Manly P. Hall: Ignorance, Natural or Acquired

It looks as though I hit upon an attractive subject we've had several Snickers from various locations regarding it but I think it is a very basic problem and that is an effort to understand the compound nature of ignorance now in order to understand it I think we have to go back and see what is happening or has happened in the early ages of the earth as the lord said to All Creatures Be fruitful and multiply the next requirement was some kind of survival survival became the primary need of living things survival was hazarded by danger

and the dangers of that time were natural dangers disasters the Primitive World fighting for survival so in the beginning all effort on the part of living things was to develop the pressure or impulse to Survive this was apparently created with them for that which is fashioned is expected to endure at least for a time so survival was the primary problem of the human being and of all natural creatures around him on the earth survival required something complete ignorance was not capable of survival and yet there was no clear demarcation between ignorance and anything else and

so far as we can understand in those Days ignorance ruled the world because there was really no situation permitting the individual uh to develop an orderly uh sequence of rules or obligations or governments the survival principle however was very strong and has always been been strong and is still to this time so survival began to involve something else it involved some kind of source of information the creature was not born With a fully developed mentality capable of Reading Writing and arithmetic the creature was born in a kind of a state of bewilderment but as bad

as things were he hope to stay here for a while therefore the problem of trying to find out what hurt the least uh what accomplished the most and how to expend life most usefully in some way all these were primary objectives and in these Objectives the only possible source of information or instructions were were experienc arising from observation and personal contact experience must do some good and primitive man in desperate need of everything began to be interested in experience he began to observe that certain things he did got him into further trouble other experiences indicated

that On right occasion he did something right and this sort of eased things a little bit and so the problem of experience also included watching the experiences of others he watched the various prehistoric animals he watched the various semi domesticated ones and he watched also the actions of others of his own kind and he began to realize that these others of his own kind shared his dilemma but also through obser common Observation rules of survival who gradually be created so survival was the result of watching other things live and die watching the various processes and

procedures by which the common obvious dangers of life could be averted or reduced this therefore was the beginning of education education was the gradual accumulating of knowledge of things practical and useful in old days there were no colleges universities or Anything of this kind but there were the elders and those who had experienced the most were recognized as the Guardians of those who had experienced less and all the lives coming into this world were given certain help and information by the elders the old ones the TRS those who had experiened those who knew those who

had watched observed and contemplated now all of this would be very rudimentary in terms of our present thinking but it was possible for The olds to more or less clarify some of the doubts of that time to make things a little easier for those who were still in swamp and jungle the olds could tell a little bit more about the nature of survival they were the ones who had walked in strange places they knew what was beyond the hills they knew what was on the other side of the river and this constituted higher education and

this education gradually Went on until it resulted in a moderate state of security it wasn't a severe and complete Security it wasn't anything that you might say uh made life as we know it now but it did extend the probabilities of survival and it did help the individual to realize that he could no more than he did now of course ignorance may be just simply based on the concept of ignorance the individual who seen things happening around him observed nothing And profited nothing the person who watched others suffer and did the same thing that caused

them to suffer were in this difficulty because they had ignored experience or had failed to observe so ignorance was the failure uh to observe the failure to share in common knowledge and the failure to recognize the pro the processes of universal law so survival began gradually to impose upon the creatures the fact that there were rules to the Game that no matter how you began or why you went there were laws governing everything their M mistakes were consistently similar when things were done well there were certain Securities and improvements achieved uh when you ignored the

whole thing you struggled along below the level of the intelligence of your own kind and came finally to Oblivion so the beginning of it all was was the recognition that there were Rules and the old ones repeated this and instructed the young they set up various forms of passing on information and it was always the Elder teaching the younger because there were no other sources of instruction but this instruction included pass passing on the importance of watching nature seeing how things operate around us relating ourselves to the behavior patterns of other creatures and finally refraining

from those things Which consistently proved harmful or hurtful so little by little the native kind of intelligence came up we would call it today sheer ignorance because in our terms of thinking this primitive believing was little better than idolatry little better than imagination but even in those days there seemed to be a rule governing imagination if you imagine certain things it was better if you imagine certain other things it was worse and Out of it all came the inevitable realiz realization of better and worse of Good and Evil of security and insecurity of emotion toward

something better or a falling back into something worse nature never stood still having attained a certain degree of security enough to build a Hut or hollow out a cave on the side of a hill the next thing that came after the problem of security that was most close to everyone was Rebellion we find the scriptures very clearly pointing this point out the moment the individual attained a certain security he wanted Liberty he wanted to do as he pleased he wanted to be himself he wanted to view the environment around him as something useful to himself

and as time went on he began to be ambitious to dominate this environment and out of this particular Type of thinking came a an Impulse to freedom and this impulse to Freedom now extends through practically every Department of nature every creature that has discovered EX existence has attained a certain pattern of security then wishes to achieve Liberty to be free from domination obviously the first and common domination was the environment the the individual wanted to be free from The Treasure of the Necessity of doing certain things simply because they were there he wanted to begin

to think in terms of being a person and the moment he began to feel like a person he got into trouble because this is a very dangerous feeling still is the individual however having decided he wanted to be free began to use every faculty of his at his possession to achieve Freedom out of it all the determination to do what he Pleased Freedom wasn't very much in those times at best but it was a rebellion against inevitables it was a a idea that the person could be stronger than the laws of his environment and in

fact to go of so far ultimately as to create new laws of environment and that these laws which he created were stronger than the laws of nature this was another fundamental error but it did rise inevitably in the thinking of human beings so we got the Uh survival person and we have the individual who his survival wishes to change his own destiny wishes to do something of himself wish to possess something himself wish to train or dedicate some ability but most of all self self expression to escape from a kind of bondage which was a

an imprisonment within the framework of natural law so as long as man has existed he has resisted in many ways the pressures of nature around him he has Wished to dominate everything but as yet has never developed the faculties and Powers capable of domination so this brings us to the next step in the problem domination which he wanted very definitely was for a reason he wanted to be better than somebody else he wanted to be stronger than someone else he wanted to be richer than someone else so a whole group of patterns were created By

which the individual should could satisfy his own Ambitions ambition arose by comparison with other things there were stre creatures stronger than he was creatures that lived longer that were more Fleet of foot there were all kinds of things around him which he could not really compete with but he also found the possibility of competing with the mutual abilities of his own kind so he wanted to establish the Olympic Games or Something by which he would be create a competition a competition based upon the idea of achieving greatness over something else to have a stronger will

a stronger purpose and the will became willful and because of this willfulness F the Angels according to B the German Mystic actually therefore we gradually get the person around to the point where he may be still in a wigwam or a cave or mud hut but he was now a person groping for Progress hunting and seeking ways of releasing himself from the entanglement of all other kinds of things now in this time also we have rising up however a few mysterious people or mysterious beings which are sometimes return ref to as the ancient priests there

were some that were born apparently with a certain difference of attitude a certain tendency not to create a conflict with natural law but to try to understand the law was better Than man's way of doing things the gradual discovery which ultimately produced the priest or the medicine man or the psychic leader of a tribe these were recognitions possibly by extra sensitivity of the individual that there was something that if you didn't play the game right you got into trouble that therefore there should be some way of restoring the Dignity of the rules the laws of

nature the laws of the universe the universe at that time probably was a Small square of land inhabited by a few people and a lot of strange creatures but in any event it was life it was the pattern of things it was a place it was our share of The Good Earth so the uh one person who uh became more attentive to procedures began to realize that the more the individual achieved Freedom the greater his difficulties became the moment he believed himself to be capable of going above the common rules of his kind he was

in So the more sensitive individual began to recognize that rules were the basis of security that the individual who kept the rules was the one who survived the one who went out on his own did not survive Satan used to tell this story about the bisen herds of the American southwest there were always some kinds of creatures wolves jackals cats of various Den ations and sides that wandered along side by side with the Buffalo herd or the Bison herd and they were watching watching for one thing and that was a young rebel they were watching

for a bison who decided to go out on his own who would leave the strength of the tribe or kurd and go forth conquering and to conquer as soon as this individual animal with a higher ago got a few yards away from the herd down came the carnivores and in a very short time he was finished now the same thing happened on other levels Satan pointed them out on that animal human levels there are those who want to go out and do as they please regardless who just won't take instruction or advice from anybody they

got to do it themselves so they wandered away from the herd and very soon to get into serious difficulties because strength was keeping the rules weakness was breaking the rules and no man no matter how much he considered his own strength was strong enough to break the Rules so out of this realization gradually emerged the concept of somebody who made the rules and theology came into existence but as yet it was all very primitive and tribal and each tribe had a pattern of its own but gradually became evident be evident and obvious that all of

these tribes found the same experiences they were in different localities their philosophies worked out differently but all by watching and Observing came to the final conclusion that the universal laws were immutable that they could not be broken man cannot break the laws but the laws can break manine if he disobeys them so out of this gradually the came the development of of herds of animals as domesticated creatures the building of towns and Villages all kinds of experiments in individuality in which the individual tried in all kinds of ways to find out What he could do

and as he went along he found that when he did certain things he had certain rewards but everything he founded also had certain penalties the moment he went away from nature and Nature's basic principles he was in a confusion all of his own ideas were useful and helpful and he was proud of them but a great many of them led to trouble as for example the more the village grew in size the less possible it was to stay in It the village had to be left behind because of problems of Sanitation had never been solved

and therefore The Village became a death trap although it was the beginning of what we call civilization and we're not quite certain now whether civilization is not an infirmity in itself but regardless of all these things our creature goes along there was no schooling as we know it anymore than there was school for rabbits and cats and dogs but they all Had their rules and they all had their laws and they enjoyed what we might term today a natural ignorance now a natural ignorance is not dangerous really because it is something we can get over

a natural ignorance afflicts everything that comes into this world the babe that is born is not self-sufficient nothing that happens in our world is with a complete sense of certainty there are always possibilities of alternate views and most of all there Is the primordial lack of of ultimate wisdom which has Afflicted man since the beginning of time there are things we can know and the things we cannot know and up to a certain point everything we could know became natural normal and possible and what we could not know became the source of Eternal fears doubts

wonders and conflicts there was no centralized opinion about things we could not personally sense with the Limited faculties that we possess possessed so we came out with an ignorant person an ignorant person is one who is not schooled but he's also one who may suffer now from ignorance from the unwillingness to learn or the unwillingness to accept ideas or beliefs that are contrary to his own willfulness he will not accept the limitation upon his freedom without great resistance and yet the freedom That he has he has perverted constantly since he first had it his freedom

can destroy him just as quickly as his bondage can all the various patterns of life that he sets up um are subject to certain rules and regulations which he has to finally accept somewhere in the dawn of time the young sat around the Old Gentleman or the old squa and listen to the stories of the people they learned the ways of the of the Jungle of the forest of the desert they found out How to tell what foods were edible and what were poisonous they found also how to create animal uh protections to to domesticate

animals they learned unfortunately also how to kill each other but they were all parts of this early knowledge or Early Education and this education divided sharply into two branches the kind of education that that helped us to do better and the kind of education that helped us to do worse one was the means of advancing the Divine plan and the other was a means of opposing that plan by our own willfulness and determination to do as we please regardless of consequences out of this comes another little Bible story of the building of the Tower of

Babel here EV tried to build a tower that would go up to heaven but they built it of mud and without straw and as a result of it it collapsed and also there was a division of tongues and Men no longer understood each other So the uh building of a civilization was a long and difficult arduous and stress Laden procedure but it was made worse not because of the actual seriousness of the situation but rather of the unwillingness of living things to accept the basic truths of Life they would not accept equality they accepted only

that they certain ones of them would be better than others they did not accept a general a general Brotherhood some were Brothers and some were enemies and enemies were people who opposed the plans of those who did not like them and in every case all of these different decisions and up to a tremendous Encyclopedia of basic facts we gradually build up over the period of the first 50,000 years probably of man's inhabitants of this planet a way of life a code a concept of existence we finally came to certain basic conclusions about what could be

And what could not be and at a very early date these conclusions were built into the subject of religion and theology and it was assumed that the gods the mados or the great spirits were responsible for these rules that men could not break and that these various deities like those who kept the rules and were a little unhappy about those who didn't keep the rules and out of all this the rules took on the idea of a moral tradition they took on the pattern Of the ancient wisdom the wisdom that had been handed down from

the past the simple laws of common sense so we may say that in the days of primordial ignorance Common Sense gradually evolved as the Panacea there was nothing very scientific or very profound or very world shaking about common sense but it was a key to survival it was a way of estimating the probabilities of things it was a way also of approaching a problem from a point of experience And that man could solve problems and having solved them could leave a written record of these solutions for the service of those who came after him so

we have experience and we have common sense and we have folk knowledge of the basis of education then we know that the moment this occurred Humanity divided into two essential groups those who accepted this uh new uh concept of survival who were glad and and happy over being able to Solve certain problems and the other group who resented the whole idea from the very beginning because it interfered with doing exactly what they pleased the the freedom of will was hazarded and this hazarding of Freedom became a moral evil to those who were morally inadequate so

that we now have here the beginning of we might call an an assumed ignorance a new kind of ignorance an ignorance resulting from the Dissemination of false knowledge and this false knowledge came into existence for one reason and one reason only individuals not willing to live according to the laws of nature they had to do it differently therefore the knowledge which they acquired in the development of their own OS became we might say a very complicated form of ignorance all of that has descended now to our present time we have schools we have universities we

have all kinds of Places where the individual can go to learn the essential values of a kind of living in other words he can find partial Solutions at least to his determinations to be free to do as he please and to create a great and con and opulent future for himself individually and theoretically collectively but the collective part s gets mixed up in the idea very deeply each person is out for himself now having come to this idea of How to be successful they began to teach it and this process of being successful has been

what might be termed practical or uh acceptable learning that which did not improve the individual's temporal condition uh was not necessary to his success now success was a very interesting thought and many most people today devote their lives very largely to the concept of success they want to be successful And if there are laws interfering with that if they're man-made laws they break them and we call it crime and if they are divinely made laws they call it sin but sins are not very important to the average person crimes are more difficult to get away

with so the problem of the individual breaking away from the pattern by motive of self-determinism left a very serious weakness in our systems of learning in our definite Determination to do what we want to do most of the world has forgotten what we were supposed to do uh the the idea that we came here from some remote source and went through hundreds of thousands of years to gradually develop a mind has been overlooked almost completely it has been assumed that the mind was just given to us to do as we pleased with that we could

use it for the most unpleasant thinking that we could use it to corrupt ourselves and others and we Could use it as a as an excuse or defense against the mistakes that we make now by the time we have been thoroughly educated we have what is called acquired ignorance we have an ignorance which was not given to us by nature or by the gods or by any outside Factor we are we have acquired a schooling on how to do wrong and get away with it or to say the maybe a little more genely the way

to live a life in this World with indifference to all the factors that are disagreeable to us so this is ignorance of the factors that we do not want to accept we do not want to believe basically in equality we do not want to basically believe in the victory of right over wrong we want to believe it theoretically and then do as we please so we have an education that is now based not upon experience not upon the wisdom of the elders not upon the Truths that were first carved on the cave walls of ancient

France and Spain what we are now trying to do is to create a new kind of world a world to be fashioned to do exactly as we please Perfect Freedom the ability to invent as long as an invention is even possible uh the possibility of becoming rich as possible and and then holding on to it which is not so easy everywhere we want to be exactly what we want to be if we want to drink ourselves to death it Is an inali able right that we can do so if we want to be kind it's

very nice but if it's expensive we generally get over this type of feeling so actually we have created a new kind of world it is a world in which we have created a kind of ignorance which will help us to survive the mistakes that we make we won't do not want to do it right primarily we want to do it sufficiently so that it will serve us but not that we Will serve it with any true Integrity so we have today to find what might be termed Basics and they're not easy to find they're not

easy because we do not believe in them any longer we believe in certain specialized attributes way back in the dawn of things when there was an argument somebody threw a stone and that gradually developed into a slingshot then we put a handle on one side of the stone and made Tommy hawk or Battle Club out of it then we developed the bow and arrow and then after a while the throwing spear which was the Primitive weapon of the Western Hemisphere we went on a little further and somebody found out that the Chinese fired off firecrackers

for weddings and funerals so we took the idea and made a cannon in order that we might shoot each other after that got a little longer and then everybody had a little bigger cabin then they something had to Something else had to be accomplished in order that we should always be victorious over the adversary and of course the adversary was always part of ourselves so we gradually broke up Humanity into a mass of conflicting units each struggling desperately to survive according to rules that were essentially wrong therefore their education should have come along at this

time and begun to correct these Errors but what education did instead of explain to explaining to us why we shouldn't build bigger cannons education now tells us to make nuclear bombs instead and that becomes a symbol of Higher Learning of our materialistically oriented culture we always get over a bad situation by creating a worse one that will eat it up and then we will suffer because the thing will turn on us so all the way along the problem of ignorance Has never essentially changed and cannot change until the individual determines within himself the difference between

ignorance and wisdom the evidences The Monuments to ignorance are so numerous that even the school child today is beginning to feel this uh this process so he is now striking for freedom and freedom is taking him back to the first days of emergence from caves today we want to Show that we do not respect the mistakes of our elders by creating an antisocial situation instead of however of trying to turn against our elders we would get much further if we would look more deeply into into the basics of life it is not our ancestor who

is responsible primarily it is always an attitude a conviction and a belief that is unsound that gets us all into these difficulties grandfather may have had it great-grandfather may have had it but The fact that he had it and that we don't like what he had so we create a revolution against grandfather is ridiculous the revolution is turned against a person but the very ones who are revolting are in that own turn in a little different way doing the same thing we result in we we are reject in their ancestry it just keeps on repeating

itself so the problem of the need for clearing up of ignorance has to be given Some kind of thought sometime or gradually Humanity will return to the caves from which it came because it cannot stand the constant uh B between personal willfulness and universal truth exist the two are incompatible unless the individual rises above himself these basic laws will never come down to his level he has to go up to theirs or he is in trouble and you go up to their the higher levels of things will result on Require self-control discipline idealism inter Integrity

a fraternal relationship with life Revolutions of a peaceful nature in which we find joy in growing whereas Revolutions of a militant nature lead to nothing but distress so we are looking around now to see where we are beginning to work on the problem of getting real education to come into the possession of an acquired knowledge that will serve us we have as the basis of an acquired Knowledge an internal life around a mysterious power principle or or energy which we call Soul there's something inside of ourselves a small voice that gets smaller as it as

the days go by but is still there there is an internal realization that we're wrong but we haven't the courage or the strength or the integrity to give that realization an opportunity to express itself we are convinced that in our present State the first move Toward living better is going to strip us of everything we have we are going to be Outlaws if we become intelligent the reward is not to be intelligent but to become part of a pattern the the rebel the teacher the idealist the dreamer these are out outcasts rejected by a society

that wants none of them there are certain things we have not been able to reject because of the tremendous intensity and universality of them such as for instance religion but we still Are able to live in the presence of it without being greatly influenced and most people regardless of their religious affiliations are seeking primarily for fame and fortune these are the things that come first now if we're going to try to do something to change this basic ignorance then we must say or believe that this basic ignorance is is in a sense moral it is

kindly it is rather simple it's just I don't know but I' like to find out attitude and in the individual who wants to grow must grow by gradually becoming aware of things he needs to know and and providing with this with this knowledge a sense of his own acceptance if he wants to live better he can it will please his inner life but not be particularly fortunate in his economic environment therefore all the way along the individual has to stand For principles or he must become involved in the compromises which we now call civilization we

are now standing at a point where it is obvious that we're in serious trouble we also realize from daily reading of the a rather pessimistic price that this trouble is not getting any better to speak of that we are still trying to make things work that never have worked since the beginning of Time we have tried to fight our way to peace we did that with stone axes we did it with bows and arrows we did it by just throwing logs at each other it never ended the the possibility of fighting our way to peace

is not acceptable to universal law but the universal law has its own way of solving these things and these the way nature solves this type of problem is very simple it is in the very principle of gradually achieving Basics out of Natural IGN ignorance the uh answer to animosities is simply friendship the answer to over Ambitions is moderation the answer to militant aggressiveness is a nonaggressive non-militant effort to restore the integrities of Human Relationships but nobody is much interested in them no one wants to see that everyone is fairly treated because to do this would

create what to Young and ambitious people persons is a Universal monotony that they cannot even think of enduring the adventure of killing themselves is very close to their minds and hearts the ADV the possible winning of the great Lottery of Life the possibility of becoming an alcoholic and still retain the love and friendship of mankind and keep your job these are the things that are concerning most people is ways to do what they please and not suffer from the result result and wherever this is taught this Is acquired ignorance it is simply taking something that

isn't so glorifying it putting a few letters after its name and considering it intelligent we cannot solve these problems simply by a granding of the trouble itself we cannot point to how Noble the difficulty is when in reality the no lies in the worlds of solution now how are we going to get a better group on Education if we sent a small child to school we know that child doesn't know too much at that time but it doesn't need to know very much because it is under the strong protection of parents now if these parents

don't know anything that's a little difficult for the child as well as the parents it's not recommended but if it is is true then the opportunity for the parent to grow a little is in is intensified by the needs of the child and the thoughtful parent Sometimes does thinking for the first time when confronted with a small child who needs to know and the parent hasn't the slightest idea what to tell him now this fact that nobody knows what to do about anything is not the the keynote of a great Advanced civilization it is actually

only evidence of something that has missed the mark for a great deal and must either go back and start over or nature will step in now nature is not cruel but Nature has certain moral factors in it it isn't moral in the sense that it stands somewhere and preaches sermons nature however does reward that which is right by certain Securities and integrities and it punishes those that are not right by certain difficulties and because most people aren't right the difficulties are not are numerous all right you piled up a universe of difficulties vast structures like

mountains piled upon Mountains and the difficulties are being strengthened and intensified every day you file up something like that and then you turn to the people and say we will show you how to Cho to solve this but they can't the the mountain will not disappear the solution does not lie in trying to make the mountain endurable nor can you take that mountain and mine it for gold ore or anything of that kind or you get out of it is trouble so as the problems grow greater And more and more people are out of work

more and more people are doubting everything then the question arises what to do about it and the answer to the to the informed person to the naturally ignorant individual who wants to know more is to find out exactly what the problem is and and City the intellectual instead of the intelligible approach to this situation is to take the mountain climb it measure it and decide that it can be built still higher If we do this we want we point to the mountain as a great great natural disaster as a great natural Hazard when it does

not of call of that kind it's our own building the difficulties that we Face are not put there by outrageous Providence they are put there by the simple mistakes of people who either cannot or will not grow if they cannot grow they have simple ignorance if they can grow and don't they have compound ignorance and Most people suffer from one or the other but there is in each individual the inalienable right to do that which should be done there is no possibility of taking away from the person the potential of being an intelligible reasonable individual

there is no solution to our economic problems our employment problems our population problems unless we get to understand and live in harmony with Natural law we are not here to get ourselves into a disaster and then spend the rest of the evolutionary period trying to get out of it we are here to do things the way they need to be done and this is very obvious the great ignorance is therefore the willingness to accept false answers to facts the individual is perfectly willing to be deluded into the belief that the pattern by which he lives

and By which he hopes to profit that this pattern is sacrif San and he can hope to fulfill it now we've got a situation in which nearly everybody is out trying to deceive somebody else the whole process of business has been corrupted we no longer think of the B and exchange methods of the past always built upon a very strange but rickety Foundation of man's inhumanity to man and man's ultimate selfishness to everything except himself And to everyone else except himself he is just one of the victims of the situation this leaves us uh with

certain uncertainties about how far we've come in this great evolutionary plan are we really getting somewhere yes we are getting somewhere there's no question about it we're learning but it's a hard way it's an individual suffering a 100 times s more than he should it's an individual who hurts for ages and generations when he Should have had the tooth out in the beginning and let it heal he's an individual who has been disillusioned until his heart is broken but he has never been willing to give up the illusions that cause it he is a good-hearted

person who has believed in the Brotherhood of Man and skinned everyone in sight and been skinned in turn this is the way the thing has gone somewhere along the way we have lost the contact with the Divine And yet we sit on that contact all the time this planet is a direct contact with the infinite reality of things this cont this Earth is one of the great books which we are able to read it is Al it is almost a visual literal symbolical repres representative of holy RIT it is the same thing here in our

Gardens in our mountains and our valleys we have the law as the old Indian American Indians believed we have the great spirits walking from the peaks of Mountains we have around us all of the realities necessary to our security if we will meditate upon them consider them and learn the lessons that they teach and we have to realize that the voice of God is heard in the winds and in all the voices and sounds of nature and the voice of a God who is a little disappointed in his creation can be heard also in the

confused s sounds of the Commonwealth and of the tremendous intricate Organization of man's present communal existence the war and howl of cities the bleed and cry of the suffering and the incredible sounds made by modern television programs and the like should tell us that something isn't happy and where we can where we enjoy becoming intoxicated or would rather take narcotics and die something is wrong and a civilization that has come to this is not right basically or it wouldn't have gotten here we are just Missing the lesson and missing it badly we are perfectly willing

apparently to have a revolt against society which we do by some form of eccentricity we wear our hair longer or our beards longer simply because it is our idea of a revolt against tradition we have a right to the Revolt there's no question about it but the length of our hair will not solve it we'll be just in the same trouble with hair down to our waist or with our head Shaven we're going to be in the same problem until the Revolt takes the form of a definite distinct recognition of the need for re-educating our

own lives unless we do it the answer will not come so we have now come to a point where most many people don't think life is even worth living they're not very much interested in survival that's why maybe they will keep on being alcoholics until they pass on at a very early age simply because life is meaningless for the Humanity to have lived for millions of years to come to the time that the human being doesn't care whether the lives or dies is not a success so all this glamour of the skyscrapers all this glamour

of computerization all the wonderful achievements that we brag about have left us very poor little creatures without any real reason to exist afraid to live and afraid to die this is a very sad end of a great program but it Doesn't have to stand stay this way it doesn't have to remain a disaster but the individuals who want it to change must see the need for the kind of change that must take place also Within themselves there is no reason in the world why the inner life of the individual cannot be improved without intruding unnecessarily

upon the structure of a society that is opposed to him and is against him there will always be and always have been good People there always have been people who are willing to make sacrifice who would like to do it better there are parents who would like to have their children better educated and one of the simple grounds I start the whole thing is on the level of Education we are entitled to an education that is inspired by need and not by policy children growing up need to be educated in the basics of living they

Need to know the difference between the natural ignorance of infancy and the acquired ignorance of the higher educational structure they need to know that what they are learning will help help them to be better human beings and not be satisfied to make them technicians who can command a high salary we are training everyone today in an economic conflict combat and uh Unnecessary situation rather than to educate them to be people the individual with all the degrees has to go down and die like everybody else he has in almost every case broken homes delinquent children great

wealth and still greater miseries he is perhaps worth billions but he's tied down to narcotics he is a Hellbound by alcoholism or he has one of the the many disasters which definitely prove the Insufficiency of success the uh school then should have should begin to think in terms of Basics the uh school should perhaps begin with the parents before the children go to school maybe every parent should be required at the time of the birth of a child to have some type of basic counseling as to what is important and real in life years ago

and I uh was quite young I went to a barber who was an an Immigrant from Italy he had come over brought his family and his children and he was running a barber shop and uh we got talking about things of interest and while he was Kipping here and there why uh we talked about his motives he had three sons and his own idea was very simple he said we came over here clip clip in order uh that I could make these boys rich clip clip I'm educating them I'm sending them To University they're going

to be professional men they're going to have all the education I never had and they're going to be successes clip clip clip and this was to him something that almost everyone would say he was a good man he was trying very hard and he was he was working in this little Barber Shop day and night to make sure that his younger descendants would have better life than he had but there was no obvious indication That this was going to happen and the answer is that probably the father in spite of his mistaken ideology was the

greater success in the family because he was trying he was working hard struggling hard to bestow privileges which were in themselves comparatively worthless so this is what we have and something has to be done to get back uh to a proportionate situation as we look at the map around us we see an absurd situation in the hands in mishandled by Absurd people we find no basic effort to understand the values of living no understanding of the possibility of humanity uniting its resources to go somewhere as one solid group determined to learn to grow to live

and to love instead of that all the little frictions every person who is strong regarding himself as a slave master and enslaving those beneath him so that people lose all faith in government lose all faith in Law and Order and gradually Come to identify man's made law with universal law and this of course is the ultimate disaster that the laws of men are merely expressions of the laws of God if they are they're misquoted because deity never did it that way so we have to find if we can some natural way to find that we

don't know now how are we going to know that we don't know well one way is to ask a series of basic questions and see if we can answer them ourselves pass them on to our friends And see if they can answer them and and if these questions are basic nobody can answer them so the answer primary answer is that we are not yet in a condition or position where we can definitely say that any pattern that we set up is inevitable we cannot say that we know all there is to know about any subject

we don't know all there is to know about an automobile we don't know all we need to know about Universal governments we do Not know the fullness of anything science is still searching and groping for answers that it has been seeking for several 100 years without too much success laws are being constantly amended because they don't work medicine is in constant Revolution between the effort to become more profitable to people and the opposite attitude of being more profitable to themselves all these things show that after all all these years we haven't gotten where we Should

have gotten it doesn't seem possible that world can suffer for 500 centuries or something of that nature and not find out what causes the suffering how that always the pattern is the same now in one man succeeded gorgeously and somebody else suffered from exactly the same procedures it would be more complicated but it is not that way suffering goes right after the heels of Mistake always and this we have to to finally adjust to so here we are in the end approaching of our Century A Century of the greatest material progress the world has ever

known and a century burdened with the most horrible responsibilities and tragedies that the world has ever known must we therefore equate and regard as identical progress and Misery do we have to feel that all progress has to be attended by tragedy do we have to think that the more who die on battlefields the more advanced we become no we don't have to we could learn something along the way if we were farmers down in mid Deep South 100 years ago we would have some simp answers to these things maybe no one would pay any attention

to them but they would be right answers that we cannot use today Because we do not know how so we have this prac are we going to go on fighting a battle that we must lose and which are we are losing every day or would it be better to stop for a moment reconsider and head in a different direction I think the uh answer is beginning to emerge as it did in the day days of The Crow magnon and the time when the dinosaurs were swallowed up there is a continuing pressure now the Recognition growing

among people in all parts of the world that the present situation is not right that is not something that can be cured by more of the same misery cannot be solved by creating more Misery we cannot make peace by continuing to create violence and all around the world now there is a tremendous sense arising of The wrongness the falseness of this concept upon which we have built so relentlessly we can see it in our investments we can see it in money we can see it in theater drama literature art science mathematics and theology we can

see all these things we can see where the weaknesses are then we see why an individual can graduate from a university and become within a few weeks a hopeless heroin victim education did not prevent him From becoming an drug addict another type of education not quite so recent he became an alcoholic always the the education didn't save him education apparently wasn't the answer to making the man right might but it should have been that education should mean that people grow up to learn something about life now some think this too dull a subject nobody wants

to do that anymore they want to watch Dynasty on TV uh which of course is a highly ennobling experience if there's anything that should lead to a universal Reformation it is something like Dynasty or uh Dallas that really should cause us to realize the mess we're in what pleas watch it and most people are kind of a little jealous that they're not one of the contending characters but it's still the fact that this is just an aggravated example of a Situation which we now call fiction but is unfortunately more than history it is something that

we should be learning from and we should learn to our grow from such things but we don't do it but actually we have to learn against the hard way but the way is getting H enough now so that learning ought to become increasingly popular we have to before the end of the present century begin to get Roots down To facts we have to realize that the answer to those Eternal search for knowledge is to find out how the infinite would do it and do it that way we should have to try to change place with

some Universal Providence and F and determine in ourselves how that Providence would take care of the delinquent child or the delinquent country or the delinquent race we have to get back to some type of basic Thinking and uh there are moves now that are in that direction education is breaking loose in many ways from the old stalemate that was it was held in but the intellectual is still the Aristocrat where it should be not that at all it should be that the intelligent person is the one who is the natural leader intelligence is innate intellectualism

is acquired and most people are more interested in intellectualism because they get higher Salaries also you go further socially bya joining with those who make the mistakes you can get richer but you can live shorter and when the end comes you can be very measurable so uh why not some way recognize also religion's place in this religion has been very much theology bound religion has put too much emphasis on the name of the faith it has been put too much uh emphasis upon the sectarian differen Which have led in thousands of years to countless Wars

there's probably no single greater cause of War than religion it has caused some of the most miserable and terrible occurrences in the history of the world and those it has not caused it has been unable to cure so that the problem remains that religion as we know it is not working it is not working in the sense that is not helping people to grow now when a small child is taken into the Temple to be consecrated to his faith this should not simply be a a ritual this should be a commitment based upon understanding upon

realization of meaning and value it should be an indoctrination in a higher V vision of life's purpose it should be a consecration to integrities now of course those who are more or less materialistic in their thinking deny the theological virtues uh they do not believe that the uh righteous must Always win and all that type of thing they feel that that belongs to an earlier Superstition but I think they have one point against them namely that the critic is not doing as well as the one he criticizes uh the critic in this field the material

IST is in very serious trouble and it's becoming more and more doubtful that he can continue to sleep in peace as he realizes what his devices Are doing to destroy the world so consequently the intellectual the individual who is the sophisticate who does not believe in such ordinary things as the golden rule is going to wake up sometime and realize that rule is going to be here long after after he's gone and it's going to be here we hope long after Humanity has restored the integrities which he helped to tear down so we have simple

things like that The golden rule in 50 religions All Nations all peoples who have had any basic intellectual understanding have accepted that rule they have found that it was the basis of something that was wiser and stronger and better and deeper than any arguments and dissensions could possibly be until man is able uh to disprove the workings of universal law he better obey it because the law is not going to be overthrown by any intellectual Individual they say they do not know the law but we can't find out about the law but because of the

law little ones come into the world every few minutes all over the world because of the law we hope and we dream because of the law we learn to live and become a little bit useful to ourselves and others because of the law we love and we become fruitful because of the law we love our children because of that love and that realization of that law some of us at Least become merciful and compassionate of others these simple rules are the basis of integrities that are far greater than the Einstein theory these simple rules are

the innate structure substance and essence of the creature we call man they are part part of his Fabric and because of them his heart beats because of them his blood circulates because of them his heart loves and because of him His ideals and his thoughts dream of better times this is a creature this is not something you can desect in a laboratory this is not something that is merely a synthetic creature fashioned out of man's experimentation this is something that has been endowed with powers and virtues that no living person has fully understood it is

something that we cannot estimate but we know to be one of the greatest Miracles as we will ever a Face in our daily living there is something completely beyond our understanding and completely beyond our skill and yet it is a manifestation of something that we've all in one way or another come to depend on we all depend on this heart beating if it doesn't beat we're in trouble very quickly we all depend to a large degree upon dreams and hopes beliefs we all also depend largely upon physical structure for the attitudes and practices imagine a

Musician whose nerves did not tie his fingers to his composition think of anyone who is in a special prision Precision work it was not the skill comes from some mysterious working of nerves and muscles in a body we don't understand well man himself is a mystery we should be rather reluctant to kill him off while we do not know how he came into existence we should not contribute to his uh to early departure we should be working with These things finding out what makes them finding out how we can understand them better if you want

to know how to run a country study the digestive system of the human body and you'll learn a lot and you learn things that you cannot go against if you go against the digestive system of the body you got a sick person on your hands if you go against the digestive system of experience in the world you have a sick world on your hands and no cure for That sickness will come until the evil is corrected or the mistake is made right all around us there are truths of a kind of world that we don't

want to live in anymore a world of simple values of kind-hearted people would just as soon be nice as being impossible uh people who do not expect to and cannot expect to suddenly become wealthy but who always dream that they might be one who could and in order to get Chase this wheel of the Wisp they hasten themselves Into an early grave all around us is evidence of life and it's also evidence that we are destroying life we are doing things we cannot undo we cannot re re replace what we have demolished and destroyed we

cannot restore the forest that we cut down we cannot restore the species of creatures that have become extinct D largely due to our uh personal selfishness we cannot restore anything unless we change our habits change our Ways and begin to think of ourselves in a proper manner it's nice perhaps to believe that you might become a conqueror over a continent or take on a nation but uh think for a moment here we are on the earth uh which Mark Twain called the mole hill here is this tiny little planet somewhere lost in a constellation the

bounders of which we've never defined floating in a space that goes on from here to no one knows where and here we are greedily Determined to own it we Grant we determine that the neighbor sh own it we're going to divide up the the real estate and make a reasonable or unreasonable profit and here we fight with our little money bags and all our little thoughts and selfishness and ambition and Grandeur complex while we are about as insignificant as anything in the universe we are just a small planet a kind of stupid one but a

kindly one of Itself someone on another one putting a telescope on us might see that some of the mountains are continents but it certainly will not see successful persons or unsuccessful persons all this is if an in an infinitude of Errors more and more every day while we're here I think the utopians had the best answer while we're here let's be comfortable let's do it the best we can let's free our minds from all this false stuff and take a little of that energy to study Our own needs more correctly instead of sitting by the

hour watching uh imaginary plots on television or something of this nature why not spend a little of that time trying to find out how to do things a little better ourselves so that we can help to make a better environment there's no use being Grand great and tremendous ruling over something that is nothing in itself no matter how many times men conquer the planet the planet will remain Unconquerable and such as it is is hardly worth the effort it much better to learn to make a beautiful garden out of it live in it comfortably with

your friends have a few pets that you enjoy and follow the instincts of your creative hearts and minds and do beautiful things there's no reason why not it's not getting anywhere any other way we will never build enough great machines to express the natural affections and genius that is locked in The hearts of so-called average person we will never be able to take this little planet and change it into the ruler of the cosmos any more than we can take make any individual the ruler of the planet he may have Ambitions in that direction but

in a few years he sleeps with his forefathers and he is no more the the all physical things are transitory all outward achievements are at best relaxations the real labors the real Work is to unfold the universal purpose inside of ourselves the reason why we were created what we are here to do and to find out the difference between a native ignorance which says I don't know and goes out and tries to find out and an acquired ignorance who says there which says there's nothing to learn and I don't care if there is this type

of attitude has got to change if we want to get anything accomplished until we can answer the Basic questions of life we are not in a very uh s secure position a scientist of the 19th century once said there can be no knowledge at all until man knows in himself why he is what he is and what his purpose is all other things are secondary all other things are of the luxury group The the nature of of life itself is pushing us relentlessly to the point where we have to think straight to Survive and that's

what is happening now so instead of resenting this instead of kicking against the bricks as Paul said let us rather go with it and say if there's something for me to learn I'll start right now I'll try to become the person that my inner potential makes possible and I will try to release through myself Universal good as it manifests in me and share it with others it can be a very quiet and sensitive adjustment it may Not change the course of history in the next few years but it will change the course of our individual

history forever and we will go out of here with a better hope and we will go out having Justified the divine plan but when we wake up and there is another star in the inner heaven and it's about time that we wake up because things are getting pretty rough around here and the sophisticated attitudes of everybody who knows Everything these attitudes are false this is acquired knowledge which is no cure to ignorance but is really one of the great causes of it because natural ignorance is simple it's it can be cured but actually this artificial

ignorance this acquired philosophy that is not so or the goals of which are not legitimate or the purposes of which are not within the boundaries of natural law all this type of so-called knowledge is Deceit and conceit and can bring us nothing but further misery and Misfortune we can take these lessons to ourselves we don't necessarily F them upon other people but those who want to think a little better and who have a little better hope for themselves and their own Futures and look forward to greater understanding of the universal plan and ability to live

according to it uh will find that in a few very sensitive sessions with themselves they Can find out this cure for natural ignorance and those are more sophisticated who become humbled by the victories of their adversaries can also become a little more understanding of what they could do to change their Destinies we will all endure what we must endure as a uh um Anthony I believe was one who said it we will endure what we have to endure as best we can in charity and in faith but that which we can change we will change

by a simple Dedication to principles if we live what we believe our beliefs Will Keep Us Alive if we do not live according to them but live in conflict with them claiming virtues that we will not practice then we are part of this uh world of individuals who have been educated above and beyond their capacities who have taken an attitude that is not true so let us not long not acquire further ignorance but it let get down to basic facts find out how little We do really know and do the best to know a little

more about it I think under those conditions the blessings of heaven will be upon us that's it