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.
[3] In his prospectus for All and Everything, printed at the beginning of each part of the trilogy, Gurdjieff states his aim in the first volume of "destroy[ing], 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."
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 [that] has yet been seen.
After Gurdjieff was in a serious car accident in 1924, he decided to pass on something of his theoretical teachings by writing a number of detailed books.
Gurdjieff first mainly dictated Beelzebub's Tales in Russian and Armenian between 1924 and 1927,[1] as he was initially unable to write personally because of his condition after the accident.
After realizing from the various public readings of his texts that those people who were not familiar with his form of mentation and expression would not be able to understand anything, he decided to completely rewrite everything.
The listeners (including the behaviorist John Watson, Lincoln Steffens, and George Seldes) were apparently perplexed and unimpressed.
Beelzebub details the history, customs and psychology of humanity and relates the esoteric theory behind the workings of the universe.
Beelzebub narrates a history of creation that allegorically explains the human condition as perceived by Gurdjieff: Earth is described as being orbited by two satellites which broke off the planet during its early phase after it was hit by a comet: the Moon and a second body (unknown to mankind) called Anulios.
An artificial organ was implanted into all human beings by the "high powers" making them oblivious of this mechanism but causing psychological side effects such as vanity, pride, and other vices: And then, in fact, with the help of the Chief-Common-Universal-Arch-Chemist-Physicist Angel Looisos, who was also among the members of this Most High Commission, they caused to grow in the three-brained beings there, in a special way, at the base of their spinal column, at the root of their tail—which they also, at that time, still had, and which part of their common presences furthermore still had its normal exterior expressing the, so to say, ‘fullness-of-its-inner-significance’—a ‘something’ which assisted the arising of the said properties in them.
The introduction states that before Gurdjieff's death in 1949, he entrusted the book and his other writings to Jeanne de Salzmann, his closest pupil, with instructions for future publication.
De Salzmann had followed Gurdjieff for more than thirty years and played a central role in his decision in the 1940s to organize the practice of his teaching.
[12] Opponents of this view, such as John Henderson, claim that Orage had worked closely with Gurdjieff to produce the original English translation.
Beelzebub tells the tales to his grandson Hassein while they are traveling together on the spaceship Karnak for his conference on another planet, shortly after his return from the exile.
The name later appears as the name of a demon or devil, often interchanged with Beelzebul), while the name Hassein has the same linguistic root with Husayn (Arabic: حسین).
Another possibility is noted in Life Is Real Only Then, When 'I Am', where Gurdjieff wrote that he accidentally learned of the word Solioonensius from a Dervish.
Gurdjieff would expound one of the book's most controversial ideas in an early chapter entitled "The Arch-absurd: According to the assertion of Beelzebub, our Sun neither lights or heats".