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In the Engaging of Destiny Our Freedom is Born, Just as With the Coming of the Light the Day Overcomes the Night!
The music was like the music of old, when all songs had been the songs of the body, and the songs of the mind had not yet been invented. As we begin to confront our destiny as a given, unchangeable series of events which, no matter how painful, needs to be acknowledged and accepted, we become able to experience the relief of one who was a slave and is now is free. The freedom of each of us is in proportion to the degree with which we confront and live in relation to our destiny. Unfortunately, the term destiny has been so used and misused by Hollywood films that the word has almost solely the connotation of inescapable catastrophe, secret doom, irrevocable ruin—all of which gives a curiously erotic flavor to the films, as though the secret urge to be carried off for pleasures of the flesh by Zeus camouflaged as bull were present in the subconscious of all of us, male as well as female. True, the definitions of destiny do include irrevocable fate, but they also include much more. The verb form of the word, destine, is defined as to ordain, to devote, to consecrate. Destiny is a cognate of the term destination, which implies moving toward a goal. We discern two trends in these different meanings: one the element of direction, and the other the sense of plan or design. These are all aspects of the human condition; our billiard balls have been left far being. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
I define destiny as the pattern of limits and talents that constitutes the givens in life. These may be on a grand scale, like death, or on a minor scale like the gasoline shortage. As we shall see below, it is in the confronting of these limits that our creativity emerges. Our destiny cannot be canceled out; we cannot erase it or substitute anything else for it. However, we can choose how we shall respond, how we shall live out our talents which confront us. Destiny is a term that describes our condition prior to sociological and mortal judgments. One’s destiny is archetypal and ontological; the term refers to one’s original experience at each moment. It is the design of the Universe speaking through the design of each one of us. Destiny confronts us on different levels. There is our destiny on the cosmic level, like birth and death. We may postpone death slightly by giving up smoking, for example, or we may invite it by living; but all the while passing into Heaven stands there irrevocable waiting. Dylan Thomas’s poem on the death of his father is an impassioned and arresting creative work. However, it did not cancel out the fact that his father had to pass into Heaven. Also on this cosmic level are Earthquakes and volcanoes, or we can take our chances, remaining in the path of the eruptions. However, we cannot escape the fact that volcanoes and other such eruptions of the Universe do occur without the slightest concern for us. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
When we admit these so-called destructive aspects of destiny, we also see that the beneficial wide of the pattern includes the pleasure in the pathless woods and the rapture by the lonely shore. There is a second group of givens genetic. Our destiny is expressed in our physical characteristics, like the color of our eyes and skin, the race we happened to be born into, whether we are male or female, and so on. Anatomy is destiny. One’s talents—such as special gifts for music, art, or mathematics—are part of this bundle. One feels possessed by them. There is no denying talents without penalty, and one name for the attempt at denial is neurosis. Third, there is the cultural aspect of destiny. At birth we are thrown into a family we did not pick, into a culture about which we knew nothing, and into a particular historical period about which we had no say. We may, and sometimes need to, fight our family, but there is no successful way of disowning this fount from which we sprang. Freedom’s great emotional potency is due to the fact that human life and indeed the pursuit of happiness depend upon the nature and the efficiency of these means which culture gives mortals in their struggle with the environment, with other human beings, and with Destiny herself. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
A fourth groups of givens is circumstantial. The stock market rises and falls; a war is declared; Pearl Harbor is attacked. Once these happen, they cannot be reversed nor avoided nor ignored nor done over again. One can think of the different forms of destiny on a spectrum with various gradations. On the left-hand extreme position I would put what the philosophers call necessity and the poets call fate, like Earthquakes and volcanoes. These are scarcely at all susceptible to human change. Determinism I would place near this end also. In the middle I would place the unconscious function of the human mind, since this is partly determined and partly influenced by human activity. The cultural aspects of destiny I would place nearer the right end of the spectrum, since, though we have no voice in choosing our society or historical period, we have a good deal of freedom in how we use them. On the extreme right hand I would put talent, for though it is given in once sense, we have considerable freedom with respect to how we use it. There are also varying ways of relating to one’s destiny. One is to cooperate with it. The aspects of destiny assigned to every mortal is suited to one, and suits one to oneself. Another way is be aware of and to acknowledge one’s destiny. Most of us do this, at least superficially with physical size, anatomy, and death. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
A fourth way is the outright confronting and challenging of one’s destiny. A fifth and most active response is encountering and rebelling against destiny. Rage, rage against the dying of the light is an example of this. These ways are not mutually exclusive, to be sure, and we all use all of them at different times. The role of talent as a form of destiny is shown in a letter Beethoven wrote when he was twenty-eight and becoming so hearing impaired that “others heard the shepherd singing and I heard nothing. Oh, if I were rid of this affliction I could embrace the World! I feel that my youth is just beginning and I not always been ill? Grant me but half freedom from my affliction and then—as a complete, ripe mortal I shall return to you and renew the old feelings of friendship. You must see me as happy as it is possible to be here below—not unhappy. No! I cannot endure it. I will take Fate by the throat; it shall wholly overcome me. Oh, it is so beautiful to live—to live a thousand times! I feel that I am not made for a quiet life.” We can, of course, spend our lives trying to falsify or flee from our destiny. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is the story of a young man who tried to falsify his past. Gatsby changed his name, disowned his parents, cultivated a British accent, and spent the crucial years after the World war trying to win back Daisy, the rich young lady with who he had fallen in love when he was in military training. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
In Fitzgerald’s words, “The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his platonic conception of himself. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seven-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.” At the tragic ending, the fabulous dance orchestras were silenced, the last person had left the once-crowned parties, Gatsby’s big house was empty, Daisy had gone back to her rich husband. And Gatsby’s body floats dead in his own swimming pool. Fitzgerald sums up the tragedy and relates it to us all: “Gatsby had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that is no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms father….And one fine morning—so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
With beautiful insight, Fitzgerald sees the human compulsion to repeat behavior: “tomorrow we will run faster.” Id this not our universal hubris? “No man of woman born / Coward or brave, can shun one’s destiny,” Homer proclaimed centuries ago. We human beings beat on like boats against the current, while we are all the time borne back ceaselessly into the past. Fitzgerald rightly observed that each of us to some extent falsifies, denies, or dodges one’s destiny—to commit the errors is all too human. He himself was especially of this type, as imaginative writers often are, and his special difficulty with his own destiny, which obviously included his early fame, led to his alcoholism and early death. So he knows of what he speaks. Destiny is a vital design. This means that destiny is a destination, or the significant direction or conflict of directions each one of us senses within oneself. Our will is free to realize or not to realize this vital design which we ultimately are, but we cannot…change it, abbreviate it, or substitute anything for it. The environment we live in, the outside World we face, and our own character as it has developed up until that moment simply make this task easier or harder. Life means the inexorable necessity of realizing the design for an existence which each one of us is. The sense of life is nothing other than each one’s acceptance of one’s inexorable circumstance and, on accepting it, converting it into one’s own creation. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
Destiny in this sense is that design in our lives that we spend our years trying to find, seeking and groping, trying this job and that one, loving this woman or man and that one, stumbling into this therapist’s office or that one, sometimes with success and sometimes with failure. The tendency, present especially in America, to believe that we can change everything at any time we wish, that nothing in character or existence is fixed or given (in Los Angeles not even death) and that now with psychotherapy or the cults we can remake our lives and personalities over the weekend is not only a misperception of life, but is also a desecration of it. Psychoanalysis and its offspring provide varied ways of trying to discover this vital design of each of us. Gurus—or other persons who claim to have some transterrestial connections—are so prized in our day because they presume to tell us what our vital design is. To the extent that we are able to live out or destiny, we experience a sense of gratification and achievement, a conviction that we are becoming what we were meant to become. It is an experience of authenticity, a feeling of being in accord with the Universe, a conviction of genuine freedom. The huge World that girdles us about puts all sorts of questions to us, and tests us in all sorts of ways. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
Some of the test we meet by actions that are easy, and some of the questions we answer in articulately formulated words. However, the deepest question that is ever asked admits of no reply but the dumb turning of the will and tightening of our heartstrings as we say, “Ye, I will even have it so!” When the vital design is covered up and silenced, however, the sensitive person has the experience of acting like a prig—one feels unreal, ungenuine, inauthentic. This design is not an idea or plan thought up by the person involved, and freely chosen. The design is anterior to all the ideas one’s intellect forms, and to all the decisions of one’s will. Life is essentially a drama, because it is a desperate struggle—with things and even with our own character—to succeed in being in fact that which we are in design. Often our pressure to deny our destiny comes from such things as our insecurity, our dread of ostracism, our fear and anxiety, and our lack of courage to risk ourselves. These, in turn, come largely from the pressure to conform: it is safer to belike everybody else. The vital design, the authentic pattern to which we are called can then be left far behind. However, the tendency to deny our destiny may also come from a conflict between possibilities—between, say, being a scientist or a poet, as in Goethe’s life. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
There is the conflict in classical tragedy, for example, between Orestes’ love and pity for his mother and his need to avenge his father, the love-hate dilemma that arises from a fundamental human conflict between desire and destiny. There is a tendency among us to separate that which has an evil connotation in destiny, which we generally call fate, from that which is constructive, which we call destiny. It is crucial to remember that the concept of destiny is prior to the moral criteria of good and evil. So let there be no confounding the ought to be of mortality, which inhabits mortal’s intellectual region, wit the vital imperative, the has to be of personal vocation, situated in the most profound and primary region of our being. We need to accept the negative fate element together with the beneficial destiny. Adolph Hitler developed his great power over the German people by his use of the destiny of the German people, he was using the term correctly no matter how destructive his campaigns turned out to be. “The devil can quote scripture” has a meaning far beyond what we normally assume. Destiny and freedom from a paradox, a dialectical relationship. By this I mean that they are opposites that need each other—like day and night, Summer and Winter, God and the devil. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
Out of encountering of the forces of destiny come our possibilities, our opportunities. In the engaging of destiny our freedom is born, just as with the coming of the light day overcomes the night. Destiny, as we have declared, is not to be thought of as a ball and chain that afflict human beings. It is true that there is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will. However, it is likewise true, as Shakespeare also points out, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we underlings.” These statements sounds like a clear contradiction. However, they are paradoxes instead. Freedom is by no means the absence of destiny. If there were no destiny to confront—no death, no illness, no fatigue, no limitations of any sort and no talents to pose against these limitations—we would never develop any freedom. The meaning of the dialectical relation between freedom and destiny is that, even though they are opposites, they are still bound together. They imply each other. If destiny changes, freedom must change, and vice versa. First comes a thesis; this gives rise to its antithesis; and this, in turn, leads to a synthesis. Each not only makes the other possible; each stimulates activity in the other pole, gives power and energy to the other. Thus we can truly speak of destiny being born out of freedom and freedom being born out of destiny. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
For freedom is honed in the struggle with destiny. The freedom that develops in our confronting our destiny produces the richness, the endless variety, the capacity to endure, the ecstasy, the imagination, and the imagination, and the other capacities that characterize the World and ourselves as conscious creatures, free but destined, moving in it. In this sense destiny is personal: Each of us suffers one’s own destiny. It is out of the dialectical relation of destiny and freedom that creativity and civilization are born. Thus freedom and necessity [destiny] meet and fuse not only in my present and future choices but in the very individuality of my existence. Each and every decision establishes a new foundation for the formation of my real historical self: I am bound by the decisive character of my choices; in virtue of these choices I have become what I wanted myself to be. Hence, there are all the paradoxical statements about freedom. We are doomed to be free by the very fact of being born. We are condemned to freedom. Mortals are the being condemned to translate necessity into freedom. Thus mortals begin to have some sense of that cosmic pathos of the I without as yet realizing this. The human body is the carrier of its sensations, from its environment. In this particularity the body learns to know and discriminate itself, but this discrimination remains on the plane where things are next to each other. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
However, once the I of the relation has emerged and has become existent in tis detachment, it somehow eternalizes and functionalizes itself and enters into the natural fact of the discreteness of the body from its environment, awakening I-likeness in it. Only now can the conscious I-act, the first form of the basic word I-It, of experience by an I, come into being. The I that has emerged proclaims itself as the carrier of sensations and the environment as their object. Of course, this happens in a primitive and not in epistemological manner; yet once the sentence “I see the tree” has been pronounced in such a way that it no longer relates a relation between a human I and a tree You but the perception of the tree object by the human consciousness, it has erected the crucial barrier between subject and object; the basic word I-It, the word of separation has been spoken. If we are curious and interested enough to follow up correctly the clues and hints which life gives us sometimes; if we observe, study, analyse, and pray; and if we become sensitive enough, then we shall be driven to become pilgrims with no choice except engagement in a spiritual quest. Our supreme need and deep request is then inner work. When one wakes up to the suspicion that ordinary purposes of human life on Earth hide other much more important ones, and that one will have to find them by oneself, one may begin to seek out and study the teachings of those who have gone farther along this way. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Whether we are guided by human experience or superhuman revelation, by intuitive feeling or intellectual thinking, we must come in the end to the recognition of the great mystery which surrounds us. The mysterious enigmas of the spiritual life must sooner or later challenge the sleeping mind of mortals into wakeful thoughts. Our so-called intelligentsia, who played with political red fire until they painfully felt its destructiveness on their own persons, played at the same time with intellectual disdain for those who escaped from the World into ivory-towers of spiritual seeking. The second World war, however, began the process of making them feel the barrenness of their own fields and the stark coldness of their own outlooks. So quite a number of them have begun to peep into the ivory-towers and to find out what goes on there. The resultant discoveries are opening their eyes. The spirit’s beauty has lured mortals on a dream of unfound gold. For the heart of mortals has always seemed to me like a grey galleon moving on the green seas of thought and seeking this World of treasure. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
Ineffable bliss and serene joy are at the heart of all things and that is one of the reasons why people seek God’s infinite happiness even though they are not all aware of this. Those who turn to the spiritual life for material benefits, such as better relations with other people and better physical healthy are entitled to do so. However, they should remember Jesus’ counsel: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of of Heaven,” for then not only will “all these things [material benefits] be added unto you” but they have a chance of gaining the kingdom whereas the other approach postpones such a glorious result. God must be sought for his own sake; otherwise the spiritual quest will not be found or else will be found only in fleeting glimpses. That is the goal, that is the final end. However, there are two others pairs of realities which may separate us from the love of God—height and depth, and things present and things to come. Everyone understands their meaning without guidance. However, it is hard to exhaust the richness of this meaning. Height and depth are the highest and lowest points in the movements of the stars; they are the points of their greatest and least influence, for good and for evil. Height and depth are the moments in which a life process reaches its strongest realization, in vitality and success and power, and in which it reaches its weakest realization, perhaps its end. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
Height and depth are the moments of victory and defeat, of fulfillment and emptiness, of elevation and depression, of fascination and of anxiety. And both moments, heights as well as depth, try to separate us from the love of God, the one by its light, the other by its darkness, both making God invisible. Things present and things to come—the first pints to the impact which the present makes upon us. It points to the seductive power of the present, to our refusal to look back or ahead when we are held in the grip of the acute enjoyment or the acute pain of the present moment. And things to come means the expectation of the new, the joy of the unexpected, the courage of the risk. However, it also means the incalculable, the contingent, and the anxiety about the strange and unknown. If we prepare our hearts, feasting upon the words of Chris can happen at any time and on any occasion. Our Heavenly Father loves us. He has provided a perfect plan for us to enjoy his blessings. In this life, we are all invited to come unto Christ and receive the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and faithfully living the gospel. We must commit to the strait and narrow path and press forward with a steadfastness in Christ. It is an experience of joy, nourishment, celebration, sharing, expressing love to families and loved ones, communicating our thanksgiving to God, and building relationships while enjoying abundant, incredibly delicious food. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
We See the Spiritual Truths of God through the Perspective of an Eye of Faith
The young one was confused, then gradually scornful. He could not form a cleaver answer. However, the true reply was plain enough in his soul—in the souls of all those listening and watching. True and useful as the hypothesis may be that freedom and determinism give birth to each other, I became aware that it also had a serious difficulty. This difficulty hovered around the nature of the word determinism. Does not that term severely limit the reality with which we deal, which is shown in this very example? Does not the word determinism omit the richness, the hopes and fear, the very human anxiety mediated by the enemy-friend? Determinism is borrowed from physics and is particularly adequate to describe physical movements on the model of billiard balls: when one ball hits another, it imparts to it a completely predictable direction and movement. To the extent that one is unaware of one’s physiological and neurological reactions, the term determinism may also fit those realms as well. Hence, determinism is at least partially adequate in describing the conditioning of Pavlov’s dogs and Skinner’s pigeons. However, when consciousness enters the picture, as it does with human beings, we find ourselves forced to search for a more inclusive word, a word that will do justice to the infinite number of nuances in human experience. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
Also, being limited itself, the word determinism forces us into a limited view of freedom. One of the reasons our concept of freedom has become so confused is that we have tried to cut it down on a Procrustean bed until it is parallel to determinism. The only kind of freedom that turns up then is that of picking and choosing, the freedom of doing. It is called in psychology classes decision-choice, and it can be reduced to discrete items. However, there is then no place for ultimate freedom—what is called essential freedom, the freedom of being. And the inadequacy of the term determinism is shown in the fact that it leaves no place for mystery. It takes no special acumen to see that mystery is a part of all human experience. It is a mystery that any of us was born at all and, especially for me, a mystery that I was born after eight o’clock at night in California; a mystery that sometimes we meet a particular person with whom we fall in love; and a mystery that we ultimately pass into Heaven at an unpredictable place and by unpredictable means. The sense of the mysterious stands at the cradle of true art and true science. It is important to see that the mystery does not deny that there are causes. However, the debate that we will sooner or later discover the determining elements in the situations that now seems mysterious does not apply, since the mystery has to do with the pattern by which these elements are related to each other, not the elements themselves. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
How a person responds to a situation already involves one’s freedom, and that freedom may combine a number of different causes. This is what Dr. Freud called overdetermined, determined by many causes at once. Falling in love my be determined by one’s libido, one’s culture, one’s early family background, one’s personal plans, or a combination of several of these things. A pattern means tat different events or causes are put together in a particular form, as a snowflake is put together in a certain pattern of crystals. This form cannot be broken into parts, for the form is precisely the relationship between the parts, as Pythagoras determined. We need a new word to do justice to such human phenomena, a term that can take in the richness, the complexity, the mystery, the artistic elements in form. Hence I reserve determinism for inanimate things like billiard balls. For human beings I will use the term destiny. Human freedom is a finite freedom with all of its potentialities being limited by the opposite people, destiny. Determinism is one part of destiny. That we have to pass away, that we are conditioned, that we can so easily be taught to behave like robots—is not all of this part of our destiny? #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
We reflect on our lives, we anxiously anticipate our passing into Heaven, we are conscious of the fact that we never know when we are to leave this Earth or how—does not all this refer to destiny? When the subject is self-conscious about what is happening to him or her, the radical shift from determinism to destiny occurs. The presence of consciousness creates the context in which the human being’s responses to his or her destiny occur. The presence of consciousness creates the context in which the human being’s responses to his or her destiny occur. That hour like a breathing space which returns as surely as one’s suffering is the hour of consciousness. Mortals are superior to their fate. One is stronger than one’s rock. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny. Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a World. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a mortal’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. We greet those we encounter by wishing them well or by assuring them of our devotion or by commending them to God. We may suppose that relations and concepts, as well as the notions of relational processes and states. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
The elementary, spirit-awakening impressions and stimulations of the natural mortal are derived from relational processes—the living sense of confrontation—and from relational states—living with one who confronts one. About the Moon which one sees every night one does not think much until it approaches one bodily, in one’s sleep or even while one is awake, and casts a spell over one with its gestures or, touching one, does something wicked or sweet to one. What one retains is not the visual notion of the migratory disk of light nor that of a demonic being that somehow belongs to it, but at first only an image of the Moon’s action that surges through one’s body as a motor stimulus; and the personal image of an active Moon crystallizes only very gradually. Only then is them memory of that which was unconsciously absorbed every night kindled into the notion of an agent behind this action. Only then does it become possible for You that originally could not be an object of experience, being simply endured, to be rectified and become a He or She. The originally relational character of the appearance of all beings persists and remains effective for a long time. This may help us to understand a spiritual element of primitive life that has been discussed a great deal in recent literature without having been adequately interpreted: that mysterious power whose concept has been found with all sorts of variations in the faith and science. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
God is a supra-sensible or supernatural force. The boundaries of this World are draw by our bodily experiences. The appearances to which we attribute a mystical potency are all the elementary relational processes—that is, all the processes about which one thinks at all because they stimulate one’s body and leave an impression of such stimulation in mortals. The Moon and the dead who haunt one at night with pain and lust have this potency; but so does the Sun that burns one, the beast that howls at one, the chief whose glance compels one, and the singer whose song fills one with strength for the workaday. The World is spiritual not because of any human power of magic might be at its center, but rather because any such human power is only a variant of the general power that is the source of all effective action. The causality of the World is a continuum. What is most important for the drive for preservation and most noteworthy for the drive for knowledge, namely, that which is active and effective, stands out most clearly and gain independence, while the less important, that which is not shared, the changeful You of the experiences, recedes, remains isolated in mortal’s memory, gradually becomes an object and even more gradually gets arranged in groups and species. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
If we pick and choose what we accept in the proclamation, we cloud our eternal view, putting too much importance on our experience here and now. Some people come to spiritual teachings seeking them only for the sake of getting relief from their trouble end by seeking truth for its own sake. Truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come. Truth looks backward and forward, expanding the perspective of our small point in time. “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” reports Jesus. Truth shows us the way to eternal life, and it comes only through our Savior, Jesus Christ. There is no other way. Jesus Christ teaches us how to live, and, through his Atonement and Resurrection, Christ offers us forgiveness from our sins and immortality beyond the veil. This is absolutely true. Christ teaches us that it does not matter if we are rich or less affluent, prominent or unknown, sophisticated or simple. Rather, our mortal quest is to strengthen our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, to choose good over evil, and to keep God’s commandments. While we celebrate the innovations of science and medicine, the truths of God go far beyond these discoveries. The full-grown person finds in one’s experience of the World and in the knowledge of oneself sufficient subject matter for thought about human affairs. One then asks questions, the great questions, which mortals have asked since earliest antiquity: What am I? Whither do I go? #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Every school of thought, variety of cult, sect of religion, and system of spirituality that has any pretensions to spirituality accepts the existence of the soul. Disagreements do not start until after this acceptance. Why not take your stand on this undisputed fact and verify it for yourself? There are billions of forms and of creatures in the Universe spread through space. They appear and vanish, they come and go, create and pass away, grow and decay, act and interact. This has been going on for immense periods of time; but in the thoughtful mortal’s mind there must arise the question, “To what end was is and shall be all this?” If mental restlessness, a discontent with ignorance, with the recurring trivialities of a life which does not offer any higher meaning, out one on the Quest, one may find oneself suffering from mental loneliness. One may arrive at a true appraisal of life after one has experienced all that is worth experiencing. This is the longest and most painful way. Or one may arrive at it by listening to, and believing in, the teachings of spiritual seers. This is the shortest and easiest way. The attraction of the first way is so great, however, that it is generally the only way followed by humanity. Even when individuals take on the second way, they have mostly tried the other one in former births and have left it only because the pain proved to me too much for them. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Some people come to the quest quickly, under the impulse of a great decision; but most come slowly, by degrees and stages. When it has evolved the necessary prerequisites to do so, the World will come to philosophy. Until then it will possess only imperfect expressions of the truth, or caricatures distortions and falsifications of it. Only those individuals who are not satisfied with these substitutes or with the slow pace of the World’s evolution, will step out of the mass and enter upon the Quest just now. When a mortal is thoroughly awakened to the reality of the philosophic goal, one will soon or later hear its summons to one. When that happens one embarks upon the Quest. For example, one starts an activity of conscious self-discipline and deliberate restraint, a process of re-educating the mind, the feelings, and the will. When the interest in philosophical teaching no longer springs out of light curiosity but out of deep need, the desire to embark actively on the philosophic and spiritual life will inevitably follow. It is the character which one has inherited from former Earth lives which makes one susceptible to spiritual urges and attracts one to mystical teachings of this kind. If changing events or changed environments, new contacts with living mortals or with printed books appear to be responsible, this is only because delayed-action tendencies were already in existence but still needed such external changes to be able to manifest themselves. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
The original drive for self-preservation is no more accompanied by any I-consciousness than any other drive. What wants to propagate itself is not the I but the body that does not yet know of any I. Not the I but the body wants to make things, tools, toys, wants to be inventive. And even in the primitive function of cognition one cannot find any cognosco ergo sum of even the most naïve kind, nor any conception, however immature and innocent, of an experiencing subject. Only when the primal encounters, the vital primal words I-acting-You and You-acting-I, have been split and the participle has been reified and hypostatized, does the I emerge with the force of an element. Awakening to the need of the Divine may come through some mental crisis or emotional shock which shakes the whole of mortal’s being to its deepest foundations. It is out of the suffering and grief produced by such a situation that one plants the first trembling steps on the secret path. It is such outer torments of life that shatter inner resistance so that the need for spiritual help is acknowledged. And the more unsatisfactory outward life becomes, the more satisfactory does the blessed inward life seem both by contrast and itself. Many will be irritated by these thoughts, but some will be disturbed by them. It is only from the last group that a reconsideration of what they seek in life and how they propose to attain it is at all likely. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
The driving powers of our own beings point to realities which are simultaneously both glorious and terrible; realities full of beauty and full of destructiveness. What are these realities? We do not have to look far to discover them. They are in all of us, in our own families, in our own nation, in our World. By what signs do we recognize them? By a mixture of irresistible fascination and unconquerable anxiety. The name of one of these powers with an angelic face is love. The poetry of all languages abounds in the praise of this principality ruling over the life of all mortals. Its angelic face appears in pictures and statues, its angelic beauty sounds through music, its divine fascination is expressed in the figures of pagan gods and goddesses. And at the same time, all works of art, and all myths are full of the tragic and deadly works of the Angel of love. Fascination and fear, joy and guilt, creation and destruction are untied in this great ruler of our lives. And both the joy and the anxiety of love tend to separate us from the love of God; the one by attracting us away from God to itself, the other by throwing us into the darkness of despair in which we cannot see God any longer. Before mortals will undertake the moral purifications with which the quest must begin, and the mental trainings which must complement them, one must have some incentive to do so. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
We declare the means by which mortal life is created to be divinely appointed. We affirm the sanctity of life and of its importance in God’s eternal plan. Where will one find it? Since it depends on one’s stage of evolution, character, and destiny, the answer is different with different people. If some find it in the sadness produced by World-weariness, others find it in the joy produced by a Glimpse. Still others are prompted by the hunger for Truth or by the thirst for self-improvements, or even blindly by the tendencies brought over from previous births. The hour comes when, promoted by disappointment, bereavement, or revelation, one is driven to find out the reasons for all one’s activities. One is beginning to feel their insufficiency, their shallowness. Such inquiry, if persisted in, will in the end put one upon the quest. Amongst the multitude of those who are attracted toward such teaching, it is inevitable that there should be those who are only casually interested, those who are tremendously in earnest about it, and those who are to be found somewhere between these two groups. If the teaching favourably commends itself to any individual from the first contact as being requisite to one’s needs, this is often a sign that one has followed it in earlier existences. One disciple who picked up the Quest again in this life described it as a feeling of reunion, of coming home. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Another principality, angelic and demonic at the same time, is power. It has the severe manly beauty which we see in some pictures of the great Archangels. It is itself a great Angel, good and evil, just as love is a mighty principality, and it is the builder and protector of cities and nations, a creative force in every human enterprise, in every human community, in every human achievement. It is responsible for the conquest of nature, the organization of states, the execution of justice. Its mighty ally is another Angelic figure, good and evil, namely, knowledge. We are all in their bondage. World history is the realm in which the reign of the Angel power is most manifest in all its glory and in all its tragedy. There is no need to say more about it to the people of our time. Every morning brings us news about this ruler of our World. And we all are grasped both by the Angelic fascination of its creativity and by the demonic terror of its destructiveness in our personal lives as well as in the lives of our nations. And when power is allied with knowledge—a knowledge undreamed of even before in the history of humankind—fascination as well as terror are infinitely increased. Both separate us from the love of God, the one driving us to the adoration of power and knowledge, the other driving us to cynicism and despair. God is blessing you, but every person prospers according to one’s own genius. We can know things of God as we seek them spiritually. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Love is a Cosmic Force—For those Who Stand in it and Behold in it, People Emerge from their Entanglement in Busy-ness!
Riding on a train through Switzerland, I looked up suddenly to see Armand directly opposite watching me over the upturned cover of cover of his fur-lined coat. Armand snatched the book out of my hand and insisted that I explain what it was, why I read it, what did the picture on the cover mean? In Paris Armand pursued me nightly through the boulevards and the back streets, only and now and then questioning me on the places I went, the things I did. In Venice, I would look out of my room at the Danieli, to see Armand staring from a window across the way. Only when people are tired of the frustrations and obstruction, the spites and cruelties which so often mar Worldly life, will individuals feel ready to turn in real earnest to the Quest. Only then will its perfect tranquility seem more desirable than the hectic excitement of following desires. The essential point is that the more an executive is involved in the World’s affairs, the more one needs this quest which leads one out of the World. The more one’s life is devoted to acquiring money and good and position, the more one needs a firm base within oneself from which properly to use these things as they ought to be used. A time may come when a mortal may tire of the whole social round, the business or professional rat-race, and desire to turn away from it—when one begins to see through its futilities, vanities, and uneducatedness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
After trying to the usual ways, what other recourse can they have to fulfill this quest? The first appearance of this sense of futility (in the heart’s deeper life), and may pass disregarded and unheeded. However, it will return again and again, and grow apace, until the unsatisfactoriness of a wholly materialistic life, the transitioriness of a merely Earthly happiness, achieve recognition and obtain acceptance. With this negative phase, modern mortal’s inner life begins. They feel vaguely that there are higher laws governing life, that they do not know them. They would like to learn, but in the medley of sects and cults—wit their claims and contradictions—they do not feel safe enough to entrust their lives to any particular one, although attracted to some more than to others. To escape from Worldly troubles, to assuage the disappointment of frustrated hopes, Christians offer a way. The smugly complacent, the thoughtless surface-types, or those always immersed in pettinesses and trivialities will have no awareness of a higher need. However, the others, relatively a few, will find it gnawing at their hearts and tensing their minds. The very condition which is so satisfactory to the larder group brings misery to the smaller one. No longer is one content to be a straw swept along by the river of circumstance. Those who are tired of the falsities and inanities accepted by so many, who want to come to a true life, must come to the quest. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
Those who seek a larger meaning to life cannot live like the less affluent for bodily needs alone, or like the professional for bodily and cultural needs alone. Their feeling is still the profounder: a peace and harmony, an understanding and strength. People come to this quest seeking something beyond the misery, wretchedness, and cruelty of this chaotic World, something of light, warmth, kindness, and peace. The need to insulate ourselves privately from the shocks of contemporary living, is partly met my Christianity. There are those who come to this quest simply because they are disillusioned with the World. Wearied with the self-seeking disputations of political schemers, repelled by the heartless treatment of non-followers by political extremists, they turn away and look elsewhere for truth, honesty, goodness. We seek truth for various reasons. One is because it possesses a certitude that gives us anchorage and rest. The free mortal is one who wills without arbitrary self-will. One believes in destiny, and believes that it stands in need of one. One must sacrifice one’s puny, unfree will, that is controlled by things and instincts, to one’s grand will, which quits defined for destined being. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
As freedom and destiny, so arbitrary self-will and fate belong together. However, freedom and destiny are solemnly promised to one another and linked together in meaning. Metaphorically, freedom in its essence is the acceptance of the chains which suit you and for which you are suited, and of the barness in which you pull towards an end chosen and valued by yourself, and not imposed. It is not, and never can be, the absence of restrictions, obligations or law and of duty. That direct relationships involve some action on what confronts us becomes clear in one of three examples. The essential deep of art determines the process where by the form becomes a work. That which confronts me is fulfilled through the encounter through which it enters into the World of things in order to remain incessantly effective, incessantly It—but also infinitely able to become again a You, enchanting and inspiring. It becomes incarnate: out of the flood of spaceless and timeless presence it rises to the shore of continued existence. Less clear is the element of action in the relation to human You. The essential act that here establishes directness is usually understood as a feeling, and thus misunderstood. Feelings accompany the Christian spirit and spiritual fact of love, but they do not constitute it; and the feelings that accompany it can be very different. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
Jesus Christ’s feeling for the possessed man is different from his feeling for the beloved disciple; but the love is one. Feelings one has; love occurs. Feelings dwell in mortals, but mortals dwell in one’s love. This is no metaphor but actuality; love does not cling to an I, as if the You were merely it content or object; it is between I and You. Whoever does not know this, know this with one’s being, does not know love, even if one should ascribe to it the feelings that one lives through, experiences, enjoys, and expresses. Love is a cosmic force. For those who stand in it and behold in it, mortals emerge from their entanglement in busy-ness; and the good and the evil, the cleaver and the foolish, the beautiful and the unattractive, one after another become actual and a You for them; that is, liberated, emerging into a unique confrontation. Exclusiveness comes into being miraculously again and again—and now one can act, help, heal, educate, raise, redeem. Love is responsibility of an I for a You: in this consists what cannot consist in any feeling—the equality of all lovers, from the smallest to the greatest and from the blissfully secure whose life is circumscribed by the life of one beloved human being to him that is nailed his life long to the cross of the World, capable of what is immense and bold enough to risk it: to love mortals. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
Let the meaning of action in the third example, that of the creature and its contemplation, remain mysterious. Believe in the simple magic of life, in service in the Universe, and it will dawn on you what this waiting, peering, stretching of the neck of the creature means. Every word must falsify; but look, these beings live around you, and no matter which one you approach you always reach Being. Relation is reciprocity. My You acts on me as I act on it. Our students teach us, our works form us. When they are touched by the sacred basic word, the wicked become a revelation. How are we educated by children, by animals! Inscrutably involved, we live in the currents of universal reciprocity. You speak of love as if it were the only relationship between mortals; but are you even justified in choosing it as an example, seeing that there is also hatred? As long as love is blind—that is, as long as it does not see a whole being—it does not yet truly stand under the basic word of relation. Hatred remains blind by its very nature; one can hate only part of a being. Whoever sees a whole being and must reject it, is no longer in the domination of hatred but in the human limitation of the capacity to say You. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
It does happen to mortals that a human being confronts them and they are unable to address one with the basic word that always involves an affirmation of the being one addresses, and then they have to reject either the other person or themselves: when entering-into-relationship comes to this barrier, it recognizes its own relativity which disappears only when this barrier is removed. Yet whoever hates directly is closer to a relation than those who are without love and hate. This, however, is the sublime melancholy of our lot that every You must become an It in our World. However exclusively present it may have been in the direct relationship—as soon as the relationship has run its course or is permeated by means, the You becomes an object among objects, possibly the noblest one and yet one of them, assigned its measure and boundary. The actualization of the work involves a loss of actuality. Genuine contemplation never lasts long; the natural being that only now revealed itself to me in the mystery of reciprocity has again become describable, analyzable, classifiable—the point at which manifold systems of laws intersect. And even love cannot persist in direct relation; it endures, but only in the alternation of actuality and latency. The human being who but now was unique and devoid of qualities, not at hand but only present, not experienceable, only touchable, has again become a He or She, an aggregate of qualities, a quantum with no shape. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
Now I can again abstract from one the color of one’s hair, of one’s speech, of one’s graciousness; but as long as I can do that one is my You no longer and not yet again. Every You in the World is doomed by its nature to become a thing or at least to enter into thinghood again and again. In the language of objects: every thing in the World can—either before or after it becomes a thing—appear to some I as its You. However, the language of objects catches only one corner of actual life. The It is the chrysalis, the You the You the butterfly. Only it is not always as if these states took turns so neatly; often it is an intricately entangled series of events that is tortuously dual. What is the relationship between freedom and determinism? Both of them operate in our day-to-day lives. If we refused to accept either freedom or determinism, we would diminish our possibilities for living. Without determinism and the predictability of plane schedules that goes with it, for example, our lives would be lost in anarchy. However, without freedom and the exuberance that goes with it, without poetry and flights of imagination that freedom entails, we would be swallowed up in apathy. I read everything on the topic I could find, and I pondered the question at length; but evermore, I came out by the same door I went in. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
One morning, having gotten up early to go to my study, I walked out to get the morning newspaper, which is thrown on the curb in front of our house. When I was about fifteen steps from the house, in this relaxed, preworking mood, there suddenly came into my mind—so clearly that it seemed like someone speaking out loud—these sentences: Freedom and determinism give birth to each other. Every advance in freedom gives birth to a new freedom. Freedom is a circle within a larger circle of determinism, which is, in turn, surrounded by a larger circle of freedom. And so on ad infinitum. Immediately there crowded also into my mind the demonstrations for this hypothesis. Take Dr. Freud and his description of the unconscious. In his deterministic theory of the mind, he demonstrated that our needs are determined by unconscious childhood experiences and that our so-called rational values are really not rational, but are compensations for their opposites in our unconscious, irrational urges. Dr. Freud seems to be taking our freedom away. However, soon we began to see that the real effect of Dr. Freud’s determinism was to increase the breadth and depth of the human mind. One was, in our present terms, simply clarifying one aspect of destiny. For hereafter the mind would include not only the conscious, the unconscious, and, with an assist from Dr. Jung, the collective unconscious. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
Lo and behold, the determinism in Dr. Freud’s theory actually gave us far-reaching possibilities for freedom in self-development, freedom in directing our minds, and freedom in enjoying the ecstatic possibilities of intellectual exploration. Another illustration was Dr. Darwin and the determinism to make us all into a bunch of monkeys? However, after the anger had cooled, we began to see that Darwin’s new theory, deterministic as it was, actually gave us a new intellectual freedom for understanding our past and new freedom in possibilities, especially in the twentieth century, for controlling and directing our evolution. All this ran through my mind in a few seconds. Immediately after that flood of idea, I picked up the newspaper and started back toward the house. However, in the few moments it took to retrace my steps, I became acutely aware of a fragment of poetry running through my mind: “Other friends have flown before—on the morrow one will leave me.” I had no idea where this intrusive and surprising couplet came from, and at that moment I had not the slightest hint as to what it meant. However, I became aware that I was instantaneously filled with anxiety. My frightened mind was now totally occupied by thoughts completely contrary to my exhilaration of minutes before. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
I began to recognize an old shadow-companion, an enemy-friend who always put in his leering appearance at just such moments. The context surrounding this verse in my mind indicated that it expressed the anxiety projected by this uninvited and obtrusive guest who spoke so stridently I could not help but listen. It was as though my enemy-friend was saying, “Come off it. Forget these new ideas you have gotten, which you fondly imagine were original. People have known these things for centuries. Forget it all and go in and enjoy your breakfast.” Now very anxious but exhilarated, I hurried into the house not to eat my breakfast, but to scribble down these ideas before they should be lost in the confusion that anxiety creates. Later on in the morning, I recalled where the couplet came from. It was the last two lines of a stanza in Poe’s The Raven. As every schoolboy knows (although later we may have forgotten) the scene of the poem in Poe’s room late at night. Oppressed with feelings of loneliness and alienation, and possibly under the influence of medication, Poe carries on a conversation with this raven who flew into his room and perched on his window sill. Poe gradually begins to feel an affection for this unusual bird, and he fears, in the couplet mentioned, that the bird will desert him—“On the morrow he will leave me.” However, the raven answers this one word, as he does at the conclusion of half of the stanzas in the poem: “Nevermore.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
Being a psychoanalyst, I could not resist pondering the significance of the word “nevermore.” Could it mean “nevermore” will we escape from the human paradox? That is, when we gain enough freedom to get new insights, new visions, will we be attacked by the anxiety that accompanies freedom like a shadow? We may black off our new thoughts by apathy or by strict and rigid doctrines, hanging on to the tried and true ideas that never upset anyone. Yet whatever form of denial we choose, this “nevermore” says that we never will be completely free from this human paradox: that with the freedom presupposed in every new idea, there comes the equivalent anxiety to plague us. This is the curse and the blessing of being human—that we are free but destined at the same moment. However, at the same time this destiny, of which this black bird was a part, is saying something helpful: that its presence, as Poe experienced it, will “nevermore” desert us. Long before the Christian era people spoke of the divine providence at work behind the driving forces of life and history. And in Christianity the words of Jesus about the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, and one’s command not to be anxious about tomorrow, have strengthened the faith in providence. It become the most common belief of Christian people. It gave them courage in danger, consolation in sorrow, hope among ruins. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
However, more and more this faith lost is depth. It became a matter-of-course and was deprived of the overwhelming, surprising and triumphant character it has in the words of Paul. When the German soldiers went into the First World War most of them shared the popular belief in a nice God was would make everything work out for the best. Actually, everything worked out for the worst, for the nation and for almost everyone in it. In the trenches of the war, the popular belief in personal providence was gradually broken and in the fifth year of war nothing was left. During the second World War similar developments took place in this country. In the political tensions and fears of the last decade the belief in historical providence also broke down. The confidence, shared by large groups in this country, that in history everything will eventually turn out for the best, has almost disappeared. Today not much of it is left. Neither the personal nor the historical belief in providence had depth or a real foundation. These beliefs were products of wishful thinking and not of faith. Faith in providence is not a part of the Christian faith—a part which is easier to grasp than the other parts. It is not the case, as an old country parson once told me, that people firmly believe in divine providence, but that the higher contents of the Christian faith, sin and salvation, Christ and the Church, are strange to them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
If this is so, then the meaning of providence must also be strange to them and their belief in it is due to break down as such beliefs have in the storms of our century. Faith in providence is faith altogether. It is the courage to say yes to one’s own life and life in general, in spite of the driving forces of fate, in spite of the insecurities of daily existence, in spite of the catastrophes of existence. It is of such courage that Paul speaks in our text. However, first he speaks of the powers which try to make this courage impossible. What do these powers do? They separate us from the love of God. This sentence is surprising. We would point to the dangers of pain and death which threaten our life day by day. Paul is certainly not unaware of them. He enumerates them as tribulation of distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or the sword. However, he feels himself to be a conqueror of them all. And then he starts again and names the powers which threaten to separate us from the love of God. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
There is something mysterious about these powers. They do not have evil names like those which Paul has previously listed; most of them have glorious names—Angels, principalities, life, and height. Why are they the ones which are most threatening? It is because they are always at work in every moment of our lives and because they have a double face. They are the powers which rule the World and they rule it for good and for evil. They grasp us by the good they bring and they destroy us by the evil they contain. This is the reason that they are more dangerous than the obvious evils. This is the reason that the triumph over them is the ultimate test which proves that Jesus is the Christ, the bringer of the new state of things. There are billions of forms and of creatures in the Universe spread through space. They appear and vanish, they come and go, create and pass away, grow and decay, act and interact. This has been going on for immense periods of time; but in the thoughtful mortal’s mind there must arise the question, “To what end was is and shall be all this?” If mental restlessness, a discount with ignorance, with the recurring trivialities of life which does not offer any higher meaning, put one on the Quest, one may find oneself suffering from mental loneliness. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
When One’s Personal Life is Miraculously Saved During Some Period of Great Danger, Perhaps in the Face of Death, it is for a Purpose!
Who would cash this royalty check? No one. It was seven o’ clock and the fancy skyscraper, which housed Shanghai World Financial Center, at 100 Century Avenue, Lu Jia Zui, Pudon Xinqu was for the most part closed, and Armand had no identification because his wallet had somehow disappeared day before yesterday. So dismal this glaring gray Winter twilight, the sky boiling silently with low metallic clouds. Even the stores had taken on an uncommon grimness, with their hard facades of marble or granite, the wealth within gleaming like archaeological relics under museum glass. He plunged his hands in his pockets to warm them, and he bowed his head as the wind came with greater fierceness and the first sign of rain. He did not give a darn about the check, really. He could not imagine pressing the buttons of a phone. Nothing here seemed particularly real to him, not even the chill. Only the dream seemed real—Lestat had somehow set into motion something that even he could never control. When we express our freedom peacefully, openly, cheerfully it is easier to persuade others to want to help us achieve justice. This might entail a high price, but it will achieve the sense of dignity, the rebirth, the self-esteem among the mortals—it will earn freedom for their people. The way of non-violence means a willingness to suffer and sacrifice, but it is a way to free people from a permanent death of the spirit, and noting can be more redemptive. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
What is the inner dignity, the experience of rebirth, that occurs as one takes one’s stand? Let us note two cases. When one experiences a loss of freedom for the first time, something happens inside a person. One crosses a barrier. It is an emotional experience which jars and confuses one; later, after the emotional impact one has worn thin, one is left with a new sense of oneself as a citizen. An individual is able to sense this, and one suspects that it is truth of others. When people refuse to be victimized any longer by the Kashisties (fictional secret rouge law enforcement troops from Law and Order SVU), they become transformed into a power community of men and women, capable, despite the severest limitations, of free and even heroic acts. Their subsequent activity at the polls and in initiating a boycott of businesses that practice discrimination suggests that this kind of freedom, though essentially personal, will inevitably lead to social action, and that freedom once won is not readily surrendered. If we do not encourage less affluent communities to engage in direct action-picket lines, boycotts, demand civil rights protection in housing and a safe and clean-living environment with properly functioning appliance—all the money and loving care in the World will not succeed in providing them with a dignified life. Our people must feel that they are shaping their own lives; they that have implemented changes in the politics of the powerful. One cannot engineer a freedom. A freed mortal is not yet free. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
Thus people do earn their right to be free. They experience the birth of themselves inwardly, shape themselves, experience the dignity of an independent human being. We might think of the demonstration as a rite of the initiation through which the people of the World are mustered into the sacred order of freedom. It is also a rite the entire World must undergo to exorcise the demons of racial, gender, creed, cultural, and spiritual hate. “All that separates, whether of race, class, creed or sex is inhuman and must be overcome,” reports Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex. If in a spasm f emancipated exuberance these rites should cause inconvenience or violate the canons of cultivated good taste or trouble the dreams of some good-livers—I think it is forgivable….exuberance and…inconvenience are small prices to pay when a World is undoing historic wrong. Freedom is an art demanding practice, and too many of us are unpracticed. Freedom is an art demanding practice, and too many of us are unpracticed. Freedom is not an end; it is a beginning and a process. We feel further from the end now than we did before a decade’s progress was wrought. This is part of the fact that freedom is never static, never gained once and for all; and this is because essential freedom is an inner state that must be re-affirmed in each act. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
The majority leaps at the thought that life has some higher mean, some better worth. Destiny, which can always present as the limiting factor, may make the struggle to attain freedom more difficult than at first envisioned. This certainly is true for the egalitarian movement; sometimes people do not build their foundation deep enough to sustain the later shocks. However, essential freedom is an inner state that is reaffirmed in each act. The struggle is surely more complex than we may foresee, but the complexity is splendid; perhaps that is freedom too. “I have told you all this,” said Jesus Christ, “so that you may have the happiness I have had,” reports John 15.11. In starting this task, he knows that he is not carrying out his own personal desire but following a way chalked out for him by the higher self. There are certain rare moments when intense sorrow or profound bereavement makes a mortal sick at heart. It is then that desires temporarily lose their force, possessions their worth, and even existence itself its reality. One seems to stand outside the busy World those figure flit to and fro like the shadowy characters on a cinema screen. Worst of all, perhaps, significance vanishes from human activity, which becomes a useless tragi-comedy, a going everywhere and arriving nowhere, an insane playing of instruments from which no music issues forth, a vanity of all the vanities. It is then, too, that a terrible suicidal urge may enter one’s blood and one will need all one’s mental ballast not to make away with oneself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Yet these dark moments are intensely precious, for they may set one’s feet firmly on the higher path. Light here symbolizes the spiritual World, and darkness our Earthly home. Our purely spiritual acts contrast with the gluttonous Worldly activity going on in some communities and a faction of individuals act like wild dogs knawing at a bone and alley cats searching for leftovers. Christ must be the center of our attentions, and his light will draw us to righteous ways. Few realize this whilst all complain. The self-destruction to which one is being urged by focusing on dreaded experiences of life is not the crude physical act, but something subtle—a suicide of thought, emotion, and will. One is being called indeed, to die to one’s ego, to take the desires and passions, the greeds and hates out of one’s life, to learn the art of living in utter independence of externals and in utter dependence on God. And this is that same call which Jesus Christ uttered when he declared: “One that loseth one’s life shall find it.” When discrimination, systematic oppression, or injustice is welcomed or forces on us, we all kind of lose our lives and want to be reborn in Christ and evict the demons out of our temple. Thus the sorrows of life on Earth are but a transient means to an eternal end, a process through which we have to learn how to expand awareness from the person to God. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
Only When the person can feel in their own muscles, in their own hearts, that they have risked themselves, that they have leaped, that they have risked themselves, that they have gained the sense of dignity necessary for the real experience of freedom, then freedom of being is gained. Thus, they will develop their collective legends as we developed ours in 1776. “Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are mortals who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical. However, it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will,” reports Sir Frederick Douglass. If a mortal will not come to this quest willingly, because it leads to Truth and one loves Truth, then one must be forced onto it, unwillingly, because there is no other way to alleviate one’s burdens and reduce one’s miseries. When dreams are pleasant, most persons have no inclination to wake up, whereas when they are frightening they soon awaken. So too the dream of Worldly life does not impress them wit the need of true religion until it become tragic or severely disappointing. Only when sorrow drives them to question the value of living do they take a real interest in non-Worldly urges. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
Certain events will so arrange themselves as to put a mortal upon the quest, or if one is already on it, to prepare one for a further advance. They will not be pleasant events, for they will crush one’s spirit, or render it lame and weak for a time. However, it is only through this apparent defeat by circumstances that one is compelled to accept a course which will, spiritually, benefit one greatly in the end. Do mortal’s hearts have to be broken before they yield to the Most High? Often, yes, but not if they heed the teacher, prophets, seers, and sages. Where a mortal is ready for this quest but stubbornly clings to one’s old familiar way of thought and life, God may or may not release karma that will tear one away from it. One’s desires will then be macerated by suffering until its will to live gets weaker and weaker. A few come to this quest after the shock produced by the unreasonableness and unfairness and stupidity of the treatment they received from the organization, the group, the sect, the church, the party, to which they belonged. Some crisis in their lives, such as the need to get married or to get divorced, blocked by solemn bleak dogma or decision, become the occasion of the shock. Sometimes, heartless discourtesy provokes swift disillusionment. A single jarring incident, a single deliberate injustice or hurt or insult is enough to bring on such resentment and indignation—penetrating as sharply as a hypodermic needle—that character change and a new outlook were inaugurated. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Some have even come to the quest not because they had any real vocation for it but because they had nowhere else to go, because the World had lost all meaning, all hope for them through some ghastly tragedy or some heartbreaking loss, and this was a better way than committing suicide. However, the best way to come to the quest is of course to fulfill the higher possibilities as a human being. If they are ever to come alive spiritually, most persons need a drastic shock, an enforced awakening, a sharp arousal from that long sleep which is the egoic existence. Only if it breaks antiquated habits, trends, and inclinations, this is effective, and thus will make a new mortal. When a mortal comes to the point when all one’s outer life dissolves in tragedy or calamity, one comes also to the point when this quest is all that is left to one. However, one may not perceive this truth. One may miss one’s chance. Either consciously or not, one says to oneself, in a sense, “By my I alone I cannot endure this adverse destiny. I must seek help and support from outside myself.” So one goes to another mortal or to an institution, but in the end one must go to God. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
When one’s personal life is miraculously saved during some period of great danger, perhaps in the face of death, it is for a purpose. Before a mortal comes to this path one may have to grope and stumble and struggle for years. If the mortal lets others draw one down below one’s own level, the emotion of remorse and disgust or the logic of suffering and self-preservation may force his return. They need first to discover that they are on the wrong road. Out of the distress or frustration following it may arise the search for a right one. No person makes one take on this task or enterprise, this labour or quest—whatever one wishes to call it. A summons come to one from within, from a part of oneself hidden in mystery, and one obeys. Why? It is for those who feel that their lives ought to hold something more than the mere gaining of material necessities or even the mere satisfying of intellectual urges. If one will follow up this intuition, one will be able to move one’s feet eventually out of darkness into light. When a mortal becomes tired of hearing someone else tell one that one has a soul, and sets out to gain firsthand experience of it for oneself, one becomes spiritual. However, unfortunately, for mortals ever come to this point. Only after they have felt the uncertainties of human affection, the transiencies of human passion, and the insufficiencies of human activities, mortals will seek to feel the real life. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
To those who wish to escape from the pressures of tyrannies of contemporary materialism, philosophical Christianity offers the most effective way and the safest road. It seeks to understand the true relationships between the divine and the human. It will enable them to realize their spiritual potentialities. For materialism is and can be only a temporary phase of mortal’s endeavour to comprehend the facts of life. When the mind is sufficiently developed, the presence of God within us sooner or later, creates of itself the craving for truth and the abstract questions about life, God, and mortals. This knowledge that life in this World can never by fully satisfying makes one commit oneself one day to the quest for God. Christ has conquered these powers which govern the World, and it is affirmed triumphantly in the beautiful and powerful words of the book of Romans in the Holy Bible. “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Jesus Christ died for us,” reports Romans 5.8. If these words have power over our souls in our time, they must say something we feel to be true, even if we do not share the ancient belief in the stars and their constellations. They name the powers in whose bondage we all are and with us all mortals in all periods of history, and the whole of creation. And they show us that which can give us the certainty that these powers do not prevail against us, that they are conquered and that we can participate in the victory over them. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
Who, in recent years, and indeed in our whole century, does not feel the irresistible forces which determine our historical and personal destiny? They drive nations and individuals into insoluble conflicts, internal and external; into arrogance and insanity, into revolt and despair, into inhumanity and self-destruction. Each of us is involved in these conflicts and driven to a greater or lesser degree by these forces. The personal life of each of us is in come way determined by them. No security is guaranteed to anyone; no house, no work, no friend, no family, no country anywhere in the World is safe, no plans are certain of fulfillment, all hopes are threatened. The mayor of Sacramento, Darrell Steinberg, even went as far as to tell people if they need food and affordable housing to, “Eat from a garbage can if you have to, sleep somewhere even if it’s a park. None of this matters.” And tent cities are now popping up all along the rail road for miles and miles, and homeless camps are being shutdown, with threats of arrest, as violence and loud words are spoken. Meanwhile, nothing is being done to add affordable housing to prevent homelessness, but that taxpayer funded ($600 million) King’s arena went up overnight, while the team still owns the other perfectly good arena that is sitting empty. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
This is not a new state of things in human history. However, what is new is that during a few years of comparative safety, we had forgotten that this is the true state of things. Now we see it again everywhere because suddenly we are living in its midst in every part of the Earth. No taxation without representation is a slogan originated during the 1700s that summarized one of the 27 colonial grievances of the American colonists in the Thirteen Colonies, which was one of the major causes of the American Revolution. Driven by the forces of fate, we ask the question humankind has always asked: What lies behind this inequality; what is its meaning; how can we endure it? Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a mortal could stake one’s life on it a thousand times. True faith rests upon the character of God and asks no further proof than the moral perfections of the One who cannot lie. It is enough that God has said, “Ask and you shall be given.” Faith in God and Jesus Christ is a gift from Heaven that comes as we choose to believe and as we seek it and hold on to it. You will find some of your greatest joys in your efforts to make your home a place of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and a place that is permeated with love. That miraculous feeling is what we all want in our homes. It is a feeling that come from being spiritually minded. And it will come to pass that there will be no contention in the land, because of the love of God which does dwell in the hearts of people. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Faith is the key to leading your family to raise to that spiritual place we are meant to experience. As we grow and help others grow in the faith that Jesus Christ is our loving Redeemer, we will feel a desire to repent. As we do, humility will begin to replace pride. As we begin to feel what the Lord has given us, we will want to share more generously. Rivalry for prominence or recognition will diminish. Hate will be driven out by love. And finally, like it did for the people converted by King Benjamin, the desire to do good will fortify everyone against temptation to sin. King Benjamin’s people testified that they had “no more disposition to do evil.” So building faith in Jesus Christ is the beginning of reversing spiritual decline in your family and community and home. That faith is more likely to bring repentance than your preaching against each symptom of spiritual decline. In addition to your example of growing in faith, your praying as a family can play a crucial part in making a home a sacred place. God loves with a great love the mortal whose heart is a light of passion for the impossible. The rest of your life will be the best of your life. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
We May Wander the Whole Length of Chang’an Avenue and Find No Shop Which Can Sell Us a Packet of Starry Truths that Might Comfort and Console
I told you. It is just a dream. However, if you want a name, let me call it the gateway of life and death. I will bring you with me through this gateway. And why? Because I am a coward. And I love you too much to let you go. I promise you nothing. How can I? I have told you what lies ahead. See how everything creates its opposite! War continues in the midst of peace. Want is born from abundance. In one and the same laboratory, the same people search for what will kill and what will cure, cultivating both good and evil. Freedom is fraught with paradoxes because of its unique character. Before there could be any freedom to walk on the streets or to raise cattle in frontier towns, for example, law and order were necessary. If freedom is to exist at all, a certain degree of security is essential, yet security is the opposite of freedom. The purpose of government is to preserve sufficient security so that each mortal may live without fear of one’s neighbor. Have to, paradoxically, is strangely freeing. The word paradox is used to describe the relationship between two opposing things, which even through they are posited against each other and seem to destroy each other cannot exist without each other. God and the devil, good and evil, life and death, beauty and unattractiveness—all these opposites appear to be at odds with each other. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
However, the paradox is that the very confrontation with the one breathes vitality into the other. When we are aware of death, life is more alive, more zestful; and only because there is life death has significance. God needs the devil. When we see it in opposition to destiny, freedom comes alive, and destiny is significant only when it is in opposition to freedom. The opposites fructify each other: each gives dynamism, power, to the other. The emotions elicited in us by a paradox are surprise and amazement. The assertion that God cannot exist without the devil catches short those who believe life is a one-way ticket to paradise. That male and female need the differences between each other gives pause to those who dabble in simplistic hopes for a future brave new androgyny. People do not understand how that which differs with itself is in agreement: harmony consists of opposing tension, like that of bow and the lyre. This is illustrated by the bow and cord; one can shoot with the bow because of the tension set up by the string pulling against it. Or the frame of the lyre and its strings. Each of these opposites is useful to us by virtue of the tension set up between the two forces. The paradox we confront here is that between freedom and destiny. It can be stated in many ways. One is that freedom gets it vitality, its authenticity, from its juxtaposition with destiny. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
And destiny, such as in death, is important to us because it perpetually threatens our freedom; the Grim Reaper stands at any given moment in our freedom is, new possibilities beckon us in our dreams, in our aspirations, in our hopes and actions, and the possibility pushes us to acknowledge, encounter, confront, engage, or rebel against our destiny. The paradox is fundamental in psychotherapy, a point not realized by most therapists. Louis de Pointe du Lac, for example, when we came to terms with the paradoxes of his life, only then did he attain his personal freedom. The chief one was his love-hate relation with his mother. However, there were other derivative paradoxes such as his dependency-love relation with Lestat de Lioncourt. The major experiences such as birth, death, love, anxiety, guilt are not problems to be solved, but paradoxes to be confronted and acknowledged. Thus in therapy we should talk of solving problems only as a way of making the paradoxes of life stand out more clearly. Attention to the paradox….My contribution is to ask for a paradox to be accepted and tolerated and respected, and not for it to be resolved. By flight to a split-off intellectual functioning it is possible to resolve the paradox, but the price of this is the loss of the value of the paradox itself. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
Just as the acceptance of normal anxiety is necessary if we are to be able to free ourselves of neurotic anxiety, so the acceptance of the normal paradoxes of life—love-hate, life-death—is necessary is we are to achieve freedom from the compulsive and neurotic aspects of our problems. The confusion with regard to freedom in our day is that we have conceived of freedom as a bow with no string to hold it in tension or a lyre with no frame to give it tautness and hence produce music. We were created free, the American Declaration of Independence tells us, and hence we assume there are no limits. Freedom thus has lost its viability; it has vanished like the flame going out in our fireplace when we need it most. When I confront a human being as my You and speak the basic word I-You to him or her, then one is no thing among things nor does one consist of things. He is no longer He or She, limited by other Hes and Shes, a dot in the World grid of space and time, nor a condition that can be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, one is You and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing but one; but everything else lives in his or her light. Even as a melody is not composed of tones, nor a verse of words, nor a statue of lines—one must pull and tear to turn a unity into a multiplicity—so it with the human being to whom I say You. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
I can abstract from one the color of one’s hair or the color of one’s speech or the color of one’s graciousness; I have to do this again and again; but immediately one is no longer You. And even as prayer is not in time but time in prayer, the sacrifice not in space but space in the sacrifice—and whoever reverses the relation annuls the reality—I do not find the human being to whom I say You in any Sometime and Somewhere. I can place one there and have to do this again and again, but immediately one becomes a He or a She, an It, and no longer remains my You. As long as the firmament of the You is spread over me, the tempests of causality cowers at my heels, and the whirl of doom congeals. The human being to who, I say You I do not experience. However, I stand in relation to one, in the sacred basic word. Only when I step out of this do I experience one again. Experience is remoteness from You. The relation can obtain even if the human being to whom I say You does not hear it in one’s experience. For You is more than It knows. You does more, and more happens to it, than It knows. No deception reaches this far: here is the cradle of actual life. This is the eternal origin of art that a human being confronts a form that wants to become a work through one. Not a figment of one’s soul but something that appears to the soul and demands the soul’s creative power. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
What is required is a deed that a mortal does with one’s whole being: if one commits it and speaks with one’s being the basic word to the form that appears, then the creative power is released and the work comes into being. The deed involves a sacrifice and a risk. The sacrifice: infinite possibility is surrendered on the alter of the form; all that but a moment ago floated playfully through one’s perspective has to be exterminated; none of it may penetrate into the work; the exclusiveness of such a confrontation demands this. The risk: the basic word can only be spoken with one’s whole being; whoever commits oneself may not hold back part of oneself; and the work does not permit me, as a tree or mortal might, to seek relaxation in It-World; it is imperious: if I do not serve it properly, it breaks, or it breaks me. The form that confronts me I cannot experience nor describe; I can only actualize it. And yet I see it, radiant in the splendor of the confrontation, far more clearly than all clarity of the experienced World. Not as a ting among the internal things, not as a figment of the imagination, but as what is presented. Tested for its objectivity, the form is not there at all; but what can equal its presence? And it is an actual relation: it acts on me as I act on it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
Such work is creation, inventing is finding. Forming is discovery. As I actualize, I uncover. I lead the form across—into the World of It. The created work is a thin among things and can be experienced and described as an aggregate of qualities. However, the receptive beholder may be bodily confronted now and again. What, then does one experience of the You? Nothing at all. For one does not experience it. What, then, does one know of the You? Only everything. For one no longer knows particulars. The You encounter me by grace—it cannot be found by seeking. However, that I speak the basic word to it is a deed of my whole being, is my essential deed. The You encounters me. But I enter into a direct relationship to it. Thus the relationship is election and electing, passive and active at once: An action of the whole being must approach passivity, for it does away with all partial actions and this with any sense of action, which always depends on limited exertions. The basic word I-You can be spoken only with one’s whole being. The concentration and fusion into a whole being can never be accomplished by me, can never be accomplished without me. I required a You to become; becoming I, I say You. All actual life is encounter. “The Lord healeth the broken in hear, and bindeth up their wounds—Bless the Lord, O my soul…who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction,” reports Psalm 147.3; 103.2,3, 4. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
How do we paint Jesus the Christ? It does not matter whether he is painted in lines and colors, as the great Christian painters in all periods have done or whether we paint him in sermons, as the Christian preachers have done Sunday after Sunday, or whether we paint him in learned books, in Biblical or systematic theology, or whether we paint him in our hearts, in devotion, imagination and love. In each case we must answer the question: How do we paint Jesus Christ? The stories in the Gospel of Matthew contribute to the answer; they add a color, and expression, a trait of great intensity, they paint him as the healer: It is astonishing that this color, this vivid expression of his nature, this powerful trait of his character, has more and more been lost in our time. The grayish colors of a moral teacher, the tense expression of a social reformer, the soft traits of a suffering servant have prevailed, at least amongst our painters and theologians and life-of-Jesus novelists; perhaps not so much in the hearts of the people who need somebody to heal them. The gospels, certainly, are not responsible for this disappearance of power in the picture of Jesus. They abound in stories of healing; but we are responsible, ministers, laymen, theologians, who forgot that “Savior” means “healers,” he who makes whole and sane what is broken and insane, in body and mind. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
The woman who encountered Jesus was made whole, the demoniac who met him was liberated from his mental cleavage. Those who are disrupted, split, disintegrated, are healed by him. And because this is so, because this power has appeared on Earth, the Kingdom of God has come upon us; this is the answer Jesus gives to the Pharisees when they discuss his power of healing the mentally possessed; this is the answer he gives to the Baptist to overcome his doubts; this is the order he gives to his disciples when he sends them to the towns of Israel. “And as ye go, preach, saying, the kingdom of God is at hand. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” That is why they shall do and for this he gives them authority and power; for in him is the kingdom of Go has appeared, and its nature is salvation, healing of that which is ill, making whole what is broken. All we still able to experience this power? I do not speak of theological inhibitions about the acceptance of such a picture of Christ. They do not weigh very heavily. Of course we were worried about miracle stories for many decades; today we know what the New Testament always knew—that miracles are signs pointing to the presence of a divine power in nature and history, and that they are in no way negations of natural laws. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
Of course, we were and we are worried about the abuse of religious healing for commercial and other selfish purposes or about its distortion into magic and superstition. However, when the right use is lacking and superstitions arise, the abuses occur because faith has become weak. All these are not serious problems; good theology and good practice can solve them. However, the serious problem is, as always, the problem of our own existence. Are we healed, have we received healing forces, here and there from the power of the picture of Jesus the Savior? Are we grasped by this power? Is it strong enough to overcome our neurotic trends, the rebellion of unconscious strivings, the split in our conscious being, the diseases which disintegrate our minds and destroy our bodies at the same time? Have we overcome in moments of grace the torturing anxiety in the depth of our hearts, the restlessness which never ceases moving and whipping us, the unordered desires and the hidden repressions which return as poisonous hate, the hostility against ourselves and others, against life itself, the hidden will to death? Have we experienced now an then in the moments of grace that we are made whole, that destructive spirits have left us, that psychic compulsions are dissolved, that tyrannical mechanisms in our soul are replaced by freedom; that despair, this most dangerous of all splits, this real sickness unto death, is healed and we are saved from self-destruction? Has this happened to us under the power of the picture of Jesus as the Savior? #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
This is the real problem, the true Christological problem (theologically speaking), the question of life and death (humanly speaking), for every Christian and of Christendom of today. Do we go to the physicians lone, or to the psychotherapists alone or to the counsellors alone in order to be healed? Sometimes, of course, we should go to the, but do we also go to or—more precisely—do we also receive the healing power in the picture of Jesus the Christ who is called the Savior? This is the question before us, and this question is answered by those who can tell us that they have experienced his healing power, that the New Being has grasped their bodies and their soul, that they have become whole and same again, that salvation has come upon them. Not always, of course, but in those moments which are moments of grace and in which they are anticipated the perfect wholeness, the wholeness of God being in all. Can we join this answer? To believe that this quest is only for religious people, or for impractical dreamers, and not for reasonable people or for mortals active in the World is to believe something that is untrue. The laity, the masses, are entitled to be told that a higher truth exists, that they can come to it when they can cope with it, tat it is up to them to equip themselves with needed qualifications. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
Just because most people appear to have superficial interests and are not yet ready for the deeper thoughts of philosophy does not necessarily mean that they are not making spiritual progress. One the contrary, they may be doing very well on their own particular levels of development. It will simply be necessary for them to incarnate many more times before they are capable of understanding the more advanced truths. Aspirants come from the low, the middle, and the high strata of life—with most probably from middle. No age is unsuited to be the study and practice of philosophy. No one is too young to begin it, nor too late. Although the middle-age and elderly, being more experiences, are more receptive to the ideas of emotional control and personal detachment, philosophy is not necessarily a subject fit only for those in their Sunset years. Mortals who are seized by ambition, who want money, prestige, honours, power, will not welcome the idea of detachment, and they are right. For they are not yet ready for it: they need to gain the fruits of their desires, to experience the strivings and accomplishments from which the truth about them can be deduced. Only after the lessons have been learned can they be in a position to reflect properly and impartially upon this idea and appreciate its worth. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
One who is afraid to touch this study because one is afraid of spoiling one’s Worldly career is unfit for it. Nevertheless, it is an error to believe that those who shed such a fear are called upon to forget their tasks or shirk their responsibilities and duties in this World. They are not. If they become indoctrinated with the ideas here taught, they can succeed in their tasks and duties; they need not fail. Those who live in a private realm of far-fetched phantasies which are caricatures of the real facts, as well as those who betray all the signs of neuroticism, hysteria, or psychopathy, often talk overmuch about the quest but do not seem able to apply its most elementary injunctions. To encourage them to follow it is only still further to build up their ridiculous egoism and bolster their fool’s paradise. For them the quest is unachievable until they become different persons. The unequal balance of the whole psyche is a characteristic of those seekers who impatiently shun the philosophic discipline. Hence we find that emotional neuroticism, intellectual disorder, volitional weakness, and egotistical excess are strongly marked in a number of people who take a fussy, shrieking interest in mysticism. They seek ardently for teachers but not for truth, for personalities rather than principles. They surrender themselves eagerly to visible organization but not to the invisible God. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
It does not occur to them that the absence of proper qualifications unfits them for personal discipleship under competent master. For anyone to express even a hint of this unfitness is to arouse their anger, provoke their hostility, and stiffen their conceit. And if one goes out to suggest, in however kindly and constructive a manner, that their energies would be more profitably directed towards self-improvement than towards running after incompetent teachers and absurd sects, one is rewarded by abuse and vilification. Neither a dry pedantic intellectualism nor a sloppy excitable emotionalism is desirable in the seeker after truth. It is not for irresponsible persons, those of feeble will or hysterical nerves. It is wrong to look upon this quest as one for semi-lunatics, emotionally disturbed persons, or gullible, brainless miracle-hunters. It is not a place for the deposit of sickness, troubles, and deficiencies. Such things must be taken elsewhere for repair. All too many people take to this quest who are not really ready for it, who need to become human beings before seeking the more massive achievement of becoming superhuman ones, who ought to attain personal decency, balance, discipline, practicality, and calmness before losing themselves in the theoretical flights of spirituality. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
Truth is discoverable but not by everyone. It is not discoverable by criminals who break every ethical law, by lazy who will not pause and look within each day, by the cynics who sneer at the quality of reverence, by those who do not value it enough to cultivate their true intelligence. Does everyone have the right to know this truth? Yes and no. Yes—because all mortals must do so in the end as a part of the fulfilment of life’s purpose. No—when they are as yet uninterested in it and unable or unwilling to receive it. If our thought is to be straight and fearless we ought to fling all prejudices overboard at the very start of our voyage. The prejudiced mortal with one’s prejudices confirmed not contradicted. One is not really looking for truth. Before the quest can ever begin, prejudices must be removed. This is a psychological operation which the mortal cannot preform upon oneself, expect in part, without a great effort. The fool cannot follow this Quest. One may try to but one will be sent back to learn some wisdom through Earthly lessons and through Earthly difficulties brought on by one’s foolishness. Flighty temperaments, which seek the latest novelty rather than the first truth, are unfit for philosophy. The very name “Quest” implies movement, travelling, journey; those who remain stationary cannot be said to be on the “Quest.” By this I do not mean those who find themselves stagnating against their will, but those who make no effort inwardly to advance. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
The truth is sometimes so spiky and so uncomfortable that people hide from it. Entry on the quest is a sign that enough courage has been gathered to face it. Those who assert that they are questers but who are too much in love with their own fancies are incapable of facing the realities being those fancies. To this extent their quest is a bogus one, although not usually a consciously bogus one. People wish to be settled: only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them! No factory can manufacture divine peace for us, nor can any workshop turn out the inspirations which bestow heroism on a mortal. We may wander the whole length of Chang’an Avenue in Beijing, China and find no shop which can sell us a packet of starry truths that might comfort and console. The morning post will bring a hundred letters in the office mail, but it will not bring one word or hint that shall conduct us nearer the higher aims. “For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as children, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we are saved,” reports Romans 8.20-24. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Justice Without Love is Always Injustice Because it Does Not Do Justice to the Other One, Nor to Oneself, Nor to the Situation in Which We Meet!
I stood on the hilltop in the Moonlight and I tried not to see this paradise. I tried to picture those I loved. Were they gathered still together in that fairy-tale wood of beautiful trees? If only I could see their faces or hear their voices. I looked on these verdant green valley, now patched with beautiful contracted Cresleigh homes, a picture book World with flowers blooming in profusion, the red poinsettia as tall as trees. And the clouds, ever changing, borne like the tall sailing ships on brisk winds. What had the first Europeans thought when they looked upon this fecund land surrounded by the sparkling sea? That this was the Garden of God? Even the most uneducated people would not dare to affirm that compassion, gratitude, love of the beauty of the World, love of religious practices, and friendship belonged exclusively to those centuries and countries that recognize the Church. These forms of love are rarely found in their purity, but it would even be difficult to say that they were met with more frequently in those centuries and countries than in the others. To think that love in any of these forms can exist anywhere Christ is absent is to belittle him so grievously that it amounts to an outrage. It is impious and almost sacrilegious. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
These kinds of love are supernatural, and in a sense they are absurd. They are the height of folly. So long as the soul has not had direct contact with the very person of God, they cannot be supported by any knowledge based either on experience or reason. They cannot therefore rest upon any certainty, unless the word is used in a metaphorical sense to indicate the opposite of hesitation. In consequence it is better that they should not be associated with any belief. This is more honest intellectually, and it safeguards our love’s purity more effectively. On this account it is more fitting. In what concerns divine things, belief is not fitting. Only certainty will do. Anything less than certainty is unworthy of God. During the period of preparation, these indirect loves constitute an upward movement of the soul, a turning of the eyes, not without some effort, toward higher things. After God has come in person, not only to visit the soul as he does for a long time beforehand, but to possess it and to transport its center near to his very heart, it is otherwise. The chicken has cracked its shell; it is outside the egg of the World. These first loves continue; they are more intense than before, but they are different. One who has passed through this adventure has a deeper love than every for those who suffer affliction and for those who help one in one’s own, for one’s friends, for religious practices, and for the beauty of the World. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
However, one’s love in all these forms had become a movement of God himself, a ray merged in the light of God. That at least is what we may suppose. These indirect loves are only the attitude toward beings and things here below of the soul turned toward the Good. They themselves have not any particular good as an object. There is no final good here below. Thus strictly speaking we are no longer concerned with forms of love, but with attitudes inspire by love. In the period of preparation the soul loves in emptiness. It does not know whether anything real answers its love. It may believe that it knows, but to believe is not to know. Such a belief does not help. The soul knows for certain only that it is hungry. The important thing is that it announces its hunger by crying. If we suggest to a child that perhaps there is no bread, the child does not stop crying. It goes on crying just the same. The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry. It can only persuade itself of this by lying, for the reality of its hunger is not a belief, it is a certainty. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
We all know that there is no true good here below, that everything that appears to be good in this World is finite, limited, wears out, and once worn out, leaves necessity exposed in all its nakedness. Every human being has probably had some lucid moments in one’s life when one has definitely acknowledged to oneself that there is no final good here below. However, as soon as we have seen this truth we cover it up with lies. Many people even take pleasure in proclaiming it, seeking a morbid joy in their sadness, without ever having been able to bear facing it for a second. Mortals feel that there is a mortal danger in facing this truth squarely for any length of time. That is true. Such knowledge strikes more surely than a sword; it inflicts a death more frightening than that of the body. After a time it kills everything within us that constitutes our soul. In order to bear it we have to love the truth more than life itself. Those who do this turn away from the fleeting things of time with their souls. They do not turn toward God. When they are in total darkness, how could they do so? God himself sets their faces in the right direction. He does not, however, show himself to them for a long time. It is for them to remain motionless, without averting their eyes, listening ceaselessly, and waiting, they know not for what; deaf to entreaties and threats, unmoved by every shock, unshaken in the midst of every upheaval. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
If after a long period of waiting God allow them to have an indistinct intuition of his light or even reveals himself in person, it is only for an instant. Once more they have to remain still, attentive, inactive, calling out only when their desire cannot be contained. If God does not reveal this reality, it does not rest with the soul to believe in the reality of God. In trying to do so it either labels something else with the name of God, and that is idolatry, or its belief in God remains abstract and verbal. Such a belief prevails wherever religious doctrines are taken for granted, as is the cause with those centuries and countries in which it never enters anyone’s head to question it. The state of nonbelief is then what Saint John of the Cross calls a night. The belief is verbal and does not penetrate the soul. At a time like the present, if the unbeliever loves Go, if one is like the child who does not know whether there is bread anywhere, but cries out become one is hungry, incredulity may be equivalent to the dark night of Saint John of the Cross. When we are eating bread, and even when we have eaten it, we know that it is real. We can nevertheless raise doubts about the reality of bread. Philosophers raise doubts about the reality of the World of the senses. Such doubts are however purely verbal; they leave the certainty intact and actually serve only to make it more obvious to a well-balanced mind. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
In the same way one to whom God has revealed his reality can raise doubts about this reality without any harm. They are purely verbal doubts, a form of exercise to keep one’s intelligence in good health. What amounts to criminal treason, even before such a revelation and much more afterward, is to question the fact that God is the only thing worthy of love. That is a turning away of our eyes, for love is the soul’s looking. It means that we have stopped for an instant to wait and to listen. Queen Akasha did not seek Lestat, she waited for him. When she was convinced that he no longer existed, and that nowhere in the whole World was there anything that could be Lestat, she did not on that account return to her former associates. She drew back from them with greater aversion than ever. She preferred the absence of Lestat to the presence of anyone else. Lestat awakened her from her statue state, from her cold slumber. She no longer hoped for that. However, never for an instant did dream of employing another method which could obtain a luxurious and honored life for her—the method of reconciliation with her kith and kin. Akasha did not want wealth and consideration unless they came with Lestat. She did not even give a thought to such things. However, she wanted to turn Earth into a Heaven. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
At that moment Lestat could hold out no longer. He could not help declaring himself. He gave certain proof that he was Lestat. Akasha saw him, she heard him, she touched him. There would be no more question for her not as to whether her savior was in existence. One who has had the same adventure as Akasha, one whose soul has seen, heard, and touched for itself, one will recognize God as the reality inspiring all indirect loves, the reality of which they are as it were the reflections. God is pure beauty. This is incomprehensible, for beauty, by its very essence, has to do with the senses. To speak of an imperceptible beauty must seem a misuse of language to anyone who has any sense of exactitude: and with reason. Beauty is always a miracle. However, when the soul receives an impression of beauty which, while it is beyond all sense perception is no abstraction, but real and direct as the impression caused by a song at the moment it reached our ears, the miracle is raised to the second degree. Everything happens as though, by a miraculous favor, our very sense themselves had been made aware that silence is not the absence of sound, but something infinitely more real than sounds, and the center of a harmony more perfect than anything which a combination of sounds can produce. Furthermore there are degrees of silence. When compared with the silence of God, there is a silence in the beauty of the Universe which is like noise. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
God is, moreover, our real neighbor. The term of person can only be rightly applied to God, and this is also true of the term impersonal. God is one who bends over us, afflicted as we are, and reduced to the state of being nothing but a fragment of inert and bleeding flesh. Yet at the same time he is not some sort of victim of misfortune as well, the victim who appears to us as an inanimate body, incapable of thought, this nameless victim of whom nothing is known. The inanimate body is this created Universe. If we were able to attain it, the love we owe to God, this love that would be our crowning perfection is the divine model both of gratitude and compassion. God is also the perfect friend. So that there should be between him and us, bridging the infinite distance, something in the way of equality, he had chosen to place an absolute quality in his creatures, the absolute liberty of consent, which leaves us free to follow or swerve from the God-ward direction he has communicated to our souls. He has also extended our possibilities of error and falsehood so as to leave us the faculty of exercising a spurious rule in imagination, not only over the Universe and the human race, but also over God himself, in so far as we do not know how to use his name aright. He has given us this faculty of infinite illusion so that we should have the power to renounce it out of love. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
In fact, contact with God is the true sacrament. We can, however, be almost certain that those whose love of God has caused the disappearance of the pure loves belonging to our life here below are no true friends of God. After the soul has had direct contact with God, our neighbor, our friends, religious ceremonies, and the beauty of the World do not fall to the level of unrealities. On the contrary, it is only then that these things become real. Previously they were half dreams. Previously they had no reality. “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of Heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations, and mortals of every language worshipped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed,” reports Daniel 7.11. Could God possibly forgive people without at least demanding their conversation and some ritual observances? People, at any time, can return and be accepted by God. God can at any time forgive those who repent. Many people say we live in a sick society—and the quality of life might be changed radically by the development of a new sense of community. If every person returns from one’s evil way and from the violence on one’s hands, who knows, God may return. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
Modern mortals are voracious readers who have never learned to read well. Part of the trouble is that one is taught to read drivel that is hardly worth reading well. (There was a time when children learned to read by reading the Bible.) One ends up by reading mainly newspapers and magazines—ephemeral, anonymous trash that one scans on its way to the garbage can. One has no wish to remember it for any length of time; it is written as if to make sure that one will not; and one reads it in a manner that makes doubly sure. There is no person behind what one reads; not even a committee. Somebody wrote it in the first place—if one can call that writing—and then various other people took turns changing it. For the final result no one is responsible; and it rarely merits a serious response. It cries out to be forgotten soon, like the books on which one is learned to read, in school. They were usually anonymous, too; or they should have been. In adolescence students are suddenly turned loose on books worth reading, but generally do not know how to read them. And if, untaught, some instinct prompts them to read well, chances are that they are asked completely tone-deaf questions as soon as they have finished their assignment—either making them feel that they read badly after all or spoiling something worthwhile for the rest of their lives. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
We must learn to feel addressed by a book, by the human being behind it, as if a person spoke directly to us. A good book or essay or poem is not primarily an object to be put to use, or an object of experience: it is the voice of You speaking to me, requiring a response. “So whatever you wish that mortals would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets,” reports Matthew 7.12. Recently I have had to think about the relation of love to justice. And it occurred to me that among the words of Jesus there is a statement of what is called the “Golden Rule.” The Golden Rule was well known to Christians and Greeks, although mostly in a negative form: What you do not want that mortal should do to you, do not so to them. Certainly, the absolute for is richer in meaning and nearer to love, but it is not love. It is calculating justice. How, then, is it related to love? How does it fit the message of the kingdom of God and the justice of the kingdom as expressed in the Sermon on the Mount where the Golden Rule appears? Let us think of an ordinary day in our life and of occasions for the application of the Golden Rule. We meet each other in the morning, we expect a friendly face or word and we are ready to give it although our minds are full of anxious anticipation of the burdens. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
Somebody wants a part of our limited time, we give it, having asked somebody else to give us a part of one’s time. We need help and we give it if we are asked, although it includes sacrifice. We are frank with others, expecting that they will be frank with us even if it hurts. We are fair to those who fight against us expecting fairness from them. We participate in the sorrows of our neighbors, certain that they will participate in ours. All this can happen in one day. All this is Golden Rule. And if somebody has violated this rule, consciously or unconsciously, we are willing to forgive as we hope to be forgiven. It is not astonishing that for many people the Golden Rule is considered as the real content of Christianity. It is not surprising that in the name of the Golden Rule criticism is suppressed, independent action discouraged, serious problems avoided. It is even understandable that statesmen ask other nations to behave toward their own nations according to the Golden Rule. And does not Jesus himself say that the Golden Rule is the law and the prophets? However, we know that this is not the answer of the New Testament. The great commandment as Jesus repeats it and the descriptions of love in Paul and John’s tremendous assertion that God is love, infinitely transcend the Golden Rule. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
The Golden Rule must be transcended, for it does not tell us what we should wish that mortal would do to us. We wish to have freedom from heavy duties. We are ready to give the same freedom to others. However, someone who loves us refuses to give it to us, and one oneself refuses to ask us for it. And if one did, we should refuse to give it to one because it would reduce our growth and violate the law of love. We wish to receive a fortune which makes us secure and independent. We would be ready to give a fortune to a friend who asks us for it, if we had it. However, in both cases love would be violated. For the gift would ruin us and the other individual. We want to be forgiven and we are ready to do the same. However, perhaps it is in both cases an escape from the seriousness of a personal problem, and therefore against love. The measure of what we shall do to mortals cannot be our wishes about what they shall do to us. For our wishes express not only our right but also our wrong and our foolishness more than our wisdom. This is the limit of the Golden Rule. This is the limit of calculating justice. Only for one who knows what one should wish and who actually wishes it, is the Golden Rule ultimately valid. Only love can transform calculating justice into creative justice. Love makes justice just. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
Justice without love is always injustice because it does not do justice to the other one, nor to the oneself, nor to the situation in which we meet. For the other one and I and we together in this moment in this place are unique, unrepeatable occasion, calling for a unique unrepeatable act of uniting love. If this call is not heard by listening love, it is not obeyed by the creative genius of love, injustice is done. And this is true even of oneself. One who loves listens to the call of one’s own innermost center and obeys this call and does justice to one’s own being. For love does not remove, it establishes justice. It does not add something to what justice does but it shows justice what to do. It makes the Golden Rule possible. For we do not speak for a love which swallows justice. This would result in chaos and extinction. However, we speak for a love in which justice is the form and structure of love. We speak for a love which respects the claim of the other one to be acknowledged as what one is, and the claim of ourselves to be acknowledged as what we are, above all as persons. Only distorted love, which is a cover for hostility or self-disgust, denies that which united love. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
Love makes justice just. The divine love is justifying love accepting and fulfilling one who, according to calculating justice, must be rejected. This justification of one who is unjust is the fulfillment of God’s creative justice, and of God’s reuniting love. Knowing that the ultimate meaning of freedom will elude us, let us still endeavor to define the term as best we can. The first definition is on the psychological level, the domain of everyday actions: Freedom is the capacity to pause in the face of stimuli from many directions at once and, in this pause, to throw one’s weight toward this response rather than that one. This is the freedom we experience in a store when we pause over the purchase of a necktie or a shirt. We summon up in our imaginations the image of how we will look in this or that tie, what so-and-so will say about it, or how the color will fit such and such a suit. And then we buy the tie or we move on to something else. This is freedom of doing, or existential freedom. This freedom is shown most interestingly in the supermarket, when we push our carts through the aisles between the tumultuous variety of packages and cans of food on the shelves, each one silently shouting through its bright-colored label “Buy me!” We see the shoppers with expressions of hesitancy, vacuity, wonder, pausing for some inspiration as to which of all these foods will be good for dinner tonight. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
The shopper seems hypnotized, charmed, preoccupied. Like patients on a ward in a mental hospital, they do not see me as I walk directly across their line of vision. The expressions of wonder and hesitancy are a readiness, an invitation, an openness to some stimulus on the shelves to persuade them to throw the balance this way of that in making their choice. This first freedom is experienced by each of us hundreds of times every day. It is decked up in respectable terms like decision/choice when we discuss freedom in psychology classes—if we ever discuss freedom in psychology classes at all. The most profound illustration of this kind of freedom is our ability to ask questions. Take, for example, my asking a question after listening to a lecture. The very fact that the question comes up in my mind at all implied that there is more than one answer. Otherwise there would be no point in asking the question in the first place. This is freedom; it implies that there is some possibility, some freedom of selection in what I ask. The speaker then pauses for a few seconds after I have asked it, turning over in his or her mind the possible answers. We sense that there is, in asking and answering questions, a good deal more going on, and it is of a richer nature, than the mere responding to various stimuli and selecting a response. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
Each person who lights this candle within one’s own mind will soon begin to attract other mortals like moths to a flame burning by a fire—not all mortal nor many mortals but only those who are groping for a way out of their darkness. Can a scrupulously impartial search through World-thought and experience lead to discovery of truth? “Wilt thou be made whole?” asked Jesus. Questioning implies some value judgment, some investment of the person’s life, some invitation to share, to make contact, some challenge to consider a new idea. Regrettably, in recent decades our very idea of freedom has been diminished and grown shallow in comparisons with previous ages; it has been relegated almost exclusively to freedom from outside pressure, to freedom from state coercion—to freedom understood on the juridical level, and no higher. Only when this search for a higher life has becomes an absolute necessity to a mortal, has one found even the first qualification needed for the Quest. “And the Lord God doth work by means to bring about his great and eternal purposes; and by very small means the Lord doth confound the wise and bringeth about the salvation of many souls,” reports Alma 37.7. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
It is a Rare Gift to Meet a Human Being in Whom Love—and this Means God—is so Overwhelmingly Manifest!
All right. I allowed myself to be taken along. White marble tile, carved gold fixtures; and ancient Roman splendor. Time is important because, although we are eternal beings, we are not going to be able to enjoy the pleasures of being in the flesh and on this Earth forever, and you may miss it, even when you go to Heaven. Nevertheless, we know and believe the love God has for us. “God is love, and one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in one,” reports 1 John 4.16. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this, if you have love for one another, all mortals will know that you are my disciples,” reports John 13.34-35. After two thousand years are we still able to realize what it means to say, “God is Love”? The writer of the First Epistle of John certainly knew what he wrote, for he drew the consequences: “One who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in one.” God’s abiding in us, making us his dwelling place, is the same thing as our having love as the sphere of our habitation. God and love are not two realities; they are one. God’s Being is the being of love and God’s infinite power of Being is the infinite power of love. Therefore, one who professes devotion to God may abide in God if one abides in love, or one may not abide in God if one does not abide in love. And one who does not speak of God may abide in him if one is abiding in love. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
And since the manifestation of God as love is his manifestation in Jesus Christ, Jesus can say that many of those who do not know him, belong to him, and that many of those who confess their allegiance to him do not belong to him. The criterion, the only ultimate criterion, is love. For God is love, and the divine love is triumphantly manifest in Christ the Crucified. Let me tell you the story of a woman who passed away a few years ago and whose life was spent abiding in live, although she rarely, if ever, used the name of God, and though she would have been surprised had someone told her that she belonged to him who judges all mortals, because he is love and love is the only criterion of his judgment. Her name was Elsa Brandstrom, the daughter of a former Swedish ambassador to Russia. However, her name in the mouths and hearts of hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war during the First World War was the Angel of Siberia. She was an irrefutable, living witness to the truth that love is the ultimate power of Being, even in a century which belongs to the darkest, most destructive and cruel of all centuries since the dawn of humankind. At the beginning of the First World War, when Elsa Brandstorm was twenty-four years of age, she looked out the window of the Swedish Embassy in what was then Saint Petersburg and saw the Germany prisoners of war being driven through the streets on their way to Siberia. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
From that moment on, after what she had seen, Elsa could no longer endure the splendor of the diplomatic life of which, up to then, she had been a beautiful and vigorous center. She became a nurse and began visiting the prison camps. There she saw unspeakable horrors and she, a girl of twenty-four, began, almost alone, the fight of love against cruelty, and she prevailed. She had to fight against the resistance and suspicion of the authorities and she prevailed. She had to fight against the brutality and lawlessness of the prison guards and she triumphed. She had to fight against cold, hunger, dirt and illness, against the conditions of an undeveloped country and a destructive war, and she prevailed. Love gave her wisdom with innocence, and daring with foresight. And whenever she appeared despair was conquered and sorrow healed. Elsa visited the hungry and gave them food. She saw the thirsty and have them to drink. She welcomed the unknown, clothed the people in their birthday suits and strengthened the sick. Elsa herself fell ill and was imprisoned, but God was abiding in her. The irresistible power of love was with her. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
And she never ceased to be driven by this power. After the war Elsa initiated a great work for the orphans of Germany and Russian prisoners of war. The sight of her among these children whose sole ever-shinning Sun she was, must have been a decisive religious impression for many people. With the coming of the Nazis, she and her husband were forced to leave Germany and come to this country. Here she became the helper of innumerable European refugees, and for ten years I was able personally to observe the creative genius of her love. We never had a theological conversation. It was unnecessary. Elsa made God transparent in every moment. For God, who is love, was abiding in her and she in the Lord. She aroused the love of millions towards herself and towards that for which she was transparent—the God who is love. On her deathbed Else received a delegate from the king and people of Sweden, representing innumerable people all over European, assuring her that she would never be forgotten by those whom she had given back the meaning of their lives. It is a rare gift to meet a human being in whom love—and this means God—is so overwhelmingly manifest. It undercuts theological arrogance as well as pious isolation. It is more than justice and it is greater than faith and hope. It is the presence of God himself. For God is love. And in every moment of genuine love we are dwelling in God and God in us. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Attitude is an important part of the foundation upon which we build a productive life. In appraising our present attitude, we might consider what is necessary. There are many degrees of necessity. Everything is necessary in some degree if its loss really causes a decrease of vital energy. (This word is here used in the strict and precise sense that it might have if the study of vital phenomena were as far advanced as that of falling bodies.) When the degree of necessity is extreme, deprivation leads to death. This is the case when all the vital energy of one being is bound up with another by some attachment. In the lesser degrees, deprivation leads to a more or less considerable lessening of energy. Thus a total deprivation of food causes death, whereas a partial deprivation only diminishes the life force. Nevertheless, if a person is not to be weakened, the necessary quantity of food is considered to be that required. The most frequent cause of necessity in the bonds of affection is a combination of sympathy and habit. As in the case of avarice or drunkenness, that which was at first a search for some desired good is transformed into a need by the mere passage of time. The difference from avarice, drunkenness, and all the vices, however, is that in the bonds of affection the two motives—search for a desired good, and need—can very easily coexist. They can also be separated. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
When the attachment of one being to another is made up of need and nothing else it is a fearful thing. Few things in this World can reach such a degree of ugliness and horror. Whenever a human being seeks what is good and only find necessity, there is always something horrible. The stories that tell of a beloved being who suddenly appears with a death’s head best symbolize this. The human soul possesses a whole arsenal of lies with which to put up a defense against this ugliness and, in imagination, to manufacture sham advantages where there is only necessity. It is for this very reason that ugliness is an evil, because it conduces to lying. Speaking quite generally, we might say that there is affliction whenever necessity, under no matter what form, is imposed so harshly that the hardness exceeds the capacity for lying of the person who receives the impact. That is why the purest souls are the most exposed to affliction. For one who is capable of preventing the automatic reaction of defense, which tends to increase the soul’s capacity for lying, affliction is not an evil, although it is always a wounding and in a sense a degradation. When a human being is attached to another by a bond of affection which contains any degree of necessity, it is impossible that one should wish autonomy to be preserved in one’s self and the other. It is impossible by the miraculous of nature. It is, however, made possible by the miraculous intervention of the supernatural. This miracle is friendship. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Friendship is an equality made of harmony. There is harmony because there is a supernatural union between two opposites, that is to say, necessity and liberty, the two opposites God combined when he created the World and men. There is equality because each wishes to preserve the faculty of free consent both in oneself and in the other. When anyone wishes to put oneself under a human being or consents to be subordinated to one, there is no trace of friendship. The Queen of the Damn’s Maharet is not the friend of Queen Akasha. There is no friendship where there is inequality. A certain reciprocity is essential in friendship. If all good will is entirely lacking on one of the two sides, the other should suppress one’s own affection, out of respect for the free consent which one should not desire to force. If on one of the two sides there is not any respect for the autonomy of the other, this other must cut the bond uniting them out of respect for oneself. In the same way, one who consents to be enslaved cannot gain friendship. However, the necessity contained in the bond of affection can exist on one side only, and in this case there is only friendship on one side, if we keep to the strict and exact meaning of the word. If only for a moment, a friendship is tarnished as soon as necessity triumphs, over the desire to preserve the faculty of free consent on both sides. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
In all human things, necessity is the principle of impurity. If even a trace of the wish to please or the contrary desire to dominate is found in it, all friendship is impure. In a perfect friendship these two desires are completely absent. The two friends have fully consented to be two and not one, they respect the distance which the fact of being two distinct creatures places between them. Mortals have the right to desire direct union with God alone. Friendship is a miracle by which person consent to view from a certain distance, and without coming any nearer, the very being who is necessary to one as food. It requires the strength of the soul that Eve did not have; and yet she had no need of the fruit. If she had been hungry at the moment when she looked at the fruit, and if in spite of that she had remained looking at it indefinitely without taking one step toward it, she would have performed a miracle analogous to that of perfect friendship. Through this supernatural miracle of respect for human autonomy, friendship is very like the pure forms of compassion and gratitude called forth by affliction. In both cases the contraries which are the terms of the harmony are necessity and liberty, or in other words subordination and equality. These two pairs of opposites are equivalent. From the fact that the desire to please and the desire to command are not found in pure friendship, it has it in, at the same time as affection, something not unlike a complete indifference. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Although friendship is a bond between two people it is in a sense impersonal. It leaves impartiality intact. It in no way prevents us from imitating the perfection of our Father in Heaven who freely distributes Sunlight and rain in every place. On the contrary, friendship and this distribution are the mutual conditions one of the other, in most cases at any rate. For, as practically every human being is joined to others by bounds of affection that have in them some degree of necessity, one cannot go toward perfection except by transforming this affection into friendship. Friendship has something universal about it. It consists of loving a human being as we should like to be able to love each soul in particular of all those who go to make up the human race. As a geometrician looks at a particular figure in order to deduce the universal properties of the triangle, so one who knows how to love directs upon a particular human being a universal love. The consent to preserve an autonomy within ourselves and in others is essentially of a universal order. As soon as we wish for this autonomy to be respected in more than just one single being we desire it for everyone, for we cease to arrange the order of the World in a circle whose center is here below. We transport the center of the circle beyond the Heavens. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
If the two beings who love each other, through an unlawful use of affection, think they form only one, friendship does not have this power. However, then there is not friendship in the true sense of the word. That is what might be called an adulterous union, even though it comes about between husband and wife. There is not friendship where distance is not kept and respected. The simple fact of having pleasure in thinking in the same way as the beloved being, or in any case the fact of desiring such an agreement of opinion, attacks the purity of the friendship at the same time as its intellectual integrity. It is very frequent. However, at the same time pure friendship is rare. When the bonds of affection and necessity between human beings are not supernaturally transformed into friendship, not only is the affection of an impure and low order, but it is also combined with hatred and repulsion. That is shown very well in The Queen of the Damned and in Romeo Must Die. The mechanism is the same in affections other than carnal love. It is easy to understand this. We hate what we are dependent upon. We become disgusted with what depends on us. Sometimes affection does not only become mixed with hatred and revulsion; it is entirely changed into it. The transformation may sometimes even be almost immediate, so that hardly any affection has had time to show; this is the case when necessity is laid bare almost at once. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
When the necessity which brings people together has nothing to do with the emotions, when it is simply due to circumstances, hostility often makes it appearance from the start. When Christ said to his disciples: “Love one another,” it was not attachment he was laying down as their rule. As it was a fact that there were bounds between them due to the thoughts, the life, and the habits they shared, he commanded them to transform these bonds into friendship, so that they should not be allowed to turn into impure attachment or hatred. Since, shortly before his passing into Heaven, Christ gave this as a new commandment to be added to the two great commandments of the love of our neighbor and the love of God, we can think that pure friendship, like the love of our neighbor, has in it something of a sacrament. Christ perhaps wished to suggest this with reference to Christian friendship when he said: “Where there are two or three gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them.” Pure friendship is an image of the original and perfect friendship that belongs to the Trinity and is the very essence of God. It is impossible for two human beings to be one while scrupulously respecting the distance that separates them, unless God is present in each of them. The point at which parallels meet is infinity. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
The Greeks were an eminently visual people. They gloried in the visual arts; Homer’s epics abound in visual details; and they created tragedy and comedy, adding new dimensions to visual art. The Hebrews were not so visual and actually entertained a prohibition against the visual arts. Neither did they have tragedies or comedies. The one book of the Bible that has sometimes been called a tragedy, Job, was clearly not intended for, and actually precluded, any visual representation. The Greeks wanted God to be a friend, they visualized their gods and represented them in marble and in beautiful vase paintings. They also brought them on the stage. The Hebrews did not visualize their God and expressly forbade attempts to make of him an object—a visual object, a concrete object, any object. Their God was not to be seen. He was to be heard and listened to. He was not an It but an I—or a You. Christianity was born of the denial that God could not possibly be seen. Not all who considered Jesus a great teacher became Christians. Christians were those for whom he was the Lord. Christians were those who believed that God could become visible, an object of sight and experience, of knowledge and belief. Of course, Christianity did not deny its roots in Judaism. Jesus as the Son of God who had ascended to the Heavens to dwell there with God, as God, did not simply become another Heracles, the son of Zeus who had ascended to the Heavens to dwell there with the gods, as a god. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Jesus did not simply become another of the legion of Greek gods and demigods and sons of Zeus. He had preached and was to be heard and listened to. His moral teachings were recorded lovingly for the instruction of the faithful. However, were they really to be listened to? Or did they, too, become objects—of admiration and perhaps discussion? Was the individual to feel addressed by them, commanded by them—was he able to relate his life to them? The new dispensation was hardly that. The New Testament keeps saying, nowhere more emphatically than in the Gospel according to John, that those who only live by Jesus’s moral teaching shall not enter the kingdom of Heaven; only those can be saved who are baptized, who believe, and who take the sacraments—eating, as that Gospel puts it, “of this bread.” Of course, Christian belief is not totally unlike Jewish belief. It is not devoid of trust and confidence, and in Paul’s and Luther’s experience of faith these Jewish elements were especially prominent. Rarely have they been wholly lacking in Christianity. Still, this Jewish faith was never considered sufficient to some. Christian faith was always centered in articles of faith that had to be believed by those who wanted to be saved. When the Reformation did away with visual images, it was only to insist more firmly on the purity of doctrines that must be believed. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
However, may love the beautiful stained-glass windows, which communicate stores to those who are visual learners. And for Luther the bread and wine were no mere symbols of Christ’s flesh and blood—otherwise he might have made common cause with Ulrich Zwingli and presented the splintering of Protestantism—but the flesh and blood itself: God as an object. People sometimes wonder, is there some particular purpose in my birth here? Is it all ere coincidence? Must we doubt, deny, even reject God? These are some of the questions a thoughtful mortal might ask. If one is to moan over the length of the road opening out before one, one should also jubilate over the fact that one has begun to travel it. How few care to take this step! If some are immediately and irrevocably captured by the teachings, others are only gradually and cautiously convinced. Those who feel an emptiness in their hearts despite Worldly attainment and possession may be unconsciously yearning for God. So many of us place so much value in possessions, yet we overlook the startling fact that we have not begun to possess ourselves! What mortal can call one’s essential self? Can we build a bridge between this sorrowful Earthly life and the peaceful eternal life? Are the two forever sundered? Every seer, sage, and saint answers the first question affirmatively and the second negatively. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
The echoes of our spiritual being some to us all the time. They come in thoughts and things, in music and pictures, in emotions and words. If only we would take up the search for their source and trace them to it, we would recognize in the end the Reality, Beauty, Truth, and Goodness behind all the familiar manifestations. Those who can no longer confine their thinking within the conventional boundaries of common experience may cross over into religion’s reverent faith, into Christianity’s deep-felt intuition, or into philosophy’s final certitude. Whoever perceives the inferiority of one’s environment to what it could be, as well as the imperfections of one’s nature in the light of its undeveloped possibilities, and who sets out to improve the one and amend the other, has taken a first step to the quest. It is better to come late to the higher life with its nobler values and uplifting practices, than not at all. It is still better to come to it when one is comparatively young and foundations are being laid. They will be fortunate indeed if their spiritual longings are satisfied without the passage of many years and the travail of much exploration. They will be fortunate indeed if pitying friends do not repeatedly tell them with each change and each disappointed pulling-up of tents that they are pursing a mirage. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Those who have found their way to this Path leave forever behind them their aimless wanderings of the past. One fateful day, one will ruefully realize that one is octopus-held by external activities. Then will one take up the knife of a keen relentless determination and cut the imprisoning tentacles once and for all. I have no need to see and to test in order to be set free. I am free even in the confusion of servitude. I enjoy the freedom of the future, generations in advance. And when I die, I shall die a free man, for I have fought for freedom my whole life long. Mortals are free, in so far as one has the power of contradicting oneself and one’s essential nature. Mortals are free even from one’s freedom; that is, one can surrender one’s humanity. Freedom, by its very nature, is elusive. The word is difficult to define because of its quicksilver quality: freedom is always moving. You can state what it is not or what you desire to get free from—which is why the phrase freedom from should never be disparaged. However, it is difficult to designate what freedom is. Thus we always hear of the struggle for, the fight for freedom. Yet, when someone tells us “how I found freedom,” we have a feeling that something is being faked. The greatest virtue is not to be free, but to struggle ceaselessly for freedom. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Freedom is like a flock of white butterflies bestirred in front of you as you walk through the woods: rising in cluster they flit off in an infinite number of directions. Once you become self-konsciously sure of your freedom, you have lost it. Hence we find ourselves almost always describing what freedom is not rather than what it is: “I am free tomorrow” means I do not have to work; “I have a free period” means I do not have any class then. Freedom is frequently and persistently conceived of as a negative quality. Freedom is very much like health or virtue or innocence. After we have lost it, we feel it mist intensely. The dictionary does nothing to relieve our frustration. In the eighteen different meanings in Webster’s, fourteen of them are negative, such as “not held in slavery” or “not subject to external authority.” Of the reaming four, one is “liberty”—which deals with political freedom—and the others are simply tautological, such as “spontaneous, voluntary, independent.” Freedom is continually creating itself. Freedom is expansiveness. Freedom has an infinite quality. The guiding laws of life are not easy to find. The sacred wisdom of God is also the secret wisdom. The seeker quests until one’s thoughts rests. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
The quest will continue to attract its votaries so long as the Real continues to exist and mortals continue to remain unaware of it. This ever-new set of possibilities is part of the reason psychology has by and large evaded the subject, for freedom cannot be pinned down as psychologists are wont to do. In psychotherapy the closest we can get to discerning freedom in action is when a person experiences “I can” or “I will.” When a client in therapy says either of these, I always make sure he or she knows that I have heard him or her; for “can” and “will” are statements of personal freedom, even if only in fantasy. These verbs point to some event in the future, either immediate or long-term. They also imply that the person who uses them sense some power, some possibility, and is aware of ability to use this power. The mystery of the soul is as formidable and as baffling as any. Yet it is also a fascinating one. If few people have penetrated it today, may tried to do so in the past. Only when they are brought by the discipline of experience to a sense of responsibility, are they likely to seek this knowledge. This does not mean that a spiritual outlook requires an unquestioning acceptance of what mortals have made of themselves and the World. We approach God deep in our hearts. We feel the divine presence in that profound unearthly stillness where neither the sounds of emotional clamour nor those of intellectual grinding can enter. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
To Keep Aloof is to Write One’s Name in the Book of Failure—The Lord is Still Existent and Still Eager to Speak with Us Even Today!
I know your arguments. For centuries I have pondered them, as I have pondered so many questions. You think I do what I do with human limitations. I do not. To understand me, you must think in terms of abilities yet unimagined. Sooner will you understand the mystery of splitting atoms or black holes in space. The abyss and light of the World, time’s need and the craving for eternity, vision, event, and poetry are the dialogue with me. When I confront you, God is present. However, if I look away from you, I ignore him. As long as I merely experience or use you, I ignore God. As long as I merely experience or use you, I deny God. Yet, when I encounter you, I encounter God. Loneliness is honesty in one sense. In honesty you have to separate yourself from the impersonal mass—you are saved from conformism. To be honest is to be lonely in the sense that you individuate yourself, you seize the moment to be yourself and yourself alone. There is an initial loneliness about being oneself, speaking out of one’s own center. Some people feel a sadness and despair about being cast loose, alone, into the Word. One may feel life a single red wood tree standing at the North Pole, with nobody or nothing around for a million miles. However, is not the loneliness that we all experience at times, the kind that is inseparable from the human condition? #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
If you dare to be honestly yourself, you will be lonely. At each moment in our self-consciousness we are alone. No one else can genuinely come into our sanctum sanctorum. We pass into Heaven alone. No one escapes. This is destiny in its deepest sense. When we recognize this, then we can overcome the loneliness to some extent. We recognize that it is a human loneliness. It means we are all in the same yacht, and we can then choose to, or not to, let others into our life. Lo and behold, we then have used the aloneness to be less lonely. Sometimes when people have to work in an international community or land where the people who speak their native language are a minority and uninteresting, one can feel painfully lonely, due chiefly to the isolation. And their work may not be that absorbing. Nonetheless, people generally follow the usual defense: they throw themselves into their work with ever greater zeal. However, the harder they work, the more isolated they may feel. Generally, this could lead to an individual collapsing and having to go to bed for a couple of weeks. This is what many call a nervous breakdown. When this happens, one may want to change their lifestyle. Maybe take up a hobby like reading, drawing, gardening, sculpting or a sport. Even learning to cook could be fascinating. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
Still, giving up your habit of rigidly planning your life and taking the flow of your energy as it comes can have some unintended side effects. Being all without aim or sense of direction, isolated, may lead to one feeling like a nonentity since all one’s old ways of proving their worth are no longer being employed. Seeking a new direction and life and letting go and trusting in God has also been helpful for some people. David Talbot started out on his Summer vacating up toward the Caspian Sea with no plans, no fixed guides to follow. By accident he met a group of fifteen or sixteen artists traveling and doing art as a group, and he got a job with them as a sort of fancy handy man. He traveled and had made sketches with them all through the villages along the Caspian Sea. This was the birth of him becoming an architect. He also fell deeply in love that summer and it was the greatest joy of his life. However, should we call this accident of meeting this group an accident, or was it really an expression of destiny? I think it was. When David gave up his rigid and compulsive demands on life, when he let go and let God, unexpected possibilities opened up in unpredictable ways which would have never been known to him. These are aspects of destiny become conscious. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
For other people, they may need to support their confidence without taking away the force of their despair, since despair may well lead to the deepest insight and the most valuable change. When in despair or depression, it is true that most people shrink—they tend to retreat into their hopelessness. However, one should try to experience this despair constructively, as an opportunity. The despair can then act upon the person like the flood in Genesis: it can clear away the vast debris—the false answers, false buoys, superficial lighthouses, and phony principles—and leave the way open for new possibilities. That is, for new freedom. We know in psychotherapy that times of despair are essential to the client’s discovery of hidden capacities and basic assets. Those therapists are misguided who feel it incumbent upon themselves to reassure the patient at every point of despair. For if the client never feels despair, it is doubtful whether one ever will feel anything below the surface. There is surely value in the client’s experience that one has nothing more to lose anyway, so one may as well take whatever leap is necessary. That seems to me to be the meaning of the sentence from folklore, “Despair and confidence both banish fear.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
The loves of childhood and of adolescence cannot be subtracted from us; they have become part of us. Not a discrete part that could be served. It is as if they had entered our blood stream. Therefore, one cannot let anyone tell them what is best to do, and sometimes when you already have a successful career, consider sticking to it or just transferring to a different office or location. Do not let people prey on your vulnerabilities because even those who seem like well wishers would like to see you fail and may give you faulty advice, whether they be paid consultants, friends, family or coworkers. We ought to be mindful that all human beings we confront are persons. We need a new language, and new poets to create it, and new ears to listen to it. Meanwhile, if we shut our ears to the old prophets who still speak more or less in the old tongues, using ancient words, occasionally in new ways, we shall have very little music. We are not so rich that we can do without tradition. Let one that has new ears listen to it in a new way. To be given direction, to feel an impulsion towards it, and to practice purification is a necessary requisite for the journey. Two warnings are needed here: fall not into the extreme of unbalance, and depend not on what is outside. One reminder: seek and submit to grace. It may be imageless or found anywhere anytime and, in any form, —a work of art, a piece of music, a living tree, or a human being—for in the end it must come from your own higher individuality and in your own loneliness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
Before embarking on a new journey in life, one should figure out what attracts them most to this direction? What does one hope to get out of it? And if one is seeking religious satisfaction, spiritual truth or moral power of inner peace or psychic faculties? Consider if you will be satisfied with a theoretical understanding or would one go as far as to put in into practice? And are you will to put in the work and effort and dedication needed for the experience? How far do you think this new path will take you in life, career, and spirituality? The beginnings of this higher life are always mysterious, always unpredictable, sometimes intellectually quiet and sometimes emotionally excited. When first one sets logs of one’s first raft afloat upon these strange waters whose ending can only be somewhere in infinity, as the geometricians say, there are no lights to show one’s frail vessel the way of travel, no Suns or Stars to point a path for it. However, one knows then that one’s head is bowed in homage to a higher power. Later one will know also how utterly right was the intuition which earlier drove one forth. We walk the Quest uncertainly, human nature being what it is, human weakness following us so obtrusively as it does. The decision to embark on this quest—so new, uncommon, and untried to the average Westerner—becomes especially hard to the mortal seeking alone, with no compassion or relative to fortify one’s resolution. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
This urge to discover an intangible reality seems an irrational one to the materialistic mentality. However, on the contrary, it is the most completely logical, the most sensible of all the urges that have ever driven a mortal. The instinct which draws mortals to the truths of philosophy, the experiences of mysticism, and the feeling of religion is a sound one. The fact of one’s own self-existence is the innate primary experience of every mortal. It is clear, certain, and incontrovertible. However, the nature of that existence is obscure, confused, and arguable. So much happens in the subconscious before they are quite aware of it that only when a new decision, a new orientation of feeling or thought is firmly arrived at, and openly appears, do they discover and define what they have been led to by outer and inner developments. In each mortal there is a part of one which is unknown and unmolested. It is in the region of consciousness below the normal state that the most powerful forces move the human being—and can be applied to move one. Here only can the radical transformation be made. If one believes that these ideas ring true, then one’s course of duty is plain. To keep aloof in such a circumstance is to write one’s name in the Book of Failure. Mortals have largely conquered their planetary environment. Now one must begin the sterner task of conquering oneself. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
“Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth” is a sentence from that ancient record, the Hebrew Bible. However, any mortal may find that the Lord is still existent and still willing to speak to one even today. Yet, to actualize such an encounter one must take to the secret path and practice inner listening. In mortals, Heaven and Earth unite. One is free to enjoy the one or the other. The first leads to peace of mind, the second ties one to the terrestrial wheel. Whoever sincerely wants access to divinity may find it, but one must make the first move. The fulfilment of the heart’s nostalgic yearning for its true homeland may be delayed, but it cannot be defeated. If experience, reason, or intuition cannot bring one to the conviction that God rules the World, a prophet’s help, grace, or writing may do so. If that fails, one has no other recourse than to keep pondering the question until light dawns. If the quest seems too far from one’s environment or circumstances, it is still a good time to start, for the reward will be better savoured. This search after the soul need not wait until death until it successfully ends. To do so would be illogical and in most causes futile. Here on Earth and in this very lifetime the grand discover may be made. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
The quest upon which one has entered will be a long one and the task one has understand a hard one. However, the Ideal will also be one’s support because one’s conscience will endorse one’s choice to the end. Leave aside wrangling, and take up the quest leading to the true goal, the Supreme Overself, which is unique. Push thy enquiry further. Since God is the source and power of reconciliation, who could reconcile Him? All of us have tried and are trying to reconcile God by rites and sacraments, by prayers and services, by moral behavior and works of charity. However, if we try this, if we try to give something to God, to show good deeds which may appease the Lord, we fail. It is never enough; we never can satisfy God because there is an infinite demand upon us. And since we cannot appease God, we grow hostile toward the Lord. Have you ever noticed how much hostility against God dwells in the depth of the good and honest people, in those who excel in works of charity, in piety and religious zeal? This cannot be otherwise; for one is hostile, consciously or unconsciously, toward those by whom feels rejected. Everybody is in this predicament, whether one calls that which rejects one God, or nature, or destiny, or social conditions. Everybody carries a hostility toward the existence into which one has been thrown, toward the hidden powers which determine one’s life and that of the Universe, toward that which makes one guilty and that threatens one with destruction because one has become guilty. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
We all feel rejected and hostile toward what has rejected us. We all try to appease it and in failing, we become more hostile. This happens often unnoticed by ourselves. However, there are two symptoms which we hardly can avoid noticing: The hostility against ourselves and the hostility against others. One speaks so often of pride and arrogance and self-certainty and complacency in people. However, this is, in most cases the superficial level of their being. Below this, in a deeper level, there is self-rejection, disgust, and even hatred of one’s self. Be reconciled to God; that means at the same time, be reconciled to ourselves. However, we are not; we try to appease ourselves. We try to make ourselves more acceptable to our own judgment and, when we fail, we grow more hostile toward ourselves. And one who feels rejected by God and who rejects oneself feels also rejected by the others. As one grows hostile toward destiny and hostile toward oneself, one also grows hostile toward other people. If we are often horrified by the unconscious or conscious hostility people betray toward us or about our own hostility toward people whom we believe we love, let us not forget: They feel rejected by us; we feel rejected by them. They tried hard to make themselves acceptable to us, and they failed. We tried hard to make ourselves acceptable to them, and we failed. And their hostility grew. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
Be reconciled with God—that means, at the same time, be reconciled with the others! However, it does not mean try to reconcile the others as it does not mean try to reconcile the others as it does not mean try to reconcile yourselves. Try to reconcile God. You will fail. This is the message: A new reality has appeared in which you are reconciled. To enter the New Being we do not need to show anything. We must only be open to be grasped by it, although we have nothing to show. Being reconciled—tat is the first mark of the New Reality. And being reunited is its second mark. Reconciliation makes reunion possible. The New Creation is the reality in which the separated is reunited. The New Being is manifest in the Christ because in the him the separation never overcame the unity between him and God, between him and humankind, between him and himself. This gives his picture in the Gospels its overwhelming and inexhaustible power. In him we look at a human life that maintained the union in spite of everything that drove him into separation. He represents and mediates the power of the New Being because he represents and mediates the power of an undisrupted union. Where the New Reality appears, one feels united with God, the ground and meaning of one’s existence. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
One has what has been called the love of one’s destiny, and what, today, we might call the courage to take upon ourselves our own anxiety. Then one has the astonishing experience of feeling reunited with one’s self, not in pride and false self-satisfaction, but in deep self-acceptance. One accepts one’s self as something which is eternally important, eternally loved, eternally accepted. The disgust at one’s self, the hatred of one’s self has disappeared. There is a center, a direction, a meaning for life. All healing—bodily and mental—creates this reunion of one’s self with one’s self. Where there is real healing, there is the New Being, The New Creation. However real healing is not where only a part of body or mind is reunited with the whole, but where the whole itself, our whole being, our whole personality is untied with itself. The New Creation is healing creation because it creates reunion with oneself. And it creates reunion with the others. Nothing is more distinctive the Old Being than the separation of mortals from mortals. Nothing is more passionately demanded than social healing, than the New Being within history and human relationships. Religion and Christianity are under strong accusation that they have not brought reunion into human history. Who could deny the truth of this challenge. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
Nevertheless, humankind still lives; and it could not live any more if the power of separation had not been permanently conquered by the power of reunion, of healing, of the New Creation. Where one is grasped by a human face as human, although one has to overcome personal distaste, or racial strangeness, or national conflicts, or the differences of sex, of age, of beauty, of strength, of knowledge, and all the other innumerable causes of separation—there New Creation happens! Humankind lives because this happens again and again. And if the Church which is the assembly of God has an ultimate significance, this is its significance: That here the reunion of mortal to mortal is pronounced and confessed and realize, even if in fragments and weaknesses and distortions. The Church is the place where the reunion of mortals with mortals is an actual event, though the Church of God is permanently betrayed by the Christian churches. However, although betrayed and expelled, the New Creation saves and preserves that by which it is betrayed and expelled: churches, humankind and history. The Church, like all its members, relapses from the New into the Old Being. Therefore, the third mark of the New Creation is re-surrection. The word resurrection has for many people the connotation of dead bodies leaving their graves or other fanciful images. However, resurrection means the victory of the New state of things, the New Being born out of the death of the Old. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
Resurrection is not even an event that might happen in some remote future, but it is the power of the New Being to create life out of death, here and now, today and tomorrow. Where there is a New Being, there is resurrection, namely, the creation into eternity out of every moment of time. The Old Being has the mark of disintegration and death. The New Being puts a new mark over the old one. Out of disintegration and death something is born of eternal significance. That which is immersed in dissolution emerges in a New Creation. Resurrection happens now, or it does not happen at all. It happens in us and around us, in soul and history, in nature and Universe. Reconciliation, reunion, resurrection—this is the New Creation, the New Being, the New state of things. Do we participate in it? The message of Christianity is not Christianity, but a New Reality. A New state of things has appeared, it still appears; it is hidden and visible, it is there and it is here. Accept it, enter into it, let it grasp you. There is a great difference between the essence of the Necessary and that of the Good. There is no contradiction between seeking our own good in human being and wishing for one’s good to be increased. For this very reason, when the motive that draws us toward anybody is simply some advantage for ourselves, the conditions of friendship are not fulfilled. Friendship is a supernatural harmony, a union of opposites. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
When a human being is any degree necessary to us, we cannot desire one’s good unless we cease to desire our own. Where there is necessity there is constraint and domination. We are in the power of that of which we stand in need, unless we possess it. The central good for every mortal is the free disposal of oneself. Either we renounce it, which is a crime of idolatry, since it can be renounced only in favor of God, or we desire that the being we stand in need of should be deprived of this free disposal of oneself. Any kind of mechanism may join human beings together with bonds of affection which have the iron hardness of necessity. Mother love is often of such a kind; so at times is paternal love, as in Pere Goriot of Balzac; so is carnal love in its most intense form, as in L’Ecole des Femmes and in Phedre; so also, very frequently, is the love between husband and wife, chiefly as a result of habit. Filial and fraternal love are more rarely of this nature. A person with a good heart can help someone fix a tire, take a roommate to the doctor, have lunch with someone who is sad, or smile and say hello to brighten a day. However, a follower of the first commandment will naturally add to these important acts of service. We need to have compassion and we will be provided opportunities to forget self and lift others. If we are to be more like Christ, we are to be sensitive to the struggles, trials, and challenges faced by so many but that can often be overlooked. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
There Other Two Persons Seemed a Million Miles Away—Hold Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand and Eternity in an Hour
The air so emotionally frigid that when going to be at night, there was a feeling that no other person was in the house. I never in a thousand years would have imagined that would come out. Often times in human beings there is an early attachment of imprinting behavior, where people seem to follow their attachment with a similar blind fidelity. And this behavior may be made stronger by punishment or other difficulties put in their path. Some people spend a lifetime looking for someone to make up for their losses, to bring them justice for their less than pleasant childhoods or adult life. They go through life lonely, yearning for a love that will fill the large area of emptiness in their hearts. However, the struggles these individuals are engaged in is bound to be self-defeating. The first and fundamental challenge is to confront one’s fate as it is, reconcile one’s self to the fact that one did receive a bad deal, know that justice is irrelevant, no one will ever make up for the emptiness and the pain of those years. The past cannot be changed—it can only be acknowledged and learned from. It is one’s destiny. It can be absorbed and mitigated by new experiences, but it cannot be changed or erased. An individual only adds insult to injury by going on the rest of one’s life knocking one’s head against the same stone wall. Fortunately, psychotherapy can be a vehicle through which human beings may become more aware of and compensate for such implanted destiny. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Some people hang on to the past as a way of hanging on to someone they cared deeply about. It is an expression of the hope that someday this coveted individual will reward one, someday one will find the Holy Grail. Now one will get the original care one was missing; now one will get that restored! However, there is no way to restore it, no matter how much of a loss it is. Bad fate, yes. Yet, that is just the way it is. The lost idol image, the lost change, the great emptiness within one—they are all going to remain there. These things are the past; there is no way of changing them. You can change your attitude toward these tragic happenings, as the ultimate freedom is a command over one’s own attitude. However, you cannot change the experiences themselves. If you hang on to an illusion of such change, always hoping for pie in the sky by and by and by you cut off your possibilities. You then become rigid. You do not let yourself take in the new possibilities. You trade your freedom for a mess of emotional pottage. And this way, as a corollary, you never use your anger constructively. You lose a tremendous amount of power, energy, and possibility. In short, you lose your freedom. However, is there no constructive value in coming to terms with one’s early fate? Yes, there is—and a value potentially greater than what one gives up. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
The struggle to come to terms with acrimonious relationships and lifestyles has much to do with the emergence of creativity. For example, a man who had an unpleasant childhood ended up developing talents which led to his high status in the World of architecture. Because he had such a disturbed family life, that the creativity was compensation for such an early trauma. We know that creative people often come out of such unfortunate family backgrounds. Why and how they do is still one of the mysteries the answer to which the Sphinx of creativity has not revealed. We do know that some people have been unfortunate and never have been able to take life lightly. They learn from the hour of birth that it is best to take life easily, as many may. They cannot coast along or rest on their laurels. This exceptional achievement following a disturbed childhood or adulthood had been documented in many cases. Such freedom of the artist is not born. It is made in the pain of adolescent loneliness, the isolation of physical disability, or, perhaps, the smug superiority of inherited title. The freedom that permits generation of possibilities is the beginning of a creative product. Many of our most valuable people have come from the most calamitous situations. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
Investigations of the childhoods of eminent people expose the fact that they did not receive anything like the kind of child rearing that a person in our culture is led to believe is healthy for children. Whether in spite of or because of these conditions, it is clear that these children not only survived, but reached great heights of achievements, many after having experienced the most deplorable traumatic childhoods. The tension in these personalities between high aspiration and disappointment may well be the necessary matrix out of which creativity—and, later, civilization—is born. This type cannot slide into any well-adjusted syndrome. There is the outstanding exception of J.S. Bach, but his contentment—if it was that—seems to have been a combination of fortunate social conditions. The well-adjusted person rarely make great painters, sculptors, writers, architects, musicians. Coming out of such a confused early childhood allows the creative capacity to be considered a later compensation. The question is: Can a person seize these possibilities—these new reaches of freedom not without cruel fate, but despite fate—and weld them into a significant building, house, a statue, a painting, or some other creative product? #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
If one can accept the deprivation of the care one rightfully expected, if one can engage this loneness face to face, one will have achieved a strength and a power that will be a foundation more solid than one ever could have achieved otherwise. If one can accept this aspect of one’s destiny, the fates will work rather than against one. In this way one lives with the Universe rater than against it. One must learn to engage and accept these cruel things in one’s background. It is, therefore, inevitable that the questions “Is there a need for self-control” arises when a way of life is being espoused that encourages freedom of thought and action. And it is vital that no glib, easy answer be given, for it is an important question. Situations do exist where it can be said without equivocation “Yes, do exercise self-control.” Wen, for example, individuals have the desire to destroy the life or property of others or when they have the urge to take their own lives or act in obviously self-destructive ways, it is important that they control these impulses. Society has found it necessary and desirable, when it has the opportunity, to impose control on such persons by limiting their freedom by restraining them. One of the most painful tragedies in American life today is the suicides that occur among high school and college students—frequently those of great promise. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
It could be said those planning to end their own lives to please, please, hold on! Life may seem painful and meaningless. Perhaps you feel suddenly and terribly disillusioned. However, at least bear with the struggles and give yourselves the perspective of a few more years before you make such an irrevocable decision. It is not enough simply to develop self-control, even though we may need to use it to curb destructive impulses. The ultimately satisfying answer is to deal effectively with problems that underlie our destructive impulses so that we can move beyond the need for self-control. The basic problem is self-hate, for self-destructiveness and destructiveness directed toward others go hand and hand. The nation, for example, that sets out to destroy other nations is bent on a self-destructive course. The personal who assaults another person and follows one’s impulses is not benefiting one’s self. And, of course, one’s self-hate is evident in the obvious lack of confidence on one’s ability to relate to individuals in other ways that would be more pleasant. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
So let us be clear about one thing. The violent or destructive acts we are so often afraid we will do if we do not control ourselves are not the result of true freedom or spontaneity. The murderer is not free. One is an enslaved, tormented person who is driven by pent-up feelings of self-hate that have been projected outward onto other individuals or onto society at large. The superheated steam of this hatred builds up in one’s internal pressure cooker until whatever self-control one possesses is bypassed in an explosion of violence. To exhort such a person to control one’s self may be a necessary stop-gap measure, although it is likely to be futile. Any thorough-going help must deal with the mortal’s self-hate. Most of us may feel some impulses within ourselves to be destructive to others or to ourselves, which we sense the seen to curb by self-control. Often the inner pressure is not too great and we can be successful in this control if we choose to go that route, but the more such self-control we need to impose on ourselves the less able we will be to be carefree and spontaneous. And spontaneity is a deliciously desirable way of living. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
If we can discover why we feel destructive and through this exploration reduce the self-hate to the point where we have relatively little need for self-control, it will be a far more freeing experience. A professional therapist can often be very helpful here, for one can provide a relatively secure environment where hatreds (both toward the self and others) can be expressed and explored with a minimum of danger. Often in therapy people discover that they are not nearly as dangerous to themselves or others as the feared. They find they had been so frightened of freedom that they had imagined themselves far more potentially harmful than they were as a way of keeping themselves rigidly controlled. However, some people like to deceive themselves. To be rejected makes a better excuse—to tell everyone how misunderstood they are, and how they triumphed over great odds. The misunderstood genius, nobody to help them, and so on. We all live in the old state of things. We belong to the Old Creation, and the demand made upon us by Christianity is that we also participate in the New Creation. We have known ourselves in our old being, and we shall ask ourselves in this hour whether we also have experiences something of a New Being in ourselves. The union with God is when the New Reality is present. God is the ultimate truth and demands complete devotion. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
It is important to experience the birth in consciousness of a new—though old—part of the self. One may consider it a dawning of awareness of new possibilities which have in effect been there all the time. This is a giant step toward personal freedom. This New Creation is manifest in Jesus who is called Christ. And it is actually the beginning of accepting acceptance, the uniting of one’s self with that early self that one had had to lock up in a dungeon in order to survive when life was not happy but threatening. Although this does not alter the original lack of basic trust, it does surmount it in the literal meaning of that term. We hear about the psychology of anger and how it clouds our vision, causes us to misunderstand each other, and in general interferes with the calm necessary for a rational, clear view of life. People point out that their anger curtails one’s freedom. All this is true. However, it is one-sided; it omits the constructive side to anger. In our society, we confuse anger with resentment, a form of repressed anger that eats steadily away at our innards. In resentment we store up ammunition to get even with our fellows, but we never communicate directly in a way that might resolve the problem. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
This transformation of anger into resentment is the sickness of the middle class. It corrodes our stature as human beings. Or we confuse anger with temper, which is generally an explosion of repressed anger; with rage, which may be a pathological anger; with petulance, which is immature resentment; or with hostility, which is anger absorbed into our character structure until it infects every act of ours. I am not referring to these kinds of hostility or resentment. I am speaking, rather, of the anger that pulls the diverse parts of the self together, that integrates the self, keeps the whole self alive and present, energizes us, sharpens our vision, and stimulates us to think more clearly. This kind of anger brings with it an experience of self-esteem and self-worth. It is the healthy anger that makes freedom possible, the anger that cuts one loose from the unnecessary baggage in living. However, people who are romantically involved with others that do not share their values will find there is a conflict of two different value systems, and it will feel like a red hot poker being shoved into your heart. Some people take their issues they have with their absentee parents out on their partner or a family member of the same gender as the parent they have an issue with. They take revenge by punishing innocent people as a whole. The individual being targeted has to admit one’s own cruelty—cruelty to one’s self most of all for allowing someone like that to be in one’s life. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
Do not cover up what you really feel and become deceitful just to survive. Do not surrender your freedom. Many people always try to foresee that the other person’s reaction will be before they speak. These types of individual hide behind such laudable words as responsibility, dutiful, noble member of society, and so on. However, one must hate these roles they play with people who are taking advantage of them. Occasionally being honest with people and venting your anger will give you partial freedom. At least one starts to know one can say what one feels. However, it may still be a freedom within a jail. There is the lacking surge of anger that leads to a changing of one’s life, the willingness to cut loose all the barges one is pulling, to throw aside all one’s luggage and one’s overscrupulous cares. It is not a good idea to always prefer to be hurt rather than to take care of yourself even if it hurts someone else. Another vital question remains to be discussed in regard to living spontaneously. Can we be deeply involved in a love relationship and still be free to be spontaneous? A great many people act as though love and spontaneity are incompatible. There are two frequent feelings that contribute to this reaction that love and freedom cannot coexist. And, of course, they help to make love that much more frightening to us. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
One of these feelings has to do with the idea that the revealing of ourselves, which intimacy involves, gives the other person power over us, thereby limiting our freedom to do what we want to do. Have you noticed that when you talk to people sometimes it is like you have an invisible wall between your eyes and theirs—a wall that has never been absent in all the time you have know them? Well, some of us are always on guard. There is the feeling that one can never let anyone see one completely—know all about who we are. That is because it would give the other person too many strings on one. It would allow one to become their puppet. Many develop these defenses of withdrawing into one’s self and permitting others to see as few of one’s real feelings as possible as a way of avoiding manipulation by them. This is because some feel if one allows others to really know one, one will be helpless to avoid being manipulated. The other feeling that leads us to shy away from love because it appears to threaten our freedom is probably even more common. This is the idea that love is inescapably tied up with obligation and responsibility. Among other ways in which this duty theme operates is the idea that if we really love another we will cease doing what we want to do and concentrate on pleasing the one we love. Such feelings often strike a death blow to the experience and expression of love. Men and women talk about their lack of freedom to do what they would like to do because of the necessity of providing adequately for their families. So work becomes noxious, tolerated duty. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
We also hear could saying their partner would not like it if they did this or that and that they would like to go out, but the children have to come first, you know. So all of life become hedged about with responsibilities and the necessity of pleasing others brought about by love. And virtually everything in life, from daily work, fidelity, pleasures of the flesh, and second honeymoons to family picnics, walking in the park, and holding hands in the movie, becomes a dutiful and essentially joyless act that we do in hope that spouse and children will be pleased. When approached this way, it is no wonder that love seems like slavery and many splendored things! When so many people view love this way, it is not surprising that a playboy (and playgirl) philosophy would develop in our culture in which physical intimacy without emotional intimacy would become very attractive to us as a way of life. The essential message of the philosophy seems to be, “As long as I can remain indifferent to my pleasures of the flesh partners I can retain my freedom and individuality. Once I begin to allow myself to care for someone, I have had it! I am on my way to becoming a slave.” The joker in this deck is that the moment we embrace this philosophy we have walked out on the freedom to have the most deeply satisfying fun of all—a love relationship freely experienced and expressed. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
The basic problem underlying our feeling that love and freedom are incompatible is our old nemesis, self-hate. If we act freely and do what we want to do, we assume, and often we have been taught to assume, that we will destroy relationships that are important to us. However, this involves a colossal distrust of ourselves. We are, in effect, saying to ourselves, “If you do not watch yourself carefully, you are such a miserable creature and so self-destructive that you will alienate everyone you care for and end up all alone.” The reality is that one of the quickest ways of alienating another person is to put every effort into pleasing them. When we try to put their wishes foremost, we are likely to become a nonentity in their eyes. It is not particularly pleasing to attempt to relate to a person who has no apparent desires of one’s own, who always bends to accommodate our wishes, and who makes an uncomplaining doormat of one’s self for us to walk upon. Furthermore, when we deny our own desires, we quickly come to resent that person for talking advantage of us. That resentment will then likely be expressed in any number of ways. Perhaps we begin to take on martyr posture and express by word or attitude the feelings: “After all I have done for you, the least you could do would be to try to please me once in a while.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
It is much more straightforward and ultimately satisfying to be what we want to be and do what we want to do. As we learn that we can value ourselves and respond to our own desires, it is unlikely we will act in ways that destroy relationships with those for whom we care—because this will be destructive toward ourselves, too. It is true that more flare-ups of disagreements and anger may occur, because our wishes and those of others will not always agree, but two individuals in this situation are likely to respect each other for being sufficiently independent to express feelings openly, and the way is then clear to battle through to some agreements. If we do find ourselves acting in ways that constantly hurt those we love and destroy our relationships with them it would be advisable to seek professional help, for it would be an indication that we have so much self-hate that we have a need to hurt ourselves, since hurting others is self-destructive. Love God and do as you please. This is a profound idea, but it can be carried an additional step and be developed into a philosophical phrase which is more complete. If you truly value yourself, love yourself and do as you please for you will not hurt people unnecessarily. To do so would be to hurt yourself. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
This seems too good to be true to most of us. We are so connived that to live spontaneously is to live dangerously toward others and ourselves, but if we can begin, perhaps a little at a time, to be more responsive to our inner selves, we will discover that living spontaneously is exciting and rewarding to ourselves and to those we care for. Once having made that discovery we will not be content with less than an ever-increasingly spontaneous life. Moving toward the right attitude is passionate and infinite longing. The New Being is not something at simply takes the place of the Old Being. However, it is a renewal of the Old which has been corrupted, distorted, split and almost destroyed. Yet, not wholly destroyed. Salvation does not destroy creation; but it transforms the Old Creation into a New one. Therefore we can speak of the New in terms of a re-newal: The threefold “re,” namely, re-condilation, re-union, re-surrection. The message of reconciliation is: Be reconciled to God. Crease to be hostile to the Lord, for God is never hostile to you. The message of reconciliation is not that Good needs to be reconciled. How could he be? Since God is the source and power of reconciliation, who could reconcile the Lord? The sacred is here and now. God is present in all elements. Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
All I Do to My Disciples is to Free them from their Own Bondage by Any Means their Case May Need
Try always to treat humanity, in our person as well as that of others, as an end and never only as a means. Even when you treat me only as a means I do not always mind. A genuine encounter can be quite exhausting, even when it is exhilarating, and I do not always want to give myself. Even when you treat me only as a means because you want some information, I may feel delighted that I have the answer and can help. However, mortal’s attitudes are manifold, and there are many ways of threatening others as ends also. There are many modes of I-You. You may be polite when asking; you may show respect, affection, admiration, or one of the countless attitudes that mortals call love. Or you may not ask but seek without the benefit of words. Or you may speak but not ask, possibly responding to my wordless question. We may do something together. You may write me. You may think of writing me. And there are others ways. There are many modes of I-You. The total encounter in which You is spoken with one’s whole being is but one mode of I-You. Obscurity is fascinating. One tries to puzzle out details, is stumped, and becomes increasingly concerned with meaning—unless one feels put off and gives up altogether. We pay a price of all the activities in our lives. When it is Life loses much of its color, its adventure, and its satisfaction in relationships wen it is lived in these terms. Take legalism, for example. Thus church, though it has to exclusive domain on legalism, provides many examples of people who are essentially legalists. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
A certain Mrs. Rice gained considerable prestige and power in her denomination. This was largely because she was a tireless and efficient worker for the church since her husband, a successful businessman, had died and left her financially independent while she still had many active years left. She devoted them mainly to the church. She was also, of course, in a position to make large donations to her favorite projects in the denomination, which did not diminish her influence among denominational leaders. Mrs. Rice wore her increasing stature in the church well. Correctness in behavior was important to her, and she was every inch the gracious lady. She was charming and friendly. She did not throw her weight around in any obvious fashion. If she has any secret sins they were well hidden, and everyone would have been greatly surprised had any come to light. In spite of her friendliness and her habit of befriending many younger people, however, it would have been hard to have imagined her to be very close to anyone. She was the patroness of many, the confidante of none. Not too long after the death of her husband, a minister came to the local church of which she was a member. She appeared to develop a deep respect, perhaps even affection, for this man, who had great talents. Toward the end of his ministry in that perish the relationship between Mrs. Rice and the minister, while still cordial, seemed perceptibly more distant, a fact that was puzzling to the minister. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
When the minister had been in another church in the denomination for some time, his name began to appear as a candidate for various positions of importance within the church on the basis of his demonstrated abilities. However, it also became apparent that his name was being dropped from consideration each time it came up. It eventually came to him through friends that there was a persistent rumor for a reliable source that he had had a sexual affair with one of the women of his former parish. With characteristic directness he traced the rumor to its source, the church’s wealthy benefactress. When he confronted her, Mrs. Rice admitted that she was responsible for the rumor, although, as she said, “There may have been one or two others who thought the same thing.” She said she was convinced that what she had reported was true and that she felt it was her duty to prevent such a person from achieving eminence in the church. Even if he were innocent, she felt, the fact that he could bring on such suspicious by his actions indicated he was a person of questionable judgement. The minister had traced the rumor, he was only able in a small way to lessen its harmful effect on his career. It seems almost irrelevant to report that he had not be sexually involved with the woman in question though it had been a deeply significant relationship for him and filled a need for emotional intimacy he had not experienced elsewhere. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
The wealthy widow serves as an example of the essential barrenness of the legalistic approach to life. True intimacy was unquestionably frightening to Mrs. Rice, and living by the rules protected her from it. In a very practiced and not unpleasing way she was proper and friendly. Always the friendliness was within bounds. To have revealed enough to herself to have been emotionally close to another would probably have seemed like an impropriety to her. It is probable that her adherence to the rules made it difficult, if not impossible, to see herself clearly. No doubt she was sexually attracted to the minister, but this would be so untenable a thought that she would not allow herself to feel it. When faced with the decision as to whether or not to betray her friend, perhaps she was faced with some brief doubts. However, this was no doubt quickly, if sadly, resolved by her dedication to the rules. So it became her Christian duty to pass on her knowledge to others, and she willingly became judge, jury, and executioner. Is there no place for rules in life? Yes, of course there is. Society provides many examples. We agree that we will drive on one side of the street rather than on the other and thus eliminate mass chaos. In a complex society we need such rules. And no doubt we have a responsibility to ourselves to see that helpful ones are enacted and that destructive or overly restrictive laws are not enacted, or, if they have been enacted, to see that they are repealed. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
However, when rules become a way of life, they become a problem. When we constantly judge ourselves and other people good or bad, the rules become distancing devices. We tend to classify people, including ourselves; and we give up our freedom to accept, enjoy, and respond to people, including ourselves, as they are. Almost always in rule-dominated lives, a hierarchy of sins tends to develop, and those sins we tend to find most frighteningly desirable but unacceptable in ourselves tend to head the list. We are likely to be most condemning of sins of passion—expressions of anger, pleasures of the flesh, unrestrained expressions of love and warmth, unconfined creative thinking that threatens changes in the established order. Far down on the list and sometimes the subject of polite discussion but never accorded the passionate condemnation given the fist order of sins are such things as indifference, coldness, prejudice, unscrupulous business practices, hypocrisy, judgmentalism, and the like. Of these we tend to be tolerant, for this, as we say, is “just the way people are”! Becoming less legalistic helps us to love more spontaneously. If we move beyond self-control into a more creative relationship with ourselves, it will also help us. If we allow ourselves to be responsive to our impulses and desires, many of us have deep-seated fears that we will in one way or another run amuck and be destructive to those about us and perhaps ultimately to ourselves. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
Because of this pervasive mistrust of ourselves, we feel it necessary to clamp lids of self-control on our lives. We set up a kind of inner boarder of censorship through which most of our impulses to act or speak must pass and be voted upon before action can be permitted. Obviously, much of our potential spontaneity is lost in the process. In one of Grimm’s stories there is a competition between a giant and a little tailor to see which is the stronger. The giant throws a stone so high that it takes a very long time before it comes down again. The little tailor lets a bird fly and it does not come down at all. Anything without wings always comes down again in the end. It is because the will has no power to bring about salvation that the idea of secular morality is an absurdity. What is called morality only depends on the will in what is, so to speak, its most muscular aspect. Religion on the contrary corresponds to desire, and it is desire that saves. The Roman caricature of Stoicism also appears to the muscular will. However, true Stoicism, the Stoicism of the Greek, from which Saint John, or perhaps Christ, borrowed the terms Logos and Pneuma, is purely desire, piety, and love. It is fully of humility. The Christianity of today has let itself become contaminated by its adversaries, on this point as on many others. The metaphor of a search for Go is suggestive of efforts of muscular will. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
It is true that Pascal contributed to the spread of this metaphor of the search for God. He made several mistakes, notably that of confusing faith and autosuggestion to a certain extent. In the great symbols of mythology and folklore, in the parables of the Gospel, it is God who seeks mortals. “Quaevens me sedisti lassus.” Nowhere in the Gospel is there question of a search undertake by mortals. Mortals do not take a step unless one receives some pressure or is definitely called. The role of the future wife is to wait. The slaves waits and watches while one’s master is at a festival. The passer-by does not invite oneself to the marriage feast, one does not ask for an invitation; one is brought in almost by surprise; one’s part is only to put on the appropriate garment. The mortal has found a pearl in a field sells all one’s goods to buy the field; one does not need to excavate the entire field with a spade in order to unearth the pearl; it is enough for one to sell all one possesses. To long for God and to renounce all the rest, that alone can save us. The conditions of modern civilized society are not helpful to the Christian self-culture, although they will serve intellectual self-culture. What is first needed is a recognition of the value of retreat, of times and places where every many and woman may periodically and temporarily isolate oneself or whilst withdrawing attention from Worldly affairs and giving it wholly to spiritual ones. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
The attitude that brings about salvation is not like any forms of activity. It is the waiting or attentive and faithful immobility that lasts indefinitely and cannot be shaken. The slave, who waits near the door so as to open it immediately when the master knocks, is the best image of it. One must be ready to die of hunger and exhaustion rather than to change one’s attitude. It must be possible for one’s companion to call one, talk to one, hit one, without one even turning one’s head. Even if one is told that the master is dead, and even if one believes it, one will not move. If one is told that the master is angry with one and will beat one when he returns, and if one believes it, one will not move. Active searching is prejudicial, not only to love, but also to the intelligence, whose laws are the same as those of love. We just have to wait for the solution of a geometrical problem or the meaning of a Latin or Greek sentence to some into our mind. Still more must we wait for any new scientific truth or for a beautiful line of poetry. Seeking leads us astray. This is the case with every form of what is truly good. Mortals should do nothing but wait for the good and keep evil away. One should make no muscular effort except in order not to be shaken by evil. In the constant turning and returning of which our human condition is made up, true virtue in every domain is negative, at least in appearance. This waiting for goodness and truth is, however, something more intense than any searching. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
These words will make no appeal to the materialist mentality which still regards all spiritual experiences as the outcome of pathological conditions. Such an attitude, fortunately, has become less sure of itself than it was when first I embarked on these studies and experiments, now more than in the past. The Christian who sits in an hour-long prayer session is not wasting one’s time, even though one is indulging in something which to the sceptic seems meaningless. On the contrary, one’s prayer is of vital significance. The Father is aware of us, knows our needs, and will help us perfectly. One aspect of that perfect love is our Heavenly Father’s involvement in the details of our lives, even when we may not be aware of it or understand it. We seek the Father’s divine guidance and help through heartfelt, earnest prayer. When we honor our covenants and strive to be more like our Savior, we are entitled to a constant stream of divine guidance through the influence and inspiration of the Holy Ghost. The notion of grace, as opposed to virtue depending on the will, and that of inspiration, as opposed to intellectual or artistic work, these two notions, if they are well understood, show the efficacy of desire and of waiting. Attention animated by desire is the whole foundation of religious practices. That is why no system of mortality can take their place. The mediocre part of the soul has, however, a great many lies in its arsenal that are capable of protecting it, even during prayer or the participation of the sacraments. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
The soul outs veils between our eyes and the presence of perfect purity, and it is clever enough to call them God—such veils, for instance, as states of the soul, sources of sensible joy, of hope, of comfort, of soothing consolation, or else a combination of habits, or one or several human beings, or perhaps a social circle. It is difficult to avoid the pitfall of striving to imagine the divine perfection religion invites us to love. Never in any case can we imagine something more perfect than ourselves. This effort renders useless the marvel of the Eucharist. A certain formation of intelligence is necessary in order to be able to contemplate the Eucharist only what by definition it enshrines, that is to say, something which is totally outside our experience, something of which we only know that it exists and that noting else can ever be desires expect in error. The trap of traps, the almost inevitable trap, is the social one. Everywhere, always, in everything, the social feeling produces a perfect imitation of faith, that is to say perfectly deceptive. This imitation has the great advantage of satisfying every part of the soul. That which longs for goodness believes it is fed. That which is mediocre is not hurt by the light; it is quite at its ease. Thus everyone is in agreement. The soul is at peace. However, Christ said that he did not come to bring peace. He brought a sword, the sword that serves in two. It is almost impossible to distinguish faith from its social imitation. All the more so because the soul can contain one part of true faith and one of imitation faith. It is almost but not quite impossible. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
Under present circumstances, it is perhaps a question of life of death for faith that the social imitation should be repudiated. The necessity for a perfectly pure presence to take away defilement is not restricted to churches. People come with their stains to the churches, and that is all very well. It would, however, be more in conformity with the spirit of Christianity if, besides that, Christ went to bring his presence into those places most polluted wit shame, misery, crime, and affliction, into prisons and law courts, into workhouses and shelters for the wretched and the outcast. Every session of bench or courts should begin and end with a prayer, in which the magistrates, the police, and the accused, and the public shared. Christ should not be absent from the places where work or study is going on. All human beings, whatever they are doing and wherever they are, should be able to have their eyes fixed, during the whole of each day, upon the service of bronze. Is should also be publicly and officially recognized that religion is nothing else but a looking. In so far as it claims to be anything else, it is inevitable that it should either be shut up inside churches, or that it should stifle everything in every other place where it is found. Religion should not claim to occupy a place in society other than that which rightly belongs to supernatural love in the soul. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
Moreover it is true also that many people degrade charity in themselves because they want to make it occupy too large and too visible a place in their soul. Our Father lives only in secret. Love should always be accompanied by modesty. True faith implies great discretion, even with regard to itself. It is a secret between God and us in which we ourselves have scarcely any part. The love of our neighbor, the love of the beauty of the World, and the love of religion are in a sense quite impersonal loves. This could easily not be so in the last case, because religion is connected with a certain section of society. The very nature of religion is connected with a certain section of society. The very nature of religious practices must remedy this. At the center of the Catholic religion a little formless matter is found, a little piece of bread. The love directed toward this particle of matter is necessarily impersonal. It is not the human person of Christ such as we picture him; it is not the divine person of the Father, likewise subject to all the errors of our imagination; it is outwardly only a fragment of matter, yet it is at the center of the Catholic religion. Herein is possessed the great scandal and yet the most wonderful virtue of this religion. It all authentic forms of religious life alike, there is something that guarantees their impersonal character. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
The love of God ought to be impersonal as long as there has not been any direct and personal contact; otherwise it is an imaginary love. Afterward it ought to be both personal and impersonal again, but this time in a higher sense. There is however a personal and human love which is pure and which enshrines an intimation and a reflection of divine love. This is friendship, provided we keep strictly to the true meaning of the word. And keep in mind that God is at this moment aware of you, your feelings, and the spiritual and temporal needs of everyone around you. This great and comforting truth can be found in daily life. The closer we draw to our Heavenly Father, the more his light and joy will shine from within us. Others will notice that there is something unique and special about us. And they will ask about it. We have to try to fill our hearts with love for others and truly see everyone around us as a child of God. Laugh with them, rejoice with them, weep with them, respect them, heal, life and strengthen them. Strive to emulate the love of Christ and have compassion for others—even to those who are unkind, who mock and wish to cause harm. Love them and treat them as fellow children of Heavenly Father. As our love for God and his children deepens, so does our commitment to follow Jesus Christ. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Randolph Harris II International Institute 