Why give up an opportunity to see her again? There was not any harm in just seeing her. The more we come to terms with our soul tendencies, the more we find ourselves conceiving and living by a universal structure of reality. A friend of mine with whim I was having lunch seemed depressed. The lunch was not far along when he told me that he was preoccupied over some event of the weekend. His three children, aged twelve to twenty-three, had devoted several pithy hours to pointing out how he had been, if not responsible for, at least a prime contributor to, their problems. The upshot of their attack was that he had not made enough clear decisions in his relation to them, had not take a firm enough stand or set a strong enough structure. However, it is important that his children felt comfortable enough to communicate their issues with him, because some adult children stay respectful to their parents out of necessity and you never may know how they feel about the things you did and know you are responsible for doing that caused extreme hardship in their lives, when you know it is your fault, regardless of if you are in denial or not. Nonetheless, my friend, a sensitive, imaginative man who was a considerable success in his own life and work, had been brought up by strict inner-directed parents. However, he had known that he could never raise his children on that Victorian will-power pattern. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13

At the same time, my friend and his wife had also never been devotees of the popular over permissiveness which filled the vacuum when Victorianism was routed. What struck me with poignancy as he talked was my awareness that almost every parent these days seems to express in some form the same pain and perplexity that infused his question, “How does a parent make decisions about his children? How should a father asset his will?” This crisis of will affects the neurotic and normal alike—the patient on the couch as well as the psychiatrist or psychologist in the chair listening to him. The man I referred to was not in treatment for neurosis; yet he was experiencing the same contradiction in will and decision that is an inescapable expression of the psychological upheaval of the transitional age in which we live. The inherited basis of our capacity for will and decision has been irrevocably destroyed. And, ironically if not tragically, it is exactly in this portentous age, when power has grown so tremendously and decisions are so necessary and so fateful, that we find ourselves lacking any new basis for will. That Victorian will power is a faculty by which people make resolutions and then direct their lives down the rational and moral road that the culture dictates. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13

However, most of what motives us and our behaviors—whether in bringing up children or participating in pleasures of the flesh or running a business—are determined by unconscious urges, anxieties, fears, and the endless host of bodily drives and instinctual forces. The deeply rooted belief in psychic freedom and choice is quite unscientific and must be given ground before the claims of a determinism which governs mental life. Loss of individual will and responsibility is due to the fact the people no longer reflect on what is emerging from the depths of their soul or culture, and then they reflect and interpret and mold what they find without pondering why. In effect, this is a mutilation of one’s own consciousness, and it forfeits the chance to pus through the crisis to a new place of consciousness and integration. And in the process, one’s image of oneself will never be the same again; our only choice is to retreat before this destruction of our vaunted will power or to push on to the integration of consciousness on new levels. I do not wish or choose to do the former; but we have not yet achieved the latter; and our crisis of will is that we are now paralyzed between the two. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13

The dilemma arising from the undermining of will has become a thorny problem. Among the sophisticated use of the term will power has become perhaps the most unambiguous badge of naivete. It has become unfashionable to try, by one’s unassisted efforts, to force one’s way our of a condition of neurotic misery; for the stronger the will the more likely it is to be labeled a counter-phobic maneuver. The unconscious is heir to the prestige of will. As one’s fate formerly was determined by will, now it is determined by the repressed mental life. Knowledgeable moderns put their backs to the couch and in so doing may fail to put their shoulders to the wheel. As will has been devalued, so had courage; for courage can exist only in the service of will, and can hardly be valued higher than that which it serves. In our understanding of human nature we have gained determinism, lost determination. The tendency to see ourselves as the spawns of determinism has spread, in late decades, to include contemporary mortal’s conviction that one is the helpless object of scientific forces in the form of atomic power. The helplessness is, of course, vividly represented by the nuclear bomb, about which the typical citizen feels powerless to do anything. Many intellectuals saw this coming and asked in their own terms whether modern mortals are obsolete. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13

However, the important development in our present decade is that this is the common awareness of all who even watch TV or go to the movies, the modern era has destroyed mortal’s faith in one’s ability to influence what happens to him or her. Indeed, the central core of modern mortal’s neurosis, it may be fairly said, is the undermining of one’s experience of oneself as responsible, the sapping of one’s will and ability to make decisions. The lack of will is much more than merely an ethical problem: the modern individual so often has the conviction that even if one did exert one’s will—or whatever illusion passes for it—one’s actions would not do any good anyway. It is this inner experience of impotence, this contradiction in will, which constitutes our critical problem. Our ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because emblematic language alone is able to express our supreme concern. Symbols have one characteristic in common with signs; they point beyond themselves to something else. The red sign at the street corner points to the order to stop the movement of cars at certain intervals. A red light and the stopping of cars have essentially no relation to each other, but conventionally they are untied as long as the convention lasts. The same is true of letters and numbers and partly even words. They point beyond themselves to sounds and meanings. They are given this special function by convention within a nation or by international conventions, as mathematical signs. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13

Sometimes such signs are called symbols; but this is unfortunate because it makes the distinction between signs and symbols more difficult. Decisive is the fact that signs do not participate in the reality of that to which they point, while symbols do. Therefore, signs can be replaced for reasons of expediency or convention, while symbols cannot. This leads to the symbol: It participates in that to which it points: the flag participates in the power and dignity of the nation for which it stands. Therefore, it cannot be replaced except after an historic catastrophe that changes the reality of the nation which it symbolizes. An attack on the flag is felt as an attack on the majesty of the group in which it is acknowledged. Such an attack is considered blasphemy. Another characteristic of a symbol is that it opens up levels of reality which otherwise are closed for us. All arts create symbols for a level of reality which cannot be reached in any other way. A picture and a poem reveal elements of reality which cannot be approached scientifically. In the creative work of art we encounter reality in a dimension which is closed for us without such works. The symbol’s characteristic not only opens up dimensions and elements of reality which otherwise would remain unapproachable but also unlocks dimensions and elements of our soul which correspond to the dimensions and elements of reality. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13

We never know we go—when we are going. We jest and shut the door; fate following behind us bolts it, and we accost no more. A great play gives us not only a new vision of the human scene, but it opens up hidden depths of our own being. Thus we are able to receive what the play reveals to us in reality. There are within us dimensions of which we cannot become aware except through symbols, as melodies and rhythms in music. Symbols cannot be produced intentionally—this is further characteristic. They grow out of individual or collective unconscious and cannot function without being accepted by the unconscious dimension of our being. Symbols which we have an especially social function, as political and religious symbols, are created or at least accepted by the collective unconscious of the group in which they appear. Additionally, a consequence of the fact that symbols cannot be invited, like living beings, they grow and die. They grow when the situation is ripe for them, and they die when the situation changes. The symbol of the king grew in a special period of history, and it died in most parts of the World in our period. Symbols do not grow because people are longing for them, and they do not die because of scientific or practical criticism. The die because they can no longer produce response in the group where they originally found expression. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13

These are the main characteristics of every symbol. Genuine symbols are created in several sphere of mortal’s cultural creativity. The built environment reflects the natural World and the conception of the people who inhabit it of their place within the natural scheme of things. A building’s form might echo the World around it, or might contrast with it—but, in each case, the choices builders make reveal their attitudes toward the World around them. The architecture of the vast majority of early civilizations was designed to imitate natural forms. The significance of the pyramids of Egypt is the subject of much debate, but their form may well derive from the image of the god Ra, who in ancient Egypt was symbolized by the rays of the Sun descending to Earth. A test in one pyramids reads: “I have trodden these rays as ramps under my feet.” I believe that inscription is in one of the Pyramids of Mycerinus (circa 2470 BCE). As one approached the mammoth pyramids, covered in limestone to reflect the light of the Sun, the eye was carried skyward to Ra, the Sun itself, who was in the desert the central fact of life. Human’s ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically! One may ask: Why can it not be expressed directly and properly? If money, success or the nation is someone’s ultimate concern, can this not be said in a direct way without symbolic language? It is not only those cases in which the content of the ultimate concern is called “God” that we are in the realm of symbols? #RandolphHarris 8 of 13

The answer is that everything which is a matter of unconditional concern is made into a god. If the nation is someone’s ultimate concern, the name of the nation becomes a sacred name and the nation receives divine qualities which far surpass the reality of being and functioning of the nation. The nation then stands for and symbolizes the true ultimate, but in an idolatrous way. Success as ultimate concern is not the natural desires of actualizing potentialities, but is readiness to sacrifice all other values of life for the sake of a position of power and social predominance. The anxiety about not being a success is an idolatrous form of the anxiety about divine condemnation. Success is grace; lack of success, ultimate judgment. In this way concepts designating ordinary realities become idolatrous symbols of ultimate concern. The reason for this transformation of concepts into symbols is the character of ultimacy and the nature of faith. That which is the true ultimate transcends the realm of finite reality infinitely. Therefore, no finite reality can express it directly and properly. Religiously speaking, God transcends one’s own name. This is why the use of one’s name easily becomes an abuse or a blasphemy. Whatever we say about that which concerns us ultimately, whether or not we call it God, has a symbolic meaning. It points beyond itself while participating in that to which it points. In no other way can faith express itself adequately. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13

The language of faith is the language of symbols. If faith were what we have shown that it is not, such an assertion could not be made. However, faith, understood as the state of being ultimately concerned, has no language other than symbols. When saying this I always expect the question: Only a symbol? One who asks this question shows that one has not understood the difference between signs and symbols nor the power of symbolic language, which surpasses in quality and strength the power of any nonsymbolic language. One should never say “only a symbol,” but one should say, “not less than a symbol.” With this in mind we can now describe the different kinds of symbols of faith. The fundamental symbol of our ultimate concern is God. In the 1432 portrait of God by Jan van Eyck, God is celebrated in a materialism that is the proper right of benevolent kings. Behind God’s head, across the top of the throne, are Latin words that, translated into English, read: “This is God, all power in his divine majesty; of all the best, by the gentleness of his goodness; the most liberal giver, because of his infinite generosity.” God’s mercy and love are indicated by the pelicans embroidered on the tapestry behind him, which is Christian tradition symbolize self-sacrificing love, since pelicans were believed to wound themselves in order to feed their young with their own blood if other food was unavailable. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13

A symbol of God is always present in any act of faith, even if the act of faith includes the denial of God. Where there is ultimate concern, God can be denied only in the name of God. One God can deny the other one. Ultimate concern cannot deny its own character as supreme. Therefore, it affirms what is meant by the word “God.” Atheism, consequently, can only mean the attempt to remove any ultimate concern—to remain unconcerned about the meaning of one’s existence. Indifference toward the ultimate question is the only imaginable form of atheism. Whether it is possible is a problem which must remain unsolved at this point. In any case, one who denies God as a matter of ultimate concern affirms God, because one affirms ultimacy in one’s concern. God is the fundamental symbol for what concerns us ultimately. Again it would be completely wrong to ask: So God is nothing but a symbol? Because the next question has to be: A symbol for what? And then the answer would be: For God! God is a symbol for God. This means that in the notion of God we must distinguish two elements: the element of ultimacy, which is a matter of immediate experience and not symbolic in itself, and the element of concreteness, which is taken from our ordinary experience and symbolically applied to God. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13

The mortal whose ultimate concern is a sacred tree has both the ultimacy of concern and the concreteness of the tree which symbolizes one’s relation to the ultimate. The person who adores Apollo is ultimately concerned, but not in an abstract way. One’s ultimate concern is symbolized in the divine figure of Apollo. The mortal who glorifies Jahweh, the God of the Old Testament, has both an ultimate concern and a concrete image of what concerns one ultimately. This is the meaning of the seemingly cryptic statement that God is the symbol of God. In this qualified sense God is the fundamental and universal content of faith. It is obvious that such an understanding of the meaning of God makes the discussion about the existence or non-existence of God meaningless. It is meaningless to question the ultimacy of a supreme concern. This element in the idea of God is in itself certain. The symbolic expression of this element varies endlessly through the whole history of humankind. Here again it would be meaningless to ask whether one or another of the figures in which an ultimate concern is symbolized does exist. If existence refers to something which can be found within the whole of reality, no divine being exists. The question is not this, but: which of the innumerable symbols of faith is most adequate to the meaning of faith? #RandolphHarris 12 of 13

In other words, which symbol of ultimacy expresses the ultimacy without idolatrous elements? This is the problem, and not the so-called existence of God—which is in itself an impossible combination of words. God as the ultimate in mortal’s ultimate concern is more certain than any other certainty, even that of oneself. God as symbolized in a divine figure is a matter of daring faith, of courage and risk. God is the basic symbol of faith, but not the only one. All the qualities we attribute to him, power, love, justice, are taken from finite experiences and applied symbolically to that which is beyond finitude and infinite. If faith calls God “almighty,” it uses the human experience of power in order to symbolize the content of its infinite concern, but it does not describe a highest being who can do as one pleases. So it is with all the other qualities and with all the actions, past, present, and future, which mortals attribute to God. They are symbols taken from our daily experiences, and not information about what God did one upon a time or will do at sometime in the future. Faith is not the belief in such stories, but it is the acceptance of symbols that express our ultimate concern in terms of divine actions. Another group of symbols of faith are manifestations of the divine in things and events, in persons and communities, in words and documents. This whole realm of sacred objects is a treasure of symbols. Holy things are not holy in themselves, but they point beyond themselves to the source of all holiness, that which is of ultimate concern. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13