Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson
The Penguin hardback edition
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| Author | G. I. Gurdjieff |
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| Language | Russian and Armenian (original) |
| Publisher | Harcourt (1950) E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc. (1964, 1973) Two Rivers Press (1993) Penguin Arkana (1999) |
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Publication date
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1950 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback), Audiobook |
| Pages | P. 1248 (Penguin paperback edition) p. 1152 (Tarcher hardcover edition) |
| ISBN | (Penguin paperback edition) ISBN (Tarcher hardcover edition) ISBN (Audiobook read by William J. Welch) |
| OCLC | 42017479 |
| Followed by | Meetings with Remarkable Men |
Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson or An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man is the first volume of the All and Everything trilogy written by the Greek-Armenian mystic G. I. Gurdjieff. The All and Everything trilogy also includes Meetings with Remarkable Men (first published in 1963) and Life Is Real Only Then, When 'I Am' (first privately printed in 1974).
Because the book was intended to be the main study tool for his teachings, and because the idea of work is central to those teachings, Gurdjieff went to great lengths in order to increase the effort needed to read and understand it. Gurdjieff himself once said, “I bury the bone so deep that the dogs have to scratch for it." The book treats of an enormous number of subjects and questions. It is a vast allegorical myth structure in a literary form all its own.
The plot of Beelzebub's Tales primarily revolves around the ruminations of an extraterrestrial known as "Beelzebub" to his grandson Hassein, as they travel through space towards Beelzebub's home planet, "Karatas", on the spaceship Karnak. It mainly recounts the adventures and travails of Beelzebub amongst the "three-brained beings" (humans) of the planet Earth. Beelzebub covers the entire history of the strange behaviors and customs of these beings.
Beelzebub's Tales is included in Martin Seymour-Smith's 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written, with the comment that it is "...the most convincing fusion of Eastern and Western thought has yet been seen."
In his prospectus for All and Everything, printed at the beginning of each part of the trilogy, Gurdjieff states his aim in publishing these texts:
Gurdjieff was most notable for introducing the Fourth Way. He claimed that the Eastern teachings brought by him to the West expressed the truth found in other ancient religions and wisdom teachings relating to self-awareness in one's daily life and humanity's place and role in the universe. It might be summed up by the title of his third series of writings: Life Is Real Only Then, When 'I Am', while his complete series of books is entitled All and Everything.
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Wikipedia