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

y the time they are ripe they contain scarcely anything destined by GreatNature for consumption by beings for their normal being-existence."These scientists of new formation are, of course, very far from suspectingthat, when any surplanetary formation is artificially grafted or manipulated inany such fashion, it is reduced to a state defined by Objective Science as'absoizomosa,' in which it absorbs from its surrounding medium cosmicsubstances useful only for the coating of what is called its 'automaticallyreproducing subjective presence.'"Indeed, from the very beginning of this most recent contemporarycivilization of theirs, it somehow happened that the beings of all theinnumerable separate groups there adopted only one of the seven aspects ofthe fundamental commandment given to three-brained beings from Above,namely, 'to strive to acquire inner and outer purity', and this single aspect,which in a distorted form they made their ideal, is conveyed in the followingwords:" 'Help everything around you, both the animate and inanimate, to acquirea beautiful appearance. '"Especially in the last two centuries there, they have striven to achieve this'beautiful appearance'—but of course, only for those various external objectswhich in the given period chanced to become, as they expressed it, 'fashionable.'"During this period, it has been of no concern to them whether anyexternal object had any substance whatsoever in itself—what was importantwas that it should have what they call a 'striking appearance. '"I must say, my boy, as regards the achievements of the contemporarybeings of this continent in enhancing the 'external beauty' of these fruits oftheirs, that nowhere on the other continents of the same planet or even on theother planets of that solar system have I seen fruits so beautiful in appearanceas that of the present time on this continent of