Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson: All and Everything by G.I. Gurdjieff

Author:G.I. Gurdjieff
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Mysticism, Philosophy, Religious, Fiction
ISBN: 9780141956343
Publisher: Penguin UK
Published: 2000-01-27T00:00:00+00:00

“As regards the second factor, although all the causes serving together as the source of its arising were, as I have said, the abnormal conditions of their ordinary being-existence, in my opinion the basic cause is their famous subdivision into ‘castes,’ which has become established for their mutual relationships and has existed there uninterruptedly, except in the period when the results of the most saintly labors of Ashiata Shiemash had definitely taken root in them.

“The only difference is that in former centuries the division into different castes proceeded from the consciousness and initiative of certain independent individuals there, whereas now this proceeds quite automatically without the participation of the will or consciousness of anyone.

“Now, my boy, I find it opportune to explain to you briefly in what way and in what progression these favorites of yours became automatically sorted out into their different celebrated ‘classes,’ and also how later they began by themselves to subdivide into ‘castes.’

“Whenever, through various chance circumstances, a substantial group of your favorites concentrates somewhere in order to exist together, certain of them in whom for some reason or other the consequences of the properties of the organ kundabuffer have already been thoroughly crystallized—which gives to their common presence the impulse for what is called ‘cunning’—and in whose hands there are at that time many different what are called ‘means of intimidation,’ or what they themselves call ‘weapons,’ soon set themselves apart from the other beings and, putting themselves at their head, constitute the beginnings of what is called the ‘ruling class.’

“And further, since in all three-brained beings of the planet Earth, particularly of recent periods, the sacred being-impulse called ‘Conscience’ takes no part in the functioning of their ordinary consciousness—as a result of which they lack even the desire to make any conscious being-effort at all—the beings who have thus set themselves apart as the ruling class, making use of these ‘means of intimidation,’ compel the other beings of the given group to produce for them even those efforts which every being should without fail make for himself in his ordinary being-existence.

“And the other beings of the group, also for the same reasons, not wishing to produce these being-efforts themselves, least of all for others, and at the same time fearing the means of intimidation of the beings of the ruling class, begin to resort to all kinds of cunning in order to unload ‘onto their neighbor’s back’ the being-efforts inevitably required by the ruling class.

“The usual result is that the beings of every such group gradually sort themselves out and fall into different categories according to the degree of their artfulness. And it is precisely their division into categories of this kind that leads to further subdivision in subsequent generations, and the assignment of one another into these famous ‘castes’ of theirs.

“This relegating of one another to castes of different kinds infallibly crystallizes in the common presence of each of them toward the beings belonging to other castes the being-data for what is called

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