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Whether they are Driven by Hate or by Love, the Power of the Human Passion is the Same!
One who does not enjoy one’s own company is usually right. Cooperation, faith, mutual trust, and altruism are built into the fabric of the nervous system and propelled by internal satisfactions attached to them. Mammals and many other forms of life could not survive a single generation without built-in cooperative behaviour. Gratifications also relate to positive satisfactions springing from buoyant health, vigorous and rested; delight accompanying both genetically endowed and socially acquired values; joys, solitary and shared feelings of pleasant excitement, engendered by exposure to novelty and during the quest for novelty. Gratifications result from satisfaction of curiosity and the pleasure of inquiry, from the acquisition of widening degrees of individual and collective freedom. Positive features of satisfaction enable humans to sustain unbelievable privations and yet to cling to life and, beyond that, to attach importance to beliefs that may surpass the values of life itself. That is why so many people find it off that in forty thousand years since their final birth, some humans have failed to develop higher strivings more fully but seem to be governed principally by their greed and destructiveness. Why did the biologically built-in strivings not remain—or become—predominant? #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
There are specific environmental conditions conducive to the optimal growth of humans and, if our precious assumptions are correct, to the development of the life-furthering syndrome. On the other hand, to the extent these conditions are lacking, one will become a crippled, stunted human, characterized by the presence of the life-thwarting syndrome. One must not overlook the fact that people’s desires are often harmful for them, and that the desires themselves can be symptoms of dysfunctioning, or of suggestion, or of both. Everybody today knows, for instance, that drug additions is not desirable, even if many people desire the use of drugs. Since our whole economic system rests on generating desires that the commodities can profitably satisfy, it is hardly to be expected that a critical analysis of the irrationality of desires would be popular. In the attempt to change and improve social conditions humans are constantly limited by the material factors of their environment, such as ecological conditions, climate, technique, geographical situation, and cultural traditions. As we have seen, primitive hunter-gatherers and early agriculturalists lived in a relatively well0balanced environment that was conducive to generating constructive rather than destructive passions. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
As we have seen, primitive hunter-gatherers and early agriculturalists lived in a relatively well-balanced environment that was conducive to generating constructive rather than destructive passions. However, in the process of growth, humans change, and they change their environment. One progresses intellectually and technologically; this progress, however, creates situations that are conducive to the development of the life-thwarting character syndrome. The material conditions have their own laws and wish to change the is of itself not enough. Indeed, if the Earth had been created as a paradise where humans would not be bound by the stubbornness of material reality, one’s reason might have been a sufficient condition to create the proper environment for one’s unimpeded growth, with enough for all to eat and, simultaneously, the possibility of freedom. However, to speak in terms of the biblical myth, humans were expelled from Paradise and cannot return. One was saddled with the curse of the conflict between oneself and nature. The World was not made for humans; one is thrown into it, and only by one’s own activity and reason can one creates a World which is conducive to one’s full development, which is one’s home. One’s rulers themselves were executors of historical necessity, even through they were often evil humans who followed their whims and failed to execute their historical task. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Irrationality and personal evil became decisive factors only in those periods when the external conditions were such that they would have permitted human progress and when this progress was impeded by the character deformation of the rulers—and the ruled. Nevertheless, there have always been visionaries who clearly recognize the goals for human’s social and individual evolution. Rational is any thought, feeling or act that promotes the adequate functioning and growth of the whole of which it is a part, and irrational that which tends to weaken or destroy the whole. Environmental factors further or hinder the development of certain traits and set the limits within which humans act. Nevertheless, human’s reason and will are powerful factors in the process of one’s development, individually and socially. It is not history that makes humans; humans create themselves in the process of history. Only strict and rigid thinking, the result of the laziness of the mind and heart, tries to construct simplistic schemes of the either-or type that block any real understanding. Humans must satisfy their bodily needs in order to survive, and one’s instincts motivate one to act in favour of one’s survival. If one’s instincts determined most of one’s behaviour, one would have no special problems in living and would be “a contented cow” provided one had ample food. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
However, for humans the satisfaction of one’s organize drives alone does not make one happy, nor does it guarantee one’s sanity. Nor is one’s problem that of first satisfying one’s physical needs and then, as a kind of luxury, developing one’s character-rooted passions. The latter are present from the very beginning of one’s existence, and often have even greater strength than one’s organic drives. When we look at individual and mass behaviour we find that the desire to satisfy hunger and pleasures of the flesh constitutes only a minor part of human motivation. The major motivation of humans are one’s rational and irrational passions; but they do not commit suicide for the lack of satisfaction involving pleasures of the flesh, and not even because they are starving. However, whether they are driven by hate or by love, the power of the human passion is the same. That this is so can hardly be doubted. Human’s instinctual drives are necessary but trivial; human’s passions that unify one’s energy in the search of their goal belong to the real of the devotional or sacred. The system of the trivial is that of making a living; the sphere of the sacred is that of living beyond physical survival—it is the sphere in which humans stake their fate, often one’s life, the sphere in which one’s deepest motivations, these that make life worth living, are rooted. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
In order to appreciate this distinction properly one must remember that what a person calls sacred is not necessarily so. Today for instance, the concepts and symbols of Christianity are held to be sacred, although they no longer elicit a passionate involvement for most church-goers; on the other hand, the striving for the conquest of nature, for fame, power, and money, which are the real objects of devotion, are not called sacred because they have not been integrated into an explicit religious system. Only exceptionally, when one has spoken of “sacred egoism” (in a national sense), or “sacred revenge” has this been different in modern times. In one’s attempts to transcend the triviality of one’s life humans are driven to seek adventure, to look beyond and even to cross the limiting frontier of human existence. This is what makes great virtues and great vices, creation as well as destruction, so exciting and attractive. The hero is the one who has the courage to go to the frontier without succumbing to fear and doubt. The average human is a hero even in one’s unsuccessful attempt to be a hero; one is motivated by the desire to make some sense of one’s life and by the passion to talk as far as one can to its frontiers. Individuals live in a society that provides them with ready-made patterns that pretend to give meaning to their lives. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
In our society, for instance, they are told that to be successful, to be a “bread winner,” to raise a family, to be a good citizen, to consume goods and pleasures gives meaning to life. However, while for most people this suggestion works on the conscious level, they do not acquire a genuine sense of meaningfulness, nor do they have a center within themselves. The suggested patterns wear thin and with increasing frequency fail. That this is happening today on a large scale is evidenced by the increase of drug addition, by the lack of genuine interest in anything, in the decline of intellectual and artistic creativity, and in the increase of violence and destructiveness. Socioemotional development may be seen as a series of stages that occur around certain ages. The successful completion of each stage is important for healthy childhood development. During their youth, children have a surplus of energy and try to learn and master tasks that will bring a sense of competence and connection to their World. The concept of the transmuting internalization (nine alien syllables). It is the process we have in mind when we say we have really learnt something. What is learnt concerns our place in the World: the infant moves from a state in which something food that felt like part of “self” (in a self-object way) turns out to be “not self.” If we do not learn this, we can never feel confident that we can work to make good things happen in fact and not just in phantasy. It is only when we recognize a good thing as not (yet) ours, that we can set about making it ours. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Imagine a process in which, for instance, milk and biscuits arrive so soon after the child begins to form an expectation of milk and biscuits, that to the child it appears that they arrived because it thought of them, the parent’s prompt reaction having accustomed the child to this. This child is in a self-object state of mind. Later, on some occasions, the biscuits do not arrive soon enough for the child to believe it has omnipotently created them. It then begins to learn that the arrival of milk and biscuits is not completely under the control of its thoughts. However, it may have come to associate milk and biscuits with hearing someone say “bikky” and this lays the foundation for shouting “bikky,” whenever the child has a wish for milk and biscuits, and thereby getting them. The milk and biscuits now arrive not by being merely thought of. The child has to do something to make them arrive: shout, and they come. The child is learning a skill. Later still, it may learn that they now no longer arrive unfailingly when one shouts, but that one can make one’s way to the kitchen and find them, or one can ask, “Please may I have a biscuit.” More skills, more autonomy. We have come a long way. And so the child, and the patient, come to be able to do something for themselves which previously had to be left to parent or therapist. It is like an extended weaning process. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
The parent’s responsiveness to the child’s needs prevents traumatic delays before the narcissistic equilibrium is established after it has been disturbed, and if the shortcomings of the parent are of tolerable proportions, the infant will gradually modify the original boundlessness and blind confidence of one’s expectations of absolute perfection. With each of the parent’s minor empathic failures, misunderstandings and delays, the infant withdraws narcissistic libido from the archaic imago of unconditional perfection (primary narcissism) and acquires in its stead a particle of inner psychological structure which takes over the parent’s functions in the service of the maintenance of narcissistic equilibrium. If all goes well, the acquisition of more autonomy and skill is matched and supported by the natural development of the child’s (or the patient’s) growing interest in the World of other people and things, in exploration, in play. This is a very different process from the enforced instinctual renunciation and a major chase of the self-regulation and the internalization of parental advice. Although most children are probably still subject to a very great deal of instinctual renunciation, it is pleasant to know that there are cheerier developmental possibilities. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Interestingly, these possibilities are created by the failure of the parent to mirror the child’s needs in every particular. It is the experience of this sequence of psychological events via the merger with the empathic omnipotent self-objects that sets up the base-line from which optimum (non-traumatic, phase-appropriate) failures of the self-object lead, under normal circumstances, to structure-building via transmuting internalisations. These “optimal failures” come about because of a longer than hitherto normal but still manageable delay before gratification, or because of a misunderstanding of what the infant wanted, so that it did not get what it wanted on that occasion, but still felt generally loved and understood. A comforting thought for fallible parents and psychotherapists. Of course, if the parent’s support is withdrawn too abruptly, that deprivation, though harmful, is nowhere near as damaging as a constant lack of empathy would be. Therefore, it is important to make sure your baby is loved or has someone that will be loving to your baby. Yet, if the psychological environment response to the child with a full range of undistorted empathic responses, even seriously realistic deprivation are not psychologically harmful. Humans do not live by bread alone. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
In due course, the merged state comes to an end, as the parents make time for their own needs. In this one serves one’s child better than an obsessively devoted one might do, who might fail to give the child a chance to grow up. There have to be appropriate preconditions for development, in child-growth as in therapy. What the child needs is neither continuous perfect empathic responses from the self-object nor unrealistic admiration. What creates the matrix for the development of a healthy self in the child, is the self-object’s capacity to respond with proper mirroring at least some of the time what is pathogenic is not the occasional failure of the self-object but one’s chronic incapacity to respond appropriately. “In case I am delayed, I write that you may know how people ought to conduct themselves in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the support structure and foundation of the truth,” reports 1 Timothy 3.15. “Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her; that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church radiant, having no stain or wrinkle or any other blemish; but that she would be holy and blameless,” reports Ephesians 5.25-27. If what is said about the spiritual formation of the children of light is true, what would we expect to find in those gatherings of disciples of Jesus into local congregations, which we call “churches”? Of the actual churches around us, what would they do better to omit, and what do they need more of? #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
A reasonable response might be that these local congregations would be entirely devoted to the spiritual formation of those in attendance—to the “renovation of the heart,” as we have explained it here. This seems to have been Saint Paul’s idea, and he, more than any other, was given the role of defining the church, this new thing on Earth, the non-ethnic people of God. Identification with Christ and the emerging community of Christ obliterated all other identities, not by negation, but by its new and positive reality. Thus we have Saint Paul’s magnificent statement to the Ephesians that Christ in his triumphant capacity as risen Lord of all (Ephesians 4.10), has given certain people to the “called out ones” or ecclesia (that is, the church) “apostles, prophets evangelists, pastors, and teachers” Ephesians 4.11). And these special, supernatural functions are solely for the purpose of “equipping the holy ones (‘saints’) for the work of service, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us arrive at a coherent faith and the full knowledge of the Son of God—at a completed human being, as measured in terms of the stature of the fullness of Christ,” reports Ephesians 4.12-13. As a result of this “building up” we will no longer be like children, swept up in every current of teaching that comes by, or taken in by human trickery and deceitful schemes. (Does not that sound all too familiar?) #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Instead, “speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every respect into him who is the head, Christ, from who the whole body, being adapted and held together by what is supplied through every part functioning properly, grows and builds itself up in love,” reports Ephesians 4.14-16. However, one can regard the moral law as an illusion, and so cut oneself off from the common ground of humanity. One can refuse to identify the Numinous (having a strong religious or spiritual quality; indicating or suggesting the presence of a divinity) with the righteous, and remain a barbarian, worshipping pleasures of the flesh, or the dead, or the lifeforce, or the future. However, the cost is heavy. And when we come to the last step of all, the historical Incarnation, the assurance is strongest of all. The story is strangely like many myths which have haunted religion from the first, and yet it is not like them. It is not transparent to the reason: we could not have invented it ourselves. It has not the suspicious a priori lucidity of Pantheism or of Newtonian physics. It has the seemingly arbitrary and idiosyncratic character which modern science is slowly teaching us to put up with in this willful Universe, where energy is made up in little parcels of a quantity no one could predict, where speed is not limited, where irreversible entropy gives time a real direction and the cosmos, no longer static or cyclic, moves like a drama from a real beginning to a real end. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If any message from the core of reality ever were to each us, we should expect to find in it just that unexpectedness, that willful, dramatic anfractuosity which we find in the Christian faith. It has the master touch—the rough, masculine taste of reality, not made by us, or, indeed, for us, but hitting us in the face. If, on such ground, or on better ones, we follow the course on which humanity has been led, and become Christians, we then have the “problem” of pain. Being Christians, we learn from the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity that something analogous to “society” exists within the Divine being from all eternity—that God is Love, not merely in the sense of being the Platonic form of love, but because, within Him, the concrete reciprocities of love exist before all World and are thence derived to the creatures. Again, the freedom of a creature must mean freedom to choose: and choice implies the existence of things to choose between. A creature with no environment would have no choices to make: so that freedom, like self-consciousness (if they are not, indeed, the same thing), again demands the presence to the self of something other than the self. The minimum condition of the self-consciousness and freedom, then, would be that the creature should apprehend God and, therefore, itself as distinct from God. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
It is possible that such creatures exist, aware of God and themselves, but of no fellow-creatures. If so their freedom is simply that of making a single naked choice—of loving God more than the self or the self more than God. However, a life so reduced to essentials is not imaginable to us. As soon as we attempt to introduce the mutual knowledge of fellow-creatures we run up against the necessity of “Nature.” However, if you were introduced into a World which thus varied at my every whim, you would be quite unable to act in it and would thus lose the exercise of your free will. Nor is it clear that you could make your presence known to me—all the matter by which you attempted to make signs to e being already in my control and therefore not capable of being manipulated by you. That God can and does, on occasions, modify the behaviour of matter and produce what we call miracles, is part of Christian faith; but the very conception of these occasions should be extremely rare. However, try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself. Whatever human freedom means, Divine freedom cannot mean indeterminacy between alternatives and choice of one of them. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Perfect goodness can never debate about the end to be attained, and perfect wisdom cannot debate about the means most suited to achieve it. The freedom of God consists in the fact that no cause other than Himself produces His acts and no external obstacle impedes them—that His own goodness is the root from which they all grow and His own omnipotence the air in which they all flower. God is great, we and we are to conceive that greatness and that suffering without contradiction. Morality is an absolute and not situational; humans must be true to God, the Creator; and rules we must live by can be found only in the Christian Bible; have the courage to tactfully speak your convictions no matter the personal costs. God who made the Heavens and the Earth is an all-powerful God and has given an exacting standard of justice for humans to live by. That is why we need more than iron principles. We need Jesus Christ. We must open our hearts to the Son of God and will discover remarkable joy and peace will flood over us. No longer will you want to partake in gossip or be pictured as a troublemaker, a person with an unquenchable thirst for drama, a maverick who loves to make waves and tilt with windmills. This discovery will drain us of everything rotten and fills us with the Spirit of God. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
To each one is due what is one’s own. Now that which is directed to a human is said to be one’s own. Thus the master owns the servant, and not conversely, for that is free which is its own cause. In the word debt, therefore, is implied a certain exigence or necessity of the thing to which it is directed. Now a twofold order has to be considered in things: the one, whereby one created thing is directed to another, as the parts of the whole, accident to substance, and all things whatsoever to their end; the other, whereby all created things are ordered to God. Thus in the divine operations debt may be regarded in two ways, as due either to Gd, or to creatures, and in either way God pays what is due. It is due to God that there should be fulfilled in creates what His will and wisdom require, and what manifests His goodness. In this respect, God’s justice regard what befits Him; inasmuch as He renders to Himself what is due to Himself. It is also due to a created thing that it should possess what is ordered to it; thus it is due to humans to have hands, and that other animals should serve them. Thus also God exercises justice, when He gives to each thing what is due to it by its nature and condition. This debt however is derived from the former; since what is due to each thing is due to it as ordered to it according to the divine wisdom. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
And although God in this way pays each thing its due, yet He Himself is not the debtor, since He is not directed to other things, but rather other things to Him. Justice, therefore, in God is sometimes spoken of as the fitting accompaniment of His goodness; sometimes as the reward of merit. When God does punish the ricked, it is just since it agrees with their deserts; and when God does spare the wicked, it is also just; since it befits His goodness. Although justice regards act, this does not prevent its being the essence of God; since even that which is of the essence of a thing may be the principle of action. However, good does not always regard act; since a thing is called good not merely with respect to the act, but also as regards perfection in its essence. For this reason, the good is related to the just, as the general to the special. When one as reviewed a problem from all its angles, and has done this not only with the keenest powers of the mind but also with the finest qualities of the heart, it should be turned over at the end to God and dismissed. The technique of doing so is simple. It consists of being still. In the moment of letting the problem fall away, one triumphs over the ego. This is a form of meditation. In the earlier stage it is an acknowledgment of helplessness and weakness in handling the problem, of personal limitations, followed by a surrender of it (and of oneself) to God in the last resort. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
One can do more. Further thought would be futile. At this point Grace may enter and do what the ego cannot do. It may present guidance either than, or at some later date, in the form of a self-evident idea. The commonest error is to try to produce and manufacture intuition. That cannot be done. It is something which comes to you. Hence do not expect it to appear when concentrating on a problem, but if at all after you have dismissed the problem. Even then it is a matter of grace—it may or may not come. One must watch vigilantly for the impulses of self-interest which interfere with the truth of intuitions or reflections. If our inner mentor so bids it, we must be ready to fly in the face of Worldly wisdom. We shall not rue he day we acted so. The giving up of all Earthly desires, the liberation of the heart from all animal passions, the letting go of all egoistic grasping—these attitudes will arise spontaneously and grow naturally if a human is truly quest-minded, so that one’s intuition will assert itself little by little. Often intuition does not advise one until the time for an action or a decision or a move is nearly at hand. So one must wait patiently until it does and not let intellect or imagination construct fanciful plans which may be cancelled by intuition’s arisal. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
There is an aspect of the World-Mind which, manifesting as protons and electrons, expresses its energies, forces, and powers. The atom is made from divine stuff. The World, which is made from atoms, is divine. The same energy which is behind the Universe is converted into the “matter” of the Universe. However, it remains unexhausted and unconsumed. God is its source, and is inexhaustible. Lord of undying fire that burns within us all, my prayer is sent to you, from my heart to yours. As you are enflamed, so may I be also; filled with the fire that rolls out from your hidden home, that golden-walled palace enclosed by living water. Burn away my weakness. Light within me a raging fire of strength. Cause me to burn with zeal to perform the acts you desire. Yea, every mouth shall give Thee praise, every tongue shall vow loyalty to Thee, every knee shall bend before Thee, every head shall bow down to Thee. All hearts shall revere Thee and unto Thy name all our inmost being shall sing praises, as it is written in holy Scripture: All my bones shall proclaim, “O Lord, who is like unto Thee? Thou deliverest the weak from one that is stronger, the poor and the needy from one’s despoiler.” #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Genius Does What it Must—Cannot Make a Gentleman the Prince of Darkness!
The city room is an outhouse. You can get black lung by working on the rewrite desk for a week. They should pass a law against vaping, cigarettes, and the joint. There is need of a different kind, rooted exclusively in the human situation—the need for the development of a character structure. This need has to do with the phenomenon that was dealt with before, the decreasing significance of instinctive equipment in humans Effective behaviour presupposed that one can act immediately—that is, without being delayed by too much doubt and in a relatively integrated manner. It seems plausible to speculate that human beings, being still less determined by instinct than other terrestrial beings, would have been a biological failure if one had not developed a substitute for the instincts one lacked. This substitute also had to have the function of instincts: enabling one to act as if one were motivated by instincts. This substitute is the human character. Character is the specific structure in which human energy is organized in the pursuit of human’s goals; it motivates behaviour according to its dominate goals: a person acts “instinctively,” we say, in accordance with one’s character. Character is a human’s fate. The miser does not ponder whether one should save or spend; one is driven to save and to hoard; the exploitative-sadistic character is driven by the passion to exploit. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
The sadistic character is driven by the passion to control; the loving-productive character cannot help striving for love and sharing. These character-conditioned drives and strivings are so strong and unquestionable for the respective persons that they feel that theirs is simply a “natural” reaction, and find it difficult to really believe that there are other people whose nature is quite different. When they cannot help becoming aware of it, they prefer to think that these others suffer from some kind of deformation and are deviants from human nature. Anybody who has some sensitivity in judging other people (it is of course much more difficult with regard to oneself) sense whether a person has a sadistic or a destructive or a loving character; one sees enduring traits behind the overt behaviour and will be capable of sensing the insincerity of a destructive character who behaves as if one were a loving person. Sudden outburst of violence may be caused by brain disease, such as tumors, and such have, of course, nothing to do with depressive-bored states. Human groups from the very beginning have lived under very diverse environmental circumstances, regards different areas in the World and as regards fundamental changes of climate and vegetation within the same area. Since the emergence of Homo developed the less was a result of genetic changes, and the last forty thousand years such change is nil. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Yet these different environmental situations made is necessary for each group to adapt its behaviour to these respective situations, not only by learning but also by developing a “social character.” The concept of social character is based on the consideration that each form of society (or social class) needs to use human energy in the specific manner necessary for the functioning of that particular society. Its members want to do what they have to do if the society is to function properly. This process of transforming general psychic energy into specific psychosocial energy is mediated by the social character. The means by which social character is formed are essentially cultural. Through the agency of the parents, society transmits to the young its values, prescriptions, commands, et cetera. In more than a rudimentary sense, character is a human phenomenon; as far as we know human were able to create a substitute for their lost instinctive adaptation. The acquisition of character was a very important and necessary element in the process of human survival, but it has also many disadvantages and even dangers. Inasmuch as character is formed by traditions and motivates humans without appealing to one’s reason, it is often not adapted to or is sometimes even direct contradiction to new conditions. For example, concepts like the absolute sovereignty of the state are rooted in an older type of social character and are dangerous for the survival of humans in the atomic age. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
The concept of character is crucial for the understanding of the manifestations of malignant aggression. The destructive and sadistic passions in a person are usually organized in one’s character system. In a sadistic person, for instance, the sadistic drive is a dominant part of one’s character structure and motivates ne to behave sadistically, limited only by one’s concern for self-preservation. In a person with a sadistic character, a sadistic impulse is constantly active, waiting only for a proper situation and a fitting renationalization to be acted out. Such a person corresponds almost completely to Lorenz’s hydraulic model inasmuch as character-rooted sadism is a spontaneously flowing impulse, seeking for occasions to be expressed and creating such occasions where they are not readily at hand by “appetitive behaviour.” The decisive difference is that the source of the sadistic passion lies in the character and not in a phylogenetically programmed neural area; hence it is not common to all humans, but only to those who share the same character. Human’s existential needs can be satisfied in different ways. The need for an object of devotion can be answered by devotion to God, love, and truth—or by idolatry of destructive idols. The need for relatedness can be answered by love and kindness—or by dependence, sadism, masochism, destructiveness, and narcissism. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
The need for unity and rootedness can be answered by the passions for solidarity, brotherliness, love, and mystical experience—or by drunkenness, addition to harmful and intoxicating substances, depersonalization. The need for effectiveness can be answered by love, productive work—or by sadism and destructiveness. The need for stimulation and excitation can be answered by productive interest in humans, nature, art, ideas—or by a greedy pursuit of ever-changing pleasures. What are the conditions for the development of character—rooted passions? We consider first that these passions do not appear as single units but as syndromes. Love, solidarity, justice, reason are interrelated; they are all manifestations of the same productive orientation that I shall call the “life-furthering syndrome.” On the other hand, sadomasochism, destructiveness, greed, narcissism, incestuousness also belong together and are rooted in the same basic orientation: “life-thwarting syndrome.” Where one element of the syndrome is to be found, the other also exist in various degrees, but this does not mean that someone is ruled either by the one or by the other syndrome. In fact, people in whom this is the case are the exceptions: the average person is a blend of both syndromes; what matters for the behaviour of the person and the possibility of change is precisely the respective strength of each syndrome. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
As to the neurophysiological conditions for the development of the two respective kinds of passions, we must start out from the fact that humans are unfinished and “uncompleted.” Not only is the human brain not fully developed at birth, but the state of disequilibrium in which one finds oneself leaves one as an open-ended process to which there is no final solution. However, are humans—being deprived of the help of instincts and equipped only with the “weak reed” of reason by which one deceives oneself so easily—left without any help from one’s neurophysiological equipment? It seems that this assumption would miss an important point. One’s brain, so superior to that of the primate not only in size but also in the quality and structure of its neurons, has the capacity to recognize what kinds of goals are conducive to human’s health and growth, physically as well as psychically. It can set goals leading to the realization of human’s real, rational needs, and humans can organize one’s society in ways conducive to this realization. Humans are not only unfinished, incomplete, burdened by contradictions; one also can be defined as a being in active search of one’s optimal development, even though this search must often fail because external conditions are too unfavourable. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
The assumption that humans are a being in active search of their optimal development is not without support from neurophysiological data. Human’s capacity for intelligently directed self-development confers upon one the ability to determine the pattern of one’s culture and so to shape the course of human evolution in directions of one’s own choice. This ability, which no other terrestrial beings that we know of have, is human’s most distinctive characteristic, and it is perhaps the most significant fact known to since. It is now established beyond peradventure of doubt that various levels of nervous system organization are interdependently interrelated with one another. Somehow, by means that are still mysterious, purposive behaviour organized at each of these different levels of integrative function becomes expressed by a linked sequence of over-all purposes representing some kind of final judicious reckoning among contending functions. The purpose of the whole organism are clearly manifested and continuously served according to some integrated internal point of view. Some goal-seeking systems at the molecular level can be identified by physical-chemical techniques. Other goal-seeking systems at the level of the brain circuitry can be identified by neurophysiological techniques. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
At each level, parts of these systems are concerned with the appetites and satisfactions that govern behaviour. All of these goal-seeking systems originate in and are intrinsic to protoplasmic materials. Many such systems are peculiarly specialized and are located in particular nervous and endocrine systems. Evolutionarily elaborate organisms possess appetites and satisfactions, not only to fulfill vegetative needs; not simply for the obligate cooperations required for unions in pleasures of the flesh, the rearing of young, and the safeguarding of food, family and territory; not just for the adaptive behaviours essential to meet successfully the vicissitudes of environmental change; but also for extra energies, strivings, and outreaching—the extravagance that go beyond mere survival. The brain is a product of evolution, just as are teeth and claws; but we can expect much more of the brain because of its capacities for constructive adaptation. Neuroscientists can take as their long-range objective the understanding of the fullest potentialities of humankind in order to help humanity become more fully self-aware and to illuminate human’s nobler options. Above all, it is the human brain, with its capacities for memory, learning, communication, imagination, creativity, and the powers of self-awareness, that distinguishes humanity. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Cooperation, faith, mutual trust, and altruism are built into the fabric of the nervous system and propelled by internal satisfactions attached to them. Mammal and many other forms of life could not survive a single generation without built-in cooperative behaviour. A baby cannot exist alone, but is essentially part of a relationship. However complex the psychology of the sense of self and of the establishment of an identity eventually becomes as the baby grows, no sense of self emerges expect on the basis of this relation in the sense of BEING. This sense of being is something that antedates the idea of being-at-one with, because there has not yet been anything except identity. Two separate people can feel at one, but hereat the place that I am examining, the baby and the object are one. Many of my patients have suffered disturbances in the process of self-formation, and therapy can help them in specific ways to repair that early damage. I have become convinced that, to some extent at least, a properly conducted analysis of patients suffering from a disturbance in the formation of the self creates a psychological matrix that encourages the re-activation of the original development tendency. The nuclear self of the patient is consolidated, the talents and skills of the analysand that are correlated to the nuclear self are revitalized, while other aspects of the self are discarded or recede. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
In the state of primary narcissism, there is as yet no differentiation of self and object (usually an attachment figure like a parent, or may a house). Without this differentiation there can be no object-representation, and this makes it possible for the wonderful feelings of goodness, rightness, safety and omnipotence which belongs to that stage for the lucky ones. Yes, babies often feel like they are omnipotent because of a sense that is traced to what is called “oceanic feeling,” and it persists int adult life, or at least the longing for it persists. It is basically a narcissistic feeling of well-being, in conjunction with a feeling of union with some an all-powerful force—obviously the home-loving feelings. To my mind, narcissistic feelings come from the memory—traces of what it was like in the days of oceanic feelings and harmonious interpenetrating mix-up when the self and a beneficent and powerful (m)other were sill merged in the infant’s experience. This must have felt good. The baby’s self-esteem is determined by the gratification of its (instinctual) needs. The first supply of satisfaction from the external World is simultaneously the first regulator of self-esteem. When being gratified, the baby feels wonderful, indeed omnipotent. When the baby has a need which is not being satisfied, it fees irritated, frustrated, deprived, and it longs for what will remove the disturbing displeasure. The motivation comes from the wish to restore equilibrium. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
The longing for the return of omnipotence and the longing for the removal of instinctual tension are not yet differentiated from each other. If one succeeds in getting rid of an unpleasant stimulus, one’s self-esteem is again restored. The individual’s experiences connected with omnipotence lead to a most significant need of the human mind. The longing for the oceanic feeling of primary narcissism can be called the “narcissistic need.” “Self-esteem” is awareness of how close the individual is to the original omnipotence. Its (instinctual) needs make the child dependent on the parent. However, the child actually renounces its own instinctual satisfaction. The tendency to participate in the parent’s omnipotence, after renunciation of one’s own, differentiates itself from the desire for instinctual satisfaction. Thereafter every token of love from the powerful adult has the same effect as the satisfaction of instinctual needs. The nature of the child’s dependence is thus changed. When the baby loses love, the small child loses self-esteem, and when one regains love the self-esteem also returns. This is what makes children so educable. They need supplies of affection so badly that they are ready to renounce other satisfactions if rewards of affection are promised or if withdrawal of affection is threatened. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
The promise of necessary narcissistic supplies of affection under the condition of obedience and the threat of withdrawal of these supplies if the conditions are not fulfilled are the weapons of any authority. Some people behave as though any flaw, any difference of opinion, any lack in total harmony between them and an attachment figure or authority figure or even a peer is quite intolerable. When this occurs, they feel great distress and outrage, that their perhaps not yet even spoken thoughts and feeling had not been responded to by those people who are crafting their futures, and they require the full attention of these individuals so they can mirror their every move in an attempt to figure out what behaviours are proper decent. The individual is back in a development phase where one need a totally accurate and absolutely competent self-object. This way of relating is called “mirror-transference” and it is basically a revival of the “purified pleasure-ego,” in which the individual attempts to save the original all-embracing narcissism by concentrating perfection and power upon the self—here called the grandiose self—and by turning disdainfully aware from an outside to which all imperfections have been assigned. When children or mature people behave as though they are entitled to everyone’s deference and subservience, in ordinary life, we call them cheeky or demanding or pompous, and we respond by setting limits, through noncompliance, ridicule, scolding, or whatever. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
The self-object state of mind exists exactly to the extent that the mother is prompt to bring to the baby what it needs precisely at the moment the baby needs it. This confirms the illusion, so necessary at that stage, of harmony, security, and invulnerable power. For the self-object is the baby’s experience of its own competence, of its own power to have whatever it needs. We can get a glimpse of what this experience may feel like, in a sentence such as “To get what you want makes you feel grand, wonderful.” This sentence can mean both “makes you feel grand, wonderfully satisfied” and “makes you feel you are a grand, wonderful person.” This distinction between “I feel grand” and “I feel that I am grand” is more sophisticated than infants (and many adults) are capable of making. So the parents or care givers who are to prompt to cater to one’s baby keeps the baby feeling grand and confirms that baby’s sense of goodness and well-being. This promptness and accuracy of response is called “mirroring”: there is a symmetry between the baby’s phantasy-image of what it needs and the care giver’s intelligent caring supply of that need. I will often call it confirming, because it also confirms the baby’s sense of its own rightness: its right to exist, to have these needs, to have these gratifications. The confirming/mirroring process has important implications for the development of the infant’s sense of self. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
As if it has formed itself, the human environment reacts to even the smallest baby to confirm this idea. When, within the matrix of mutual empathy between the infant and its self-object, the baby’s innate potentialities and the self-object’s expectations converge, is it permissible to consider this juncture the point of origin of the infant’s primal rudimentary self? Accurate empathy is the first step in mirroring—knowing what the baby feels. Doing something about whatever is troubling the bay is the second step—but only the second. Except in extreme situations, the first is more important. The first requirement is not that something be done for the child; the first requirement is to understand and absorb what the child is experiencing and to communicate back some recognition and acceptance of its experience. In short, do not just shovel the silver spoon in, confirm the child’s right to hunger and satisfaction. When that happens in the right way, the child’s sense of itself is strengthened. The child then experiences hunger (or whatever), but not to such an extent that it becomes oppressed, humiliatingly dependent, or hurt—certainly not to the explosive extreme extent which would disrupt the emerging organization of self-structures. Gratifications also relate to beneficial satisfactions springing from buoyant health, vigorous and rested; delight accompanying both genetically endowed and socially acquired values; joys, solitary and shared feelings of pleasant excitement, engendered by exposure to novelty and during the quest for novelty. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
If anyone has a clear intuition about a matter, it would be foolish of one to trust intellect alone in the same matter. Gratifications result from satisfaction of curiosity and the pleasure of inquiry, from the acquisition of widening degrees of individual and collective freedom. Beneficial features of satisfaction enable humans to sustain unbelievable privations and yet to cling to life and, beyond that, to attach importance to beliefs tat may surpass the values of life itself. We do not have to speculate on which special area of the brain generates higher strivings, such as those for solidarity, altruism, mutual trust, and truth, but we must look at the brain system as a whole from the standpoint of its evolution in the service of survival. Empathy and love are qualities inherent in the brain system. How is it possible for two people to communicate, since language presupposed shared experience? Since the environment does not exist for humans by themselves but in their relationship to the human observer, communication presupposed that we find the like representation of environment in the two elements whoa re separated by their skins, but alike in their structure. When they realize and utilize this insight then A knows what A knows, because A identifies oneself with A and we have the equality I-Thou. Clearly, identification is the strongest coalition—and its mist subtle manifestation is love. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
The intellect is one medium of understanding, the intuition is another. The intuition should give orders which the intellect should carry out. The reasoning and particularity needed to do so and to attend to their details will then be provided by the intellect itself. However, the original function of giving direction and the authority of giving command will be vested in the intuition alone. Intuition reaches a conclusion directly, without the working of any process of reasoned thinking. What the thinking in one cannot receive, the mystical intuition can. The secret has yielded itself again and again, but not to human’s logical thinking; it has yielded itself only to human’s subtle intuition. After long thought and observation I became aware of a second brain or gland, locked in the region of the heart, which commanded with authority. I discovered that most of the difficulties of life were the result of the head-brain attempting to do the work of the heart-brain. It was like a skilled labourer trying to assume the place of a high-powered engineer. The point which appears in space is a point of light. It spreads and spreads and spreads and becomes the World-Mind. God has emerged out of Godhead. And out of the World-Mind the World itself emerges—not all at once, but in various stages. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
From that great light come all other and lesser lights, come the suns and the planets, the galaxies, the Universes, and all the mighty hosts of creatures small and great, of being just beginning to sense and other fully conscious, aware, wise. And the World appear the opposite, the dual principle which can be detected everywhere in Nature, the equilibrium. The Lord is just, and hath loved justice. There are two kinds of justice. The one consists in mutual giving and receiving, as in buying and selling, and other kinds of intercourse and exchange. This the Philosopher calls commutative justice, that directs exchange and intercourse in business. This does not belong to God, since, as the Apostle says: “Who hath first given to Him, and recompense shall be made one?” (Romans 11.35). The other consists in distribution, and is called distributive justice; whereby a ruler or a steward gives to each what one’s rank deserves. As then the proper order displayed in a ruling family or any kind of multitude evinces justice of this kind in the ruler, so the order of the Universe, which is seen both in effects of nature and in effects of will, shows forth the justice of God. Hence Dionysius says (Div. Nim. Viii, 4): “We must needs see that God is truly just, in seeing how He gives to all existing things what is proper to the condition of each; and preserves the nature of each in the order and with the power that properly belong to it.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Certain of the moral virtues are concerned with the passions, as temperance wit concupiscence, fortitude with fear and daring, meekness with anger. Such virtues as these can only metaphorically be attributed to God; since, as stated above, in God there are no passions; nr a sensitive appetite, which is, as the Philosopher says, the subject of those virtues. On the other hand, certain moral virtues are concerned with works of giving and expending; such as justice, liberality, and magnificence; and these reside not in the sensitive faculty, but in the will. Hence, there is nothing to prevent out attributing these virtues to God; although not in civil matters, but in such acts as are not unbecoming to Him. For, as the Philosopher says, it would be absurd to praise God for His political virtues. Since good as perceived by intellect is the object of the will, it is impossible for God to will anything but what His wisdom approves. This is, as it were, is law of justice, in accordance with which His will is right and just. Hence, what He does according to His will He does justly: as we do justly what we do according to the law. However, whereas law comes to us from some higher power, God is a law unto Himself. Now is the time to be children of the light. That is where we now stand in our World. That is the situation we now have to deal with. We are beyond the point where mere talk—no matter how sound—can make an impression. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Demonstration is required. We must live what we talk, even in places where we cannot talk what we live. We stand again in the World of the first century, when children of light first entered it. The test is reality. If the bewildering array of spiritualities and ideologies that throng our times really can do what apprenticeship to Christ can do, what more is there to say? There is no effectual response to our current situation expect for the children of light to be who and what they were called to be by Christ their head. Mere “reason” and “fact” cannot effectively respond, because they are now under that same sway of public spirit and institutions as are the arts and public life generally—and indeed as much of the “church visible” as well. Only when those who really do know that Jesus Christ is the light of the World take up their stand with him, and fulfill their calling from him to be children of light where they are, will there by any realistic hope of stemming the tide of evil and showing the way out of that tide for those who really want out. The call of Christ today is the same as it was when he left us here to serve him “even to the end of the age,” reports Matthew 28.20. We have not yet come to the “end of the age.” That call is to be his apprentices, alive in the power of God, learning to do all he said to do, leading others into apprenticeship to him, and also teaching them how to do everything he said. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
If we follow that call today in our Christian groups to become the children of the light, the morbid and difficult moments can be replaced by hope and light offered through the gospel of Jesus Christ, as it did in past time. Also, the most important thing happening in our communities will be what is happening in our churches. “Let your light so shine before humans, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father in Heaven,” reports Matthew 5.14-16. And now that we know, from our studies here, what it takes to become mature children of the light, how could we possibly be excused from not taking that open path and leading others to it. We will then, once again, see among us the presence of God who answers by fire. As Moses said to the Lord long ago: “Is it not by Thy going with us, that we, I and Thy people, may be distinguished from all the other people who are upon the face of the Earth?” (Exodus 33.16). As coins pouring from your lap, please rain down your gifts and blessings on me, Prosperous One. As plants turning green in the spring, please bring prosperity into my life, Lord of Fertility. As Ultimate Driving Machines being brought from the factory to the dealership, please send riches into my life, Great Ultimate Driving Machine. Please walk beside me, Lord of Strength, as I undergo trial. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Controller of the riches beneath the Earth, fertilizer of all life upon it, distributor of the wealth that arises from it: Lord of the Earth, Lord of Wealth, when sharing out your bounty, please do not forget me, who am faithful in your service. The breath of every living being shall bless Thy name, O Lord our God, and the spirit of all flesh shall ever glorify and extol Thee, O our King. From everlasting to everlasting Thou art God. However, for Thee we have no King, Deliverer and Saviour to rescue, redeem and give sustenance and to show mercy in all times of trouble and distress; yea, we have no Sovereign but Thee. Thou wert God from the beginning even as Thou wilt be God until the end. Thou art God of all that lives, Lord of all generations, extolled in manifold praises. Thou guidest Thy World with loving kindness and Thy creatures with tender compassion. Thou dost not slumber nor sleep; Thou arousest those that sleep, and awakenest those that slumber. Thou causest the uneducated to speak, loosest the bound, supportest the falling and raisest up those that are bowed down. To Thee alone d we give thanks. Were our mouth filled with song as the sea, our tongues with joyful praise as the multitude of its waves, our lips with adoration as the spacious firmament. Father, please help me, I am calling to you! My need is great, but your power is greater. I know you will prevail over the troubles that beset me. You who created all things, please give birth to what I desire; bring it to pass. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Still Let Me Dive into the Joy I Seek—For Yet the Past Doth Prison Me!
Any time friends have to be careful of what they say to friends, friendship is taken on another dimension. While the intellect argues waveringly at length, the intuition affirms confidently in an instant. While the one gropes among the appearances and shadows of truth, the other walks straight toward the truth. Ordinarily, ample time is needed to accumulate data and deliberate properly before the correction decisions or judgments can be made. None of this is necessary to make them intuitively, for the intuition itself operates out of time and beyond thought. An intuitive idea is quite different from one derived from the customary process of logical thinking. Unless it is distorted or muddled by the individual oneself, it is always reliable. Can we say that of an intellectual idea? The best wisdom of a human does not come out of acuteness of thinking; it comes out of depth of intuition. It suits our hypertrophied and hybristic modern consciousness not to be mindful of the dangerous autonomy of the unconscious and to treat it negatively as an absence of consciousness. The hypothesis of invisible gods or daemons would be, psychologically, a far more appropriate formulation, even though it would be an anthropomorphic projection. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
However, since the development of consciousness requires the withdrawal of all the projections we can lay our hands on, it is not possible to maintain any non-psychological doctrine about the gods. If the historical process of World despiritualization continues as hitherto, then everything of a divine or daemonic character outside us must return to the psyche, to the inside of the unknown human, whence it apparently originated. The materialistic error was probably unavoidable at first. Since the throne of God could not be discovered among the galactic systems, the inference was that God had never existed. The second unavoidable error is psychologism: if God is anything, he must be an illusion derived from certain motives—from will to power, for instance or from repressed pleasures of the flesh. These arguments are not new. Much the same thing was said by the Christian missionaries who overthrew the idols of heathen gods. However, whereas the early missionaries were conscious of serving a new God by combating the old ones, modern iconoclasts are unconscious of the one in whose name they are destroying old values. Nietzsche thought himself quite conscious and responsible when he smashed the old tablets, yet he felt a peculiar need to back himself up with a revivified Zarathustra, a sort of alter ego, with whom he often identifies himself in his great tragedy Thus Spake Zarathustra. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Nietzsche was no atheist, but his God was dead. The result of this demise was a split in himself, and he felt compelled to call the other self “Zarathustra” or at times, “Dionysus.” In his fatal illness he signed his letters “Zagreus,” the dismembered god of the Thracians. The tragedy of Zarathustra is that, because his God died, Nietzsche himself became a god; and this happened because he was no atheist. He was of too positive a nature to tolerate the urban neurosis of atheism. It seems dangerous for such a man to asset that “God is dead”: he instantly becomes the victim of inflation. Far from being a negation, God is actually the strongest and most effective “position” the psyche can reach, in exactly the same sense in which Paul speaks of people “whose God is their belly,” (Phil. 3.19). The strongest and therefore the decisive factor in any individual psyche compels the same belief or fear, submission or devotion which a God would demand from humans. Anything despotic and inescapable is in this sense “God,” and it becomes absolute unless, by an ethical decision freely chosen, one succeeds in building up against this natural phenomenon a position that is equally strong and invincible. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
If this psychic position proves to be absolutely effective, it surely deserves to be named a “God,” and what is more, a spiritual God, since it sprang from the freedom of ethical decision and therefore from the mind. Humans are free to decide whether “God” shall be a “spirit” or a natural phenomenon like the craving of candy from a person with a sweet tooth, and hence whether “God” shall act as a beneficent or a destructive force. However, indubitable and clearly understandable these psychic events or decisions may be, they are very apt to lead people to the false, unpsychological conclusion that it rests with them to decide whether they will create a “God” for themselves or not. There is no question of that, since each of us is equipped with a psychic disposition that limits our freedom in high degree and makes it practically illusory. Not only is “freedom of the will” an incalculable problem philosophically, it is also a misnomer in the practical sense, for we seldom find anybody who is not influenced and indeed dominated by desires, habits, impulses, prejudices, resentments, and by every conceivable kind of complex. All these natural facts function exactly like an Olympus full of deities who want to be propitiated, served, feared, and worshipped, not the individual owner of this assorted pantheon, but by everybody in one’s vicinity. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Bondage and possession are synonymous. Always, therefore, there is something in the psyche that takes possession and limits or suppresses our moral freedom. In order to hide this undeniable but exceedingly unpleasant fact from ourselves and at the same time pay lip-service to freedom, we have got accustomed to saying aporetically, “I have such and such a desire or habit or feeling of resentment,” instead of the more veracious “Such and such a desire or habit or feeling of resentment has me.” The later formulation would certainly rob us even of the illusions of freedom. However, I ask myself whether this would not be better in the end than fuddling ourselves with words. The truth is that we do not enjoy masterless freedom; we are continually threatened by psychic factors which, in the guise of “natural phenomena,” may take possession of us at any moment. The withdrawal of metaphysical projections leaves us almost defenceless in the face of this happening, for we immediately identify with every impulse instead of giving it the name of the “other,” which would at least hold it at arm’s length and prevent it from storming the citadel of the ego. “Principalities and powers” are always with us; even if we would, we have no need to create them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
It is merely incumbent on us to choose the master we wish to serve, so that one’s service shall be our safeguard against being mastered by the “other” whom we have not chosen. We do not create “God,” we choose him. Though our choice characterizes and defines “God,” it is always human-made, and the definition it gives is therefore finite and imperfect. (Even the idea of perfection does not posit perfection.) The definition is an image, but this image does not raise the unknown fact it designates into the realm of intelligibility, otherwise we would be entitled to say that we had created a God. The “master” we choose is not identical with the image we project of him in time and space. He goes on working as before, like an unknow quantity in the depth of the psyche. We do not even know the nature of the simplest thought, let alone the ultimate principles of the psyche. Also, we have no control over its inner life. However, because this inner life is intrinsically free and not subject to our will and intentions, it may easily happen that the living thing chosen and defined by us will drop out of its setting, the human-made image, even against our will. Then, perhaps, we could say with Nietzsche, “God is dead.” Yet it would be truer to say, “He has put off our image, and where shall we find him again?” #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
The interregnum is full of danger, for the natural facts will raise their claim in the form of various—isms, which are productive of nothing but anarchy and destruction because inflation and human’s hybris between them have elected to make the ego, in all its ridiculous paltriness, lord of the Universe. That was the cast the case with Nietzsche, the uncomprehended portent of a whole epoch. The individual ego is much too small, its brain is much too feeble, to incorporate all the projections withdrawn from the World. Ego and brain burst asunder in the effort; the psychiatrist calls it schizophrenia. When Nietzsche said “God is dead,” he uttered a truth which is valid for the greater part of the World and it is characteristic of their behaviour. They choose to serve idols such as the fake news, pleasures of the flesh, and other such objects. People are influenced by that statement it not because he said so, but because they want it to be a widespread psychological fact to justify the dysfunction of humanity, and not take responsibility for their own maleficent actions. A way to just give up trying to life right. So the consequences are not long delayed, it created a catastrophe. The life of Christ is understood by the Church on the one hand as an historical, and on the other hand as an eternally existing, mystery. This is especially evident in the sacrifice of the Mass. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
From a psychological standpoint, the view of the reality of Christ can be translated as follows: Christ lived a concrete, personal, and unique life which, in all essential features, had at the same time an archetypal character. This character can be recognized from the numerous connections of the biographical details with Worldwide myth-motifs. These undeniable connections are the main reason why it is so difficult for researchers into the life of Jesus to construct from the gospel themselves factual reports, legends, and myths are woven into a whole. This is precisely what constitutes the meaning of the gospels, and if one tried to separate the individual from the archetypal with a critical scalpel, they would immediately lose their character of wholeness. The life of Christ is no exception in that not a few of the great figures of history have realized, more or less clearly, the archetype of the hero’s life with its characteristic changes of fortune. However, the ordinary human, too, unconsciously lives archetypal forms, and if these are no longer valued it is only because the prevailing psychological ignorance. Indeed, even the fleeting phenomena of dreams often reveal distinctly archetypal patterns. God who made the World still upholds it. He rules the entire Universe, this great Being, and regulates the Universal Laws of humans. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
The World-Mind brings our Universe into being and governs it, too. The enormous number of objects and creatures which appear through Its agency, through Its power and wisdom, cannot be limited to what is visible alone, and must fill a thinking person with wonder at the possibilities—a wonder which Plato said must be the beginning of philosophy. The Infinite Intelligence knows and controls all things, all situations. “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shalt not fall on the ground without your Father,” (Matthew 10.29) puts simply that an infinite intelligence controls the entire Universe, and that it is as present in the smallest event as in the greatest. This is the Power that carries everything along, every entity, and which provides the Universe with its continuity. In the sense that the World-Mind is the active agent behind and within the Universe, it is carrying the whole burden of creation; it is the real doer carrying us and our actions too. There is a Mind which keeps that planets in their allotted orbit and the lives of humans in their largely self-earned destines. The World-Mind is God as universal intelligence and creative power. The World-Mind is Divine Ideation, the First Intelligence, the Universal Wisdom. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
We are frequently informed by religious and mystical sources that God is Love. It would be needful for those who accept this statement to balance and complete it by the affirmation that God is Pure Intelligence. Love is not the ultimate but only an attribute of the ultimate. The intelligence which works so untiringly in the World around us knows what to do without having to prepare a plan. It does not need to think in the way human beings think. Being infinite, its wisdom is infinite. The Intelligence which formulate the World-Idea is living and creative—in short, Divine. The so-called laws of nature merely show its workings. If the divine did not have real being, with all its attributes of consciousness, intelligence, power, and love, we ourselves would not exist. Those who cannot comprehend the infinite of intelligence behind the World around them can hardly be expected to comprehend that it has an independent existence as an attribute of pure Spirit. The World-Mind holds in one eternal thought the entire World-Idea. The World-Mind knows and experiences everything and everyone. It also knows the Supreme non-thing, the Real, while knowing the illusoriness of the cosmos. The World-Mind knows all because it is eternally in all. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
The mental activity of the World-Mind is not, and cannot be, an unconscious process. In the elemental, the mineral, and even the plant kingdom this may seem to us to be so; but if the first act of mentation which began the evolutionary process was not done unawares, then the entire project of the entire cosmos, at all the different stages of this process, also cannot be unknown, at any moment and in any point, to the World-Mind. In its own mysterious way, the World-Mind is all-embracing, aware of everything, every entity and every activity. The World-Mind is not only Lord and Governor of the World but also Lord and Governor of the illusion which makes the World so vivid to the unenlightened; that is, It is Itself the All-Knowing, the All-Seeing, Conscious of the Real. If that one Mind were behind all, only then could it be possible that One Mind could comprehend all. The World-Mind is common to all human minds and is the field of their interaction, and the notion that A and Be are independent and isolated minds are superficially correct but fundamentally fallacious. There is a common ground of mind, a hidden linkage, and the ideas of one can be transmitted to the other, albeit often unconsciously. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
No event could be outside the knowledge of God, no entity could be beyond the power of God. Were the World-Mind beyond, because outside, the finite Universe, then it would be limited by that Universe and thus lose its own infinitude. However, because it includes the Universe completely within itself while remaining completely unlimited, it is genuinely infinite. World-Mind is neither limited nor dissipated by its self-projection in the Universe. If World-Mind is immanent in the Universe, it is not confined to the Universe; if it is present in every particle of the All, its expression is not exhausted by the All. Inexplicable and incomprehensible though the fact must be to the human intellect, the One infinite Mind never loses its own character even though it is seemingly incarnated into the myriad forms of an evolving Universe, never loses itself in them. It is a wisdom expressed through the World-Idea, but not confined to it. Amid all this apparent self-division into innumerable selves, the World Mind remains as intact and inviolate as ever it was. When we think of holiness, great saints of the past like Francis of Assisi or George Muller spring to mind—or contemporary gains of the faith like Mother Teresa. However, holiness is not the private preserve of an elite corps of martyrs, mystics, and Nobel prize winners. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Holiness is the everyday business of every Christian. It evidences itself in the decisions we make and the things we do, hour by hour, day by day. You are going to be all right. God loves you. People love you. You are surrounded by a community who is praying for you. You are going to be all right. The good news of Jesus Christ is that such God’s love is available to all. Holiness is obeying God—loving one another as He loved us. God is the Judge, the lover of all, and Jesus is the Mediator of the new covenant. If a person is not ready to live by them, beliefs are not worth much. We must live by love, the law of kindness brought to light by the Gospel. What is this good for? To make all who receive it enjoy God and themselves: to make them like God; lovers of all; contented in they lives; and crying out at their death, in calm assurance, “O grave, where is they victory! Thanks be unto God, who gives me the victory, through my Lord Jesus Christ.” Holiness is obeying God—sharing His love, even when it is inconvenient. No talk here of the crushing burden of piety, as it has been called of religion as a life sentence instead of life. Our walk with Christ, well learned, is a burden only as wings are to a bird or the engines are to an airplane. The mature children of the light are like their Master. They know God and his Word, they think straight, and they live in the truth, because every essential dimension of the being has been transformed to serve God: heart, soul, mind, and strength. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Holiness is obeying God—finding ways to help those in need. “Look carefully then how you walk! Live purposefully and worthily and accurately, not as the unwise and witless, but as wise—sensible, intelligent people; making the very most of the time—buying up each opportunity—because the days are evil. Therefore do not be vague and thoughtless and foolish, but understanding and firmly grasping what the will of the Lord is,” reports Ephesians 5.15-17. Heroism is an extraordinary feat of the flesh; holiness is an ordinary act of the spirit. One may bring personal glory; the other always gives God the glory. The sure standard for holiness is Scripture. There God makes clear what He means by holy living or, as theologians call it, the process of sanctification. Then Ten Commandments, from which all other commandments flow, are the beginning; they apply today as much as they did when God engraved them on tablets of stone for Moses. Next, the life of Jesus provides holiness in the flesh; in His persevering self-denial, His unqualified obedience of the Father’s will, and the fullness of the Holy Spirit in His daily life, Jesus remains our example. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Then Paul gives explicit guidelines. Consider just this sampling of injunctions: Lay aside falsehood and speak the truth. DO not let the sun go down on your anger. Let one who steal, steal no longer but work. Let no unwholesome word come from your mouth. Be rid of bitterness and wrath and malice. Be kind to each other, forgiving. Walk in live. Be careful so you will not even be accused of immorality, greed, or any impurity Engage not in silly or coarse or filthy talk. Do not practice idolatry in any form nor associate with those who do. Abstain from immorality dealing with pleasures of the flesh and conquer lustful passions. Do not lead weaker humans to sin. Things we should practice: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Things we should avoid: Immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, strife, outbursts of anger, drunkenness, jealousy. The faithful must become weary in doing good. A human reaps what one sows. The quest for holiness, then, should begin with a search of the Scriptures. Holiness consists in think as God thinks and willing as God wills. That thinking and willing is a process requiring discipline and perseverance and is a joint effort: God’s and ours. On the one hand, the Holy Spirit convicts of sin and sanctifies. However, that does not mean we can sit back, relax, and leave the driving to God. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
God expects—demands—that we do our part. Our progress in holiness depends on God and ourselves—on God’s grace and on our will to be holy. Understanding this joint responsibility makes clear what is otherwise one of the most troublesome areas for many Christians, found in Paul’s letter to the church at Rome where on one hand he says we are dead to sin and in the next verse exhorts us not to let sin reign in our mortal bodies. Why should we turn away from sin that is already dead? The answer to this seeming contradiction underscores the joint responsibility for sanctification. We are dead to sin because Christ died to sin for us. He settled the ultimate victory. However, as we live day by day, sin still remains a constant reality. Though God gives us the will to be holy, the daily fight requires continuing effort on our part. Fighting off sin is like beating back continuing guerrilla attacks. Holy living demands constant examination of our actions and motives. However, in doing so we must guard against the tendency to focus totally on self which is easy to do—especially as the culture’s egocentric values invade the church. In fact, this self-indulgent character of our times is a major reason the topic of true holiness is so neglected today by Christian teachers, leaders, writers, and speakers. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
We have perhaps, unconsciously substituted a secularized self-centered message in the place of true holiness. For when we speak of “victory” in the Christian life, we all-too-often mean personal victory—how God will conquer sin for us (at least those sins we would like to be rid of—those extra ten pounds, that annoying habit, maybe a quick temper). This reflect not only egocentricity but an incorrect view of sin. Sin is not simply the wrong we do our neighbour when we cheat one, or the wrong we do ourselves when we abuse our bodies. Sin, all sin, is a root rebellion and offense against God, it is cosmic treason. We must understand that our goal as believers is to seek what we can do to please God, not what He can do for us. Personal victories may come, but they are a result, not the object. True Christian maturity—holiness, sanctification—is God-centered. So-called victorious Christian living is self-centered. It is time for us Christians to face up to our responsibility for holiness. Too often we say we are defeated by this or that sin. No, we are not defeated; we are simply disobedient. If we stopped using the terms “victory” and “defeat” to describe our progress in holiness, it might be well. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The Christian life begins with obedience, depends on obedience, and results in obedience. We cannot escape it. The orders from our commander-in-chief are plain: “Whoever has my commandments and obeys them, one is the one who loves me.” Loving God—really loving Him—means living out His commands no matter what the cost. God is real. Put your faith in the God of the Bible, not the God you made up in your head. Holiness is obeying God. Please listen to me, you who grant wisdom: The stories that have been told about you from the times when our race was young have taught me that you are the clearest of thinkers and the best at deciding the proper path. I find myself now with a choice to make and I do not know how to make it. Without a clear road before me, then, I turned you for help. Path-Maker, Way-Shower, God, what should I do? I ask that you please give me a sign to help me decide. Please some to me with clear counsel; please come to me with advice. Please come to me, whether in a dream, or in the chance remark of a stranger, or in my own deliberations. May my decision reflect your calm wisdom, and my life become thereby a pleasure for you to see. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
You alone are the Lord. God, you have made Heaven the Heavens of Heavens with all their host, the Earth and all that it contains, the seas and all that is in them. God, you reserve them all; and the host of Heaven render homage unto Thee. You art the Lord God, who did choose Abram You did bring him forth out of Ur of the Chaldees, and gave him the name of Abraham, finding his heart faithful before Thee. God, you made the covenant with him to give his descendants the land of the Canaanite, the Hittie, the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Jebusite, and the Girgashite, and Thou has fulfilled Thy words; for Thou art righteous. And Thou did see the affliction of our fathers in Egypt, and did hear their cry by the Red Sea; and did perform signs and wonders upon Pharaoh, and on all his servants, and on all the people of his land, knowing that they dealt arrogantly against them. Thus did Thou make Thy name great to this day. Thou did divide the sea before them, so that they crossed the sea on dry land, whereas their pursuers did Thou cast into the depths like a stone into mighty waters. The Lord is highly exalted. The Lord is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation; He is y God, and I will glorify Him; my father’s God, and I will exalt Him. The Lord is triumphant in battle, the Lord is His name. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH
Rancho Cordova, CA |
Now Selling!
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The Sun Had Risen, but the Glimmer Barely Penetrated the Thick Darkness!
he real superstar is a man or a woman raising kids on $150 a week. The question is not at what age I want to retire, it is at what income. Each generation must not only preserve the gains of culture and civilization, and maintain intact those just institutions that have been established, but it must also put aside in each period of time a suitable amount of real capital accumulation. This saving may take various forms from net investment in leaning and education. Assuming for the moment that a just savings principle is available which tells us how great investment should be, the level of the social minimum is determined. Suppose for simplicity that the minimum is adjusted by transfer paid for by proportional expenditure (or income) taxes. In this case raising the minimum entails increasing the proportion by which consumption (or income) is taxed. Presumably as this fraction becomes larger there comes a point beyond which one of two things happens. Either the appropriate savings cannot be made or the greater taxes interfere so much with economic efficiency that the prospects of the least advantaged in the present generation are no longer improved but begin to decline. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
That human-thing relationship is growing more and more temporary may be illustrated by examining the culture surrounding the little girl or boy who trades in one’s Barbie doll. This child soon learns that Barbie dolls are by no means the only physical objects that pass into and out of one’s young life at a rapid clip. Pampers, bibs, paper napkins, Kleenex, towels, non-returnable soda bottles—all are used up quickly in one’s home and ruthlessly eliminated. Corn muffins come in baking tins that are thrown away after one use. Spinach is encased in plastic sacks that can be dropped into a pan of boiling water for heating, and then thrown away. TV dinners are cooked and often served on throw-away trays. One’s homes is a large processing machine through which objects flow, entering and leaving, at a faster and faster rate of speed. From birth on, one is inextricably embedded in a throw-away culture. The idea of using a product once or for a brief period and then replacing it, runs counter to the grain of societies or individuals steeped in a heritage of poverty. However, some people are not used to disposable products. They like to keep their things, even old things, rather than throw them away. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
We represented one company that wanted to introduce a kind of plastic throw-away curtain. We did a marketing study for them and found the resistance too strong. This resistance, however, is dying all over the developed World. From cardboard milk containers to the rockets that power space vehicles, products created for short-term or one-time use are becoming more numerous and crucial to our way of life. The recent introduction of paper and quasi-paper clothing carried the trend toward disposability a step further. Fashion boutiques and working-class clothing stores have sprouted whole departments devoted to gaily coloured and imaginatively designed paper apparel. Fashion magazines display breathtakingly sumptuous gowns, coats, pajamas, even wedding dresses made of paper. The bride pictured in one of these wears a long white train of lace-like paper that, the caption writer notes, will make “great kitchen curtains” after the ceremony. Like the reverse of what happened in the film The Sound of Music. Paper clothes are particularly suitable for children. Writes one fashion expert: “Little girls and boys will soon be able to spill ice cream, draw pictures and make cutouts on their clothes while their mothers smile benignly at their creativity.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
And for the adults who want to express their own creativity, there is even a “paint-yourself-dress or suit” complete with brushes. Price: $20.00. Price, of course, is a critical factor behind the paper explosion. Thus a department store features simple A-line dresses and men’s breathable underwear, made of what it calls “devil-may-care cellulose fiber and nylon.” The dresses start off at about $50.00 dollars and the men’s underwear about $55.00 a pair. It is almost more cost effective for the consumer to buy and discard a new one than to send an ordinary dress to the cleaners. Soon it will be. However, more than economics is involved, for the extension of the throw-away culture has important psychological consequences. We develop a throw-away mentality to match our throw-away products. This mentality produces, among other things, a set of radically altered values with respect to property. However, the spread of disposability through the society also implies decreased durations in human-thing relationships. Instead of being linked with a single object over a relatively long span of time, we are linked for brief periods with the succession of objects that supplant it. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Thus it seems evident, for example, that the classical principle of utility leads in the wrong direction for questions of justice between generations. For if one takes the size of the population as variable, and postulates a high marginal productivity of capital and a very distant time horizon, maximizing total utility may lead to an excessive rate of disposal (at least in the near future). However, since from a moral point of view there are no grounds for discounting future well-being on the basis of pure time preference, the conclusion is all the more likely that the greater advantages of future generations will be sufficiently large to compensate for present sacrifices. This may prove true if only because with more capital and better technology it will be possible to support a sufficiently large population. Thus the utilitarian doctrine may direct us to demand heavy sacrifices of the less affluent generations for the sake of greater advantages, which balance the losses of some against the benefits to others, appears even less justified in the case of generations than among contemporaries. Even if we cannot define a precise just savings principle, we should be able to avoid this sort of extreme. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
When people are poor and saving is difficult, a lower rate of saving should be required; whereas in a wealthier society greater saving may reasonably be expected since the real burden is less. Eventually once just institutions are firmly established, the net accumulation required falls to zero. At this point a society meets its duty of justice by maintaining just institutions and preserving their material base. Each passes on to the next a fair equivalent in real capital as defined by a just saving principle. (It should be kept in mind there that capital is not only factories and machines, and so on, but also the knowledge and culture, as well as the techniques and skills, that make possible just institutions and the fair value of liberty.) This equivalent is in return for what is received from previous generations that enables the later ones to enjoy a better life in a more just society. Only those in the first generation do not benefit, let us say, for while they begin the whole process, they do not share in the fruits of their provision. Nevertheless, since it is assumed that a generation cares for its immediate descendants, as fathers say care for their sons, a just savings principle, or more accurately, certain limits on such principles, would be acknowledged. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
It is also characteristic of the contract doctrine to define a just state of society at which the entire course of accumulation aims. The ethical problem is that of agreeing on a path over time which treats all generations justly during the whole course of human history. What seems fair to persons in the original position defines justice in this instance as in others. Thus imagining themselves to be fathers, say, people are to ascertain how much they should set aside for their sons by noting what they would believe themselves entitled to claim of their fathers. When they arrive at an estimate that seems fair from both side, with due allowance made for the improvement in their circumstances, then the fair rate (or range of saving rates) for that stage is specified. Now once this is done for all stages, we have defined the just saving principle. When this principle is followed, adjacent generations cannot complain of one another; and in fact no generation can find fault with any other no matter how far removed in time. Justice does not require that early generations save so that later ones are simply more wealthy. Saving is demanded as a condition of brining about the full realization of just institutions and the fair value of liberty. If additional accumulation is to be undertaken, it is for other reason. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
It is a mistake to believe that a just and good society must wait upon a high material standard of life. When humans want is meaningful work in free association with others, these associations regulating their relations to one another within a framework to just basic institutions. To achieve this state of things great wealth is not necessary. In fact, if not a temptation to indulge and emptiness, beyond some point it is more likely to be an absolute hindrance, a meaningless distraction. The shift toward transience is even manifest in architecture—precisely that part of the physical environment that in the past contributed mostly heavily to human’s sense of permanence. The child who trades in his or her Barbie doll cannot but also recognize the transience of buildings and other large structures that surround one. We raze landmarks. We tear down whole streets and cities and put new ones up at a mind-numbing rate. The average age of dwellings has steadily declined from being virtually infinite in the days of caves to approximately a hundred years for houses built in the United States of America’s colonial days, to about forty years at present. The American made one’s World yesterday, and one knows exactly how fragile, how shifting it is. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Buildings in New York, New York USA literally disappear overnight, and the face of a city can change completely in a way. The horror of living in New York is living in a city without a history. All eight of my great-great grand-parents lived in the city, and only one of the houses they lined in is still standing. That is what I mean by the vanishing past. Less patrician New Yorkers, whose ancestors landed n America more recently, arriving there from the barrios of Puerto Rico, the villages of Eastern Europe or the plantations of the South, might voice their feelings quite differently. Yet the vanishing past is a real phenomenon, and it is likely to become far more widespread, with Trump Tower being stripped of its name, engulfing many of the history-drenched cities of Europe. New York and even now California is a continual evolutionary process of evacuations, demolitions, removals, temporarily vacant lots, new installations and repeat. This process is identical in principle to the annual rotation of crops in farm acreage-plowing, planting the new seed, harvesting, plowing under, and putting in another type of crop. Most people look upon the building operations blocking New York’s streets as temporary annoyances, soon to disappear in a static peace. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Many people still think of permanence as normal, a hangover from the Newtonian view of the Universe. However, those who have lived in and with New York since the end of the century have literally experienced living with Einsteinian relativity. That children, in fact, internalize this “Einsteinian relativity” was brought home to me forcibly by a personal experience. Some time ago my wife sent my son, age twelve, to 725 5th Avenue to get the 5th Avenue Filet Mignon, steak fires, sauteed spinach, cobb salad without avocado, Trump’s Ice Cream. It is just five blocks from our 50-story apartment on the Upper East Side. Our little boy had been there at least six or seven times before. An hour and a half later he returned perplexed. “It must have been torn down,” he said, “I could not find it.” It had not been. New to the neighbourhood, Rickey had merely looked on the wrong block. But he is a child of the Age of Transience, and his immediate assumption—that the building had been razed and replaced—was a natural one for a twelve-year-old growing up in the United States at this time. Such an idea would probably never have occurred to a child faced with a similar predicament even a century ago. The physical environment was far more durable, our links with it less transient. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
It is a natural fact that generations are spread out in time and actual exchanges between them take place only in one direction. We can do something for posterity but it can do nothing for us. What is just or unjust is how institutions deal with natural limitations and the way they are set up to take advantage of historical possibilities. Obviously if all generations are to gain (except perhaps the first), they must choose a just savings principle if followed brings it about that each receives from its predecessors and does its fair share for those which come later. It is now clear why the difference principle does not apply to the saving problem. There is no way for later generations to improve the situation of the least fortunate first generation. Either earlier generations have saved or they have not; there is nothing the parties can do to affect it. It seems best to preserve the present time of entry interpretation and therefore to adjust the motivation condition. We can now see that persons in different generations have duties and obligations to one another just as contemporaries do. The present generation cannot do as it pleases but is bound by the principles that would be chosen in the original position to define justice between persons at different moments of time. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
In addition, humans have a natural duty to uphold and to further just institutions and for this the improvement of civilization up to a certain level is required. An examination of the history of humanity suggested that humans in our epoch are so different from humans in previous ties that it seems unrealistic to assume that humans in every age have had in common something that can be called “human nature.” It seems simple to know when a human individual comes into existence, but in fact it is not quite as simple as it seems. The answer might be: at the time of conception, when the fetus has assumed definite human form, in the act of birth, at the end of weaning; or one might even claim that most humans have not yet been fully born by the time they die. We would best decline to fix a day or an hour for “the birth” of an individual, and speak rather of a process in the course of which a person comes into existence. Indeed, if we look at human’s individual development in terms of historical tie, we might say that human proper was born only a few minutes ago. Or we might even think one is still in the process of birth, that the umbilical cord has not yet been served, and that complications have arisen that make it appear doubtful whether humans will ever be born or whether they are to be stillborn. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Does the extraordinary development of the human’s brain make up for one’s instinct deficit? To some degree it does. Humans are guided by their intellect to make right choices. However, we know also how weak and unreliable this instrument is. It is easily influenced by human’s desires and passions and surrenders to their influence. Human’s brain is insufficient not only as a substitute for the weakened instincts, but it complicates the task of living tremendously. By this I do not refer to instrumental intelligence, the use of thought as an instrument for the manipulations of objects in order to satisfy one’s needs. Human’s thinking has acquired an entirely new quality, that of self-awareness. Gifted with self-awareness and reason, humans are aware of oneself as a being separate from nature and from others; one is aware of one’s powerlessness, of one’s ignorance; one is aware of one’s end: death. Self-awareness, reason, and imagination have giving the terrestrial being a different kind of existence. Their emergence has made humans into an anomaly, the deviation of the Universe. They are part of nature, subject to her physical laws and unable to change them, yet they transcend nature. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
Humans are set apart while being a part; they are homeless, yet not chined to the home they share with all creatures. Cast into this World at an accidental place and time they are forced out of it accidentally and against their will. Being aware of oneself, one realizes one’s powerlessness and the limitations of one’s existence. One is never free from the dichotomy of one’s existence: one cannot rid oneself of one’s mind, even if ne would one to; one cannot rid oneself of one’s body as long as one is alive—and one’s body makes one want to be alive. Human’s live cannot be lived by repeating the pattern of their species; one must live. Humans are the only beings that do not feel at home in nature, who can feel evicted from paradise, the only terrestrial being for whom one’s own existence is a problem that one has to solve and from which one cannot escape. One cannot go back to the prehuman state of harmony with nature, and one does not know where one will arrive if one goes forward. So many people are worried about climate change, but what is more worrisome about the future is corruption. If the Constitution of the United States of America is not enforced and human right are ignored, no matter what the climate is like, it will not be a safe place your future generations. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Human’s existential contradiction results in a state of constant disequilibrium. This disequilibrium distinguishes one from the animal, which lives, as it were, in harmony with nature. This does not mean, of course, that the animal necessarily lives a peaceful and happy life, but that it has its specific ecological niche to which its physical and mental qualities have been adapted by the process of evolution. Human’s existential, and hence unavoidable disequilibrium can be relatively stable when one has found, with the support of one’s culture, a more or less adequate way of coping with one’s existential problems. However, this relative stability does not imply that the dichotomy has disappeared; it is merely dormant and becomes manifest as soon as the conditions for this relative stability change. Indeed, in the process of human’s self-creation this relative stability is upset again and again. Humans, in their history, change their environment, and in this process one changes oneself. One’s knowledge increases, but so does one’s awareness of one’s developing state; one experiences oneself as an individual, and not only as a member of one’s tribe, and with this one’s sense of separateness and isolation grows. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Humans create larger and more efficient social units, led by powerful leaders—and one becomes frightened and submissive. One attains a certain amount of freedom—and becomes afraid of this very freedom. One’s capacity for material production grows, but in the process one becomes greedy and egotistical, a slave of the things one created. Every new state of disequilibrium forces humans to seek for new equilibrium. Indeed, what has often been considered human’s innate drive for progress is one’s attempt to find a new if possible better equilibrium. The new forms of equilibrium by no means constitute a straight line of human improvement. Something more painful than fire often times consumes the human body and it begins to burn within one’s soul. One starts to understand that no matter what one has done or not done, no matter what the circumstances, no punishment comes to us in this life on Earth which is undeserved. We are all guilty of putting Jesus Christ to death because of our fallen nature and our need of the atonement His death made. We either recognize our sinful selves, or our sentence of death, and our deserving of that sentence, which leads us to repent and believe—or we curse God and die. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Sin is within us. For if there is anything worse than our sin, it is our infinite capacity to rationalize it away. The evil deep within all of us is sometimes thrust before us by the conviction of the Holy Spirit, forcefully and painfully. And it makes us feel unclean. We become the helpless thief nailed to that cross, and what we see within us is so ugly that we can do nothing but cry out to God for help. Without the conviction of the Holy Spirit and the repentance that must follow, there is no way out of our predicament. We have the capacity to change anything about our lives—careers, jobs, homes, cars, Barbie dolls, even spouses—but we cannot change our own sinful nature. There must be an answer to the dilemma of evil within, because I have seen lives changed among the Christian inmates. However, for the rest of us and all the freedom we have, what a desperate plight. Trapped in and by our own sin. Thankfully, there is an answer to the wrenching dilemma. Loving God. When we see the reality of our sin, when we come to face to face with it and look into the raging fires of hell itself, and when we then repent and believe and are delivered from that plight, our entire being is filled with unspeakable gratitude to the God who sent His Son to that cross for us. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
We must express that gratitude. But how? Simply stated: by living the way God commands us. By obedience. That is what the Scriptures mean by holiness or sanctification—believers are set apart for holy living. Therefore, holiness is the only possible response to God’s grace. Holy living is loving God. However, everyone who has tried to live a holy life knows, holiness is the toughest, most demanding, vocation in the World. Our progress in holiness depends on God and ourselves—on God’s grace and on our will to be holy. God loves the human nature assumed by the Word of God in the person of Christ more than He loves all the Angels; for that nature is better, especially on the ground of the union with the Godhead. However, of speaking of human nature in general, and comparing it with the angelic, the two are found equal, in the order of grace and of glory; since according to Revelation 21.17 the measure of a human and of an Angel is the same. Yet so that, in this respect, some Angels are found nobler than some humans, and some human nobler than some Angels. However, as to natural condition an Angel is better than a human. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
God therefore did not assume human nature because He loved humans, absolutely speaking, more; but because the needs of humans were greater; just as the master of a house may give some costly delicacy to a sick servant, that one does not give to one’s own son in sound health. And now we can begin to speak of “sanctification,” as a condition of the human soul established in imparted (not just imputed) righteousness. It is the condition of soul in the mature children of light. What are we to make of it? Especially, is it to be taken as a goal for every apprentice of Jesus? Is sanctification sensible, or is it magical? What exactly is sanctification anyway? This is a matter that used to be much better understood than it is now. The work of Jesus Christ in the World is twofold. It is a work accomplished for us, destined to effect reconciliation between God and humans; it is work accomplished in us, with the object of effecting our sanctification. By the one a right relation is established between God and us; by the other, the fruit of the reestablished order is secured. By the former, the condemned sinner is received order is secured. By the former, the condemned sinner is received into the state of grace; by the latter the pardoned sinner is associated with the life of God. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
How many express themselves as if, when forgiveness with the peace which it procures has been once obtained, all is finished and the work of salvation is complete! They seem to have no suspicion that salvation consists in the health of the soul, and that the health of the soul consists in holiness. Forgiveness is not the reestablishment of health; it is the crisis of convalescence. If God thinks fit to declare the sinner righteous, it is in order that one may by that means restore oneself to holiness. Christ designs to make us both safe and sound. Justification gives the first—safety; sanctification gives the second—soundness. Sanctification does not mean perfection reached, but the progress of the divine life toward perfection. Sanctification is the Christianizing of the Christian. Any human who thinks oneself is a Christian, and that one has accepted Christ for justification, when one did not at the same time accept one for sanctification, is miserably deluded in that very experience. Not culture, but crucifixion, is what the Holy Spirit prescribes for the natural human. Sanctification is not a matter of course, which will go on whatever we do, or o not do. It requires a direct superintendence and surgery on the one hand, and, on the other hand a practical hatred of evil on our part that cooperates with the husbandry of God. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
The Holy Spirit enables the Christian, through increasing faith, more fully and consciously to appropriate Christ, and this progressively to make conquest of the remaining sinfulness of one’s nature. These comments fill out the meaning of the definition of sanctification as that continuous operation of the Holy Spirit, by which the holy disposition imparted in regeneration is maintained and strengthened. The intuition should be accorded the highest place among human’s faculties. It should always lead or direct them. Knowledge of the facts concerning humans and their nature, their general destiny and spiritual evolution, can be gained by the intuition; but information concerning the details of one’s personal history must be gleaned, if at all, by the physical faculty. The intuition appears indirectly in aesthetic ecstasy and intellectual creativity, in the pricking of conscience, in the longing for relief from anxieties, or peace of mind. It appears directly only in mystical realization. The intuition comes from, and leads to, God. It is the strength or feebleness of our intuition which determines the grace of our spiritual evolution. What begins as a gentle surrender to intuition for a few minutes, one day resolves into a complete surrender of the ego to God for all time. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
The intuitive method should not be asked to solve problems which can easily solved by the reason; otherwise it may fail to respond. On the other hand, when intuition is working, intellect should retire. No human idea can account for its own existence without testifying to the prior existence of a human mind. The World as idea can only account for its own existence by pointing to a World-Mind. And it is equally a fact that the highest kind of existence discoverable to us in the Universe is mental existence. In using the name “Mind” for God, I but follow some of the highest examples from antiquity, such as Aristotle in Greece, Hermes Trismegistus in Egypt, Asvaghosha in India, and the Patriarch Hui Neng in China. For us who are philosophically minded, the World-Mind truly exists. For us it is God, and for us there is a relationship with it—the relationship of devotion and aspiration, of communion and meditation. All the abstract talk about nonduality may go on, but in the end the talkers must humble themselves before the infinite Being until they are nothing and until they are lost in the stillness—Its stillness. Blessed one, please come near to me and hear my prayer. You who have, since ancient times, listened to my people’s words, please hear my prayer now. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Great is your power, and perfectly is it applied, with artful skill, with respect for beauty. My own might is little indeed; yours is beyond imagining. Please use your power in my interests: please grant me my wishes, please accomplish my objectives. Let us praise the name of God for the Lord takes delight in His people; He adorns the humble with salvation. Let the faithful exult in glory; let them sing for joy ere they go to sleep. Praises of God are on their lips, and a two-edged sword in their hand; to bring judgment upon the wicked nations, and chastisement upon the peoples; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; to execute upon them the prescribed judgment; He is the glory of all His faithful. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Praise God in His sanctuary; praise Him in the firmament of His power. Praise Him for His mighty deeds; praise Him according to His abundant greatness. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Hallelujah Blessed be the Lord forevermore. Amen, Amen. Blessed be the Lord out of America, one who dwells in the United States. Hallelujah. Blessed be the Lord God, the God of America who alone does wondrous things. Blessed by His glorious name forever; and let the whole Earth be filled with His glory. Amen, Amen. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Could Ever Hear by Tale or History—The Course of True Love Never Did Run Smooth!
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. His picture was, until recently, everywhere: on television, on posters that started out at ne in airports and railroad stations, on leaflets, matchbooks and magazines. He was an inspired creation of Madison Avenue—a fictional character with whom millions could subconsciously identify. Young and clean-cut, he carried an attache case, glanced at his watch, and looked like an ordinary businessman scurrying to his next appointment. He had, however, an enormous protuberance on his back. For sticking out from between his shoulder blades was a great, butterfly-shaped key of the type used to wind up mechanical toys. The text that accompanied his picture urged keyed-up executive to “unwind”—to slow down—at the Sheraton Hotels. This wound-up man-on-the-go was, and still is, a potent symbol of the people of the future, millions of whom feel just as driven and hurried as if they, too, had a huge key in the back. The average individual knows little and cares less about the cycle of technological innovation or the relationship between knowledge-acquisition and the rate of change. Until, of course, a computer application starts to rival Wall Street investors. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
Besides that, most people are usually keenly aware of the pace of their own life—whatever that may be. The pace of life is frequently commented on by ordinary people. Yet, oddly enough, it has received almost no attention from either psychologist or sociologists. This is a gaping inadequacy in the behavioural sciences, for the pace of life profoundly influenced behaviour, evoking strong and contrasting reactions from different people. It is, in fact, not too much to say that the pace of life draws a line through humanity, dividing us into camps, triggering bitter misunderstanding between parent and child between Madison Avenue and Main Street, between men and woman, between American and European, between East and West. The inhabitants of the Earth are divided not only by race, nation, religion, or ideology, but also, in a sense by their position in time. From within the main centers of technological and cultural change in San Jose and San Francisco, California, Manhattan, New York, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in Canada, Dubai,London, Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, are millions of men and women who can already be said to be living the way of life of the future. Trendmakers often without being aware of it, they live today as millions more will live tomorrow. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
And while these tritons of technology account for only a few percent of the global population today, they already form an international nation of the future in our midst. They are the advanced agents of humanity, the earliest citizens of the World-wide super-industrial society now in the toddler stages of development. What makes them different from the rest of humankind? Certainly, they are richer, better educated, smarter, and more mobile than the majority of the human race. They also live longer, in better homes, eat better, and drive better cars. However, what specifically marks the people of the future is the fact that they are already caught up in a new, stepped-up pace of life. They “live faster” than the people around them. They do not have time to sit at the same coffee shop for twenty years fixating on the same people and topics. Some people are deeply attracted to this highly accelerated pace of life—going far out of their way to bring it about and feeling anxious, tense or uncomfortable when the pace slows. They want desperately to be where the actions is. (Indeed, some hardly care what the action is, so long as it occurs at a suitably rapid clip.) #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
The attraction to the fast pace of life is one of the hidden motivating forces behind the much publicized “brain-drain”—the mass migration of European scientists to the United States of America and Canada. After studying 517 English scientists and engineers who migrated, it was concluded that it was not higher salaries or better research facilities alone, but also the quicker tempo that lured them. The migrants were not put off by what they indicate as the faster pace of North America; if they anything, they appear to prefer this pace to others. Similarly, a veteran of the civil rights movement in Sacramento reports: “People who are used to a speeded-up urban life…cannot take it for long in the rural South or Sacramento.” That is why people are always driving somewhere for no particular reason. Traveling is the drug of The Movement. Understanding the powerful attraction that a certain pace of life can exert on the individual helps explain much otherwise inexplicable or atypical behaviour. However, if some people thrive on the new, rapid pace, others are fiercely repelled by it and go to the extreme lengths to “get off the merry-go-round,” as they put it. To engage at all with the emergent super-industrial society means to engage with a faster moving World than ever before. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
Some mature people are even more likely to react strongly again any further acceleration of change. There is a solid mathematical basis for the observation that age often correlates with conservatism: time passes more swiftly for senior citizens. When a fifty-year-old father tells his fifteen-year-old son that he will have to wait two years before he can have an Ultimate Driving Machine of his own, that interval of 730 days represents a mere 4 percent of the father’s lifetime to date. It represents over 13 percent of the boy’s lifetime. It is hardly strange that to the boy the delay seems three or four times longer than to the father. Similarly, two hours in the life of a four-year-old may be the felt equivalent of twelve hours in the life of his twenty-four-year-old mother. Asking the child to wait to hours for a piece of candy may be the equivalent of asking the mother to wait fourteen hours for a cup of coffee. There may be a biological basis as well, for such differences in subjective response time. The calendar years seem progressively to shrink. In retrospect every year seems shorter than the year just completed, possibly as a result of the gradual slowing down of metabolic process. Even if it were not, with the slowdown of their own biological rhythms, the World would appear to be moving faster to senior citizens. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
Populations sometimes actively resist a change of pace. This explains the pathological antagonism toward what many regard as the “Americanization” of Europe. The new technology on which super-industrialism is bases, much of it blue-printed in American research laboratories, brings with it an inevitable acceleration of change in a society and a concomitant speed-up of the pace of individual life as well. While anti-American orators single out computers, Aaliyah, Meghan Markle, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, or Coca-Cola for their barbs, their real objection may well be to the invasion of Europe by an alien time sense. America, as the spearhead of super-industrialism, represents a new, quicker, and very much unwanted tempo for some. Too hip, too modern, too attractive, too innovative—it attracts a lot of envy. Fast pace embodies the American Pace of Life. Human’s perception of time is closely linked with their internal rhythms, which could be why those who are ahead of their time are considered disruptive. The human responses to time are culturally conditioned. Part of this conditioning consists of building up within the child a series of expectations about the duration of events, processes or relationships. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
Indeed, one of the most important forms of knowledge that we impart to a child is a knowledge of how long things last. This knowledge is taught in subtle, informal and often unconscious ways. Yet without a rich set of socially appropriate durational expectancies, no individual could function successfully. From infancy on the child learns, for example, that when Daddy leaves for work in the morning, it means that he will not return for many hours. (If he does, something is wrong; the schedule is askew. The child senses this. Even the family dog—having also learned a set of durational expectancies—is aware of the break in routine.) The child soon learns that “mealtime” is neither a one-minute nor a five-hour affair, but that is ordinarily lasts from fifteen minutes to an hour. He learns that going to a movie lasts two to four hours and it comes with popcorn, hotdogs, sodas, and big boxes of candy, but that a visit with the pediatrician seldom last more than one hour and he gets a sugar-free lollipop and is told to eat healthy. He learns that a school day ordinarily lasts six hours. He learns that a relationship with a teacher ordinarily extends over a school year, but that his relationship with his grandparents is supposed to be of much longer duration. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Indeed, some relationships are supposed to last a lifetime. In adult behaviour, virtually all we do, from mailing an envelop to building a career, is premised upon certain spoken or unspoken assumption about duration. It is these durational expectancies, different in each society but learned early and deeply ingrained, that are shaken up when the pace of life is altered. This explains a crucial different between those who suffer acutely from the accelerated pace of life and those who seem rather to thrive on it. Unless an individual has adjusted one’s durational expectancies to take account of continuing acceleration, one is likely to suppose that two situations, similar in other respects, will also be similar in duration. Yet the accelerative thrust implies that at least certain kinds of situations will be compressed in time. The individual who has internalized the principle of acceleration—who understands in one’s bones as well as one’s brain that things are moving faster in the World around one—makes an automatic, unconscious compensation for the compression of time. Anticipating that situations will endure less long, one is less frequently caught off guard and jolted than the person whose durational expectancies are frozen, the person who does not routinely anticipate a frequent shortening in the duration of situations. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
In short, the pace of life must be regarded as something more than a colloquial phrase, a source of jokes, sighs, complaints or ethnic put-downs. It is a crucially important psychological variable that has been all but ignored. During past eras, wen change in the outer society was slow, humans could, and did, remain unaware of this variable. Throughout one’s entire lifetime the pace mighty vary little. The accelerative thrusts, however, alters this drastically. For it is precisely through a step-up in the pace of life that the increased speed of broad scientific, technological and social change makes itself felt in the life of the individual. A great deal of human behaviour is motivated by attraction or antagonism toward the pace of life enforced on the individual by the society or group within which one is embedded. Failure to grasp this principle lies behind the dangerous incapacity of education and psychology to prepare people for fruitful roles in a super-industrial society. Relationships that once endured for long spans of time now have shorter life expectancies. It is this abbreviation, this compression, that gives rise to the almost tangible feeling that we live, rootless and uncertain, among shifting dunes. Transience is the new “temporariness” in everyday life. It results in a mood, a feeling of impermanence. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
None of us occupy abodes of safety—true homes. We are all the same people in all the rooming houses everywhere, desperately and savagely, some methodically and strategically, trying to effect soul-satisfying connections with our community. We are, in fact, all citizens of the Age of Transience. Transience, indeed, can be defined quite specifically in terms of the rate at which our relationships turn over. People of the future live in a condition of “high transience”—a condition in which the duration of relationships is cut short, the through-pit of relationships extremely rapid. In their lives, things, places, people, ideas, and organizational structures get used up more quickly. This affects immensely the way they experience reality, their sense of commitment, and their ability—or inability—to cope. It is this fast through-put, combined with increasing newness and complexity in the environment, that strains the capacity to adapt and creates the danger of future shock. If we can show that our relationships with the outer World are, in fact, growing more and more transient, we have powerful evidence for the assumption that the flow of situations is speeding up. And we have an incisive new way of looking at ourselves and others. Let us, therefore, explore life in a high transience society. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
Barbie, mostly a twelve-inch plastic teen-ager, who looks remarkably like Paris Hilton, Nicky Rothschild, Britney Spears, Amanda Hearst, Reese Witherspoon, Ivanka Trump, or Tomi Lahren, is the best-known and best-selling doll in history. Since her introduction in 1959, the Babies doll population of the World has grown to over one billion Barbie dolls—more than the human population of China or India. Little girls adore Barbie because she is highly realistic and eminently dress-upable. Mattel, Inc., makers of Barbie, also sells a complete wardrobe for her, including clothes for ordinary daytime wear, clothes for formal party wear, clothes for swimming and skiing. In 1970, Mattel announced a new improved Barbie doll. The new version had a slimmer figure, “real” eyelashes, and a twist-and-turn waist that made her more humanoid than ever. Moreover, Mattel announced that, for the first time, any young lady wishing to purchase a new Barbie would receive a trade-in allowance for her current dolls. What Mattel did not announce was that by trading in her old doll for a technologically improved model, the little girl of those days, citizen’s of the super-industrial World, were learning a fundamental lesson about the new society: that human’s relationship with things are increasingly temporary. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
The ocean of humanmade physical objects that surrounds us is set within a large ocean of natural objects. However, increasingly, it is the technologically produced environment that matters for the individual. The texture of plastic or concrete, the iridescent glisten of an Ultimate Driving Machine under a streetlight, the staggering vision of a cityscape seen from the window of a jet—these are the intimate realities of our existence. Humanmade things enter into and colour our consciousness. Their number is expanding with explosive force, both absolutely and relative to the natural environment. This will be even more true in super-industrial society than it is today. Anti-materialists tend to deride the importance of “things.” Yet things are highly significant, not merely because of their functional utility, but also because of their psychological impact. We develop relationships wit things. Things affect our sense of continuity or discontinuity. They play a role in the structure of situations and the foreshortening of our relationships with things accelerates the pace of life. Apparently Mattel, Inc. caught on and now has a diverse cast of Barbies that really reflects the entire human race. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
Our attitudes toward things reflect basic value judgments. Nothing could be more dramatic than the difference between the new breed of girls and boys who cheerfully turn in their Barbies for the new improved model, like their mothers and grandmothers before them, clutch lingeringly and lovingly to the same doll until it disintegrated from sheer age. In this difference lies the contrast between past and future, between societies based on permanence, and the new, fast-forming society based on transience. For most thinkers since the Greek philosophers, it was self-evident that there is something called human nature, something that constitutes the essence of humans. There were various views about what constitutes it, but there was agreement that such an essence exists—that is to say, that there is something by virtue of which humans are humans. Thus humans are defined as rational beings, as social terrestrial beings, a terrestrial beings that can makes tool (Homo faber), or a symbol-making terrestrial being. More recently, this traditional view has begun to be questioned. One reason for this change was the increasing emphasis given to the historical approach to humans. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
An examination of the history of humanity suggested that humans in our epoch are so different from humans in previous times that it seemed unrealistic to assume that every human in every age have had in common something that can be called “human nature.” The historical approach was reinforced, particularly in the United States of America, by studies in the field of cultural anthropology. The study of primitive peoples has discovered such a diversity of customs, values, feelings, and born as a blank sheet of paper on which each culture writes its text. Another factor contributing to the tendency to deny the assumption of a fixed human nature was the concept has so often been abused as a shield behind which the most inhuman acts are committed. In the name of human nature, for example, Aristotle and most thinkers up to the eighteenth century defended slavery (exceptions among the Greeks would be the Stoics, defenders of the equality of all humans, and in the Renaissance, such humanists as Erasmus, Thomas More, and Juan Luis Vives). Or in order to prove the rationality and necessity of greediness in society, scholars have tried to make a case for acquisitiveness, competitiveness, and selfishness as innate human traits. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
Popularly, one refers cynically to “human nature” in accepting the inevitability of such undesirable human behaviour as greed, murder, cheating, and lying. Another reason for skepticism about the concept of human nature probably lies in the influence of evolutionary thinking. One humans came to be seen as developing in the process of evolution, the idea of a substance which is contained in one’s essence seemed untenable. Yet I believe it is precisely from an evolutionary standpoint that we can expect new insight into the problem of the nature of humans. In the nature of all humankind: in each of us there is sin—not just susceptibility to sin, but sin itself. There is something natural in humans that arouses their desires, proving inner weakness or susceptibility to sinning. However, in each one of us, there are also stirrings of good. It is gradually disclosed that the line separating god and evil passes not through states, nor between cases, nor between parties either—but right through every human heart—through all human hearts. “Sinner” is not some theological term contrived to explain away the presence of evil in this World; nor is it a cliché conceived by colonial hymn writers or backwoods preachers to frighten recalcitrant congregations. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
We are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners. We are sinners indeed and in deed. Humans go to great lengths to avoid their own responsibility. Many blame Satan for every imaginable evil—but Jesus Christ states clearly that sin is in us. Others recoil with horror at the sins of the society around them, smugly satisfied that sinful abominations are not of their doing—not realizing that God holds us responsible for acts of omission as well as acts of commission. Still others believe, as did Dr. Socrates two thousand years ago, that sin is not human’s moral responsibility, but is caused by ignorance. Dr. Hegel, whose philosophy so enormously influenced nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century thought, argued that humans are “evolving” through increasing knowledge to superior moral levels. However, what do we see around us in the beginning of this twenty-first century that has produced such advances in knowledge, technology, and science Soaring crime rates. Countless shattered families. A globe scarred by continual wars, oppression, and now a deadly pandemic. All our knowledge has not ushered in a brave new World. It has simply increased our ability to perpetrate evil. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
History, the fake news media, and popular culture continues to validate the biblical account that humans are by their own nature sinful—indeed, imprisoned by their sin. And we are not reluctant prisoners. We actually delight in sin and evil. What else explains our secret delight in another’s fall? Why else are people doing these mid-2000s Gossip Girl “Take Downs”? So pervasive is the sin in us that we are subject to lonely shame if we cannot share in the sins of our peers. What is it? Nothing less than the evil within us, the dark side of the line that passes through each human heart. There is a lot of good programs out there. Even on free TV. Every year Ion TV puts on these wonderful Christmas movies, a lot of feel good stories about love, happiness, family, friends, and community, but so many people prefer to emulate evil. Not that all violent TV and video games and movies are bad. Research say they are good for entertainment and help some people release their aggression. Not all people suffer from acute television intoxication. Many people can still distinguish good behaviour from bad behaviour and know that actions have consequences. The war to end all wars is a battle for eternal stakes between spiritual forces—and it is being waged in you and in me. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
When we truly smell “that smell,” the stench of sin within us, it drives us helplessly and irresistibly to despair. However, God has provided a way for us to be freed from the evil within: it is through the door of repentance. When we truly comprehend our own nature, repentance is no dry doctrine, no frightening message, no morbid form of self-flagellation. It is a gift God grants, a map which lead to life. It is the key to the door of liberation, to the only real freedom we can ever know. Because it does not mean freedom, perhaps it is not surprising that people in prison seem to have an easier time understanding repentance than those on the outside. Prisoners are captives in every sense. They have had their most blatant sins exposed in the blinding light of the court room, in the fake news media, draw out before the neighbours, and they have been locked into the midst of every from of evil and depravity. Thus, it is not surprising that the most vivid illustrations of repentance in the Bible often begin in a prison cell. The same mind which humans use to understand that two added to three totals five cannot be used to understand that one who loses oneself finds oneself. The messages which come to the human race from the kingdom of Heaven, mercifully come through different channels of its psyche. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
The Word may be received in abstract mental activity as well as utter mental stillness, in passive aesthetic appreciation as well as active creation. The intuition is a mystical faculty, whose messages may dawn slowly on the conscious mind of emerge into it suddenly. These intuitive feelings tell us that a deeper kind of Being is at the base of our ordinary consciousness. It is almost impossible to put into thoughts that which is above thoughts. However, hints, suggestions, and symbols may render some service. Only intuition, which comes up by itself, can come closer still to the truth and deliver what is more like it. If intellect fails to touch Reality, what can? The answer is intuition and inspiration. That intuition is often mistake for insight reveals one of the defects of mysticism. There are some who even question the validity of all insight, and, indeed, this is a sensible question to raise. The whole problem needs threshing out in paper on the subject. Insight is not concerned with mundane matters, but only with what is beyond our time-space dimension. Quite obviously, no one has the right to apply such a term to views concerning such matters as intellectual theology or physical diet. Intuition can, however, deal with these quite effectively when it is, itself, checked by reason. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
If we lack the capacity to comprehend, gauge, or perceive the Infinite, we do have the capacity to feel its presence intuitively. Spirit—impenetrably mysterious, without form or figure, yet as real to the mystic as matter is to the materialist—find its voice in humans and Nature, in art and circumstance. Faint glimmerings fall upon our sight from above through furtive gleams of intuition. These delicate intuitive impulses can produce no impression on ordinary minds. We can convince the intellect that the soul exists—but the only really adequate proof is intuitive personal experience of it. The discover of the soul’s existence is not a result of intellectual analysis or of emotional feeling but of intuitive experience. The World-Mind is unique, different from any other existing or conceivable mind in the whole cosmos. Indeed, all these others can only arise out of and within it, but can never equal or transcend it. There is only a single absolute unconditioned entity. Yet from it there extend countless finite and conditioned entities. They are visible to the sense of sight, physical to the sense of touch; yet it is neither. The meaning among cultured Muslims of the Islamic phrases “La Llaha” “Il-la-lahu” is: first, the denial of plurality and the affirmation of Unity in the Supreme Being; second, this Being is also the only real activating Force in the cosmos. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
Behind all the innumerable creatures in this Universe and behind all the innumerable phenomena of the Universe itself, there is a single, infinite, eternal, supreme Intelligence. It is something that never had a beginning and can never have an end. It does not change, although the World born from it does nothing else more incessantly than change. We talk of being, but it is not to be found in tie, nor in the mind and feeling of the conditioned self. And yet all these have emerged somehow out of it. Is it, then, that God is being? In the end it must be so. Only in such a language as Sanskrit does one find a word which covers this ample meaning, that truth and being are one. The word is Sat. World-Mind emanates and activates the cosmos into a fresh cyclic being. This continues under its sustenance but, again cyclically, it absorbs the cosmos in the end. Thus it is the closet to the common idea of God, the Personal God to be worshipped. The World-Mind may be worshipped by religious devotees or mediated upon by others as present in their own souls. Now, what is the mistake most commonly made by believers and others today, as they approach these glowing passages about the children of the light? #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
The mistake is simply this: Many do not understand the presupposition of inner transformation into Christlikeness that accompanies all the passages. They assume that we are supposed to “do” all the glowing things mentioned in such passages without loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. In fact, they think we must do them while our heart, soul, mind, and strength are still strongly inclined in the opposite direction, against God. And of course their despair is totally justified. What they are thinking would be completely impossible. To the person who is not inwardly transformed in each essential dimension, evil and sin still look good. They are strongly attractive. That is precisely what Peter calls, “the corruption that is in the World though strong desire or lust,” reports 2 Peter 1.4. To such people the law is hateful because it denies them what they have their hearts set on; and everything must then be done to evade the law and do what they want. Even if they do suffer from a bad conscience that tells them they are in the wrong, the force of their whole being is set against Christlikeness. As Jesus Christ rains them and “cleanses them for himself,” however, all of that begins to reverse. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
The law Jesus bestows in their hearts appears as a beautiful gift of God, as precious truth about what is really good and right. It becomes, in the language of the psalmist, “sweeter than honey freshly dripping from the honeycomb,” reports Psalm 19.10; when it is freshly taken, honey never tastes good. At that point it is sin that looks stupid, ridiculous, as well as repulsive—which it really is. Resistance to sin is then based upon that new and realist vision of what it is, not on fear of punishment. The illusion that sin is really a good thing arbitrarily prohibited by God is dispelled, and we see with gratitude that his prohibitions are among his great kindness. God love Christ not only more than He loves the whole human race, but more than He loves the entire created Universe: because He willed for Him the greater good in giving Him a name that is above all names, in so far as He was True God. Nor did anything of His excellence diminish when God delivered Him up to death for the salvation of the human race; rather did He become thereby a glorious conqueror; “The government was placed upon His shoulder,” according to Isaiah 9.6. Praise shows God, and reminds us, that we appreciate God, that we do not see Him as our employee. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
Thanksgiving shows God, and reminds us, that we do not consider what we ask for to be our right, something God has to give us. One way to prevent the “gimme, gimme, gimme more” attitude that is not acceptable is to limit petitionary prayers to intangible things. Some of the prayers we have might be described as material blessings—fertility, prosperity, health, a new house. Others ask for what might be called spiritual blessings—comfort, love, awareness, wisdom. However, the material is no less valuable than the spiritual. We do not point our noses to the sky and say, “Well, I only pray for spiritual things.” The material is just as sacred as the spiritual. Nor do we pray for an excess of things. Excess is drain on the Earth. We try not to drain on anything—not if we are try to are path, that is. Pray for what is right, for what is good, for what is deserved, and let no one but God tell you that it is wrong. God of my people: please hear me. Please let it be your words I write. Please let it be your words I speak. This time which we find ourselves in is no less sacred than the times of the Ancestors when the laws were laid down. This place in which I find myself is no less sacred than the circles of stone beneath faraway skies. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
I pray to all the beings that dwell in this World, to stone and tree, to waves and breezes, to person and beast, to deities and dust motes: please do not let me forget. Please keep my eyes open to the sacred that surrounds me and in which I live. Around me, God of the land is watching—may I do what is right. I give from my own store to you, God of this place. Please remember my generosity and please be my friend. Please accept this gift, Holy Ones, and please keep me in your World-Mind, as I will keep you in my heart. Holy Ones, Mighty Ones, Angels and the Holy Trinity, I ask for your blessings today and eternally that I might be blessed with holiness and with fortune, that my family might be blessed with holiness and with fortune, that my community might be blessed with holiness and with fortune, that my country might be blessed with holiness and with fortune, that my planet might be blessed with holiness and with fortune. Please send them forth, you who are holy. Send them forth, you filled with fortune. Send them forth, upon all for whom I pray. Please send them forth, please send them forth. Hallelujah. Sing unto the Lord a new song, and His praise in the assembly of the faithful. Let America rejoice in their Maker; let the children of America be joyful in their King. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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Arrogant Wrongdoing is the Deepest Possible Wound People Can Inflict on their Soul!
Life experiences become acting experiences, which in turn become life experiences. If there is anything to learn from the history of movies, it is that corruption leads to further corruption, not to innocence. We are told that in certain happy regions of the Earth, where nature provides in abundance everything that humans require, there are races whose life is passed in tranquility, and who know neither coercion nor aggression. I can scarcely believe it and I should be glad to hear more of these fortunate beings. The Manus are an illustration for a system which is clearly distinguished from system A, which is Life-Affirmative Societies. Where as in system A, which are Life-Affirmative Societies, the main emphasis of ideals, customs and institutions is that they serve the preservation and growth of life in all its forms. There is a minimum of hostility, violence, or cruelty among people, no harsh punishment, hardly any crime, and the institution of war is absent or plays an exceedingly small role. Children are treated with kindness, there is no severe corporal punishment; women are in general considered equal to men, or at least not exploited or humiliated; there is a generally permissive and affirmative attitude toward pleasures of the flesh. There is little envy, covetousness, greed and exploitativeness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
In system A there is also little competition and individualism and a great deal of cooperation; personal property is only in things that are used. There is a general attitude of trust and confidence, not only in others but particularly in nature; a general prevalence of good humour, and a relative absence of depressive moods. In it are societies with relatively abundant food supply and others characterized by a good deal of scarcity. However, in system B, which are Nondestructive-Aggressive Societies, this system shared with the first the basic element of not being destructive, but differs in that aggressiveness and war, although not central, are normal occurrences, and in that competition, hierarchy, and individualism are present. These societies are by no means permeated by destructiveness or cruelty of by exaggerated suspiciousness, but they do not have the kind of gentleness and trust which is characteristic of the system A societies. System B could perhaps be best characterized by stating that it is imbued with a spirit of male aggressiveness, individualism, the desire to get things and to accomplish tasks. On the other hand, the system of the Manus is very different from system which. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
System C, which characterizes Destructive Societies, is very distinct structure. It is marked by much interpersonal violence, destructiveness, aggression, and cruelty both within the tribe and against others, a pleasure in war, maliciousness, and treachery. The whole atmosphere of life is one of hostility, tension, and fear. Usually there is a great deal of competition, great emphasis on private property (if not in material things then in symbols), strict hierarchies, and a considerable amount of war-making. The main contrast lies between systems A and B on the one hand, which are both life affirming, and system C, which is basically cruel or destructive, id est, sadistic or necrophilous. The Manus are sea-dwelling, fish people living in villages built in the lagoons along the south coast of the Great Admiralty Islands in a system A structure. They trade their surplus catch with nearby agricultural land dwellers and obtain from them manufactured articles from more distant sections of the Archipelago. All their energy is completely dedicated to material success, and they drive themselves so hard that many men die in their early middle age. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
In fact, it is rare for a man to live to see his first grandchild. This obsession for relentless work is upheld not only because of the fact that success is the main value, but because of the shame related to failure. Not to be able to pay back one’s debts is a matter which leads to humiliation of the afflicted individual; not to have any economic success which promotes a certain amount of capital accumulation puts one in the category of a man without any social prestige. However, whatever social prestige a man has won by hard work is lost when he is no longer economically active. The main emphasis in the training of the young is laid upon the respect for property, shame, and physical efficiency. Individualism is enhanced by the fact that relatives compete with each other for the child’s allegiance, and the child learns to consider itself valuable. Their marriage code is a strict one, resembling nineteenth-century middle-class morality. The main vices are intimate partner offenses, scandalmongering, obscenity failure to pay debts, failure to help relatives, and failure to keep one’s house in repair. The training for hard work and competition seems to be contradicted by one phase in the life of young men before their marriage. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
The young unmarried men form a kind of community, living in a common clubhouse, sharing a common mistress (usually a war prisoner) and their tobacco and betel nut. They lie in a rather marry, roistering life on the borders of society. Perhaps this interval is necessary to produce a modicum of pleasure and contentment during one period of a male’s life. However, this idyllic life is interrupted for a good by the act of marriage. In order to marry, the young man has to borrow money, and for the first few years of his marriage there is only one goal for him, to repay the debt incurred to his financial backer. He must not even enjoy his wife too much as long as he owes part of her to his sponsor. Energy is so completely devoted to the overriding aim of success that personal motives of affection, loyalty, preference, dislike, and hatred are all barred. It is of crucial importance for the understanding of this system that while there is little love and affection, there is also little destructiveness or cruelty. Even within the fierce competition which dominates the whole picture, the interest is not to humiliate others but only to maintain one’s own position. Cruelty is relatively absent. In fact, those who do not succeed at all, who are failures, are left alone, not made the butt of aggression. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
In the system C, while they have no chiefs, they are a well-organized group arranged in concentric circles, within each of which specified traditional forms of hostility are allowed. Aside from a matrilineal grouping, the susu (“mother’s milk”), where one finds a certain amount of cooperation and trust, the Dobuans’ interpersonal relations, inhabitants of the Dobu Islands, have the principle of distrusting everybody as a possible enemy. Even marries does not lessen the hostility between the two families. A certain degree of peace is established by the fact that the couple live during alternate years in the village of the husband and in the village of the wife. The relationship between husband and wife is full of suspiciousness and hostility. Faithfulness is not expected, and n Dobuan will admit that a man and woman are every together even for the shortest period expect for purposes of pleasures of the flesh. Two features are the main characteristics of this system; the importance of private ownership and of malignant sorcery. The exclusiveness of ownership among them is characterized by its fierceness and ruthlessness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Ownership of a garden and its privacy is respected to such a degree that by custom, man and wife have intercourse within it. Nobody must know the amount of property anyone has. It is as secret as if it had been stolen. The same sense of ownership exists with regard to the ownership of incantations and charms. The Dobus have “disease-charms” which produce and cure illnesses and each illness has a special charm. Illness is explained exclusively as a result of malevolent use of a charm. Illness is explained exclusively as a result of malevolent use of a charm. Some individuals own a charm which completely controls the production and cure of a certain illness. This disease-and-cure monopoly for one illness naturally gives them considerable power. Their whole life is governed by magic since no result in any field is possible without it, and magical formulae quite aside from those connected with illness are among the most important items of private property. All existence is cutthroat competition and every advantage is gained at the expense f the defeated rival. However, competition is not as in other systems, open and frank, but secret and treacherous. The ideal of a good and successful man is one who has cheated another of his place. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
The most admired virtue and the greatest achievement is “wabuwabu,” a system of sharp practices which stresses one’s own gains at the expense of another’s loss. The art is to reap personal advantage in a situation in which others are victims. (This is a system quite different from that of the market which, in principle at least, is based on a fair exchange by which both sides are supposed to profit.) Even more characteristic of the spirit in this system is their treachery. In ordinary relations the Dobuan is suave and unctuously polite. As one man puts if: “If we wish to kill a man we approach him, we eat, drink, sleep, work and rest with him it may be for several moons. We bide our time. We call him a friend.” As a result, in the not infrequent case of murder, suspicion falls on those who have tried to be friends with the victim. There is also an obsessional emphasis on pleasures of the flesh by otherwise joyless people can be observed in present-day Western society among the “swingers” who practice group sex and are extremely bored, unhappy, and conventional people clinging to sexual satisfaction as the only relief from continuous boredom and loneliness. The Dobu fosters and lives out without repression of man’s worst nightmares of the ill-will of the Universe. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
It may not be too different from those sectors of the consumer society, including also many members of the younger generation, from whom sexual consumption has been freed from restrictions, and for whom sex (like drugs) is the only relief in an otherwise bored and depressed mental state. According to their view of life, virtue consists in selecting a victim upon whom one can vent the malignancy one attributes alike to human society and to the powers of nature. All existence appears to one as a cut-throat struggle in which deadly antagonists are pitted against one another in a contest for each one of the goods of life. Suspicious and cruelty are one’s trusted weapons in the strife and one gives no mercy, as one asks none. However, the fact that destructiveness and cruelty are not part of human nature does not imply that they are not widespread and intense. This fact does not have to be proven, not only can it be seen in modern life, but also in primitive society. Unfortunately, we ourselves have been and still are witnesses of such extraordinary acts of destruction and cruelty that we need not even look at the historical record. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Humans, during most of their history, have lived in a zoo and not “in the wild”—id est, under the condition of liberty conducive to human growth and well-being. Human’s often act cruelly and destructively even in situations that do not include crowding. Destructiveness and cruelty can cause one to feel intense satisfaction; masses of humans can suddenly be seized by lust for blood. Individuals and groups may have a character structure that makes them eagerly wait for—or create—situations that permit the expression of destructiveness. Animals, and even hunters, on the other hand, do not enjoy inflicting pain and suffering on other animals or their prey, nor do they kill “for nothing.” Sometimes an animal seems to exhibit sadistic behaviour—for instance, a cat playing with a rodent; but it is an anthropomorphic interpretation to assume that the cat enjoys the suffering of the rodent; any fast-moving object can serve as a plaything, whether it is a rodent or a ball of wool. The wish to destroy for the sake of destruction is different. Only some types of humans take pleasure in destroying life without any reason or purpose other than that of destroying. To put in more generally, only humans appear to be destructive beyond the aim of defense or of attaining what one needs. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Human’s destructiveness and cruelty cannot be explained in terms of animal heredity or in terms of a destructive instinct, but must be understood on the basis of those factors by which humans differ from their animal ancestors. The problem is to examine in what manner and to what degree the specific conditions of human existence are responsible for the quality and intensity of human’s lust for killing and torturing. There is no doubt about the presence of aggressiveness and destructive tendencies in the human psyche which are of the nature of biological drives. However, the most pernicious phenomena of aggression, transcending self-preservation and self-destruction, are based upon a characteristic feature of humans above the biological level, namely one’s capability of creating symbolic Universe in thought, language and behaviour. Biologically, nonadaptive, malignant aggression, id est, destructiveness and cruelty, is not a defense against a threat; it is not phylogenetically programmed; it is characteristic only of humans; it is biologically harmful because it is socially disruptive; its main manifestations—killing and cruelty—are pleasureful without needing any other purposes; it is harmful not only to the person who is attacked but also to the attacker. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Malignant aggression, though not an instinct, is a human potential rooted in the very conditions of human existence. Malignant parts of human’s aggression is not innate, and hence not ineradicable, but it admits that malignant aggression is a human potential and more than a learned pattern of behaviour that readily disappears when new patterns are introduced. A number of experiments have shown that male hormones tend to generate aggressive behaviour. For an answer to the question why this should be so, we must consider that one of the most basic differences between male and female is the difference in function during the act of pleasures of the flesh. The anatomic and physiological conditions of male pleasures of the flesh functioning require that the male be capable of piercing the hymen of the virgin, that he should not be deterred by the fear, hesitation, or even resistance she might manifest; in animals, the female in position during the act of mounting. Since the male capacity to function in pleasures of the flesh is a basic requirement for the survival of the species, one might expect that nature has endowed the male with some special aggressive potential. The expectation appears to be borne out by a number of data. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Of course, some aggression is needed in life. Mostly self-assertive aggression. A general lack in aggressiveness in this sense will be a hesitant and poor officer; an attacking soldier who lacks it will easily retreat. However, one must differentiate between aggression with the aim to damage and the self-assertive aggression that only facilitates the pursuit of a goal, whether it is to damage or to create. The connection between self-assertion, aggression, male hormones, and—possibly—Y chromosomes suggests the possibility that men may be equipped with more self-assertive aggression than women and may make them better general, surgeons, or hunters, while women may be more protective and caring and make better physicians and teachers. Yet, many men lack self-assertive aggressiveness, and many women perform excellently those tasks that require it. Obviously, there is not a simple relationship between maleness and the self-assertive aggressiveness, but a highly complex one about whose details we know almost nothing. This is no surprise to the geneticist who knows that a genetic disposition can be translated into a certain type of behaviour, but can be understood only in terms of its interconnection with other genetic dispositions and with the total life situation into which a person is born and has to live. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
The person with unimpeded self-assertive aggression feels less easily threatened and, hence, is less readily in a position of having to react with aggression. The sadistic person is sadistic because one is suffering from an impotence of the heart, from the incapacity to move the other, to make one respond, to make oneself a loved person. One compensates for that impotence with the passion to have power over others. Since self-assertive aggression enhances the person’s capacity for achieving one’s aims, its possession greatly diminishes the need for sadistic control. The shy our inhibited person, as well as the one with compulsive obsessional tendencies, suffers from an impediment of this type of aggression. The therapeutic task is, first, to help the person to become aware of this impediment, then, to understand how it developed, and most importantly, to understand by what other factors in one’s character system and in one’s environment it is supported and supplied with energy. Perhaps the most important factor that leads to the weakening of self-assertive aggression is an authoritarian atmosphere in family and society, where self-assertion is equated with disobedience, attack, sin. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
For all irrational and exploitative forms of authority, self-assertion—the pursuit by another of one’s real goals—is the arch sin because it is a threat to the power of the authority; the person subject to it is indoctrinated to believe that the aims of the authority are also one’s, and that obedience offers the optimal chance for fulfilling oneself. The divine soul having somehow lost is consciousness is now seeking to become self-conscious again. It is supposed that the ego originates and ends on the same level—divinity—and therefore the question is often asked why it should go forth on such a long and unnecessary journey. This question is a misconceived one. It is not the ego itself which ever was consciously divine, but its source, God. The ego’s divine character lies in its essential but hidden being, but it has never known that. The purpose of gathering experience (the evolutionary process) is precisely to bring it to such awareness. The ego comes to slow birth in finite consciousness out of utter unconsciousness and, later, to recognition and union with its infinite source. That source, whence it has emanated, remains untouched, unaffected, ever knowing and serenely witnessing. The purpose in this evolution is the ego’s own advancement. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
When the Quest is reached, God revels its presence fitfully and brokenly at first but later the hide-and-seek game ends in loving union. On the other hand, sin or disobedience to what we know to be right distances us from God and forces us to live on our own. That means it makes soul rest impossible and is very destructive to the soul. “He who is partner with a thief hates one’s own soul,” Psalm 29.24. Those are surely right who have recognized in pride the root of all disobedience. We think we are “big enough” to take our life into our own hands and disobey, instead of “humbling ourselves under the mighty hand of God.” If we do not take things into our own hands, we will not get what we want—another blow to our pride, and this will certainly be driven by the thought. Our attitude should be, to the contrary, that there is no particular reason why I should get what I want, because I am not in charge of the Universe. The understanding of all this no doubt lies back of the warning already from Saint Peter: “abstain from fleshly lusts, which wage war against the soul,” reports 1 Peter 2.11. How do fleshy lusts war against the soul? Very simply, by enticing us to uproot our dependent life, pulling it away from God, which will deprive our soul of what it needs to function correctly in the enlivening and regulation of our whole being. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
To allow lust (or strong desire) to govern our life is to exalt our will over God’s That is why Saint Paul calls covetousness “idolatry” (Ephesians 5.5; Colossians 3.5). We are the idol, in that case, prepared to sacrifice the well-being and possessions of others to ourself. One also speaks of those whose God is their belly—that is, their desire center (Romans 16.18; Philippians 3.19). James also assigns the origin of sin to our strong desires or lusts (1.14), and now, perhaps, we see clearly how that works. So sin, through desire and pride, alienates the life in us (the soul) from the life that is in God and leaves us in the turmoil of a soul struggling with life on its own. Those who go so far as to abandon themselves to evil—consciously choosing evil as their goal (the “wicked” of Proverbs 21.10)—will be totally abandoned by God. Arrogant wrongdoing is the deepest possible wound people can inflict on their soul. Efforts at spiritual formation in Christlikeness obviously must reverse this process of distancing the soul from God and bring it back to union with Him. What can help us to do that? The Law of God. At this time of great change, I tell you the hard truth: you are the one who must undergo this task. I cannot do it for you, nor can any others do it for you. You magic lies within. You know what to do. Look deeply and you will see. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
A hard time lies before you, but you go under the protection of the Holy Ones and you go guarded by love. God of clear sight, God of the fierce change, please help your children in what they must do. Be beside them, be with them, be their unfailing assistant. Help them to do what they must. Let all the Earth revere the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the World stand in awe of Him. For God spoke, and the World came into being; He commanded, and it stood firm. The Lord brings the design of the heathens to naught; He makes their thoughts to be of no effect. The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the thoughts of His heart to all generations. Happy is the people whose God is the Lord; the people whom He hath chosen for His possession. The Lord looks down from Heaven; He beholds all the children of humans. From the place of His habitation, He gazes upon all the inhabitants of the Earth; He that fashions the hearts of them all, gives heed to all their doings. A king is not saved by the greatness of power; a mighty human is not delivered by sheer strength. A horse is a vain thing for safety; neither does it afford escape by its great strength. Behold, the eye of the Lord is upon them that revere Him, upon the that hope in His mercy, to deliver them from death, and to keep them alive in famine. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Our soul still waits for the Lord; He is our help and our shield. For in God does our heart rejoice, for we trust in His holy name. Let Thy loving kindness, O Lord, be upon us, for our hope is in Thee. Expressions of will are called divine wills, not as being signs that God wills anything; but because what in us is the usual expression of our will, is called the divine will in God. Thu punishment is not a sign that there is anger in God; but it is called anger in Him, from the fact that it is an expression of anger in ourselves. It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto Thy name, O Most High; to declare Thy loving kindness each morning, and Thy faithfulness every night, with an instrument of ten strings and the lute, with sacred music upon the harp. For Thou, O Lord, hast made me rejoice in Thy work; I will glory in the works of Thy hands. How great are Thy deeds, O Lord! Thy thoughts are very deep. The ignorant human does not know, nor does the fool understand this—the wicked may spring up as the grass, and the workers of iniquity may flourish, only to be destroyed forever. However, Thou, O Lord, shalt be exalted forever. Thine enemies, O Lord, Thine enemies shall perish; all the workers of iniquity shall be scattered. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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So Ended Saturn and the God of the Sea—The Heavens and the Earth were Manifest!
The more people have studied different methods of brining up children, the more they have come to the conclusions that what good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is the best after all. My logic aims to teach and instruct the understanding, not that it may with the slender tendrils of the mind snatch at and lay hold of abstract notions (as the common logic does), but that it may in very truth dissect nature, and discover the virtues and actions of bodies, with their laws as determined in matter, so that one’s science flows not merely from the nature of the mind, but also from the nature of things. If humans are to enhance their powers of creativity, one has to try to control conditions of creative thought. Wonder is the child of rarity. Of course, nature and reliability of knowledge could not be divorced from the method of acquiring it. Acquisition can be managed only through the powers of the human being; hence, any improvement in knowledge must mean better control over human’s faculties of knowing. If humans were to uncover nature’s secrets, if one were to acquire new knowledge of the physical World, one must abandon old ways of search and inquiry and must devise new ways of querying nature directly. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
The will is the immediate and effective cause of voluntary behaviour. Appetite or desire is the immediate and effective cause of involuntary movement and action of the body. Appetite triggers physiological activity. Human desire reveals habits and patterns of conduct that have been learned under the guidance of the senses and affections. Will marks moments of deliberate choice. It is always associated with those forms of conduct that have both their origin and sanction in reason. An educated person in the days of Elizabeth and James never doubted that the origin of action—its efficient, not its final cause—is choice. The will governs, moderates, and overrules all of human’s behaviour. It is the imperium of conduct. It rules except when the passions engulf it. In its proper function, the will is responsive to two sources of influence: the “seeds” of God’s good in the Nature of humans to which the will is sensitive directly; and information supplied by the understanding. This faculty, playing the role of minister or councillor, supplies the will with right ends in keeping with right desires, and with right means conducible to the ends desired. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
The liberty, or choice of means is grounded on the Direction of the Judgment. So all the Acts in the Understanding, whereby they are proportioned to the Rules of right Reason. This I think evident—that we find ourselves a power to begin or forbear, continue or end several thoughts of our minds, and motions of our bodies, barely by the choice or preference of the mind. This power which the mind has to prefer the consideration of any idea, or the forbearing to consider it; or to prefer the motion of any part of the body to its rest is that which we call the Will. The actual preferring one to another that which we call volition or willing. The forbearance of that action, consequence to order or command of the mind, is called voluntary. And whatsoever action is performed without such a thought of the mind, is called involuntary. The will has power to control and direct thought. The will can demand, as it is, that the understanding supply all desires information prior to the act of choice. Confronted with a practical problem, the will can ask the understanding to think about, to reason, to judge the matter at hand, drawing upon the accumulated experience stored in memory. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
The power of will over mind will seem less strange to us when we reflect upon the implications of such modern expressions as “I am trying to remember,” “Try to think,” and “You can at least try to work out the problem.” The power of will over body movement is much more evident than the effect of will on mental activity. The idea of the beginning of motion we have from reflection of what passes in ourselves; where we find by experience, that, barely by willing it, barely by a thought of mind, we can move the parts of our bodies, which were before at rest. The detailed description of the life of primitive hunters and food gatherers has shown that humans—at least since they fully emerged fifty thousand years ago—was most likely not the brutal, destructive, cruel being and hence not the prototype of “man the killer” that we find in more-developed stages of their evolution. However, we cannot stop here. In order to understand the gradual development of humans the exploiter and the destroyer, it is necessary to deal with the development of humans during the period of early agriculture and, eventually, with their transformation into a builder of cities, a warrior, and a trader. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
From the emergence of humans, approximately half a million years ago to about 9000 B.C., humans did not change in one respect: humans lived from what they gathered or hunted, but did not produce anything new. Humans were completely dependent on nature and did not themselves influence or transform it. This relationship to nature changed radically with the invention of agriculture (and animal husbandry) which occurs roughly with the beginning of the Neolithic period, more precisely, the “Protoneolitihc” period as archeologist call it today—from 9000 to 7000 B.C.—in an area stretching over one thousand miles from western Iran to Greece, including parts of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and the Anatolian Plateau in Turkey. (It started later in Central and Northern Europe.) For the first time humans made themselves, within certain limits, independent of nature by using one’s inventiveness and skill to produce something beyond that which nature had thus far yielded to one. It was now possible to plant more seed, to till more land, and to breed more animals, as the population increased. Surplus food could be slowly accumulated to support craftsmen who devoted most of their time to the manufacture of tools, pottery, and clothing. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
The first great discovery made in this period was the cultivation of wheat and barley, which had been growing wild in this area. It was discovered that by putting seed of these grasses into the Earth, new plants would grow; that one could select the best seed for sowing, and eventually the accidental crossing of varieties was observed, which produced grains very much larger than the seeds of the wild grasses. The process of development from wild grasses to high-yielding modern wheat is not yet fully known. In involved gene mutations, hybridization, and chromosome doubling, and it has taken thousands of years to achieve the artificial selection by humans on the level of present-day agriculture. For humans in the industrial age, accustomed to looking down on nonindustrialized agriculture as a primitive and rather obvious form of production, the Neolithic discoveries may not seem comparable to the great technical discoveries of our day, of which they are so proud. Yet the fact that the expectation that seed would grow was proved correct by results gave rise to an entirely new concept: humans recognized that they could use this will and intention to make this happen, instead of things just “happening.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
It would not be exaggerated to say that the discovery of agriculture was the foundation for all scientific thinking and later technological development. After 5000 B.C. Catal Huyuk could afford luxuries such as obsidian mirrors, ceremonial daggers, and trinkets of metal beyond the reach of most of its known contemporaries. Cooper and lead were smelted and worked into beads, tubes and possibly small tools, thus taking the beginnings of metallurgy back int the seventh millennium. Its stone industry in local obsidian and imported flint is the most elegant of the period; its wooden vessels are varied and sophisticated, its woollen textile industry fully developed. Make-up sets for women and very attractive bracelets for men and women were found in the burial sites. They knew the art of smelting copper and lead. The use of a great variety of rocks and minerals shows that prospecting and trade formed a most important item of city’s economy. In spite of this developed civilization, the social structure seems to have lacked certain elements characteristic of much larger stages of evolution. Apparently there was little class distinction between rich and poor. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
Although the sizes of buildings, equipment, and burial gifts suggest social inequality, this is not a glaring observation. Furthermore, even more impressive evidence for the absence of violence, among the many hundred of skeletons unearthed, not a single one has been found that showed signs of violent death. The Earth’s and woman’s capacity to give birth—a capacity that men lack—quite naturally gave the mother a supreme place in the World of the early agriculturalist. (Only when men could create material things by intellect, id est, magically and technically—could they claim superiority.) The mother, as goddess (often identified with mother Earth), became the supreme goddess of the religious World, while the Earthly mother became the center of family and social life. The mother-goddess is often found to be accompanied by a leopard, clothed with a leopard skin, or symbolically represented by leopards, at the time the most ferocious and deadly animal of the region (or tiger). This would make her the mistress of wild animals, and it also indicated her double role as the goddess of life and death, like so many other goddesses. “Mother Earth,” who gives birth to her children and receives them again after their individual life cycle has ended is not necessarily a destroying mother. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
The relationship which stands at the origin of all culture, of every virtue, of every nobler aspect of existence, is that between mother and child; it operates in a World of violence as the divine principle of love, of union, of peace. Raising her young, the woman learns earlier than the man to extend her loving care beyond the limits of the ego to another creature, and to direct whatever gift of invention she possesses to the preservation and improvement of the other’s existence. Woman at this stage is the repository of all culture, of all benevolence, of all devotion, of all concern for the living and grief for the dead. Yet of the love that arises from motherhood is not only more intense, but also more universal. Whereas the paternal principle is inherently restrictive, the maternal principle is universal; the paternal principle implies limitation to definite groups, but the maternal principle, like the life of nature, knows no barriers. The idea of motherhood produces a sense of universal maternity among all men, which dies with the development of paternity. The family based on father right is a closed individual organism, whereas the matriarchal family bears the typically universal character that stands at the beginning of all development and distinguishes material life from higher spiritual life. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Every woman’s womb, the mortal image of the Earth mother Demeter, will give brothers and sisters to the children of every other woman; the homeland will know only brother and sisters until the day when the development of the paternal system dissolves the undifferentiated unity of the mass and introduces a principle of articulation. Matriarchal states were particularly famed for their freedom from internecine strife and conflict. The matriarchal peoples—and this is no less characteristic—assigned special culpability to the physical injury of one’s fellow humans or even of animals. This picture of the mode of production and social organization of hunters and Neolithic agriculturalists is quite suggestive in regard to certain psychical traits that are generally supposed to be an intrinsic part of human nature. Prehistoric hunters and agriculturalist had no opportunity to develop a passionate striving for property or envy of the “haves,” because there was no private property to hold on to and no important economic differences to cause envy. On the contrary, their way of life was conducive to the development of cooperation and peaceful living. There was no basis for the formation of the desire to exploit other human beings. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
The idea of exploiting another person’s physical or psychical energy for one’s own purposes is absurd in a society where economically and socially there is no basis for exploitation. The impulses to control others also had little chance to develop. The primitive band society and probably prehistoric hunters since about fifty thousand years ago were fundamentally different from civilized society precisely because human relations were not governed by the principles of control and power; their functioning depended on mutuality. An individual endowed with the passion for control would have been a social failure and without influence. Finally there was little incentive for the development of greed, since production and consumption were stabilized at a certain level. In many highly developed societies, such as the feudal society in the Middle Ages, the members of one occupational group—such as the guilds—did not strive for increasing material profit, but for enough to satisfy the traditional standard of living. Even the knowledge that the members of social classes above them had more luxuries to consume did not generate greed for this surplus consumption. The process of living was satisfying, and hence, no greater consumption appeared desirable. The same holds true for the peasants. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
The rebellions of the peasants in the sixteenth century were not because they wanted to consume as much as the class above them, but they wanted the basis for a dignified human existence and fulfillment of the traditional obligations the land owners had towards them. Do the data on hunter-gatherers and early agriculturalists suggest that the passion of possessiveness, exploitation, greed, envy did not yet exist and are exclusively products of civilization? We cannot make such a sweeping statement, but there is a great difference between cultures which foster and encourage greed, envy, and exploitativeness by their social structure, and cultures which do the opposite. Within a short period, historically speaking, humans learned to harness the physical energy of oxen and the energy of the winds. They invented the plough, the wheeled cart, the sailing boat, and one discovered the chemical processes involved in the smelting of copper ores (to some extent know earlier), and the physical properties of metals, and one began to work out a solar calendar. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
As a consequence, the way was prepared for the art of writing and standards and measures. In no period of history till the days of Galileo was progress in knowledge do rapid or far-reaching discoveries so frequent. But social change was not less revolutionary. The small villages of self-sufficient farmers were transformed into populous cities nourished by secondary industries and foreign trade, and these new cities were organized as city states. Human literally created new land. The great cities of Babylonia rose on a sort of platform of reeds, laid crisscross upon the alluvial mud. They dug channels to water the fields and drain the marshes, they built dykes and mounds to protect humans and cattle from the waters and raise them above the flood. This creation of tillable land required a great deal of labour and this capital in the form of human labour was being sunk in the land. Another result of this process was that a specialized labour force had to be used for this kind of work, and for cultivating the land necessary to grow food for those others who were specialized in crafts, public works, and trade. They had to be organized by the community and directed by an elite which did the planning, protecting, and controlling. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
This means that a much greater accumulation of surplus was needed than in the earlier Neolithic villages, and that this surplus was not just used as food reserve for times of need or growing population, but as capital to be used for an expanding production. The beginning of Neolithic agriculture humans had already developed made it possible for them to produce a small surplus, but this surplus only helped to stabilize their life. When, however, it grew, it could be used for an entirely new purpose; it became possible to feed people who did not directly produce food, but cleared the marshes, built houses and cities and pyramids, or served as soldiers. Of course, such use could only take place when technique and division of labour had reached a degree which made it possible for human labour to be so employed. At this point the surplus grew immensely. The more fields were ploughed, the more marshes were drained, the more surplus could be produced. This new possibility led to one of the most fundamental changes in human history. It was discovered that humans could be used as economic instruments, that they could be exploited, that they could be made a slave. War as an institution was a new invention, like kingdom or bureaucracy, made around 3000 B.C. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Then as now, war was not caused by psychological factors, such as human aggression, but, aside from the wishes for power and glory of the kinds and their bureaucracy, was the result of objective conditions that made war useful and which, as a consequence, tended to generate and increase human destructiveness and cruelty. One of the most significant features of the new urban society was that it was based on the principle of patriarchal rule, in which the principle of control is inherent: control of nature, control of slaves, women and children. The new patriarchal man literally “makes” the Earth. His technique is not simply modification of the natural processes, but their domination and control by man, resulting in new products which are not found in nature. Humans themselves came under the control of those who organized the work of the community, and hence the leaders had to have power over those they control. In order to achieve the aims of this new society, everything, nature and humans, had to be controlled and had to either exercise—of fear—power. Humans were aware of their faculties through their behaviour. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
God gave humans revelations so the use their will to discover God, but some people use religion to control other people. In order to become controllable, humans had to learn to obey and submit, and in order to submit they have to believe in the superior power—physical and/or magic—of their rulers. The new patriarchal system was one based on force and power; it was exploitative and mediated by the psychical mechanism of fear, “awe,” and submission. It was “irrational authority.” To exert power in every form was the essence of civilization; the city found a score of ways of expressing struggle, aggression, domination, conquest—and servitude. The new ways of the cities were rigorous, efficient, often harsh, eve sadistic, and the Egyptian monarchs and their Mesopotamian counterparts boasted on their monuments and tablets of their personal feats in mutilating, torturing, and killing with their own hands their chief captives. In addition to sadism, the passion to destroy life and the attraction to all that is dead (necrophilia) seem to develop in the new urban civilization. There was a destructive, death-oriented myth to be found in the new social order. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
Each historic civilization begins with a living, urban core, the polis, and ends in a common graveyard of dust and bones, a Necropolis, or city of the dead: fire-scorched ruins, shattered buildings, empty workshops, heaps of meaningless refuse, the population massacred or driven int slavery. Whether we read the story of the Hebrews’ conquest of Canaan or the story of the Babylonians’ wars, the same spirit of unlimited and inhuman destructiveness is shown. A good example is Dr. Sennacherib’s stone inscription on the total annihilation of Babylon: “The city and its houses from its foundation to its top, I destroyed, I devastated, I burned with fire. The wall and the outer wall, temples and gods, temple towers of brick and Earth, as many as they were, I razed and dumped them int the Arakhut Canal. Through the midst of that city I dug canals, I flooded its site with water, and the very foundations thereof I destroyed. I made its destruction more complete than that by a flood.” Nonaggressive societies are not as rare or puny as Dr. Freeman and other exponents of the Freudian theory indicate. Aggressiveness is not just one trait, but part of a syndrome; we find aggression regularly together with other traits in the system, such as strict hierarchy, dominance, class division, ex cetera. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
In other words, aggression is to be understood as part of the social character, not as an isolated behaviour trait. Societies are not simply differentiated in terms of more or less aggression, or more or less nonaggression, but in terms of different character systems distinguished from each other by a number of traits that form the system, some of which do not have any obvious connection with aggression. What we most learn in God’s yoke, beyond acting with him, is to abandon outcomes to God, accepting that we do not have in ourselves—in our own “heart, soul, mind, and strength”—the wherewithal to make this come out right, whatever “this” is. Even if we “suffer according to the will of God,” we simply “entrust our souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right,” report 1 Peter 4.19. Now, this is a major part of that meekness and lowliness of heart that we also learn in his yoke. And what rest comes with it! Humility if the framework within which all virtue lives. Our Lord did not say: Learn of Me to despise the World and live in poverty…but only this: Learn of Me for I am gentle and lowly of heart. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
And one of the signs by which a human may know that one is in a state of grace is this—that one is never puffed up. Accordingly, we are to “clothe ourselves with humility,” reports 1 Peter 5.5, which certainly means loss of self-sufficiency. “God gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety upon Him, because He cares for you,” reports 1 Peter 5.5-7. Humility is a great secret of rest of soul because it does not presume to secure outcomes. Here is a simple fact: We live in a World where, by God’s appointment, “the race is not to the swift, and the battle is not to the warriors, and neither is bread to the wise, nor wealth to the discerning, nor favour to humans of ability; for time and chance overtake them all,” reports Ecclesiastes 9.11. The Lord “does not delight in the strength of the horse; He does not take pleasure in the legs of a man,” reports Psalm 147.10. He has a plan for our life that goes far beyond anything we can work out and secure by means of strong horses and good legs. We simply have to rest in His life as he gives it to us. Knowledge, from Christ, that He is good and great enables us to cast outcomes on Him. We find this knowledge in the yoke of Christ. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
Resting in God, we can be free from all anxiety, which means deep soul rest. Whatever our circumstance, taught by Christ we are enabled to “rest [be still] in the LORD and wait patiently [or longingly] for Him,” reports Psalm 37.7. We do not fret or get angry because others seem to be doing better than we are, even though they are less deserving than we. However, the Holy Spirit divided unto each one as He will, namely, according to the free choice of the will, not in obedience to necessity. We have free-will with respect to what we will not of necessity, nor be natural instinct. For our will to be happy does not appertain to free-will, but not natural instinct. Hence other animals, that are moved to act by natural instinct, are not said to be moved by free-will. Since then God necessarily wills His own goodness, but other things not necessarily. God has free will with respect to what He does not necessarily will. Since the evil of sin consists in turning away from the divine goodness, by which God wills all things, it is manifestly impossible for Him to will the evil of sin; yet He can make choice of one of two opposites, inasmuch as He can will a thing to be, or not to be. In the same way we ourselves, without sin, can will to sit down, and not will to sit down. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
In life, be there, do not panic in the face of the pathology; and hold out an optimistic vision of what can come from the pain. To become aware means to perceive one’s wholeness as a person defined by spirit; to perceive the dynamic center that stamps on all utterances, actions, and attitudes the recognizable sign of uniqueness. Such an awareness is impossible if, and as long, the other is for me the detached object of my observation, for that person will not thus yield one’s wholeness and its center. It is possible only when one become present in genuine dialogue. Individuals naturally seek equilibrium because disequilibrium, which is a mismatch between one’s way of thinking and one’s environment, is inherently dissatisfying. When individuals encounter new discrepant information, they enter into a state of disequilibrium. Spiritual experience is the encounter with one’s ground being. It is the moment of one’s life, one’s place in the Universe, and the values that characterize how one lives. Because these issues are central to the self-reflective life and because they are realized in moments of extraordinary clarity with an urgency and authority all their own, they demand attention in the articulation of any definitive psychological system. #RanndolphHarris 21 of 22
God of learning, please guide me in my intellectual quests today. Please keep my mind open and fill it with learning. Land of Spirits, please show yourself to me and teach me to love nature. God, please be true. Be strong. Please keep your promises. I seek wisdom. Please love your children. Please be at peace. Please bless your children. This is my request of you. May all the Holy One help you to make it true. God has given our lard a heritage, for his loving kindness endures forever. God has redeemed us from our foes, for His loving kindness endures forever. God gives food to all creatures, for His loving kindness endures forever. O please give thanks unto God of Heaven, for His loving kindness endures forever. Rejoice in the Lord, O ye righteous, it is befitting for the upright to praise Him. Give thanks unto the Lord with the harp, sing praises unto Him with the ten stringed psaltery. Sing unto Him a new song; play skillfully amid songs of joy, for the word of the Lord is just, and all His work is truth. God loves righteousness and justice; the Earth is full of loving kindness of the Lord. By the word of the Lord were the Heavens made, and all the host of them by His command. God gathered the waters of the sea as a heap; He lay up the deeps in the store-houses. God is Almighty. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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Upon Your Skirts Have Fallen Tears of Mine–Genuine Joy and Creativity Come Out of Paradox!
The run-of-the-mill have a truer capacity for love than intellectuals, who should know better. I have always worked with the temperamental conviction that at bottom there are no insoluble problems, and experience justifies me in so far as I have often seen patients simply outgrow a problem that destroyed others. This “outgrowing,” as I called it, proves on further investigation to be a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest appears on the patient’s horizon, and through this broadening of one’s outlook the insoluble problem loses its urgency. It is not solved logically in its own terms, but fades out when confronted with a new and stronger life urge. It is not repressed and made unconscious, but merely appears in a different light, and so really does become different. What, on a lower level, leads to the wildest conflicts and to panicky outbursts of emotion, from the higher level of personality now looks like a storm in the valley seen from the mountain top. This does not mean that the storm is robbed of its reality, but instead of being in it one is above it. However, since, in a psychic sense, we are both valley and mountain, it might seem a vain illusion to deem oneself beyond what is human. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
One certainly does feel the affect and is shaken and tormented by the storm, yet at the same time one is aware of a higher consciousness looking on which prevents one from becoming identical with the affect, a consciousness which regards the affect as an object, and can say, “I know that I suffer.” What our text says of indolence, “Indolence of which a human is conscious, and indolence of which one is unconscious, are a thousand miles apart,” hold true in the highest degree of affect. Now and then it happens in my practice that a patient grows beyond oneself because of unknow potentialities, and this becomes an experience of prime importance to me. In the meantime, I have learned that all the greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insoluble. They must be so, for they express the necessary polarity inherent in every self-regulating system. They can never be solved, but only outgrown. I therefore asked myself whether this outgrowing, this possibility of further psychic development, is not the normal thing, and whether getting stuck in conflict is pathological. Everyone must possess that higher level, at least in embryonic form, and must under favourable circumstances be able to develop this potentiality. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
When I examine the course of development in patients who quietly, and as if unconsciously, outgrow themselves, I see that their fates have been something in common. The new thing comes to them from obscure possibilities either outside or inside themselves; they accept it and grow with its help. It seems to me typical that some take the new thing from outside themselves, others from inside; or rather, that it grows int some persons from without, and into others from within. However, the new thing never comes exclusively either form within or from without. If it comes from outside, it becomes a profound inner experience; if it comes from inside, it becomes an outer happening. In no case is it conjured into existence intentionally or by conscious willing, but rather seems to be borne along on the stream of time. The goal toward which the individuation process is ending is “Wholeness” or “Integration”: a condition in which all the different elements of the psyche, both conscious and unconscious, are welded together. The person who achieves this goal possess an attitude that is beyond the reach of emotional entanglements and violent shocks—a consciousness detached from the World. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Individuation is a spiritual journey; and the person embarking upon it, although one might not subscribe to any recognized creed, is nonetheless pursuing a religious quest. By paying careful attention to the unconscious, as manifested in dream and fantasy, the individual comes to change one’s attitude from one in which ego and will are paramount to one in in which one acknowledges that one is guided by an integrating factor which is not of one’s own making. This integrating factor, expressed by the emergence of quaternity or mandala symbols, is named the Self; and archetype which not only signifies union between the opposites within the psyche, but is a God-image, or at least cannot be distinguished from one. Unity and totality stand at the highest point on the scale of objective values because their symbols can no longer be distinguished from the imago Dei. Imago Dei (The Image of God) is a concept and theological doctrine in Judaism, Christianity, and Sufism of Islam, which asserts that human beings are created in the image and likeness of God. Hence all statements about the God-image apply to the empirical symbols of totality. Ironically, facing death can being the courage to live and create. By the creative act, we are able to reach beyond our own death. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Because we are able to reach beyond our own death when we are creative, this is why creativity is so important, and why we need to confront the problem of the relationship between creativity and death. One needs to devote one’s aesthetic and sensibilities as an artist and their fantasy to the outside World and harness it for the task of creating a real life in relationship with others. The role of the artist is the greatest kind of courage. Many people struggle to create life through symbol and imagination, they demonstrate the essential task of creating in the face of death. It they create themselves and their own lives, however, it may be asked what “self” they are creating. Are they creating false selves and role expectations or authentic selves and authentic lives? Mandalas are cryptograms concerning the state of the self which is presented to the individual creating them. In them, some people see the self—that is, their whole being—actively at work. To be sure, at first one may only simply understand them; but they seem to the individual highly significant, and one guards the like precious pearls. One has the distinct feeling that they are something central, and in time one may acquire through them a living conception of the self. The self, one may think, is like the monad which one is, and which is their World. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
The mandala represents his monad, and corresponds to the microcosmic nature of the psyche. Now, for clarity, the mandala is an art form that one usually creates, like a painting of patterns or a sketch, and it represents one’s mind. It makes it easier for one to concentrate on, transform, and internalize unconscious things in oneself. Monads are one of the ultimate indivisible units of existence. Monads are independent of one another and innately have the power of action and direction toward some end. Although no monad in reality acts on any other, they work in a divinely preestablished harmony so that an appearance of causal connection is maintained. The concept of the monad is intended, in part, to address the mind-body problem arising from Cartesian dualism. While working on mandalas, there may be a great many and some questions may arise repeatedly: What is this process leading to? Where is its goal? From one’s own experience, one may know that one cannot presume to choose a goal which would seem trustworthy to oneself. It may be necessary to abandon the idea of the superordinate position of the ego. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
It may be a good idea to go with the scientific analysis of myths which are Symbols of Transformation. This may be an unconscious process. Therefore, let oneself be carried along by the current without a notion of where it will lead one. When one begins drawing the mandalas, however, one will see that everything, all the paths one has been following, all the steps one has been taking, are leading back to a single point—namely, to the mid-point. It may become increasingly plain to one that the mandala is the center. It is the exponent of all paths. It is the paths to the center, to individuation. Some people have seen these artworks on the exterior of Victorian houses, or in the pattern of stained-glass windows, like the stained-glass window Mrs. Winchester created with the spider web and thirteen orbs. The goal of psychic development is the self. Uniform development exists, at most, only at the beginning; later, everything points toward the center. This insight gives one stability, and gradually one’s inner peace will return. One will know that finding the mandala as an expression of the self, one has attained for one the ultimate. And perhaps one will learn more. There is great importance of authenticity and subjectivity in the creation of the self in the World. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Our subjectivity is our true home, our natural state, and our necessary place of refuge and renewal. It is the font of creativity, the stage for imagination, the drafting table for planning, and the ultimate heart of our fears and hopes, our sorrows and satisfactions. To the extent that some are struggling to create, not just any selves, but experientially coherent authentic selves, subjectivity is a necessary aspect of one’s creativity. The confrontation between life and death, the courage to create in the face of death, and the authenticity of a subjective self can be organized into a paradoxical model. Genuine joy and creativity come out of paradox. The human psyche is a continuum of constrictive and expansive possibilities. The dread of constriction and expansion promotes dysfunctional extremism or polarization, whereas confrontation with or integration of the poles promotes optimal living. Some people oscillate between the poles of expansion out into life and withdrawal into depression and a fantasy World (light and dark imagery, pleasures of the flesh and spirituality), these extremes can be understood as resting on a continuum, with the therapeutic task being to name and integrate the poles. However, the solitary journey toward independence may be molded after the heroic journey towards consciousness. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
The pull toward unconsciousness and the need for nurturance and interdependence is part of one’s journey. In Victorian women, hysteria often was a form personality of the vamp and the little girl. The mental hospital is a metaphorical space in which to articulate the crazy-making pressures of middle-class life, particularly for women. The home, the mental hospital, the body: these are woman’s places in the social order that apportion different roles to the genders; and woman herself is the very sense of mutilation. Some women, especially young women experience death by suicide or have a lust for it because they may want to die perfect, certainly not mutilated. To lose your virginity is to be mutilated; virginity is unopen, not yet spoiled. Sleeping Beauty remained perfect. Being Sleeping Beauty also expresses one’s desire to remain a child, and object of fantasy, dependent, and this beauty in their lives makes them want to die as Sleeping Beauty rather than risk imperfection. Some are seeking to balance freedom and security, meaning and emptiness, loneliness and relationship. Death may be seen as warm arms, as a release from the struggle of living. Perhaps it is a good idea to let them know it is acceptable to live and remain pure. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
When pain becomes too great, contain it with humour and with writing. Presence is critical. Having someone listen to one’s silence, to one’s presence (dasein), and give one immediate, kinesthetic, and profound attention is absolutely necessary. When in a suicidal depression, one needs someone to hold one’s hand. One needs someone to help them see life as a composition, to bring one’s extremes more integrated whole, and to apply one’s creativity to one’s actual life. An essential part of healing is to see one’s individual story in a larger cultural perspective. The balance tbween nurturance and work, and the themes of sacrifice, homelessness, and the closeness between death and rebirth, are especially close to the psyche and psychotherapy of women. Sacrifice is the basis of the early primordial fertility rites and is a necessary part of the spring rebirth. Feeling sacrificed to the dominant patriarchal culture and experiencing the plight of insecurity in the living environment through the dispossession of an archetypal place in the World bring some people together in a bond of empathy and shard humanity. This bond can also unite individuals in an empathy of an intense, preverbal sibling type relationship. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
When people have someone to groan with in sympathy, it implies a way of being that does not distance but noncognitively feels with one one’s experience and allows one to descend into the underworld, transform the pain unto image and symbol, and re-emerge stronger. As one has someone to work with them through the process and changing imagery, those who have faith and the word of God deep in their hearts will be able to absorb and overcome the fiery darts that the adversary will surely send to destroy us. Otherwise, our faith, hope, and conviction may not endure, and we could become a casualty. I have learned that having the word of God deep in my soul, coupled with faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and His Atonement, allows me to draw upon the power of God to overcome the adversary and anything he may throw at me. As we face challenges, we can rely upon the promise of the Lord taught by Saint Paul: “For God hath not given us a spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” We know that as a child the Saviour grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him. We know that as He grew older, Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and humans. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
And we know that by the time God’s ministry commenced, those who heard Him were astonished at his doctrine: for his word was with power. Through preparation, the Saviour grew in power and was able to resist all of Satan’s temptations. As we follow the Saviour’s example and prepare through studying the word of God and deepening our faith, we also can draw upon the power of God to resist temptations. Clear the space for change to happen. Let go of the vestiges of your old life, and of illusions that others provide a home for and that your Ghostly Love can provide a relationship. The second phase has to do with descent. These entails one’s experiencing one’s aloneness, one’s vulnerability, tracking the images in one’s dreams and journals, and experiencing one’s images of fire, darkness, crosses, and sacrifice. Remember, there is no expiration date associated with the power God bestows upon those who make and keep temple covenants, nor is there a restriction from accessing that power during a pandemic. However, if we fail to keep our covenants and do not life in a way that allows us to continually qualify to receive His power, the God’s power diminishes in our lives. Focus on your readiness to create your own life, and to meet another person without any baggage or encumbrances from your past. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
When you are free from encumbrances and baggage, when you do meet someone, you will be free and ready to move into a relationship with clear intentions of creating a stable home and a place for yourself. From then on, your images will deal with rebirth, light, and interdependence. Staying with this process means trusting in the Lord and the logic of one’s psyche and helping one to put one’s images and experiences into the context of a meaningful story. Because without working through the healing process, one is faced with total lack of understanding, either not wanting to understand what one is talking about because it is too painful or one is unable to understand because it is too foreign to their experience or because one is totally unable to listen to another person and hear what one is saying. In any event, the World will seem to offer nothing of care or concern for one’s experience or one’s feelings. It will seem unable and unprepared to give one anything to help one in suffering. One will just suffer, and by asking others to listen, and getting no response, one’s suffering will increase. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
However, through it all, our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, love us! They care for us! They and Their holy angels are watching over us. I know this is true. As we seek union of feeling, we will call down the power of God to make our efforts whole. We often think of substance in terms of food or money, but perhaps what we all need more of is mercy. Sometimes when a person witnesses your suffering, it makes a difference. Just being seen and heard by another. And one listening and sharing in your deep mourning. It has an impact on other people. Their eyes fill with tears. This makes some people want to listen quietly and mourn with you. The ability to listen is a rare quality, born of love. The ability to sit in silence is even more rare—a holy moment when two sit as one. Th feeling has no need for explanation. When a person manifests the least kindness and love, oh what a power it has over one’s mind. The nearer we get to our Heavenly Father, the more are we disposed to look with compassion on perishing souls—we feel that we want to take them upon our shoulders and cast their sins behind our back. If you would have God have mercy on you, have mercy on another. Let us not judge each other or let or words bite. Let us keep each other’s names safe and give the gift of mercy. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Differences can be turned to advantage instead of disadvantage. Unity does not magically happen; it takes work. It is messy, sometimes uncomfortable, and happens gradually when we clear away the bad as fast as the good can grow. Each of us is going to have deeply wounding experiences, things that should never happen. Each of us will also, at various times, allow pride and loftiness to corrupt the fruit we bear. However, Jesus Christ is our Saviour in all things. His power reaches to the very bottom and is reliably there for us when we call on Him. We all beg for mercy for our sins and failures. Jesus freely gives it. And Jesus Christ asks us if we can give that same mercy and understanding to each other. That is the meaning of the soul in the Christian understanding, and can be seen from what the Bible says about God’s soul. Many people are surprised to learn that God, too, has a soul, and even translators of the Bible often do not seem to know what to do about it. Referring to the gross wickedness into which Judea had fallen, the prophet Jeremiah gives the Lord’s word: “Be thou instructed, O Jerusalem, lest my soul depart from thee: and lest I make thee desolate, a land not inhabited,” reports Jeremiah 6.8. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
However, more recent versions translate this as “or I shall turn from you in disgust,” or “Lest I be alienated from you.” Similarly I Jeremiah 9.9: “Shall not my soul be avenged on a nation as this?”; “Shall I not bring retribution on a nation such as this?”; and “On a nation such as this I shall not avenge Myself?” In these and other cases the word “nephesh” (or soul) occurs in the Hebrews text with reference to God. That is done in order to indicate the utter depth of the response of God to the wickedness of his people. That depth is not successfully communicated by the alternative language offered. The true meaning is hollowed out and lost. Similar observations must be made about Isaiah 1.14. In speaking of the soul of God, reference is always made to the deepest, most fundamental level of his being. And similarly in the New Testament texts such as, “Behold, My Servant Whom I Have Chosen; My Beloved In Whom My Soul Is Well-Pleased” (Matthew 12.18; see Leviticus 26.11; Psalm 11.5; and numerous other passages referring to God’s soul. The heart of the matter is that to refer to someone’s soul is to say something about the ultimate depths of one’s being and something that cannot be communicated by using terms like “person” or “self” or various available pronouns. (see Matthew 11.29.) #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
The human entity has travelled through joy and suffering, experienced birth and death, experimented with good and evil for the very purpose of becoming a fully conscious entity. How then could annihilation—Vendantic or any other kind—be its ultimate fate? Is it for this, that humans should end as a mere speck of dust, that they were born? Consciousness, aspiration insight, and inspirations, artistic creations and scientific revelations, the noblest ethical feeling—all useless because the being hey serve is destined to vanish utterly? If all human’s seeming progress comes to an end with one’s death, one’s own end, how futile it is! It helps little to say that others will benefit by it, for this merely shifts the futility to them, for they too will die. The human situation is unsatisfactory and the Biblical Psalmist succinctly lamented. We have not come from oblivion. All our past is present in our characters, capacities, and tendencies; therefore we shall not go into oblivion. There is no death—only a change of state. We have the power to remove prejudice and build unity while we are here in mortal form. May we draw upon God and walk upright with one another—in perfect peace and harmony. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
We bring before you today one of yours, people of our past, one who will continue what you started in the long-ago time. God your beloved child is one of us, the family that reached so far back, and we will need you to please guide your family until they are ready to assume their full responsibilities. Be with you children and us as we do that; as your children grow, please be at their side to help. Please come to us today and learn who your children are, come and celebrate with us. Whatever the Lord desireth, He performeth, in Heaven and Earth, in the seas, and all deeps; He causeth mists to arise from the ends of the Earth; He maketh lightening for the rain; He being forth the wind out of His store-houses. God smote the first-born of Egypt, both man and beast. He sent signs and wonders into the midst of Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all His servants. God concerned many nations, and struck down might kings; Sihon, king of the Amorites, and Og, king of the Bashan, and all the kingdoms of Canaan; and gave their land for a heritage unto Israel His people. “Lord” is Thy name for ever; as Lord art Thou known throughout all generations. For the Lord shall judge His people, and have compassion upon His servants. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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In a World where the Pulse of Time Beats Infinitely Slowly, Birth and Death Count for Little!
Hardships do not build character. They reveal it. Anyone who will tear down Victorian craftsmanship will tear down America. Victorian architecture and religion have made America what it is today. A World without Victorian architecture is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval prison. Just like the unconscious mind, Victorians have a lot of secrets that can take several lifetimes to reveal. Faith and the word of God fills our inner soul and is sufficient to sustain us—and allows us to access His power. The notion that God created this World spectacle for the benefit of the human alone is an absurd and unwarranted anthropolatry, but the notion that life first attains individual self-consciousness in humans is justified in philosophy and by experience. What is it of which one alone is conscious? It is of being oneself, one’s ego. In all earlier stages of evolution, consciousness is entirely veiled in its forms and never becomes self-aware. Only in the human state does individual consciousness of being first dawn. There may exist on other planets creatures infinitely more intelligent and more amiable than human beings. We may not be the only pebbles on the beach of life. Nevertheless the piece of arrogance which places humans highest in the scale of existence contains the dim reverberation of a great truth, for humans bear the divine within their hearts. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Human beings have made too much fuss about themselves, their own importance in the cosmic scale. Why should there not be other forms of life superior t them, conscious intelligent beings higher in mentality, character, and spiritual knowledge, better equipped with powers and techniques? Even a partial awareness of what it means to be a human—as above an animal—capable of thinking abstractly, conscious of the vastness of the Universe and the littleness of the ego, asking the ago-old questions about meaning and purpose in life, sometimes getting a glimpse of a few words of the answer through religion, art, Nature, mysticism, joy, suffering, or intelligence, even this is enough to make one wonder what follows in development after one, higher than oneself, if not here then perhaps on other planets or in a fourth dimension. Such beings must already exist somewhere. Are they the gods of ancient fable and myth, disfigured or miscomprehended in human narratives by passing of time? Were they visitors who helped infant humanity reach its tends and then left it, withdrew, except for rare appearances as avatars, angels, or lawgivers? There are existences for beings on levels and in times and space different from ours. The Level we know and the humans we see only partially manifest the World-Idea. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
The multibirthed nature of human experience fits in with the shimmering galaxies of the multiverse itself. “We are not alone,” could be echoed back by this planet Earth itself. There are beings not subject to the same laws as those governing humankind’s physical existence. They are normally not visible to humans. They are gods. The Gods are both symbols of particular forces and beings dwelling on higher planes. All these figures irrupt autonomously into consciousness as soon as it gets into a pathological state. With regard to the anima, I would particularly like to draw attention to the case described by Nelken. Now the remarkable thing is that these figures show the most striking connections with the poetic, religious, or mythological formulations, though these connections are in no way factual. That is to say, they are spontaneous products of analogy. One such case even led to the charge of plagiarism: the French writer Benoit gave a description of the anima and her classic myth in his book L’Atlantide, which is an exact parallel of Rider Haggard’s She. The lawsuit proved unsuccessful; Benoit and never heard of She. (It might, in the last analysis, have been an instance of cryptomnesic deception, which is often extremely difficult to rule out.) #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
The distinctly “historical” aspect of the anima and Benoit’s condensation with the figures of the sister, wife, mother, and daughter, plus thus associated incest motif, can be found in Goethe (“You were in times gone by my wife of sister”), as well as in the anima figure of the regina and femina alba in alchemy. The English alchemist Eirenaeus Philalethes (“love of truth”), writing about 1645, remarks that the “Queen” was the King’s “sister, mother, or wife.” The same idea can be found, ornately elaborated, in Nelken’s patient and in a whole series of cases observed by me, where I was able to rule out with certainty any possibility of literary influence. For the rest, the anima complex is one of the oldest features of Latin alchemy. When one studies the archetypal personalities and their behaviour with the help of the dreams, fantasies, delusions of patients, one is profoundly impressed by their manifold and unmistakable connections with mythological ideas completely unknown to the layperson. They form a species of singular beings whom one would like to endow with ego-consciousness; indeed, they almost seem capable of it. And yet this idea is not borne out by the facts. There is nothing in their behaviour to suggest that they have an ego-consciousness as we know it. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
The behaviours show, on the contrary, all the marks of fragmentary personalities. They are masklike, wraithlike, without problems, lacking self-reflection, with no conflicts, no doubts no sufferings; like gods, perhaps, who have no philosophy, such as the Brahma-gods of the Samyutta–nikaya, whose erroneous views needed correction by the Buddha. Unlike other contents, they always remain strangers in the World of consciousness, unwelcome intruders saturating the atmosphere with uncanny forebodings or even with the fear of madness. If we examine their content, id est, the fantasy material constituting their phenomenology, we find countless archaic and “historical” associations and images of an archetypal nature. This peculiar fact permits us to draw conclusions about the “localization’ of anima and animus in the psychic structure. They evidently live and function in the deeper layers of the unconscious, especially that phylogenetic substratum which I have called the collective unconscious. This localization explains a good deal of their strangeness: they being into our ephemeral consciousness an unknown psychic life belonging to a remote past. It is the mind of our unknown ancestors, their way of thinking and feeling, their way of experiencing life and the World, gods and humans. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The existence of these archaic strata is presumable the source of the human’s belief in reincarnations and in memories of “previous existences.” Just as the human body is a museum, so to speak, of its phylogenetic history, so too is the psyche. We have no reason to suppose that the specific structure of the psyche is the only thing in the World that has n history outside its individual manifestations. Even the conscious mind cannot be denied a history reaching back at least five thousand years. It is only our ego-consciousness that has forever a new beginning and an early end. The unconscious psyche is not only immensely old, it is also capable of growing into an equally remote future. It moulds the human species and is just as much a part of its as the human body, which, though ephemeral in the individual, is collectively of immense ago. The anima and animus live in a World quite different from the World outside—in a World where the pulse of time beats infinitely slowly, where the birth and death of individuals count for little. No wonder their nature is strange, so strange that their irruption into consciousness often amounts to a psychosis. They undoubtedly belong to the material that comes to light in schizophrenia. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
What I have said about the collective unconscious may give you give a more or less adequate idea of what I mean by their term. If we now turn back to the problem of individuation, we shall see ourselves faced with a rather extraordinary task: the psyche consists of two incongruous halves which together should form a whole. One is inclined to think that ego-consciousness is capable of assimilating the unconscious, at least one hopes that such a solution is possible. However, unfortunately the unconscious really is unconscious; in other words, it is unknown. And how can you assimilate something unknown? Even if you can form a fairly complete picture of the anima and animus, this does not mean that you have plumbed the depths of the unconscious. One hopes to control the unconscious, but the past masters in the art of self-control, the yogis, attain perfection in samadhi, a state of ecstasy, which so far as we know is equivalent to a state of unconsciousness. It makes no difference whether they call our unconscious a “universal consciousness”; the fact remains that in their case the unconscious has swallowed up ego-consciousness. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
They do not realize that a “universal consciousness” is a contradiction in terms, since exclusion, selection, and discrimination are the root and essence of everything that lays claim to the name “consciousness.” “Universal consciousness” is logically identical with unconsciousness. It is nevertheless true that a correct application of the methods described in the Pali Canon or the Yoga-sutra induces a remarkable extension of consciousness. But, with increasing extension, the contents of consciousness lose in clarity of detail. In the end consciousness becomes all-embracing, but nebulous; and infinite number of things merge into an indefinite whole, a state in which subject and object are almost completely identical. This is all very beautiful, but scarcely to be recommended anywhere north of the Tropic of Cancer. For this reason we must look for a different solution. We believe in ego-consciousness and in what we call reality. The realities of a north climate are somehow so convincing that we feel very much better off when we do not forget them. For us it makes sense to concern ourselves with reality. Our European ego-consciousness is therefore inclined to swallow up the unconscious, and if this should not prove feasible we try to suppress it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
However, if we understand anything of the unconscious, we know that it cannot be swallowed. We also know that it is dangerous to suppress it, because the unconscious is life and this life turns against us if suppressed, as it happens in neurosis. When one of them is suppressed and injured by the other, conscious and unconscious do not make a whole. If they must contend, let it at least be a fair fight with equal rights on both sides. Both are aspects of life. Consciousness should defend its reason and protect itself, and the chaotic life of the unconscious should be given the chance of having its way too—as much of it as we can stand. This means open conflict and open collaboration at once. That, evidently, is the way human life should be. It is the old game of hammer and anvil: between them the patient iron is forged into an indestructible whole, and “individual.” This, roughly, is what I mean by the individuation process. As the same shows, it is a process or course of development arising out of the conflict between the two fundamental psychic facts. The symbol of formation has the closet affinities with alchemical ideas, and especially with the conception of the “uniting symbol,” which yield highly significant parallels. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Naturally these are processes which have no meaning in the initial stages of psychological treatments. On the other hand, more difficult cases, such as cases of unresolved transference, develop these symbols. Knowledge of them is of inestimable importance in treating cases of this kind, especially when dealing with cultured patients. How the harmonizing of conscious and unconscious data is to be undertaken cannot be indicated in the form of a recipe. It is an irrational life-process which expressed itself in definite symbols. It may be the task of the analyst to stand by this process with all the help one can give. In this case, knowledge of the symbols is indispensable, for it is in them that the union of conscious and unconscious contents is consummated. Out of this union emerge new situations and new conscious attitudes. I have therefore called the union of opposites the “transcendent function.” This rounding out of the personality into a whole may well be the goal of any psychotherapy that claims to be more than a mere cure of symptoms. As experience piles up, self-structures gradually establish themselves and, in doing so, separate out more and more from other structures which have less to do with one’s identity. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
In the course of this process, as the self becomes more distinct, other people and things also gain coherence and individuality. There is a growing sense of “Ah yes, this is me, and that is that, and you are you, and this is what goes on between us.” Gradually, with further experiences, if all goes well, the personality develops a relatively stable sense of itself in its environment and a stable sense of what is not self but other people and things. Our life-experiences are increasingly reorganized and integrated, with more linkages to the more central regions of the self, and/or with more clearly delineated object-imagery. Our experiences can become more closely connected with (or, on the other hand, more distant from) the feelings or excitements which originally accompanied the experiences. This is a process through which our experiences can also become relatively less integrated with the person with whim we first experienced them, and relatively less integrated with the feelings or excitements with which we first experienced them. Thus feelings and excitements can be isolated from the structures in terms of which they were first experienced, isolated from structures of self and/or isolated from object-imagery. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
To give an imaginary illustration of a very complicated process, the experience may be of a child being hugged by the mother and enjoying it. In words: “I like being hugged by mother.” This may be broken up into such substructures as “hugging is lovely” (whoever hugs whom: the “depersonalized” relationship), as well as “I liked being hugged,” “I love mother,” “I like hugging,” “mother loves me,” “mother loves hugging me,” “mother likes hugging,” and so on. This example is also useful in letting us realize just how many structures can emerge out of one experience; it is a mistake to think of an experience being broken up into one self-concept, one object-concept, one relationship, one emotion. “Depersonalizing” is used to describe this process. Depersonalizing is a useful way of coping with distressing feelings, I shall often call it “distancing” or “disowning.” In depersonalizing, emotions and objects differentiate. My first experience of a dog may have been frightening, but “frightening” and “dog” will eventually probably differentiate from each other, so that in due course I can distinguish between the dog which scared me, and dogs in general which have no personal significance for me either frightening or lovable, and so on. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
At that level of abstraction, dogs remain dogs, whatever my experience of them: object-constancy has been achieved. In depersonalizing, the emotions and self differentiate. “I” and “frightened” differentiate. More generally, I learn that I am not wholly (always) good or wholly (always” bad, or wholly (always) happy or wholly (always) unhappy. Later I have to discover that my feeling hat someone or something is good or bad does not mean that it is so. And I have to discover that my feeling that someone or something is good or bad does not mean that other people think so. Subjectivity is thus turned into objectivity. This process of depersonalizing may be patchy or superficial. Underneath what we have learned about dogs which helps us say we know that not all dogs are frightening although we once knew a frightening puppy, there may be unconscious connections very tightly integrated with a feeling of good or bad about dogs. Part of psychotherapy is to being these unconscious connections into consciousness. When thinking about feelings, it is useful sometimes not to think in a “distancing” or depersonalized way of “love,” or “distress,” or “fear.” It can be instructive to think for a while in terms of “love-of,” and “distress-from,” and “fear-of,” and “hate-of,” and “greed-for,” and “bliss-with.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
If we think of feelings apart from who-feels-what-towards-whom, we risk being cut from out roots. Feeling are experienced as relational—once stated, it seems obvious, at least for a healthy functioning organism. Feelings are relational from the start except when something has gone wrong with our biochemistry. When feelings are detached from the experiences in which they were aroused, that is normally due to a later and defensive manoeuver. This component in the object-relation does not therefore separate out in an organized way, as self-structures or object-imagery do in the healthy infant. On the contrary, it looks as though health may consist in keeping feelings attached to the experiences with which they are bound up. Healthy people may have a clear sense of self and of the people and things around them, but they are not much visited by isolated waves of “fear-of” or “bliss-with.” Such feelings would normally be anchored in an experience. Depersonalized feelings are very weird. One of the many contributions made by Dr. Melanie Klein and her associates comes from their intuitive understanding that “I am angry (with a person or thing)” is very close to “Someone or something is very angry with me.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
The feeling “angry-with” may be depersonalized, detached from particular experiences, and associated at random with self or with other. Similarly “I feel torn apart (by something in the course of hunger)” may become “I have torn apart (the breast associated with hunger).” For some people there is no differentiation between self-and-feeling; for others there is none between others-and-feeling. It seems that people vary in this respect. The former are likely to experience “I am fine, sad, content, frightened, furious,” et cetera. The latter are likely to experience “He is nice, she is frightening, that is nasty, this is sweet, the other wicked.” Only people who are very out of touch would be assailed by feelings of fear or well-being or anger or love without any clear connections with anything. Illustrating the extreme, a person mainly organized in terms of self-structures, and distant from the World of people and things, might say, “I was so worried when I did not hear…I wondered what I had done wrong. I felt so guilt and worried, then I remembered that I am always forgetting people’s birthdays. Are I not awful.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Another kind of person, mainly organized in terms of other people and things, and distant from one’s own feelings, might say, “They sent this letter which said they were closing down. With a cheque. The cheque was an insult. They have no right to send a notice like that through the post. I went to the Citizens’ Advice Bureau round the corner from where I used to live—not last year but the year before. Almost everyone there was new, much younger and two were Asian.” Yet another kind of person hardly experiences either self or other people, but picks up feelings without firmly attaching them to anyone: “It was really eerie, a dangerous atmosphere. There were a lot of booming noises and a lot of talk which I do not remember. It felt very heavy and threatening. It did not mater, though.” People differ in how they are aware, more in some ways, less in others. One wonders at which point thee types begin to become fixed. It is an interesting area to speculate in. Whole cultures or subcultures may be found which prefer one or other type, so that polite conventional speech requires more awareness of some aspect than another. Thus in some circles it is discourteous to talk about oneself, and in others it is band manners to talk about others, and in yet other circles one should not talk about impersonal matters. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Because I cannot deal with the soul here in a thorough and systematic manner that would address main issues (I refer again to the literature noted), my strategy will be twofold: First, I will elaborate a picture or image of the soul, and second, I will look at certain things said about the soul in the Bible. Now the image: Our soul is like an inner stream of water, which gives strength, direction, and harmony to every other element of our life. When that stream is as it should be, we are constantly refreshed and exuberant in all we do, because our soul itself is then profusely rooted in the vastness of God and His kingdom, including nature: and all else within us is enlivened and directed by that stream. Therefore we are in harmony with God, reality, and the rest of human nature at large. As is usual in biblical themes, a little child that has been allowed to develop naturally and have been natured in all the aspects of its being gives us the best presentation of that a life flooded with a healthy soul looks like. Now, beyond the image or picture of an inner stream is this reality: Life is self-initiating, self-directing, self-sustaining activity and power. In this full sense, of course, only God has life. That is the biblical view. Moreover, it his “hand is the soul of every living thing,” Job tells us (Job 12.10). #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Can it be truth that all this cast travail, all this long long ingathering of experience, all this travel to the farthest limit, is only to end in negation, in unlearning all knowledge and returning to where we started? My heart does not believe it, my reason cannot accept it. “The Father has life in Himself,” Jesus taught, and “gave to the Son also to have life in Himself,” reports John 5.26. “He alone possesses undying life,” reports 1 Timothy 6.16, according to Saint Paul, and is the one “who gives and preserves life to all things,” reports 1 Timothy 5.13. The individual living thing receives its relatively “self-initiating, self-directing, self-sustaining power” from the hand of God. This derivative life flows through the living being in the form of its own soul. As for the human, its peculiar form of soul is related to the unique spirit relationship it has to be God (Genesis 2.7). It is its peculiar form of soul that enlivens everything else in the creature, and its overall condition reflects the state of its soul. In the human being, spiritual life in the kingdom of God is central to its soul and its life. This, we seriously suggest, is not an image but a reality, and one that the image of a stream of water can portray with some force. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
When we speak of the human soul, then, we are speaking of the deepest level of life and power in the human being. On this land, please pour blessings, O Lord, pour blessings. On this house please pour blessings, O Lord pour blessings. Spirits of the Ancestors, do you see what has been done? A house has been born to continue your line. Once again, a link is forged in the ancient chain and we are all connected that much tighter. Bless this Victorian Mansion; it carries your memory forward to the future. Because God has set His love upon Sarah Winchester’s Mansion and estate, He will protect it; God will protect it because it knows His name. God will rescue the Winchester and its fine Victorian architecture and bring honour to it. Give will give Mrs. Winchester’s estate abundance of long life, and the Winchester mansion shall witness God’s salvation. Hallelujah. Praise the name of the Lord; give praise, ye servants of the Lord, who stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of God. Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good; sing praise unto the name of God, for it is pleasant. For the Lord hath chosen this estate as wonder of the World and a treasure for many generations to enjoy. Indeed I know that the Lord is great, that our Lord is above all who are worshipped as gods. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Winchester Mystery House
Sarah Winchester’s Daisy Bedroom – the room she was trapped in during the 1906 earthquake. Legend says that she had the front of the house boarded up after the earthquake.
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A Million Years to Her are Nothing Remarkable—Heaven and Earth Have Faded!
I know what happened there and I am not the only one who knows. There is nothing else that can be said about it. Although defensive aggression, destructiveness, and cruelty are not ordinarily the cause of war, these impulses manifest themselves in warfare. Hence some data on primitive warfare will help to complete the picture of primitive aggression. Among the Walbiri of Australia the characterization of warfare in hunting-gathering societies generally does not emphasize militarism—there is also no class of permanent or professional warriors; there is no hierarchy of military command; and groups rarely engage in wars of conquest. Every human was (and is still) a potential warrior, always armed and ready to defend one’s rights; but one is also an individualist, who prefers to fight independently. In some disputes kinship ties are align humans into opposed camps, and such a group may occasionally have comprised all the humans of a community. However, there are no military leaders, elected of hereditary, to plan tactics and ensure that others adopt the plans. Although some people are respected as capable and courageous fighters and their advice is valued, other humans do not necessarily follow them. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Moreover, the range of circumstances in which fights occur is in effect so limited that humans know and can employ the most effective techniques without hesitation. This is still true today even of young bachelors. There was in any case little reason for all-out warfare between communities. Slavery was unknown; portable goods were few; and the territory seized in a battle was virtually an embarrassment to the victors, whose spiritual ties were wit other localities. Small-scale wars of conquest against other tribes occurred occasionally, but I am sure that they differed only in degree from intratribal and even intracommunity fights. Thus the attack on the Waringari that led to the occupation of the water wholes in the Tanami area involved only Wangeiga men—a few score at most; and I have no evidence that communities ever entered into military alliances, either to oppose other Walbiri communities or other tribes. Technically speaking, this kind of conflict among primitive hunters can be described as war; in this sense one may conclude that “war” has always existed within the human species, and hence, that it is the manifestation of an innate drive to kill. This reasoning, however, ignores the profound differences in the warfare of civilized cultures. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
Primitive warfare, particularly that of the lower primitives, was neither centrally organized nor led by permanent chieftains; it was relatively infrequent; it was not war of conquest nor was it bloody war aimed at killing as many of the enemy as possible. Most civilized war, in contrast, is institutionalized, organized by permanent chieftains, and aims at conquest of territory and/or acquisition of slaves and/or booty. In addition, and perhaps most important of all, is the frequently overlooked fact that there is no important economic stimulus among primitive hunter-gatherers to full-scale war. The birth-death ratio in hunting-gather societies is such that it would be rare for population pressure to cause some part of the population to fight others for territorial acquisition. Even if such a circumstance occurred it would not lead to much of a battle. If hunting rights or rights to some gathering spot were demanded, the stronger, more numerus, group would simply prevail, probably even without battle. In the second place there is not much to gain by plunder in hunting-gathering society. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
All bands are poor in material goods and there are no standard items of exchange that serve as capital or as valuables. Finally, at the hunting-gathering level the acquisition of captives to serve as slaves for economic exploitation—a common cause of warfare in more modern times—would be useless, given the low productivity of the economy. Captives and slaves would have a difficult time producing more than enough food to sustain themselves. The overall picture of warfare among primitive hunter-gatherers given by Service is supported and supplemented by a number of other investigators, some of who are quoted in the following paragraphs. Dr. D. Pilbeam stresses the absence of war, in contrast to occasional feuds, together with the role of example rather than power among the leaders in a hunting society, and the principle of reciprocity and generosity and the central role of cooperation. (D. Pilbeam, 1970.) Dr. U. H. Stewart comes to the following conclusion concerning territoriality and warfare: There have been many contentions that primitive bands own territories or resources and fight to protect them. Although I cannot assert that this is never the case, it is probably very uncommon. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
First, if they are too small, the primary groups that comprise the larger maximum bands intermarry. If they are too large, they split off. Second, in the cases reported here, there is no more than a tendency for primary groups to utilize special areas. Third, most so-called “warfare” among such societies is no more than revenge for alleged witchcraft or continued interfamily feuds. Fourth, collecting is the main resource in most areas, but I know of no reported defense of seed areas. Primary bands did not fight one another, and it is difficult to see how a maximum band could assemble its manpower to defend its territory against another band or why it should do so. It is true that durian trees, eagle nests, and a few other specific resources were sometimes individually claimed, but how they were defended by a person miles away has not been made clear. (U. H. Stewart, 1968.) Dr. H.H Turney-High (1971) comes to similar conclusions. He stressed that while the experiences of fear, rage, and frustration are universal, the art of war develops only late in human evolution. Most primitive societies were not capable of war because war requires a sophisticated level of conceptualization. Most primitive societies could not imagine an organization necessary to conquer or defeat a neighbour. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
According to Rapaport, Turney-High’s work did not find a very friendly reception among anthropologist because he stressed that secondary accounts of battles written by professional anthropologists were hopelessly inadequate and sometimes downright misleading; he believed that primary sources were more reliable, even when they were by amateur ethnologist generations ago. (H.H. Turney-High, 1971.) Dr. Quincy Wright’s monumental work (1,637pages including an extensive Bibliography) presents a thorough analysis of warfare among primitive people based on the statistical comparison of the main data to be found among six hundred and fifty-thee primitive peoples. The shortcomings of his analytical in the classification of primitive societies as well as different kinds of warfare. Nevertheless, his conclusions are of considerable interest because they show a statistical trend that corresponds to the result of many other authors: “The collectors, lower hunters and lower agriculturalists are the least warlike. The higher hunters and higher agriculturalists are more warlike, while the highest agriculturalists and the pastors are the most warlike of all.” (Q. Wright, 1965.) #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
This statement confirms the idea that warlikeness is not a function of human’s natural drives that manifest themselves in the most primitive form of society, but of one’s development in civilization. Dr. Wright’s data show that the more division of labour there is in a society, the more warlike it is, and that societies with compulsory classes are the most warlike of all people. Eventually his data show that the greater the equilibrium among groups and between the group and its physical environment, the less warlikeness one finds, while frequent disturbances of the equilibrium results in an increase in warlikeness. Dr. Wright differentiates among four kinds of war—defensive, social, economic, and political. By defensive war, he refers to the practice of people who have no war in their mores and who fight if actually attacked, “in which case they make spontaneous use of available tools and hunting weapons to defend themselves, but regard this necessity as a misfortune.” By social war he refers to people with whom war “is usually not very destructive of life.” (This warfare corresponds to Dr. Service’s description of war among hunters.) #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Economic and political wars refer to people who make war in order to acquire women, slaves, raw materials, and land/or, in addition, for the maintenance of a ruling dynasty or class. Almost every body reasons: if civilized humans are so warlike, how much more warlike must primitive humans have been! However, Dr. Wright’s results confirm the thesis that the most primitive humans are the least warlike and that warlikeness grows in proportion to civilization. If destructiveness were innate in humans, the trend would have to be the opposite. A view similar to Dr. Wright’s has also been expressed by M. Ginsberg, who writes: It would seem that war in this sense grows with the consolidation of groups and economic development. Among the simplest peoples we ought to speak rather of feuds, and these unquestionably occur on grounds of abduction of women, or resentments of trespass or personal injury. It must be conceded that these societies are peaceful by comparison with the more advanced of the primitive peoples. However, violence and fear of violence are there and fight occurs, though that is obviously and necessarily on a small scale. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
The facts are not adequately known, and if they do not support the view of a primitive idyllic peace, they are perhaps compatible with the view of those who think that primary or unprovoked aggressiveness is not an inherent element of human nature. (E. Glover and M. Ginsberg, 1934.) Dr. Ruth Benedict (1959) makes the distinction between “socially lethal” and “non-lethal” wars. In the latter, the aim is not that of subjugating other tribes to the victor as masters and profiteers; although there was much warfare among North American Indian: The idea of conquest never arose in aboriginal North America, and this made it possible for almost all these Indian tribes to do a very extreme thing: to separate war from the state. The state was personified in the Peace Chief, who was a leader of public opinion in all that concerned the in-group and in his council. The Peace Chief was permanent, and though no autocratic ruler he was often a very important personage. However, he had nothing to do with war. He did not even appoint the war chiefs or concern himself with the conduct of war parties. Any human who could attract a following led a war party when and where he would, and in some tribes, he was in complete control for the duration of the expedition. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
However, this lasted only till the return of the war part. The state, according to this interpretation of war, had no conceivable interest in these ventures, which were only highly desirable demonstrations of rugged individualism turned against an out-group where such demonstrations dis not harm the body politic. (R. Benedict, 1959.) Dr. Benedict’s point is important because it touches upon the connection of war, state, and private property. Socially nonlethal war is to a large extent an expression of adventurousness and the wish to have trophies and be admired, but it was not invoked by the impulse to conquer people or territory, to subjugate human beings, or to destroy the basis for their livelihood. Dr. Benedict comes to the conclusion that “elimination of war is not so uncommon as one would think from the writing of political theorists of the prehistory of war…It is a complete misunderstanding to lay this havoc [war] to any biological need of humans to go to war. The havoc is humanmade.” (R. Benedict, 1959.) Another outstanding anthropologist, Dr. E. A. Hoebel (1958) characterizes warfare among early North American Indians in these terms: “They come closer to William James’s Moral Equivalents of War. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
“They release aggressions harmlessly: they provide exercise, sport and amusement without destruction; and only mildly is there any imposition of desires by one part on the other.” (E.A. Hoebel, 1958.) Dr. Hoebel comes to the general conclusion that human’s propensity to war is obviously not an instinct, because it is an elaborate cultural complex. He gives as an interesting example the pacifistic Shoshones and the violent Comanches who in the 1600 were still culturally and racially one. The humans of the old did not till the field, but the fruits of plants and trees were sufficient for food. Nor did the women weave for the furs of birds and animals were enough for clothing. Without working there was enough to live, there were few people and plenty of supplies, and therefore the people did not quarrel. So neither large rewards nor heavy punishments where used, but the people governed themselves. However, nowadays people do not consider a family of five children as large, and each child having again five children, before the death of the grandfather, there may be twenty-five grandchildren. The result is that there are many people and few supplies, that one has to work hard for a meagre return. So the people fall to quarreling and though rewards may be doubled and punishments heaped up, ooooooone does not get away from disorder. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Now, of all the dimensions of human being that must be dealt with in understanding spiritual formation, the soul is by far the most controversial and inaccessible in today’s World. For various reasons, it was rejected by the field of “psychology”—by very name the “theory of the soul”—as that field tried to develop itself into a “scientific” understanding of humans. The alleged failure to “find” and enduring, nonphysical center that organizes life into a whole has become a part of what is regarded as the outcome of modern thought, as everyone with a high-school education now knows. The issues here certainly run deep, and we do not mean to dismiss them lightly. However, they are not the kind of matters that can be dealt entirely in this scope. Part of soul growth and development involves charity. Charity is act of service, but it is more. It is a condition of the heart. While charity is an essential part of our lives, the ways we develop and exercise it vary as much as each life. “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work: Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift,” reports 2 Corinthians 9.6, 8, 16. The Apostle Paul taught that persistence is necessary in serving, as it is in planting and harvesting. “And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
“As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good until all,” report Galatians 6.9-10. We may plant a good seed, but we must then spend long hours cultivating the plant before we can reap the harvest. And in service to others, our harvest is always twofold. First, our service blesses those we serve. Second, we are blessed with divine help as we serve. Cultivation of the soul has expressed itself in a great wave of popular publications and media presentations on the soul. “Soul” has become almost as attention-getting a some of the biggest celebrities, and as widely used as selling the most popular music. People pride themselves on having and knowing and expressing “soul.” The superficial conditions of ordinary life in most Western contexts have brough this forth. It is a natural reaction to a deeply felt need, for indeed the soul—or, more generally, the spiritual side of life—simply cannot be indefinitely suppressed. Fundamental aspects of life such as art, sleep, pleasures of the flesh, ritual, family (“roots”), parenting, community, health, and meaningful work all are in fact soul functions, and they fail and fall apart to the degree that soul diminishes. It is possible that the reason modern intellectuals have failed to find soul is that soul really is no longer present in their individual lives. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
Perhaps something like a soulless life really is possible and not just something to be portrayed in fashionable literary works. That would explain why meaning is such a problem for human beings today. “Meaning” in action is fundamentally a matter of “carry over” or transcendence. Meaningful experience flows. It does not leave you stuck on something you cannot get past-whether a word you do not understand or a pointless social situation. Meaning is one of the greatest needs of human life, one of our deepest hungers—perhaps it is, in the final analysis, the most basic need in the realm of the human experience. If life as a whole is meaningful, almost anything can be born. However, in the absence of meaning, boredom and mere effort or willpower are all that is left. “Dead” religion or a dead job or relationship is one that has to be carried on in “meaningless” human routine. In boredom and carrying on by mere willpower, almost nothing can be endured, and people who are well off by all other physical and social standards find such a life unbearable. They re “dead souls.” By contrast, though in meaningful experience we are very active, the presence of meaning, with its power of “carryover,” relieves the pain of effort and makes even great strain exhilarating. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
It is as if a power beyond us meets our action and carries us. That is always, in some measure, the presence of soul. The human fetus grows through various stages, each of which corresponds to a parallel stage of the whole human race’s own previous evolution. Examine any living organism you choose and you will find that its conception, birth, and growth show an innate evolutionary trend. The process of passing from an embryonic stage to a more evolved one involves considerable differences physically. It is equally true although less apparent, mentally. The nature and functions of humans are reflected in miniature in the cells which compose one’s body, while one oneself reflects those of the Universal Mind in which one is similar to the cell. There is no one cell in the whole organism of a human which does not reflect in miniature the pattern, the proportions, and the functions of the immense cosmos itself. The microorganism has within it all the varied possibilities of becoming a human entity. The body’s physical cells disintegrate into the Earth and become part of the soil until they take new forms in plant and animal life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Just as a class in school one day breaks up and all the students go their separate ways, and in its place another class is formed, so the units are fully individualized only when they enter human stage. Until then they very, very slowly approach this release, just as an embryo in the womb approaches the form of a new born baby. The human body is composed of millions of tiny different intelligences, each having its own specialized life, all having developed from a single generalized cell. Some cells die within hours, others within days or even longer after the body’s own death. The fertilized egg contains all the organs of the human being in miniature. They merely grow and become big to produce the adult. It is an astonishing thought that the entire human body, from its head to its feet, is contained in miniature in the cell from which it starts existence. No microscope can see it, for it still is only an idea. However, given time, the idea finds expression is a form. In our bodies, the phagocyte cells follow they very opposite path to all the other cells, scattering and moving restlessly where the others are settling down into groups. There are millions of living cells which, in their totality, compose the human body. Each has its own separate birth, life, and death. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Nature extravagantly spends large fragments of time on outworking her high purpose; a million years to her are nothing remarkable. We poor mortals, however—being helpless prisoners in the captivity of time, whose tyrannous character we have yet to understand—are eager to see improvement and progress before the same day’s sun has set. We need but to consider the enormous duration of the aeons which have straddled the globe since the first Lemurian lived and loved. If they study the World-Idea, those who get discouraged by seeing how slow is humanity’s moral growth, and how few are the signs of its spiritual awakening, may gain fresh hope. The will of Gd is entirely unchangeable. On this point we must consider that to change the will is one thing; to will that certain things should be changed is another. It is possible to will a thing to be done now, and its contrary afterwards; and yet for the will to remain permanently the same: whereas he will would be changed, if one should begin to will what before one had not willed; or cease to will what one had willed before. This cannot happen, unless we presuppose change either in the knowledge or in the disposition of the substance of the willer. For since the will regards good, a human may in two ways begin to will a thing. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
In one way when that thing begins to be good for one, and this does not take place without a change in one. Thus when the cold weather begins, it becomes good to sit by the fire; though it was not so before. In another way when one knows for the firs time that a whing is good for one, though one did not know it before; hence we take counsel in order to know what is good for us. Now it has already been shown that both the substance of God and His knowledge are entirely unchangeable. Many of the words the Lord has spoken are to be understood metaphorically, and according to the likeness of nature. For when we repent, we destroy what we have made; although we may even do so without change of the will; as, when a human wills to make a thing, at the same time intending to destroy it later. Therefore God is said to have repented, by way of comparison with our mode of acting, in so far as by the deluge He destroyed from the face of the Earth humans whom He had made. The will of God, as it is the first and universal cause, does not exclude intermediate causes that have power to produce certain effects. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
Since however all intermediate causes are inferior in power to the first cause, there are many things in the divine power, knowledge and will that are not included in order of inferior causes. Thus in the case of Lazarus, one who looked only on inferior causes might have said: “Lazarus will rise again.” And God wills both: that is, that in the order of the inferior cause a thing shall happen; but that in the order of the higher cause it shall not happen; or He may will conversely. We may say, then, that God sometimes declares that a thing shall happen according as it falls under the order of inferior causes, as of nature, or merit, which yet does not happen as not being in the designs of the divine and higher causes. The He foretold Ezechias: “Take order with thy house, for thou shalt die, and not live,” reports Isaiah 38.1. Yet this did not take place, since from eternity it was otherwise disposed in the divine knowledge and will, which is unchangeable. Hence Gregory says (Moral, xvi, 5): “The sentence of God changes, but not His counsel”—that is to say, the counsel of His will. When therefore God says, “I also will repent,” His words must be understood metaphorically. For when they do not fulfill what they have threatened, humans seem to repent. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
It does not follow from this argument that God has a will that changes, but that He sometimes wills that things should change. Although God’s willing a thing is not by absolute necessity, yet it is necessary by supposition, on account of the unchangeableness of the divine will, as has been said above. There are different stages in the development of people: some stand on the lower, some on the higher ones—and others fill in the space between. There is no equality among human beings, in character or manners, in intelligence or intuitiveness. Those who resent this fact may deny it, thereby revealing their incapacity for understanding truth. Exploitation of the lower types by the higher ones has bred the resentment, and this in turn has blinded the eyes or the mind. By one’s own reactions to the fragments of knowledge of the World-Idea which come to a human, one reveals oneself, one’s kind of character and stage of development. The wise and the foolish, the enlightened and the ignorant, the good, and the bad, dwell on the same Earth outwardly but on different planets inwardly. The human being slowly unfolds its possibilities through the workings of manifold experience. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
It is there, in this manifold of experience, that there are to be seen conscience, guiding it along ever-higher moral paths; capacity, expressing its active power and creative talent; and intelligence, teaching it to discriminate between foolishness and wisdom or to penetrate through appearance to reality. It is significant that animals tend to live in herds. As humans mature, they reach more and more individuality. Slowly, at times pleasurably and at times painfully, the human entity builds up its consciousness and capacities through the ages. If human needs brought us thus far, human curiosity is bringing us into another kind of cycle. Yet this perception of the ultimate goodness behind life, the ultimate triumph of light and love, need not keep us from recognizing that there are evil tendencies in many humans. We may recognize the as motes in the beam, as dust in the sunray, for we must not lose our perspective about them; but we may still regard them as temporary phases of human vicissitude that will be over-passed and left behind as the slow course of evolution carries out its work upon the human race. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as a day that is past, and as a watch in the night. Thou carriest humans away as with a flood; they are like moss; they are like grass that grows in the morning. In the morning it flourishes and grows up; in the evening it is cut down and withers. Truly we perish by reason of Thy displeasure, and are overwhelmed by Thy wrath; for Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, our secret sins in the light of Thy presence. Yea, all our days pass away because of Thy displeasure; we bring our year to an end as a sign. The days of our years are but three-score years and tend, or by reason of strength four-score. Yet is their pride but travail and vanity; for seedily our life is over and we vanish. Who knows the power of Thy wrath? And how fearful is Thine anger! Please teach us, therefore, to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom. Return unto us, O Lord; how long wilt Thou be wroth? O relent Thee concerning Thy servants. Please give us abundantly every morning of Thy lovingkindness, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Gladden us according to the days wherein Thou hast afflicted us, the years wherein we have seen sorrow. Please let thy work be revealed unto Thy servants, and Thy glory unto their children. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
And let Thy graciousness, O Lord our God, be upon us; establish Thou also the work of our hands for us; yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it. Please watch over our families and protect them during their whole life. May our children, and our children’s children know to worship God. May each moment we experience on this Earth welcome us and bring protection. May God increase all His people and may we rejoice with a new life. May our lives grow and give us strength. Lord, please guide us in the way to grow being us healing and strength. May be learn and know the meaning and purpose of our lives on this Earth. Deep inside, may we learn what we must know and do what we must do. Please go before us an open the gates of opportunity. May our journey in this life be smooth and safe. May we know the right thing with all of us and do it no matter what the pain. A hard road lies before us, shining ones, a road filled with great difficulties, a road filled with great joys. Please guide us alone it. Please be at our side, Lord, and send guardian angels. Father of World, we turn to you in prayer that you might bless us, our Father, who took your role here on Earth and performed it well. May we act the role as artfully. Amen. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Randolph Harris II International 