If I never lay eyes on you again after tonight, if I never come across a single shred of evidence that you really exist or were here with me, or that any of these things were said, I will still be transformed by you as I am not. You are my miracle of sorts. You are greater proof than millions of mortals have ever been given. You are proof not only of the supernatural and the mysterious and the wondrous, you are proof of exactly what I believe! The central fact of modern history in the West—by which we mean the long period from the end of the Middle Ages to the present—is unquestionably the decline of religion. No doubt, the churches are still very powerful organizations; there are millions of churchgoers all over the World; and even the purely intellectual possibilities of religious belief look better to church people now than in the bleak days of self-confident nineteenth-century materialism. A few years ago there was even considerable talk about a religious revival, and some popular and patriotic periodicals such as Life magazine gave a great deal of space to it; but the talk has by now pretty much died down, the movement, if any, subsided, and the American public buys more automobiles and television sets than every before. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

When Life magazine promotes a revival of religion, one is only too painfully aware from the nature of this publication that religion is considered as being in the national interest; one could scarcely have a clearer indication of the broader historical fact that in the modern World the nation-state, a thoroughly secular institution, outranks any church. The decline of religion in modern times means simply that religion is no longer the uncontested center and ruler of being’s life, and that the church is no longer the final and unquestioned home and asylum of one’s being. The deeper significance of this change does not even appear principally at the purely intellectual level, in loss of belief, though this loss due to the critical inroads of science has been a major historical cause of the decline. The waning of religion is a much more concrete and complex fact than a mere change in conscious outlook; it penetrates the deepest strata of being’s total psychic life. It is indeed one of the major stages in being’s psychic evolution. Religion to medieval beings was not so much a theological system as a solid psychological matrix surrounding the individual’s life from birth to death, sanctifying and enclosing all its ordinary and extraordinary occasions in sacrament and ritual. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

The loss of the church was the loss of a whole system of symbols, images, dogmas, and rites which has the psychological validity of immediate experience, and within which hitherto the whole psychic life of Western beings have been safely contained. In losing religion, beings lost the concrete connection with a transcendent realm of being; one was set free to deal with this World in all its brute objectivity. However, one was bound to feel homeless in such a World, which no longer answered the needs of one’s spirit. A home is the accepted framework which habitually contains our life. To lose one’s psychic container is to be cast adrift, to become a wanderer upon the face of the Earth. Henceforth, in seeking one’s own human completeness beings would have to do for oneself what one once had done for one, unconsciously, by the church, through the medium of its sacramental life. Naturally enough, being’s feeling of homelessness did not makes itself felt for some time; the Renaissance being was still enthralled by a new and powerful vision of mastery over the whole Earth. No believer, no matter how sincere, could possibly write the Divine Comedy today, even is one possessed a talent equal to Dante’s. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

Visions and symbols do not have the immediate and overwhelming reality for us that they had for the medieval poet. In the Divine Comedy the whole of nature is merely a canvas upon which the religious symbol and image are painted. Western beings have spent more six hundred years—over half a millennium—in stripping nature of these projections and turning it into a realm of neutral objects which one’s science may control. Thus it could hardly be expected that the religious image would have the same fore for us as it did for Dante. This is simply a psychic fact within human history; psychic facts have just as much historical validity as the facts that we now, unlike the beings of Dante’s time, travel in airplanes and work in factories regulated by computing machines. A great work of art can never be repeated—the history of art shows us time and again that literal imitation leads to pastiche—because it springs from the human soul, which evolves like everything else in nature. This point must be insisted upon, contrary to the view of some of our more enthusiastic medievalist who picture the psychic containment of medieval beings as a situation of human completeness to which we must return. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

History has never allowed beings to return to the past in any total sense. And our psychological problems cannot be solved by a regression to a past state in which they had not yet been brought into being. On the other hand, when beings fail to recognize that every major step forward by beings of the past and present entails some loss, the sacrifice of an older security and the creation and heightening of new tensions, enlightened and progressive thinkers are equally blind. (We should bear this in mind against some of the criticism of Existentialism as a philosophy that has unbearably heightened human tensions: it did not create those tensions, which were already at work in the soul of modern beings, but simply sought to give them philosophic expression, rather than evading them by pretending they were not there.) It is far from true that the passage from the Middle Ages to modern times is the substitutional of a rational for a religious outlook; on the contrary, the whole of medieval philosophy is one of unbounded rationalism in comparison with modern thought. Certainly, the Whole natural World, and particularly this natural Would as it opens toward God as First Cause should be transparently assessible to human reason. However, it is also possible that the limits of human reason have very radically shrunk. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

Human reason, in some cases, has been applied like an acid solvent to all things human and divine. The rationalism of the medieval philosopher was contacted by the mysteries of faith and strict and rigid doctrines, which were altogether beyond the grasp of human reason, but were nevertheless powerfully real and meaningful to beings as symbols that kept the vital circuit open between reason and emotion, between the rational and non-rational in the human psyche. Hence, this rationalism of the medieval philosophers does not end with the attenuated, bleak, or grim picture of beings we find in the modern rationalists. Here, once again, the condition under which the philosopher creates one’s philosophy, like that under which the poet creates one’s poetry, has to do with deeper levels of one’s being—deeper than the merely conscious level of having or not having a rational point of view. We could not expect to produce a St. Thomas Aquinas, any more than a Dante, today. The total psychic condition of beings—of which after all thinking is one of the manifestations—has evolved too radically. Which may be why present-day Thomists have on the whole remained singularly unconvincing to their contemporaries. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

The true deathlessness must be a changeless one. Consequently it must be an eventless one. However, this does not necessarily mean a boring one. For if we realize our higher individuality, we shall be able to hold consciously and unaffected such an immortal life within our hearts whilst entering into relations with a changeful World process without them. And this will be true whether the World be on our present physical level of perception or not, whether in the flesh or out of it. One who has reached this degree will be always poised in the Overself, always aware of one’s identity with its inimitable nature yet also conscious of one’s limitations as an ego. This may seem queer and contradictory yet the being will never feel oneself pulled in different directions but, on the contrary, will feel a perfect harmony between the human and the divine. When all else is but a heap of ashes, this, once established, will remain. Insight always remains with its possessor whereas intuition only comes and goes. Insight deals solely with the Real whereas intuition deal with the phenomenal. Amid all this variegated World-activity, the Real remains unchanged and unchangeable just as the dream-World which is emanated from the mind of a dreamer leaves one’s mind unaffected and unaltered. It never changes. Hence the first characteristic of insight—that faculty in beings which can perceive this reality—is likewise that it never changes. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

While still continuing to feel the presence and enjoy the peace of the Infinite, one attends to ordinary everyday affairs. However, it is inevitable that the attention demanded by the later forces some reduction in awareness of the former. One’s work in the World, one’s life in the home, and even one’s pleasures in society will not at any moment stray outside one’s divinized consciousness but will always be held within it. One will remain in relation with the mystical part of one, the part that is forever alone. What I say here appears perhaps to many an obscure and foolish saying, since they even boast of never having been in dread. However, doubtless one should not be in dread of being, of finite things, but only the being who has gone through the dread of possibility is educated to have no dread—not because one avoids the dreadful things of life, but because they always are weak in comparison with those of possibility. If on the other hand the speaker means that the great things about one is that one has never been in dread, then I shall gladly initiate one into my explanation, that this comes from the fact that one is spirit-less. If the individual cheats the possibility by which one is to be educated, one never reaches faith; one’s faith remains the shrewdness of finitude, as one’s school was that of finitude. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

However, beings cheat possibility in every way—if they did not, one has only to stick one’s head out of the window, and one would see enough for possibility to begin its exercises forthwith. “One thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,” reports Philippians 3.13. These very personal words of Paul, which appear in one of his most personal letters, lead us to ask—what did he want to forget? What do we forget, and what so we remember? What is the function of forgetting in a being’s life and in the household of the Universe? Above all, what should we remember and what should we forget? However, in raising these questions, another more disturbing one comes to mind—what does it mean for a thing, for a being, to be forgotten? When we are forgotten, in parts of our being, or totally, for a period, or for life, what does it mean for us? What does the thought we may be forgotten in eternity do to us? When he says of the dead that “the memory of them is dead,” that they are forgotten “with their love and their hate,” and according to the psalm, that their place knows them no more, how can we endure the words of the Preacher? #RandolpHarris 9 of 18

The simple word “forget” can plunge us into the deepest riddles of life and death, of time and eternity. The Bible abounds in its use. For forgetting and remembering are two of the most astonishing qualities by which the divine image of a being is made manifest. I ask you to concentreate with me on the myster of forgetting and remembering and of being forgotten, knowing in advance how limited our words and insight and courage must be in the face of such a mystery. Let us first consider forgetting and remembering, and then being forgotten and perhaps also being remembered. The biggest deceiver in religio-mystical life is the institutional establishment, the organizational group. For here the followers have the experience of being nourished when in actuality only the social need is being nourished. Here the truth and its virtue, beauty, strength, reality, and above all its transcendence, which is totally outside ordinary Worldly experience, are imitated effectually and successfully. So the followers are satisfied and fall into complacence. The Quest is deserted and the copy which is substituted for it has the advantage of being much easier and pleasanter for all concerned. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

The most commonplace life has events enough, no doubt, but the question is whether the possibility in the individuality is honest towards itself. It is recounted of an Indian hermit who for two years had lived upon dew, that he came once to the city, tasted wine, and then became addicted to drink. This story, like every other of the sort, can be understood in many ways, one can make it comic, one can make it tragic; but the being who is educated by possibility has more than enough to occupy one in such a story. Instantly one is absolutely identified with that unfortunate being, one knows no finite evasion by which one might escape. Now the dread of possibility holds one as its prey, until it can deliver one saved into the hands of faith. In no other place does one find repose, for every other point of rest is mere nonsense, even though in being’s eyes it is shrewdness. This is the reason why possibility is so absolutely educative. No being has ever become so unfortunate in reality that there was not some little residue left to one, and, as common sense observes quite truly, if a being is canny, one will find a way. However, one who went through the curriculum of misfortune offered by possibility lost everything, absolutely everything, in a way that no one has lost it in reality. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

If in this situation one did not behave falsely towards possibility, if one did not attempt to talk around the dread which would save one, then one received everything back again, as in reality no one ever did even if one received everything double, for the pupil of possibility received in infinity, whereas the soul of the other expired in the finite. No one ever sank so deep in reality that one could not sink deeper, or that there might not be one or another sunk deeper than one. However, one who sank in the possibility has an eye too dizzy to see the measuring rod which, Brenda, Kelly, and Dylan hold out as a straw to the downing being; one’s ear is closed so that one is just as good as most of them. One sank absolutely, but then in turn one floated up from the depth of the abyss, lighter now than all that is oppressive and dreadful in life. Only I do not deny that one is educated by possibility is exposed—not to the danger of bad company and dissoluteness of various sorts, as are those who are educated by the finite, but—to one danger of downfall, and that is self-slaughter. If at the beginning of one’s education one misunderstands the anguish of dread, so that it does not lead one to faith but away from faith, then one is lost. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

On the other hand, one who is educated by possibility remains with dread, does not allow oneself to be deceived by its countless counterfeits, one recalls the past precisely; then at last the attacks of dread, though they are fearful, are not such that one flees from them. For one dread becomes serviceable spirit which against its will leads one wither one would go. Then when it announces itself, when it craftily insinuates that it has invented a new instrument of torture far more terrible than anything employed before, one does not recoil, still less does one attempt to hold it off with clamor and noise, but one bids it welcome, one hails it solemnly, as Sokrates solemnly flourished the poisoned goblet, he shuts himself up wit it, he says, as a patient says to the surgeon when a painful operation is about to begin, “Now I am ready.” The dread enters into his soul and searches it thoroughly, constraining out of him all the finite and the petty, and leading him hence whither he would go. When one or another extraordinary event occurs in life, when a World-historical hero gathers heroes about one and accomplished heroic feats, when a crisis occurs and everything becomes significant, then beings wish to be in it, for these are things which educate. Quite possibly. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

However, there is a much simpler way of being educated much more fundamentally. Take the pupil of possibility, set one in the midst of the Jutland heath where nothing happens, where the greatest event is that a partridge flies up noisily, and one experiences everything more perfectly, more precisely, more profoundly, than the being who was applauded upon the stage of universal history, in cause one was not educated by possibility. The establishment of spiritual ashrams or communal colonies is an enterprise of which, we hope, we shall never be guilty. Such institutions usually find an enthusiastic response from persons who like to join cranky cults, indulge in endless tea-table talk, and worship leaders suffering from inflated egos. We however are working for those who have understood that it is better to worship God in solitude than in public hall or church and who believed us when we constantly repeated that institutions invariably end as the greatest obstructions to the progress of genuine spirituality. Their material expansion is usually taken as a sign of the expansion of spiritual rot. Just as the League of Nations erected magnificent million-pound buildings as its headquarters only a short while prior to its total collapse, so these institutions flourish externally at the cost of their internal life. We ask those who have faith in our teachings to keep clear of spiritual organizations, unless you are sure they are safe and righteous. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

The words “annihilate,” “destroy,” “fight,” “tear out”—these are surely aggressive. Aggression has many more facets than is customarily recognized. In contrast to self-assertion, which may be simply a holding fast—“Here I stand; you can come this far and no farther”—aggression is a moving out, a thrust toward the person or thing seen as the adversary. Its aim is to cause a shift of power for the interests of one’s self or what one is devoted to. Aggression is the action that moves into another’s territory to accomplish a restructuring of power. This level in our spectrum occurs because of the individual’s or group’s conviction that the restructuring cannot come by self-affirmation or self-assertion. Perhaps the aggressor wants land and resources, as nations do when they annex the other’s territory in war. Or perhaps the aggressor has an intellectual stake in the change, as Mondrian did in his new art forms. Or perhaps the aggression grows out of a hated of injustice, or it has a spiritual aim, like that of the abolitionists. Whatever the aim and motive may be, and without reference at the moment to when it is justified and when it is not, aggression itself consists of the endeavor to seize some of the power, prestige, or status of the other for one’s self or for the ideas to which one is devoted. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

The question does arise, however, as to the conditions which generate this jealousy. Are jealous reactions as they are observed in sibling rivalry and in the Oedipus complex bound to arise in every child, or are the provoked by definite conditions? Dr. Freud’s observations concerning the Oedipus complex were made on neurotic persons. In them he found that high-pitched jealousy reactions concerning one of the parents were sufficiently destructive in kind to arouse fear and likely to exert lasting disturbing influences on character formation and personal relations. Observing this phenomenon frequently in neurotic persons of our time, he assumed it to be Universal. Not only did one assume the Oedipus complex to be the vary kernel of neuroses, but also one tried to understand complex phenomena in other cultures on this basis. It is this generalization that is doubtful. Some jealousy reactions do arise easily in our culture in the relations between siblings as well as in those between parents and children, as they occur in every group living closely together. However, there is no evidence that destructive and lasting jealousy reactions—and it is these we think of when talking of the Oedipus complex or of sibling rivalry—are in our culture, not to speak of other cultures, so common as Dr. Freud assumes. They are in general human reasons but are artificially generated through the atmosphere in which a child grows up. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

Suffice it to mention the lack of warmth and the spirit of competitiveness contribute to jealousy. Besides, neurotic parents who create the kind of atmosphere we have discussed are usually discontented with their lives, have no satisfactory emotional or relationships in pleasures of the flesh and hence are inclined to make their children the objects of their attention. They lose their need for affection on the children by excessively meddling in their lives, and this can go on well into adulthood. If a parent is jealous of their child, because a child as an adult has freedom and the opportunities that the parent does not, the parent may try to profit off their child’s demise so he or she can live the type of lifestyle he or she thinks one deserves. Some parents choose to skate by in life, instead of working for what they want, and are often stuck in relationships and with material items that are nice, but they do not find satisfying. Therefore, exploiting their child for profit may be very appealing. We, however, are accustomed to believe that a hostile opposition to the family or to some member of it is unfortunate, of course, if the child had to fight against the actions of neurotic parents. If there are good reasons for opposition, however, the danger for the child’s character formation is possessed not so much in feeling or expressing a protest, but in repressing it. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

There are several dangers arising from the repression of criticism, protest or accusations, and one is that the child is likely to take all the blame on itself and feel unworthy of love; the implications of this situation we shall discuss later on. The danger that concerns us here is that repressed hostility may create anxiety and start the development we have discussion. There are several reasons, effective in various degrees and combinations, why a child who grows up in such an atmosphere will repress hostility: helplessness, fear, love or feelings of guilt. The increase in violence and destructiveness on a national and World scale has turned the attention of professionals and the general public alike to the theoretical inquiry into the nature and causes of aggression. Such a concern is not surprising. It is due to the lack of spiritual vitality, where institutions become more important than the teaching and the Worldly strength of the human-made organization is preserved by the sacrifice of its mortal strength. However, we establish institutions to uplift beings. The institutions turn themselves by degrees of vested interests. The original purpose is then lost and a selfish purpose replaces it. The consequence is that beings are both affected and infected by this moral deterioration of the institutions. They are no longer helped to rise, nor even prevented from falling. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18