Randolph Harris II International Institute

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Should I Ever Take Ease Upon a Bed of Leisure, May that Same Moment Mark My End!

85It is a lust again of time and for the future, for the mysteries of the natural World. For being the watcher that I became that long-ago night in Paris, when I was forced into it. I lost my illusions. I lost my favorite lies. You might say I revisited that moment and was reborn to darkness of my own free will. The transition to a study of the negative aspects of bureaucracy is afforded by the application of Veblen’s concept of trained incapacity, Dewey’s notion of occupational psychosis, or Warnotte’s view of professional deformation. Trained incapacity refers to that state of affairs in which one’s abilities function as inadequacies or blind spots. Actions based upon training and skills which have been successfully applied in the past may result in inappropriate responses under changed conditions. An inadequate flexibility in the application of skills, will, inchanging milieu, result in more or less serious maladjustments. Thus, to adopt a barnyard illustration used in this connection by Kenneth Burke, chickens may be readily conditioned to interpret the sound of a bell as a signal for trained chickens to their doom as they are assembled to suffer decapitation. In general, one adopts measures in keeping with one’s past training and, under new conditions which are not recognized as significantly different, the very soundness of this training may lead to the adoption of the wrong procedures. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

ImageAgain, in Burke’s almost echolalic phrase, “people may be unfitted by being fit in an unfit fitness”; their training may lead to the adoption of the wrong procedures. Dewey’s concept of occupational psychosis rests upon much the same observations. As a result of their day to day routines, people develop special preferences, antipathies, discriminations and emphases. (The term psychosis is used by Dewey to denote a “pronounced character of the mind.”) These psychoses develop through demand put upon the individual by the particular organization of one’s occupational role. The concepts of both Veblen and Dewey refer to a fundamental ambivalence. Any action can be considered in terms of what it attains or what it fails to attain. “A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing—a focus upon object A involves a neglect of object B.” In his discussion, Weber is almost exclusively concerned with what the bureaucratic structure attains: precision, reliability, efficiency. This same structure may be examined from another perspective provided by the ambivalence. What are the limitations of the organizations designed to attain these goals? For reasons which we have already noted, the bureaucratic structure exerts a constant pressure upon the official to be “methodical, prudent, disciplined.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

ImageIf the bureaucracy is to operate successfully, it must attain a high degree of reliability of behavior, an unusual degree of conformity with prescribed patterns of actions. Hence, the fundamental importance of discipline which may be as highly developed in a religious or economic bureaucracy as in the army. Discipline can be effective only if the ideal patterns are buttressed by strong sentiments which entail devotion to one’s duties, a keen sense of the limitation of one’s authority and competence, and methodical performance of routine activities. The efficacy of social structure depends ultimately upon infusing group participants with appropriate attitudes and sentiments. As we shall see, there are definite arrangements in the bureaucracy for inculcating and reinforcing these sentiments. At the moment, it suffices to observe that in order to ensure discipline (the necessary reliability of response), these sentiments are often more intense than is technically necessary. There is a margin of safety, so to speak, in the pressure exerted by these sentiments upon the bureaucrat to conform to one’s patterned obligations, in much the same sense that added allowances (precautionary overestimations) are made by the engineer in designing the supports for a bridge. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

ImageHowever, this very emphasis leads to a transference of the sentiments from the aims of the organization onto the particular details of behavior required by the rules. Adherence to the rules, originally conceived as a means, becomes transformed into an end-in-itself; there occurs the familiar process of displacement of goals whereby an instrumental value becomes a terminal value. Discipline, readily interpreted as conformance with regulations, whatever the situation, is seen not as a measure designed for specific purposes but becomes an immediate value in the life-organization of the bureaucrat. This emphasis, resulting from the displacement of the original goals, develops into rigidities and an inability to adjust readily. Formalism, even ritualism, ensures with an unchallenged insistence upon punctilious adherence to formalized procedures. This may be exaggerated to the point where primary concern with conformity to the rules interferes with the achievement of the purposes of the organization, in which case we have the familiar phenomenon of the technicism or red tape of the official. An extreme product of this process of displacement of goals is the bureaucratic virtuoso, who never forgets a single rule binding his or her actions and hence is unable to assist many of one’s clients. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

ImageA case in point, where strict recognition of the limits of authority and literal adherence to rules produced this result, is the pathetic plight of Bernt Balchen, Admiral Byrd’s pilot in the flight over the South Pole. According to a ruling of the department of labor Bernt Balchen cannot receive his citizenship papers. Balchen, a native of Norway, declared his intention in 1927. It is held that he has failed to meet the condition of five years’ continuous residence in the United States of American. The Byrd Antarctic voyage took him out of the country, although he was on a ship carrying the American flag, was an invaluable member of the American expedition, and in a region to which there is an American claim because of the exploration and occupation of it by Americans, this region being Little America. The bureau of naturalization explains that it cannot proceed on the assumption that Little America is American soil. That would be trespass on international questions where is has no sanction. So far as the bureau is concerned, Balchen was out of the country and technically has not complied with the law of naturalization. Such inadequacies in orientation which involve trained incapacity clearly derive from structural sources. The process may be briefly recapitulated. An effective bureaucracy demands reliability of response and strict devotion to regulations. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

ImageSuch devotion to the rules of an effective bureaucracy leads to their transformation into absolutes; they are no longer conceived as relative to a set of purposes. This interferes with ready adaptation under special conditions not clearly envisaged by those who drew up the general rules. Thus, the very elements which conduce toward efficiency in general produce inefficiency in specific instances. Full realization of the inadequacy is seldom attained by members of the group who have not divorced themselves from the meanings which the rules have for them. These rules in time become symbolic in cast, rather than strictly utilitarian. The usefulness of organizations makes them a necessity. The appointment of people to administer those organizations is unavoidable. In the arrangements of human society, there is a necessary place for human institutions.  However, organizations and bureaucracy may lead to anxiety.  A way of escaping anxiety that is considered most radical consists in avoiding all situations, thoughts or feelings which might arouse anxiety. This may be a conscious process, as when the person who fear driving or mountain climbing avoids doing these things. More accurately speaking, a person may be aware of the existence of anxiety and aware of avoiding it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

ImageOne may also, however, be only dimly or not at all aware of avoiding activities. One may, for instance, procrastinate in matter which, without one’s knowledge, are connected with anxiety, such as making decision, going to the doctor or writing a letter. Or one may pretend, that is, subjectively believe that certain activities one contemplates—such as taking part in a discussion, giving orders to employees, separating oneself from another person—are unimportant. Or one may pretend not to like doing certain things and discard them on that basis. This a young lady whom going to parties involves gears of being neglected may avoid going altogether by making herself believe that she does not like social gatherings. If we go one step farther, to the point where such avoidance operates automatically, we have the phenomenon of an inhibition. An inhibition consists in an inability to do, feel or think certain things, and its function is to avoid the anxiety which would arise if the person attempted to do, feel, or think those things. There is no anxiety present in awareness, and no capacity for overcoming the inhibitions by conscious effort. Inhibitions are present in their most spectacular form in the hysterical losses of functioning: hysterical blindness, speechlessness or paralysis of a limb. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

ImageIn the sphere pleasures of the flesh and frigidity and impotence represent such inhibitions, although the structure of these inhibitions may be very complex. In the mental sphere inhibitions in concentration, in forming or expressing opinions, in making contacts with people are well-known phenomena. It might be worth while to spend several pages merely enumerating inhibitions, as to convey a full impression of the variety of their forms and the frequency of their occurrence. I think, however, that I may leave it to the reader to review one’s own observations on that score, because inhibitions are nowadays a well-known phenomenon and easily recognizable, if they are fully developed. Nevertheless it is desirable to consider briefly the preconditions that are necessary in order to become aware that inhibitions exist. Otherwise we should underestimate their frequency because usually we are not aware of how many inhibitions we really have. In the first place, we must be aware of the desire to do something in order to be aware of the inability to do it. For instance, we have to be aware of possessing ambitions before we can realize that we have inhibitions on that score. The question may be asked whether we do not always at least know what we want. Decidedly not. Let us consider, for example, a person listening to a paper and having a critical thought about it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

ImageA minor inhibition would consist in a timidity about expressing the criticism; a stronger inhibition would prevent one from organizing one’s thoughts, with the result that they would occur to one only after the discussion was over or the net morning. However, the inhibition may go so far as not to permit the critical thoughts to come up at all, and in this case, assuming that one really feels critical, one will be inclined to accept blindly what has been said or even to admire it; and one will be quite unaware of having any inhibitions. In other words, if an inhibition goes so far as to check wishes or impulses there can be no awareness of its existence. A second factor that may prevent awareness occurs when an inhibition has such an important function in a person’s life that one prefers to insist that it is an unchangeable fact. If, for instance, there is an overpowering anxiety of some kind connected with any sort of competitive work, resulting in an intense fatigue after every attempt to work, the person may insist that one is not strong enough to do any work; that belief protects one, but if one admitted an inhibition one might have to return to work and thereby expose oneself to the dreaded anxiety. Truth comes after states and ecstasies and then takes it place. It is easier to glimpse the truth than to stay in it. For the first, it is often enough to win a single battle; for the second, it is necessary to win a whole war. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

ImageCompensatory trends in an individual will influence the forms of his or her creating will take, but they do not explain the process of creativity itself. Compensatory needs influence the particular bent or direction in culture or science, but they do not explain the creation of the culture or science. Because of this I learned very early in my psychological career to regard with a good deal of skepticism current theories explaining creativity. And I learned always to task the questions: Does the theory deal with creativity itself, or does it deal only with some artifact, some partial, peripheral aspect, of the creative act? The other widely current psychoanalytic theories about creativity have two characteristics. First, they are reductive—that is, they reduce creativity to some other process. Second, they generally make it specifically an expression of neurotic patterns. The usual definition of creativity in psychoanalytic circles is regression in the service of ego. Immediately the term regression indicates the reductive approach. I emphatically disagree with the implication that creativity is to be understood by reducing it to some other process, or that it is essentially an expression of neurosis. Creativity is certainly associated with serious psychological problems in our particular culture—Van Gogh went psychotic, Gaugin seems to have been a schizoid, Poe was an alcoholic, and Virginia Woolf was seriously depressed. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

ImageObviously creativity and originality are associated with persons who do not fit into their culture. However, this does not necessarily mean that the creativity is the product of the neurosis. The association of creativity with neurosis presents us with a dilemma—namely, if by psychoanalysis we cured the artists of their neuroses would they no longer create? This dichotomy, as well as many others, arise from the reductive theories. Furthermore, if we create out of some transfer of affect or drive, as implied in sublimation, of if our creativity is merely the by-product of an endeavor to accomplish something else, as in compensation, does not our very creative act then have only a pseudo value? We must indeed take a strong stand against the implications, however they may creep in, that talent is a disease and creativity is a neurosis. We sail on a vast expanse, ever uncertain, ever drifting, hurried from one to the other goal. If we think to attach ourselves firmly to any point, it totters and fails us; if we follow, it eludes our grasp…vanishing forever. Nothing stays for us. This is our natural condition, yet always the most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find a steadfast place and an ultimate fixed basis whereon we may build a tower to reach the infinite. However, our whole foundation breaks up, and Earth opens to the abysses. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

Image We may not then look for certainty. Our reason is always deceived by changing shows, nothing can fix the infinite between the two infinities, which at once close and fly from it. The heart has its reason which reason know not. The relationship between power and love is shown in myth. Recall that Eros, god of love, is the offspring of Aphrodite and Ares, god of war or strife. In what better way could the ancient Greeks have told us that there is no love without aggression? However, even more surprising is the name of another child which blessed this union, Harmonia. The word means that which is fitting, in proportion, in concord—and it seems paradoxical in the extreme. However, is it not appropriate that harmony should  be a dynamic proportion between strife and beauty? The empirical relationship of power and love is illustrated in the closeness of the two in the problem of violence, the converse of power. Violence is most apt to occur between persons who are closely tied emotionally and, therefore, vulnerable to each other. According to a statistical study of homicides in the city of Sacramento, which is in the state of California, the majority of murders are committed against a member of the family. The most dangerous room, again judged in terms of the likelihood of murder occurring there, is the bedroom. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

ImageAccording to M. E. Wolfgang, “If you are a woman over 16, your murderer will most likely be a husband, lover, or relative. When a man is killed, the killer is most likely to be his wife. The bedroom is the most murderous room in the house.” Maybe that is why bad partners are sent to sleep on the couch. In marriage and in relationships between couples we see a similar relationship between love and power. There is a necessity of combining self-assertion (power) with tenderness (love) in the pleasures of the flesh. Without tenderness, the caring and the sensitivity for the feelings and delight of the other is absent; and without self-assertion the capacity to put one’s self fully into the act is missing. When love and power are seen as opposites, love tends to be the abject surrender of one partner and the subtle (or not so subtle) domination by the other. These are often the sadomasochistic marriages. When the aim is to be guided only by love, assertion and aggression are obviously ruled out as being too tainted with power. There results a clinging to one another, an absorption in each other. Missing are the firmness of assertion, the structure and the sense of dignity that guard the rights of each of the partners. Such relationships may swing back and forth, from surrender as a form of love to violence as a form of power. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

ImageEveryone is familiar with the news clippings telling how a devoted wife or husband of thirty years suddenly took a hatchet to his or her mate in a peculiarly bloody murder. This extreme example reveals the problem in a love that does not have within it a realistic assertion of power. There is statistical grounds for the common saying that marriage with someone who is undercontrolled—for instance, blows up from time to time—may make for turmoil and frequent fighting, but it does not make for murder. The docile, overcontrolled individual, the one who appears kind all the time, can be the one who releases one’s aggression in one big blowup. This accords with our thesis that violence occurs when a person cannot live out one’s needs for power in normal ways. It is only when one’s intermittent nature becomes obvious, however remarkable and uplifting they may have seemed, that one who experienced them is ready to seek for the higher Truth. This is not only a matter of personal feeling, but also of impersonal intuitive knowledge confirmed by reason and experience. Not everyone will enter into the kingdom of Heaven. Only to a very few is it given to enter and remain stabilized in the kingdom; many more must be content with glimpses only. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

ImageThe belief is all too common that union with God is experienced as a tremendous uprush of ecstatic emotion. This is true in several cases, but not in all. In any case, only after the excitement has abated and calm has descended on the being will one be able to see whether this is merely another of those temporary glimpses or whether it is really a lasting discovery of one’s divine identity. For the truth is that such a durable discovery of one’s divine identity. For the truth is that such a durable discovery, such an ever-present fulfillment of one’s highest possibilities, comprises much more than this inspired, but still personal experience. It is true that our sins and faults are automatically dispersed by the inrush of Enlightenment, but it is equally true that they will return if we have no prepared our selves to be able to stay in the Light. To gaze upon this great light without sufficient precious training of the inward life is ordinarily not possibly for more than a short time. The few exceptions who were able to stay in the light unbrokenly were beings of special genius and special destiny. Those who have obtained the abiding state are in the sanctuary, but those who have attained the transient one are only at the gate. Visions, mental states, and experiences may succeed each other progressively, but they are not the same as a continuous stabilized awareness of that which is behind all these temporary states. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

ImageIn one’s earlier years, if it does not fulfill one’s expectations, the seeker may try one kind of institution of a religious or mystical character and then move to a different one. In this way one may experiment with different creeds and different forms of practice. This may be useful so far as it exposes one to the influences which are needed to balance one another. However, if one ever does, it may be bewildering. Most traditional forms, or the newer organizations which have some sort of spiritual teaching, are useful in the beginning to most people. However, this is not to say that they are going to be useful always. They have their limitations, and at certain stage may prevent further advance. However, those who can stand alone are always smaller in number:  most persons will frankly admit that they cannot, certainly most young and elderly persons. This is the justification for the need of organizations, groups, churches, and priesthoods. They offer what seems fixed support in life, stable in doctrine, superior nobler holier and wiser than what the ordinary person finds in oneself. This is why philosophy attracts the few, those who are, or who can be trained to become, strong enough to walk a lonely path. For us, the end is always on the covenant path through the temple to eternal life, the greatest of all gifts of God. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

ImageWe know this flight in our dreams, perhaps because we knew it in some celestial realm beyond this Earth before we were born. However, sometimes we cannot conceive of the sight of eternal life as Earthly creatures because we have somehow forgotten, or damaged and torn our heart and soul. Seeing darkness where we expect to see light reminds us that one of the fundamental needs we have in order to grow is to stay connected to our source of light—Jesus Christ. He is the source of our power, the Light and Light of the World. Without a strong connection to Christ, we begin to spiritually die. Knowing that, Satan tries to exploit the Worldly pressures we all face. He works to dim our light, short-circuit the connection, cut off the power supply, leaving us alone in the dark. Satan operates a lot like Lestat in Ann Rice’s Tales of the Body Thief. When David is reborn in a new body, tall, with tan skin and blonde hair and lean, Lestat turns him into a Vampire to steal his joy. He was infuriated that David experienced a miracle which allowed him to give up his 74-year-old body and take over the beautiful body of a twenty-six-year-old male. Out of the miracle came youth, rebirth, and Lestat could not stand to see David profit. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

ImagePressures in life are common conditions in morality, but Satan works hard to isolate us and tell us we are the only one experiencing them. When tragedies overtake us, when life hurts so much we cannot breathe, when we have taken a beating like the man on the road to Jericho and been left for dead, Jesus come along and pours blessings into our wounds, lefts us tenderly up, takes us to an inn, looks after us. Jesus will ease the burdens which are put upon our shoulders, that even we cannot feel then upon our backs, that we may know of a surety that the Lord, our God will and does visit his people in our afflictions. It is not intended that we run faster than we have the strength. However, in spite of that many of us run very, very fast and the energy and emotional supply sometimes registers close to being on E—empty. When expectations overwhelm us, we can step back and ask Heavenly Father what to let go of. Part of out life experience is learning what not to do. However, even so, sometimes life can be exhausting. Jesus assures us, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” reports Matthew 11.28. Christ is willing to join with us in the yoke and pull in order to listen our burdens. Christ is rest. Should I ever take ease upon a bed of leisure, may that same moment mark my end! #RandolphHarris 18 of 18Image

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An Architect Builds a House with the Same Feeling as that with which a Criminal Commits a Crime!

ImageThe evening sky was a deep shining blue, as it is often in this part of the World, as incandescent as it can be over Cresleigh Homes Rocklin Trails, and the soft white clouds made the same clean and dramatic panorama on the far edge of the gleaming sea. Entrancing, and this was but one tiny part of the golden state of California. Why do I ever wander in other climes at all? The plain truth is that the more any being is exposed to middle-class values, the more sophisticated one becomes. Many people feel resigned to their fate, however. They are furiously angry at themselves for what they were doing, or desperately hunting other work that would pay as well and in addition offer some variety, some prospect of change and betterment. Some opportunity to obtain the American Dream of owning a beautiful home, having a wife and kids and two nice automobiles, and a saving account to help pay for college, medical bills, home repairs, and maintenance and for family vacations. Beings are sick of being pushed around by harried foremen (themselves more pitied than hated), sick of working like blinkered donkeys, sick of being dependent for their livelihood on maniacal production-merchandising setup, sick of working in a place where there is no spot to relax during the twelve-minute rest period. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

ImageThe mature people stay put and wait for their vacations. However, since the corporations demands young blood (if you are over thirty-five, you have a hard time getting hired), the corporation in which I work is aswarm with new faces every day; labor turnover was so fantastic and absenteeism so rampant, with the young people knocking off a day or two every week to hunt up other jobs, that the company is forced to over-hire in order to have sufficient workers on hand at the starting siren. Nevertheless, white-collars commuters, too, dislike their work, accept it only because it buy their family commodities, and are constantly on prowl for other work, I can only reply that for me at any rate this is proof not of the disappearance of the working class but of the proletarianization of the middle class. Perhaps it is not taking place quite in the way that Marx envisaged it, but the alienation of the white-collar being (like that of the laborer) from both their tools and whatever one produces, the slavery that chains the exurbanite to the commuting timetable (as the worker is still chained to the timeclock), the anxiety that sends the white-collar being home with one’s briefcase for an evening’s work (as it degrades the working being into pleading for long hours of overtime), the displacement of the white-collar slum from the wrong side of the river to the suburbs (just as the working-class slum is moved from old-law tenements to skyscrapers barracks)—all these mean to me that the white-collar being is entering (though one’s arms may be loaded with commodities) the gray World of the working being. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

ImageThree quotations from beings with whom I worked may help bring my view into focus: Before starting work: “Come on, suckers, they say the Foundation wants to give away more than half a billion this year. Let us do and die for the old Foundation.” During rest period: “Ever stop to think how we craw here bumper to bumper, and crawl home bumper to bumper, and we have got to turn out mere every minute to keep our jobs, when there is not even any room for them on the highways?” At quitting time (this from the mature foremen, whose job is not only to keep things moving, but by extension to serve as company spokesmen): “You are smart to get out of here…I curse they day I ever started, now I am stuck: any man with brains that stays here ought to have his head examined. This is no place for an intelligent human being.” Such is the attitude towards work. And towards the product? On the one hand it is admired and desire as a symbol of freedom, almost a substitute for freedom, not because the worker participated in making it, but because our whole culture is dedicated to the proposition that the automobile is both necessary and beautiful. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

ImageOn the other hand the automobile is hated an disposed—so much that if your new car smells bad it may be due to a banana peel crammed down its gullet and sealed up thereafter, so much that if your dealer cannot locate the rattle in your new car you might ask him or her to open the welds on one of those tail fins and vacuum out the nuts and bolts thrown in by workers sabotaging their own product. Sooner or later, if we want a decent society—by which I do not mean a society glutted with commodities or one maintained in precarious equilibrium by over-buying and forced premature obsolescence—we are going to come face to face with the problem of work. Apparently the Russians have committed themselves to the replenishment of their labor force through automatic recruitment of those intellectually incapable of keeping up with severe scholastic requirements in the public educational system. Apparently we, too, are heading in the same direction: although our economy is not directed, and although college education is as yet far from free, we seem to be operating in this capitalist economy on the totalitarian assumption that we can funnel the underprivileged, undereducated, or just plain underequipped, int a factory, where are can proceed t forget about them once we have posted the minimum fair labour standards on the factory wall. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

ImageIf this is what we want, let us be honest enough to say so. If we conclude that there is nothing noble about repetitive work, but that it is nevertheless good enough for the lower orders, let us say that, too, so we will at least know where we stand. However, if we cling to the belief that other beings are our brothers and sisters, not just Egyptians, or Israelis, Canadians, or Hungarians, but all beings, including millions of Americans who grind their lives away on an insane treadmill, then we will have to start thinking about how their work and their lives can be made meaningful. That is what I assume the Hungarians, both workers and intellectuals, have been thinking about. Since no one has been ordering us what to think, since no one has been forbidding our intellectuals to fraternize with our workers, should not it be a little easier for us to admit, first, that our problems exist, then to state them and then to see if we can resolve them? Competitive power is power against another. In its negative form, it consists of one person going up not because of anything one does or any merit one has, but because one’s opponent goes down. There are many examples of this in industry and in universities, such as the appointing of a president or chairman when there is only one desire position and many applicants. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

ImageCompetitive power may also be the kind of power present in student rivalry due to the grading system, which promotes destructive personal influences directly counter to whatever impulses students have toward mutual caring and cooperation. It causes college students to hate transfer students from junior colleges because they believe they are better prepared to handle the curriculum. The chief criticism of this kind of power is its parochialism: it continuously shrinks—although not as drastically as manipulation—the area of human community in which one lives. However, at this point we note a very interesting shift from destructive to constructive power. For competitive power can give zest and vitality to human relations. I refer to the kind or rivalry that is stimulating and constructive. A football game in which one side immediately establishes its superiority is simply not interesting. We want our opponents to test our mettle; pure ease at winning is boring. This kind of competition is much more present in the business World than most people assume; that the achievement (which I include in the realm of power) of businessmen is possessed in their own satisfaction in getting better results, more efficient activity, to which their competition pushes them. #RandolpHarris 6 of 16

ImageIt is worthwhile to remind ourselves that the great drama of The Queen of the Damned, The Vampire Lestat, Tale of the Body Thief, and Interview with the Vampire and many of the works of Anne Rice were produced in competitions. The implication is that it is not competition itself that is destructive but only the kind of competitive power. The competition between America and China, in the race to the Moon or to produce more cost efficient and better forms of technology (mousetraps), drains off a great deal of tension that would otherwise go to warfare. This kind of competition in sports is a counteraction to the competitive power that might otherwise lead America and Russian to tear at each other’s throats. Even if such assertions presuppose a too simplistic view of international aggression, they nevertheless do illustrate a beneficial form of competitive power. To have someone against you is not necessarily a bad thing; at least one is not over you or under you, and accepting one’s rivalry may bring out dormant capacities in you. For example, Lestat in The Tales of the Body Thief switched bodies with a human, but found he was unhappy because it was not natural for him. He thought he missed blue skies, green grass, Sunlight, and blue oceans, but being human almost killed him. It brought out the weakness in him and made he see that in his vampire body he was happy, a superior being, and knew that his human adventure had failed. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

ImageFear and anxiety are both proportionate reactions to danger, but in the cause of fear the danger is a transparent, objective one and in the case of anxiety it is hidden and subjective. That is, the intensity of the anxiety is proportionate to the meaning the situation has for the person concerned, and the reasons why one is thus anxious are essentially unknow to one. The practical implication of the distinction between fear and anxiety is that the attempt to argue a neurotic out of one’s anxiety—the method of persuasion—is useless. One’s anxiety concerns not the situation as it stands actually in reality, but the situation as it appears to one. The therapeutic task, therefore, can be only that of finding out the meaning certain situations have for one. Having qualified what we mean by anxiety we have to get an idea of the role it plays. The average person in our culture is little aware of the importance anxiety as in one’s life. Usually one remembers only that one had some anxiety in one’s childhood, that one had one or more anxiety dreams, and that one was inordinately apprehensive in a situation outside one’s daily routine, as, for instance, before an important talk with an influential person or before examinations. The information we get from neurotic persons on this score is anything but uniform. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

ImageSome neurotics are fully aware of being hounded by anxiety. Its manifestations vary immensely: it may appear as diffused anxiety, in the form of anxiety-attacks; it may be attached to definite situations or activities, such as heights, high rise buildings, low income housing, school, streets, public performances; it may have a definite content, such as apprehension about getting married, becoming insane, growing out of your teenage body as an adult, getting cancer, swallowing pins. Others realize that they have anxiety now and then, with or without know the conditions that provoke it, but they do not attribute any importance to it. Finally there are neurotic persons who are aware only of having depressions, feelings of inadequacy, disturbances in pleasures of the flesh, and the like, but they are entirely unaware of ever having or having had anxiety. Closer investigation, however, usually proves their first statement to be inaccurate. In analyzing these persons one invariably finds just as much anxiety beneath the surface as in the first group, if not more. The analysis makes theses neurotic persons conscious of their previous anxiety and they may recall anxiety dreams or situation in which they felt apprehensive. Yet the extent of anxiety acknowledged by them usually does not surpass the normal. This suggests that we may have micro anxiety without knowing it. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

ImageWhen it is put in this way the significance of the problem involved here does not show. It is part of a more comprehensive problem. We have feelings of affection, anger, suspicion, so fleeting that they scarcely invade awareness, and so transitory that we forget them. These feelings may really be irrelevant and transitory; but they may just as well have behind them a great dynamic force. The degree of awareness of a feeling does not indicate anything of its strength or importance. Concerning anxiety this means not only that we may have anxiety without knowing it, but that anxiety may be the determining factor in our lives without out being conscious of it. In fact, we seem to go to any length to escape anxiety or to avoid feeling it. There are many reasons for this, the most general reason being that intense anxiety is one of the most tormenting affects we can have. Patients who have gone through an intense fit of anxiety will tell you that they would rather die than have a recurrence of that experience. Besides, certain elements contained in the affect of anxiety may be particularly unbearable for the individual. One of them is helplessness. One can be active and courageous in the face of great danger. However, in a state of anxiety one feels—in fact, is—helpless. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

ImageTo be rendered helpless is particularly unbearable for those persons whom power, ascendancy, the idea of being master of any situation, is a prevailing ideal. Impressed by the apparent disproportion of their reaction they resent it, as if it demonstrated a weakness or a cowardice. Why is creativity so difficult? And why does it require so much courage? Is it not simply a matter of clearing away the dead forms, the defunct symbols and the myths that have become lifeless? No. It is as difficult as forgoing in the smithy of one’s soul. We are faced with a puzzling riddle indeed. Having attended a concert given by Aaliyah, Sully Erna wrote the following letter when he got home:

My dear Mrs. Aaliyah Haughton,

My wife and I were overwhelmed by your beauty and your voice during your concert. If you continue to sing with such grace and beauty, you will certainly die young.  No one can sing with such perfection and look so beautiful without provoking the jealousy of the gods. I earnestly implore you to sing something badly every night before going to bed…. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

 

ImageBeneath Sully Erna’s letter there was a profound truth—creativity provokes the jealousy of the gods. This is why authentic creativity takes so much courage: an active battle with the gods is occurring. I cannot give you any complete explanation of why this is so; I can only share my reflections. Although the film Queen of the Damned is based on the legend, one can see the intimidation and disdain when Queen Akasha played by Aaliyah when she walked into the bar. And if you read the novel The Queen of the Damned, by the description of Akasha, you can tell that role was meant for Aaliyah. Her life’s work is probably more significant than most can truly understand. That was a powerful role. It is akin to Meghan Markle being made a duchess, and the struggles she faces carrying and giving birth to a royal heir. Down through the ages, authentically creative figures have constantly found themselves in such a struggle. An architect builds a house with the same feeling as that with which a criminal commits a crime. In Judaism and Christianity the second of the Ten Commandments adjures us, “You shall not make yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in the Heavens above or that is in the Earth beneath, or that is in the water under the Earth.” I am aware that the ostensible purpose of this commandment was to protect Jewish people from idol worship in those idol-strewn times. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

ImageHowever, the commandment also expresses the timeless fear that every society harbors of its artist, poets, entertainers and saints. For they are the ones who threaten the status quo, which each society is devoted to protecting. It is clearest in the struggles occurring in American to usurp power from President Trump and the republican party. Yet in spite of this divine prohibition, and despite the courage necessary to flout it, countless Jews and Christians through the ages have devoted themselves to painting and sculpting and entertaining and have continued to make graven images and produce symbols in one form or another. Many of then have had the same experience of a battle with the gods. That is because genius and psychosis are so close to each other. Also, creativity carries such an inexplicable guilt feeling. So many entertainers and artist experience death by suicide, or assassination and often at the very height of their achievement, much like Aaliyah. We burn with desire to find a steadfast place and an ultimate fixed basis whereon we may build a tower to reach the infinite. However, our whole foundation breaks up, and Earth opens to be abysses. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

Image As result, we have witnessed an explosion of interest in the transcendental dimension of human experience. The recent collapse of traditions has brought an even greater sense of desolation to many clients and even greater impulse to compensate for and deny that desolation. Some have turned to drugs to provide that compensation, others to materialism, and still others to relationships and religion. We have also witnessed an avalanche of studies extolling the transcendental (or transpersonal) dimension of human experience. They have provided a necessary counterweight to the smug, antiseptic traditional psychological theorizing on this topic. Transpersonal psychologist encourage their clients to take guidance not from observed reality or rational thinking, but rather from their intuitive minds and other intangible sources. Some transpersonal theorists, on the other hand, are equally insistent about the virtues of transcendental experience. Such theorists as Ken Wilber unqualifying embrace the notion of an ultimate or godlike human consciousness, totally unrestricted by time and space. The film Queen of the Damned was supervised like no other film anyone knew of. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

ImageIt appeared to be one of Warner Brothers most important projects, and they obsessed with every detail. Queen of the Damned (2002) is also considered by some—for example, the British critic Robin Wood—to be one of the finest, if not the finest, motions pictures ever made alone with Interview with the Vampire (1994). The theological strict and rigid doctrines that God can take on the nature of living beings constitutes a mystery beyond human understanding. It is unintelligible and unacceptable to philosophy, which can limit God’s unbound being to no particular place, no here or there. The moment we give to finite human beings that which we should give to infinite God alone, in that moment we place Earthen idols in the sacred shrine. We must not give to finite human beings the attributes of Divinity as we must not give to Divinity the attributes of individual beings. There is metaphysically no such thing as a human appearance of God that we know of, as the Infinite Mind brought down into finite flesh. God cannot be born in the flesh, cannot take a human incarnation. If God could so confine himself, he would cease to be God. For how could the Perfect, the Incomprehensible, and the Inconceivable become the imperfect, the comprehensible, and the conceivable? I guess this is why the legend of vampires, who have godly powers, have flaws and are evil by nature. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

ImageFrom time to time, someone is born predestined to give a spiritual impulse to a particular people, area, or age. One is charged with a special mission of teaching and redemption and is imbued with special power from the universal intelligence to enable one to carry it out. One must plant seeds which grow slowly into trees to carry fruit that will feed millions of unborn people. In this sense one is different from and, if you like, superior to anyone else who is also inspired by the Overself. However, this difference or superiority does not alter one’s human status, does not make one more than a being still, however divinely used and power-charged one may be. All of this is not to be misunderstood to mean that we suggest that everyone ought to acquire every item of one’s spiritual knowledge afresh through one’s own personal experience, ignoring all the experience of the whole race. On the contrary, we would strongly suggest that one avail oneself of this experience through the form it has taken in great literature throughout the World. A competent spiritual director of one’s way is certainly worth having, but unfortunately the problem of where to find such a being seems insuperable. If an aspirant is lucky enough to solve it without becoming the victim of one’s own imagination one will be lucky indeed. If not, let one exploit one’s own inner resources. Let one appeal to the divine soul within oneself for what one needs. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16

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A Glowing Tripod Will at Last Give Sign that You Have Reached the Deepest, Nethermost Shrine and by its Light You Will Behold the Mothers!

ImageWithin moments of leaving of the Cresleigh Homes Rocklin Trails House, stepping out into the glorious daylight, I knew that this experience would be worth all of the trials and the pain. And no mortal chills, with all its debilitating symptoms would keep me from frolicking in the morning Sun. Never mind that my overall physical weakness was driving me mad: that I seemed to be made of stone as I plodded along with Nacho, that I could not jump two feet in the air when I tried, or that pushing open the door of the butcher shop took a colossal effort; or that my cold was growing steadily worse. Once Nacho had devoured his breakfast of scraps, begged from the butcher, we were off together to revel in the light everywhere, and I felt myself becoming drunk on the vision of the Sunlight falling upon windows and wet pavements, on the gleaming tops of brightly enameled BMWs, on glassy puddles where the snow had melted, upon the plate-glass shop windows, and upon the people—the thousands and thousands of happy people, scurrying busily about the business of the day. In our society most men and women spend the major portion of their waking hours at work, a fact which should not be taken to mean that beings find or express themselves only in their work. Yet far beyond the workplace and the time spent in it, the work we do and the way we do it shape our lives—our image of ourselves and our relations with others. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22

ImageThe World we have lost, a World based on the patriarchal productive unit of preindustrial times was an intimate Word in which work was inseparable from other family activities. Let it be noted, however—especially for those who would turn the clock back—that this was an authoritarian World, ruled by a father or father-figure who was absolute boss. But along with the power and control exercised by this figure went duties and responsibilities toward those whose work he supervised. He ruled his flock, but he also tended it. With large-scale industrialism this type of family industry as the basic productive unit came to an end, never to be restored. In the rise of industrial capitalism, handicrafts were replaced by machine-tool production. What this transformation meant for the ordinary worker, turn from the roots of their medieval past, is the beings are alienated from a World in which nature, others, and them as living beings become objects. The object produced by being’s labor—its produce—now confronts one in the shape of an alien thing, a power independent of the producer. The product of labor is labor given embodiment in a material form this product is the objectification of labor. Furthermore, the worker is estranged from the very process of production, which is controlled not by one, but by an alien being. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

ImageHaving lost control of one’s work, beings are alienated from others—and from oneself as well. Both labor and the possessing class represent the same self-estrangement. Alienated labor is not the result, but the cause of private property because people want to see the emancipation of themselves as creative and self-expressive, free to product the things they desire with love and passion. However, today we are confronted with the ambivalent machine—an instrument of liberation and of repression. As a result of innovation and globalization in America, we are seeing the heartland being eroded. United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that licensed dairy farm numbers in the country declined by 2,731 farms, a drop of 6.8 percent, leaving just 37,468 licensed dairy farms America, compared to 40,199 last years. Wisconsin is the state with the most dairy farms in American, but 590 dairy farms went out of business. Decline in American production is also because we are confronted by a formidable counterpart of the machine—bureaucracy. While bureaucracy aims at the rationalization of human behavior, it rarely achieves this goal. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

ImageBlind adherence to the rules may be dysfunctional, that is, it will prevent the bureaucracy from performing its intended function. For instance, former governor Jerry Brown signed a law that mandates cutting methane from livestock 40 percent by 2030 from 2013 levels. Dairy Farmer Kim Jorgensen has 270 cows. The cow tax would cost him an estimated $93,126.00. This mandate will cost a number of farmers their livelihoods and it will have an effect on competition. It means that farmers in California will have to compete with colleagues who do not have this mandate, and California dairy famers will be at a disadvantage. Consumers will prefer to buy their milk if it is affordable, but if diary famers are penalized, consumers will switch to milk produced outside of California, or the Untied State or switch to an alternative like cashew milk, almond milk, soy milk, or camel’s milk. If our goal is to create jobs and support local business, by taxing cow emission and buying milk and beef from other countries, where it is not regulated by the USDA will cause Americans to lose more jobs in the future. Therefore, as you can see whether bureaucracy is efficient or inefficient, it can be inherently impersonal and defeat the purpose of what it is intended to do. This impersonal character makes bureaucracy a hated and feared institution. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

ImageAlthough Americans tend to dislike bureaucracy because it tends to over regulate the beings and their production, and it has run amuck, many democrats are pushing for socialism and want to actually expand the government and put the government in more control of their lives. By forcing the government to provide healthcare for everyone, pay for college educations, tax foods and drinks that can lead to obesity to curb their popularity and control who can own guns. If democrats have their way, there will even be mandated wages and your education, experience, and performance will not matter because democrats want their “fair share,” even if they have not worked for it nor earned it. For instance, with democrats demanding their “fair share” to help people in retail jobs earn a living wage, they could reduce a doctor’s pay from $50 an hour to $25 an hour to supplement people’s wages in retail jobs so bureaucrats can equalize the wage disparity in California. This impersonal character makes bureaucracy a hated and feared institution, which capitalist want less government and less regulation so people have a fair chance at succeeding in life. When personal feelings and needs are permitted to intrude into its deliberations, there is a danger for bureaucracy. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

ImageHowever, bureaucracy is not supposed to be only an alien governing power that provides welfare and handouts to those who do not want to work, while over taxing and oppressing those who want to get an education and work; it is for increasing numbers of professional and white-collar workers a workplace. However, life in the crystal palace is not a government bureau or dreary counting house, but more of what many would consider the ideal corporate environment—physically luxurious and at least superficially warm and friendly in its human relationships. And yet, the crystal palace is less alienating than the assembly line because it is safe, clean, nice and peaceful. People are artificially caring, but not snarky, sarcastic nor vindictive. Both the assembly line and crystal palace turn out robots, but with the crystal palace you get cheerful robots, instead of cheerless robots, even though both are victims of impersonal and remote power. When not at work is where beings find themselves, in leisure hours, if they have any. However, some people have no training for leisure. And so, like the work from which it provides escape, leisure becomes a great void and these people usually fill that void with sinful activities. The Devil finds work for idle hands. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

ImageFor some people their leisure time is occupied with productive activities so they stay out of trouble. Out of all the other I’s some are chosen as a pattern that is me. However, there are all the other possibilities of patterns within what all the others say which come into me and become other I’s which is not myself, and sometimes these take over. Then who am I? The personal self is not formed in isolation. It is built out of both our private and our shared experiences. We tend to evaluate ourselves, at least in our early years, by comparing ourselves to others or by patterning our behaviors and ideas on those of people whom we feel to be significant. Peer and authority figures are often role models for our personal selves. Even if you are not in your ideal career, or ideal environment, I myself choose to occupy myself with reading psychology, religion and other subjects for 3-7 hours every day. I truly believe that an education, even if it is not formal, will help my mind develop and eventually elevate me to a place where I can achieve my dreams. Some people run hither and thither, from teacher to teaching to a different teacher or teaching, from Euramerica to India, to Japan, to China, looking away from their own being for that which is the essence of that being. They are like the man who looked everywhere for his spectacles. At last he gave up the search—only to find the spectacles resting on this own nose. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

ImageHowever, had this man’s attention had first to be drawn to his nose by someone—or by the book of someone—who could see his spectacles there. These seekers are not ordinarily aware of what is continually present within them, the stillness of the centre of their being, and instead of looking there for it, they look elsewhere, or to other beings. The real service which is rendered them by others is to tell them where to look; the rest is for them to do. However, the lazy, or those who want something for nothing, expect or want the gurus to do it for them—a false idea. The other great error of these confused minds is to seek from the crystal palace what it is not rejecting. The best in the crystal palace are not rejecting spirituality but ignorance, superstition, unbalance, futility, narrowness, and excess of liberalism. The Westerner who adores American’s past want to copy it, picturing it as a golden age of excess and abundance (which it never was). One tries to restore it for oneself and in oneself, becoming an ape and a parrot. If some have found their way to this illumination by following slavishly the details of a special teaching, others have found it by following their faith in God. It is not uncommon for inexperienced beginners on the Quest, who are ignorant of the serious and often harmful results of such associations, to turn to untrustworthy so-called occult teachers. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

ImageIn most cases, it would be far safer, and more satisfactory in the end, for them to depend solely upon their own unassisted efforts than to follow such a dangerous method. One of the predominant trends of neurotics of our time is their excessive dependence on the approval or affection of others. We all want to be liked and to feel appreciated, but in neurotic persons the dependence on affection or approval is disproportionate to the real significance which other persons have for their lives. Although we all wish to be liked by persons of whom we are fond, in neurotics there is an indiscriminate hunger for appreciation or affection, regardless of whether they care for the person concerned or whether the judgment of that person has any meaning for them. More often than not they are not aware of this boundless craving, but they betray its existence in their sensitivity when the attention they want is not forthcoming. They may feel hurt, for example, if someone does not accept their invitation, does not telephone for some time, or even only if one disagrees with them in some opinion. This sensitivity may be concealed by a “do not care” attitude. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

ImageFurthermore, there is a marked contradiction between their wish for affection and their own capacity for feeling or giving it. Excessive demands concerning consideration for their own wishes may go with just as great a lack of consideration for others. The contradiction does not always appear on the surface. The neurotic may, for example, be overconsiderate and eager to be helpful to everyone, but if this is the case it is noticeable that one acts compulsively, not out of a spontaneously radiating warmth. The inner insecurity expressed in this dependence on others is the second feature that strikes us in neurotics on surface observation. Feelings of inferiority and inadequacy are characteristics that never fail. They may appear in a number of ways—such as a conviction of incompetence, of stupidity, of unattractiveness—and they may exist without any basis in reality. Notions of their own stupidity may be found in persons who are unusually intelligent, or notions about their own unattractive in the most beautiful person. These feelings of inferiority may appear openly on the surface in the form of complaints or worries, or the alleged defects may be taken for granted as a fact on which it is superfluous to waste any thought. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

ImageOn the other hand, feelings of inferiority may be covered up by the compensating needs for self-aggrandizement, by a compulsive propensity to show off, to impress others and one’s self with all sorts of attributes that lend prestige in our culture, such as money, possession of antique pictures, antique furniture, women and/or men, social contacts with prominent people, travel, or superior knowledge. One or the other of these tendencies may be entirely in the foreground, but more generally one will feel distinctly the presence of both tendencies. The third set of attitudes, those concerning self-assertion, involve definite inhibitions. By self-assertion I mean the act of asserting one’s self or one’s claims, and I use it without any connotation of undue pushing forward. In this respect neurotics reveal a comprehensive group of inhibitions. They have inhibitions about expressing their wishes or asking for something, about doing something in their own interest, expressing an opinion or warranted criticism, ordering someone, selecting the people they wish to associate with, making contact with people, and so on. There are inhibitions also in reference to what we might describe as maintaining one’s stand: neurotics often are incapable of defending themselves against attack, or of saying “no” if they do not wish to comply with the wishes of others, as for example to a saleswoman who wants to sell them something they do not want to be, or to a person who invites them to a party, or to a woman or man who wants to experience pleasure of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

ImageThere are finally the inhibitions toward knowing what they want: difficulties in making decisions, forming opinions, daring to express wishes which concern only their own benefits. Such wishes have to be concealed: a friend of mine in her personal accounts puts “movies” under “education” and “liquors” under “health.” Particularly important in this latter group is the incapacity to plan, whether it be a trip or a plan of life: neurotics let themselves drift, even in important decisions such as a profession or marriage, instead of having clear conceptions of what they want in life. They are driven exclusively by certain neurotic fears, as we see in persons who pile up money because they fear impoverishment, or take part in endless love affairs because they fear to enter a constructive piece of work. However, God is immanent in us, that through realization of our higher self we become more like God, but that God never ceases to be the Unattainable, the Incomprehensible. The individual is as inseparable from the Infinite as the ray from the Sun. Nevertheless one differs from it in degree and in attribute. Just as a little child may be closely intimate with its mother but not with its mother’s mind, so the human being may be closely intimate with the World-Mind but not with Its full consciousness. The higher kingdoms of Nature cannot be understood by denizens of lower ones. Beings can grow, move, and reflect, but as far as we know cannot enter into God’s infinitely mysterious consciousness. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22

ImageBeing itself infinite, the World-Mind is able to express itself in an infinite number of souls. How is your mood? The mother, from whom one is born, who gives us form to start with, who carries the survival of the race in her womb—no topic can be more important. Every patient, in learning to love, must confront the psychological remains of his or her mother’s imprinting. However, we have to take responsibility for our own anxiety and our own distress—blame but yourself that it has come to that. Something of importance is occurring beyond the achievement of Helen, who represent feminine beauty raised to an ethical level in ancient Greece. A goal for the development of the virtue, so prized by the Greeks, was the “Mothers” ultimate importance. The form of forms participates in the Universe of reproduction of the species. The one in whose womb life is created, the one who carries the implantation of new life, also has these powers such as intuition that alternate between knowledge and magic. Wizards of femininity, they (the Mothers) must be rescued to help form and reform the new culture. The Mothers have, by nature of reproducing the race, whether they are conscious of it and take responsibility for it or not the key to transformation as they had been for the forming of the fetus in the womb at pregnancy. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

ImageHowever, this Age of Information is one of force. Such power is gained by overcoming the competitors; it works by thrust, tax, by attack, by fake news and systematic discrimination of traditional ways of life and my usurping patriarchal power, deconstructing gender roles, and by cyber activity. The seamy side of the Age of Information is green energy over jobs, life-killing drugs to abort the elderly and terminally ill (which 88 percent of is used by White people), a housing and homeless crisis nationwide, the whole arsenal of competitive, adversarial systems. The feminine characteristics ideally are receptivity rather than aggression, tenderness and creating rather than destroying. Many people still believe in the patriarchal gospel and it is balanced with a traditional family union of man and women. It is not about fighting your opponent and being militant, but showing your skills and talents to appeal to others. Power, strength, dependability—all these are called masculine and patriarchal. Only the bastard child wants to fight his father, instead of showing his intelligence. Mothers are the source of love, tenderness, caring, instead of toughness, cruelty, slaughter. When life is not in balance with the feminine and masculine, the drama is bound to come to grief. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22

ImageWe must explore humanism, to search out every way to help human beings and other beings discover and live by their greatest callings. Progress does not mean simply mechanical achievements or achieving wealth, it means that human beings are learning to be conscious of their richest unique capacities, and thus have life and have it more abundantly. Stretching up toward the divine is a way to transcend being. Evil acts must be changed to good. Eventually, the devil is duped, betrayed by his own powers. When people use their powers in a petty and selfish fashion, it always rebound upon them. Thefts are symbolic. This is a creature of compulsion and obsession. It is a game. That is why they cannot hand on to what they steal. It is the process that counts with those types of beings more than anything else. It is an endlessly destructive game. Beings who are possessed by the devil’s nature always have a pattern. They rise from the lowest caste in society to living in extravagant luxury, running up ludicrous accounts for fine clothing, motorcars, jet excursions here and there, sports terms, and then it all collapses in the face of their petty crimes, treachery, and betrayal. They cannot break the cycle. It always brings them down. “And the mists of darkness are the temptation of the devil, which blindeth the eyes, and hardeneth the hearts of the children of men, and leadeth them away into broad roads, that they perish and are lost,” 1 Nephi 12.17. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

ImageA curious paradox characteristic of every kind of courage here confronts us. It is the seeming contradiction that we must be fully committed, but we must also be aware at the same time that we might possibly be wrong. This dialectic relationship between conviction and doubt is characteristic of the highest types of courage, and gives the lie to the simplistic definitions that identify courage with ere growth. People who claim to be absolutely convinced that their stand is the only right one are dangerous. Such conviction is the essence not only of strict and rigid doctrines, but of its more destructive cousin, fanaticism. It blocks off the user from learning new truth, and it is a dead giveaway of unconscious doubt. The person then has to double his or her protests in order to quiet not only the opposition but his or her own unconscious doubts as well. Whenever I heard—as we all did during the Obama days—the “I am absolutely convinced” tone or the “I want to make this absolutely clear” statement emanating from the White House, I braced myself, for I knew that some dishonesty was being perpetrated by the telltale sign of overemphasis. Shakespeare aptly said, “The lady [or the politician] doth protest too much, methinks.” In such a times, one longs for the presence of a leader like Lincoln, who openly admitted his doubts and as openly preserved his commitment. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

ImageIt is infinitely safer to know that the being at the top has his or her doubts, as you and I have ours, yet has the courage to move ahead in spite of these doubts. In contrast to the fanatic who has stockade oneself against new truth, the person with the courage to believe and at the same time to admit one’s doubt is flexible and open to new learning. Paul Cezanne strongly believed that he was discovering and painting a new form of space which would radically influence the future of art, yet he was at the same time failed with painful and ever-present doubt. The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt, but in spite of doubt. To believe fully and at the same moment to have doubts is not at all a contradiction: it presupposes a greater respect for truth, an awareness that truth always goes beyond anything that can be said or done at any given moment. To every thesis there is an antithesis, and to this there is a synthesis. Truth is thus a never-dying process. We then know the meaning of the statement attributed to Leibnitz: “I would walk twenty miles to listen to my worst enemy if I could learn something.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

ImageThere is, among intellectuals, a tendency to deny and renounce power. Some have done this under the rubric: “Intellectuals and power are incompatible.” Others have said: “Ought we to redefine [power] in a clear way, or ought we to banish it altogether? My initial reaction is that it should be banished altogether. Indeed, outside Marxist circles, the subject has unfortunately been generally banished. There is a suspicious of the whole topic as through it were like Faust: whoever seeks power has already sold his soul to Mephistopheles. Some intellectuals propose that they deal in influence, and that influence is the opposite to power in that it restructures or alters preference. These intellectuals believe that power is the restructuring of action without altering preferences; you are made to do something irrespective of whether it is your preferred course of action. However, is not this distinction between influence and power essentially false? If we take the university as the setting, we need only ask any graduate student whether one’s professors have power over one, and one will laugh at our naivete. Of course the professors have power; the perpetual anxiety of some graduate students as to whether they will be passed or not is proof enough. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22

ImageThe professors’ power is even more effective because it is clothed in scholarly grab. It is the power of prestige, status, and the subtle coercion of others that follows from these. This is not due to the professors’ conscious aims; it has more to do with the organization of the university and the teachers’ unconscious motivations for being part of it. The more powerless the teacher feels oneself to be, the more destructive, even though subtle and covert, will be one’s influence. Influence is surely a form of power—intellectual power, but power all the same. I agree that being coerced into doing something regardless of whether it is the preferred course of action is a form of power (albeit a kind we are all used to and accept a hundred times a day, from waiting for red light to change to paying taxes). However, the emphasis on altering preferences can actually be harmful in that it leads to the state of the de Tocqueville described as characteristics of Americans—that we are bodily freer than Europeans, but intellectually more conformists and spiritually more in bondage. Many academic examinations fall into this category, in which it is psychologically healthier for the student to realize that one is required to take the examination and one does not like it, and to study for it with that realization in mind. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22

ImageThe damage to one’s integrity comes when one tries to persuade oneself that one does like the examination, and really does not. The idea of liking what you have to do is an illusion, and an unhealthy one at that. If we can like and choose a proportion of what we have to do, and do the rest because we are required to without trying t delude ourselves, we shall have more effectively preserved out autonomy and our humanity. The denial of power in society on the part of the professor is an example of pseudoinnocence. The professor proposes an idea, which in turn has power. One ducks out by letting the idea be powerful, not him. It is as though one says: “I said it, but the ‘it’ is responsible for my action, not me.” No doubt this syndrome is related by both cause and effect to the general American tendency toward anti-intellectualism, the distrust of the intellectuals on the frontier. However, one cannot purchase innocence so easily. Ideas unmated with reality produce few offspring. When the intellectual realizes that one has been increasingly pushed from the battlefield [of power] and put to flight, the reason may be that one has defined oneself out of the battle to begin with. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22

Miss-Fabulous-aaliyah-31078570-1597-2560If the intellectual were to admit that one also has power, although a different kind from that of the politician, the businessman, and the military leader, it would clear the air. Furthermore, modern society clearly needs the intellectuals and their guidance; the corporate power needs to be shared with them as well as with the other disinherited groups of society. It is worthwhile to recall that in The Queen of the Damned, by Anne Rice, Lestat de Lioncourt, the intellectual vampire appears to be getting ready to be decapitated, but is pulled in by Queen Akasha, the 6,000-year-old most powerful and first vampire in the World. However, later Queen Akasha faces a struggle, when all the vampires turn against her and is herself decapitated by one of the redhead witches the was responsible for bring the dark forces into her life that cursed her with vampirism. This is a graphic allegory of the role of intellectual and the nutrient power that one can express in our day. Be careful who you are willing to die for, as they may not be there to nourish you in your time of need. I have argued against the idea that there is an irreconcilable incompatibility between power and the intellectual. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22

ImageHowever, there is creative tension, which takes the form of pull between power and consciousness. This is why beings of intensive consciousness—like Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Pascal—have preferred an ascetic life, in which there were at least periods of freedom from the paraphernalia of the World. It is the function of consciousness to be, as Sokrates described himself, “a gadfly to the state.” Consciousness can disturb the establishment of power. It leads to conflicts which can be turned into new integration. It is the function of consciousness to keep us alert, to keep our imaginations functioning, to keep us forever curious, forever ready to explore infinite possibilities. Whereas power requires decision and dispatch, consciousness requires a loosening of controls, a freedom to wander where the spirit listeth, and exploration of new forms of existence which may be far out on the frontiers of knowledge. Enactment of the master-pupil relationship, with the subordinate and submissive role allotted to one, is far better if it happens within one’s own person that if it is objectified without. Then the lower ego will have to play this role. Only when one is beginning to find one’s own way to the inner reality and feel its support, only when one is lessening one’s dependence on some other human being (call one a professor or what you like), can it be truly said that one is a disciple of the Holy Spirit itself—not some particular being’s disciple. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22Image

 

 

 

What Do You think Really? Inside of You? Is there a God or a Devil? I Mean Truly, What do You Believe?

ImageI arrived quite early in the evening for I had gone backwards in time against the turning of the World. It was cold and crisp, but not cruelly so, though a bad norther was on its way. The sky was without a cloud and fully of small and very distinct stars. I went at once to my beautiful house at Cresleigh Rocklin Trails. It has an intimate view of the greenbelt and its is a beautiful community. It was not until tomorrow night that Mr. Raglan James meant to meet me. And impatient as I was for this meeting, I found the schedule comfortable, as I wanted to find Louis right away. But first I indulged in the mortal comfort of a hot shower, and put on a fresh suit of black velvet, very trim and plain, rather like the clothes I had worn in Miami, and a new pair of black boots. And ignoring my general weariness—I would have been asleep in the Earth by now, had I been still in Europe—I went off, walking like a mortal, through the town. The person living with an alienated and reified, negative identity concept of oneself closely resembles the hypochondriacal patient, except that one’s unhappy preoccupation concerns not a physical ailment but a reified physical or psychic quality that has become the focal point of one’s self-image. The relief one gains from one’s burdensome preoccupation is due to the fact that the reified bad quality no longer is viewed as part of the on-going process of living and of goal-directed thought and action. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13

ImageThe perceived reified bad quality has been severed from the “I” that acts with foresight and responsibility and is looked upon as an inherent, unalterable, unfortunate something an ossified part of oneself that no longer participates in the flux, growth, and development of life. It is experienced as an unchangeable fate whose bearer is doomed to live and die with it. The relief this brings is that the person no longer feels responsible for the supposed consequences of this fixed attribute; one is not doing anything for which one can be blamed, even though one may feel ashamed and unacceptable for being such and such. The preoccupation with the reified identity directs attention away from what one does to what one supposedly is. Furthermore, one no longer has to do anything about it because, obviously, one cannot do anything about it. Thus, the anxiety, fear, and effort that would be connected with facing and acting upon the real problem is avoided by putting up with the negative, fixed identity which, in addition, may be used to indulge self-pity and to enlist the sympathy of others. Kind of like how in Anne Rice’s The Tale of the Body Thief, Lestat is so lonely that he considers killing himself by going into the Sun, but David tells him not to, and he does it anyway and only gets darker. And also when Lestat considers letting the body thief take his body, but David tells him, “You’re going to make another ghastly mistake!” #RandolphHarris 2 of 13

ImageSo far we have discussed mainly negative self-images. However, alienated identity concepts may be beneficial as well as negative. Alienated identity of the beneficial variety occurs in vanity, conceit and—in its more pathological form—in delusions of grandeur, just as in its negative counterpart the “I” of the vain person is severed from a fixed attribute on which the vanity is based. The person feel that one possesses this quality. It becomes the focal point of one’s identity and serves as its prop. Beauty, masculinity or femininity, being born on the right side of the river, success, money, prestige, or being good may serve as such a prop. While in the negative identity feeling a reified attribute haunts the person, such an attribute serves the beneficial self-image as a support. Yet it is equally alienated from the living person. This is expressed nicely in the phrase “a stuffed shirt.” It is not the person in the shirt but some dead matter, some stuffing that is used to bolster and aggrandize the self-feeling. It often becomes apparent in the behavior of the person that one leans on this real or imagined attribute, just as it often is apparent that a person feel pulled down by the weight of some alienated negative attribute. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13

ImageWhen one is weighed down by some alienated negative attribute, it could be similar to how Reglan James behaves in Anne Rice’s novel The Tale of the Body Thief. “David, that’s what’s wrong with him! I’ve been trying to figure it since I saw him on the beach in Miami,” says Lestat. “That isn’t his body! That’s why he can’t use its musculature or its…its height. That’s why he almost falls when he runs. He can’t control those long powerful legs. Good God, that man is in someone else’s body. And the voice, David, I told you about his voice. It’s not the voice of a young man. Oh, that explains it!” Instead of being possessed by another entity or being, people’s negative emotions give off such a vibe that they do not seem normal. The way they talk, the way they move, the things they say, it indicates something is wrong with them. They are possessed by darkness. The reliance on an identity, on a self-image based on the prop of some reified attribute remains precarious even where is seems to work, after a fashion, as it does in the self-satisfaction of the vain. This precariousness is inevitable since the beneficial self-evaluation of such a person does not rest on a feeling of wholeness and meaningfulness in life, in thought, feeling, and deed. One is always threatened with the danger of losing this thing, this possession, or which one’s self-esteem is based. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13

ImageToday, especially in this country where youth has become a public fetish, many thousands try to preserve its alienated mask while terrified by the prospect of suddenly growing old, when the mask can no longer be worn or will become grotesque. The beautiful picture of youth can alienate beings from their actual life, which effects the internal markup of the being, marking their aura over with years of cruelty, selfishness, and greed, as they advance in age. Their true character is a secret threat that they feel when be exposed as they age because they are superficial and have no substance to go with their beauty. All beauty and no brains. In ever case of alienated identity concepts, there is a secret counterimage. Very often the hidden self announces its presence merely in a vague background feeling that the person would be lost, would be nothing if it were not for the alienated, reified quality on which the feeling of being something, somebody, or the feeling of vanity, is based. In this feeling both a truth and an irrational anxiety find expression. The truth is that no being who looks upon oneself as a thing and bases one’s existence on the support of some reified attribute of this thing has found oneself and one’s place in life. The irrational anxiety is the feeling that without the prop of such an attribute one could not live. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13

ImageSimilarly, in the negative alienated identity concepts there usually is a beneficial counterimage. It may take a generalized, vague form: If it were not for such and such (the reified attribute forming the focus of the negative identity), I would be all right, successful, wonderful, and so forth. Or it may take the more concrete form of some grandiose, exaggerated fantasy about one’s beneficial qualities. These artificial beneficial counterimages, too, express both an irrational hope and a truth. The irrational hope is that one may have some magical quality which will transport one into a state of security, or even superiority, because then one will possess that attribute which, instead of haunting one, will save one. However, actually it is nothing but the equally reified counterpart of what at present drags one down. The truth is that beings have potentialities for overcoming their alienation from oneself and for living without the burden and the artificial props of alienated, reified identity concepts. There is a distinction between helpful self-awareness and futile and self-torment rumination. We should oppose the ascetic interpretation we find among our modern hypochondrists and those who turn their vengeance against themselves. Instead, one sees the real meaning of self-knowledge in taking notice of oneself and becoming aware of one’s relation to other people and to the World. The pseudo self-knowledge against which one speaks foreshadows the widespread present-day self-preoccupation which is concerned, fruitlessly, with an alienated, negative sense of identity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13

ImageA productive self-knowledge is to pay attention to what one is actually doing in one’s relation to others, to the World and to oneself. A complete understanding of a neurosis is not possible without tracing it back to its infantile conditions, I believe that the genetic approach, if used one-sidedly, confuses rather than clarifies the issue, because it leads then to a neglect of the actually existing unconscious tendencies and their functions and interactions with other tendencies that are present, such as impulses, fears and protective measures. Genetic understanding is useful only as long as it helps the functional understanding. Proceeding on this belief I have found in analyzing the most varied kinds of personalities, belonging to different types of neuroses, differing in age, temperament and interests, coming from different social layers, that the contents of the dynamically central conflict and their interrelations were essentially similar in all of them. My experiences in psychoanalytical practice have been confirmed by observations of persons outside the practice and of characters in current literature. If the recurring problems of neurotic persons are divested of the fantastic and abstruse character they often have, it cannot escape our attention that they differ only in quantity from the problems bothering the normal person in our culture. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13

ImageThe great majority of us have to struggle with problems of competition, fears of failure, emotional isolation, distrust of others and of our own selves, to mention only a few of the problems that may be present in a neurosis. The fact that in general the majority of individuals in a culture have to face the same problems suggests the conclusion that these problems have been created by the specific life conditions existing in that culture. That they do not represent problems common to human nature seems to be warranted by the fact that the motivating forces and conflicts in other cultures are different from ours. Hence in speaking of a neurotic personality of our time, I not only mean that there are neurotic persons having essential peculiarities in common, but also that these basic similarities are essentially produced by the difficulties existing in our time and culture. As far as my sociological knowledge allows me I shall show later on what difficulties of our culture are responsible for the psychic conflicts we have. The validity of my assumption concerning the relation between culture and neurosis ought to be tested by the combined efforts of anthropologist and psychiatrists. The psychiatrists would not only have to study neuroses as they appear in definite cultures, as has been done from formal criteria such as frequency, severity or type of neuroses, but particularly they should study them from the point of view of what basic conflicts are underlying them. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13

ImageThe anthropologist would have to study the same culture from the point of view of what psychic difficulties its structure creates for would have to study the same culture from the point of view of what psychic difficulties its structure creates for the individual. One way in which the similarity of attitudes open to surface observer can discover without the tools of psychoanalytic technique, concerning persons with whom one is thoroughly familiar, such as oneself, one’s friends, members of one’s family or one’s colleagues. There is a curious relationship between our society’s attitude toward power on one hand and sexuality on the other. This is partially seen in our own day with pornography, our sexy commercialism, our advertising built on luscious blondes and shapely brunettes. If they could, people would mold magic gold into gigantic phallus to shock the ladies and gentlemen. In the Industrial Revolution there began the radical separation between the product of the worker’s hands and one’s relation with the persons who use one’s product. Indeed, the worker normally saw nothing at all of the product one helped produce except one’s own little act. The alienation of labor added to the alienation of persons from themselves and from other people. Their personhood is lost. With the growth of industry and the bourgeoisie, pleasures of the flesh becomes separated from the beings; one’s pleasures of the flesh are bought and sold, as is the product of one’s hands. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13

ImageThere are some situations of power when force, or coercion, or compulsion is an integral part of power. War is one of them. With sick persons or children, compulsion or coercion has to be used in proportion to the lack of capacity of knowledge of the other person. When my son was three years old, I kept a firm grip on his hand as we walked across Broadway, a condition that was relaxed as he grew and earned the intricacies of traffic enough to be able safely to take on the responsibility of crossing himself. However, there are ultimate limits to the application of force. If a species of animal uses its superior force to kill off all the other animals in its vicinity, it obviously will not have them for food when it needs them. This balance of nature is a delicate interweaving of the force of various animals and plants in relation to each other. When this balance is upset, we are faced with fearful prospects, indeed—as we are learning to our sorrow in modern ecology. Thus, to keep from self-destruction, power can be allied with force only up to the point where it might destroy the identity of the other. In a gun battle of the West, to destroy the identity of the enemy is precisely the goal of shooting. Hence I cite this as an example of the self-destructive effect of power allied with force. The one who is killed, obviously losing one’s being, is no longer present to give what one can to the community, no longer a person to whom to relate; and we are the poorer thereby. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13

ImageAlso the spontaneity of the other person cannot be destroyed without a loss to the destroyer as well. This is the danger in extreme forms of coercion and compulsion in brainwashing, conditioning, and hypnosis. If the person is transformed into something resembling a mechanism, one may still preserve some spontaneity; but if he is transformed into a complete mechanism, one ceases to be a person in the process. Power, therefore, ought to move with the affirmation of the spontaneity of the person it encounters; this will assure it most success in the long run. This is why I permitted Mercedes, an individual with practically no sense of her own power or spontaneity or choice to start with, to decide wen she wished to come to her psychotherapy sessions and when she chose not to. It was a process not only of letting her use her own spontaneity but requiring her to use it. While it is utopian to try to divorce power completely from force, compulsion, and coercion, it is cynical to identity all kinds of power with them. Is a tiny rain drop the same rainstorm? Can it cause a dam to burst as a rain storm? No—although the two are of the same nature, they are not of the same identity. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13

ImageFor any being to say “I am God” is incorrect, unless one understands the statement to refer only to the nature of one’s innermost being and only in this way, that one is but an insignificant drop of God with all the limitations that belong to a spark. We have to find our own self before we can find that of God’s. Hence there is real need of the higher self tenet. We are not entitled to aspire towards union with the wholeness of God so long as we still have not attained union with the godlikeness in beings. The mystical quest does not open the inner mysteries of God to our gaze. It opens the inner mysteries of beings. It leads them to one’s own divinity, not to God’s. There was once a less affluent Russian painter who could scarcely get enough money to buy bread for his wife and children. When the artist is on his death bed, his best friends finds the canvas on which the painter was working. It I blank except for one word, unclearly written and in very small letters, that appears in the center. The word can either be solitary—being alone; keeping one’s distance from events, maintaining the peace of mind necessary for listening to one’s deeper self. Or it can be solidarity—living in the market place; solidarity, involvement, or identifying with the masses. Opposites though they are, both solitude and solidarity are essential if the artist is to produce works that are not only significant to his or her age, but that will also speak to future generations. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13

ImageThere is no contradiction between advising aspirants at one time to seek a master and follow the path of discipleship, and advising them to seek within and follow the path of self-reliance at another time. The two counsels can be easily reconciled. For if the aspirant accepts the first one, the master will gradually lead one to become increasingly self-reliant. If one accepts the second one, one’s higher self will lead one to a master. When this craving for a guru becomes excessive, inordinate, it is a sign of weakness, an attempt to escape one’s own personal responsibility and to place it squarely on somebody else’s shoulders, a manifestation of inferiority complex such as we are accustomed to see in faces that have long been enslaved by others. Although it is true that one must find one’s own way to the goal, one need not do so as if one exists alone on this planet. One may be helped by drawing creatively on the experience gained by others even while one critically judges it. “And they did land upon the shore of the promised land. And when they had set their feet upon the shores of the promised land they bowed themselves down upon the face of the land, and did humble themselves before the Lord, and did shed tears of joy before the Lord, because of the multitude of God’s tender mercies over them. And it came to pass the they went forth upon the face of the land, and began to till the Earth,” reports Ether 6.12-13. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13Image

Our Eternal Life is Useless to Us if We Do Not See the Beauty Around Us, the Creation of Mortals Everywhere!

ImageI think the very name of Paris brought a rush of pleasure to me that was extraordinary, a relief so near to well-being that I was amazed, now only that I could feel it, but that I had so nearly forgotten it. I wonder if you can understand what it meant. My expression cannot convey it now, for what Paris means to me is very different from what it meant then, in those days, at that hour’ but still, even now, to think of it, I feel something akin to that happiness. And I have more reason now than ever to say that happiness is not what I will ever know, or will ever deserve to know. I am not so much in love with happiness. Yet the name Paris makes me feel it. Mortal beauty often makes me ache, and mortal grandeur can fill me with that longing I felt so hopelessly in the Mediterranean Sea. But Paris, Paris drew me close to her heart, so I forgot myself entirely. Forgot the damned and questioning preternatural thing that doted on mortal skin and mortal clothing. Paris overwhelmed, and lightened and rewarded more richly than any promise. It was the mother of New Orleans, understand that first; it had given New Orleans its life, its first populace; and it was what New Orleans had for so long tried to be. However, New Orleans, though beautiful and desperately alive, was desperately fragile. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15

ImageThere was something forever savage and primitive there, something that threatened the exotic and sophisticated life both from within and without. Not an inch of those wooden streets nor a brick of the crowded Spanish houses had not been bought from the fierce wilderness that forever surrounded the city, ready to engulf it. Hurricanes, floods, fevers, the plague—and the damp of the Louisiana climate itself worked tirelessly on every hewn plank or stone façade, so that New Orleans seemed at all times like a dream in the imagination of her striving populace, a dream held intact at every second by a tenacious, though unconscious, collective will. However, Paris, Paris was a Universe whole and entire unto herself, hollowed and fashioned by history; so she seemed in this age of Napoleon III with her towering buildings, her massive cathedrals, her grand boulevards and ancient winding medieval streets—as vast and indestructible as nature itself. All was embraced by her, by her volatile and enchanted populace thronging the galleries, the theaters, the cafes, giving birth over and over to genius and sanctity, philosophy and war, frivolity and the finest art; so it seemed that if all the World outside her were to sink into darkness, what was fine, what was beautiful, what was essential might there still come to its finest flower. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15

ImageEven the majestic trees that graced and sheltered her streets were attuned to her—and that waters of the Seine, contained and beautiful as they wound through her heart; so that the Earth on that spot, so shaped by blood and consciousness, had ceased to be the Earth and had become Paris. We were alive again. We were in love, and so euphoric was I after those hopeless nights of wandering in Eastern Europe. The estrangement of many late-nineteenth-century artist from prevailing cultural values established a model of rejection; and since their time the alienated hero—if one can be called a hero—has occupied a major place in the World of art and literature. For more than a century the European literary outlook has one constant, always predominant and ever more profoundly rooted characteristic: the consciousness of estrangement and loneliness. This mood colors the poetry of Yeats, Rilke, Pound, Eliot; it figures in the works of Gide, Kafka, Thomas Mann, Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Alberto Moravia, and Sartre—to name just a few. To the alienated being as seen by these authors, life is essentially meaningless or absurd—the idea of absurdity being another contribution by Kierkegaard to the lexicon of alienation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15

ImageA World than can be explained by reasoning, however faulty, is a familiar World. However, in a Universe that is suddenly deprived of illusions and of light, beings feel a stranger. One is an irremediable exile, because one is deprived of memories of a lost homeland as much as one lacks the hope of a promised land to come. This divorce between beings and their life, the actor and one’s setting, truly constitutes the feeling of absurdity. A stranger is unrelated to anything or anyone at all, a being for whom everything is meaningless, a being who murders and feelings nothing, a being who ends one’s tale of nothingness and absurdity by saying, “For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howl of execrations.” The idea that the human condition is essentially one of alienation now plays an important part in society. If you crammed a ship full of human bodies till it burst, the loneliness inside would be so great, that they would turn to ice…so great is our isolation that even conflict is impossible. When the fake news media and people in our society are directed toward the atomized World of beings and its values to the point life seems surreal and becomes deliberately nihilistic, meaningless, even anti-art, anti-law and order, anti-truth and ugly, something Biblical is taking place. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15

ImageThe new century is full of such deep antagonisms, the unity of its outlook on life is so profoundly menaced, that the combination of the farthest extremes, the unification of the greatest contradictions, becomes the main them, often the only theme in life. Humanity is caught at a moment of inhumanity, caught at a time of discontinuity, of appalling, invidious, silent horror. Many people find themselves alienated and revolted by the prevailing values of their society. Others too rebel, although more quietly. In a recently study, the decline of utopian thinking in the young generation in the Untied States has been described as a nation unwilling to accept what the culture offers. Alienation, once seen as the conquest of a cruel (but changeable) economic order, has become for many the central fact of human existence, characterizing being’s thrownness into a World in which one has no inherent place. Formerly imposed upon beings by the World around them, estrangement increasingly is chosen by them as their dominant reaction to the World. Where can love be found if your heart will not feel? Indifference is their chief response. Looming over the alienated mass society and its culture is the power of the modern state. Remote from human needs, implacable in its thrust for power, bureaucratic government completes the process of alienation which we have been sketching. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15

ImageOnce again, we are witnessing not the beginning but the culmination of a long development. We can trace the rise of the secular state to Machiavelli. With Machiavelli we stand at the gateway of the modern World. The desired end is attained; the state has won its full autonomy. Yet this result has had to be bought dearly. The state is entirely independent; but at the same time it is completely isolated. The sharp knife of Machiavelli’s thought has cut off all the threads by which in former generations the state was fastened to the organic whole of human existence. The political World has lost its connection not only with religion or metaphysics but also with all the other forms of being’s ethical and cultural life It stands alone in an empty space. Existential psychology (for our purposes) is both complementary to and integrative of other psychological approaches. Not only is it concerned with the psychological influences of biology, environment, cognition, and social relations, but it is also concerned with the full network of relations—including those with cosmic features—that inform and underlie those modalities. Let us take the case of Babette, for example, to illustrate this integrative view. For years, Babette has felt empty inside, hollow—and for years she has masked over those feelings. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15

ImageBabette has consumed herself with barbiturates, for example, forged herself with food, and inflated herself with falsehoods. However, when the shades close at night, or when the partying ceases, the hollowness in Babette returns—and with increasing ferocity. The very latest imports from France and Spain: crystal chandeliers and Oriental carpets, silk screens with painted birds of paradise, canaries singing in great domed, golden cages, and delicate marble Grecian gods and beautifully painted Chinese vases could not keep her happy. Even though the luxury enthralled many, the new flood of art and craft and design, one could start at the intricate pattern of the carpet for hoers, or watch the gleam of the lamplight change the somber colors of a Dutch painting. She even hired a painter to make the walls of her room a magical forest of unicorns and golden birds and laden fruit trees over sparkling streams. An endless train of dressmakers and shoemakers and tailors came to her mansion to outfit her in the best fashions, so that she was always a vision, not just of an heiress beauty, with her curling lashes and her glorious raven black hair, but of the taste of finely trimmed hats and lace gloves, flaring velvet coats and capes, and sheer white puffed-sleeve gowns with gleaming blue sashes. Babette was treated as if she were a magnificent doll. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15

ImageAnd then strange things began to happen. Babette would be found in the arm of her chair reading the work of Aristotle or Boethius or a new novel just come over the Atlantic. Or pecking out the music of Chopin, Bach, and Mozart. We heard the night before with an infallible ear and a concentration that made her ghostly as she sat there hour after hour discovering the music—the melody, then the bass, and finally bringing it together. Babette was a mystery. It was not possible to know what she knew or did not know. Babette was exasperated when she steps into my office on this misty evening. She is 20, depressed, and isolated She has tried many treatments, she tells me bitingly, but they invariably fall short of the mark. To be sure, she is quick to elaborate, they do help to a point. Thy serve to maintain her, or get her through the night. They help her to change habits, for example, or to chemically alter her mood. They give her thought exercises and practical, rational advice. They reward her when appropriate and discourage her when necessary. They help her to learn the reasons for her despair, and the distortions, consequently, of having misunderstood those reasons. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15

ImageExistential therapy could help to break this pattern, I think to myself as Babette sits across from me. It could work in conjunction with other therapies, deepening her hard-won gains. For example, in addition to helping Babette think more logically about her hollowness, I would also work with her to explore that hollowness—to see what it is about, to immerse herself in it, and to experience its (immediate, kinesthetic, and affective) dimensions. The more she can work with these dimensions, I would propose, the less they will threaten her and the more she can range freely within them. She can then be freed from the vicious cycle of compartmentalized therapies to seek richer meanings of long terms in her life—and she can forgo her compensatory masks. The problems of Babette and her oversimplified cures—indeed the problems of mainstream psychology—are but microcosms of a society wide epidemic. It is an epidemic of part-methods treating part-lives, of quick fixes and easy solutions that console, but fail to genuinely confront, human problems. The signs of the epidemic are legion: The erosion of the environment is traceable to get-rich-quick methods of industrial disposal. Impression management, trickle down economics, and “just say no” to drugs are the new watchwords of presidential politics. Great procurements of revenue are spent on a strong and powerful military (while funds for health care, those without homes, affordable housing, and job training dwindle). #RandolphHarris 9 of 15

Image Divisiveness and violence become increasingly acceptable problem-solving strategies. Given the above, what is our position—the existential-integrative position—in psychology, and how will t be used? First, existential-integrative psychology is a revaluation of the oversimplified and one-dimensional thinking that, in our experience, permeates conventional portrays of human being. We perceive two basic dangers in the conventional approach—a tendency to unduly bot reduce and exaggerate the human condition. On the reductionist side, we see an increasing trend toward conceiving human beings as machines—precise mathematical tools that can readily accommodate to an automated, routinized lifestyle. With respect to exaggeration, we are concerned about trends in our field that depict the human being as a god (one can predict and control both internal and external environments) and trends that shun the challenges of human vulnerability. We are also concerned about more recent trends, such as those of postmodernism, which appear to stridently subvert the (shared) or foundational aspects of human being and leap headlong into relativism. Beyond these critical analyses, however, existential-integrative psychology also proposes a vision. While we have already hinted at this vision psychotherapeutically, we now present a more comprehensive statement. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15

ImageWhether one be outside in the World or inside in the cloister is not so important to one as whether one’s thoughts and feelings, one’s character and consciousness have right direction. Either of these environments may be a hindrance or a help to one’s spiritual aspirations, depending on its particular nature.  Yes, if one uses it for this specific purpose, even the Word may be a means of advancement. It is less important whether or not we live under monastic rules than whether we live faithfully in the purpose which prompted those rules to be formulated. The purification of the mind may be accomplished at home or it may be accomplished in an ashram-monastery. Do not be carried away from truth by the bigots who denounce the one or the other place!  People who have stepped out of the World may have stepped into a vocation which is proper and good for the, but it is not necessary and not right to suggest that everyone else should do so. First of all, everyone else could not do so. It is not a matter so much of staying with the Worldings and doing their work nor of fleeing to isolated religious groups and following their disciplines, as of comprehending the mentalist secret and of keeping an inner detachment. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15

ImageDetachment from the World is an absolute necessity for the beings who seek authentic inner peace, and not its imagined counterfeit. However, renouncement of the World is not necessary to any expect those who have an inborn natural vocation for spiritual isolation. There is something deeper than our ordinary thoughts and feelings, something that is our inmost essential self. It is the soul. It is here, if we can reach to it, that we may meet in fellowship with the Divine. Through it the World-Mind reveals something of its own mysterious nature. One has come far when one has come to feel not only that divinity truly is but also that it is as near as one’s own being. One discovers that Consciousness, the very nature of mind under all its aspects, the very essence of be-ing under the personal selfhood, is where beings and God finally meet. One knows that God indisputably exists, not because some religious doctrines which are rigid and strict avers it but because one’s own experience proves it. There is a vital and definite connection between every being’s mind and the Universal Mind, between one’s individual existence and Its existence. Because of this connection one is called upon to worship It to commune with It and to love It. Only as a result of being liberate from oneself, taken out of oneself, can one find the universal being. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15

ImageThe illuminated beings of earlier generations, who usually appeared at the beginning of each historical epoch and from whose ranks the great social lawgivers and religion-founders were drawn, had no personal master for none was available at the time. Who taught them? It was none other than the World-Mind, operating directly through each being’s Overself and within one’s human consciousness. Whoever is unable to find an outward master in our own times may still find, when one has worked on oneself sufficiently to be ready for it, this same direct inward help (grace) from the World-Mind if one turns to that Mind. Through the power of the God within the seeker can be led to a higher truth, or what the Greek thinkers called the Logos can help one to find for oneself. If one refuses to seek and cling to the human personality of any master but resolves to keep al the strength of one’s devotion for the divine impersonal Self back of one’s own, that will not bar one’s further progress. It, too, is a way whereby the goal can be successfully reached. However, it is a harder way. Socrates got his wisdom from within himself. He had no master. The teachings of Jesus were not based on any of the ancient doctrines—that is, those of the great Jewish people, Egyptians, or Indians. They were entirely Self-inspired. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15

ImageThe human mind is fortunate in this, that it has a connection with the Divine Mind. It can become one’s spiritual teacher and moral guide. However, one must be careful: first, not to mix one’s own opinion with what one receives; second, and not less but more important, to put oneself through a preparatory and purificatory discipline to make the connection vitalized. After all, it is the Overself which was the real Teacher to all of the teachers. “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. One who does not love remains in death,” reports I John 3.14. In our time, as in every age, we need to see something which is stronger than death. Death has become powerful in our time, in individual human beings, in families, in nations and in living beings as a whole. Death has become powerful—that is to say that the End, the finite, and the limitations and decay of our beings have become visible. For nearly a century this was concealed in Western civilization. We had become masters in our early household. Our control over nature, and our social planning has widened the boundaries of our beings; the affirmation of life had drowned out its negation which no longer dared make itself heard, and which fled into the hidden anxiety of our hearts, becoming fainter and fainter. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15

ImageWe forgot that we are finite, and we forgot that the abyss of nothingness surrounding us. We had gathered into our barns the fruits of thousands of years of toil. All generations of beings had labored so that we, the generation of fulfillment, might tread death under our feet. It was not death in the sense of the natural end of life which we thought to have destroyed, but death as a power in and over life, as the Lord and master of the soul. We kept the picture of death from our children and when here and there, in our neighborhood and in the World, mortal convulsions and the End became visible, our security was not disturbed. For us these events were merely accidental and unavoidable, but they were not enough to tear off the lid which we had fastened down own the abyss of our being. Lestat possessed the wisdom of a sorcerer, the powers of a witch…I might have come to understand that he had somehow managed to wrest a conscious life from the same forces that governed these monsters. “I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well. The aim and final reason of all music should be none else but the glory of God and refreshing the soul. Where this is not observed there will be no music, but only a devilish hubbub,” reports Johann Sebastian Bach. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15Image

We Seek Truth for Various Reasons—One is Because it Possesses  Certitude that Gives Us Anchorage and Rest!

ImageThe great façade of the cathedral rose in a dark mass opposite the square, but the doors were open and I could see a soft, flickering light within. It was Saturday evening early, and the people were going to confession for Sunday Mass and Communion. Candles burned dim in the crystal chandeliers. At the far end of the nave the altar loomed out of the shadows, laden with white flowers. It was to the old church on this spot that they had brought my brother. Has that solidarity declined? Recent development in the New and Old World suggest that with greater prosperity the militancy of working-class movements has fallen sharply. If not true of the older generation, still loyal to the slogans of yesteryear, it seems to be particularly true of working-class youth. Some young of the World workers today is a new type: apolitical, or democratic, hedonistic, individualistic; in short, a far cry from the militant radicals of their grand father’s generation. However, decay of the working-class culture, which was itself a defense against alienation, has not necessarily led to greater integration. Along with the middle-class contemporaries, young workers face a World without values. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15

ImageHowever, it is not only material possession which divide mortals and other beings. In a heterogenous society like ours there are numerous and sometimes overlapping underrepresented groups or out-groups. Because our is a multi-racial, multi-ethic, and multi-cultural population, we are most likely to think of such groups in terms of color, hair textures, gender, sexuality, and religious affiliation since these distinctions are among the most powerful of all social barriers. However, it seems legitimate to broaden the concept of the underrepresented groups to include other section of the population who, because of some distinguishing characteristic, are rejected by the community. Among these groups are the young, the aged, the physically limited, intellectually disabled, those who are celibate, and homosexuals and transgenders, and it is also changing, too, to include White men (people discriminate against them just because of their status). We do not mean to suggest that all of them face equally serious patterns of prejudice and discrimination. Majority attitudes may range from ill-concealed hate and violence at one extreme to pity at the other; and barriers to solidarity and integration differ. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15

ImageAfrican Americans and Black Americans, for example, are segregated in enormous transient communities; while homosexuals inhabit half-Worlds with no physical boundaries. Nevertheless, all such out-groups face a certain degree of isolation from society: they are in the community but not of it. As a result, they tend to form more or less distinct subcultures of their own. Although these subcultures offer some security and protection, common to most of them is a striving for integration with the majority groups on top. Furthermore, it is only natural for underrepresented groups to acquire some of the prevailing attitudes toward them. When this becomes self-hatred for sharing the despised or feared characteristic, we have perhaps the most extreme form which this pattern of alienation takes: alienated from others, they become alienated from themselves. We began by saying that many beings today are estranged from others as well as from themselves. However, others means not only the social communities in which they live; it also refers to the natural and supernatural World beyond. Thus, if we speak of a being’s alienation from nature, we do not mean nature in any metaphysical sense—although fairly serious metaphysical problems are involved; all we mean is that men and women today are not as close to land, air, sea, wind and mountain as their ancestors or their contemporaries who have yet to be blessed with an industrial and urban civilization. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15

ImageThe World is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: little we see in Nature that is ours. However, there is another aspect to this debate. About 70 years ago, there was no social media, communities were small, more intimate and far more conservative. People could leave their doors unlocked and towns were built around corporations. So the people in the communities did not travel far, all new each other, and they could afford to live were they worked. Private business was not disclosed in the streets. But as people became more mobile, new challenges arose, wives went to work and were home less often, husbands  traveled father and were exposed to more people. And with social media people are exposed to thousands of more people than they were used to and it seems that everyone is already occupied with someone or your marriage and relationship is harder to maintain because there is now so much more competition. It is not as easy to date because some people like being alone and others are far more selective than in the past. Conversely, in some part of Africa, there are still tribes who hunt and gather and sometimes they eat a lot of meat or a lot of sugar and the diet works for them, they do not have cancers, heart disease or any other diseases that people in developed nations have. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15

ImageAlthough conceptions of the external World vary widely, many primitive societies and those areas still influenced by Eastern mysticism, feel themselves in fairly close unity with nature. In the pre-scientific Western World also people and nature were considered related parts of a more or less harmonious whole. Whether nature was considered hostile or friendly, people felt close to it. For leading thinkers in the West however this intimate relationship began to end with the seventeenth-century revolution in science and philosophy, and for ordinary citizens, with the industrial revolution that followed. To understand and control nature—the goals of modern science and technology—people first had to separate or alienate themselves from it. Nature, in scientific thought had its laws formulated without any reference to dependence on individual observers. The radical separation of people (as subject or observer) from nature (as object or external World) is likely due to the dawn of modern scientific discovery. What were the consequences of this division nature and people? First of all, it led to what we now call the scientific attitude, with its spirit of detachment, a spirit which has become the keynote of our age. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15

ImageFor as science redeveloped, it became more abstract and increasingly remote from common life to the point science is the view of life where everything human is excluded from the prospect. It is of intention inhuman, supposing, strange as it may seem, that the further we travel from ourselves the nearer we approach the truth the further from our deepest sympathies, from all we car for, the nearer we are to reality, the stony heart of the scientific Universe. The flowering of science and technology gave beings enormous power to control nature and thereby transform society. Note the word control; for the language we use offers a clue to the new relationship between mortals and nature. Thus when we speak of our power over nature we reveal a certain antagonism between people and the external World, with nature regarded as something to be conquered—or even destroyed. The greater that power, the more we are alienated from nature and from ourselves. Estrangement from nature is the common experience. Industrialism created the first cities in which nature played little or no part. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15

ImageThe towns are now losing their last glimpse of nature. Formerly men and women who lived in the English town were never far from the open country: their town life was fringed with orchards and gardens like Cresleigh Rocklin Trails. However, as the Industrial Revolution advanced, the towns were growing up in which working people would find it harder and harder to escape out of the wide web of smoke and squalor that enveloped their daily lives. Civilization was rapidly painting the green spaces black on the industrial map. The Angel Meadows were no longer meadows, old Meadowview lost much of its charm, and the only Angel that came near them was the Angel of Death. Life in such a town brought no alleviation of the tyranny of the industrial system; it only made it more real and somber to the mind. There was no change of scene or colour, no delight of form or design to break its brooding atmosphere. Town, tree, building, sky, all have become part of the same unrelieved picture. The men and women who left the mill and passed along the streets to their homes did not become less but more conscious of that system as a universal burden, for the town is so constructed and so governed as to enforce rather than modify, to reiterate rather than soften the impressions of an alien and unaccommodating power. One would call this ancient history need only explore the spreading blight of modern American cities to see that the damage done to nature has been long-lasting, perhaps permanent. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15

ImageThat the damage was not intentional is beside the point. Ironically, contemporary scientists and philosophers today, particularly those of the existentialist school, reject the Cartesian dualism between living beings as subject and nature as object. However, for ordinary citizens, many of them living in grim prisons of concrete and steel, the damage has already been done: the technology that classical science produced has erected almost insurmountable barriers between them and the natural World. We have put many stages of artifice and device, of manufacture and alteration, between ourselves and the rest of nature. The ordinary city-dweller knows nothing of the Earth’s productivity; one does not know the Sunrise and rarely notices when the Sun sets (changes angles in the sky, actually for the Sun does not really rise nor set); ask one in what phase the Moon is, or when the ide in the harbor is high, or even how high the average tide runs, and likely as not one cannot answer you. Seed-time and harvest are nothing to one. If one has never witnessed an Earthquake, a great flush flood, a hurricane, tsunami, blizzard, or heatwave, one probably does not feel the power of nature as a reality surrounding one’s life at all. Nature, as living beings, animated and apparently unanimated, has always known it, knows no more. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15

ImageIn the Western World most of us are the city dwellers, and one need not be a mystic to recognize that something is missing from our lives. Are we not poorer for it? There is a time, an appointed hour, for all things under Heaven. And in fourteen contrasts one embraces the whole of human existence, showing that everything has its time. What does this mean? This too is vanity and striving for the wind. The fact that everything has its appointed time only confirms one’s tragic view. Things and actions have their time. Then they pass and other things and actions have their time. However, nothing new comes out of this circle in which all life moves. Everything is timed by an eternal law which is above time. We are not able to penetrate into that meaning of this timing. For us, it is mystery and what we see is vanity and frustration. God’s timing is hidden to us, and our toiling and timing are of no ultimate use. Any human attempt to change the rhythm of birth and death, or war and peace, of love and hate and all the other contrast in the rhythm of life is in vain. This is the first but it is not the whole meaning of that statement that everything has appointed hour. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15

ImageIf the Preacher says that there is a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill, a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to speak and a time to be silent, he asks us to be aware of the right time to be silent, he asks us to be aware of the right time, the time to do one thing and not to do another thing. After he has emphasized that everything is timed by an unsurmountable destiny, he asks us to follow this timing from above and to do out own timing according to it. As a teacher of wisdom who gives many wise rules for our acting, he requests right timing. He knows that all our timing is dependent on the timing from above, from the hidden ruler of time; but this does not exclude our acting at the right and not as the wrong moment. The whole ancient World was drive by the belief that for everything we do there is an adequate hour: If you want to build a house or to marry, if want to travel or to begin a war—for any important enterprise—you must ask for the right moment. You must ask somebody who knows—the priest or the astrologer, the seer or the prophet. On the ground of their oracles about the good season you may or may not act. This was a belief of centuries and millennia. It was one of the strongest forces in human history, from generation to generation. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15

ImageThe greatest beings of the past waited for the oracle announcing the appointed hour. Jesus himself says that his hour was not yet come and he went to Jerusalem when he felt that his hour had come. The modern mortals know of the need for timing as much as his predecessors. When in my early years in this country I had to discuss a certain project wit an influential American business man, and he said to me, “Do not forget that the first step to a successful action is the right timing.” Innumerable times, when reading about political or commercial actions, I was reminded of these words. In many conversations about activities and plans the problem of timing came up. It is one of the most manifest patters of our culture, of our industrial civilization. People ask: What about the I-You relationship between beings? Is this always entirely reciprocal? Could it be, is it permitted to be? Is it not, like everything human, subject to the limitations of our inadequacy, and is it not limited further by the inner laws that govern our life with one another? The first of these two obstacles is surely familiar enough. Everything, from your own experience of looking day after day into the eyes of your neighbour who needs you after all but responds with the cold surprise of a stranger, to the melancholy of the holy men who repeatedly offered the great gift in vain—everything tells you that complete mutuality does not inhere in a being’s life with one another. It is a form of grace for which one must always be prepared but on which one can never count. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15

ImageYet there are also many I-You relationships that by their very nature may never unfold into complete mutuality if they are to remain faithful to their nature. Elsewhere I have characterized the relationship of a genuine educator to one’s pupil as being of this type. The teacher who wants to help the pupil to realize one’s best potentialities must intend one as this particular person, both in one’s potentiality and in one’s actuality. More precisely, one must know one as a mere sum of qualities, aspirations, and inhibitions; one must apprehend one, and affirm one, as a whole. However, this one can only do if one encounters one as a partner in a bipolar situation. And to give one’s influence unity and meaning, one must live through this situation in all its aspects not only from one’s own point of view but also from that of one’s partner. One must practice the kind of realization that I call embracing. It is essential that one should awaken the I-You relationship in the pupil, too, who should intend and affirm one’s educator as this particular person; and yet the educational relationship could not endure if the pupil also practiced the art of embracing by living through the shared situation from the educator’s point of view. Whether the I-You relationship comes to an end or assumes the altogether different character of friendship, it become clear that specifically educational relationship is incompatible with complete mutuality. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15

ImageAnother, no less instructive example of the normative limits of mutuality may be fund in the relationship between a genuine psychotherapist and one’s patient. If one is satisfied to analyze one’s patient—that is, to being to light unconscious factors from one’s microcosm and to apply to a conscious project the energies that have been transformed by this emergence—one my successfully accomplish some repairs. At best, one may help a diffuse soul that is in poor structure to achieve at least some concentration and order. However, one cannot absolve one’s true task, which is the regeneration of a stunted personal center. That can be brought off only by a being who grasps with the profound eye of a physician the buried, latent unity of the suffering soul, which can be done only if one enters as a partner into a person-to-person relationship, but never through the observation and investigation of an object. In order to promote coherently the liberation and actualization of this unity in a new situation in which the other person comes to terms with the World, the therapist, like educator, must stand not only at one’s own pole of the bipolar relationship but also at the other pole, experiencing the effects of one’s own actions. Again the specific healing relationship would end as soon as the patient decided to practice the art of embracing and actually succeeded in experiencing events also from the doctor’s point of view. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15

ImageHealing, like educating, requires that one lives in confrontation and is yet removed. The most striking example of the normative limits of mutuality could probably be found in the work of those charged with the spiritual well-being of their congregation: here any attempt at embracing from the other side would violate the consecrated authenticity of the mission. Every I-You relationship in a situation defined by the attempt of one partner to act on the other one so as to accomplish some goal depends on a mutuality that is condemned never to become complete. The ultimate Knower is supra-personal, divine pure consciousness, the knowing and understanding of the Self, God who is the Soul’s Creator and only Beatitude. All this is higher than the ego, the person, the individuality, the being. The Omnipresence of the Infinite Mind carries great meaning for us individuality. For it signifies that this Mind is not less present and not less active too. To realize the Self through the householder’s life shall be the grand ideal of the future of the World. It is not by giving up all, but by realizing the Self in all, that one has to realize the object of the World-evolution and be free. #RnandolphHarris 14 of 15

ImageThe path is not through negation of the Universe to the affirmation of the Supreme Self, but through affirmation of the Supreme Self to the mergence of the Universe in the Supreme Self. The mission this time is educational and not religious. Spread education in the name of the Highest Truth enshrined in the Bible and religions will grow of themselves on the sure foundation of the Highest Truth. I am weary of arguing with you. Hell is hatred, people living together in eternal hatred. We are not in Hell. You can take the present or not, I do not care. It does not matter. Only let us have an end to all this. The great adventure of our lives. When you can live until the end of the World, what does it mean to die? And what is the end of the World except a phrase, because who knows even what is the World itself? I have now lived in two centuries, seen the illusions of one utterly shattered by the other, been eternally young and eternally ancient, possessing no illusions, living moment to moment in a way that made me a picture of a silver clock ticking in a void: the painted face, the delicately craved hands looked upon by no one, looking out at no one, illuminated by a light which was not a light, like the light by which God made the World before he had made light. Ticking, ticking, ticking, the precision of the clock, in a room as vast as the Universe. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15Image

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Manifest Destiny—We Have Eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and the United World of America is Our Future!

ImageI will see a splendid city where great ideas are born in the minds of the populace, ideas that go forth to illuminate the darkened corners of the World. And I will know people like you, people who have thoughts in their heads and quick tongues with which to voice them, and we will sit in cafes and we will drink together and we will clash with each other violently in words, and we will talk for the rest of our lives in divine excitement. In America, pseudoinnocence has a history as long as the country’s. A “Chosen People” set sail from England, turning its back on a Europe that, for it, stood for sin, injustice, aristocratic exploitation, and religious persecution. These people sought to establish in America a land that would embody the opposites: righteousness, justice, democracy, and freedom of conscience. The very founding of the new nation was an enactment of the myth of the New Jerusalem, not in some distant future but already an actuality before the eyes of the “Chosen.” America began with a belief in perfection, and then it became devoted to progress. However, how do you progress beyond perfection? What about the religious persecution that soon sprang up even in New England? What about the beginning genocide of the Indians? #RandolphHarris 1 of 13

ImageNecessarily, then, there began the long struggle between ideals and reality, a battle in which the idealistic America, which was the approximate of the perfect state, the new Garden of Eden with no snakes in the grass, was pitted against the reality of persecution and extermination of the Indians. An ethical dilemma, indeed! The confusion and hypocrisy to which this led is shown ironically in Benjamin Franklin’s writings: “If it be the design of Providence to extirpate these savages in order to make room for the cultivators of the Earth, it seems not improbable that run may be the appointed means. It has already annihilated all the tribes who formerly inhabited the seacoasts.” Mr. Franklin shows how the citizens identify the design of Providence, the will of God, with their own and their countrymen’s self-interest. Americans are the “cultivators of the Earth,” and genocide of the Indians—an enterprise the guilt for which we have not yet confronted—is the will of God. This is the hallmark of pseudoinnocence: always identify your self-interest with the design of Providence. Probably all nations are given to a kind of historical amnesia or selective recollection that makes unpleasant traumas of the past. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13

ImageCertainly Americans since the Puritans have historically regarded themselves as a latter-day “Chosen People” sent on a holy errand to the wilderness, there to create a New Jerusalem. The framers of the Constitution were, furthermore, deathly afraid of exploitative power, as Americans have always been. They formulated their Articles with the intention that no group would ever gain this power; so afraid were they of being exploited that, in the Articles, they stretched its meaning to include all power. Americans now had the difficult ethical task of believing overtly that they did not want power, that their capacity for moral thinking and for serving their fellow mortals obviated their need for power. They saw themselves as the saviors of the needy from Europe. The Statue of Liberty still promises, through the inscription on its base: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I life my lamp beside the golden door. However, since America is no longer a population building nation, some believe the statuette of limitations on the invitation from the Statue of Liberty has expired. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13

ImageIn this country the Garden of Eden myth, along with the open denial of power, has continuously coexisted with a great amount of violence. The homicide rate here is three to ten times that of European countries; we have had one of the  bloodiest labor histories of any of the large powers; the majority of Americas in the large cities seem to be afraid nowadays to walk on the streets at night or hand the cashier a one hundred dollar bill. The essential American soul is hard, isolated, stoic and a killer. This violence exists, oddly enough, side by side with a remarkable tenderness and warmth in the American character. We cannot escape the conclusion that some special conflicts must be present in the consciousness of Americans to account for the simultaneous existence of violence and tenderness. I propose that, primarily, the violence and, second, the tenderness are connected with our conscious denial of power and the pseudoinnocence that accompanies this denial. Violence comes from the powerlessness; it is the explosion of impotence. The denial of our desires for power, when it occurs in the endeavor to cover up an actually high degree of power, sets up an inner contradiction: power then does not allay our feelings of powerlessness. It does not lead to the sense of responsibility that actual power ought to entail. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13

ImageWe cannot act upon our power directly, for we always carry an element of guilt at having it. If we were to admit it, we would have to confront our guilt. That is why power is customarily translated into money in America. At least money is external. Cold cash we give to other people and nations; we share it profusely with charities, indicating out guilt in possessing it. So we behave like a nation of wolves in rabbits’ skins. As a nation America has also failed to develop a viable sense of tragedy, which would serve, through making for empathy with our enemies, to mitigate our cruelty. One has only to read the reports of the men who fly the bombers over Indochina (“I do not think of the women and children below,) the fliers say. “I think only I have a job to do, and I get a joy out of doing it well.”) to find proof of our insulation of the evil of the World. “Two World wars have not induced in [Americans] either a sense of sin or that awareness of evil almost instinctive with Old World peoples.” Lacking this sense of our own complicity, most Americas also lack the element of mercy, which may well turn out to be a sine qua non of living in the World with an attitude of humanity. We tend to have sympathy with the aims and the spirits of people who are driven by success for the corporate state is rich and important. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13

ImageMany rightly see the American dream and even the problem of innocence in the first centuries of America’s history. We can appreciate the manner in which the sense of powerlessness eats away at the confidence of our people and their capacity to act, the willful ignorance in American life, and our tendency to try to get rid of evil by forbidding it. However, ironically, the promise to the young people and to all of us in the second half is pseudoinnocence writ large. “There are no enemies…There is nothing on the other side…Nobody wants war except the machine…And even business people, once liberated, would like to roll in the grass and lie in the Sun. There is no need, then, to fight any group of people in American.” Woodstock is cited as a myth of the new age now realized in all its ease and splendor, with no recognition at all of its aftermath, namely Altamont, where Hell’s Angels, brought in as bodyguards for singers, committed murder. It is an impressionistic painting of the Garden of Eden, with all of the glow of innocence and the ease and delight of children romping in the fields to rock music, the age before the fall, before the sense of anxiety or guilt intruded. However, alas! It is for children and not for adults. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13

ImageFar from Consciousness III being an answer, it would be no consciousness at all, for it lacks the dialectic movement between “yes” and “no,” good and evil, which gives birth to consciousness of any sort. The hard questions—if by that it meant political and economic organizations—are insignificant, even irrelevant. All will be done by Consciousness III, which will not require violence. We are then lulled into a blissful ease that is remarkably similar to those pictures on ancient Greek vases of gods lolling on Mount Olympus. Are there really no enemies? Can we call to mind the Berrigan bothers and think of that? Or the Soledad brothers? Or Angela Davis? Or the convicts at Attica, who, after the slaughter, were forced to run the gantlet naked? Or Vietnam—yes, the defoliation and dehumanized cruelty of Vietnam? Some have no understanding of the creeping fascism already discernible in our country: the turning of youth against their fathers, the anti-intellectualism, the growth of violence coupled with the sense of powerlessness of the mass of people, the tendencies of bureaucracies to make decision on the basis of what works mechanically with all human sense drowned in opportunism. It could be that some lack an understanding of the isolation, the loneliness, the despair that motivates many young people, especially in the drug scenes. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13

ImageAt Coachella I once went to a hipster wedding; everybody was colorfully dressed as a stage set for the Beyonce Black Greek life step show along with strolling by pledges. However, I could not escape seeing the isolation in practically everyone’s eyes, each young person seeming alienated and lonely even in the crowd devoted to innocence and joy. With alienation we must be careful to prohibit and reduce violence so that people do not become apathetic. Once I was sitting at breakfast with a young man, one of a group of flower children, perhaps nineteen or twenty, with a clear, open face and guileless blue eyes. In the course of our talk he showed me a letter he had written and was sending to his chancellor at his college. In this confident letter that he composed, Klaus would be thereby excused from the final exams. Addressing the chancellor by his first name, the letter stated: “I do not believe in taking tests”; then several more sentences to the same effect; and finally the signature, “Klaus.” I asked Klaus if he had made a copy of the letter. “No, I don’t think it is necessary—the chancellor will read this one.” As I looked at him now, his eyes and face seemed too clear and too open—I felt the doom toward which he and his comrades were marching; I felt the heavy books under which they felt their brains were being crushed by, crushed like flowers indeed, with the students feeling no more than books could feel. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13

ImageI saw how much importance these youngster placed on their academic performance, and although it is for their own good, I felt like crying out: “Harmless as doves you are, but where is your wisdom of serpents?” Some people always equate power to the corporate state, the power of the military; totalitarianism is defined as pure power. They never look at the good power. In their minds it always corrupts. However, it is the misuse of power that is the evil; the very existence of power is a good thing. You need power to get out of bed and use the restroom. You need power to control your own life and get an education. You need power to have control over your own behavior. You need power to have self-esteem to accept yourself and not bother others. Innocence in our day is the hope that there are no enemies, that we can move into a new Garden of Eden, a community characterized by freedom from all want, guilt, and anxiety. However, this also means freedom from responsibility; it means going back prior to the birth f consciousness, for guilt is the only other side of moral consciousness—we have eaten of the tree of knowledge. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13

ImageWe valiantly try to persuade ourselves that if we only find the key, we can easily create a society in which vulnerability, guilt, anxiety will all be things of the unmourned past. Unmourned and unstudied—here is possessed the contemporary uninterest in history and the refusal to study it. To hang to this picture of innocence, you must deny this history. For history is the record, among other things, of mortal’s sins and evils, of wars and confrontations of power, and all the other manifestations of mortal’s struggle toward an enlarged and deepened consciousness. Hence so many of the new generation turn their backs on history as irrelevant; they do not like it, they are not part of it, they insist we are in a brand-new ball game with new rules. And they are completely unaware that this is the ultimate act of hubris. Such innocence is particularly tempting in America because we actually ack a long history. We have very little sense of the sacredness of place, of roots, of homeland. In the Untied States of American, many people build houses in which to spend their old age, and they sell them before the roof is on. They settle in a place, which they soon afterwards leave to carry their changeable longings elsewhere. One will travel fifteen hundred miles to shake off one’s happiness. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13

ImageThis, in contrast to Europeans who have lived in the same city for a thousand years, and whose very walls around the city bespeak the centuries of struggle by which they earned their convictions and their culture. However, the United States is waking up again. Many people want to come to the United States of America because we are a nation of Law and Order and protect our citizen. The cry not to build a wall to protect our boards is only enflaming the nation to make the realize we need one. People are drowning to sneak into the Untied State of America. There are also others who are legally waiting in line to get here and not being allowed entrance because a quota has been met. There are also security concerns when we do not know who is coming into America or where they are living. Why do so many people want to be American? Because they also believe in Manifest Destiny. That Americans are ordained by God to expand their boarders. If some many people want to be American and want Americans to take care of them, it means that they also want our government to expand, so we can institute Law and Order in their countries, create jobs and safe housing for their people so they do not have to flee. Many people would love to go back to their home country, the land they love, the land of their ancestors, but it is not safe for them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13

ImageIt is important to also understand that it is what we expect from ourselves that will be more effective than what someone else expects from one. Rules and regulations thrust upon them from outside which one is unwilling or unable to enforce will be of much less use. As human beings, one of the things that we do to understand our World is to create systems of meaning that help us organize the sensations, experience, and objects we encounter. However, too often we use these seemingly descriptive systems to determine the worth of others. These human-made hierarchies of value can cause division, contention, and skewed understanding of self-worth. Conversely, God’s system of valuing us promotes connection, compassion, and love. We are God’s children. He loves us unconditionally, eternally, and unchangingly. Our worth is infinite because are his sons and daughters. No one spirit is more valuable then others. There are some people who still use an intricate set of codes, such as the very wealthy, to dictate behavior and measure worth. However, as the children of God we are also expected to abide by certain standards—to be loving, honest, show respect, and be slow to anger. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13

ImageWe are also supposed to have joy in our lives. Even though we cannot yet control those external forces that impact our lives here on Earth, as we strive to become father disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, we can find peace, joy, and happiness despite the Worldly troubles that swirl around us. The scriptures teach us that Satan desires to lead people into darkness. His every effort is to shut out the light and truth of Jesus Christ and his gospel. The Devil seeks that all people might be miserable like unto himself. If Heavenly Father’s work and glory is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of men and women, Lucifer’s work is to bring to pass the misery and endless woe of God’s children. Sin and transgression dim the Light of Christ in our lives. That is why our quest is to bask in the Light of Christ, which brings peace, joy, and happiness. The way to full realization of God may be possessed through a monastery or a nunnery for one person and through a family home or a career in the World for another. If any mortal assets that it must be possessed solely through a particular one of these two, one is mistaken. If one insists on forcing this idea on all aspirants, one is sinning. If one claims illumination as authority, it could be only a partial, limited, and incomplete illumination. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13Image

 

 

 

 

If the Mind is to Engage With Success in the Quest for Truth, it Must First be Unfettered and then Unprejudiced

Even his unusual beauty and unfailing charm were something of a secret to him. But I had always wanted many things. What accounted for the duration of the life many of us live? Why do we last so long? I purpose that there are five levels of power present as potentialities in ever human being’s life. The first is the power to be. This power can be seen in the newborn infant—he can cry and violently wave his arms as signs of discomfort within himself, demanding that his hunger or other needs be met. Whether we like it or not, power is central in the development in this infant of what we call personality. Every infant becomes an adult in ways that reflect the vicissitudes of power—that is, how one has been able to find his or her power and use it—indeed, how to be it. It is given in the act of birth, not by the culture as such but by the sheer fact that the infant lives. If the infant is denied the experience that one’s actions can get a response from those around him or her—as show in Rene Spitz’s studies of the pitiable infant orphans in Puerto Rico who were given no attention by nurses or other mother substitutes—the infant withdraws into a corner of his or her bed, does not walk or develop in other ways, and literally wither away physiologically and psychologically. The ultimate in impotence is death. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

The power to be is neither good nor evil; it is prior to them. However, it is not neutral. It must be lived out or neurosis, psychosis, or violence will result. The second phase is self-affirmation. Every being has the need not only to be but to affirm one’s own being. This is especially significant for the human organism, for it is gifted with, or condemned to, self-consciousness. This consciousness is not inborn but begins to develop in the infant after a few weeks, is not fully developed for several years, and, indeed continues developing throughout one’s life. The question of significance then emerges, and the long and crucially important quest for self-esteem or substitutes for it, accompanied by grief with the lack of it. With human beings, mere physical survival is now no longer the main issue, but survival with some esteem. The cry for recognition becomes the central cry in this need for self-affirmation. If significance and recognition are granted as a matter of course in the family, the child simply assumes them and turns one’s attention to other things. However, if—as too often the case in our disrupted day when parents as well as children are radically confused—self-affirmation is blocked, it becomes a compulsive need which drives the person all of one’s life. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

Or the child’s affirming of oneself may be made difficult in the face of one’s parents’ pattern of “We love you only if you obey us.” The child this get caught in the destructive aspects of competitiveness, the buying and selling of oneself and the World: one’s self-affirmation is taken by others to be a diminishing of them, and one is diminished in turn by theirs. In these or many other ways one’s self-affirmation is distorted or blocked outright. When self-affirmation meets resistance we make greater effort, we give power to our stance, making clear what we are and what we believe; we state it now against opposition. This is self-assertion, the third phase. It is a stronger form of behavior, more overt than self-affirmation. It is potentiality in all of us that we react to attack. We make it unavoidable that the others see us as we cry: “Here I am; I demand that you notice me!” The speech of Willy Loman’s wife in Arthur Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman, is a good example of this: “Attention must be paid…” Even though “Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the papers…he’s a human being…So attention must be paid.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

The fact that her assertion was nominally for someone else does not change the fact that she was doing the asserting. When we are doing it for someone else, some of us can assert ourselves more firmly. That is merely another form of self-assertion—often made necessary by canons of politeness or not “blowing one’s own horn.” The fourth phase is aggression. When self-assertion is blocked over a period of time—as it was for the Jewish people for many years, as it is for every underrepresented group of people—this stronger form of reaction tends to develop. When I spent three years in Salonika, I found that the 100, 000 Sephardic Jewish people living there—one third of the population of the city—actually made up the cultured intelligentia of the city. There was a complete absence of anti-Semitic prejudice such as existed in the rest of Europe and America. There was so a complete absence of the aggressiveness associated in this country with Jewish people Indeed, the motto in Salonika was: “It takes two Jews to outwit a Greek, and two Greek to outwit an Armenian.” The Armenians, the group less represented, were the ones in whom aggression and a sharp bargaining sense had developed. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

In contrast to self-assertion, which is drawing a line at a certain point and insisting “This is me; this is mine,” aggression is a moving into the positions of power or prestige or the territory of another and taking possession of some of it for one’s self. The motives may be righteous enough—to right an ancient wrong, as with the natives in Africa about whom Frantz Fanon, in his book The Wretched of the Earth, writes; or passion for liberation; or pride; or any one of a thousand other things. Motive does not concern us at the moment; we only emphasize that this is a phase of behavior that in every person exists a potentiality, and in the right situation it can be whipped into action. When aggressive tendencies are completely denied to the individual over a period of time, they take their toll in a zombielike deadening of consciousness, neurosis, psychosis, or violence. Finally, when all the efforts towards aggression are ineffective, there occurs the ultimate explosion known as violence. Violence is largely physical because the other phases, which can involve reasoning or persuasion, have been ipso facto blocked off. In typical cases, the stimulus transmitted from the environment to the individual is translated directly into violent impulse to strike, with the cerebrum being bypassed. This is why when a mortal erupts in a violent temper, one often does not fully realize what one has done until afterward. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

It is tragic, indeed, when whole peoples are placed in a situation where significance becomes almost impossible to achieve. The African Americans are, of has met with a lot of opposition. The central crime of the early Americans is that they placed the Africans, during several centuries of slavery and one century of physical freedom but psychological oppression, in situations where self-affirmation was impossible. In physical slavery, and later in psychological slavery, every one of the nonviolent phases was difficult or impossible. They were permitted to affirm themselves only as singer, dancers, and entertainers for the titillation of the majority group, or as tillers of fields owned by others, and later, in the construction of automobiles. That this would lead to widespread apathy and, later on, to radical explosions should no longer surprise anyone. An illustration comes from the remark of an African American man in Harlem: “When the times comes, it is going to be too late. Everything will explode because the people they live under tension now; they going to a point where they can’t stand it no more. When they get to that point…” #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

He dangles the end of the sentence, correctly letting us simply imagine what might come, because—as indicated above—before the violent explosion we cannot realize what may happen. For as long a people feel forced to remain in such a semihuman state, there will be aggression and violence. If the other phases of behavior are blocked, then the explosion into violence may be the only way individual or groups can get release from unbearable tension and achieve a sense of significance. We often speak of the tendency toward violence as a building up inside the individual, but it is also a response to the outside conditions. The source of violence must be seen in both its internal and external manifestations, a response to a situation which is felt to block off all other ways to response. However, it seems that people in positions of authority are not always willing to address nor resolve situations where people are being exposed to semihuman conditions because they are part of the problem and do not want to get in legal or civil trouble, so they hope that the person reaching out for help resorts to violence as a way to abdicate themselves of any illegal, unethical, or immoral ties to the situation. Their defense will be the person has a problem and erupted in violence and there was nothing we could do to prevent this from happening. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

The five phases above are ontological ones—that is, they are part of the human being as human. It is the endeavor of ontology to describe the characteristics of being as being—in our case the human beings as human. A child of three may erupt in violence that takes the form of a temper tantrum as many a mortal of sixty; and although we may judge the latter more harshly, the action is potentially present in both. The ontological view does not deny development, but takes its inquiry down to a deeper level. It is not to be identified with the nature theory of violence any more than with the nurture theories discussed earlier. Ontological inquiry is directed at the structure in which both nature and nurture are rooted. I believer that the psychotherapeutic approach provides one of the most fruitful avenues for the investigation of violence and aggression. When pondering the condition of Juan Carlos Chapa Jr., Adel Sambrano Ramos, or Dylann Storm Roof, we can see the seeds and roots of the madness and the violence in our nation. I am aware of the dangers of identifying too closely the society with the individual, but to entirely avoid a relationship between the two is just as erroneous. Social problems and psychological problems can no longer be isolated from each other. I believe it is valuable to try to understand modern social aggression and violence in the context, for example, that we can learn from Elliot Rodger and other persons in dire need of power. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

Medieval mortals were conscious of themselves only as a member of a race, people, party, family, or corporation—only through some general category. The duty of pioneers, if they are to be successful pioneers, it to realize they will need courage to forget outworn ideas and to free themselves from dying traditions so as to cope with the new conditions which are arising. In this connection, if it were practicable, the suggestion that it is also a duty to cooperate with existing spiritual movements would be acceptable; but experience will show that most of these movements are unable to enter that deep union of hearts which alone can guarantee success to any external union. Such a plan would end in failure and it is better for them to pursue their own independent course than waste time and force in attempting what would not succeed and is not really needed. With the Renaissance emerges the individual as we know them. If one’s entrance upon the scene was gradual rather than dramatic, it is indicated nonetheless clearly by important changes in language. In the Middle Ages the word “individual” means “inseparable”; and it was used chiefly in theological arguments about the Holy Trinity or to indicate a member of some group, kinds of species. The complexity of the term is at once apparent in this history, for it is the unit that is being defined, yet defined in terms of its membership of a class. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

The separable entity is being defined by a word that has meant inseparable. The crucial history of the modern description is a change in emphasis which enabled us to think of the individual as a kind of absolute, without immediate reference to the group of which one is a member. This change took pace in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries; and since then we have come to speak of the individual in one’s own right, whereas previously to describe an individual was to give an example of the group of which one was a member, and so to offer a particular description of that group and of the relationships within it. This semantic change reflected profound changes in the social order after the medieval period, particularly the breakup of the feudal caste system. When mortals found that they could change their status and social mobility increased, the idea grew of being an individual apart from one’s social role. Also important, as we shall see, was mortal’s new detachment from power over nature: when mortal (as subject) divorced one’s self from nature (as object) in order to understand and control it, individualism was given further impetus. It is the historical emergence of the individual as we now know one, of mortal alone, that makes alienation so crucially a modern problem. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

In the past, as we saw, when they lost their status that identified them and offered them some security, mortals particularly felt anxiety or despair. However, when the medieval system collapsed, the likelihood of alienation increased appreciably. Indeed, only with the release of the individual from medieval bonds could alienation become a widespread social problem. The breakdown of the feudal order forced mortals to fall back upon themselves; they had to learn how to cope with countless problems and decision that were once taken care of my Worldly and spiritual hierarchies. However, together with the anxieties generated by this new autonomy mortals sensed a great promise, for in the period of the formation of the national state and the development of a mercantile economy one’s own future seemed to have infinite possibilities. At the end of the curve, in our own century, mortals begin to feel threatened by the encroachment of powerful social forces emanating not only from one’s own corner of the Earth but from every part of a contracting World. If mortals today fear freedom or wish to escape from it, this was not always so—certainly not for the optimistic of the political and scientific enlightenment. However, then alienation is not only an accompaniment of individualism. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

Perhaps above all, as we have suggested, alienation is a response to fearful new powers that mortals themselves have created and that threaten their hard-won freedom. Foremost among them are the machine and the social structures which administer it. The freedom to command one’s life in one’s own way can be got only by first getting the fearlessness to disregard the criticism and to ignore the expectations of other people. One who would follow an independent path must, to some extent, be fearless. One must refuse to be intimidated by the power, prestige, claims, or size of established organizations, just as one must refuse to be deluded by the idealizations of themselves which they hold before the public. Few people know what a free existence really is; most people live caged in by fear of, or enslavement to, the opinion of others. Even the rich do not know it for their cages are gilt and comfortable. Even the spiritual do not know it for they mere echo back what these others want them to think about God. Complete freedom is possible only to those who have special character, one that is devoid of tyrannizing ambitions and despotic cravings, and even of unworldly strivings. Such is the strange paradox of the quest that on the one hand one must foster determined self-reliance but on the other yield to a feeling of utter dependence on the power of God. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

Those who are self-sufficient and prefer to learn and develop by themselves, are those who especially need to practise this inward listening and waiting. What we mean is that modern mortals have to become more self-reliant, has to throw off the remnants of tribal consciousness which still rule one, has to learn to think for one’s self. However, it one must stand aloof to one’s own way, with one’s own free thoughts, it remains a benevolent, amiable independence. One wishes all beings well while knowing they receive, suffer, or enjoy the results of their own physical, emotional, or mental action. Ones desire to express individual views, character, and personality must be respected so long as one does not try to impose them aggressively or tyrannically on others. This is the only genuine guarantee of continuity. The genuine guarantee of duration is that the pure relation can be filled as the beings become You, as they are elevated to the You, so that the holy basic word sounds through all of them. Thus the time of human life cannot and ought not to overcome the It-relation, it then becomes so permeated by relation that this gains a radiant and penetrating constancy in it. The moments of supreme encounter are no mere flashes of lightning in the dark but like a rising Moon in a clear starry night. And thus the genuine guarantee of spatial constancy consists in this the mortal’s relations to their You, being radii that lead from all I-points to the center, create a circle. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

Not the periphery, not the community comes first, but the radii, the common relation to the center. That alone assures the genuine existence of a community. The anchoring of time in relation-oriented life of salvation and the anchoring of space in a community unified by a common center: only when both of these come to be and only as long as both continue to be, a human cosmos (shelter for mortals, a houselike World) comes to be and continues to be around the invisible altar, grasped in the spirit out of the World stuff on the eon. The encounter with God does not come to mortals in order that one may henceforth attend to God but in order that one may prove its meaning in action in the World. All revelation is calling and a mission. However, again and again mortals shun actualization and bends back toward the revealer: one would rather attend to God than to the World. Now that one has bent back, however, one is no longer confronted by a You; one can do nothing but place a divine It in the realm of things, believe that one knows about God as an It, and talk about him. It is not necessary to be surly and irritable in order to be an individualist. One can still be affable, genial, civil, and courteous—even radiant with good will It is a matter of inner equilibrium. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

One must refuse to violate one’s intellectual integrity or sacrifice one’s spiritual independence. Even as the egomaniac does not live anything directly, whether it be a perception or an affection, but reflect on one’s perceiving or affectionate I and thus misses truth of the process, thus the theomaniac (who incidentally, can get along very well with egomaniac in the very same soul) will not let the gift take full effect but reflects instead on that which gives, and misses both. When you are sent forth, God remains presence of you; whoever walks in one’s mission always has God before one: the more faith the fulfillment, the stronger and more constant the nearness. Of course, one cannot attention to God, touching oneself all over with God, but one can converse with God. Bending back, on the other hand, turns God into an object. It appears to be a turning toward the primal ground, but belongs in truth to the World movement of turning away, even as the apparent turning away of those who fulfill their mission belongs in truth to the World movement of turning toward. For the two basic metacosmic movement of the World—its expansion into its own being returning to association [with God]—attain their supreme and conciliation, their mixture and separation, in the history of mortal’s relation to God. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

It is in the return that the word is born on Earth; in spreading out it enter the chrysalis of religion; in a new return it is reborn with new wings. Not caprice is at work here, although the movement toward the It may at times go so far that it holds down the movement of going forth again t the You and threatens to suffocate it. The powerful revelations invoked by the religions are essentially the same as the quiet one that occurs everywhere and at all times. The powerful revelations that stand at the beginnings of great communities, at the turning points of human time, are nothing else than the eternal revelation. However, revelation does not pour into the World through its recipient as if one were a funnel: it confers itself upon one, it seizes one’s whole element in all of its suchness and fuses with it. Even the more who is mouth is precisely that and not a mouthpiece—not an instrument but an organ, an autonomous, sounding organ; and to sound means to modify sound. If one is unable to continue in this quest without the association, encouragement, or sympathies of others who are also following it, then one had better not enter it at all, for quite obviously one is not ready for it not sufficiently appreciative of its values. If being different is an honest result of the search for higher truth, it must be acceptable. However, when it is merely a disguised egocentric exhibitionism, it becomes reprehensible. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16

The Dark Night of the Soul–Pain is Followed by Joy, Separation Followed by Reunion, Death Followed by Renewal, Winter Followed by Spring!

I came into a brightly illuminated eighteenth-century Cresleigh Home in Rocklin Trails. The stone walls had been covered in fine rosewood paneling with framed mirrors rising to the ceiling. There were the usual painted chests, upholstered chairs, dark and lush landscapes, porcelain clocks. A small collection of books in the glass-doored bookcases, a newspaper of recent date lying on a small table beside a brocaded wing chair. High narrow French doors opened onto the stone terrace, where banks of white lilies and red roses gave off their powerful perfume. And there, with his back to me, at the stone railing stood an eighteenth-century man. It was Marius, when he turned around and gestured me to come out.  Marius told me about this link between despair and joy, and how it is so important that the ancient Greeks, whp devoted one of their central legends to it, that of Persephone and Demeter. Persephone was picking flowers with her friends one day when Hades, god of the Underworld, saw her and was stricken with love. He seized her and carried her off to his underworld. When her mother, Demeter, goddess of fruit and grain and other produce of the fields, heard Persephone’s cries, she rushed around the World trying to find her. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14

Learning that Hades had carried Persephone off to the underworld with Zeus’ connivance, Demeter was filled with a terrible and savage grief. Demeter left Olympus and wandered about the Earth incognito. Meeting two young women who sympathized with her story that she had been captured by pirated and had escaped, Demeter was taken to their home to meet their mother, Metaneira. Demeter continued to be so sad that a long time she sat upon the stool without speaking, never smiling, because of her sorrow…tasting neither food nor drink, because she pinned for her deep-bosomed daughter.  Metaneria and her daughters proclaimed to Demeter, “Mother, what the gods send us, we mortals bear perforce though we suffer.” What an acknowledgment of destiny, an adjuring of Demeter to accept fate! Its importance is shown in the fact that it is repeated later to make sure we have heard it. Metaneria then asked Demeter to be nurse to her newborn son. Demeter came to life and bestowed love upon the infant, who then grew amazingly. Meanwhile, in her grief and rage Demeter had caused the land to bear no more fruit and grain, and a cruel famine covered the Earth. Zeus finally was moved to command Hades to let Persephone return to Earth, though Hades fed his shy mate a pomegranate seed. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14

Persephone returned to Demeter who welcomed her with great joy. When Persephone confessed she had unbeknownst eaten a pomegranate seed, Demeter knew that he daughter would have to return to Hades for one-third of each year—the Winter—but could remain on Earth the rest of the time. However, this small flaw was quickly drowned in their joyousness. “So did they then, with hearts at one, greatly cheer each other’s soul and spirit with many an embrace; their hearts had relief from their griefs while each took and gave back joyousness. And straightway made fruit to spring up from the rich lands, so that the whole Earth was laden with leaves and flowers.” Demeter’s great grief, to the extent of speaking to no one, refusing all comfort and all food and drink, pining with longing for her daughter, amounts to a profound despair. It was a despair which carried over to humankind in the cruel famine on Earth. However, Demeter’s despair soon became a creative state, shown in her love for Metaneria’s infant son and his amazing growth. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14

Demeter’s suffering is followed by this intense joy, which is stronger than she would have felt had the sorrow not preceded it. In other words, despair is a prerequisite to the birth of joy. Persephone’s fearful descent into the underworld is followed not only by joyful ascension, but the Earth’s periods of barrenness is followed by an eruption of fruit and flowers. The legend shows pain followed by joy, separation followed by reunion, death followed by renewal, Winter followed by Spring. Winter—the part of the year Persephone must go back to the underground—is often considered the dreaded part of the year, the time when despair would be most prevalent. However, Winter is the purifier, as the Magee Indians call it. The snow and the ice purify the ground. They cover over the myriad creatures from insects to deer who have lived out their span of life; and the ground, being enriched, springs forth with new life after the purification. This is the gestation before creativity. Out of such abyss, from such severe sickness one returns newborn, having shed one’s skin, ore ticklish and malicious, with a more delicate taste for joy, with a more tender tongue for all good things, with merrier senses, with a second dangerous innocence in joy, more childhood and yet a hundred times subtler than one has ever seen before. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14

A similar linking despair and joy is the death and resurrection in Christian theology—and all resurrections, seen in the prototype of the resurrection of flowers and leaves on the trees in the Spring. This pattern runs through all of life. It is destiny, the design of the Universe, the form in which all of existence is encompassed. In Europe at Easter time, people turn out en masse for the sacrament of Good Friday, since they want to make sure Jesus is dead. The celebration of his death is a necessary precursor to any rising from the tomb. The renewal requires the death beforehand. Only if he has been really does do the fact that Christ has risen have meaning. In America there is a scant attendance on Good Friday, but the churches are filled to capacity on Easter. This is indicative of our lack of belief in tragedy in this country. It is a demonstration of our endeavor to overlook the death that must occur before the resurrection, the suffering that precedes creativity. Henry Miller refers to the same thing in terms of emotional death the resurrection, when he writes “those who are dead may be restored to life.” For Miller this occurs in the emotional release, after despair, of the creative process. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14

Despair before joy is the meaning of the dark night of the soul of which the mystic Saint John of the Cross writes. Or, it could be the slough of despondence must be gone through before we can arrive at the gates of the Celestial City. If one is determined to achieve the Holy Grail, the hero must be willing to endure trial and dismemberment, even a species of death. Those whom claim to live in a perpetual state of ecstasy or in a never-interrupted state of love are either deluding themselves or settling for a mediocre state of existence. In mystic tradition the state of ecstasy is only second state and by no means the goal. Persons of lesser devotion or commitment often want to slide back into this second stage and have to be cautioned against selling the mystic experience short. Gethsemane is not at all an admission of failure on the part of the ministry of Jesus, but a necessary stage that cannot be avoided. It turns out not to be possible to let this cup pass from me. Without the despair, no resurrection. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14

One of the mystics of history encourages would-be explorers of the mystic path to endure the pains and the discomfort. For behind this nothingness, behind this dark and formless shape of evil is Jesus hid in his joy. “Like wise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sights too deep for words. And one who searches the hearts of mortals know what is in the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God,” reports Romans 8.26-27. This passage represents a mysterious saying of St. Paul. It expresses the experience of a mortal who knew how to pray and who, because he knew how to pray, said that he did not know how to pray. Perhaps we may draw from this confession of the apostle the conclusion we could find much evidence in our daily experience. Ministers are used to praying publicly on all kinds of occasions, some of which offer themselves naturally to prayer, other only artificially and against good taste. It is not unimportant to know the right how for praying and the right hour for not praying. This is a warning, on the periphery of what Paul wants to say, but a necessary warning, especially to ministers and laymen who are leaders in the Church. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14

The next step leads us nearer to the center of Paul’s problem: There are two main types of prayer, the fixed liturgical and the free spontaneous prayer. Both of them show the truth or Paul’s assertion, that we do not know to pray as we ought. The liturgical prayer often become mechanical or incomprehensible or both. The history of the Church has shown that this was the fate even of the Lord’s prayer. Paul certainly knew the “Our Father” when he wrote that we do not know how to pray when we make a liturgical law out of the example of praying which Jesus gave to his disciples. However, if we turn from the formulated to the spontaneous prayer, we are not better off. Very often the spontaneous prayer is an ordinary conversation with somebody who is called God, but who is actually another mortal to whom we tell things, often at great length, to whom we give thanks and of whom we ask favors. This certainly does not prove that we know how to pray. The liturgical Churches which we use classical formulas should ask themselves whether they do not present the people of our time rom praying as they honestly can. And the non-liturgical Churches who give the freedom to make up prayers at any moment, should ask themselves whether they do not profane prayer and deprive it of its mystery. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14

And now let us take a third step, int the center of Paul’s thought. Whether at the right time or not, whether a formulated or a spontaneous prayer, the question is decisive whether a prayer is possible at all. According to Paul it is humanly impossible.  When we pray, this we should never forget: We do something humanly impossible. We talk to somebody who is not somebody else, but who is nearer to us than we ourselves are. We address somebody who can never become an object of our address because he is always subject, always acting, always creating. We tell something to him who knows not only what we tell him but also all the unconscious tendencies out of which our conscious words grow. This is the reason why prayer is humanly impossible. Out of this insight Paul gives a mysterious solution to the question of the right prayer: When we pray, it is God himself who prays through us. God himself in us: that is what Spirit means. Spirit is another word for God present, with shaking, inspiring, transforming power. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14

When we pray something in us, which is not we ourselves, intercedes before God for us. We cannot bridge the gap between God and ourselves even through the most intensive and frequent prayers; the gap between God and ourselves can be bridged only by God. And so Paul gives us the surprising picture of God interceding for us before himself. If taken literally, such symbols—like all symbols concerning God—are absurd. If taken as genuine symbols, they are absurd. They symbol of God interceding before himself for us says that God knows more about us than that of which we are conscious. He searches the hearts of mortals. These are words which anticipate the present-day insight, of which we are rightly proud, that the small light of consciousness rises on a large basis of unconscious drives and images. However, if this is so, who else can bring our whole being before God expect God himself, who alone knows the deep things in our soul? This may help us also to understand the most mysterious part of Paul’s description of prayer, namely, that the Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. Just because prayer is humanly impossible, just because it brings deeper levels of our being before God than the level of consciousness, something happens in it that cannot be expressed in words. Words, created by and used in our conscious life, are not the essence of prayer. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14

The essence of prayer is the act of God who is working in us and raises our whole being to himself. The way in which this happens is called by Paul sighing. Sighing is an expression of the weakness of our creaturely existence. Only in terms of wordless sighs can we approach God, and even these sighs are his work in us. This finally answers a question often asked by Christians: Which kind of prayer is most adequate to our relation to God? The prayer in which we thank or the prayer in which we beg, the prayer of intercession or of confession or of praise? Paul does not make these distinctions. They are dependent on words; but the sighing of the Spirit in us is too deep for words and for the distinction of kinds of prayer. The Spiritual prayer is elevation to God in the power of God and it includes all forms of prayer. A last word to those who feel that they cannot find the words of prayer and remain silent towards God. This may be lack of Spirit. It also may be that there is silent prayer, namely, the sighs which are too deep for words. Then God who searches the hearts of mortals, knows and hears. “Wherefore, let us be faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord; therefore let us go down to the land of our father’s inheritance, for behold he left gold and silver, and all manner of riches. And all this he hath done because of the commandments of the Lord,” reports 1 Nephi 6.17. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14

All that one needs for the management of life can be had from within. The eyes of an animal have the capacity of a great language. Independent, without any need of the assistance of sounds and gestures, most eloquent when they rest entirely in their glance, they express the mystery in its natural captivity, that is, in the anxiety of becoming. This state of the mystery is known only to the animal, which alone can open it up to us—for this state can only be opened up and not revealed. The language in which this is accomplished is what it says: anxiety—the stirring of the creature between the realms of plantlike security and spiritual risk. This language is the stammering of nature under the initial grasp of spirit, before language yields to spirit’s cosmic risk which we call mortals. However, no speech will ever repeat what the stammer is able t communicate. I sometimes look into the eyes of a cockatiel or a dog. The domesticated animal has not by any means received the gift of the truly eloquent glance from us, as a human conceit suggests sometimes; what it has from us is only the ability—purchased with the loss of its elementary naturalness—to turn this glance upon us brutes. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14

In this process some mixture of surprise and question has come into it, into its dawn and even its rise—and this was surely wholly absent from the original glance, for all its anxiety. Undeniably, this bird or dog began this glance by asking me with a glance that was ignited by the breath of my glance: “Can it be that you mean me?” Do you actually want that I should not merely do tricks for you? Do I concern you? Am I there for you? And I there? What is it about me? What is that?!” (“I” is here a paraphrase of a word of I-less self-reference that we lack. “That” represents the flood of a mortal’s glance in the entire actuality of its power to relate.) There the glance of the animal, the language of anxiety, had risen hugely—and set almost at once. My glance, to be sure, endured longer; but it no longer retained the flood of mortal’s glance. Once own inner self has the capacity of makings its own revelations to one. These got, one will find oneself increasingly independent of those which come from outside, from the hearsay of other mortals or the writings of strict and religious doctrines. What a number of mortals can no longer get from church or temple, they must get from their own selves through mysticism. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14

One needs to realize that one’s greatest power will come to one through one’s own God and not through any other source, such as the overshadowing by spirits, and so on. Through this eventual realization, one will attain to greater progress and render much deeper service. Thus one will fulfill one’s owns highest destiny. Let one stand in one’s own place, and not seek to occupy that of another. Let one find a life that is real, and not copied. However, such admonitions are good only so far as one has already come to communion with God. Ultimately, there is only one real Master for every spiritual seeker, and that is one’s own divine God. The human teacher may assist one to the extent of giving one a temporary emotional uplift or a temporary intellectual perception, but one cannot bestow permanent divine consciousness on another individual. All that the teacher can do is to point out the way through the labyrinth; the journey must be made by the seeker oneself. For example, an individual living alone on a desert island could travel through all the stages of the Quest and attain the highest realization even though one had no visible teacher. God will give one all the guidance and help one needs. However, one is likely to mistakenly believe that one’s own ego is making the progress. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14

 

A Teacher—When Will God Send Me One with Truth and of Boundless Benevolence?

When I turned around, Marius was gone. The sack was gone. However, Nicki’s violin and my valise of belongings lay on a stone table in the middle of the room. We know in psychotherapy that often despair is essential to the discovery on the part of the client of his or her hidden capacities and basic assets. The function of despair is to wipe away our superficial ideas, our delusionary hopes, our simplistic mortality. There are some misguided therapists who feel that they must reassure the patient at ever point of despair. However, if the client never feels despair, it is doubtful whether one ever will feel any profound emotion. Apropos of considering Voltaire’s remark “Despair has often gained battles,” a friend wrote this limerick: There once was a man named Voltaire who found his best hope in despair. If that sounds perverse, it could have been worse. Voltaire could declare, “I do not care.” There is surely value in the client’s experience that one has nothing more to lose anyway so one may as well take whatever leap life requires to make of one. I suggest that this is what is meant by that sentence in folklore “Despair and confidence both banish fear.” #RandolphHarris 1 of

Since there are a number of signs that we in America may be on the threshold a period as a nation when we shall no longer be able to camouflage or repress our despair, it is important to remind ourselves of the points that despair and confidence both banish fear. Those who can feel healthy despair are often those who also can at the same time experience the most intense pleasure and joy. Sartre was talking about a life-enhancing despair when in his play The Flies, after Zeus has pointed out al the despair Orestes will face, Orestes asserts against Zeus, “Human life begins on the far side of despair!” He could as well have said that human freedom and human joy also begin on the far side of despair. This is why we believe more firmly in the dignity and the nobility of being human after seeing a performance of tragedy rather than comedy: the character and the tragic downfall of Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, or even Harry in The Iceman Cometh give us a conviction of the significance of life. As we leave the theater, we are not only relieved, we are inspired. The despair we have felt in the drama highlights its opposite, the nobility of life. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13

Despair is a desperate refusal to be oneself. There different levels of despair at not willing to be one’s self, or still lower, despair at not willing to be a self’ or lowest of all, despair at willing to be another then one’s true self. Despair is a failure of spirit, a spiritlessness. When mortals are characterized as a spirit-less has become a talking-machine, and there is nothing to prevent one from learning a philosophical rigmarole just as easily as a confession of faith and a political recitative repeated by rote. Again: Despair is a qualification of spirit, it is related to the eternal in mortals. In unconsciousness of being in despair a mortal is furthest from being conscious of oneself as spirit. This thing of despairing is inherent in mortals; but if one were not a synthesis of finite and infinite, and this is what makes despair possible. One also emphasizez that the worst condition of all is to boast about never having been in despair, for that means that the person has never been authentically conscious of oneself. This leads us to another characteristic of seeing, the most significant of all. We never see only what we see; we always see something else with it and through it! Seeing creates, seeing unites, and above all seeing goes beyond itself. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13

If we look at a stone we see directly only the colors and forms of the side which is turned toward us. However, with and through this limited surface we are aware of the roundness, of the extension and mass of the structure of the whole thing. We see beyond what we see. If we look at an animal we see directly the colors and forms of its skin. However, with it and through it we are aware of the tension and power of its muscles, of its inner strivings which are covered as well as revealed by the skin. We see not color sports, but a living being. If we look at a human face, we see lines and shades, but with it and through it we see a unique, incomparable personality whose expressions are visible in one’s face, whose character and destiny has left traces which we understand and in which we can even read something of one’s future. With and through colors and forms and movements we see friendliness and coldness, hostility and devotion, anger and love, sadness and joy. We see infinitely more than we see when we look into a new depth. Again the language gives us a help when it speaks of con- templation. Con- templation means going into the temple, into the sphere of the holy, into deep roots of things, into their creative ground. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13

We see the mysterious powers which we call beauty and truth and goodness. We cannot see them as such, we can see them only in things and events. We see them with and through the shape of a rose and the movements of the stars and the image of a friend. We can see them, but it is not necessary that we see them. We can close our eyes, we can become blind. Some are blind to any beauty which is more than a pleasant feeling, some are blind to any truth which is more than correct observation and calculation, some are bind to any goodness which is more than usefulness. And some are blind to any ground which is the unity of these powers and which we call holy. It is the ultimate, the last which we can see with and through all things; and therefore it is the end of all seeing. It is the light itself and therefore it is darkness for our eyes. Only with and through can we see it, through things and mortals, through events and images. This seeing and not seeing at the same time is what we call faith. Nobody can see God; but we can see him with and through. Here the conflict ends between seeing and hearing. He word tells us where to see and when we have seen we pronounce what we have seen and heard. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13

In the state which we call faith, sound and vision are united and perhaps this is the reason why the holy likes to be expressed in music more than in any other medium. Music gives wings to both, word and image, and goes beyond both of them. However, for a second time we are called down from the flight above to the lowliness of our human situation. Our Gospel calls us blind, all of us. And Jesus says that we are blind because we believe we see and do not know that we are blind; and Christ then threatens that we shall be thrown into more blindness if we insist that we are seeing. The question is: Where of all places can and shall we see into the ground of all Being? Who can lead our contemplation into the temple, into the holy itself? Seeing gives us a World, the order and unity of the many. However, we see within this order, disorder; within the unity, conflict threatening to explode the World itself and to being back the old darkness of the chaos. And order and chaos are so mixed with each other that we often feel dizzy, without ground and meaning, desiring to keep our eyes closed. Seeing unites us with what we see. However, we see so many things and beings with which we do not want to be untied, towards which we are indifferent or hostile, which are indifferent or hostile to us, which are repulsive and which we hate to see just because every seeing unites, even if it is through hate. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13

And it may be even our own self that we do not want to see because we are repelled by our image and because we hate it if we see it. Not in love but in hate are we untied with ourselves, and perhaps we want to deprive ourselves of our eyes like Lestat in The Queen of the Damned, of our eyes which first did not see what they ought to see and now cannot stand to see what they must see. And is not that which we love to see and that which we hate to see so mixed that we often praise the poverty of not seeing? Seeing is seeing with and through beings into their depth, into the good and the true and into their holy ground. However, which are the beings and images that shall lead us to this temple? Those whom Jesus called blind believed they knew the way to the temple, to the holy and the holiest. Innumerable temples all over the World contain things and images with and through which we can see God. However, what we see are idols, fascinating, horrible, overwhelming in seductive beauty or destructive power, demanding what cannot be fulfilled, promising what cannot be given, giving what elevates and lowers at the same time. And this is so because they hold us fast to themselves and do not lead us beyond. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13

Our eyes are bound by them, often bound by the demonic fascination they exercise and with which they take possession of us. We contemplate them, we go into their temples, we unite with them in self-surrender, and we leave them emptied, despairing, destroyed. This is the great temptation of seeing. This is the reason why hearing was put against seeing. It is the reason why images were destroyed again and again and every image forbidden, why the temples were burned and God was called the Infinite Void. However, this cannot be the last word. Emptiness can be both light and darkness; and we want light, the lights which is life and vision. Jesus also could have become an idol, a national and religious hero, fascinating and destructive. This is what the disciples and the masses wanted Christ to be. They saw him the good and the true, the holy itself. However, the succumbed to the temptation of seeing. They kept to that which must be sacrificed if God shall be seen with and through any mortal being. And when Christ sacrificed himself, they looked away in despair like those who image and idol is destroyed. However, he was too strong; he drew their eyes back to him, but now to Christ crucified. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13

However, of hum it is true. Certainly Christ is not the only one to look at intuition and contemplation. We are not asked to stare at Christ, as some do. We are not asked to look away from everything for his sake, as some do. We are not asked to give up the abundance of his creation as some do. We are not asked to refuse union with what we see as some do. However, we are asked to see wit and through everything into the which Christ shows the way. We shall see into it unimpeded by that which tries to keep us, away from the last dept. And when we are tired of seeing the abundance of the World with all its disorder, its hate and separation, its demonic destruction, and if we are also unable to look into the blinding light of the divine ground, then let us close our eyes. And then it might happen that we see the picture of someone who looks at us with eyes of infinite human depth and therefore of divine power and love. And those eyes say to us “Come and see.” Human’s religious situation, existence in the presence, is marked by its essential and indissoluble antinomies. That is these antinomies are indissoluble constitutes their very essence. Whoever affirms the thesis and repudiates the antithesis violates the sense of the situation. Whoever tires to think a synthesis destroys the sense of the situation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13

Whoever would settle the conflict between antinomies by some means short of one’s own life transgresses against the sense of the situation. It is the sense of the situation that it is to be lived in all its antinomies—only lived—and lived ever again, ever anew, unpredictably, without any possibility of anticipation or prescription. A comparison of the religious and the philosophical antinomy will make this clearer. We can relativize the philosophical conflict of freedom and necessity by relegating the latter to the World of appearance and the former to that of being, so that the two positions no longer really oppose one another but rather get along with one another as well as do the two World in which each is valid. However, when I mean freedom and necessity not in Worlds that are thought of but in the actuality in which I stand before God; when I know, I have been surrendered and know at the same time, it depends on me, then I may not try to escapes from the paradox I have to live by relegating the irreconcilable propositions to two separate realms; neither may I seek the assistance of some theological artifice to attain some conceptual reconciliation: I must take it upon myself to live both in one, and lived both are one. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13

We regard Ralph Waldo Emerson as the perfect example of spiritual independence. He seems beholden to no mortal and draws all one’s light from within. How did he arrive at this condition? For in his early thirties, he wrote to his Aunt Mary, “A teacher–when will God send me one full of truth and boundless benevolence?” This question was written soon after he came to Europe. There were four literary heroes across the Atlantic among whom he hoped to find his teacher. They were Carlyle, Landor, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. However, when he met them in the flesh, Landor severely disappointed him. The Coleridge visit was “of no use beyond the satisfaction of my curiosity.” Emerson’s interview with Wordsworth was more successful but still so fruitless that he was glad to end it. The first glance at Carlyle made him believe that his search for a teacher was over, that there was his man. The actuality was the he found a lifelong friend, even a fellow-pilgrim and seeker. However, he did not become a pupil. He had gone in search of a master. He failed to find one. Indeed he tells his aunt as much, that he seeks a man who is wise and true but that he never gets used to men. “They always awaken expectations in me which they always disappoint.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 13

Ralph Waldo Emerson left Europe, writing in his journal in his journal on shipboard the melancholy after-reflection, “I shall judge more justly, less timidly, of wise men forevermore.” And it was there, in his little cabin, that he received the illumination which he could not find in Europe. He need look outside himself no more. Out of his illumination, whilst still afloat on the ocean he wrote down such sentences as these: “A man contains all that is needful within himself.” “Nothing can be given to him or take away from him but always there is a compensation.” “The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself.” One’s attraction toward this or that teacher may weaken and die but one’s attraction toward the Inspirer of all teachers, God, will keep on growing stronger in one. One alone must answer this question, and one can best answer it by listening for and obeying that deep inner feeling which is called intuition. The rarity of competent teachers in the World, and especially in the Western World, forces seekers to practice self-reliance and cultivate independence, unless they are willing to accept substitutes for competence or join organizations making unsubstantiated claims. God will not neglect determined seekers and through circumstances, events, books, or otherwise gives them the particular guidance or instruction needed at a particular time. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13

The aspirant of today who is thoroughly discriminating will generally fail to find the support of a competent teacher. Usually one will have to depend on the inner Self alone. If one will listen to the voice of the Silence and accept its invisible leadership, one need not accept any human leadership. What one learns from outside one’s self, from teacher or tradition, will never lead to one’s true fulfilment until one joins it with what one learns in the stillness from inside oneself. People tie themselves to some one mortal, living or dead, and worthy of one. Yet one is outside themselves, and the divine is within, themselves. They contemplate one’s form, surrender to one’s personality, refuse to look within. As long as they do this, so long does the Consciousness elude them. When a mortal recognizes that all one really needs come to one from the higher self, and not from other mortals, and in the measure that one uses one’s own efforts to complete one’s development and so come closer in consciousness to that self, in that measure will one gain what one needs. Books however sacred, ceremonies however impressive, lecture however learned, even Masters however wise are still only outer helps and as such must in the end be discarded. “The Lord liveth, and as we live, we will not go down unto our father in the wilderness until we have accomplished the things which the Lord have commanded us,” reports 1 Nephi 3.15. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13