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Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
394-783.mp3
This is tape number ET31 from the library of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust. Two
meditations by Howard Thurman. This is side 1, entitled Supportive Order Inherent in Life.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, oh, Lord,
my strength and my Redeemer.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
As a continuation of our time together last week, I want to read, today, from The Inward
Journey. And this has to do with the unity of life. "In all the waking hours, the tentacles of time
give channel to each living thing-- the bird on wing, the mole moving in darkness underground,
the cricket chanting it's evening song, the primeval whale sporting in chilly seas or floating
noiselessly in turbulent waters, in mountain crevice or sprawling meadow, the delicate beauty of
color-stained flower or fragile leaf.
High above the timberline, the sprig of green dares wind and snow. In the barren parchness of
desert waste, the juiceless shrub and water logged cactus. High in the tree top, the green-pearled
fruit of olive mistletoe and the soft gray stillness of creeping moss. The infant, the growing child,
the stumbling adolescent, the young adult, the man full-blown or stooped with years-- the
tentacles of time give channel to each living thing.
And beyond all this, thoughts that move with grace of being, light thoughts that dance and sing
untouched by gloom or shadow or the dark. Weighty thoughts that press upon the road with
tracks that blossom into dreams or shape themselves in plan and scheme.
Thoughts that whisper, thoughts that shout, thoughts that wander without rest, seeking, seeking,
always seeking. Thoughts that challenge, thoughts that soothe. The tentacles of time give channel
to each living thing.
Out from the house of life, all things come. And into it, each returns again for rest. When I
awake, I am still with thee.
There is not only a built-in unity and harmony in the organism-- in yours, in mine. But there is a
unity that is inherent in the particular life. This unity is determined by many factors, some of
which we understand and some we do not understand.
Why does your foot grow and grow and then stop growing? Why does some other part of your
body develop? And then something gives the word. And it stops it. It makes an end of growing.
The thing that's in my mind is that there is, in the individual life, a kind of built in logic and order
that is inherently a part of the individual's life, so that everything in your life counts. It is a part
of the order that is inherent in the living stuff which is your own life.
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Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
Now this does not mean as it seems, that I am making some left handed case for a kind of ranting
determinism that suggests that everything that concerns your life or my life is fixed and ordered.
No. I am saying, however, that because of the harmony that is within the movement of the
private life, every thing in that life belongs.
Pitts Theology Library
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And if I could understand the totality of a man's life, how he has responded from the day of his
conception to the present, to all of the forces that have played upon his life to which he has
responded, then the story of his life would make sense. For there is, within the life, an order and
a harmony.
And this is the basis upon which so much of the therapy that people are using now at the hands
of the disciplined minds-- the doctors who work with us when we have emotional upsets and
emotional disturbances, or we have some other things going on within us that are unmanageable
and that cause us to do things which are out of character. And how do these men work?
They assume that there is a logic here that somewhere in the development of your life or my life
or the individual's life that is seeking help, something happened. An event took place. And I
responded to that event in a certain way.
And as a result of the impact of this-- upon my life and my response to it, what I am
experiencing now is the order. This is how we study diseases. We say that the cure for a disease
is unknown. But we do not say, ever, that the cure is unknowable.
For the assumption is that there is an order that is inherent in the operation of the disease, that
there is a rational order in the mind. This rational order is always trying to penetrate, to make
contact, to touch, to sense, to become aware of, to understand.
The principle of order that may be at work and the behavior of this body of cells, so that when
the rational principle in the mind makes contact with the order that is in the disease, so that the
mind says that the logic in my mind and the logic here in this disease flow together, and give me
an insight, then men can talk in terms of curing the disease or of reducing it so that it will not,
any longer, threaten life.
What I'm saying is that we are surrounded by an order of which we are part and of which all of
life is a part. And that if there are those experiences in life that break the order, those experiences
that rupture the community, these things are regarded as being against life.
And the purpose of life from this point of view is to develop more and more order, more and
more synthesis, more and more wholeness, more and more creativity. And wherever there is that
which is divisive, wherever there is that which tears asunder, which [? rends ?] this must be
regarded as being against life.
And he who works for order, who works for harmony, who works for a total experience of
integration, life is on his side. And he who works against this, whatever may be the private
grounds for the judgment that monitors the enterprise, this is against life. And if it is against life,
it is against God."
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, oh, Lord,
my rock and my Redeemer.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
[MUSIC PLAYING]
The preceding program was pre-recorded.
This is tape number ET31, from the Library of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust. This is
side 2, entitled For Love's Sake.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, oh, Lord,
my strength and my Redeemer.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Today I am reading, as the background for our thinking, a prose poem from the greatest of these.
"While there is a lower class, I am in it. While there is a criminal element, I am of it. While there
is a man in jail, I am not free. Thus spoke one whose very life and deeds these words fulfilled.
Contacts with one another abound in a world grown small. Because the mind of man has worked
unceasingly to banish barriers set by nature here and there, everywhere. But where there is no
will to love, to make an act of grace towards fellow man, contacts may degrade. Outrage nip the
tender shoots of simple trust.
Love abides when all else sickens and dies from sheer revulsion and disgust. The fruit it bears
sustains the nerve and makes the life a harbor of repose for the weak and tottering, a heavy
judgment for the cruel and hating, a precious bane for those who seek to know the way of God
among the sons of men.
With it, the deeds of men are measured by man's great destiny. It meets men where they are,
sometimes cruel, sometimes lustful, sometimes greedy, often callous, mean, of low design, and
treats them there as if they were full-grown and crowned with all that God would have them be.
For love's sake, and love's alone, men do with joyous hope and tender joy what no command of
heaven, hell, or life could force of them if love were not. To be God's child, to love with steady
mind and fervent heart, this is the law of love."
The apostle, Paul, in one of his letters, has left a very significant and pointed line which has
bearing on our thought for today. He says, "My prayer to God is that your love may grow more
and more rich in knowledge and in all manner of insight, that you may have a sense for what is
vital, that you may be transparent and of no harm to anyone."
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We are surrounded today by a climate of impersonality, I suppose, is the best way to put it. It is
very difficult for the individual in our society to keep from becoming anonymous in his
relationships and in his estimate of himself, so that any thought about the thickening of human
relations, the tidying of relationships-- so that when men move in the midst of each other, they
will have no sense of jeopardy, no sense of being threatened, is a most important consideration.
Pitts Theology Library
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The basic statement that I would make, that I hope you will remember, with reference to this
whole idea is that in our kind of world today, there is but one refuge that any man has on this
planet. And that is in another man's heart. And when I close the door against any man, it means
that I undermine my own sense of emotional security as I seek to live my life on this planet.
Now there are many contexts which we have, contacts, for the most part, are contacts without
fellowship. Now contacts without fellowship tend to express themselves in a kind of
unsympathetic mood.
They are, essentially, unsympathetic. They are cold. They are detached. Sometimes they are
cruel. The contacts are there. But they are not warm. They are unsympathetic. They are hard-the sort of thing that you feel, sometimes, when you go into a man's office. And he looks at you
with a with a dead hard stare in his eyes. And you wonder whether the third button on your shirt
is open or closed. But you dare not feel to see.
It is something that strips you, that lays you bare, that exposes you. It's hard. It's devastating. It is
destructive. Now an unsympathetic attitude tends to express itself in the exercise of a will that is
distorted, a will that is ill, a will that is sick.
And there is a subtle contagion about a sick will. Many people who come into direct contact with
it or are exposed to it find that they are contaminated by this. And the same sort of disposition or
attitude which is theirs, which is to be found in the mind and the life of the person with the ill
will, becomes characteristic of those to whom it is exposed.
Now an ill will that is dramatized in the life of a man is what we mean by hate walking on the
earth. Now the reverse of this is true.
Contacts with fellowship are warm. And they make for an understanding that is sympathetic-the kind of understanding that we all seek, the sort of understanding that gives the individual a
sense of inner freedom, that gives the individual the feeling that he need not pretend.
He need not cover up. The vulnerable things in his life will be protected by someone who
understands him in a sense that is increasingly total. And this is what we seek, after all-understanding that is sympathetic, so that in its warm glow, the weaknesses and the strengths, the
good points and the bad points, are not held in any sense that is judgmental.
But they are gathered up in a healing mood of not only compassion but of understanding. This is
what we seek among ourselves. This is what our children seek. This is what adults seek.
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Now sympathetic understanding tends to express itself in the exercise of a will that is good. Now
a good will is the creative expression of one man's total attitude towards another man.
Pitts Theology Library
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It is, laced, if I may use that word, in a kind of kindness. And here, something very important
must be said. No one ever quite deserves kindness. Men deserve respect as human beings. Men
deserve honor, sometimes, for the contribution which they have made to the redemption of the
common life or the contribution which they have made to some stark human need to which they
are exposed.
But no one ever quite deserves kindness. For when you are kind to a man, it means that you
place upon him something that he does not merit. It is like placing a crown over his head that, for
the rest of his life, he is trying to grow tall enough to wear, so that when you are the recipient of
the kind act, you know deep within yourself that you cannot ever repay this deed to the person
from whom the deed issued to you so that the only thing that you can do is to seek to confer that
kind of meaning upon someone else as your response to that kind of meaning that has been
conferred upon you.
Now a goodwill caught, dramatized, epitomized, for instanced in the life of a man is what we
mean by Love. And when we love, it means that we deal with each other at a point in each other
that is beyond all the good and beyond all the evil. There is but one refuge that one man has
anywhere on this planet. And that is in another man's heart.
Will you keep your door open that whoever knocks may enter?
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, oh, Lord,
my strength and my Redeemer.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
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Dublin Core
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Title
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We Believe (Television Series, 1958-1965)
Description
An account of the resource
<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>
<img src="http://pittsviva.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/webelieve-whdh-boston.png" style="float: right;" alt="webelieve-whdh-boston.png" />
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Descriptions by Dustin Mailman
AudioWithTranscription
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Audio with Transcription
<iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-783.html" ></iframe>
Internal Notes
Notes for project team
Edited - GL 7/26
Original Title
Title as transcribed from tape cassette
Supporting Order Inherent in Life; For Love's Sake (ET-31; GC 11-24-71), 1971 Nov 24
Time Period
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1960s
1950s
Location
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WHDH-TV, Boston, Massachusetts
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
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394-783
Creator
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Thurman, Howard
Title
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Supportive Order Inherent in Life (1963-05-17); For Love's Sake (1958-05-30)
Source
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<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
Format
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audio
Publisher
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<a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a>
Date
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1963-05-17
1958-05-30
Description
An account of the resource
In this recording within the We Believe Series; Howard Thurman reads from his text, "The Inward Journey." Thurman's reading speaks to the intricate ways in which human life and experience is ordered in a synchronistic fashion. It is in one's understanding of creation's interrelatedness, Thurman suggests, that one can come to understand that the entirety of one's existence belongs.
In this recording within the We Believe Series; Howard Thurman reflects upon a poem from Eugene V. Debs, speaking to notions of solidarity and love. He notes that notions of love and disease both have a contagious characteristic, and that there is great responsibility in one's choosing of love or disease. To share one's heart, thus one's love, is to invite fellowship and community. To share one's disease, is to invite isolation and individualism.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Dustin Mailman
belonging
contagion
creation
creativity
ecology
Eugene V. Debs
experience
fellowship
harmony
healing
heart
interconnectivity
inward journey
love
order
organism
Paul
Philippians
poetry
relationship
security
society
synchronization
synthesis
tentacles of time
unity
vulnerability
wholeness
will
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Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
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thurman.pitts.emory.edu
394-766.mp3
This is tape number ET4 from the library of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust, Two
Meditations by Howard Thurman. This is side 1, entitled Salute to the New Year.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
[BELLS TOLLING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord,
my strength and my Redeemer.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I'm beginning this first meditation for the new year by reading from Meditations of the Heart.
"There is always something impressive about a new start. Think how fortunate it would be if
time was not somehow divided into parts. Suppose there were no day, only night. Even in parts
of the world and near the North Pole, there is a six month day and a six month night.
Or suppose there were only winter or only summer or only spring. Suppose there were no
artificial things, like months, so that we could not be mindful of the passing of time. Suppose
there were no years, just the passing of hours with no signposts to mark them into units of
months and years. Then there would be no new year.
The beginning of another year means the end of a year that has fulfilled itself and passed on. It
means that some things are finished, rounded out, completed forever. It means that, for some of
us, sudden changes have taken place that are so profound in their nature that we can never be
what we were before.
There is something so final, so absolute, about a year that is gone. Something of it remains in us
that we take into the year that is next in line. But the new year means a fresh start, a second wind,
another chance, a kind of reprieve, a divine act of grace bestowed upon the children of men.
It is important to remember that whatever the fact may have been, it cannot be undone. It
remains a fact. If we have made serious blunders, they're made. All our tears cannot unmake
them. We may learn from them and carry our hard won lessons into the new year.
We can remember them not with pain, but with gratitude that, in our new wisdom, we can live
into the present year with deeper understanding and greater humanity. May whatever suffering
we brought on ourselves or other people teach us to understand life more completely and, in our
understanding of life, to love life more wisely, thus fulfilling God's faith in us by permitting us to
begin this new year."
It is always a fateful thing to stand at the beginning or even to have a sense of beginnings. It
means that there stretches out before us areas of living and thinking and experiencing that have
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not been explored by us and with reference to which always there are the possibilities undreamed
of.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
The sense of the future is very important in the living of life in the present, for it means that we
have been chosen, as it were, to have another chance, to improve our lives, to make fresh
mistakes, to make new friends, to gain wider and deeper experiences.
This sense of the future is very important in terms of man's total adventure-- one of the reasons
why, for instance, we shrink from death, one of the reasons why all of the religions of the world
know that they cannot address themselves, finally, to the deepest needs of the human spirit until,
somewhere in their theology or their dogma or their aspiration or their teaching, a recognition is
made of what physically death in and of itself implies.
For the thing that is dreadful, to use that word, about man's encounter with death is that it seems
to man that the future is cut off. And if there is no future, then the present and the past begin to
lose their meaning so that all of the religions of the world have something important and crucial
to say about the future. For, if it, they can address themselves to the place of the future in man's
total experience. Then they can deal totally with man.
Now there's something else that's very important. The sense of tomorrow is a part of the sense of
the future. Suppose you did not have tomorrow. Then, had you thought about what this would
mean to how you would interpret your past and how you would interpret your present?
For always and when, for instance, when you were young, very young-- say nine, 10 years old-you knew that whatever may be happening to you at that moment or whatever your past has
meant to you, the real possibility of your life remained to be explored.
So when you were nine years old, you said, the thing that I'm looking for really I can't get until
I'm in my teens. And then when you got into your teens, you said, no, I haven't had enough time
yet so that I can't experience it until I'm in my 20's. And then, when you were in your 20's, you
said, well, now, there's some things that can only come with a certain kind of maturity. So it'll
have to come in my 30's-- and on and on and on.
I said, when I get there, the struggle will be over. But when I got there, I found that the struggle
was not over, that the struggle will not be over, no, not even in death. This is the place of
tomorrow. It means that I can bring to bear upon the next day all that I have learned and gathered
or accumulated from all of the other days of the past.
So the poet says, I go to prove my soul. I see my way as birds, their trackless way. I shall arrive.
What time? What circuit first? I ask not. But unless God sent his hail, his sleet, or fireballs, I
shall arrive. He guides me and the bird in His good time.
Now this sense of tomorrow has something else to say about your life and about my life. It says
that it may be possible for me to select those aspects of my past which seem, to me, to be
excellent, to be worthful, but which I did not realize as being excellent or wistful when I was
going through them.
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I can't select these now, in the present, and prepare myself to build upon them in the future so
that the meaning of my life then becomes identified not merely with what I have experienced,
not merely with what I am now experiencing. But the meaning of my life can be identified with
that which is yet to come.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
It means that I have one more chance to do tomorrow in a manner that is more significant and
more expressive of my true intent, things that would improve upon all that I have known in the
past.
So as we move into the new year, let us move into it face forward, greeting the future with hope
and aspiration. Let us not back into the future, looking at the past, saying to ourselves that,
whatever the future may be, it cannot, in any sense, be as good as the past.
No. The golden age is not in the past, was not yesterday. The golden age is tomorrow. Let us
salute, then, the new year.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight. O Lord,
my rock and my Redeemer.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This is tape number ET4 from the library of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust, Two
Meditations by Howard Thurman. This is side 2, entitled The Strength to Be Free.
[BELLS TOLLING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord,
my strength and my Redeemer.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
During this month, many people in different parts of our country will be thinking about freedom
and its meaning because of the national holiday that falls within the month. As a background for
our thought about a certain aspect of freedom, I'm reading two paragraphs.
"Give me the strength to be free. The thought of being free comes upon us sometimes with such
power that, under its impact, we lose the meaning that the thought implies. Often, being free
means to be where we are not at the moment, to be relieved of a particular set of chores or
responsibilities that are bearing heavily upon our minds, to be surrounded by a careless rapture
with no reminders of costs of any kind, to be on the open road with nothing overhead but the
blue sky and the whole day in which to roam.
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For many, being free means movement, change, reordering. To be free may not mean any of
these things. It may not involve a single change in a single circumstance. Or it may not extend
beyond one's own gate, beyond the four walls in the midst of which all of one's working hours
and endless nights are spent.
Pitts Theology Library
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It may mean no [INAUDIBLE] from the old familiar routine and the perennial cares which have
become one's persistent lot. Quite possibly, your days mean the deepening of your rut, the
increasing of your monotony, and the enlargement of the areas of your dullness. All of this and
more may be true for you. Give me the strength to be free.
Often, to be free means the ability to deal with the realities of one's situation so as not to be
overcome by them. It is a manifestation of a quality of being and living that results not only from
understanding of one's own situation, but also from wisdom in dealing with it. It takes no
strength to give up, to accept shackles of circumstance so that they become shackles of soul, to
shrug of the shoulders in blind acquiescence. This is easy.
But do not congratulate yourself that you've solved anything. In simple language, you have sold
out, surrendered, given up. It takes strength to find the high prerogative of your spirit. And you
will find that, if you do, a host of invisible angels will wing to your defense. And the glory of the
living God will envelop your surroundings because, in you, He has come into His own."
Give me the strength to be free and to endure the burden of freedom and the loneliness of those
without change. There is the freedom of the innocent, those who have not yet entered into any
measure of responsibility, whose lives are free from cocking care, from any of the burdens that
are generated by the necessities of growth and maturity.
It is the freedom of the little child whose childhood has been guaranteed by adults. For if a little
child is not permitted to experience childhood-- not merely to be a child chronologically, but to
experience childhood-- then he is forced to deal with his environment as if he were an adult.
And if a child is forced to deal with his environment as if he were an adult, then certain very
important biological and psychological processes that should be going on within the organism of
the child are interrupted. And the nervous system of the child becomes warped and twisted and
sometimes even gnarled so that the child grows up now with this lack of the experience of
childhood and becomes antisocial.
He has what may be called an angry nervous system, where there is not guaranteed for the child
the be carefree freedom, if I may put it that way, of innocence. The society pays a terrible toll for
as long as this child lives.
There is another kind of freedom. It is the freedom that is the result of responsibility-- the
freedom to be responsible, first, for your own action. And this means growth in maturity, growth
in wisdom.
When I was a boy, I had two sisters. One was older and one was younger. And I found it a very
convenient arrangement. Because whenever I was reprimanded for doing something, I could
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always say that I did it to help my younger sister out. Or I did it because of the influence of my
older sister, always dodging the kind of necessity that belongs to the responsible individual,
namely to take responsibility for one's own action.
Pitts Theology Library
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Now there is another kind of responsibility with reference to action. And that is a responsibility
for one's reaction. It is true that I cannot determine the influences or the forces that will be
brought to bear upon my life.
There are events which catch me in their agonizing grapple with which I am unable to exercise
any kind of control. These events are not responsive to my will, however good and kind and
generous and holy or persistent my will may be.
Now, given my set of involvements, given the impersonal forces that are brought to bear upon
my life because of the very nature of my existence at the time and place that finds me, as a result
of all of these things, I cannot have any determinative influence.
But one responsibility that I do have and that is I am responsible for my reaction to the things
that happen to me. This is in my hands. And I can react with acquiescence. I can react as if I am
a poor, undernourished victim of circumstances. Or I may deal with the raw materials of my
experience with the creative integrity of a responsible mind and personality.
Now there is another kind of freedom still. And that is the freedom of option. Freedom
fundamentally, in its most crucial definition, means the sense of alternative, the sense of option.
Now I may not be able to act on the option. But if I maintain a sense of option, I am still free.
Now this is important. For where there is no sense of option, where the individual is stripped of
all choice, when all opportunities for alternatives are eliminated, then the individual is not free.
Therefore, any society that is dedicated to freedom as our society theoretically is dedicated to
freedom must, above all else, guarantee for the individual a persistent and consistent sense of
alternative so that he is under no necessity to conform without any option being available to him.
He must have a sense of option if he would be free. Give me the strength to be free and to endure
the burden of freedom and the loneliness of those without change.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord,
my strength and my Redeemer.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
5
�
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We Believe (Television Series, 1958-1965)
Description
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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>
<img src="http://pittsviva.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/webelieve-whdh-boston.png" style="float: right;" alt="webelieve-whdh-boston.png" />
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Descriptions by Dustin Mailman
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Original Title
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Salute to the New Year; The Strength to be Free (ET-4; GC 11-16-71), 1971 Nov 16
Time Period
The decade in which the recording was produced.
1960s
Location
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WHDH-TV, Boston, Massachusetts
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394-766
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Thurman, Howard
Title
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Salute to the New Year (1962-01-05); The Strength to be Free (1960-07-01)
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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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1962-01-05
1960-07-01
Description
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In this recording within the We Believe Series; Thurman draws from his work "Meditations of the Heart" to reflect upon the meaning of a new year. He suggests that each passing year is a "year that has fulfilled itself and passed on," and is filled with change, fresh starts, grace, and hard lessons. In the passing of the previous year, Thurman suggests, there is an "opportunity to love life more wisely," noting that both the past and the future are "Golden Ages."
In this recording within the We Believe Series; Thurman draws from his work "Meditations of the Heart," to reflect upon the content of freedom, as the July 4th holiday approaches him and the original audience. He waxes over the variety of expressions of freedom: freedom as release from a current moment, freedom as a wide-open road, freedom as responsibility which leads to growth in wisdom. While discerning these forms of freedom, Thurman returns to a mantra, "Give me the strength to be free and to endure the burden of freedom and loneliness of those without change."
Contributor
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Dustin Mailman
angels
beginnings
birds
change
child
completion
conformity
death
Fourth of July
freedom
friendship
future
God
gratitude
holiday
innocent
life
maturity
movement
new start
New Years Day
organism
re-ordering
responsibility
seasons
soul
strength
time
tomorrow
understanding
unity
wisdom
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48892f56a18053f9d74d1d6936b43755
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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
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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.
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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.
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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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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
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audio
Publisher
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<a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a>
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<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.
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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
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394-047_B.mp3
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I'd finish my education and I would get-- I'd become self-supporting. I'd get a job. And then I
would be able to write a famous letter to my mother. And tell her now as of this day, it is
unnecessary for you to work anymore. You can come home and take your ease and have your
own garden and do all the things for the sick, and all the things you want to do.
So when I was-- I got my first position, I wrote her the letter. She went home. At the end of the
year, I came down to Florida just to visit and to participate in normal felicitations for being such
a wonderful son. I said this first afternoon, Mama, how does it feel just to get up in the morning
when you're ready to get up and not have to work over a hot stove eight, nine hours a day and
then not quite be able to do the simplest things for your children that you want to do?
And then I told her something that I'd never told her before. That I remember a little boy seeing I
come in to our little room with her lantern. In those days, everybody rode bicycles, and she had a
lantern because she came home from her work at night. And she'd come in our room and take the
lamp and hold it over us and look at us.
And I remember one night I pretended to be asleep. I wasn't asleep for some reason. And I
watched her. And I watched the tears come and drop as she looked at us, because the only time
that she could see us was when we were asleep. Because she went to work before we were up
and came home after we were in bed.
Her answer was, well, it's pretty good. It's pretty good. But the most important thing that has
happened is this. So many things in my life are now for the first time falling into place. All of my
life until last year I had to work so that when I slept I slept in a hurry to get enough energy to
take me through the next long day.
But now things are sorting themselves out, because all of me is not caught in this surviving
process. And one of the things that I discovered is that all these years I've told you the wrong
birthday. That you were not born so and so and so and so. But you were born so and so and so
and so. Because this was happening and this was happening. But all these years there's been none
of me available to sort these things out.
Now, I think in some such situation as that, the mind was able to lift itself up from being body
bound. But it had inherent in its-- if I may think of the mind as having structure for a moment-there's inherent in the mind order, harmony so that the mind always raises a question. This has to
make sense. It's always trying to harmonize, to integrate, to structure, to give ordered meaning so
that man's experience as a human animal is an experience of harmony and order even in terms of
the way he fits into the ecology of the world.
Sometimes I think-- and this is an aside-- sometimes I think that one of the reasons why we have
such radical and increasingly disastrous mental aberrations in our society is not merely because
of increase in pressure and all the things that go with modern life, these elements. But I think it is
because man has ruptured the harmony which he as a human creature has with his total
environment. I just don't think that you can pollute the streams and poison the atmosphere and
denude the hills without the psyche feeling itself ravaged, ravaged.
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And it has no way to express its agony except in aberrations in the mind. Because all life is one,
one. Now, just a little more, and I'll put it and I'll stop.
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First you see the racial memory-- now bear in mind, I don't want to seem to be pedantic all
together, but just to keep you up to date with the process-- community means for any expression
of life the actualizing of its potential. It is the way life realizes itself in an expression of life, This
harmony, this internal order is implicit in the racial memory as manifests in the creation myths
around the world.
Second, in man's experience as a creature among other creatures on the planet-- first, within his
own organism and in turn for the way in which that organism corresponds externally with his
environment and his flow, his flow, his flow. Now, the third.
Community is implicit in all the dreams of the prophets and the seers as manifested in utopias.
It's interesting, isn't it, that every utopia projects into a future that is not yet the same kind of
harmony that is present in the racial memory.
And the unique thing about any utopia-- Moore's, Plato's, the biblical ones, any of that you name
and there are hundreds of them-- the unique thing about them is within the utopian community
they are every word is important it's critical with the utopian community, within that, there is
harmony.
Now, outside of it, of course, is outside of it. But within the utopia itself there is harmony, there
is a structure of moral and often physical dependability. And that's interesting. In the book the
prophet talks of a time when the lion and the lamb will lie down together. And a little child may
put his hand over the hole of an asp and the asp will relax his self-regarding impulse and not
sting the child. And when this happens what will happen to man?
Man will beat his swords into plowshares, his spears into pruning hooks. Why? Because the
knowledge, says the prophet, the knowledge of the Lord will cover the Earth as the waters cover
the sea. That the correspondence in the deliberate self-consious activity of the human spirit will
be one with the wholeness and the order and the balance that is inherent in the natural world.
Now, there are a lot of problems in this. The main thesis that I'm developing as far as I've gone in
my thinking about it is as I've outlined. Now, one of the functions then a person who worked for
a community in society is to make this kind of discovery. Namely, that experiences of unity
between peoples are more compelling than all the concepts, ideologies, creeds, fears, anxieties,
hatred that divide. Let me say it again.
Experiences of unity among peoples are more compelling than all these things that divide. Now,
if I can multiply these experiences of unity between peoples over a time interval of sufficient
duration, I can undermine any barrier that separates one man from another. This is the heart of it.
And I don't need the voice of Yahweh thundering from a desert [INAUDIBLE], as wonderful as
it. Is if I can hear Him say the right things, I don't need any-- to read any law in any book.
Community is built into the bias of mind. Now, finally-- and I hope I mean it-- finally,
pragmatically this means that the problem in human relations as far as community's concerned is
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constantly to widen the magnetic field of my relations, so that they would include more and more
and more people. And let me illustrate [INAUDIBLE]
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During war-- during any time a nation is at war-- one of the first things that the nation has to do
if it is going to wage war effectively-- and this is one of the reasons why we have so much
trouble waging the war in Vietnam-- because the first thing that has to be done, the enemy has to
be so defined that he is no longer a member of the human race.
He becomes the Hun. He becomes the Jap. Now one I redefine him so that he is no longer a
member of community, then it's open season. I can do anything I want to do without
undermining my own sense of community.
It's the sort of thing that happens when you have a friend who can't tell you what he thinks of you
until he gets mad. Now, once he gets mad then you are bound. And then he can say all the things
he wants to say to you and keep your self-respect. But once you get within is magnetic field
you've become a part of his experience of community, so that people that I want to hate I can't do
it until I read them out.
It confined it to human life. She said, if my concept of reverence for life is not widened and
widened and widened, if I want to destroy you, all I need to do-- if I want to destroy you with a
clear conscious is all I need to do is to have you outside of the circle.
If I kill a rattlesnake because the rattlesnake threatens my life or the rattlesnake is a menace, all I
need to do is to redefine a human being as a menace and kill him. It's as simple as that-- without
any guilt, without any moral responsibility, once he is out of bounds.
So that the genius of community then is to widen the magnetic field so that what I experience as
harmony and order in terms of the structure of my relationships with those people who are within
the circle cannot apply to people as they go of until I widen the circle. And if I don't widen the
circle I will bare nonexistence. I will bare nonexistence.
I saw a man pursuing the horizon round and round they sped. I accosted the man. It is futile, said
I. You can't. You lie, he cried and ran on for better or for worse. All life is one and I can never be
what is my potential to be as long as you are not what your potential is to be so that I'm tied to
you.
And even when I kill you it's my way of affirming that you and I cannot be separated. Cannot be
separated, cannot be separated. Well, thank you. You're very kind.
[APPLAUSE]
3
�
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Man and Social Change Series (1969, California State College, Long Beach, CA)
Description
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In the three lectures comprising this series, Thurman discusses the effects of personal experience on social change. He illuminates points regarding individual freedom, the expression of togetherness in community, and nonviolence as the individual’s attempt to broaden one’s circle of concern.
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1969
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Descriptions by Dr. Tim Rainey
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California State College, Long Beach, California
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1960s
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Man and Social Change (II): Man and the Experience of Community [Side B], 1969 Mar 20
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394-047_B
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Thurman, Howard
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1969-03-20
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<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
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Description
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Community is evinced when any form of life identifies with another. For Thurman, humans experience wholeness when individual existence recognizes itself within the fullness of all existence. Community is an expression of life because its manifestation follows the “harmony,” “order,” and “inner togetherness” consistent with a person’s inner order. In this way, Thurman notes, community makes sense to the mind. Recognizing this profound continuity, persons in community must widen the “magnetic field” of their relationships and pursue experiences of harmony that compel the spirit more than ideologies, creeds, or, fears that divide.
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Man and Social Change, Part 2: Man and the Experience of Community (continued), 1969 March 20
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community
disharmony
harmony
innocence
life
organism
racial memory of the human
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394-047_A.mp3
My reading-- two things as a background for our thinking.
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"I like to feel strange life beating up against my own life. I like to realize forms of life utterly
unlike my own. When my own life feels small, and I am oppressed with it, I like to crush
together and see it in a picture, in an instant, a multitude of disconnected, unlike phases of human
life-- a medieval monk with his string of beads pacing the quiet orchard and looking up from the
grass at his feet to the heavy fruit trees, little Malay boys playing naked on a shining sea beach, a
Hindu philosopher alone under his banyan tree, thinking, thinking, thinking, so that in the
thought of God, he may lose himself-- a troop of Bacchanalians dressed in white, with crowns of
vine leaves, dancing along the Roman streets, a martyr on the night of his death looking through
the narrow window to the sky and feeling that already he has the wings that shall bear him up, an
epicurean discoursing at a Roman bath to a knot of his disciples on the nature of happiness, a
Kaffir witch doctor seeking for herbs by moonlight, while from the huts on the hillside comes the
sound of children playing and dogs barking and the voices of women and children, a mother
giving bread and milk to her children in little wooden basins and singing the evening's song.
I like to see it all. I feel it run through me, that life belongs to me. It makes my little life larger. It
breaks down the narrow walls that shut me in."
And now one other, and then we will be ready to work. "Now we are ready to look at something
pretty special. It's a duck riding the ocean 100 feet beyond the turf. No, it isn't a gull. A gull
always has a raucous touch about him.
This is some sort of duck. And he cuddles in the swells. He isn't cold, and he is thinking things
over. There's a big heaving in the Atlantic, and he is a part of it. He looks a bit like a mandarin or
the Lord Buddha meditating under the Bo tree.
But he has hardly enough above the eyes to be a philosopher. He has poise, however, which is
what philosophers must have. He can rest while the Atlantic heaves, because he rests in the
Atlantic. Probably he doesn't know how large the ocean is. Neither do you.
But he realizes the ocean. And what does he do, I ask you? He sits down in it. He reposes in the
immediate as if it were infinity, which it is."
That's religion. And the duck has it. "He has made himself part of the boundless by easing
himself into the boundless just where all the boundless touches him."
The people of the Middle Ages were more like this duck than we are. They took life as it
presented itself and ran it up in spires of Gothic. They crossed few oceans, but they floated on
the sea of time.
And the cat is more like this duck than we are. We can radio to the moon and get back a pic for
an answer. But a cat can make a hearth rug a haven in the infinite or launch four kittens into life
in a cracker-box by the furnace, purring with pride, because he has tuned in on cosmic waves.
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Man and the meaning of community-- for some time, I have been seeking to find a way of
thinking about the experience of harmony and order and community in human life. And the thing
that has puzzled me has been the fact that persons who concern themselves about community,
who work for community, again and again and again seem to be driven establish some
transcendent point of reference to which they relate in order to give to them courage and a sense
not only of continuity but heart. And where there is lacking this transcendent point of reference,
then it is very difficult for the individual human spirit who is concerned about community to
keep from growing weary, getting tired, and often, finally giving it up as something that is not
essential to man's life on the planet. Now, I don't believe this, you see, so that I have driven my
mind to see if they cannot be within the context of man's living experience, the ground and the
rational, for his concern about and his experience of community.
This is the essence of my search, and I want to talk about how my mind works with reference to
trying to find a clue to this issue, which for me, is a very, very important and very crucial issue.
Because as long as I live my life, I discover over and over again that I'm surrounded by so much
that casts down so much that makes for despair of heart and often so little that uplifts and
inspires. And yet, it would seem to me that the thing that uplifts and inspires should be inherent
in man's experience of life itself. So it does not have to be appeal to a dogma beyond us, as
wonderful as any dogma that can lift the spirit may be. But there ought be, in man's experience
of living his life and reflecting upon the journey of man on the planet, that will give him heart.
And it is not, therefore, contingent upon the vicissitude of his fortune or by the experiences that
may contradict his search.
Now, I begin with one or two propositions, naturally. And the first is that, in our thought about
life, one of the simplest, and for me, the most profound observation, is that life itself is alive.
That's the first, that this is a living, pulsing, breathing dimension of experience. Well, you know
that you are alive, and you know that your cat and your dog or your pet snake that these are alive.
And the person next to you may be alive.
And the mind, you see, is so overwhelmed by all of these-- how do I say this-- the mass attack of
all of these particular expressions of vitality by which we are surrounded that the simplest thing
about life is overlooked-- that it is life itself that is alive, that this is, in essence, a dynamic
universe. And wherever there is life, there is some kind of structure of dependability, some inner
logic that gives meaning and structure and viability and purpose. Not in a metaphysical sense,
but purpose in the sense that is expressed when you notice that a house plant that you have finds
a way to turn towards the sun without any guidance from you.
I remember going out in front of our home once and seeing some men digging away at the place
where the sewer, the sewer pipes. And of course, they're always doing this in cities. And then the
two-- I think there's something demonic about it. But there is. And there's never any end to it.
So I went out to see what was going on. And they had-- there was a ditch, and I noticed that two
sections of sewer pipe had been exposed. And around these sections of pipe, there was a network
of roots just encased so that you could not see the pipe. And then where the joints were I noticed
that it seemed that the roots turned inward in a unique way. Being curious, I waited until they
began to move these around, and I discovered that, sure enough, some little eager rootlets had
found a way to penetrate the joints and get inside the sewage pipe.
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And when the man took his sledge business and cracked the thing open, the inside of that section
of the sewer was one massive root. And they came from a tree 300 yards away on the back of the
lot. The roots had smelled this water and had gone under the basement of the house and found it.
Pitts Theology Library
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Now, purpose in that sense is what I'm talking about. This seems to be characteristic of the way
life behaves. So life is alive. That's the first proposition. And wherever you see it, it's on the hunt
for that which will nourish it, sustain it, and hold it.
Now, with that general statement about life, I would like to begin the heart of my idea. And it is
here a working definition, because I think this is important. Community is an expression of life
when the potential of that life fulfills itself.
Now, let me say it again. It's almost 8 o'clock at night, and you've had dinner. And we've been
moving quietly into zero hour, and you have had a long day. And you would be forgiven if you
find that you're just having a difficult time to sort of wander along with me. But you have my
permission to take a nap.
[LAUGHTER]
But do it quietly.
[LAUGHTER]
This is all that I ask. And when you wake up, we will be sort of wandering along, working at this
idea. So don't be embarrassed, because I'm not going anywhere till I'm through. I'll be right here
working.
Now, community, then, in it's simplest and most elemental form, is what happens when any form
of life actualizes its potential, when within that tight cycle that that expression of life represents
it fulfills itself. Or that's the building block. Now, the more complex the form of life may be, the
more involved is the process by which that form of life actualizes its potential.
And with the complex forms of life, such as man, even the notion of potential is itself dynamic
so that I'm never sure at any given moment in time when I have actualized my potential, because
I am always moving, growing, getting insight so that it's almost like a mirage. But when I get
there, I say yes. If I do that, then I have, as a living thing, experienced inner harmony. But when I
get there, I find that this experience simply opens up areas that still must be actualized before I
can say that I have it.
Now, with this notion, then, of community, this working definition, it would seem to follow that
harmony, that inner togetherness, inner order, that seems to be built into the process of individual
expressions of life, is the way life itself functions, the way it is structured. Now, to jump to my
conclusion, when I am working for harmony, when I'm working for community, I am not going
against the grain of existence. But I am supported by this. Whether I bow my knee before an altar
or recognize any object of transcendent devotion, I am supported in the quest for community by
my experience as a living creature in a living universe.
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Now, if this is the case, and in addition, I happen to be religious, then all the gross is net. But the
religious dimension in this sense is not necessitous to the experience. This is what I am saying.
Pitts Theology Library
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Now, we discover, then, that this notion of community is very present in the memory of the race,
as manifested, for instance, in the creation stories and the creation myths. It doesn't matter what
culture, what tradition, where in time you come upon them. Essentially, when man raised the
question, how did we get here, how did this human show get on the road, the answer, in the race,
has always the same basic elements in it. Let us begin then to illustrate it, the first proposition,
with our own creation accounts as found in the Bible.
At that far off time, says the racial memory, that was a period when harmony existed between all
living things, between man and the animals. All manifestations of life were harmonious. This is
what Genesis is, and this is what the Babylonian myths, the American Indian myths, any of them,
they all say the same thing.
Now, what happened? It was community, community in the sense of inner harmony, but
community in which the predominant element was innocence, innocence. And as soon as
knowledge was introduced, and man lost his innocence, he was involved in guilt.
So that one of the critical problems of education is, how can young people move from innocence
to knowledge without guilt? And can guilt be stripped, drained, of all of its dismal moral
dimensions so that it becomes, in the quest for knowledge, an incentive? This is one of the
critical problems of education.
Now, when knowledge came, innocence was lost. And the order, the harmony between Adam in
our account and all the other animals and creatures, this harmony was broken. But in the racial
memory, wherever we touch it, it is an echo of a time when community was pervasive.
When I was a boy, I ran across the meadow to visit one of my chums-- well, as a matter of fact,
my only chum, but for very good reasons. And when I started around the house-- because,
always, I met him in the back yard, where we could shoot marbles. And as I came around the
house, I heard [KNOCKING] a rap on the window pane. And I looked up, and his father was
standing at the window. And he urged me to come around and come in the house through the
front door. I did. And when I walked into the room where he was, he pointed out into the back
yard.
And here in the sand was my chum's baby sister, all three months, four months, five months,
crawling stage, sitting in the sand playing with this rattlesnake. Now, they were having a very
happy time. The snake would try to crawl away. She'd pull him back by his tail. She turned him
over on his back, and he would get back, and then he'd tried to get away.
And they were just delighting themselves in each other. And my friend was out on the side where
the path was standing guard, and his father sent me out to stand on the other side. For what
purpose? So that no one would come around and do what? Introduce into this harmony fear,
divisiveness, so that the harmony would be broken. And as soon as the harmony was broken,
then these two living things that were harmonious became enemies, enemies, enemies.
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But implicit in the racial memory is the notion of order, of structured community, but community
of innocence. And the ethical problem that community creates in the light of that kind of racial
memory is, can you move from a community of innocence to a community of responsibility and
survive? And survive, so bearing in mind the working definition-- community is the experience
of any form of life when it realizes itself. And it may be stated in another way that when life
realizes itself in any expression of life, that expression of life experiences wholeness. And
wholeness is community.
All right. So what I despair in the midst of the disharmonies of contemporary life, I feel that life
is on the side of harmony, and life is against disharmony. Not as a religious judgment, but as a
judgment the content of which is the derivative from the structure of your life itself. This is what
I'm saying.
Now, you take it another step. I think the experience of community is not only present in the
racial memory, but the experience of community is inherent in man's experience as a creature on
this planet, as a creature. For many years, the thing that has comforted me most in trying to work
for and to live experientially into the meaning of community has been the contemplation of my
own organism, my own organism. This is curious, isn't it?
It seems as if my body committed harmony to memory. My organism committed, so that I
become aware of some part of my organism when it is out of harmony. And the whole
philosophy of therapy is the restoration to the organism of an original harmony, an original
harmony.
Now, only when my little finger can't little finger do I become aware that my little finger is out
of harmony, out of community? And I do everything I can to restore it so that it becomes a part
of this.
Now, man's body then is a manifestation of a built in, organistic harmony with a kind of implicit- as we've discovered in later times-- a kind of implicit command in the coding in the cell. Out of
some 10 million cells in the body of a becoming baby, some cells become fingernails. Some
become eyebrows. Each cell working on the basis of that which is inherent in the coding that's in
the cell itself, and one of the problems of modern medicine is right here.
We have built up defenses and therapies and cures, et cetera. Now, knowledge concerning these
things sufficient so as to manage most of the disorders, you see, or disorders that we call
sicknesses, from things that invade the body from the outside. If doctors really wanted to, I'm
sure they could cure the common cold but it isn't worth curing. But they could. They know now
enough so they can deal with those things that invade so that for the next 50 years, the whole
problem of medicine and its relation to human sickness will be how to deal with those disorders,
those unregulations within the community of the human organism.
For instance, a friend of mine who's a surgeon tells me that if you have just a fraction of a liver
left that the body can build another liver. And when it gets to the right size, there's a cut off, and
it stops making liver cells. And because we don't know what the mechanism of the cut off is, we
can't stop the body from making cancer cells. But if we knew what the human mechanism was of
the cut off-- this is what I'm talking about.
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Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
So that there is, as a creature, as a human creature, I experience community in my body. There is
a built in harmony physiologically in my organism. Now, when I get ready to think in terms of
the bearing that this has on my self conscious activity, then I notice something very interesting.
And that is that it seems to be the nature of the mind to think always in terms of an inner order.
We say it in this way, that things must make sense to the mind.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
And it may be, if I may just let my mind play around with the notion just a little, that it just
maybe, you see, that for a long time, as we were developing through these millions of years on
this planet, that the mind could not be separated from the body, that we had body-mind but not
mind as a separate entity. And perhaps the mind became separated from the body in a very
interesting way. And let's let our imagination play with it.
Suppose-- you see, there was a time when our forebears had to spend all of their energy just
trying to stay alive. They didn't have any built in external things to keep them from being
attacked by these various creatures. So they had to live in trees, so the rumor goes, because this
was safe, and it gave them a view all the way around, a view from Hadrian's bridge.
And suppose, one day, one of our ancestors decided he wanted to give his little boy a birthday
present. And he knew that the most delectable present he could get was a certain kind of dinosaur
egg that could only be found about 20 miles over on the other side of the prairie or the valley. So
early in the morning, he goes out to find this thing. And he finds it, and he starts back home. And
he's tired now, so he sits down to rest under the shade of a rock.
And after he settled in, the rock began to move, because it was one of these monsters having a
siesta. So he was chased all the way across the prairie, and the trees seemed to be farther and
farther away rather than closer and closer. And he noticed something that he'd never seen before.
There was an opening in the side of the hill. He'd been over that way 1,000 times, but he'd never
seen it. And he dotted into that opening, and the opening was small enough for him to get in and
too small for his pursuer. And when he got in there, he said, my, this is pretty good.
Now, if I can manage some way to seal it up so the things that are small enough to get in here
can't get in here without my seeing them first, then this is the new home. So he left to his tree and
brought his family down and put them in there. And the word went from treetop to treetop, you
don't have to live in trees anymore if you can find your opening in the hills.
Now, think of it. Think of what happened. Think of it. All the energy of the organism was spent
in just staying alive. Now with a cave, it was no longer to spend all this energy in the business of
staying alive.
This energy became surplus energy. And thus, imagination was born, and the mind now could
begin to float up and detachment from the organism. I had a dream when I was a boy, and that
was that I would--
6
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Man and Social Change Series (1969, California State College, Long Beach, CA)
Description
An account of the resource
In the three lectures comprising this series, Thurman discusses the effects of personal experience on social change. He illuminates points regarding individual freedom, the expression of togetherness in community, and nonviolence as the individual’s attempt to broaden one’s circle of concern.
Date
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1969
Contributor
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Descriptions by Dr. Tim Rainey
AudioWithTranscription
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Audio with Transcription
<iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-047_A.html" ></iframe>
Location
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California State College, Long Beach, California
Time Period
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1960s
Original Title
Title as transcribed from tape cassette
Man and Social Change (II): Man and the Experience of Community [Side A], 1969 Mar 20
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
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394-047_A
Creator
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Thurman, Howard
Date
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1969-03-20
Source
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<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
Format
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audio
Publisher
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<a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a>
Coverage
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GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13148225.246838 3999563.3243138))
Description
An account of the resource
Community is evinced when any form of life identifies with another. For Thurman, humans experience wholeness when individual existence recognizes itself within the fullness of all existence. Community is an expression of life because its manifestation follows the “harmony,” “order,” and “inner togetherness” consistent with a person’s inner order. In this way, Thurman notes, community makes sense to the mind. Recognizing this profound continuity, persons in community must widen the “magnetic field” of their relationships and pursue experiences of harmony that compel the spirit more than ideologies, creeds, or, fears that divide.
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<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
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Man and Social Change, Part 2: Man and the Experience of Community, 1969 March 20
Contributor
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Description by Dr. Tim Rainey
community
disharmony
harmony
innocence
life
organism
racial memory of the human