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Nobody Does it Without Carrying Scars in One’s Soul One’s Whole Life
I was enchanted by the World of rock music—the way the singers could scream of good and evil, proclaim themselves angels of devils, and mortals would stand up and cheer. Sometimes they seemed the pure embodiment of madness. And yet it was technologically dazzling, the intricacy of their performance. It was barbaric and cerebral in a way that I do not think the World of ages past has ever seen. Also there was something vampiric about rock music. It must have sounded supernatural even to those who do not believe in the supernatural. I mean the way the electricity could stretch a single note forever; the way harmony could be layered upon harmony until you felt yourself dissolving in the sound. So eloquent of dread it was, this music. The World just did not have it in any form before. Since personal freedom is a venture down paths we have never traversed before, we can never know ahead of time how the venture will turn out. We leap into the future. Where will we land? With freedom one experiences a dizziness, a feeling of giddiness, a sense of vertigo, giddiness, dread—are expressions of the anxiety that accompanies freedom like its shadow. Sometimes a patient in therapy will wryly smile and say, “When I am mad at you, I think I was better off when I was neurotic—then I could go along in only one groove.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
I say “wryly” because if he really believed this, he would not be in therapy in the first place since the purpose of therapy is precisely to take one out of the rigid grooves, the narrow, compulsive trends, which are blocks to freedom. This gives the person a sense of release. However, it is a freedom that brings anxiety. Anxiety is potentially present whenever we are free; freedom is oriented toward anxiety and anxiety toward freedom. Anxiety is the reality of freedom as a potentiality before this freedom has materialized. For freedom is possibility, and who is to forecast what the end result of any possibility may be? Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor saw this clearly: “Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a mortal and a human in society than freedom. Mortals are tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom one can hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.” Freedom is a burden because it brings anxiety in its wake; and the Grand Inquisitor sought to shield people from the paralyzing aspects of anxiety by robbing them of its positive aspects—chiefly, freedom. Requiring the surrender of their freedom, he removed the stimulus to invent new forms, new styles, new ideas—in short, new possibilities. Now, as he insisted, men and women are “vile, weak creatures,” “slaves by nature,” “base creatures.” He is surely logical: if you take away freedom, you make people into the base, weak, vile salves the Grand Inquisitor describes. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
It is helpful to keep in mind that anxiety, like dizziness, can be both constructive and destructive. The constructive aspect is stimulating and gives one energy and zest; anxiety is a teacher that, since we carry it inwardly, can never be avoided. Anxiety illuminates experiences that we would otherwise run away from. Civilization is the result of anxiety in that cavemen were forced to invent thinking in order to cope with the saber-toothed tiger and the bison and other animals, which were stronger in tooth and nail and would have exterminated the human race. The anxiety that comes with excessive freedom can also be destructive in that it can paralyze us, isolate us, send us into panic; and when repressed, it may lead to cardiac ailments and other psychosomatic illnesses. These two aspects of anxiety are parallel to constructive and destructive stress. If one lives with any sense of adventure, every person must bear constructive stress; but destructive stress is the excessive tension we see on the modern assembly lines which can tear the human being to pieces. This is why personal freedom is fascinating and the most prized of all human conditions. However, because it is inseparable from anxiety, it is dangerous and understandably dreaded at the same time. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
The longer I live and the more I observe in the lives of others, the more numerous becomes the illustrations of higher laws—the factuality of righteousness and the universality of the Quest. This is only as it should be for both are parts of the World-Idea. Thought and action are reflected back by choices and what the consequences of our choices are. They can lead to corruption, or to eternal life. “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live,” reports Deuteronomy 30.19. Everything in life goes exactly according to what is written in God’s Word. There are no exceptions. This is the law that affects everyone, whether a believe or a non-believer. You will reap what you sow. All corruption that is in the World comes from lusts. Let no one make the mistake of separating out the quest from everyday life. It is Life itself! Questers are not a special group, a labeled species, which one does or does not join, but are all humanity. This is not merely a matter for a small elite interested in spiritual self-help. It is a serious truth important to every mortal everywhere. The inability to measure up to these ideals does not carry a stigma. All mortals at this level come to Earth with their imperfections. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
All mortals seek for truth either consciously and deliberately or unconsciously and blindly, but they can seek only according to their capacity and ability, circumstances and preparedness. It is not a question whether questers are happier than non-questers—for that is an individual personal matter: the division itself is an artificial one. The ascent to Consciousness is for all mortals, not for a few only. Humankind is so near to God and yet so far away from God! Every fresh day is a fresh call from God to mortals. “Then he went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. And when his friends heard it, they went out to seize him; for they said, ‘He is beside himself,’” reports Mark 3.19-21. It is there in all, whether it be latent or patent, this impulse in each mortal to improve and better oneself into a person of worth. Ultimately it develops, in this body or a later one, into the aspiration to transcend oneself. The divine soul dwells in every mortal. Therefore, if only one will apply the faculties one possesses, every mortal may find it. “And his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside they sent to him and called him. And a crowd was sitting about him; and they said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you.’ And he answered, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking around on those who sat about him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother,’” reports Mark 3.31-35. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
For most of those who go away to a university to study, it is not the first time that they leave the home of their parents. However, for all of them it is an important step on their own independent way of life. Every step on this road brings them farther away from the place from which they came, the family into which they were born. The first moves towards independence occur very early in life—as exemplified in the story of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple. And none of these moves is without pain and tragic guilt—as indicated in the anxiety of the parents of Jesus and the reproaches they made to him. However, only after Jesus has begun his public activities the depth of the gap between him and his family becomes fully manifest. In the story which we have just read and which is recorded by the three Gospels, Jesus uses the family relations as symbols for a relation of a higher order for the community of those who do the will of God. Something unconditional breaks into the conditional relations of the natural family and creates a community which is as intimate and as strong as the family relations, and at the same time infinitely superior to it. The depth of this gap is emphasized in the attempt of one’s family to seize him and to bring him home because of his extraordinary behavior which makes them believe he is out of his mind. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
And the gap is strongly expressed in Christ’s saying that one who loves father and mother more then him cannot be his disciple, words even sharpened in Luke’s version, where everyone is rejected by one who does not hate father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters—and one’s own life. All these words cut with divine power through the natural relation between the members of the family whenever these relations claim to be ultimates. They cut through the bondage of age-old traditions and conventions and their unconditional claims; they cut through the consecration of the family and ties by sacramental or other laws which make them equal to the ties between those who belong to the new reality in the Christ. The family is no ultimate! The family relations are not unconditional relations. The consecration of the family is not a consecration for the final aim of mortal’s existence. We can imagine the revolutionary character of such sayings in face of the religions and cultures of humankind. We can hardly measure their disturbing character in face of what has happened century after century within the so-called Christian nations—with the support of the Christian churches who could not stand the radical nature of the Christian message in this as in other respects. However, in spite of its radicalism, the Christian message does not request this dissolution of the family. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
The Christian message affirms the family and limits its significance. Each mortal must someday take this quest. This is as certain as the Sun’s rising, for it is not said on high authority that we can live by bread alone? The work of the opening up to one’s inner being, and to its best, not worst, side is both the duty and the destiny for every mortal. One may evade the first and retain the second for a time but cannot do so for all time. What the quester does of one’s own free choice today, the generality of mortals will be obliged to do tomorrow. The hour of awakening must come to every mortal, even if it has to come at the hour of deathl and when it does it will be with utter amazement and stupefaction at best, or else with all the force of an explosive shock. For one is a member of the human species, not the animal one, and shares its destiny. Jesus takes up the prophecy of Micah, that in the last days “brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child, and the children will rise against parents and have them put to death.” It belongs to periods in which the demonic powers get hold of the World, that the family community is turned into its opposite. However, when Jesus uses this prophecy, he adds, “And you will be hated by all for my name’s sake.” The same words which point to the demonic disruption of the family are used to describe its inescapable divine disruption. This is the profound ambiguity of the Biblical teaching. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Now let us look into our own situation. We cannot cut the ties with our family without being guilty. However, the question is: Is it willfulness which demonically disrupts the family communion, or is it the step toward independence and one’s own understanding of the will of God which divinely liberates us from the bondage to our family? We never know the answer with certainty. We must risk tragic guilt in becoming free from father and mother and brothers and sisters. And we know today better than many generations before us what that means, how infinitely difficult it is and that nobody does it without carrying scars in one’s soul one’s whole life. For it is not only the real father or mother or brother or sister from whom we must become free in order to come into our own. It is something much more refined, the image of them, which from our earliest childhood has impregnated our souls. The real father, the real mother may let us go free, although this is by no means the rule in Christian families. However, even if they have the wisdom to do it, their images can prevent us from doing what the will of God is in a concrete situation, namely, to do acts in which love, power, and justice are united. Their image may prevent us from love by subjection to law. It may prevent us from having power by weakening our personal center. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
Their image may also prevent us from exercising justice by blinding us to a concrete situation and its demands. And the same thing happens with the images of brothers and sisters. Although it is easier to become free from them in an external sense, they may hiddenly produce decisions which determine for the worse whole periods of our lives. However, do not mistake me! Opposition and revolt are not yet freedom. They are unavoidable stages on the way to freedom. However, if they are not overcome as much as the early dependence must be overcome, they create another servitude. How can this happen? Certainly, in pathological cases, psychotherapy is needed, as Jesus himself acted as a healer, bodily and mentally. However, more is necessary, namely, the dependence on that which gives ultimate independence, the image of that which makes it possible to hate and to love every life, including our own. No human problem and certainly not the family problem can be solved on a finite level. This is true although we know that even the image of God can be distorted by the images of father and mother, so that its saving power is almost lost. This is the danger of all religion and a serious limit for our religious work. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
However, it is not a limit for God, who again and again break through the images we have made of him, and who has shown in Christ that he is not only father and mother to us, but also child, and that therefore in hum the inescapable conflicts of every family are overcome. The Father who is also child is more than a father as he is more than a child. Therefore we can pray to the Father in Heaven without transferring our hostility against the father image to him. Because God has become child, it is possible for us to say the Our Father. How dissonant the ego sounds! When it issues from tragic lips, tense with come self-contradiction that they try to old back, it can move us to great pity. When it issues from chaotic lips that savagely, heedlessly, unconsciously represents contradiction, it can make us shudder. When the slips are vain and smooth, it sounds embarrassing or disgusting. Those who pronounce the name of God, wallowing in the soul, uncover the shame of the World spirit that has been debased to mere spirituality. The Quest cannot be evaded. In the end all must come to it; otherwise they will be pulled or pushed along it however unwilling or reluctant they may be. More and more people are moving, albeit at a slow pace and with suspicious minds, into mystical teaching—but they are moving. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
Nature is trying to teach mortals to equilibrate themselves. The sooner they learn this lesion, the better for their happiness and success. How beautiful and legitimate the vivid and empathic God sounds! Prayer is our infinite conversation, and the air of conversation is present on all its ways, even before our judges, even in the final hour on Earth. In prayer we actually go out in faith and toward God. Thus, we stand together with the holy Trinity in actuality and are never severed from it. Even solitude cannot spell forsakenness, and when the human World falls silent for one, one his one’s soul say You. How beautiful and legitimate the full armor of God is. It is the pure intercourse with nature. Nature yields to it and speaks ceaselessly with it; she reveals her mysteries to it and yet does not betray her mystery. The soul believers in her and says to the rose: “So it is You”—and at once shares the same actuality with the rose. Hence, when it returns to itself, the spirit of actuality stays with it; the vision of the Sun clings to the blessed eye that recalls its own likeness to the Sun, and the friendship of the elements accompanies mortals into the calm of dying and rebirth. Thus, accepting God as adequate, true, and pure resounds through the ages. And to anticipate and choose an image from the realm of unconditional relation: how powerful, even overpowering, is our Saviour, and how legitimate to the point of being a matter of course! #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
For it is the unconditional relation in which mortals call the soul of the Holy Ghost has become unconditional for one. If detachment ever touches one, it is surpassed by association, and it is from this that one speaks to others. In vain we seek to reduce our spirituality to something that derives its power from itself, nor can we limit our soul to anything that dwells outside us. Both would once again deactualize the actual, the present relations. Everyone can seek God and then become righteous; everyone can say Father and then becomes son or daughter: actuality abides. The multitudes who people our planet will eventually travel the same course that the philosophic aspirant now travels. However, they will do it slowly through the lapse of numerous centuries; they will move lightly, imperceptibly, and without the intense pressures one puts upon oneself. Mortal are made in God’s image in the sense that one latently possesses certain Godlike qualities. However, these have to be developed by evolution which can be meticulous, through the path of normal experience, or swift through Quest. “Never be weary of good works, but be meek and humble in heart; for such shall find rest to their souls,” Alma 37.34. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
If We Take Eternity to Mean Not Infinite Temporal Duration but Timelessness, then Eternal Life Belongs to those Who Live in the Present!
If one would give birth to a dancing star, I tell you one must harbor chaos. I hide nothing from you, not my ignorance, not my fear, not the simple terror that if I try I might fail. I do not even know if it is mine to give more then once, or what is the price of giving it, but I will risk this for you, and we will discover it together, whatever the mystery and the terror, just as I have discovered alone all else. Most of us are so preoccupied with the noise, the uproar, the cacophony of the modern World that we have no energy left for constructive living. We long to pause, to absorb into our day-to-day existence, some calmness, some inner order in which we can call our soul our own, in which we take time to experience some beauty, to know and enjoy our friends, and to let whatever creative impulses or visions we have be heard, listened to, have their moment. This pressing need coincides with influx of Christian influence, especially among the young people in this country, shown by the wide sale of books on religion, and the endless listening to preachers. There can be no doubt of the depth and urgency of the hunger for some psychoreligious center of life. However, it often happens that aspirants put off the sacrifice of time which prayers and meditation call for because, they complain, they are too busy with this or that. Eternal anxiety is the lot of the free mortal. Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
Thus they never make any start at all and the years slip uselessly by. In most cases this involves no penalty other than the spiritual stagnation to which it leads, but in some cases where a higher destiny has been reserved for the individual or where a mission has to be accomplished, the result is far different. Everything and everyone that such a person uses as an excuse for keeping away from the practice of meditation, the exercise of devotion, and the communion of prayer may be removed from one’s external life by the higher self. Thus, through loss and suffering, one will be forced to obey the inward call. Human beings are given more than one chance to redeem themselves. Such is the mercy of the higher power. Prayer is a way, available for most of us without a radical changing of our vocation, by which we can put meaningful content into the pause. No matter what form or stripe this prayer may take—yoga of the physical or mental variety—all have in common the aim of providing channels to deeper levels of experience by means of the pause. When I, for example, am overburdened with fatigue or gloom or the distress of problems and the sleeplessness that goes with these things, I may pause temporarily to withdraw myself from the ego-self. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
I cannot withdraw myself from the ego-self by the head-on force of thinking. However, it can be done, sometimes with the help of a prayer, or through relaxation, or pausing and letting be. I seek to move into the psyche-self, in which I see tings sub specie aeternitatis, in which I no longer feel the pain described above—the ego-self that feels the pains described above—the ego-self that feels them is temporarily transcended. The fatigue, the distress, the gloom all seem to vanish. They psyche-self, freed from the groveling kind of pain, freed from the narcissism, freed from ego-centered misery, can be a channel to awareness of infinite possibilities. Time-backed and Earth-bound as one is, it is not surprising that one often tries to evade the Quest, to ignore it in various ways such as always keeping bust truing to fulfill increasing ambition, cultivating skepticism disguised as practicality, or demanding instant and demonstrable proofs. However, most often one deflects the thoughts of it or changes the conversation abruptly. If pursued by oneself or others, the very idea makes one nervous. One is uneasy at the thought of higher laws to be obeyed. One is fearful of what one will be asked to do and of the discipline to be practiced. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
It is sadly human to want to digress from the straight path of the Quest at times. This happens to many and a proportion of them yields to the desire. Invariable, however, the passing years bring them back to either the leaving point or the starting point. Experience always points up the lesson that the initial urge faith conviction or reasoning which put them on the path was a wise and necessary one. When they learn at first hand with sorrow, loss, or frustration, the picture of life grows a little clearer to them, what the teachers offered free without such unpleasant consequences. One can understand how in the modern World, left to itself, untouched and unthawed by the emergence of any individual, should become alienated and turn into an incubus; but how does it happen at, as you say, the I of mortal is deactualized? Whether it lives in relation or outside it, the I remains assured of itself in its self-consciousness, which is a strong thread of gold on which the changing states are strung. Whether I say, “I see you,” or “I see the tree,” seeing may not be equally actual in both cases, but the I is equally actual in both. Prayer is, par excellence, a concentration of the void, the pause, the no thing. It is a freeing of the self from the clutter of life, giving one a pleasantly dizzy and mildly ecstatic experience. This dizziness is an attractive state that one likes to come back to, at least in memory, in moments throughout the day. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
In this sense meditation is a relief and a freedom from our buying and selling, our technological culture. Prayer seems magical and curative because it opens one’s vision and being to a New World, a brightly colored World, conducive to calmness and peacefulness. In general it seems to be a less intense form of the World than the mystics describe, but in quality the same, a World which has within it sweetness, overflowing love, beauty now all about it. This is the common denominator of many diverse methods of prayer. They seem to have in common: stopping the machinery, the noise, the pressure, the haste, the compulsive driveness, and a higher level of consciousness, what was called oceanic. One experiences being absorbed into the Universe and the Universe being temporarily absorbed into one’s self. Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos. Persons appear by entering into relation to other persons. One is the spiritual form of natural differentiation, the other that of natural association. The purpose of setting oneself apart is to experience and use, and the purpose of that is living—which means dying one human life long. The purpose of relation is the relation itself—touching the soul. For as soon as we touch the soul, we are touched by a breath of eternal life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
Whoever stands in relation, participates in an actuality; that is, in a being hat is neither merely a part of one nor merely outside oneself. All actuality is an activity in which I participate without being able to appropriate it. Where there is no participation, there is no actuality. Where there is self-appropriation, there is no actuality. The more directly the soul is touched, the more perfect is the participation. The I is actual through its participation in actuality. The more perfect the participation is, the more actual the I becomes. However, the I that steps out of the event of the relation into detachment and the self-consciousness accompanying that, does not lose its actuality. Participation remains in it as a living potentiality. To use words that originally refer to the highest relation but may also be applied to all others: the seed remains in one. This is the realm of subjectivity in which the I apprehends simultaneously its association and its detachment. Genuine subjectivity can be understood only dynamically, as the vibration of the I in its lonely truth. This is also the pace where the desire for ever higher and more unconditional relation and for perfect participation in being arises and keeps rising. In subjectivity the spiritual substance of the person matures. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
The person becomes conscious of oneself as participating in being, as being-with, and thus as a being. The ego becomes conscious of oneself as being this way and not that. The person says, “I am”; the ego says, “That is how I am.” “Knowing thyself” means to the person: know yourself as being. To the ego it means: knows your being-that-way. By setting oneself apart from others, the ego moves away from being. This does not mean that the person give up one’s being-that-way, one’s being is different; only, this is not the decisive perspective but merely the necessary and meaningful form of being. The ego, on the other hand, wallows in one’s being-that-way—a fiction that one has devised for oneself. For at bottom self-knowledge usually means to one the fabrication of an effective apparition of the self that has the power to deceive one every more thoroughly; and through the contemplation and veneration of this apparition one seeks the semblance of knowledge of one’s own being-that-way, while actual knowledge of it would lead one to self-destruction—or rebirth. The person beholds one’s self; the ego occupies oneself with one’s My: my manner, my race, my works, my genius. The ego does not participate in any actuality nor does one gain any. One sets oneself apart from everything else and tries to possess as much as possible by means of experience and use. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
This is one’s dynamics: setting oneself apart and taking possession—and the object is always It, tat which is not actual. One knows oneself as a subject, but this subject can appropriate as much as it wants to, it will never gain any substance: it remains like a point, functional, that which experiences, that which uses, nothing more. All of its extensive and multifarious being-that-way, all of its eager individuality cannot help it to gain any substance. There are two kinds of human beings, but there are two poles of humanity. No human being is pure person, and none is pure ego; none is entirely actual, none entirely lacking in actuality. Each lives in a twofold I. However, some mortals are so person-oriented that one may call them persons, whiles are so ego-oriented that one may call them egos. Between these and those true history takes place. The more a human being, the more humanity is dominated buy the ego, the more does the I fall prey to inactuality. In such ages the person in the human being and in humanity comes to lead a subterranean, hidden, as it were invalid existence—until it is summoned. There is always the danger that some people will be too separate from the reality of most people’s experience. Let us keep in mind that prayer occurs, often silently, in all gradations, from a chance insight on a crowded elevator to the conscious cultivation of the sense of peace to regular discipline of meditating for short periods several times a day. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
There are also dangers in becoming isolated from the World of social action by praying too much, and it can be a detriment to one’s own creativity, which means we should not only pray, but take corrective actions to help assist our prayers. We never wholly leave the ego-self behind, and we still live in the real World with its rationality and irrationality, and with our responsibility toward this World. However, it is precisely in this ever-present World that prayer can give meaning to our pauses. All forms of prayer seek to change the character of the self, a change that involves a new relationship with the void. Many people will be familiar with at least the beginning stages of the void by their practice of meditation. I speak of the holy void because holy, coming from the root whole, refers to the mystical experience of grasping the wholeness of the Universe in one’s prayer. The feeling of the World as bounded whole is the spirituality of God. The holy void is the pause appearing in imaginary spatial form. This is one reason the mystics are so often shepherds since they look out continuously on the endless desert. One has this experience of the void in looking steadily out over the sea, an experience rightly termed oceanic since it gives one feeling of infinity. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
Being in the desert or at the ocean where our vision can seemingly go on for ever can give us acute anxiety, since the eyes have no boundaries with which to orient us; or it can give us a sense of profundity, of eternity, or of infinity, all of which are pleasurable. This is why floating in a stimulus-free tank, where we are insulted from every sound and every glimmer of light can bring either intense anxiety or a transcendent, holy experience. In the void the experience of nothingness occurs, and in this one’s spiritual inspirations are called forth and one’s deepest thoughts are made manifest. In the experience of nothingness, we find ourselves cleansed of the chatter and the clatter of a World which is too much with us. If a mortal is born with spiritual capacity but refuses to use it, and even deliberately shuts it away, a day will come wen it will thrust itself up into one’s conscious self for acceptance and use. If one continue to deny it, the capacity will then operate against one, until one’s sanity becomes questionable or one’s fortunes become adverse. No mortal can afford to fail to heed the summons to the Quest. If one does, it is at one’s own peril and one will then fail in everything else, for this is an imperative call coming from the highest part of one’s being. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
In is not by accident the people love to believe in myths in searching for ways things can be said and done, for Greek mythic language is one of the ways such truths can be made manifest. In the holy void the nothingness that we experience gives our deeper thoughts room to make themselves manifest, and the otherwise silent inner voice can be heard. This is the equivalent of the listening to the silence we referred to earlier. One method of prayer consists of continuously clearing the mind of all content until God—or being, as some would prefer—can speak to us out of the void. The nothingness then becomes a something; a something that comes, the Christians would say, from the depths of our soul. The void is the dimension of eternity. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who life in the present. Our human hope is these experiences of timelessness—such as when we see something breathtakingly beautiful or hear a piece of music that seems to raise us into that seems to raise us into eternity—is to hang on to the experience of forever. Those who have been personally confronted by an illuminated mortal with the Quest of the God and reject it to continue their quest of the ego instead, are destined to suffer. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
On hearing a Symphony of Ruben de Ronde called Save Me I thought the of the sweet sounds, oh, beautiful music, do not cease! Reject me not into the World again. And again in God’s World: O World, I cannot hold thee close enough! Lord, I do fear. Thou has made the World too beautiful this years; my soul is all but out of me—let fall. No burning leaf: prithee, let no bird call. The warning which Light on the Path gives to disciples, but if thou look not for one, if thou pass one by, then there is no safeguard for thee. Thy brain will reel, thy heart grow uncertain, and in the dust of the battlefield thy sight and senses will fail, and thou wilt not know thy friends from thy enemies—this warning is apposite here and should be taken deeply to heart. Necessity will with time force this comprehension on them. Prophets and teachers will disclose this truth to them but if they do not listen then hard experience must disclose it. The void may seem to be contact with pure being, but I prefer a more modest judgment, that one gets glimpses of being, but I prefer a more modest judgment, that one gets glimpses of being, awareness that there is a beckoning path to pure being even though none of us gets very far on it. The concentration on the spaces between words, the intervals, the pauses in life—these yield the touch of ecstasy. However, the moment formulation in words occurs, the no thing becomes a something. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Obviously, one listens with care to any message that may be formulated in moments like these, and one need not worry too much about its origin. It may be interpreted as coming from one’s deeper self, or from the various autosuggestions that occur, or from contact with the being of the Universe. The last may be experiences as a glimpse of Go—assuming that God is conceived as the ground of being and meaning in the Universe. At this point I feel, as I gotten have, what we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence. How long can a mortal withstand this silent call of the God within one? –as long as one’s hopes and desires can find some measure of satisfaction, as long as frustration does not crush them, or until destiny itself overrides one’s indifference and compels one to heed it. The Call of the Quest once heard may be lost for a while, even a long while, but it will return. The need of truth is an irrepressible one but it may take a long time to come through in all its force and clarity. One is left free to save or destroy oneself, to accept the truth or turn one’s face away from it. “Learn wisdom in thy youth; yes, learn in thy youth to keep the commandments of God. Yea, and cry unto God for all thy support; yea, let all thy doings be unto the Lord, and whithersoever thou goest let it be in the Lord; yea, let all thy thoughts be directed unto the Lord; yes, let the affections of thy heart be placed upon the Lord forever,” reports Alma 37.35,36. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Human Beings are Given More than One Chance to Redeem themselves for Such is the Mercy of the Higher Power!
If you follow your conscience, you do what you want. However, it was simpler than that. I wanted you to have the wealth I gave you. I wanted you…to be happy. I lighted the torch on the wall, and went out for a moment to breathe the fresh air. Then leaving gates and doors unlocked behind me, and went up stairs to watch the twilight melt from the sky. An hour must have passed. The azure light faded, the stars rose. A friend responded to my question as to how he was with these words: “I have got a cold, I did not sleep much last night, everything is going wrong.” My friend went on: “The people who argue that the psyche and the ego are identical are wrong. My ego is in bad shape; my psyche is fine.” All through history human beings have wrestled with the fact that each of us experiences two aspects of selfhood which are never fully separated from each other. One of these aspects is the ego-self. This has the functions Dr. Freud rightly assigned to it: beleaguered monarch thought it is, it keeps, as best it can, some harmony in the different sections of its kingdom. It judges the demands of reality, balances preconscious ideas, and sifts out unacceptable unconscious impulses so that the person can live with some unity. The ego-self is related to the instincts and bodily well-being. A number (though not all) of the concerns about wounded prestige, suffering slights, I would assign to this ego-self. The ego-self’s question is some form of “Do I get what I want?” Hence, its associated with the term egocentricity. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
The other aspect is the psyche-self, which seeks to see life steadily and its it whole. The psyche-self is concerned with the context of freedom. The heightened consciousness of which we speak from time to time is a function of the psyche-self. It is the aspect that scans the various possibilities of the self; it is the locus of what we call essential freedom. When Christopher Burney, during the five years in solitary confinement in Germany in World War II, set himself to review everything he had been taught in school in order to keep from going psychotic, he was using not the ego-self, but the source of purpose that transcends the ego, which is the psyche-self. The ego-self is correlated with freedom of doing, the psyche-self with freedom of being. When it is pointed out again and again that freedom depends on how the self relates itself to itself at every moment, one is speaking of the psyche-self in relation to the ego. The self relating to itself was the aspect of selfhood that Dr. Freud never understood. About his therapeutic practice we find Dr. Freud writing, “analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible but to give the patient’s ego freedom to choose one way or the other.” This refers to freedom, but it omits the function most concerned with this freedom—namely, the self relating to itself. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
There is a curious phenomenon in human selfhood that I have noticed in my clients and in myself that I call the automatic pilot. The automatic pilot is the device on passenger planes to which the pilot can shift the directing of the plane when, on a long flight, he or she needs to rest. A client, for example, will be intensely anxious about a confrontation one must have with some other person or about a difficult phone call one mast make. Finally, one gets one’s courage up and goes ahead to do these anxiety-laden acts. One is surprised to discover that they turn out much better than one anticipated. There seems to be some unexpected assistance, some power that one did not know one possessed. From a Freudian point of view, it would be asserted that the help of which one was not aware comes from the client’s preconscious; and in Jungianism, it would probably be interpreted as a voice from the unconscious. I call such assistance a function of the psyche-self. The implication is that we, whether we are patients in therapy or not, can rightfully trust ourselves on those deeper dimensions which I have called the psyche-self. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
In the welter of self-distrust in which we generally find ourselves these days (covered up as it is by neonarcisscism, techniques of assertiveness, and advice to stand up for yourself), we can bank on more power, more capacity than mist of us give ourselves credit for. This upsurging of strength and energy which we did not know we has is an example of the working of destiny through the psyche-self. However, it is required at the same time that we confront our despair and our anxiety rather than suppressing them; otherwise the despair and anxiety will take over in the moment when we need their opposites. The automatic pilot is partially an influence from Eastern mysticism, particularly Zen Buddhism and its offshorts. It is the phenomena of letting go and letting be. The awareness of the duality of selfhood enables us to correct a radical misunderstanding of Zen Buddhism and other Eastern psychoreligions with regard to transcending the self. There is a passion among some groups in America to lose oneself, to escape from oneself, to get free of oneself. It is significant that this passion came along with, or followed closely, the age of narcissism and the preoccupation with self-sentiments. The “me” decade followed hard upon the Zen decade. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
These two phases, me decade and Zen decade, sound contradictory—and they are on paper. However, their proximity shows that they had in common the same longing to escape from oneself. People in search of a drug would ask a friend, “Do you have any uppers?” or if the answer was no, “Do you have any downers?” It did not matter whether the result one got was elation or depression. At least one got free of oneself. The rushing after Zen and the narcissism was thus often to be found in the same person. There was no distinction between the constructive self-concern of a person and the self-concern of one who leaps after one gimmick one weekend and after another gimmick the next weekend. This leaping often leads not only to temporary elation, but to eventual confusion and despair. The loss of the self, I believe is a misnomer. The misunderstanding of the Zen Buddhist goal of freedom from the self actually leads to a more subtle kind of narcissism. One’s own pushiness, one’s demands, one’s egocentricity may still be present; only the person now rationalizes them in terms of nonselfullness. We cannot help noting the exemplars of Zen Buddhism and Transcendental Meditation and other forms of psychoreligion are not without any self; the idea is abused. They are relieved of one phase of the self—namely, what I have called the ego-self. However, they seek to discover in the psyche-self a new clarity, a freshness, a sense of immediacy and of eternity. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
The self we transcend in Zen Buddhism and meditation is the ego-self. The ecstasy we experience is the freedom from the concerns of the ego-self, a process of dumping rubbish of the self, followed by the pre-eminent presence, however temporary, of the psyche-self. One gains power over an incubus by addressing it by its real name. Similarly, the It-World that but now seemed to dwarf mortal’s small strength with its uncanny power has to yield to anyone who recognizes its true nature: the particularization and alienation of that out of whose abundance, welling up close by, every Earthly You emerges to confront us—that which appeared to us at times as great and terrible as the mother goodness, but nevertheless always motherly. However, how can we muster the strength to address the incubus by one’s right name as long as a ghost lurks inside us—that I that has been robbed of its actuality? How can the buried power to relate be resurrected in a being in which a vigorous ghost appears hourly to stamp down the debris under which this power lies? How is a being to collect itself as long as the mania of one’s detached I-hood chases it ceaselessly around an empty circle? If caprice is one’s dwelling place, how is anyone to behold one’s freedom? #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
Even as freedom and fate belong together, caprice belongs with doom. However, freedom and fate are promised to each other and embrace each other to constitute meaning; caprice and doom, the spook of the soul and the nightmare of the World, get along with each other, living next door and avoiding each other, without connection and friction, at home in meaninglessness—until in one instant eye meets eye, madly, and the confession erupts from both that they are unredeemed. How much intellectual eloquence and artistry is used today to prevent or at least conceal this occurrence! Free is the mortal that wills without caprice. One believes in the actual, which is to say: one believes in the real association of the real duality, I and You. One believes in destiny and also that is needs one. It does not lead one, it waits for one. One must proceed toward it without knowing where it waits for one. One must go forth with one’s whole being: that one knows. It will not turn out the way one’s resolve intended it; but what wants to come will come only if one resolves to do that which one can will. One must sacrifice one’s little will, which is unfree and ruled by things and drives, to one’s great will that moves away from being determined to find destiny. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Now one no longer interferes, nor does one merely allow things to happen. One listens to that which grows, to the way of Being in the World, not in order to be carried along by it but rather in order to actualize it in the manner in which it, needing one, wants to actualize it in the manner in which it, needing one, wants to be actualized by one—with human spirit and human deed, with human life and human death. One believes, I said; but this implies: he encounters. The capricious mortal does not believe and encounter. One does not know association; one only knows the feverish World out there and one’s feverish desire to use it. We only have to give use an ancient, classical name, and it walks among the gods. When you say You, he means: You, my ability to use! And what one calls one’s destiny is merely an embellishment of and a sanction for one’s ability to use. In truth one has no destiny but is merely determined by things and drives, feels autocratic, and is capricious. One has no great will and tires to pass off caprice in its place. For sacrifice one lacks all capacity, however much one may talk of it, and you may recognize it by noting that one never becomes concrete. One constantly interferes, in order “to let it happen.” How, one says to you, could one fail to assist destiny? How could one not employ all feasible means required for such an end? That is how one see those who are free; one cannot seem them differently. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
However, the free mortal does not have an end here and then fetch the means from there; one has only one thing: always only one’s resolve to proceed toward one’s destiny. Having made this resolve, one will renew it at every fork in the road; and one would sooner believe that one was not really alive than one would believe that the resolve of the great will was insufficient and required the support of means. One believes; one encounters. However, the unbelieving marrow of the capricious mortal cannot perceive anything but unbelief and caprice, positing ends and devising means. One’s World is devoid of sacrifice and grace, encounter and present, but shot through with ends and means: it could not be different and its name is doom. For all one’s autocratic bearing, one is inextricably entangled in unreality; and one becomes aware of this whenever one recollects one’s own condition. Therefore one takes pains to use the best parts of one’s mind to prevent or at least obscure such recollection of one’s falling off, of the deactualized and the actual I, were permitted to reach down to the roots that mortals calls despair and from which self-destruction and rebirth grow, this would be the beginning of the return. “Jesus Christ was not Yes and No; but in him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him,” reports II Corinthians 1.19,20. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
A change in his traveling plans and the angry reaction of the Corinthian Christians to this change is used by Paul for profound and far-reaching assertions about Jesus “the Christ”: “In hi it is always Yes, he is not Yes and No.” This reminds us by contrast of the words of a great Protestant mystic who has said that in Yes and No all things consist, and of philosophers and theologians who are convinced that truth can only be expressed through No and Yes, and above all of Paul’s own central doctrines that God justifies the sinner, that he says “yes” to one whom he says a radical ‘”no” at the same time. And does not Paul in this second letter to Corinthians formulate the Yes and No in a most paradoxical way: “Unknown and yet well known, dying and behold we live, having nothing yet possessing every.” This certainly is Yes and No. However, in the Christ, he says, there is not Yes and No. Really not? Do we not come from Good Friday to Easter, which point to the deepest No and the highest Yes—that of the death and life of Christ? Yes and No: This certainly is the law of all life, but not Yes alone and not No alone. Yes alone is the advice of a self-deceiving confidence which soon will be shaken by the No of the three gray figures: emptiness, guilt, death. No alone is the advice of a self-deceiving despair whose hidden Yes to itself is manifest in its self-seclusion and its resistance against the Yes of love and communion. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
And further, Yes and No is the law of truth. Not Yes alone and not No alone! Yes alone is the arrogance which claims that its limited truth is the ultimate truth, but which reveals by its fanatical self-affirmation how many hidden No’s are present in its ground. No alone is the resignation which denies any ultimate truth but which shows by its self-complacent irony against the biting power of every word of truth how strong the Yes to itself is that underlies its ever-repeated No. Truth as well as life unite Yes and No, and only the courage which accepts the infinite tension between Yes and No can have abundant life and ultimate truth. How is such a courage possible? It is possible because there is a Yes above the Yes and No of life and of truth. However, it is a Yes which is not ours. If it were ours, even our greatest, our most universal and most courageous Yes, it would be contrasted by another No. This is the reason why no theology and no philosophy, not even a theology or philosophy of “Yes and No” is ultimate truth. In the moment in which it is expressed, it is contradicted by another philosophy and another theology. Not even the message of Yes and No, be it said by Kierkegaard or by Luther or by Paul, can escape its No. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
There is only one reality where there is not Yes and No but only Yes: Jesus as the Christ. First he also stands under the No, as completely as a being can stand; this is the meaning of the Cross. Everything of Christ which is only the expression of a finite life or a finite truth stands with all life and all truth under the No. Therefore, we are not asked to accept Christ as the unquestionable teacher or as the always fitting example, but we are told that in Christ all promises of God have become real, and that in Christ a life and truth which is beyond Yes and No has become manifest. This is the meaning of Resurrection. The No of death is conquered and the Yes of life is transcended by that which has appeared in Christ. A life which is not balanced by death, a truth which is not balanced by error is visible in Christ’s being. Christ shows the final Yes without another No. This is the Easter message; this is the Christian message altogether. And this is the ground of a courage which can stand the infinite tension between Yes and No in everything finite, even in everything religious and in everything Christian. Paul points to the fact that Christian say Amen through Christ. One cannot say Amen to anything expect the reality which is the Christ. Amen is the formula of confirmation, the expression of ultimate certitude. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
There is no ultimate certitude expect the life which has conquered its death and the truth which as conquered its death and the truth which has conquered its error, the Yes which is beyond Yes and No. Paul points to that which gives us such a certainty: It is not an historical report, but it is the participation in Christ, in whom we are established, as he says who has given us the guarantee of his Spirit in our hearts. We can stand the Yes and No of life and truth because we participate in the Yes beyond Yes and No, because we are in it, as it is in us. We are participants of Christ’s resurrection; therefore, we can say the ultimate Yes, the Amen beyond our Yes and our No. How many people thing and say that when their material fortunes improve, or their family problems are solved, or their living place is changed they will be able to give time and effort to the spiritual quest, but until then they must wait! However, in actual fact this seldom happens. For when the improvement, solution, or change does take place, new matters call for their attention or new attachments are formed for the ego, and so the spiritual effort gets postponed again. Those who believe that it is better to wait for more propitious circumstances before they begin the Quest, deceive themselves into an unavailing and lugubrious pessimism. Neither tomorrow nor the next year will be any better. Procrastination my be perilous. Later may be too late. Beware of being drawn into that vast cemetery wherein mortals bury their half-born aspiration and paralysed hopes. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Wide Unclasp the Tables of Their Thoughts—These Same Thoughts, People, this Little World
It was time to go out, time to test my powers. After all there had not been a case of witchcraft in a hundred years, the last that I knew f being the trial of La Voisin, a fortune-teller, bunt alive in the time of Louis the Sun King. All the houses, built by Cresleigh Homes in Rocklin, California, looked like dollhouses to me in their completeness. They reminded me of baby Winchester Mansions. Perfect collections of toys with their dainty little wooden chairs and polished mantelpieces, mended curtains and well-scrubbed floors. I saw all this as one who had never been a part of life, gazing lovingly at the simplest details. A starched white apron on its hook, worn boots on the hearth, a pitcher beside a bed. And the people . . . oh, the people were marvels. I was reflecting on my time at the Winchester Mansion, after the passing of Mrs. Winchester in 1922, we opened one of the safes, and I was flabbergasted by what I saw there. The safe was crammed with gems and gold and silver. There were countless jeweled rings, diamond necklaces, ropes of pearls, plate and coins and hundreds upon hundreds of miscellaneous valuables. I ran my fingers lightly over the heap and then held up handfuls of it, gasping as the light ignited the red rubies, the green of the emeralds. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
I saw refractions of color of which I have never dreamed, and wealth beyond any calculation. It was the fabled Caribbean pirates’ chest, the proverbial king’s ransom. And it was mine now. More slowly I examined it. Scattered throughout were personal and perishable articles. Satin mask rotting away from their trimming of gold, lace handkerchiefs and bits of cloth to which were fixed pins and brooches. Here was a strip of leather harness hung with gold bells, a moldering bit of lace slipped through a ring, snuffboxes by the dozen, lockets on velvet ribbon. Had Mrs. Winchester been collecting this all her life? I lifted up a jewel-encrusted sword, far too heavy for these times, and a worn slipper saved perhaps for its rhinestone buckle. There were other objects scattered about in this treasure. Rosaries made up gorgeous gems, and they still had their crucifixes! I touched the small sacred images. Perplexity is leavened by extravagant Victorian beauty scattered along each crooked path of exploration in this 160-room catacomb. Regularly each night Mrs. Winchester dined in lonely splendor, table set with a $774,387.88 solid-gold dinner service. And each night she counted every piece as it was put away in one of the mansion’s six huge safes. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
I think I was on the verge of deceiving her, of creating some strong emanation of contentment with all the powers I had. I would tell mortal lies with immortal skills. I would start talking and talking and testing my every word to make it perfect. However, something happened in the silence. I do not think I stood still more than a moment, but something changed inside of me. An awesome shift took place. In one instant I saw a vast and terrifying possibility, and in that same instant, without question, I made up my mind. It had no words to it or scheme or plan. And I would have denied it had anyone questioned me at that moment. I would have said, “No, never farthest from my thoughts. What do you think I am, what sort of monster” . . . And yet the choice had been made. I understood something absolute. The relation between creativity and pause is as close as it is startling. Not only does one get one’s original ideas in the pause—Albert Einstein got his while shaving. Henri Poincare, French Mathematician, got his while walking by the sea; others get theirs in dreams at night—but the capacity to pause is woven all through the creative production itself. The pause is an active, nimble, often intense state, as when an Olympic diver, Jennifer Abel or Tom Daley, pauses at the end of the diving board until that precise hundredth of a second when every muscle is tensed in harmony. And at that instant one dives. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
The creative person stands in a state of openness, heightened sensitivity, incubating the creative idea, with a sharpened readiness to grasp the creative impulse when it is born. The phrase “inviting the Muses,” which is a part of the occupation in the pause, is an active yearning, an imploring, the authenticity of which is demonstrated by the hours of hard work the creative person puts in before and after the insight. While writing this essay, I went to the nearby coast one Sunday hoping to do a sketch. Afterward, I wrote some notes about the experience: I walk about on the shore in a mood of readiness, openness, asking myself, Where is the scene that grasps me? This red cliff with that water behind it or that boulder with the other rocks in front of the ocean? I continue looking until I have the special feeling that a particular scene seizes me. I see it; and though I do not think of this consciously, I see it in a way that no one has ever seen it before. I think only: “This I like, this turns me on.” When I start painting: The colors flow into each other . . . my muscles react . . . I make this line going off in the direction, another great rock on the paper . . . the colors form almost as though they had their own plan in mind . . . the World is born anew in the painting. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Not only did no one ever see this scene before as I do now [everyone sees every scene differently] but I find a new picture coming to birth, new to me as well as others, in the flowing of the colors into each other, new in that the combination makes a different effect from what I have expected. We see how important are such terms as “readiness,” “openness.” In these active pauses, we see the work of destiny born in the unpredictable flowing of colors. Hence so much of creativity seems accidental. However, the artist, whether one be scientific inventor or painter or writer or what not, is the one who can most often put oneself in readiness for the “accident.” True, the picture comes out differently from what one expects. However, knowing one can never predict for the “lucky accident.” This means that “accident” is not the right term: rather, a myriad of different possibilities exist, and out of these one is born. Our capacity to appreciate is already a kind of creativity which shows the activity in the pause. Our appreciative listening to Mozart, Aaliyah, Bach, our concerned reading of Aeschylus, is our creative contribution. The listening and the seeing are what is important; hence, Frederick Franck in his book on Zen painting entitled it, very rightly, The Zen of Seeing. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
Indeed, it takes listeners, actual or imaginary and partakes of the creative act by virtue of the fact that writing poetry or prose or music dramas would not be possible without a real or imagined audience, whether an author writes for people of one’s own century (like most of us) or for later centuries (like Soren Kierkegaard). The presence of the pause is very clear in Henri Matisse’s paintings in his use of space—which is a synonym for pause. Ben Shahn tells, in his description of creativity, of one day taking his daughter out to his studio with him to make a mock-up book out of one color, rejected it, pondered another, put it aside, and so on for half an hour. When they came back into the house, the little girl asked her mother, “Why can’t Daddy make up his mind?” Ben Shahn goes on to explain that the artist is the one who has the courage to pause, to be suspended for a certain duration in midair. And even though in our technological culture such doubts may appear on the surface to imply weakness, this pausing is really a sign of an inner richness of discriminatory powers. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
There is a phrase among artists, “negative space,” which stands for space not noticed by the usual viewer. On a Rorschach record, “negative space” is the white area surrounding the black or colored. Many people who take the Rorschach never notice or remark on the white spaced—it is simply “surrounding.” Those who do, who see many white spaced may be adjudged “stubborn” on the test because they are preoccupied with the opposite to what most people point out. This is an interesting commentary on the conformist tendencies in our culture to see artist and musicians as a bit strange and to see the pause as an anomaly. I want to make clear that the common misconception that the creative person is passive is just that—a misconception. The creative person is receptive. I agree entirely with Archibald MacLeish when he quotes a Chinses poet, “We poets struggle with Non-being to force it to yield Being. We knock upon silence for an answering music.” Archibald MacLeish continues, “The ‘Being’ which the poem is to contain derives from ‘Non-being,’ not from the poet. And the ‘music’ which the poem is to own comes not from us who make the poem but from the silence; comes in answer to our knock.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
The creative act has always been a paradox, and it probably will always be one. Practically everybody trying to explain it, especially the psychoanalysts who propose that creativity is “regression in the service of the ego,” find they crash upon the rocks of their inability to distinguish between passivity and receptivity. The creative persons are the latter; they are certainly not the former. We do not know from what combination in the brain cells and synapses the creative ideas spring. However, we do know that creativity requires freedom, and the pause is the way to give that creative combination the chance to work. Pausing is wondering, and wonder is first cousin to creativity. Poetry for me is the space between the words. A poet is a poet when he or she can create that tension between words—a tension created by spaces—that lift the reader would add, of intense or mild ecstasy—standing mentally outside oneself. These new experiences of splendor or wonder or just plain insight have their start in the poem, but they leap out into the reader’s conception of his own private World. Creativity comes not only out of our moments or hours or weeks of effort; it requires—and this is essential—the moments or hours or weeks of pause between the effort. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
The pause is that situation in which symbols are formed. The intensity of handling all the stimuli that come at us requires the symbol. How are we to assess these stimuli, how are we to judge them, to weight them—all of which must be done before one can throw one’s strength toward this response rather than that one, to employ our simplest paradigm of freedom? The term symbol comes from two Greek words, sym meaning “with” and bollen meaning “to throw.” The symbol is, thus, that which throws or brings together these antimonies into one image, one form. The vitality of the situation is preserved for as long as the symbol continues to exist. We surely cannot handle all these stimuli by computer; we cannot add and subtract and in other mathematical ways try to fashion them into a decision. In a technological problem one can do this. However, when one tries to turn human decisions—such as whom shall I marry—over to the machine and tried to abstract oneself out of the picture, one becomes more and more mechanical, less and less personal and human. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
Lo and behold, the warmth has gone out of the situation, the vitality lost, the personal characteristics fled, and the person talking to you experiences you as less and less a person and more and more a machine. This is similar to talking with brain-injured patients in a mental hospital: they understand all the words you use, but cannot go behind the words to understand you as the person speaking. A human being is normal communication speaks in symbols, and if these are not grasped—and they are not by the brain-injured—the person is not understood. Al vital words carry some residue of their origin as symbols. In a human problem, the pattern is all-important and personal likes and dislikes are crucial. The response, to which you throw your weight, will not be only a conclusion, but will also be a commitment with its own power. Many factors need to be taken into consideration, some of which are only partially conscious. In such personal questions there is no decision which is right, but only approximately so. We have to keep the different factors all alive, like a juggler with a dozen balls in the air; we cannot avoid some factors without doing damage to the totality. What ideally happens is that these stimuli begin to fit into a pattern, a whole, a totality, a form that preserves the kernel and the value of each one. This is the symbol. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
Take, for example, the apparently simply stimuli that arise around the concept of patriotism. There is the call of one’s homeland; the fact that our forefathers fought in 1776 to construct this nation; the feeling of comradeship with people who speak the same language; and a million and one other facts and memories acting as stimuli. You hit upon a banner, and you call it a flag. The flag does not leave out any of the above meanings; it expresses the multitude of meanings in a compact, dynamic symbol. The elements that are forged and united into symbol in this pause which we have made the center of freedom come from many sources. They are from past and present, individual and group, consciousness and unconsciousness, and they are both rational and irrational. All of these antimonies are brought together in the pattern which is the symbol. The symbol keeps them alive and vital. Every great culture that embraces more then one people when a response is made to a You, an essential act of the spirit. Reinforced by the energy of subsequent generations that points in the same direction, this creates a distinctive conception of the cosmos in the spirit; only this does a human cosmos become possible again and again; only now can a mortal again and again build houses of worship and human houses in a distinctive conception of space and from a confident soul—and full vibrant time with new hymns and songs and give the human community itself a form. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
However, only as long as one possesses this essential act in one’s own life, acting and suffering, only as long as oneself enters into the relation is one free and thus creative. When a culture is no longer centered in a living and continually renewed relational process, it freezes into the It-World which is broken only intermittently by the eruptive, glowing deeds of solitary spirits. From that point on, common causality, which hitherto was never able to disturb the spiritual conception of the cosmos, grows into an oppressive and crushing doom. Wise, masterful fate which, as long as it was attuned to the abundance of meaning in the cosmos, held sway over all causality, has become transformed into demonic absurdity and has collapsed into causality. The same karma that appeared to earlier generations as a beneficial dispensation-for our deeds in this life raise us into higher sphere in the next—now is seen as tyranny for the deeds of a former life of which we are unconscious have imprisoned us in a dungeon from which we cannot escape in this life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Where the meaningful law of Heaven is used to arch, with the spindle of necessity hanging from its bright vault, the meaningless, tyrannical power of the planets now holds sway. It used to be merely a matter of entering Dike, the Heavenly path that aimed t be ours, too, and one could live with a free heart in the total measure of destiny. Now we feel, whatever we do, the compulsion of heimarmene, a stranger to spirit who bends every neck with the burden of the dead mass of the World. The craving for redemption grows by leaps and bounds and remains unsatisfied in the end, in spite of all kinds of experiments, until it is finally assuaged by one who teaches mortals how to escape from the wheel of rebirth, or by one who saves the souls enslaved by the powers into the freedom of the children of God. Such accomplishments issue from a new encounter that becomes substantial, a new response of one human being to one’s You, an event that comes to determine fate. The repercussions of such a central essential act may include the supersession of one culture by another that is devoted to this ray, but it is also possible for a culture to be thus renewed. The yearning for spiritual light wells up in the heart spontaneously. It is a natural one. However, desires, egoism, and materialism cover it for so long a time that it seems unreal. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Blessed are the Eyes Which See the things that We See–We Can Exercise Our Freedom Even Against Destiny!
I was too anxious and miserable to play with them! I was too dazed. I shouted the old questions, “Who are you, speak to me!” The glass panes rattled in the nearby windows. Mortals stirred in their little chambers. There was no cemetery here. “Answer me, you pack of cowards. Speak if you have a voice or once and for all get away from me!” And then I knew, though how I knew, I cannot tell you, that they could hear me and they could answer me, if they chose. And I knew that what I had always heard was the irrepressible evidence of their proximity and their intensity, which they could not disguise. However, their thoughts they could cloak and they had. I mean, they had intellect, and they had words. I let out a long low breath. I was stung by their silence, but I was stung a thousand times more by what had just happened, and as I had done so many times in the past, I turned my back on them. The length of time of the pause is, in principle, irrelevant. When we look at what actually happens in people’s experience, we note that some pauses can be infinitesimally small. When I am giving a lecture, for example, I select one word rather than another in a pause that lasts for only a millisecond. In this pause a number of possible terms flash before my mind’s eye. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
If I want to say the noise of loud, I may consider in this fraction of a second such words as deafening, startling, or overwhelming. Out of these I select one. All this happens so rapidly—strictly speaking, on the preconscious level—that I am aware of it only when I stop to think about it afterward. Note in this last sentence I say “stop to think.: This habitual phrase is another proof of the importance of pause. There is a necessity of stopping to think—in other words, pausing is essential to the process of reflection. However, something else, even more interesting, occurs in those small, multitudinous pauses as one speaks. This is the time when I “listen” to the audience, when the audience influences me, when I “hear” its reaction and ask silently, What connotations are they taking from my words? For any experienced lecturer the blank spaces that constitute the pauses between the words and sentences is the time of openness to the audience. At such times I find myself noting: There someone seems puzzled; here someone listens by tipping his head to one side so as not to miss any word; there in the back row—what every speaker dreads to see—is someone nodding in sleep. Every experienced speaker than I know is greatly helped by the cultivation of one’s awareness of facial expressions and other subtle aspects of unspoken communication from the audience. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
Walt Whitman once remarked that “the audience writes the poetry,” and in an even clearer sense the audience gives the lecture. Hence, a lecture delivered from the same notes, sat once to a social club and then again to graduate students at a large university, will often seem to be two entirely different speeches. The pause for milliseconds while one speaks is the locus of the speaker’s freedom. The speaker may mold one’s speech this way or that, one may tell a joke to relax the audience, or—in a thrilling moment of which there cannot be too many in a lecturer’s career—one may even be aware of a brand-new idea coming to one from Heaven knows where in the audience. Cassandra, we are told in Aeschylus’ drama, foretold the doom of Mycenae. A prophetess, she was sensitive to communications on many different levels of which the average person is unaware. This sensitivity caused her much pain, and if she could have, she would gladly have given up her role. She was doomed, or destined to listen on these different levels; she could not escape hearing the messages coming in her pauses. Quite apart from the roles of prophetess or mystic—which we see also in Tiresias and Jeremiah and Isaiah—it would seem that multitudes of us have such capacities, but we train ourselves (a process abetted by much contemporary education) to suppress this sensitivity to the pauses. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
And we may suppress the sensitivity to the pause in the hope of avoiding the pain. The difference between the charlatan and the genuine prophet may well be the sense of pain the latter experiences in one’s prophecies. The pause may be longer, for instance, wen one is answering questions after a lecture. In response to a question, I may silently hem and haw for a moment while different possible answers flash through my mind. At that time I do not usually think of Soren Kiekegaard’s proclamation “Freedom is possibility,” but that is what I am living out in those moments of pause. The thrilling thing is that at such a time a new answer that I have never thought of may suddenly emerge. It is often said that intellectually creative people—like John Dewey, for example—are a strain to listen to and are not good public speakers, because the time they pause to consider different possibilities requires a capacity to wait that most people find tedious. One’s freedom may involve still larger pauses. When one is making important decisions like buying a house, “Let me sleep on it” is a not infrequent remark. These are the situation in which a longer interval between stimuli is desired; there may be many different houses available, or one can decide not to buy at all. The decision then requires complex consideration, pondering, setting up the possibilities for choice, and playing “as if” games with oneself to assess various factors like view and design and so on. Freedom consists of these possibilities. The pauses are the exercise of one’s freedom to choose among them. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
We recall that Jesus Christ, following his own inner guidance, went off into his separate wilderness to engage in his quest. If the records are to be believed, he paused for forty days. These were assumedly times of intense concentration, times of considering possibilities, of listening to whatever voices were available on deeper levels within themselves, voices from nature, voices from what we now term archetypal experiences, voices from what Jesus called God, and I would call Being. These assumedly were periods in which they experienced their visions and integrated themselves around their message. However, students tell me that they have professors who pause permanently. These teachers make a career our of pausing. The pause is then not a preparation for action but an excuse for never acting at all. It has been remarked that the academic profession is the only one in which you can make your living by questioning things. How much it is still true in academia that persons substitute talking for decision or rationalize lack of commitment by calling it “judicious pausing” I do not know. Nevertheless this is a tendency that confronts us all: to use pausing as a substitute for committed action. In our action-oriented life in America this misuse of pausing is a not infrequently found neurotic reaction. However, this dilemma is not overcome by acting blindly, without consciousness and without reason. When it is necessary to act if one’s freedom is to be actualized at all, to be free obviously requires the courage to act. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
A person may ponder for months and years or all life long, never finding satisfactory answers. This occurs particularly with the question of death. When he stated his concerns with what might happen beyond death, Hamlet spoke for many of us. “When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, it must give us pause.” However, in our personal freedom can be actualized regardless of whether we find satisfactory answers or not, or even if there are no answers at all. We can exercise our freedom even against destiny. Indeed, in the long run to “know that he dies,” as Blaise Pascal said, is the most essential and triumphant experience of freedom possible for a human being. In the It-World causality holds unlimited sway. Every event that is either perceivable by the senses and physical or discovered or found in introspection and psychological is considered to be of necessity caused and a cause. Those events which may be regarded as purposive form no exception insofar as they also belong in the continuum of the It-World: this continuum tolerates a teleology, but only as a reversal that is worked into one part of causality without diminishing its complete continuity. The unlimited sway of causality in the It-World, which is of fundamental importance for the scientific ordering of nature, is not felt to be oppressive by the mortal who is not confined to the It-World but free to step out of it again and again into the World of relation. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
Here I and You confront each other freely in a reciprocity that is not involved in or tainted by any causality; here mortals finds guaranteed the freedom of one’s being and of being. Only those who know relation and who know of the presence of the You have the capacity for decision. Whoever makes a decision is free because one has stepped before the countenance. The fiery matter of all my capacity to will surging intractably, everything possible for me revolving primevally, intertwined and seemingly inseparable, the alluring glances of potentialities flaring up from every corner, the Universe as a temptation, and I, born in an instant, both hands into the fire, deep into it, where the one that intends me is hidden, my deed, seized: now! And immediately the menace of the abyss is subdued: no longer a coreless multiplicity at ply in the iridescent equality of its claims; but only two are left alongside each other, the other and the one, delusion and task. However, now the actualization commences within me. Having decided cannot mean that the one is done while the other remains lying there, an extinguished mass, filling my soul, layer upon layer, with its dross. Only one that funnels all the force of the other into the doing of the one, absorbing into the actualization of what was chosen the undermined passion of what was not chosen, only one that serves God with the evil impulse, decides—and decides what happens. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Once one has understood this, one also knows that precisely this deserves to be called righteous: that which is set right, toward which a mortal directs oneself and for which one decides; and if there were a devil he would not be the one who decided against God but one that in all eternity did not decide. The mortal to whom freedom is guaranteed does not feel oppressed by causality. One knows that one’s mortal life is by its very nature an oscillation between You and It, and one senses the meaning of this. It suffices one that again and again one may set foot on the threshold of the sanctuary in which one could never tarry. Indeed, having to leave it again and again is for on an intimate part of the meaning and destiny of this life. There, on the threshold, the response, the spirit is kindled in one again and again; here, in the unholy and indigent land the spark has to prove itself. What is here called necessity cannot frighten it; for there one recognized true necessity: fate. Fate and freedom are promised to each other. Fate is encountered only by one that actualizes freedom. That I discovered the deed that intends me, that, this movement of my freedom, reveals the mystery to me. However, this, too, that I cannot accomplish it the way I intended it, this resistance also reveals that mystery to me. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
One that forgets all being caused as one decides from the depths, one that puts aside possessions and cloak and steps bare before the countenance—this free human being encounters fate as the counter-image of one’s freedom. It is not one’s limit but one completion; freedom and fate embrace each other to form meaning; and given meaning, fate—with its eyes, hitherto severe, suddenly full of light—looks like grace itself. No, the mortal who returns into the It-World, carrying the spark, does not feel oppressed by causal necessity. And in healthy ages, confidence flows to all the people from the mortals of the spirit; to all of them, even the most obtuse, the encounter, the presence has happened somehow, if only in the dimension of nature, impulse, and twilight; all them have somewhere felt the You; and now the spirit interprets this guarantee to them. However, in sick ages it happens that the It-World, no longer irrigated and fertilized by living currents of the You-World, severed and stagnant, becomes a gigantic swamp phantom and overpowers mortals. As one accommodates oneself to a World of objects that no longer achieve any presence for one, one succumbs to it. Then common causality grows into an oppressive and crushing doom. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
The freezing temperature of those snowy peaks of thought frightens away some who might otherwise venture on the Quest. It is the ego which is so frightened, knowing that its own end would come with the end of the journey into this elevated region. A mortal may stay at one’s present level or try to rise in character to a better one than one was born with. It ideals and values do not stir one, if one is ruled by undisciplined animal appetites, these truths will not appeal to one. Even if one is qualified to receive truth one may not be in the mood to do so, that is, one is not ready and willing to meet the cost. One’s interest or one’s desire or one’s emotions at that particular time as elsewhere possessed. When they learn the price—disciplining and reducing the fattened ego—that will have to be paid for this higher consciousness, they are more hesitant to embark on the Quest. Mortals who are uninterested in affairs other than their own personal ones, in matters other than their own work and pleasure, position and fortune, mortals who are preoccupied with the trivial round of external, selfish activities only, will naturally regard the study of philosophy as a waste of time, the practice of meditation as a form of indolence, and the endeavour after self-improvement as a needless trouble. No higher yearings enter their hearts, no reverent feelings touch them. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
Because of their unwillingness either to look within or to think more deeply for any higher purpose or obligation that they might have, people live largely in delusion and deception, especially self-deception. “Why am I here on Earth?” is a question for which they can only find one answer: to satisfy their own material desires. This question is as old as the Christian message itself and the answer is equally old, as our text indicate. Jesus takes his disciples aside and speaks privately to them when he praises them because they see what they are seeing. The presence of the Messiah is a mystery; it cannot be said to everybody, and it cannot be seen by everybody, but only by those like Simeon who are driven by the Spirit. There is something surprising, unexpected about the appearance of salvation, something which contradicts pious opinions and intellectual demands. The mystery of salvation is the mystery of a child. So it was anticipated by Isaiah, by the ecstatic vision of the sibyl and by the poetic vision of Virgil, by the doctrines of mysteries and the rites of those who celebrated the birth of a child. A child is real and not yet real, it is in history and not yet historical. Its nature is visible and invisible, it is here and not yet here. And just this is the character of salvation. Salvation has the nature of a child. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
As Christendom remembers every year, in the most impressive of its festivals, the child Jesus, so salvation, however visible it may be, remains always also invisible. One who wants a salvation which is only visible cannot see the divine child in the Manger as one cannot see the divinity of the Man on the Cross and the paradoxical ways of all divine acting. Salvation is a child and when it grows up it is crucified. Only one who can see power under weakness, the whole under the fragment, victory under defeat, glory under suffering, innocence under guilt, sanctity under sin, life under death can say: Mine eyes have seen thy salvation. It is hard to say this in our days. However, it always has been hard and always will be hard. It was and is and will be a mystery, the mystery of a child. And however deep the World might fall, even into utter self-destruction, as long as there are mortal they will experience this mystery and say: “Blessed are the eyes which see the things that we see.” Not everyone is prepared by temperament, or past history, to seek the higher truth, much less has the time and will for it. Not everyone among the seekers is ready to make the sacrifices that a conscientious re-adjustment of character and behavior wants from one. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
I believe in a high power behind the Universe. I call it God. I believe this same higher power is behind mortals. Call it the soul, if you like to. Such beliefs do not appeal to the cocktail-soaked cynics and sophisticates of our era. Such teachings are ignored or rejected as being of interest only to dreamers, idlers, or misfits. There is some truth in this criticism, some basis for this attitude. Plain normal people who have to make a living, who are body with the World’s work, politics, and economics, who have personal and family problems most of the time, find all this to be unrealistic out of touch with things as they are, humanity as it is and has been. So long as the objects of their existence remain small and circumscribed, selfish and materialistic, so long will the meaning of their existence be denied them. It is not that they are contemptuous of truth but that they are indifferent to it. The opinions of most people about mysticism are either totally or partially worthless. This is because they are not informed either by accurate or by sufficient knowledge of the subject. They know next to nothing of its true history, nature, and results. Lack of concern for higher values reveals mortal’s frailty or malice. To the diseased mentality, mysticism is an attempt to cripple progress by weakening intellect and inhibiting needed action. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
And Sometimes the Pain and Ache and Even Agony of Miscarried Love is Almost More than We Can Bear!
The stone moved out easily enough, as I had seen before, and it had a hook on the inside of it by which I could pull it closed behind me. However, to get into the narrow dark passage I had to lie on my belly. And when I dropped down on my knees and peered into it, I could see no visible light at the end. I did not like the look of it. I knew that if I had been a mortal still, nothing could have induced me to crawl into a passage like this. It would be too much to expect the mass of people to take to this quest in its fullness. They are unable to make more than an elementary effort to confine the lower nature within the requires limits. Most people are like sleep-walkers, caught up in their own illusions. Their belief that they are awake is the biggest of these illusions. The poor are overpowered by their grinding poverty, the rich by their fortune; both find neither the time nor taste for spiritual enquiry. Easily stupefied by sensuality, thoroughly bewitched by constant repetition of the same pleasure, they shrug aside the disturbing thoughts and visible reminders of life’s transitoriness and the body’s infirmity. So, why is it so hard for people to see that if one really cares about some other person, there will be some attachment, some normal jealousy and one will be vulnerable to pain; and that the aim with jealousy is not to exorcise it entirely, but to realize it is a problem only when it reaches neurotic proportions? #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
The awareness of normal jealousy is the one corrective to the growth of neurotic jealousy, the dreary picture of which we have seen in these vignettes. It times in which there were difficulties standing in the way of pleasures of the flesh, such as perhaps during the decline of the ancient civilization, love became worthless and life empty, and strong reaction-formations were required to restore indispensable affective values…the ascetic current in Christianity created physical values for love which pagan antiquity was never able to confer on it. The decline of the ancient civilizations, when love became worthless and life empty, is related to the disintegration of our mores and culture. Too many people focus on pleasures of the flesh as an antidote against anxiety; the neurological pathway that carries the sexual stimulation cuts off that pathway which transmits anxiety. In our own concern with the innumerable problems in our society that we cannot solve, it is understandable that we turn to our preoccupation with pleasures of the flesh. However, we should avoid making principles out of our own abnormal state. The books and TV shows are alike in that they reflect and act upon the moral vacuousness that has become so commonplace as to be nearly normative in recent writings about pleasures of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
Is not this moral vacuity one explanation for the fact that, while we never has more talks and workshops and public-school teachings on pleasures of the flesh, contraception, terminating pregnancies, and complication with unprotected and even protected sex, the rate of venereal disease, teenage pregnancies and abortions are rising dramatically? Pleasures of the flesh and intimacy that goes with it are so basic a part of human existence that one cannot separate them from one’s values. To treat pleasures of the flesh and values as totally divorced from each other is not only to block the development of one’s freedom, but also to make the cultural problem of pleasures of the flesh simply insoluble. Moral concern in pleasures of the flesh hinges on the acceptance of one’s responsibility for the other as well as for oneself. Other people do matter; and the celebration of this gives pleasures of the flesh its ecstasy, its meaning, and its capacity to shake us to our depths. When made into the be-all and end-all of pleasures of the flesh, without a committed relationship, at the legal age, and without intimacy—it is an expression of narcissism. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
Narcissism is not beautiful. It is actually a personality disorder in which a person has an inflated sense of self-importance. There are fewer than 200,000 cases diagnosed per year, so it is rare. Treatment can help, but this condition cannot be cured. It requires a medical diagnosis, but lab test or imaging not required. Chronic narcissism can last for years and be lifelong. Narcissism is a refusal to love, a running from the beautiful Echo as Narcissus did in the myth. Pleasures of the flesh as solitary stimuli, carried on in the absence of sharing, without intimacy, is an overpowering concern with one’s own stimuli, a peering endlessly at oneself, as Narcissus peered into the pool. As a way of life, pleasures of the flesh without intimacy is motivated by resentment and vengeance, like Echo’s myth. Narcissus allegedly self-destructs by stabbing himself, but we self-destruct by a long, drawn-out amputation of vital parts of ourselves. Our contemporaries seem not to be vengeful because some specific person will not love them now (as was the case with Echo), but they seem to carry a vengeance from infancy, an experience of not having been loved, that they have never come to terms with. They have never accepted, as one must accept, their destiny, with all its cruel and its beneficent strains. Nor have the accepted the fate that no one ever gets enough love. This yearning for love makes us human. Having accepted that aspect of destiny, perhaps then we can join the human race. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
What the proponents of the ideal of pleasures of the flesh without intimacy as the way to genuine freedom have grossly overlooked is that freedom in the pleasures of the flesh is like freedom in every other realm of life: one is free only as one recognizes one’s limits—for instance, one’s destiny. The structure, the design, of the pleasures of the flesh function in life needs to be seen steadily and whole. In human relations responsibility comes out of ever-present loneliness and our inescapable need for others, which is dramatically true in pleasures of the flesh; and without this sense of responsibility there is no authentic freedom. Our freedom is pleasures of the flesh then grows in proportion to the parallel growth of our sensitivity to the needs, desires, wishes of the other. These needs, desires, and wishes of the other are the givens. The fact that pleasures of the flesh are stimuli can blossom into authentic intimacy and into love is one of the mysteries of life which can give us a lasting solace and joy. As in all aspects of confronting destiny, there is a risk. If you have feelings, you are bound to be vulnerable and hurt. And sometimes the pain and ache and even agony of miscarried love is almost more than we can bear. However, accepting this risk is the price of freedom, and especially the freedom to love authentically. Who wishes to trade these for existence as a zombie? #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
Standing under the basic word of separation which keeps apart I and It, one has divided one’s life with one’s fellow mortals into two neatly defined districts: institutions and feelings. It-district and I-district. Institutions are what is out there where for all kinds of purposes one spends time, where one works, negotiates, influences, undertakes, competes, organizes, administers, officiates, preaches; the halfway orderly and on the whole coherent structure where, with the manifold participation of humans heads and human limbs, the round of affairs runs its course. Feelings are what is in here where one lives and recovers from the institutions. Here the spectrum of emotions swings before the interested eye; here one enjoys one’s inclination and one’s hatred, pleasure and, if it is not too bad, pain. Here one is at home and relaxes in one’s rocking chair. Institutions comprise a complicated forum; feelings, a boudoir that at least provides a good deal of diversity. This separation, to be sure, is continually engendered, as our supportive feelings break into the most objective institutions; but with a little good will it can always be restored. A dependable separation is most difficult in the areas of our so-called personal life. In marriage, for example, it is not always so simple to attain; but time works wonders. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
In the areas of so-called public life it is eminently successful: consider, for example, how in the age of political parties, but also of groups and movements that claim to be above parties, Heaven-storming congresses alternate flawlessly with the day-to-day operations that crawl along on the ground, whether mechanized and evenly or organically and slovenly. However, the severed It of institutions is a golem, and the served I of feelings is a fluttering soul-bird. Neither knows that human being; one only the instance and the other only the object. Neither knows person or community. Neither knows the present: these, however modern, know only the rigid past, that which is finished, while those, however persistent, know only the fleeting moment, that which is not yet. Neither has access to actual life. Institutions yield no public life; feelings, no personal life. That institutions yield no public life is felt by more and more human beings, to their sorrow; this is the source of the distress and search of our age. That feelings yield no personal life has been recognized by few so far; for they seem to be the home of what is most personal. And once one has learnt, like a modern mortal, to become greatly preoccupied with one’s own feelings, even despair over their unreality will not easily open one’s eyes; after all, such despair is also a feeling and quite interesting. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Those who suffer because institutions yield no public life have thought of a remedy: feelings are to loosen up or thaw or explode the institutions, as I they could be renewed by feelings, by introducing the freedom of feelings. When the automatized state yokes together totally uncongenial citizens without creating or promoting any fellowship, it is supposed to be replaced by a loving community. And this loving community is supposed to come into being when people come together, prompted by free, exuberant feelings, and want to live together. However, this is not how things are. True community does not come into being because people have feelings for each other (though that is required, too), but rather no two accounts: all of them have to stand in a living, reciprocal relationship to a single living center, and they have to stand in a living, reciprocal relationship to one another. The second event has its source in the first but is not immediately given with it. A living reciprocal relationship includes feelings but is not derived from them. A community is built upon a living, reciprocal relationship, but the builder is the living, active center. Even institutions of so-called personal life cannot be reformed by a free feeling (although this is also required). #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Marriage can never be renewed expect by that which is always the source of all true marriage: that two human beings reveal the You to one another. It is of this that the You that is I for neither of them builds a marriage. This is the metaphysical and metaphysical fact of love which is merely accompanied by feelings of love. Whoever wishes to renew a marriage on another basis is not essentially different from those who want to abolish it: both declare that they no longer know the fact. Indeed, take the much-discussed eroticism of our age and subtract everything that is really egocentric—in other words, every relationship in which one is not at all present to the other, but each uses the other only for self-enjoyment—what would remain? True public and true personal life are two forms of association. For them to originate and endure, feelings are required as a changing content, and institutions are required as a constant form; but even the combination of both still does not create human life which is created only by a third element: the central presence of the You, or rather, to speak more truthfully, the central You that is received in the present. The basic word I-It does not come from evil—anymore than matter comes from evil. It comes from evil—like matter that presumes to be that which has being. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
When mortals let it have its way, the relentlessly growing It-World grows over one like weeds, one’ own I loses its actuality, until the incubus over one and the phantom inside one exchange the whispered confession of their need for redemptions. In our story, Jesus as well as His foes acknowledge authority. They struggle about valid authority, not about authority as such. And this is what we find everywhere in the Bible and the life of the Church. Paul fights with the original disciples, including Peter, about the foundations of apostolic authority. The bishops fight with the princes about ultimate source of political authority. The reformers fight with the hierarches about the interpretation of the Bible. The theologians fight with the scientists about the criteria of ultimate truth. None of the struggling groups denies authority, but each of them denies the authority of the other group. However, if the authority is split in itself, which authority decides? Is not split authority the end of authority? Was not the split produced by the Reformation the end of the authority of the Church? Is not the split about the interpretation of the Bible the end of the Biblical authority? Is not the split between theologians and scientists the end of intellectual authority? Was not the split between the gods of polytheism the end of their divine authority? #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
Is not the split in one’s conscience the end of the authority of one’s conscience? If one has to choose between different authorities, not they but oneself is ultimate authority for oneself, and this means: there is no authority for one. This, however, creates the dreadful alternative of our historical period. If there is no authority, we must decide ourselves, each for oneself. As finite beings we must act as if we were infinite, and since this is impossible, we are driven into complete insecurity, anxiety and despair. Or, unable to stand the oneliness of deciding for ourselves, we suppress the fact that there is a split authority. We subject ourselves to a definite authority and close our eyes against all other claims. The desire of most people to do this is very well known to those in power. They use the unwillingness of human beings to decide for themselves in order to preserve their power and to increase it. This is true of religious as well as of political powers. On this ground of human weakness the systems of authority are built in past and present. “By what authority” do you do this? Jesus is asked And Christ answering but by pointing to the acting and speaking of John. Here, Christ tells the leaders of his nation, you see the rise of an authority without ritual or legal foundation. However, you deny the possibility of it. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
So you deny both the Baptist and myself. You deny the possibility of an authority guaranteed by its inner power. You have forgotten that the only test of the prophets was the power of what they had to say. Listen to what the people say about us, namely, that we speak with authority and not as you, who are called the authorities. That is what Christ tells them. What would Christ say to us? He would not have to fight about his authority with the chief priests and the scribes and the elders of our day. In our time they all acknowledged Christ. He would have to ask quite a different question of them. He would have to ask: “What is the nature of my authority for you? It is like that of John the Baptist, or is it like that of the authorities who tried to remove me? Have you made the words of those who have witnessed to me, the Bible, the Church Fathers, the popes, the reformers, the creeds, into ultimate authorities? Have you done this in my name? And is so, do you not abuse my name? For whenever my name is remembered, my fight with those who were in authority is also remembered.” After the work done to gain livelihood or fulfil ambition, there is usually a surplus of time and strength, as part of which could and should be devoted to satisfying higher needs. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
There is hardly a mortal whose life is so intense that it does not leave one a little time for spiritual recall from this Worldly existence. Yet the common attitude everywhere is to look no farther than, and be content with, work and pleasure, family, friends, and possessions. It feels no urge to seek the spiritual and, as it erroneously thinks, the intangible side of life. It makes no effort to organize its day so as to find the time and energy for serious thought, study, prayer, and meditation. It feels no need of searching for truth or getting an instructor. People who find their own company boring, their own resources empty, their own higher aims non-existent, must needs flee from it to some form of escape, such as the cinema, the radio, the theatre, or television. Here they are not confronted by the uncomfortable problem of themselves, by aimless meaningless drifting “I.” Humanity ordinarily shirks this enquiry into truth partly because of its difficulty, partly because of its apparent personal unprofitability, and partly because of its loneliness. There are those—and they are many—who do not want such a quest: its disciplines frighten them away or its studies bore them or its isolation makes too daring a demand on their gregariousness. “Some things lighten nightfall and make a Rembrandt of a grief. But mostly the swiftness of time is a joke; on us. The flame—moth is unable to laugh. What luck. They myth are dead,” reports Stan Rice “Poem on Crawling into Bed: Bitterness” Body of Work (1983). #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
The Purest Form of Love, the Warmest, the Most Exciting Love is Not Mine for Another, But Mine for Me!
I climbed to my feet. I felt myself light and powerful, and strangely numbed, and I went to the dead fire, and walked through the burnt timers. It was time now to examine the inner room. Most of us remember the myth of Narcissus as the story of a beautiful youth who fell in love with his own image in a pool and pined away because he never could possess it. However, the actual myth is a great deal richer. It begins with Tiresias, the aged prophet, predicting to the river nymph who was Narcissus’ mother, provided he never knows himself, her son would live to a ripe old age. This catches us up short. What is the meaning of not knowing oneself? True, the dynamics of narcissism always have as their fulcrum the problem of self-knowledge. However, could Tiresias be saying if Narcissus avoids the absorption of self-love, the very thing we later call narcissism, that he will live long? Or can he be referring to the literal translation of know thyself, from the Greek know that you are only a man, accept your human limits, which Narcissus obviously refused to do? The second character in the myth, also forgotten by most of us, is Echo, a lovely mountain nymph who falls hopelessly in love with Narcissus and follows him over hill and dale as he hunts for stage. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
Intending to call his hunting companions, Narcissus cries, “Let us come together here!” Echo responds in the same words and rushes out to embrace Narcissus. However, he shakes her off roughly and runs away crying out, “I will die before you ever lie with me!” Echo then pines away, leaving behind only her melodious voice. Disdaining her supine resignation, the gods condemn her to wander forever in the mountain glens and valleys, where we hear her voice today. However, in her need for revenge, she calls upon the gods to punish Narcissus by making him also the victim of unrequited love. It is only then that he falls in love with his own reflection. At first he tried to embrace and kiss the beautiful young man who confronted him, but presently he recognized himself, and lay gazing enraptured into the pool, hour after hour. How could he endure both to possess and yet not to possess? Grief was destroying him, yet he rejoiced in his torments; knowing at least that his other self would remain true to him, whatever happened. Echo, although she has not forgiven Narcissus, grieved with him; she sympathetically echoed ‘Alas! Alas!’ as he plunged a dagger in his chest, and also the final ‘Ah, youth, beloved in vain, farewell!” as he expired. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
Narcissus’ tragic flaw, in the eyes of the gods, is that he could never love anyone else, never love in the sense of giving himself in union with another person. There is no fertility in Narcissus’ love, and none in narcissism—no genuine coupling, no cross-fertilization, no interpersonal relationship. This threatens to be a tragic flaw in our present-day “I am me” effort to escape the paradox: we cannot love without committing ourselves to another person. In grasping for freedom from entanglement with other persons, we come to grief over our failure of compassion and commitment—indeed, the failure to love authentically. However, there is another important insight in this story that will help us understand present-day neo-narcissism and that, to my knowledge, has not yet been mentioned in the literature. It is that narcissism has its origin in revenge and retaliation. Echo’s plea, answered by Aphrodite, is a gesture of revenge. And this is also true in our contemporary neo-narcissism: there is in it a strong motive of anger and revenge. This is shown in the above series of verses. “I have no right, no wrongs” can be translated into the cry “The culture has let us down.” What we learned as children turns out to be phony; our parents seemed unable by dint of their confusion to show us any alternative moral guideposts or teach us wisdom; and what we were taught often turns out to be undesirable anyway and promotes conterrebellion. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
It is out of revenge upon those in the culture who betrayed her that the writers of the verses withdraws into herself and comforts herself with a lonely self-love: “The purest form of love, the warmest, the most exciting love is not mine for another, but mine for me.” In our society we have called this self-love. The phrase self love came into general currency after Erich Fromm’s essay “Selfishness and Self-Love.” Dr. Fromm condemned the fist and elevated the second. He did not see the important differences between self-love and love of another. There is a tragic flaw in this self-love, a seductive error that carries over into the masses of self-help books and spreads the havoc that arises from neo-narcissism. What is called love for others and self-love are two different things. Love for another person is the urge toward the uniting of two separate entities who invigorate each other, revivify each other, and contribute their differences to each other, and combine their different genes in a new and unique being—toward which the pleasures of the flesh is a powerful motivation. The essence, then, is the combining of two different beings. Nature’s obvious purpose in this, in contrast to incest, is the increase of possibilities. The insemination, the combination of two different sets of genes, result in the creation of new forms and original patterns. All of this Narcissus could not or would not do. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
The well-worn, strict doctrine that if you hate yourself, you cannot love others is true. However, the converse of that—that is you love yourself, you will automatically love others—is not true. Narcissus, in his rejection of Echo, dramatically demonstrates this. Many persons use self-love, then, ought really to be termed self-caring, which includes self-esteem, self-respect, and self-affirmation. This would save from the confusion of self-caring and love for others, as it is shown so vividly in the myth of Narcissus. To be free to love other persons requires self-affirmation and, paradoxically, the assertion of oneself. At the same time it requires tenderness, affirmation of the other, relaxing of competition as must as possible, self-abnegation at times in the interests of the loved one, and the age-old virtues of mercy and forgiveness toward each other. Destiny is the other person in the act of loving. The dialectical poles of self-caring and love for the other fructify and strengthen each other. Fortunately, this paradox can neither be escaped nor solved, but must be lived with. There are others, however, who are not satisfied with such ignorance and such indifference, who want certain and assured knowledge of the spirit, by penetrating the secrets of their own being. And it is the promise of the satisfaction of this want which attracts them to the quest for God’s truth. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
Was the baptism of John from Heaven or from mortals? Many cannot answer this. If one says that it was from mortals, they would have hurt the popular feelings and perhaps even a feeling within themselves, that John was a prophet. However, if they had said that he was from God, they would have established an authority beyond the threefold authority which they could claim for themselves. And this they did not want. They, who were called authorities, demanded that all authority be vested in them. Therefore, they did not accept John as a prophet, nor Jesus as the Christ. Do not minimize the seriousness of this conflict. It was not simply a conflict between good and evil, between faith and unbelief. The conflict was much more profound and much more tragic than this! Let us imagine that we ourselves were in the place of those who asked Jesus about the source of his authority. Let us imagine ourselves as the guardians of a great religious tradition, or as the unquestionable experts in a sphere of decisive importance for human existence, or as people who have learned through a long experience to deal with matters of highest value. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
And let us also assume that we had no function as legally established authorities and that somebody came and spoke about the same things in quite a different language and acted in the field of our authority in quite a radical way; how would be react? And if the people who saw and heard this man said of him what they said about Jesus, that he teaches as one who has authority and not as we the established authorities, how would we react? Would we not think: He confuses the masses, he spreads dangerous doctrines, he undermines well-proved laws and institutions, he introduces strange modes of life and thought, he disrupts sacred ties, he destroys traditions from which generations of mortals have received discipline and strength and hope? It is our duty to resist him and if possible to remove him! For the sake of our people we must defend our consecrated and tested authority against this mortal who cannot show the source of the authority he claims. Could we be blamed for such a reaction? And if not, can we blame the authorities in Jerusalem for their reaction to Jesus? We think of the Reformation. This was a moment in the history of the Church in which the question of authority was once more in the center of events. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Luther, and consequently the whole Protestant World, broke away from the Roman Church and from 1500 years of Christian tradition when no agreement about the authority of the pope and the councils could be reached. Here, again, someone had arisen who spoke and acted with an authority of the pope and the councils could be reached. Here, again, someone has arisen who spoke and acted with an authority the sources of which could not be determined by legal means. And here also we must ask, “Are the Catholic authorities who rejected him in the name of their established authority to be blamed for it?” However, if we do not blame them, we can ask them, “Why do you blame the Jewish authorities who did exactly the same as you did when the people said of the Reformers that they spoke with authority and not like the priests and monks?” Is the same thing so different if it is done by the Jewish high priest and if it is done by the Roman high priest? And one may ask the present-day Protestant authorities in Europe and in this country, “Are you certain that the insistence on your authority, on your tradition, and your experience does not suppress the kind of authority which Jesus has in mind?” #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
And now we ask, “What does authority mean?” What does it mean for a mortal as a mortal? What does it mean for our period and for each of us?” First of all, it means that we are finite and in need of what the word “authority” really says: to be started and increased. It means that we are born, that we were infants and children, that we were completely dependent on those who gave us life and home and guidance and contents for soul and mind. We were not able to decide for ourselves for many years, and that made us dependent on authority and made authority a benefit for us. We accepted this authority without resistance, even if we rebelled on special occasions. And this authority became the basis for all other authorities. It gave strength to the authority of the older brother or sister, of the more mature friend or teacher, of the official, of the ruler, of the minister. And through them we have been introduced into the institutions and traditions in society, state and Church. Authority permeates, guides, shapes our lives. The acceptance of authority is the acceptance of what is given by those who have more than we. And our subjection to them and to what they stand for enables us to live in history, as our subjection to the laws of nature enables us to live in nature. And from the authority of the law is derived the authority of those who represent and administer it and who, for this reason, are called the authorities. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
Our daily life would be impossible without traditions of behavior and customs and the authority of those who have received them and surrendered them to us. Mortal’s control of nature would be impossible without the tradition of knowledge and skill into which every new generation is introduced and which gives authority to those who are able to introduce us. Mortal’s intellectual life—the language one uses, the songs one sings, the music one plays, the houses one builds, the pictures one paints, the symbols one creates—one has received through the authority of those who have participated in it before one. Mortal’s religious life—the faith one hold, the cult one loves, the stories and legends one has heard, the commandments one tried to obey, the texts one knows by heart—all this is not created by one; one takes it from those who represent to one religious authority. And if one revolts against the authorities which have shaped one, one does it with the tools one has received from them. The language of the revolutionary is formed by those against whom one revolts. The protest of the reformer uses the tradition against which one protests. There, no absolute revolution is possible. If it is attempted, it fails immediately; and is a revolution succeeds, its leaders soon have to use forms and ideas created by the authorities of the past. This is true of the rebellion of the adolescent against the family authority as well as of the rebellion of new social groups against the authority of the established power. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
When we speak of human finitude, we usually think of mortal’s transitorines in time, of birth and death, of the vicissitudes which threaten one in every moment. However, we are not only finite in that we are temporal, we are also finite in that we are historical and that means subject to authority, even if we rebel against it. We are thrown into existence, not only bodily, but also mentally. In no respect are we by ourselves, in no moment can we be by ourselves. One who tries to be without authority tries to be like God, who alone is by himself. And like everyone who tries to be like God, one is thrown down to self-destruction, be it a single human being, be it a nation, be it a period of history like our own. Art, to: as one beholds what confronts one, the form discloses itself to the artist. One conjures it into an image. The image does not stand in a World of gods but in this great World of mortals. Of course, it is there even when no human eye afflicts it; but it sleeps. The Chinese poet relates that mortals do not want to hear the song that one was playing on one’s flute of jade; then one played it to the gods, and they inclined their ears; and ever since mortals, too, have listened to the song—and thus one went from the gods to those with whom the image cannot dispense. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
As in a dream it looks for the encounter with mortal in order that one may undo the spell and embrace the form for a timeless moment. And there one comes and experiences what there is to be experienced: that is how it is made, or this is what is expresses, or its qualities are such and such, and on top of all that perhaps also it might rate. Not that scientific and aesthetic understand is not necessary—but it should do its work faithfully and immerse itself and disappear in that truth of the relation which surpasses understanding and embraces what is understandable. And also: that which towers above the spirit of knowledge and the spirit of art because here evanescent, corporeal mortals need not banish oneself into the enduring matter but outlasts it and rises, oneself an image, on the starry sky of the spirit, as the music of one’s living speech roars around one—pure action, the act that is not arbitrary. Here the Independent World appeared to mortals out of a deeper mystery, addressed one out of the dark, and one responded with one’s life. Here the word has become life, and this life, whether it fulfilled the law or broke the law—both are required on occasion lest the spirit die on Earth—is teaching. Thus it stands before posterity in order to teach it, not what is and not what ought to be, but how one lives in the spirit, in the countenance of the Independent World. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
And that means: it stands ready to become an Independent World at any time, opening up to the spirit of God; no, it does not stand ready, it always comes toward them and touches them. However they, having become uneager and inept for such living intercourse that opens up a World, are well informed; they have imprisoned the person in history, and one’s speech in a library; they have codified the fulfillment of the breach, it does not matter which; nor are they stingy with reverence and even adoration, adequately mixed with some psychology, as is only proper for modern mortals. O lonely countenance, starlike in the dark; O living finger upon an insensitive forehead; O steps whose each is fading away! It is a tradition in spiritual circles of God that anyone who has ever felt the truth power or beauty of the Gospel, however briefly, will not be able to escape being drawn to its practical consequence, the Quest, one day, however long deferred it may be. A mind which is no longer satisfied with shallow consolations will naturally turn to mystical experience or metaphysical study for deeper ones. All that has happened before one’s entry upon the quest has really been converging toward it. It is as inevitable that some mortals should come to the Quest because of their sorrows and difficulties as that other mortal should abandon it temporarily for the same reasons. God offers the surest path to the mind’s peace and the heart’s satisfaction. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
How Can Mortals Accuse the Gods! For they Say Evils Come from Us—However, they themselves, by Reason of their Sins, Have Sufferings Beyond those Destined for them!
That was permission, was it not? Or cosmic indifference, I am not sure which. I would have said nothing about the book to anyone; I had only brooded on it in those long painful hours when I could not really think, except in terms of chapters: an ordering; a road map through the mystery; a chronicle of seduction and pain. They are still asking me those questions now. Even Gabrielle, who in the main never bothers with questions, never says much of anything. They want to know when I am going to recover, when I am going to talk about what happened, when I am going to stop writing through the night. As for the Great Family, well, it was not likely that any of them would think it more than a fiction, with a touch here and there of truth; that is, if they ever happened to pick up the book. Are we responsible for our destiny? If we dare to answer that by saying “Partly so,” we then face another question just as difficult. That is: If destiny is a given, a vital design that gives us talents and limits and that we cannot revoke, how can responsibility have any meaning? The ancient Greeks faced this problem, together with the moral implications of destiny, when the ethical consciousness of the Greek civilization was being formed. During this period, around 1000 B.C., Homer relates the following fascinating incident from the Trojan War. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
The combined Greek forces were encamped around the walls for Troy. Agamemnon, the general in chief of the Greek armies, had stolen Achilles’ mistress from the Achilles’ tent. When Achilles returned and discovered this, his rage knew no bounds. He was not only a man of fiery temper, but also the best fighter in the Greek army. There hung in the balance the portentous question: Would the whole Greek expedition be destroyed by the enmity between these two men? As these two heroes confront each other, Agamemnon says: “Not I…was the cause of this act, but Zeus and the furies who walk in darkness: they it was who…put wild ate [madness] in my understanding, on that day when I arbitrarily took Achilles’ prize from him. So what could I do? Deity will always have its way.” In other words destiny—Zeus and his wild ate—will brook no denial. Is Agamemnon saying, “I was brainwashed; not I but my unconscious did it”? It may seem so, but he is not. He is preparing the way to assume his own responsibility. He then goes on: “But since I was blinded by ate, and Zeus took away my understanding, I am willing to make peace and give abundant compensation.” Ah! Since destiny did these things to me, I will give compensation. Cooling down, Achilles answers: “Let the son of Atreus [Agamemnon] go his way…For Zeus the counselor took away his understanding.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
The Greeks are saying here that a person is responsible even though the gods work inwardly, even though they take away one’s understanding. That is, one is destined, but one is responsible for what this destiny makes one do. Although Agamemnon is driven by destiny, which work through powers in his unconscious mind, he is nevertheless responsible. And responsibility is inseparable from freedom. Freedom and responsibility on one side, and ate and destiny on the other—these operate simultaneously in this dialectical and intimately human paradox. Julian Jaynes reminds us of another incident from Homer and the Trojan War. Hector finds himself confronting Achilles in the heat of battle Hector does not want to fight Achilles at that moment, so he backs away. His withdrawing is not determined by cowardice, for instance, he is not forced by Achilles’ sword to back up. Instead, the goddess puts her shield around Hector in the form of a could under which he could back out of the battle without any loss of self-esteem. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
The furies who walk in darkness and the goddess surrounding Hector with a could are superb synonyms for destiny. Indeed, the gods and goddesses were personifications of destiny; they set the ultimate limits on human actions opened up possibilities for human beings. Anyone who opposed them outright was brought to ruin by such means as a bolt of lightning—what we moderns call an act of God, carrying of this ancient belief—from the hand of Zeus. This sense of responsibility is partly the impingement of culture upon us. If we are to live with any harmony in community, we have to have responsibility. Those who pursue this quest do so because they too want to be happy. Do not imagine that only the Wordly pleasure-seekers, the hard money-hunters, the romantic love-dreamers, or the ambitious fame-followers are in this respect, in a different category. It is only their method and result that are different. All without exception want the feeling of undisturbed happiness, but only the questers know that it can be found only in the experience of spiritual self-fulfillment. Fame, fortune, love, or pleasure may contribute towards the outer setting of a happy person’s life but what of that person oneself? Who has not heard or known of mortals sitting in misery amid all their riches or power, of death forcing a well-mated could to bid each other farewell? When we see it, we must love the highest. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
Culture can help us mitigate or meliorate destiny: through culture we can learn to build architectural marvels as well are Cresleigh Homes to keep out the snow and the Winter cold and other elements. Through culture we barter our services for food so that we do not starve. However, culture cannot overturn destiny, cannot erase it. We can collectively cover our eyes to the results of our actions, blind ourselves to the full import of our cruelty and our responsibility for that cruelty as the Mayor of Sacramento does to housing crisis. However, this requires a numbing our of sensitivity and will sooner or later take its toll in neurotic symptoms. What lures a person to this quest? It may be that the ideas by which, and with which, one has lived for a long time have proved insufficient, false, or feeble. It may be that bereavement, calamity, or suffering have brought one to cherish peace. It may be nothing else than the simple need for higher quality of living. It may even be that one comes to this quest, as some undoubtedly do, because one seeks a special benefit—healing, relief, amendment of fortune, perhaps. However, in that case one must remain on it because one seeks God, alone. Lastly let it be noted that if for some reason the first step on this quest is the final step down a long road of increasing desperation, for most it ought to be the first step up a garden path of increasing joy. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
For Homer the acknowledging of destiny was by no means a wallowing in guilt, but an acceptance of personal responsibility. Homer has the gods proclaim in the Odyssey: “O alas, how now do mortals accuse the gods! For they say evils comes from us [the gods]. However, they themselves, by reason of their sins, have sufferings beyond those destined for them.” Some come to the quest for spirituality through the joy enkindled by great music, inspired writing, or majestic landscape, or through response to beauty; but others—and they are more—come through being wrecked or crushed, threatened with destruction, left hopeless, forlorn, and helpless. They reach the end of their strength, or discover the falseness and futility of their wisdom. One may come to the need or, as well as the illumination by, the God through two very different paths: through joy and sweetness or through suffering and sadness. In these Homeric tales the early Greeks were learning—an arduous task in civilization requiring hundreds and hundreds of years—that freedom and destiny require each other, that they are in dialectical relation with each other. Agamemnon knows that he must assume his responsibility by compensating Achilles for what he believes the god– for instance, destiny—made him do. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
In the Old World it is the general belief that a mortal turns toward this spiritual quest to fulfill their destiny for either two reasons. If one is young, it is because one has an inborn genius for it. If one is somewhat older, it is because one is dissatisfied with life, disappointed in it, or bereaved by its calamities. However, the philosophical view, while including these reasons, goes father and wider. For it sees that some, notably those who are aesthetically sensitive and those who are martially fulfilled, are indeed satisfied with their existing form of life. Only, they sense the greater possibilities open to a human being and wish to expand it to realize them more completely. The Greeks found, furthermore, that their belief in destiny, expressed in the gods and goddesses, energized and strengthened them individually. The typical Greek citizens, as anyone who reads Herodotus or Thucydides knows, were amazingly self-reliant and autonomous. We look at their activities and realize that it is not true that belief in destiny tends to make one passive and inert. The opposite is true—namely, that belief in unlimited freedom, as the flower children demonstrated, tends to paralyze one. For unlimited freedom is like a river with no banks; the water is not controlled in its follow and hence spills out in every direction and is lost in the sands. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
Hence the seeming paradox that the deterministic movements, like Calvinism with its predestination, and Marxism with its economic determinism of history, have such great power. One would think that since people are the result of their predestination or their economic status, not much change is possible. However, the Marxists and Calvinists work energetically to change people and often with great success. In other words, their belief in their particular form of destiny give them power. Therefore, it would be too wide-sweeping a generalization to assert that all entrants on the quest come out of disgust with the Worldly life. This may be true for some, for several reasons, but it is not so true for Westerners. For among the latter there are those whose approach to life is through art—through sensitivity to beauty and joy—or through science—through the pursuit of truth about the Universe. Such persons are not unhappy, not alienated from Earthy affairs, but they know that a deeper basis to their present satisfaction is required. It is not only those who have exhausted all their limited means of attaining happiness who turn away and come to this quest: there are others whose capacity for enjoyment still remains, but having had the experience of a single glimpse or understood the pointers given by inspired are, they are attracted toward living on a higher plane. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
However, where some turn away from the World for negative reasons because of their misery and disappointment, others come to the quest for beneficial reasons; they have sensed or suspected, felt, or been told of, a higher plane of existence: they respond to a divine call. One is not sacrificing so much that is dear to the World for the sake of an empty abstraction, nor trampling on inborn egotism for the sake of a cold intellectual conception. One is doing this for somethings that has become a warm living presence in this life—for the God. After going through innumerable smaller decisions, once in a while a person arrives at a point where one’s freedom and destiny seems united. This was true of Martin Luther, wo, when he nailed his ninety-nine theses on the door of the cathedral at Wittenberg, declared, “Here I stand, I can do no other.” Such acts are the fruition of years of minor decisions culminating in the crucial decision in which one’s freedom and destiny merge. Deeper than all other desires is this need to gain consciousness of the God. Only it is unable to express itself directly at first, so it expresses itself in the only ways we permit it to—first the physical, then the emotional and intellectual quest of happiness. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
By encountering destiny directly, the Greeks had their own ways also of mitigating it. The clever individual, like Ulysses, could know which gods to set against other gods in his sacrifices. The Greeks could guarantee an auspicious wind with which to sail from Aulis to Troy by sacrificing Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon. This cruel act, incidentally, clinched Agamemnon’s destiny—one would later be murdered by his wife for his part in the bloody heritage of Mycenae. Therefore, the impulse which puts a person’s feet on the spiritual path, is not always an explicable one. It is sometimes hard to say why one obeys it, wen it will hinger the ego’s natural cravings at the very start and lead to an unnatural self-effacement at the very end. All one knows is that something him one bids one begin the journey and keeps one on it despite its hurts to one’s pride, one’s passion, and one’s ego. Disenchanted with celebrities and disillusioned with the World, the will be more inclined to turn in the end towards the divinity within themselves, to trust its first faint leadings on Jesus’ assurance that “the Kingdom of Heaven is within you!” Such independence is outwardly a lonely path, but with patience it will prove not less satisfying. Why should anyone be willing to put oneself aside, one’s inclinations and desires, unless one is bidden to do so by a power stronger than one’s own will? #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
In Aeschylus’ drama, when Agamemnon came back from Troy, he marched in as the proud conqueror, one who could scarcely restrain one’s boasting that one had accomplished the laying low of Troy. The chorus hastens to warn one not to commit hubris, the sin of overweening pride, which makes the gods jealous and incites their revenge. It is parallel to our modern, weaker form of the same wisdom “Pride goeth before a fall.” However, Agamemnon, with one’s bluster, does commit hubris, and this leads directly to his death. Hubris is the refusal to accept one’s destiny. It is the person’s belief that one performed great acts all by oneself. It is the tendency to usurp the power of the gods. It is also the denial of how much one is always dependent upon one’s fellow mortals and one’s society. Destiny itself is the course of our talents and assists the victors in these great projects like Trojan War, and when we lose sight of this—as we do when we commit hubris—evil consequences ensure. Others are attracted to these spiritual teachings through an impulse of feeling unsupported by the understanding of reason. It is safe to say that such persons are being led by their souls into this attraction. Does not the possibility or the power to do something about the situation at and confer on one some responsibility to do it? I choose to answer yes. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
Responsibility is no longer simply tied to past causes—for instance, what one did. It must be geared also to present freedom—for example, what I can do. The freedom to act confers on me the responsibility to act. In tis sense freedom and responsibility are united. Responsibility is more than a moral teaching, more than another rule of the ethical life. It is part of the underlying ontological structure of life. This means, obviously, that there is a host of things that we are responsible for that we will never be able to discharge. However, it is better to carry unfulfilled responsibility than to act on some pretense of pure conscience. Such is the interdependence of people in the collective nature of the human community that we need to assume responsibility for a multitude of things. Obviously, I am not saying that we develop neurotic consciences—there may be many reasons for not doing the given thing. For example, my friend brings up his child wrongly, and I had better not act on my hunch that I know how and he does not. However, the freedom inherent in a friendship does confer on me the responsibility to be open to talk with him about it and to share whatever insights I have. Thus, I am not suggesting we be busybodies. I am suggesting we be sensitive, compassionate, and aware of the complex interdependence of our humanity community. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
Those who conceive of this quest as escapism are neither right nor wrong. They are right when it is embarked upon because of a neurotic refusal to do for and to oneself with effort what is hoped God or gurus will be able to do without it. They are wrong when it is embarked upon because of an evaluation of life that is made above its distorting battle or out of a compulsive, involuntary, and inner attraction toward the Ideal. Only when thought and experience have run deep enough and wide enough are the ego’s emotional and fleshly hungers likely to yield to spiritual hunger. One can no more help being on the spiritual quest than one can help being on this Earth. The hunger to know the inner mysteries of life, and the aspirations to experience the Soul’s peace and love will not leave one alone. They are part of one, as hands or feet are parts of one. When ripened by experience, it is natural and inevitable that mortals should yearn to be untied with their divine Source. Through widely different kinds of external experience, the ego seeks but never finds enduring happiness. Discovering in the end that it is on a wrong road, it turns to internal experience. Then or melancholy lot took shape in primal history? Indeed, it developed—insofar as mortal’s conscious life developed in primal history. However, in conscious life cosmic being recurs as human becoming. Spirit appears in time as a product, even a byproduct, of nature, and yet it is spirit than envelops nature timelessly. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
The opposition of the two basic words as many names in the ages and Worlds; but in its names truth it inheres in the creation. Then you believe after all in some paradise in the primal age of humanity? Even if it was a hell—and the age to which we can go back in historical thought was certainly full of wrath and dread and torment and cruelty—unreal it was not. Primal mortal’s experiences of encounter were scarcely a matter of tame delight; but even violence against a being one really confronts is better than ghostly solicitude from faceless digits! From the former a path leads to God, from the latter only to nothingness. Let us close this enumeration with the pair of most threatening power—death and life. These two belong to each other. In every life death is always present; it works in body and soul from the moment of conception the moment of dissolution. It is present at the beginning of our lives just as much as at their end. At the moment of our birth we begin to die, and we continue to do so daily, throughout our lives. Growth is death, because it undermines the conditions of life even while it is increasing life. However, not to grow is immediate death. All of us stand between the fascination of life and the anxiety of death, and sometimes between the anxiety of life and the fascination of death. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
Death and life are the greatest, the all-embracing powers, which try to separate us from the love of God. Even if we could fully understand the life of the primitive, it would be no more than a metaphor for that of the truly primal mortal. Hence the primitive affords us only brief glimpses into the temporal sequence of the two basic words. More complete information we receive from the child. Here it becomes unmistakably clear ow the spiritual reality of the basic words emerges from a natural reality: that of the basic word I-You from a natural association, that of the basic word I-It from a natural discreteness. One’s own higher self will direct the properly equipped seeker’s steps towards philosophy. One may go reluctantly, fighting against its ideas secretly or openly for months and years. However, in the end one will have to yield to what will become quite plainly a divine leading. One’s intellect will have to obey this irresistible intuition. If a mortal is born with innate tendencies for this quest, nothing will keep one from it and one will surely come to it in the course of time. One may come because one is so satisfied with life that one believes in God’s goodness. One may come because one is so disappointed in life that one disbelieves in God’s goodness. However, by whatever the road, one will come to it because the urge will be irresistible. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
We See the Spiritual Truths of God through the Perspective of an Eye of Faith
The young one was confused, then gradually scornful. He could not form a cleaver answer. However, the true reply was plain enough in his soul—in the souls of all those listening and watching. True and useful as the hypothesis may be that freedom and determinism give birth to each other, I became aware that it also had a serious difficulty. This difficulty hovered around the nature of the word determinism. Does not that term severely limit the reality with which we deal, which is shown in this very example? Does not the word determinism omit the richness, the hopes and fear, the very human anxiety mediated by the enemy-friend? Determinism is borrowed from physics and is particularly adequate to describe physical movements on the model of billiard balls: when one ball hits another, it imparts to it a completely predictable direction and movement. To the extent that one is unaware of one’s physiological and neurological reactions, the term determinism may also fit those realms as well. Hence, determinism is at least partially adequate in describing the conditioning of Pavlov’s dogs and Skinner’s pigeons. However, when consciousness enters the picture, as it does with human beings, we find ourselves forced to search for a more inclusive word, a word that will do justice to the infinite number of nuances in human experience. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
Also, being limited itself, the word determinism forces us into a limited view of freedom. One of the reasons our concept of freedom has become so confused is that we have tried to cut it down on a Procrustean bed until it is parallel to determinism. The only kind of freedom that turns up then is that of picking and choosing, the freedom of doing. It is called in psychology classes decision-choice, and it can be reduced to discrete items. However, there is then no place for ultimate freedom—what is called essential freedom, the freedom of being. And the inadequacy of the term determinism is shown in the fact that it leaves no place for mystery. It takes no special acumen to see that mystery is a part of all human experience. It is a mystery that any of us was born at all and, especially for me, a mystery that I was born after eight o’clock at night in California; a mystery that sometimes we meet a particular person with whom we fall in love; and a mystery that we ultimately pass into Heaven at an unpredictable place and by unpredictable means. The sense of the mysterious stands at the cradle of true art and true science. It is important to see that the mystery does not deny that there are causes. However, the debate that we will sooner or later discover the determining elements in the situations that now seems mysterious does not apply, since the mystery has to do with the pattern by which these elements are related to each other, not the elements themselves. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
How a person responds to a situation already involves one’s freedom, and that freedom may combine a number of different causes. This is what Dr. Freud called overdetermined, determined by many causes at once. Falling in love my be determined by one’s libido, one’s culture, one’s early family background, one’s personal plans, or a combination of several of these things. A pattern means tat different events or causes are put together in a particular form, as a snowflake is put together in a certain pattern of crystals. This form cannot be broken into parts, for the form is precisely the relationship between the parts, as Pythagoras determined. We need a new word to do justice to such human phenomena, a term that can take in the richness, the complexity, the mystery, the artistic elements in form. Hence I reserve determinism for inanimate things like billiard balls. For human beings I will use the term destiny. Human freedom is a finite freedom with all of its potentialities being limited by the opposite people, destiny. Determinism is one part of destiny. That we have to pass away, that we are conditioned, that we can so easily be taught to behave like robots—is not all of this part of our destiny? #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
We reflect on our lives, we anxiously anticipate our passing into Heaven, we are conscious of the fact that we never know when we are to leave this Earth or how—does not all this refer to destiny? When the subject is self-conscious about what is happening to him or her, the radical shift from determinism to destiny occurs. The presence of consciousness creates the context in which the human being’s responses to his or her destiny occur. The presence of consciousness creates the context in which the human being’s responses to his or her destiny occur. That hour like a breathing space which returns as surely as one’s suffering is the hour of consciousness. Mortals are superior to their fate. One is stronger than one’s rock. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny. Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a World. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a mortal’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. We greet those we encounter by wishing them well or by assuring them of our devotion or by commending them to God. We may suppose that relations and concepts, as well as the notions of relational processes and states. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
The elementary, spirit-awakening impressions and stimulations of the natural mortal are derived from relational processes—the living sense of confrontation—and from relational states—living with one who confronts one. About the Moon which one sees every night one does not think much until it approaches one bodily, in one’s sleep or even while one is awake, and casts a spell over one with its gestures or, touching one, does something wicked or sweet to one. What one retains is not the visual notion of the migratory disk of light nor that of a demonic being that somehow belongs to it, but at first only an image of the Moon’s action that surges through one’s body as a motor stimulus; and the personal image of an active Moon crystallizes only very gradually. Only then is them memory of that which was unconsciously absorbed every night kindled into the notion of an agent behind this action. Only then does it become possible for You that originally could not be an object of experience, being simply endured, to be rectified and become a He or She. The originally relational character of the appearance of all beings persists and remains effective for a long time. This may help us to understand a spiritual element of primitive life that has been discussed a great deal in recent literature without having been adequately interpreted: that mysterious power whose concept has been found with all sorts of variations in the faith and science. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
God is a supra-sensible or supernatural force. The boundaries of this World are draw by our bodily experiences. The appearances to which we attribute a mystical potency are all the elementary relational processes—that is, all the processes about which one thinks at all because they stimulate one’s body and leave an impression of such stimulation in mortals. The Moon and the dead who haunt one at night with pain and lust have this potency; but so does the Sun that burns one, the beast that howls at one, the chief whose glance compels one, and the singer whose song fills one with strength for the workaday. The World is spiritual not because of any human power of magic might be at its center, but rather because any such human power is only a variant of the general power that is the source of all effective action. The causality of the World is a continuum. What is most important for the drive for preservation and most noteworthy for the drive for knowledge, namely, that which is active and effective, stands out most clearly and gain independence, while the less important, that which is not shared, the changeful You of the experiences, recedes, remains isolated in mortal’s memory, gradually becomes an object and even more gradually gets arranged in groups and species. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
If we pick and choose what we accept in the proclamation, we cloud our eternal view, putting too much importance on our experience here and now. Some people come to spiritual teachings seeking them only for the sake of getting relief from their trouble end by seeking truth for its own sake. Truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come. Truth looks backward and forward, expanding the perspective of our small point in time. “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” reports Jesus. Truth shows us the way to eternal life, and it comes only through our Savior, Jesus Christ. There is no other way. Jesus Christ teaches us how to live, and, through his Atonement and Resurrection, Christ offers us forgiveness from our sins and immortality beyond the veil. This is absolutely true. Christ teaches us that it does not matter if we are rich or less affluent, prominent or unknown, sophisticated or simple. Rather, our mortal quest is to strengthen our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, to choose good over evil, and to keep God’s commandments. While we celebrate the innovations of science and medicine, the truths of God go far beyond these discoveries. The full-grown person finds in one’s experience of the World and in the knowledge of oneself sufficient subject matter for thought about human affairs. One then asks questions, the great questions, which mortals have asked since earliest antiquity: What am I? Whither do I go? #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Every school of thought, variety of cult, sect of religion, and system of spirituality that has any pretensions to spirituality accepts the existence of the soul. Disagreements do not start until after this acceptance. Why not take your stand on this undisputed fact and verify it for yourself? There are billions of forms and of creatures in the Universe spread through space. They appear and vanish, they come and go, create and pass away, grow and decay, act and interact. This has been going on for immense periods of time; but in the thoughtful mortal’s mind there must arise the question, “To what end was is and shall be all this?” If mental restlessness, a discontent with ignorance, with the recurring trivialities of a life which does not offer any higher meaning, out one on the Quest, one may find oneself suffering from mental loneliness. One may arrive at a true appraisal of life after one has experienced all that is worth experiencing. This is the longest and most painful way. Or one may arrive at it by listening to, and believing in, the teachings of spiritual seers. This is the shortest and easiest way. The attraction of the first way is so great, however, that it is generally the only way followed by humanity. Even when individuals take on the second way, they have mostly tried the other one in former births and have left it only because the pain proved to me too much for them. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Some people come to the quest quickly, under the impulse of a great decision; but most come slowly, by degrees and stages. When it has evolved the necessary prerequisites to do so, the World will come to philosophy. Until then it will possess only imperfect expressions of the truth, or caricatures distortions and falsifications of it. Only those individuals who are not satisfied with these substitutes or with the slow pace of the World’s evolution, will step out of the mass and enter upon the Quest just now. When a mortal is thoroughly awakened to the reality of the philosophic goal, one will soon or later hear its summons to one. When that happens one embarks upon the Quest. For example, one starts an activity of conscious self-discipline and deliberate restraint, a process of re-educating the mind, the feelings, and the will. When the interest in philosophical teaching no longer springs out of light curiosity but out of deep need, the desire to embark actively on the philosophic and spiritual life will inevitably follow. It is the character which one has inherited from former Earth lives which makes one susceptible to spiritual urges and attracts one to mystical teachings of this kind. If changing events or changed environments, new contacts with living mortals or with printed books appear to be responsible, this is only because delayed-action tendencies were already in existence but still needed such external changes to be able to manifest themselves. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
The original drive for self-preservation is no more accompanied by any I-consciousness than any other drive. What wants to propagate itself is not the I but the body that does not yet know of any I. Not the I but the body wants to make things, tools, toys, wants to be inventive. And even in the primitive function of cognition one cannot find any cognosco ergo sum of even the most naïve kind, nor any conception, however immature and innocent, of an experiencing subject. Only when the primal encounters, the vital primal words I-acting-You and You-acting-I, have been split and the participle has been reified and hypostatized, does the I emerge with the force of an element. Awakening to the need of the Divine may come through some mental crisis or emotional shock which shakes the whole of mortal’s being to its deepest foundations. It is out of the suffering and grief produced by such a situation that one plants the first trembling steps on the secret path. It is such outer torments of life that shatter inner resistance so that the need for spiritual help is acknowledged. And the more unsatisfactory outward life becomes, the more satisfactory does the blessed inward life seem both by contrast and itself. Many will be irritated by these thoughts, but some will be disturbed by them. It is only from the last group that a reconsideration of what they seek in life and how they propose to attain it is at all likely. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
The driving powers of our own beings point to realities which are simultaneously both glorious and terrible; realities full of beauty and full of destructiveness. What are these realities? We do not have to look far to discover them. They are in all of us, in our own families, in our own nation, in our World. By what signs do we recognize them? By a mixture of irresistible fascination and unconquerable anxiety. The name of one of these powers with an angelic face is love. The poetry of all languages abounds in the praise of this principality ruling over the life of all mortals. Its angelic face appears in pictures and statues, its angelic beauty sounds through music, its divine fascination is expressed in the figures of pagan gods and goddesses. And at the same time, all works of art, and all myths are full of the tragic and deadly works of the Angel of love. Fascination and fear, joy and guilt, creation and destruction are untied in this great ruler of our lives. And both the joy and the anxiety of love tend to separate us from the love of God; the one by attracting us away from God to itself, the other by throwing us into the darkness of despair in which we cannot see God any longer. Before mortals will undertake the moral purifications with which the quest must begin, and the mental trainings which must complement them, one must have some incentive to do so. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
We declare the means by which mortal life is created to be divinely appointed. We affirm the sanctity of life and of its importance in God’s eternal plan. Where will one find it? Since it depends on one’s stage of evolution, character, and destiny, the answer is different with different people. If some find it in the sadness produced by World-weariness, others find it in the joy produced by a Glimpse. Still others are prompted by the hunger for Truth or by the thirst for self-improvements, or even blindly by the tendencies brought over from previous births. The hour comes when, promoted by disappointment, bereavement, or revelation, one is driven to find out the reasons for all one’s activities. One is beginning to feel their insufficiency, their shallowness. Such inquiry, if persisted in, will in the end put one upon the quest. Amongst the multitude of those who are attracted toward such teaching, it is inevitable that there should be those who are only casually interested, those who are tremendously in earnest about it, and those who are to be found somewhere between these two groups. If the teaching favourably commends itself to any individual from the first contact as being requisite to one’s needs, this is often a sign that one has followed it in earlier existences. One disciple who picked up the Quest again in this life described it as a feeling of reunion, of coming home. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Another principality, angelic and demonic at the same time, is power. It has the severe manly beauty which we see in some pictures of the great Archangels. It is itself a great Angel, good and evil, just as love is a mighty principality, and it is the builder and protector of cities and nations, a creative force in every human enterprise, in every human community, in every human achievement. It is responsible for the conquest of nature, the organization of states, the execution of justice. Its mighty ally is another Angelic figure, good and evil, namely, knowledge. We are all in their bondage. World history is the realm in which the reign of the Angel power is most manifest in all its glory and in all its tragedy. There is no need to say more about it to the people of our time. Every morning brings us news about this ruler of our World. And we all are grasped both by the Angelic fascination of its creativity and by the demonic terror of its destructiveness in our personal lives as well as in the lives of our nations. And when power is allied with knowledge—a knowledge undreamed of even before in the history of humankind—fascination as well as terror are infinitely increased. Both separate us from the love of God, the one driving us to the adoration of power and knowledge, the other driving us to cynicism and despair. God is blessing you, but every person prospers according to one’s own genius. We can know things of God as we seek them spiritually. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Love is a Cosmic Force—For those Who Stand in it and Behold in it, People Emerge from their Entanglement in Busy-ness!
Riding on a train through Switzerland, I looked up suddenly to see Armand directly opposite watching me over the upturned cover of cover of his fur-lined coat. Armand snatched the book out of my hand and insisted that I explain what it was, why I read it, what did the picture on the cover mean? In Paris Armand pursued me nightly through the boulevards and the back streets, only and now and then questioning me on the places I went, the things I did. In Venice, I would look out of my room at the Danieli, to see Armand staring from a window across the way. Only when people are tired of the frustrations and obstruction, the spites and cruelties which so often mar Worldly life, will individuals feel ready to turn in real earnest to the Quest. Only then will its perfect tranquility seem more desirable than the hectic excitement of following desires. The essential point is that the more an executive is involved in the World’s affairs, the more one needs this quest which leads one out of the World. The more one’s life is devoted to acquiring money and good and position, the more one needs a firm base within oneself from which properly to use these things as they ought to be used. A time may come when a mortal may tire of the whole social round, the business or professional rat-race, and desire to turn away from it—when one begins to see through its futilities, vanities, and uneducatedness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
After trying to the usual ways, what other recourse can they have to fulfill this quest? The first appearance of this sense of futility (in the heart’s deeper life), and may pass disregarded and unheeded. However, it will return again and again, and grow apace, until the unsatisfactoriness of a wholly materialistic life, the transitioriness of a merely Earthly happiness, achieve recognition and obtain acceptance. With this negative phase, modern mortal’s inner life begins. They feel vaguely that there are higher laws governing life, that they do not know them. They would like to learn, but in the medley of sects and cults—wit their claims and contradictions—they do not feel safe enough to entrust their lives to any particular one, although attracted to some more than to others. To escape from Worldly troubles, to assuage the disappointment of frustrated hopes, Christians offer a way. The smugly complacent, the thoughtless surface-types, or those always immersed in pettinesses and trivialities will have no awareness of a higher need. However, the others, relatively a few, will find it gnawing at their hearts and tensing their minds. The very condition which is so satisfactory to the larder group brings misery to the smaller one. No longer is one content to be a straw swept along by the river of circumstance. Those who are tired of the falsities and inanities accepted by so many, who want to come to a true life, must come to the quest. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
Those who seek a larger meaning to life cannot live like the less affluent for bodily needs alone, or like the professional for bodily and cultural needs alone. Their feeling is still the profounder: a peace and harmony, an understanding and strength. People come to this quest seeking something beyond the misery, wretchedness, and cruelty of this chaotic World, something of light, warmth, kindness, and peace. The need to insulate ourselves privately from the shocks of contemporary living, is partly met my Christianity. There are those who come to this quest simply because they are disillusioned with the World. Wearied with the self-seeking disputations of political schemers, repelled by the heartless treatment of non-followers by political extremists, they turn away and look elsewhere for truth, honesty, goodness. We seek truth for various reasons. One is because it possesses a certitude that gives us anchorage and rest. The free mortal is one who wills without arbitrary self-will. One believes in destiny, and believes that it stands in need of one. One must sacrifice one’s puny, unfree will, that is controlled by things and instincts, to one’s grand will, which quits defined for destined being. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
As freedom and destiny, so arbitrary self-will and fate belong together. However, freedom and destiny are solemnly promised to one another and linked together in meaning. Metaphorically, freedom in its essence is the acceptance of the chains which suit you and for which you are suited, and of the barness in which you pull towards an end chosen and valued by yourself, and not imposed. It is not, and never can be, the absence of restrictions, obligations or law and of duty. That direct relationships involve some action on what confronts us becomes clear in one of three examples. The essential deep of art determines the process where by the form becomes a work. That which confronts me is fulfilled through the encounter through which it enters into the World of things in order to remain incessantly effective, incessantly It—but also infinitely able to become again a You, enchanting and inspiring. It becomes incarnate: out of the flood of spaceless and timeless presence it rises to the shore of continued existence. Less clear is the element of action in the relation to human You. The essential act that here establishes directness is usually understood as a feeling, and thus misunderstood. Feelings accompany the Christian spirit and spiritual fact of love, but they do not constitute it; and the feelings that accompany it can be very different. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
Jesus Christ’s feeling for the possessed man is different from his feeling for the beloved disciple; but the love is one. Feelings one has; love occurs. Feelings dwell in mortals, but mortals dwell in one’s love. This is no metaphor but actuality; love does not cling to an I, as if the You were merely it content or object; it is between I and You. Whoever does not know this, know this with one’s being, does not know love, even if one should ascribe to it the feelings that one lives through, experiences, enjoys, and expresses. Love is a cosmic force. For those who stand in it and behold in it, mortals emerge from their entanglement in busy-ness; and the good and the evil, the cleaver and the foolish, the beautiful and the unattractive, one after another become actual and a You for them; that is, liberated, emerging into a unique confrontation. Exclusiveness comes into being miraculously again and again—and now one can act, help, heal, educate, raise, redeem. Love is responsibility of an I for a You: in this consists what cannot consist in any feeling—the equality of all lovers, from the smallest to the greatest and from the blissfully secure whose life is circumscribed by the life of one beloved human being to him that is nailed his life long to the cross of the World, capable of what is immense and bold enough to risk it: to love mortals. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
Let the meaning of action in the third example, that of the creature and its contemplation, remain mysterious. Believe in the simple magic of life, in service in the Universe, and it will dawn on you what this waiting, peering, stretching of the neck of the creature means. Every word must falsify; but look, these beings live around you, and no matter which one you approach you always reach Being. Relation is reciprocity. My You acts on me as I act on it. Our students teach us, our works form us. When they are touched by the sacred basic word, the wicked become a revelation. How are we educated by children, by animals! Inscrutably involved, we live in the currents of universal reciprocity. You speak of love as if it were the only relationship between mortals; but are you even justified in choosing it as an example, seeing that there is also hatred? As long as love is blind—that is, as long as it does not see a whole being—it does not yet truly stand under the basic word of relation. Hatred remains blind by its very nature; one can hate only part of a being. Whoever sees a whole being and must reject it, is no longer in the domination of hatred but in the human limitation of the capacity to say You. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
It does happen to mortals that a human being confronts them and they are unable to address one with the basic word that always involves an affirmation of the being one addresses, and then they have to reject either the other person or themselves: when entering-into-relationship comes to this barrier, it recognizes its own relativity which disappears only when this barrier is removed. Yet whoever hates directly is closer to a relation than those who are without love and hate. This, however, is the sublime melancholy of our lot that every You must become an It in our World. However exclusively present it may have been in the direct relationship—as soon as the relationship has run its course or is permeated by means, the You becomes an object among objects, possibly the noblest one and yet one of them, assigned its measure and boundary. The actualization of the work involves a loss of actuality. Genuine contemplation never lasts long; the natural being that only now revealed itself to me in the mystery of reciprocity has again become describable, analyzable, classifiable—the point at which manifold systems of laws intersect. And even love cannot persist in direct relation; it endures, but only in the alternation of actuality and latency. The human being who but now was unique and devoid of qualities, not at hand but only present, not experienceable, only touchable, has again become a He or She, an aggregate of qualities, a quantum with no shape. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
Now I can again abstract from one the color of one’s hair, of one’s speech, of one’s graciousness; but as long as I can do that one is my You no longer and not yet again. Every You in the World is doomed by its nature to become a thing or at least to enter into thinghood again and again. In the language of objects: every thing in the World can—either before or after it becomes a thing—appear to some I as its You. However, the language of objects catches only one corner of actual life. The It is the chrysalis, the You the You the butterfly. Only it is not always as if these states took turns so neatly; often it is an intricately entangled series of events that is tortuously dual. What is the relationship between freedom and determinism? Both of them operate in our day-to-day lives. If we refused to accept either freedom or determinism, we would diminish our possibilities for living. Without determinism and the predictability of plane schedules that goes with it, for example, our lives would be lost in anarchy. However, without freedom and the exuberance that goes with it, without poetry and flights of imagination that freedom entails, we would be swallowed up in apathy. I read everything on the topic I could find, and I pondered the question at length; but evermore, I came out by the same door I went in. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
One morning, having gotten up early to go to my study, I walked out to get the morning newspaper, which is thrown on the curb in front of our house. When I was about fifteen steps from the house, in this relaxed, preworking mood, there suddenly came into my mind—so clearly that it seemed like someone speaking out loud—these sentences: Freedom and determinism give birth to each other. Every advance in freedom gives birth to a new freedom. Freedom is a circle within a larger circle of determinism, which is, in turn, surrounded by a larger circle of freedom. And so on ad infinitum. Immediately there crowded also into my mind the demonstrations for this hypothesis. Take Dr. Freud and his description of the unconscious. In his deterministic theory of the mind, he demonstrated that our needs are determined by unconscious childhood experiences and that our so-called rational values are really not rational, but are compensations for their opposites in our unconscious, irrational urges. Dr. Freud seems to be taking our freedom away. However, soon we began to see that the real effect of Dr. Freud’s determinism was to increase the breadth and depth of the human mind. One was, in our present terms, simply clarifying one aspect of destiny. For hereafter the mind would include not only the conscious, the unconscious, and, with an assist from Dr. Jung, the collective unconscious. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
Lo and behold, the determinism in Dr. Freud’s theory actually gave us far-reaching possibilities for freedom in self-development, freedom in directing our minds, and freedom in enjoying the ecstatic possibilities of intellectual exploration. Another illustration was Dr. Darwin and the determinism to make us all into a bunch of monkeys? However, after the anger had cooled, we began to see that Darwin’s new theory, deterministic as it was, actually gave us a new intellectual freedom for understanding our past and new freedom in possibilities, especially in the twentieth century, for controlling and directing our evolution. All this ran through my mind in a few seconds. Immediately after that flood of idea, I picked up the newspaper and started back toward the house. However, in the few moments it took to retrace my steps, I became acutely aware of a fragment of poetry running through my mind: “Other friends have flown before—on the morrow one will leave me.” I had no idea where this intrusive and surprising couplet came from, and at that moment I had not the slightest hint as to what it meant. However, I became aware that I was instantaneously filled with anxiety. My frightened mind was now totally occupied by thoughts completely contrary to my exhilaration of minutes before. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
I began to recognize an old shadow-companion, an enemy-friend who always put in his leering appearance at just such moments. The context surrounding this verse in my mind indicated that it expressed the anxiety projected by this uninvited and obtrusive guest who spoke so stridently I could not help but listen. It was as though my enemy-friend was saying, “Come off it. Forget these new ideas you have gotten, which you fondly imagine were original. People have known these things for centuries. Forget it all and go in and enjoy your breakfast.” Now very anxious but exhilarated, I hurried into the house not to eat my breakfast, but to scribble down these ideas before they should be lost in the confusion that anxiety creates. Later on in the morning, I recalled where the couplet came from. It was the last two lines of a stanza in Poe’s The Raven. As every schoolboy knows (although later we may have forgotten) the scene of the poem in Poe’s room late at night. Oppressed with feelings of loneliness and alienation, and possibly under the influence of medication, Poe carries on a conversation with this raven who flew into his room and perched on his window sill. Poe gradually begins to feel an affection for this unusual bird, and he fears, in the couplet mentioned, that the bird will desert him—“On the morrow he will leave me.” However, the raven answers this one word, as he does at the conclusion of half of the stanzas in the poem: “Nevermore.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
Being a psychoanalyst, I could not resist pondering the significance of the word “nevermore.” Could it mean “nevermore” will we escape from the human paradox? That is, when we gain enough freedom to get new insights, new visions, will we be attacked by the anxiety that accompanies freedom like a shadow? We may black off our new thoughts by apathy or by strict and rigid doctrines, hanging on to the tried and true ideas that never upset anyone. Yet whatever form of denial we choose, this “nevermore” says that we never will be completely free from this human paradox: that with the freedom presupposed in every new idea, there comes the equivalent anxiety to plague us. This is the curse and the blessing of being human—that we are free but destined at the same moment. However, at the same time this destiny, of which this black bird was a part, is saying something helpful: that its presence, as Poe experienced it, will “nevermore” desert us. Long before the Christian era people spoke of the divine providence at work behind the driving forces of life and history. And in Christianity the words of Jesus about the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, and one’s command not to be anxious about tomorrow, have strengthened the faith in providence. It become the most common belief of Christian people. It gave them courage in danger, consolation in sorrow, hope among ruins. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
However, more and more this faith lost is depth. It became a matter-of-course and was deprived of the overwhelming, surprising and triumphant character it has in the words of Paul. When the German soldiers went into the First World War most of them shared the popular belief in a nice God was would make everything work out for the best. Actually, everything worked out for the worst, for the nation and for almost everyone in it. In the trenches of the war, the popular belief in personal providence was gradually broken and in the fifth year of war nothing was left. During the second World War similar developments took place in this country. In the political tensions and fears of the last decade the belief in historical providence also broke down. The confidence, shared by large groups in this country, that in history everything will eventually turn out for the best, has almost disappeared. Today not much of it is left. Neither the personal nor the historical belief in providence had depth or a real foundation. These beliefs were products of wishful thinking and not of faith. Faith in providence is not a part of the Christian faith—a part which is easier to grasp than the other parts. It is not the case, as an old country parson once told me, that people firmly believe in divine providence, but that the higher contents of the Christian faith, sin and salvation, Christ and the Church, are strange to them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
If this is so, then the meaning of providence must also be strange to them and their belief in it is due to break down as such beliefs have in the storms of our century. Faith in providence is faith altogether. It is the courage to say yes to one’s own life and life in general, in spite of the driving forces of fate, in spite of the insecurities of daily existence, in spite of the catastrophes of existence. It is of such courage that Paul speaks in our text. However, first he speaks of the powers which try to make this courage impossible. What do these powers do? They separate us from the love of God. This sentence is surprising. We would point to the dangers of pain and death which threaten our life day by day. Paul is certainly not unaware of them. He enumerates them as tribulation of distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or the sword. However, he feels himself to be a conqueror of them all. And then he starts again and names the powers which threaten to separate us from the love of God. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
There is something mysterious about these powers. They do not have evil names like those which Paul has previously listed; most of them have glorious names—Angels, principalities, life, and height. Why are they the ones which are most threatening? It is because they are always at work in every moment of our lives and because they have a double face. They are the powers which rule the World and they rule it for good and for evil. They grasp us by the good they bring and they destroy us by the evil they contain. This is the reason that they are more dangerous than the obvious evils. This is the reason that the triumph over them is the ultimate test which proves that Jesus is the Christ, the bringer of the new state of things. There are billions of forms and of creatures in the Universe spread through space. They appear and vanish, they come and go, create and pass away, grow and decay, act and interact. This has been going on for immense periods of time; but in the thoughtful mortal’s mind there must arise the question, “To what end was is and shall be all this?” If mental restlessness, a discount with ignorance, with the recurring trivialities of life which does not offer any higher meaning, put one on the Quest, one may find oneself suffering from mental loneliness. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
Randolph Harris II International Institute 