And gradually I realized that I possessed a new concept of loneliness, a new method of measuring a silence that stretched to the end of the World. And all I had to interrupt it were those menacing recorded preternatural voices which carried no images as their virulency increased. It is always and forever the struggle: to perceive somehow our own complicity with evil is a horror not to ne borne. It is much more reassuring to see the World in terms of totally innocent victims and totally evil instigators of the monstrous violence we see all about. At all costs, never disturb our innocence. However, what is the most innocent place in any country? It is not the insane asylum? The perfection of innocence, indeed, is madness. Rocklin charmed me, subdued me somewhat. Almost Venetian, it seemed, the somber multicolored mansions rising wall to wall over the narrow black streets. Irresistible the lights sprinkled over hilltop and value; and the brilliant manicured lawns and plush trees shooting up like a fairy-tale forest into a misty blue sky. We live at the end of an era. The age that began with the Renaissance, born out of the twilight of the Middle Ages, is now at a close. The era that emphasized rationalism and individualism is suffering an inner and outer transition; and there are as yet only dim harbingers, only partly conscious, of what the new age will be. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15

Recall those towering individuals of the Renaissance, explorers of the Earth like Columbus and Magellan, and explorers of the Heavens like Copernicus. Our comparable exploration is the recent trips to the Moon and robots deployed on Mars. However, practically no one remembers the names of the astronauts who walked on the Moon. What we do remember is the machinery; the hero of the moon trip was not an individual but a projectile, and the mortals were tenders of this projectile. Let no one conclude from this, however, that in the new age mortals will be subordinate to technology. It may be just the opposite: the development of technology, filling a role similar to that of the ancient slaves, may force us to find intellectual and spiritual content to fill the vacuum of our days and nights. In the present gap between ages, power is disengaged from its hereditary lines, confused, and up for grabs. Those who have occupied the numbing position of subordinate groups—the African Americans, and Chicanos, women, the less affluent, students, mental patients, convicts—are springing to life, announcing their existence, and presenting their demands. Power becomes a new and urgent issue not only for these groups, but for every individual in our culture who is trying to get one’s bearings and fine one’s pace amid the turbulence. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15

Power lessens in such periods—often called by its alternate names, alienation and helplessness—become very painful. There is one way, however, of confronting one’s powerlessness by making it a seeming virtue. This is the conscious divesting on the part of an individual of one’s power; it is then a virtue not to have it. I call this innocence. The word is derived from the Latin in and nocens, literally, not harmful, to be free from guilt or sin, guileless, pure; and in actions it means without evil influence or effect, or not arising from evil intention. To start with, we must distinguish between two kinds of innocence. One is innocence as a quality of imagination, the innocence of the poet or artist. It is the preservation of a childlike clarity in adulthood. Everything has a freshness, a purity, newness, and color. From this innocence spring awe and wonder. It leads toward spirituality: it is the innocence of Saint Francis in his Sermon to the Birds. When Jesus said: “Only as ye become like little children shall ye enter the kingdom of Heaven,” it is assumedly what he had in mind. It is the preservation of childlike attitudes into maturity without sacrificing the realism of one’s perception of evil, one’s complicity with evil. This is authentic innocence. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15

Such innocence can be a real protection in time of need. If one would keep free from influences that would take away the ideals which one has specifically set up for it to follow, one must try to keep one’s own life in one’ own hands. If one values freedom one must refuse to put one’s self in a position where one will be compelled to echo the views of those who do not share one’s ideas. One may have to choose between the trials of sturdy independence and the temptations of enervating security. It does not ask one to make harsh sacrifices but it does ask one to make reasonable ones. If they seem harsh to one that is only because one has been kept until then in a state of so-called normality by the powerful suggestions of organized society. His normality is merely the pooling of common ignorance and the sharing of common weakness. If the mind is to engage with success in the quest for truth, it must be unfettered and then unprejudiced. It requires moral strength or mental power to refuse the gregarious support of the crowd—be it sectarian church, a mystical group, or some other combination. It requires faith in oneself and the courage to resist the pull of others and be an individual. To venture so far afield from the common way and yet keep quite sane and practical, and not become a human oddity, a social freak, is something indeed. One has to pick one’s way through mistaken teachings, among provisional standpoints, and between ambitious gurus. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15

There is another kind of innocence. A type of innocence which does not lead to spirituality but rather consists of blinders—Pseudoinnocence, in other words. Capitalizing on naivete, it consists of a childhood that is never outgrown, a kind of fixation on the past. It is childishness rather than childlikeness. When we face questions too big and too horrendous to contemplate, such as the dropping of the atomic bomb, we tend to shrink into this kind of innocence and make a virtue of powerlessness, weakness, and helplessness. This pseudoinnocence leads to utopianism; we do not then need to see the real dangers. With unconscious purpose we close our eyes to reality and persuade our unconscious purpose we close our eyes to reality and persuade ourselves that we have escaped it. This kind of innocence does not make things bright and clear, as does the first kind; it only makes them seem simple and easy. It wilts before our complicity with evil. It is this innocence that cannot come to terms with the destructiveness in one’s self or others; and hence, it actually become self-destructive. Innocence that cannot include the soul because it becomes evil. This parallels the innocence in neurosis. It is a fixation in childhood, never lived through but clung to as the only protection against hostile, unloving, or dominating parents. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15

A young man in therapy, who had developed an intricate pattern of capitalizing on such weakness, once dreamed himself as a rabbit being chased by wolves. It turned out that he had been a wolf in rabbit’s skin. Often the only strategy available to such persons, learned by necessity in childhood, consists of accepting the overt powerlessness their situation requires and then getting their power by covert means. In this sense, the perfection of innocence, indeed, is madness. There in the insane asylum people drift through life truly innocent, unable to see into themselves at all. However, it may not be an inability to see into themselves. Nor is it being truly innocent. Only when viewed from the outside it is an innocence. In their detached innocence, they talk with spirit because they cannot find anyone else who is willing and able to understand them. The tremendous growth of mechanical power since the eighteenth century—first steam, then electricity, and now atomic power—made possible a great increase, albeit not necessarily an equitable distribution, of social wealth. While the early stages of the industrial revolution actually improvised millions, by almost any material standards we are today better off then were our ancestors. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15

New mechanical power produced new wealth; but it also imposed rigid controls over human behavior. Thorstein Veblen was one of the first sociologist to interpret the broad cultural implications of mechanization: “Within the range of…machine-guided work, and within the range of modern life so far as it is guided by the machine process, the courses of things is given mechanically, impersonally, and the resultant discipline is a discipline in the handling of impersonal facts for mechanical effect.” Most directly affected are people who work with machines. Unlike the tools of workmanship, which at every given moment in the work process remain the servants of the hand, the machines demand that the laborer serve them, that one adjust the natural rhythm of one’s body to their mechanical movement. However, this discipline extends far beyond the workplace, affecting not only factory workers but the whole of society. Indeed, the clock rather than the steam engine became the foundation of the modern industrial system, for once machines were regulated by mechanical, or non-human, time, an impersonal new discipline was imposed on mortals. Today our lives are increasingly regulated by machines which set standards or performance and product, telling us when to start working, when to stop, what to do and how to do it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15

Also, the measure of our submission to mechanical controls is that we are largely unconscious of their influence. However, of their influence there can be no doubt. Historically, one of the first major results of mechanization was to transform labor: what had formerly been an integral part of human life became a means to an end. To feed and operate the machines of the new civilization required not just raw materials but free labor. Since industrialism was pioneered by capitalist this meant a special kind of freedom. This is described as the working principle of the early capitalist market economy: Production is interaction of mortals and nature; if this process is to be organized through a self-regulating mechanism of barter and exchange, then morals and nature must be brought into its orbit; they must be subject to supply and demand, this is, be dealt with as commodities, as goods produced for sale. However, for mortals to be treated as a commodity, a brutal operation was required: the freeing of labor from traditional bonds of craft, family and community. Thus one of the many tragic ironies of the early capitalist market economy: expected automatically to produce general welfare, it split the community in ways which survive to this day. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15

To separate labor from other activities of life and to subject it to the laws of the market was to annihilate all organic forms of existence and to replace them by a different type of organization, an atomistic and individualistic one. When labor became a mechanically regulated commodity, mortals lost part of themselves. This returns to our major theme of alienation. The worker, having lost control over both the conditions of one’s labor and the fruit of one’s labor, became alienated from their soul. The spirit (or human mind) is at war with itself; in consequence, it has to overcome itself as its own most formidable obstacle. That development which in the sphere of Nature is a peaceful growth, is for the spirit, a severe, a mighty conflict with itself. What spirit really strives for is the realization of its Ideal being; but in doing so, it hides that goal from its own vision, and is proud and well satisfied in this alienation. Therefore, mortal’s own intellectual creations become independent of their creator and hence alienated to one. Human achievement is a dialectical process in which mortals can advance to higher forms only by overcoming or mastering oneself and cultural forces that one creates. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15

Therefore, the history of mortals is a history of their alienation or frustration, and of one’s self-realization through the conquest of these frustrations. The self-sufficiency of one’s ideal, its remoteness from popular ways, may be boldly and openly expressed in action or kept as an interior and hidden thing. For most the first way may prove to be an imprudent course but for others it may be a necessity. Mentally one cannot fit oneself into any of the accepted categories which the society of one’s place and time provide, so an independent and solitary path attracts one. Physically, one may have to make an uneasy compromise with society, with the result that both benefit by their mutual services. Thus without doing violence to one’s chief principles one yet finds a way to live among those who have no use for them. “Now as they went on their way, he entered a village; and a woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving; and she went to him and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has eft me to serve along? Tell her then to help me.’ But the Lord answered, ‘Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about may things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her,’” reports Luke 10.38-42. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15

Before anyone can carry out an independent investigation of truth, one must first possess the capacity to do so. To develop this capacity where it is lacking, the philosophic discipline is prescribed. The words Jesus spoke to Martha belong to the most famous of all the words in the Bible. Martha and Mary have become symbols for two possible attitudes towards life, for two forces in mortal and humankind as a whole, for two kinds of concern. Martha is concerned about many things, but all of them are finite, preliminary, transitory. Mary is concerned about one thing, which is infinite, ultimate, lasting. Martha’s way is not contemptible. On the contrary, it is the way which keeps the World running. It is driving force which preserves and enriches life and culture. Without it Jesus could not have talked to Mary and Mary could not have listened to Jesus. Once I heard a sermon dedicated to the justification and glorification of Martha. This can be done. There are innumerable concerns in our lives and in human life generally which demand attention, devotion, passion. However, they do not demand infinite attention, unconditional devotion, ultimate passion. They are important, often very important for you and for me and for the whole of humankind. However, they are not ultimately important. And therefore Jesus praises not Martha, but Mary. She has chosen the right thing, the one thing mortals need, the only thing of ultimate concern for ever mortal. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15

The hour of a church service and every hour of prayer and reading is dedicated to listening in the way Mary listened. Something is being said to us, to the speaker as well as to the listeners, something about which we may become infinitely concerned. This is the meaning of every sermon. It shall awaken infinite concern. What does it mean to be concerned about something? It means that we are involved in it, that a part of ourselves is in it, that we participate with our hearts. And it means even more than that. It points to the way in which we are involved, namely, anxiously. The wisdom of our language often identifies concern wit anxiety. Wherever we are involved we feel anxiety. There are many things which interest us, which provoke our compassion or horror. However, they are not our real concern; they do not produce this driving, torturing anxiety which is present when we are genuinely and seriously concerned. In out story, Martha was seriously concerned. Let us try to remember what gives us concern in the course f an average day, from the moment of awakening to the last moment before falling asleep, and even beyond that, when our anxieties appear in our dreams. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15

We are concerned about our work; it is the basis of our existence. We may love it or hate it; we may fulfill it as a duty or as a hard necessity. However, anxiety grasps us whenever we feel the limits of our strength, our lack of efficiency, the struggle with our laziness, the danger of failure. We are concerned about our relationships to others. We cannot imagine living without their benevolence, their friendship, their love, their communion in body and soul. However, when we think about the indifference, the outbursts of anger and jealousy, the hidden and often poisonous hostility we experience in ourselves as well as those we love, we are worried and often in utter despair. The anxiety about losing them, about having hurt them, about not being worthy of them, creeps into our hearts and makes our love restless. We are concerned about ourselves. We feel responsible for our development towards maturity, towards strength in life, wisdom in mind, and perfection in spirit. At the same time, we are striving for happiness, we are concerned about our pleasures and about having a good time, a concern which ranks very high with us. However, when we look at ourselves in the mirror of self-scrutiny or of the judgments of others, our anxiety strikes us. We feel that we have made the wrong decisions, that we are failing before mortals and before ourselves. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15

We compare ourselves with others and feel inferior to them, and we are depressed and frustrated. We believe that we have wasted our happiness either by pursuing it too eagerly and confusing happiness either by pursuing it too eagerly and confusing happiness with pleasure or by not being courageous enough to grasp the right moment for a decision which might have brought happiness. We cannot forget the most natural and most universal concern of everything that lives, the concern for the preservation of life—for our daily bread. There was a time in recent history in which large groups in the Western World had almost forgotten this concern. Today, the simple concern for food and clothing and shelter is so overwhelming in the greater part of humankind that it has almost suppressed most of the other human concerns, and it has absorbed the minds of all classes of people. However, there is a qualitative difference between historical ages. There are times of ripening when the true elements of the human spirit, held down and buried, grows ready underground with such pressures and such tensions that it merely waits to be touched by one who will touch it—and then erupts. The revelation that then appears seizes the whole ready element in all its suchness, recasts it and produced a form, a new form of God in the World. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15

Ever new regions of the World and the spirit are thus lifted up into form, called divine form, in the course of history, in the transformations of the human element. Ever new spheres become the place of a theophany. It is not mortal’s own power that is at work here, neither is it merely God passing through; it is a mixture of the divine and the human. Whoever is sent forth in a revelation takes with one in one’s eyes an image of God; however supra-sensible it may be, one takes it along in the eyes of one’s spirit, in the altogether not metaphorical but entirely real visual power of one’s spirit. The spirit also answers by beholding. Although we on Earth never behold God without World but only the World in God, by beholding we eternally form God’s form. Form is a mixture of You and It, too. In faith and cult it an freeze into an object; but from the gist of the relation that survives in it, it turns ever again into presence. God is near his forms as long as mortals do not remove them from him. In true prayer, cult and faith are unified and purified into living relation. That true prayer lives in religions testifies to their true life; as long as it lives in them, they live. “And they did remember his words; and therefore they went forth, keeping the commandments of God, to teach the word f God among all the people,” reports Helaman 5.14. #RandolphHarris 15 or 15