Beelzebub, on Castes

     ""In my opinion, it was the second of these two chief forms of abnormally established ordinary being-existence, namely, the assigning of each other to different classes or castes, that had become, as you will surely understand for yourself later, the basis for the gradual crystallization in the common presence of your favorites of a particular psychic property that in the whole of the Universe is inherent exclusively in the presence of those three-brained beings.

     "This unique property was formed in them soon after the second transapalnian perturbation and, gradually developing and becoming stronger in them, passed from generation to generation by heredity, until it reached contemporary beings as a lawful and inseparable part of their general psyche; and this particular property they call 'egoism.'

     "Sometime later, at an appropriate place in my further tales about the three-brained beings of the planet Earth, I will explain to you in detail how, thanks to the abnormal conditions of external being-existence established there, your favorites first began assigning each other to various castes and how, thanks again to the same abnormalities, this maleficent form of mutual relationship has persisted until today.  But meanwhile you should know that the cause of the arising in their common presence of this unique property of 'egoism' was that, owing as always to those abnormally established conditions, soon after the second transapalnian perturbation their general psyche became dual.

     "This became fully evident to me during my last sojourn on the surface of this planet of yours, when I began to be deeply interested in the legomonism concerning the deliberations of the Very Saintly Ashiata Shiemash entitled 'The Terror of the Situation.'  In the course of my detailed research and investigations relating to his subsequent very saintly activities and their results, the question arose in me of how and why those factors, obtained from the particles of the emanations of the sorrow of our Common Father Creator for the actualizing in their presence of the divine being-impulse of Objective Conscience, was crystallized precisely in their 'subconscious,' and so avoided that final degeneration of all the data placed in them for engendering the being-impulses of Faith, Hope, and Love.  And this strange anomaly, by the way, fully justifies one of the numerous wise sayings of our highly esteemed, irreplaceable, and honorable Mulla Nasr Eddin, which states:

     "'Every real happiness for man can arise exclusively from unhappiness--also real--which he has already experienced.'

     "This duality of their general psyche is produced because, on the one hand, various what are called 'individual initiatives' issue from that localization in their presence which is always predominant during their waking existence and is nothing but the result of accidentally perceived impressions coming from their abnormal environment, which taken as a whole make up their so-called 'consciousness'; and on the other hand, various other 'individual initiatives' simultaneously issue from that normal localization existing in the presence of every kind of being which they call the 'subconscious.'

     "And because these 'individual initiatives' issue from two different localizations, each of your favorites in his daily waking existence is, as it were, divided into two independent personalities.

     "Here it must be remarked that this duality was also the reason why their presence gradually lost that impulse indispensible to three-brained beings which is called 'sincerity.'

     "Later, the practice even took root among them of intentionally suppressing this being-impulse called 'sincerity'; and now, from the day of their arising or, as they say, from the day of their 'birth,' these three-brained beings are taught by their producers--or, as they say, their 'parents'--an entirely contrary impulse, namely 'deceit.'

     "To teach and influence their children to be insincere with others and deceitful in everything has become so ingrained in the beings of the planet Earth of the present time that they even consider this their duty toward their children; and they designate this conduct by the famous word 'education.'

     "They 'educate' their children never to be able and never to dare to do as the conscience present in them instinctively directs, but only what is prescribed in the manuals of 'bon ton' usually compiled by various candidate-ghassnamoosses.

     "And of course by the time these children grow up and become responsible beings, they already manifest themselves and act automatically just as they were taught during their formation, just as was suggested to them, and just as they were 'wound up'--in short, just as they were 'educated.'

     "Thanks to all this, the conscience that might be in the consciousness of the beings of that planet is, from their earliest infancy, gradually driven back within, so that by the time they are grown up this conscience is found only in what they call their 'subconscious.'

     "And the functioning of the aforementioned data for engendering in their presence this divine impulse of Conscience gradually ceased long ago to participate in that consciousness under the direction of which their 'waking existence' flows.

     "That is why, my boy, the crystallization in their common presence of the divine manifestation issuing from Above, forming the data for the arising of this sacred being-impulse, takes place only in their 'subconscious,' which has ceased to participate in the process of their ordinary daily existence, so that these data have escaped the degeneration undergone by all the other sacred being-impulses that they also ought to have in their presence, namely, the impulses of Faith, Hope, and Love."

 Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, G.I. Gurdjieff, Viking Arkana Edition, 1992, Chapter 27

     "As for the disappearance from their common presence of data for the 'ableness to be sincere' with other beings like themselves, this was caused by that abnormal form of their mutual relationships long before established there which, as I have already told you, was based on their division into different 'castes or classes.'

     "When this habit of allocating one another to these various maleficent castes had become inherent in them, there gradually crystallized in the common presence of each of them two peculiar, quite opposite 'organic properties,' whose manifestations have ceased little by little to depend on either their ordinary consciousness or their 'subconscious.'

     "These two properties consist in their always behaving toward each other either with 'haughtiness' or with 'servility.'

     "While these properties are being manifested in them, any relationship 'on an equal footing' with anybody at all is paralyzed.  And thanks to this, their inner sincere, as well as their outer habitual, relationships have become established in such a way, particularly in recent times, that it is now quite usual, if someone belongs to a caste considered higher than that of another, for impulses called 'haughtiness,' 'contempt,' 'condescension,' and so on to arise in him toward the other.  And if someone considers his own caste lower than that of another, there will unfailingly arise in him the impulses they call 'self-abasement,' 'false humility,' 'obsequiousness,' 'cringing,' and many others of the same sort, all of which together constantly deprive your favorites of what is called the 'awareness of one's own individuality,' which ought to be present in them also.

     "And so these properties, becoming inherent in their common presence, gradually caused your favorites to lose the habit of being sincere with others like themselves and finally to cease automatically to be capable of it, even with those belonging to their own caste.

     "For this reason, my boy, I decided this time, while existing among these favorites of yours, to choose that profession which makes it possible, now and then, automatically to establish relations in which they can be sincere up to a certain degree; and I did this in order to have the opportunity of asking questions indispensible to my research, and thus of collecting material for my elucidations.

     "That is why I then became one of those profesionals known there at the present time as 'physicians.'

 Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, G.I. Gurdjieff, Viking Arkana Edition, 1992, Chapter 31