[Music] Between Western psychology, psychiatry and psychotherapy and the so-called religions of Asia, there is common ground because both are interested in changing states of human consciousness. Whereas institutional Western religion, Christianity, Judaism and even Islam are relatively less interested in this matter. Western religions are more concerned with behavior, doctrine and belief than with any transformation of the way in which we are aware of ourselves and of the world. But this matter concerns psychiatry and psychology very much. Only those states of consciousness which are not normal are usually treated in Western psychology as being in some way sick. There are of course exceptions to this and there have increasingly been exceptions in the work of Jung and to some extent even of Groddeck, of Princehorn, of more modern people, Rogers and Ronald Lang. Changing consciousness is often looked upon as a form of therapy. But in general, different states of consciousness from the normal are regarded as a form of sickness and therefore official and institutional psychiatry constitutes itself the guardian of sanity and of socially approved experience of reality. And very often it seems to me that reality appears rather much the way the world is seen on a bleak Monday morning. In this official doctrine, I might even say dogma, of what reality is. Because after all we know that our science, such as it is of psychology, is founded in the scientific naturalism of the 19th century. And the metaphysical and mythological assumptions of that science still underlie a great deal of psychological thinking, in behaviorism eminently, but also to a large extent in official psychoanalysis. Indeed one might say that psychoanalysis is based on Newtonian mechanics and in fact could be called psycho-hydraulics. Not that that analogy is altogether inappropriate, because there are certainly respects in which our psychic life flows and exhibits the dynamics of water. But of course we want to know what kind of water. And for the scientific naturalism of the 19th century, the basic energies of nature were considered to be very much inferior to human consciousness in quality. Ernst Haeckel, a biologist of that time, would think of the energy of the universe as blind energy. And correspondingly it seems to me that Freud thought of the libido as essentially blind, unconscious energy, embodying only a kind of formless, unstructured and insatiable lust. This is a generalization. Some modification in that thinking is of course possible. But the tendency is to regard all that which lies below the surface of human consciousness as being less evolved, because you must remember that this was also the time of Darwin's theories of evolution, of seeing the human mind as a fortuitous development from much more primitive forms of life, coming forth by purely mechanical processes, by natural selection and by the survival of the fittest. And therefore man was in general seen as a fluke of nature, an embodiment of reason, emotion and values, for which the more basic processes of nature had no sympathy and about which they did not care. If therefore the human race is to flourish, we must take charge of evolution, have to spontaneous process, but must be directed by human ingenuity, despite the fact that although our brains are capable of dealing with a colossal number of variables at once, our conscious attention is not. Most people cannot consider more than three variables at the same time without using a pencil. And this shows that in many ways the scanning process of man's conscious attention is very inadequate for dealing with the infinitely many variables, the multidimensional processes of the natural universe. However, a serious attempt has been made, and scientific naturalism issued in a fantastic fight with nature. In this whole notion of the conquest and subordination of nature, which has as a matter of fact very ancient non-scientific and biblical origins, with the idea of man as the head and chief and ruler of nature in the image of God. And the time has now dawned upon us all when our attempts to beat nature into submission are having alarming results, because we see that it's very dangerous to mess around with processes that we don't understand, that have enormous numbers of variables, and we begin to wonder whether we hadn't better let well enough alone. At the same time, although I said that Western psychology had more in common, or more common interest, with Oriental religion than it does with Western religion, there is a sense in which psychiatry and psychotherapy are becoming the religion of the West. Psychoanalysis has much in common with the forms and procedures of institutional religion. There is, for example, apostolic succession, the passing down of manna, of qualified power to practice therapy, from the father founder, Sigmund Freud, through his immediate apostles, to an enormous company of archbishops and bishops, among whom there are, of course, as there were with Christianity, heresiarchs, such as Jung and Grodde and Rank and Reich. And the heresiarchs are duly excommunicated and anathematized. There are rituals, as there are also rituals with religion. There is the sacrament of the couch. There is the spiritual discipline of free association. There is the mystic knowledge of the interpretation of dreams. And there are also the two great symbolic fetishes, the long one and the round one. Now, it's extraordinarily easy to make fun of all this. And we must not forget that we owe a tremendous debt to Freud, if for nothing else than pointing out that that much of ourselves of which we are aware in terms of the conscious ego is not really ourselves. It is something superficial. However we find its nature, it is superficial. And the realities of human life are not under the gaze of its scanning process, at least not in the ordinary way. And that was a tremendous revelation, there's no question about that. But one sees troublesome signs when the doctrines and processes of psychiatry, psychoanalysis and so forth become officialized. And I think Thomas Sass in his books "The Myth of Mental Illness" and "The Manufacture of Madness" is pointing out something extremely important to us. Which is that in effect, the psychological official of today is the priest. And that he is beginning to exercise the same sort of controls over human life as were exercised by the church in the Middle Ages. So that a professor of psychiatry at Columbia or Harvard or Yale medical schools has today the same sort of intellectual respectability and authority as the professor of theology at the University of Toledo or Padua would have had in the year 1400. Now you must realize that the theologians of those days not simply believed in their cosmology and the theology, they almost knew it was true in the same way that our scientists know certain things to be true. Despite the fact that they change their opinions very often, while they hold them they have in effect the force of dogma as witnessed the anatomization of Velikovsky for his uncomfortable ideas. And therefore there are heresies existing today which are persecuted in the same way as heresies were persecuted by the Holy Inquisition. And they are persecuted out of kindness in exactly the same way that the Holy Inquisition persecuted heresy out of kindness and deep concern for human beings. That is unimaginable to us, but it was so. For after all, if you seriously believed that someone who did not hold the Catholic faith and who voluntarily rejected it would be tortured physically and spiritually for ever and ever and ever in hell, you would resort to almost any means to preserve a fellow human being from such a fate. Especially if the complaint or disease of heresy from which he suffered was infectious. You would first of all reason with him. And if he was not responsive to reason, you would resort to abuse and to forceful argument. And if he was not responsive to that, you would give him shock treatment and bang him about. If that did not work, the thumb screw and the rack and the iron maiden. And if that did not work as a last desperate resort, you would burn him at the stake in the pious hope that in the midst of those searing fires he would think better and make a last act of perfect contrition and so be rescued from everlasting damnation. And you did all this in the spirit of "this is going to hurt me more than it's going to hurt you." In the spirit of a surgeon who is very, very sorry indeed that he has to make you undergo this extremely painful operation. But it is in your best interests and there really is at least a 50/50 chance that you may survive. And so therefore in perfectly scientific medical spirit, people may be very arbitrarily and without due process deprived of their civil rights, incarcerated in prisons that are in many cases much worse than prisons for criminals, and generally left to rot, be neglected and ignored, and when bumptious, given shock treatment or put in solitary confinement. For what? Because they have unorthodox and heretical states of consciousness. A lot of these people are not dangerous until provoked into being dangerous by being ignored, by being treated as machines, and in generally defined as non-human. And if you are defined as non-human, there's precious little you can do about it. Because everything you say that sounds human will be taken as a kind of utterance of a mechanical man, as imitating humanness out of lunatic cunning. You will be suspicious. Everything you say will be listened to in a different way and with different ears. And you will have one hell of a time talking yourself out of it. Because there really are no rules as to what one must do when incarcerated for having unorthodox consciousness. There is no clear road to repentance. And this is found likewise in jails, where people are incarcerated on one to ten year sentences, as in places like Vacaville, California. Where, when I visited such prisons, young men have come to me in perfect desperation, saying, "I don't know what's happened to me, because I want to live like a decent citizen. I know I've done things that are wrong, but I simply don't know what is expected of me here. If I try to do what's expected, they say I'm compliant. And that seems to be some sort of a sickness." Thomas Sass drew attention to this when he quoted a discussion of the types of school children who may very well need therapy. There were overachieving children. There were underachieving children. There were children who exhibited erratic patterns. There were children who were sort of dully mediocre. In fact, every sort of child can be given a diagnostic name for his behavior which sounds sick. As Jung once suggested, life itself is a disease with a very poor prognosis. It lingers on for years and invariably ends with death. And I submit that in our present knowledge of the human mind, such power in the hands of psychiatrists is amazingly dangerous. For I would suggest that today we know about as much concerning the human mind as we knew about the galaxy in 1300. And that while there are indeed individuals who are certainly able to perform psychotherapy, it is the sheerest arrogance for anybody to say that he is officially qualified to do so. We do not know how it is done, just as we do not know really how musical, artistic, and literary genius is done. You cannot really teach it. You can put the tools for doing these things into people's hands, and you can show them how to use the tools. But whether they will use those tools with genius is quite unpredictable. And this is above all through of the art of psychotherapy. We don't know how it's done. We've got some vague ideas. There probably are some people who, by reason of their mental derangement, are probably not qualified to perform it, because they are maybe out just to make other people into messes. But to say that there are certain standards and certain examinations that can be passed, and certificates that could be issued, which do indeed qualify people for this work, is, I think, pernicious nonsense. And is used, of course, out of economic self-interest, when those who consider themselves official therapists run into competition. The same was done by religion. I was talking, imagine it, to a Buddhist priest in Thailand some years ago. I was looking at some books in a bookshop in the precincts of a Buddhist temple. And I was wandering over, and I noticed a book on a certain form of Buddhist meditation. And I murmured, "Hmm, Satipatthana," which is the name of a certain kind of Buddhist meditation. And a voice suddenly said to me, "You practice Satipatthana?" I looked up, and there was a skinny Buddhist monk in a yellow robe with rather red eyes looking at me. I said, "Not exactly Satipatthana. I use a different method. It's called Zen." "Oh, Satipatthana, not Zen!" I said, "Oh, well, it's something like it, isn't it?" "No." "Well, it's rather like yoga," I said, "isn't it?" "Not yoga, no. Satipatthana different, only right way." "Well, look," I said to him, "I have a lot of Roman Catholic friends who tell me that their way is the only right way. Who am I to believe?" "You know," I said, "you're like someone who's got a ferry boat for crossing the river." I used the Buddhist simile. "And another fellow down the stream has opened up ferry business. And you go to the government and say, 'He's not authorized to operate a ferry boat because he's competition to you. Let all operate ferry boats who will. And if you haven't got the sense to get off, to stay off one that sinks, it's your fault." "And after all," I could say to him, "you believe that everything that happens to you is your own karma. So why worry?" But now, it's so interesting that since official psychiatry—and I underline that word "official" because I hope those of you in this audience who are therapists will regard yourselves as unofficial. At least that'll give you an out. But nevertheless, official psychiatry has curious things in common with Western religion as well as with Eastern. With Eastern, I said, only in so far as it has an interest in states of consciousness and inclines to regard other states of consciousness than the ordinary as sick. But it has one very important feature in common with Western religion. And to that, we have to go a little bit into Western religious history. And ask ourselves, what in Western religion, and especially in Christianity, and this goes also for Judaism and Islam, what is the Great Heresy? Curiously enough, the Great Heresy was first in the West committed by no lesser person than Jesus Christ, who believed himself to be God. This, of course, will be unquestionably true if you think that the Gospel of St. John has historical value. It's a little vaguer in the synoptic Gospels, but if you read the Gospel of St. John, there is absolutely no doubt about it. For he said, "I and the Father are one. He who has seen me has seen the Father. Before Abraham was, I am. I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the resurrection and the life." He said all that according to this Gospel. And that is something that in the Western world, you are not supposed to say. And especially, you are not supposed to believe it. And actually, it was very difficult for Jesus, because he was saying all this in the context of the Hebrew culture. And he tried to find language in the Hebrew Scriptures with which to express his state of consciousness, because he had an unusual state of consciousness. As I read it, he had cosmic consciousness, otherwise known as mystical experience, otherwise known as moksha, nirvana, bodhi, satori, kvana, alvana, or what you will. And that happens to people. It has happened as far back as we know. It happens all over the world and in all cultures. We don't know very much about it. We don't really know ways in which to make it happen, because it seems to be of the nature of it that it is a spontaneous surprise. But it unquestionably happens. And most people keep their mouths shut about it when it does. I had a friend who in the middle of having a stroke had this illumination, and he said to me, "I fear to speak to my friends of this, but it was the most beautiful experience. I shall never be afraid of death. In fact, I recommend everyone to have a stroke." This was my friend Jean Varda, a lately deceased Greek painter. But Jesus certainly had this transformation of consciousness, and he was crucified for it. Why? Because he had committed an act of insubordination and treason against the cosmic government. Because if you believe that God is a monarch, an absolute, omniscient, and omnipotent authority, shall we say a sort of cosmic ego, then to claim to be that is to introduce democracy into the kingdom of heaven, to usurp divine authority, and to speak in its name without proper authorization. And they asked Jesus, "By what authority do you speak? Of heaven or of men?" And he was tricky about answering that one. He said, "By what authority did John the Baptist speak?" And they were nervous about answering that one. He could have asked, "By what authority did Isaiah speak?" etc. Or Moses. But Moses became official authority. And if you could wangle it that what you said was simply an extension of what Moses said, because Rabbi so-and-so said it, who got it from Rabbi so-and-so, who got it from Rabbi so-and-so, who got it from Rabbi so-and-so, who got it from Moses, then it's okay. Notice this, that to be an authority today in the academic world depends on documentation. It's not enough to say, "For I say unto you, you must put in your footnotes." And the more the footnotes, the more the authority, obviously. So, our dissertations tend to be books about books about books about books, and our libraries multiply by mitosis. So, when somebody speaks as an authority, that means speaks as the author. That's all it means. It's a statement for which you, of which you are the author, and therefore for which you assume responsibility. That is to speak with authority. And to be original is likewise not to be freaky, but to speak from the origin. That is what Christians mean when they say to speak in the Spirit, to have your mouth possessed by the Holy Spirit, as they believe the mouth of Jesus was possessed by the Holy Spirit. So, the gospel of Jesus, which of course was hushed up from its inception, was that, "Wake up everybody and find out who you are." Asking that, again in the gospel of St. John, "They," pointing to his disciples, "may be one, even as you, Father, and I are one." And when he was accused of blasphemy, the Jews took up stones to stone him, you know. And he said, "Many good works have I shown you from the Father, and from which of these do you stone me?" And they said, "For a good work we don't stone you, but for blasphemy, because you being a man make yourself God." Now listen to the reply. He said, "Is it not written in your law, 'I have said ye are gods'?" And if that is what the scripture says, it can't be denied. So why do you tell me I blaspheme? Because I say, "I am a son of God." No answer. Because I said, "I am a son of God." It doesn't say that in your King James translation. It says, "I am the son of God." And you'll see the "the" italicized, and you will think that that is for emphasis, if you don't realize that passages in italics in the King James Bible are interpolations by the translators. In Greek, leaving out the definite article is equivalent of having the indefinite article. "Oeas tus eu" is "a son of God," not "Oeas tus eu." So "son of" in Hebrew and in Arabic means "of the nature of." When we call someone a son of a bitch, we mean bitchy. And so if you call someone a son of God, you mean divine. "Of the nature of God," as the Nicene Creed subsequently defined it, "he is of one substance with the Father." But what happened was that this being blasphemy for the Jews, it became blasphemy for the Christians, for anyone else than Jesus, to say it. They said, "Okay, baby, it was so with you, but there it stops. No more of this business." And as a result of that, Jesus was made irrelevant by pedestalization, by being kicked upstairs. [laughter] In spite of the fact that he said, "Greater works than these that I do shall you do." Oh no. Upstairs with you, baby. Because we just can't have that sort of thing going on in a monarchical universe. We're not going to have democracy in the kingdom of heaven. So, this is why the gospel is impossible. Because we are supposed to follow the example of Christ. Where he says, for example, "Be not anxious for the morrow. Do not worry about what you shall eat, what you shall drink, and what you shall wear. God will take care of you. Doesn't he take care of the birds? Don't the flowers grow? And they're wonderful. They're crazy. They're great. What are you worrying about?" I've never heard a sermon preached on that. Never. Because it's totally subversive. The economy would crash. So, they say, "Oh, yes, that's all very well, but he was the boss's son." See, he had that colossal advantage. "Take up your cross and follow him." Hey, but wait a minute. I don't know I'm going to be resurrected three days later. I can't do all those miracles. He had an unfair advantage. So, how could you ask us to follow the example of Christ? But supposing he didn't have an unfair advantage? Supposing that what was true about Jesus as the Son of God is true of us. Only a few of us know it. And we are pretty careful to be quiet about it, lest the same thing happen to us as happened to Jesus. And indeed it often does. And you know, you get these people from Arkansas or Texas or anywhere in the Bible Belt, who never heard of the Upanishads. And they have this cosmic consciousness experience. And they realize that that's what happened to Jesus. They say, "I'm Jesus. Come back." Well, everybody says to them, "You aren't Jesus. It's pretty obvious you're not Jesus. You're just Joe Doakes." Well, they say, "He says that's what they said about Jesus. He has a perfect argument, except they say you're not much of a Jesus." They say, "All right, if you're Jesus, command that these stones be made bread." And he says, "A wicked and deceitful generation seeketh for a sign, and there shall no sign be given." [laughter] Now, why talk about this? Is it interesting? Is it important for the human being to realize that in some sense of the word, whatever it means, he is God or one with God? As is plainly taught by the Hindus, hinted at by the Buddhists, only they don't like to put it out as a concept, in case people will use the concept as an idol to hang on to. They want you to find out for yourself and not believe in it. And certainly the Taoists understand it, the Sufis understand it, a lot of people understand it. But so what? Well, the importance of it is this, that to know that you are God is another way of saying that you feel completely with this universe. You feel profoundly rooted in it and connected with it. You feel, in other words, that the whole energy which expresses itself in the galaxies is intimate. It is not something to which you are a stranger, but it is that with which you, whatever that is, are intimately bound up. That in your seeing, your hearing, your talking, your thinking, your moving, you express that which it is which moves the sun and other stars. And if you don't know that, if you don't feel that, well, naturally you feel alien. You feel a stranger in the world, and if you feel a stranger you feel hostile. And therefore you start to bulldoze things about, to beat it up, and to try and make the world submit to your will, and you become a real troublemaker. So I feel also one reason why you become hostile is the feeling that you were just brought into this place, that your father and mother went up to some monkey business that they probably shouldn't have done, or it was bad rubber goods, and as a result of this, here you are, and you didn't ask to be here. Well, you always feel you can turn around and blame them. You can blame somebody. You can blame the government. You can blame the rascals. You can blame the cheaters. Always supposing you yourself aren't a rascal, which is a long odds. You always can blame someone and say, "I didn't ask for it. Take it away." And yet, and yet, and yet, very few people are all too ready to take it away. Camus said that the only serious philosophical problem is whether or not to commit suicide. And if you don't, if you don't say, "Take it away," what are you going to do? You've really got to assume responsibility for it. You've got to say, "Yes," to what happens. It's my karma, and that doesn't mean merely—there are many misinterpretations of the doctrine of karma. It's usually unpopularly understood that what happens to you, either fortunate or unfortunate, is the result of good or bad deeds in a previous life. Well, that's popular superstition. The real meaning of karma, the word in Sanskrit means simply "doing." And if I say of an event, "It is your karma," it is saying, "It is your doing." So, the exposition, a book which would expound karma, would be not so much a whodunit as a youdunit. But that seems fantastic. Now, therefore, what I propose we do is that we, instead of just ideologizing, we have a clinical experience. You know, in psychiatric school, in medical school, it's very usual for a doctor to bring a patient out in front of the students and talk with the patient as a kind of demonstration. He says, "I want you to recognize the difference between a psychopath and a manic-depressive or a schizophrenic or something." They don't know what all these things mean. And especially the schizophrenia. And so, he has a dialogue with the patient right there. So, let us suppose that I'm the patient, and you are the students and the doctors. And I suffer from what you would call the delusion that I'm God. And therefore, you might want to do something about me or with me or humor me or ask me questions. And so, I'm perfectly willing to submit to your examination and your treatment and invite you to help yourselves. Now, when did you become God? Now. Will you marry me? No. [laughter] Yes? God, do you sleep on your stomach or are you mad? Sleeping is like politics. One sleeps on the right side, and then when you're tired of that, you sleep on the left. When you're tired of that, you sleep on your back. And when you're tired of that, you sleep on your stomach. And it is thus that the world goes round. If you were God now, what were you yesterday? Now. How do you become God? You don't become God. Am I also God? Yes. Remember the same person? No. Remember three persons but one God. [laughter] God, could you tell us a little about Satan? Could I tell you a little bit about Satan? Yes. Although the matter is a little esoteric, but I told you all about it in the book of Job, where you will see that in the court of heaven, Satan is the district attorney. He is not, as Christians imagine, the enemy of heaven and the enemy of mankind. He's merely the person who sees the bad side of things and carries out the dirty work. And therefore, he saw Job and wondered whether Job really was as great a guy as he seemed to be, and suggested that God should appoint a committee of investigation to find out. And the committee did its work very thoroughly, but the case went against Satan because it was proved in the end that Job was an honorable man. Now you notice that although we pay the salary of the district attorney, whenever there's a great criminal case before the public eye, people begin to take the side of the underdog. And the prosecutor always has less public sympathy than the defense, except in political trials. On the right hand of God, and you know the defense is always on the right hand of the judge in court, is our only mediator and advocate, which is the phrase referring to Jesus Christ our Lord. So there is the defense and there is the prosecution, and it is the function of Satan to be the prosecutor. There is a good deal more to it than that, because before all this started, as in a stage play, there was an arrangement in the green room before coming on stage, in which certain things were understood, but that are only to be revealed when the curtain goes down at the end of the play. Yes, but he doesn't know it. Why do you hide? It's for the same reason you're hiding. Yes. Who else? Man has free will to the extent that he knows who he is, not otherwise. Where I got it from. Yes, to the extent that she knows who she is, yes. That is correct. I know more God than any of you. Then you only have the power to know who you are. Well, that is saying quite a bit, yes. What is not God? What is not God? There is nothing that is not God. How do you learn who you are? It's like waking up from a dream. After a while, one's experience begins to change. It's like waking up from a dream. It's like waking up from a dream. It's like waking up from a dream. It's like waking up from a dream. It's like waking up from a dream. It's like waking up from a dream. It's like waking up from a dream. It's like waking up from a dream. It's like waking up from a dream. It's like waking up from a dream. It's like waking up from a dream. It's like waking up from a dream. Where am I going? It's like waking up from a dream. thing I could wish. So I spent a lot of time playing with those. And science fiction wasn't in it! You know, you go going like that, and here is Cleopatra. And so on, and then you press this button. Symphonic music. In four-channel sound. 16-channel sound. Anything, you know, all possible pleasures are available. And when, you know, you're like everybody's dream of the Sultan and the palace, you suddenly notice there's a button labeled "Surprise." You push that, and here we are. Is boredom a problem? Yes, boredom is of course the problem. Boredom is the other side of creativity. And the energy of creation has as its, that is the yang, the yin side of that energy is called boredom. Everything, of course, is fundamentally yang and yin. If you understand that, you really don't need to understand anything else. As God, what responsibility do you feel to ameliorate evil in the world? As God, what responsibility do I feel to ameliorate evil in the world? I begin with the point that I am responsible for the way the world is. If I couldn't feel that, I'd have to blame somebody else. I'm not willing to do that, because I know that under various changing circumstances it might be appropriate for me to be as big a rascal as rascals have been. Now as to improving the world, the world is always improving. It may look to some people slow, but it's improving even when it is declining, because the world works in an undulatory process, like a wave. It goes up and it goes down, it goes up and it goes down. And it couldn't go up all the time, because if it did, we wouldn't know that that was up. So it goes down some of the time so that we can know when it goes up, because if we didn't know when it went up, it would be like being in a space where everything was light. There'd be nothing to write home about. There would be no black marks on the space, and so it would be like a piece of perfectly empty paper. Similarly, to be in a completely black space would also be a kind of unconsciousness with nothing to write home about, and so nothing would make any difference. So therefore, if you're going to have black, you won't know that it's black unless you have some white, and if you're going to have white, you won't know that it's white unless you have some black. Why do you teach us all to love one another, because if we get to that point, there won't be any reduction down, or what happens? Correct, but that's not a teaching, it's a koan. A koan. A koan is a Japanese word for a spiritual problem used in Zen Buddhism, such as, "What is the sound of one hand?" And these problems are given to those who ask questions concerning their spiritual development. And sometimes, as St. Paul pointed out, commandments are given not in the expectation that they will be obeyed, but in the expectation that they will reveal something to those who hear them. That was St. Paul's comment on the whole Mosaic law. Yes, sir? [inaudible] The hereafter is, of course, now. Because if you will examine it closely, there is no when else than now. And if you want to make hell of it, you can make hell of it. If you want to make heaven of it, you can make heaven of it. Purgatory, purgatory. It's all here. Always was, always will be. Death. What is death? Death is an undulation in consciousness. How would you know you were alive unless you had once been dead? [inaudible] Yes. [inaudible] It wasn't unnecessary for him to have material possessions. They said of St. John the Baptist that he was an ascetic, but of Jesus, this man consorts with gluttoners and wine-bibbers and comes eating and drinking. And when the Lady Mary poured precious ointment on his feet and anointed him, they said the same thing that the members of the vestry say to the minister today. Why this great expense? Couldn't it all have been sold for much money and given to the poor? [inaudible] It is a problem, sure. But you see, in many ways, when you get down to these very deep ethical problems, where there sure is no easy decision one way or the other, you must look at the problem from the point of view of an artist. Which way of doing this is in some sense greater? It may be better to go off with a bang than with a whimper. [music] {END} Wait Time : 0.00 sec Model Load: 0.64 sec Decoding : 2.03 sec Transcribe: 4334.45 sec Total Time: 4337.11 sec