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

We have to solve the most difficult question of this course: what religion is. We cannot compare things of which we are not sure what we mean by them. I give you an example of the governments, the various states. They have different constitutions, but they are all states over the whole globe, and you assume today that except for some dark spots in Africa, there is a nation everywhere over the globe. And so when you compare governments, you have to know that there has to be government in each spot of the world, otherwise you cannot compare the different forms of government.

That entails a big order, because it means that -- two things: we first must know what it is and second, we -- in our heart of hearts, we must admit that it is necessary. This is mostly overlooked in your life's definitions, or in your bull sessions. You discuss God and politics, but you are never quite sure -- since you are, at this moment, after all, before your responsibilities that it has to be. For example, it's very nice to discuss girls, but the question is, are you already mature enough to know that one day you'll have to be married? It's very different, you see, to pass muster -- the beauties and amenities of sex life by itself or to know that in the end you will have to line up with the people who find the solution of their sex troubles in marriage and then go on to other things and do not adore the passions of your sex -- of your power to procreate, of your potency, by itself. And as long as a boy, or an adolescent, or be it even a grown-up man -- is only interested in sex, he really cannot be talked to, because he plays with it. And that's beneath the dignity of any human being. Sex is not to be played with, although you do play with it. That is, sex is playing -- play with love -- playing with love is obviously not the way of really coming to know what it was given us for. And therefore I cannot talk to you easily over -- about marriage before I haven't gotten you to the concession that to play with sex is an inferior affair. Very inferior.

We do many inferior things, gentlemen, and we play with politics. I mean, you know how in this country, the people at Harvard or at Dartmouth in the '30s were all Communists. Well, they weren't Communists, although Mr. Remington went to jail for perjury, saying he hadn't been a Communist. He was very stupid, because he should have admitted that he played with Communism, you see. He did.

So, you -- to play with politics, it's very nice. But to be in politics is something quite different. And to be responsible for government means to be a statesman. Then you are even more than a politician, so you have three grades, you see. Playing with politics, making a business out of politics, and being -- really, you

see -- serious about politics. Can you see the difference?

Now, gentlemen, pardon me. It is even more difficult to know what religion is, because it is the most difficult and the most independent activity of man. And in reporting on this problem -- to find out that religion is everywhere, that it is with everybody and that it is necessary and serious -- is so difficult to explain to you, because the higher up we come in all ways of life, gentlemen, the more ready is the corruption. And I give you, for the -- to show you that you are really dealing with the frailest and the most difficult task there can be -- the old Latin adage, corruptio optimi pessima. Carry this with you. If anybody asks you about religion, and you will have nine-tenths of your answers to most people who talk to you about the subject. Corruptio optimi pessima: the corruption of the best is always the worst. Gentlemen, a good woman is far superior to a good man. But when she is corrupted, she is much worse than any man, because a good and perfect woman is a great gift of God. You can corrupt her, you see. If she becomes a maniac or a whore or an hysteric mother, you see, matriarch, she becomes a viper. Generations of vipers. You have heard of this book, probably. And therefore, gentlemen, when people tell you that most religion is corrupt, you just have to agree with it, and say, "Of course." It is so corrupt, because it is so easily corrupted. The corruption of the best always is the worst. Pessima means "worst." Optimi is "of the best," and corruptio I don't have to translate, that's just "corruption." The corruption of the best is always the worst.

A car, gentlemen, you think, of course, is your most precious idol. The only thing you worship are cars. That's your religion. But you will admit that a car can easily be found out to be corrupted when it doesn't run. And you declassify it and junk it and say, "It no longer is a car." But a religion that doesn't -- isn't, you see -- doesn't work, you have a hard time to find out, you see, before you say it's a superstition. And therefore, the terrible thing about this is the corruption is also the hardest to detect. The corruption of a religion is harder to detect than the corruption of a car. Because although religion also makes you run, like a car, you see, you can immediately see if the car runs. But you can't see it as well with religion. You usually only see it on the deathbed of a man, whether he has the right kind of religion, or even in his afterlife, in his reputation, afterwards.

So religion is the hardest to detect as to its quality of being the best or the worst, of being good or evil, of being right or wrong, being alive, you see, or being impotent.

Well, this is only as a kind of preface, gentlemen, to my task. I told you I wanted to make sure that you wouldn't mistake religion for all the many other things for which it is mistaken today: one was philosophy. Religion is the opposite from philosophy because it conquers the mind to the actions of the rest of

our bodies, whereas philosophy tries to make all the other limbs of the body bow to the insights of the mind. Philosophy starts here. But we said religion is a power that makes us act or makes us not act, that makes us desist from action, or may -- makes us force to action we had never considered before. It's the opposite from philosophy. And we said also it is the opposite from theology. Theology is the justification of a religion to the mind, to the philosophers. It's the conversation between religion and philosophy. It isn't religion. Now in this country, however, at this moment, people have at best a little bit of a philosophy. And as I told you, from this Englishman who said 40 years ago something about America, he said, "There is no religion in America" -- which is a big order, but we will have to hear the worst about us in order to escape the corruption of religion.

What then is it? It is not philosophy. It is not theology. We said it is -- are two commands in one. It is the power to obey God more than men. And it is the power to place life above death. Living beings above dead things. Now again, in this country, with the domination of the brain, of your reason, or whatever you call it, there is very little religion, because -- I can prove this to you. My two commands, obey God more than men, and treat living beings different from dead ones -- if you find it today in American slang at all, it would run: "Be free," would be the first command. "Have liberty." And there it would be very unclear to whom you obey in your liberty, you see. Yourself, or God? And most people would think your-- themselves, you see. So the first command is here philosophically deteriorated into running, "Obey yourself." "Do what you please." "Be free." I -- you can hardly understand the importance of my sentence, "Obey God more than men," as long as you say, "I never obey a man, anyway, so why should I obey God more than men?" you see. But of course my command, gentlemen, is a truly religious command, because it includes my own command: "I shall not obey myself." "I shall not obey myself" is included in the sentence, "I shall not obey men more than God," you see. I may God -- obey myself, as long as God is in agreement with me, you see. But sometimes you have to turn against your own vices and you must not obey yourself. Everybody knows this, gentlemen, but most people today deny it officially. So we get immediately the corruption of the best into the worst. Here is the right commandment: Obey God more than men.

If you corrupt this, it means, "obey nobody." But if you analyze this sentence, which is a good American sentence, "be independent," you see. "Patronize everybody, but obey nobody." "Flaunt your parents," et cetera. Usually it would have to be translated "Obey yourself." Because everybody has to obey somebody.

Now, here you see typical -- a typical example of corrupt religion. Here are three sentences, you see. They look all quite different. This to you is un-understandable. You say, "I don't know," of course. I had a sophomore here in class who wrote on top of his paper, "I've never heard of prayer, and I don't know

what it is for." Well, that's just a { } of your generation. Anybody who can say this, gentlemen, has of course no access to religion, as we shall see, because he cannot distinguish between God and himself. Prayer means to become aware of the existence of more than yourself and other men. It's very simple.

Here you have three sentences, gentlemen. This is that which means religion and all from the first man to the last, as long as there is religion. If you have your own philosophy, you will come to the conclusion that liberty is better than tyranny, you see, and slavery. So you have to say, "Obey nobody." And in fact, that means if we, from our point of view -- revere what it means, it means, "Obey yourself." Isn't that true? So we have three sentences. This is a corruption, gentlemen. This is the virtuous veneer of corruption. That is the typical worldly secular cloak of -- irreligion. And this is a religious sentence. And in every case you will find, gentlemen, that the man who denies religion will never express what he is in for in the appropriate terms, but always with this cloak. Every philosopher or every independence maniac or every -- well, rebel, or what-not -- will say, "Oh, I'm just wonderful because I obey nobody." They will never admit that this means, "Obey yourself."

The corruption, gentlemen, of religion will only be, of course -- be voiced and worded by the man who has religion. The anti-religious person will, of course, express the corruption in so many other words. I knew a little young girl who said she had to go to bed with many men, because they were so -- otherwise so unhappy. And she had to serve them and that was her great act of love. Well, it's a very nice circumscription for saying that she was a harlot, you see. But she cannot call herself a harlot. No woman can say, "I am a harlot." I had a young Dartmouth friend. He's now a professor. I hope he has improved in his spirituality. He went to Paris and of course, why do Americans go to Paris? Why do they support this ridiculous country politically all the time? Because they dine there well and drink there well and they go to bed with women -- they can't afford this in this country so cheaply. So Americans are corrupted by France and that's why everybody has to pay lip service to the beauty and the greatness of France in this country. It's ridiculous. But the tradition is only that --that the corruption which you shun in this country -- to have many mistresses, you see, you can afford in France. And mistresses are very highly seductive. Very nice to have, occasionally. Usually the year later, it's not so nice. But in the first moment, it seems so very convincing.

Now gentlemen, this girl -- boy from Dartmouth here, hungry for life, went to Montmartre. And he settled with a little girl, and when he came back, this idiot -- he always called her "my little prostitute," which shows that Americans just shouldn't go to France, and that he's certainly not a human being very easily. Because the man who calls the person to whom he only goes to bed a prostitute

and not Little Lott -- Lissy, or whatever her name was, or Lucy, is not a human being.

You are infamous. That's infamous. He had no right to call this girl who made him happy for a moment, you see, call her any longer prostitute. There are many words for a name, for a person. For the police, she might have been a prostitute. And for the doctor, she might have been a prostitute. For this man, she had to be his little girl. And there you see, the -- your schizophrenic character with regard to Europe and here. When an American travels, he's out of bounds. And he behaves -- he even rapes girls in Holland in the Occupation. An American soldier did this who was a college graduate -- a 14-year-old girl. Why can he -- he would never have thought of this at home. Holland was an allied country, was it not. And yet, he thinks there is another world in which he can just do as he pleases. That's the typical weakness of most Americans. They have only an American religion which holds good in America. And there's no religion abroad and my friend -- since when -- here on these shores, when he told me about it, and he called this girl a little prostitute, you see, I could have slapped him in the face. He was too old for this, but he deserved spanking, you see, because he showed that he had not the power to throw himself behind his actions and to see that this was a human being, whom he had liked for a moment -- perhaps even loved. And in calling her a little prostitute, he showed the impotency of the human oxen, which most Americans are in -- with regard to sex affairs. An oxen is a man who cannot spiritually accompany his physical actions. He only can go to bed with a girl, but he cannot speak about it in dignified terms.

Now, gentlemen, a potent man is a man who can look down to who he really is and admit who he is. And you are all eye -- star-eyed idealists and philosophers who think how man should be and what you really do has nothing to do with it. Look down to your acts and speak in unison with your acts. And don't look up to your ideas, which are no good anyway. Religion is against philosophy because it is not idealistic, gentlemen. This boy tried to be an idealist coming home, still looking down onto this little girl. But he should have looked up to his actions there and to have said, "Well, obviously since I went to bed with her, she can't have been a prostitute only. She must have also been a human being." And he would have learned something.

But you with your philosophy, gentlemen, you say, "I obey only myself." Or you say, "I obey nobody." So she -- you didn't -- he didn't even obey the presence of this little woman, who should have told him that under Heaven, there are many more human relations than his vocabulary of a Dartmouth student's had ever taught him, and he had to find a new expression -- "mistress," or what-not for this word, because religion, gentlemen, is the admission that not I call things arbitrarily, of people, but I learn by my relations who they are.

To give you a simpler example: here, another Dartmouth boy -- a teacher in a high school now, here in New Hampshire -- went to England as a soldier. And he got engaged to a very -- as far as I can make out -- a very fine English girl. And when he departed for the United States, she came to the station and she broke down and wept and was quite beside herself, because after all, she knew what life was and that the soldier going home may not be faithful, and she was in love with this boy. And therefore he canceled the engagement because a girl who is so passionate that she breaks down in a public place and cries was not for him. Now that's still worse than calling the girl for -- of a moment a prostitute, you see. He didn't deserve to experience life. He was an absolute atheist. Can you understand this, why it is more important to take such a fact, to study religion, gentlemen, than all the people who go to church? This boy -- he is still unmarried, I am glad to say -- and I hope this curse will follow him and he will never get married; he doesn't deserve it. Can you see my disgust? Can you understand it? Here is a man who is given by God the greatest gift there is on life, the real passion of a woman. And she expresses it in the only human way, which only has been abolished in the United States of America, by weeping, and he says, "Weeping is not for me." So he could not accept the command that if a good woman weeps, he has to learn that weeping is a part of life. That would have been obeying God more than men, because what he had learned here in high school and Dartmouth College, that people don't cry, is just human, is it not? That's not in the divine experience, gentlemen. That's just silly. You all are silly, because you don't weep, and so you can only grin and you can never laugh. Nobody can laugh, gentlemen, who cannot cry. You want to laugh all the time, and so I despise your laughter. Your laughter in The Nugget gives me the creeps. It's so coarse, because I know you only can laugh there, you can never cry.

I had an experience, once. We had a tremendous Russian movie here, "Peter the Great." And there was an actress who played the czarina, the wife of Peter. He had gotten her out of the gutter and made her his empress. And he was going to die. And she thought, it was all finished. And in her great love, she threw herself over this dying czar on his bed, and began to break down. And this whole theater in Hanover resounded with laughter. And when I asked the boys the next day in class, "Why did you laugh?" they said, "Because ..." -- you know the reason? "Because we were quite sure that this could never have happened to us. We would never break down and cry." Such a man has no religion, because he only obeys himself and his routine. He cannot experience the necessity of mending his ways and learning that crying is the most sublime utterance of human -- of the human heart.

These are three examples, gentlemen. The prostitute, the tears of the fiance‚, gentlemen, and your behavior in the movies, by which you can learn more about

this whole course, gentlemen, and religion, than in any book of philosophy, on theology. Now perhaps you begin to understand why religion has nothing to do -- or very little -- with philosophy or -- and theology, you see. It is the power to obey God more than men and to treat living processes more than dead. You want to have the stony face of a lady at the railroad station, who is all smiles and gives you some chocolate. And here this boy found a girl was breaking down in despair and he couldn't take it. And the same with the czarina. And the same with the ideology and the philosophy of this young man who went to Paris and saw there a real little girl, whom he liked, with whom he went to bed and who he labeled afterwards, "My Little Prostitute." There is no "My Little Prostitute." Can you see this? It's impossible. It doesn't exist. "My" never goes with "prostitute." Prostitute is for statistics. For you see, for an objective reason. But not "My Little Prostitute."

But this power to appropriate a new experience, gentlemen, is religion -- would you care to take this down -- the power to appropriate a new experience, and to bow it and give it a new name. Therefore, gentlemen, all religion goes with new names. Where there is religion, there is a new name for God. And this boy had to come home from England and had to say that "It's the greatest experience of my life. For the first time in my life I have seen a young woman cry for me. And I have to make up for this for the rest of my life, lest I not deserve it." Gentlemen, there is no greater gift for any human being than to have somebody who cries for him. And if this is not a religious experience, there is just no religious experience. But you don't -- think a religious experience has something to do with the Vatican or with Christian Science, or with the Mormons. It's much simpler, gentlemen. It is your power to appropriate a new experience as being superior to all men- -- human-made, manufactured, you see, manipulated, ideas and conventions. Most of you can never do this. You are all second-rate as long as you have not this immediate power, this potency, gentlemen, to call a new experience with a new name.

Now we have already reached a great insight from this point of view, gentlemen: God is the power which makes us give to a new experience a new name. You can only do this, you see, under divine inspiration. He had to break down because he no longer, you see, obeyed his self, his former self. He became a new person by making this one new contact. It's { } experience.

On the other hand, gentlemen, there is another corruption from the other end. We now come to the opposite end of religion. This was the second sentence, a very simple sentence. You have to obey God more than man, including yourself. But you have -- we all have also to make things obey us. You have to handle a car. You have to sit down. You have to heat this house. You have to treat the bread and butter of everyday decently. You shall not waste. You shall cook. And

all the things of life have to be treated, you see, have to be wood, despite The New York Times Sunday edition, even 50 years from hence, so we have to have conservation, and all these mean things. The things given, you see, have to be treated in some way and the dead things can be treated more freely -- by manipulated -- than living beings. Now gentlemen, I take a bet. If you meet a hundred other boys on campus, and you try to explain this command to them, the second command of which I am now going to speak: Make dead things obey you more than living beings, or command preferably things than human beings between, again, the freedom of the other fellow, you see -- command preferably things, instead of living beings. You would always translate it in this way to the other fellow: Command dead things preferably to living things. That is, you would give the etiquette "things" even to the living. And I feel on this campus that when you speak of God, you always say, "Well, you know that thing" or "something." The word, "thing," in you, gentlemen, has become almighty. And you say of the first, "Obey yourself," to the exclusion of other authority, especially God, but also your parents or anybody else, so you also say of the world at last, that you are surrounded by things. And you call me also "something." If you formulate this sentence, "Command dead things preferably to living things," you already have corrupted religion, because you have given the higher, the living being, the term "thing" from the lower one, from { }. The word "thing" is the second great sin of the American college boy. When he calls living processes, and living beings also "things" -- "things" do only apply to {do --} dead things, to "its." As soon as you give the word "things" to anybody who deserves to be called "you" and "he" and "she," you have confused life and death.

And you all confuse life and death, by use -- your abuse of the word "thing." And I would then say, gentlemen, the right word is "Command things as against men." And the corruption is -- you would say, "Command nobody," which you cannot do. Or you would say, "There is nothing to command." And you would introduce the word in "nothing" as you have it -- and most American boys think there is nothing good about commanding. And you actually would like to live in a world -- what you call democracy, you see, where nobody gives orders and nobody takes orders. And the rest to you is {corrupt}. But it isn't. You have to find the beautiful order in which everybody takes orders and which everybody gives orders. But in the appropriate order of things and living beings and God. You can't give orders to God. Give as few orders as possible to human beings, you see. And in all the orders, there are two things. You will agree with me that it is perfectly all right to manufacture and manipulate wood and iron and steel and gold and silver, you see. No objection to this, isn't that true? Already, with artificial insemination of bulls -- of cows, it is a doubtful procedure. You see immediately. Can you really command a cow to be inseminated now, as they all do? I think we have to fight that out in the future. I'm not so sure. And if it comes to ladies who don't -- have impotent husbands and go to students whom they --

and get themselves artificially inseminated, I would just say that's impossible. And it's done in this country, but { }.

Because these women cannot be made to obey like things, you see. And the men who give their semen cannot be made to be treated like machines, where you put in $5 on top and then they -- I don't know how they do it, but it must be a very distasteful action of onanism or what it is to get this semen out of the male. And I am told that students sell their own sperm. Is that true?

Well, this man is abused, is he not? It's abuse. And that's a scandal, and that goes on in this country, and we call this a religious country under God. That's the Devil, because men here are for money treated as machines, as things. So you see, religion tells you that although you can make money, you can't do it. It is not right to make money, you see, in any way you please. If your body then has to be manipulated, you become a pig. And that's the real question as of today, because this may come to you as a temptation any minute.

And these are the other questions, gentlemen. What do I care -- as I said once more, for all your misunderstanding of religion -- religion is there where you cannot treat your own self, you see, as a thing. Can you see the point, by the way? It's very simple, gentlemen. It's very -- you know all your own sex troubles, gentlemen. As long as you are not married, you are in great danger of splitting up into the thing sex and into your own mind an you know how unhappy it makes you. They go crazy over it. People go to the mental asylum, because they split into two things. They treat themselves as things, you see, which nobody can do. And you split into two.

So gentlemen, why do we have these two commands? Look them over. We saw here the -- I would say the near, the secular form of this command { } I would say the American idol: mechanize -- have machinery -- replace by machinery. Mechanize! With an exclamation mark, as an imperative. But that is not the right hierarchy. If you mechanize, you can mechanize your own body, too, you see. And you are very unhappy. If you look this over, gentlemen, you will see that the universe is tackled in these two commandments. There are three elements, or four. There are God, there are men -- in the plural, all men, you see, including yourself -- and there is the world of things. So will you take it down gentlemen. The world -- religion has the problem of organizing, of placing the divine -- the gods, men and things. And you may take it very simply today and say God, men, world. All religion, gentlemen, tries to rhyme God, man and world. However, no religious man says this at the beginning. That's philosophy copying religion, so to speak, and the human mind can speak of God, world and man. Your human experience, gentlemen -- the boy who goes to England and sees a girl crying for him -- really experience there only one god, the god of love.

He doesn't experience right away the whole of God, you see. Therefore I warn you, gentlemen, if we have a course on religion, we must speak of more than one god. To believe in one god is only one -- perhaps the highest religion, you see. But it's not the beginning of your experience. At this moment, you experience sports as one god, sex as another god, science as a third god, politics as a fourth god, you see, family pride as a fifth god, but you do not experience God. There are -- no way of really experiencing God without having experienced gods. Who knows Hebrew? Anybody does? Does anybody happen to know Hebrew? You may recall that in the Bible the one word for God is the plural, the Elohim. And that means all the gods together in one. And that's the true experience of any decent fellow, that he -- all of you have religion, gentlemen, because all of you have one god at least, usually several. But you would never say that sex is all of God, you see. But it is your ruling passion.

The same is true -- that's even worse with philosophy -- philosophers always think that if they make up something about m-a-n, they have understood something about m-e-n. Now you know very well that the whole problem of life is not between m-a-n, if there was only one man, but the problem is that here are 43 people in this room. And you must understand each other and act together, you see, and fight each other, et cetera. So gentlemen, all philosophers are terribly clever in dodging the second plural, which is the real thing: how do two or more people believe the same thing? And how do they believe even in the same god? That's very miraculous. And so I don't wish to cheat you, gentlemen, I say the formula -- God, man and world is a philosophical formula. The experimental formula of your life, gentlemen, is: gods, men -- m-e-n -- and things. If these things form a real, one world, it is very doubtful. The Hindus believe that there are many worlds. It makes just as much sense, you know. Is the Mars a world by itself? Is it really our world, you see, like all these stratospheric stories now try to tell us. They are all nonsensical and worthless because they are just duplications of us, these Mars, you see, inhabitants. But there are many worlds, perhaps, and certainly you don't even know the unity of the world. What you actually experience in life is that there are terribly many things of which you would like to buy or to eat or to consume or to get out of the way or to dominate, you see, or to sell, or to buy or whatever it is. That's all we know.

So gentlemen, the fight between philosophy and religion comes out. Religion can have the honesty of saying, "I know only parts of God; I know gods. I know only parts of man's character; I know men. I never shall know all men. But I have some dealings with some men," you see. "And they seem all to be very difficult people to get along with." And here, { } this proud word of "world," if you are really interested in religion, gentlemen, then you must speak of things.

Now, you will find, gentlemen, that the one corruption of religion, by which it

is ruined is this cheap talk of God, man and world to people who have not first made -- to make the connection of several people, of many things, you see, and of several gods.

Before you have experienced gods, you cannot experience God. That's why we have at least a trinity in Christianity, to remind you of the fact that if you have not met one other man as divine, Jesus of Nazareth, you cannot know who his father is. It's hopeless. It's nonsense. The Jews said the same. They said, "Either you are an Israelite or a Gentile." In both cases, you can see the power of one God who has set the nations of the world as against the Jews, and the Jews as against the nations. There again, you have two ways of God, at least, before you can know who God is. God has led these nations different ways and contrariwise, you see. But they both have to be there to enable the world to come to its appointed end when the Messiah comes. Even the Jews, although they stress the unity of God so much, you see, at least admit that people on this earth experience God in a very different manner.

So gentlemen, be wise and that's the greatest progress we can make at this moment in this class, that you are -- I invite you to see the commands which you really have to realize in your life. I'm not so simple, dealing with God, man and world. It is much more complicated if you have 5 million things and if you have 2 billion men, you see, and if you have an innumerable galaxy of angels and archangels and dominions and powers and principalities, as the Bible calls them, you see, and foreign gods and devils, and you have to decide who is your God. Very cheap if you say there is just one god, you see. But then I have no guarantee that you know what you mean by this term at all.

Let's have a break right here.

About this distinction between God and gods, man and men, and world and things. Now I wish to tell you that I have found with -- inside myself and in others -- that always when the mind dominates, that is, when I am irreligious, when I am tempted to brush aside the three entities as God, man and world. All your psychology deals with man in the singular. That's very simple. Solves nothing, because we never are man in the singular. You are always your mother's son, you see, and your son's father. And that's, you see, a very complicated business. And you never are just the man. But the fiction of philosophy is that everything connected with it is to try to persuade you that if you know something about man then your troubles are solved. Then they begin, because then you are all ready, you see, ready to go to a lunatic asylum, once you think that ma-n can be treated by himself. He cannot be.

Religion tells you that you are under the power of gods or demons, if you

may, or spirits -- and that you are always tempted to command your brothers or to take orders from your brothers. And that you have to command things. So, the second question concerns this confusion. If we put this in this order, the dividing line between this and this runs right through us. If I call you individuals, I treat you as things, dead things. By themselves, they can be counted -- they can be set aside. But I treat you as an individual, and therefore I can come to manipulate you in a mob or in a mass. Police would do this, you see. If 1,000 individuals of questionable dignity line up before a prison, the warden will think that they may try to free the prisoners and he may take a hose and spray them with water. And he treats them as things, does he not? Any mob is treated that way. In a war, we treat the enemy as nature. Now nature is just another expression for a plurality of things which can be manipulated. And therefore, gentlemen, whoever goes to war, whoever is in the police, whoever is in the FBI, whoever is a tax collector, whoever does something for the state, for the government, you see, to other people is tempted to treat them as things, as cases, as we say, because the moment a man becomes a thing, he is a case. And gentlemen, in this country the most people escape religion by treating themselves as cases. The -- what's the greatest case-mania today for all of you? How do you treat yourself as cases when you go to whom?

(Inaudible.)

Wie?

(Psychiatrist.)

Of course, you see. He takes you as a case. And a case is a man -- casus. You know -- what's the English translation of casus? You don't know what cadere means?

(inaudible.)

Wie?

(Body, dead body?)

No. What, too? Well, somebody must know what casus means. Fall, it means. A fall. Gentlemen, fallen man is a case. We have, as you know, formally abolished religion, and there is no fallen man and there are no original sin, and the secular mind always very wonderful in splitting the truth from his veneer, from his concealment, calls himself a case. Well, in former days, we called ourselves sinners. That meant we had fallen from grace. Now the modern psychoanalytical idiot, who gives all his money to the psychoanalyst, $8,000 a year -- I have a

friend who pays now $6,400 a year, annually, that is, $13,000 to a psychoanalyst who listens three hours a day -- a week, to this man's toilet stories. And he has made himself into a case. He was a fine boy. He flunked Dartmouth because of drinking. He worked himself up again, graduated from Harvard, and then his nervous system gave out and he's now -- I admired him, for he had stamina for 10 years. Now he's 25 and it is all gone and for the next two years, his father has to pay the psychoanalyst $6,500 a year, as I told you, for three sittings a week, and the boy has decided not to make any decision in the meantime, and just to be a parcel, you see, a little wreck in the hands of this criminal.

And so, gentlemen, here you have a wonderful case of secular religion. This boy has a religion, that the psychoanalyst is the priest and that he is a case, and that he has no responsibilities since he pays $6,500 good money, the psychoanalyst is in charge. And this boy, of course, wouldn't think of becoming a Roman Catholic, because he would say, "There the clergyman is in charge of my soul, and I want to be a captain of my soul and so I have to be a Protestant." But he goes to the pseudo-clergyman, to the pseudo-priest, and he pays them high money, which the Catholic priest wouldn't even ask for, you see, and he's a case. Gentlemen, a case is a man treated as a thing, in his own eyes. And that's what the old religions meant by the fact of original sin. That man who has fallen from grace is a man who prefers to be treated as a thing, because it's convenient, because he has no longer himself any relation to the gods. That is somebody else's charge. The psychoanalyst has to know all the answers, you see. And the case hasn't. The case has no -- he is just -- etched away -- etched, I think, is the best word -- or cauterized away his old connection with the divine. Such a caseman would always think of "My Little Prostitute." Such a case-man would not marry a girl who weeps for him. Such a case-man waits for something { } others ordered so he knows what to do.

So this man lives in -- by indirection. As you know, most people in this country want to live -- to be one of them, they have promiscuity. They sleep three boys and three girls in the same room together and think nothing of it. It's more innocent than if they are alone, and they don't wish to be bothered in their conscience with any decisions they have to make. This is a country of religious slaves in this country. You are all right for the Roman Catholic church, or for Tibetan prayer { }, because you actually go to the psychoanalyst and you are not ashamed of yourselves.

I have a friend with whom I have been friendly since my sixth year, so he has watched all my vicissitudes in Europe and here, and he is in this country now, too, out in Oregon. And last year he visited us and he said, "Eugen," -- that's my first name -- he said, "I have always respected you for one thing. You have never carried all your troubles to the psychiatrist. And you have been in great troubles,

and you have always fought it out, breathing, and not, you see, second-rate." Gentlemen, your psychiatric treatment is always second-rate. It's like hypnosis, as against obedience. If I obey, you see, an officer who gives me an order, I'm still a free man. If I'm hypnotized, I'm not, you see. It's the same act. It's the same practice. It makes your { }. And so people think, "Why not hypnotism, hypnotism?" Because I am out, you see, I am treated as a thing. Hypnotism isn't better in its results, but it's buried, you see, in the hypnotiser's relation to me, because he has no right to treat me as a thing. He kills me. He takes away some living sperm from me, you see, for this moment. Now in an emergency, gentlemen, as with the mob who gangs up before the prison, the warden has every right to treat these men as things. I don't say that the hypnotiser against the { } is all right. If a person is in great danger, you have to treat this { } perhaps in his own interest as a thing. You can see a { }, you see, people will have to grab him and put him in a taxi, and where is the bag? Isn't that right? But we also know that he wakes up the next morning, that he has been treated as a thing.

So will you kindly know, gentlemen, that all of us, when we are asleep, and when we are drunk, and when we are hypnotized, and when we are afraid, have to be treated as things. So the great difficulty of the religious task is, gentlemen, to state in so many words that man is half a thing, that he has to take orders. And half he is divine, because he has to -- can give orders, you see. And therefore, this is your difficulty to discover when is man a thing, when is man a god, and when he is just your brother. Because obviously, we are all three, you see, in ordination.

Now we come therefore to the most difficult statement I have to make today, gentlemen: whom we have to call God, what we have to call a thing. We never know ahead of time. Whom we have to call a god and what we have to call a thing, we never know ahead of time.

(inaudible interruption)

I have nothing to do with you. I'm -- know no Spanish. I can't help you. This is another class.

(Okay. Thank you.)

He had to be treated as a thing.

Gentlemen, that is why religion is perpetual, and is a power really in your and my life. It is not connected with any origin just in the past. This discovery, which element in you and me just beastly or thing-like, you see, or case-like, and which thing in me is -- which power in me has the authority to give orders, is

undecided. Tomorrow, the same man who was a wise ruler yesterday, maybe has become a tyrant. The same child, which had to take orders when it was four, may have to be emancipated when it is 14. There you see a very simple problem. And you know, in this country, this is not known. In this country, gentlemen, and that of course was -- made the Englishman say, "There is no religion in America." In this country, you have all fallen into the strange philosophical idolatry or frozenness or rigidity to say God is always God, man is always man and things are always things. And you have not come to understand that to use your own potency, you see, to create the decision of who is God and what is thing inside yourself and others, is the process of living. That is human life, gentlemen, not eating, not sleeping. But decide every day who is God and what is thing.

I read you now, for see -- showing you the difference between the English and the Americans an article today in The New York Times. And you will kindly take down -- jot down this points made here and tell my afterwards -- after some thinking -- why the English have a different religion from us.

LONDON -- Juvenile delinquency in Great Britain last year dropped by 14 percent. There were 45,000 arrests in 1952, but in 1953, 38,000. Four probation homes and two juvenile courts have been closed for lack of offenders. Here is how Britain went about it. Home Secretary David Maxwell-{Frye}, Britain's top law enforcement officer, has this maxim: Children are not naturally good citizens.

Take this against the American maxim: man is good, by nature. The greatest heresy of Benjamin Franklin. Man is good by nature. That's, you know, the 18th century heresy of the Enlightenment, which even most Christian ministers here try to propagate because otherwise they wouldn't be allowed to preach.

"Children are not naturally good citizens" versus the American "man is good by nature." It's ridiculous, this sentence, and it's hard to believe that anybody ever believed it, but America has been founded on this heresy that man is good by nature. And this comes from their watertight compartment that all men are, by themselves, always men. I tried to show you that at times we are { }, you see. And at times we are gods. And at times we are men. That is, we never know whom we have against us. You meet a man, he may be Jesus Christ reborn, you see, on this earth. And he may be just a criminal, you see. And he may be just a wild beast, a madman. Do you know? You don't. You see, the Americans have this straight, perfect system of thinking about God, man and world that you even are a pacifist. A pacifist is a man who says that man can never become a thief, or an institution can never be dead, you see. It's perfectly { }. It says it is never worthwhile to lay down your life for your brethren, or for God's honor. Pacifism knows ahead of time who is man, who is God and who are things. That comes all

from the American system of thinking that this is all in nature pre-decided.

Well, let's go on here with the English system:

There are seven points made in England. In the tough seaport of Liverpool, more than 600 youth clubs have been started in the last five years. The second -- in Wigan, Lancashire, parents of young offenders must appear in court with their children. In many cases, they are fined heavily.

By the way, will you kindly watch the word cases. "In many cases," you see. Where the children are not humans, the parents have to act as the human representatives, you see. And they are fined. Very good case, you see, where a thing has to be represented in court by a living human. And the child is treated as a case.

On the Isle of Man, juvenile delinquents are flogged. Whipping was abolished in '48, then brought back in '52. The child crime rate has plummeted.

Now Point Three, obviously has to do with the American religion. It's against the American religion to treat your brother man as your brother, because therefore you can't spank him. He's a god in his own right, or a devil. And so you make children into miserables because they aren't spanked. And you are -- of course, with you it's too late. You should have spanked in your youth, but your parents were forbidden to do so, because of American religion, because of this impotency to declare that this boy at that moment was just a brat and had to be brought up short against his being a nuisance, by being spanked.

I once saved the life of a man by spanking him, by slapping him in the face. He was my subordinate officer. I was in command of a town at the battlefront in France, on the German side. And he was my lieutenant, second lieutenant. He was 18 years of age. And I had to make him the officer on guard of the day. And so he had to take one of the watches. It was very -- it was the Battle of the Somme -- it was a very dangerous situation. We didn't know where the enemy was { }. The trench warfare was interrupted by this attack of the British on the line of the Somme. We had tremendous casualties. There were many hundred thousand people killed in this battle on both sides. It was November, it was mud time, mud season -- rainy, so very wild and stormy nights, very early darkness. It was very uncomfortable. The boy was denounced to me in the morning by the staff sergeant as having slept on his watch. And that, as you know, in wartime, at the front, is enough to have him shot. He had -- he, tremblingly, reported to me in full -- how do you say? -- full uniform, with a helmet and his white bandoleer they wore at that time and everything, as you report for court-martial, you see.

And here was an 18-year-old promising boy, and here was his end of life, or he's at least being disgraced, you see, totally, for the rest of his life. And so I -- with all the might I had in my command, I slapped him in the face. And let it be done, and didn't court-martial him. And my slapping him was the only way, as a paternal action, you see, by which I took the authority of the inner circle of the family, instead of the external circle of the legal authority, which I also represented. He being on my staff, I felt at liberty to switch loyalties, so to speak, you see. As my officer, he was still my younger brother, but as a man in command, I had also responsibility to my other men. Why did I have to slap him? Because I had to break him down. I had to show all my other men that he couldn't get away with murder, and that he had dishonored -- but my treating him as a boy who could be spanked, you see, I had convinced all these other men that they should also not insist on his punishment, you see. He moved in an inner circle where you just spank a man, and no one would have a formal trial.

You may have heard that opposite occurs in the United States. These idiots of progressive educators, they have invented school courts. Well, poor little children are really treated as thought they were delinquents and they have an attorney and there's a case made of this, you see, and they plead guilty and then the student council -- you have it in Dartmouth also, this ridiculous treatment -- they try to pass judgment. That is, you bring up a child into an adult. In my case, I did the opposite. I took down this seeming adult, you see, into the fate of a child. And thereby I saved him, Ten years later, he brought his young wife to me and thanked me for his -- my action, because I had saved his life. But gentlemen, it cannot be done more cheaply. It cannot be done without spanking. It cannot be done by ranking or by treating him as a man to whom I can give a sermon. Then I would have treated him as a grown-up. I had to exemplify that he was a thing in my eyes. You cannot understand this. You would never have slapped him in the face, you would have court-martialed him, as you do with these poor schoolchildren, these seniors in high school or { } bigger gods. And that's the whole idiocy of our modern society: to try to -- not to know when to treat a man as a harmless thing, which can be treated -- gotten out of the way, and when you treat him as a -- { } human being, born in the cradle, you already treat him as a responsible, independent person. The boy of 2 has already to decide what he wants to eat, you see. Make his own decisions. You deprive him of the real opportunities, when he will be treated as an annex to the grown-ups, as a thing. It's not a dishonor to be treated as a thing. But a thing demands to be treated. And when you have to treat your child as a thing, as the English do, then you spank it.

Number Four: In the schools, teachers have complete latitude to dole out corporal punishment. Whipping is commonplace. Discipline is excellent. { } movies are graded and children are barred from these made for adults. Television is supervised rigidly,

and the children's program really carry anything more boring than a Western movie. Horror comic books can be obtained only at American military posts in England.

Take that down. That's why you know why we are so little loved in Europe. We are not hated for our mores, but for our lack of mores.

"Horror comic books can be obtained only at American military posts." Again, your impotency to distinguish between whether a man should be treated as a case and when he treated -- be treated as a free agent. A man who wants to read horror comic books is not a human being.

He -- deserves no respect. And you cannot understand that.

British parents are very strict with their children. And seven: children are subject to the same criminal laws as adults. They are tried in special juvenile courts. But if the magistrate decides they are hopeless cases, they can then be sent to jail for long terms.

Well, these seven points, what would you think is the religious point in a stronger statement -- showing a religious implication? They are all, of course, declaring the religious conviction of the English people, as against the Americans. And you can see that that country has a religion. There isn't American religion. The American religion is a philosophical religion of nature. And it worships nature. All do. And therefore, the nature of a man is already there from the beginning, you see. He is never alternating a God, or a thing, or a man, you see. He has a nature. And the nature has to be treated by persuasion, you see, and wages and bribes. He cannot be spanked, he cannot be -- he cannot withhold anything from you, like these horror comic books, you see, and so man's nature is the religion of America. God has a nature, man has a nature, things have a nature. That's irreligious, gentlemen. All religion is the power to abolish the notion of nature. You cannot have a religion, gentlemen, without admitting that nothing is natural, that at this moment, the miracle is to know what is man, what is God, and what is thing, and all these three aspects of reality, you see, change all the time. You cannot rely that a man is by nature a man. He can be a maniac. He can be a beast, you see. He can be childish. And I tried to do in this case, you see. I had to take him down and not treat him as an adult.

So, we'll see next time then, gentlemen, the religion of nature in America, I think is the first religion we should try -- come to know because you it so well. You all believe in it. You have a religion without knowing it and we'll talk -- of course, have to deal with this problem under the two aspects, what is the content of the religion of nature in America and how far can you yourself deny it, or how

far are we all propelled into it?