You simply do not know the flesh. The concept is too complex for you. What do you think taught your souls your souls in Sheol their perfection? Was it not suffering? Yes, they enter perhaps twisted and burnt if they have failed to see beyond suffering on Earth, and some may disappear. But in Sheol, over the centuries of suffering and longing, others are purged and purified. Since we generally think of aggression as being destructive, I shall not need to illustrate this beyond a brief personal example. I was engaged to speak at a conference of the junior executives of the American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation. This conference was part of a six-week training session held on the campus of a New England college and, I assumed, an expression of the humanistic interest of AT&T. I had spoken at such conferences before with gratifying results. However, I found, to my surprise and some bewilderment, that my talk was confronted with strange, invisible barriers. I have always been convinced of the truth of Walt Whiteman’s statement that the “audience makes the speech.” This audience seemed alert and fresh bur, try as I would, I just could not communicate my main ideas. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

At a recess I discovered that, for this part of their training, these young executives (being judged for possible promotion to the few top positions in the corporation) were being trained to be “aggressive,” and that AT&T has retained a couple of professors from college to grade the men and women on how efficiently they could shoot holes in the arguments presented. What I was really facing was not an audience that wanted to learn or even a group present for the pleasures of intellectual stimulation. Its aim was entirely different; the audience was listening not to what I said, but for the errors, the weaknesses in the argument. This was, in short, a sophisticated form of listening geared toward putting down the speaker. The aggression had a weighty competitive reward, namely promotion to high office. This is an example of noncommunication. Such an attitude will successfully inhibit any speaker; you cannot bring forth your ideas unless you feel that they will at least be heard. This does not mean that they will be agreed with; but it does mean that they will be listened to for their own intrinsic merit. If I had known about the purpose of this audience at the outset I could have simply changed the whole theme of my talk to aggression and its purposes and effect; then we would at least have been communicating. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

Many are wondering, as we speak about communication, how is the mass market formed on which popular culture is sold and perpetuated? In the first place, individual taste has become uneconomic for the purchaser and for the seller, and this effectively stunts its growth. People are prepared accordingly throughout the educational process. Group acceptance, shared taste, takes the place of authority and of individual moral and aesthetic judgment and standards. However, people often move from group to group. Any tastes therefore that cannot be sloughed off—an individual taste, not easily divided from the person in whom it dwells—becomes an obstacle to adaptation. Success is hindered by a discriminating personal taste which expresses or continues an individual personality, and success is fostered by an unselective appetite. Numerous precautions are taken, beginning in nursery school (itself hardly an individualizing institution) to avoid elaboration of personal discernment and to instill fear of separation from the group. Group acceptance is stressed through formal and informal popularity contests, teamwork, and polling. Education altogether stresses group instruction. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

For instance, the size of one’s classes and the class average, not the qualities of individual pupils, are often considered the measure of the teacher. The student oneself is so much treated as part of a group that, except in higher education (which is only partly immune), one may be automatically promoted with one’s group regardless of individual achievement or variation. Finally, the surviving individual talent is instructed not to cultivate, but to share, itself. The writer gives a writing course, the scholar lectures and writes popularizations, the beauty models of appears on TV, and the singer deserts the concert hall for the juke box. The aggregate effect of advertising is to bring about wide sharing of tastes. The actual social function of advertising is not to mold tastes in any particular way, nor to debase it. This goes for manufacturers, publishers and movie-makers too. They are quite content to produce and advertise what people want—be it T.S. Eliot or Edgar Guest, Kierkegaard or Norman Vincent Peale, “September Morn” or mobiles. It does not matter what people want to buy as long as they want to buy enough of the same thing to make mas production possible. Advertising helps to unify tastes, to de-individualize it and thus to make mass production possible. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

There is no evidence to support conspiracy theories which hold that wicked capitalists, through advertising and mass media, deliberately (or stupidly) debauch the originally good, natural tastes of the masses. Mass production—capitalist or socialist—demands unified taste; efficiency (or profitableness) is dependent only on its being shared by sizeable groups. Can one say anything about mass tastes beyond saying that they are widely shared? Are they homogenized on the lowest common denominator? There seem to be no good reasons to assume that the lowest tastes are most widespread. One may say something of the sort about some crowds untied temporarily by crude common appetites at the expense of reason, restraint and refinement. However, why consider consumers a crowd? Even the fare offered by the entertainment media is usually consumed by people separately or in very small groups. (Except for movies, but moviegoers are isolated from each other though they are together.) Producers have no interest in lowering tastes or in catering to low rather than high taste. They seek to provide for a modal average of tastes which through advertising they try to make as congruent with the mean average as possible. Neither average can be identical with the lowest common denominator. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

Yet in one sense consumers are treated as a crowd: their individual tastes are not catered to. The mass-produced article need not aim low, but it must aim at an average of tastes. In satisfying all (or at least many) individual tastes in some respects, it violates each in other respect. For there are—so far—no average persons having average tastes. Averages are but statistical composites. A mass-produced article, while reflecting nearly everybody’s tastes to some extent, is unlikely to embody anybody’s taste fully. This is one source of the sense of violation which is rationalized vaguely in theories about deliberate debasement of taste. The sense of violation springs from the same thwarting of individuality that makes prostitution (or promiscuity) psychologically offensive. The cost of inexpensive and easy availability, of mass production, is wide appeal; and the cost of wide appeal is de-individualization of the relationship between those who cater and those who are catered to; and of the relationship of both to the object of the transaction. By using each other indiscriminately as impersonal instruments (the seller for profit, the buyer for sensation—or, in promiscuity, both parties for sensation and relief of anxiety) the man or woman of the night and his or her client sacrifice to seemingly more urgent demands the self which, in order to grow, needs continuity, discrimination and completeness in relationships. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

Though profit and sensation can be achieved by depersonalization, the satisfaction ultimately sought cannot be, for the very part of personality in which it is felt—the individual self—is stunted and atrophied, at least if de-individualization continues long enough and is comprehensive. Ultimately, the sense of violation too is numbered. Now, the depersonalizing effects of the mass production of some things—say, electric clocks—may be minor as far as consumers are concerned and more than offset by the advantages of affordability. The same cannot be said for mass entertainment or education. And though some individuals may, society cannot have one without the other. The effects of mass production on people as producers and consumers are likely to be cumulative. Besides, even goods that seem purely utilitarian include elements of non-utilitarian, of aesthetic and psychic (for instance, prestige) appeal. Indeed, less than half of consumer expenditure goes for the satisfaction of simple biological needs. (More, perhaps, in the lowest income groups, and much less still in the higher ones.) One may work toward enlightenment and inner freedom, to the aspiration which draws one most. Whatever helps consciousness come nearer to high moods is a useful spiritual path to someone. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

Distinctions of this kind are necessarily hazy, but if cigarettes, newspapers, television, drinks, shaving lotion or lipstick, the prestige location of one’s Cresleigh Home, the fashionableness of one’s clothing, and so forth, are taken to satisfy nonbiological needs—and we can do without them biologically—then we are motivated by psychic needs in spending most of our money. This, of course, is not in itself objectionable—except that the processes by which many of these needs now arise and are stilled bring to mind the processes by which bread is now mass produced. In milling and baking, bread is deprived of any taste whatever and of all vitamins. Some of the vitamins are then added again (taste is provided by advertising). Quite similarly with all mass-produced articles. They can no more express the individual tastes of producers than that of consumers. They become impersonal objects, however pseudo-personalized. Producers and consumers go through the mass production mill to come out homogenized and de-characterized—only it does not seem possible to reinject the individualities which have been ground out, the way the vitamins are added to enrich bread. The human relations industry tried to do just that and it doubtlessly supplies a demand and can be helpful, just as chemical sedatives or stimulants can be. However, it seems unlikely that any assembly line—including manned by human relations counselors—can give more than the illusion of individuality. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

To produce more, people work under de-individualizing conditions and are rewarded by high income and leisure. Thus they can and do consume more. However, as consumers, they must once more rid themselves of individual tastes. The benefits of mass production are reaped only by matching de-individualizing work with equally de-individualizing consumption. The more discontinuous income earning and spending become physically, the more continuous they seem to become psychologically. Failure to repress individual personality in or after working hours is costly; in the end the production of standardized things by persons demands also the production of standardized persons. This intellectual preparation and emotional purification is a task that strains being’s faculties to the extreme. Nobody therefore need expect it to be other than a lifetime’s task. Few even succeed in finishing it in a single lifetime—a whole series is required in most cases. Nature has taken a very long time to bring beings to one’s present state, so she is in no hurry to complete their development in any particular reincarnation. Yet such is the mystery of grace, that this is always a grand possibility, always the sublime X-factor in every case. However, the individual aspirant cannot afford to gamble with this chance, which, after all, is a rare one. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

One must rely on one’s personal efforts, on one’s own strivings, more than anything else, to being one nearer to the desired goal. In a material sense, this assembly-line shaping, packaging and distributing of persons, of life, occurs already. Most people perch unsteadily in mass-produced, impermanent dwellings throughout their lives. They are born in hospitals, fed in cafeterias, married in churches or castles or mansions or rose gardens. After terminal care they perish in hospitals, are shelved briefly in funeral homes, and are finally incinerated or put in the ground. On each of these occasions—how many others?—efficiency and economy are obtained and individuality and continuity stripped off. If one lives and dies discontinuously and promiscuously in anonymous surroundings, it becomes hard to identify with anything even the self, and uneconomic to be attached to anything, even the self, and uneconomic to be attached to anything, even the self, and uneconomic to be attached to anything even one’s own individuality. The rhythm of individual life loses autonomy, spontaneity, and distinction when it is tired into a stream of traffic and carried along according to the speed of the road, as we are, in going to work, or play, or in doing anything. Traffic lights signal when to stop and go, and much as we seem to be driving we are driven. To stop spontaneously, to exclaim, Verweile doch Du bist so schoen (Stay, for you are beautiful), may not lose the modern Faust his soul—but it will cause a traffic jam. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

The egoism which falsifies our true sense of being and the materialism which distorts our true sense of reality are maladies which can hardly be cured by our own efforts. Only by calling, in trust and love, on a higher power, whether it be embodied in another man or in ourself, can their mesmeric spell ultimately be broken. Yet it is our own efforts which first must initiate the cure. Turning inward upon oneself might be retiring to a fool’s paradise or into a real one. To make progress inwardly is ultimately all that matters, everything else passes except the fruit of our spiritual efforts. Mysticism is the theory and practice of a technique whereby a being seeks to establish direct personal contact with spiritual being. The ideal here may not set at becoming a sinless saint but at becoming an enlightened and balanced human being. The ultimate point to be attained is fully humanity. One alone who has developed on all sides in this way is fully human. It is one sign of the sage who lives in perfect detachment that one does not miss an enjoyable experience which has passed away, and another sign that one is not afraid of this passing while one is enjoying it. What happened in all those earlier years is now veiled history to the enlightened being; what happens now, in the Eternal Now, is the important significant matter. Thus one’s mind is free from old burdens and errors. Yet, if needed, dead events can be resuscitated by intense concentration. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

The background of one’s mind is far away from everyday consciousness as if invisible, but it can spring instantly forward if needed. There is no split between higher and lower mind: they are in harmony but the kind of activity is different. It would not be correct to say that one’s consciousness splits itself into two. The proficient can mentally turn inside from the busyness of one’s environment and within a few moments find the divine presence there. One part of one can enter frequently into cerebral thinking but another part can drop out of this into celestial experience. Our work remains active in the foreground of consciousness, while our wisdom remains in the background as its inspirer. One moves in the World of bodily senses and their surrounding objects without losing the Presence, being held by it rather than holding on to it. Primitive society was organized for a certain kind of production of life, a ritual technique of manufacture of the things of the World that used the dimension of the invisible. Beings used their ingenuity to fill one’s stomach, to get control of nature for the benefit of one’s organism; this is only logical and natural. However, this stomach-centered characteristic of all culture is something we easily lose sight of.  #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

 One reason is that beings were never content to just stop at food: they wanted more in life in the widest sense of the term—exactly what we would expect an organism to want if it could somehow contrive to be self-conscious about life and death and the need to continue experiencing. Food is only one part of that quest; being quickly saw beyond mere physical nourishment and had to conceive ways to qualify for immortality. In this way the simple food quest was transmuted into a quest for spiritual excellence, for goodness and purity. All of being’s higher spiritual ideals were a continuation of the original quest for energy-power. All morality is fundamentally a matter of power, of the power of organisms to continue existing by reaching for a superhuman purity. It is all right for a being to talk about spiritual aims; what one really means is aims for merits that qualify one for eternity. This too, of course, is the logical development of organismic ambitions. Thus the sacrificial lamb is no longer the young of an ewe slaughtered at the Paschal Feast as the embodiment of some god in order to promote the life of the crops, but a symbol expressing a sum of innocence, purity, gentleness, self-sacrifice, redemption and divinity. Doubtless many will be scandalized at any attempt to derive the cure of souls for the cravings of the stomach. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

Even so the rising generation may find cause not for anger, but for wonder, in the rapidity with which beings, so late emerged from the brute, has proceeded from the conquest of matter to that of the spirit. No one would dare gainsay the profoundly unselfish and spiritual emotions that beings are capable of. As a creature one is most attuned to the living miracle of the cosmos and responds to that miracle with a fineness and a nobility that are in themselves wondrous; the whole thing is surely part of a divine mystery. However, the step from the stomach quest to the spiritual one is not in itself as idealistic as some would seem to make it out. The earning of spiritual points is the initial impetus of the search for purity, however much some few noble souls might transmute that in an unselfish direction. For most beings faith in spirituality is merely a step into continued life, the exact extension of the organism stomach project. Many people what is going on in the mind that ideas they were pondering should break through at a sudden moment. Most striking at first is this appearance of sudden illumination, a manifest sign of long, unconscious prior work. The role of this unconscious work in mathematical invention appears to me, incontestable, and traces of it can be found in other cases where it is less evident. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

Often when one works at a hard question, nothing good is accomplished at the first attack. Then one takes a rest, longer or shorter, and sits down anew to the work. During the first half-hour, as before, nothing is found, and then all of a sudden the decisive idea presents itself to the mind. It might be said that the conscious work has been more fruitful because it has been interrupted and the rest has given back to the mind its force and freshness. The appearance of the illumination is not due to the relief from fatigue—for instance, simply taking a rest. It is more probably that this rest has been filled out wit unconscious work and that the result of this work has afterward revealed itself to the geometer or someone seriously considering the solution to a problem. Only the revelation, instead of coming during a walk or a journey, has happened during a period of conscious work, but independently of this work which plays at most a role of excitant, as if it were the goad stimulating the results already reached during rest, but remaining unconscious, to assume the conscious form. When it comes to the conditions of unconscious work, it is possible, and of a certainty it is only fruitful, if it is on the one hand preceded and on the other hand followed by a period of conscious work. These sudden inspirations (and the examples already cited sufficiently prove this) never happen expect after some days of voluntary effort which has appeared absolutely fruitless and whence nothing good seems to have come, where the way taken seems totally astray.  #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

These efforts then have not been as sterile as one thinks; they have set agoing the unconscious machine and without them it would not have moved and would have produced nothing. The aspirant’s decision to aim for the highest Goal is the governing factor: if one sticks to this decision, one is bound to succeed sooner or later. The question now arises: What is this Goal? It is the fulfilment of the Real Purpose of life, as apart from the lower purposes of earning a livelihood, rearing a family, and so forth. The aspirant will become fully Self-conscious—as aware of the divine Overself as one now is of one’s Earthly body. And this achievement will be perpetual, not just a matter of occasional glimpse or fleeting intuitions. Even though the Quest has become more difficult under modern conditions, it has not become impossible. The timeworn means t this end must simply be brought up to date. What are the means? They are thought, feeling, will, and intuition used in a special way. This constitutes the fourfold path, or Quest. “And now, behold, my joy is great, even unto fulness, because of you, and also this generation; yea, and even the Father rejoiceth, and also the holy Angels, because of you and this generation; for none of them are lost,” reports 3 Nephi 30. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16