Orage's Commentary on Gurdjieff's Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson: New York Talks 1926-1930 PDF
Preview Orage's Commentary on Gurdjieff's Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson: New York Talks 1926-1930
© Book Studio 2020 All rights reserved. Hardback ISBN: 978-0-9572481-0-6 Front cover: “Bursting with Stars and Black Holes,” courtesy NASA. Acknowledgement is gratefully made to Frank Brück for preparing and revising the text, and to Matthias Buck-Gramcko for reworking the illustrations. A. R. Orage G. I. Gurdjieff CONTENTS FOREWORD 29 MARCH 1926 12 APRIL 1926 10 JANUARY 1927 10 JANUARY 1927 10 JANUARY 1927 11 JANUARY 1927 17 JANUARY 1927 17 JANUARY 1927 18 JANUARY 1927 20 JANUARY 1927 24 JANUARY 1927 24 JANUARY 1927 25 JANUARY 1927 31 JANUARY 1927 31 JANUARY 1927 2 FEBRUARY 1927 7 FEBRUARY 1927 14 FEBRUARY 1927 14 FEBRUARY 1927 21 FEBRUARY 1927 21 FEBRUARY 1927 27 FEBRUARY 1927 28 FEBRUARY 1927 28 FEBRUARY 1927 7 MARCH 1927 7 MARCH 1927 14 MARCH 1927 14 MARCH 1927 21 MARCH 1927 28 MARCH 1927 28 MARCH 1927 4 APRIL 1927 11 APRIL 1927 18 APRIL 1927 25 APRIL 1927 25 APRIL 1927 2 MAY 1927 9 MAY 1927 16 MAY 1927 16 MAY 1927 17 MAY 1927 23 MAY 1927 23 MAY 1927 30 MAY 1927 31 MAY 1927 17 OCTOBER 1927 24 OCTOBER 1927 31 OCTOBER 1927 7 NOVEMBER 1927 5 DECEMBER 1927 14 DECEMBER 1927 27 DECEMBER 1927 19 MARCH 1928 26 MARCH 1928 2 APRIL 1928 2 APRIL 1928 3 APRIL 1928 9 APRIL 1928 15 APRIL 1928 21 APRIL 1928 23 APRIL 1928 30 APRIL 1928 7 MAY 1928 7 MAY 1928 14 MAY 1928 21 M 1928 AY 21 MAY 1928 4 DECEMBER 1928 14 JANUARY 1929 4 FEBRUARY 1930 20 JANUARY 25 MARCH CHAPTER 17 — THE ARCH-ABSURD CHAPTER 18 — THE ARCH-PREPOSTEROUS L. S. M. ON BEELZEBUB SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY FOREWORD A. R. Orage’s commentaries on Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson are an essential part of the Fourth Way literature. They demonstrate a way of approaching and understanding a work that Orage considered to be literature of the highest kind. As most of us have no experience in reading and understanding this form of literature, Orage’s commentaries are of invaluable help. Here, we can find hints on where to look for the keys to understanding Beelzebub which, as Gurdjieff once said, are all in the book, but not near their locks. Following these hints we can avoid the fallacy of looking for the keys, like Mullah Nasruddin, only in places where there is “more light.” Orage saw in the intended difficulty of reading Beelzebub, not a dirty trick to confuse and belittle the reader, but a conscious measure to shock the intellect whereby emotion is aroused, so that perception is sufficiently expanded to assimilate a thought or idea. Gurdjieff understood perfectly the inadequacy of direct formulation. Hence, Orage tries in his commentaries to illuminate Beelzebub from different angles, so that we may approach it, not as a flat plane but as multidimensional space. A fine illustration of this can be seen in the film “Contact” with Jodie Foster, where a message from beings in outer space is deciphered by the human recipients only after they add a further dimension to their trials. When Orage went to Gurdjieff at his Château du Prieuré in 1922, to find God, as he said, he himself lived already with the halo of a wise man. However, Gurdjieff showed no regard to this and Orage had to endure a severe training of body, emotion and intellect. In the beginning of 1924, Orage was sent to New York as Gurdjieff’s emissary for America. That summer, Gurdjieff suffered an automobile accident which almost cost him his life, and as a result, his financial situation became drastic. During his recovery, Gurdjieff thought about his situation and realized that the dissemination of his message was no longer possible in the ways he had planned, so he decided to put his whole body of ideas into a series of books, the first of which he entitled Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson . Was it only chance that his deputy in New York, A. R. Orage, was one of the best English literary critics of his time? Gurdjieff’s first draft of Beelzebub, however, was rejected by Orage as completely unintelligible, but it was not long before a revised version arrived. “This is entirely different,” Orage said, “Now I begin to smell something very interesting. . . . The book will take shape. It is full of ideas. As I see it, it is really an objective work of art, of literature of the highest kind; it is in the category of scripture. It is consciously designed to have a definite effect on everyone who feels drawn to reading it. Anyone who tried to rewrite it would distort it.” * In the following years, Orage rendered one chapter after another into articulate English. Spending several weeks or months of each year at the Château du Prieuré, Orage had the opportunity to discuss the book intensively with Gurdjieff. Often they talked all through the night. Orage was always eager to learn more about the secrets he supposed were hidden by Gurdjieff in the book. Gurdjieff enjoyed Orage’s company and was fond of his congenial ability to find the right English formulations to express exactly what he intended. It is no exaggeration to say that none of Gurdjieff’s other pupils were so deeply involved in the creation of Beelzebub and so near in spirit to the author as Orage. Back in New York, Orage used each new chapter of Beelzebub as teaching material for his groups, masterfully provoking insights and questions from his pupils. For him, the book was, at the least, a device to acquire an impartial perspective of one’s life, which is a sine qua non for all further steps in personal evolution. Orage’s splendid commentaries on Beelzebub would probably never have been known if his New York pupils, especially Lawrence Morris and Sherman Manchester, had not taken notes. A small portion of these notes were edited and published by C. S. Nott. † This present volume is complete and unabridged. The notes have been edited with an emphasis on readability. Illegible words, missing or wrong punctuation and grammatical errors have been corrected. Missing letters and words have been reconstructed using the context where possible. In cases where no meaning could be deduced, no changes have been made. Frank Brück Weyhe near Bremen , June 2013 * C. S. Nott, Teachings of Gurdjieff , p92-3 † Ibid, Chapter III 29 MARCH 1926 The first form of reason is based entirely on examples from our experience. Similarity of concepts accidentally acquired. The second presupposed an ability to see an idea or form apart from its contents. The third form, objective reason, is only possible to “I” and has to do with the nature of things. The epitome of this is the enneagram. The triangle is “I” and the surrounding circle is “it.” “I” is under the law of three while the organism is under the law of seven. Only when “I” can begin to think of the whole organism under the law of seven. In the law of seven there are three points: begin at do — then between mi and fa, then from si to do. Try to think of the triangle as the main spring of the whole. Without its activity nothing will happen. There are three “hands” — one has completed its circle as far as it can go (that is to si) — one has gone do, re, mi — and the third has only just started at do. If we are alert at the note mi, we shall know when to intervene. Never try to create art or to observe art with feeling. (This is one of the things on the wall of the institute in a script not to be read without the key.) The story of the bees — merely mechanical — failed, they got no cosmic- consciousness, therefore, they were reduced in size and lived happily after. A long time for us will be required to learn to know, much longer than to learn to be, much longer to learn to do. This means from an objective standpoint. [Orage said regarding writing that he no longer dared at all to write objectively, but has now a glimpse of what objective writing would be. ] In the matter of writing, it is possible to write sentences such that they will have, if read, a definite foreseen effect no matter what the state of the reader happens to be. These are called “matrices” or magic sentences. If read with the ear, the rhythm affects you; if read with the eye, the arrangement of the letters affect you; if read with the understanding, the meaning will affect you. There is expected of each of you, a certain work. That work we do not yet understand, and of course, still less are we able to undertake this work at this stage. Every “I” that has some possibility to self-realization has as its duty to carry the organic kingdoms over the note si, i.e. 2,000 million organisms waiting through numberless recurrences for a shock to carry them over the missing half-steps. When you have established the separability of “I” so that you can non- identify at will — a different sort of instruction will be available. When “I” is born, then there will be someone to care for it — just any new form. It is not best to make the way to the prenatal growth smooth and too easy, lest “I” shall be born a weakling. Despair is a divine fire that purifies — burns up impurities. Nobody who brings to birth “I” will be left. “As if” you were a reasonable person deputed to act as a reasonable person would act. Situations in which we find ourselves from which we cannot escape. Take it as if you were placed in that situation to find out what a reasonable person would do in that situation. Then, “as if” you had to proscribe what is best to be done every changing moment. Then the aspect to one’s state is real. We are only ghosts, really. These illusions are caused by sense imaginations. Try to see what your organism has been from conception to the present, and then see the whole of your life. Imagination based on sense impressions produces negative emotions. In this state, it is not possible to act reasonably, but real perception will enable you to think and act reasonably. A mother crying over (to us) a repulsive criminal is enslaved by an earlier actualization. But we are enslaved with the present actualization. Ceasing to hate a person who arouses negative emotions is one step — learning to love such a person would be another. Generally speaking any negative state can be used for self-observation, then participation, then experiment. These are exercises for “I.” Ceasing to hate means no longer wasting energy. Learning to love is developing positive emotion. But to do this we must have a positive reason for so doing — i.e. a neutralizing force. (What would one be?) If you would say to yourself: “I have a body” and realize it, you would have arrived at our object of self-consciousness, self-realization with non - identification, by the direct method. We must discover that here is finally and forever “I” and “it.” We will then be at do of the intellectual. So long as my relations with Orage are very friendly so long will “I” be identified with “it.” The case of the Russian — cliff, boulder, rope = do, i.e. self-realization (“easy way”).
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