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

[Opening remarks missing]

... take a further step. We compare religions and we had -- I had to give you an example of a religion with which you are quite well acquainted, your own religion. Everybody in this country to a certain extent shares, and I give you the example of the allegedly orthodox Roman Catholic who, in actuality has a natural religion when he says that every man is moved by economic motives -- as you believe this and you are part of nature and your stomach rules your will and your -- is your destiny; and in the large stomach may consider it a bank account. And I told you also that this man was better than his own thinking of himself, that he, on the one-hand side, went to the Roman Catholic church for his sacraments and that on the other -- also he had a family with two -- by which he did well and for which he took great care and that certainly was not an economic situation whatsoever, because he sacrificed for it.

Now before going on and saying a little more about natural religion, I want you to face this man's dilemma, or this man's reality, and I want you to consider, if not everybody in your own environment is in the same triple situation, that he has a philosophy about his religion. He is religious-conscious, religion-conscious, and that was his little mouse religion which he had, that he was just a mouse looking for lard in the great pantry of God, that's the economic ideology which the American businessman has to bandy around in order to be admitted into this great society, that he may not be called an idealist. And since he fears that more than anything else, you see, he has to be -- pose as practical. And practical means that two dollars are better than one dollar. We'll see there are more dogmas in this { }. Then the same man, as you know, goes to church, and so he has a theological religion, because theologians interpret what's going on there. And he accepts it at its face value. He probably officially on Sundays is a Thomist, or whatever the priest tells him he has to be.

There is another religion, and you see that's an institutional religion, institutionalized religion. And that's -- is his conscious religion, or philosophical religion, or personal religion, or personal { } saying so much. Well, his mental religion.

And then we found, since he has a family and sacrifices for this family, he has a living religion. Now, any man in your acquaintance, gentlemen, has these three religions. Everyone has a religion as he thinks to have. You all have an idea of what your religion is. Of course, it's always wrong idea, because nobody knows himself. But it's just the umbrella which he holds over his head -- I should

say which his head holds over his heart, to protect him from seeing into the blackness of his own heart too deeply.

So, you have -- every one of you has a mental religion. Every one of you has an institutional religion, either by saying "yes" or "no" to it, you have a religion, for example, which irks you. That would be the institutional religion to which you say "no." But you would still think, "This is the institutional religion." And whether you say, "Go to church," or "Don't go to church," it is that what you call institutional. Like the lady here in college -- I told you the story --- who every Sunday at 11 o'clock would sit down, feeling very emancipated and say, "Oh, how wonderful! Now I can sit down and work," because all the other people go to church. Now this lady came from the South, was very na‹ve, and had heard that religion consisted in going to church at 11 o'clock at Sunday morning, and so she said, "So, very good," because her husband and she had decided not to go to church, so she always had some needlework at 11 on Sunday, you see, and felt very good that she did not belong to this superstitious world in which you had to go to church at 11. Now is this lady free from institutional religion? Not at all, you see. But she says, "I" -- "Institutional religion is not for me." That was her religion. So anything you have to combat always paralyzes you. It takes, you see, effort and energy. So the poor woman had to do needlework, you see, to do repentance for the institutional religion. In a way, she tried to improve institutional religion, by her protest. And that's very sweet of her. I don't think it will help much, you see, because I don't think the world could be any better if everybody worked at 11 o'clock on Sunday morning, but that's what she tries. And you try too by saying, "Oh the Church is so obsolete and so wicked, I just go to sleep there. So I can't go there." Perhaps it would be better for you to accept that amount of sleep and make the sacrifice for the continuity of the human race.

Nobody goes to church for his own salvation, gentlemen. Nobody prays in public there because his soul will -- there -- much improved. But you must keep the doors open for the whole of mankind. You don't go to church to pray the same way as you pray in your own bedchamber, or in your own heart, when you sit at your desk. It is a terrible mistake in this country that people think that we go to church there to get, so to speak, wrought up over our private existence. It's the great praise of God of the whole community, and God wants to be praised. We'll see to that -- all this, later.

But the institutional religion, gentlemen, as represented or interpreted to you and me by theologians, and the philosophical religion, represented to you by your own mind, as far as you can go, are obviously only two-third of the full story of any human being. There is a living religion. And what is this living religion? Well, we found when Mr. Baker gives Baker Library to Dartmouth College, then this is his religion, that endowment is better than life insurance. And this is

his living religion. And you can see, gentlemen, that this entails a sacrifice. It cost something. It cost something. All religion begins with sacrifice. There it is alive. You make the sacrifice, you are alive, because, gentlemen, sacrifice is unnatural and that's why most Americans bark at the word "sacrifice." I can't -- most of you -- I never get to pronounce this word without blushing, because no decent American wants to say that he sacrifices. It's disagreeable because it is unnatural.

Now, the living religion, gentlemen, expresses itself by its sacrifice. The mental religion expresses itself by a philosophy, by your own ideas. And the institutional religion expresses itself by authority or community spirit, by something all people have in common.

But this leads us quite far, gentlemen. Once I will be able to talk to you -- I shall be able to talk to you for the rest of this term, I think, with common mutual understanding as soon as I have freed you from the idea that human beings have one religion nowadays. They all have three. The difficulty for understanding each other comes from this monistic, this singular obsession of yours that every man has a religion. That isn't so, you see. Every man partakes in three religions. That is because we are many people and live out many periods of history. And the three religions, gentlemen, are like the past, that's the institutional religion; the present, that's your mental image; and your sacrifice produces the next religious step, or in religion, that's the future. To live means to produce the future, gentlemen. To take part in the institutional religion means to respect the past. And at any one moment, man can fool himself in thinking, "This is my present state." And he can forget the past and the future and think he has time to face the facts. And that's usually the {way} of Mr. Philosopher with his economic theory, whatever his philosophy is, you see. So there is a present conscious-- what I call a consciousness of religion, a religious consciousness. That's the present. That's very fleeting. Don't take your ideologies, your ideas too seriously. Tomorrow you will have different ones.

But when you sacrifice, gentlemen, it has absolutely no sense for the present moment. If you say, "I can't go to the movies, because my mother is sick, and I have to stay with her," the meaning will escape any worldly friend and he'll say, "Don't be a fool. Your mother goes to sleep. She takes some pills or some morphine or whatnot, and therefore you -- she doesn't miss you. Go to the movies just the same." And he deprives you of your creative faculty of bringing about a future in which your relations are more intimate than they were if you would act naturally. Any -- ja?

(Sir, I disagree with you when you said we shouldn't take our present ideas seriously; because only by taking them seriously can we get them down and formulate new ideas for the future.)

Well, I'm talking of the importance of this idea for your religion, sir. I will not -- for your philosophy, it may be very important, sir. But only if you verify them, if you act upon them. If this man, you see, who says, "I am a free thinker," commits suicide, I will take this very seriously. But, you see. Or if he goes to war and slays some other person with, by the economic theory of history, or buys pleasure, you see. But you see how dangerous this is if I take these ideas too seriously. I would then condemn him too deeply, because if you work on your own, for example, by your own reasons, you are led astray. I must try to prevent you from acting on your philosophy very often.

This is only what I mean, you see. It's not verified. I take my thoughts seriously, but I try to connect them with the past and future. I invite you to consider, that's why the history of philosophy plays such a part in our education here, in this philosophy department, because history is authority. History is verified thought, you see. History is always a religious attitude towards philosophers, you see, who have gone before us. All -- the whole history of philosophy, gentlemen, is the church part, the institutionalized part of philosophy. You understand? It's that amount of respect which we should give to the people have thought before us, like Plato, you see. You understand? It is really the religion of a philosopher that he should listen to people who have also been philosophers. You see the difference? That's not philosophy itself. That's the religion of -- of the philosopher, you see, the institutionalized religion. In the great philosophers of the past, you have even in this classroom an amount of church, an amount of authority, an amount of institutions, you see. I think it quite useful. Who majors in philosophy? Well, you know we have this course 1112, you see, that is the authoritarian part of philosophy, you see. The part of priests of philosophy, so to speak, you see, whose opinions one must know before one can formulate one's own philosophy. Otherwise what you do, you see, is too cheap, too fleeting, too accidental.

Now, you see already with these three attitudes, with three religions, that man has a religion, because he's broken up in his time-experience. Because every one of us has this fragmentation of his time-experience, that he calls certain things "the past," and certain living beings whom he loves "the future," and himself "the present." Anybody who is selfish only usually knows of the present. Anybody who is reverent will be inclined to let the stand -- past stand as it is, the order of things, you see. And anybody who is really a lover, who really loves, must do like Jesus and change the world. Therefore, all -- every human being, gentlemen, experiences -- in the clash of the institutional -- the living, the sacrificial, and the mental {capiz} of his religion, the terrible conflict between the three tenses of life; that at the same time you are responsible for the continuation of the past, for the bringing about of the future, and for your justification at present, in your own life and existence.

And gentlemen, the three tenses are in conflict.

They are attained by quite different action. As I said, the future is attained only by a sacrifice. The past is only attained by obedience. And the present is attained by reflection, by the mirror of cogitation, of reflection on oneself, by consciousness. You only know of consciousness at this moment, or more than of the other things. You hate to be reminded that we all must make sacrifices, although you are in a college where you spend four years sacrificing these four years for the benefit of doing better then later in life, and where you are not permitted, so to speak, the full benefit of being in real life, but having to play and to wait all the time until you are equipped to do something with this, you see. That's the sacrifice. You should know that it is a sacrifice. You would then rate it much higher than you do. You think it's just the time to be idled away. Then of course it loses all meaning.

Now, we have, I think, now to -- can still simplify this triplex, triune religion, which every human being since the creation of the world has had and will have to have. Can't get out of it. The mental religion obviously is an affair of thinking. Nobody knows of what your religion -- you think your religion is. And you have even a hard time to express it. You can't sit down, even in a bull session -- only in the time of need, if you have to tell your girl what you really believe -- will you even formulate your philosophy. Isn't that true? I mean, it's a hard thing to know what one thinks. And therefore, we have here: the first part of religion dealing with one's own consciousness is the thinking part of religion, gentlemen. What is the institutional part of religion? Gentlemen, that's the hearing part. You listen. You obey. You harken to the Ten Commandments. Harken Israel. The Lord is thy God. In the Rg Veda of the Hindus, gentlemen, the greatest part is called sruti or sruti and that means "what we have heard." Sruti means simply "the ear" or "the hearing" or "what we have heard." That is the content of the greatest religion revelation of India. What we have heard. In our time, and they -- hearing has been very much underestimated. But you'll remember that I already told you obedience and command are { } of religion, to know when to command and when to obey. So you cannot be surprised that institutionalized religion is that part of their religious life which comes to us by listening to it, by hearing. In church you listen. And you are made vibrant by the music so that you listen better. The music is opening us up, so that our ears are open. Really that's what it is. That's why we have to sing, so that we may freely -- free -- become free to listen. You can't listen when you come cluttered with the dirt of the workday into the church. Something has to happen. You have to open your ears, and the priest at the altar ...

[tape interruption]

... So you see, he says that he wants to listen to the Lord. Intro ibo ad altare Domini, you see, ut audiam verbum Dei, "So I may hear." The priest too has to listen.

So gentlemen, we have here the listening process embodied, that you and I have to listen, just as in the philosophy -- history of philosophy, you see, you have to listen first to the philosophers, you see, of old. Now the middle ground, gentlemen: the sacrificial, living religion. What lies between thinking and hearing? Which act? Would you tell me? There is a third spiritual act.

Would you kindly put your hand before your mouth when you yawn?

(Doing.)

Wie?

(Doing?)

(Speaking?)

You said it. Who said it? Somebody said the right thing here. Wie?

(Doing?)

No, speaking. Speaking, gentlemen. Speaking. You have to tell somebody with responsibility. You have to tell your girl, "I'm going to marry you." That's a religious act, because you found a new race.

Speaking. There are three spiritual aspects of religion, gentlemen. The thinking, the speaking and the hearing. In the church, the speaker is the priest only. But he cannot speak for himself there, you see. The sacrifice, as the martyr, the saint speaks when he's act -- otherwise you couldn't interpret his actions. There is is no action without the word, without speech. If I slap you in the face, I can do it for love and I can do it from wrath, you see. I have to add this, before you know whether I spank you as a father or whether I hate you as an enemy. Isn't that simple?

Therefore gentlemen, there is no act without the word. Get rid of that idea. Because nobody can explain any act if he doesn't know what name to give it. You always think, acting, acting. But all -- always implied that people know whether you are murdering somebody or butchering a goose, you see, or whether you are spanking a child, or whether you are taking revenge on an enemy. You can beat up somebody and do exactly the same as what you do

when you spank your child. But obviously the difference is in the word "spank," isn't it? It's the only difference. The outer act is exactly the same. Poison is medicine and medicine is poison, according to what you call it or what you intend to do with it. What -- your destiny of this same cup of poison is.

It's very strange in America that natural religion has abolished this. Natural religion, gentlemen, emphasizes thinking, without speech. Institutionalized religion, in telling you you have to go to church on 11 o'clock on Sunday, emphasizes hearing. Living religion emphasizes the honesty of your word. You have to make your promise good. The 50th Psalm says, you see, "The righteous man is he who speaketh of the law of the Lord day and night." You must have heard this first Psalm -- that far your religious knowledge has perhaps gotten you. Gentlemen, have you ever thought that this is simply true, that my friend the Catholic man with the materialistic philosophy, you see, did not speak of the law of the Lord day and night? And that's why he had no living religion. Otherwise he would have not said that man does everything for economic reasons, because his children he doesn't want to make -- believe -- this. He wants them to love him. He wants them, of course, to honor father and mother, you see, and he sends them to Sunday school. But wouldn't it be better if he taught the children in Sunday school himself? Sunday school after all is a makeshift, gentlemen. All your parents and all yourselves who send children to Sunday school have no right to do so if you weren't willing to teach them exactly the same thing yourself. That's why most Sunday schools are such a craven crime, because parents send their children to Sunday school without believing themselves a word of what is said there. Think it is very nice that the children are taken off their hands on Sundays. Well, don't -- isn't it true? Isn't that the greatest blemish on religion today, that parents dare to send their children to a Sunday school without believing one word of what is said there? That's the Devil. And the children know it. Every child knows very well whether his parents believe what the minister tells them there or whether it doesn't -- they don't. So of course, you see, corruption of the best is the easiest.

And why -- where does it always happen, gentlemen? As soon as the parents would never say this themselves to a child, responsibly. To speak means to feel responsible for another person's life. You cannot make a sacrifice if you have not the certain feeling that your life is less important than another's. Sacrifice means that you know the importance of another life, and that you have to guarantee this life.

A famous story is told by a Mr. von Hgel, a man whose name I want you to know, a famous Catholic in the 19th century. His great specialty were the mystics of the Middle Ages, but he was a decent fellow, just the same. And this Baron von Hgel, who lived in England, he is of Austrian-Belgian nobility and when

his family migrated to England, he followed. His father had been Austrian ambassador to Brussels. And well, it doesn't matter, only that he is a very international person, and has written all his books in English. And if you ever want to give -- make a pleasure to your girlfriend, give her the Letters of Baron von Hgel to his niece. That's one of the most charming books on education and religion that exists in any language. And since you have -- never know what to give your girlfriend anyway, I recommend this book very highly. Letters to My Niece, or to his niece, Baron von Hgel. It's a small book, it's not -- he gives there some just excellent, simple rules of how to go about the religious life very soberly. He says any man who want to live religiously has to turn to the world the next minute and forget about religion. Otherwise he goes nuts, you see. It's the breathing in and the breathing out -- a very fine way in which he puts these processes. Of course, you cannot obey God more than man and you cannot know what are things, you see, compared to life, if you do not act out this in the world of things and in the world of man. He makes it very plain, very simple.

Well, I was not going to say this, but he repeats a story which he tells about sacrifice, or living religion. There was an Oxford boy, a man who had gone to Oxford -- a student at Oxford, and his sergeant in the Boer War, as a sergeant was a routine soldier. You may say a mercenary, who had written -- signed up with the British Army and there was 24 years or longer already in the service. The boy was a -- of a noble family, as the lords go, and was going to be the heir of a big title and heirdom in England. He was a lieutenant, and this was his sergeant. And they fought the Boers. And that was a very bloody and cruel war and it was a guerrilla war. That is, the Boers had scattered, because they could not resist in open battle the organized British Army, and therefore you never were safe. The guerrillas penetrated behind the lines and there were no two fronts, which makes war rather simple, you see, in trench warfare. But the enemy was everywhere, so they couldn't be surprised that one day when they just climbed over a railroad track -- how do you call it, the dam of the railroad -- how do you call it? The railroad bed? Or would you call it --

(Bed, embankment.)

Wie? Bed? Embankment. Yes, this is perhaps -- of the embankment. Bang! Bang! Bang! A machine gun tried to raze them, and the boy from Oxford threw himself across the path of the machine gun and protected the sergeant, who was I think 44, and the boy was perhaps 22. And the boy was immediately mortally wounded. And the sergeant broke down and said, "But how could you do this? Your life is much more worth than mine -- much more valuable. You mustn't." And he was in tears. And the boy could say before he died, "What could have been more wonderful?"

Now, if you can understand this, you know what religion -- living religion is. That means, that at that moment, you forget, you see, your own philosophy about the value of your own life and the importance of yourself. And it's not very difficult for you, I hope, to grasp, that you would have done the same in his case. But at that moment, he enacted a deep faith, that when a man has the honor to prolong life of somebody else, he better do it, even at the expense of his own. It's a great honor. It's the same if you see a child drown and it may be a poor, feeble-minded child. And if you don't jump, if you can swim at all and take off your clothes and jump into the river. You certainly are not a man if you consider that it is better that you survive than the child. Isn't that true? Do you doubt it? You seem to doubt it.

In those moments, gentlemen, everybody knows what he has to do, fortunately. But when one discusses it in a classroom, some people sit back and know always -- try to know better than they know themselves. I mean, most people have a very low idea of their own religion, but they have it, I'm glad to say. And I feel that, in this country, you can rely very much that 80 percent of the people will jump into the water to save a child, but when you debate it with them, they will deny it. Isn't that true?

Now, this boy, who made the sacrifice, gentlemen, had to say this one word -- "What could be more wonderful?" -- to make the act meaningful. Without his word, we would to this day not know whether it was just accidental, whether it was his act or not, you see. But we have to know that in order to interpret, you see, life -- his life, at least -- at all. And you must see that this sentence makes the act meaningful. Doesn't that true?

So I have given you an example, gentlemen, of a speaking sacrifice. Any husband who says that he wants to marry his wife for better, for worse, risks that she -- the next day she may look very ugly from an operation. That's a great sacrifice, gentlemen, to be tied to such a woman. With God's help, one can go through this. But this may be very terrible, a very great sacrifice. There's no way out by divorce in such a case, isn't there -- is there? And that's what you say, when you say, "For better, for worse." That's why you should say it yourself, gentlemen. Please when you get married, do not allow the minister to say this for you and just repeat it. Learn it by heart. Otherwise I don't think it shows any -- your understanding. It's terrible, these ceremonies in this country. It doesn't exist in any other country, this ugly idea that the minister has to tell you three words at a time, and then you repeat the most important statement you can ever make in words in all your life. I've seen twice people say it themselves without the minister. I felt much relieved. But you -- you betray yourself of the greatest moment of your life if you allow the minister to -- that's the abuse of institutionalized religion. That's just superstition. Do you think the word becomes correct

because he says it? You must have heard these ceremonies, which are empty and shallow. And there you see how easy it is to distinguish between good institutionalized religion and poor institutionalized religion. This has nothing to do with your faith in the Roman Catholic church, or in the Protestant church, or in God Almighty, when you are just too lazy to -- not to make this statement about your intentions with -- when get married yourself. And you don't make it yourself when you just allow this other fellow to -- who is just another fellow at that moment -- to make this. The Church has always held, since Christ's days, that marriage is a sacrament, administered by husband and wife to each other, because it is the declaration of a sacrifice. The woman says "I'm willing to risk my life by giving birth to a child." And every woman risks her life in doing that. And the husband makes the sacrifice that -- he's going to stick it out with her, even though she may be as ugly the owl the next day.

Of -- all the other -- this is really the worst part of the sacrifice. And it is one. And don't believe -- betray it. Marriage is a sacrifice of your own free will. It is the abdication of one's will. And you can't get married for having fun. It's impossible. Marriage is not fun. And in marriage, the word "sacrifice" appears in the center of all of your lives. The vow of a monk, gentlemen, not to marry, is not more of a sacrifice than the vow of a man to marry. It ranks just equal. It's exactly the same in the other direction.

And I think that the balance between the three religions, which everyone has to live out, the conflict between one's mind and one's action and one's obedience, one's authority, or one's institutions -- that this conflict will never be solved unless you learn again, gentlemen, to take those occasions seriously where you are allowed to speak. For example, when you have to bury a dear friend, or your father, or your mother. It may be that you have to speak, because you will -- it will not do that a paid minister of religion comes instead, and speaks on the grave about a person whom he has never known.

I had to bury my father. I had to bury my father-in-law, myself. And that, of course, were the greatest moments. I was committed. And the whole family was elated, because it was not an outside man who spoke. And why don't you take advantage of these opportunities, you little cowards? And then you wonder that institutional religion is both arrogant and stale. You make it so. It is arrogant if the minister tells you what to say at a wedding. And it is of course stale if you allow the minister to say -- to speak at a funeral or at a wedding. You can. Everybody can who has the neighborhood, you see, the experience of the other person's life. When a person dies whom you have loved, you are able to speak about the merits and the place of his work. Everybody knows very well this, but you run away. A quarter of a year before the man finally dies, he is never seen again. He's somewhere in a hospital. He's in a coma. And they use all these drugs to

keep him away from his moment of death. He cannot bless you and you can therefore not render the blessing by saying the last word of thanks at his grave. And that's what we call today "civilized America." It's a barbarous country. It has no religion with regard to death. And in this sense, I must say this Englishman was right. America -- you have just to read Evelyn Waugh on the wonders of Woodland, or how this is called in California. Who has read this Evelyn Waugh business?

(The cemetery in Los Angeles?)

Yes.

(The Loved One.)

That's the end of all civilization. They have managed in California to go from barbarism to decadence without ever touching civilization.

Gentlemen, this is very serious. A people that is not blessed by the dying and will not say themselves the last word of the obituary or eulogy about the dying, and a family in which the people can wed without being serious about it and spontaneous, cannot live. Cannot live.

I do not wish to go astray, but later on you must remind me another time I'll tell you the story of two American chaplains, how they betrayed their barbarism in -- chaplains in the Army, and the Navy, during the World War. And they are ashamed of it, now. Now they know better. But at that time, they were just the typical college graduate, who runs away from death and says, "Don't mention it."

I think we have made some headway, gentlemen. We have now gotten the instruments of understanding all religion. Gentlemen, that's not a small matter. And we have done it by freeing ourselves from the superstition that a man has one religion. One is nothing, because then everybody says, "I have a different religion." And as soon as you give -- say "One man, one religion," you see, you get nowhere, because everybody says, "You don't understand me." But as soon as you break it up into man's actualization, you see, of his relation to past, present, and future, you know whence he says he has come; you know that he thinks he knows where he wants to go; and you know where he is at present.

Now, gentlemen, religion therefore becomes what it always has been called since 1954 years, a way of life. The simplest translation of "religion" is: a way of life, under the understanding that it doesn't mean a way from New York to Los Angeles. It's not -- a way of life is not a way through space. But it's a way through time. It is a wisdom to give to the past what belongs to the past, and to

the future what the future needs to come about, and to survive in the present under the conflict of these two demands. And we'll say, gentlemen, the past is in danger because all is cluttered with dead corpses, which we call things. A thing is a corpse of the past.

That will strike you as strange, gentlemen, but our universe is probably filled with dying matter, with matter that has died. It's not my idea, but a great French philosopher, {Ravaillon,} already 100 years ago said, "Let all these naturalists should cease to talk. It isn't that dead matter has created living matter, but the universe is filled with corpses." We all leave corpses behind. Dead stars, who have been aglow, and now they have died.

Now try to think this, gentlemen, out, for a minute. Thing equals corpse. You just have to think of coal, which was once an organic substance, a wood, a forest. You know that, petrified forest. There you have the greatest example of the history of life on this earth. Former life is still there, visible, in the form of oil or in the form of carbon. It was alive once, and now it's dead. It reverses the whole process of the man with the natural religion, of course, who thinks, you see, that he himself in his little manufacturing business, produces life out of dead things. The test tube, gentlemen, you see. I don't believe in the test-tube gentleman, but I do believe that life is always excellent if it can die.

Gentlemen, a living being has the great excellency of being allowed or able to die. Dead things cannot die. Will you take this down? Dead things cannot die. Living beings may die. God keeps the world only going through those livers, those living beings who, because they know of their death, can restore life. That's what we can. Because you and I know that we are going to die, we can do something about the regeneration. For example, you can get married. You can write a book. You can reform the legislation, so that not everybody has to become such a crook as you are. That is, gentlemen, man is -- has the great honor that he can die, and even know of his death. Dead things cannot. Now you'll see that that throws first of all light on our first commandments, that dead things take second seat before living things, gentlemen. To know a dead thing from a living thing means also to know the past against the future. The dead things belong to the past, encroach on us from the past. The living beings enter time, you see, and beckon us from the future. The difference from life and death is also a difference -- distinction between past and future.

The more you assimilate this, gentlemen, the more you know what religion really is. It is an attempt to salvage from the past only that which is alive. And it tries to keep the -- out of the future that which already has died, the corpses. If I say, "Man must obey God more than men," the simple interpretation of this is, you see: if men are in alliance with dead things, the { } to command, I have to

rebel against it. If they defend the future against my own dead weight and laziness, I must obey them in God's stead. That is, if man must obey God more than men, it also means that he must find out whether the people in authority or himself are defending at this moment a corpse interest, or a future interest, or the interest of a future otherwise not possible, otherwise blocked.

This equation, gentlemen, is now, I think, central. You will not follow -- will not be able to follow this course if you do not put these three things together: thinking, speaking, listening. If you want to, say "obeying," but "listening" is I think good enough. Past, present and future, but distribute it right. Where does thinking go?

(The present.)

The present, you see. And the third, to decide to cut the present, and split the present every moment into that which has died and is a corpse, and that which has to be born and is a seed. You know this old sentence, "By their fruits you shall know them." But there is dead sperm. There is dead seed. And there is corpses, who have -- contain nothing anymore to expect from. So the third {eke} -- trinity, so to speak, is the division, in every given moment, in any present moment between those things that must be explicitly sent to Hades, to the grave, must be buried, and those things that must be declared to have been born.

Let's have a break here.

We can now look back once more on natural religion, as it -- because it is so very predominant, and state some of its dogmas and criticize them, I think now, very easily. I was asked by one of you, quite rightly, what the -- about the Quakers, who officially defy the institutionalized church. As you know, that's a very doubtful assertion at this moment after 300 years of Quakerism, as you can be born a Quaker. It's -- it has become hereditary, and with -- by this very fact, it is an institution. Anything you inherit is institutionalized. And they can't help it. They have a great problem there. Who knows of Quakerism? Who is a Quaker? Well, as you may know, there is a difference between a Quaker who is self -- has become a Quaker himself and the child who is -- becomes a Quaker because his parents are, in the meeting. You belong to the meeting, if you are a Quaker, you see, the one at the church; instead of "church," they call it "meeting." And they have certain preference. Now, by this preference of a child born from a Quaker, from Quaker parents, there is this institutional element very clearly there. Who asked me the question? You see. That's a very, very material thing and the Quakers prefer people who have, whose family have been Quakers to those who become Quakers. If you were right, they should be the other way. They should prefer to have people who have not inherited grace, you see.

Then, of course -- I have worshiped with the Quakers myself on {Pendle Hill,} near Philadelphia, and at other occasions, but there it's very impressive, because that's the Quaker center. And you know the service is that you wait for the inner voice. Now, it is still not a philosophy and a religion, because the people there are all acting out the priesthood of the faithful to hear the Word of God which they are then meant then to proclaim. You see, anybody can get up at a Quaker meeting after a certain time of silence and say what the spirit is telling him to say. So this richness of the three processes of hearing, thinking and saying is indeed there. And Quakerism only lives by those who then finally do get up, you see, and -- you may say -- make the sacrifice of saying something. That is, of course, in any -- if you have, I don't know, who has a little bit of theological instruction himself -- in Protestantism the highest sacrament is the Word -- the transubstantiation of the Word itself in the sermon and in our prayer. That is, that which is simply there comes to us as an institutionalized corpse, as a form like the "Our Father in Heaven," has to be filled with us, with our own sacrificial intent to such an extent that it comes to life. And that is the real meaning of the Resurrection in Protestant Christianity. Believe it or not, the Word has to rise from the dead. As an institutionalized word, it is nothing but printed matter, you see. But if we enter upon it, it rises from the dead and that is what is called in the great theological controversy of the centuries, the transubstantiation -- by this, that which is bread and wine becomes His body and His blood.

I only want to mention this to show you that this problem the Quakers had to face, too, you see. The transubstantiation of the Word, that is, the unification of past, present, and future is within them, too, because they still speak of God and Christ, you see. And therefore, if this word comes to life at their meeting, the past, by which they are, you see, called The Friends, and the present, and the future are tied together. Only, of course in the Quakers, the attempt is made to tone down institutional religion to the limit, you see, and to build up sacrifice to the hilt. But that's only a shift in emphasis. An element of all three must be there. Otherwise there would be no Quaker meeting. Because the Quakers know ahead of time that next Sunday they'll meet. That's enough to be institutionalized. It's the past, demanding respect. Gentlemen, any date predicted in the calendar is a part of the past encroaching on the future. You cannot live by a businessman's calendar and say -- know ahead of time when New Year is -- next January 1st -- without having already ruled over the future. And there the past is present.

Who has taken Philosophy 9? You know I tell this story there of the two bankers who meet -- or the industrialist and the banker. And the industrialist is a very busy-body man, very self-important, very conceited, and he -- they must meet again, and -- do you know, remember the story -- and the banker says, "Well, when can we meet again? We haven't finished our business. And it's November."

And the man says, "I'm sorry. I can't -- we can't meet before March 17, next year."

And the banker is very angry over this conceited ass, and he says, "Sorry, then I have a funeral."

By which he -- there you see the difference between a free calendar of the future, you see. A funeral cannot be put in the calendar ahead of time. It must happen. That's God's calendar. That's the free future. But the businessman's calendar, with all his conferences and meetings, that is the past, you see. All businessmen in America live only in the past. That's why they think they are so progressive. Because they are cluttered with dates. They even want to have as a calendar now -- you know, there's a great debate going on, they want to convince the Pope that Easter should always fall on the same day. We should have 13 months, and for the year 2050, we shall know when Easter comes, and it must always be on the same day. And we must give -- have the feeling that is just a machine. That's the American Chamber of Commerce's ideal of a human calendar.

Anybody who knows the distinction between life and death, gentlemen, must fight such a notion. You must live in a world partly predicted, and partly absolute free and astonishing. And the falling -- free-falling of Easter is an attempt to tell you and me that the coming of the divine spirit of freedom into this world of nature is against all the rules of the 365-day calendar. It's different and every year. And that's its glory. But in this country, you cannot even talk to a Roman Catholic about this. Even here they bow to the Chamber of Commerce and, "Oh, it is a good idea, and it's only perhaps the Pope in Rome will allow it," and they write letters to Rome and say, "Couldn't it?" and so on. Terrible. {You haven't} understand the alpha and omega of religion, gentlemen. Anybody who knows of this split of the three tenses in past, future, and present as the real religious question of man -- he also knows that he should have lived in three calendars. And he should defend them against each other. And the religious calendar must never coincide with the natural calendar, nor must he with his personal calendar. If you feel like going off on a spree, and climb the White -- Mount Washington, you have my blessing. But it must be for a good reason that you break the routine of this college.

I had a young friend here in this college. He visited me the other day, and we remembered a story. He was in love with a girl, but the girl was very young and the father was very violent and told the girl she could never see this man again. And he came to me in great despair, and it was on a Tuesday, I think, or Monday, of the week. And he said, "You know, he wants to see me on Sunday together with his girl, when she comes out -- my girl -- when she comes back from

college. There will be a terrible scene and he will just expel me out of his house and I don't know wish to have my poor girl go through this terrible agony that in her presence I am just taken down. And what should I do?"

Well, I say, "If you are man, you can do something very simple. You can go down there two days ahead of time and face the old man by yourself. And spare your girl the agony. It's just your cowardice if you don't do that. If you wait for his -- go by his appointment book, that's ridiculous. Aren't you a free man?"

And he said, "But we have an hour exam on Thursday."

So I got disgusted. I said, "I won't speak to you one word, if the hour exam has anything to do with this decision."

Well, he left. He went down on Thursday, and he didn't take the hour exam and he did talk to the old man. And when the girl came home from Smith College, the father said to her, "He looks like a very nice man. I think I'll take him into my business."

Now here you see the three calendars, you see. The businessman's calendar was on Sunday to have the conference on family matters. And weekdays, you have the conferences in the more important matters. But the boy was in the same temptation. He had the academic year calendar and he thought that an hour exam came first. So all -- both were superstitious. And he had to break these two calendars, you see. Now the college calendar, to tell you the truth, consists of nine months' no work and three months' vacation, as you know. And so it is a very different calendar from the businessman's calendar, is it not? But it's a make-believe calendar. So the hour exam is the high point, you see, of makebelieve.

May I venture to say, gentlemen, that all of us live in these three calendars? That is, part of our life is fixed. You get 70 years to be 70 years and you get to be 21 and get the key of the house, and so on and so forth. This is the natural calendar. But that's only one. Then you have the industrial calendar, the business calendar, which is quite objective and works 24 hours a day. And then you have your personal calendar. You must know when to take off, and when to disappear, and when to take a cut in this course, and when to be there and ask even for more hours than I am willing to give. That will also happen, that you want to enlarge on what is given and you talk to me privately and have a conference. By the way, I'm very glad that anybody wants to talk to me about this. We can have an appointment.

But gentlemen, again there's the great American natural religion. And from

this point of view which we now have reached, that I tell you that past, present and future have three different calendars: a personal calendar, that comes from your own philosophy of life, you see; a sacrificial calendar, when this boy skipped his hour exam, you see; and a natural calendar -- an economic calendar, you can say -- from necessity, where electricity has to be produced and commodities have to be and -- food has to be produced, you see, and we cannot ask when to produce it. We have just to take the seasons as they come, as they fall.

We now turn back to the American dogmas. Gentlemen, one of the dogmas of the natural religion is that this distinction between the three calendars must not exist; that past, present and future must be made to look alike; that they are not three different worlds, three different realities, which must be reached by three quite different approaches. One by love and sacrifice, the other by reflection and meditation, and the third by natural law, so to speak, by routines. But the natural religion-man says that if everybody is made reasonable, and has the right philosophy, everything will go peacefully, automatically without conflict and it's only the stupidity of man who has the wrong philosophy that we still have wars, or civil war, or race prejudice, or any such thing. You know these naturalistic people who always say, "Oh, it's just a question of education." I see you educating Mr. Malenkov. That's one of the greatest hobbies of the American women, you see, from which you have to escape. That man is only wicked as long as he is not educated. As you well know, there's no more wicked man than an educated man. If he is wicked, an educated wicked man is much worse than an uneducated wicked man. Education has nothing to do with goodness, or with religion. Most educated people are irreligious, arrogant. You think I am religious because I know so much? My only danger is that I know too much, so that I may lose my religion. I know much more than you, gentlemen, so it's very much more difficult for me to be religious.

But the natural religion-man said that knowledge is goodness. One thing. Second, there's one calendar, and because there's only one dimension of time. So to the natural man, time is the fourth dimension of space. It's just one dimension. He goes by the clock.

Next dogma: because he goes by the clock, it is not a question of life and death, but a question of more or less. A question of quantity. Gentlemen, when something is a question of life and death, then you have to ask, "How long?" Every religious question, I've told you, is a time question, "when." For example, you have to love your fatherland, you country, but how long? If it becomes a Hitler Germany, gentlemen, you leave it, as I have done. And you say, "It's dead. It has died for all practical purposes." And you know the debate is still not closed in Germany, over the victims of Hitler -- whether in resisting him they were the noble martyrs, you see, of a real faith, or whether they were traitors. The old

Nazis, of course, say they -- that we were traitors.

That's a decision you have to make as a religious man. When does your loyalty to any one end? When you get married, you have to be loyal to your wife. And the Bible says, you have to leave your parents, you see. You gain your parents only afterwards, as the grandparents of your children. That is the way in which -- this wonderful way in which love works, that if the parents have given up their son, they will have the grandchildren. If they want to cling to their son -- if the mother wants to have the son, the mother is -- the daughter-in-law will take care of it that she never has the grandchildren, because that's her revenge on being raped, or biased, or deprived of the love of her husband, spiritual love of her husband, through her mother-in-law. And that, as you know, is the great conflict in this country: the subduing of the wife's rights. There's a -- either she goes too far in her stealing the son, which is terrible, because they have no common religion. In natural religion, gentlemen, women have no religion together. The brotherhood of man, I'm afraid, does not include the relation between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. Natural religion cannot solve the problem, gentlemen, that past and future are in conflict, and yet at peace, because there is only one dimension, one natural time.

Now I'll give you a great secret. When you -- have you ever heard in the church, people pray, "As it was in the beginning, now is and ever shall be." Have you heard this? That's the greatest heresy, the way it is understood today, in all the churches of America, including the Catholic church. The Anglicans even pray, "World without end" -- the Episcopalians, which is -- adds agony and heresy to the full meaning. This great prayer was introduced in 507 of our era, 507 in Southern France, as an attempt to express the miracle that although something had been true in the past, it had to be renewed at present, and it would have to be regenerated in the future. That is, Christ had died on the cross before, and he has to die again today, { } your sacrifice, and He will -- the Holy Ghost will have to save us again from the misunderstanding of the present. That is, we can be -- know of the Council of Orange, on which it was introduced. The great problem then was to say, "It is a miracle that the now, and the past, and the future are speaking to us." By itself, gentlemen, time is suffering from a fragmentation bomb. Time as you live it, actually, at this moment, is in tidbits, in fragments. You have no relation to the past, no relation to the future. You just live yourself, your own mind. You philosophize.

All natural religion, gentlemen, cannot see in time the problem of unifying fragments, but it says, "Time is given outside, externally." Gentlemen, why is time given not outside, externally? Why is religion -- natural religion the opposite from living religion? Why is it just a philosophical religion? And therefore, only one-third of the whole thing? For a very simple reason, an amazingly simple

reason, and that's why no minister ever tells you. It's too simple probably. {It has the idea} -- one has to be obviously as na‹ve as I am to be astonished as children would be about what really religion is after. As long as you think that time is there, that the whole time -- the world has one time, and that's -- runs from millions of years back to the Third World War, and then it's all over. You have, as you well know, this funny idea of the most natural scientist: time is unspeakably long, as far as yesterday goes; and the future, until the hydrogen bomb explodes, is just a little bit here. That's what most Americans feel to be the future. Just a very short moment then we all explode.

America at this moment has no balance between future and past whatsoever, because you say -- tell us even, this nonsense that there are 1,000 million years have elapsed from the coming of the earth, you see, and three more years will elapse until Russia is superior with bombs to America. That's -- the end. Now three years in the future and 1,000 million years in the past, that's out of balance, is it not? I only call a religious person a man who has exactly as much future as he has past. Ask yourself if you are religious. But if you really pray that God is as much in the future as in the past, obviously, He has as much time coming as He has gone through with the past. You don't believe that, at all. Nobody in this country believes that, at this moment. You all have the jitters. You all think that it will all be over in a minute. Or in a hundred years, that's -- oh, a hundred years, who'd think of America in 2054?

Gentlemen, I gave a lecture in Europe two years ago on spiritual life, or the laws of our spiritual life from 1100 to 2000. And the university where I lectured of course couldn't take that. And so they thought it was a misprint, and they -- so I -- when it was announced, it read, "The laws of the spiritual life between 1100 and 1200," because everybody today is so sure of the past. And then I said, right before my audience and I said, "My -- if this is 1952, if I am worth anything, obviously I must talk to you something that will come to fruition in 2000. That's the minimum. Because then you" -- these were boys of 20 -- "will be 70, and then you will have the possibility to do something about what I say now. Therefore, if I say in 1952, the laws of the spiritual life from 1100 to 2000, I mean every word of this. I mean that I can only say something, because I've tried to tell you what will be necessary to make life possible in the year 2000."

And if these people, with this -- the great issues here speak, do you think that one great issue is ever involved among these people? It's always the issues of yesterday, that these people treat. They call that "great." Impatient people. If they -- if the people with the Great Issue course would get -- ever try to get you, they would try to show you what you have to think in 2000, and not today. That's a great issue. An issue of today can never be great. It's too late. It's all in the past. That's all mechanized. I mean, there again you cannot -- I mean, you cannot do

anything about it. You sir, come to { }? What is your interest in this matter? And you are fortunately not interested at all. You're bored stiff.

Gentlemen, that's one point. the second point of natural religion is: since it has no relation to the difficulty of getting the times -- past, present, and future -- into balance, it also thinks that the only way of dealing with time is to accelerate it.

I'll give you one dogma. You always say you are not dogmatic, but the natural religious man is the most intolerant man I know. The liberal is the most dogmatic thinker in this world. I know it, gentlemen, because I have suffered from the intolerance of liberals, all my life. I've been persecuted just by the liberals. I cannot believe their nonsense.

Everybody in this country thinks that to say something in an hour is better than to say it in three hours and to say something in five minutes is still smarter than to say it in 60 minutes. Now, gentlemen, if you have the more-or-less approach to life, and then you only dealing with dead matter, and then time, too, is something you can measure by the yardstick. But I assure you, gentlemen, that important experiences cannot be shortened because they must be born. Now the birth of a child takes nine months, and there's no way to whittle that time down. And the seasons of an eye -- of the plant take a year, and there's no way of shortening this, and no desire should there be to shorten it in a hothouse. And we know what we think of hothouse fruits. They have no taste. And hothouse children, and children prodigy. They are the crime of the natural religion-man, gentlemen, the children prodigy.

A friend of mine is a psychiatrist. And to him came parents. Had a very bright child and they had asked from this child not only to listen to music, but to learn at the age of 2 the name of all the conductors and composers. And at the age of 3, the child was just a vegetable. They had made it into a child prodigy and they had killed that child. And he said, "I can't do anything to you parents. You have killed this child's mind."

Why? Because the parent thought it was better for a child to know at 3 than at 15. You all believe that. It's your deepest instinct that you can accelerate the life of the mind. That is, if you have only philosophy as the element of religion, which is all religion, and you don't believe in institutionalized religion, in hearing and obedience, and if you don't believe in sacrifice, then you must bring up a child as early as possible with its own philosophy. That's progressive education. Progressive education says, "The only religion of the child is his consciousness." It must purpose. It must know. So these children have no time. Now, gentlemen, the wisdom of our creator is that He has given three different growing processes

to our existence on this earth. And they do not ask our arbitrary timetable, but they have to be respected.

The real timetable, gentlemen, of the past still lasting, of the future already knocking at the door, and of our present -- waking and doubting, and fooling around, and thinking and meditating, and cogitating, you see, and reflecting and balancing and checking off the past against the future, and the future against the past -- these three calendars are God's revelation to you and me. That is, they come to you and me as real acts of your and my faith. Everybody -- you know very well that at 18 you couldn't get married. Who tells you this? { }. And perhaps you want to go and have all the fun of it, and you know very well that some deep voice in you or your parents to whom you { }, you { } at that moment the right to speak to you in your own {self-faith}: "It's nonsense. You can't." Gentlemen, the timing is the religious aspect of all your actions. The main point of a man is not that he must eat, but when he does eat. We -- the glutton eats all the time. The ascetic eats only rarely. The moderate man eats regularly. Three religions, three timetables. The glutton is completely, you see, dedicated to the always. That is, we all die, gentlemen, we all shit, we all sleep. All the functions of delight, after all, are the same, as it is expressed in the "brotherhood of man." The Russians all go shitting and urinating together. That's very brotherly. They really do it. They make a point of it. In the Army, one does, too. Terrible.

Because, gentlemen, the problem of life is the distinction of a person: it's not that we must do all these things, but it's usually when he does it. That's all we can do. Life seems materially very much fixed, you see. Well, it makes quite a difference whether you study at 45, after you have made a fortune, or whether you study at 18, before you want to learn anything. Girls perhaps should go to college at 45. A woman has -- leaves her ignorance when she comes into the years of change. That's very important, then that she should, you see, use her brain. Now, the girls should not go to college at 18. We could instead establish some markets for managing the girls, wouldn't you think that -- ? These girls should not go to college because the question "when" has not been asked as a religious question for these women. They just imitated the men, the suffragettes, as you know. They are feminists. But they wanted to have men's rights. So they got it. And their soul has been injured, because they have not asked religiously, "When do I need this," but they have asked dialectically, you see, "Me, too." Now the "Me, too" attitude is never a religious attitude.

And the whole college system of America suffers, as you know, from this idiotic idea that you have -- you see, that you can get what you can. You can buy this wisdom here for $45 -- bucks or how much is it now for one course?

(Eighty.)

Eighty. I have slept. All right.

But I'm quite serious, gentlemen. The question "when" is the only important question in the religious life, I have said before. Now perhaps you discover why, because the present is always the moment in which the schedule is changed. It has to be decided whether to go on with the old things or to make room for something beside the old things, or to throw out something old. All religious decisions are -- bring about a changing calendar; other, they are not religious. Therefore, past, present, and future are not automatically connected, but they are always contradictory. That is no future which is just the extension of the past. That's an abuse of the word "future." And you all abuse the word "future."

Well, I have to stop here. Thank you.