Beelzebubs Tales to His Grandson
On Attention and Understanding
of Beelzebubs Tales
by G. I. Gurdjieff
everyone. Both the teaching and the Book are meant for those who can and will
Question: Sir, I asked you last Thursday, if there was a way to develop
attention; you said that attention was measured in the degree that one
remembers oneself. You told me to especially look into myself. I
especially asked you that because I wasnt able to put my attention on the
reading of Beelzebub. During this week I understood that attention was
what I was. As many Is as there were, so many different attentions. I
wanted to ask you if there was, for developing attention, only the method
of I am or if there are other special methods?
Gurdjieff: One thing I can tell you. Methods do not exist. I do not know
any. But I can explain now everything simply. For example,
in Beelzebub, I know, there is everything one must know. It is a very
interesting book. Everything is there. All that exists, all that has existed,
all that can exist. The beginning, the end, all the secrets of the creation of
the world; all is there. But one must understand, and to understand
depends on ones individuality. The more man has been instructed in a
certain way, the more he can see. Subjectively, everyone is able to
understand according to the level he occupies, for it is an objective book,
and everyone should understand something in it. One person understands
one part, another a thousand times more. Now, find a way to put your
attention on understanding all of Beelzebub. This will be your task, and it
is a good way to fix a real attention. If you can put real attention
on Beelzebub, you can have a real attention in life. You didnt know this
secret. In Beelzebub there is everything, I have said it, even how to make
an omelet. Among other things, it is explained; and at the same time there
isnt a word in Beelzebub about cooking. So, you put your attention
on Beelzebub, another attention than that to which you are accustomed,
and you will be able to have the same attention in life.
Mr. Gurdjieff put everything,
everything he knew in Beelzebubs Tales.
A. L. Staveley
Commentary by A. L. Staveley
Gurdjieffs work, his teaching, is not meant for everyoneneither is his Book for
use them.
The world, the civilisation we have known, is disintegrating around us with
increasing momentum. The planet, including humanity, is threatened, yet
everywhere there is inertia. Many people, including those interested in Gurdjieffs
teaching, realize that something new is urgently required in their lives, and that
that something concerns a transformation in the inner life of Man in the first
place, but can and must result also in a huge change in mans outer life.
Repair the past, Prepare the future Gurdjieff tells us, and gives great knowledge
skillfully concealed so one needs to struggle to decipher it, opening up in the
process new pathways through ones thinking and feeling. Great knowledge of
the cosmos, knowledge of the past and the future, of how to go about making a
new world. But more than all this is the introduction to the awe-inspiring
concepts of Conscience and of Reciprocal Maintenance.
First, the divine impulse of Conscience, potentially the representative of the
Creator in us, still existing unspoilt in the subconsciousness of man which, as an
active factor in everyday consciousness, can become a major step in the evolution
of mankind.
The second basic shock for real understanding is the concept of Reciprocal
Maintenance. Everything in the Universe everywhere supporting and maintaining
everything elsea world away from the limited notions of ecology. We really
cannot, and must not, ignore the responsibility for our humanity.
This Book is a guide to becoming a real man. Gurdjieff advised us to read, reread
and then read this Book again many, many times. Read it aloud with others and
read it to yourself. Even if you read it thirty, even fifty times, you will always find
something you missed beforea sentence which gives with great precision the
answer to a question you have had for yearsa connection to quite another part
of the Book. You will eventually build up a network of real ideas that will be your
own knowledge, not second-hand, but the priceless, hard-won fruit of your own
struggle for understanding.