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Bulletin Board Pix CHAPTER 20 The third
flight of Beelzebub to
the planet Earth AFTER A BRIEF
pause Beelzebub continued: "This time I
stayed at home on the planet Mars for a very short while,
only
long enough to see and talk with those who had just arrived,
and to give
certain instructions of a common tribal character. "Once these
obligations were taken care of, I descended again to your
planet with the intention of pursuing my aim, that is, to
uproot from those
strange three-centered beings their horrible custom, which
they considered a
sacred duty, of destroying the existence of beings of other
brain-systems. "On my third
descent to the planet Earth our ship Occasion did not alight
on the Colhidius Sea, now called the 'Caspian,' but on the
sea known at that
period as the 'Sea of Beneficence. ' We decided to alight
there because this
time I wished to go to the capital of the beings of the
second group on the
continent of Ashhark, the city of 'Gob,' which was situated
on the
southeastern shore of that sea. "The city of
Gob was then a large city, and was renowned over the whole
planet for its production of fine 'fabrics' and what are
called 'precious
ornaments.' The city spread over both banks of the mouth of
a large river,
called the 'Keria Chi,' which rose in the eastern highlands
of the country and
emptied into the Sea of Beneficence. On its western side
another large river,
called the 'Naria Chi,' flowed into the same sea. And it was
chiefly in the
valleys of these two rivers that the beings of the second
group on the
continent of Ashhark existed. "If you like,
my dear boy, I will tell you a little about the history of
these
beings," Beelzebub said to Hassein. "Yes,
Grandfather, please! I shall listen to it all with great
interest and
gratitude!" replied his grandson. So Beelzebub
began "A long, long time before the period of my present
tale,
and even long before the second great catastrophe to that
ill-fated planet,
while the continent of Atlantis was still at the height of
its splendor, one of
the ordinary three-centered beings of that continent
'discovered'—as later
became clear through my investigations—that the powdered
horn of a being
of a particular exterior form then called 'pirmaral' was a
very effective remedy
for all sorts of 'diseases,' and this 'discovery' was
afterward circulated far and
wide by various 'freaks' on your planet At the same time
there was gradually
crystallized in the Reason of ordinary beings a directing
factor, of course
illusory, which later contributed to the formation in the
common presence of
each of your favorites, especially the contemporary ones,
the 'Reason' of their
so-called 'waking existence,' and this factor is to a large
extent the cause of
the frequent change in their convictions. "Owing to this
factor, crystallized in the presence of the three-brained
beings of that period, it became the custom that anyone who
'fell ill,' as they
say, of some disease or other had to be given a dose of this
powdered horn to
swallow. "You might be
interested to know that pirmarals still breed on your
planet,
but the contemporary beings take them merely for one of the
species they call
'deer' and have no special name for them. "Well, my boy,
the beings of the continent of Atlantis destroyed so many of
these pirmarals for the sake of their horns that soon not a
single one was left
there Then certain beings of that continent who had made a
profession of
hunting pirmarals went to look for them on other continents
and islands. "This kind of
hunting presented great difficulties, for it took many
hunters
to round up and capture the pirmarals, so these professional
hunters always
took their whole families along with them to help. One day
several of these
families banded together and set off to hunt pirmarals on a
distant continent
then called 'Iranan,' which later, after the upheavals
caused by the second
catastrophe, was called the continent of 'Ashhark,' and
today is known by
your favorites as 'Asia.' "For my
further tales concerning these three-brained beings who have
taken your fancy, it will be useful for you, I think, if I
emphasize here that
because of various disturbances during the second
terrestrial catastrophe,
certain parts of the continent of Iranan entered within the
planet, while in their
place other land masses emerged and attached themselves to
it, with the result
that this continent was considerably changed, becoming
almost as large as the
continent of Atlantis before the catastrophe. "Well, my boy,
one day while this group of hunters and their families were
pursuing a herd of these pirmarals, they came to the shores
of the water space
later called the 'Sea of Beneficence.' This sea, with its
rich and fertile shores,
pleased them so greatly that they no longer wished to return
to the continent
of Atlantis, and from then on they remained in that region. "At that time
this country was indeed so marvelous and so
'sooptaninalnian' for ordinary being-existence that no being
in his right mind
could help liking it. Not only did great herds of the
two-brained beings called
'pirmarals' exist there, but the shores of this water space
situated in the middle
of that country were covered with luxuriant vegetation,
including vast
numbers of fruit trees of many kinds, whose fruit then still
served your
favorites as the principal product for their 'first
being-food.' "And there
were also such multitudes of the one-brained
and two-brained beings called 'birds' that when flocks of
them passed
overhead, the sky became, as your favorites say, 'quite
dark.' "The waters of
the Sea of Beneficence so abounded with fish that you
could almost catch them with your bare hands
"As for the soil along the shores of the sea and in the
valleys of the two
great rivers flowing into it, every inch was so fertile that
it could be used to
grow anything you like. "In short, the
country and its climate so delighted the hunters and their
families that none of them had any desire to return to the
continent of Atlantis.
So they settled there and multiplied, soon adapting
themselves to the
surrounding conditions and existing, as is said, 'on a bed
of roses.' "At this place
in my tale, I must tell you about an extraordinary
coincidence
that had important consequences both for the first settlers
of this second group
and for their descendants down to recent times. "It seems that
when the hunters from the continent of Atlantis decided to
settle by the Sea of Beneficence, there already existed on
the shores of that sea
a being from their own continent who was very important at
that time and who
was an 'astrosovor,' that is, a member of a section of a
'learned society,' the
like of which has never again appeared on the planet Earth
and probably never
will. "This learned
society was called the 'Society of Akhldanns.' "The
circumstances that had brought this member of the Society of
Akhldanns to the shores of the Sea of Beneficence were as
follows: "Just before
the second catastrophe those genuinely learned beings then
existing on the continent of Atlantis who had founded that
truly great society
became aware that something very serious was about to happen
on their planet
So they set themselves to observe very carefully all the
natural phenomena on
their continent, but in spite of all their efforts they
could not find out precisely
what was impending. Somewhat later they sent certain of
their members to
other continents and islands, in the hope that by their
combined observations
they might learn what the anticipated danger was. "These members
were to observe not only natural processes on the planet
Earth, but also every kind of 'celestial phenomenon.' One of
these members,
the important being I just mentioned, chose the continent of
Iranan for his observations
and, having migrated there with his servants, settled on the
shores
of that water space later called the 'Sea of Beneficence.' "One day this
learned member of the Akhldanns chanced to meet some of the
hunters on the shores of this sea and, learning that they
too had come from
Atlantis, he was naturally very glad and began to establish
friendly relations
with them. "Thus, shortly
afterward, when the continent of Atlantis was engulfed
within the planet, this learned Akhldann, having no longer a
place to return to,
remained with the hunters in that future Maralpleicie. "Later, the
group of hunters chose this learned being, as the most
intelligent, to be their chief. Still later, this member of
the great Society of
Akhldanns married one of the hunters' daughters, named
Rimala, thus
becoming the founder of the second group on the continent of
Ashhark or, as
it is now called, 'Asia.' "A long time
passed. "In this
country, generations of three-brained beings arose and
disappeared
and, as everywhere else on the Earth, the general level of
the psyche of this
group underwent many
changes, sometimes of course for the better, sometimes for
the worse. "As their
numbers grew, these beings gradually spread more and more
widely over the country, though always preferring the shores
of the Sea of
Beneficence and the valleys of the two great rivers that
emptied into it. "Only much
later a common center of existence was formed on the
southeastern shore of the sea, and this city, named the city
of 'Gob,' became
the chief place of residence for the head of this second
group of beings, whom
they called a 'king ' This position of 'king' became
hereditary, beginning with
the first chief they had chosen, the learned member of the
Society of
Akhldanns. "At the time
to which my present tale refers, the king of the beings of
this
second group was the grandson of the great-grandson of that
learned being,
his name was Koniutsion. "My later
inquiry and investigation showed that this King Koniutsion
had
introduced a most wise and beneficial measure in order to
uproot a 'terrifying'
evil that had arisen among the beings who by the will of
fate had become his
subjects. "And he
introduced this measure in the following circumstances: "One day King
Koniutsion observed that the beings of his community
were becoming less and less capable of work, while scandals,
robberies, and
acts of violence were on the increase among them, as well as
many other
unpleasant incidents, which had never occurred before or
only in quite
exceptional cases. "These facts
surprised and grieved the king, who became very thoughtful
and resolved to get to the root of this sorry state of
affairs. "After lengthy
observation he finally came to the conclusion that the cause
lay in a new habit of the beings of his community, namely,
the habit of
chewing the seeds of a plant then called 'gulgulian.' This
surplanetary
formation still arises on the planet Earth today, and those
of your favorites
who consider themselves 'well educated' call it 'papaveroon,'
but the ordinary
beings simply call it 'poppy.' As I have just said, the
beings of Maralpleicie
had a passion at that time for chewing the seeds of this
surplanetery formation,
which had to be gathered only when 'ripe.' "In the course
of further observation and impartial reflection, the king
realized that these seeds contained a certain 'something'
which, when
introduced into these beings, had the power to change
completely, for the
time being, all the established habits of their psyche, so
that they saw, understood,
sensed, and acted quite otherwise than they were accustomed
to do.
For instance, a crow would appear to them to be a peacock; a
trough of
water, a sea; a harsh clatter, music; good will appeared to
them as enmity,
insults as love, and so on and so forth. "As soon as
King Koniutsion became thoroughly convinced of all this, he
dispatched some of his closest and most trustworthy subjects
throughout the
land to issue strict orders in his name forbidding all
beings of his community
to chew these poppy seeds; he also arranged that those who
disobeyed his
orders should be punished and fined. "At first,
thanks to these measures the use of these seeds appeared to
diminish in the country of Maralpleicie. Very soon, however,
it was
discovered that this was not so; in reality the number of
those who chewed
the seeds was even greater than before. On realizing this,
the wise King Koniutsion
decided to punish still more severely those who persisted in
this
habit; at the same time he increased the surveillance over
his subjects and
enforced punishment with even greater strictness. He himself
began going
about everywhere
in the city of Gob, personally examining the guilty and
meting out
punishments, both corporal and moral. "In spite of
all this the desired result was not obtained. The number of
those who chewed poppy seeds rose steadily in the city of
Gob, and reports
from other territories subject to him showed a daily
increase. "It then
became evident that many three-brained beings who had never
before indulged in this habit now took it up merely out of
'curiosity'—one of
the particularities of the psyche of the three-brained
beings of that planet
which has taken your fancy—that is, merely to try out the
effect of those
seeds whose use had been prohibited by the king and punished
with such
relentless severity. "I must
emphasize here that, although this curiosity had begun to be
crystallized in the psyche of your favorites immediately
after the loss of
Atlantis, it never functioned so blatantly in the beings of
former epochs as it
does in the contemporary three-brained beings there, who
have more of it, I
dare say, than there are hairs on a 'toosook.' "So, my boy .
. . "When the wise
King Koniutsion finally became convinced that he could
not root out the passion of chewing 'gulgulian' seeds
through fear of
punishment, and saw that the only result of his measures had
been the death
of some of those punished, he repealed all the orders he had
previously issued
and once again began to think seriously about how to find a
really effective
means of destroying this evil, so lamentable for his
community. "As I learned
much later thanks to an ancient surviving monument, the
great King Koniutsion then retired to his chamber and for
eighteen days
neither ate nor drank, but only very seriously thought and
thought. "According to
my most recent investigations, the king was particularly
anxious to find some means of uprooting this evil because by
that time all the
affairs of his community
were going from bad to worse. The beings who were addicted
to this passion
had almost ceased to work; the now of revenue into the
communal treasury
had entirely dried up; and ruin stared the country in the
face. "Finally, the
wise king decided to deal with this evil indirectly, by
playing
upon the weaknesses in the psyche of his subjects. With this
aim he invented
a most original 'religious doctrine,' corresponding to the
psyche of the beings
of that time, and he propagated this invention of his by
every means at his
disposal. "In this
religious doctrine it was held, among other things, that far
from the
continent of Ashhark lay a large island on which there
existed our 'Mister
God.' "You must know
that in those days not one of the ordinary beings was
aware of the existence of any cosmic concentrations other
than their own
planet Earth. They were certain that the scarcely visible
'white points' far
away in space were nothing more than the pattern on the
'veil of the world,'
that is to say, of their planet; for in their notions the
'whole world' consisted,
as I have just said, of their planet alone. They also
believed that this 'veil' was
supported like a 'canopy' on special 'pillars,' the bases of
which rested on their
planet. "Well, it was
asserted in that ingenious doctrine of the astute King
Koniutsion that Mister God had intentionally attached to our
'souls' the organs
and limbs we now have, in order to protect us against our
environment and
enable us to serve Him effectively and profitably, and not
Him alone but also
the 'souls' already taken to that island of His. "When we die,
and our 'soul' is liberated from all these specially
attached
parts, it becomes what in reality it should be, and is
immediately taken to this
island where, in accordance with how it has existed with its
organs and limbs
on our continent of Ashhark, our Mister God assigns to it an
appropriate place
for its further existence. "If the 'soul'
has fulfilled its duties honestly and conscientiously,
Mister
God leaves it to continue its existence on His island, but
the 'soul' that here on
the continent of Ash-hark has been idle or discharged its
duties indolently or
negligently, existing only for the gratification of the
desires of its attached
parts, or finally, has not kept His commandments, such a
soul our Mister God
sends to a smaller neighboring island for its further
existence. "Here on the
continent of Ashhark exist many 'spirits' attendant upon
Him,
who walk among us wearing 'caps of invisibility,' thanks to
which they can
constantly watch us unnoticed and report all our doings to
Mister God, or
inform Him on the 'Day of Judgment ' We can conceal nothing
from them,
neither our actions nor our thoughts. "This doctrine
also said that our continent of Ashhark and all the other
continents and islands of the world were created by our
Mister God only to
serve Him and the meritorious 'souls' already dwelling on
His island All the
continents and islands of the world are, as it were, places
of preparation and
storehouses for everything needed for this island of His. "This island
where Mister God Himself exists with the meritorious 'souls'
is called 'Paradise,' and existence there is just 'roses,
roses ' All its rivers are
of milk, and their banks of honey, no one there needs to
toil or labor,
everything necessary for a happy, carefree, and blissful
existence is to be
found there, supplied in superabundance from our own
continent and the
other continents and islands of the world This island of
'Paradise' is full of
young and lovely women from all the peoples and races of the
world, and any
one of them belongs for the asking to the 'soul' that
desires her. "In certain
public squares of that superb island are great heaps of
jewels,
from the most brilliant diamonds to the deepest turquoises,
and every 'soul'
can take anything he likes without the least hindrance In
other public squares
of that beatific island are piled huge mountains of
sweetmeats
prepared with essence of 'poppy' and 'hemp,' and every
'soul' may help
himself to as much as he pleases at any hour of the day or
night. "There are no
diseases there, and of course none of those 'lice' or
'fleas'
that give us all no peace here and blight our whole
existence. "The other,
smaller island, where for the rest of their existence our
Mister
God sends the souls whose temporary physical parts have been
lazy here and
have not existed according to His commandments, is called
'Hell ' All the
rivers on this island are of burning pitch, the whole
atmosphere stinks like a
skunk at bay Swarms of horrible beings blow police whistles
in every square,
and all the 'carpets,' 'chairs,' and 'beds' are made of fine
needles, with their
points sticking out. "One very
salty biscuit is given to each 'soul' once a day, and there
is not a
single drop of drinking water on the island There are also
innumerable other
torments that the beings of the Earth would not wish to
undergo for anything
in the world, or even to imagine. "Well then, my
boy, when I came to Maralpleicie for the first time, all the
three-brained beings of that country were followers of the
'religion' based
upon the ingenious doctrine I have just been telling you
about, and this
'religion' was then in full bloom. "The inventor
of this ingenious doctrine, the wise King Koniutsion, had
undergone the sacred 'rascooarno' long before this, that is
to say, he had 'died'
many years earlier But his invention, owing as always to the
strangeness of
the psyche of your favorites, had taken such a strong hold
that not a single
being in the whole country of Maralpleicie doubted the truth
of its very
original tenets. "From the day
of my arrival in the city of Gob I began,
as usual, visiting the 'kaltaani,' by this time known as 'chaikhanas.' "It must be
noted that although the custom of sacrificial offerings was
also
flourishing at that period in Maralpleicie, it was not being
practiced on so
large a scale as it had been in Tikliamish. "I set about
looking for a suitable being, in order to make friends with
him
as I had done in the city of Koorkalai. And indeed I soon
found such a friend,
but this time he was not a priest by profession. "My new friend
turned out to be the proprietor of a large 'chaikhana', and
although I came to be on very good terms with him, as they
say there, I never
had that strange feeling of 'kinship' toward him that had
arisen in my essence
toward the priest Abdil. "I existed for
a whole month in the city of Gob without reaching any
decision or undertaking anything practical for my aim
Accompanied by
Ahoon, I simply wandered about the city visiting different 'chaikhanas,'
including the one that belonged to my new friend. "During this
time I became familiar with the manners and customs of this
second group and also with the fine points of their religion
And by the end of
the month I reached the decision to attain my aim, once
again, through their
religion. "After serious
pondering I resolved to add something to the religious
doctrine already existing there, and I counted on being
able, like the wise
King Koniutsion, to spread this addition of mine effectively
among the
beings of that country What I added was the notion that
those spirits who, as
was said in that great religion, walk among us wearing 'caps
of invisibility'
and watch our deeds and thoughts are none other than the
beings of other
forms existing among us It is Just they who watch us and
report everything to
our Mister God. "But we men
not only fail to pay them due honor and respect, but even
destroy their existence, both for our food and for
sacrificial offerings. "In my
explanations I particularly emphasized that not only should
we
cease destroying the existence of the beings of other forms
in honor of Mister
God but, what is more, we should try to win their favor and
beseech them at
least not to report to Mister God all those little evil acts
that we commit
involuntarily. "And I began
to spread this addition of mine by every possible means—of
course very cautiously To start with, I did so through my
new friend, the
proprietor of the 'chaikhana ' I must tell you that his 'chaikhana'
was one of
the largest in the whole city of Gob, and was famous for its
reddish liquid, of
which the beings of the planet Earth are very fond So it was
always filled
with customers and was open day and night It had become a
meeting place
not only for the inhabitants of the city itself but also for
visitors from the
whole of Maralpleicie. "I soon became
quite expert at converting all these customers, some
individually others by speaking to them in groups. "My new
friend, the proprietor of the 'chaikhana,' believed so
firmly in my
invention that he was beside himself with remorse He was in
constant distress
and bitterly repented his former contemptuous attitude
toward the beings of
other forms and his treatment of them. "Becoming day
by day a more fervent advocate of my invention, he not
only helped to spread it in his 'chaikhana,' but began of
his own accord to
visit other 'chaikhanas' in the city of Gob to proclaim the
!truth' that so
agitated him He held forth in the public markets and even
went several times
to the outskirts of the city to visit holy places, of which
there were many at
that period, established in honor or in memory of somebody
or something. "It is
interesting to remark here that on the planet Earth, the
stories that
give rise to the establishment of holy places usually come
from certain
terrestrial beings called 'humbugs.' "This disease
of 'humbugging,' or lying, is very widespread there. On the
planet Earth people lie both consciously and unconsciously.
And they lie
consciously when there is some personal material advantage
to be gained; and
unconsciously when they fall ill of the disease known as
'hysteria.' "Besides the
proprietor of the 'chaikhana' there were a number of other
beings
of the city of Gob who began unconsciously to help me, as
they also had
become ardent supporters of my invention; and soon all the
beings of that
second Asiatic group were eagerly spreading this invention
of mine, and
persuading each other that it was an indubitable 'truth'
that had suddenly been
revealed to them. "The result of
it all was that, in the country of Maralpleicie, not only
did
sacrificial offerings diminish but the beings of other forms
even began to be
treated with unprecedented attention. "Such comical
scenes were enacted there that although I myself was the
author of the invention, I found it difficult to refrain
from laughter. "We witnessed
for instance farces such as these: a highly respectable and
wealthy merchant would be riding to his shop one morning on
his donkey; on
the way a motley crowd of beings would pull him off his
donkey and maul
him within an inch of his life for having dared to sit on
it;
then, bowing low before it, the crowd would escort the
donkey wherever it
chose to go. "Or what is
called a 'woodcutter' would be hauling a load of wood from
the forest to market with his oxen. He too would be dragged
from his cart and
beaten, and then the crowd would very gently unyoke the
oxen, and escort
them
ceremoniously wherever they wanted to go. And if all this
had happened in a
part of the city where the cart might hold up traffic, the
crowd would haul it to
the market themselves and leave it there to its fate. "This
invention of mine soon led to the appearance of quite new
customs
in the city of Gob—for instance, that of placing troughs in
the public squares
and at all the street crossings, where every morning the
residents could leave
their choicest morsels of food for dogs and other stray
beings; and also the
custom of going at sunrise to the Sea of Beneficence to
throw in all kinds of
food for the beings called 'fish.' "But the most
peculiar of all was the custom of paying attention to the
voices of one-brained and two-brained beings of various
forms. As soon as
your favorites heard the voice of a being of any other form,
they would begin
praising the name of their god and invoking his blessing. It
might be the
crowing of a cock, the barking of a dog, the mewing of a
cat, the squealing of
an ape, no matter what ... it would always arouse them. "It is
interesting to remark here that on these occasions for some
reason or
other they would raise their heads and look upward even
though, according to
the teaching of their religion, their god and his assistants
were supposed to
exist on the same level as themselves, and not where they
directed their eyes
and prayers. It was extremely interesting to watch their
faces at these
moments." "Pardon me,
Your Right Reverence," interrupted Beelzebub's devoted old
servant Ahoon, who had been listening to these tales with
the greatest interest.
"Do you remember, Your Right Reverence, how often in that
city of Gob we
ourselves had to flop down in the street at the cries of
beings of different
forms?" "Indeed I do
remember, dear Ahoon," replied Beelzebub. "How could I
ever forget such comical impressions? "The fact is,"
he continued, turning to Hassein again, "the three-brained
beings of the planet Earth are inconceivably proud and
touchy. If someone
does not share their views or agree to do as they do or
criticizes their
manifestations, they are very offended and their indignation
knows no
bounds. "And if one of
them should happen to have some power, he would order
anyone rash enough to criticize his conduct or to behave
differently from
himself to be shut up in the sort of place usually crawling
with 'rats' and 'lice.' "And if the
offended one should be physically stronger, and no one were
looking—at least no important power-possessing being with
whom he
happened to be on bad terms—he would simply give the
offender a good
thrashing, as the Russian Sidor once thrashed his favorite
goat. "Well knowing
this aspect of their strange psyche, I had no desire to
offend them and incur their wrath. Furthermore, as I was
profoundly aware
that to outrage anybody's religious feeling is contrary to
all morality, I tried
when existing among them always to do as they did, so as not
to be conspicuous
and draw attention to myself. "Here it will
do no harm to point out that, owing to the abnormal
conditions of ordinary existence there, the only beings of
that strange planet,
especially during recent centuries, who become notable and
are therefore
honored by the rest, are those who manifest themselves
somehow or other
more absurdly than the majority. And the more absurd their
manifestations,
the more stupid, mean, and insolent the tricks they play,
the more celebrated
they become, and the greater is the number of beings on
their own continent,
or even on other continents, who know them personally, or at
least by name. "On the other
hand, an honest being who does not behave absurdly has no
chance at all of becoming famous, or even of being noticed,
however kind
and sensible he may be. "So, my boy,
when our Ahoon mischievously reminded me of our
ludicrous situation, I was speaking of the custom of
attaching significance to
the voices of beings of various forms and particularly to
the voice of
'donkeys,' of which for some reason or other there were a
great many in the
city of Gob. "On that
planet the beings of other forms make their voices heard,
each at
a definite time For instance, the cock crows just before
dawn, an ape cries in
the morning when it is hungry, and so on, but donkeys bray
whenever it
enters their heads to do so and, in consequence, you may
hear the voice of
that silly being at any hour of the day or night. "Well then, it
became customary in the city of Gob that whenever the
sound of a donkey's bray was heard, everyone immediately had
to flop down
and offer up prayers to their god and their revered idols I
must add that
Nature has given the donkey a very loud voice, and its
braying can be heard a
long way off. "So, as we
walked along the streets of the city and saw the citizens
flopping down at the braying of every donkey, we had to flop
down likewise,
so as not to appear different from the others, and it was
this ridiculous
custom, I see now, that tickled old Ahoon so much. "Did you
notice, dear Hassein, with what venomous satisfaction our
old
friend reminded me, after so many centuries, of my comical
situation at that
time?" Having said
this, Beelzebub, with a smile, went on with his tale. "Needless to
say, in this second center of culture on the continent of
Ashhark the destruction of beings of other forms for
sacrificial offerings
entirely ceased, and if isolated instances did occur, the
other beings of that
group settled accounts with the offenders without
compunction. "Having thus
become convinced that I had succeeded so easily in
uprooting, for a long time to come, the custom of
sacrificial offerings among the second group of beings on
the continent of
Ashhark, I decided to leave. But I had it in mind, in any
event, to visit other
large centers inhabited by the beings of Maralpleicie, and I
chose for this
purpose the region of the river called 'Naria Chi.' "Soon after
making this decision, I sailed with Ahoon to the mouth of
that
river and began to travel up it against the current. At each
of the large centers
we came to I was able to verify that there had already
passed from the beings
of the city of Gob to the beings of these places the same
new customs and
notions concerning the destruction of the existence of
beings of other forms
for sacrificial offerings. "We finally
arrived at a small town called 'Arguenia,' which in those
days
was considered the most remote point of the country of
Maralpleicie. It was
inhabited by a fair number of beings of this second Asiatic
group, who were
engaged chiefly in extracting from nature what is called
'turquoise.' "In this small
town of Arguenia, in accordance with my usual procedure, I
began to visit various 'chaikhanas,' pursuing there, as
always, the fulfillment
of my principal aim."
CHAPTER 21:
The first visit of Beelzebub to India BEELZEBUB
continued as follows: "One day while
sitting in a 'chaikhana' in the small town of Arguenia I
overheard a conversation among several beings seated not far
from me. "They were
talking about traveling by caravan to 'Pearl-land' and
deciding
when and how they should go. "Overhearing
their conversation, I gathered that they intended to go
there
to exchange their 'turquoise' for what are called 'pearls.' "Here, by the
way, let me draw your attention to the fact that in former
epochs your favorites liked, as they still do today, to wear
pearls, turquoise,
and many what are called 'precious trinkets,' for the
purpose, as they say, of
'adorning' their exteriors. But if you would like my
opinion, they do this
simply by instinct, in order to offset their inner
insignificance. "At the period
to which my present tale refers, these 'pearls' were very
rare
among the beings of the second Asiatic group and commanded a
high price.
In Pearl-land, on the contrary, they were plentiful and
could be bought quite
cheaply, for at that time pearls were obtained only from the
water spaces
surrounding that country. "The
conversation of the beings sitting near me in the 'chaikhana'
in the
small town of Arguenia immediately interested me, as I
myself had the
intention of going to Pearl-land, which was the place of
existence of the
three-brained beings of the third group on the continent of
Ashhark. And the
association was at once aroused in my thoughts that it might
be better to go
directly to Pearl-land with the caravan of these beings than
to return to the
Sea of Beneficence by
the way we had come and travel from there to Pearl-land in
our ship
Occasion. "Although this
journey, in those days almost impossible for the beings of
the Earth, would take a great deal of time, I reflected that
the journey back to
the Sea of Beneficence, with its unforeseeable
contingencies, would perhaps
take not much less time. Moreover, an association arose in
my thoughts
because long before this I had heard a great deal about the
peculiarities of
nature in the regions through which the proposed caravan
route lay, and in
consequence a certain 'being-love of knowledge' that was
already crystallized
in me, having been shocked into functioning by what I had
overheard, at once
imposed on my common presence the need to experience all
this myself
directly with my own organs of perception. "That is why,
my boy, I purposely went over and sat down with those
beings and joined in their discussion. As a result, Ahoon
and I were included
in their caravan, and two days later we set off with them. "We then
passed through some most unusual places, unusual even for
the
nature of that ill-fated planet, certain parts of which, by
the way, had become
so strange only because this planet had already undergone
two what are
called 'transapalnian perturbations,' almost without
precedent in the Universe.
From the very first day we had to make our way through
gorges overhung
with rocky 'projections' of unusual forms, containing
conglomerations of all
kinds of 'intraplanetary minerals.' "It was only
after a month's travel, according to their time calculation,
that
our caravan from Arguenia came to places where Nature had
not completely
lost the possibility of producing surplanetary formations in
the soil, and of
creating corresponding conditions for the arising and
existence of various
one-brained and two-brained beings. "After all
sorts of difficulties, at last, one clear morning,
we reached a summit and suddenly saw on the horizon the
outline of a large
water space, bordering the shores of that part of the
continent of Ashhark then
called 'Pearl-land.' "Four days
later we arrived at the chief center of existence of the
third
Asiatic group, the city then known as 'Kaiamon.' Having
arranged for a place
to stay, Ahoon and I spent the first few days simply
strolling about the streets
of the city, observing the specific manifestations of the
beings of that third
group in the process of their ordinary existence. "It cannot be
helped, my dear Hassein! Now that I have told you the
history of the arising of the second group of beings on the
continent of
Ashhark, I shall also have to tell you about the arising of
the third group
"Tell me, tell me, dear beloved Grandfather!" cried Hassein
eagerly. Then,
with reverence, he lifted his arms and said with great
sincerity. "May my dear
and kind grandfather become worthy of perfecting himself
to the degree of Reason of the sacred Anklad!" Saying nothing
to this, Beelzebub only smiled and continued as follows: "The history
of this third group begins shortly after that period when
the
families of the 'pirmaral' hunters had first come from the
continent of Atlantis
to the shores of the Sea of Beneficence and, having settled
there, had founded
the second group of Asiatic beings. In those remote days—
infinitely remote
for your contemporary favorites—that is, not long before the
second
transapalnian perturbation occurred to this ill-fated
planet, certain
consequences of the properties of the 'organ kundabuffer'
had begun to be
crystallized in the presences of the beings of the continent
of Atlantis; and this
aroused in them the need, among other needs unbecoming to
three-brained
beings, to adorn themselves
with various trinkets and to wear the famous 'talismans'
they had
invented. "And one of
these trinkets, much prized then on the continent of
Atlantis
as everywhere today on the Earth, was this 'pearl' we have
mentioned 'Pearls'
are formed in certain one-brained beings breeding in the 'saliakooriapi'
of
your planet Earth, that is, in the part called 'hentralispana,'
or as your favorites
might express it, the 'blood of the planet,' which is found
in the common
presence of every planet and serves the actualizing of the
process of the Most
Great Common-Cosmic Trogoautoegocrat, and there on your
planet this part
is called 'water.' "The
one-brained beings in which 'pearls' are formed used to
breed in the
'saliakooriapi,' or water spaces, surrounding the continent
of Atlantis, but on
account of the great demand, so many of these 'pearl-bearing
beings' were destroyed
that soon there were none left along the shores of that
continent
Thereupon, when those beings who made the aim and sense of
their existence
the destruction of these one-brained beings—that is to say,
who destroyed
them only to procure that part of their common presence
called 'pearl' for the
gratification of their absurd egoism—found no more in the
water spaces near
the continent of Atlantis, these 'professionals' began to
look for them in other
water spaces, and gradually moved farther and farther away
from their own
continent. "Once during
this search, their rafts were unexpectedly earned by
prolonged 'saliakooriapnian displacements' or, as they say,
'storms,' to a
region abounding in these 'pearl-bearing beings,' where
conditions were
extremely favorable for their destruction. "The waters
that these destroyers happened to reach, and where these
'pearl-bearing beings' bred in large numbers, were precisely
those surrounding
the country then called 'Pearl-land,' and now called
'Hindustan' or 'India. ' "For the first
few days, these terrestrial professionals gave free rein to
the
inclination, already inherent in their presences, wantonly
to destroy these one-brained
beings of their planet, but later, after they found out,
also by chance,
that almost everything required for ordinary existence grew
in abundance on
the neighboring land mass, they decided not to return to
Atlantis but to settle
permanently in Pearl-land. "Thereupon a
few of these destroyers of 'pearl-bearing beings' sailed
back
to the continent of Atlantis, and after bartering their
pearls for articles still
lacking in the new place, they returned to Pearl-land,
bringing with them their
families and those of their comrades who had stayed behind. "Later on,
others among those first settlers in this country, still
'new' for
the beings of that period, visited their native land from
time to time to
exchange pearls for various articles they needed, and each
time they brought
back with them more of their relatives and kinsmen, or
simply laborers indispensable
for their extensive activities. "So, my boy,
from then on, that part of the surface of the planet Earth
became known to all the three-brained beings there, and
especially to those of
Atlantis, as the 'Land of Beneficence.' "Thus, many
beings from Atlantis were already existing on this part of
the
continent of Ashhark before the second great catastrophe
occurred to the
planet Earth, and when the continent of Atlantis was
engulfed within your
planet many of its inhabitants who happened to be saved,
chiefly those who
had relatives by blood or marriage in Pearl-land, gradually
collected there. "With the
'fecundity' proper to them they multiplied steadily, and
began to
spread over this part of their planet. "At first they
populated only two particular regions around the mouths of
two great rivers, which flowed from the interior of the
continent of Ashhark
and emptied into
the vast water space just where many of the 'pearl-bearing
beings' bred But as
their numbers continued to increase, they also began to
settle in the interior of
the country, although their favorite regions were still the
valleys of the two
rivers. "Well then, my
boy, when I first arrived in Pearl-land, I decided to attain
my
aim as before by means of the 'havatviernoni' existing
there, that is, through
their 'religion ' But it turned out that at that time the
beings of this third group
of the continent of Ashhark had several peculiar 'havatviernonis,'
or
'religions,' each based upon a quite independent 'religious
teaching' having
nothing in common with the others. "In view of
this I began to make a serious study of these 'religious
teachings' and, having ascertained that the one founded on
the teaching of a
genuine Messenger of our Common Endless Creator—afterward
called Saint
Buddha —had the most followers, I devoted all my attention
to its study. "Before
telling you more about the three-brained beings breeding on
that part
of the surface of the planet Earth, I think it necessary to
remark, however
briefly, that ever since the custom arose of having
independent
'havatviernonis' or 'religions,' there have existed and
still exist among your
favorites two basic kinds of 'religious teachings. ' "One kind is
invented by certain three-brained beings in whom, for some
reason or other, the psychic functioning proper to a 'hasnamuss'
has been
developed, and the other kind of religious teaching is
founded upon detailed
instructions revealed as it were by genuine Messengers from
Above, who are
indeed sent from time to time by certain of the closest
assistants of our
Common Father to help the three-brained
beings of your planet destroy in their presence the
crystallized
consequences of the properties of the organ kundabuffer. "The religion
then followed by most of the beings of Pearl-land, to which
I
devoted my attention, and about which I now find it
necessary to tell you,
arose in the following way: "As the
three-brained beings of that third group multiplied, many of
them
were formed with 'hasnamussian' properties and began
spreading ideas more
maleficent than usual among the other beings around them, so
that a special
psychic property began to be crystallized in the presences
of most of them,
engendering a factor that greatly hindered the normal
'exchange of substances'
actualized by the Most Great Common-Cosmic Trogoautoegocrat. "Well then, as
soon as that lamentable result—again issuing from this
same planet—became known to certain Most Sacred Individuals,
they
graciously vouchsafed that a corresponding Sacred Individual
be sent
especially to that group of beings to regulate their
being-existence in a more
or less tolerable manner, in accordance with the existence
of the whole of that
solar system. The Sacred Individual who was sent to them was
coated with the
planetary body of a terrestrial three-brained being and was
called, as I have
said, Saint Buddha. This actualization took place several
centuries before my
first visit to the country of Pearl-land. At this point
Hassein looked up at Beelzebub and said: "Dear
Grandfather, more than once in your talks you have used the
expression 'hasnamuss. ' Until now I have understood, merely
from the
intonation of your voice and the consonance of the word
itself, that by this
expression you designated certain three-brained beings you
always set apart
from others as if they deserved 'objective contempt. ' Be
kind, as always, and explain to me the real meaning of this
word." Whereupon
Beelzebub, with a smile peculiar to him, replied: "As regards
the 'type' of three-brained being for whom I have adopted
this
expression, I will tell you at the proper time; but
meanwhile know that this
word designates the already defined common presence of any
three-brained
being—whether consisting of the planetary body alone or
already coated with
higher being-bodies—in whom for some reason or other data
have not been
crystallized for the divine impulse of Objective
Conscience." With no
further explanation of the word "hasnamuss," Beelzebub
continued: "Well, my boy,
during my detailed study of that religious teaching, I also
discovered that when this Sacred Individual had become
coated with the
presence of a three-brained being of that planet, and had
seriously pondered
how to fulfill the task laid upon him from Above, he decided
to accomplish it
by the enlightenment of their Reason. "Here it must
be noted without fail that at that time there had already
been
crystallized in the presence of Saint Buddha, as my detailed
investigations
made evident, a very clear understanding that during the
process of its
abnormal formation, the Reason of the beings of the planet
Earth becomes
'instincto-titillarian,' that is, it functions only under
the action of
corresponding shocks from without. In spite of this, Saint
Buddha decided to
carry out his task by means of their 'Reason'—so peculiar
for three-brained
beings—and he began informing that Reason of theirs with
objective truths of
every kind. "First of all,
Saint Buddha assembled a number of the chiefs of the third
Asiatic group and spoke to them as follows: 'Beings with a
presence in the image of the Creator of all things! 'My essence
has been sent to you by certain Enlightened and Most
Sacred Final Results, who guide in perfect justice the
actualization of
everything existing in the Universe, to serve as a helping
factor for each of
you in the striving to free yourselves from the consequences
of those
abnormal being-properties which, because of important
common-cosmic
needs, were implanted in the presence of your ancestors and,
passing by
heredity from generation to generation, have reached you
also.' "Saint Buddha
spoke about this again and in a little more detail, but only
to
certain beings he himself had initiated. "This time he
expressed himself in the
following words: 'Beings with a
presence designed to actualize the Hope of our Common
Father! 'Soon after
the arising of your species, there occurred in the process
of
the normal existence of the whole solar system an unforeseen
misfortune
which entailed serious consequences for everything existing. 'In order to
avert universal disaster it was then considered necessary,
according to the calculations of certain Most High Most
Sacred Individuals,
among other measures to make a change in the functioning of
the common
presence of your ancestors, namely, to implant in them a
certain organ with
special properties, owing to which everything external
perceived by their
presence and transformed in them for their own coating would
be manifested
not in accordance with reality. 'A little
later, when the normal existence of your solar system had
been
stabilized and there was no further need for various
intentionally created
measures, our Most All-Gracious Common Father did not fail
to give the
command to annul certain artificial measures, and among
other things
to remove from the common presence of your ancestors the now
superfluous
"organ kundabuffer," with all its special properties. And
this command was
immediately carried out by the corresponding Sacred
Individuals who
superintend such cosmic actualizations. "'After a
considerable time had passed, it suddenly became clear that,
although all the properties of that organ had indeed been
removed from the
presence of your ancestors by these Most Sacred Individuals,
nevertheless a
certain cosmic result flowing lawfully from these
properties, namely, the
"predisposition" that arises in every more or less
independent cosmic presence
from the repeated action of any function, had not been
foreseen and destroyed. "'And so it
turned out that as this "predisposition" passed by heredity
to
succeeding generations, the consequences of many of the
properties of the
organ kundabuffer began gradually to be crystallized in
their presence. "'As soon as
this lamentable factor in the presence of the three-brained
beings
breeding on the planet Earth was ascertained, a
corresponding Sacred
Individual was sent here, with the all-gracious sanction of
our Common
Father, so that, having been coated with a presence like
your own and having
perfected himself by Objective Reason in the conditions
already established
on Earth, he might indicate the way and show you how to
uproot from your
presence the already crystallized consequences of the
properties of the organ
kundabuffer, as well as your inherited "predisposition" to
new crystallizations. "'During the
period when this Sacred Individual, coated with a presence
like your own and already at the age of a responsible
terrestrial three-centered
being, was personally guiding the ordinary process of
being-existence of your
ancestors, many of them did indeed free themselves
completely from the
consequences of the properties of the organ
kundabuffer, and thereby acquired being for themselves
personally or became
normal sources for the arising of a normal presence in
future beings like
themselves. "'But even
before this Sacred Individual's appearance here, owing to
the
many abnormal conditions of ordinary existence created by
you, the duration
of your existence had become unnaturally short, and
consequently the process
of the sacred "rascooarno" had to occur very early to this
Sacred Individual
also—that is to say, he too, like yourselves, had to die
prematurely, without
having time to accomplish the task assigned to him. After
his death,
everything gradually became as it had been before, partly
due to the same
abnormal conditions of ordinary being-existence and partly
to that maleficent
property in your psyche called "wiseacring." 'Thanks to
this property in your psyche the beings here, even of the
second generation after the contemporaries of this Sacred
Individual sent from
Above, gradually began to change everything he had explained
and indicated,
until ultimately the whole of his teaching was completely
destroyed. "'Again and
again the same action was taken by the Most High Common-
Cosmic Final Results—and each time with the same fruitless
outcome. "'And now, in
this present period of the flow of time, when the abnormal
existence of the three-brained beings of the Earth,
particularly of those on that
part of its surface called "Pearl-land," is becoming a
serious hindrance to the
normal harmonious existence of the whole of this solar
system, my essence is
manifested among you from Above in order that here on the
spot, together
with your own essences and in the already established
conditions, it may look
for some way to uproot from your common presences those
consequences still
existing in you owing to the "lack of foresight on the part
of certain Most
Saintly Cosmic Final Results." "After this,
by means of various talks with them, Saint Buddha first
clarified
for himself and then explained to the others how the process
of their existence
should be conducted, and in what order their positive part
should consciously
guide the manifestations of their unconscious parts, so that
the crystallized
consequences of the properties of the organ kundabuffer, and
also the
'inherited predisposition' to them, might gradually
disappear from their
common presence. "And indeed,
as my detailed research made clear to me, during the period
when the inner psyche of the beings on that part of the
surface of the Earth
was guided by this genuine Messenger from Above, Saint
Buddha, those consequences
so maleficent for them once more began to disappear from the
presences of many of them. "But to the
sorrow of every Individual with Pure Reason of any gradation
whatever and to the misfortune of the three-brained beings
of all succeeding
generations who arise on that planet, the first descendants
of the
contemporaries of this genuine Messenger from Above, Saint
Buddha, fell
victim to that evil property of their psyche, namely 'wiseacring'—still
one of
the chief results of the abnormally established conditions
of ordinary beingexistence
there— and began to wiseacre about all his indications and
counsels, and this time to 'superwiseacre' so thoroughly
that all that reached
the beings of the third and fourth generations who arise on
that planet was
what our honorable Mullah Nasr Eddin defines by the words: 'Only
information about its specific smell.' "Little by
little they so completely changed these indications and
counsels
of his that should their saintly author reappear there and
for some reason or
other wish to learn about them, he would never even suspect
that he himself
had given these indications and counsels. "Here I cannot
refrain from expressing my essence-grief at that strange
practice of your favorites, which in the course of many of
their centuries has
gradually become, as it were, lawful in the process of their
ordinary existence
This peculiar practice, already firmly established there,
served to distort all
the true indications and exact counsels of Saint Buddha, and
thus created yet
another factor for the dilution of their psyche. "The chief
characteristic of this long-standing habit is that a small,
sometimes quite trifling cause is enough to change for the
worse or even
completely destroy any 'good' outer or inner tempo of
ordinary existence—
'good,' that is, in the objective sense of the word. "Certain
details of the arising of the trivial cause that led to the
distortion
of the true explanations and indications of this genuine
Messenger from
Above, Saint Buddha, may provide you with excellent material
for a better
sensing and understanding of the strangeness of the psyche
of those three-brained
beings who have taken your fancy And so I shall speak of
this at
length and explain the exact sequence in which this peculiar
practice arose
and was manifested there, bringing about a certain sad
misunderstanding, particularly
in evidence today. "I must tell
you that I cleared up this misunderstanding long after the
period to which my present tale refers, namely, during my
sixth descent there,
when it became necessary, in connection with a question
concerning the
saintly Ashiata Shiemash, about whom I shall soon tell you,
to investigate a
certain fact about the activities of that genuine Messenger
from Above, Saint
Buddha As it turned out, the source of the lamentable
misunderstanding was,
unfortunately, certain authentic words spoken by Saint
Buddha himself. "One day while
instructing some of his closest initiates, Saint Buddha
spoke in very precise terms about a means for the possible
destruction in their
nature of the consequences
of the properties of the organ kundabuffer, transmitted to
them by heredity. "Among the
things he said to them was this: "'One of the
best means of rendering ineffective the predisposition in
your
nature to crystallize the consequences of the properties of
the organ
kundabuffer is "intentional suffering"; and the greatest
"intentional suffering"
can be obtained in our presences by compelling ourselves to
endure the
displeasing manifestations of others toward ourselves.' "This
explanation of Saint Buddha, along with other definite
indications of
his, were circulated among the ordinary beings there through
his closest
initiates; and after he had undergone the process of the
sacred 'rascooarno,' it
began to pass from generation to generation. "As I have
already told you, my boy, from the time of the loss of
Atlantis
the property called the 'psycho-organic need to wiseacre'
had become fixed in
the psyche of your favorites. And so—to the misfortune of
all ordinary threecentered
beings of that period and. of all succeeding generations up
to the
present—the beings of the second and third generations after
Saint Buddha
began to wiseacre and superwiseacre about this counsel of
his. As a result, the
very definite notion became fixed in their presence and also
passed from
generation to generation that this 'endurance' could be
produced only in
solitude. "Here the
strangeness of the psyche of your favorites showed itself,
as it
still does today, in their failure to grasp the obvious
fact—obvious, that is, to
any more or less sane Reason—that in advising them to
practice that kind of
endurance, the divine teacher, Saint Buddha, meant of course
that they should
do so while continuing to exist among beings like
themselves. And he advised
this in order that, by frequently producing this sacred
being-actualization
toward the displeasing manifestations of others, there might
be evoked in
them what are called 'trentroodianos' or, as
they would say, the 'chemico-physical results' that engender
in the presence
of every three-centered being those being-data necessary for
the arising of
one of the three holy forces of the sacred being-Triamazikamno
And in
beings, this 'holy force' always becomes affirming toward
all the denying
properties already present in them. "Well, my boy,
from the time when the mentioned definite notion had
taken root, certain of your favorites deliberately withdrew
themselves from
the established conditions of ordinary being-existence, in
the midst of which
their predisposition to the crystallization of the
consequences of the
properties of the organ kundabuffer had become more intense
in their
presences Yet of course, as the divine teacher Buddha had
foreseen, it was in
those conditions alone that this 'endurance' of the
manifestations of others
displeasing to themselves could crystallize in their
presence those
actualizations of 'partkdolgduty' required from all
three-centered beings in
general, without which 'self-perfecting' is impossible. "And so, for
the sake of this famous 'suffering' of theirs, many of the
three-centered beings of that planet, either singly or in
groups—that is, with
others who thought as they did—began to withdraw from the
society of their
fellow beings. "They even
founded special colonies for this purpose where, although
existing together, they nevertheless arranged everything so
as to produce this
'endurance' of theirs in solitude. "It was then
that their famous 'monasteries' first came into existence,
which continue down to the present day, and where certain of
your favorites
go, as they say, 'to save their souls. ' "Well, when I
first visited Pearl-land, most of the three-brained beings
were,
as I said before, followers of the religion
based upon the supposedly exact counsels and indications of
Saint Buddha,
and their faith in this religion was unshakable. "At the outset
of my study of the doctrinal subtleties of that religion, I
was
still uncertain just how to make use of it to attain my aim
But when in the
course of my investigations I happened to clarify for myself
a particular
notion shared by all the followers of that religion, which
again was based
upon a misunderstanding of certain words actually uttered by
Saint Buddha, I
at once decided how to act through this peculiar
havatviernoni, or religion, of
theirs. "It transpired
that in his explanations of cosmic truths Saint Buddha had
told them, among other things 'Each of the three-centered
beings existing on
the various planets of our Great Universe, and of course on
the Earth also,
must in reality be nothing other than a particle of that
Most Great Greatness
which is the All-Embracing of all that exists, and the
foundation of this Most
Great Greatness is there Above, the better to embrace the
essence of
everything existing. "'This Most
Great Foundation of the All-Embracing of everything existing
constantly emanates throughout the whole of the Universe,
and on the planets
it coats from its particles certain three-centered beings
who have attained in
their common presence the capacity to have their own
functioning of the two
fundamental cosmic laws of the sacred Heptaparaparshinokh
and the sacred
Triamazikamno, so that these particles form a definite unit,
in which alone
divine Objective Reason has the possibility of becoming
concentrated and
fixed. 'And this has
been foreseen and created in this manner by our Common
Creator so that when these particles of the Great
All-Embracing return, now
spiritualized by divine Reason, and reblend with the Prime
Source of the All-
Embracing, they should compose that Whole which, in the Hope
of our
Common Endless Uni-Being, may actualize
the sense and striving of everything that exists in the
entire Universe. "And it seems
that Saint Buddha said to them further "'You, three-centered
beings of the planet Earth, endowed with the possibility of
acquiring your own
functioning of both fundamental sacred laws, have also the
full possibility of
coating in yourselves this most sacred particle of the Great
All-Embracing of
everything existing, and of perfecting it to the required
degree of divine
Reason. 'And this
Great All-Embracing of all things embraced is called "Holy
Prana. "' "This precise
explanation of Saint Buddha was well understood by his
contemporaries, and many of them began to strive with
eagerness to absorb
and to coat in their presences the particles of this Most
Great Greatness, and
afterward by this means to make manifest divine Objective
Reason. "But when the
beings of the second and third generations following Saint
Buddha began wiseacring with their peculiar Reason about his
explanations of
cosmic truths, they introduced for future transmission the
definite notion that
this 'Mister Prana' is already in them when they first see
the light of day. "Thanks to
this misunderstanding, the beings of that period and of all
subsequent generations, including the present one, have
imagined that,
without fulfilling any being-partkdolgduty, they are already
particles of that
Most Great Greatness, as Saint Buddha himself had so
specifically described. "So, my boy,
as soon as I had realized what this misunderstanding was,
and
had ascertained that the beings of Pearl-land were all,
without exception,
convinced that they were already particles of 'Mister Prana'
himself, I decided
to make use of this misunderstanding and to attain my aim,
here also, through
their religion. "Before saying
more, I must not fail to point out that although Saint
Buddha
had supposedly said that a being already has within himself
at his arising a
particle of the Most Great Greatness, my detailed
investigations quite clearly
showed me that he could never possibly have said that. "And he could
not have said this because, as my investigations quite
definitely showed, when he happened on one occasion to be
with his devoted
disciples in the locality of 'Senkoo-ori,' what he actually
said was as follows: "'If this most
sacred Prana is crystallized in you, with the conscious or
unconscious participation of your "I," you must without fail
bring the
perfecting of the individual Reason of this totality of most
sacred atoms to the
required gradation, otherwise this most holy coating,
changing from one
exterior coating to another, will suffer and languish
eternally. "Here it is
interesting to recall that the beings of that planet were
given the
same warning by another Sacred Individual, also a genuine
Messenger from
Above, Saint Kirmininasha, who expressed it in these words: "'Blessed is
he that hath a soul, blessed also is he that hath none, but
grief
and sorrow are the lot of him who hath in himself only its
conception. ' "So, my boy,
when I had made all this clear to myself, I at once decided
to
make use of this error of theirs for the accomplishment of
my aim. "Here in
Pearl-land, just as in the city of Gob, I first invented an
addition
to their religious teaching, and then began to spread this
invention of mine by
every possible means. "I spread the
idea that the most sacred Prana, of which our divine teacher
Saint Buddha had spoken, is already present not only in us
men but in all
beings that arise and exist
on our planet Earth I said that a particle of that Most
Great All-Embracing, the
most sacred Prana, settles from the moment of its arising in
every form of
being on every scale, whether breeding on the surface of the
planet, in its
waters, or in the atmosphere. "I regret to
have to say here, my boy, that more than once I was
constrained to emphasize that these words came from the lips
of Saint
Buddha himself. "Several
beings of that country with whom I had established friendly
relations, and who were the first I persuaded to accept my
invention, believed
in it immediately without question, and from then on very
effectively helped
me— unconsciously of course—to spread this invention of mine
Here, too,
my friends went about, zealously and passionately proving to
their fellows
that this was just so and could not possibly be otherwise In
short, my second
invention brought about the desired results in Pearl-land
more rapidly than I
could have expected. "Owing simply
to my invention, your favorites so changed their
essence-relations
with beings of other forms that they not only ceased to
destroy their
existence for their famous 'sacrificial offerings,' but even
began very
sincerely, with the whole of their being, to regard them as
beings like
themselves. "If only they
had stopped at this point, all would have been well, but
here,
just as in the country of Maralpleicie, they soon fell into
their habit of
wiseacring and began to manifest many comical aspects of
their
havatviernoni. "For instance,
within a few of their months after I began spreading my
invention, at almost every step you could see, when
strolling down the street
in the city of Kaiamon, beings walking on what are called
'stilts ' And they
walked on stilts so as not to risk crushing some insect or
other, a 'little being
just like themselves,' as they now believed. "Many were
afraid to drink water that had not been freshly drawn from a
spring or stream, fearing that tiny beings might have fallen
into it and that
without seeing them they would unwittingly swallow these
'poor little
creatures like themselves.' Many took the precaution of
wearing what are
called 'veils' lest the 'poor little beings' existing in the
air should accidentally
enter their mouths or noses And so on and so forth. "From that
time on, in the city of Kaiamon and its outskirts, and
throughout Pearl-land, societies began to spring up whose
aim was to protect
'defenseless' beings of various forms, both those existing
among them and
those they called 'wild.' In all these societies there were
rules prohibiting not
only the destruction of these beings for sacrificial
offerings, but also the use
of their planetary bodies for 'first being-food. ' "Eh-h-h-h-hkh
. . . my boy! "Owning to the
strangeness of their psyche, the intentional suffering and
conscious labor specially actualized for them by that Sacred
Individual, Saint
Buddha, who had been coated with a planetary presence like
their own, have
ever since hovered in vain over this planet, without
producing any of the real
results that could have been lawfully expected; but they
have engendered only
all kinds of pseudo teachings, like those existing there
today bearing the
names of 'occultism,' 'theosophy,' 'spiritualism,'
'psychoanalysis,' and so on,
which, now as before, are simply means for 'obscuring' their
psyche, already
obscured enough without this. "Needless to
say, of the truths indicated by Saint Buddha himself
absolutely
nothing has survived and reached the beings of the present
time. "Half of one
of the words he used did, however, manage to reach the
contemporary beings of that unparalleled planet. And this
half word reached
them in the following way. "Among other
things, Saint Buddha explained to the beings of Pearl-land
how, and in what part of the bodies of their ancestors, the
famous organ
kundabuffer had been implanted. "He told them
that the Angel Looisos had by a special means made this
organ grow at the lower extremity of that brain that Nature
had placed in their
ancestors as well as in them, along the back, in what is
called the 'spinal
column. ' "Saint Buddha
added, as I also made clear, that, although the properties
of
this organ had been entirely destroyed in their ancestors,
its material formation
had remained at the lower extremity of this brain and having
been transmitted
from generation to generation had also reached them. "'But this
material formation,' he said, 'now has no significance
whatsoever and can be completely destroyed in the course of
time, if your
being-existence proceeds as is becoming to three-centered
beings.' "However, when
they began wiseacring and inventing all sorts of forms of
their famous 'suffering,' they also played one of their
usual tricks with the
name of this organ. "To begin
with, as the root of the second half of this name happened
to
coincide with a word that in the language of that time meant
'reflection,' and
as they had thought up a means for destroying this material
formation
rapidly—and not in the course of time, as Saint Buddha had
advised them—
they also wiseacred about this word with their bob-tailed
Reason, ruminating
as follows: 'Of course
when this organ was in action, its name must have contained
the root of the word for "reflection," but since we are
destroying even its
material basis the name should now end with a word whose
root means
"former And as the word for 'former' in their language was
then pronounced
'lina,' they changed the second half of this name, and
instead of 'kundabuffer,'
they obtained the word 'kundalina.' "Thus it was
that half of the word 'kundabuffer' survived and, passing
down from generation to generation, finally reached your
contemporary
favorites, accompanied of course by a thousand and one
different explanations
Even the present-day 'learned beings' have a name made up of
abstruse Latin
roots for that part of the spinal marrow Today the whole of
so-called 'Hindu
philosophy' is based on this famous 'kundalina,' and around
the word itself
exist thousands of occult 'sciences,' secret and revealed,
which explain
absolutely nothing. "And as for
the way in which the significance of that part of the spinal
marrow is defined by contemporary terrestrial beings,
learned in what are
called the 'exact sciences,' that, my dear boy, is a
profound mystery. "And it became
a mystery because several centuries ago this 'definition'
suddenly, without rhyme or reason, entered the favorite mole
of the famous
Scheherazade, which that incomparable Arabian fantasist
chanced to have on
the right side of her adorable navel. "And there
this 'scientific explanation' has been preserved intact down
to
the present day. "When I was
quite convinced that I had succeeded so easily in
destroying,
perhaps for a long time, that terrible practice of
sacrificial offerings among the
beings of this group, I decided to stay in Pearl-land no
longer, but to return to
the Sea of Beneficence and rejoin our ship Occasion. "We were just
ready to leave when the idea suddenly occurred to me not to
return to the Sea of Beneficence by the way we had come, but
by another
route quite unusual for those days. "That is to
say, I decided to return through the region later called
'Tibet. '" CHAPTER 22:
Beelzebub in Tibet for the first time " AS THE ROUTE
proposed for the journey through Tibet was very rarely used
by the three-brained beings of those days, and we could not
count on joining
one of their caravans, I had to organize one of my own, and
I began at once to
make preparations and to lay in all the supplies we would
need along the way. "I procured
some scores of the quadruped beings called 'horses,'
'mules,'
'donkeys,' 'Chamianian goats,' and so forth, and hired a
number of your biped
favorites to look after them and to carry out the
semiconscious work required
for this mode of travel.
"As soon as I had got together everything necessary, I set
off, accompanied
by Ahoon.
"This time we passed through still stranger regions, where
the nature of
that ill-fated planet was even more extraordinary, and we
encountered, or
rather there came within the field of our vision, a much
greater number of the
various one-brained and two-brained beings which are called
'wild,' and
which at that time came there from remote parts of the
continent of Ashhark
in order to hunt for prey, that is, to procure their 'first
being-food.'
"These wild beings were then particularly dangerous, not
only for the
three-brained beings but also for the quadruped beings that
your favorites,
with the cunning proper to them, had already made their
slaves, compelling
them to work solely for the satisfaction of their egoistic
needs. And these wild
beings were particularly dangerous because just at that
period there was being
crystallized in their presences, again due to the abnormal
conditions of being-existence
established
by the three-brained beings there, a special function about
which I shall
tell you at the proper time.
"It was chiefly on account of these wild beings that the
regions through
which our route lay were almost inaccessible to the
three-brained beings of
that period It was possible for them to pass through these
places only, as they
say, 'by day,' that is, when in the atmosphere of their
planet the process of
Aieioiuoa takes place in the active element Okidanokh.
"They could travel by day because during this time of the 'krentonalnian'
position of their planet in relation to their sun, almost
all the wild beings were
in the being-state called 'sleep,' that is, in the state in
which the energy
necessary for their ordinary existence is automatically
elaborated in their
presences, and this takes place in them during just this
time, whereas in three-centered
beings, on the contrary, energy is elaborated only when that
same
sacred process is not occurring in the atmosphere, that is
to say, during what
they call 'night.'
"And so, my boy, your favorites could pass through these
places only by
day At night great vigilance was required and they had to
erect artificial
shelters to protect themselves and their 'belongings' from
the wild beings, for
during that period of the krentonalnian position of the
planet Earth these wild
beings are wide awake and take their first being-food.
"And since by then they had become accustomed to using for
this purpose
chiefly the planetary bodies of weaker beings of other forms
arising on their
planet, they would prowl about at night and seize such
beings in order to make
use of their planetary bodies to satisfy this need.
"These wild beings, particularly the smallest ones, were
already perfected
to the highest degree in wiliness and cunning, of course
also owing to the
abnormally established conditions of ordinary
being-existence of the three-brained
beings there. So all along our route we, and especially
those we had hired for
the semiconscious work, had to be extremely watchful and
alert at night in
order to protect ourselves, our quadruped workers, and our
supplies.
"A pack of wild beings would gather around our camp at
night, having
come there to pounce on something suitable for their first
being-food, they
were rather like a' mob of your favorites on the 'floor of
the stock exchange,'
or at an 'election of representatives' to some society or
other whose nominal
aim is the common pursuit of a means to a happy existence
for all their fellow
beings, regardless of their notorious 'castes.'
"We kept huge fires burning all night to 'scare away' the
wild beings, and
our biped workers, although forbidden to do so, destroyed
with poisoned
'kilnapara' arrows the ones that came too near our camp Yet
not a single night
passed without some of what are called 'lions,' 'tigers,'
and 'hyenas' carrying
off one or more of our quadruped beings, so that their
number shrank daily.
"It is true, my boy, that this way back to the Sea of
Beneficence took us much
longer than the way we had come, but what we saw and heard
during our
journey of the strangeness of the psyche of your favorites
fully justified the
extra time spent.
"We traveled under these conditions for more than a month of
their time
and finally came upon a small settlement of three-brained
beings who, as we
learned, had only recently migrated there from Pearl-land
The name of this
settlement was 'Sincratortsa' and later on, when the
surrounding region was
populated, this place became its chief center The whole
country also came to
be known by that name, though afterward the name was changed
several
times, and it is now called 'Tibet. '
"As we came upon these beings just when night was falling,
we asked them for 'shelter ' And when they gave us
permission to stay in
their settlement, we were very glad at the prospect of a
night's rest, for we
were all so exhausted by the constant warfare with the wild
beings that it was
imperative for us, especially for our biped workers, to
spend at least one night
in peace.
"In the course of the conversation that evening, it
transpired that all the
beings of this settlement belonged to a sect, well known in
Pearl-land under
the name of the 'Self-Tamers,' formed by followers of that
very religion
which, as I have already told you, purported to be based on
the direct
instructions of Saint Buddha.
"In this connection I might mention that the beings of your
planet have yet
another particularity that long ago became proper to them
alone, which
consists in this, that no sooner does some new 'havatviernoni,'
or 'religion,'
arise among them than its followers begin to split up into
different camps,
and each of these soon forms what is called a 'sect' of its
own The strangest
thing about this particularity of theirs is that those who
belong to such a sect
never call themselves 'sectarians,' as the name is
considered offensive, they
are called this only by those who do not belong to their
sect And the
adherents of a sect are 'sectarians' for others only as long
as they have no
'guns' and 'ships' at their disposal, but as soon as they
get hold of enough guns
and ships, what had been a particular sectarian doctrine at
once becomes the
dominant religion.
"The beings both of this settlement and of many other
districts in Pearlland
had become sectarians after having broken away from the
religion whose
doctrine I had studied in detail, and which later was known
as 'Buddhism '
This sect of the Self-Tamers arose owing to that distorted
understanding of
one of the principles of the Buddhist religion which, as I
have already told
you, they called 'suffering in
solitude.' And it was in order to give themselves up to this
famous 'suffering,'
without hindrance from others like themselves, that these
beings with whom
we spent the night had settled so far away from their own
people.
"Now, my boy, everything I learned that night and saw the
next day of the
devotees of that sect made such a painful impression upon me
that for many
of their 'centuries' I could never recall it without
'shuddering.' And so I should
like to tell you in some detail about what I then saw and
learned.
"During our conversation that evening I learned that while
still in Pearlland,
before their migration to this isolated place, the leaders
of this sect had
invented a special form of 'suffering.' They had decided to
withdraw to some
inaccessible place where other beings, not belonging to
their sect and not
'initiated' into its 'arcana,' would be unable to prevent
them from inflicting
upon themselves this particular form of 'suffering' they had
invented.
"After a long search, they finally found this place that we
had come upon
by chance, and saw that it was well suited to their purpose.
As they were
already solidly organized and materially secure, in the face
of great
difficulties they migrated with their families to this
place, which was almost
inaccessible to their ordinary countrymen and which, as I
have already said,
they named 'Sincratortsa.'
"At first, while they were settling down in this new place,
they existed
more or less in harmony; but when they began actually
putting into practice
the special form of 'suffering' they had invented, their
families, and
particularly their wives, having discovered what that form
of suffering really
was, rebelled and made a great outcry, which resulted in a
schism.
"This schism had occurred not long before our arrival at
Sincratortsa and
already small groups were beginning to
migrate to new places that they considered even more
suitable for an isolated
existence.
"For a better understanding of what follows, you will need
to know the
principal cause of the schism among these sectarians.
"It turned out that the leaders of the sect, while they were
still in Pearl-land,
had pledged themselves to withdraw completely from beings
like
themselves, and to stop at nothing in order to attain
liberation from the
consequences of the properties of that organ of which the
divine teacher, Saint
Buddha, had spoken Their pledge committed them to exist in a
certain way
until their planetary bodies were completely destroyed, in
other words, until
their death, and the purpose of this special form of
existence was to 'purify'
what they called their 'souls' of all the alien deposits due
to that organ
kundabuffer which, as Saint Buddha had told them, their
ancestors had once
possessed And having freed themselves from these
consequences, they would
acquire the possibility, as the divine teacher had also
said, of reblending with
the all-embracing Holy Prana.
"But when they had settled down and begun to put into
practice this
special form of 'suffering,' and their wives on learning its
true nature had
rebelled, many of these sectarians, under the influence of
their wives,
declined to carry out the obligations they had assumed in
Pearl-land, and as a
result they split up into two independent parties.
"From then on these sectarians, formerly called the
'Self-Tamers,' began to
be called by different names Those who remained faithful to
the obligations
they had taken upon themselves were called 'Orthodoxhaidooraki,'
while
those who had renounced certain of the obligations assumed
in their native
land were called 'Katoshkihaidooraki' At the time of our
arrival in
Sincratortsa, the sectarians named 'Orthodoxhaidooraki'
had established, not far from their original settlement, a
well-organized 'monastery' where their special form of
suffering was in full
swing.
"The next day, on resuming our journey after a restful
night, we passed very
near this monastery of the Orthodoxhaidooraki sect of the
Buddhist religion.
And as it was the hour of day when we usually made a halt to
feed our
quadruped workers, we asked the monks to allow us to stop
for a while in the
shelter of their monastery.
"Strange and unusual as it may seem, these beings who bore
the name of
'monk' did not refuse our objectively just request, but
admitted us at once,
without any of the swaggering that has become proper there
throughout the
centuries to monks of all doctrines. Thereupon we
unexpectedly found
ourselves in the 'holy of holies' of this doctrine, just
that sphere which the
beings of the planet Earth, from the very beginning, have
been so ingenious in
hiding from observation. In other words, they become so
skillful at wiseacring
and making a 'mystery' of something, and then so thoroughly
concealing this
'mystery' by all sorts of means, that even beings with Pure
Reason cannot
penetrate to the heart of it.
"The monastery of the Orthodoxhaidooraki sect of the
Buddhist religion
occupied a large square surrounded by a massive wall, which
protected those
within from beings of their own kind and from wild beings.
In the center of
this vast walled enclosure stood a large, solidly built
structure that formed the
main part of the monastery. In one half of this building the
monks carried on
their ordinary being-existence; and in the other they
practiced those manipulations
that were the special feature of the belief of their sect,
but which to
outsiders were 'arcana.'
"Along the inner side of the encircling wall, and built
solidly into the wall
itself, was a row of small cell-like compartments,
set close together And it was precisely in the nature of
these cell-like
structures that lay the difference between this monastery
and monasteries
in general on the planet Earth.
"These sentry-box structures were entirely walled in on all
sides, except
for a small opening near the bottom, through which, with
great difficulty, a
hand could be thrust It was within these 'cells' that the
'deserving' members of
the sect were to be perpetually immured, and there they were
to occupy
themselves with certain manipulations of what they call
their 'emotions' and
'thoughts' until the total destruction of their planetary
existence And it was
when the wives of these sectarians known as 'Self-Tamers'
found out about all
this that they raised their great outcry.
"In the religious teaching of this sect there was a full
explanation of just
what manipulations had to be practiced on oneself, and for
how long, in order
ultimately to merit being immured in one of these 'cells,'
there to receive once
every twenty-four hours a piece of bread and a small jug of
water.
"When we were admitted within the walls of that terrible
monastery, every
one of these monstrous 'cells' was occupied, and the care of
the immured, that
is, giving them once every twenty-four hours through the
tiny opening a piece
of bread and a small jug of water, was undertaken with great
reverence by
other sectarians, themselves candidates for immurement, who
while awaiting
their turn existed in the large building in the center of
the monastery square.
"Your immured favorites did indeed remain in those monstrous
sepulchers
until their motionless and half-starved existence, so full
of deprivation, came
to an end.
"As soon as the companions of the immured learned that one
of them had
ceased to exist, his planetary body was removed from the
improvised
sepulcher and at once, in place of the being who had thus
destroyed himself,
another unfortunate
fanatic of that maleficent religious teaching was walled up.
And the
ranks of these fanatical monks were always being filled with
other members
of that peculiar sect constantly coming from Pearl-land.
"In Pearl-land itself all the adherents of that sect already
knew of the
existence of this specially convenient place for
accomplishing the 'crowning
act' of their religious doctrine, which was supposedly based
on the exact
instructions of Saint Buddha; and in every large center they
even had what are
called 'agents' to help them get there.
"Having rested and fed our biped and quadruped workers, we
left behind
us that melancholy place of sacrifice to the wretched organ
which, according
to the ruminations of certain Most High Cosmic Individuals,
for some reason
or other, had to be implanted in the presence of the former
three-brained
beings of that ill-fated planet.
"Eh-h-h-h-kh . . . my boy," sighed Beelzebub, "as you can
imagine, it was
scarcely with agreeable sensations or happy reflections that
we departed from
that place.
"Continuing our route toward the Sea of Beneficence, we
again passed
through a region having high projections of many different
forms, with
conglomerations of intraplanetary minerals that had erupted
to the surface
from great depths.
"Here I must say something about an exceedingly strange fact
I observed
concerning that part of the surface of your planet. The
first time I passed
through this region, now called 'Tibet,' its peaks were, it
is true, unusually far
above the surface of the Earth, but did not differ
particularly from similar
elevations on other continents, or on the continent of
Ashhark, or Asia, of
which Tibet is a part. But during my sixth and last personal
sojourn on the
planet Earth, when my way took me once more through those
memorable regions,
I observed that in no more than a few score of their
centuries the whole of this region had projected so far
above the rest of the
planet that no heights on any of the other continents could
even be compared
with it.
"For instance, the principal chain of peaks in the region we
were passing
through, which the beings there call a 'mountain range,' had
in the interval
projected so far upward that some of its peaks are to this
day the loftiest of all
the abnormal projections of that 'vainly long-suffering
planet And I dare say
that if you climbed one you might perhaps be able, with the
aid of a
'teskooano,' to 'distinguish clearly' the opposite side of
this peculiar planet.
"When I first observed that strange phenomenon taking place
on your highly
original planet, I at once thought that it very likely
contained the germ for the
arising of some future misfortune on a great cosmic scale
Later, when I made
a statistical study of that abnormal phenomenon, my first
apprehension grew
all the more And it grew all the more because in one section
of my statistics it
was shown that the height of the mountain chain increased
from 'decade to
decade ' The same section also showed when and how
terrestrial 'planetary
tremors' or, as your favorites call them, 'earthquakes,'
occur as a result of the
excessive height of those Tibetan peaks.
"Although planetary tremors, or earthquakes, are often
provoked in that
planet of yours by other intraplanetary disharmonies
resulting from the two
great transapalnian perturbations, whose causes I will some
day explain to
you, nevertheless most of the planetary tremors there,
especially in recent
centuries, have taken place solely on account of those
excessive elevations
And this is because, due to these excessive elevations,
equally
disproportionate projections have arisen in the presence of
the atmosphere of
that planet, in other words, what is called the 'blastegoklornian
sphere' of the
atmosphere of the Earth has acquired, and in certain
places continues to acquire, a materialized presence that
projects too far to
permit the 'reciprocal blending of the results' of all the
planets of that system
Thus, during the movement of the Earth, in the course of the
process known as
the 'common-system harmony,' its atmosphere 'hooks on,' as
it were, at certain
times to the atmospheres of other planets or comets of that
system And owing
to these 'hookings-on,' 'planetary tremors' or 'quakes'
occur in corresponding
places in the common presence of your planet.
"I must also explain to you that the region of the common
presence of the
planet where these 'tremors' occur depends upon the position
occupied by the
planet itself in the process of the 'common-system
harmonious movement' in
relation to other concentrations of the same system.
"Be that as it may, if this abnormal growth of the Tibetan
mountains
continues, sooner or later a catastrophe on a general cosmic
scale is inevitable.
However, if this menace I perceive becomes evident, the Most
High, Most
Sacred Cosmic Individuals will no doubt take the proper
measures at the
proper time. "
"Please, please, Your Right Reverence!" interrupted Ahoon,
and he rattled
off the following: "Allow me to report to Your Right
Reverence some
information I happened to pick up about the growth of those
Tibetan
mountains you have deigned to mention Just before our flight
from the planet
Karatas," continued Ahoon, "I had the pleasure of meeting
the Archangel
Vilooar, the governor of our solar system, and His
Magnificence
condescended to recognize me and to speak with me.
"Perhaps Your Right Reverence remembers that while we were
existing on
the planet Zernakoor, His Magnificence the Archangel Vilooar
was still an
ordinary angel, and often used to drop in to see us.
"So, during our conversation when His Magnificence heard me
mention
the name of the solar system where we
had been exiled, he told me that at the last, most high,
most sacred reception
of finally reintegrated Cosmic Results, a certain
Individual, Saint Lama, had
had the privilege, in the presence of all the Sacred
Individuals, of personally
presenting at the feet of our Endless Uni-Being a petition
regarding the
abnormal growth of some of the elevations of a planet
belonging, apparently,
to that solar system And our All-Gracious Endlessness,
granting his request,
immediately commanded that the Archangel Looisos be sent to
that solar
system where, as one already familiar with it, he might
clarify on the spot the
causes of these projections and take appropriate measures.
That is why His
Conformity the Archangel Looisos is just now hurriedly
winding up his
current affairs in order to set off for that planet.
"Good, good, dear Ahoon," commented Beelzebub, and he added
"Thank
you for this information Glory be to our Creator' What you
have just said will
undoubtedly help to destroy the anxiety that arose in my
presence when I first
noticed the abnormal growth of those Tibetan mountains,
namely, my anxiety
that the precious memory of our wisest of the wise, the
infinitely revered
Mullah Nasr Eddin, might completely disappear from the
Universe. "
Having said this, and allowing his face to assume its
customary
expression, Beelzebub went on:
"We continued our journey through the region now called
'Tibet,'
encountering hardships of every kind, and we finally came to
the source of
the river named 'Keria Chi ' A few days later, sailing down
the river to the Sea
of Beneficence, we regained our ship Occasion.
"After this third descent of mine to the planet Earth I did
not go there again in
person for a considerable period, nevertheless from time to
time I observed
these favorites of yours attentively through my big
teskooano.
"And I did not go there for a long time for the following
reason: soon after returning to Mars, I became interested in
an enterprise that
the Martian three-brained beings were just then carrying out
on the surface of
their planet.
"To understand what this undertaking was that I became
interested in, you
must know that the planet Mars is for the system Ors, to
which it belongs, a
'mdnel-haootian link' in the transformation of cosmic
substances;
consequently it has a 'keskestasantnian firm surface,' that
is to say, one half of
its surface consists of land presence and the other of 'saliakooriapnian'
masses
or, as your favorites would say, one half of it is land in
one continuous
continent, and the other half is covered with water.
"So, my boy, as the three-brained beings of the planet Mars
use only
'prosphora' or, as your favorites call it, 'bread,' for
their first being-food, they
always sow 'wheat' on the land half of their planet. But
since the wheat
derived the moisture it needed for the 'evolving djartklom'
only from what is
called 'dew,' the yield from one grain of wheat was only a
seventh part of the
total process of the sacred Heptaparaparshinokh, that is to
say, the entire yield
was only one-seventh.
"As this amount of wheat was insufficient for their needs,
and in order to
get more they would have to utilize the planetary
saliakooriap, the three-centered
beings there had been talking ever since our arrival of
bringing the
necessary quantity of saliakooriap from the opposite side of
the planet to the
side where their being-existence proceeded.
"Several of their years later, they finally decided the
question and made the
necessary preparations, and just before I returned from the
planet Earth they
set to work digging special 'canals' for conducting the
saliakooriap.
"This undertaking, my boy, was extremely complicated, and to
carry it out
the beings of the planet Mars were constantly inventing all
sorts of 'machines'
and 'appliances,' among which were many original and
ingenious ones, and
as I was always interested in any new invention, I was very
much taken by
this work.
"By the courtesy of those kind Martians I spent nearly all
my time at these
works, and that is why during this period I very seldom
descended to the
other planets of that solar system.
"Occasionally, however, for a rest, I flew to the planet
Saturn to visit
Gornahoor Harharkh, who meanwhile had become my real
essence-friend,
and to whom I am indebted for such a marvel as my big
teskooano which, as
I have already told you, increases the visibility of remote
concentrations 7,
000, 285 times."
CHAPTER 23: The fourth personal sojourn of Beelzebub on
the planet Earth
BEELZEBUB
continued thus:
"I descended for the fourth time to that planet Earth at the
request of
my essence-friend Gornahoor Harharkh.
"First of all I must tell you that when I had become
friendly with this
Gornahoor Harharkh, I would always, during our 'exchanges of
subjective
opinion,' share with him my impressions about the strange
psyche of the
three-centered beings of that planet of yours The result of
these conversations
was that he too became so interested in your favorites that
he even very
seriously asked me to keep him informed, if only in a
general way, about my
observations of them; and thereafter I sent him, just as I
did to your uncle
Tooilan, copies of all my notes on the particularities of
their psyche.
"And how Gornahoor Harharkh came to be the cause of this
descent of
mine occurred in the following way:
"As I have just told you, after my third descent to your
planet, I
occasionally, for a rest, ascended to the planet Saturn to
see my friend During
these visits I became convinced of his great learning, and
one day the idea
came to me to invite him to descend to the planet Mars on
our ship Occasion,
so that there on the spot he might give me the benefit of
his knowledge
concerning the details of setting up my observatory, which
was just then
being completed.
"Here let me emphasize that if this observatory later became
famous, and
was in fact the best of all the installations of its kind in
the whole Universe, I
am indebted chiefly to the learning of this essence-friend
of mine.
"Well then, when I mentioned this to Gornahoor Harharkh,
without thinking long he agreed, and at once we began
considering
how to carry out our intention The problem was that the
route from the planet
Saturn to the planet Mars passed through cosmic spheres that
did not
correspond to the presence of Gornahoor Harharkh, a being
who had as yet
only the possibilities for an ordinary planetary existence.
"The result of our deliberations was that on the following
day his chief
assistant began, under his direction, to arrange a special
compartment in our
ship Occasion, and to equip it with every sort of apparatus
for elaborating the
substances that make up the atmosphere of the planet Saturn,
to which the
existence of Gornahoor Harharkh was adapted by Nature.
"One 'khrkh-khr-khroo' later, when all these preparations
had been
completed, we set out on our journey in the direction of the
planet Mars,
where we arrived safely at my house And there on Mars, which
has almost the
same atmosphere as the planet Saturn, my essence-friend very
soon became
acclimatized and began to exist almost as though on his own
planet.
"It was during his stay on Mars that he devised the 'teskooano,'
or
'telescope,' thanks to which my observatory became so famous
throughout the
whole Universe The teskooano he constructed is indeed a
marvel of being-
Reason, for, as I told you, it increases the visibility of
remote cosmic
concentrations 7, 000, 285 times, both during certain
processes taking place in
cosmic substances in the atmospheres surrounding almost all
cosmic
concentrations and during certain processes which the cosmic
'ethernokrilno'
undergoes in interspatial spheres.
"With this teskooano I was sometimes able to observe from my
house on
Mars almost everything taking place on those parts of the
surface of other
planets of that solar system which, during the process of
the 'general system
movement,' were at that moment within the field of vision of
my observatory.
"Well, my dear boy, one day while Gornahoor Harharkh was
staying with
me as my guest and we were observing together the existence
of those
favorites of yours, we happened to notice a fact, which
became the subject of
a very serious exchange of opinions between us about the
three-centered
beings of your peculiar planet.
"The result of this exchange was that I undertook to descend
to the surface
of that planet and to bring back to the planet Saturn a
number of the beings
your favorites call 'apes,' in order to carry out certain
experiments with them
and elucidate the fact that had astonished us."
At this point in his narrative, Beelzebub was brought a "leitoochanbros,"
that is, a sort of metal plate on which is recorded the text
of an etherogram
received from somewhere or other, the addressee having only
to hold the plate
to his organ of auditory perception to hear everything
communicated in it.
Having listened to the contents of the leitoochanbros,
Beelzebub turned to
his grandson and said:
"You see, my boy, what coincidences occur in our Great
Universe This
etherogram refers to your favorites in connection with the
'ape-beings' I just
mentioned It was sent to me from Mars and informs me, among
other things,
that the three-centered beings of the planet Earth are once
more troubled by
the 'ape question. '
"I must first tell you that on account of their abnormal
being-existence,
there was long ago crystallized and there is periodically
intensified in the
presence of those peculiar three-brained beings arising and
existing on the
planet Earth a strange factor, producing from time to time a
'crescendo
impulse,' under the action of which they wish to find out at
any cost whether
they have descended from these apes or the apes have
descended from them.
"Judging from the etherogram, this time the question is
agitating chiefly
the biped beings who breed on the continent called 'America.
'
"Although this question always troubles them somewhat, every
once in a
while it becomes for a long time, as they express it, the
'burning question of
the day. '
"I remember very well that this 'agitation of mind' over the
origin of the apes
occurred among them for the first time when their 'center of
culture,' as they
also like to express it, was the country of Tikliamish The
starting point of this
'agitation of mind' was the wiseacring of a certain 'learned
being of new
formation' named Menitkel.
"This Menitkel became a learned being because, in the first
place, his
childless aunt was an excellent 'matchmaker,' and mixed a
great deal with
'power-possessing beings', and because, in the second place,
at the age when
he was on the threshold of being a responsible being he was
given as a
birthday present a book entitled Manual of Bon Ton and
Love-Letter Writing
As he was financially secure and therefore quite free,
thanks to an inheritance
from his uncle, a former pawnbroker, he compiled, out of
boredom, a massive
and erudite work about the origin of these apes, in which he
'cooked up' an
elaborate theory supported by all kinds of 'logical proof,'
but of course such
'logical proof as can be conceived and crystallized only in
the Reason of those
freaks who have taken your fancy.
"This Menitkel then 'proved' by his theory that their
'fellow countrymen,'
the apes, were descended from none other than people who
had, as they say,
'gone wild ' The other terrestrial beings of that period, as
had already become
proper to them, believed implicitly this Auntie's darling,
without any 'essence-criticism'
whatsoever, and from that time on this question, agitating
the
strange 'Reason' of your favorites, became the subject of
disputes and
fantasies, right
up until what is called the seventh 'great planetary process
of reciprocal
destruction.'
"Thanks to this maleficent idea there was fixed in the
instincts of most of
the unfortunates of that period another abnormal so-called
'dictatorial factor,'
which began to engender in their common presence the false
feeling that these
ape-beings were sacred. And this factor, which engendered
such a sacrilegious
impulse, passed by heredity from generation to generation
and reached the
instincts of many beings even of the present time.
"As for the false notion cooked up by that 'pawnshop
progeny,' it held its
ground for nearly two of their centuries and became an
integral part of the
'Reason' of most of them. But due to various events growing
out of the
seventh planetary process of reciprocal destruction, which
lasted nearly half a
century, it gradually faded away and completely disappeared
from their
common presence.
"But when their so-called 'cultured existence' became
concentrated on the
continent of 'Europe,' and when the time again came around
for that peculiar
disease known as 'wiseacring' to manifest itself with
maximum intensity—for
this disease, by the way, had long before become subject to
the fundamental
cosmic law of Heptaparaparshinokh, according to which its
intensity had to
fluctuate with a certain periodicity—then, to the grief of
three-brained beings
of the whole Universe, that 'ape question,' or 'who is
descended from whom,'
once more arose and having become crystallized again became
part of the
abnormal 'Reason' of your favorites.
"In this instance also, the 'ape question' arose from the
stimulus given by a
learned being, of course again a 'great' one, but of an
altogether 'new
formation,' by the name of Darwin. This 'great' scientist,
basing his theory on
that same logic of theirs, set about 'proving' exactly the
opposite of what
Menitkel had said, that is, he 'proved' that it was they
themselves who were descended from these Mister Apes.
"As for the objective reality of either of the theories of
these 'great'
terrestrial learned beings, I am reminded of one of the wise
sayings of our
esteemed Mullah Nasr Eddin:
" 'Luck smiled on them both, for they both managed to find
the authentic
godmother of the incomparable Scheherazade on an old
dunghill.'
"In any case, bear in mind that for many centuries this
question, among
others just as ephemeral, has provided material for the kind
of thinking your
favorites consider the 'highest manifestation of Reason.'
"In my opinion your favorites could get a correct answer to
this question
that always agitates them of how the apes arose, if only
they really knew how
to apply another of the maxims of our dear Mullah Nasr Eddin,
who often
used to say:
'The cause of every misunderstanding must be sought in
woman. '
"If they had made use of this wise maxim to resolve their
enigmatic
question perhaps they would have finally discovered the
origin of these fellow
countrymen of theirs.
"As the subject of the genealogy of these apes is indeed
exceedingly
complicated and unusual, I shall inform your Reason about it
from every
possible aspect.
"The fact is that neither are your favorites descended from
apes nor are
apes descended from them, but the cause of the arising of
these apes is in
this case—as in every other misunderstanding there—their
women.
"First of all I must tell you that none of those terrestrial
ape-beings now
arising there in various exterior forms ever existed before
the second
'transapalnian perturbation', it was only after this
disaster that the genealogy of
their species began.
"The cause of the arising of these 'misconceived' beings
—as well as that of all events more or less serious in the
objective sense that
occur on the surface of that ill-fated planet—stemmed from
two sources
totally independent of each other.
"The first, as always, was the same lack of foresight on the
part of certain
Most High, Most Saintly Cosmic Individuals, and the second
was, once again,
those abnormal conditions of ordinary being-existence
established by your
favorites themselves.
"The point is that during the second transapalnian
perturbation, besides the
chief continent of Atlantis many other large and small land
masses entered
within the planet, and new land masses appeared in their
place These
displacements of various parts of the common presence of
this unfortunate
planet lasted several of their days, accompanied by frequent
planetary tremors
and manifestations that could not fail to evoke terror in
the consciousness and
feelings of beings of every kind.
"During that period many of your three-brained favorites
who, together
with one-brained and two-brained beings of other forms, had
chanced to
survive unexpectedly found themselves upon other newly
formed land masses
in places that were entirely unfamiliar to them It was just
then that many of
these strange 'keschapmartnian' three-brained beings of
active and passive sex
or, as they say, 'men' and 'women,' were compelled for a
number of their years
to exist apart, that is to say, without the opposite sex.
"Before continuing to relate how all this occurred, I must
tell you in a little
more detail about that sacred substance which is the final
result of the
evolving transformations of every kind of being-food and is
formed in the
presence of every being without distinction of 'brain system
' This sacred
substance, elaborated in the presence of beings of every
kind, is almost everywhere called 'exioëhary,' but your
favorites on the planet
Earth call it 'sperm. '
"Through the all-gracious foresight and command of our
Common Father
Creator and according to the actualization of Great Nature,
this sacred
substance arises in the presence of all beings, without
distinction of brain
system or exterior coating, in order that by its means they
may consciously or
automatically fulfill that part of their being-duty which
consists in the
continuation of their species But in the presence of
three-brained beings it
also arises in order that they may consciously transform it
for coating their
higher being-bodies for their own being.
"Before the second transapalnian perturbation there, which
the
contemporary three-brained beings refer to as the 'loss of
the continent of
Atlantis,' in the period when various consequences of the
properties of the
organ kundabuffer had already begun to be crystallized in
their presence, a
being-impulse was gradually formed in them which later
became
predominant.
"This impulse is now called 'pleasure', and in order to
satisfy it they were
already beginning to exist in a manner unbecoming to
three-centered beings,
that is to say, most of them gradually began to remove this
sacred being-substance
from themselves for the satisfaction of this impulse alone.
"Well, my boy, from then on most of the three-brained beings
of the planet
Earth were not content to carry out the process of the
removal of this
substance, which is continuously elaborated in them, only at
those periods
normally established by Great Nature for beings in
accordance with their
organization, for the purpose of the continuation of their
species Owing to
this, and also to the fact that most of them had ceased to
utilize this substance
consciously for coating their higher being-bodies, it came
about that when
they did not remove it from themselves in ways that by then
had become
mechanical, they naturally experienced a sensation called 'sirklinimana,'
a
state they describe as 'feeling out of sorts,' and which is
invariably
accompanied by what is called 'mechanical suffering.'
"Remind me at some opportune moment about those periods
fixed by
Nature for the normal process of the utilization of the
exioëhary by beings of
different brain-systems for the continuation of their
species, and I shall
explain this to you in detail.
"Well then, they like ourselves are only 'keschapmartnian'
beings, and
when this sacred substance, continuously and inevitably
formed in them, is
utilized normally for the continuation of their species by
means of the sacred
process 'elmooarno,' its removal from their presences must
be accomplished
exclusively with the opposite sex. But these three-brained
beings who by
chance had escaped disaster were no longer in the habit of
utilizing this
substance for coating their higher being-bodies and, as they
were already
existing in a manner unbecoming to three-brained beings,
when they were
obliged to exist for several of their years without beings
of the opposite sex,
they turned to various antinatural means for the removal
from themselves of
this sacred substance, exioëhary.
"The beings of the male sex had recourse to the antinatural
means called
'moordoorten' and 'androperasty' or, as the contemporary
beings would say,
'onanism' and 'pederasty,' and these antinatural means fully
satisfied them.
"But for the three-brained beings of the 'passive sex' or,
as they call them,
'women,' these antinatural means were not sufficiently
satisfying, and so the
poor 'women-orphans' of that time, already more cunning and
inventive than
the men, began to seek out beings of other forms and
accustom them to be
their 'partners.' Well then, it was after these
'partnerships' that there began to
appear in our Great Universe
those species of beings which, as our dear Mullah Nasr Eddin
would
say, are 'neither fish nor fowl.'
"As regards the possibility of this abnormal blending of two
different kinds of
exioëhary for the conception and formation of a new
planetary body of a
being, it is necessary to give you the following
explanation:
"On the planet Earth, as on other planets of our Universe
where
'keschapmartnian' beings breed and exist—that is,
three-brained beings in
whom the formation of the sacred exioëhary for the creation
of a new being
must take place exclusively in the presences of two beings
of distinct, independent
sexes—the fundamental difference between the sacred
exioëhary
formed in the presences of beings of opposite sexes, that
is, in men and
women, consists in this, that in the exioëhary formed in the
presences of
beings of the male sex, the localized 'holy affirming' or
'positive' force of the
sacred Triamazikamno participates, while in the exioëhary
formed in beings
of the female sex there participates the localized 'holy
denying' or 'negative'
force of the same sacred law.
"Thanks to the all-gracious foresight and command of our
Father of
everything existing in the Universe, and in accordance with
the actualizing
power of Great Mother Nature, in certain surrounding
conditions and with the
participation of the third separately localized holy force
of the sacred
Triamazikamno, namely, with the 'holy reconciling' force,
the blending of the
exioëhary formed in two separate beings of distinct,
independent sexes during
the process of the sacred 'elmooarno' taking place between
them brings about
the arising of a new being.
"In the case I was speaking of, the abnormal blending of two
heterogeneous kinds of exioëhary was possible only by virtue
of a certain
cosmic law known as the 'affinity of the numbers of the
totality of vibrations,'
which began to act
owing to the second transapalnian perturbation on this
ill-fated planet, and
which then still continued to act on its common presence.
"Concerning this cosmic law, it is important to tell you
that it arose and
began to exist in the Universe after the fundamental sacred
law of
Triamazikamno had been modified by our Creator in order to
render the
Heropass harmless, and after its holy parts, until then
entirely independent,
had become dependent upon forces from outside. But, my boy,
you will
understand this cosmic law in all its aspects only when I
shall explain in
detail, as I have promised you, all the fundamental laws of
world-creation and
world-existence.
"Meanwhile, you should know that on normally existing
planets anywhere
in our Great Universe the exioëhary formed in the presence
of a three-brained
being having organs of perception and transformation for
localizing the 'holy
affirming' force of the sacred Triamazikamno, in other
words, the exioëhary
formed in a three-brained keschapmartnian being of the
'male' sex, can never
be blended— owing to that same law—with the exioëhary formed
in the
presence of a two-brained keschapmartnian being of the
opposite sex.
"On the other hand, when a special combination of cosmic
forces occurs
and this same law of the 'affinity of the numbers of the
totality of vibrations'
begins to act, the exioëhary formed in a three-brained
keschapmartnian being
of the 'female' sex can sometimes, in certain surrounding
conditions, blend
quite well with the exioëhary formed in two-brained
keschapmartnian beings
of the male sex, but only as the active factor in the
actualizing process of the
fundamental sacred Triamazikamno.
"In short, during those terrible years on that planet of
yours, a phenomenon
very rare in the Universe appeared, that is,
a blending of the exioëhary of two keschapmartnian beings of
different brain
systems and of opposite sexes, and the result was the
arising of the ancestors
of these terrestrial 'misconceived' beings now called
'apes,' who give your favorites
no peace, and from time to time so agitate their strange
Reason.
"But when this terrible period was over, a relatively normal
process of
ordinary existence was reestablished on your planet, and
your favorites of
different sexes again began to find each other and exist
together, and
thereafter those 'ape-beings' actualized the continuation of
their species among
themselves.
"And this continuation of their species was possible because
the conception
for the arising of the first of these abnormal beings had
taken place according
to the same external conditions that in general determine
the presences of
future keschapmartnian beings of active or passive sex.
"The most interesting result of this highly abnormal
manifestation of the
three-brained beings of your planet is that there now exist
a great many
species of the descendants of these ape-beings, differing in
exterior form, and
each of these different species bears a striking resemblance
to some form of
two-brained quadruped being still in existence there.
"This came about because the blending of the exioëhary of
the
keschapmartnian three-brained beings of the female sex,
which brought about
the arising of the ancestors of those apes, proceeded with
the active exioëhary
of the various species of quadruped beings that exist there
even until today.
"Indeed, my boy, during my last personal stay on the planet
Earth, when I
happened in the course of my travels to come across the
various species of
apes and, in accordance with a habit that has become second
nature, I
observed them, I ascertained definitely that the whole of
their outer functioning
and the so-called 'automatic postures' of each 'species' of
these
contemporary apes are exactly like those in the common
presence of certain
normally arisen quadruped beings there, and their 'facial
features' are even
exactly the same as those of particular quadrupeds As for
the 'psychic
features' of all the different species of these apes, they
are absolutely
identical, even down to minute details, with those of the
psyche of the three-brained
beings of the 'female sex' there. "
At this point in his tales Beelzebub became silent. After a
long pause he
looked at his favorite Hassein with a smile that clearly
expressed a double
meaning. Then, still smiling, he said:
"The text of the etherogram I have just received also
indicates that this
time, in order to settle once and for all who is descended
from whom—they
from the apes or the apes from them—these freaks, your
favorites, have
decided to carry out 'scientific experiments', and several
of them have already
left for the continent of Africa, where many of these apes
breed, with the
object of bringing back the number required for these
'scientific
investigations' of theirs.
"To Judge by this etherogram, the beings of the planet Earth
who have
taken your fancy are once again up to their usual 'tricks. '
"From all I have learned about them during my observations,
I foresee that
this 'scientific experiment' will unquestionably arouse the
serious interest of
the rest of your favorites, and will for a time serve their
strange Reason as
material for endless discussion and argument. And all this
will be quite in the
order of things there.
"Concerning the 'scientific experiment' itself which they
propose to carry
out with the apes brought from Africa, I can say in advance
with certainty
that, at any rate, the first part of it will succeed with
flying colors.
"And it will succeed because the apes themselves, issuing
from what is
called a 'titillarian result,' are by nature very fond of
occupying themselves
with titillation, and before the day is out will no doubt
play their part and
enthusiastically assist your favorites in this 'scientific
experiment.'
"As for the beings who propose to carry out this experiment,
and as for any
benefit to be derived from it by the other three-brained
beings there, you can
get a good idea of the whole thing if you remember the
profoundly wise
saying of our honorable Mullah Nasr Eddin 'Happy is the
father whose son is
busy even with murder and robbery, for then he will have no
time to teach
him titillation.
"It seems, my boy, that I have not yet told you why and by
whom, ever since I
left the solar system Ors, I have been kept informed by
etherogram of the
most important events taking place on its various planets,
and also of course
on your planet Earth.
"You remember that my first descent in person to the surface
of that planet
of yours was made on account of one of the young beings of
our tribe, who
afterward did not wish to stay there any longer but returned
with us to the
planet Mars, where he later became an excellent governor of
the beings of our
tribe dwelling on that planet, and eventually of all the
beings of our tribe who,
for one reason or another, still dwell on certain planets of
the system Ors.
"Well then, my boy, when I left that solar system, I made
him a gift of my
famous observatory with everything in it, and in gratitude
for this he promised
to report to me once a year, according to the time
calculation of the planet
Mars, all the important events occurring on the planets of
that system And so
he keeps me accurately informed of the most important events
on all the
planets on which there is a being-existence, and, knowing my
great interest in
the three-brained beings breeding on the planet Earth, he
does his
best, as is clearly evident, to send me information
concerning all their
manifestations, thus keeping me constantly in touch with the
whole process of
ordinary existence of these three-brained beings, although I
am now
inaccessibly remote, even for their featherweight thoughts.
"This governor of our beings gathers all his information
about the three-brained
beings of the planet Earth either from his own observations
through
the great teskooano I left him, or from reports communicated
to him by those
three beings of our tribe who chose to remain forever on the
planet Earth, all
three of whom at the present time on the continent of Europe
have substantial
enterprises of their own—indispensable for everyone existing
there under the
prevailing conditions.
"One of them has an 'undertaker's business' in one of the
large cities, the
second, in another large city, runs a 'bureau for marriage
and divorce', and the
third is the proprietor of a network of agencies founded in
various cities for
what is called 'currency exchange. '
"However, my boy, owing to this etherogram, I have wandered
a long way
from my original tale. Let us go back to our former theme.
"Well then, on this fourth flight of mine to the planet
Earth our ship
Occasion alighted on the sea called the 'Red Sea ' And we
alighted on this sea
because it washed the eastern shores of the continent of
Grabontzi, now called
'Africa,' where I wished to go, and where the ape-beings I
needed then bred in
greater numbers than on any of the other land masses on the
surface of your
planet, and also because this sea was particularly
convenient for mooring our
ship Occasion, but above all because it bordered the country
known as 'Nilia,'
now called 'Egypt,' where at that period those beings of our
tribe existed who
wished to remain on
that planet, and upon whose help I was relying to collect
the apes.
"Having alighted on the Red Sea, we left our ship Occasion
and reached
the shore by 'hippodrenekakh', and afterward, on camels, we
came to the city
where our beings existed, then the capital of the future
Egypt. This capital city
was called 'Thebes.'
"On the very day of my arrival in the city of Thebes, one of
the beings of
our tribe there told me, among other things, that the
Earth-beings of that
locality had devised a new system for observing other cosmic
concentrations
from their planet, and in order to put it into effect were
then building the
required structures, and, as everybody was saying, this new
system offered
advantages and possibilities hitherto unparalleled on the
Earth.
"When he had told me all he had seen with his own eyes, I at
once became
greatly interested, for from his account of certain details
of this new
construction it seemed to me that these terrestrial beings
had perhaps found a
way of overcoming a difficulty to which I myself had just
been giving a great
deal of thought while completing the building of my
observatory on the planet
Mars.
"And so I decided to postpone for a while my original
intention of
immediately going farther south on that continent to collect
the apes I needed,
and to go instead to the place where those structures were
being erected, in
order to find out all about it for myself.
"Well then, the day after my arrival in the city of Thebes,
I took as guide one
of the beings of our tribe who had many friends there, among
them the chief
builder of those structures, and accompanied of course by
our faithful Ahoon,
I traveled this time on what is called a 'choorteteff' down
that great river now
known as the 'Nile.'
"Near the place where this river flowed into a large
saliakooriapnian area,
those great artifacts were just being completed, certain
parts of which
especially interested me.
"The district where the work was being carried on—both for
this new
'observatory,' as they called it, and for other buildings
designed for the
welfare of their being-existence —was then named 'Avazlin';
a few years later
it came to be called 'Caironana,' and today it is referred
to simply as the
'outskirts of Cairo.'
"These great artifacts were begun long before my fourth
flight to the Earth
by one of their 'pharaohs'—a title given to their kings by
the beings of that
region—and at the time of my first visit to this place they
were being
completed by his grandson, also a pharaoh.
"Although the observatory that interested me was not quite
finished,
observations of the visibility of cosmic concentrations
could be made from it,
and the results issuing from these concentrations as well as
the reciprocal
action of these results could be studied.
"At that period on the Earth the beings occupied with such
observations
and studies were called 'astrologers.' But later, when that
psychic disease of
your favorites called 'wiseacring' was finally fixed in
them, and these
specialists 'shriveled and shrank,' becoming 'specialists'
only in giving names
to remote cosmic concentrations, they came to be called
'astronomers.'
"The difference in value and significance for the beings
around them between
the professionals of that time and those who supposedly
follow the same
occupation today may show you the extent of the decline that
has steadily
taken place in the crystallization of data engendering 'sane
logical mentation,'
which your favorites as three-brained beings ought to have
in their common
presence; I therefore find
it necessary to explain this change for the worse, and help
you reach an
approximate understanding of it.
"At that period, the terrestrial three-brained beings of
responsible age
called 'astrologers,' besides making observations and
investigations of various
other cosmic concentrations for the purpose of a more
detailed study of the
branch of general learning they represented, took upon
themselves several
other definite essence-obligations toward their fellow
beings.
"One of their fundamental obligations was to advise, as our
'zirlikners' do,
all the conjugal pairs in their 'flock,' according to their
types, about the time
and form of the process of the sacred 'elmooarno' for the
purpose of a desirable
and corresponding conception of their results And when these
results
were actualized or, as they say, 'new-born,' the astrologers
had to draw up for
each of them an 'oblekioonerish,' that is, what your
favorites call a 'horoscope '
And from then on they or their deputies guided those young
beings during the
whole period of their formation up to responsible age, as
well as during their
responsible existence itself, giving them corresponding
indications on the
basis of the oblekioonerish and of the cosmic laws,
constantly explained by
them, relating to the action of the results of other large
cosmic concentrations
on the process of being-existence on all planets.
"These indications and, so to speak, 'warning counsels' of
theirs consisted
in the following:
"As soon as a function became disharmonized in the presence
of any being,
or was only just beginning to be so, he would apply to the
astrologer of his
district, who, on the basis of the oblekioonerish and of the
variations expected
according to calculation in the atmospheric processes caused
by the action of
other planets of their solar system, would indicate just
what the disharmonized
being should do with
his planetary body at certain definite periods of the
krentonalnian movement
of that planet, as for instance, in what direction to lie
down, how to breathe,
what movements it was preferable to make, with which types
of beings to
avoid relations, and many other things of this kind.
"Besides all this, the astrologers assigned to the beings of
their flock in the
seventh year of their existence, again on the basis of their
oblekioonerish,
corresponding mates of the opposite sex for the purpose of
fulfilling one of
the chief being-duties, that is, the continuation of the
species or, as your
favorites would say, they assigned them 'husbands' and
'wives.'
"Justice must be done to your favorites of that period as
long as these
astrologers existed among them, they followed their counsels
very strictly and
entered into conjugal unions only according to their
indications.
"Therefore, at that period, in regard to their conjugal
unions they always
corresponded to each other according to their types, just as
they do on all
other planets inhabited by keschapmartnian beings Far as
they were from
knowing many trogoautoegocratic cosmic truths, the ancient
terrestrial
astrologers made these matches successfully because they had
at least a
thorough knowledge of the laws governing the influence of
the different
planets of their solar system on the beings breeding on
their own planet, that
is, the influence of these planets on a being at the moment
of his conception,
for further development as well as for his complete
attainment of the being of
a responsible being.
"Thanks to the practical knowledge acquired over many
centuries and
transmitted from generation to generation, they knew which
types of the
passive sex corresponded to which types of the active sex.
Thus the pairs
chosen according to the indications of the astrologers
nearly always turned out
to be corresponding, which is the opposite of
what happens there today when your favorites are united in
conjugal pairs
who almost never correspond in type; so that throughout
their entire existence
about half of the so-called 'inner life' of these couples is
spent on what our
esteemed Mullah Nasr Eddin expresses in one of his sayings:
" 'What a good husband he is, and what a good wife she is,
whose whole
inner world is not taken up with the constant nagging of the
other half!'
"In any case, my boy, if these astrologers had continued to
exist and practice
there, they surely would have acquired such experience that
the existence of
the beings of this unfortunate planet would gradually have
come to bear some
resemblance, at least in their family relations, to that of
similar beings on
other planets of our Great Universe. But this beneficial
practice, established in
the process of their existence, your favorites have
thrown—as they have all
their other good attainments, without even having had time
to make real use
of it—to the 'gluttonous swine' of our venerable Mullah Nasr
Eddin.
"As usually happens there, these astrologers began gradually
to 'shrink,'
and finally, as is said, they 'vanished.'
"After the function of the astrologers had been abolished,
other
professionals in the same field appeared in their place, but
this time from
among the 'learned beings of new formation,' who also began
to observe and
study, as it were, the results issuing from the various
large cosmic concentrations
and their influence on the existence of the beings of their
planet. But as
the ordinary beings around them soon noticed that their
'observations' and
'studies' consisted merely in inventing names for various
remote suns and
planets—meaning nothing to them—among the milliards in the
Universe, and
in supposedly measuring, by a method known to these
professionals alone, the
distances between
the cosmic points seen from their planet through those
'playthings' of theirs,
which they also call 'telescopes,' they gave them, as I have
already told you,
the name of 'astronomers. '
"Now that we have mentioned these contemporary
'ultra-fantasists,' so highly
esteemed by your favorites, it will do no harm to enlighten
your Reason as to
their real significance.
"First of all, my boy, you should know about the existence
of a 'something'
that is actualized for these terrestrial types, as it is in
general for every cosmic
unit, and that serves for beings with Objective Reason as an
'initiating factor'
for comprehending the sense and meaning of any cosmic result
This
'something,' which serves as an 'initiating factor' in
evaluating the
significance of these contemporary terrestrial beings, is a
wiseacring 'map'—
named by them, of course unconsciously, an 'inventory of the
heavenly
spaces. '
"There is no need to draw any other logical conclusion about
this
'initiating factor' actualized specially for them, the very
name of this map of
theirs is enough to show that its designations can only be
relative With the
means at their disposal, even though they rack their
'esteemed brains' in
devising names and calculating various measurements, your
favorites can see
only those suns and planets that, fortunately for them, do
not change too
rapidly the course of their falling in relation to their own
planet, thus making
it possible for them over long periods of time—long, of
course, as compared
with the brevity of their own existence—to observe and, as
they pompously
put it, 'mark down their positions.'
"In any case, my boy, whatever may result from the
activities of these
contemporary representatives of 'science,' please don't hold
it against them. If
they bring no good at all to your favorites, at least they
do them no great harm
After all, they have to be occupied with something.
"It is not for nothing that they wear spectacles made in
Germany and special smocks sewn in England Let them be! Let
them
be occupied with this, God bless them!
"Otherwise, like most of the other freaks there who are
concerned,
as they say, with 'higher matters,' they will, out of
boredom, busy
themselves with the struggle of 'five against one ' And
everyone knows
that beings who are occupied with this exercise always
radiate
vibrations very harmful for those around them.
"Well enough! . . .Let us leave these contemporary
titillators in
peace and return once more to our interrupted theme.
"I think, my boy, that before I continue to speak about the
observatory
and other structures erected for the welfare of the
being-existence of
your favorites, you should know that the 'conscious power'
of the
three-brained beings manifested in the creation of those
great artifacts
that I saw with my own eyes—unparalleled before and after
that
period—was also a result of the attainments of ordinary
three-brained
beings, members of the learned Society of Akhldanns, which
was
formed on the continent of Atlantis before the second great
terrestrial
catastrophe, and so it will be appropriate if I first tell
you, even though
briefly, the history of the arising of that truly great
learned society.
"It is absolutely necessary to inform you of this history,
because in the
course of my further explanations about those three-brained
beings of
the planet Earth who have taken your fancy I shall probably
have to
refer more than once to that society of learned beings.
"And I must tell you about the history of its arising and
existence so
that you may realize that if something is attained by the
three-brained
beings on your planet thanks to their being-partkdolgduty'—that
is to
say, their conscious labor and intentional suffering—not
only are these
attainments utilized by them for the welfare of their own
being but also,
as with us, a certain part of these attainments is
transmitted by heredity and
becomes the property of their direct descendants.
"You can perceive this law-conformable result in the fact
that, although
abnormal conditions of ordinary being-existence had begun to
be established
even before the disappearance of the continent of Atlantis,
and although after
the second great catastrophe they worsened to such an extent
that the ableness
to manifest the possibilities proper to the presence of
three-brained beings was
soon totally crushed in them, nevertheless, at least part of
their scientific
attainments passed by inheritance, even though mechanically,
to their remote
posterity.
"I must first tell you that I learned about the history of
this society through
what are called 'teleoghinaras,' also found in the
atmosphere of your planet
Earth As you probably do not yet know exactly what a 'teleoghinara'
is, try to
transubstantiate in the corresponding parts of your common
presence the
information concerning this cosmic actualization.
"A 'teleoghinara' is a materialized idea or thought, which
after its arising
exists almost eternally in the atmosphere of the planet
where it appeared.
" 'Teleoghinaras' can be formed from being-contemplation of
a quality
such as only those three-brained beings have and can
actualize who have
coated in their presences their higher being-bodies, and
have brought the
perfecting of the Reason of these higher being-parts up to
the degree of the
sacred 'Martfotai ' And a sequence of being-ideas
materialized in this way
concerning a given event is called a 'korkaptilnian
thought-tape.'
"The 'korkaptilnian thought-tapes' concerning the arising of
the learned
Society of Akhldanns were, as I found out much later,
intentionally fixed by a
certain eternal Individual, Asoochilon, now a saint, who
became coated in the
common presence of a three-brained being named Tetetos,
who arose on the continent of Atlantis and existed there
four centuries before
the second great transapalnian perturbation.
"These 'korkaptilnian thought-tapes' are never destroyed as
long as the
given planet remains in the same 'tempo of movement' as at
the moment of
their arising, and they are subject to none of those
transformations, whatever
the cosmic cause, to which all other cosmic substances and
crystallizations are
periodically subject And however long a time may have
passed, every threebrained
being who has acquired in his presence the ableness to enter
into the
being-state called 'soorptakalknian contemplation' can
perceive these
'korkaptilnian thought-tapes' and become aware of their
contents'.
"And so, my boy, I myself learned the details of the arising
of the Society of
Akhldanns partly from the texts of these 'teleoghinaras' and
partly from
numerous data I gathered much later when I made my usual
detailed
investigations concerning a highly important fact that
interested me From
these two sources of information it became evident to me
that this learned
Society of Akhldanns, which arose on the continent of
Atlantis and was
composed of three-brained beings of the Earth, was founded
735 years before
the second transapalnian perturbation.
"It was founded on the initiative of a being there named
Belcultassi, who
was able to bring the perfecting of his highest being-part
to the Being of a
Sacred Eternal Individual, and this highest part of his now
dwells on the Holy
Planet Purgatory.
"In the course of my investigation of all the inner and
outer being-impulses
and manifestations that led this Belcultassi to form that
truly great society of
ordinary three-brained beings—'envied' in its day throughout
the whole
Universe as 'worthy of imitation'—it appeared that one day
while this future
Sacred Individual was engaged in contemplation,
according to the practice of every normal being, and by
association
his thoughts were concentrated on himself, that is, on the
meaning and aim of
his existence, he suddenly sensed and cognized that the
functioning of the
whole of him had been proceeding until then not as it should
have proceeded
according to sane logic.
"This unexpected realization shocked him so profoundly that
thereafter he
devoted the whole of himself exclusively to becoming able at
any cost to
unravel this and understand it.
"First of all, he decided to attain without delay the
'potency' that would
give him the force and the possibility to be absolutely
sincere with himself,
that is, to be able to overcome those impulses which had
become habitual in
the functioning of his common presence from the many
heterogeneous
associations arising in him from all sorts of accidental
shocks, coming from
outside and also engendered within, namely, the impulses
called 'self-love,'
'pride,' 'vanity,' and so on.
"And when, after incredible what are called 'organic' and
'psychic' efforts,
he had attained this, he began, without mercy for these
being-impulses that
had become inherent in his presence, to think and recall
just which being-impulses
had arisen in him on just what occasions in the course of
his past
existence, and how he had, consciously or unconsciously,
reacted to them.
"Analyzing himself in this manner, he began to recall
exactly which
impulses had provoked this or that reaction in his
'independently spiritualized'
parts, that is, in his body, in his feelings, and in his
thoughts, and the state of
his essence when he reacted to something more or less
attentively, and how
and when, in consequence of such reactions, he had
manifested consciously
with his 'I' or had acted automatically under the direction
of his instinct alone.
"And it was then that this bearer of the future Sacred
Individual,
Belcultassi, having in this way recalled all his former
perceptions,
experiencings, and manifestations, clearly realized that his
external
manifestations did not correspond at all either to his
perceptions or to the
definite impulses formed in him.
"He then began to make similar sincere observations of
impressions—
coming from without as well as from within—at the very
moment they were
perceived by his common presence, and he made all these
observations with
the same exhaustive, conscious verifications of how these
impressions were
perceived by each of his spiritualized parts, when and how
they were
experienced by the whole of his presence, and for what
manifestations they
became the impulses.
"These conscious observations and impartial verifications at
last convinced
Belcultassi that in his common presence something was
proceeding not as it
should proceed according to sane being-logic.
"As it became clear to me during my further detailed
investigations, although
Belcultassi had become convinced of the accuracy of his
observations of
himself, he doubted the validity of his own sensations and
understanding, and
even the normality of his own psychic organization He
therefore set himself
the task of verifying first of all whether he was in general
normal in sensing
and understanding everything in this way and not otherwise.
"To carry out this task, he decided to find out whether
others sensed and
cognized things in the same way he did. With this aim he
began inquiring
among his friends and acquaintances, trying to learn from
them how they
sensed all this, and how they cognized their perceptions and
manifestations,
both past and present—doing so of course very
discreetly, to avoid touching those impulses inherent in
them of self-love,
pride, and so on.
"Thanks to his inquiries, Belcultassi gradually succeeded in
evoking
sincerity in his friends and acquaintances, and as a result
he learned that they
all sensed and saw everything in themselves the same way
that he did.
"Now among these friends and acquaintances of his were
several serious
beings not yet entirely enslaved by the action of the
consequences of the
properties of the organ kundabuffer, and they also, having
penetrated to the
gist of the matter, became very deeply interested in it, and
continued to verify
what proceeded in themselves and independently to observe
those around
them.
"Shortly afterward, again on the initiative of Belcultassi,
they began to
meet together from time to time to share their observations
and findings. As a
result of prolonged verifications, observations, and
impartial conclusions, this
entire group of terrestrial beings became absolutely
convinced, as Belcultassi
was, that they were not as they ought to be.
"A little later many other beings who also had such a
presence joined their
group. And still later they founded the society which they
named the 'Society
of Akhldanns.'
"The word 'akhldann' then expressed the following concept:
'the striving to
become aware of the sense and aim of the Being of beings.'
"From the day of the founding of this society, Belcultassi
himself stood at its
head, and the activities of its members were carried out
under his general
guidance. For many of their years the society existed under
the same name,
and its members were called 'Akhldannsovors'; but later,
when for purposes of
a general character they divided up into a number of
independent groups, the
members came to be called by the names of their different
groups.
"And this division into groups took place for the following
reason:
"When the members of the society had become definitely
convinced that
there was something very undesirable in their presence, they
began to search
for every possible means of achieving its removal from
themselves, in order to
become able to be what they ought to have been according to
sane logic, and
thus to correspond to the sense and aim of their existence,
the elucidation of
which they had determined to carry out at any cost as the
very basis of their
task But when they began to put into practice this task
decided on by their
Reason, they soon realized that in order to fulfill it they
must first collect more
detailed information in various special branches of
knowledge.
"And as it proved impossible for each of them individually
to acquire all
the necessary specialized knowledge, they divided up for
convenience into a
number of groups, so that each group could study one of the
special branches
of knowledge required for their common aim.
"Here you should note, my boy, that it was then that genuine
Objective
Science arose there for the first time, and developed
normally until the second
great catastrophe to their planet—certain of its branches
even developing at an
unprecedented rate Consequently, during that period many
objective cosmic
truths, great and small, gradually became evident to those
three-brained beings
who have taken your fancy.
"The members of this first, and perhaps last, great
terrestrial learned society
were then divided into seven independent groups or
'sections,' and each of
these sections received a specific designation.
"The members of the first group of the Akhldann Society were
called
'Akhldann-fokhsovors,' which meant that they
studied the presence of their own planet and the reciprocal
action of its
separate parts.
"The members of the second section were called 'Akhldann-strassovors,'
and this meant that they studied the 'radiations' of all the
other planets of their
solar system and the reciprocal action of these radiations.
"The members belonging to the third section were called 'Akhldannmetrosovors,'
which meant beings occupied with the study of that branch of
knowledge similar to our 'silkoornano,' corresponding in
part to what your
contemporary favorites call 'mathematics.'
"The members of the fourth group were called 'Akhldann-psychosovors,'
a
name designating those members of the society who made
observations of the
perceptions, experiencings, and manifestations of beings
like themselves—
observations that they verified statistically.
"The members of the fifth group were called 'Akhldann-harnosovors,'
which meant that they were occupied with the study of the
branch of
knowledge that combined the two contemporary terrestrial
sciences called by
your favorites 'chemistry' and 'physics.'
"The members belonging to the sixth section were called 'Akhldannmistessovors,'
that is to say, beings who studied all kinds of outer
events,
whether actualized consciously or arising by themselves, and
further studied
which of these events were erroneously perceived by beings,
and in what
circumstances.
"And as regards the members of the seventh and last group,
they were
called 'Akhldann-gezpoodjnisovors.' These members of the
Akhldann Society
devoted themselves to the study of those manifestations of
the three-brained
beings of their planet proceeding in them not as a result of
various
functionings coming from impulses of different kinds
engendered by data
already present in them, but as a
result of cosmic influences coming from outside and not
depending on the
beings themselves.
"The three-brained beings of your planet who became members
of this
society actually approached Objective Knowledge to a degree
that had never
been reached before and perhaps will never be reached again.
"And here it is impossible not to express regret that, to
the great misfortune of
the terrestrial three-brained beings of all later epochs,
just at the moment
when, after incredible being-efforts by the members of that
great society, the
required tempo of work had finally been established—both
with regard to the
conscious discernment of themselves and the unconscious
preparation for the
welfare of their descendants—just at the height of all their
efforts, as I said,
certain of them ascertained that something serious was soon
to befall their
planet.
"In order to determine the character of the serious event
they anticipated,
they dispersed over the whole planet and, shortly afterward,
as you already
know, the second transapalnian perturbation occurred to that
ill-fated planet
of yours.
"Well then, my boy, after this catastrophe, a number of the
members of that
great learned society who had survived gradually came
together again and,
having lost their native land, first settled with other
surviving beings in the
center of the continent of Grabontzi, but later, when they
had somewhat come
to themselves after this 'cataclysm not according to law,'
they jointly decided
to try to reestablish their society and perhaps to resume
and fulfill in practice
all the tasks that had formed its basis Unfortunately, on
that part of the surface
of the continent of Grabontzi the abnormal conditions of
being-existence
already established before the
catastrophe had by this time begun to 'boil furiously'; and
so these surviving
members of the Akhldann Society looked for another place on
that continent
for their permanent existence more suitable for carrying on
their work, which
demanded complete seclusion.
"They found a suitable place in the valley of the large
river flowing
northward on that continent and they all migrated there with
their families, in
order to continue in seclusion to fulfill the tasks
undertaken by their society.
"The entire region through which this great river flowed
they first named
'Sakronakari.' This name was afterward changed several times
and today that
region is called 'Egypt,' while the great river then known
as 'Nipilhooatchi,' is
now, as I have already said, called the 'Nile.'
"Not long after these former members of the learned Society
of Akhldanns
had settled on this part of the surface of the planet Earth,
all the beings of our
tribe then existing on that planet migrated to the same
place. The relationship
of the beings of our tribe with that part of the surface of
your planet, and also
with those former members of the Society of Akhldanns who by
chance had
survived, came about as follows.
"I once told you that, just before the second transapalnian
perturbation, our
'pythoness' during a prophecy had insisted that for the
continuation of their
existence on that planet all the beings of our tribe should
migrate without
delay to a definite part of the same continent, now called
'Africa.' The part of
the continent indicated by the 'pythoness' lay near the
source of the river
Nipilhooatchi, and the beings of our tribe existed there
during the whole of
the second transapalnian perturbation and also later, when
things became
relatively normal and most of the surviving terrestrial
beings had almost
forgotten the catastrophe, and had again formed—just as if
nothing had
happened to them—one of their famous 'centers of culture' in
the very heart of
the future
Africa. And while the former members of the Society of
Akhldanns were
looking for a suitable place for their permanent existence,
they chanced to
meet several beings of our tribe, who advised them to
migrate farther down
the same river.
"Our friendly relations with many of the former members of
the Society of
Akhldanns had begun on the continent of Atlantis and went
back almost to the
founding of that society Do you remember, I told you that
when I descended
to that planet for the first time, the beings of our tribe
were assembled in the
city of Samlios in order, with my participation, to find
some way out of the
difficult situation that had been created? Well then, those
general meetings of
ours were held in one of the chapter halls of the principal
'cathedral' of the
Society of Akhldanns, and from that time on good relations
were established
between the beings of our tribe and certain members of that
society.
"And there, in the future Egypt, where both of these groups
of beings had
migrated as I have described, the relations of the beings of
our tribe with
those former members who had by chance survived, and also
with their
descendants, lasted without interruption almost until the
departure of our tribe
from your planet.
"The hope of the few surviving members of the Society of
Akhldanns that
they would be able to revive the society and carry out its
tasks was not
fulfilled Nevertheless, thanks to them alone, there was
preserved in the
presence of the beings of several generations after the loss
of Atlantis the
sense and 'instinctive conviction' of the need for what is
called 'completed
personal being.
"It was also thanks to them that certain attainments of the
Reason of the
three-brained beings there survived as long as their Reason
remained normal,
and after a while began to be transmitted mechanically from
generation to
generation,
reaching the beings of quite recent periods and even certain
beings of the
present day.
"Among the results of the scientific attainments of the
members of the
Akhldann Society, transmitted by inheritance, were also
unquestionably those
imposing and ingenious 'structures' that, during the fourth
descent of mine to
your planet, I saw being erected by the beings breeding on
that part of the
present Africa.
"Although, when I saw this new observatory with my own eyes,
the
expectations I had formed about it from everything our
countrymen had told
me were not justified, nevertheless this observatory and the
other architectural
works of the beings of that region proved to be exceedingly
ingenious, and
aroused in my common presence data that enriched my
consciousness with a
great deal of productive information.
"So that you may clearly represent to yourself and
understand how these
structures were erected by the three-brained beings of this
region for the
welfare of their being-existence it will be enough, I think,
if I explain to you
in as great detail as possible how the particularity of
their ingenious and
practical inventions was manifested in this new observatory,
on account of
which I had decided to visit that place.
"To begin with, I must inform you of two facts related to
the change in the
common presence of these three-brained beings who have taken
your fancy.
"The first fact is that at the beginning, while they were
still existing
normally in a manner becoming to all three-brained beings in
general and
while they still had what is called 'olooestesnokhnian
sight,' they could
perceive with their own eyes the visibility of all great and
small cosmic
concentrations existing beyond them during any process of
the Omnipresent
Okidanokh taking place in their atmosphere up to a distance
proper to the
vision of ordinary three-brained beings.
"Moreover, those who had consciously perfected themselves
and who had
thereby brought the sensitivity of perception of their organ
of sight up to what
is called the 'olooessultratesnokhnian state,' acquired, as
do three-brained
beings everywhere else, the possibility of perceiving, at
that same distance,
the visibility of all cosmic units whose arising and further
existence depend
upon crystallizations coming directly from the sacred
Theomertmalogos, that
is to say, from the emanations of our Most Holy Sun
Absolute.
"And when the abnormal conditions of ordinary
being-existence had
become fixed there, and when, for reasons I have already
told you about,
Great Nature was compelled, among other restrictive
measures, to degrade the
functioning of their organ of sight to what is called the 'koritesnokhnian'
level—proper only to the presence of one-brained and
two-brained beings—
from that time on the three-brained beings there were able
to perceive the
visibility of any great or small cosmic concentrations
situated beyond them
only when the sacred process of 'Aieioiuoa' proceeded in the
'omnipresent
active element' Okidanokh in the atmosphere of their planet
or, as they say,
according to their understanding and perceptions, in the
'dark of night. '
"The second fact, also related to the degeneration of their
sight to the
'koritesnokhnian' level, is based on a law common to all
beings, namely, that
the results of any manifestation of the Omnipresent
Okidanokh are perceived
only when the organ of sight is in immediate contact with
the vibrations
formed in beings which actualize the functioning of that
being-organ,
enabling it at the given moment to perceive the visibility
of cosmic
concentrations situated beyond them, that is to say, the
results of any
manifestation of the Omnipresent Okidanokh are perceived
only when they
take place within certain limits—depending upon the quality
of perception
attained by the given organ—and beyond these limits what is
called the
'momentum of the
impulse' dies down; or, to put it otherwise, these beings
perceive the visibility
of objects only when they are almost next to them.
"But if these results take place beyond the mentioned
limits, this
manifestation does not reach those beings in whose presence
the organs of
visual perception have been formed only by the results of
the totality of
'itoklanotz.'
"Here it is opportune to recall one of the profound sayings
of our Mullah
Nasr Eddin, which very neatly fits the present case, that
is, the degree to
which the visual perception of your contemporary favorites
is limited. This
wise saying of his, seldom used there, consists of the
following words:
'Show me the elephant the blind man has seen—and then I will
believe
that you really see a fly.'
"Well, my boy, thanks to the artificial devices for the
observation of other
cosmic concentrations which I had seen, and which were being
constructed in
that future Egypt on the initiative coming from the Reason
of the remote descendants
of the members of the learned Society of Akhldanns, any one
of
these unfortunate favorites of yours, in spite of the 'koritesnokhnian'
sight that
had long before become inherent in them, acquired the power
to perceive
freely at any time, as they say, 'of the day or night' the
visibility of all those
remote cosmic concentrations which during the process of the
general
harmonious movement fell within the sphere of their
observation.
"To compensate for the limitation of their organ of visual
perception they
invented the following: instead of placing their 'teskooano,'
or telescope, on
the surface of the planet, as was the custom in those days
and still is, they
placed it very deep within the planet, according to an idea
which, by the way,
had also come down to them from their remote ancestors, and
carried out their
observations of cosmic concentrations
found beyond the atmosphere of the Earth through specially
hollowed-out 'shafts.'
"The observatory I then saw had five of these shafts Each of
them opened
toward the horizon from a different point in the space
occupied by the
observatory, but they all converged at a small underground
hollow, something
like a 'cave ' From there the specialists of that time,
called 'astrologers,' made
their observations for the purpose of studying, as I have
already told you, the
visible presences and the results of the reciprocal action
of cosmic
concentrations belonging to their own solar system as well
as to other systems
of our Great Universe.
"They made their observations through any one of the five
shafts, which
looked out in different directions toward the horizon,
according to the given
position of their planet in the process of the
'common-cosmic harmonious
movement' in relation to the cosmic concentration being
observed.
"I repeat, my boy, that although the chief particularity of
the observatory
erected by the three-brained beings of the future Egypt was
not new to me,
since this principle had also been applied in my observatory
on Mars—the
only difference being that my seven long tubes were placed
not within the
planet but on its surface—nevertheless all their innovations
were so
interesting that, for any eventuality, I even made a
detailed sketch of
everything I saw during my stay there, and later made use of
some of it in my
own observatory.
"As for the other large structures there, I shall perhaps
tell you more about
them later Meanwhile I shall only say that all these
separate, still unfinished
structures were laid out not far from the observatory itself
and, as I learned
upon examining them under the guidance of the chief builder,
a friend of one
of our tribe, they were intended partly for the
observation of other suns and planets of our Great Universe,
and partly for
determining and intentionally directing the currents of the
surrounding
atmosphere so as to obtain the 'climate' desired.
"All these structures occupied a fairly large area in that
locality and were
enclosed within a special lattice fence made of the plant
known there as
'zalnakatar.'
"It is very interesting to note here that at the main
entrance to that vast
enclosure they had erected a rather large stone figure—large
of course in
comparison with the size of their presences—called the
'Sphinx,' which
strongly reminded me of the statue I had seen on my first
descent in person to
your planet in the city of Samlios, just opposite the
enormous building
belonging to the learned Society of Akhldanns, which was
then known as the
'principal cathedral' of this society.
"The statue I saw in the city of Samlios and which greatly
interested me
was the emblem of the society, and was called 'Conscience.'
"It represented an allegorical being, each part of whose
planetary body
represented one part of the planetary body of some definite
form of being
existing on the Earth, which, according to the notions
crystallized in the three-brained
beings there, expressed to perfection one or another
being-function.
"The mass of the planetary body of this allegorical being
was represented
by the 'trunk' of a terrestrial being of definite form
called 'bull.'
"This bull trunk rested on the four legs of another form of
being existing
there called 'lion'; and to the part of the trunk called the
'back' were attached
two large wings, similar in appearance to those of a
powerful bird-being
breeding there called 'eagle.'
"And at the place where the head should have been, there
were fixed to the bull's trunk by means of a piece of
'amber' two breasts
representing the 'breasts of a virgin. '
"When I became interested in this strange allegorical figure
on the
continent of Atlantis and inquired about its meaning, one of
the learned
members of the great society of men-beings gave me the
following
explanation:
" 'This allegorical figure is the emblem of the Society of
Akhldanns, and
serves as a stimulus for all its members constantly to
recall and awaken in
themselves the impulses corresponding to those it
represents.
"And he went on to say:
" 'Each part of this allegorical figure arouses in every
member of our
society, in the three independently associating parts of his
common presence,
that is, in the body, in the thoughts, and in the feelings,
a shock calling forth
corresponding associations for the separate realizations
which, in their totality,
alone make it possible for us to rid ourselves little by
little of the maleficent
factors present in every one of us, both those factors
transmitted by heredity
and those we have ourselves acquired, which gradually
engender within us
undesirable impulses, as a consequence of which we are not
what we might be.
" 'This emblem of ours constantly reminds us and indicates
to us that it is
possible to attain freedom from those factors only if we
unremittingly compel
our common presences to think, feel, and act under all
circumstances in
accordance with what is expressed in this allegorical
figure.
" 'And all of us who are members of the Society of Akhldanns
understand
our emblem in the following way:
'The trunk of this allegorical being, represented by that of
a bull, means
that the factors crystallized in us, both inherited and
personally acquired,
which engender in our presences those maleficent impulses
can be regenerated
only by indefatigable labors—those labors for which, among
all the beings of
our planet, the "bull" is particularly fitted.
" 'That this trunk rests on the legs of a lion means that
these labors must be
performed with the awareness and feeling of courage and of
faith in one's
'might'—that property possessed in the highest degree, among
all the beings of
the Earth, by the being to whom these legs belong, the
mighty "lion."
'The wings of the strongest and highest-soaring of birds,
the "eagle,"
attached to the bull's trunk, constantly remind the members
of our society that,
during these labors, and while experiencing this inner
psychic property of self-respect,
one must meditate unceasingly on questions not concerned
with the
manifestations directly required for ordinary
being-existence.
'As regards the strange image of the head of our allegorical
being in the
form of the "breasts of a virgin," this means that "love"
should predominate
always and in everything during the inner and outer
functionings evoked by
one's consciousness—such a love as can arise and exist only
in the presence of
concentrations formed in the lawful parts of every whole
responsible being in
whom the hopes of our Common Father are placed.
" 'And that the head is fixed to the trunk of the bull with
amber signifies
that this love should be strictly impartial, that is to say,
completely separated
from all the other functions proceeding in every whole
responsible being.
"In order, my boy, for you to understand the meaning
symbolized by the
material known there as 'amber,' I must add that amber is
one of the seven
planetary formations in the arising of which the
'omnipresent active element'
Okidanokh enters with its three separate, independent, and
sacred parts in
equal proportions, and, in the process of planetary
actualization, these
intraplanetary and surplanetary formations serve to impede
the independent
flow of the three separate streams of these three localized
sacred parts.
At this point in his tale, Beelzebub paused for a moment, as
if pondering
something, and then continued:
"While I was describing to you what I then saw on a part of
the surface of
your planet still surviving today, where there existed
certain direct
descendants of the members of that truly great learned
Society of Akhldanns,
there were gradually revived in me—as a result of the
manifestations of my
being-Reason and due to the effect of various associations
aroused by the
visual impressions of the environment of that region—all the
scenes and the
whole series of associative thoughts evoking a certain
being-experiencing of
mine that occurred during my last stay there when I visited
contemporary
Egypt and was sitting one day absorbed in thought at the
foot of one of those
ancient structures which have chanced to survive from that
period and are
called today the 'pyramids.'
"And in the general functioning of my Reason there
proceeded, among
other things, the following reflections:
"Good! . . . If not even one of the benefits for ordinary
being-existence
formerly attained by the Reason of the beings of the
continent of Atlantis has
come down by inheritance to contemporary beings of your
planet, this could
perhaps be logically justified by the simple fact that, for
cosmic reasons
neither issuing from the three-brained beings there nor in
any way depending
upon them, the second great cataclysm not according to law
occurred, in
which not only this continent itself perished but also
almost everything existing
upon it.
"But Egypt! Was not its magnificence still quite recent?
"There is no denying it.
"As a result of the third small catastrophe to that
ill-fated planet, and of the
fifth—about which I will speak later—this part of its
surface was covered with
sand. Nevertheless, the three-brained beings dwelling there
did not perish, but
were only scattered over various other parts of the same
continent,
and so in whatever new conditions they found themselves,
there should have
been preserved in their presence the crystallized results of
the factors
perfected for normal 'being-logical mentation,' transmitted
to them by heredity.
"Well, my boy, after these distressing 'alstoozori' of mine
or, as your
favorites would say, 'sorrowful reflections,' I wished to
clarify for myself the
true cause of this lamentable fact, and as a result of
careful investigations I
finally understood and became aware with my whole being that
this
abnormality is due exclusively to one aspect of the chief
particularity of their
strange psyche, that particularity which has become a
completely crystallized,
inseparable part of their common presence and serves as a
factor for the periodic
arising in them of the 'urgent need to destroy everything
outside
themselves.
"For when this particularity of their psyche—horrifying for
every being
with Reason—reaches its climax and those three-brained
beings begin to
manifest it outwardly, that is to say, when they begin to
carry out the process
of reciprocal destruction on some part of the surface of
their planet, then, at
the same time, just in passing, as it were, with no
deliberate aim and even
without what is called 'organic need,' they also destroy
everything that comes
within range of their organ of sight. At the height of these
psychopathic paroxysms,
the beings between whom this terrible process takes place
destroy not
only each others' intentionally produced objects but also
works of the beings
of former ages that have chanced to survive and reach them
intact.
"And so it was, my boy, that at the period of my fourth
sojourn on the surface
of your planet, and after my arrival in the country now
known as 'Egypt,' I
stayed there several days among the remote descendants of
the members of
the learned Society of Akhldanns, and became acquainted with
certain results
of their being-partkdolgduty that had survived
for the welfare of their descendants. Then, accompanied by
two members of
our tribe, I went to the southern countries of this
continent where, with the
help of the local three-brained beings, I captured the
desired number of ape-beings.
"Having accomplished this, I signaled telepathically to our
ship Occasion,
which descended to us, it must be said, on the first very
dark night And when
we had loaded the ape-beings into the special compartment of
the ship that
had been arranged for Gornahoor Harharkh under his own
direction, we
reascended to the planet Mars, and three Martian days later,
taking the apes
with me, I ascended on the same ship to the planet Saturn.
"Though we had decided to carry out the experiments on the
apes only in
the following year, when they would have become thoroughly
acclimatized
and adapted to their new conditions of existence, I ascended
to the planet
Saturn without delay, because at my last meeting with
Gornahoor Harharkh I
had promised him to be present at a family solemnity that
was soon to take
place.
"This family solemnity, called a 'khri-khra-khri,' was the
consecration by
the beings around Gornahoor Harharkh of his recently arisen
first heir.
"I had promised to attend this family solemnity in order to
take upon
myself toward this first heir of his what is called the 'alnatoorornian
being-duty.'
"Here it is interesting to remark that the ceremony for
assuming this being-duty
also took place in ancient times among the three-brained
beings of your
planet and has even come down to your contemporary favorites
but, just as in
everything else, they have kept only the external form of
this serious and
important procedure The beings who, as it were, take this
obligation upon
themselves are called by your contemporary favorites
'godfathers' and
'godmothers.'
"This first heir of Gornahoor Harharkh was then named
Raoorkh."
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