DR. BERGEN: The problem is of no slight interest. Will you attempt an answer, Rosenberg?
ROSENBERG: May I observe parenthetically that the problem is artificial in the sense that most moral questions are not so sharply a choice between the self’s good or another’s, but most ends turn out to be commonly held by the community.
RAKOVSKY [angered]: The problem is not artificial. On the contrary, it is just such an acute predicament that bares the moral and cuts away all other considerations.
DR. BERGEN: What is your answer, Rosenberg?
ROSENBERG: As an answer, I can suggest only the questionable one of an effort to decide which man is of greater value, professionally let us say, to humanity. A lawyer ought to sacrifice his life for a doctor. [Laughter] A good doctor, I mean. But I admit that one could hardly make a thorough inquiry into a man’s professional capacities while in the water. [Laughter]
DR. BERGEN: Your answer is weak and perhaps begs the question again. The good of humanity may be divided and contradictory. I will consider this matter myself and afford you the intuitive reply next week.
MRS. BERGEN [to DR. NEWMAN, sotto voce]: He stares at the sky until an answer comes to him. That is what he means by an intuitive reply.
DR. BERGEN: Let us continue with the second imperative. You will observe that a number of modifications have been made since last week. These changes flow from a greater grasp of the inspiration which the deity’s blue eye affords me.
You are with each other, you are not alone, you depend on each other, and you speak to each other.
To further a desire, or to make an hour interesting, or in order to have a friend and engage his affection,
Or to increase the aura and warmth of company, while eating or in the theatre or while two are alone and with their hands seek each other,
So that, in this ineluctable mixture of lives, the necessity of speech requires the perfect effort to speak
The word which occurs to you, the thought which oppresses you, the anger or love
Which rises to the fluent or hesitant tongue, which rises and is suppressed because of fear or tact or in order to avoid laughter.
Suppress nothing. Speak your whole mind fully and lucidly and without omission,
Do not exclude the least childlike pun, the sudden nonsense syllable, the comment which will surely be nursed in resentment.
For frankness, sincerity, articulation, explicitness are the attributes of the man aware that God’s blue eye regards him.
Permit yourself to be ridiculous as a man weeping, an actor hissed, a girl deliberately tripped.
Adopt with voluntary act the naive, the ingenuous, the stupid.
Accept harm
Until you are certain that you know what you do, and why your act is enacted, and that your whole heart and mind have consented.
Let every emotion be large, black and white, scrawled upon your countenance as a cartoon,
Gross, clumsy, foolish.
Pride, dignity, assurance
Are nothing without the power of righteousness, but once righteous.
They are garments, sweet fruits, the best pleasures of man.
[There is a pause. The DISCIPLES are obviously moved, and they display their emotions differently.]
DR. BERGEN: Let us continue with the third imperative in this week’s formulation, omitting today your proposal of “Questions of Exact Communication.” I will answer tomorrow, Herriot, your question as to how to communicate exactly the feeling of respect in the midst of desire, and the emotion of wishing to teach and yet not presume complete superiority.
Think of the objects for which you care. Discover why you care for them. Be conscious of the different worth you confer upon them, which would be surrendered, exchanged or passed over, which things are equivalent to life itself for you.
Because man’s desires govern his acts, if he governs them; because his desires are himself as an acting being and because by his desires and his choices man must be judged and understood,
Resort to a painstaking examination in the fullness of consciousness, examine your desires in the detail of a moment, seize the moment of feeling, grasp the care involved in such statements as “salt,” “sugar,” “a gleaming automobile,”
“The pungency of tobacco,” “the crinkling of her cheeks when she smiles,” “the pleasant sense of health which flows from a dinner well-digested,”
“The continuous exercise of the much-used body,” “the complexities of sleep when at times the mind confronts itself,” “the look of the white pitcher upon the brown dresser,” “the distortion of tiredness, weakness, and pain.”
Examine the times and conditions of these cares, the circumstances upon which they depend, the hours and the places when they become without meaning for you,
As well as the environment of their full meaning. Decide once and for all which sentiments, which cares, which desires are most permanent, justifiable, and necessary.
Your decision decides your fate, your decision can be true only if you open your heart and give your mind to that being whose blue eye is actual in the arching, domed, and ineluctable scene which is infinite overhead, your decision before that being’s blue eye,
In whom “Justice,” “Truth,” “Beauty,” are genuine and absolute.
[There is a pause. DR. BERGEN appears to be exhausted. Then, raising his voice, he addresses DR. NEWMAN.]
I hope that you do not find our ritual too oppressive, Dr. Newman. [Several DISCIPLES turn to look at DR. NEWMAN.]
DR. NEWMAN: On the contrary, I have been completely absorbed. Please go ahead. I am very much impressed by the somewhat intellectual character of your doctrines, which is so different from the emphasis upon emotion in most latter-day religious societies.
DR. BERGEN: Thank you. I regard that as praise. [To the DISCIPLES.] Let us continue. I now ask each of you to render “Witness and Testimony” to your inmost cares, thoughts, and observations. Each one in turn. And let me quote from the second imperative: “Speaking your whole mind fully and lucidly and without omission, nothing excluded because of fear or tact or in order to avoid laughter.” In your usual order, beginning with Herriot.
HERRIOT: Last summer by means of playing tennis for five hours every day, I gained poise, dignity, bearing, rid myself of shyness, spoke with complete assurance. This effect has made me meditate on the relationship of the body to the mind. They seem to be one. And yet they seem to be two. Is consciousness the inside of what is seen from the outside as the nervous system? Is the spirit of man merely his nervous system? I do not think so.
DR. BERGEN: Thank you Herriot. I would remind you that we are not engaged in “Problems.” But your problem is very important and I will seek the intuitive answer. Schmidt!
SCHMIDT: I have been troubled by sexual desire. I reflected on the mot of a few years back: “Sexual intercourse is the lyricism of the people.” I remembered with a kind of sad glee my previous habit of asking all adults whom I encountered: “Have you had your orgasm today?” [Laughter.]
MRS. BERGEN [interrupts, in an anguished voice]: Felix, is it necessary that Martha hear all these things? Is it absolutely necessary?
DR. BERGEN: It is necessary, absolutely [ironically mimicking her]. Nothing may be secret or undisclosed. The secret corrupts. Thank you for being frank, sincere and explicit, Schmidt. Rakovsky!
RAKOVSKY: I summed up all the acts for which I have been unable to forgive myself. How, meeting S. last week, I fell into an attitude immediately, an attitude full of lies, though I wished merely to tell him of how radically my life had been altered. I had to compose, invent. I could not tell the truth without improving it, because the truth does not satisfy me. When shall I be truthful, utterly candid?