Beelzebub’s Cosmic Laboratory and Gurdjieff's Electromagnetic Ecology of Transformation

As he [Jesus] was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. (Luke 9: 29)

Chapter 18 of Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson—The Arch-preposterous—is one of Gurdjieff’s densest allegories, where the language of cosmic science reveals the deeper laws of spiritual transformation.

Beelzebub meets the Saturnian scientist Gornahoor Harharkh, who demonstrates experiments with the Omnipresent-Okidanokh, the primordial energy of the universe. What looks like science fiction is in fact a profound parable about energy, ecology, and the alchemy of human becoming.

Okidanokh as Cosmic Light

Okidanokh, Gurdjieff tells us, is the energy that permeates the entire cosmos. In its lawful state it consists of three independent forces: Anodnatious (active), Cathodnatious (passive), and Parijrahatnatioose (reconciling). Harharkh shows Beelzebub how these can be separated (Djartklom) and recombined (striving to reblend) in his laboratory. When only two clash, artificial light is produced—an abnormal, non-lawful result. When all three combine, lawful creation flows invisibly.

This is the Law of Three. But it is also a description of electromagnetism ("Light") itself. In earlier reflections I argued that what modern science calls electricity is a fallen, fragmentary manifestation of this sacred substance. Gurdjieff’s Okidanokh is not an abstract principle—it is the very pulse of the universe, the divine energy that undergirds life, consciousness, and God’s creative act. Electromagnetic forces are its shadow, accessible to modern science, yet stripped of their reconciling, sacred dimension.

Electricity, God, and Spiritual Ecology

In Gurdjieff’s Okidanokh, Electricity and the Spiritual Ecology of the Cosmos, I traced how our exploitation of electricity is not only ecological but theological. The extraction of Okidanokh through dynamos and power grids siphons off the very energies designed for cosmic nourishment. What should circulate lawfully between heaven, earth, and man is drained into wires and machines. The effect is the shortening of life, the degradation of soul, and the disruption of the sacred economy of God’s creation.

Here Scripture resonates. Ezekiel’s vision of the Chashmal—the fiery, living radiance of God (Ezekiel 1:4, 27–28)—describes a luminous energy, a divine electricity that flashes like lightning (barak) from the throne. The prophets saw what Gurdjieff called Okidanokh: the immanent radiance of God coursing through creation.

Jesus Himself takes up this symbolism: “I saw Satan fall like lightning (barak) from heaven” (Luke 10:18). The fall of the rebel force is marked by corrupted light—unnatural discharge of divine energy. By contrast, Christ is the true Light of the world (John 8:12), the reconciler of cosmic forces, the embodiment of the third, harmonizing power.

God is not absent from Gurdjieff’s cosmology. Okidanokh is His immanent energy—what the Christian tradition would recognize as the sustaining power of the Logos: “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:4–5).

The Data-Energy Apocalypse

In The Data-Energy Apocalypse: AI, the Internet and Web3, I pointed to the exponential acceleration of this crisis. The infrastructures of AI, computation, and digital networks are hungry machines consuming planetary Okidanokh.

The internet, far from being immaterial, is powered by the vast conversion of sacred energy into artificial signals and luminous screens. We are literally burning the divine current for entertainment, commerce, and control. This is not only an ecological crisis but a metaphysical one. The spiritual ecology of the cosmos itself is being wounded.

The biblical prophets warned of such dissipation: “They exchanged the glory of God for images” (Romans 1:23). Our artificial lights are images of Light, parasitic imitations draining the real. Gurdjieff’s allegory of artificial light produced by only two forces without the third force prefigures this very condition.

Inner and Cosmic Alchemy

Yet Chapter 18 is not simply diagnosis—it is revelation. Harharkh’s experiments include the transmutation of metals: red copper transformed into other densities, even into gold. This is an image of alchemy. Just as metals can be changed in the crucible, so too can the energies of the human being. The Okidanokh that modernity dissipates outwardly can also be gathered and transformed inwardly.

Beelzebub himself undergoes an inner initiation. In the vacuum chamber, he experiences the dissolution of his planetary body, a foretaste of the sacred Rascooarno (death). His thinking, feeling, and moving centers collapse until essence alone perceives. He confesses to his grandson that in this moment he felt fear for his own survival. This weakness—ego’s last resistance—becomes the very ground of sincerity. Transformation requires the death of the false self, the confession of fear, and the awakening of essence.

Here is the inner alchemy: to transmute the base metals of our energies into the gold of higher being-bodies. Here is cosmic alchemy: to rejoin the lawful circulation of Okidanokh, no longer as a parasite draining God’s current, but as a conscious participant in its harmonious flow.

As Paul puts it, “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Death, Confession, and God

The alchemical path requires dying before death. To pass through the inner Rascooarno is to taste what it means to lose the supports of ordinary life—breath, movement, thought—and to discover essence as the true ground. Gurdjieff’s allegory insists: only by undergoing this death can we be reborn into a life aligned with divine law.

Beelzebub’s confession is therefore theological. To admit ego’s fear is already to turn toward God, the source of Okidanokh. The reconciliation of the three forces within us is nothing other than the reconciliation offered by Christ—the third force who unites heaven and earth, God and man. “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

The Ecology of the Soul

Our technological culture dissipates Okidanokh on a planetary scale. The result is artificial light without true illumination, a culture electrified yet spiritually darkened. But within us lies the possibility of reversal.

Through conscious labor, intentional suffering, and sincerity before God, we can become alchemists of the soul. By refining our inner substances, we not only save ourselves but participate in the healing of the world.

The ecology of the soul and the ecology of the cosmos are not separate. Each human act of inner reconciliation contributes to the restoration of balance in the great spiritual ecology. To work on oneself is to serve the Whole.

Let there be the True Light

Chapter 18 is a mirror for our time. Okidanokh is the divine electromagnetic current, the energy of God Himself flowing through creation. We, in our ignorance, divert it into machines and digital illusions. Yet Gurdjieff shows that even in this age of artificial light, the path of true illumination remains open.

We must each enter the chamber, face our inner death, confess our ego, and begin the alchemy of essence. To consciously reconcile the forces of Okidanokh within is to align with God’s creative act. To heal our soul is to heal the cosmos. Only then can humanity step back into its rightful role—not as a parasite of divine energy, but as its conscious transformer and transmitter, a living bearer of the true Light of God.

Above the vault over their heads was what looked like a throne of lapis lazuli, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking. (Ezekiel 1: 26-28)