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Nobody Does it Without Carrying Scars in One’s Soul One’s Whole Life
I was enchanted by the World of rock music—the way the singers could scream of good and evil, proclaim themselves angels of devils, and mortals would stand up and cheer. Sometimes they seemed the pure embodiment of madness. And yet it was technologically dazzling, the intricacy of their performance. It was barbaric and cerebral in a way that I do not think the World of ages past has ever seen. Also there was something vampiric about rock music. It must have sounded supernatural even to those who do not believe in the supernatural. I mean the way the electricity could stretch a single note forever; the way harmony could be layered upon harmony until you felt yourself dissolving in the sound. So eloquent of dread it was, this music. The World just did not have it in any form before. Since personal freedom is a venture down paths we have never traversed before, we can never know ahead of time how the venture will turn out. We leap into the future. Where will we land? With freedom one experiences a dizziness, a feeling of giddiness, a sense of vertigo, giddiness, dread—are expressions of the anxiety that accompanies freedom like its shadow. Sometimes a patient in therapy will wryly smile and say, “When I am mad at you, I think I was better off when I was neurotic—then I could go along in only one groove.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
I say “wryly” because if he really believed this, he would not be in therapy in the first place since the purpose of therapy is precisely to take one out of the rigid grooves, the narrow, compulsive trends, which are blocks to freedom. This gives the person a sense of release. However, it is a freedom that brings anxiety. Anxiety is potentially present whenever we are free; freedom is oriented toward anxiety and anxiety toward freedom. Anxiety is the reality of freedom as a potentiality before this freedom has materialized. For freedom is possibility, and who is to forecast what the end result of any possibility may be? Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor saw this clearly: “Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a mortal and a human in society than freedom. Mortals are tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom one can hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.” Freedom is a burden because it brings anxiety in its wake; and the Grand Inquisitor sought to shield people from the paralyzing aspects of anxiety by robbing them of its positive aspects—chiefly, freedom. Requiring the surrender of their freedom, he removed the stimulus to invent new forms, new styles, new ideas—in short, new possibilities. Now, as he insisted, men and women are “vile, weak creatures,” “slaves by nature,” “base creatures.” He is surely logical: if you take away freedom, you make people into the base, weak, vile salves the Grand Inquisitor describes. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
It is helpful to keep in mind that anxiety, like dizziness, can be both constructive and destructive. The constructive aspect is stimulating and gives one energy and zest; anxiety is a teacher that, since we carry it inwardly, can never be avoided. Anxiety illuminates experiences that we would otherwise run away from. Civilization is the result of anxiety in that cavemen were forced to invent thinking in order to cope with the saber-toothed tiger and the bison and other animals, which were stronger in tooth and nail and would have exterminated the human race. The anxiety that comes with excessive freedom can also be destructive in that it can paralyze us, isolate us, send us into panic; and when repressed, it may lead to cardiac ailments and other psychosomatic illnesses. These two aspects of anxiety are parallel to constructive and destructive stress. If one lives with any sense of adventure, every person must bear constructive stress; but destructive stress is the excessive tension we see on the modern assembly lines which can tear the human being to pieces. This is why personal freedom is fascinating and the most prized of all human conditions. However, because it is inseparable from anxiety, it is dangerous and understandably dreaded at the same time. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
The longer I live and the more I observe in the lives of others, the more numerous becomes the illustrations of higher laws—the factuality of righteousness and the universality of the Quest. This is only as it should be for both are parts of the World-Idea. Thought and action are reflected back by choices and what the consequences of our choices are. They can lead to corruption, or to eternal life. “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live,” reports Deuteronomy 30.19. Everything in life goes exactly according to what is written in God’s Word. There are no exceptions. This is the law that affects everyone, whether a believe or a non-believer. You will reap what you sow. All corruption that is in the World comes from lusts. Let no one make the mistake of separating out the quest from everyday life. It is Life itself! Questers are not a special group, a labeled species, which one does or does not join, but are all humanity. This is not merely a matter for a small elite interested in spiritual self-help. It is a serious truth important to every mortal everywhere. The inability to measure up to these ideals does not carry a stigma. All mortals at this level come to Earth with their imperfections. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
All mortals seek for truth either consciously and deliberately or unconsciously and blindly, but they can seek only according to their capacity and ability, circumstances and preparedness. It is not a question whether questers are happier than non-questers—for that is an individual personal matter: the division itself is an artificial one. The ascent to Consciousness is for all mortals, not for a few only. Humankind is so near to God and yet so far away from God! Every fresh day is a fresh call from God to mortals. “Then he went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. And when his friends heard it, they went out to seize him; for they said, ‘He is beside himself,’” reports Mark 3.19-21. It is there in all, whether it be latent or patent, this impulse in each mortal to improve and better oneself into a person of worth. Ultimately it develops, in this body or a later one, into the aspiration to transcend oneself. The divine soul dwells in every mortal. Therefore, if only one will apply the faculties one possesses, every mortal may find it. “And his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside they sent to him and called him. And a crowd was sitting about him; and they said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you.’ And he answered, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking around on those who sat about him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother,’” reports Mark 3.31-35. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
For most of those who go away to a university to study, it is not the first time that they leave the home of their parents. However, for all of them it is an important step on their own independent way of life. Every step on this road brings them farther away from the place from which they came, the family into which they were born. The first moves towards independence occur very early in life—as exemplified in the story of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple. And none of these moves is without pain and tragic guilt—as indicated in the anxiety of the parents of Jesus and the reproaches they made to him. However, only after Jesus has begun his public activities the depth of the gap between him and his family becomes fully manifest. In the story which we have just read and which is recorded by the three Gospels, Jesus uses the family relations as symbols for a relation of a higher order for the community of those who do the will of God. Something unconditional breaks into the conditional relations of the natural family and creates a community which is as intimate and as strong as the family relations, and at the same time infinitely superior to it. The depth of this gap is emphasized in the attempt of one’s family to seize him and to bring him home because of his extraordinary behavior which makes them believe he is out of his mind. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
And the gap is strongly expressed in Christ’s saying that one who loves father and mother more then him cannot be his disciple, words even sharpened in Luke’s version, where everyone is rejected by one who does not hate father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters—and one’s own life. All these words cut with divine power through the natural relation between the members of the family whenever these relations claim to be ultimates. They cut through the bondage of age-old traditions and conventions and their unconditional claims; they cut through the consecration of the family and ties by sacramental or other laws which make them equal to the ties between those who belong to the new reality in the Christ. The family is no ultimate! The family relations are not unconditional relations. The consecration of the family is not a consecration for the final aim of mortal’s existence. We can imagine the revolutionary character of such sayings in face of the religions and cultures of humankind. We can hardly measure their disturbing character in face of what has happened century after century within the so-called Christian nations—with the support of the Christian churches who could not stand the radical nature of the Christian message in this as in other respects. However, in spite of its radicalism, the Christian message does not request this dissolution of the family. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
The Christian message affirms the family and limits its significance. Each mortal must someday take this quest. This is as certain as the Sun’s rising, for it is not said on high authority that we can live by bread alone? The work of the opening up to one’s inner being, and to its best, not worst, side is both the duty and the destiny for every mortal. One may evade the first and retain the second for a time but cannot do so for all time. What the quester does of one’s own free choice today, the generality of mortals will be obliged to do tomorrow. The hour of awakening must come to every mortal, even if it has to come at the hour of deathl and when it does it will be with utter amazement and stupefaction at best, or else with all the force of an explosive shock. For one is a member of the human species, not the animal one, and shares its destiny. Jesus takes up the prophecy of Micah, that in the last days “brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child, and the children will rise against parents and have them put to death.” It belongs to periods in which the demonic powers get hold of the World, that the family community is turned into its opposite. However, when Jesus uses this prophecy, he adds, “And you will be hated by all for my name’s sake.” The same words which point to the demonic disruption of the family are used to describe its inescapable divine disruption. This is the profound ambiguity of the Biblical teaching. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Now let us look into our own situation. We cannot cut the ties with our family without being guilty. However, the question is: Is it willfulness which demonically disrupts the family communion, or is it the step toward independence and one’s own understanding of the will of God which divinely liberates us from the bondage to our family? We never know the answer with certainty. We must risk tragic guilt in becoming free from father and mother and brothers and sisters. And we know today better than many generations before us what that means, how infinitely difficult it is and that nobody does it without carrying scars in one’s soul one’s whole life. For it is not only the real father or mother or brother or sister from whom we must become free in order to come into our own. It is something much more refined, the image of them, which from our earliest childhood has impregnated our souls. The real father, the real mother may let us go free, although this is by no means the rule in Christian families. However, even if they have the wisdom to do it, their images can prevent us from doing what the will of God is in a concrete situation, namely, to do acts in which love, power, and justice are united. Their image may prevent us from love by subjection to law. It may prevent us from having power by weakening our personal center. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
Their image may also prevent us from exercising justice by blinding us to a concrete situation and its demands. And the same thing happens with the images of brothers and sisters. Although it is easier to become free from them in an external sense, they may hiddenly produce decisions which determine for the worse whole periods of our lives. However, do not mistake me! Opposition and revolt are not yet freedom. They are unavoidable stages on the way to freedom. However, if they are not overcome as much as the early dependence must be overcome, they create another servitude. How can this happen? Certainly, in pathological cases, psychotherapy is needed, as Jesus himself acted as a healer, bodily and mentally. However, more is necessary, namely, the dependence on that which gives ultimate independence, the image of that which makes it possible to hate and to love every life, including our own. No human problem and certainly not the family problem can be solved on a finite level. This is true although we know that even the image of God can be distorted by the images of father and mother, so that its saving power is almost lost. This is the danger of all religion and a serious limit for our religious work. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
However, it is not a limit for God, who again and again break through the images we have made of him, and who has shown in Christ that he is not only father and mother to us, but also child, and that therefore in hum the inescapable conflicts of every family are overcome. The Father who is also child is more than a father as he is more than a child. Therefore we can pray to the Father in Heaven without transferring our hostility against the father image to him. Because God has become child, it is possible for us to say the Our Father. How dissonant the ego sounds! When it issues from tragic lips, tense with come self-contradiction that they try to old back, it can move us to great pity. When it issues from chaotic lips that savagely, heedlessly, unconsciously represents contradiction, it can make us shudder. When the slips are vain and smooth, it sounds embarrassing or disgusting. Those who pronounce the name of God, wallowing in the soul, uncover the shame of the World spirit that has been debased to mere spirituality. The Quest cannot be evaded. In the end all must come to it; otherwise they will be pulled or pushed along it however unwilling or reluctant they may be. More and more people are moving, albeit at a slow pace and with suspicious minds, into mystical teaching—but they are moving. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
Nature is trying to teach mortals to equilibrate themselves. The sooner they learn this lesion, the better for their happiness and success. How beautiful and legitimate the vivid and empathic God sounds! Prayer is our infinite conversation, and the air of conversation is present on all its ways, even before our judges, even in the final hour on Earth. In prayer we actually go out in faith and toward God. Thus, we stand together with the holy Trinity in actuality and are never severed from it. Even solitude cannot spell forsakenness, and when the human World falls silent for one, one his one’s soul say You. How beautiful and legitimate the full armor of God is. It is the pure intercourse with nature. Nature yields to it and speaks ceaselessly with it; she reveals her mysteries to it and yet does not betray her mystery. The soul believers in her and says to the rose: “So it is You”—and at once shares the same actuality with the rose. Hence, when it returns to itself, the spirit of actuality stays with it; the vision of the Sun clings to the blessed eye that recalls its own likeness to the Sun, and the friendship of the elements accompanies mortals into the calm of dying and rebirth. Thus, accepting God as adequate, true, and pure resounds through the ages. And to anticipate and choose an image from the realm of unconditional relation: how powerful, even overpowering, is our Saviour, and how legitimate to the point of being a matter of course! #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
For it is the unconditional relation in which mortals call the soul of the Holy Ghost has become unconditional for one. If detachment ever touches one, it is surpassed by association, and it is from this that one speaks to others. In vain we seek to reduce our spirituality to something that derives its power from itself, nor can we limit our soul to anything that dwells outside us. Both would once again deactualize the actual, the present relations. Everyone can seek God and then become righteous; everyone can say Father and then becomes son or daughter: actuality abides. The multitudes who people our planet will eventually travel the same course that the philosophic aspirant now travels. However, they will do it slowly through the lapse of numerous centuries; they will move lightly, imperceptibly, and without the intense pressures one puts upon oneself. Mortal are made in God’s image in the sense that one latently possesses certain Godlike qualities. However, these have to be developed by evolution which can be meticulous, through the path of normal experience, or swift through Quest. “Never be weary of good works, but be meek and humble in heart; for such shall find rest to their souls,” Alma 37.34. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Time and Growth are Needed Before a Mortal Can Sign that Absolute Commitment of Mind and Life for Which it Asks!
I think he handled the notes much differently from other violinist. And the pauses between the notes—ah, there is where the artistry is possessed! Nicolas bore down on the strings, and I could almost see him against my eyelids, swaying back and forth, his head bowed against the violin as if he meant to pass into the music, and then all sense of him vanished and there was only the sound. The long vibrant notes, and the chilling glissandos, and the violin singing in its own tongue to make every other form of speech seem false. Yet as the song deepened, it became the very essence of despair as if its beauty were a horrid coincidence, grotesquely without a particle of truth. The goal of music and fasting is inner unity. This means hearing but not with the ear; hearing, but not with the understanding; it is hearing with the spirit of God, with your whole being. The hearing that is only in the ears is one thing. The hearing of the understanding is another. However, the hearing of the spirit is not limited to any one faculty, to the ear, or to the mind. Hence, it demands the emptiness of all the faculties. And when the faculties are empty, then the whole being listens. There is then a direct grasp of what is right before you that can never be heard with the ear or understood with the mind. Fasting of the heart empties the faculties, frees you from limitations and from preoccupations. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
Was this what Nicolas believed, what he had always believed when I talked on and on about goodness? Was he making the violin say it? Was he deliberately creating those long, pure liquid notes to say that beauty meant nothing because it came from the despair inside him, and it has nothing to do with the despair finally, because the despair was not beautiful, and beauty was then a horrid irony? I did not know the answer, but the sound went beyond him as it always had. It grew larger than the despair. It fell effortlessly into a slow melody, like water seeking its own downward mountain path. It grew richer and darker still and there seemed something undisciplined and chastening in it, and heartbreaking and vast. I lay on my back on the roof now with my eyes on the stars. Pinpoints of light mortals could not have seen. Phantom clouds. And the raw, piercing sound of the violin coming slowly with exquisite tension to a close. We define freedom as the capacity to pause in the midst of stimuli from all directions, and in this pause to throw our weight toward this response rather than that one. The crucial term, and in some ways the most interesting, is that little word pause. It may seem strange that this word is the important one rather than terms like liberty, independence, spontaneity. And it seems especially strange that a word merely signifying a lack of something, an absence, a hiatus, a vacancy, should carry so much weight. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
In America especially, the word pause refers to a gap, a space yet unfilled, a nothing—or, better yet, a no thing. I was in some silent understanding of the language the violin spoke to me. Beauty was not the treachery some imagine it to be, rather it is an uncharted land where one can make a thousand fatal errors, a wild and indifferent paradise without signpost of evil or good. In spite of all the refinements of civilization that conspired to make art—the dizzying perfection of the string quartet or the sprawling grandeur of Fragonard’s canvases—beauty was savage. It was as dangerous and lawless as the Earth had been eons before mortals had one single coherent thought in their hears or wrote codes of conduct on tablets of gold plates. Beauty was a Savage Garden. Good and evil, those are concepts mortals have made. And better, really, than the Savage Garden. However, maybe deep inside Nicki had always dreamed of a harmony among all things that I had always known was impossible. Nicki had dreamed not of goodness, but of justice. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
The word pause, like the word freedom, seems essentially to signify what something is not rather than what it is. We have seen that freedom is defined almost universally by what it is not—or, in a sentence definition, “Freedom is when you are anchored to nobody or nothing.” Similarly, the past is a time when no thing is happening. Can the word pause give us an answer not only as to why freedom is a negative word, but is also loved as the most affirmative term in our language? This conception of nothingness as somethinhness enabled the philosophers to perceive the integrity of non-being, to name the free space and give us zero. Freedom is experienced in our World in an infinite number of pauses, which turn out not to be negative but to be the most affirmative condition possible. The ultimate paradox is that negation becomes affirmation. Thus, freedom remains the most loved word, the word that thrills us most readily, the condition most desired because it calls forth continuous, unrealized possibilities. And it is so with the pause. The no thing turns out to bespeak a reality that is most clearly something. It is paradoxical that in our lives empty can be full, negative can be affirmative, the void can be where most happens. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
There is something in the Christian message which is opposed to established authority. There is something in the Christian experience which revolts against subjection to even the greatest and holiest experiences of the past. And this something is indicated in the question of Jesus, “Was the baptism of John from God or mortals?” and in his refusal to give an answer! That which makes an answer impossible is the nature of an authority which is derived from God and not mortals. The place where God gives authority to a mortal cannot be circumscribed. It cannot be legally defined. It cannot be put into the fences of doctrines and rituals. It is here, and you do not know where it comes from. You cannot derive it. You must be grasped by it. You must participate in its power. This is the reason why the question of authority never can get an ultimate answer. Certainly there are many preliminary answers. There is no day in our lives in which we do not give, silently or openly, answers to the questions of authority, saying mostly “yes” and sometimes “no.” However, an ultimate answer we cannot give. We only point to a reality, as Jesus does. And this is what our religious leaders could and should do—the churches, and the ministers, and the theologians, and every Christian who acts as a priest to other Christians. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
They all can raise their fingers as Jesus did to John, and as John did to Jesus. We all can point passionately, but not as established authorities, to the Crucified—as does the Baptist, in the tremendous picture by the antiquated painter Matthias Grunewald. There his whole being is in the finger with which he points to the Cross. This is the greatest symbol of which I know for the true authority of the Church and the Bible. They should not point to themselves but to the reality which breaks again and again through the established forms of their authority and through the hardened forms of our personal experiences. And once more we ask: “What does it mean that the question of authority cannot get ultimate answer?” It would sound like a blasphemy if I said, “Because God cannot give an answer.” It would sound not blasphemous but conventional if I said, “Because God is Spirit.” Yet both sentences mean the same. God who is Spirit cannot give an ultimate answer to the question of authority. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
The churches, their leaders and members, often ignore the infinite significance of the words “God is Spirit.” However, the sharp eyes of the enemy see what these words mean. Nietzsche calls the mortal who first said that God is Spirit the first one of those who have killed God. His profound insight into the human soul made it certain to him that a God who is not circumscribed on a definite place, who does not answer definitively the question of authority, cannot be accepted by most human beings. If he were right, we either had to agree with him that there is no God left, or we had to return to a God who tells us a definite answer to the question of authority, and subjects us by Divine order to an established religious authority as the Earthly representative of one’s own Heavenly authority as the Earthly representative of one’s own Heavenly authority. However, this God is not the God who is Spirit. Actually, such a God is the Heavenly image of the Earthly authorities which use him for the consecration of their own power. This God is not the God of whom Jesus speaks in our story. The God who cannot answer the question of ultimate authority because he is Spirit does not remove the preliminary authorities with whom we live our daily lives. God does not deprive us of the protection of those who have more wisdom and power than we have. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
God does not isolate us from the community to which we belong and which is a part of ourselves. However, he dines ultimate significance to all these preliminary authorities, to all those who claim to be images of his authority and who distort God’s authority into the oppressive power of a Heavenly tyrant. The God who does not answer the questions of ultimate authority transforms the preliminary authorities into media and tools of himself—of the God who is Spirit. Parental authority in Heaven, but it is the earliest tool through which the Spiritual qualities of order and self-control and love are mediated to us. Therefore, the parents must be and remain subjects of honor, but not of unconditional authority. Even God whom we call the Father in Heaven cannot answer the ultimate questions of authority. How could the parents? The authority of wisdom and knowledge on Earth is not the consecrated image of the authority of Heavenly omniscience, but it is the tool through which the Spiritual qualities of humility and knowledge and wisdom are mediated to us. Therefore, the wise ones should be honored but not accepted as unconditional authorities. The authorities in community and society, in nation and state, are not consecrated images of Heavenly power and justice, but they are tools through which the Spiritual qualities of mutuality, understanding, righteousness, and courage can be mediated to us. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Therefore, the social authorities should be accepted as guarantees of the external order but not as those which determine the meaning of our lives. The authority of the Church is not consecrated Earthly image of the Heavenly Ruler of the Church, but it is a medium through which the Spiritual substance of our lives is preserved and protected and reborn. Even the authority of Jesus the Christ is not the consecrated image of the mortal who rules as a dictator, but it is the authority of one who is emptied oneself of all authority; it is the authority of the mortal on the Cross. If you say that God is Spirit and that he is manifest on the cross, it is one and the same thing. And you who are fighting against authorities and you who are searching for authorities, listen to the story in which Jesus fights against them and establishes an authority which cannot be established! Here is an answer, namely, that no answer can be given except the one that, beyond all preliminary authorities, you must keep yourselves open to the power of one who is ground and the negation of everything which is authority on Earth and in Heaven! #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
It is easy to understand why so many persons have little faith in such teachings, but it is hard to understand why so few persons take the trouble to investigate them. Most people are too shallow—for which they are not to be blamed, since living itself is a fatiguing job—to be able to mine successfully for Reality, or for Truth, which is the knowledge of reality. It is hard for the moderns to appreciate that are years, when measured against Jesus’ teaching, are often spent in futile activities, hard to understand with the spiritual that they merely exist and do not really live. They bow too quickly before the mystery of life and being, resign further search and enquiry, make no more effort to develop and use their mental and intuitive faculties. Faith and patience are deserted too soon. Quite a number seek understanding of life’s meaning, but few seek a true understanding. Most want a partisan or prejudiced one, an endorsement of inherited ideas or personal satisfactions. Too many are married for life to their personal views: they are not seekers of Truth and are not really willing to learn the New and the True. It is a wrong and yet common notion to believe that one is not in a position to start out on the Quest. The business person pleads one’s business cares, the sinner one’s sins, the antiquated mortal one’s age, and the young person one’s youth as an excuse for failing to make any beginning at all. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
However, is it not the communal life of modern mortals bound to be submerged in the It-World? Consider the two chambers of this life, the economy and the state: are they even thinkable in their present dimensions and ramifications, expect on the basis of a superior renunciation of all immediacy—and even an inexorably resolute repudiation of any alien authority that does not itself have its source in this area? And if the I that experiences and uses holds sway here—in the economy, the I uses opinions and aspirations—is it not precisely to this absolute dominion that we owe the extensive and firm structure of the great objective fabrics in these two spheres? Does not the form-giving greatness of leading state people and business people depend on their way of seeing the human beings with whom they have to deal not as carriers of an inexperienceable You but rather as centers of service and aspirations tat have to be calculated and employed according to their specific capacities? If they refused to add up He + He + He to get an It, and tried instead to determine the sum of You and You and You, which can never be anything else than you, would not their World come crashing down upon them? If not an exchange of form-giving mastery for a puttering dilettantism, and of lucid, powerful reason for murky enthusiasm, what would this come to? #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
And when we turn our eyes from the leaders to the led and consider the fashion of modern work and possession, do we not find that modern developments have expunged almost every trace of a life in which human beings confront each other and have meaningful relationships? It would be absurd to try to reverse this development; and if one could bring off this absurdity, the tremendous precision instrument of this absurdity, the tremendous precision instrument of this civilization would be destroyed at the same time, although this alone makes life possible for the tremendously increased numbers of humanity. Speaker, you speak too late. However, a moment ago you might have believed your own speech; now this is no longer possible. For an instant ago you saw no less than I that the state is no longer led: the strokers still pile up coal, but the leaders merely seem to rule the racing engines. And in this instant while you speak, you can hear as well as I how the machinery of the economy is beginning to hum in an unwonted manner; the overseers give you a superior smile, but death lurks in their hearts. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
They tell you they have adjusted the apparatus to modern conditions; but you notice the henceforth they can only adjust themselves to the apparatus, as long as that permits it. Their spokesperson instruct you that the economy is taking over the heritage of the state; you know that there is nothing to be inherited but the despotism of the proliferating It under which the I, more and more impotent, is still dreaming that it is in command. Only seldom during a lifetime, and that very briefly, will mortals give a thought to these larger features of their existence—to its unreality, to its unreality, to its changeability, and to its mortality. Some people do not succeed n making the self-disciplinary grade which the quest of philosophy calls for. This is because they are more easily distracted from the quest by their personal feelings than they should be. People who live unaware of why they are here consequently live unconcerned with what seem like mere abstractions lacking any utility at all. They could not face truth for they would be embarrassed by the Goddess’s unshrinking gaze. I learned from each thing that I touched. And there were moments when all the color and texture became too lustrous, too overpowering. I wept inwardly. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Justice Without Love is Always Injustice Because it Does Not Do Justice to the Other One, Nor to Oneself, Nor to the Situation in Which We Meet!
I stood on the hilltop in the Moonlight and I tried not to see this paradise. I tried to picture those I loved. Were they gathered still together in that fairy-tale wood of beautiful trees? If only I could see their faces or hear their voices. I looked on these verdant green valley, now patched with beautiful contracted Cresleigh homes, a picture book World with flowers blooming in profusion, the red poinsettia as tall as trees. And the clouds, ever changing, borne like the tall sailing ships on brisk winds. What had the first Europeans thought when they looked upon this fecund land surrounded by the sparkling sea? That this was the Garden of God? Even the most uneducated people would not dare to affirm that compassion, gratitude, love of the beauty of the World, love of religious practices, and friendship belonged exclusively to those centuries and countries that recognize the Church. These forms of love are rarely found in their purity, but it would even be difficult to say that they were met with more frequently in those centuries and countries than in the others. To think that love in any of these forms can exist anywhere Christ is absent is to belittle him so grievously that it amounts to an outrage. It is impious and almost sacrilegious. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
These kinds of love are supernatural, and in a sense they are absurd. They are the height of folly. So long as the soul has not had direct contact with the very person of God, they cannot be supported by any knowledge based either on experience or reason. They cannot therefore rest upon any certainty, unless the word is used in a metaphorical sense to indicate the opposite of hesitation. In consequence it is better that they should not be associated with any belief. This is more honest intellectually, and it safeguards our love’s purity more effectively. On this account it is more fitting. In what concerns divine things, belief is not fitting. Only certainty will do. Anything less than certainty is unworthy of God. During the period of preparation, these indirect loves constitute an upward movement of the soul, a turning of the eyes, not without some effort, toward higher things. After God has come in person, not only to visit the soul as he does for a long time beforehand, but to possess it and to transport its center near to his very heart, it is otherwise. The chicken has cracked its shell; it is outside the egg of the World. These first loves continue; they are more intense than before, but they are different. One who has passed through this adventure has a deeper love than every for those who suffer affliction and for those who help one in one’s own, for one’s friends, for religious practices, and for the beauty of the World. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
However, one’s love in all these forms had become a movement of God himself, a ray merged in the light of God. That at least is what we may suppose. These indirect loves are only the attitude toward beings and things here below of the soul turned toward the Good. They themselves have not any particular good as an object. There is no final good here below. Thus strictly speaking we are no longer concerned with forms of love, but with attitudes inspire by love. In the period of preparation the soul loves in emptiness. It does not know whether anything real answers its love. It may believe that it knows, but to believe is not to know. Such a belief does not help. The soul knows for certain only that it is hungry. The important thing is that it announces its hunger by crying. If we suggest to a child that perhaps there is no bread, the child does not stop crying. It goes on crying just the same. The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry. It can only persuade itself of this by lying, for the reality of its hunger is not a belief, it is a certainty. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
We all know that there is no true good here below, that everything that appears to be good in this World is finite, limited, wears out, and once worn out, leaves necessity exposed in all its nakedness. Every human being has probably had some lucid moments in one’s life when one has definitely acknowledged to oneself that there is no final good here below. However, as soon as we have seen this truth we cover it up with lies. Many people even take pleasure in proclaiming it, seeking a morbid joy in their sadness, without ever having been able to bear facing it for a second. Mortals feel that there is a mortal danger in facing this truth squarely for any length of time. That is true. Such knowledge strikes more surely than a sword; it inflicts a death more frightening than that of the body. After a time it kills everything within us that constitutes our soul. In order to bear it we have to love the truth more than life itself. Those who do this turn away from the fleeting things of time with their souls. They do not turn toward God. When they are in total darkness, how could they do so? God himself sets their faces in the right direction. He does not, however, show himself to them for a long time. It is for them to remain motionless, without averting their eyes, listening ceaselessly, and waiting, they know not for what; deaf to entreaties and threats, unmoved by every shock, unshaken in the midst of every upheaval. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
If after a long period of waiting God allow them to have an indistinct intuition of his light or even reveals himself in person, it is only for an instant. Once more they have to remain still, attentive, inactive, calling out only when their desire cannot be contained. If God does not reveal this reality, it does not rest with the soul to believe in the reality of God. In trying to do so it either labels something else with the name of God, and that is idolatry, or its belief in God remains abstract and verbal. Such a belief prevails wherever religious doctrines are taken for granted, as is the cause with those centuries and countries in which it never enters anyone’s head to question it. The state of nonbelief is then what Saint John of the Cross calls a night. The belief is verbal and does not penetrate the soul. At a time like the present, if the unbeliever loves Go, if one is like the child who does not know whether there is bread anywhere, but cries out become one is hungry, incredulity may be equivalent to the dark night of Saint John of the Cross. When we are eating bread, and even when we have eaten it, we know that it is real. We can nevertheless raise doubts about the reality of bread. Philosophers raise doubts about the reality of the World of the senses. Such doubts are however purely verbal; they leave the certainty intact and actually serve only to make it more obvious to a well-balanced mind. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
In the same way one to whom God has revealed his reality can raise doubts about this reality without any harm. They are purely verbal doubts, a form of exercise to keep one’s intelligence in good health. What amounts to criminal treason, even before such a revelation and much more afterward, is to question the fact that God is the only thing worthy of love. That is a turning away of our eyes, for love is the soul’s looking. It means that we have stopped for an instant to wait and to listen. Queen Akasha did not seek Lestat, she waited for him. When she was convinced that he no longer existed, and that nowhere in the whole World was there anything that could be Lestat, she did not on that account return to her former associates. She drew back from them with greater aversion than ever. She preferred the absence of Lestat to the presence of anyone else. Lestat awakened her from her statue state, from her cold slumber. She no longer hoped for that. However, never for an instant did dream of employing another method which could obtain a luxurious and honored life for her—the method of reconciliation with her kith and kin. Akasha did not want wealth and consideration unless they came with Lestat. She did not even give a thought to such things. However, she wanted to turn Earth into a Heaven. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
At that moment Lestat could hold out no longer. He could not help declaring himself. He gave certain proof that he was Lestat. Akasha saw him, she heard him, she touched him. There would be no more question for her not as to whether her savior was in existence. One who has had the same adventure as Akasha, one whose soul has seen, heard, and touched for itself, one will recognize God as the reality inspiring all indirect loves, the reality of which they are as it were the reflections. God is pure beauty. This is incomprehensible, for beauty, by its very essence, has to do with the senses. To speak of an imperceptible beauty must seem a misuse of language to anyone who has any sense of exactitude: and with reason. Beauty is always a miracle. However, when the soul receives an impression of beauty which, while it is beyond all sense perception is no abstraction, but real and direct as the impression caused by a song at the moment it reached our ears, the miracle is raised to the second degree. Everything happens as though, by a miraculous favor, our very sense themselves had been made aware that silence is not the absence of sound, but something infinitely more real than sounds, and the center of a harmony more perfect than anything which a combination of sounds can produce. Furthermore there are degrees of silence. When compared with the silence of God, there is a silence in the beauty of the Universe which is like noise. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
God is, moreover, our real neighbor. The term of person can only be rightly applied to God, and this is also true of the term impersonal. God is one who bends over us, afflicted as we are, and reduced to the state of being nothing but a fragment of inert and bleeding flesh. Yet at the same time he is not some sort of victim of misfortune as well, the victim who appears to us as an inanimate body, incapable of thought, this nameless victim of whom nothing is known. The inanimate body is this created Universe. If we were able to attain it, the love we owe to God, this love that would be our crowning perfection is the divine model both of gratitude and compassion. God is also the perfect friend. So that there should be between him and us, bridging the infinite distance, something in the way of equality, he had chosen to place an absolute quality in his creatures, the absolute liberty of consent, which leaves us free to follow or swerve from the God-ward direction he has communicated to our souls. He has also extended our possibilities of error and falsehood so as to leave us the faculty of exercising a spurious rule in imagination, not only over the Universe and the human race, but also over God himself, in so far as we do not know how to use his name aright. He has given us this faculty of infinite illusion so that we should have the power to renounce it out of love. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
In fact, contact with God is the true sacrament. We can, however, be almost certain that those whose love of God has caused the disappearance of the pure loves belonging to our life here below are no true friends of God. After the soul has had direct contact with God, our neighbor, our friends, religious ceremonies, and the beauty of the World do not fall to the level of unrealities. On the contrary, it is only then that these things become real. Previously they were half dreams. Previously they had no reality. “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of Heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations, and mortals of every language worshipped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed,” reports Daniel 7.11. Could God possibly forgive people without at least demanding their conversation and some ritual observances? People, at any time, can return and be accepted by God. God can at any time forgive those who repent. Many people say we live in a sick society—and the quality of life might be changed radically by the development of a new sense of community. If every person returns from one’s evil way and from the violence on one’s hands, who knows, God may return. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
Modern mortals are voracious readers who have never learned to read well. Part of the trouble is that one is taught to read drivel that is hardly worth reading well. (There was a time when children learned to read by reading the Bible.) One ends up by reading mainly newspapers and magazines—ephemeral, anonymous trash that one scans on its way to the garbage can. One has no wish to remember it for any length of time; it is written as if to make sure that one will not; and one reads it in a manner that makes doubly sure. There is no person behind what one reads; not even a committee. Somebody wrote it in the first place—if one can call that writing—and then various other people took turns changing it. For the final result no one is responsible; and it rarely merits a serious response. It cries out to be forgotten soon, like the books on which one is learned to read, in school. They were usually anonymous, too; or they should have been. In adolescence students are suddenly turned loose on books worth reading, but generally do not know how to read them. And if, untaught, some instinct prompts them to read well, chances are that they are asked completely tone-deaf questions as soon as they have finished their assignment—either making them feel that they read badly after all or spoiling something worthwhile for the rest of their lives. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
We must learn to feel addressed by a book, by the human being behind it, as if a person spoke directly to us. A good book or essay or poem is not primarily an object to be put to use, or an object of experience: it is the voice of You speaking to me, requiring a response. “So whatever you wish that mortals would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets,” reports Matthew 7.12. Recently I have had to think about the relation of love to justice. And it occurred to me that among the words of Jesus there is a statement of what is called the “Golden Rule.” The Golden Rule was well known to Christians and Greeks, although mostly in a negative form: What you do not want that mortal should do to you, do not so to them. Certainly, the absolute for is richer in meaning and nearer to love, but it is not love. It is calculating justice. How, then, is it related to love? How does it fit the message of the kingdom of God and the justice of the kingdom as expressed in the Sermon on the Mount where the Golden Rule appears? Let us think of an ordinary day in our life and of occasions for the application of the Golden Rule. We meet each other in the morning, we expect a friendly face or word and we are ready to give it although our minds are full of anxious anticipation of the burdens. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
Somebody wants a part of our limited time, we give it, having asked somebody else to give us a part of one’s time. We need help and we give it if we are asked, although it includes sacrifice. We are frank with others, expecting that they will be frank with us even if it hurts. We are fair to those who fight against us expecting fairness from them. We participate in the sorrows of our neighbors, certain that they will participate in ours. All this can happen in one day. All this is Golden Rule. And if somebody has violated this rule, consciously or unconsciously, we are willing to forgive as we hope to be forgiven. It is not astonishing that for many people the Golden Rule is considered as the real content of Christianity. It is not surprising that in the name of the Golden Rule criticism is suppressed, independent action discouraged, serious problems avoided. It is even understandable that statesmen ask other nations to behave toward their own nations according to the Golden Rule. And does not Jesus himself say that the Golden Rule is the law and the prophets? However, we know that this is not the answer of the New Testament. The great commandment as Jesus repeats it and the descriptions of love in Paul and John’s tremendous assertion that God is love, infinitely transcend the Golden Rule. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
The Golden Rule must be transcended, for it does not tell us what we should wish that mortal would do to us. We wish to have freedom from heavy duties. We are ready to give the same freedom to others. However, someone who loves us refuses to give it to us, and one oneself refuses to ask us for it. And if one did, we should refuse to give it to one because it would reduce our growth and violate the law of love. We wish to receive a fortune which makes us secure and independent. We would be ready to give a fortune to a friend who asks us for it, if we had it. However, in both cases love would be violated. For the gift would ruin us and the other individual. We want to be forgiven and we are ready to do the same. However, perhaps it is in both cases an escape from the seriousness of a personal problem, and therefore against love. The measure of what we shall do to mortals cannot be our wishes about what they shall do to us. For our wishes express not only our right but also our wrong and our foolishness more than our wisdom. This is the limit of the Golden Rule. This is the limit of calculating justice. Only for one who knows what one should wish and who actually wishes it, is the Golden Rule ultimately valid. Only love can transform calculating justice into creative justice. Love makes justice just. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
Justice without love is always injustice because it does not do justice to the other one, nor to the oneself, nor to the situation in which we meet. For the other one and I and we together in this moment in this place are unique, unrepeatable occasion, calling for a unique unrepeatable act of uniting love. If this call is not heard by listening love, it is not obeyed by the creative genius of love, injustice is done. And this is true even of oneself. One who loves listens to the call of one’s own innermost center and obeys this call and does justice to one’s own being. For love does not remove, it establishes justice. It does not add something to what justice does but it shows justice what to do. It makes the Golden Rule possible. For we do not speak for a love which swallows justice. This would result in chaos and extinction. However, we speak for a love in which justice is the form and structure of love. We speak for a love which respects the claim of the other one to be acknowledged as what one is, and the claim of ourselves to be acknowledged as what we are, above all as persons. Only distorted love, which is a cover for hostility or self-disgust, denies that which united love. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
Love makes justice just. The divine love is justifying love accepting and fulfilling one who, according to calculating justice, must be rejected. This justification of one who is unjust is the fulfillment of God’s creative justice, and of God’s reuniting love. Knowing that the ultimate meaning of freedom will elude us, let us still endeavor to define the term as best we can. The first definition is on the psychological level, the domain of everyday actions: Freedom is the capacity to pause in the face of stimuli from many directions at once and, in this pause, to throw one’s weight toward this response rather than that one. This is the freedom we experience in a store when we pause over the purchase of a necktie or a shirt. We summon up in our imaginations the image of how we will look in this or that tie, what so-and-so will say about it, or how the color will fit such and such a suit. And then we buy the tie or we move on to something else. This is freedom of doing, or existential freedom. This freedom is shown most interestingly in the supermarket, when we push our carts through the aisles between the tumultuous variety of packages and cans of food on the shelves, each one silently shouting through its bright-colored label “Buy me!” We see the shoppers with expressions of hesitancy, vacuity, wonder, pausing for some inspiration as to which of all these foods will be good for dinner tonight. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
The shopper seems hypnotized, charmed, preoccupied. Like patients on a ward in a mental hospital, they do not see me as I walk directly across their line of vision. The expressions of wonder and hesitancy are a readiness, an invitation, an openness to some stimulus on the shelves to persuade them to throw the balance this way of that in making their choice. This first freedom is experienced by each of us hundreds of times every day. It is decked up in respectable terms like decision/choice when we discuss freedom in psychology classes—if we ever discuss freedom in psychology classes at all. The most profound illustration of this kind of freedom is our ability to ask questions. Take, for example, my asking a question after listening to a lecture. The very fact that the question comes up in my mind at all implied that there is more than one answer. Otherwise there would be no point in asking the question in the first place. This is freedom; it implies that there is some possibility, some freedom of selection in what I ask. The speaker then pauses for a few seconds after I have asked it, turning over in his or her mind the possible answers. We sense that there is, in asking and answering questions, a good deal more going on, and it is of a richer nature, than the mere responding to various stimuli and selecting a response. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
Each person who lights this candle within one’s own mind will soon begin to attract other mortals like moths to a flame burning by a fire—not all mortal nor many mortals but only those who are groping for a way out of their darkness. Can a scrupulously impartial search through World-thought and experience lead to discovery of truth? “Wilt thou be made whole?” asked Jesus. Questioning implies some value judgment, some investment of the person’s life, some invitation to share, to make contact, some challenge to consider a new idea. Regrettably, in recent decades our very idea of freedom has been diminished and grown shallow in comparisons with previous ages; it has been relegated almost exclusively to freedom from outside pressure, to freedom from state coercion—to freedom understood on the juridical level, and no higher. Only when this search for a higher life has becomes an absolute necessity to a mortal, has one found even the first qualification needed for the Quest. “And the Lord God doth work by means to bring about his great and eternal purposes; and by very small means the Lord doth confound the wise and bringeth about the salvation of many souls,” reports Alma 37.7. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
It is a Rare Gift to Meet a Human Being in Whom Love—and this Means God—is so Overwhelmingly Manifest!
All right. I allowed myself to be taken along. White marble tile, carved gold fixtures; and ancient Roman splendor. Time is important because, although we are eternal beings, we are not going to be able to enjoy the pleasures of being in the flesh and on this Earth forever, and you may miss it, even when you go to Heaven. Nevertheless, we know and believe the love God has for us. “God is love, and one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in one,” reports 1 John 4.16. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this, if you have love for one another, all mortals will know that you are my disciples,” reports John 13.34-35. After two thousand years are we still able to realize what it means to say, “God is Love”? The writer of the First Epistle of John certainly knew what he wrote, for he drew the consequences: “One who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in one.” God’s abiding in us, making us his dwelling place, is the same thing as our having love as the sphere of our habitation. God and love are not two realities; they are one. God’s Being is the being of love and God’s infinite power of Being is the infinite power of love. Therefore, one who professes devotion to God may abide in God if one abides in love, or one may not abide in God if one does not abide in love. And one who does not speak of God may abide in him if one is abiding in love. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
And since the manifestation of God as love is his manifestation in Jesus Christ, Jesus can say that many of those who do not know him, belong to him, and that many of those who confess their allegiance to him do not belong to him. The criterion, the only ultimate criterion, is love. For God is love, and the divine love is triumphantly manifest in Christ the Crucified. Let me tell you the story of a woman who passed away a few years ago and whose life was spent abiding in live, although she rarely, if ever, used the name of God, and though she would have been surprised had someone told her that she belonged to him who judges all mortals, because he is love and love is the only criterion of his judgment. Her name was Elsa Brandstrom, the daughter of a former Swedish ambassador to Russia. However, her name in the mouths and hearts of hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war during the First World War was the Angel of Siberia. She was an irrefutable, living witness to the truth that love is the ultimate power of Being, even in a century which belongs to the darkest, most destructive and cruel of all centuries since the dawn of humankind. At the beginning of the First World War, when Elsa Brandstorm was twenty-four years of age, she looked out the window of the Swedish Embassy in what was then Saint Petersburg and saw the Germany prisoners of war being driven through the streets on their way to Siberia. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
From that moment on, after what she had seen, Elsa could no longer endure the splendor of the diplomatic life of which, up to then, she had been a beautiful and vigorous center. She became a nurse and began visiting the prison camps. There she saw unspeakable horrors and she, a girl of twenty-four, began, almost alone, the fight of love against cruelty, and she prevailed. She had to fight against the resistance and suspicion of the authorities and she prevailed. She had to fight against the brutality and lawlessness of the prison guards and she triumphed. She had to fight against cold, hunger, dirt and illness, against the conditions of an undeveloped country and a destructive war, and she prevailed. Love gave her wisdom with innocence, and daring with foresight. And whenever she appeared despair was conquered and sorrow healed. Elsa visited the hungry and gave them food. She saw the thirsty and have them to drink. She welcomed the unknown, clothed the people in their birthday suits and strengthened the sick. Elsa herself fell ill and was imprisoned, but God was abiding in her. The irresistible power of love was with her. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
And she never ceased to be driven by this power. After the war Elsa initiated a great work for the orphans of Germany and Russian prisoners of war. The sight of her among these children whose sole ever-shinning Sun she was, must have been a decisive religious impression for many people. With the coming of the Nazis, she and her husband were forced to leave Germany and come to this country. Here she became the helper of innumerable European refugees, and for ten years I was able personally to observe the creative genius of her love. We never had a theological conversation. It was unnecessary. Elsa made God transparent in every moment. For God, who is love, was abiding in her and she in the Lord. She aroused the love of millions towards herself and towards that for which she was transparent—the God who is love. On her deathbed Else received a delegate from the king and people of Sweden, representing innumerable people all over European, assuring her that she would never be forgotten by those whom she had given back the meaning of their lives. It is a rare gift to meet a human being in whom love—and this means God—is so overwhelmingly manifest. It undercuts theological arrogance as well as pious isolation. It is more than justice and it is greater than faith and hope. It is the presence of God himself. For God is love. And in every moment of genuine love we are dwelling in God and God in us. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Attitude is an important part of the foundation upon which we build a productive life. In appraising our present attitude, we might consider what is necessary. There are many degrees of necessity. Everything is necessary in some degree if its loss really causes a decrease of vital energy. (This word is here used in the strict and precise sense that it might have if the study of vital phenomena were as far advanced as that of falling bodies.) When the degree of necessity is extreme, deprivation leads to death. This is the case when all the vital energy of one being is bound up with another by some attachment. In the lesser degrees, deprivation leads to a more or less considerable lessening of energy. Thus a total deprivation of food causes death, whereas a partial deprivation only diminishes the life force. Nevertheless, if a person is not to be weakened, the necessary quantity of food is considered to be that required. The most frequent cause of necessity in the bonds of affection is a combination of sympathy and habit. As in the case of avarice or drunkenness, that which was at first a search for some desired good is transformed into a need by the mere passage of time. The difference from avarice, drunkenness, and all the vices, however, is that in the bonds of affection the two motives—search for a desired good, and need—can very easily coexist. They can also be separated. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
When the attachment of one being to another is made up of need and nothing else it is a fearful thing. Few things in this World can reach such a degree of ugliness and horror. Whenever a human being seeks what is good and only find necessity, there is always something horrible. The stories that tell of a beloved being who suddenly appears with a death’s head best symbolize this. The human soul possesses a whole arsenal of lies with which to put up a defense against this ugliness and, in imagination, to manufacture sham advantages where there is only necessity. It is for this very reason that ugliness is an evil, because it conduces to lying. Speaking quite generally, we might say that there is affliction whenever necessity, under no matter what form, is imposed so harshly that the hardness exceeds the capacity for lying of the person who receives the impact. That is why the purest souls are the most exposed to affliction. For one who is capable of preventing the automatic reaction of defense, which tends to increase the soul’s capacity for lying, affliction is not an evil, although it is always a wounding and in a sense a degradation. When a human being is attached to another by a bond of affection which contains any degree of necessity, it is impossible that one should wish autonomy to be preserved in one’s self and the other. It is impossible by the miraculous of nature. It is, however, made possible by the miraculous intervention of the supernatural. This miracle is friendship. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Friendship is an equality made of harmony. There is harmony because there is a supernatural union between two opposites, that is to say, necessity and liberty, the two opposites God combined when he created the World and men. There is equality because each wishes to preserve the faculty of free consent both in oneself and in the other. When anyone wishes to put oneself under a human being or consents to be subordinated to one, there is no trace of friendship. The Queen of the Damn’s Maharet is not the friend of Queen Akasha. There is no friendship where there is inequality. A certain reciprocity is essential in friendship. If all good will is entirely lacking on one of the two sides, the other should suppress one’s own affection, out of respect for the free consent which one should not desire to force. If on one of the two sides there is not any respect for the autonomy of the other, this other must cut the bond uniting them out of respect for oneself. In the same way, one who consents to be enslaved cannot gain friendship. However, the necessity contained in the bond of affection can exist on one side only, and in this case there is only friendship on one side, if we keep to the strict and exact meaning of the word. If only for a moment, a friendship is tarnished as soon as necessity triumphs, over the desire to preserve the faculty of free consent on both sides. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
In all human things, necessity is the principle of impurity. If even a trace of the wish to please or the contrary desire to dominate is found in it, all friendship is impure. In a perfect friendship these two desires are completely absent. The two friends have fully consented to be two and not one, they respect the distance which the fact of being two distinct creatures places between them. Mortals have the right to desire direct union with God alone. Friendship is a miracle by which person consent to view from a certain distance, and without coming any nearer, the very being who is necessary to one as food. It requires the strength of the soul that Eve did not have; and yet she had no need of the fruit. If she had been hungry at the moment when she looked at the fruit, and if in spite of that she had remained looking at it indefinitely without taking one step toward it, she would have performed a miracle analogous to that of perfect friendship. Through this supernatural miracle of respect for human autonomy, friendship is very like the pure forms of compassion and gratitude called forth by affliction. In both cases the contraries which are the terms of the harmony are necessity and liberty, or in other words subordination and equality. These two pairs of opposites are equivalent. From the fact that the desire to please and the desire to command are not found in pure friendship, it has it in, at the same time as affection, something not unlike a complete indifference. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Although friendship is a bond between two people it is in a sense impersonal. It leaves impartiality intact. It in no way prevents us from imitating the perfection of our Father in Heaven who freely distributes Sunlight and rain in every place. On the contrary, friendship and this distribution are the mutual conditions one of the other, in most cases at any rate. For, as practically every human being is joined to others by bounds of affection that have in them some degree of necessity, one cannot go toward perfection except by transforming this affection into friendship. Friendship has something universal about it. It consists of loving a human being as we should like to be able to love each soul in particular of all those who go to make up the human race. As a geometrician looks at a particular figure in order to deduce the universal properties of the triangle, so one who knows how to love directs upon a particular human being a universal love. The consent to preserve an autonomy within ourselves and in others is essentially of a universal order. As soon as we wish for this autonomy to be respected in more than just one single being we desire it for everyone, for we cease to arrange the order of the World in a circle whose center is here below. We transport the center of the circle beyond the Heavens. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
If the two beings who love each other, through an unlawful use of affection, think they form only one, friendship does not have this power. However, then there is not friendship in the true sense of the word. That is what might be called an adulterous union, even though it comes about between husband and wife. There is not friendship where distance is not kept and respected. The simple fact of having pleasure in thinking in the same way as the beloved being, or in any case the fact of desiring such an agreement of opinion, attacks the purity of the friendship at the same time as its intellectual integrity. It is very frequent. However, at the same time pure friendship is rare. When the bonds of affection and necessity between human beings are not supernaturally transformed into friendship, not only is the affection of an impure and low order, but it is also combined with hatred and repulsion. That is shown very well in The Queen of the Damned and in Romeo Must Die. The mechanism is the same in affections other than carnal love. It is easy to understand this. We hate what we are dependent upon. We become disgusted with what depends on us. Sometimes affection does not only become mixed with hatred and revulsion; it is entirely changed into it. The transformation may sometimes even be almost immediate, so that hardly any affection has had time to show; this is the case when necessity is laid bare almost at once. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
When the necessity which brings people together has nothing to do with the emotions, when it is simply due to circumstances, hostility often makes it appearance from the start. When Christ said to his disciples: “Love one another,” it was not attachment he was laying down as their rule. As it was a fact that there were bounds between them due to the thoughts, the life, and the habits they shared, he commanded them to transform these bonds into friendship, so that they should not be allowed to turn into impure attachment or hatred. Since, shortly before his passing into Heaven, Christ gave this as a new commandment to be added to the two great commandments of the love of our neighbor and the love of God, we can think that pure friendship, like the love of our neighbor, has in it something of a sacrament. Christ perhaps wished to suggest this with reference to Christian friendship when he said: “Where there are two or three gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them.” Pure friendship is an image of the original and perfect friendship that belongs to the Trinity and is the very essence of God. It is impossible for two human beings to be one while scrupulously respecting the distance that separates them, unless God is present in each of them. The point at which parallels meet is infinity. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
The Greeks were an eminently visual people. They gloried in the visual arts; Homer’s epics abound in visual details; and they created tragedy and comedy, adding new dimensions to visual art. The Hebrews were not so visual and actually entertained a prohibition against the visual arts. Neither did they have tragedies or comedies. The one book of the Bible that has sometimes been called a tragedy, Job, was clearly not intended for, and actually precluded, any visual representation. The Greeks wanted God to be a friend, they visualized their gods and represented them in marble and in beautiful vase paintings. They also brought them on the stage. The Hebrews did not visualize their God and expressly forbade attempts to make of him an object—a visual object, a concrete object, any object. Their God was not to be seen. He was to be heard and listened to. He was not an It but an I—or a You. Christianity was born of the denial that God could not possibly be seen. Not all who considered Jesus a great teacher became Christians. Christians were those for whom he was the Lord. Christians were those who believed that God could become visible, an object of sight and experience, of knowledge and belief. Of course, Christianity did not deny its roots in Judaism. Jesus as the Son of God who had ascended to the Heavens to dwell there with God, as God, did not simply become another Heracles, the son of Zeus who had ascended to the Heavens to dwell there with the gods, as a god. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Jesus did not simply become another of the legion of Greek gods and demigods and sons of Zeus. He had preached and was to be heard and listened to. His moral teachings were recorded lovingly for the instruction of the faithful. However, were they really to be listened to? Or did they, too, become objects—of admiration and perhaps discussion? Was the individual to feel addressed by them, commanded by them—was he able to relate his life to them? The new dispensation was hardly that. The New Testament keeps saying, nowhere more emphatically than in the Gospel according to John, that those who only live by Jesus’s moral teaching shall not enter the kingdom of Heaven; only those can be saved who are baptized, who believe, and who take the sacraments—eating, as that Gospel puts it, “of this bread.” Of course, Christian belief is not totally unlike Jewish belief. It is not devoid of trust and confidence, and in Paul’s and Luther’s experience of faith these Jewish elements were especially prominent. Rarely have they been wholly lacking in Christianity. Still, this Jewish faith was never considered sufficient to some. Christian faith was always centered in articles of faith that had to be believed by those who wanted to be saved. When the Reformation did away with visual images, it was only to insist more firmly on the purity of doctrines that must be believed. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
However, may love the beautiful stained-glass windows, which communicate stores to those who are visual learners. And for Luther the bread and wine were no mere symbols of Christ’s flesh and blood—otherwise he might have made common cause with Ulrich Zwingli and presented the splintering of Protestantism—but the flesh and blood itself: God as an object. People sometimes wonder, is there some particular purpose in my birth here? Is it all ere coincidence? Must we doubt, deny, even reject God? These are some of the questions a thoughtful mortal might ask. If one is to moan over the length of the road opening out before one, one should also jubilate over the fact that one has begun to travel it. How few care to take this step! If some are immediately and irrevocably captured by the teachings, others are only gradually and cautiously convinced. Those who feel an emptiness in their hearts despite Worldly attainment and possession may be unconsciously yearning for God. So many of us place so much value in possessions, yet we overlook the startling fact that we have not begun to possess ourselves! What mortal can call one’s essential self? Can we build a bridge between this sorrowful Earthly life and the peaceful eternal life? Are the two forever sundered? Every seer, sage, and saint answers the first question affirmatively and the second negatively. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
The echoes of our spiritual being some to us all the time. They come in thoughts and things, in music and pictures, in emotions and words. If only we would take up the search for their source and trace them to it, we would recognize in the end the Reality, Beauty, Truth, and Goodness behind all the familiar manifestations. Those who can no longer confine their thinking within the conventional boundaries of common experience may cross over into religion’s reverent faith, into Christianity’s deep-felt intuition, or into philosophy’s final certitude. Whoever perceives the inferiority of one’s environment to what it could be, as well as the imperfections of one’s nature in the light of its undeveloped possibilities, and who sets out to improve the one and amend the other, has taken a first step to the quest. It is better to come late to the higher life with its nobler values and uplifting practices, than not at all. It is still better to come to it when one is comparatively young and foundations are being laid. They will be fortunate indeed if their spiritual longings are satisfied without the passage of many years and the travail of much exploration. They will be fortunate indeed if pitying friends do not repeatedly tell them with each change and each disappointed pulling-up of tents that they are pursing a mirage. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Those who have found their way to this Path leave forever behind them their aimless wanderings of the past. One fateful day, one will ruefully realize that one is octopus-held by external activities. Then will one take up the knife of a keen relentless determination and cut the imprisoning tentacles once and for all. I have no need to see and to test in order to be set free. I am free even in the confusion of servitude. I enjoy the freedom of the future, generations in advance. And when I die, I shall die a free man, for I have fought for freedom my whole life long. Mortals are free, in so far as one has the power of contradicting oneself and one’s essential nature. Mortals are free even from one’s freedom; that is, one can surrender one’s humanity. Freedom, by its very nature, is elusive. The word is difficult to define because of its quicksilver quality: freedom is always moving. You can state what it is not or what you desire to get free from—which is why the phrase freedom from should never be disparaged. However, it is difficult to designate what freedom is. Thus we always hear of the struggle for, the fight for freedom. Yet, when someone tells us “how I found freedom,” we have a feeling that something is being faked. The greatest virtue is not to be free, but to struggle ceaselessly for freedom. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Freedom is like a flock of white butterflies bestirred in front of you as you walk through the woods: rising in cluster they flit off in an infinite number of directions. Once you become self-konsciously sure of your freedom, you have lost it. Hence we find ourselves almost always describing what freedom is not rather than what it is: “I am free tomorrow” means I do not have to work; “I have a free period” means I do not have any class then. Freedom is frequently and persistently conceived of as a negative quality. Freedom is very much like health or virtue or innocence. After we have lost it, we feel it mist intensely. The dictionary does nothing to relieve our frustration. In the eighteen different meanings in Webster’s, fourteen of them are negative, such as “not held in slavery” or “not subject to external authority.” Of the reaming four, one is “liberty”—which deals with political freedom—and the others are simply tautological, such as “spontaneous, voluntary, independent.” Freedom is continually creating itself. Freedom is expansiveness. Freedom has an infinite quality. The guiding laws of life are not easy to find. The sacred wisdom of God is also the secret wisdom. The seeker quests until one’s thoughts rests. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
The quest will continue to attract its votaries so long as the Real continues to exist and mortals continue to remain unaware of it. This ever-new set of possibilities is part of the reason psychology has by and large evaded the subject, for freedom cannot be pinned down as psychologists are wont to do. In psychotherapy the closest we can get to discerning freedom in action is when a person experiences “I can” or “I will.” When a client in therapy says either of these, I always make sure he or she knows that I have heard him or her; for “can” and “will” are statements of personal freedom, even if only in fantasy. These verbs point to some event in the future, either immediate or long-term. They also imply that the person who uses them sense some power, some possibility, and is aware of ability to use this power. The mystery of the soul is as formidable and as baffling as any. Yet it is also a fascinating one. If few people have penetrated it today, may tried to do so in the past. Only when they are brought by the discipline of experience to a sense of responsibility, are they likely to seek this knowledge. This does not mean that a spiritual outlook requires an unquestioning acceptance of what mortals have made of themselves and the World. We approach God deep in our hearts. We feel the divine presence in that profound unearthly stillness where neither the sounds of emotional clamour nor those of intellectual grinding can enter. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
The Way of Life Would be to Love Guardedly and Almost Secretly but the Soul is Perfectly Knowable and Experienceable
It was a more lavish place even than the great hall of the palace; it was stuffed to overflowing with fine things, with a couch made of carved leopards, and a bed hung with sheer silk; and with polished mirrors of seemingly magical perfection. The concept of destiny makes the experience of anger necessary. The kind of person who never gets angry is, we may be sure, the person who also never encounters destiny. When one encounters destiny, one finds anger automatically rising in one, but as strength. Passivity will not do. This emotion is not necessarily negative. Encountering one’s destiny requires strength, the encounter takes the form of embracing, accepting, or attacking. Experiencing the emotional state of anger and conceiving of destiny means that you are free from regarding yourself as too precious; you are able to throw yourself into the game, whatever it may be, without worrying about picayune details. Enkil, a man in his middle twenties, sought the help of a psychotherapist because he was having difficulty in his marriage. One week, after he had had several sessions with the therapist, sudden and dramatic changes occurred in his relationship with his wife, Akasha. Both of them began to talk to each other about events and feelings that they had never discussed before. In some ways it was an agonizing week for them. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Anger that had been pent up for months, and even years, poured forth. In the course of their self-disclosures each of them revealed that they had had dates with another since their marriage. More expressions of anger and hurt burst forth, reaching an intensity they had never experiences before. However, when the anger and hurt had been expressed other feelings began to manifest themselves. They became aware that they felt closer and more attracted to each other than they ever had before. As they moved toward each other, they felt more care and warmth. Gaining awareness of our fear of love is often a difficult task, for we tend to disguise it from ourselves and others by employing many defenses against intimacy. Some people have a reservoir of hostility built up over the years that has something to do with their behavior, and the functions that it appears to serve in relation to their spouse and other people one cares for is one of keeping it virtually impossible to experience intimacy. There are many similar defenses against intimacy. We may keep people at a distance by seeming indifferent to them, by being rigid or legalistic, or by playing the role of martyr. As long as we are successful at employing these ways of keeping others away, it is hard for us to become aware of our fear of love, for we make the possibility of intimacy so remote that there is a little danger of our experiencing it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
With the lion so successfully caged, we do not become aware of our fear of it. If we can begin to see what we are doing and begin to give up some of our defenses, then we will be more likely to experience our fear of love directly. Once this occurs, we are in a much better position to do something about it. If we cannot only be aware of our fear of love, but also accept it both in ourselves and in others, it will also be helpful. Here, as elsewhere, caring for ourselves seems to be the starting point for personality growth. If we can experience and accept our fear of love, we will have less need of indirect ways of expressing it, which are almost invariably harmful to relationships. When we experience more intimacy than our fears will permit, instead of finding some pretext for withdrawing, we can admit our fear to ourselves and often to the other person as well. This direct way of responding to our fear will be far less destructive to the relationships. A natural ebb and flow of the experience and expression of love will then be possible, as we experience such intimacy as we are ready for and then withdraw for a time as our fear asserts itself too strongly. As we see this pattern clearly, we will be far more able to take in stride apparent setbacks in our association with others. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
When we can recognize that when someone we love acts destructively or hurtfully towards us it is almost certainly an indication that one, too, is afraid rather than that one does not care for us, and it makes a big difference to recognize this. If we did not have this insight, we may be just as hurt or express as much anger. The chances of resolving the situation are much better, however, because we ourselves will not be likely to react as though we have been completely rejected and unloved. This is when we often pick one of Mrs. Winchester’s favorite flowers, a daisy, and pluck the petals off as we play that “he or she loves me, he or she loves me not” game in which we tally up what we consider to be indications of how the other person involved feels based on what answer comes up when we get to the last petal. Then no matter the outcomes, we say to ourselves, “There must something the matter with me or my love would not treat me this way.” This game may give up hope, but it might just be pointless, for the problem is usually not possessed in the absence of caring but rather in the fear of love, which leads the person to act as though one does not care. Of course, recognizing the existence of the fear of love does not always lead to a resolution of interpersonal difficulties. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
Anger for some people is a path to freedom. The times when some people become angry are times when one gains valuable insight, which are then expressed constructively—for example, the time when Akasha told Enkil about her plans to marry Lestat and move across the World, which he had called “the craziest plan I ever heard.” Experiences like Enkil’s is analogous to a ship putting out to sea. It is cast loose from the dock, and, sailing in the open wind, it then gets its power from cooperation with wind and sea and stars, as we get our power by living in cooperation with destiny. Our freedom, like the ship’s, thus comes from engaging destiny, knowing that the elements are there all the time and that they have to be encountered or embraced. Constructive anger is one way of encountering destiny. However, often sailors find that they have to fight the elements, as in the case of a storm at sea. We find our freedom at the juncture of forces we cannot control but can only encounter—which often, like the ship fight the storm, takes all the strength we have. Now it is not only sailing with, it is sailing against the sea and the storm winds. The constructive anger we have been speaking about is one way of using our power to choose our way of encountering destiny. The possible responses to destiny range from cooperation with at one end of the spectrum to fighting against the other. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Our anger empowers us in the struggle against destiny. As Beethoven cried, “I will seize fate by the throat!” And out of that came the Fifth Symphony. Of course, recognizing the existence of the fear of love does not always lead to a resolution of interpersonal difficulties. A woman, for example, might see that her husband belittles her constantly as a means of avoiding intimacy and as a way of coping with his own self-hate. Yet if she saw no crack in the wall of this defense, she might ultimately come to the conclusion that it would be self-destructive for her to continue the marriage. And a child might still have to be taken from a cruel father even though it might be recognized that his brutality is rooted in a terrible fear of love. If we can discover that the potential hurt of not experiencing and expressing love ultimately far outweighs the risk that accompany intimacy, this might also be a helpful revelation. When we dare to love, we can never eliminate the possibility that we will be hurt. The emotional involvement of caring always includes vulnerability; in fact, if we allow ourselves to love someone, we can be certain that we will sometimes be hurt. Someone we love will pass on to Heaven; someone we love maybe injured; someone we love may suffer from an infirmary; someone we love will be so frightened and mistrustful of our caring that they will react in ways that are hurtful or even destructive to us. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
If we chose to love, these are painful experiences, and we cannot avoid them. It is quite customary to relegate us, the votaries Christianity, to the asylum of eccentricity, crankiness, gullibility, fraud, and even lunacy. In some individual cases our critics are perfectly justified in doing so. When the Christian losses one’s direct path, one easily deviates into these aberrations. However, to make a wholesale condemnation of all Christianity because of the rotten condition of a part of it is unfair and itself an unbalanced procedure. Wherever and whenever it can, science puts all matters to the test. Christianity welcomes this part of the scientific attitude. It has nothing to fear from such a practical examination. However, there is a drawback here. No scientist can test it in a laboratory. One must test it in one’s own person and over a long period. Owning to the widespread lack of education of the subject, there are some people who are disturbed by various fears of prayer. Prayer has been given by God to mortals for their spiritual profits, not for their spiritual destruction. Hatred and jealousy of the flesh, which is in so many evil spirits, is due to that fact that we have both body and soul, which should not exist on this Earth. There are times when there had been mountains and oceans and forests and no living things such as us. That is why evil believes that to have a spirit within a mortal body is a curse. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
God likes the music and rhythm of the language—the shape of words, so to speak. Yes, there are bad spirits who like to hurt people, and why not? And there are good spirits who love them, too. This is why the Bible stresses righteousness. God requires us to have faith in our soul and requires us to search for it patiently, untiringly, and unremittingly. Because this is a strong Christian experience, one’s who preserve in their search may hold the hope that one day they may find it. Mortals will rush agitatedly hither and thither in quest of a single possession, but hardly one can be induced to go in quest of one’s own soul. Strange as it may seem to our kith and kin who has immersed themselves heavily in the body’s senses, hard to believe as it may be to those who have lost themselves deeply in the World’s business, there is nevertheless a way up to the soul’s divinity. That the divine power is active here, in London or Oakland, and now, in the twenty first century, may startle those who look for in only in Biblical times and in the Holy Land. However, human perceptions in their present stage cannot bring this subtler self within their range without a special training. Its activity eludes the brain. What are the alternatives to a life in which love experienced and expressed? Does such a life hold out the hope of any less hurt? Only two other alternatives appear to be available. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
One of the alternatives, if it possible, would be to cut oneself off completely from the experience of love. Such a person would say in effect to themselves, “I will not allow anyone to mean anything to me. I may have business relationships of one kind or another, but no one will be important to me beyond the immediate dealings in which we find each other useful, and no one will learn anything of personal nature about how I feel or who I really am. I will never allow myself to experience the desire or need for love.” Perhaps this kind of life could be achieved, but it sounds like a desperately lonely existence. Perhaps a person could keep so busy or be so controlled that one could even block the loneliness out of awareness, but what kind of life is that? The viewpoint suggested here does, of course, involve a value judgment that meaningfulness is found above all else in human relationships, although it does not appear that few of us would choose to live so isolated an existence. The other alternative is more often practiced, but it seems almost equally unsatisfying. This way of life would be to love guardedly and almost secretly. Although one may not be aware of it, such a person says to oneself, “All right, so I admit to myself that I care for my children and my partner. And maybe there are a few other people in the World who mean something to me. However, I am going to play it cool. I will never reveal too much of myself or let them know how much I care. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
“No sense getting too far out on a limb or being too enthusiastic about our relationship. No use letting them see how much they mean to me. They would be likely to find some way of using it to push me around or hurt me.” A lot of us settle for this approach to love. However, this, too, makes for a kind of loneliness and cheats us out of the deepest and most satisfying experiences of love. And since it involves a guardedness and calculated dullness in our relationships, it cheats us of the free, unburdened feelings that spontaneity in our actions and words could give us all. All of life becomes toned downed and the exhilarating excitement is taken away. The risks of love are ever-present, but the alternatives are not inviting. So from the standpoint of satisfying living it is better even to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. If we postponed the experience and expression of love until we no longer feared it, we would postpone it forever. Some people do appear to use their fear of love as a perpetual excuse for stalemated living—loving and trembling seem to go together. If we desire love we must learn to love in spite of our fears. This process of taking a chance on love might be compared to the experience of a person who wants to make parachute jumps. If one is no a fool, one is frightened. And no amount of prejump training will eradicate that fears. When the time comes to make the leap one will be trembling internally and, quite possibly, externally. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
No amount of reassurance by experienced jumpers will make it otherwise. Making the leap of love is not too unlike this. No amount of advance preparation or reassurance from others will keep us from experiencing fear. If the experience is too frightening, we can make some tentative leaps in the direction of self-disclosure and the involvement of love and withdraw back into the security of emotional distance. In that, it is different, however, as the parachutist, once committed, does not have that option. When we make our first moves toward deeper experiences and more open expressions of love, it may seem at first that our fear is greatly intensified. This is a very critical time, for we may become so frightened that we choose to withdraw permanently and not allow ourselves another chance to feel so deeply. This sometimes happens in psychotherapy. After a few sessions a person may begin to respond to the therapist’s warmth with feelings of caring. Perhaps the individual does not even allow oneself to verbalize these feelings but suddenly discovers one cannot afford the sessions or does not have sufficient time to work them into a busy schedule. At first, when we allow ourselves to love more deeply, it is understandable that the experience of fear is intensified. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
In the past our defenses—the devices we used to keep our emotionally distant from others—protected us not only from the experience of love but also from the full awareness of our fear. As we allow the defenses to crumble we stand vulnerable and stark before our fear. One thing that will help as we begin to allow ourselves the experience of love will be the awareness that we no longer in the same circumstances as we were when the fear of love developed within us. When we were first exposed to the risks of love, we were children. And when we experienced the hurts of feeling rejected, we were relatively helpless to do anything about the situation. No wonder we were frightened and built whatever defenses against hurt we could be walling ourselves off emotionally. Every person who does not feel this close intimate fellowship with one’s Overself is necessarily a pilgrim, most probably an unconscious one, but still in everything and everywhere one is in search of one’s soul. The soul is perfectly knowable and experienceable. It is here in mortal’s hearts and minds, and such knowledge once gained, such experience once known, lifts them into a higher estimate of themselves. Mortals then become not merely thinking animals but glorious beings. It is not astonishing that mortals have ever been attracted and captivated by something which the intellect can hardly conceive nor the imagination picture, something which cannot even be truly named? #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
Here is something to ponder over: why mortals should have forfeited all that seems dear, to the point of forfeiting life itself, for something which can never be touched or smelled, seen or heard. What is it that turned mortal’s hearts toward religion, Christianity, philosophy since time immemorial? One’s aspiration toward the diviner life is unconscious testimony to its existence. It is the presence within one of a divine soul which has inspired this turning, the divine life itself in one’s heart which has prompted one’s aspiration. Mortals have no escape from the urge to seek the Sacred, the Profound, the Timeless. The roots of one’s whole being are in it. We are neither the originator of this doctrine nor even its prophet. The first mortal who ventured into the unknown within-ness of the Universe and of oneself was its originator whilst every mortal who has since voiced this discovery has been its prophet. The day will come when science, waking more fully than it is now from its materialistic sleep, will confess humbly that the soul of mortals really does exist. Often as adults we still feel helpless, as though we were still children. However, we are not helpless. If we express love and are rejected, we can do something about it—we can express our anger and frustrations. If our loving proves unsatisfying, we can withdraw from that person is we choose to and express our love to others more able to respond. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
When we love them has nothing to do with our value as a person, we can discover that another person’s inability to express love to us. Perhaps most important of all we can learn that we can survive hurt and that, while we can learn that we can survive hurt and that, while it is never pleasant, it need not be catastrophic. Mortals are free to imprison their hearts and minds in soulless materialism or to claim their liberty in the winder life of spiritual truth. Let them pull aside their mental curtains and admit the life-giving Sunlight of truth. What could be closer to a mortal than one’s own mind? What therefore should be more easy to examine and understand? Yet the contrary is actually true. One knows only the surfaces of the mind; its deeps remain unknown. Our fear of love will never completely disappear any more than would the fear of the parachutist. In both instances there is always a realistic risk of hurt, but as we are able to enter into more and more emotionally intimate relationships, the fear will gradually lessen. If the mind is to become conscious of itself, it can do so only by freeing itself from the ceaseless activity of thoughts. The systematic exercise of prayer is the deliberate attempt to achieve this. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
Just as muddied water clears if the Earth is left alone to settle, so the agitated mind clarifies its perceptions if left alone though prayer to settle quietly. There exists a part of mortal’s nature of which ordinarily one is completely ignorant, and of whose importance one is usually sceptical. What is the trust highest purpose of mortal’s life? It is to be taken possession of by one’s higher self. One’s dissatisfactions are incurable by any other remedy. True happiness lay in drawing nearer to the Infinite Being. That which is Infinity is indeed bliss; there can be no happiness in limited thing. Such is the insecurity of the present-day World that the few who have found security are only the few who have found their own soul, and inner peace. We will find it increasingly easy to be ourselves and to express all our feeling, for we will have increasing confidence that people will generally like us as we are. And when we are frightened, we will likely find it comfortable to express that feeling, too—and expressing it will help to dissipate it. “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear,” reports I John 4.18. It is true. There is no fear in love—only fear of love and the vulnerability it involves and the repeated experience of love reduces fear. Whether the central message of the New Testament, which revolves around the crucifixion of Jesus, is regarded as the literal truth or as a myth growing out of mortal’s yearning for meaning in life, the theme is a deeply moving one. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
The New Testament is often garbled by theological lingo, and possible drafted by William Shakespeare, but it finally comes down to relationships and appears to be essentially this: God risked creating persons so independent they could love him or thumb their noses at him. He went even further and chose to love them. As it always does, the decision to love necessarily included suffering. However, it must have been worth the risk, for perhaps the alternative even for God was the ultimate loneliness of having no one to love. We can discover for ourselves that it is worth the risk to love, even though we tremble and even though we know we will sometimes experience the hurt we fear. Preference for some human being is necessarily a different thing from charity. Charity does not discriminate. If it is found more abundantly in any special quarter, it is because affliction has chanced to provide an occasion there for the exchange of compassion and gratitude. It is equally available for the whole human race, inasmuch as affliction can come to all, offering them an opportunity to exchange. Preference for a human being can be of two kinds. Either we are seeking some particular good in one, or we need one. In general way all possible attachments come under one of these heads. We are drawn toward a thing, either because there is some good we are seeking from it, or because we cannot do without it. Sometimes the two motives coincide. Often however they do not. Each is distinct and quite independent. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
One Who Knows the Secrets of All Hearts Alone Knows the Secret of the Different Forms of Faith—One Has Never Revealed this Secret
It is no longer good for you to be around us. I fear we have all become too enamored of you and would sweep you off your feet and take you away from these things which you have set out to do. You will forgive us for leaving so suddenly. I am confident that this is best for you. I have arranged for the car to take you to the airport. Be assured I love you more than words can say. In all departments of life, love is not real unless it is directed toward a particular object; it becomes universal without ceasing to be real only as a result of analogy and transference. It might be said in passing that the knowledge of what analogy and transference are, a knowledge for which mathematics, the various branches of science, and philosophy are a preparation, also has a direct relationship to love. Many people find their way into some form of psychotherapy or counseling as a way of interrupting the rejection cycle. They seek professional help for all kinds of reasons, of course. Some are aware, at least vaguely, of their lack of self-acceptance and how it interferes with their relationship with other people and are not content to live out their lives on that level. More often individual find their way into psychotherapy because of some symptom of their self-hate and its corollary fear of love. They may be having marital problems of issues dealing with pleasures of the flesh, anxiety attacks, vocational problems, physical illness caused by emotional factors, or any numerous symptoms. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
When it is effective in helping a person achieve a more satisfying life, what takes place in psychotherapy? This is a profoundly significant question to which many answers have been given, each involving differing theories of the human personality and its development. Although there is room for disagreement about many details of the process, one change that appears to occur in successful psychotherapy is that the person has a growing sense of one’s own worth as a person. And it seems likely that one of the best ways to describe the process behind this growing sense of one’s value is to see it as a cycle of acceptance. The therapist working with Jesse in his own unique way somehow coveys to her his feelings that she is a person of worth with intensely green eyes and the thick curly red hair pouring down over her shoulders. Jesse then gradually comes to feel that she is basically accepted and respected as an individual. She begins to understand that the therapist sees through whatever annoying traits she has and the things she does that tend to destroy herself and others. She grasps that he recognizes that all of these things are symptoms of her self-hate and have nothing to do with her basic worth. She begins to sense that he cares for her. This does not mean that the therapist remains benignly acquiescent to every reaction of the client. He may become annoyed and express his annoyance; he may feel hurt or angered by something the client says or does and express his feelings. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
However, the very fact that the therapist is willing to enter into the relationship this honestly and intensely, revealing his own humanness, will be an expression of trust in the client’s basic ability to handle the situation. And through it all he somehow conveys the feeling, perhaps not expressed directly, that he values the client for the individual one is because everyone is unique. In such a relationship the client is gradually freed to be aware of more and more of one’s feelings that one has not allowed oneself to fully experience. One becomes more free to reveal facets of one’s personality to this accepting human being that one has hitherto revealed to no one for fear of experiencing further rejection. Gradually, with the assistance of the therapist’s teachings, and encouraged by the feeling of acceptance, the client discovers oneself being more honest and open as an individual and with the therapist. As one discovers that nothing destroys the therapist’s basic attitude toward one, one begins to allow oneself to have glimmerings of one’s own value as a person. This is often a discouraging process. The fear of emotional intimacy is ever-present and there will be frequent setbacks as the clients begins to reveal oneself, becomes frightened, and withdraws into the shell of one’s defenses against closeness. Later, as one gives up one defense against intimacy one is likely to adopt another in its place, with little or nor awareness of what one is doing. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
The client is almost certain to have doubts about the genuineness of the therapist’s acceptance. If these doubts remain unexpressed, they constitute a serious block to the therapeutic process. When they are expressed openly they can often be dealt with effectively. They take many forms. One person may say, “It is your job to accept me when no one else would possibly do so.” Another may say, “I cannot help feeling that sooner or later you will find out something about me that will cause you to have nothing more to do with me.” Such ideas are very persistent because our feelings of self-hate are so persistent. One woman had been in therapy for many months and had made many gains in growing self-acceptance, which were reflected in much more satisfying relationships with people. Even so, on one occasion just before a session with her therapist, when she was feeling particularly low, she rose from her chair, from which she had been talking with a group of friends, and blurted out, “I am going to the one person in the World who accepts me, and I pay him to!” However, as the client’s confidence in the therapeutic relationships grows, one can begin to deal directly with one’s self-hate and its sources. In one therapy session, a young woman, Maharet, was making remarks that indicted she was feeling critical of herself. In order to help her experience her emotions more intensely, the therapist asked her to imagine that the self she was criticizing was sitting in the chair opposite her and to talk directly to the self. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
Maharet paused for a few moments, and then said, “The first thing that comes to my mind is that I want to gradually think about what I want to say and let it dawn on my how I feel about myself.” She then said with deep feeling, “I guess I really want to tell you I love you, but it seems somehow selfish.” As she finished, she was crying as the relief of knowing that she could care for herself flooded over her. At the same time tears rolled won the therapist’s cheeks, for he knew the same feeling from his own experience. For many moments, thereafter, Maharet and the therapist sat in silence, enjoying their sense of closeness to each other and to themselves. As the individual in therapy gradually develops this sense of self-acceptance, one will have less need to escape into the various defenses one has used in the past. One will gain ability to be more open and self-revealing to the therapist as another human being who consistently care for one regardless of whatever emotional interchanges they may experience together. Sometimes one will become very frightened, but gradually the awareness of the satisfactions of being one’s self will be so rewarding and so productive of growing feelings of self-worth that former patterns of living will seem too unrewarding to continue. No attempt is being added here to explain every movement in the direction of emotional health that can occur in psychotherapy. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
It is being suggested that perhaps the most important thing that can happen is that they cycle of rejection in the client’s life is broken and a cycle of acceptance is begun. This process is as follows: Feelings of rejection lead to feelings of worthlessness, self-hate, then escape into defenses against intimacy, and further feelings of rejection as others react to our defenses. However, with therapy, there is an interruption of cycle through psychotherapy, followed by feelings of unconditional acceptance by therapist who sees through client’s defenses against intimacy, growing feelings of self-worth, growing love of self, an increasing openness and genuineness and less need for escape hatches, and further feelings of acceptance as others react favorably to our openness. Not every therapist, of course, is equal in the ability to be authentic and genuinely accepting in relationship with clients. Therapists are human, too, an inevitably have experienced some degree of rejection and self-hate. Most of them have at one time been in therapy themselves in order to become more effective persons and more capable of direct and open relationships. However, in common with all of humanity, therapists remain somewhat afraid of love and only relatively able to be genuine. Perhaps it is likely to be a sign of the effective therapist that one can afford to experience one’s own humanness and limitations, freely admitting that one’s adventure with each client is one in which one, too, hopes to grow as a person. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
This discovery may take time. There may be emotions that take more effort to cope with. However, gradually awareness comes that the more depth of emotion they reveal to each other, the more similarity of feeling they find among themselves, and the more emotionally intimate they come to feel. The mutual acceptance and enjoyment they find in each other gradually translates itself into increased feelings of self-worth and growing courage to be one’s self with group members and with people in general in spite of the fears that still exist. Humans demean themselves by not caring for the dignity of their status the ideals they ought to honour. Our daily lives become mechanical, obedient to the World’s demands, and our daily activities a constantly turning treadmill; but this only happens if there are no spiritual aims, spiritual aspirations, and spiritual practices to provide a resistance to this course. In Europe today, and perhaps even the whole World, the knowledge of comparative religion amounts to just about nothing. People have not even a notion of the possibility of such a knowledge. Even without the prejudices which get in our way, it is already very difficult for us even to form an idea of it. Among the different forms of religion there are, as it were, partial compensations for the visible differences, certain hidden equivalents which can only be caught sight of by the most penetrating discernment. Each religion in original combination of explicit and implicit truths; what is explicit in one is implicit in another. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
The implicit adherence to a truth can in some cases be worth as much as the explicit adherence, sometimes even a great deal more. One who knows the secrets of all hearts alone knows the secret of the different forms of faith. One has never revealed this secret, whatever anyone may say. Because we trouble our heads with search for intangible reality, we are regarded as odd people. However, it never occurs to our critics that it is much more odd that they should go on living without pausing to inquire if there by any purpose in life at all. When one knows that one must put aside the trivialities of life and come to terms with the demands made upon one by one’s higher nature, a time comes in the intellectual growth of a mortal. To put one’s own purpose in harmony with the Universe’s purpose is the most sensible thing one can do. Therefore there is nothing unpractical, irrational, or eccentric in the Quest. Only the unthinking crowd, who suffer blindly and drift tragically, may believe so. No one who has felt the inner peace, received the deep wisdom, and touched the rocklike strength which mark the more advanced stages, could ever believe so. The virtue of religious practices is due to contact with what is perfectly pure, resulting in the destruction of evil. Nothing here below is perfectly pure except the total beauty of the Universe, and that we are unable to feel directly until we are very far advanced in the way of perfection. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
Moreover, this total beauty cannot be contained in anything tangible, though it is itself tangible in a certain sense. Religious things are pure by right, theoretically, hypothetically, by convention. That is why it is perfect. If they are not connected with motives that impel people to observe them, human conventions are useless. In themselves they are simple abstractions; they are unreal and have no effect. However, the convention by which religious things are pure is ratified by God himself. Thus it is an effective convention, a convention containing virtue and operating of itself. This purity is unconditioned and perfect, and at the same time real. There we have a truth that is a fact and in consequence cannot be demonstrated by argument. It can only be verified experimentally. It is a fact that the purity of religious things is almost everywhere to be seen in the form of beauty, when faith and love do not fail. Thus the words of the liturgy are marvelously beautiful; the words of the prayer issued for us from the very lips of Christ are perfect above all, In the same way Romanesque architecture and Gregorian plain chant are marvelously beautiful. Some people like to believe that the architecture, singing, language, and even the words are chosen by Christ himself. The moment we become convinced that universal life has a higher purpose than the mere reproduction of the species, that moment our own individual life takes on a higher meaning, a glorious significance. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
It is this that gives our less affluent personal lives their meaning and rescues them from their foamlike character. Here is a concept on which the mind can linger, braces by its reminder of our human possibilities. Those who move through life hopeless and dreamless, who see none of its beauty and hear none of its music, who have lost most of its battles and won none of its prizes, these can console themselves only by adopting a new set of values or by applying one if they merely theorized before. If they do this, the end can be a new beginning. The discovery that there are higher concepts of human existence, that these have a validity not less than the meaner ones which are all that so many people know, may prove a turning point at any age. For the young it gives some guidance, for the mature it offers some hope. So short a time, so small a gain, so high a quest. For what is best, serves better in the end. The importance of this work is ignored by most people and unknown to many people. They believe it to be the preoccupation of time-wasting dreamers or ill-adjusted neurotics. If they do not treat it with such indifference they treat it either with open abuse or with contemptuous indulgence. However, if they could understand that it penetrates to the foundations of human living and affects the settlement of human problems, they might be less arrogant in their attitudes towards it. It is not less important to the individual than to society at all times but immeasurably more so in those grave, critical times. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
It may be asked of what social use are those who make this quest their primary occupation, and therefore make their Worldly occupation and way of life conform to it? First of all, they embody, and therefore carry on and keep alive, the very idea of the quest. Secondly, their very presence, by telepathic and auric existence, does touch the inner beings of those who come into contact with them and does leaven the mental atmosphere of those who do not—however minute the effect on any particular day. Thirdly, although each has to live and express the quest in the way referable to one’s temperament and circumstances, one does offer a model—in general terms—for others to see, an example from which to draw stimulation. In choosing this path, the aspirant has taken the first step toward a Divine Power whose possession, or rather whose possession of one, will ultimately, enable one to become a real healer of suffering humankind. Jesus declares that we are forgiven. Our state of mind, our ecstasy of love, show that something has happened to us. And nothing greater can happen to a human being than that one is forgiven. Forgiveness means reconciliation in spite of estrangement; it means reunion in spite of hostility; it means acceptance of those who are unacceptable, and it means reception of those who are rejected. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
Forgiveness is unconditional or it is not forgiveness at all. Forgivenness has the character of in spite of, but the righteous ones give it the character of because. The sinners, however, cannot do this. They cannot transform the divine in spire of into a human because. They cannot show facts, because of which they must be forgiven. God’s forgiveness is unconditional. There is no condition whatsoever in mortals which would make one worthy of forgiveness. If forgiveness were conditional, conditional by mortals, no one could be accepted and no one could accept one’s self. We know that this is our situation, but we loathe to face it. It is too great as a gift and too humiliating as a judgment. We want to contribute something, and if we have learned that we cannot contribute anything beneficial, then we try at least to contribute something negative: the pain of self-accusation and self-rejection. And then we read our story and the parable of the Prodigal Son as if they said: These sinners were forgiven because they humiliated themselves and confessed that they were unacceptable; because they suffered about their sinful predicament they were made worthy of forgiveness. However, this reading of the story is a misreading and a dangerous one. If that were the way to our reconciliation with God, we should have to produce within ourselves the feeling of unworthiness, the pain of self-rejection, the anxiety and despair of guilt. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
There are many Christians who try this in order to show God and themselves that they deserve acceptance. They perform an emotional work of self-punishment after they have realized that their other good works do not help them. However, emotional works do not help either. God’s forgiveness is independent of anything we do, even of self-accusation and self-humiliation. If this were not so, how could we every be certain that our self-rejection is serious enough to deserve forgiveness? Forgiveness creates repentance—this is declared in our story and this is the experience of those who have been forgiven. The view that such an existence is selfish and unproductive, is a shallow one. It takes no account of the value of higher forces. For whoever, by this quest and practice, realizes the divine presence, does so not only for oneself but for all others in that little part of the World confided to one’s care. Who are the most important human beings in the World? Those who try to bring sanity to an insane World or those who try to perpetuate its condition? Our artist can find new sources of inspiration in it. Our dying religious hopes can receive an influx of unexpected new life from it. If we turn our faces to that direction where the Sun rises in red dawn, the phoenix of Divine Truth can rise again out of the ashes of materialism strewn around us. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Yet since the spiritual is the deepest part of our nature, the process of our absorption of spiritual truths is a slow and not obvious one. Another perennial attitude is summed up in the words Us-Them Here the World is divided in two: the children of light and the children of darkness, the sheep and the goats, the elect and the damned. Every social problem can be analyzed without much study: all one has to look for are the sheep and goats. There is room for anger and contempt and boundless hope; for the sheep are bound to triumph. Should a goat have the presumption to address a sheep, the sheep often do not hear it, and they never hear it as another I. For the goat is one of Them, not one of Us. Righteousness, intelligence, integrity, humanity, and victory are prerogatives of Us, while wickedness, stupidity, hypocrisy, brutality, and ultimate defeat belong to Them. Those who have managed to cut through the terrible complexities of life and offer such a scheme as this have been hailed as prophets in all ages. In these five attitudes there is no You: I-I, I-It, It-It, We-We, and Us-Them. There are many ways of living in a World without You. There are also many World with the two poles I-You. I-You sounds unfamiliar. What we are accustomed to is I-Thou. However, mortal’s attitudes are not manifold, and Thou and You are not the same. Nor is Thou very similar to the German Du. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
German lovers say Du to one another, and so do friends. Du is spontaneous and unpretentious, remote from formality, pomp, and dignity. What lovers or friends say Thou to one another? Thou is scarcely ever said spontaneously. Thou immediately brings to mind God; Du does not. And the God of whom it makes us think is not the God to whom one might cry out in gratitude, despair, or agony, not the God to whom one complains or prays spontaneously; it is the God of the pulpits, the God of the holy tone. When mortals pray spontaneously or speak directly to God, without any mediator, without any intervention of formulas, when they speak as their heart tells them to speak instead of repeating what is printed, do they say Thou? How many know the verb forms Thou commands? The World of Thou has many mansions. Thou is a preachers’ word but also a dear to anticlerical romantic poets. Thou is found in Shakespeare and at home in the English Bible, although recent versiouns of the Scriptures have tended to dispense with it. Thou can mean many things, but it has no place whatever in the language of direct, nonliterary, spontaneous human relationships. If one could liberate I-Thou from affectation, the price for that would still involve reducing it to a mere formula to jargon. However, supposed a mortal wrote a book about direct relationships and tried to get away from the formulas of theologians and philosophers: a theologian would translate it and turn Ich und Du into I and Thou. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
One may be told contemptuously that that kind of truth and reality have no practical value for us living in the World as it is, active in the World and dealing with the facts as they are, not getting lost in dreams. That in several ways this is not so can be demonstrated without too much difficulty. However, let it be said that such a supreme knowledge or experience may possibly serve higher purposes which our small minds cannot yet glimpse. All that really matters is how one lives one’s life. However, relative-plane activities do not constitute all there is to living. Consciousness rises from the plane behind the mind, and this region, like the outer World, needs to be explored with competent guides—its possibilities and benefits fully revealed by each individual one thou. Living will begin to achieve its own purpose when one’s outer life becomes motivated, guided, and balanced by the fruits of one’s inner findings. When you show u and censure the oddities and charlatanries, you do not demolish the cause for mystics, the unreasons and fanaticisms of a few mystical cults. As the influences of the World increasingly embrace the evil, we must strive with all diligence to stay firmly on the path that leads us safely to our Savior. We do not lower our standards to fit in or to make someone else feel comfortable. #Randolpharris 16 of 16
We Must Put a Spiritual Purpose into Our Lives—The Search for Truth Becomes a Driving Moral Compulsion
I was coming to understand something of the greatest importance: all stories were part of one great story, the story of who we are. I had not seen it so clearly before, but now it was so clear that it thrilled me. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul, and with all your strength. And teach your children diligently, and talk with them when you sit in your houses. Because another great principle of family life is that it is desirable for disciplinary measure to be reserved for things that have been done and not be used for things that have been said. Many parents express a concern about respect at this point, saying, “If we let our children say anything they please to us, they will not have any respect of us.” However, when this thought is examined, the idea of forcing our children to be dishonest with us by disciplinary means seems a rather strange way to help our children consider us worthy of high regard. There are too many instances of quiet, studious, industrious, and respectful young men or women who have spent many years bottling up anger and other feelings and who at a crisis point in their lives take up a harsh attitude and alienate those around them or act out and start bullying to place a very high value on respect won this way. Fortunate indeed is the child who has learned through experience that one can tell one’s parents how one really feels without living in fear of retribution. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
Because in each of us, what we much realize, is the full story of who we are. Therefore, one is fortunate, too, if one has learned that one can trust one’s parents to be as honest with one. Out of this kind of relationship will grow the genuine mutual respect and love that can last a lifetime. A quality of relaxed good humor seems to accompany the disciplinary efforts of many successful parents. “Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee,” reports Exodus 20.12. For such parents the children’s infractions of the rules and the punishment meted out does not become the deadly serious business that it does in many households. It is likely that the quality in the parents that makes this attitude possible is their own self-acceptance. When the child goes against the rules, they do not feel that their worth as persons or as parent is threatened, so they do something that will help the child remember in the future. The commandment to honor our parents has strands that run through the entire fabric of the gospel. It is inherent in our relationship to God our Father. It embraces the divine destiny of the children of God. This commandment relates to the government of the family, which is patterned after the government of Heaven. The commandment to honor our parents echoes the sacred spirit of family relationships in which—at their best—we have sublime expressions of Heavenly love and care for one another. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
When we realize that our greatest expressions of joy or pain in mortality come from the members of our families, we sense the importance of these relationships. In this day, failing to honor our parents is not a capital crime in any country of which I am aware. However, the divine direction to honor our father and our mothers has never been revoked. It is important that parents to not feel like bad parents, and so they do not give the child the feeling that he or she is a bad seed. Imagine, for example, if he had been relaxed about it, how Leo Pete’s father could have laughed, even with a five-year-old, when he found him urinating against the church. And still he could have gotten the message across that it would be wise to be more discreet in the selection of a site for the sake of the shockable ladies who might be watching. The relaxed good humor being described does not, of course, include hostile ridicule and sarcasm, which are very destructive to children. There would be little humor and nothing salutary, for example, in the comment of a father who would say to his son in from of the boy’s friends, “If you were more intelligent, you would have remembered to take the rubbish out this morning.” To young people, honoring parents is appropriately understood to focus on obedience, respect, and emulation of righteous parents. “Children, obey your parents in all things [I believe he meant all righteous things]: for this is well pleasing to our Lord,” reports Colossians 3.20. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
One factor that seems to underlie a great many problems in families is the tendency of parents to underrate children’s abilities in the area of relationships. Perhaps we use the idea that they could not possibly understand as another device to maintain some emotional distance between ourselves and them because of our fear of love and its risks. In any case, our children are more perceptive than we think they are. When we attempt to conceal emotions from them, we fool our children much less than we think we do. When we resent them, for example, and try to hide our resentment from them, we show it in some more subtle way and they get the message. And the subtlety makes it much more difficult for them to handle than our anger. Our children are also much tougher than we think they are, and they can handle our negative feelings better than we think they can. Children do not need to be handled with kid gloves. Particularly, if we do not have to pretend that we are perfect, we can make a lot of mistake in our dealings with our children and they can survive quite well. If we can have a genuine relationship with them in which we are not too frightened to express our love, our anger, and our others feelings, and if we can admit it when we make mistake, our children will understand, accept, and feel secure because it will have the ring of reality; because they will know that they, too, have the same feelings. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
If one truly honors one’s parents, one will seek to emulate their best characteristics and to fulfill their highest aspirations for us. No gift purchased from a store can begin to match in value to parents some simple, sincere words of appreciation. Nothing we could give them would be more prized than righteous living for each youngster. Our children can also understand our feelings better than we think they can. When we are discouraged or upset about something, we often assume that our children could not understand. And we may feel that we want to protect the from some of the problems and worries that beset us. If they knew what was going on and why they tension exists within the family, since they sense that something is wrong, more often than not even our younger children would understand and would feel much better. If, for example, a family is in financial difficulties, there is likely to be a charged atmosphere throughout the hoe no matter how hard the parents try to conceal the fact from the children. If the children are not told what is going on, they can only guess about the cause of the tension. Their guesses will most likely be that something is wrong between family members. They may feel that the parents do not love each other any more and are going to get a divorce, as some of the others parents on the block have done. Or they may even imagine that they have dome something to create all the tension that nobody wants to talk about. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
If we will simply give them facts and feelings with which to work, our children will understand much better than we think they can. It may even be a relief to them to discover that parents are human, too, and also have their worries and problems! Everything that has been said here about family life points to the importance of the maturity of parents. If parents are able to be emotionally honest and direct with their children, if they can express their love in deeply satisfying ways, despite the risks of being hurt that such love always involves, families will tend to be more healthy. However, parents, too, have been reared in families. And, they, like everyone else, have been hurt in the past and have in varying degrees been emotionally crippled in the ability to accept themselves and in their freedom to express love, so the tendency exists for parents to react to their children in ways that perpetuate the fear of love from one generation to the next. Is there an any escape from this social inheritance? Fortunately, it is possible for individuals, whether they are parents or not, who long for more satisfying experiences of love to gain more self-acceptance and self-awareness. It is a matter of learning to value ourselves. The Lord of All Creation has restored us. It must have been for our good that we have known such bitterness…we who live thank you, as we do now, the father will tell the children of your faithfulness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
Jesus and the New Testament writers are aware of the psychological and sociological factors which determine human existence. They are keenly aware of the universal and inescapable dominion of sin over this World, of the demonic splits in the souls of people, which produce insanity and bodily destruction; of the economic and spiritual misery of the masses. However, there awareness of these factors, which have become so decisive for our description of mortal’s predicament, does not prevent them from calling the sinners sinners. Understanding does not replace judging. We understand more and better than many generations before us. However, our immensely increased insight into the condition of human existence should not undercut our courage to call wrong wrong. Sinners are seriously called sinners in the same way the righteous one are seriously called righteous. If we tried to show that righteous one’s are not truly righteous, we would be missing something in our spirit. When our children do what they are supposed to do, they have no reason to feel that they have done anything wrong, and nor does their father or mother tell the so because good behavior is encouraged. The child’s righteousness is not questioned. Such righteousness is not easy to attain. Much self-control, hard discipline, and continuous self-observation is needed. Therefore, we should not despise righteous ones. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
Human attitudes are manifold. Some mortals take a keen interest in certain objects and in other mortals and actually think more about them than they think of themselves. They do not so much say I or think I as they do I. They take an interest, they do not give of themselves. They may manipulate or merely study, and unlike mortals of the I-I type they may be good scholars; but they lack devotion. This I-It tendency is so familiar that little need be said about it, except that it is a tendency that rarely consumes a mortal’s whole life. Those who see a large part of humanity—their enemies, of course—as mortals of this type, have succumbed to demonology. This is merely one of the varieties of mortal’s experience and much more widespread in all ages as a tendency and much rarer as a pure type in our own time than the Manichaeans fancy. There are mortals who hardly have an I at all. Nor are all of them of one kind. Some inhabit Worlds in which objects loom large. They are not merely interested in some thing or subject, but the object of their interest dominates their lives. They are apt to be great scholars of extraordinary erudition, with no time for themselves, with no time to have a self. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
They study without experiencing: they have no time for experience, which would smack of subjectivity if not frivolity. They are objective and immensely serious. They have no time for humor. They study without any thought of use. What they study is an end in itself for them. They are devoted to their subject, and the notion of using it is a blasphemy and sacrilege that is not likely to occur to them. For all that, their subject is no subject in its own right, like a person. It has no subjectivity. It does not speak to them. It is a subject one has chosen to study—one of them subjects that one may legitimately choose, and there may be others working on the same subject, possibly on a slightly different aspect of it, and one respects them insofar as they, too, have no selves and are objective. Here we have a community of solid scholars—so solid that there is no room at the center for any core. Theirs is the World of It-It. There are other ways of having no I. There are mortals who never speak a sentence of which I is Lord, but nobody could call them objective. At the center of their World is We. The contents of this We can vary greatly. However, this is an orientation in which I does not exist, and You and It and He and She are only shadows. One type of this sort could be called We-We. Theirs is a sheltered, childish World in which no individuality has yet emerged. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
In pursuing this integral quest, one has the satisfaction of knowing that they are pursuing the only quest which can bring them to a truth which is all-embracing and all-explaining. The fact that so few have ventured on this quest offers no indication of what will happen in the future. If humankind could take any other way to its own self-fulfillment, this situation might remain. However, there is no other way. For one there must exist something more than merely being a member of the herd; there must be a higher direction leading to truth to satisfy the mind, to a nobler character to satisfy the conscience, to refined beautiful and gentler moods inspired by the arts, music, literature, and reverence. What we see and think is only an awareness gleaned by the shallower part of oneself. There is one’s deeper being—indeed, the term “part” is quite inapplicable here—one’s real essence, the greater Consciousness from which thoughts and emotion emerge for their limited lives. To find and know this is a duty to which one must one day come. The search for truth becomes, for such a person, neither a spare-time hobby nor an intellectual curiosity, but a driving moral compulsion. The more deeply we understand the nature of mortals, the more reliably shall we understand the duty of mortals. The risk of entering such a spiritual adventure may be quite formidable, but the risks of not entering it are unquestionably frightful. For the probabilities of wrong action and mistaken choice will still remain, with the painful karmic aftermath. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
The mortal who fails to touch the Overself’s beauty in this life and under this pressure can hardly be blameworthy, but the mortal who fails to try to touch it, is blameworthy. Nobody really knows how to live correctly unless one knows the higher laws governing life itself. Whether on college campus or life’s school, the higher laws have to be learnt at some time, in some birth—whether by instruction when young or by experience when older. The fact of their existence may be disregarded at our own peril. Mortals can come into the personal knowledge that there is this unseen power out of which the whole Universe is being derived, including oneself. However, neither the animal nor the plant can come into this knowledge. Here we see what evolution means and why it is necessary. We find a similar truth in the great literature of the World. Whether one’s native speech is French or Urdu or Mandarin Chinese or any other, the literature of the World—of only in translation—is open to us all. We never think of avoiding reading Goethe because he is German, or that Shakespeare is confined to Britain, or that the Koans are the property only of the Japanese. The more deeply authors penetrate into the depths of human experience the more they speak the language of all humanity. They then give solace and enhancement to us all. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
This is another definition of a classic: a writing that interprets our own deepest symbols and myths. Hence a classic passes on from ancient Homer, say, to all of us no matter how many centuries later we may live and no matter what nationality we may be. The drama, Peer Gynt, for example, is entirely about the questions, “What is my Self?,” surely the deepest puzzle of human beings in whatever country. When Ibsen wrote the drama he thought his play would not be understood outside Scandinavia. However, to his surprise he found that Peer was understood wherever human beings were conscious of themselves, wherever human beings asked, “Where is myself?”; and hence Peer was claimed everywhere as a national prototype. Even in Japan it was stated that Peer Gynt is typically Japanese. George Bernard Shaw wrote that “The universality of Ibsen (and his grip upon humanity) makes his plays come home to all nations, and Peer Gynt is as good a Frenchman as a Norwegian.” There is on my desk a copy of the book of poems by the contemporary Russian poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Opening the book at random I found these lines, “The visions of malapaga those of Peer Gynt, seem, all of them, now to apply to me.” The reason Peer Gynt is a character for all nations is that the myth and the drama reflect on a profound level the problems, the loves, the yearnings, the sorrows, the ultimate discoveries of one human being who stands for all human beings. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
After reading it, we arise from our chairs feeling deeply understood; our loneliness is assuaged and our hearts feel at home again. Such a classic gives us a sense of joy and serenity—which after all is our definition of beauty. Poetry is a particular form of art which gives us another aspect of beauty in our common human language. If we ask why such and such a word in a poem is in such and such a place and if there is an answer, either the poem is not of the highest order or else the reader has understood nothing of it. If one can rightly say that the word is where it is in order to express a particular idea, or for the sake of a grammatical connection, or for the sake of the rhyme or alliteration, or to complete the line, or to give a certain color, or even for a combination of several reasons of this kind, there has been true inspiration. In the case of a really beautiful poem the only answer is that the word is there because it is suitable that is should be. The proof of this suitability is that it is there and that the poem is beautiful. The poem is beautiful, that is to say the reader does not wish it other than it is. It is in this way that art imitates the beauty of the World. This suitability of things, beings, and events consists only in this, that they exist and that we should not wish that they did not exist or that they had been different. Such a wish would be an impiety toward our universal country, a lack of the love of the Stoics. We are so constituted that this love is in fact possible; and it is this possibility of which the name is the beauty of the World. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
One may ask one’s self, “Why is it that so many of the great classics in human history are in poetry?” Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Lucretius’s The Nature of Things, Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, Vergil’s Aeneid, Shakespeare’s dramas, Goethe’s Faust are all in poetry. One might think the prose would be more flexible, and therefore enable the writer to range more widely than in poetry. However no: depth rather than flexibility is what these authors seek, and poetry requires a deeper level of communication. “Why these things rather than others?” never has any answer, because the World is devoid of finality. The absence of finality is the reign of necessity. Things have causes and not ends. Those who think to discern special designs of Providence are like professors who give themselves up to what they call the explanation of the text, at the expense of a beautiful poem. In art, the equivalent of this reign of necessity is the resistance of matter and arbitrary rules. Rhyme imposes upon the poet a direction in one’s choice of words which is absolutely unrelated to the sequence of ideas. Its function is poetry is perhaps analogous to that of affliction in our lives. Affliction forces us to feel with all our souls the absence of finality. When we earnestly, heartily, firmly, and sincerely seek to learn the gospel of Jesus Christ and teach it to one another, these teachings may transform our hearts. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
This transformation will bring us a more happy, productive, and healthy life and help us to maintain an eternal perspective. If we do so, I promise that the influence of the Holy Ghost will bring truth to our heart and mind and will bear witness of it, teaching all things. If the soul is set in the direction of love, the more we contemplate necessity, the more closely we press its metallic cold and hardness directly to our very flesh, the nearer we approach to the beauty of the World. That is what Job experienced. It was not because he was so honest in his suffering, because we would not entertain any thought that might impair its truth, that God came down to reveal the beauty of the World to him. Our actions must reflect what we learn and teach. We need to show our beliefs through the way we live. The best teacher is a good role model. Teaching something that we truly live can make a difference in the hearts of those we teach. If we desire people, whether that they be family or not, to joyfully treasure up the scriptures and teaching of living apostles and prophets of our day, they need to see our souls delighting in them. Keep living a worthy life, be a good example to what you believe, and draw closer to our Savior, Jesus Christ. He knows and understands our deep sorrows and pains, and he will bless your efforts and dedication. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
I Cannot Live Because I Have Lost My Youth—Could One Ever Be Certain that He Could Live Out the Week or Month?
There is something wrong with the way ghost act. And the same holds true for Angels. I am not saying there is not an afterlife. I am only maintaining that those entities who come down here so beneficently to meddle with us are more than a little cracked. Violence and vitality share a common root—the root of both is force (etymologically, in its Latin form vis). The various plays of force and the radical nature of the encounters of its two forms in essay. Let us first consider in general terms the expression of force in primal instinct and the ways in which it becomes modified as a consequence of the process of socialization, adopting a coldly rational view. The first instinct is to take in enough material from the outside World so that one may be sustained; that is, so that one’s system may replenish itself. The system puts out energy constantly, both to maintain its individual boundaries and to perpetuate its kind; it must take in some source of energy that it does not presently contain. This source is food, which includes air, Sunshine, and other organic matter. For life as a whole, then, death must be constant and almost equal in quantity to life; organisms must die so that other organisms may live. Life therefore depends upon a quantitative superiority of the mechanisms for reproduction. In the average, each organism must reproduce itself and a surplus besides; hence if life is to continue, the pleasures of the flesh must be most powerfully motivated. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
It is of equal rank, so far as motives are concerned, as the drive to ingest. The latter is most necessary to the prolongation of individual life, and through individual forms to life itself; the latter is necessary because of the principle that life feeds upon life. It is a requirement of life that it should expand, that individual forms of it should multiply. A stasis seems theoretically conceivable; it is, in fact, the basic tendency of the supreme being. The strongest organism will seek to limit its own reproduction out of an apparent or misguided self-interest. Because it temporarily has ascendancy and an assurance of sustenance, it finds no need for reproduction more than one of its own kind per unit already existing. It loses supremacy, then, purely as a function of probability arising out of life’s tendency toward diversity. Profile life produces many new forms, in such great numbers that finally there occurs some form that is better suited to be supreme. Thus are old rulers deposed; the rules of life make it certain that supremacy cannot be maintained. Death is simply a rule of life. Dr. Freud was wrong in claiming that Eros and Thanatos are equally strong forces. Life is infinitely stronger than Death, for from the beginning Death is merely a by product of life. He tendency of matter is toward life, and the present tendency of life is toward consciousness. Consciousness itself arises in the interest of the expansion of life; the competition among organisms for food is decided ultimately by such things as attention and memory and logic. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Eventually organisms must be born incapable of an unconscious; all the power of symbolism for the imaginative construction of experience must finally become conscious, together with all motives. It may be asked, however, is not symbolism itself a diversion on the road to complete consciousness? Wat is symbolism but a disguised mode of representing motives that were once completely unconscious? It not symbolism simply a step toward conscious representation of the motives of all life? Does it not decrease in the individual as motives become conscious? It may be replied that symbols are possible because of a tremendous differentiation of matter (the structure of the human brain) and that this differentiation of structure and direction of development will not be reserved. Hence symbolic forms should continue indefinitely, though functionally they may become less important for life. It remains a question, however, whether completely conscious motives would require the complexity of determination and differentiation that symbols now have. The motives themselves might, of course, change beyond recognition, into something we cannot now conceive, into a form requiring for their representation the very mechanics that the development of symbolization has made a permanent possession of human intelligence. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
The tendency of life, then, is toward the expansion of consciousness. In a sense, a description of means for the expansion of consciousness has been the central theme; it is in this evolutionary tendency that such diverse phenomena as psychotherapy, surprising or unexpected self-renewal, the personally evolved and deepened forms of religious belief, creative imagination, mysticism, and deliberately induced changes in consciousness through the use of chemicals find a common bond. Engagement as an individual in these efforts to expand consciousness is therefore, in various measure, participation in the job that life in general is now facing. It is itself a mark of vitality. What then of violence? Analyzed coldly in terms of instinctual force, it seems evident that violence itself should provide the primal basis for all relations among individual living systems. One seeks to eat the other, and the superior force succeeds. Communities then develop from mutual recognition that selfish ends will be best served by cooperation—that two can eat better than one, or that the alien aggressor may be more effectively repulsed by a defense in common. The idea of justice, according to this conception, arises from a recognition that communities cannot be maintained unless all members hold it a superior form of interest to desist from eating one another and to cooperate in seizing the enemy and resisting one’s attacks. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Thus slaying is sanctioned only when committed against an outsider. Otherwise it would lead to disruption of the community pact and eventually to the inferior form of social organization in which everyone is the unqualified enemy of everyone else. Societies may thus be defined as a form of carefully qualified enmity. In the interest of community organization, however, illusions (which are usually a form of self-deception in the interest of survival) must arise. The most important illusions take the form of identifications, which essentially are a claim that another individual is actually oneself, to be treated by one as one would treat oneself. Such identification in their most extreme form are extended to the entire community. In their more restricted form they pertain especially to parents, mates, and offspring, or substitutes for these (for instance, symbolic equivalents of these). Identifications arise for the same basic reason as community itself—for the more efficient securing of sustenance and for the purpose of warding off aggression, not only from outsiders, but from the very person with whom the community is made. One purpose of a pact is to reduce the number of one’s enemies by, at a minimum, the number of one’s allies—by those allies themselves, in fact. Community uses symbolization for this purpose. Sympathy then is based upon the complex perception of community interest, or at least a capacity for justifying complexly one’s friendships or communities. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
This repelling way of putting the matter leaves quite out of account the strange force of love and the impulse to create. The analysis nevertheless has value within the framework of a purely rational psychology, if for no other reason than it forces us to consider carefully how far objective self-interest can take us. There is a real question as to whether through simply this process of symbolization and sympathy, and eventually through attainment of the Ultima Thule of fully conscious rationality, aggression can be mitigated for life as a whole. Even if a species should succeed in including its entire self in a single community (as none has done yet), the reduced motive for reproduction might eventually produce a static state in the species which would ensure the succession of some other species to supremacy. The unknow quantity in all of this, as we have been arguing directly or by implication throughout, is the power of creative imagination, the main instrument of freedom. At this writing, so far as mortals are concerned, it appears possible, even though the problems are extraordinarily complex and difficult, that one will extend community to include all other mortals. The idea is verbalized and current, and it has many advocates. All other living beings, however, have entertained to the death the notion that some infraspecies organization will attain supremacy, so that combat is entered upon even when the strength of the combatants and their equality makes it seem probable that one will die and the other nearly die, or that both will die. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
And life as a whole is indifferent to the success of single species, as much as to the success of single individuals. The one thing of which we can be certain is that life is inextinguishable. One mark of the breadth of the community that mortals have established is that we are able now to contemplate the idea that the very species Humankind—surely an extremely special vehicle for the expansion of consciousness—may be the final supreme form of life. This local interest raised to the highest form it has yet attained, and it would mean the passing of violence as a form of adaptation and the total institutionalization of the remaining energy of the instinct in World law. Religious revelation tells us much the same story as does this sort of analysis, though the terms are different. Consider the chapters of Genesis and the account it gives of the first murder: In the relative innocence of a World but lately paradise, Cain slays Abel. The murderer, confronted by God, denies knowledge of his brother’s whereabouts, for, he says, he is not his brother’s keeper. When the accusation is pressed against him, however, he admits the deed. God condemns him to a life of wandering on the face of the Earth, but mercifully places upon his forehead a distinguishing mark, that mortals may not kill him. Thus is mortal’s violence confessed in this early Biblical story, and its fearfulness acknowledged. The mark of Cain is a sign of human murderousness, but it carries immunity with it. The murderer within us is to be exiled, yet he is awesome because he is a murderous man. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
The scene is placed in the Bible immediately after what theologians call the Fall; as we have argued earlier, biologists might well call it the Accession. Our first parents had just eaten the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which is to say they became ethical beings, and for the first time in Nature a natural creature passed judgment. Thus, close upon passing of innocence came murder itself, and the first ethical judgment is that murder is a crime against human nature. An exception came quickly to be recognized. The exception is war—a large exception indeed. Its basis is the family. One may not kill one’s blood relatives, but one may kill those outside the family, who are the enemies of the family. Loyalty to the family will sanction the deed. Finally, family need not be defined by blood. Geography will suffice, or race, or economic interdependence, or religious belief. Thus the wars of families become wars of nations, and murder is countenanced once again. Mortals seem in war thus to triumph over their accession to conscience, and the eating of the apple was not so fateful a deed as it had at first appeared. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
However, in the course of the centuries fallen mortals have come more and more to control the World. Control is based in large part on knowledge of the workings of a machine-like Universe, and the creation of new machines. Among the machines are those used for murder, private and public. Among the knowledge is knowledge of the basic structure of matter, and finally of the atom itself. New force has been released, and its release adapted to an ancient and sanctioned end: the killing of an entire family. The new force, however, is gigantic; its murderous power is beyond anything previously dreamt of. So great is this power that one family might destroy al others on Earth, provided there could be no retaliation in kind. Retaliation in kind, however, has come to be a certainty. This is the setting of the modern dilemma of a creature who has nibbled at the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but who is loath to assume the responsibility given with freedom or to accept the grace of redemption. Unless human consciousness can take another giant step and root out murder from the heart of mortals, or develop the control of violence through law to a new and extraordinary level, some other form of consciousness must become the carrier of vitality. “The devil is source of secret combinations of murder,” reports 2 Nephi 9.9. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Whether we live in the Renaissance, or in the thirteenth-century France, or at the time of the fall of Rome, we are part-and-parcel of our age in every respect—its wars, its economic conflicts, its anxiety, its achievement. However, no well-integrated society can perform for the individual, or relieve one from, one’s task of achieving self-consciousness and the capacity for making one’s own choices responsibly. And no traumatic World situation can rob the individual of the privilege of making the final decision with regard to oneself, even if it is only to affirm one’s own fate. It may have been superficially easier for a person to be adjusted in another age—those golden ages of Greece or the Renaissance that one might look back to longingly. However, the wish that one lived in those times, expect as an exercise in fantasy, is based on a false understanding of mortal’s relation to tie. In those days it might actually not have been any easier for the individual to find and choose to be one’s self. In our day there is greater need for one to come to terms with one’s self; we are less able to rest in the mothering arms of our historical period. So could one not argue, if it were a matter for drawing room argument, that it is better for a person’s learning to find oneself to live in our day? On the superficial level there are assets or debits to living in any period. On the more profound level, each individual must come to one’s own consciousness of oneself, and one does this on a level which transcends the particular age one lives in. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
The same holds true for one’s chronological age. The important issue is not whether a person is twenty or forty or one hundred: it rather is whether one fulfills one’s own capacity of self-conscious choice at one’s particular level of development. This is why a healthy child at eight—as everyone has observed—can be more of a person than a neurotic adult of thirty. The child is not more mature in a chronological sense, nor can one do as much as the adult, not take care of one’s self as well, but one is more mature wen we judge maturity by honesty of emotion, originality, and capacity to make choices on matters adequate to one’s stage of development. The statement of the person of twenty who says, “When I am thirty-five, I will begin to live” is as falsely based as the one who, at forty or fifty, laments, “I cannot live because I have lost my youth.” Interestingly enough, one generally finds on closer inspection that this is the same person, that the one who makes that lament at fifty was postponing living also at twenty—which demonstrates our point ever more incisively. One has to some extent overcome the tendency to see one’s self only in others’ eyes, and thus see truth to some degree objectively and love outwardly. These are all ways of living sub specie aeternitatis; they show the human being’s capacity to transcend the given situation of the moment. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
The task and possibility of the human being is to move from one’s original situation as an unthinking and unfree part of the mass, whether this mass is one’s actual early existence as a foetus or one’s being symbolically a part of the mass in a conformist, automaton society—to move from the womb, that is, through the incestuous circle, which is but one step removed from the womb, through the experience of the birth of self-awareness, the crises of growth, the struggle, choices and advances from the familiar to the unfamiliar, to ever-widening consciousness of one’s self and thus broadening freedom and responsibility, to higher levels of differentiation in which one progressively integrates one’s self with others in freely chosen love and creative work. Each step in this journey means that one lives less as a servant of automatic time and more as one who transcends time, that is, one who lives by meaning which one chooses. Thus the person who can die courageously at thirty—who has attained a degree of freedom and differentiation that one can face courageously the necessity of giving up one’s life—is more mature than the person who is on one’s deathbed at ninety cringes and begs still to be shielded from reality. The practical implication is that one’s goal is to live each moment with freedom, honesty, and responsibility. One is then in each moment fulfilling so far as one can one’s own nature and one’s evolutionary task. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
When we are living our lives with honesty, freedom, and responsibility, now only are we fulfilling our evolutionary task, but this is also the way one experiences the joy and gratification that accompany fulfilling one’s own nature. Whether the young instructor eventually completes one’s book or not is a secondary question: the primary issue is whether he, or anyone else, writes and thinks in the given sentence or paragraph what he believes will gain the praise of another, or what he himself believes is true and honest according to his lights at the moment. The young husband, to be sure, cannot be certain of his relation with his wife five years hence: but in the best of historical periods, could one ever have been certain that he would live out the week or month? Does not the uncertainty of our time teach us the most important lesion of all—that the ultimate criteria are the honesty, integrity, courage and love of a given moment or relatedness? If we do not have that, we are not building for the future anyway; if we do have it, we can trust the future to itself. The qualities of freedom, responsibility, courage, love and inner integrity are ideal qualities, never perfectly realized by anyone, but they are the psychological goals which give meaning to our movement toward integration. When Socrates was describing the ideal way of life and the ideal society, Glaucon countered: “Socrates, I do not believe that there is such a City of God anywhere on Earth.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
In regard to the question about the City of God being on Earth or not, Socrates answered, “Whether such a city exists in Heaven or ever will exist on Earth, the wise mortal will live after the manner of that city, having nothing to do with any other, and in so looking upon it, will set one’s own house in order.” When he told us to consider the lilies of the field that neither toil nor spin, Christ proposed the docility of matter to us as a model. This means that they have not set out to clothe themselves in this or that color; they have not exercised their will or made arrangements to bring about their object; they have received all that natural necessity brought them. If they appear to be more beautiful than the richest stuffs, it is not because they are richer but a result of their obedience. Materials are docile too, but docile to mortals, not to God. When it obeys mortals, matter is not beautiful, but only when it obeys God. If sometimes a work of art seems almost beautiful as the sea, the mountains, or flowers, it is because the light of God has filled the artist. When manufactured by mortals uninspired by God, in order to find things beautiful, it would be necessary for us to have understood with our whole soul that these mortals themselves are only matter, capable of obedience without knowledge. For anyone who has arrived at this point, absolutely everything here below is perfectly beautiful. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
In everything that exists, in everything that comes about, one discerns the mechanism of necessity, and one appreciates in necessity the infinite sweetness of obedience. For us, this obedience of things in relation to God is what the transparency of a window pane is in relation to light. As soon as we feel this obedience with our whole being, we see God. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: one cuts away here, one smooths there, one makes this line lighter, the other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon one’s work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all the is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiseling your statue, until there shall shine out on your from it the Godlike splendor of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine. When we hold a newspaper upside down, we see the strange shapes of the printed characters. When we turn it the right way up, we no longer see the characters, we see words. The passenger on board a boat caught in a storm feels each jolt as an inward upheaval. The captain is only aware of the complex combination of the wind, the current, and the swell, with the position of the boat, its shape, its sails, its rudder. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
As one has to learn to read or to practice a trade, so one must learn to feel in all things, first and almost solely, the obedience of the Universe to God. It is really an apprenticeship. Like every education, it requires time and effort. One who has reached the end of one’s training realizes that the differences between things or between events are no more important than those recognized by someone who knows how to read, when one has before one the same sentences reproduced several times, written in red ink and blue, and printed in this, that, or the other kind of lettering. One who does not know how to read only sees differences. For one who is literate, it all comes to the same thing, since the sentence is identical. Whoever has finished one’s apprenticeship recognizes things and events, everywhere and always, as vibrations of the same divine and infinitely sweet word. This does not mean that one will not suffer. Pain is the color of certain events. When a mortal who can and a mortal who cannot read look at a sentence written in red ink, they both see the same red color, but this color is not so important for the one as for the other. When an apprentice gets hurt, or complains of being tired, the working person and less affluent have this fine expression: “It is the trade entering one’s body.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Each time that we have some pain to go through, we can say to ourselves quite truly that it is the Universe, the order and beauty of the World, and the obedience of creation to God that are entering our body. After that how can we fail to bless with tenderest gratitude the Love that sends of this gift? Joy and suffering are two equally precious gifts both of which must be savored to full, each one in its purity, without trying to mix them. Through joy, the beauty of the World penetrates our soul. Through suffering it penetrates our body. We could no more become friends of God through joy alone than one becomes a ship’s captain by studying books on navigation. The body plays a part in all apprenticeships. On the place of physical sensibility, suffering alone gives us contact with that necessity which constitutes the order of the World, for pleasure does not involve an impression of necessity in joy, and that only indirectly through a sense of beauty. In order that our being should one day become wholly sensitive in every part to this obedience that is the substance of matter, in order that a new sense should be formed in us to enable us to hear the Universe as the vibration of the word of God, the transforming power of suffering and of joy are equally indispensable. When either of them comes to us we have to open the very center or soul to it, just as a person opens one’s door to messengers from one’s loved one. If the messenger be polite or rough, what does it matter to a love, so long as one delivers the message? #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
The creative relationship of anger and love is even more evident in our dealings with those we care for. Anger and love are not opposites, as we often assume. Anger says you care enough to become emotionally involved. And when we suppress anger, we often give the other person the feeling that we do not really care. Expression of anger is also creative because it often clears the way for us to become aware of other feelings, especially hurt and love. There is an interesting sequence of paragraphs in the section of the New Testament that was used earlier to illustrate the anger of Jesus. The angry words go on, and on, and on: “You…play actors…you blind leaders…you blind fools…you utter frauds…you serpents, you viper’s brood…” However, when the anger is spent, the hurt and love flood into awareness. You can almost see Jesus’ features soften and hear the tears in his voice as he says, “Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You murder your prophets and stone the messengers that are sent to you. How often have I longed to gather your children round me like a bird gathering her brood together under her winds and you would never have it.” Whether or not this sequence of Jesus’ words is historically accurate, it is psychologically true to life. For when we can express anger we become freer to discover our deeper feelings. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Some of the most dramatic events which occur in group therapy follow this pattern. Participants in mist such groups are encouraged to be aware of their emotional reactions to each other. Often there are feelings of anger, and if this anger is expressed directly, sometime even shouted, a sequence of feelings frequently follows. When the anger has been expressed, the person often becomes aware of feelings of hurt which underlie most anger. Perhaps tears flow. And finally, after the anger and hurt, awareness comes that feelings of love are also present. Thus the expression of anger often opens the door to the experience of love. This sequence of feelings provides an explanation for the not uncommon experience of couples who report that some o their most intense feelings of love and intimacy occur after their disputes when they make up. So we see that the creative expression of anger often leads to more satisfying love relationships. When we conceal our anger from others and from ourselves, we limit our capacity to love, for we are denying one facet of love. When we express our anger in honest directness, on the other hand, we are permitting ourselves to be seen as we really are at that moment. Sometimes others will not be able to respond as freely with their feelings and the experience of love will be limited as a result. However, at least we will have opened a door in the wall that separates us, which will provide the opportunity for a more emotionally intimate relationship. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Here, as elsewhere, of course, we are afraid of the experience of love. To express anger, and then to be aware of our hurt and our love, increases our vulnerability. So to express anger creatively inevitably means a lowering of our defenses against being hurt. And that is frightening. So despite our hunger for the love that might well be experienced through revealing our anger, it may well be that our fear of love is the most basic reason why we shy away from expressing anger. Affliction is not suffering. Affliction is something quite distinct from a method of God’s teaching. The infinity of space and time separates us from God. How are we to seek for him? How are we to go toward him? Even if we were to walk for hundreds of years, we should do no more than go round and rough the World. Even in an airplane we could not do anything else. We are incapable of progressing vertically. We cannot take a step toward the Heavens. God crosses the Universe and comes to us. Over the infinite of space and time, the infinitely more infinite love of God comes to possess us. He comes at his own time. We have the power to consent to receive him or to refuse. If we remain unaware, he comes back again and again like a boomerang, one day he stops coming. If we consent, God puts a little seed in us and he goes away again. From that moment God has no more to do; neither have we, except wait. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
We only have not to regret the consent we gave God, the nuptial yes. It is not as easy as it seems, for the growth of seed within us is painful. Moreover, from the very fact that we accept this growth, we cannot avoid destroying whatever gets in its way, pulling up the weeds, cutting the good grass, and unfortunately the good grass is part of our very flesh, so that this gardening amounts to a violent operation. On the whole, however, the seed grows of itself. A day comes when the soul belongs to God, when it is not only consents to love but when truly and effectively it loves. Then in its turn it must cross the Universe to go to God. The soul does not love like a creature with created love. The love within it is divine, uncreated; for it is the love of God for God that is passing though it. God alone is capable of loving God. We can only consent to give up our own feelings so as to allow free passage in our soul for this love. That is the meaning of denying oneself. We are created for this consent, and for this alone. Divine Love crossed the infinite of space and time to come from God to us. However, how can it repeat the journey in the opposite direction, starting from a finite creature? When the seed of Divine Love placed in us has grown and become a tree, how can we, we who bear it, take it back to its origin? How can we repeat the journey made by God when he came to us, in the opposite direction? How can we cross infinite distance? It seems impossible, but there is a way—a way with which we are familiar. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Desire’s Perfect Goal Should Not Disenthrall Thy Soul—Here is a Star, there is a Star, Some Lose Their Way!
The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned. Love would conquer all, of course, but one has to know when it is there first. Glaucus was a fisherman. One day he had drawn his nets to land and had taken a great many fishes of various kinds. So he emptied his nets and proceeded to sort the fishes on the grass. The place where he stood was a beautiful island in the river, a solitary spot, uninhabited, and not used for pasturage of cattle, not visited by anyone but himself. On a sudden, the fishes, which had been laid on the grass, began to revive and move their fins as if they were in the water; and while he looked on astonished, they one and all moved off to the water, plunged in, and swam away. He did not know what to make of this, whether some god had done it, or some secret power in the herbage. “What herb has such a power?” he exclaimed; and gathering some of it, he tasted it. Scarce had the juices of the plant reached his palate when he found himself agitated with a longing desire for the water. Glaucus could no longer restrain himself, but bidding farewell to Earth, he plunged into the stream. The gods of the water received him graciously and admitted hi to the honour of their society. They obtained the consent of Oceanus and Tethys, the sovereign of the sea, that all that was mortal in him should be washed away. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
A hundred rivers poured their waters over Glaucus and then he lost all sense of his former nature and all consciousness. When he recovered, he found himself changed in form and mind. His hair was sea-green, and trailed behind him on the water; his shoulders grew broad, and what had been thighs and legs assumed the form of a fish’s tail. The sea-gods complimented him on the change of his appearance, and Glaucus fancied himself rather a good-looking personage. One day, Glaucus saw a beautiful maiden Scylla, the favourite of the water-nymphs, rambling on the shore, and when she had found a sheltered nook, laving her limbs on the clear water, he fell in live with her. Glaucus showed himself on the surface, spoke to the maiden, saying such things as he thought most likely to win her to stay; for she turned to run immediately on sight of him, and ran till she had gained a cliff overlooking the sea. Here she stopped and turned round to see whether it was a god or s sea animal, and observed with wonder his shape and colour. Glaucus, partly emerging from the water and supporting himself against a rock, said, “Maiden, I am not monster, nor sea animal, but a god; and neither Proteus nor Triton ranks higher than I. Once I was a mortal, and followed the sea for a living; but now I belong wholly to it.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
Then he told the story of his metamorphosis, and how he had been promoted to his present dignity, and added, “But what avails all this if it fails to move your heart?” Glaucus was going on in this strain, but the maiden, Scylla, turned and hastened away. Glaucus was in despair, but it occurred to him to consult the enchantress, Circe. Accordingly he repaired to her island. After mutual salutations, Glaucus said, “Goddess, I entreat your pity; you alone can relieve the pain I suffer. The power of the herbs I know as well as any one, for it is to them I owe my change of form. I love Scylla. I am ashamed to tell you how I have sued and promised to her, and how scornfully she has treated me. I beseech you to use your incantations, or potent herbs, if they are more prevailing, not to cure me of my love—for that I do not wish—but to make Scylla share it and yield me a like return.” To which Circe replied, for she was not insensible to the attractions of the sea-green deity, “You had better pursue a willing object; you are worthy to be sought, instead of having to seek in vain. Be not different, know your own worth. I protest to you that even I, goddess though I be, and learned in the virtue of plants and spells, should not know how to refuse you. If Scylla scorns you, scorn her; meet one who is ready to meet you half way, and thus make a due return to both at once.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
However, Glaucus replied, “Sooner shall trees grow at the bottom of the ocean, and seaweed on the top of the mountains, than I will cease to love Scylla, and her alone.” The goddess Circe was indignant, but she could not punish him, neither did she wish to do so, for she liked him too well; so she turned all her wrath against her rival, poor Scylla. She took her plants of poisonous powers and mixed them together, with incantations and charms. Then she passed through the crowd of gamboling beasts, the victims of her art, and proceeded to the coast of Sicily, where Scylla lived. There was a little bay on the shore to which Scylla used to resort, in the heat of the day, to breathe their air of the sea, and to bathe in its waters. Here the goddess poured her poisonous mixture, and muttered over it incantations of mighty power. Scylla came as usual and plunged into the water up to her waist. What was her horror to perceive a brood of serpents and barking monsters surrounding her! At first she could not imagine they were a part of herself, and tried to run from them and to drive them away; but as she ran she carried them with her, and when she tried to touch her limbs, she found her hands touch only the yawning jaws of monsters. Scylla remained rooted to the spot. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
Scylla’s temper grew as ugly as her form, and she took pleasure in devouring hapless mariners who came within her grasp. Thus she destroyed six of the companions of Ulysses, and tried to wreck the ships of Aeneas, till at least she was turned into a rock, and as such still continues to be a terror to mariners. Mistakes are a deliberately wrong choice in the contest between what is clearly good and what is clearly bad is sin. We all want a partner, but some want one to the point of it being a pathology. Many people knowingly or unknowingly force a relationship due to an addiction of love. If one is honest with oneself, and know that one has nothing in common with their focus of their intertest, such as different goals, different lifestyles, and different hobbies, and the person is not attracted to the individual pursing a relationship, this is a clear indication that they do not like you in a romantic way, much like how Scylla was not in the least bit interested in Glaucus. Yet, Glaucus could not take no for an answer and ended up running her like, and the rage she experienced ruined the lives of others. Absolutely imagine if you had people dragging you into things you did not want to be part of, and you will understand why this is not a healthy thing to do. It is never a healthy thing to do. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
People who think they can learn from their mistakes have a different brain reaction to mistake than people who think intelligence is fixed. One major difference between people who think intelligence is malleable and those who think intelligence is fixed is how one responds to mistake. When one makes a mistake, the best thing to do is to try to learn from it and figure it out. Conversely, some people who think they cannot gain intelligence will not take the opportunities to learn from their mistakes, and they usually employ defense mechanisms to justify their behaviour so they do not feel guilt or remourse. Defense mechanisms are psychological maneuvers that operate below the surface of one’s awareness (they are unconscious) to protect one from emotional pain or distress. The most familiar one is probably denial. Denial allows one to dismiss a painful reality so that one can go on acting as if a situation or event is not true—because one does not want to admit it is true. Transgression is different from being overtaken in a fault. Both sins and mistakes can hurt us and both require attention. People who try to force relations, often end up feeling insecure, hurt, and betrayed for no reason. Then these individuals start questioning themselves as to why they are never good enough for the person they are interested in. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
There should be no license for sin, but mercy should go hand and hand with reproof. Though it may be hard to admit, there comes a time when one just needs to cut their losses and leave a person alone. The progression of a romantic relationship cannot be formed. It must evolve naturally, over time. Impatient, insecure, or damaged people try to force relationships. Mortal make these kinds of mistakes all the times. However, these things are on an essentially predetermined course. A fool is a person lacking judgment or prudence. The Saviour used the term fool to characterize the lesson in this parable about the rich man who built greater barns to store his abundant fruits and goods and then said to his soul, “Thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry,” reports Luke 12.19. The distinction between sins and mistakes is important to our actions. We have seen some very bitter finger pointing. All of us make mistakes, and some of us very serious ones. Any thoughtful person feels a kind of failure because one’s sins or moral failure. One does not get clean by rolling in the mire. One does not get clean and whole by brooding unduly over the past, although we can certainly learn from our mistake. There is no strength in weakness; there is no strength in sin; and we do not overcome our mistake and our sins by fighting them directly. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
If people dwell upon them too much, they may succumb to their sins. The avoidance of guilt can be addictive, too. Guilt-avoidance has become a drug of choice for many people, because it is so pleasurable, almost intoxicating, to think of oneself as morally pure. Those who are addicted to guilt-avoidance are usually a bit inconsistent. They avoid the guilt themselves, but they do not mind imposing a bit of it—maybe even a lot of it—on others. It can be immensely pleasurable to notice the flaws of others while ignoring your own. However, that is a sin, too. All things considered, we are on a safer ground when we focus on our own sins, not those of others. At least this is how we process theologians see things. We believe that when we harm others, or fail to act in ways that prevent them from being harmed, we violated something deep within the nature of nature. We have violated an Eros toward life’s flourishing that is divine. In sinning against others, we sin against God. It takes courage to stand up. The freedom to be different. The freedom to take guilt and make something beautiful of it. Humans have the freedom to turn guilt into love. Few gifts are more desirable than a clear conscience—a soul at peace with itself. Only God can heal a troubled soul. However, if we want God to forgive us, we must follow the procedure he has given to us. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
Confession is a necessary requirement for complete forgiveness. It is an indication of true Godly sorrow. It is part of the cleansing process—the starting anew requires a clean page in the diary of our conscience. Confessions should be made to the appropriate person who has been wronged by us and to the Lord also. In addition, the nature of our transgression may be serious enough to require a confession to God in prayer. “Therefore I say unto you, Go; and whoever transgressed against me, him shall you judge according to the sins which he or she has committed; and if he or she confess his or her sins before thee and me, and repents in the sincerity of one’s heart, that person one shall forgive, and I will also forgive that individual,” reports Mosiah 26.29. Remember, it is complete deliverance from the tortures of a guilt-ridden soul that we seek. Repentance is not easy. Godly sorrow brings one to the depth of humility. This is why the gift of forgiveness is so sweet and draws the transgressor so close to the Saviour with a special bond of affection. Full repentance liberates the individual with joy unspeakable. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
Any type of open and truthful disclosure reduces stress and helps individuals come to terms with their behaviour. It is not coincidental that some of the most powerful people or institutions in may cultures encourage people to confess their transgressions. And there is strong evidence that writing about upsetting experiences or dark secrets can benefit your mental and physical well-being. Similar to religious confessions, expressive writing encouraged individuals to explore their deepest thoughts and feelings about upsetting experiences. For such emotional purges to work, people must be completely honest with themselves. Putting emotional turmoil into words changes how we think about it. Giving concrete form to secret experiences can help categorize them in new ways. Talking or writing about a disturbing event helps us to understand it better. And things we do not understand cause greater anxiety. Once we are able to express our upheavals, we tend to ruminate about them less, freeing us up to focus on others thing. Dozens of studies have also shown that expression is linked to less stress and improved sleep and cardiovascular function. Also, better sleep is associated with enhanced immune function and better general health—which correlates with better mental health, too. Confession can help people get through difficult times. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
You Left Me a Heavenly Sweet Legacy of Love–Meet Me on Top of the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day
I have really hope you have found happiness, and if ever in need of something, like someone to love you, do not hesitate to call me. Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears, but our intellect…must itself lack all those things which of its nature it understands. Since then it naturally understands all sensible and bodily things, it must be lacking in every bodily nature; just as the sense of sight, being able to know colour, lacks all colour. If sight itself had any particular colour, this colour would prevent it from seeing others colours, just as the tongue of a feverish person, being coated with bitter moisture, cannot taste anything sweet. The true genius shudders at incompleteness—imperfection—and usually prefers silence to saying the something which not everything should be said. Maybe there is something divine in the bliss we feel. Love aims at transcending human existence, at connecting it with the eternal and infinite, and thereby at achieving the only aspect of immortality that is open to us as human beings. Because many people want both height and depth, spirituality strengthens and develops love and transforms it into a desire for a higher level of understanding of the self, others, and the Universe. When our eyes fall upon the beauty of the Earth, our soul is able to remember true love and reverences as it enjoys the expression of the divine—of temperance, justice, and knowledge of the absolute. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
The human being is a spiritual being at the core. We are the soul and have an existence beyond the physical. Our personality has, in fact, many sub-personalities or different, often conflicting, aspects. Some of these aspects can be very troublesome and sabotage our efforts at success and happiness. Magically, if we can observe some aspect of ourselves with detachment, then we can change that aspect or somewhat control it. The idea of aspects of personality and observing them is now part of our daily language (largely do the work of Psychosynthesis). We regularly hear people say, “There is a part of me that wants marry Walter, but the other part of me is says Sam Baldwin is my destiny.” Psychosynthesis work sets up a dialogue with the different aspects of self to try to find a way of balance and integration of these, often, conflicting, parts. People tend to be dominated by love, will, and intelligent activity. Love deals with matters of the heart, compassion, emotion, and sensitivity. The will is one’s drive, need to achieve, power to remove and overcome come obstacles. Intelligent activity is the capacity to actively plan, organize, construct mental schemes and models of things. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
Psychosynthesis tries to identify the basic type and then attempt to bring in balance if necessary. For example, the love type may need to develop the will to be less vulnerable and more effective. The will type may need to develop emotional sensibility so as to learn to love and be loved. In the 1993 film, Sleepless in Seattle is a classic fairy tale which involves a love struck, beautiful, enchanted princess Anne Reed, and sleepless, pragmatic, handsome prince Sam Baldwin. After the death of his wife, Sam moved to Seattle with his son and is convinced he will never find love again, and he just focuses on his work in architecture and never sleeps. His son, Jonah calls a talk-radio program hosted by a psychiatrist and Johan tells the World how concerned he is about his dad, and then the father gets on the phone and talks about what love means to him. The World falls madly in love with him, and many women want to meet him, but he is not interested. Anne Reed hears the call, and although she is already engaged, she feels he is her destiny. Anne bases he love life on the 1957 film An Affair to Remember. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
Psychosynthesis would have helped Anne balance her need for love, and would have helped Sam develop a less will driven and emotional aspect of his personality, which is a form of conscious balance and choice. It lets people know where they are lacking balance in their lives, and as you see it is not always a chemical imbalance, but a lack of development or personal understanding. However, fate brings the lovers together in hopes they can balance each other out. There are usually three levels of satisfaction: Happiness, joy, and bliss. Happiness is the goal for most people’s lives it is the arrangement of life events to bring about the desired end. Problem, it can be fleeting and may not last for long. Joy is the constant states of soul, and is the surest sign of the presence of the soul. Bliss is the condition of the spirit beyond all material limitations. The intellect here serves as a bridge. Because of the refinement of the matter composing it, the intellect is well adapted as a medium of consciousness—it is like a translucent substance through which the soul can shine. However, it is only in conjunction with a soul that the intellect and the whole psychophysical organism can have experiences. The soul can gain release through discriminatory knowledge (viveka), that is, by realizing the essential distinction between itself and nature. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
Contemplative techniques induce a stilling and purification of the mind in which the essential nature of the soul is reflected clearly. Thereby the soul learns to recognize the repression of the sublime, which tend to lead to unhappy and neurotic states that are the result of failure to understand and admit the spiritual aspects in ourselves and others. We cannot base on life on films like Sleepless in Seattle because taking such a risk could turn out to be more like Sleeping with the Enemy. Sleeping with the Enemy is a 1991 film in which a character called Laura Burney lives in a beautiful home by the beach on Cape Cod with her husband, Martin, a charming, handsome and wealthy investment counselor. In reality, Martin is not charming at all. He is volatile and charged with energy. Martin is extremely obsessive and has control issues. Martin is also physically and emotionally abusive toward his wife, Laura, throughout their marriage. He makes her keep the house crystal clean, makes her pretend to be happy, tells her what she is allowed to wear, selects the music she can listen to, and even controls her social activities. Therefore, we need to teach our kids that life is not all about finding love, but more about finding a career that allows one to support oneself and becoming aware of the external World, since mental and physical entities evolve on a parallel and mutually adapted lines; thus, it opens the way to a correspondence theory of perception. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
According to the theory of perception, external happenings imprint themselves via the sense and the sensus communis, or mind organ (manas), on the intellect. These images are then illuminated by the soul. The mind is, so to say, a screen containing pictures of the outer World, and the soul lights these up. However, the soul itself cannot be illuminated and this perceived introspectively; therefore, its existence is known only by inference (or by a special state of consciousness). This is why religion and talk therapy have become some popular. Doctors realize a lot of people do not have chemical imbalances, but they are experiencing situations and conditions that they are not equipped to handle and need guidance of someone who can help them recognize there is nothing wrong with them, but they may be in a situation that is not conductive to their development. By medicating people who do not have chemical imbalances, we could be doing more damage than good because we are using a drug to control them and forcing them to adapt to situations, which may be unsafe. Conversely, some people do need medication because there is something wrong with their brain. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
While we are on the subject of mental health, there was this interesting study about a mental who was schizophrenic, he was a witness to a crime, and was arrested. He mother did not want him on medication because she believed it was dangerous for him. He was being assaulted in jail because he was not normal. The investigators forced him to take a shot of an antipsychotic that would last a month so he could clear his head up enough to see lucid and testify. After taking the medication, he hanged himself because he suffered from depression, as his friends, the voices in his head were gone, and he was lonely. Therefore, not everyone needs therapy and not everyone needs medication. As a society, we just have to understand there are different types of people and not everyone is typical and we cannot force them to adhere to our standards. Of course, we can never understand what life is like for some people, who have mental or physical impairments, or who have been sheltered and do not understand the World, because we have never been in their shoes. So, it is not our job to sit back and judge people who have learned to adapt as best to life as they can. Sometimes people are living unimaginable lives. “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you,” reports Matthew 7.1-2. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
A layperson’s most natural way of defending belief in induction is that it has worked in the past. Concealed in this reply, of course, is the assumption that what has already worked will continue to do so. However, there is a lack of clarity about what counts as success in using the rule. Our society has much neglected the need for the development of the capacity for expression of love and beauty. Love is a basic soul quality. When unfolded, it enables the person to love and accept the people they encounter and find the good in all people. We have to identify our infinity of living Worlds in endless pace with the infinity of God. Knowledge therefore must begin not with sense experience but with a rational search for units of divine life. The atoms of the physical World are carried in the ether, which is the universal medium of the divine life and power. The conquest of the self, in which the intellect achieves mastery over the passions of humans and drives out the beast is were all the traditional virtues of moderation and self-control have place, and at this level we appear to have the choice between good and evil. However, when we use this freedom as reason dictates, we become aware that we are simply following the urge of our nature toward union with the divine; and the rational person burns with the heroic fury of an intellectual love of God. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
The mind senses the presence of God in the whole of his creation. Beauty is everywhere. We live in the beauty, but in reality everything is beautiful. We place immense trust in the analogical power of reason as a means of empathy with the universal of life of things. In mathematical reasoning, we possess the standard for God’s own knowledge, and whatever we can prove mathematically we know as surely and as perfectly as God does. Thus in the genuinely scientific investigation of nature we possess a revelation equal in authority, though not in importance, to the revelation concerning human’s moral duties and destiny that is contained in the Holy Scripture. “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise person who built his or her house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. However, everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish person who built his or her house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with great crash,” reports Matthew 7.24- 27. That is why God wants us to apply his ways in our lives now. What we can take with us for all eternity is our love and concern with one another. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
Randolph Harris II International Institute 