Beelzebubs-Tales-to-His-Grandson-by-G-I-Gurdjieff

Earth by an as yet very limited number of people, is based, as I have alreadysaid, on three specific data formed in me at different times during mypreparatory age.The first of these three data, from the moment of its arising, became as itwere the chief directing lever of my entire whole, while the other two becamethe "vivifying sources" for the nourishing and perfecting of the firstThis first datum arose in me when I was still, as is said, a "chubby mite "My dear, now deceased, grandmother was then still alive and was a hundredand some years old.When my grandmother—may she attain the Kingdom of Heaven—wasdying, my mother, as was then the custom, took me to her bedside and, as Ikissed her right hand, my dear grandmother placed her dying left hand on myhead and said in a whisper, yet very distinctly:"Eldest of my grandsons! Listen and always remember my strict injunctionto you: In life never do as others do."Having said this, she gazed at the bridge of my nose and, evidently noticingmy perplexity and my obscure understanding of what she had said, addedsomewhat angrily and imperiously:"Either do nothing—just go to school—or do something nobody else doesWhereupon she immediately, without hesitation and with a perceptibleimpulse of disdain for all around her, and with commendable self-cognizance,gave up her soul directly into the hands of His Faithfulness, the ArchangelGabriel.I think it will be interesting and perhaps even instructive for you to knowthat all this made so powerful an impression on me that I was suddenly unableto endure anyone around me, and as soon as we left the room where the mortal"planetary body" of the cause of the cause of my arising lay, I, very quietly,trying not to attract attention, stole away to the pit where, during Lent, thebran and potato peelings were stored for our "sanitarians," that is to say, ourpigs.