B253 <=> B255 [BTG XXII Beelzebub’s first time Tibet, p. 254]

“These wild beings, particularly the smallest of them, were at that time already – also, of course, owing to the abnormally established conditions of the ordinary being-existence of the three-brained beings there – perfected as regards apprehendingness and cunning up to the ideal.

“In consequence of this, all along this second route of ours, we, and especially our workmen for the semiconscious work, had to be extremely watchful and alert at night in order to guard ourselves, our quadruped beings, and our supplies.

“A whole ‘gathering’ of these wild beings would form round our camp at night, having come there to provide themselves with something suitable for their first food, a meeting rather like an ‘assembly’ of your favorites during what is called the ‘quotation of stock prices’ or during their ‘election’ of representatives to some society or other, the nominal purpose of which is the joint pursuit of a means to the happy existence of all beings like themselves without distinction of their notorious castes.

“Although we kept logs burning brightly all night, to scare these wild beings, and although our biped workers, notwithstanding that they were forbidden, destroyed with the help of the, as they are called, poisoned arrows of ‘Elnapara’ those beings that came too near our camp, yet not a single night passed upon which what are there called ‘tigers,’ ‘lions,’ and ‘hyenas’ did not carry off one or more of our quadruped beings; the number of which in consequence diminished daily.

“Although, my boy, this way back to the Sea of Beneficence took us far longer than the way by which we had come here, all that we then saw and heard about the strangeness of the psyche of your favorites, during our passage through these places, fully justified the extra time spent.