We did not think they would simply disappear. We could not image it. Aliveness is conducive to joy. Many people read the word joy as pleasure, but the distinction between joy and pleasure is crucial, particularly so in reference to the distinction between the being and the having modes. It is not easy to appreciate the differences, since we live in a World of joyless pleasures. What is pleasure? Even though the word is used in different ways, considering its popular thought, it seems best defined as the satisfaction of a desire that does not require activity (in the sense of aliveness) to be satisfied. Such pleasure can be of high intensity: the pleasure in having social success, earning more money, winning a lottery; the conventional pleasures of the flesh; eating to one’s heart’s content; winning a race; the state of elation brought about by drinking, trance, elicit substances; the pleasures in satisfying one’s sadism, or one’s passion to alter what is alive. Of course, in order to become rich of famous, individuals must be very active in the sense of busyness, but not in the sense of birth within. When they have achieved their goal they may be thrilled, intensely satisfied, feel they have reached a peak. However, what peak? Maybe a peak of excitement, of satisfaction, of a trancelike or orgiastic state.  #RandolphHarris 1 of 15

However, they may have reached this state driven by passions that, though human, are nevertheless pathological, inasmuch as they do not lead to an intrinsically adequate solution of the human condition. Such passions do not lead to greater human growth and strength but, on the contrary, to human crippling. The pleasures of the radical hedonists, the satisfaction of ever new cupidities, the pleasures of contemporary society produce different degrees of excitements. However, they are not conducive to joy. In fact, the lack of joy makes it necessary to seek ever new, ever more exciting pleasures. In this respect, modern society is in the same position the Hebrews were in three thousand years ago. Speaking to the people of Israel about one of the worst of their sins. Moses said: “You did not serve the Lord your God with joy and gladness of heart, in the midst of the fullness of all things,” reports Deuteronomy 28.47. Joy is the concomitant of productive activity. It is not a peak experience, which culminates and ends suddenly, but rather a plateau, a feeling state that accompanies the productive expression of one’s essential human faculties. Joy is not the ecstatic fire of the moment. Joy is the glow that accompanies being. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15

Pleasure and thrill are conducive to sadness after the so-called peak has been reached; for the thrill has been experienced, but the vessel has not grown. One’s inner powers have not increased. One has made the attempt to break through the boredom of unproductive activity and for a moment has unified all one’s energies—expect reason and love. One has attempted to become superhuman, without being human. One seems to have succeeded to the moment of triumph, but the triumph is followed by deep sadness: because nothing has changed within oneself. As is to be expected, joy must play a central role in those religious and philosophical systems that proclaim being as the goal of life. Joy is virtue; sadness is sin. Joy, then, is what we experience in the process of growing nearer to the goal of becoming ourself. Our human center does not lie in ourselves, but in the authority to which we submit. We do not arrive at well-being by our own productive activity, but by passive obedience and the ensuing approval by the authority. We have a leader (secular or spiritual, king/queen or God) in whom we have faith; we have security as long as we are humble. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15

The submission to God is not necessarily conscious as such, it can be mild or severe, the psychic and social structure need not blind us to the fact that we live in the mode of having to the degree that we internalize the authoritarian structure of our society. By submission or by domination or by trying to silence reason and awareness—these ways succeed only for the moment, and block the road to a true solution. There is but one way to save ourselves from this Hell: to leave the prison of our egocentricity, to reach out and to one ourselves with the World. If egocentric separateness is the cardinal sin, then the sin is atoned in the act of loving. The very word atonement expresses this concept, for it etymologically derives from atonement, the Middle-English expression for union. Since the sin of separateness is not an act of disobedience, it does not need to be forgiven. However, it does need to be healed; and love, not acceptance of punishment, is the healing factor. The concept of sin as disunion has been expressed by some of the church fathers, who followed Jesus’ nonauthoritarian concept of sin, and suggests where there are sins there is diversity. However, where virtue rules there is uniqueness, there is oneness. Through Adam’s sin the human race, which should be a harmonious whole without conflict between mine and thine, was transformed into a dust cloud of individuals. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15

Similar thoughts concerning the destruction of the original unity in Adam can also be found in the idea that the fact of salvation appears necessary as the regaining of the lost oneness, as the restitution of the supernatural oneness with God and at the same time the oneness of mortals among each other. The concept of sin and repentance tells us that we shall be as Gods for an examination of the whole problem of sin. In the having mode, and thus the authoritarian structure, sin is disobedience and is overcome by repentance: punishment, renewed submission. In the being mode, the nonauthoritarian structure, sin is unresolved estrangement, and it is overcome by the full unfolding of reason and love, by at-onement. One can indeed interpret the story of the Fall in both ways, because the story itself is a blending of authoritarian and liberating elements. However, in themselves the concept of sin as, respectively, disobedience and alienation are diametrically opposed. The Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel seems to contain the same idea. The human race reached here a state of union, symbolized by the fact that all humanity has one language. By their own ambition for power, by their craving to have the great tower, the people destroy their unity and are disunited. In a sense, the story of the Tower is the second Fall, the sin of historical humanity. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15

The story is complicated by God’s disapproving of the people’s unity and power being used to attack him. “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do, and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech,” reports Genesis 11.6-7. Of course, the same difficulty already exists in the story of the Fall; there God is afraid of the power that man and woman would exercise if they ate of the fruit of both trees. There are two escae hatches that it is well to examine in more detail because they play so important a part in many families, spiritual or human. One of these is the attempt to escape from feelings of self-hate by hating others. This involves a mental process psychologist call projection. When a motion picture projector casts a picture on a screen, what the view sees is not determined primarily by the screen, although its quality can affect the image. The picture comes from within the projector, although the viewer may become so lost in the drama unfolding on the screen that one is no longer consciously aware of the source of the image. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15

In the phenomenon of projection, psychologically speaking, the individual is both the projection machine and the viewer. In other words, a person sees what he or she projects onto the screen. In many ways, by using various scientific methods, psychologists have shown that all of us do a great deal of projecting, some of us more than others. In other words, when we look out at the World around us our view of reality is more or less distorted by the image we project, without conscious awareness, from our own minds. So, for example, psychologists have demonstrated that if we are shown a broken line drawing suggesting some image with which we are familiar, we have a tendency to complete that image in our mind when we look at the incomplete drawing. Projection is an important consideration here, because we have a tendency to project onto others qualities or feelings that we cannot accept ourselves. Thus, for example, a person who cannot accept his or her own feelings about pleasures of the flesh may feel that every man or woman who glances at him or her is out to seduce one. Since the feeling that we hate ourselves is such a threat to us, we cannot accept it in ourselves. Projection of self-hate onto others becomes one readily available way of avoiding these feelings. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15

It is no surprise, then, that some children faced with frequent situations in which they feel rejected by others learn to avoid the feelings of worthlessness and self-hate by this means. Instead of being aware of the feeling, “I hate myself,” such a child will feel “They hate me!” It is only a small step further, of course, for the child’s reaction to be “Since they hate me, I hate them.” The child then has a target toward which to express all of the hostility seething within one—hostility because one feels worthless and because one has been rejected. When we project feelings we do not choose our targets indiscriminately. They usually make some kind of sense. A natural target for the child is the parents from whom one has felt rejection. And it is the child whose parents have been overly punishing and who have severely restricted the child’s freedom who most often tends to develop the reaction “My parents hate me, therefore I hate them!” When the child yells out one’s anger toward one’s parents or rebels against their directives, one is likely to meet more severe punishment and restriction. As a result, one feels more rejection and slips deeper into feelings of self-hate that is again converted into “You hate me, so I hate you.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 15

If this cycle is not broken, the hatred of others often widens in scope to people outside the family circle as the child grows older. Often those in positions of authority, who are probably unconsciously identified with the parents, become the great target of increasing hatred; and so the child may get into difficulty with school officials and later with the police. Thus the rebellion against parents who do not seem to care can spread to rebellion against a society that does not seem to care. And if a person becomes a parent, he or she will probably be too emotionally disadvantaged and frightened to express his or her love to one’s children. One, too, will probably be punitive and hurtful. And thus, unless the cycle is broken, the blight of self-hate perpetuates itself from one generation to another. Feelings of rejection become feelings of worthlessness, then self-hate becomes escape by hating others instead of one’s self, and further rejection (he or she has gotten into one scrape after another. Punishment does not seem to help. He seems hopeless!) and this all cycles back around to create more feelings of worthlessness. In psychotherapy, we want to know, “Did the patient improve or not?” where the word “improve” means some fairly general changes in state from bad to good. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15

Some example changes used to measure the patient are  such as these: (a) the patient feels better, is more comfortable, takes more interest in life, and the like; (b) important interpersonal relations are straightened out a bit; (c) physical symptoms have been relieved or cured; (d) important health-tending decisions have been made; (e) there has been an increase in insightful remarks and behavior. Each therapist then makes a formal presentation before these two judges of every case one has handled; prior to the presentation the judges have read all of the material concerning the patient that has been recorded in the clinical chart. In the instruction to the judges it is emphasized that the crucial variable is not the general level of functioning of the patient at the conclusion of therapy, but rather the change in state that had occurred between beginning and end of therapy. Further, it is made clear to the judges that part of their function is to evaluate the therapist’s involvement in one’s own account of the therapeutic process, and to weigh that factor in coming to a best estimate as to the degree of change that has actually occurred. On the basis, then, of two main sources of information (formal presentation of the case by the therapist, and an evaluation from the clinical chart), the expert raters assign cases, first of all, into two main categories, those who have shown definite improvement and those who had failed to improve or who have improved only slightly. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15

It is of some interest to examine the kinds of incidents and outcomes that the judges considered indicative of improvement or lack of it. Here a case of improvement: A man who entered therapy in a very depressed, anxious physically upset state, and whose troubles centered on his relations with his foreman on a construction job (a relationship in which was outwardly submissive and cooperative but inwardly enraged finally learned to stand up to the foreman and express his feelings. There was clear advance in his feelings of independence and esteem, and toward the conclusion of the therapy the patient left the former job and started a business of his own. Here is a case where no improvement was seen: A man with a history of homosexuality attempted to seduce his male therapist, who responded with anger as well as some anxiety. The patient had to be transferred to another therapist. The kind of outcomes in improvements are generally when the patient reports feelings of well-being at the conclusion of therapy, in contrast to depression and anxiety at its start. Specific symptoms, such as headaches, frigidity, or impotence, gastric disturbances, menstrual difficulties, skin disorders, and so forth, tend to be relieved or totally cleared up; in some cases there are significant changes in the direction of more mature interpersonal relations, especially with patents, parent-substitutes, or spouses. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15

The failures in psychotherapy could often be traced to the inability of the therapist to handle some particularly difficult problems. Perhaps with more experienced psychotherapists some of the patients who did not improve would have made some progress; however, there seems little doubt that the cases that were marked down as therapeutic failures were basically more difficult problems. Generally, more disturbed individuals do not improve. As stated in the past, the fear that one may lose one’s possessions is an unavoidable consequence of a sense of security that is based on what one has. I want to carry this thought a step further. It may be possible for us not to attach ourselves to property and, hence, not fear losing it. However, what about the fear of losing life itself—the fear of dying? Is this a fear only of older people or of the sick? Or is everybody afraid of dying? Does the fact that we are bound to die permeate our whole life? Does the fear of dying grow only more intense and more conscious the closer we come to the limits of life by age or sickness? We need of large systematic studies by psychoanalysts investigating this phenomenon from childhood to golden years and dealing with the unconsciousness as well as the conscious manifestations of the fear of dying. These studies need not be restricted to individual cases; they could examine large groups, using existing methods of sociopsychoanalysis. Since such studies do not now exist, we must draw tentative conclusions for many scattered data. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15

Perhaps the most significant datum is the deeply engraved desire for immortality that manifests itself in the many rituals and beliefs that aim at preserving the human body. On the other hand, the modern, specifically American denial of death by the beautification of the body speaks equally for the repression of the fear of dying by merely camouflaging death. It is not just woman any more, men in the entertainment industry are buying lace front wigs and caking on makeup to try and appear twenty to thirty year young than they are. However, there is only one way—taught by the Buddha, by Jesus, by the Stoics, by Master Eckhart—to truly overcome the fear of dying, and that way is by not hanging onto life, not experiencing life as a possession. Yet, it takes a cute young lady on TV to remind people of these Biblical principals before they manifest them. Nevertheless, the fear of dying is not truly what is seems to be: the fear of stopping living. Death does not concern us, since while we are, death is not yet here; but when death is here we are no more. To be sure, there can be fear of suffering and pain that may precede dying, but this fear is different from that of dying. While the fear of dying may this seem irrational, this is not so if life is experienced as a possession. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15

The fear, then, is not of dying, but of losing what I have: the fear of losing my body, my ego, my possessions, and my identity; the fear of facing the abyss of nonidentity, of being lost. To the extent that we live in the having mode, we must fear dying. No rational explanation will take away this fear. However, it may be diminished, even at the hour of death, by our reassertion of our bond to life, by a response to the love of others that may kindle our own love. Losing our fear of dying should not begin as a preparation for death, but as the continuous effort to reduce the mode of having and to increase the mode of being. The wise think about life, not death. The instruction on how to die is indeed the same as the instruction on how to live. The more we rid ourselves of the craving for possession in all its forms, particularly our ego-boundness, the less strong is the fear of dying, since there is nothing to lose. Research in psychotherapy by Harris and Christiansen declares that there is so significant relationship between improvement and intelligence. The Harris-Christiansen sample consisted of already hospitalized persons who were given psychotherapy because of delayed recovery from physical infirmary, surgery, or accident, whereas almost all patients in the present study had elected on their own initiative to seek psychotherapy at the clinic, and in their waking hours wen about business of life in an upright position. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15

This difference might well account for the IQ difference between the samples, as well as for the fact that these self-referred patients were a good standard deviation above the general population mean in intelligence. Simply being aware of the fact that psychotherapy is to be had and that it makes sense to seek it when you are in personal difficulties is probably related beneficially to general intelligence and cultural sophistication. It is also to be expected on theoretical grounds that greater effectiveness of cortical functioning should be associated with a factor of modifying ability in personality and structure. Intelligence certainly involves the ability to cognize relationships adequately, including emotional relationships, and to correct one’s cognitions on the basis of new evidence. It would seem that in this sample, at any rate, the more intelligent patients were better able to use the psychotherapeutic relationship to induce desired personality changes. We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all people. And since there are endless ways of being honest and dishonest, one definition of honest is: Honesty implies freedom from lying, stealing, cheating, and bearing false witness. “Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips, and from deceitful tongue,” reports Psalms 102.2. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15