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Believe More than Ever and Forever in my Filial and Tenderly Grateful Friendship
I am with the Lord in the Light, the Creator, the Divine Source of All Things. The solution to all mysteries is available to me. The image of the Mystical Body of Christ is very attractive. However, I consider the importance given to this image today as one of the most serious signs of our degeneration. For our true dignity is not to be parts of a body, even though it be a mystical one, even thought it be that of Christ. It consists in this, that in the state of perfection, which is the vocation of each one of us, we no longer live in ourselves, but Christ lives in us so that through our perfection Christ, in his integrity and in his indivisible unity, becomes in a sense each one of us, as he is completely in each host. The hosts are not a part of his body. The present-day importance of the image of the Mystical Body shows how wretchedly susceptible Christians are to outside influences. Undoubtedly there is real intoxication in being a member of the Mystical Body of Christ. However, today a great many other mystical bodies, which have not Christ for their head, produce an intoxication in their members that to my way of thinking is the same order. Each person is at a different point in one’s psychological development. For one person one technique might be just what one needs to enter into a new, better phase of life. For another, it might just start a series of events which then need to be followed up by more similar experiences. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
Some techniques require cautions. Where these cautions are stated, they should be adhered to, so that maximum value can be obtained from the techniques. The future is exciting. The pursuit of joy is exciting. The time is now. We had better hurry. The culture is already getting to the youth, as if they are beginning to feel frightened and guilty. If there is one statement true of every living person it must be this: no one has achieved their full potential. The latent abilities, hidden talents, and undeveloped capacities for excellence and pleasure are legion. The consequences of this universal fate are many. Observers frequently refer to the human potential as our largest untapped natural resource. Increasing leisure-time underlines the significance of unused potential. And perhaps the most important of all, the unexpressed robs us of pleasure and joy in living—it prevents us from reaching the unreachable star. Writing is probably the most prevalent and most widely understood form of communication of creative interpretations of experience. Then too, the social impact of writers in disseminating information, influences public opinion, forming public taste, and advancing culture, is very great. Language itself is so much an expression of culture that a study of its use in any particular society provides a unique field for observation of creative forces in the culture. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
Social enthusiasm has such power today, they rise people so effectively to the supreme degree of heroism in suffering and death, that I think it is as well that a few sheep should remain outside the fold in order to bear witness that the love of Christ is essentially something different. The Church today defends the cause of the indefeasible rights of the individual against collective oppression, of liberty of thought against tyranny. However, these are causes readily embraced by those who find themselves momentarily to be the least strong. It is their only way of perhaps one day becoming the strongest. That is well known. You may perhaps be offended by this idea. You are not the Church. During the periods of the most atrocious abuse of power committed by the Church, there must have been some priests like you among the others. Your good faith is not a guarantee, even were it shared by all your Order. You cannot foresee what turn things may take. There is a slight, prudent, loss of Full Understanding as one slip into the Earthly atmosphere. No saint can carry the Fullness of Knowledge into the World because the World could not grasp it. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
I must give you the impression of a Luciferian pride in speaking thus of a great many matters that are too high for me and about which I have no right to understand anything. It is not my fault. Ideas come and settle into my mind by mistake, then, realizing their mistake, they absolutely insist on coming out. I do not know where they come from, or what they are worth, but, whatever the risk, I do not think I have the right to prevent this operation. Christ granted to his well-beloved disciple, and probably to all that disciple’s spiritual lineage, to come to him not through degradation, defilement, and distress, but in uninterrupted joy, purity, and sweetness. Joy is the feeling that comes from the fulfillment of one’s potential. Fulfillment brings to an individual the feeling that one can cope with one’s environment; the sense of confidence in oneself as a significant, competent, lovable person who is capable of handling situations as they arise, able to use fully one’s own capacities, and free to express one’s feelings. Joy requires a vital, alive body, self-contentment, productive and satisfying relations with others, and a successful relation to society. Obstacles to realizing this potential come from everywhere. The methods used to organize social institutions frequently squelch creativity and impose mediocrity. Society seems to place a premium on relationships featuring hypocrisy and superficiality—relationships that are tolerated rather than sources of happiness. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
Child-rearing practices, attitudes toward pleasures of the flesh, many religious doctrines and covenants, attitudes toward material achievement, confusion about maleness and femaleness—all coalesce to make it difficult for an individual to learn to know oneself, to like oneself, to become acquainted with one’s real feelings and desires and to learn to use oneself effectively and joyously. Our bodies, too, can inhibit the development of joy. Poor physical condition, physical trauma, and emotional problems (converted into physical ailments, weakness and malformations) limit a person’s capacity for full realization. A pained, tired, deadened, or unfeeling body cannot experience itself fully and cannot hold the feeling required for optimal fulfillment of the individual. In the past century, many investigators have been working on theories and methods for developing the human potential. As yet, these practitioners are not united behind one coherent approach, but each works at a vitally important element of the problem. From organization to interpersonal relations to physical health to creativity, workers are exploring ways to develop the human potential. Creative writing was defined for the purpose of the study as the composition of phrases, essays, stories, poems, and plays which communicate a single individual’s interpretation of experience in an original manner. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
Many writers tend to have a high degree of intellectual capacity, genuinely value intellectual and cognitive matters, values own independence and autonomy. They are also verbally fluent; can express ideas well. Writers tend to also enjoy esthetic impressions and are esthetically reactive. This group of individuals also possess the ability to be highly productive, get things done, is concerned with philosophical problems such as religion, values, the meaning of life and so forth. There is on display a high aspiration level for self, a wide range of interests, and writers think and associates to ideas in unusual ways; has unconventional thought processes. Other characteristics are that they are interesting and arresting people (meaning they have the ability to captive others with their thoughts and essence and make the pause and want to know more). Several also appear straightforward, forthright, candid in dealing with others. Typically their behavior is in an ethically consistent manner; is consistent with own personal standards. However, as we saw in the film, The Fault in Our Stars when Hazel and Gus go to meet their favorite author, some writers are more concerned with their own adequacy as a person, either at a conscious level or unconscious level and can be basically anxious, has fluctuating moods, engages in personal fantasy and daydreams, fictional speculations. One might put this down as life problems and suggest there is something more involved. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
Many writers write as much more of a form of self-therapy, or attempt to workout their problems through displacement and substitution in a socially acceptable form of fantasy. They fit the status of a true artist. Among artists such as painters, sculptors, and designers, the correlation between rated quality of work shows that there is a commitment to such endeavors selective for intelligence, so that the average I.Q. is already a superior one. They generally have beyond an I.Q. of 120. Creative writers proved significantly more original than any other group of creative individuals we studied. The average score of the general population on the Independence of Judgment Scale is 8.12; the group of representative successful writers scored 11.69, the student writers scored 15.2, and the distinguished creative writers scored 15.69. While the distinguished creative writers and the student writers were not significantly from representative successful writers at the one percent confidence level, and they in turn obtained significantly higher scores for independence of judgment then do people in general. The average population is 50 percent flexible. The average student writer is more flexible than 98 percent of the general population, while their elders in the field of creative writing are more flexible than about 84 percent of the general population. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
However one puts it, the finding is clear: writers as a class are significantly more independent, flexible, and original than most people and the creative writers who have achieved renown do very well for their years by being almost as flexible as their student counterparts, and a bit more independent. Still, findings indicate the writers appear to be both sicker and healthier psychologically than people in general. Or, to put it in another way, they are much more troubled psychologically, but they also have far greater resources with which to deal with their troubles. This jibes rather well with their social behavior as a matter of fact. They are clearly effective people who handle themselves with pride and distinctiveness, but the face they turn to the World is sometimes one of pain, often of protest, sometimes of distance and withdrawal; and certainly they are emotional. All of these are, of course, the intensely normal traits indicated by the peaks on their profile of diagnostic scores. The California Psychological Inventory indicates that the writers are a highly creative group and differs from the general population in making rather low scores on Socialization, a performance which in this context I think is correctly interpreted as resistance to acculturation, for the so-called socialization process is often seen by the creative individual as a demand for the sacrifice of one’s individuality, which indeed it often is. They score low also on Sense of Well-being, Self-control, and Desire to Make a Good Impression. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
Perhaps they score low on subjective matters because they are judged more harshly than others and because they have to deal with more scrutiny, they are harder to get through to, but people seem to like the writers because they tend to be unique, do not play games with people, are careful about how they use their time and tend to have problems, but are seem to be able to handle them very well. Writers are distinctly more introverted than extraverted, more feeling than thinking, and more intuitive than oriented to sense experience. Overall, 89 percent of the writers studied were intuitive, as compare of about 25 percent of the general population. The really striking differences between writers and other groups, however, is possessed in the general area of fantasy and originality of perception. One of our interviews was devoted especially to the fantasy life, from day dreams and night dreams and hypnagogic experiences to transcendental experiences in full and acute consciousness. An unusually high percentage (40 percent, in fact) of creative writers claimed to have had experiences either of mystic communion with the Universe or of feelings of utter desolation and horror. Other experiences of an unusual sort were also described, such as being barraged by disconnected words as words as though one were caught in a hailstorm, with accompanying acute discomfort, or seeing the World suddenly take on a new brightness while the Sun and Moon remained the same. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
A high frequency of dreaming was also reported, as well as a high frequency of dreaming in color, as compared with student groups we have studied. Most impressive of all, however, was the extent to which motivation played a role, both in the writer’s becoming a writer and in the way in which creative writing served a more general philosophic purpose. Almost without exception the successful creative writer had had to suffer considerable hardship in holding to one’s calling. The hardship included criticism from family and friends, periods of intense self-doubt, financial adversity, sacrifice sometimes of important personal relationships, and even public censure or ridicule. By the time the writer got to us one was past many of these adversities, although poets (even internationally famous ones) were generally living in very modest circumstances, and there were some surprising (to us) very modest instances of distinguished writers of fiction who still had to take other jobs occasionally to stay afloat. One writer who was hailed as the most remarkable body of poetry to come from America in the past decade was earning his living working in a gymnasium and occasionally as dock worker, while still another was typing term papers for undergraduates. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
At the other extreme there were several novelists whose earnings were in the millions of dollars. Yet to all of them the economic question was of secondary importance; this is true of all of our groups of creative individuals. On the Economic values scale of the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Scale of Values, creative individuals consistently earn their very lowest score. It is quite apparent that they are playing for other stakes. What then are the stakes, and if there are stakes, just what is the game? The game, I believe, centers upon the nature of intellect itself and upon the meaning of human life. In reviewing the performance of creative writers on the Symbol Equivalence test I was struck by the rapidity with which they moved from the commonplace stimulus image to the cosmic metaphor. Their concerns, as shown in projective tests like the Thematic Apperception Test and the Rorschach, are with mythical themes—with death, with great inanimate forces, with the symbolic rather than the literal meaning of shapes and colors. The freedom-determinism question arises again and again both in their work and in their fantasies. The nature of mortals in relation to the cosmos is the engaging problem. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
The commitment, in brief, is to larger meanings of an esthetic and philosophical sort which can find expression in the life work that the individual has chosen for oneself (or, as some have put it, in the life work that has chosen the individual). As an aside, one may recall here Goethe’s statement: I did not make my songs, my songs made me.” In brief, such individuals are involved constantly in the creation of their private Universes of meaning; they are cosmologists all. I am convinced that without this intense cosmological commitment no amount of mental ability of the sort measured by I.Q. tests will suffice to produce a genuinely creative act. Without wishing to be overly dramatic in this matter, I believe it is literally true that the creative individual is willing to stake one’s life on the meaning of one’s work. We think we have observed this in the personal account given in intensive interviews with subjects in our own studies, and certainly the many biographies and autobiographical writings of the great artists and scientists bear the conclusion out. Indeed, as Crombie concluded from his survey of the scientific revolution, regulative beliefs of an almost metaphysical sort rest behind the most dedicated quests for new theoretical formulations. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
Creative vision, whether in art or in science, has always involved an act of rejection preceding the act of construction; the structure of the World as mist people see it must be broken or transcended. William Blake, a great artist both in writing and in painting, has spoken of fourfold vision. For him, single vision is simply what ordinary physical eyesight enables us to see: the World that the consensus of opinion based on a limited use of sense would affirm as real. A tree is a tree, an inkblot is an inkblot, the sky is blue, and so on. Two-fold vision is the still-limited act of imagination; a cloud formation looks like two lions dancing, or an elephant pushing a BMW X7; the ink blot might be two dancers, or a bird in flight, or an actress kneeling in prayer. In three-fold vision, we do not see the mean thing-in-itself as in single vision, nor the thing as it might be if it were a little or even a lot of different, as in two-fold vision, but we see the thing as symbol. Recall again the Heavenly chorus at the conclusion o Faust: All things transitory but as symbols are sent; Earth’s insufficiency here grows to event. Clearly, the symbol presents a reality transcended. It is the medium through which a superior vision of reality is sought; it amplifies the poor real World by an act of imagination. The symbol, the play, the dream these are the manifestation of the three-fold vision. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
Four-fold vision is still a step beyond. It is the vision of the mystic, the seer, the prophet; it is vision suffused with the most intense feeling: horror, awe, ecstasy, desolation. A passage from Blake himself illustrates it well: I assert for myself that I do not behold the outward creation to me it is hindrance and not Action. “What,” it will be Questioned, “When the Sun rises, do you not see a round disk of fire somewhat like Guinea?” Oh, no, no, I see an Innumerable Company of the Heavenly host crying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.” I question not my corporeal of Vegetarian Eye any more than I would Question a Window concerning a Sight. I look through it and not with it. As we can see, in this research we have attempted through a verity of techniques to understand the vision of the World that these our subjects had. Their work itself, of course, is their primary testament, vision is what it communicates above all. Here again, however, a difference must be noted between the true creative writers, and the students, who, as I have indicated, I consider having been using writing for another purpose. The most intolerable of all forms of banality is cosmic banality, and mooning around about death and the cosmos can be a cheap way of getting out of working. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
Sharpness of detail, validity of characterization, discipline of form, tireless re-writing and shaping up, a touch of the old shoemaker in finding pride in the craft and even in keeping trade secrets; these were among the characteristics of these creative writers, and when I say that their concern is with cosmic moral issues I should add that the issues are brought to life in characterization and in language, so that the reader is given an opportunity to experience through one’s own nature the reality that the writer perceives. My own conclusion, then, is that creative writers are persons whose dedication is to nothing less than a quest for ultimate meanings. Or perhaps it is not so much that they are dedicated as that they understand themselves to have been elected and have accepted the office. What is enjoined upon them then is to listen to the voice within and to speak out. What they speak is to be the truth, but it need not be everyone’s truth, or even anyone else’s. In these essentials, omitting writing as the specific form, I believe creative writers are no different from creative individuals in all walks of life, including those whose business it is to be silent. “Finally, I bid you farewell, until I shall meet you before the pleasing bar of God, which bar striketh the wicked with awful dead and fear. Amen,” reports Jacob 6.13. Believe more than ever and forever in my filial and tenderly grateful friendship. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
Human Imagination Soars Among the Planets in the Heavens but at the Same Time Our We Live on the Blessed Earth
Running, running happily, laughing breathlessly, down a long road, something under my arm, a small red object without any definite shape, more a shade of a color. Suddenly, a large deserted mansion loomed up in front of me. I hurried quickly inside and climbed, climbed blocky, heavy steps. A long time. However, at the top a closet, open. The red shade had grown to gigantic proportions, almost the size of a trunk. I pushed it in the closet, but not really pushed—despite its size it was very light and almost dropped into the closet. I started gathering things from the red trunk, some strange objects. Suddenly the door slammed hard against its frame, and frightened I rushed down the stairs. As I walked down, I seemed to change clothes, or rather new things seemed to replace the old. I was richly clothed by the time I reached the bottom. However, then a great sense of fright fell about me and I began to run—quickly through a meadow. Someone chased me—a stout figure with long, flowing hair. Soon, more stout figures pursued. Back in the mansion I hurried up the stairs, but there were few this time. The closet door was open and there was nothing there, only space. I could hear rumbling of voices, pounding, pounding, louder and louder. And then a mass of grey or rather haze rushed at me and I started back hurriedly into the closet—back, back. And then space, falling, falling, falling. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Even from this one example it is apparent that the technique is a powerful one for studying the nature of symbol formation. Social conversion and everyday concerns are designed to conceal this variation and to increase the comfortable feeling that we are all more or less alike. That is why the sudden breakdown or the unexpected divorce or the inexplicable crime surprises or startles us. There is a widespread tacit pact not to reveal oneself, not to speak of the extremes of emotion, or terror, anger, pride, death-wish or glory-wish, or even the great joy, also known as the moment of illumination when the vast expanse of life and time, and the arrays of the dead, and passing moments, are suddenly realized and one’s own passing life is self-blessed. If I am sad, it comes primarily from the permanent sadness that destiny has imprinted forever upon my emotions, where the greatest and purest joys can only be superimposed and that at the price of a great effort of attention. It comes also from my miserable and continual sins; and from all the calamities of our time and of all those of all the past centuries. Otherwise a barrier of incomprehension will remain between us, whether the error is on my part or on yours. This would grieve me from the point of view of my friendship for you, because in that case the result of all these efforts and desires, called forth by your charity toward me, would be a disappointment for you. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Moreover, although it is not my fault, I should not be able to help feeling guilty of ingratitude. For, I repeat, my debt to you is beyond all measures, my Lord. The Incarnation of Christianity implies a harmonious solution of the problem of the relations between the individual and the collective. Harmony in the Pythagorean sense; the just balance of contraries. This solution is precisely what mortals are thirsting for today. The position of the intelligence is the key to this harmony, because the intelligence is a specifically and rigorously individual thing. This harmony exists wherever the intelligence, remaining in its place, can be exercised without hindrance and can reach the complete fulfillment of its function. That is what Saint Thomas says admirably of all the parts of the soul of Christ, with reference to his sensitiveness to pain during the crucifixion. The special function of the intelligence requires total liberty, implying the right to deny everything, and allowing of no domination. Wherever it usurps control there is an excess of individualism. Wherever it is hampered or uneasy there is an oppressive collectivism, or several of them. Since he willed them from all eternity, God respects the laws of nature, and there are two languages that are quite distinct although made up of the same words; there is the collective language and there is the individual one. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
The Comforter whom Christ sends us, the Spirit of truth, speaks one or other of these languages, whichever circumstances demand, and by a necessity of their nature there is not agreement between them. When genuine friends of God repeat words they have heard in secret amidst the silence of the union of love, and these words are in disagreement with the teaching of the Church, it is simply that the language of the marketplace is not that of the nuptial chamber. Everybody knows that really intimate conversation is only possible between two or three. As soon as there are six or seven, collective language begins to dominate. That is why it is a complete misinterpretation to apply to the Church the words “Wheresoever two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” Christ did not say two hundred, or fifty, or ten. He said two or three. He said precisely that he always forms the third in the intimacy of the tete-a-tete. Christ made promises to the Church, but none of these promises has the force of the expression, “They Father who seeth in secret.” The word of God is the secret word. One who has not heard this word, even if one adheres to all the doctrines and covenants taught by the Church, has no contact with the truth. The function of the Church as the collective keeper of the doctrines and covenants is indispensable. She has the right and the duty to punish those who make a clear attack upon her within the specific range of this function, by depriving them of the sacraments. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
However, when she (the Church) claims to force love and intelligence to model their language upon her own, she is guilty of an abuse of power. This abuse of power is not of God. It comes from the natural tendency of every form of collectivism, without exception, to abuse power. In the first place it should be noted that love is actually a relatively rare phenomenon in our society. As everyone knows, there are a million and one kinds of relationships which are called love: we do not need to list all the confusions of love with sentimental impulses and every kind of oedipal and back to mother’s arms motifs as they appear in the romantic songs like God’s Plan by Drake and the movies. No word is used with more meanings than this term, most of the meanings being dishonest in that they cover up the real underlying motives in the relationship. However, there are many other quite sound and honest relationships called loved—such as parental care for children and vice versa, or pleasures of the flesh, or the sharing of loneliness; and again the startling reality often discovered when one looks underneath the surface of individual’s lives in our lonely and conformist society, is how little the component of love is actually involved even in these relationships. Most human relationships, of course, spring from a mixture of motives and include a combination of different feelings. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Pleasures of the flesh are love in a mature form between a man and a woman and are generally a blend of two emotions. One is part of the soul’s desire which is part of the individual’s need to fulfill oneself. It is the drive of each individual to unite with the complement of oneself—the drive to find the other half of the original being. The other element in mature love between man and woman is the affirmation of the value and worth of the other person, which we include in our definition of romantic love. However, granted the blending of motives and emotions, and granted that love is not a simple topic, the most important thing at the outset is to call our emotions by their right names. And the most constructive place to begin learning how to love is to see how we fail to love. We shall have made a start, at least, when we recognize our situation as that of one of anxiety. So, learning to love, at length one is taught to know one does not. The function of the new society is to encourage the emergence of a new mortal, beings whose character structure will exhibit the following qualities: Willingness to give up all forms of having, by placing God first and foremost, in order to fully be. Security, sense of identity, and confidence based on faith in what one is, on one’s need for relatedness, interest, love, solidarity with the Word around one, instead of one one’s desire to have, to possess, to control the World, and thus become a slave to one’s possessions. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
The human being’s radical disunity can temporarily achieve a unity by virtue of beauty. We have to learn acceptance of the fact that nobody and nothing outside oneself give meaning to life, but that this radical independence and no-thingness can become the condition for the fullest activity devoted to caring and sharing. Enslaved as we are to our money-minded culture, we suppress our hungry for beauty and lose the chance to experience unity. The genuine if temporary release from this dilemma lies in beauty. It is the Universal language which gives solace and serenity. It provides the sense of unity within ourselves which transcends, however temporarily, the grim paradoxes of life. Being fully present where one is creates a joy that comes from giving and sharing, not from hoarding and exploiting. Only the unity of reality with the form, of the accidental with the necessary, of the passive state with freedom, that completes the conception of humanity will allow love and respect for life in all its manifestations. It grants the knowledge that not things, power, all that has passed away, but life and everything that pertains to its growth are sacred. As soon as reason issues the mandate a humanity shall exist, at the same time the law, and there shall be a beauty. This will compel us to reduce greed, hate, and illusions as much as one is capable. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
To those who try to flee from the realization of the dual nature of humankind, nothing is more unwarrantable and contradictory than such a conception, because the aversion of matter form, the passive and the active feeling and thought is eternal and cannot be mediated in anyway. Living without worshipping idols and without illusions is somethings that God actually compels us to do and it is possible because one can reach a state that does not require illusions. Beauty is our way of meeting—not erasing—this dilemma. It brings its great boon precisely by virtue of its dealing with the nature of subjectivity and objectivity. For the beautiful ought to temper while uniformly exciting the two natures, and it ought also to excite while uniformly moderating them. Developing one’s capacity for love, together with one’s capacity for critical, unsentimental thought is an avenue to shedding one’s narcissism and accepting the tragic limitations inherent in human existence. We try to avoid the paradox by being whole-heartedly the one or the other—the spiritual person who has the delusion that one has escaped from the senses, and the sensual person who has sacrificed the spirit. Making full growth of oneself and of one’s fellow beings is the supreme of goal of life. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
Many would rebuke our sensuous culture, as we must look to form, to our spirit and become inspired by the richness of our thinking. To reach this goal, discipline and respect for reality is necessary. Spiritual people may want to remember the richness of the World of the senses where it all begins. Knowing, also, that no growth is healthy that does not occur in a structure, but knowing, too, the difference between structure as an attribute of life and order as an attribute of no-life of the dead for beauty is our second creator. Nor is this inconsistent with the fact that she (beauty) only makes it possible for us to attain and realize humanity. For in this she acts in common with our original creator, nature, which has imparted to us nothing further than this capacity for humanity, but leaves the use of it to our own determination of will. Developing one’s imagination, not as an escape from intolerable circumstances but as the anticipation of real possibilities, as a means to do away with intolerable circumstances is a central idea and inspiration. It is that beauty that is born in play. It may seem like a frivolous idea; but recall that we speak of Mozart and Beethoven playing the piano, the very opposite of superficiality. And we refer to Shakespeare’s plays; and it is clear that such playing describes the most profound and humanizing of all human activities. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
Not deceiving others, but also not being deceived by others; one may be called innocent, but not naïve. Play unite the inner World of our personal reverie with the outer World of people and nature. The object of the play instinct, represented in a general statement, may therefore bear the name of living form, a term that serves to describe all aesthetic qualities of phenomena, and what people style, in the widest sense, beauty. Knowing oneself, not only the self one knows, but also the self one does not know—even though one has a slumbering knowledge of what does not know is a way that we sense one’s oneness with life; hence giving up the aim of conquering nature, subduing it, exploiting it, exploring it, dissecting it, but trying, rather to understand and cooperate with nature. A marble block, though it is and remains lifeless, can nevertheless become a living form by the architect and sculptor; a mortal, though one lives and has a form is far from being a living form on that account. For this to be the case, it is necessary that one’s form should be life, and that one’s life should be a form. As long as we only thing of one’s form, it is lifeless, a mere abstraction. It is only when one’s form lives in our feelings, and one’s life in our understanding, that one is the living form, and this will everywhere be the case where we judge one to be beautiful. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
Freedom that is not arbitrariness but the possibility to be oneself, not as a bundle of greedy desires, but as a delicately balanced structure that at any moment is confronted with the alternative of grown or decay, life or death allows us to understand how the idea play is an accurate description of the psychologically healthy person. The goal of psychotherapy is to help the patient learn to create and teaches us that evil and destructiveness are necessary consequences of failure to grow. The neurotic type of person is the artist who cannot create any art. All people are struggling to be creative in some way, and the artist is the one who has succeeded in this task of life. Thus creativity brings together two purposes in life: to love and to work. Both of these, love and work, are aspects of creativity. We Know that only few have reached perfection in all these qualities, but being without the ambition to reach the goal, in the knowledge that such ambition is only another form of greed, of having. The idea that beauty is the product of play, brings together the objective and subjective aspects of life. The outward and inward mortal are at one. Happiness in the process of ever-growing aliveness, whatever the further point is that fate permits one to reach is the description of the goal of psychotherapy for living as fully as one can is so satisfactory that the concern for what one might or might not attain has little chance to develop. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
What we seek to do is to help each patient become unified in him or herself, so that they can live out their lives with some integrity, some wholeness, some beauty. Through the description of beauty, the goal is to help one explore and understand and manifest the picture of the psychologically integrated human being. The neurotic is the one who cannot achieve this; healthy persons are the ones who can do it in their work and their love, whether they are painters or teachers or whatever they may be. The person who is integrated is thus one who has learned to play in the proper sense. After all, if you love what you do it is like playing and can be very productive. The psychologically healthy person is the one who overcomes the dilemma of life by creating, by doing—whether the doing involves sketching Greek poppies on a hillside, cooking your favorite cuisines, being an architect, or a designer, or working at your favorite store. This is what people mean when they say that beauty has kept them alive. We have seen that modern society has tended to abandon the pattern of living in which men dominated women in their various relationships. One probably reason this movement has taken place is that there has been an increasing awareness that the former was not only unfair but also tended to deprive both men and women of the experience of emotional intimacy, one of our most basic desires and needs. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
We have also seen, however, that the changes have often resulted in a competitive relationship between the genders that has been no more successful in satisfying the need for love. This is not to say, of course, that marriages based on either the dominance-submission or the competitive pattern are doomed to failure. In fact they are often very successful when judged in terms of permanence or even in terms of the relative satisfaction for the individuals involved in them, and it would not be desirable to suggest that such relationships should be terminated. What is being said here is that many persons will feel that neither of these alternatives is sufficiently satisfying for them. They long for some more creative approach to man-woman relationships. For these men and women it would seem desirable to look further. The key to this search is to be found in self-affirmation. When a person is able to be himself and express one’s feelings directly and clearly to another one has opened the door to the possibility of a creative encounter with that individual. And if that person is not too frightened by this direct approach and can respond with similar candor and self-affirmation both are likely to feel that their confrontation has been a fulfilling experience. And this feeling of fulfillment does not necessarily depend on the two people reaching an agreement. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Often when different viewpoints are involved, such an encounter can take place without changing the minds of either party. And yet, each person can have the satisfied feeling that one has been turn to oneself and that one has a deepened respect and caring for the other, who has been equally true to oneself. A certain couple, Sarah and Neal, had been having difficulties in their marriage and sought the help of a marriage counselor. Conferences were set up so that each of them saw the counselor once a week without the other present. Each one had many complaints about the other. Sarah’s main point of contention was the Neal always seemed half-hearted in this attitude toward her. When he wanted to enjoy pleasures of the flesh with her, Neal would approach her very tentatively as though he feared or even expected that she would reject his advances. And often Sarah did repulse him, probably in part because his efforts did little to convince her that he really cared for her and desired her intimately. Neal and Sarah’s emotional impasse had various effects on their relationship. When pleasures of the flesh was agreed upon Neal could not always become sufficiently interested to engage. This temporary impotency was probably related to his fear of intimacy, his doubts of his adequacy, and to Sarah’s failure to respond more enthusiastically to his hesitant advances. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
Sarah, on the other hand, experiences times when she felt acute desires for pleasures of the flesh and frustration that she seemed unable to communicate directly to Neal. If she had been able to interconnect her wishes, this might have helped Neal to feel more comfortable and better able to relate to her. Sometimes couples are just out of sync because of life matters, career goals, or something could be troubling them, it is not necessarily a sign of rejection between two married people. As a result of her frustration she often felt very depressed and became sarcastic and nagging toward him. One morning when Sarah came to see the counselor it was quickly apparent that she was filled with anger about life in general and toward her husband in particular and she spent most of the hour describing her complaints about him. When she was not speaking of Neal, Sarah talked about how sad and blue she was, how empty life seemed, and how she sometimes wished she could die. As she left the office, still in a state of distress, she vowed she was not going to let that guy near her that night. For one thing, it was a Saturday, and on Saturdays he usually like to have passionate intimacy with his wife, and she made it absolutely clear that she did not appreciate such scheduling of romance…what next, was he going to leave a tip on the nightstand a creep away in the middle of the night? #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
During Neal’s appointment the next week no information was volunteered about this particular subject, so the counselor waited until Sarah’s appointment the following Saturday to hear the next saga. Sarah reported that when she had left the office the previous week she had gone directly home, marches into the house and through it immediately into the bathroom, glancing neither to the left nor the right! Neal, with that amazing sensitivity that men occasionally display, became aware somehow that all was not well! And he stormed into the bathroom right behind her, slammed the door, and locked it. With his own temper flaring like a coronal mass ejection he said something like this: “I can tell you are extremely upset, and I will be darned if I am going to live in this house all day with you like this. We are going to stay right here until we find out what is going on!” And they did. They stayed there and has a calm discussion for more than an hour. When Sarah had finished telling all of this, the counselor looked at her and asked, “Well, how did you like that kind of treatment from your husband?” Sarah said, “I am happy he finally understood where I was coming from and we got to discuss the issues. It is nice when Neal shows his sensitivity side.” And actually, the question had been unnecessary, for she had a bounce and a sparkle about her that morning, which no one had ever seen. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
This is the Land that the Sunshine Washes–Life is a Stone Thrown Uphill Against the Downward Rush of Matter
Her expression remained placid, though she looked away, her inner focus gathering. The situation is not encouraging when men and women attempt to cling to old patters of male dominated relationships. For the woman this often means that she takes great pride in being feminine and, perhaps, protests too much that she enjoys being just a housewife who devotes her life to home and children and is dependent on her husband for economic support, direction, and decision-making. Very often, particularly in a World where the position of women has changed, the woman has more hostility about this subordinate role than she admits, even to herself. Frequently this rage expresses itself in a helpless role played by the woman, which in reality gives her a powerful tool for controlling those around here. One such woman seemed helpless in many ways. She was frightened of driving into the nearby metropolitan area from the suburbs in which she lived. So whenever she needed to go it was up to her husband to take her. Her housework and shopping often seemed like overwhelming tasks, so her husband had to out. She depended heavily on him to take over with the children. Then, in the throes of marital difficulties, the husband moved out. However, she found to her surprise that se could function perfectly well without him. When she needed to go to the city, she drove without a qualm. She organized her housework and shopping around a job schedule and had things running more smoothly than they had ever been when he husband was around to help. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
After a few weeks of separation, the husband moved back home to give it another try. Immediately she slipped back into the helpless role. She suddenly was unable to do what she had been doing so nicely. Finally she was able to see that she had been playing this dependent role hoping thereby to hold on to her husband because she needed him so much and could not get along without him, although in reality the role made her seem an incompetent nag toward whom the husband reacted with irritability and criticism. The man who maintains a dominant role in the home and reserves important decision-making to himself may, if he is a benevolent dictator and his wife does not mind, have a relatively successful and happy relationship. Nevertheless, the role of superiority always creates some emotional distance. You cannot have it both ways, a superior-subordinate relationship and a full partnership. And probably only in the latter can the fullest intimacy be achieved. Little needs to be said, of course, about those situations in which men attempt to maintain a dominant position in the home by physical or psychological brutality. Emotional intimacy is absent, and if the relationship continues indefinitely the woman who tolerates it must either be too weak to institute a change or have a need for punishment. Perhaps the central characteristic of the relations that have been described is that each of them involves a denial and suppression of parts of the self. The person may have some awareness of this, or it may occur with little or no conscious thought. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
This denial of the self is the symptom of distrust and hate of one’s self. The individual not only does not accept as a legitimate part of himself that which he denies and suppresses; he also assumes it will not be accepted by those whose love he most desires. Furthermore, he lacks confidence in his ability to handle the situation if he were to express all of his feelings and then encounter the hurt he fears. Thus, although one woman may never see what she is doing clearly enough to admit it even to herself, her relationship to her husband may be summed up as follows: “Even though I long to be loved and protected, I dare not let him see that I am warm and soft and full of need for him. Even if he responds at the moment, he would see my vulnerability and weakness and would inevitably hurt me and use me more than I could bear. I would be in his power.” On another woman’s life may suggest that she is saying: “I have to tiptoe carefully through life and not let my husband see I have a mind of my own. I have good ideas about what should be done in our home and family life, but if I let him know directly about these things he will think I am trying to ruin his life. There are ways I have of getting things I want out of him, but I could never discuss them with him directly. If I did not keep him thinking I am pretty helpless and that he is the he-man around there, he would probably leave.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
And one man’s life may sounds something like this: “I have all kinds of feelings, but I cannot afford to let her see many of them. Sometimes I feel lonely and frightened—like I did often as a kid. And maybe I would like to put my head on her lap and cry a little and be confronted. However, I would not let myself do that—let her see my little-oy feelings. I would seem weak to her, and she would despise me even though she might make a show of comforting me at the time. In fact it is even hard for me to show my tenderness and love for her most of the time, for I just feel in my bones that she would get around to taking advantage of my weakness.” The tone of another man’s life may be: “I would like to be more significant to my wife and family than I am. And sometimes I feel angry both at myself and at her because I am not. I have some pretty definite ideas, too, about how things should be run around here, but often they seem to run counter to what she wants. However, I guess it makes sense to let her do things her way. If I did not there would probably be everlasting bickering and the marriage might not survive. I guess it is just better to get most of my satisfactions outside of the home.” Involved in all of these lives is an almost paradoxical relationship between independence and dependence. None of the persons described is truly independent; that is, they lack self-acceptance and confidence in their ability to stand alone if need be. There is, therefore, a deep-rooted insecurity about relationships and a fear that they will be abandoned by those who are important to them. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
Without full awareness of what is happening they dedicate their lives to the proposition that half a loaf is better than none. In other words, they settle for a partial relationship rather than risk no relationship at all. Since they do not feel truly independent, they cannot risk letting others see their dependency—their need for love. Or they feign a dependency that in reality is simply a new means of controlling the other person and seducing him to staying around. What it comes to is that our fear of manhood or womanhood is, above all else, a fear of being ourselves. For society today, if we only could grasp it, has probably opened the door more widely than ever before to the possibility of creative relationships between men and women. The answer lies in the direction of the disarmingly simple but very complex matter of being our total selves in relationship with the opposite gender. Concerning the general relationship of emotional conflict to creativity, much more needs to be said. To get some perspective on the dynamics involved, we must consider the problem in some of its formal aspects. To begin with, conflict, taken in the most general sense, describes a state of affairs in which one force, or a complex of forces acting in relative unity, meets another force or complex of forces similarly organized. Forces in the stars and forces in the atom are prototypical physical examples in which conflict may produce explosion and enormous destruction. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
Conflict is one aspect of all natural phenomena; it is an indispensable part of life, of change, of the development of new forms. Forces change one another, just as people, who are forces, do; and we are changed by what we change. Conflict would cease only if the Universe itself in its totality came to a state of perfect equilibrium, in which case it would be dead. Like itself, in this interpretation, is a vehicle for the maintenance of disequilibrium. Life is a stone thrown uphill against the downward rush of matter. A bit cheerlessly, I thought, and inaccurately, life is a detour on the road to death. The physical theory that the material Universe is tending toward a state in which there will be no motion and no conflict. In this view, life itself is a force that offers challenge to the inanimate. Conflict is thus a Universal in all of nature and is in some sense disembodied; genuine emotional conflicts can be lively things and often we can thank our lucky stars when we get a good one to grapple with. They can have in them the makings of something better. Conflict is in many instances generative of new solutions rather than a disabling form of stasis. The real question is this: can an internal dialogue take place between conflicting forces in such a fashion that the speakers do not simply repeat themselves but that occasionally something new gets said? #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
Let us consider for a moment the more common case, in which the dialogue is forever repeated and opposing forces in the conflict, quite undeterred by tedium, reassert their position over and over again in an intrapsychic equivalent of cold war. Dr. Freud gave the name “repetition compulsion” to the universal human tendency to get into the same jam time after time. Usually the situation that is repeated is one which it its most primitive form occurred in early childhood. As the brain develops, however, and the capacity for complex symbolization increases, the situations tend to get fancier and fancier so far as content is concerned, so that in extreme cases, such as the delusional system of a paranoid schizophrenic, the entire cosmos becomes involved, complete with people from outer space armed with ray guns, and private conversations with divine personages and the celebrated dead. A well-worked-out psychoneurosis may be equally elegant, however, and I think it not too much to suggest that many events of great importance in World history had their beginnings in infantile disasters or conquests which individuals of unusual personal force caused to find re-enactment, with the World itself as stage. Whether the re-enactment is momentous for others or hardly noticed at all by them, the point is that these repetitions are essentially static in character and have the smell of death about them. Forces in the unconscious are blind, they are locked in upon themselves, they do not change one another because essentially there is never a mutual confrontation. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
Moreover, the histrionic in which they involve the individual and those with whom one one’s self is involved in the external World are generally grade B or C melodramas. If viewed from the outside and if viewed without sympathy, they are like nothing so much as the kind of television film that is regularly re-run. Psychoneurosis in this view is the most tedious thing under the Sun, and banality is its essence. What depth psychotherapy attempts to do is to alter the deadly stasis of unconscious conflict by bringing the conflicting forces into consciousness, where they will have a chance to look at one another and hear what the other has to say. The hard necessity in depth therapy is to permit regression to occur, a little bit at a time, concurrently with efforts at increasing the strength of the ego, so that the patient may allow to come back into consciousness some painful feeling or severely tabooed impulse which had earlier been repressed. When this happens, the conflict can come out into the open, elements in it can be discriminated and criticized, and genuine confrontation with consequent decision may ensure. This sort of constructive meeting of opposing forces may occur without psychotherapy, of course. People were working hard at know themselves long before Dr. Freud cast into the form of a theoretical system and a technique of therapy hos own particular way of getting to know himself. Socrates long ago took self-knowledge as his goal, and judging from the Platonic dialogues he seems to have progressed well. Many of the philosophers and artists of the World have exemplified in their person the same process. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
The artist transforms material from the unconscious into a social communication; he gives it reality involving discrimination, selection, technique, purpose, and understanding both of the material itself and of its potential audience. In saying this, let me make it plain, I am not saying that the artist is usually neurotic or that his neurosis is being expressed in his art. Artists indeed seem to have more than their share of troubles, at least troubles of a certain sort, but we certainly need not say that because a person is troubled he has a psychoneurosis. Could it not be that individuals of unusual sensibility and symbolic scope are at once more prone to despair, disgust, forlornness, and rage at the tragedy, to use Yeats’ vivid expression, of consciousness harnessed to a dying animal and yet at the same time ore capable of transcending these universal human bonds through metaphor and through identification with natural processes? Fear, anger, guilt, and despair are perfectly natural and appropriate emotions for all of us at times, and people who experience life most intensely are likely to feel such emotions most extremely (as well, let it be said, as joy, love, and freedom of spirit). So, if they are artists, they will seek to express their image of life and their relation to it in the cultural language of which they have most command, and thus invite others to test the reality of their perceptions and, in a sense, to join them. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
Whatever is neurotic in them then becomes a part of the content, symbolically expressed, of their creative activity, and not simply a part of themselves that inhibits construction. Many creative people offer to psychoanalysis when it is proferred them a fundamental objection which for them is perhaps right. Although by not accepting it they may thus be left with their woes, there is yet the chance that as they struggles with their problems they may out of their distress make a testament to their belief in the ultimate intelligibility and significance of not only their own lives, but the lives of others. And for this, of course, there are great rewards. However, one need not be an artist or philosopher or even just a singularly valiant person to do the work of getting a conflict out in the open. An individual who decides to enter upon a psychoanalysis formally, for instance, with benefit of couch and analyst (or, to put it another way, makes a systematic practice of going to bed twice, and at least once by himself, on certain days) has usually already begun the work himself. Moreover, when the analysis is, as they say, terminated, he almost invariably continues it by himself, using the techniques he has learned. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
These consist usually in paying attention to small signs in himself that something is going on within him that he does not quite does not quite know about his feelings and ideas come out even when they do not seem sensible, and paying attention to his dreams and reveries. It certainly is not easy, but it can be done. I might add, however, that psychoneurosis, in addition to being essentially stereotyped, is also rather shiftless and usually avoids work whenever possible, so that it is not a bad idea to have a schedule of appointments and some monetary inducement for keeping them. Some are always ready to obey any order, whatever it may be. However, one must know what righteousness is. Should one joyfully obey the order to go to the very center of hell and to remain there eternally. I do not have a preference for orders of this nature. I am not perverse like that. So many things are outside Christianity, so many things that I love and do not want to give up, so many things that God loves, otherwise they would not be in existence. In all the history now known there has never been a period in which souls have in such peril as they are today in every part of the globe. The bronze serpent must be lifted up again so that whoever raises his or her eyes to it may be saved. The heart has to be transported, forever, I hope, into the Blessed Sacrament exposed on the altar. You see that I think most people are very far from the thoughts of hell, with the best of intentions, attributed to society. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
Life, it Seems, is but a Dream, and Even Dreams are Dream
Be assured of my love, and the love of those here. The World as it is, the reality principle, adamantine sanity, these reassuringly solid phrases may furnish just the firm ground one needs to embark on a consideration of the role of the unconscious, that realm of chaos and shadows, in creative activity. To see things as they are when they are not as we would like them to be is the sternest task to which as rational beings we are called. In the service of this stern necessity, conscious thought and reflection, discrimination, memory, judgment, logic, and experiment. To be able to doubt methodically while suspending judgment, to explore alternative explanations in the light of certain canons of evidence and criticism, is the essence of scientific attitude. Pristine common sense is the everyday form of this attitude; the physical sciences and mathematics are its most rigorous and pure embodiment. It is no news that many scientists, and especially the very best, are odd people. As we have suggested elsewhere, they are in the very forefront of the direction in which evolution is taking us, and as such they exemplify in their works such qualities as dryness of judgment, meticulous attention to details, distinctions and small differences, radical questioning of common assumptions, a distrust of the unfortified senses, and a preference for the abstract and the qualitative, and the immediately natural. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
We are all children of Adam, however, if I may so show my hand, and even the most scientific of scientists usually has a streak of irrationality a yard wide up one’s back, which makes one’s oddness complete. The distinguished historian of science, A.C. Crombie, has given us in his monumental presentation of the history of the science revolution literally hundreds of accounts of how superstitions, whims, bizarre images or convictions lead finally to scientific advances and important break-throughs. The point of all this is that Necessity may be as stern as she wishes, and when we are called to the task we must go, but we rarely go quietly. There is something in the human mind that does not like things as they are, something that will make up its own little World in whatever way seems to that individual piece of mind to be an improvement. All things transitory but as symbols are sent; Earth’s insufficiency here grows to event. The symbol presents a reality transcended. It is the medium trough which superior vision of reality is attained; it amplifies the less affluent real World through the act of imagination. Life, it seems, is but a dream, and even dream are dreams. Players and painted stage took all my love and not the things that they were emblems of. Symbols, dreams, play, light-heartedness—these are the stuff of a part of mind that gives little service to syllogism, evidence, judgment, classification, prediction, law, and stern necessity. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
However, stern necessity calls: let us consider the way in which unconscious and preconscious forces may influence the mental apparatus, which might just as well be called the mind, both topographically and dynamically. The topography does not, of course, have anything to do with the central nervous system, but is concerned solely with hypothetical spatial arrangements in formal theoretical system, irrespective of their possible situation or neurological correlates in the body. The mental apparatus, then, like all Gaul, is divided into three parts: the unconscious, the preconscious, and the conscious. Unconsciousness is a regular and inevitable phase in the process constituting our mental activity; every mental act begins as an unconscious one, and it may either remain so or go on developing into consciousness, according as it meets with resistance or not. Between the unconscious and the preconscious there occurs a kind of testing process, which is called the censorship. The mental act in the unconscious has two alternative fates open to it: upon being scrutinized by censorship it may be rejected, not allowed to pass into the second phase, in which event is said to be repressed and must remain unconscious. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
If, however, it passes this scrutiny it enters upon the second phase, the preconscious, and becomes capable of entering consciousness. The rigorous censorship exercises its office at the point of transition from the unconscious to the preconscious. Once in the preconscious, the thought my now, without any special resistance and given certain conditions, become the object of consciousness. The core of the unconscious consists of instinct-presentations having the sole aim of discharging the energy with which they are invested. In other words, they are the mental representation of impulses, or drives, or physiologically-based excitations which seek discharge. A tension or imbalance exists, and the tendency of the organism is to regain balance and stability by a discharge of energy. These ideational representations of drives that—because of the nature of the external World as well as of the organization of consciousness—are denied discharge become related to one another by laws quite different from those that govern logical thought. For one thing, they are exempt from mutual contradiction; quite opposite feelings about the same object may exist simultaneously in the unconscious. Time, place, and custom have no effect upon them. Moreover, they are continually seeking short-cuts to discharges of their energy, and this they achieve by such mechanism as displacement, condensation, substitution, and symbolization. These mechanisms are exhibited most clearly in dreams. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
Several persons whom the dreamer knows in one’s waking state may be condensed into a single dream personage; one person may be substituted for another, and feelings displaced from the original object of them to another object; situations that trouble the dreamer in one’s waking life may undergo a symbolic transformation which serves to make them almost unrecognizable. Our studies of the psychology of literary creation persuade us that ideas from the unconscious play a large part in furnishing the material out of which the work of art is made. Art differs from dreams and neurosis, however, in that its elaboration requires conscious effort, criticism, judgment, and a sense of form that is quite alien to the chaos of the unconscious. What appears to happen is this: the censorship momentarily suspends its function and an unconscious idea passes into the preconscious. This idea at first seems vague and appears to have no relationship to other conscious content. Often it finds its first fleeting representation simply as a momentary visual or verbal image. In then somehow begins to pull along with it various associated ideas, feelings, and symbols from the unconscious, which then enter into relationship to one another in the preconscious, as well as with other ideas already in the preconscious. The complex of ideas thus elaborated may finally come to conscious expression almost fully formed, or, more commonly, they come in fragments, and it is the task of conscious thought to relate them to one another. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
The real work, of course, comes in making out of this material a communication, for instance, giving it a social reality, which involves discrimination, selection, technique, purpose, and understanding both of the material itself and of an audience of at least one other person who can appreciate it. Most fictions, including many that are published in book form, are not works of art and do not possess social reality in the sense of which I have spoke of it. The World of the psychotic, and to a lesser degree of the neurotic, is a private World, and the creator of it is bond to feel alone in it. Probably the feeling of isolation is the most poignant aspect of neurotic suffering, rather than the effects that we designate as symptoms. It is obvious to everybody that we are in a process of cultural self-destruction. What is left is also not secure any more. It still stands because it was not exposed to the destructive pressure to which the rest has already succumbed. However, it too is built on gravel. The next landslide can take it along. The cultural capacity of modern mortals is diminished because the circumstances which surround them diminish them and damage them physically. The industrial being is unfree, unconcentrated, incomplete, and in danger of losing their humanity because society with its developed organization exercises a hitherto unknow power over mortals, mortal’s dependency on it has grown to a degree that one almost has ceased to live a mental existence of one’s own. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
Thus we have entered a new Middle Ages. By a general act of will freedom of thought has been put out of function, because many give up thinking as free individuals, and are guided by the collective to which they belong. With the sacrifice of independence of thought we have—and how could it be otherwise—lost faith in truth. Our intellectual-emotional life is disorganized. The overorganization of public affairs culminates in the organization of thoughtlessness. The industrial society is characterized not only by a lack of freedom but also by overeffort. For two or three centuries many individuals have lived only as working begins and not as human beings. The human substance is stunted and in the upbringing of children by such stunted parents, an essential factor for their human development is lacking. The overoccupation the adult person succumbs to leads more and more to the need for superficial distraction. Absolute passivity, diverting attention from and forgetting of oneself are a physical need for modern humans. As a result, people need to make the most of the resources, make them last longer, and focus on the spiritual so they have more time to develop and grown. However, mortals are not to retire into an atmosphere of spiritual egotism, remote from the affairs of the World, but to lead an active life in which one tired to contribute to the spiritual perfection of society. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
If among modern individuals there are so few whose human and ethical sentiments are intact, not the least reason is the fact that they sacrifice constantly their personal morality on the altar of the fatherland, instead of being in constant living interchange with the collective and giving it the power which drives the collective to its perfection. The present cultural and social structure drives toward a catastrophe, from which only a new Renaissance, much greater than the old one, will arise; we must renew ourselves in a new belief and attitude, unless we want to perish. Essential in this Renaissance will be the principle of activity, which rational thinking gives into our hands, the only rational and pragmatic principle of historical development produced by mortals. If we decide to become thinking human beings, I have confidence in my faith that this revolution will occur. We must have a reverence for life. As the basis of ethics, people have generally ignored that the decay of human society and the World is being brought about through the practice of industrialized life; at the beginning of this century we already saw the weakness and dependency of the people, the destructive effect of obsessional work, the need for spiritual development and less consumption. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
The necessity for a Renaissance of collective life will be organized by the spirit of solidarity and reverence for life. If one takes the World as it is, it is impossible to endow it with meaning in which the aims and goals of mortals and of humankind make sense. The only meaningful way of life is activity in the World; not activity in general but the activity of giving and caring for fellow creatures. There must be a demand for giving up the having orientation, and for more of a social activity in the spirit of care and human solidarity. A radical inner human change is the only alternative to economic catastrophe. There must be a New World consciousness, a new ethic in the use of material resources, a new attitude toward nature, based on harmony rather than on conquest, and a sense of identification with future generations. For the first time in mortal’s life on Earth, they are being asked to refrain from doing what one can do; they are being asked to restrain their economic and technological advancement, or at least to direct it differently from before; humans are being asked by all future generations of the Earth to share their good fortune with the unfortunate—not in a spirit of charity but in a spirit of necessity. Humans are being asked to concentrate now on the organic growth of the total World system. Can mortals, in a good conscience, say no? Without these fundamental human changes, Homo sapiens are as good as doomed. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
It is to be hoped that the Club of Rome comes to grips with the problem of those social and political changes that are the preconditions for attaining the general goals. It is time for an ethical World change, not as a consequence of ethical beliefs but as the rational consequence of economic analysis. Material increase of consumption does not necessarily mean increase in well-being; a characterological and spiritual change must go together wit the necessary social changes; unless we stop wasting our natural resources and destroying the ecological conditions for human survival, catastrophe within a hundred years if foreseeable. Our failures are the result of our success, and our techniques must be subordinated to our real human needs. Economy as a content of life is a deadly illness because infinite growth does not fit into a finite World. Economy should not be the content of life, and that fact that it cannot be is evident today. If one wants to describe the deadly illness in more detail, one can say that it is similar to an addiction like alcoholism or drug addiction. It does not matter too much whether this addiction appears in a more egotistical or more altruistic form, whether it seeks its satisfaction only in a crude materialistic way or also in an artistically, culturally, or scientifically refined way. Poison is poison, even if wrapped in sliver paper. If spiritual culture, the culture of the inner mortal, is neglected, then selfishness remains the dominating power in a mortal and a selfishness fits this orientation better than a system of love for one’s fellow beings. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
Considering present technology and patterns of behavior our planet is grossly overpopulated now. The large absolute number of people and the rate of population growth are major hindrances to solving human problems. We are seeing climate change, not only because it is natural, but because there are more people on the planet. The limits of human capability to produce food by conventional means have very nearly been reached. Problems of supply and distribution already have resulted in roughly half of humanity being undernourished or malnourished. Some 20-30 million people are starving to death annually now. Attempts to increase food production further will tend to accelerate the deterioration of our environment, which will eventually reduce the capacity of the Earth to produce food. It is not clear whether environmental decay has now gone as far as to be essentially irreversible; it is possible that the capacity of the planet to support human life has been permanently impaired. Such technological success as automobiles, pesticides, and inorganic nitrogen fertilizers are major causes of environmental deterioration. There is reason to believe that population growth increases the probability of a lethal Worldwide plague and of a thermonuclear war. Either could provide an undesirable death rate solution to the population problem; each is potentially capable of destroying civilization and even driving Homo sapiens to extinction. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
There is no technological panacea for the complex of problems composing the population-food-environment crisis, although technology properly applied in such areas as pollution abatement, communications, and fertility control can provide massive assistance. The basic solutions involve dramatic and rapid changes in human attitudes, especially those relating to reproductive behavior, economic growth, technology, the environment, and conflict resolution. The real problem for people in our day is preparatory to love itself, namely to become able to love. To be capable of giving and receiving mature love is as sound a criterion as we have for the fulfilled personality. However, by that very token it is a goal gained only in proportion to how much one has fulfilled the prior condition of becoming a person in one’s own right. Assuming the premise is right—that only a fundamental change in human character from a preponderance of the having mode to a predominantly being mode of existence can save us from a psychological and economic catastrophe—the question arises: Is large-scale characterological change possible, and if so, how can it be brought about? I suggest that human character can change if these conditions exist: We are suffering and are aware that we are, we recognize the origin of our ill-being, we recognize that there is a way of overcoming our ill-being, and we accept that in order to overcome our ill-being we must follow certain norms for living and change our present practice of life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
There needs to be a historical development that will liberate human beings from those socioeconomic and political conditions that make people inhuman—prisoners of things, machines, and their own greed. When patients consult a doctor, it is because they have suffered and they are aware that they have suffered. However, they are not usually aware of what they suffered from. The goal is to help the patient become aware of what causes their ill-being. As a consequence of such knowledge, patients can arrive at the next step: the insight that their ill-being can be cured, provided its causes are done away with. However, I do not believe anything lasting can be achieved by persons who suffer from a general ill-being and form whom a change in character is necessary, unless they change their practice of life in according with the change in character they want to achieve. For instance, one can analyze the dependency of individuals until doomsday, but all the insights gained will accomplish nothing while they stay in the same practical situations they were living in before arriving at these insights. To give an example: a woman whose suffering is rooted in her dependency on her father, even though she has insight into deeper causes of the dependency, will not really change unless she changes her practice of life, for instance separates from her father, does not accept his favors, takes the risk and pain that these practical steps toward independence imply. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
Insight separated from practice remains ineffective. Be very careful, because if you should pass over something important through your own fault it would be a pity. This should make one see intellectual honesty in a new light. It is not opposed to faith, but in some people there are obstacles to the faith, impure obstacles, such as prejudices, and habits. One must face the whole question of faith, doctrines and covenants, and the sacraments, this will oblige them to consider them closely and at length with the fullest possible attention, making once see them as thing which they have obligations to discern and perform. And there is a great blessing of another order when one gains friendship by charity, as it will provide one with a source of the most compelling and pure inspiration that is to be found among human things. For nothing among human things has such power to keep our gaze fixed ever more intensely upon God, than friendship for the friends of God. Nothing will better enable an individual to measure the breadth of a true friend’s charity than the fact that they bore one for so long and with such gentleness. It may seem like a joke, but that is not the case. A friend may not have the same motives as self, but you will know that their patience can only spring from a supernatural generosity. “Learn wisdom in thy youth; yea, learn in thy youth to keep the commandments of God,” reports Alma 37.35. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
To Accept One’s Finiteness is the Basic Courage Every Mortal Must Have
Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all you know on Earth, and all you need to know. Beauty is the eternal splendor of the One showing through the Many. That is, in the many different forms in our Universe, the One shines through and gives splendor and meaning to all. This holds good as far as many are concerned at any rate, for most never hesitate in their choice of attitude; it leads people to adopt the Christian attitude as the only possible one. Several people are born, grow up, and always remain within the Christian inspiration. When considering the great trilogy of Beauty, Truth and Goodness, we often place Beauty at the top because Beauty is harmony, and whether Truth or Goodness are harmonious is the test of their integrity. Goodness gives a person self-respect, Truth gives gratification, but Beauty gives peace and joy simultaneously. Goodness, or ethics, consists of acting in a way that is harmonious with our fellow human beings, and this makes the action testable by its beauty. Much confusion exists today about the roles of men and women. We tend to be uncertain about what it means to be a man or a woman, and this uncertainty adds to the fears that keep us from knowing, accepting, and affirming ourselves. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
At one time in our history little confusion existed concerning these roles, for there was a rather clear social expectation. The man was expected to be the head of the home. When a final decision was to be made concerning important matters affecting the family, it was his responsibility to make that decision. If he chose to consult his wife for her opinion that was fine and gentlemanly of him, but he was not required by social custom to do so. Now, even in those days—some might say “good old days”!—women probably were the real rulers in the home more often than the men would have cared to admit. However, at any rate there was a social standard that man should have dominion over woman. However, times have changed and we now even have Internal Women’s Day to honor the achievements of women. Our society granted women the right to vote. Increasingly it gave them additional legal rights. In times of national emergency it encouraged them to work, and they made themselves so indispensable that many of them continued to work when the emergency was over. Gradually, virtually all professions were opened up to them. Equal educational opportunities became available to them and they increasingly took advantage of them. With all these changed taking place it was inevitable that the woman’s role, and man’s too, within the home and in relationship to each other would change. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
However, in what ways? As so often occurs in times of social transition, the old ways tended to be abandoned without a clear definition as to what the new would be. As others have pointed out, certain periods of history are characterized by particular forms of neurotic behavior. A good case can be made for believing that our basic neurosis, our fear of love, has been expressed in many of our reactions to the shifting roles of men and women that occurred in the rush to fill the vacuum created by the changing times. Although the changes unquestionably opened the door to the possibility of new and exiting opportunities for emotional closeness between men and women never widely experienced before, we have frequently avoided this dangerous intimacy. Some of us reacted in extreme ways against the former roles. Others avoided the hopeful possibilities with more or less desperate attempts to cling to the old ways in male-female interaction while the World moved on. When women overact against the old system, it often means turning to a strongly competitive role in relation to men, sometimes subtly, sometimes openly, expressed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
The woman often appears to make a fetish, suggesting a deep insecurity about herself, of proving to the World, and probably most of all to herself, that she is not only the equal of any man but also superior to most. She may even attempt to dominate men as men dominated women in the past. This approach to life often leads to a de-feminization, which creates a veneer of hardness that seems to defy any man to attempt genuine intimacy with the woman. She may not shy away from physical closeness, for part of her platform of equal rights may well include a revolt against the double standard and a frenzied effort to prove that she is as free as any male. However, her fear of domination, her mistrust of herself and of her partner, may make it impossible for her to allow herself to experience genuine warmth and affection for a man. Strong reactions against feelings of dependency are often involved. All of us—men as well as women—have desires to be take care of, protected, and sheltered by another loving person. However, the woman who is afraid she may not be able to avoid domination is very threatened by such feelings. She may go to great lengths to suppress and even deny to herself these feelings of need for another woman. Some women feel that by enjoying a relationship with a man that they are giving up some of their independence to him, and it can cause them great anguish to have to release some of their power they worked so hard to achieve. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
In some cases, women actually deny their desires for a man and these struggles are so serious that they can cause her emotional and physical harm, as she may take the issues out on herself. This is why some women are cold, or seem unemotional. For men, overreaction against the old ways often leads to a near abdication of any meaningful role in the home. Convinced that one dare not dominate the home, he may abandon all leadership and leave the administration of home, household finances, and the discipline, education, and open expression of love of his children to his wife as her exclusive sphere of activity. Of course other factors, such as modern industrialization and our commuting ways, which often make the man’s workaday World a vastly different existence far separated from the home, both physically and psychologically, have encouraged this trend. The result is that, in the home, where the man might hope for emotional intimacy with a wife and children, he often seems, and may even adopt the role of, an inferior, bumbling, ineffectual creature who is a nonentity at best and at worst someone who disrupts the efficient routine that his wife has in operation when he is not around. He may feel like an outsider. While this may appear to be a caricature of American males today, there are many who fit the picture and many more who tend in that direction—men who appear to be afraid to be genuine persons in relation to their wives and children. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
Furthermore, our society appears likely to proceed further in that direction since a snowballing effect can be observed. Since family life is increasingly centered around women, it spears that girls are likely to emulate their mothers. Boy, on the other hand, confronted with a dominant mother image and a largely absent and apparently weak father, are likely to identify with the dominant mother and become increasingly feminized, and yet at the same time be frightened of women, who for them seem all-powerful. As one man put it, “I have never won an argument with a woman in my life! They are so good at repartee.” Another man, speaking of his wife, said, “When we fight, she has the supreme court behind her and I have new Lawyer from New York Law who just passed the bar exam.” This changing role of men is likely to lead to many symptoms of emotional disturbance. The man may express his fear of women and his (perhaps largely unconscious) rage by becoming impotent. He may turn toward homosexuality, as he seeks to satisfy his need for some kind of intimacy with follow males, who pose less threat to his damaged sense of personal identity. He may make conquests of pleasures of the flesh with women, in his workaday World, that involve little genuine intimacy. He may even adopt any one of many distancing devices, since the fear of love is magnified by his perspective of women. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
The woman, of course, is in a similar bind. For as the man tends in various ways to withdraw from her, her, own protective devices come into play. Without quite knowing what is going on, she feels frustrated, hurt, and abandoned. The risks of expressing love and understanding seems too great, so she goes on her way, substituting control and irritable nagging for the love she longs to give and receive, but which she fears. Vanity and narcissism—the compulsive needs to be admired and praised—undermine one’s courage, for one of them fights on someone else’s conviction rather than one’s own. When one act to gain someone else’s praise, furthermore the act itself is a living reminder of the feeling of weakness and worthlessness: otherwise there would be no need to haughtily display one’s attitude. This often leads to the cowardly feeling which is the most bitter humiliation of all—the humiliation of having co-operated knowingly in one’s own vanquishment. It is not so bad to be defeated because the enemy is stronger, or even to be defeated because one did not fight; but to know one was a coward because one chose to sell out one’s strength to get along with the victor—this betrayal of one’s self is the bitterest pill of all. There are also specific reasons in our culture why acting to please others undermines courage. For such acting, at least for men, often means playing the role of one who is unassertive, unaggressive, gentlemanly, and how can one develop power, including sexual potency, when one is supposed to be unassertive? #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
With women, too, these ways of gaining admiration militate against the development of their indigenous potentialities, for their potentialities are never exercised or even brought into the picture. The hallmark of courage in our age of conformity is the capacity to stand on one’s own convictions—not obstinately or defiantly (these are expressions of defensiveness not courage) nor as a gesture of retaliation, but simply because these are what one believes. It is as though one were saying through one’s actions, “This is myself, my being.” Courage is the affirmative choice, not a choice because “I can do no other”; for if one can do no other, what courage is involved? To be sure, at times one has simply to cling with dogged determination to a position one has won through courage. Such times are frequent in therapy when a person has achieved some new growth and must then withstand the counterattack of anxious reaction within oneself as well as the attacks of friends and family members who would be more comfortable if he had remained the way he was. There will be plenty of defensive actions at best; but if one has conquered something worth defending, then one defends it not negatively but with joy. When in a person’s development courage begins to emerge—that is, when the person begins to break out from the pattern of devoting one’s life to getting others to admire him or her—an intermediate step generally occurs. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
The person in this intermediate stage takes independent stands, to be sure, but they defend their actions at the court in which the laws are written by the very authorities they have been trying to please. It is as though they demanded the right to be free, but, like the American colonists before the Revolution, they have to argue their case on the basis of laws written by those from whom they demanded their rights. People in therapy in this stage often dream literally of trying to persuade their parents of the justice of their case, of the right to be themselves. It may well be that this stage is the farthest that many people reach in their development toward freedom and responsibility. However, in the final analysis this halfway station leaves the person in a hopeless dilemma: for in granting one’s parents or parental substitutes the right to draft the laws, and in arguing before their court, one has already tacitly admitted their sovereignty. This implies one’s lack of freedom, and one’s guilt if one asserts one’s freedom. The hardest step of all, requiring the greatest courage, is to deny those under whose expectations one has lived the right to make the laws. And this is the most frightening step. It means accepting responsibility for one’s own standards and judgments, even though one knows how limited and imperfect they are. This is what we mean by the courage to accept one’s finiteness—which is the basic courage every human must have. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
Accepting our finiteness is the courage to be and trust one’s self despite the fact that one is finite; it means acting, loving, thinking, creating, even though one knows one does not have the final answers, and one may well be wrong. However, it is only from a courageous acceptance of finitude, and a responsible acting thereon, that one develops the powers that one does possess—far from absolute though they may be. To do this presupposes the many sides of the development of consciousness of self which we have discussed, including self-discipline, the power to do the valuing, the creative conscience, and the creative relation to the wisdom of the past. Obviously this step requires a considerable degree of integration, and the courage it requires is the courage of maturity. For those who live as they should, passing away is the instant when, for an infinitesimal fraction of time, pure truth, unassisted, certain, and eternal, enters the soul. Life leading to this good is not only defined by a code of morals common to all, but also consists of a succession of acts and events strictly personal to one, and is essential to one who leaves them on one side never reaching the goal. Even when people are faced with inward darkness, one must have the everlasting conviction that any human being, even though practically devoid of natural faculties, can penetrate to the kingdom of truth reserved for genius, as long as one longs for truth and perpetually concentrates all one’s attention upon it attainment. One thus becomes a genius too. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
Under the name of truth, we also include beauty, virtue, and every kind of goodness, as it is a conception of the relationship between grace and desire. The Christian idea of love for one’s neighbor is a form of justice and it is so beautiful. The duty of acceptance in all that concerns the will of God, whatever it may be, is impressed on the minds of many, as it is a duty we cannot fail in without dishonoring ourselves. This experience enables us to get a better understanding of the possibility of loving divine love. It is a beautiful love that one can experience with all of one’s soul and bear witness to the tenderness it enshrines. It is as if Christ comes down and takes possession of one. It allows for in the midst of suffering to feel the presence of a love, like that which one can read in the smile on a beloved face. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms. Give beauty in the inward mortal, and may the outward and inward mortal be at one. The timelessness of beauty saves us from worshipping at the shrine of progress, or kneeling at the altar to pray that tomorrow we will make more money than today, and the future will be better than the past, until we are caught up in the sordid merry-go-round that makes it impossible for us to appreciate the delicious calm of a moment of timelessness. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
Beauty has nothing to do with progress. Who will be so rash as to proclaim that our present buildings are more beautiful than the Parthenon? Or our present churches more beautiful than Chartres? Or our present dishware more beautiful than Greek vases? Or modern music better than Mozart and Bach? Beauty is beyond the confines of progress. Progress must not be identified with evolution, a very different thing. Even evolution does not guarantee that our species and our World are getting better and better; many species have been dropped out, and why should we be evolutions darling? The one thing we can be sure about is the timelessness of beauty. Let us, as Walter Pater entreats us, seek the desire for beauty, the experience of poetic passion, the love of art, the highest quality of each moment for its own sake. The great explosion of creativity which occurred in Fifth Century Greece has bequeathed to us an endlessly rich mine of beauty in which to spend precious hours and days in the company of great spirits. The Greeks were willing to live and die for beauty. It is fascinating to note how the scientists have kept alive the sense of beauty since Grecian times. The astronomer Kepler believed his discoveries were in direct line with Pythagoras, and that the revolution of the planets around the Sun was beautiful in the same sense as the vibrations of a violin string are beautiful. No wonder he spoke of the harmony of sphere, and broke out in a cry of joy, “I thank thee, Lord God our Creator, that thou allowest me to see the beauty in thy work of creation.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
Kepler also wrote, “Mathematics is the archetype of the beauty of the World.” Researchers of physics recognize truth by the splendor of its beauty. After this I came to feel that Plato was a mystic, that all the Iliad is bathed in Christian light, and that Dionysus and Osiris are in a certain sense Christ himself; and my low was thereby redoubled. We mistaken assume that beauty is passive, which is no doubt the influence of our culture which does not have time to listen to the active powers of beauty. However, listening is an active process. Every since Plato, beauty has been experienced by the sensitive persons as an active agent: it is the sign of the splendor of truth, and it speaks out through this splendor to the mathematicians, physicists, and all those who listen patiently. The effect of this practice is extraordinary and surprises me every time, for, although I experience it each day, it exceeds my expectation at each repetition. At times the very first words tear my thoughts from my body and transport it to a place outside space where there is neither perspective nor point of view. The infinity of the ordinary expanses of perception is replaced by an infinity to the second or some third degree. At the same time, filling every part of this infinity of infinity, there is silence, a silence which is not an absence of sound but which is the object of a positive sensation, more positive than that of sound. Noises, if there are any, only reach me after crossing this silence. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
The stars in the Heavens sing a music if we only had ears to hear. The useful combinations are precisely the most beautiful, I mean those best able to charm this special sensibility that all mathematicians know. Sometimes, also, during this reflection or at other moments, Christ is present with me in person, but his presence is infinitely more real, more moving, more clear than on that first occasion when he took possession of me. It sometimes seems to me that when I am treated in so merciful a way, every sin on my part must be a mortal sin. And I am constantly committing them. However, for as to the spiritual direction of my soul, I think that God himself has taken it in hand from the start and still looks after it. What a lovely World we could live in if we would listen more frequently to this splendor! Beauty alone confers happiness on all, and under its influence every being forgets that one is limited. However, the sense of limitations is crucial to our creating beauty. We actually create beauty out of the endeavor to come to terms with the paradox on one hand of freedom and on the other of destiny. Our limits come from being both nature and spirit, finite and infinite, objective and subjective. No one knows this struggle better than the artists, be they painters or musicians or sculptors or dancers or any other figures in the arts. Sculptures or paintings or a piece of music is genuine beauty, a gift to the World. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
The Purple Hues With the Rolling Green Hills Behind them…it is the Most Beautiful Time of the Day!
We need to make life on this World a little better. The gentlemen had risen to see me off. I murmured my superficial farewells, and only then did the secret grip release me. I walked slowly into the formal garden beyond the pool, and would have gone up into the roaring clouds, to be as far away from the Earth as I could be. However, I discovered a new quality of life which had begun with the poppies and spread out to an awareness of the colorful and adventurous aspect of life—the aspect of beauty—which had been there all the time but which I had never noticed. I seemed released from my old compulsions: I felt empowered, freed for all kinds of activities. I brushed up on my French and found, to my initial surprise, that there was a great deal of musical and cultural life in Rocklin, that friends of different nationalities were waiting, so to speak, for me to join them. These experiences were embodied in my life, and I could live out, imprint upon my psyche, the new ways of life learned psychologically; it crystallized my new understanding of beauty. Human beings can be saved from the danger of being transformed into things. The only wat to salvation lay in going forward and creating a new society that will free people from alienation, from submission to the machine, from the fate of being dehumanized. #RandolphHarris 1 of 12
Beauty is the experience that gives us a sense of joy and a sense of peace simultaneously. Other happenings gives us joy and afterwards peace, but in beauty these are the same experience. Understandings beauty is a way to liberate human beings from selfishness and greed, it is a way to be free to devote ourselves to the law of God and its wisdom, with no one to oppress or disturb it, and this will make us worthy of life in the World to come. In the era of God there will be neither famine nor war, neither jealousy nor strife. Earthly goods will be abundant, comforts within the reach of all. The one preoccupation of the whole World will be to know the Lord. Hence, it is beautiful that we will be very wise, we will know the things that are now concealed and will attain an understanding of our creator to the utmost capacity of the human mind. “For the Earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the water cover the sea,” reports Isaiah 11.9. The goal of history is to enable human beings to devote themselves entirely to the study of wisdom and the knowledge of God; not solely power and luxury. The Messianic Time is one of Universal peace, absence of envy, and material abundance. Beauty is serene and at the same time exhilarating; it increases one’s sense of being alive. #RandolphHarris 2 of 12
The realm of freedom does not commence until the point is passed where labor under the compulsion of necessity and of external utility is required. In the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of material production in the strict meaning of the term. Just as people of the past had to wrestle with nature, in order to satisfy one’s wants, in order to maintain one’s life and reproduce it, so civilized mortals have to do it, and one must do it in all forms of society and under all possible modes of production. With one’s development the realm of natural necessity expands, because one’s wants increase; but at the same time the forces of production in this field cannot consist of anything else but of the fact that socialized mortals, the associated producers, regulate their interchange with nature rationally, bring it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by some blind power; that they accomplish their task with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most adequate to their human nature and most worthy of it. However, it always remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human power which is its own end, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can flourish only upon that realm of necessity as its basis. The increase of beauty is its fundamental premise. #RandolphHarris 3 of 12
Beauty gives us not only a feeling of wonder; it imparts to us at the same moment a timelessness, a repose—which is why we speak of beauty as being eternal. Salvation does not postulate a final eschatological solution; the discrepancy between mortals and nature remains, but the realm of necessity is brought under human control as much as possible, but always remains a realm of necessity. The goal is that development of human power which is its own end, the true realm of freedom. When the whole World is preoccupied with knowing the Lord, this is the development of human power as its own end, as it will allow us to give birth to our inner wealth. Beauty is the mystery which enchants us. Like all higher experiences of being human, beauty is dynamic; its sense of repose, paradoxically, is never dead, and if it seems to be dead, it is no longer beauty. When cannot allow everything the economist takes away from us in the way of life and humanity to be restored to us in the form of money and material wealth. The goal is not luxury and wealth, nor is it poverty; in fact, both luxury and poverty can be looked upon as a vice. However, absolute poverty, as well as being wealthy, can be conditions that give birth to or have given birth to one’s inner wealth. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12
What is this act of giving birth? Well, you do not need a uterus, it is not a physical birth and something both men and women can experience. It is the active, unalienated expression of our faculty toward the corresponding objects. All human relations to the World—seeing, feeling, desiring, acting loving—in short all the organs of one’s individuality…are in their objective action [their action in relation to the object] the appropriation of this object, the appropriation of human reality. This is not the form of appropriation in the mode of being, not in the mode of having. Let us assume that mortals to be mortals, and their relation to the World to be a human one. Then love can only be exchanged for love, trust for trust, and so forth. If you wish to enjoy art, you must be an artistically cultivated person: if you wish to influence other people, you must be a person who really has a stimulating and encouraging effect upon others. Every one of your relations to mortals and to nature must be a specific expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your real individual life. If you love without evoking love in return, for instance, if you are not able, by the manifestation of yourself as a loving person, to make yourself a beloved person, then your love is impotent and a misfortune. #RandolphHarris 5 of 12
Most people in our culture suppress their reactions to beauty; it is too soul-baring. A session with a patient in therapy may illustrate our general cultural shyness in talking on this topic. I had been seeing tis particular client, a woman, once a week for a year; always she talked about some practical problem, generally about the difficulties of getting along with her husband. Though I liked her and she was a highly intelligent person who was also mild, optimistic, pleasant, quiet, and unselfish, but she was a bit too bland and unwarlike, all things considered, and her quarrels with her husband had become boring to me. It appears that her intelligence represented the operation of the reality in principle in behavior, and was responsible for characteristics as the appropriate delay of impulse-expression and the effective organization of instinctual energy necessary for the attainment of goals in the World as it is. Easy accessibility of both primary process and secondary process indicated that she is a person who is both original and intelligent. This how she began by saying she was very weary, they had had visitors for a week, she was “punch drunk” and did not have much to say. #RandolphHarris 6 of 12
So I suggested, since she was so fatigued, that she try free association, simply letting whatever popped into her mind come forth. I explained Dr. Freud’s idea of free association: it is like looking out the window of a speeding train. Each view seems separated from the one before, but when you look down on the whole, as though from above, one can see it makes a meaningful landscape. She somewhat reluctantly agreed though she did not believe it would do any good. Following in a summary of the hour: The first thing that comes to me, I stopped my car on the way here to look at the twilight. It was just beautiful, the purple hues with the green hills behind them…it is the most beautiful time of the day…I believe in God, and when I see such beauty, I know there is a Divine Creator. The poets in the country I come from speak of this time of day when they are writing the most important things—when they write of love and so on. In the twilight I used to go to the beach all alone, it was lovely. This time of day would be a good time to die, a good time to be alone…I should have been a poet [smiling]…This time at twilight does not last long. It seems to say something about true love—it cannot be actualized. [Silence] #RandolphHarris 7 of 12
I would like to die at this time…It is so peaceful here in your office…I keep noticing the beauty outside the window…My mother called from [another country]…called all the way to tell me she has a cold…That ruins the beauty…My mother always wanted me to notice the beauty…to enjoy the World. The bay is so beautiful…I stop each time I drive toward the bridge…San Francisco seems unreal, like a fata morgana…I am part of it…it feels so good, I want to melt into it. People come up to me, want me to take their picture with their camera, they stand right in front so they block out all the picture [she laughs]. Maybe I think other people ruin the scene. When I was in the army [in another country], I would go swimming in the ocean at twilight, alone. It was wonderful. Then the waves drove me out—they seemed like monsters coming after me. The mountains behind the ocean are great in twilight, but they become monsters—big and dark—when night falls. [End of summary] At the conclusion of the hour I asked her how she felt. “Somewhat relaxed…like when I go to a good movie. My friends want to talk about it, but not I…This scene here [looking out my windows] is pure beauty.” She then expressed her fear that she had said nothing today, maybe it was all superficial talk. I assured her that no topics could be more important than beauty, God, death. I added that I thought it was the most profound hour we had ever had. #RandolphHarris 8 of 12
This person is like the majority of people in our Western culture: we are shy about them, they are too persona. We talk about the view, anything to avoid the personal statement. And if we do let out such feelings we apologize for them, as this woman did in saying she was afraid it was all superficial talk. It is fascinating how much beauty preoccupied this young woman, and yet she had never mentioned it before. Each of us can give as examples of beauty only those experiences which have impressed us. Beauty is, to me, listening to Aaliyah’s self-titled album or Arimin van Buuren’s A State of Trance, or Murray Perahia play a Mozart concerto. Beauty is standing under the grape arbor among lilacs in May when the air is heavy with their fragrance, faint for a moment and then filling the air suddenly again as though to intoxicate us. My own experience of beauty has generally been of the simple things—a walk through the pine forests beside the lake, snow in Winter weighing down the limbs of spruce trees till they touch the ground. When the limpid sky turns to pink and the pink to orange and then a fiery red as the Sun rises over the mountains like a God to change the whole face of the Earth, that is what I consider beautiful. The greatest block to a person’s development of courage is one’s having to take on a way of life which is not rooted in one’s own powers. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12
Early in the morning in Summers in Rocklin Trails I walk out of my house on the far edge of the meadow as the morning mist hangs in the air. The Sun rises and its yellow rays rest on the mist. There is no human sound, only the song of thrushes in the bushes. On every blade of grass in the meadow there is a pearl-drop of dew, and as I pick a blade and look more closely I see on each pearl-drop its spectrum of color reflecting the Sun, creating a meadow filled with trillions of tiny sparkling rainbows. However, in our culture, in our discursive language, we cannot talk too much of beauty. Thus a person is unable to know what one believes, let alone stand up for it, or what one’s own powers are, if one has had all along to live up to some role of oneself in one’s parents’ eyes—an image one carries on and perpetuates with oneself. One’s courage is a vacuum before one very begins to act, since it has no real basis within the individual. True, in poetry or in painting or in music we can communicate the experience. However, beauty is a subjective vision at the same moment as it is an objective datum, and we need to respect this wholeness, this union of experience. This is why, when we are before an image of beauty, we instinctively remain silent. We look and we listen. When we talk too much about beauty, we are objectifying it, putting it outside ourselves, destroying the inner vision and reducing it to objective chatter. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12
We must preserve the capacity for wonder—which is the awareness that we can never fully explain the inner experience of beauty. There is also a cultural reason why we do not talk much about beauty. Our culture worships change. We become bored instead of serene; and how then can we appreciate the sense of eternity, the timelessness of this experience? In our age time is money; we construct great buildings only to tear them down in seventy-five years. We erect the tallest edifice in the World, which destroy the previously lacelike loveliness of the skyline of New York, which was one of the wonders of the World. Our age is not one in which beauty has a firm place at the Board of Directors’ meeting. We must nevertheless, being human, communicate by words as much as we can. Normally when a child can take each step in differentiation from one’s parents, each step in becoming oneself, without unbearable anxiety. Just as one learns to climb the steps despite the pain and frustration of falling back time and again, and eventually succeeds with a laugh of joy, so one normally feels out one’s own psychological independence step by step. Aware of one’s parents’ love, and aware of a security present in proportion to one’s degree of immaturity, one can take the occasional crises with parents and such crises as going to school, and one’s growing courage is not overwhelmed. One is not required to stand alone to a greater degree than one is prepared to do. #RandolphHarris 11 of 12
However, if the parents need, like the mother above, to force the child out of their own anxiety, one’s task is made that much more difficult. Parents who have inner, often unconscious, doubts about their own strength tend to demand that their children be especially courageous, independent and aggressive; they may buy the son boxing gloves, push him into competitive groups at an early age, and in other ways insist that the child be the man they inwardly feel they are not. Generally parents who push the child, like those who overprotect one, are showing in actions which speak louder than words their own lack of confidence in him. However, just as no child will develop courage by being overprotected, so no child will develop it by being pushed. One may develop obstinacy or bullying tendencies. However, one’s courage grows only as an outcome of one’s confidence, generally unverbalized, in one’s own powers and one’s indigenous qualities as a human being. This confidence gets its base from one’s parents’ love for the individual and their belief in one’s potentialities. What one needs is neither overprotection nor pushing, but help to utilize and develop one’s own power, and most of all to feel that one’s parents see one as a person in one’s own right and love one for one’s own particular capacities and values. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12
Life Touches the Remote Mysteries of the Divine Encounter and Reverse Cannot Befall that Fine Prosperity!
In the beauty of the World brute necessity becomes an object of love. What is more beautiful than the action of gravity on the fugitive folds of the sea waves, or on the almost eternal fold of the mountain? We cannot take a single step toward Heaven. It is not in our power to travel vertical direction. If however we look Heavenward for a long time, God comes and takes us up. We are free only to change the direction of our glance; we cannot walk into Heaven; we cannot rise without being lifted by grace. The vertical is forbidden to us because the World is the province of gravity and dead weight (pasanteur). The whole Universe, as we know it though the senses of the imagination, has been turned over by God to the control of brute mechanism, to necessity and blind force, and that primary physical law by which all things eternally fall. The very act of creation entailed the withdrawal of the Creator from the created, so that the sum total of God and his World and all of its creatures is, of course, in the process of becoming more like God through their own volition. God grace penetrates, like a ray of light, the dark mechanical realm of unlimited mystery. And we love this World, because we can feel God and have virtue. To God, we are like the smile of the beloved through pain, and this makes him want to redeem us and his World. God in his mercy sometimes prevents people from reading the mystics, so that is should be evident to them that they have not invented this absolutely unexpected contact. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
I called out to the very most ancient one, “Aaliyah, I have made promises to those I love. Help me to keep them. Lend your most powerful ear to those whom I love. Lend your most powerful ear to me.” Where was she, the tower of ivory? The great ancestor. The one who now and then came to our assistance. I had no clue, because I had never bent my stiff neck to go in search of her. However, I knew that in her centuries of endurance she had acquired powers that surpassed all dreams and fears of mine, and that she could hear me if she chose. Aaliyah, our guardian, our mother, listen to my plea. Hear me, Sweet Aaliyah, wherever you are. Surely you know this World as no one else knows it. Have you spied these tall children? I do not dare to say their names. And then I wrapped myself in comforting phantasms, roaming the winds for my own sake, dissolved now and then in the poetry of love, and envisioning bowers of love, places of Divine safety foreordained beyond Good and Evil, where I am the one I coveted could dwell. It was a blessed vision, and it is mine to enjoy. I want to lead us on a wonderous journey that weaves art and clinical insight together to project a pattern for more humane psychotherapy and better mental health. Psychological well-being comes from the act of making, from making art of stone or oils, love or death. The task of becoming human is an artist’s task, and art is thus a birthright shared by us all. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
Art not only enhances individual lives, it makes authentic social existence possible. If modern art seems unsure of its direction, it is because art is always first to register convulsive changes in culture. A sure index to the future is the way society reacts to its art. That may be why a society in which violence and terrorism are on the increase is actually one in which the ecstasy is actually one in which the ecstasy promised by beauty in art has doubled back on itself in a viciously destructive coil. Art thus reflects a culture’s preferences, predicts its future and provokes it to change. My firm belief is that one paints, as one writes, not out of a theory but out of the vividness of experience. When Lorenzo de’ Medici assumed control of his family in 1469, Florence, Italy was still the cultural center of the Western World. Lorenzo’s predecessors had founded the Platonic Academy of Philosophy, where the artist Sandro Botticelli studied a brand of Neoplatonic thought that transformed the philosophic writings of Plato almost into a religion. According to the Neoplatonists, in the contemplation of beauty, the inherently corrupt soul could transform its love for the physical and material into a purely spiritual love of God. Thus, Botticelli uses mythological themes to transform his pagan imagery into a source of Christian inspiration and love. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
His Birth of Venus (circa 1482), the first monumental representation of the goddess in her birthday suit since ancient times, represents innocence itself, a divine beauty free of any hint of the physical and sensual. It was this form of beauty that the soul, aspiring to salvation, was expected to contemplate. For the short period at the outset of the sixteenth century, Florence was again the focal point of artistic activity. The three great artists of the High Renaissance—Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael—all lived and worked in the city. There is a surprisingly close parallel between art and psychotherapy, and in my life they both came out of the same source. In each a new form is born not out of ideas but out of the intensity of experiences. Rational thoughts follow to anchor theoretically the truths that already have grasped us a vision. To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most. For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments’ sake. Our free will consists in nothing but the ability to turn, or refuse to turn, our eyes toward what God holds up before him. We are looking at what saves us. Here on Earth we must be content to be eternally hungry; indeed, we must always welcome hunger, for it is the sole proof we have of the reality of God, who is the only sustenance that can satisfy us. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
In the spring of the second year of college, I realized tat the rules, principles, values by which I used to work and live simply did not suffice anymore. I got so completely fatigued that I had to go to bed for four weeks to get enough energy to continue my teaching. I had learned enough psychology at college to know that these symptoms meant that something was wrong with my whole way of life. I had to find some new goals and purposes for my living and to relinquish my moralistic, somewhat rigid way of way of existence. In the Untied States nowadays I would have gone to a therapist, but back then, I was in a psychologically strong culture where only a few people spoke my language and they did not like to bring excess attention to things that go on in their private lives. What to do? Ascending one hill I found myself suddenly knee deep in a field of wild poppies covering the whole hillside. It was a gorgeous sight: brilliantly crimson and scarlet, the poppies were lovely forms as they bent delicately in one direction and the another. Their perfect movements together seem like people in a ballet, perhaps the “Nutcracker Suite” at Christmas time. I stood there, intoxicated, wholly captivated by this sight. My poppies in their dance were swaying in unison and bowing in the slight breeze, each of them having a miraculous perfection of beauty in itself. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
When the poppies nodded toward me they presented their yellow-black centers, and when they nodded away they then seemed a fiery scarlet. I thought how good it would be to sit among these flowers and draw their forms so that I would never forget them. So I went back on the house and borrowed a pencil and pad and came out to kneel among the poppies to sketch them. They made an imprint on my mind that seems as vivid today as it was then. However, I realized that I had not listened to my inner voice, which had tried to talk to me about beauty. I had been too hard-working, too principled to spend time merely looking at flowers! It seems it had taken a collapse of my whole former way of life for this voice to make itself heard. This inner voice hereafter would always be redolent with the slight perfume that covered the hillside that morning. Thus began my devotion to art and to beauty. Beauty is indeed the sphere of unfettered contemplation and reflection; beauty conducts us into the World of ideas, without however taking us from the World of sense. By beauty the sensuous mortal is brought back to matter and restored to the World of sense. Life touches the mysteries of the Divine Encounter, on the other it is rooted in a World with which we are familiar. To those who consider themselves on the safe side of belief, it is a way to become closer to a true love of God and a true sense of his nature, but it is not an easy faith. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
Even though many are submerged in materialism, this is still a peaceful and enchanted World. Some unbelievers rather smugly despise the churchgoer for seeking what they consider an easy consolation, but this reveals the secret of one’s own cowardice, as one’s agnosticism may itself only an opiate, a dodge to avoid facing the grace of God’s reality and the grace of his love. I have been wondering lately about the will of God, what it means, and how we can reach the point of conforming ourselves to it completely. In this domain everything that comes about is in accordance with the will of God, without any exception. Here then we must love absolutely everything, as a whole and in each detail, we must fee the reality and presence of God through all external things, without exception, as clearly as our hand feels the substance of paper through the penholder and the nib. The second domain is that which is placed under the rule of the will. It includes the things that are purely natural, close, easily recognized by the intelligence and the imagination, and among which we can make our own choice, arranging them from outside so as to provide means to fixed and finite ends. In this domain we have to carry out, without faltering or delay, everything that appears clearly to be a duty. When any duty does not appear clearly, we have sometimes to follow our inclination, but in a limited degree; for one of the most dangerous forms of sin, or perhaps the most dangerous, consists of introducing what is unlimited into a domain that is essentially finite. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
The third domain is that of the things, which, without being under the empire of the will, without being related to natural duties, are yet not entirely independent of us. In this domain we experience the compulsion of God’s pressure, on condition that we deserve to experience it and exactly to the extent that we deserve to do so. God rewards the soul that think of him with attention and love, and he rewards it by exercising a compulsion upon it strictly and mathematically proportionate to this attention and this love. We have to abandon ourselves to the pressure, to run to the exact spot whiter it impels us and not go one step farther, even in the direction of what is good. At the same time we must go on thinking about God with every increasing love and attentiveness, in this way gaining the favor of being impelled ever further and becoming the object of a pressure that possesses itself of an ever-growing proportion of the whole soul, we have attained the state of perfection. However, whatever stage we may have reached, we must do nothing more than we are irresistibly impelled to do, not even in the way of goodness. Our prayers often constitute a mystery in so far as they involve a certain kind of contact with God, a contact that is mysterious but real. It is important for us to have real faith and be true lovers of God because it we are just acting, it is like just as a false diamond is like a real one, so that those who have no spiritual discernment are effectively taken in. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
For the matter of that, a social and human participation in the symbols and ceremonies of the sacrament are an excellent and healthy thing in it as it marks a stage of the journey for those who travel that way. For many, it helps put ever more attention and love into their thought of God. If it were conceivable that in obeying God one should bring about one’s own damnation while in disobeying him one could be saved, most people would still choose to obey God because his ways are righteous. This is felt in moments of attention, love, and prayer. God also teaches us that we have the vocation to move among people of every class and complexion, mixing with them and sharing their life and outlook, so far that is to say conscience allows, merging into the crowd and disappearing among them, so that they show themselves as they are, putting off all disguises. It is because we long to know others so as to love them just as they are. For if we do not love them as they are, it will not be they whom we love, and our love will be unreal. God ways teach us how to form a natural purity of the soul. And although crimes may horrify us, they no longer surprise us. We can feel the possibility of them, and this discernment that teaches us to do things so we are not horrified by things we can possibility prevent. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
The natural disposition is dangerous and very painful, but like every variety of natural disposition, it can be put to good purpose if one knows how to make the right use of it with the help of grace. It is the sign of a vocation, the vocation to remain in a sense anonymous, ever ready to be mixed into the paste of common humanity. Now at the present time, the state of mortal’s minds is such that there is a more clearly marked barrier, but most people know that we cannot deny Christ or we will be denied before his Father which is in Heaven. I love God, Christ, and the faith as much as it is possible for a human to love them. I love the saints through their writings and what is told of their lives—apart from some whom it is impossible for me to love fully or to consider saints. I love the people of genuine spirituality whom chance has led me to meet in the course of my life. I love the religious liturgy, hymns, architecture, stained glass windows, rites, and ceremonies. I love the Church and I know all saints felt this love. Some believe this type of love constitutes a condition of spiritual progress, but everyone has their own level of progress and we are not to judge what is right for some for the action of grace in our hearts is secret and silent. It is my business to think about God. It is for God to think about me. The fate of the World is decided out of time; and it is in this recorded legend that humankind has its sense of true history, the eternal idea of salvation and grace. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
If one defines originality as the ability to respond to stimulus situations bot adaptively and usually, and if one defines intelligence simply as the ability to solve problems, then at the upper level of problem-solving ability the manifestation of intelligence will be also a manifestation of originality. People with a disposition toward integration of diverse stimuli suggests an openness in the more original subject to a variety of phenomena, combined with a strong need to organize those phenomena into some coherent pattern. This might best be described as a resistance to premature closure, combined with a persistent effort to achieve closure in an elegant fashion. In brief, everything that can be perceived must be taken cognizance of before configuration is recognized as possibly final one. Our every experience of Divine Love will come to sustain us at the intersection of body and soul. To contemplate the social is as good a means of purification as retiring from the World. Many people experience the joy and bitterness of Christ’s passion as a real event. This leads many people to give their key to the beyond, in thoughtful prayer, as a way to approach an encounter with God. In a moment of intense physical suffering, when I was forcing myself to feel love, but without desiring to give a name to that love, I felt, without being in any way prepared for it, there was a presence more personal, more certain, more real than that of a human being, though inaccessible to the senses and the imagination. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
While it is believed that common minds have no conception of true courage, this is the error which comes from identifying courage with obviously spectacular acts like the soldier’s charge of Michelangelo’s struggles in completing the paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. With our present knowledge of the unconscious working of the mind, we know that struggles requiring courage equal to that of the soldier’s charge take pace in almost anyone’s dreams and deeper conflict in times of difficult decision. To reserve courage for heroes and artists only shows how little one knows of the profundity of almost any alive human being’s inner development. Courage is necessary in every step in a person’s movement from the mass—symbolically the womb—to becoming a person of one’s own right; it is at each step as though one suffers the pangs of one’s own birth. Courage, whether the soldier’s courage in risking death or the child’s in going off to school, means the power to let go of the familiar and the secure. Courage is required not only in a person’s occasional crucial decision for one’s own freedom, but in the little hour-to-hour decisions which place the bricks in the structure of one’s building of oneself into a person who acts with freedom and responsibility. “And the Lord said unto me: Thy fathers have also required of me this thing; and it shall be done unto them according to their faith; for their faith was like unto thine,” reports Enos 1. 18. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Thus we are not talking about heroes. Indeed, obvious heroism, such as rashness, is often the product of something quite different from courage: in the last war the hot pilots in the air force who appeared to be very brave in taking risks were often the ones who were unable to overcome their anxiety inwardly and had to compensate for it by courting danger in external rash deeds. Courage must be judged as an inner state; otherwise external actions can be very misleading. It requires greater courage to preserve inner freedom, to move on in one’s inward journey into new realms, than to stand defiantly for outer freedom. It is often easier to play the martyr, as it is to be rash in battle. Strange as it sounds, steady patient growth in freedom is probably the most difficult task of all, requiring the greatest courage. This if the term hero is used in this discussion at all, it must refer not to the special acts of outstanding persons, but to the heroic element potentially in every mortal. If we could come back to see that life is like a mirror, tending to reflect back to us the images of our own thinking, then we should realize that by changing our thinking we can change the reflections in the mirror. “And my soul hungered; and I kneeled down before my Maker, and I cried unto him in mighty prayer and supplication for mine own soul; and all the day long did I cry unto him; yea, and when the night came I did still raise my voice high that it reached the Heavens,” reports Enos 1.4. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
I am as You Desire Me and When Night is Almost Done, Sunrise Grows so Near that We Can Touch the Spaces—it is Time to Smooth the Hair!
The night sounds were at one particular and at the same time a deep hum on the warm breeze, and the Moon was high, sometimes penetrating a break in the garden that suddenly revealed its beautiful glistening light more subtly. I looked at the scattered stars—so cunningly bright in the Cresleigh Rocklin Trails night. And I loved them, as usual. What a comfort was it to be discovered in the endless Universe, a marvelous being on a beautiful blue, green and white diamond of revolving divinity, whose forefathers had read patterns and meanings into these countless unknowable points of cold white fire, which gave us faith with their entrancing, dramatic display of twinklingly glimmers of light. Thankful they shine over us to guide lost soul back to Heaven as they illuminate the pastureland, the distant clusters of over, and cast glory on the warmly lighted houses. My soul is with the garden tonight. The most important fact for understanding both the character and the secret religion of contemporary human society is the change in the social character form the earlier era of capitalism to the twenty-first century. The authoritarian-obsessive-hoarding character that has begun to develop in the sixteenth century, and continued to be the dominant character structure at least in the middle classes until the end of the nineteenth century, was slowly blended or replaced by the marketing character. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
I have called this phenomenon the marketing character because it is based on experiencing oneself as a commodity, and one’s value not as use value but as exchange value. The living being becomes a commodity on the personality market. The principle of evaluation is the same on both the personality and the commodity markets: on the one, personalities are offered for sale; on the other, commodities. Value in both cases is their exchange value, for which use value is a necessary but not a sufficient condition. Although the proportion of skill and human qualities on the one hand and personality on the other hand as prerequisites for success varies, the personality factor always plays a decisive role. Success depends largely on how well personal sell themselves on the market, how well they get their personalities across, how nice a package they are; whether they are cheerful, sound, aggressive, reliable, ambitious; furthermore, what their family backgrounds are, what clubs they belong to, and whether they know the right people. The type of personality required deepens to some degree on the special field in which a person may choose to work. A stockbroker, a salesperson, a secretary, a railroad executive, a college professor, or a hotel manager must each offer a different kind of personality that, regardless of their differences, must fulfill one condition: to be in demand. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
What shapes one’s attitude toward oneself is the fact that skill and equipment for performing a given task are not sufficient; one must be able to put one’s personality across in competition wit many others in order to have success. If it were enough for the purpose of making a living to rely on what one knows and what one can do, one’s self-esteem would be in proportion to one’s capacities, that is, to one’s use value. However, since success depends largely on how one sells one’s personality, one experiences oneself as a commodity or, rather, simultaneously as the seller and the commodity to be sold. A person is not concerned with his or her life and happiness, but with becoming salable. The aim of the marketing character is complete adaptation, so as to be desirable under all conditions of the personality market. The marketing character personalities do not even have egos (as people in the nineteenth century did) to hold onto, that belong to them, that do not change. Foe they constantly change their egos, according to the principle: “I am as you desire me.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
Those with the marketing character structure are with goals, moving, doing things with the greatest efficiency: if asked why they must move so fast, why things have to be done with the greatest efficiency, they have genuine answers, such as, “To keep you from unnecessarily having to wait behind fifty people when your order is always ready,” or “Because this is what the manufacture recommends for safety reason and optimal performance,” or “In order to promote from within and employee retention,” or “This is the way to maximize profits, keep shareholders and customers happy, and it helps the company grow,” and that is much better than rationalizations. Many people are also getting back to having more interest (at least subconsciously) in philosophical or religious questions, such as why one lives, and why one is going in this direction rather than in another. They have their developing consciousness that is opening up to the infinite idea of God and eternal life, and are developing a self, a core, and a sense of identity. However, if people are having an identity crisis it is produced by the fact that its members have become selfless instruments, whose identity rests upon their participation in the corporations (or other giant bureaucracies), as a primitive individual’s identity rests upon memberships in the clan. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
We have to make sure our character either loves or hates. These old-fashion emotions have to fit into a character structure that functions almost entirely on the cerebral level and accepts feeling, whether good or evil ones, because they are what assist us with the marketing characters’ main purpose: selling and exchanging—or to put it even more precisely, functioning according to the logic of the Universal Soul, of which we are a part, and we must of course be concerned with how well we function, as indicated by our advancement in the bureaucracy. Since we are in marketing and people can sense and feel us, we must have deep attachment to ourselves and to others, we have to care, in a deep sense of the word, because we want our reactions to feel real and for people to like us. This may also explain why we are concerned with dangers in our communities and ecological catastrophes, even when the data that point to these dangers is being hidden. That we are concerned with our community, people in it, and the environment might still be explained by the idea that we have great courage and unselfishness; and that we have a concern for our children and grandchildren is included in such an explanation. The expressiveness of concern on all these levels is the result of the increase of emotional bonds, even to people were merely associate with as well as those nearest to us. The fact is, we are close to marketing characters; and we are close to ourselves. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
Many contemporary human beings love to buy and consume, and they are so attached to what they buy, and this significant display of the marketing character phenomenon is so appear with how architects design homes, then builders furnish them so you can see the many lovely moments you can have in a house with similar items. The marketing character is seen in how people groom and educate their children to make them as attractive and respectful as possible in faith that they will lead a successful life. And look at the prestigious cars people buy, not only for the comfort and safety they give, but for the style and brand recognition. For many people, they love their car as much as their dogs or other pets. The things we own are utterly indispensable, along with our friends and relations, who are irreplaceable, too, since some deeper bind exists to tall of them. The marketing character goal, proper functioning under all circumstances, makes us respond to the World mainly cerebrally. Reason in the sense of understand is an exclusive quality of Homo sapiens; controlling intelligence as a tool for the achievement of practical purposes is common to animals and humans. Controlling intelligence without reason is dangerous, however, because it makes people move in directions that may be self-destructive from the standpoint of reason. In fact, the more brilliant the uncontrolled intelligence is, the more dangerous it is. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
It was no less a scientist than Charles Darwin who demonstrated the consequences and the human tragedy of a purely scientific, alienated intellect. He writes in his autobiography that until his thirtieth year he had intensely enjoyed music and poetry and pictures, but that for many years afterward he lost all his taste for these interests: “My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of fact…The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.” The process Darwin describes here has continued since his time at a rapid pace; the separation from reason and hearts is not something we want. We have to put God first, have love in our hearts, and we can still have nice material possessions. However, it is a loss of special interest that this deterioration of reason had taken place in the majority of the leading investigators in the most exacting and revolutionary sciences (in theoretical physics, for example) and that they were people who were deeply concerned with philosophical and spiritual questions. I refer to such individuals as Martin Luther, Francis Bacon, Harriet Tubman, Buddha, Empress Dowager Cixi, Sarah and William Winchester, William Randolph Hearst, Albert Einstein, N. Bohr, L. Szillard, W. Heisenberg, E. Schrodinger. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
The supremacy of cerebral, controlling thinking goes together with an atrophy of emotional life. Since it is not cultivated or needed, but rather an impediment to optimal functioning, emotional life has remained stunted and never matured beyond the level of a child’s. As a result the marketing characters are peculiarly naïve as far as emotional problem are concerned. They may be attracted by emotional people, but because of their own naivete, they often cannot judge whether such people are genuine or fakers. This may explain why so many pseudo human beings can be successful in the spiritual and religious fields; it may also explain why politicians who portray strong emotions have a strong appeal for the marketing character—and why the marketing character cannot discriminate between a genuinely religious person and the public relations product who fakes strong religious emotions. The term marketing character is by no means the only one to describe this type. It can also be described by the term alienated character; persons of this character are alienated from their work, from themselves, from other human beings, and from nature. In psychiatric terms the marketing person who is detached and not genuine could be called a schizoid character; but the term may be slightly misleading, because a schizoid person living with other schizoid persons and performing well and being successful, because of one’s schizoid character entirely lacks the feeling of uneasiness that the schizoid character has in a more normal environment. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
In a study of two hundred and fifty executives, managers, and engineers in two of the best-run large companies in the United States, it was discovered that many of these people are found to possess features of the cybernetic person, particularly the predominance of the cerebral along with the underdevelopment of the emotional sphere. Considering that the executives and managers are and will be among the leaders of American society, the social importance of this study is substantial. It was found that 0 percent of these people had a deep scientific interest in understanding, dynamic sense of the work, animated. 22 percent were centered, enlivening, crafts-person- like, but lacks the deeper scientific interest in the nature of things. 58 percent found the work itself stimulates interest, which is not self-sustained. 18 percent were moderate productive, not centered. Interest in work is essentially instrumental, to ensure security, income. 2 percent are passive unproductive, diffused. 0 percent rejecting of work, rejects the real World. Two features are striking: deep interest in understanding (reason) is absent, and for the vast majority either the stimulation of their work is not self-sustaining or the work is essentially a means for ensuring economic security. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
In complete contrast is the picture of what we call the love scale. 0 percent were loving, affirmative, creatively stimulating. 5 percent were responsible, warm, affectionate, but not deeply loving. 40 percent possessed moderate interest in another person, with more loving possibilities. 41 percent were found to have conventional concern, decent, and are role oriented. 13 percent are passive, unloving, uninterested. And 1 percent were considered to be rejecting of life, hardened heart. No one in the study could be characterized as deeply loving, although 5 percent show up as being warm and affectionate. All the rest are listed as having moderate interest, or conventional concern, or as unloving, or outright rejecting of life—indeed a striking picture of emotional underdevelopment in contrast to the prominence of cerebralism. The cybernetic religion of the marketing character corresponds to that total character structure. Hidden behind the façade of agnosticism or Christianity is a thoroughly pagan religion, although people are not conscious of it as such. This pagan religion is difficult to describe, since it can only be inferred from what people do (and do not do) and not from their conscious thoughts about religion or strict doctrines of religious organization. Most striking, at first glance, is that mortals have made themselves into a god because one has acquired the technical capacity for a second creation of the World, replacing the first creation by the God of traditional religion. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
We can also formulate: We have made the machine into a god and have become godlike by serving the machine. It matters little the formulation we choose; what matters is that human beings, in the state of their greatest real impotence, imagine themselves in connection with science and technique to be omnipotent. This aspect of cybernetic religion corresponds to a more hopeful period of development. However, the more we are caught in our isolation, in our lack of emotional response to the World, and at the same time the more unavoidable a catastrophic end seems to be, the more malignant becomes the new religion. We cease to be the masters of technique and become instead its slaves—and technique, once a vital element of creation, shows its other face as the goddess of destruction (like the Indian goddess Kali), to which men and women are willing to sacrifice themselves and their children. While consciously still hanging onto the hope for a better future, cybernetic humanity represses the fact that they have become worshippers of the goddess of destruction. “And thus we see the great call of diligence of people to labor in the vineyards of the Lord; and thus we see the great reason of sorrow, and also rejoicing—sorrow because of death and destruction among mortals, and joy because of the light of Christ unto life,” reports Alma 28.14. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
This thesis has many kinds of proof, but none more compelling than these two: that the great (and even some smaller powers continue to build nuclear weapons of ever-increasing capacity for destruction and do not arrive at the one sane solution—destruction of all nuclear weapons and the atomic energy plants that deliver the material for nuclear weapons—and that virtually nothing is done to end the danger of corruption, economic and ecological catastrophe. In short, nothing serious is being done to plan for the survival of the human race. “And thus we see how great the inequality of mortals is because of sin and transgression, and the power of the devil, which comes by cunning plans which he hath devised to ensnare the hearts of mortals,” Alma 28.13. Attitudes of superiority provide another way of expressing anger indirectly. It is quite hostile after all to say to another person, in effect, “I am so more better than you and any opinions or feelings you may have count for nothing, my human!” And when such superiority feelings are used cleverly, such as portraying oneself as condescendingly tolerant of another, they become a powerful and cutting weapon. Many mortals who feel themselves to be trained in logic and the scientific method use this distancing device with great effectiveness. Such a mortal will convey the feeling to one’s wife that there is something suspect about any emotional reaction she may have. “After all,” he says, “you have to approach life rationally. You are letting your emotions influence your judgment.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
And, of course, the wife may turn the tables and adapt her own superior attitude and declare, “Well, I was just reading in a book the other day that it is important and right to show our emotions. So there!” (Well, of course she is right, but she is using it in an assertive way, which could lead to a fight!) Sometimes we express hostility indirectly by misplacing our anger. We may nag and express irritation about many little things, while avoiding the genuine anger which we are afraid to reveal. For example, a wife might “pitch a fit” continually about her husband not fixing the things on the “honey do list,” when she is really afraid that if he lets it go too long, it might reflect poorly on him as an employee and create a lack of advancement in the company organization when his boss comes over for dinner or finds out about it otherwise, as it is a small community. Sometimes we misplace our hostility to other people. Often this involves a pecking order in which we misplace anger from a person who is a considerable threat to us, like a spouse or a boss, and place it on someone less threatening, like our children, who in turn may pull the display deviant behavior as a result. We sometimes express anger indirectly by projecting it onto another person and seeing that individual as being hostile toward us. This process, too, serves the purpose of maintaining emotional distance, for if we can purpose of maintaining emotional distance, for is we can preserve the idea that another person is unfriendly and hostile there is little danger of our becoming close. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
In fact, the person may become increasingly unfriendly and hostile as one reacts to our reactions to one’s imagined hostility. A discussion of the costs we pay in damage to ourselves and damage in our relations with others when we suppress anger cannot be concluded without a discussion of the violent explosions that sometimes occur. And the fact that such explosions do occur is often frightening to those who sense something of this potential violence within themselves. It is not unusual to feel as one man who stated, “I have so much anger bottled up in me that I am afraid if I ever let myself express it, it would be the point of no return.” Often this fear has little or no basis in fact. It serves as an excuse for imposing control on ourselves. We are really afraid of an open relationship in which we could express our anger freely. The fear that we will do violence is substituted to give ourselves a more plausible reason for not being genuine. On the other hand, the fear of violence may have some basis of truth. The fallacy of continuing a rigid control of our anger, however, is that this simply increase the inner tension and makes the possibility of violence more real. The frequently used analogy of the steam boiler under pressure is probably the most appropriate one. If hostility is permitted to build up and none of the pressure is allowed to escape, the possibility of an explosion increases. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
The person who fears violence within oneself may need to consult professional help immediately to assess the reality of his or her fear and help him or her to find safe ways to dissipate the inner pressure. Nick was such a person. He was in construction work; and when irritating situations arose on the job, he often became frightened with himself. He seethed with so much anger, particularly toward his foreman on these occasions, that he was afraid he might end the life of one of them if he ever got carried away and began to express his feelings. The therapist he sought out helped him talk through a lot of his feelings, including a huge backlog of anger toward his father that he had probably misplaced on the foreman. Nick also discovered that he could talk over some of his irritations with his boss and that when he did this his feeling of wanting to do violence disappeared even when he and his boss did not reach complete agreement. In brief, we are trying to help people become more intelligent, widely informed, concerned wit basic problems, cleaver and imaginative, socially effective and personally dominant, verbally fluent, and possessed of initiative. Instead of being seen as conforming, rigid and stereotyped, uninsightful, commonplace, apathetic, and dull. Whatever you believe to be truth about God, declare to be the Truth about yourself. Know that the power within you is God, and the law of good establishing right action in your life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
Reverse Cannot Befall that Fine Prosperity Whose Sources are Interior and Security is Loud, I Guess that Means Listen!
I have given them every opportunity. Every type of advancement and profit sharing as well, but they want me in residence. Resident curator! Ah, that sounds brilliant. However, will I take the job? I have finished my Ph.D. and am ready to start teaching. I wish I could take the job. I spent years in Europe with you and Aunt Queen. It was a luxurious journey. I am thoroughly ruined for ordinary life. I would love nothing better than to be curator here, to maintain the Easter and Christmas traditions for the sake of the parish, and whatever else I want, whie earning a high salary, having a gorgeous house and ample time to write a couple of books in my academic field. Some people believe that I have the style and grace to pull it off. Oh, this could be the answer, but I have a few reservations. However, think about it. In my idle hours, I could begin to build a proper library on shelves put on the inside walls of the double parlor. And I could write a short history of Rocklin, to be printed up for the tourists, you know, with architectural details and blueprints and legends and such. Throw in the limousine and driver twenty-four hours a day, and a new car of my own every two years, and a deep-pocket expense account and paid vacations to New York and Tennessee, and I think it would be possible, but only time will tell. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
That homely yearning for simplicity which we have been discovering in ourselves and in the great majority of people who have taken our preference tests has not escaped the hearts of educators any more than of the parents and the children they teach. One sign of it is the immense popularity of the notion that intelligence can not only be measured, but can be expressed in a simple number, with a base of reference something like a dollar—the I.Q. (intelligence quotient), one hundred units of which can be counted upon to indicate that the Lord dealt out to his servant an average number of talents, to be buried or used according to one’s character and personal worthiness, for better of for worse. The enduring vogue of the I.Q. is certainly testament to our natural desire to keep the story simple, and psychologist and teachers have been the worst offenders in supporting this popular simplification. The fact is, of course, that intelligence is a complex set of interrelated aptitudes and abilities, some of them verging closely upon the temperamental rather than being limited to what we usually think of as intellective. Of course, we also have to consider the results of a studies designed especially to discover some of the determinants, other than a simple one-number estimate of intelligence, that are important in the production of the sorts of original perceptions and problem-solutions. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
Another study we have seen, employed a wide variety of psychological tests in the usual living-in assessment setting. Both because of the nature of the sample and because of the method employed for discovering significant relationships, several restrictions upon the generalizability of the results must be organized. For one thing, correlation coefficients between the measure of originality and several hundred other variables were computed in a search for significant associations, and the observed correlations have not as yet been checked in any other sample that is this similar to the general population (simply because we changed track and decided to work particularly with a view to discovering the traits of original persons; they had not engaged themselves in work that called for a high order of original thought, nor was originality an important value in their lives. In brief, the correlations to be reported may not reflect anything concerning the way in which highly creative people differ from the norm. The results therefore are germane to the question of how originality varies with other personal characteristics only if originality be considered as a variable that is distributed continuously throughout the general population. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
In spite of these strictures inherent in the design of the study, there is some reason to believe that the results are generalizable to the problem of creative process in the highly original person. In the past, we saw that originality in free-response performance tests is sufficiently consistent across test to be considered a dimension, and that in addition the test dimension itself is related to personality variables which were hypothesized on theoretical grounds to be characteristics of highly original persons. Thus the testing of theory in that respect suggests that generalizable relationships may be discovered in this sample, and perhaps in fact that it particularly favors the finding of valid relationships. The central characteristic of the various indirect expressions of anger is that they create barriers of emotional distance between ourselves and the other person. Thus they keep us from experiencing emotional intimacy. Since, as we have seen, we are very much afraid of the experience of love, it seems likely that we often use these indirect expressions of anger as a way of preserving the safety of distance. Evasion of direct expression of anger thus becomes a tool of our fear of love. Looking at it from the other side, then, expression of anger in indirect ways becomes a means of cheating ourselves of what we most want—the experience of love. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
One indirect expression of anger that we sometimes use is apparent indifference. Now, of course, if we are really angry, we are not all indifferent. However, that is the point! We resist letting the other person know that we care enough to let them get under our skins. To express the anger directly would be to risk a genuine encounter. So instead we express our hostility by saying in effect, “You do not matter to me.” One man recalls that, when we felt angry, hurt, and frustrated, as a child on certain occasions, by his mother’s stipulations, he would shout through tears, “I do not care! I do not care!” One can guess that those were rather unsuccessful attempts to appear indifferent! Grievance collecting is another indirect expression of anger in which we store up anger for future use, particularly at times when there is danger of intimacy we fear. So, for example, one woman often countered any expression of love from her husband with something like, “Well, you should have thought of that six years ago when you were off getting drunk at the Ritz Hotel bar, slow dancing with that frisky bleached-blonde tramp, buying her Paris Hiltons (sex on the beach) because she can’t drink whiskey, while I was in the hospital giving birth to your baby!” And this particular weapon in her grievance arsenal is so effective and important that she may never let herself be aware that her husband was so “shook up” by his caring for her and by the possibility of becoming a father (and experiencing love for his child) that he could not face his emotions at the moment. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Often our grievance collecting take less dramatic, but just as effective, form. We may have an almost inexhaustible supply of minor resentments. Probably, if we tried, it would be hard for us to put them all into words, but they provide enough impetus to keep us almost constantly irritable or moody with the other person without bringing about the explosion that might clear away the tension between us and permit some frightening moments of closeness. The quality that above all deserves the greatest glory in art—and by that word we must include all creation of mind—is courage; courage of a kind of which common minds have no conception, and which is perhaps described here for the first time…To plan, dream, and imagine fine works is a pleasant occupation to be sure….However, to produce, to bring to birth, to bring up the infant work with labor, to put it to bed full-fed with milk, to take it up again every morning with inexhaustible maternal love, to lick it clean, to dress it a hundred times in lovely garments that it tears up again and again; never to be discouraged by the convulsions of this mad life, and to make of it a living masterpiece that speak to all eyes in sculpture, or to all minds in literature, to all memories in painting, to all hearts in music—that s the task of execution. The hand must be ready at every moment to obey the mind. And the creative moments of the mind do not come to order…And work is a weary struggle at once dreaded and loved by those find and powerful natures who are often broken under the strain of it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
If the artist does not throw one’s self into his or her work like a soldier into the breach, unreflectingly; and if, in that crater, one does dig like a miner buried under a fall of rock…the work will never be completed; it will perish in the studio, where production becomes impossible, and the artist looks on at the death by suicide of one’s own talent…And it is for that reason that the same reward, the same triumph, the same laurels, are accorded to great poets as to great generals. One of the reasons creative activity takes so much courage is that to create stands for becoming free from the bonds to the infantile past, breaking the old in order that the new can be born. For creating external works, in art, business or what not, and creating one’s self—that is, developing one’s capacities, becoming freer and more responsible—are two aspects of the same process. Every act of genuine creativity means achieving a higher level of self-awareness and personal freedom, and that, as we have seen in the Promethean (who stole fire from the Gods), and Adam from the Garden of Eden legends, may involve considerable inner conflict. A landscape painter, whose main problem was freeing himself from ties to a possessive mother, had for years wanted to paint portraits but had never dared. Finally pulling his courage together, he dove in and painted several portraits in the course of three days. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
The portraits turned out to be excellent. However, strangely enough, he felt not only considerable joy but strong anxiety as well. The night of the third day he had a dream in which his mother told him he must commit suicide, and he was calling up his friends to say good-bye with a terrifying and overwhelming sense of loneliness. The dream was saying in effect, “If you create, you will leave the familiar, and not create.” It is highly significant, when we see the nature of this powerful unconscious threat, that he could paint no more portraits for a month—until, that is, he had overcome the counterattack of the anxiety which had appeared in the dream. Believing that the Universal Spirit comes to fullest consciousness in mortal’s innermost Self, we strive to cultivate the inner life, knowing that spiritual certainty is the result of an impact on God upon the soul. We seek the witness of the Inner Spirit. There is a presence pervading all, an intelligence running through all, a power sustaining all, binding all into one perfect whole. The realization of this presence, intelligence, power, and unity constitutes the inner nature of the mystic Christ, the indwelling spirit, the image of God. The mind has the possibility of projecting limitless expressions of itself, but each expression is unique and different from any other. Thus the infinite is not divided, but multiplied. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Eden is that Old Fashioned House We Dwell in Every Day Without Suspecting Our Abode Until We Drive Away
Oh, this was nothing short of providential! I was absolutely furious and delirious happy at the same time. I closed my focus. In any age courage is the simple virtue needed for a human being to traverse the rocky road from infancy to maturity of personality. However, in an age of anxiety, an age of herd morality and personal isolation, courage is a sine qua non. In periods when the mores of the society were more consistent guides, the individual was more firmly cushioned in his crises of development; but in times of transition like ours, the individual is thrown on one’s own at an earlier age and for a longer period. In the past courage has been oversimplified: we suppressed our awareness of death, told ourselves that happiness and freedom would come automatically and assumed that loneliness, anxiety and fear were always neurotic and could be overcome by better adjustment. It is true that neurotic anxiety and loneliness can and should be overcome: the chief courage needed in dealing with them is in taking steps to get professional help. However, there still remain the experiences of normal anxiety which confront any developing person, and it is in confronting rather than fleeing these that courage is essential. Courage is the basic virtue for everyone so long as one continues to grow, to move ahead; it is they only lasting virtue. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
We do not refer chiefly to the courage needed to face external threats, such as war and destructive weapons. We refer rather to courage as an inward quality, a way of relating to oneself and one’s possibilities. As this courage in dealing with oneself is achieved, one can with much greater equanimity meet the threats of the external situation. Courage is the capacity to meet the anxiety which arises as one achieves freedom. It is the willingness to differentiate, to move from the protecting realms of parental dependence to new levels of freedom and integration. The need for courage arises not only at those stages when breaks with parental protection are most obvious—such as the birth of self-awareness, at going off to school, at adolescence, in crises of love, marriage and the facing of ultimate death—but t every step in between as one moves from the familiar surroundings over frontiers into the unfamiliar. Courage, in its final analysis, is nothing but an affirmative answer to the shocks of existence, which must be borne for the actualization of one’s own nature. The opposite to courage is not cowardice: that, rather, is the lack of courage. To say a person is a coward has no more meaning than to say one is lazy: it simply tells us that some vital potentiality is unrealized or blocked. The opposite to courage, as one endeavors to understand the problem in our particular age, is automaton conformity. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
The courage to be oneself is scarcely admired as the top virtue these days. One trouble is that many people still associate that kind of courage with the stuffy attitudes of the self-made mortals of the late nineteenth century, or with the somewhat ridiculous no matter how sincere “I-am-the-master-of-my-fate” theme in such a poem as “Invictus.” With what qualified favor many people today view standing on one’s own convictions is revealed in such phrases as “sticking one’s neck out.” The central suggestion in this defenseless posture is that any passer-by could swing at the exposed neck and cut off the head. Or people describe moving ahead in one’s beliefs as “going out on a limb.” Again what a picture! The only things one can do out on a limb are to crawl back again, saw the limb off and come down, dramatic as Icarus in a martyr-like and probably useless crash, dramatic as Icarus in a martyr-like and probably useless crash, or remain out on the limb, vegetating like a Hindu tree-sitter and exposed to the ridicule of a populace which does not think highly of tree-sitting, till the limb breaks off of its own dead weight. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Both of these expressions highlight the fact that what is most dreaded is getting out of the group, protruding, not fitting in. People lack courage because their fear of being isolated, alone, or of being subjected to social isolation, that is, being laughed at, ridiculed or rejected. If one sinks back into the crowd, one does not risk these dangers. And this being isolated is no minor threat because primitive people may be literally killed by being psychologically isolated from the community. There have been observed cases of natives who, when socially ostracized and treated by their tribes as though they did not exit, have actually withered away and died. To be cut dead by social disapproval has much more truth than poetry in it. It is thus no figment of the neurotic imagination that people are deathly afraid of standing on their own convictions at the risk of being renounced by the group. What we lack in our day is an understanding of the friendly, warm, personal, original, constructive courage of a Socrates or a Spinoza. We need to recover an understanding of the beneficial aspects of courage—courage as the inner side of growth, courage as a constructive way of that becoming of oneself which is prior to the power to give oneself. Thus, when in this chapter we emphasize standing on one’s own belief, we do not at all imply living in a vacuum of separateness; actually, courage is the basis of any creative relationship. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
It takes courage not only to asset oneself but to give oneself. When we suppress anger, insofar as its direct expression is concerned, we inevitably pay some price for this denial of ourselves. As a matter of fact, the idea of suppression of anger involve some self-deceit, for we always express our anger in some way. Attempting to suppress anger is like trying to push an inflated inner tube under water. When we manage to push one side of it under, it pops out at some other point. So when we suppress the direct expression of anger it manifests itself in some indirect way. We may take it out on ourselves or others. Usually our reactions involve some form of both. There is an emotional logic in our tendency to turn our anger inward in some self-damaging expression. After all, as we have seen, we have been taught to hate and mistrust this part of ourselves. We have been taught that anger is condemnable, so when we feel angry our feelings of self-hate are increased. Some punishment of ourselves for having these feelings that we do not accept in ourselves is therefore in order. Sometimes turning anger in on oneself results in physical illness. The symptoms may be relatively simple and fleeting. Many people, for example, will develop a slight headache following a conversation in which there was more anger than they expressed or perhaps even realized. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Often more chronic problems develop, such as ulcers or high blood pressure. Indeed, although there is much additional research to be done into the relation of anger and physical illness, it seems clear that such emotional factors can have much to do with either the onset or the progress (or both) of most physical ailments. The physical illness itself can then become a weapon for the expression of hostility, too. The wife, for example, who does not allow herself to express her anger toward her husband and children directly may mete out considerable punishment toward them as well as herself when she has frequently recurring sick headache. Depression is another frequent result of turning anger in one one’s self. Marge, a middle-aged woman, sought professional help because much of the time she was in moods of gloomy despair and because she seemed to have no motivation to do her work. Her thoughts were sufficiently suicidal that she asked the therapist to keep her supply of sleeping pills lest she take an overdose in the midst of an acute depression. As she talked, it rapidly became apparent that she had deep feelings of self-hatred stretching back into childhood, when her parents seemed to have had some need to take a very pessimistic attitude toward her, her adequacy, and the possibility of her ever amounting to anything. So sensitized had she become to this attitude that any sign of rejection or criticism by others was interpreted by her as total rejection and an indication of her complete worthlessness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
It is not surprising to learn that Marge was filled with rage about these slights, whether they were real or fancied. However, since she had also learned to despise her anger, her rage remained almost totally unexpressed and not fully experienced, since to be aware of it would be further confirmation to her of her worthlessness. Instead, the anger was converted into feelings of depression and helplessness. It was only as she was gradually able to express some anger directly in day-by-day situations that her depression slowly lifted and she became freer to devote energies to productive pursuits in her profession and in her personal life. Perhaps the most subtle but most damaging price we pay for the suppression of anger is in the gradual deadening of the self that often occurs. The child learns it is risky to express anger and even wrong and worthy of rebuke to feel angry. Yet anger-producing situations are constantly occurring. One solution to this dilemma that the child faces is gradually to shut anger out of immediate awareness. Years of practice lead to some degree of success at this task. In this process of cutting off one’s awareness of a significant part of one’s self, it is almost as though we were making a psychological command out of the biblical verse suggesting that “If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.” As a matter of fact, this verse is probably often quoted in ways that encourage us to keep ourselves unaware of our feelings of anger or desire of pleasures of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
Extreme examples of this tendency, which probably we all have to some extent, can be seen in advanced schizophrenic patients who seem unable to have any genuine emotional experience. It is true that such persons may occasionally appear to become enraged, and they may erupt in violence. Even then, however, there appears to be a mechanical quality to the rage. They are too emotional deadened to connect their explosion with any deep, meaningful feeling. Many of us who are not as seriously emotionally damaged as that might be described as having a slow fuse to anger. All of us probably had the experience of having an encounter with a person during which we feel vaguely uncomfortable. Later on, when the person was safely absent, we suddenly realized that we were quite angry. And then (safe again) we thought of all the things we would have liked to have said if we had only thought of them at the right moment. In addition to damaging our relationship to ourselves, we also pay a price in our relationship to others when we suppress our feelings of anger, for almost invariably we find some way of taking our anger out on them. Behind most anger is hurt, resentment, or frustration. If you dig deep enough into the anger that you have felt, one of these three roots will probably be there. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Randolph Harris II International Institute 