Psycho-symbolism in Gurdjieff’s Teaching
1989
Copyright © S.B. Groves 2010
Gurdjieff was, to say the least, an enigmatic person. Even those who knew him fairly well
were surprised at times by the different aspects of his makeup that he would reveal.
Sometimes he would behave like a prosperous businessman – a veritable tycoon; then he
would show himself as a musician and teacher of oriental dances; then he would appear to
be a sage, steeped in the mysteries of the East; and then again, he would appear as a
nobody. He could be kind and courteous; fierce and uncompromising; stubborn and
unmovable; sociable and the teller of jokes; serious and given to bouts of solitude, and so
on. Many of these characteristics come through in his writings.
Gurdjieff’s most important book is All and Everything or Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson.
It is a bulky, rambling work filled with strange words, amusing anecdotes, and themes that
are hard to understand. The form of the writing conceals a great deal of valuable
knowledge, and the reader must be prepared to go through the book many times in order to
discern the principles it contains. Gurdjieff intentionally buried some of his best esoteric
knowledge beneath thick layers of words and symbols, and his intention was to make
people work hard to get at this knowledge. But even those who were close to Gurdjieff, like
Orage, could not prize out of him the concealed meanings he had put there. Orage helped
with the translation and was the man who put the English edition into its final form. It is in
All and Everything that we find the symbolic method at work, and we shall refer to this book
many times in the course of this lecture.
Let us commence with the mythical event described in Chapter XLII ‘Beelzebub in America’.
‘America’, as described here, is a kind of caricature of a certain type of person to be found
all over the world. Such a person has only external values, is money-hungry, a pretender,
and an opportunist who is always trying to find ways of exploiting other people. Gurdjieff
sees such people as slick conjurors who use mental tricks to get their own way, yet give
nothing in return and render no service. He describes a certain mythical Professor
Kishmenhov as a chief inventor of conjurors, and tells a tale about a certain conjury known
as ‘chicken soup’. For details of this read pages 924/5.
To grasp what this is all about, let us look at the name Kishmenhov. It is Gurdjieff’s
modification of two German words: kitsch (meaning trash) and mensch (meaning person),
and immediately we see that we are dealing with a ‘trash person’, a worthless and
perfidious person. The ‘chicken’ is the only real formation in the tale. Since ‘chicken’ or bird
represents a genuine idea, we see that the extraordinary method of preparing the chicken
soup was to push the idea around in various ways, without disclosing its real nature, and
dispensing (for people’s mental nourishment) an infinite dilution of the idea. In other words,
under the pretence of a teaching nothing at all is given out, but unsuspecting people are
convinced that what they are served is the ‘real thing’. Any real idea which is abused in this
manner inevitably dies at the hands of an unscrupulous person, and the whole of its
meaning disappears from that individual.
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Amusing tales are widely employed by the Sufis as instruments for conveying ideas and
teachings, and one must always be alert in order to catch the inner sense of a story.
Gurdjieff knew this process very well, and often employed it in his writings. Casual remarks,
jokes and contradictory statements are sometimes used to get important ideas across to the
readers’ mind.
One of the unusual features of All and Everything is the abundance of strange words, many
of which are difficult to pronounce. Sometimes the words signify ordinary things –
sakronakari (Egypt), oblelioonerish (horoscope), and noorfooftafaf (willingness), while at
other times they were names for fundamental cosmic laws – traimazikamno (the law of
three, triads), and heptaparaparchinokh (the law of seven, octaves). Many of these words
are compounds of word-roots and parts of words from several languages – Greek,
Armenian, English, Russian, Hungarian, Persian and Arabic. They were specifically created to
make people stop and ponder, and search for meanings. They also serve to interrupt the
mechanical flow of automatic reading, and jerk the reader into making a more conscious
effort to understand the sense of the paragraphs. In addition, superficial minds are easily
put off by such words, and soon stop reading the book.
The chapters on America, France and Germany are really caricatures of certain types of
people rather than critiques of entire nations. For example, Gurdjieff points out that in Asia
many people are addicted to opium – but at least it is genuine opium; in the western world
vast numbers of people are addicted to systems, pseudo-teachings, slogans and pastimes,
all of which are worthless. Here, he expresses a major weakness of humanity, and the
people who behave in the above manner he whimsically calls ‘Americans’. The whole
chapter on America is an analysis of the abuses of food, alcohol, sex, morality and the
environment. Although written in the early part of the Twentieth Century, it is remains true
to the present world situation.
The framework of the entire book is the universe, and throughout the chapters accounts are
given of spacecraft and flights from planet to planet. The significance of this background
should be grasped, because Gurdjieff is endeavouring to lead the reader into an
understanding of the psycho-cosmological nature of esoteric work. Laws of world-building
and world-maintenance are expounded, and human beings are shown to be inevitable
participants in the inexorable world-process. Using the words of Beelzebub, Gurdjieff
describes contemporary humanity as a collection of ‘slugs’, ‘unfortunate arisings’,
‘sleepwalkers’, ‘nullities’ and so on. The reason for these harsh remarks is that most people
are in a sleep state and do not see that they have a responsibility to God, the universe and
themselves. They drift through life and rarely contribute to the welfare and harmony of the
cosmic system.
Beelzebub descends from the planet Karatas and visits other planets in the universe. The
Solar System interests him and he selects Mars as his temporary headquarters. From Mars
he descends to the Earth on a number of occasions, observing the aberrated behaviour of its
inhabitants, and occasionally sharing the knowledge of higher worlds with certain
individuals. Also, on Mars he built an observatory so as to be able to study the
characteristics of Earth-dwellers. This is a description of the necessary process of selfobservation whereby a higher and deeper part of us witnesses the mechanical thoughts and
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behaviour of the ordinary self. Of course, the ‘planets’ represent planes or levels of being.
They are states of consciousness, degrees of enlightenment and purification, conditions of
harmonization and conjunction with the Divine. ‘Spacecraft’ which travel from planet to
planet represent capacities and methods of changing and exploring these psychocosmological levels of being.
Beelzebub’s home planet of Karatas is of significance, because the name carries a Persian
root – kar (meaning work, to make an efforts) and designates a level of life where one’s
cosmic responsibilities are recognized and acted out. There is also a Cape Karatas in the
south of Turkey. His spaceship Karnak is also of interest – Karnak is an Armenian word which
conveys the idea of the body being the tomb of the soul.
Chapters IV and V – ‘The Law of Falling’ and ‘The System Archangel Hariton’ provides a
description of how the spaceships operate, and a comparison is drawn between the
propulsive mechanisms of the older ships and the improved mechanisms of the newer ones.
An uninformed reader may regard this chapter as dull material and as being insignificant,
and in this way miss something very important. The earlier spacecraft were driven by a
special mechanism whereby electromagnetic rays were employed to create a total vacuum
inside a special chamber. By means of this internalized vacuum the spaceship could easily be
moved in any direction. In the newer spacecraft an improved propulsion mechanism was
present. A large cylinder whose walls contained special materials was installed. When any
substance whatsoever – air, atomic particles, ether or cosmic radiation – entered the
cylinder, the walls caused a massive expansion of the substance and this was allowed to
escape through a suitable exit. The impulses then drove the spaceship at high speed in any
direction. It was said that the denser the substances that entered the cylinder, the more
effective was the propulsion.
What Gurdjieff is describing here is a new system of working on oneself. The old propulsive
system was passive (vacuum) and consisted in reliance upon faith, love and hope. The new
system is highly active and requires work to be done on denser substances. Such dense
substances are our negative states; coarse emotions; heavy, opaque thoughts; and sluggish
mechanical habits. When we know how to use them, we can transform our difficulties into
helpful, dynamic states that propel us through life.
So, the book beings with a kind of parable about the urgent need to actively promote one’s
evolution by transforming our impediments and making creative use of the energies
released. If we can bring this about we shall be able to move to other ‘planets’; that is,
planes and levels of being. We live in a world of conflict, resistance, friction and sleep, and
must learn to turn them to our advantage. By so doing we accelerate our development.
The theme of ‘Beelzebub’s Tales’ is that the universe is a very great creation, and that it is
filled with life, energy and meaning. In many ways, both overt and covert, Gurdjieff shows
that people everywhere are ignorant of this great truth, and have no meaning in their lives –
no aim to provide them with an orientation. He points out that in past ages there were
people with a real knowledge of life and existence who possessed the method of inner
development.
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He writes about the ancient ‘Society of Akhaldans’, and declares the meaning of the word
akhaldan to be
“The striving to become aware of the sense and aim of the Being of beings”.
The members of this Society or School learned to seek out and eliminate from themselves
certain undesirable features and characteristics. Once this was accomplished, and they had
cleared their lives of impediments they were in a position to search for objective knowledge,
which consists of inviolable universal truths, laws and principles. In chapter XXIII Gurdjieff
outlines the fields of research they pursued, and there were 7 branches in all. It is, in effect,
a full program which any modern seeker ought to pursue.
From ancient times certain valuable knowledge has been transmitted by legominisms. These
are collections of truths which formed the High Knowledge of ancient times, and were
transmitted to perceptive beings of later generations in the form of inscriptions on marble
or sheets of gold, as certain architectural patterns, as sacred symbols, as certain forms of
music, and by direct instruction by word of mouth. Sometimes undeveloped and
unauthorised people in modern times manage to get hold of scraps of information from
ancient legominisms. The consequences of this are described by Gurdjieff in a most
colourful way in ‘All and Everything’ pp 351.
Scattered throughout the book are many references to a key process which is given the
name of being-partkdolgduty. This term is ‘duty’ repeated in three languages: partk = dolg =
duty. It is responsible duty carried out for the sake of one’s being, and for the Being of
beings (God). The Armenian park comes from the Zend word hvareno, which meant the
majesty or halo surrounding a prominent being. Being-partkdolgduty means ‘conscious
labour and voluntary suffering’, and this is precisely what people in the modern world do
not want. Instead they crave a formula, a magical influence, the presence of a spiritual guide
that will give them high spiritual standing without effort. They forget the enormous labour
that went into the building of the world and the formation of the human body. They close
their eyes to the fact that they are in deep debt for all that they are and have. They choose
not to see that their very existence entails a duty to fully develop something that has been
sewn in them for higher purposes.
Being-partkdolgduty is:
 The intellectual duty to understand the aim and meaning of existence.
 The emotional duty to feel the pressure involved in the maintenance of existence.
 The physical duty of making the planetary body the servant of one’s aim.
A person should have a sense of obligation to discharge the service for which they were
created, and should remember that they will evolve only to the degree to which they carry
out this obligation.
Chapter 17, which bears the curious title ‘The Arch-Absurd’, introduces the reader to deep
cosmological and psychological principles. From God, the Endless Creator Uni-Being there
proceed the law of triads and the law of octaves. The substance of the Divine flows forth
and undergoes transformation and crystallisation to become the Prime Source Substance,
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etherokrilno. This substance, which is outside space and time, permeates the universe, and
is the basis for the arising and maintenance of everything in the cosmos. The Arabic root krr
signifies ‘creative action’. It is something with creative potential. In the holy triad,
etherokrilno is the sacred denying force. Etherokrilno itself undergoes crystallisation to form
the ‘omnipresent active element’ Okidanokh. This seems to resolve into the Armenian word
oki (spirit) and gyank (life); hence Okidanokh suggests something like ‘the spirit of life’ or
‘living spirit’.
By the laws of 3 and 7 Okidanokh is translated into suns, planets and galaxies where all
manner of formation arise and myriads of energy transformations get under way. As soon as
objects and organisms arise, and interact with Okidanokh, the cosmic process of Djartklom
is initiated. Djartklom is the dispersion of Okidanokh into the 3 fundamental sources of its
own arising whenever it enters into a new cosmic formation.
Okidanokh
Active
force
Denying
force
Neutralizing
force
The presence of 3 forces means that a formation has its own triad:
Active
force
Neutralizing
Force
Denying
force
When the object or organism ceases to exist the 3 separate forces re-blend to form
Okidanokh, but carry with them vivifying vibrations. Hence, Okidanokh is being perpetually
enriched by the energy interactions that take place in existing things.
In human beings the 3 forces become organised into the three primary ‘brains’ or centres.
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Affirming
Thinking
Reconciling
Feeling
Denying
Acting-instinctive
When there is Divine influx, any centre can be activated into a conscious state and is able to
see the inadequacies of the other centres. This can lead to remorse, which is sorrow for
one’s present state in the light of what one ought to be. From this can emerge powerful
Work efforts connected with a central aim.
Djartklom can take place in human beings in two distinct ways.
 It may be initiated by the world-process through what Gurdjieff calls the
Kerkoolnonarnian actualisation. This is “the obtaining-of-the-required-totality-ofvibrations-by-adaptation” (Gurdjieff ). It takes place automatically and serves the
purposes of creation, but has no effect upon the inner life of the individual. Only
that which is performed intentionally can be of help and use to a person.
 As a result of Being-partkdolgduty, which is intentionally-directed, conscious work
on oneself. This raises the vibrations of personal life, and so vivifies it. It also fights
against mechanicalness and sleep, stupid mechanical thinking, and useless or even
harmful habits. There is also the effort to bring about alignment of oneself with the
law and order of Reality through consciousness of one’s aim and responsibilities.
The forces of Okidanokh which are separated by conscious Djartklom are themselves
energetic vibrations. They can only combine with ‘kindred vibrations’ that may happen to be
present in the brains or centres of the awakened individual. The blended vibrations then
concentrate in those brains and become a permanent part of the individual’s life, as we see
in the diagram on the following page..
The ‘kindred vibrations’ in the individual are obtained by self-sensing, self remembering,
and struggling against the ubiquitous falsities and evils which plague every person’s life. We
have to rouse ourselves if we wish to undergo transformation or rebirth. Only a first-grade
fool, a terrestrial nullity, can assume that regeneration takes place merely by hearing or
reading something about it.
Chapters 39 and 40, ‘The Holy Planet Purgatory’ and the Law of Heptaparaparshinokh’ are
key factors in the book. In highly symbolic language there is set forth the laws and processes
whereby the Kesdjan body is built. ‘Kesdjan’ is derived from Persian roots and means ‘the
vehicle of the soul’. During the course of life people must so conduct themselves that they
crystallise within themselves a spiritual body, which is the means of existing and functioning
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in the spiritual world. Love, charity of spirit, conscious knowledge, wisdom, usefulness, deep
feeling states, intentional interaction with Divine, spiritual and cosmic processes, and the
extension of consciousness into the darkness of the unconscious mind are indispensable
activities in forming both the kesdjan and higher being bodies. The ‘Purgatory’ chapter
contains an account of the operations of the enneagram as it applies to human perfecting.
In the chapter ‘The Law of Heptaparaparshinokh’ the law of octaves, and the reciprocal
process of involution and evolution, are discussed in detail.
Below we see a diagram illustrating the process discussed on the previous page of blended
vibrations:
Okidanokh
Thinking centre
Djartklom
Feeling centre
These blendings are
called
Being-Impulses
Acting centre
Chapter 41, ‘The Bokharian Dervish Hadji-Asvatz-Troov’ provides important data on
vibrations, music and the human psyche. Bokhara was one of the great spiritual centres of
the ancient world in the region of Afghanistan. Hadji, from Hajj, is one who has made the
pilgrimage to Mecca, and asvatz comes from Armenian asdvadz meaning God. The rest you
must discover for yourselves. The chapter deals with colour vibrations as well as musical
vibrations, and how some vibrations can produce physical manifestations in the body. A
great deal of inner information is communicated in this essay, but it is not at all clear to the
casual or uninformed reader. This information is not so much a matter of intellectual
knowledge, but is insight provided by emotional perception.
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