A World of silent cathedrals. Thousands of magnificent cities. Measureless galleries. Warriors poised in their chariots inscribed in arabesque bas-reliefs spiraling into eternity. Objects have their own light and beauty. There is grandeur in this view of life…having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved. Above us shone the bright stars, beyond the zig zag line traces in the black sky by the tip of the foremast as it weaves back and forth; the gleaming stars charmed our eyes. The evening lights of Rocklin Trails had been left far in the rear. Without a doubt this was the most amazing and intense experience of my life. The faces of other people were clear and beautiful and open. Their faces looked bright and strong, like those of archangels. I could look at them without fear of shyness and with frank admiration and adoration. People looked pure, shed of a fog of dissimulations, anxieties, hypocrisies. Everyone was true to one’s own self and no one was ashamed. It was, so I had heard, a land where silence and serenity were an essential part of its beauty. I wanted to be quiet with my own heart and open to my own spirit. I sought especially the answer to the question of the relationship of the beauty of nature to the Infinite, to what some people call the Absolute and others call God. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

It was thus a strange kind of expectancy that I felt as I sat with my companions of the Cresleigh Rocklin Trails community looking at the stars gleaming in the night’s sky. A half Moon peeked over the pyramidal roof tops, and the stars scrutinized us in their sharp way, peering more brightly than the eyes of a cat at night. We witnessed another act of the drama which proves everlastingly that mortals are not alone in this natural paradise. It is a special little kingdom. Creation is a stone thrown uphill against the downward rush of habit. We must remember that without habit we cannot exits, just as without creation we would not exist. Habit and creation, or law and freedom, or gravity and turbulence, depending upon how or in what aspects we view these polarities, conduct an incessant and fruitful dialectic. In another aspect, of from another and judgmental point of view, we may call the polarities Heaven and Hell, though it is not always clear which is. Without contraries there is no progression. The doors of perception are cleansed, and by doors we mean those structural aspects of consciousness of which we are speaking, and by cleansed, we mean, unhinged and plain removed. The love of God and the vow of love inwardly is renewed each second of each day, each time eternal and each time wholly complete and new. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

 Everyday as the bird rise with the lavender dawn, as from the buses on either side comes the exhilarating trills of warblers, the merry chirps of sparrows, and a well-blended chorus of notes from countless other feathery creatures, with faithfulness I pray God will not refuse us the grace. A silent priest whose figure and face arrested our attention was all and stood with natural dignity and grace of figure; his face was delicate, sensitive, intelligent. His clear blue eyes especially attracted us. We had seen him in the coffee shop, where he had quietly waited for coffee, which should have shown us that he was not native to this part of the globe. He had a pleasing English accent and a rich, expressive voice; he told us he was studying the rich treasures of Byzantine art and hagiography. We later learned that he was of a high British Family. About the human body itself there are several features we tend not to notice, they seem so common. When we have considered these common enough facts briefly, we may then turn to certain features of the human mind that also are so commonplace that one must make a special point of thinking about them if they are to be noticed at all. Our bodies are not closed, but open. Some of the openings seem mostly to let things in and other seems mostly to let thing out, but the main function of the 10 or 12 openings and numerous minor ones is to provide a constant interchange of materials between the system or field that we identify ourselves and the systems or fields that we recognize as not-ourselves. We generally face the way we are going. Another way of putting this is to say that our face is front. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

 In terms of temporal passage, the things that have not yet happened are in front of us, in the course of time we shall face them. Like almost everything in nature, in our gross aspect we are approximately symmetrical, and generally bilateral.  We have two ears and they are located on opposite side of the head. The fact of bilateral symmetry has a great deal to do with how we locate ourselves and all the not-ourselves in space and time. The stone road led up through a valley where the blossoming lemon and orange trees of this Easter season were exuberant with their delicate bright shades. They unceasingly tempted us to pause, like the mythological Circe, with their intoxicating order—but our muscles were responding like tuned violin strings and we had no choice but to continue up the beckoning path. I need not go on with these commonplaces, for you can yourself think of many more and of their consequences for our sense of self: our jointedness, our plasticity, the flexibility of control we have over our openings, our shape and our size and the tiny span we occupy in the scale of magnitude of the physical World, our remarkable similarity to one another, the counterphoic quality of our motility, our bony skeletons and casings, our living and moving brains, and our perishability. Joy arises from the full development of personal functioning. The parts of the body may be taught and trained, exercised and sharpened. The senses may be made more acute to discriminate smells and sights. Strength and stamina can be increased in the muscles.  #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

Sensory awareness and appreciation can be awakened so that more sensitivity to bodily feelings and natural events can be developed. Motor control can be cultivated so that development of mechanical and artistic skills result, and coordination and dexterity improve. The nervous system may be developed through study and the acquisition of knowledge and experience. Logical thinking and the creative potential can be nurtured and brought to fruition. Bodily functions controlling the emotions can also be developed. Awareness of emotions, appropriate expression of feelings (and their relation to other functions such as thinking and action) can be trained. I remind you of these aspects of our structure—the structural shapes of our destiny—both because I want as well to remind you of certain aspects of the structure of mind and because mind and body bear to one another a relationship which poses for psychology its ultimate and most crucial problem. I seem no reason why we should not conceive of the body as a machine, and indeed I can think of no reasonable alternative conception. However, protoplasm is different from all other mechanical systems in that it feels, and that in its complex human embodiment it possesses what we know as our own consciousness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

 This consciousness has a structure in the same sense that our body does, and some of its structural aspects do seem to derive from the structure of the body, though to say “derive from” already prejudges the question and exhibits one of the structural aspects of my own consciousness (and yours as well, I would guess), which sees a before and an after, logical antecedent and logical consequence, cause and effect. Thus far our realized human has acquired a finely tuned body, and has developed it to its full integrated functioning. If one is to develop further, one must be able to relate to other people in order to achieve the most joy. Since ours is a communal culture, this means functioning in such a way that human interaction is rewarding for all concerned. This theory assets that our needs from and toward other people are three: inclusion, control, and affection. We achieve interpersonal joy when we find a satisfying flexible balance in each of these areas between ourselves and other people. Inclusion refers to the need to be with people and to be alone. The effort in inclusion is to have enough contract to avoid loneliness and enjoy people; enough aloneness to avoid enmeshment and enjoy solitude. The fully realized mortal can feel comfortable and joyful both with and without people, and knows how much of each—and when—one functions best. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

The phenomenon of feeling cannot be shown to arise from any peculiarity of our mechanical constitution. The attempt to deduce it (for instance, the property of feeling) from the laws of mechanics, applied to never so ingenious a mechanical contrivance, would obviously be futile. It can never be explained, unless we admit that physical events are but degraded or undeveloped forms of physical events. We see frequently in creative individuals such an ability to transcend the ordinary boundaries of structures of consciousness; indeed, more than ability, an actual desire to break through the regularities of perception, to shatter what is stable or constant in consciousness, to go beyond the given World to find that something-more or that something-different that intuition says is there. Let us take a look at the features of mind that are as commonplace as those we have considered in thinking of the human body, but that ordinarily do not claim our attention. One word of qualification first, however. Structural characteristics of our body, even though we recognize them as dynamic and passing, seem to us more tangible than the structures of consciousness of which I shall speak. When I say that these structures I mean simply that they are relatively enduring and constantly recurring psychic dispositions, and thus have a sort of permanence and distinctness and boundedness which make the word structure appropriate. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

Our mind so operates that we consider the proposition logically impossible that a thing can both be and not be at the same time. Definitively and certainly, as far as human beings have the right to use these two words, our vocations impose upon us the necessity of engaging in intellectual work. And that is in order that we may serve God and the Christian faith in the realm of intelligence. The degree of intellectual honesty that is obligatory for us, by reason of our particular vocations, demands our artistic creations be so intimate and secret that no one can penetrate into them from outside. In the area of control the effort is to achieve enough influence so that a mortal can determine one’s future to the degree that one finds most comfortable, and to relinquish enough control so that one is able to learn on others to teach, guide, support, and at times to take some responsibility from one. The fully realized mortal is capable of either leading or following as appropriate, and of knowing where one personally feels most comfortable. Space and time seem to exist independently of our perception of them, and to be separate categories of being, themselves independent of one another. In science we say that a protocol sentence is one that specifies some space-time coordinate and ascribes to a thing or event there a certain quantity or value. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

In common sense, anything that happens happens at some particular time and in some particular place. Everything in principle has an explanation; that is, if we could but know everything, there would be no unintelligible or unaccountable—for event. In common parlance, there is a reason for everything. In affection the effort is to avoid being engulfed in emotional entanglement (not being free to relate without a deep involvement), but also to avoid having too little affection and a bleak, sterile life without love, warmth, tenderness, and someone to confide in. The fully realized mortal is aware of one’s needs, and function effectively not only in close, emotionally involving situations, but also in those of lesser intensity. As in the other two areas, one is able to both give and take, comfortably and joyfully. This approach to human potential is called Interpersonal Relations. Our mind seems to be distinct and separate from other minds, our self to belong to us alone; and like everything else, we exist in a particular time for us, the present, and a particular place, our body. Our self is the only self we known, and no other self knows us. And while our own individual mind, if it could validly be compared with other minds, might prove to be remarkably similar to those other minds, to us it is unique, the only one. Assume now that one has a good body structure, functioning well, and one relates optimally with the people of his or her life. However, one function within a society, and one’s development cannot be completed without the support of the society. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

If the society is repressive, one cannot develop fully. If social institutions are destructive, one cannot grow. If family life is constricting, if work is dehumanizing, if laws are humiliating, if norms are intolerable, if bigotry and prejudice are the bases human functioning, then our fully realized mortal is deep trouble. Joy at the level of organization comes when society and culture are supporting and enhancing to self-realization. Approaches at this level are called Organizational Relations. This, then, is our framework. Joy is developed through the levels of body-structure, personal functioning, interpersonal relations, and organizational relations. The fact that attention seem to wax and wane, that mind seems to sleep and to wake, that time seem to pass moment by moment in a succession of states rather than in an unstoppable flow, that most inanimate objects seem impenetrable and unmoving, that up seem to be above down, that the inside of a thing cannot be the outside of it, and so on are the basic achievement of consciousness. Joy is the feeling that comes when one realizes one’s potential for feeling, for having inner freedom and openness, for expression of expression of oneself, for being able to do whatever expression of oneself, for being able to do whatever one is capable of, and for having satisfying relations with others and society. In the older day the psychiatric way of determining whether or not the patient had what was called a clear sensorium was to ask the “W” questions: who are you, where are you, why are you here, when did you arrive, what is your name, what day I it, which way is out and so on. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

Knowing these whys and wherefores, and being able in addition to make some simple comparisons and strike some arithmetical averages, meant that you were sane enough for most purposes. It is no longer news that modern mathematics and physics can do so very well without some of these common-sense notions, and in most of the modern arts as well there are significant works that aim at breaking up the best established of our regularities of perception. A large part of the effort, unfortunately, must go into undoing. Guilt, shame, embarrassment, or fear of punishment, failure, success, retribution—all must be overcome. Destructive and blocking behavior, thoughts, and feelings must be altered. The experiences which I call hellish are marked by a sense of impossible distance between people, of intrinsic solitariness of the self, of vast darkness and desolation throughout the Universe, of the puniness of the shelters we have made for ourselves, the feebleness of fire against the outer coldness and darkness, and an anticipation of death or a feeling that one is already dead. The light and glow with which persons are suffused, or which come visibly from them, in the Heavenly experience, seems to go out when the experience is one of Hell. Or the person may seem to move in dark ugly red shadows, or to be a sickly green. Smiles become meaningless grimaces, and all human actions seem mere puppetry. In the hellish experience, time may seem impossibly slow and painful, and determinism is experienced as being a prison. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

By contrast, determinism is experienced under happier conditions as being perfectly natural and quite all right. The subject knows, with the preacher in Ecclesiastes, that there is nothing new under the Sun, that every story is an old story and has been told an infinite number of times before, but somehow that knowledge is not disturbing. Everything is reconciled; time does not matter. Talents and abilities must be developed and trained. It sounds overwhelming, but there is cause for optimism. Much work is now being done at all levels. You will recognize in these observations some concrete illustrations of the age-old paradoxes that philosophy grapples with, the paradoxes that art occasionally resolves. The philosophic problems are these: the problem of the one and the many, unity and variety; determinism and freedom; mechanism and vitalism; good and evil; time and eternity; the plenum and the void; moral absolutism and moral relativism; monotheism and polytheism and atheism. These are the basic problems of human existence, and, so far as we possibly can, we arrange things so as to forget them. The requirement that the Universe has put to the human brain is that of striking an average in countless dimensions simultaneously, so that the individual unit of life (for instance you and I) may continue to be alive as long as possible, and thus that life on the whole may increase. However, the paradox is that this striking of averages requires, from the individual point of view, a sacrifice of self. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

We are required to be part of universal habit, but evolution has brought us to that point of consciousness where we as individual human beings realize the preciousness of consciousness and perhaps take pride in our individual, inimitable selfhood. It does not make sense that we should be given life on the one hand and death on the other. The easiest thing to do is to forget it, and we usually succeed in doing so, with the help of our average-making brain, that remarkable machines which psychologist are now working to simulate in some material that does not feel and need not dissolve so soon. We are working hard to achieving personal growth through the exploration of feelings and a strong effort is being made to create an atmosphere of openness and honesty in communicating with each other. Ordinally, a strong feeling or group solidarity develops and group members are able to use each other very profitably. It is evident that an experience of such intensity and emotional importance may provide a means for initiating or facilitating the process of personal growth. It is easy enough to slide into the comforting sentiment, “Love will solve all.” However, it is not helpful to tell people that they should love. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

Telling they should love only promotes hypocrisy and sham, of which we have a good deal too much in the area of love already. Sham and hypocrisy are greater deterrents to learning to love than is outright hostility, for at least the latter may be honest and can then work worked with. Simply the proclaiming of the point that the World’s hostilities and hatreds would be overcome if only people could love invites more hypocrisy; and furthermore, we have learned in out dealings how crucial it is to lead from strength, and to meet people directly and realistically. If we begin by trying to make ourselves as individuals able to love, we shall make our most useful contribution to a World in dire need of concern for the neighbor and stranger. As with peace, those who call for love loudest often express it least. To make ourselves capable of loving, and ready to receive love, is the paramount problem of integration; indeed the key to salvation. Do let me thank you again from the bottom of my heart for your kindness to me. I shall often think of you. I hope that we shall have news of each other from time to time. May we reverse or slow down some of the averaging process, alter our experience of the passage of time, dissolve many definitions and melt many boundaries, permit greater intensities or more extreme values of experience to occur in many dimensions. I hope I have never fallen, and never shall fall, to such a depth of cowardice and ingratitude. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

 I do not need any hope or any promise in order to believe that God is rich in mercy. I know this wealth of his with the certainty of experience; I have touched it. What I know of it through actual contact is so far beyond my capacity of understanding and gratitude that even the promise of future bliss could add nothing to it for me; since for human intelligence the addition of two infinites is not an addition. God’s mercy is manifest in affliction as in joy, by the same right, more perhaps, because under this form it has no human analogy. Mortal’s mercy is only shown in giving joy, or may in inflicting pain with a new to outward results, bodily healing or education. However, it is not the outward results of affliction that bear witness to divine mercy. When we try to disguise this, the outward results of true affliction are nearly always bad. It is in affliction itself that the splendor of God’s mercy shines, from its very depths, in the heart of its inconsolable bitterness. If still preserving in our love, we fall to the point where the soul cannot keep back the cry “My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” if we remain at this point without ceasing to love, we end by touching something that is not affliction, not joy, something that is central essence, necessary and pure, something not of the senses, common to joy and sorrow: the very love of God. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

It is the same as when we see someone very dear to us after a long absence; the words we exchange with one do not matter, but only the sound of one’s voice, which assures us of one’s presence. The knowledge of this presence of God does not afford consolation; it takes nothing from the fearful bitterness of affliction; nor does it heal the mutilation of the soul. However, we know quite certainly that God’s love for us is the very substance of this bitterness and this mutilation. I should like out of gratitude to be capable of bearing witness to this. This is the source of beauty. Even if there were noting more for us than life on Earth, even if the instant of death were to being us nothing new, the infinite superabundance of the divine mercy is already secretly present here below in its entirety. If we believe that the Father is within us, and if we believe that all things are possible to God, then we should no longer deny that God knows what to do with his own creation, and we should include ourselves in that creation. Only got can give life. And we should never forget that God is always working constructively. The greatest gift of life is to be accepted. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16