I came into a brightly illuminated eighteenth-century Cresleigh Home in Rocklin Trails. The stone walls had been covered in fine rosewood paneling with framed mirrors rising to the ceiling. There were the usual painted chests, upholstered chairs, dark and lush landscapes, porcelain clocks. A small collection of books in the glass-doored bookcases, a newspaper of recent date lying on a small table beside a brocaded wing chair. High narrow French doors opened onto the stone terrace, where banks of white lilies and red roses gave off their powerful perfume. And there, with his back to me, at the stone railing stood an eighteenth-century man. It was Marius, when he turned around and gestured me to come out.  Marius told me about this link between despair and joy, and how it is so important that the ancient Greeks, whp devoted one of their central legends to it, that of Persephone and Demeter. Persephone was picking flowers with her friends one day when Hades, god of the Underworld, saw her and was stricken with love. He seized her and carried her off to his underworld. When her mother, Demeter, goddess of fruit and grain and other produce of the fields, heard Persephone’s cries, she rushed around the World trying to find her. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14

Learning that Hades had carried Persephone off to the underworld with Zeus’ connivance, Demeter was filled with a terrible and savage grief. Demeter left Olympus and wandered about the Earth incognito. Meeting two young women who sympathized with her story that she had been captured by pirated and had escaped, Demeter was taken to their home to meet their mother, Metaneira. Demeter continued to be so sad that a long time she sat upon the stool without speaking, never smiling, because of her sorrow…tasting neither food nor drink, because she pinned for her deep-bosomed daughter.  Metaneria and her daughters proclaimed to Demeter, “Mother, what the gods send us, we mortals bear perforce though we suffer.” What an acknowledgment of destiny, an adjuring of Demeter to accept fate! Its importance is shown in the fact that it is repeated later to make sure we have heard it. Metaneria then asked Demeter to be nurse to her newborn son. Demeter came to life and bestowed love upon the infant, who then grew amazingly. Meanwhile, in her grief and rage Demeter had caused the land to bear no more fruit and grain, and a cruel famine covered the Earth. Zeus finally was moved to command Hades to let Persephone return to Earth, though Hades fed his shy mate a pomegranate seed. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14

Persephone returned to Demeter who welcomed her with great joy. When Persephone confessed she had unbeknownst eaten a pomegranate seed, Demeter knew that he daughter would have to return to Hades for one-third of each year—the Winter—but could remain on Earth the rest of the time. However, this small flaw was quickly drowned in their joyousness. “So did they then, with hearts at one, greatly cheer each other’s soul and spirit with many an embrace; their hearts had relief from their griefs while each took and gave back joyousness. And straightway made fruit to spring up from the rich lands, so that the whole Earth was laden with leaves and flowers.” Demeter’s great grief, to the extent of speaking to no one, refusing all comfort and all food and drink, pining with longing for her daughter, amounts to a profound despair. It was a despair which carried over to humankind in the cruel famine on Earth. However, Demeter’s despair soon became a creative state, shown in her love for Metaneria’s infant son and his amazing growth. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14

Demeter’s suffering is followed by this intense joy, which is stronger than she would have felt had the sorrow not preceded it. In other words, despair is a prerequisite to the birth of joy. Persephone’s fearful descent into the underworld is followed not only by joyful ascension, but the Earth’s periods of barrenness is followed by an eruption of fruit and flowers. The legend shows pain followed by joy, separation followed by reunion, death followed by renewal, Winter followed by Spring. Winter—the part of the year Persephone must go back to the underground—is often considered the dreaded part of the year, the time when despair would be most prevalent. However, Winter is the purifier, as the Magee Indians call it. The snow and the ice purify the ground. They cover over the myriad creatures from insects to deer who have lived out their span of life; and the ground, being enriched, springs forth with new life after the purification. This is the gestation before creativity. Out of such abyss, from such severe sickness one returns newborn, having shed one’s skin, ore ticklish and malicious, with a more delicate taste for joy, with a more tender tongue for all good things, with merrier senses, with a second dangerous innocence in joy, more childhood and yet a hundred times subtler than one has ever seen before. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14

A similar linking despair and joy is the death and resurrection in Christian theology—and all resurrections, seen in the prototype of the resurrection of flowers and leaves on the trees in the Spring. This pattern runs through all of life. It is destiny, the design of the Universe, the form in which all of existence is encompassed. In Europe at Easter time, people turn out en masse for the sacrament of Good Friday, since they want to make sure Jesus is dead. The celebration of his death is a necessary precursor to any rising from the tomb. The renewal requires the death beforehand. Only if he has been really does do the fact that Christ has risen have meaning. In America there is a scant attendance on Good Friday, but the churches are filled to capacity on Easter. This is indicative of our lack of belief in tragedy in this country. It is a demonstration of our endeavor to overlook the death that must occur before the resurrection, the suffering that precedes creativity. Henry Miller refers to the same thing in terms of emotional death the resurrection, when he writes “those who are dead may be restored to life.” For Miller this occurs in the emotional release, after despair, of the creative process. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14

Despair before joy is the meaning of the dark night of the soul of which the mystic Saint John of the Cross writes. Or, it could be the slough of despondence must be gone through before we can arrive at the gates of the Celestial City. If one is determined to achieve the Holy Grail, the hero must be willing to endure trial and dismemberment, even a species of death. Those whom claim to live in a perpetual state of ecstasy or in a never-interrupted state of love are either deluding themselves or settling for a mediocre state of existence. In mystic tradition the state of ecstasy is only second state and by no means the goal. Persons of lesser devotion or commitment often want to slide back into this second stage and have to be cautioned against selling the mystic experience short. Gethsemane is not at all an admission of failure on the part of the ministry of Jesus, but a necessary stage that cannot be avoided. It turns out not to be possible to let this cup pass from me. Without the despair, no resurrection. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14

One of the mystics of history encourages would-be explorers of the mystic path to endure the pains and the discomfort. For behind this nothingness, behind this dark and formless shape of evil is Jesus hid in his joy. “Like wise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sights too deep for words. And one who searches the hearts of mortals know what is in the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God,” reports Romans 8.26-27. This passage represents a mysterious saying of St. Paul. It expresses the experience of a mortal who knew how to pray and who, because he knew how to pray, said that he did not know how to pray. Perhaps we may draw from this confession of the apostle the conclusion we could find much evidence in our daily experience. Ministers are used to praying publicly on all kinds of occasions, some of which offer themselves naturally to prayer, other only artificially and against good taste. It is not unimportant to know the right how for praying and the right hour for not praying. This is a warning, on the periphery of what Paul wants to say, but a necessary warning, especially to ministers and laymen who are leaders in the Church. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14

The next step leads us nearer to the center of Paul’s problem: There are two main types of prayer, the fixed liturgical and the free spontaneous prayer. Both of them show the truth or Paul’s assertion, that we do not know to pray as we ought. The liturgical prayer often become mechanical or incomprehensible or both. The history of the Church has shown that this was the fate even of the Lord’s prayer. Paul certainly knew the “Our Father” when he wrote that we do not know how to pray when we make a liturgical law out of the example of praying which Jesus gave to his disciples. However, if we turn from the formulated to the spontaneous prayer, we are not better off. Very often the spontaneous prayer is an ordinary conversation with somebody who is called God, but who is actually another mortal to whom we tell things, often at great length, to whom we give thanks and of whom we ask favors. This certainly does not prove that we know how to pray. The liturgical Churches which we use classical formulas should ask themselves whether they do not present the people of our time rom praying as they honestly can. And the non-liturgical Churches who give the freedom to make up prayers at any moment, should ask themselves whether they do not profane prayer and deprive it of its mystery. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14

And now let us take a third step, int the center of Paul’s thought. Whether at the right time or not, whether a formulated or a spontaneous prayer, the question is decisive whether a prayer is possible at all. According to Paul it is humanly impossible.  When we pray, this we should never forget: We do something humanly impossible. We talk to somebody who is not somebody else, but who is nearer to us than we ourselves are. We address somebody who can never become an object of our address because he is always subject, always acting, always creating. We tell something to him who knows not only what we tell him but also all the unconscious tendencies out of which our conscious words grow. This is the reason why prayer is humanly impossible. Out of this insight Paul gives a mysterious solution to the question of the right prayer: When we pray, it is God himself who prays through us. God himself in us: that is what Spirit means. Spirit is another word for God present, with shaking, inspiring, transforming power. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14

When we pray something in us, which is not we ourselves, intercedes before God for us. We cannot bridge the gap between God and ourselves even through the most intensive and frequent prayers; the gap between God and ourselves can be bridged only by God. And so Paul gives us the surprising picture of God interceding for us before himself. If taken literally, such symbols—like all symbols concerning God—are absurd. If taken as genuine symbols, they are absurd. They symbol of God interceding before himself for us says that God knows more about us than that of which we are conscious. He searches the hearts of mortals. These are words which anticipate the present-day insight, of which we are rightly proud, that the small light of consciousness rises on a large basis of unconscious drives and images. However, if this is so, who else can bring our whole being before God expect God himself, who alone knows the deep things in our soul? This may help us also to understand the most mysterious part of Paul’s description of prayer, namely, that the Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. Just because prayer is humanly impossible, just because it brings deeper levels of our being before God than the level of consciousness, something happens in it that cannot be expressed in words. Words, created by and used in our conscious life, are not the essence of prayer. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14

The essence of prayer is the act of God who is working in us and raises our whole being to himself. The way in which this happens is called by Paul sighing. Sighing is an expression of the weakness of our creaturely existence. Only in terms of wordless sighs can we approach God, and even these sighs are his work in us. This finally answers a question often asked by Christians: Which kind of prayer is most adequate to our relation to God? The prayer in which we thank or the prayer in which we beg, the prayer of intercession or of confession or of praise? Paul does not make these distinctions. They are dependent on words; but the sighing of the Spirit in us is too deep for words and for the distinction of kinds of prayer. The Spiritual prayer is elevation to God in the power of God and it includes all forms of prayer. A last word to those who feel that they cannot find the words of prayer and remain silent towards God. This may be lack of Spirit. It also may be that there is silent prayer, namely, the sighs which are too deep for words. Then God who searches the hearts of mortals, knows and hears. “Wherefore, let us be faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord; therefore let us go down to the land of our father’s inheritance, for behold he left gold and silver, and all manner of riches. And all this he hath done because of the commandments of the Lord,” reports 1 Nephi 6.17. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14

All that one needs for the management of life can be had from within. The eyes of an animal have the capacity of a great language. Independent, without any need of the assistance of sounds and gestures, most eloquent when they rest entirely in their glance, they express the mystery in its natural captivity, that is, in the anxiety of becoming. This state of the mystery is known only to the animal, which alone can open it up to us—for this state can only be opened up and not revealed. The language in which this is accomplished is what it says: anxiety—the stirring of the creature between the realms of plantlike security and spiritual risk. This language is the stammering of nature under the initial grasp of spirit, before language yields to spirit’s cosmic risk which we call mortals. However, no speech will ever repeat what the stammer is able t communicate. I sometimes look into the eyes of a cockatiel or a dog. The domesticated animal has not by any means received the gift of the truly eloquent glance from us, as a human conceit suggests sometimes; what it has from us is only the ability—purchased with the loss of its elementary naturalness—to turn this glance upon us brutes. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14

In this process some mixture of surprise and question has come into it, into its dawn and even its rise—and this was surely wholly absent from the original glance, for all its anxiety. Undeniably, this bird or dog began this glance by asking me with a glance that was ignited by the breath of my glance: “Can it be that you mean me?” Do you actually want that I should not merely do tricks for you? Do I concern you? Am I there for you? And I there? What is it about me? What is that?!” (“I” is here a paraphrase of a word of I-less self-reference that we lack. “That” represents the flood of a mortal’s glance in the entire actuality of its power to relate.) There the glance of the animal, the language of anxiety, had risen hugely—and set almost at once. My glance, to be sure, endured longer; but it no longer retained the flood of mortal’s glance. Once own inner self has the capacity of makings its own revelations to one. These got, one will find oneself increasingly independent of those which come from outside, from the hearsay of other mortals or the writings of strict and religious doctrines. What a number of mortals can no longer get from church or temple, they must get from their own selves through mysticism. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14

One needs to realize that one’s greatest power will come to one through one’s own God and not through any other source, such as the overshadowing by spirits, and so on. Through this eventual realization, one will attain to greater progress and render much deeper service. Thus one will fulfill one’s owns highest destiny. Let one stand in one’s own place, and not seek to occupy that of another. Let one find a life that is real, and not copied. However, such admonitions are good only so far as one has already come to communion with God. Ultimately, there is only one real Master for every spiritual seeker, and that is one’s own divine God. The human teacher may assist one to the extent of giving one a temporary emotional uplift or a temporary intellectual perception, but one cannot bestow permanent divine consciousness on another individual. All that the teacher can do is to point out the way through the labyrinth; the journey must be made by the seeker oneself. For example, an individual living alone on a desert island could travel through all the stages of the Quest and attain the highest realization even though one had no visible teacher. God will give one all the guidance and help one needs. However, one is likely to mistakenly believe that one’s own ego is making the progress. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14