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

"At any other time, perhaps nothing would have happened and this new'gospel' of his would simply have slipped into its niche in the libraries of thebibliomaniacs there among the multitudes of other books expounding similar'truths.'"But fortunately or unfortunately for this writer, it happened that certain'power-possessing beings' of the great community in which he existed hadjust been having rotten luck at 'roulette' and 'baccarat' in various resortsabroad, and kept on demanding what is called 'money' from the ordinarybeings of their community, whereupon, thanks to these inordinate demands,these beings at last awakened from their usual 'torpor' and began to 'sit up.'"Seeing this, the 'power-possessing beings' who had stayed at homebecame alarmed and took appropriate measures."Among these measures was the total and immediate destruction ofanything new that appeared in their native land that could possibly keep theordinary beings of their community from falling back into their torpor."It was just then that this writer's 'gospel' appeared."In the contents of this new 'gospel,' the power-possessing beings foundcertain things which, in their understanding, might keep the ordinary beingsfrom hibernating again, and so they immediately decided to get rid of boththe writer and his 'gospel,' for by now they had become past masters atgetting rid of native 'upstarts' who did not mind their own business."But for certain reasons they could not treat this writer in that way Thisthrew them into a quandary, and they hemmed and hawed about what to do."Some proposed simply to shut him up in a place teeming with 'rats' and'lice', others to send him to 'Timbuktu,' and so on and so forth, but in the endthey decided to anathematize both him and his 'gospel,' with public ceremonyand