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

CHAPTER 24Beelzebub's fifth flight to the planet EarthBEELZEBUB continued his tale as follows:"After my fourth sojourn on the surface of the planet Earth, many yearspassed by."During these years, of course only from time to time, I attentivelyobserved through my teskooano the being-existence of these favorites ofyours."By now their numbers had considerably increased, and they were alreadypopulating almost all the large and small land masses on your planet, and ofcourse their chief particularity continued to manifest itself, that is to say,every so often they would begin to destroy each other's existence."During this time, that is, between my fourth and fifth visits, the surface ofyour planet underwent great changes, particularly in the places where theexistence of your favorites was concentrated For example, their 'centers ofculture' on the continent of Ashhark that I had personally visited on myprevious descents to the Earth, namely, the countries of Tikliamish andMaralpleicie, had entirely disappeared by the time of my fifth arrival there"The cause of the destruction of these 'centers of culture' and of thechanges on the surface of the Earth was a new catastrophe, the third for thisill-fated planet."This third catastrophe was entirely local in character, and occurred as aresult of unprecedented accelerated 'displacements of parts of the atmosphere'or, as your favorites would say, 'great winds,' which lasted several years."And the cause of these abnormal displacements, or 'great winds,' wasonce again those two fragments which had broken off from this planet ofyours during the first great ca-