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If they Do Not Even Know Why they are Standing Upon it at All, What is the Use of their Running from Point to Point on this Earth?
Your faith touches me as always, but do not be my acolyte just now. They were already legends—filled with love for all they saw around them, beings who understood the word joy. How can we learn to love ourselves? Perhaps we can start by admitting that it is impossible! It is not possible in the same sense that we will never become completely self-accepting (not in this life anyway!). Like others values worth wanting, loving one’s self is an ideal never fully realized. However, moving in that direction is a fascinating and worthwhile, lifelong adventure. If we can become more self-aware, it will help us to become more loving toward ourselves. It is not possible to love someone profoundly whom one does not know, and many of us are virtually strangers to ourselves, so deadened have we become to any awareness of our deeper feelings. And since we have spent many years cutting ourselves off from awareness of hated parts of ourselves, the recovery of awareness is usually not easily accomplished. We are frightened of what we may find and resist awareness in multitudes of ways. Frequently, the help of a professional therapist is needed to help us overcomes these resistances. Often in the early stages of recovering self-awareness it will seem as though we are learning to hate ourselves, not love ourselves. This happens because one of the first things we become aware of is our hidden self-hate, which has been building up over the years and of which we have likely had only vague intimations, and feelings that have been too unacceptable for us to allow ourselves to experience some to the surface. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
We may begin to feel more hate then we thought it was possible for us to feel. Self-loathing, deeply experienced hurt, disgust about pleasures of the flesh, and other frightening feelings may burst into awareness. This is a crisis in personal growth, but it is often a necessary crisis. Advocates of self-actuating thinking approach mental health frequently do a disservice at this point. Too often they short-circuit this process by encouraging individuals to think optimistically about themselves without taking into account their need to first experience their self-hatred. Under the influence of this advice individuals are likely to cover up something bad about apparent self-acceptance and self-affirmation over the tomb of their inner deadness to themselves and their self-hate. In this way they may talk themselves into being more successful insurance salesmen or less disagreeable husbands, while they have only cut themselves off even farther from contact with themselves and the ultimate possibility of genuine self-acceptance and self-affirmation. Gradually, when we allow ourselves to experience self-hate, this crisis will pass. We discover that it is not so bad after all to have very human feelings. A young woman who has been shocked and scandalized by accounts of promiscuity feels profound disgust as she becomes aware that she, too, has desires for pleasures of the flesh that are not limited to one man. However, she begins to enjoy and cherish her feelings for pleasures of the flesh. As is usually the case, he disgust masked an unaccepted appetite. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
Khayman was a young man addicted to working long and hard hours and he was considerably bugged by his father’s lack of ambition. He could not understand how his father could go off for a day of fishing when he was having business difficulties and financial pressures. When the young man examined his feelings more closely, it became evident that he did not allow himself to experience his own desire to take off and get away from it all occasionally. He was afraid he would like it too much and become a drifter. So he drove himself constantly, no allowing himself the pleasure of relaxation. And it is not surprising that once Khayman was able to experience this desire to loaf within himself, he not only moved in the direction of greater self-acceptance but was able to experience more love for his father. If we can keep our goals realistic, it will also help us in our efforts to learn to love ourselves. Many of us make severe demands on ourselves. We think we ought to be perfect, and we think we ought to achieve that perfection immediately. When we fail to do so, as we certainly must, we are burdened with unproductive feelings of guilt and worthlessness. With this kind of perfectionist cycle operating we might easily make even the search for self-acceptance a new vehicle for feelings of worthlessness! #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
Perhaps the secret is possessed in learning to relax and enjoy what we are right now—every feeling, every urge, every idiosyncrasy that is a part of us. Then if we really want to be what we have always told ourselves we ought to be, we may be freer to move in that direction. In other words, we dare not wait until we are perfect to start loving ourselves. We would wait forever. Let us learn to love ourselves in our imperfections. This attitude toward ourselves might be compared to the attitude of a warmly affectionate father toward his son. When the boy makes mistakes, he does not stop loving his son. He recognizes that failures and probably will express his concerns and perhaps may even become angry. However, somehow, there is communication from father to son of steadfast love and encouragement that is no destroyed or even threatened by these occasional crises. A similar attitude toward ourselves is very desirable. There will, of course, be times when we feel we have goofed. We may be angry and say to ourselves, “Oh, you meathead, you have done it again.” However, if there is a basic underlying sense of personal worth that is not shaken by the recognition that we have made a mistake, we can be much more effective about doing what we want to do in the future; for we will not be wasting the days of our lives in self-recrimination. Often this self-accepting attitude involves a sense of humor in which we can laugh at ourselves in our errors, give ourselves a good kick in the britches, and move on to the next moment of living. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
Ideally, religious faiths might play an important part in helping their believers to learn to love themselves. Perhaps they do, but frequently they tend to create self-hate. Often religion says, “You are unworthy and condemnable in God’s sight. However, if you confess your unworthiness, God is willing to forgive you. You will then be a new creature, and God will give you strength to feel and act in more acceptable ways.” It cannot be denied that individuals who accept such a belief in God often experience a profound relief as they feel released from the burden of self-hate. And often they live greatly changed lives. However, the question remains whether the basic problem of self-hate has been adequately dealt with or whether a veneer of self-acceptance has simply been laid over the self-condemnation. It would appear that a new and better repressive technique is often acquired whereby the individual can somewhat better avoid dealing with the desires and feelings that are still felt to be so condemnable in God’s eyes. On the other hand, religion sometimes says, “God knows how often you get into messes you regret. He also knows how ugly and brutal you can sometimes seem. However, he also knows how frightened you are and understands why you do the things you do. He loves and accepts you as you are. Because God loves you, he really wants you to enjoy life and the experience of love to the fullest. He enjoys being a partner in your quest.” It seems likely that faith in this kind of God would add to the experience of love for one’s self. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
Millions of humans come into the World and after a relatively short existence disappear. No of us are an exception, our turn to vanish will also come. Thought, confronted with this fact, must either despair, take refuge in the hopes of religion, or resolve to find out the truth behind the tremendous cosmic drama. It is better to accept the loneliness of the quester than the complacency of the Worldling who lives without any understanding of life’s inner purpose. Men and women try various ways to overcome their innate loneliness and with various results in the end. So long as the expedient used is something or someone outside themselves, their victories turn out to be illusions. There is no final way other than the Way which everyone has had to tread at last who ever succeeded in this objective, and which leads inwards to the Overself. In their search for satisfaction outside of and apart from the Overself, men and women are really fugitives from it. The response provoked in you by the entry of these ideas will determine your future. We suffering from stagnation and imagine that existence in the intellect and body is enough; it is not. The primary emphasis must be laid on the living principle of our being, the central self which creates both body and intellect. Here it is, the human creature put upon this round planet and left to make nothing from life, merely survive, or to make something out of it, and hold the great vision of the World-Idea, in company with the gods. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
The making of money, the earning of a livelihood, and the attainment of professional or business success have their proper place in life and should be accorded it but—in comparison with the fulfilment of spiritual aspiration—out to be regarded as having quite a secondary place. Some people throw their clothes away after they wear them, they rent million-dollar apartments and forget where they are. No scientific technological advance, buy sports and luxury cars and cannot remember where they parked them. These individuals have an endless parade of sports coats, pants, robes, silk foulards. mink-lined raincoats, and dinner jackets for Monte Carlo, and jeweled cuff links. When they awake, their clothes are already laid out for them. Heaven help them if they were to change a single time, from the linen handkerchief to the black silk socks. Breakfast awaits them in the immense kitchen with its beautiful windows. The Greeks as always were a splendid people, gentle and trusting though they were darker of hair and skin now on account of their Turkish blood. The power to communicate varies. To listen to the thoughts of others is often to be heard oneself. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
They are sane, but they are so busy, and have so much money, and travel so much that it is like finding a tree in the forest without a map of which one you are looking for. Gold watch on his wrist, one of those high-tech numbers he so adored. Think of that thing flashing its digits inside his office. No scientific technological advance, no political gain, no economic improvement will ever be enough in and of itself to provide a proper goal for human endeavour. It is easy to forget this in certain favourable periods, and if we do we come close to disaster in the end. We use every possible moment to cultivate the uncertain fields of commerce or to grow the perishing flowers of pleasure, but we are unable to spare one moment to cultivate the certain fields of the spirit within ourselves or to grow the enduring asphodels of divine devotion. The goals of progress are but imagined ones. There is only one goal which is undeniably real, completely certain, and authentically true—and that is an unchanging one, an eternal one. Yet it is also the one that has escaped humankind! #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
Our self-hate is developed primarily from experiences of feelings of rejection by others. Learning to love ourselves also involves relationships with people. We need the experience of emotional intimacy with others so that we can learn that we can be accepted as we are and thus can grow in self-acceptance. A very real predicament faces us at this point. We are desperately afraid of intimacy because we assume that deep involvement with another person will lead only to further rejection and hurt, and further confirmation of our feelings of worthlessness and unlovableness. Yet the experience of intimacy is almost a prerequisite for moving in the direction of the greater self-acceptance that would free us to enter into intimate relationships. The only solution to this dilemma seems to be to move gradually into increasing intimacy in spite of our fear. We will probably act somewhat like a wild deer leading to trust a would-be human friend. Because of our fear, our seeking of intimacy will undoubtedly proceed slowly and cautiously and our forward progress will include many frightened strategic withdrawals. However, if we can overcome our fear sufficiently to begin to talk about our inner feelings with another human being we will begin to learn that we are not unique. And out of the mutual acceptance will begin to assert itself. When we feel hurt, angered, misunderstood, and above all else, frightened, of course such a relationship will have its difficult moments, both for ourselves, and the other person. This will happen because we are both so frightened of self-disclosure that we constantly seek to avoid it. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
If we can persist in spite of our fears, the rewards in satisfaction and growing self-acceptance will be great. If we are sufficiently motivated toward changing ourselves, if we have not been so emotionally damaged that we cannot make a start, the suggestions described above for breaking through the cycle of rejection and our self-hatred and learning to love ourselves will probably be helpful. Here in this country, mortals are more eager to better their manufactures than themselves. They will accept their own imperfections quite smugly and contentedly, but the imperfections of their automobiles—never! Yet, if they do not even know why they are standing upon it at all what is the use of their running from point to point on this Earth? Mortals as scientists have put under observation countless objects on Earth, in sea and sky. They have thoroughly examined them. However, mortal as mortal has put oneself under a shallower observation. One has limited one’s scrutiny first to the body, second to what thinking can find. Yet a deeper level exists, where a deeper hidden self can be found. One will discover that it is not enough to regard as good only that which is favourable to one’s physical life. One must complete the definition and sometimes even contradict it by adding that which is favourable to one’s spiritual life. There is nothing more important in life than the Quest, and the time will come when the student discovers that there is nothing more enjoyable as well. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
This is inevitable in a Quest whose essential nature is one of infinite harmony and unbroken peace. No Worldly object, person, or pleasure can ever bestow the satisfaction experienced in uniting with the Overself. It is not the primal needs and their gratification but the realization of our divine possibilities which is the hidden justification of our presence in this World. The ceaseless longing for person happiness which exists in every human being is a right one, but is generally mistake in the direction along which satisfaction is sought. For all outward objects and beings can yield only a transient and imperfect delight that can never be equivalent to the uninterrupted happiness of life in the Overself. An existence which has no higher aims than purely physical ones, no nobler activities than merely personal ones, no inner references to a spiritual purpose, has to depend only on its own small resources. It has failed to benefit by its connection with the power behind the Universe. That the truth of life must be deeper than what we see and hear and touch, is suspected by intuitive persons, believed or felt by pious persons, and directly known by wise persons. What the surface story tells us is not the whole of it, they say. The love of institutional religion, although the name of God necessarily comes into it, is not in itself an explicit, but an implicit love of God, for it does not involve direct, immediate contact with him. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
When they are pure, God is present in religious practices, just as he is present in our neighbor and in the beauty of the World; in the same way and not any more. The form that the love of religion takes in the soul differs a great deal according to the circumstances of our lives. Some circumstances prevent the very birth of this love; others kill it before it has been able to grow very strong. In affliction some mortals, in spite of themselves, develop a hatred and contempt for religion because the cruelty, pride, or corruption of certain of its ministers have made them suffer. There are others who have been reared from their earliest youth in surrounding impregnated with a spirit of this sort. If they are sufficiently strong and pure, we must conclude that in such cases, by God’s mercy, the love of our neighbor and the love of the beauty of the World will be enough to raise the soul to any height. The love of institutional religion normally has as its object the prevailing religion of the country or circle in which a mortal is brought up. As a result of an inborn habit, everyone thinks first of that each time one thinks of a religious service. The whole virtue of religious practices can be conceived of from the Christian tradition concerning the recitation of the name of the Lord. Our goal is to raise ourselves in a land of purity, and the Bible reminds of that the Lord really has the power of transforming the soul. Religion is supposed to truly be nothing else but this promise of God. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
Every religious practice, every rite, all liturgy is a form of the recitation of the name of the Lord and in principle should have a real virtue, the virtue of saving whoever devotes oneself to performing it with desire. All religions pronounce the name of God in their particular language. As a rule it is better for a mortal to name God in one’s native language rather than one that is foreign to the culture. When it has to make the slight effort of seeking for the words in a foreign language, even when this language is well known, except in special cases, the soul is not able to abandon itself utterly. A writer whose native language is poor, difficult to manipulate, and not widely known throughout the World is very strongly tempted to adopt another. There are a few like Joseph Conrad who have done so with startling success. However, they are very rare. Except in special cases such a change does harm, both thought and style suffer, the writer is always ill at ease in the adopted language and cannot rise above mediocrity. A change of religion is for the soul like a change of language for a writer. All religion, it is true, are not equally suitable for the recitation of the name of the Lord. Some, without any doubt, are very imperfect mediums. However, religion is known only from inside. Catholics say this of Catholicism, but it is true of all religions. Religion is a form of nourishment. It is difficult to appreciate the flavor and food value of something one has never eaten. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
The comparison of religions is only possible, in some measures, through the miraculous virtue of sympathy. If at the same time as we observe them from outside, we can know mortals to a certain extent, as we manage by sympathy to transport our own soul into theirs for a time. In the same way the study of different religions does not lead to a real knowledge of them unless we transport ourselves for a time by faith to the very center of whichever one we are studying. Here, moreover, this word faith is used in its strongest sense. This scarcely ever happens, for some have no faith, and the others have faith exclusively in one religion and only bestow upon the others the sort of attention we give to strangely shaped shells. There are others again who think they are capable of impartiality because they have only a vague religiosity which they can turn indifferently in any direction, all our faith, all our love to a particular religion in order to think of any other religion with the high degree of attention, faith, and love that is proper to it. In the same way, only those who are capable of friendship can take a real heartfelt interest in the fate of an utter stranger. If we do not love our fellow travelers on this mortal journey, we cannot truly love God. We are all spirit children of our Heavenly Father and, as such, are brothers and sisters. As we keep this truth in mind, loving all of God’s children will become easier. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
You See, it is True–You Only Love Me When I Do Exactly What You Want Me to Do!
I went into the bedroom, latched the door tight, surveyed the inviting bed, dove into it and pulled the covers up over my head. No more! Down pillows, yes, Oblivion, will you please get with it! Self-hate also gets in the way of successful relationships because we do not trust ourselves to be genuine. We develop some variety of phoniness because we assume people will not like us as we really are, since we ourselves do not. Every one of us probably has one or more acquaintances who are patently phony and are rather extreme examples of this tendency. It may, for example, be a woman who grew up in less affluent surroundings than those which she now lives. She is insecure in the next experience and, whether she allows herself to be aware of it or not, feels her current social set could not accept her if she were natural, so she puts on airs and acts in ways that she feels are the way a person in her setting should act; but the performance does not come off well since it is obviously false. While most of us are not as obviously phony as such a woman, we all have some of the tendency. One way it may express itself is in an effort to be kind or helpful when we do not really feel kindly toward a person. This is a made-to-order pitfall for those who have been raised in religious families where strong emphasis has been placed on the individual’s obligation to be helpful and loving. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
In Christian homes children become familiar with such passages as: Love is patient and kind…it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (I Corinthians 13.3-7.) These are beautiful words from a beautiful chapter. And when we are filled with feelings of warmth and love, they describe well some of the experiences that occur. When we are so full of feelings of caring that we could scarcely do otherwise then be loving, they are the genuine overflow toward another. Often we turn it around. We say to ourselves,” Kindness is a sign of love, so I should be kind, therefore I will be kind.” So we try to be kind to those for whom we may feel considerable unexpressed irritation or resentment. We remain emotionally distant because our kindness is phony. Our resentment is almost sure to seep through in indirect expressions, as when, for example, we seem condescending and patronizing in our kindness. Or perhaps we should be patient with our children, and so we act that way when we feel more like screaming at them. They sense our anger and yet have no way of coping with it directly since it remains unexpressed. And a wall of falseness stands between us because we have not trusted ourselves to be genuine. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
The self-hate that makes us afraid to be ourselves gets us into very difficult binds in our relations with others because we tend to assume that we can gain affection only through acceptable performances, since we feel no one could possibly love us just because who we are. Destiny grew up in a home where great emphasis was placed on performance. Generally, she was made to feel that anything she did in the home as a child was inadequate and that she was rather worthless. The resulting feelings of self-hate made marriage a difficult experience for her. It was inevitable that she would assume that her husband, Marius, could not possibly love her for herself, so she constantly assumed that she would have to perform well or he would abandon her. Yet she seethed with anger, because he did not love her (so she self) without regard to her performance. The way in which Destiny kept the house became one of the focal points of this predicament. She has some tendency to let it become quite cluttered. Whenever this happened Marius became angry. He said that since there were no children and since she was not working the least she could do was to keep a reasonably picked up house. And since he himself was frightened and full of doubts about his own lovableness, he felt—and expressed the feeling—that when she failed to keep the house uncluttered she care nothing at all for him. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
Marius’s reaction added fuel to the fire as far as the dilemma that Destiny felt. Anything that she did at that point was certain to be unsatisfying to her. If, in response to his anger, she busied herself and cleaned the place up, he praised her, and yet this only increased her anger, because she would say to herself, “Only when I perform well for him, he expresses affection.” I am not free to do as I please because he will leave me if I want him to stay with me.” If, on the other hand, she rebelled, as she often did, against the feeling of having to please him and let the house become more and more cluttered, Marius became more frustrated and angry, and she would use this to confirm her feelings of self-hate, for she could say, “You see, it is true. You only love me when I do exactly what you want me to do.” Perhaps the most damaging result of Destiny’s preoccupation with this bind was that she became virtually emotionally paralyzed. She became unable to know what she wanted, so concerned was she with what he wanted. She could not really tell whether it was more satisfying to herself to live in a clutter or an uncluttered house. Everything she did tended to be a reaction to Marius, rather than the act of a person doing what she wanted to do. Even the suggestion by Marius that they hire somebody to some in regularly and clean up was very frightening, for she told herself, “When someone is coming in and cleaning up, he will no longer need me. Then he will get rid of me!” #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
Destiny never learned to love herself, and so it was difficult for her to believe that Marius could be staying with her because he loved her and wanted her for reasons other than efficiency. If we hope to grow in emotional maturity and in the capacity to experience and express love, one must believe self-hate continually gets in the way of the experience of love, and it becomes evident that learning to love ourselves is a crucial and necessary experience. Since we will be more able and willing to disclose ourselves, a solid, deep rooted sense of one’s worth as a person is the foundation, we can become independent individuals, who know ourselves and thus have a self for others to discover and love. And out of this foundation of self-acceptance comes the capacity to accept others as they are, for we will find nothing in them that we have not found and accepted in one form or another in ourselves. Beauty is the form which reaches most deeply into the human heart and mind. It is the language which translates all the moods of humanity into feelings and insights and sensual experiences that we can understand. In beauty there are no foreigners: the deeper we penetrate into the human soul, be it of ourselves or our neighbors, the more we find ourselves at one with people of all nations, even those people behind iron curtains. It is by beauty that we feel the pulse of all humankind. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
The love of the beauty of the World, while it is universal, involves, as a love secondary and subordinate to itself, the love of all the truly precious things that bad fortune can destroy. The truly precious things are those forming ladders reaching toward the beauty of the World, opening onto it. One who has gone farther, to the very beauty of the World itself, does not love them any less but much more deeply than before. Numbered among them are the pure and authentic achievements of art and science. In a much more general way they include everything that envelops human life with poetry through the various social strata. Every human being has at one’s roots here below a certain terrestrial poetry, a reflection of the Heavenly glory, the link, of which one is more or less vaguely conscious, with one’s universal country. Affliction is the tearing up of these roots. Human cities in particular, each one more or less according to its degree of perfection, surround the life of their inhabitants with poetry. They are images and reflections of the city of the World. Actually, the more they have the form of a nation, the more they claim to be countries themselves, the more distorted and soiled they are as images. However, to destroy cities, either materially or morally, or to exclude human beings from a city, thrusting them down to the state of social outcasts, this is to sever every bond of poetry and love between human beings and the Universe. It is to plunge them forcibly into the horror of ugliness. There can scarcely be a greater crime. We all have a share by our complicity in an almost innumerable quantity of such crimes. If only we could understand it, it should wring tears of blood from us. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
This requires freedom, you say? Yes, freedom of the body within limits, but limits which free the mind. However, you may argue, “We have learned in our day to enslave the mind—what do you say to that?” The tyranny over the mind we need to fight, but let us make sure what kind of bondage we are fighting, and for what kind of freedom. It is not the freedom to become a millionaire, or the freedom to convince us through clever advertising to buy the million and one things we do not need, nor the things that are deleterious to us. In principle it is the freedom to be, not just to possess. Freedom is indeed an integral part of this beauty, but let it be a genuine freedom, a freedom to think and to feel, a freedom to speak and to contemplate, a freedom to appreciate and to create, a freedom to experience beauty. Let us return to the major problem of beauty versus power in our World. For the first time in all human history persons like you and me have been able literally to see the planet concentrated in exploration. Some people spend the entire night flying through the air. Flying to Boston, then Washington, then to Chicago, then back to New York City, is not unusual. Technological inventions obsess so many, one after the others. People use telephones to call long distance all over the planet, speaking with for hours with mortals in Australia or India and the internet to contact people Worlds away or order medication and shoes. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
Television catches people up utterly, so that the house is full of blaring speakers and flickering screens. Anything with blue skies enthralls some. Many must watch the news programs, prime time series, documentaries, and every film, regardless of merit, ever taped. Many people have seen images of the planet supposedly photographed as a totality. The astronauts, and we through identifying with them and seeing the picture emblazoned in newspapers throughout the World, have been able to gaze at the World as a whirling planet in which all nations now are a part. This photograph is a symbol for a new relationship between nations. We saw the great wall of China, the Indian ocean the Russian steppes, the north and south Americas, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and unfortunately we all got to watch Our Lady of Paris, also known as Norte-Dame Cathedral, which is 856 years old burn to the ground. Indeed, in the photograph we were what we in our stubbornness have been trying to escape in reality: all citizens of the same World. In this photograph the Chinese wall shuts our nothing, the perpetual squabbles of the nations turn out to be absurd, the revolvers held at the heads of Russian and the United States are transcended by the spinning planet in its orbit. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
The whole Earth turns slowly before our eyes. I do not mean to belittle our national problems at all: I mean only to present a new symbol of the Word which for the first time requires us to see that all countries are citizens of the planet. As we are all awaiting the Royal baby, most of us realize we are grasped in this photograph of World culture by how colorful is this new Earth, new in the sense that it was our first view of the whole Earth. The whirling ball is shimmering gold on the side of the Sun, dazzling and resplendent, shading into a brilliant ultramarine. The shadow then merges into inky darkness and on into the pure black of the vast empty corridors that separate us from the solar systems of light far beyond. On and on the blackness stretches to the distant stars. The photograph was a symbol which can lead us to a radical change in our way of seeing and experiencing the World. The picture reached deeply into my own soul; the nations, usually so noisy, now seemed silent and serene. It showed the nations at last formed into a peaceful co-existence, charmed by the vast spaces of the Universe. Can anyone of us let this picture penetrate into our minds and souls without realizing that we live in a new World, a planet now of a beauty we had not suspected before? #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
It is not surprising that on Christmas Eve, in the flight of Apollo 8, Captain Frank Borman and his crew of two astronauts read for all the World to hear the story of creation in the book of Genesis. “The Earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep….And God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And God saw that the light was good.” This word “form” from the King James translation has the same meaning as I have used it in describing the form in the work of artists. The ground forms Joseph Binder used to emphasize are now wedded to space-forms; we reach not just into our own foundations as Binder taught us, but also into infinity. One of the astronauts, Russell Schweickart, told me that he carried with him into the stratosphere a number of quotations from different authors, T.S. Eliot, Archibald MacLeish, among them, which he thought might express his experience. One that especially grasped his personal feelings while in orbit was a short poem by Robert Nathan: “So beauty passes ever out of reach, save to the heart where happiness is home; there beauty walks, wherever it may be, and paints the Sunset on a quiet sea.” However we may conceive of the intimations of infinity with which our human minds are endowed, the metaphor of God the Artist is most expressive for many people. That is the concept of the painter of the Sunset on the quiet sea in Robert Nathan’s poem, and includes the forms of the Earth as well as of infinity. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
Form is the essence of all things on Heaven and Earth, as I have tried to show in many different ways. Its dwelling is the light of setting Suns, and the round ocean and the living air. A presence that disturbs us with the joy of elevated thoughts. When I asked Russell Schweickart which of his fellow astronauts had uttered the phrase quoted by the newspapers with the photograph of the Sun-emblazoned Earth, he replied that everyone of them had felt the same thing when they looked out from their spaceship at the whirling Earth. It came our in words that one of them suddenly exclaimed, “God, it is beautiful.” So long as a mortal is a stranger to one’s own divine soul, so long has one not even begun to live. All that one does is to exist. In this matter most mortals deceive themselves. For they take comfort in the thought that this attitude of indifference, being a common one, must also be a true one. They feel that they cannot go far wrong is they think and behave as so many other mortals think and behave. Such ideas are the grossest self-deceptions. When the hour of calamity comes, they find out how empty this comfort, how isolated they really are in their spiritual helplessness. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
Focus on the Imaginative Part of the Soul and Awaken What is Real and Eternal to See the True Light and Hear the True Silence
Very well. I am going to lay down the law to you. If I am to remain with you, I am the Master here. And I refuse to prove myself to you. I will not spend my tenure with you being constantly questioned as to the virtue of my authority! For most people giving affection and receiving affection are very difficult matters. Many people feel that they are unlovable and that any gestures of affection or admiration are extremely hard for them to accept. If a person knows one is unlovable, how can one believe it when someone professes love? Well, many people have deep within themselves a special significant sense of deprivation of affection and the consequent feelings make them feel unlovable. When they are able to go inside of themselves and reflect on this strong need for affection, it will help the individual readjust. One will begin to turn away from the inability to feel affection—there will actually be a massive escape from one’s longing—and one will gradually look toward the problem itself. Most of the times, the issue is an unresolved problem with one’s parental situation and once that is identified, an individual can work toward a resolution of those feelings with a possible increase in self-esteem. Sometimes it is important to figure out what each person wants and what you want to give. This will allow one to understand better some difficulties one has to on one’s life where people tend not to treat one as a sufficiently significant individual. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
Other people are here to teach us lessons, and sometimes people have pseudo personalities, which become unmasked later in life, especially after changes in the family dynamics. However, as you are maturing, you can see where people are coming from, so it is no big surprise when they show you who they really are. Some people are so busy trying to gratify others regardless of one’s own wishes. The important thing to remember is no matter how good you are or how much you try to please and impress others, in many cases it is a failed effort because they do not care. The central issues of affection is trusting the feelings of others. The other side of this trust is the ability to gratify and give pleasure to someone who trusts. As the brain matures, the feelings of trust of distrust are usually felt very clearly in any situation. Successful experiences can greatly restructure a person’s self-concept in the direction of helping one feel more loving and loveable. Even in your family or people you grew up with, you may find later in life that you have different values than them and that is why they do not totally accept you, and that is find. Unfortunately, cultural and organizational forces are often powerful deterrents to joyful feelings. It is always good to see where people are coming from and you do not have to express any feelings of hurt or anger toward them, just be civil, but understand they may not have your best interests at heart. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
We have already seen how the tendencies to condemn, so prevalent in the church, are frequently incorporated into the life of religious families. To the child of such a family, religion often becomes a strong additional force in one’s feeling of rejection and one’s increasing hatred of oneself. One is taught that one is inherently evil and that it is only through God’s gracious mercy that one can be saved from oneself. And although it made clear to one that god behavior will not be of sufficient merit to win God’s acceptance of a naturally sinful person like oneself, one is nevertheless subjected to strong emphasis on various rules of conduct. It is no surprise that one feels that one is under constant surveillance by one’s family, one’s religious group, and God, and that they are all judging one’s worth by one’s actions. Feeling condemned on all sides, one attempts some form of escape from one’s growing self-hate. However, as we have seen, such efforts lead only to further feelings of rejection. Many people whose lives are deeply intertwined with a religious group find it difficult to experience and express love because they have a tendency to suppress or repress many of their feelings. It is within many of these groups that people are most forcefully confronted with the idea that they are committing a sin if they feel angry, covetous, jealous, or are involved in pleasures of the flesh with others. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
Many churches are so condemning toward these feelings that their members are likely to avoid expressing them and may deny even to themselves that they exist. And as we have seen in the discussions of anger and pleasures of the flesh, when we are full of unexpressed and unrecognized feelings that create barriers between ourselves and others, it is difficult to experience our love. In this context of life, as in others where we are so adept at creating barriers to love, it begins to look as though we are so frightened of love that we need the hindrances we create. No doubt it would be an oversimplification to see fear of love as the only factor in churches’ apparent need to codify behavior and judge people accordingly, but it is at least one very important underlying factor. Religious groups, like people in general, have not understood their fear of intimacy. Without realizing it, they have encouraged emotional distance between people rather than the experience of love they professed to promote. For example, churches often substitute apparent expressions of love for the experience of intimacy. A good illustration of this exists in those thousands of congregations (not al by any means) in our society who willingly give money to missionary enterprises throughout the World, including Africa, proclaiming their love of all humankind but who would be very upset and uncomfortable if someone from a culture different from theirs braved the evident fear, suspicion, and hostility and attempted to worship wit them and become active in their congregation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
In an effort to promote fellowship many congregations have coffee hours after church services. The typical remoteness and lack of self-revelation that usually marks these functions makes them even less productive of the experience of love than the average cocktail party, where people sometimes feel relatively free to be themselves and express some of their genuine feelings. Churches from study groups, women’s groups, men’s clubs, and couples’ organizations. Although these groups talk about love and fellowship, they usually speak in very rational and impersonal ways. If anyone begins to express deeply personal feelings about the subject of discussion, such groups tend to become very uncomfortable and quickly change subject. If intimate relationships between members of these groups, as they undoubtedly sometimes do, it is accomplished outside of the group and almost in spite of it, for there is little or nothing within it to encourage the experience of love. During church services the minister often talks about the feeling of love and communion, which he presumes the worshipers feel with God and with each other as they worship. If he were sufficiently self-aware, it might be more helpful if the minister could tell his people that he, like the, is aware of an awful loneliness and longing for love that is almost too frightening to act upon. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Another way in which the church often promotes emotional distance is that it discourages honesty within its community. This happens because if they are themselves, the church’s preoccupation with behavior fosters the impression among its adherents that they will be condemned rather than accepted and loved. So the church becomes a place where people do not say things many of them often say in other life situations. It becomes a place where people pretend they do not do things which they sometimes do: drink, smoke, act primarily in terms of the profit motive in their business, fornicate, get angry with their children—whatever their particular congregation would disapprove of. And it becomes a place where people pretend they do not feel things that they really do feel: anger, lust, prejudice, fear of love. We all wear masks, of course, to protect us from the self-revelation that would make us feel exposed and vulnerable to those around us, and we will never discard them entirely, but the atmosphere that most churches create, in which members feel they will be condemned if they say or do the wrong thing, makes the possibility of genuineness and the experience of love within the religious community even more difficult. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
We live in a World of unreality and dreams. Perhaps the most powerful demonstration of my thesis is that our age is witnessing the diminishing of the teaching of humanities in our high schools and our colleges. After an intensive study of the humanities over the last six years, the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington reported that these subjects are progressively being erased from college curricula. The humanities were originally the soul of educational institutions of human life through the great work of history, literate, philosophy and art. However now, students can graduate from seventy-two percent of the colleges in the country without even taking modern or ancient history, that is, without any understanding of Greece and Rome, where our civilization came from, or our struggles since the Renaissance, or the wars that have put us in the present predicament of having our very existence threatened by nuclear war. When we entered college, it used to be pointed out that to learn a foreign language was to go into the heart of another people’s culture, and understand its art and psyche. Now a student in the majority of colleges can go through without understanding any other people’s culture, or any profession except one’s own. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
To give up our imaginary position as the center, to renounce it, not only intellectually but in the imaginative part of our soul, that means to awaken to what is real and eternal, to see the true light and hear the true silence. A transformation then takes place at the very roots of our sensibility, in our immediate reception of sense impressions and psychological impressions. It is a transformation analogous to that which takes place in the dusk of evening on a road, where we suddenly discern as a tree what we thought at first was whispering voices. We see the same colors; we hear the same sounds, but not in the same way: To empty ourselves of our false divinity, to deny ourselves, to give up being the center of the World in imagination, to discern that all points in the World are equally centers and that the true center if outside the World, this is to consent to the rule of mechanical necessity in matter and of free choice at the center of each soul. Such consent is love. The face of this love, which is turned toward thinking persons is the love of our neighbor; the face turned toward matter is love of the order of the World, or love of the beauty of the World which is the same thing. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
I recall that I stumbled into a class in the ancient Greek language in Oberlin College and, in spite of being a country boy who scarcely knew Greece had ever existed, I remained in class. It turned out to be the richest, most valuable class I ever took. Nowadays there are very few such classes that one can eve stumble into. Literature, which is the language which crosses all borders—the Russians Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, the French Proust, the German Goethe, the English Shakespeare, the Americans Emerson and Whitman—all these are now scantily studied, or not at all in the hurry to get on to the study of computers, economics and business. And as far as the classic go—these great ancient Greek dramas and myths which are buried in our souls, along with Dante’s Divine Comedy and Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus—these classics are not read at all by the majority of the graduates. The understanding of the psyche of modern Americans requires knowing the self-interpretation of human beings in symbols and myths down through the ages; yet I rarely meet in my teaching graduate students who are planning to become psychotherapists, any who has even read the great classics. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
The purpose of the humanities is to make us more human, to enrich our lives, to develop our imaginations, and to make life worth living. And it is a saddening thing that these subjects are being dismissed. We need have no prejudice against engineering, business studies, accounting, techniques of all sorts including the use of computers, when we point out that these are studies of the how of life, to the neglect of what life is about. This is reflected in the fact that a professor of literature, so I am told by a professor-friend at one of our most distinguished universities, receives about $70,643.60 and a professor of business receives about $188,382.93. Philosophy, which used to be concerned with understanding the meaning of life, is now defunct on most campuses or, where it still exists, it has capitulated to the technical trends by becoming analytical philosophy. These studies of techniques are concerned with quantities, with exchange of goods, money, and even auctioning off of great pictures. However, the humanities are concerned with the quality, the what of life, the painting of the pictures or the composing and playing of music. The humanities are concerned, as I have said, with the questions of meaning. When, during the last century, they put on a great celebration in Boston at the completion of the stringing of telephone wires from Maine to Texas, Thoreau said, “Nobody asks the real question, Do the people of Maine have anything to say to the people in Texas?” #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
Our age is replete with techniques for mass communication, but what is the content of what we communicate beyond business and money matters? Barbara Tuchman wrote a penetrating article in the New York Times two years ago entitled, “The Decline of Quality.” When I had it xeroxed and passed around, a number of people were offended: how dare she criticize our great age of mass communication, our new techniques for everything from TV to dish-washing? This, of course, was exactly what she meant: the quality of life diminishes as the concern with quantity burgeons. This of course has a great deal to do with modern art and the future. Art—in which we include along with painting and sculpture, the dance, architecture, literate, poetry, music—is devoted to the quality of human life. Hence the great confusion in art in our time: it is as though art is lost, it has no central soul or direction in which to go. However, we note at the same time the poignant hunger of people for great art as shown in the crowds that line up to see the exhibitions of the artifacts of King Tut, or the works of Picasso or Van Gogh. Of course one can argue that this is conformism; people crowd in because that is the thing to do. However, I do not believe such arguments exhaust the motives. Even if cake with a hundred flavors is added, Men and women do not live by bread alone. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
It is a genuine hunger, a starvation for what people’s own intuition tell them is great. It is the artists, the musicians, the poets, the dramatists that remind us that life is worth living. Especially is we are talking about life abundant, some of us can say with truth that beauty has saved our lives. In ancient times the love of the beauty of the World had a very important place in mortal’s thoughts and surrounded the whole of life with marvelous poetry. This was the case in every nation—in China, in India and in Greece. The Stoicism of the Greeks, which was very wonderful and to which primitive Christianity was infinitely close, especially in the writings of Saint John, was almost exclusively the love of the beauty of the World. As for Israel, certain parts of the Old Testament, the Psalms, the Book of Job, Isaiah, and the Book of Wisdom, contain an incomparable expression of the beauty of the World. The example of Saint Francis shows how great a place the beauty of the World can have in Christian thought. Not only is his actual poem perfect poetry, but all his life was perfect poetry in action. His very choice of places for solitary retreats or the foundations of his convents was in itself the most beautiful poetry in action. Vagabondage and poverty were poetry within him; he stripped himself to his birthday suit in order to have immediate contact with the beauty of the World. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
Saint John of the Cross also has some beautiful lines about the beauty of the World. However, in general, making suitable reservations for the treasures that are unknown, little known, or perhaps buried among the forgotten remains of the Middles Ages, we might say that the beauty of the World is almost absent from the Christian tradition. This is strange. It is difficult to understand. It leaves a terrible gap. If the Universe itself is left out, how can Christianity call itself Catholic? In transitional ages there is bound to be some kind of cultural breakdown. The whole society becomes disoriented and negates itself. When we fail to see this from a historical viewpoint, then we do get hopeless, pessimistic, and lose our sense of balance—for we know only the present that will be destroyed in the cultural change. This illustrates again the dangers we face in dropping history—along with the other humanities—from college curricula. We can, however, experience ourselves as part of a culture that is dying in order that a new society may be born. This dying period is certainly no picnic for any sensitive person. Psychological breakdowns are almost the normal thing in our day; we have psychotherapists of all kinds trying to meet this need. However, for the most part therapists are equipped only to patch people up. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
The breakdowns of morals and family life—all these are part of the radical change. If we can see it that way, then we can move ahead with courage. We can realize that we are building a future, trying to produce some context, some art, some drama, some music that will communicate something to future ages. That I would like to be a part of. And I am sure all of us would. Therefore, find the ground form. Get below the surface, below all your superficial whims and find the reality, the foundation. Find the structure on which your life is built. One Summer on the coast of Maine, John Marin made several of his watercolors. These paintings were done with Marin’s character style—a dash across the sky for clouds, a jagged blue and brown expressing the ocean, strong vertical lines of green for spruce tress and the curves of brownish-red showing the unpredictable might of this rugged, rock-bound coast. Each stroke of Marin’s brush is made with profound emotion. When he had completed these particular paintings, he took them to the drug store in the little town and stood them against the wall. He then asked the pharmacist, whom we all knew as a typical “Down Easterner,” how he liked them. The druggist answered, “They will be fine when they are finished.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
What the druggist called unfinished was really the genius of Marin; he looked on beauty bare. In ever transitional age one must let go the finishing, and look on beauty care. The incompleteness, the groping, fits our age. Our beauty is not at all pretty or charming—it may be the bare rock, the skeleton watercolors of Marin, the silence of John Cage sitting at his piano without a note, the discord and sounds of cultures grinding together. If you are not prepared, it is dangerous to look. Hence Plato, as Greece began its deterioration, write of the terror of beauty, and Rilke wrote these enigmatic lines: “For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we still are just able to endure and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.” We have in music, especially in the giants like Beethoven and Schonberg, Aaliyah Haughton and The Beatles, the same sense of terror. And even Dostoyevsky, who certainly knew what beauty was, has Dmitri, one of his characters in the Brothers Karamazov, cry out, “The awful thing that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the Devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of mortals.” Yes, this is what modern art is all about. It has little or nothing to do with prettiness or niceness or sweetness. It its beauty there is the terror of the ground forms, and the contemporary artists are our distant early warning. They tell us of the fundamentals of love and the terror of life and death. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
In the Middle Ages we have art for God’s sake, in the Renaissance we have art for mortal’s sake, in the nineteenth century we have art for art’s sake, in the twentieth century we have no art for God’s sake, and in the twenty-first century we have art to remind us we have a soul. The good way must be clearly good but not wholly clear. If it is clear, it is too easy to reject. What is wanted is an oversimplification, a reduction of a multitude of possibilities to only two. However, if the recommended path were utterly devoid of mystery, it would cease to fascinate mortals. Since it clearly should be chosen, nothing would remain but to proceed on it. There would be nothing left to discuss and interpret, to lecture and write about, to admire and merely think about. The World extracts a price of calling teachers wise: it keeps discussing the paths they recommend, but few mortals follow them. The wise give mortals endless opportunities to discuss what is good. Mortal’s attitude are manifold. Some live in a strange World bounded by a path from which countless ways lead inside. If there were roads signs, all of them might bear the same inscription: I-I. Those who dwell inside have no consuming interest. They are not devoted to possession, even if they prize some; not to people, even if they like some; not to any project, even if they have some. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
Things are something that they speak of; persons have the great advantage that one cannot only talk of them but also to, or rather at them; but the Lord of every sentence is no man but I. Projects can be entertained without complete devotion, spoken of, and put on like a suit or a dress before a mirror. When you speak to mortals of this type, they quite often do not heart you, and they never hear you as another I. You are not an object for mortals like this, not a thing to be used or experienced, nor an object of interest or fascination. The point is not at all that you are found interesting or fascinating instead of being seen as a fellow I. The shock is rather that you are not found interesting or fascinating at all: you are not recognized as an object any more than as a subject. You are accepted, if at all, as one to be spoken at and spoken of; but when you are spoken of, the Lord of every story will be I. Some come to the truth in a roundabout way. The Quest is direct. The quest is governed by its own inherent laws, some easily ascertainable but others darkly obscure. It is a search for meaning in the meaningless flow of events. It is response to the impulsion to look beyond the ever-passing show of Earthly life for some sign, value, or state of mind that shall confer hope, supply justification, gain insight. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
My Business is to Think About God—It is for God to Think About Me!
You do me a bitter injustice. You cannot know my accomplishments. And only very few of my descendants know them either. Now let us get back to your present obligation. Since affection is based on the building of emotional bonds, it is usually the last phase to emerge in the development of human relations, following inclusion and control. In the inclusion phase, people must encounter each other and decide to continue their relation; control issues require them to confront one another and work out how they will be related; then, to continue the relation, affection ties must form and people must embrace each other to form a lasting bond. The person with too little affection the underpersonal, tends to avoid close, personal ties with others. One maintains one’s two-person relations on a superficial, distant level and is most comfortable when others do the same with one. Consciously, one wishes to maintain this emotional distance, and frequently expresses a desire not to get emotionally involved, while unconsciously one seeks a satisfactory affectional relation. One’s fear is that no one loves one. In a group situation one is afraid one will not be liked. One has great difficulty genuinely liking people, and distrusts their feelings toward one. One’s attitude could be summarized by this statement, “since I have been rejected, I find the affection area very painful; therefore, I shall avoid close personal relations in the future.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 12
The direct technique for maintaining emotional distance is to reject and avoid people in order to actively prevent emotional closeness or involvement, even to the point of being antagonistic. The subtle technique is to be superficially friendly to everyone. This behavior acts as a safeguard against having to get close to, or become personal with, any one person. The deepest anxiety for the underpersonal, that regarding the self, is that one is unlovable. If people got to know the individual well, one believes, they would discover the traits that make one so unlovable. As opposed to the inclusion anxiety that the self is of no value, worthless, and empty, and the control anxiety that the self is not smart and irresponsible, or has a defect that they want to hide, the affection anxiety is that the self is undesirable and unlovable. However, maybe these types of individual view themselves this way because they think they would not be able to love someone they deemed as defective, so they believe others will feel the same way about them. In contrast, the overpersonal type attempts to become extremely close to others. One definitely wants others to treat one in a very close, personal way. The unconscious feeling on which one is operating is, “My first experience with affection were painful, but perhaps if I try again they will turn out to be better.” Being liked is extremely important to one in one’s attempt to relieve one’s anxiety about always being rejected and unlovable. #RandolphHarris 2 of 12
The direct technique for being liked by a person who is overpersonal is an overt attempt to gain approval, be extremely person, ingratiating, intimate, and confiding. The subtle technique is more manipulative, to devour friends and subtly punish any attempts by them to establish other friendships, and to be possessive. The underlying feelings are the same as those for the underpersonal. Both the overpersonal and the underpersonal reposes are extreme, both are motivated by a strong need for affection, both are accompanied by a strong anxiety about ever being loved (and basically about being unlovable), and both have considerable hostility behind them stemming from the anticipation of rejection. For the individual who successfully resolved one’s affectional relations with others in childhood, close emotional relations with others in childhood, close emotional relations with one other person present no problem. One is comfortable in such a personal relation, and one can also relate comfortably in a situation requiring emotional distance. It is important for one to be liked, but if one is not like one can accept the fact that the dislike is the result of the relation between oneself and one other person—in other words, the dislike does not mean that one is unlovable. Unconsciously, one feels that one is a loveable person who is loveable even to people who know one well. And one is capable of giving genuine affection. #RandolphHarris 3 of 12
The primary interaction of the affection area is that of embrace, either literal or symbolic. The expression of the appropriate deeper feelings is the major issue. In most groups a paradox arises around this issue. At the beginning of the group there are many expressions as to how difficult it is to express hostility to people. It often later develops that there is only one thing more difficult—expressing warm, optimistic feelings. Affection problems, both giving and taking, are usually very profound. There are affectional elements in many of the foregoing techniques, especially the encounter and the two-person group fantasy. The question of whether religion can help us experience and express love is not simple. Either a “Yes!” or a “No!” answer would find many outspoken adherents. Much can be said on both sides. On one hand it seems undeniable that much of our idealism about love has had its origin and perpetuation in the Jewish and Christian traditions in our culture. In principle, at least, most of us value love and long for the satisfaction that experiencing and expressing love might bring in our personal, family, community, and national lives. The presence of this longing undoubted is related to our religious heritage, perhaps particularly to the New Testament and such passages as the following: If I speak in tongues of mortals and Angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am noting. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12
And when we do achieve some degree of emotional intimacy, if we disclaim the influences of our religious heritage on these experiences, in what may appear to be a nonreligious or even an irreligious setting, we are probably deceiving ourselves. However, the church has a rather poor record in helping people experience the love of which so much is spoken. Despite lip service to the primacy of love in human relationships, the church, by and large, tends in practice to see moral value primarily in terms of external behavior rather than in terms of the experience of love. As a result of this approach, religious groups often appear to be concerned primarily with judging people. They judge some people acceptable and stamp them with their good behavior seal of approval and make them feel welcome as long as their behavior remains acceptable. They judge others unacceptable and make them feel unwelcome, or at least uncomfortable, unless they repent and change their behavior to meet the group’s standards. As a result, the experience of being accepted, loved, and enjoyed as a person, irrespective of externals, is probably a rare experience in the church. And so the doors to the experience and expression of love are often rather effectively shut. And they are pushed shut under the guise of being lovingly concerned for the welfare and happiness, both present and eternal, of the individual! #RandolphHarris 5 of 12
Many of the people in the World want to be deceived. The truth is too complex and frightening; the taste for truth is an acquired taste that few acquire. Not all deceptions are palatable. Untruths are to easy to come by, too quickly exploded, too cheap and ephemeral to give lasting comfort. Mundus vult decipi; but there is a hierarchy of deceptions. Near the bottom of the ladder is journalism: a steady stream of irresponsible distortions that most people find refreshing although on the morning after, or at least within a week, it will be stale and flat. On a higher level we find fictions that mortals eagerly believe, regardless of the evidence, because they gratify some wish. Near the top of the ladder we encounter curious mixtures of untruth and truth that exert a lasting fascination on the intellectual community. We cannot, on the face of it, be wholly true, although it is plain that there is some truth in it, evokes more discussion and dispute, divergent exegeses and attempts at emendations than what has been stated very carefully, without exaggeration or onesidedness. The Book of Proverbs is boring compared to the Sermon on the Mount. In our trying to find meaning in such a transitional age, let us also refer to music. John Cage, the composer who has been very much in the forefront of modern music, was advertised as giving a concern in New York. #RandolphHarris 6 of 12
There was an expectant crowd which filled the auditorium, but John Cage ascended the platform and sat down at the piano for an hour, not lifting a finger. I think it tremendously important here is a musician who thinks art is so crucial, and his music so significant, that he believes that before anyone can really hear it, they have to learn to listen to the silence. What does this have to do with modern art and life? We have to realize that what people are trying to express often is a great emptiness, or sorrow and despair as in Picasso’s Guernica. When you see a picture entitled “White on White,” there is nothing on the canvas as far as you can discern. It was painted in two kinds of white and then framed. I am told that the modern artist Duchamp framed a toilet seat and hung it up as a picture. Like “White on White,” there are other offerings which consist of paintings with a little dot here and there, or a couple of lines in the corner, and then framed. When I go into the National Gallery in Washington, I see several great Leonardo da Vincis and Rembrandts and a number of other works for all time. Then I come to the contemporary artists, and I have a feeling of coldness. Their paintings contain nothing about human beings that we can recognize. What these contemporary artists are basically trying to say is that one must look, and often times we see a very bleak future. Their prediction is not about the lovely country of America where everyone is going to get rich. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12
It is a country that is becoming more and more mechanical, computerized, more and more money-occupied, directed by the Dow Jones Index—more and more humanly empty. Many of these artists, like the ones who draped cow’s intestines and blood over a rusty automobile as a still life in front of my office building in New York a few years ago, are trying to say people “Look! Really look, See what is happening, Take it in!” Mark Rothko, whose Chapel is in Huston, was one of the great figures in modern art. He committed suicide, but before he died he wrote a letter explaining his sadness at the reception of his works. He felt that people could not understand what he was trying to do, that any rich man could buy up all his paintings, dig a whole in his back yard, and dump his canvases in to bury them from the World. Now to somebody who had had a passion all his life to communicate by way of art, to say something important to his fellow human beings, this prospect was a great tragedy indeed. Where there is in Rothko is color after color—red, black, then perhaps brilliant gold and then a coast of black and another brown. Your initial feeling in that chapel might be dismal. Your second thought might be that to understand it requires a great deal of looking. Then you might sit on one of the benches in the chapel (which Rothko also designed) and you too would look. After a while you would being to feel that here is someone speaking to you out of subterranean levels, speaking out of his depths to those who will listen; he is the psalmist crying, “Out of the depths I call unto Thee.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 12
In a biographical film about Rothko, he is quoted as saying that when people look at his pictures, he hopes “They will laugh or cry or maybe pray.” These words are very relevant. People sometimes laugh and walk our again, and they sometimes cry. When they begin to take in what goes on with an artist like Rothko, then perhaps they pray. That is very fitting for this chapel. Perhaps people become unpersonal because they are not in their proper environment, they had in the past tried to reach out or get people interested in their work, but many are more interested in being side show clowns. Particular artist, Jules Olitski, has a Summer studio on an island, where he has built a great barn. There are canvases all over the floor. Olitski paints with a mop and spray gun. The mop has a white flap at the end like the kind one uses in mopping a bank floor. He dips the mop into big pails of paint and then spreads it on the canvases. There are a number of levels in each painting; it is a mirage of many different colors. When you look at it you not only feel those basic patterns of curving physical forms, but you also begin to see the many different hues shining through. The more you look at it, the more colors you see which were covered up and are now reflected through the painting. As you let yourself gaze upon these canvases, you are rewarded with a rich visual experience and with the ecstasy which accompanies such an experience. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12
What these artists are trying to tell us, what they are predicting, it seems to me, is that we are at the end of an age. I am not a great lover of our present hedonistic age and our materialistic society, where necessity is associated with horror and freedom with boredom, as Auden puts it: “This stupid World where gadgets are gods and we go on talking, many about much, but remain alone, alive but alone, belonging—where?—Unattached as tumble weed.” I think our society is radically faulty in a number of ways—such as our amoral economic system, our loss of values, our vulnerability to nuclear war, the millions starving while wheat rots in our storage bins, the Sacramento Unified School District getting ready to be take over by the state of California, the dramatic increase of homelessness in Sacramento, with the sky high rents, and how the Oroville dam broke, meanwhile the city invested nearly $300 million taxpayer dollars into a sports arena. The results are that the quality of human relationships has diminished. It is difficult for people in our day to see beyond the glamour, the sensational advances in science and medicine, the technological ease with computers, the fata morgana appearances of progress on all sides—yes, it is indeed difficult to see the reality underneath. In contrast, freedom is possibility. The word possibility comes from the Latin posse, “to be able,” which is also the original root of our word power. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12
Thus beings that long and tortuous relationship, interminably debated in the parliaments of the World and fought and bled over on countless battlefields, of the relationship between freedom and power. Powerlessness, we know, is tantamount to slavery. It is a truism that, if people are to have freedom, they must have the equivalent personal power in the form of autonomy and responsibility. The women’s liberation movement, which Reese Witherspoon is part of with her legal defense group to help working women gain equality called Time’s Up, has argued this point wit cogency. To be sure, one has to discriminate between possibilities: hectic acting, because it is more comfortable to act than not to, is a misuse of freedom. President Nixon is guilty of this, as illustrated in his own writings about “the unbearable tensions that can be relieved only by taking action, one way or the other. Not knowing how to act or not being able to act is what tears your insides out.” This compulsion to act in any extreme form is what is meant by “acting out” in therapy and is often symptomatic of the psychopathic personality. Personal freedom, on the contrary, entails being able to harbor different possibilities in one’s mind even though it is not clear at the moment which way one must act. The possibilities must be there to begin with, otherwise one’s life is banal. #RandolphHarris 11 of 12
The psychologically healthy person is able to confront and manage the anxiety directly in such situations, in contrast to the neurotic, in whom anxiety sooner or later blocks off his consciousness of freedom and one feels as if one is in a strait jacket. Freedom always deals with the possible; this gives freedom its great flexibility, its fascination and its dangers. The very idea of a quest involves a passage, a definite movement from one place to another. Here, of course, the passage is really from one state to another. It is a holy journey, so one who is engaged on it is truly a pilgrim. And as on many journeys, difficulties, fatigues, obstacles, delays, and allurements may be encountered on the way, yes! And here there will certainly be dangers, pitfalls, oppositions, and enmities too. One’s intuition and reason, one’s books and friends, one’s experience and earnestness will constitute themselves as one’s guide upon it. There is another special feature to be noted about it. It is a homeward journey. The Father is waiting for his child. The Father will receive, feed, and bless one. It is a movement from the outward to the inward but it is effected only with much labor, though much despondency, and after must time. “My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken,” Psalm 62.1-2. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12
Have You Found Your Soul—It is the Quest to become Conscious of Consciousness and Penetrate the Mystery of its Knowing Power
You must trust in my principles. That is our paradox. We do not leave behind the Natural Law when we receive grace. We are principled beings. I never stopped loving you, not for an instant. Whatever I felt for you are the Bryant family gathering in no way affected my feelings for you. How could it? I warned you twice to be patient with your family because I knew it was right for you to do so. Then the third time, all right, I went too far with a little mockery. However, I was trying to curb your insults, and your abuse of those you loved! But you would not listen to me. Affairs are not always tragic. If the basic relationship with the spouse is not too hopelessly unsatisfying and if the principles do not react precipitously, a marriage often survives extramarital affairs. In fact, it may be strengthened as the result of a new-found ability to be open to the experience and expression of love. However, society’s attitude about extramarital affairs often operates against the survival of a marriage. The experience of Fallon, a young wife, is probably not too exceptional. Her husband, Blake, an attorney, became involved with another woman-a divorcee—within their social group. Blake was sufficiently indiscreet about his affair that a good many members of the community, including relatives, became aware of the situation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
Fallon sought the help of a psychotherapist, who Blake also saw on a sporadic basis. As soon as others became aware that an affair was taking place, Fallon was besieged with pressure to seek a divorce. Both his parents and her parents urged it. Other friends and relatives said or implied if she did not see a lawyer and force him to move out, she was a fool. Her physician gave her similar advice. The force and the vehemence with which many of these people spoke seemed to indicate that they themselves felt threatened by the situation. It was almost as if they were saying to Alice, “If you let him get away with this without being punished for it, what is going to happen to society. We cannot afford to tolerate this kind of behavior.” Fortunately, Fallon had a mind of her own, although the constant pressure caused her many bad moments in which she asked herself if she were some kind of weakling for not seeking a divorce. However, when she did not immediately seek a divorce, things began to happen that made her happy she had not yielded to pressure. For one thing, she began to discover, through therapy, that she was very frightened of love and had never been free to express the love and affection of which she was capable. Fallon realized she had been difficult to live with throughout her marriage. She had been overly sensitive, constantly feeling hurt about something Blake had done. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
Because she had hurt feelings that she felt were caused by her husband, in retaliation Fallon would either withdraw from behind a wall of hurt silence or complaint at Blake about little things that has no connection with her deeper feelings. As She became aware that she acted this way because of her fear of love, Fallon began to become much more capable of experiencing intimacy, including the expression of love to Blake. She also discovered that he, too, was changing. Having known the love of the other woman seemed to affect Blake’s view of himself. He felt more lovable and developed more confidence in his ability to express love. And even while he continued to see his lover, he became more able to express love openly to Fallon than he had ever been before. And she, through her new self-discovery—which might have never happened if Blake had not had an affair—was much more able to respond with deep-felt love and was able to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh experience of their relationship as never before. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
So eventually, while Blake was still having his affair, she could send her advice-giving friends away muttering and shaking their heads, by saying in all honesty, “I do not want a divorce! I feel more love for my husband than I was ever able to feel in the past, and we both find much more satisfaction in our relationship than we ever did before! Why would I want to get a divorce now?” Since Blake now found many satisfactions in his marriage that neither he nor Fallon had been capable of experiencing with each other before, and since he deeply valued his home and desired to be with his children, he, too had every reason to continue the marriage rather than to seek a permanent alliance wit another woman. This is not to say that life for the couple was tranquil during these times. Not at all. Both of them, and perhaps particularly Fallon, went through great upheavals of feelings. There were moments of torrid anger and times of anguished hurt. Most of all, there were times of fear. Fallon would become terrified after expressing her love in openness during their expression of pleasures of the flesh. It was apparent that the fear that Blake would abandon her was most acute at those times, because it was then that she was most aware of how much she cared. However, the point if that growth occurred in both Fallon and Blake as they learned to deal more honestly and openly with themselves and their emotions. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Society frowns strongly on their expressions with the result that people devise a variety of techniques to hide these feelings from others as well as from themselves. It is often more effective to express hostility in safe atmosphere. Then, direct ways of dealing with the feeling can be explored. Too often, the usual efforts to suppress these negative feelings lead to the suppression of the whole self. If Fallon and Blake had automatically sought divorce as it was automatically suggested, this experience of revelations would have been short-circuited. However, it is not being claimed here that every affair will have salutary effect. Yet, it is important that society take its head out of the sand, so they do not ignore or hide from obvious signs of danger, to be aware that extramarital affairs are not always the disasters we like to assume and that it is not unusual for marriages to be strengthened and married love to be deepened by the forces that extrametrical affairs sometimes set in motion. When a person begins to seek out one’s real nature, to find the truth of one’s real being, one begins to follow their quest in life. It is a call to those who want inner nourishment from real sources, not from fanciful or speculative ones. It calls them away from things, appearances, shows, and externals to their inward being, toward reality. After such considerations, we are led to wonder what constitutes the reality behind the Universe. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
This is a quest which takes us into religion, mysticism, and philosophy and the great mysteries of life, a quest which eventually confirms the celebrated words of Francis Bacon: “A little thinking may incline the mind toward atheism, but greatness of study bringeth the mind back to God.” We are now in a transitional period similar to that of the end of Hellenism and the birth of Roman arts and culture. It is a period also like the demise of medieval art and the Renaissance. In all transitional periods there is a confusion as to what the new meaning of art if going to be. Since we are in the very midst of that confusion, our period is especially. The confusion in physics, just as before the Einsteinian and Quantum theories were born to throw light on the whole of physics, is like the present confusion in art, which is a reflection of life. The artist is the predictor of what happens in science rather than the reverse. When any new culture is established, the art gives the people their language. In the Middle Ages all the less affluent knew the meaning of the figures in the stained glass of the windows of Chartres; this was their language. Chartres consist of a vast library of dazzling symbols and myths, and these constituted the life of the less affluent. It was literally true that no sculptor or painter of fainted glass needed to sign one’s work—God could see all and he would know all. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
Similarly in the Renaissance, the new humanism made the new humanistic art recognizable to all. At this moment, we are in the midst of a new cultural transition with its attendant difficulties and confusion. When giving the inaugural address at the opening of a new wing in the Modern Museum in New York, Paul Tillich spoke on the topic, “The Art of No Art.” Though we can surely understand what Chesterton and Tillich meant, the problem, strictly speaking, is not no art. It is rather a confusion in our day of many different forms of art. In the Metropolitan Museum, for example, we pass through the rooms of the Renaissance art and see a similarity in colors and in forms. In the seventeenth century we see portraits, like those by Van Dyck, running the whole length of the hall. In the early nineteenth century we see many landscapes and seascapes, which became art of the kind taught in academia. At the end of the nineteenth century we see protests against academic art Van Gogh, in Gauguin, in Cezanne and in Picasso. By the art we can recognize the period it comes from. However, it our contemporary age we have every kind of art—Wyeth and his realism, de Kooning and his jagged strokes which show great vitality and color with contorted figures, Motherwell and Franz Kline who reveal the great tensions in modern times. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
There is Tobey with his calligraphy, Picasso who seemed to change his style every decade, Pollock who painted with surprisingly harmonious colors the abstract forms by means of his drip school, Olitski with his subconscious forms expressed in coat after coat of different colors with the underlying pinks and lavenders showing through to produce a captivating charm, Rothko with his profundity in which the deepest abstract forms of reality are available for those willing to meditate in the presence of his paintings. There is Hans Hofmann with his energetic and bright colors which seem to cry out with the vitality and strength of the Earth, O’Keefee with her abstractions from nature. And so on and on. The modern age reveals many different kinds of art with the basic form, the soul of modernity if I may say so, still undiscovered. Take Picasso. In his youth his draftsmanship was fantastically accurate in his paintings of the less affluent in Spain. Then in 1907 broke forth cubism with his painting of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, a classic picture of the natural form in a harlotry environment. Just after the First World War he was painting figures of bathers that showed what The Great Gatsby meant, namely, we play, we have beautiful bodies, but it is going to amount a meaningless tragedy. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Then in the 1930s and early 1940s, Picasso painted pictures of machines. These were portraits not of persons but of the human being as a machine, with wheels, spokes, and so on; everyone seemed cold and made of steel. He did not give these pictures names but rather numbers. Here is an artist predicting a century in which people will be taken over by computers, which is just what has actually happened. The quest we teach is no less than a quest for knowledge in completeness and a search for awareness of the Universal Self, a vast undertaking to which all mortals are committed whether they are aware of it or not. The great central questions of life for the thinking mortal are: What am I? What is my relation to, and how shall I deal with, my surroundings? What is God, and can I form any connection with God? Every puzzle which fascinates innumerable persons and induces them to attempt its solution—be it mathematical and profound or ordinary and simple—is an echo on a lower level of the Supreme Enigma that is forever accompanying mortals and demanding an answer: What is one, whence and whither? The questers puts the problem into one’s conscious mind and keeps in there. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
It is a quest to make life of better quality, both inside and outside the self, in the thoughts moving in the brain, in the body holding that brain, and in the environment were that body moves. It is a clarion call to mortals to seek one’s true self, a voice that asks one, “Have you found your soul?” The quest is simply the attempt of a few pioneer mortals to become aware of their spiritual selves as all mortals are already aware of their physical selves. It is a quest to become conscious of Consciousness, to explore the “I” and penetrate the mystery of its knowing power. The secret path is an attempt to establish a perfect and conscious relation between the human mind and that divinity which is its source. When a mortal passes from the self-seeking aspiration of the Quest, one passes to conscious cooperation with the Divine World-Idea. It is, from another standpoint, a quest for one’s own centre. It is the opening up of one’s inner being. The love of the order and beauty of the World is thus the complement of the love of our neighbor. It proceeds from the same renunciation, the renunciation that is an image of the creative renunciation of God. God causes this Universe to exist, but h consents not to command it, although he has the power to do so. Instead he leaves two other forces to rule in his place. On the one hand there is blind necessity attaching to matter, including the psychic matter of the soul, and on the other the autonomy essential to thinking persons. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
By loving our neighbor we imitate the divine love which created us and all our fellows. By loving the order of the World we imitate the divine love which created this Universe of which we are part. Mortals do not have to renounce the command of matter and of souls, since one does not possess the power to command them. However, God has conferred upon one an imaginary likeness of this power, an imaginary divinity, so that one also, although a creature, may empty oneself of one’s divinity. Just as God, being outside the Universe, is at the same time the center, so each mortal imagines one is situated in the center of the World. The illusion of perspective places one at the center of space; an illusion of the same kind falsifies one’s idea of time; and yet another kindred illusion arranges a whole hierarchy of values around one. This illusion is extended even to our sense of existence, on account of the intimate connection between our sense of value and our sense of being; being seems to us less and less concentrated the farther it is removed from us. We relegate the spatial form of this illusion to the place where it belongs, the realm of the imagination. We are obliged to do so; otherwise we should not perceive a single object; we should not even be able to direct ourselves enough to take a single step consciously. God thus provides us with a model of the operation which should transform all our soul. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
In the same way as in our infancy we learn to control and check it in our sense of time, values, and being, freedom endlessly re-creates itself, gives birth to itself. Otherwise from every point of view except that of space we shall be incapable of discerning a single object or directing a single step. Freedom is capacity, we have seen, to transcend its own nature—an occurrence in which that overused word transcend really fits: We begin to appreciate the great fascination that freedom, phoenixlike in its capacity to rise from its own ashes, exercised on our ancestors. We begin also to experience the dangers in freedom. People will cling to freedom, treasure it, and if necessary they will die for it, or continually yearn and fight others for it if they do not now enjoy it. And it is still true, according to the statistical studies of Milton Rokeach, that the majority of people place freedom highest on their list in the ranking of values. Freedom is not only basic to being human, but also freedom and being human are identical. This identity of freedom and being is demonstrated by the fact that each of us experiences oneself as real in the moment of choice. When one asserts “I can” or “I choose” or “I will,” one feels one’s own significance, since it is not possible for the enslaved person to assert these things. In the act of choice, in the original spontaneity of my freedom, I recognize myself for the first time as my own true self. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Existence is real only as freedom. Freedom is the being of existence. When I exercise my freedom, only in those moments am I fully myself. To be free means to be one’s self. The possibility of changing, which we have said is freedom, includes also the capacity to remain as one is—but the person is different from having considered and rejected changing. This change, furthermore, is not to be confused with changing for its own sake, as we shall see presently, or changing for escapist reasons. Hence, the gross confusion of license, so often pointed at in American youth, with genuine freedom is that they are exercising their freedom when they immerse themselves in invigorating tasks and spiritual growth, as it keeps healthy young adults from living at the expense of society. Freedom consists of how you confront your limits, how you engage your destiny in day-to-day living. The Lord our God is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Praise the Lord, who covered the Heavens with clouds, who prepared the rain for the Earth, who made the grass grow upon the mountains. And may our souls be together in the bundle of life in the light of out Lord. May the Lord bless you, and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you; and be gracious to you; the Lord life up his countenance upon you, and give you peace. #RandolpHarris 13 of 13
Sometimes One Can Mistake Gratitude for Love—Dogs are Hardly an Article of Faith
Love or the lack of it is at the root of everything. Guard your children. Weigh wisdom of intervention if such is even possible. Ponder the question of inevitability. To cease wishing is a contemporary emotional and spiritual wasteland, almost like inhabiting the land of the dead. Another characteristic is satiety; if wishes are thought of only as pushed toward gratification, the end consisting of the satisfying of the need, the reality is that emptiness and vacuity and futility are greatest where all wishes are met. For this means one stops wishing. Without faith we cannot want anymore, we cannot wish. The truth of faith consists in true symbols concerning the ultimate. And the faithful is one human being with the power of thought and the need for conceptual understanding. There is a dimension of meaning expressed in the symbolism of the whish, this is what gives the wish its specifically human quality, and without this meaning, the emotional and spiritual aspects of wanting become dried up. When we have faith, it is a symbol that peace and prosperity are just around the corner and it is only a matter of time until all our need will be met. However, the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful. The difference is obvious and fundamental. However, it is, as the phrase “in principle” indicates, a difference which is not maintained in the actual life of philosophy and of faith. It cannot be maintained, because the philosopher is a human being with an ultimate concern, hidden or open. And the faithful one is a human being with the power of thought and the need for conceptual understanding. This is not only a biological fact. It has consequences for the life of philosophy in the philosopher and or the life of faith in the faithful. An analysis of philosophical systems, essays or fragments of all kinds shows that the direction in which the philosopher asks the question and the preference one gives to special types of answers is determined by cognitive consideration and by a state of ultimate concern. The historically most significant philosophies show not only the greatest power of thought but the most passionate concern about the meaning of the ultimate whose manifestations they describe. The philosophy, in its genuine meaning, is carried on by people in whom passions of an ultimate concern is united with a clear and detached observation of the way ultimate reality manifests itself in the process of the Universe. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
At most general faith means much the same as trust. Therefore, we are being asked to have faith as knowledge of specific truths revealed by God. Faith is a practical commitment beyond the evidence to one’s belief that God exists. We are to have a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence towards us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit. It is this element of ultimate concern behind the philosophical ideas which supplies the truth of faith in them. Our vision of the Universe and our predicament within it unites faith and conceptual work. We may hold that in our sinful state we will inevitably offer a resistance to faith that may be overcome only by God’s grace. It is, however, a further step for individuals of faith to put their revealed knowledge into practice by trusting their lives to God and seeking to obey his will. Humans contain the potentialities of these creative principles, and can choose to make their lives an ascent towards and then a union with the intuitive intelligence. The One is not a being, but infinite being. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
Thus Christian and Jewish philosophers who held to a creator God could affirm such a conception that God is infinite, and created the World. God, as the creator of all, is not far from any one of us. Philosophy is not only the mother’s womb out of which science and history have come, it is also an ever-present element in actual scientific and historical work. The frame of reference within which the great physicists have seen and are seeing the Universe of their inquiries is philosophical, even if their actual inquiries verify it. In no case is it a result of their discoveries. It is always a vision of the totality of being which consciously or unconsciously determines the frame of their thought. Because this is so one justified in saying that even in the scientific view of reality an element of faith is effective. Scientific view of reality an element of faith is effective. Scientists rightly try to prevent these elements of faith and philosophical truth from interfering with their actual research. This is possible to a great extent; but even the most protected experiment is not absolutely pure—pure in the sense of the exclusion of interfering factors such as the observer, and as the interest which determines the kind of question asked of nature in an experiment. What we said about the philosopher must also be said about the scientist. Even in one’s scientific work one is a human being, grasped by an ultimate concern, and one asks the question of the Universe as such, the philosophical question. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
Intellectual inquiry into the faith is to be understood as faith seeking understanding (fides quaerens intellectum). To believe is to thin with assent (credere est assensione cogitare). It is an act of the intellect determined not by the reason, but by the will. Faith involves a commitment to believe in a God, to believe God, and to believe in God. What is eternal is unchanging. In the same way the historian is consciously or unconsciously a philosopher. It is quite obvious that every task of the historian beyond finding of the facts is dependent on evaluation of historical factors, especially the nature of mortals, one’s freedom, one’s determination, one’s development out of nature and so forth. It is less obvious but also true that even in the fact of finding historical facts philosophical presuppositions are involved. This is especially true in deciding, out of the infinite number of happenings in every infinitely small moment of time, which facts shall be called historically relevant facts. The historian is further forced to give one’s evaluation of sources and their reliability, a task which is not independent of one’s interpretation of human nature. Finally, in the moment in which a historical work gives implicit or explicit assertions about the meaning of historical events for human existence, the philosophical presuppositions of history are evident. Where there is philosophy there is an expression of an ultimate concern; there is an element of faith, however hidden it may be by the passions of the historian for pure facts. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
God does not possess anything superadded to his essence, and his essence includes all his perfections. No one can attain to truth unless one philosophizes in the light of faith. Our faith in eternal salvation shows that we have theological truths that exceed human reason. And if one could attain truths about religious claims without faith, these truths would be incomplete. Higher truths are attained through faith. All these consideration show that, in spite of their essential difference, there is an actual union of philosophical truth and the truth of faith in every philosophy and that this union is significant for the work of the scientist and the historian. This union has been called philosophical faith. The term is misleading, because it seems to confuse the two elements, philosophical truth and the truth of faith. Furthermore, the term seems to indicate that there is one philosophical faith, a philosophia perennis, as it has been termed. However, only philosophical questions are perennial, not the answers. There is a continuous process of interpretation of philosophical elements and elements of faith, not one philosophical faith. Revealed theology is a single speculative science concerned with knowledge of God. Because of its greater certitude and higher dignity of subject matter, it is nobler than any other science. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
Philosophical theology, though, can make demonstrations using the articles of faith as its principles. Moreover, it can apologetically refute objections raised against the faith even if no articles of faith are presupposed. There is truth of faith in philosophical truth. And there is philosophical truth in the truth of faith. In order to see the latter point we must confront the conceptual expression of philosophical truth with the symbolical expression of truth of faith. Now, one can say that most philosophical concepts have mythological ancestors and that most mythological symbols have conceptual elements which can and must be developed as soon as the philosophical consciousness has appeared. In the idea of God the concepts of being, life, spirit, unity and diversity are implied. In the symbol of the creation concepts of finitude, anxiety, freedom and time are implied. The symbol of the “fall of Adam” implies a concept of mortal’s essential nature, of one’s conflict with oneself, of one’s estrangement from oneself. Only because every religious symbol has conceptual potentialities is theo-logy possible. There is a philosophy implied in every symbol of faith. However, faith does not determine the movement of the philosophical thought, just as philosophy does not determine the character of one’s ultimate concern. Symbols of faith can open the eyes of the philosopher to qualities of the Universe which otherwise would not have been recognized. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
Faith is the starting point, scripture offers the data, and philosophy is a supplement not a competitor. Faith, philosophy, and scripture help make sense of each other. However, faith does not command a definite philosophy, although churches and theological movements have claimed and used Platonic, Aristotelian, Kantian or Humean philosophies. The philosophical implications of the symbols of faith can be developed in many ways, but the truth of faith and the truth of philosophy have no authority over each other. In the past few years, a number of persons in psychiatry and related fields have been pondering and exploring the problems of wishing and willing. We may assume that this confluence of concern must be in answer to a strong need in out time for a new light on these problems. It is not wishing that cases illness but lack of wishing. The problem is to deepen people’s capacity to wish, and one side of our task in therapy is to create the ability to wish. Wish is an optimistic picturing in imagination. It is a transitive verb—to wish involves an act. Wishing is similar to faith because it allows us to see beyond our experience and knowledge and hope that something good may happen, and so we send out more beneficial vibrations into the Universe. Every genuine wish is a creative act. I find support for this in therapy: it is indeed a beneficial step when the patient can feel and state strongly, for example, “I wish to buy a beautiful Cresleigh home and feel safe and secure in my community.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
That wish, in effect, moves the conflict from a submerged, unarticulated plane in which one takes no responsibility but expects God and parent to read his or her wishes by telepathy, to an overt, healthy conflict over what one wants. On the basis of theological myth of creation God exults when mortals come through with a wish of one’s own. The wish in interpersonal relationship requires mutuality. This is a truth shown in its breach in many myths, and brings the person to one’s doom. Peer Gynt in Ibsen’s play runs around the World wishing and acting on his wishes; the only trouble is that is wishes have noting to do with the other person he meets but are entirely egocentric, encased in cask of self, sealed up with a bung of self. In The Sleeping Beauty, by the same token, the young princes who assault the briars in order to rescue and awaken the slumbering girl before the time is ripe, are exemplars of behavior which tries to force the other in love and pleasures of flesh before the other is ready; they exhibit a wishing without mutuality. The young princes are devoted to their own desires and needs without relation to Thou. If wish and will can be seen and experienced in this light of autonomous, imaginative acts of interpersonal mutuality, there is profound truth in St. Augustine’s dictum, “Love and do what you will.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
We cannot be naïve about human nature. We know full well that this wishing is stated in ideal terms. We know that the trouble is precisely that mortals do wish and will against their neighbor, that imagination is not only the source of our capacity to form the creative mutual wish but it is also bounded by the individual’s own limits, convictions, and experience; and, thus, there is always in our wishing an element of doing violence to the others as well as to ourselves, no matter how well analyzed we may be or how much the recipient of grace or how many times we have experienced satori. This is called the willful element, willful here being the insistence of one’s own wish against the reality of the situation. Willfulness is the kind of will motivated by defiance, in which the wish is more against something than for its object. The defiant, willful is correlated with fantasy rather than with imagination, and is the spirit which negates reality, whether it be a person or an aspect of impersonal nature, rather than sees it, forms it, respect it, or takes joy in it. There are two realms of will, the first consisting of an experience of the self in its totality, a relatively spontaneous movement in a certain direction. In this kind of willing, the body moves as a whole, and the experience is characterized by a relaxation and by an imaginative, open quality. This is an experience of freedom which is anterior to all talk about political or psychological freedom; it is a freedom, presupposed by the determinist and anterior to all the discussions of determinism. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
In contrast, the will of the second realm is that in which some obtrusive element enters is that in which some obtrusive element enters, some necessity for a decision of an either/or character, a decision with an element of an against something alone with a for something. If one uses the Freudian terminology, the “will of the Super-Ego” would be included in their realm. We can will to read but not to understand, we can will knowledge but not wisdom, we can will scrupulosity but not mortality. This is illustrated in creative work. In the second realm of will is the conscious, effortful, critical application to creative endeavor, in preparing a speech for meeting or revising one’s manuscript, for example. However, when actually giving the speech, or when hopefully creative inspiration takes over in our writing, we are engrossed with a degree of forgetfulness of self. In this experience, wishing and willing become one. One characteristic of the creative experience is that it makes for a temporary union by transcending the conflict. The temptation is for the second ream to take over the first; we lose our spontaneity, our free flow of activity, and will become effortful, controlled and so forth, Victorian will power. Our error, then, is that will tries to take over the work of imagination. This is very close to a wish. Will is the capacity to organize oneself so that movement in a certain direction or toward a certain goal may take place. Wish is the imaginative playing with the possibility of some act or state occurring. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
Will and wish may be seen as operating in polarity. Will requires self-consciousness; wish does not. Will implies some possibility of either/or choice; wish does not. Wish gives the warmth, the content, the imagination, the innocence’s play, the freshness, and the richness of the will. Will gives the self-direction, the maturity, to wish. Will protect wish, permits it to continue without wish, will loses its life-blood, its viability, and tends to expire in self-contradiction. If you have only will and no wish, you have the dried-up, Victorian, neopuritan mortal. If you have only wish and no will, you have the driven, unfree, infantile person who, as an adult-remaining-an-infant, may become the robot mortal. Awareness of one’s feelings lays the groundwork for knowing what one want. This point may look very simple at first glance—who does not know what one wants? However, the amazing thing is how few people actually do. If one looks honestly into oneself, does one not find that most of what one thinks one wants is just routines like fresh fish on Friday; or what one wants is what one thinks one should want—like being a success in his or her work; or wants to want—like loving one’s neighbor? One can often see clearly the expression of direct and honest wants in children before they have been taught to falsify their desires. The child exclaims, “I like ice cream, I want a cone,” and there is no confusion about who wants what. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
Such directness of desire often comes like a breath of fresh air in a murky land. It may not be best that one has the cone at the time, and it is obviously the parents’ responsibility to say Yes or No if the child is not mature enough to decide. However, let the parents not teach the child to falsify one’s emotions by trying to persuade him or her that he or she does not want the cone! To be aware of one’s feelings and desires does not at all imply expressing them indiscriminately wherever one happens to be. Judgment and decision are part of any mature consciousness of self. However, how is one going to have a basis for judging wat one will or will not do unless one first knows what one wants? For an adolescent to be aware that one wants to drive a brand-new BMW 3 Series, does not mean that one acts on this impulse. However, suppose he never lets his impulses reach the threshold of awareness because they are not socially acceptable? How is he then to know years later, when he buys a care, whether he wants to drive it or not, or whether because thus is then the acceptable and expected act, the routine thing to do? People who voice with alarm the caution that unless desires and emotions are suppressed they will pop out every which way, and everyone, will experience neurotic emotions. As a matter of fact, we know that it is precisely the emotions and desires which have been repressed which later return to drive the person compulsively. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
The Victorian gyroscope kind of person had to control his or her emotions rigidly, for, by virtue of having locked them up in jail, one had turned them into lawbreakers. However, the more integrated a person is, the loses compulsive become one’s emotions. In the mature person feelings and wants occur in a configuration. In seeing a dinner as part of a drama on the stage, to give a simple example, one is not consumed with desires for food; one came to see a drama and not to eat. Or wen listening to a concert singer, one is not consumed with pleasures of the flesh even though she may be very attractive; the configuration is set by the fact that one chose in coming to hear music. Of course, as we have indicted, none of us escape conflicts from time to time. However, these are different from being compulsively driven by emotions. Every direct and immediate experience of feeling and wanting is spontaneous and unique. That is to say, the wanting and feeling are uniquely part of that particular situation at the particular time and place. Spontaneity means to be able to respond directly to the total picture—or, as it is technically called, to respond to the figure-ground configuration. Spontaneity is the active “I” becoming part of the figure ground. In a good portrait painting the background is always an integral part of the portrait; so an act of a mature human being is an integral part of the self in relation to the World around it. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
Spontaneity, thus, is very different from effervescence or egocentricity, or letting out one’s feelings regardless of the environment. Spontaneity, rather is the acting “I” responding to a particular environment at a given moment. The originality and uniqueness which is always part of spontaneous feeling can be understood in this light. For just as there never was exactly that situation before and never will be again, so the feeling one has at that time is new and never to be exactly repeated. It is only neurotic behavior which is rigidly repetitive. God’s great plan of happiness provide a perfect balance between eternal justice and the mercy we can obtain through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. It also enables us to be transformed into new creatures in Christ. A loving God reaches out to each of us. We know that through his love and because of his Atonement of his only begotten Son, all humankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances. Eternal relationships are also fundamental to our theology. The family is ordained of God. Under the great plan of our loving Creator, the mission is to achieve the supernal blessing of exaltation in the celestial kingdom. Finally, God’s love is so great that, except for the few who become people of perdition, God has provided a destiny of glory for all his children, including those who have passed away. Our loving Heavenly Father wants us to have joy. “Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested,” reports Kate Atkinson. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
After Dinner Light for Flowers and Let the Music Go to Sweeten Your Heart
There are so many things I am not free to tell. Mortals were not the Virgin; they were alone, facing a severe and strict God whose mercy one could obtain only by an act of complete surrender. The beneficial aspect showed itself in the increasing spirit of rationality and objectivity and in the growth of individual and social conscience. The flowering of science in our day is one of the most impressive manifestations of rational thought thee human race has ever produced. Chinese scientist He Jiankui delivered the World’s first genetically edited babies. The twin girls have been born with deoxyribonucleic acid (a self-replicating material present in nearly all living organisms as the main constituent of chromosomes. It is the carrier of genetic information) altered to make them resistant to human immunodeficiency virus. This is a groundbreaking move because these are the first so-called designer babies. Human equality, of the sacredness of life, of all mortal’s right to share in the fruits of nature, found expression in the ideas of natural law, humanism, enlightenment philosophy and the objectives of forming a perfection Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings to Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
Common to all these ideas is the concept that all mortals are children of Mother Earth and have a right to be nourished by her, and to enjoy happiness without having to prove this right by the achievement of any particular status. The humanity of all people implies that they are all the sons and daughters of the same mother, who have an unalienable right to love and happiness. However, the average person today obtains one’s sense of identity from belonging to a nation, rather than from being the son or daughter of man. Many people think that this fixation is warped, while others understand it. These people judge others from other lands with different criteria than the member of their own clan. Their feelings toward the stranger are not considered fair by all. Those who are not familiar by bonds and soil (expressed by common language, customs, food, song, etc.) are looked upon with suspicion, and paranoid delusions about them can spring up at the slightest provocation. The person who has not freed oneself from the oaths to blood and soil is not yet fully born as a human being; one’s capacity for love and reason are not fully developed; one does not experience one’s self nor one’s fellow mortals in their—and one’s own—human reality. However, expecting people to obey the laws is totally reasonable. “Perceive the words of understanding,” reports Proverbs 1.2. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
Nationalism and Patriotism is considered a cult because people put their own nation above others, and base this foundation on truth and justice with a loving interest in one’s own nation, which is the concern with the nation’s spiritual as much as with its material welfare—never with its power over other nations. The national feeling can be seen in the reaction to the violations of clan symbols, a reaction which is very different from that to the violation of religious or moral symbols. Let us picture a person who takes the flag of one’s country to a street of one of the cities of the Western World, and tramples on it in view of other people. One would be lucky not to be lynched. Almost everybody would feel a sense of furious indignation, which hardly permits of any objective thought. The person who desecrated the flag would have done something unspeakable; one would have committed a crime which is not one crime among others, but the crime, the one unforgivable and unpardonable. Not quite as drastic, but nevertheless qualitatively the same would be the reason of the person who says, “I do not love my country,” or, in the case of war, “I do not care for my country’s victory.” Such a sentence is areal sacrilege, and a person saying it becomes a monster, an outlaw in the feelings of one’s fellow people. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
In order to understand the particular quality of the feeling aroused by people not being loyal to their country, we may compare this reaction to one which would occur if a person got up and said, “I am in favor of killing all mentally ill people, or all poor people; I am in favor of starting a war in order to conquer South America.” Indeed, most people would feel that this was an unethical, inhuman opinion. However, the crucial point is that the particular feeling of an uncontrollable deep-seated indignation and rage would not occur. Such an opinion is just bad, but it is not a sacrilege, it is not an attack against the sacred. Even if a person should not speak disparagingly of God, one would hardly arouse the same feeling of indignation as against the crime, against the sacrilege which is the violation of the symbols of the country. It is easy to rationalize the reaction to a violation of the national symbols by saying that a person who does not respect one’s country shows a lack of human solidarity and of social feeling; but is this not also true of the person who advocates war, or the killing of innocent people, or who exploits others of one’s own advantage? Undoubtedly, lack of social responsibility and of human solidarity, as are the other acts mentioned here, but the reaction to the violation of the flag is fundamentally different from the reaction to the denial of social responsibility in all other aspects. The one object is sacred, a symbol of clan worship; the others are not. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
Only when humans succeed in developing one’s reason and love further than one has done so far, only when one can build a World based on human solidarity and justice, only when one can feel rooted in the experience of universal humanity, will one have found a new, human form of rootedness, will one have transformed this World into a truly human home. Ontological principles have a polar character according to the basic polar structure of being, that of self and World. The first polar elements in individualization and participation. Their bearing on the problem of courage is obvious, if courage is defined as self-affirmation age is obvious, if courage is defined as the self-affirmation of being in spite of nonbeing. If we ask: What is the subject of this self-affirmation, we must answer: the individual self which participates in the World, i.e. the structural Universe of being. Mortal’s self-affirmation has two sides which are distinguishable but not separable: one is the affirmation of the self as a self; that is of separated, self-centered,individualized, incomparable, free, self-determining self. This is what one affirms in every act of self-affirmation. This is what one defends against nonbeing and affirms courageously by taking nonbeing upon oneself. The threatened loss of its is the essence of anxiety, and the awareness of concrete threats to it is the essence of fear. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
Ontological self-affirmation precedes all differences of metaphysical, ethical, or religious definition of the self. Ontological self-affirmation is neither natural nor spiritual, neither good nor evil, neither immanent nor transcendent. These differences are possible only because of the underlying ontological self-affirmation of the self as self. In the same way the concepts which characterize the individual self are possessed below the differences of valuation: separation is not estrangement, self-centeredness is not selfishness, self-determination is not sinfulness. They are structural descriptions and the condition of both love and hate, condemnation and salvation. It is time to end the bad theological usage of jumping with moral indignation om every work in which the syllable “self” appears. Even moral indignation would not exist without a centered self and ontological self-affirmation. The subject of self-affirmation is the centered self. As centered self it is an individualized self. It can be destroyed but it cannot be divided: each of its parts has the mark of this and no other self. Nor can it be exchanged: its self-affirmation is directed to itself as this unique,unrepeatable, and irreplaceable individual. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
The theological assertion that every human soul has an infinite value is a consequence of the ontological self-affirmation as an indivisible, unexchangeable self. It can be called the courage to be oneself. However, the self is self only because it as a World, a structured Universe, to which it belongs and from which it is separated at the same time. Self and the World are correlated, and so are individualization and participation. For this is just what participation means: being part of something from which one is, at the same time, separated. Literally, participation means taking part. This can be used in a threefold sense. It can be used in the sense of sharing, as for instance, sharing a room; or in the sense of having in common, the participation of the individual in the universal; or it can be used in the sense of being a part, for instance of a political movement. In all these cases participation is a partial identity and a partial non-identity. A part of a whole is not identical with the whole to which it belongs. However, the whole is what it is only with the part. The relation of the body and its limbs is the most obvious example. The self is part of the World which it has as its World. The World would not be what it is without this individual self. One says that somebody is identified with a moment. This participation makes one’s being and the being of the movement partly the same. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
To understand the highly dialectical nature of participation it is necessary to think in terms of power instead of in terms of things. The partial identity of definitely separated things cannot be shared by all its citizens, and in an outstanding way by its rulers. Its power is partly their power, although its power transcends their power and their power transcends its power. The identity of participation is an identity in the power of being. In this sense the power of being of the individual self is partly identical with the power of beings of one’s World, and conversely. For the concepts of self-affirmation and courage this means that the self-affirmation of the self as an individual self always includes the affirmation of the self as an individual self always includes the affirmation of the power of being in which the self participates. The self affirms itself as participant in the power of a group, of a movement, of essences, of power of being as such. Self-affirmation, if it is done in spite of the threat of nonbeing, is the courage to be. However, it is not the courage to be as oneself, it is the courage to be as a part. The phrase “courage to be as a part” presents a difficulty. While it obviously demands courage to be as oneself, the will to be as a part seems to express the lack of courage, namely the desire to live under the protection of a larger whole. Not courage but weakness seems to induce us to affirm our selves as a part. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
However, being as a part points to the fact that self-affirmation necessarily includes the affirmation of oneself as participant, and that this side of our self-affirmation is threatened by nonbeing as much as the other side, the affirmation of the self as an individual self. We are threatened not only with losing our individual selves but also with losing participation in our World. Therefore self-affirmation as a part requires courage as much as does self-affirmation as oneself. It is one courage which takes a double threat of nonbeing into itself. The courage to be is essentially always the courage to be as a part and the courage to be as oneself, in interdependence. The courage to be as a part is an integral element of the courage to be as oneself, and the courage to be as oneself is an integral element of the courage to be as a part. However, under the conditions of human finitude and estrangement that which is essentially united becomes existentially split. The courage to be as a part separates itself from unity with the courage to be as oneself, and conversely; and both disintegrate in their isolation. The anxiety they had taken into themselves is unloosed and becomes destructive. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
Our perception of a situation determines the feeling we experience. “This day we perceive that the Lord is among us,” reports Josh 22.31. Competing needs, feelings, hungers, attitudes, and ideas fill our life’s experiences with conflicts. These add to both the grandeur and the misery of human life. One day you may experience enough of these conflicts, piled on top of each other to make you shout out: “Enough! I have had enough. I want to simplify! I must clear away the cobwebs, the entanglements, the complexities. I must get back to a simple, easily lived existence.” So you will stop doing certain things, resign from a few responsibilities, drop out of a few entanglement, give up a few unnecessary friends, enemies, tasks, pleasures. The pity is that this scarcely untangles or simplifies the picture. Your life is all the things you have experienced and will usually continue to be all these things, plus the decision you make to simplify! Take the following situation as an example: Randy, 20, earns a better-than-comfortable income, has been married eight years, has two healthy children. He likes his work, though it does not excite, stimulate, or satisfy him. He keeps to it because he needs the money, the security, and the idea that he is steadily employed and rising. However, he feels gnawing frustrations. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
Randy decides one day to quit the job, take his family to a simpler part of the country, where job pressures and societal pressures are reduced. He moved from the hustle-and-bustle of Manhattan to the relative leisure of a small farming town in Sacramento. His skills get him a job, though the salary is one third that of his Manhattan salary. His home is smaller, and is wife, Erin, must take on new skills. His children have some difficulty adjusting to the new climate, social and cultural pattern, and a school where both are in the same classroom, with children younger and older. The new job is less challenging, but Randy is determined to believe that he has at last found “Utopia.” He refuses to complain and chides his wife and children when they grumble or long for their previous life. After six months, the family moves back to Manhattan.When asked by his friends to explain his moves, Randy chuckles and says he guesses he is not cut out for rural life. Randy had come to accept, at leas to feel “at home” in a very complex urban environment. He had a job that suited his aptitudes, but it failed to meet some of his other needs. His restlessness was a byproduct of his feeling that something was missing from his life. The decision to move was based on several things, particularly a desire to get un-stuck from what he perceived to be an entangling lifestyle. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
Randy also found that he had rather enjoyed the urban entanglements, or at least that he had had some part to play in these patterns.In the Sacramento rural community he felt very unimportant, unneeded. Add tot his the strain on his family which was relayed back to him and you see some of the difficulty in his situation. Randy had the objectivity to see that maybe the restlessness and dissatisfaction were in him, not in the home or job. He sought vocational guidance and together he and the counselor looked at the various needs he had and found a job better suited to meet those needs. Do you remember how good it felt the last time you were recognized for your work? Research proves that appreciation is not only the number one thing employees declare their boss could do t inspire great work from them, but it also shows that is must be given in timely fashion. However, receiving praise for your hard work long after the result of your work can be considered offensive by many employees. Yes, this means that when we do something great at work, we expect a timely response. It is important to understand that you hold the power, the words, and the giddy-up to cheer people up along the way—by giving them instant gratification. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
We also live in a society where too many people are trying to combat bullying and bad vibes by being nice to people and paying compliments that they do not really mean. For example, people often say, “I appreciate you,” just for you someone saying hello, thanking them or following the rules, but it is kind of an empty comment because these are things we are meant to do. So, if you have people in your life who are going out of their way for you, be sure to show them that they really are appreciated. And also, be willing to accept gifts, it is a way of bonding and showing people who much you care. They want you to have things that you will cherish and when you look at them you will be filled with good memories. When people are gone,they want you to have something to remember them by. “No power of influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; by kindness,and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 121.41-42. We always know when Jesus is at work because he produces in the commonplace something that is inspiring. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
Everyone faces hard things: the death of a loved one,divorce, a wayward child, illness, trials of faith, a lost job, or any other difficulty. To help us travel and triumph over our hard times with such glimpses of eternity, we must face hard things, first, by forgiving others and, second, by giving ourselves to Heavenly Father. Forgiving those who may have caused our hard things and reconciling ourselves to the will of God can be very difficult. It can hurt must when our hard thing is caused by a family member, a close friend, or even ourselves. The Lord needs you to look like, sound like a true disciple of Jesus Christ. That can be a hard thing, yet, we can do it—with joy. As we face hard things in the Lord’s way, may we lift up our heads and rejoice. At this sacred opportunity to testify to the World, our Savior lives and guides us. Lesson taught through the traditions we establish in our homes, though small and simple, are increasingly important in today’s World. We are urged to make our home sanctuaries of faith. It is an effort driven by our faith—our belief that one day the seeds sown in their youth will take root and begin to sprout and grow. The power of the Savior’s gospel to transform and bless us flows from discerning and applying the interrelatedness of its doctrine, principles, and practices. The Holy Ghost will enlighten each of us as we consider our increased responsibilities as individuals and families to our time and enhance our lives. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
Desire’s Perfect Goal Should Not Disenthrall Thy Soul—Here is a Star, there is a Star, Some Lose Their Way!
The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned. Love would conquer all, of course, but one has to know when it is there first. Glaucus was a fisherman. One day he had drawn his nets to land and had taken a great many fishes of various kinds. So he emptied his nets and proceeded to sort the fishes on the grass. The place where he stood was a beautiful island in the river, a solitary spot, uninhabited, and not used for pasturage of cattle, not visited by anyone but himself. On a sudden, the fishes, which had been laid on the grass, began to revive and move their fins as if they were in the water; and while he looked on astonished, they one and all moved off to the water, plunged in, and swam away. He did not know what to make of this, whether some god had done it, or some secret power in the herbage. “What herb has such a power?” he exclaimed; and gathering some of it, he tasted it. Scarce had the juices of the plant reached his palate when he found himself agitated with a longing desire for the water. Glaucus could no longer restrain himself, but bidding farewell to Earth, he plunged into the stream. The gods of the water received him graciously and admitted hi to the honour of their society. They obtained the consent of Oceanus and Tethys, the sovereign of the sea, that all that was mortal in him should be washed away. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
A hundred rivers poured their waters over Glaucus and then he lost all sense of his former nature and all consciousness. When he recovered, he found himself changed in form and mind. His hair was sea-green, and trailed behind him on the water; his shoulders grew broad, and what had been thighs and legs assumed the form of a fish’s tail. The sea-gods complimented him on the change of his appearance, and Glaucus fancied himself rather a good-looking personage. One day, Glaucus saw a beautiful maiden Scylla, the favourite of the water-nymphs, rambling on the shore, and when she had found a sheltered nook, laving her limbs on the clear water, he fell in live with her. Glaucus showed himself on the surface, spoke to the maiden, saying such things as he thought most likely to win her to stay; for she turned to run immediately on sight of him, and ran till she had gained a cliff overlooking the sea. Here she stopped and turned round to see whether it was a god or s sea animal, and observed with wonder his shape and colour. Glaucus, partly emerging from the water and supporting himself against a rock, said, “Maiden, I am not monster, nor sea animal, but a god; and neither Proteus nor Triton ranks higher than I. Once I was a mortal, and followed the sea for a living; but now I belong wholly to it.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
Then he told the story of his metamorphosis, and how he had been promoted to his present dignity, and added, “But what avails all this if it fails to move your heart?” Glaucus was going on in this strain, but the maiden, Scylla, turned and hastened away. Glaucus was in despair, but it occurred to him to consult the enchantress, Circe. Accordingly he repaired to her island. After mutual salutations, Glaucus said, “Goddess, I entreat your pity; you alone can relieve the pain I suffer. The power of the herbs I know as well as any one, for it is to them I owe my change of form. I love Scylla. I am ashamed to tell you how I have sued and promised to her, and how scornfully she has treated me. I beseech you to use your incantations, or potent herbs, if they are more prevailing, not to cure me of my love—for that I do not wish—but to make Scylla share it and yield me a like return.” To which Circe replied, for she was not insensible to the attractions of the sea-green deity, “You had better pursue a willing object; you are worthy to be sought, instead of having to seek in vain. Be not different, know your own worth. I protest to you that even I, goddess though I be, and learned in the virtue of plants and spells, should not know how to refuse you. If Scylla scorns you, scorn her; meet one who is ready to meet you half way, and thus make a due return to both at once.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
However, Glaucus replied, “Sooner shall trees grow at the bottom of the ocean, and seaweed on the top of the mountains, than I will cease to love Scylla, and her alone.” The goddess Circe was indignant, but she could not punish him, neither did she wish to do so, for she liked him too well; so she turned all her wrath against her rival, poor Scylla. She took her plants of poisonous powers and mixed them together, with incantations and charms. Then she passed through the crowd of gamboling beasts, the victims of her art, and proceeded to the coast of Sicily, where Scylla lived. There was a little bay on the shore to which Scylla used to resort, in the heat of the day, to breathe their air of the sea, and to bathe in its waters. Here the goddess poured her poisonous mixture, and muttered over it incantations of mighty power. Scylla came as usual and plunged into the water up to her waist. What was her horror to perceive a brood of serpents and barking monsters surrounding her! At first she could not imagine they were a part of herself, and tried to run from them and to drive them away; but as she ran she carried them with her, and when she tried to touch her limbs, she found her hands touch only the yawning jaws of monsters. Scylla remained rooted to the spot. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
Scylla’s temper grew as ugly as her form, and she took pleasure in devouring hapless mariners who came within her grasp. Thus she destroyed six of the companions of Ulysses, and tried to wreck the ships of Aeneas, till at least she was turned into a rock, and as such still continues to be a terror to mariners. Mistakes are a deliberately wrong choice in the contest between what is clearly good and what is clearly bad is sin. We all want a partner, but some want one to the point of it being a pathology. Many people knowingly or unknowingly force a relationship due to an addiction of love. If one is honest with oneself, and know that one has nothing in common with their focus of their intertest, such as different goals, different lifestyles, and different hobbies, and the person is not attracted to the individual pursing a relationship, this is a clear indication that they do not like you in a romantic way, much like how Scylla was not in the least bit interested in Glaucus. Yet, Glaucus could not take no for an answer and ended up running her like, and the rage she experienced ruined the lives of others. Absolutely imagine if you had people dragging you into things you did not want to be part of, and you will understand why this is not a healthy thing to do. It is never a healthy thing to do. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
People who think they can learn from their mistakes have a different brain reaction to mistake than people who think intelligence is fixed. One major difference between people who think intelligence is malleable and those who think intelligence is fixed is how one responds to mistake. When one makes a mistake, the best thing to do is to try to learn from it and figure it out. Conversely, some people who think they cannot gain intelligence will not take the opportunities to learn from their mistakes, and they usually employ defense mechanisms to justify their behaviour so they do not feel guilt or remourse. Defense mechanisms are psychological maneuvers that operate below the surface of one’s awareness (they are unconscious) to protect one from emotional pain or distress. The most familiar one is probably denial. Denial allows one to dismiss a painful reality so that one can go on acting as if a situation or event is not true—because one does not want to admit it is true. Transgression is different from being overtaken in a fault. Both sins and mistakes can hurt us and both require attention. People who try to force relations, often end up feeling insecure, hurt, and betrayed for no reason. Then these individuals start questioning themselves as to why they are never good enough for the person they are interested in. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
There should be no license for sin, but mercy should go hand and hand with reproof. Though it may be hard to admit, there comes a time when one just needs to cut their losses and leave a person alone. The progression of a romantic relationship cannot be formed. It must evolve naturally, over time. Impatient, insecure, or damaged people try to force relationships. Mortal make these kinds of mistakes all the times. However, these things are on an essentially predetermined course. A fool is a person lacking judgment or prudence. The Saviour used the term fool to characterize the lesson in this parable about the rich man who built greater barns to store his abundant fruits and goods and then said to his soul, “Thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry,” reports Luke 12.19. The distinction between sins and mistakes is important to our actions. We have seen some very bitter finger pointing. All of us make mistakes, and some of us very serious ones. Any thoughtful person feels a kind of failure because one’s sins or moral failure. One does not get clean by rolling in the mire. One does not get clean and whole by brooding unduly over the past, although we can certainly learn from our mistake. There is no strength in weakness; there is no strength in sin; and we do not overcome our mistake and our sins by fighting them directly. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
If people dwell upon them too much, they may succumb to their sins. The avoidance of guilt can be addictive, too. Guilt-avoidance has become a drug of choice for many people, because it is so pleasurable, almost intoxicating, to think of oneself as morally pure. Those who are addicted to guilt-avoidance are usually a bit inconsistent. They avoid the guilt themselves, but they do not mind imposing a bit of it—maybe even a lot of it—on others. It can be immensely pleasurable to notice the flaws of others while ignoring your own. However, that is a sin, too. All things considered, we are on a safer ground when we focus on our own sins, not those of others. At least this is how we process theologians see things. We believe that when we harm others, or fail to act in ways that prevent them from being harmed, we violated something deep within the nature of nature. We have violated an Eros toward life’s flourishing that is divine. In sinning against others, we sin against God. It takes courage to stand up. The freedom to be different. The freedom to take guilt and make something beautiful of it. Humans have the freedom to turn guilt into love. Few gifts are more desirable than a clear conscience—a soul at peace with itself. Only God can heal a troubled soul. However, if we want God to forgive us, we must follow the procedure he has given to us. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
Confession is a necessary requirement for complete forgiveness. It is an indication of true Godly sorrow. It is part of the cleansing process—the starting anew requires a clean page in the diary of our conscience. Confessions should be made to the appropriate person who has been wronged by us and to the Lord also. In addition, the nature of our transgression may be serious enough to require a confession to God in prayer. “Therefore I say unto you, Go; and whoever transgressed against me, him shall you judge according to the sins which he or she has committed; and if he or she confess his or her sins before thee and me, and repents in the sincerity of one’s heart, that person one shall forgive, and I will also forgive that individual,” reports Mosiah 26.29. Remember, it is complete deliverance from the tortures of a guilt-ridden soul that we seek. Repentance is not easy. Godly sorrow brings one to the depth of humility. This is why the gift of forgiveness is so sweet and draws the transgressor so close to the Saviour with a special bond of affection. Full repentance liberates the individual with joy unspeakable. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
Any type of open and truthful disclosure reduces stress and helps individuals come to terms with their behaviour. It is not coincidental that some of the most powerful people or institutions in may cultures encourage people to confess their transgressions. And there is strong evidence that writing about upsetting experiences or dark secrets can benefit your mental and physical well-being. Similar to religious confessions, expressive writing encouraged individuals to explore their deepest thoughts and feelings about upsetting experiences. For such emotional purges to work, people must be completely honest with themselves. Putting emotional turmoil into words changes how we think about it. Giving concrete form to secret experiences can help categorize them in new ways. Talking or writing about a disturbing event helps us to understand it better. And things we do not understand cause greater anxiety. Once we are able to express our upheavals, we tend to ruminate about them less, freeing us up to focus on others thing. Dozens of studies have also shown that expression is linked to less stress and improved sleep and cardiovascular function. Also, better sleep is associated with enhanced immune function and better general health—which correlates with better mental health, too. Confession can help people get through difficult times. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
You Left Me a Heavenly Sweet Legacy of Love–Meet Me on Top of the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day
I have really hope you have found happiness, and if ever in need of something, like someone to love you, do not hesitate to call me. Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears, but our intellect…must itself lack all those things which of its nature it understands. Since then it naturally understands all sensible and bodily things, it must be lacking in every bodily nature; just as the sense of sight, being able to know colour, lacks all colour. If sight itself had any particular colour, this colour would prevent it from seeing others colours, just as the tongue of a feverish person, being coated with bitter moisture, cannot taste anything sweet. The true genius shudders at incompleteness—imperfection—and usually prefers silence to saying the something which not everything should be said. Maybe there is something divine in the bliss we feel. Love aims at transcending human existence, at connecting it with the eternal and infinite, and thereby at achieving the only aspect of immortality that is open to us as human beings. Because many people want both height and depth, spirituality strengthens and develops love and transforms it into a desire for a higher level of understanding of the self, others, and the Universe. When our eyes fall upon the beauty of the Earth, our soul is able to remember true love and reverences as it enjoys the expression of the divine—of temperance, justice, and knowledge of the absolute. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
The human being is a spiritual being at the core. We are the soul and have an existence beyond the physical. Our personality has, in fact, many sub-personalities or different, often conflicting, aspects. Some of these aspects can be very troublesome and sabotage our efforts at success and happiness. Magically, if we can observe some aspect of ourselves with detachment, then we can change that aspect or somewhat control it. The idea of aspects of personality and observing them is now part of our daily language (largely do the work of Psychosynthesis). We regularly hear people say, “There is a part of me that wants marry Walter, but the other part of me is says Sam Baldwin is my destiny.” Psychosynthesis work sets up a dialogue with the different aspects of self to try to find a way of balance and integration of these, often, conflicting, parts. People tend to be dominated by love, will, and intelligent activity. Love deals with matters of the heart, compassion, emotion, and sensitivity. The will is one’s drive, need to achieve, power to remove and overcome come obstacles. Intelligent activity is the capacity to actively plan, organize, construct mental schemes and models of things. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
Psychosynthesis tries to identify the basic type and then attempt to bring in balance if necessary. For example, the love type may need to develop the will to be less vulnerable and more effective. The will type may need to develop emotional sensibility so as to learn to love and be loved. In the 1993 film, Sleepless in Seattle is a classic fairy tale which involves a love struck, beautiful, enchanted princess Anne Reed, and sleepless, pragmatic, handsome prince Sam Baldwin. After the death of his wife, Sam moved to Seattle with his son and is convinced he will never find love again, and he just focuses on his work in architecture and never sleeps. His son, Jonah calls a talk-radio program hosted by a psychiatrist and Johan tells the World how concerned he is about his dad, and then the father gets on the phone and talks about what love means to him. The World falls madly in love with him, and many women want to meet him, but he is not interested. Anne Reed hears the call, and although she is already engaged, she feels he is her destiny. Anne bases he love life on the 1957 film An Affair to Remember. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
Psychosynthesis would have helped Anne balance her need for love, and would have helped Sam develop a less will driven and emotional aspect of his personality, which is a form of conscious balance and choice. It lets people know where they are lacking balance in their lives, and as you see it is not always a chemical imbalance, but a lack of development or personal understanding. However, fate brings the lovers together in hopes they can balance each other out. There are usually three levels of satisfaction: Happiness, joy, and bliss. Happiness is the goal for most people’s lives it is the arrangement of life events to bring about the desired end. Problem, it can be fleeting and may not last for long. Joy is the constant states of soul, and is the surest sign of the presence of the soul. Bliss is the condition of the spirit beyond all material limitations. The intellect here serves as a bridge. Because of the refinement of the matter composing it, the intellect is well adapted as a medium of consciousness—it is like a translucent substance through which the soul can shine. However, it is only in conjunction with a soul that the intellect and the whole psychophysical organism can have experiences. The soul can gain release through discriminatory knowledge (viveka), that is, by realizing the essential distinction between itself and nature. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
Contemplative techniques induce a stilling and purification of the mind in which the essential nature of the soul is reflected clearly. Thereby the soul learns to recognize the repression of the sublime, which tend to lead to unhappy and neurotic states that are the result of failure to understand and admit the spiritual aspects in ourselves and others. We cannot base on life on films like Sleepless in Seattle because taking such a risk could turn out to be more like Sleeping with the Enemy. Sleeping with the Enemy is a 1991 film in which a character called Laura Burney lives in a beautiful home by the beach on Cape Cod with her husband, Martin, a charming, handsome and wealthy investment counselor. In reality, Martin is not charming at all. He is volatile and charged with energy. Martin is extremely obsessive and has control issues. Martin is also physically and emotionally abusive toward his wife, Laura, throughout their marriage. He makes her keep the house crystal clean, makes her pretend to be happy, tells her what she is allowed to wear, selects the music she can listen to, and even controls her social activities. Therefore, we need to teach our kids that life is not all about finding love, but more about finding a career that allows one to support oneself and becoming aware of the external World, since mental and physical entities evolve on a parallel and mutually adapted lines; thus, it opens the way to a correspondence theory of perception. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
According to the theory of perception, external happenings imprint themselves via the sense and the sensus communis, or mind organ (manas), on the intellect. These images are then illuminated by the soul. The mind is, so to say, a screen containing pictures of the outer World, and the soul lights these up. However, the soul itself cannot be illuminated and this perceived introspectively; therefore, its existence is known only by inference (or by a special state of consciousness). This is why religion and talk therapy have become some popular. Doctors realize a lot of people do not have chemical imbalances, but they are experiencing situations and conditions that they are not equipped to handle and need guidance of someone who can help them recognize there is nothing wrong with them, but they may be in a situation that is not conductive to their development. By medicating people who do not have chemical imbalances, we could be doing more damage than good because we are using a drug to control them and forcing them to adapt to situations, which may be unsafe. Conversely, some people do need medication because there is something wrong with their brain. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
While we are on the subject of mental health, there was this interesting study about a mental who was schizophrenic, he was a witness to a crime, and was arrested. He mother did not want him on medication because she believed it was dangerous for him. He was being assaulted in jail because he was not normal. The investigators forced him to take a shot of an antipsychotic that would last a month so he could clear his head up enough to see lucid and testify. After taking the medication, he hanged himself because he suffered from depression, as his friends, the voices in his head were gone, and he was lonely. Therefore, not everyone needs therapy and not everyone needs medication. As a society, we just have to understand there are different types of people and not everyone is typical and we cannot force them to adhere to our standards. Of course, we can never understand what life is like for some people, who have mental or physical impairments, or who have been sheltered and do not understand the World, because we have never been in their shoes. So, it is not our job to sit back and judge people who have learned to adapt as best to life as they can. Sometimes people are living unimaginable lives. “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you,” reports Matthew 7.1-2. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
A layperson’s most natural way of defending belief in induction is that it has worked in the past. Concealed in this reply, of course, is the assumption that what has already worked will continue to do so. However, there is a lack of clarity about what counts as success in using the rule. Our society has much neglected the need for the development of the capacity for expression of love and beauty. Love is a basic soul quality. When unfolded, it enables the person to love and accept the people they encounter and find the good in all people. We have to identify our infinity of living Worlds in endless pace with the infinity of God. Knowledge therefore must begin not with sense experience but with a rational search for units of divine life. The atoms of the physical World are carried in the ether, which is the universal medium of the divine life and power. The conquest of the self, in which the intellect achieves mastery over the passions of humans and drives out the beast is were all the traditional virtues of moderation and self-control have place, and at this level we appear to have the choice between good and evil. However, when we use this freedom as reason dictates, we become aware that we are simply following the urge of our nature toward union with the divine; and the rational person burns with the heroic fury of an intellectual love of God. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
The mind senses the presence of God in the whole of his creation. Beauty is everywhere. We live in the beauty, but in reality everything is beautiful. We place immense trust in the analogical power of reason as a means of empathy with the universal of life of things. In mathematical reasoning, we possess the standard for God’s own knowledge, and whatever we can prove mathematically we know as surely and as perfectly as God does. Thus in the genuinely scientific investigation of nature we possess a revelation equal in authority, though not in importance, to the revelation concerning human’s moral duties and destiny that is contained in the Holy Scripture. “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise person who built his or her house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. However, everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish person who built his or her house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with great crash,” reports Matthew 7.24- 27. That is why God wants us to apply his ways in our lives now. What we can take with us for all eternity is our love and concern with one another. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
Good Sense is the Most Evenly Shared thing in the World
There is no such thing as chance or accident; the words merely signify our ignorance of some real and immediate causes. Some people are not honestly looking for guidance. They may in fact pray for guidance, but they almost always imagine the answer they want to hear. Their hearts may not really be open. If they would only stop to think about what they planned and give serious thought to the counsel they revived, they would know their decision did not make much sense. The truth is, some decisions are so obviously bad that we do not need the Lord or the bishop to tell us that they are. The development of critical thinking skills is an important and lasting benefit of a college education. Such skills enable people to evaluate, compare, analyze, critique, and synthesize information so they will not accept everything they hear at face value. Perhaps the most glaring need for critical thinking is in how we evaluate things we hear on television and in the news. For example, people spend billions of dollars every year on natural dietary supplements based on marketing claims that in fact may not have been tested. So when a salesperson or journalist tells you that, for example, echinacea helps presents colds you should ask if that statement has been scientifically tested, how was it tested, when, and by whom. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
Similarly, when politicians make claims in 30-second sound bites, check those claims before you accept them as truth. Be skeptical. And if you can do check on the validity of advertising and political statements, you will find that they are frequently misleading or just plain wrong. Many people have confidence that the Lord will somehow intervene if they get into trouble. However, they overlook the fact that we are here on Earth to learn—often from our mistakes. We make decisions, then like by the consequences. The Church is not a substitute for intelligent thought or plain, common sense. Whatever other aspects of meaning the word sense may retain in the compound “common sense,” it has prominently the force of sense as opposed to nonsense. In what is contrary to common sense there is always something more or less—but obviously—nonsensical. It produces the feeling, varying in strength according to circumstances, that argument is only precariously in place in dealing with it. For to deploy arguments at all directly against the manifestly absurd is to invest it with some intellectual dignity and to muffle its self-annihilating character. It is, moreover, to invite the suspicion that one has failed to recognize absurdity, and such failure has a very foolish look. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
Many of our ideas about the World come from personal observation. We check these conclusions out with other people, and if most people agree with us we assume our ideas are true. Such agreements become our common-sense fact. Common sense can be a good source of information for making day-to-day decisions. However, sometimes it is based upon little evidence, limited information, and personal bias. When this happens, it can hinder our perception of reality. Psychology bases its theories on objective and systematic investigation, not common sense, though its findings often agree with our common-sense notions about behaviour. However, psychology attempts to eliminate facts based on insufficient evidence or personal bias. Furthermore, there are questions and actions that show a lack of maturity and an unwillingness to accept responsibility. Still others indicate a serious misunderstanding of how life works. Since the issues concern mainly the World of perception, the element of common sense means that a person should trust their own sense, and not tolerate the suggestion of things that are ridiculous, not real of mere representations. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
Common sense is a mental endowment, ordinary understanding—without which a person is out of his or her mind, or feeble-minded; ordinary, practical good sense in everyday affairs; and the faculty of private truths. What we need in unimpeachable authority for the fundamental convictions shared by all normal people about matters of fact with respect to which consciousness can give no guarantees. Common sense supplies it. It outs us into assured possession of such first truths as that there is an external World, that our minds are incorporeal, that we are capable of free agency. First truths have characteristic marks: No attack upon them, and no attempt to prove them, can operate from premises that surpass them in clarity or evidence. They are, and always have been, acknowledged by the vast majority of humankind. Those who imagine they reject them act like all other people in conformity with them. If truths of common sense are self-evident, how can they be denied? And again, if they are self-evident, how can they me made evident when denied? The truths of common sense cannot be made evident by deductive proofs, but there is always absurdity in opinions contrary to its dictates. In defending common sense, we admit it has control over us. Therefore, we all need to stay close to our Father in Heaven and seek his guidance through daily prayer. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
At the same time, we need to acknowledge our own responsibility. The Lord’s plan gives us our agency. In return, we are expected to think and act. Even prayer is not a substitute for wisely taking care of our everyday responsibilities. The convictions of common sense come to us with the backing of our entire cognitive nature. They are tests of truth; their own must be presumed, for they are too elementary to have antecedents from which they could be derived. The only possible falsification of common sense would be demonstrated inconsistency in its deliverances, and this would bring epistemological chaos. “God grants a treasure of common sense to the honest. He is a shield to those who walk with integrity. He guards the path of the just and protects those who are faithful to him. The you will understand what is right, just, and fair, and you will find the right way to go. For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will fill you with joy. Wise choices will watch over you. Understanding will keep you safe,” reports Proverbs 2.7-11. Therefore, our common sense is a God given natural ability to make good judgments and to behave in a practical and sensible way. An internal sense, which is believed to be the sense by which information from the other five sense is understood and interpreted. Common sense is a sensible understanding, or one’s basic intelligence which allows for plain understanding and without which good decision or judgment cannot be made. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
Human’s gods and demons have not disappeared at all: they have merely got new names. Those who do not believe in God or who believe that they do not believe in him, believe nevertheless in some little pocket of god or devil of their own. Religious agnosticism is not a psychological fact, but a self-deception. It is an essential law [ein Wesensgesets] that every finite spirit believes in either God or an idol. These idols may very greatly. So-called unbelievers may treat the state or a woman or art or knowledge or any number of things as if they were God. “The laws of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul. The statues of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple,” reports Psalm 19.7. God has significantly affected the masses. What needs explanation is not belief in God, which is original and natural, but unbelief or, rather, belief in an idol. God gave us our brains, the apparatus we need for making sound judgments, and he does not want them standing idle. He expects us to use them. Certain decisions are right simply because they make good sense. God will remove every obstacle that presents us from doing his will. He does things we cannot do, but expects us to use the good sense he has given us. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
When God delivered Saint Peter from prison, the Angel supernaturally removed the chains and led him past two guards, then miraculously opened the iron gate before him. However, once they were out in the street, the angel departed and left Saint Peter to use his brain. God is not going to do for us what he has endowed us to do for ourselves. God may want us to gather facts on which we can base a sound judgment, or list the advantages and disadvantages of the various alternative. For instance, if you are trying to decide what house to buy, you may need to compile some data. How much money do you have available? Which elevation fits your budget? What are some features you want in your house? Which elevation offers the features you like and is in your price range? We must trust God to guide us, but we must also take the responsibility for making an intelligent choice on the basis of the information we have. Insist on good reasons for the decisions you make. Remember, however, that human reason is fallible. We can never be sure that we have obtained all the relevant facts, nor that we are interpreting them correctly. We must, as in all other cases, set the observed facts before us and, after first discussing the difficulties, go on to prove, if possible, the truth of all the common opinions about these affections of the mind, or, failing this, of the greater number and the most authoritative; for if we both refute the objections and leave the common opinions undisturbed, we shall have proved the case sufficiently. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
Common sense is thought of as changeless, the same for all people at all times. It s rightly thought of common sense as having a kind of instinctive character—but instincts can undergo modification. These beliefs show some modification as people become civilized and civilization develops. They are not, as ordinarily held, beliefs that have been up for acceptance or rejection; they exist as lifelong belief-habits. And they possess a logical feature in virtue of which they are double-resistant when criticized. The Scriptures teaches that basic moral values are inscribed on the soul of every human being. Those values may differ from person to person or from culture to culture, but there is in every person a sense of ought, called conscience, which evaluates one’s behaviour and either accuses or defense the individual. God can use that conscience to lead us. It is true that a conscience can be seared or branded by the effects of sin. That happens when we regularly ignore its voice and neglect to heed its warnings. A conscience may also become overly sensitive and restrictive, prohibiting things which God permits. Each person’s conscience is conditioned by knowledge, experience, and training, so it too must always be measured by the Word of God. However, there is still that innate compulsion or restraint which must be reckoned with. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
Bring all the very general first premises to recognition and develop every suspicion of doubt of their truth. However, the doubt one is looking for must be the real thing, not paper doubt; we can no more induce genuine doubt by an act of will than we can give ourselves a surprise by deciding to. Strong thinkers are apt to be great breath-holders, but holding one’s breath against belief is not doubting. However, in claiming indubitability for a belief of common sense, we are not declaring its truth—propositions that really are indubitability, for the time being may nevertheless be false. The future holds possibilities of surprise for all our beliefs. Yet, though any one of our indubitable beliefs might turn out to be false, they could not all do so. Still, prayerfully heed the voice of conscience. It may express the will of God. Closely linked to conscience is the plain sense of duty. Certain things are obviously God’s will simply because they are rightfully expected of us. “Anyone, then, who knows the good one ought to o and does not do it, sins,” reports Apostle James. Common sense is a great mass of roe, rich in valuable metals, that need philosophical smelting. It must have removed inadvertences, confusions, and contradictions. However, the procedures by which is this done—rigorous reflection, the adjustment of its beliefs to the assured results of science are not alien to it. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
Common sense has been self-correcting in its evolution and is still to some extent modifiable. The man in the street is not to be taken as a representative; the common sense of philosophical importance resides in the consensus of ignorant and educated belief. This unanimity is the result of a long development, during which idiosyncrasies of opinion have been worn down by mutual attrition, and mistakes—which common sense itself can see to be such—have been corrected. Common sense is less a matter of particular beliefs than the persistence of plastic tendencies to certain most general and comprehensive beliefs. We are constantly predicting human behaviour. If we could not predict the instructor would be there, we would not come to class. On a date, we observe the behaviour of our companion and predict the best moment to express our affection. Each of us engages in prediction every day, based on past experience and present observation. In the same way, psychology tries to study behavior systematically to make predictions based on the best empirical evidence. However, praying for guidance when duty is clear can lead to grave sins, deep delusions, and pathetic regrets. Fix that leaky toilet your wife has been after you about. Pay back that money you borrowed. You do not need to pray about it. It is your duty. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
Doing out duty has another application as well. When we face difficult choice and honestly cannot decide what to do, just faithfully perform the next thing that is expected as part of one’s daily responsibilities. Guidance may come and greater opportunities may open to one while one is carrying out those obligations. The idea of predicting behaviour is a frightening one to many people. You might be afraid that if you can predict your own behaviour that you will have no choice as to how you will act. However, this is not necessarily so. Suppose you know that having your mother nag you about studying bugs you so badly that you are likely to refuse to study at all. When she does so, you can make some choices. You can avoid seeing her when you know you have to study. You can ask her not to nag you on the subject. Or you can try to change your own reaction to her nagging, somehow. All of these choices grow out of your own awareness of the pattern: Mother nags = I refuse to study. You predict what your future reactions will be if they follow past patterns, and only then can you decide you will change the pattern somehow. The way to be used of God to our greatest capacity, and to enjoy the assurance that he will keep us in the center of his will, is to be steadfast and dependable in what he has given us to do. Keep doing what you are doing, and do it well until new guidance comes. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
Randolph Harris II International Institute 