Welcome back to this tour through G. I. Gurdjieff’s Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson.
We have arrived at the penultimate chapter of Book 1 in this series, entitled The organization for man’s existence created by the Very Saintly Ashiata Shiemash. It’s a pretty long chapter and, as the title suggests, it deals with how Ashiata Shiemash went about setting up the structure that would help him fulfil his mission to shake humankind out of its aeons long lethargy and finally take its place amongst the other fully functioning three-brained beings of the Multiverse. There are all sorts of undercurrents swirling beneath the surface text of this section of the work, which I’ll do my best to point out as we travel through it, but, be warned, some of the implications are not very pleasant, especially if we are still not prepared to pull out our finger and start doing some work on ourselves. We are, after all, getting to the nitty-gritty of this first book, the business end of what Gurdjieff, through Beelzebub, has been building up to, so it’s hardly surprising that his message to us is becoming increasingly urgent.
The very opening passage carries a stark reminder to us all that unless we manage, through our own efforts, to unify the three separate strands of the Okidanokh with which we are born, and, through the ‘Unified I’ that we become once our centres are working together in concert, begin to coat ourselves with our higher-being bodies by, essentially, transforming energy, then it is curtains for us as the individuals we perceive ourselves to be. The All and Everything, a massive anti-entropy device whose continued existence depends on a constant stream of energy that has been recycled into reusable ‘fuel’ for its own upkeep, has no use for degraded energy that has not been put through the ‘purification’ process. We all start out in life with equal potential to work on ourselves. Some do, many don’t. Those who do, acquire the potential to move up to the next level. Those who don’t, stagnate and disappear. In a way it’s like a financial institution that needs a certain level of return from its investments to survive as a company. It gives an equal amount of investment capital to each of its employees. Some employees work hard at it, doing their research and making sure that each decision is the right decision, increasing what they have been given for the good of the organisation. Other employees do nothing with their investment capital, frittering away their days on long lunches and messing around on the computer. This does nothing for the organisation, so the employee is released and their investment capital retrieved and given to a new employee in the hope that they will turn out to be better at contributing to the company’s overall success and survival. That’s how it works with the All and Everything. If you don’t put in the hard yards, you cease to exist. It’s as simple as that.
On that bit of a downer, let’s take a look at how Beelzebub gets the same message across in the opening couple of paragraphs of this chapter. Ashiata Shiemash, he says, finally figured out a plan of action on how to get humanity to awaken its Objective-Consciousness so that it became an inalienable part of everyday existence. Descending from the mountain Veniziama, Ashiata avoided Babylon and went instead to a place called Djoolfapal, the capital city of a central Asian country called Kurlandtech. There he established contact with a kind of monastic order called the brotherhood Tchaftantouri, a name signifying ‘To-be-or-not-to-be-at-all’ which pretty much encapsulates what we have already been talking about above; that is, you have a choice to either work on yourself and exist, or to not work on yourself and cease to exist.
This brotherhood, says Beelzebub, had been founded by two ‘genuine’ initiates who, having realised that their internal wiring was somehow wrong, had set out to find within themselves the means to put it right. To help with this, they sought out others – mostly from monasteries – who were feeling this same kind of inner disconnect, so that together they might find a solution. In this way, the brotherhood Tchaftantouri was formed. Now this, of course, is a way of describing the ‘seekers’, those amongst us who feel that there must be more to the lives we are leading and our relationship with the multiverse, and somehow know that we can rewire ourselves if only we try. We know the key to our inner growth lies within us, but we very often have no idea where to look to find the person or knowledge, the locksmith, that will help us find the keyhole into which it fits. What Beelzebub is describing, here, with his account of the foundation of the brotherhood Tchaftantouri is similar to his own endeavour which is generally known as ‘The Work’ and which still thrives today. To illustrate the need that many people feel to release their inner self, here’s a little digression: I met, many years ago, an Irish lad, who had been working in the building trade. At the point in his life at which I encountered him, he had just boozed away a redundancy package on a two-month binge. I asked him why he’d done it, and he replied that he had always so badly wanted something more fulfilling out of life, something that would help him grow spiritually, and, despairing of ever finding it, he’d resorted to alcohol. He knew that religion was not the answer, and so his next port of call was education (which was where I met him) – but his inner thirst was not for the type of knowledge you can find at a college. He felt, he said, an ache, an inner calling. He needed to be let off his internal leash. It was at that point that I loaned him P. D. Ouspenky’s In Search of the Miraculous, and, after he’d read it, told him about Gurdjieff’s Work, about what it was and what it aimed for, and offered to put him in touch with some people whom I knew to be actively involved in it. I asked if that might be something he wanted, and his reply, when it came, was emphatic. It was as if an inner light of relief had been turned on inside him. ‘Are you kidding,’ he said, ‘this conversation is what I have been waiting for all my life!’
Anyway, back to the text, and Ashiata Shiemash turned up at the Brotherhood Tchaftantouri and proceeded to enlighten the Reason of its members. His technique was to impart what Gurdjieff calls ‘objectively true information’ to his charges, and then guide them to discern the intrinsic essence of the truthfulness in that information so that they could assimilate it both without passion, emotion, or any of the other obfuscating inner noise that so messes up human thought processes, and without any outside influences that were trying to intrude in the form of sights, sounds, other peoples’ opinions etc. (and, in this day and age, that would include TV, Internet, and Social Media). In short, it was a lesson in absolutely honed objective rationality – a study in not what to think, but how to think, taught by a totally impartial instructor.
While instructing the brotherhood, which, we are told, would later be known as Heechtvori or ‘Only-he-will-be-called-and-will-become-the-Son-of-God-who-acquires-in-himself-Conscience’ (another allusion to the need to develop objective Consciousness) Ashiata also drew up its rules. He then sent the brethren out with the mission to spread the knowledge that every human had within themselves the ability, with sufficient work, to develop a fully functioning objective consciousness in their waking existence, and thereby become a true child of the All and Everything. They started off in Djoolfapal itself where, after trawling the local monasteries, they eventually recruited 35 suitable ‘novices’ who were to become the first brotherhood Heechtvori.
Ashiata then taught both brotherhoods – Tchaftantouri and Heechtvori – together for a further year, after which he selected a few from the originals plus 35 from amongst the ‘novices’ whom he believed had developed enough to take the next step in his masterplan. To qualify for this ‘All-the-rights-possessing’ elite, the brothers had to (a) have attained a high degree of objective conscience, and (b) prove themselves able to ‘initiate’ a further 100 individuals into the knowledge that humankind was capable of being-objective-conscience, then train each of those individuals to not only actually acquire it but, having acquired it, initiate a further 100 individuals each of their own. The idea, of course, was for the knowledge of the acquisition of being-objective-conscience to be passed on by an ever-extending chain of fully trained experts. Beelzebub explains that it was to this wave of Heechtvori initiates that the appellation of ‘Priest’ was first applied, although, he says, after – spoiler alert! – Ashiata’s endeavours were later destroyed, that term continued to be applied to the ‘unimportant’ clergymen of today. That being said, Beelzebub also points out that there still exist some people today to whom the appellation ‘Priest’ is applied, who are the real deal. They are selfless individuals who live for the betterment of others and, in so doing, elicit a sense of gratitude from those around them (but, Beezebub snarkily adds, only when those around them can be bothered to remember what has been done for them).
Ashiata Shiemash’s teachings began to leak out in a ripple effect, and the people of Djoolfapal and its environs gradually started to realise that there were a lot of advantages to be had if they could bring objective-conscience into their waking functions and kindle in everything around them the impulse of Divine-Love. Ashiata’s masterstroke was to insist in his teachings that full membership of his brotherhood could only be attained if each ‘initiate’ were able to awaken in a further one hundred others the Divine impulse conscience. Soon enough, he had a wide enough pool of initiates that he could select from them those in whom the ability to employ Reason in everything they thought and did was indelibly entrenched, and he set these ones aside as his ‘first-degree-initiates’ earmarked for more in-depth training on his ‘objective truths’. Now, this is, of course, the modus operandi of just about every esoteric society out there – that is, the selection of the best and most dedicated amongst them for inclusion in an elite cabal that receives (supposedly) higher knowledge. The process has been adulterated in many teachings (of which I could mention several just off the top of my head) because those selected may be chosen for more ‘worldly’ considerations than their psycho-spiritual potential, but let’s cut Asiata Shiemash some slack, here, because he was still feeling his way through how he was going to achieve his divine mission, and we must remember that his goal was to ensure that his ‘teaching’ was promulgated in an unalloyed fashion, no matter who dispensed it and who received it. Ashiata, therefore, selected his ‘first-degree-initiates’ because they had shown that objective Reason was firmly moored in their waking psyche, and they had the ability to pass on the knowledge of how to acquire that state – and this is the important bit – exactly as Ashiata Shiemash had taught them. These ‘first-degree-initiates’ then became known as ‘Great Initiates’ and Beelzebub infers that Ashiata kept a tight rein on this group’s progress, obviously as some kind of quality check to ensure that no alien influences were creeping in to dilute his own teachings.
Part of that teaching was to explain fully what objective-conscience actually is, and how it is possible to manifest it in the waking state of three-brained beings:
Genuine Conscience, says Ashiata Shiemash, is the manifestation in an individual of what we might call an eternal rub between joy and sorrow on a cosmic scale. This ‘rub’ on an individual level, is described as ‘suffering’ – it is the constant friction that we feel in the battle between our planetary bodies and our attempts at generating the ‘energy’ or ‘food’ necessary for the formation of our higher being-bodies (‘astral’ and ‘soul’ for want of better terms at this stage in the teaching). Only when our three centres are working in perfect concert and our physical as well as higher bodies are functioning in perfect unison, are we capable of true objective Reason. I have mentioned in passing before in this series that it is the friction between what we want to do and what it is objectively right that we do, that is the ‘food’ for our psycho-spiritual growth. That inner struggle has been called many things by many esoteric schools – the ancient philosophies, for instance, called it the deliberate quelling of desire or passion/emotion – but it could equally be something as basic as the hunter’s need to wait immobile despite bodily aches and itches demanding to be scratched, or an individual actively choosing to keep their mouth shut in a situation where they know spouting off will only make matters worse. Ashiata Shiemash’s own triple 40-day-and-night self-deprivation bonanza on Mount Veziniama was a graphic demonstration of generating inner friction to produce food for higher-being growth. As Gurdjieff, through Beelzebub, says, it is all about consciously assisting non-desires to predominate over desires until that behaviour becomes an unalienable part of our waking psyche.
Anyway, within three years, Ashiata’s masterplan was in full flow. Not only the inhabitants of Djoolfapal and its surroundings, but the inhabitants of practically all the lands of Asia, were now aware that the potential for waking-objective-conscience existed in them, and they began to work towards it. Many new offshoot Heechtvori brotherhoods were formed in various countries after Ashiata had despatched his disciples to start them, but always under his central direction. And so it was that most of the inhabitants of Asia, under the mentorship of their local branch of the brotherhood Heechtvori, who were, in turn, acting under the central guidance of Ashiata Shiemash, began the arduous task of transferring the processes previously active only in their subconscious into being an ever-present function of their waking existence, and thereby ridding themselves once-and-for-all of the lingering effects of the organ kundabuffer which had been holding them back for so long.
Within ten Earth years, as a consequence of just about every person in Asia now striving to achieve this state of what we will call totally objective rationality in everything they experienced, both inner and outer, something extraordinary happened. Separate states, along with their class or caste systems, ceased to exist. Beelzebub explains that the creation of class or caste systems arose in mankind shortly after the second great cosmic cock-up that affected the planet. These stratified societies had, over time, come to be seen as part of the natural order of things, although Gurdjieff, through Beelzebub, reminds us that, in effect, all humans are born equal and any perceived ‘superiority’ over our fellow creatures is simply and squarely a result of inflated ego. But egoism, he says, has its origins in the way that, following the second great Transapalnian-perturbation (cock-up), our general psyche became what Beelzebub describes as ‘dual’. Now this is a very interesting observation, and, putting aside when it started – the second perturbation, which is just a narrative device – it describes the base state of the human condition before work is done on it.
Beelzebub describes humans in this basic condition as having two states. One is a ‘waking’ state in which they believe they are the authors and architects of their own thoughts and actions when, in fact, they are simply reacting to outside stimuli. Undeveloped humans refer to this state as their ‘consciousness’. The other state is their ‘subconscious’ in which the same outside stimuli are processed through layers of rationality and logic, so that they stand a chance of perceiving the true objective reality of what is happening. The problem is, though, says Beelzebub, that the processing of impressions through two very different systems – one with rationality filters and one without – results in a split personality or, more accurately, two distinct and separate personalities, which, in turn causes the loss of the crucial attribute of Sincerity. Now, we must be very careful about defining what Beelzebub means here by ‘Sincerity’ as the knock-on effects of abandoning this facility are quite disturbing . . .
What Gurdjieff, through Beelzebub, is getting at here is, specifically, the way that parents let their offspring down because they abrogate the responsibility of developing them into waking-objective-conscience aware citizens of the multiverse to the various educational systems provided around the globe, which are, of course, totally unaware of both the concept itself and how to go about instilling it. In short, says Beelzebub, children learn ‘deceit’. They learn how to behave in a way that is utterly divorced from what is required of them to become a useful element in the cosmic whole. So alien is the way a child is brought up to objective normality, that it forces any instinct that child may have had to realise its true psycho-spiritual potential deep within its subconscious. The only saving grace of this situation is that, because the subconscious takes no active part in everyday life, the potential for objective-conscience remains unimpaired by all other ‘waking state’ activity, which is why, according to Beelzebub, it was a target that Ashiata Shiemash believed he could reach, and a resource into which he could tap.
The egoism that rules the waking state of humans who walk the world asleep is responsible for all those nasty little traits that we see being exercised all around us: cunning, envy, hate, hypocrisy, contempt, haughtiness, servility, slyness, ambition, two-facedness, to name but a few. And yet, as soon as Ashiata’s teachings awakened objective-conscience in the people of Asia, those traits disappeared entirely. How nice is that!? Unfortunately for us, though, all Ashiata’s good work was undone (which is the subject of the next chapter, so we’ll have to wait for more details of that development) and Beelzebub tells Hassein that contemporary humans are every bit as self-centred, spiteful, and solipsistic as they were before that messenger-from-on-high’s efforts. As humankind’s ruling affectation, Egoism, it would seem, is what keeps our desire for objective-consciousness buried deep within our sub-conscious and is a prime driver behind our bizarre predilection for dividing our species into nation states, class-systems and castes.
Now, the next bit of what Beelzebub tells Hassein is a bit weird, but let’s have a go at unravelling it anyway. Apparently, Beelzebub was having difficulty observing the antics of humans on Earth through his marvellous far-seeing Teskooano (an advanced telescope) which his friend, the large raven-like King of Saturn, had devised for him. The problem was that the atmosphere surrounding the planet would often become obscured by a discoloration caused by a type of human energy transmission.
When humans are ‘shocked’ (there’s that word again) into genuine conscious rational and objective thought and behaviour, all the peripheral garbage that has hitherto ruled their hearts and minds either becomes quiescent or vanishes completely. The new ability to ‘see rightly’ (to coin a phrase from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince) comes hand-in-hand with a being-impulse that Beelzebub calls ‘Remorse-of-Conscience’ which can only be a totally psycho-spiritual version of that ‘Oh-my-God-what-the-hell-have-I-done” feeling we get after a banging night out on the tiles or when we calm down after a spectacular spit-throwing, insult-hurling, public tantrum. It is the ‘crystallizations’ as Beelzebub calls them, or energy transmissions, that the Remorse-of-Conscience throws off, becoming mingled with humanity’s other energy transmissions, that causes the discoloration in the atmosphere, through which the organ of sight finds it difficult to penetrate. And that is all Beelzebub says about the inability to see through the denseness of the discoloured atmosphere, which leaves us feeling a little unsatisfied with the explanation. But I have a feeling this passage is about the uncertainty of outcome when we are seeking to improve ourselves, and the feelings of doubt and dislocation that prevent us from seeing what we can truly become as we start to lose sight of what we were but are not yet able to fully visualise what we will turn into. I’ll have more to say about that in the self-help section at the end of this post.
Back to the narrative, and Beelzebub gets back onto the dangers of egoism. Apparently, even in those amongst us benighted humans who manage, through some sort of psycho-spiritual ‘shock’, to experience this ‘Remorse-of-Conscience’, egoism will attempt to stamp it out as soon as it starts. And there are all sorts of ways in which humanity will attempt to dampen down what is a genuine being-impulse, many of which, as Beelzebub amusingly points out, end in -ism: alcoholism, cocainism, morphinism, nicotinism, onanism (eh?), monkism (becoming a monk, I suppose), Athenianism (no real idea on this one: an overly zealous attachment to Athenian philosophical schools, perhaps?), amongst others. The result of all this is a society in which just about everybody is, essentially, out for themselves. Because there are not, and never have been, enough material goodies available at any one time for every human being to live a life of luxury, those who live in prosperity do so at the expense and to the disadvantage of many others. Cunning, contempt, and hate are just some of the unsavoury character traits that become engrained in those who climb over others to get what they want – and we’re not going to be able to join the cosmic family of well-adapted three-brained beings by behaving like that now, are we?
At this point Beelzebub drags Hassein’s attention back to the time of Ashiata Shiemash and the initial success of his efforts to get us all functioning in an objectively aware waking state. Apparently, we were doing OK, gradually beginning to treat one another based on our efforts to think and act totally rationally and strive for a state in which we could be of use to the All and Everything. One of the consequences of these changes in the population was that humans ceased to divide themselves into societal strata (or caste/class systems). Not only that, but they began to see themselves as part of a beautiful, interconnected whole, as beings who – every single one of them – contained within themselves the energy of the Creator. I’m not saying that they realised they were all cogs in a massive anti-entropy device because that would spoil the effect somewhat – but there must have been some kind of warm, fuzzy ‘togetherness’, a new sense of belonging, of realising that what they had long suspected, i.e. that there had to be ‘something more’ to all this, actually existed. Lovely, innit?
Beelzebub says that masters voluntarily manumitted their slaves, and those in positions of power, realising that they sat upon pedestals built on pomposity and vanity relinquished their authority. The new leaders and guardians of society became so not because of hereditary practice nor through any kind of electoral process, but because their advanced objective consciousness was palpable to those around them.
What Beelzebub tells Hassein next is truly fascinating, because he sets out the stepped process by which humans must strive to achieve within their being a state of genuine conscience. It’s worth going through them one at a time and in order, because this is pretty much the first time in the work that Gurdjieff, through Beelzebub, tells us explicitly what we need to achieve to make it as a responsible universal three-brained being. I’m going to quote each one verbatim, and then attempt an analysis:
- The first striving: to have in their ordinary being-existence everything satisfying and really necessary for their planetary body.
This speaks to me of the philosophical concept of living according to the dictates of nature. Give your physical body what it needs in terms of nutrition and exercise. Eat and drink healthily and no more than you need, don’t ingest harmful substances, get the right amount of physical exercise, and don’t surround yourself with a load of old self-indulgent toot that’s totally superfluous to a sensible lifestyle.
- The second striving: to have a constant and unflagging instinctive need for self-perfection in the sense of being.
This striving is about that ‘feeling’ we all get in our solar plexus when we yearn to be connected to that ‘something’ that is greater than us, but of which we are a part, and whose spark we all feel within us. Most of us get that feeling now and then, but then something mundane comes along and the moment is gone. It’s a bit like the pilot light in those old-fashioned gas-powered hot-water cylinders – a lonely little flame, until the switch is turned and the whole thing roars into life. That’s what we need to be like. That occasional urge to perfect our reason and take our rightful place in the multiverse must become a burning and unquenchable desire to find ourselves and finally, truly, wake up.
- The third striving: the conscious striving to know ever more and more concerning the laws of World-creation and World-maintenance.
Any type of learning and knowledge acquisition is a good thing, isn’t it? But what I think Gurdjieff, through Beelzebub, is getting at particularly here is increasing our individual understanding of how everything fits together and works. It is essentially spheres within spheres, with energy passing down from a macrocosmic to a microcosmic level at which point it must be transformed and then passed back up again for the balance and smooth continued operation of the whole to function correctly. Each nestled sphere is dependent on and affected by its neighbours, and imbalance in one can cause knock-on imbalance in those next to it. Like any well-designed machine, there is redundancy built in, checks and measures, so that some adjustment is necessary at times lest the machine grind to a halt. Humans affect the Earth, which affects the Solar System, which affects the Galaxy, which affects the Galaxy Cluster, and so on and on right up to the Energy Source itself. Balance must be kept, and if that means temporarily switching out a few circuits in one of our spheres until the problem is ironed out, then so be it. And it is all, of course, applicable on an individual level as well. If you understand how the All and Everything fits together, and that you, as an individual, are an intrinsic part of it all and have your own role to play in helping everything tick over, then the more you learn, the better equipped you are to fulfil your function. And if that all sounds a bit impersonal and mechanical, well that’s because it actually is. But, and it’s a big but, if you understand your part in this great cosmic dance and you learn to dance it well, Gurdjieff implies that the reward for you, as a responsible universal entity, is substantial.
- The fourth striving: The striving from the beginning of their existence to pay for their arising and their individuality as quickly as possible, in order afterwards to be free to lighten as much as possible the Sorrow of our COMMON FATHER.
To my mind, this is a natural sequitur to the previous striving. When you have acquired an understanding of how the whole thing works, you can begin to put it into practice – starting with yourself. The All and Everything is, in effect, taking a chance when the laws that govern the energy that permeates the multiverses invests in the temporary agglomeration of energy strands that is you. Some of the work’s already been done for you. The energy needs recycling, so it has been pre-split into three separate strands which it is your job to reunite through your own efforts. Can you do it? Are you up for it? If yes, then great! Get to work on yourself as soon as possible and reap the rewards. No? Well, that’s a shame, your existence has been a bit of a waste of time, so we’ll remove you as an individual from the chessboard and create another one in the hope it will do a better job of what it’s been given.
5. The fifth striving: The striving always to assist the most rapid perfecting of other beings, both those similar to oneself and those of other forms, up to the degree of the sacred ‘Martfotai’ that is up to the degree of self-individuality.
This is, in effect, what Ashiata Shiemash is attempting in his contemporary Asia. And it makes complete sense, really, because, for the All and Everything, it removes some of the guesswork, some of the will-they-won’t-they, from the equation. In a way, it’s giving the intent of the multiverse – that is; to get that energy repurified into something useable as quickly as possible without the whole machine falling into disrepair – a bit of a nudge in the right direction. If you, having achieved your own psycho-spiritual ‘maturity’, help others to achieve theirs, and so on and so forth, then that is a win: for you, for the individuals you help, for the ones they help, and, ultimately, for the Power behind the Multiverse itself. The fewer the number of individuals out there given the opportunity to fritter away their existences without self-improvement, the better. If, by your intervention, you can bring that number down, the better for everyone and everything concerned.
And there you have Gurdjieff’s 5-phase strivings. One of the more noticeable emphases is on the constancy, the full-time commitment and application to the effort required to make them bear fruit. The Latin noun constantia from which the English word constancy comes contains within its range of meaning a sense of self-possession and firmness of character, of steadfastness and consistency. Lucius Annaeus Seneca (whose life is the subject of another thread on this website) actually entitled one of his works De Constantia Sapientis or On the Steadfastness/Commitment of the (Stoic) Sage so what I believe Gurdjieff is also implying here in his ‘strivings’ is the whole package. When you rise through these strivings, you do so with rational focus. The application of your time is not enough on its own – it must be accompanied at all times by a consciously rational mind. You must be truly awake. So it’s a bit of a shame that a fully focused and unwavering effort at self-betterment is something that we humans are mostly pretty rubbish at . . .
If you’ve followed my series so far, you’ve probably noticed that this first book of Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson has a particular Leitmotif running through it, a recurring theme of advancement and then setback. Whether it’s in the history of the formation of the Earth itself – the so-called perturbations or global cataclysms – or the serial failure of messengers sent from on high to get humanity back on track, nothing ever runs smoothly. There are always setbacks and cockups, and, especially in the case of the divine messengers attempting to change humanity’s attitude, reversions to the previous norm after the initial impetus has run its course. There are a few reasons why Gurdjieff is doing this, but, to my mind anyway, one of them is to illustrate on a microcosmic – that is, personal and individual – scale how the self-betterment endeavours of most of us end up. We start off with a hiss and a roar, full of good intentions to make a better person out of ourselves, but few of us learn the trick of making the new commitment to self-betterment stick or develop the knack of keeping the fires of the mental and emotional energy necessary for such an undertaking burning so that we can achieve our goal.
Anyway, back to the narrative (not much longer to go in the chapter now so please bear with me) and Beelzebub relates to Hassein that, at this early stage of Ashiata Shiemash’s mission, everything seemed to be going swimmingly. The individuals who perfected the five strivings soon stood out from the crowd and, from amongst them, the best-of-the-best became the natural ‘leader’ and chief of all, and that individual directed the spread of this new form of active-conscious-rational existence beyond Asia to all the other continents and islands. The system of having the most psycho-spiritually advanced being as community leader and following that individual’s lead in all things became the universal norm, and everybody was very happy with this new Guru-led form of social organisation and followed the wise direction with joy and devotion. The old, pre-Ashiata structure was completely dismantled and, according to Beelzebub, it was a time of utopian joy for all. Gorgeous! Even humankind’s predilection for internecine warfare was put on hold, with small scale armed conflicts arising only in those remote areas where the new teaching had not yet taken hold.
With right-minded folk now proliferating on the Earth, the entire energy exchange with surrounding space-time began to change back to a relationship normal for a planet on which its three-brained population was correctly transubstantiating energy into a form necessary for what Beelzebub calls the Most Great Omnicosmic Trogoautoegocrat, but what we – in the interests of keeping things simple at this stage – will call the proper functioning of a self-sustaining Multiverse. A notable consequence of this ‘refinement’ of the energy exchange was that lifespans increased and birthrates declined in accordance with the cosmic law of ‘equilibration-of-vibrations’. Simply put, because the energy being transmitted back up the chain was of the required, higher quality, less beings were required to keep the engine oiled, as it were. Or, as Beelzebub would have it, because humanity was now emanating vibrations that were more in line with what Great Nature requires, human deaths on an industrial scale (warfare) were no longer necessary. It’s a bit like car-engine oil. You use low grade stuff, it burns through quickly, so you need more of it, but it’ll ultimately wreck the machine. High-grade oil, though, lasts longer, protects better, and extends the life of the engine.
The question, though, was whether this new, ideal state of existence could last. Well of course it couldn’t, we are dealing here with humans after all. No sooner had Ashiata Shiemash ‘departed the planet’ then it all started to unravel until, today, only whispers and rumours of that saintly messenger’s work remain in certain inscriptions from ancient times. Modern interpretations of that era as a ‘priest-organisation’, says Gurdjieff, fall so short of the mark as to be laughable. Gurdjieff, writing these passages around a century ago, was well aware of the state humanity had got itself into. The merit-elected leaders of Ashiata Shiemash’s time had given way to ‘chiefs’ and ‘kings’ who kept their people in terrified thrall at the point of a bayonet and with the threat of imprisonment. And a quick look at what’s going on around us today in this pretty rotten old world of ours should tell us straightaway what a mess we’re all in. The chapter ends with Beelzebub bemoaning the irony in the hubris of planet Earth’s contemporary inhabitants as they sneer at the acts of the ‘savages’ from ancient civilisations . . .
Well, I say! Blimey! Blinking ‘eck, and things of that nature generally. That was a long chapter, but it contains a surprisingly simple message: Wake up! Find the energy to make yourself objectively rational, then help others to do the same!
There are a lot of self-help goodies in this text, and I’ve spouted on at length about some of them in my digressions in the narrative above, but there are still a few relevant things to point out that can help us in everyday life.
The first of them is that bit in the chapter where Beelzebub was talking about his occasional inability to see through Earth’s atmosphere with his Martian telescope due to some kind of human vibration-emanations fog. As with all Gurdjieff’s words, there are probably multiple layers of meaning in that passage, but I want to touch again on what I was saying above about that sense of disorientation and disconnect that we often feel once we have started on a voyage of self-discovery and psycho-spiritual metamorphosis. When the commitment to see the process of inner change through has been cemented in us, it can be scary. But it can also be a time of great liberation and release – even relief. In practical terms, you don’t have to make a huge, initial leap into the unknown. You can, of course. You can sell up, jump on a plane and go join an ashram somewhere in the high Himalaya, but that type of drastic cut-and-run option is not open to everyone out there. So, you could, for example, start by making an inner commitment not to associate any longer with that quasi-friend who is always being snide and whose big gob always gets you into trouble whenever you are out with them. You could decide you will no longer interact with narcissistic folk who use you and get off on putting everyone down. You could change to a healthier diet, cut down on booze, quit smoking – anything really, so long as a positive change is being made and you feel that you are moving forward. And it’s really weird (but lovely) the way the Multiverse helps you along the path. As you discard your personal baggage on the quest for a better you, help turns up in the most unexpected ways: new and better friends come along, opportunities arise, doors open. You just have to make that first move. So yes, it can seem a bit disorientating at first as the old you recedes into the fog of the past, but the whole point of letting go of the old you is to find a new and better one. We have to walk through the morning fog before it lifts to reveal the sunny day ahead.
Another thing I wanted to mention is a bit to do with Ashiata Shiemash’s insistence on developing objective rationality in everything; that is, not just about what we are thinking and feeling inside, but also about how we are being affected by things external to us that gain access via our senses – and that can mean anything from something we witness as we pass by on the street, to something we see or hear on social media, the Internet, or TV, to somebody we encounter – family member, friend, colleague, a person we’ve just met through our jobs or at a party, anyone really – who is relating an experience or expressing an opinion.
So, first off, some people can present a very forceful and persuasive argument, whether it’s about something they’ve come up with themselves (or think they’ve come up with themselves) or something they’ve inherited from somebody else’s opinion and have taken as gospel. Such people do not hold the monopoly on truth! The situation can be compounded by the way these forceful ‘presenters’ attempt immediately to dismiss and belittle any argument or opinion that runs counter to their own viewpoint. Be extremely careful with this type. They are often, as the ancient Sanskrit proverb states, mere empty vessels that sound much. There is a massive difference between a self-righteous, pompous and pontificating twat who is good at arguing (‘debating’ they will call it even though they are not listening to a word that you have to say in reply) and somebody who listens well, strips out all the rhetoric and passion from what is being said to them, and keeps their own counsel until they can objectively analyse the content and formulate a rational response (if any is, indeed, required).
And connected to that observation is the following one about the passions (or emotions if you prefer) that arise within us unbidden when we see or hear something that we instinctively either love or loathe (or anything in between those two extremes). It could be love at first sight, an instant dislike of somebody to whom we’ve only just been introduced, the latest trend in teenage hair styles, the sight of a middle-aged man on a skateboard, retro-70s fashion, jazz music (only joking). There are more examples: an instant antipathy when we are told third hand about the antics of a friend or family member we have no time for, fuming about what a news item on current affairs is reporting even though it has given a deliberately one-sided presentation of the facts; whatever it is, we are looking at the arising in us of an emotion that has totally by-passed any attempt at logical analysis.
Now, I could go on and on about this, but what I am trying to say here is that we should try to, as best we can, catch ourselves at it when one of these rogue emotions comes along. Once you begin to recognise them, it gets easier. Always consider every side of anything you see or hear. If you recognise that something has made you feel anti, then ask yourself why it has made you feel anti. If you cannot find a reasonable explanation, then get more evidence. You’ll be amazed how many things fade into insignificance once you’ve boiled away all the passion and dross and realised that your ‘strong feeling’ about something was, in reality, built on sand.
OK, that’s it for this post. I’ve raved on for far too long. The next chapter – the last in Book 1 of Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson tells us about how Ashiata Shiemash’s grand designs for, and efforts on behalf of, humanity, fell to pieces. I hope to see you all there.
