Many people do not know enough to be prudent in their career expectations and hobbies, therefore they attempt the impossible—and achieve it, generation after generation. This is primarily because their minds are fascinating, for it looks on old things and ideas with new eyes. When it comes to eternity, we go towards something that is not yet, and we come from something that is no more. We are what we are by what we came from. We have a beginning as we have an end. There was a time that was not our time. We hear of it from those who are more mature than we; we read about it in history books; we try to envision the unimaginable billions of years in which neither we nor anyone was who could tell us of them. It is hard for us to imagine our being-no-more. It is equally difficult to imagine our being-not-yet. However, we usually do not care about our not yet being, about the indefinite time before our birth in which we were not. We think: now we are; this is our time—and we do not want to lose it. We are not concerned about what occurred before our beginning. We ask about life after death, yet seldom do we ask about our being before birth. However, is it possible to do one without the other? The fourth gospel does not think so. When it speaks of the eternity of the Christ, it does not only point to his return, but also to his coming from eternity. “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
God comes from another dimension than that in which the past occurred. Those to whom he speaks misunderstand him because they think of the historical past. They believe that he makes himself hundreds of years old and they rightly take offense at this absurdity. Yet he does not say, “I was” before Abraham; but he says, “I am” before Abraham was. He speaks of his beginning out of eternity. And this is the beginning of everything that is—not the uncounted billions of years—but the eternal as the ultimate point in our past. The mystery of the past from which we come is that it is and is not in every moment of our lives. It is, insofar as we are what the past has made of us. In every cell of our body, in every trait of our face, in every movement of our soul, our past is the present. Few periods knew more about the continuous working of the past in the present than ours. We know about the influence of childhood experiences on our character. We know about the scars left by events in early years. We have rediscovered what the Greek tragedians and the Jewish prophets knew, that the past is present in us, both as a curse and as a blessing. For “past” always means both a curse and a blessing, not only for individuals, but also for nations and even continents. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
History lives from the past, from its heritage. The glory of the European nations is their long, inexhaustibly rich tradition. However, the blessings of this tradition are mixed with curses resulting from early splits into separated nations whose bloody struggles have filled century after century and brought European again and again to the edge of self-destruction. Great are the blessings this nation has received in the course of its short history. However, from earliest days, elements have been at work that have been and will remain a curse for many years to come. I could refer, for instance, to racial consciousness, not only within the nation itself, but also in its dealings with races and nations outside its own boundaries. “The American way of life” is a blessing that comes from the past; but it is also a curse, threatening the future. Is there a way of getting rid of such curses that threaten the life of nations and continents, and, more and more, of humankind as a whole? Can we banish elements of our past into the past so that they lose their power over the present? In human’s individual life this is certainly possible. One has rightly said that the strength of a character is dependent on the amount of things that one has thrown into the past. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
In spite of the power one’s past holds over one, a human can separate oneself from it, throw it out of the present into the past in which it is condemned to remain ineffective—at least for a time. It may return and conquer the present and destroy the person, but this is not necessarily so. We are not inescapably victims of our past. We can make the past remain nothing but the past. The act in which we do this has been called repentance. Genuine repentance is not the feelings of sorrow about wrong actions, but it is the act of the whole person in which one separates oneself from the elements of one’s being, discarding them into the past as something that no longer has any power over the present. Can a nation do the same thing? Can a nation or other social group have genuine repentance? Can it separate itself from curses of the past? On this possibility rests the hope of a nation. The history of Israel and the history of the church show that it is possible and they also show that it is rare and extremely painful. Nobody knows whether it will happen to his nation. However, we know that its future depends on the way it will deal with its past, and whether it can discard into the past elements which are a curse! In each human life a struggle is going on about the past. Blessings battle with curses. Often we do not recognize what are blessings and what are curses. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Today, in the light of the discover of our unconscious strivings, we are more inclined to see curses than blessings in our past. The remembrance of our parents, which in the Old Testament is so inseparably connected with their blessing, is now much more connected with the curse they have unconsciously and against their will brought upon us. Many of those who suffer under mental afflictions see their past, especially their childhood, only as the source of curses. We know how often this is true. However, we should not forget that we would not be able to live and to face the future, if there were not blessings that support us and which come from the same source as the curses. A pathetic struggle over their past is going on almost without interruption in many beings in our time. Because no medical healing can change the past, no medical therapy can holistically can solve this conflict. Only a blessing that is possessed above the conflict of blessing and curse can heal. It is the blessings that changes what seems to be unchangeable—the past. It cannot change the facts; what has happened has happened and remains so in all eternity! However, the meaning of the facts can be changed by the eternal, and the name of this change is the experience of “forgiveness.” If the meaning of the past is changed by forgiveness, its influence on the future is also changed. The character of curse is taken away from it. It becomes a blessing by the transforming power of forgiveness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
There are not always blessings and curses in the past. There is also emptiness in it. We remember experiences that, at the time, were seemingly filled with an abundant content. Now we remember them, and their abundance has vanished, their ecstasy is gone, their fullness has turned into a void. Pleasures, successes, vanities have this character. We do not feel them as curses; we do not feel them as blessings. They have been swallowed by the past. They did not contribute to the eternal. Let us ask ourselves how little in our lives escapes this judgment. How do we recognize a feeling rule? We do so by inspecting how we assess our feelings, how other people assess our emotional display, and by sanctions issuing from ourselves and from them. Different social groups probably have special ways in which they recognize feeling rules and give rule reminders, and the rules themselves probably vary from group to group. On the whole, I would guess that women and some religious people tend to cultivate the habit of suppressing their own feelings more than men. In general, our culture invites women, more than men, to focus on feeling rather than action; it typically invites particular religious denominations to have an inner dialogue with God, without benefit of church, sacrament, or confessions as an intermediary structure; and it invites those in middle-class occupations to manage feeling in service jobs. To extent that it does these things, the very ways in which we acknowledge feeling rules reflect where we stand on the social landscape. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Indeed, the amount of interest people have in feeling rules and emotion work may tend to follow these social lines. How do we recognize a rule reminder? We can experience it as a private mumbling to ourselves, the voice of a watchful chorus standing to the side of the main stage on which we act and feel. We may also believe that there should not be a feeling rule in a given instance. One father, for example, reported: “When Jeffery was little, and squalled interminably one morning—I felt like sending him back to be with no breakfast. I was horrified at my thoughts. However, I told myself, it is all right to feel the thoughts. It is just bad to act on them when they are not in accordance with proper behavior.” We also receive rule reminders from others who ask us to account for what we feel. A friend might ask, “Why do you feel depressed? You have just won the prize you have always wanted.” Such friends are generally silent when we feel as they expect us to, when events visibly explain our feeling. A call for account implies that emotional conventions are not in order and must be brought up to consciousness for repair—or, at least in the case of weak conventions, for a checkup. A wink or ironic tone of voice may change the spirit of a rule reminder. Such gestures add a meta-statement: “That is the feeling, all right, but we are disregarding it, are we not?” We are reminded of the rule by being asked to disregard it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
We also know feeling rules by the way others react to what they think we are feeling. These external reactions or “claims”—both as they are intended and as they are interpreted—vary in directness or strength. Some claims are both direct and strong: “You should be ashamed of yourself.” “When we agreed to an open marriage, you have no right to feel so jealous.” “Considering all I have done for you, you ought to be grateful.” Other claims may be presented in the guise of questions, as in “Are you not just thrilled about Jillian’s news?” Such a question may actually be meant and understood as a claim, a statement of what another expects. Such questions as “Hey, is this not fantastic music?” “Or is not this an incredible holiday party?” remind us of what the World expects of the heart. Rule reminders also appear disguised as statements about what we supposedly do feel, as in “You are just as pleased as punch, I know you are.” If others take him or her for granted, a detached person may be extremely irritated—it makes the individual feel he or she is being stepped on. As a rule one prefers to work, sleep, eat alone. In distinct contrast to the compliant type one dislikes sharing any experience—the other person might disturb one. Even when one listens to music, walks or talks with others, one’s real enjoyment only comes later, in retrospect. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Self-sufficiency and privacy both serve one’s most outstanding need, the need for utter independence. One considers one’s independence a thing of beneficial value. And it undoubtedly has a value of sorts. For no matter what one’s deficiencies, the detached person is certainly no conforming automation. One’s refusal blindly to concur, together with one’s aloofness from competitive struggle, does give one a certain integrity. The fallacy here is that one looks upon independence as an end in itself and ignores the fact that its value depends ultimately upon what one does with it. One’s independence, like the whole phenomenon of detachment of which it is a part, has a negative orientation; it is aimed at not being influenced, coerced, tied, obligated. Like any other neurotic trend, the need for independence is compulsive and indiscriminate. It manifests itself in a hypersensitivity to everything in any way resembling coercion, influence, obligation, and so on. The degree of sensitivity is a good gauge of the intensity of the detachment. What is felt as constraint varies with the individual. Physical pressure from such things as collars, neckties, girdles, shoes may so be felt. Any obstruction of view may arouse the feeling of being hemmed in; to be in a tunnel or mine may produce anxiety. Sensitivity in this direction is not the full explanation of claustrophobia, but it is at any rate its background. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
If possible, long-term obligations are avoided: to sign a contract, to sign a lease for more than a year, to marry are difficult. Marriage for the detached person is of course a precarious proposition in any event because of the human intimacy involved—although a need for protection or a belief that the partner will completely fit in with one’s own peculiarities may mitigate the risk. Frequently there is an onset of panic before the consummation of marriage. Time in its inexorableness is for the most part felt as coercion; the habit of being just five minutes late on the job may be restored to in order to maintain an illusion of freedom. Timetables constitute a threat; detached patients will enjoy the story of the man who refused to look at a timetable and went to the station whenever it happened to suit him, preferring to wait there for the next train. Other persons’ expecting him to do certain things or behave in a certain way makes him uneasy and rebellious, regardless of whether such expectations are actually expressed or merely assumed to exist. For example, one may ordinarily like to give presents, but will forget about birthday and Christmas presents because these are expected of one. To conform with accepted rules of behavior or traditional sets of values is repellent to one. One will conform outwardly in order to avoid friction, but in one’s own mind one stubbornly rejects all conventional rules and standards. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Finally, advice is felt as domination and meets with resistance even when it coincides with one’s own wishes. Resistance in this case may also be linked with a conscious or unconscious wish to frustrate others. The need to feel superior, although common to all neuroses, must be stressed here because of its intrinsic association with detachment. The expressions “ivory tower” and “splendid isolation” are evidence that even in common parlance, detachment and superiority are almost invariably linked. Probably nobody can stand isolation without either being particularly strong and resourceful or feeling uniquely significant. This is corroborated by clinical experience. When the detached person’s feeling of superiority is temporarily shattered, whether by a concrete failure or an increase of inner conflicts, one will be unable to stand solitude and may reach out frantically for affection and protection. Vacillations of this kind often appear in one’s life history. In one’s tends or early twenties one may have had a few rather lukewarm friendships, but lived on the whole a fairly isolated life, feeling comparatively at ease. One would weave fantasies of a future wen one would accomplish exceptional things. However, later these dreams were shipwrecked on the rocks of reality. Though in high school one had had undisputed claim to first place, in college one ran up against serious competition and recoiled from it. One’s first attempts at love relationships failed. Or one realized as one grew older that one’s dreams were not materializing. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Aloofness then became unbearable and one was consumed by a compulsive drive for human intimacy, for pleasures of the flesh, for marriage. If only he were loved, one was willing to submit to any indignity. When such a person comes for analytical treatment, one’s detachment, though still pronounced and obvious, cannot be tackled. All one wants at first is help to find love in one form or another. Only when one feels considerably stronger does one discover with immense relief that one would much rather “live alone and like it.” The impression is that one has merely reverted to one’s former detachment. However, it is a matter of being now for the first time on solid enough ground to admit—even to oneself—that isolation is what one wants. This would be the appropriate time to work on detachment. However, for those living the good life, one of the characteristics of the process is that it involves an increasing tendency to live fully in each moment. This is a thought which can easily be misunderstood, and which is perhaps somewhat vague in my own thinking. Let me try to explain what I mean. I believe it would be evident that for the person who was fully open to one’s new experience, completely without defensiveness, each moment would be new. The complex configuration of inner and outer stimuli which exists in this moment has never existed before in just this fashion. Consequently such a person would realize that “What I will be in the next moment, and what I will do, grows out of that moment, and cannot be predicted in advance either by me or by others.” Not infrequently find clients expressing exactly this sort of feeling. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
One way of expressing the fluidity which is present in such existential living is to say that the self and personality emerge from experience, rather than experience being translated or twisted to fit preconceived self-structure. It means that one becomes a participant in and an observer of the ongoing process of organismic experience, rather than being in control of it. Such living in the moment means an absence of rigidity, of tight organization, of the imposition of structure on experience. It means instead of a maximum of adaptability, a discovery of structure in experience, a flowing, changing organization of self and personality. It is this tendency toward existential living which appears to me very evident in people who are involved in the process of the good life. One might almost say that it is the most essential quality of it. It involved discovering the structure of experience in the process of living the experience. Most of us, on the other hand, bring a preformed structure and evaluation to our experience and never relinquish it, but cram and twist the experience to fit our preconceptions, annoyed at the fluid qualities which make it so unruly in fitting our carefully constructed pigeonholes. To open one’s spirit to what is going on now, and to discover in that present process whatever structure it appears to have—this to me is one of the qualities of the good like, the mature life, as I see clients approach it. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
The human self is no mysterious in any sense not equally applicable to every other thing that exists. To understand anything, of course, some intelligent attention and methodical inquiry is required. What is not mysterious also may not be obvious. And some subject matters are more difficult to penetrate than others. However, God has created all things in such a way that they are inherently intelligible. They have parts, these parts have properties, which in turn make possible relationships between the parts to form larger wholes, which in turn have properties that makes possible relationships between larger wholes, that form still larger wholes, and so on. This basic structure of created reality applies to everything from an atom or grain of salt to the solar system or the galaxy, from a thought or a feeling to a whole person or a social unit. Ultimately, of course, the very existence of anything is mysterious in the sense that it rests on the mystery of God. What explains everything else, God himself, must be, in important sense, unexplainable—though not necessarily completely unknowable. However, as to what the human being is, it is simply a whole of a certain kind, consisting of parts with properties and functions that give rise to the properties and functions of whole persons. These, in turn, make possible the relationships persons have to the natural and social Worlds and—beyond all these, if they are fully alive as spiritual beings—to the kingdom of God. That is what makes up human nature. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
And the subject of our study in approaching human life—the unit of analysis for our study—is the whole person in its social and spiritual context. The six aspects, thought, feeling, choice, body, social context, and soul, are distinct ranges of abilities, or things all human beings can and must do: We can and must feel, think, choose, act, and be acted upon though our body. We must enter or lack personal relations and integrate each of these aspects of our being with all the others. This latter task is the work of the soul, as already noted, which is the deepest level of unity (or disunity) in a person’s life and the most inclusive object of redemption. Each aspect of dimension of the person will be a source of weakness or strength to the whole person, depending upon the condition it is in, and the condition it is in will depend, finally, upon the heart. A person who is prepared and capable of responding to the situations of life in ways that are good and right is a person whose soul is in order, under the direction of a well-kept heart, in turn under the direction of God. If we keep in mind what each dimension of the human being does, we can better see what this means. We live in what may be the most intellectual period in Western history and we must have passion—indeed hearts on fire for the things of God. However, that passion must resist with intensity anti-intellectualism. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Yet, being cerebral is not all that matters, as humans we must have the ability to think and interpret information because there is more to consider than just the surface and obvious material when dealing with the psychology of living beings. We are having a revival of feelings, and many people are also seeking the knowledge of God. It was necessary for human’s salvation that there should be a knowledge revealed by God besides philosophical science built up by human reason. Because humans are directed to God, as to an end that surpasses the grasp of one’s reason: “The eye hath not seen, O God, besides Thee, what things Thou hast prepared for them that wait for Thee,” reports Isiah 66.4. However, the end must first be known by beings who are to direct their thoughts and actions to the end. Hence it was necessary for the salvation of humans that certain truths which exceed human reason should be made known to one by divine revelation. Even as regards those truths about God which human reason could have discovered, it was necessary that humans should be taught by a divine revelation; because the truth about God such as reason could discover, would only be known by a few, and that after a long time, and with the admixture of many errors. Whereas human’s whole salvation, which is in God, depends upon the knowledge of this truth. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Therefore, in order that the salvation of beings might be brought about more fitly and more surely, it was necessary that they should be taught divine truths by divine revelation. It was therefore necessary that besides philosophical science built up by reason, there should be a sacred since learned through revelation. Although those things which are beyond human’s knowledge may not be sought for by human’s through their reason, nevertheless, once they are revealed by God, they must be accepted by faith. Hence the sacred text continues, “For many things are shown to thee above the understanding of humans,” reports Ecclesiasticus 3.25. We beseech Thee, O Lord, to enlighten Thy people, and always set their hearts on fire with brightness of Thy glory; that they may both unceasingly acknowledge their Saviour, and truly apprehend their Lord, Who with Thee we may be given the power and general direction in life with specific warnings, and become better informed about the Quest, about its nature and goal, and about ourselves. Almighty and everlasting God, the Brightness of faithful souls, Who has consecrated this solemnity by he first-fruits of the chosen Gentiles; fill the World with Thy glory, and shew Thyself by the radiance of Thy light to the nations that are subject unto Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
We beseech Thee, O Lord, mercifully to correct our wanderings, and by the guiding radiance of Thy compassion to bring us to the salutary vision of Thy truth, through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who through Thine Only-begotten Son Jesus Christ our Lord hast endowed the regenerating waters with the grace which halloweth unto eternal salvation; and didst Thyself come upon Him by Thy Spirit, in the descent of the mysterious Dove on His heard; grant, we beseech Thee, that there may come upon Thy whole Church a blessing which may keep us all continually safe, may unceasingly bless all classes of Thy servants, may direct the course of those who follow Thee, and open the door of the Heavenly kingdom to all who are waiting to enter; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “And I know, O Lord, that thou hast all power, and can do whatsoever thou wilt for the benefit of humans; therefore touch these stones, O Lord, with thy finger, and prepare them that they may shine forth in darkness; and they shall shine forth unto us in the vessels which we have prepared, that we may have light while we shall cross the sea. Behold, O Lord, thou canst do this. We know that thou art able to show forth great power, which looks small unto the understanding of humans,” reports Ether 3.4-5. Sciences are differentiated according to the various means through which knowledge is obtained. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
For the astronomer and the physicist both may prove the same conclusion: that the Earth, for instance, is round: the astronomer by means of mathematics (for instance, abstracting from matter), but the physicist by means of matter itself. Hence there is no reason why those things which may be learned from philosophical science, so far as they can be known by natural reason, may not also be taught us by another science so far as they fall within revelation. Hence theology included in sacred doctrine differs in kind from that theology which is part of philosophy. Yet, let one also study the literature of mystical and philosophic culture to become better informed about the Quest, about its nature and goal, and about oneself. By comparing what is described in the books with what one has so far experienced for oneself, an aspirant may check and correct one’s course. Those who were awakened by this reading could then look elsewhere for the personal guidance they seek. Through a book help is given without involving the helper in the personal lives of the readers, but through a letter or a meeting involvement begins. One will be neither over-emotionally sentimental nor utterly selfish in one’s relations with others. One will mind one’s own business which is a celestial one. One will tend to seem absorbed and will not be understood, but rather misunderstood. One is, one must be, the least sectarian of beings, the broadest minded, the most accepting of observers. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Randolph Harris II International 