[audio:http://idiotplayers.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/IP-20100524-Beelzebub-Mysteries.mp3|titles=A reading from GI. Gurdjieff’s Beelzebub’s Tales, Chapter 30, The Mysteries]
download (right-click and Save as…)
In this selection, also from Chapter 30 of Gurdjieff’s Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, Beelzebub recounts, of course in compounding detail, the methods of an ancient club of researchers by means of their experiments in the theatre. This club is called the Club of the Adherents-of-Legominism. I can re-phrase this as the Club-of-Expertise-in-Disclosing-Truths. This club comes to separate the work of investigating the various modes of this disclosure. Saturdays they devote to developing and performing mysteries. I imagine that modern mysteries are not so far from ancient types in that modern mysteries, like Sherlock Holmes, evoke the state of “not-knowing”. The characters in the mystery story as well as the reader experience something hidden. In order to know this something hidden, some new insight, some fresh impression, some increase in being is needed. Yet, the ancient mysteries such as they are represented by Beelzebub are much more rigorous in creating the conditions for this increase of being – although this rigorousness need not come at the expense of entertainment value according to Beelzebub.
The recording here is longer than the others we have posted until now. It covers all of the section on the Saturday events except the final short passage about costuming. Rather than include this short passage, we chose to close the podcast with the words of Mullah Nassr Eddin. In addition to the reading, there is improvisational music performed by members of the idiotplayers art troupe.
It would be foolhardy to suggest that we could provide adequate definitions for the key terms Beelzebub introduces in the selection in this brief introduction. Nevertheless, we venture a few…
Law of Sevenfoldness
The law by which all of existence changes from something into something quite different in accordance with the 7 tones of vibrations of everything else arising within and beyond its sphere.
Shocks
The impulse that can carry everyday awareness into the perception of something new or at least unexpected.
Darthelhlustnian state
The state in which one observes from within the rising and falling of sensitive energy, subtle and gross.
Ikriltazkakra
The power to maintain one’s inner coherence even in the midst of many things happening all at once.
Being-Partkdolg-duty
The duty we feel when we wish to become truly individual, as opposed to being merely stylishly individual. This is the duty to engage our subjective life in something objectively needed in the form of conscious labour and intentional suffering or perhaps, in other words, through right action and intentional service.