The Merciless Heropass: Time, Gurdjieff, and the Gospel

In Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, Gurdjieff gives one of his most haunting images of the human condition: the Merciless Heropass—time itself. Beelzebub calls it the “ALL-COMMON MASTER” (p.35), merciless because nothing escapes it, not suns, not planets, not men. Time erodes everything it touches. It is impartial, inexorable, and utterly indifferent.

Unlike the other forces that govern the cosmos, the Merciless Heropass stands apart. All other processes are “fractions” of the primordial arising of the Most Holy Sun Absolute (p.123), distributed through the sacred Heptaparaparshinokh (Law of Seven) and Triamazikamno (Law of Three).

But time, Gurdjieff tells us, is different. It is not fractioned. It does not arise from the Absolute’s emanations. It has no source. It is not objective but “Ideally-Unique-Subjective” (p.124). It “blends always with everything and becomes self-sufficiently independent.”

Time flows like Divine Love, but with the opposite effect: rather than giving, it takes away. Its mercilessness is that it continues, indifferent to the destiny of suns and men alike.

Time as Cosmic Threat

Gurdjieff’s mythic cosmology presses the idea further: even the Sun Absolute itself, the very dwelling-place of God, was threatened by the Merciless Heropass. In the sacred canticles of the cherubim and seraphim, the Creator observed that the Absolute was gradually diminishing in volume (losing its possibilities), consumed by time’s merciless erosion (p.749). This divine recognition led to a moment of cosmic anxiety: if the Merciless Heropass continued unchecked, even God's eternal dwelling would be undone.

In response, the Creator changed cosmic laws and brought forth the great Trogoautoegocrat—the reciprocal feeding of everything that exists (pp.136–7). This system of exchange, sacrifice, and mutual nourishment was devised to offset the destructive pull of the Merciless Heropass, creating dynamic equilibrium so that no unforeseen catastrophe would undo the Absolute (p.759).

In other words, the very structure of the cosmos—life feeding life, death feeding life, circulation of energies across scales—was instituted to preserve creation from the dissolving force of time.

The Human Experience of the Merciless Heropass

What does this mean for us, the “three-brained beings” of Earth? It means that our mortality is not accidental. The Merciless Heropass flows through us, mercilessly.

Once, says Gurdjieff, human beings lived according to the Fulasnitamnian principle: our existence endured until a soul (Kesdjan body) was formed (p.130). The purpose of life was conscious transmutation—human beings serving as "energy exchangers" through which cosmic substances were refined and used by higher intelligences.

But humanity fell into abnormal existence. We squandered our purpose, ceased to fulfill nature's aim, and instead devoured each other, destroying the balance of our planet. As a result, Great Nature had to shorten our duration of life, shifting us to the Itoklanoz principle: living and dying mechanically like animals for nature's extraction, without the time necessary to consciously crystallize higher being-bodies (p.131).

Thus the Merciless Heropass, flowing through the distorted conditions of modern life, devours us with even greater speed. The shortening of our years mirrors the shrinking of our souls. We age, we decay, and we die, without having built anything within that resists the flow.

Resisting the Merciless Heropass

Yet there are moments of resistance. Gurdjieff gives a striking example: bread. Water and flour, fused in the fire, create a new substance—prosphora—that resists decomposition. This is because the fire acts as the “third force” that fuses elements into a more durable whole (pp.966–7). In the same way, man, through conscious labor and intentional suffering, can fuse inner substances into a stable totality.

The Work is nothing less than the attempt to crystallize something permanent, a “real I,” that does not disintegrate when the body returns to dust.

The Merciless Heropass is merciless, but it is also the great spur to action. Awareness of time’s inexorability awakens urgency. To “remember oneself” is to remember death.

Spiritual development is born precisely in the recognition that there is no postponement, no indulgence of indefinite tomorrows. As the Psalms put it: “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” (Ps. 90:12).

Time in the Gospel

At this point, Gurdjieff’s vision converges with the Gospel. Scripture too sees time as both merciless and redeemable.

• “All flesh is grass, and all its glory like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, because the breath of the Lord blows on it. Surely the people are grass” (Isa. 40:6–7).

• “Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow” (Ps. 144:4).

• “The days of our lives are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong… they are soon gone, and we fly away” (Ps. 90:10).

Here too, time is merciless. Human existence is fleeting. Death is inevitable.

Yet the Gospel introduces a new dimension: God is the Vanquisher of the Merciless Heropass.

In one of the hymns of Beelzebub’s Tales, beings praise God as the “Unique Vanquisher of the Merciless Heropass” (p.1174). Christ enters time, subjects Himself to its merciless law—He grows, suffers, and dies—but in resurrection He overturns it from within. Death is not escaped but abolished. Time is not erased but transformed.

Paul proclaims: “Christ Jesus abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10). And again: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:54–55).

Eternal life, as John defines it, is not timeless stasis but communion: “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3). To know Christ is already to participate in life that the Merciless Heropass cannot erode.

Redeeming Time

The Apostle Paul exhorts believers: “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil” (Eph. 5:15–16). This phrase—redeeming the time—is the Gospel equivalent of Gurdjieff’s demand to use time consciously. To redeem time is not to stop its flow but to consecrate it, to transform each moment into an arena of eternity.

The Merciless Heropass is merciless only for the passive. For those awakening, it becomes the proving ground of eternal becoming. The very force that devours can be used as fire for transformation.

Time as Teacher

The Merciless Heropass is merciless, but it is also just. It treats kings and beggars alike. It is merciless because it destroys, but just because it never discriminates (p.132). And in this sense, time is also our teacher. Every wrinkle, every gray hair, every funeral is the Merciless Heropass reminding us: You do not have forever.

The man who sleeps experiences this as tragedy. The man who awakens experiences it as possibility.

This is why Gurdjieff insisted on shock. The recognition of time’s mercilessness is meant to shock us awake, to galvanize conscious labor. Christ says the same in a different key: “Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning” (Luke 12:35). The watchful servant redeems time, while the sleeping one is consumed by it.

Practical Implications

1. Numbering Our Days: The first step is to see time. Not to live as though life stretches indefinitely, but to confront the brevity of existence. Daily remembrance of death is not morbidity but sobriety.

2. Using Shocks: Life delivers shocks—the death of loved ones, illness, collapse of plans. These are opportunities to awaken to the Merciless Heropass. Instead of numbing ourselves, we must receive them consciously, allowing them to break our mechanical sleep.

3. Crystallization Through Work: Conscious efforts—self-observation, prayer, voluntary suffering—are how the human being fuses inner substances. Without this, the Merciless Heropass disintegrates us into nothing. With it, something real resists decay.

4. Union with Christ: For Gurdjieff, a soul can be formed that resists the Merciless Heropass. For the Gospel, this possibility is fulfilled in union with Christ, the true vanquisher of time. Without Him, any crystallization risks becoming rigidified ego; with Him, it becomes participation in eternal life.

The Choice

The Merciless Heropass is not merely a mythic curiosity in Gurdjieff’s Tales. It is a mirror held up to our condition. Time is eating us. It will dissolve everything that is not grounded in eternity.

But the Merciless Heropass is also just. It gives us the chance to work. Every moment is a seed of transformation. To squander time is to squander the one chance to forge something eternal. To redeem time is to align with the Creator’s aim—to resist decay, to awaken, to participate in life that does not end.

Gurdjieff presents the Work as the path of crystallizing being against the Merciless Heropass. The Gospel presents Christ as the one who has already vanquished the Merciless Heropass, opening the way to eternal communion. Both converge in the same demand: do not sleep. Do not squander time. Act.

For the Merciless Heropass will not stop. The only question is whether we will allow its mercilessness to reduce us to nothing, or whether we will use it as the very medium of salvation.