1 10 14 https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/0ccded947c145a56eb5ec09bf92bc471.pdf 4d7d1acac6dceab23ec4d82d8b16b5e9 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-572_A.mp3 Pitts Theology Library Emory University There is so much that engages the mind and ensnares the emotions that again and again we are wondrous, lost in the midst of our own private and collective wildernesses with no sense of being at home anywhere in anything at any time. Our enthusiasms wax hot and cold. One day life is full and the wave is high and the sun is bright. And the hours pass quickly. And we seem no longer afraid. And then the next day the day is long, it's dreary. And we wonder how it felt to ride with freedom and abandoned on the crest of the wave. It is wonderful, therefore, to sit together, to be enveloped by a single moment and feel the presence and sense the lights and the shadows and the lives of those who sit next to us. It is good to be caught up in the creative silence, surrounded by the brooding presence of God. And perchance as we wait together in the quietness, some new light may be thrown upon old problems, some fresh hope may give wings to spirit to which despair is the familiar. Perhaps a sense of forgiveness for sins committed, for errors done, for blundering stupidities that have wrought havoc in other people's lives. All this may be the miracle for us as we wait together at the quietness. Oh, love of God, without which life has no meaning and no harbor. Leave us not alone with our little lives, our broken dreams, our insistent problems. But invade our spirits with thy vitality that we may be renewed in all the ways of our lives and that we may turn from this place this day. With all that is within us washed purified, and refreshed. We seek this with simplicity of heart and with quiet faith and confidence. Thou will not deny thy love to thy children. Oh, God our Father. Amen. I shall begin this morning a series which bears the same title and will include before I'm finished some of the same minds and spirits about whom we talked some two years ago under the same title, a title which is not original. It's the title of a book by Cheney. And the title was not original with Cheney, because it comes out of the Old Testament. I'd like to lay the groundwork, if I can, for our thinking together. It is just a little risky to discuss anything which has to do with mysticism in California. In some other parts of the United States. It is not as risky. Now that I have said it, then it isn't necessary for you to think it. So we can go on now. [LAUGHTER] 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu There are two or three basic insights upon which the mystic rests his total position. If indeed we may think of it in such formal terms. The first insight is that there is an all pervasive spirit. Time transcendent, space transcendent, that gathers up into itself the total gamut of human experience. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And that's very important. And it's very important because any persons who thought much about mystical religion, which from my point of view is genuine religion. People who've thought about it tend to divide themselves into two groups-- those who say that mysticism is negative, that it is life-denying, that it pulls man away from the involvements of his life, that its watchword is detachment. And because therefore, mysticism in this interpretation is life-denying, because it insists upon detachment, upon withdrawal, it is negative. And because it is negative, it is against life. And because it is against life, there can be no morality in it. No morality. And if there is to be an ethic, if we are to be consigned with values or value judgments, then we must be moving out towards life. We must be in the stream of life. Now the basis for this observation is two-fold. In the first place, a part of it is true. When you study the lives of these men and women who have explored the aspect of experience on the side of experience that opens up into the infinite-- see, there are two aspects of experience. This side of experience that is measurable, that we can put into words, and we can add up, that we can define. But there's another aspect to the same experience that opens in another direction. And when we look in that direction, we can't quite define it. We can't quite get meaning out of it all together. It's almost like looking at your watch. You look at your watch, and you know what time it is. And as soon as you finish looking at your watch and close it, someone says what time is it? And then you must look at your watch again. Now why? Because the first time you looked at your watch, you looked at it for yourself. You were looking at it in a manner that did not have to be unscrambled. But as soon as someone made a demand upon you with reference to time, then you had to relocate this knowledge of which you are already sure. But you had to relocate it in another context, moving out this way. Now all experience is like that. The simplest relationship that means anything to you, you discover that there are aspects of it that are quite measurable that you can define it. You love your child. Yes. You get up early in the morning, you get breakfast for the child. And you stand a lot of noise. Oh, you do all sorts of things, which in one sense are manifestations of this feeling tone that you have. But curiously enough, if someone said, do you now pick out the one thing that you do for your child that proves that you love your child, you back away from that, because no one thing is quite able to do what? To contain all that the experience says, because the other end of the experience opens out into the infinite, you see. So as long as you're looking this way, you can measure off as you do toothpaste out of one of these tubes. But looking, looking from within another context, looking back from the source out 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu of which it comes, you are unable to reduce it to a manageable unit, except to experience it. You know it. But you can't prove it. For the moment you began trying to prove it, you say to yourself, that means I'm not sure of it. For the things of which I'm sure, I don't try to prove. They are. Pitts Theology Library Emory University But I can't escape the necessity for trying to prove it all the time. Now that is what the mystic is saying, that one aspect of his interpretation of his experience moves out into time space involvements, moves out into activities. But as he is observed, it seems as if what he is really doing is withdrawing from all activities and finding his meaning and his significance in a dimension that has nothing to do with this world and with time space involvement. Now let's take this overall background and break it down a little and see what we have. I began by saying that the great and first basic principle of the mystic's interpretation of life is that we are surrounded, we are enveloped by an all-pervading spirit. And that spirit is the reality. And there are some who say that spirit is the only reality. And that everything else is shadow as seeming. We may not think that. Now the mystic takes another step, that he is the creation, as all other life is, and all other things are. The creation of this all-enveloping spirit. But the human personality has deep within it that which is part and parcel of this all-inclusive, all-pervasive divine spirit. That to use the words of one about whom we should be talking in some weeks, that the beyond that I seek is within. That's what he's talking about. That I am not only created by this spirit that's all-pervasive spirit of God, but that within me is not a manifestation of the spirit of God, but the spirit of God. And when, therefore, I see within myself to commune with the spirit of God, there is available to me without any go-betweener primary immediate direct living contact with this living spirit. Now that is-- those are the two pillars upon which the whole mystical insight rests. That we are surrounded by an all-pervasive spirit of God, which spirit is the creator of life and the world, and which spirit is in me. And that spirit which is in me is the real thing. And I can make direct contact with that spirit without going outside of myself. Now that is why the mystic seems always to be in love with the institution. For if the institution, you see, says that there's a formula that must be operative before you can experience this, certain ceremonials through which you must pass. The knee must bow in a certain way. You must be in a certain kind of place built a certain way with what is called an altar in front of it. Or you must have some individual who himself has been set aside as the unique Handler of the inner life or lives of man, that he has to present you before this spirit that you must attach in your prayers a certain formula. 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Well, the mystic says, all right for anybody who feels that that's what he has to do. But it doesn't mean anything to me, because that's going all the way around Robin Hood's barn, as it were, to get into the door when the door is in me, and no man can shut it. No man. That's why he's always a dangerous man. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Suppose he's mistaken. Suppose he's mistaken. You remember the story in McCombs' How I Made Woodrow Wilson President? And after McCombs had spent-- according to the story, which he wrote-- he'd spent a fortune and lost his health practically, and gone all over the country, and finally precipitated the landslide and Woodrow Wilson was the next president. And they went to this summer home outside of Princeton to talk about who would be what and you know, make these great decisions. And when McCombs walked into Woodrow Wilson's study, Woodrow Wilson invited him to a chair. And then he closed the door and stood with his back against the door and addressed McCombs as follows. McCombs, I owe you nothing. God made me president. Well, now-[LAUGHTER] Now, now, now, now when he's talking-- when he's talking like that, you see, there isn't anybody who can say he's wrong. No. No. You can't say he's wrong. Who are you to say? But suppose he misread the signals. And there is release in him as a result of the conviction that arises in his spirit inspired by that affirmation, a strength, and a power, and an endurance that nothing else in the world can give a man! Suppose he is mistaken. There is nothing more destructive in life than a man who is sure that he walked through the door that no man can shut, and there the secret was given him. And on the basis of that secret he becomes as if he were 10,000 men. Nothing more deadly if the man didn't tarry long enough to get it straight. And who knows what carrying long enough to get it straight is? Sometimes it takes 30 years to know whether or not a simple thing you did was an error. Sometimes it takes 40 years. And indeed, our man may live his entire life profoundly convinced that his movements are in accordance with what seems to him to be the right way of life to discover that he was mistaken. He was mistaken. Therefore, that is why the mystic always goes back again and again and again and again and again! Testing, testing. He is unwilling to risk a single moment of transcendent ecstasy. Again and again. That is a part of the meaning of the disciplines about which we will be talking during these, we shall be talking during these Sunday mornings, the disciplines that these various men found 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu necessary. And very interestingly enough, no one of them who has spent hundreds of hours in the spiritual disciplines, as they're called, ever says that if the disciplines are followed, that that which moves directly as a result of the disciplines will be an active dynamic awareness of the presence of God. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Nor the responsibility of the discipline is to keep the spirit pliable, to keep it from getting set, so that when the spirit of God moves, it won't do this, but it remove insight. And that is why however holy the mystic is, when you talk with him, one thing he's always sure of. And that is that he is so far away from the living fruition of God in his life that the distance that he is away is as the East is from the West. Now one other thing. And I'll stop. The all-pervading spirit that creates all of life, including the human beings, deep within the individual, says the mystic, there is God and that God is available to the human spirit-- speak to him thou for he hear us, spirit. The spirit may meet closer is he then breathing, nearer than hands and feet. There is that insistence. And that the disciplines are important because they keep the spirit active. They keep the perspective, the relatedness, supple. And then there is this final thing. The necessity for relating the spiritual energy generated by this communion about which we shall be talking these days, to relate that to the world of function. Even a mystic sect like the Essenes who were very active during the time of Jesus, who withdrew from all participation in the struggle of the Jewish community for freedom from Rome, who went under the hills, wouldn't cut their hair, and did a lot of other things, pray. They were not withdrawing from the struggle. But they were sure that the only way by which-that would destroy the Empire. That was their way of working. That was their way of working. They withdrew from cutting a Roman's neck off or doing a lot of other things out here. But they were not withdrawing from the struggle. But they felt that the way to do it is is to move underneath the foundation that stabilizes the evil order. And if you move at that level, when you start, everything that's above you will begin to crumble and fall. Because there is no power less than the power of God that is capable of withstanding the power of God. Therefore, if I can release as a living channel the living energy of God into the situation, anything that is less than that that is in the situation will be destroyed. That is what the mystic does with social action. He is no coward, sticking his head in the sand, praying to God because he is scared or because he doesn't have the nerve to do anything else. But he is sure that he is in touch with terrible energy, terrible energy. And if his life can be a point of focus through which that energy hits its mark in the world, then the redemptive process can work. And that is why the way of the mystic is so difficult, and yet in some ways so simple. And we shall see during the next eight, nine, 10 weeks what happens in the life of a man when this is his orientation, whether his religion is Buddhist, or Greek, Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish, or no religion. 5 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Men Who've Walked with God (1953) Description An account of the resource In this series, Thurman explores the dynamics of mysticism through the lives of notable figures throughout history. The mystic's insight is that God is the creator of all of life, and indeed dwells in the human spirit as the deepest thing within a human being, which is always reaching out to touch the deepest in others. Throughout this sermon series, Thurman illustrates the ethical implications of this insight, as well as the discipline necessary to live out mystical religion. Ultimately, "Men Who've Walked With God," examines the ways in which a mystic relates to themselves and the world. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Rodell Jefferson III. AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-572_A.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Fellowship Church, San Francisco, California Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1950s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Men Who've Walked: God, part 1 and 2 (Fellowship Church or Marsh Chapel), 1953 Apr 12, 19 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-572_A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource Men Who've Walked With God, Part 1, 1953 April 12 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1953-04-12 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13627798.925371 4550756.1096806)) Description An account of the resource In this first sermon on "The Men Who've Walked with God," Thurman explores the dynamics of mysticism. Mystical experience is deeply personal, and yet always urging one out towards life. The mystic cannot be lost in transcendence, because the mystic must test their insights in the outer world. Mysticism is better experienced than it is explained. In this experience, there is direct contact with the Spirit of God. For this reason, as Thurman says, the mystic goes against the grain of institutions that claim their formulas are the doorway to God. Thurman ends hinting that the following series will deal with the disciplines of mysticism that keep the spirit active within and in the world. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Rodell Jefferson III. https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/6c004d8f3f98f7b2c0ce48f22d926a43.pdf db79059f9cc856c161b9d46d12471103 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-573_B.mp3 Pitts Theology Library Emory University There was a seeker. He wanted to find the solution to the problem of human existence. And I suppose that in that sense we all seek it, don't we? Of course, we do not define our quest in such lofty terms. But, ultimately, what we are after is the final solution to the riddle of our private existence. There are many stories about Buddha, and you may know more of them than I do. But let us cut through all that the devotion and the imagination and the inspired response of millions of human beings have given to this creative and moving spirit who seemed in himself to be so completely one with what he claims to have found, that when his worshipers contemplate his life, they think of him as the only God worthy of worship. He wanted to know the answer for the human suffering. Everywhere he looked around him in the world, he saw men were suffering-- young people were getting older, old people were getting older. No man escaped old age if he continued to live-- and old age brought with it the disintegration of power, of body and mind. And it seemed, as contrasted with the glory and the wonder and the beauty of youth, to be tragedy. He saw around him men who were hungry and who could find no food to eat. And the living of their lives on the basis of the provisions that were available to them seemed to him and, perhaps, to them, to be an increasing nightmare without reason and without tenderness. He saw people die. One by one, the duties end, one by one the lights go out. The tallest mountain must crumble, the strongest beam must break, the wisest man withers like a plant-- death everywhere riding on all the winds. What is there about the nature of human existence that makes all of life a breeding ground for end wishes-- that was his trouble. He set out to find it-- if I can get rid of my flesh, if I can get rid of the persistent demands of my body-- if somehow I can detach myself from my space-time involvement, then I can be free of the thing-- because that which is responsible for all of the suffering of life and, therefore, that which is responsible for life itself-- for in his thinking it seemed that life and suffering were synonymous. And here, he broke with the romantic mystics for the romantic mystics recognized that that life was made up of that which was good and that which is evil-- that life is a combination of the negative and the positive-- of joy and sorrow, of hope and despair. And, therefore, the devout Brahma felt that if he could by ecstasy lift himself above the conflict, then he would be beyond good and evil-- and only those who were not able to do that would be caught in the agonizing grapple of the tension between good and evil. But for Gautama, life is evil because life has desire. Life means desire, and it is of the nature of desire that it can never be fulfilled. It's very interesting, isn't it? When I got there, I said, well, the thing that I want I'll find. But when I got there, it wasn't there, it was somewhere else. And then when I got to that other place that I had located, then it wasn't there. He had all experiences and he ran through dreams and traveled the world-- whose margin fades forever and forever when I move. 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu I said when I got there that the fight would be over, but when I got there, I found that the fight was not over-- that the fight would never be over-- no, not even in death. Isn't that human experience? That's what he says anyway. Pitts Theology Library Emory University In as much as it is true in his thinking that you cannot fulfill desire, then desire must be attacked in a more fundamental manner. Desire must be rooted out, but you cannot root out desire unless somehow you are able to destroy it in a human spirit the will to live. And the will to live is intimately a part of the love of life. One of his disciples said to him-- he was talking about nirvana and how nirvana is bliss. And he said, but if nirvana is bliss, then that means that you are feeling something, you are enjoying something. And he said, no, nirvana is bliss, because it is bliss to be rid completely of all desire. Now let's look at this. The root of human suffering is desire. Desire is rooted, grounded in the life process itself. The end of all of life in terms of its most significance is to arrive at a point where significance is irrelevant-- to arrive at a point that is beyond significance, beyond feeling, beyond desire. In Washington DC, in the old part of the Rock Creek Cemetery, there is a statue built by Saint Gordon-- a statue built as a memorial to the wife of Henry Adams. You may remember that in one of the Galsworthy novels published after his death, there is a long description of this member of the Forsyth saga of the Forsyth family who lands in Washington. He sits in front of this statute and makes a very important discovery about the meaning of human existence. Very often during the years that I lived in Washington, I would go out to Rock Creek Cemetery. And every visitor who came to preach in the university chapel, I arranged to take him out there sometimes before the service, because it was very helpful in many ways. There is a woman seated in a chair. Her body is draped with a huge bit of greenish bronze coming over her face and covering everything except a hand. The cheek is resting on the hand, elbows leaning on the arm of the seat, and she is looking straight ahead. And as you look at her, you see that every tear that was in her has been cried out-that there is nothing left that can register awareness. That she is beyond all tension, beyond all struggle, beyond all the contradictions of life. And she has landed out there somewhere. And they call that statue Nirvana. The meaning of what Buddha found after going through all-- the meaning of what Buddha found after going through all of the varied experiences of life-- after starving himself to death-- almost to death-- after doing all of running the whole gamut of flagellation and the reduction of the self, he found that he couldn't do it that way-- that he couldn't even by thinking it through do it. He couldn't by meditating do it. The only thing that he could do was, well, he didn't know. It's very interesting. He didn't know. He didn't know what he could do. He could wait-- this is very interesting now. He could wait. He had done everything. He could wait and see if he could get still enough inside-- but not the stillness of no activity altogether, and yet it seems that is what he was trying to say. 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu But it is more like the stillness of absolute motion-- a stillness that is so utterly dynamic that it isn't activity at all. It's very interesting. I can't put it into words. But when this happened to him, then he had the illumination. And a lot of the illumination-- and I'm trying to talk about it from the outside with my mind and I can't do it. Pitts Theology Library Emory University The illumination-- whatever the illumination was-- it freed him of all of the necessities of existence. He preached about it afterwards, for suddenly it seemed to him that he had arrived at a place at which it was up to him to go forward, to come back, and pick up life or go on beyond-but not go on beyond as Buddha, but go on beyond the self and the limitations of the self. Now naturally, when he had that experience, he had to give a blueprint. His disciples wanted to know, how do you do it? And he wanted to share it. So he gave a lot of instructions-- techniques- full path, right speech, right thinking, right living, right meditations, and so on. But it is quite possible to follow all of the steps of the full path and not get it. Now what is the bearing of all of this in his life in terms of this epic and the crucial problem of the masses of people-- for it is at that point that we are concerned. You remember-- and I'll have to take an extra minute this morning-- you remember when we were discussing the whole doctrine of reincarnation and the insistence that the soul became involved in the deeds that we do. And the deeds affected the quality of the soul. And, therefore, the soul had to get its purification. And if it meant coming back again and again and again and again-- because the theory of time upon which we are operating is a circular theory of time, and you cannot be free until you are free of the necessity even of being yourself. And it's so difficult for us in our culture and civilization to grapple with that, because all of our emphasis is upon self realization-- of coming to one's self. What we are all striving to do some time is to say with reference to something, I did it-- I did it. And a whole school of psychologists developed our around the idea of the necessity for taking personal responsibility for your individual actions. The self coming to one's self and defined in all these various ways. But here is the reverse of that. Buddha insists that the self has no enduring value or significance. Now the only thing that endures is the event, the act, and its result. Long before John Watson worked on behaviorism at John Hopkins University, here's behaviorism. Hundreds of years before-- what is it that counts? The deeds-- and each deed carries its own value, its own merit, its own judgment, its own logic. The self is not important in terms of the effect of the deed on the self. So that when one dies, if I in my imagination when I read this, this it the way it seems to me-that when one dies, one goes through a sort of opening-- a little place like that-- just big enough for the self to get through, but not big enough for all these events to get through. So they are left outside, as you leave your clothes outside. But when you go in-- whatever "in" is-- you find that you didn't do your work well. And you must come back-- there's only one way that you can come back-- that's right back through that same place and pick up what you left at the door. 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu And the only way that you can get rid of that is finally to arrive at a place that there's nothing left at the door and then you're free. The event-- now you see you see what that means in terms of human history. It's an amazing thing-- that all human life is involved in the operation of law-- the operation of logic, the operation of antecedent, consequence, reaping, sowing. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And there is no provision made for any creative appearation upon the logic of events. If I want to alter the history of the world, there is only one way by which it can be altered in this pattern of thought. And that is to alter the events which, in turn, will influence the consequences. It's interesting, because an aspect of this appears in the thought of Jesus-- you remember? He pictures the end of human history when all the people of the world will come before the great judgment. And what is interesting about the judgment is not the judge and what he has to say. Sheep on the right, goats on the left-- but what determines whether you are a sheep or a goat? The judge? No, the event-- the event. I was sick and you didn't come to see me. I was in prison, you didn't visit me-- and so forth and so on. The event-- the history of the individual's life became his judgment. Now long before Jesus of Nazareth appears, here is a man wrestling with that same problem. It is not a complete answer. It is not a complete answer and I don't have time now to deal with it, because it makes up all of life-- a mechanical, materialistic operation. And it confines the activities of the human spirit within the starkest kind of determinism. And I don't think that life is like that altogether. I think there's always a margin in which it is possible for the creative human spirit to elect an alternative that violates even the logic of events. One man with one mind can stand over against the logic even of human history and hold his creative power at dead center over this logical stuff until a new law moves out of him and invades the stuff of human history. That's why I think life is good rather than evil, because it has that possibility. Now I know I should stop, but if you'll just bear with me for two more minutes and a half-- or three. I'm concerned at one more step here about the ethic that's involved in this. You remember-- no you don't-- but when we talked about the Jianists, I said that they did not project this doctrine of Ahimsa, about which Mahatma Gandhi talks so much-- because they wanted to do something positive. They said, thou shalt not kill not because of the respect that they had for the life that would be destroyed, but thou shalt not kill because if I kill, then I defile myself. And it is because I do not wish to become contaminated that I will not kill you-- not because I love you, I don't love you, but I don't want to get dirty, so I will not kill you. It was very nice of them. Now the ethic that is a derivative from the discovery of Buddha is this-- it is the ethic of self purification, which is the next creative step from this position that the Jianists disclosed-- self purification. I get rid of desire and then get reading and ridding myself of desire through these processes that are familiar to the Buddha, I purify myself. But now this is the wonderfully glorious thing about his insight. 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu He discovered that if an individual becomes sufficiently pure in his life, that the purity of his life radiates automatically without the movement of his will even. The purity of his life radiates a quality that is moral in character that affects the lives of other people. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And by so doing, you see, he introduces a life-affirming concept into a position which basically is life-denying. For, you see, if I get rid of the self and so forth and self-purification, that's withdrawal, that's life-denying, that is not life-affirming. And the logic of that position, you see, is to withdraw. Come and touch with that radiation-- find themselves affected by the quality of my purity. Therefore, he said, the responsibility of the individual becomes a double responsibility. I will purify myself that I may get from under the necessities of existence. But in the purification of myself, I recognize to radiate a quality of living that will influence the minds, the thinking, and the processes of the people around me. And his great contribution to ethics is at that point-- that he defines direct action in times that have to do with the inner purity of the life. And, after all these centuries, we still do not dare try the way that he suggested-- to make and attack on moral disorder in the world by the purification of one's own life on the theory and in the faith that something can be radiated from that that is redemptive in character. And until we test that, how dare we set up our faith, whatever it may be, with arrogance and pride and look with judgment upon the faith of the Buddha. 5 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Men Who've Walked with God (1953) Description An account of the resource In this series, Thurman explores the dynamics of mysticism through the lives of notable figures throughout history. The mystic's insight is that God is the creator of all of life, and indeed dwells in the human spirit as the deepest thing within a human being, which is always reaching out to touch the deepest in others. Throughout this sermon series, Thurman illustrates the ethical implications of this insight, as well as the discipline necessary to live out mystical religion. Ultimately, "Men Who've Walked With God," examines the ways in which a mystic relates to themselves and the world. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Rodell Jefferson III. AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-573_B.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Fellowship Church, San Francisco, California Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1950s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Men Who've Walked: Brahman Mystics; Buddha (Fellowship Church or Marsh Chapel), 1953 Apr 26, May 3, Side B Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-573_B Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13627798.925371 4550756.1096806)) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1953-05-03 Description An account of the resource In this fourth lecture on "The Men Who've Walked with God," Thurman talks about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha">the Buddha</a> and his wrestling with human existence. Thurman says that the Buddha saw the aging and hunger in the world and equated life with suffering. The Buddha's response to this was to root out desire, to renounce attachment to the self. Thurman says that the insight here is that the self is not so much important as much as the act and the deed of the self. The ethical insight of the Buddha is in the purification of desire, which radiates into the moral life as a powerful life-affirming posture. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Rodell Jefferson III. Title A name given to the resource Men Who've Walked With God: Buddha, 1953 May 3 https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/7a1f52a7c0046cb415c462379b5a4ece.pdf 019f06805562f05d6951e2ae14d13f7f PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-574_B.mp3 Pitts Theology Library Emory University Well, I do not speak disparagingly, please, I say to myself. And I was interested in the fact that-by the reading of a synopsis of the Confessions-- that the people, who at this particular session, had so many things to say about this man. And I could not keep from saying to myself, what would they say about him if they had read the entire Confession [INAUDIBLE]. I don't know. But it's a tribute to his greatness, not that there aren't many things about him that have given Western civilization a great deal of trouble. I'd like to think carefully with you for a few minutes about him because he is the father of Roman Catholic mysticism. And in many ways, he represents one of those amazingly unique things in human history, a man whose mind and whose grasp of the age in which he lived was so tremendous that he held in his hands the crumbling outposts of the Roman Empire until those disintegrating aspects of the empire could re-rally around a new point of integration and make it possible for the genius of the Roman Empire to be funneled into the future and, thereby, providing a light that has continued to loom in the darkness even down to latest time. There is so much that's fascinating about him that it requires a great deal of strength and control merely to lift out that which is relevant to our purposes this morning. He was born in the fourth century. His father was a so-called pagan. And his mother was a devout, gentle daughter of the church, pious, spent much of her time in prayer, both for her husband and for her son. The father focused all of his hopes on his son, which is a perfectly natural thing. He wanted his son to be a leader of a certain kind of [? thought. ?] He gave him the best training possible. And this son grew up as a teacher, a professor of rhetoric. He taught rhetoric in his native city. But he found there that things were not-- well, he was unhappy. He was unhappy not only because of things that were going on in his soul, but he was unhappy because his livelihood depended upon these students paying tuition. And the students paid the tuition directly to the teacher. Well, these fellows at this university-- I assume they were fellows- at this university would attend class right up to three days before the end of the term and then decide to change professors. So that Augustine thought that, over and over again, life wasn't kind to him. He decided he would go to Rome-- go to Italy, rather, and he went to Milan. And there, students were a little better, only they were rough. Well, students have been students a long time, haven't they? When he went to Milan, he came under the influence of a man who was a great preacher, Ambrose. His mother did not want him to go to Milan. Because if she were unable to bring his wild and dynamic spirit under the gentle tutelage of the church when she lived with him in the same house and the same community, what chance would she have if he went to Rome, to Italy, that place far away from her restraining influences? So the night before he left, she prayed all night, asking, God, please don't let my boy take the boat. And even as she prayed, the boat pulled out and carried Augustine to Italy. And as it turned 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu out, that was the best thing that could have happened for him. It reminds me of a phrase that Havelock Ellis uses somewhere in his reflections, that after he became 60 years old, he spent much of his time thanking God that God did not answer the prayers of his youth. [LAUGHTER] Pitts Theology Library Emory University You see, this would be a terrible world if the only clues to the meeting of the deepest needs of the human spirit were in the hands of the people who had the needs. It would be a terrible world. And I'm very glad that beyond my strength, there is a greater strength. Beyond my mind, there's a greater mind. Beyond my spirit, a greater spirit. Or else, there would be no way by which the arrows of my mind and the blindness of my spirit could be absorbed. And I, therefore, can be protected and saved from myself. But anyway, Augustine went to hear Ambrose preach because he was interested not in what Ambrose was saying, but because he was interested in Ambrose's oratory and his rhetoric. Ambrose was a spellbinder. But underneath all the magic of his words, there was something else. And Augustine found that Ambrose's mind held him in tow while Ambrose's spirit took his spirit captive. And then certain questions began to stir in his mind. When Augustine came to Italy, he was a Manichean. Now don't be-- don't let your mind stumble around all of that. He was a Manichean. And Manichean's, we don't know quite what the origin of the cult, of the sect was. But basically, the tradition is that they came from Persia somewhere. But at any rate, their philosophy was very influential in Augustine's life, and it is come down straight through. They believe that all of life was divided into a struggle between light and darkness. We've talked about that several times from the pulpit-- light, darkness. And there is a thing that these two powers, the powers of darkness and the powers of light, the god of darkness, the god of light, were not only two separate gods, two separate powers, but they were two powers that were equally matched. And it meant then that, for all eternity, the contradictions of human experience were ultimate and final contradictions, that there could be no way by which, ultimately, good could triumph, no way by which, ultimately, evil could triumph. And since the destiny was a tie, then how individuals lived was not particularly important because, ultimately, it made no difference in the way the things were balanced. There was another force in Augustine's life, and that was the force of what must have been a very remarkable woman. When he was a young man, his father, in order to protect him in some other ways, developed, was instrumental in developing, an alliance between Augustine and a lady who became the mother of his only child, all of this antedating his 33rd year when he finally took his confession and became a Roman Catholic. And he loved this woman. They were never married. And when I talk about this, I do not mean to seem to be a peddler of unclean linen or to put the judgment of this age and this period upon his life. But it's important because of the bearing that it has on what flowered in his mind. And 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu the thing that flowered in his mind has become so definitive in its effect on Western culture and Western civilization. And that's why I want to say just a word about it. Pitts Theology Library Emory University When he met Ambrose and came under the sweeping judgment of the mind, and the spirit, and the morality of this devoted and inspired Catholic priest, his very proximity to Ambrose began to raise in Augustine's mind certain searching questions about Augustine's own life. And one of the things that he had to face was, what shall I do with this lady? And he and Ambrose struggled together. And then Augustine and the spirit of God struggled. And Augustine and the spirit of Monica, his mother, struggled. And Augustine and the spirit of the age struggled. And so he would send her away, and then bring her back, send her away, bring her back, until, at last, out of the depths of his soul conflict, he discovered that only his total surrender to what to him at that time was the sovereignty of God would be able to resolve the inner conflict of his spirit. And he sent her away for good and turned his back upon all relationships that had to do with any dimension of the fulfillment of the flesh except the consumption of food. But the scar remained, and Augustine limps through the pages of human history bearing in his mind and in his body the agonizing struggle of the flesh with the spirit. And his struggle over this problem became the basis of his interpretation of the meaning of human depravity, the meaning of original sin. Original sin then becomes the sin of the flesh, and there is no way by which man can be redeemed from the sin of the flesh, says Augustine, except by a definitive and radical act of God that picks the man up, purges him, and places him yonder. So that becomes the muted motif, moving like a fleeting ghost, through all of the massive revolvings of the mind of this tremendous man. God is sovereign. God is ruler. God is all that there is. And in the presence of God, mere man is but a pile of filthy So deep and searching is the conflict in the soul of man that only a god who is the creator of life and the soul is capable of redeeming man. That was what he felt. And that moves into the heart of his great contribution, the city of God. He was writing while the city of this world about which he had been writing was being destroyed. Think of it. Think of it for a moment. It's overwhelming-- the barbarians pushing against every frontier. The Roman Empire disintegrated and disintegrated and disintegrated through the radical expansion of slavery and conquest. And with a corresponding loss of a sense of responsibility for the fate of the empire on the part of the average citizen-- fear everywhere. Men had lost their nerves. The eternal city was proving itself to be a time-borne, time-eroded [? caucus. ?] Is there any force anywhere capable of providing solidity and stability for this crumbling mass that at one time was the Roman Empire? No king can do it because the kings are interested in selfish plunder. No politician can do it. No mere philosopher can do it. The need is so vast, so 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu tremendous, that only someone who stands outside of human history and operates upon human history is capable of saving it. Pitts Theology Library Emory University So in the city of God, this is what Augustine works out. And it is that, it is that concept, which, subsequently, the Roman Catholic Church began working on. You see, for 1,000 years after Augustine's death, in which you gather up most of the creative aspects of the Roman Empire, and you see them now redefining themselves in this hierarchical church. It's very interesting, but I won't go down that way. [INAUDIBLE] what Augustine felt in himself, you see, this collapse, this struggle, he saw all around him in the empire. And just as only God could redeem him, Augustine, only God could redeem the empire. You see? Now, if God is the Redeemer, and only God, the sovereign whose will must be not only authentic but mandatory, then the vehicle through which this god expresses himself in time and space becomes the vehicle without which man cannot be pleasing to God. So you get the doctrine, which is still the doctrine in the Roman Catholic Church, that outside of this structure, there can be no salvation. And you see the logic that swings out of it from Augustine's mind and Augustine's dilemma. Now if the church is the custodian of salvation as the representative, the earthly representative, of the only sovereign god, then if I want to relate myself to the sovereign god, I must relate myself through this instrumentality. And this instrumentality expresses itself through the sacraments. And therefore, without these, it is very difficult, if at all possible, to be pleasing to God. And now, that's Augustine the theologian, Augustine the architect, [INAUDIBLE]. I will do the difficult thing. I will say just a few words about the Augustine in who I am interested. I'm interested in Augustine the man, who gave to the world in his experience and interpretation of the meaning of mystical religion. And may I refresh your mind that we began by saying that the basic insight of the mystic is that God is the creator of all of life, including all living things, including all human beings, that there is, in the human spirit, therefore, that which is not only like God, that which is not only an expression of God, but that which is God himself, and that the god in man, which is the deepest thing in man, says the mystic, or the highest, constantly reaches out into life to make contact with the deepest thing in life, knowing that what it finds out there, there being anywhere, is what it has already experienced in here, and that morality as a derivative from that kind of religious experience is the method by which the god in man seeks to bring under subjection and control the total life of the individual. That, in a word, is the mystic's position. Now, we saw how it was approached by these various people. Now, just a word about Augustine-- and, in this particular, Augustine following Plato. He was very-- he was profoundly influenced by Plato, more by Plato than Aristotle. And so were the Greek fathers, for that matter, early church fathers. That's why some people feel that if you took Plato and Aristotle completely out of the Christian tradition and theology, what we have left we would not be able to recognize. That's an overstatement of something that has a lot of truth in it. 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Pitts Theology Library Emory University So, all right, Augustine was deeply under the influence of Plato. At one point, we see it expressed in his mysticism. Augustine felt that behind every manifestation was the real, that the real was not the for-instanced. And he has a beautiful passage in somewhere in the Confessions in which he says, I went to the skies. And I asked the skies, are you He? And the sky said, no. I went to the winds and the breezes, and they said, no. I went to the denizens of the sea and the air. And they said, no. I went to my senses-- taste, touch, smell. I said, are you He? No. Then I went to my soul. And my soul, when I asked the question, said, that which is is in me. Now Augustine's mysticism follows the pattern of all the rest of it, that there is, what he calls, at the top of the soul. Maybe you'll notice the same phrase when we come to Eckhart some weeks from now. At the top of the soul, there is God, God, and that this is given. This is created. This is a part of the expression of human life and that the will, the mind, are all vehicular of this. Now, he said that God, and the mystics, and the mystics' journey, you see, all these, this mystic experience by which the illumination comes, Augustine goes through the senses. Then he goes through the mind and exhausts reason and thought. He exhausts feelings. And then he comes by the negative path, interestingly. He comes to that which is. That's the way he phrases it, "that which is" as over against that which is not. And then when he gets there, he is beyond reflective analysis, beyond discursive thought, beyond articulate, broken-down feelings, spelled-out feelings. And he experiences union, says Augustine, union with Christ-- he's a Christ mystic-- union with Christ, union with God, which I experience without awareness of experiencing. Now the effect on Augustine was he used his mysticism, his mystical experience, as energy, as a source of energy and dynamics for sustaining him in these great undertakings of state and dogma to which he gave the resources of his mind. And I'm impressed with him because, usually, we think of the mystic as someone who has taken his retreat from the world. But Augustine is one of the first great mystics in the Christian tradition, individualist though he is-- he is not a group mystic. He isn't interested in any sort of fellowship, in which all the people in the fellowship share this. He is a straight, perpendicular mystic-- no lateral in him. But nevertheless, there is envy in the-- there is a pragmatic result that come from his experiences of union with God and, as he would say, union through Christ as over against what Plato would say-- or Plotinus. But they all talk about the same thing. Don't forget that. There is a secondary utility that comes from this experience. And that is that he doesn't seek union in order that he might get strength to do a job. But he seeks union because of the hunger in him that only God can answer. And once that hunger is met, there is automatically released in him energy with which he does the hard job, the impossible job-- bear the heaviest burdens and suffers the greatest travel and misery. Therefore, we can all say with him, perhaps, those classic words that will be a part of the utterance of the human spirit as long as men are aware of the consciousness of God. "Behold, thou hast made us for thyself. And our souls are restless until they find their rest in thee." And to that word of Augustine, the whole human race says, amen. 5 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Men Who've Walked with God (1953) Description An account of the resource In this series, Thurman explores the dynamics of mysticism through the lives of notable figures throughout history. The mystic's insight is that God is the creator of all of life, and indeed dwells in the human spirit as the deepest thing within a human being, which is always reaching out to touch the deepest in others. Throughout this sermon series, Thurman illustrates the ethical implications of this insight, as well as the discipline necessary to live out mystical religion. Ultimately, "Men Who've Walked With God," examines the ways in which a mystic relates to themselves and the world. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Rodell Jefferson III. AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-574_B.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Fellowship Church, San Francisco, California Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Internal Notes Notes for project team Edited - GL 6/9 Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1950s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Men Who've Walked: Plotinus; St. Augustine (Fellowship Church or Marsh Chapel), 1953 May 10, 24, Side B Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-574_B Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13627798.925371 4550756.1096806)) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1953-05-24 Description An account of the resource In this sixth lecture on "The Men Who've Walked with God," Thurman examines <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo">St. Augustine</a> as a source of mystical insight. Thurman describes Augustine's search for God through the senses, the mind, the feelings, until finally finding "that which is" inside the soul. Thurman says that this is a union with God that is beyond thought, analysis, and spelled-out feelings. This mystical experience releases energy for the undertakings of life in which we might deal with our various difficulties and burdens. Thurman ends with a quote from Augustine: "Our souls are restless until they find their rest in thee." Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Rodell Jefferson III. Title A name given to the resource Men Who've Walked With God: St. Augustine, 1953 May 24 https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/c09b98c53d8882cef39470c9426f1838.pdf d4b054f151aaa2d124fa9744fb933892 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-575_B.mp3 About St. Francis of Assisi, I want to read something. He didn't write it, but it's about him and it catches his spirit. That's the part of it. I want to take the time to read it all. Pitts Theology Library Emory University St. Francis to the birds. Little sisters, the birds, we must praise God you and I. You, with songs that fill the sky. I, with halting words. Little flowers of air with your feathers soft and sleek and your bright brown eyes and meek, he hath made you fair. He hath taught to you skill to weave and tree and [? thatch. ?] Nests where happy mothers hatch. Speckled eggs of blue and have children given. When the soft heads over brim the brown nests, then thank ye him in the clouds of heaven. Also on your lives, live his laws who loveth you. Husbands, be kind and true. Be home keeping wives. Love not gossiping. Stay at home and keep the nest. Fly not here and there in quest of the newest thing. He's talking to the birds, of course. [LAUGHTER] Live as brethren lived. Love be in each heart and mouth. Be not envious. Be not wroth. Be not slow to give. When you build a nest, quarrel not over a straw or wool. He who hath, be bountiful to the neediest. Be not [? puffed ?] or vain of your beauty or your worth, of your children or your birth, or the praise you gain. Eat not greedily. Sometimes for sweet mercy's sake [INAUDIBLE], worm or insect spare to take. Let it craw or fly. See ye say not near to our church on holiday. Less than human folk should stray from their prayers to hear. Now depart in peace. In God's name I bless each one. May your days be long and the sun and your joys increase. And remember me, your poor brother Francis, who loves you and give thanks to you for this courtesy. Sometimes, when ye sing name my name, that he may take pity for the dear song's sake on my shortcomings. There is something about life, for lack of a better characterisation, that says that life is alive. That life is dynamic and that there are purposes and ends, goals that extend beyond the literal purpose and the literal goal and the little end of the little of the big man. In other words, life seems to me to be working towards fulfilments in the large, gross in the sense that they are unrefined as far as the particular mind is concerned. But in the sweep of the life process, ends are achieved that are greater than any little ends. And perhaps, perhaps, perhaps if a man can be sufficiently sensitive, consciously or unconsciously, to relate his level of purpose to the big purpose, his little goal to the big goal, his little ends to the big ends, then the strength and the power and the fullness of the big purpose and the big goal and the big end may give vitality to the little purpose and the little goal and the little ends. 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Now that sounds [INAUDIBLE] St. Francis, but it isn't really, because St. Francis came along at a time when the lights were going out everywhere. The church had become [? stone. ?] And the medicine and salvation, of which the church at that time was the custodian, the dispenser, was given only to those who rated it in one way or another, because they were able to pay up because they could pile up enough deeds and so forth and so on. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And the little man with his little hopes was desolate. And god moved here in the heart of a little valley and stirred a man who became the answer to the darkness. And life is always doing that, isn't it? Always doing that. Because life is its own restraint. Because life is-- life is alive and dynamic. Any study of history reveals many illustrations of the thing. [INAUDIBLE] to take one, to which I referred many times from this pulpit. In the early 18th, 19th century, [? 1856, ?] when Napoleon was at the height of his power, strutting across Europe like some mighty colossus, dominating the whole horizon so that all men who looked in any direction could not see the light because of his shadow, what happened? In England, at least two babies were born right at the peak of Napoleonic power. One was Charles Darwin. And you can see what the work of Darwin's mind did to all the presuppositions that Napoleon had. There was another cause, Mendel [? Song. ?] But I'm not intelligent enough to know how-- too much about how that bears. But the other, a baby was born in a log cabin in Kentucky, and his name was Abraham Lincoln, precisely at the moment of what seemed to have been the greatest bankruptcy. It's interesting. So we are not surprised that St. Francis comes along at a time when the lights were out. Life is like that, I think. Francis came from a very wealthy family. You know his story well. I'll just give it in bold outline and then come at once to where he belongs in this procession. He lived gayly. A man of great joy, troubadour. Graced by the grace of self and then later by the grace of god. Troubadour, nevertheless. And then one day he stopped for a prayer in a wayside chapel. A chapel that had fallen into disrepair, if I may say it that way. And the moment of turning into the chapel was the climax of a long inner process that had been at work in this man's sensitive spirit. A process that was bringing him closer and closer and closer to the kind of decision that would transform his life. He knelt and he prayed. And when he opened his eyes, the crucifix that needed restoration opened its eyes and said to him, repair my church. Now, we need not waste any time on whether or not the crucifix spoke, what Francis saw, because all the words that we use about it will be descriptive words. They will not have to do with the thing itself. It is sufficient to say that Francis, when he heard the voice, surrendered his life. And when he surrendered his life, so much energy that had been dammed up in him by his inner conflict was released that he became a new man. And we may explain it in any way we wish. The fact is, he came into this place in one condition and he went out in a new and radically different condition. 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu It's like the figure that Carl Sandburg describes about the violinist, the old-- the man who went up on the attic in the gallery to hear [? Michel Mo ?] play the violin. And he spent his last $0.25. He was about to commit suicide. All life had caved in on him. But he said, well, I'll spend this last quarter and go up and get a seat in the gallery, said Carl Sandburg about this man, and hear [? Michel Mo ?] play the violin once before I die. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And when [? Michel Mo ?] began playing the violin, the dam broke in the man who heard. And Carl Sandburg, in his quaint and wonderful manner, says, and when he came downstairs out of the gallery his feet hit the sidewalk in [INAUDIBLE] way. And that's thing. What happened, we won't try to talk about at the moment. But that it happened is crucial and important. So Frances renounced a lot of things. But he was a disappointment to his father, because his father had ambitions for him. And when he came in with this idea about surrendering his life, then that didn't make very much sense. So there was some legal matter that was referred to the bishop having to do with property rights and so forth and so on. And Frances just, when the hearing was called, Frances just bundled all of the clothes that he had that he owned, put them under his arm, and walked into the hearing without a stitch on and said, well, here it is. That's the end of your claim on me. Very dramatic. It may not be true. [LAUGHTER] But the important thing is that they said he did it. And that indicates the measure of impact of a man's mind on his contemporaries. That's the important thing. Then he began making certain discoveries. And I want to talk about these because it is in this area that his mysticism looms large. He is an uncomplicated mystic. He isn't bothered about trying to understand the Godhead and the soul and how the Godhead manifests itself, as we will be seeing when we talk about [? Eckhart. ?] He isn't interested in any of the metaphysical problems, any of the theological problems, and the philosophical problems. The only thing he knows is that there is in his heart a song, which song is an expression of the love of God as the love of God manifests itself in Frances. And it is this same music that he has when he listens to another person's heart. It is the same music that he hears when he looks at the braids or the sun or the flower. The love of God singing in his heart. And the love of God that is in every other living thing and answers the music. That's all Frances says. He gathered around him some followers. And when this creative thing which was in him began moving, it had to be organized, you know. Organization's very important. It is the way by which great creative concepts are kept from disintegrating. And also, it is the way by which they are embalmed. And in order to have the right for this order, the pope gave permission. But the ultimate authority, of course, rested with the pope and so forth. And Francis had no interest in all of that 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu really. All he wanted to do was love people, and be loved by them, and respond to them naturally and simply, without ambiguities and thickness. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And near the end of his life, he had the great experience. It was Easter. And he'd been praying and meditating on the life of Jesus Christ, and the suffering. And he sought god to please permit him to experience in his body the suffering of Jesus Christ and in his heart the love of Jesus Christ. Interesting combination. And as the sun rose on Easter morning, and a great tidal wave of unrelenting emotion swept up through him and engulfed him and identified all of his being with what he felt was the resurrected Christ standing in the shafts of light from the morning sun. When that happened to him, he looked at his hand. And in his hand and in his feet and in his side, there was the stigmata. There was the blood. There are about 42-- last time I checked this was 10 years ago. At that time, there were about 42 cases on record of the stigmata-- of men or women who experienced at a moment of great critical identification in their bodies the wounds of Jesus. One other thing about him and that I pick up the thing that I want to pinpoint, he battled with disease all of his life. About 20 years ago, a little book was written called Fighters of Fate. It's the story of a group of men who had wrestled with tuberculosis and who had won the battle. And one of the most inspiring chapters in that little book is the chapter on Saint Francis' struggle with tuberculosis and his triumph over it. Now, he died feeling that as far as the great order that bears his name is concerned, it would have been much better if he'd never been involved in it. But he also died feeling that in his life the love of God had been so operative that all who knew him responded to him in kind. Now, in a general way, that's the story of Francis. There are two things about it to which I want to call your attention now. One is what he does about poverty. How in his renunciation, you see-- bear in mind what the basic proposition is. That there is actively at work in him the very vital awareness of the love of God. Which, love is harmonious. It's integrating. It's whole. And the degree to which the individual, in all of the dimensions of his life and personality, becomes completely involved in the love of God. To that degree, will he relax his interests in preferences as he lives. Now that's very interesting. Now think about it very hard for a minute. I know it's warm in here and a little on the sleepy, but think hard with just a minute. It is the bias of the personality for preferences that creates so many of the complicated problems of living. For instance, when Francis relaxed his insistence upon preferences, one of the first things that manifested itself was his dealing with lepers. All of his life, he had an instinctive revulsion against lepers. He would do anything to help anybody, but he simply could not abide having primary face to face contact relations with lepers. But when he relaxed his insistence upon preferences-- things that I enjoy to do, things I do not enjoy to do, things I like, things I do not like. When we relaxed that, then he bathed the leper, 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu took care of them, lived there for a while without feeling that he was doing something merely for the good of the leper. Not feeling that he was doing something for the good of his own soul. Pitts Theology Library Emory University But all questions of appraisal with reference to the thing that is done are relaxed because, says Francis, in the love of god there can be no disharmony. So if I move into the living situation, from within the spirit and the mood of the harmony which is the love of God, then I take into the disharmony, that which [? wrecks ?] like a catalytic agent. Bringing peace out of chaos and tranquility out of confusion. Tremendous thing. I just look at him and long with all my heart that some day I shall be able to do that. Now the other thing. What he does, he takes the same principles. He applies it to poverty. It is another dimension of enunciation. And his quarrel with poverty isn't-- I mean, his acceptance of poverty isn't because he wants to make sacrifices. And it doesn't have to do primarily or exclusively with money, with clothes, but anything that creates in the mind attitudes of disharmony, of scatteredness, of divisiveness, of divided allegiances, divided loyalties has to be renounced. Even the doing of good deeds if necessary. If I find that I am wedded to the doing of good deeds, then the center of focus becomes that. And the good deed is no longer vehicular either of the loving spirit or the will of god. Even the church might become-- and for Francis to feel this in the 13th century, something the church might become that which is an end in itself. And if it becomes an end in itself and is no longer vehicular, then it has to be renounced. Renounce, this is not thy. And so he embraced poverty as an attitude towards life, which made it possible in his spirit not to become attached to things. Because the interesting thing about things is that when you get them, they take over. I'm sure I've told you about this. When I was a senior in Divinity School [INAUDIBLE], a friend of mine gave me a very beautiful thin gold Elgin watch. And up to that time, I only had an Ingersoll watch. You know, it made a loud noise. And I would put it on a pulpit when I was talking. And it was a lot of silence in between. You could hear the thing tick away. And this friend decided that he would do something about it. So he gave me this beautiful watch. Well, for six months I had been conducting a study group two and a half miles across town. This was in Rochester, New York. And we would begin at ten o'clock at night and go into 12:00, 12:30. Then, I would walk home down Main Street, one o'clock, 1:30. But after I was given this watch, then I changed my route completely. I walked only where there were bright street lamps because I did not want anybody to take me watch. I didn't know what they would do to me, you see. So I became involved in my identification with this thing. Things are tyrannical. They squeeze. And there is no way by which we can disentangle ourselves, unless we relax our attachment. Not so much to the things, but to what the things symbolize in our mind. That's the thing. And it is my identification with the status, my identification to security, my identification with this, this, this, this, or the other that makes me take the symbol and hug it to my breasts until it chokes me to death. 5 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Now, Francis saw that. And he said, don't do it. If you do [INAUDIBLE] disciples or his followers, his troubadours reminded him of a very interesting thing-- that a rich man is also a child of God. Interesting. That the obligation to seek the response, the movement of the love of God in my heart. [? Reaching ?] to make music with the movement of the love of God in [? x's ?] heart must not be obstructed by the category into which I placed the other man. Pitts Theology Library Emory University So he is a communist. So I can hear the music of the love of God. He is a Democrat. He is Republican. He's Catholic. He's Buddhist. He's a Korean. He's a Baptist. He is rich. He's poor. He's ugly. He's beautiful. He doesn't wear decent clothes. He's overdressed. He has bad mannerisms. He's crude. All of these things, my friends, when they become the way by which we imprison another, then the music of the love of God in the heart can't make music with them. And he who builds obstructions that become divisive, warring off one man from another because of politics, creeds, predicaments, status, or class, is against God, who's will is that the love in my heart will make music with the love in your heart. And I'm grateful to Francis and to God. Both for the inspiration and the judgment that his life places over my own. 6 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Men Who've Walked with God (1953) Description An account of the resource In this series, Thurman explores the dynamics of mysticism through the lives of notable figures throughout history. The mystic's insight is that God is the creator of all of life, and indeed dwells in the human spirit as the deepest thing within a human being, which is always reaching out to touch the deepest in others. Throughout this sermon series, Thurman illustrates the ethical implications of this insight, as well as the discipline necessary to live out mystical religion. Ultimately, "Men Who've Walked With God," examines the ways in which a mystic relates to themselves and the world. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Rodell Jefferson III. AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-575_B.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Fellowship Church, San Francisco, California Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Internal Notes Notes for project team Edited - GL 6/9 Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1950s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Men Who've Walked: Gandhi; St. Francis (Fellowship Church or Marsh Chapel), 1953 Jun 7, 14, Side B Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-575_B Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13627798.925371 4550756.1096806)) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1953-06-14 Description An account of the resource In this eighth lecture on "The Men Who've Walked with God," Thurman illustrates the mystical life of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_of_Assisi">St. Francis of Assisi</a>. Thurman describes St. Francis as an "uncomplicated mystic," not so much interested in metaphysics and theological problems. Rather, all that St. Francis knows is that there is a song in his heart which is an expression of the love of God. With the love of God, St. Francis is able to live from a place of harmony and satisfaction in God. Ultimately, we must be careful to not let our possessions and our social labels obstruct the music of God in the hearts of others and ourselves. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Rodell Jefferson III. Title A name given to the resource Men Who've Walked With God: St. Francis of Assisi, 1953 June 14 https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/a8a40ba20ee349e3af003a9faa27e2b9.pdf b05830ed66621a451518bc9b3f3d7c6a PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-576_A.mp3 Pitts Theology Library Emory University By jumping way ahead of ourselves in a sense, and dealing with a person of this contemporary, practically. And an American, and a woman, who has left her record in a single little book. Which in many ways is one of the most suggestive, and thoroughly, and simply illuminating volumes that I have ever read. The book is 27 years old, and the title of it is the Leaves from a Secret Journal by Jane Steger. One thing I forgot. Something I wanted to tell you about St. Francis last Sunday, and I didn't think of it until Wednesday. [LAUGHTER] May I just said it in passing. One of the most wonderful stories about him is that when he died and went to heaven he was so holy that as he moved through the gates, he took the gates off their hinges so that anybody who wishes now can walk in. I think that's a nice story. I'd like to begin our thinking together, about this very remarkable and very, very simple mystical spirit, by reading a few lines from one of the things. I sit in the center of myself and weave busy thoughts, like a black spider making her web. I am so intent on my own spinning, I can see nothing but the whirling of my own mind. If I could stop a moment and be still, I might take note of the gleaming dew drops God hangs all over the Gossamer of thought, his tremendous periods. I might see also the tapestry of other spiders lying in gauzy freshness everywhere on the grass of imagination. If I could get straight away from the center of my own leaving and kneel down, I might indeed perceive God himself. But the little shuttles of thought fly so fast so fast I am deafened by them were entangled in my own web, and choked by the limitations of self. Beautiful. That is, I think so. I do not know any details of this remark concerning this remarkable person, except as revealed by the references which she makes to her own situation in the pages of her journal. It is clear first, that she is an American woman. The second, that from early years, maybe 18, 17, 18, she became increasingly ill. So that little by little, all of the normal activities of her life were cut off. And after many experiences, she discovered that what she had lost in her excursions and her lack of excursions into the outer world, freedom of movement and so forth, she began to find balance by the kinds of excursions which she more and more, was able to take by exploring the landscape within herself. She kept a journal. About eight years after her illness, she became acquainted with the mystics, and began studying them very carefully. And perhaps, she was more deeply influenced by Evelyn Underhill than by any other person or book, [? say of ?] her excursions into the New Testament, and the impact of the life of Jesus upon her. 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Now that is as much as the book reveals, about who she was, and about the statistics of her life. Now I'd like to have you explore her mind and spirit for a little. You will bear in mind the basic thesis upon which we are working during this series, that there is a spirit that is creator and creative, of which the external world is a manifestation. Pitts Theology Library Emory University That the manifestation of the creative spirit of the creator seems best exemplified in the things that we recognize as conscious things. Things that are from within. A rather narrow compass, things that are living things, like trees, and cats, and dogs, and people. That there is in man, and some even say, in all living things, that which is not an expression of the creator. But that which is the creator himself. That there is, to borrow a phrase, from one about whom we should be thinking in two weeks, there is in every living thing, an uncreated element. A core that is-- that is not becoming. That is not on the make. That is not potential. But what is. And this isness is God, say these mystics. And if I want to find him, then I need not of necessity, go yonder. But all I need do is turn within that he is in me already. And that the discipline is of the spirit have as their fundamental purpose, the widening of the area of the domination of the God that is within us. Caught in that concept, these mystics deal with various aspects of human experience-- life, death, suffering, faith-- all of the various things in which we are involved. Now with that broad and rather sketchy, but basic outline of the position of these mystics with whom we have been dealing over the past weeks, let us look at Jane Steger. She begins with a very simple feeling really that all of creation is alive. That just behind the tree is what she calls the spirit of the tree. She's all right. There's nothing wrong with her. And she's not a pantheist, either. But really not concern ourselves with these learned phrases about it. And she feels that the living thing in her, the something in her, is not unlike the living thing that's in the trees, and the flowers, and so forth. And if she, and the times, when she tries to relate, to let these two things, which are the same thing, get together. That she goes out, for instance, she looks at a tree, and does whatever her sort of mind and spirit does with reference to the tree. And she has moments when she's sure that she can hear the tree growing. Not in the sense that they do in Iowa about the corn. [LAUGHTER] When I was in Iowa, at midnight, a friend of mine took me way outside of Iowa City and, we parked by a big corn field. And he said, now you listen very carefully, and if you do, it's so hot, you can hear the corn growing. But we didn't. We simply heard crickets. But she what she's saying is that if she can feel the light in another living thing, it deepens the life-- spelled with a capital L-- in her. Now I've seen people do it in various ways. I've seen 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu people who have flowers, and I remember visiting a home once. And this lady was taking care of the flowers, and she said, you know, I water my flowers. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And I give them some of these synthetic things. But that is the thing that makes my flowers grow, I love my flowers. I brood over my flowers, and I give them something that responds. Something in the flower responds to something in me. And when that happens, then they have to grow. Doesn't that sound stupid? No, I don't think so. But anyway, that's the way she goes at it. Now she applies the same thing to human beings, you see. She talks about the winks of beauty that she sees in various kinds of human beings. That there's something in them is trying to break through to announce itself to the whole world. But the human being is so burdened by fears, so burdened by hate sometimes, so burdened by pain, by miseries, by frustrations, by internal disorders, and churnings, that this thing is blocked. This something, this God is blocked. It can't get food to express itself. And she says, sometimes, when it does get through, illumination takes place. She has a great chapter on light, and how when something in the individual permits him to relax his anxieties and his fears, and he seeks to attune himself with the God that is in him. That his countenance becomes the lumen. And it's a light, she says, that one feels rather than a light that one sees. It's a very interesting thing. Now a second aspect of her insight is that for a long time, she said, every day was a monotonous sort of routine thing. And there's no highlights. And then as she began her meditations and her prayers, one of the things that occurred how was it that she just was not expecting anything. So she said that life is surrounded by so many little expression of wholeness, of winged messengers. But we don't see them. And as I was sitting here reflecting on all of this a few minutes ago, my eyes fell on something right here. Now it is to Mr. And Mrs. W. [? Warneky, ?] September 25, 1932. Now I have been sitting here nearly five years, and this is the first time I've seen it. Looking straight, because I can't see anything but this. But I see it every Sunday, and I haven't seen it. And when I saw it, then my mind began moving over all the things that must've been at work. Who are these people. What kind of contribution they must have made to the Evangelical and Reformed Church, which was here, that would cause people in the congregation to wish to identify their spirit with the place from which the book would be read Sunday after Sunday. And a good feeling that I was a part of the human race, that could feel such things and do such things simply swept all over me. Now that's what she's talking about. I didn't know I'd have so perfect an experience of it, my own life sitting right before you. But she's saying that once I am on the look, once I am open, once I become increasingly aware of these overtones, then every day is full of them in the most unexpected places. About five months ago, at the close of the morning service, a man who was seated down front came up, and he said, I want to tell you a miracle that I saw just now. He said, when the 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu congregation stood, and we began singing the causing hymn, I found myself looking at the flowers. And before my eyes, I saw a bud burst out into flower. Pitts Theology Library Emory University He was just sitting there looking. That was all. When we were surrounded by it. As Alfred Noyes suggests about Tycho Brahe, there is magic all around us. In the rocks, in the trees, in the minds of men. Deep hidden springs of magic. And he who strikes the rock [INAUDIBLE] may find them where he will. We are surrounded by it. Now a third thing out of her life. It is very important that she began praying, and exploring the inner depths of her own spirit, and getting these glimpses of God, and these deep insights with reference to him, she was frightened. And she was frightened because she said, I can't follow up on that. I dare not surrender my life to God. I dare not give myself over to the moving spirit, that more and more is being disclosed within me. Because, said she, if I do, God will require of me something that is so unusual, and so dramatic, that I don't think I can do it. I'm afraid to do it. Suppose he asked me-- she's very shy-- suppose he asked me to stand on the street corner and preach. Suppose he asked me to-- she gives one illustration there of the Salvation Army ladies, who at Christmas time, ring the bell over the pots. She said, I would just be horrified that it is my kind of shyness and embarrassment to stand there and do that. Suppose God asked me to do something like that, and then and then I would have to go back on my word. But indeed, I could not go back on my word. And how terrible it would be to know that I had lied to God. But finally, she said, I overcame it. And to my amazement, God did not ask me to do anything like that. He just asked me to clean out my bureau drawers. [LAUGHTER] And to get a lot of little things in order. And to do certain simple things with reverence to my mother, with whom I was living. All these little ways, God. And then she said, I remembered how for so long a time, I had held back from him, because I was afraid that if I did not, he would make me do something that would stretch me become completely out of shape. Then there's third, a fourth thing. She has some interesting insight about human suffering. It's a rather fanciful thing. Rather almost winsome. She writes in her journal some of her feelings on the doctor told her that the possibilities are that she would get increasingly worse rather than better, and she dealt with that in her own mind and 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu spirit. And she found that the thing that paralyzed her most of all was not suffering itself, it was the fear of suffering. And that she had to overcome that. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And she spent many hours in prayer, meditation, seeking to get a perspective on her condition. And interesting-- nowhere in any of the pages is anything about getting her condition changed. Yet getting the facts shifted. But getting a perspective on it, which is very interesting. And she says, in my imagination, I think that the human beings are to God as the fingers are to the hand. And she said, some of the fingers are the fingers through which God creates, God suffers. And the people who come to Earth, perhaps she says, they may ask before they're born that they may volunteer to be God's fingers of suffering. It sounds far fetched perhaps, doesn't it? But that's a great concept. And Deutero-Isaiah, you remember? The concept of the suffering servant, that all of the vast amount of human beings across all of the pages of history, only Israel, says Deutero-Isaiah, was chosen by Yahweh to reveal to life and to all the ages of man, the insights that can only come from the broken heart, and the crushed spirit. Finger. The finger of God's suffering. For she feels that a very simple way that if God could not suffer, then there could be no consciousness, either of God. There would be no consciousness of God in us. It's a rather interesting thing, but the basic insight is [INAUDIBLE]. That it takes suffering-- this is this is the insight. It takes suffering out of the category of the negative. It takes suffering out of the category of mere retribution. It takes suffering out of the category of mere divine vengeance or divine retaliation. But it places suffering at any point in the experience that gives to the experiencer of the suffering. The possibility of distilling out of it, something that he could get in no other way. It's an interesting thing. And then she is not by herself in what she does with the suffering. Now one other thing. She borrows a phrase from William Blake. A phrase which is this. The death of the divine image. And this is what she says about it, bear in mind about the whole idea of the consciousness of God expressed in all of these manifold ways. Every time I do a good, wholesome, spontaneous act of response to human need in self giving-every time I do that-- a part of the divine image is sacrificed in the act. That when I share my life, outgoing to meet the needs of someone else, I participate at that point in the death of the divine image. That is, the sacrifice of the divine image, and the act by which the need and another person is redeemed. Now she said a phrase of her own. She matches. With this, she borrows from Blake. She says, I participate in the birth of the divine image when I am able to make to God in a whole offering of my life. Whether it is my opinion, my joy. Whether it is my dreams, my hopes, my anxieties, my fears. Whatever it is that I am able to offer completely to God, in that offering, I participate in the birth of the divine image in me. Now to pull it together. She feels that the line that separates the two worlds is a very thin line. 5 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu That there is just a door between. That the door is in the heart of man. That we find ourselves going through that door and then coming back on this side sounds-- I won't that. It sounds a certain way. But there's something very profound. Pitts Theology Library Emory University That we are like the blind puppy-- [INAUDIBLE], I wish I had time to read it to you. The puppy is blind when he's born. And then he needs to sniff all the time. Just sniffs everything. And he has no idea at all, but what that is all. That for the rest of his life, he will have to be guided by his nose exclusively. And then one day, his eyes open, and he sees all the world that he didn't dream of as existing when he was in the blind sniffing age. Now she says that that's where we are. Then we are the blind puppy. We are using our minds, that it's equivalent to the way the puppy used his nose. And we feel that everything that is anything can be grasped by our minds. That if it doesn't make sense of the mind, then it has no sense at all. We are in the blind puppy stage-- [SNIFFING]-doing that all of players with our little intellects. But she says there will come a time when our eyes will open. As indeed, she said, in everybody's experience there are moments when the eye does open. And many things that I cannot grasp with my mind disclose themselves to me in a quality of assurance, and conviction that is far more important than all the logic that I can muster. It is like the experience of Tolstoy standing in the public square. And he sees the man beheaded. And as the man's head falls in the empty wicker basket on the other side, Tolstoy says, at a level in me deeper than thought, deeper than logic, deeper than my culture, deeper than my religious conviction, I knew that this thing was wrong. And it happens to us. And when that happens to you-Even though all the world is on the other side. 6 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Men Who've Walked with God (1953) Description An account of the resource In this series, Thurman explores the dynamics of mysticism through the lives of notable figures throughout history. The mystic's insight is that God is the creator of all of life, and indeed dwells in the human spirit as the deepest thing within a human being, which is always reaching out to touch the deepest in others. Throughout this sermon series, Thurman illustrates the ethical implications of this insight, as well as the discipline necessary to live out mystical religion. Ultimately, "Men Who've Walked With God," examines the ways in which a mystic relates to themselves and the world. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Rodell Jefferson III. AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-576_A.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Fellowship Church, San Francisco, California Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Internal Notes Notes for project team Edited - GL 6/10 I think title is "Jane Steger" not "Janis Tegar" - RJ 1/9/22 Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1950s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Men Who've Walked: Janis Tegar; Fra Angelico (Fellowship Church or Marsh Chapel), 1953 Jun 21, 28 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-576_A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1953-06-21 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13627798.925371 4550756.1096806)) Description An account of the resource In this ninth lecture on "The Men Who've Walked with God," Thurman explores insights from Jane Steger's <a href="https://archive.org/details/leavesfromsecret0000steg"><em>Leaves From a Secret Journal</em></a>. Jane Steger suffered from illness at a young age and, in her illness, became familiar with the mystics. In Steger's journal, we find that she felt creation itself was alive with the Spirit of God, and that our very lives participate in the divine image. Drawing from Steger's writing, Thurman concludes that the door separating us from the divine is very thin, and that this door is in the human heart. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Rodell Jefferson III. Title A name given to the resource Men Who've Walked With God: Jane Steger, 1953 June 21 https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/a25a9ad1b46c30b3f19889adb690f48b.pdf 1f731169536b7da0dc0bc09cb7dedbe5 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-577_A.mp3 Pitts Theology Library Emory University A little boy hemmed in by petty thoughts and petty things intent on toys and trifles all my years. Pleased by life's gods, pained by its pricks and stings, swayed by ignoble hopes, 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 gold which all nature attends. Such is my safest 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, despite that life profound, whose darkness is God's light. This is a continuation of our series, men who walked with God. [INAUDIBLE]. Concerning whom it was said from him, God hid nothing. Eckhart dramatizes in my own thinking at any rate, one of the interesting and significant paradoxes that we find in studying the history of mystical thought, certainly as far as Western culture and Western civilization are concerned. For some of the most profoundly influential mystics, those who seemingly have plumbed depths which leave the rest of us high on the shore, were nurtured in the bosom of Roman Catholicism. In the bosom of a church that is carefully structured. A choice that is in some rather significant ways, authoritarian. A church which has its categories, fairly well and fairly accurately defined. And yet within the bosom of I do not speak reverently or whatever the other word is now. But about a church that is fundamentally authoritarian. As any institution would be that had a monopoly for 1,000 years. I mean, that is not a criticism of Roman Catholicism. It's simply a fact, and so should the evolution of which it has taken good advantage. But there it is in some ways, a rigid system a church that is officially the dispenser of the medicine of salvation. And the medicine of salvation expressing itself was spelled out in terms of the seven sacraments. And yet within that framework, there has grown up through the year, natured in its very bosom, to mix the metaphor, these daring spirits, the logic of whose insight is to transcend. And ultimately, negate any institution that undertakes to introduce the human soul to its God. It's an amazing thing. But they almost called Eckhart. How you got by, I don't quite know, but they didn't put some of his things on the index until after he was dead. But he had narrow skirmishes. And I think he had these narrow skirmishes because he was a man with a highly developed mind and a disciplined spirit, who spoke in a language 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu that communicated itself to the masses of the people. I think that is really the reason why he had so much trouble. He was thoroughly trained, thoroughly disciplined. But he brings not out of his mind, but out of his heart. And heart responded to heart in a way that was independent of sacrament, independent of institution. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And when you read Eckhart's sermons today, you wonder what kind of people what does lay people back in the 13th century. Because when you read his sermons, it's very difficult to understand what on earth he's talking about, unless you get inside, and look out. And we don't read that way. We read outside, and look outside. But at any rate, wherever Eckhart opened his mouth to preach, the little people crowded the place. What was he talking about. Let's examine the basis of his mysticism for a few minutes and see what instructions may there be for us. Eckhart stated that the ground of all existence was what he called the God head. Don't trouble yourself too much about the term. Just feel along. The Godhead. The Godhead in Eckhart's language is that which is the ground of all manifestations of life. It is without classification, without differentiation, without division. It sustains supports, all manifestations. But it itself is a continuum in which there is no movement. It cannot be named, for if you name it, you limit it. It's the nameless nothing, he says. It's a nice way. The unnatured nature. Another phrase he uses. Or desperately trying to say that you can't say it. You see, he does it creatively. That's a Godhead. When the Godhead manifests itself, when the Godhead becomes any dimension, self-conscious, then God is born. If you had a spring-- the best way I can describe this to you-- here is a spring. We will call the spring the godhead. Now if when any of the love the spring spills over, that spilling, in Eckhart's thought, is God. You can see the spill. You can get through, you can deal with the spill. It separates itself somewhat from the spring itself. Now the son is the act. It's very complicated, perhaps, but not so much. The son is the act by which God becomes aware of himself. God looking back upon himself is the son. And the relationship between God as the spilling over the differentiation of the Godhead. And be the process by which this spilling over takes on the form of consciousness. And wherever there is consciousness, there is subject and object. And this whole creative relationship between subject and object into which the Godhead breaks and differentiation is the Holy Spirit. But we need not bother too much with the theology of it. But that's the way his mind folds. The bottoming all thought, all movement, all nature, all activity, all existence, and all existences is this undifferentiated ground of being. Only he wouldn't say of being. That's a mistake, because the minute I see of being, I'm limited. And he wouldn't limit it, this ground, period. 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Now the creator of the world, the creator of man, the creator of all things, all existences, is not the Godhead . It is God the that which becomes differentiated. And in God's mind, you see the influence of Plotinus, and the influence of Plato, and the influence of some other people. And the thinking of Eckhart in the mind of God, the creator, who is the personal God, which is the spilling over of the Godhead in time and space. Pitts Theology Library Emory University That all creation, every object that we experience is but a manifestation of certain archetypes. To illustrate it as we did when we were talking about Plotinus weeks ago, that here is the your cat, Josephine, may die, and your neighbor's cat, Henry, may die, but cats don't die. Cats keep coming on. Individual men may die, but man doesn't die. Now what he's saying is that man as an archetype, as an idea exists in the mind of God, and keeps spilling out eternally. Therefore, the reality-- pushed, you see-- the reality is not in the particular . Manifestation but the reality is behind that. It is the eternal thing of which the particular that we experience as a manifestation. Well, so much for that part of it. Now The most significant part of his insight-- and you are you doing very well, you haven't just deserted me yet. The second part of it, which is perhaps a third, but from my point of view, the most important part of what he have to say about the soul. And I read a contemporary poem from the Book of Mystical Verse. In this, there is a division between the lower ourselves and the higher self. It's the division which I thought makes, and it makes it in a very striking matter-- the lower self is the self of the senses. It is the means by which we communicate in the world of senses and sense experience. It is the dimension of attachment. It is the area, the middle area from which we draw all of our collections of fears, and hopes, and dreams, aspirations, yearning. All of the wanting ambitions of the human spirit. Of the thing upon which we lay hold with abiding enthusiasm and cuts them saying, this is mine, and mine forever, and mine alone. All of the ways by which we give to ourselves the assurances that nullify the deep sense of isolation of the human spirit. That is the surface self, says Eckhart. Now there is another self. There is another division. Eckhart, of course, calls the second division- he even uses the word, the unconscious, but I dare not use that word. It's loaded. I won't do that, but Eckhart calls it the unconscious. It is also the ground which is identical with this ground that he calls the Godhead, you see. That there is in me-- and this is his great contribution-- there is in me the same ground that is the Godhead. That there is another self that he calls sometimes, the active reason. Which active reason, which other dimension of the self has a core. And that core is the created element. It is God. 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu It is the Godhead. It is the expression. Not the expression. It is-- how do I say this-- it's the isness of the Godhead itself. It is not broken down in any form. But it is the center of the core of my being. Which core is central to the active reason? Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now Eckhart says, when I want to find my true self, I do not chase up and down the highways of my senses, for they lead me consistently astray. But when I want to find my true self, I disentangle myself from-- the sentence says-- from this other region. And move straight to the core of me, which, says Eckhart, is where the Godhead is located. Therefore, he says, that in the soul of man, there is that which is uncreated, which has never been created, which is the Godhead itself. And the individual-- and he was almost a pantheiest here-- and the individual can retreat from the senses. Retreat until finally, he becomes one with this core, but not quite. Eckhart is not quite an oriental, you see, for he says that the souled man does not quite merge, become one, with the Godhead. Now, says Eckhart, the way by which this core, you see, this Godhead, which is the uncreated element at the very core-- the way by which the individual grows in spiritual awareness, the way by which the individual grows in spiritual stature, and in richness, is to do the things that will widen the area of the spread of this uncreated element, which is at the core of one's being, one's soul. And how do you do that? You do that, first of all, by working on detachment. And he comes back you see, to his wrestle with the senses. No man who is involved in attachments can free himself so as to give, to keep from blocking the spread of all of the Godhead, which is at the core of his soul and his life. So the only way by which you can precipitate this spread is by disentangling yourself from all of the things that commit the mind, and commit the spirit, and involve the heart. Now he sounds as if he is altogether negative, but he isn't. What he said-- he is full of surprises. He says that if a man is having the most profound kind of mystical experience as Saint Paul had when he was carried into the third heaven-- and there in the midst of that highly accentuated moment of divine awareness, he remembers that there some man around the corner who is hungry. He'd better leave his mystical experience and go and feed him. And then come back, because that's all right, isn't it? Another time-- one of the interesting adages about him, the stories about him-- he was walking through the streets with a lantern in the daytime, and then he finally found a man, who asked him, if he had a lantern in one hand, and a bucket of water in the other hand. And the man says, what are going to do with these things, [INAUDIBLE]. He said, well, with the water, I'm going to put hell out. And with the lantern, I'm going to burn heaven up, so that man will serve God because they love him, rather than because-- well, for the obvious reasons. 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu There was a very interesting and searching ethic that is derived from Eckhart. For you see, if it be true-- if it be true, as Eckhart presupposes, assumes, believes, and affirms, that there is central in every living person, a core, which has at its core, the eternally undifferentiated Godhead, then that means two things that are very important. Pitts Theology Library Emory University One, that I am never permitted to say of another human being, that he is anything that is a denial of the infinite [? voice ?] of his personality. Because his personality is the best gift in which he's carried this priceless ingredient. And I can never deal with another human being as if he's just another human being. He is carrying around with him this uncreated element [INAUDIBLE]. And therefore, in all of my primary intimate face to face or secondary contact with human beings, my greatest and most insistent responsibility is to seek to develop with him, the kind of relationships that will make it possible for core to salute core. For the core in me to salute the core in you with any attitude that I have that [? flops. ?] In a mood that I have that makes it difficult. Any involvements of my life, however holy they may be that block it-- these must be destroyed that the core in me may be able to salute the core in you. That is the business of man. And when he does it-- when he does it, he becomes in that moment a manifestation of the Godhead. He spills over. And Eckhart even goes so far at one time to say that such a human being becomes God-- but he took it back when they put too much pressure on him. But you see the logic of it. That if the Godhead becomes God when it spills over in time and space-- therefore, when the Godhead which is at the core of me spills over in my time space relationships, at least I can say that where ever such a person is there, the kingdom of God is at hand. At least we can say that much. Now sin for Eckhart is not so much how people behave. He doesn't ignore it, don't misunderstand it. But sin in Eckhart is self will. It is when the will deliberately blocks the light, the manifestation of this uncreated core in a personality. Now this means that there is within the power of the individual with his mind, to cover over this uncreated element. But it is not within the power of any individual to destroy this. This is very important. And you can see the revolutionary character of the doctrine about which he insists, because if we say that it is not within the power of the individual, whatever may be the nature of his behavior-- to destroy, to nullify, to wipe out this uncreated element, then the logic of that is that no man under any circumstance, can ultimately be cut off from God. And you can see what the doctrine like that would do. Not to Catholicism merely of the 13th, the 14th centuries, but what it would do to contemporary Protestantism and Catholicism. That there is nothing that the individual can do that can [AUDIO OUT] of God. 5 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Men Who've Walked with God (1953) Description An account of the resource In this series, Thurman explores the dynamics of mysticism through the lives of notable figures throughout history. The mystic's insight is that God is the creator of all of life, and indeed dwells in the human spirit as the deepest thing within a human being, which is always reaching out to touch the deepest in others. Throughout this sermon series, Thurman illustrates the ethical implications of this insight, as well as the discipline necessary to live out mystical religion. Ultimately, "Men Who've Walked With God," examines the ways in which a mystic relates to themselves and the world. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Rodell Jefferson III. AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-577_A.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Fellowship Church, San Francisco, California Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Internal Notes Notes for project team Edited - GL 6/10 Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1950s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Men Who've Walked: Meester Eckhart; Jacob Boehmen (Fellowship Church or Marsh Chapel), 1953 Jul 5, 12 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-577_A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1953-07-05 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13627798.925371 4550756.1096806)) Description An account of the resource In the 11th sermon from the series "The Men Who've Walked With God," Thurman explains the complex theology of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meister_Eckhart">Meister Eckhart</a>. Eckhart believes that there is the Godhead, the ground of all things. This Godhead element is a part of a person's soul, and is always yearning to spill over. For Thurman, spiritual discipline is about giving more of one's life to this core. With Eckhart's Godhead insight, we can no longer deny the infinite worth of any human being; furthermore, our responsibility is to honor the Godhead in others above all else so that we may connect with one another core to core. Thurman says that when this takes place, the kingdom of God is manifested. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Rodell Jefferson III. Title A name given to the resource Men Who've Walked With God: Meister Eckhart, 1953 July 5 https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/d1c318c53e4038af3c3b3629d3581bb2.pdf 8612cf1d08be7ef208c823fd89fbc870 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-572_B.mp3 Pitts Theology Library Emory University To remind you that one of the simple guides that I've had all my life, particularly since I have been preaching, is this-- I assume always that in any audience of any kind before which I'm speaking, that there is at least one person in the audience who knows more about what I'm talking about than I do. And it has been a wonderful thing-- that is, it has saved me much-- and that keeps me, in the presence of authentic authorities, from being self-conscious. The fundamental proposition on which we are working during these days is this-- that the mystic affirms that God is the creator of life totally and that every living thing is a manifestation of that creativity. And deep within the structure of every living thing is a core of reality, which is, in essence, one with that out of which all of life comes. And as far as human life is concerned, the mystic says, in the language that is religious, that deep within the human spirit there is God-- not a manifestation of God, but that which is God. And therefore, he who seeks God may find Him within-- that there is a door that no man can shut, and that door is deep within the human spirit. And therefore, in the last analysis, all intermediaries, all things which lead men to God are not ultimately required in order that man may find God. And that is why the mystic is always logically opposed to institutions. He's even opposed to the book itself. He needs no intermediary. He needs no symbol because the thing itself is in his heart, and it is closer than breathing. It is nearer than hands and feet. And yet, it's rather interesting, isn't it, that in the Christian religion, the greatest movement of mysticism has come out of the Roman Catholic Church. It is a paradox. But we shall deal with that when we come to it. And we are not to it this morning. In the period between 1000 BC and 100 or 200 AD, every single creative, spiritual, ethical, and philosophic movement in human history emerged and became articulate. It's an amazing thing. In the period between 1000 BC and 1 or 2 AD, right there in that, all the prophets of Israel, the great upward surge of the creative spirit of God in Hinduism and in Buddhism, the movement of mysticism and ethics in China, all of this searching, wrestling of the Greek philosophers, Jesus of Nazareth and Paul of Tarsus fall in that period. The implications of that are very far reaching, but you work them out. It is a small wonder, then, that we find Laozi appearing in the 7th century BC. He's in that period. The great insight which this man had may be summarized in simple words. He affirmed Dao as the creator of life and the ground, of all being as one who existed before existence, who is without name because he is without category. But inasmuch as all of the thinking of the mind has to be done in terms that are special in order to talk about it, we must reduce it to some form that is symbolic, even the word itself. Now the insight is rather interesting because it dares to go behind all expressions of life in any form. It is behind the act of creation. It is before any contrasts like good and evil, like male and female, right, wrong, light, dark, before any differentiation took place. 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu It is a movement like the movement of absolute motion. It is dynamic without action. It is that out of which everything that is emerges. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now there's nothing new about that. There's nothing new. There's nothing particularly original except originality in its truest sense. And what is that? That any time an insight becomes my own, then something happens that has never happened in human history before. The insight becomes mine. And if it's never been mine before, then that's new. That's creative. That's original. Now I'm not surprised that this notion-- it's more than it now-- this feeling after, the mood of the before beginnings is a part of a heritage of the whole human family because in all of the religions, whatever kind, there is this feeling, this grouping after the reproduction of wholeness, of totality, of completeness. The Garden of Eden-- complete whole. No contrasts, no contradictions, not even the intimations of paradox. All of the harassment of the mind that keeps gripping us towards dreams of utopias, of golden ages, of heavens, it seems to be-- all of that stirring seems to be the echo of a previous movement somewhere in the background of human history-- even my private need for wholeness. I'm always trying to become integrated. I'm always trying to find myself and then become myself-- to be what I am, to do what I see so that the profound conflicts that tear my spirit asunder can be resolved. And I will be a whole person. Why do I want that? Why is it a necessity for me? And why do I seek it always? Is it because my spirit is haunted by a movement in which I participated before I became a house divided against itself? I wonder. At any rate, the first insight of Dao is that here is this ground, this wholeness out of which all separateness came. Now how does this spirit manifest itself? It manifests itself in a certain quality. And there's a name for that quality. The Dao in action is the way this quality is defined, this Te. And wherever there is life manifesting itself, there the Dao is in action. And if I seek to find the Dao, I may find the Dao not only in my sense, but I may find it in all manifestations by which my life is surrounded. Therefore, there must be some method by which I may do this, some technique. And what is the technique? They have a technical name for it. The name escapes my mind at the moment. But it is the way. And what is that way? How do you walk in that way? What is the technique by which the individual in whom Dao is, who is surrounded by manifestations of life in which Dao is-- how does the individual become conscious of the Dao-ness that is within him and the Dao-ness that is in these manifestations? What's the method? Renunciation-- how familiar-- renunciation, detachment-- you'll hear these for the next 10 weeks. You'll just hear over and over again, these two words-- detachment, withdraw, the reduction of 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu fever. Some interpreters say that it is non-action, but that is not the way it is said. For when we use the term "non-action," we think of a certain kind of quietism, a certain kind of passivity. But what he's getting at is that there begins to dawn upon the individual, the seeker, the awareness that what he is seeking, really, by all of his feverish activity, is not to be found in the activities themselves. It is the discovery that you can't make a quantitative impression on infinity. Pitts Theology Library Emory University You can't-- well, it's-- no, you don't understand. But that values are not to be found by the multiplication of function-- you can't give yourself over to busyness, busyness, and find this because you're so concentrated with tensions, lest you miss the thing that you seek-- that it is before your very eyes, and you can't see it. Doing, action, functioning, management, participation-- here, there, everywhere-- being constantly overwhelmed by the mass attack of the tyranny of detail-- that in the midst of all of this, the individual has a sense of being lost and confused because he doesn't have a chance to distill out of some fragment of his experience the Dao that is there because he can't wait long enough. He grabs it here. And then he squeezes it hard. And if it doesn't come right out, he has to run over here to get it and over here and over here, over here. But all the time what he is looking for he has. And doesn't know it. Now when I become aware that I have it, I stop looking and start being. And that's what he's saying. And now one more little word about it. It doesn't mean that there is a withdrawal from participation in life, but it means finding where your center is and sticking with it. And that is discipline because we are so pulled apart in directions that are themselves so inviting-- that for many of us, to apply this to our own period and our own moment in human history-- for many of us, we have never taken the time to find out where our center is and what it is. Have you? How many of us have ever stopped to find out where our center is, what our point of focus is? What are you really trying to do? What is the meaning of all of the activities in which you are engaged? What are you after? If you are able, this moment by magic, to have the deepest longings of your spirit fulfilled, what would they be? Do you know? Do you know? When that time comes, as it must come to us all, when one by one, our duties end, one by one, our lights go out, when we withdraw from all of the variety of our participations and the functioning and in the activities of our living, what will we have left that will be for us the distilled essence of the totality of our endeavoring as human beings? What about it? Or are you so busy, so involved, so frantic, so full of fear, so panicky that you can't hear the pulse of the Dao in you? When I was in Divinity School-- I'm through now-- when I was in Divinity School, I had a group of adults that met across town at half past 10:00 on Tuesday nights. We would meet from half past 10:00 until 12:00, 12:30, sometimes 1 o'clock. 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu And then I would walk the length of Main Street in Rochester, New York, all the way out to the seminary. And one night as I walked along, I kept hearing a noise like flowing water. And I had been wrestling with a little cold, and I'd taken out a quinine by the doctor's orders in that far off time. And I thought it was a rumbling in my ears. Pitts Theology Library Emory University So I said to one of my profs the next day that I had a strange experience at 2 o'clock in the morning walking down Main Street. And he said, oh, it wasn't the rumbling in your ear at all. He said Main Street is built over a canal that connects the Genesee River, some river with something else. And all during the day, there's so much traffic on it-- streetcars, automobiles, blowing of the horns-- that you can't hear this canal flowing. But at night, late at night, when there's no traffic, then there comes rumbling up out of the bowels of Main Street. This movement, the sound-- it's there all the time. That's the Dao. So much noise in us, so much movement that we can't hear the movement of the Dao. And we cannot let it spill over into us at various levels of our awareness and our division-- that it might bring to all of that which is divided a wholeness; to that which is tempest-tossed, a calmness; to that which is despairing, hope. Whether it be Dao or whether it be the demiurge, whether it be the eternal fire, whether it be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; or whether it be the father of Jesus Christ, all the mystics are saying the same thing-- Thou hast made us for Thyself. And our souls are restless till they find their rest and be. That's the message. 4 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Men Who've Walked with God (1953) Description An account of the resource In this series, Thurman explores the dynamics of mysticism through the lives of notable figures throughout history. The mystic's insight is that God is the creator of all of life, and indeed dwells in the human spirit as the deepest thing within a human being, which is always reaching out to touch the deepest in others. Throughout this sermon series, Thurman illustrates the ethical implications of this insight, as well as the discipline necessary to live out mystical religion. Ultimately, "Men Who've Walked With God," examines the ways in which a mystic relates to themselves and the world. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Rodell Jefferson III. AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-572_B.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Fellowship Church, San Francisco, California Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1950s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Men Who've Walked: God, part 1 and 2 (Fellowship Church or Marsh Chapel), 1953 Apr 12, 19, Side B Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-572_B Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Title A name given to the resource Men Who've Walked With God, Part 2, 1953 April 19 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13627798.925371 4550756.1096806)) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1953-04-19 Description An account of the resource In this second lecture on "The Men Who've Walked with God," Thurman summarizes his teachings on mysticism and supplements it with a conversation on Laozi and the Dao. Laozi affirmed the Dao to be the creator of life that has no name or category. The Dao manifests itself in all of life. Thurman explains that experiencing the Dao requires detachment – not withdrawal from life, but rather finding the center of your being, a discipline we rarely make time for. Thurman says that we must parse through the noise of our lives to hear the God who lives at our center. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Rodell Jefferson III. https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/b210a92426a88f40996d25ee615f5bf6.pdf a773e37f3709a6b10d904e5e2144a517 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-573_A.mp3 Pitts Theology Library Emory University We're continuing our series on men who walked with God by thinking this morning about certain of the important insights, mystical insights, that are to be found in Brahmanic-- Brahmanic-mysticism in an aspect of Hindu faith. It is very important, it seems to me, that in our interest and effort to be in our thinking and in our awareness, world citizens, that we include in the concept itself things that are not merely political and sociological, but things which have to do with the profound level at which the genius of a people finds itself moving. I may say almost in passing that, at least from my point of view, it is hardly a reasonable hope that there should ever come a time in human history when there shall be one world, politically and socially, until men find out how they can be sustained by one faith. And by "one faith," I do not mean-- taking time away from the idea of it-- by "one faith" I do not mean one creed, one doctrine, one dogma, one church-- I don't mean that-- but one faith, one pulse beat that is so fontal, that is so basic to all of the movement of life that it is capable of feeding all the little heartbeats and recognized as such. It takes more than a political dream and more than a hunger of body to ground and sustain a neighborhood the size of a planet. Now you will pardon the digression, but I feel better. In our thinking together, then, about the Brahmanic mystic, let us bear in mind the fundamental point on which we are working, that the mystic assumes-- more than that, he affirms-- that all living existences are manifestations of the creator, the creative spirit. And therefore, there is within every living thing-- and particularly in the human spirit-- that which is identical with this creator. And he who seeks to find it may find it within himself, not exclusively there, but he may find it within himself. And the beyond is the within, as we shall discover when we are thinking together about Plotinus in a few weeks from now. Now the Brahmanic mystics were not unlike these about whom we have been thinking. They felt that all living things had within them a soul, which soul was identical with the world soul. The language is slightly different, but the principle is the same-- and that one can make contact with this. One can become consciously aware of this indwelling soul, which is identical with the world soul-- not by the processes of reflective thinking, not by analysis, not by bringing the mind to bear upon some point of concentration, but by giving up, renouncing, and moving directly. How-- they aren't quite sure they're are able to tell you, but moving directly on the altar stairs what is called ecstasy. It is an ecstatic lifting of the spirit into a dimension in which all awareness of individuality, in some rather profound sense, is sloughed off. And the soul bathes itself in that which is itself and more. But that was for the priest, you see, the Brahmanic priests. And they found that they had responsibilities, that it was all right for them as a small group with this-- what shall I say-- with this particular insight, with this knowledge, really, through experience that there is this great world soul that is available to them, is in them, and they can have an encounter, an explosive encounter with it as soon as they detach themselves from their involvement. 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu That's all right if you have no responsibility, they discovered. But if you have responsibility, then what do you do? These men, these Brahmanic priests had two responsibilities. Pitts Theology Library Emory University One responsibility was to keep alive the institution. And they functioned in that regard on behalf of their social duties. They represented the religious leadership, and they did things on behalf of the perpetuation of the caste to which they were committed, which had nothing to do with this private thing. So they made concessions, in a sense, to the private privilege of moving ecstatically into the presence of God, delaying it in order that they might fulfill their duties to their fellows who themselves were not aware of the possibilities of life in the way that they, the Brahmins, were aware of it. Now the first duty, then, was to keep up the ceremonials. And the second duty was to perpetuate their class. If they didn't marry and have children, then they would disintegrate. So they made the second concession. So they worked it out in a rather interesting way. And you will see the bearing of all this on the point in a minute. They-- the first part of their lives is naturally spent as children. And then they married, and they became fathers and so forth. That was fulfilling that aspect of it. And then they supported their families and did all the things to go along with that kind of social responsibility. And then they retired. Having fulfilled their social responsibilities, they withdrew. And when they withdrew, they just gave up their affairs and lived in retirement as a kind of preparation for this fourth and final stage, which was to renounce everything and become wanderers and beggars until they had combed out of their spirits all of the urgences towards attachment and involvement. And then, the great moment, and they lifted themselves to this height and spent the last half of their lives in the fulfillment of their spiritual destiny. They did it quite mathematically. They divided the first half of their lives in their making the concessions to the social order. Then after having made these concessions and guaranteeing the perpetuation of the race and the perpetuation of the caste-- then having fulfilled those responsibilities, they renounced life and picked up the second half. Now there are two problems raised by this. What about the masses of people who can't do that, who can't solve the problem in that way? What happens to them? What about them? And that's always the problem of the religious priest. That's always the problem of the religious founder. That's always a problem of all of the individuals who become the embodiment of the religious concept. They win a certain insight and a certain depth as a result of the cycling series of struggles and triumphs and failures through which they pass until at last there is distilled in them an insight which becomes for them the answer of man to the call of God. And then all these people who watch that and want to participate but who don't have their wisdom, don't have their patience, don't have their courage, don't have their this or that or the 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu other-- what about them? Well, when these Brahmanic mystics faced that, they saw several things. Number one, that if their idea that the soul was identical with the world soul-- to use the phrase that is familiar to us-- then man, in his living in the world, was not really involved in any of the activities of the world. Pitts Theology Library Emory University The reality was behind the manifestation. Now follow this, please. Now if the reality is behind the manifestation, then that means that the manifestation itself has no meaning. If the real is the invisible, the real is behind, then what you see is a seeming, a shadow. And if what you see is a shadow, is seeming, a manifestation, then whatever is done by that shadow, that seeming, that manifestation has to be interpreted in terms of its unreality. So the truth is that the Brahmin felt that he was above good and above evil because he was involved in union with the world soul, with which union was the only reality. And anything else was an unreality. And the people said, that's all right, but we can't deal with that. We don't know what you're talking about. And that's what some of you are saying right now. Why would you take our time on Sunday morning to talk about something like this? So they began dealing with it. And how do they deal with it? They began emerging a doctrine and the doctrine of incarnation, reincarnation. And what does the doctrine of reincarnation say? It says that the world of experience, the world of thisness and thatness, is real. It is not the only reality, but it is a reality. And what happened in the manifestation, in the experience of living, has its effect on the soul that is in the individual who is living. And if behavior, if time-space involvements can affect the quality of the soul, then time-space involvements, in some sense, must be as real as the soul. Interesting, isn't it? Now if that be the case, the problem of getting rid of the effects of time-space involvements must, of necessity, be a problem that not only affects behavior, the body, but it must be something that affects the spirit, the soul, which is one in identity with the world soul. Now, you see, if you died-- says the thinking in this regard-- if you died and you went directly to become either one with the world soul or one in communion with the world soul and if that happened automatically, then that would say that nothing that you did in the world made any difference, you see? No, you don't. Let me say it again because this is so, so crucial and because it has bearing on what we as individuals think about the meaning of our own lives and about the ultimate destiny of our own lives, the kind of peace that we have made about living and dying, reaping and sowing, and whether or not there is such a thing, either in time or out of time, as judgment in which the human spirit has to stand on its feet and be counted. So it's crucial. That's why-- even though these people were wrestling with it in their way. Now let's go back. If you die and-- or when you die, if you go directly to become either one with the world soul or in perpetual communion with the world soul if that happens automatically, then that means that 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu what you do while you are living has made no difference. Do you see that it has made no impact because, automatically, when you die, this happens? Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now if that is the concept, then the religious experience cannot sustain any kind of moral or ethical enterprise. It delivers human behavior to amorality, to a kind of nihilism, a meaninglessness. There can be no purposes, no goals, no ends on behalf of which men are willing to live and suffer and die, if need be, in order that that to which they are committed will triumph. All of that is snatched out of life if it makes no difference. So then the myth-making tendency of the human spirit that is always so creative and redemptive came into fore. We have a myth, a very interesting one about the moon and how the moon is full. When the moon is full, it means that it's full of people who-- the people who've died are there. Then those who have the password can go on through to the area beyond. If you don't have the password, you come back in the form of rain. This is a nice way of dealing with the problem. What is the problem? Let's not lose sight of the issue. What is the problem? If it be true that living day by day makes no difference, then when I die, I go where I would have gone whether I have been a good man or bad man. It makes no difference. If there be a difference, then how does the universe deal with the difference? If in every human spirit, there is the eternal god-- that's the problem-- a problem we've have never solved, either, incidentally. But that's the problem. So, they said, reincarnation-- if you have the password, you can get through the moon, you see? If you don't have the password, you come back. That's the simple way of dealing with it. Now it is because of the necessity that every human spirit feels for the need of redemption from the cocking ache of living frustrations from moment to moment that knocks always at the door of religion, insisting that it open up and give relief so that life, if it cannot change, will at least be endurable. So that's what they tried to do with this doctrine. You keep coming back and coming back until-- what happens?-- until all of the stain and adulteration that has seeped into the spirit, growing out of the behavior and the experiences in time and space, which says, you see-- and it's tremendous-- which says, you see, that even at this period in the long journey of man's quest, there was emerging the insistence that the ultimate destiny of man is a good and whole and creative destiny. That is, that because there is in man that which is identical with the world soul, then man can not die. It's what he saying. So he comes. He must come back again and again and again and again and again and again until at last he learns the password and can say it and pass on beyond. But that is dealing with the problem, you see, in times that, in a sense, are other worldly. But what happens when you aren't dying, you see, you aren't dead? The solves it, you see. I know that when I die, I will, if I haven't learned this, then I'll have to learn it some time. Well, what happens in that interval? And there arose, in the movement of the 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu spirit of God in Hinduism, a group of people, two movements that undertook the answer to deal with this problem. Pitts Theology Library Emory University One was the Jainists and, the other, the Buddhists. I'd like to say just a word about the Jainists, and then I'm through. And they said, since this is the story of man-- now what is the story of man? Man has within himself a soul, which soul is identical with the world soul. If man dies, he may go directly to fulfill all of the demands of communion or absolvtion in the world soul-- or if- and that is true-- if living means nothing. But if living means something, if my deed is a deed, really, then what I do affects this world, the soul that is in me. And it loads it down with adulteration that has to be worked out. And it is worked out in a series of goings, goings away, and comings back. Now how do I behave before I take off? If living, now-- living-- has reality in it-- and see that's always a problem-- if living has reality in it, I must live on the basis of the doctrine that the Western world-- with which the Western world became familiar, in the words of Mahatma-- in the experience of Mahatma Gandhi, the doctrine of "ahimsa." Now just a word about the ethics there-- the doctrine of-- as it first appeared, the doctrine of no killing. And at first, you see, it seems as if you shouldn't kill because you-- because there is, in the thing you kill, the world soul. You see, that is what the Christian finally comes around to in his Christian ethic. I have respect for personality because there is in personality the living God. All the great religious belief that bottoms much of Western thought and culture is that, in the presence of God, the human spirit is of infinite worth. And therefore, when I look into the eyes of another man, I'm looking into the eyes of God. The statement know thyself is taken more mystically from the statement thou has seen thy brother, thy has seen thy God. That's way over there, but that is not these people have done. They aren't saying that I should not kill because there is in the living thing the world soul. They aren't saying that. They are saying I must not kill because I must not defile myself-- very different. If I kill, I will defile myself. And if I defile myself, then this quality that is unworthy begins to invade the aspect of me that is wasteful, and I become stained and contaminated and sordid and unclean. And if I become stained and contaminated and sordid and unclean, then I cannot go before His face and live. So I will not kill you, even though you take my life, because I cannot defile myself. Once that is embraced, once that is embraced, the door opens now for all levels of consideration which you have to do with compassion, lest all life be defiled. And out of that comes, finally, the great ethic of Buddhism. And out of that kind of thinking emerges-- and don't misunderstand what I said-- out of that kind of thinking, not of that moment in history, not out of that culture, but out of that kind of thinking, which doesn't know any culture or any background, has emerged the great ethical insight that has harassed the mind and tortured the spirit of man as he looked at himself where he was and at the heights where he was destined to go. And I am glad to recognize 5 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Pitts Theology Library Emory University these struggling, nameless Hindu followers of the light for the beams which their light casts across my pathway at my point in the darkness. 6 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Men Who've Walked with God (1953) Description An account of the resource In this series, Thurman explores the dynamics of mysticism through the lives of notable figures throughout history. The mystic's insight is that God is the creator of all of life, and indeed dwells in the human spirit as the deepest thing within a human being, which is always reaching out to touch the deepest in others. Throughout this sermon series, Thurman illustrates the ethical implications of this insight, as well as the discipline necessary to live out mystical religion. Ultimately, "Men Who've Walked With God," examines the ways in which a mystic relates to themselves and the world. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Rodell Jefferson III. AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-573_A.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Fellowship Church, San Francisco, California Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1950s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Men Who've Walked: Brahman Mystics; Buddha (Fellowship Church or Marsh Chapel), 1953 Apr 26, May 3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-573_A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1953-04-26 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13627798.925371 4550756.1096806)) Description An account of the resource In this third lecture on "The Men Who've Walked with God," Thurman examines mysticism through the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahman">Brahmanic mystics</a> and the development of Hinduism. The insight of the mystics was that one's soul was identical with the world-soul. However, this presented an issue. If dying means that one will merge back into the world-soul, does life have any meaning? Thurman explains how the Doctrine of Reincarnation was made to answer this. What we do in this world has an effect on our souls; living makes a difference. Out of this insight, the mystics crafted a respect for personality out of respect for the living God. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Rodell Jefferson III. Title A name given to the resource Men Who've Walked With God: Brahman Mystics, 1953 April 26 https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/3cfb0be076653e582e0ddfb03e13d9d5.pdf 8f7255de5f6521699676f624664a0aaf PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-574_A.mp3 Pitts Theology Library Emory University Short a way as I can. To continue our series by making a great leap ahead and thinking together with you about Plotinus. Some of you have very gently and deftly raised the question with me as to, why are we spending so much time talking about these people that nobody's ever heard about? And they don't have anything to do with what we are about. And I confess to you that I can understand out of what sort of frustration that expression arises, but as I have said to some of you personally, we are, all of us, concerned about trying to find somehow the clue to living so that as the years unfold for us living for us will be increasingly a meaningful and deeply satisfying experience. And it is the insight of men through the ages, which insight is effectively dramatized in certain of these individuals with whom we have to do, that, apart from man's active awareness of the presence of the living God in his life, he cannot expect to find either meaningful living or significant living. And it isn't as if human life or the individual's life took place in isolation and every man would have to go through all of the experiences through which men before him went. But there is something in human experience that seems to me-- for lack of a better term, that seems to me to be cumulative. There is a wisdom in the human spirit that is greater than the particular wisdom of the particular man, however wise, and intelligent, and profound he may be. There is a vitality that is greater than my vitality or your vitality. There is a strength greater than my strength or your strength, and that's-- that element, that dimension of life has been at work in the life of man through all these years. And it has built up a kind of a momentum, a kind of backlog. That's the word-backlog of experience, of knowledge, yes, and of wisdom, upon which any individual may draw, whether or not he understands the language, whether or not he is a part of the culture. It has nothing to do with anything that is literate, but it has everything to do with the-- I don't know how to put this. It has everything to do with the push of life in which all living things have shared, and wherever I touch life, I draw on that. And I may not be able to recognize it. I remember the first time I studied a little of Greek philosophy and ran into Socrates and Plato. And now and then certain things became clear in their words, and with a great sense of freedom and with no sense of modesty whatsoever I felt that, well, I've been thinking that way a long time. [LAUGHTER] I know what he's talking about, and I've never heard of Socrates, or Plato, or the Greeks, except the man who ran the restaurant downtown. That all that the human spirit has accumulated, all that has been breathed through it by the living breath of the living God is available to any man, anywhere, at any moment in any age-- whether he's rich or poor, ugly or beautiful, educated or illiterate, sophisticated or simple, it makes no difference. That's what these men are talking about. 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu That is why there are moments when you relate to what they are saying and feeling in ways that have nothing to do with the formal discursive parts of your mind while under stress. Well, all this is in Plotinus. Let's hit the Plotinus. Plotinus is just running. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Plotinus came into the world about the third century AD. He was the flowering of this wonderfully creative process that had been going on in human history that we think of now in terms of Greek philosophy. He was the mystic, the mystic of the spirit. He was a different kind of mystic than Plato. Plato was an intellectual mystic, but Plotinus was-- I wish I could have known him. All the little children liked him. They enjoyed talking to him. He related himself to them at the points of their understanding, and he became the custodian of a garden variety of nondescript children and brooded over them. And people sought him out to tell him their troubles. They felt, if they could talk to Plotinus, somehow, whatever the difficulty was, it just doesn't seem quite as difficult after talking with Plotinus as it did before. Apparently he loved people, and people loved him. And they responded to him, and he responded to them. That was Plotinus the man, walking through Greek life, spreading radiation, and beauty, and kindness. What a wonderful thing. But he had a secret, and it is about his secret that we want to talk for the remaining minutes. Plotinus felt, taught, thought that all of life, all creation was in God. Now, mark you, these other men up to this time-- and we'll see how they move subsequently-- were sure that God was in the world, you see? And that wherever you touched any form of matter somewhere wrapped up in it was spirit, but Plotinus says that all the world, all created things, all time space expressions-- all of these are in God-- that God surrounds, envelops, encloses matter, things, vicissitudes, change, shift, process. Now, the soul-- and it is important, I think, in getting the clue of his insight to his secret to deal primarily with his interpretation of the soul of man. The soul of man is bliss. Well, that's not the best way to put it. Let's see. Well, let me talk about it, and then I'll get the phrase. The soul of man-- when a man is born, a part of his soul is left in the divine sphere. Bear in mind, now, some of the other minds who dealt with this same problem. That when man is created, a part of his soul is left up here, and a part comes down and participates in creation, you see? Is for instance. But all of the soul of the individual is not in the individual's body. A part of it is left. Now, the part that is in the body, because it is in the body and is involved in all of the appetites, and so forth, and so on of the body, its awareness as a soul becomes dimmer and dimmer. It's like a new pair of shoes. First time you put them on, they are scuff free. They show no marks of everything from walking, but the longer you wear them, the less new they seem to be. He says that's it. The soul gets dim, and grows more dim, and more dim as it is removed in its awareness. And this may not have anything to do with time, bear in mind-- as it is removed from its awareness of its origin and the other part of it. 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Now, he says that, in order for the soul to become aware of itself, come to itself-- that's the phrase that Jesus uses-- when the soul, says Plotinus, comes to itself, then immediately it becomes aware of the part of itself that it left in what Plotinus calls the divine sphere. And a movement begins-- the two parts of the soul gravitating towards each other. Pitts Theology Library Emory University So it is in Plotinus that we get the double movement of the spirit, moving down this way and moving up this way. It finds its classical expression, finally, in Christianity, for Plotinus belonged to the school that influenced the church fathers. And Augustine bore heavily upon him, drew heavily upon him. By the time this concept, this moving down and moving up gets into the Christian movement, we get the seeking God-- the seeking God and the responding individual. We get the figure, for instance, of the shepherd, who seeks the last sheep and the bleating lost sheep crying for the shepherd, the double movement. We get it in Francis Thompson's "Hound of Heaven," seeking the relentless divine nemesis, tracking the human soul, stalking it. And yet at the same time, the movement of the humans soul, the pull towards something that is more than it now experiences, more than it now knows, more than it now understands-- and we've all felt that, haven't we? There is something in me that reaches for more than anything that I know. There is a hunger in me for some thing or for some what that all that I know, and have, and taste, and feel, and experience cannot quite satisfy. That's what Plotinus is talking about. It's not so far fetched after all, is it? Now, when the heart and the soul comes to itself and makes its contact-- you see, this movement-- and the soul gets together with itself, homecoming-- in that moment, the soul becomes aware of what Plotinus calls the universal soul, what Emerson called the over soul. He becomes aware of it, and in that awareness, a very interesting thing happens. In that awareness, the individual who experiences that begins to see that his soul, or that which is deepest in him, is the same as that which is deepest in the not him in somebody else. And a sense of unity begins to emerge, which unity is disclosed to the individual out of his discovery that what is deepest in him is a clue to what is deepest in his neighbor. But the soul isn't back yet, according to Plotinus. It's on its journey. Now, mark you, the soul is starting from where you and I are now, and we're moving up this way for the moment. Figuratively, I mean. When the soul becomes aware of the over soul, the world soul, which is the lung-- the divine lung of the stuff of life-- doing that. Now, when it becomes aware of that through contemplation, through detachment, through withdrawal from sense involvements, and slavery to appetite, and so forth-- it's the same lists all the time. Wherever you touch it, it's the same list. Same list. Whatever may be the character of the religion, it's the same list. Then the soul arrives through contemplation now of the divine. It arrives to a point that it identifies itself with the divine thought, no differentiation between what it is and what it is thinking. But as long as there is awareness of thought, there is self-consciousness. There is subject and predicate. And as long as there is self-consciousness, then there is mind, which is. 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu And mind, says Plotinus, the mind that we touch at the peak, the focal point of contemplation and meditation, where the mind seems to envelop its object and become one with it-- when that happens, says Plotinus, we move into the knowledge that the ground of the soul, the ground of all of the expressions of life is mind, is intelligence. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And as the soul looks back over the way over which it has come, it knows without knowing and senses without being aware that every expression of life is an utterance of an intelligence, and an aura, and a rationality. And then, says Plotinus, when I arrive at a place-- to use Kepler's phrase, jumping way ahead-- oh God, I thank Thee that I think thy thoughts after Thee. When I arrive at a place that I think God's thoughts after him-- I still am not quite there, because where God is ultimately must be beyond thought and beyond intelligence, because all thought, all intelligence has to do with differentiations, has to do with separateness, has to do with this as over against that. But when there is no this-ness and that-ness, no pro, no con, no tension, then all that we mean by thought disintegrates. So Plotinus has his chute-- his C-H-U-T-E. And it is the point at which they all come in one way or another. It is the final moment of complete ecstasy which seemed so meaningless to those who live in this century and in this period of human history. And it seems meaningless to us because we are a generation that has been schooled in the dishonoring of our feelings. The only points at which we are permitted to honor our feelings are moments that are private-- exclusively private and significantly intimate, or moments that are completely outlawed, like the alumni reunion, like the football game, like the race track. We do not honor our feelings. We are afraid of our feelings, and to be an intellectual, to be selfcontained, to be an integrated human being is, according to the way we feel in modern life-- is to be lopsided, because nobody thinks his way through the world. You don't think your way through the world, whatever you may think about what you think. No, you feel your way through the world. No man ever dies for an idea. He'll die for an ideal because that has dynamics in it, energistics. It has a fringe of surging vitality in it. You don't find that in the reality today of any syllogism, however sound it is. And that's what these men knew, so they recognized the fact that there was a time when I move beyond all of the reflective processes of my mind, when all of the intellectual aspects of my personality break down under the overwhelming impact of that which is beyond the mind, but envelops the mind. And everybody, at some moment in his life, in some tiny or dramatic aspect, has been visited, always temporarily, by a surging something that sweeps him beyond the furthest realm of human thought. And then it turns him loose, and he says, ah. Drops back into himself or herself. Now, what Plotinus is saying-- that the soul starts moving to make contact with the part of itself that it left behind. And that movement is symbolic of the movement of the spirit of God in the life of man. And then, on its way it becomes aware of itself, and becoming aware of itself, it becomes aware of a world soul, an over soul, which is in every one of us. And then on its journey, by further contemplation, by further meditation, by further prayer, it finally arrives at a point that it contemplates the divine thought, the divine idea, the divine 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu reflection, the divine utterance-- all these words they use. And then, meditating upon that, one arrives at a point that the thinker and the thought, the meditator and the meditation become one. One-- but an awareness of this oneness is present. And then God-- one comes into His presence finally, without benefit of ascent up any ladders of logic, but by what he calls the moment of the movement of the divine that creates the ecstasy in the heart. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And therefore, to him, there is a trinity-- God, the unutterable, who spills over into God, the mind, that becomes the ground of the soul and all other manifestations-- and then God the soul, whose unique revelation is in the human spirit. And this was a man who loved little children and was so simple in his relationships. 5 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Men Who've Walked with God (1953) Description An account of the resource In this series, Thurman explores the dynamics of mysticism through the lives of notable figures throughout history. The mystic's insight is that God is the creator of all of life, and indeed dwells in the human spirit as the deepest thing within a human being, which is always reaching out to touch the deepest in others. Throughout this sermon series, Thurman illustrates the ethical implications of this insight, as well as the discipline necessary to live out mystical religion. Ultimately, "Men Who've Walked With God," examines the ways in which a mystic relates to themselves and the world. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Rodell Jefferson III. AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-574_A.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Fellowship Church, San Francisco, California Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1950s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Men Who've Walked: Plotinus; St. Augustine (Fellowship Church or Marsh Chapel), 1953 May 10, 24 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-574_A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1953-05-10 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13627798.925371 4550756.1096806)) Description An account of the resource In this fifth lecture on "The Men Who've Walked with God," Thurman speaks on the Greek philosopher <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plotinus">Plotinus</a>. For Thurman, Plotinus's insight is the "double search" of mystical experience – the idea that as we seek out God, God also searches for us. Through this journey, one comes to share in the divine mind, or as Thurman says, "thinking God's thoughts after Him." However, Thurman is describing a thinking process, but rather an experience of ecstasy that expands beyond our sense of personality. This is the result of God spilling over into the mind and finally communing with the soul God has sought out. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Rodell Jefferson III. Title A name given to the resource Men Who've Walked With God: Plotinus, 1953 May 10 https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/d0b277d8584c6d99e54c44630b959577.pdf 23409f6944bab86ee95be8c6ab11d679 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-575_A.mp3 Pitts Theology Library Emory University According to the Christian, mystics began primarily with St. Augustine. But I want to reach back today and pick up one who is outside of the immediate Christian tradition. But it was a part of my plan to do him, but two weeks ago, it just didn't seem right. I want to deal with certain aspects of the mystical insight of Mahatma Gandhi. I have here, something that is very precious to me. And this nothing to do with Mr. Gandhi's mysticism, but I just want to see it. This is a piece of cloth that Mr. Gandhi-- that's made out of thread that Mr. Gandhi wore. And he gave it to me when we were in India in 1935. And I just thought you'd like to see it. You may recall that when we were talking about the Brahmanic mystics and Gautama Buddha-that considerable emphasis was placed upon the significance of the doctrine of ahimsa as it bore upon the relation between the inner life and the outer life. It was quite an art at the time that ahimsa deals, basically, with the attitude of the individual towards himself. It has to do with the purification of the individual's life. In its outgoing manifestation, it is non-resistant. It is passive. It is non-active, really. But not because of how the individual conceives of himself as being related to the other person, but rather, because the attitude that is ahimsa, the quality of life that is ahimsa, is one which purifies the individual. I will-- the true doctrine, the true genius of ahimsa, I would say-- I will not kill you because you are sacred or because you love your life. But it says that I will not kill you because if I kill you, I defame myself. Now, that's the essence of it, laid bare. The very anatomy of the doctrine of not killing, which is related, therefore-- you see-- to the whole mystical experience of purgation, of self-purification as a part of the discipline through which the individual passes from his attachments in life and in experience. Through detachment from the life and experience. To illumination and then union-that's the process. Now, we discovered how the Buddha gave a positive quality, a life-affirming quality to this life denying doctrine of ahimsa by injecting into the relationships, a quality of compassion and under certain quality of reverence, he lifted the metaphysical doctrine of our reverence for life to a category that was ethical in character so that I revere life. And because I revere life, I will be compassionate to all living things. Now, that is the background of Mr Gandhi. The story of his life is very well-known to most of-well, to all of us, I suppose. I need not take time to go into details concerning it. There are two or three things, however, that I want to point out. I ask him, and he will pardon me-- that part of it. Now, there is only one way to say that. And that's the way I'm saying it. 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu I ask him, when at last we had a chance to see him-- a chance that I thought we were going to miss, because each time a date was set for us to get together, he was sick. [LAUGHTER] Pitts Theology Library Emory University So two weeks before leaving India, in Bombay we were, early one morning I decided that I would have to do something about it. You wait for life to move, and then if life doesn't decide that it understands what you're talking about, then you try to give it some instructions. [LAUGHS] So I decided I would send him a telegram to find out whether we could go down to his place in [INAUDIBLE] to see him or do something, because two weeks and we would be coming back to America. And you'd come back to America without having a chance to see him. So when I walked out of the house at which we were living, I met a man at the gate who had on a Gandhi cap and so forth. And he looked at me. And we passed each other, sort of spoke. Well, I decided to speak, and he decided to speak. And then we both decided that we didn't know whether we should speak. It was that sort of moment, you know. But we finally got by each other. And then he turned around. And he said, are you, you? And I said, yes. [LAUGHTER] And then he said, I have a letter from Gandhi ji. And I said, that's interesting because I'm going to the post office now to send him a telegram. So I read the letter. And the letter said that he was down at a native state in Badoli and on his way back up to his ashram. He was not very well, traveling with his doctor. And he wondered whether we can interrupt our schedule at the university and come down to this place in Badoli to see him. And then his letter said an amazing thing. I'll never get over it if I live forever. He said, if your schedule is so busy and so crowded that you cannot take time to come down here to see me and if, at the end of your schedule, you must get your boat so there is no time there to come to see me, I will get on the train with my doctor and come to Bombay to see you. Think of it, the great Mahatma Gandhi. [LAUGHTER] I tell you, I'll never get over it. Well, of course, you can imagine what happened. We just cancelled the rest of everything and got down there. 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Three hours we sat, talking by the watch. And he had the watch-- a big, silver watch that he put out in front. He said we have only three hours. And there are many things that I want to know and we want to talk about. And we must do it by the clock, by the watch. Pitts Theology Library Emory University At the end, I wanted to know one or two things. And his [INAUDIBLE] wanted to know one or two things. And he agreed to answer us because all the time we had spent answering his questions about America and about American Negroes and about Africans and so forth. I wanted to know from him, why did his doctrine of ahimsa, with the things that he added to it-noncooperation and so forth-- why did that fail of its objective? Namely, to bring to the Indian people freedom. And he said to me that the doctrine failed because number one, it was a creative, ethical doctrine with a spiritual foundation. Now, follow his thinking, now. With a spiritual foundation-- and it would be effective only in the life that was so disciplined-- so disciplined-- that it, the life, could handle this ethical doctrine with its spiritual foundation. And he said the masses of Indians can't do that because, said he, they are lacking in vitality. And they are lacking in vitality for two reasons. The first reason is they're hungry. And then he talked statistics about the number of Indians who live and die and so forth without getting enough food to eat and on and on and on. And he said, so I had to withdraw from politics. I mean-- yes, from active politics-- and go into something else. I had to do something about this poverty. And during the long months-- six months-- during which the season is dry and farming is impossible, the villagers are idle and they starve. Now, if we could recapture the lost cottage industry by reintroducing the village and the cottage spinning wheel, then we could make a fundamental attack on this question of poverty. So the spinning wheel became the symbol, the vehicle, by which this man sought to attack the problem-- not of poverty as such, but to make it possible for the average Indian to deal creatively with the doctrine of ahimsa. That's the thing to remember. Don't forget that. Incidentally, of course, it meant an attack on poverty and so forth. Then, the second reason for their lack of self-respect was the presence of untouchability in Hinduism-- untouchability in Hinduism. And I expected him to say that they had lost their selfrespect because of the presence of the conqueror in their midst-- that this man is there and had done that for 200 or 300 years, and done this and this and this and this, this. No, he said none of that. But we have lost our self-respect because as Hindus, we practice untouchability. Tremendous. 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu So he began working at it. And the first thing he did as a caste Hindu was to adopt into his family, as a member of his family, a girl who was an Untouchable. And at the time he did that, the plight of the Untouchable was so terrible in South India that an Untouchable was not even permitted to cross a street on which was located a Hindu temple, because his shadow would contaminate. Pitts Theology Library Emory University At that moment, this man adopted, as a member of his family, one of these people. And he said to all the caste Hindus, this is what I mean by what I'm saying. And then the second thing he did was to change the name from Untouchables or Shudras [INAUDIBLE] depending on the part of the country to Harijans. And the word "Harijans" means "child of God." And with a wonderful, cherubic chuckle, he said, I felt that if I could make every caste Hindu call an outcast, every time he referred to him, a child of God, I would, in that act, create for the caste Hindu the kind of moral problem that could never be solved until he changed his attitude towards the Untouchables. Tremendous, isn't it? Let that soak in. It's tremendous. So he changed the name of his publication to Harijan. Now, what's back of all this? Here is a man. And this is how it relates to our series. Here is a man who is rooted in the basic mysticism of the Brahma, who inherits, as one of the ethical overtones of his Hindu past, the application of the doctrine of ahimsa to individuals and to relationships with individuals that extend beyond that of merely self-purification, which says, you see, that it is possible to achieve effective, worldly ends. Mark all the words, please. That it is possible to achieve effective, worldly ends by the use of methods, techniques that are, themselves, unworldly. Now, think about it. Don't hurry over that, even though the time is getting away. Let's think about it, that it is possible to achieve worldly ends-- worldly ends. The thisness and thatness ends. Pro-ing and con-ing ends. Conflicts, the contradictions of experience, all of the tensions by which the individual's life is twisted because the good that he sees, he is unable to achieve. And the good that he sees again and again, he does not want to achieve. That it is possible-- it is possible to deal with the materials that are inherent in the traffic of life-to deal with them effectively and creatively by the use of means and methods that are, themselves, derived from another kind of orientation. Now, that's what he's saying. So ahimsa, then, becomes a doctrine of ethics, which is life-affirming, even though ingenious the doctrine is life-denying. For it says, you see, as Gandhi very adequately expressed in manifest, that whatever may be the nature of the time-space involvements of the human spirit, they are 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu always rooted in a dimension of life that transcends time and space, that there is no such thing as an activity that is not rooted and grounded in a realm that transcends that activity. Pitts Theology Library Emory University That's what he's saying. And if it be true, then, that there is a quality that is spiritual, that undergirds the total operation of life's adventure, then he who is able to deal with the things on the surface of life from within the knowledge that he has of the doubts of life will be able to gather in the total sweep of his living a creative synthesis in which there is, at last, no conflict and no frustration. Now, that's what he's saying. You believe that? You believe that? I wonder. We believe it in little ways, don't we? We believe it in little ways. You have a problem in your own life and it merely has to do with your digestion. There's just some reason it isn't operating properly. And you think about various things. You say, well, something disagreed with me or I should have known better than to have eaten the cucumbers at 12 o'clock at night or something like that. But if it keeps happening, you keep fooling with it. You begin to dig back behind that, don't you? Maybe I'm worrying too much. Maybe I'm getting too tired. Maybe I'm-- and you go on. And little by little by little by little, you push, push, push, push back until, at last, that which is movement on the surface of your life is but manifestation of stirrings at the depth of your life. That's what he's talking about. Now, let's see the kind of thing that it made him do. And I'll be through it in two or three minutes, I hope. When one of his ascetic friends chided him because he was becoming involved more and more in thisness and thatness, more involved in conflict and life, instead of withdrawing into the foothills or some other place in the Himalayas, and there practicing his purgation. And there's just something to be said for that. We've talked about it once before, this deep insistence that keeps turning up in the human spirit, that somehow I must, at long last, withdraw. And in my withdrawing, I am able to bring to bear upon the total problems of existence, a total self that isn't scattered in this, and that, and the other. And perhaps if I can do that-- and men always rise up in our society and feel this way, and who are under great conviction, and who have a tremendous contribution to make to our disorder-- if they can sufficiently purgate themselves, and at last get the illumination and be bathed in the light of His presence so that there is no longer any awareness of darkness, and I do not know which is I and which is He. There are men who feel that if that can happen, then the world can be redeemed, and only that way. 5 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu So when such a man wrote to Mahatma Gandhi, chiding him because he was trying to clean up the world-- clean up India and doing a lot of other things-- why don't you withdraw to your cell? And Gandhi said, I carry my cell with me, working in human relations and politics, trying to clean up life around me. That is my purgation. That is my [INAUDIBLE]. Pitts Theology Library Emory University That was my discipline. I do not offer it for you, he said, but for me. Working in the traffic is the discipline. And if I, in the midst of the traffic of life, can walk with the independence of solitude, as Emerson says, then every struggling man caught by the agonizing pressures of his life from which there seems to be no relief can take hold. Because where he is in his trap, surrounded by the intimacy of his own agonies, there he can see God's face and be transformed. And that's why the masses of the Indian people found, in this strange, little man, the door to all their hopes. And it's easier to believe both in the love and the wisdom of God, because He left so great a witness and so humble a man. 6 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Men Who've Walked with God (1953) Description An account of the resource In this series, Thurman explores the dynamics of mysticism through the lives of notable figures throughout history. The mystic's insight is that God is the creator of all of life, and indeed dwells in the human spirit as the deepest thing within a human being, which is always reaching out to touch the deepest in others. Throughout this sermon series, Thurman illustrates the ethical implications of this insight, as well as the discipline necessary to live out mystical religion. Ultimately, "Men Who've Walked With God," examines the ways in which a mystic relates to themselves and the world. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Rodell Jefferson III. AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-575_A.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Fellowship Church, San Francisco, California Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1950s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Men Who've Walked: Gandhi; St. Francis (Fellowship Church or Marsh Chapel), 1953 Jun 7, 14 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-575_A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1953-06-07 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13627798.925371 4550756.1096806)) Description An account of the resource In this seventh lecture on "The Men Who've Walked with God," Thurman examines <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi">Gandhi</a>. For Thurman, Gandhi illustrates what it looks like to bring mystical insight into politics and the traffic of life. In the work of Gandhi, one sees that "it is possible to achieve effective, worldly ends by the use of... techniques that are, themselves, unworldly." By shining the light of spiritual truth onto the conflicts and frustrations of life, new creative synthesis is made possible. For Thurman, Gandhi is a mystic who did not withdraw from the world, but rather brought his religious integrity into human relations. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Rodell Jefferson III. Title A name given to the resource Men Who've Walked With God: Gandhi, 1953 June 7