B453 <=> B455 [BTG XXX Art, p. 454]

“Owing to their genuine and sincere striving to the corresponding manner of their existence and to their being-acts, these several terrestrial beings had already, even before their arrival in Babylon, been considered initiates of the first degree by those terrestrial three-brained beings worthy to become what are called ‘All-the-Rights-Possessing-Initiates-according-to-the-renewed-rules-of-the-Most-Saintly-Ashiata-Shiemash.’

“And thus, my boy, when I began going to the said club, it became quite clear to me, both from the conversations with them and from other data, that these several terrestrial learned beings who sincerely strove to perfect their Reason had from the beginning kept to themselves in the city of Babylon, and never mixed in any of those affairs with which the general mass of these Babylonian learned beings there of that time very soon became involved.

“These several learned beings kept themselves apart there, not only in the beginning when all the other learned beings who were then in the city of Babylon first opened a central place for their meetings in the very heart of the city, and when for their better mutual support both materially and morally, they founded there a central club for all the learned beings of the Earth; but also later on, when the whole body of learned beings were divided into three separate ‘sections’ and each section had its independent club in one or another part of the city of Babylon, they identified themselves with non of the said three sections.