Transcript

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{word} = hard to understand, might be this

[Opening remarks missing]

... to take today. I tried to tell you that the question of religion is always the question of up- and down-looking. And as we move in our organic, our halfasleep existence from eating, to breathing, to playing, to working, to loving is still always something -- some hour in which we will be tested whether we can face a catastrophe of our whole little world. All these five spheres, which we have tried to become aware of, are not with us all the time. A catastrophe, that you have to be asked to stand up and testify for the truth, or that you have to die in battle on a -- as a soldier, or that you have to rescue somebody from danger or from oblivion, or that you have to sacrifice yourself for your children, that is not to be known before it has happened. And to get ready for the decisive hours of our life fills perhaps 69 years of the 70 years which it is given us to live, gentlemen. So we come to the conclusion that the -- our sojourn in the spheres is of very different length. The rarity of the fifth sphere, of war or great danger for the whole of civilization is in our personal life rarer than the necessity of keeping alive day by day. And this has led many people, from their mere cleverness, to the conclusion that they are not important for settling the religious issue; that you can settle the issue whether there is a God, or a creator, or the necessity of prayer, or sacrifice, or suffering by deciding that in the ordinary, daily work, you don't figure that you are really ever meeting with the extreme case.

A famous anatomist once said that in all his dissections of corpses and cells, he had never run into a soul. And he therefore assumed there was no soul. This is a very great idiot, because if you set out to go into anatomy, you have made sure that you can't find a soul. That's why you become an anatomist. In anatomy there is no soul to be found. It's very simple. All people who go into physics can't find life. All people who go into anatomy can only find corpses. All people who go into industry can only find production. And all people who go only in for nightclubs can only find sex. So what's the wonder? I have never understood these idiots who say because they have chosen a path into one certain little field and there they don't find the soul, or God, or anything, and then they are surprised that they get what they want. But they knew ahead of time that they had concentrated. So I still agree with Mr. Virchow and said -- when -- if he says that in his laboratory he didn't find the soul, but I would ask him what was it that made him decide to become an anatomist. That this was -- that he knew that before he ever was one that this was a useful activity. And that it was needed in his time, and that he could ask society -- to support him in this nonsense of laboratory work. Perhaps it's all nonsense that we are -- pay these physicists for nuclear physics. It looks very much like nonsense to me. You don't think so,

gentlemen, but you have a hard time to justify -- it's just an act of faith. You believe in science. That is, you have made science your god. And so you don't question it. You say, "Science must be."

Gentlemen, whenever a man says something must be, he says it is divine. It is a part of the universe as it is meaningful and it gives meaning to all other acts of life. So you say -- or Virchow says there must be dissection of cells, all right. I have no objection. But if you do this, gentlemen, then you must know that the only religious issue in this whole field of anatomy is a man's decision to devote his life to dead matter. That is a tremendous faith in God's creation, because it means that even dead matter deserves exploration. Even dead matter, worthless as it is. Or you can even kill material. You can vivisect dogs, because they are -- less alive than you and I, and if we vivisect the dog we can find some cure, as you know, for the bite of a sick dog, as Mr. Pasteur did, and thereby rescue many people from dying. But then we have a clear belief that your and my life is worth more than a dog's life. So that is interesting in this statement. In vivisection, we have a very clear understanding what's up, and what's down. What's low and what's high. And religion cannot forego this dogmatic statement.

And here comes in the quest of dogma. The dogmatic statement that there is higher and lower in reality for our decisions. Mr. Virchow, by becoming an anatomist and saying "Man needs anatomy" has placed man above dead matter. And he has thereby recognized the spheres of which we are talking at least to the extent that organic substance is allowed to sacrifice dead substance. And that purposeful life, men's life, intellectual life is allowed to reduce organic matter, living cells into dead matter for your and my benefit.

So you have very clearly there an up and down. Now gentlemen, this is not easy for you to understand, because up and down in our physical universe is, of course, perfectly relative. You cannot say that the sun is high and we are low. The earth turns around the sun and it's perfectly arbitrary obviously in the dead world of stars to say that anything is high and anything is low. So, you understand, gentlemen, that the word -- high and low -- is exclusively a term of your and my belief. It's a question of faith. The funny thing is that all the atheists are absolutely sure that they know what high and low is. For example, their own brain is very high, with all these people. They say that this brain sits in judgment over the question of whether there is a God or not. I am a little bit more simpleminded and I think that obviously, since I live from one catastrophe to the next, and shall die, that the Lord over life and death obviously stands higher than I myself. This -- the man in his na‹ve intelligence will not see. But there's more to this question of up and down, and this is my difficulty with you.

We meet those fears which we only have to expect, or to fear, or to dread, or to

reckon with, which demand a change of our own mind from us. We meet them with an act which has gone out of existence in your lifetime, and it doesn't seem that in America it will ever have a chance again. To embrace the darkness of your own death and -- to affirm the end of the United States, or to affirm that we mustn't go to war now against Russia, although a truculent general would like to do it -- gentlemen, what does this take? This takes the acceptance of a will that is not your and my will. We have to say that another will takes precedence of -- our will. Now you say this all the time, in your fraternity and in your family, that the other fellow may have it and you quiet down, because you are cowards. But this is not true of human beings only. The president of your fraternity, or the president of this college, or the President of the United States, where you have to take their say-so whenever there is -- within their competence to say so, although you disagree. You take it for granted that if a president is put in by the majority, he can do what you disapprove of. And you obey just the same. But obviously the general character of -- the fact is that 99 percent of life's actions, you do not -- agree with what happens. Mr. -- {Antonissen} had three boys in his car as you know, and I don't think that he anticipated that he would smash them up for the great purpose of going in -- from Claremont to Hanover in 19 minutes. One cannot go from Claremont to Hanover in 19 minutes. But so was this boy's will. He's your colleague, as you know. And well, he had this car accident. You must know this. No? The son of Dr. {Antonissen}. There were four boys in the car, and he was least hurt. Wie? You -- who knows this?

(It must have happened before our time.)

Isn't it true? Well, his will was very clear. He said that he had to make Hanover in 19 minutes from Claremont. You know the distance. So obviously, it -- he was served right and so now he has to accept this higher will. And he is loaded with the responsibility that three other people got hurt. But this happens to you and me all the time. It's not just in a car. I teach you here something, and you go away and commit suicide, it's on me, because you have misunderstood something I have said. Nobody, not one of you, can escape constant responsibilities of which we don't even know. You just didn't greet a person on the -- on the street and he says, "I'm through," like Mr. {Friedman}, and disappears. Probably has committed suicide, because you didn't greet him. The boy obviously was so terribly isolated and lonely nobody knows this freshman. Have you ever seen him? You see, he just slunked away, because nobody talked to him. So we are responsible. And we have to accept this other will. We didn't mean to; we didn't will it. But we allowed it to happen, and now we have to accept this.

Gentlemen, take the -- General Lee and the Southern people in the Civil War and you will see that it is -- not natural at all that we should embrace a defeat and say this is right. Lee did not accept the defeat, in the sense in which I mean

acceptance, but at least he complied with its conclusions. He became president, as you know, of a little college, and didn't say anything after that about the Civil War. But as you know, it has taken 70 years -- 90 years! -- 90 years before the South would vote for a Republican president. So you can say that it took these people 90 years before they accepted the will of God. This is normal. You have learned in your -- this cheap modern world, in which even prayer is commercialized, that we can babble this -- the -- Our Lord's Prayer 20 times a day, as the superstitious ladies do. I have been myself in an Anglican conference in England, where they prayed the Lord's Prayer six times a day, until I said I couldn't do that. I couldn't -- I could pray it once a day, but for five other times it would seem to me it was just a fa‡on de parler, just a manner of table talk.

But gentlemen, there is a tremendous sentence in this prayer: "Thy will be done." And not mine. Now the whole South has gone to church for 90 years, I have no doubt, and they have prayed in church Our Lord's Prayer. But they have never applied it to the defeat in the Civil War. Until Mr. {Shivers} made Mr. Eisenhower his choice. That -- because that's the expression of full acceptance of the lay of the land, isn't it? Before that's all still opposition.

So I would throw out this suggestion, gentlemen, which perhaps comes to you unexpected, that if we do not look up to catastrophe and to love as going beyond our purpose, and our will and moving us into a sphere not of our own making, by an act of surrender, that if we do not do this, that time is prevented from happening, that God's government is suspended, that we obstruct it. The South has obstructed for 90 years the decision of the Civil War. That's a very great fact. You have it with the isolationists who have obstructed America's experience of two world wars for 50 years, or 40 years, or 30 years -- just as you please -- wish to count. Now if you see this in big letters written over the national life of such an -- a mercurial race as the Americans, who are so very quick on the trigger, and who change their mind allegedly every day, you can imagine where the French live. They still live in 1789, the French. They cannot accept the existence of other nations, which didn't exist when they came into being in 1789. At that time, there was no united Germany. And they have never forgiven the Germans that they united after that. There was no united Italy. And so the French to this day dream of a world in which they have now, in which the Saar is something by itself, and Luxembourg is something by itself, and Western Germany is something by itself, you see. And if they could have it, they would have Southern Germany by itself, because that is the day of acceptance of fate, their great revolution. And on that day, the world looked so, that France was the biggest nation in -- on the continent of Europe and all the other states were smaller than France. France at that time counted 24 million people. And all -- and every one political unit next and around them was smaller in numbers. This they have accepted as their dogma. They are dogmatically convinced that this is right.

And as you see it now, they are on the way of winning out again. This whole Saar business is just a crying injustice, but it is a very explicable if you think of the obsession of the French that their nation is the grand -- great nation. Mr. DeGaulle has said a few days ago again that France -- would have to arbitrate between Russia and the United States. Now imagine! this little paralyzed, obsolete, decadent nation of 40 million people offering its arbitration to the two colossi of 200 million people each, and more if you take their satellites. And -- wonderful. This would be ridiculous if it wasn't so tragic. The French have long ago lost the power to pray, "Thy will be done," and not "My will be done." They can't. They are Roman -- they have no Protestants as you know, and they are either free thinkers or Roman Catholics. So -- however, they have only stereotypes. The stereotype of non-prayer on the one-hand side, and the stereotype of Latin prayer, which you never have to take personally. It's so easy to say, you see, "fiat voluntas tua." You see. That's the good Latin -- but you don't know what it means, unless it hits home where you would like it to hit home. And I assure you, gentlemen, that this great formula, this is the simplest prayer in the world, "Thy will be done," you see. It's the one way in which we accept the existence of God. Most people cannot really fill this little sentence of three words, fiat voluntas tua: Thy will be done. They cannot fill it with meaning. They cannot.

And so you see that 99 out of hundred people, gentlemen, obstruct the march of time. So the religious problem is: how many people will look up to catastrophe and love, to things that are bigger than your own mind, and accept the verdict that is expressed by the fact that some people love you and some people don't love you, and that some certain states of the world come to an end, and certain other states begin? Now who can really say, "Thy will be done"? Why couldn't the South say, "Thy will be done" for 90 years? And I am guessing that in Georgia, they still can't say it. This is -- in these great examples, gentlemen, it happens exactly what happens to your own life. Don't think that we are very far away from your own home in these statements. It has to do with every human being on the globe. Ninety-nine out of us -- a hundred, they pray for all other things except for the one thing they should pray. That is, that their will be not now recalcitrant and obstructive to what has already happened. The isolationists are a very good -- case in point. I see Mr. {Bricker} get up in the Senate, I always have the feeling that I'm in the plush and velvet era of 1875. That's how the people in Ohio still live.

A friend of mine, a -- here a professor in this college was sent by the Navy to take over a college there in Ohio. There are many colleges, as you know, and he was welcomed in this war, in the Second World War -- in midst of it, by the president of the college, allegedly Christian college, with these words: "This is a fine place. Here is neither a Nigger, nor a Jew nor a Catholic." That's -- you see, that is a man who -- and he certainly did pray, every Thursday they had chapel.

Obviously the United States were not created for not containing any one of these three groups. It's quite a big order to pry -- pray themself happy because he could still live in 1756.

Most people are like that. This man is not an exception. He was very stupid to say so to an unknown man who reported it to me, you see. That's why I know this -- his black soul. But most souls are this black. They exclude themselves from any common will, any common catastrophe, or cataclysm, any judgment of God. And you have to see these things, gentlemen, as the religious issues not the last judgment, but the judgment over the South and the defeat of the Civil War. And the judgment over the isolationism by our getting involved into two world wars without willing it. Before you can -- and the religious schism in this world between Catholics and Jews and Protestants as a judgment over our own insipidity, or weakness, or whatever you may say, or recalitrancy. Before you -- you must see this before you understand any religious term in any religion of the world. All religions try to say to their faithful, anyone, that the will of God is not done. Or the will of the gods is not done. If you cannot understand that the will of the gods is never done by the majority, then you understand -- or begin to understand the necessity of a way into this will, higher will. And we call this prayer. Prayer is an attempt to come around yourself to do the will of God. What words you use, gentlemen, or what acts you could do, it means always a power inside yourself by which you fight your own mind, and try to see what the world-mind -- the creator-mind really has in mind, as we say, what the spirit is that should now grip you and move you. It is the permission of the whole creative process to grip you, despite your own mind. Gentlemen, all prayer is an attempt to destroy your self-mindedness, your own-mindedness, because it's too short, too narrow. It doesn't cover reality.

You can see this very easily. If you see the realm of catastrophe, affection, work, organism -- organic life, and mechanism. An -- little atom today -- a nucleus, these cyclotrons -- is already mechanically working. That is, a -- mechanic force is already to be had by -- in atoms or molecules, so small is the element of the universe that already contains mechanical reactions. So you can see that whether you have a million atoms, every -- each of them moving, or one -- makes in principle no difference for our mind in judging every mechanical act as limited to a very small area in time and in space. You can add them. You can have many spaces and many times, but they don't add up to one period, to one century. I mean, if you have a million atoms exploding at one moment, if you could think of this, as in the times when the earth was created, it would still be nothing that had any meaning, let's say for today. With the {salt stock} of yesterday we really have very little to do at this moment, I mean. We build on it, but we are not connected, we are not responsible for what happened there. Because it's mechanic. Mechanics.

Mechanics, gentlemen, have no responsibility for other mechanisms, and we are not responsible for these mechanisms. If you stumble against a stone, the stone can go and can be destroyed. You don't have to cherish and say, "Poor stone," you see, "I pity you." This would be nonsense. This shows you the limitations, the little frontiers within which mechanisms are contained. And the one thing is that they are all subhuman. The extent of your and my life has nothing to do with any mechanical house that harbors us. Here these walls -- your and my life doesn't depend on the existence of Dartmouth Hall. Only sentimental alumni may think so. You and I -- we go into the world and build a new hall.

And therefore, gentlemen, this is stone. A church, it's stone. Let it go. I was all against rebuilding all these destroyed churches in Germany, because that was a chance for -- their getting religion. Now the American churches, in their unbelief, send money to rebuild the churches, so of course. The result is that there are now churches there, but they are just mechanics, mechanisms. This rebuilding of the churches is just fantasia of unbelief, because it's mechanical, stone. The first Christians for 200 years had no churches. First church was built in 200 A.D., and of course the two -- the first hundred years of this Christian church were the { } years of Christianity, weren't they? And they worked out beautifully without churches.

But most people today think -- in America, as you know, the University of Texas has a program by which all the income of the oil wells in Texas has to be spent on buildings, and they can't spend one cent on living people, on professors' salaries, or so. So they have the biggest campus -- mechanism. And this mechanism -- after the buildings are built, they are just there. And they have no effect on the future, And we learned, gentlemen, a mechanism is in time and space less effective than any organic life. Organic life must digest. It must take in substance from outside. A plant even has to find some oxygen in the air. The mechanism rests in itself. Here this table, this -- they are just there. But stone. But something mechanical. Dead. But even -- I here in this room, I have to breathe. And we are dependent on some heat. And we are dependent therefore on all kinds of substances which must come to our rescue. Organic life is already connected in space and time with longer periods than the mechanism. It's not atomic. We call this for this reason "organic," because organic means that it must take in substance and give off substance. It is connected, for better, for worse, with an -- the rest of the world. It has roots. It has -- it takes in light.

Then we come to the purposive animal, gentlemen, which you are. The man who studies, the man who works, the man who plays. Your and my purpose can extend over four years in college, or you can plan a happy life for the next 30 years. You can't ply -- plan your whole life, because before you can plan, you must grow first, you see, organically and unconsciously. So a man's purpose can

never cover his own whole life. That's very interesting, I think. A man's purpose can never cover his whole life -- time. But it is able to extend over decades. Perhaps if he's lucky and nobody hits him over the head in the meantime.

Affectionate life, gentlemen, the higher life of the fourth sphere, certainly extends over more than one generation. You can, as a loving being, be blessed to see your great-grandchildren. And they are your great-grandchildren and they will recognize you as your -- as their ancestor. And you can recognize your own ancestors if you have a soul, of which of course most people make no use. Mr. Virchow didn't, and you don't. And you say you have no ancestors. You are selfmade men. Well, the self-made man, gentlemen, remains in third sphere of the will. And therefore all his plans are less long than 30 years. Nobody can plan for more than 30 years. Even the Russians didn't dare to plan for more than five years. It's very short. I don't like the idea that my life-work, gentlemen, extends over 30 years. I just read today by -- in Schopenhauer the great sentence that he knew that his work, which was neglected in his lifetime, would be read by his children, by the children, and the grandchildren, and the great-grandchildren of all those who had tried to silence him. That's a proud sentence, but it's a true sentence of a man who has spirit, gentlemen, and faith. I hope the same of myself. Certainly.

Therefore, love, affection, passion, all the powers of Venus -- any mother who gives birth to a child feels quite sure -- certain that she can master more than one generation, can influence it, instill important, you see, things. Any teacher must hope this. I don't care what you think, gentlemen, but I do very much care what you will say in 2000 to your children. That's the only interest I have in your existence. Because I know: 80 percent of you will be just chaff, will be empty. Most of you will not bear fruit. But some will. In American colleges, it's a very small percentage of people who don't forget everything they have ever heard or learned, after commencement, as you well know. Most of them don't wish to be reminded of college years after commencement. But the few who do, they are the people who connect the times, and who live in the fourth sphere. It's something very strange in this college, gentlemen.

I read the oath of Hippocrates in the waiting room of our -- a doctor in the hospital, again the other day. The famous oath every doctor takes. And have you read it? Who has read the oath of Hippocrates? Well, you know, the first thing he has to swear is that he will treat the teacher like his father and never forget that he owes his wisdom to him. As you know, that's forbidden in liberal arts college, any gratitude to a teacher. And that's why you don't learn anything. You cannot learn anything without this gratitude to the man who teaches you. Ja, you -- you get toothache when I say this, my dear man, and you make a terrible, bitter mouth. But it is the truth. And the oath of Hippocrates shows it. And you can, of

course, as this is in this college -- treat us as -- just as doormats and as facilities for your learning something. But it won't work. This, what you learn, there is not in the fourth sphere. It's just in the mechanic sphere of learning something by rote for the exam. And I'm sorry, sir. But it is so -- life is very different from what you think it is. You cannot learn without a personal relation to the men from whom you learn. Impossible. If you believe it, you don't learn. And that is the heresy of our -- Dartmouth College, at this moment. That's why the results in all the high schools of the land are so miserable. The children just don't learn anything. Absolutely nothing, because this -- the teacher -- the poor teachers are never asked, "Do you want to teach? Must you teach?" That's reciprocal, gentlemen. I must teach, unfortunately, so I depend on your good will. I do -- don't teach because I get a salary. The salary is certainly less than I could earn any other place, in any other capacity. I'm not so stupid that I couldn't be president of a bank.

Gentlemen, when I was a young man -- I must tell you this. It's not just said with vanity at the end of my life. But when I was a young man, I had the choice between being the president of a bank, being president of the big railroad, and becoming a scholar. And I choose to be a scholar. All right. And I think I knew what I was doing. But you think that a man who teaches is just an idiot who, because he can't become president of a bank, becomes a professor. That's your idea of a college professor.

I've seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears how people sank into their knees when here a man came who had married the daughter of DuPont and thereby become rich and says, "That's the man. That's the man, Mr. {Greenwald}." He's shown now in a movie. By marrying the right daughter, you can always become president.

Well, the serious thing is, in the fifth sphere, gentlemen, we deal with -- not with generations; we deal with ages, with centuries. The Civil War has made law for centuries. Slavery has been abolished, for good. You know that. Cannot be reintroduced into the United States, or there will be no United States. You can have slavery in Ameri-- on the soil of this country, but certainly there will not be a president in -- on the capitol in Washington then. So gentlemen, we have a climax -- centuries, or thousands of years, even -- or 500 years since the discovery of America, for example, or generations -- that is, two, three generations, 60, 90 years -- our own -- half a generation, 30 years of our own will, organic life, 24 hours or a year or seven years, in the shedding of our skin, in our physiological existence, all the mechanics of the moment, as in a car accident. Accordingly, gentlemen, since you at this moment live in the short-lived way -- on the shortlived wave -- I cannot say short wave, because unfortunately the short waves reach far, and the long waves are -- you see, are in the neighborhood. So the term

is unfortunate. I cannot compare it with the radio waves without turning it all around. But still, you can understand that we move in these five wavelengths. Obviously any soldier of the Civil War made epoch for centuries. As far as he was married, he still has now his grandchild living in Texas or in Georgia, you see. And -- his memory as a secessionist soldier may keep this granddaughter in the ranks of the Democratic Party. It probably does, you see. And his own lifework, when he came home from the war and changed his profession, like General Lee, they all suspend him in a different network of time-lengths. The -- long network of century, the shorter one of generations, the still shorter one of my planned life-work or profession, the still shorter of my organic processes -- until I get pneumonia, or cancer, or whatever it is, and my sicknesses -- they are very good types of periods in organic existence, and my mechanical environment -- the house in which I live, and the soil on which I tread, and the streets on which I walk, and the railroad in -- through -- on -- in which I move. Can you see this, gentlemen, that all these five entities have a different velocity and a different range?

If you want to understand these five spheres with regard to the religious issue of finding the will that complies with all five of these movements, within yourself and within myself, you see, you can -- may compare it to this invention of a railroad, which moves in five different degrees of speed, on a ribbon. Go -- all five ribbons going on all the time. You step from the rail -- from the platform -- of the -- at the station onto the ribbon that only moves at 10 miles and hour. And then, once you move 10 miles an hour, you have no trouble in moving -- in stepping over to a platform that moves at 25 miles an hour. And on it goes until you are on the big, you see, railroad out to Ca- -- Los Angeles, which can go 70 miles an hour. It has always been my great hope that we would construe our railroads, in the -- this way that we -- you can be on the stations and we else would have to stop. That would eliminate an immense amount of waste. You see, I could have been president of a railroad.

And -- but this is life. Life consists of these five ribbons that move at different speeds. And you and I are usually only on the two small slowly moving ribbons, so to speak. And we -- let me -- do not bring up the courage to jump on the faster- and faster-moving. As you see, gentlemen, for a great event, like the Russian Revolution, the Bolshevik revolution, and the World War, it will take you in this country at least 70 years before it is accepted, before you see that the Russian Revolution was indispensable. It has taken the people of Europe at least 70 years before they accepted the French Revolution, as such a thing. And it has, as you know, taken the Tories a hundred years before they accepted the Whig Revolution of 1688.

So if you begin to see these elementary facts that by far the majority of people

do not move with the times, you perhaps begin to see that prayer is something very real. It is not the luxury of feeding your soul with sentiment. But it is your wish not to be a nuisance, which makes you pray. As long as you think that prayer is some private telephone line with God Almighty, you don't know who God is, and you don't know who you are. You must know that you are a nuisance. Because you do not wish to share the full life of the cosmic order that goes on at this moment. And that would demand your surrender. And therefore, you only live as a parasite. You are carried, but you don't carry.

I have been hesitant, as you know, from the whole course --to speak to you of prayer before. I got once a paper of a boy here in this college, which I have never forgotten. I even printed it in The Chicago Journal of Religion in 1945. You can read it -- look it up there. It's a great paper because it began with the words, "I have never heard of prayer, nor have I ever understood what purpose it serves." The poor boy only knew of purpose. That was -- he could not even see his own life. And I tried to show you that your own life is beyond your own purpose. You have been born without purpose. And you will live beyond all your purposes, I suppose. But this boy said because he didn't know the purpose of prayer, so he couldn't pray. Gentlemen, if you would wait until you understand the purpose of prayer, nobody would ever pray. But prayer makes a man complete. And a man who doesn't pray is an incomplete person. And 99 percent of the people in the United States -- they may pray on Sundays, but they don't pray personally, to surrender their own will to the movement of the government of the world. As long as you think that prayer is outside the time process, which is inexorably, ineluctably flowing on all the time, you will never catch the meaning, or the history or the significance of prayer. If you think, "I can take it or leave it," and you all think prayer is just something nice -- at this moment, the psychoanalyst tells the people, "It's good for your inner digestion, just do pray." Well, they are the real devils of our days, of course; and they, of course, have the majority vote.

But gentlemen, this has nothing to do with the history of prayer in mankind. Any nation and any individual who does not pray doesn't complete his existence, because he does not bring into his life those spheres for which he has to wait, or which have already passed away and which are not with him at this moment. Here in this classroom, gentlemen, we as I -- we are organic substance, you are organic substance; I am purposive substance. I'm hard -- working hard, you see, and you are sitting back. Well, this is all right. We cannot always be at our highest. We are not always on the battlefield of decision. We don't decide anything at this moment, here. It's obvious. Therefore we are not at our best. Therefore, at this moment, and as long as you are students, and as long as -- nobody is ever always at his best, in these 99 fractions of life, we must make room for the entrance of the big life. That's prayer. However you call it, I don't care. Many people who think they don't pray, do pray. And many people who

think they pray, don't pray. You can see that prayer -- what is prayer, gentlemen? An orientation about who God is, and who you are. That is, the essence of prayer is to give God that name by which you will be placed, in the right dimension, in the right light. In His face. Prayer is reciprocal. It's a famous prayer, gentlemen, in the Orient by a Persian, Sufi, which I think is very -- express this very simple: "Wherever a man says, "O Lord," he also says, "My Dear Son." Can you understand this? Wherever a man -- oh, oh -- "Wherever a man says O Father, he -- there always is -- he also says, My Dear Son." That is, if you say to your -- you don't pray to God to call him Father, but so that you may call him -- yourself his son. That's the only reason why you have to pray. Because thereby you place yourself in the universe. Prayer is not the title you give God, but because you bestow a title on Him, a title is bestowed on you. That's the only reason why man is not complete without prayer, because within this invocation, gentlemen, you receive your place in the universe. And there is no other way for receiving this place. Nobody can call you the Child of God, except God. And you have to say that you acknowledge His power to place you in the universe. You are not just Americans. You are not just the son of your -- physical parents, or carnal parents. Heavens! If you were this, I could -- would despise you. Who are you? I have nothing to do with you. Why do I have to give honor to you, and place, and independence, and freedom? Because you are the sons of somebody else, a greater power than anybody in his room -- in this room, or in the -- registry of Dartmouth College. The only reason why I have to respect you, gentlemen. But you don't make yourself respected. The next generation will have long forgotten it, because you can't make your children anymore learn how to pray. You think it's not necessary. Or you send them to Sunday school, where they unlearn prayer, because it's childish.

It's a very serious business, gentlemen. In a prayer, the only essential thing is the invocation. That's why all divine service starts with the invocation. It means that you include your unfinishedness into your existence, and say, "I am at this moment just planning a country dance for next -- square dance for tomorrow." That's all very minor. "And I'm trying to write a thesis, and I'm trying to save enough money to see my girl next Saturday." That's all permissible, gentlemen, but that's not you. That's not you. Your pleasures are not you. Even the worries are not you. You know that. There is no other way for any man at any moment to find home to himself unless he is reinstituted into his proper place in the universe. Now how -- as I said, however, you do this, this process is called prayer. Prayer completes man, because he is always incomplete in the spheres in which he has to move. A prisoner, a man who is condemned to die, knows this very well.

So -- as you remember, two years ago, we had this terrible issue with the Korean prisoners of war, where the whole college of Dartmouth -- to its dishon-

or, it has to be remembered -- was all for trading these 26,000 Northern Koreans, whom Mr. Syngman Rhee set free, for an armistice. And the people here cried -- these pacifists on this campus, these good Christians, the whole Dartmouth Christian Union -- they cried with tears, the nice bargain with the army, with the Russians is off, because Syngman Rhee let 26,000 prisoners of war escape. Gentlemen, from time immemorial, people have prayed for prisoners. And to set a prisoner free has always been the most normal act. And when the American Army, represented by the better part of us, the -- Southern Koreans, set these prisoners free, we did just the minimum of what we could do for these 26,000 people. And here were these stalwarts of Americanism, who said this was terrible, because it stultified the lawyers in their proceedings in the tent, there, for trading horseflesh and human flesh across the counter. I've never felt such a contempt for young people. It is not true that young people are generous, I found out then. They're just cowards. The whole question was: if the 26,000 people are not traded over the counter and sent back into the Communist camp and -- then the armistice isn't signed, then I may have to be drafted. And I may be sent to Korea. And so that does it when you do not pray. Because I think that nobody who knows what prayer is, could have stifled in his heart his self-contempt for this attitude. And some of you must remember this attitude. It was all over this campus. I have fought it in my class, and one of the boys finally did break down, and he was ashamed. But he was an exception.

They -- you have a very simple example of how most of you are totally lost in the spirit of the times, gentlemen, in the third sphere, where just what you want to do makes law, you see. What you want to do or what you don't want to do. And that's the sphere of work and play. And I can't assure you sufficiently gentlemen, that anybody who only lives in the sphere of purpose and play is not fully alive to his real equipment, gentlemen. Haven't you the organs of procreation? Haven't you the heart to be frightened and to be elated? The man who lives on purpose lives on his brains, the deadest organ of your body you have. Because it is only give to what is. It is most uncreative. The mind can never create a new world. No great inventor, no creative mind has ever been accepted by the rationalists. The rationalists have always proved that he cannot exist, just as they disprove the Civil War has ever happened in the South. Mr. Talmadge. He says -- just says it hasn't happened, I mean. Not to him. All purpose, all will.

So I cannot say more in this classroom, gentlemen. But I want you to understand. I have tried to build up a situation in which you may know so much trouble to understand that prayer is a part of human existence. And unless you understand this, then you do not see the identity of prayer with reliigon. There is no religion without prayer, and there is no prayer without religion. It's the same thing. It is the power of which I tried to speak to you in our first meeting. In the first meeting, I said we must find a power, just as electricity. If it isn't a power,

I'm not interested in it. It's not a church, it's nothing in books. It's not the animism of the -- but I want to know why you and the animistic Indian do exactly the same thing. He tries to be inspired, and you try to be inspired, and I try to be inspired to be more complete than this shrouding cloud of space and time at this moment allows me to be. I'm not my purpose. I'm much more stretched out. That's why I became a scholar and not a bank president. I said to my dear father, who was a banker, said to me finally when we had hashed it all out. He said, "Well, I fully agree. You can't eat a good dinner more than once a day." And as the bank president, you may afford to have two dinners, but don't do it. It will kill you.

That is, purpose, gentlemen, is always less than a man's life is worth. You may have all the purposes in the world, but they are always less important than God's will with you. Subordinate. I have nothing against -- I am full of purpose, gentlemen. I write books. I travel, I -- bring up my family, et cetera. I build a house. I raise horses. But this is wonderful, gentlemen, but it's very minor. And it can be changed. And it will be -- has been changed by fate, which I have to accept. But to build life out of little pruposes, that's impossible, gentlemen. You cannot do that. You have to receive the order of the day on your table by a higher command. And that flows on your desk one day, because you have prayed, because you have made room for this, and you have -- are not cluttered up with all your own anxieties, and your own telephone calls, et cetera, and all the telegrams and Christmas cards which you send out.

You have no judgment over important and unimportant as long as you do not look up to your higher potential place in the universe. You will read the history of mankind, gentlemen, who counts in history? Anybody who can hear something that somebody hasn't heard. The old complaint that runs through all religious life is that 99 percent of the people have ears, but they don't hear, and have eyes, and they don't see. So I would say of the Southern Democrats, you see. They have ears, and don't hear, and eyes, and -- you see, don't see -- in the main course, in the main -- at the main issue, haven't they? Very different. And we have to live with them and they make havoc and they ask for hecatombs of bloody sacrifice. Gentlemen, what happens when the will of God is not done? Because the will of God is in the timing, in the right timing. You can do anything without aggravation if you do it in -- at the right time. And anything is -- that's done too late costs hecatombs of other people's life -- lives.

The time is -- the hour in which something has to be done, gentlemen, is the test that our will cannot be done. And it is also always, when it is ruined, has to be brought back at a terrible price. As you know, in 1789, the absence of the two members of New Jersey from the American Senate prevented the abolition of slavery for the Northwest Territories to be carried by Jefferson. And that { }.

And if it hadn't been voted -- this ordinance which Jefferson wanted at that time, 1787, I think it was, isn't it? Does anybody know the Northwestern Ordinance?

[unintelligible]

Wie? 1787. You see, if these gentlemen from New Jersey had been present, it would have -- history would have taken a different course. So dearly do we pay for anything that's done too late. There would have been no bloodshed in 1787. But as you know, after all -- what's the -- slavery just began then to prosper, with manufacturing slaves, you see, for artificial semination. They would have done it if they had already known what we can do, you see. And they did something similar, as you know. They sent people around just to hatch children. And for money. These men. Like a bull. And of course, these things then could only be { }, because they had gotten -- they had been gotten out of hand from first being rather an emergency measure for the new country.

I only mean to say, gentlemen, the issue in life is at the right time. Now, it's very easy for Mr. {Shivers} to vote for President Eisenhower. But it wasn't easy -- wouldn't have been easy in 1880, you see. And that would have been interesting, wouldn't it? Now it isn't interesting.

So gentlemen, prayer brings a man up to date. Let's say this in such crude and simple ways, because that's what it is. Prayer is the power which links us with what's really going on at this moment, and I don't care for any other prayer. If Mr. {Antonissen} had prayed, instead of saying, "I'm in 19 minutes in Clairmont -- from Clairmont and Hanover," he would have said, "I wanted to be in -- want to be in Hanover, but obviously this is not the will of God. And so I have to forego the convenience of being in 19 minutes in Hanover." But for this he would have had to be still for a minute and would have not been rushed and would -- he would have said, you see, "I'm not in a hurry." And then he would have timed his time right. It's very strange, you see. The man who prays has endless time, so that he can gauge the purposive sections of his life, without rushing. It's a contradiction in terms. You think that because you rush, you are always on time. The man who rushes, gentlemen, will always lose the important makeup in his time process, because the big decisions, you see, are all beclouded by your rushing into small business. Can you see this? As you know, most neurotic cases come from this rushing lower level and missing out on the higher level. And as long as you do not see these five levels as really higher, you will not understand the movement of the heart out of these lower levels, which is called the religious process in any man: the power to find his surrender to a will that isn't his own.

Have I simplified things to such an extent that you can see that I'm not talking

of something outside your own experience? I don't know if I can. Somebody who has denied that he can pray, because he first must have to solve the great question of knowing whether there is a God or not, is very hard to touch again. Most of you are deaf -- have become deaf to real life. You don't know that very much depends on your, for example, seeing through that America's dependent on France. And that therefore, at this moment, your political contribution to -- of these world wars is that you feel suddenly that the whole superstition that French and Americans have more to do than any other nation has with the Americans must go. It's over with 1789. The Americans have believed the French, you see, that their view of Europe is the only reasonable view of Europe, and that's still in our state department. And you can't afford it now. You have to wake up, for example, to this fact, that France has nothing more to do with the United States than any other part of the globe. The sooner you learn this, gentlemen, the more justice you will do to the other nations of the globe. And -- America has not been just -- has not been just to the other nations, whenever France was concerned.

Look at Indochina. It wasn't our business to support the horrid government of France in Indochina. And yet Mr. {Truman} nearly went to war for it. What do we have to do with the misgovernment of France in the -- in Indochina? Just France. If any other nation had done it, the poor Dutch -- we threw them out of the Malayan Archipelago. There is civil war to this day, because Mr. Roosevelt said, probably he leaned over backward, being of Dutch descent -- he didn't want to do anything in favor of the Dutch. So he threw them out after the war. As you know the greatest hardship has -- was -- is still very doubtful whether they should have ever left. But it was done by us. We prevented the Dutch to land troops there. We forced them out. And now there is chaos. And Communism, by the way, too, and everything. And we have destroyed this -- these beautiful islands of Bali, of which we talk so much about their primitive dances and so. The Dutch were there 300 years, as long as we are in this country. And after all, we would have to go out of America, because they were red Indians here, were there not? And they have saved the natives, and have built them up and have married them. And we have done nothing but -- killing them. Then we tell the Dutch to get out of there, which Mr. Roosevelt did. Colonialism. But where there's real colonialism, in Indochina: oh, that's France. France is so beautiful, I mean the -- . As I told you the whores of Montmartre just do it all.

It's the simplest principle, gentlemen, of any spy or army general, to have some beautiful girls. and then you get all the secrets from the enemy, through these girls. And that's how the French have acted towards the Americans.

Really, this Indochina business should show you how much depends on such decisions, such prayers, for a big nation. This is not a { } issue. This cannot be

solved by self-interest. Cannot be solved by geopolitics. It cannot be solved by economists. Don't believe it for a minute, gentlemen. It's { } slavery to your own applications to the fourth sphere, to your -- you see, old affections, which has prevented America to say, from the very first day, "Hands off Indochina. Well, if this is Communist China or not it -- we are of no concern to us. The abuse of government has been there so strong with the French, it's purely a colony and exploited, and that's not for Americans to defend." Wouldn't you say that's true?

Only to show you, gentlemen, that prayer is not something in church. And it is not something in the bosom of your family. Prayer is a public act. And this, of course, is adverse with you. You believe that prayer is private. There is no such thing as private. If I pray for doing God's will, I must be ready to implement this in public. Or it isn't prayer. There is no -- I can begin inside myself, but it must come out. If it doesn't come out, it hasn't been prayer. It has just been some nice, you see, aside; as of the stage, where you make a witty remark aside, because you don't dare talk to to the person, you see in front, full-faced. Prayer is not aside. Prayer is the exposition -- your exposure to the power that takes you back into full life. And full life is neither public nor private. It's just life. It's open life. I have coined this formula, gentlemen. I have said that all catastrophes are neither public law nor private law. They are all under the open sky. When you get married, that's a public catastrophe -- open catastrophe -- for your parents, usually. And that's neither -- when you marry, that's public law. The sheriff has to register it. When you then buy -- rent an apartment, that's private. And then you retire into the privacy of your home. But obviously, gentlemen, the love story is -- is open event in the history of the creation. You, as a creature of God, and the other person meet under the open sky. I can't recommend you sufficiently the admission, gentlemen, that only work is done privately, because it's under your own purpose. But already affection is public, because you want to be able to register in a hotel as husband and wife, otherwise you can't sleep together.

[tape interruption]

... and say, marriage must be this way. It does not -- this is your marriage.

Now, we have made some progress, gentlemen. Religion is either cosmic, an attempt to get in touch with the cosmic order, or {it isn't} religion. Today you have instittuionalized religion. That's public. And you have private prayer. That's intentional. But the great religious issues of the time when Jesus was crucified on Golgotha, that was under the open sky. And if you read the Letter to the Hebrews, the author, who was probably a woman, Priscilla, the friend of Paul, wrote -- writes there very eloquently, and perhaps as a woman she's nearer to the cosmic order than anybody else -- she writes that the greatness of the acts of Jesus was that it was done as a catastrophe under the open sky. You may { }

I think in the 13th chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews, there they said, "Jesus is our high priest, because he was outside the city of man, outside the camp, and he was crucified in the open." So that Heaven and earth could meet -- that is, great forces could come out, which were not ruled, you see, by the Romans and the -- or the Greek philosophers, or the Jewish priests, and so they came to a clash of Greek and Roman and Jewish thought in the event, and they all were suddenly in a crucible, thrown together into this melting pot which we call Christianity, inside the Roman Empire.

We have three words, gentlemen. I prefer in my own writing, this word "open," but hits you. I think -- have lost the term of Heaven and earth very much out of your vocabulary. I want to remind you that I mean cosmic. I mean something like the survival of the fittest of Darwin. A new race is created. The Christians were a new race in the Roman Empire. You will have to create a new race of Americans, gentlemen, no longer tied to the French -- to the French ideals of 1789. Which is not so simple for you to produce. But you will have to. Then you will be a new race. There are many wonderful hymns in American hymnbooks which speak of this new race that has to be created. Gentlemen, a new race isn't created by private action, and a new race cannot be created by public law. You can understand this. A race is something of such dimensions, you see, that your purpose cannot -- is not enough. You can enter on this purpose of God, you see. But you and your wife, if you create a new race, that's God's mercy and not our own doing. And the same, if I come to this country and decide, for example, not to go back to Germany, or not to go to university -- but to teach college students, which is really quite some hardship -- which is the content of my coming to this country that I thought I could not agree with what the graduate schools of this country do. I can't. Because they have excluded there by establishments the completeness of men. There is no -- power to make people understand that in any lecture, there is also prayer. And without this, I couldn't teach you, and that's what perhaps you may resent, but you must at least realize that I try to do this.

It is not possible to have a classroom in the absence of God. That's impossible. You can talk about God in any theological seminary in this land, but you enter it, you know of one thing the professor of theology is convinced: that God is not in this classroom. You only talk of God, and about God. They could -- quite convinced that God has given them permission to treat God as an object. Isn't that true?

What time is it? Half-past. Well. We have made, I think -- if you admit the up and -- high and low, of our own situation, if you admit that the real cases of our being made over are of equal importance to our full stature, then there are many occasions in which we just breathe and live in suspended animation, then you

must understand that we must include our vastest potential into our daily thought. And this inter-penetration of the rare, high moments and the many low moments institutes now all the processes which religion begets. The begetting, gentlemen, of these individual processes would mean that in order to cover the fifth sphere, there are certain institutionalized, educational, training processes in order to penetrate into the work field, there are certain stylized prayers, there are certain stylized rituals, and gentlemen, the -- we call this whole process of instituting man into his completeness, of bringing him back into the full order of his real existence -- we call this the liturgy. Any religion lives by liturgy, that is, by forms in which man is all the time kept alert to the five challenges of his existence. The liturgy, the fright liturgy of any religion is meant to empower us, at any minute. Just as you want to have -- you could have electric light -- electricity, if you waited for a thunderstorm, you see. Then there was lightning. And then there was fire. Now you come into this room and turn on the {bulb}, and there is electric light.

Now, all religion tries to make the power of your whole being available to yourself at any time. That's a secret, and that's not meaningless, gentlemen. It is the power itself. The liturgy is the attempt to make the power available. As you can see, this is not -- the bulb isn't the electricity. But nobody will deny that was a great discovery when Mr. Edison showed that he didn't have to wait for lightning, but that he could have the {same} electricity, you see, at our command, you see.

If you do not see this relation, gentlemen, of public religion, private prayer and open world government or world-creation, however you call it, you will of course, always have to despise all organized religion, as you are inclined to say -- to think. But all organized religion is only an attempt to make sure that not one child of women is born without giving -- being given the opportunity of entering this field of force. It's a field of force inside which you can move if you are aware what's going on in all these five fields.

The liturgy then, gentlemen, must do five things, if only to show you how rational all liturgies must be. You can't be supersitious about mechan- -- the mechanic world. All liturgy must show you we are masters of fire, and water, and salt, and mechanisms, and metals and minerals. That is, all liturgy is directed against any superstition with regard to dead matter. For example, we must today fight the physicists who think that dead matter has to be exploded. We may tell them that we can also throw away the cyclotron. That would be one way of fighting superstition with regard to this mechanic sphere.

With regard to catastrophe, gentlemen, the same liturgy must say that any catastrophe can be a blessing in disguise. That any liability can be turned into an

asset. That in the acceptance of the defeat of the Civil War, we may grow. That the cross may lead to the resurrection. That is, gentlemen, with regard to the fifth sphere, any liturgy of any religion will try to bless catastrophe. To get a blessing out of a curse.

With regard to affection, gentlemen, it will say that one passion must not obstruct the rise of another passion, that no passion will be self-devouring. It must set limits to any earthly passion. The affections, you see, must not become tempests, which sweep us off our feet. Otherwise you go to pieces. And with Venus, this is obviously very important to know, you see. That no one passion must destroy you. If you are married and you fall in love with another wife, that must not lead to a divorce. Of course, if you have married the first time without love, it must lead to a divorce. That's a warning, for example. But liturgy is the -- the institution of marriage, therefore, the sacrament of marriage is put under a ritual in which you are, so to speak, trained -- for better, for worse. To see the next passion coming, you see, but in such a way that you are -- do not allow it to destroy what you have received, and what you have been allowed to live.

With regard to purpose, gentlemen, the -- in purpose, the important thing for a liturgy is to train you to give up your own planned work. And to shift to another. The Sabbath is the first -- no, perhaps not the Sabbath so much as the -- well, if you know, you wouldn't be surprised. The greatest religions -- liturgy taught in institutions in the United States for giving up purpose is -- are the elections. They are revival in the secular form, that's how they came about. The belief in elections is a very strange belief, by reasonable people, by the majority who never thought of it. People never believe that this { }. The majority was { } a very poor thing. And it is. Because the majority is always stupid. But we believe in it, because it has a religious connotation. It is one way of getting rid of your own purpose. Everything Mr. Nolan { } plan is now out of the window, so are the elections, you see. After the election, everything is different. And suddenly the whole sphere of three is shown in its brittleness. Yes, we have plans, but the voters, they think, "No. So the most beautiful plan for our next { }." Isn't that strange? And the { } very great lesson. Now, in all revivals, the { } in Judaism -- that, for example, is very special in this case -- have tried to emphasize that men's will must have an end, men's purposes. That even the greatest will must be given up. On the day -- who knows what happens on the day of atonement? All contracts are dissolved. All {vows} are open -- are over -- are out, you see. It's a very great idea, that every year a men die -- that every year men must die through their will. That's the messianic rule. That is, the will of God is always greater than your will.

Then with regard to the organic sphere, you have the Sabbath. The Sabbath is not the breaking of a man's will, but just its stoppage, so you can breathe again.

It's the greatest discovery, you see, that a man shall not keep his door open on Sunday, as they all do as they can in Hanover __ Mr. {Allen} and { }, all these rascals. The Sabbath is consecrated to remind people that we always get out of our organic, you see, rhythm. And that we have to slow down. By ourselves, we would always do too much. Very strange. People are -- although they are -- I think they are lazy in the higher spheres of life, they are very busy bodies in the lower spheres of life. Very interesting.

So, gentlemen, you can see suddenly perhaps that the liturgy is very elaborate and very eloquent. A liturgy works itself into you by the calendar. Liturgy comes to men not by a system of thought, and not by books, and not by philosophies, but in the form of taking you through experience over the years. You are confirmed; you are baptized; you are married in a church; you are buried, by a -- usually by a religious ceremony. Now you can understand this, gentlemen. The liturgy is an attempt to make you participate in the full life of the human race when you are in great danger of being sunk into any one of these smaller grooves. Can you understand this? So, as you may have heard, occasionally -- this is a very great {providence? prominence?} about this word. There is a { } liturgical movement on foot today. And therefore the word "liturgy" exists again. Fifty years ago, they didn't even know what liturgy was. If you go -- ask a Baptist or a Congregationalist, he says, "What do you mean?" Well, it's the order of worship, that's all. But that's a lot. If you come to a church, even the -- most impoverished church -- {cericularly, as in certainly and particularly} an impoverished church, except Unitarians, they can't be redeemed -- but you will still find that beside this Unitarian lecture committee, there's always an invocation. Now I told you that the whole content of any service could be invocation and nothing else. Because invocation places men. And I resent it when there is no invocation. Modern man has become such a lecture-fan that he always contrives, so to speak, to get over the invocation. But gentlemen, before I can open my ears to a sermon or my mouth to a song, I have to make sure that I know who I am, and before whom I wish to stand at this moment. And this can only be done by the invocation. And the invocation is the original form of all religious worship. Perhaps you take this down, gentlemen. In the oldest religions, the whole worship consists simply in the invocation of the names of God. They are loosely seriatum, so to speak, appended ot one another, and in these names, man finds himself. And nothing more is needed. The greatness of original language is, gentlemen, the invention, the discovery, the creation of those words which to you are just dead dodos. Redeemer, Creator, Father. Gentlemen, to say this, that is as much as painting the -- Madonna by Raphael, in those days, you see. That was unheardof for these -- these poor people, you see, in their fear, in their yelling, in their animal nature to discover that they had the right to claim that in the universe, there was for them the place as the right heirs of the creator. Gentlemen, anybody who says "Father" says that he, the son, has the right to co-create the world,

because the sons inherit the patrimony of their father. And it means then that a man then claims the right to add, to complete creation, to continue the farm of which his father had him born. The -- this is our farm and he is the farmer.

So don't despise these things. You may say, "No, God isn't my father. I have never prayed," gentlemen. But then ask yourself about the miserable position that you hold in the universe.

It is complete insanity for you then to go on living, because you have no right to be on this earth. I would -- don't see who can give you any right to exist. I mean, you can say, "The Constittuion of the United States gurantees me this." When you go to Honduras, and you go just outside the United States -- why should you have any right to exist? May I ask you why any man outside the United States should respect the modern American, who only does wrong with the other people, sends Hollywood movies to these people, And reduces their framework of life to this nothingness of divorce, and benzedrine, and coffee, and what else do we drink? I mean, marijuana. There's no evil that doesn't come from our big cities, now -- not interested in the rest of the world. What is your right that you aren't murdered on the shores of Ireland? You can't explain this, gentlemen. You all think that wherever you go, you have a right to be. That is not -- cannot be just the armed power of the United States that protects you. No, you are shipwrecked, and you believe that this man in -- on the Norway shore will go at great lengths, risk his own life to bring you out on your boat. Well, you just accept it as a fact, don't you? Can you ever explain this? Perfectly inexplicable. And to tell you the truth, it is very stupid.

All religious acts are stupid in the eyes of the men of the world. And you better know this. They ask you this, fortunately. Only the stupid shall inherit the -- the Kingdom of Heaven. If you are not stupid, you see, you will consider your own advantage. And then you can't save another person's life. It makes no sense.

So, gentlemen, this is why a religon can never be a philosophy. All philosophy tries to be clever. And the whole religious lesson is that the last thing that is important is to be clever. You can be clever within your purpose. But the whole problem of religion is: is your purpose good enough? To rescue another man's life, gentlemen, is not clever. It has nothing to do with this whole level of clever and stupidity. And it is easier for a stupid man to do right than for a clever man. Because a clever man has so many reasons not to do right.

Well, I have to stop here. Thank you.

Would you kindly look up in my pamphlet on the calendar, Time Bettering Days. Page 13, where I dictated to you a -- in a correction so it's easily to be

found. Or I put it in myself, I don't know. And we will have to add next time this problem of how this power of prayer, which we have now recognized to be the process -- the religious process itself -- that is the religious process -- how it divides the times of before and after. Before prayer, I'm incomplete. I have my own purpose. I'm eager to do, you see, what I think right, after the liturgical process has reinstated me, after I have come around to the fullness of life, in all five dimensions, I must be aware of before and after, and we'll analyze this. On the bottom of Page 13, you find already the {hint}, and I would like you to go over this carefully, 13 and 14. And for the exam, I thought, to make things easy, I would like you to write on one of the chapters of The Christian Future. That is, I think in both partners' interest -- mine and yours. I don't have to inquire into your evaluation of what I say. This -- I want to avoid this. You can understand why. And I want to avoid -- to be -- that you are too personal. But read this book so that I can ask questions from any one chapter in the book. And I can't allow you to bring the book to the class -- to the exam. That's, I think -- I would overstep my privileges. But in this sense, I think we get something objective between the course and the exam, you see, and it will -- I don't care to tell you this in advance, I mean. So just -- I just think out some questions -- up some questions out of the book.

Thank you.