The Material Question

I had to hold myself without weakening, while experiencing all kinds of feelings, to an extremely intense level of inner activity in order not to identify myself with anything. And I had to resist, with a merciless attitude towards myself, any change in the automatically flowing process of mental and emotional associations demanded for the themes of thought which I had been working out during this time. And, finally, I had to force myself not to neglect or omit anything which might be related to, logically correspond to, or contradict any of the innumerable series of separate ideas which in their totality constitute the substance of my writings.

In my concern to express my thoughts in a form accessible to others, my psychic concentration, time and again, reached such a point that for unusually long periods I forgot even my most essential needs.
But the objective injustice most painful to me in all this was that, during this inner concentration of the whole of my force for the purpose of transmitting true knowledge to people, both now and of the future, I had frequently to tear myself away from this state, and, at the cost of my last reserves of energy accumulated with much difficulty during short intervals between the hours of intensive work, to think out various complicated arrangements for postponing this or that payment or settling one or another of my debts.

During these six years, I grew tired to the point of exhaustion not from writing, rewriting, and again revising the many manuscripts piled in a cellar arranged especially for my archives, but from this periodic necessity to turn over and over in my head all possible combinations for dealing with these ever­ increasing debts.

Until these last years, whenever I needed the support of others for a material problem, of little importance compared to that for which my time was necessary—support concretely expressed by the word ‘money’—and when I did not receive it, I could still be resigned to this, as I understood that the significance of my activities could not be clear to everyone. But now that the significance and aim of my activities, thanks to what I have actualized during the last six years, may be recognized by all, I do not intend to resign myself to this any longer; but on the contrary I consider myself justified, with an entirely clear conscience, in requiring that every person who approaches me, without distinction of race, faith, or material or social position, shall protect me as the apple of his eye, in order that my force and time may be spared for the activities corresponding to my individuality.

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