ZERO POINT

"The SLUGS"

On G. I. Gurdjieff's Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson

Section II

7. The Atrophy of the Sacred Being-Impulses
of Faith, Hope & Love

During Beelzebub’s fifth visit on the spaceship “Occasion” to the Earth from the planet Mars, he visits the “Center-of-Culture” of the time–the majestic city of Babylon. Beelzebub was attempting to elucidate for himself, and for a High Commission, the factors which were contributing to the “acceleration of the rate of the degeneration of their ‘psychic-organization.” Beelzebub explains to Hassein that the beings no longer had a “real being-psyche,” and there had been an “atrophy” within them of the three sacred “being-impulses” –of Faith, Hope and Love. (p. 321)
Beelzebub recounts various stories about Sacred Individuals who visited the Earth, or who were “intentionally actualized from Above.” The Tales include materials on Saint Krishnatkharna, Saint Buddha, Saint Lama, Saint Mohammed, Saint Jesus Christ, and Saint Moses. These Sacred Individuals had attempted to help humankind through one of the three“sacred ways for self-perfecting,” namely based on the arousing of the three sacred being-impulses of faith, hope and love.

During his fifth visit to Earth, Beelzebub reads from a “legominism,” or statement by another Sacred Individual, the “Very Saintly Ashiata Shiemash,” entitled “The Terror-of-the-Situation.” Ashiasta Shiemash had similarly been actualized from Above, and intended to influence the course of events through the means of the traditional sacred ways for self-perfecting. However, his observations and experiences on the planet Earth raised grave “essence-doubt” about the possibility of doing so, because of “the consequences of the properties of the Kundabuffer ... (which had) crystallized in their presences.” These ill-effects formed an artificial “second nature” within the three-brained beings, and each of the sacred being-impulses had degenerated within their strange psyches.
Ashiasha Shiemash, after a period of meditation realized that it was “already too late” to save the contemporary beings by the three traditional ways. Each of the sacred being-impulses had passed into the subconscious, and atrophied into new peculiarities within the human psyche. Properties of the organ Kundabuffer, which resembled the sacred being-impulses, had become mixed with them. Ashiata Shiemash explained:

“The contemporary three-centered beings here do at times, believe, love, and hope with their Reason as well as with their feelings; but how they believe, how they love, and how they hope–ah, it is exactly in this that all the peculiarity of these three being-properties lies!” (p. 356) Firstly, these sacred being impulses no longer arise or function “independently,” as they do in other three-brained beings in the Universe, but instead, they always depend upon some consequence of the organ Kundabuffer–“as for instance, ... “vanity,” “self-love,” “pride,” “self-conceit,” and so forth. ... “swagger,” “imagination,” “bragging,” “arrogance,” and so on.” (p. 356)

Faith has degenerated into a willingness to “believe-any-old-tale,” if it evokes these characteristics within the men-beings. Similarly, the genuine being-impulse of love is confused with sexual sense, pity, desire for submission, a craze for outer things, and so on. Ashiasta Shiemash elaborates on the nature of Love, as a sacred being-impulse:

"... that most beatific sacred being-impulse in the presence of every three-centered being of the whole Universe, which, in accordance with the divine foresight of Great Nature, forms those data in us, from the result of the experiencing of which we can blissfully rest from the meritorious labors actualized by us for the purpose of self-perfection.” (p. 357) Of course, other three-brained beings in the Universe, as well as Beelzebub and Hassein, have as the center of their emotional life, “an independent brain localized in the region of their what is called ‘breast,’” –instead of a center dispersed through the body, as the nodes of the sympathetic nervous system, but most primarily in the ‘pit of the stomach’ and the solar plexus.   (pp. 779-780)
    Similarly, the sacred-being impulse of Hope has atrophied into a "newly-formed-abnormal hope,” where they “always hope in something.” The hope of the slugs has become a hope for tomorrow, for better things, and it is fed by self-love and imagination. This so-called hope leads to “possibilities ... being paralysed in them.”
    At various points within the Tales, Beelzebub provides brief depictions of the atrophied forms of the sacred being-impulses and their true forms. Generally, he depicts the slugs as “always believing, always loving, and always hoping in everything newly perceived.” (p. 567) In contrast, the true being-impulse of faith is depicted:

“... owing to faith alone does there appear in a being, the intensity of being-self-consciousness necessary for every being, and also the valuation of personal Being as a particle of Everything Existing in the Universe.” (pp. 191-2) The intensification of being self-consciousness brings about an awareness of self as a particle of everything existing, and a faith in God, the Endlessness, an ultimate life source. According to Beelzebub, three brained beings can “instinctually sense reality” and this should be the basis of Faith, not the wishing for tomorrow or for something new. Faith arises, like love and hope, as a result of sensing the reality of one’s being and not from imagination or outward things.

Love, according to Beelzebub, “should predominate always and in everything during the inner and the outer functioning evoked by one’s consciousness,” but such a love is only in the presences of those who are “formed in the lawful parts of every whole”–requiring an awakening to the realities of self. (p. 310) Elsewhere, Beelzebub explains that the “being-property of sensing the inner feeling of similar beings in relations to oneself” is another property which “must infallibly exist in all beings of our Great Universe,” but this again has atrophied among the men-beings of planet Earth. Beelzebub depicts experiences which are generally unknown among the contemporary beings. However,

“... occasionally, one of those favourites of yours perfects himself firstly to the degree of sensing with all his spiritualized parts that every being or, as is said, ‘every breathing creature’ is equally near and dear to our COMMON FATHER ... .” (p. 878) Higher emotions, or the sacred being-impulses, are experienced only when a man-being becomes spiritualized in his parts, and attains a certain “totality-of-self-awareness.”

Nott (1969), a student of Gurdjieff, describes moments of awakening to such a state of self-consciousness. His account illustrates a taste of the sacred being-impulses:

It was during this summer that I had the first deep and vivid experience of higher consciousness. The three previous experiences of this unexpected impact of higher forces were a taste of real consciousness of self. The present one was different. One hot day I was walking from the house across the fields to bathe in the Wisconsin river. About half way a strange and wonderful force began to enter into me and permeate my whole being, and filled me with light and power. I stopped and stood still and let the force flow. Although I was aware of my surroundings–the forest and fields and the hot sun, they were only a background to the inner experience; all anxieties and cares of ordinary life dropped away; at the same time I saw myself and my relations with people quite clearly; I saw the patterns of my life, my organism moving as it were along its appointed path. There was time no longer, and an understanding of the whole of life seemed possible for me. It was as if for a few moments I had entered into my real life; and the outer life, which had seemed so important and took up all my time, was not the real life but something ephemeral, a sort of cinema film with which I was identified. Only the inner something was eternal-I, the real self of me. I AM. (p.154) Moments of self-consciousness enable one to penetrate the hidden dimensions of being and self. Experiences involve the transformation of the sense of time, illumination of the patterns of one’s life, realization of one’s interconnectedness with nature and the larger cosmos, and experiences of objective emotions–including the sacred being-impulses of faith, hope and love. The experience of self-consciousness involves a quantum shift in the experience of I–awakening to one nature as a particle of the living and sacred whole.
Higher emotions do not come about through the refinement or intensification of typical personal emotions. Real emotions require the dissolution of the false consciousness system, based upon self-love and self-feeling, attachments and identifications, “swagger” and “cunning.” Such personal emotions are based on the complex of nerve nodes within the sympathetic system, particularly in the “pit of the stomach,” and not within the original center of emotions, related by Beelzebub to a independent brain in the area of “the breast.” All esoteric mystical paths teach the importance of transcending personal elements in the emotional life and the awakening of the Heart.
Unfortunately, for your favorites, humankind on planet Earth, the sacred being-impulses have atrophied, contributing further to the degradation of the human psyche.

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