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

If you want to understand your own situation in a liberal arts college, in this play -- play environment -- it has also been called a {gonal}, I mean, of -- of competitive athletics, where you rival -- where you try to excel. You can see what happens to love when it is taken out of its own sphere of recognition and is just made into a willful play. In the Jupiter -- religion of the Greeks, Venus became Eros. Eros is willful love, gentlemen. It is willful love. There is one epic which goes so far -- in old Greece -- which says that Jupiter himself, in order to move the earth because -- and get it going and supply something that would overcome the death of every special life, became Eros himself. It couldn't be clearer said -- more clearly said that the Greeks in this -- made an attempt to have a purely willful religion. And in -- if you read Plato, the great difference between Plato and Christianity is a simple one, that in him Eros is willing. Eros is not passion, but it is want. It is "I will love. I need this." It doesn't come above us as something that we suffer.

So if you -- you see, I have { } to this. You see, in this country, as you know, everything is today just sex -- that is, the part of the mechanical sphere even. Think of your artificial semination and we believe -- love has been destroyed by giving into this sphere. Or at best, in good society, it is Eros. It is state. It is flirtation. It is still willful. Now the difference between the girl whom you marry and the girl whom you date -- we talked about this already -- is always that, if it is a date, you still feel that you can take it or leave it. Or she can take it or leave it. Love is too serious for this, you see. Love is much nearer to a disease than to a free act of your will. It is more powerful than you, which is -- as much destructive as it is constructive. Love has often destroyed people. But it's terribly important, gentlemen. If you take Eros, this little boy, as he is painted, a boyish thing, out of the -- then you have taken love out of its proper sphere. Eros is multiple love. There is no end to erotic experiences. Yet it is not mere sex. It's much nicer, because people speak to each other. Where there is speech, gentlemen, there is not just sex. You can take this really down. It's very important. And sex without song is sin. Now Eros is sex with fun. When you say, "We want to have fun," that's Eros. If you say that you marry in order to have fun, you can't marry. Stay in the erotic sphere where you have many girls and she has many boys. That's all right for Eros, but it's not right for Venus. Because Venus is absolutely selective and exclusive.

It has -- there is a famous novel in -- written by a very spirited man from Prague -- {Golem} -- in which it is said that that the highest love would be not only the love to one woman, but only one embrace. And that should be the culmination, and then most people should die. This man, in an exaggerated

fashion, has the right idea of the power of selectivity, that one act of love, perf-- done to perfection is really the fulfillment of any life.

If you can understand this, gentlemen, you have taken a tremendous step into the understanding of religion. Because by your -- as we said of Prince Hal and Henry V -- if you do not understand when you have still the right to be Prince Hal and -- or when you have to be King Henry V in your life, then you are lost. And the girl even more so, if she doesn't know when to stop to be Princess Hal, as I think we should call this lady. Now in Eros, you have the application -- you remember we said in the sphere of purpose, there is play and work. With Eros, serious work is not concerned, but it is entering the sphere of work -- of play, which is still in the third sphere of clarity, of purpose, of plan, and of -- as we say, dates. If you can date a girl, you also are very happy to know that on Sunday afternoon she has to leave again. And you can work again. And that's all play. Those of you who have taken Philosophy 9 know that play is always distinguished by one simple feature. You can call it in and call it off at will. Play is something -- you stop and you begin whenever you please. And all serious life unfortunately has the terrible character that we can't do anything about its ending or its beginning. Nothing can be done by you and me by will. And war has to come to an end. And you can't stop it before, which people in this country just cannot understand, otherwise nobody would have coined this ghastly phrase, "Mr. Truman's War." War is in the sphere of not-play. And we can't do anything about ending a war, gentlemen. Any war ends when it is over. Any war ends when it is fought, and not before. You cannot understand this. To you, you only live in the third, or in the second sphere, and you have no idea of the distinction, gentlemen, between things that can be altered by your will and things that cannot be altered by your will. Therefore in love, you also never see the great distinction between Eros -- between fun, between your dating somebody -- and this thing getting serious and burning you up, that there is no longer any question in your mind that you have anything to say in this matter.

Most of you, of course, marry -- when they only play and so they never get married. I mean, the first marriage in America today is just an experimental marriage and ends in divorce. Which -- and I think there's no way out, because since you didn't get married, you can't acknowledge this marriage as being the real marriage. And once you're then 10 years older, you discover what a real marriage might be, then you go and get a divorce. Whenever you feel that you can leave it, just as much as do it, don't marry. Marriage is an evil which must be a necessary evil before it is undergone. And in necessary things, the word "evil" and "good" doesn't apply, you see. It is not a question whether sleep is good or evil. You have to sleep, or you go nuts, you see. No moral inquisition possible whether it's good to sleep or not good to sleep. You have to sleep, isn't that true? So you have to get married one day. But that's not good or it's not evil. It's --

gentlemen, all necessary things are beyond your moral etiquettes. And they are also beyond your choice -- choosing. You have to wait as long as possible and you do it when it is absolutely necessary. Because then you may be sure that you will respect it. If you do it too early, something which you feel you could have done and you could not have done, gentlemen, and you will not respect your marriage.

So I think we have made an important step into the division of the sphere of love, gentlemen. When it falls down into the sphere of sex, it is nothing, of course, of any relevance. It has lost its proper function of reviving life. Love is there to overcome death. That's the simple formula, gentlemen, which it's high time for you to recuperate. Love is not sentimental. It is not luxury. Love is the only way of which the -- nature knows in overcoming death. In physics, where love is not known, they say that the world must die from cold. At least they said this still five years ago. They have now -- are now giving up this notion. The famous second thermodynamic law says that everything ends finally in the death of -- by cold, as a constant loss of heat. Because these people have no idea that God created into the world some strange power called love, which is there to spell death. Whenever somebody dies, new people are born. But they are not born by accident. They are born in a wave of passion, which must be on a higher plane than mere life. You cannot mate without breaking down the whole structure of your purposive will. And that is what is called the orgasm of love. In orgasm, your organism gives way to the next form of life. So love, gentlemen, is one form of voluntary death. By love, we anticipate death. We disarm our own specification, our own special armor, and therefore we outrun death. If you mate in time and have offspring, then at the hour of your death, new life is there. But for this purpose, you have to envisualize love as a form of death, because you can have only healthy offspring and not a degenerate offspring if you can completely lose yourself in this passion of procreation, and forget yourself in order to give life to the next generation.

So I won't go into this {force, yet}. I am more anxious now to give you the fifth stage, the last sphere. Because then we'll go back and specialize in these various religions as they come under the -- as they try to be comprehensive and to give every one sphere its relative right in your and my life. Remember that all these spheres are results of our being frightened by change, by metamorphosis, by something that we have to undergo: death, transportation in space, change of our age, change of our health, change of our means of subsistence, as by work. It is always the fear of having nothing to live on, or live for, or live by, which makes it necessary for us to ask ourselves, "What does this change mean? Where do I -- can I hold onto something that lasts, across this chasm of change? Where am I before and where am I hereafter?"

Now in this fifth sphere, gentlemen, we leave behind the sphere of -- mutual recognition. We enter the sphere of fate, of war, of catastrophe. The Roman god of catastrophe, as I told you, was Saturnus, the god on Saturday. And the Jewish god who raised Saturnus and says, "I am he who comes. I shall be more," is, of course, Jahweh. That is, you have here already the two possible conceptions of the future, which is of the unknown future, per se; of catastrophe, per se. One, negative, a beautiful time ends by the outbreak of a war. The other, the history of salvation begins. The next event will usher in the golden age. You can look at the same event as an end of an era, or as the beginning of the next. Can you see this?

I read up yesterday The Dartmouth of the year '40. And there was a tremendous fight going on in the editorship of The Dartmouth among the staff there against any America -- participation of America into the war. And all the letters to the editor and all the editorials -- they were partly directed against myself, and that's why I had to look it up -- they tried to sell the idea that America -- in America everybody could do as he pleased, and everybody was there for himself, and why should anybody care for these self-destroying Europeans, and certainly America had nothing to do with these fools. Once they had maybe -- had made the mistake in 1917 to meddle with European affairs, we will never do it again. And the desperate struggle in this whole year of '40 was to sell to the students the idea that it is so wonderful, that we should not jeopardize this great anarchy of freedom in which -- this country indulged at that time with six million unemployed, as you know, and with a national income of $85 billion, instead of $365 as we have now. And the whole idea was -- 1914 or 1917 was the best year and all other things we should forget. It -- astounding blindness for people who have the privilege of enjoying an education. It -- which -- would be interesting to you really to look into The Dartmouth. It stands in Room 103 at the library. I recommend you to look into the year 1940 and '41, if you want to recognize your own -- your own beautiful soul. The idea being that anything that can come now must be worse than what we have. And that is -- would be Saturnus. The view of Saturnus is: any deep change is catastrophical, is negative.

Now as you know, the Jews have come into the world to combat this very view. They say anything is better than the idolatry of the powers or the idols of the marketplace now. The greatness of Judaism is that they say the will of God certainly is better than the will of the reigning few, at this moment, of the powers that be. Anything is better than today. That is the Jewish messianism. It's revolutionary. Because they say, "This as of today is not good enough for my soul. My soul yearns for a better day." The Saturnus belief, gentlemen, means that the -- today is better than any possible change. You can see how ambivalent it is. You and I will go through both stages. At one time, we will have -- you see, look at the future as Saturnicus keeps threatening us with dismay; and the other time, you will say, "Really I'm longing for the coming of the Lord. And this {world}

has to go." But you can also see how -- how tempting for a group to describe the future as purely catastrophical, and to fence off all change by saying anything we have -- capitalism, unemployment, everything is still better than what we can get with the dynamic of violent change. The violent change is always too costly. If you hear today the people who talk of evolution. They are very much off base. Saturnicus types. They are all {pagans}. Evolution is a humanistic Greek and Roman concept. That's why this country loves it, because this country is at this moment in the claws of a pagan religion, of Greek and Rome -- Greece and Rome. Very much the Renaissance has won out in America at this moment. And you -- Americans think that to hold onto what there is, is better than to have a break. In principle, there may be new inventions, but we all have the frame of reference which is in itself impeccable, is good.

So you see, as with Venus, where you have to distinguish between the 20-year-old woman and the 50-year-old woman, so you have with the change ahead of us on principle, which is beyond your and my private, individual choosing -- which has nothing to do with your and my aging; with the growth of children; it has nothing to do with work, planned work, but it has to do with conflict, coming from an outside world, as in a war, or with famine, with all the uncontrollable things. I would say that the American people have tried to live in the last 50 years in their mind with the idea that there will be less and less uncontrollable forces. And that we finally will have a way of prolonging life -- to 150 years, abolishing disease, abolishing slums, abolishing racial conflict, and that I -- finally the end of the world will be in general smooth-running -- a smoothrunning mechanism where everybody can play football as long as he wants. Gentlemen, that is not the truth about life. But if you have this religion, then the end of the world is only Saturnical. It is the god to be deprecated. For example, if you live -- believe this, you must hate all the Russian and Chinese Communists. The more you stick to the status quo, you -- more you must begin all those uncontrollable forces which ridicule your idea that you are in control. Saturn is the hatred of the uncontrollable, or the fear of the uncontrollable, or the -- course, also the humility to the uncontrollable. But it means the uncontrollable is recognized as still the uncontrollable, but it is deprecated; it is pooh-poohed; it is hated; it is, you see, made into the Devil.

The whole Jewish discovery, when they left the fleshpots of Egypt, was that you could change this, and yet you could say that God's ways are not men's ways, and that His ways shall -- must be praised and justified and blessed, the more they hurt your private and vested interests. That's the reason that you are -- that this was no good reason that you were hurt, to say that there was no God. Your famous logic, "There can be no God, because there is such a terrible war," that's, of course, no logic, because you first must know what happens in order -- before you know what God is. And you have first just your own private ethics.

You say, "I wouldn't do this if I were God." Then you depict God after your own model and say, "He shouldn't send such a terrible war. He shouldn't send concentration camps. He shouldn't send gas chambers," and such things. You have heard this and -- you must even have used the argument yourself very often.

So we are in the fifth sphere, gentlemen, in the great sphere of the justification of God. In the other spheres, you just take advantage of them. You don't argue with speed. You don't argue with -- money, with dollars, with gold. You worship it. You worship work, as with organization. Or you worship sex. You worship love, as with your cult of friendship, or with your cult of women, or with your mother-worship, if you are under the spell of matriarchy. Gentlemen, there is usually no argument about the gods of the first four spheres. Even Eros, all these things you like: wine, or you accept it, or you didn't -- but there's not much argument. When you come to a bull session on the existence of God, you always mean the god of the fifth sphere. That is, you mean that god which is totally uncontrollable, and which steps into your little private life with such majesty that all your own plans, all your own affections, all your own family relations are suddenly nothing, compared to the majesty of a world war. Who's interested who's your mother -- what your mother-in-law thinks of your -- thinks of her daughter-in-law if you are suddenly drafted, and have to march? I mean, all these family relations, which are the sphere of four, you see, of your personal affections -- it's all gone. All your nice plans of work, how -- when to take the next exam, that's all upset. One atomic bomb, and it's all forgotten. So gentlemen, the fifth sphere is impersonal. Or, to be more clearly, it is beyond your -- the reach of your own personal will, plan and affectionate -- affections in your group. And that's why we call it catastrophe, a catastrophe. It turns around your values. Because after this has happened, you have to find new family. Your family may have been bombed out of existence.

After the earthquake in Messina, a friend of mine woke up. He was in -- in Florence. And he woke up and his wife and nine children had perished in Messina. And to this day, he hasn't found anything. There were rumors that a Greek ship had landed -- 1908 it was -- in Messina after the terrible earthquake and had fished up some people. For 30 years, he believed that any day his children would appear again. He's still alive. Mr. Gaetano Salvemini. He's a great -- a very great Italian. He taught at Harvard for 10 years. Now he's back in Florence. Well, the fate of this man was completely, of course, changed by this catastrophe. Whether you have nine children and a wife or you haven't makes quite a difference, you see. Yet nothing in his own life could do anything in this direction, you see. And he had to sit there for 30 years and wait whether, perhaps in Southern Russia some babies had been rescued by this Russian battleship, you see, and whether they might reappear or not. And he was just the football of fate. Can you see this?

This is a very -- I mean outstanding case where you recognize your own decision. What do you do with uncontrollable powers in your most intimate life, gentlemen? What do you do when you go blind, when you lose a leg? It's uncontrollable. All your affections have to turn in other directions. All your will has to go another way. Your organism is even changed and certainly your outer material environment -- all the other force fields, gentlemen, are commanded by Saturnus, or by Jahweh, by the God who has created Heaven and earth.

And that's the wrong translation, gentlemen. You should not read the Bible as though it said, "God had created the -- Heaven and earth." If God -- it really means is God creates Heaven and earth. And if you get this earthquake, it means that He is still creating and changing, and catastrophically changing your environment. As long as you read the Bible with this wrong understanding that God one day created Heaven and earth, you have no idea what it means. Never did Moses mean this when he wrote the Old Testament. He meant to say that God at this moment was creating Heaven and earth. It is terrible, this translation. Does so much wrong. As you know, in Hebrew, there is only two tenses: the incomplete, the perfect tense; and the imperfect tense. But it has no -- not the meaning of present and past, as in our language. It means the act is completed, or the act is incompleted. But whether it is as we say, "yesterday" or "today," that was not even in the power of a Hebrew writer to express. And the whole problem of your understanding this attempt of the Bible is, of course, that a man who makes the experience -- like my friend Salvemini, that today his nine children and his wife disappear -- knows that the world is created today. And from there he gathered that it probably also was created in the beginning. That is, gentlemen, the -- our statements about the state of the reality, of the real world, in the fifth sphere, depend on your and my meeting the uncontrollable, today. Anybody who has met with an uncontrollable event in his own life says, "Therefore I know that God comes across our human plans and purposes -- our little plans and our little groups, you see -- with a mighty will and therefore since I have experiences in my own life, I date His actions back." The whole Bible story, gentlemen, is written from the experience of people who first have made contact with the power in Number 5, and who therefore have decided that the god who destroys my organism, my will, my affections and my physical environment is so much in power that he must have been in power all the time before.

So that's why the Bible today has no meaning for you, gentlemen. You read it as a history book. It has never been meant as a history book. As you know it's written around the Sabbath in the six days of creation, which every Jew lived his worship in Israel. On -- we'll come to this later. I won't give away the -- this now. But the main point is that in Sphere 5, gentlemen, what you have heard about all the world religions has to be reassessed by you. In this Sphere 5, you must understand that people have believed in God from their own experience and

then have projected this into the past, and that when they speak of the creation of God, in -- of the world by God -- they mean to say that they know how creation takes place, from their own experience. Anybody who has proposed to a girl knows that he is a different person after -- on the day after she has said "Yes." So he knows what creation out of nothingness is. If he has realized this, what this means -- that somebody has suddenly discovered you, you see, then you understand that God also said to the sun, "Be." And there was no sun before, but just a { }.

Everything, gentlemen, in your own life, comes first. St. Paul knows only, of course, that Jesus is the son of God, because he was remade by Him. And after the conversion -- you have to take this into account -- because he has experienced the total rebirth, he says that in Christ we are all reborn. It's not the other way around, because Christ -- he believes in the -- you see, in Christ, that he's -- then is reborn. It's all -- . First you have to be reborn before you know what rebirth is.

Gentlemen, your own experience of Sphere 5, then, you have to canvass. I don't think you have any. And that's why you only live in the 3-A sphere of play. Anybody who has been before catastrophe in his own life -- who has lost his parents on one day, or his best friend, or his love, or his -- as I say, his limbs -- may have a partial experience. You haven't. You are before this experience. But I warn you, you cannot judge any existing great religion at this moment, because you do not know on what experience they base their judgments. You cannot read the Bible. Begin to read the Bible when you are 40. Then you will have an understanding. The only way out of our situation is, don't read the Bible before you are 40. You have then a great thing to come to you. As long as the Bible is read in Sunday schools, there's no hope for your -- any understanding of religion. It's childish. Makes no sense to me. The first thing I would try, if I were a real minister, would say to my parishioners, "Don't allow your children to read the Bible, because they misunderstand it." You can see how important it is, gentlemen.

If this doesn't happen in your life, first, then it's all wooden. Why should we be interested in what God did in the beginning of the world? I'm not interested. Are you really? Just curiosity. You can read this up in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. What difference does it make whether there was a { } or a creator, and 600 million years ago? But what difference does it make today? A tremendous difference.

For me and you it is very important whether somebody is there who waits that you are responding to his call, and then we can also say, "Well, the mountain responded to his call, before. Obviously, because we respond."

So in this Point 5, gentlemen, of course all great religion hinges. Because in Point 5, the human -- solidarity of the whole of creation and the solidarity of the whole human race is at stake. All these processes are still limited in scope. As far as your love goes, well -- your pedigree, your friends -- that covers a rather small selection of the universe, does it not? I mean, these are your friends. All -- you can list them not on the fingers of your -- one hand, but you can list them still -- they are below a thousand, the people with whom you can really enter in cordial and affectionate relations. Your physical relations -- where you shit, and where you eat, and where you draw your textiles from for your garments -- that can be a limited room. You can have an autonomous economy covering two townships here in Vermont, you see. And they did. And they lived very happily, these pioneers, you see. They had their own flax, and they had their own wool, and they had their own leather all in the same town. That doesn't give a world view of religion. Can you see this? This is limited.

Gentlemen, wherever you come in touch with catastrophe, with violent change: fire, earthquake, storm, hurricanes, war, revolution, anarchy, degeneration -- these are the great items -- there the whole of creation and the whole of human society is at stake. And therefore you decide by your decision on this question whether you have attachment to the whole of the problem of life, or whether you have singled out yourself a little private religion of the white man or of the Yankee or of the Jew. That is, if you are just a minority religion. That wouldn't be a world religion. The problem of your belonging where -- which is -- the Question 5 poses -- is always to be decided either all men and the whole world or my little world and my little group against the whole world. That is, whether the Russians say they are only interested in Russians, or whether the Americans say they are only interested in Americans, or whether the people in Hanover say they are only interested in Hanover or the Fascists say they are only interested in Hitler, this is always a pseudo-religion, because it decides in -- that the -- one man's poison is the other man's meat. Or how do you say? Wie? What's meat to the gander -- wie? What is it?

(One man's meat is another man's poison.)

Ja. Poison. Gentlemen, the question of five always poses the question: is my enemy and myself under the same god, or is my happiness the other man's unhappiness and vice versa? If you cannot see that it is more important what to Russia and we are now undergoing together than what keeps us apart, then you have no religion. The purely secular statesman says, "I am only interested in weakening the Russians." If he had one grain of religion, he would -- knows that no secular statesman must ever be allowed to be just secular or to follow his secular policy out, because the Russians and we have something bigger in common. Isn't that true? This is the question between secular and religious,

gentlemen, in the Sphere 5.

Perhaps you take this down. It's quite important. It's unknown today. The secular mind sees in any catastrophe only the separate interests of those who benefit and those who suffer. The religious mind sees in the suffering itself the great problem: all suffer, or all benefit. So the Question 5 poses the problem of the solidarity of the whole human race and the unity of the whole universe. According to your decision in the experience of a catastrophe, gentlemen, you become a pagan or a believer in the living God. Paganism means to answer the experience of 5 by a division of loyalty, by a division of interests. If you are a pagan, you say, "What's good for Rome must be bad for Carthage. Therefore I rejoice that the gods of Rome," you see, "have -- are favoring us," you see, "and the gods of Carthage are weak." That's paganism. Now that's the -- same is true of capitalism and labor. If labor rejoices because capitalism doesn't reap any dividends, you see, it's pagan. If it can see that the golden goose cannot be slaughtered, that the Port of New York must not decay because otherwise there is no longshore union which can benefit by a contract any more, because the exports and imports no longer touch the Port of New York, then you have Christianity, or religion, you see. Can you see? It's very simple. The secular mind, gentlemen, meets an emergency with its partial interest. The religious mind is forced by the catastrophe to change its own mind. That is, my mind, as long as I am a member of the longshore union -- longshoremen union in New York, of course, I'm out for highers wages, I'm all for Mr. Bradley, and so on -- as soon however as I am wakened up to the emergency that the whole Port of New York may disappear one day, you see, I suddenly have to change my mind. The secular mind is that mind which must be changed by catastrophe. You can take it down this way. The secular mind is that mind which must be changed by catastrophe, or out goes that purpose which the secular mind has tried to defend. There are, of course, idiots who do not want to see the common interest, and prolong the agony. And they are the real devils. I mean, they are the isolationists in -- and they are the longshoremen union -- and there is in every -- way of life -- of life, a group of men who do not want to change their minds. Their minds -- they are prisoners of -- their own mind comes first. Therefore they cannot sense the catastrophe.

Gentlemen, in Sphere 5, the great question arises: do people realize catastrophes? Do people realize catastrophes? And how do they realize catastrophes? You realize love, here by a pang in the heart, you see. You realize work by a decision. You realize organic life by your bodily changes. By hunger, for example, you realize that you are hungry, you see. By breathing, you realize that you need oxygen. When you feel a bowel movement, you have to free yourself of your -- these feces. That is, every sphere realizes the change in a different way. Gentlemen, how do we realize catastrophe? This is a question of all questions.

It's the question of the prophets. It's the question of Christianity. It's the question of paganism. The pagan does not want to realize emergency. He wants to deprecate it. And he wants to say, "It won't be that bad." That's your attitude. The Jew, the prophetic Jew, the messianic Jew, that is, the believing Jew has brought into the world the tremendous power of sensing catastrophe, far ahead, of saying "It smells fishy. This is -- this order of things has to go. It won't last." And gentlemen, the middle attitude, the Christian attitude is not to sense it in general, but to determine the hour in which we must let go. The Jew has no country of his own for the last 2,000 years, as you know. He didn't have it in Babylon. That is, the Jew has discarded loyalties in anxious -- anxiousness to meet the next catastrophe, to be free when the prophetic voice sounds, you see. So the Jew has less loyalties than he could have. The pagan has more than is good for him. The Christian tries to sacrifice the loyalty that has to go now and to persuade his pagan confreres, with whom he is in the same -- in the same boat, to let go. That is, the Jew is in general disloyal to the order that it is now, because he says, "Somebody has to prepare the future." The pagans tries to forget the emergency. The Christian tries to persuade or to preach or to act -- enact himself that sacrifice that at this moment is -- do you see -- the one that is necessary for meeting the emergency. Take isolationism. That is something that has to be sacrificed at this moment, you see.

Perhaps it -- this is too hurried. But the main point is, gentlemen, we meet an emergency not at all -- all with the willingness to admit that it is one. That's what the Bible always means when it says, "They have ears and don't hear, and they have eyes and don't see." And you read The Dartmouth of 1940, as I did this morning -- you can say this of these youngsters there, your contemporaries -- and your age group -- they have eyes to see and they don't see, and they have ears to hear and they can't hear. It's rather pathetic. That's however -- I think most of you are in this -- you are running too fast. You can't smell what is fishy and you can't hear and you can't see. You're too much in movement.

(Sir, why is it worthwhile to die for your country with an honorable death, if after the war will there may be a change like you say and you'll have another country? I mean, why die for a principle if the principle will change? And you would change, had you lived?)

Well, to be -- you see. One day, two ladies discussed marriage. And one said to the other, "I tell you, unhappily married is still better than no husband at all." So to be allowed to die for a cause is certainly better than to have no cause to die for. As long as you don't give up -- admit { }, there is nothing I can prove. If you think it is better to be absolutely nobody, just dirt, you see, confined to the prison of your own self, than to serve a dying cause, then there's no argument, you see. You -- there are three possibilities. You accept only two.

(There is no way of telling which is the good cause, though.)

No. That's found out by your sacrifice. You see, as long as -- as soon as any cause, as any law, any revealed order of life as that has existed before, as long as it -- as soon as it doesn't find one man who's willing to die for it, or one woman, it is doomed. Because then it -- the life of not even one person, you see, is coined by the order to be defended. Now "order" means, you see, something that is able to coin life. We'll see this in a minute -- you ask perhaps a minute too early your question. But believe me, this is the question of all questions which you have asked. If you can't see this, then, you see, you don't know how tenuous your and my life hangs on this thread of being connected with the whole of life. You always assume that you have life, and I have life. Gentlemen, analyze you physically. Your heart has branched off from your mother's heart, in her womb. You are all members of one large tree. The -- how do you call it in English? The -- you have killed the word of breath -- the breath of life which has entered you so that all the time the embryo -- the fetus begins to breathe, you see, is a transmission of that breath that goes through the whole universe. If you don't see that the whole of life is far a priori prayers to your little life, that you are inside this life, then of course nothing can save you. You build your picture up in this way. Here is Mr. -- what's your name?

({Krull}.)

And here is B, and here is C, and here is D. Now gentlemen, obviously, A has no reason to sacrifice for B; and B has no reason to sacrifice for C; that's all nonsense. If you really think of your breathing power, of your propagating power, of your mental power as your power, it's nothing. But if you come to see, as it is anatomically true, as it is physiological true, as it is true evolutionary that it is true in every aspect, that you are the outcropping of a life process which is universal and of which you are a little point, you see, an outcropping, a leaf or a bud on a tree, on a branch, the thing then -- the thing is obviously very different. Then the question is for the leaf or for the bud, do I have to fertilize the roots of the tree, or do I have to live out my own life? And he buries the foliage of the last year around the roots of the tree so that the tree may be more fertile the next year. So it is the question in any catastrophe whether at this moment the tree doesn't have to be saved, you see, whether we haven't even to forego perhaps even one years' crop. That's -- are the boys who are killed in the war. They are one year's crop. They are wonderful. They could bear -- become new trees, couldn't they, but they are killed. This is terrible. It is only however not -- that's not evil. Because otherwise there is no tree. But you don't believe that this is a very precious tree, you see, in which through thousands of generations life has finally reached its outline -- its supreme -- you see, shape and configuration, and outline. You cannot understand this question of {this}, "What is more important,

the leaf or the tree?" Can you see at least the point?

So what I am trying to introduce you, gentlemen, is as we are placed in this vast universe of space, through which we want to race in our speed-cars or which we want to exploit by digging the gold or by digging the oil or by drilling the oil, so this vast universe also tells us that this little bit of life in the midst of this desert of death, the oceans, the atmosphere, and all -- the sun, all these dead corpses -- is so little that it has to show a tremendous solidarity in order to survive at all. There is so little life, compared to so much death. And once you begin to look at it from this end, you see, of the littleness of life, then your own life is perfectly meaningless unless it is life to life, life with life. Can you see this? And then -- you become very indifferent to this little moment of your own life, because the whole of life, from the beginning to the end, is at stake in any such emergency. There may be no life. Absolutely no life. You have come to believe that life everlasting and so were some private affair on some star and you have the boredom of seeing the sun rise every morning in Heaven. Gentlemen, life everlasting is a very simple problem of -- for the Bible. Either you make the necessary sacrifices in Sphere 5 for the return of life, or there will be no return of life. You and I are perfectly capable of destroying all life on this planet. As you well know now with the bomb. But it has been the same way always, gentlemen. Man has always known that he can commit suicide, gentlemen. We are the only being in creation who can take life, in a large scale without, you see, necessity, by error. Because you can commit suicide. Now anybody who is free to commit suicide, of course, can take down the rest of the human race with this same great appetite. No animal can commit suicide. Can you see this? We can turn against the propagation of life. We can enter this Sphere 5 of catastrophe by saying we are Saturnus, we are the god of destruction. We destroy. We are an incredible beast, you know, an incredible animal. We are the only animal that say -- can say non-animation is preferable to animation. Imagine, the word "animal" means animated, you see. And no animal can say "I prefer not to be animated." But we can.

So, the identity, the solidarity of all life against all death -- that's the problem of 5. If you deny it, sir, no religion. You can be a private citizen, and you can be a free mason, and you can be a philosopher; it's nothing to do with religion. Religion is always the question, you see: What this event means with regard to your relation to the universe, your place in the universe. If you say, "I don't want to answer this question. I know nothing about it. It's just your --" you see, you can of course say "no," I mean, to this question. Any man who can have -- who has the privilege of knowing his relation to the universe can also abuse this relation and say there is none. In this sense, you see, you can. But how -- as long as you breathe, however, and eat, and want to be loved, and want to be -- get a letter from a friend, you see, your theory of destruction is not quite { }. I will only

believe you after you have committed suicide, you see. The irreligious attitude has to be sealed by suicide before I will believe it. Then I will believe that the man has no interest in his -- being bound to the whole process of creation.

(Well, { } you said we come from a tree. I understand that. But war is life against life, not life against death, as I see it. I mean, what is this tree? Is this tree America? Or is it capitalism? Or --)

War is not life against life. War is death against order, it's against Sphere 4. Now in the Sphere 4, where you -- we fight an order, not the individual life. You remember the sphere -- second sphere has to do with the individual life, with your life and with my life. In the fourth sphere, there is association. And in a war, you defend the association called America, not the individual life. And the individual life is only a sacrifice for the association. You will never get me with this -- this is a catch-phrase, "life is against life." It is too simple.

But I have to admit, I have to make things at this moment difficult for you. But I would -- that's why this whole course, gentlemen, is frightening you. I wish I could say to everybody who's still disappointed, "Just leave this course." I'll give him a C or even if he wants to, a B. I don't want you to feel that I am {unfair to you}. You do not know what a religion is. Now what choice do I have -- first to try to tell you what it is, before I show you other people's religion. Here, you want to know what the Mexicans believe. But since you do not know what you believe, I cannot tell you what the Mexicans believe. You go to war. You are not a -- you are -- you have not escaped into another country from fear of the draft. Your religion therefore is that of every man, that is -- the law deserves to be defended. Your mind hasn't caught up with your acts. But in fact, my dear man, your religion, as you prove it by your action, is that you think this -- the government has the right to demand your services. Now this -- about this, you should ponder. You shouldn't wrack your brain by saying it is not right that you should ponder over the problem: Why do you allow them to draft you? And I think you do this in a very honorable -- for a very honorable reason. Because they are right. And in -- part of your own life serves, so to speak, the purpose of proving that they are right, by your own acts. Because whatever you acquire, for example, in this college, only makes sense if you move within a law of this country. And the law deserves to be protected by individual life, because individual life is less important than the law of life. Because the law of life makes for the recurrence of life, you see. And the individual life -- {it's very bad that it should} be sacrificed; we wish it wouldn't, of course, you see, but if we have to take the choice. When Napoleon had his first son born, the King of Rome, the only son, in his {marriage}, Napoleon the First -- and the doctor came and said, "I either have to save the child or the mother. Both can't live." So he said, "Then you must save the mother," because she is the order out of which children can be

born." He wanted this heir terribly, but he gave it up. He gave the son up, you see, because he said, "The mother must be saved." There you have a very clear decision between law and individual, you see. The King of Rome would have satisfied his personal ambitions, you see, but you cannot do this. The mother has to be saved, not the baby. That was Napoleon's very loving, very magnanimous and very great answer.

(Well now, what about the Catholic religion, which says the baby has to be saved, and not the mother?)

I've never understood that. I've never understood that. I've never understood that. I still don't understand it. We'll ask the pope.

You are quite right, I mean. You're quite right. I've never understood. Napoleon, who was, as you know, at that time a very orthodox Catholic, and {quite in love} with the Church, made, I think, the right decision. Tremendous decision. Of course, the mother {we save}. And every wish, you see, every fiber of his being was in the other way inclined.

But let's come back to the main point, gentlemen. The main point is that in a catastrophe, the religious question is restated. It is restated with regard to the solidarity, the unity of the created universe, outsiders in the inner society of men. All men and the whole world undergo the catastrophe. Or we would say a catastrophe is that by which we either recognize the solidarity of the human race, as against the material universe, so that also the unity of the world is reinstated, or by which we disenable us even to realize a catastrophe, that anything has happened. In the -- you find then that Jesus says very clearly to the Jews in the New Testament, "You cannot realize the impending doom of Jerusalem and you cannot realize that this makes for a new solidarity of the human race; that I have to take -- carry out the Gospel now, out of the temple of Jerusalem, because the temple is going to be destroyed. So I must in advance take the consequences," you see. This way -- the temple in Jerusalem will represent unity in a pagan world will no longer go. And the Jews laugh and say there will be no -- blasphemy. The temple of Jerusalem cannot be destroyed, if you would -- could -- in a primitive way, you can say that the whole merit of Jesus is that he anticipated the catastrophe by 40 years. And to anticipate catastrophe is greatness, in human life, because it makes for the recurrence of life, if you have already organized life around the next catastrophe. And don't make -- you see, conclusively clear that from now on, we must live in a different setup of society, after the catastrophe.

So in any catastrophe, gentlemen, there is the origin of a universal religion. And the clearest case is Christianity, because it anticipated the dying -- the end of Israel, by 40 years. That's very -- seems very little, gentlemen. That's all the dif-

ference between freedom and blind -- blindness, I mean, and enslavement by the first four spheres and ineptitude of seeing what is really going on in the world. Now if -- if we now ask ourselves, "What does the catastrophe," gentlemen? What does the catastrophe? It demands from us a change in character. It demands from us a change of character. Not just of mind. But a bourgeois, who accepts the socialist revolution in Russia must dismiss his servants, and he must dismiss his bonds and stocks. That is, he must give up something, must he not? A change of character is the answer to any emergency. In a geological sense, if you have a new era, the glacier period on this earth, the people had to give up certain ways of life and had to change in order to survive the Ice Age, which they obviously did; because some people seem to go back to before the Ice Age -- and animals, too, you see -- and some way or other they managed to survive. Others perished, because they couldn't make the adjustment.

Now it seems, gentlemen, that only those who make the adjustment in time, anticipating the catastrophe, find the real way of surviving the catastrophe. It's very important. You have to anticipate the catastrophe for making the readjustment. Therefore the word "adjustment" is not true, therefore Christianity calls it a rebirth. Because it has not to go externally by a mimicry, by an adjustment, as you adjust yourself to circumstances in an environment. The man who accepts catastrophe changes his heart, when he changes his character. That is, he doesn't say, "I have to bow to circumstances," but he says, "This is the will of creation. I am glad that I am changed now." He affirms the change.

Therefore in Sphere 5, gentlemen, your own attitude towards religion is decided. If you say, "I adjust myself," you believe that the emergency is outside to your own will. That's the first attitude. That's why you are all Moslem. You are all for adjustment to fate. The Moslem is also for adjustment to fate. I told you that my friend Mr. Bedau lived 20 years in the Orient and says that all American businessmen are Moslem. The -- you are all on the way to Islam, because you say that you adjust yourself to circumstances after they have occurred. Gentlemen, if you adjust yourself to circumstances after they have occurred, the circumstance and you are never really reconciled. They are not on speaking terms. The emergency has nothing to say to your inner man. But it only looks at you at -- it would be clever now not to say anything anymore, and just to take this new thing for granted. Most Americans live this way. Gentlemen, the great speech, the great worship of the fifth sphere is the other way around, is the recognition that emergency comes in order to transform you into a new character, to give you a new character; as the Letter to the Hebrews calls Christ, the "new character of God" -- in which the getting of a new character is rejoiced in, painful as it is. If you anticipate the emergency, then you can create the new type who can meet the emergency, by what? Well, as I said, we have no word in English which is really pertinent for this old religious term "sacrifice." The word is -- it seems to me

for -- in your language not valid. If I bring it up, I always feel that the -- any American boy looks at me and says, "Why can't you do without sacrifice?" You really think that sacrifice is something luxurious; it's a luxury, something of your free will. Gentlemen, sacrifice is, of course, nonsense if it isn't the condition for surviving emergencies, catastrophes. That's what sacrifice is by definition. Would you kindly take it down? Sacrifice is the means of surviving catastrophe.

And now we come to the bottom of the division in the Sphere 5, gentlemen. The man who does not see the identity of God's will and his own will, of emergency -- catastrophe outside in his own destiny will buy off with conscience money his readjustment. Agamemnon, when he wanted a favorable wind, he sacrificed his daughter. Abraham was supposed to sacrifice his son. As you know in the end he didn't, but he was willing to. That is, gentlemen, the one way of solving the problem of emergency is always the scapegoat. As you know, half the religions of the earth offer to the gods human sacrifices, to buy off the emergency.

[tape interruption]

... so you see the catastrophical conflict was here, as you know, solved in the most cruel and gruesome manner. And these people of the reservations were treated in a scandalous way. The Spaniards did better. The Spaniards did not -- they have no prosperity in the Spanish colonies. They have no industry. They have no standard of living. They have no refrigerators. They have no television. But one thing is there; the natives are alive. Now you can take your choice and think it through. What is really better, gentlemen? That you have this high standard of living and all the redskins are dead? Or whether these redskins in South America are alive and they have no standard of living. I doubt it what -- in before the judges -- throne of God is -- will be more justifiable. You took the catastrophical conflict here just as something that had to be -- {end}, with a lack of solidarity between the white man and the redskin. Out he goes. One in. That's the typical thing as -- that I told you about 5, you see, he's sacrificed. I think, gentlemen, we'll never -- we'll never have solved this problem. I foresee that in 200 years the American consciences will beat so loudly that the next president then, in 2154, will have to prove that he's of Indian blood, and has to have two such jawbones. I'm sure that will come. It happened in Rome. It happened in Greece. Everywhere such a destruction of the progenitors of the first inhabitants is vindicated, it is -- this will never be quite forgotten here. It's long before this will come up. But it will come up, you can be sure of this. These ghosts will have to be laid one day. And probably the fiction will then be that only a president who derives his ancestry from some redskin will be entitled to become president. That's a joke, you understand. But I want to insinuate to you that we have not met this catastrophe here in any Christian way. It was a pagan solution. Whereas

these Spaniards, with all their bigotry, superstition, whatever you can say, they at least found some way by which they kept these people alive, which is not -- is quite an achievement. And you cannot prove that they are -- haven't solved -- found the better solution. Quite the contrary.

Sacrifice, gentlemen, if you give me a better word, can either be somebody else's sacrifice or my own. I can change the emergency -- the character of the emergency -- by changing my own character or by putting the blame on another character and making him the scapegoat. The scapegoat idea, gentlemen, and my own change of character are two sides of the same question, because they are emergencies. You live in a fools' paradise. You say there don't have to be emergencies. There don't have to be world wars. There has to be no revolution. You are quite wrong. Catastrophes are indispensable. We don't know of any history without catastrophes. There's only -- men's freedom, or man's reaction to catastrophe is two-fold. One-half of mankind can say somebody else has to be sacrificed, and another half can say, "I have to sacrifice part of myself," you see. This is the difference between the pagan sacrifice of the daughter of Agamemnon and the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. That's why he calls Himself the last bloody sacrifice, because he did it voluntarily, and said, "Take me." But this is identical, still, gentlemen. And this is very difficult for you to see. You will not see that voluntary sacrifice, if not made, will always be replaced by unvoluntary sacrifice by -- of somebody else. If you do not sacrifice your racial prejudice in time in the South, obviously Mr. Talmadge in Georgia makes for very many catastrophes in Georgia if he really insists that the Negroes are not his concern. It's a -- ja?

(Sir, on that -- do you really feel -- believe in segregation, you have the right to leave the country now, because the law is interpreted as saying that segregation is wrong.)

My dear man. Belief and saying something { }. If Mr. Talmadge and his father for the last 30 years had given the Negroes better schools than the white man, they have the right to be segregated.

(No, I don't -- )

If they didn't, you see, what they do is not interesting. Or whether they leave the country or not -- I mean, {all they matter} -- it's all talk, idle talk. Because belief has nothing to do with speech; or what thinking is, you see, it's action. They have never acted -- and segregation has only acted that the Negro is a former slave. Segregation would mean equality. They have never treated the Negroes as equal. Therefore this whole talk of segregation is all nonsense. It doesn't mean we need segregation, but it means keeping the Negro down. This is not the same that -- segregation is a polite, you see, but absolutely politically

wrong phrase, because what it meant was that if you paid $5 for a -- per head for a school of a white person in Georgia, you pay 50 cents for a school of a Negro in Georgia; what has this to do with segregation?

(Okay. Well then if you really believe that the Negro should be put down, and your country says, "No," do you have a right to walk out on that country? On the basis of what we're doing now --)

Ja. If we had a good conscience and we said {he} -- they have to be put down, we could walk out. But since he camouflages and says, "We only keep them separate," you see, he uses a language which { }. I think that anybody who has a good {case} can say what he thinks. If he would say, you see, what he really thinks, he could fight for it. But now it's all betwixt and between. Do you understand? They call segregation what is inequality. And therefore, I mean, he has no -- he cannot fight. In his own heart, he's divided himself, { } you see. Because he speaks one language outside and one -- has another thought inside. Such a man is not -- he is not strong. Strength of a political -- of any conviction comes only if that what you say and that what you think, are really the same.

So the question would -- I would say this man is a broken reed, you see. If you take Ezra Pound or if you take { } the man of the Spoon River Anthology, Mr. Lee -- what is it?

(I don't know.)

Well, { } -- he was an honest man, this { }. It's a very -- have you ever read it? Well, he said Lincoln was no good and he was against equality, and -- well, I honor such a man, if {he means it,} you see. That's { } or Osborne, The Founding of the Great Race. Have you heard of this man? I mean, there are many people in this country -- not many, but some -- who had the courage of their convictions, you see, and said it's all nonsense, with this equality. Now, I mean just -- they should be {heard}. But that's different from these people -- nothing, you see, neither here nor there.

Now, I have to stop here.