the general title of these talks that
i'm giving here is mind over mind
and i'm going into
all the various problems which have to
do
with the control of the mind
and so i might introduce what i'm going
to say by saying it from different
points of view
for example if you're interested in
communications
it will be
the problem of feedback
or if i may put it in theological terms
how does man follow the will of god
if the will of man is perverse
the theologians say
uh you cannot do this without having
divine grace
or the power
to follow the will of god
how then
do you get grace
why is grace given to some and not to
others
if i cannot follow the will of god by my
own effort because my will is selfish
how will my will which is selfish be
transformed into an unselfish will
if i cannot do it
because i am already the selfish will
then grace must do it
if grace has not already done it why not
because i didn't accept it
but by definition i had no power to
accept it because my will was selfish
must i then become a calvinist
and say that only those
people
who are predestined to receive grace
will be able to live
the good life
then
we come back to the inadmissible
position
that people who live evil lives and do
not
get grace because they are not
predestined to it out of the infinite
wisdom of the godhead then god himself
must be held responsible for their evil
deeds
and so
that is a nice little tangle
if i put this in
the language of oriental
philosophy and religion
it would be something like this
the buddha said that
wisdom
must come
only from the abandonment of selfish
craving or desire
one who abandons that desire
attains
nirvana which is supreme peace
liberation
nirvana means in sanskrit blow out
that is exhale the breath
the opposite
desire is to breathe in now if you
breathe in
and hold it
you lose your breath
but if you breathe out
it comes back to you
so the principle here is
if you want life don't cling to it
let go
but the problem is
if i desire not to desire is that not
already desire
how can i desire not to desire
how can i surrender myself
when myself is precisely
an urge to hold on
to cling
to cling to life to continue to survive
i can see rationally that by clinging to
myself i may strangle myself
i may be like a person who has a bad
habit
as a result of which he is committing
suicide
and he knows that but can't give it up
because
the means of death are so sweet
so it all comes down to this basic
question
that human beings
have for a long long time been concerned
about transforming their minds
is there any way in which one's mind can
be transformed
or is it simply a process which is
nothing more than a vicious circle
i could ask why have you come here this
afternoon
what were you looking for
would it be too presumptuous of me to
say
that you were looking for help
that you hoped you would hear somebody
who had something to say
that would be of help and relevance
to you as members
of a world
which is running into the most intense
difficulty
a world beset
by a complex of problems any one of
which would be bad enough
but when you add together
all the great political
social and ecological problems with
which we are faced they are appalling
and one naturally says
the reason why we are in such a mess is
not
simply that we have wrong systems for
doing things
whether they be technological political
or religious but we have the wrong
people
the systems may be all right
but they are in the wrong hands because
we are all in various ways
self-seeking
lacking in wisdom
lacking in courage
afraid of death
afraid of pain
unwilling really to cooperate with
others
unwilling to be open to others and we
all think that's too bad it's me that's
wrong
and if only i could be the right person
is this man going to tell me something
that will help me to change myself
so that i will be a more creative and
cooperative member of the human race
i would like to improve
so in so many people's minds and from so
many different angles there is this
urgent feeling that i must improve me
and this is
critically important
because it's obvious
that at least it's superficially obvious
that the way things are
we are going to hell fast
now in this question
can i improve me
there is the obvious difficulty
that if i am in need of improvement
the person who is going to do the
improving is the one who needs to be
improved
and there immediately we have a vicious
circle
all right
do you want grace
well ask god maybe he'll give it to you
and the theologian will tell you yes god
gives his grace freely
he gives it to all because he loves all
it's here like the air all you have to
do is receive it
or a more
orthodox a catholic christian would say
all you have to do is to be baptized
to take the holy sacrament of the altar
the bread and wine
the body and blood of christ and there
is the grace right there
and it's given by these simple physical
means so that it's uh very easily and
readily available
well a lot of people got baptized
and it doesn't always take
people fall from grace
why do they
you see we're just talking about the
same old problem but we put it a step up
but it's the same problem
how
can i improve myself
was the first problem the second problem
is how can i accept grace they're both
the same problem
because you've got to make a move
which will put yourself out of your own
control into the control
of a better
if you don't believe in the christian
kind of a god you can believe in the
hindu kind of a god who is your inner
self
you see you've got a lower self which
you can call your ego
that's that little scoundrels fellow
that's always out for me
but behind the ego there is the atman
the inner self
the inward light as quakers would call
it the real self the spirit
which is substantially identical with
god
so you've got to i meditate in such a
way that you identify with your higher
self how do you do that well you start
by watching all your thoughts
very carefully
watching your feelings watching your
emotions so that you begin to build up a
sense of separation
between the watcher
and what is watched
so that you are as it were no longer
carried away by your own stream of
consciousness you remain the witness
impassively impartially
suspending judgment
and watching it all go on
that seems to be something like progress
at least you're taking an objective view
of what is going on you are beginning to
be in a position to control it but just
wait a minute
who is this self
behind the self the watching self
can you watch that one
it's interesting if you do
because you find out of course
that this is just as the
problem of grace
is nothing more than a transposition of
the first problem
how am i to be unselfish
by my own power
it becomes how am i to get grace by my
own power
so in the same way we find
that the watching self or the observing
self behind all our thoughts and
feelings is itself a thought
that is to say
when the police enter a house in which
there are thieves
the thieves go up from the ground floor
to the first floor
when the police arrive on the first
floor the thieves have gone up to the
second
and so to the third and finally out to
the roof
and so when the ego
is about to be unmasked
it immediately identifies with a higher
self
it goes up a level
because
the religious game is simply
a refined and highbrow version of the
ordinary game
how can i outwit me
how can i one-up me
so
if i find for example that in the quest
for pleasure
the ordinary
pleasures of the world
food
sex power
possessions
all this becomes a drag
and i think no it isn't there so i go in
for the arts
literature
poetry music
and i absorb myself in there in those
pleasures
and after a while
they aren't the answer so i go to
psychoanalysis you see
and then i found out that's not the
answer
i go to religion
i'm still seeking what i was seeking
when i wanted candy bars
i want to get that goodie
only i see now that of course it's not
going to be a material goodie
all material goodies fall apart
but maybe there's a spiritual goodie
that's not going to fall apart
but in that quest
the quest is not different from the
quest for the candy bar
same old story only you've refined the
candy bar and made it abstract and holy
and blessed and so on
so it is with the higher self the higher
self's your old ego
and you sure hope it is eternal
indestructible and all wise
but then the great problem is how to get
that higher self working how does it
make any difference to what you do and
what you think
i know all kinds of people who've got
this higher self going
practicing their yoga
but they're just like ordinary people
sometimes a little worse
and
they can fool themselves
they can say for example
well my point of view in religion
is very liberal i believe that all
religions have
uh
divine revelation in them
but i don't understand the way you
people fight about it
you fight and say that
we
um
jehovah's witnesses
have the real religion
others say well we roman catholics have
it
and the muslims say no it is in the
quran
and this is the right way
and somebody else gets up and he may be
a rather highbrow catholic and say well
god has given the spirit through all the
traditions but
ours is the most refined and mature
and then somebody comes along and says
well as i said they're all
equally revelations of the divine
and in seeing this of course i'm much
more tolerant than you are
you see
how that game is going to work
see i could take this position
supposing you regard me as some sort of
a guru
and you know how gurus hate each other
they're always putting each other down
and i could say well
i don't put other gurus down
see that outwits all of them
we're always doing that
we're always finding a way
to be one up
and by the most incredibly subtle means
so you see that you see
and you say i realize i'm always doing
that now tell me how do i not do that
i say why do you want to know
well i'd be better that way
yeah but why do you want to be better
you see the reason you want to be better
is the reason why you aren't
shall i put it like that
we aren't better because we want to be
because the road to hell is paved with
good intentions
because
all the do-gooders in the world whether
they're doing good for others or doing
it for themselves are troublemakers
on the basis of kindly let me help you
or you'll drown said the monkey putting
the fish safely up a tree
we white anglo-saxon protestants british
german american
have been on a rampage for the past
hundred or more years to improve the
world
we have given the benefits of our
culture our religion our technology to
everybody
except perhaps the australian aborigines
and we have insisted that they receive
the benefits of our culture even our
political styles our democracy
you would better be democratic or we'll
shoot you
and having conferred these blessings all
over the place we wonder why everybody
hates us
see because sometimes doing good to
others and even doing good to oneself is
amazingly destructive
because it's full of conceit
how do you know what's good for other
people
how do you know what's good for you
if you say uh you want to improve
then you want to know what's good for
you
but obviously you don't
because if you did you would be improved
so we don't know it's like the problem
of geneticists
which they face today i went to a
meeting of geneticists not so long ago
where they gathered in a group of
philosophers and theologians and said
now look here
we need help
we now are on the verge of figuring out
how to breed any kind of human character
uh we would want to have
we can give you saints
philosophers scientists
great politicians anything you want just
tell us what kind of human beings are we
to breed
so
i said
how will those of us who are genetically
unregenerate
make up our minds
what genetically generate people might
be
because i'm afraid very much that our
selection of virtues
may not work
it may be like for example
this new kind of high yield grain
which is made
and uh which is becoming ecologically
destructive
when we interfere with the processes of
nature and breed efficient plants and
deficient animals there's always some
way in which we have to pay for it
and i can well see that eugenically
produced human beings might be dreadful
we could have
a plague of virtuous
people do you realize that
any animal considered in itself is
virtuous it does its thing but in crowds
they're awful
like a crowd of ants or locusts on the
rampage
they're all perfectly good animals but
it's just too much
i could imagine a perfectly pesticide
mass of a million saints
so i said to these people look was the
only thing you can do
just be sure
that a vast variety of human beings is
maintained
don't please
breed us down to a few excellent types
excellent for what we never know how
circumstances are going to change
and how
our need
for different kinds of people changes
at one time we may need very
individualistic and aggressive people
at another time we may need very
cooperative teamworking people
at another time we may need people
who are full of interest in dexterous
manipulation of the external world at
another time we may need people who
explore into their own psychology and
are introspective
there is no knowing
but the more varieties and the more
skills we have obviously the better
so you see here again the problem comes
out in genetics
we do not really know how to interfere
with the way the world is
the way the world actually is
is an enormously complex interrelated
organism
the same problem arises in medicine
because the body
is a very complexly interrelated
organism
and if you look at the body in a
superficial way you may see that
something wrong with it is chickenpox
and there's spots that itch that come
all out all over the place well you
might say well spots are there cut them
off
so you kill the bug
well then you find you got real problems
because you had to introduce some bugs
to kill the bug it's like bringing
rabbits into australia
and that starts going all over the place
and getting out of hand
but then you think well now wait a
minute it wasn't the bugs in the blood
there are bugs all over the place what
was wrong with this person
that his blood system
suddenly became vulnerable to those
particular bugs his resistance wasn't up
therefore what you should have given was
not an antibiotic but vitamins
okay so we're going to build up his
resistance but resistance to what
you may build up resistance to this and
this and this class of bugs but then
there's another one that loves that
situation and comes right in
see we always look at
the human being medically
in bits and pieces
because we have heart specialists lung
specialists bone specialists nerve
specialists
and so on
and they each see the human being from
their point of view
there are a few generalists but they
realize the human body is so complicated
that no one mind can understand it
and furthermore supposing we do succeed
in healing all these people of their
diseases
what do we then do about the population
problem
i mean we've stopped cholera the black
bubonic plague we're getting the better
of tuberculosis we may fix cancer and
heart disease then what will people die
of
well there let's go on living
will be enormous quantities of us then
we have to fix this birth thing
pills for everybody
then we find what are the effects the
side effects of those pills
what are the psychological effects upon
men and women of not breeding the uh
children in the usual way
we don't know
and what seems a good thing today or
yesterday like ddt
turns out tomorrow to have been a
disaster
what seemed in the moral and spiritual
sphere too like great virtues
in times past
are easily seen today
as
hideous evils let's take for example the
inquisition
in its own day among catholics the holy
inquisition
was regarded
as we today regard the practice of
psychiatry
you you see you you feel that in curing
a person of cancer almost anything is
justified
the most complex operations the most
weird surgery
people suspended for days and days on
end on the end of tubes
with x-ray penetration burning
or people undergoing shock treatment
people locked
in the colorless
monotonous corridors of mental
institutions
in all good faith
they knew that witchcraft and heresy
were terrible things
awful plagues imperiling people's souls
forever and ever
so any means were justified
to cure people of heresy
we don't change
we're doing the same thing today
but under different names
we can look back at those people and see
how evil that was but we can't see it in
ourselves
so therefore beware
of virtue
lautzer the chinese philosopher said the
highest virtue
is not virtual and therefore really is
virtue
but inferior virtue cannot let go of
being virtuous
and therefore is not virtue
translated in more of a periphrastic way
the highest virtue is not conscious of
itself as virtue and therefore really is
virtue
lower virtue is so self-conscious that
it's not virtue
in other words
when you breathe
you don't congratulate yourself on being
virtuous
but breathing is a great virtue
it's living
when you come out with beautiful eyes
blue or brown or green as the case may
be
you don't congratulate yourself for
having grown one of the most fabulous
jewels on earth
so it's just eyes
and you don't account it a virtue
to see
to entertain the miracles of color and
form
you say oh that's just
but that's real virtue
virtue in the sense of the old sense of
the word a strength is when we talk
about the healing virtue of a plant
that's real virtue
but the other virtues are stuck on
they're air sights they're imitation
virtues
and they usually create trouble
because more
diabolical things are done in the name
of righteousness
and be assured that everybody of
whatever nationality or political frame
of mind or religion always goes to war
with a sense of complete rightness
the other side is the devil
our
opponents
whether in china or russia or vietnam
have the same feeling of righteousness
about what they're doing as we have on
our side
and
a plague on both houses
because
as confucius said the goody goodies are
the thieves of virtue
which is the form of our own proverb the
road to hell is paved with good
intentions
so in a way the moral or the immoral
of
these considerations
is that if you are really
aware
of your own inner workings
you will realize there's nothing you can
do to improve yourself
because you don't know what better is
in any case
and you
who will do the improving are the one
who needs to be improved
and this also goes for society
we can change society we can get
enormous enthusiasm going out of the
idea that there is a revolution afoot
and that this revolution is going to set
everything to right do you know a
revolution that ever said anything to
ride
whether the revolution came from the
left wing or from the right wing
the best
forms of government that have ever
existed in the world are those which
muddled through
well they didn't have any very clear
uh set up of control
but they muddle along
a kind of what i'll call controlled
anarchy
seems to work out better than anything
else
when we have a great system
and great power to put it into effect
there is always more violence more
bloodshed more trouble
makes no difference
whether it be chairman mao or adolf
hitler
so
what instead therefore if we see
that you can't outwit yourself
you can't be shall i say self-conscious
unself-conscious on purpose
you can't be desiredly spontaneous
and you cannot be genuinely loving
by intending to love
either you love someone or you don't
if you pretend to love a person you
deceive them and build up
reasons for resentment
you say well i ought to be honest
that
that's the beginning of oh
so many lies you can't imagine
it's like when
i hear a lot said about love
the big love thing on the way
everybody's got to love everybody but we
sing songs about love do you know what i
do i buy a gun and bar my door
because i know there's a storm of
hypocrisy brewing
so
let's look at this thing from another
point of view which you will at first
think highly depressing
let's supposing we can't do anything to
change ourselves
suppose we're stuck with it
now that is the the worst thing an
american audience can hear
there's no way of improving yourself
because every kind of culture in this
country is dedicated to self-improvement
to take jogging that deplorable practice
it's a very nice thing to run
and to go dancing across the hills
at a fast speed
but these joggers
shaking their bones and rattling their
brains with running on their heels
and
because there's a grimness about it it's
determinantly good for you
see
why do you go to school
oh
now look look now wait a minute you may
not clap when i'm through
there's only one reason for going to
school
and that is that somebody's got
something here whether it's a professor
or a library that you want to find out
that you are incredibly interested in
um
how to write chinese characters
or how to understand botany
and you would like to know you're just
interested in flowers
and you would like to find out
everything there is to be known about
them
that's the point of coming here
or you might like to know
how to practice yoga
the course is now being offered at ucla
on kundalini yoga for credit
pretty funny
when i think back 10 years
but the whole point of coming to school
is that you're interested in something
you don't come to improve yourself
but the trouble is that the schools got
the wrong idea they gave people honors
for learning
and
the reward for studying
french should be the ability to speak
french and enjoy reading french and
having fun with french people
but when you get a degree for it
then the degree becomes the point
in a game of one-upmanship
and of course one upmanship is the main
business of the educational uh community
today
you learn all the rules of how
to be a good professor
it's instructive to go to a professional
professor's meeting
in my field which is philosophy you go
to a congress of philosophers and you'll
find when they all get together in the
bar or in the restaurant and somebody's
room the one thing they don't talk about
is philosophy
it is very bad form indeed to show
interest in philosophy among your
colleagues
the same is exactly true in clergy
gatherings they don't talk about
religion what they both talk about is
politics
church politics and academic politics
because it's bad form
to be brilliant on the faculty because
it outclasses your colleagues
therefore faculty people tend to
cultivate a studied mediocrity
and you've got to watch out for that i
mean if you get mobs of students coming
to your lectures
you get pretty black looks from your
colleagues
and then of course there's a whole world
of one-upmanship in research
and publication of learned papers how
many
what's the relative quantity of
footnotes to basic text and footnotes on
footnotes
and the
various ways of making your bibliography
painfully accurate
in it's endless but you see what it is
it's scholarship about scholarship
and not scholarship
just as
learning because learning is good for
you
is irrelevant to learning
the whole idea of improving yourself by
learning
is irrelevant to the learning process
and in the same way
doing business
is doing business doing business such as
manufacturing uh clothes
is a very good thing to do
i could conceive that it would be
extremely enjoyable something one could
be very proud of to make good clothes
of course you need to sell them because
you need to eat
but to make clothes to make money
raises another question
because then your interest is not in
making clothes it's making money and
then you're going to cheat on the
clothes
and then you get an awful lot of money
and you don't know what to do with it
you can't
you know you can't eat 10 roasts of beef
in one day
can't live in six houses at once can't
drive three rolls royces at the same
time
what are you to do
well you just go make more money you put
your money back invested in something
else and it'll make more
and you don't give a damn how it's made
so long as they make it
we don't care if they foul the rivers
put oil fumes throughout the air
everywhere kill off all the fish so not
so long as you see these figures
happening you're not aware of anything
else
so you see you went out to do a
self-improvement thing making money you
see is a measure of improvement a
measure of your economic worth wildness
at least that's what it's supposed to be
it isn't anything of the kind
but you without in other words for the
status instead of for the actuality
so if in other words you you do an art
you're a musician
why do you play music the only reason
for playing music is to enjoy
if you play music to impress an audience
to be read about yourself in the
newspaper you're not interested in music
so in the same way why do i come and
talk to you
because i enjoy it i like the sound of
my own voice
i'm interested in what i'm talking about
and i get paid for it
and that's smart in this life is to get
paid for what you enjoy
so here's the situation you see
there is no the the the whole idea of
self-improvement
is a
is a will of the wisp and a hoax
that's not what it's about
let's begin where we are
what happens if you know
if you know beyond any shadow of doubt
that there is nothing you can do to be
better
well it's kind of a relief isn't it
now you say well now what will i do
see there's a little fidget comes up
because we're so used to
um
making things better leave the world a
better place than when you found it sort
of thing i want to be of service to
other people and all these dreadfully
hazy ideas
and uh so
we think there's that little itch still
but
supposing instead of that
seeing that there isn't really anything
we can do
to improve ourselves or to improve the
world if we realize that that is so
it gives us a breather
in the course of which we may simply
watch what is going on
watch what happens
nobody ever does this you know
and therefore it sounds terribly simple
it sounds so simple that is almost it
looks as if it isn't worth doing
but you ever just
watched watch what's happening
and watch what you are doing by way of
reaction to it
just watch it happen
and don't be in a hurry
to think you know what it is
in other words people look at the say oh
that's the external world
oh
how do you know
the whole thing from a neurological
point of view is happening in your head
that you think there is something
outside the skull is a notion in your
nervous system
the may or may not be
but it's a notion in your nervous system
you think this is the material world
well that's somebody's philosophical
idea
or maybe you're you think it's spiritual
that too is somebody's philosophical
idea this real world is not spiritual
it is not material
the real world is simply
so could we look at things in that way
without as it were fixing labels and
names and gradations and judgments on
everything
but watch what happens
watch what we do
now you see if you do that
you do at least give yourself a chance
and it may be
that
when you i are in this way freed from
busy bodiness
and being out to improve everything
that your own nature will begin to take
care of itself
because you're not getting in the way of
yourself all the time
you will begin to find
out that
the great things that you do
are really happenings
for example
no great genius
can
explain how he does it
yes he says i have learned the technique
to express myself
because i had something in me that
had to come out i had to know how to
give it out so if i were a musician i
had to learn
how music is produced
that means learning to use an instrument
or learning a technique of musical
notation or whatever it may be
if i want to describe something i have
to learn a language so that others can
understand me i i need a technique
but then beyond that
i'm afraid i can't tell you how it was
that i used that technique to express
this mysterious thing i wanted to show
you
if we could tell people that
we would have schools where we would
infallibly train musical geniuses
scientific
uh
miracle minds
and there would be so many of them who
we wouldn't know what to do with them
geniuses would be
a dime a dozen
and then we would say well these people
are after all not very ingenious
you know phds how many of them are there
because what is fascinating always about
genius is the fellow does something we
can't understand
he surprises us
but you see just in the same way we
cannot understand our own brains
neurology knows relatively little about
the brain
which is only to say that the brain is a
lot smarter than neurology
yes
there is this
which can perform all these
extraordinary intellectual and cultural
miracles
but we don't know how we did it
but we did
we didn't
have some campaign to have an improved
brain
over the
monkeys or whatever maybe our ancestors
it happened
and all growth you see is fundamentally
something that happens
but
for it to happen
two things are important
and the first is as i said you must have
the technical ability
to express what happens
and secondly
you must get out of your own way
but right at the bottom of the whole
problem of control is how am i to get
out of my own way
and if i showed you a system let's all
practice getting out of our own way
it would turn into another form of
self-improvement
see here's the dynamics of this thing
and we find this problem you see
repeatedly throughout the entire history
of human spirituality
it had been the phraseology of zen
buddhism
you cannot get this by thinking
you cannot attain to it by not thinking
it is only you see as you
as
getting out of your own way ceases to be
a matter of choice
when you see that there's nothing else
for you to do
when you see in other words that doing
something about your situation is not
going to help you
when you see equally that trying not to
do anything about it is not going to
help you
where are you where do you stand
you're non-plussed
and you are simply reduced to watching
[Music]
now you may say i need some help in this
process
and therefore i am going to find someone
else to help me
it may be a therapist
it may be a clergyman
it may be a guru
it may be
any kind of person who teaches a
technique of self-improvement
now
how will you know
whether this person is able to teach you
how can you judge for example whether a
psychotherapist
is a effective or just a charlatan
how can you judge whether a guru is
himself spiritually wise or merely a
good chatterbox
well of course you ask your friends
you ask his other students or patients
and they're all of course enthusiastic
you have to be enthusiastic when you
bought something expensive
if you bought an automobile which turned
out to be a lemon
it's very difficult to admit that it was
a lemon and that you were fooled
and it's the same when you buy a
religion or an expensive operation
but what people do not sufficiently
realize is that when you pick an
authority
whether it's
a psychotherapeutic one or a religious
one
you
chose it
in other words
that this fellow or this book or this
system is the right one is your opinion
and how are you competent to judge
after all
if you're saying to this other person or
other source
i
think you are the authority that's your
opinion
so you cannot really judge whether an
authority is a sound authority unless
you yourself are a sound authority
otherwise you may just be being fooled
you may say for example i
believe that the bible is the word of
god
all right that's your opinion
i know the bible says it's the word of
god
but it's your opinion that the bible is
not lying
the church says the bible is the word of
god but it's your opinion that the
church is right
you cannot escape from that situation
it's your opinion
so you see when you select an authority
who will help you to improve yourself
it's like hiring the police
out of your tax money
and putting them in charge of seeing
that you obey the law
i mean can't you take care of yourselves
you mean is this the land of the free
and the home of the brave or isn't it
but you see nobody seems to want to be
in charge of themselves
because they feel they can't do it
the saint paul said
to will is present with me
but how to do good i find not
for the good that i would i do not and
the evil that i would not that i do
so
there at once
we are in difficulty
because trying to improve yourself is
like trying to lift yourself up into the
air by tugging at your own bootstraps
and it can't be done
now
there are all sorts of ways in which
religious people try to explain that it
can be done
i referred already to the grace of god
you say no you can't do the job yourself
because the improving
you is the one that needs to be improved
therefore you have to say god help me
now of course that god exists is your
opinion
that god will answer your prayer is your
opinion and your idea of god is your
idea of god
if you bought somebody else's script
you bought it
maybe your mother and father talk to you
about god in a very impressive way
but basically you bought their idea
and if you're a father yourself i'm a
grandfather now i've got five
grandchildren
and i know i'm as stupid as my own
grandfather must have been
yeah i am one i sit there in the
position which they look at think oh
wowie that's an important man
i know that i'm just like anyone else
so
i hope my children are not believing
things on my authority
because it's always their authority
if i look impressive and make big noises
at them
they've just been taken in