According to Beelzebub’s Tales, the early harmony of the solar system “Ors” was disrupted by a cosmic catastrophe.  A comet collided with the earth and broke off two fragments which became the Moon and a secondary satellite, Anulios–unknown to modern science.  This catastrophe threatened to disrupt the broader Cosmic Harmony, until the moons were stabilized in their new orbits.  A second catastrophe then occurred when the Earth’s “center-of-gravity” shifted–as an aftereffect of Moon being ejected and later falling back into orbit.  This caused the submerging of the continent Atlantis and the rising of other land masses.   Later catastrophes, the great winds, were also byproducts of adjustments involving the Moon and its atmosphere, in conjunction with the Earth.  One of the cosmic adjustments instituted required that a certain “sacred vibration,” “askokin vibrations,” be produced by the Earth in order to maintain the moons.  Such energies are produced by organic life on earth and by the existence of humankind–the Tetartocosmoses.  Beelzebub states: “... by their existence they ...  maintain the detached fragments of their planet.”

Unfortunately, other unforeseen cosmic misfortune occurred when certain archangels on a Most Holy Commission implanted a special organ called the Kundabuffer in humankind, at the base of the spine.  The purpose of this intervention was to prevent humans from becoming aware of their enslavement to the moon and thus rebelling in order to escape their fate.  The properties of this special organ are most peculiar in their effects upon humankind.  The Kundabuffer causes humans firstly to “perceive reality topsy-turvy” and secondly, to be conditioned by “sensations of ‘pleasure’ and ‘enjoyment.’” 

Beelzebub describes this “topsy-turvy” process as taking the “ephemeral for the real,” as contemporary three-brained beings have “mechanized themselves to see nothing real.”  One aspect of this peculiarity of the human psyche is the tendency to “depend exclusively only upon what others say about (any) given question”–that is, the qualities of suggestibility and gullibility.  The three-brained beings’ knowledge of reality is no longer based upon their own being-experience, the fulfilling of their being obligations and “being-Partkdolg-duty,” nor is it based upon their own “sane or active deliberations,” nor upon the “instinctual sensing of reality.”   Instead, Beelzebub describes people as ready to believe any old tale, simply recording what is heard or what one is told or reads, in a ‘formatory’ way.  ¹   People then imagine that they understand themselves and all those things about which they talk, profess and write their books.  Gurdjieff refers distastefully to “the scientists of new formation” with their invented sciences and philosophies, and the “disease of lying,” by which people imagine that they know all kinds of things–none of which they have directly experienced or arrived at through their own ‘sane deliberations.’  The first effect of the organ Kundabuffer was that the three-brained beings breeding on planet earth no longer “instinctually sense reality” but came to perceive reality “topsy-turvy.”

 The second major effect of the organ Kundabuffer is also quite odd, as explained by Beelzebub: “that every repeated impression from outside should crystallize in them data which would engender factors for evoking in them sensations of ‘pleasure’ and ‘enjoyment.” (p. 88)   The Kundabuffer causes humankind to become conditioned by sense pleasure and enjoyment.  Beelzebub consistently describes the laziness and self indulgence of human beings, their imaginary concerns, vanity and egoism, and multiform sexual vices.  He portrays humans as continually misusing their sexual substances, “only for the satisfaction of the said impulse”–of pleasure.  Humans do not understand the role that these sacred sexual substances play in the psychology of their possible evolution and the coating of the “higher being-bodies.” 

The Kundabuffer organ was eventually removed from human beings–again by a higher Commission–when the moons were apparently no longer a threat to the larger cosmic harmony.  However, the effects of the Kundabuffer on the human psyche had become crystallized in humans’ presences and were maintained by the abnormal conditions of being-existence which had become established.   The properties of the Kundabuffer thus passed from generation to generation even in the absence of the organ itself.  In various stories to his grandson, Beelzebub provides humorous insights into the peculiarities and deficiencies of the strange human psyche–all explained in reference to a background of cosmic occurrences.  

Over time, the strangeness of the human psyches increased and, according to Beelzebub, “the quality of their radiations went steadily from bad to worse.”  (p. 106)   These ‘radiations,’ or ‘Askokin vibrations,’ are ordinarily released at the destruction of beings and are required for the maintenance and evolution of the Moons and the Earth–but not in such vast quantities.   Great Nature thus increased the numbers of the three-brained beings on Earth in order to accommodate the atrophy of the human psyche and the degeneration of the Askokin vibrations. However, other adverse effects were then produced–including decreasing age expectancies, from centuries to seventy years or so; various illnesses; animal sacrifice and slaughter; and the worst “horror of the situation,” human warfare–the “process of reciprocal destruction.”  These pathological symptoms of the degradation of the human psyche continue to disrupt the larger cosmic harmony, because the deaths (or Rascooarnos) of such large numbers of beings produces surpluses of poor ‘Askokin vibrations.’  

Beelzebub’s tales also describe the roles of various Sacred Individuals who visited the earth trying to bring sanity back to those disturbed three-brained beings breeding there, mainly through the awakening of various sacred being-impulses which are still dormant in the unconscious. Unfortunately, the ‘spiritual part’ of humans has passed into their subconscious and a ‘false consciousness’ system has been formed and maintained by the Kundabuffer and its properties crystallized in their presences, and by the abnormal conditions of being-existence established on Earth. 

Beelzebub’s tales are rich in surrealistic humour and portray most vividly the horror of the situation and the strangeness of the human psyche evident on that ill-fated planet Earth.  Serious undesirable qualities have became crystallized in humans, who are no longer capable of sincere and active mentation or the instinctual sensing of reality, but are controlled by their ‘egoism,’ the reflexes of the stomach, material interests, sexual vices, self-calming and other ‘Hasnamussian’ traits.  As Beelzebub suggests, the only serious thing for a “slug” is to awaken and overcome the strangeness of their psyche.