by giving a brief resume of the second session that was held yesterday afternoon.
 As you remember, I had started out in the very beginning of the seminar
 to give you an outline of the Hindu mythology of the nature of the universe.
 And then I went on in the second session to give an outline of the equivalent Christian mythology,
 which to some extent includes the Hebrew. And we saw that it had certain very,
 very distinctive and important features. First of all, that whereas in the Hindu world view,
 the creation is the dismemberment, the voluntary dismemberment of the creator,
 in the Christian and the Hebrew worldview, what is dismembered is not the creator.
 The creator remains eternally separate from the creation. And I explained it by the analogy,
 which indeed is the biblical analogy, of manufacture, pottery specifically.
 Adam is formed out of the clay. And so, whereas the Hindu will say, "Tatvam asi,"
 "that art thou," where "that" means the ultimate that, the which then which there is no whicher,
 the Christian is told every Ash Wednesday, "Remember, O man, that thus thou art, and thus
 thou shalt return." Except that by the grace of God, and only by the grace of God, there may be
 salvation. Maybe. So the tremendously important feature upon which the whole of the Christian
 worldview is based is, you could call it really three points, and they are all to do with
 distinctions. The eternal distinction of the creator from the creature, of God from man.
 The eternal distinction of good and evil. These do not resolve themselves into an opposite.
 The devil is malice, but his malice is overruled. It is not a case of Persian dualism,
 as between Ormuzd, the principle of light, and Ariman, the principle of darkness.
 The malice of the devil is always under the control of the divine. It is allowed,
 because freedom is allowed. But if freedom gets out of hand, in the end it is overruled,
 and the devil is consigned everlastingly to the torments of hell, with all his angels and the
 human beings he has managed to pervert. Except that by the grace of God, and only by the grace
 of God, there may be salvation. Maybe. So the tremendously important feature upon which the
 whole of the Christian worldview is based, is, you could call it really three points,
 and they are all to do with distinctions. The eternal distinction of the creator from the
 creature. So that distinction between good and evil is a very important, firm feature of
 Christianity. It's a completely serious distinction. That is to say, the God is not acting
 his part, and the devil is not acting his part. They really mean it. And the third principle is
 an equally eternal distinction between persons. Just as you and I are not God, so by the same
 measure you and I are not each other. We are all distinct, and we are all important in the eyes of
 God, on the principle that just as a sparrow doesn't fall to the ground without the Father
 in Heaven being aware of it, that means that every sparrow is important. So to a much greater
 measure, every human being is important, immeasurably important, in the eyes of the Godhead.
 And so this constitutes, as it were, the basic distinction, the basic feature of all the
 theistic religions, of Judaism in the first place, of Christianity in the second, and Islam
 in the third. Then I went on to explain, and in a sort of outline,
 the fact that Christianity consists above all things of a story.
 The story of the fall of the angels, followed by the fall of man, a perversion of the substance of
 the universe, that is to say a perversion of the very clay from which all things are made,
 so that it has, as it were, a flaw or fault in it. I tried to show what the fall really consists in
 so far as man is concerned, which is pride. The original sin is not, as some people suppose,
 sexual intercourse. It is pride. It is taking the control of the world into one's own hands,
 instead of being spontaneous, instead of simply trusting and acting like we suppose the animals
 to act and we suppose children to act on impulse. Once you start controlling, you are in the
 position of the sorcerer's apprentice. You've got to go on. And so we now witness mankind frantically
 endeavoring to control the amazing things that result from his technology and from his cleverness.
 The atomic bombs, the population explosion, the erosion of the soil, the proliferation of smog,
 the falling of the water table, the messing up of all bacteriological
 entities by penicillin, and heaven only knows what. And we are fighting to control that, you see.
 And we are learning the lesson at last. So that was the fall. And then I went on to try and
 describe the most difficult part of Christianity, which is what it means to say that the world is
 saved by Jesus Christ. And you hear some preacher hold forth about Jesus saves, are you saved,
 brother? And we are saved by the blood of the lamb, by the crucifixion of Christ on the cross.
 All this is sheer gobbledygook to most people. They haven't the faintest idea what it means,
 and nor have the preachers. But they think, you know, like a man like Billy Graham,
 he goes around with this and moves huge audiences. But he never explains what it is. He just says,
 "Believe it." And then you'll find it changes your behavior. But you see, if you're blessed
 or cursed with a critical intellect, you just can't swallow that. It just won't do.
 So then I tried to explain the doctrine of the incarnation, that is, the idea that in
 the historical appearance of Jesus Christ in the world, God became man. That is to say,
 the divine united itself with the human and with all the aspects of human life, with its birth,
 with its problems, with its suffering, and finally with its death.
 And so this union achieved a new start for the human race.
 And therefore, through the gift, as it were, of love or grace or union with God,
 to the human race, everybody is able, enabled to appropriate that gift. But you see, the gift
 is given to your substance and not to your person. That's the distinction I underlined.
 In Christian terminology, the person means the ego, the will. And the substance is, as it were,
 the stuff out of which you are made as pots are made of clay. All right, so the substance has now
 been rendered flawless. But it's up to you to appropriate that flawlessness by a voluntary
 act. And here's the nub. The nub is how, under the former problem for the Jew, under the
 dispensation of the law and the prophets, was how am I to acquire a pure heart? How am I to obey the
 law in pureness of heart, to have, to use Jeremiah's phrase, the law written in my inward parts? How
 am I to do that? And everybody who knows himself through and through finds out that he can't do
 that. He can't be spontaneous on purpose. And so, in Christianity, the same problem arises again in
 a far more crucial form. It says, you can obey the law. You can be a saint, if you've got the power
 and the grace of God. Now, how do you get that? Well, you have to believe in Jesus Christ. You
 have to believe that all this is true, that God really did become man in Jesus Christ. And you've
 got to believe that. So you ask yourself, do I really believe it? And you think, do you know
 there's something uncertain about this? Like St. Augustine's prayer, "Lord, I believe. Help thou
 mine unbelief." You see? And so there's always this little worm at the center of things, where you
 know and become conscious of a certain element of irreducible rascality in you that lies at the very
 core of the will. And the question is, how do you will to abandon your will? You see? That's the
 problem. You must try not to try. You must freely give up your freedom. So in the words of the
 prayer, "God, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom."
 In the original Latin, "Whom to know is to live, whom to serve is to reign." R-E-I-G-N.
 So there is the puzzle of Christianity. Furthermore, we must remember that it's a
 terribly serious religion. There never was. Whereas the Hinduism views the whole world as the play,
 the sport, the lila of the divine. In the West, the world is serious. It is a tragic view. If it's
 a dramatic view at all, it's a tragic drama. Whereas the Eastern view is it's a comedy.
 Although it's curious, isn't it, that Dante could write the Divine Comedy?
 Because somewhere, you see, you can't get around it. That if the notation of life,
 if the meaning of life is fundamentally tragic, God's a washout.
 So there is the idea, really, in a kind of esoteric strain of the Christian tradition.
 Dante brings it out, you see. When he heard the song of the angels, he said this sounded
 like the laughter of the universe. And all those angels in heaven get around the throne of God,
 and they sing "Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah" forever. And everybody, every child who goes to
 church thinks, "Oh, what a drag. You mean we've got to go up there on like a church service forever,
 sing 'Hallelujah' around the throne?" But you see, the preachers don't get it across,
 because they don't swing. They don't realize that this word "Hallelujah" is a kind of a dance word.
 It's like, almost it's like scat singing, where all the meaning goes out of the language,
 and it's just rhythm. It's just sheer exuberance. And Dante makes this quite clear,
 that these angels surrounding God have found It. They've found the point. And there's no need for
 anything else, and the point has no point beyond being the point. It doesn't serve any end beyond
 itself. It's It. You're there. You've arrived, and they just go out of their minds. And so that is
 really what even the most orthodox Christianity is after, if you will press the preacher and get him
 to follow the logic of his own belief. Now, when we put Christianity, as I showed you, inside the
 context of Hinduism, and this is something that is happening by simply by virtue of the spread of
 communications. Before we had steamships, let alone jet aircraft, we thought that the world around the
 Mediterranean was the only civilized world. Indeed, there were some extremely remote people called the
 Chinese, who were supposed to be highly civilized, but they might as well have been on some other
 planet. But as our communication system has spread beyond the Mediterranean, it is perfectly
 inevitable that our culture and our religions have to exist in the context of others. And the very
 fact that this happens automatically changes their meaning, whether you like it or not,
 just as the context of words changes the meaning of the individual words.
 So we then see that Christianity is now operating, it is in fact happening, this is not something I
 am discussing as a quaint theory of something that ought to happen, it is something that is
 happening. Christianity and Christians, with their particular beliefs and their particular points of
 view, are waking up to find themselves surrounded by very different peoples, also civilized, who
 have rather different points of view. What is going to happen? What difference does it make?
 So, then, I am putting Christianity in the context of Hinduism, to make a special case,
 to give a specific example of the sort of thing that would happen. I am not saying that it is
 going to happen just like this, I am trying to indicate general directions. So then,
 the Hindu looks at Christianity and he says, "Good heavens, isn't that amazing?"
 For here, in the many, many forms of being which the Supreme Self, the Brahman, plays at being,
 here comes the Christian, the Christian soul. This is a new identity which the dancer of the
 universe is playing. And he is playing as far out as he can get. He is dancing, not dancing.
 He is playing that he is not God at all, and never was.
 And that he, absolutely not that. Don't you dare claim any kinship with the Father.
 He created you out of nothing. You are not begotten, you are made.
 The Son, the Logos, is begotten, you see. The creature is made,
 and can be a son of God by adoption only. The whole human race is orphaned.
 And God is the Father by adopting, you see. So, the Hindu would say, "Look at that!"
 And what's more, this orphan is now adopted, but goodness, what conditions! Once you become
 adopted, you become responsible for making that choice between the good and evil.
 And if you choose the evil, you are lost forever.
 Absolutely lost, and you won't just be annihilated.
 You'll spend all the endless cycles of time in excruciating and ineffable agony.
 You will exist bodily as well as spiritually. You'll be devoured by ever-renewed worms,
 and consumed by fires that will penetrate to the inmost centers of your nerves.
 You should hear the theologians describe it. If you look at my book, The Two Hands of God,
 I've got quotes in there from a great, very sophisticated German theologian, Matthias
 Schaben, who is one of the great horror writers of all time, because he describes hell in the
 most sophisticated philosophical language. That's something that the ordinary preacher doesn't do,
 like Jonathan Edwards describing a sinner in the hands of an angry god. He'll use this ordinary,
 vivid imagery. But Schaben goes into philosophical categories. I mean,
 he makes this so horrendous, because he is obviously such a great intellectual,
 describing the reality of physical torments as well as spiritual torments in hell.
 So you see the predicament that the Christian soul is faced with.
 So the Hindu looks at that, you see, and says, "That is something." Here, the action,
 the big act, is so good that the actor himself is totally taken in by his part.
 It's as if Hamlet actually slew Polonius on the stage.
 The actor of Hamlet actually slew the actor of Polonius, you see. The drama is out of hand.
 But the Hindu knows it will recover, because it's all right.
 Don't worry, you know. It's okay, there's a doctor in the house.
 But from his point of view, you see, he sees this as a very remarkable religion.
 But now once we've looked at it that way, we've let the cat out of the bag, haven't we?
 Once you look at it that way, you can never go back to being an ordinary Christian.
 You know, you've seen that there is a twinkle in the father's eye.
 And when he says, dresses himself up in his official robes, puts on his beard and his
 panoplies of spiritual war, and all the angels gather around, and he says, "Thou shalt love me."
 And all these conditions, "And you shall," and this and that and the other. You look him in the eye.
 Of course, the angels are supposed to veil their faces. Of course, they don't look God in the eye,
 because that would give the show away. But there's a hymn which ends up with the aspiration,
 "Prostrate before thy throne to lie, and gaze, and gaze on thee."
 You think, what an interesting robber neck you have to do that.
 Anyway, the thing is, you see, if you look in the eye of God, you notice there's a twinkle in it.
 Because if he is a God, as a true father, a true father is always like this.
 The father says to the child, "Look now, you've got to stay in that playpen."
 Because the child is getting big enough to get out, and then you don't know,
 you're going to get into the gas stove and the electric light system or something.
 And eventually the child climbs out of the playpen. He's been told, "You must stay in it."
 But the father is a little bit angry, but at the same time he's pleased,
 because it means the child is growing up.
 Well, so in the same way there must be a twinkle in the father's eye,
 just as I explained to you, there is always a twinkle in the guru's eye.
 Because the guru knows who you are, even if you claim that you don't.
 The guru knows you are the supreme Brahman in disguise, or Shiva, or whatever aspect you want
 to assume. And you're in disguise, and you won't admit it.
 It's like in forms of certain psychoanalytical gambits.
 One of the basic gambits of psychoanalysis is that all behavior which the patient describes
 as involuntary is interpreted to him by the analyst as voluntary.
 Involuntary behavior is, say, dreams.
 And the analyst raises the question, "What do you mean by those dreams?"
 Then he switches it. When the patient does certain behavior that the patient interprets
 as voluntary, the analyst brings it back to him and says, "I wonder what compelled you to do that?"
 And then the unconscious is brought up, you see, as the source of involuntary behavior.
 But sometimes in one context the unconscious is interpreted as something that happens to you.
 But in another context it's interpreted as your own real and secret intent,
 which you won't admit. This is a beautiful, really, it's a very interesting technique.
 And you don't need to use it, you don't need to believe the Freudian mythology that goes
 along with it. But as a technique it is a very interesting, indeed.
 So, in the same way, you must now see God the Father in the Christian context as Guru,
 and Jesus Christ also as Guru, coming on very seriously about "Thou shalt love"
 and all this business about hell and so on, and challenging you.
 Now, what is the nature of the challenge? This is the crucial point.
 The nature of the challenge is the famous double bind.
 You are required and commanded to perform an act which will be acceptable only if you do it
 voluntarily. And every stratagem is used to bring this home. And this essential stratagem is the
 crucifixion. When I was a boy in England, we used to attend the Good Friday services naturally,
 and at the door the clergyman would hand each of us a coloured picture of Christ on the cross,
 a very sad, dejected Christ, and written underneath in Gothic script,
 the verse "This have I done for thee, what doest thou for me?"
 And it wasn't simply, they weren't so naive as that they felt that
 that would make you put a little bit more in the collection.
 It poses a very vivid problem, you see, because they put it this way to you, "You really
 crucified Christ."
 In all those others, there's a whole strain of mysticism in Christianity, whereby the events of
 the gospel are eternal events. The birth of Christ has to become the birth of Christ in man's heart.
 The crucifixion is something that you did. Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
 If the crucifixion was a merely historical event, the answer is simply no.
 But were you there when they crucified my Lord? Obviously, this mystique wants
 to impress that you were, that indeed you were a party to it.
 So you see then, you begin to see that the crucified Christ somehow involves and contains
 all misery inflicted upon the innocent. Are they innocent or not?
 What are you going to do about it? The more you realize this, the more you realize
 that you cannot escape responsibility
 for all the horrors that are going on in the world. After all,
 you don't live except by eating dead creatures. Even if you're a vegetarian,
 the soft, luscious vegetables, the lettuce suffers in its own particular way when you crunch it.
 And so the grapes, when you squeeze them to make your wine, and the wheat grains,
 when you grind them up to make your bread, they suffer. You bet they suffer.
 Certainly the pigs and the cows and the sheep do when we slay them for our entree.
 And so you can't live at all without crucifying something, without sticking nails into it and
 spikes. And go on to that, what about other people? We are all living by mutual exploitation.
 Those of us who belong to the middle class in the United States, which is fairly prosperous,
 are managing collectively, more or less, to exploit each other only minimally.
 But we are living off, heaven only knows what kinds of depressed Indians, Mexicans, Africans,
 Negroes in this country, and so on and so on, you see. It's exploitation through and through. You
 cannot get, say, to the top in business without putting somebody else down.
 And so you begin to realize this and you start feeling awfully guilty.
 And so this is the meaning, this is the idea of the man hanging on the cross.
 What are you going to do about that? That's the question.
 And you think, well, oh dear, what can I do about it? Maybe I'd just better abandon
 everything and become a medical missionary like Albert Schweitzer.
 Do something heroic, go down to the South and be crucified by the people in Mississippi because
 they're helping the Negroes. Well, all right, what about the medical missionary thing? Will you be
 able to go down and give medicines to those people that don't come from drug firms, which use some
 pretty questionable practices? Of course, you'll have to start paying at least that part of your
 income tax that goes to the armaments race. But then what about sales tax? That indirectly gets
 there too, doesn't it? Where do you stop? See, then you suddenly, the more you think about these
 things, you realize you're completely involved. And there is no way out. You are a bastard.
 You did it. You know that poem of Kenneth Rexroth about the death of Dylan Thomas? You did it. You
 in your gray flannel suit, etc. So this is what one comes to see.
 Now, before we explore that critical point further,
 let's look at various other considerations. First of all, a lot of people when they get there
 think, "Oh dear." Well, there is one way I know I can be spiritually secure,
 to be sure that I hurt. So long as I really enjoy myself, I'm frightfully guilty and obviously
 sinful. But if I hurt, it isn't quite so bad. At least I'm doing something in the direction
 of making payment for this frightful affront which my life consists in.
 "Oh, I thank the good Lord of Lords for my boils, for my mental and bodily pains,
 for without them my faith all congeals and I'm doomed to hell's near-ending pains."
 You find this in many, many forms in Christian piety and devotional literature. It's not only
 the Calvinistic attitude, not only the Puritan attitude, but it's also the Catholic attitude
 which is expressed in, let's say, the cult of suffering in Spanish and Mexican Christianity.
 The idea of the flagellantes, the penitentes, the wearing of a hair shirt, of the frightful
 rules of convents and the practices to make things uncomfortable. Always make yourself
 a little bit uncomfortable. You see, that's a very, very important principle of piety.
 But you see how phony that can be. Because you can always congratulate yourself a little bit that
 you make yourself uncomfortable. You have missed the point. You think you can do something to pay
 the price. Whereas the hymn says, "There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin.
 He only could unlock the gate of heaven and let us in."
 Let's look at another aspect of it, another great feature of Christianity,
 traditional Christianity, is the Mass. The central act of Christian worship which somehow
 begins in the Last Supper. A very curious rite, almost cannibalistic.
 Salvation through eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ.
 I wonder if it's occurred to you that blood, the drinking of blood from a Jewish point of view,
 is outrageous. Because one of the fundamental rules of Jewish ritual law is that blood is prohibited.
 When an animal is killed in a kosher way, blood is in as far as possible drained out.
 Because blood is the life. And it belongs only to God. So in a typical sacrifice,
 the story of the great sacrifice in which the covenant was originally made between the Hebrews
 and Yahweh, the blood is poured out on the altar for Yahweh but sprinkled over the people.
 Not concealed by them but sprinkled over them to show that they have now formed a family.
 With the Lord. But you mustn't eat it. That is absolutely taboo.
 So a situation where suddenly to Hebrew people, Jesus says, unless you eat the flesh of the son
 of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. That is almost, in our culture, that would
 be equivalent to recommending incest. It would be as shocking as that to them. So then what happens,
 you see, at this last supper? He takes the bread, which is of course ground wheat.
 And the bread is the staff of life. It is for those cultures the main ingredient of a meal.
 Meat and vegetables are a garnishing. Bread is the point, like a tortilla for a Mexican is
 something you wrap it up, or rice for a Chinese is the staple. But bread for these people. So he
 says, this is my body. And all of you eat it. And he breaks it and hands it round.
 Then he takes the cup and says, this is my blood. And you see, even in simile, even in
 metaphor, this is a terrible thing to say. This is my blood of the new arrangement
 between God and man, known in Elizabethan English as the New Testament.
 This is my blood of the new arrangement, which is poured out for you and for many.
 For the forgiveness of sins.
 Do this in remembrance of me. Now look at that. This is to say, look, you live by shedding blood.
 You live by taking life. Please don't feel guilty about it anymore. It's for the remission of sins.
 Because in all the animals which contribute to your nourishment, it is I who am giving myself
 to you. So this is in remembrance of me, the me being the self in all of you. The I am who was
 before Abraham was, or rather the I am who is before Abraham was. I am the way, see all these
 sayings contain this subtle meaning underneath them. And in remembrance, as I pointed out to you,
 the beginning of the creation is dismembering. The fulfillment of it is remembering.
 Finding out again who you are, ceasing to be lost. So you see, here stands the thing that
 comes absolutely at you in the whole symbolism of the Christian mass, only the Christians never
 knew what to do with it. So they said, this is kind of dangerous stuff, this bread and wine,
 it's God. Once it's consecrated, we put it up the end of the church there, don't get too close to it,
 and put it on top of steps. And when the people could have the bread, all right,
 but when they saw in Western Europe, all those men coming up to receive the chalices with long
 drooping mustaches, they said, "Uh-uh, there'll be a desecration of it." You know, they'll go out
 and they'll kiss some girl and they want to wipe their mustaches and they'll drool it in the soup
 and our Lord can't be submitted to that. So the priest who was clean shaven, usually,
 he could have the chalice. People could have the bread, but there's a perfect panic in Catholic
 ritual that no crumb of that bread or no tiny droplet of that wine should get control.
 They lock what remains of the bread in the tabernacle on the altar, which is a safe.
 And it's been a safe ever since people started the Black Mass,
 but they went and stole it and they defiled it and had a right for Satan instead.
 And they drink every drop of the wine. When the priest finishes the chalice,
 he takes it in his hands like this and he puts his fingers together and his acolyte pours water over
 and he rubs so that no fragment of bread should be left on his fingers. And then he drinks the
 whole thing. And then it's washed out once again and he drinks that. See, none of that precious
 stuff must be defiled. Now, read the latest things that are happening in the Vatican.
 What they're doing now is they've altered all that. No longer is the Mass to be celebrated at
 the far east end of the church. It's to come right down to the center and everybody is to gather
 around. And in as far as possible, everybody is to join in. In other words, it's not just
 something that the priest mumbles in a corner by himself. But the responses that are said,
 everybody's supposed to join. But you see what's happened? The thing has become radial
 instead of addressed to the throne. The picture is the deity. In other words,
 the divine point is moving into the center. Where is that? The kingdom of heaven is within you,
 you see, instead of being something out there.
 Now, why is this glimmer occurring? This glimmer occurs because the challenge.
 This have I done for thee, what doest thou for me?
 And you know, really, it's a pretty bad scene. You're really guilty. You're really
 awfully responsible. There's no way you can pay for it. You know, like sometimes people say to
 their children, well, it's no point you're being sorry about it. It's done. And of course, I can't
 forgive you now because you may be sorry today, but we'll have to see how your conduct is over a
 period of weeks before we'll know whether you really decided to reform.
 Ooh, can you make a pea first and feel terrible, you see? And this is much worse than that.
 What are you to do? See, and you can't expiate by doing that medical missionary bit.
 Or by suicide, there's no way out. And yet, you must love God and you know you don't.
 The only reason you attend church is really because you're afraid. I mean, you may like the
 minister and there may be a sort of nice atmosphere around with the hymns are pleasant and the ritual
 is rather lovely. But when it really comes down to that confession thing, where you say, for these
 and all my other sins, which I do not now remember, I am heartily sorry, firmly purpose amendment,
 do you? You know you don't. You've got to do it again. And that makes you feel all the more guilty.
 Makes you wonder whether you really are forgiven. So you get to a point of impasse. The point at
 which you realize there is nothing you can do to get the grace of God. Nothing. Because it's all
 phony. And incidentally, there's nothing you can not do. You can't be passive either.
 Because that would be phony also. Activism is wrong and quietism is equally wrong.
 So you say, what am I to do? You suddenly realize that's the wrong question.
 The point is, what does it mean that I am at this predicament?
 What does it mean? What it means is that your conception and sense of yourself as a separate
 ego is phony. That this self that you have imagined yourself to be is a mire, an illusion,
 and you found out that it is because you found out that it's impotent.
 There isn't, it can't do something, there's really something that has to be done,
 but you can't do it. Also, you can't help by not doing. The ego is incapable of either because
 it is a hoax. It is, it's a very interesting hoax. And it's been worthwhile having this drama.
 But drama it was. Now you might say, well then that's pretty bad state of affairs because
 what you come to realize is a kind of fatalism. You're a Calvinist after all.
 Here is man then, nothing but a puppet. But that won't do.
 Because when you talk about a puppet, you look upon it as something pushed around by somebody
 else. When you see, for example, the marionette in this little theater, you think of the marionette
 as being just a dead thing, which is being influenced by the player behind the scenes.
 All right, what about your fingers? Are they puppets? To whom?
 Are you your fingers? Are you not your fingers?
 Surely your fingers are integrally you. They're not parts of you. They are as much you as your
 head is. It's true you can survive with your fingers or your arm chopped off, but human
 beings don't ordinarily come that way. Having fingers is as much part of being human as having
 a head. So they're not puppets. They move by themselves. See, it's one of the most interesting
 things about human fingers. And yet, they're you, just as we move around by ourselves. And yet,
 we're something a lot more than that. So this comes then, this catastrophic moment
 when you realize that your ego is reduced to a joke. Because you're intolerably guilty,
 so there's nothing you can do about it. You can't make amends without creating further trouble.
 You know how it is when people get into a family argument, somebody tries to apologize,
 and that makes everything much worse than it was before. Well, it's this on a cosmic scale.
 But it's all been brought out, you see, by the Lord, whether he's God the Father or whether
 he's the image of Jesus Christ acting as guru. See, there are many ways in which it's done.
 Take the famous Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus says, "Be not anxious for your life,
 what you shall eat, what you shall drink, and what you shall put on.
 For is not living more than meat, is not the body more than clothes?"
 And then he says, "Look at the wild birds, who do not sow, they practice no agriculture,
 they don't gather things into barns, and yet your Father in Heaven feeds them."
 All that, everybody always says, of course, nobody can practice the Sermon on the Mount.
 No sensible, provident person would dream of following this advice.
 Then why is it offered?
 It's saying, you see, you ought to go back to the life of spontaneity,
 of not making plans for the future, the life of impulse. The implication is, why can't you?
 Figure that one out. Why can't you be spontaneous? What's stopping you?
 Why can't you obey this precept? In fact, why can't you obey the precept, "Thou shalt love?"
 "Thou shalt be artificially natural." "Thou shalt be purposively unselfconscious."
 "Thou shalt free associate." It's a great puzzle.


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