"Wednesday, the day of painting, was devoted to the study of the combinations of different colors.
"On that day the learned beings of this group brought for demonstration all sorts of objects for domestic use made of very durable colored materials, such as 'carpets,' 'fabrics,' and 'chinkrooaries,' that is, drawings in various colors on skins specially tanned to last many centuries. On these objects were drawn, or embroidered in many-colored threads, various scenes of nature on that planet and different forms of beings breeding there.
"Before continuing to speak about the way in which these terrestrial learned beings
indicated certain fragments of knowledge in their combinations of colors, I must point out one fact concerning this subject, which is most distressing for your favorites and which took place in their presence, again on account of those abnormal forms of daily existence established by them themselves.
"This fact I wish to explain to you concerns
the gradual deterioration in the quality of those 'organs of perception' which are formed in the presence of every kind of being, especially the organ that interests us at present, namely,
the organ for perceiving and distinguishing what is called the 'blending of center-of-gravity vibrations,' which reach their planet from the spaces of the Universe.
"I am referring to what is known as the 'common integral vibration issuing from all sources of actualizing,' which the learned being Aksharpantziar
called the
'white ray,' and also to the separate blendings of 'center-of-gravity vibrations,' which are
perceived and distinguished by beings as different 'tonalities of color.'
"You must know that from the time of the arising of the three-brained beings of the planet Earth, before the period when the organ kundabuffer was implanted in them, and later when this organ was totally removed from their presence, and even much later, beginning from the second transapalnian catastrophe almost up to the time of our third flight in person to the surface of that planet, the organ of sight was actualized in them with the same 'sensitivity of perception' as in the common presence of all ordinary three-brained beings of the whole of our Great Universe.
"During these periods I have mentioned,
in all the three-brained beings arising on your planet, this organ was formed with the requisite sensitivity to perceive the blendings of the separate 'center-of-gravity vibrations' of the 'white ray,' and to distinguish one-third of all the 'tonalities of color' found in general in the presences of the planets as well as in all other cosmic concentrations, great and small.
"Objective Science has precisely established that the number of separate blendings of 'center-of-gravity vibrations' issuing from the 'common integral vibration,' that is, the number of 'tonalities of color' is exactly equal to one 'hooltanpanas' which, according to the calculations of the terrestrial three-brained beings, would amount to 5, 764, 801 tonalities.
"Only a third of this total number of blendings or tonalities—with the exception of the one tonality which is accessible only to the perception of our All-Autocratic Endlessness—that is, 1, 921, 600 tonalities, can be perceived as 'different colors' by all ordinary beings on whatever planet of our Great Universe they arise.
"But if the three-brained beings complete the perfecting of their highest part, and their organ for the perception of visibility thereby acquires the sensitivity of what is called 'olooestesnokhnian sight,' they can then distinguish two-thirds of the total number of tonalities existing in the Universe which, according to terrestrial calculation, amounts to 3, 843, 200 different tonalities of color. And only those three-brained beings who perfect their highest being-part to the state of what is called 'Ishmetch' become able to perceive and distinguish the total number of blendings or tonalities, with the exception of that one tonality which, as I have already told you, is accessible to the perception of our All-Maintaining Creator alone.
[...]
"First of all it must be said that the 'common integral vibration,' like every already definite cosmic formation, is formed according to the completed
result of the fundamental cosmic law of the holy Heptaparaparshinokh, namely, that cosmic law which the three-brained beings of the planet Earth of the Babylonian period called the 'Law of Sevenfoldness', in other words,
this vibration consists of seven complexes of results or, as is sometimes said, seven 'classes of vibrations' issuing from cosmic sources, whose arising and further action depend on seven other sources, which in their turn arise and depend on seven further ones, and so on right up to the first most holy, unique, seven-propertied vibration issuing from the Most Holy Prime Source.
And all these together compose the 'common integral vibration' of all sources of actualization of everything that exists in the Universe, and later, thanks to their transformations, they actualize in the presences of the cosmic insapalnian concentrations the number of different tonalities of color I have mentioned.
"As for the details of the 'most holy, unique, seven-propertied vibration,' these you will understand only when I have explained to you in its proper
time, as I have already many times promised you, all about the great fundamental laws of world-creation and world-maintenance.
"And meanwhile, as regards this question, you ought to know that when this 'common integral vibration,' which the terrestrial three-brained beings call the
'white ray,' enters with the presence proper to it into the spheres of its possible transformation in the presence of an insapalnian planet, there occurs in it, just as in the case of every definite cosmic arising having the possibility of further actualization, that cosmic process called 'djartklom', that is to say, it itself remains as a presence, but its essence disintegrates, as it were, and engenders processes for evolution and involution by the separate 'center-of gravity vibrations' of its arising, and these processes are actualized thus certain groups of 'center-of-gravity vibrations' separate themselves from the others and are transformed into third ones, and so on.
"During these transformations, the 'common integral vibration,' or 'white ray,' acts through its 'center-of-gravity vibrations' upon other ordinary
processes taking place nearby in intraplanetary and surplanetary arisings and decompositions, and owing to 'kindred vibrations,' and in accordance with surrounding conditions, its center-of-gravity vibrations blend and become part of the common presence of these definite intraplanetary or surplanetary formations in which these processes are taking place.
"So, my boy, during my personal descents to the planet Earth, I noted, at first without any conscious intention on the part of my Reason, and later I quite intentionally verified,
the progressive worsening of this being-organ in all your favorites.
"Deteriorating century by century, the 'sensitivity of perception' of that organ, by means of which there chiefly proceeds in the presence of three brained beings what is called the 'automatic saturation by externals'—which serves as the basis for the possibility of natural Self perfecting had been diminished to such a point that at the time of our fifth stay there, during the period called by contemporary beings the period of the 'greatness of Babylon,' your favorites could perceive and distinguish the blendings of the 'center-ofgravity vibrations' of the white ray at most up to the third degree of its 'sevenfold strata,' that is, only up to 343 different tonalities of color.
"Here it is interesting to note that quite a number of the three-brained beings of the Babylonian epoch already suspected the gradual deterioration of the sensitivity of this organ of theirs, and certain of them even founded a new society in Babylon, which launched a peculiar 'movement' among the painters of that time. This peculiar 'movement' had the following program to find out and elucidate the truth only by means of the tonalities existing between white and black. And they executed all their works using exclusively the tonalities from black to white.
"When I found out about that particular 'movement' among the Babylonian painters, they were already using about fifteen hundred quite distinct shades of the color 'gray. ' This new 'movement' in painting made a great stir among the beings who were striving to learn truth at least in something, and it even gave rise to another and still more peculiar 'movement,' this time among the beings then known in Babylon as
'olfactorists,' who studied and devised new combinations of 'concentrations of vibrations' acting in a particular way on the sense of smell of beings, and producing definite effects on their general psyche, that is to say, among those beings who made it their aim to find the truth by means of smells.
"Certain enthusiasts of this study, in imitation of the followers of the new 'movement' in painting, founded a similar society, the stated purpose of which was: 'to seek the truth in the nuances of smells given off between the moment of the action of cold at freezing and the moment of the action of heat at decomposition.'
"As the painters had done with colors, they also found between these two limits of smell about seven hundred very definite gradations, which they employed in their experiments.
"I do not know where these two peculiar 'movements' in Babylon would have led, if a newly appointed mayor of the city, soon after our arrival there, had not started prosecuting the followers of that second 'movement' since, with their already sufficiently keen sense of smell, they had begun to get wind of and unwittingly to expose certain of his 'shady dealings,' with the result that he used every possible means to suppress everything connected not only with that second 'movement,' but with the first as well.
"As regards that organ of theirs about which we began to speak, namely,
the organ for perceiving the visibility of cosmic arisings outside themselves, the deterioration of its sensitivity continued after the Babylonian period and reached such a point that during our last stay on the surface of this planet your favorites, instead of the 1, 921, 600 'tonalities of color' which they ought to have perceived, had the possibility of perceiving and distinguishing only the result of the penultimate 'sevenfold crystallization of the white ray,' that is, forty-nine tonalities, and even then only some of your favorites had that capacity, while the rest, perhaps the majority, were deprived even of that.
"But what is most interesting as regards the progressive deterioration of that most important part of their common presence is the sorry farce that results, which is that those contemporary three-brained beings who can still manage to distinguish this miserable fraction of the total number of tonalities—merely forty-nine—look down with disdain and self-conceit upon those other beings who have lost the capacity to distinguish even this insignificant number, as upon beings with an abnormal deficiency in that organ, and speak of them as afflicted by the disease called 'Daltonism.'
"The last seven blendings of the 'center-of-gravity vibrations' of the 'white ray' were called in Babylon, just as now among the contemporary beings of that planet, by the following names:
- Red
- Orange
- Yellow
- Green
- Blue
- Indigo
- Violet
"Now listen to the way in which the learned beings belonging to the group of painters indicated the useful information and various fragments of knowledge they had attained, through lawful inexactitudes of the great cosmic law called the 'Law of Sevenfoldness,' by means of the combinations of these seven independent definite colors and other, secondary tonalities derived from them.
"In accordance with that definite property of the 'common integral vibration,' or the 'white ray,' during the process of its transformations
about which I have just spoken and which was already familiar to the learned Babylonian painters,
each of its 'center-of-gravity vibrations' or one of the separate colors of the 'white ray' always ensues from another and is transformed into a third, for example, the color orange is obtained from red, and in turn passes into yellow, and so on and so forth.
"So, whenever these learned painters of Babylon made their pictures, or wove or embroidered with colored threads, they arranged the different
tonalities—whether lengthwise or crosswise or at the points of intersection of the lines of color—not in the lawful sequence in which this process normally takes place in accordance with the Law of Sevenfoldness, but 'otherwise', and
it was in these equally lawful 'otherwises' that they placed the substance of certain information and knowledge.
It definitely is. 
Gurdjieff makes you slow down, think and contemplate, that's why I love the man (I actually do love him, I'm not just saying that.) 
:D
