Ah, let us be true to one another, the World, which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams so various, so beautiful, so new. In moments, I stood in my own courtyard in Cresleigh Homes Rocklin Trails, looking up at my own lighted windows, windows that had been mine for so long, hoping and praying that Sully was there, and afraid that he was not. Team play is the thing. Team play means that you alone cannot get too far out ahead of the troops. You cannot because in our company it is necessary to consult and check over everything. Someone will ask whether this does not lead to a certain amount of mediocrity. It does. We have a substantial number of mediocre people in the company—that is, men and women of ordinary ability who would probably never originate anything under any circumstances. However, where organizing an effort is concerned it is sometimes better to have mediocre talent than a bunch of creative individuals who disturb the situation by questioning everything. In terms of performance, if you have a slow but sure operation, mediocre personnel, including your nephews, can carry it out beautifully. In planning, mediocrity has and still does hurt the company. Our method is to get together and talk it out, each one of us contributing one’s mite. When thirty-three can do it better, why have one being make a decision? #RandolphHarris 1 of 15

The consequence of the policy of teamwork is that our executives commit few errors—although sometimes they arrive at the right decision three years too late. However, the sure markets for the company’s products bring in so much money that the mistake is buried under mountains of dollar bills. Our interminable round of conferences may also be counted on to produce by default serious errors of omission. These do not hurt noticeably either, for the reason cited above. I got over my impatience at the slow pace of things, but I felt it once at a lecture given to senior and junior executives on the new central filing system that would go into effect when we reached the palace. A fierce little girl, a vestal of the files, told us how it was going to be. We sat, without anyone suggesting it, according to rank, and I could work out the possible course of my company career, if I stayed with it, just by looking at the assemblage of heads in front of me—bald and white in the front rows, then pepper-and-salt, and gradually back where I was, the black, brown, and blonde heads of hair. I thought of my own head, slowly changing through the years as I moved up a row or two, with never a chance by a brilliant coup of jumping while still brown-headed—or even pepper-and-salt—over several rows and landing among the white thatches. When anything I accomplish I do as a member of a group, how could I make such a leap? #RandolphHarris 2 of 15

A little more tension would be welcome. This may be based on fragmentary evidence, but I suspect that when people are not placed under at least a minimum of tension they seek it out in their dreams. One day overheard our press-relations man conferring with our public-relations manager, Josh Tyler, who said: “Maybe next time, Sully, you had better try it the other way.” The press man came out of the office and saw me. “Boy!” he said, “I sure got a bawling out on that!” Another man of some rank joined his local Democratic Party, and worked hard at it during the presidential campaign. However, he felt guilty about what he had done. Finally he rushed upstairs and confessed to the president of the corporation. “Gosh,” he told me afterward in a disappointed tone, “he did not mind at all. He just put his hand on my shoulder and said: ‘Do not worry, Armin, I am a Jeffersonian Republican myself!’” We conform by choice. Critics of big business are constantly on the watch for the kind of over-cooperation that a company explicitly demands of its members. Our company does not demand anything. Oh, there is tactful pressure on us to join the annuity and insurance program, and a rather strong insistence on Red Cross and Community Chest contributions, but nothing serious. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15

What you have to watch out for is the amount of compliance you fall into by yourself, without realizing it. When my book was published, something like this almost happened to me. Far from resenting the satire, most of our employees who read it enjoyed the book. I was asked to autograph dozens of copies, and several were brought and prominently displayed in the company lending library. I had thought of myself as a writer in temporary captivity. Now that was no longer possible. A captive of what? Good Will? I began to feel what I now recognize was a gradually deepening contentment. If you are on the watch for the symptoms, here are a few: (1) You find that you are planning your life defensively, in terms of savings plans and pensions, rather than thinking speculatively of moving up fast—faster than the others. (2) You become much less impatient over inefficiency, shrug your shoulders and accept it as the way things are. (3) Your critical faculties become dull; you accept second-best; it seems unsporting to complain. (4) Nothing makes you nervous. (5) You find that you are content to talk to people without saying anything. (6) You mention something like (improvising now) “our Human Development Department” to outsiders and learn with surprise that they think you have made a joke. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15

During this period of contentment, which lasted quite a few months, I did not concern myself with anything beyond the requirements of my job. I became easy-going and promiscuously nice, and had a harmless word for everybody. Finally, I was reminded that this sort of thing was the mark of a fat soul. A succession of incidents helped indicate what was wrong. Mystery does oppose theology. When the mystical and the theological are mixed, it does not work with the proper fire of magic. The volume of life you can take into your being and still maintain your integrity and individuality, the intensity and variety of outlook one can entertain in the unity of one’s being without feeling defensive or insecure is what creates a fat soul. It is the strength of your spirit to encourage others to become freer in the development of their diversity and uniqueness. Essentially the power to sustain more complex and enriching tensions. However, we are remote from the lives of others. Shortly before we moved to the country the press-relations man and I were looking out our eleventh-floor window in the direction of the waterfront. We saw a half-circle of beings gathered on a far-off pier. “Is not that what they call a shape-up?” he asked with faint curiosity. It was easy to tell that he barely imagined that these beings existed and that their quaint customs were real. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15

Some weeks before, I had looked down on a gentleman in a homburg and cutaway, running among the crowds in the financial district. He carried a bouquet of red roses wrapped in green paper. You do not associate this street with flowers, and it was exciting to see him running, holding his green wrapping like a torch of something beautiful in this place. And then he died on his feet, twisting over and slumping to the pavement. His head rested against the wall of a building. He rested with the flowers flung across his knees and his fine hat askew, and the absurd and living gallantry that produced his death could only be nothing to us or to anyone in the crowds that simply swerved around him and kept going, because of the way we are concentrated and oriented away from things like that. How remote we were too from the crazy musicians who arrived on a blustery fall day with the idea that, since this was a financial center, there would be a rain of coins from the tall buildings in response to their trumpet, guitar, and bass fiddle. The wind swirled their jazz among the canyons. I saw that no one was paying them the slightest attention. Feeling guilt, I threw them a quarter, but they did not see it. They danced and made jazz in the cold, while upstairs we went on with our work, and they did not exist, and it was nobody’s fault. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15

It is not that we should have been expected to know about longshoremen, or care particularly about the beings in the homburg, or throw coins to the brave musicians, but we have simply, systematically, avoided letting these aspects of life into our field of visions. We came in from the suburbs and plundered the city, and left each night without having the least idea of what was going on there. Even our daily experienced in the rapid transit was spent behind newspaper; taxis shielded us from the bad sections of town. We never heard guitars strumming on the dirty doorsteps, nor comprehended possible excitement of disorderly feelings that make other people so much more alive than we are. And when the corporation moved to the country our isolation from all that became completely splendid. Now most of us could anticipate fifteen-and thirty-minute rides in car pols from our suburban homes to a suburban office. You could almost hear an official sign of contentment on the day that we moved. The need to identify oneself with an organized group, established religion, or particular sect, or indeed with any cause, is at base the need to identify oneself with the God within. One unwittingly wants to belong to something larger than one’s own little ego. Such membership helps to achieve this because it removes the sense of separateness and the feeling of loneliness. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15

However, affiliation with a group only removes a sense of separateness at the surface level. With the efflux of time, one finds it necessary to search for satisfaction at a deeper level. For the group, the church, or the institution are outside one and give it only temporarily, partially, or spottily. Only by turning around and looking within one’s own being is a durable and fuller result is possible. For there, in the hidden presence of the Spiritual self, one will find that larger Cause, Source, Mystery, with which one can identify oneself in the perfect way. In joining a society or group one joins mostly those who are not more advanced than oneself in the capacity to pray. There are certain hindrances to progress which accompany membership in such organizations. If, however, the social value of finding other persons interested in spiritual subjects outweighs the immediate need of making inner progress, then membership would of course be most helpful. However, there are several reasons why it is beneficial to keep groups small, as they might help answer mutual questions. Quality should be the only consideration in admissions to groups; quantity would in the end disintegrate the group. Let the effort be limited to study, clearing up questions, and talks. If there is no powerful and uplifting leader in their midst to protect them, group prayer should not be practiced among beginners. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15

There is a right time and a wrong time for personal endeavour to lead and assist a spiritual group. The right time will come only with competence. Until then there is the ever-present task of the student’s own self-improvement. That is above all else. It is only as group allegiances are slowly widened that goodwill can be established towards those who are outside such borders. Now we come upon one important distinction between pseudo, escapist creativity on the one hand and that which is genuine on the other. Escapist creativity is that which lacks encounter. This was illustrated vividly to me when I worked with a young man in psychoanalysis. A talented professional, this man had rich and varied creative potentialities, but he always stopped just short of actualizing them. He would suddenly get the idea for an excellent story, would work it out in his mind to a full outline which could have then been written up without much further ado, and would relish and enjoy the ecstasy of the experience. Then he would stop there, writing down nothing at all. It was as though the experience of seeing himself as one who was able to write, as being just about to write, had within it what he was really seeking and brought its own reward. Hence he never actually created. This was a fairly baffling problem to him and to me. We had analyzed many aspects of it: his father had been a somewhat gifted writer but a failure; his mother had made much of his father’s writings, but had shown only contempt for him in other realms. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15

The young man, an only child, had been pampered and overprotected by his mother and often had been shown preference over his father—for instance, by being served special food at meals. The patient was clearly competing with his father, and if he succeeded faced a dire threat. All this and more we had analyzed in some detail. A vital link of experience, however, was missing. When discussing the difference between fear and anxiety we found as our first result that anxiety is a fear which essentially involves a subjective factor. What then is the nature of the subjective factor? When one is experiencing anxiety, one has the feeling of a powerful, inescapable danger against which one is entirely helpless. Whatever the manifestations of anxiety, whether it be a hypochondriac fear of cancer, anxiety concerning thunderstorms, a phobia about high places, or any comparable fear, the two factors of an overpowering danger and defenselessness against it are invariably present. Sometimes the dangerous force against which one feels helpless may be felt to come from outside—thunderstorms, cancer, accident and the like; sometimes the danger is felt to threaten one from one’s own ungovernable impulses—fear of having to jump down from a high place, or to cut someone with a knife; sometimes the danger is entirely vague and intangible, as it often is in an anxiety attack. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15

Such feelings in themselves, however, are not characteristic only of anxiety; they may be exactly the same in any situation which involves a factual overpowering danger and a factual helplessness toward it. I imagine that the subjective experience of persons during an Earthquake, or of an infant under two years of age exposed to brutalities, is in no way different from the subjective experience of one who has anxiety concerning thunderstorms. In the case of fear the danger is present in reality and the feeling of helplessness is conditioned by reality, and in the case of anxiety the danger is generated or magnified by intrapsychic factors and the helplessness is conditioned by one’s own attitude. The question concerning the subjective factor in anxiety is thus reduced to the more specific inquiry: what are the psychic conditions that create the feeling of an imminent powerful danger and an attitude of helplessness toward it? This at any rate is the question that the psychologist has to raise. That chemical conditions in the body can also create the feeling and the physical concomitants of anxiety is as little a psychological problem as the fact that chemical conditions can produce elation or sleep. In tackling this problem of anxiety, Dr. Freud has, as so often in other problems, shown us the direction in which to move. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15

Dr. Freud has given us direction with the concept of anxiety by his crucial discovery that the subjective factor involved in anxiety is possessed in our own instinctual drives; in other words, both the danger anticipated by anxiety and the feeling of helplessness toward it are conjured by the explosive force of our own impulses. In principle, any impulse has the potential power to provoke anxiety, provided that its discovery or pursuit would mean a violation other vital interests or needs, and provided that it is sufficiently imperative or passionate. In periods when there are definite and severe taboos against pleasures of the flesh, like the Victorian era, yielding to pleasures of the flesh has often meant incurring a realistic danger. An unmarried young lady, for example, had to face a real danger of tortured conscience or social disgrace, and those yielding to masturbation urges had to face a real danger in so far as they were subject to threats of castration or warnings of fatal physical injuries or mental disease. The same holds true today for certain perverted pleasures of the flesh, such as exhibitionistic drives or impulses directed toward minors. In our times, however, as far as “normal” pleasures of the flesh are concerned, our attitude has become so lenient that admitting them to ourselves, or carrying them out in reality, involves serious danger much less frequently; hence there is less factual reason for apprehension on that score. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15

Now no matter how you may interpret the causes of this pattern, one central feature is clear—the encounter was lacking. Is not this the essence of escapist art? Everything is there but the encounter. And is not this the central feature of many kinds of artistic exhibitionism—what Rank calls the artiste manqué? We cannot make a valid distinction by saying one kind of art is neurotic and the other healthy. Who is to judge that? We can only say that in exhibitionistic, escapist forms of creativity there is no real encounter, no engagement with reality. That is not what the young man is after; he wants to be passively accepted and admired by mother. In cases of this kind it is accurate to speak of regression in the negative sense. However, the crucial point is that we are dealing with something quite different from creativity. The concept of encounter also enables us to make clearer the important distinction between talent and creativity. Talent may well have its neurological correlates and can be studied as given to a person. A man or woman may have the talent whether one uses it or not; talent can probably be measured in the person as such. However, creativity can be seen only in the act. If we were purists, we would not speak of a creative person, but only of a creative act. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15

Sometimes, in the case of Picasso, we have great talent and at the same time great encounter and, as a result, great creativity. Often times we have great talent and truncated creativity, as many people felt in the case of Scott Fitzgerald. Many times we have a highly creative person who seems not to have much talent. It was said of the novelist Thomas Wolfe, who was one of the highly creative figures of the American scene, that he was a “genius without talent.” However, he was so creative because he threw himself so completely into his material and the challenge of saying it—he was great because of the intensity of his encounter. So, creativity can channel people away from pleasures of the flesh and anxiety and provide them with a healthy outlet for their soul. We have to begin by cultivating intuitive feelings. These come to us infrequently at first and so the process is a gradual and long one. Eventually, we reach a point, a very advanced point, where the ego sees its own limitations, perceives its helplessness and dependence, realizes that it cannot lift itself up into the final illuminations. It should then surrender itself wholly to the Overself and cast its further development on the mercy and Grace of the power beyond it. It will then have to go through a waiting period of seeming inactivity, spiritual stagnation, and inability to feel the fervor of devotion which it formally felt. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15

This is a kind of dark night of the soul. Then, slowly, it begins to come out of this phase, which is often accompanied by mental depression and emotional frustration, into a higher phase where it feels utterly resigned to the will of God or destiny, calm and peaceful in the sense of accepting that higher will and not in any joyous sense, patiently waiting for the time when the infinite wisdom will bring it what it once sought so ardently but what it is not as detached from it is detached from Worldly ambitions. After this phase there will come suddenly unexpectedly and in the dead of night, as it were, a tremendous Realization of the egoless state, a tremendous feeling of liberation from itself as it has known itself, a tremendous awareness of the infinitude, universality, and intelligence of life. With that, new perceptions into the Laws of the cosmos will suddenly unfold themselves. The seekers must thus pass from intuition into insight. It is the making of the being ready, the preparation of one’s mind and heart, which takes so much time, so many years even in many cases; but the enlightenment itself is a single short happening: the effect remains permanently. Call upon the Lord, that his kingdom may go forth upon the Earth, that the inhabitants thereof may receive it, and be prepared for the days to come, in which the Son of Man shall come down in Heaven, clothed in the brightness of his glory, to meet the kingdom of God which is set up on the Earth. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15