The rode to redemption can express itself in many forms. And yet, sometimes the greatest obstacle we face can be found within our own conscience. Those who make religion their god will not have God for their religion. Having eliminated the confusion which come from ignoring the relations of thought, imagination, and speech, we may not return to the questions. The Christians say that God has done miracles. The modern World, even when it believes in God, and even when it has seen the defencelessness of Nature, does not. It thinks God would not do that sort of thing. Have we any reason for supposing that the modern World is right? I agree that the sort of God conceived by the popular “religion” of our own times would almost certainly work no miracles. The question is whether that popular religion is at all likely to be true. I call it “religion” advisedly. We who defend Christianity find ourselves constantly opposed not by the irreligion of our hearers but by their real religion. Speak about beauty, truth and goodness, or about a God who is simply the indwelling principle of these three, speak about a great spiritual force pervading all things, a common mind of which we are all parts, a pool of generalized spirituality to which we can all flow, and you will command friendly interest. However, the temperature drops as soon as you mention a God who has purposes and performs particular actions, who does one thing and not another, a concrete, choosing, commanding, prohibiting God with a determinate character. People become embarrassed or angry. Such a conception seems to them primitive and crude and even irreverent. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22

The popular “religion” excludes miracles because it excludes the “living God” of Christianity and believes instead in a kind of God who obviously would not do miracles, or indeed anything else. This popular “religion” may roughly be called Pantheism. Pantheism is usually based on a quite fanciful picture of the history of religion. According to this picture, Man stars by inventing “spirits” to explain natural phenomena; and at first he imagines these spirits to be exactly like himself. As he gets more enlightened they become less manlike, less “anthropomorphic” as the scholars call it. Their anthropomorphic attributes drops off one by one—first the human shape, then human passions, then personality, will, activity—in the end every concrete or positive attribute whatever. There is left in the end a pure abstraction—mind as such, spirituality as such. God, instead of being a particular entity with a real character of its own, becomes simply “the whole show” looked at in a particular way or the theoretical point at which all the lines of human aspiration would meet if produced to infinity. And since, on the modern view, the final stage of anything is the most refined and civilized stage, this “religion” is held to be a more profound, more spiritual, and more enlightened belief than Christianity. Now this imagined history of religion is not true. Pantheism certainly is (as its advocates would say) congenial to the modern mind; but the fact that a shoe slips on easily does not prove that it is a new shoe—much less that it will keep your feet dry. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

Pantheism is congenial to our minds not because it is the final stage in a slow process of enlightenment, but because it is almost as old as we are. It may even be the most primitive of all religions, and the orenda of a savage tribe has been interpreted by some to be an “all-pervasive spirit.” It is immemorial in India. The Greeks rose above it only at their peak, in the thought of Plato and Aristotle; their successors relapsed into the great Pantheistic system of the Stoics. Modern Europe escaped it only while she remained predominantly Christian; with Giordano Bruno and Spinoza it returned. With Hegel it became almost the agreed philosophy of highly educated people, while the more popular Pantheism of Wordsworth, Carlyle and Emerson conveyed the same doctrine to those on a slightly lower cultural level. So far from being the final religious refinement, Pantheism is in fact the permanent natural bent of the human mind; the permanent ordinary level below which humans sometimes sinks, under the influence of priestcraft and superstition, but above which one’s own unassisted efforts can never rise one for very long. Platonism and Judaism, and Christianity (which has incorporated both) have proved the only things capable of resisting it. It is the attitude into which the human mind automatically falls when left to itself. No wonder we find it congenial. If “religion” means simply what humans say about God, and not what God does about humans, hen Pantheism almost is religion. And “religion” in that sense, has in the long run, only one really formidable opponent—namely Christianity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

Hence, if a Minister of Education professes to value religion and at the same time takes steps to suppress Christianity, it does not necessarily follow that one is a hypocrite or even (in the ordinary this-Worldly sense of the word) a fool. One may sincerely desire more “religion” and rightly see that the suppression of Christianity is a necessary preliminary to his design. Modern philosophy has rejected Hegel and modern science started out with no bias in favour of religion; but they have both proved quite powerless to curb the human impulse towards Pantheism. It is nearly as strong today as it was in ancient India or in ancient Rome. Theosophy and the worship of the life-force are both forms of it: even the German worship of a racial spirit is only Pantheism truncated or whittled down to suit barbarians. Yet, by a strange irony, each new relapse into his immemorial “religion” is hailed as the last word in novelty and emancipation. This native bent of mind can be paralleled in quite a different field of thought. Humans believed in atoms centuries before they had any experimental evidence of their existence. It was apparently natural to do so. And the sort of atoms we naturally believe in are little hard pellets—just like the hard substances we meet in experience, but too small to see. The mind reaches this conception by an easy analogy from grains of sand or salt. It explains a number of phenomena; and we feel at home with atoms of that sort—we can picture them. If later science had not been so troublesome as to find out what atoms are really like, the belief would have lasted for ever. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

The moment it does that, all our mental comfort, all the immediate plausibility and obviousness of the old atomic theory, is destroyed. The real atoms turn out to be quite alien from our natural mode of thought. They are not even made of hard “stuff” or “matter” (as the imagination understands “matter”) at all: they are not simple, but have structure: they are not all the same: and they are unpicturable. The old atomic theory is in physics what Pantheism is in religion—the normal, instinctive guess of the human mind, not utterly wrong, but needing correction. Christian theology, and quantum physics, are both, by comparison with the first guess, hard, complex, dry, and repellent. The first shock of the object’s real nature, breaking in on our spontaneous dreams of what that object ought to be, always has these characteristics. You must not expect Schrodinger to be as plausible as Democritus; he knows too much. The true state of the question is often misunderstood because people compare an adult knowledge of Pantheism with a knowledge of Christianity which they acquired in their childhood. They thus get the impression that Christianity gives the “obvious” account of God, the one that is too easy to be true, while Pantheism offers something sublime and mysterious. In reality, it is the other way around. The apparent profundity of Pantheism thinly veils a mass of spontaneous picture-thinking and owes its plausibility to that fact. Pantheists and Christians agree that God is present everywhere. Pantheists conclude that He is “diffused” or “concealed” in all things and therefore a universal medium rather than a concrete entity, because their minds are really dominated by the picture of a gas, or fluid, or space itself. The Christian, on the other hand, deliberately rules out such images by saying that God is totally present at every point of space and time, and locally present in none. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

Again the Pantheist and Christian agree that we are all dependent on God and intimately related to Him. However, the Christian defines this relation in terms of Maker and made, whereas, the Pantheist (at least on the popular kind) says, we are “parts” of Him, or are contained in Him. Once more, the picture of a vast extended something which can be divided into areas has crept in. Because of this fatal picture Pantheism concludes that God must be equally present in what we call evil and what we call good and therefore indifferent to both (either permeates the mud and the marble impartially).  The Christian has to reply that this is far too simple; God is present in a great many different modes: not present in matter as He is present in humans, not present in all humans as in some, not present in any other human as in Jesus Christ. Pantheist and Christians also agree that God is super-personal. The Christian means by this that God has a beneficial structure which we could never have guessed in advance, any more than a knowledge of squares would have enabled us to guess at a cube. He contains “persons” (three of them) while remaining one God, as a cube contains six squares while remaining one solid body. We cannot comprehend such a structure any more than the Flatlanders could comprehend a cube. However, we can at least comprehend our incomprehension, and see that if there is something beyond personality it ought to be incomprehensible in that sort of way. The Pantheist, on the other hand, though one may say “super-personal” really conceives God in terms of what is sub personal—as though the Flatlanders thought a cube existed in fewer dimensions than a square. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

While most glimpses come naturally and unexpectedly, it is possible to develop the experience systematically by the technique of prayer. If the glimpse is not to remain an isolated event, one must try to put less of one’s mind on oneself and more on the Overself, less into emotional reactions to it and more into pure contemplation of it. It may come upon you without warning at any time and in any place. However, if you provide conditions which are proper and propitious for it, it is more likely to come. Once a human has had this scared experience one will naturally want to provoke it again. However, how? One will find prayer to be part of the answer. The first principle in releasing your potential is to gain the knowledge of God. The Christian Bible is the fountain of knowledge. The author of that extraordinary text is God, the Holy Spirit. Remember, God often chooses difficult seasons to increase our anointing. Do not walk out on your season! Do not call I quits; just call it a night, get some rest and try again tomorrow. God is restoring to you all that the enemy stole! He will do it without fail—He is faithful. If one is tempted by these sudden glimpses to enquire whether there is a method or technique whereby they may be repeated at will, one will find that there is and that it is called prayer. If one wishes to go farther and enquire whether one’s whole life could continuously enjoy them all the time, the answer is that it could and that to bring about it one needs to follow a way of life called The Quest. It is useful to exercise, to bring the experience back to mental sight and emotional presence, to evoke the glimpse as vividly as one can. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

The Glimpse is to be recalled frequently and enjoyed reminiscently. Let it help one in this way to dedicate the day to greater obedience of intuitive urge. Let it bring forth afresh that love of and aspiration toward the Overself which are necessary prerequisites to a stable experience of it. If few attain the wonder of Overself consciousness, it is because few can lift their minds to the level of impersonality and anonymity. However, what all cannot do with their minds, they can do much more easily with their hearts. Let them approach enveloped in love, and the grace will come forward to meet them. By its power, the ego which they could not bring themselves to renounce will be forgotten. If the mind and the feelings are properly balanced, and if, at the same time, the body is purified, its organs co-operated with, and it forces regenerated, these glimpses will last longer and come more easily, hence more often. When the glimpse happens, a human comes out of oneself. It may follow one’s admiration of a beautiful scene in Nature or one’s appreciation of a beautiful poem or one’s simple relaxed mood, but in each case one lets go of one’s taut self-consciousness. This allows the entry of grace. If one works intensively on oneself, according to the prescription of philosophy, one will be blessed with such glimpses. However, be wise who you share your secrets with—some are sabotaging your destiny! We have seen some convincing arguments from the terrestrial World that attachment and separation-anxiety are biological phenomena, and there is visual evidence of the sufferings of little children ill-prepared for separation from those to whom they are attached. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

According to this viewpoint, they infant terrestrial being has built-in as well as built-up expectations that its needs will be met by an attachment-figure, normally the mother. If there is a delay in having these needs met, two kinds of distress result: first, distress caused by the unmet need—hunger, cold, pain, or whatever, and second distress at the loss of the attachment-figure. Accordingly, the crying young of the species is biologically bound to create tension and anxiety in adults who her it, and this does not abate until the distress-signals cease. The adult comforts the infant both by meeting its needs and by relieving the fright it got when it found itself unattached and subject to unmanageable distress. It is this distress which one of our patients described as a black hole—a hole where there should be a button to attach the infant to the selfobject and the facilitating environment; it is distress caused when the illusion of omnipotence has to be given. In self psychology, one’s experience of another person (object) as part of, rather than as separate and independent from, one’s self, particularly when the object’s actions affirm one’s narcissistic well-being. There is a time in infancy, when body-experiences and other processes have not yet integrated into a coherent and whole self; there is not yet a single dominant self-image, nor yet a set of interrelated ego-functions. The development of an identity is the growth of self-experience as a physical and mental unity which had cohesiveness in space and continuity in time. The mother’s exultant response to the total child (calling him or her by name as she enjoys his presence and activity) supports, at the appropriate phase, the development from auto-erotism to narcissism—from the stage of the fragmented self to the stage of the cohesive self. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

The mother’s (and other people’s) love of the baby is he beginning of the baby’s self-love. Empathic, competent, loving people generate a selfobject state of mind when which enables the infant to experience itself as whole, lovable, in control and capable—“grand.” It is love that causes integration—“cathexis”—between the different experiences which happen to an infant, so that it feels to be “grand.” A fragmented self is the consequence of a poorly cathected self and falls more easily apart. The cause of such disintegration lies in the unmanageable loss of the selfobject state: the infant abruptly loses the sense that it is whole, loveable, and competent—a sense which god care would normally provide—before it can cope with such a discovery by looking after itself. Whole a relationship to an empathically approving parent is one of the preconditions for the original establishment of a firm cathexis of the self, and while in analysis disturbances in this realm are once more open to correction, the opposite sequence of events (from a cohesive self to its fragmentation) can often be observed both in analysis and in a child’s interplay with its pathogenic parents. The fragmentation of the self, can, for example, be studied in patients who, with the assistance of the analyst’s presence and attention, have tentatively re-established a feeling of the cohesiveness and continuity of the self. Wherever the mirror-transference cannot be maintained, the patient feels threatened by the dissolution of the narcissistic self. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

An empathic and competent mothering figure (or therapist) will understand and provide for the baby’s needs in such a way that the child (in us) can begin to build on a foundation of self-confidence and trust in the goodness of the World. However, the abrupt failure or loss of the selfobject state damages the child’s sense of itself as a whole person: to be cut off from one’s selfobject, before one has grown out of this state in a natural way, must be like being cut off from one’s arm or leg, certainly as traumatic. Thereafter the person is prey to a host of related anxieties, all to do with what it feels like when you are falling apart: fear of loss of the reality-self, caused by longing for ecstatic merging with an idealized parent-figure; fear of loss of contact with reality and fear of permanent isolation because of experiences of unrealistic grandiosity; frightening experiences of shame and self-consciousness, caused by the intrusion of exhibitionism; hypochondrial worries about physical or mental illness due to obsessional interest in disconnected aspects of the body or the mind. These are commonly interpreted in psycho-analysis as castration fears. However, these fears also come from earlier breaks in integrity. Let me emphasize again that rage and destructiveness are not primary givens but arise in reaction to the faculty empathic response of the selfobject. An isolated striving to search for an outlet for rage and destructiveness is not part of the primary psychological equipment of humans, and the guilt with regard to unconscious rage that we encounter in the clinical situation should not be regarded as a patient’s reaction to the primal infantile viciousness. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

Drives are normally integrated into the personality in the course of development. However, when there is fragmentation, when the person falls apart, they become important in isolation from the self-organization, which no longer provides a context which transcends and contains them. Healthy drive-experiences always include both self and selfobject. However, if the self is seriously damaged or destroyed, then the drives become powerful in their own right. Such drive manifestations only establish themselves in isolated after traumatic and/or prolonged failure in empathy from the selfobject. A facilitation environment allows a child to notice its needs and wishes, and to begin to imagine what would make it happy, and then to find its wish answered. For this to happen, the mother or other care-taking persons need not be there all the time, but they must not be away so long that the baby feels abandoned. They can safely be away for a little while and the baby will not mind, picking up the thread of its phantasy of their continued care at the point where it loses the sensory stimulus of their actual presence but still retains the remembered sense of their presence (= care). There may, however, be a brief delay between the first arousal of need and the coming of the mother (or other care-taking person). When this happens, the baby may cry, and this will bring, let us say, the mother, to do what is needed. There is a mathematical metaphor for the amount of frustration or desolation an infant may be able to tolerate. The baby can recover without ill-effects from x amount of delay before someone comes to cope. The baby may even be able to stand an absence for x + y amount of time, and still be able to pick up the threads of its god phantasy. However, sometimes there may be a ye longer interval: x + y + z. This is too long, and the infant becomes traumatized—wounded, damaged. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22

This is where we locate the basic fault. The environment has now ben irrevocably experienced not as facilitating but as indifferent at best, hostile at worst. The infant is now forced to develop ego-functions, so that it can look after itself—before it has reached the phase of development where a self arises naturally out of play experiences. A problem has to be faced prematurely—how to get along in an unhelpful environment. A False Self (a set of cognitive functions disconnected from the life of feelings and emotions) begins to develop and to manage the environment so that further traumatic experiences may be avoided. However, the sense of indwelling may have been impaired by repeated bad experiences, and a rather lifeless self will develop, in which thinking and feeling and doing are dissociated from each other, with no strong sense of being or of being whole. Here is the place of the basic fault, where the break may come. Trauma implies that the baby has experienced a break in life’s continuity, so that primitive defences now become organized to defend against a repetition of “unthinkable anxiety” or a return of the acute confusional state that belongs to the disintegration of the developing self-structures. A break in being is different from a frustration, and here again we see that it may not be castration-anxiety. Frustration belongs with “male-element” Drive-satisfaction-seeking. To the experience of being belongs something else, not frustration but maiming. Something should be there which is not there—the indwelling self. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

The pain of x + y + z amount of desolation may have created a practically permanent agony, of which a person may not be continuously aware, but which is nevertheless there al the time, sapping the capacity for work and happiness. Important to those who live with this agony and to their therapists—that the fear of breakdown may in fact be a fear of reviving the memories of a previously experienced breakdown: there is a basic fault. In other words, there was a time when the process of integration was devastatingly interrupted and the infant had to remain in its distress; it could not return to the safety of a mother’s enveloping and holding presence, but was left with the chaos of half-individuated processes not properly synchronized with one another. This state is called agony. The pain is so great that “anxiety” does not seem a strong enough word. There are five primitive agonies. The first—the fear of retuning to an unintegrated state—being the most basic, while the others in one way or another represent memories of later developmental disasters: failure of indwelling, when the body seems no to be the place where “I” dwell, loss of the sense of reality, loss of the capacity to relate to other people and things, the sense of falling for ever with nothing to hold on to. We must assume that the vast majority of babies never experience the x + y + z deprivation, a baby has to start again permanently deprived of the root which could provide continuity with the personal beginning. This allows us to afford more hope. It is permissible to think that, while some parts of the growing order remain intact and make a rebuilding of the destroyed possible. Only repeated deprivation in major areas of development would be likely to wipe out the possibility of reconnecting with the early roots of experience, the True Self. Babies are constantly being cured of the effects of x + y + z degree of deprivation by the mother’s comforting her localized spoiling that mends the ego-structure. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22

This is an important issue for psychotherapists: can this person be helped to find enough associations of goodness, and to bring them into operation often enough to have them contribute to greater ego-strength? If not, is there any point in helping one become more aware? Or will such efforts leave the unfortunate person as disabled as ever? The services of a physician skilled in the knowledge of diseases and in the care of their sufferers should never be slighted. Orthodox allopathic medicine deserves our highest respect because of the cautiously scientific way it has proceeded on its course. It has achieved notable cures. However, it also has many failures to its debit. This in in part due to the fundamental error which it accepts in common with other sciences like psychology—the materialist error of viewing humans as being nothing more than their body. Only by setting this right can it go forward to its fullest possibilities. Its deficiency in this respect has forced the appearance and nourished the spread of unorthodox healing methods, of which there are many. Most of these have something worthwhile to contribute but unfortunately—lacking the caution of science—make exaggerated claims and uphold fanatical attitudes, with the result that they too have their failures and incur public disrepute. The extreme claims made by credulous followers and unscientific leaders of mental healing cults revolt the reason of those outside their fold and lead to distrust of the justifiable claims that should be made. However, they have enough success to justify their existence. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

Only by a mutual approach and interaction will they modify each other and thus bring a truly complete system of healing. If the World of sick and suffering patients is to benefit by the full extent of present-day human knowledge, they have to do it willingly and quickly. The cults which allow power only to the Spirit, which would deny it to all other means or media, even as secondary causes, are too extreme and fanatical. Some people egotistically try to better the gift God has given them to their own detriment and disease. The difficulties of keeping to one’s own rigid mode of protective habit usually becomes too much in the end for a fastidious traveler. It is a mistake to take a meal when mentally tired or emotionally disturbed. The benefit of food intake will be offset by the harm of upset digestion. One’s experiments in dietary reform must come to this end: one will find that one returns to the philosophic admonition of expertly balanced feeding, but with some better understanding of what constitutes “balance.” Even taken to excess may lead to death, even beneficial vitamins also. Thus, if too much too quickly is eaten or drunk, science knows any food item or product can be fatal. This verifies my often-used phrase that “a good overdone becomes the bad.” Are we determined or free? Imagine a questioned posed to two completely identical persons, two persons who are in every way—heredity, past experience, current brain states—replicas of one another. If we now confront them with identical choices in an identical manner (coffee or tea?), will each necessarily respond the same? Or could they act differently? #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

Note that the answer to this mind teaser is either yes or no. As William James said, “The issue…is a perfectly sharp one, which no eulogistic terminology can smear over or wipe out. The truth must lie with one side or the other, and its lying with one side makes the other false.” An answer of “Yes—there is nothing to differentiate them because all possible influences are identical” assumes determinism: behaviour is lawfully related to causal influences. Although the people each made a conscious choice, it was not their power to have chosen otherwise. Many psychologist—most, we suspect—would answer yes. However, others would answer no. Some of these reject determinism because they assume an element of indeterminism—of inherent unpredictability. Much as elementary particles behave with apparent randomness, so might human behaviour exhibit a lack of orderly causation. Others answer no because they believe that just as God is the ultimate source of natural evens, so are people, o some extent, the ultimate cause of their own actions. To be sure, we are influenced by various biological and psychological factors; still, say the proponents of agent causation, these factors do not totally determine our behaviour. When all is said and done, you and I can tip the scales this way or that, toward coffee or tea, toward moral or immortal actions. We psychologist agree that our work requires some regularity. We need not assume that behaviour is completely determined to look for what orderly causes or predictors there are. To search out the factors that do, in fact, influence behaviour, we do not need to make a philosophical assumption of absolute determinism; we only need to assume enough determination to provide a delectable regularity. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

Biological factor, current situation, and past experience all anchor the person. As a working hypothesis, it has proven fruitful to assume an underlying regularity to behaviour. Within the complexity of human nature, there is discernible order. When combined and interacting, our biology, our past experience, and our current situation powerfully influenced our behaviour. How powerfully? As research psychologist, we need not assume absolute determinism. We need only assume what is now beyond question—that there is order to human behaviour. For our research it matters little whether this order is rooted in an absolute determinism or whether random indeterminacies or self-determination means that we can only hope to describe behaviour in terms of probabilities. In either case, the enormous complexity of human nature will always limit us to statistical generalizations. Compared with predicting people, predicting the weather is easy. Nevertheless, let us imagine just for a few moments that our behaviour is absolutely determined and therefore, in principle, predictable to an all-knowing and all-wise scientist—the “ideal reasoner.” What then? Are the implications as terrible as most people suppose? (Note: we are not advocating absolute determinism, because we do not know what the ultimate truth is; we are simply attempting to clear away some misunderstandings about determinism.) One approach to this question is to consider the opposite—a World with no determinism and therefore, possibly, with utter unpredictability. Is it not in such a World, rather than the absolutely determined World, that people would adopt a fatalistic whatever-will-be-will-be attitude? #RandolphHarris 18 of 22

If people’s actions tomorrow were not influenced by the circumstances created today, then nothing we do today could make a difference. To act responsibly, we must have some idea of the effects of our actions. Indeed, it is a World in which our actions do have predictable effects that hope reigns eternal. If “you reap whatever you sow,” then we have a responsibility for the future. In a deterministic World the stream of causation runs from the past to the future through our choices today. Our decisions are on the cutting edge of reality; they make all the difference. A determinist such as the psychologist B. F. Skinner would therefore agree that we should “train children in the right way” and would understand how the sins of the parents are predictably laid upon their children “to the third and the fourth generations.” Morality requires at least some regularity and predictability. Here the mind boggles. Does not morality also require freedom to choose? How can a determined person be held morally accountable? What real choice does a determined person have? In one sense, an absolutely determined person can have complete freedom—freedom in the practical, political sense that people care about. The opposite of determinism is not freedom in this practical sense, but indeterminism. Whether determined or not, our hypothetical person experienced a genuine, uncoerced choice—coffee or tea. To repeat, even if our actions were absolutely determined, we would nevertheless be free to choose consciously among alternatives, knowing that what we decide can make a great difference and that society may hold us accountable. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22

Indeed, we have freedom to decide and control our own future destinies. Personal causation—the effect of what we believe and choose—is a tremendously important concept in contemporary psychology. What determinism denies is not the practical consequences of our inner beliefs and choice, but the philosophical idea of agent causation—that people are ultimately self-determining. It is said our lives are measured by what we leave behind, but the most valuable legacy of all is a mind. Plan to take some time off, and give some thought to what you would do with that time; hopefully, you will spend part of it reviewing God’s favours to you in the past. What else? Lock up ye olde curiosity shoppe. Devote more time to reading your spiritual books than your survival manuals. Withdraw from causal conversations and leisurely pursuits. Do not contract for new ventures, and do not gossip about old ones. After you have done all these, you will find more than enough time to undertake a program of prayer. Most of the Saints did just that—avoided collaborative projects whenever they could, choosing instead to spend some private time with God. Seneca, that old pagan philosopher and playwright, had it right so many centuries ago. When he went out with the intelligentsia or hung around with entertainers, he retuned home utterly talked out and terribly hoarse, or so e said in one of his letters. Quite often we have the same experience when we horse around with our friends and associates for hours, even days, on end. What is the remedy for a talkathon? It is easier to cut out the conversation altogether than it is to cut down the size. What is the point? It is easier to stay at home alone than to stroll about the rialto with an entourage? #RandolphHarris 20 of 22

What is certain? Whoever wants to arrive at interiority and spirituality has to leave the crowd behind and spend some time with Jesus Christ. The Evangelists Mark (6.31) and Luke (5.16) wrote as much. What is the general wisdom? Nobody is comfortable in public unless one has spent a good deal of time in the quiet of one’s home. Nobody speaks with assurance who has not learned to hold one’s tongue. Nobody has a success as general who has not already survived as soldier. Nobody respects decrees who has not already obeyed writes. If you want to feel secure, then you have to have a good conscience. St Paul made that clear in his Second Letter to the Corinthians (1.12). And that is how the Saints did it. Virtue and Grace shone from their faces, but Fear of God ran deep in their very veins; even then they were subject to fits of spiritual anxiety and secular stress. As for the depraved, what security they do feel in their being rises from a swamp of pride and presumption. Is there a moral? On the outside you may appear modest as self-actualized or holy as a hermit; but on the inside, at least while you are on this Earth, you are seething and frothing and feeling anything but secure. More often than they might suspect, people of reputation have been in grave danger and did not know it. They are good people, but they have extended their self-confidence beyond its natural limit. From this one could draw the conclusion that it is helpful to be tempted from time to time. One might even say that to be tempted to the point of endurance could help deflate interior desolations and deflect exterior consolations. Your proper motivation should be, “I love the Lord.” #RandolphHarris 21 of 22

Spirit of love that flows against our flesh set it trembling moves across it as across grass, erasing every boundary that we accept, and swings the doors of our lives wide—this is a prayer I song: Save our perishing Earth! Spirit that cracks our single selves—eyes fall down eyes, hearts escape through the bars of our ribs to dart into other bodies—save this Earth! The Earth is perishing. This is a prayer I sing. Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the World which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His Kingdom during the days of your life and during the life of all the house of America, speedily, yea, soon; and say ye, Amen. May His great name be blessed for ever and ever. Exalted and honoured be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory transcends, yea, is beyond all praises, hymns and blessings that humans can render unto Him; and say ye, Amen. May there be abundant peace from Haven, and life for us and for all America; and say ye, Amen. May He who establish peace in the Heavens, grant peace unto us and unto all America; and say ye, Amen. Lord of the World—Lord of the World, the King supreme, ere aught was formed, He reigned alone. When by His will all things were wrought, then was His sovereign name made known. And when in time all things shall cease, He still shall reign in majesty. He was, He is, He shall remain all-glorious eternally. Incomparable, unique is He, no other His Oneness share. Without beginning, without end, dominion is might is His to bear. He is my living God who saves, my Rock when grief or trials befall, my Banner and my Refuge strong, my bounteous Portion when I call. My soul I give unto His care, asleep, awake, for He is near, and with my soul, my body, too; God is with me, I have no fear. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22

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