Lecture 14

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Live! » Volume 5: Cross Of Reality (1953)

(1:18:55)

Transcript

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

(Philosophy 9, December 4.)

...he -- so far, I have tried to show you that man in -- at play, as a soldier, and as a worker, behaves in very different ways. And he's -- as a research fellow, and as a worker, or as a manager -- a different person. And we call them all "persons" with this glibness of modern society, which has inherit- -- -herited the discipline of Christianity, but doesn't -- does now bestow it on every natural animal which you call "a brat," or "a human being," or "a student at Dartmouth." But if you aren't a Chris- -- Christian, you aren't a person so easily. And that -- the point today and for the rest of the term will be to show you how, without very s- -- distinct conditions, the private, and the general, and the soldier on leave, and the recruit, or the veteran, are just not able to understand their fellow man in the opposite camp, and are far from being a person.

So the next chapter, as you remember, in our index had been already before, man's problem to be able to come from his loneliness and solitude, from his so-called individuality, into these various positions, with understanding and with the possibility of not just being a private, but next day a general. This power to be one and the other, asks for certain conditioning.

And we therefore turn to this place where this conditioning is -- has been done so far, and now stops to be performed. And the -- another reason why we have to talk about these things is that the silent groove in which all these breads were baked, and these human beings were turned into personalities, or persons, is at this moment suddenly not working. It has been, as you know, replaced by television. I'm speaking of the home. I'm speaking of the family. That is, we will see why the family is the unit which does not consist of persons, but dismisses persons in the end; and why you have to reckon with the pre-personal situation before you can understand the person. And we shall now define "the person" very simply. A person is that human being which can cope with the four aspects of play, of war, and of peace. Understood? A per- -- a person is a human being that is not pigeon-holed, that hasn't to be an athlete. It can also study. That hasn't to be just a blue -- brown-study man, but can also play in a drama. That hasn't to be a -- just a art-for-art's-sake man, but that if it -- a -- a person dies, can also conduct his funeral.

I've just come back from a funeral in which this pompous ass of an Episcopal minister really prevented the dead person to get her due. It was terrible. She prevented -- he preven- -- he was an Episcopalian, so he claimed jurisdiction. She was just brought to this place, where -- because her husband had, and her

grandparents had -- were lying there, the man insisted on his Episcopalian jurisdiction, that he was the parish priest. The priest who knew her from outside, from Groton, who wanted to do it wasn't allowed by him to do it. This man was in front of a gathering of Unitarians, and all kinds of people. She had happened to be an Episcopalian person, so he insisted to say the Creed, although in the Episcopalian burial service, there is no place for the Creed. He invented that just to show his importance, and so you -- I -- this man was a brute, but not a person. Not a living person. So I assure you you can be a ritualist in the Episco- -- or the Roman Catholic Church, and still not deserve the right of a person, but just be a pompous ass.

This is very important for us at this moment, gentlemen, because -- would you kindly note this down? -- the fiction of today is that everybody by birth is a person. That's a very dangerous fiction. That's why we today are in such trouble with our religious education, with our political parties, with Mr. McCarthy, with Eisenhower. It isn't true that a man wakes up and is a person. A person is a man who can cope with opposites, who can decide when is the time for what in his life. If you are a playboy, and you don't know when to become serious and become soldiers, you aren't a person. You are a playboy. As we say, you see. Or when you are a brute -- an athlete, or -- how would you call a man who is always on the warpath, I mean, who has to "fight the Japs," or the -- somebody, I mean, such a wide -- Marine? Well, he's not a person. He's just again a boy, a pirate, a -- or a wild Westerner. Not a person.

A person is something you have completely lost sight of. And glibly you talk in any ad, you -- search for personality. Manager, you see, "who has a fine personality." A person is something very clear, who he can decide, the mask, or the role which is on his face, and -- owe him at this moment, and he can change this role. Persona in Latin means to sound through the mask. The person is originally the actor on the tragic scene who wears the mask of the hero, you see. And a person is that man who therefore knows when to wear one mask or the other.

Our God knows very well when to appear as the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit. But you never think that we learn what a person is from the Creed, from the Trinity. God -- God is three persons in one, because He -- shows us three faces. And you little people don't understand the Trinity, because you think that God is just as limited as you and I, to one face. And so you say that's the -- the grandeur, that God of course must be more than you and I before it completely escapes you. The Trinity is -- defined to make man not forget that God certainly not an animal, or a man, but more than you and I. So He's of course richer than you and I. It's the simplest dogma in the world, the Trinity. And I have never understood why, for the last 150 years, America took special

delight to take it down. They -- it has ended themselves into the -- quagmire, because you no longer are persons. You are either playboys or you go to the psychoanalyst as patients. That is, you are dissolved into non-entities. You are bundle of nerves, a bundle of associations, with a torn will. You are schizophrenic. And what's schizophrenic? Anything but not being a person, being halfcocked. The whole country, you know, has the record in schizophrenia. There is no other continent, and no other country -- the poorest countries in the world stand higher in soul discipline than the American people. The only thing we have is the standard of living. But we have no souls left. They are all split into two, bec- -- what is it?

(May I suggest that we might have a higher record for schizophrenia, because perhaps we have more hospitals to accommodate them. And schizos come to light. I mean, they're uncovered, there's more work being done...)

No, it's unknown in Europe. I have lived in Europe, my dear man. Such stability and heartlessness as in this country, and such overburdening with people, to have an alias, and to be somebody else in every society is -- are -- only in this society, you see, has a man to have 22 faces, because he belongs to the Elks, and to the Rotarians, and to the Masons, and to the -- I have -- we had a woman over the other day who belonged at the same time to the Congregation and to the Episcopal Church, to make quite sure that she went to Heaven.

No, because people are joiners, Sir. That's the reason, because you always have to run with -- you cannot be alone. That's why you are not a person in this country. People have always to gre- -- be gregarious. This is the whole reason. People -- read Pascal. And he says, "There are more crimes, and more sins done, because a man cannot stand to be alone in his room for one hour." He cannot.

(Well, I would agree with you on that. But I just wanted to point out that in a poorer country, you're less likely to have research or work done for mental cases. And therefore to have a singularly lower schizo { }.)

But our psycho- -- our psychiatrists are all sick themselves.

If you take six psychoanalysts, seven of them have to go to an institution. They are the sickest of the sick. Take the sociologists, the psychologists. They are crazy, because they don't know that -- that mankind is in a creative process at this moment in God's presence. No, my dear man. It has {fatal} consequences. When you take life, you see, as given in -- in personal ways, that comes only to people who have faith, and love, and hope. It doesn't come to you with your { }.

Who says this -- this is so obvious. We build the hospitals after we have discovered there is schizophrenia. This na‹ve idea, because we are so rich. Of course, we -- rich people fall sick of special diseases. That's very true. Poor people just have -- have a lot of diseases go around them. Sure. That's already in Hamlet. Don't you know that -- what the grave digger says in Hamlet? No? Who knows what he says, when they talk about Yorick, and the graveyard.

(I did the scene one { }.)

What?

(It's -- I had to do a speech once. But what do you mean? What -- where's he talking about what?)

That rich people have so many good reasons to take their lives, you see. Poor haven't. They just starve.

Oh no. If you -- if you cannot see this, I'm very sorry for you. If you really believe this -- this is a fine excuse, you see --

(Oh, oh, I can see...)

-- of this building the hospitals, and then you draw -- you have to find all the -- sufficient number of patients to fill them. As you well know, we haven't enough doctors, because we don't even have enough training places for doctors in this country. How can you say that we have a superabundance of hospitals? There are many more hospitals in Germany, or France, and Switzerland. Just go to Switzerland. That's richer than the United States. This is actual gold over- -- you see, we have overdrawn our gold account long ago, as you know. The Swiss have a coverage of 140 -- 140 percent for their -- for their bank note circulation, you see. They have more gold than they have notes in circulation. But you go around there. There are no schizophrenics.

(Are you really convinced there are more cases per -- per -- or a higher ratio of cases of schizophrenia in America than in any other country? Or ...)

Oh, certainly, certainly. There is no warmth, because of the complete disintegration of the family. That's the { }. Well, look at all these brats, in their heartlessness, and their indifference. Do you think I could find in Euro- -- in Germany a class where 10 people come to an examination and-- and say they haven't read the paper when I assigned this eight weeks before? This indifference, this feeling of -- superior to -- to the most -- simplest things, this just doesn't exist, this care- -- devil -- this I-don't-care-attitude. The children already tell you

when you ask them, "Do you wish to have some ice cream?" they say, "I don't care." What can you do with such people who can no longer be reached?

You become a person only by attachment. Now the one thing preached in this country is detachment, isn't it? We'll see that attachment is the condition of becoming a person. And since the religion of this people is -- in this coun- -- if I get excited, you laugh at me and say, "Why does he get excited? We never get excited." Yes, gentlemen, but I am a person, and you are not. I suffer, and you don't want suffer. You have said -- declared from the beginning, "We won't suffer." So you can't grow up, because any growth in this world, from childbed on, takes suffering. And you have -- sit back and say, "I won't suffer. It hurts." But you have -- it does hurt.

(But it seems to me that the mere fact that you do have -- I mean, I'm agreeing with you. I think we do have more schizophrenics in this country. Wouldn't you call that an evil progress?)

Oh no, no, no. We have -- don't just -- don't have -- make the -- have -- we have no faith, you see, in this problem, where if you are -- there are great cases in the history of the human mind of schizophrenics, where people have suffered so much under their identity that they withdrew.

Greatest case was the German poet H”lderlin, who was a very sensitive man, a great genius, and a great poet. In the middle of his life, his sweet- -- only person in whom he confided died, his sweetheart Diotima, a great woman. And he w- -- went to France, was a tutor, and was mistreated there and went out of his mind. That is, he defended himself against -- the use of his name against himself. He didn't want to be H”lderlin anymore. He invented a Chinese name under whom you could talk to him. He lived another 40 years in this state. And he still wrote some very magnificent verse. But it was all in his depth conscience. He could no longer -- he didn't want the world to know who he was. It's a great case of -- of madness, as a {hermit,} as a piece of great self-defense of the soul. And you can learn from this great case that the human soul has nothing to do with the human mind. This man went out of his mind to defend the purity of his soul.

Now the American disease is the identification of mind and soul. The -- that's the disease. If you -- the soul is the power that changes the mind. The American idea is that the mind is God, that the mind is that which keeps you alive. It's the one thing that kills you. That's why break down, gentlemen, because you can see: if you -- you remember my picture: mind, body, soul, role. Now the schizophrenia is something very simple. It's an overweighing of the position of mind, of the inner consciousness, you see. Already your soul is trying

to divest yourself of this situation. You live in another hope. You emigrate, or give notice to your boss that you hate him and have to leave him, or to get a divorce, or what-not. To dismiss you either bodily, your situation, or your -- what the body gets in this country is -- is cancer. And what the mind gets is schizophrenia. They are very {much} related. They are just the same thing, one in the body and one in the mind. Because the body gets cancer when the harmonious -- power to harmonize your system, and to draw every cell into this great stream of formation, of shape, of hue, of -- of taking shape, when this is upset now, these asses here in this country, because they are only minds, look for cancer as a bacteria, as a -- of the disease, the normal thing. What happens is that the -- the form which God has meant you to constitute, a living form, that is, a st- -- tempest, so to speak, of particles, always finding its -- themselves in the same way -- able to form your body, your nose, and your mouth, and your heart, and your limbs.

As you know, they are not there, but they are re-formed, re-created in every minute, because if you could see yourself through the microscope. You are in a turmoil. You are in rotation. We are in a frenzy at this moment. You -- we like to think of each other as sitting here, or st- -- I -- standing here. As you know, that isn't true. If you could really see who I am, and I see who you are, we would all be in a tremendous cosmic dance of electrons, and going at a tremendous rate of -- of -- thousands of miles, certainly beyond sound, power. What is a jet plane, compared to me and you? We are rotating at a tremendous speed at this moment, gentlemen.

Now you can understand that the lice -- slightest break put on such a furious, frenzied movement, must -- bring on a catastrophe. We know all these things, but these doctors won't see it. So when -- you get the cancer when the newly produced cells are not integrated into -- and cannot follow this { }. And you know what cancer is, after all. It's the luxurious growth of the cells who -- which no longer find their ordinary place in the body, but go outside, and stay there as tumor. It is so true, you see. So it's only -- the soul can only cure this. Only your admission that the -- who gets cancer? The people who stay in their gro- -- mind too long, in these cities where they all get cancer, of course. Old people get cancer from the -- as the old-age disease, because the -- our Lord of course says, "When the harmony no longer can be created, then this is just the expression of -- of death."

So you must of course distinguish between an early cancer, which is a violent destruction of the system, and an old-age cancer, which has very different forms, and which it goes -- comes much milder, and is a way of taking us out of this world. And it is already the way into the disintegration of the body which follows, when we are finally dead. It's nothing very special. Sir?

(I wonder. Then would -- would you think it might be a better idea instead of spending all this money on -- cancer research to spend it educating the soul, in order to stop --)

Well it -- obviously. The Chinese don't have cancer, because they give all their life to this discipline of the soul.

Now, only to show you, gentlemen, that this very much depends on your understanding that before a man is able to assume these four attitudes of being mind, of being body, of being soul, of being role -- that something will have to take place in all of our lives. And funny enough, it has. And we all -- all live -- grow up in a family.

The difficulty, gentlemen, is two-fold. First the psychologist says that his -- science is the science of the mental processes. And take this down, gentlemen: the whole academic profession confounds mind and soul. If I say that psychology is the science of the mental processes, I'm dealing with the mind; I'm not dealing with the soul.

Now the soul is the power to change our role, our body, and our mind. That's nothing else. Whether it is immortal, we do not know. But it has certainly that quality which have -- has led up to this strange expression, immorta- -- of immortality, which I never use. It certainly has the power to overcome any one mentality, any one physical state, and any one social role -- cultural role. Obviously the soul is this power which allows a woman still to smile after she has ceased to be beautiful. Very simple. She has changed her body. It allows you to have the same face, and the same faith that you had as a boy, although you have changed your mind about many things. And it allows a king, when he has abdicated and is a beggar, and a beggar who has become a millionaire still to be the same man. That we call the soul. The soul is that power to live down various stages of body, society, and mind.

So nobody can -- do with this -- without this fact of the soul. Even not -- the people who have denied the soul. I know a psychologist in this college. He first was a bachelor. Then he got married. Then he got drunk. And then he got divorced. Now he has -- the soul, a very depraved soul, to be sure. But he denies that he has one. You see. The psychologists are that group in this country who says there is no such thing as a soul. Well, obviously the -- there is no such thing if you want to be a psychologist only, because inside any certain mentality, you cannot make the discovery of the soul. The soul is only -- would only come in handy to this man if he would only say, "I'm seared by my profession. It doesn't do me very much good to be a psychologist, or to teach Dartmouth students. So we'd better give it up and go fishing." At that moment, the operator would be

the soul, and no longer the psychologist. Isn't that clear?

But the -- the vanity, gentlemen, of any professionalist is that he wants to think not about his power to cease to be what he is, or to think about the initiative which he -- took one day to become what he is, but he wants only to enlarge on this state of mind inside of which he moves. Well, that's a very small part of reality, you see, that he is a psychologist. There first has to be -- he has to be a son; he has to be a student; he has to be { }; he must also be able to say, "Down with psychology," "Up with psychology." He must decide on this. The decision cannot be made by the psychologist to become a psychologist.

You see, if you choose your profession, you certainly do something else than to act inside the profession. You join it. You enter it. You remember what we said about entering, about growth, about shame? Now, the psychologist, you see, cannot admit -- in the soul, because it's connected with shame. Now you remember my lecture on shame to you? I lectured on it twice; and it's very important. All the sciences -- as sociology and psychology -- say that shame is something superstitious, something sick, something that proves that man is super- -- that is limiti- -- I mean, how do you say? -- that is obsolete, that is dated. All these people cannot admit the existence of the soul. Shame is the signifier, is the semantics of the life of the soul, because shame means, "It is too early to do something. I have to wait." The soul, you see, says inside the psycholog- -- "Well, today I say carry on. I won't tell my students. And tomorrow, I'll still carry on. But the day after tomorrow, I shall write a letter to the administration and say, I resign." He can't write this letter too early. Or he's licked. His whole decision is -- you see, is meaningless. So all this time he's discreet. That's asham- -- he's ashamed, in other words.

And this shame is the condition of any decision the soul makes about a state of body, a state of mind, or a state of role. And you all know it. When you send in your letter of resignation to your fraternity, you wait as long as you possibly can, because one day too early, and you may be in error, because you haven't yet found out. So don't talk. I told you the same about your love affairs. The person who talks about the body of his mistress to other men is just a swine. He can never get married, because he has lost the power to integrate his life with this woman's life.

This has very much to do with this, gentlemen. We are trained in a very simple manner in a family, and again, it is only our Greek heritage which has prevented it. You know, the Greeks as -- were homosexuals. And the Greeks therefore had absolutely no way of understanding that the two sexes in the family are knitted together in such a way that afterwards, a person is a man who can dispose of his mother's and his sister's aspirations and feelings, as of his

own, because he knows them. He is more than himself in his decisions, because he has lived together with the other sex, and he has lived together with the other age.

You take any normal family -- of course there are no normal families, but if you take a model -- an abstract thing, the strange thing about the family is that there are four. The Greek tradition is that there are three. And your old -- the other idea is that the normal family is already known when you study father, mother, and child. This is untrue. The -- a -- the real family, even where there is one child -- oh, I beg your pardon, { }, is -- consists always of four members by necessity. And the only child -- who is an only child? You see, you are very much to -- to be pitied, because you have to bear at the same time the role of daughter and -- and son. That makes only children overburdened. It's very serious. This is the deepest psychological problem, but no psychologist ever handles it. And yet, every only child knows it, that the father wants to have a daughter in the son, and doesn't understand that he must rebel, and the mother wants to have a son, and so it's always mixed. It's terrible. That's why one child, no -- no family.

And -- that's why your generation finally has found the answer and said, "Many children." That's the answer to this whole question. If you have five or six children, some will be boys and some will be daughters. And it's a gamble, certainly. But one child -- you have to do something very special to get this child into normalcy.

We couldn't have more than one child. Our son used to run around and just tear us to pieces physically and say, "I must have a sister. I must have a sister." Well, we burst into tears. He was absolutely right. He knew we were wrong, but we were not wrong with -- with our own will. That was -- as it goes in life. But that's a tragedy. This son was not normally brought up. So now he has six children. He's giving his revenge.

But gentlemen, this is very sep- -- don't -- I'm not -- this is not -- this is very serious. Once you understand this secret, nothing shall again deprive you of your knowledge that there is a soul. And after all, that's the beginning of {his Summa}. I don't care for people discussing the existence of God. It's better not to do it at this -- juncture of the United States. But since the soul is our participation in the divine life, it's much more important to make sure that you know that there's a soul. The rest takes care of itself. I don't blame you if you -- say, "I know nothing about this, the whole matter." But your part in the divine life is the soul, because it can dismiss the visible states of your existence in a material world.

The social role is something very material, because it gives you an in-

come. The mental role is very important, begives it -- -cause your party, your religion, your science, your status in the intellectual world; to which paper you subscribe, how you feed your mind -- probably by means that do not deserve your attention. And you shouldn't. But because you don't know that there is a soul, your mind is just given to the given media -- of today, because you have lost the power of changing your mind. You haven't been trained in it. And the -- fourth thing, your body. You have to live as Helen Keller, and you have to live from ol- -- youth into old age, and you have to live with three sets of teeth, and -- not just two, as our far- -- our forefathers had to do it.

And so you have to live through change. And this identity in change is the human soul. Once you know this, gentlemen, nine-tenths of the stuff you read in the daily papers, and books, and textbooks, and examinations, just falls down to the ground as irrelevant, because it starts from a wrong proposition. Once you know this, you are absolutely safe. That's what the people called "safe" in former days, this discovery. They called this "conversion," you see. It is much simpler. It is the discovery who you really are. You convert to your own true being. And your true being certainly is not identical with your limbs. It is not identical with your mind as of this moment. And it is not identical with your social position. Anybody knows this. But there is a great mystery -- how can a man without going insane change his mind? Obvious is -- the brain can replace by another brain, by another instruction. He -- { }, yet you are the same person, you are a better person, you are more of a person, because you have been able to change your mind.

On the other hand, the soul also tells you you can't change your mind all the time. You can't be fickle. It is not possible to say, "I have an open mind." This { } idea you know is very funny today. The people who are -- getting a glimpse of the truth of the human soul say, "I have an open mind." Well, the only recommendation you can make in such a case is, "Close it, by all means."

Obviously the soul takes care of it that the mind is neither open nor closed, but is a -- you see, able to determine what it has to keep, and to retain very firmly, you see, and what it has to be able to dismiss. Something -- the problem is just quite different from what you think it is. You see, so you have an open mind, and you know nothing in it, because it isn't worth learning anything, because the more you will have to learn something different. So therefore, no memory.

Gentlemen, the soul teaches us very beautiful things. Let me say one more thing about our role, about our mind, and about our body. The soul says of all these three great ways of living, that they come to their appointed end, that they have to be fulfilled. And therefore, I -- I offer you only one interpreta-

tion. Memory -- memory for the mind is not a savings box, but a promise. The me- -- everything we shall remember is -- are meant to promise us someday in which this memory will come to life again and serve us well. So if you see -- think the mechanical way of the psychologist, you will see -- read all these monographs on memory, but not one mere mention that we remember this, which is something later to be avoided, a scar, a wound, a repress- -- which we then repress, you see, { } or the other -- a great promise, something bright which we want to remember. And I have a good memory -- on historical dates, because to me history is the future of the human race. You forget all the historical dates, because you think that's all dust and ashes, and it's long ago. Nobody can remember history who thinks that history is the past. That's why you have no interest in history in this country because you think that you can reach the future without loving the past. Now I know I can't, you see, because I copulate the future with all the unfulfilled promises and prophecies of the past. And so I know every date.

The other year, I climbed in the high mountains, and we had to come down. And my -- I was still more vigorous than my friend. My friend was very tired, and he said, "Don't -- sing, and don't say anything to me; I'm irritable." And we had thousands of mosquitoes. So I don't blame him. And so -- what does I -- do we do? We -- I had to walk in silence, so I simply said, "I'll set -- with every step I make, a -- historical date, 1, 2, 3, you see, year, and always add the fact -- the event of this year."

Well, I did very nicely. I counted twice from 1953 and had two -- two events for every year. That is, I didn't repeat the same event in counting. That's my memory about history, but why? Not because I'm antiquarian, gentlemen, but because all the...

[tape interruption]

...waiting for their future fulfillment. So a mind without a soul is -- are -- is one of these terrible machines, which you know these people who can deliver all the -- the things in arithmetic: 2 and 2 is 4, and 4 times 4 and -- on they go, you know. These quiz kids. They are heartless people. To them, memory is just an accident of birth. I mean, they are equipped with something, you see. But they cannot use their soul and bring it into their mind. You understand? The mind is just a machine. The same is true if you look at the body between a bride who -- or a dancer, and a mere crude and brutal -- man to whom nature has given a broad shoulder -- broad shoulders and heavyweight build. That's not the problem of the body. It's -- the body's then sold, when every movement, when this girl comes into the room is in itself gratifying, is in itself a welcome, is in itself an -- an expression of this great dance in which we are actually at this

moment, as I tried to tell you, engaged. The women in you and me -- the graciousness in you as a young man fortunately, enables you to carry your body in such a way that you suggest this movement. You suggest to us the truth about mankind, that is -- if you behave and move graciously through the world, there is an incentive to make all the movements of society harmonious, and rhythmical, and gracious. And if you are plump, and -- and do not get up when a lady comes into the room, it isn't that you hurt any code of manners, gentlemen, but that you forfeit this privilege of at this moment establishing such a gracious relation, which is the expression of the truth about the human race.

The ethics of society are not in any way connected with morals, as you think, but they are the expression of rhythmical, beautiful movement, as far as the body is concerned. That's why the coronation of the queen -- is not an empty gesture, because it is there -- in the bodies of these dignitaries, there is expressed the real process. But this country, as you know, laughs at all these things, at least -- officially, and then they all go to England and pay $10,000 to be able to see nobody in the {room}.

You are torn, you see. This country is so torn, because the soul has to be officially denied, and of course underneath it comes in -- there are no more obscurantists than in this country again, my dear man. You have the Rosicrucians, and you have the Christian Science, and you have all the people who believe so much in the soul that they believe too much in it. They don't believe in the body, in the mind, in the role at all.

Well, that's of course funny. These -- what is an obscurantist? A man who wants to have the soul all the time and doesn't allow the soul to go into these various, you see, appearances, and doesn't say that the dance is an expression of the secret of the soul. You understand? These people don't see reality as it appears to our five senses. But the people who live -- want to live in -- so-called American reality have trampled dead and down their most wonderful surge: the power that decides when to give in to the body, when to give in to the mind, and when to give in to the role. That's why you have so many guilt complexes in this country. they -- you have an internal mind.

In -- yesterday we had a -- such a conflagration in class. I talked about the soldier. And I had just met a chaplain, a Dartmouth boy, of course, a pacifist, in New York. And this man said that Christ condemned war. And I said, "Now, you dare to be a chaplain in the United States Army? They must be very stupid to give you a uniform. So what do you say to an honorable soldier who dies on the battlefield? What's your comfort? `You die for your sins.' Is -- are you going to say -- and tell him this? Or `You're gy- -- going die for the sins of the government, because it went to war'? That's what you dare to do as a chaplain."

You have these asinine people in this country. You -- and they are all -- abound, these people who dodge the draft, or want -- would like to dodge the draft, or condemn the draft, and haven't made up their mind. You see, that -- they obviously were brought up wrong, that Christ said any -- such a thing, never in His life. But He said, "If you do not want to go war, then you mustn't marry, and mustn't have property, you mustn't have a profession, and must have no interest in life. Then {That?} you can. But if you, as long as you live on this earth, you are earthly. And you are responsible for other people."

So you see today here in this country, you have this private soul business, people having made up a mind about this private soul and then living officially as joiner with all the official things. You go into the army, but that doesn't impress you; you don't learn what the -- about -- what the war really is, but you still say, "It's bad." And then you go -- into politics and say, "Well, but that's just politics. I'm of course clean, like a Simonized car."

So most people in this country have a wonderful -- this is I think your situation. You have here soul. Then you have around it the pacifist, liberal, progressive mentality of your private citizen. Again, you play all the games in reality which split you -- make you schizophrenic, and that's your downfall, because you have separated. Nobody can live as a naked soul. And so you have around yourself a little mentality, you see, which really has been created by your soul, your -- or by your teacher's soul, or by your mother's soul.

And so you have a double mind. Here is your pacifist mind. My friend { }, this Dartmouth chaplain, you see, has a mind of his own, is a pacifist, you see. But he has a uniform, which is the chaplain's, you see. And that leads to grave consequences, because obviously he has to comfort soldiers, so he can never tell them the truth of his private mind, so he has an official mind. And you see this, the second mind.

And here comes in your problem, gentlemen -- Sir, of -- of American society, you see. And since he doesn't believe -- doesn't know much about the soul, he has simply two minds. He has a pacifist mind for his private consumption. He's like this boy at Dartmouth, who was the most glowing free trader in his own days in college, and learned in public speaking how to be very eloquent about it. And he went around and said, "The globe will never be at peace as long as we have front- -- Customs." And it was wonderful to -- to listen to him. When I came here, he was all over the place. And the next year, he went to the Chamber of Commerce and got a job to defend the high tariff of the United States. And he never thought much of it. But there he was, you see, with two minds.

And that's what I mean with the private soul, and a mind. If you are initi-

ated, as I tried to initiate you into the real secret of the soul, you would know that you have to decide whether you are a free trader, or not a free trader. And you cannot do both at the same time. And then you have either to starve, and you have {to courage the starve}, and not take the job with the Chamber of Commerce, or you have to go into the de- -- depths of your mind and find out under what conditions perhaps Customs are perfectly legitimate and one can fight for them. But you cannot let it rest at that like the -- advertiser who says, "I would never buy the product, but I'm going to advertise it."

But all -- all this country does is -- it is very serious about the double mind. Can you see this? And it all comes from the denial of the soul, because the soul has no mind of its own. It only gives -- rings the bell when the mind is corrupt, and you have to change your mind. The laws of thinking, you see, are not within the soul. The soul only rings the bell and says, "This mentality is worn out."

When I came to this country, I knew that my German mentality could not serve me any more. I had ceased to be a German. That's a very terrible decision. Only it has been made by 200 million Americans. They all came to this country. I am not an exception. And said, "From now on, we are no longer under the rules of the Italian, or French mentality." Isn't that true? And the more they would ha- -- do know this, the better Americans can they become. That doesn't mean that they lose their soul in emigrating into this country. You only discover this tremendous human freedom that mentally, you see, they can acquire new categories. But they are the same people.

(Aren't they changing their minds there?)

What?

(Aren't they changing their minds there?)

They are changing their minds. Well, aren't they?

(That's what I'm saying. I think they are.)

That's what I tried to say.

(Well then, how -- wouldn't that conflict with your previous -- previous idea?)

be a conscientious objector. If you s- -- or if you learn by the fact that there is a law on the draft, you see, on the books of the government, that perhaps it isn't so, then you have to dismiss your conscientious objections, you see, and you have to become then a cheerful soldier. But you cannot have it both ways without going to pieces.

(How can a man who has a good private mind, and say -- let us say the German mentality, changes his private mind and comes over here and...)

Because the mind is nothing private. I tried to tell you in my studies that it is the -- have you all forgotten all about Plato, Aristotle, and Paul and -- and don't you -- well, you don't remember. The mind is our participation in the common speech of the race. There is no private mind. That's your error. You think, "I have a mind." I tried to tell you that you participate, as we do participate in a football team. You aren't the football team. You need even the enemy, the other -- opposite team before you are anybody. Ja? The mind is not your pri- -- there is no private mind. With -- every mind I belong to one school of thought. This I try -- tried to teach you. You see, there are schools of thought, of Greek philosophy running down through the ages. And you are either one or the other. But you haven't invented these things. You cannot. They are there.

Let's have a break. Open the windows, please.

[tape interruption]

...labor. That is he lived 78 years, and he went out of his mind in 1805. So that's some story.

As to the cancer problem. I know that would interest you, but I will only tell you: I have a friend with whom I began my wo- -- life work together. He's a physiologist at a university in Germany. And his career was checked, and he never was promoted because in 1923, he published his book on cancer. And that was of course high treason {for the --}. And all the millions of the Rockefeller Foundation, you see, are -- would have been spent in vain in the last 30 years, if this was true. So it is very easy to say then this man is -- is not a scholar. He's still teaching in G”ttingen. But he's an old man now, and has given -- up all hope of seeing the day of his vindication. But the only thing you can see is that the people have become very more cautious in their cancer process, as you know, and are now inclined. I have seen in the last year the first inklings of their knowing that it is a constitutional disease.

But two days -- when was it? Three years ago, I was in England, and there was a young lady. And she was so pretty. And she was slaughtering chickens left

and right, and vaccinating them with -- with cancer to prove that this was infectious, that it was bacteria. So she has many chickens to her credit. But -- so there was -- millions of dollar were spent on this search. And -- as I said, this man said all this in '23. The book is in the library. You can read it.

(Do you think they'll never find a physical cure for cancer?)

No, certainly not. If you have to pass a street in New York 50 times a day, you must get cancer, because each time the whole system from such shock which you have there, some fright from being run over, gets the -- gets the -- gets a -- how do you say it? -- you're ruined. -- There are other reasons why you are ruined. or the telephone bell rings 50 times. Who can stand that?

(Would you apply this sort of -- the idea of the Christians -- Christian Science idea to all these illnesses? In other words, not only cancer, I mean, say a bone breakage or some -- some things of that. Or does that just apply to cancer? If you -- if you educate the soul.)

Oh no. It's just the power to see what is what. I mean, I'm quite sure that if you get a -- get a streptococci infection, you get a streptococci infection, Sir. This is all nonsense. You have -- there is -- I am not dogmatic about any of these things, you see. Only I can see what is what, because I have a more complete picture of reality. They have to reduce everything to streptococci. I am not obliged to the -- reduce everything, but I haven't denied that there are streptococci. You understand?

No, far from it. Every -- I have written a book on proving that every -- the same illness can happen out of five different spheres of human life. That is, you can fall sick, you see, purely me- -- from mechanical reasons. You can fall sick for organic, vegetative reasons. You can sick for mental reasons. You can fall sick for lack of -- of nourishment for your love, you see. And you can fall sick from the fate of -- that befalls your whole nation, from political, you see, disaster and corruption. A -- a sensitive person can fall very much sick because of some tremendous crisis that happens to its political setup. Many people have fallen sick when Hitler threatened, and rightly so, because -- I fell sick, too. I came to the doctor who was a friend of mine, belonged to this group of ours about the cancer and all these things -- who also was never promoted. He's a fa- -- now famous at least. But never was promoted in Heidelberg. Is an old man, now. He was the brother of the last secretary of state in Germany.

certain crisis of the body politic, you see, certainly is -- is -- is brutal, is a coar- -- is coarsely built, you see. Because at that time I just felt in my bones that the whole -- the whole country was going, you see, to -- to pieces.

So sickness is this very -- you only have to be undogmatic in res- -- because you know it is very complex. The psychologists are -- and sociologists of our day are {very} wrong, or the -- the doctors, too, because they know only one thing. So they prolong life, for example, which has its beautiful shape. I mean, this -- old lady who -- whose funeral I mentioned to you the -- 10 minutes ago, well, she -- she knew that she should have died two years ago. They -- they prevailed on her to operate. She didn't want it. The relatives didn't want it. The doctors said, "Well, our students have to learn something." Imagine. So she operated on -- they operated on her. She had to live in agony for two more years. And otherwise, she would have gone out in -- in due time. She was 82. Her life was completely fulfilled. She had been through everything beautiful in life, and everything painful. And she wanted to die. And the family wanted her to die. But the doctors here, of course, said, "We can operate, so we must operate." You see. Because they only know the body. And they have no respect for anything else. It's a great pity. She was, so to speak, deprived of the beauty of her biography.

(Can I ask you a question about the mind and the official mind? A person can have one set of values on how you would like to see things done. And because different people would have different values, when you have a community action, the -- the action that results would be a compromise, would be on a lower level perhaps than your personal values. Now, when you have that in any legislative body, a -- the person doesn't have to change his own values to conform to something which is -- the action is less than what he thinks it should be.)

Well, you get into deep danger with values, Sir. Values are man-made. God is not. If you didn't believe in God, you were -- you would be right. But God is the power in us to unite these values one day. If we don't believe in God, we would have all these values, you see, at the same level. And they aren't. There are cheap values, and other values. And God is powerful enough to change all values, because we can change our minds. You are just in love with the term "value." And that's for a secular society the last thing. But values are your making. Values don't talk to us, you see. God talks to you, and your parents talk to you, and the saints talk to you, and the predecessors in your vocation. Hippocrates talks to you, or Paracelsus tal- -- or Goethe talks to you, Shakespeare talks. They are your living beings. They are your ancestors. And your children may talk to you, and call you down. But the values, I have no respect for values. I don't believe that the -- in the true, the good, and the beautiful, Sir. They don't talk. I look up to them, kneel down, and they are my own way -- of my own

making. I say I am bad, but there is the true and the beautiful. That's a {waxen nose}.

So -- but I tell you. I gave this answer before. You may compromise, you must compromise, we all do, as long as you have the hard power to suffer. That is, suffering in this college -- as you see, is abolished. You say, "compromise," then it's all over, and you don't suffer. If it is wrong what is happening, you have to stick to your suffering. That is, you must, with the power of your heart prepare the next day in which this injustice, or this mere compromise will be rightened. Or don't mix in it. If it is an indifferent thing, don't carry of course your heart on your sleeve. I don't mean that you should have to suffer about any vote on a -- on a traffic problem, or all -- that's all nonsense. You understand. These are technicalities. But when it comes to big issues, corruption in the town management, you see, fear in this country now, and so on, then you cannot be compromised with other people having other values. You must try to have a community in which the -- there can be agreement. And this can only be if a constant process of speaking with each other, and sharing the faith, you see, and the hopes with each other, is produced.

And that's why no government, no secular government can ever live without some kind of church, some kind of meeting ground of the same people who vote against each other, where they can be trained into voting perhaps one day together. That is, if you have John Lewis, and -- and Wilson, you see, on both sides of the fence, you must prepare luncheon together, or churches together, or travels together, or baseball games together where they are in the same boat, and so that they can relive their unity, despite their difference. That's all the Church -- I mean, the Church is not I mean the, as you know, stone building. But the Church is against the state anything that -- that insists that the soul is stronger than the mind, or the body, or the vested interests.

So this suffering is the important {thing}, because the suffering creates the Church. The Church is a meeting ground for souls that overpower the mind, their body, and their role. I -- let me be so short in this. But your -- perhaps you can follow, ja?

Therefore the Church is a daily creation of people who want to be free from the chains of the accident of their birth, or their environment, you see, or their society, and want to be able to re-create the unity of man, despite all these difference of mind, body, and -- and -- and society, or government, or what you call it.

Therefore, Sir, the power that creates this is so that you suffer. And this is forbidden to -- even to mention in modern psychology. They -- people say,

"Suffering? To be abolished. Just take a little benzedrine, or curare," or something, you see. "Suffering? Sleeping pill. Don't suffer. Suffer -- suffering is bad."

Suffering is the only creative force in human {existence, you see}, because it makes you feel that you -- as -- temporarily you have to put up with something, but not finally. Can you see this? So you have to add to your story. And your story is a correct description of what actually happens today in the city hall, in the town { }. But it doesn't explain why this is not the last, you see, event. Can you see this? And -- people no -- pay no attention to the straight problem how a vote in 1925 and a vote in 194- -- '45, differ, you see. But unfortunately they do differ, because in those 20 years, people do mature, you see, and do change their mind. And that's the whole problem. I don't care what happens today, we all make nonsense, you see.

here, he was all over the place. And the next year, he went to the Chamber of Commerce and got a job to defend the high tariff of the United States. And he never thought much of it. But there he was, you see, with two minds.

And that's what I mean with the private soul, and a mind. If you are initiated, as I tried to initiate you into the real secret of the soul, you would know that you have to decide whether you are a free trader, or not a free trader. And you cannot do both at the same time. And then you have either to starve, and you have {to courage the starve}, and not take the job with the Chamber of Commerce, or you have to go into the de- -- depths of your mind and find out under what conditions perhaps Customs are perfectly legitimate and one can fight for them. But you cannot let it rest at that like the -- advertiser who says, "I would never buy the product, but I'm going to advertise it."

(Aren't they changing their minds there?)

What?

(Aren't they changing their minds there?)

They are changing their minds. Well, aren't they?

(That's what I'm saying. I think they are.)

That's what I tried to say.

(Well then, how -- wouldn't that conflict with your previous -- previous

idea?)

No, I'm afraid the -- a -- the modern mind tries to have both minds. A private mind, where he says, "Of course, wars are very bad," and the official mind where he wears the uniform. Now if you say, "War is a crime," you have to be a conscientious objector. If you s- -- or if you learn by the fact that there is a law on the draft, you see, on the books of the government, that perhaps it isn't so, then you have to dismiss your conscientious objections, you see, and you have to become then a cheerful soldier. But you cannot have it both ways without going to pieces.

(How can a man who has a good private mind, and say -- let us say the German mentality, changes his private mind and comes over here and...)

Let's have a break. Open the windows, please.

[tape interruption]

...labor. That is he lived 78 years, and he went out of his mind in 1805. So that's some story.

and are now inclined. I have seen in the last year the first inklings of their knowing that it is a constitutional disease.

But two days -- when was it? Three years ago, I was in England, and there was a young lady. And she was so pretty. And she was slaughtering chickens left and right, and vaccinating them with -- with cancer to prove that this was infectious, that it was bacteria. So she has many chickens to her credit. But -- so there was -- millions of dollar were spent on this search. And -- as I said, this man said all this in '23. The book is in the library. You can read it.

(Do you think they'll never find a physical cure for cancer?)

was the brother of the last secretary of state in Germany.

And -- and he said, "Well, you are very healthy, because you are sick, because you are the only man who has a premonition to what's going to happen to Germany now is sick." It was in '31, you see. And he who doesn't fall sick in certain crisis of the body politic, you see, certainly is -- is -- is brutal, is a coar- -- is coarsely built, you see. Because at that time I just felt in my bones that the whole -- the whole country was going, you see, to -- to pieces.

crates talks to you, or Paracelsus tal- -- or Goethe talks to you, Shakespeare talks. They are your living beings. They are your ancestors. And your children may talk to you, and call you down. But the values, I have no respect for values. I don't believe that the -- in the true, the good, and the beautiful, Sir. They don't talk. I look up to them, kneel down, and they are my own way -- of my own making. I say I am bad, but there is the true and the beautiful. That's a {waxen nose}.

difference of mind, body, and -- and -- and society, or government, or what you call it.

Therefore, Sir, the power that creates this is so that you suffer. And this is forbidden to -- even to mention in modern psychology. They -- people say, "Suffering? To be abolished. Just take a little benzedrine, or curare," or something, you see. "Suffering? Sleeping pill. Don't suffer. Suffer -- suffering is bad."

But the human heart is that valve -- that safety valve which says, "This is just of today." Ja? Can you follow? And people don't want to see the importance of the institutions for changing our minds. They only today give all the money to the institutions that sha- -- that shame the mind. The Rockefeller Foundation has a philosophy. The philosophy is just one mind. This mentality now is procrastinating behind the times at this moment.

For example, as I told you with regard to cancer. I could show to you in every field, history, social science, psychology, the same thing. Because the man who heads this Rockefeller Foundation is an excellent man, but he went to college 30 years ago. And that's all he knows, you see. And how can he be in the same boat as the creative mind? He's not a creative man. He's an administrator.

Now take this down, gentlemen: the mind of any administrator is always two generations behind the creative thought of the same time -- of his time. He has to be, otherwise he couldn't be an administrator. You can only administer what has already been produced. Therefore, an admini- -- if you put the administration of science into the head of an administrator, he must -- like General Groves in the atomic project, be behind the businesses. And he was. How else can it be? He has other faculties. Faculties that are -- the faculties of a grandson. I administer when I am standing on a pile of gold or a mountain of achievement, and when I now try to distribute this. But to administer does not mean to create for the first time gold out of nothing. But the thinker, gentlemen, the creative thought -- the artist, the genius -- they produce out of nothing just as God does.

Just out of 20,000 words, { } words Shakespeare has created his life work. Everybody could have had these words at his disposal, as you know. But nobody did anything with them.

But you don't believe all this. You don't believe in any biblical truth. the Bible says that God created the world out of nothing by the power of the Word. And we -- do you know why Moses wrote this? Because he had experienced it. And why did the -- the -- the -- disciples of the Lord said the word had become flesh? Because they had become new men under the impact of the new name. This is all experienced in the Bible. There's nothing theoretical about it.

So Moses said, "I have created the children of Israel out of nothing, by the power of my word. I came to them and I said the Lord wa- -- wills it, and you leave it. And from that day on there was, and never before, a people called Israel." They weren't there before. So he said, "God must be the same. I'm -- my highest experience in life that I have been able to create something out of nothing. All the rest, these sorcerers of Pharaoh, these chemists and physicists think it's impossible. I know it's possible. They all told me it is impossible. And therefore I know that my God, who has cond- -- conducted -- led the children out of Israel has created the sun and the moon by the power of the word. He said, `Let there be light,' and there was light."

That's much more probable to me, gentlemen, that this is a true story than anything you read in these -- in these ridiculous textbooks with -- which try to say it's so long ago that it has been possible to have this world. Do you think it's a better explanation to say that you and I are here, because 5,000 billion years ago some source {folk} started? Then we should be the accidental product then of 5 billion years of development, of evolution? I think that's so silly, that I -- I have never understood how any serious person could believe in such a chain of accidents. I'm not an accident, gentlemen. You may be. I am not.

I am not an accident. I am an event. And you are events. And what does this mean? An event is something that comes in its -- into existence under its own name. And that's what the Bible says. It's as true as it has ever been. And you can say that Darwin is an event in the history of the human mind a catastrophe. The infamous -- pride of -- of a natural scientist to explain his own existence, by accident. Why should I listen to a man who says he's accident? He's an -- I'm another accident, so we never agree. But the fact is that we want to agree. Mankind was created to be what everybody knows. Charles Darwin is very important, because he spoke. And we have to make something on him. We have to refute him. So how is he an accident? You see, he's a duty. I have to get rid -- of him, or I have to reconcile myself to him. And I can describe that it was the last onslaught of the Greek mind to prevent the Christian era from coming true.

Science has to be christened now. Science has been pagan for the last 1900 years. The Christianity left it outside its -- its realm, you see. Now that's no longer possible. Even in the -- in the -- in evolution do you have to bring in the principle of the word, because that's what I realize. You can -- the United States only exist through the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Isn't that the power of the word by which you recognize yourselves as -- as Americans?

Now -- no, not now.

Gentlemen, because I must come back to the topic, which is: that the human being found at war, in play, and at work is not the individual, but the person; and that any description of the individual, as though he was the person, makes it impossible for society to -- to reconcile play, war, and work, peace and war. Because the problem is to go from one to the other. To go from war to peace, from peace to war -- you remember, we said about this -- and from play to serious things -- this power is the first that makes a man a person. Many human beings live today in this country who are swayed. When the government says it's war, they go to war. When it says, it's peace, they go to peace. When the -- say it's leisure, they go play. But they are lived, as I call this, you see. They are lived. They are only those people in this society at this moment.

Count who can determine when this country should be serious, when it should play, and when it should work, and when it should go to war. Those are the real salt of the earth. Those are the backbone of this country. The others who come the next day, whining, and said, "Heavens. We have a war upon us. Oh, must I really go to work. I would like to play a little longer," and so on, you see. They are lived.

Will you take this down, gentlemen? The man who isn't a person is lived, because he finds these situation of war, peace, and work, and he can't do anything about it, because he hasn't want to suffer. He hasn't made to want -- wanted to make decisions in time, you see, in his -- in his part. He cannot understand what's happening. One day there was Pearl Harbor, as you remember, or don't remember. And then everybody was suddenly at war. Obviously, that part of the -- Americans had been lived just -- in this respect. And don't be afraid to use this phrase. It's a very important phrase for the future. It's unknown in psychology and -- because they are so proud. They think you -- we are superior with our mind. The mind will never admit that it is lived. But if I speak to 150 million Americans, I assure you, I have tried -- I speak to so many, as you well know, there are perhaps a thousand in this country who have an original mind. The others are like the minister on the pulpit, you see, who said, "Sorry, my dear friends, and brethren, and sisters in the Lord. I can't preach a sermon today, because Walter Lippmann is on a leave of absence."

That is, most people repeat the commentator, or the public voices. This -- what you call your mind, gentlemen, isn't your mind by a long shot. Ninetyeight percent is either repetition or opposition. You see, the only thing a man -- the ordinary man can do is to say "no" to what is offered. Then you think you are very original. But to say "no" to something that {offered} is not yet creating the world in your own right at all, because what you de- -- negate is also, you see, {are already} bound to deal with. If you talk all day long against McCarthyism, McCarthy still rules the game. You see. He's there and you say "no." So you are spellbound by Mr. McCarthy, and your mind is filled with -- with -- with dross, because he doesn't deserve to be discussed. But you think you have to. I don't discuss him at all. I mean, I don't discuss mi- -- mosquitoes.

Now this intermediary space, gentlemen, between these two very different things, the individual human being, and the person -- once more, I told you -- is filled out by the family. The family is the space, if there is any family at all. The time -- space of time during which the individual is transformed into a person, and that we shall call a person then, gentlemen, leaves the family as able to play a role in society, to have a mind, which he can change, to have a body which he can outgrow, you see. And we shall call a "person" also somebody who for this reason, because he can change his mind, his body, and his role, can impersonate those human characters in whom these four significant phas- -- the aspects of reality are embodied.

And therefore we have to equate now the members of any normal family with the four aspects of every one of you. The mother stands for the dignity in the family, and therefore for the role of -- in society. She is the ritualist. She says how to celebrate Christmas in every family. Well, if -- if she weren't there, nobody would know. The father is there for the natural part, for the energy, for the physical wherewithal. If he isn't the breadwinner, as we say, then there is no family. Then there is just a submarginal { }. The daughter, gentlemen, represents more than the other members the soul, because it is her destiny to lose her name and gain another. The great symbol of change of mind, body, and role obviously is the change of name which a ma- -- girl has to undergo when she marries. Couldn't be more complete, you see, because that's a change of mind. To be your father's daughter and to be your husband's wife entails a completely remaking of your mentality, and the greatest identity of the soul.

That's why in a bride, there is more of soul than of any other person in a living group. And if she is just lipstick, and diamonds, and bridal veil, you must vomit. That's a tragedy. From a bride, you expect that she really is deeply moved, that she really has there the highest moment of her life.

And if sh- -- if this is all fake, as in the terrible story of Edna Vincent

Millay -- has anybody read -- read Edna Vincent Millay on -- on -- on marriage? Oh, this is a terrible play, which she has laid out in New York. The brides -- the maids are all gotten up, and the gowns are made and -- and no -- and this just -- it's a typical story from the outside in, you see, the bride without the soul. You couldn't -- call it, the play.

{ } so here, you see, this -- the identification of soul with daughter, because the daughter is destined, obviously is to leave this home and to be married. Then she fulfills her destiny. She can also become a nun. It's exactly the same thing. And the son, gentlemen, I need not tell you that this -- your are { }. That's because you are students, and we are your professors, the mind carries so much weight with the professors and the students, because we are interested in ideas. So you are -- can be identified with the mind, the irresponsible mind inside of you. You thinking about the whole world, but nobody will put you to the test. You are a free trader now, but if you pay -- I pay you $4,000 a year, I may get you for the high tariffs, you see, very cheaply. Incredible, but true. I can buy your mind. And that's accepted in this country.

Now gentlemen, the virginity of the bride is in her power to dismiss the gods of her family, and to become her husband's alter ego. Your virginity is in your mind. Don't sell your mind. God is not interested in your body. All the stupidities, the follies you commit with your body are obviously easily forgiven. But if you sell out your mind, you cannot be restored. A man -- a son, a young man who defiles his mind does exactly what the harlot does. And I hope that with this figure of speech, of this {scheme} here, you can understand why this is so, because your purity is in your inner man, in your self-consciousness. The bride's is in her bodily integrity, in her not surrendering her future to any wanton demand, because the whole future of the human race is at stake through her. So she must give life to somebody who can carry on. Therefore, this is very serious.

Therefore, gentlemen, you are quite mistaken of thinking the problem of chastity is the same with the boy and a girl. In this country, as you know, the only people who make fuss about chastity are the boys. The girls have ceased long ago. But this is very bad, because it is much more serious, as yet you think that your mind should be undefiled, and that a girl- -- girl's body should be undefiled. That's very serious. But you think the other way around.

In this country, you will find, and in England -- long ago I came to England, in 1925, and a lady s- -- told me frankly, she said, "There are no more virgins among our girls, but there are still among our boys." Well, that's a complete perversion of -- of reality, you see. That's why these boys in England were not prepared for the Third World War -- Second World War at all. There was this

complete mental slump in England, because people didn't give a damn to their -- for their mind anymore. But they had still puritan affections about their body.

Gentlemen, now I don't say that -- that your chastity of the body is worth nothing. But it comes through your mental attitude. That is, the mind is the -- the sovereign power at this moment in your lives. And this integrity is the most important. I don't say that it isn't highly desirable that you remain chaste if you can totally, you understand. But this -- once you break your mind, you cannot he- -- be healed of -- you are an apostate to your own deepest convictions, you see. Then -- then that's you -- you don't want to suffer mentally, you see. You cannot rest until this mental injustice, if you think it is one, you see, has been addressed in -- either by your changing your mind, seeing that you were utterly wrong, you see, with your m- -- your thought, or by your following it up. Either one. You understand?

This is very serious, gentlemen. I wished I had more time, because it's that which is really sick at this moment in -- in society. You get these wrong -- really wrong values, because people really think that -- that you can play with your mind. I think a young man cannot play with his mind.

You -- I have -- when I came here -- I can tell you this as the end story -- when I came here, it was the habit, I think -- I hope I haven't heard it again in the last 15 years, and I hope it has disappeared -- to say that in philosophy, or in -- in the college, "We played with ideas." Played with ideas. And I cannot tell you what a shock I -- I was after all a man -- how old? 50 years of age -- I had never heard such a blasphemy, that I wasn't out for the truth, you see, that I wasn't fighting, that I hadn't to move resistance, that I hadn't to suffer from anybody, you see, thinking differently, as a terrible threat, you see, to the future of -- or the peace of the world. "Playing with ideas." And I think you have heard this. WHo has heard this phrase?

Gentlemen, then you are lost, absolutely lost. I have never for one minute to play with any one idea. It has -- either struck me as wrong, or it's true. If it was true, I had to follow it up. If it was wrong, I had to run away from it, like the hellfire. But I have not -- I cannot say that I have been able to play with ideas.

If -- this is quite different from a hypothesis in a chemical laboratory, between the idea that there must be chemistry, and the idea whether this will come out red or green, such -- some such mixture of -- that's a different story. That's not an idea at all, you see. That's an experiment. And I may -- I -- that's why I could never become a chemist, because I could never be indifferent to the outcome whether this would be -- look red or green. I think I would become excited. So let them make their dyes.

And there are different things in the world, certainly. But they are not ideas, because you mind at this moment is preparing himself for reality. And those things are absolutely vital. They are, or they are not. But they are not in any half-baked version. You remember what I said about Paul, and Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle, you see. It is impossible to play with the idea of homosexuality. You have to know beforehand that it must remain wrong. If you admit it for one moment in your studies that homosexuality is after all a good thing, you see, or -- that it might be proven to be a good thing, you are lost.

And so are -- there are many truths. If you say you can play with war, a good idea to experiment { }, you are lost. That's blasphemy. There are then -- the love of a woman: you cannot play with the love of a woman. Many people -- I have been mistaken. I thought I loved a woman, and I only willed -- willed to love her. And so I made love to her and made her very unhappy. But I can -- honestly say that as soon as I realized that I only willed to love, you see, because it was ambition more than love, you see, I gave up. I have made this girl very unhappy, to be sure. But I -- at least I can say I never thought that my mind was a toy, you see. When I -- this -- this is the terrible danger at this moment.

Thank you.