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''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. The All and Everything trilogy also includes ''Meetings with Remarkable Men'' (first published in 1963) and ''Life Is Real Only Then, When 'I Am''' (first privately printed in 1974). Because the book was intended to be the main study tool for his teachings, and because the idea of ''work'' is central to those teachings, Gurdjieff went to great lengths in order to increase the effort needed to read and understand it. Gurdjieff himself once said, “I bury the bone so deep that the dogs have to scratch for it." 〔(Gurdjieff International Review )〕 The book treats of an enormous number of subjects and questions. It is a vast allegorical myth structure in a literary form all its own. The plot of ''Beelzebub's Tales'' primarily revolves around the ruminations of an extraterrestrial known as "Beelzebub" to his grandson Hassein, as they travel through space towards Beelzebub's home planet "Karatas" on the spaceship ''Karnak''. It mainly recounts the adventures and travails of Beelzebub amongst the 'three-brained beings' (humans) of the planet Earth. Beelzebub covers the entire history of the strange behaviors and customs of these beings. ''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 has yet been seen." ==Overview== In his prospectus for ''All and Everything'', printed at the beginning of each part of the trilogy, Gurdjieff states his aim in publishing these texts: ::''FIRST SERIES: Three books under the title of “An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man,” or, “Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson.”'' ::''SECOND SERIES: Three books under the common title of “Meetings with Remarkable Men.”'' ::''THIRD SERIES: Four books under the common title of “Life Is Real Only Then, When ‘I Am.’”'' ::''All written according to entirely new principles of logical reasoning and strictly directed towards the solution of the following three cardinal problems:'' ::''FIRST SERIES: To destroy, 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.'' ::''SECOND SERIES: To acquaint the reader with the material required for a new creation and to prove the soundness and good quality of it.'' ::''THIRD SERIES: To assist the arising, in the mentation and in the feelings of the reader, of a veritable, non-fantastic representation not of that illusory world which he now perceives, but of the world existing in reality.'' 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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