And nothing stuck, as it was quite recently made clear to me, not through any fault of mine, nor through the fault of my former respected and nonrespected teachers, but this human labor was spent in vain owing to one unexpected and quite exceptional event which occurred at the moment of my appearance on God’s Earth, and which was — as a certain occultist well known in Europe explained to me after a very minute what is called “psycho-physico-astrological” investigation — that at that moment, through the hole made in the windowpane by our crazy lame goat, there poured the vibrations of sound which arose in the neighbor’s house from an Edison phonograph, and the midwife had in her mouth a lozenge saturated with cocaine of German make, and moreover not “Ersatz”, and was sucking this lozenge to these sounds without the proper enjoyment. 34 BTG I

But the change I have witnessed in that language during the last thirty or forty years has been such, that instead of an original independent language coming to us from the remote past, there has resulted and now exists one, which though also original and independent, yet represents, as might be said, a “kind of clownish potpourri of languages”, the totality of the consonances of which, falling on the ear of a more or less conscious and understanding listener, sounds just like the “tones” of Turkish, Persian, French, Kurd, and Russian words and still other “indigestible” and inarticulate noises. 55 BTG I

“It is a place of indescribable beauty and splendiferousness. In that Paradise are magnificent fruits in abundance, and endless quantities of fragrant flowers and enchanting sounds of cherubic songs and seraphic music constantly echo in the air; and many other things were also enumerated whose outer reactions according to the perceptions and cognitions abnormally inherent in the three-brained beings of that strange planet are likely to evoke in them, as they say, ‘great-satisfaction’, that is to say the satisfaction of those needs formed in their common presences, which are criminal for three-centered beings to possess, and the totality of which have driven out from their presences everything, without exception, that was put into them by our COMMON FATHER and which it is imperative for every three-brained being to possess. 2049 BTG XXIV

“In that Hell sounds constantly echo of fearful ‘cacophony’ and infuriated offensive ‘abuse’. 2052 BTG XXIV

“The second particularity of the functioning of the perceptive organ of hearing is that in general, by the action of vibrations obtained from the sequence of sounds of every kind of melody, the association is usually evoked in the presences of the beings in one or another of the three brains, just in that brain in which at the given moment what is called ‘the-momentum-of-what-was-experienced’ is increasing more intensively, and the sequence of the impulses evoked for experiencing usually proceeds in an automatic order. 2771 BTG XXX

“The learned musicians and singers then in the city of Babylon combined their melodies in such ways that the sequence of the vibrations of the sounds should evoke in the beings a sequence of associations, and therefore also impulses for experiencings, not in the usual automatic order, that is to say, so that the sequence of vibrations, on entering into the common presence of the beings, should evoke the Vibroechonitanko in the Hlodistomaticules, not of just one brain, as it usually proceeds according to which brain at the given moment the associat.ons predominate, but should evoke it now in one brain, now in another, and now in the third; thus they also provided for the quality or, as they themselves would say, the numbers of the vibrations of the sounds which would affect one or another brain. 2772 BTG XXX

“Owing to these sequences of sounds which they combined simultaneously in the presences of beings, different kinds of impulses arose, which evoked various quite opposite sensations, and these sensations in their turn produced unusual experiencings in them and reflex movements not proper to them. 2774 BTG XXX

“And truly, my boy, the sequence of sounds they combined did indeed affect all the beings into whose presence they entered, exceedingly strangely. 2775 BTG XXX

“It happened in this way because as the sounds of their melodies which they had combined in a definite sequence entered into my common presence, Djartklom proceeded in them, or as it is otherwise said, the sounds were ‘sorted out’ and acted equally upon all the three variously caused Hlodistomaticules, with the consequence that the associations proceeding in me in the three independent brains — though simultaneously and with an equal intensity of similar associations but differently natured series of impressions — engendered in my presence three quite different promptings. 2777 BTG XXX

“But later on, when thanks as always to the same conditions of ordinary being-existence abnormally established by themselves, every kind of property proper to the presences of three-brained beings gradually deteriorated, this ‘being-ableness’ also deteriorated in them and at such a tempo that whereas the beings of the Babylonian period could use for conversation among themselves only seventy-seven definite consonants, the deterioration continued at such a tempo after the Babylonian period, that five centuries later, the beings there could use at most only thirty-six definite ‘letters’, and the beings of certain communities could not reproduce even this number of separate articulate sounds. 2801 BTG XXX

“Almost as many of these restorials of the voice or as they are still sometimes named ‘light sounds of voice are formed among your favorites and until today are still formed, as there are independent groups into which they are divided and still continue to be divided, and this proceeds so because these light sounds of voice arc in general formed among the beings from many outer as well as inner surrounding conditions not depending on them themselves, as for instance: geographical, hereditary, religious, and even from the ‘quality-of-nourishment’ and the ‘quality-of-reciprocal-influences’, and so on and so forth. 5099 BTG XL

“‘Restorials’ or gravity-center-sounds in the voices of beings are in general and are called those notes which, during the reproductions of different sounds by corresponding organs, the beings manifest according to the properties fixed in them and depending on the general functioning of their presence — which properties in their turn are the result of heredity and of acquired faculties — freely, easily, and for a long time, without evoking any tension whatsoever on the part of other separate functionings of theirs, that is to say, in other words the restorials are obtained when the tempo of the result of such a manifestation of theirs fully harmonizes with other functionings of their common presence, the tempo of which is already fixed in them thanks to all the inner and outer conditions of their common being-existence. 5103 BTG XL

“At the present time among your favorites such groups exist as have the capacity to reproduce the gravity-center notes in the octave of sounds not only in five or seven gravity-center sounds but even in thirteen and seventeen whole notes. 5107 BTG XL

“To illustrate what I have just said, the beings of a certain smallish group might serve as a good example who dwell on the continent Asia to whose singing I personally very much liked to listen and who in their physiological possibilities — although they had the data for the manifestation of only three restorials — could nevertheless in their chanting reproduce up to forty separate definite sounds. 5109 BTG XL

“This physiological particularity of theirs, namely, that whatever number of definite sounds they reproduced the beings of this small group always obtained in the whole octave of their voice only on these three restorials inherent in them what is called the ‘unchanging totality of vibrations’, and that all during their manifestation these restorials had the property of evoking what is called ‘centralization’ and echo in the whole presence of a being, I made very clear to myself when, having become interested in their chanting, I began to investigate this particularity, rare among your contemporary favorites, with the aid of three special what are called there ‘tuning forks’ which I ordered, and with the aid of several very sensitive what are called ‘vibrometers’ which I possessed and which were invented for me personally by my essence-friend Gornahoor Harharkh. 5113 BTG XL

“‘After long deliberations we finally decided that probably the whole cause lay in the nature itself of the vibrations of the sounds. And we came to this conclusion because from our conversation it further became clear that in the monastery in which our Sheikh had been an ordinary dervish, they played, besides the tambour, stringed musical instruments, while here, in our monastery, they played these same sacred melodies exclusively on wind instruments. 5283 BTG XLI

“‘Then our Sheikh, having thought a little, said to me: “‘”Hadji, you, as a specialist in stringed instruments, try — perhaps you can manage to make a stringed musical instrument on which any dervish, without being a specialist, can produce the sounds of the necessary melody merely by a mechanical action, such as, for example, turning, striking, pressing, and so on”. 5287 BTG XLI

“‘Having returned home, I sat down and thought very seriously for a long time; and the result of all my thinking was that I decided to make an ordinary zimbal and to devise with the help of my friend the dervish Kerbalai-Azis-Nuaran such a mechanism of little hammers that their striking should produce the corresponding sounds. 5293 BTG XLI

“‘It began in this way: “‘I must first tell you that before this I already very well knew that half the length of any string gives twice the number of vibrations of a whole string of equal volume and density, and in accordance with this principle I arranged on the zimbal what are called “bridges” for the strings and then began correspondingly to tune all the strings for a certain ancient sacred melody in “oneeighth-toned” sounds, of course according to my “Perambarrsasidaan” or, as it is called in Europe, “tuning fork”, producing the vibrations of the Chinese absolute note “do”. 5304 BTG XLI

“‘Soon the mechanical zimbal devised by us was ready; it was entirely satisfactory to us and I must say turned out to be something of the kind of the “new Greek hand organ” but with quarter tone sounds and a little larger in size. 5310 BTG XLI

“To the back half of this board was fastened a whole network of various small glass and metal pipes, which also served to produce sounds, but this time sounds obtained from vibrations arising from certain movements and currents of ordinary or of artificially compressed or rarefied air; and for measuring the vibrations of these sounds the same vibrometers served as were used for measuring the vibrations arising from the string. 5343 BTG XLI

“‘Unfortunately for the Europeans, neither the first inventor nor the perfecter of that siren knew that sound can be obtained not only from the action of genuine vibrations but also from the simple flow of air; and as this siren of theirs sounds only from the flow of air and not at all from natural vibrations, therefore the determination of the exact number of vibrations by the indications of that siren is out of the question…. 5355 BTG XLI

“Turning to us he said: “‘I will now produce from these combined pipes only five different tones of sound, and you please look attentively at this pot of flowers and look at your watches and notice how long I continue to produce these sounds and also remember the numbers indicated by the hands of the vibrometers for these sounds’. 5358 BTG XLI

“‘Vibrations issuing from the latter kind of strings, and also the vibrations obtained from the flow of air, are purely momentum vibrations. In this case the sounds are obtained from those vibrations which arise from the mechanical action of the momentum evoked by them and from the friction of the air flowing from it’. 5368 BTG XLI

“But this time, in the melody, two sounds of the lowest octave of the grand piano were evenly and constantly repeated. 5377 BTG XLI

“Having said this, he sat down at the grand piano and again began to strike the keys; this time he produced the sounds of two notes only, one from among those of the higher octaves of the grand piano, and the other from among the lower, always alternately, and as he began he almost shouted: “‘Now thanks again to the vibrations engendered by means of the sounds of the grand piano, but this time good-carrying ones, let the pain of my faithful old friend cease’. 5404 BTG XLI

“‘”These names of theirs are not just names, but real music. Can one really compare the sounds of the music invented there by various Beethovenings and Chopinings, and other fashionable “riders, with the sounds of the names of these blessed fishes? 6141 BTG XLII

“By the way, it is interesting to remark, that when these gypsies shake their clothes in the Tandoor a highly interesting phenomenon results from this action of theirs; namely, the lice in their clothes crawl out and falling into the fire explode before burning, and the various sounds of the explosion of these lice, large and small, produces altogether a surprising ‘musical symphony’. 6217 BTG XLII

“During their responsible existence these intelligentsia beings there always act or manifest only when they receive corresponding shocks from outside, and it is these same shocks proceeding from outside which give them the possibility of becoming correspondingly animated and of experiencing, only through the unrolling of the series of former corresponding automatic perceptions already present in them and not depending at all on their own wish or will; and these external shocks of theirs for the said kind of experiencing are usually in the first place animate or inanimate things accidentally coming within the sphere of their organs of perception of visibility; secondly, the various beings they meet; thirdly, the sounds or words reverberating where they happen to be; fourthly, scents accidentally perceived by their sense of smell; and finally, unaccustomed sensations that proceed from time to time during the functioning of their planetary body, or as they say, their ‘organism’ and so on. 6506 BTG XLIII

“Man — how mighty it sounds! The very name ‘man’ means ‘the acme of Creation’; but . . . how does his title fit contemporary man? 7261 BTG XLVIII