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

(Philosophy 9, January 20th, 1954.)

...meaning of religion. It isn't very simple. Who went to Henry IV? May I ask for a friendly explanation why not everybody has gone? Isn't that a unique opportunity to see a Shakespeare play? I cannot understand that you don't want to.

(Seen it already.)

Wie?

(Seen it. Or studied it { }).

You have all seen it? No.

(No, no. Not all of us.)

But how can anybody stay out when they have this rare chance of seeing a Shakespeare play? Would you -- there was practically no student when I went. It -- was just for the townspeople, it seems. Wie?

(Sold out.)

What?

(It was -- had been sold out.)

-- Students? Oh, not to students. High school boys were there in great numbers, because they still believe. But no students.

({ }.)

Well, I mean it. Very few students. Certainly out of the 2,800 students, there can only be perhaps have been -- gone 600, which is to me quite unnatural. Is there any explanation? I mean, are you so blas‚ that you only can go to the movies? I am interested, because I certainly would travel far -- from far away. I mean, in Europe, too, people to see a Shakespeare play. It's -- for me -- utterly ununderstandable that not every one of you has tried to see it. Any explanation?

(I don't mean to deride The Players or anything, but I'd -- would rather

pass up the opportunity of seeing it done by a group of amateurs in lieu of some -- some { } by a { }.)

Now wait a minute. William Shakespeare has written 37 plays. If you can see during your lifetime in this barbarous country eight plays, it is very much, because most of them are never given. Therefore to tell me that you have to -- to berate the quality of the -- of the performance is ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. That's absolutely no criterion. You -- what do you understand of -- performing, anyway? You have no map -- standard. Have you seen anybody who is a great actor play in your life? You just see these Hollywood ladies. Is this acting? That's just silly, I mean. That's lipstick. I mean, what you call "acting" is not acting.

(Laurence Olivier isn't an actor, Sir?)

What?

(Laurence Olivier isn't an actor?)

Well, but he played Hamlet. Didn't he -- didn't I -- isn't that he? But certainly he spoiled Hamlet totally. {It's terrible.} It's terrible. It has nothing to do with Shakespeare.

No, no. I'm quite serious. I ha- -- can't understand you, because obviously you -- when you are two years away from college, you will weep that you didn't go. You are like the boy who -- who wrote me a long letter last -- last June and asked me what books he should read. I said, "Well, if you didn't learn this -- where you were in college in the four years, I certainly -- I can't tell you after graduation." But that's how you live. I mean, I don't understand.

I -- I haven't -- you haven't offered any explanation, because obviously, Sir, the question that this is not a good performance, which you -- could -- would mean that you have any judgment in the matter. Now, how should you?. There is no repertory theater in the whole country. The players of the -- various colleges are the only people who do this kind of service to all of us, you see. There we can see the good plays. On Broadway, you can only see the bad plays. I mean, that's not -- Broadway is not -- is not theater. I mean, that's commercial. This isn't.

I -- please, I really -- I would like to know what else you had to do during this week. If you all would go and try to go, we would certainly get a better theater very soon. We would get two players' groups, and we would get a better -- a better audience, I mean, a larger room, and something could be done. So now you wait for the Ernest Martin Hopkins Center before you can go and look at the

thing. I don't understand. It is you -- you who ruin this college, because if you do not support the best thing this whole college does, The Players, then I don't know what you want to see.

And I assure you, I mean, it's very difficult to see -- find any place where today a Shakespeare play is given. So it's a -- you cannot say that you wait before -- because you will see it elsewhere. You are not sure that any -- I mean, out of this people, 10 of you may be able to see Henry IV in the future. But this is very doubtful. You have to go to the Old Vic in -- in London. And they don't play Henry IV every season. It's the only repertory theater in -- in {Anglo-spechsen}. Of course, if you want to go to Germany, you can see a Shakespeare play every evening. Or in Russia now. That's where they play Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw, in Moscow. I mean it. They do. Shakespeare is sold in Moscow in much larger sales than in America. The editions of Shakespeare and all English writers in -- in Moscow excels by far the American book market. Dickens, and -- what -- Mark Twain, everything. And you call this Communism.

(There were 600 names signed up, who weren't able to get tickets.)

What?

(There were 600 men who had signed up lists to get tickets, if there were any available.)

Who tried to go and couldn't go in this hall? Well, I take my hat off to you, gentlemen. You suffer.

Well, that's some explanation. But also only concerns four. I mean, in this room.

What I am -- was driving at, I asked this --

(Why do you think Shakespeare is more popular in Russia than --)

At this moment.

(But you can -- can you explain why. Because it's basically a --)

Oh yes, because the death is encompassed into life. It brings us the whole topic. You see, Henry IV, you have seen Falstaff and -- and Prince Hal -- and -- and Henry. And the -- the war scene. And there is a famous speech of Falstaff on valor. And last time, I tried to bring to your attention this fact that -- the full life, the complete life only begins when this strange fact that we are destined to die is

included into life. Most of you, I said, live in this crippled way, that you have some background; you have some outer world to which you adapt yourself, as you call it, or adjust yourself; and you have some inner schizophrenia which you call your "mind," your inner life. And there you are torn, and split, and nervous, and neurotic, and what-not. And here you are clever and jump on the bandwagon, and -- and join, and -- and fight, and -- and so on. And here this is your mother complex. Or in a good way it's your tradition, that what you have inherited. The -- the strange situation of the human being as being able to have values acquired in history transmitted to him. What in nature cannot be done we can do, we can -- we can inherit acquired qualities.

That's why the naturalists are so wild. You know, the Russians therefore hold that we can acquire -- inherit acquired qualities, because they are revolutionaries and still believe in the spirit. It's a very quick thing, and in America, where we should believe in the inheritance of acquired qualities, you see, the -- you don't believe it. Any immigrant who is one foot longer in his leg -- leggery -- in his legs than his Sardinian father proves that there can be transmission of inherited values, because his son has again the long leg. But you don't believe it. You know it's taboo here with the biologists to speak of the inheritance of acquired qualities, whereas if there is no such thing as inheritance of acquired qualities, there can be no human history.

This point here, that a man can give meaning to his life, only if he encompasses -- his own death is today pooh-poohed. And therefore Shakespeare is not popular, because in those days of Elizabethan England, dying was a part of living, or life even was a part of dying. This sounds very abstract, and I have of course to convey to you a more concrete meaning today. But in -- in Falstaff and Prince Henry, you see the two types. For Falstaff death is something not to be lived, not to be experienced, not -- you see, to be postponed. So death remains outside his consciousness. Since we all must die, gentlemen, obviously death is as much demanding to be included in our consciousness as all facts of life. If -- if we want to live rightly, our consciousness obviously must cover the whole ground of existence.

Now one-half of this truth is that we were born in order to die. That is, that the measure of our life is just as much in its limitations as in its actual being. I mean, I come into the world with the life expectation of 70 to 90 years. Therefore, it is just as important on -- for me on the first day of my life to be reminded of my having to leave this world, as my being reminded that I have to enter it. Entering and leaving are two acts of living.

The way in which you people have encompassed death very na‹vely into your life is your homelessness. No American has a home except the whole of the

United States, where in 1795, a Frenchman came to this country and he wrote up our mores, and he said, "In New York, every family moves on May 1st of every year, whether they need it or not. They move."

In Oreg- -- Portland, Oregon, I have a friend who is there in the real estate business. He says, after -- he goes to every client after three years and says, "It's time that you move, because otherwise people will think that you are not a success." So whether he likes his habitation or not, he has to move to a different suburb. Otherwise they -- people think that he's sunk.

So gentlemen, death -- what I mean by death is the sacrifice of our environment. Our environment is -- first our own body. That's the first environment. Our clothes are the second. Our lodgings are the third. Our hometown is the fourth. Our country is the fifth. And the earth is the sixth. That is, we are in these boxes of environmental steadiness. And all our environment is less steady than you and I are ourselves. You can -- like a cat have nine lives. Yet it is the same cat that has the nine lives, but who -- are -- its -- skins -- sheds its skin so often. And so death, gentlemen, is a per- -- as permanent as life. And you can only understand the problem of including death in life if you see that in this country, which is such a happy-go-lucky country, one thing that distinguishes the American from the European to his great advantage is the ease with which he sheds his local skin. That is part, you see, the nibbling-off of your own eggshell, this willingness to bury something that is not important, that you can live without.

Death is this power to dismiss part of our life in due time, you see, in order to have more life. God has created death so that we might have more life. Without death, there is no life, because death is a sacrifice of any given form. That is death. And you can't conquer this whole dimension of death as long as you think it is something either unpleasant, or it is something to be forgotten about, or to be left to the undertaker, or to the life insurance company. Death is not just the -- the last breath. But death is as immediate when we enter life, as life itself, because it means the timely dismissal of a stable form. That we survive the death of this parti- -- part of our {existence} in order to enter a new life, to rise again.

If you then can see that man begins to die as soon as he begins to live, you will see that your own biography, gentlemen, consists of these two opposite directions. From death to the very first day of life, there stretches out the problem of dismissing a transient form. And from birth to death, there -- stretches the challenge to be molded into your definite, into your final form. You can say of Lincoln, when Stanton said of him, "Now he belongs to the ages," that he had reached finality, that he had reached his final form with the help of Edwin Booth. He couldn't have done it alone. It took some murder to give him the

immortality. Yes, the sacrifice, the martyr, you see, is not self-made. Daniel Webster would have liked to be as immortal as Lincoln, but no martyrdom. Just dinners. So he's just a hero in -- at Dartmouth College and nowhere else.

So death is not self-induced. You cannot make your death. But you are exposed to it. It's not my merit that I -- was able to begin a new life here in this country after leaving Germany. Without Hitler, I wouldn't have had the challenge -- the provocation to make a new -- new beginning.

In this sense, gentlemen, death is also -- please mark this well, that part of life's program which is not our will. Whenever we cannot get what we want, that's just as real as when we get what we want. And life is composed of the fulfillment of our -- the will of our life, our willing to live, combined with God's will not to give us what we will, which is death. Death is everything which is not given to our will's fulfillment. And the weave -- woof and warp of life compos- -- consists of the Tep- -- the tapestry that is woven out of wish fulfillment, and wish denial. And obviously, no life is interesting that only consists in getting what we want. You call this happiness, gentlemen, when people get what we want. And these people are the most miserable people there are. They all blow out their brains at 40 or 45. A man who is totally successful has nothing to live in his second half. Because life -- our life is -- lasts for two generations -- through two generations, twice 30 years, because it exists of this interaction between that which in any one state of mind, we want -- we plan. And the answer, the response given to us by our environment, by the world outside in denying us part of this program, and thereby weaving the real pattern of our lives.

Now gentlemen, and -- if a man only wants to get what he wants, he obviously cannot really have any life, full life, because nothing enters his life that isn't in there from his appetites and instincts from a baby. If you only live -- say, "I want ice cream and two cars in the garage," you may give -- can get this. But it's very uninteresting, because your whole life is already stabilized from your first will on. And that is then just the unfolding of your own first little bit of will. I hope you -- not one of you wants to live this way. I hope that you all wait for the clue of life which tells you what you should want. You all wait till -- for what you should want. I hope. Because that is living. That is the power to include denial of your will to live, as much as affirmation. That's the only way in which you can learn. Learning means to be able to admit other goals, goals not yet to be formulated by yourself.

As you know, in this country there is today a tremendous confusion between aims of my will, purpose, and goal, and destiny. If we put these four words here, one under the other, they may at first seem to be more or less the same. But gentlemen, I can fulfill my destiny by not willing anything. I can me --

allow myself to be led from day to day. "Lead, kindly light." How -- does the -- the chant go? By Newman? No? "Lead --." Don't you know it? It's the most famous hymn in the -- in the hymnbook. It's in the Catholic as well as in the Protestant hymnbooks. It's one of the very few hymns that are in both. Don't you know it? John Newman. "Lead, kindly light, amidst the -- encircling gloom"? Of course, you have sung it, but it only shows you that you sing it in church in your sleep.

Don't you know this? "Lead kindly light, amidst the encircling gloom?" Wie? "Lead you me on"? Lead thou me on"? No? Well, I didn't have to learn it as a child, so I don't have to know it. But you should.

Gentlemen, aim is something I can aim at. That is, it can be seen. Now any aim is below your dignity. Because you cannot see yourself, therefore you cannot possible see what you're meant to do. Anything you can see, if you make it the aim of your life, would be a golden calf, because visible things are below your own vitality. You are more than any living thing you can aim at. You can shoot at something, you see. But this something -- since you can shoot at it, is a -- in your -- within your power of also being killed, of also being executed, explo- -- that's below life. Your life must be more precious. You cannot take your life yourself if you think so. If you have the wrong philosophy that aiming is living, you will commit suicide, because you will just as much aim at yourself as you will aim at somebody else. These people in the papers who take their wife's life and then their own always stagger me by the cheapness of which they con- -- confuse taking aim, so to speak, you see, and being master of their own destiny.

Now aim is, gentlemen, within our own sight. Purpose is, I would think, something within our own inner sight. A purpose is nothing, perhaps, not a -- not a target to be seen in the outer world. It's not a house I want s- -- to buy, or a horse I must get -- put in my stable, but it ma- - or a car, but we would think that a purpose is to become president, for example. That would be your purpose in life.

Now the goal is something to be seen outside of you by others. You may not know of your goal, obviously, you see. That begins to be objective, that transcends your own self-consciousness. You need not be conscious of your goal in life. Many people who have a goal are unconsciously, subconsciously drawn to it, you see. And later on, they can say, "That has been his goal all his life," but he may never have confessed it to himself. You can't do this with a purpose. Purpose and aim are always in your consciousness. Goal and destiny not. But a goal would be probably within your constitution. "It was his goal to become president," you can say of Eisenhower, but you cannot say that it was his purpose to become president. You see the difference? Obviously before he had been made

commander-in-chief, it couldn't have been his purpose. It wasn't as we all know. But we can after -- afterwards say he was a man of destiny, you see, that among all the generals, he was, you see, to be this.

Now destiny, gentlemen, is the affirmation of the meaningful goal. It can be a man's goal by -- by his depth psychology, so to speak, to become something, but it may be fatal for the country. Or it may be fatal for his reputation. He may -- it may be quite abortive just the same, although it has been his goal, you see. A man may achieve a position in life, but we may say, "Unfortunately," you see, "He should have never -- we should have been spared this."

In destiny, you have the harmony between the cosmic order and the man's place in the order. Destiny exists, gentlemen, without aim, without purpose, and even without goal, because in destiny, as you may -- may -- may -- find it very often, a man is used who is the most -- greatest misfit seemingly, the man who in his own constitution has not -- neither the depth psychology, nor -- nor the subconscious nor the conscious in himself to do it. But he's just taken by the forelock, and -- like Mr. Malenkov, you have the feeling that's not destiny, as perhaps it would have been with Kirov. But it is -- just destiny. But it isn't -- wasn't his goal, his purpose, or aim. He could never think that he should be the one man surviving Stalin. And as you know, there were two others, Zhdanov and Kirov, he -- who were the crown princes, the Princes of Wales in the picture. So he is just, you see, it's destiny only. No will involved, no purpose involved, no aim involved.

You do not distinguish these things, because you actually try to reduce this marvelous, complicated, cosmic order to these atoms of will which you and I constitute. Now if you would cons- -- really believe that the 160 million Americans at this moment are organized by everybody's will, the greatest anarchy must ensue, you see. That's all nonsense. You are here by divine providence, not by your own will. You may -- but you -- most of you believe it, the other way around.

Well, it is silly. By the masses of people who are at peace -- the miracle is -- is so great that we all get our place from the working of a greater order in which we receive our place. Most people are quite reasonable about this. That is, in -- in sane moments, they act as though they knew that -- a place is coming to them, you see. And they do not overrate their own purpose in life, and their own willpower. But -- when it comes to philosophizing, and when it comes to theorizing about your life, you suddenly behave very different. Then you really construe the universe out of man's individual purposes, and wills, and aims.

But I can only tell you, gentlemen, that the less you will, the less you aim,

and the less purpose you have, the easier it is for you to find your place in life. You have to ask this great favor that "not thy will be done" -- "not my will be done," but "thy will," you see, which is the content of every rational prayer since Adam and Eve. Because once our will is done, great war and strife is always the consequence.

So don't pray -- you see, the Sicilian bandit, who prays to God that his larceny or his robbery may succeed certainly abuses God's will, you see, and tries to turn it for -- to his own purposes. Don't pray this way. You couldn't, I mean, in seriousness, after having gone to college. You all know that this is not a prayer. It's a curse. It's a blasphemy, to pray that God may give you what you wish. The only prayer that is allowed human beings is the prayer, "Teach me your will. Teach me to know what thou will me to do." All other prayers of wish fulfillment, gentlemen, are not prayers. I mean, they -- call them pagan, because they are this side of reality. They are inured into your own life. And they do not include the great secret that real life must include the denial of my own will, because otherwise I cannot enter the fabric of the universe. I can only enter the cosmic, complete maze of events if I speak the "Open, Sesame." And the "Open, Sesame" of man into living is "not my will be done," because otherwise, you see, you are trying to enlighten the universe with your own will.

And all -- you can be sure, gentlemen, that this is most misleading. The universe is not interested in your will. But it is interested in fulfilling its -- its own destiny. And can on- -- you can only ask, "What should I do to lead things to their destination?"

Take -- pardon, no; one moment -- take the forests of this country. We have to lead them to their destination. All things -- all creatures here below, are given man to lead them to their destination. Wheat -- a new production of wheat is all right. But if you would just dry, squeeze out the -- the soil in one harvest, or in two, and then march on, you obviously would have -- not have led the soil to its destination, you see. You would have subjected it to your -- will. And the result would be that your children will curse you, because you have made the -- your will the law of the country.

All conservation starts from this insight, that in order to use things, we have to study their destination. And we'll injure them if we don't. The difference between marriage and raping the girl. The girl is destined to become one husband's wife and to bear -- bear children. If you rape her, you break by your own will the destiny of this other human being. And you are cursed.

Wherever you look, gentlemen, man is asked to lead the creation to its destiny. And therefore the first move he must wake is to brush aside his own

accidental will. His greed, his envy, his -- his avarice, his lust, whatever it is, because this may blind him to the destiny of the thing which is -- lying at -- in front of him, to which he should lie -- lend his helping hand to make it work. The inventor is a man to -- understands which secret power or possi- -- potentiality is in this -- in this energy in, you see, and makes it work. And when we say, "It works, " we thereby say that we have found the destiny -- at least the limited destination of this energy which we have unleashed by a pulley, or by a -- some mechanical gadget. In gadgeteering, we are much more in the realm of destiny than we are in making our pile. The American male is usually a combination of a religious person as an inventor, and of an irreligious person as a speculator.

And most of us, we all, I -- may say, live in a combination of will and nonwill, you see, of destiny and will. The gadgeteer, the mechanic-inventor, although he may also try to make money, is saved by serving the material world in -- through -- in his invention. There he is immersed in the universe and its secrets, and its possibilities. And he reveals some amount of destiny, of goal, in the universe, regardless of his own will. In as far as he wants to have patent rights, and wants to make a million out of it, he shows his own part in the game.

And I would suggest, gentlemen, that we all are combinations of living and dying. Dying to our own will, and fulfilling our own will. No man is human, gentlemen, whose will cannot be as much -- be abandoned as fulfilled, by -- with his own confirmation. A ma- -- a human being -- it's a very simple definition -- a human being is that being which can understand that to have one's -- my will, and program, and purpose denied is better than to have it fulfilled. If you cannot understand this, you haven't yet become human. You are then just will, male, female. That is, as sexual beings, or as peo- -- people of the moment, the two things, sex and age, in themselves make your own will sovereign.

You -- only have to think in -- of the family to know that life there begins to be human when another person's will, you see, and your will are reconciled, because it no longer matters what you want, or what the other person wants, because you will do together what has to be done, and what comes to you. That is, you will be assigned a role in a drama, and you will no longer ask, "What did I want?" When your father falls sick, you -- you just say, "Shall I go and see the doctor and get him?" or "Shall I now -- go to the office and -- and write -- send off the letter which he had to mail this morning?" That is, you wait for the role of -- in the drama, and anybody who has a role to play in such a unit is very happy, because he has no longer to ask for his own will. He is free from this necessity of thinking out what he wants to do.

As you know, all modern education is -- ruins the children by overtaxing their will. The child at 2 is already asked to order the menu. Do you eat carrots?

Well, the child cannot know. But you try to make him will before he even wills. Ooh.

There is this -- this, you see, I have to say -- tell you these very primitive things. Every Japanese, every Chinese, every Hindu, every African Negro knows all these things. The barbarism of modern Western man is that it has now boiled down to self-will as the basis of life, which is of course -- poor physical science. This is -- comes from the time of -- before the revolution of physics, where the atom seemed to be the -- the last unit, and so man has also been made a will, as the -- the atom of the universe.

But that's all nonsense, gentlemen. You begin to breathe, you -- to respire, when you can inhale and exhale. That is, ins- -- all spirit, all life in you consists of two movements, one trying to impart to the universe your spirit, and one power to inhale the spirit of the universe. And to -- that we call "respiration." Now the word "expire" means dying. And the word "inspire" very well could mean to come to life. Obviously, gentlemen, the real process of living is to respire. Respiration means to be able to impart your will to the universe and to receive the will of the universe into you. And in any one moment in which you deeply breathe, fully breathe, which as you know, very few people do, because they only breathe the -- up here, instead of breathing with -- down to their loins, when you fully breathe, you as much receive the will of the universe as you impart your will in your exhalant.

You actually think of inspiration as a self-willed process, as though it meant your will. But what you call "genius," gentlemen, what you -- we call "inspiration," you only limit it to the -- to the artist, but it belongs anywhere. Inspiration is always the good will of the universe to communicate to your -- you your proper destiny inside this universe. Then you are inspired. "Inspiration" means never to do what I will. "Inspiration" always means the power to dismiss my hitherto will as too short, too narrow, too anxious. Inspiration breaks anxiety. And as you know, the -- modern man boasts of being un- -- having anxieties. Mr. Auden wrote this famous book. What -- how is it called?

(The Age of Anxiety.)

Wie?

(The Age of Anxiety.)

Yes. Yes. Mr. Tillich, when he was here, he -- also only sells us the idea that we are more anx- -- anxious. Gentlemen, people are always -- have anxiety, but they always knew that to be an- -- an- -- to have anxieties means not to be

able to breathe fully. It's a physical thing, if you are anxious, your throat gets very tight. And you cannot breathe. It's like a pang on your -- on your heart. And at night, you have nightmares.

So anxiety is a lack of inspiration and respiration. And it is this great anxiety that my will will not come true. -- Now since everybody in these modern schools is told that his will is -- is -- he must carry out his will. He must have a program. What courses do you wish to take, you see? Electives, and so on. Since you all are self-determined, autonomous, and since nobody can be self-willed and autonomous, if he wants to keep his -- his mind -- you all go crazy with anxiety. I don't blame you. But anxiety is the disconnection with the breath of the universe, the spirit of the universe. That's anguish. It's a very real thing. You are cut off from this great universe, because people have persuaded you to believe that you must find your own salva- -- your salvation inside your own will program, inside your own purposes, inside your own ideas. Gentlemen, if you had to do this, you would be the most miserable of creatures. No man can live by his own will.

Now you bel- -- all -- believe it. You believe firmly that every girl should live by your will, because you persuade her to marry you. So no -- no rationalist, no will- -- hero, no will-boxer as you -- they all seem to me, these people, really means that everybody should follow his own will. You always think that there should be one person that should follow your will. The result is, of course, that you are governed by your women in the end, because anybody who is misconstrued about his own power of willing will become the slave of somebody else's will.

All the rationalists, gentlemen, are tyrannized by the -- women are -- who are good enough to allow them to go to bed with them, because the rationalist stands before a miracle. He wants to do his own will, so that somebody else is willing to do his will, is outside that which he construes as human. So it's miraculous. And therefore, since miracles are superior to our own understanding, he must kneel before it. And all these rationalists therefore shower all the gifts of their imagination on these women, and spoil them, and become their -- their -- their slaves. It's a very simple thing, you see.

What you cannot rationalize inside the orbit of your own understanding, you must worship. So the women become gods, divinities. And that is by and large the story of the American Free Mason, of the American male. He cannot understand the fact that nobody is happy by doing his own will, just his own will, you see. He has construed a universe of businessmen in which everybody can fillow -- follow out his own program, and then he cannot live by it, so he ge- -- goes and marries the secretary, because -- and learns to do her will.

It's a very funny world. I think it is wiser if you and I, because we ha- -- are family people, include into your picture of humanity what you know about your sister and your mother, and say, "This is part of the human being, that it is able to dismiss its own will, and to weave the pattern of one's biography together out of the two strands of my will, you see, and my non-will."

And here we enter the sphere of the religious sphere. Anybody who denies this double movement of inspiration and expiration, of dying and living, is unable to understand either Jesus, or Abraham, or Buddha, and -- or Lao-Tzu. The superstitious part of all the churches, all the religions, the idiots, consist of these 90 percent of the populace who have the idea that their prayers must be fulfilled. So they go to church and -- and ruin the real religion by saying that Jesus, or Buddha, or whoever it is, just an automat for the fulfilling of their own wishes. So they just use these people as a means for aggrandizement of their own little private will.

For all these people, gentlemen, religion has a purpose. Already the word "purpose" says to -- tells you very clearly that they all make religion something smaller than their own will. Because if religion has a purpose, then it is under my control. I do it, because I can thereby carry out a purpose. It's a means to an end.

Now that isn't a religion, gentlemen. It is the abuse of religion. And it exists, of course, wholesale at this moment in America. And it exists everywhere in the world. That is, the Falstaffs, gentlemen, always form the majority of the people. That is, the people who live by a mutilated self-consciousness, whose self-consciousness only includes the two-thirds -- Falstaff says he's a gentlemen, and he certainly isn't. Falstaff says that he is very clever, which he probably is, you see, and he says that he wants to survive all onslaughts of nature, so outside, you see, he keeps his own {will}. But he has no honor. He has no honor. And therefore, dying to his own will just doesn't exist in his imagination. That his destiny can -- may be very different from his purpose is beyond him.

Now gentlemen, you count in your -- -side yourself, and inside your own family, inside the nation all the people whose highest position is to confound purpose with destiny, and aim with goal, you see, and you know already that 90 percent of the people in their everyday life must degrade religion. They must.

Now there is one comfort, gentlemen. Everything is okay in a world of -- in the world of ours as long as the 90 percent of the ordinary folks and as long as I, 90 days out of hundred days, admit that I'm better during the 10 days in which I obey to my destiny than the 90 days when I follow my own routines, and my own whims, and my own mood. As long as you admit that the man in you, who in one day can give up his own will, is the better man than the man who usually

-- here does every day what is on his program, the hierarchy of -- is in order -- the human hierarchy.

Gentlemen, the full man is rare. It is only at the rare moment, or what we call the "high points" of life that you and I have to undergo this excruciating experience that our will isn't good enough. That you flunk a course, or you are sever- -- or you are sent away from -- from college, well, that's utterly against your will. You aren't prepared to meet it. If you can meet such a situation, you see, this will be your making, because you suddenly will go beneath your own purposive program. And you have to dig out a deeper stream of life, and say, "Well, I must come up with a new purpose which is grounded in this experience, that this en- -- who -- I was defeated."

The power, gentlemen, to turn a liability into an asset is the human quality. Christ's defeat is His victory. Anybody who can to understand this begins to understand Christianity. Christ was a failure. And you cannot tell all the superstitious people often enough that He was a complete failure, absolute failure, and that He had the courage to -- show to people that the complete dismissal of His own will made Him triumphantly fulfilling His destiny. Whereas Mr. Rockefeller, who fulfilled his destiny is -- his will is still a curse in Mexico, as you know, when you go there to the Palace of Justice in Mexico City, I have been told, you still can see his caricature. Have you seen it? Isn't it true? Because he got his will, you see. And that's a curse. Nero got his will. He burned -- he burned Rome. And he burned the Christians. But the Christians are triumphant, and Nero is not.

If you understand that, you begin to wake up to the -- to the difference between purpose and destiny. And you begin to understand this very comforting thing: that to fulfill one's destiny, it only takes acceptance of the few moments of defeat. You may, for example, for seven years go from one school to another. If in due time you recognize that scholarship or erudition is not for you, and you become an honest plumber, this one acceptance, you see, will seem to be compressed into one moment. Yet by accepting it after seven years of disappointing marks in school, you would shed new light on the seven years before. They would all be just one great object lesson in making you see what you should decide on.

Now the very fact that it took seven years of making you see this, you see, will be forgotten in your own conscience, and you will think, "Well, now I make the right decision. I have the courage to say study is -- is not for me. And I won't," you see, "hang on around these academic places." You will be very blessed if you do this, but if I talk to you about life, you will say, "Well, at one moment, I had a bright idea. I had a great power. I had great courage. I had the spirit, the guts, you see, to throw off this, what all my environment had told me,

that you have to have a degree today even to be a barber. And I decided I would not have a degree. But better do a good -- good piece of work as a plumber."

If a man does this, gentlemen, you see that actually he transforms the liabilities of seven years of waste into a great asset, that he dies to his presumptuous program, to his own will, or his parents' will. Usually it's the parents' will that is visited on the children. That's why the Old Testament has to say that the -- that the misdeeds of the parents are visited on their children and chil- -- children. The liberals have cursed this -- this commandment, and have said that was very cruel. But gentlemen, you are here because your parents willed it so. Now, I hope it's all right, that their will wasn't cursed, that it is a blessing. But some of you probably should leave Dartmouth College right away, because you aren't made for college. You must know such unhappy creatures whose parents' ambitions send them to college. And that's original sin. That's the meaning of it, that the will of your parents -- the apish, monkeyish love of your parents -- makes you stay in places because of their will, and not of your destiny. Isn't that very simple? So how can you say anything against original sin when one-half of your life is made by the will of your parents, by their program? They must make mistakes. It can't be helped. But you have to get out of this. And you have to -- can only get out of it by admitting that it was a mistake.

What I -- had started with is, that the momentary subjection to this abandonment of your or your parents' will, or your environment's will, the programmatic fixation, you see, "This must be," "I must get a degree," or "I must get rich," or "I must be this or that," "I must live in New York," or however the prejudices go, these pre- -- pre-fic- -- you see, prefixed notions, dogmatic notions which everybody has. We are all dogmatic in this sense, that we all think certain things are necessary to our happiness. As soon as you dismiss them, you will feel that you are getting acquainted with your real destiny, that you dig out a much deeper vein of belief and faith than is superficially here, up in your mental processes, in your conscious conceptions of living. But on the other hand, you will also feel the disparity, the...

[tape interruption]

...one such freeing decision, to leave college, for example, or to enter the dra- -- accept the draft and not to become a minister from anxiety. These decisions, although they seem to take up only one moment, stamp your life with greater thoroughness and -- make it more important, this moment, than decades of living.

So gentlemen, all religion believes that the life is exalted by some great moments of decision, or crisis, or catastrophe, or conversion. Take all these

words. "Conversion" is the word you know best, in religion. The conversion of Paul in Damascus seems to be one moment. And compared to his persecution of the Christians for a number of years, it is very small. Yet it sheds new light on everything he has done before. It seems that he has only been itching to be converted, in looking backward, you see. He had to go the extremes. You know, he executed these poor Christians. And later he posed as a Christian oneself. How can you believe such a man? Well, only because one moment can be bigger, can be more destined to be lived than the elapse of the clock's time over years.

I mention this because nobody mentions it to you, gentlemen, that all human life, all your own grasp of your own life, that you become the captain of your own destiny, is unable as long as you have the superstition that every 60 minutes are just 60 minutes, that there is a parity, an equality of the natural time moments. That's -- the physicist may believe. Your and my life is different. We have heydays, high points from which all other parts of life are organized. Again, Falstaff doesn't understand that. Therefore, he is unable to grasp the whole aspect of the religious existence. It is a condition of religious existence, gentlemen, that one moment may decide over the whole of your life, or at least over long chapters of your life. Anybody who proposes to a woman knows that this is just it. That's why he -- she shouldn't propose to you, because then she deprives you of this one, great, creative act, that you declare one moment to be the decisive moment in your life. It belongs to a man, gentlemen, to make once such a decision. And all the women who marry you by proposing to you, as all their short stories now { }, deprive you of your great moment, of your creative power. It is up to you. Even if she is very suggestive, she must leave it to you. If she says it, say, "No."

Ja, ja, that's the testing. You must say no. Next day you may propose yourself. You will be miserable. You have then not established yourself in your domination over your own life. Gentlemen, these high points of decision subject the lifetime to your own decision, because at that very moment, you sit in judgment. You dismiss whole parts of your life as not good enough, as dying. You become the -- superior to the question of life and death. Religion, as I said before, gentlemen, consists in this power to have the tapestry of life woven out of my will and the cosmic will, the universal will. And by dismissing my own will, or when I am like Lincoln, the emancipator of the slaves, by imparting my will to the resistant, the leading spirit can also, you see, say that he is in tune with the universe. But then it isn't his private will anymore. Lincoln didn't emancipate the slaves just from his own private whim, but because he incorporated at this moment the order that had to be imparted to all the parts of the society living in this country.

So "inspiring," or "expiring," man puts in -- harmonizes life and death. Life

and death are the generalities; expiring and inspiring are the particulars. Or, one is the atom of life and death, you see, inspiring and expiring. Life and death are the universals. As long as you do not see that we die as often as we l- -- come to life, this whole talk of death and of religion will remain to you ridiculous, or abstract, or very foreign. You say, "I'll die early enough." You cannot do this, gentlemen, when you see that your salvation depends on your dismissing dead things every minute. Something in the environment, something in your routine, something in the ruts has to be killed, executed, dismissed, abandoned, voluntarily, you see, any minute. Therefore, we all die every minute partially. Cromwell -- the great British Cromwell, said, "Day -- die daily. Die daily." That's a very good formula: die daily.

And that's the meaning of prayer. That's the meaning of religious worship. When you go Sunday to the church, you try to form that body of people who can do God's will, and the -- the idea of the -- of a service is not that you listen to a sermon. It is not that you say some pious prayers. It is not that you sing in this monotonous shouting, as they mostly do. The problem of the service is something much more profound, and therefore we have no service, because people -- even the ministers no longer know that it is an attempt to form a company of people who try to receive a new will into their limbs.

That is, the things that you have willed all the week long you should leave behind when you open the door of the church. And you should try, through the help of others, because the -- the single individual is so obsessed by his own plans that he couldn't do it, because he is encouraged by others doing exactly the same, abdicating their own will, to receive that will by which peace in the community can be obtained. Without a common will received on Sundays into your limbs, your limbs must go on just rampant, working out your specialty.

If in the church, for example, the doctors, and the nurses, and the patients, and the pe- -- family of the patients cannot sit together and pray, the doctor will become a specialist who simply says, "I must operate. Give me any case. I'll operate on it." He has to be taken into -- back into the community and must learn to estimate how much operating and surgery is wholesome. Not everything has to be operated upon. But we have the idolatry today of the surgeon. Because he doesn't go to church. He just follows his own will. He has learned that operating is skillful. He's -- must show his skill. So you all go to the surgeon when it isn't necessary. Because he doesn't go to church anymore with you. It's all just an abstraction. We have just -- only the fiction of a church today. Because -- ask 90 out of hundred churchgoers. They'll say, "Oh, I want to listen to the sermon. He's so sentimental, you see. and so wonderful. He speaks of the lilies in the valley, and the lilies on the mountain." I don't know. "And the sunshine and the sunset." And that's a good minister. Well, to hell with him. He is already in hell. Because

the -- the minister and -- everything, the Mass in Catholic Church, and the whole service in the Protestant Church are all trying to do exactly the same: to form a body of people who can forget their own wills so perfectly that when they come out, they have received some common will into their limbs and are forced to go- -- make a little, little place at least to this other will, of which they had never thought while they were following their own obsession, their own speciality.

I think I go to Heaven only because I have exposed myself on Sundays to my -- to another will. Gentlemen, I -- my will is -- is crowded. I have so much to do in life. My ideas, my books, my themes -- my -- my purposes, that's very easy. And the difficulty is to stay all a long life still in touch with reality to that extent that not one of my things is -- is too important, that I can still submit -- subject it to the tantalizing task of having it -- seeing it rejected, because obviously what I think out and think up is not always the best; it is not always the most -- urgent, and the most important.

(Drawing this out just a little more broadly, if I say that I don't believe in God, then all these principles that I've gotten from the past three courses with you then don't have any meaning.)

Have I mentioned God at this moment? I didn't think so.

(No.)

So why shouldn't they have meaning? Didn't you understand them?

(Yes, but I was just -- was trying to find where the -- well, what the inspiration was behind this { }.)

Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. The -- we have learned to live in an era in which talking of God means very little. So I don't do it, if I can help it. I have no objection to do it. I still have this tradition. But I feel, between you and me, it is much more important that you should only understand the workings of any small group, and the subjection of your own will to a next, greater will, so to speak. That's perfectly enough, this approach, this approximation, you see, whether you -- you ever reach the -- the state of willingness to speaking of the universal God, I do not know. That's not my business in this class. I'm not going to convert you to a creed, you see. I don't try.

But I can show you in a -- in a simple, model case of your and my living here together, you see, that the -- it would be -- a man who is a cellular pathologist, and a cellular biologist doesn't have to speak of -- of the whole human body. He explains the cell. In the same sense, you see, I talk to you of any time-cell of

real life, and the rest I leave to -- to the theologians. That's not my business. Buddha, as you know, never believed in any god. He's an atheist. Lao-Tzu, too. There's no difference. You can say that Jesus is just as much an atheist as He is a theist. It's very doubtful whether you can classify Him with the superstitious people who have the -- some god in their waist pocket or in -- on their mantelpiece. You see. It's very doubtful.

I mean, they are all on the borderline. It makes no difference with these four men whether you -- they -- you speak of God or the non-God, you see. That's not the case. The verb -- the word doesn't do it. The great atheist Nietzsche clamored all his life for God, as you may know, or for the revival of God. Yet he always is rated as an atheist. Anybody who understands something of this life beyond life, of -- including death into life, gentlemen, is beyond this -- this -- these -- these quibbles.

So this -- these things you can realize every day in your own life. I -- I am at peace with the great religious tradition. I cannot see why this -- any difficulty. But I know since it is abused so much by the -- by the superstitious that some people I mean are only -- see only the outside of the abuse, you see, by the 90 percent -- can never understand why it came to pass. But obviously mostly the atheists are on the side of the founders of our faith, and the so-called believers are abusing it. And that's pretty bad. But that's how it is.

(Where does the universal will come from?)

Which universal role?

(Will. Universal will.)

Come from?

(I mean, how do { }?)

It is the wrong question. Yes. Well, you presuppose always what you cannot, that everything comes from. I don't believe this. This is na‹ve. This -- you see, you -- you ask a question which you can ask about a part, you ask of the whole. You cannot do this. You cannot. That's just a wrong question.

This idea of always hunt- -- chasing up origins, you see, is a very tiresome question. I had a teacher. He's a great historian of antiquity. He wrote a great history of all antiquity, Adolf Meyer. And he was -- one day he said -- in our seminar to us, "I'm fed up with these people always hunting for origins. The Egyptians got it from the Babylonians. The Babylonians got it from the Sumeri-

ans. And the Sumerians got it -- well, I want to know what it is, that it is, how it is. But I'm not interested -- somebody had it." This hunting for origins, Sir, is not -- this asking from is a very childish question.

(Well then, what is it?)

Well. You see, the decisions you have to make. And that's how very serious -- that's now our next point. Is it: What is it? Who is it? or How is it? Or is it all three? You see, in the -- your question is already your answer. This gentlemen's ans- -- question is "What?" And your question is "What?" And so you will never hear the answer, "He."

I'm open -- I do not ask what, how, who, but I learn from my life to come to know which way I must put the question. You already are prejudiced. Anybody who asks, "What is the universe?" can only get the answer, "This is the universe." And that's a thing. That's nothing living. That's nothing speaking. That's nothing thinking. That's nothing of design or destiny. That's just accident. But you -- don't know that by your question, you have given the answer. And you have made yourself the lord of life by this na‹ve syllabus of your childhood days that you thought, like a child, you see -- "What is God?" A baby will ask. You shouldn't ask this. As long as you ask, "What is God?" the answer is, "There is no God." Because God is not "what." -- Your question implies the answer.

You see thee -- this may not interest you, but I think I have to -- mention it. The decision whether we answer "who" or "what" is the decision over our religion. As long as you ask na‹vely "What?" your answer will always be some cosmology, some philosophy. -- You will always use something to explain some other thing. But you must know that you have given the answer by your question. Nine-tenths of the questions asked are silly questions. They are questions that cannot be answered, because they are just prejudiced by your own preconception how the answer must run. As long as you ask "from," I cannot help you, because you do not really ask the question of your existence, you see, which is here and now, and is not explained away by deducing it from some origin. That doesn't solve your question what you should do here. It makes no difference who's your father and your mother, you see. You are here. You must be a good man regardless of -- of all the excuses of your -- of your pedigree, or of your chemical -- chemistry. And the second thing is, as long as you ask "What?" you cannot hear "Who."

Please.

(Doesn't -- don't the religions today try to ex- -- give the answers to these questions?)

No. The -- you mist- -- confuse the theology and religion, you see. Religion is dead, killed by the theologians. The theologians, you see, give cogitations, I mean, ref- --. Well, we'll come this perhaps next time.

Let me today put before you the two people in which you can, better than in Jesus' life, see that they meant by death a daily act. Buddha and Lao-Tzu are the two people who have dismissed will. And they have dismissed two kinds of will. If you have here the social order, the society, and if you get here the world of nature, of resisting, let us call this the world of resistance, and let us call this the world -- the society of functioning, of functions -- then we will say that the same world is always both. It's half-functioning. The air lends itself to our -- use of oxygen, for our breath. In this sense, we live in a social symbiosis with nature, with the things around us. Functioning universe is social. Resisting universe is nature, because then we treat the universe as being one thing and another.

When we { }, however, of functionalism, we see everything within one. You can also call this the -- society's view of the universe in which all is wholism -- one big whole. As you know, that the philosophy of the last -- latter-day saints in South Africa, of General Smuts. He was a wholist. He says you can understand the functions of any part by knowing and understanding the whole. Wholism is a -- is a slogan in philosophy. That would be Lao-Tzu's problem. Lao-Tzu finds himself within the wall of the Chinese empire, within a tremendous whole of millions of people functioning around the imperial palace. And he tries to encompass death into this living machine, or this mechanic life. This mechanist life of examinations, and New Year's proclamations, and all the wonderful artificial life around in -- him -- the Chinese empire. All society -- America is very much like China at this moment, and we here are very Confucianist. Confucius is the god of America, and "keep smiling." This country is the nearest edition of China that exists today.

Lao-Tzu therefore, gentlemen, is a -- your most important person, your most important saint. He's much more important than Christ or Abraham at this moment in -- in -- for America as a point of salvation, because Lao-Tzu says, "All the nice lubrication, all the keep-smiling, all this insi- -- wheels within wheels is not the full life. It must go to pot. You lubricate, and you lubricate, there still -- be { }. You will and you will, and there still will be disaster. You must learn to unwill your function." And if you have read my paper, you know that he -- recommends to men to behave as the hub, the nave of the wheel around which the spokes turn. And the invisible point around -- around which all the active members of society must turn. There must always be somebody who -- who stays outside of this functionalism. He has a function of nonfunction.

And the function of nonfunction is then the everyday proclamation of

death as a valuable thing in life. That's why I've talked at such lengths today, gentlemen, of -- of the necessity for you. If you want to understand religion, you have today to un- -- not understand it from the last judgment, hell, Heaven, Adam and Eve, the great things, the Crucifixion, but you must approach the divine from the everyday moment of 24 hours' day living, and you must find there the point of the nave, of the hub of the wheel, where you dismiss function, when you are saying it is just as meaningful to be he who does not function. And the more people decline to be driven to this wheel-within-wheel life, the more peace and prosperity will ensue.

As you know, Lao-Tzu said that an emperor who wills will destroy his country. And the emperor who has the faith not to will, and allow just everybody go on and do with a minimum of government, he will see prosperity and peace. That's a very important gospel today, you see, in -- in a time of planning and of -- of government intervention and so on. Lao-Tzu says that God created -- as He created life and death, He also created nonfunctioning as much as functioning. To dismiss your function as not important is the whole life of Lao-Tzu.

The great outcome in China is the dancer. The dancer, the -- as Hamlet when he throws off his cape and joins the duel, he's usually played by -- as like a -- like a ballet-master, you see, like a dancer, with his spring- -- springlike and -- and svelte. The ease, the unaggravated, so to speak, un- -- not weighed down by worry, not weighed down by office, not weighed down by -- by duty, but newborn, like morning dew. The picture for Lao-Tzu's individual is perhaps not so much the cell, as the drop of dew. That is the ideal of the Tao people in China, you see, to -- to be a still, as noiseless, as indifferent as a drop of dew, distilled into this absolute elegancy of taking up as little space as possible, making as little noise as possible, as being satisfied of diminishing instead of increasing, making it a glory that you earn less -- that you are less known every day, and you become more anonymous, that you are more incognito. That less and less people, you see, depend on you.

It's very hard for you to understand as young people, I suppose, this ideal of -- of the Tao, this idea of your carrying more weight in the harmony of the universe, contributing more to the destiny of the human race by not willing, by not trying to fill an important place in life. But -- with your sense of humor, you are already -- have a sense of this, I mean. Anybody who says in the very moment where he is a VIP, "After all, I'm not a VIP," is already on the road to Taoism, you see, because he's -- tries to replace this Very Important Person business, you see, by adding the counterweight of "For Heaven's sake, I'm not a very important person."

So Sir, I'm in agreement with you that you can reach to these same ulti-

mates of which the Western world speaks, when it speaks of Judaism and Christianity, by dwelling on everyday -- everyday hours, you see. And -- Lao-Tzu certainly is an atheist. He doesn't -- hasn't anything to say about the gods, because he is concerned with enjoining into -- you to treat this very moment as ambiguous, that it is equally important at this moment to expire -- to exhale, than to inspire, you see, to be inspired, and not to know. To leave it ambiguous, leave it ambivalent. To remain ambivalent. Because -- there -- if there aren't enough ambivalent people in a country, all the people who will -- the Republicans, the Democrats, the New Dealers, and the Old Dealers, and so on, they will come to grips and they'll will kill each other. And the country only lives by the third party that's perfectly indifferent to this fight and says, "No, I don't care one way or the other."

It is not true, ge- -- that America is ever governed by a party -- two-party system, gentlemen. The country has always lived by the third party, by the people who didn't go to the elections, you see, who said, "Now, you aren't good enough so that I should be swayed by your party." -- You are so blind to reality that you do not see that any community -- if really everybody would take sides in an election, and no child would be omitted, would have civil war. If everybody had voted either Stevenson or Eisenhower, you see, we wouldn't be in this classroom at this moment. We would all be in the streets marching.

But the West only concentrates on will, on purpose, on end. So you only mention the people who are full of aim in this field, you see. But we actually live by the aimless people. It's in -- with regard to this issue of politics.

Now you can say that on any issue, gentlemen, in any living group, there are always three groups: one for, one against, and one indifferent. Lao-Tzu says the indifferent is the important one. In the Western world, we say, "No, the -- the two sides are the important, the reactionaries and the progressives." Well { } -- the reserve, the human reserve, Lao-Tzu shouts, is the important one, you see. The more people get engaged into the struggle, the less is the -- is the possibility of getting out of it, of coming back to -- of dismissing this issue.

(-- I was just going to ask you what -- you criticize the apathy of the American people, and their I-don't-care attitude, earlier in your lectures, I'm wondering if -- if you mean that their attitude is -- not only is apathetic to -- a personal will, but also to this universal will as well, and therein lies their -- their crime? Or -- because just now you said that the third party, people who don't care or are indifferent to the outcome run the country. But earlier you said that the -- the American attitude of "I don't care" was wrong. Would you explain that to me?)

Well, if I offer you ice cream. Wasn't this my story? The little girl who -- whom my friend offered ice cream. And she said, "I don't care." And then the -- my friend said, "But you have to care." Well, the ice cream, you see -- demands her personal decision, and she shouldn't have evaded being the guest of -- of this hostess, you see. Because this certainly -- not entering the spirit of the party if she does -- says, you see, that the good thing offered to her is -- you see, is indifferent. She shouldn't be indifferent. It's very impolite. It's a good thing offered. If she can't eat anymore, she must excuse herself and say, "Excuse me, I really can't." That's -- would be the proper answer, wouldn't it? Because she must enter the spirit of the enterprise in this case, because she's personally addressed.

The other side of this I-don't-care attitude certainly is great innocence with regard to things you do not understand, and you are not engaged in, and nobody has the right to ask you, so to speak. So I think the same thing can be a point of strength and a point of weakness. Isn't that true?

(I understand.)

So I hope I have -- this -- this is a most difficult thing, gentlemen, that I have had to -- try to explain to you: that in every moment, the presence of death has to be included into the presence of life. The philosophers call life very often "will." Schopenhauer wrote a book on li- -- the world as will, on the one-hand side. Will is, so to speak, the consummation of the life-force, where you have -- life you have some will, of staying alive, of -- or of following out your own instincts, your own drives. So perhaps you make a footnote that "will" and "life" are -- have been used here today as exchangeable. And where there is life, you see, we stress will. Where there is death, we stress unwill, or nonwill. This is a problem of vocabulary, of course, but it is -- makes it perhaps easier for you to understand many discussions.

In some religions, the question is between will -- my will and God's will, that -- as in Christianity. On the other hand, it's also a -- theology of life and death, of dying and li- -- living. So make this equation: life equals will, and you will suddenly be able to integrate whole chapters of discussion and to see that they are dealing with the same thing from another aspect. Will is my subjective experience of life. Life is a description, you see.

(Would you subdivide will in -- I mean, will of the universe, and personal will? Would you life equals will, but will is two -- two types of will -- your personal will and the will of the universe? Is that what you'd say?)

Oh, you have spoiled the whole thing.

(Well, I mean --.)

"Person" is already a reconciliation between the divine will and your will. The self wills. You want to live. Your little body, you see, since you are in this world, tries to exist. And that's not personal. That's prepersonal. That's just the brute animal in you and me. Any person is always already an ex- -- the result of some act of faith on your part: how much you represent the universal will. You cannot be a person without taking over some responsibility. You understand? So the -- the -- never is the opposition universal will and personal will. The opposition is just will...

(...and personal will.)

...and -- and --.

(Oh, yeah. Yeah.)

No. Person is already always reconciled, you see, it's always redeemed. The -- that you may be a person, you see, is the greatness of your place in the universe. Can you see this? Because you abuse the word "person," and use it far too early for the baby in the cradle, you have lost all understanding of the religious formulas. It is not the fault of the religion, but people have in the last hundred years, in their eagerness to endow the whole -- humanity with bliss and happiness, have said, "Everybody is a person."

But gentlemen, you can -- any moment lose your personality and regain it. But to become a person is the whole object of living. Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Jesus, Abraham put before men the question, "When are you a person, and when you are just a brute self?" That's your question. And that's why we talk about all these things, because nobody is satisfied at being just brute will. You all want to be -- have a personal will. But if you have a personal will, part of the cosmic order enters your consciousness and you want to be a doctor, for example. Obviously the being -- becoming a doctor makes you into quite a person. And -- being a Dartmouth student, already you have an element of personality inside of you. But gentlemen, you become a person. The heresy of liberalism is we are born person -- we should be born a person. Nobody is born a person. You are born just brutal selves. Al Capone is not a person. He's a gangster.

Thank you.