So, Gurdjieff feels that, at the very end of the Tales–Hassein supposedly asks him this question. He has just been recognized as one of the great Podkoolads; he finally grew his horns in this special ceremony. So, now what was there all the time becomes externally manifested. So, as a sacred Podkoolad, he is on his way back home to Karatas, his birth planet, the planet of all truly independent wills. He is on his way home, and then suddenly Hassein asks him this question: “What can be done? What can be done about the circumstance of Man on the Earth, with all of this that we’ve been talking about?” Suddenly–and this is where the story line, I think, is so obvious-suddenly, Beelzebub stands up, and one arm is thrust up and the other down and a glow begins. So, he is standing in the presence of endlessness. Hassein, the grandson’s question, becomes endlessness’ question: What can be done? What comes back from up above:
“In order that the convictions formed in me during this time, owing to Your explanation of the abnormalities proceeding on the Earth, may become definitely crystallized in me, I still wish very much to have this time Your personal and frank opinion as to the following: How You would reply if, let us suppose, our all-embracing creator endlessness, were to summon You before him and ask You this:
“’Beelzebub! ! ! !
“’You, as one of the anticipated, accelerated results of all My actualizations, manifest briefly the sum of your long-centuried impartial observations and studies of the psyche of the three-centered beings arising on the planet Earth and state in words whether it is still possible by some means or other to save them and to direct them into the becoming path?’”[1]
What is the answer to this? We are put in this very interesting philosophical, psychological and spiritual mode of question. Here is endlessness asking Beelzebub a question. This is not an exam; this is not whether he graduates from high school or not. It’s not that he gets a pat on the head. endlessness does not know! That’s so plain on the surface of what Gurdjieff is trying to get across. This is endlessness’ question. This is part of the hazard of existence. The hazard is, you’ve got to have all the laws–and, the Law of Seven, in particular–but this is the Law of Hazard. Things will happen that even endlessness can’t anticipate and cannot see will happen. So, he wants to know, too, obviously.
So, he asks Beelzebub, “What can be done?” And, what is Beelzebub’s answer? You have to instill another organ, like Kundabuffer, but now it has to have a characteristic of reminding one, right in the moment, that everyone on whose eyes you touch is going to die, and you are going to die. Only then can the process begin to root out egoism. So, he sticks with it right to the very, very end: It is egoism which is the root of all that has been standing in Man’s way. And yet, egoism is the gift, the gift of potentially a reunited will. So, it is a very interesting, paradoxical, powerful, powerful–I think a very powerful–notion because it is given then to each of us that we have this spark, we have this human spark of wishing to live, and what do we do with it? How do we mature it; how do we grow it? How do we turn it into something that can be a useful servant?
That’s a big part of Gurdjieff’s message. He believes what is absolutely essential is that we use all of the understandings that have come from our understanding of the physical world, all the scientific understandings. We must buckle down and accept modern biology. Biology is biology is biology, by damn! You cannot work your way around that. You cannot think your way or wish your way or pray your way around it. It is what it is. So, that is what makes it so realistic for me. Since he poses the science of the West and the wisdom of the East, and the blending of those two, this is a great requirement, a great requirement for reconciliation. It is the only answer, at the very end of the Tales. There is no other way out of this mess.
[1] Gurdjieff, G.I., Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, p 1182.
SummaryTranscript