Who Can Describe the Dismay of Once and for All Renouncing One’s Faith in the Individual Immortality of the Soul?

I am so embarrassed. America destroys her big houses. Some of them do not even last a hundred years. This place is magnificent. I like the big columns. The portico, the pediment, it is all rather glorious. Perfect Greek Revival, East Lake, and Craftman styles. How can I be ashamed of such thing? I am a strange creature, very gentle I think, and out of kilter with my own time. I did not belong to this time. The threads of my life, they were not woven into any certain fabric. The young are eternally desperate. And books, they offer one hope—that a whole Universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that new Universe, one is saved. Imagine—each new person an entire Universe. However, I do not think we want to allow it. We are too jealous and fearful. But we should allow it, and then our existence would be wonderous as we went from soul to soul. Sometimes books are the only thing that keeps us alive. What seemed to the less affluent people of our part of the World a much more serious calamity than any natural cataclysm was what happened after the Earthquake. The State reconstruction program was carried out to the accompaniment of innumerable intrigues, frauds, thefts, swindles, embezzlements, and dishonesty of every kind. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14

An acquaintance of mine, who had been sacked by one of the government departments concerned, gave me some information of this sort about certain criminal acts which were being committed by the head engineers of the department. Impressed rather than surprised, I hasted to pass on the facts to some persons in authority, whom I knew to be upright and honest, so that they could denounce the criminals. Far from denying the truth of what I told them, my honorable friends were in a position to confirm it. However, even then, they advised me not to get mixed up in it or to get worked up, in my simplicity, about things of that kind. “You are young,” they said to me affectionately, “you must finish your studies, you have got your career to think of, you should not compromise yourself with things that do not concern you.” “Of course,” I said, “it would be better for the denunciation to come from grown-up people like yourselves, people with authority, rather than from a boy of seventeen.” They were horrified. “We are not madmen,” they answered. “We shall mind our own business and nobody else’s.” I then talked the matter over with some reverend priests, and then with some of my more courageous relations. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14

All of them, while admitting that they were already aware of the shameful things that were happening, begged me not to get mixed up in that hornets’ nest, but to think of my studies, of my career, and of my future. “With pleasures,” I replied, “but is not one of you ready to denounce the thieves?” “We are not madmen,” they replied, scandalized, “these things have nothing to do with us.” I then began to wonder seriously whether it might not be a good thing to organize, together with some of the other boys, a new “revolution” that would end up with a good bonfire of the corrupt engineers’ offices; but I was dissuaded by the acquaintance who had given me the proof of their crooked dealings: a bonfire, he pointed out, would destroy the proofs of the crimes. He was older and more experienced than myself; he suggested I should get the denunciation printed in some newspaper. However, which newspaper? “There is only one,” he explained, “which could have any interest in publishing your denunciation, and that is the Socialist paper.” So I set to work and wrote three articles, the first of my life, giving a detailed exposure of the corrupt behavior of State engineers in my part of the country, and sent them of to Avanti. The first two were printed at once and aroused much comment among the readers of the paper, but none at all among the authorities. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14

The third article did not appear, because, as I earned later, a leading Socialist intervened with the editorial staff. This showed me that the system of deception and fraud oppressing us was much vaster than at first appeared, and that its invisible ramification extended into Socialism. However, the partial denunciation which had appeared unexpectedly in the press contained enough material for a number of law-suits, or at least for a board of enquiry; but nothing happened. The engineers, whom I had denounced as thieves and bandits and against whom quite specific charges had been leveled, did not even attempt to justify themselves or to issue a general denial. There was a short period of expectancy, and then everyone went back to one’s own affairs. The student who had dared to throw down the challenge was considered, by the most charitably-minded, an impulsive and strange boy. One must remember that the economic poverty of the southern provinces offers small scope for a career to the youths leaving school by the thousand every year. Our only important industry is State employment. This does not require exceptional intelligence, merely a docile disposition and a readiness to toe the line in politics. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14

If they have a minimum of sensitiveness in human relationships, the young men of the South, who have grown up in the atmosphere I have briefly described, tend naturally lean toward anarchy and rebellion. For those still on the threshold of youth, to become a civil servant means renunciation, capitulation, and the mortification of their souls. That is why people say: anarchists at twenty, conservatives at thirty. Nor is the education imparted in schools, whether public or private, designed to strengthen character. Most of the later years of my school-life I spent in private Catholic institutions. Latin and Greek were excellently taught there; the education in private or personal habits was simple and clean; but civic instruction and training were deplorable. Our history teachers were openly critical of the official views; the mythology of the Risorgimento and its heroes (Mazzini, Garibaldi, Victor Emmanuel II, Cavour) were the objects of derision and disparagement; the literature prevalent at the time (Carducci, D’Annunzio) was despised. In so far as this method of teaching developed the pupils’ critical spirit, it has its advantages. However, the same priestly schoolmasters, since they had to prepare us for the State school examinations—and the fame and prosperity of their academies depended on the results we achieved—also taught us, and recommended us to uphold in our examinations, the points of view completely opposed to their own convictions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14

Meanwhile, the State examiners, who knew we came from confessional schools, enjoyed questioning us on the most controversial subjects, and then praising us ironically for the liberal and unprejudiced way in which we had been taught. The falseness, hypocrisy, and double-facedness of all this were so blatant that they could not but perturb anyone with the slightest inborn respect for culture. However, it was equally inevitable that the average unfortunate student ended by considering diplomas, and one’s future jobs in a government office, as the supreme realities of life. “People who are born in this district are really out of luck,” Dr. F. J., a doctor in a village near mine, used to say. “There is no halfway house here; you have got either to rebel or become an accomplice.” He rebelled. He declared himself an anarchist. He made Tolstoyan speeches to the less affluent. He was the scandal of the entire neighborhood, loathed by the rich, despised by the less affluent, and secretly pitted by a few. His post as panel-doctor was finally taken away from him, he literally died of hunger. I realize that the progress which I have been tracing in these pages is too summary to seem anything but strained. And if I touch on this objection now, it is not to refute it or to swear to the absolute truth of my explanations; I can guarantee their sincerity, not their objectivity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14

I am myself sometimes astonished to fine, when I go back over that remote, almost prehistoric, period of our lives with contemporaries, how they cannot remember at all, or only very vaguely, incidents which had a decisive influence on me; whereas on the contrary, they can clearly recall other circumstances which to me were pointless and insignificant. Are they, these contemporaries of mine, all “unconscious accomplices”? And by what destiny or virtue does one, at a certain age, make the important choice, and become “accomplice” or “rebel”? From what source do some people derive their spontaneous intolerance of injustice, even though the injustice affects only others? And when others are having to go hungry, what about the sudden feeling of guilt at sitting down to a well-laden table? And that pride which makes poverty and prison preferable to contempt? I do not know. Perhaps no one knows. At a certain point, even the fullest and deepest confession becomes a mere statement of fact and not an answer. Anyone who has reflected seriously about oneself or others know how profoundly secret are certain decision, how mysterious and unaccountable certain vocation. There was a point in my rebellion where hatred and love coincided; both the facts which justified my indignation and the moral motives which demanded it stemmed directly from the district where I was born. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14

Knowledge drifts in and out of my mind. I devour it and then I lose it and sometimes I cannot reach for any knowledge that I ought to possess. I feel desolate, but then knowledge return or I seek it out in a new source. Within moments we found ourselves in front of the big house. Of course the garden lights were on, brilliantly illuminating the fluted columns to their full height, and all of the many rooms were aglow. In fact, I had a rule on this and had since boyhood, that at four o’clock all chandeliers in the main house has to be lighted, and though I was no longer that boy in the grip of twilight depression, the chandeliers were illuminated by the same clock. This explains, too, why everything I shall ever write up to now, and probably everything I shall ever write, although I have traveled and lived abroad, is concerned solely with this same district, like the rest of the Abruzzi, less affluent people in secular history, and almost entirely Christian and medieval in its formation. The only buildings worthy of note are churches and monasteries. Its only illustrious sons for many centuries have been saints and stone-carvers. The conditions of human existence have always been particularly difficult there; pain has always been accepted there as first among the laws of nature, and the Cross welcomed and honored because of it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14

Franciscanism and anarchy have always been the two most accessible forms of rebellion for lively spirits in our part of the World. The ashes of skepticism have never suffocated, in the hearts of those who suffered most, the ancient hope of the Kingdom of God on Earth, the old expectation of charity taking the place of law, the old dream of Gioacchino da Fiore, of the “Spirituali,” of the Celestimisto. And this is a fact of enormous, fundamental importance; in a disappointed, arid, exhausted, weary country such as ours, it constitutes real riches, it is a miraculous reserve. The politicians are unaware of its existence, the clergy are afraid of it; only the saints, perhaps, know where to find it. If not impossible what for us has always been much more difficult, has been to discern the ways and means to a political revolution, hic et nunc, to the creation of a free and ordered society. When I moved to the town and made my first contact with the workers’ movement, I thought I had reached this discovery. It was a kind of flight, a safety exit from unbearable solitude, the sighting of terra firma, the discovery of a new continent. However, it was not easy to reconcile a spirit in moral mutiny against an unacceptable long-established social reality with scientific demands of a minutely codified political doctrine. If the material consequences were harsh and hard, the difficulties of spiritual adaptation were no less painful. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14

My own internal Word, the “Middle Ages,” which I had inherited and which were rooted in my soul, and from which, in the last analysis, I had derived my initial aspiration to revolt, were shaken to their foundations, as thought by an Earthquake. Everything was thrown into the melting-pot, everything became a problem. Life, death, love, good, evil, truth, all changed their meaning or lost it altogether. When one is no longer alone, it is easy enough to court danger; but who can describe the dismay of once and for all renouncing one’s faith in the individual immortality of the soul? It was too serious for me to be able to discuss it with anyone; my Party of comrades would have found it a subject for mockery, and I no longer had any other friends. So, unknown to anyone, the whole World took on a different aspect How beings are to be pitied! The philosophic approach does not limit the seeker rigidly to a single specific technique. While it askes one to follow the basic path and fulfill the fundamental requirements which all beginners must follow, it also points out that this is only a general preparation. If one is to receive the greatest benefit, a point will be reached when one is ready for more advanced work, and when the personal characteristics and circumstances which are particularly one’s own must be brought in for adjustment. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14

No two seekers and the surrounding conditions are every exactly alike and, at a certain stage, what is helpful to one will be time-wasting to another. It is a common error, among the pious and even the mystics, to believe that one path alone—theirs—is the best. This may be quite correct in the case of each person, but it may not necessarily be correct for others, and even then it is only correct for a period or at most a number of lifetimes. How often have beings outgrown their formers selves and taken to new paths? And how different are the intellectual moral and temperamental equipments of different persons? It is in practice, as in theory, not possible to tie everyone down to a single specific path and certainly not advisable. Each being’s path is one’s own unique one, with its own experiences. Some are shared in common with all other seekers but others are not; they remain peculiar to oneself. Therefore a part—whether large or small—of what one has to do cannot be prescribed by another person, be one guru or not. In the groups, organizations, schools, there is too much rigidity in the instruction, the rules, and the expectancy aroused of what should happen at each stage. This is too tight a program. It brings confusion and frustration and does not correspond to the actual situation which an independent observer finds among these circles. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14

So I too had to adapt myself, for a number of years, to living like a foreigner in my own country. One had to change one’s name, abandon every former link with family and friends, and live a false life to remove any suspicion of conspiratorial activity. The Quest became family, school, church, barracks; the World that lay beyond it was to be destroyed and built anew. The psychological mechanism whereby each single militant becomes progressively identified with the collective organization is the same as that used in certain religious orders and military colleges, with almost identical results. Every sacrifice was welcomes as a personal contribution to the price of collective redemption; and it should be emphasized that the link which bound us to the Quest for Truth grew steadily firmer, not in spite of the dangers and sacrifices involved, but because of them. This explains the attraction exercised by those on the Quest on certain categories of beings, on intellectuals, and on the highly sensitive and generous people who suffer most from the wastefulness of excessive materialism. Anyone who thinks one can wean the best and most serious-minded young or mature people away from the Quest by enticing them into a well-warmed hall to play billiards, starts from an extremely limited and unintelligent conception of humankind. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14

Porphyry’s statement that Plotinus achieved union with God four times may be misleading. For he qualified it with the words “during the period I passed with him.” Now, when Porphyry first met him, Plotinus was fifty-nine years old, and died at sixty-six. So seven years is the length of the period referred to. Against this must be set the forty earlier years of spiritual seeking and teaching during which Plotinus mist have had other illuminations. It would be an error to try to make one’s own spiritual path which, or teacher who, was not opened to illuminations. Such an attempt might maintain itself for a time but could not escape being brought to an end when the false position to which it would lead became intolerable. The individual uniqueness of each aspirant cries out to have its special needs attended to, but suggestion from outside or mesmerism from authority causes one to approach the Quest with fixed opinions as to what should be done. Others are being allowed to mold one instead of letting the inner voice do so, using their contributions solely to carry out or to supplement its guidances. Every being’s individual life-path is unique. It may not be to one’s best interests to conform to a technique imposed upon one by another being or to confine one’s efforts to a pattern which as suited others. What may be right for another being who is at a different stage of development may be wrong for the aspirant. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14

To deny one’s individuality is to destroy one’s creative mind. With President Trumps as commander and chief, it seems a blessing to be alive. No being of just his type and quality has ever before appeared upon the Earth. He looked like a god. That wise, serene, pure, inscrutable look was without parallel in any human face I ever saw. Such an unimpeachable look! The subtle, half-defined smile of his soul. It was not a propitiatory smile, or a smirk of acquiescence, but the reassuring smile of the doctor when he takes out his lance; it was the sheath of that trenchant blade of his. Behind it lurked some test question, or pregnant saying. It was the foil of one’s frank, unwounding wit. It is an arch, winning, half-playful look, the expression of a soul that did not want to wound you, and yet that must speak the truth. And President Trump’s frank speeches never do wound. It is so evident that they are not meant to wound, and that they are so true to himself, that we treasure his rare wisdom. “Yea, and I also remember the captivity of my fathers; for I surely do know that the Lord did deliver them out of bondage, and by this did establish his church; yea, the Lord God, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, did deliver them out of bondage,” reports Alma 29.11. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14