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...{ } close to Mission Street. And I had to think that in this simple word, in Fairview Mission Elem- -- Elementary School, the two periods which we have so far tried to illuminate--the tribes and the temples that -- of Egypt--are both represented. It will -- it is strange that our -- the babies who cannot read and write are sent to a school which is full of Egyptology. They go to an elementary school. The location is just signified by -- Bayview. But the order in which they are supposed to move, or into which they are supposed to be lifted takes its clue from the word "element." Now of "elements" you can only speak if you know the composition of the whole cosmic order. Then it's -- can be distributed and divided into elements.

These poor children have -- know nothing, you see. They don't know that they speak prose or poetry. They don't know -- that they read and write Latin script. Certainly they don't know no -- don't know what an element is. Yet we send them to an elementary school, because it is the moment in which the children are introduced into the sky world, into this heavenly world, which is -- above us, and which you all mistake for being the world of the self. But that isn't true. The self doesn't exist except in your stomach. But the elements of life you enter when you learn something, and begin to think about self. Any man who can say "self" is already an Egyptian priest, because he has found a kind of scale upon which the -- the notion of element can be placed at the bottom. And then up it goes--be it to the 99 elements so far known, or be it to the sky world of higher orders of the planet, and the sun, and the moon.

The word "element" is a Greek word, and has something to do with the -- with the -- articulation of the alphabet later. But certainly in your language the word "element," "elementary," is very far-fetched, indeed. It transposes all of us who use the term into an organized universe. The universe of the Egyptians is one of organizing the stars in the heavens, the skies, and making every one of us, in so far as he can read and be prepared to know their movements, make him a lieutenant of this general order.

The word "lieutenant," as you may -- should know, means Statt- -- Stattholder, and -- how should I say in English? place-holder, place keeper. And so you all, when you go to elementary school, try to gain a foothold in the universal order of the universe.

So let us keep in mind that -- our schoolchildren still bear the consequences of man's adventure in these big valleys in which a -- a minus, a detriment, a calamity, was turned into an advantage. Whereas the people in the prairies or in

the mountains, the natives of the tribes try to find a place where they can be fed, and nursed in migration, Egypt--Babylonia, Assyria, Guatemala, Peru, Mexico--all are countries who have taken advantage of a disadvantage. You can only speak of elements when you have decided to go to a place where, by the nature of man and nature of things, you would be starved. You would be driven out. Because it is -- there is a flood, and you are in danger of being flooded out, of being -- of drowning.

All the great temples of mankind have been established at a place which is the least fit for -- for people's living. To this day, I told you, the Bedouins despise the Egyptians, because they have committed this madness to go into a country that is for 120 years under water. They say, "Only fools can do this." And the progress of mankind is always based on taking advantage of a calamity, of doing something so unexpected in the ordinary course of events that you have to overturn the prevailing rules and orders. And that is what the Egyptians did when, for 120 days, they moved the whole -- population to Gizeh, and to Cairo, and be- -- began these public works--very much like our Job Corps. And only in the rest of the year were these people -- truck gardeners and wheat-growers in the otherwise flooded area.

I must stress this very strongly, gentlemen. It is -- you are so soft that you think you would go there where the climate is nice, and the -- the soil is fertile. And why not? This is not history. Real man has always only made a progress when he has tackled the most difficult.

Arthur Schnabel, the musician, the great pianist, has written a book in 1942, which I recommend you for learning by heart before you get engaged and marry. Music and the Line of Most Resistance. Music and the line of most resistance. It so happens that 40 years ago, I wrote a book on Christianity which was called Ama Qui {Arduissimum} Est. So I was delighted when I discovered that 20 years later, a musician--a musician of all people, you see; people with long hair and very soft-spoken--that he had written the same title, Music and the Line of Most Resistance.

In history, my dear pe- -- friends, you must know this: nothing works that tries to get by, to squeeze in -- what all you do, you see. copying in an exam from your neighbor's paper, that may -- get you a B or even an A. But by getting by, you don't get anywhere, because you don't know it.

And Jesus, of course, came to the most pious and most religious people with the greatest revelation and the true revelation of God. And that's why He could found Christianity. He couldn't have founded it in Rome; and He couldn't have founded it in Santa Cruz. He had to go to the place of might and of greatest


And in this sense, the conquest of the Nile Valley for wheat production is a great triumph of the human soul, because they went where it was very dangerous to go to, and seemed impossible. How can you master such a high flood? You know, high water is as bad as fire. E- -- perhaps even worse. People run. Water is coming!

Now the -- the starlike attitude of the -- pharaoh has been that he said, "Be quiet; be of good cheer; nothing will happen. We know how to master the flood, you see. For 120 days it's mounting; and then for 240 days, it's sinking, slowing. Therefore we can exploit it. We can" -- what's berlisten? "we can trap it. We can take advantage of its weakness that it cannot be so high all year around." All inventions of mankind and your own career, is bound up with this courage of yours to go to a place where it is the har- -- the hardest to succeed, that such a success pays.

Your successes, just by copying other people's papers, isn't -- isn't worth anything. Neither is your paper any better if you have copied it, nor do you make any progress. That is why the cheating in -- in a class, for example, is something by which you cheat yourself, not the teacher. Because you cheat yourself by thinking you have gotten an A. Of course, you didn't.

It's very strange that in the 19th century, this old rule of heroic hardship has been ridiculed. People think you have to go -- get by. I mean, we live of course under the aegis of Madison Avenue. And the image is everything. Gentlemen and ladies, the image is nothing. It is just stupid to fall for it. You cannot live on images, not even on a wonderful image of your own.

Ama qui {arduissimum} est. Love that which is the hardest. If -- we will see that the Jews did exactly this when they left Egypt. The Egyptians did this when they left the prairies and the woodlands, and settled in a -- in a country of -- which was flooded one-third of the year.

Inside this Egyptian order, or -- on nothing, so to speak, on water, on flood, on danger, on drowning, we have now today -- take one further step, because it is -- you may not be so surprised, it is so -- such that any order, when it is -- when it is taken over by the next step in history, doesn't -- isn't taken over at its primeval source, at its real beginning, but at an eccentric point to which it has already developed.

When the Greeks inherited the Egyptian wisdom, the wisdom of the Egyptian priests, they already saw it in full development. And I ha- -- must

prepare to- -- you today to take this step from Egypt to Greeks and Jews. And this you can only take if you see that in this Egyptian heroic order of fighting the flood, or exploiting the flood, there was one element of popularity and of weakness on which then the later-comers could capitalize.

What happened is this: the Egyptian pharaoh, as I told you, became a god, because he could do the one thing no other human being and no star could perform. He could go from nor- -- south to north. The sun and the moon cannot move from south to north. The North always remains empty. The constellations in the sky, you see, cannot conquer the North. That made a great impression on these observants of these heavenly hosts. There -- were these heavenly hosts, these angels, these stars, these constellations in the sky. Yet they had one taboo. They had this taboo: you can't go north.

So Horus said, "If I can go north"--that was the hardest thing to do, you see--"then I will master Egypt, and I will master the flood." And he did.

And Horus is that star, I told you already, who can move from south to north. But he had to govern millions of people. And these millions of people, of course, could not participate in his movement from south to north, from -- Syene, from Aswan -- the Aswan Dam today, down to the Mediterranean Sea. This was reserved for the emperor.

Now anything that is reserved, of course, suscitates en- -- jealousy. And just as Christianity has been supplemented by the cult of Mary, so the cult of Horus was supplemented by the cult of the sun, the -- of Ra. The sun -- name for the Egyptian sun-god is Ra. I have already told you that he was written in this manner. The sun shines every day in Egypt. And therefore the problem was, for Horus, to let his subjects participate in something of the sky. They couldn't all go to Aswan and ride the flood down to the Mediterranean. That was reserved to the king and his followers, to the -- so to speak, the -- the -- the army.

The peasant who was then expected to work the newly conquered soil, could only see the stars as they moved, day by day. And he became a worshiper of the sun. There is a tremendous literature on this, and a tremendous misunderstanding. Because the -- modern man, of course, for the -- at first did not understand why the pharaoh of Egypt was more powerful than all the stars in sky -- the sky, because he could move from south to north. This has taken a century before this appeared in its full importance. You always read of "sun cult" in books. Throw them away. There is nothing behind sun cult. You cannot have a sun cult, because the sun is too monotonous. All your popular books on anthropology are full of this -- of this idiocy. There is no sun cult, because it is nothing to -- to cultivate. The sun is there, and you can't influence it. You can influence

the -- the flood. You can ride with the flood north, you see, for example. And you can observe when it comes. And you can have a calendar to tell you on July 19th the flood is -- rising. But the sun, in -- in these latitudes, like 30th degree, it is very monotonous. It is too hot. You get all -- eye disease, and it is not a very benevolent -- star, either. What you do in Egypt is to work at night, and sleep in daytime.

So our -- your popular notions about sun cult has to be -- have to be revised. I don't know of any sun cult that is really fruitful. But it is an aside, just as the cult of Mary. You know, all Catholics can be divided in such: who worship the mother of this man, or -- and the other half, the superstitious ones, who worship the son of this mother. And it is very hard for many Catholics to understand the difference. But it's quite a difference whether you are the s- -- the mother of the Savior, or whether the Savior is this mother's son.

And so inside our every -- religion, there runs a line of -- of where the -- where you really twist the whole thing around. To worship a man because he has this mother is one thing; and to worship a mother because she has this son is quite another. And don't be betrayed. The modern -- interesting situation is that there are two religions in the Catholic Church. And there are in every religion, I mean. In the Congregational, just as well. And most people are perfectly satisfied or have the second-rate religion.

The sun is -- has bec- -- been made by the pharaohs in a very -- in a very interesting policy- -- policy-making process, the -- the religion of the fellahim, of the peasants of Egypt. They were allowed or invited to imitate the liturgy of the sun going from east to west. Since Horus and the pharaonic government had to move from south to north over 1500 kilometers -- 1,000 miles, the natives, the peasants who were doomed to stay put in one place for tilling the soil, you see, were -- were, so to speak, paid off by being told, "You worship the sun. And you follow its movement. And your liturgy consisted -- you get -- up in the morning at 6 o'clock, you see, embark on the Nile River, cross over to the other side; in the evening, you come back." And so for the dead, the popular belief was that the souls of the dead were buried in the West, where the sun sets, you see, and they were rising again in the East.

East and west are the forms of popular religion in Egypt, just as the cult of Mary is one form of the Catholic Church. And you cannot decide, just by hearing the word "Mary" whether this is a good Christian who worships his Lord, or whether he is a -- everyday politician who worships his own indifference, you -- I would say.

It is very strange that we have evaded these issues for 200, 300 years. Yet if I talk to Catholic people, I always make sure whether they really mean Mary, the

fa- -- the mother of this Lord who went to the Cross; or whether they meant the Lord, who is the son of Mary. It is not quite the same.

In order then to keep this clear, please: the sun cult is a -- popular form of the religion of the ancients. Where you have sun cult, it is an attempt to make it accessible, what happens in the big center of worship, as in Mexico City, for example, you see, to make it accessible and imitable, or emphatically, I mean, to be lived, to be felt for the populace, for the low-brows, for those who cannot -- who are not priests.

All Egypt -- is divided into priests and laymen. and the discovery of the people of God, and the priests, the initiated, has -- exists to this day. It's a new division. We had the division: parents and children; offspring and ancestors, you remember, in the tribe. This new division in Egypt is: those who can move against nature from south to north, and those who just are the burst- -- what's "bercer"? basking in -- in -- in this east-west religion, which is purely natural, and which occurs every day, and in which you are like a child of the land, given to the movements to which you are -- inside which you are caught, so to speak.

I hope I have -- is it clear, or is there any question about this? It is a difficult notion, because all our books, you see, of the last hundred years have neglected to take the cult of these ancient river empires any way seriously. But it's a very serious business that you can organize 20 million people for 3,000 years in such a way that they are satisfied, you see, that they gladly perform. And these Egyptians to this day, are still behaving as though Pharaoh of Egypt was governing them. This will now pass. The Russians are destroying Egypt by being such fools to pay for this Aswan Dam. So the country will not be flooded. The water will be dammed up, and -- Heaven knows --. The old Egypt of the last 4,000 years is gone. And -- it's with Mr. Mao; it is not so easy to make revolutions. Very complicated business. The Russians do not even know that they are destroying the oldest order of -- on Earth, which has come down to us.

The Egyptians lived this order down to the days of Caesar. This is -- two great constellations of -- 1460 years each. The last time that this constellation was celebrated was the year of the Lord 1-3-9 of our era, In 139, the impression of the -- on the world of this Egyptian flood religion was still so strong that the emperor of Rome transferred his residence to the Nile Valley, and celebrated it. 139; later we never hear again of this. And as you know, it is now a Mohammedan country, and was overrun by the Mohammedans, because its own way of life by that time had vanished.

There has been inside Egypt a resistance against this medication, to these pedantic movements. Every year, after all, they say, "Can't we have a round-tip

ticket -- ticket -- a round-trip ticket? It is too awful that Pharaoh has -- makes the king's progress every year." It took a long time, you see. It took a great -- a capital outlay. And it's just like Mr. Reagan now suddenly being for -- all for thrift.

So in -- there was an attempt in -- inside Egypt, before the first solar constellation ended, before the year 1318, before Moses left Egypt, and before this new freedom was proclaimed of the Old Testament. The last--not the last, but one of the last pharaohs--Amenophis IV, Amenophis IV--perhaps it's worth your while taking down this name--decided to get rid of this ped- -- pedantic imitation of the constellations in the sky. And how did he do it?

You read quite some popular stories about this, nowadays. There is a place in Egypt called -- Tel-Amarna. "Tel" means village, and Amarna is the settlement now with an Arabian name. And you see that there is -- in the popular books, there is always talk that he was a monotheist, this man--Amenophis IV--and that he tried to introduce monotheism into Egypt. That's very far from the truth. It is true that there was a religious upheaval, and that Tel-Amarna was chosen by him to get rid of this very inconvenient Nile -- journey down the Nile for 120 days so -- at the head of this -- these flood waves who run down from the -- Aswan to Cairo. This is true. He did something about it. But he did it in a strange manner. Amenophis IV built this town of Amarna after he had obviously surveyed the -- the course of the Nile River very carefully. You never read in any of these modern books where Amarna is situated. Has any -- who has not heard the -- the name -- the name "Amarna"? I would be quite interested. Oh, so it's quite unknown.

It has been excavated in the last 30 years, and the -- fact of Amarna is that Amenophis IV, who was obviously a -- a serious decadent--he has -- looks really as though he couldn't be a king--he put this place, Amarna, in exactly the middle of Egypt. If you survey the -- the -- the curves and the arcs of the Nile River, from Aswan to the Mediterranean, all the bows and crooks, and all the windings, you find that Amarna is situated 512 kilometers from the southern end, and 512 kilometers from the east- -- northern end. So it was a feat of geometry of the first order that you could measure, you see, all the crooked lines of such a river over thou- -- 1,000 kilometers.

This was done, however, and therefore the -- Amenophis IV had the bright idea to say, "If I settle in the middle of Egypt, I don't have to go on this journey every year. I can govern from the middle."

So if you want to know about the only religious reform which the Egyptians ever tried, then you must know that this is a strictly geographical reform, that it is -- has still all the handicaps of geography, and the God -- the living God

is not a god of geography. He is not located in Tel-Amarna. And that's why your books -- popular books are all wet. They are wrong. They have not taken the trouble of measuring the distance. I did. And the -- amazing result is: it's exactly in the middle.

And for this reason then, the documents under Amenophis IV, who governed from 1358 on, 40 years before the crisis, before the return of the Great Year, all these documents declare that he was situated in exactly the center of the empire, that the four points: east, west, north, south, had been all oriented strictly, and that therefore he could hope to master the government of his country. The answer of course was that the enemy broke in, into the northern end and the southern end of his empire, and it didn't help him that he was lo- -- situated ex- -- in exactly the middle, you see. The enemy, as a matter of fact, took advantage of his vow, that he would never move out of this center. So he was a madman, or a decadent, however you like to s- -- call him.

And it is quite important for you to note: this is not an attempt to monotheism, as you read in all the popular textbooks, who are such atheists that they don't even know what monotheism is. I mean, the books written about religion -- in this country, they are so scandalous, because they have never taken the care to ask themselves, "What would we have done in this place?" Don't read this stuff. I mean, Will Durant, and such { }. It's just terrible. People who have no faith themselves, who have never experienced -- have no power to found a religion themselves, how can they understand what was done, if they don't take this seriously? So they say, "It's a sun cult." Never anything of a sun cult, but the abolition of this very terrifying journey every two years, with the whole court, you see; it couldn't be abolished.

As you know, there is from -- by Scott this wonderful Kenil- -- Kenilworth novel. Who has -- who has read this? -- By S- -- by Walter Scott, Kenilworth. Who has? You have? Heavens! Scott -- has written in English! He describes the last Egyptian journey, the queen's progress. Elizabeth comes to Kenilworth, and Scott makes William Shakespeare attend. So it's -- there you have the last link to the old Egyptian traditions, in this progress of the queen, for -- to -- through her, the kingdom. And this is exactly what every king has to do. He has to take possession of the frontiers of his kingdom.

So the Amarna incident I think is a very instructive one, because there they -- the king of Egypt, the pharaoh of Egypt tried to build his house on a static basis. "Pharaoh" means big house. The -- the transformation of all of Egypt into one house, inside which Horus can go on his journey, was trans- -- an attempt was made to transform it in Amarna, in 1358. And when it didn't work, the disgusted people left Egypt and founded the state of Israel. The Jews are not to

be understood except as a violent upheaval of the emancipated and progressive elements of Egypt. And I'm sure that Moses was a full professor at the Egyptian university.

And that's what it says in the Bible. Moses learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. That's a quotation, gentlemen and ladies. And he was a professor who said, "This is not for me anymore."

At this moment, I don't wish to deviate from the Egyptian story, because we have to do one -- take one more step inside Egypt, before we can leave it. Priest needs laity. I -- give you an example, how the priests worship the true calendar of the river Nile--who was of course defied in those days as a mighty power beyond human endeavor, beyond human techniques--and the laity, who just bowed with the sun, evening and morning; ther- -- thereby became one day. In the Bible creation story, you have a -- a -- a relic of this popularity of the sun cult.

What is a temple? Why did the Egyptians build temples? Why did they use all these incredible stones--I told you how many for one pyramid--enough to build a wall around the whole country of France. Why had all the people moved up to Gizeh to spend there the flood time? Well, they had to be fed. Otherwise they couldn't have returned to their garden land. It was a very practical measure, to take care of these -- by public works. We did exactly the same in -- under F. D. Roosevel- -- F.D.R. Public works always come when there is disorder.

These public works of the Egyptians, to build these pyramids, led to this division between priest and laity, because only the priest knew why and how. And the laity just had to perform, and lay the bricks. They didn't -- were not asked "how" and "when," you see. These are the two great questions of life. If you know when to get married, you wouldn't get divorced.

Now for this purpose, the Egyptians invented what we call "script." The most important chapter of -- for us at this moment of the history of mankind is obviously that we enter the phase of writing. We can hardly imagine any progress, any order without print or writing. You take it for granted, script. I already told you that the first script was in the tattoos of the tribes. The next thing is that the temples were inscribed. The temples were the stars -- world themselves, the sky world. Any temple in Egypt is inscribed with hieroglyphs, because the temple must tell the story in the sky. Any temple in Egypt is a communication of the constellations of what happens when the sun, and the moon, and the stars move--and Horus, too, the pharaoh, you see, replacing the negligent stars who -- won't move from north -- south to north.

Therefore the hieroglyphs, the sacred -- letters, you see, are the Egyptian progress with regard to writing. The -- as you may know, the Greeks have no hieroglyphs, bec- -- and they did not inscribe their temples. And if you want to know the distinction between Egyptian religion, and -- and Greek religion, the difference is that the temple is inscribed in Egypt, and the temples in Delphi are naked. They are not inscribed. And this again you find in no books, because these books are all written by unbelievers. They do not know that we're all trembling people, and want to get orientation. And therefore, to give up writing in E- -- in Greece, no -- signifies that something quite different is prevailing there. That the -- E- -- they had not the same religion, because they did not inscribe the temples with the hie- -- holy messages of their gods. We will see that they had a different script for this reason. The -- the hieroglyphs and the Greek alphabet are two modes. One is priestly, sacra- -- sacred, and the other secular and poetical. Homer was written -- was written in a secular language; but the inscriptions on the temple in Gizeh are written in a sacred language. And that's very different.

And again, you see the laziness of the popular writers. Do you think anybody mentions this? No. It's too important to mention it.

The inscriptions on the temples in Egypt meant quite literally that the sky world was inscribed, was made to speak its secrets. The priest in Egypt obviously--we can read this, I mean--felt that the -- the heavens praised the glory of God. They notified man of what's going on, what the constitution of Egypt has to be. And so these inscriptions--in endless repetition, in 36 different counties, 36 temples, 36 times the same inscription--they proclaim the order of the universe. It is like an elementary book today of geometry, where you also proudly say, you see, that the two sides of a ri- -- of a rectangular form, you see, together give two -- what do they do? How do you express this? I can't say this in English. What do produce the two -- the squares over two sides of a rectangular triangle? Wha- -- what do they do? No, if A -- A to the square and B to the square. What do they produce? What? No, I'm at a loss, so next time I will have written it up.

The -- you must -- I must ask you to try to understand the world of the pagans, of the Mexicans, of the Egyptians, of the Peruvians, in -- so that you never mistake the Greek alphabet, and the Greek lettering, and the Greek literature for anything identical with these older layers of civilization. The Greeks abolished this sacredness of knowledge. All knowledge of the Greeks is secular. They had no priests, to speak of. And the symptom of this is that instead of inscribing the walls of the temples, instead they sang poetry. Poetry in Greece holds the place which in Egypt the priesthood holds.

And I want you to understand: this is -- the main purpose of this course here, that priesthood is an eternal category --. You cannot le- -- live without it.

But it means simply today, in our modern language, the professional. It means, the man who knows, the expert. And therefore the word "priest," although still the correct word, always entails that there are laymen who don't understand, and who have to be told, and get a prescription. You will understand the Egyptians best if you -- if you recall that the word "prescription" is the more genuine term instead of "script." To prescribe, you see, means to command in an abstract, otherwise inaccessible world. A prescription -- the doctor gives you a prescription, because you can't possibly -- only a pharmacist can prepare this prescription, you see. So here is you -- you, the layman, take as a layman, you see, as a victim of this doctor, you go and hand over the prescription to the servant of this medical profession, the pharmacist in the drugstore. And the pharmacist understands the sacred letters, you see, allegedly; and he can give you the prescribed medicine.

In this triangle between pharmacist, and doctor, and you as the patient, there lives the order of Egypt. That is, it isn't script. It is prescription, which these priests do in their inscriptions. If you ever come to -- to Mexico City, or to Yucatan in this country, or you go to -- to Cambodia, or you go to Egypt itsel- -- herself, you will -- must remember that all the inscriptions on the temple walls are prescriptions. You do unjus- -- as you don't know what tattoo is, as long as you do not understand that it is simply the constitution of the tribe, written on the citizen's body, forever and forever, so you don't understand Egypt if you think these hieroglyphs are there, just a love letter to your cousin. They are not -- indifferent to what is going on in the world. They are prescriptions which can make you behave, so that no harm is done, that the flood is respected, that the stars are worshiped, that you cross over from east to west, or from south to north in the proper order, that you become a citizen of the sky.

Under the influence of the Greek renaissance in the last hundred years, this was not understood. And it is only now that although there is your pyramid on the dollar note, and although the French Revolution tried to introduce the Egyptian calendar with its decadic order, you see--this what they tried in 1792--it has all been overruled by the influence of the -- Greek tradition, what you call the "Renaissance." And although I hope it is fading out now, this Renaissance has done much harm to your mind, because it has made you into a purely passive being of -- only mirroring, reflecting things, but not understand the -- understanding the prescription, the commands of these things, that they ask you to -- to make a sacrifice in your own existence, in your life, to support an order.

The Greeks seem to be -- not to make any demands on you. Just curiosity. Now curiosity, ladies and gentlemen, may be good in California, but for the rest of the world, the people perish if they are just curious. It's no recommendation to have an intellectual curiosity. I don't know if this is still the principle in your

college, Mr. Smith. Is it?

Well, it's quite important that I must -- I must stress this point, that the Egyptians did not favor studying for study's sake; they did not favor intellectual curiosity. They did cul- -- cultivate a cosmic obedience, a cosmic routine, and a cosmic calendar, prescribing to every human being the necessary, the moral, the virtuous movements. This is not the same as reading a novel, The Beloved.

It's very hard for you to appreciate at all, I think, the order of discipline, or the order of obedience which perma- -- permeated these empires. It was the great pride of man to do exactly what you were ordered to do. Because only in this manner could you live in harmony with the spheres. The very expression "harmony of the spheres" comes from this universal perception that there is an order in the sky, and that if man on earth only can get hold of its principles, he is blessed, he is in bliss.

That's why, for example, the horoscope now still exists as a remnant of this belief. I told you that the horoscope nowadays is -- has no longer the -- the power over your life, as it used to have, 2000 B.C., because there it was the fate of -- of all of Egypt, altogether, under one pharaoh. Now you think you can get your private horoscope, and of course you can't. It's an absolutely arbitrary invention. But it's of course a way of making money.

What makes it difficult for you to measure the discipline, the severity of the discipline, that any professional group imposes on the laity is of course that we have this Greek intermezzo: that people just become artists and poets, and sing anything -- write novels, and make even people read these novels, which I -- still don't understand. And -- how this come -- brought about, that people think they must read other people's novels, I do not know. It's a very strange situation.

If you read that you must read Mr. Capote -- why, it would be a more natural reaction to kill the man. What is this? I mean, that you read such a terrible book. It's very strange. For an Egyptian and for a tribesman, perfectly ununderstandable, you see. It would be an absolute -- going to Hell, subscribing a pact with the Devil. And it is, to this day. You ought to know what you are doing. I mean, perhaps you can do it then, because man can at least, if he knows what he is doing, he can do anything. But if you don't know what you are doing, and you think it is prescribed to read novels, I'm sorry, you see. The prescription are limited to the priests. No literary man can prescribe you to read his stuff.

But this whole country has shoved aside this distinction between "script" and "prescription," and you really think that this is prescribed reading. How do they call it? Prescribed reading? Ja, ja. Interesting.

I would -- would like to make one point so that the temple of Egypt takes on a certain dignity and a certain lasting importance. The temple incorporates all professionalism. Where there is a temple, you enter the temple in order to be initiated. And the initiation in a temple takes the place of the initiation in the tribe. The young man in Egypt was not initiated in the tribal fashion, by dancing around the -- you see, on the dancing-green, and getting his girl then and there. But he was initiated by obediently carrying out the ritual in the temple, around the shores of the river Nile.

This relation to the temple I think is the hardest for us to understand. And you can only understand it if you take the doctors, the lawyers, the engineer today, and the literary critic, representing this professionalism. You blindly obey their orders. When it -- when the bridge has to be built, you better go to an engineer. And if a medicine has to be -- has to be given out, you'd better go to a doctor. And that's the authority of the old templar services: the right to prescribe behavior.

In a country in which there is -- allegedly, you see, everybody free, it is very hard to understand that you too live under a very strict order of pseudoprophets, of pseudo-priests, like this man Capote. And they have taken the place of the priests in order to inherit the mantle of the priesthood, the authority. It brings in money; and mighty -- so. And this might of the professional you accept. But you don't know that the source of it is the -- your dream of somebody being in the know, somebody being able to tell you what you should do, and therefore following blindly in their wake.

So I think an official priesthood is better. They say at least that they claim authority. The -- the -- today the -- the substitutes for this official authority are very -- they have to hide it; they have to conceal it.

You know where it is hidden today? You don't see temples prescribing any order today, as they -- you did see in every village in Egypt in the old days. Where do we today get our prescription from? The Greeks, as we shall see further, in -- the next time, transfor- -- when they abolished the script on the temple walls, and had these white, naked temple walls with their reliefs only--the Argonauts, or the titans, or the -- or the Amazons, you see--carved out in stone, they don't prescribe. They just tell stories.

They had a principle. The Greek substitute for the temple is the system: of philosophy. Our -- the philosophers of Greece replaced the local temple by what they called "system." A system is sold to us under the claim that it is strictly logical, that you can't evade it, that everything is deduced from everything else so compellingly, you see, that must be true--never is. And so today, you all are un- --

live under the yoke of the Greek system. And that's exactly the substitute for the Egyptian temple.

A temple in stone prescribes action. He says how to enter, when to enter, what to do in the temple, when to prostrate yourself, when to -- to -- keep -- get clean linen on, when to do this and this. And then you are elated and become a star, as the sun and the moon. You are deified by taking your place in the divine hosts. But the system does exactly the same with the help of your mind. You believe that there are certain pegs in your logic called "mind," or "body," or "soul," and how all these ab- -- ridiculous abstractions are called. And -- and you believe the system. If somebody says, "But the mind has to be fed," you feed the mind with the dregs of civilization.

And on it goes. You are all believing in system, despite Longfel- -- or not Longfellow -- who did? -- Tennyson's beautiful verse: "Our little systems have their day." That's the best verse in English poetry in the 19th century. Because Europe has been plunged into two world wars because of its belief in system.

The system in the 19th century has taken the part -- the place of the templar service. And inside your own mind, if you think what -- how you worship systematic order, you see that this is -- works out exactly as an architrave, or a pillar in -- in stone. It is your inner temple which you build up with the help of system. And it is very difficult. If -- if these people have their -- their philosophy, you can't do much to shake it, I mean. They are gone for good. Most people who have a system in their -- in their -- in their head, I can't recommend them for marriage. They are too cruel. Because systematic thinkers, you see, cannot listen to -- to charity. They have to do things in the most gruesome way. Mr. Hitler was a very great systematizer. And all these people, all the -- the people with principles--a principle is nothing but the entering wedge to a system--and it has been recommended today, that you must marry a man of principle. Marry a man of no principle.

I had to bring this up, because if I wouldn't say that the temple is still among us, you would not attach great significance to the Egyptian phase of human -- of the universe on the -- human history. I assure you that the Egyptians have left behind this heritage of systematic organization. They did it in -- in space. They did it under the eternally blue sky of Egypt. We do it in the mind. But the mind has taken over this same order. And it's just as bloody -- bloodthirsty and just as dangerous as a temple. Because people who follow systems -- beware of them. They are not good people. Government is not -- government by system. But it's government by free men, who can listen to something new. And if you have a man who believes in -- in system, run away. Emigrate.

This is the danger of the United States at this moment, that you have -- confuse system, you see, bec- -- and you don't know that this is the old -- the old sorcerers of pharaoh rejected in the Al- -- Old Testament.

I think I must in -- because we lost one meeting, I must go on now to the two peoples who capitalized on the achievements of priesthood and parenthood: the Greeks and the Jews. Neither the Greeks nor the Jews live on parenthood. Very simple example is that Agamemnon is punished for sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia. He has to die himself for this. Clytemnestra, his wife, kills him. And Isaac is not sacrificed, although he is the first-born son.

In the year of the Lord 1070 in our era, gentlemen, the Swedish king sacrificed his seventh son. For the seventh time he executed bloody sacrifice to reconcile the god with his own government. So 1070, the king of Sweden, these nice fair-hair- -- -headed Swedes, with the Nobel Prize now in their pocket, the -- he -- this king just executed his seventh son. But he had been so loved by the -- by the people, that they chased the king and became Christians and abolished human sacrifice. I think that's an important story, because it shows you that Abraham and Agamemnon are the outcome of these orders in which offspring could be sacrificed for the parent.

The abolition of this human sacrifice -- it's not human sacrifice. This was the next of kin. Abraham and Isaac are not -- it's just what you call "human sacrifice," then. It -- looks as though this was just a captive in the war, a perfectly indifferent person. It was his only begotten son! That's a very different story, is it not? It's a part of myself.

So if you read these popular atheistic history books, throw them away. They have no imagination. They say that -- that Isaac was human sacrifice. It was the man himself with his younger and more lasting part who was there, under judgment. So the thing is a little more serious and a little more poignant than what you read about the abolition of human sacrifice. It's something to -- to murder a captive, you see, or a criminal with a -- or to -- to execute your own son. It's not the same. Or you own daughter, for that matter.

So -- at the beginning of the Greek story stands the story of Agamemnon and Iphigenia, because Troy couldn't have been conquered, you see--the Greeks couldn't have become Greeks--unless Agamemnon hadn't made this sacrifice. That was a condition of the their moving out. The fleet was marooned in -- as you know, in Aulis. And if he hadn't done this -- they would have gone home. And the same is true, of course, of Isaac and -- and Abraham. Since Abraham in old age got this son, if he had sacrificed his son, no Jews, no Israel, no Revelation.

It is very simple, this story, and I think exhilaratingly so. The story of man -- man's soul and man's religion is not a complicated story. Don't believe this for a minute. All these books on the many religions, you can throw them in the wastepaper basket. The issue is very simple, you see. Who rules? You or God?

And you -- as you decide this, you see, you are plagued forever with -- with one thing or the other. If you -- if you follow the fact that God has as much right over your -- children as you have over them, you see, you are plagued by the naughtiness of these children, you see. If you murder them, you are -- you do -- have to do penance, because you can never get over the fact that you have sacrificed youth to old age. That's forbidden, too. So you can't win.

This is the result of all religious experience of mankind. We have to trust a higher power. We can't win in the sense that we can plan life. That's impossible. You can't plan. And in this sense, both the Egyptians -- the Greeks and the -- and the Jews have refuted the priests of Pharaoh. The pharaohs were sorcerers in the technical sense that they could predict when the wheat would grow, when the flood would come, when, when, when everything happened, you see. They were astrologers and they predicted.

I told you about prescription. That's of course only another term for "prediction." The -- the priests of Pharaoh you could very well call predictors. They made their great impact on civilization, because they could predict the moon -- darkening of the moon, and the darkening of the sun, and the coming of the flood and the coming of the harvest. They did this. And as far as they do, we are very grateful to them. We still rely on them, don't we? It is only when this was carried too far on human life that you have to revoke the power of the Egyptians. Or when it comes to marrying your sister.

The Egyptian heritage therefore had to be purged, purified, by these two groups: Jews and Greeks. The Jews and the Greeks inherited the prescripting power of the priesthood. Take the temple of Solomon, or take Delphi. They are temples, and they are priests. But they have not the same character as an Egyptian, or a Peruvian temple, or an Mexican temple, you see. There are no human sacrifices.

That is, the will of these priests could predict the -- what the sun and the moon would do. But it was not allowed from then on to predict what man should do. This is very different.

It is today again a -- big crisis. Gentlemen, if you take man in the old tribal order, with his ancestors and his offspring; and if you take the world as -- the priestly order of the universe, that we know what happens, that we can predict,

when it will -- when it will strike, when the -- there will be a constellation in the sky, you can see the temptation of mankind to move either by ancestral worship, as the tribes do by sacrificing the neighbors to the power of your own tribe, or to put man, the pharaoh, into the star world and say, "He moves like a star." This was quite serious, and quite in good faith said. And I could give you -- show you that the Secret Service of this country would like to have Mr. Johnson move exactly as such a predictable star. That's what they are after. They try to -- create an unbreakable order, you see. And he must never have a stomach ache, et cetera.

You see, the -- what the Greeks and the Jews introduce now, and to which we shall turn next time explicitly, is an order in which man is neither a part of a tribe, of other pa- -- of an order of his ancestors, and he is not a part of the stones of the universe. The universe of the tribal man contains him totally. He is absorbed. If he can be sacrificed for the tribe, and add life and vitality to the tribe, you see, he has done his duty. In Egypt, he has done his duty if he builds the temple in such a way that the star lore can be received, interpreted, and applied.

We now approach this, which you take for granted, that you are in some way eccentric to these two orders. Neither your ancestors can prevent you from becoming a clergyman, for example, or to marry whom you like--this is tremendous, you see. And even a very short while ago, this was unheard-of in most countries of the world, that you should be able to marry whom you like, you see. You take this all for granted. But for two-thirds of the -- of the -- mankind to this day, it is unheard-of. Neither in China, nor in -- India can you do that. You are under orders. And the orders are not your orders.

There is a tribe in Egy- -- in China which may perhaps illuminate this very clearly, the Nakhi -- N-a-k-h-i. These Nakhis experience every year hundreds of suicides. Why? Because the young men want to marry the girls they -- they love. The parents say, "You must marry my daughter -- my neighbor's daughter, because the land ad- -- is adjacent to ours, the farms, you see, have to be united." Then these children go out and kill themselves. And that's the ritual every year, because the Nakhis have still the old tribal order that -- you can -- you can marry whom -- with whom you have danced; and the Chinese have the local order, the geographical order: "You have to do as the priest says; here is your land, and here you stay, and there you go."

So don't believe that I am talking dreams. Your own problem is the same. The problem is very, very closely related to your existence here in this country, I mean. The -- after all, the whole issue in -- in the race question is a question of marriage, and nothing else.

Greeks and Jews have triumphed over these two limitations of the tribal order, by ancestral prescription; and over tattoo, and over the Egyptian order by temple prescription, and star-lore, and constellations in the sky. How they did it, I think would interest you. But for today, I think I should not set out with this, but leave -- better let you go home.