We heard the presence very sharply after that, as we explored the churches, then again it was gone. We climbed belfries to survey our kingdom, and afterwards huddled in crowded coffeehouses for a little while merely to feel and smell the mortals around us, to exchange secret glances, to laugh softly, tete-a-tete. That form of the pause which we call leisure is also, curiously enough, both desired and feared. Unbonded leisure can turn people’s lives into chaos, which those people can then blame on excessive freedom. Persons who despair about such problems as delinquency, truancy, alcoholism, drugs, often point to too much leisure as the villain of piece. These people believe that the devil indeed has work for idle hands. The word leisure can be read as freedom or pausing. This is why American leisure has to be filled with named games, organized recreation, labelled hobbies, planned activities. And this is why the have to is often paradoxically freeing. Observing the sharp dilemma people are thrown into by leisure time, we ask: What is this apparent fear of leisure? In America we have traditionally associated freedom, especially in the form of leisure, with space. There was always some new, unexplored space to go to. Land was free. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13

However, we cannot enter the private dwellings of mortals now to search for the clothes we need, even if we can hear a house is empty, we cannot move swiftly through the streets, with our eyes on the windows of the darkened mansions, and steal one of the rings off a sleeping woman’s hands. Therefore, America the free is not this is not true in a literal sense nearly as much as it used to be, the concept is still very much a part of our American Legend, American Dream, and Americana. Unfortunately, the Native Americas were never considered as owning the space or land. Freedom of the land was recognized as the fundamental freedom, from which other freedom was derived. We expressed our freedom of the body by moving to a new space. So we remained extroverts, concerned with our muscle. Hence, the great outcry, and near panic, with gasoline shortage. People interpreted it as having their freedom to travel, to move, taken away from them, thus enslaving them. In Europe, on the contrary, all spaces has been exploded for a long time, and is now apportioned out and owned by somebody. So the Europeans’ emphasis has been on time. Europeans cultivated the introvert side, turned inward, free in their imaginations and thought to travel all over the World. Freedom meant freedom of the mind in contrast to the body. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13

However, in American this leaves us with a problem. We no longer can simply pack up and move to another house, typically farther west. When our freedom essentially means what we do with our leisure, freedom then turns out to be a vacuum. There is no being in it; it is a “no thing.” This becomes clear in psychoanalysis. There is something called “Sunday neuroses,” the anxiety that subtly eats away at business people on Sunday when nothing is planned, nothing scheduled. These business people are filled with anxiety and stoically endure the passage of time until Monday morning when they can go back to work and again become occupied. (What a graphic phrase, “become occupied,” implying that something outside ourselves takes over and occupies us!) Does this version of freedom, with it dependence on the pre-planned and its main emphasis on the capacity of the self, engender creativity, originality, spontaneity? My own opinion is that it does not; that indefiniteness and randomness, the recognition of the pauses are all essential to creativity. I enthusiastically agree. If the person is to be open to one’s creative impulses, randomness, the recognition of the pauses, and the confronting of leisure rather than destroying it by excessive planning are essential. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13

The pause is the essence of creativity, let alone of originality and spontaneity. One cannot avail oneself of the richness of precociousness or unconsciousness unless one can let oneself periodically relax, be relieved of tension. It is then that the person lets the silences speak. There is value to the analyst when a patient misses an hour. If the analyst is the creative type, this empty hour is of the essence. Therefore, it is true that unstructured freedom is difficult for most people to confront for long periods. However, there are happy mediums, and the use of leisure falls in that category. The constructive limits to our freedom are given by what we are committed to and by the myths we live by. Then there can be meaning to leisure. We can use it for random thinking, reverie, or for simply wandering around a new city for a time. Yes, the time may be wasted. However, who is to say that this wasted time may not bring us our most important ideas or new experiences, new visions, that are invaluable? The letting be and letting happen may turn out to be the most significant thing one can do. The sickness of our age is unlike that of any other and yet belongs with the sicknesses of all. The history of cultures is not a stadium of eons in which one runner after another must cover the same circle of death, cheerfully and unconsciously. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13

A nameless path leads through their ascensions and declines. It is not a path of progress and development. It is a descent through the spirals of the spiritual underworld but could also be called an ascent to the innermost, subtlest, most intricate turn that knows no Beyond and even less any Backward but only the unheard of return—the breakthrough. Shall we have to follow this path all the way to the end, to the test of the final darkness? However, where there is danger what saves grows, too. The biologistic and the historiosophical orientations of this age, which made so much their differences, have combined to produce a faith in doom that is more obdurate and anxious than any such faith has ever been. It is no longer the power of karma nor the power of the stars that rules mortal’s lot ineluctably; many different forces claim this dominion, but upon closer examination it appears that most of our contemporaries believe in a medley of forces, as the late Romans believed in a medley of gods. The nature of these claims facilitates such a faith. Whether it is the law of life—a universal struggle in which everybody must either join the fight or renounce life—or the psychological law according to which innate drives constitute the entire human soul; or the social law of an inevitable social process that is merely accompanied by will and consciousness; or the cultural law of an unalterably uniform genesis and decline of historical forms. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13

Or, whatever variation there may be: the point is always that mortals are yoked into an inescapable process that one cannot resist, though one may be deluded enough to try. From the compulsion of the stars the ancient mysteries offered liberation; from the compulsion of karma, the Christian sacrifice, accompanied by insight. Both were preparations for salvation. However, the medley idol does not tolerate any faith in liberation. It is considered foolish to imagine any freedom; one is supposed to have nothing but he choice between resolute and hopelessly rebellious slavery. Although all these laws are frequently associated with long discussions of teleological development and organic evolution, all of them are based on the obsession with some running down, which involves unlimited causality. The strict and rigid doctrines of a gradual running down represents mortal’s abdication in the face of the proliferating It-World. Here the name of fate is misused: fate is no bell that has been jammed down over mortals; nobody encounters it, except those who started out from freedom. However, the strict and rigid doctrines of some running down leaves no room for freedom or for its most real revelation whose tranquil strength changes the countenance of the Earth: returning. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13

The strict and rigid doctrines do not know the human being who overcomes the Universal struggle by returning; who tears the web of drives, by returning; who rises above the spell of one’s class by returning; who by returning stirs up, rejuvenates, and changes the secure historical forms. The strict and rigid doctrines of running down offers you only one choice as you face its game: to observe the rules or drop out. However, one that returns knocks over the mortals on the board. The strict and rigid doctrines will at most permit you to carry out conditionality with your life and to remain free in your soul. However, that one returns considers this freedom the most ignominious slavery. Nothing can doom mortals but the belief in doom, for this prevents the movement of return. The belief in doom is a delusion from the start. The scheme of running down is appropriate only for ordering that which is nothing-but-having-become, the severed World-event, objecthood as history. The presence of the You, that which is born of association, is not accessible to this approach, which does not know the actuality of spirit; and this scheme is not valid for spirit. Divination based on objecthood is valid only for those who do not know presentness. Whoever is overpowered by the It-World must consider the strict and rigid moral doctrines of an ineluctable running down as a truth that creates a clearing in the jungle. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13

In truth, these strict and rigid doctrines only leads one deeper into slavery of the It-World. However, the World of the You is not locked up. Whoever proceeds toward it, concentrating one’s whole being, with one’s power to relate resurrected, behold one’s freedom. And to gain freedom from the belief is unfreedom is to gain freedom. And Jesus cried out and said, “One who believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me. And one who sees me sees him who sent me. I have come as light into the World, that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. If any one hears my sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge one; for I did not come to judge the World but to say the World. One who rejects me and does not receive my sayings has a judge; the word that I have spoken will be one’s judge on the last day. For I have not spoken on my own authority; the Father who sent me has himself given me commandment what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has bidden me,” reports John 12.44-50. “He who believes in me, believes not in me but in one who sent me.” These words follow a bitter complaint of the evangelist about the unbelief and half-belief of the people and their leaders. The words are introduced by the phrase: “Jesus cried out . . .” He is making an almost desperate effort to be understood. And what Jesus cries out is that the believing in him means not believing in him. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13

The argument of the unbelievers was—and is in all periods—that it is impossible to believe in Jesus of Nazareth as Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus declares: “This argument is valid. If people are asked to believe in me, they should not do so. However, they are not asked any such thing! They are asked to believe in one who has sent me, who is greater than I and with whom I am one. I have spoken on my own authority,” Jesus continues. “If I did so, the unbelievers would be right.” There are many authorities in past and present. Why accept one and not another? Why accept any authority? As Jesus the man Jesus is neither an authority nor an object of faith. None of his superior qualities—neither his religious life, nor his moral perfection, nor his profound insights—make him an object of faith or the ultimate authority. On this basis, Jesus say, he does not judge anyone. If he did, he would be a tyrant who imposes himself and his greatness on others, thus destroying instead of saving them. What about our preaching? When we use the name of Jesus, do we not often try to force upon those to whom we are speaking and upon ourselves something great besides God? Do we always make it clear that believing in Christ does not mean believing in him? If not, are we not working for destruction more than for salvation? #RandolphHarris 9 of 13

It seems that the Christian painters knew more about this than we often do. They did not present a picture of Jesus of Nazareth as Jesus of Nazareth. They painted him as the infant of Bethlehem who contains the whole Universe, though lying now in Mary’s lap. Through Christ’s infantile traits shines the power of the Lord of the World. Or they painted Christ as the visible bearer of the divine majesty in those great mosaics where every piece of his grown is transparent for the infinite depth he represents and expresses. Or they painted him as the Crucified who does not suffer as an individua man, but as he who stands for both the suffering Universe and the divine love which participates in its suffering. Or they painted him as the bringer of the new aeon who controls the powers of nature, the souls of mortals, the demonic forces of disease, insanity, and death. However, they did not give Christ individual traits, did not make him a representative of a psychological type or of a sociological group. Look at the pictures of the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo gave a special character to every prophet, to every sibyl. However, when he painted Jesus as the ultimate judge, only an irresistible divine-human power appears. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13

When in our time Jesus became an object of biographical and psychological essays and was  portrayed as a fanatic and neurotic, or as a pious sufferer, or as a social benefactor, or as a moral example, or as a religious teacher, or as a mass leader—he ceased to be the one in whom we can believe, for he ceased to be the one in whom we do not believe, if we believe in him. He was no longer Jesu who is the Christ. We cannot pray to anyone except to God. If Jesus is someone besides God, we cannot and should not pray to him. Many Christians, many among us, cannot find a way of joining honestly with those who pray to Jesus Christ. Something in us is reluctant, something which is genuine and valid, the fear of becoming idolatrous, the fear of being split in our ultimate loyalty, the fear of looking at two faces instead of at the one divine face. However, one who sees him see the Father. There are no two faces. In the face of Jesus the Christ, God makes his face to shine upon us. For nothing is left in the face of Jesus the Christ which is only Jesus of Nazareth, which is the only face of one individual besides others. Everything in his countenance is transparent to him who has sent him. Therefore, and therefore alone, can we sing at Christmas-time: “O come, let us adore him.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 13

The word mystic is not the perfect one to convey my meaning, but it is at least the handiest one. It as been so ill-used that spouters of the errant nonsense have taken shelter under its roof whilst oracles of the loftiest wisdom have not hesitated to call themselves by this name. The partisan approach to this name has caused it to become either an abusive or else an adulatory word rather than a precise description. Whereas some use it in contempt, others use in it praise! Again, how many are scared by its very sound! When they hear the word mysticism uttered, there are even persons who feel a shiver run down their back! It has been stated that they who do not feel in possession of enough strength or desire to tread the ultimate path need not do so, and that if they remember and sometimes read about it even this will yield good fruit in time. We have been asked to be more explicit on this point. We deeply sympathize with all those who do not feel inclined to tackle the mental austerities involved in the ultimate path. If, however, they will just dip into its intellectual study from time to time, a little here this week and a little there next week, without even making their reading continuous and connected, there will slowly take shape in their minds an outline of some of the main tenets of this teaching. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13

And however vague this outline may be it will be immeasurably better than the blank ignorance which covers the rest of humankind like a shroud. These new ideas will assume the characteristics of seeds, which under the water of the student’s own aspiration and the Sunshine of visible and invisible forces, will grow gradually into fruitful understandings and deeds. For the karmic consequences of such interest will be one day birth into a family where every opportunity for advancement will be found. At least it has aroused them to awareness that there is such a thing: they have later the chance to think about it, still later to try it, and perhaps in the end to appreciate it. The ideal may appeal, coming as it does from God, but the ego will put up obstacles, resistances, to its realization. The images of the Ideal formed in the early years of adulthood may get broken or smudged or even lost. The clamour from outside—by which I do not mean heard noise alone—is so insistent that the summons from inside is seldom heard or, if heard at all, is taken to be a summons to culture, art, poetry, and music perhaps or to intellect and its development. This dream of eventual illumination will haunt the background of one’s own mind as a hope to be fulfilled in some far-off future life. One is too aware of one’s own weakness to bring it into the foreground. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13