Howard Thurman’s Inner Life Series
Transcripts provided by the Howard Thurman Digital Archive.
Art lovingly hand-prompted with prompt-poems and curated by me over the course of about 20 minutes.
Howard Thurman shared his Inner Life Series at Fellowship Church in San Francisco, California. Although the Emory Archive lists the years of the series as 1951 (for the first lectures) and 1952 (for the later lectures), and the Boston University archive at least consistently places it in 1952, the series was probably preached at a pivotal moment in 1953. This can be identified by the internal coherence of the series, which clearly indicates a contiguous series of teachings in line with the general pattern of Thurman’s preaching series, and by the death of Joseph Stalin which is mentioned in the sixth lecture. Stalin’s death occurred on March 5, 1953 and the archive mistakenly lists the date of this lecture as March 8, 1952. Stalin’s death was reported on the front page of the Friday edition of the San Francisco Chronicle on March 6, 1953. Might this newspaper have been in Thurman’s office as he preached that sermon?
Possibly. Might Thurman have been speaking in 1952, but from a divinely revealed future vantage point precisely a year later? Perhaps he had been carried forward a year in time, in a vision, and accidentally revealed a future yet unknown by those less intimately connected to God. Although he is known to have been remarkably far-sighted, my own view is that the archives have gotten this wrong.
The moment and the proper dating of the series is of particular significance in Thurman’s life. He was transitioning from Fellowship Church to become Dean of the chapel at Boston University. In his autobiography, he describes himself as being in the process of making this decision in communication with his church board before spring:
When I returned to San Francisco, Sue and I talked about it, and our family discussed it. Then I took the chairman of the board of the church into my confidence. I prayed for guidance even as I weighed alternatives. Still I could not get a feeling for what I should do. I was scheduled to give the Religion and Life Lectures at Wellesley that spring. Before I left, I embodied in a memorandum to the board of the church the basic implications of the invitation. [1]
The precise dates surrounding this decision are provided in Peter Eisenstadt’s recent biography of Thurman. This indicates that the Inner Life series was given precisely as Thurman was pondering one of the most significant transitions in his own personal journey, both inward and outward:
In early January 1953, when both Case and Thurman were in Los Angeles for a conference, Case evidently upped the ante, offering Thurman the deanship of the university chapel (the position he had held at Howard), a tenured professorship of Spiritual Disciplines and Resources, and an offer to take “leadership of religion in the life of Boston University.” The agreement to come to Boston was consummated during Thurman’s previously planned speaking tour in Massachusetts. On 9 March, Thurman wrote a letter to the board and members of Fellowship Church, stating that he was accepting the offer and would be moving to Boston in the fall. [2]
The careful reflection on bringing the inner life into a deep and rich wholeness with outer life has special significance against this backdrop: he was carefully discerning his next steps, while also communicating it with his beloved and deeply interconnected congregation.
(The titles here are my own, and have helped me think about and refer to the content of the lectures. I am unaware of any titles provided by Thurman himself.)
Day 1: Let there be Inner Light, and Darkness
[INAUDIBLE] which begins today on the Inner Life. It is my idea to deal with the certain important aspects of the inner life and some of the methods and disciplines that are helpful in renewing the springs that are within us. And all of these will be a prologue to some other thinking that I’d like to do with the congregation concerning the difficulties and the problems that are involved for all of us who are concerned about the meaning of human dignity in the world.
We’re concerned about the kinds of attitudes that at one time were very familiar to us and were part of the presuppositions of our lives. And now, because of the blanket of fear that is sweeping all over America and the world, we are permitting, what seems to me to be, diabolical forces to establish squatter’s rights over positions which belong to those who believe in the dignity of the mind and the spirit of man.
But I feel that as a background for that, we need to think carefully about the inward part of us. These two things, one from an English poet and one from the apostle Paul.
“Hemmed in by petty thoughts and petty things, intent on toys and trifles all my years, pleased by life’s gauds, pained by its pricks and stings, swayed by ignoble hopes and ignoble fears. Threading life’s tangled maze without life’s clue, busy with means, yet heedless of their ends, lost to all sense of what is real and true, blind to the goal to which all nature tends. Such is my surface self.
But deep beneath, a mighty actor on a worldwide stage, crowned with all knowledge, lord of life and death, sure of my aim, sure of my heritage, I, the true self, live on in self’s despite, that Life Profound whose darkness is God’s light.”
And then these rather searching words from the apostle. He says, it is all in your interests. He’s talking about his faith and so forth. “It is all in your interests, so that the more grace abounds, the more thanksgiving may rise and redound to the glory of God.” And then he says, “Hence, I never lose heart. Though my outward man decays, my inner man is renewed day after day.
The slight trouble of the passing hour results in a solid glory past all comparison for those of us whose eyes are on the unseen, not on the seen, for the seen is transient, but the unseen is eternal.”
I’d like to think with you, then, about certain general aspects of the inner life. For purposes of reflection, I would like to begin by distinguishing, if I may, between those things that are apparently superficial in us, those areas of our lives that are obvious.
The reaction area, things that we do superficially, the words that we speak from which we extract the meaning before we send them out, and then send them on their way — there’s a whole area in which we have agreed to be casual and unreal, even to be deceptive, but by agreement.
For instance, if you’re not feeling very well, and some casual person, or some person who says in a casual manner — some uncasual person who speaks to you in a casual manner — and says, oh, how are you? And you say, oh, I’m fine. And your head is just about to fall off, you say. You don’t live your private life in public. You don’t turn the inside out always. There’s an agreement about that.
I remember visiting with Lincoln Steffens many years ago. And his son, Pete, was very perturbed. Because his father was teaching him to be honest and to have direct reactions. And yet, all the time, his father expected him to say things that were the courteous things to say when he didn’t feel that way.
And I remember, we were sitting talking. And the son came rushing in. And his father introduced me to him. And Pete said, how are you? And I said, fine. And then he rushed out. And at the door, his father stopped him. And he said, Pete, is that on the level? Oh, yes, he’s a nice guy.
[LAUGHTER]
And he went on out. And then when he left, his father said, I asked him whether it was on the level, because we had to have a good session about the superficial agreements that men have about certain courtesies and so forth, when no one expects that they should be true.
Well, I don’t know. It would be an interesting thing to try for about two hours, just saying what it is, you know, calling it by name, without blinkers. I imagine it would be a great relief to a lot of things that are going on inside of us. But that’s neither here nor there.
Now the mind, the thinking process, is a part of this first layer, this first division, of the inward parts — the whole reflective process of the mind, the problem-solving process of the mind. And that is why there are many, many men feel that, think, rather, that there can be no thinking on the part of the individual apart from some problem, some kind of difficulty, some felt difficulty that upsets this normal flow of what we call the pattern of adjustment, or just superficial adjustment.
But in the operation of this first level, the thinking part of us, thoughts become very important as far as determining what our inner life is like. It is quite possible, it would seem to me, to feed the mind with the kind of thoughts, the kind of ideational content, the kind of concepts, that will sweeten the life, that will give positive accent to the life, that will invade the pattern of living, not so much in terms of a set of proposals about goodness or beauty or wholeness, but rather in terms of quality, of flavor, of pain, of overtone.
Now I would like to ask you a very simple question. During this past week, seven days, what kind of thoughts have you put into this rather superficial reservoir of yours? It’s just that part of your mind that’s in active commerce with ideas.
One of the ways by which you can get just a glimpse of your flavor is to watch yourself, to feel yourself, when you’re not aware of what you are about — I don’t know how to say this — to watch yourself when you aren’t looking, you know, and see how you look, what are you doing? That’s when the rhythm, the flow, of your mind — this is still, perhaps, superficial dimension, but we’ll call it that for the moment — but when the pattern is at work.
And you are not working it. It is working. And then you watch it. And all sorts of things are recognizable, if you are discerning. You will recognize that by doing this, by reading a certain kind of material for so long a time, that the flavor of that is a part of the taste of you, not your taste, but the taste of you — very different.
And in that sense, you see, I can, even though in a limited way, in that sense, I can create the kind of flavor that I shall have. In that sense, I can create my own judgment, the own judgment that life will pass upon me.
Now that’s an almost mechanical process, but not quite mechanical, so that our man can deliberately go about the business of feeding into his mind the materials, which, when they fructify and blossom, will transform the quality of his being. That’s possible. The world is full of witnesses of that stuff.
Now there’s a second area. It is a wider, deeper area. There are all sorts of words by which you recognize it. And I’m a little self-conscious to talk about it. Because everybody is an expert in psychology now. So I will call it this big, this vast, continuum. They have a lot of words for it.
It’s the unconscious. There’s something else. There’s something else. But it is a vast continuum that has been opened up. And in this opening process, we have become aware of great abysmal drives that are churning away. And now and then, they throw up to the surface things that make havoc of the nicely arranged furniture — period furniture.
[LAUGHTER]
And we have been so enamored by this, so deeply affected — and indeed, it has wrought revolutions, and the thinking, and in the feeling tones, even in the therapy by which men have sought to administer unto other men, so I do not speak in any way that is disparaging. But we have become so overwhelmed by this that we feel that it represents not only the connecting link with the soul of the rhythm of the pulse, the respiration — that’s the word — with the respiration of all the generations of human beings who’ve ever lived, and before them, those who stood in immediate candidacy to become human beings, the whole round movement of the upward push of life. It is a point at which we are involved in that process.
So now and then, when the tide rises, it is because of the movement of moons that are far beyond the furthest rim of our memories or our thinking. And when those tides stop moving, we can very easily say that we are the victims. There is no way by which we can push the tide back. And once we take that into the center of our awareness, then the movement of the tide is spearheaded by the formal discursive processes of the mind.
And we hope to relate this level to that one in ways that are conscious so that we may use this great continuum as a resource upon which we draw. For the vitality is needful in working out a pattern of living by the use of the reflective processes of mind. And in a very interesting way, and to some of our thinking, this continuum has taken the place of God. It is God.
Now I’d like to take one more step. It seems to me that there is still a deeper level in the human spirit, a level that antedates the group soul, the folk spirit. And, of course, I’m prejudiced. I have a name for it. I think it is God. It is the level in the human spirit in which God moves without disguise.
Socrates had the idea, in part. Do you remember how he, in his explanation of the soul, he talks about — he says that the souls lived in the presence of God before they were born. And before they became involved in time and space, they were in the presence of God waiting for their time, as men line up with their parachutes, to jump out of a plane. And there they are. They live in the presence of God, so that they are naked and undisguised in the presence of this, what may be called, this raw energy, with no filter, just capacity, boundaries.
And then when the moment comes for life, says Socrates, these souls become involved in bodies and become a part of the time space predicament. Then, he says, everything, everything that is knowable, they have already. And that is why, for him, teaching is not teaching. Learning is not learning. It’s recollection.
And you remember the dramatic instance in which he brought a slave into the academy. And by asking him a series of questions, he finally had the slave give an answer to something that was completely outside of the realm of the slave’s experience and any of his generation.
That the ground of the spirit of man is not like the eternal, but is the internal. And therefore, he who sends his shaft down deep enough strikes that stream which becomes the living water, washing and purging and cleansing.
And I think that is why, when men talk to you now about ways by which number one section and number two section can be straightened up and people may become whole, they say to you, there is no substitute that can be shared with the distressed person, in mind and soul, no substitute for love, for being cared for.
Now that’s what they’re getting at. A Hindu poet expresses it in another way. But he’s saying the same thing. And I laugh when you say that a fish in the water is thirsty. Do you seek the real, the true, the beautiful? Go where you will, from Benares to Mathura. If you have not found your own soul — if you have not found your own soul, the world is unreal to you. That’s what he’s talking about.
Some years ago — and I’ll stop now. Some years ago, a friend of mine gave me an old copy of the National Geographic magazine. It was a [INAUDIBLE] copy. It is the story of certain big trees that are growing in the Sahara Desert. And the scientists tells this story about those trees.
He says that there was a time when the Sahara Desert was a great primeval forest, dank, full of luxurious growth. And then as there were shifts in the climate, the moisture began disintegrating. And finally, at long last, there was the desert waste. The vestigial reminders of that previous glory of the area is the oasis. It is the signature of the jungle left in the desert.
But there are some other signatures, these great trees. He says that these trees go back through the ages, that they are the offsprings of trees that sent their roots down more deeply into the earth as the demands and the pressures of the external environment increased, so that, at long last, they went through all of the subsidiary and secondary areas of moisture and minerals and reached what he called deep underground rivers in which there abided concentrated minerals. And they began bathing their roots in these deep waters.
So as they did, strength and energy, power, ability to stand the torrid heat, the wind storms, everything. So independent of oasis, here and there, the traveler occasionally runs upon one of these trees with green leaves in the desert. And now, whatever it takes, whatever it takes, my friend to tunnel all the way down through all these layers, until you hit this eternal residue in you must be done.
For it is where nothing can abide that is not authentic. It is where there is no barrier. It is in you. And when the God in your spirit makes contact with the God of life, then there is established, in that moment, a courage that can turn any darkness into light — any darkness into light.
How tragic it is if we turn our backs on so great a wholeness. How tragic it is.
Day 2: The Fluid Area of Your Consent, the Embers of Anticipation
This morning, a continuation of the idea upon which we launched ourselves last Sunday, I would like to read two paragraphs. As long as a man has a dream in his heart, he cannot lose the significance of living. There is much insistence upon being practical, down to earth. Such things as dreams are want to be regarded as romantic or as escape hatches for the human spirit.
The dream in the heart is the outlet. Man cannot continue long to live if the dream in the heart has perished. It is then that they stop hoping, stop looking, and the last embers of their anticipations fade away.
The dream is one with the living water welling up from the very springs of being, nourishing and sustaining all of life. Where there is no dream, the life becomes a swamp, a dreary dead place, and deep within, a man’s heart begins to rot. The dream need not be some great and overwhelming plan. It need not be a dramatic picture of what might or must be some day. It need not be a concrete outpouring of a world-shaking possibility, of sure fulfillment.
Such may be important for some. Such may be crucial for a particular moment of human history, but it is not in these grand ways that the dream nourishes life. The dream is the quiet persistence in the heart that enables a man to ride out the storms of his churning experiences. It is the exciting whisper moving through the aisles of his spirit, answering the monotony of limitless days of dull routine. It is the ever-recurring melody in the midst of the broken harmony and harsh discords of human conflict. It is the touch of significance, which highlights the ordinary experience, the common event.
The dream is no outward thing. It does not take its [INAUDIBLE] from the environment in which one moves or functions. The dream lives in the inward parts. It is deep within, where the issues of life and death are ultimately determined. Keep alive the dream. For as long as a man has a dream in his heart, he cannot lose the significance of living.
There is in every person an inward sea, and in that sea, there is an island. And on that island is an alter, and there stands guard over that altar the angel with the flaming sword. And nothing can get by that angel to be placed on that altar unless it has the mark of your inner authority upon its brow.
And what gets by the angel with the flaming sword and is placed on your altar on your island in your sea becomes a part of what a friend of mine calls the fluid area of your consent, the center of your consent. And what becomes the center of your consent is your connecting link with the eternal. Now, that is all of the sermon, but I won’t sit down.
Let’s work at it a little. How does one chart that sea? How does one chart it? Because I do not speak either as an expert or an authority in these matters, but as one who gives a testimony.
That is what all testimonies are, hit or miss. Testimonies reflect the true status so some things that we will say as we talk this morning will be helpful, and some things will not be, but they are the testimony. They are the witness.
One of the ways by which we set the stage for charting this inward sea is to get away from traffic, is to get quiet, withdraw, cultivate the quiet time. I won’t to say more about that because that belongs at another place in this series. And then the first thing that happens, at it seems to me, is that I must do a very difficult thing. I must accept myself.
Bear in mind the thing that we’re talking about now. We’re talking about how we chart our inward sea to get the thing that is authentic in us, placed on the altar that it may become a part of the fluid area of our consent, the nerve center of our consent. I must accept myself. I must find out without morbidity, without trying to be a psychologist, or a psychiatrist, just being an ordinary human being who’s trying to learn how to live, nothing exceptionally brilliant, and I don’t need in this initial stage to read any books on it, or consult any experts, or any authorities.
You and yourself just sit down and have a session. You know? Just a straight, honest-to-goodness session. “What am I after?” I ask myself. What is my point anyway?
Why do I do such stupid things? I wonder about myself. And then there comes stirring in your mind the fact that you are as you are because your mother was as she was, or your father was as he was, or you had a brother that bullied you. And as soon as you began engaging in such thoughts, you get sidetracked, and it’s wonderful because you don’t have to bother anymore.
But don’t get sidetracked. Come back. I must deal with myself, whatever it is that I shall go into, whatever it is that I shall become, whatever it is that I am going to do, whatever may be the end of life, whatever may be the purposes of life, whatever may be the design, and the order, and the will of God.
As far as I’m concerned, the only equipment that He has is what I have. Now, He could have done better, as Abraham Lincoln says, as I shall read to you a little later on. He could have made me like you, given me a better mind, and more this or that in my glands.
He could have made me better looking, or made me sure that I could enjoy all the things I wanted to enjoy and not get fat. He could have —
[LAUGHTER]
He could have done all things, but he didn’t. This is it.
[LAUGHTER]
This is it. So I just as well, in the process of charting this sea, I just as well stop looking around and settle in for the long pull with me. Now, once I do that, a lot of things are going to happen.
I become much more able to recognize — gee, how to say this. I see it. Now let’s see. I become much more able to recognize expressions of my life, the things I do, as objects of which there is a subject. Do you understand what I’m saying? No, I don’t think you do.
Now, let’s try it again because this is crucial. I’ve become much more able than previously to recognize things that I do, to see myself doing those things, as the object — yes, the result. Put it that way. The result — these things I do are the result of some other things at which I’m not looking. Well, I’m still trying, and we’re a little closer together, but we’re not quite there yet.
As you begin to get acquainted with yourself in the sense of which I am talking, and you look back upon some incident, some experience that you’ve had. And as you look back upon it, you see yourself behaving in that situation in a certain way, and you thought that you decided on the spur of the moment in that situation to behave that way. But when you look at it, you discover that you are behaving that way not in response to the situation in which you are but in response to something that happened to you yesterday, or the day before, or the day before, or the day before.
That was the thing that was at work to which you were responding in that situation, and it wasn’t the situation at all, so that the judgment that you had on the situation — these people did this. These people brought this bad thing out in me. These people were responsible for my making the kind of, well, the kind of person of myself that I did, they’re responsible.
And then I discover, as I as I begin to understand what is this equipment, what is this that I am, that most of the time I am the object. The things I do are the object, and the subject, the thing that inspires what I do, I have to get great discipline to get the courage to look at it. And then when I look at it and accept that this is I, right beside it there are some other things that are as positive as this thing I’m looking at is negative.
So as I began to accept myself, there comes along with that acceptance, you see, all of me, the good and the not good. You see? Whereas when I work at this thing, trying to straighten myself out, I am tempted only to see the things in me that are negative things, and what I’m saying is to look at the good and the bad, and I see myself as a mixture. And then as I look back, I begin to discern certain trends, that it may be that my trend is negative. I don’t know.
And maybe my trend is positive, but as I begin to do this and become very quiet, a strange thing begins to happen. Light begins to emerge over your landscape. You don’t know where the light comes from, and you may be so disciplined, so schooled in a certain type of life and thinking, that you refuse to identify the light because you don’t want to patronize it, but there it is, and you begin to feel, in some wonderful way, whole, whole.
Now, there’s another step. The second thing that you do in this process of charting the sea, you discover what kind of person you like and what do you want? What do you want? What do you want!
And the clue to what you want is you begin to understand what you are for as over against what you are against. And mark you, I do not mean now what you are for in the eyes of your fellow men. I don’t mean taking some objective stand, lining yourself up on this great issue or that great issue so that you may be counted in some other-than-self struggle with which you identify yourself in order that there may be social change, that this might be a better world. That’s wonderful, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about your inside stand before you begin relating it to these great issues right here.
What are you for? Are you for the things that are honest without regard to how they may be regarded by your fellow men? Because they may not be regarded as being honest, you see? Way down inside, how do you vote your ticket? How?
What are the things that you are for? You are for, not your gifts are for. Not the talents of your mind or your brain, that sort of thing — that’s important, but that is not what I’m talking about now.
Not the things you support with your money — I’m talking about that. Not the things you are for with the words you speak — I’m not talking about that necessarily. Bu what are you for, you?
There is reflected in your reply to this searching questions the quality of your own faith about the meaning of life. How do you believe in life? Do you believe in life? Are you for life or are you against life?
Or do you think that it’s too late for you to talk, think this way, to make any discoveries because high noon has long since passed for you, and if you were young, the things that I’m saying are very relevant? You are like this thing from Sara Teasdale. Let me read it to you. You may be like that.
I must have passed the crest a while ago, and now I’m going down. Strange to have crossed the crest and not to know, but the briars were always pulling in my gown. All the morning I thought how proud I should be to stand there straight as a queen, wrapped in the wind and the sun with the world under me, but the air was dull. There was little I could have seen anyway. It is nearly level along the beaten track, and the brambles caught in my gown, and it’s no use now to think of turning back, but the rest of the way you’ll be only going down.
Is that how you vote really inside, or do you vote this way? This is Abraham Lincoln. Indulge me a little while I read this to you.
I’ve never found a church that I could join, although I prayed in churches in my time and listened to all sorts of ministers. Well, they were good men, most of them, and yet the thing behind the words is hard to find. I used to think it wasn’t there at all, couldn’t be there. I cannot say that now.
Now, I pray to you and you alone. Teach me to know your will. Teach me to read your difficult purpose here, which must be plain if I had eyes to see it.
There was a man I knew near Pigeon Creek who kept a kennel full of hunting dogs, young dogs, and old smart hounds, and silly hounds. He’d sell the young ones every now and then, smart as they were, and slick as they could run, but the one dog he’d never sell or lend was an old, half-dead, foolish looking hound. You wouldn’t think he had sense to scratch the flea unless the flea were old and sickly too.
[LAUGHTER]
Most days, he used to lie beside the stove or sleeping in a piece of sun outside. Folks used to plague the man about that dog, and he’d agreed to everything they said. No, he ain’t much on looks, much on speed. Young dog can outrun him any time, out look him, and out eat him, and out leap him, but Mr, that dog is hell on a cold scent. And once he gets his teeth in what he’s after, he don’t let go until he knows he’s dead.
I am that old deaf hunting dog, oh Lord, and the world’s kennel holds 10,000 hounds smarter, and faster, and with finer coats to hunt your hidden purpose up the wind and [INAUDIBLE] upon the trace you leave behind. But even when they fail and lose the scent, I will keep on because I must keep on until You utterly reveal yourself and sink my teeth in justice soon or late.
There is no more task of earth or fire, and water only runs between my hands, but in there, I look in the blue air. The old dog, muzzle down to the cold scent day after day until the tired years crackle beneath his feet like broken sticks and the last barren bush consumes with peace. I should have tried the course with younger legs. This hunting ground is stiff enough to pull the metal heart out of a dog of steel.
I should have started back at Pigeon Creek from scratch, not 40 years behind the mark, but you can’t change yourself. And if you could, you might fetch the wrong jackknife in the swap. It’s up to you to whittle what you can with what you’ve got, and what I am I am for what it’s worth. [INAUDIBLE], and legs, and all, I can’t complain.
I’m ready to admit you could have made a better looking dog from the same raw material, but since you didn’t, this will have to do. Therefore, I utterly lift up my hands to you and here and now beseech your aid. I have held back when others tugged me on. I have gone on when others pulled me back, striving to read your will, striving to find the justice and expedience of this case, hunting an arrow down the chilly airs until my eyes are blind with the great wind, and my heart’s sick with running after peace.
And now I stand and tremble on the last edge of the last blue cliff, a hound beat out, tail down and belly flattened to the ground. My lungs are breathless and my legs are whipped. Everything in me is whipped except my will. I can’t go on, and yet I must go on.
Only what [INAUDIBLE] so important to you that deep within you cast your vote on its behalf, only that can get past the flaming sword who guards the altar at the center of your island in the midst of your inward sea. And when it gets past, the angel with the flaming sword.
It is for you the will of the only God you can worship, and failure, success, achievement, lack of achievement, disorder, frustration, all the things to which we are heir as we muddle along from day to day, become surface things while underneath the churning tempest of our days is the steady, rhythmic, pulsing of the nerve center of our consent, which rhythm moves in cadence with the movement of the Eternal. And there shall come a time when this persistent time beat will bring order. We mean, finally, by prayer.
Day 3: The Grounds of Self-Respect
— I have it or undermine the very grounds of your self-respect as a human being. That’s it. So if life is dynamic, then it is compulsory — automatically, almost, compulsory for me to deal in terms of goals, of purposes, of pursuits.
And I become increasingly conscious of the fact that I can hold in focus a purpose, until that purpose becomes related to my nerve center of consent. And when my nerve center of consent becomes related to the purpose, then there is created, through this opening in me because my nerve center of consent, that which draws upon all the vitalism and the dynamics of the universe.
That’s why when a man is related that way, you can discourage him never. You can hit him across the head. You can starve him out. You can do all sorts of things. But whatever you do, it can’t get over into where he is operating. It’s like this — and I have told you about it many times, but I like to talk about him, about this feeble-minded puppy that I had, who —
It was in the years when I was teaching down in Atlanta, Georgia. And the students would come over to the house. And he just a little puppy, and everybody liked him. But he didn’t know that. He didn’t know anything. Seeing but he was alive.
He’d jump up on you and scratch your stockings. And then you’d push him off. He’d jump up again. And then you would take a little newspaper and strike him. And he would yell as he jumped back up on you.
[LAUGHTER]
I mean, nothing ever got over to where he was. If you put your hand in his mouth, he just — he bit you. I mean, you know how dogs do. They soon learn how to pretend to bite. But he didn’t. He just chewed away.
[LAUGHTER]
Nothing ever seemed to get over into the area in which he was operating.
[LAUGHTER]
Now, that’s a thing that happens when — now, get the process, because it’s very important that we understand this — when the goal, the purpose, of your life becomes related to your nerve center of consent. And it means that it has to be held there until it catches. And the thing that inspires the mind with confidence in doing it is the awareness all around us, that we operate in a context that is, itself, dynamic.
And then I hold it there, and when it catches, then energy, life energy — if I may be redundant — somehow becomes readily at my disposal. And the effect of that energy illumines my mind, gives me fresh epithets, gives me new dimensions of awareness and meaning and overtones and values. And it seems that my life now begins to take on a significance.
And I become, for the first time in my life, a humble human being because now, with this in focus, I see what kind of person I must become in order that in the living of my life, I do no violence to this thing that has become now one with my nerve center of consent. And I discover that in my own way, I am becoming religious. Then a new kind of reverence begins to move over my life. And my values are now measured by their relevancy to this.
Now, let me hasten to say before I stop, that do not be discouraged by what I am saying, that because you think that I am thinking about some great, big vision of something, some great, overwhelming goal, like — oh, I can’t think of one — like a world government or some other tremendously dramatic something.
No. That may be, but I am talking about what is within the reach of each one of us. Suppose you say what is available to me, in terms of a goal, is that I shall make of my life something beautiful. That’s all. Something beautiful so that all who touch my life will somehow be lifted up and strengthened — not in any pious way.
But when they touch my life, they find themselves responding to life — that they find themselves just a little more in possession of themselves, just a little hardier, a little happier, a little less discouraged. Nothing dramatic, but just a little less discouraged, just a little more hopeful. That’s just because they’ve touch my life.
Suppose a simple thing like that is your goal — not to become a saint. Of course, I think you would. But not to become a saint, not to have any heroics — and I mean that. But just where you are, with your own burdens, with the little — with all the enclosures of your life, with all your routines, all your cares, all of the duties that enmesh all your feeling tones just where you are.
Suppose there — there, with this thought in mind, about the dynamics of the universe — suppose there, without changing a single thing in your situation, without changing a single thing in your environment, without altering anything except the shifting to your center of focus, the real possibility that you, where you are, can become a whole human being and that you can hold that possibility before you, with such intense clarity and no fever — intense clarity — until at last, the fluid center of your purposes begins to take it into account more and more, more and more, more and more.
Until now, when you aren’t thinking about anything, you find yourself moving in that direction. When you are thinking about something, you find that you relate it to that. And then — then, in the moments when you’re quiet, and if you are consciously a religious person, in the moments when you pray to God, you stop burdening Him with all the recitals of your burdens, filling the time with all your hostilities. Instead, it becomes a time when you check the rhythm of the fluid center of your purposes. You check it. That’s all. Check it.
And once the rhythm of the fluid center of your purposes is a part of the great movement that undergirds and bottoms life itself, then prayer, at such a time, becomes renewal. It becomes refreshment. It becomes the heightening of perspective. It becomes all those things. And when you come out of it, your feet hit the sidewalk in a new way, and there’s light in your face that had never been on land or sea before.
It’s tremendous. And I’m very grateful to God that nobody, however humble and simple and limited — nobody need suffer from a sense of complete and utter futility in a world that is dynamic, a world held in God’s hands. So get up off the ground. Lift up your head. All of the resources of God are yours, but you have to work at it.
Day 4: The Outer and the Inner Whole
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight. For the past two Sundays, I have called your attention to the centrality of the idea of the nerve center of consent, which is in each one of us. And it is the clue to the way in which we consciously work out our destiny and achieve some measure of fulfillment in living.
We have a resource upon which we draw. A resource that is as wide as life and as profound as is the plunging spirit of man. The outer and the inner — I would like to focus our thinking about that this morning. If I may look at the words of the [INAUDIBLE] for just a moment to get the setting, the words — the words of our love — the words refer in my thinking.
To all of the outward expressions of the [? life. ?] All of the activities, all of the externals, and of course, the meditation in my thought refers to the inner, to the nerve set of consent to that fluid area of purpose that provide the power for focusing on the spirit.
We live very externally. For the most part, we tend to because life seems to demand that of us. I think one of the reasons why we enjoy going to the country is the fact that we, in the country, occasionally, we encounter people who have been sufficiently unhurried to salt down a few of their observations and let them ripen.
And I think that’s why people who live in the country are always glad when summer’s over and the city people go back home, because they — the outer life, the inner life — due primarily to the influence, I think, of Greek thought on Western culture and civilization, and particularly upon Christianity, we make a sharp distinction between the outer and the inner.
We assume, for instance, that the spiritually minded individual confines himself exclusively to the inner. And we assume that the so-called practically minded man, the man of business, the man who works with his hands, the toiler — the two aren’t the same, necessarily — is the man who deals with the things that are external, that he — is not supposed to be thoughtful.
He handles the traffic. So we set up a separate category for these two human beings. And if the man who is supposed to give his thought and time to things spiritual spills over into this other area, we say that he should stick to his knitting. And if the man who is supposed to give all of his time to the traffic moves over to the other area, we say that something is wrong with him. He — does he — instead of going to church, he needs to go to a psychiatrist. Something’s wrong with him.
This dichotomy is so clear. We see it in our — even in our worship. We make a very radical distinction between two kind of gods. I’ve mentioned this to you many times, because it seems to me to be a very persistent aspect of our culture. God of religion on the one hand, the god of the sanctuary, the god of the cloister, the god of the dim light, the soft, treading step, the god of the holy place, the god of piety, the god of the extremities of life, and then the god of life over here, the god of the marketplace, the god who stays outside.
And so persistent is this dichotomy in our thinking and feeling, that we tend to split our allegiance right down the center. And we say, for instance, that the god of life is at a disadvantage in the place where the god of religion holds for. When the god of life comes into the place where the god of religion dwells, the god of life is spite. When the god of religion moves out into the traffic of the world, he is at a disadvantage. So we say about a religious insight that is trying to be implemented in terms of the context in which men live, and breathe, and suffer, struggle, hate, and love — we say that any of those impulses, those insights that we are trying to validate in that kind of context are impractical.
That is the way this dichotomy operates, so that the outer and the inner separate in our thinking. And what the psalmist says is, that let the outer and the inner, both be acceptable in thy sight, because they should be one and the same. Tremendous, isn’t it? Now, there are attitudes that we take toward living, that seem to me to invalidate this sense of integration, which may be summarized in times of the free and easy flowing between the outer and the inner. Free and easy access between these two interactions this way.
And one of those attitudes is one which insists that we should not recognize that there is a relationship between these two things. Think back over this week in your own life. Just this week. How many things have you done which seem to you to be expedient, necessary, but about which, you have, deep within yourself, the profoundest kind of inner reservation?
Let’s think about it. So that you found yourself functioning, developing a behavior pattern, or deepening a behavior pattern, activities, agreements, yessing or noing, and you said to yourself, what I’m doing is not remotely connected with my own inner nerve center of consent. One of the things that we forget is that, ordinarily, we tend to believe that if a thing is that the nerve center of our consent, if it is something to which people [INAUDIBLE] that if we can hold that thing at dead center in all of our functioning, it will finally arrive — we will finally arrive at a place that this thing will be the ground of our motivation, the very core of our motivation. And when it becomes a core of our motivation, then, more and more, the behavior patterns of our lives are reorganized around that new center of integration.
Now that’s true, that sound. That is valid. But there’s another aspect here to which I would call your attention, and that is that there is also the same kind of persistent relationship between the repetition of the outer pattern of life and the way in which that outer pattern of life finally redefines for us the nerve center of consent.
Do you see what I’m saying? I feel that you do a little bit, but let me — we understand the first principle, that if you want to change your person, all you need to do is get this central thing, we may say the will, or whatever it is, we need not use these extra words. But this intent, it is intent focused. And when that is — it’s thoroughly focused, then that intent begins to provide a new center around with his behavior takes its accent and turn.
Now, I’m saying that that is true. But the other thing is true also. That I can act in a certain way with such persistency over a time interval of such duration, that finally, the pattern of my behavior becomes the new nerve center of consent. So that those of us who are concerned about changing our lives or changing the society, about trying to make a decent human being of ourselves or a decent social order, must see clearly the flowing between the outer and the inner.
It is not only true, then, that the inner constantly and persistently informs the outer so as to redefine the meaning of the outer. But it is also true that the outer can persistently and consistently inform the inner. As Milton makes the devil say in “Paradise Lost”, I look before me, there is hell. I look behind me, there’s hell. I look to the right, there’s hell. To the left, there’s hell. Behold, I myself am hell. The outer, inner.
Now, therefore, in an effort to develop the inner that it may become robust, we must not cut it off from the outer by the delusion that we can cut it off from the outer. And we can do it. I remember the first year that Doug [? Steer ?] started teaching philosophy at Hamilton as Rufus Jones’ successor. I attended all of his classes in philosophy. And two or three students, other students and I, had a little game that we played.
You know how you mark — make four lines, and then run a line through it making five, and you were tallying things? Well, Doug had a phrase that he used. The phrase was, so to speak. And I suppose those of you who’ve been listening to me for eight or nine years know that I have a few phrases that are like that. But every other sentence, Doug would say, so to speak, so to speak, so to speak. Gosh.
So one evening at dinner, the two of us showed him our tally marks. And, oh, they were way up a fabulous number. And he was shocked. He had no idea. No, he said, so to speak over and over and over and over and over again. And then the next day, in class, he was working away on the critique of pure reason, just having a wonderful time. And out it came, he got as far as [INAUDIBLE] two, and then he froze. He backed up again. And for an hour, 55 minutes of class lecture, it was the the most torturous experience I’ve ever seen a human being go through, trying to relate, you see.
The inner and the outer. He became aware of a whole pattern that had not become a part of the nerve center of his consent, but was effective that lived on the periphery. But in his effort to become a whole human being, he had to relate this inner and outer. And he limped for days until finally, finally, when he said, so to speak, he meant to say it. Now, that’s — now that’s what I mean. Now, we can develop attitudes that ignore this relationship. And when we do, we find ourselves living, as we think, constantly in two separate worlds that I, in my heart, in my private spirit, in my own personal spiritual intimacies, I am this way.
And then in the pattern of my living, in my functioning, I am this way. And the tragedy is, that one of the iniquities of our society is that it presupposes that we are to function that way. Over and over again, we find ourselves with our behavior patterns obeying laws which, deep within us, at the center, at the vital center of us, we denounce, we deny.
Can you see what such a problem is when you applied in various kinds of social situations? Suppose you lived in a part of the world in which the normal things that people were doing was going along a certain line, acting a certain way, going certain places. I remember when — one night at [? Bellswater ?] Junction in central India we were going up to Calcutta. Two young Indian friends were traveling with us. And because of trains, cars, no sleeping accommodations, the junction provided the rooms upstairs over the station lobby. And for $0.25 or some small amount, you could get a bed for two hours or three hours, and then a guard would awaken you in time for you to get to your train. Just dress and go downstairs and get your train.
And we went upstairs, our party with these two young Indian friends. And then we came up to the — in this great place, we saw, on one side, a huge sign which said, Europeans only. And another sign which said, Indians only. Well, we were regarded in India as Europeans. So we could not go over on the side where the Indians were, where our friends were going. And our friends couldn’t go on the side where we were.
So we went downstairs and sat up the rest of the night. But now, suppose you wanted a night’s sleep. And that was the law. What do you do? What do you do? The outer, the inner. An attitude which says that there is a desert and a sea between these two, is an attitude that is against life and for death. Whether in the individual or society.
Now, there is one other attitude that, against this background of the free and easy access, remember, that’s the point. The free and easy access between the inner and the outer, the words of my mouth, the outer. Of the meditation of my heart, the inner. Both as one, acceptable in the sight of God. That is the insistence, you see. Now, when I take an attitude withdrawal, when I take an attitude of withdrawal from the outer, or — I didn’t say and — or an attitude of withdrawal from the inner. I defeat both.
Now, let’s look at that just a minute. The principle of alternation is what I’m talking about. The first American thinker to introduce the concept of alternation in this whole matter of the flowing between the inner and the outer was Hawking in his tremendous volume on — well, I don’t remember the title, but it’s a good book. And then you remember that in this big work of [INAUDIBLE], there is a tremendous case made for this same principle.
But everybody knows about the principle of withdrawing and participation. The principle of picking up and putting down. The principle of walking and resting. Now, if I decide that I shall devote all of my energies to withdrawing, then withdrawing becomes the source of my arrogance and my pride. And I’ll be out of the emptiness of my own inner self. I cry to God. God, I thank the that I am his other man. I don’t get my hands dirty. I keep my space clean. I do not expose myself.
Well, there’s something in us to which that appeals tremendously. Don’t you feel, sometimes, if you could just shake everything off? Just go to your little mountain hideout and just stay there? Some private arrangement so you can get some food and some water. But if you could just get away and stay away, now, that becomes a source of arrogance. And as religious minded men, through all ages in every culture, and every kind of religion that’s ethical in character have pointed out this great danger, that one of the major sources of pride in the human spirit is the delusion that it can withdraw and enjoy God forever and ever, and ever.
But how can I be happy in Heaven if my brother is in Hell? How can I? Can’t do it. Now, the other source, you see, of pride and arrogance is just the reverse. That I can — that I have no time for the luxury of withdrawal, of the little retreat, of taking time out. Things must be done. Action, action, action, action.
One of the reasons why these people say one the reasons why the world is as it is now, there’s so many people whose heads are in the clouds. What we need is practical people. We are suffering from that right now. We say that one of the reasons why our whole government has disintegrated — and I’m not preaching a sermon on politics — but one of the reasons, like I say, our government is really disintegrated, so and so, we have no businessmen running things. Businessmen. I mean, [INAUDIBLE] practical people. They didn’t know how to do. And that becomes a source of pride and arrogance, because I begin to develop contempt for the retreater, for the person who withdraws, for the thinker, his visionary. He doesn’t know anything about the facts of life.
What I’m saying is, I’m through now, practically. That it is not one or the other of these. But if we want to be whole human beings, we’ve got to breathe in and out, in and out, in and out. For when I withdraw, even for 15 minutes a day, I not only have a chance to restore the waste places of my own spirit, to recapture the lost radiance of my own commitment, my own — see my own goals clarified, bring my own life more into focus — whether I’m a religious man or not, even in terms of straight, humanistic considerations, it’s valid.
I think it’s more than that, but even on that level, it’s valid. But not only does that happen to me, but when I withdraw and center down in my own spirit, now, this is what I believe, my friends. I believe that in that act, I become involved in the very ground of vitality in which it is possible for me to make contact with other human beings at a level that transcends all of the spoken that I can never understand through the formal discursive processes of minds.
And I think of it at that level, that a great awareness, not only of the meaning of life in general, but the meaning and the dignity of human life. And then when I come out of that and go to work in my functioning, I am building my house, my world, by a blueprint that is eternal. And to know that that is possible, or even to dare, to believe that that is possible, and not try it, is to run the risk of missing out on perhaps the most tremendous thing in human life.
And when we — then the words of our model, and the meditations of our heart become acceptable to God, because they are one and the same. And we are whole. And that’s wonderful. Wonderful.
Day 5: We Become Human in a Human Situation
Friendships with those who walked away with us. The laughter of little children. The exuberance of some other mind or personality that overflowed its joy into our days. We have been saddened during the week. Death. Affliction. Loss. Failure. All of these have visited their strength and their weakness upon us.
And we have been so busy, so full of the things that we must do, as it seems, if we would survive that there has been little time or interest in our effort towards listening to anything other than the obvious voices, hearing anything other than the monotonous sounds. We rejoice to sit together and be quiet and drink ourselves in the overshadowing presence that binds us together, pouring upon us renewal and refreshment as we wait.
And so, our Father, we give to thee the quiet searching of our hearts, the movement of our spirits in response to thy love, thou who loves us better than we love ourselves. Surround us so with thy presence and thy spirit, that we shall not be afraid because of what waits for us at home or frightened because of what we must face tomorrow. But, with renewed courage and high hopes, we give our future, even as this moment, into thy gracious keeping this day and forever. Amen.
Nights when [INAUDIBLE] with you on one more step in our thinking together about the inner life. If I were to use the texts, there would be several. One, the Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be a friend. Or if God is for us, who can be against us? Or those words that Jesus heard coming out of the stirring of his great commitment, this is my son, my beloved. In Him, am I well pleased.
The basic proposition is this. We cannot live comfortably in our minds and spirit, if indeed we can live at all, without the consciousness of having our lives OKed, sanctioned, nodded to by somebody else. We must have approval. And perhaps the test of the individual’s inward authority is how the individual is able to hammer out a principle of discrimination with reference to who rates giving to him ultimate, or final, or even limited approval.
You remember — you may remember some weeks ago, we were discussing one aspect of this general theme. And it was pointed out that all of life is dynamic, that there is an aliveness in life that supports and sustains and generates all of the individual expressions of life by which we are surrounded and of which we are a part.
And the basic assumption in connection with that is that, just as my little life seems to have purposes and plans and I follow some order, some kind of logic, even though my life may seem to be confused and confusing — yet, if I examine it very carefully, I know that there is in my life structure as I stand at any point and look back upon the days, weeks, years that have passed. I see a movement of order.
It may not be order of which I am particularly proud or it may be, but there is a logic in the living of my life so that my life is not just an accidental expression. And there is a logic in the grass and in the tomato plants and these yellow flowers and those. We’re just surrounded with logic. Therefore, is it unreasonable to think that the fact that every human being becomes a human being in a human situation, you see? Now, if you get this little step in, then all the rest is nice.
We are not born human, so they tell us. We become human in a human situation. We become human in a situation in which there are these adults, these human beings. And it is in them that we discover ourselves. It must be a great moment when the baby begins to realize that it has a foot. It must be a great discovery. The baby puts this thing in his mouth a long time before he knows that it’s a part of him.
As he watches his mother, and the mother seems to be — it’s all one. I’m sort of confused. A sort of conglomerate. It must move like that, I imagine. And then, the mother gives him his little bottle. And then, she takes his hand and puts one hand over, and the other hand follows that hand. And he holds a bottle. And she moves away. And it begins to break into his mind the fact that I am not that. I’m not that. I’m something else.
The little distinction between the self and the not self. And as soon as that distinction begins to operate, then the self begins to emerge, you see, so that I discover myself in this other context. Therefore, you see, this insistence, this necessity for approval, from the earliest moment that we can recall is but an immediate memory and underscoring of the fact that there was a time when I and the not I were one.
And therefore, when I separate myself and become self-conscious, the more self-conscious I become, the more I see that I now must break out in another dimension, and in terms that are creative, the same oneness that I experienced automatically before I discovered myself.
And that is what we mean by this. All the dreams about one society, all the dreams about the Kingdom of God, all the dreams about these utopias that harass the mind and fret the spirit of the seer and the prophet and the simple man and the simple woman, all of them are but reflections, but intonations from this profound ground of unity out of which we sprang and before which in itself consciousness became possible.
Now, approval, then, is natural. Without it, without the hunger for approval, the urge to approval, and the thing that happens to the personality when the approval is given, without that into action and interplay, it would not be possible for personality to develop and emerge and to grow and mature and all the rest of it. So let us not in the first place, then, look down our noses at the human race because the human race wants somebody to approve of it.
Now, you know what happened to you when you were growing up, how you had to have the approval of your little crowd. And there came a time when the approval of your little crowd became more important to you than the approval of your mother and father, except in and around the Christmas season. It’s very important then. But otherwise, you could afford to run the risk. You ought to be approved of so that something in you can say yes. And that saying yes is your way of defining your times so that there is more to you now.
Now, let’s take it another step. There are some approvals that are general blanket approvals. It’s the approval of the society in which you live. You eat a certain way because without that, you would have the wrong kind of sanction. You wear a certain kind of clothes.
There are certain broad approvals. We recall them conventions. And we conform to those conventions. And in conforming to those conventions, we have a sense of belonging. Now, that is, in general, our gross sense, gross in the sense of unrefined.
Ordinarily, we find some measure of stability in living, some measure of stability within. If, in the normal living of our lives, we do not run counter to the convention, and as long as we do not run counter to the convention, the convention gives to us its nod. And we belong. We are not outcasts.
And we make up our minds fairly early how much we can take and how much we can keep from giving. The conventions move along this line. You say, now, I will do this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, so as to be sure that I have a maximum of general approval.
And then, over here is another related area. I’ll try to keep the conventions out of that, if I can. This is not quite my private life, but it isn’t quite my public life. Here, it’s a little preserved. It has more of my choices in it than the big convention over here.
Now, it is in that group that I build my little relations. And now, the interesting thing about that is that again and again, I discover that the choices that I make are often not the choices of my mind or my spirit or my heart as such, but they are the choices that are reflected by the literal group. Now, not the big convention, but the little group that is so important to me, that if I do not keep its approval, I have a sense of being cut off from emotional security. Alex, let’s slice that just a little.
Here is a group. And you belong to that group. And as long as that relationship is free and easy and you have free and easy access to each other, that group confers upon you your meaning so that if you are being attacked and your stock goes way down in your mind, and you get up one morning, and you feel that there isn’t much to you, then, you remember that this little group of people thinks of you pretty good, so you attach yourself to that, and then, climb up out of that hole. They confer persona. They confer meaning upon you.
Now, whatever group it is that confers that meaning upon you, it is the approval of that group that for you is mandatory. And therefore, in your private behavior, in your private judgments, in your private choices, you do not wish ever to do anything that causes you to be thrown out of primary contact and sanction with this group that confers upon you your persona, your meaning.
So then, when it comes to some decision that you must make, some action that you must perform, one of the first questions that enters your mind, whether you think about it consciously or not — one of the first questions that enters your mind is, if I do this, what affect will it have on some unit of human beings with reference to which my relationship guarantees my freedom and my security?
So haven’t you ever said to yourself, I would like to do this thing? It’s the right thing to do. It’s the honorable thing to do. It’s the honest thing, whatever phrase you use. But I’m not free to do it. If left to my self, this is the way I would do. But I’m not quite free to do it because if I do it, then I will run the risk of being cut off by some unit of human beings whose approval is absolutely essential to my well-being.
And the choice that I must make is, shall I run the risk of rupturing that and therefore, becoming cut off and relatively insecure emotionally, or shall I somehow do the thing that will keep me in favor with those whose approval I must have in order that I may function with some measure of effectiveness and creativity? And we may decide, well, I can work it out with my conscience because my conscience isn’t going anywhere. But I don’t know whether I can work it out with the group or not, so I’d better stick with the group.
Now, there comes a time — and this is the amazing, interesting thing about the religious insight. There comes a time when the individual may be faced with the necessity for embracing a principle of discrimination in the selection of the area of sanction. It isn’t a new principle. It’s a thing that we are doing all the time.
As you look back on your own life for just a moment, you will note, no doubt, that as you have lived during the last 10, 15, or 20 years that those whose approval is necessary to your well-being have become more and more of a certain kind of human being. That may be true for you. They may more and more symbolize what to you are the goals of your life, the meaning of your life, the values of your life.
Now, the degree to which one seeks approval from those who symbolize the highest values to which the individual is loyal, the extent to which that takes place — the individual then grows more and more into the likeness of the values, the symbol of which is necessary for his peace of mind. Now, when the time comes, settle for nothing less than the ultimate approval. I shall not be satisfied until I am saying yes with the deepest being in me, to the deepest and profoundest and most significant thing in life.
Religion says that the name for that — it says, God, that there is finally one and one only basis for ultimately guaranteeing the self-respects and the validity of the self. And that is when the individual has passed beyond all secondary approval and feels himself at last seeking the approval of God upon his life. And when he seeks that, for the first time in his life, he is able to and, what is more important, willing to run the risk of getting rid of all of his defenses and his pretension.
Now, that is why the search for God is the logical expression of the normal behavior pattern of the individual who is growing into life. For the need of approval, the need for sanction, is but an expression of the siege and the reach of the human spirit for God. For approval says yes to my rut, and it releases me for growth. And therefore, I cannot be at ease in my mind and spirit until I am convinced that there is available to me the approval beyond and behind which there is no other.
And if that is possible in human life, if by living into the meaning and significance of life, I run the risk, the possibility, of securing for myself an ultimate approval, then not to take the chance to try it is to be stupid. For if it is possible and I miss it because I don’t try, I don’t have to know whether it is true. I don’t have to know whether it is true. I don’t have to be convinced intellectually that it’s true because my mind isn’t reliable, anyway.
I know that something has to happen in my life that makes me confident that there is sanction. Sanction. Sanction. Approval. Not of my deeds. Not of my thinking. That’s all right. Not of my behavior, as such. But approval of me. I can take care of everything else.
And that’s all I really needed to say, and I’m through now. It’s all that is — the whole experience of prayer and all of these various religions in the world, they’re all saying the same thing at that point, that the essence of the prayer experience, the prayer moment, is that the very heart mind throb of the universe of God touched with quickness and aliveness and vitality the deep, central core of me.
And when I touch there, I live. Even though the days are heavy and the nights are long and terrible and the disease of my body will not be cured and the crack in my heart cannot be mended, what does it matter? I live for that part. And it is far more important that I shall be touched than that the problems of my life shall be solved.
For if I’m touched, it gives me confidence to tackle anything because there’s only one point at which no can be said, and that is deep within me. And at that point, yes has been said. If God is for me, then who can be against? Who? If the Lord is the strength of my life, then whom shall I be afraid of? Of whom? Nobody.
Lecture 6: Threat is the Threat to Ethical Refinement of Moral Values
I wonder if there is any little spot on any seat where one — I see a lady standing up in the back. And if she can sit down, I’ll feel better. I don’t mind the men, provided she does want. Here’s — I didn’t mean to have some man get up, but it’s a good idea.
I had thought that I would end the series on the inner life. But I have one more thing that I want to say about it. And it is not listed in the bulletin because something happens to the mail these days, and it didn’t get here in time. I want to read — if I can find it.
“All night, the fury of contending will raged in my head until my bed seemed a tormented world, the devils filled with anguish mixed and hungry violence. I waited for the day with muted sense, too dry to weep. Even my terror is dumb, as if while body waked, spirit were numb.
At last, as though I lay upon a hill above a valley choked by envenomed thorn, trackless and dark, I saw a spark strike down from heaven whence a stream was born, which, flowing from the zenith to the sea, fierce and unswerving as the zeal of saints, had yet the saints reserved tranquility and gave to Earth its genius unconfined, the soundless passion of a single mind, the soundless passion of a single mind.”
I want to discuss ethical awareness as an aspect of the inner life. We have a line in our commitment which says, I desire to share in the spiritual growth and ethical awareness of men, women, and so forth. The fundamental fact with which I have to do this morning is this — that the sense of value, the sense of values, is a part of the native equipment of personality of men and women.
The content of value depends, to some extent, upon training, upon experience, upon observation, upon climate, and that growth of spirit and deepening of spiritual awareness are related directly to the refining of the content of my values. Now that’s a long, roundabout something. But it won’t be indefinitely, I hope.
Ultimately, the religious man has to say, about any injuries that he inflicts upon another human being, against thee, referring to God, and thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. Ultimately, I say, the religious man has to trace the effect of any activity on his part that involves other human beings upon what is, for that human being, his ultimate relationship with life.
If I could do this to you and feel that I was doing it to you, then I could so define you that it wouldn’t make any difference. But if what I do to you I would do to my ultimate value, then what I do to you becomes something other than what I do to you. That’s all that I have to say about it. But let’s go to work on it for a little long.
The sense of value, I think, is a part of the equipment of an ordinary human being or any human being. That is a sense of rightness and wrongness, a sense of meaning. You have that to start with. Now, how you define it, in other words, what is right for you, what is wrong, is a question other than a sense of right and wrong. Do you see what I mean? You have a sense of right and wrong that undergirds your particular sense of right and your particular sense of wrong.
I’ve told you many times that it made such an impression upon me, when I was much, much younger, about this bob-haired bandit who was arrested just outside of Batavia, New York, and was tried in Syracuse. And she and two men had been holding up filling stations or something, and she was finally arrested.
And then when she was put on the witness stand and was asked to tell her story, the thing that interested me and what she had to say was this — that when she was a little girl growing up in whatever part of the world it was, or America, she said, if I came home in the late afternoon after having been in the street all day and I hadn’t been able to steal anything, I came home feeling that I had done wrong. You see?
Now, there was the sense of right and wrong there. But the feel for values is a part of the equipment of personality, I think. But how you define it, what it means, what the particular right means, what the particular wrong means depends upon training, upon how you’re taught. It depends upon how you are related to what may be called your social heritage, and so forth, and so on.
That is why it seems to me that what people, how people are taught, how they are conditioned as they grow up is a matter of very great significance. Because the conditioning does not create the value. The conditioning defines the value. And just keep that in mind because that distinction is fundamental.
The training, the development of conscience, as we call it, is to some extent — how much, I’m not wise enough to know — but is to some extent the development of our social — the social context in which we are living. But that context does not create the value. It defines it, gives content, meaning to it.
Now, it would seem — and this is one of the cruel dilemmas of the whole ethical adventure of the human spirit. It would seem then that the society, exclusive of the individual, should be held responsible then. You see? Because if my conditioning is the result of my environment, and maybe the environment of my home, and my learning process, and all of that, then to a certain extent, a very significant extent, I am the creature of this sort of collective conspiracy.
And then the extent to which I am the creature of that, then perhaps I should not be responsible for my behavior. But it is because I am equipped with this basic sense of value that I think the insight is sound to hold me, as an individual, responsible for my behavior.
Therefore, Jesus, in talking about this, and dreamed — and when he projected the whole melodramatic picture of the end of the age, the climax of human history, he thought of it as a time when all of the people of the earth would come together before a judge. And the judge was some sort of [? oriental ?] despot who, in a sense, technically perhaps, was a figurehead.
Or automatically, people went to the right. And automatically, they went to the left — not because of the whimsy, or the judgment, or the arbitrary operation of the will of the judge, no. But they went to the right or to the left because that’s the way they had lived. And the insistence of this picture of Jesus is that the history of a man’s life is his judgment, that his behavior defines the judgment that life passes upon him. And therefore, to that extent, he is responsible.
Now, with that as a background, let’s look at one or two things that I have particularly in my mind and heart to say. The first is that a part of the spiritual adventure of man is to give ultimate significance to his limited, narrow, ethical judgment, to give ultimate significance to it. Now, let’s see what that means in terms of the whole process by which we develop ethical awareness.
Now, if I can ever decide, if I can ever decide, or, if as a result of my training, my decision automatically is that certain individuals by whom I’m surrounded are outside of my magnetic field of moral responsibility — Olive Schreiner, years ago, and commenting on the Christian religion said that she felt that those who follow Jesus had fallen short of one of his important insights.
She said, in the Christian concept of reverence for life, we have limited it to reverence for human life and not to other forms of life.” And she said that, therefore, if I recognize this snake as being a rattlesnake and a dangerous snake, a threat to my security, then the fact that he is a threat to my security makes him become immediately, by definition, outside of the area of my sense of moral responsibility.
Now, once that happens, then I can do anything to this snake I want to without having any disturbance of conscience because he’s out there. Now, she said, if we had widened the ethical concept as Jesus did, as she interprets Jesus as doing, then we would have seen the dilemma that is created for the development of ethical behavior among men by this category of exception.
So I say, if this rattlesnake — as long as I can say that I can destroy the rattlesnake without a sense of moral responsibility because the rattlesnake is outside of my magnetic field of ethical awareness, then if a man so behaves or if a man is so defined that he too is outside of the magnetic field of my ethical awareness, then I can deal with him with the same kind of imperviousness, the same kind of absence of moral responsibility with which I deal with the rattlesnake. So she said, this category introduced into Christian ethics becomes one that defeats the integrity of the Christian ethical enterprise. That’s her judgment.
Now let’s move back now and look at it.
That is why, taking up this same argument, that is why during a war, for instance, whatever may be the true picture — the facts rather than the true picture, because often there is a distinction between fact and truth. You see? This is very — but I won’t have time to work out the distinction, but just hold it.
Now, whatever the facts are about the enemy, the person who is the government or the people who are opposing us, in every war, what is one of the first ethical instances that emerges? We must give to the enemy a certain kind of behavior, which behavior automatically withdraws him from the human race. Once he is withdrawn from the human race, then we can deal with him as if he were not a member of the human race.
So he could pull your tongues out. And they may. I don’t know. They cut your arms off. They kill babies at the ends of bayonets. They have no — now, that becomes a moral necessity. Do you see why? It becomes a moral necessity to do that in order to defend, with some measure of integrity, the kind of behavior that you must exercise now because you don’t want to give up your membership in the race. But this kind of behavior automatically drives you out of the race of man. You must stay. And in order for you to stay, you must so define the other man so he’s out. And then you can deal him as you see fit.
Now, therefore, let’s push it just a little further now. Therefore, in our ordinary, daily behavior, the same thing operates. When we think in terms of ethical awareness, only the people are involved in our considerations who are within bounds. Much of the psychology and the morality of the struggle between groups in America is tied up here.
The so-called struggle between labor and management, what would happen, what would happen in America this morning if, within the morality — and I speak in complete terms. In some ways, it is true already — if in the morality of management, labor moved into the context of ethical awareness, of ethical responsibility so that the relationship between management and labor became a moral one, not an amoral one, or a immoral one? That is one without moral values or one with negative moral values.
Or vice versa, labor, suppose labor permitted management to move into this context of ethical awareness so that my behavior, with reference to management, or labor, or vice versa, would be behavior that carried with it moral responsibility as far as I was concerned. That was very interesting.
A few days ago, a man died in Russia. And his name was Stalin. And our newspapers have been full of many, many things about Stalin and some evaluation of his 35 years of maneuvering. Some men have insisted that he has given the world a new definition of the meaning of totalitarianism, and on, and on, and on.
But the very interesting thing, as we observe the morality of the operation of that kind of totalitarianism, that the people, the people who are capitalists, the people who are capitalists are morally out of bounds, you see, by those who function within the ethic of that kind of, that particular brand of, communistic totalitarianism.
Now, let’s not start congratulating ourselves. Because it is exactly true that as far as our particular form of government, and politics, and so forth are concerned, communistic Russia is also out of bounds as far as our ethical sense of awareness and responsibility are concerned. And that fact has entered into all of the maneuverings through which we are going and all of the investigations that are going on now.
The moment the word “communist” is attached to you, either by association, by hearsay, or what not, as soon as that happens, what happens to you? You become out of bounds. And the normal sense of ethical responsibility that obtains, under ordinary circumstances, in the context of human relations in which individuals are involved ceases to operate. You become another kind of creature.
So that under ordinary circumstances, we would look with contempt on some man who held other people up to ridicule, to exposure, who poisoned other peoples’ wells when their backs were turned. So when they dipped to get the water, it was poisoned. Our whole tradition is against that sort of thing. But what do we find ourselves doing today — placing a premium, a value upon the facility with which individuals will poison the wells of other people.
Now all of that is happening to us, my friends, as growing out of a fundamental thing on which I’m working this morning. And that is that if I set up any set of definitions, however important and crucial and mandatory that set of definitions may be, if I set up any, put up any set of definitions concerning other human beings, which definitions push them outside of my boundaries of moral responsibility, then I open the door for any kind of amoral and immoral behavior with reference to them.
Now, the Christian indictment of that is very searching, for there is the insistence in Christian ethics with this derivative basically from the prophets, that no man can ever be defined by me as being out of bounds — no man, no man. Why? Because every time I look into the face of another human being, be he enemy, friend, be he rich, poor, ugly, beautiful, black, white, yellow, brown, ignorant, educated, wise, or stupid, every time I look into the face of another human being, I see my face.
And as I keep looking, the whole of the face becomes the face of God. And I say in my heart, against thee, thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. Anything less than that, anything less than that is anti-humanity. And if it be anti-humanity, it must be anti-God. And if it’s anti-God, life is against it. And those who persist in it will be destroyed by the relentless logic of the operation of spiritual and moral law.
Now, if that, if that ethical concept, were ever placed at the heart of our orthodoxy, then any attitudes that pushed other human beings out of bounds would be regarded by that kind of orthodoxy as mortal sin and, if mortal sin, as that which stands between man and his maker. And then we would be possessed by a kind of ethical awareness that will become, for each of us, the soundless passion of a single mind.
Day 7: Do you each think that YOU are of infinite worth?
In this rather extended series on the end of life, and I’d like to read as a background two things. One is a quotation from one of the Psalms, and the other is the final paragraph in Hermann Hagedorn’s The Bomb That Fell on America. What is ma —
And the last line of that is one of the great statements in American literature. The line is “we died, but you who live must do a harder thing than dying is. For you must think, and ghosts shall drive you on.”
It’s a great line. Then coming out of the Second World War, he ends his rather long and in some ways, laborious point with this paragraph — these lines, rather. “There is power in the human soul, said the Lord, when you break through and set it free. Like the power of the atom, more powerful than the atom, it can control the atom. The only thing in the world that can. I told you that the atom is the greatest force in the world, save one. And that one is the human soul.”
Now I’d like to add one more thing. And this is not going to be a sermon made up of quotations. A few lines from The Grapes of Wrath.
“But dust did ruin the corn. Only a little green showing through the film of dust. The men were silent, and they did not move often. And the women came out of the houses to stand beside their men, to feel whether this time the men would break. The women studied the men’s faces secretly, for the corn could go as long as something else remained. The children stood nearby drawing figures in the dust with bare toes. And the children sent exploring senses out to see whether men and women would break. The children peeked at the faces of the men and women, and then drew careful lines in the dust with their toes. Horses came to the watering trough and nuzzled the water to clear the surface dust.
After a while, the faces of the watching men lost their bemused perplexity and became hard and angry and resistant. And then the women knew that they were safe, that there was no more break now. Then, they asked, what will we do? And the man replied, I don’t know. But it was all right. The women knew it was all right, and the watching children knew it was all right. Women and children knew deep in themselves that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men were whole. The women went into the house to their work, and the children began to play — at first, very cautiously.”
I want to do something this morning that I am sure that I cannot do. I’ve been working towards it in all the series, knowing all the time that when I faced it, it would not be possible. But I am comforted by a statement that one of our professors made to a senior in the class in preaching. This young fellow had done a miserable job. And the class, each one after the pattern of his own insecurity, told this young man that he had done a very terrible job. The professor, who was a wise and good man, and intelligent, listened to all that we had to say about Billy Hathaway’s bad sermon.
And then his only comment was this. “The minister is never under obligation to preach a great sermon. But he is always under obligation to wrestle with a great idea.” So I take comfort.
[LAUGHTER]
I take comfort in the fact that that is what we shall be doing.
[LAUGHTER]
There is something about the human being that I wanted to see if I can share with you what my thinking is. “What is man, that Thou art mindful of him, or the Son of Man that Thou visitest him?” And then the old Greek text it says there is not — the basis of the King James version, which I read, it says that “For Thou has made him a little lower than God,” not a little lower than an expression of God, not a little lower than “angelos,” a messenger of God. But a little lower than God himself, and crowned him with glory and honor.
What is it about you that is limitless in its power? What is it? You’ve seen human beings all your life. You’ve been involved in all sorts of experiences. And you’ve seen in the little communities from which you’ve come, or your own families, you’ve seen individuals with almost every conceivable difficulty. You’ve seen life close in around them, taking thing by thing from them, in terms of their health, in terms of their jobs, in terms of their loved ones, in terms of their homes. And they don’t give up. It’s very interesting. I don’t understand it. But I’d like to penetrate it a little.
Our civilization, despite its inadequacies and its limitations, our civilization is built upon one or two very basic religious beliefs. And one of those beliefs has to do with the thing that’s on my mind. It is a belief in the infinite value and the infinite worth of the human spirit, the human soul, the human being. And that has become so much a part of the common coin of our thinking, so much a part of the formality of our value judgments, that it is for most of us an intellectual exercise. It is inherent in our Constitution. It is inherent in the Bill of Rights. It’s a part of the ethic of our faith. It is in a gross sense the thing which is a part of the common coin of our living from day to day.
But I’d like to ask you in what sense is that true of you? Now it’s comparatively simple, you see, to be magnanimous and outgoing, and to have some vague feeling about humanity, and to say that certainly the laws should give equality to everybody that so on, so on, everybody’s valuable.
But it’s an entirely different question. Do you think that you are of infinite worth? Do you? As you examine your own life, not anyone else’s this morning. As you examine your own life, is there any cumulative experiences that are yours — your own private unique possession? Which experiences become your evidence to which you appeal when you raise this personal question as affecting you? As you look back now on the last 10 years of your life — do not go back any further than that — as you look back over the past 10 years of your life, what have you learned about your own intrinsic worth and value?
Now it may be measured, you see, in terms that are not altogether positive. For instance, as you look back over the past 10 years, you may discover that you have done more than your share of things of which you are ashamed. And because you have done these things, therefore, that argues against your intrinsic worthfulness and value. Now that may be the way you are thinking. And if you think that way, then, you see, your life becomes burdened with the kind of guilt for which you cannot find a solution. Because you can’t turn back the wheels of time.
But isn’t it something — isn’t it something to be able to be ashamed? Think about it. Now I’m not urging you to go out and just gloat over the fact that you are ashamed. I don’t mean that. But I’m dead in earnest about this. That only a highly sensitized, precious spirit can register a sense of ashamedness, a sense of degradation even.
So that as you evaluate your sense of infinite worth, even your awareness of deliberate failures for which you take full-on responsibility. But as you look back upon them, you see how aweful — A-W-E-F-U-L — they are, that you could know that this thing was wrong.
Now let’s push it just a little further. As you look back over the last 10 or 20 years, how has been your endurance? Of course I know that some of you I assure that life has done you more of a certain kind of thing than it dare do to anybody else. You may be one of those human spirits like the man that Romain Rolland describes in Jean-Cristophe There are some human spirits like mountain peaks in a range of mountains, and every time the clouds are low and the lightning begins to play, the lightning always moves around certain peaks. Other peaks the lightning leaves completely alone. But there always the lightning plays around those peaks all the time. And Rolland says that the lightning does that because there are certain minerals in those peaks that keep calling the lightning, you know?
[LAUGHTER]
When I was a senior in college, a very famous minister in our town died. And there was the dean of all the ministers who always preached the funerals of all the other ministers who died. And his funerals were always crowded because he said exactly what he thought, paying no attention to all of the niceties of the situation. And therefore, people who were a bit sadistic in their temperaments always came to the funerals to get certain satisfactions.
[LAUGHTER]
So there was a certain man who died, minister. And he was a great preacher, and he knew it.
[LAUGHTER]
And when he died, this minister at his funeral said these words. “There are some people who, when they go down to the landing where the ferryboat comes in across the River Jordan, and they see that the ferryboat is not there, then they go on back up the hill and pick up the work that they were doing. There are some other people who come down to the landing and they see that the ferryboat has pushed off and is way out in the channel. And they stand at the landing and make so much noise and confusion that the captain of the ferryboat has to turn around in the channel and come back and pick them up and take them along. Now those are the people who work themselves to death.”
[LAUGHTER]
And our brother who is here before us is such a man.
[LAUGHTER]
Now it may be that you are that kind of person who seems to attract all of the negative things, the difficulties. I know that I felt that way when I was a boy, that whenever all the crowd of boys were going around and a dog got after us, the dog always made for me for some —
[LAUGHTER]
And finally I began welcoming it in my mind because I knew it was going to happen. I had another friend who said every time I must make a crucial decision, I know that I must make the wrong decision.
[LAUGHTER]
Now what I’m trying to say is that whatever is the pattern and the picture that is revealed in the way your life has manifested itself, if you look at it in its totality, you will see clearly that the meaning of your life can be summarized in the way in which the deepest things in you, through whatever stuff of experience they have had to force their way. The deepest things in you are always reaching, reaching for the deepest things in life. And once you see that, then all of your experiences become your teachers, working over the stuff of your personality and spirit until at last there is wooed up from the bottom of you, within reach of that which is infinite and whole and beautiful the thing that will make you whole and fulfilled.
Now that is the mystery of the human soul. It is what the Psalmist means when he says, “Thou has made man a little lower than God.” And woe is the man who dishonors the movement of the deepest thing in him as it reaches out to the deepest thing in life. And to have that kind of fulfillment as the potential for the human spirit makes a man indeed a son of God. And it’s true with every kind of man — whether he is rich or poor, ignorant or learned, whe — whole-minded or half-minded, whether he is male or female. It is true with every man. And therefore, the venture of living is to cultivate a kind of inner resources that will make all of your life alert to the movement of the deepest things in you. And you will never be afraid. No other light should ever go out in your sky.
[1] Thurman, Howard. With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman . Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.
[2] Eisenstadt, Peter. Against the Hounds of Hell (The American South Series) (pp. 315–316). University of Virginia Press. Kindle Edition.