Beelzebub’s Tales
Chapt 12 “Introducing a perspective that promises nothing very cheerful”
I MUST TELL you that in the beginning the beings on that planet had the same presence as those of all the ‘keschapmartnian’ three-brained beings arising on all the corresponding planets of the whole of our Great Universe, and that they also had the same duration of existence as all other three-brained beings
“The various changes in their presence began for the most part after the second misfortune had occurred to this ill-fated planet, during which its chief continent, existing under the name of ‘Atlantis,’ entered within the planet.
“From that time on, they created all sorts of conditions of external being-existence that caused the quality of their radiations to go steadily from bad to worse.
…”As for their psyche, its fundamental traits have precisely the same peculiarities in all of them, no matter where they arise. And among these is that special property thanks to which only on that strange planet in the whole of the Universe does there occur the horrible process called the ‘process of the destruction of each other’s existence’ or, as they call it on that ill-fated planet, ‘war.’
“Besides this chief particularity of their common psyche, certain properties in each of them, regardless of where they arise and exist, are completely crystallized and become an integral part of their common presence, properties that exist under the names of ‘egoism,’ ‘self-love,’ ‘vanity,’ ‘pride,’ ‘conceit,’ ‘credulity,’ ‘suggestibility,’ and many others no less abnormal and unbecoming to the essence of any three-brained being whatsoever.
“Of these abnormal properties the most terrible one for them is ‘suggestibility.’
Chapter 34, Beelzebub in Russia
Beelzebub replied as follows:
“…In the course of long centuries many customs and what are called ‘moral habits,’ often very good and useful for their ordinary existence, were gradually established among your favorites of the planet Earth, as on all planets where beings arise who spend part of their existence simply in ordinary processes. But herein lies the evil, that these happy achievements of being-welfare, which become fixed in the process of ordinary existence from the flow of time alone, and which improve through transmission from generation to generation, sooner or later disappear entirely or are so modified that they are automatically transformed into ‘unhappy’ ones, thus increasing the number of those small harmful factors that taken as a whole ‘dilute’ more and more each year both the psyche and the very essence of your favorites.
“Of course, if at least any of these good customs and already automatized moral habits, fixed by time in the process of their existence, could have survived and passed by inheritance to subsequent generations, this alone would have made their existence, now so ‘desolate’ in the objective sense, a little more acceptable in the eyes of an impartial observer.
“The causes of the complete destruction or modification of this being-welfare for their tolerable existence—arising from the good customs and moral habits acquired in the passage of time—are once again to be found in the abnormal conditions of ordinary being-existence established by them themselves.
“And the concentrated result of these abnormal conditions around them is a special property that arose not long ago in their psyche, and that became the basic cause of the aforementioned evil. This property is called ‘suggestibility.’
“Thanks to this strange property, only recently fixed in their psyche, all the functionings of their common presence gradually began to change, and as a result, each of these beings, particularly those who arose and reached responsible age during the last centuries, came to represent in themselves a peculiar type of cosmic formation which has the possibility of acting only if it is constantly under the influence of another formation similar to itself.
“And indeed, my boy, at the present time all these terrestrial three-brained beings, taken both as separate persons and as large or small groups, must infallibly ‘influence’ or come under the ‘influence’ of others.
Views From the Real World
Influences
(After speaking of chemico-physical influences…)
Associative influences, on the other hand, are quite different. Let us take first the associative influences on me of “form.” Form influences me. I am accustomed to see a particular form, and when it is absent I am afraid. Form gives the initial shock to my associations. For example, beauty is also form. In reality we cannot see form as it is, we only see an image.
The second of these associative influences is my feelings, my sympathies or antipathies.
Your feelings affect me, my feelings react correspondingly. But sometimes it happens the other way round. It depends on the combinations. Either you influence me or I influence you. This influence may be called “relationship.”
The third of these associative influences may be called “persuasion” or “suggestion.” For example, one man persuades another with words. One persuades you, you persuade another. Everybody persuades, everybody suggests. (p.256)
The third kind of influence, suggestion, is very powerful.
Every person is under the influence of suggestion; one person suggests to another. Many suggestions occur very easily, especially if we don’t know that we are being exposed to suggestion. But even if we do know, suggestions penetrate.
It is very important to understand one law. As a rule, at every moment of our life only one center works in us—either mind or feeling. Our feeling is of one kind when another center is not looking on, when the ability to criticize is absent. By itself a center has no consciousness, no memory; it is a chunk of a particular kind of meat without salt, an organ, a certain combination of substances which merely possesses a special capacity of recording.
Indeed it greatly resembles the coating of a recording tape.
If I say something to it, it can later repeat it. It is completely mechanical, organically mechanical. All centers differ slightly as to their substance, but their properties are the same.
Now, if I say to one center that you are beautiful, it believes it. If I tell it that this is red—it also believes. But it does not understand—its understanding is quite subjective. Later, if I ask it a question, it repeats in reply what I have said. It will not change in a hundred, in a thousand years—it will always remain the same. Our mind has no critical faculty in itself, no consciousness, nothing. And all the other centers are the same.
What then is our consciousness, our memory, our critical faculty? It’s very simple. It is when one center specially watches another, when it sees and feels what is going on there and, seeing it, records it all within itself.
…
In the majority of cases each center lives its own life. It believes everything it hears, without criticism, and records everything as it has heard it. If it hears something it has heard before, it simply records. If something it hears is incorrect, for instance, something was red before and is blue now, it resists, not because it wants to find out what is right but simply because it does not immediately believe. But it does believe, it believes everything. If something is different, it only needs time for perceptions to settle down. If another center is not watching at the moment, it puts blue over red. And so blue and red remain together and later, when we read the records, it begins to answer: “red.” But “blue” is just as likely to pop out.
It is possible for us to ensure a critical perception of new material if we take care that, during perception, another center should stand by and perceive this material from aside. Supposing I now say something new. If you listen to me with one center, there will be nothing new for you in what I am saying; you need to listen differently.
If you wish to hear new things in a new way, you must listen in a new way.