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To walk in the light while darkness invades, envelopes, and surrounds is to wait on the Lord.
This is to know the renewal of strength. This is to walk and think not. There was another. In the
experience of life, not in life will teach a person not to fear life, but to love life. When he or she
discovers that the test of life in him is to be found in the amount of pain, frustration, he can
absorb without spoiling his joy in living.
And so many of these things seem part-- well, are part of what we were talking about, and so
much a part of what I am experiencing, oh, and we all are in our own living of our lives every
day. But it seems to be magnified right at this moment for me.
On Monday, there was a teachers' meeting at our school, the new school I've gone to. And they
met to decide, without me, what my next-- this year is going to be. And it was almost like being
tried by a jury, and you don't know what on earth they are saying, or-- it was a strange feeling
not to be able to have any part in that decision. And the decision is very exciting.
And I think there is-- I know that there are some opportunities in it that are exactly the things that
I wanted to do. I never had a chance to in planning the program myself. So it's very exciting. But
all those things I was up this morning thinking about.
And they were there for me to find, to-- there's one other thing. I don't want to-- well, some
words of a song kept running through my mind, and I don't know if any of you have seen the
musical "A Chorus Line," but it's a story about young people who are dancers, who are trying out
for a show, and the conflicts, the competitiveness, the personalities, the worry, the struggle, the
needing a job that is a part of it.
And the director interviews each person on the stage, and there's one, Morales, a young woman,
who tells in her story a bit about her growing up and dancing and a class that she was in, in
acting. And it was where you'd have to be something, pretend you're a couch or a chair or a
snowflake. And her song was, so I dug right down to the bottom of my soul to see what I could
feel. I dug right down to the bottom of my soul and I felt nothing.
And through several different things that she was supposed to try to feel, the instructor caused
her to feel something was wrong with her, because she couldn't feel things, and everybody else
was feeling a table and feeling a-- and dancing it out. But she couldn't feel it.
And later, she heard the instructor had died. And she sang and I dug right down to the bottom of
my soul to see what I could feel. And I felt nothing. That says a lot of things about a lot of
things. The first part of it, I couldn't help but be thinking about yes, last night, so many things
had all come together and to try to sort them out and to feel them. I'll stop.
[INAUDIBLE] the continuing series on the inner life today, and if I were to use a text, I would
use the words from the psalmist. [INAUDIBLE]
[INAUDIBLE]
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And the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight. The past two Sundays, I called your
attention to the centrality of the idea of the nerve center of consent, which is in each one of us.
And it is the clue to the way in which we consciously work out our destiny and achieve some
measure of fulfillment in living.
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We have a resource upon which we draw, a resource that [INAUDIBLE] light, and as profound
as is the plunging spirit of man. The outer and the inner-- I'd like to focus our thinking about that
this morning. If I may look at the words of the psalmist just a moment [INAUDIBLE].
The words, but the words of our mouth, the words refer in my thinking. To all of the outward
expressions of the light, all of the activity, all of the external, and of course the meditation in my
thought refers to the inner, to the nerve center of consent to that fluid area of purpose that
provides the power for focusing of the spirit.
We live very externally. For the most part, we tend to because life seems to demand that that of
us. I think one of the reasons why we enjoy going to the country is the fact that we, in the
country, occasionally, we encounter people who have been sufficiently unhurried to salt down a
few of their observations, let them ripen.
And I think that's why people that live in the country are always glad when summer's over, and
the city people go back home. [INAUDIBLE] The other life, the inner life, is due primarily to the
influence, I think of Greek thought on Western culture and civilization, and particularly upon
Christianity.
We make a sharp distinction between the outer and the inner. We assume, for instance, that the
spiritually minded individual confines himself exclusively to the inner. And we assume that the
so-called practically minded man, the man of business, the man who works with his hands, the
toiler-- the two aren't the same necessarily-- is a man who deals with the things that are external,
that he [INAUDIBLE] to be thoughtful. He handles the tragic.
So we set up a separate category for these two human beings. And if the man who is supposed to
give his thought and time to things spiritual, spills over into this other area, we say that he should
stick to his knitting. And if the man who is supposed to give all of his time to the tragic, moves
over to the other area, we say that something is wrong with him.
We have seen that the church is the psychiatrist. Something's wrong with him. This dichotomy is
so clear. We see it in our-- even in our worship. We make a very radical distinction between two
kinds of gods. I have mentioned this to you many times, because it seems to me to be a very
consistent aspect of our culture, the god of religion on the one hand, the god of the sanctuary, the
god of the cloister, the god of the dim light, the soft, treading step, the god of the holy place, the
god of piety, the god of the extremities of life, and then the god of life over here, the god of the
market place, the god who stays outside.
And so persistent is this dichotomy in our thinking and feeling that we tend to split our
allegiance right down the center. And we say, for instance, that the god of life is at a
disadvantage in the place where the god of religion holds for. When the god of life comes in to
the place where the god of religion dwells, the god of life is spent.
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[INAUDIBLE] the god of religion move out into the traffic of the world, he's at a disadvantage,
so we say about a religious insight that is trying to be implemented in terms of the context.
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I'd like for us to dwell there a little, because it is so essential to the quest of the human spirit for
wholeness, for-- not unity, but the union, I guess is a better word, and since we cannot handle the
distinction, which I think is an artificial distinction between the practical, and the theoretical, our
feeling about-- I don't quite know how to put this-- that the truth of a thing, the meaning of it is
contingent upon how practical it is, so that the only way we can communicate within this kind of
emotional security in this whole realm, as far as religion is concerned is by symbolism.
Or way back when I was in college, and they had the great Passaic, New Jersey, textile strike,
one of the first great, heart breaking labor brutalities in the history of American business, a
forerunner of the brutality of the coal mines.
When the Rockefellers were laying the foundation for their wealth, these people were killed and
so forth. But the great Passaic, New Jersey, textile strike. And the church wanted to give us
witness, and we're just beginning to get what was a conscience about the responsibility of the
Christian for the fate of the defenseless, the exploited, resisted the beginning of this sort of thing.
And to move into the area in New Jersey where the strike was on meant that you moved at your
own risk if you were not a part of the owners of the factories, who supported the police and
through their taxes, had the power of the state on their side, and the only way that the religious
community of the period could have any effect through its coming in to bring soup and
administer to the this and thatness of life.
The men who represented the church had to wear clerics, because if the if they had clerics, then
there was a certain respect, which had nothing to do with religion, but a great deal to do with
superstition. And this kind of dualism has crept into a private feeling about the relevancy of the
spiritual in terms of the practical journey that our lives take.
So that the dualism-- this is what I'm getting at. The dualism is one that dogs our footsteps, that
without realizing, without sensing it, there is a sort of internal convincement that in the world of
things and practicality in which we function, the god we worship is always at a disadvantage.
Now, hang around that a little, so that you can stir it up and it'll do pitch hitting for you down the
road. It's very hard to believe and to affirm that God is God, in the nitty gritty, rough and tumble
survival issues of life. I don't know how to that in-When I was a student in Atlanta, my senior year, I was going from one part of town, where my
college was located to another part, across in a business area. There was a section where Martin
King's church is located, or was located.
And in those days, there were no traffic lights but you had policemen, and one of the main
thoroughfares went by the railway station down through the center of town out to [INAUDIBLE]
Avenue. And at every big traffic center, there was policeman to direct the lights, to direct the
traffic.
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This young minister and I were driving along in his car, and we were talking. And so at first, we
didn't even see the policeman. In present day, this great big six feeter, six footer, six feeter. What
is it? Feet? Six footer, six foot. Anyway, you get the picture,
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And the minister who's driving the car was absorbed. He was just talking. He didn't see or think
about him until he saw this huge mass in the air, saving its life, sitting up there talking. And he
blew the whistle. I mean, he blew the whistle with his gut, not with his lungs. And even the car
froze.
It was one of those breathless moments. My friend pulled to the side, and he came forward to us,
pulled his-- what we called it in those days, his billy, little, short, leather club out with his right
hand, reached in with his left hand to pull this driver's head in reach. And my friend said Officer,
you wouldn't hit a man of God, would you?
And the thing froze, and he sputtered and said something. Now, the subtle thing for all of us is to
make, if we can in our religious experience, the distinction between religion and superstition.
And we have prostituted religion into symbolism.
And the symbolism stands in the stead of the vitality and the rawness and the intensity of the
religious experience itself. So back to Passaic. At the fever of all this brutality, a man walked in
with his clerics on.
There was at once a part of his protection and the thing for which he stood on behalf of these
defenseless people, a kind of magic, because it was anyone of these people. Somewhere in his
history, it would start a feeling that the sacred cannot be touched, and the sacred can be known
by a certain kind of symbolism.
So that if you have the symbolism, then the symbolism draws on the whole evolving of the
human spirit with reference to the untouchable, the Shekhinah, the uncreated light by which the
throne of God is surrounded.
So I find that in my own spiritual struggle, even though my mind functions in terms of anybody's
mind, functions in terms of symbolism, as the opening through which meaning comes. The
symbolism is so deceptive, because it becomes the meaning.
And this is-- yes.
There's a story I heard out of Kentucky. The fellow who did it was telling it. He was a musician.
And one time-- he played the accordion or whatever-- one time, it was the miners on one side
and the state police on the other side in this rally. And he walked down the middle and played his
music. And that day, they didn't fight. So that's sort or the other side of the coin versus this guy
in his clerical, standing between-Yes. Yes, and you see, the important thing is the distinction with which we wrestle all the time is
the distinction between what, in our minds, is the secular and the spiritual, the practical and the
theoretical.
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It's a kind of dualism that serves, I think, as a-- oh I hate to feel this, but I do. That is a padding, a
shield, to keep us from the naked exposure to the spirit of god.
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And I find that deep in my own soul-- if I may use a word like that-- I'm always trying to find a
way to escape the dualism, so that I will not live with accumulated delusions. I can handle one,
but they breed like cats in an alley.
Over and over again, I find myself saying this is true. I know it's true, but in this kind of world, it
won't work. You lost me. I mean, you lost me. What I'm saying is that over and over again, with
reference to something you believe in, you say I know this is true, but in this situation, it will not
work.
And I don't know about other human beings [INAUDIBLE]. One. But I'm always trying to find a
way by which the distinction between the practical and the theoretical will disappear.
[INAUDIBLE]
Yes. Excuse me.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Oh, never through, but go ahead.
Thinking about the things that you've said and what came to mind as far as the practical and the
theoretical becoming one, is an incident that happened, I guess last week or so, and I didn't read
the accounts of it, but these are Christians taking a stand and acting on their belief. And I know
of that because in New Haven, [INAUDIBLE] this group was praying for these people,
[INAUDIBLE] and another young man from New Haven who I guess took their blood and
poured it on classified information.
And men are being punished for their crimes. But it seems to me that the dichotomy disappears
maybe when something of an incarnation appears and people act on strong beliefs or have
behavior of this type in the room in which-Yeah.
I guess, maybe it's a rare thing rather than a common thing.
Yes, I think so. This sort of thing where the spiritually sensitive person I think is to resist the
temptation to prove something. I mean, this is the-- and yet, our whole culture and civilization
and everything depends upon tests, making dry runs, checking it out, and somewhere between
these two, I think is the thing that nourishes and sustains.
In the evolution of mind, in the whole journey of the evolving of human, of the personality, to
test a thing to prove it is so incredibly essential. And without that kind of validation, there can be
no security in knowledge, and yet, the integrity of the insight can never be tied to the necessity of
external validation.
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Now, it's a dilemma for which the human spirit finds no solution in terms of the pilgrimage of
values of which it's engaged. The moment you try to prove your truth, you become defensive
with reference to your truth. And yet, if you're not willing to test it, then the environment in
which we've grown up in Western civilization says that you don't know what you're talking
about, unless you make these dry runs.
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So that somewhere in there between these two dilemmas, the confidence in the insight has to be
its own validation, and bearing in mind all the time that I'm sure is that I am right, I may be
wrong. And it may take me in my journey 50 years to discover that 50 years ago, I should have
turned left rather than right.
But it took me 50 years for that dimension of the truth to break into my mind and spirit. Just go
on, [? Georgia. ?] Do we have a break?
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Let's take a break.
Thank you. And may I have some coffee?
You bet.
May I ask one question? You said, the minute you tried to prove [INAUDIBLE] how did you
complete that?
Oh, I have no idea.
I mean, the thought. The minute we try to [INAUDIBLE], then it becomes our truth, rather than
the real truth.
And you see, the minute you try to prove it, to your soul, that becomes, a vote of no confidence
in it. It has to say it, and be accepted for that, because you can't-- the moment, I think that in the
end journey that we take to prove it is to satisfy an observer, not ourselves.
And the observers, the integrity of the observer is not at stake. I think the greatest temptation of
Jesus, whatever testimony he brought forth in telling his disciples about the baptism and all of
that was the greatest temptation, I think, of his-- when the people around him, as he was fighting
it out between life and death on the cross, they were saying, now, if you were every to, say, come
down from the cross, I-I think everyone who's involved in the grounds of living his life by a deep, inner guidance has to
affirm the integrity of his or her journey. And the journey becomes the proof.
[INAUDIBLE] printing office. Is that all right?
Yeah.
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Do you want to start just [INAUDIBLE]?
Yeah, please.
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Hate and love, [INAUDIBLE] impulses loose insights that we are trying to validate in that kind
of context are impractical. [INAUDIBLE]
A little louder, Joyce.
The outer and the inner are separate in our thinking. What the psalmist says is let the outer and
the inner both be acceptable in thy sight because it should be one and the same. [INAUDIBLE].
There are attitudes that we take towards living. It seemed to me to invalidate the sense of
integration, which may be summarized in terms of the free and easy flowing between the outer
and the inner, free and easy access between these two interactions this way.
And one of those attitudes is one which insists that we should not recognize that there is a
relationship between these two things. Think back over this week in your own life, just this
week. How many things have you done which seemed to you to be expedient, necessary, but
above which you have deep within yourself, the profoundest kind of inner reservation?
Let's think about it. So that you found yourself functioning and developing a behavior pattern or
deepening in behavior pattern, activities, agreements, yes-ing or no-ing, and you said to yourself,
what I am doing is not remotely connected with my own inner nerve center of consent.
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Internal Notes
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Edits: will(?) provide his light; Georgia; any of those(?);
Time Period
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1980s
Original Title
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Conversations with Howard Thurman (parts 5 and 6), 1980 Sep 19-21
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Thurman, Howard
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Conversations with Howard Thurman, September 1980, Parts 5 and 6, Side A
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<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
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audio
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<a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a>
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1980-09-20
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Description
An account of the resource
This recording is a part of a wider series of conversations from September to October of 1980 where Howard Thurman met with a variety of young men and women who were discerning their calling to ministry. Thurman poses the intent of this group as an opportunity to "open up for one's self the moving, vital, creative push of God, while God is still disguised in the movement of God's self." This recording opens with one student's reflection on the inner life, which is followed by a discussion on dualism, in relation to the inner life, from Thurman. Thurman explores the tension between the outer life and the inner life, religion and superstition, and the practical and the theoretical. Speaking to these examples of dualism, Thurman notes that dualism as "a padding, a shield, to keep us from the naked exposure to the spirit of God."
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Description by Dustin Mailman
A Chorus Line
authority
cleric
coffee
confidence
darkness
dualism
evolution
fluid area of purpose
inner guidance
inner life
inward journey
Jesus
Kentucky
Martin Luther King Jr.
Nature of God
nerve center of consent
New Haven
New Jersey
non-dual
Passaic
praxis
psalmist
reflection
Shekhinah
symbolism
teachers
temptation
test
textile strike
turning
ultimate truth
validation
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394-169_A.mp3
I'm continuing today our thinking together about certain of the insights from the ancient sorrow
songs that were sung many, many years ago by the slaves in America. Today, we thinking
together about deep river.
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Deep river, my own home is over Jordan. Oh, don't you want to go to that gospel feast, that land
of promise where all is peace. Deep river, my home is over Jordan.
A contemporary point has expressed the same basic insight in other words. He says, I've known
rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has
gone deep like the rivers. I bathed in Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo, and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Mississippi and saw
Abe Lincoln going down to New Orleans. And I've seen it's muddy bosom turn all golden in the
sunset. I've known rivers, ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
The flowing streams have had a profound influence on the thoughts and the dreams and the
hopes and the aspirations of mankind throughout all the ages. It is not unusual that these early
singers would seize upon the raw materials of their own experiences with streams, with rivers
and incorporate this experience-- or these experiences into their interpretation of the meaning of
life and the destiny of man. For the rivers meant freedom for many of them, and it is altogether
fitting that the rivers should influence their thoughts and their reactions and their interpretations.
To think of life in terms of a river is always a fresh and stimulating and creative point of view. A
river has a very simple beginning. The Mississippi River, for instance, begins way up in the
northern part of our country, a very simple stream or a child could step across it at its source. But
as it moves down across the broad expanse of the American continent, it deepens and widens,
becomes turbulent and restless and churning until at last it emptiness itself into the Gulf of
Mexico, whose far off waters and call it always hears.
Life is like that, your life and my life. I have a very simple beginning. As a matter of fact, the
scientists tell us that life on this planet has a very simple beginning. And as the evolutionary
process developed, life became more complex and differentiated until at last creatures such as we
appeared on the scene.
And the individual life begins in a very simple way. For a period of nine months, the germ
forms, and at last, there is a great spasm and the child is born. And then the process starts over
again. Life is very simple for the child, but as the child develops and grows, life becomes more
involved, more complicated, more churning, more turbulent until at last it gives itself up at the
end.
It is the nature of the river to flow, always moving, always in haste. As a boy, very often I sat
beside a stream watching the waters flow by and wondered what made the river flow in this way.
There was no wind blowing, but it seemed as if the very nature of the stream itself was to flow.
This has been a thing upon which the mind of man has seized with a wide variety of creative
interpretations.
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It was the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who reminds us that no man bathes in the same stream.
One of the great world religions thinks of the meaning of life in terms of flux, in terms of
change, in terms of process. One of our great contemporary American philosophers thinks of
God himself as creative process, this notion of movement, of a process, of change. This seems to
be characteristic of life even as it is of the river.
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It is true in your life and in my life. When you were very small, you were sure that when you
were a little older, perhaps when you were nine or 10 years old, the thing that you sought would
come to pass. And then when you were 10 you said, oh, no. I can't experience this until I'm in my
teens. And then when you were in your teens, some of the things which you sought you could not
find you were sure until you were in your 20s.
And life moves like that, a coaxing cat always calling us to come to the thing that is just on the
horizon. I said that the fight would be over when I arrived, but when I got there, I found that the
fight was not over. The fight will never be over. No, not even in death. This is the nature of life.
Life is on the side of that which is on the make.
That which has arrived, that which has fulfilled itself has no future. It has only a pass. I shall
arrive. What time? What circuit first? I ask not, but unless God send his hail, his sleet, his
blinding fireballs, or stifling snow, in his good time, I shall arrive. He guides me and the bird.
The analogy is complete in the second sense because it seems that it is of the very nature of life
to be in process never to remain fixed. We cannot arrive at QED because life represents that
which is essentially dynamic, that which is full of change so that we-- if we are to be alive to its
meaning and its significance, we must be sensitive to the growing edges to that which has not
come to pass but that for which the individual stands in immediate candidacy for fulfillment.
The analogy is complete in the third place because of the relationship that the river holds to its
banks. It is the nature of the river to demand from the banks that they give of themselves to the
water. It is an automatic relationship.
If, for instance, I wanted to understand the story of the Mississippi River to refer to it again, I do
not have to follow it through all of its circuitous rounds across the country. I do not need to
examine all of its tributaries and the ways by which it touches this state or that state or this area
or that area. All I need do is go down to the delta where the Mississippi River empties into the
Gulf and there take a handful or a shovel full of delta sand and analyze it. And there I will find
the whole story of the history of the river's journey from its beginning to its fulfillment in the
Gulf of Mexico.
Your life and my life are like that. Every experience that we have, every thought that we think,
every primary encounter that we have with all of the raw materials of our living, these things
leave their deposit so that the history of a man's life is in essence the judgment that life passes
upon that individual. This is the relationship that life has to the living experience. It is the
relationship that the river has to the banks.
The analogy is complete in the last instance because a river has a goal. The goal of the river is
the sea. It is very interesting that all the waters in all the land, in all the rivers, rivulets, streams,
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all of this water comes out of the sea. And all the waters in all the lands go back into the sea that
out of which the river comes is that into which the river goes.
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The goal of the river and the source of the river are one. Your life and my life are like that. The
goal of life is God. The source of life is God. That out of life comes and that out of which life
goes is God.
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown to deep like the rivers. I've bathed in Euphrates when dawns were young. I
built my hut near the Congo, and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Mississippi and saw it's
muddy bosom turn all golden the sunset. I've known rivers, ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has
grown deep like the rivers.
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We Believe (Television Series, 1958-1965)
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<em>We Believe</em> was a color television program that aired on WHDH-TV, Channel 5, in Boston on weekday mornings at 11:15. From 1958 to 1965, while Howard Thurman was Dean of the Chapel at Boston University, he was the host of the Friday morning show. Each message has a brief introductory section with bells and music before Thurman delivers his short meditation. Some recordings have been edited to remove the intro. In some cases, the Howard Thurman Educational Trust produced tapes with two messages on one recording.<br /><br />"These meditations are no longer than 15 minutes, but highly representative of his style, influence, and search for common ground." - <a href="http://archives.bu.edu/web/howard-thurman">the Howard Thurman and Sue Bailey Thurman Collections at Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.</a><br /><br />
<p style="text-align: right;"><em>We Believe</em> program listing in the TV Guide, March 29, 1958</p>
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Descriptions by Dustin Mailman
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<iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-169_A.html" ></iframe>
Original Title
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Deep River; Nature of Life, 1958 Sep 26
Time Period
The decade in which the recording was produced.
1950s
Location
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WHDH-TV, Boston, Massachusetts
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394-169_A
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Thurman, Howard
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Deep River; Nature of Life (1958-09-26)
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1958-09-26
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<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
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audio
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<a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a>
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Description
An account of the resource
In this recording within the We Believe Series, Thurman reflects upon the "sorrow songs" of those who were enslaved in America. His remarks speak specifically to the songs that reflect upon the self in relation to a river, such as, "My soul has gone deep like the rivers." The voices of these singers relate their lives to that of a river from a place of deep experientiality. Thurman continues, by relating the unfolding of life to that of a river: a simplistic origin which grows into a complex system, which eventually returns to a wider body, one is able to understand the ways in which humanity is intertwined and shares a common trajectory.
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Description by Dustin Mailman
Abraham Lincoln
creativity
Deep River
evolution
experience
interconnectivity
Jordan River
process
river
slavery
spirituals
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Pitts Theology Library
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Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
394-094_A.mp3
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
The purpose of the course is to acquaint you with the study of mysticism as an important aspect
of the philosophy and the psychology of religion, and with a decided emphasis on the meaning of
religious experience. It is to give you a general, and in some ways, perhaps even a specific
orientation to see the meaning and the significance of mystical experience, as found in religion.
I begin, then, with certain fundamental assumptions that are basic to our discussion. And the first
is that there is an essential continuity in life that one of the basic and uniform characteristics of
life, wherever you find it, is that it's alive. And the idea is so simple, that life is alive, that the
impact of it is rather confusing to the mind. For instance, you know that you are alive and the
person next to you may be alive. You know that your dog, your cat, all these things are alive.
But the essential fact that life itself is alive is more comprehensive than our minds are trained to
apprehend. Life is alive. And it is this basic aliveness of life that establishes the ground for all of
the particular manifestations of life so that any thought about the continuity of life has to take
into account the basic assumption that life itself is alive.
Now, the corollary that follows from that is that every form of life is separated from every other
form of life, primarily, and I think, exclusively, by the context in which that form is manifest.
And if I can get behind the particular context, then I come up on the same reality. The thing,
then, that separates one form of life from the other is not indigenous. It is more apparent than
real. It is the form that that life takes, the context by which that life is defined.
Many years ago, a man living in this part of the state wrote a book which he called Kinship with
All Life. And in that book, he discusses the bearing of this whole idea on man's experience of
other forms of life. The setting for the book was rather interesting. You may remember hearing
your parents, perhaps, talk about a famous movie dog whose name was Strongheart. He's the
predecessor of all of the other long chain of moneymakers-- Rin Tin Tin, and Lassie, and that
whole group of fabulous creatures.
The owner and the trainer of Strongheart had to go to New York on business. And they asked
this man if he would keep the dog for two weeks while they were away. They gave him three or
four pages of typewritten material for how to care for this fabulous creature. Among them were
certain instructions about reading poetry to the dog a half hour each day to give him a sense of
belonging.
When they arrived at the home, [? Greatheart ?] jumped out of the car, ran ahead of Mr. Boone,
took his teeth, opened the front door, went all through the house opening the doors and sniffing
in the closets. And then he came back and rubbed his nose on Mr. Boone's hand to let him know
that everything was safe.
Then the first evening, the time came to go to bed. There was only one bed in this home, a big
Hollywood studio bed. And when Mr. Boone was ready for bed, he said to [? Greatheart, ?] there
aren't any instructions given about your sleeping habits. But this is where I'm going to sleep, I've
never slept with a dog, but if this is the order of the day, so be it. I'm going to bed.
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Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
So he went to bed. And [? Greatheart ?] jumped up on the bed, turned around two or three times,
and stretched, and was off to the races. And then occasionally, his tail would do this, because his
tail was located in the direction of Mr. Boone's head and his head was down near his feet. And
every time he did this, it was a source of irritation. And Mr. Boone finally couldn't stand it.
[INAUDIBLE] he got up and said, now, let's get organized. If you're going to sleep with me, put
your head where my head is and your tail where my feet are.
Thereupon, [? Greatheart ?] went to the French door opened out into the yard, took his teeth,
opened it, and jumped out into the yard, jumped back into the room, closed the doors, and
jumped back up on the bed with his head pointing in the one corner of the spot of the room.
Little by little, he and [? Greatheart ?] began to work out some basic understanding and kinship,
really.
And it came to a climax one day when Mr. Boone was typing, and he decided that the day was so
beautiful that he would go down to the beach and take a run and a swim. He reached down to
pick up the top of the cover for his typewriter. And as he did so, [? Greatheart ?] came rushing in
from out in the yard, he went to the closet and got his old sweatshirt, and went to another place
and that his old shoes, and put them at his feet, and they were off.
Every afternoon around 4:00 o'clock, he discovered that the dog disappeared to a lower part of
the property. And he followed him one day to discover that he was seated on a knoll facing the
sun as it is going down. And apparently, it was lost in thought. Mr. Boone joined him, and little
by little, a sense of communion began to emerge between him and the dog. And as a result of
that experience, he came upon the awareness that the thing ultimately that separated him from [?
Greatheart ?] was not the essential life that was in both of them, but the context by which the life
was defined.
So that one of the basic assumptions fundamental to any understanding of the philosophy of
mysticism is that there is an essential and basic continuity in life. And the corollary that follows
from that sense of continuity is an awareness of the oneness of life. Some years ago, I spent a
weekend with about 75 or 80 Sioux Indians and Saskatchewan.
One of the reasons why I was there, the Canadian government had changed its philosophy or its
attitudes toward the Indians, and permitted them to leave their reserves, and to live as citizens in
the communities. They found, of course, that it was rather difficult to get a place to live for
obvious reasons. When they applied for jobs, they found that even though the job had been
advertised, when they got there, the job was taken. And they could not talk about this with each
other because there were no words in the Sioux language for such things as discrimination or
prejudice.
So that I was invited to come up and be their guests, just to live, and talk, and share. Even though
they were not English-speaking, I guess the average vocabulary was maybe 25 or 30 words. Two
basic English words were OK and one other I've forgotten. My first night there, since I had never
seen the Sioux Indian, and they hadn't ever seen me or anybody like me. So I wanted to see if I
could find this continuity, this oneness.
So I invited three of them to come down to my room to talk. And I said, if you'll answer one
question for me, then this may unlock the door that separates us. Are you Indians and then
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Canadians, or you Canadians and then Indians? And the interpreter was the first to speak. He
said, I am an Indian and then a Canadian.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
I believe that it's very important for me to ground myself in the idioms, and the traditions, and all
of the things that have kept alive the integrity of the Sioux nation through all the years. And I
teach my children this so that through ceremonials and so forth, they have a sense of
participating in the collective life of the group.
When I go to a Canadian's home, I have only one question to ask him. Do you function in your
life out of a sense of your own center? If he says yes, then out of my center, I can relate to his
center, and we become one. If he says no, then there is no way by which I can transcend the
context that separates.
And then he asked the second man the same question. And there was a dialogue going on
between them in Sioux. And it lasted for 10 minutes, and I became more, and more, and more
unnerved by it, because I didn't know what on earth was going on. And finally, in desperation, I
said to the interpreter, tell me what's going on. And he said, calling this fellow by name, he's a
fool because he says he doesn't understand what you mean by the question.
He lives up on the rim of the Arctic Circle. And he says that he's a part of the wind, and the
snow, and the ice, and water, and the part of the sun, and the streams, and the blossom, and
summer. They flow into him, he flows into them. He doesn't understand what you mean by either
Indian or Canadian.
The idea being that there is a ground of life in which there is rooted the oneness and the
continuity, and that the thing that separates one form of life from the other is not the form, but
that life, because life is one, then the ground of all of life is not merely identical, not merely the
same, but is one thing. In Ardrey's African Genesis, there's a very interesting statement of this
from another angle. Let me read it to you.
Never to be forgotten, to be neglected, to be derided is the inconspicuous figure in the quiet back
room of civilization. He sits with head bent, silent, waiting, listening to the commotion in the
streets. He is the keeper of the kinds. Who is he, we do not know, nor shall we ever know. He is
a presence, and that is all.
But his presence is evident in the last reaches of infinite space beyond man's probing eye. His
presence is guessable in the last reaches of infinite smallness, beyond the magnification of
electron or microscope. He is present in all living beings and in all the inanimate matter. His
presence is asserted in all things that ever were and in all things that will ever be.
And as his command is unanswerable, his identity is unknowable, but his most ancient concern is
with order. You may sense his presence in a star-scattered sky, as silenced, you stand on a lonely
hill. There above you floats in tightly-packed grandeur the Milky Way, your galaxy, your
celestial home. And there beyond, Andromeda's faint indication floats your nearest brother in
space. 26 quintillion miles away revolves your galaxy's twin in all manner of description and
behavior.
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You may sense his presence in the kind of matter called helium that has always and will forever
behave according to the rules and regulations of helium. You may sense his word and the second
law of thermodynamics or the pattern of behavior of brook trout in a clear New Zealand pool.
You may find his word in the forms of cities, and symphonies, of Rembrandts and fir trees, and
cumulus clouds.
Pitts Theology Library
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You may read his command in the regularity of turning things, and stars, and seasons, in tides,
and in striking clocks. Where bursts the green of the apple orchard, all of a springtime day, there
passes his presence. And here, too, he passes. In the windy, fluttering of scarlet leaves and the
call of the harvesters. Where a child is born or a man lies dead. Where life must go on, though
tragedy deny it. Where a farmer replants fields, again despoiled by flood or drought.
Where man rebuild the cities that other men destroy. Where tides must ebb as tides have flowed.
There, you see his footprints, there, and there. He does not care about you, or about me, or about
man, for that matter. He cares only for order. But whatever he says, we shall do. He is rising now
in civilization's quiet back room. And he is looking out of the window. And then another way
that this is put-- Let me find it. I had it somewhere. Ah, here it is.
In one of Robinson Jeffer's poems, an old man with a double [INAUDIBLE] axe is caretaker at
the [INAUDIBLE] place. The cattle, except a few wild horns, died in that fire. The horses graze
high up the dark hill. Nobody ever comes to the infamous house. The pain, the heat, and the love
have left no ghost. Old men and gray hawks need solitude. Here it is deep and wide.
Winter and summer, the old man says, rain and the drought. Peace creeps out of war, war out of
peace. The stars rise and they set. The clouds go north, and again they go south. Why does God
hunt in circles? Has he lost something? Is it possible Himself? In the darkness between the stars,
did he lose Himself, and become Godless, and now seeks Himself? Does God exist? No doubt of
that, the old man says. The cells of my old camel of a body, because they feed each other and are
fitted together through nerves and blood, feel each other. All the little animals are the one man.
There is not an atom in all the universes but feels every other atom.
Gravitation, electromagnetism, light heat, and the other flamings, the nerves in the night's black
flesh, flow them together. The stars, the winds, and the people. One energy, one existence, one
music, one organism, one life, one God. Star fire and rock strength, the sea's cold flow, and
man's dark soul. Not a tribal nor an [INAUDIBLE]. Not a ridiculous projection of human fears,
and needs, dreams, justice, and love [? lust. ?]
A conscious God? The question has no importance. But I am conscious. Where else did this
consciousness come from? Nobody that I know of ever poured grain from an empty sack. And
who, I would say, but God, and a conscious one. And did the chief war makers with their war so
humorously, such accurate timing, and such appropriate ends.
Now, because life in this sense is one, then self consciousness creates a very threatening paradox
for personality. Because when I become conscious of myself, when I become self-aware, it
means that now I stand over against all the continuity, as if I were a separate and distinct entity.
So that self consciousness and the presence thereby of mind opens up a whole whisper of
excitement for the imagination. For it is quite conceivable to me that once upon a time, the mind
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as mind-- and each word is crucial-- that the mind as mind had no separate awareness. In a sense,
it was body-bound.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
And perhaps in the evolution of our species, we may find a clue, because alone among all of the
many forms of life at the dawn of our awareness, we had, our forebears had the least protection,
the minimal protection against the other creatures in the environment, so that all of the energy
had to be spent and to be exhausted in staying alive, and in survival.
And if you let your imagination play with it a little, suppose that all the creatures, all of our
forebears were comfortably located in their various trees in which they had established squatters'
rights, one day, one father decided that for his boy's birthday, he would give him a certain kind
of dinosaur egg that could only be found at the end of a long, rather wide [INAUDIBLE].
So early in the morning, he goes hunting for this precious egg and he finds it. And the journey is
rather long. He's a little tired. So he stops to rest, to take a mid afternoon siesta under the shadow
of a rock. And he was comfortably settled. To his amazement, the rock began to move because it
is a species with which he was not acquainted. And there followed a rather chase across the
prairie.
And he noticed something that he hadn't ever seen before as we was running, an opening on the
side of a hill. And he'd been by there 1,000 times, but he hadn't seen it before because necessity
had not [INAUDIBLE]. So he darted in there to save his life, and the creature waited outside, but
he couldn't get in. The hole was too small. He looked around. He said, this is fine.
[INAUDIBLE] a room here.
So when night came and the creature had gone about his business, he brought his family down to
live in this thing. And then the word went from tree top to tree top. You don't have to live in trees
anymore. You can find a hole in the hill. Now, once he was there and the cave with the ceiling
closed-- how many thousand years it took to develop the skill of [INAUDIBLE] something, we
do not know. But when he was able to seal the opening to the cave, then all of the energy that he
had used in order to survive now became surplus.
And I think that it is not merely an apocryphal account, but I think in essence, it points to the fact
that mind could not emerge in man as mind, as separate from the organism until there was
enough energy available for imagination to be possible, projection, all these things.
But the habitat of the mind remained in the body. And we are just at the beginning of some
understanding of the far-reaching significance of this notion in terms of physical health, bodily
health. The relationship between what goes on in the mind viewed as self consciousness, and
therefore viewed as something separate from the body, something detached from the body,
really.
And yet, it is so essentially a part of the body that what happens in this new awareness,
[INAUDIBLE] the dawn of the mind, is registered in the organism, which is its home. And so
that when we become profoundly moved, for instance, one of the first things that happens is we
become inarticulate. The mind drops back into a continuum of the organism.
5
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Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
Now, the story of the emergence of self consciousness, it makes the individual feel himself to be
over against all other expressions of life, is a very perilous sort of development. We see it in
children, for instance. One of the most revolutionary moments in the life of a little baby, I think,
is when he's given a-- What is it we give babies? A bottle. When a baby is given a bottle and he
begins to sense that his mother is no longer part of him, the peculiar sense of isolation, that the
awareness of a separate entity creates, I think, we are just now beginning to understand.
And then a little later on, when the baby has begun to crawl around, and one day when he's
crawling, as a result of forces that, of course he does not understand, and perhaps no one really
understands, something deep within him that is coordinated with his whole bodily organism, or
his whole organism and bodily function, urges him to reverse his posture, and he tries to stand up
to affirm his sense of independence, of self awareness. [INAUDIBLE] everything else.
And he finds that the universe has been very kind to him, because just in front of him as he is
trying to stand up right, he sees something hanging down that was put there by a kinder universe
to support him in his crisis. And he seizes it and draws himself up with it, and then the whole
thing moves. Then there's a crash. And then he can understand what is the parental attitude
because of something that has happened outside his whole intent and purpose.
But he has sniffed self awareness now. And one day, he staggers up on his two feet, suspended
between the ceiling and the floor with his little feet touching, and his whole organism cries out, I
did it. I'm independent. And then the floor rises up to meet him. [INAUDIBLE]
This sense of self that is rooted in self conscious puts the individual over against all the
continuities that we are talking about. And of course, I suppose there are some people who spend
a lifetime without ever quite making the step. There's a psychiatrist at Columbia who's written a
book on the development of the self. Can't think of his name.
But at any rate, he talks about a mother, and a daughter, and a little boy who went into a
restaurant to get lunch. And the waitress came, and she gave the-- she took the mother's order,
and the daughter's order, and then she said to the boy, young man, what will you have? And the
mother said, well, I'll order for him.
But the waitress was very perceptive and insisted. And she had asked him again, what will you
have? And the daughter said, well, if mother were not here and we were together, I would order
for him. So I'll tell you what we wants. But the waitress insisted. And finally, in a sort of muted
whisper, he said, a hamburger. And she said, with mustard, and relish, and pickles, onions, the
works? And then he whispered after her, mustard, onions, pickles, the works.
So she went back. She gave the mother's order, and then she gave the daughter's order, and with
full voice, she said, one hamburger, the works. And now the little boy, in utter amazement,
turned to his mother and said, mother, she thinks I'm real.
The journey is a long one to establish a sense of one's own awareness as over against not only the
external environment, people, objects, but also as over against the ground, the unity, the
continuity, the oneness of life. And I think that one of the other forms that this takes is that there
is something in the human spirit that cannot abide isolation.
6
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Getting at this from another angle. We cannot contain ourselves quietly when we have a sense of
being cut off, of being isolated, because it tends to undermine the deep awareness, perhaps
unconscious awareness, I'm not sure about this, of the ground out of which we come and of
which we are a part.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
So when we are threatened with isolation, we do all sorts of things. Even with people who are
mentally disturbed, for instance, when they retreat more and more from the external world, from
a certain kind of reality, and they have a sense of being in utter isolation. Very often, the psyche
does an extraordinary thing, a kind of spasm towards therapy.
The psyche peoples the mind of the disturbed person with voices so that the isolation is not utter,
the isolation is not complete. There is a deep necessity for a sense of being a part of the whole.
And self consciousness breaks this, tends to threaten it, so that then the mind has to re-establish a
way by which a sense of [AUDIO OUT]
7
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<iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-094_A.html" ></iframe>
Location
The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon
University of Redlands, Redlands, California
Internal Notes
Notes for project team
Greatheart (Thurman might've meant Strongheart); double-bit axe; Gore Place; anthropoid God; love lust; wide prairie; necessity had not prodded him; which I'm calling subconscious, it's - GL 5/20/19
Time Period
The decade in which the recording was produced.
1970s
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Identifier
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394-094_A
Creator
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Thurman, Howard
Title
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On Mysticism, Part 1 (University of Redlands Course), 1973
Source
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<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
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GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13042600.321303 4037296.9410534))
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1973-02
Description
An account of the resource
This recording is the first lecture in our collection of ten that Howard Thurman gave at the University of Redlands in 1973 on the topic of mysticism. Thurman indicates that this lecture functions as a means to point the listener towards practical approaches to mysticism through lenses of psychology, philosophy, and religious experience. Thurman's emphasis in this recording is the centrality of one's identity, and conception of self in relation to the world and creation. He does this by drawing upon stories of and experience he has with a Sioux tribe in Canada, and his interpretation of a Robinson Jeffers poem. The recording concludes with a stream of consciousness waxing from Thurman, illustrating his understanding of becoming "self-conscious," and the potential dangers that come when one relies primarily on the self rather than the communal body.
Contributor
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Description by Dustin Mailman
African Genesis
Andromeda
Arctic Circle
Canada
center
community
consciousness
context
continuity
creativity
ecology
embodiment
essential fact
evolution
Gore Place
identity
imagination
interconnectivity
Isolation
J Allen Boone
Kinship With All Life
mental illness
mysticism
New York
oneness
order
organism
panentheism
presence
reality
religious experience
Robert Ardrey
Robinson Jeffers
Saskatchewan
scientific theory
Sioux Indians
Strongheart