Welcome back to this tour through G. I. Gurdjieff’s Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson. Beelzebub has just told his grandson, Hassein, who is interested in the ‘three-brained’ beings that inhabit the planet Earth – that is, humans – a rather strange story about the circumstances surrounding his first descent to that planet, when he went to sort out the mess that a member of his tribe had created on the continent of Atlantis. If we recall, it would seem, according to my personal take on it anyway, that Beelzebub’s tale was some kind of allegorical warning not to embark on wholesale changes to your being without being fully aware of, and taking into account, all of the ‘parts’ that make up your ‘whole’. This next section kind of enlarges on that concept. It is a very important passage as it forces the reader to reconsider how he or she perceives Time. Why is that so important? Well, once we see time for what it really is, it opens up a whole new way of looking at the world around us, and, through that, equips us to better handle tricky situations. Oh, and there’s also a bit more about what many esoteric traditions call the ‘Astral’ body.
Beelzebub begins by talking about how the mechanics of the solar system have dictated humanity’s concept of Time: Earth describes an orbit around the Sun to give one year, the Moon describes an orbit around the Earth to give one month; the duality of night/day occurs approximately 30 times during one month to give days in a month. This also works by extrapolating outwards; so, one hundred orbits of the Earth around the Sun gives one century, a thousand orbits gives a millennium, and so on. What Gurdjieff/Beelzebub doesn’t mention is that the ‘outwards’ extrapolation (centuries, millennia, etc.) only really works since humanity has started calculating years from the birth of Christ (and, even then, in the Christian tradition of the West), which is a shame, because it would help his argument about how artificial our measurement of Time by these criteria actually is.
Beelzebub also talks about how days are divided into hours, hours into minutes, and minutes into seconds, but, again, fails to mention that these divisions are absolutely nothing to do with the mechanics of the cosmic machine. They exist because 24 (hours) is divisible by 12 which is divisible by lots of numbers (2,3,4,6) as opposed to, say 10 (2,5), and therefore lends itself to breaking down evenly into smaller units. I, personally, suspect that the fact there are 4 seasons also fits into this somewhere (as does 360 degrees in a circle), but that’s another topic. The point here is, though, that humanity puts a lot of emphasis on hours, minutes, and seconds even though they are totally artificial, man-made constructs.
What Beelzebub is actually saying here is that Time, in and of itself, does not exist.What we call Time, he says, is actually the totality of the results ensuing from all the cosmic phenomena present in a given place (those are his actual words in the book). As I’ve tried to convey in previous installments of this series, what Gurdjieff is articulating here is what, in quantum terms, can be called the particle-dance, the way everything is ‘changing’ (and by that I mean changing in any way: getting bigger, smaller, faster, slower, hotter, colder, anything) at a sub-atomic level. Because of that, he goes on, what we call Time cannot be measured by Reason or Sense. It can only truly be measured by making comparisons to everything around us. Simply put, I can’t attribute my graying hair and failing eyesight to a concept called ‘getting older’ or ‘the passage of time’ because that would imply everything around me is falling to bits at the same rate as my body; which is simply not the case: the avocado tree I planted is growing bigger, my grandson is producing teeth, and so on. This is not the passing of time as humans see it. It is the eternal dance of creation at a sub-atomic level. It is, if you want to put it in Beelzebub’s terms, the Cosmic Law unfolding in Cosmic Phenomena which are all around us and which direct All and Everything whether we can perceive them with our five senses or not.
Wow, that’s all a bit heavy, but I hope I’ve explained myself clearly enough. In essence, Gurdjieff is asking us to stop looking at Time as some kind of linear dimension as it affects us personally, and try to see it as the Unfolding of the Universe as a whole. He goes on to expand the concept out to the cosmic level:
All phenomena, Gurdjieff has Beelzebub explain to Hassein, are ‘fractions’ of a greater machine arising on the Most Holy Sun Absolute. Well, we’re on firmer ground here and this is nothing particularly new. Everything is interconnected, he is saying, and, whatever changes are occurring in your immediate environment are part of the changes that are occurring everywhere so that it all adds up together to one overarching purpose. Chaos theorists get this idea, and explain that however big a local mess looks to your limited perspective, when it’s added to, and taken into account with, loads of other complete messes in other places, some sort of overarching order and/or purpose can be discerned. The ancient Stoic philosophers believed in a Universe that was unfolding according to a predetermined plan, well beyond the power of humans to change, and their solution was to achieve a fortress-like state of mind so that whatever happened to you – good or bad – wouldn’t knock you about too much. But I’m not sure that Gurdjieff’s take on the unfolding of the Universe is quite that deterministic. Oh sure, everything’s interconnected, and the whole thing is one big machine, but I’ve the feeling that he’s offering the possibility that the ‘part’ you play in the machine as an individual is negotiable, depending on how much effort you are prepared to put in on yourself; so that you can, if you try hard enough, change the role that you play in the machine’s overall performance. In other words, you can go from being one of many tiny cog-wheels necessary for keeping the machine on the road, to being a steering wheel that helps direct it (at least that’s what Beelzebub implies when he talks about various Archangels and such who started off as normal three-brained beings and ended up as governors and directors of various quadrants of the Cosmos).
Beelzebub calls the ‘Chief Cosmic Law’ of the unfolding of All and Everything the Heptaparaparshinokh (in the name of which can be glimpsed our old mate the Law of Sevens which is explained in far greater detail later in the work). The concept of misperceiving the particle-dance of perpetual change as Time, is referred to in the book as The Heropass and Beelzebub describes it as ‘merciless’. By this, I think Gurdjieff is implying, a bit like the Stoics, that the Universe operates under some very stringent rules. We can’t do anything about the rules themselves – because they are set and immutable – but we can do something about our own existence within the Universe. If, Gurdjieff, through Beelzebub, is saying, we make the effort to understand the rules that govern the unfolding of the Universe, we can, by working on ourselves, earn some wriggle room. The rules state that change will eventually overtake our physical bodies until they no longer function and we ‘die’. What Gurdjieff is saying is that if we work long and hard enough on ourselves, we can ‘coat’ ourselves with another type of body – the Astral – that is not subject to the same type of ‘change’ as the physical body.
Anyway, back to the relativity of time. Loads of ancient writers have worked out that different creatures must have a different perception of this Heropass or ‘concept of Time’ because their physical bodies decay at a different rate to those of humans; to each thing its season, kind of thing. I say ‘worked out’, because they’d observed, for instance, a dog, go through its stages of puppy, adult dog, and old dog much faster (roughly seven times faster) than a human being. They’d also seen that same dog pass through the stages of disobedient, soppy, licking-machine when young, through alert, dedicated work animal when adult, to grumpy, fire-hugging grey-muzzle when old. They’d seen that same dog happy, sad, cold, hot, hungry, sated, and just about everything else a human feels, and so had assumed that all other creatures are exposed to the same bodily changes, moods, and appetites as humans and dogs for – and this is the crucial bit – however long their physical bodies took to ‘die’; that is, the leading edge of change passed the stage where that body could be sustained any longer. The assumption is that whether we are talking about mayflies, which live for a single day, or the Red Sea Urchin, which can keep going for over 200 years, each thing – if permitted to reach its potential – that is doesn’t get eaten or squashed, or whatever – will experience what every other thing experiences; infancy, adulthood, old age, anger, sadness, happiness, etc. etc. Well, that’s a pretty big assumption, and there are some obvious flaws in it, but, for now, it will do, so that we can move on with how Gurdjieff employs that kind of thinking.
So, Beelzebub has explained to Hassein that you can only really explain what people think of as Time, by perceiving how everything around them – themselves included – is changing. I guess it’s like answering the question ‘What’s the time?’ in terms of a flower clock, e.g. rather than saying: “It’s 3:00 pm,” you say: ”The Pot Marigold has closed,’ and, crucially, you actually think of the time of day in those terms. The next step, continues, Beelzebub, is to realise that all things perceive time to be flowing in an identical fashion; because it’s just a matter of scale. So, a mayfly and a dog each pass through infancy, adulthood, and old age. To a human observing this, the Mayfly has passed through all three stages in one day while the dog has taken 14 years, but the process is relative. The one day and the 14 years are irrelevant. To the mayfly, it has lived just as complete a life in one day, as the dog feels it has done in 14 years. It is the experience that is undergone that is important; the changes. For both Mayfly and dog there has been more than adequate time for birth, procreation, death, and, if you want to stretch it that far, all the intangibles in-between: happiness, sorrow, good and bad luck, and so on. The inference is that, for a bored mayfly, time will appear to drag just as much as it would for a bored dog or human. Beelzebub calls this ‘artificial’ standard unit of time the Egokoolnatsnarnian-sensation but we don’t need to bother too much about the terminology at this point.
Once Hassein has got his head around the concept that Time is simply continuous change and that it is how that change is experienced that really matters, Beelzebub ups the stakes by using Hassein himself as an example to illustrate the relativity of time. Beelzebub explains to his grandson that Cosmic Law dictates their home planet, Karatas, revolves around its own sun 389 times to Earth’s one. Therefore, Hassein is 12 years old in Karatas terms, but, in Earth terms, he has reached the magnificent age of 4,668 (12 x 389). Nevertheless – and this is a big nevertheless – he is still a 12 year old child with all the emotional and spiritual immaturity that goes with that territory. My feeling is that Gurdjieff has included this to reinforce the concept of relativity so that he can transition onto the real purpose of all this talk, which comes next:
Human beings, says Beelzebub, originally had the potential to live very long lives, similar to every other three-brained race in the Universe (including Beelzebub’s own tribe), but, initially through no fault of their own – although afterwards definitely through their own refusal to toe the cosmic line – Great Nature had to intervene to restore the cosmic balance. How did it all go wrong? Well, apparently, there are two principles that govern the duration of ‘being-existence’; that is, a creature’s lifespan. The first is called the Foolasnitamnian principle (don’t be put off by Gurdjieff’s weird-sounding names – they probably mean something but I haven’t got a clue what) and it applies only to three-brained beings (of which humans are a type). This principle dictates that three-brained beings somehow transmute certain cosmic substances necessary for the ‘common-cosmic Trogoautoegocratic-process’ – that’s the whole shebang – the functioning of the entire multiverses – to continue. In other words, three-brained beings have to somehow ‘convert’ certain substances (not named at this stage in the book) that provide ‘fuel’ to keep the whole of creation going – a bit like a tree taking taking in carbon-dioxide and converting it to lovely oxygen. The second principle is called the Itoklanos principle, and it is exactly the same concept except that it applies only to one- and two-brained creatures who also ‘convert’ certain cosmic substances but – and this is important – only for the solar system (or even single planet) in or on which they arise.
So, poor old humanity, on the back foot already because of a developmental cock-up perpetrated during the formation of the solar system, had the organ kundabuffer installed in order to repress any yearnings to a higher spirituality until some sort of order had been reimposed. The Kundabuffer was eventually removed from the species, but, as we learned in the last installment, it had some nasty behavioural after effects which also served to put a brake on self-betterment. As a three-brained species, humans were obliged to observe the Foolasnitamnian principle, as a result of which, any individual could ‘coat’ their physical body with another type of body called the body-Kesdjan or Astral body. Only once in possession of this type of body, does a human being gain the freedom to break the physical bonds that tie him or her to this planet. A key ingredient in following the Foolasnitamnian principle was to ‘completely perfect one’s Reasoning’. Now, it’s still pretty early on in the work, so I can’t go into too much detail here, but what is being suggested is this:
Gurdjieff is taking the ataraxia, the ultimate calm and serene state of the Stoic sapiens or wise-man, to a whole new level. Whereas the Stoics believed the pay-off for controlling emotion through the application of Reason was to not let getting kicked in the teeth by life affect you too much, Gurdjieff is saying that the very act of applying Reason; that is, the mental and spiritual energy you expend in an effort to cut through the mist and see everything as it truly is, and acknowledge the continuous change of everything around you, the particle-dance, and let that dictate your actions and state, actually generates a substance that becomes a part of you and coats you with an Astral body. This is heap big medicine! I ought to warn you at this point that the Astral body is not the be-all-and-end-all of human developmental potential. There’s more, but we’ll deal with that when we get to it.
Right, back to humanity’s woes. You’ll hopefully recall that the first catastrophe to befall the Earth was a comet collision that broke off two fragments from the fledgling planet: the Moon and another chunk called Anulios. Although humanity had nothing to do with that event, it posed a massive problem as life on Earth had to somehow ‘provide’ for its satellites with emanations. Humans, however, gradually ceased to emanate the vibrations necessary for the maintenance of the Moon and Anulios. Moreover, they had started destroying beings of other forms on the planet, thereby depleting Great Nature of what it needed to maintain the local planet and solar system. This meant that Nature had to implement the second principle (Itoklanos – designed for one- and two-brained creatures) to make good the deficit, so that the requisite quality and quantity of vibrations could be re-balanced. Accordingly, the inference is that humanity’s life-span was considerably diminished. It’s not particularly well explained at this point in the work, but Beelzebub does promse to expand later on the principle of Itoklanos for the benefit of Hassein.
Although humanity’s shortened lifespan was not originally its own fault, Beelzebub tells Hassein that it hasn’t helped itself by developing abnormal conditions of ordinary being-existence. He implies that humanity has become totally unaware and neglectful of its responsibilities where it concerns cosmic maintenance (the upkeep of All and Everything). Reason, says, Beelzebub, is totally lacking, and, in a passage that is strikingly relevant to today’s world of super-heated summers, wild storms, rising sea-levels, antibiotic resistant bugs, deadly new disease outbreaks, famine and war, he tells Hassein that humanity is totally blind to its responsibility even where it touches on the cosmic phenomena that affect its own planet.
Wow, what a section that was! Some really meaty stuff in there, but I’ll wind up this episode with a couple more observations. Firstly, where it concerns the wider intent of this Ancient Self-Help website, the concept of seeing time as change is very useful. If you can get your head around the bigger picture you have a chance at understanding how and why your life is unfolding the way it is. Whatever happens to you – good or bad – try to step back and look at what is changing around you. If you can also identify why it is changing, you are nearly there. And if it all looks like a complete and utter mess, don’t despair. Remember chaos theory: out of even the biggest messes, somewhere, at some time, some thing, some order, will shake itself out. That was the point of all the mess in the first place.
Secondly, I need to point out that Gurdjieff, through, Beelzebub, is employing a serious carrot and stick tactic in this section about the relativity of time. The reason for mentioning the two principles – Foolasnitamnian and Itaklanos – is to warn us against regressing spiritually and psychically to the level of beasts. That threat is counter-balanced by the promise of relative immortality which can come about when we develop our higher bodies, something that can only occur through the energy generated as we exercise Reason.
I’d better leave it at that as I’ve rattled on more than long enough on this page. The next section I’ll deal with is called The Arch-Absurd. Join me there to find out why.
