I think I sold my soul for a place like this. Look, you are alive, whatever you are, but you are not human. You can make a miracle, can you not? I love art, of course. Beauty. However, I got mixed up in my head when I was seventeen that I was going to start a new religion, a cult—free love, give to the less affluent, rise one’s hand against no one, you know, a sort of Amish community. There were these books on the table, medieval books! Tiny medieval prayer books. Of course, I know a prayer book when I see it; but a medieval codex, no; I was an altar boy when I was very little, went to Mass every day for years with my mother, know liturgical Latin as was required. The point is, I recognize these books as devotional and rare. These books were not like the others books. They were psalms that never appeared in any Bible. I figured that much out, simply by comparing them to other Latin reprints of the same period that I got out of the library. This was some sort of original work. If one joins a monastic order one will usually have to take a vow to practise certain restraints and renunciations. To a lesser degree this also occurs with joining certain groups and circles in the World outside such orders. The value of the vow is that it sets up a standard to be followed, a course to be travelled, and a goal to be reached. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

One may fall from the standard, deviate from the course, and fail to approach the goal, but their existence of sacred standards and goals may help one come closer to the object of the vow than one might otherwise have come. On the other hand, the layman who is not interested in vows but simply resolves to improve oneself lacks their stimulus. There is nothing but the inner force of one’s own ideal to keep one from abandoning the self-imposed rigours of one’s discipline. One depends on the power which one will have to summon up from somewhere within oneself. The weakness of binding oneself to the new regime which one has imposed on one’s own life that it can easily be shirked at any time, that if one yields to the inclination to do so, the restraints upon it will be weaker and fewer. Whatever church, organization, or cult to which one commits oneself, one should always make for oneself at least the reservation that one should retain the freedom to leave and go elsewhere or to cease seeking among outer organizations and to search within. However, there is a place and a need for the cohesion of a group, for the sustained teamwork of an organization, and for the discipline imposed on individuals by a church. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

Any institution dedicated to training for the life of the Spirit will always keep out the Spirit. It cannot be found through any formal performance nor through any organized group work. And all that training can do is to open a way wherethrough, if It is already coming or will come, it may pass. I made my life rich enough that I stopped caring about changing the World if ever I really thought of it; I made a life you see, you know, a World unto itself. However, others are able to open their soul in a sophisticated way to…to something. There is something else, something about our dilemma, that you cannot invent theologies, but for them to work they have to come from some deeper place inside a person—a totality of human experience. Illumination is not a result which follows moral purification and emotional discipline. These things are necessary but only preparatory. It is a result which follows conscious attempts to seek the Real and discard the illusory. This discrimination will show itself in the kind of values that are attached to the World, in the thinking reflections that are made about the World, and in the deliberate rejection of ego that takes place during meditation. It begins with either the intellect as enquiry, or the feelings as World-weariness, but is passes gradually into the whole life of the individual. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

It the enlightenment is to be continuous and the self-conquest completed, the technique which is to achieve them must be a sufficiently adequate one. To become established in the Reality is to give up seeking all those transient and temporary experiences which come by pursuing particular techniques, whether they be techniques of yoga or techniques of taking supplement, and take to philosophy. We must carefully qualify by such words as “intermittent,” “partial,” and “temporary,” the attainments to which exercises lead. This is because the full and permanent attainment cannot emerge out of meditation alone. It is a fruit of the threefold planting of meditation and reflection and action combined. Hence although the foregoing exercises will bring the student considerably nearer it, it must not be thought that any mystical exercise of itself can confer ultimate enlightenment. The path to this exalted result must traverse all fields to spiritual enlightenment. We need to know the truth, the wisdom-knowledge, but it is not enough. We need to have the living mystic experience, the vital feeling of what I am, but it is not enough. For we need to synthesize the two in a full actual intuitive realization, conferred by the Overself. This is Grace. This is to emerge finally—born again! #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

Good people work here. Since joining the company I have not heard one person raise one’s voice to another in anger, and rarely even in irritation. Apparently when you remove fear from a being’s life you also remove one’s stinger. Since there is no severe competition within our shop, we are serene. We do compete mildly perhaps, by trying to achieve good marks in the hope that our department head will recommend a promotion or an increase to the Salary Committee. Cutting out the other beings and using tricks to make one look bad is hardly ever done. At higher levels, now and then, executive empires will bump into each other and there will be skirmishes along the border. However, these are for the most part carried on without bullying and table pounding, and the worst that can happen to the loser is that one will be moved sideways into a smaller empire. It would be wrong to say that our employees are not lively. They have fun and love, and go on camping trips, go skinning, and operate power boats, have yacht parties, and read things and go to the movies, and ride motorcycles like anybody else. In the office they know what to do (usually after consolation) in almost any circumstance. What a great many of them have lost, it seems to me, is temperament, in the sense of mettle. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

We speak of a mettlesome horse. Well, these are not mettlesome people. When the ego is threatened—because at our company we do not threat people’s egos, they lack, perhaps, the capacity to be mean and ornery. Rather the ego tends to atrophy through disuse. Another curious thing is our talent for being extremely friendly without saying anything to each other. I remember a conversation that went on something like this: “Sully! Where did you come from? I have not seen you in—I guess it has been about a year and a half.” “Just about that, Jillian. A year and a half at least.” “What are you up to, for goodness’ sake?” “I have been in Canada, and now I am back in the states.” “Always on the move!” “Well, I guess I am. I just thought I would come down and have a chat with you before leaving.” “It is great that you did. How is your family?” “Fine, Jill, how is yours?” “They are fine, too. We just all had a family reunion and it was lovely.” “The years go by, do they not?” “They sure do.” “Well…” “Well…” Well, I guess I had better be moving along.” “It has been wonderful talking to you, Sully. Look, before you get on the plane, why do you not come down for another talk?” “I will, young lady. You can count on it.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

Also common among our employees is a genuine and lively interest in the career of upper-level executives whom they may never have laid eyes on. As the gentlemen move from one station to another, their progress is followed with exclamations and inside comments. “Hmm…Armin has moved to Purchasing! I thought so.” “Look at Welsh—he has taken over the top spot in Patagonia. Anybody can tell that they are setting him up for a vice-presidency.” Who cared about Armin and Welsh? At one point, I did. I had to prepare a press release about them, and update—add two more lines to—their official biographies. The role of the corporation’s top directors in our cosmos is an interesting one. In out company, members of the board are not remote figures from outside who drop in to attend meetings now and then. They are on the job every day. They recognize us, nod, and often say hello. I have found these august gentlemen to be amiable and even shy in the presence of their subordinates, but their appearance one the scene is the occasion of total respect, body and soul, such as I have never witnessed outside the army. They are not feared either. They conduct themselves in a friendly, most democratic manner. It is not awe they inspire but, so far as I can see, pure admiration. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

I was once talking to a young man in the employee-relations department when his eyes, gazing over my shoulder, suddenly lit up with joy. I turned, expecting to see our pretty receptionist, but it was a director passing by and giving us a wave of his hand. This unity and harmony are important for everyone who does not know how to control one’s inmost self would feign control one’s neighbor’s will according to one’s own conceit. For the living person, power is not a theory but an ever-present reality which one must confront, use, enjoy, and struggle with a hundred times a day. Every person is born a bundle of potentialities. Very few of these have become formed into actual powers at birth; one cannot yet walk or talk or make a flying machine. However, one can cry and this cry is the potentiality that develops into the complex system of communication in language. No one can doubt the delight the normal infant gets at the maturing of these potentialities into powers as one is able to talk, to crawl, to walk, to run. All of us who have watched children running in the park, skipping and jumping as randomly as puppies, can appreciate the pleasure of sheer movement, of exercising muscles that demand to be used. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

The potentiality to explore, to see the World as a person of one’s age can, will increasingly become an actual power as one’s neuromuscular structure develops. Everyone who has observed one’s own development with wonder will be aware that there is both nature and nurture in every step of this actualization of one’s potentialities. However, these potentialities also being anxiety. Potentiality becomes actuality, but the intervening variable is anxiety. The potentiality for pleasures of the flesh, which takes a decisive leap ahead at puberty, brings excitement and joy but also the anxiety associated with new relationships and new responsibilities. Power pushes toward its fulfillment. It is neither good nor evil, ethically speaking; it only is. However, it is not neutral. It requires in some way its own expression, although the forms of the expression vary greatly. There is an inescapable conflict between a being’s individual powers and the culture to which he or she belongs; and there is bound to be a struggle of these powers against the culture that seeks to hold the individual within its bounds. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

This constant struggle has a dialectical nature—as one pole changes, the other does too. Anxiety connected with an activity will spoil the pleasure that it would otherwise hold. This is not true for minor anxieties; on the contrary, they may produce an added zest. Riding a roller-coaster with some apprehension may make it more thrilling, whereas doing it with strong anxiety will make it a torture. A strong anxiety connected with pleasures of the flesh will render them thoroughly unenjoyable, and if one is not aware of the anxiety one will have the feeling that pleasures of the flesh do not mean anything. That maybe confusing because I have said that a feeling of dislike may be used as a means of avoiding an anxiety, and now I am saying that the dislike may be a consequence of the anxiety. Actually, both statements are true. Dislike may be the means of avoiding and the consequence of having anxiety. This is one small example of the difficulty in understanding psychic phenomena. They are intricate and involved, and unless we make up our minds that we must consider innumerable, interwoven interactions we shall make no progress in psychological knowledge. The purpose of discussing how we may defend ourselves against anxiety is not to give an exhaustive picture of all possible defenses. In fact we shall soon learn more radical ways of preventing anxiety from arising. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

My main concern now is to substantiate the statement that one may have more anxiety than one is aware of, or may have anxiety without being aware of it at all, and also to show some of the more common points where it may be looked for. Thus, in short, anxiety may be hidden behind feelings of physical discomfort, such as heart-pounding and fatigue; it may be concealed by a number of fears that seem rational or warranted; it may be the hidden force driving us to drink or to submerge ourselves in all sorts of distractions. We shall often find it as the cause of inability to do or enjoy certain things, and we shall always discover it as the promoting factor behind inhibitions. For reasons we shall discuss later, our culture generates a great deal of anxiety in the individuals living in it. Hence practically everyone has built up one or another of the defenses I have mentioned. The more neurotic a person is, the more is one’s personality pervade and determined by such defenses, and the greater the number of things one is unable to do or does not consider doing, although according to one’s vitality, mental capacities or educational background one would be justified in expecting one to do them. The more sever the neurosis, the more inhibitions are present, both subtle and gross. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

There are three contemporary dilemmas: (1) the failure of institutional authority, (2) the rising ride of nihilism, and (3) the struggle for psychospiritual balance, or integration. When people declare that God is dead, they do not mean all gods or every God to come; they meant the gods, both secular and religious, that no longer bred inspiration and hope, but only disillusionment and decay. This denotes the corrupt gods that catered to some greedy elite; churches financed by cocaine king; the repressive gods that stifled pleasures of the flesh, creative play, and emotional expressiveness; the technocratic gods that sapped the populace of meaningful and stimulating work; and the scientistic gods that deny the legitimacy of nonrational phenomena. This forecast the breakdown of institutional authority. We can also foresee a gaping chasm left in the wake of this breakdown—a chasm which could lead to nihilism. When people no longer have traditions to steer them or gods to inspire them, what happens? Many of them flounder; they become reckless, anarchistic beast, or they form reactionary, xenophobic enclaves. These extremes strike a note of familiarity in our own unstable era, an era bereft of traditions. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

This World view can be characterized as a primordial clash of counraries—on the one hand, repression, order, or an Apollonian consciousness and on the other hand, indulgence, abandon, or Dionysian awareness. Wherever one is sacrificed the other suffers, because neither can operate in isolation. How can we cope with these warring (individual and collective) tendencies? By confronting them, by acknowledging both our limits and our possibilities, our need for order and discipline, as well as spontaneity and abandon. In so doing, we foster dynamic, realistic lives. This is what is meant by passionate people who master their passions, or those who self-overcome. Sometimes it is okay to surround ourselves with limited horizons, as long as we do not retire from life but put ourselves in the midst of it; do not be fainthearted but take as much as possible upon yourself, over yourself, and into yourself. What we want is totality; fight for the extraneousness of reason, senses, feeling, and will. Discipline yourself to wholeness, create yourself. A human being who is strong, highly educated, skillful in all bodily matters, self-controlled, reverent toward oneself, and who might dare to afford the whole range and wealth of being natural, being strong enough for such freedom is a being of tolerance, not weakness but of strength. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

Such a spirit who has become free stands amid the cosmos with a joyous and trusting fatalism, in the faith that only the particular is loathsome, and that all is redeemed in the whole. In the case of abstract painters, for example, the encounter may be with an idea, an inner vision, that in turn may be led off by the brilliant colors on the palette or the inviting rough whiteness of the canvas. The paint, the canvas, and the other materials then become a secondary part of this encounter; they are the language of it, the media, as we rightly put it. Or scientists confront their experiment, their laboratory task, in a similar situation of encounter. The encounter may or may not involve voluntary effort—that is, will power. A healthy child’s play, for example, also has the essential features of encounter, and we know it is one of the important prototypes of adult creativity. The essential point is not the presence or absence of voluntary effort, but the degree of absorption, the degree of intensity. Let prayer stay as a beautiful, peace-bestowing, and calming exercise. If it does, it need not limit you to getting stuck with “Experience” as a final attainment. It is a felt experience, but one which must be accompanied by the knowledge that the entire Universe is a form of knowledge. The two together complete the prayerful experience. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

Thus one learns to understand that one must advance beyond ordinary situations to this goal of Being, to become established in it, in this stillness, ever-present and ever-proven. So do as you wish in this matter, do not deprive yourself of the occasional or even regular practice of prayer, should you be inclined toward it, so long as you comprehend that though it has its very important place in the Quest, it is not essential to attainment of the ultimate goal itself. Love is the primary attribute and motive for the spiritual purposes we were changed to undertake by our beloved God. A marvelous work is about to come forth. This revelation establishes that those who desire to serve God qualify for such faith, hope, charity and love, with a focus on the glory of God. Charity, which is the pure love of Christ, includes God’s eternal love for all his children. We are blessed with great love for our fellow beings and environment, for we are called to carry the gospel to the World to win souls unto Christ. When we gain a vision of love, the Lord’s work will be accomplished. We need to align our hearts with love and move away from feelings of mere responsibility or guilt. Loving performing ordinances for ancestors will strengthen and protect our youth and family in a World that is becoming increasingly evil. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

When we work in righteousness, our decisions are Heaven blessed. Most of us need time to fit and equip ourselves for the glorious moment of insight, but a few receive it in a day. It must be remembered that it does not actually happen in time but out of it, in the great Stillness. The being does not know about the absolute final truth a second before—and then it is all there. How soon it can settle down in one will also vary with different persons—it is a few hours in one case but three years in another. Those who seek the will of the Lord as individuals and for their families must strive for righteousness, meekness, kindness, and love. Humility and love are the hallmark of those who see the Lord’s will, especially for their families. Perfecting ourselves, qualifying ourselves for the blessings of covenants, and preparing to meet God are individual responsibilities. We need to be self-reliant and anxiously engaged in making our homes a refuge from the storms that surround us and a sanctuary of faith. When there is love at home, there is beauty all around. Whether enlightenment is reached by steps as an outcome of practice unremittingly done, or that it comes suddenly all at once, it must be a concept-free phenomenon, a set of doctrines and covenants that are understanding, and possess a recognition of what always was, is, and will be. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16

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