The preface, introduction, and afterword each have a special and unusual function within Gurdjieff’s literary masterpiece. Despite the fact that they fulfill the same general function prefaces, introductions, and afterwords fulfill in other books, Gurdjieff’s use of them are completely unique in certain respects.

Briefly, we will discuss the usual purpose of prefaces, introductions, and afterwords in literature.

Prefaces are generally concerned with the “genesis, purpose, limitations, and scope of the book and may include acknowledgements of indebtedness.”  Gurdjieff describes each of these.  He mentions his accident which leads to him writing, that its purpose is to befuddle the reader’s conscious mind, that it is limited by his lack of education, that it will contain philosophical and linguistic topics and deal with his “hobby” (human mentation), and he refers his indebtedness to Beelzebub, whom he is making a kind of deal with.

His introduction fulfills its function perfectly.  It introduces characters and the general scene of the book, establishing the who, when, why, and where of the story.  It gives a brief overview of Beelzebub’s promotion, banishment, and redemption, preparing the reader for a more detailed account of his travels in Solar System Ors in later chapters.

His afterword restates, in explicit terms, the theme of his book, memorializing his insights into broad-brush stroke overviews of the culture in his time.

Despite the fact that these sections fulfill the basic expectations one would have of them, they are quite unique and singular in other respects.

First, although all are composed in Gurdjieff’s own voice, the preface, introduction, and afterward are written in different styles.

The arousing of thought is unique in that it consists almost entirely of rambling, apparently non-sensical, statements.  This is in contrast to the introduction, which has an economy of language and a concise progression of necessary clues and information for the reader.  The afterword, while he does veer into his special language in one or two places (and for good reason) is much more explicitly logical and restrained in its exposition.

The arousing of thought treats the reader rather roughly, a decidedly jocular provocation of the anyone undertaking the task of reading Beelzebub’s Tales.  In contrast, the afterword gives a more detailed account of Gurdjieff’s teaching and his three-centered schema of the human psycho-anatomy.  What is odd here is that much of the afterword’s content one would normally find in the preface or introduction, not at the end of the book.  Gurdjieff delayed a clear description of his views until the very end of his roughly 1200 page book.

The fact that Gurdjieff would wait to give foundational aspects of his teaching until the end of his central book is striking.  It would appear that in this sense, at least, the book is “topsy turvy”, or composed in reverse.  The reader must wade through an incredible amount of material, only to be given essential information at the very end.  Perhaps this is what Gurdjieff was hinting at when he spoke of the Transcaucasian Kurd who must resolutely eat the burning red pepper all the way to the end, the end being the Afterword.

So we have the idea of the preface and afterword being in a kind of reverse position, despite the fact that they accomplish, in a superficial sense, typical tasks any preface or afterword traditionally might.

The preface contains the maximum difficulty level, requiring the maximum level of knowledge of the book to understand, and is in this sense the culminating chapter of the entire book.

The afterword lays all of the necessary groundwork for understanding preceding chapters.  By doing this Gurdjieff ensured the reader, on their first read, would understand absolutely nothing of the book.  Gurdjieff’s impromptu advise at the beginning of the book recommends three readings of the entire book, the first being to read the book “as you have already become mechanized to read all your contemporary books and newspapers.”

The fact that he would, by placing his only explicit description of his actual teaching at the very end of the book, force the reader to read the book once without being able to understand any of what he said, makes a kind of statement on what he thinks is going on with most people when they read books and newspapers.  People may normally read books and newspapers, which contain all sorts of explicit explanations, and yet understand nothing that they read.  In his preface, he razzes the reader in many places for being accustomed to the prevalent “language of the intelligentsia” and unable to truly think for themselves.

The reader, ingesting the Tales for the first time, and being completely unable to understanding anything due to a lack of information provided in the afterword, must read and explicitly know that they do not understand.  This is in contrast to reading books and thinking that they understand despite the fact that they don’t.

What do we mean when we say that people read books and do not understand?  Take this exercise:  read a book, any book, that breaks down a give topic and builds a point of view for the reader.  Now, out loud, without any preparation, try explaining to someone what the book is about.  Give a complete synopsis in which no essential aspects of the question under consideration is omitted, that succinctly describes the material.  This is actually quite a difficult task.  Most people, if they honestly were to do this, hardly remember or understand anything that they read.

Ouspensky describes in In Search Gurdjieff’s admonishment that if he knew how to read, he could get a great deal from reading.  In general, Gurdjieff noted how poor people’s quality of attention was with anything they did.  If a person paid extremely close attention to what they were doing, they could learn a great deal.

So we have the idea of the preface and afterword as being, in some sense, reversed, in that the former is inflicted on the reader without context, while the afterword, which gives preliminary information, is pushed to the end.  What role then does the introduction play?

The introduction plays a very important role, particularly in relationship to the Tales as a whole.  The preface and afterwords act as “bookends”, in the sense that they bound the work and connect it in an explicit way to the real world.  The introduction’s role, briefly stated, can be understood in two senses.  First, as being a template, the first phase in a series of combinatorial improvisations that algorithmically churn out later chapters  Second, as a point of distillation;  a series of “hot button” words and phrases that associate the reader to later chapters in an organized fashion.  In this way, the introduction functions as both the first step and also the last step.  It gives an initial series of characters, places, things, and events, of which later stories are only permutations, and also serves, by association, to bring into view all subsequently developed knowledge.

So in what way is the introduction a “template”?  The first thing to point out is the triad “ENDLESSNESS-Beelzebub-Ashiata”.  These three characters, in their most archetypal sense, represent Gurdjieff’s three forces “Active-Passive-Reconciling”.  These forces form the basis for all subsequent associational combinations found in the Tales.  Therefore, in any particular story, where Gurdjieff initiates multiple associational series in tandem, he is in a certain sense evoking these primordial relationships established in the introduction.  For instance, the relationship between Beelzebub and Gornahoor as described in Arch-Preposterous and the Fourth Sojourn, represent a re-framed view of the same story, using different metaphors to describe the same situation.  Another obvious instance is in the First Descent, where King Appolis bring the naive young kinsmen of Beelzebub’s tribe as a confidant in his palace on Atlantis, much as ENDLESSNESS brings on the impetuous young Beelzebub as attendant on Sun Absolute.  The topic of ENDLESS-Beelzebub-Ashiata as archetypes is explored more fully in my post God, Devil, Redeemer: ENDLESSNESS, Beelzebub, and Ashiata as Archetype.

A fundamental premise of the Gurdjieff Work is the conception of Working in life.  This is one of its most practical, grounding ideas.  But, like every idea, it is is useful in one context, and destructive in another.  It has a relationship to other ideas, other ways of looking at things, that are equally true.  In this post I examine this way of framing spiritual practice in a contemporary context.

Lets begin with its strengths.  Carrying the idea that our very lives are the place where Work not only can but needs to happen brings us out of the cloud-like haze of thoughts and feelings so often enveloping our moment to moment experience.  Take the Gurdjieffian practice, which naturally begins as an idea, of struggling with negative emotions. We not only think about struggling with negative emotions but begin to actually struggle with negative emotions as they arise in the moment.  This is one aspect of the “Work in life” concept.

This concept is a very important link between one step of the Work process and another.  The first stage begins with a limited awareness of ourselves.  Experience flows within the centers, but very little is discerned, and we act largely unaware of our own motivations and behaviors.  Work with negative emotions serves as a good example.  We often believe the mind’s negative stories about other people or ourselves, thinking that it represents the situation accurately.

Starting from this place of unawareness, we hear the idea of “Work in life.”   This begins as an idea.  The Work literature asserts that first, humans are prone to negativity, but also, second, that these emotions are largely imaginary and self-created.  As practitioners encountering this point of view, we form a metacognition about our usual way of functioning.  Just having the idea of negative emotions highlights the negative emotions that were there, but with which we had no separation.  It is an interesting phenomena that human beings need to have an idea first which can then make common aspects of experience salient.  The first stage is one of no separation from the flow of thoughts and feelings, while the second is the creation of some modicum of awareness or space, however feeble, around how I am.  Usually this state is just as imaginary as the first, because the reality of who we are in relation to everything around us is so vast and unknown.

The idea of “Work in life” carries us to yet a third stage.  Its not enough simply to notice before or after a situation that I was negative or that I will be negative, but to see it as it actually arises.  This is such a difficult task in most cases that even a person in Work groups for many years fails to do it consistently or in the situations where it could really help. And yet, we must eventually do it, or else, just as Gurdjieff said he who cannot carry out the tenants of Christ cannot be said to be Christian, so those of us who cannot carry out this third stage are not truly in the Work.

This idea is indispensable, because it forms a reciprocal influence between the theory and practice of the Work.  Theory has gained a very bad reputation in spiritual circles because of the emphasis on being grounded in experience.  However, any idea, regardless of its aesthetic appeal, that is separate from the reality of who and how I am is theory. Therefore, not only are complex metaphysical diagrams like the Hydrogen Table, the food octave, and others theoritcal, but relatively simple ideas like negative emotions are equally so.  It is extremely important to notice that the complexity of an idea is not what makes it intellectual, but the the very fact that it arises in the mind as a mental object that can float free of reality.  Often simpler ideas are taken to be less intellectual than more complex ones because they bear a more obvious relationship to daily life experience. And yet, even these simple ideas in most people never create a truly lasting and transformative impact on how they actually are.

There is, however, another aspect to this way of picturing things.  After all, the ideas of the work, even practical ideas like struggle with negative emotions, are just pictures in the mind, and not real in any final sense.

It will help to sharpen this up a bit.  The idea of a work in life is often illustrated by contrasting monastic practice with practice in “daily life” as a person with a family, a job, etc.  Gurdjieff uses this example in the Tales in the chapters on India and Tibet, and many of his recorded words emphasize the need to carry out the Work without altering one’s daily obligations.  So part of the Gurdjieff Work culture is a disparaging of monastic practice as a “running away” from life, an easy way out.  It is assumed that our daily lives, with jobs, family, hobbies, etc. are reality, and extensive retreats or sabbaticals in relative isolation are unreality.

To get some space around this point of view, it helps to have historical perspective.  Gurdjieff’s teaching career spanned roughly 1915 to 1950.  At this time, Orientalism, a fascination with the mystique of the East, far off monasteries and ascended Masters, was extremely popular in the European imagination.  In this context, take this remark from one of the most popular Work books, In Search of the Miraculous:

“When I went away I already knew I was going to look for a school or schools. …I should say better that I dreamed about the possibility of a non-physical contact with schools, a contact, so to speak, “on another plane”.  I could not explain it clearly, but it seemed to me that even the beginning of contact with a school may have a miraculous nature.  I imagined, for example, the possibility of making contact with schools of the distant past, with schools of Pythagoras, with schools of Egypt, with the schools of those who built Notre Dame, and so on.  It seemed to me that the barriers of time and space should disappear on making such contact.”(page 4)

Ouspensky goes on to say that he lost some of his fantasy about schools after his travels in the East.

This quote sums up very well the mystique of the East at the time in which Gurdjieff lived.  One can imagine that after his own travels and experiences, Gurdjieff, beginning to work with Europeans many of whom were influenced by various schools of Theosophy, one of the organizations that perpetrated Orientalism, would encounter many pupils with active fantasies about Eastern schools, astral bodies, etc.

In other places, Ive written about how he used these beliefs to act on people’s psychology.  I describe how he intentionally strengthened those fantasies, using them to get psychological leverage so as to produce other actions from them.  The method of not trying to debunk those fantasies but use them forms another very interesting part of this method.

However, he often would try to get rid of these misconceptions directly as well. Several prominent ideas were created to this effect, which again, we find in In Search. These include the idea of the obyvatael in contradistinction to what Gurdjieff referred to as tramps and lunatics.  The obyvatael he described as a good householder, able, in a practical sense, to support both themselves and as much as 10 others.  In other words, a person skillful within the context of the time and place in which they lived.  He contrasted this with tramps and lunatics, words he used for many of the intelligentsia and pseudo spiritualists who used spirituality and ideas as an escape from practical obligations.

Its hard for us today, with over 100 years of integration between East and West, to imagine how different things appeared then.  One couldn’t simply skype with a friend in Tibet, watch videos of the Dalai Lama speaking, or catch a plane from Tokyo to London on a whim.  Gurdjieff himself went through harrowing journeys to India and Tibet, contracting diseases, learning languages, all in the effort to find what we in many cases have direct access to today.  In light of all this, its surprising that the Eastern mystique still exists.  Book such as In Search of the Miraculous still manage to produce this archaic misunderstanding.

So we see from all this why Gurdjieff placed such an emphasis on Work in life.  He was dealing with pupils who had no way of understanding anything of what he had seen and learned in Central Asia.  Today we have fairly direct access to Central Asia.

Gurdjieff also realized he could use Orientalism as a way to probe prospective students.  There are many recorded examples of his grandiose claims of his knowledge of Eastern lore.  He used this as a way, on the one hand, to test the limits of visitor’s suggestibility who came to the Prieure, and, on the other hand, as a teaching to existing pupil’s about human credulity.

Here is an account from J.G. Bennett’s autobiography Witness in which he has noticed the presence of a stream near the Prieure’s kitchen garden and thought of a suggestion for Gurdjieff:

“One day Gurdjieff came up to the kitchen garden, and with considerable trepidation I asked him if I could make irrigation canals of the kind used in Anatolia.  He agreed without discussion.  The next day, I built a dam and starting cutting a canal, but as it had to pass over some higher ground, I saw that it would take me weeks to dig it in the little spare time I had after lunch.  However, I reckoned without Gurdjieff.  The same evening he came up to the kitchen garden and made a great scene about the stupidity of carrying water when a stream was so near.  Everyone was set to digging canals, and the irrigation system was working the next day.  Afterwards I heard Gurdjieff describe it as a special system that he had seen in Persia, and it became one of the marvels of the Prieure, shown to visitors as an example of Gurdjieff’s uncanny wisdom.”(p 114)

This is a very typical example of Gurdjieff’s openly fraudulent methods.  He very clearly knew that Bennett was aware of his lie, and in this way his exaggerations served, at least potentially, as a learn tool for Bennett.

So we see that Gurdjieff used the oriental mystique as a psychological technique.  In other essays Ive explored evidence for whether this should be viewed as an expression of a deep pathology or wisdom.  In this case, we can see that the very fact he could use these kinds of lies with visitors to the Prieure speaks to the culture of the time. For those who wished to study his method, practically, he made the emphasis of the Work as being “in life”; that Work takes place within while one goes about one’s normal activities.

Now, with this context, we are helped to understand a confusion that can be created.  In the context of belief in far away schools, a belief which in reality is a turning away from one’s life, the concept of Working in life is grounding.  It points out that whatever one thinks about far away monstaries, none of the will help them with the difficulties they are directly facing.  A pupil holding this perspective better focuses on their own sphere of influence and things they can actually affect.

However, for a person who is already “well-adjusted”, with a reasonably stable career, family, and social life, this concept serves merely to strengthen the idea that the “life” they think they are living is real, or, at any rate, accurately perceived.  Of course, nothing further could be from the truth, and social psychology has well documented since Gurdjieff’s time.

More esoterically, the inner teachings contained within Gurdjieff’s Legominisms point to a clear, direct perception, purified of cultural and subjective stains.  The seamless flow of sensations, thoughts, and feelings contain no trace of fixedness, and it is only in the context of a divorce from reality that any world can seem to exist.  This represents the core of the teaching; awakening to something beyond the “life”, or the conventional reality we all suppose we are living.  The Work, as a wisdom teaching, leads beyond the coagulated bits of second hand hearsay patched together to create our subjective picturings of world, and the Work, in this sense, leads us “beyond life.”  It is a “Work beyond life.”

So, ironically, we see that a point of view such as a “Work in life,” serving to free us from one kind of imagined reality, enslaves us to another.  Looking at how such a practical adage can be misunderstood bears on Gurdjieff’s counter-intuitive declaration that even apparently straightforward truths turn into new forms of illusion with time.  This, perhaps, was one of his more central observations.