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

tain beings—do you remember, I have already told you— understood bythemselves that something 'not quite right' proceeded in them, and when theyalso discovered that they had certain possibilities of destroying this something'not quite right' and of becoming such as they ought to be."It was just at that period of the flow of time when certain of them hadobserved those 'abnormal functionings' proceeding in their commonpresence—abnormal, that is, according to sane being-mentation—and wereseeking out their causes, and trying to find every possible means of removingthem from themselves, that many branches of genuine science reached a veryhigh degree of development Among those who were seriously interested inthis 'most essential activity of Reason,' as it was then called, was a terrestrialthree-brained being by the name of Theophany, who was the first to lay arational foundation for the subsequent development of this branch of genuinescience."As I chanced to learn later, this Theophany was once pouring a certainmixture onto a marble slab to dry, which consisted of the extract of the plantthen called 'patetook,' pine resin, and cream from the milk of the then famous'Khenionan goats,' so that when hardened it would produce a mastic used forchewing after eating, when he noticed for the first time that in whatever wayand in whatever quantity this mixture was poured onto the marble slab, italways solidified in the same way—and after the final cooling alwaysassumed a form composed of seven distinct plane surfaces."This fact, unexpectedly ascertained by Theophany, greatly astonished himand an intense wish arose in his common presence to elucidate to his Reasonthe root causes, still unknown to him, of this law-conformable phenomenon,and he therefore began to repeat the same procedure, but now with aconscious aim."From the very beginning of the investigations under-