You had a question too.
I want you to explain in more detail your
concept of both femininity vs. masculinity
in relationship to the Virgin Mary.
I did not understand that.
I spoke of the unity of opposites, that only
opposites can unite.
Two men cannot have children.
Two women cannot have children.
The child comes from the union of Opposites.
We speak of the masculine principle as the
creative principle,
of the feminine principle as the receptive principle
that fulfill the creative impulse.
And so, the issue of that union, we call the
union of man and woman making love.
Then the issue of that union must be the thing itself.
So if anybody says, I am in love, they have
missed the point.
They are finished.
You can say, I am love.
That's what I am.
That's what we are.
Love itself, the thing, the isn't it, the
essence is love.
And it is the union of these two things that
makes the Continuum,
that makes that circle, that makes infinity,
that keeps it going on, on, on.
Do you understand?
Now, the philosophy under which we in the West
have been trained is that
from Adam's rib came the woman.
And he hasn't been able to do it since.
I don't know what happened to him.
He had one baby and he stopped.
I don't know how long that took.
Since he had made the part that was the other
half of a residential process,
there was no one here.
Listen, a rib, what is a rib?
Something that's protecting the living room.
A rib is also what else?
When I say you're ribbing, what do I mean?
It's ribbing. Ha-ha!
Adam's rib is a joke.
You all are not addicted to riddles, if you were,
you would have read that right and laughed.
It's also a joke.
So, whenever you say Adam's rib from Adam's
rib, okay.
Because I suppose if you deal with the
reproductive organ of the male,
you could call it a rib on the third and send
him sentencing. Ha-ha-ha!
Look at all the pictures that you see.
Look at all the pictures, pictures. Ha-ha-ha!
Live, be alive, enjoy.
You don't have to take any of this seriously. Ha-ha-ha!
Now, in the beginning,
you heard people speak of the emergence of the
human species.
And they say,
oh, I had it stuck in my throat.
Ah, yeah, in the beginning.
The societies that first came out were matriarchial.
Now, we have children, and this is a surprise
to nobody.
I do not know how long we were on the earth before
the human beings discovered that it was the
union of man and woman
that began all of this.
They didn't know it.
I think it must have begun around the
domestication of animals,
when you could watch and see and count.
But look at all the knowledge that had to go
down before we understood
that it was the union of man and woman that
they got to charge.
You had to understand so many things about the physiognomy.
We did not come on this earth into this earth knowing
that this is my heart, and in Africa, the
father, the line,
is recognized through the mother, because they say,
oh, nobody knows.
All right, that's tentacle.
That's for the guys down.
It's just to tell them that they don't know.
Take my word for it.
But they saw that the woman was holy, and she
got into this thing,
because they didn't know what happened to her.
That every once in a while, she would start
getting bigger
and bigger and bigger, and they started
breaking the child.
She was great because she reproduced the thing,
and nobody knew what had happened to her.
She had this magic something that she would do
these things.
In science, all of this had to be pinned down.
What actually happened?
Where the sperm?
Who had the egg?
Who had the sperm?
The union of these, all of that had to go down
before we knew.
It is from that superstition that she was some
great magic creature
who reproduced from how.
How did she do that?
We don't know.
And because we didn't know, she got this thing
that it was
self-generating something that went on.
And that is the superstition.
Now, there are young women, now,
children that we keep in the dark a long time.
In African society, they do a thing called initiation
so that you will know, so that each one will know,
this stage of development is child,
this stage of development is man, woman.
But here, you know, because it's so dirty,
we can't talk about it.
So nobody knew.
And they still have the same superstitious thing.
But in the society from which we come,
there is an initiation period of I think six or
seven weeks
to acquaint you with the idea that this is,
this stage of development is child.
This stage of development is being done by man, woman.
And they tell you what is happening in these stages
so that you will know where you can come,
what is expected.
And you go up looking forward and being familiar
with your body and your being.
That is the temple of your being.
It is the temple from which you came.
And it should be honored and it should be loved
and it should be cared for.
It's, hey, and the joining of man and woman
should be the most beautiful thing that could happen
instead of a few dirty minutes in the dark
or in the back of a car. Ugly.
And you've got to fight to turn that thing around.
And it means that you're going to face all the
scientific facts
available to your knowledge and use them to
regenerate your being.
So that when you go and when you and your man
are together,
there is a oneness, a true union that's worthy
of human people.
This business of not knowing, then superstitiously,
anything can be superimposed on it.
And if you don't know, you can take anybody's
word for it.
So if we didn't know about the cycle of days
of the 28 days in the moon, you know, of the water,
the thing out of which you came, the men were
afraid of the women.
And in the societies where women control,
I think maybe that's why they got to be in a
place in it.
Because, you know, they throw the men out.
They read about some of the metaphors.
Because nobody knew.
She was so magic and she threw the man, just
like he now knew.
In the early days, you know, in the early days,
you see, men could not witness childbirth.
Of course.
He could witness virtue of losing his hand.
He would be executed.
Oh, God.
They would catch it.
So men learned that by dressing as women
and go in to where the midwives of the
president of childbirth.
That's how they learned.
And then they reversed it.
Of course.
The overthrow of the woman as the ruler was the
same thing
of superimposing the idea of race as the ruler.
So I don't know that we were anything either in
the way we handled the thing.
But we didn't know either, you know.
So the process of development, we're coming to understand
that it is not disharmony or conflict.
It is balance. Balance.
If you have day, you have night.
You cannot have one without having the other.
In order to make electricity, to get the third thing,
to get the third thing, you're going to have to
have opposites coming together.
In order to get light, we have to have a
positive and a negative line.
You put two positive ones together and blow the
whole thing up.
You're going to get an explosion.
But you see in this love business they're
talking about,
and men are going with men and women with women.
What is that?
There's no future in that for anybody.
I can't join the rights of the Gay liberty.
I think they have the right to know another alternative.
And another alternative is to base the thing on
another point of view.
So there's a story to be written about the gay
liberation process.
Let me tell you.
It is perfecting.
And it is growing.
It goes slowly because that's the way life unites.
They unite very slowly because, you know,
there's no continuum in them.
It's just that you manage to do somebody else,
and then that person manages.
I'm not putting this thing down.
I'm saying let's understand it.
Let's really understand it and know what it's
growing out of.
It's growing out of something very, very basic.
So you have to have the man, woman, child.
Man, woman, father, mother, only two.
There are some things that mother is the regarder.
There are some things that father is the regarder.
You see, the creative thing.
We only go to one spirit.
But mother is the thing that fulfills.
She's the one that bears the child in the water
for the nine months and brings to fruition.
That's what mother does.
So they speak of, the Africans speak of water,
the amniotic fluid that surrounds the child.
And the water, the living water in which it
lives until it is beached.
And it is the water that breaks that breaks.
It's the damn birth when the child comes out.
That's the water.
The earth then is the mother, because we are
enchanted earth.
Even the West can think that.
We are enchanted earth.
And the water is grandmother, because that's
what we can live in that until we can get to here.
We can bear the light.
Would you take a baby out when he's very, very
young, and you have to see the light from the light.
It's too much.
So things need the dark.
They need the black.
They need very, very much.
Would you add, why you're there for so many generations,
that even the white has been the black mother
without the white mother?
Yeah, because it's the earth itself.
There are some things when you want something
instead of something up in the sky, ask mama.
She got all up on your mother and say, mama!
When I was in California, before I really, I
didn't know what the earth was.
The earth was my twin sister.
It's called a table, now.
It's a table.
All living things feed on it. Mother.
It's mother.
So when they, Africans made demands with their
breasts down to the ground,
you're looking for mother, food, nourishment.
That's what we're talking about.
So ask mama.
Do not neglect the land, because if the land is used,
even the westerns need that.
That's what this flesh is, water.
And it goes back to what it came from.
And the current goes back to what it came from.
Keep thinking.
And you see that line, see those opposites again?
Shhh, there it goes.
Now, you know, it used to be clearer.
And the last thing I want to say to you is about,
the way I think we are in India and the world,
and the world is about Copernicus and Galileo.
There were two schools of thought in Africa.
The Africans, the West and Asians.
They had all said the earth is round.
Now, how do you suppose this earliest society,
I think it is considered, that's not originated perhaps
on the African continent, but the Asian continent.
Every year they seem to get more and more. Yeah.
So that Adam, that joke is over here.
And I think to look at it, you're going to have
to look at
the time lapse.
How much has evolved on our continent?
How far we had to go before we got to that
particular rhythm.
They said the concept was the unity of opposites,
that the earth was round, and that it was spinning,
that it was turning.
This is before Copernicus.
The European idea was that the earth is flat
and standing still.
That's what it takes.
And the whole schism between the church and the
state was that
the science was saying it was turning, and the
state was saying,
no, make it stand still.
Make it stand still, because then we can
control it.
If we can get everybody to say it's flat and
stand still,
and I am the center of it, and I am also the
center of it
because my skin is flat.
And that's not based on, that wasn't based on racism.
There's something there that I've been put in
to try to figure out.
And I think I'm almost done.
I won't hazard a guess until I find out some more.
Then when I come back I'll have something new
to tell you.
But Copernicus and Galileo, with his telephone,
decided that the earth was flat, and that it
was the moon.
And they put him in jail, and they kept him there,
because it did not conform with the papal ideas
that were then currently
manipulating mankind into this flat earth.
But we had always said the earth was flat, that
it wasn't round.
And that it was a spiraling energy that had a
unity of power.
Now that is in every book.
In Danquah who wrote the West African concept
of God, the account,
the doctrine of the account, thank you if you
find that.
Read it.
This will give you the idea, because this man
came over there
and talked to me about God, that the idea that
most people had here,
and certainly that they were persuaded in this school,
is that Africa had no concept of God.
And that's what you've got to really do.
And you've got to see that the children who go
there know this,
so they challenge you to do that.
You understand?
This is a time of challenge. Challenge.
And I say that isn't so.
Now, and always remember the unity of opposites
when you go to work.
If your teacher goes to angry, you go to please,
because then the unity is possible.
But if both of you go to anger, this is what we
mean by unity of opposites.
If I go to sweet, if I'm at sweet, then that
can mean that God's emerged,
because there's nothing for one thing to feed
on and grow.
It's got to unify.
It has to turn into its own, then the whole
thing will come together,
because it is opposites that unite.
Put that one if you learned nothing else here
today in your writing and whatnot.
Realize that it is a unity of opposites, not a
conflict of opposites.
And you must treat your wife, brother, and sister,
Brotherhood is a endless idea.
And when they start putting all of that stuff
on you,
you say, brother, what is the matter with you?
Didn't you wake up yet?
Don't you know?
And if he's pleased, because he usually goes to please,
because he wants you to think that there he is.
And if he goes to please and patronage and that
whole sweet thing,
go to anger, raging, faint.
But I mean, do something.
Challenge, challenge, challenge.
I think it's 1:00 now.
We could go on the rest of the day.
You know, you're on city time,
because it means that time does not exist.
Now, the big bit, John Killens was going to,
what was it, Japan,
and he arrived in Japan the day before he left.
There is no such thing as time.
And here now, if it's 1:00, it is 1:00 here,
it is this hour, some place else it is 2:00,
some place else it is three,
some place else it is four, some place else,
don't you get the message?
Don't you understand?
If a thing can be everything, it ain't nothing
to begin with.
And therefore it can be anything you want it to be.
So what do you want?
That's where you have to go.
And don't believe in things.
Just try to get to that no-thing-ness and
recognize that that is God.
And that's the reason it cannot be destroyed,
and that's the reason it always be there,
because don't insist on the person, and it does
not exist!
Big it!
It does not exist, and it does not, not exist.
Listen, it does not exist, and it does not, not exist.
It is like a radiation, like a feeling,
like it's the communication in being, it's like electricity,
it is like LIFE!
Like L-I-G-H-T.
Every time I look at a baby, LIFE!
It's just, you smile in and you just turn to jelly.
Because it's so innocent, and it's so pure.
Do you recognize that we have created a world
where they are throwing these children out of
windows and things,
and stumbling them to death, and burning them,
and doing all sorts of things to them?
It's innocent.
It's your world, clean it up.
Clean it up, but you're going to have to go to
your being to do it.
And your being is the same as anybody else's being,
and if you go to yours, you can take another person's.
And recognize that the being is the unity of opposites,
and that's why there can be no good and no bad.
Because one thing, not two, is good and bad.
It's two, and then it is me.
Thank you so much for coming today.
We're going to read from... Read!
There is no time.
There's no such thing as time.
I just said it, and I want to honor it.
I want you to know I've never spent a Sunday
morning like this.
That's church.
There we've been to theater. It's very nice.
The church did. The idea of theater originated.
And then it's kind of really a property.
It's big. It's what we are.
What's your name?
Oh, I think I can do this with my shoes on.
You know what I'm talking about?
Can you leave things with my shoes on?
I've been shoes off.
Something about being grounded.
You know what I mean?
Ah, a black woman's feet.
It is right that I, a woman's wife, should
speak up like one of those women.
My husband, my father, my brother, my son died
for me because of it.
And their blood, chilled in electric chair,
stopped by Hangman's noose,
cooked by Lynch Mob's body, filled by white
supremacist's mad desire to kill for profit,
give me their rights.
I hope that I could speak of white womanhood as
it will and should be
when it stands tall in full equality.
But then, womanhood will be womanhood, void of
color and of class.
And all necessity for my speaking thus will be
passed, less passed.
But now, since it is being the thing of part supreme,
I must in searching honestly report how it
seems to me
white womanhood stands and studies truth, and
enslavement, reaching out adulterous hands,
killing mine and crushing me.
What then is this superior thing that in order
to be sustained must be seeded by my flesh?
How can this horror to be?
Let's look to history.
They said, the White Supremacists said, that
humans were better than them,
that your fair brow should never know the sweat
of slavery.
They lied.
White womanhood too is insane.
The difference is this here.
They brought me here in chains.
They brought the willing, they smacked you,
chipped out the women,
each filled with hope that she might win with
booby lips and salty curls
and frightened, flashing eyes, hemmed to wife
who had the largest tendons. Remember?
And they sold you here even as they sold me.
My sister, there is no room for mockery.
If they counted my teeth, they did, I praise
your size.
Sold you to the highest bidder, the same size.
And you did not fight for your rights, choose
whom you would wed.
But for whatever bargain price that was the
legal tender,
you were sold to a stranger's bed in a stranger land.
And you did not fight.
Mind you, I speak, not mockingly, but I fought
for freedom.
I'm fighting now for our unity.
We are women all.
And what wrongs you murdered me and eventually
my progress.
So we share a musical death at the hands of purity.
They trapped me with a chain, a gun.
They trapped you with nine cups.
Unless you see that fault, that villainy, that
rough view of name, voice and authority,
that murderous greed that wasted you and me.
He, the white supremacist, fits your mind with
poisonous thoughts.
White skin is the creed.
And therewith brought that monstrous change,
exiling you to being.
Changed all that nature had in you, brought the
gentle youthfulness,
abolishing your springiness, tore out your heart.
Set your good apart from all that you could
save the field.
No, to be right.
And you did not fight.
But set your mind fast on my slavery to better
to this youthful ruin.
His truth.
My pearls were beads of sweat, sprung from
weary bodies pain.
Instead of rings upon my hands, I wore swollen,
bursting veins.
My ornaments were the whiplash scarves.
My diamonds, perhaps a tear.
Instead of paint and powder.
On my face, I wore a solid mask of fear to see
my blood so filled.
And you, women, see it, with no protest.
But cuddle down in your pink slavery and
thought, somehow my wasted blood
confirms your failure.
Because your necklace was gold, you did not
notice that it throttled speech.
Because diamond rings beget your hands, you did
not regret the dictated idleness.
Nor could you see the platinum braces which
grace your wrists were chained,
binding you back to economic slavery.
And though you claimed your husband's name,
still could not command his fidelity.
You bore him son.
I bore him son.
No, not willingly.
He purchased you, he raped me, I fought, but
you fought, neither for yourselves nor me.
That's a check in your superiority and self-doubt.