2025: International All & Everything Year
A Call for Renewal
In January of 2025, we will mark the hundredth anniversary of the day George Gurdjieff began writing his magnum opus, Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, the first installment of his All & Everything series.
This project began at the close of his experiments at the Prieuré near Fontainebleau, south of Paris. There, under the name of the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, Gurdjieff investigated methods of presenting his ideas to a wide variety of students. He would later explain to C.S. Nott, “I needed rats for my experiments.”
He was not satisfied with his results. After his hospitalization following a near-fatal automobile accident in 1924, Gurdjieff returned to the Prieuré and observed that his teaching had not led to the desired results and decided he needed to change course. He closed the Institute and began writing a logominism titled Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, intending to produce a complete exposition of his Work and ideas.
This work would be his primary focus for the next two decades until a few days before his death. He wrote and rewrote the text, carefully observing its effect when he read it to students. The Tales, along with the rest of the series, would be the complete, authoritative, and most mature presentation of his hard-won knowledge.
In later meetings, he would clearly indicate that the study of this book would be the foundation for future work and that acquaintance with the ideas was an absolute requirement for proceeding with the Work. He expressed his vision for how the project would continue: that interested students would form clubs devoted to reading the Tales and then use the information as a guide for continuing practical work.
This has not happened.
Today, the Gurdjieff Work is at an inflection point. The most visible ostensible representatives of the Work have not only largely ignored Beelzebub’s Tales, but they have taken a direction that directly contradicts the core teachings presented in the book.
The Gurdjieff Foundation, claiming to be the sole legitimate representative of the Work, now presents a teaching largely based on the ideas of Jeanne De Salzmann, a hazy and confused mashup of pop Buddhism, humanistic psychology, Theosophy, and New Age ideas. As I wrote this, I checked again with the website for the nearest branch of the Foundation and although they have Mr.Gurdjieff’s picture, their regular gatherings are devoted to reading Ms. de Salzmann’s book.
The Foundation doesn’t just ignore Mr. Gurdjieff’s book; they don’t want you to read it either. In 1991, they released a heavily edited revision of Beelzebub’s Tales, without any explanation or justification for the numerous changes. If Mr. Gurdjieff had not had the foresight to place the book in the public domain, you would not be allowed to read his version today. Fortunately, other independent students stepped in and made the original text available.
"The pharisees and the scribes have taken the keys of knowledge and hidden them. They themselves have not entered, nor have they allowed to enter those who wish to. You, however, be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves."
- Gospel of Thomas, Saying 39
Followers of PD Ouspensky, a failed student of GI Gurdjieff, also largely ignore the Tales in favor of Mr. Ouspensky’s own books, which present a system based on fragments he picked up during the experimental phase of Mr. Gurdjieff’s teaching, combined with his personal speculations, a scheme that the author himself repudiated at the end of his life as he sank into despair and intoxication.
Another well-known figure, JG Bennett, fused ersatz Sufism, Subud (an Indonesian type of Pentecostalism), and his own idiosyncratic ideas to create a bizarre hybrid that has little resemblance to the teachings of Mr. Gurdjieff.
Let the Dead Bury the Dead
This leaves us, and the Work itself, in a very precarious position, with the most visible and vocal individuals and organizations claiming to represent the Gurdjieff Work promoting ideas that he specifically and unambiguously denounced. If this continues unchecked, the Work is in real danger of being absorbed into the morass of New Age and self-help swindles that dominate the contemporary ‘spiritual’ climate.
“‘But in consequence of the fact that before the period of the said Sacred Individual’s appearance here, the duration of your existence had, owing to very many firmly fixed abnormal conditions of ordinary existence created by yourselves, already become abnormally short, and therefore the process of sacred Rascooarno had also very soon to occur to this Sacred Individual, that is to say, he also had, like you, to die prematurely, then after his death, the former conditions were gradually re-established there owing on the one hand to the established abnormal conditions of ordinary being-existence and, on the other hand, to that maleficent particularity in your psyche, called Wiseacring.”
- GI Gurdjieff, Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson
Fortunately, this phenomenon was not unknown to Mr. Gurdjieff. He referred to it as “wiseacring”, the inevitable distortion and eventual inversion of genuine spiritual teaching. In the Tales, he explained the mechanism behind it and demonstrated how it had happened numerous times in the past with other spiritual teachings, often within a generation or two. He foresaw it, but he also prepared the necessary shock to restore the Work to the proper course.
That necessary shock was the Tales themselves.
At this inflection point, for those who see any value in the hard-won insight offered by George Gurdjieff, there is still time to act.
Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.
- The Gospel According to St. Luke 9:60
According to the process outlined by Mr. Gurdjieff, the wiseacring will continue mechanically and inevitably, unless there is a conscious effort to introduce a shock into the process.
This shock will not come from the ‘official’ representatives of the Work, who lack the understanding and ability to make the necessary conscious efforts. If the Work continues without intervention, they will succeed in substituting a phony version of the Work, shaped to cater to their own prejudices, mechanical instincts, and weaknesses. Their efforts - working in the wrong direction - have rendered them incapable of seeing the deviation, much less consciously intervening to steward the Work through this inflection point.
2025: International All & Everything Year
As we mark the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the writing of Beezelbub’s Tales, those of us who see value in the Work and wish to see it continue as indicated by Mr. Gurdjieff have an opportunity and responsibility to intervene.
The method of intervention doesn’t need to be anything new or astonishing - Mr. Gurdjieff himself provided the first steps to begin a year of renewal:
“This benevolent advice of mine to you Americans, composing in the given case this group, and who became, thanks to a series of accidentally arranged circumstances of life, my nearest essential friends, consists in indicating the categorical necessity that each of you should cease entirely, at least for three months, the reading of your newspapers and magazines, and during this time should become as well acquainted as possible with the contents of all three books of the first series of my writings entitled An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man.”
“An acquaintance with the contents of these books is quite indispensable for each of you, chiefly in order to obtain directly or indirectly information elucidated from all sides regarding all those definite notions upon which will be based and from which will logically derive all the problems which are pursued for practical attainments. It was just for this purpose that your group was organized and is now reorganized to consist of people who have more or less cognized the absurdity of our ordinary life and who, although you have not yet sensed it with all your Being but are seriously striving to take in what you have cognized, are continuing to learn as many aspects of the objective truth as possible so as to determine, in accordance with this, your own real individuality, in order to manifest afterwards in everything in a way corresponding to a Godlike creature.”
- GI Gurdjieff, Life is Real Only Then, When ‘I AM’
A rediscovery of the Work from the perspective of Mr. Gurdjieff is absolutely essential. Launching the effort with a new focus on actually reading and absorbing the ideas for three months, while abstaining from newspapers, social media, and television, will give some the necessary basis to seriously engage the Work on the right foundation.
Three months is only the beginning, but from there, we can begin to explore other possibilities. What’s essential at this moment is to meet the crisis with conscious effort and a sincere effort to rediscover the intent and content of the Work outlined by Mr. Gurdjieff.
** If you’re interested in reacquainting yourself with Beezelbub’s Tales, or would like help engaging the text for the first time, the Spiritual Sun school offers a variety of opportunities, including weekly classes, in-depth introductory classes, and personal tutorials for qualified candidates. If you’re interested, you can send an inquiry and letter of introduction to thespiritualsun@gurdjieff.work
Additional Reading:
Full text of Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson (PDF/Kindle/HTML formats)