Dolg-Duty: air as a concrete representation of the spiritual world; conscious labor defined; kinds of suffering; unavoidable suffering; voluntary and intentional suffering; examples of Buddha, Muhammad, and Christ; work for the future.
Part Six: Reality
Cataclysm Not According to Law: division of humankind into two streams; absence of 'I'; role of education; masters and slaves; nature of 'I'; we are "children of a Common Father"; psychostatic and psychokinetic orders of society; importance of roles.
Fragments: definition of terms: remorse of conscience, cognized attention, okidanokh, self-perfection; connections between All and Everything and Third Series; being-partk-dolg-duty and psychokinetic work.
Epilogue: Gurdjieff's last days in Paris.
WHO SHOULD READ:
Bennett writes from his personal experience of working
with Gurdjieff and from the extensive research on
religious traditions that informs his own books. His
writings on All and Everything will serve to
introduce Gurdjieff's book to the beginner who may be
intimidated by the style and by the unfamiliarity of the
language and to draw together its central themes for
those who have struggled with its complexity. Bennett
reveals the personal circumstances informing Gurdjieff's
elaborate allegory and draws on his own wide experience
to mine the text for practical guidance on inner work.
QUESTIONS:
--What is life for?
--Why is salvation possible only for the few?
--How is one to approach the reading of All and Everything?
--Do Gurdjieff's writings contain practical guidance for inner work?
CONNECTIONS/RELATED WORKS:
All and Everything
Needs of a New Age Community
Hazard
The Sevenfold Work
