Saint Venoma
Saint Venoma had been taken for his merits from the planet 'Soort' to the 'Holy Planet Purgatory' where, after familiarizing himself with his new surroundings and new duties, he devoted all his free time to his favorite work. "This favorite work was to try to find out what new phenomena could be obtained from various combinations of lawful phenomena already existing. "Sometime later, in the course of his observations of cosmic laws, Saint Venoma made a discovery which afterward became famous, and which he was the first to call the 'law of falling.' "Saint Venoma formulated this cosmic law as follows: "'Everything existing in the world "falls to the bottom." The "bottom" for any part of the Universe is its nearest "stability," and this stability is the point toward which all the lines of force from all directions converge. "'The centers of all the suns and planets of our Universe are precisely such points of stability. They are the lowest points of that region of space toward which forces from all directions of the given part of the Universe inexorably tend, and where they concentrate. Each of these points is also a center of gravity that enables suns and planets to maintain their proper places.' "Saint Venoma stated further that when an object, wherever it may be, is dropped into space, it tends to fall on one or another sun or planet, depending on which sun or planet this part of space belongs to--that sun or planet being for the given region the stability, or bottom.
"Starting from this, Saint Venoma, continuing his research, reasoned as follows: 'If this is so, could not this cosmic property be utilized for the locomotion we need between the spaces in the Universe?' And from then on he worked along that line. "His further saintly labors showed that, although in principle this was possible, in fact the law of falling alone could not be employed fully to achieve this purpose, for the simple reason that the atmospheres surrounding most of the cosmic concentrations would hinder the direct falling of the object dropped in space.
"Having established this, Saint Venoma turned his whole attention to finding some means of overcoming the atmospheric resistance to ships constructed on the principle of falling.
"And three 'looniases' later, Saint Venoma did find such a means and, as soon as a suitable vessel had been completed under his direction, he went on to practical trials.
Beelzebub's Tales To His Grandson, by G. I. Gurdjieff, page 62-63
Viking Arkana Edition, 1992.