Beelzebub’s Hypnotic Tales to His Grandson

Abstract

Gurdjieff’s aim in the First Series is to mercilessly destroy all the non-veritable and fantastic views and beliefs about the world his readers hold in their thoughts and feelings. Most puzzling, however, is that he seeks to accomplish this aim via what seems to be, at least in form, equally non-veritable and fantastic beliefs contained in Beelzebub’s tales to his grandson.

First Series: To destroy, mercilessly, without any compromises whatsoever, in the mentation and feelings of the reader, the beliefs and views, by centuries rooted in him, about everything existing in the world.

—B:v

… I already consider it my duty to make a confession and hence before continuing this first chapter, which is by way of an introduction to all my further predetermined writings, I wish to bring to the knowledge of what is called your “pure waking consciousness” the fact that in the writings following this chapter of warning I shall expound my thoughts intentionally in such sequence and with such “logical confrontation,” that the essence of certain real notions may of themselves automatically, so to say, go from this “waking consciousness”—which most people in their ignorance mistake for the real consciousness, but which I affirm and experimentally prove is the fictitious one—into what you call the subconscious, which ought to be in my opinion the real human consciousness, and there by themselves mechanically bring about that transformation which should in general proceed in the entirety of a man and give him, from his own conscious mentation, the results he ought to have, which are proper to man and not merely to single- or double-brained animals.

—B:24-25