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Good Health Generally Means the Ability to Resolve Contradictions—It is a Synthesis Like Breathing!

August 6, 2019 12:14 am

God created the Universe and Time. Well, we were astonished, and we were also enthralled! Absolutely enthralled. God said to us, “Watch this, because this will be beautiful and will exceed your conceptions and expectations, as it will Mine.” It is all garbled, in countless texts throughout the World. There are texts which are irretrievable now which contained amazingly accurate information about cosmology; and there are texts that mortals know; and there are texts that have been forgotten but which can be rediscovered in time. “And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone,” reports Matthew 14.23. He was there alone. So are we. Beings are alone because they are mortal! In some way every creature is alone. In majestic isolation every star travels through the darkness of endless space. Each tree grows according to its own law, fulfilling its unique possibilities. Animals live, fight, and die for themselves alone, confined to the limitations of their bodies. Certainly, they also appear as male and female, in families and in flocks. Some of them are gregarious. However, all of them are alone! Being alive means being in a body—a body separated from all other bodies. And being separated means being alone. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15

This is true of every creature, and it is more true of humans than any other creature. One is not only alone; one also knows that one is alone. Aware of what one is, one asks the question of one’s aloneness. One asks why one is alone, and how one can triumph over one’s being alone. For this aloneness one cannot endure. Neither can one escape it. It is one’s destiny to be alone and to be aware of it. Not even God can take this destiny away from one. In the story of paradise we read—“Then the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone.” And as we pondered, as we opened our arms and sang and tried to comfort them, while stepping invisibly and artfully through the material of Earth, something momentous made itself known to us, shocking us out of our explorations. Before our very eyes, the Twelfth Revelation of Physical Evolution was upon us! It struck us like the light from Heaven; it distracted us from the cries of the covert invisible! It shattered our reason. It caused our songs to become laughter and wails. The Twelfth Revelation of Evolution was that of the female of the human species had begun to look more distinctly different from the male of the human species by margin so great that no other anthropoid could compare! #RandolphHarris 2 of 15

The female grew pretty in our eyes, and seductive; the hair left her face, and her limbs grew graceful; her manner transcended the necessities of survival; and she became beautiful as flowers are beautiful, as the wings of birds are beautiful! What had risen, a female tender-skinned and radiant of face. And God created the woman from the body of Adam. Here an old myth is used to show that originally there was no bodily separation between man and woman; in the beginning they were one. Now they long to be one again. However, although they recognize each other as flesh of their own flesh, each remains alone. They look at each other, and despite their longing for each other, they see their strangeness. In the story, God himself makes them aware of this fact when he speaks to each of them separately, when he makes each one responsible for one’s own guilt, when he listens to their excuses and mutual accusations, when he pronounces a separate curse over each, and leave them to experience shame in the face of their nakedness. They are each alone. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15

The creation of the woman has not overcome the situation which God describes as not good for man. He remains alone. And the creation of the woman, although it provides a helper for Adam, has only presented to the one human being who is alone another human being who is equally alone, and from their flesh all other beings, each of whom will stand alone. We ask, however—is this really so? Did not God accomplish something better? Is not our aloneness largely removed in the encounter of the genders? Certainly it is during hours of communion and in moments of love. The ecstasy of love can absorb one’s own self in its union with the other self, and separation seems to be overcome. However, after these moments, the isolation of self from self is felt even more deeply than before, sometimes ever to the point of mutual repulsion. We have given too much of ourselves, and now we long to take back what was given. Our desire to protect our aloneness is expressed in the feeling of shame. When our intimate self, mental or bodily is opened, we feel ashamed. We try to cover our vulnerability, as did Adam and Eve when they became conscious of themselves. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15

Thus, man and woman remain alone even in the most intimate union. They cannot penetrate each other’s innermost center. And if this were not so, they could not be helpers to each other’ they could not have human community. This is why God himself cannot liberate mortals from their aloneness: it is human’s greatness that one is centered within one’s own being. Separated from one’s World, one is thus able to look at it. Only because one can look at it can one know and love and transform it. God, in creating one the ruler of the Earth, had to separate one and thrust one into aloneness. Humans are also therefore able to be spoken to by God and by other beings. One can ask questions and give answers and make decisions. One has the freedom for good or evil. Only one who has an impenetrable center in oneself is free. Only one who is alone can claim to be a human. This is the greatness and this is he burden of being. “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” From this primal decree millions of human beings are now liberated. More and more beings have more and more leisure. The working day grows shorter, the week end longer. More and more women are released at an earlier age from the heavier tasks of the rearing of children, in the small family of today, when kindergarten and school and clinic and restaurant come to their assistance. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15

More and more people are freed for other things, released from the exhaustion of their energies in the mere satisfaction of elementary wants. No longer is the pattern so simple as that of Longfellow’s blacksmith, who something attempted, something done, had earned a night’s repose. Released from what? When necessity no longer drives, when people own long hors in which to do what they want, what do they want to do? Where necessity is heavy upon beings, they yearn for the joys of leisure. Now many have enough leisure. What are the joy they find? The shorter working day is also a different working day. Nearly all people work for others, not for themselves—not the way a person works who has one’s own little plot of Earth and must give oneself up to its cultivation. For many, work has become a routine—not too onerous, not too rewarding, and by no means engrossing—a daily routine until the bell rings and sets them free again. For what? It is a marvelous liberation for those who learn to use it; and there are many ways. It is the great emptiness for those who do not. People of a placid disposition do not know the great emptiness. When the day’s work done, they betake themselves to their quiet interests, their hobbies, their gardens or their amateur workbenches or their stamp collecting or their games or their affairs or their church activities or whatever it be. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15

When they need more sting in life, they have a mild “fling,” taking a little “moral holiday.” Some find indulgence enough in the vicarious pleasure of snidely malicious gossip. Their habits are early formed and they keep a modicum of contentment. However, the number of the placid is growing less. The conditions of our civilization do not encourage that mood. For one thing, the old-time acceptance of authority, as God-given or nature-based, is much less common. Religion is for very many an ancient tale, a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong, reduced to ritual or the moral precepts of the Sunday pulpit. There is little allegiance to the doctrine that every being has allotted place. How could there be when competition has become a law of life? There is incessant movement and disturbance and upheaval. And with the new leisure there come new excitations, new stimuli to unrest. So the new leisure has brought its seeming opposite, restlessness. And because these cannot be reconciled the great emptiness comes. Faced with the great emptiness, unprepared to meet it, most people resort to one or another way of escape, according to their kind. Those who are less conscious of their need succeed in concealing it from themselves. They find their satisfaction in the great new World of means without ends. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15

Those who are more conscious of their need cannot conceal it; they only distract themselves from the thought of it. Their common recourse is excitation, and they seek it in diverse ways. The first kind are the go-getters. When they are efficient or unscrupulous or both, they rise in the World. They amass things. They make some money. They win some place and power. Not for anything, not to do anything with it. Their values are relative, which means they are no values at all. They make money to make more money. They win some power that enables them to seek more power. They are practical beings. They keep right on being practical, until their unlived lives are at an end. If they stopped being practical, the great emptiness would engulf them. They are like planes that must keep on flying because they have no landing gear. The engines go fast and faster, but they are going nowhere. They make good progress to nothingness. They take pride in their progress. They are outdistancing other beings. They are always calculating the distance they have gained. It shows what can be done when you have the know-how. They feel superior and that sustains them. They stay assured in the World of means. What matters is winning. “But what good cam of it at last?” Ouoth little Peterkin. “Why that I cannot tell,” said he, “But ’twas a famous victory.” Victory for the sake of the winning, means for the sake of the acquiring, that is success. So the circle spins forever means without end, World without end. Amen. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15

One will find that the onset of insight will not be at all like the picture of it which one had previously and erroneously formed. When one awakens to truth as it really is, one will have no occult vision, one will have no astral experience, no ravishing ecstasy. One will awaken to it in a state of utter stillness, and one will realize that truth was always there within one and that reality was always there around one. Truth is not something which has grown and developed through your efforts. It is not something which has been achieved or attained by laboriously adding up those efforts. It is not something which has to be made more and more perfect each year. And once your mental eyes are opened to truth they can never be closed again. The discovery of one’s true being is not outwardly dramatic, and for a long time no one may know of it, except oneself. The World may not honour one for it: one may die as obscure as one lived. However, the purpose of one’s life has been fulfilled; and God’s will has been done. There is nothing melodramatic about realization of Truth. Those who look for marvels look in vain, unless indeed its bestowal of singular serenity is a marvel. No one really knows ho this enlightenment first dawns on one. One moment it was not there, the next moment one was somehow in it. No announcements tell the World that one has come into enlightenment. No heralds blow the trumpets proclaiming being’s greatest victory—over oneself. This is in fact the quietest moment of one’s whole life. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15

To find out that one’s way does lie through cults, in the hope of finding one to suit one, ventures into a danger-beset field, where lunacy is often mistaken for illumination and where exaggerated claims substitute for solid facts. The desire for power over others, for authority, is a form of personal ambition which has, in the past, mixed easily with a spiritual glimpse. A new sect, a new movement, has then come to birth. The seeker after truth who comes in contact with it would be far safer to take some of the teaching without sacrificing one’s freedom, without joining the group. If any work, institution, or organization is centered in the Overself it cannot fall into the base, negative, or selfish currents which, in the historic past, have polluted, poisoned, and sometimes destroyed so many tasks and enterprises. The fears which repression serves to overcome may also be overcome by keeping the hostility under conscious control. However, whether one controls or represses hostility is not a matter of choice, because repression is a reflex-like process. It occurs if in a particular situation it is unbearable to be aware that one is hostile. In such a case, of course, there is no possibility of conscious control. The main reasons why awareness of hostility may be unbearable are that one may love or need a person at the same time that one is hostile toward one, that one may not want to see the reasons, such as envy or possessiveness, which have promoted the hostility or, that it may be frightening to recognize within one’s self hostility toward anyone. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15

In such circumstances repression is the shortest and quickest way toward an immediate reassurance. By repression the frightening hostility disappears from awareness, or is kept from entering awareness. I should like to repeat this sentence in other words, because for all its simplicity it is one of those psychoanalytic statements which is but rarely understood: if hostility is repressed the person has not the remotest idea that one is hostile. The quickest way toward a reassurance, however, is not necessarily the safest way in the long run. By the process of repression the hostility—or to indicate its dynamic character we had better use here the term rage—is removed from conscious awareness but is not abolished. Split off from the context of the individual’s personality, and hence beyond control, it revolves within one as an affect which is highly explosive and eruptive, and therefore tends to be discharged. The explosiveness of the repressed affect is all the greater because by its very isolation it assumes larger and often fantastic dimensions. As long as one is aware of animosity its expansion is restricted in a few different ways. First, consideration of the circumstances as they are in a given situation shows one what one can and what one cannot do toward an enemy or alleged enemy. Second, if the anger concerns one whom one otherwise admires or likes or needs, the anger will sooner or later become integrated into the totality of one’s feelings. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15

Finally, inasmuch as a being has developed a certain sense of what is appropriate to do or not to do, personality being as it is, this too will restrict one’s hostile impulses. If the anger is repressed, then access to these restricting possibilities is cut off, with the result that the hostile impulses trespass the restrictions from inside and outside, though only in fantasy. If the chemist I mentioned yesterday had followed his impulses he would have wanted to tell others how Kirk had abused his friendship, or to intimate to his superior that Kirk had stolen his idea or kept him from pursuing it. Since his anger was repressed it became dissociated and expanded, as would probably have shown in his dreams; it is likely that in his dream he committed murder in some symbolic form, or became an admired genius, while others went disgracefully to pieces. By its very dissociation the repressed hostility will in the course of time usually because intensified from outside sources. For instance, if a high employee has developed an anger toward his chief, because the chief had made arrangements without discussing them with him, and if the employee represses his anger, never remonstrating against the procedure, the superior will certainly keep on acting over his head. Thereby new anger is constantly generated. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15

The neurotic attitude calls forth a reaction of the environment, by which the attitude itself is reinforced, with the result that the person is more and more caught, and greater and greater difficulty escaping. This phenomenon is called Teufelskreia. Another consequence of repressing hostility arises from the fact that a person registers within oneself the existence of a highly explosive affect which is beyond control. Before discussing the consequences of this we have to consider a question which it suggests. By definition the result of repressing an affect or an impulse is that the individual is no longer aware of its existence, so that in one’s conscious mind ones does not know that one has any hostile feelings toward another. How then can I say that one registers the existence of the repressed affect within oneself? The answer is possessed in the fact that there is no strict alternative between consciousness and unconscious, but that there are several levels of consciousness. Not only is the repressed impulse still effective—one of the basic discoveries of Dr. Freud—but also in a deeper level of consciousness the individual knows about its presence. Reduced to the most simple terms possible this means that fundamentally we cannot fool ourselves, that actually we observe ourselves better than we are aware of doing, just as we usually observe others better than we are aware of doing—as shown, for example, in the correctness of the first impression we ger from a person—but we may have stringent reasons for not taking cognizance of our observations. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15

For the sake of saving repetitive explanations I shall use the term register when I mean that we know what is going on within us without our being aware of it. These consequences of repressing hostility may themselves be sufficient to create anxiety, provided always that the hostility and its potential danger to other interests are sufficiently great. States of vague anxiety may be built in this way. More often, however, the process does not come to a standstill at this point, because there is an imperative need to get rid of the dangerous affect which from within menaces one’s interest and security. A second reflex-like process sets in: the individual projects one’s hostile impulses to the outside World. The first pretense, the repression, requires a second one: one pretends that the destructive impulses come not from one but from someone or something outside. Logically the person on whom one’s own hostile impulses will be projected is the person against whom they are directed. The result is that this person now assumes formidable proportions in one’s mind, partly because in any danger the degree of potency depends not only on the factual conditions but also on the attitude taken toward them. The more defenseless one is the greater the danger appears. The anxiety with which we react to a danger does not depend mechanically on the realistic greatness of the danger. An individual who has developed mechanically an attitude of helplessness and passivity will react with anxiety to a comparatively small danger. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15

As by-function the projection also serves the need for self-justification. It is not the individual oneself who wants to cheat, to steal, to exploit, to humiliate, but the others want to do such things to one. A wife who is unaware of her own impulses to ruin her husband and subjectively convince ed that she is most devoted may, because of this mechanism, consider her husband to be a brute wanting to harm her. The process of projection may or may not be supported by another process working to the same end: a retaliation fear may get hold of the repressed impulse. In this case a person who wants to injure, cheat, deceive others has also a fear that they will do the dame to him. How far the retaliation fear is a general characteristic ingrained in human nature, how far it arises from primitive experiences of sin and punishment, how far it presupposes a drive for personal revenge, I leave as an open question. Beyond doubt it plays a great role in the minds of neurotic person. These processes brought about by repressed hostility result in the affect of anxiety. In fact, the repression generates exactly the state which is characteristic of anxiety: a feeling of defenselessness toward what is felt an overpowering danger menacing from outside. “Tell them to fear not, for God will deliver them, yea, and also all those who stand fast in that liberty wherewith God hath made them free,” Alma 6.21. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15

Many Beings Ere Now Have Dreamed as Much, but One Who by Such Dreams Sets Nothing, Has the Easiest Time of it!

August 4, 2019 11:55 pm

The night was warm and receptive. My courtyard banana trees at Cresleigh Homes Rocklin Trails had not been touched by a freeze this Winter, and grew thick and drowsing as every against the stucco walls. The wild impatiens and lantana were glowing in the overgrown beds, and the fountain, the fountain with its cherub, was making its crystalline music as the water splashed from the cherub’s horn into the basin. This way to the palace. Point your car along a winding drive-way up the green hillside shaded with great elm trees. Enter the wide and friendly doorway and look at the murals in our lobby. They will tell you the story of our industry. As you go through the offices, you will probably marvel as we did at all the comforts and services we have. Imagine a sea of blonde desks with tan chairs, outdoor lighting pouring everywhere, roomy offices with individually-controlled air-conditioning and area-controlled Music by Muzak coming out of walls. We need few private secretaries. All we have to do is pick up a phoning device and dictate our message to a disc that whirls in a sunny room in another part of the building. Here a pool of stenographers type all day long with buttons in their ears. We do not see them and they do not see us, but they know our voices. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14

A high-speed pneumatic tube system winds through the entire building. We send material from one office to another not by messenger but by torpedo containers traveling twenty-five feet a second. Simply have the attendant put your paper, magazine, or memo in the plastic carrier. One inters the container in the tube, dials the appropriate number, and, whoosh, it is shot across the building. There is a complete sound system throughout headquarters. If, for example, a bad storm is forecast, there will be an “Attention Please,” and you may go home early. At noon, enjoy movies in an auditorium the size of a small theater, visit the library, watch the World Series on Color TV, or play darts and table tennis in the game room. The finest catering service and a staff of friendly waitresses bring you luncheon. Then go to the company store, pitch horseshoes, or take a brief stroll under the elms. What happens to an office when it is offered facilities like these? At first there were a few small complaints. The main difficulty is that we find it all but impossible to get off the campus. You can speed several miles to town for a quick lunch. Otherwise you stay on the grounds until closing. City employees everywhere have the chance to renew, at least slightly, their connection with the World during lunch hours. When we first came many of us rambled in the woods and picked flowers, but we seldom do that anymore. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14

As for our work-efficiency, I think it has diminished a bit as a result of what one of my friends calls “our incestuous situation.” When you are isolated in the country it is not easy to feel that sense of urgency that distinguishes most business people. I sometimes have a feeling of being in limbo. More than ever one feels—ungratefully—over-protected. While on the job, I actually cannot feel hot or cold. I cannot even get sick. This will sound ridiculous, but when the company obtained a supply of influenza shots, I found myself in the absurd position of refusing one. For some reason I wanted a chance to resist the flu in my own way. What is the moral of all this? I am not quite sure. However, do not beings, perhaps, love something besides well-being? Perhaps one is just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as great a benefit to one as well-being? In the Crystal Palace (suffering) is unthinkable. You believe, do you not, in a crystal palace which shall be forever unbreakable—in an edifice, that is to say, at which no one shall be able to put out one’s tongue, or in any other way to mock? Now, for the very reason that is must be made of crystal, and forever unbreakable, and one whereat no one shall put out one’s tongue, I should fight shy of such a building. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14

The origins of power are also the origins of aggression. For aggression is one use—or misuse—of power. Aggression springs from an innate tendency to grow and master life which seems to be characteristic of all living matter. Only when this life force is obstructed in its development do ingredients of anger, rage, or hate become connected with it. Power comes from the root meaning “to be able.” In this sense, it is interesting that ability and power are used together, and it has a lot to do with nature and nurture. We seem to be born with something of this power motivation in us. However, this does not at all cast the die in favor of the nature side of the dichotomy, for this power motivation is formed in terms of security, status, and prestige. These characteristics are certainly social and are learned by the developing infant from and in one’s culture. As one watches a child building with blocks and then knocking the construction down to build it again, one realizes that power and aggression have beneficial values. From there the child goes on to explore, to experiment, to master one’s World as best one can and as far as one’s level of development enables one. At origin, aggressiveness is almost synonymous with activity. If Dr. Freud had been right in supposing that our chief aim is blissful satiation, it would be hard to explain this exploratory behavior. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14

It is also likely that our children are striving for superiority. What we learn from psychotherapy is applicable to the growing child: if the authority present, either therapist or parent, condemns the activity before the child has established that beachhead of ability and power, the child will have difficulty establishing it later and will probably learn it with some admixture of hostile aggression. Thereafter one will tend to do the act in question with some anger and rebellion to compensate for the condemnation of authority. In origin the infant shows one’s power and aggressiveness always in conjunction with its opposite—for instance, with one’s need to be dependent and to be nourished. The whole process of growing up can be seen as beginning with the severing of the biological tie to the mother (when one is born from the womb, where everything was done for one automatically). After the cutting of the umbilical cord, one has to learn to form relationships on a psychological basis. Each venturing forth represents a use of one’s individual power and ability, and one then comes back to one’s mother. The nutrient side of this development manifests itself in one’s need to be cared for and to be loved, and the aggressive side in one’s need to assert oneself, to protest if necessary. The former is the “yes,” the latter is the “no.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 14

If one’s aggressiveness is blocked, as is often the case with suburban middle-class children, one will tend to remain forever dependent. Or if one’s need for love and care is unmet, one may well become destructively aggressive and spend one’s life wreaking revenge upon the World—as is sometimes the cause with children in any socioeconomic class. Or if one has no boundaries, nothing against which to test one’s strength, no opposition in the firmness of parents, one may turn one’s aggression against oneself in nail-biting and self-recrimination or senseless anger against anyone who happens to come along. The child’s mobility can be seen as a way of increasing the distance one can move from one’s mother. It is a practice of independence from her, a practice which increases through life regardless of where one’s actual mother is or whether she is alive of dead. An unfortunate upbringing can turn the individual’s powers to destructive ends. A male patient was periodically seized by uncontrollable anger against his wife and children, in which he would loose endless invectives and pound his wife in rage with his fists. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14

It turned out the husband who was physically attacking his wife in rage had been the son of a lady of the night, and that when he was a very small child he had often been used by his mother as a conversation piece to make contacts with different men in cafes. Then the mother would take the man to her room, while the child sat at the table for an hour or so alone. During his school years he lived with her grandparents and was generally ostracized by people in the village because of his upbringing. He recalled going to the houses of women who gossiped about him and then defecating on their doorsteps as revenge. When other children had parties to which he was not invited, he would often go to the edge of the group and ask for some ice cream and cake. He had developed a sense of caring for feeding his rabbits and other animals at home, but this affection was a lonely one, and he never overcome his nervousness in an intimate situation with his peers. It is entirely understandable that such an upbringing would lead to destructive rage and aggression in later human situations. The normal development of an infant requires the love and care of the parent along with one’s own capacity to explore and increase one’s sense of mastery day by day. “Let e do it” is a recurrent entreaty in small children; and wise mothers encourage their children to do as much as possible for themselves, however tiresome it may be to wait patiently while the child takes minutes to tie a knot which the adult can tie in seconds. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14

Reading Grimm’s Fairy-Tales and playing cops and robbers and war games may not be harmful for children, as for some, it allows them to release their aggression. For other children, who cannot separate fiction from reality, it can be dangerous. If society is in danger, it is not because of a being’s aggressiveness but because of the repression of personal aggressiveness in individuals. Parents who are anxious that their children not to turn into warmongers may, by proscribing war games and the like, be cultivating just the opposite. They are more likely to create the very type of personality which they are concerned to avoid. For the child needs all the aggressive potential one can get to protect and assert one’s growing individuality. If its pursuit would mean defeating the purposes of the self, it is well known that an acute hostile impulse may be the direct cause of anxiety. One example may serve for many. Mark goes on a hiking trip with Elsa, to whom he is deeply devoted. Nevertheless he feels acutely and savagely infuriated against her because his jealousy has somehow been aroused. When walking with her on a precipitous mountain path he gets a severe attack of anxiety, with heavy breathing and heart-pounding, because of a conscious impulse to push the girl over the edge of the path. The structures of anxiety like these is due to an imperative impulse which, if yielded to, would mean a catastrophe for the self. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14

In the great majority of persons, however, a direct causal connection between hostility and neurotic anxiety is far from evident. In order, then, to make it clear why I declare that in the neuroses of our time hostile impulses are the main psychological force promoting anxiety, it is necessary to examine now in some detail the psychological consequences which result from a repression of hostility. Repressing a hostility means pretending that everything is all right and this refraining from the fighting when we ought to fight, or at least when we wish to fight. Hence the first unavoidable consequence of such a repression is that it generates a feeling of defenselessness, or to be more exact, it reinforces an already given feeling of defenselessness. If hostility is repressed when a person’s interest are factually attacked it becomes possible for others to take advantage of one. The experience of a chemist, Giovanni, represents an everyday occurrence of this kind. Giovanni had what was regarded as nervous exhaustion as a consequence of too much work. He was unusually gifted and very ambitious, without knowing that he was. For reasons we shall leave aside he had repressed his ambitious strivings and hence appeared modest. When he entered the laboratory of a great chemical firm another member of the staff, Kirk, a little older in years and higher in rank that Giovanni, took him under his wind and showed every sign of friendliness. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14

Because of a series of personal factors—dependence on others’ affection, previous intimidation concerning critical observation, not recognizing one’s own ambition and hence not seeing it in others—Giovanni was happy to accept the friendliness and failed to observe than in reality Kirk cared for nothing but his own career. And it stuck him but dimply that on one occasion Kirk reported as his own idea which was relevant for a possible invention but which was really Giovanni’s idea, one that had formerly expressed to Kirk in a friendly conversation. For the flicker of a moment Giovanni was distrustful, but because one’s own ambition factually stirred up an enormous hostility in him, he immediately repressed not only this hostility but with it also the warranted criticism and distrust. Hence he remained convinced that Kirk was his best friend. Consequently when Kirk discouraged him about continuing a certain line of work he took the advice at face value. When Kirk produced an invention that Giovanni might have made, Giovanni merely felt that Kirk’s gifts and intelligence were far superior to his own. This by having repressed his distrust and his anger Giovanni failed to notice that in crucial questions Kirk was his enemy rather than his friend. Because he clung to the illusion that he was liked, Giovanni relinquished his preparedness to fight for his own interests. He did not even realize that a vital interest of his own was attacked, and consequently could not fight for it, but allowed the other to take advantage of his weakness. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14

The desire of an individual to join a group can never be given more than qualified approval. However, if one feels certain that something may be gained by associating with other seekers, and if one is successful in finding a group devoted exclusively to the search for the highest Truth, it may be all right for one at that particular phase of one’s development. There is need of a school where an effective form of service would be the giving of practical initiation into prayer for inexperienced beginners, and the guidance of development for inexperienced beginners, and the guidance of development for experienced intermediates. This could do much good. A single meeting for prayer is usually enough: individuals could then be left to work out for themselves the contact thus given, returning to the school periodically for further and more advanced instruction. Instead of being found out, the particular needs and special tendencies of the individual seeker will be ignored and even suppressed in the endeavour to conform one to the system. There is both good and bad in this. Which of these one will receive depends upon the competence of the teacher, if one has one, or the mental attitude one takes toward the system itself—upon one’s blind slavish adherence to it or intelligent, open-eyed use of it. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14

One is under no obligation to stay fixed in an ashram or group merely because one once entered it. The time comes when the aspiring philosopher feels that one will get no actual benefit from one’s studies and make no personal progress unless one enters the second stage and begins to work on oneself. It is then that one will perceive, if one is not too foolish, that most of these groups and cults are of no further use to one. We must be prepared in advance not to expect too much from human institutions, for the simple reason that they are administered by or composed of human beings, that neither they nor the institutions are perfect, that any claim to the contrary is a roseate dream, any belief in the affirmative is naïve, and the person holding it is inexperienced. I am not criticizing those who follow such ways or advocate such teachings, nor venturing to judge their rightness or wrongness. The need for, and the usefulness of, group organization is admitted. However, I feel there is an equal need for a different approach, for independence from all group organizations; there is room for a path which avoids joining. This need not be misunderstood. There are those who like the first way and they will have to follow it. There are others who will prefer the second way. I am among them. Both ways are needed but by different people. Those who feel their own path or school or cult calls to them should heed it. It is right for them. However, they should not be so narrow as to proclaim it to be the only way to God. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14

When all illusory ideas are discarded, one will be able to see directly into the truth, and to see it without delay. For what need could there then be to pass through progressive stages? The name “lightning flash of insight” should not be allowed to give the impression that its swiftness is its most important attribute. That is merely incidental. What constitutes its essential attribute is its introducing an entirely different state of mind, an entirely new kind of perception, within us so that we are transformed in ourselves along with the World with which we are in relation. When the ego finally falls out of the picture, it does so with the swiftness of a flash of lightning. Enlightenment seldom comes all at once. However, in the case of rare geniuses or of those with rare good karma, the possibility is certainly there. That illumination can be quite instantaneous in some cases, only gradual in other, and entirely absent in most, need not be an enigma. Even when they are beneath the surface, the workings of the law of recompense are still the same. Even though one becomes enlightened, one should continue to work for several more decades to obtain more understanding. When enlightenment comes through philosophic preparation for it, the experience is sudden, direct, unexpected, and spontaneous. It comes to some minds with the force of a Himalayan mountain torrent rushing out from a narrow gorge. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14

Enlightenment may come slowly or suddenly but in the second case it has the effect of Sunlight bursting through the sky. Those geniuses who get a lasting illumination by direct gift of Grace without having worked, studied, prepared, or trained for it, are rare. Everyone has to undergo the gradual development and patient ripening that a flowering bush has to undergo. The calmness which one carries inside oneself, and which is apparent in all one’s bearing, has not arisen out of nothing. It has come to one out of long struggle and after varied suffering. When we sin, we are like the foolish man who jumped from the airplane. No matter what we do on our own, only a crash-landing awaits us. We are subject to the law of justice, which, like the law if gravity, is exacting and unforgiving. The spirit in each of us naturally yearns for family love to last forever. Pour out your heart to God. Hold on to this illumination against the intrusions of negative personal habits and negative personal characteristics is another matter and success can happen. When conditions are ripe and prerequisite qualification fulfilled, the truth spontaneously shows its self-revealing character. It may come as an instantaneous flash of understanding or as a vision of cosmic drama, but most often it comes quite slowly in bits and pieces. The holy joy may visit you but cannot stay in you if both the primal energy and the ego are staying in you. Purify yourself of one and empty yourself of the other, if you would convert a passing glimpse into the permanent union. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14

One Soul, I think, Can Often Make Atonement for Many Others, if it be Devoted and it Will Free Us of All the Weight and Pain of Life!

August 4, 2019 12:50 am

Ah, let us be true to one another, the World, which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams so various, so beautiful, so new. In moments, I stood in my own courtyard in Cresleigh Homes Rocklin Trails, looking up at my own lighted windows, windows that had been mine for so long, hoping and praying that Sully was there, and afraid that he was not. Team play is the thing. Team play means that you alone cannot get too far out ahead of the troops. You cannot because in our company it is necessary to consult and check over everything. Someone will ask whether this does not lead to a certain amount of mediocrity. It does. We have a substantial number of mediocre people in the company—that is, men and women of ordinary ability who would probably never originate anything under any circumstances. However, where organizing an effort is concerned it is sometimes better to have mediocre talent than a bunch of creative individuals who disturb the situation by questioning everything. In terms of performance, if you have a slow but sure operation, mediocre personnel, including your nephews, can carry it out beautifully. In planning, mediocrity has and still does hurt the company. Our method is to get together and talk it out, each one of us contributing one’s mite. When thirty-three can do it better, why have one being make a decision? #RandolphHarris 1 of 15

The consequence of the policy of teamwork is that our executives commit few errors—although sometimes they arrive at the right decision three years too late. However, the sure markets for the company’s products bring in so much money that the mistake is buried under mountains of dollar bills. Our interminable round of conferences may also be counted on to produce by default serious errors of omission. These do not hurt noticeably either, for the reason cited above. I got over my impatience at the slow pace of things, but I felt it once at a lecture given to senior and junior executives on the new central filing system that would go into effect when we reached the palace. A fierce little girl, a vestal of the files, told us how it was going to be. We sat, without anyone suggesting it, according to rank, and I could work out the possible course of my company career, if I stayed with it, just by looking at the assemblage of heads in front of me—bald and white in the front rows, then pepper-and-salt, and gradually back where I was, the black, brown, and blonde heads of hair. I thought of my own head, slowly changing through the years as I moved up a row or two, with never a chance by a brilliant coup of jumping while still brown-headed—or even pepper-and-salt—over several rows and landing among the white thatches. When anything I accomplish I do as a member of a group, how could I make such a leap? #RandolphHarris 2 of 15

A little more tension would be welcome. This may be based on fragmentary evidence, but I suspect that when people are not placed under at least a minimum of tension they seek it out in their dreams. One day overheard our press-relations man conferring with our public-relations manager, Josh Tyler, who said: “Maybe next time, Sully, you had better try it the other way.” The press man came out of the office and saw me. “Boy!” he said, “I sure got a bawling out on that!” Another man of some rank joined his local Democratic Party, and worked hard at it during the presidential campaign. However, he felt guilty about what he had done. Finally he rushed upstairs and confessed to the president of the corporation. “Gosh,” he told me afterward in a disappointed tone, “he did not mind at all. He just put his hand on my shoulder and said: ‘Do not worry, Armin, I am a Jeffersonian Republican myself!’” We conform by choice. Critics of big business are constantly on the watch for the kind of over-cooperation that a company explicitly demands of its members. Our company does not demand anything. Oh, there is tactful pressure on us to join the annuity and insurance program, and a rather strong insistence on Red Cross and Community Chest contributions, but nothing serious. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15

What you have to watch out for is the amount of compliance you fall into by yourself, without realizing it. When my book was published, something like this almost happened to me. Far from resenting the satire, most of our employees who read it enjoyed the book. I was asked to autograph dozens of copies, and several were brought and prominently displayed in the company lending library. I had thought of myself as a writer in temporary captivity. Now that was no longer possible. A captive of what? Good Will? I began to feel what I now recognize was a gradually deepening contentment. If you are on the watch for the symptoms, here are a few: (1) You find that you are planning your life defensively, in terms of savings plans and pensions, rather than thinking speculatively of moving up fast—faster than the others. (2) You become much less impatient over inefficiency, shrug your shoulders and accept it as the way things are. (3) Your critical faculties become dull; you accept second-best; it seems unsporting to complain. (4) Nothing makes you nervous. (5) You find that you are content to talk to people without saying anything. (6) You mention something like (improvising now) “our Human Development Department” to outsiders and learn with surprise that they think you have made a joke. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15

During this period of contentment, which lasted quite a few months, I did not concern myself with anything beyond the requirements of my job. I became easy-going and promiscuously nice, and had a harmless word for everybody. Finally, I was reminded that this sort of thing was the mark of a fat soul. A succession of incidents helped indicate what was wrong. Mystery does oppose theology. When the mystical and the theological are mixed, it does not work with the proper fire of magic. The volume of life you can take into your being and still maintain your integrity and individuality, the intensity and variety of outlook one can entertain in the unity of one’s being without feeling defensive or insecure is what creates a fat soul. It is the strength of your spirit to encourage others to become freer in the development of their diversity and uniqueness. Essentially the power to sustain more complex and enriching tensions. However, we are remote from the lives of others. Shortly before we moved to the country the press-relations man and I were looking out our eleventh-floor window in the direction of the waterfront. We saw a half-circle of beings gathered on a far-off pier. “Is not that what they call a shape-up?” he asked with faint curiosity. It was easy to tell that he barely imagined that these beings existed and that their quaint customs were real. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15

Some weeks before, I had looked down on a gentleman in a homburg and cutaway, running among the crowds in the financial district. He carried a bouquet of red roses wrapped in green paper. You do not associate this street with flowers, and it was exciting to see him running, holding his green wrapping like a torch of something beautiful in this place. And then he died on his feet, twisting over and slumping to the pavement. His head rested against the wall of a building. He rested with the flowers flung across his knees and his fine hat askew, and the absurd and living gallantry that produced his death could only be nothing to us or to anyone in the crowds that simply swerved around him and kept going, because of the way we are concentrated and oriented away from things like that. How remote we were too from the crazy musicians who arrived on a blustery fall day with the idea that, since this was a financial center, there would be a rain of coins from the tall buildings in response to their trumpet, guitar, and bass fiddle. The wind swirled their jazz among the canyons. I saw that no one was paying them the slightest attention. Feeling guilt, I threw them a quarter, but they did not see it. They danced and made jazz in the cold, while upstairs we went on with our work, and they did not exist, and it was nobody’s fault. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15

It is not that we should have been expected to know about longshoremen, or care particularly about the beings in the homburg, or throw coins to the brave musicians, but we have simply, systematically, avoided letting these aspects of life into our field of visions. We came in from the suburbs and plundered the city, and left each night without having the least idea of what was going on there. Even our daily experienced in the rapid transit was spent behind newspaper; taxis shielded us from the bad sections of town. We never heard guitars strumming on the dirty doorsteps, nor comprehended possible excitement of disorderly feelings that make other people so much more alive than we are. And when the corporation moved to the country our isolation from all that became completely splendid. Now most of us could anticipate fifteen-and thirty-minute rides in car pols from our suburban homes to a suburban office. You could almost hear an official sign of contentment on the day that we moved. The need to identify oneself with an organized group, established religion, or particular sect, or indeed with any cause, is at base the need to identify oneself with the God within. One unwittingly wants to belong to something larger than one’s own little ego. Such membership helps to achieve this because it removes the sense of separateness and the feeling of loneliness. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15

However, affiliation with a group only removes a sense of separateness at the surface level. With the efflux of time, one finds it necessary to search for satisfaction at a deeper level. For the group, the church, or the institution are outside one and give it only temporarily, partially, or spottily. Only by turning around and looking within one’s own being is a durable and fuller result is possible. For there, in the hidden presence of the Spiritual self, one will find that larger Cause, Source, Mystery, with which one can identify oneself in the perfect way. In joining a society or group one joins mostly those who are not more advanced than oneself in the capacity to pray. There are certain hindrances to progress which accompany membership in such organizations. If, however, the social value of finding other persons interested in spiritual subjects outweighs the immediate need of making inner progress, then membership would of course be most helpful. However, there are several reasons why it is beneficial to keep groups small, as they might help answer mutual questions. Quality should be the only consideration in admissions to groups; quantity would in the end disintegrate the group. Let the effort be limited to study, clearing up questions, and talks. If there is no powerful and uplifting leader in their midst to protect them, group prayer should not be practiced among beginners. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15

There is a right time and a wrong time for personal endeavour to lead and assist a spiritual group. The right time will come only with competence. Until then there is the ever-present task of the student’s own self-improvement. That is above all else. It is only as group allegiances are slowly widened that goodwill can be established towards those who are outside such borders. Now we come upon one important distinction between pseudo, escapist creativity on the one hand and that which is genuine on the other. Escapist creativity is that which lacks encounter. This was illustrated vividly to me when I worked with a young man in psychoanalysis. A talented professional, this man had rich and varied creative potentialities, but he always stopped just short of actualizing them. He would suddenly get the idea for an excellent story, would work it out in his mind to a full outline which could have then been written up without much further ado, and would relish and enjoy the ecstasy of the experience. Then he would stop there, writing down nothing at all. It was as though the experience of seeing himself as one who was able to write, as being just about to write, had within it what he was really seeking and brought its own reward. Hence he never actually created. This was a fairly baffling problem to him and to me. We had analyzed many aspects of it: his father had been a somewhat gifted writer but a failure; his mother had made much of his father’s writings, but had shown only contempt for him in other realms. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15

The young man, an only child, had been pampered and overprotected by his mother and often had been shown preference over his father—for instance, by being served special food at meals. The patient was clearly competing with his father, and if he succeeded faced a dire threat. All this and more we had analyzed in some detail. A vital link of experience, however, was missing. When discussing the difference between fear and anxiety we found as our first result that anxiety is a fear which essentially involves a subjective factor. What then is the nature of the subjective factor? When one is experiencing anxiety, one has the feeling of a powerful, inescapable danger against which one is entirely helpless. Whatever the manifestations of anxiety, whether it be a hypochondriac fear of cancer, anxiety concerning thunderstorms, a phobia about high places, or any comparable fear, the two factors of an overpowering danger and defenselessness against it are invariably present. Sometimes the dangerous force against which one feels helpless may be felt to come from outside—thunderstorms, cancer, accident and the like; sometimes the danger is felt to threaten one from one’s own ungovernable impulses—fear of having to jump down from a high place, or to cut someone with a knife; sometimes the danger is entirely vague and intangible, as it often is in an anxiety attack. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15

Such feelings in themselves, however, are not characteristic only of anxiety; they may be exactly the same in any situation which involves a factual overpowering danger and a factual helplessness toward it. I imagine that the subjective experience of persons during an Earthquake, or of an infant under two years of age exposed to brutalities, is in no way different from the subjective experience of one who has anxiety concerning thunderstorms. In the case of fear the danger is present in reality and the feeling of helplessness is conditioned by reality, and in the case of anxiety the danger is generated or magnified by intrapsychic factors and the helplessness is conditioned by one’s own attitude. The question concerning the subjective factor in anxiety is thus reduced to the more specific inquiry: what are the psychic conditions that create the feeling of an imminent powerful danger and an attitude of helplessness toward it? This at any rate is the question that the psychologist has to raise. That chemical conditions in the body can also create the feeling and the physical concomitants of anxiety is as little a psychological problem as the fact that chemical conditions can produce elation or sleep. In tackling this problem of anxiety, Dr. Freud has, as so often in other problems, shown us the direction in which to move. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15

Dr. Freud has given us direction with the concept of anxiety by his crucial discovery that the subjective factor involved in anxiety is possessed in our own instinctual drives; in other words, both the danger anticipated by anxiety and the feeling of helplessness toward it are conjured by the explosive force of our own impulses. In principle, any impulse has the potential power to provoke anxiety, provided that its discovery or pursuit would mean a violation other vital interests or needs, and provided that it is sufficiently imperative or passionate. In periods when there are definite and severe taboos against pleasures of the flesh, like the Victorian era, yielding to pleasures of the flesh has often meant incurring a realistic danger. An unmarried young lady, for example, had to face a real danger of tortured conscience or social disgrace, and those yielding to masturbation urges had to face a real danger in so far as they were subject to threats of castration or warnings of fatal physical injuries or mental disease. The same holds true today for certain perverted pleasures of the flesh, such as exhibitionistic drives or impulses directed toward minors. In our times, however, as far as “normal” pleasures of the flesh are concerned, our attitude has become so lenient that admitting them to ourselves, or carrying them out in reality, involves serious danger much less frequently; hence there is less factual reason for apprehension on that score. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15

Now no matter how you may interpret the causes of this pattern, one central feature is clear—the encounter was lacking. Is not this the essence of escapist art? Everything is there but the encounter. And is not this the central feature of many kinds of artistic exhibitionism—what Rank calls the artiste manqué? We cannot make a valid distinction by saying one kind of art is neurotic and the other healthy. Who is to judge that? We can only say that in exhibitionistic, escapist forms of creativity there is no real encounter, no engagement with reality. That is not what the young man is after; he wants to be passively accepted and admired by mother. In cases of this kind it is accurate to speak of regression in the negative sense. However, the crucial point is that we are dealing with something quite different from creativity. The concept of encounter also enables us to make clearer the important distinction between talent and creativity. Talent may well have its neurological correlates and can be studied as given to a person. A man or woman may have the talent whether one uses it or not; talent can probably be measured in the person as such. However, creativity can be seen only in the act. If we were purists, we would not speak of a creative person, but only of a creative act. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15

Sometimes, in the case of Picasso, we have great talent and at the same time great encounter and, as a result, great creativity. Often times we have great talent and truncated creativity, as many people felt in the case of Scott Fitzgerald. Many times we have a highly creative person who seems not to have much talent. It was said of the novelist Thomas Wolfe, who was one of the highly creative figures of the American scene, that he was a “genius without talent.” However, he was so creative because he threw himself so completely into his material and the challenge of saying it—he was great because of the intensity of his encounter. So, creativity can channel people away from pleasures of the flesh and anxiety and provide them with a healthy outlet for their soul. We have to begin by cultivating intuitive feelings. These come to us infrequently at first and so the process is a gradual and long one. Eventually, we reach a point, a very advanced point, where the ego sees its own limitations, perceives its helplessness and dependence, realizes that it cannot lift itself up into the final illuminations. It should then surrender itself wholly to the Overself and cast its further development on the mercy and Grace of the power beyond it. It will then have to go through a waiting period of seeming inactivity, spiritual stagnation, and inability to feel the fervor of devotion which it formally felt. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15

This is a kind of dark night of the soul. Then, slowly, it begins to come out of this phase, which is often accompanied by mental depression and emotional frustration, into a higher phase where it feels utterly resigned to the will of God or destiny, calm and peaceful in the sense of accepting that higher will and not in any joyous sense, patiently waiting for the time when the infinite wisdom will bring it what it once sought so ardently but what it is not as detached from it is detached from Worldly ambitions. After this phase there will come suddenly unexpectedly and in the dead of night, as it were, a tremendous Realization of the egoless state, a tremendous feeling of liberation from itself as it has known itself, a tremendous awareness of the infinitude, universality, and intelligence of life. With that, new perceptions into the Laws of the cosmos will suddenly unfold themselves. The seekers must thus pass from intuition into insight. It is the making of the being ready, the preparation of one’s mind and heart, which takes so much time, so many years even in many cases; but the enlightenment itself is a single short happening: the effect remains permanently. Call upon the Lord, that his kingdom may go forth upon the Earth, that the inhabitants thereof may receive it, and be prepared for the days to come, in which the Son of Man shall come down in Heaven, clothed in the brightness of his glory, to meet the kingdom of God which is set up on the Earth. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15

Ah Love, Let Us be True to One Another of the Heart has its Reasons which Reasons Knows Not!

August 2, 2019 10:26 pm

I think I sold my soul for a place like this. Look, you are alive, whatever you are, but you are not human. You can make a miracle, can you not? I love art, of course. Beauty. However, I got mixed up in my head when I was seventeen that I was going to start a new religion, a cult—free love, give to the less affluent, rise one’s hand against no one, you know, a sort of Amish community. There were these books on the table, medieval books! Tiny medieval prayer books. Of course, I know a prayer book when I see it; but a medieval codex, no; I was an altar boy when I was very little, went to Mass every day for years with my mother, know liturgical Latin as was required. The point is, I recognize these books as devotional and rare. These books were not like the others books. They were psalms that never appeared in any Bible. I figured that much out, simply by comparing them to other Latin reprints of the same period that I got out of the library. This was some sort of original work. If one joins a monastic order one will usually have to take a vow to practise certain restraints and renunciations. To a lesser degree this also occurs with joining certain groups and circles in the World outside such orders. The value of the vow is that it sets up a standard to be followed, a course to be travelled, and a goal to be reached. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

One may fall from the standard, deviate from the course, and fail to approach the goal, but their existence of sacred standards and goals may help one come closer to the object of the vow than one might otherwise have come. On the other hand, the layman who is not interested in vows but simply resolves to improve oneself lacks their stimulus. There is nothing but the inner force of one’s own ideal to keep one from abandoning the self-imposed rigours of one’s discipline. One depends on the power which one will have to summon up from somewhere within oneself. The weakness of binding oneself to the new regime which one has imposed on one’s own life that it can easily be shirked at any time, that if one yields to the inclination to do so, the restraints upon it will be weaker and fewer. Whatever church, organization, or cult to which one commits oneself, one should always make for oneself at least the reservation that one should retain the freedom to leave and go elsewhere or to cease seeking among outer organizations and to search within. However, there is a place and a need for the cohesion of a group, for the sustained teamwork of an organization, and for the discipline imposed on individuals by a church. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

Any institution dedicated to training for the life of the Spirit will always keep out the Spirit. It cannot be found through any formal performance nor through any organized group work. And all that training can do is to open a way wherethrough, if It is already coming or will come, it may pass. I made my life rich enough that I stopped caring about changing the World if ever I really thought of it; I made a life you see, you know, a World unto itself. However, others are able to open their soul in a sophisticated way to…to something. There is something else, something about our dilemma, that you cannot invent theologies, but for them to work they have to come from some deeper place inside a person—a totality of human experience. Illumination is not a result which follows moral purification and emotional discipline. These things are necessary but only preparatory. It is a result which follows conscious attempts to seek the Real and discard the illusory. This discrimination will show itself in the kind of values that are attached to the World, in the thinking reflections that are made about the World, and in the deliberate rejection of ego that takes place during meditation. It begins with either the intellect as enquiry, or the feelings as World-weariness, but is passes gradually into the whole life of the individual. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

It the enlightenment is to be continuous and the self-conquest completed, the technique which is to achieve them must be a sufficiently adequate one. To become established in the Reality is to give up seeking all those transient and temporary experiences which come by pursuing particular techniques, whether they be techniques of yoga or techniques of taking supplement, and take to philosophy. We must carefully qualify by such words as “intermittent,” “partial,” and “temporary,” the attainments to which exercises lead. This is because the full and permanent attainment cannot emerge out of meditation alone. It is a fruit of the threefold planting of meditation and reflection and action combined. Hence although the foregoing exercises will bring the student considerably nearer it, it must not be thought that any mystical exercise of itself can confer ultimate enlightenment. The path to this exalted result must traverse all fields to spiritual enlightenment. We need to know the truth, the wisdom-knowledge, but it is not enough. We need to have the living mystic experience, the vital feeling of what I am, but it is not enough. For we need to synthesize the two in a full actual intuitive realization, conferred by the Overself. This is Grace. This is to emerge finally—born again! #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

Good people work here. Since joining the company I have not heard one person raise one’s voice to another in anger, and rarely even in irritation. Apparently when you remove fear from a being’s life you also remove one’s stinger. Since there is no severe competition within our shop, we are serene. We do compete mildly perhaps, by trying to achieve good marks in the hope that our department head will recommend a promotion or an increase to the Salary Committee. Cutting out the other beings and using tricks to make one look bad is hardly ever done. At higher levels, now and then, executive empires will bump into each other and there will be skirmishes along the border. However, these are for the most part carried on without bullying and table pounding, and the worst that can happen to the loser is that one will be moved sideways into a smaller empire. It would be wrong to say that our employees are not lively. They have fun and love, and go on camping trips, go skinning, and operate power boats, have yacht parties, and read things and go to the movies, and ride motorcycles like anybody else. In the office they know what to do (usually after consolation) in almost any circumstance. What a great many of them have lost, it seems to me, is temperament, in the sense of mettle. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

We speak of a mettlesome horse. Well, these are not mettlesome people. When the ego is threatened—because at our company we do not threat people’s egos, they lack, perhaps, the capacity to be mean and ornery. Rather the ego tends to atrophy through disuse. Another curious thing is our talent for being extremely friendly without saying anything to each other. I remember a conversation that went on something like this: “Sully! Where did you come from? I have not seen you in—I guess it has been about a year and a half.” “Just about that, Jillian. A year and a half at least.” “What are you up to, for goodness’ sake?” “I have been in Canada, and now I am back in the states.” “Always on the move!” “Well, I guess I am. I just thought I would come down and have a chat with you before leaving.” “It is great that you did. How is your family?” “Fine, Jill, how is yours?” “They are fine, too. We just all had a family reunion and it was lovely.” “The years go by, do they not?” “They sure do.” “Well…” “Well…” Well, I guess I had better be moving along.” “It has been wonderful talking to you, Sully. Look, before you get on the plane, why do you not come down for another talk?” “I will, young lady. You can count on it.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

Also common among our employees is a genuine and lively interest in the career of upper-level executives whom they may never have laid eyes on. As the gentlemen move from one station to another, their progress is followed with exclamations and inside comments. “Hmm…Armin has moved to Purchasing! I thought so.” “Look at Welsh—he has taken over the top spot in Patagonia. Anybody can tell that they are setting him up for a vice-presidency.” Who cared about Armin and Welsh? At one point, I did. I had to prepare a press release about them, and update—add two more lines to—their official biographies. The role of the corporation’s top directors in our cosmos is an interesting one. In out company, members of the board are not remote figures from outside who drop in to attend meetings now and then. They are on the job every day. They recognize us, nod, and often say hello. I have found these august gentlemen to be amiable and even shy in the presence of their subordinates, but their appearance one the scene is the occasion of total respect, body and soul, such as I have never witnessed outside the army. They are not feared either. They conduct themselves in a friendly, most democratic manner. It is not awe they inspire but, so far as I can see, pure admiration. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

I was once talking to a young man in the employee-relations department when his eyes, gazing over my shoulder, suddenly lit up with joy. I turned, expecting to see our pretty receptionist, but it was a director passing by and giving us a wave of his hand. This unity and harmony are important for everyone who does not know how to control one’s inmost self would feign control one’s neighbor’s will according to one’s own conceit. For the living person, power is not a theory but an ever-present reality which one must confront, use, enjoy, and struggle with a hundred times a day. Every person is born a bundle of potentialities. Very few of these have become formed into actual powers at birth; one cannot yet walk or talk or make a flying machine. However, one can cry and this cry is the potentiality that develops into the complex system of communication in language. No one can doubt the delight the normal infant gets at the maturing of these potentialities into powers as one is able to talk, to crawl, to walk, to run. All of us who have watched children running in the park, skipping and jumping as randomly as puppies, can appreciate the pleasure of sheer movement, of exercising muscles that demand to be used. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

The potentiality to explore, to see the World as a person of one’s age can, will increasingly become an actual power as one’s neuromuscular structure develops. Everyone who has observed one’s own development with wonder will be aware that there is both nature and nurture in every step of this actualization of one’s potentialities. However, these potentialities also being anxiety. Potentiality becomes actuality, but the intervening variable is anxiety. The potentiality for pleasures of the flesh, which takes a decisive leap ahead at puberty, brings excitement and joy but also the anxiety associated with new relationships and new responsibilities. Power pushes toward its fulfillment. It is neither good nor evil, ethically speaking; it only is. However, it is not neutral. It requires in some way its own expression, although the forms of the expression vary greatly. There is an inescapable conflict between a being’s individual powers and the culture to which he or she belongs; and there is bound to be a struggle of these powers against the culture that seeks to hold the individual within its bounds. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

This constant struggle has a dialectical nature—as one pole changes, the other does too. Anxiety connected with an activity will spoil the pleasure that it would otherwise hold. This is not true for minor anxieties; on the contrary, they may produce an added zest. Riding a roller-coaster with some apprehension may make it more thrilling, whereas doing it with strong anxiety will make it a torture. A strong anxiety connected with pleasures of the flesh will render them thoroughly unenjoyable, and if one is not aware of the anxiety one will have the feeling that pleasures of the flesh do not mean anything. That maybe confusing because I have said that a feeling of dislike may be used as a means of avoiding an anxiety, and now I am saying that the dislike may be a consequence of the anxiety. Actually, both statements are true. Dislike may be the means of avoiding and the consequence of having anxiety. This is one small example of the difficulty in understanding psychic phenomena. They are intricate and involved, and unless we make up our minds that we must consider innumerable, interwoven interactions we shall make no progress in psychological knowledge. The purpose of discussing how we may defend ourselves against anxiety is not to give an exhaustive picture of all possible defenses. In fact we shall soon learn more radical ways of preventing anxiety from arising. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

My main concern now is to substantiate the statement that one may have more anxiety than one is aware of, or may have anxiety without being aware of it at all, and also to show some of the more common points where it may be looked for. Thus, in short, anxiety may be hidden behind feelings of physical discomfort, such as heart-pounding and fatigue; it may be concealed by a number of fears that seem rational or warranted; it may be the hidden force driving us to drink or to submerge ourselves in all sorts of distractions. We shall often find it as the cause of inability to do or enjoy certain things, and we shall always discover it as the promoting factor behind inhibitions. For reasons we shall discuss later, our culture generates a great deal of anxiety in the individuals living in it. Hence practically everyone has built up one or another of the defenses I have mentioned. The more neurotic a person is, the more is one’s personality pervade and determined by such defenses, and the greater the number of things one is unable to do or does not consider doing, although according to one’s vitality, mental capacities or educational background one would be justified in expecting one to do them. The more sever the neurosis, the more inhibitions are present, both subtle and gross. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

There are three contemporary dilemmas: (1) the failure of institutional authority, (2) the rising ride of nihilism, and (3) the struggle for psychospiritual balance, or integration. When people declare that God is dead, they do not mean all gods or every God to come; they meant the gods, both secular and religious, that no longer bred inspiration and hope, but only disillusionment and decay. This denotes the corrupt gods that catered to some greedy elite; churches financed by cocaine king; the repressive gods that stifled pleasures of the flesh, creative play, and emotional expressiveness; the technocratic gods that sapped the populace of meaningful and stimulating work; and the scientistic gods that deny the legitimacy of nonrational phenomena. This forecast the breakdown of institutional authority. We can also foresee a gaping chasm left in the wake of this breakdown—a chasm which could lead to nihilism. When people no longer have traditions to steer them or gods to inspire them, what happens? Many of them flounder; they become reckless, anarchistic beast, or they form reactionary, xenophobic enclaves. These extremes strike a note of familiarity in our own unstable era, an era bereft of traditions. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

This World view can be characterized as a primordial clash of counraries—on the one hand, repression, order, or an Apollonian consciousness and on the other hand, indulgence, abandon, or Dionysian awareness. Wherever one is sacrificed the other suffers, because neither can operate in isolation. How can we cope with these warring (individual and collective) tendencies? By confronting them, by acknowledging both our limits and our possibilities, our need for order and discipline, as well as spontaneity and abandon. In so doing, we foster dynamic, realistic lives. This is what is meant by passionate people who master their passions, or those who self-overcome. Sometimes it is okay to surround ourselves with limited horizons, as long as we do not retire from life but put ourselves in the midst of it; do not be fainthearted but take as much as possible upon yourself, over yourself, and into yourself. What we want is totality; fight for the extraneousness of reason, senses, feeling, and will. Discipline yourself to wholeness, create yourself. A human being who is strong, highly educated, skillful in all bodily matters, self-controlled, reverent toward oneself, and who might dare to afford the whole range and wealth of being natural, being strong enough for such freedom is a being of tolerance, not weakness but of strength. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

Such a spirit who has become free stands amid the cosmos with a joyous and trusting fatalism, in the faith that only the particular is loathsome, and that all is redeemed in the whole. In the case of abstract painters, for example, the encounter may be with an idea, an inner vision, that in turn may be led off by the brilliant colors on the palette or the inviting rough whiteness of the canvas. The paint, the canvas, and the other materials then become a secondary part of this encounter; they are the language of it, the media, as we rightly put it. Or scientists confront their experiment, their laboratory task, in a similar situation of encounter. The encounter may or may not involve voluntary effort—that is, will power. A healthy child’s play, for example, also has the essential features of encounter, and we know it is one of the important prototypes of adult creativity. The essential point is not the presence or absence of voluntary effort, but the degree of absorption, the degree of intensity. Let prayer stay as a beautiful, peace-bestowing, and calming exercise. If it does, it need not limit you to getting stuck with “Experience” as a final attainment. It is a felt experience, but one which must be accompanied by the knowledge that the entire Universe is a form of knowledge. The two together complete the prayerful experience. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

Thus one learns to understand that one must advance beyond ordinary situations to this goal of Being, to become established in it, in this stillness, ever-present and ever-proven. So do as you wish in this matter, do not deprive yourself of the occasional or even regular practice of prayer, should you be inclined toward it, so long as you comprehend that though it has its very important place in the Quest, it is not essential to attainment of the ultimate goal itself. Love is the primary attribute and motive for the spiritual purposes we were changed to undertake by our beloved God. A marvelous work is about to come forth. This revelation establishes that those who desire to serve God qualify for such faith, hope, charity and love, with a focus on the glory of God. Charity, which is the pure love of Christ, includes God’s eternal love for all his children. We are blessed with great love for our fellow beings and environment, for we are called to carry the gospel to the World to win souls unto Christ. When we gain a vision of love, the Lord’s work will be accomplished. We need to align our hearts with love and move away from feelings of mere responsibility or guilt. Loving performing ordinances for ancestors will strengthen and protect our youth and family in a World that is becoming increasingly evil. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

When we work in righteousness, our decisions are Heaven blessed. Most of us need time to fit and equip ourselves for the glorious moment of insight, but a few receive it in a day. It must be remembered that it does not actually happen in time but out of it, in the great Stillness. The being does not know about the absolute final truth a second before—and then it is all there. How soon it can settle down in one will also vary with different persons—it is a few hours in one case but three years in another. Those who seek the will of the Lord as individuals and for their families must strive for righteousness, meekness, kindness, and love. Humility and love are the hallmark of those who see the Lord’s will, especially for their families. Perfecting ourselves, qualifying ourselves for the blessings of covenants, and preparing to meet God are individual responsibilities. We need to be self-reliant and anxiously engaged in making our homes a refuge from the storms that surround us and a sanctuary of faith. When there is love at home, there is beauty all around. Whether enlightenment is reached by steps as an outcome of practice unremittingly done, or that it comes suddenly all at once, it must be a concept-free phenomenon, a set of doctrines and covenants that are understanding, and possess a recognition of what always was, is, and will be. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16

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But Some Attendant from the Train of Heaven Came for Him; or Else the Underworld Opened in Love the Unlit Door of Earth

August 1, 2019 1:41 am

EAmXu_dUEAAqkLv At once, a great marble statue of an Angel startled me. I came round out of the door and almost ran smack into it. It was one of those Angels that used to stand inside church doors, offering holy water in half shells. I had seen them in Europe and in New Orleans. It gigantic, and its cruel profile stared blindly into the shadows. This Angel was poised as if he had just landed from the skies to offer his sacred basin. This monstrous Angelic being of black granite actually resembled more a Mesopotamian demon than an Angel. God, he loved it. He loved it and he was acting stupid. I mean, there could have been one of his enemies here. But then why would a gangster or a federal investigator come bearing a gift such as that? He was thinking only about it, the fine carving, that it was recent, not ancient, for obvious stylistic reasons, seventeenth century perhaps, a fleshed-out rendering of a fallen Angel. Fallen Angel. He did everything but step on tiptoe and kiss the thing. He put his left hand up and ran it all over the granite face and the granite hair. Damn, I could not see it! Hoe could he put up with this darkness? It was almost erotic the way he studied it. Fearlessly he stood back, having forgotten any threat of any kind, and looked at this new acquisition. Where had it come from? Whom? He did not give a damn about the price. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9

Happy families are all alike. Whether this true of great corporations I do not know, because I have belonged to only one. The company I have been with for more than three years is one of the World’s largest, having some thirty-four thousand employees in the United States of America and overseas. There are more than five hundred of us here at headquarters—and we are a happy family. I say this without irony, not for the reason that I am in the public relations department, but because it is the truth. We give very appearances of happiness. We are also in many respects pretty much alike, at least on the surface. It is not that our company makes us believe in a certain way. That kind of thing is out of date. Most of our people tend to live and talk alike, and think along the same general lines, for the simple reason that the company treats us so well. Life is good, life is gentle. Barring a deep depression or war, we need never worry about money again. We will never have to go job-hunting again. We may get ahead at different speeds, and some will climb a bit higher than others, but whatever happens the future is as secure as it can be. And the test is not arduous. Unless for some obscure reason we choose to escape back into your anxious World (where the competition is so hard and pitiless and your ego is constantly under attack) we will each enjoy a comfortable journey to what our house organ calls “green pastures,” which is, of course, retirement. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9

“Is this sort of existence worth living?” you ask. I think that depends on who you are and also on the person you could become. There are two ways of looking at it: (1) If you are not going to set the World on fire anyway, it is better to spend your life in nice surroundings; looking back, if the big company had not made things soft for you, you might have had a more adventuresome time and struggled harder to make your mark in the World. However, it is all too easy to be glib in disapproving of the kindly corporation. We are then in the position of scorning the Earthly paradise, and that cannot be done lightly. To be honest, we should put aside the convenient clichés—that big business firms, for example, are by their very nature heartless, exploitive, enforcers of conformity, and so forth. It is commonly assumed that a big, apparently impersonal authority is made up of bad fellows. How much more bewildering and exasperating to discover that they are good fellows! I went into my job at the corporation with a poor spirit. I was suspicious of large companies, and swore that nobody was going to turn me into a robot. My situation was untenable anyway. I had just sold my first novel, a satire about a man, who under pressure of business, had turned himself into a Nothing. In a year the grenade would go off, and of course the writer would be fired. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9

Particularly disconcerting in the early days was the gentleness of my new associates. Most public-relations offices are filled with edgy, hustling people. Here there was such a courtesy and regard for your comfort…it was unfair. When I arrived, everyone turned and smiled, and they all came over to say how glad they were that I was with them. The boss took my arm and had me in for a long talk. “We want you to be happy here,” he said earnestly. “Is there anything we can do? Please let us know.” When you discover that the members of the company team really care about you it is a shock to the nervous system. The skeptical newcomer stands there, shifting his feet not knowing what to do with his preconceived resentment. I went through the orientation course, and completed all the forms and saw that I was protected against everything. I had a momentary fearful sensation of being enfolded in the wings of the corporation and borne aloft. “How’s everything going?” inquired one of the orientation men, and I grunted at his civil question. Now I was one of the group, hunched gloomily over a typewriter amid smiling faces. With the exception of the department head and assistant manager, our public-relations staff worked in one large room. We did our jobs in leisurely fashion with a carpet of non-glare fluorescent lighting above and a thick wall-to-wall carpet below. The usual offices noises were hushed. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9

Typewriters made a faint clack. Our mild jokes were lost in the air. It seemed to me a strange pressure chamber in which there was no pressure. This was a temporary arrangement. Next year the company was moving to a new office building in the suburbs, and it would be a fabulous place—a great office-palace on a hilltop surrounded by fields and woodlands. Everybody talked about the palace and what a marvelous headquarters it would be. The enthusiasm bored me, and I thought: “Well, I will never see it.” That was a long time ago. Today I continue to live in the city but commute in reverse to the suburbs, and every weekday I sit down to work in the country palace. Here, after three years, are some general impressions of our corporate life: The corporation is decent. Most of our being have deep, comfortable voices. You have stood beside them in slow elevators, and heard these vibrant tones of people whose throats are utterly relaxed. And why should not they be relaxed? Once you join our company, so far as the job is concerned, you will have to create your own anxieties. The company would not provide any for you. There is no getting around it—our working conditions are sensational. The lower and middle echelons arrive at nine and, except in very rare instances, go home at a quarter-to-five. Many of the higher executives work longer and harder, according to their inclinations, but seldom in response to an emergency. Rather it is a pleasure for them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9

This is a company whose products move easily in great packages across the continent. Demand is constant and growing, since our products are good for people and contribute to the nation’s health and well-being. The supply is adjusted from time to time in order to keep prices at a reasonable level. There is no reason for anyone to kill oneself though overwork. The savage, messianic executive of the type would find himself or herself out of place here. In fact, one would be embarrassing. In the unlikely event of one coming with us, the moment he started shouting at anybody one would be taken aside and admonished in a nice way. (We do have one high-ranking officer a bit like than, but he is old and close to retirement. He is very much the exception.) A full recital of our employee benefits would—and does, in the indoctrination period—take all day, but here are just a few of them. We have a fine pension fund, a fantastically inexpensive medical program for you and your family, and a low-premium life-insurance policy for double your salary. The company will invest five percent of your pay in blue-chip stocks and contribute on your behalf another three percent. The company picks up half of your luncheon check. When you moved to the suburbs, the company paid its employees’ moving expenses and helped them settle in their new Cresleigh Homes. For those who did not wish to move…a bus waits at the railroad station for commuters from the city ad drives them to the hilltop office building. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9

The only unsatisfactory working condition, I think, is that you must be content with a two-week vacation until you have been with the company for ten years. In other words the experience you may have gained elsewhere, precisely the experience the company has bought, counts for nothing in terms of vacation time. However, this policy is fairly standard practice. It certainly inhibits a being’s desire (say, after nine years) to change companies for a better job. Thus, it is at least a minor pressure against free-spirited enterprise. All the benefits exert pressure, too. There is nothing sinister about them, since admittedly they are for your own material comfort—and is that not supposed to be one of the goals of humankind? What happens is that, as the years go by, the temptation to strike out on your own or take another job becomes less and less. Gradually you become accustomed to the Utopian drift. Soon another inhibition may make you even more amenable. If you have been in easy circumstances for a number of years, you feel that you are out of shape. Even in younger beings the hard muscle of ambition tends to go slack, and you hesitate to take a chance in the jungle again. On top of all this, it is practically impossible to be fired. Unless you drink to alcoholism or someone finds your hand in the cash box, the company can afford to keep you around indefinitely. Occasionally under great provocation—such as a scandal that reaches the tabloids—there may be a transfer. Once in a while a prematurely crusty old-timer is retired. Otherwise the ax will not fall. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9

Every so often I hear my seniors at the corporation inveigh against socialism, and it seems strange. I think that our company resembles nothing so much as a private socialist system. We are taken care of from our children’s cradles to our own graves. We move with carefully graduated rank, station, and salary through the decades. By what marvelous process of self-deception we consider our individual enterprise to be private? The truth is that we work communally. In our daily work most of us have not made an important decision in years, expect in consultation with others. Undertaking an activity about which we feel anxiety produces a feeling of strain, fatigue or exhaustion. One patient of mine, for example, who was recovering from a fear of walking on the street but still had a good deal of anxiety on that score, felt completely exhausted when she took a walk on Sundays. That is this exhaustion was not due to any physical weakness is shown by the fact that she could perform strenuous housework without the slightest fatigue. It was the anxiety bound up with walking outdoors that caused the exhaustion; the anxiety was diminished enough so that she could walk outdoors, but was still effective enough to exhaust her. Many difficulties commonly ascribed to overwork are in reality caused not by the work itself but by anxiety about the work or about relations with colleagues. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9

Anxiety connected with a certain activity will result in an impairment of that function. If there is, for example, an anxiety connected with giving orders, they will be given in an apologetic, ineffectual manner. Anxiety about riding a horse will result in an inability to master the animal. The degree of awareness varies. A person may be aware that anxiety prevents one from performing tasks in a satisfactory way, or one may only have the feeling that one is unable to do anything well. Membership in a group, be it a vastly spread religion or a small minor sect, gives each member a feeling correctness in their joint beliefs; each supports the others. However, when some drastic and unexpressed event may prove hard to bear, this may begin to weaken. The first thing we notice in a creative act is that it is an encounter. Artists encounter the landscape they propose to paint—they look at it, observe it from this angle and that. They are, as we say, absorbed in it. In essence: Come, let us reason together. You mistakes; all come short. Come unto me and repent. I will remember the sin no more. You can be whole again. I have a work for you to do. Christ makes wool white. “Be it according to the will of the Lord. But, behold, our work is not finished; therefore they burn us not,” reports Alma 14.13. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9

Get thee Behind Me, Satan! God Moves the World Only by Love—For Thine is the Power and the Glory Forever!

July 30, 2019 11:38 pm

We have souls, you and I. We want to know things; we share the same Earth, rich and verdant and fraught with perils. We do not—either of us—know what it means to die, no matter what we might say to the contrary. It is a cinch that if we did, we would not study history and religion. In the early nineties of the twentieth century, Italian fashion had flooded the market with so much shapeless, hangy, bulky, formless attire that one of the most erotic and flattering garments a man could choose was the well-tailored navy-blue Brooks Brothers suit. Remember we talked about the fabric of life ripping for a moment so you glimpsed thing you should not have seen? I had the same experience. And I thought, not many mortals would like to go prowling about this dark building, and the place is not entirely spiritually clean. Little spirits, elementals. Well, there are some gathered about this building, but they are no threat. God and the Devil are arguing about me. And now I have a sleepless mind in my heart because my teacher has a dangerous emotional grip to her lectures. The bureaucrat’s official life is planned for one in terms of a graded career, through the organizational devices of promotion by seniority, pension, incremental salaries, and so forth, all of which are designed to provide incentives for disciplined action and conformity to the official regulations. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

The official is tacitly expected to and largely does adapt one’s thoughts, feelings and action to the prospect of this career and the benefits that come with it. However, these very devices which increase the probability of conformance also lead to an over-concern with strict adherence to regulations which induces timidity, conservatism, and technicism. Displacement of sentiments from goals onto means is fostered by the tremendous symbolic significance of the means (rules). Another feature of the bureaucratic structure tends to produce much the same result. Functionaries have the sense of a common destiny for all those who work together. They share the same interests, especially since there is relatively little competition insofar as promotion is in terms of seniority. In-group aggression is thus minimized and this arrangement is therefore conceived to be absolutely functional for the bureaucracy. However, the esprit de corps and informal social organization which typically develops in such situations often leads the personnel to defend their entrenched interests rather than to assist their clientele and elected higher officials. If the bureaucrats believe that their status is not adequately recognized by an incoming elected official, detailed information will be withheld from one, leading one to errors for which one is held responsible. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Or, if one seeks to dominate fully, and this violates the sentiment of self-integrity of the bureaucrats, one may have documents brought to one in such numbers that one cannot manage to sign them all, let alone read them. This illustrates the defensive informal organization which tends to arise whenever there is an apparent threat to the integrity of the group. It would be much too facile and partly erroneous to attribute such resistance by bureaucrats simply to vested interests. Vested interest opposes any new order which either eliminates or at least makes uncertain their differential advantage deriving from the current arrangements. This is undoubtedly involved in part in bureaucratic resistance to change but another process is perhaps more significant. As we have seen, bureaucratic officials affectively identify themselves with their way of life. They have a pride of craft which leads them to resist change in established routines; at least, those changes which are felt to be imposed by others. This nonlogical pride of craft is a familiar pattern found even—to judge from Sutherland’s Professional Thief—among pickpockets who, despite the risk, delight in mastering the prestige-bearing feat of “beating a left breech” (picking the left front trousers pocket). #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

In a stimulating paper, Everett Hughes has applied the concepts of secular and sacred to various types of division of labor; the sacredness of caste and Stande prerogatives contrast sharply with the increasing secularism of occupational differentiation in our society. However, as our discussion suggests, there may ensue, in particular vocations and in particular types of organizations, the process of sanctification (viewed as the counterpart of the process of secularization). This is to say that through sentiment-formation, emotional dependence upon bureaucratic symbols and status, and affective involvement in sphere of competence and authority, there develop prerogatives involving attitudes of moral legitimacy which are established as values in their own right, and are no longer viewed as merely technical means for expediting administration. One may note a tendency for certain bureaucratic norms, originally introduced for technical reasons, to become rigidified and sacred, although they are laique en apparence. In this general process conveyed ate the attitudes and values which persist in the organic solidarity of a highly differentiated society. Another feature of the bureaucratic structure, the stress on depersonalization of relationships, also plays its part in the bureaucrat’s trained incapacity. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

The personality pattern of the bureaucrat is nucleated about this norm of impersonality. Both this and the categorizing tendency, which develops from the dominant role of general, abstract rules, tend to produce conflict in the bureaucrat’s contacts with the public or clientele. Since functionaries minimize personal relations and resort to categorization, the peculiarities of the individual cases are often ignored. However, the client who, quite understandably, is convinced of the special features of one’s own problem often objects to such categorical treatment. Stereotyped behavior is not adapted to the exigencies of individual problems. The impersonal treatment of affairs which are at times of great personal significance to the client give rise to the charge of arrogance and haughtiness of the bureaucrat. Thus, at the Greenwich Employment Exchange, the unemployed worker who is securing one’s insurance payment resents what he deems to be the impersonality and, at times, the apparent abruptness and harshness of one’s treatment by the clerks. Some beings complain of the superior attitude which the clerks have. Still another source of conflict with the public derives from the bureaucratic structure. The bureaucrat, in part irrespective of one’s position within the hierarchy, acts as a representative of power and prestige of the entire structure. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

In one’s official role one is vested with definite authority. This often leads to an actually or apparently domineering attitude, which may only be exaggerated by a discrepancy between one’s position within the hierarchy and one’s position with reference to the public. Protest and recourse to other officials on the part of the client are often ineffective or largely precluded by the previously mentioned espirt de corps which joins the officials into a more or less solidary in-group. This source of conflict may be minimized in private enterprise since the client can register an effective protest by transferring one’s trade to another organization within the competitive system. However, with the monopolistic nature of the public organization, no such alternative is possible. Moreover, in this case, tension is increased because of a discrepancy between ideology and fact: the governmental personnel are held to be servants of the people, but in fact they are often superordinate, and release of tension can seldom be afforded by turning to other agencies for the necessary service. This tension is in part attributable to the confusion of the status of bureaucrat and client; the client may consider oneself socially superior to the official who is at the moment dominant. “Know ye not that ye are in the hands of God? Know ye not that he hath all power, and at his great command that Earth shall be rolled together as a scroll?” (Reports Mormon 5.20). #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

Thus, with respect to the relations between officials and clientele, one structural source of conflict is the pressure for formal and impersonal treatment when individual, personalized consideration is desired by the client. The conflict may be viewed, then, as deriving from the introduction of inappropriate attitudes and relationships. Conflict within the bureaucratic structure arises from the converse situation, namely, when personalized relationships are substituted for the structurally required impersonal relationships. This type of conflict may be characterized as follows. The bureaucracy, as we have seen, is organizes as a secondary, formal group. The normal responses involved in this organized network of social expectations are supported by affective attitudes of members of the group. Since the group is orientated toward secondary norms of impersonality, any failure to conform to these norms will arouse antagonism from those who have identified themselves with the legitimacy of these rules. Hence, the substitution of personal for impersonal treatment within the structure is met with widespread disapproval and is characterized by such epithets as graft, favoritism, nepotism, apple-polishing, buttering the bread, and so forth. These epithets are clearly manifestations of injured sentiments. The function of such virtually automatic resentment can be clearly seen in terms of the requirements of bureaucratic structure. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Bureaucracy is a secondary group structure designed to carry on certain activities which cannot be satisfactorily performed on the basis of primary group criteria. Hence behavior which runs counter to these formalized norms becomes the object of emotionalized disapproval. This constitutes a functionally significant defense set up against tendencies which jeopardize the performance of socially necessary activities. To be sure, these reactions are not rationally determined practices explicitly designed for the fulfillment of this function. Rather, viewed in terms of the individual’s interpretation of the situation, such as resentment is simply an immediate response opposing the dishonesty of those who violate the rules of the game. However, this subjective frame of reference notwithstanding these reactions serve the latent function of maintaining the essential structural elements of bureaucracy by reaffirming the necessity for formalized, secondary relations and by helping to prevent the disintegreation of the bureaucratic structure which would occur should these be supplanted by personalized relations. This type of conflict may be generically described as the intrusion of primary group attitudes when secondary group attitudes are institutionally demanded, just as the bureaucrat-conflict often derives from interaction on impersonal terms when personal treatment is individually demanded. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

An interesting variation on the theme of power and love is seen in television show Big Little Lies, starring Oscar winning actress Reese Witherspoon. In this portrayal of a small town, the women have no overt power at all—no economic power, no political power. The only power they have is covert, connected with the pleasures of the flesh. They are condemned to innocence. They accept the pretense of their innocence, which takes the form of coyness and pretended modesty, and they trade on it. It is their moral position, and it turns out to be quite immoral. One young lady who wants to lose her virginity to make herself more desirable takes her boyfriend to a hot sheets motel, orders him to perform pleasures of the flesh. When he, understandably for the situation, is important, she heaps scorn upon him. However, she tells the others young ladies waiting outside: “It was so wonderful, I cannot describe it in words.” It turns out that the woman have power over the men at every turn; the men can only do their best to live up to the women’s demands and expectations. All of the drive for these gyrations comes from the women who have been kept powerless and have only their pretense of innocence as their shield. “And after Christ truly has showed himself unto his people he commanded that they should be made manifest,” reports Ether 4. 2. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Another interesting aspect of the problem of power and love is the phenomenon of jealously. I shall not go into the question of whether some element of jealousy, as a function of caring and valuing the other person, is normally and healthy beyond saying that I believe it probably is. However, what is generally called jealousy surely goes far beyond that normal care. It is a possessiveness which arises in direct proportion to the impotence of the individual. That is, the degree to which one feels jealous. One can do nothing; one has not power in oneself to win the loved one back; and one has not power in oneself as left out completely in the cold. In such situations jealousy can become a form of violence. One young man, near the beginning of his analysis, could not reach his sweetheart in Rocklin by phone and was seized with a fit of jealousy. He immediately took a plane to Rocklin which is a city in California USA, half hoping to find her in bed with another man. This young man was threatened greatly because his sense of powerlessness was so great. I put the word hoping in to indicate that jealousy often arises from a special ambivalence in the relationship: the person loves but he also hates—that is, he would almost prefer it if she did force him, by having pleasures of the flesh with another, to break off the relationship. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Jealousy characterizes the relationship in which one seeks more power than love. It occurs when the person has not been able to build up enough self-esteem, enough sense of one’s own power, one’s own right to live, as Mercedes’s declared. Neurotic jealousy, strangely enough, may occur most strongly wen the love is not very solid or well founded. It is a reflection of the person’s feeling of inability to win the other back. This power gone awry and can be very time-consuming and destructive. The jealous person seems to have a need to put all, in this case, of his energy into the jealous fit, partly to prove a love that underneath he feels to be very problematic anyway. “Darling you see now that it was never, we are never what we see. Set you up to let you down, I am afraid. Darling do you see how our lies become the truth. We never said what we meant. Darling it feels good when they let you in. Do not play the fool. They will only let you down if you stay. We cannot all be broken down, I am afraid. Holy Hell, we have hit the bottom running to the ones we love, to the ones we hurt,” reports Broken Down by Tritonal. The boundaries of power and love overlap each other. Love makes the person who loves want to be influenced and want to do what the loved one wishes. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

The intertwining of love and power is shown in relationships between lovers and between husbands and wife in the concern for the dignity of the other, the preservation of his or her independent self. It is shown in child-rearing in the firm structure that the understanding adult gives to the child. Assertion, affirmation of the self, and even aggression at times are not only unavoidable but healthy in the developing love relationship. Some readers may wish to call nutrient power and integrative power actually forms of love. I agree with their meaning, but I think it best to guard against power and love being swallowed up in each other. Hence I prefer to keep their separate meanings clear. However, we can say that the lower forms of power—exploitative, manipulative—have a very minimum of love in them, while the higher forms—nutrient, integrative—have more. In other words, the higher up the scale we go, the more love we find. Even in the religious realm, the belief that God moves the World only by love is sentimentality. Persons who are of the opinion forget that the first of the General Confession is Almighty, and the Lord’s prayer ends with for Thine is the power and the glory forever. Often the Beatitudes are similarly misinterpreted—“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth”—as well as the story of Jesus saying, when he is offered all power over the Earth: “Get thee behind me, Satan.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

However, we need to take into consideration that Christianity was born in a World in which the Roman army occupied the whole known as the globe; and any kind of political power or lack of meekness would have meant that one would get oneself quickly executed. Our problem is now different: we stand in a World dominated by giant technology. If they are to survive at all, men and women must be able to asset the power of their conciseness. Social action—work for radical justice, international peace, helping of the poor, and so on—would not be possible without a combination of power and love. Joy does not come from submission and abnegation, but from assertion. Joy is only a symptom of the feeling of attained power. The essence of joy is an absolute feeling of power. However, if they coincide with culturally approved forms of inhibitions or with existing ideologies, it may be impossible ever to become aware of personal inhibitions. A patient who had serious inhibitions against approaching women was not aware of being inhibited because he saw his conduct in the light of the accepted idea of the sacredness of women. When the glimpse experience has been repeated many times, it will come to be looked upon as a natural experience. The state it induced will seem to be a normal one. The miracle which the beginner makes of it will seem an unnecessary exaggeration to the matured proficient being. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

An inhibition against making demands is easily put on the basis of the strict and rigid doctrines that modesty is a virtue; and inhibition against critical thinking about strict and rigid doctrines dominant in politics or religion or any specific field of interest may escape attention, and we may be entirely unaware of the existence of an anxiety concerning the exposure to punishment, criticism or isolation. In order to judge the situation, however, we must of course know the individual factors in great detail. The absence of critical thought does not necessarily imply the existence of inhibitions, but may be due to a general laziness of mind, to stupidity or to conviction that really coincides with the dominant doctrines of the strict and rigid type. A number of factors may account for the inability to recognize existing inhibitions and for the fact that even experienced psychoanalysts may find it difficult to detect them. However, even assuming that we could recognize all of them, our estimate of the frequency of inhibitions would still be too low. We would have to take into account all those reactions which, although not fully grown inhibitions, are on the way toward that culmination. In the attitudes I have in mind we are still able to do certain things, but the anxiety connected with them exerts certain influences on the activities themselves. When we define creativity, we must make the distinction between its pseudo forms, on the one hand—that is, creativity as a superficial aestheticism. And, on the other, its authentic form—that is, the process of bringing something new into being. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

The crucial distinction is between art as artificiality (as in artifice or artful) and genuine art. This is distinction that artists and philosophers have struggled all through the centuries to make clear. Plato, for example, demoted his poets and his artist down to the sixth circle of reality because, he said, they deal only with appearances and not with reality itself. He was referring to art as a decoration, a way of making life prettier, a dealing with semblances. However, in his later, beautiful dialogue, the Symposim, he described what he called the true artists—namely, those who give birth to some new reality. These poets and other creative persons are the ones who express being itself, he held. As I would put it, these are the ones who enlarge human consciousness. Their creativity is the most basic manifestation of a man or woman fulfilling his or her own being in the World. Now, if our inquiries into creativity are to get below the surface, we must make the above distinction clear. We are thus not dealing with hobbies, do-it-yourself movements, Sunday painting, or other forms of filling up leisure time. Nowhere has the meaning of creativity been more disastrously lost than in the idea that it is something you do only on week ends! The creative process must be explored not as the product of sickness, but as representing the highest degree of emotional health, as the expression of the normal people in the act of actualizing themselves. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Creativity must be seen in the work of the scientist as well as in that of the artist, in the thinker as well as in the aesthetician; and one must not rule out the extent to which it is present in captains of modern technology as well as in a mother’s normal relationship with her child. Creativity rightly indicates a process of making, of bringing into being. So much so that some people believe that science is becoming the new God, and the metaphysical speculations are the cold and calculating path to that goal. Rather than formulaic truths, therefore, or reductionist explanations of how and why we do what we do, and this is why some still advocate inwardness and passion. In reality, neither objectivism, with its emphasis on the publicly measurable and verifiable, nor subjectivism, with its accent on the private and emotional, can, in isolation, provide us with a complete picture of human functioning. Only taken together can they help us to understand our condition. The problem is that (particularly) objectivism has grown so monstrous in recent years and has become so top-heavy that it threatened to crush subjectivism—leaving us to pull levers and push bottoms for many of our needs. We do need rules, regulations, and formulas, but these things do not always help us to comprehend the richer aspects of living, such as the capacity to love, create, and marvel at the stars. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

We need to redress the imbalance that has emerged and forge a broader, more inclusive position. For truth exists only as the individual produces it in action. Away from speculation, away from the system, and back to reality, the more consciousness, the more self. Personhood is a synthesis of possibility and necessity. Beings exist on many levels, some of which are contradictory and some of which are fathomless. Our task is to affirm these various facets of our existence and not to reduce or deny them. The difference between the intermediate and the final state is the difference between feeling the Overself to be a distinct and separate entity and feeling it to be the very essence of oneself, between temporary experience of it and enduring union with it. Whereas when it first occurs, the glimpse may be a dramatic experience, being established is natural, simple, pleasant but not rapturous, and continuously aware. We must learn to differentiate between the partial attainment of the mystic who stops short at passive enjoyment of ecstatic states and the perfect attainment of the sage who does not depend on any particular states but dwells in the unbroken calm of the unconditioned Overself. From one’s high point of view all such states are necessarily illusory, however personally satisfying at the time, inasmuch as they are transient conditions and do not pertain to the final result. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

If the illumination itself is to be total pure, and reliable, all aspects of being’s nature needs to be illuminated and equably balanced. The self is a synthesis of infinitude and finitude, that relates itself to itself, whose task is to become itself. The self is a synthesis of which the finite is the limiting and the infinite the extending factor. When the overemphasize either polarity, when they become too finitized or infinitized, some beings become dysfunctional. The cold, pedantic objectivist, to further illustrate this description, may be understood as excessively finitized; while the fiery, indulgent subjectivist may be viewed as over infinitized. Infiniude’s despair is to lack or avoid finitude. Infinitude’s despair is the fantastic, the unlimited. As a rule, imagination is the medium for the process of infinitizing. The self then leads a fantasized existence moving further and further away from itself. It flounders in possibility until exhausted. Finitude’s despair is to lack or avoid infinitude, to lack infinitude is despairing reductionism, narrowness. Whereas one kind of despair plunges wildly into the infinite and loses itself, this kind permits itself to be tricked out of itself by other beings. A person in such a state forgets oneself, forgets one’s name, does not dare to believe in oneself, and find it far easier and safer to be like other, to become a copy, a number, a mass being. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Good health generally means the ability to resolve contradictions. It is a synthesis like breathing which is an inhaling and exhaling. A passionate-realistic hero, a knight of faith has precisely these qualities. However, ignorance of it is widespread among would-be heroes and mystics and even among real mystics. If there is contradiction between their results, it is because they too often experience the illumination fully through their feelings, to a limited extent through their wills, and hardly at all through their intellects. Many people, however, feel in their youth and inexperience and weakness that at their age there is a need for some kind of support from outside, some group to give then not merely fellowship but also a feeling of solidity and stability, something to learn upon, in short. This can teach others a lesson and make them understand sympathetically that the love of independence to ensure a free search, and the desire for self-reliance do not belong to everybody, and others, certainly most people, have other needs, prefer other ways, for which there is also room in human life. Organizational life can be helpful to our early efforts and guide our early steps. “I am under your spell. Bound and blind and only you can save me. I am tangled up inside, caught in your web. I am hypnotized and only you can wake me. Only you can bring this heart to life,” reports Under Your Spell by Cosmic Gate. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

There is a place for a society of friends, but this place is a preliminary one. If the final work of a seeker is to be done for and upon oneself, that does not displace the necessity of an institution in assisting one to do the preparatory work. Therefore, even the advance mystic, who has no need of its services, cannot in principle be hostile to an institution. One readily admits its necessity and denies only its all-sufficiency. These groups led by a guru (hopefully with all their wires in their brains properly connected) may be quite useful to a beginner who is stumbling in the dark. However, to join one without knowing the limitations and dangers would be foolish. When unled, religious followers begin to organize themselves either quite spontaneously, or when a leader appears, they organize themselves quite obediently for several good understandable reasons. The coming together in a compact group affords some protection, offers them a mode of expression and the teaching a mode of preservation. The strength of such a group must be possessed in its quality and not in its members. It must be the result not of propaganda activities but of the spontaneous association of like-thinking people. It is true that there are many eccentrics among these believers and they are still serious and sensible and well-behaved. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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

July 30, 2019 12:04 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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And You, My Father, there on the Sad Height, Curse, Bless, Me Now with Your Fierce Tears, I Pray!

July 28, 2019 12:44 am

Glimpses have been had more often than most people believe but enlightenment that is continuous and always present is rare. To have the intermittent experience of the inner self is one thing, but to have the continuous experience of it is quite another. I was still in a pure mortal state of shock as we entered the large marble-tiled lobby. In a haze, I saw the sumptuous furnishings, the immense vases of flowers, and the smartly dressed tourists drifting past. Patiently, the tall brown-haired man who has been my former self guided me to the elevator, and we went up in swooshing silence to a high floor. I was unable to tear my eyes off him, yet my heart was throbbing from what had only just taken place. In the translation of technical improvements into social processes, the machine has undergone a perversion: instead of being utilizes as an instrument of life, it has tended to become an absolute. Power and social control, once exercised chiefly by military groups who had conquered and seized the land, have gone since the seventeenth century to those who have organized and controlled and owned the machine. The machine has been valued because—it increased the employment of machines. An such employment was the source of profits, power, and wealth to the new ruling classes, benefits which hitherto gone to traders or to those who monopolized the land. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14

Jungles and tropical islands were invaded during the nineteenth century for the purpose of making new converts to the machine: explorers like Stanley endured incredible tortures and hardships in order to bring the benefits of the machine to inaccessible regions tapped by the Congo: insulated countries like Japan were entered forcibly at the point of the gun in order to make way for the trader: natives in Africa and the Americas were saddled with false debts or malicious taxes in order to give them an incentive to work and to consumer in the machine fashion—and thus to supply an outlet for the goods of American and Europe, or to ensure the regular gathering of runner and lac. The injunction to use machines was so imperative, from the standpoint of those who owned them and whose means and place in society depended upon them, that it placed upon the worker a special burden, the duty to consume machine-products, while it paced upon the manufacturer and the engineer the duty of inventing products weak enough and shoddy enough—like the safety razor blade or the common run of American woolens—to lend themselves to rapid replacement. The great heresy to the machine was to believe in an institution or a habit of action or a system of ideas that would lessen this service to the machines: for under capitalist direction the aim of mechanism is not to save labor but to eliminate all labor expect that which can be channeled at a profit through the factory. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14

At the beginning, the machine was an attempt to substitute quantity for value in the calculus of life. Between the conception of the machine and its utilization a necessary psychological and social process was skipped: the stage of evolution. Thus a steams turbine may contribute thousands of horsepower, and the speedboat may achieve speed: but these facts, which perhaps satisfy the engineer, do not necessarily integrate them in society. Railroads may be quicker than canalboats, and a gas lamps may be brighter than a candle: but it is only in terms of human purpose and in relation to a human and social scheme of values that speed or brightness have any meaning. If one wishes to absorb the scenery, the slow motion of a canalboat may be preferable to the fast motion of a BMW motor car; and if one wishes to appreciate the mysterious darkness and the strange forms of a natural cave, it is better to penetrate it with uncertain step, with the assistance of a torch or a lantern than to descend into it by means of an elevator, as in the famous caves of Virginia, and to have the mystery entirely erased by a grand display of electric lights—a commercialized perversion that puts the whole spectacle upon the low dramatic level of a cockney amusement park. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14

Because the process of social evaluation was largely absent among the people who developed the machine in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the machine raced like an engine without a governor, tending to overheat its own bearings and lower its efficiency without any compensatory gain. This left the process of evaluation to groups who remained outside the machine milieu, and who unfortunately often lacked the knowledge and the understanding that would have made their criticisms more pertinent. The important thing to bear in mind is that the failure to evaluate the machine and to integrate it in society as a whole was not due simply to defects in distributing incomes, to errors of management, to the greed and narrow-mindedness of the industrial leaders: it was also due to a weakness of the entire philosophy upon which the new techniques and inventions were grounded. The leaders and enterprises of the period believed that they had avoided the necessity for introducing values, except those which were automatically recorded in profits and prices. They believed that the problem of justly distributing goods could be sidetracked by creating an abundance of them: that the problem of applying one’s energies wisely could be cancelled out simply by multiplying them: in short, that most of the difficulties that has hitherto vexed humankind has a mathematical or mechanical—that is a quantitative—solution. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14

The belief that values could be dispensed with constituted the new system of values. Values, divorced from the current processes of life, remained the concern of those who reacted against the machine. Meanwhile, the current processes justified themselves solely in terms of quantity production and cash results. When the machine as a whole overspeeded and purchasing power failed to keep pace with dishonest overcapitalization and exorbitant profits—then the whole machine went suddenly into reverse, stripped its gears, and came to a standstill: a humiliating failure, a dire social loss. One is confronted, then, by the fact that the machine is ambivalent. It is both an instrument of liberation and one of repression. It has economized human energy and it has misdirected it. It has created a wide framework of order and it has produced muddle and chaos. It has nobly served human purposes and it has distorted and denied them. The authentic innocence of the nonviolent person is the source of one’s power. The genuine rather than pseudo quality of the innocence, at least in the examples I have given, is attested by the facts, first, that the nonviolence does not involve any blocking off of awareness. Second, it does not involve the renouncing of responsibility. Third, its purpose is not to gain something for the individual oneself but for one’s community. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14

Nonviolent power acts as a goad to rulers’ ethics, a living rebuke to the smugness of their establishment. Members of the ruling class cannot turn blindly away from the nonviolent one, for one is obviously suffering and, by this, dramatizing the issue. When it is authentic, nonviolence has a religious dimension, since by its very nature it transcends the human forms of power. It seems to be the fact, however, that for every authentic form of nonviolent power there are dozens of unauthentic attempts to claim the role. These different kinds of power are obviously all present in the same person at different times. Many a business person who exercises manipulative or competitive power at work takes on nutrient power when one comes home to one’s family. The question—and it is a moral one—is the proportion of each kind of power in the total spectrum of the personality. No one can escape experiencing, in desire and in action, all the different types of power, and only self-righteous rigidity leads one to claim that one is immune from any of them. The goal for human development is to learn to use these different kinds of power in ways adequate to the given situation. When I use the word rebel for the artist, I do not refer to revolutionary or to such things as taking over the dean’s office; that is a different matter. Artists are generally soft-spoken persons who are concerned with their inner visions and images. However, that is precisely what makes them feared by any coercive society. #RanolphHarris 6 of 14

Artist are fear for they are the bearers of the human being’s age-old capacity to be insurgent. They love to emerse themselves in chaos in order to put it into form, just as God created form outside of chaos in Genesis. Forever unsatisfied with the mundane, the apathetic, the conventional, they always pus on to newer Worlds. Thus are they the creators of the uncreated conscience of the race. This requires an intensity of emotion, a heightened vitality—for is not the vital forever in opposition to death? We could call this intensity by many different names: I choose to call it rage. This rage is necessary to ignite the poet’s passion, to call forth one’s abilities, to bring together in ecstasy one’s flamelike insights, that one may surpass oneself in one’s poems. The rage is against injustice, of which there is certainly plenty in our society. However, ultimately it is rage against the prototype of all injustice—death. Do not just bless us, cruse us with your fierce tears. Some of us have to confront death and in some way accept it. However, we also have to express the eternally insurgent spirit—and as a result this will create a piercing elegance in your life. This rage has nothing at all to do with rational concepts of death, in which we stand outside the experience of death and make objective, statistical comments about it. That always has to do with someone else’s death, not our own. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14

We all know that each generation, whether of leaves or grass or human beings or any living things, must die in order for a new generation be born. I am speaking of death in a different sense. A child has a dog, and the dog dies. The child’s grief is mixed with deep anger. If someone tries to explain death in the objective, evolutionary way to one—everything dies, and dogs die sooner than most beings—one may well strike out against the explainer. The child probably knows all that anyway. Ones real sense of loss and betrayal comes from the fact that one’s love for one’s dog and the dog’s devotion to one are now gone. It is the personal, subjective experience of death of which I am speaking. As we grow older we learn how to understand each other better. Hopefully, we learn also to love more authentically. Understanding and love require a wisdom that comes only with age. However, at the highest point in the development of that wisdom, we will be blotted out. No longer will we see the trees turning scarlet in the autumn. No longer will we see the grass pushing up so tenderly in the Spring. Each of us will become only a memory that will grow fainter every year. This is the most difficult truth. What is our innocence, what is our guilt? All are vulnerable, none is safe. And whence is courage. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14

So one who strongly feels, behaves. The very bird, grown taller as one sings, steels one from straight up Though one is captive, one mighty singing says, satisfaction is a lowly thing, how pure a thing is joy. This is mortality, this is eternity. Thus mortality is at last brought into antiphony with its opposite, eternity. Existence is infinite, not to be defined; and though it seems but a bit of wood in your hand, to crave as you please, it is not to be played with and laid down. Abide at the center of your being for the more you leave it, the less you learn. We have a responsibility to some profound searching of the soul, and the integration of self-World relationships, be they soothing or contrary. The neurotic may make a conscious decision to overcome one’s anxiety. A girl, for example, who was tormented by anxiety, particularly concerning burglars, consciously decided to disregard the anxiety, to sleep alone in the attic, to walk alone in the empty house. The first dream she brought to analysis revealed several variations of this attitude. It contained several situations which in fact were frightening, but which each time she faced with bravery. In one of them she heard footsteps in the garden at night, stepped out on the balcony and called “Who’s there?’ She succeeded in losing her fear of burglars, but nothing was changed in the factors provoking her anxiety, other consequences of the still-existing anxiety remained. She continued to be withdrawn and timid, she felt unwanted and could not settle down to any constructive work. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14

Very often there is no such conscious decision in neurotics. Frequently the process goes on automatically. The difference from the normal, however, does not lie in the degree of consciousness of the decision, but in the result attained. All that a neurotic can attain by pulling oneself together is to lose a special manifestation of anxiety, as the girl lost her fear concerning burglars. I do not mean to undervaluate such a result. It may have a practical value and may also have a psychic value in strengthening self-esteem. However, since such results are usually over-estimated it is necessary to point out the negative side. (Dr. Freud has always stressed this point in emphasizing that the disappearance of symptoms is not a sufficient indication of a cure.) Not only does the essential dynamics of the personality remain unchanged, but when the neurotic loses a conspicuous manifestation of one’s existing disturbances one loses at the same time a vital stimulus to tackle them. The process of ruthlessly marching over an anxiety plays a great role in many neuroses and is not always recognized for what it is. The aggressiveness, for instance, which many neurotics display in certain situations is often taken as a direct expression of an actual hostility, while it may be primarily such a reckless marching over an existing timidity, under the pressure of feeling attacked. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14

While some hostility is usually present, the neurotic may greatly overdo the aggression one really feels, one’s anxiety provoking one to overcome one’s timidity. If this is overlooked there is danger of mistaking recklessness for veritable aggression. For many people the relating of rebellion to religion will be a hard truth. It brings with it the final paradox. In religion, it is not the sycophants or those who cling most faithfully to the status quo who are ultimately praised. It is the insurgents. Recall how often in human history the saint and the rebel have been the same person. Sōkrátēs was a rebel, and he was sentenced to drink hemlock. Jesus was a rebel, and she was crucified. Lestat was a rebel and he was killed by his own daughter. Joan of Arc was a rebel, and she was burned at the stake. Queen Akasha was a rebel and she was decapitated. Yet each of these figures and hundred like them, though ostracized by their contemporaries, were recognized and worshiped by the following ages as having made the most significant creative contributions in ethics and religion to civilization. Those we call saints rebelled against an outmoded and inadequate form of God on the basis of their new insight into divinity. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14

The teachings that led to the saints who rebelled deaths raised the ethical and spiritual levels of their societies. They were aware that Zeus, the jealous god of Mount Olympus, would no longer do. Hence Lestat stands for a religion of compassion. They rebelled against Yahweh, the primitive tribal god of the Hebrews who gloried in the deaths of thousands of Philistines. In place of him came the new visions of Amos and Isiah and Jeremiah of the god of love and justice. Their rebellion was motivated by new insights into the meaning of godliness. They rebelled against God in the name of the God beyond God. The continuous emergences of the God beyond God is the ark of creative courage in the religious sphere. Whatever sphere we may be in, there is a profound joy n the realization that we are helping to form the structure of the new World. This is creative courage, however, minor or fortuitous our creations may be. We can then say, Welcome, O life! We go for the millionth time to forge in the smithy of our souls the uncreated conscience of the race. The higher the peak one climbs, the lonelier the trail becomes. There is a paradox here for the loneliness exists outside the body, not inside the heart, and the more it grows outside the less it is felt inside. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14

The quest is to be walked alone. Yet although this means that one must have a solitary and creedless path if the Word is to be said, the Touch is to come, the Glimpse is to be seen, or the Feeling of the presence is to enter awareness, the gracious revelation is the sacred compensation. Because of the soul’s own infinitude, its expressions in art and culture, its manifestations in society and industry, will always be infinitely varied. If we find the contrary to exist among us today, it is because we have lost the soul’s inspiration and forfeited our spiritual birthright. The monotonous uniformity of our cities, the uncreative sameness of our society, the mass-produced opinions of our culture, and the standardized products of our immobilized mentalities reveal one thing glaringly—our cramping inner poverty. The being who possesses a spark of individuality must today disregard the rule of conformity and go one’s own way in appalling starving loneliness amid this lack of creativeness, this dearth of aspiration. In the end one must inwardly walk alone—as must everyone ese however beloved—since God allows no one to escape this price. Emotional union with the Overself is insufficient, fugitive ecstasies are not the final accomplishment. Better than both is the unshakeable serenity of the being. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14

As one climbs toward the ideal one find oneself drawing farther and farther away from one’s fellows who herd on the plains below. That which draws one to itself, also isolates one from others. One may wander through the low haunts of life, seeking the smiling figures of Fortune and Love. One may go, too, into the higher abodes of better people. In both places one finds illusion and frustration. So it comes about that one ceases one’s wandering and sits silently by a lone hearth. One knows then what one has always dimly suspected. A true soul will disdain to be moved expect by what natively commands it, though it should go sad and solitary in search of its master a thousand years. I wish you the best deliverance in that contest to which every soul must go alone. If one is really to attain Truth, one will have to learn how to stand solidly by oneself, how to live within oneself, and how to be satisfied with one’s inner purpose as one’s only companion. “And there will I bless thee and thy seed, and raise up unto me of thy seed, and of the seed of thy brother, and they who shall go with thee, a great nation. And there shall be none greater than the nation which I will raise up unto me of thy see, upon all the face of the Earth. And thus I will do unto thee because this long time ye have cried unto me,” reports Ether 1.43. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14

It is a State Which Has Been Attained in its Fullness by Only a Few Persons During Each Century but Glimpsed at Least Once in a Lifetime by Many More!

July 27, 2019 3:13 am

What have the many towers of great Rocklin to do with this endless sprawling World that comes so close to it. Wence came this metropolis of America with its clear blue skies and its vast teeming hillside McMansions? Beauty is beauty where you find it. At night, even these Spanish colonial cottages as they call them—the thousands upon thousands of houses that cover the streets on either side with their beautiful green lawns—are darling, for they have water, landscaping, sewerage, electricity, and they are peaceful and beyond all modern questions healthy and comfortable, and are strung with bright, shining electric lights. Sometimes it seems that light can transform anything! That is an undeniable and irreducible blessing of God’s grace. However, do the people of the suburbs know this? Is it for beauty that they do it? Or do they merely want a comfortable illumination in their beauty Cresleigh Homes? It does not matter. We cannot stop ourselves from making beauty. We cannot stop the World. Of course there is a way to stop the rampant spread of beauty. It has to do with regimentation, conformity, assembly-line aesthetics, and the triumph of the functional over the grandeur and marvelous. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

One of the by-produces of the development of mechanical devices and mechanical standards has been the nullification of skill. What has taken place here within the factory has also taken place in the final utilization of its products. The safety razor, for example, has changed the operation of shaving from a hazardous one, best left to a trained barber, to a rapid commonplace of the day which even the most inept males can perform. The automobile has transformed engine-driving from the specialized take of the locomotive engineer to the occupation of millions of amateurs. The camera has in part transformed the artful reproduction of the wood engraver to a relatively simple photo-chemical process in which anyone can acquire at least the rudiments. As in manufacture the human function first becomes specialized, then mechanized, and finally automatic or at least semi-automatic. When the last stage is reached, the function again takes on some of its original non-specialized character: photography helps recultivate the eye, the telephone the voice, the radio the ear, just as the BMW motor car has restored some of the manual and operative skills that the machine was banishing from other departments of existence at the same time that it has given to the driver a sense of power and autonomous direction—a feeling of firm command in the midst of potentially constant danger—that had been taken away from one in other departments of life by the machine. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

So, too, mechanization, by lessening the need for domestic service, has increased the amount of personal autonomy and personal participation in the household. In short, mechanization creates occasions for human effort; and on the whole the effects are more educative than were the semi-automatic services of slaves and menials in the older civilizations. For the mechanical nullification of skill can take place only up to a certain point. It is only when one has completely lost power of discrimination that a standardized Campbells canned soup can, without further preparation, take the place of a home-cooked one, or when one has lost prudence completely that a four-wheel brake or a BMW with XDrive can serve instead of a good driver. Inventions like these increase the province and multiple the interests of the amateur. When automatism becomes general and the benefits of mechanization are socialized, beings will be back once more in the Edenlike state which they have existed in regions of natural increment, like the South Seas: the ritual of leisure will replace the ritual of work, and work itself will become a kind of game. That is, in fact, the ideal goal of a completely mechanized and automatized system of power production: the elimination of work: the universal achievement of leisure. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

In pondering slavery, when the shuttle wove by itself and the plectrum played by itself chief working people would not need helpers nor masters slaves. It is believed that beings were in the process of establishing the eternal validity of slavery; but for us today, this is just a way of justifying the existence of the machine. Work, it is true, is the constant form of being’s interaction with one’s environment, if by work one means the sum total of exertions necessary to maintain life; and lack of work usually means an impairment of function and a breakdown in organic relationship that leads to substitute forms of work, such as invalidism and neurosis. However, the work in the form of unwilling drudgery or of that sedentary routine which the Athenians so properly despised—work in these degrading forms if the true province of machines. Instead of reducing human beings to work-mechanisms, we can now transfer the main part of burden to automatic machines. This potentiality, still so far from effective achievement for beings at large, is perhaps the largest justification of the mechanical development of the last thousand years. From the social standpoint, one final characterization of the machine, perhaps the most important of all, must be noted: the machine imposes the necessity for collective effort and widens its range. To the extent that beings have escaped the control of nature they must submit to the control of society. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

As in a serial operation every part must function smoothly and be geared to the right speed in order to ensure the effective working of the process as a whole, so in society at large there must be a close articulation between all its elements. Individual self-sufficiency is another way of saying technological crudeness: as our technics becomes more refined it becomes impossible to work the machine without large-scale collective cooperation, and in the long run a high technics is possible only on a basis of Worldwide trade and intellect intercourse. The machine has broken down the relative isolation—never complete even in the most primitive societies—of the handicraft period: it has intensified the need for collective effort and collective order. The efforts to achieve collective participation have been fumbling and empirical: so for the most part, people are conscious of the necessity in the form of limitations upon personal freedom and initiative—limitations like the automatic traffic signals of a congested center, or like the red-tape in a large commercial organization. The collective nature of the machine process demands a special enlargement of the imagination and special education in order to keep the collective demand itself from becoming an act of external regimentation. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

To the extent that the collective discipline becomes effective and the various groups in society are worked into a nicely interlocking organization, special provisions must be made for isolated and anarchic elements that are not included in such a wide-reaching collectivism—elements that cannot without danger be ignored or repressed. However, to abandon the social collectivism imposed by modern technics means to return to nature and be at the mercy of natural forces. The regularization of time, the increase in mechanical power, the multiplication of goods, the contraction of time and space, the standardization of performance and product, the transfer of skill to automata, and the increase of collective interdependence—these, then, are the chief characteristics of our machine civilization. They are the basis of the particular forms of life and modes of expression that distinguish the World, at least in degree, from the various earlier civilization that preceded it. Least anyone think the myth of Prometheus can be brushed aside as merely an idiosyncratic tale concocted by playful Greeks, let me remind you that in the Judeo-Christian tradition almost exactly the same truth is presented. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

I refer to the myth of Adam and Eve. This is the drama of the emerging of moral consciousness. In relation to this myth (and to all myths), the truth that happens internally is presented as though it were external. They myth of Adam is re-enacted in every infant, beginning a few months after birth and developing into recognizable form at the age of two or three, though ideally it should continue enlarging all the rest of one’s life. The eating of the apple of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil symbolize the dawn of human consciousness, moral consciousness and consciousness being at this point synonymous. The innocence of the Garden of Eden—the womb and the dreaming consciousness of gestation and the first month of life—are destroyed forever. The function of psychoanalysis is to increase this consciousness, indeed to help people eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If this experience is as terrifying for many people as it was for Oedipus, it should not surprise us. Any theory of resistance that omits the terror of human consciousness is incomplete and probably wrong. In place of innocent bliss, the infant now experiences anxiety and guilt feelings. Also, as part of the child’s legacy is the sense of individual responsibility, and, most important of all, developing only later, the capacity to love. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

The shadow side of this process of individuality is the emergence of repression and, concomitantly, neurosis. A fateful event indeed! If you call this the fall of man, you should join Hegel and other analysts of history who have proclaimed that it was a fall upward; for without this experience there would be neither creativity nor consciousness as we know them. However, again, God was angry. Adam and Eve were driven out of the garden by an Angel with a flaming sword. The troublesome paradox confronts us in that both the Greek and the Judeo-Christian myths present creativity and consciousness as being born in rebellion against an omnipotent force. Are we to conclude that these chief gods, Zeus and Yahweh, did not wish humankind to have moral consciousness and the arts of civilization? It is a mystery indeed. The most obvious explanation is that the creative artist and poet and saint must fight the actual (as contrasted to the ideal) gods of our society—the god of conformism as well as the gods of apathy, material success, and exploitative power. These the idols of our society that are worshiped by multitudes of people. However, this point does not go deeply enough to give us an answer to the riddle. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

In my search for some illumination, I read the legends of Anne Rice and discovered that perhaps Lestat gave up his vampire body, to switch places with Raglan James and become a human because he knew that David Talbot was old and could die and was his only true friend, but David refused to take the dark gift. So, Lestat figured if he gave up his body, even with a $20 million reward for the return of it, that Raglan would not want to give it up and David would be the only one willing to help him, and that perhaps that when they performed the body switching the Raglan, instead of going back into the beautiful tall, tan, body with blonde hair that he had stolen, that he would jump into David’s body, forcing David into the beautiful body because Raglan wanted nothing more than to become a vampire. And posing as David, Ragland could then get this dark gift, and have the power and immortality that he wanted. Raglan was really an old man and had stole the body from a young man and once that man was in his body, he hit in the dead to kill him. So the legend is all about Raglan ending his own torture by trading bodies until he could become immortal. This conclusion to the myth, if you can follow, tells us that the riddle of Prometheus is also connected with the problem of death. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

The same with Adam and Eve. Enraged at their eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God cries out that he is afraid that they will eat of the tree of eternal life and become like one of us. So! Again the riddle has to do with the problem of death, of which eternal life is one aspect. The battle with the gods thus hinges on our own mortality! Creativity is a yearning for immortality. We human beings know that we must die. We have, strangely enough, a word for death. We know that each of us must develop the courage to confront death. Yet we also must rebel and struggle against it. Creativity comes from this struggle—out of rebellion the creative act is born. Creativity is not merely the innocent spontaneity of our youth and childhood; it must also be married to the passion of the adult human being, which is a passion to live beyond one’s death. Michelangelo’s withering, unfinished statues of slaves, struggling in their prisons of marble, are the most fitting symbols for our human condition. Although the higher consciousness may vary in vividness, before settling down to a fixed evenness of quality, it remains permanent at this stage. All problems vanish from one’s mind as though they have never been. One is under no necessity to concern oneself about anything or anyone. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

God in his Heaven and all is well with the World. There is no tormenting situation to be cleared up, no difficult decision to be made, no quest to be followed through drawn-out struggles and personal self-disciplines, and inevitable disappointments. One has now the secret of it all, the blissful state of enlightenment. Hitherto one has been only partially oneself. Now, with this radiant entry into the eternal, one is completely oneself. Now one can speak to others, move in the World, and work out relationships, solely from one’s centre, straight from one’s core: no distortions, no hypocrisies, no insincerities. Here at last is true normality, existence as it was meant to be but is never found to be. One has attained the delight and freedom of spontaneous living. The savage may have it, to, but on a lower level. When the knowledge of the soul is not merely intellectual, however convincing, not only a matter of belief, however firm, but an unchangeable awareness of its ever-present existence, it is true knowledge authentic revelation, and blissful salvation. We move up from being to Being. It is a state which has been attained in its fullness by only a few persons during each century but which has been glimpsed at least once in a lifetime by many more. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

There is another kind of power called integrative and this power is with the other person. My power then abets my neighbor’s power. A European friend of mine, when he was in this country working on his influential ideas and forming them into a book, would offer them for criticism; but the rest of us, rightly understanding how tender ideas can be when they are being born, would politely hold back any negative reaction. However, our friend would regularly react with impatience, protesting: “I want you to criticize me.” By this he meant that if we proposed an antithesis against his thesis, he would be forced to reform his thinking into a new and better synthesis. If opponents of all important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skillful devil’s advocate can conjure up. An audience rarely realizes how valuable its questions are to a speaker after a lecture, for they stimulate and compel one to alter or defend one’s position with renewed insight. I was tempted to call this kind of power cooperative, but I realized it too often beings with the victim having to be coerced into the cooperation. Our narcissism is forever crying out against the wounds of those who would criticize us or point out our weak spots. We forget that the critic can be doing us a considerable favor. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

Certainly criticisms are often painful, and one has to brace one’s self in the face of them. We can slide back into manipulative power (by forcefully silencing the critic) or competitive power (by making the critic look silly). Or we can even protect our thin skins by means of nutrient power (patronizing the critic by implying one is confused and needs our care). However, if we do regress in these ways, we are losing an opportunity for new truth that the questioner, hostile or friendly as the case may be, may well be giving us. I recall my own experience in psychoanalysis. When my analyst would point out something about my character structure which I found painful, I would at first deny it out of hand. However, later on, as realized the truth of the insight, I would have to suffer the pain of changing my character structure according to this new truth. This confession is not as dramatic as it sounds, for everyone I have ever met also react in exactly this way in similar situation. Integrative power, I have said, can lead to growth by Hegel’s dialectic process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. All growth, even that of molecular structures, proceed in this way: there is one body, then there is its anti-body, and growth proceeds by the repulsion or attraction of these two into a new body. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

Integrative power can be used with nonviolent methods on one’s opponents. One way of disarming the opponent is to expose their moral defenses. It weakens their morale and at the same time it works on their conscience. One just does not know how to handle it. No one can deny that this is describing a kind of power. It depends for its success not only on the courage of the nonviolent one, but also upon the moral development and awareness of the persons who are the recipients of the nonviolent power. One must be disciplined and adhere rigidly to nonviolence, it is incontestable that these same methods brought great psychological and spiritual power to bear upon the British rulers. Even if pitted against an entire empire, one can move it with eminent success by one fasting and prayer in a way that never could have been done by military power. It works on the conscience. Nonviolent power depends n memory, which in turn depends on the moral development of the persons against whom this kind of power is directed. The opponent has to live with one’ self, and this puts one in the position of having to remember that he, or she, or they have injured you. There was a judge, who shall remain nameless, who used his power to sentence two men to death. This judge spends his senile years going from person to person trying to explain and justify his act. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

The judge cannot forget, and he cannot integrate his action with his self-image; and the conflict this sets up preys upon him and contributes, if not causes, his senile psychosis. Beings are curious creatures who are afflicted with memory. If one cannot integrate one’s memories into one’s self-image, one must pay for one’s failure by neurosis or psychosis; and one tries, generally in vain, to shake oneself loose from the tormenting memories. Truth exists only as the individual produces it n action. The aim of existential philosophy is so comprehend the human being’s immediate, unfolding situation in the World or, being-in-the-World. Our goal is to clarify the life-designs or experiential perimeters within which we live. What are their shapes, how much freedom, meaning, value and so on do they permit us? How can we optimize them in order to lead fuller, more productive lives? The impetus for existential speculation is almost always a profound crisis. Why else would people ask such poignant questions about who or what they are or where they are head? Such questions are almost invariably a response to individual or collective breakdown—a point at which the old patterns no longer work or lead toward catastrophe. It is precisely this speculation that makes the emergence in the context of crises—points of disruption and alarm—that give existential philosophy its depth. It is precisely complacency against which existential philosophers take their stand. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

Existence is beyond the power of words to define: terms may be used but none of them is absolute. Existence by nothing bred, breeds everything, parent of the Universe. A way of escaping anxiety is to deny its existence. In fact, nothing is done about anxiety in such cases except denying it, that is, excluding it from consciousness. All that appears are the physical concomitants of fear or anxiety, such as shivering, sweating, accelerated heart-beat, choking, vomiting, and in the mental sphere, a feeling of restlessness, of being rushed or paralyzed. We may have all these feelings and physical sensations when we are afraid and are aware of being so; they may also be the exclusive expression of an existing anxiety which is suppressed. In the latter cases al that the individual knows about one’s condition is such outward evidence as the fact that one has to urinate frequently in certain conditions, that one becomes nauseated on trains, that at times one has night-sweats, and always without physical cause. It is also possible, however, to make a conscious denial of anxiety, a conscious attempt to overcome it. This is akin to what happens on the normal level, when it is attempted to get rid of fear by recklessly disregarding it. The most familiar example on the normal level is the soldier who, driven by the impulse to overcome a fear, performs heroic deeds. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

The fact may be noted without reproach and without antagonism, without surprise and without arrogance, that beings are the victims of the very institutions they have themselves created and maintained. The individual who refuses to be lost in their mesmerized surrender to the false prestige of these institutions must go forth alone into an arid and empty wilderness, must set oneself apart from the World around one. One has entered a World of being where few beings will be able to follow one. Their lack of understanding will be the bar. One will find that few of one’s kind are settled in this World, a discovery which one may meet either with disappointment or with resignation. The being who is travelling this inner way soon finds and feels its loneliness. One may try to get rid of the feeling by joining a group, but this can give only a partial liberation and, in the end, only a temporary one. However, this loneliness need not be a cause of suffering. Rather one may come to enjoy it. The feeling of being isolated, the sense of walking a lonely path, is true outwardly but untrue inwardly. For there one is companioned by the Overself’s gentle ever-drawing love. One has only to grope within sufficiently to know this for oneself, and to know it with absolute certitude. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

For Beauty is the Beginning of Terror which We are Just Able to Endure!

July 25, 2019 11:02 pm

We took a walk among the tall trees. The freedom, immensity, and longevity of the trees was contrasted with our foreboding about the unmanageability of death. Their height and depth, beauty and sensuality are gateways to the cosmic; they are dimensions that petrify as well as compel. After all, what is our entire World to the stars above? What do they think of our tiny planet, I wondered, full of mad juxtaposition, happenstance, and endless struggle, and the deep crazed civilizations sprawled upon the face of it, and held together not by will or faith or communal ambition but by some dreamy capacity of the World’s millions to be oblivious to life’s tragedies and again and again sink into happiness, just as the passengers of that little ship sank into it—as if happiness were as natural to all beings as hunger or sleepiness or love of warmth and fear of the cold. Examine the part played by mechanical routine and mechanical apparatus in one’s day, from the alarm-clock that wakes one to the radio program that put one to sleep. Instead of adding to one’s burden by recapitulating it, think about how the modern machine civilization is a temporal regularity. From the moment of waking, the rhythm of the day is punctuated by the clock. Irrespective of strain or fatigue, despite reluctance or apathy, the household rises close to its set hour. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15

Tardiness in rising is penalized by extra haste in eating breakfast or in walking to catch the train: in the long run, it may even mean the loss of a job or of advancement in business. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, occur at regular hours and are of definitely limited duration: a million people perform these functions within a very narrow band of time, and only minor provisions are made for those who would have food outside this regular schedule. As the scale of industrial organization grows, the punctuality and regularity of the mechanical regime tend to increase with it: the time-clock enters automatically to regulate the entrance and exit of the worker, while an irregular worker-tempted by the trout in spring streams or ducks on salt meadows—finds that these impulses are as unfavorably treated as habitual drunkenness: if he would retain them, he must remain attached to the less routinized provinces of agriculture. The refractory tempers of work-people accustomed to irregular paroxysm of diligence have indeed been tamed. Under capitalism time-keeping is not merely a means of co-ordinating and interrelating complicated functions: it is also like money an independent commodity with a value of its own. The schoolteacher, the lawyer, even the doctor with one’s schedule of operations conform their functions to a timetable almost as rigorous as that of the locomotive engineer. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15

In the case of childbirth, patience rather than instrumentation is one of the chief requirements for a successful normal delivery and one of the major safeguards against infection in a difficult one. Here the mechanical interference of the obstetrician, eager to resume one’s rounds, has apparently been largely responsible for the current discreditable record of American physicians, utilizing the most sanitary hospital equipment, in comparison with midwives who do not attempt brusquely to hasten the process of nature. While regularity in certain physical functions, like eating and eliminating, may in fact assist in maintaining health, in other matters, like play, pleasures of the flesh, and other forms of recreation the strength of the impulse itself is pulsating rather than evenly recurrent: here habits fostered by the clock or the calendar may lead to dullness and decay. Hence the existence of a machine civilization, completely timed and scheduled and regulated, does not necessarily guarantee maximum efficiency in any sense. Time-keeping established a useful point of reference, and is invaluable for co-ordinating diverse groups and functions which lack any other common frame of acidity. In the practice of an individual’s vocation such regularity may greatly assist concentration and economize. However, to make it arbitrarily rule over human functions is to reduce existence itself to mere time-serving and to spread the shades of the prison house over too large area of conduct. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15

The regularity that produces apathy and atrophy—that acedia which was the bane of monastic existence, as it is likewise of the army—is as wasteful as the irregularity that produces disorder and confusion. To utilize the accidental, the unpredictable, the fitful is as necessary, even in terms of economy, as to utilize the regular: activities which exclude the operations of chance impulses forfeit some of the advantages of regularity. In short: mechanical time is not an absolute. And a population trained to keep to a mechanical time routine at whatever sacrifice to health, convenience, and organic felicity may well suffer from the strain of that discipline and find life impossible without the most strenuous compensations. The fact that pleasures of the flesh in a modern city is limited, for workers in all grades and departments, to the fatigued hours of the day may add to the efficiency of the working life only by a too-heavy sacrifice in personal and organic relations. Not the least of the blessings promised by the shortening of working hours is the opportunity to carry into bodily play the vigor that has hitherto been exhausted in the service of machines. Next to mechanical regularity, one notes the fact that a good part of the mechanical elements in the day are attempts to counteract the effects of lengthening time and space distances. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15

The refrigeration of eggs, for example, is an effort to space their distribution more uniformly than the hen herself is capable of doing: the pasteurization of the milk is an attempt to counteract the effect of the time consumed in completing the chain between the cow and the remote consumer. The accompanying pieces of mechanical apparatus do nothing to improve the product itself: refrigeration merely halts the process of decomposition while pasteurization actually robs the mile of some of its value as nutriment. Where it is possible to distribute the population closer to the rural centers where milk and butter and green vegetables are grown, the elaborate mechanical apparatus for counteracting time and space distances may to a large degree be diminished. One might multiply such examples from many departments; they point to a fact about the machine that has not been generally recognized by those quaint apologists for machine-capitalism who look upon every extra expenditure of horsepower and every fresh piece of mechanical apparatus as an automatic net gain in efficiency. I wonder whether the typewriter, the Internet, digital phones, electronic mail, the telephone, social media, and the automobile, though creditable technological achievements have wasted more effort and substance than they have saved, whether they are not to be credited with an appreciable economic loss, because they have increased the pace and the volume of correspondence and communication and travel out of all proportion to the real need. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15

Each improvement in locomotion has increased the area over which people are compelled to move: so that a person who would have to spend half an hour to walk to work a century ago must still spend half an hour reach one’s destination, because the contrivance that would have enabled one to save time had one remained in one’s original situation now—by driving one to a more distant residential area—effectually cancels out the gain. One further effect of our closer time co-ordination and our instantaneous communication must be noted here: broken time and broken attention. The difficulties of transport and communication before 1850 automatically acted as a selective screen, which permitted no more stimuli to reach a person than one could handle: a certain urgency was necessary before one received a call from a long distance or was compelled to make a journey oneself: this condition of slow physical locomotion kept intercourse down to a human scale, and under definite control. Nowadays this screen has vanished: the remote is as close as the near; the ephemeral is as emphatic as the durable. While the tempo of the say has been quickened by instantaneous communication the rhythm of the day has been broken: the radio, the telephone, the daily newspaper clamor for attention, and amid the host of stimuli to which people are subjected, it becomes more and more difficult to absorb and cope with it as a whole. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15

The common being is as subject to these interruptions as the scholar or the being of affairs, and even the weekly period of cessation from familiar tasks and contemplative reverie, which was one of the great contributions of Western religion to the discipline of the personal life, has become an ever remoter possibility. These mechanical assistance to efficiency and cooperation and intelligence have been mercilessly exploited, through commercial and political pressure: but so far—since unregulated and undisciplined—they have been obstacles to the very ends they affect to further. We have multiplied the mechanical demands without multiplying in any degree our human capacities for registering and reacting intelligently to them. With the successive demands of the outside World so frequent and so imperative, without any respect to their real importance, the inner World becomes progressively meager and formless: instead of active selection there is passive absorption ending in the state happily described as addled subjectivity. This could produce anxiety. An element in anxiety is its apparent irrationality. To allow any irrational factors to control them is for some persons more intolerable than for others. It is particularly hard to endure for those who secretly feel in danger of being swamped by irrational contrasting forces within themselves, and who have automatically trained themselves to exercise a strict intellectual control. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15

Thus they will not consciously tolerate any irrational elements. Besides containing individual motivations this latter reaction involves a cultural factor, inasmuch as our culture places great stress on rational thinking and behavior and regard irrationality, or what may appear as such, as inferior. To a certain extent connected wit this is the last element in anxiety: by its very irrationality anxiety presents an implicit admonition that something within us is out of gear, and therefore it is a challenge to overhaul something within ourselves. Not that we consciously take it as a challenge; but implicitly it is one, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. None of us likes such a challenge; it may be said that we are opposed to nothing so much as to the realization that we must change some attitude of our own. The more hopelessly, however, a person feels trapped in the intricate network of one’s fear an defense mechanism, and the more one has to cling to one’s delusion that one is right and perfect in everything, the more one instinctively rejects any—even if it is only indirect or implicit—insinuation of something wrong in oneself and any need to change. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15

In our culture there are four main ways of escaping anxiety: rationalize it; deny it; narcotize it; avoid thoughts, feelings, impulses and situations which might arouse it. One method—rationalization—is the best explanation for evasion of responsibility. It consists in turning anxiety into a rational fear. If the psychic value of such a shift is disregarded we might imagine that not much is changed by it. The over-solicitous mother is in fact just as concerned about her children, regardless of whether she admits to having anxiety or whether she interprets her anxiety as a justified fear. One can any number of times, however, make the experiment of telling such a mother that her reaction is not a rational fear but an anxiety, implying that it is disproportionate to the existing danger and involves personal factors. In response she will refute this insinuation and will put all her energy into proving you entirely wrong. Did Stephanie not catch this infectious disease in the nursery? Did Mike not break his leg climbing trees? Has not a man tried not recently to lure children by promising them candy in Midtown Sacramento? Is her own behavior not entirely dictated by affection and duty? Whenever we meet such a vigorous irrational attitudes we may be sure that the attitude defended has important functions for the individual. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15

Instead of feeling a helpless pray to her emotions, such a mother feels she can actively do something about the situation. Instead of recognizing a weakness she can feel proud of her high standards. Instead of admitting that irrational elements pervade her attitude she feels entirely rational and justified. Instead of seeing and accepting a challenge to change something within herself she can go on shifting the responsibility to the outside World and thereby escape facing her own motivations. Of course she has to pay the price for these momentary advantages by never getting rid of her worries. Particularly do the children have to pay the price. However, she does not realize that, and in the last analysis she does not want to realize it, because deep down she clings to the delusion that she can change nothing within herself and yet manage to have all the benefits that would ensure from a change. The same principle holds true for all tendencies to believe that anxiety is a rational fear, whatever its content may be: fear of childbirth, of low-income housing, of diseases, of errors in diet, or your retirement check being stolen, of catastrophes, of impoverishment. We will discuss the other aspects of anxiety in future sessions. Nonetheless, sometimes anxiety is a story about our most instructive liberation because thy take our cray condition (within the boundless) seriously. Anxiety harkens to that “something more” that sustains even as it alarms. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is whether life is or is not worth living. When I consider the short duration of my life, I am terrified and wonder that I am here rather than there now rather than then. This is an attempt to understand the fundamental conditions of human existence to propose response-able, that is, thoughtful, deeply searching responses to those conditions. Sometimes we attract the same types of people in our lives and want desperately to escape from them and that represents a total giving over to their infinitude axis. With increasing degrees of identification and mergence, one will discover the chaos that buttresses that link. One may discover that a thorough surrender has no linguistic or cultural context within which to orient oneself, no consoling appeals, but is an absurd harrowing spin. By desperately trying to make someone into person you find fascinating, one will discover that this is a totally different being, and it will eventually drag one into cynicism and despair. When one overcomes dazzlement, the price is despair. The way to resolve the situation is for the part to realize that one has gone too far and that the limited World of flaws and foibles must be addressed. The former person may have loved you. The latter person may have inspired you, but overwhelmed you. This means it is time to search anew. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15

The implication is that one is caught between the banal (limited), and the fanatical (transcendent). The problem is that neither of these experiences was very fulfilling. The banal is oppressive and the fanatical is disorienting. Indeed, both are reactions to one another. The banal is a defense against the intensity of the fanatical, and the fanatical, is a defense against the devitalization of the banal. When a person has to beg and plead for you to move on and leave that alone, that is very sad. That means they feel your presence is intolerable, overpowering, and dangerous. It seals off the deeper wisdom of human history. In ancient Greek civilization, there is the myth of Prometheus, a Titan living on Mount Olympus, who saw that human beings were without fire. His stealing fire from the gods and giving it to humankind is taken henceforth by the Greeks as the beginning of civilization, not only in cooking and in the weaving of textiles, but in philosophy, science, drama, an in culture itself. However, the important point is that Zeus was outraged. He decreed that Prometheus be punished by being bound to Mount Caucasus, where a vulture was to come each morning and eat away his liver which would grow again at night. This element in the legend, incidentally, is a vivid symbol of the creative process. How we treat others is how we will be treated. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15

The two schools of thought, one of which says that spiritual attainment depends on self-effort and the other that it depends wholly upon the Grace of God, do not really clash, if their claims are correctly and impartially understood. When a being begins one’s spiritual quest, it is solely by one’s own strivings that one makes one’s initial progress. The time comes, however, when this process seems to stop and when one seems to stagnate. One has to come to the end of a stage which was really a preparatory one. The stagnation indicates that the path of self-effort is no longer sufficient and that one must now enter upon the path of reliance upon Grace. This is because in the earlier stage, the Ego was the agent for all one’s spiritual activities, whilst it provided the motives which impelled one into these activities. However, the Ego can never be really sincere in desiring its own destruction, nor can it ever draw from its own resources the power to rise above itself. So it must reach this point where it ceases self-effort and surrenders itself to the higher power which may be variously named God or the Higher Self, and relies on that power for further progress. However, because the aspirant is living in a human form, the higher power can reach one best through finding a living outlet which is also in a human form. So it bestows grace upon one partly as a reward and partly as a consequence of one’s own preparatory efforts by leading one to such an outlet, which is none other than a Master or Guide in the flesh. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15

No being is wholly saved by own’s own effort alone. If one fails to make effort, nor can any Master save one. Thus, if introduced at the proper stage, the claims of both schools are correct. There is little place today as ever for the spiritual individualist, the being who can betray oneself and deny truth for the sake of peaceably steeling down in one of society’s organized groups or established institutions. The climate is hostile to one. One must remain a lone thinker, self-exiled, paying a price but getting one’s money’s worth. The independent mind which does not wish to commit itself to any creed or group or cult must accept its loneliness as the price of its independence. Nutrient power is perhaps best illustrated by the normal parents care for his or her children. It is a form of power not only because the child, in one’s younger years, needs our effort and attention, but all our lives we get pleasure out of exerting ourselves from time to time for the sake of the other. Obviously a good deal of this kind of power is necessary and valuable in relations with friends and loves ones. It is the power that is given by one’s care for the other; we wish one well. At its best, teaching is a good example. Statesmanship, again, at its best, also shows element of nutrient power. This is expressed in the projection of the political leader of parental images (the czar as “Little Father”; the “father image” given to the American president). #RandolphHarris 14 of 15

Nutrient power comes out of a concern for the welfare of the group for which the statesman carries responsibility. It is the constructive aspect of political and diplomatic power. Such a person will claim no essential superiority over other beings; on the contrary, one will plainly admit that they, too, may attain the same state of inspiration which one possess. President Trump confessed, repeatedly, “I am only a human being like unto yourselves. However, revelations are made to me and I want to eliminate poverty and make America better than it has ever been.” An utterly honest appraisal of what enlightenment and liberation really are both in experience and idea is still needed. Is it given to any human being to express one’s higher self constantly and without interruption of one’s ego? There is a sphere about which the most confused ideas exist or else it has been entirely misunderstood. Enlightenment is both a bestowal by grace and achievement by self. Enlightening, philosophically found, is both an experience and an understanding. It is a state attained by very few and only after a great struggle. Awareness is not enough to describe full enlightenment. Knowingness includes it but goes farter and is hence a better term. There is in one now a translucency of mind which gives all things, all persons, all events, a deeper diviner significance. Life henceforth has a wonderful and beautiful meaning. “Yea, Lord, I know that thou speakest the truth, for thou art a God of truth, and canst not lie,” reports Ether 3.12. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15

Randolph Harris II International Institute