Section VII

A Particle of All that Exists

“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.”

(Gurdjieff, 1950, objective of the First Series)

Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson is undoubtedly one of the most profound and mysterious books among the sacred literature of the world.  The framework of ideas, claims and objective science offers a fundamentally alternative view of the miraculous nature of life–a perfectly coherent, intelligible and astounding account of “All and Everything.”  In the light of The Tales, all of modern thought and understanding is so much ‘pouring-from-the-empty-into-the-void.’  The ‘sorry scientists’ of ‘new format’ have no conception of the great inscrutable mysteries of Nature and the subtle inner dimensions of human beings.  The materialist science philosophy has led to the dismissal of the human soul and of views of the Cosmos as due to the actualization of Divine Laws or supernatural Beings.   Of course, most of the scientists of new formation will dismiss Beelzebub’s Tales as a work only of myth, allegory and fantasy, and not grasp the secrets of ‘objective science’ and the deep truths articulated.  Of course, like all of the slugs, the sorry scientists and wiseacres are conditioned to take the ephemeral for the real and they no longer instinctually sense cosmic truths, as is natural to three centered beings with three spiritualized independent brains.  As a higher type, Mr. Gurdjieff himself attained his horns through it all–for his own conscious labours and intentional suffering.

Imagine that, human beings are potentially similitudes of the whole, particles of the Great Universe.  In this way, everything is some Divine Fraction, a law conformable portion of the whole.  Behind essence is real I, behind real I, is God, or at least the Most Most Holy Sun Absolute.  Beelzebub provides strange and provocative tales for his grandson Hassein about the hidden dimensions of those strange three-brained beings on planet Earth, the principles of esoteric science, and the meaning and purpose of it all for living, breathing creatures.

The notion of a particle is very profound, like that of “certain definite points,” used by Beelzebub to describe the effects of the Emanations of the Sun Absolute, acting upon the etherokrilno of empty space to involve into Second-order Suns.  Ouspensky recalls Gurdjieff’s discussion of dimensions, which is suggestive as to how to conceive the nature of a point:

“... seven cosmoses related to one another in the ratio of zero to infinity. ... The zero-dimension or the point is a limit.  This means that we see something as a point, but we do not know what is concealed behind this point.  It may actually be a point, that is, a body having no dimensions and it may also be a whole world, but a world so far removed from us or so small that it appears to us as a point.”  (1949, p.209)

The relation of “I” to “God” or the “Sun Absolute” is surely the relationship of the zero-dimension to the infinite and it is all tied up in seven dimensions.

The slugs on planet Earth are created and maintained by the same laws of Triamazikamno and Heptaparaparshinokh as embodied within the larger cosmos.  This is the basis upon which human beings can perfect their higher being-bodies and assume larger cosmic purposes.  Beelzebub explains firstly the triune nature of human beings and then the sevenfold:

“When each separate ‘higher-perfected-being-body’ becomes an independent Individual and acquires in itself its own law of Sacred Triamazikamno, it begins to emanate similarly to the Most Most Holy Sun Absolute but in miniature.”  (p. 798)

“... through each of them (your favorites) the cosmic substances arising in all seven Stopinders of the Sacred Heptaparaparshinokh could be transformed, and all of them, again even the contemporary, besides serving as apparatuses for the Most Great Trogoautoegocrat, could have all possibilities for absorbing from those cosmic substances which are transformed through them what is corresponding for the coating and for the perfecting in each of them of both higher-being bodies; because each three-brained being arisen on this planet of yours represents in himself also, in all respects, just like every three-brained being in all our Universe, an exact similarity of the whole Megalocosmos.

“The difference between each of them and our common great Megalocosmos is only in scale.  

“Here you should know that your contemporary favorites very often use a notion taken by them from somewhere … and expressed by them in the following words: ‘We are the images of God.’

“These unfortunates do not even suspect that, of everything known to most of them concerning cosmic truths, this expression of theirs is the only true one of them all.

“And indeed, each of them is the image of God, not of that ‘God’ which they have in their bobtailed picturings, but of the real God, by which word we sometimes still call our common Megalocosmos. 

“Each of them to the smallest detail is exactly similar, but of course in miniature, to the whole of our Megalocosmos ….  (pp. 774-5)

For Beelzebub, God is not an old Jew, nor does he have a comb sticking out of his pocket.  The bobtailed picturings of your favorites only obscure the ancient wisdom and teachings. 

At varied times, Beelzebub refers to three-brained beings as potentially becoming “a particle of all that exists;” (p. 162) as “a particle though an independent one, of everything existing in the Great Universe;” (p. 183) and as, “beings having in their presences every possibility for becoming particles of a part of Divinity ....”  (p. 452)

In the context of describing one of Saint Buddha’s teachings, Beelzebub explains this profound secret of human potential:

“This Most Great Foundation of the All-embracing of everything that exists constantly emanates throughout the whole of the Universe and coats itself from its particles upon planets-in certain three-brained beings who attain in their common presences the capacity to have their own functioning of both fundamental cosmic laws of the sacred Heptaparaparshinokh and the sacred Triamazikamno-into a definite unit in which alone ‘Objective Divine Reason’ acquires the possibility of becoming concentrated and fixed.  ... certain parts of the Great All-embracing, already spiritualised by Divine Reason, return and reblend with the great Prime Source of the All-embracing ...”  (pp.244-5)

Beelzebub explains that after Buddha’s talk, the people misunderstood his message and began to believe that they already were such “parts of the Most Great Greatness,” even without performing any being-Partkdolg duty.  They were “convinced that they were already particles of Mister Prana himself.”  (p. 246) 

A soul is not given to a human being but must be acquired.  Unfortunately, the cosmic catastrophes which occurred to the Earth lead to the emergence of a strange breed on the planet, who Hassein dared to call ‘slugs’ and who according to Beelzebub are willing to believe any old tale.   Humans have missed the mark and do not establish their own inner triangle or sevenfold nature, completing the inner octave to blend again with the Most Holy Sun Absolute or to assume other roles in the larger Cosmos.   Such independent Sacred Individuals can actually serve larger cosmic purposes–a role initially conceived also for those three-brained beings on the ill-fated planet Earth.