Concluding Beelzebub’s Tales: Gurdjieffian Notions of the Soul and the Import of Human Life

Pittman, Michael

doi:10.5840/asrr2024415109

Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review

Volume 15, Issue 1, 2024

G. I. Gurdjieff and the Work Tradition

Michael Pittman

Pages 3-25

https://doi.org/10.5840/asrr2024415109

Concluding Beelzebub’s Tales
Gurdjieffian Notions of the Soul and the Import of Human Life

This essay is part of an ongoing study of the notion of the uncreated soul as presented in G. I. Gurdjieff’s magnum opus, Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson. Keeping in view the overarching themes of the conscious labor and intentional suffering (being-Partkdolg-duty) and the development of higher-being bodies, the article will examine and discuss some of the references to the soul found in the last third of Gurdjieff’s work. In this last part of the book, after thoroughgoing attempt to destroy, and then revise and reinvigorate the notion of the soul in prior sections of the book, Gurdjieff, returns to an arguably ordinary way of referring to humans as souls, with a now-established notion that the soul must be developed. Some of the themes introduced in this last third of the book include America, War, and the issue of justice. Driven by the earnest and sincere questioning of his grandson Hassein, Beelzebub attempts to explain and frame the challenges facing human beings of Earth. Following the conclusion of the Tales proper, this article presents and analyzes some key elements of Gurdjieff’s concluding chapter, written in his own voice, addressing the psychological and spiritual structure of the human being, and a restatement of his aim for Beelzebub’s Tales as a whole.

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