I was enchanted by the World of rock music—the way the singers could scream of good and evil, proclaim themselves angels of devils, and mortals would stand up and cheer. Sometimes they seemed the pure embodiment of madness. And yet it was technologically dazzling, the intricacy of their performance. It was barbaric and cerebral in a way that I do not think the World of ages past has ever seen. Also there was something vampiric about rock music. It must have sounded supernatural even to those who do not believe in the supernatural. I mean the way the electricity could stretch a single note forever; the way harmony could be layered upon harmony until you felt yourself dissolving in the sound. So eloquent of dread it was, this music. The World just did not have it in any form before. Since personal freedom is a venture down paths we have never traversed before, we can never know ahead of time how the venture will turn out. We leap into the future. Where will we land? With freedom one experiences a dizziness, a feeling of giddiness, a sense of vertigo, giddiness, dread—are expressions of the anxiety that accompanies freedom like its shadow. Sometimes a patient in therapy will wryly smile and say, “When I am mad at you, I think I was better off when I was neurotic—then I could go along in only one groove.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 13

I say “wryly” because if he really believed this, he would not be in therapy in the first place since the purpose of therapy is precisely to take one out of the rigid grooves, the narrow, compulsive trends, which are blocks to freedom. This gives the person a sense of release. However, it is a freedom that brings anxiety. Anxiety is potentially present whenever we are free; freedom is oriented toward anxiety and anxiety toward freedom. Anxiety is the reality of freedom as a potentiality before this freedom has materialized. For freedom is possibility, and who is to forecast what the end result of any possibility may be? Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor saw this clearly: “Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a mortal and a human in society than freedom. Mortals are tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom one can hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.” Freedom is a burden because it brings anxiety in its wake; and the Grand Inquisitor sought to shield people from the paralyzing aspects of anxiety by robbing them of its positive aspects—chiefly, freedom. Requiring the surrender of their freedom, he removed the stimulus to invent new forms, new styles, new ideas—in short, new possibilities. Now, as he insisted, men and women are “vile, weak creatures,” “slaves by nature,” “base creatures.” He is surely logical: if you take away freedom, you make people into the base, weak, vile salves the Grand Inquisitor describes. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13

It is helpful to keep in mind that anxiety, like dizziness, can be both constructive and destructive. The constructive aspect is stimulating and gives one energy and zest; anxiety is a teacher that, since we carry it inwardly, can never be avoided. Anxiety illuminates experiences that we would otherwise run away from. Civilization is the result of anxiety in that cavemen were forced to invent thinking in order to cope with the saber-toothed tiger and the bison and other animals, which were stronger in tooth and nail and would have exterminated the human race. The anxiety that comes with excessive freedom can also be destructive in that it can paralyze us, isolate us, send us into panic; and when repressed, it may lead to cardiac ailments and other psychosomatic illnesses. These two aspects of anxiety are parallel to constructive and destructive stress. If one lives with any sense of adventure, every person must bear constructive stress; but destructive stress is the excessive tension we see on the modern assembly lines which can tear the human being to pieces. This is why personal freedom is fascinating and the most prized of all human conditions. However, because it is inseparable from anxiety, it is dangerous and understandably dreaded at the same time. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13

The longer I live and the more I observe in the lives of others, the more numerous becomes the illustrations of higher laws—the factuality of righteousness and the universality of the Quest. This is only as it should be for both are parts of the World-Idea. Thought and action are reflected back by choices and what the consequences of our choices are. They can lead to corruption, or to eternal life. “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live,” reports Deuteronomy 30.19. Everything in life goes exactly according to what is written in God’s Word. There are no exceptions. This is the law that affects everyone, whether a believe or a non-believer. You will reap what you sow. All corruption that is in the World comes from lusts. Let no one make the mistake of separating out the quest from everyday life. It is Life itself! Questers are not a special group, a labeled species, which one does or does not join, but are all humanity. This is not merely a matter for a small elite interested in spiritual self-help. It is a serious truth important to every mortal everywhere. The inability to measure up to these ideals does not carry a stigma. All mortals at this level come to Earth with their imperfections. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13

All mortals seek for truth either consciously and deliberately or unconsciously and blindly, but they can seek only according to their capacity and ability, circumstances and preparedness. It is not a question whether questers are happier than non-questers—for that is an individual personal matter: the division itself is an artificial one. The ascent to Consciousness is for all mortals, not for a few only. Humankind is so near to God and yet so far away from God! Every fresh day is a fresh call from God to mortals. “Then he went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. And when his friends heard it, they went out to seize him; for they said, ‘He is beside himself,’” reports Mark 3.19-21. It is there in all, whether it be latent or patent, this impulse in each mortal to improve and better oneself into a person of worth. Ultimately it develops, in this body or a later one, into the aspiration to transcend oneself. The divine soul dwells in every mortal. Therefore, if only one will apply the faculties one possesses, every mortal may find it. “And his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside they sent to him and called him. And a crowd was sitting about him; and they said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you.’ And he answered, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking around on those who sat about him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother,’” reports Mark 3.31-35. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13

For most of those who go away to a university to study, it is not the first time that they leave the home of their parents. However, for all of them it is an important step on their own independent way of life. Every step on this road brings them farther away from the place from which they came, the family into which they were born. The first moves towards independence occur very early in life—as exemplified in the story of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple. And none of these moves is without pain and tragic guilt—as indicated in the anxiety of the parents of Jesus and the reproaches they made to him. However, only after Jesus has begun his public activities the depth of the gap between him and his family becomes fully manifest. In the story which we have just read and which is recorded by the three Gospels, Jesus uses the family relations as symbols for a relation of a higher order for the community of those who do the will of God. Something unconditional breaks into the conditional relations of the natural family and creates a community which is as intimate and as strong as the family relations, and at the same time infinitely superior to it. The depth of this gap is emphasized in the attempt of one’s family to seize him and to bring him home because of his extraordinary behavior which makes them believe he is out of his mind. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13

And the gap is strongly expressed in Christ’s saying that one who loves father and mother more then him cannot be his disciple, words even sharpened in Luke’s version, where everyone is rejected by one who does not hate father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters—and one’s own life. All these words cut with divine power through the natural relation between the members of the family whenever these relations claim to be ultimates. They cut through the bondage of age-old traditions and conventions and their unconditional claims; they cut through the consecration of the family and ties by sacramental or other laws which make them equal to the ties between those who belong to the new reality in the Christ. The family is no ultimate! The family relations are not unconditional relations. The consecration of the family is not a consecration for the final aim of mortal’s existence. We can imagine the revolutionary character of such sayings in face of the religions and cultures of humankind. We can hardly measure their disturbing character in face of what has happened century after century within the so-called Christian nations—with the support of the Christian churches who could not stand the radical nature of the Christian message in this as in other respects. However, in spite of its radicalism, the Christian message does not request this dissolution of the family. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13

The Christian message affirms the family and limits its significance. Each mortal must someday take this quest. This is as certain as the Sun’s rising, for it is not said on high authority that we can live by bread alone? The work of the opening up to one’s inner being, and to its best, not worst, side is both the duty and the destiny for every mortal. One may evade the first and retain the second for a time but cannot do so for all time. What the quester does of one’s own free choice today, the generality of mortals will be obliged to do tomorrow. The hour of awakening must come to every mortal, even if it has to come at the hour of deathl and when it does it will be with utter amazement and stupefaction at best, or else with all the force of an explosive shock. For one is a member of the human species, not the animal one, and shares its destiny. Jesus takes up the prophecy of Micah, that in the last days “brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child, and the children will rise against parents and have them put to death.” It belongs to periods in which the demonic powers get hold of the World, that the family community is turned into its opposite. However, when Jesus uses this prophecy, he adds, “And you will be hated by all for my name’s sake.” The same words which point to the demonic disruption of the family are used to describe its inescapable divine disruption. This is the profound ambiguity of the Biblical teaching. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13

Now let us look into our own situation. We cannot cut the ties with our family without being guilty. However, the question is: Is it willfulness which demonically disrupts the family communion, or is it the step toward independence and one’s own understanding of the will of God which divinely liberates us from the bondage to our family? We never know the answer with certainty. We must risk tragic guilt in becoming free from father and mother and brothers and sisters. And we know today better than many generations before us what that means, how infinitely difficult it is and that nobody does it without carrying scars in one’s soul one’s whole life. For it is not only the real father or mother or brother or sister from whom we must become free in order to come into our own. It is something much more refined, the image of them, which from our earliest childhood has impregnated our souls. The real father, the real mother may let us go free, although this is by no means the rule in Christian families. However, even if they have the wisdom to do it, their images can prevent us from doing what the will of God is in a concrete situation, namely, to do acts in which love, power, and justice are united. Their image may prevent us from love by subjection to law. It may prevent us from having power by weakening our personal center. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13

Their image may also prevent us from exercising justice by blinding us to a concrete situation and its demands. And the same thing happens with the images of brothers and sisters. Although it is easier to become free from them in an external sense, they may hiddenly produce decisions which determine for the worse whole periods of our lives. However, do not mistake me! Opposition and revolt are not yet freedom. They are unavoidable stages on the way to freedom. However, if they are not overcome as much as the early dependence must be overcome, they create another servitude. How can this happen? Certainly, in pathological cases, psychotherapy is needed, as Jesus himself acted as a healer, bodily and mentally. However, more is necessary, namely, the dependence on that which gives ultimate independence, the image of that which makes it possible to hate and to love every life, including our own. No human problem and certainly not the family problem can be solved on a finite level. This is true although we know that even the image of God can be distorted by the images of father and mother, so that its saving power is almost lost. This is the danger of all religion and a serious limit for our religious work. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13

However, it is not a limit for God, who again and again break through the images we have made of him, and who has shown in Christ that he is not only father and mother to us, but also child, and that therefore in hum the inescapable conflicts of every family are overcome.  The Father who is also child is more than a father as he is more than a child. Therefore we can pray to the Father in Heaven without transferring our hostility against the father image to him. Because God has become child, it is possible for us to say the Our Father. How dissonant the ego sounds! When it issues from tragic lips, tense with come self-contradiction that they try to old back, it can move us to great pity. When it issues from chaotic lips that savagely, heedlessly, unconsciously represents contradiction, it can make us shudder. When the slips are vain and smooth, it sounds embarrassing or disgusting. Those who pronounce the name of God, wallowing in the soul, uncover the shame of the World spirit that has been debased to mere spirituality. The Quest cannot be evaded. In the end all must come to it; otherwise they will be pulled or pushed along it however unwilling or reluctant they may be.  More and more people are moving, albeit at a slow pace and with suspicious minds, into mystical teaching—but they are moving. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13

Nature is trying to teach mortals to equilibrate themselves. The sooner they learn this lesion, the better for their happiness and success. How beautiful and legitimate the vivid and empathic God sounds! Prayer is our infinite conversation, and the air of conversation is present on all its ways, even before our judges, even in the final hour on Earth. In prayer we actually go out in faith and toward God. Thus, we stand together with the holy Trinity in actuality and are never severed from it. Even solitude cannot spell forsakenness, and when the human World falls silent for one, one his one’s soul say You. How beautiful and legitimate the full armor of God is. It is the pure intercourse with nature. Nature yields to it and speaks ceaselessly with it; she reveals her mysteries to it and yet does not betray her mystery. The soul believers in her and says to the rose: “So it is You”—and at once shares the same actuality with the rose. Hence, when it returns to itself, the spirit of actuality stays with it; the vision of the Sun clings to the blessed eye that recalls its own likeness to the Sun, and the friendship of the elements accompanies mortals into the calm of dying and rebirth. Thus, accepting God as adequate, true, and pure resounds through the ages. And to anticipate and choose an image from the realm of unconditional relation: how powerful, even overpowering, is our Saviour, and how legitimate to the point of being a matter of course! #RandolphHarris 12 of 13

For it is the unconditional relation in which mortals call the soul of the Holy Ghost has become unconditional for one. If detachment ever touches one, it is surpassed by association, and it is from this that one speaks to others. In vain we seek to reduce our spirituality to something that derives its power from itself, nor can we limit our soul to anything that dwells outside us. Both would once again deactualize the actual, the present relations. Everyone can seek God and then become righteous; everyone can say Father and then becomes son or daughter: actuality abides. The multitudes who people our planet will eventually travel the same course that the philosophic aspirant now travels. However, they will do it slowly through the lapse of numerous centuries; they will move lightly, imperceptibly, and without the intense pressures one puts upon oneself. Mortal are made in God’s image in the sense that one latently possesses certain Godlike qualities. However, these have to be developed by evolution which can be meticulous, through the path of normal experience, or swift through Quest. “Never be weary of good works, but be meek and humble in heart; for such shall find rest to their souls,” Alma 37.34. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13