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G.I. GURDJIEFF

Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson: An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man

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ALL AND EVERYTHING / FIRST SERIES

Ten Books in Three Series

FIRST SERIES Three books under the title of Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man.

SECOND SERIES Two books under the common title of Meetings with Remarkable Men.

THIRD SERIES Five books under the title of Life Is Real Only Then, When "I Am. "

All written according to entirely new principles of logical reasoning and directed toward the accomplishment of the following three fundamental tasks:

FIRST SERIES To destroy, mercilessly and without any compromise whatever, 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, nonfantastic representation not of that illusory world which he now perceives, but of the world existing in reality.

F R I E N D L Y  A D V I C E

(Written impromptu by the author on delivering this book, already prepared for publication, to the printer)

According to the numerous deductions and conclusions resulting from my research concerning the profit contemporary people can obtain from new impressions coming from what they read or hear, and also according to the thought of one of the sayings of popular wisdom I have just remembered, handed down to our days from very ancient times.

"Any prayer may be heard and granted by the Higher Powers only if it is uttered thrice:

First—for the welfare or the peace of the souls of one's parents, Second—for the welfare of one's neighbor, And only third—for oneself personally," I find it necessary on the first page of this book, now ready for publication, to give the following advice "Read each of my written expositions thrice First—at least as you have already become mechanized to read all your contemporary books and newspapers.

Second—as if you were reading aloud to another person, And only third—try to fathom the gist of my writings Only then will you be able to count upon forming your own impartial judgment, proper to yourself alone, on my writings And only then can my hope be actualized that according to your understanding you will obtain the specific benefit for yourself which I anticipate, and which I wish for you with all my being.

FIRST BOOK

CHAPTER 1: The arousing of thought

AMONG ALL the convictions formed in my "common presence" during my responsible, peculiarly composed life, there is one unshakable conviction that people—whatever the degree of development of their understanding and whatever the form taken by the factors present in their individuality for engendering all kinds of ideals—always and everywhere on the Earth feel the imperative need, on beginning anything new, to pronounce aloud, or if not aloud at least mentally, that particular invocation understandable to even the most ignorant person, which has been formulated in different ways in different epochs, and in our day is expressed in the following words "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost Amen."

That is why I now also, in setting forth on this venture quite new for me, namely authorship, begin by pronouncing this invocation, and pronounce it not only aloud but even very distinctly and, as the ancient Toulousites used to say, with a "fully manifested intonation"—of course only to the extent permitted by data already formed in my whole presence and thoroughly rooted in it for such a manifestation, data, by the way, which are generally formed in man's nature during his preparatory years, and which later, during his responsible life, determine the character and vivifyingness of such an intonation.

Having begun thus, I can now be quite at ease and should even, according to contemporary notions of "religious morality," be completely assured that from now on everything in this new venture of mine will proceed, as is said, "like a pianola."

In any case, this is the way I have begun, and how the rest will go I can only say, as the blind man put it, "we shall see."

First and foremost, I shall place my hand, moreover the right one, which— although at the moment it is slightly injured due to an accident that recently befell me—is nevertheless really my own, and has never once failed me in all my life, on my heart, of course also my own—but on the constancy or inconstancy of this part of my whole I see no need to expatiate here—and frankly confess that I myself have not the slightest wish to write, but am constrained to do so by circumstances quite independent of me, though whether these circumstances arose accidentally or were created intentionally by extraneous forces I do not yet know I only know that these circumstances bid me write not just some trifle for reading oneself to sleep, but thick and weighty tomes.

However that may be, I begin . . .

But begin with what?

Oh, the devil! Will there indeed be repeated that strange and extremely unpleasant sensation it befell me to experience about three weeks ago, while I was composing in my thoughts the scheme and sequence of the ideas I intended to publish and did not know then, either, how to begin?

This sensation I could only describe in these words "the fear of drowning in the overflow of my own thoughts."

To stop this disagreeable sensation I might still have had recourse to that maleficent property inherent in me, as in all contemporary people, which enables us, without experiencing any remorse of conscience whatever, to put off anything we wish to do "till tomorrow."

I could have done this very easily because before beginning the actual writing there seemed to be plenty of time, but today this is no longer so and, cost what it may, "even though I burst," I must begin.

But begin with what?

Hurrah! . . . Eureka!

Almost all the books I have happened to read in my life have begun with a preface. So I too must begin with something of the kind.

I say "of the kind." because in my entire life, from the moment I began to distinguish a boy from a girl, I have always done everything, absolutely everything, not as it is done by other, like myself, biped destroyers of Nature's good. Therefore I ought now, and am perhaps even bound on principle, to begin not as any other writer would.

In any case, instead of the conventional preface I shall begin quite simply with a warning.

Beginning with a warning will be most judicious on my part, if only because it will not contradict any of my principles, whether organic, psychic, or even "willful" At the same time it will be quite honest—honest, of course, in the objective sense, since I expect without the least doubt, as do all those who know me well, that owing to my writings there will entirely disappear in the majority of readers— immediately and not gradually, as sooner or later must occur to everyone—all the "treasures" they have acquired, either by inheritance or by their own labor, in the form of "quieting notions" that evoke only romantic images of their present lives or naive dreams about the future.

Professional writers usually begin such introductions with an address to the reader full of all kinds of bombastic, magniloquent, and so to say "honeyed" and inflated phrases.

In this alone I shall follow their example and also begin with an "address to the reader," but I shall try not to make it as sugary as they usually do with their evil wiseacring, by which they titillate the sensibilities of the more or less normal reader.

Thus . . .

My dear, highly honored, strong-willed, and of course very patient Sirs, and my very dear, charming, and impartial Ladies—forgive me, I have omitted the most important— my in no wise hysterical Ladies!

I have the honor to inform you that although, due to circumstances that have arisen in one of the later stages of my life, I am now going to write books, during my whole life I have never written a single book or "instructive article," or even a letter in which it was necessary to observe what is called "grammaticality," so that although I am about to become a "professional writer" I have no practice at all in the established rules and procedures or in what is called "bon ton literary language," and am therefore constrained to write not as ordinary "patented" writers do, to whose form of writing you are in all probability as much accustomed as to your own smell.

In my opinion, what will be troublesome for you in all this is chiefly that in childhood there was implanted in you—and has now become perfectly harmonized with your general psyche—an excellently working automatism for perceiving all kinds of new impressions, thanks to which "blessing" you have now, during your responsible life, no need to make any individual effort whatsoever.

To speak frankly, I personally see the central point of my confession not in my lack of experience in the rules and procedures of writers, but in my ignorance of what I have called "bon ton literary language," required in contemporary life not only of authors but even of all ordinary mortals.

As regards the former, that is to say, my lack of experience in the rules and procedures of writers, I am not greatly disturbed. And I am not disturbed, because in the life of contemporary people this lack of experience is in the order of things.

This new "blessing" arose and is flourishing everywhere on Earth thanks to an extraordinary disease which, for the last twenty or thirty years, for some reason or other, has afflicted all those persons from among the three sexes who sleep with half-open eyes, and whose faces are fertile soil for the growth of every kind of pimple.

This strange disease is manifested thus if the invalid is somewhat literate and his rent is paid for three months in advance, he, she, or it inevitably starts writing some "instructive article," if not a whole book.

Knowing all about this new human disease and its epidemic spread on Earth, I naturally have the right to assume that you have acquired "immunity" to it, as the "medical experts" would say, and that you will therefore not be too indignant at my lack of experience in the rules and procedures of writers.

That is why I make the center of gravity of my warning my ignorance of "bon ton literary language."

In self-justification, and also perhaps to lessen the disapproval in your waking consciousness of my ignorance of this language indispensable for contemporary life, I consider it necessary to say, with humble heart and cheeks flushed with shame, that although I too was taught this language in my childhood, and although some of my elders who prepared me for responsible life constantly forced me, without sparing any means of intimidation, to learn by rote the host of nuances that in their totality compose this contemporary "delight," yet unfortunately, of course for you, of all that I learned by rote nothing stuck, and nothing whatever has survived for my present activities as a writer.

And if nothing stuck, it was not through any fault of mine or of my former "respected" and "nonrespected" teachers This human labor was spent in vain owing to an unexpected and quite exceptional event that occurred at the moment of my appearance on God's Earth, at which moment—as a certain well-known European occultist explained to me after very minute what are called "psycho-physico-astrological" investigations— through the hole in the window pane made by our crazy lame goat, there poured vibrations of sound from an Edison phonograph in the neighbor's house, while the midwife who delivered me had in her mouth a lozenge saturated with cocaine of German make, moreover not ersatz, which she was sucking to the sound of the music without the proper enjoyment.

Aside from this event, rare in the everyday life of people, my present situation also came about because later on in my preparatory and adult life— as, I must confess, I myself surmised after long reflection based on the method of the German professor Herr Stumpfsinnschmausen—I always, both instinctively and automatically, and sometimes even consciously, that is, on principle, avoided using this language for intercourse with others.

And I manifested myself thus in regard to this trifle, perhaps not such a trifle, thanks to three data formed in my entirety during my preparatory age— about which data I intend to inform you in this first chapter of my writings.

However that may be, the fact remains, illuminated from every side like an American advertisement—which fact cannot now be changed by any forces, even with the know-how of the "experts in monkey business"—that I, who have in recent years been considered by many people a rather good teacher of temple dances, have today become a professional writer, and will of course write a great deal—as it has been proper to me since childhood whenever I do anything to do a great deal of it—nevertheless, not having, as you see, the automatically acquired and automatically manifested practice needed for this, I shall be obliged to write all I have thought out in the plain, simple everyday language established by life, without any "literary manipulations" or "grammatical wiseacrings."

But the pot is not yet full! . . . I have still not decided the most important question of all in which language to write.

Although I have begun to write in Russian, nevertheless in that language, as the wisest of the wise, Mullah Nasr Eddin, would say, "you cannot go far. " [1]

The Russian language is very good—it cannot be denied I even like it, but only for swapping anecdotes and for referring to someone's parentage.

The Russian language is like the English, which is also very good, but only for discussing in "smoking rooms," while settled in an easy chair with legs stretched out on another one, the topic of "Australian frozen meat" or, perhaps, the "Indian question."

Both these languages are like the dish known in Moscow as "solianka," into which goes anything and everything except you and me—in fact, everything you wish, even the after-dinner "cheshma" [2] of Scheherazade.

It must also be said that owing to all kinds of conditions accidentally, or perhaps not accidentally, formed in my youth, I have had to learn, very seriously and of course always with self-compulsion, to speak, read, and write a great many languages, and to such a degree of fluency that if in following this profession unexpectedly forced on me by fate I decided not to take advantage of the "automatism" acquired by practice, I could perhaps write in any one of them.

But in order to make judicious use of this automatism acquired by long practice, I would have to write either in Russian or in Armenian, because during the last two or three decades the circumstances of my life have been such that I have had to use just these two languages for communication with others, and consequently have had more practice in them.

Oh the devil! Even in a case like this, one of the aspects of my peculiar psyche, unusual for a normal man, has already begun to torment the whole of me.

And the "torment" I feel at this moment, at my almost too mellow age, is derived from a property implanted in childhood in my peculiar psyche, with a lot of rubbish unnecessary for contemporary life, that automatically compels the whole of me always and in everything to act only according to popular wisdom.

In the present case, as always when I am in doubt, there has just slipped uninvited into my brain, which is constructed unsuccessfully to the point of mockery, that saying of popular wisdom which existed in very ancient times and which has come down to our day in the following words "Every stick has two ends."

In trying to understand the underlying thought and real meaning hidden in this strange formulation, any more or less sane-thinking man will, in my opinion, soon come to the conclusion that all the ideas contained in this saying are based on the truth, recognized by people for centuries, that every phenomenon in the life of man is due to two causes of opposite character, and divides into two exactly opposite results, which in their turn become the cause of new phenomena For example, if "something" obtained from two opposing causes produces light, then this "something" must also inevitably produce the opposite phenomenon, that is, darkness, or again, if a factor engenders an impulse of palpable satisfaction in the organism of a living creature, it likewise inevitably engenders dissatisfaction, of course also palpable, and so on and so forth, always and in everything.

Adopting here this example of popular wisdom formed in the course of centuries and expressed by the image of a stick, which as was said has indeed two ends, one end considered good and the other bad, then if I take advantage of the mentioned automatism acquired by me through long practice, it will of course be very good for me personally, but according to this saying, for the reader it will be just the opposite; and what the opposite of good is, even every nonpossessor of hemorrhoids can easily understand.

In short, if I exercise my prerogative and take the good end of the stick, the bad end will inevitably fall "on the reader's head."

This may indeed happen, for in Russian it is impossible to express the so to say niceties of philosophical questions, which I intend to touch upon in my writings rather fully; whereas, although it is possible to do so in Armenian, this language, to the misfortune of all contemporary Armenians, has now become quite impractical for expressing contemporary notions.

In order to assuage the bitterness of my inner hurt owing to this, I must say that in my early youth, when I became interested in philological questions and was deeply absorbed in them, I preferred the Armenian language to all the others I then spoke, even including my native tongue.

This language was my favorite at that time chiefly because it had its own character and had nothing in common with the neighboring or kindred languages All its "tonalities," as the learned philologists say, were peculiar to it alone and, as I understood even then, it corresponded perfectly to the psyche of the people of that nation.

But during the last thirty or forty years I have witnessed such a change in this language that although it has not completely lost the originality and independence it had possessed since the remote past, it has now become a sort of "clownish potpourri of languages" whose consonances, falling on the ear of a more or less attentive and conscious listener, sound like a collection of Turkish, Persian, French, Kurdish, and Russian tones, mixed with other "indigestible" and inarticulate noises.

Almost the same might be said about my native language, Greek, which I spoke in childhood, and the taste of whose "automatic associative power" I still retain. I could, I dare say, express anything I wish in it even now, but it is impossible for me to employ it here for the simple and rather comical reason that someone must transcribe my writings and translate them into other languages. And who could do this?

It can be said with certainty that even the best expert in modern Greek would understand simply nothing of what I would write in the tongue I assimilated in childhood, because during the last thirty or forty years my dear "compatriots," inflamed with the desire to be at all costs like the representatives of contemporary civilization even in their conversation, have treated my dear native language just as the Armenians, anxious to become Russian "intelligentsia," have treated theirs.

The Greek language whose spirit and essence were transmitted to me by heredity and the language now spoken by contemporary Greeks are as much alike as, according to the expression of Mullah Nasr Eddin, "a nail is like a requiem."

So what is now to be done?

Ah me! Never mind, esteemed buyer of my wiseacrings. As long as there is plenty of French armagnac and Khaizarian "bastourma," I shall find a way even out of this tight corner.

I am an old hand at this.

In life, I have so often gotten into difficult situations and out of them that this has become almost a matter of habit with me.

Meanwhile, I shall write partly in Russian and partly in Armenian, all the more since among those people always hanging around me there are several who know how to get along more or less easily in both these languages, and I somehow entertain the hope that they will be able to transcribe and translate them fairly well for me.

In any case I repeat, and repeat so that you may remember it well—not as you are in the habit of "remembering" other things, and on the basis of which you are accustomed to keeping your word of honor to others or to yourself—that no matter what language I use, I shall always and in everything avoid what I have called "bon ton literary language."

With regard to this it is an extremely curious fact, perhaps more worthy of your love of knowledge than you may suppose, that from my earliest childhood, that is to say, ever since the birth in me of the need to rob birds' nests and to tease my friends' sisters, there arose in my "planetary body," as the ancient theosophists called it, and moreover—why I don't know—chiefly in the right half, an involuntary, instinctive sensation that up to the period of my life when I became a "teacher of dancing" was gradually formed into a definite feeling, and later, when thanks to this profession of mine I came in contact with people of many different types, the conviction also began to arise in what is called my "mind" that these languages, or rather their "grammars," are composed by people who with respect to knowledge of language are exactly like those biped animals whom the esteemed Mullah Nasr Eddin characterizes thus "All they can do is wrangle with pigs about the quality of oranges."

People of this kind, who, due to rotten heredity and nauseating upbringing, on reaching a certain age have been turned into "voracious moths," destroying the good prepared and left for us by our ancestors and by time, have not the slightest notion and have never even heard of the blatantly obvious fact that during preparatory age there is acquired in the brain functioning of every creature, and thus of man also, a definite property whose automatic manifestations proceed according to a certain law that the ancient Korkolans called the "law of associations," and that the process of mentation of every creature, especially man, flows exclusively in accordance with this law.

Since I have happened to touch upon a question that has recently become almost an "obsession" of mine, namely, the process of human mentation, I consider it possible, without waiting for the place in my writings I had designated for the elucidation of this question, to speak at least a little in this first chapter about some information that accidentally became known to me According to this information, it was customary in long-past centuries on Earth for every man bold enough to aspire to the right to be considered by others and to consider himself a "conscious thinker" to be instructed, while still in the early years of his responsible existence, that man has two kinds of mentation one kind, mentation by thought, expressed by words always possessing a relative meaning, and another kind, proper to all animals as well as to man, which I would call "mentation by form."

The second kind of mentation, that is, "mentation by form"—through which, by the way, the exact meaning of all writing should be perceived and then assimilated after conscious confrontation with information previously acquired—is determined in people by the conditions of geographical locality, climate, time, and in general the whole environment in which they have arisen and in which their existence has flowed up to adulthood.

Thus, in the brains of people of different races living in different geographical localities under different conditions, there arise in regard to one and the same thing or idea quite different independent forms, which during the flow of associations evoke in their being a definite sensation giving rise to a definite picturing, and this picturing is expressed by some word or other that serves only for its outer subjective expression.

That is why each word for the same thing or idea almost always acquires for people of different geographical localities and races a quite specific and entirely different so to say "inner content."

In other words, if in the "presence" of a man who has arisen and grown up in a given locality a certain "form" has been fixed as a result of specific local influences and impressions, this "form" evokes in him by association the sensation of a definite "inner content," and consequently a definite picturing or concept, for the expression of which he uses some word that has become habitual and, as I said, subjective to him, but the hearer of that word—in whose being, owing to the different conditions of his arising and growth, a form with a different "inner content" has been fixed for the given word—will always perceive and infallibly understand that word in quite another sense.

This fact, by the way, can be clearly established by attentive and impartial observation during an exchange of opinions between persons belonging to different races or who arose and were formed in different geographical localities.

And so, cheerful and swaggering candidate for a buyer of my "wiseacrings," having warned you that I am going to write not as professional writers usually do but quite otherwise, I advise you to reflect seriously before you embark on reading my further expositions, and only then to undertake it Otherwise, I am afraid that your hearing and other perceptive as well as digestive organs may be so thoroughly automatized to the "literary language of the intelligentsia" prevailing at the present time on Earth that these writings of mine might affect you very, very cacophonously, and thereby you might lose . . . do you know what? . . . your appetite for your favorite dish, and that special psychic feature of yours which particularly "titillates your vitals" on catching sight of your neighbor, the brunette.

That my language, or rather the form of my mentation, can produce such an effect I am, thanks to repeated past experiences, as much convinced with my whole being as a "thoroughbred donkey" is convinced of the rightness and justice of his obstinacy.

Now that I have warned you of what is most important, I am tranquil about all that will follow. For if any misunderstanding should arise on account of my writings, you alone will be to blame, and my conscience will be as clear as for instance . . . ex-Kaiser Wilhelm's.

In all probability you are now thinking that I am a young man with an "auspicious exterior" and, as some express it, "suspicious interior," and that, as a novice at writing, I am deliberately trying to be eccentric in the hope of becoming famous and thereby rich.

If you really think so, you are very, very mistaken.

First of all, I am not young I have already lived so much that, as is said, I have not only been "through the mill" but "through all the grindstones"; and second, I am not writing in order to make a career for myself, or to "plant myself firmly on my own feet" by means of this profession which, I must add, in my opinion provides for those who practice it many openings to become candidates direct for Hell— assuming of course that such people can in fact perfect their being to that extent—because, knowing nothing whatever themselves, they write all kinds of "claptrap" and, thus automatically acquiring authority, they develop year by year one of the chief factors for the weakening of the psyche of people, already sufficiently weakened without this.

And as regards my personal career, thanks to all forces high and low and, if you like, even right and left, I have established it long ago, and have long been standing on "firm feet" and, it may be, on very good feet I am certain moreover that their strength will suffice for many more years, to the dismay of all my past, present, and future enemies.

Yes. . . I think I might as well tell you about an idea that has only just arisen in my madcap brain, which is specially to request the printer to whom I shall entrust my first book to print this initial chapter of my writings in such a way that anybody can read it without cutting the pages of the book itself, whereupon, on learning that it is not written in the usual manner, that is, to help produce in the mind of the reader, very smoothly and easily, exciting images and lulling reveries, he may if he wishes, without wasting words with the bookseller, return it and get his money back, money perhaps earned by the sweat of his brow.

And I shall do this without fail because I have just remembered the story of what happened to a certain Trans-caucasian Kurd, a story I heard in my early youth and which in later years, whenever I recalled it in similar cases, aroused in me an enduring and inextinguishable impulse of tenderness I think it will be very useful for me, as well as for you, if I relate this story in some detail.

It will be useful chiefly because I have already decided to make the "salt" or, as contemporary "pure-blooded" Jewish businessmen would say, the "tzimmes" of this story one of the basic principles of that new literary form I intend to use for attaining the aim I am now pursuing in this new profession of mine.

This Transcaucasian Kurd once set out from his village on some business or other to town, and there in the market he saw in a fruit stall a handsomely arranged display of all kinds of fruit.

In this display he noticed one particular fruit, very beautiful in both color and form, and its appearance so took his fancy and he so longed to try it that in spite of having scarcely any money he decided come what may to buy at least one of these gifts of Great Nature, and taste it.

Then with intense eagerness and a boldness not customary to him, he entered the shop and, pointing with his horny finger at the fruit that had taken his fancy, asked the shopkeeper its price The shopkeeper replied that a pound of the fruit cost six coppers.

Finding that the price was not at all high for what in his opinion was such beautiful fruit, our Kurd decided to buy a whole pound.

Having finished his business in town, he set off again on foot for home that same day.

Walking at sunset over the hills and dales, and willy-nilly perceiving the exterior aspect of those enchanting parts of the bosom of Great Nature, our Common Mother, and involuntarily inhaling the pure air, uncontaminated by the usual exhalations of industrial towns, our Kurd quite naturally felt a sudden wish to gratify himself with some ordinary food also, so sitting down by the side of the road, he took some bread from his provision bag and the "fruits" that had looked so good to him, and leisurely began to eat.

But. . . horror of horrors! . . . very soon everything inside him began to burn.

Yet in spite of this he kept on eating.

And this hapless biped creature of our planet kept on eating, thanks only to that particular human inherency I mentioned, the principle of which I have decided to use as the basis of the new literary form I have created, and which will serve as a "guiding beacon" leading me to one of my aims You will, I am sure, soon grasp the sense and meaning of this—of course according to the degree of your comprehension—during the reading of any subsequent chapter of my writings, that is, if you take the risk and read further, or perhaps even at the end of this first chapter you will already "smell" something.

And so, just at the moment when our Kurd was overwhelmed by all the unusual sensations aroused within him by this strange repast on the bosom of Nature, there came along the same road a fellow villager of his, reputed by those who knew him to be very clever and experienced, and seeing that the whole face of the Kurd was aflame and that his eyes were streaming with tears, and that in spite of this, as if intent upon the fulfillment of his most important duty, he was eating real "red pepper pods," he said to him.

"What are you doing, you Jericho jackass? You'll be burnt alive! Stop eating that barbarous stuff, so foreign to your nature."

But our Kurd replied "No, for nothing on Earth will I stop. Didn't I pay my last six coppers for them? Even if my soul departs from my body, I will go on eating."

Whereupon our resolute Kurd—it must of course be assumed that he was such—did not stop, but went on eating the red peppers.

After what you have just perceived, I hope there may already be arising in your mentation a corresponding association, which should finally lead you, as sometimes happens with certain people, to what you call "understanding " And then you will understand why I—well knowing and having often felt pity for this human inherency, whose inevitable manifestation is that if anybody pays money for something he is bound to use it to the end—was animated in my whole presence by the idea that arose in my mentation of taking every possible measure so that you, my "brother in appetite and in spirit," as they say—in the event of your being accustomed to reading books written exclusively in the "language of the intelligentsia"—having already paid money for my writings, and discovering only afterward that they are not written in the usual convenient and easily read language, should not be compelled to read them through to the end at any cost, as our poor Transcaucasian Kurd was compelled to go on eating what he had fancied for its appearance alone—that not-to-be-joked-with, noble "red pepper."

And so, to avoid any misunderstanding on account of this property, which arises from data formed in the "presence" of contemporary man thanks to his frequenting the cinema and never missing an opportunity of looking into the left eye of persons of the other sex, I wish to have this opening chapter of mine printed in the said manner, so that everyone can read it through without cutting the pages of the book itself.

Otherwise the bookseller will, as is said, "cavil," and behave without fail according to the basic principle of all booksellers, formulated in the following words "You are more a fool than a fisherman if you let go the fish that has swallowed the bait," and will decline to take back a book whose pages have been cut I have no doubt that this would happen Indeed, I fully expect such lack of conscience on the part of the booksellers.

My certainty about this lack of conscience on the part of booksellers comes from data formed in me during the period when I was a professional "Indian fakir" and, in order to clarify a certain "ultraphilosophical" question, I had to become familiar with the associative process of the manifestation of the automatically constructed psyche in contemporary booksellers and their salesmen, when palming off books on their buyers.

Knowing all this and having become, since the accident that befell me, just and fastidious in the extreme, I cannot help repeating, or rather I cannot help warning you again and even insistently advising you, before beginning to cut the pages of this first book of mine, to read very attentively, even more than once, this first chapter of my writings.

But if notwithstanding this warning of mine you still wish to become acquainted with the rest of my expositions, there is nothing left for me but to wish you with all my "genuine soul" a very, very good "appetite," and that you may "digest" everything you read, not only for your own health but for the health of all those near you.

I said "with my genuine soul" because recently, living here in Europe, and frequently meeting people who on every appropriate and inappropriate occasion are fond of taking in vain sacred names that belong only to man's inner life, that is to say, of swearing to no purpose, and being, as I have already confessed, a follower—not only in theory, like contemporary people, but also in practice—of the sayings of popular wisdom established throughout the centuries, among which is one that corresponds to the present case and is expressed in the words "When you are in Rome do as the Romans do"—in order not to be out of harmony with the custom established here in Europe of swearing in ordinary conversation, and at the same time to act according to the commandment enunciated by the holy lips of Saint Moses not to take the sacred names in vain—I decided to make use of one of the oddities of that freshly baked fashionable language called "English," and each time the occasion requires it, to swear by my "English soul."

The point is that in this fashionable language the word for "soul" and the word for the bottom of the foot, also "sole," are pronounced and even written almost alike.

I do not know how it is for you, who are already half a candidate for a buyer of my writings, but as for me, no matter how great my mental desire, my peculiar nature cannot avoid being indignant at this manifestation of people of contemporary civilization, whereby the very highest in man, particularly beloved by our Common Father Creator, can be named and often understood as that which is lowest and dirtiest in man.

Well, enough of "philologizing." Let us return to the main task of this initial chapter, intended, among other things, to stir up my drowsy thoughts as well as yours, and also to give the reader a warning.

I have already composed in my head the plan and sequence of my intended expositions, but what form they will take on paper, speaking frankly, I do not yet know with my consciousness; but in my subconscious, I already definitely feel that on the whole they will take the form of something, so to say, "hot," and will act on the common presence of every reader just as the red pepper pods did on the poor Transcaucasian Kurd.

Now that you have become familiar with the story of our common countryman, the Transcaucasian Kurd, I consider it my duty to make a confession to you. Before going on with this first chapter, which serves as an introduction to all that I plan to write, I wish to inform your so-called "pure waking consciousness" of the fact that, in the chapters following this warning, I shall expound my thoughts intentionally in such a sequence and with such logical confrontation that the essence of certain real ideas may pass automatically from this "waking consciousness," which most people in their ignorance mistake for the real consciousness, but which I affirm and experimentally prove is the fictitious one, into what you call the "subconscious"— which in my opinion ought to be the real human consciousness— in order that these concepts may mechanically bring about by themselves that transformation which in general should proceed in the common presence of a man and give him, by means of his own active mentation, the results proper to him as a man and not merely as a one- or two-brained animal.

I decided to do this without fail so that this introductory chapter, intended as I have already said to awaken your consciousness, may fully justify its purpose and, reaching not only your, in my opinion, "fictitious consciousness" but also your real consciousness, that is to say, what you call your "subconscious," may compel you for the first time to reflect actively.

In the "presence" of every man, irrespective of his heredity and education, there are formed two independent consciousnesses, having almost nothing in common either in their functioning or in their manifestations.

One consciousness is formed from the perception of all kinds of mechanical impressions, arising accidentally or deliberately produced by others, including almost all words, which are indeed only empty "sounds", and the other consciousness is formed partly from the "previously fixed material results" transmitted to a man by heredity, which have become blended with the corresponding parts of his common presence, and partly from his intentionally evoked associative confrontations of these "materialized results.

This second human consciousness, which in itself as well as in its manifestations is none other than what is called the "subconscious," and which is formed, as I have just said, from the "materialized results" of heredity and the confrontations produced by a man's own intention, is the one that in my opinion—based on many years of experimental investigations carried out under exceptionally favorable conditions—should predominate in his common presence.

In view of this conviction of mine, which doubtless seems to you the fantasy of an afflicted mind, I cannot now, as you yourself see, disregard this second consciousness, and am thus obliged by my essence to construct this first chapter of my writings, which should serve as a preface for all that follows, in such a way that it will reach and, in the manner required for my aim, "ruffle" the perceptions accumulated in both these consciousnesses of yours.

Continuing my exposition with this idea in mind, I must first of all inform your fictitious consciousness that, thanks to three definite and peculiar psychic data crystallized in my common presence during my preparatory age, I am really "unique" at so to say "muddling and befuddling" all the notions and convictions supposedly firmly fixed in the presences of people with whom I come in contact.

Tut! Tut! Tut! I already sense that in your false—but according to you "real"—consciousness there are beginning to be agitated, like horseflies, all kinds of data bequeathed to you by heredity from your "uncle" and "mama," the totality of which, always and in everything, engenders in you the really touching impulse of curiosity—in this instance, to find out as quickly as possible why I, a mere novice at writing, whose name has not even once been mentioned in the newspapers, have suddenly become unique.

Never mind! I personally am very pleased to see this curiosity arise in you, even though only in your "false" consciousness, as I know from experience that this impulse unworthy of man can sometimes change its nature and become a worthy impulse called the "desire for knowledge," which in its turn helps a contemporary man to perceive and even to understand more clearly the essence of any object on which his attention happens to be concentrated, and therefore I am willing and even glad to satisfy this curiosity that has arisen in you So listen, and try to justify and not disappoint my expectations.

This original personality of mine, already "sniffed out" by certain Individuals from both choirs of the Judgment Seat Above whence Objective Justice proceeds, and also here on Earth by an as yet very limited number of people, is based, as I have already said, on three specific data formed in me at different times during my preparatory age.

The first of these three data, from the moment of its arising, became as it were the chief directing lever of my entire whole, while the other two became the "vivifying sources" for the nourishing and perfecting of the first.

This first datum arose in me when I was still, as is said, a "chubby mite " My dear, now deceased, grandmother was then still alive and was a hundred and some years old.

When my grandmother—may she attain the Kingdom of Heaven—was dying, my mother, as was then the custom, took me to her bedside and, as I kissed her right hand, my dear grandmother placed her dying left hand on my head and said in a whisper, yet very distinctly:

"Eldest of my grandsons! Listen and always remember my strict injunction to you: In life never do as others do."

Having said this, she gazed at the bridge of my nose and, evidently noticing my perplexity and my obscure understanding of what she had said, added somewhat angrily and imperiously:

"Either do nothing—just go to school—or do something nobody else does.

Whereupon she immediately, without hesitation and with a perceptible impulse of disdain for all around her, and with commendable self-cognizance, gave up her soul directly into the hands of His Faithfulness, the Archangel Gabriel.

I think it will be interesting and perhaps even instructive for you to know that all this made so powerful an impression on me that I was suddenly unable to endure anyone around me, and as soon as we left the room where the mortal "planetary body" of the cause of the cause of my arising lay, I, very quietly, trying not to attract attention, stole away to the pit where, during Lent, the bran and potato peelings were stored for our "sanitarians," that is to say, our pigs.

And I lay there, without food or drink, in a tempest of whirling and confused thoughts—of which, fortunately for me, I still had only a very limited number in my childish brain— right until my mother's return from the cemetery, when the weeping that was shaking her after finding me absent and searching for me in vain "broke in" on me. At once I climbed out of the pit and stood a moment on the edge, for some reason or other with hands outstretched; then I ran to her and, clinging fast to her skirt, involuntarily began to stamp my feet and—why I don't know—to imitate the braying of the donkey that belonged to our neighbor, the bailiff.

Why all this produced such a strong impression on me just then, and why I almost automatically behaved so strangely, I still cannot make out, though during recent years, particularly on the days known as "Shrovetide," I have pondered over it a great deal, trying to discover the reason.

I have only reached the logical supposition that it was because the room where this sacred scene occurred, which was to have tremendous significance for the whole of my future life, was permeated through and through with the scent of a special incense brought from a monastery of Mount Athos and very popular among followers of every shade of belief of the Christian religion. Whatever it may have been, those are the facts.

During the days following this event, nothing particular happened in my general state, unless it was that I walked more often than usual with my feet in the air, that is to say, on my hands.

My first act that was obviously not in accord with the manifestations of others, though without the participation either of my consciousness or of my subconscious, occurred on exactly the fortieth day after my grandmother's death, when our family, our relatives, and all those who had esteemed my dear grandmother, who was loved by everybody, were gathered in the cemetery, as was the custom, to perform over her mortal remains reposing in the grave what is called the "requiem service " Suddenly, without rhyme or reason, instead of observing what was conventional among people of all degrees of tangible and intangible morality and of every station in life, that is, instead of standing quietly as if overwhelmed, with an expression of grief on one's face and even if possible with tears in one's eyes, I started skipping and dancing around the grave and sang:

Let her with the saints repose, She was a rare one, goodness knows! . . .

and so on and so forth.

And from this moment on, as regards any form of "aping," that is, imitating the habitual automatized manifestations of those around me, a "something" always arose in my presence, engendering what I should now call an "irresistible urge" to do things not as others do.

At that age, for example, I did such things as the following: when my brother, sisters, and the neighbors' children who came to play with us were learning to catch a ball only with the right hand, and threw it in the air, I would first bounce the ball hard on the ground, and when it rebounded, after first doing a somersault, would catch it, but only with the thumb and middle finger of the left hand; or if all the other children slid down the hill headfirst, I would try to do it, and moreover better and better each time, "backside first"; or if we were given various kinds of Abaramian pastries, and the others, before putting them into their mouths, would first of all lick them, evidently to try their flavor and prolong the pleasure, I would first sniff one on all sides and perhaps even put it to my ear and listen intently, and then, almost unconsciously, though very seriously, I would mutter to myself, "enough is enough, you don't need to stuff!"

and humming to an appropriate rhythm, would swallow it whole without savoring it, and so on and so forth.

The first event that gave rise to one of the two data I mentioned, which became the "vivifying sources" for nourishing and perfecting my deceased grandmother's injunction, occurred just at the age when I changed from a chubby mite into what is called a "young rascal," and had already begun, as is sometimes said, to be a "candidate for a young man of pleasing appearance and dubious content."

And this event occurred under the following circumstances, which were perhaps even specially combined by Fate.

One day, with a number of young rascals like myself, I was setting snares for pigeons on the roof of a neighbor's house, when suddenly one of the boys who was standing over me and watching me closely said:

"I think the horsehair noose ought to be set so that the pigeon's big toe never gets caught in it because, as our zoology teacher recently explained to us, it is just in that toe that the pigeon's reserve strength is concentrated, and of course if this big toe gets caught in the noose, the pigeon might easily break it."

Another boy, leaning over just opposite me—from whose mouth, by the way, whenever he spoke saliva always splashed abundantly in all directions— snapped at this remark of the first boy and delivered himself, with a copious shower of saliva, of the following words:

"Shut your trap, you hopeless mongrel offshoot of the Hottentots! What an abortion you are, just like your teacher' Even if it's true that the pigeon's greatest physical force is concentrated in its big toe, then all the more reason for seeing that just that toe gets caught in the noose Only then can there be any importance for our aim—that is, catching these unfortunate pigeon creatures—in a certain particularity proper to all possessors of that soft and slippery 'something,' the brain, which consists in this, that when, thanks to the action of other influences, on which its insignificant power of manifestation depends, there arises what is called a 'change of presence,' periodically necessary according to law, the slight confusion that should proceed for the intensification of other manifestations of the general functioning immediately enables the center of gravity of the whole organism, in which this slippery 'something' plays a very small part, to shift temporarily from its usual place to another place, and this often leads to unexpected results in the general functioning, ridiculous to the point of absurdity."

He discharged the last words with such a shower of saliva that it was as if my face had been exposed to one of those "atomizers"—not of ersatz production—invented by the Germans to spray material with aniline dyes.

This was more than I could endure, and without changing my squatting position, I flung myself at him head first, hitting him full force in the pit of the stomach, which instantly laid him out flat and made him, as is said, "lose consciousness."

I do not know or wish to know what results will be formed in your mentation on learning about the strange convergence of life circumstances I will now describe, but for my mentation, this coincidence provided material for reinforcing my belief that all the events that occurred in my youth, far from being simply the results of chance, were created intentionally by certain extraneous forces.

The point is that this dexterity had been taught me very thoroughly only a few days before this event by a Greek priest from Turkey, who, persecuted by the Turks for his political convictions, had been compelled to flee from there, and on arriving in our town had been engaged by my parents to teach me the modern Greek language.

I do not know on what he based his political convictions and ideas, but I remember very well that in all our conversations, even when he was explaining the difference between ancient and modern Greek exclamations, it was apparent that this Greek priest was always dreaming of getting to the island of Crete as soon as possible, and manifesting himself there as befits a true patriot.

Well then, on beholding the effect of my skill, I was, I must confess, extremely frightened, because knowing nothing about such a reaction to a blow in that place, I was quite sure I had killed him.

While I was experiencing this fear, another boy, a cousin of the one who had become the first victim of my so to say "skill in self-defense," seeing what I had done and obviously overcome by a feeling called "consanguinity," without a moment's pause leaped at me and with a wide swing punched me in the jaw.

From this blow I "saw stars," as is said, and at the same time my mouth felt as full as if it had been stuffed with enough food for the artificial fattening of a thousand chickens.

After a little while, when both these strange sensations had calmed down within me, I discovered that there actually was some foreign substance in my mouth, and when I pulled it out with my fingers, it turned out to be nothing less than a tooth of large dimensions and strange form.

Seeing me staring at this extraordinary tooth, all the boys swarmed around me, and also began staring at it with great curiosity and in deep silence.

By this time the boy who had been laid out flat recovered and, picking himself up, also began to stare at my tooth with the other boys, just as if nothing had happened to him.

This strange tooth had seven prongs, and at the end of each of them a drop of blood stood out in relief, and through each separate drop there shone clearly and distinctly one of the seven aspects of the manifestation of the white ray.

After this silence, rare among us young rascals, the usual hubbub broke out again, and in noisy chorus we decided to go at once to the barber, a specialist in extracting teeth, and to ask him why this tooth was like that.

So we all clambered down from the roof and went off to the barber's And I, as the "hero of the day," stalked at the head of them all.

The barber, after a casual glance, said it was simply a "wisdom tooth" and that all members of the male sex have one like it—that is, all those who up to the time when they can say "papa" and "mama" are fed exclusively on their own mother's milk, and who are able at first sight to pick out from many others the face of their own father.

From all the effects of this event in which my poor "wisdom tooth" became a complete sacrifice, not only did my consciousness begin, from that time onward, to absorb on every occasion the very essence of the essence of my deceased grandmother's behest—may she attain the Kingdom of Heaven—but also, because I did not go to a "qualified dentist" to have the socket of my former tooth treated, which as a matter of fact I could not do since we lived too far from any contemporary center of culture, a "something" began to ooze chronically from this socket, which had the property—as was only recently explained to me by a famous meteorologist with whom I chanced to become bosom friends during frequent meetings in the all-night restaurants of Montmartre—of arousing an interest in and a tendency to seek out the causes of every suspicious "actual fact", and this property, not transmitted by heredity to my common presence, gradually and automatically led to my becoming a specialist in the investigation of every "suspicious phenomenon" that, as so often happened, came my way.

And when, of course with the cooperation of our All-Common Master, the Merciless Heropass, that is, the "flow of time," I was transformed into the young man I have already described, this new property became a real inextinguishable hearth, always burning, of consciousness.

The second vivifying factor I mentioned, which brought about the complete fusion of my dear grandmother's injunction with all the data making up my individuality, was the totality of impressions received from information I chanced to acquire concerning the origin here on Earth of a principle, which later became—as was demonstrated by Mr. Allan Kardec during an "absolutely secret" spiritualistic séance—one of the chief "life principles" among beings arising and existing on all the other planets of our Great Universe.

This all-universal principle of living is formulated in the following words:

"If you go on a spree, then go the whole hog, including the postage."

As this now-universal principle arose on the same planet as you and where, moreover, you spend most of your time lolling about on a bed of roses and frequently dance the fox trot, I consider that I have no right to withhold from you the information I have that will help you understand certain details of the origin of that universal principle.

Soon after the inculcation in my nature of the new inherency I mentioned, that is, the unaccountable striving to learn the real causes of all sorts of "actual facts," I arrived for the first time in the heart of Russia, in the city of Moscow, where, finding nothing else for the satisfaction of my psychic needs, I occupied myself with investigating Russian legends and sayings. And one day—whether accidentally or as a result of some objective lawful chain of circumstances, I do not know—I came across the following story.

Once upon a time a certain Russian, who to all appearances was just a simple merchant, had to go on some business or other from his provincial town to this second capital of his country, the city of Moscow, and his son—his favorite one, because he resembled only his mother—asked him to bring back a certain book.

When the great, unconscious author of this all-universal principle of living arrived in Moscow, he and a friend of his, as was and still is the custom there, got "blind drunk" on genuine Russian vodka.

And when these two members of one of the large contemporary groupings of biped breathing creatures had drunk the proper number of glasses of this "Russian blessing," and were launched on a discussion about what is called "public education"—a topic with which it has long been customary to begin a conversation—our merchant suddenly remembered by association his dear son's request, and decided to set off at once with his friend to a bookshop to buy the book.

In the shop, after looking through the book that the salesman had handed him, the merchant asked its price.

The salesman replied that the book cost sixty kopecks.

Noticing that the price marked on the cover of the book was only forty-five kopecks, our merchant first began to ponder in an unusual way—especially unusual for Russians—and then, with a certain movement of his shoulders, he straightened himself up like a ramrod and, throwing out his chest like an officer of the guards, said after a little pause, very quietly but in a tone of great authority:

"But it is marked here forty-five kopecks. Why do you ask sixty?"

Thereupon the salesman, putting on the "oleaginous" face proper to all salesmen, replied that indeed the book cost only forty-five kopecks, but had to be sold for sixty because fifteen kopecks were added for postage.

At this reply our Russian merchant was greatly perplexed by these two quite contradictory but obviously reconcilable facts, and something visibly began to proceed in him, and gazing up at the ceiling he again began to ponder, this time like an English professor who has just invented a capsule for castor oil, then, suddenly turning to his friend, he delivered himself for the first time on Earth of the verbal formulation which, expressing in its essence an indubitable objective truth, has since assumed the character of a proverb.

And he put it to his friend as follows:

"Never mind, old fellow, we'll take the book. Anyhow we're on a spree today, and 'if you go on a spree, then go the whole hog, including the postage.' " As for me, unfortunately doomed while still living to experience the delights of Hell, as soon as I had become aware of all this, something very strange that I have never experienced before or since began to proceed in me and continued for rather a long time, it was as if all the usual associations and experiences from various sources were, as contemporary Hivintzes would say, "running races" inside me.

At the same time, in the whole region of my spine there began an intense, almost unbearable itching and in the very center of my solar plexus an equally unbearable colic, and after a while these two mutually stimulating sensations gave way suddenly to a peaceful inner state such as I experienced in later life only once, when the ceremony of the "great initiation" into the brotherhood of the "makers of butter from air" was performed over me And later, when my "I," that is, this "something unknown" which in ancient times a certain eccentric—called by those around him a "learned man," as we still call such persons—defined as a "relatively mobile arising, depending on the quality of functioning of thought, feeling, and organic automatism," and which another renowned scholar of antiquity, the Arabian Mal el-Lel, defined as "the compound result of consciousness, the subconscious, and instinct"—a definition, by the way, which was later "borrowed" and repeated in a different form by the no less renowned and learned Greek, Xenophon—

when this same "I" turned its dazed attention within, I first constated very clearly that everything, even down to each single word of this saying, recognized as an "all-universal life principle," was transformed in me into a special cosmic substance which, merging with the data crystallized long before from my deceased grandmother's behest, was converted into a "something" which, flowing everywhere through my whole presence, settled forever in each atom composing it There and then my ill-fated "I" felt distinctly and, with an impulse of submission, became aware of the for me sad fact that, from that moment on, always and in everything, without exception, I would willy-nilly have to manifest myself according to this inherency formed in me, not in accordance with the laws of heredity or even under the influence of surrounding conditions, but arising in my common presence from the action of three external, accidental causes having nothing in common first, from the injunction of a person who had become, without the slightest desire on my part, the passive cause of the cause of my arising, second, because a tooth of mine was knocked out by some ragamuffin, chiefly on account of somebody else's "slobbering", and third, thanks to the verbal formulation delivered in a drunken state by a person totally unknown to me—a certain "Russian merchant."

If before my acquaintance with this "all-universal principle of living" I had manifested myself differently from other biped animals like myself, arising and vegetating on the same planet, I did so automatically and sometimes only half-consciously, but after this event I began to do so consciously and, moreover, with an instinctive sensation of the two blended impulses of self-satisfaction and self-awareness, in correctly and honorably fulfilling my duty to Great Nature.

It must be emphasized that although even before this event I did everything not as others did, my manifestations scarcely attracted the attention of those around me but, from the moment when the essence of this principle of living was assimilated in my nature, then on the one hand all my manifestations, whether directed toward an aim or merely to "pass the time," acquired vivifyingness, and began to assist the formation of "corns" on the organs of perception of every creature similar to me, without exception, who turned his attention directly or indirectly toward my actions, and on the other hand I began to carry out all these actions in accordance with the injunction of my deceased grandmother to the utmost possible limits, moreover, the practice was automatically acquired in me when beginning anything new and also at any change, of course on a large scale, always to utter, silently or aloud:

"If you go on a spree, then go the whole hog, including the postage."

In the present case, for example, since owing to causes not dependent on me but flowing from the strange and accidental circumstances of my life I happen to be writing books, I am compelled to do this also in keeping with that same principle, which has gradually been fixed in me by various extraordinary coincidences created by life itself, and has blended with each atom of my common presence.

This time I shall put this psycho-organic principle of mine into practice by not following the custom of all writers, established from the remote past down to the present, of taking as the theme of their various writings the events that supposedly have occurred or are now occurring on Earth, but instead I shall take events on the scale of the whole Universe Thus also in the present case, "If you take, then take!"—that is to say, "If you go on a spree, then go the whole hog, including the postage."

Any writer can write on the scale of the Earth, but I am not any writer.

Can I confine myself merely to this "paltry Earth" of ours—paltry, that is, in the objective sense?

No, this I cannot do I cannot take for my writings the same themes that other writers generally take, if only because what our learned spiritualists affirm might suddenly come true and my grandmother might hear of this, and do you realize what might happen to her, to my dear beloved grandmother? Would she not turn in her grave, as they say? And not only once, but—as I understand her, especially now that I have become quite skillful at entering into the position of another—she would turn so many times that she might almost be transformed into an "Irish weathercock."

Please, reader, do not be alarmed I shall, of course, also write of the Earth, but with such an impartial attitude that this comparatively small planet and everything on it will correspond to the place it occupies in reality, and which, even according to your own sane logic—arrived at thanks, of course, to my guidance—it must occupy in our Great Universe.

And of course I must make the various what are called "heroes" of my writings not such types as in general the writers of all ranks and in all epochs on Earth have described and extolled, that is, types such as those Toms, Dicks, or Harrys who are born through a misunderstanding and, during the process of their formation up to "responsible life" fail to acquire anything proper to a creature in the image of God—that is to say, a man—and who, until their last breath, progressively cultivate in themselves only such "charms" as "lasciviousness," "mawkishness," "amorousness," "malice," "chicken-heartedness," "envy," and similar vices unworthy of a man.

I intend to introduce in my writings heroes of such a kind that everybody must willy-nilly sense them with his whole being as real, and about whom data must inevitably be crystallized in every reader for the notion that each one of them is indeed a "somebody" and not just "anybody."

During these last weeks, while lying in bed, my body completely exhausted, I mentally drafted a summary of my future writings and thought out the form and sequence of their exposition; and I decided to make the chief hero of the first series of my writings ... do you know whom? . . . the great Beelzebub himself. And I did this in spite of the fact that, from the very outset, this choice of mine might evoke in the mentation of most of my readers such associations as would engender in them all kinds of automatic contradictory impulses coming from the data infallibly formed in the psyche of people by all the established abnormal conditions of their external existence, and in general "crystallized" in them thanks to the famous "religious morality" rooted in their life—all of which must inevitably result in an inexplicable hostility toward me personally.

But do you know what, reader?

In the event that you decide, despite this warning, to risk further acquaintance with my writings, and you try to absorb them always in a spirit of impartiality and try to understand the very essence of the questions I intend to elucidate, I now wish—in view of an inherency in the human psyche whereby the good can be perceived without opposition only when a "contact of mutual frankness and confidence" is established—to make a sincere confession to you about the associations that arose in me and precipitated in the corresponding sphere of my consciousness the data that prompted the whole of my individuality to select as the chief hero of my writings just such an individual as is presented before your inner eyes by this same Mr. Beelzebub.

I did this not without cunning. My cunning lies simply in the logical supposition that if I pay him this attention he will infallibly—as up till now I have no reason to doubt— show his gratitude by helping me in my intended writings with all the means at his command.

Although Mr Beelzebub is, as the saying goes, of "a different clay," yet— as I learned long ago from the treatise of the famous Catholic monk, Brother Foolon—he has a curly tail, so I—being thoroughly convinced from experience that curls are never natural but can be obtained only by various intentional manipulations—have to conclude, according to the "sane logic" formed in my consciousness from reading books on chiromancy, that Mr Beelzebub must also have a good share of vanity, and will therefore find it extremely awkward not to help someone who is going to advertise his name.

It is not for nothing that our incomparable teacher, Mullah Nasr Eddin, frequently says:

"Without greasing the palm, not only is it impossible to live tolerably anywhere but even to breathe."

And another terrestrial sage, named Till Eulenspiegel, who also based his wisdom on the crass stupidity of people, has expressed the same idea in the following words:

"If you don't grease the wheels the cart won't go."

Knowing these and many other sayings of popular wisdom, formed throughout the centuries in the collective life of people, I have decided to "grease the palm" of Mr Beelzebub, who, as everyone realizes, has means and knowledge enough and to spare.

Hold on, old fellow! Joking, even philosophical joking, aside, it seems that with all these digressions, you have violated one of the chief principles that you had made the basis of the system you planned for actualizing your dreams through this new profession the principle to remember and always take into account the weakening of the function of thinking in the contemporary reader, and not to fatigue him with the perception of numerous ideas over a short period of time.

Moreover, when I asked one of those people who are always hanging around me, "eager to enter Paradise without fail with their boots on," to read aloud straight through everything I have written in this introductory chapter, what is called my "I"—of course, with the participation of all the data formed in my peculiar psyche during the course of my life, which have given me, among other things, an understanding of the psyche of creatures like myself but of different types—my "I" perceived and cognized with certainty that, thanks to this chapter alone, there must inevitably arise in the common presence of every reader without exception a "something" automatically engendering a marked hostility toward me personally.

To tell the truth, it is not this which worries me the most at the moment, what worries me is the fact that at the end of the reading I also perceived that in the sum total of everything expounded in this chapter, my whole presence, in which the aforesaid "I" plays a very small part, manifested itself in a way quite contrary to one of the fundamental commandments of that universal teacher whom I particularly esteem, Mullah Nasr Eddin, which he expressed in the words:

"Never poke your stick into a hornets' nest."

But the agitation that had pervaded the whole system animating my feelings when I realized that an animosity toward me must necessarily arise in the reader immediately quieted down when I remembered the ancient Russian proverb that states "There is no offence which with time will not blow over—time grinds every grain into flour " Since then, the agitation that arose from realizing my failure to obey the commandment of Mullah Nasr Eddin no longer troubles me in the least, nevertheless, a very strange process has begun in both of my recently acquired "souls," taking the form of an unusual itching, which has increased progressively until it now produces an almost intolerable pain in the region a little below the right half of my already over-exercised "solar plexus."

Wait! Wait! . . . This process, it seems, is also quieting down, and in the depths of my consciousness—let us say meanwhile even of my "subconscious"—there is beginning to arise everything required to assure me that it will cease entirely, for I have just remembered another fragment of life wisdom, which leads me to understand that if indeed I acted against the advice of the highly esteemed Mullah Nasr Eddin, I nevertheless did so without premeditation according to the principle of that extremely engaging—not widely known on Earth, yet unforgettable by anyone who once met him —that precious nugget, Karapet of Tiflis.

Well, it can't be helped . . . now that my introductory chapter has turned out to be so long, it will not matter if I spin it out a little more to tell you also about this extremely engaging Karapet of Tiflis.

First of all I must state that twenty or twenty-five years ago the Tiflis railway station had a "steam whistle."

It was blown every morning to wake up the railway workers and station hands and, as the Tiflis station stood on a hill, this whistle was heard almost all over the town, and woke up not only the railway workers but all the other inhabitants as well.

The Tiflis local government, as I recall it, even entered into a lengthy correspondence with the railway authorities about the disturbance of the morning sleep of the peaceful citizens.

To release the steam into the whistle every morning was the job of this same Karapet, who was employed in the station.

When he would come in the morning to the rope by which he released the steam into the whistle, before taking hold of the rope and pulling it, he would wave his arms in all directions, and solemnly, like a Muslim mullah from a minaret, cry in a loud voice:

"Your mother is a —! Your father is a —! Your grandfather is more than a —! May your eyes, ears, nose, spleen, liver, corns, . . . " et cetera In short, he pronounced in various keys all the curses he knew, and not until he had done so would he pull the rope.

When I heard about this Karapet and this practice of his, I went to see him one evening after the day's work, with a small "boordook" of Kahketeenian wine, and after performing the indispensable solemn "toasting ritual" of the locality, I asked him, of course in a suitable form, according to the local code of "amenities" established for mutual relationship, why he did this.

He emptied his glass at a draught and, having sung the famous Georgian song "Drink up again, boys," obligatory when drinking, he began in a leisurely way to answer as follows:

"Since you drink wine not as people do today, that is, merely for appearances, but in fact honestly, this already shows me that, unlike our engineers and technicians who plague me with questions, you wish to know about this practice of mine not out of curiosity but from a genuine desire for knowledge, and therefore I wish, and even consider it my duty, to confess to you sincerely the exact reason for the inner so to say scrupulous considerations that led me to this."

He then related the following:

"Formerly I used to work in this station at night cleaning the boilers, but when they put in the steam whistle, the stationmaster, evidently considering my age and incapacity for the heavy work I was doing, gave me the one job of releasing the steam into the whistle, for which I had to arrive punctually every morning and evening.

"The very first week of my new service, I noticed that after performing this duty of mine I felt vaguely ill at ease for an hour or two. "But when this queer feeling, increasing day by day, eventually became a definite instinctive uneasiness from which even my appetite for 'makokh' disappeared, I began to rack my brains in order to find out the cause I thought about it with particular intensity, for some reason or other, while going to and coming from my work, but however hard I tried I could not make anything clear to myself, even approximately.

"Things went on like this for almost six months, and the palms of my hands had become calloused from the rope of the steam whistle when, quite suddenly and accidentally, I understood why I was experiencing this uneasiness.

"The shock that brought about a correct understanding, resulting in the formation of an unshakable conviction, was a certain exclamation I happened to hear in the following rather peculiar circumstances.

"One morning when I had not had enough sleep, since I spent the first half of the night at the christening of my neighbor's ninth daughter, and the other half reading a rare and very interesting book I had come across entitled Dreams and Witchcraft, I was hurrying on my way to release the steam, when I suddenly saw at a street corner a barber-surgeon I knew, employed in the local government service, who beckoned me to stop.

"The function of this barber-surgeon friend of mine was to go through the town at certain hours, accompanied by an assistant pushing a specially constructed cart, and to seize all the stray dogs whose collars lacked the metal tags issued by the local authorities on payment of the tax He then had to take these dogs to the municipal slaughterhouse, where they were kept for two weeks at the town's expense and fed on slaughterhouse offal. If by the end of this period their owners had not claimed them and paid the tax, these dogs were driven, with a certain solemnity, down a passageway that led directly to a specially designed oven.

"Shortly afterward, from the other end of this remarkable and salutary oven, there flowed, with a delightful gurgling sound, a certain quantity of pellucid and ideally clean fat, to the profit of the fathers of our town, for the manufacture of soap and also perhaps of something else, while, with a purling sound no less delightful to the ear, there poured out a fair quantity of useful substances for fertilizer.

"My friend, the barber-surgeon, proceeded in the following simple and admirably skillful manner to catch the dogs.

"He had somewhere obtained an old, quite large fishing net, which he carried on his broad shoulders, folded in a suitable manner, and during these peculiar excursions of his through the slums of our town for the good of humanity, when a dog 'without its passport' came within range of his allseeing and for the whole canine species terrible eye, he, without haste and with the softness of a panther, would steal up close to it and, seizing a favorable moment when his victim was interested and attracted by something, would cast his net over it and quickly entangle it. Then, pulling up the cart to which a cage was attached, he would disentangle the dog in such a way that it found itself imprisoned in the cage.

"When my friend the barber-surgeon beckoned me to stop, he was just waiting for the opportune moment to throw the net over his next victim, which at that moment was standing and wagging his tail at a bitch. My friend was just about to cast his net when suddenly the bells of a neighboring church rang out, calling the people to early prayer. At this unexpected sound ringing out in the morning quiet, the doe took fright and, springing aside, shot off down the empty street at its full canine velocity.

"This so infuriated the barber-surgeon that his hair, even in his armpits, stood on end and, flinging his net down on the pavement, he spat over his left shoulder and cried out:

" 'Oh, Hell! What a time to ring!''

"As soon as this exclamation of his reached my reflecting apparatus, numerous thoughts began to swarm in it which ultimately led, in my view, to a correct understanding of lust why there proceeded in me the aforesaid instinctive uneasiness.

"The moment I understood this I even felt annoyed at myself that such a simple and clear idea had not entered my head before.

"I sensed with the whole of my being that my interference in the communal life could have no other result than the very sensation that had been proceeding in me all this time.

"And indeed, everyone awakened from his sweet morning slumbers by the blast of my steam whistle must doubtless curse me by everything under the sun—just me, the cause of this infernal din—and thanks to this, there must surely flow from all directions toward my person vibrations of all kinds of malice.

"On that memorable morning, after performing my duties, while sitting in my usual mood of depression in a neighboring 'dukhan' and eating 'hachi' with garlic, I continued to ponder, and I came to the conclusion that if I should curse beforehand all those who are outraged by my service for the benefit of some of them, then according to the book I had read the night before, however much all those still lying in the 'realm of idiocy'—that is, between sleep and drowsiness—might curse me, it would have no effect on me at all.

"And in fact, since I began to do this, I no longer feel that 'instinctive uneasiness. '"

Well now, patient reader, I must really conclude this opening chapter. It has only to be signed.

He who...

Stop! Misconceived formulation! With a signature there must be no joking. Otherwise the same thing will happen to you as happened once before in one of the countries of Central Europe, when you were forced to pay ten years' rent for a house you occupied for only three months, simply because you had signed a paper obliging you to renew the lease for the house each year.

After this and many similar life experiences, I must, in any case as regards my own signature, be very, very careful.

Very well, then.

He who in childhood was called "Tatakh"; in early youth, "Darky"; later, the "Black Greek"; in middle age, the "Tiger of Turkestan"; and now, not just anybody, but the genuine "Monsieur" or "Mister" Gurdjieff, or the "nephew of Prince Mukhransky," or finally, simply a "teacher of dancing."

_______________

Notes:

1. Mullah Nasr Eddin or as he is also called Nasr Eddin Hodja is little known in Europe and America but is very well known in all the countries of the continent of Asia He is a legendary personage corresponding somewhat to the German Till Eulenspiegel Many popular tales and savings are attributed to this Nasr Eddin some of long standing and others more recent all expressing "life wisdom."

2. "Cheshma" means veil

CHAPTER 2: Prologue. Why Beelzebub was in our solar system

IT WAS in the year 223 after the creation of the world by objective time calculation or, as would be said here on the Earth, in the year 1921 after the birth of Christ.

Through the Universe flew the trans-space communication ship Karnak.

Having left the spaces of the "Assooparatsata," that is, the "Milky Way," it was flying from the planet "Karatas" to the solar system "Pandetznokh," the sun of which is called the "Pole Star. "

On this trans-space ship was Beelzebub with his kinsmen and close companions.

He was on his way to the planet "Revozvradendr," to a conference in which he had consented to take part, at the request of friends of long standing Only the remembrance of these old friendships had induced him to accept the invitation, for he was no longer young, and so lengthy a voyage with its inevitable hardships was by no means an easy task for one of his years. A short time before this voyage Beelzebub had returned home to the planet Karatas, the place of his arising, and far from which, due to circumstances not depending on his essence, he had passed many years of his existence in conditions alien to his nature.

These long years of an existence unsuited to him, with all the perceptions and experiences foreign to his essence, had not failed to leave a noticeable mark on his common presence.

Time itself had by now inevitably aged him, and these unaccustomed conditions of existence had brought Beelzebub, that same Beelzebub who had had so exceptionally strong, fiery, and splendid a youth, to a no less exceptional old age.

Long, long before, when Beelzebub was still existing at home on the planet Karatas, he had been taken, owing to his extraordinarily resourceful intelligence, into service on the "Sun Absolute," where our Lord Sovereign Endlessness has the fundamental place of His dwelling, and there Beelzebub, with a number of others like himself, had become an attendant upon His Endlessness.

But then, owing to his youthful and still unformed Reason, as well as to his callow and impetuous mentation with its unequally flowing associations, that is, a mentation based on a limited understanding—which is natural for beings who have not yet become fully responsible—Beelzebub once saw something in the government of the world that seemed to him "illogical" and, having found support among his comrades, unformed beings like himself, interfered in what was none of his business.

Thanks to the force and impetuosity of Beelzebub's nature, his intervention, supported by his comrades, soon captured all minds and brought the central kingdom of the Megalocosmos to the brink of revolution.

Having learned of this, His Endlessness, notwithstanding His all-lovingness and all-forgivingness, was constrained to banish Beelzebub and his comrades to one of the remote corners of the Universe, to the solar system "Ors," whose inhabitants call it simply "the solar system", and He assigned as the place of their existence one of the planets of that solar system, namely the planet "Mars," with the privilege of existing on other planets also, but only of that solar system.

Among these exiles, besides Beelzebub's comrades, were many who had merely sympathized with him, as well as the attendants and subordinates of Beelzebub and his friends.

They all arrived with their entire households at this remote place and in a short time there was formed on the planet Mars a whole colony of "three-centered beings" from various planets of the central part of our Great Universe.

This population, so foreign to that planet, accommodated itself little by little to its new dwelling place, and to shorten the long years of exile, many of them found some occupation or other, either on Mars or on neighboring planets that had been almost entirely neglected because of their remoteness from the Center and the poverty of all their formations.

As the years rolled by, many of these exiles, either on their own initiative or in response to needs of a general character, gradually migrated from Mars to other planets, but Beelzebub himself with his close attendants remained on the planet Mars, where he organized his existence more or less tolerably.

One of his chief occupations was the setting up of an "observatory" on the planet Mars for the observation of remote points of the Universe as well as of the conditions of existence of beings on neighboring planets, and this observatory of his, by the way, later became well known and even famous everywhere in the Universe.

Although the solar system Ors had been neglected because of its remoteness from the Center and for many other reasons, the Most Holy Cosmic Individuals surrounding our Common Father Endlessness had sent Messengers from time to time to the planets of this solar system, to regulate more or less the process of existence of the three-brained beings arising there, and to bring it into accord with the general world harmony.

And thus to one of the planets of this solar system, the planet called "Earth," a Messenger was once sent from our Endlessness—a certain Ashiata Shiemash And as Beelzebub had fulfilled a special task indispensable to his mission, this Messenger, upon his return to the Sun Absolute, earnestly besought His Endlessness to pardon the once young and fiery but now aged Beelzebub.

In view of this request of Ashiata Shiemash, and also of the modest and conscious existence of Beelzebub himself, our Maker Creator pardoned him and gave him permission to return to the place of his arising.

And so it was that now, after a long absence, Beelzebub was again in the Center of the Universe.

His influence and authority, far from having declined during his exile, had on the contrary greatly increased, since all those around him clearly recognized that, thanks to the long years he had spent in unaccustomed conditions, his knowledge and experience had inevitably been broadened and deepened.

And so, when events of great importance occurred on one of the planets of the solar system Pandetznokh, Beelzebub's old friends decided to intrude upon him and invite him to the conference concerning these events.

And that is why Beelzebub, with his kinsmen and attendants, was now making the long journey on the space ship Karnak from the planet Karatas to the planet Revozvradendr.

At the time to which our tale refers, all those aboard the big space ship Karnak were occupied either with their duties, or simply with actualizing what is called "active being-mentation."

Among the passengers one very handsome boy stood out; he was always near Beelzebub himself.

This was Hassein, the son of Beelzebub's favorite son, Tooloof.

After his return home from exile, Beelzebub had seen his grandson Hassein for the first time and, appreciating his good heart—and also owing to what is called "family attraction"—had taken an instant liking to him.

And as the moment happened to coincide with the time when the Reason of young Hassein needed to be developed, Beelzebub, now having a good deal of free time, took charge of the education of his grandson himself, and from then on kept Hassein with him wherever he went.

For his part, Hassein so loved his grandfather that he would not stir a step without him, and eagerly absorbed everything he said or taught.

As this narrative begins, Beelzebub, Hassein, and Ahoon, the devoted old servant who always accompanied Beelzebub everywhere, were sitting on the highest "kasnik," or upper deck, of the Karnak under the "kalnokranonis," a sort of glass bell, talking among themselves while observing the boundless space.

Beelzebub was speaking about the solar system where he had spent many years He was describing the peculiarities of the nature of a planet called "Venus. "

During the conversation, word was brought to Beelzebub that the captain of the ship wished to speak with him, and Beelzebub gave his consent.

CHAPTER 3: The cause of a delay in the falling of the Karnak

SOON AFTERWARD the captain entered and, having greeted Beelzebub with all the ceremony appropriate to one of his rank, said:

"Your Right Reverence, allow me to ask your authoritative advice An 'inevitability' lies directly in the line of our course and will hinder our 'falling' by the shortest route.

"The point is that if we follow our intended course, in two 'kilprenos' [1] our ship will be passing through the solar system 'Vuanik.'

"But at the very place where our ship must pass, there will also pass, about one kilpreno before, the great comet belonging to that solar system and named 'Sakoor' or, as it is sometimes called, 'the Madcap.'

"So if we keep to our proposed course, we must inevitably cross the space through which this comet will have passed.

"And as Your Right Reverence certainly knows, this mad comet always leaves a great deal of 'zilnotrago' [2] in its track, which on entering the planetary body of a being disorganizes most of its functions until all the zilnotrago has been volatilized.

"I thought at first," continued the captain, "of avoiding the zilnotrago by steering the ship around this zone, but this would mean a long detour and would greatly prolong our voyage On the other hand, to wait somewhere until the zilnotrago is dispersed would take still longer.

"Faced with these alternatives, I cannot decide on my own what to do, so I am venturing to trouble Your Right Reverence for the benefit of your wise advice."

When the captain had finished speaking, Beelzebub thought a moment and then answered:

"Really, I do not know how to advise you, my dear Captain . . . Ah yes, in that solar system where I existed for a long time, there is a planet named 'Earth,' on which there arose, and still continue to arise, very strange three-centered beings And among them, on one of the continents of that planet called 'Asia,' there arose a very wise three-brained being named Mullah Nasr Eddin.

"For each and every peculiar situation, great and small, in the existence of the beings there," Beelzebub continued, "this terrestrial sage, Mullah Nasr Eddin, had an apt and pithy saying.

"As all his sayings were full of the sense of truth for the beings of that planet, I too always used them as a guide, for the sake of having a comfortable existence there.

"In the present situation also, my dear Captain, I wish to profit by one of his wise sayings. In such a quandary as ours he would probably say:

" 'You can't jump over your knees, and it's absurd to try to kiss your own elbow!'

"I now say the same to you, and add there is nothing to be done. When faced with an event arising from forces immeasurably greater than one's own, one must submit.

"The only question is, which of the alternatives you mentioned should be chosen—that is, to wait or add to our journey by a detour.

"You say that a detour would greatly lengthen our journey, but that waiting would take still longer Well then, my dear Captain, suppose that by making the detour we should save a little time What do you think? Is the wear and tear on our ship's machinery worthwhile for the sake of ending our journey a little sooner?

"If a detour would involve even the slightest damage to our ship, then in my opinion we ought to give preference to your second suggestion, and stop somewhere until the path is cleared of the noxious zilnotrago That would at least spare our ship useless damage And we will try to fill the time of this unforeseen delay with something useful for us all.

"For example, it would give me personally great pleasure to talk with you about contemporary ships in general and our ship in particular. A great many inventions that I still know nothing about have been made in this field during my absence from these parts.

"In my time, for instance, these big trans-space ships were so complicated and cumbersome that it took almost half their power to carry the materials needed to elaborate the energy for their locomotion.

"But contemporary ships, in their simplicity and the freedom they offer for all being-manifestations, are the very model of 'bliss-stokirno.' At times you even forget that you are not on one of the planets So, I should very much like to know how this marvel was brought about and how the contemporary ships work.

"Now go, my dear Captain, and make all the arrangements for this necessary stop. Then, when you are quite free, come back and we will pass the time of our unavoidable delay in conversation useful for us all."

When the captain had gone, Hassein suddenly sprang to his feet and began to dance and clap his hands, shouting "Oh, I'm glad, I'm glad, I'm glad about this!"

Beelzebub looked with affection on these joyful manifestations of his favorite, but old Ahoon could not restrain himself and, shaking his head reproachfully muttered half to himself that the boy was a growing "egoist. "

Hearing what Ahoon had called him, Hassein stopped in front of him and with a mischievous glance said:

"Don't be angry with me, dear Ahoon. The reason for my joy is not egoism but only this happy coincidence. You heard him, didn't you? My beloved grandfather didn't only decide to make a stop but also promised the captain to talk with him.

"And you know very well that my grandfather's talks always lead to stories of places where he has been, and you know how wonderfully he tells his stories, and how much new and interesting information is 'crystallized' in our presences through these tales.

"Where is the egoism? Hasn't he, of his own free will, after weighing with his wise Reason all the circumstances of this unforeseen event, decided to make a stop, which evidently doesn't upset his plans too much?

"It seems to me that my dear grandfather has no reason to hurry. Everything he needs for his rest and comfort is here on the Karnak, and here also are many who love him and whom he loves.

"Didn't he just say that we must not oppose forces higher than our own, adding that not only should we not oppose them but should even submit to them and accept all their results with reverence, at the same time praising and glorifying the marvelous and providential works of our Lord Creator?

"I'm glad, not because of the mishap, but because this unforeseen event from Above enables us to listen once more to the tales of my dear grandfather. Is it my fault that the circumstances have turned out to be so desirable and happy for me?

"No, dear Ahoon, you shouldn't scold me, but should even join me in expressing gratitude to the Source of all beneficent results."

All this time Beelzebub had been listening attentively and with a smile to the chatter of his favorite, and when Hassein had finished, said "You are right, dear Hassein, and for being right, even before the captain returns I shall tell you anything you like."

Upon hearing this, the boy at once ran and sat at Beelzebub's feet and, after thinking a little, said:

"Dear Grandfather, you have already told me so much about the solar system where you spent so many years that by now I could probably go on, by my own logic, to describe in detail the nature of that peculiar corner of our Universe.

"But I am curious to know whether three-brained beings dwell on the planets of that solar system, and whether 'higher being-bodies' are coated in them This is what I should like you to tell me about," said Hassein, looking up affectionately at his grandfather.

"Yes," replied Beelzebub, "three-brained beings dwell on almost all planets of that solar system also, and higher being-bodies can be coated in almost all of them.

"Higher being-bodies or, as they are called on some planets of that solar system, 'souls,' are coated in three-brained beings inhabiting all the planets except those before reaching which the emanations of our Most Holy Sun Absolute, through repeated deflections, have gradually lost the fullness of their strength and no longer contain the vivifying power needed for coating higher being-bodies.

"Of course, my boy, on each planet of that solar system the planetary bodies of the three-brained beings are coated and take on an exterior form corresponding to the nature of that planet, adapting to it in every detail.

"On the planet Mars, for instance, where we were exiled, the three-brained beings are coated with a planetary body having a form— how shall I tell you?—like a 'karoona,' that is to say, they have a long broad trunk, amply provided with fat, and a head with enormous protruding and shining eyes. On the back of this huge planetary body of theirs are two large wings, and on the underside two comparatively small feet with very strong claws.

"Almost the entire strength of this huge planetary body is adapted by nature to generate energy for their eyes and their wings.

"As a result, the three-brained beings breeding on that planet can see freely everywhere, however great the 'kldatsakhti,' [3] and can move about not only on the planet but also in its atmosphere, and occasionally some of them even manage to travel beyond its limits.

"On another planet not far from the planet Mars, owing to the intense cold there, the three-brained beings are covered with thick soft wool The outer form of these three-centered beings is like that of a 'toosook,' that is, it resembles a kind of double sphere, the upper sphere serving to contain the principal organs of the planetary body, and the lower one the organs for the transformation of the 'first and second being-foods.'

"In the upper sphere there are three apertures opening outward; two serve for sight and the third for hearing.

"The lower sphere has only two apertures: one in front for the taking in of the first and second being-foods, and the other at the back for the elimination of residues from the organism To the lower sphere are attached two strong sinewy feet, and on each of these is a protuberance that serves the same purpose as our fingers.

"There is still another planet in that solar system, my dear boy, quite a small one, bearing the name 'Moon.'

"During its movement this peculiar little planet often came very near our planet Mars and sometimes for whole kilprenos I took great pleasure in observing, through the 'teskooano,' [4] in my observatory, the process of existence of the three-brained beings who inhabit it.

"Though the beings of this planet have very frail planetary bodies, they have an indomitable spirit, which gives them an extraordinary perseverance and capacity for work.

"Their external form is like that of large ants, and like them they are always bustling about, working both on and within their planet.

"The results of their ceaseless activity are already plainly visible.

"I once happened to notice that in two of our years they had 'tunneled' the whole of their planet. They were obliged to undertake this task on account of the abnormal 'climatic conditions' there, caused by the fact that this planet arose unexpectedly, and therefore the regulation of its climatic harmony had not been prearranged by the Higher Powers.

"The climate of this planet is truly 'mad,' and in its variability could give points to the most high-strung, hysterical women existing on another planet of that solar system, which I shall also tell you about.

"Sometimes the cold is so intense on this Moon that everything is frozen through and through, and it becomes impossible for beings to breathe in the open atmosphere, and then suddenly it gets so hot that you could fry an egg in a Jiffy.

"There are only two short periods on that peculiar little planet, namely, before and after it completes its orbit around a neighboring planet, when the weather is so glorious that for several rotations the whole planet is in bloom, and yields the various products for the first being-food of its inhabitants—even greatly in excess of what they need for existence in that strange intraplanetary kingdom they have devised, where they are sheltered from the vagaries of this mad climate and all the inharmonious changes in the state of the atmosphere.

"Not far from that small planet is another, larger planet, which occasionally comes quite close to Mars, and is called 'Earth.'

"The Moon is actually a fragment of this Earth, which must now constantly maintain the Moon's existence.

"On the planet Earth also, three-brained beings are formed, and they too contain all the data for higher being-bodies to be coated in them.

"But in 'strength of spirit' they do not begin to compare with the beings breeding on the little planet I just mentioned The external coating of the threebrained beings of that planet Earth closely resembles our own, except that their skin is a little slimier than ours Moreover, they have no tails, and their heads are without horns But the worst thing about them is their feet, for they have no hoofs It is true that for protection against external influences they have invented what they call 'boots,' but this invention does not do them much good.

"Aside from the imperfection of their external form, their Reason is uniquely and utterly bizarre.

"Their 'being-Reason,' owing to many causes that I may tell you about sometime, has gradually degenerated and at present is very, very strange, and peculiar in the highest degree."

Beelzebub was about to say more, but just then the captain of the ship entered. So, promising the boy to tell him about the beings of the planet Earth some other time, he began to talk with the captain.

He asked the captain first to tell him who he was, how long he had been a captain, and how he liked his work, and then to give him some information about contemporary cosmic ships.

"Your Right Reverence," the captain began, "when I approached the age of a responsible being, I was destined by my father for this career in the service of our Endless Creator Starting in the lowest ranks on the trans-space ships, I ultimately became worthy to perform the duties of captain, and for eight years now I have been a captain on long-distance ships.

"In this latest post of mine on the Karnak I succeeded my father, who had performed the duties of captain almost from the very beginning of world creation and who, after his long years of blameless service to His Endlessness, was held worthy of promotion to the post of governor of the solar system 'Kalman.'

"In short," continued the captain, "I began my service just when Your Right Reverence was leaving for the place of your exile I was then only a 'sweeper' on the long-distance ships of that period.

"Yes a long, long time has passed by.

"Everything has changed and has been changed since then only our Lord and Sovereign remains unchanged May the blessings of 'Amenzano' be on His Changelessness throughout eternity!

"Your Right Reverence has seen fit to remark, very justly, that the earlier ships were most inconvenient and cumbersome.

"They were indeed very complicated and unwieldy I remember them well myself There is a vast difference between the ships of that time and now.

"In our youth all the ships, both for intersystem and interplanetary communication, were still run on the cosmic substance 'elekilpomagtistzen,' which is composed of two distinct parts of the omnipresent 'Okidanokh.' And it was to produce this substance that the earlier ships had to carry such a quantity of materials.

"But these ships did not remain in use very long after your departure; they were replaced by ships of the system of Saint Venoma."

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Notes:

1. "Kilpreno" in the language of Beelzebub means a certain period of time of approximately the same duration as what is called an "hour" on the Earth.

2. "Zilnotrago" is the name of a gas similar to what is called on the Earth "cyanic acid."

3. "Kldatsakhti" means "darkness."

4. "Teskooano" means "telescope."

CHAPTER 4: The law of falling

THE CAPTAIN continued:

"This happened in the year 185 by objective time calculation.

"Saint Venoma had been taken for his merits from the planet 'Soort' to the 'Holy Planet Purgatory' where, after familiarizing himself with his new surroundings and new duties, he devoted all his free time to his favorite work.

"This favorite work was to try to discover what new phenomena could be obtained from various combinations of lawful phenomena already existing.

"Sometime later, in the course of his observations of cosmic laws, Saint Venoma made a discovery which after-ward became famous, and which he was the first to call the 'law of falling.'

"Saint Venoma formulated this cosmic law as follows:

" 'Everything existing in the world "falls to the bottom." The "bottom" for any part of the Universe is its nearest "stability," and this stability is the point toward which all the lines of force from all directions converge.

'The centers of all the suns and planets of our Universe are precisely such points of stability. They are the lowest points of that region of space toward which forces from all directions of the given part of the Universe inexorably tend, and where they concentrate. Each of these points is also a center of gravity that enables suns and planets to maintain their proper places.'

"Saint Venoma stated further that when an object, wherever it may be, is dropped into space, it tends to fall on one or another sun or planet, depending on which sun or planet this part of space belongs to—that sun or planet being for the given region the stability, or bottom.

"Starting from this, Saint Venoma, continuing his research, reasoned as follows 'If this is so, could not this cosmic property be utilized for the locomotion we need between the spaces in the Universe?’ And from then on he worked along that line.

"His further saintly labors showed that, although in principle this was possible, in fact the law of falling alone could not be employed fully to achieve this purpose, for the simple reason that the atmospheres surrounding most of the cosmic concentrations would hinder the direct falling of the object dropped in space.

"Having established this, Saint Venoma turned his whole attention to finding some means of overcoming the atmospheric resistance to ships constructed on the principle of falling.

"And three 'looniases' later, Saint Venoma did find such a means and, as soon as a suitable vessel had been completed under his direction, he went on to practical trials.

"This construction had the appearance of a large chamber, the walls of which were made of a special material somewhat like glass On every wall of the chamber were fitted, so to say, 'shutters' made of material impervious to the rays of the cosmic substance 'elekilpomagtistzen,' and these shutters, although set close to the walls, could slide freely in any required direction Within the chamber was placed a special 'battery' which generated and supplied this substance elekilpomagtistzen.

"I was present myself, Your Right Reverence, at the first experiments in which Saint Venoma tested the principle he had discovered.

"The whole secret lay in this when rays of elekilpomagtistzen were made to pass through this special glass, they destroyed everything in their path that the atmosphere of planets is usually composed of, such as 'air,' 'gases' of all kinds, 'fog,' and so on. This part of space became absolutely empty, without resistance to pressure, so that if even an infantbeing gave this enormous structure a push, it would move as lightly as a feather.

"On the outer side of this peculiar structure were appendages like wings, which were set in motion by this same substance elekilpomagtistzen, and gave the impetus to move this immense structure in the required direction.

"And so, when the results of these experiments had been approved and blessed by the Commission of Inspection, under the presidency of the Archangel Adossia, the construction of a big ship on these principles was begun.

"The ship was soon ready and commissioned for service. And this type of ship gradually displaced all the systems that had existed before. Later, Your Right Reverence, the inconvenience of this system became more and more apparent; nevertheless it continued to be used exclusively on all the lines of trans-space communication.

"It cannot be gainsaid that the ships constructed on this principle were ideal in atmosphereless spaces, and moved there with almost the speed of the 'etzikolnianakhnian' rays issuing from planets; yet when they approached some sun or planet it became real torture for the beings directing them, as much complicated maneuvering was necessary because of this same law of falling.

"For as soon as a ship came into the atmospheric medium of some sun or planet that it had to pass, it immediately began to fall toward that sun or planet and, as I just said, great care and considerable knowledge were needed to keep the ship from falling off its course.

"While the ships were passing near any sun or planet, their speed often had to be reduced hundreds of times below their usual rate.

"It was particularly difficult to steer them in any sphere where there was a large aggregation of 'comets'.

"Great demands were therefore made upon the beings who had to direct these ships, and they were prepared for their duties by beings of very high Reason.

"But in spite of these drawbacks, the system of Saint Venoma, as I have already said, gradually replaced all the previous ones.

"The ships of this system of Saint Venoma had been in existence for twenty-three years when it was first rumored that the Great Angel Hariton had invented a new type of ship for intersystem and interplanetary communication."

CHAPTER 5: The system of Archangel Hariton

"SHORTLY AFTERWARD, again under the supervision of the Great Archangel Adossia, practical tests open to all were made with this new invention, which was later to become so famous.

"The new system was unanimously acknowledged to be the best, and soon it was adopted for service throughout the Universe, gradually superseding all previous systems.

"At the present time this system of the Great Angel, now Archangel, Hariton is in use everywhere. The ship on which we are now flying is based on the same principles, and its construction is similar to that of all ships built according to this system. It is not very complicated.

"The whole of this great invention consists of a single 'cylinder' shaped like an ordinary barrel.

"The secret of this cylinder lies in the disposition of the materials of which its inner walls are composed.

"These materials are isolated from each other by means of 'amber' and, owing to their arrangement in a certain order, have the property of acting on any cosmic gaseous substance entering the space they enclose—whether 'atmosphere,' 'air,' 'ether,' or any other combination of homogeneous cosmic elements—causing it immediately to expand within the cylinder.

"The bottom of this 'cylinder-barrel' is hermetically sealed, but the lid, although it can also be tightly closed, is hinged in such a way that on pressure from within it opens, and then shuts again.

"So, Your Right Reverence, if this cylinder-barrel is filled with atmosphere, air, or any other such substance, the action of its walls causes these substances to expand to such an extent that the interior becomes too small to hold them.

"Striving to find an outlet from this constricted interior, they naturally press against the lid of the cylinder-barrel, which opens on its hinges and allows these expanded substances to escape, and then immediately closes again Since in general Nature abhors a vacuum, as soon as the expanded gaseous substances are released, the cylinder-barrel is again filled up with fresh substances from outside, and they in their turn undergo the same process, and so on without end Thus the substances are always being changed, and the lid of the cylinder-barrel alternately opens and shuts.

"Fixed to this lid is a very simple 'lever,' operated by the movement of the lid, which sets in motion some also very simple 'cogwheels,' and these in turn revolve fans attached to the sides and stern of the ship itself.

"Thus, Your Right Reverence, in spaces where there is no resistance, contemporary ships like ours simply fall toward the nearest stability, but where there are any cosmic substances that offer resistance, it is these substances, no matter what their density, that are acted upon by the cylinder and enable the ship to move in any desired direction.

"It is interesting to note that the denser the substance in any given part of the Universe, the better the charging and discharging of the cylinder-barrel proceed, and in consequence, of course, the rate of movement of the levers is accelerated.

"Nevertheless, I repeat, a region without atmosphere, that is, a space containing only 'world ethernokrilno,' is the best for contemporary ships as it was for earlier ones, because it offers no resistance at all, and the law of falling can therefore be employed to the full with no need for the work of the cylinder.

"Furthermore, contemporary ships have the advantage that in atmosphereless spaces they can be given an impetus in any direction, and can fall wherever intended without the complicated manipulations necessary in ships of the system of Saint Venoma.

"In short, Your Right Reverence, both in convenience and simplicity, contemporary ships are beyond comparison with the earlier ones, which were often exceedingly complicated and at the same time had none of the possibilities of the ships we use now."

CHAPTER 6: Perpetual motion

"WAIT! WAIT!" Beelzebub interrupted "What you have just been describing must surely be that ephemeral idea that the strange three-brained beings breeding on the planet Earth called 'perpetual motion,' for the sake of which at one time great numbers of them went quite 'mad' or even perished.

"It once happened on that ill-fated planet that somebody got the 'crazy notion' into his head that he could invent a 'mechanism' that would run forever without requiring any material from the outside.

"This notion so took everybody's fancy that most of the crackpots of that peculiar planet began thinking about it and trying to produce this 'miracle ' How many of them had to pay for this ephemeral idea with all the material and spiritual welfare that they had previously acquired at great cost!'

"For one reason or another, they were all quite determined to invent what they imagined would be a 'simple matter.'

"Whenever external conditions permitted, many of them gave themselves up to the search for this perpetual motion, without any inner data for such work, some relying upon their 'knowledge,' others upon 'luck,' but most of them driven by an already full-blown psychopathy.

"In short, to invent perpetual motion became the 'rage' there, and every crank felt obliged to be interested in this question.

"I was once in a town where a large number of 'models' and all kinds of 'descriptions' of proposed mechanisms for this perpetual motion had been collected.

"What could not be found there? What ingenious and complicated machines did I not see? In any single one of these mechanisms there were more ideas and 'wiseacrings' than in all the laws of world-creation and world-existence.

"I noticed at the time that in these innumerable models and plans of proposed mechanisms, the idea of using what is called the 'force of weight' predominated The idea was this a complicated mechanism was designed to lift a 'certain weight,' which was then supposed to fall, and by its fall to set the whole mechanism in motion, and this motion would again lift the weight, and so on without end.

"The result of all this was that thousands of these unfortunates were shut up in 'lunatic asylums,' while thousands more, lost in this dream, completely neglected to fulfill even those being-duties that had somehow been established there in the course of many centuries, or else fulfilled them in the worst possible way.

"I don't know how it would all have ended if some quite demented being with one foot already in the grave, an 'old dotard,' as they say, who had somehow acquired a certain authority, had not proved by 'calculations' known only to himself that it was absolutely impossible to invent 'perpetual motion. '

"Now, my dear Captain, after your explanation, I can understand very well how the cylinder invented by the Archangel Hariton works It is the very thing those unfortunates dreamed of.

"Indeed it can safely be said that, given atmosphere alone, this cylinder will work perpetually and without requiring any other outside materials "And since the world cannot exist without planets and hence without atmospheres, it follows that as long as the world does exist, and in consequence atmospheres, the cylinder-barrel invented by the Great Archangel Hariton will always work.

"Now just one question occurs to me—about the materials this cylinder-barrel is made of. Could you tell me, my dear Captain, what these materials are and how long they can last?"

To Beelzebub's question the captain replied as follows.

"Although the cylinder-barrel does not last forever, it can certainly last a very long time.

"Its principal part is made of 'amber' with 'platinum' hoops, and the inner surfaces of the staves are composed of 'anthracite,' 'copper,' 'ivory,' and a very strong 'mastic' unaffected by 'paischakir,' 'tainolair,' 'saliakooriap,' or even by the radiations of cosmic concentrations." [1]

"But the other parts," the captain continued, "both the exterior levers and the cogwheels, must certainly be renewed from time to time, for though they are made of the strongest 'metal,' long use will wear them out.

"And as for the body of the ship, its long existence can certainly not be guaranteed."

The captain would have said more, but at that moment a sound like the vibrations of a long minor chord from a far-off orchestra of wind instruments resounded through the ship.

With an apology the captain rose, explaining as he did so that he must be needed on urgent business, since everybody knew he was with His Right Reverence, and no one would venture to trouble the ears of His Right Reverence for anything trifling.

_______________

Notes:

1. "Paischakir" means "heat", "tainolair" means "cold", "saliakooriap" means "water."

CHAPTER 7: Becoming aware of genuine being-duty

WHEN THE CAPTAIN had gone, Beelzebub glanced at his grandson and, noticing his unusual state, asked with concern and a shade of anxiety:

"What is the matter, my dear boy? What are you thinking about so deeply?"

Looking up at his grandfather with eyes full of sorrow, Hassein said thoughtfully:

"I don't know what is the matter with me, dear Grandfather, but your talk with the captain has brought me to some exceedingly melancholy thoughts Things I never thought of before are now a-thinking in me.

"Thanks to your talk, it has gradually become clear to my consciousness that in the Universe of our Endlessness things have not always been as I now see and understand them.

"Formerly I should never have allowed myself to imagine, even if the thought had come to me by association, that this ship we are flying on, for instance, has not always been just as it is now.

"Only now have I come to understand clearly that everything we have and use today, all the contemporary amenities and everything necessary for our comfort and welfare, did not always exist, nor did they make their appearance so easily.

"It seems that in the past certain beings must have labored hard and suffered very much for all this, and endured a great deal that perhaps they could have spared themselves They labored and suffered solely that we might have these advantages today and use them for our welfare.

"And all this, consciously or unconsciously, they did for us—beings quite unknown and entirely indifferent to them.

"And now not only do we not thank them, but we do not even know anything about them, and take it all as a matter of course, and neither ponder this question nor trouble ourselves in the slightest about it.

"I, for instance, have already existed so many years in the Universe, yet the thought has never entered my head that perhaps there was a time when everything I see and have did not exist, and that everything was not born with me like my nose.

"And so, my dear and kind Grandfather, since your conversation with the captain has gradually made me aware of all this with the whole of my presence, the need has arisen in me to make clear to my Reason why I personally have these advantages, and what obligations I am under on their account.

"It is just because of this that there now arises in me a 'process of remorse.

Having said this, Hassein bowed his head and became silent.

Looking at him affectionately, Beelzebub began to speak as follows:

"I advise you, my dear Hassein, not to put such questions to yourself yet. Be patient. Only when you reach the corresponding period of your existence for becoming aware of such essence-questions, and reflect actively upon them, will you understand what you must do in return.

"At your age, you are not yet obliged to pay for your existence.

"This present period of your life is not given you for paying for your existence, but for preparing yourself for the future—for the obligations becoming to a responsible three-brained being.

"So in the meantime, exist as you exist. Only do not forget one thing: at your age, it is indispensable that every day when the sun rises, while watching the reflection of its splendor, you bring about a contact between your consciousness and the various unconscious parts of your common presence. Trying to make this state last, think and convince the unconscious parts—as if they were conscious—that if they hinder your general functioning in the process of ordinary existence, then in the period of your responsible age they will not only be unable to enjoy the good that is proper to them, but also your whole presence, of which they are a part, will not be capable of becoming a good servant of our Common Endless Creator, and will thus be unable to pay honorably for your arising and existence.

"I repeat once more, dear boy, try in the meantime not to think of these questions: at your age it is still too early to think about them.

"Everything in its proper time!

"Now ask me whatever you wish, and I will tell you. As the captain has not yet returned, he must be occupied with his duties and will not be coming back for quite a while."

CHAPTER 8: The impudent brat Hassein, Beelzebub's grandson, dares to call men "slugs"

HASSEIN at once sat down at Beelzebub's feet and coaxingly said:

"Tell me anything you wish, dear Grandfather. Anything you tell will be the greatest joy for me, if only because it is you who are telling it."

"No," objected Beelzebub, "you yourself must ask what interests you most of all. It will give me much pleasure to tell you whatever you particularly wish to know about."

"Well then, dear, kind Grandfather, tell me something about those . . . what are they called? . . . I've forgotten . . . Oh yes, about those 'slugs.'"

"What? About what slugs?" asked Beelzebub, not understanding the question.

"Don't you remember, Grandfather, a little while ago, when you spoke about the three-centered beings breeding on the various planets of that solar system where you existed for so long, you mentioned that on one planet—I forget what you called it—there exist three-centered beings who are on the whole like us, but whose skin is a little slimier than ours?"

"Aha!" laughed Beelzebub. "You must be asking about those beings who breed on the planet Earth and who call themselves 'men.'"

"Yes, Grandfather, yes Tell me about those 'men-beings' I should like to know more about them."

Then Beelzebub said, "I could tell you a great deal about them, for I often visited that planet and existed among those terrestrial three-brained beings for long periods, and even made friends with many of them.

"It would be very interesting indeed for you to learn more about them, for they are most peculiar. They have many characteristics you would not find in any other beings on any other planet of our Universe.

"I know them well, because the whole course of their arising, their development, and their existence during many, many centuries—by their time calculation—has unfolded before my eyes.

"Not only did their arising and existence take place before my eyes, but even the final formation of their planet itself.

"When we first arrived in that solar system and settled on the planet Mars, nothing existed as yet on the planet Earth, which had not even had time to cool off entirely after its concentration.

"From the very beginning, this planet has been the cause of much concern for our Endlessness.

"If you wish, I will begin by telling you about the events of a general cosmic character connected with this planet that led to the grave concern of our Endlessness."

"Yes, dear Grandfather," said Hassein, "do tell me about that. Certainly it will be most interesting, like everything else you tell me."

CHAPTER 9: The cause of the genesis of the Moon

AND BEELZEBUB began as follows:

"After arriving on the planet Mars, where we had been directed to exist, we gradually began to settle down.

"We were still absorbed in the bustle of organizing all the external necessities for a more or less tolerable existence in surroundings so absolutely foreign to us, when suddenly, on one of our busiest days, the whole planet Mars was shaken, and a little later such an asphyxiating stench arose that at first it seemed as though everything in the Universe had been permeated with something 'unspeakable.'

"After a considerable time, when the stench had finally gone and we came to our senses sufficiently to make out what had happened, we understood that the cause of this terrible phenomenon was that same planet Earth, which occasionally approached so near to Mars that we could observe it clearly, sometimes even without a teskooano.

"For reasons we could not yet grasp, this planet, it transpired, had 'burst' and two fragments broken off from it had flown into space.

"I have already told you that this solar system was then still being formed, and did not yet fully participate in what is called the 'harmony of reciprocal maintenance of all cosmic concentrations.'

"We learned later that in accordance with this general cosmic harmony of reciprocal maintenance of all cosmic concentrations, a comet of vast orbit, which still exists under the name of 'Kondoor,' also had to function in this solar system This comet, although already 'concentrated,' was describing its full orbit for the first time.

"As competent Sacred Individuals later explained to us in confidence, the line of this comet's path had to cross the path of the planet Earth. And as a result of the erroneous calculations of a certain Sacred Individual who dealt with matters of world-creation and world-maintenance, these two concentrations had to pass through the point of intersection of their trajectories at the same moment. Owing to this error, the planet Earth and the comet Kondoor collided, and collided so violently that from the shock, as I have already told you, two large fragments broke off from the planet Earth and flew into space.

"This shock entailed these serious consequences because this planet had arisen so recently that its atmosphere, which might have served as a 'buffer,' had not yet had time to be completely formed around it.

"Of course, my boy, our Endlessness was at once informed of this general cosmic misfortune. And immediately, a full commission of angels and archangels, specialists in the work of world-creation and world-maintenance, under the direction of the Great Archangel Sakaki, was dispatched from the Most Holy Sun Absolute to the solar system Ors.

"The Most High Commission came to our planet Mars, since it was the nearest to the planet Earth, and from there began its investigations.

"The sacred members of this High Commission promptly reassured us by saying that there was no longer any danger of catastrophe on a great cosmic scale.

"And the Arch-Engineer Archangel Algamatant was good enough to explain to us personally that in all probability what had happened was this:

"'The broken-off fragments of the planet Earth had lost the momentum given by the shock before reaching the limits of this planet's sphere of influence, and hence, according to the law of falling, they had begun to fall back toward their fundamental mass.

" 'But they could not actually fall upon their fundamental mass because in the meantime they had come under the cosmic law called the "law of catching up," and were inevitably subject to its influence Therefore they would now have to make regular elliptical orbits around their fundamental mass, just as this mass itself, the planet Earth, made and still makes its orbit around its sun Ors.

"'And that is how it will always be, unless some new unforeseen catastrophe on a large scale changes it in one way or another.

"'Glory be to chance,' concluded His Pantameasurability, 'the harmonious general system movement was not unduly disturbed by all this, and the peaceful existence of the system Ors was soon reestablished.'

"Nevertheless, my boy, this Most High Commission, having considered all the available facts and also all the possible consequences, came to the conclusion that, although the fragments of the planet Earth might maintain themselves for the time being in their existing positions, yet in view of certain 'tastartoonarian displacements' envisaged by the commission, they might some day stray from their positions and bring about many irreparable calamities, both for the system Ors and for neighboring solar systems.

"So, to avoid this eventuality, the Most High Commission resolved to take certain measures.

"They decided that the best solution would be for the fundamental mass, that is, the planet Earth, to maintain its detached fragments by constantly sending them the sacred vibrations called 'askokin.'

"The sacred substance askokin can be formed on planets only when both the fundamental cosmic laws operating in them, the sacred 'Heptaparaparshinokh' and the sacred 'Triamazikamno,' act in the 'ilnosoparnian' manner, that is to say, when these two sacred laws in a given cosmic concentration are deflected independently, and also manifest themselves on its surface independently—of course only within certain limits.

"And so, my boy, since a cosmic actualization of this kind was possible only with the sanction of His Endlessness, the Great Archangel Sakaki, accompanied by several other sacred members of that Most High Commission, set off immediately to beseech His Endlessness to give His consent.

"Afterward, when these Sacred Individuals had obtained the sanction of His Endlessness, the ilnosoparnian process was actualized on the planet Earth, still under the direction of the Great Archangel Sakaki. And so from that time on, on that planet, as on many others, there began to arise everything corresponding to the 'ilnosoparno,' thanks to which the detached fragments exist until now without constituting a threat of catastrophe on a universal scale.

"The larger of these two fragments was named 'Loonderperzo' and the smaller 'Anulios'; and the ordinary three-brained beings who arose and were formed on the Earth knew them by these names. But the beings of later times gave them different names at different periods, and more recently the larger fragment has come to be called 'Moon,' but the name of the smaller one was gradually forgotten. As for the beings there now, not only have they no name at all for this smaller fragment, but they do not even suspect its existence.

"It is interesting to note that the beings of a continent on that planet called 'Atlantis,' which later disappeared, still knew of this second fragment of their planet and also called it 'Anulios.' But the beings of the last period of existence of that continent, in whose general presences there were already crystallized the results of the consequences of the properties of the organ called 'kundabuffer'—about which, it now seems, I shall have to explain to you even in great detail— called it 'Kimespai,' which meant 'never allowing one to sleep in peace.'

"The contemporary three-brained beings of this peculiar planet do not know about this former fragment, chiefly because its comparatively small size and its remoteness make it quite invisible to them, and also because no 'grandmother' ever told them that once upon a time any such little 'satellite' of their planet had been known.

"And if one of them should by chance catch sight of it through that excellent yet childish toy of theirs called a 'telescope,' he would pay no attention to it, simply mistaking it for a big 'aerolite.'

"Contemporary beings will probably never see it again, since it has become proper to their nature to see only unreality.

"Let us give them their due, during recent centuries they have indeed most 'artistically' mechanized themselves to see nothing real.

"So, my boy, in due course there began to appear on the planet Earth 'similitudes of the Whole' or, as they are also called, 'microcosmoses,' and from these micro-cosmoses were formed 'oduristolnian' and 'polormedekhtic' vegetation.

"Still later, these microcosmoses began to be grouped, as usually occurs, into various forms of what are called 'tetartocosmoses' of all three-brainsystems And among them arose for the first time just those biped tetartocosmoses whom, a little while ago, you called 'slugs. '

"Some other time I will fully explain to you why and how, during the transition of the fundamental sacred laws into the ilnosoparnian process, similitudes of the Whole arise on planets, and what factors contribute to the formation of the various 'systems of being-brains'; and I will also explain all the laws of world-creation and world-maintenance in general.

"Meanwhile you should know that from the beginning, these three-brained beings who interest you, arising on the planet Earth, had the same possibilities of perfecting the functions needed to acquire being-Reason as have all other forms of tetartocosmoses throughout the whole Universe. "But later, just during the period when they were gradually beginning to be spiritualized by what is called 'being-instinct'—as also takes place on similar planets of our Great Universe—there befell that misfortune, unforeseen from Above, which was so grievous for them."

CHAPTER 10: Why "men" are not men

BEELZEBUB sighed deeply and continued his tale "After the actualizing of the 'ilnosoparnian' process on the planet Earth, one year by objective time-calculation went by.

"During this period there were gradually established the corresponding processes of the involution and evolution of everything arising on this planet.

"And of course there gradually began to be crystallized in the three-brained beings there the corresponding data for the acquisition of Objective Reason "In short, on that planet also, everything was proceeding in the usual normal order.

"And so, my boy, if the Most High Commission under the supreme direction of the Archangel Sakaki had not gone back again in a year's time, perhaps all the subsequent misunderstandings connected with the three-brained beings arising on that ill-fated planet would not have occurred.

"This second descent of the Most High Commission to the Earth took place because, in spite of the measures they had taken, most of its sacred members were not fully assured of the impossibility of undesirable surprises in the future, and they now wished to verify on the spot the results of their earlier measures.

"The Most High Commission decided in any event, if only to reassure themselves, to take certain additional precautions, including one measure, the consequences of which have not only gradually become a stupendous horror for the three-brained beings of that ill-fated planet, but have even become, so to say, a 'festering sore' for the whole of the Great Universe.

"You know that by this time what is called 'mechanical instinct' had gradually been engendered in them, as is normal in three-brained beings.

"The sacred members of the Most High Commission then reasoned that if this mechanical instinct in the biped three-brained beings of that planet were to develop toward the attainment of Objective Reason, as usually occurs everywhere among three-brained beings, it might possibly happen that they would prematurely comprehend the reason for their presence on that planet and would then make a good deal of trouble; it might happen that once they understood the reason for their arising, namely, that by their existence they should maintain the detached fragments of their planet, and became convinced of their slavery to circumstances utterly foreign to them, they would refuse to continue this existence of theirs and on principle destroy themselves.

"So, my boy, in view of this, the Most High Commission decided, among other things, to implant provisionally in the common presence of the three-brained beings there a special organ with properties that, first, would make them perceive reality 'upside down' and, second, would cause every repeated impression from the outside to crystallize in them data that engender factors for evoking sensations of 'pleasure' and 'enjoyment.'

"Then, with the help of the Universal Arch-Chemist-Physicist, the Angel Looisos, a member of this Most High Commission, they made a 'something' grow in the three-brained beings there, in a special way at the base of their spinal column at the root of their tail—for at that time they still had a tail, and that part of their common presence still kept its normal aspect, expressing the 'fullness of their being-significance'—a 'something' that fostered the arising in them of the properties I just mentioned.

"And this 'something' they then for the first time called the 'organ kundabuffer '

"Having made this organ grow in the presence of the three-brained beings and having made sure that it would work, the Most High Commission of Sacred Individuals, headed by the Archangel Sakaki, returned to the Center, reassured and with clear conscience, while on the planet Earth, which has taken your fancy, the action of this ingenious and astonishing invention began to flourish from the very first day, as the wise Mullah Nasr Eddin would say, like 'the trumpets of Jericho.'

"Now, if you wish to understand even approximately the results of the properties of the organ devised and brought into existence by the incomparable Angel Looisos—blessed be his name to all eternity—you must know about the various manifestations of the three-brained beings of that planet, not only while this 'organ kundabuffer' actually existed in their presence but also later, after its destruction, for, although this astonishing organ and its properties were destroyed in them, the consequences of its properties, for many reasons, began to be crystallized in their presences "But this I will explain to you some other time "Meanwhile it must be said that there was still a third descent of the Most High Commission to that planet three years later, according to objective time-calculation, but on this occasion it was under the direction of the Most Great Arch-Seraph Sevohtartra, since the Most Great Archangel Sakaki had by then become worthy to be the divine Individual he now is, namely, one of the four All-Quarters Maintainers of the whole Universe.

"During this third descent the sacred members of the Most High Commission satisfied themselves by thorough investigation that the precautionary measures they had taken to maintain the existence of the detached fragments of the planet Earth were no longer needed. And so, among other things, again with the help of the Arch- Chemist-Physicist, the Angel Looisos, they destroyed in the presence of three-brained beings there the 'organ kundabuffer' with all its astonishing properties.

"But now let us return to the tale I began.

"After this unexpected interruption, when we had recovered from the bewilderment produced by the catastrophe that had menaced that whole solar system, we slowly resumed the settlement of our new place on the planet Mars.

"Little by little we made ourselves familiar with the surrounding nature and adapted ourselves to the existing conditions.

"As I have already said, many of us definitely settled down on Mars; and others either left or prepared to leave for other planets of the same solar system, traveling by the ship Occasion, which had been put at the disposal of the beings of our tribe for interplanetary communication.

"As for me, I remained on the planet Mars with some of my kinsmen and attendants.

"By this time my first 'teskooano' had been set up in the observatory I had constructed there, and I was devoting myself entirely to the organization and development of this observatory of mine, in order to make a more detailed study of the remote concentrations of our Great Universe and of the planets of that solar system. Among the latter, the planet Earth particularly engaged my attention.

"Time passed.

"The process of existence on this planet was gradually established, and to all appearances was taking place just as on all other planets.

"But by close observation it could be seen that the number of these three-brained beings was increasing Furthermore, sometimes very strange manifestations of theirs could be observed, they did something from time to time that was never done by three-brained beings on other planets, that is, they would suddenly, without rhyme or reason, begin destroying one another's existence.

"Sometimes this destruction of one another's existence was not limited to one region but took place in several regions at once, and would last not only for one 'dianosk,' but for many, and even for whole 'ornakras.' [1]

"It was also noticeable at times that, owing to this horrible process of theirs, their numbers rapidly diminished, but at other periods, when there was a lull, their numbers noticeably increased.

"We gradually got used to this last peculiarity of theirs, telling ourselves that obviously, for certain higher considerations, this property must have been given to the organ kundabuffer intentionally by the Most High Commission, because seeing the fecundity of these biped beings, we assumed that large numbers of them would be needed to maintain the 'common-cosmic harmonious movement.'

"Had it not been for this strange peculiarity of theirs, it would never have entered anybody's head that there was something 'fishy' about that planet.

"During the period I am speaking of, I visited most of the planets of that solar system, those already populated and those still unpopulated.

"Personally I liked best of all the three-centered beings dwelling on the planet 'Saturn ' Their outer form is quite unlike ours, resembling that of the bird-being, 'raven.'

"It is interesting to remark, by the way, that for some reason or other these raven-beings are found not only on almost all the planets of this solar system but on most of the planets of our Great Universe where beings of various brain systems arise and are coated with planetary bodies of different forms.

"The verbal intercourse of these raven-beings of the planet Saturn is somewhat like our own. But their way of speaking is the most beautiful I have ever heard.

"It can be compared to the music of our best singers when with all their being they sing in a minor key.

"And as for the quality of their relations with each other—I don't even know how to describe it. It can be known only by existing among them and having the experience oneself.

"All that can be said is that these bird-beings have hearts exactly like those of the angels nearest our Endless Maker and Creator.

"They exist strictly according to the ninth commandment of our Creator: 'Consider everything belonging to another as if it were your own, and so treat it.'

"Later, I must certainly tell you in more detail about those three-brained beings who arise and exist on the planet Saturn, since one of my real friends during the whole period of my exile in that solar system was a being of that planet, who had the exterior coating of a raven and whose name was Harharkh."

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Notes:

1. "Dianosk" means "day", "ornakra" means "month"

CHAPTER 11: A piquant trait of the peculiar psyche of man

Now LET us return to those three-brained beings arising on the planet Earth who have interested you most of all and whom you called 'slugs.'

"I shall begin by saying how glad I am that you happen to be a long way from those three-centered beings you called by a name so insulting to their dignity, and that they are not likely ever to hear of it.

"Do you know, my poor child not yet aware of yourself, what those beings, particularly the contemporary ones, would do to you if they heard what you had called them?

"What they would do to you if they had you in their clutches—the mere thought of it fills me with horror!

"At the very least they would give you such a thrashing that, as our Mullah Nasr Eddin puts it: 'You wouldn't recover your senses before the next crop of birches.'

"In any case, I advise you, whenever you start anything new, always to bless Fate and beseech her mercy, so that she may watch over you and keep the beings of the planet Earth from ever suspecting that you, my beloved and only grandson, had the temerity to call them 'slugs.'

"You must know that in the years that I observed them, both from the planet Mars and during my sojourns among them, I studied the psyche of these strange three-brained beings very thoroughly, so I know what they would do to anybody who dared to give them such a nickname.

"To be sure, it was only in childish naïveté that you called them that, but the three-brained beings of that peculiar planet, and especially the contemporary ones, do not make such nice distinctions.

"Who called them that, why, and in what circumstances, is all one to them. They have been called by a name they consider insulting, and that's quite enough.

"Discrimination in such matters, according to the understanding of most of them, is simply 'pouring from the empty into the void.'

"Be that as it may, you were extremely rash to call the three-brained beings breeding on the planet Earth by such an offensive name; first of all because you have made me anxious for you, and then because you have prepared for yourself a menace for the future.

"For, even though you are a long way off and they couldn't get at you to punish you personally, nevertheless, if they should somehow learn, even at twentieth hand, how you had insulted them, you may be sure that their bona fide 'anathema' would fall upon you, and the scope of this anathema would depend upon what chanced to be occupying them at the moment.

"Perhaps it might be worth while describing to you how the beings of the Earth would behave if they should happen to learn in what way you had insulted them. This could serve as a good example to elucidate the strangeness of the psyche of these three-brained beings who interest you.

"If everything was rather dull for them just then, in the absence of any other absurd interest, the moment they were provoked by your insult they would immediately arrange, somewhere in a previously chosen place, with specially selected people, dressed of course in costumes specially designed for such occasions, what is called a 'solemn council.'

"First of all, for this solemn council of theirs they would choose what is called a 'president,' and only then would they proceed with their 'trial.'

"To begin with, they would, as they say, 'pick you to pieces,' and not only you but your father, your grandfather, and so on, perhaps all the way back to Adam.

"Further, if they decide—of course, as always by a 'majority of votes'— that you are 'guilty,' they would sentence you according to a code of laws based on former puppet plays of the same kind and collated by beings known as 'old fossils.'

"But if they happen, again by a 'majority of votes,' to find nothing criminal in your action, though this very seldom occurs among them, then this whole trial of theirs, recorded in detail on paper and signed by the whole lot of them, would be dispensed—to the wastepaper basket, you think? Not at all—to the appropriate specialists, in this case, to what is called there the 'Holy Synod,' where the same procedure would be repeated, but this time you would be tried by 'important' beings.

"Only after this lengthy 'pouring from the empty into the void' would they finally come to the main point, namely, that the accused is out of reach But it is just here that the principal danger to your person arises For when they are certain beyond the shadow of a doubt that they cannot get hold of you, then, as I have already said, they will unanimously decide to do nothing more nor less than 'anathematize' you.

"Do you know what this is and how it is done?

"No? Then listen and shudder.

"The most 'important' beings will proclaim to all the other beings that in all their appointed establishments, called !churches,' 'chapels,' 'synagogues,' 'town halls,' and so on, special officials on special occasions, with appropriate ceremonies, shall mentally wish you something like the following:

"That you should lose your horns, that your hair should turn prematurely gray, that the food in your stomach should turn into coffin nails, that your future wife's tongue should grow three times its length, or that whenever you take a bite of your favorite pastry it should taste like soap, and so on and so forth in the same vein.

"Now do you understand what dangers you exposed yourself to when you called those remote three-brained freaks 'slugs'?"

With these words Beelzebub looked with a smile at his favorite.

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