But all this happened without my knowledge, my vigilance, or my collusion, for I was long gone from such things. If the quest is only an emotional whim or an intellectual fad for a mortal, one will make little headway with it. If on the contrary it is something on which one’s deepest happiness depends and one is ready to give what it demands from every candidate, if one is resolved to go ahead and never desert it, one will possess a fair chance. “Slavery is founded in the selfishness of mortal’s nature—opposition to it is one’s love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension bring them, shocks an throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow,” reports President Abraham Lincoln. Whereas the freedom of doing refers to the act, the freedom of being refers to the context out of which the urge to act emerges. It refers to the deeper level of one’s attitudes and is the fount out of which freedom of doing is born. Hence, I call this second kind of freedom essential freedom. This is illustrated in Bruno Bettelheim’s testimony concerning his two years in a concentration camp during the Second World War. He had no freedom of doing at all; he was powerless to change the actions of the SS. However, he did have what he calls ultimate freedom, the freedom to choose his attitude toward his captors. This freedom of being, or essential freedom, involves the ability to reflect, to ponder, out of which the freedom to ask questions, whether spoken or not, emerges. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15

A prisoner in San Quentin gives us our springboard here. This prisoner was a Chicano and a poet. He could not take the pushing around in the prison, and hence for give years he had been held in solitary confinement, which, with a strange irony, is called in San Quentin “Maximum Adjustment Center.” Here are the words from his interview: “They have separated me from my family, deprived me of touching my young boy. They have hidden the Sun, Moon, and Starts from my view, exchanged their concrete and steel for Earth and flowers and everything warm and soft. The wind through my hair is replaced by their rules in my ears. All tears are forbidden on the tier. The strength in my muscles is bound by chains and shackles. They have tried to negate my existence—and almost succeeded. They have left me with nothing, nothing except an inner core, a secret, private place they have not yet found how to get to.” The speaker of these words is obviously not trying to select among stimuli. This is clearly a different kind of freedom, expressed in such phrases as” inner core and a secret, private place where they have not yet found how to get to.” He goes on: “It is where I think of who I am, where I try to understand the what and why of y enemies, and where I keep alive my will to live in a hell where I am made to feel like a nothing, at best an animal, a wild animal in captivity.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 15

We notice that the does not say, “What shall I do,” but rather “I try to understand.” He is engaged in a succession of leaps in his own thoughts, leaps which imply breaking throughs to a new dimension in his relation to himself. This is clearly not a freedom of doing; it is a freedom of being. He tells us also—and this is of great importance—that this is where he keeps alive his will to live. This is a freedom that invigorates, that inspirits, and he rightly interprets it as that which he owes his survival in agonizing loneliness of solitary confinement. He concludes: Although I sometimes get depressed and feel like giving up, the discovery of my thoughts gives me joy. For until they find a way to take my thoughts away, I am free. Knowledge is freedom, and is the source of hope in this most hopeless of all paces. A man can live without liberty but not without freedom.” In that shocking, surprising, unexpected last sentence, he is using the term liberty to refer to the political state. If we have to live under fascism or in prison, hate it as we may, we could survive. However, freedom is essentially an inner state. This core, this secret place, is absolutely necessary for our survival as humans. It is what gives the person a sense of being; it gives one the experience of autonomy, identity, the capacity to use the pronoun “I” with its full range of meaning. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15

I do not wish to have this inner freedom confused with the sentimentally subjective statements of it. In the Civil War play Shenandoah, there is a song and dance performed by an African American boy with the words, “Freedom’s just a state of mind.” Was Freedom just a state of mind for Martin Luther King? Was it just a state of mind for Faust, who exchanged his soul for unlimited knowledge and Worldly pleasures? Was it just a state of mine in the temptation of Amadeo? Was freedom just a state of mind for the freedom marchers? Was it just a state of mind for Washington and the Continental Army at Valley Forge? It is just a state of mind for those in the women’s liberation movement? There is no authentic inner freedom that does not, sooner or later, also affect and change human history. This includes Bruno Bettelheim’s ultimate freedom, the affecting of history coming in his insightful books after the concentration camp. It includes the freedom described by the prisoner in San Quentin, its effect on history consisting, for one thing, in our quoting him here. The subjective and objective sides of freedom can never be separated from each other. “The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression. Ignorance is a cure for noting. Believe in life! Always human beings will progress to greater, broader, and fuller life,” reports William Edward Burghardt Du Bois. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15

It is an age-old requirement of the higher self that those who seek its favours shall be ready and willing to empty their hearts of all other affections if called upon to do so. Jesus told us this long ago, and there is nothing that modern inventive genius can do to alter the requirement. To search for truth in its full integrity, putting aside all the pitiful substitutes which content little, less honest minds, requires not only an independence that creates intellectual if not personal loneliness, but also a willingness to abandon egoism and surrender its Worldly advantages. I propose that the prisoner in San Quentin we quoted is freer than his guards. In a poem he wrote in prison we find the words, “though we are wrapped in chains/The jailor is not free!” The qualifications required from him are love of the highest, desire for truth, conformity of living to the divine laws, and balance in his own person. No one can deny that Epictetus, as a slave, was freer than this owner and master. Our prisoner also is experiencing freedom as an inner condition of life, the source of his human dignity and the source of his strength to write poems, “Scratched out from the pit of prison with a worn pencil from my cell.” The seeker who has a strong yearning for Truth and who has a sense of correct values already possess some of the indispensable qualification for this path to freedom, and should go far upon it. However, the will to continue despite all obstacles, together with a special kind of patience, is also essential—particularly in the earlier stages. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15

The prisoner’s statement “the discover of my thoughts gives me joy” is profound comment with far-reaching implications for our lives as well. His freedom is not a freedom of security, but a freedom of discovery. The joy of the discovery of one’s own thoughts is a truth that we rarely hear from anyone who has not hammered it out on the anvil of years of solitude. One must begin one’s quest with an attitude of deep veneration for something, some power, higher than oneself. A mighty longing for liberation from one’s present condition is a prerequisite for the philosophic quest. The ardent desire to establish one’s true identity needs to be present also. We must bring to the Quest not only all these delicate intuitions and subtle Christian concepts, but also a practical common sense and a sturdy, robust reason. This is a teaching for more evolved people, that is, for those who are fine in character, more sensitive and intelligent in mind than the masses. It is for people to whom the mind’s experiences are not less but even more important than the body’s. The prisoner in San Quentin also tells us that his knowledge is freedom and his source of hope. In the freedom of being new possibilities continually surge up, possibilities of new discoveries about oneself, new flights of imagination, new visions of what the World and living might be. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15

We should not hope for something, but have the freedom to know is itself hope, regardless of whether anything concrete eventuates or not. Essential freedom is the essence out of which other forms of freedom flow. Most students of this teaching are not highly intellectual. If they had been, the pride and arrogance of intellect would, in most cases, have stopped them from entering such a mystical field. However, neither are they unintelligent. They are sensible, mature, and discerning enough to appreciate the value of its balanced ideal. To obtain something they greatly desire, mortals will arouse their will and apply in strongly. Only when sufficient experience of life matures them sufficiently are they likely to arouse and apply this same will to the Quest itself. Many people criticize those who try harder than others to succeed because they do not understand why they are trying so hard and the challenges they are trying to overcome. It is kind of an oxymoron because usually people shame others for being lazy and not trying to hard enough.  Samuel B Fuller was born into rural poverty in Monroe, Ouachita Parish, Louisiana in 1905. The family’s poverty was such that he had to drop out of school in sixth grade. However, his life was an illustration of business success and self-help. Mr. Fuller’s career as an entrepreneur started after he borrowed $25 using is car as collateral. He invested in a load of soap from Boyer International Laboratories. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15

Mr. Fuller started selling soap door-to-door and it inspired him to invest another $1000. In 1929, Samuel Fuller incorporated Fuller Products. In four years, he was promoted to a manager at Commonwealth while continuing to grow his own company to a line of 30 products and hiring additional door-to-door salespeople. This was a time when African Americans were not taken seriously as consumers and businesses and advertisers would not market to their communities. However, Mr. Fuller has tremendous success ad the Fuller Products saw tremendous expansion. The growth was sufficient for the company to open its own factory in 1939. In 1947, Mr. Fuller purchased Boyer, and kept his identity a secret to prevent is bankruptcy. The company began to manufacture and sell a diverse line of commodities from deodorant and hair care to hosiery and men’s suits. Mr. Fuller was probably the richest African American man in the United States of America. His company had $18,000,000.00 ($189,860,414.94 in 2019 dollars) in sales and a sales force of five thousand (33 percent of them European American). However, after people found out that Mr. Fuller was African American, people organized boycotts of Fuller’s product line during the 1950s. Shortly after, Mr. Fuller went bankrupt. So, not all people have had an easy time in life, and that is why they try so hard. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15

Nevertheless, on a macro scale, times have changed and many people have faith, no matter what obstacles are in their path that they can achieve success.  To obtain somethings they greatly desire, many will arouse their will and apply it strongly. Only when sufficient experience of life matures them sufficiently are they likely to arouse and apply this same will to the Quest itself. A would-be follower of this path need not be concerned if one lack intellect and has had an imperfect education. One should accept what one can understand of the books one studies and leave the rest for some future time. What is needed much more than intellect is humility, intuition, and intelligence, which many intellectuals do not possess. People are needed with intellectual acumen, with emotional control, with balance reason, with loyalty to ideals and with sincerity and faithfulness in working for them. They are to be undeterred by criticism and unmoved by praise. And lastly, amid the arduous struggles of this quest, its soaring thoughts and serious comprehensions of World-sorrows, a sense of humour is needed also. Those who care enough for advanced ideas to seek them out in spite of social rebuffs, as well as those who have the courage to explore what is waiting beyond already accepted ones, have become marked proportion of questers. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15

In the concept of freedom we have what Archimedes sought but did not find, a fulcrum on which reason can rest its ladder, without therefore placing it in the present of in a future World but only in the inner sense of freedom, because it unites both Worlds in itself and must also be the principle of the explanation for both. As the prisoner in San Quentin demonstrates in his interview, this essential freedom is the source of his joy and his spirit. The former is down in his words “it gives me joy.” The Spirit is shown in his courage, his hope, the very fact that he survived and preserved his sanity and his sense of possibility in a situation in which many people would long before have given up in despair and probably taken refuge in psychosis. He says in a poem written while he was in prison that insanity was his constant companion, but he managed to avoid it by his absorption in his writing. Survivors of the concentration camps give similar testimony to this essential freedom and to the fact that the inmates who could choose their own attitudes toward the SS were not spiritually enslaved.  If it were necessary, this is pragmatic proof of the reality of their essential freedom. Everyone expects to witness scientific advance made in these modern times but only a few have the mental courage to expect spiritual advance let alone seek it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15

It is for those who are ready for the phase of intellectual independence and spiritual individualism, who are courageous enough to face the inner solitariness of the human spirit when it turns from doing to being. That mortal is excellently qualified for philosophy who has a strong spirit for service, who is well-balanced emotionally, and who is well-equipped intellectually. Picasso provides us with al illustration of freedom of being in contrast to freedom of doing. In 1904 Cezanne had advised other painters to interpret nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone. Picasso, a young artist prodigy at the time, ad absorbed the rules and discipline of his craft. He could draw beautifully, and he knew the laws of perspective and proportion. All these are givens, which I will refer to as destiny. Picasso had come to terms with this discipline: in his early blue period, especially in those paintings of the less affluent Spanish, every expression is superbly drawn. This, however, is still freedom of doing, or existential freedom. However, Picasso, an artist of courage and zest, struggles against the boundaries. Was there a way of transcending the antiquated rules, a way of pushing on to new dimensions? #RandolphHarris 11 of 15

In 1907 came the breakthrough with is painting Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon. This marked the birth of cubism. No longer was it a question of drawing arms and legs accurately in an academic sense; no longer was it a matter of rendering the fingers exactly as they are in reality. The challenge now was to see the human body as embodying the forms of nature, which Picasso did in this painting with a completeness never before achieved. The question now was ow the lines of the arms and legs of the women in this painting relate to the space, how they fit on the canvas and with each other. The cylinder, the sphere, the cone were now visible before us. When we look at mountains, the curved lines of the plains cut by the vertical lines of trees rising up from horizontal lines of the fields, the cones that we see, all these are part of our bodies and ourselves as shown in the amazing balance with which we walk, the rhythm with which we breathe and with which our hearts beat. We are not saying that cubism is the highest form of art or that everyone must like it, but only that it represents an important—and, for our day, crucial—development. This breakthrough of cubism, foreshadowed by Van Gogh and Gaugin, and certainly Be Cezanne and Matisse, demonstrates the freedom of being in contrast with the freedom of doing. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15

The leap was to a new context in which paintings were to be seen. It changed the attitudes with which we look at painting, and it changed the questions artists ask about their work. It cast a new light on our relation to nature. Cubism opens up a host of new possibilities and gives a new unity to ourselves and our Universe. The new way these artists related to space in the first decade of the 20^th century, for example, predicted the space age, which was to be take up and reexpressed by intellectuals and scientists in the 1960s. It illustrates how one artist speaks for the whole community of one’s colleagues as well as for one’s self and for one’s culture. The Quest calls for people of the World who are not Worldly, aspirants with clear minds, endowed with common sense, students who will strive to lift themselves from inner mediocrity to inner superiority, followers who will strive to make worthwhile contributions to their environment. If the faculties of mind and the qualities of character which the successful mortal of affairs already possesses were to be transferred to the field of understanding and mastering life itself, one could quickly progress in it. It is not futile dreamers nor neurotics seeking some guru’s shoulders to lean on for the remainder of their years. There exist plenty of cults willing or eager to serve them. It is for those who understand there is real work to be done by, on, for, and within themselves. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15

Is one sincerely desirous of receiving truth (rather than comfort for one’s illusions and confirmation for one’s beliefs) from God? Is one earnestly willing to obey this leading? It is a mark of the quester that one is utterly sincere in seeking truth, and that one has some depth, enough not to be content with shallow presentations of it. Authenticity of being is a necessary requirement in a would-be disciple. The insincere has better stay away from the quest. If one is determined as one is sincere, as unselfish as self-discipled, as sensitive, as intuitive, one may expect to go far on the quest. In humility the quest is to be begun: in even greater humility it is to be fulfilled. Until one has become conscious of one’s shortcomings, one’s ignorance, and one’s sinfulness, mortals will rest in smug complacency and receive no spur to self-improvement, no impetus to enter the quest. Humility is another name for such consciousness. Hence, its importance is such as to be rated the first of a disciple’s qualifications. It is not for the average mortal but only for the exceptional mortal—for the one who is determined to pursue the meaning of life to the uttermost. When these words awaken profound echoes in a mortal’s soul, one shows thereby that the intuitive element is sufficiently alive to enable one to profit by further teaching. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15

The life of a human being does not exist merely in the sphere of goal-directed verbs. It does not consist merely of activities that have something for their object. I perceive something. I feel something. I imagine something. I want something. I sense something. I think something. The life of a human being does not consist merely of all this and its like. All this and its like is the basis of the realm of It. But the realm of You has another basis. We are told that people experiences their World. What does this mean? People go over the surfaces of things and experiences them. They bring back from them some knowledge of their condition—an experience. They experiences what there is to things. However, it I not experiences alone that bring the World to mortals. In every kind of situation one will remember that one is dedicated to this quest, will remember its ideals and disciplines, yet not forget that one is still a human being. They are welcome who are willing to equip themselves with proper and profounder knowledge, who wish to fit themselves by study of fundamental principles, by regular prayer, personal self-discipline, and public service for a higher life for themselves and a valuable one for society. The mass of people are apathetic toward the quest: the less affluent for one set of reasons, the rich for another. Only the few capable of individual judgement, the defiant and independent thinkers, will be capable of rising up out of the mass. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15