Ninth Lecture

And one must have an inclination not just to see the avalanche when it buries the villages below, but one must have the inclination to see the snowball that falls from above, because it becomes an avalanche. Certainly, I have watched for a long time and admonished again and again, but the admonitions were not really heard or at least not taken very seriously. People outside our Society reproach me that one of my greatest faults was – today they already mention greater ones, that was a year ago – that I make blind followers, that I have blind followers who blindly believe in authority. I may well say: when it comes to something where the members of the Society should place some trust in me and do one thing or another in response to that trust, I usually do not find very many followers. As a rule, the opposite of my opinion happens. It has been that way all these years. Actually, the opposite of my opinion has always happened. You just don't notice it, because in many circles a special method has been followed: people didn't ask for my opinion so much as for their own opinion and then told people: 'That's what he said.' I was very far from saying it, but the person concerned would have liked me to have said it, so he told them that I had said it. It is true that when it is said in the outside world that I have blind followers, the practice of the Society shows that the complete opposite is the case, at least with regard to matters where I should be approached with some trust, because I have sometimes been trying to reach a judgment for years, and the other person has not done so.