{ } = word or expression can't be understood
{word} = hard to understand, might be this

[Opening remarks missing]

... drama has to appeal to your power of speech. You will also remind -- remember the question asked last time, which was quite significant about a painless death, better -- being, after all, better than any other death and what is there to be gained by the good life? I'd like to come back to these things for a moment before we go on.

I shall try today to give you a layout of the -- possible or necessary comparison of the different religions. We'll classify them, without giving big names to them, but we'll see how man can solve this task to be ready for the decision of the ... [tape fade-out] ... of this strange relationship between our powers to do wrong, and our command not to do wrong, and our power and our right to dominate the universe and our powerlessness to dominate it. These were the two "mays" and "cans" as you remember. And we had, at the last time, stated that when we associate, we can fly. No single man was able to build an airplane. But the whole American industry was able to do it, so that we felt the domination over nature needs association, and leads to association of human beings, because the "may," with regard to all dead things is useless if we cannot associate. We can only dominate anything external if there is somebody helping us. So association leads to the domination of nature; that is, to translate our infinite permission to dominate our "may" into our "can," with regard to the outer world. With regard to your own decisions, however, what you may do -- the association takes modern industry. The association is there to dominate the means of production, that maybe throw the atom bomb. If you just follow the pressures of the Army, and the Navy, and the Air Force at this moment, as some big shots in industry who fear recession, then they -- you will throw the atom bomb, and keep the industry going by armaments, for example. And I have talked to men in the Air Force, who were bitter enemies of President Eisenhower. They wanted to have Mr. Taft elected, because they said, "To Taft we can sell the Air Force and the atomic bomb right away, but Eisenhower is an infantry man. And he'll never understand."

Now there you have, gentlemen, a new aspect of the formulation of our dilemma, that we may not do everything we can do. If you want to know what your next "may" is, or "may not," you have to free yourself from all associations that might domineer your will. You see then, we have this situation. I may do everything with nature. May everything. I can do only very few things myself. I need association. I can do everything, can everything, with the help of others. I may not do everything, but I can. I can murder my father, but I may not. You all

can do any number of things which you may not do. Isn't that true? But "can" nearly everything, or "can" many things.

Now, gentlemen, here is the relation in these four. You take this down? You will see the real dilemma of any living being. His associations mislead him constantly. That is, because you have a big industry for peacetime purposes, you can go to war right away, but you may not. And the President of the United States cannot give in to the pressure groups and to the lobbyists, because he's associated with them. That is, we -- in our endeavor to be powerful in this world, we arm. Now the association into which we have to enter for the purpose, leads to employment. And the fear of unemployment will lead then to all kinds of police, if the statesman on the top just follows the association in which he finds himself. The chambers of commerce and the lobbies in Washington, and so on. So it is with you, gentlemen. You can, because you are 3,000 students in Dartmouth, form { } and the Dartmouth outing club, and the canoe club and the football team and everything else, can you not? You can do this, because you are 3,000 students. You can have all these good professors here, because you are 3,000. You cannot have them singly, you see. But now, you know very well that on this campus, you may not do certain things. And usually you are tempted to do them, because you can do them through your associations, because 3,000 { } men are quite a power. And the administration fears, of course, that if it is -- clamps down on you, nobody will come. So it is lenient. And first, it's "Give up the language requirement," and finally it's "Give up the drinking, you see, prohibition," et cetera. And now you can nearly do everything on campus, because we are in the net of our associations with you. And you tempt us, all the time, gentlemen. You don't see that you are little devils. Any association is devilish. A man who is -- you will have a family, your children and your wife are great tempters to abuse your situation, you see, and to idolize the family. They'll demand it.

Nobody seems to see this in this country. You are all such optimists. You think that man is with his conscience alone. No, gentlemen. In any one moment, any friendship, any family, any nation, any class, any college, any industry in which you -- which belong also tries to remove from you the scruples of what you may not do, and tells you, "But you can do it. Why don't you?" Can you see this perhaps? So, gentlemen, there's a very wonderful dialectics or interplay or however you call this. Because man may not do everything he can do, but wants to execute what he may do by creating a situation in which he can do it, he has associations, associates. And gentlemen, I'm afraid the guilt by association lies not where the people who look for it today, because your sister is a Communist. But it lies where you don't look it, in the people with whom you work, and on whose -- on whom you depend for your livelihood, and for whose good will you give everything on campus so that you may become a member of the fraternity. And so on and so forth. You just have -- who has seen the play about the frater-

nity on campus? You remember, that was the problem, that the Yankee there, you see, you see, could join the fraternity, but he found he might not. Do you understand? Because there was the association, you see, in which he would then be -- have become, you see, co-guilty, by association.

Now the word "association" is a very wonderful thing, gentlemen. Only because we are in a society, associated with other people who love us and whom we love, are we at all constantly tempted to step over from the realm of things, where we are masters of the universe, and execute, for example, against these poor Russians, or against these poor Indochinese, or whoever it is, our power. Perhaps you have seen how we wavered over the last six months whether it was better to throw naphtha bombs on Indochina, you see, or let the French give it up. And the same was true in Korea, you see. The Russians even were so shocked by the power of destruction wrecked -- wreaked on this poor country, you see, and an Englishman wrote this wonderful book, Weep, Korea, because whether the Americans or the Russians conquered made no difference to the poor Koreans. They were just the victims of both, because they did what they could, these two great powers, you see. And finally they said, "But we may not destroy Korea totally." And they were led into this by -- the association in which they lived, or they formed.

The United States are an association of people, gentlemen. And here you see the deepest reason for Church and State. The Church tries to get you out of your associations, and the State gives you the opportunity for forming associations. That is, it has nothing to do with what is called "State" and "Church" officially today in this country. You can say, gentlemen, any group of people, any doctor, any psychoanalyst, any father who gives you the power to follow out your "may not" or your "may" in freedom is the Church. And any power that allows you to associate, to invest capital, to form a machine factory, or to run a railroad, or to buy a { }, is what we call "secular" or "state" -- because the secular means "with the things of this world," doesn't it -- and therefore allows you to fulfill the dream of your inner "may": "I may as a human being dominate the earth," you see. It's my { }. Therefore { }. And we have to have this other world, you see. Otherwise we wouldn't eat, because our bread comes from this carrying into existence, you see, our commission to eat meat, and bread, and butter, et cetera. Isn't that true? The whole world of the standard of living, gentlemen, is the world of free association. And the whole world of changing our ideals, or our standards, is the world of criticism, of this -- the world of church, the Church. And what we call Church, gentlemen, then, is from the individual to the whole universe the power to free us of our -- of our temptation to forget that there is a distinction between "may" and "can."

If you -- you can put this in a -- what the Greeks call a chi, it looks like an X,

but the Greeks wrote this letter chi in the -- in logic. Has anybody heard of that figure of the chiasmus in rhetorics? In your style? It's chiasm [SHEE-asm], chiasm [SHY-asm]. Not "chasm." That's entirely different. "May" to "can," with regard to your -- to the inner voice is really -- is opposite, you see, to the relation of "can" and "may." I may not do something with regard to my conscience. I can do everything with regard to the things I know. Therefore, I may do everything here. So, this is the constant conflict in which we live.

"May" and "can" for your inner man is -- says, "Well, I may still wet my bed -- ever, I may not wet my bed, but I can." And so you have the man who never grows up and remains a child in many respects, because what he can, you see, is dominant, and he doesn't apply his knowledge that he may not any longer act as a baby, a little baby. And here's the opposite. He may everything, but he cannot. So here, this leads to ever more associations, gentlemen. And whatever the Church is, it is the power to dissociate yourself from certain conventions at this moment. If you cannot do this, you must know that you have no religion. You are a slave. Freedom is therefore, gentlemen, this double movement into new associations and into the power to dissociate.

Any girl who tells her parents that now she wants to marry a man, you see, is making use of this power of dissociation. If she just runs away with the boy and elopes, she has no religion, because she doesn't realize that this is the deepest decision and that she therefore must keep open her relation to her parents as -- of before and must reconcile these parents to the new step, because it is her deepest being that says, "I must now be recognized for dissociating myself not accidentally, not for a superficial whim, but so that everybody can say, `She must do this.'" She dissociates, you see, with reason, with necessity, from deep love. And therefore the dissociation from her parents -- that's really the decision of the woman who marries, you see -- to get out -- go out and take a -- on a new name. You have to persuade your girl, but don't elope with her. Not a good idea. Because you make it cheap, and you make her cheap, and you make you cheap. You deprive your marriage of its religious sanction, because it remains accidental. And anything remains accidental, gentlemen, in which the dissociation doesn't become articulated -- you can take this down, gentlemen -- and anything remains playful, where the association doesn't become articulate, every association tries to be incorporated legally, like a -- the marriage which you embody and go the sheriff and have it legalized, as we say. And that's a great thing. But the dissociative act, gentlemen, is taken at your own risk. Nobody asks you to cease to be an American.

When I emigrated to this country, it was my decision that I had to cease to be a German. I had to just leave. And I had to take all the steps, and all your ancestors have done this, you see. They have dissociated themselves, many for religious

reasons, as you know. Many for other reasons. But the country to this day is proud that it has Pilgrim fathers in its ancestry, people who dissociated themselves by a religious act from the State, the King of England, or the Dutch Republic or France, to which they belonged, or Germany for that matter, or Poland. And the dissociation of these people still makes this country still holding onto Thanksgiving Day of the Puritans, you see. And the people who came here by mere necessity, kicked out by hunger, you see, they are -- haven't set the tone of this country. The eloquence of this country relies on his religious background, and the religious background comes from people not of free association first, but of free dissociation.

And therefore, gentlemen -- take it down -- Americans can know better than any other people in the world that the Church is older than the State, in this country. First the people said "No," and said, "We may not worship the Anglican bishops and their" -- how do you? -- "tassles and chasubles, and so on. We need a pure religion." Then they came to this country -- with the famous covenant -- on the Mayflower and formed a new association, because a man is free to associate all the time. But he is not free to do the bidding of an association which was founded for one purpose and now used -- is used for another. We came to this country to form a government under God, and not to throw the atomic bomb in an aggressive war. And if we do so, we have ceased to be Americans. That's a new -- would be a new country. Yet, gentlemen, anybody who has lived knowingly over -- through the last eight years, or nine years, will tell you that the Catholic clergy went before the President and said, "We have no objection against the preventive war. Throw the bomb on Moscow in 1947." Mr. Forrestal jumped out of the window as Secretary of War, because we didn't go to a preventive war against Moscow. And on it goes.

And the same people who now tell you that Mr. -- it was Mr. Truman's war in Korea, demanded and scolded the American government of the Democrats in 1947 for being cowards, and for being not Republican enough, and not in the Theodore Roosevelt line of being very, very aggressive and even imperialistic. It's a very queer world in which we live, in which the party now in power tries to make us forget that in 1947 they were the people who said that we were -- that sold out to Russia in Yalta and that we should have gone to war with them.

So complete, gentlemen, is the quandary, this chi, in which we sit, that the "may" -- this "may" and this "may -- the "may" with regard to life, and the "may" with regard to dead things, are constantly one inviting association, and the other forbidding association. And you will find, gentlemen, that anybody who is a real man will come at one hour in his life to the conclusion that no other man, with whom he is already in the community a friend, can help him in this hour; that he must do something at the risk of losing the friendships, the esteem, and the

regard of his next associates. And a man who hasn't realized this has never run up to religion. The religious problem is the power to say "no" to association and to say "yes" to association. And that's nothing to gain, sir, but that's just a way of -- to live.

I told the story of the boy who asked me, "What do we gain by the good life?" And I said, "Well, that's the reason for war. As long as boys grow up in an American college who can ask such a question, there must be war," because war does away with anti-divine, with ungodly associations. That's a defeat in a war when you destroy a government and dissolve the country. They suddenly have new associates. The Germans, you see, are no longer associates with Hitler. They aren't. And you all, gentlemen, are in the great danger, in a college, to become anti-religious, because you are not associated and you have not the power to dissociate yourself. And this terrible dilemma is that we have to be loyal, gentlemen. But never must the loyalty deprive you of your power to dissociate yourself. Take the mother-son complex. Every one of you is -- has this problem: How much do I owe my mother? That's your loyalty. That's your association as you find it. She wouldn't be in this world if she hadn't nursed you and looked after you. That's, you see, the domination of the outer world which she gave you by her close association. You know very well that many marriages are wrecked, before they are even concluded, because the mother remains the dominating power over the soul of her boy. That is, the association is not dissociated when the divine voice in you should say, "Now it is no longer my mother, but it will be my bride." And the bride knows this, gentlemen. And that's why most women in America are so terribly jealous, because they are so afraid of the weakness of the man, that he's still under the influence of his mother, that they do everything to destroy the family ties or the spiritual friendships of this man, just to make sure that they have some influence on the man. I see this. It's very ghastly. You marry too young, you see. If you would marry, as formerly it was done at 27 or 28, it wouldn't happen to you that this tie has to be broken or has to be outgrown, and that you really feel the power now to stand alone. And there you have it at home, the very clear experience that everybody has to have religion in order to solve his problem: May he associate with his mate? He can only if she and he can fully take over the relationship which formerly existed between son and mother. A wife cannot be second-rate in the spiritual association with her husband.

So I want to -- only to make sure that you understand that I'm speaking very practically. These are all the things of everyday life. But I want to help you, gentlemen. As long as you ask about anything "why" or "what," you are not asking a religious question. "Why" and "what" are always questions about things, and about the State, and the secular, the world, industry, production, anything. The only four movements which the religious soul has to make is the power to say "thank you," please," "yes" and "no." You have to say "yes" to the wife of your

choosing and "no" to your mother, at one time. Now you have to say "yes" to your parents still, perhaps, because your hour hasn't come, you see, and "no" to the prostitute who beleaguers you on the highway or wherever it is. "Yes" and "no" are religious answers always to your associates or your dissociations. And "thank you" and "please" bring about your knowledge, gentlemen, that something is over and something is beginning. And the change of our mind is the experience of the liveliness by which we become aware of what life is. Life is change. Life is transformation. And if you analyze these two words, of which you never hear in psychology, "thank you " and "please," and which show that the modern psychology has no contact with real life. They examine the retina of the eye and such reactions, gentlemen. But it has nothing to do with life. That's something mechanical, or technical or physiological.

But your life is made up of "thank you" and "please," or of its opposite, gentlemen. You deprecate, also. You don't always say to the next day, "Please come in." If it is an examination, you may deprecate it and say, "Oh, I wished it wasn't there." We have to undergo things, you see, where we don't say "please," but where we pray, "Let this not be done." And we say also to the past, gentlemen -- what would be the opposite of thanking? When do you not thank for something that has happened, but say, "Oh, I wish I had not received this"? Well, that's something that may show you, because you don't know the expression, how lost we are. Every human being before knew exactly what the opposite of thanking was. And you don't. And that is typical of our generation. I had to discover it myself. My generation was just as bad as yours, I assure you.

What would be the opposite of thanking? You all know it. You all do it. But you don't want to know it, that it exists. No, the opposite -- it's much simpler, sir. It has -- it's nothing moral. It's cursing. Cursing, swearing. Don't you swear? "Damn it!" That's the opposite of thanking, isn't it? "Damn it! It shouldn't have happened," you see. And thanking, "thank you," means "How wonderful that it has happened." To thank means to want to contemplate what has happened, to think, steadily. To face it. Thanking and thinking has very much to do with each other, gentlemen. To think means -- to thank means just explicitly to stop, to think. That's what thanking is. That's all. To curse means to run away from something, to damn it. To say, "I don't like to think about it." Isn't that true?

Now you are so deprived of both thanking and cursing -- swearing has been forbidden in this country, unfortunately. I think it's a wonderful way out. And if you know what you're doing, gentlemen, you would be suddenly relieved from all this burden on your thinking, if you knew that all thinking consists only of -- deep thinking, important thinking -- of this decision, whether you would thank, or you would curse; whether you would pray, or you would deprecate; whether you would say "yes," or you would say "no." In these movements of your soul,

you reach rock-bottom of the inner life of man. And what youth asks -- a question, "why," "what," et cetera -- that questions of technological interest -- what do I take in order to bake a cake? All right. There you ask what? Dead things, you see. And why is that so? Well, you want to take apart your watch. Any child wants to take apart the watch and say, "Why do the wheels turn?" You can never ask, "Why does my mother love you -- love me?" You can only say "thank you," to this. There's no other answer.

There has -- something terrible used to happen here on campus. I think they have given it up. Fifteen years ago, there was a gentlemen on this campus who asked his students in a questionnaire, "Whom do you love more, your mother or your father?" That's the Devil. That's the real Hell. And that was done in Dartmouth College in its heydays, of course, of the Communistic infiltration. But it wasn't Communism, gentlemen. It was childishness and devilishness which drove this country nearly crazy 30 years ago and 20 years ago. Why can't you ask, "Whom do I love more, my mother or my father?" Do you know the answer?

Wie?

There's only one answer. You must never try to know that. Curse on you if you try. A love is always different in any one relation. As soon as you try to know this, you break the love of -- to both. It doesn't matter that you say, "I love my mother more than my father." It would be equally wrong to your mother to say that. It's an insult to your life, with these people. If you can't see this, gentlemen, you haven't even begun to know what religion is, gentlemen. This question is the most anti-religious thing that has ever happened on the campus of Dartmouth College. Yet, it passes as science. It's utter nonsense. Nobody at -- can ever answer. Besides, I mean -- these devilish things are all so stupid. If it's only a semblance { }. It has absolutely no value. Next day they -- anyone participated would be refuted, because fortunately, love is something we { } don't know. You don't know whom -- how much you love a person -- unless, you see, { } you {realize.} So it is quite -- silly to ask a question, but it isn't silly only, but it's very wicked. It's destructive. It's always the end. It will always lead to a divorce.

I mean, Mr. Freud, of course, has ruined you because he says that he only has to deal with people of broken-up marriages, anyway. People who have too much money and no work to do, and the end of an era, the end of the bourgeois society, and so he only sees the broken-up cases. And so he comes to the conclusion that a man wants to sleep with his mother and to murder his father. Gentlemen, even this doesn't prove that he loves his mother more than his father. He can't love at all. That's all. Isn't that true? A man who wants to sleep with the mother and murder his father has no love. But you can't measure it. You can't say that he loves his mother more than he loves his father, because that isn't love. If he

lusts, it has nothing to do with love. It's just possessiveness, or sex.

No, gentlemen. I'll ask you to take this quite seriously. Relations to human beings, which you inherit, you can only thank for or curse. That's all. And relations of -- with human people, or with any future -- you may wish to become a creative artist -- prayer, you see, and deprecation. If you wish to become a creative artist, you may pray, lest you have to take a job as a typist. You feel that might ruin your violin fingers. Or that you might not be drafted because it might ruin your delicacy, you see, of your fingers as a musician. So gentlemen, as little as you know what cursing is, or what thanking is, and as much as you overrate thinking, which is a pale abstraction from thanking and cursing -- it's a pale abstraction to think -- of the real process of saying what I have, you see, I'm grateful for, or I hate it. In the same { }, gentlemen, the undergraduate body of Dartmouth College doesn't know what prayer is, obviously it doesn't. Prayer is your meeting the future. That's all what it is. And a person who doesn't pray has no future. Most of you have no future. You just are accidents, gentlemen. And as this man said, the next war will have to wipe you out. A man who cannot curse and cannot bless, cannot be blessed. He is cursed. He is cursed, gentlemen. And world -- man -- God always, when this comes about, sends big wars. The last -- do you think that the last two wars were accidental? They come when men not -- do not volunteer for their decision between associations and dissociations. Obviously if the people in Austria and Hungary had volunteered to dissolve their empire and liquidated it peacefully, there wouldn't have been a First World War. Isn't that true? And obviously, if the nations of this world had settled their economic differences and their colonial problems peacefully, there wouldn't have been a Second World War. Wars come, gentlemen, when you think that you alone make the decisions in the right of more associations, and do not dissociate yourself in time from the dead associations, the things that have gone corrupt, that you -- when you think, "Well, I can associate." So that this association takes away all my responsibility. There is no "may not" anymore, because my association tells me that it is good, you see. And you are abolished.

These two wars, gentlemen, haven't helped you at all. You are just the same irresponsible crowd as before. And you ask the same idiotic psychological questions, "why" and "what." The wars come, gentlemen, so that you may say -- have to say, "yes" and "no." Instead, you dodge the draft.

I had such an argument. A lady the other day comes to my house and says how she could get her -- keep her son out of the service. Now, he's so shortsighted that he probably doesn't have to serve, anyway, but she was so frightened, and "What can I do, that my boy doesn't have to serve?"

I said, "Didn't you come to this country 20 years ago with this son?" Of course,

she did. "Now, why aren't you proud that he can serve?"

"It's just a loss of time."

I said, "Loss of time? Where would you be if you -- he had lost his life and you, too?"

And she dared to tell me that it was a loss of time to serve in an army which gives men, for the remainder of his life, that amount of free time that he can still do -- say "yes" and "no" himself. But that's how you live, gentlemen. And so the next war is probably in the making, because we have 2 million such boys in colleges today, who don't deserve better than to be wiped out.

And it all depends on the few who act differently and who volunteer. I have now a friend who is 25. He was a minister. He even didn't have to serve, so at 25 years, applied to enter the service, because he said, "I cannot claim this privilege, for it's nonsense." And so he's now an ordained minister and now he will serve in the Army. That's a good man.

Only to show you, gentlemen, that these things are really as they are, you remember my page on your speechlessness. Now speechlessness comes when men only chatter, prattle. You have nothing to say after you however have said once "yes" to your bride, or she has said "yes" to you. You can write a poem. You are very eloquent. The experience of having overcome one temptation in life to which you have said, "no," makes a man out of you. And then you have something to say. And you suddenly become -- go into politics and make big speeches, because you have experienced these powers of thanking, of cursing -- you can also curse -- of praying, of deprecating, of saying "yes" and "no." Here is the Herald Tribune. He describes -- the critic, Mr. Kerr -- describes the content of two plays. And he shows that in the two plays the same line occurs, twice, which is quite strange:

In "Reclining Figure," { } comedy about the machinations of art dealers -- one cultivated crook is about to milk another cultivated crook of his spoils. "Be my guest!" cries the victim, throwing his arms wide. In "Fragile Fox," Norman {Brooks'} melodrama about some of the shooting that went on behind the lines in World War II. A cynical private first-class is having a shattered leg set on an Army cot and a friend is asked to straddle him during the operation. "Be my guest!" cries the victim, writhing in pain.

After sober thought, on the matter, I'd call this table-hopping wit -- the kind that is eminently satisfactory in a buzzing restaurant.

Now you'll remember my story, eight years ago, was laid out in a restaurant, where the man, the producer, overheard this young couple. You remember? Do you? You remember this story? So I'm very proud of this coincidence, gentlemen. It's more than a coincidence. Here this man writes eight years after my book was published -- written it was in 1941 -- but that's eternally true about our scene, that he says:

I call this table-hopping wit, the kind that is eminently satisfactory in a buzzing restaurant, and you are already feeling a little set up and you are happy enough to be clapped on the shoulder and to see a familiar face bending over an unfinished Scotch ...

Exactly the situation I have described there.

"... And when you are reasonably certain that the lively joke-swapping effort will be over in a moment. This is a legitimate vein, and I admire the man who can bring it off gracefully. But I don't think it's strong enough for the legitimate theater."

One of you took me to task and said this producer had given up too early, because of this experience of speechless chat. Now he's -- the critic says, "It isn't strong enough for the legitimate theater." And that's eight years later, and with all these catastrophes and tragedies going on around us.

Let's line out now, gentlemen, our -- I think without your knowing it, we have made quite some headway in giving a skeleton for comparison of different attitudes of men towards these eternal situations. But we cannot live to the next day, gentlemen, without saying "yes," and "no," "thank you," and "please." Because the next day means a new "yes," and a new "no," and a new "please," and a new "thank you." There is -- would be nothing new under the sun if life would not constantly, you see, consist of these creative re-associations by which we welcome something, and dismiss something. { }.

You live, gentlemen, not by asking "why" and "what" -- may I repeat this? -- but you live every morning by saying "no" to your wish to stay in bed and saying "yes" to your power to jump out of bed. It's as simple as that. And you know how important it is sometimes to do -- jump out of bed and not to stay in bed. And that takes a decision. And it means that what has happened has happened, and you must know whether it's plus or minus, thank or curse. And what's going to happen is so uncertain, that you try to single out what you pray for and what you deprecate. Isn't that true? Every one of us does this. But you don't know what you're doing. You are so -- you have made a screen of intellectual curiosity before yourself, and wit and nonsense. And that's what you think is your mental life. Gentlemen, you are much better people than you know. The terrible thing is

not that you don't know this, even, but that you don't want to know, that you do everything never to meet God. You meet the minister in church, but that's no other escape of not meeting God.

God is the secret of yourself, gentlemen, in process of being revealed, that a new day for you is dawning, that you must change your mind, that you must today say something different from what you said yesterday. That's the same thing: your love to your mother, which was excellent yesterday, now no longer is good enough and has to be replaced by another. Yes. And this is life, gentlemen, that there is no standstill, that you have to make this decision day after day: what is still good enough for you and what is not yet there which you need.

Now you remember that I tried already to reach you in this respect. I'm sure I haven't quite succeeded, but I hope you may at least admit that I'm talking about your real religion, and I'm not talking about Judaism or Christianity. I'm not interested in these slogans. To you these are mere slogans. They are mere associations on the surface. They have nothing to do with your power to say "no" to the United States government, or to your family, or to the church to which you belong, or to the college, when it comes to that. And that would be your religious power. And before, you haven't shown me that you can say "no" to something, I don't give you the right to say that you are a living member of a church. Formerly, nobody could become a Christian without forswearing the Devil. The way in which a man joined the church originally was, "Do you forsake the Devil and all his works?" You -- have you heard of this? That was meant very literally, you see; that the people felt that a man who cannot dissociate himself from the Devil, you see, cannot join the church. The joiners are not -- no people. Most people here at this campus just want to be joiners. Join -- still one more group.

I'm interested in the people, gentlemen, who can say "no." I once saved the life of a man who's now a professor at a famous university, because he was the president here of the Dartmouth -- not of the Dartmouth, but of the student union, which was at that time a Red front organization. I didn't even know that. I was living my own life very much, but I told this boy who came to me and wanted to work with me, I said, "If you work with me, just as an avocation, I have no time for you. But if you and your group ..." -- it was a whole group of boys; two of them were killed in the war -- "... if you want to work with me, prove it to me."

{ } said, "How can you?"

"Dismiss some of your damned extracurricular activities." So he gave up this presidency. And since he was a roommate of Mr. {Remington,} you can imagine that it saved his life, that he did this, because the two things together would have

made life impossible for him later on.

So his "no" made him, and I could only believe him, gentlemen, because of this "no." And we did work together and we still work together. He visited me this summer again and we still are close associates. But our association, gentlemen, is of a higher order, because it is based on a previous "no" to another association. And if you want to test your wife, you will also find it necessary that she must -- or that she test you -- that she must give up something. And the women, as I told you, you will find today are so overbearing that they want you to say "no" to all your friends and all your spiritual activities before, because they don't know better. They are so frightened that otherwise they might not be powerful enough to retain you. And you have to be articulate about this, and you must have to say to your -- to the chosen one, gentlemen, and it's very accurately true -- you can say to her that you do leave your parents and will cleave to the wife of your choosing, but that you cannot give up the gods and the religion that you have discovered on your own in the course of life and together with your friends, or with books, or with authorities, or with teachers or whatever it is. And you will find this is a very useful advice, gentlemen, that you can make this distinction. You will never understand otherwise what's going on today in America. Most divorces come on this overbearing of the poor woman who has a man, who is not -- has not cut the umbilical cord to his mother, who unknowingly or knowingly is still haunted by her power, who marries this girl to have freedom of sex, and who has then like associations. And the woman, not being able to break this umbilical cord, which would be the heart of the matter, then makes sure that civilization, culture and however you call it -- television and theater and clubs and political convictions and religious convictions are -- go through her, because she is so jealous, because she is so uncertain, because her husband hasn't brought to her the fruits of his own "no," the new "yes," which he has found -- but is burdening her with his old associations. And she will not stand that. So you are, gentlemen, in a very delicate position with your young marriages. She has the right that you discard anything that just protected you when you were young, because that's not new life. That's just life to be thankful for.

But you have nothing usually to bring her of new life. You haven't written poetry. You haven't a political conviction. You haven't joined a church. You haven't reformed the world. You have done nothing. You haven't even acquired real friends, just chummies. So she brushes this all aside and has no respect for you. It's just casual. You see, you must show her that your life before you meet her has not been just accidental, that you have said "yes" and "no" to certain things. And in this very moment, she'll believe you. And you -- she will be yours forever. But any woman, gentlemen, who hears that a man says, "For better, for worse," wishes to know that he knows what he's talking about, that he's not just repeating the formula of a minister of a church, that he doesn't just -- has learned

this by heart, even. If I hear you say these words in church, I want always to leave, because you only repeat what the minister has to say first. Learn it not only by heart, but understand it and then it will come. The formula is simply true in marriage. And you should be ashamed that you just repeat the words of the minister in church. It's a scandal how marriage is now concluded in this -- here, with bridesmaids, the main thing always seems to me the d‚collet‚ of the bridesmaid. That you call marriage, and then the dead repetition of a formula by people who say, "Church is a superstition." But you are the superstitious people by repeating another man's formula. Isn't that superstition? And the most liberal people in this country are the ones who, in the last emergency, go to church and are married in church because it looks so good. It is a social event. And then they -- the liberals, the atheists, the free thinkers, the people who care for nothing -- they represent the superstition, because any believer doesn't have to wait for the minister to tell his wife that he wants to be married in the name of God and Christ and -- with her, to her. But an unbeliever who repeats this formula and doesn't even know what it -- does -- neither know what it means, nor does he -- have learned it so he can speak out of his own heart. He's then -- gloats over the superstitious people who go to church, the old-timers, and -- who is he? He's worse off than the last African Negro. And this country consists of African Negroes in the -- far majority -- that is, of people who are superstitious, who think that when they use the magic formula in church, their wife will be faithful to them -- to him. Don't you believe that? You're so na‹ve that when you marry, you really think, "That's it." Marriage is a process, gentlemen, of melting two people together in such a way that the "yes" of the man and the "no" of the man goes. Since you never have dissociated yourself of anything in life, neither the Devil, nor the drink, nor sex, nor anything -- if you have no freedom over yourself, how can you think that this woman trusts you? She's full of mistrust that you might run away with another woman.

And she's right. Sheer -- accidentally, if you stay married, usually from cowardice, because it's so inconvenient to pay to two women so much money.

Now, gentlemen, let's this -- sum this up. You want to go?

Since every one of us, gentlemen, in his own generation has to learn to say, "yes," "no," "thank you " and "please" -- will you take this down, perhaps? -- since every human being becomes a human being by having the power of dismissing associations and forming new associations -- and the monk and the nun has to do this because they have to join a monastery or convent -- a nurse who entered the hospital, you don't have to get married for this, gentlemen, -- anybody who is wedded to a new vocation. Every one of you who is here just leaving college is faced with the same, "College is over." Isn't it? And the boy who can't say this, you see, remains the eternal alumnus, you see, and is a plague on both houses.

So, gentlemen, in the midst of every day on which you wake up, there is the secret, "What shall we become tomorrow?" And in this secret, there lies the identity of men and God. If we solve -- if our secret stands revealed, it is -- two forces are needed: my own readiness to say "no" to my will hitherto. My mind is not good enough as it was, and I was too stupid. I didn't know the new situation. So gentlemen, this -- my secret consists in two aspects. I must have the power to say "no" to my previous will, and mind, and feelings. I have to be able to change my mind, and the mind consists of -- at least of these three things. I must be able to dissociate myself with my own inclinations. Can I do it? It's a riddle. Will I be strong enough? So you know the central prayer of our era says, "Not my will be done." That's the human contribution to the secret of yourself, that you are still able to say "no" to your previous self. If you can't say this, gentlemen, you can't -- never come up to humanity. You are just a mass, a mob. A mob is a group of people who have lost this power to dissociate themselves. You can even see it on the street. The mob is people who have jelled in such a way that they cannot dissociate. Isn't that true? Any one in this -- mob who can still go home and say "Good-bye" to the rest of the mob, you see, ceases to be mob.

Now, ask yourself, how often you have this power to say "no" to your previous self or to your mob association, which has become a mob, usually, because it's useless in the new situation. Now the second thing is, gentlemen, the secret unfolds only if you can admit that you are changed. And it is not voluntary that we are changed. To grow up, gentlemen, as you know, is very painful process. And to say, "yes," or to pray, even, for your growing up, means that you invite growing pains. And the admission that these growing pains are blessed, and that you have to be thankful for them, is your belief in God. There is no other. Gentlemen, nobody knows of God who hasn't discovered Him as his own other half. There is no God outside.

Now, I'll give you a help to explain why this has been forgotten. For the last 400 years, people have talked always about God's power, about His omnipotence, in competition with the powers of nature. And I think that's no useful talk today when we try to approach religion. All talks, which speak of God as "power," seem to me to do more harm than good at this moment for a man who doesn't already believe in God. Never try this, to show that God -- after all, is infinite power. The word "power" today is a bastard. Most people in this country think power is in itself good. Well, power is neither good nor bad, obviously. And I'm sure that God is omnipotent, gentlemen. But I don't wish to tell a man who doesn't know that he believes in God, that he can discover God under the name of power in America today. The word "power" is today tampered with, is polluted. God, although He is certainly omnipotent, must be discovered by you and me in quite a different manner, as inseparable from yourself, as somebody who is at work in you. Otherwise we don't care. I mean, what do I care for the

pope? Or what do I care for the saints? Or what do I care for the Hindu -- for Mr. Buddha, or Abraham or anything? If I have no access to God myself, I'm lost. Or it's all just bunk. But every one of you gets out of bed, actually and who has decided even to go to college, gentlemen, has this very na‹ve faith that the next day is greeting him, welcoming him, and he prays for it. You may be very na‹ve and it may turn out to be a very wicked day, a very bad day, but we couldn't live without this na‹ve faith. I told you, to speak means to believe. To speak means to believe. And you all, gentlemen, still say "good-bye" and "good morning," and as long as you can say to anything, "you are welcome, you are welcome," you usher in an associate which is not yourself. You admit that this other fellow, the beggar on the street, makes your day full, because you have the great honor of being allowed to help this beggar. And in this moment, a glance of the divinity falls upon you and the beggar, and everyone has experienced this. But you try to forget it.

That's so funny. The funny thing is that everyone in this country seems to be in a conspiracy to suppress his real experiences of the divine life and to rationalize, "Is there a God?" That's not a religious question. I'm not interested in people who talk theology or philosophy. That's not serious. Never answer a boy who asks you, "Is there a God?" Dismiss it. That's a question of a 4-year-old child. It's never to be answered. It isn't. It's not a question you can ask. God is not something that -- because it isn't something. God is everywhere, at every moment. How can you ask, "Is there a God?" If the people cannot discover that He is everpresent, then they haven't discovered, so it's no use talking about Him. Never do this, gentlemen. Don't have these bull sessions on the existence of God. Perfectly useless. And worse than that, they usually cauterize the human soul for any understanding of what's happening to her every morning and every evening and every noon. Every moment.

But gentlemen, I think there is today -- every time has its own approach. Other times had the right to talk of God as power. Don't misunderstand me. Or God is spirit. You don't know what "spirit" is, so there's no use telling you that God is "spirit." You say, "spirit" I prefer spirits. You do that. You don't know what spirit is. So what meaning can it have to you? So all these things -- even "God is love," since you don't know what love is, you think it's sex. Don't call God "love." Or you think it's kindness. God isn't kind. Love is a terrible passion, and jealous, and powerful, and therefore, no use saying, "God is kindness." The charity ladies in New York, they are all kind. They have no religion. Kindness and sex are the two degradations of "God is love," you see. And power plants and power corporations are the degradation of power -- or military power today -- of the power notion of God.

Gentlemen, we have praised over the last centuries knowledge, enlighten-

ment. And now I want to bring your own experience nearer to you. God is darkness, is secret. As long as you can hold out in a darkness before you know your own secret, gentlemen, you are still not quite lost. But if you say you only want light, as your curiosity questions show "why" and "what," then you don't -- know nothing of God. God is the not-yet-revealed light. And in you, and in nobody else. That is, nobody knows of God unless he has found Him in his own existence. All the other arguments for the existence of God are nonsense, valueless. They leave you cold -- bleed you cold. Have nothing to do with it. Can't reason out God. But He is just there, because you have to hold onto this faith that your own will, your own self, your own feelings, they are not good enough at this moment and you pray for a better self. So God is the power to change you. If I say He is a secret, it's the same, because change takes time. Change from one aspect is still a secret. From the other aspect is a -- is that your aliveness which can undergo change. Life is change, or it isn't life.

And here we come now to the list. Gentlemen, I told you, if a father can see his own secret in his daughter revealed, he being male, she being female; he belonging to one generation, she belonging to the next generation -- and if he can realize the identity -- if a man who endows Baker College -- Baker Library can feel that while he made the money, this money is only meaningful because he made it for the endowment of this library -- if you can ever see that the final cause, the destination of the money, backward working, allows him to thank God for the millions he made, and before he had found this useful purpose, he's unable to thank for this -- for his money and he may say "it is a curse" -- that only the final end in the next generation and generations to come does ennoble his greed. If you can see that his secret stands revealed only the next generation, you have found access to the heart of the matter, which we call "religion." That a man in one state of mind, and heart, and feeling, and will can see identity in a time in which another mind, another will, even another sex, as we said, you see, another {rule,} and if he knows it's {just} one life out of which these two wills -- my will to make the money and, you see, other people's will to use the money -- { } you see, can be identified as one divine will.

Gentlemen, what we call divine -- {or} secret, {or} later revelation -- that is the power to identify opposite wills, opposite times, opposite feelings, opposite experiences -- will you take this down? -- this is the original meaning, gentlemen, of the word "spirit." The spirit between father and daughter makes the father into the father and the daughter into the daughter. Here. Spirit is at least plural-aged, as I -- une faute de mieux -- I have no other better word. At least it must comprise two generations. There is no spirit that doesn't comprise more than one man and make them { }. So the spirit moves in this -- how do you call it -- the point between the two sides of an angle?

(Apex.)

Wie?

(Apex.)

The apex. The spirit is the apex between two lines of will, two lines of thought, two lines of feeling, and unites them. Spirit is at least two wills unified ...

[tape interruption]

... and but still the spirit is moved between them and above them and comprises them. No man has a spirit, gentlemen. We all can only participate in it. And the spirit is a secret, before you and the other partner have given each other the final name. Before Dartmouth College hasn't called this library Baker Library, Mr. Baker was not redeemed. Only when we gave the library his name did we accept this relationship of his money and our studies. Isn't it obvious? Before the money was vacant, floating, looking for a customer. But the spirit between Baker and Dartmouth was such that now there is a reconciliation, what is called redemption. His money is redeemed. More there isn't to redemption, gentlemen. I take quite purposively a very simple and very robust example. It's very crude, my example of Baker Library. But the whole secret of the Holy Ghost is in this. The spirit waits to be recognized by the people who give each other, under this spirit, the right name. That is the meaning of a "nation under God," that all generations of Americans will be able to recognize each other, as Baker's millions and Baker's books recognize each other in the title, "Baker Library."

That's a long story, is it not? And you have to work for it, that it remains true, that the library is still useful, and not just filled with textbooks, which is the great danger in America. You know that in Russia they print nine times as many books a year as we do in this country? And in Russia, there's only -- one-fifth of it are textbooks. In this country, out of 150 million volumes printed every year, 140 million volumes are textbooks, which means that there is no creative life whatsoever in this country. Textbooks are not books. And that's America, the richest country in the world and the most -- the laziest spiritually. A complete absence of any spiritual life. Of course { } say, "What do I gain by the good life?" Nothing. No money. But you are at peace then with the rest of the world. You don't have to go to war.

Now, gentlemen, let me generalize, {gentlemen.} The most general experience you all have to make is your death. That is, the greatest change of any will in humanity is that you die. So you can have a religion, gentlemen, that centers

around suitor and bride. You can have a religion that centers around father and daughter. You can have a religion that centers around life and death. You know very well that the Greeks had this great religion of Zeus and Athene. That was the question of father and daughter. They went so far to say that the daughter has no mother. The whole secret was in Minerva -- Athene jumping ready-made out of the head of Zeus. That's true daughterly love, you see. But with the slight idolatry of -- or not slight -- a terrible idolatry of the father. That's why the Greeks are idolaters. But it is the Greek religion, gentlemen -- is based on the relation of father and daughter. You have another, suitor and bride. Has anybody heard ever of Mr. Swedenborg, the great --? He believed that this was heart of all religion. His sacred marriage, you see, between husband and wife is very wonderful. And he's quite right. He dominated the 18th century. And the father of William James in this country was a Swedenborgian and you will come to recognize, I hope, in the course of this course, that he signifies a necessary contribution to our complete religious experience. The bride and the suitor do represent Christ and His church. And you can learn nearly every secret of life if you really faithfully live out your great love, and become the husband of a wife, of one wife. That's a great story.

So man can learn what religion is in this form, in this form of change, that out of a mere suitor, a mere bachelor, he becomes the bridegroom of a bride. That's an inspired thing. So we put here Swedenborg.

Then you have the problem of life, death and life. And I told you that this is the problem of all the old ancient peoples, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Chinese with their ancestor-worship, the problem of what becomes of man after death. What -- where is this life going after death? So what do we pray for when we die? Where is the future, and what is the thing to be thankful for if all life leads to death? So, we'll -- we say that all -- well, the fate of the dead, or what -- is then the obsession of this -- such a religion.

Then we said, gentlemen, that Mr. Benjamin Franklin, who had very little religion, had at least the religion of a change of mind. He was a progressive man. He had a philosophy and we said, -- we say now with clearer understanding, gentlemen, that the philosophical aspect of religion, is when the whole problem is a change of mind, not a change of the body, not a passing out of life, but just a change of mind. Mind, mind, mind, mind. Today I think this. Today I'm of this party. Tomorrow I'm an adherent of the next party. You all have to face this, gentlemen. These poor philosophers, naturalists, and however they call them, scientists -- they have more changes to undergo, day after day, but less important ones. Less incisive ones. They have only a change of mind to undergo. Now a modern scientist, as you know, prays for progress. Prays for progress. And you know, Mr. Oppenheimer didn't quite know if Mr. Teller was a progress or back-

sliding in his case of scientific discovery. Very interesting. Modern scientists have lost the cure progress, very much. They were -- 50 years ago, they were quite sure that whatever they discovered would be progressive. But as you know, Mr. Oppenheimer suddenly straddled the fence and said, "Mr. Teller goes too far. That's not progress to make a hydrogen bomb." I don't blame him. They are now suddenly faced with the fact that -- that's a very superficial religion, gentlemen -- a philosophy of religion. They have then the religion of the change of mind. That's the scientific -- the academic religion. Today in this country, the academic religion, which -- it's the most you usually have is, that you want to change your mind for the better, by progressing. You will dismiss one thought if you're quite sure that the next thought is better. If you live long enough, as I have to, gentlemen, you will find that sometimes the thoughts of your youth have been much better than the youth -- or the thoughts of your middle age or the mind of your old age. Senility is a terrible thing. Complacency is a terrible thing. The bay window of the man of 55, you know, very often destroys his best thought. And therefore, gentlemen, I cannot believe that one -- the change of mind is always progressive. I think the mind is fickle. But I still have to see that it is progressing. I don't believe, gentlemen, that the change of mind means progress. And there I am completely distinguishable, at least from the philosopher, who believes that the only important change of -- is the change of mind, because the mind always progresses. And you have a religion, gentlemen, of the mind when a man believes in progress.

The last -- the next stage, gentlemen, is body -- transformation of the body. We saw already that this is the same as the metamorphosis in which the Hindu religion believes. Here we have Greeks, here we have Swedenborg, here we have the ancient {kinship or} empires. We have here the Hindu religion. They believe in the -- that the soul migrates from one body into the other, so that the fate of change -- the secret to be revealed is, do I become in the next life a pig, or a snake, or a lion, or a raven? Very hard for you and me to take this seriously, gentlemen. But if you think of the ages of your own life, you will find that the Hindu metamorphosis is just an enlargement of your own problem, that in your youth you are a calf; and in in your middle age you become a roaring lion; and in your old age, you usually become an eagle, a seer, like St. John of Patmos.

That is, gentlemen, you find a reasonable experience of this transformation of your body in your experience of aging in your {own inside} life. You all pass through, by and large, 10 ages. Every seven years, bodily you are very different. And if you analyze what you are from 1 to 7, from 7 to 14, from 14 to 21, 21 to 28 and on it goes, you will find that your body demands from you a different mind, even a different soul every seven years. You have to put off what is childish after you lose your teeth. Then the child goes to school. You know why it goes to school? Because -- and not before? Because only when the child has lost its

physical integrity for the first time can it appreciate the life of the mind, because the life of the mind steps in for any physical loss or integrity, for some partial death.

We think, because we don't want to die. Perhaps you take this down, gentlemen. We think, because we don't want to die. And to think means, as I've told you, to say "yes," "no," please" and "thank you"! That means to think. Nothing else is worth the great order of thinking. "Yes," "no," "thank you," "please" means the power to think and we think, because we must die. And we think for no other reason. If you and I could live head-on all the time, you would drive at 150 miles an hour and never give it a thought. Why should you? Nothing can happen. You can't die. The immortal gods don't think, the Olympians. They have no reason to think. Why should they have a philosophy? It's poor mortals who must think, you see.

You and I have to think, because every seven years, gentlemen, we die. St. Augustine has said, "As many ages a man has to live through, as many deaths does he must die -- must he die." If you only knew this, gentlemen, you wouldn't run around as boys of 60, but as wise, old men. The terror of Americans, you see, why -- when they meet other people in the world is, that they all want to be boys at 60 and girls at 70. You are no girl at 70. You are a grandmother. But you don't want to be it, and so you are absolutely childish already at 30. Well, it's very nice for you, now, gentlemen, to play the 12-year-old, which you do in this college. What you -- when I go around in the classes and hear what other people have to teach you -- all the things you should have learned when you were 12. You're wasting your time here. I attended a class here this morning, in French and Latin. Well, these are not things for 20-year-old men. But you have insisted, with your play, with your avalanche of playfulness, that nothing is learned ever in time in this country. You all want to change from boyhood to adolescence. The word "adolescence" has gone out of existence. You are boys.

But gentlemen, the price you pay is that you have missed two important deaths. You have missed the death at 14 and at 21. And so your poor wife has to be married to a playboy. And you -- your faces show it. There's not a wrinkle in them. Have you had a sleepless night over the existence of God in your life? You dismiss Him. You are ashamed if you ever have a worry. You don't want to suffer. You want to have a painless death. Have I ever heard in any use of any other country any other cry than to be allowed to suffer and to sacrifice, in Russia, or in England, or in Germany, or in Italy because that makes a man? And here I have to sit -- stand and listen to this -- he's not here, is he? -- Ja. Sorry to have heard such a question. A young man who only asks for painlessness, gentlemen, cannot grow up. To grow up means to have pain. And very heavy pain. There is no other way for life. Have you ever seen a child born? Have you? You

should, because then you would know how costly it is to be born, that your mother has a travail. That's a terrible pain. And that has to be so, because otherwise your life won't be good.

Life struggles against death, and the heavier, more passionately it struggles, the more life it is. And you all live anabiotic at 35 degrees. That you call life. A painless life, gentlemen, is no life. It's worse than death. Can neither live nor die.

And therefore, it's so difficult for you -- to speak to you of any of these things, because you have made a non-life the rule. I'm sorry. I can't go quite through with this list, but you can see that this is all rather unsatisfactory. That these changes are just taken as they occur from the outside. And there have been then epochs on mankind -- on mankind to put change not as a danger at the outskirts of life and say, "Father, my" -- his life ends and the daughter comes about. Mr. Baker makes his money, and then there's quite a will, and then comes Baker Library -- long after his death. And so, the suitor is never sure before the bride occurs -- comes on. They have been attempts to place the full life into you and me, so that we can face death ourselves, and not wait until it occurs from the outside. And we call these religions, gentlemen, at the distinction of these religions, with a different name. These religions are all natural. That is, they are forced upon us by circumstance. Everybody dies. Everybody changes his mind. Everybody has children who don't do his will and bidding, you see, except in a miracle, so to speak, as a miraculous exception. And so you can imagine, gentlemen, that people have been yearning all through the ages to get this secret a little closer, into their own hands, into their own -- under their own jurisdiction. In all these cases, if you look at it, you have to wait if your soul is going to be a lion in the next generation. You can already see that if you want to become an adolescent, out of a boy, there's much more inside of you. { } that what enters, you see, not outside your life, after you have ended your life, and begin the new one, that the life and the death take place inside of you. Let's -- then confront this list with another list next time.