Transcript
{ } = word or expression can't be understood
{word} = hard to understand, might be this
[Opening remarks missing]
... men know who God is, or what is divine, because there is inexorable change upon you and me. We have to change every day because we are older. Change is inexorable. That's perhaps the best word. Or it's ineluctable. Even the word "inevitable" doesn't strike me as good enough for this change, which comes from the fact that life spends itself, and can only be maintained every day, gentlemen, if you change the means of life. You eat one piece of bread, gentlemen, and the next day you have to eat another piece of bread. You cannot eat anything twice. Very -- of course, seems to be a very queer example, for the fact that life cannot be repeated. But it is very important that you should realize, gentlemen, that every day you must be different in order to be the same. You only keep your identity through change. We keep our identities through change. And the divine power in us is to rediscover ourselves after the change. And God then would be -- could be defined, gentlemen, as the power who can say, "From now I -- on, I will be there. So far, or so long, I have been here." That is the definition given in the Old Testament to God in the burning bush. Jehovah -- Jahweh means this, "From now on, I shall be there," which means that God is able to make a break. He is free. God is freedom. You are not free if you cannot say, "From now on, I shall not be in Egypt, but in the desert." God became the God of the Jews, because they count their experience of God from the Exodus from Egypt. And so they pray to the God who led the children of Israel out of Egypt. It seems very simple, gentlemen. But to go from New York into the desert, that's quite something. And you forget that the Jews came from the richest country with the highest standard of living at the time, and went for 40 years to live nowhere, where they had to wait for manna from Heaven, because there was no wheat and there were no pigs, and there was nothing to eat. You can do -- can't do this. You are not free. You would never exchange a country with -- like America, with its standard of living -- for the desert. And that is the meaning of God: "From now on, I shall be there. So long I have been here."
This is universal, gentlemen. It has nothing to do with Jewish or Christian religion. I -- as a fact, it is so universal that I brought you the remark of a chieftain of the {Moskontims,} or the Prairie Potawatomi Indians, very simple people, who said to his white host, "You and I were brought into this world only to do as the Great Spirit desires." Very simple. That is, to do something different every day. "You and I were brought into this world only to do as the Great Spirit desires." Now you understand, perhaps, what "spirit" means. Spirit is the freedom of a man to say, "Tomorrow I shall be in the desert. Yesterday I was in Cairo. And I am, just for this very reason, the same person. If I had stayed on in Cairo, I
would have become a slave. But since I'm now in the desert, I have the same freedom I had at one time in Cairo."
I had a friend, {Musselman}, Mennonite, in Pennsylvania. He came to see me after he had closed his father's eyes on his deathbed and received the father's blessing. And the father was a minister in the Mennonite sect. And he told me the story that his father on his deathbed had said to his son, "My son, we have come to this country 250 years ago to escape compulsory service in the army of the Emperor of Austria -- of the the Holy Roman Empire. You must -- now this country is going to the -- into compulsory military service, too -- you must promise me to keep our congregation fit, when this day comes, to leave again. My friend {Musselman} shook his head and -- sadly, and said, "There will be no place to go." But I said, "What a man your father is. He believes in freedom." He thought that after 250 years, the congregation would still have the same stamina it had when it came to this country. And then you can perhaps understand. A Mennonite, leaving today the United States, would show that he has the same freedom as his ancestors who came to the United States. So you see, coming to the United States must be at a certain moment superseded by leaving the United States. And it means exactly the same thing. That's why the New Testament begins with the great word: Flee into Egypt. The holy family continued the tradition of the Jews to leave Egypt. And they believed in the God who had led the children of Israel into -- in -- out of Egypt. So the New Testament, if it wanted to be a new epoch in the life of God with man, had to begin with the one sentence, "Flee into Egypt," out of Jews -- the Jewish country, because you must find the new -- the same freedom now once more. It's exactly the story as Mr. {Musselman.}
And therefore, for all those who believed this, the Christians, there was an epoch made, and an experience of God which differed from the experience of Israel so far. It is very simple, gentlemen, then that change forces us to believe in God. If you hadn't to die, and you hadn't to change, and you hadn't to grow, you -- it would never dawn on you that they -- you had to crave a power to do just that.
Now I promised you last time to show you that there are three ways of dealing with change. One, you deny it. You deny it. That's the way of the philosopher. That's Socrates' way in the Phaedon. You don't die. "I'm going on just the same." You can brave death. That's your idea. Most Americans brave death. That is, you don't face the change, but you procrastinate. That's why people can tell you that you should become 150 years old. That is -- would be a great progress in medicine. From -- for any religious person, it would be a breaking of the laws of God, because nobody at 100 or 110 can change anymore, and life is change. And so just to hang onto dear life for 15 more years just -- you can't think of it. I mean,
the old -- younger people would, I hope, rally and kill all these people off, who want to cling to life after their day is over. Then you can undergo the change, submit to it. That is the bulk of religion, in most cases. You have a religion in which you submit to change. Well, "We all have to die," you say, and so you are quite decent about it. You don't say, "There is no death," but you say, "If death is there, I'll undergo it. If there is war, I will be drafted. If I have to enter a factory, I'll do it." These changes are not your changes, but you submit to changes from the outside. And though the secret, change, remains in this case, here change is denied. Or it is postponed. Or it is -- well, "denied" includes of course -- it is yielded to. It is transfigured. It is said, "It isn't so bad after all," you see. It is talked out of existence. In this case, however -- I have here "change" -- the change remains a secret, an outside secret. I think you -- most of mankind, lives this way. The Stoic, the philosopher, usually tries to live it this way, the Greek mind. The philosopher. This is the Epicurean. Take it as it comes. The -- "Enjoy, make merry, tomorrow you are dead."
And in some form or other, most of us live this way, or try to live it this way. So the religious problem remains a secret, because change is left, something we submit to. The way the people of the United States took the Depression was very fatalistic, I mean, you see. It was very typical, you see, natural religion. The change came, so now we are poor. Yesterday we were rich. Now we are rich again, so -- called the business cycle.
But gentlemen, there is an attempt to withdraw the secret from our own eyes, and to be God partly ourselves. Now, since God is He who can say, "From now on, I shall be there," divine would be in every human being the power to say partly, at least, this about his own life. Anybody who can volunteer for the change has a power that transcends that of the bulk of the animal-nature in you and me. And such a man would thereby be deified. Christianity, for example, is an attempt to deify men, through our -- the first-born son -- because He has shown the way. But no -- never misunderstand Christianity, gentlemen. It's not an attempt to leave man in the lurch or to declare him to be a sinner, but it's an attempt to give man his share in divinity. That's therefore called, gentlemen, a religion which tries to disclose this secret. So these are disclosing religions. And they are now called, with a stale -- word that has gone stale. How do we call these disclosing religions usually?
The mankind of old has always known these things, gentlemen. But it hasn't called it the secret, "the secret," but it has called it "the veil." There is a veil before these people's eyes who believe in the boom and the prosperity until October 20th, 1999. And who know only the next day that they are poor. They -- you see, they submit to the secret, but they do not withdraw -- what? -- from their eyes in time, themselves? It's not quite the secret, but --
(The veil.)
The veil. So this is revealed religion, a power to withdraw the veil, you see, revealed religion.
Now the revealed religions, gentlemen, center on change. And they want you and me to be ready for the change, to produce the change. They want you to get -- to become the veil and the revelation, so to speak, yourself, not to have this outside of you. In this sense, gentlemen, there is in every human being at any -- at certain times a great desire to live revealed religion. And I would say, we all three, gentlemen, are like our friend the businessman, that we have these three religions, all. We have a kind of Stoicism, of indifference, where we just hang on to our own convictions, and our own life and want to get the things done. And that's good, gentlemen. No -- Dante couldn't have written his poem if he hadn't felt that nothing mattered but his poem. And it took him, as you know, 25 -- 20 years to write it, and therefore we have it. And that is the stubborn conviction of any doer in life, that nothing else matters. After him, the deluge. So don't mistake me, gentlemen. I too am, in part, a Stoic. You are, too. Any workman, gentlemen, who feels that his work has to be done, therefore forgets change, because you cannot operate, you see, by already saying that "The work doesn't have to be done, or will never be finished." Nobody can.
So we have again this very strange liberty, gentlemen, that where we work, where we have something to do, we need time and freedom from change. And where we need freedom from change, we forget death and change and transformation, and metamorphosis. Where we submit to change, gentlemen, we live in the group, we live in the family, or in the society and believe that the United States will do all right, so we share. So, gentlemen, this is the world -- the life of the active doer, of the artist, of the creative mind, of the workman, of the operator, of the man through whom things are achieved. This is the life of the people, The life of the people shared by you and me means that we have to submit. If the United States go to war, you and I can do little about it. You see, we are drafted. Therefore we had better submit. The same with the business cycle. In general, the individual would be ridiculous. You just can tell yourself, "Cut your losses." It's the best you can do. That means, submit to change.
Gentlemen, then there is revealed religion. And that means that the work that you do and the fate of the peoples themselves have to be changed, that the goal of a nation is over, and that the goal of a poet, of an artist, of a machine -- manufacturer, of an inventor is over. And that is revealed, that you shouldn't continue to do what you're doing. Mr. Mendez-France is at this moment trying to convince the little folks in his constituency that they shouldn't use the sugar which they produce for alcohol, but for eating sugar, for edible sugar. And that
would be a religious change, because he must persuade them that their way of work, you see, has to be mended. And that's very hard to do. They have done it all the time. And I admire him. That takes great courage, to say to these people who have elected him -- it would be like Mr. McCarthy telling Mr. McCormack that he is a scoundrel. That takes real religion, because our group is always in conspiracy that nobody does wrong in the group, you see. And if you wish to be elected by the farmers of Vermont, you better don't tell them that they should stop raising cows. But that's exactly what Monsieur Mendez-France at this moment has to tell his people. So for this one reason, I think he is a very great man. And I won't say anything about the rest of his policies, but that is real greatness, gentlemen. And if you look around in the world, the real issue between capitalism and communism is not in the methods of work, probably not even in long run in the methods of ownership. But it is in this one little item of Monsieur Mendez-France: can you tell the producers in your country that they should produce something different? For example, can you tell a Swiss -- an American watch manufacturer that he should let the Swiss watches in, and stop making watches which aren't quite as good as the Swiss? Any statesman who can do this will save the peace of the world, because he will be able to lower our tariffs. That's a religious decision, because it goes against the vested interest of the group. And we have no religion, and therefore Mr. Eisenhower had to give in to the watchmakers of this country and ruin our Western alliances. And that's a very serious thing, gentlemen. It will be decided in this election, whether the United States still have their conscience, the religion to dissociate themselves from their own vested interests, from their way of producing. And to say that it is more important that we form one economic area at large, you see, or whether we have to press every lobby in Washington to its success. That's a very difficult thing, because it doesn't mean, you see, that the exchange comes from the outside, and we just submit to it, by a war -- but that we should take it into our own hearts, you see, and see, since the change must come, let us assert that from now on, God is with the wider economic area, you see, and has ceased to be interested in the separate isolationist existence of the United States of America, in this one respect, at least.
Every day, gentlemen, there are three ways of life open before every one of you and me. Otherwise religion wouldn't be a vital thing. There is a way of being loyal to the ways that the association -- the group follows. Loyalty, you see. To be steadfast, even stubborn, have your own character, to be steadfast to your own calling, and to be obedient to God, to whom -- we must obey more than men. Gentlemen, these three attitudes -- of obedience, of loyalty, of steadfastness -- all together form what is called faith. Faith is always composed of three different elements which you have to mix every day differently. You have to decide, "Where do I forget my death?" Now, take a man who has cancer. He still has to finish a book. He can go and be operated upon, and have his life
prolonged, or he can sit down and finish his book and say, "I don't care for cancer. The first thing is that I have to finish the book." Such a man would be a Stoic. And I think he would do right. And it would be deprecable if he would not think that his work has to come first, and whose physical death is a minor matter. And he's truly religious, because what does he believe, gentlemen, with regard to his work and God? What's the relation of such a man's work and his God?
(He feels that God is mad at him and send him to work.)
That's a command, of course, so he must obey God more than man. Isn't that true? And the physicians are then just his human side. And he must say to these physicians, "You don't understand. The ordinary patient, you would be quite right. But not in my case."
So, gentlemen, faith here looks backward. That is, there is still a command from God that still has to be done, before I die. Then there is a command to live with the people's rhythm, with the calendar of America, to be loyal to what has been the way of this country for the last 150 years, ever since the tariff poisoned the political life of this country. You know when the tariff came into prominence in America?
(In the 1840s.)
Wie?
(In the 1840s.)
Well, already earlier. Already the people of Massachusetts threatened to secede, because they were unprotected, you know, in 1815. This is the oldest, it's really the story of America, is the story of the tariff, in some form or other. The protection of the existing working interests, productive interests. Don't think that I am slightening them, gentlemen. They are real. A loyalty to the -- our submission to the business cycle and so on takes also faith, real faith. I've seen Europeans admire the way that people of this country took the Depression, without any bitterness. And said, "It's all right. I mean, it just has happened, and we will still come up again." You see? That takes faith. But it's faith in the present. Faith in something we are { }. It means shared life. Shared life in the group. And this, however, gentlemen, this obedience to God more than men, for command, nobody else has yet heard -- or begin to realize, would be the creative life, gentlemen, in which man has to represent the divine command to others, for the first time. Nobody else believes. Nobody else has heard.
You can see this very clearly if you compare, for example, a composer who
says, "I have to compose this opera," with a man like Gandhi, or a man like Abraham Lincoln. A composer composes one opera or one symphony. But in comparison to Mozart or Beethoven today, it's established that there must be composers. So although it may be his specific command to compose one opera, it is not a new command to make ...
[tape interruption]
... man, who has to come forward with an unheard-of proposition, you see? That we, for example, should destroy all our atom bombs. That would be a command, you see, which few people at this moment would agree with, and would approve of, and he probably -- would be crucified. Or you remember when Bill Mitchell tried to tell the United States that they have to have an air fleet. Nobody listened. He was court-martialed. That would be a command not yet heard, that an officer should come forward and try to force his superior officers to use some reason.
So this is shared faith. This is continued faith. And gentlemen, this is the faith -- how do we call the faith -- people who wrote the Declaration of Independence -- what honorable name do they have?
(Founding fathers?)
That's founding faith. And gentlemen, in the term "founding fathers," the pride and the greatness rests on the word "founding." Most of you will be fathers, but the great question is, will you be founding fathers?
So we have at every moment, gentlemen, a man's share in these three religions. The religion of worshiping life without change, so religion, or worshiping the loyalty of the group in which the change occurs, the allegiance, and worshiping the voice which allows a new group to take shape, the founding voice. Can you see that these great distinctions between revealed religion, and veiled religion, and stubbornness, or pride -- or character, you may call it -- fearlessness, that they have never -- can never have been divided in the history of the human race for long. The old fathers of the church have left us a very beautiful saying -- say that revealed religion is as old as Adam and Eve. The church, they say, is -- began with Adam and Eve and will last to the last judgment day. Your idea is that this isn't so. Your idea thinks that all these religions are outside each other. One man has this religion, and the other has this religion. I don't believe this for a minute. We can only talk of religion, gentlemen, because you and I have all the same religions, but in different admixtures, you see. The -- just as government all over the earth is the same, essentially, you see. People aren't murdered. Theft is punished, you see. That roads are built. That the people can defend themselves
against an enemy. That there is a court into which you can go where -- if you want to get your property, you see, sealed and deeded. Gentlemen, don't believe that government is so very different. Democracy is only one form of government, for example, you see. There are others and they are still government. And you will admit that the British, who are an aristocracy to this day -- Mr. Atlee went to Oxford and certainly is not a democrat -- that the aristocracy of Great Britain, they now pose for the American bankers and farmers as democrats. It's ridiculous. No Englishman is ever a democrat. He can't. He's an aristocrat. The whole Labor Party is. They -- you just should see how these labor leaders look down on their union members. And they can't cope with them now, you see, because there is -- you have seen of this dock strike. All the labor leaders are just put out, because they are still aristocrats.
So gentlemen, democracy, aristocracy, monarchy, dictatorship, they are just forms of government, gentlemen. And in an emergency, we also have a dictator in the president of the United States. He can call out the militia and quash a riot and he can send troops. He is a dictator, and that's very good that he is. At times, you have to be. And at times our Supreme Court is an aristocracy. And it's very fortunate that we have nine men in the country who are not mobbed, and not mob-ruled. That's very few, but still there are nine. That's our aristocracy. And do you know that we also have a monarchy? We have a crown prince. We -- you call him vice president. But Mr. Nixon is for all practical purposes a representative of the one element of monarchy which is needed in a big nation, that there never is a vacancy, you see? The vice president is our crown prince, our Prince of Wales. And that's the monarchical element in the United States. And without it, the founding fathers would have felt that they would have sacrificed this great nation and this great continent, this tremendous, you see, task of rule, to accident. Imagine if the president died and there is not immediately somebody. Without special election, you see, the country would split. There would be nobody in authority sufficiently. You have to have a president on the day the old president dies, you see. Vive le -- le roi est mord, vive le roi, the French used to say to stress the greatness of monarchy, you see. There's not a moment without a king. And that's why we have the vice president.
This is -- was only meant as a sideline, gentlemen, to make sure that you understand this course. Comparative religion is only possible if you admit that the elements of religion are everywhere, with all people all the time. Otherwise the whole course -- I was asked when I came to class last time by a man who went with me -- "Ah! You're talking about the four great religions, are you?"
I said, "I don't even know who -- which they are." I try to lay the groundwork here so that people will -- may understand what religion is. I find it very difficult to explain this. I know nothing of four great religions. Heavens, that's all non-
sense. You ask a Roman Catholic, in whom the Moslem believes, they -- he'll answer, "They believe in Allah." And if you say, "This God, the same god you believe in?" they say, "No." Now have you ever heard a greater idiocy? Of course they believe in the same gods. The Moslem and we. It shows you just how ridiculous. They don't know, perhaps so much about this God, but don't they believe in God? And doesn't this man who -- in -- this Prairie Potawatomi believe in God, "You and I were brought into this world only to do as the Great Spirit desires"? It's all nonsense, gentlemen. We have really made walls where there are no walls, and where the good people of this earth never have meant to be walls. But it is true that there is at every one moment before our eyes a different apparition, a different emphasis, a different importance on these three aspects of the life through change, as you may call the divine life. That life, which can say of its own life, "From now on, I shall be there."
And therefore, gentlemen, the Bible is very careful to assert that long before there were Jews and Greeks, there is God and man in conversation. The Bible is not a Jewish book. The Bible tries to explain why there have to be Jews and Christians, because the people of this earth forgot who God was. But that's the story of the Bible, after all. The story of the Bible is very insistent that all men believe in God, but since the -- most of them try hard to forget and live by the business cycle, for example, or by the standard of living, there has to be one group that reminds the others that there are idolaters. That's Judaism. So there is no Jewish religion. Never has been. Take this down, gentlemen. There is no Jewish religion, and there is no Christian religion. Jews and Christians came into the world to do away with false religions, and to restore the universal religion of mankind. If you don't believe this, you can't be a missionary. You can't go to church, even. It's all ridiculous, because you would separate yourself from the rest of mankind. But both Jews and Christians preach the solidarity with all men. You are responsible for the last heathen and his faith, are you not? You're not responsible for these Christians. They cannot be saved, these people on Park Avenue. But a heathen can be saved, because he only doesn't know how to restore the universal religion. But he's not irreligious, as the people in New York. It takes a Christian to be areligious, gentlemen. The ordinary man has religion. It takes great sophistication to lose your faith. You have to go to college, and such things. Enter a fraternity.
Now from the very beginning, gentlemen, therefore we have to say this, that Judaism and Christianity are wrong when you call them religion. They are fighting any separate religion, and that's the creed, that's the essence. Read the Christian Creed, and read anything that God says to Moses. He says, "I'm sorry, without you people, the Jews, as my priests on this earth, I cannot convince the other nations that they are idolaters," but that's all. He -- the covenant on this at the Sinai, of which you might have heard, means just this. It's so simple that
people just over look it. They don't want to hear it. That's why there are Jews everywhere in the world. That's why there must be Christians everywhere in the world.
But we have made our task nearly impossible, because heathen in our midst, the so-called academic people, the professors of religion -- the Greek, in other words -- the people who have no religion themselves, have tried to split humanity and its faith and to make Christianity and Judaism into one religion among others. Then we are lost. Then it would mean that mankind, never since the beginning, has made an effort to come back to its universal faith. And that would be such an indictment against man, that we'd better give up from the very beginning. But for the last 3,500 years, man has been very decent about the necessity of smashing the idols. And they have been smashed. But they are reestablished on our campuses. You are the idolaters, with your belief in psychology and in science and such nonsense. I'm not. Because I very humbly say that one can only be a Christian if one believes that all men at all times have recognized the true God.
This -- the whole New Testament is filled with Jesus' remarks on the score that the Good Samaritan believed in the true God. He had not -- heard nothing of Jesus. And he was a Samaritan. Neither a Greek nor a Jew. Neither a philosopher nor concerned with the Bible, especially, or at least not with the standard, or revised version.
Let us at this moment make a pause in this line of thought. And let me bring you back for one moment to something that might of -- be of interest and that might relieve here the tension of this moment.
Gentlemen, I tried to show you last time that the "may" and the "can," the necessity for us to change, and the necessity for us to know what we may use as we like -- dead things -- and those elements of life whom we must let stand, whom we may not murder, or rape, or violate, that this is the crux of everyday life. You remember this equation. And I had to explain something to a man in the Eastern zone of Germany, which is occupied by the Bolsheviks, as you know, and which -- where the people, of course, are living a very tentative life. He is -- that is a minister there, a Protestant, who in the conditions of Eastern Germany, now lives in a Catholic seminary, typical of the unity of the denominations in Germany. It is that it makes no difference whether a Roman Catholic or a Protestant studies theology. They are all one heart and one soul. Very different from this country, where the Catholics think that a Protestant is not a Christian. So this man writes me from a Catholic place as a Protestant theologian about religion. And I tried, as best as I can to answer this, without ruining his future in the Soviet zone. And I tried to explain to him this "may" and "can" business in other
terms, of course, and -- according to our correspondence. And suddenly I saw clearly what the Bible meant when it had to describe the -- this "may" and "can" business. And since you probably have never seen this so simply and clearly, I thought I might introduce it as a further explanation of this "may" and "can" business.
You know the Bible has a very difficult time to state the religious quandary of mankind: in the beginning why there are no Jews, no revelation, no Moses, no Sinai, no Christ. Adam and Eve, they must represent the whole of mankind. And so the Bible has in the beginning nothing but the universal condition humaine, the universal human condition, just as an existentialist might have, you see, who tries to -- the existentialists in Paris, you know, these people who try to speak on the condition humaine, that which every human being is confronted with. And so, as you know, the Bible in the first and second chapter describes how God goes -- his spirit moves -- from the sun to the mountains, from the mountains to the vegetation, from the vegetation to the animals, and finally He says, "From now on, I shall be with men. And that's very good." And so he gives over part of his own creative acts to men. And God is already Jahweh, the God who can speak. "From now on, I shall be there." And that's the meaning of the six days of His creation. And then He creates, as you know, men: Adam and Eve. And so they form the first association. And the fall of man, gentlemen, is that he cannot -- Adam -- dissociate himself and say, "I did it." You know what he says? He says, "The corporation did it. The -- my environment tempted me. She did it, and the serpent did it." And it isn't what he did. This is quite -- left quite obscure, you see. But the method of his dealing with the problem, that he said, "Everybody does it in my fraternity," you see -- the fraternity in his case being Eve and the serpent. And all the people who talk about the fall, always think it's sex. Obviously not, because they lived before very happily as husband and wife and obviously slept together very assiduously and very happily. But the question is that when God asks him, "Who has done it?" He says, "Not me."
And there you have the typical "may" and "can" situation, you see, that since we must associate for life, we try to say we have just been members of the group, and we haven't done anything ourselves. And so the whole fall story, gentlemen, to a modern liberal of the 19th century, became un-understandable. All the Biblical criticism which has reached you tried to analyze the relation of Adam to God, but it omitted society. It omitted the whole sociological aspect. As you know, there was no science of sociology at that time. And everything was dealt with philosophically, through the brain -- here, of the individual. And now if you take the brain of Adam and God, they never meet. And so poor Adam, has always in the 19th century been treated as a man who didn't behave very well sexually, and now God takes him to task, or I don't know what the explanation was. The famous apple, you see.
And in the end, I must say, neither I nor you, to be quite frank, could understand what the fall was. And so everybody pooh-poohed original sin and, "That -- that's just ridiculous. There is no original sin, Let's do away with this. The whole story of the fall is just a fairy tale for little children. It's a hoax." And I prefer people who say this to the -- all the pious people who think they understand and don't understand. But gentlemen, it's very -- if you look at the matter from what we know now here, about your and my daily situation, you will admit that there couldn't be a more classic description of the {milieu} theory, of the theory that man is a behaviorist, and that the environment is the thing. That's what the fall -- story of the fall says. And I thought it was worth your while to open your eyes to the real story. The Bible, having at that time no temple, no priesthood, no dogma, no Ten Commandments, nothing but the fact that they were people, had to state religious -- the religious issue of the Bible, the whole book, you see, in such simple terms, that the first chapter says, "Who is God?" God is He who shifts His creative power from one event to the next, and who can say so. That's the definition of God, the living God. And the second: man does not want to be like God. And so the irony of the tree, which makes you be like God, is in this, you see, that when he thinks he can be God, he at the same time tries to escape his divinity. He doesn't want to be the man who says "I did it." That would be his divine freedom, you see. So that's the story why the tree is the tree. If you eat from him, you will be like God, you see. That cannot be done, as long as you do not share God's power to frankly say what you're doing, and that's the one thing Adam doesn't want to do. Therefore, he cannot be like God. Can you see the unity of the whole story? Any question about this? I would like to answer. Ja?
(Would you repeat that definition of God?)
I have given it now so often that I am quite ashamed. Can you repeat it, sir? Ja.
(Excuse me. I think that --)
Not "I think."
(All right. What you said, that God is a creator, and He can speak when He wants to, and that Adam and man --)
No, he wants to have the statement, "Who is God?" God is He who can say, "From now on, I shall be there." This implies that before he has been elsewhere. He has the freedom, you see, of transferring his power to a new task, and can say so.
Ja, please.
(Would you say that the original sin, then, is the association, the human desire to follow our loyalty to the group, rather than to our individuality, our conscience?)
Ja. Ja. Exactly. And we all do, don't we? I mean, we all do. That's why it's the original, the -- given with any human group is this resulting weakness of the individual, you see. That's why it is called "original," that which is constitutionally given, since we are more than one. At least in the sexes, but later in the division of labor, in the nations, you see, since we are always more than one. This situation, you see, is so fundamental, that it can always, you see, be used rightly or wrongly. And when it is used wrongly, it is sinful, you see.
(Sir --)
That's why Mary, you see, must conceive of her fate without Joseph. Because since Eve and Adam formed this association, you see, Mary has to take it all upon herself -- she hasn't to evade the issue by hiding behind any man, you see. It's her business. That's the meaning of Mary, { } as against Eve.
Ja?
(Is the only reason that you say that Adam couldn't have reached { } divinity, because he wouldn't dare speak out that he had taken the apple?)
Ja. That's the whole difference there. You see, the difference of the divine life and your life is that you want not to be quoted. That's always the Devil { }. The man who says, "If you quote me, I shall deny it." The man who doesn't want to stick his neck out. Anybody who does something -- take a man who commits a crime from jealousy. He shoots his competitor. And he reports himself to the -- you see, to the police. He's not a criminal in the ordinary sense. He's superior. He wants to be punished under the law, but he has done it just the same. But the man who tries to escape from the police, you see, he is the criminal. It's very simple, gentlemen. You are all divine, if you say, "I did it." And the man who cannot say so is the usual person, who hopes that somebody else will cover it up or it will not be noted, and so on. Most of you think that the lie is not the definite result of your life, but that you are found out about your lie, isn't that true? I mean, most people think if you aren't found out, you haven't done it.
Ja?
(Would you say then that pride was the original sin?)
No. Behaviorism. Behaviorism. Pride, of course, is a vanity connected with
this, but I think pride is only the -- one aspect of this inner weakness. I mean, you can call it vanity, and pride, but it isn't the whole story. I mean, at least not the way -- you -- we usually today use the word "pride." I don't think that in -- the ancients had the words for this very thing, you see, which I tried to describe, this ineptitude, or this impotency to stand by what had happened, you see, and lift it up from the realm of the accidental, or the objective, into something you volunteer to say, "I did it." But usually today "pride" has been so demoralized by the Sunday schools, and so on, that I hate to give any noun to something. I like the example better. You understand?
It's -- we nearly always go wrong in this country especially, I think, if we use any abstract moral term. The word "virtue," the word "vice," the word -- all of these terms -- pride, you see, humility, charity, kindness -- they all have been talked, you see, down. And so I wanted to show you in this story how the readers of the Bible have misread it, because they started from the resumption that philosophical religion was the only religion that exists, knowing nothing of this constant tragedy of man between his "may" and his "can" -- his association and his dissociation, of Church and State. For 150 years, Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Benjamin Franklin, and all the people who beset your minds today in this country -- and everywhere, by the way -- have said, "This is never the issue. I am always free." You see? "I never depend on my neighbor for my actions." That's what the philosophy of all these people is, you see. "I can improve myself." If you read the Poor Richard of Franklin, he can -- for two weeks he can acquire this virtue, and for another fortnight, he acquires the next virtue. Have you ever heard of such imbecility? Can anybody acquire any virtue? I mean, are you sure that after a fortnight you have trained yourself in virtue? Obviously, after the fortnight, the greatest danger is -- the danger is greater than ever before that you commit the very thing you've tried to train yourself in not doing it. I mean, man is not master of his appetites and of his virtues. This is just horrid, the idea.
(Sir, you said that pride was a part of this original sin. It seems to me exactly the opposite. Shame would be more a part of his original sin, and if that were true, that would be more or less the redeeming grace in man. That he was ashamed of this, but he didn't want -- he wasn't proud. He didn't say, "Yes, I did this. I --)
There we -- you see, there is what happens when you use these terms, you see, you see. But we -- most people are proud because they are ashamed. That is, pride is the covering up of the shame, isn't it? So I mean, I don't want to use these terms. Do you understand, now? Here we are, in deep water, you see. Avoid both if you can, for a moment, and just look at what was done. And it was done that the man entrenched himself behind his associates, you see. And now we have learned in the last meeting, I hope you have understood, that this is a
constant desire of man to say, "I was asked to associate. Therefore, because I cannot dominate the universe, and eat bread, and have peace, and have a house over my head, and weave -- and spin, you see -- and use metal, if I do not incorporate, I have to form a company. A man is not made to be alone. That's a chapter in Genesis. God gives man a companion, so He creates -- the woman, you see. And that is the fundamental company. All other companies, gentlemen, factories, nations are very little compared to this first step that man is not alone, you see. You're not thinkable, alone. And so, the whole problem of the eternal man, the everlasting man, his whole tribe had to be placed by the writer of Genesis into this very first beginning, you see. If he hadn't universalized the question, that it would, so to speak, concern every possible corporation, association, you see, formation of company, society -- then the whole book of the Bible would lack its center. The center of the Bible is, "Who is man, that God shall be mindful of him?"
(But sir, how does the Koran -- the Koran --)
We come to that. We come to that. But we deal with Christianity. Sure. You're quite -- a legitimate question. But I would say, he is a part of the Jewish-Christian stem of religion, you see, of an attempt to restore religion. And we shall see how the Islam has restored the faith, you see, how far he has -- they have gone and how far they have not gone. But in this sense, Islam is, of course, a religion inside our own, you see. It tends to restore the true religion to all the faithful. It's a universal religion, in this sense, you see. No, no. Islam is a part of revealed religion.
It's a very strange thing about -- we have to speak about Islam; I can be quite eloquent about it. I -- it's a very exciting thing because, gentlemen, the religion that at this moment prevails in America is Islam. A very leading missionary, among the Arabs, Christian missionary, an American, Monsieur Badot, Hugo {Badeau}, who came to Dartmouth three years -- five years ago, made an excellent -- gave an excellent address to us in the faculty. And he said, "Living among the Arabs, first in Iraq and later in Egypt, I found that their religion very much equals the American businessman religion. That by and large, what the actual American believes, is Islam." So you have to be very careful with words. I mean, he says, "Don't be betrayed. That they don't -- are not Christians, but they are good Moslems," which is not little. But that's what they are. So, I mean, it will be very exciting for you, when we come to this -- I hope we'll have time at the end -- to see why he meant this, why he had a right to say this. That's why you cannot convert the Arabs to Christianity. That's out of the question. There's no conversion possible, you see. They came after Christ.
Ja?
(Well, do you think that we should try to convert anybody who has a belief in a superior being, in a God?)
He doesn't have to be converted.
(Well, can he --)
Only -- we have to convert him only from the obstacles in this belief -- to this belief, from his idolatry. You can never convert a man from his real belief. Why should you? You can only show him that he already was yearning to believe. To "convert" means to pull -- to push man into his own, to make him confront the issue, which has been there all the time, but from which he ran away, you see. That's "convert." You -- today you could -- should call it "confrontation," perhaps. It would be perhaps a more effectual term.
I warn you today that one of the many terms you cannot use anymore is the term "conversion." Who said, "The professor," hunh?
But I hope this -- this seems a sidelight, this illustration of the Bible. It may help you still, I think, to see the great simplicity of the lines of religious understanding, gentlemen. It is always in such simple terms. Any confusion about religion arises from your not wishing to see the distinction between men and man. The fall of man is when he justifies an act, because "men do this." And so he always tries to say "the others." And that comes from this fact that he needs all the others for accomplishing our mastery of the death which has died.
So gentlemen, the higher life, the divine life is always the life that is free to assert its own change, to -- that knows of its own change. The ordinary life is that which just lives. And then there are dead things that you and I, through our work, have to incorporate into the life process. Gentlemen, what does it mean to work? What does it mean to form a state? What does it mean to have property? What do you have when you have a garden? Or when you have a car? You don't know this, gentlemen, but in the religious sphere, it's very simple. There are dead corpses which you re-incorporate into the stream of life. To work means to reincorporate dead things into the life process. This is all what work can do, you see. There's matter, there's material, and by work you lead it back so that it -- you have a coat, you see, you eat it, you stand on it, you live in it. You don't know that work is the re-incorporation of corpses into the life process of living bodies. The word "corporal," "incorporate" is a very beautiful word, gentlemen. It has to do with "corpse." Corpse is a corpus, a corporation, a body out of which life has gone out, is it not? So to re-incorporate a corpse, is not a pun, but it is the great desire that no dead things should lie around in the universe. We try to re-incorporate them. And this is our command. Man being himself so near death all the
time, is warned by God, "Don't be surrounded by corpses. Use these corpses so that they can enhance life."
Therefore work is a very noble thing, if you understand it, gentlemen. But if a man has 10,000 acres and lets them go to waste, you see, there must be then a legislation which takes this land from him. We have in Vermont 40,000 private owners of woodland, and only 17 of them have enough woodland so that they can hire a forester. The 39,983 other owners of forestry land in Vermont, of which I am one, must now expect legislation under which this land is taken from us. And we deserve it. We are unable to re-incorporate this land into the life process of the country. Something has to be done. We either can be asked to collectify, you see, so that always 5,000 acres are brought together, because 5,000 acres in the experience of forestry men in this country are the minimum for which it is worthwhile to hire a forester and to do something. Everything smaller doesn't pay. There you have a clear case of change of what is right and wrong. You are all for private property, gentlemen. If I understand private property, it means that energy is let loose by private ownership which no other ownership will unleash. If I own a garden, I 'll do much more for the garden than the government or the community would ever do for it, you see. Because on this little plot of land, I consume so much energy, you see, that miracles can be performed. Isn't that obvious? You see, I have roses and tulips, and if it would belong to the community, they would have grass, at best, or nothing. That's why we have private ownership, gentlemen. But don't believe that this is an irreligious proposition, that ownership is somewhere in the law book and that you can hold onto it against God's will. If these 39,983 Vermonters tried to continue to have woodland without doing anything to this terrible underbrush there, without either allowing it to live nor -- or to die, the legislation must take over, because they have forfeited their private property. That may take 50 years until the people wake up to this. We have to wait till an enemy comes into the country who passes such legislation, or things you never think of, but gentlemen, that is bound to happen. It's an injustice to the forestry, to the land. It is impossible, and I know it is. I have 100 acres. It's impossible for me to do anything with it, you see. It doesn't pay. I would ruin myself. I would go bankrupt. I have tried to persuade my neighbors to put these lots together, you see. Can't yet do it. No Vermonter ever can see beyond his own nose.
And there are even worshiped for this in the United States, gentlemen. It's very poor. They have -- they are in process of forfeiting their property, gentlemen, because dead things are given man for the re-incorporation into the life process. You must believe me. There may be -- we may be very patient. Society may say, "Well, they may come to their senses." Out of 187 Vermont towns, gentlemen, at this moment ...
[tape interruption]
... Now we come to the next great secret, gentlemen, of -- inside the secret of religion. Secret -- the secret of religion is the inexorable change of your and my existence. Everything changes. The same forest that gives the firewood and the timber for the houses of my community 100 years ago, now is a curse on the community, because it is neither timber nor firewood, actually. It's just there, you see. It has nothing to do in relation to the few people who live there, this woodland, because most of our old pastureland and fields have gone back to wilderness. And so there's far too much of it. Since there is this perpetual change, you are never sure where a demand is made on your decision between "may" and "can." Not one minute. But, gentlemen, now comes the second secret and that's the next step we have to take.
The changes, which we have to undergo, demand from you and me a different status, a different density, intensity of life. And that's completely unknown in our modern businessman's society. If you change the speed of your car, or you change the trend of your thought, you have not the feeling of any change of your own detachment. You do it cold-bloodedly. When a businessman comes to you and persuades you to buy a new gadget, you change your mind. Before, you said you were perfectly happy without the gadget and after he has -- sold you the gadget, you say, "How could I ever be without it?" So you have it, now. But the way in which you reached this conversion -- which is a conversion, a change of mind -- is, as you know, done with full weighing of the evidence. What it -- does it cost? How many installment payments? What do I give up? On whom will -- I shall be dependent now for buying the gasoline for the gadget or the electricity, or whatever it is -- is necessary to, you see, to turn it, make it go 'round. And therefore, gentlemen, there is a kind of change which leaves me alone. There is a change, I re-arrange my things, re-arrange my environment. That's also already change. My -- I re-arrange my environment.
Then you take the earthquake in Japan. Or you take the Second World War. You take the bombing of Hiroshima. The survivors in Hiroshima, gentlemen, could not re-arrange their environment. The re-building of Hiroshima is a very minor matter compared to the experience that I live under the threat of a bomb every minute. My life has suddenly changed its existence, because I have to admit catastrophes. So I think the -- on the opposite end of a human experience is the catastrophe. You have not -- know not very much of catastrophes, except motor-car accidents. But think of the the people in Europe and the bombing of their cities -- of Dresden, or of Frankfurt, or of London -- the London blitz -- and you will see that these people have the experience of something that transforms every value of their own. When I re-arrange my environment, I still am the judge of what -- of the change, am I not? I am detached, myself. And here I am so
implicated, that there is -- I seem to be the only man implicated. There are no things that matter. I lose my furniture. Of course, I lose my house as a matter of course. The question is, can I myself survive? Is there still some life left, or even can one member of my family survive?
So a "catastrophe," we mean an event, gentlemen, which annihilates my own state of consciousness, totally. I wake up the next morning, and I cannot understand. And I shall never understand. A man who was in Hiroshima will never really live through these two states with full understanding. I mean, they are incomparable. I hope that next time I find some better illustrations.
Gentlemen, you have a young lady to whom you propose. One day she decides to say, "Yes." And she goes to the altar and the next morning she is very much frightened and shocked by the fact that the maid in the hotel calls her with your name. She had known this all the time, but she had never realized that from now on, nobody would ever have the right to call her with her old maiden name. She had now to be "Mrs." Such a person at a wedding -- any man who has -- is a candidate for office and from now on is "the judge," or "the doctor" or "the president," undergoes also a change which transforms his self-consciousness of himself. The catastrophe outrules all consciousness. The detached change leaves his self-consciousness untouched. "I did it. I made the decision." The wedding is something -- if it is a wedding -- that is stronger than she and he. They cannot realize ahead what it really does to them. They have to undergo it before they know. They can plunge voluntarily for the event. They can take the plunge. But when they come out of the plunge, you see, the change is more, or different from what they had expected it to be. Nobody, gentlemen, can foresee such an event rationally, or describe it. And you can't describe it to anybody else.
We have at least, gentlemen, three states, which I can name here directly. And we'll see, gentlemen that there are two more. And we'll see then that the intensity by which -- with which we respond to a change makes a difference in our aspect of explaining the problem of the divine presence in our own life and of change. If you think that a whole life is a contract with businessmen to buy some more things, or to discard some more things, you will look at life, obviously in a different way than if you think that it is a wedding, or if you think it's all catastrophe, like the pessimist. And we will see that there is a very beautiful order.
And, at this moment, I have to stop, but the problem of next time will be, gentlemen, that we will have to give you a scale of the intensity of the change. The intensity of the change is graded. And the religions of the human race are distinguishable according to the intensity of the change on which they put the emphasis.
Thank you.