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Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
394-769.mp3
This is tape number ET7. From the library of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust, two
meditations by Howard Thurman. This is side 1 entitled, Jesus, His Contribution.
Pitts Theology Library
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[CHURCH BELLS TOLLING]
[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]
Since this is the beginning of Lent, I want to read a meditation from the Inward Journey and
make a comment.
"In many ways beyond all calculation and reflection, our lives have been deeply touched, and
influenced by the character, the teaching, and the spirit, of Jesus of Nazareth.
He moves in and out upon the horizon of our days, like some fleeting ghost. At times when we
are least aware and least prepared, some startling, clear thrust of his mind is our portion.
The normal tempo of our ways is turned back upon itself. And we are reminded of what we are
and of what life is. Often, the judgment of such moments is swift and silencing.
Sometimes, his insight kindles a wistful longing in the heart, softened by the muted cadence of
unfulfilled dreams and unrealized hopes. Sometimes, his words stir to life long forgotten
resolution, call to mind an earlier time when our feet were set in a good path and our plan was
for a holy endeavor.
Like a great wind they move, fanning into flame the burning spirit of the living God. And all
leaden spirits are given wings that sweep beyond all vistas and beyond all horizons.
There is no way to balance the debt we owe to the spirit which he let loose in the world. It is
upon this that we meditate now in the gathering quietness. Each of us, in his own way, finds the
stairs leading to the holy place.
We gather in our hands the fragments of our lives, searching eagerly for some creative synthesis,
some wholeness, some all-encompassing unity capable of stealing the tempests within us and
quieting all the inner turbulence of our fears.
We seek to walk in our path, which opens up before us, made clear by the light of his spirit and
the radiance which it casts all around us. We join him in the almighty trust that God is our father.
And we are his children living under the shadow of his spirit.
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Accept the offering of our lives, oh, God. We do not know quite what to do with them. We place
them before thee as they are, encumbered and fragmented with no hints, no suggestions, no
attempts to order the working of thy spirit upon us.
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Accept our lives, our Father, work them over, correct them, purify them, hold them in thy focus,
lest we perish and the spirit within us dies."
Many years ago, a book was written in which this line occurs, "men may come to God through
nature. Men may come to God through other good men. But he who seeks God with all of his
heart, will somewhere in his quest, encounter Jesus."
If I were to summarize in short and narrow compass what seems to me to be the significance of
the impact which he has upon the world, it would be stripped of what is formally recognized as
systematic Christologies, or theologies, or dogmas-- stripped to the literal substance of itself.
There are three things that stand out in my thought. One is that he, Jesus, did give to the world, in
creative summary and compass, the vision of a great ideal.
And that ideal, very simply put, is built upon the compact structure of the primary family unit.
For he insisted that all men are children of God. And as children of God, they have a common
father.
There is one family, and that is the human family and the thing that is binding, is intrinsic, and
inherent in the very nature of being itself. The vision of a great ideal that all men everywhere in
every climb, every class, every background, every affirmation, all men, are members of one
family.
And the second important and searching contribution which he gives, growing out of that, is that
there is a way of living that underscores, and highlights, and even dramatizes, if you please, how
this family concept can be implemented at the level of the individual with his aspirations, and his
hopes, and his dreams, and his fears.
And he said that the method, the technique, the process, the procedure, the way, the spirit that
makes it possible for the dream, which is literal in the mind, may be reduced to literal fact or
expressed as literal fact.
And he called this way, this procedure, this mood, this spirit, this technique, this skill, this art-he called it love. And to love means to deal with a member of the family of God at a point in that
person that is beyond all of his faults, and all of his blemishes, and all of his virtues-- to deal with
him totally, to encompass him.
So that within the sweet of your caring, all aspects of his life may be exposed without, in turn,
his being threatened by this exposure. And he said that to be loved, is to have a sense of being
dealt with at a point in one's self that is beyond all of one's virtues and beyond all of one's fault, a
sense of being completely, and thoroughly understood, and dealt with gently and cared for
tenderly, and spontaneously, and deliberately.
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Not only did he suggest this technique by which the dream can become instant fact, but he also
suggested, and made manifest in his living religious experience, a resource that is available to the
individual member of the family that will enable him to carry out this, to endure, as he works out
the fulfillment of the dream through the manifestation of the technique.
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And he said, this source is God. And he said that God is very close. He said that God is the
ground of life, the creator of life, the creator of the living substance, the creator of existence. And
he suggested three things that God is.
That when he prayed, even though the prayers are translations, of translations, of translations, of
translations, as you read them in the Bible, when we read them, we have a sense that when he
prayed, he was sure that he was talking to somebody. He met somebody. He had a personal
encounter.
And the second thing that his faith taught him was that God is near, not way off somewhere high
above the earth in the heavens looking down upon man. But that God is a living part of the very
stuff of life, close at hand.
Speak to him, thou, for he heareth and spirit with spirit may meet, closer is he than breathing,
nearer than hands and feet. And then he also felt that God was love, that the universe is not some
cold, impersonal manifestation of energy and power.
But that God the creator is also God the Father, close as breathing, and yet, very tender and
caring. And why did he seize upon this notion of love as the key to God? Because when a man
loves, he will do, for his beloved, what no power on earth, and heaven, or hell can make him do
without love. This is his contribution to our time.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
That the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, oh, Lord,
my rock and my Redeemer.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This is tape number ET7. From the library of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust, two
meditations by Howard Thurman. This is side 2 entitled, The Triumphant Entry.
[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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Next Sunday is a very important Sunday in the Christian calendar. It is the Sunday of the
triumphant entry of the Master into Jerusalem. I would like to read as a background for our
thinking about this from the Inward Journey.
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"Searching, indeed, must have been the thoughts moving through the mind of the Master as he
jogged along on the back of the donkey on that fateful day, which marks, in the Christian
calendar, the triumphant entry.
The experience must have been as strange and out of character for him as it was for the faithful
animal on whose back he rode. For more than two years, Jesus had been engaged in a public
ministry.
Once, when there were those who want to make him a King, he had refused. My kingdom is not
of this world, he said. He had walked the countryside with his band of disciples preaching,
teaching, healing, and spreading a quality of radiance that could come only from one whose
overwhelming enthusiasm was for God and his kingdom.
He had kept many lonely trysts in the late watches of the night. Trueing his spirit and his whole
life by the will of his father. So close had he worked with God, that the line of demarcation
between his will and God's will would fade and reappear, fade and reappear.
Step by resolute step, he had come to the great city. Deep within his spirit there may have been a
sense of foreboding or the heightened quality of exhilaration that comes from knowing that there
is no road back. He had learned much.
So sensitive had grown his spirit and the living quality of his being, that he seemed more and
more to stand inside of life looking out upon it as a man who gazes from a window in a room out
into the yard and beyond to the distant hills.
He could see all the sparrow-ness of the sparrow, the leprosy of the leper, the blindness of the
blind, the cripple-ness of the cripple, and the frenzy of the mad. He had become joy, sorrow,
hope, anguish to the joyful, the sorrowful, the hopeful, the anguished.
Could he feel his way into the mind and the mood of those who cast the palms and the flowers in
his path? Was he in the cry of those who exclaimed their wild and unrestrained hosannas?
Did he mingle with the emotions that lay beneath the exhortations, ready to explode in the
outbursts of the mob screaming, crucify him, crucify him. I wonder what was at work in the
mind of Jesus of Nazareth as he jogged along on the back of the faithful donkey?
Perhaps, his mind was far away to the scenes of his childhood, feeling the sawdust between his
toes in his father's carpenter's shop. He may have been remembering the high holidays in the
synagogue with his whole body quickened by the echo of the ram's horn as it sounded.
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Or perhaps, he was thinking of his mother, how deeply he loved her, and how he wished that
they had not been laid upon him the great necessity which sent him out on the open road to
proclaim the truth, leaving her side forever.
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It may be that he lived all over again, that high moment on the Sabbath when he was handed the
scroll, and he unrolled it to the great passage from the prophet Isaiah. The Spirit of the Lord is
upon me.
For he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, to open the eyes of the blind, to unstop
the ears of the deaf, to announce the acceptable year of the Lord. I wonder what was moving
through the mind of the Master as he jogged along on the back of the faithful donkey?"
One day, when the Master and his disciples were going along a country road, a man suddenly
appeared, a man with a look of derangement in his face-- his hair disheveled, his eyes bloodshot.
There was a stare in those bloodshot eyes. And he looked here and there. His eyes dancing in
some kind of frenzy, and then closer scrutiny observed that dangling from his wrists were broken
chains and from his ankles the same.
And when he saw the Master, he spoke. And when he spoke, the Master asked him a question,
who are you? What is your name? And for a moment, just a swirling moment, a look of sanity
came across his face. And his mind that was tilted, righted itself temporarily.
And he said, I don't know. This is my great problem. If I knew who I was or if I know who I am,
then I could be whole. There are so many of me, and they riot in the streets. Their name is legion.
If I knew my own name, then I would know who I am and who God is.
Now the gift, the rare and extraordinary gift, of the Master, the gift that gives him, in some
amazing way, a place that places him at the center of much of the imagination, and aspiration,
and praise of a large section of the human race was the sense that because he knew where he
was, knew what his sense of mission, purpose, sense of goal were, what was his aim, what was
the integrity of himself-- because he was so secure within this, he was able to enable other people
to find for themselves the same quality.
So I wonder then, as he rode along at the triumphant entry-- when all the people were casting
down their flowers and praising him and saying the hosannas-- I wonder, did he feel secure in
that? Did he feel flattered by it? Did he feel, oh, yes. The people are right. Or did he wait for this
approval?
Now if he felt secure in what he was doing independent of the hosannas-- then a few days after,
when the same crowd began saying, not hosanna, but crucify him. Kill him. He would still be
secure. Because his sense of the presence of his father was not contingent upon whether they said
hosanna or whether they said crucify him.
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And it is this, I think-- certainly for me that makes me call him Master-- that he was so secure in
his relationship with God, that he was not dependent for his emotional sense of well-being upon
the affirmation or the condemnation of the crowd.
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So that near the end, when he is alone in the garden and his three disciples are sleeping and he
prays, and he comes back and he finds that they are asleep-- he said, that's all right. Sleep. I am
not really, in essence, dependent upon your yes or your no.
Now I ask myself, even as I ask you, as we think about the meaning of this event in the Christian
year, in what is your security? Is it contingent upon the approval of X, or Y, or Z?
Or stripped of the literal substance of yourself, do you feel that God gives to your life his
approval? And if so, nothing else matters if God is for you, and you are for him, who, who can
be against you?
[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.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This program was prerecorded.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
6
�
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" />
Contributor
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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/394-769.html" ></iframe>
Original Title
Title as transcribed from tape cassette
Jesus: His Contribution; The Triumphant Entry (ET-7; GC 11-16-71), 1971 Nov 16
Time Period
The decade in which the recording was produced.
1960s
Location
The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon
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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394-769
Creator
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Thurman, Howard
Title
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Jesus, His Contribution (1963-03-01); The Triumphant Entry (1964-03-20)
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>
Date
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1963-03-01
1964-03-20
Description
An account of the resource
In this recording within the We Believe Series; Howard Thurman reflects upon his writing within "The Inward Journey," to speak to the impact Jesus has upon one's experience of life. Thurman notes that it is in one's seeking of God that they find Jesus, and when one finds Jesus, one has the resources to find synthesis, wholeness, and unity.
In this recording within the We Believe Series; Howard Thurman reflects upon his writing within "The Inward Journey." In this reflection, he gives a narration of the passage of scripture that is commonly referred to as "Jesus' Triumphal Entry Into Jerusalem," and provides a series of questions and perspectives from the perspective of Jesus and those who were with Jesus in this narrative.
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Dustin Mailman
christology
donkey
experience
fact
family
flowers
heart
historical Jesus
holiday
hope
ideal
inward journey
Jesus of Nazareth
kingdom
lent
longing
love
ministry
palms
prayer
process
prophet
quest
reflections
sanctification
spirit
story
synthesis
Triumphant Entry
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394-100_B.mp3
I think that it is my experience of my own aliveness that is what I mean when I say that I am
living. And I think that, at the same time, I'm very aware of the fact that the essential part of my
life is not contained in whether [INAUDIBLE] of my body. I can't explain it.
Pitts Theology Library
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But this is why, for instance, under certain circumstances, a man very gladly gives up his life for
something which seems, to him, to be very important than whether he lives or whether he dies in
such categories. Now what this is, how we designate varies with a whole strain of other
conditions. But that, there is an element here that cannot be defined in terms of what is
happening to my body. [INAUDIBLE] which you [? are sure. ?] Now where it comes from,
where it goes, how it got where it it, it's a nice exercise to practice here.
There are very good [INAUDIBLE] theological explanations for it that would satisfy the
believer. But when everything is over, what remains is that a man experiences a quality of his
life that cannot be defined in terms of his body and in terms of the [INAUDIBLE]. Now this
opens up a whole lot of other things. I can understand why there are people who follow in this
line of thought. There's an echo from the platonic idea of the soul who feel that they bring
memories into this experience of things that were never taught to them, they never heard of.
When I first began teaching years and years ago at a men's college, I was [INAUDIBLE]. One
afternoon, a fellow came into my quarters with a piece of sculpture he had just wrapped up in a
newspaper. And he said, [INAUDIBLE] Who did it? Where'd you get it from? He said, I did it
this afternoon. [INAUDIBLE] tell me more. And he said, I let out the stones [INAUDIBLE]
stones [? from ?] granite. And I took a chisel and a hammer. And this is what [INAUDIBLE]
And I like you, and I want for you to have it.
And I said, well, who are you? I'm a freshman. I'm from Savannah, Georgia, a place called
[INAUDIBLE]. Is your father an artist? He said, I've never seen an artist in my life. He said, one
day last year in my senior year of high school, the city of Savannah admitted our high school
class to spend an afternoon in the art gallery. And as soon as I walked in, something came over
me. And I knew that anything I saw there, I could do. [INAUDIBLE]
So I said, I'm going to Indianapolis next week and may I take it because I know the head of
sculptures at the Indianapolis Art Institute. I'll have her look at it and see what she thinks
[INAUDIBLE]. So I made the appointment with a friend of mine. And on Saturday morning, I
went out to her house.
It's quite an experience, because when I walked to her front door, I rang the bell. She came to the
door and took a hard look at me. And she said, I saw you on the plane last night. I said, were you
on the plane from [INAUDIBLE] Oh, no. I wasn't on the plane. I was here. But I saw you. You
had on the same suit. You had on a blue shirt and a maroon neck tie. I said, that's right. And then
she said, well, [INAUDIBLE]
[LAUGHTER]
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I felt a little creepy now. So when I went into the living room of her [INAUDIBLE] room,
everything in the room was painted in light pea green. The windows, the ceiling, everything, the
baby grand piano, all the chairs. And then there was an old-fashioned gas light that had the cloth
thing, the mantles or whatever the thing is called. And that was burning. The only thing that was
not pea green, aside from [INAUDIBLE] was a bust of [INAUDIBLE] that she was working on.
Pitts Theology Library
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[INAUDIBLE]
And then she said, I believe you have something you want to show me. And I said, that's right.
[INAUDIBLE] Took me by the hand, and closed our eyes and began running our hands through
[INAUDIBLE]. And suddenly I felt that I was in the room alone [INAUDIBLE]. Have you had
the experience of being with someone and suddenly just being by yourself? But I knew that if I
waited, she'd come back. She did. And I said, well, [INAUDIBLE]. Oh, she said, I would feel
greatly blessed if I could [INAUDIBLE]. Tell me one. So I told her about two of them.
[INAUDIBLE]
BC, AD, some time far off somewhere. And I looked [INAUDIBLE]. And she said, well, how [?
do you come ?] [? for it? ?] Here is a young student, [INAUDIBLE] who's never been around the
gallery. [INAUDIBLE] and the first thing [INAUDIBLE] without any training whatsoever,
showed [INAUDIBLE]
See, the body that he has now is a young body. But she said, if I may apply age to souls-- and the
contradiction [? of that-- ?] that body houses an old soul.
Now all of this is-- you're going to get into a lot of [? fog ?] here. The only thing that I want to
have you see is that I think Plotinus is right when he says that when I become aware of who I am,
I discover that I am without beginning and without ending. [INAUDIBLE]
And I have only one assignment as far as any other living thing is in the world. And that is to
find in that person, or that animal or what have you, the thing of which I'm aware in myself. And
whatever it takes to call this thing that is imprisoned in another human being to get out of its
prison [INAUDIBLE], I will do.
Could mean healing the body, could mean feeding the hungry. Whatever [? it ?] [? is. ?] Because
I cannot lay claim to me until in my person, you can lay claim to you. [INAUDIBLE]
Now, I want to [? tie ?] [? this ?] man up because we want to get through with him. We aren't
through but we'll have to stop. Now let's quickly with [? screaming ?] redundancies
[INAUDIBLE], the good, God, the absolute, without category, without definition, [? spills ?] [?
over ?] in what Plotinus calls mind. Mind manifests itself in soul, world soul, Emerson's OverSoul. And this soul is the soul of existence. And everything that exists participates in that soul.
Now a part of the soul is back up there, so that the soul-- in a delightfully beautiful way, the soul
is always gazing back on its homeland. And it's trying, therefore, to journey back. Now how does
the soul make the journey from the time-space existence back first to the mind, to the nous?
And then what the soul does is seek always for disentangling itself from the involvement of its
senses. All, here again, all the [INAUDIBLE] together disentangling oneself from sensory
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experience, freeing oneself from all of the attachment of identity, by which as an illusion, the
soul seeks to establish its significance. Getting rid, stripping is one way that a contemporary
mystic put it. [? Teething. ?] Getting down to the little substance of the self.
Pitts Theology Library
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Now how is this done? Plotinus suggests that it is done by concentration. And concentration is an
act of mind, M-I-N-D. So that I can by concentration penetrate all forms that are emanations
from the mind. And in penetrating these forms, these [INAUDIBLE], it quietly begins to break in
my spirit that I am finding in them what I have discovered in myself. So they don't stand
[INAUDIBLE].
Now when I get that far, says Plotinus, I am up on the verge. I'm up past the timber line now.
And here, as he describes as the soul [? and the ?] home, the home of the soul in the absolute, I
lose all of my own self-awareness.
And impressions of God, of the absolute, of the good, maybe my essence flows back into the
essence out of which [? we've come. ?] And the line of demarcation disappears. But this cannot
last long. Yes.
Is that what you mean [INAUDIBLE]?
I'm sorry.
[INAUDIBLE] I'm always finding it but I'm never finding it?
Yes. And this experience is the moment that Plotinus calls [INAUDIBLE] as the moment of
ecstasy. When [INAUDIBLE] transcended and you are nowhere and you are everywhere.
[INAUDIBLE] boundary [INAUDIBLE] Yes.
During that moment, you can't really-- can you think? You can't know what's happening. You
have to explain it after.
No.
Afterwards it's all explained.
Yes. Afterwards you talk about what happened. But you can't talk about what [INAUDIBLE].
Because there is no margin of the self that can give you subject predicate. You can't establish any
psychological distance between you and the experience. You can only do that after the fact.
Hegel has some such notions when he talks about happiness. You remember when he says that
when a man says that I am happy, he doesn't mean that. He means that I was happy. That when
he's happy, he's happy. He has to get right on the edge away from it before he knows that he was
happy.
It's another way of putting the same [? basic ?] [? influences. ?] His contribution [INAUDIBLE]
that he brings into the stream of Western Christian thought, the essence of the platonic doctrine
of the soul. And the journey that-- not journey. That's the wrong word, I'm sorry. The discovery
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that every person can make that what he is most seeking as the key, the true, the meaning of life
is in himself. But he doesn't quite know it until he discovers it in [? him. ?]
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And that cycle-- all creation in a tight band of [? steel. ?] And I can never ignore any
manifestation of life. Because if I do, it may be just the revelation of myself that I've been
looking for all my life. [INAUDIBLE]
And we will see when we come to Eckhart, what a fantastic thing [INAUDIBLE]. Eckhart, who
became I think really the son of Plotinus [? in a certain way. ?]
[? Not so ?] with Augustine. When you read Augustine's Confessions, when you read any
[INAUDIBLE]
Well. That's it.
I'm now reading something. I have to apologize. I have such a bad cold. [COUGHS]
"And sometimes even when I'm walking in my garden, and I see the peach tree covered with
blossoms in the corner, and the roses and lilies growing all around, and the grapes hanging from
the table, and all the small flowers sending out their scent, the feeling comes to me. And I want
to say, to all the gardeners that have been before me, to the little old first mother who scratched
earth and put in roots and grasses, to Chinese and Persian and Egyptian and Babylonian and
Indian, and men and women of races whose names I shall never know, without whom I should
never have this beauty, I want to say to you, thanks.
And sometimes as I work there I feel as if they were working beside me. And the garden belongs
to them and to me. And sometimes I think perhaps in years to come, when I have long ages been
dust, some woman working in a garden more beautiful than any I can dream of now will stretch
out her hand and say, to all the gardeners that have been before me. And I, so long dead in the
dust, will live in her heart again.
You know, up country on the Great Plains where the camel thorn tree grows, there are ant heaps
as high almost as a man. Millions of ants have worked at them for years. And slowly and slowly
they have grown a little and a little higher.
Sometimes I have fancied that if a little ant should come on the top of one of these heaps, and
should rear himself on his hind legs and wave his little antennae in the air, and should look
around and say, my ant heap that I have made, my ant heap from which I can see so far, my
plains, my sky, my thorn tree, my earth, and should wave his little antennae and cry, I am at the
beginning of everything, and that then suddenly a gust of wind should come, the ant heap would
still be there. The ant heap on top of which he chanced to be born. And there would still be the
trees and the plains and the sky. But he would be gone forever.
I have sometimes wondered, isn't it a little bit so with us when we walk about so proud on the top
of our little heap of civilization? Because the most that any man can hope for, and the most that
any nation can hope for is this. The man, that in the one little hour of life that is given him he
may be able to add one tiny grain, so small perhaps that no eye will ever see it, to the heap of
things good and beautiful that men have slowly been gathering together through the ages. The
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nation, that when its time to pass comes, as it comes to all, it may have added to the things good
and beautiful which humanity lays up through the ages for the use of all-- one layer, perhaps, one
thin layer, but that so well and truly laid that all coming after shall say it was nobly and
beautifully done."
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I want to begin with Meister Eckhart today. It was through Eckhart that the channel opened up
that made available, first to the scholastics and then to the modern world, modern philosophy and
religion, the timeless insights first of Plato and then of Plotinus. He was-- he meaning Eckhart-was trained in the school at which Albertus Magnus was the great teacher who was the central
inspiration of the scholastics of the period.
When we try to trace the roots of a man's concepts, it is always a very fascinating adventure of
the mind. Because we come upon what to us is the beginning of the idea in our minds. But if we
examine that beginning in our minds, we see that that beginning was related to something else
that was in someone else's mind with whom we came in contact. And that contact precipitated a
reaction which is the new idea in our mind.
So that we do not ever quite get to the source. We're always on our way to the source. But it
helps a little to be able to read signposts along the way. And one of these I will read to you now.
This is a quotation from Albert Magnus, Albert the Great. And if you listen to it, you will see
here and there ideas which we talked about that were to be found in the mind of Plotinus. It's
very interesting.
And we see these same ideas flowering in a far more formidable and frightening manner in
Thomas Aquinas, for those people who are courageous enough to deal with him. Now this is the
quotation from Albert the Great.
"When St. John says that God is a spirit, and that He must be worshiped in spirit, he means that
the mind must be cleared of all images." Sounds like Plotinus. "When thou prayest, shut thy
door-- that is, the door of the senses. Keep them barred and bolted against all phantasms and all
images.
Nothing pleases God more than a mind free from all occupations and distractions. Such a mind is
in a manner transformed into God, for it can think of nothing and love nothing except God. Other
creatures and itself it only sees in God." You know the basic idea we ran into in Plotinus.
"He who penetrates into himself and so transcends himself ascends truly to God. He whom I love
and desire"-- God, says Albert the Great-- "is above all that is sensible"-- not intellectual, but
sensible in terms of sense, [INAUDIBLE] feeling, touch-- "and all that is intelligible." The mind
can't help me.
"Sense and imagination cannot bring us to Him, but only the desire of a pure heart. This brings
us unto the darkness of the mind whereby"-- in the darkness of the mind-- "we can ascend to the
contemplation even of the mystery of the Trinity. Do not think about the world, nor about thy
friends, nor about the past, the present, or the future. But consider thyself to be outside of the
world and alone with God, as if thy soul were already separated from the body and had no longer
any interest in peace or war or the state or the condition of the world.
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Leave thy body and fix thy gaze on the uncreated light. Let nothing come between thee and God.
The soul in contemplation views the world from afar off, just as when we proceed to God by the
way of abstraction we deny to Him first of all bodily and sensible attributes, then intelligible
qualities, and lastly that being which would keep Him always away from any created thing.
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Now remember, this is the man who was one of the great influences on Eckhart. And what he-one of the great teachers, as a matter of fact. And what he's saying essentially is what Plotinus is
talking about-- that in order to contemplate God, in order to get through to God, as it were, then
all sense data, all this-ness and that-ness, all particularities, all manifestations, all things of that
sort must be removed from the awareness. The only way to get to God, to realize God, is by a
negation of all sense data, all sense, just to get rid of it.
Now this has become one of the monumental steps in the whole mystic journey. And we call it
the Negative Way. You can't get to God unless you disembody yourself.
And of course the question that always comes to my mind is that when I disembody myself, what
do I have? If I am-- I can't think, you see, outside of a context of sense data, touch, feel, smell,
taste, awareness, response to objects external to ourselves. If I'm stripped of all of that, how can I
recognize what I have?
It is only what I'm not that leads towards what I am. But if what I'm not is no longer not-ing, then
I'm lost.
But what this particular stream of mysticism [? that ?] [? is ?] the logic of what you were talking
about in Plotinus. What it says is that the enemy to the spirit is matter. And the thing that I've
always quarreled about in my own thinking about this is that it seems to give matter too much
power.
I think it's one thing to say that I must transcend an object. But it's an entirely different thing to
say that I must deny the validity of the existence of the object. It seems to me that then when the
mystics of this school, following Plato-- [INAUDIBLE] [? yeah. ?]
The particular-- as we pointed out last week, the particular was not the real. Only the universal
was the real. In Jungian psychology, the archetype is the real. In Plato, the universal form is the
real.
You are not real. But man, the man form-- that's the reality. So you'll die. Man will die. But that
won't. That keeps pushing that out. And they eliminated and more keep coming. You can't-because the reality is not in the body, in the creation. The reality is that of which the creation is a
manifestation. I was starting to say symbolic. But not quite. That isn't fair to it.
Albert the Great then said that the only way that you can finally get to God is by ridding oneself
of all sense experience. Now, this is a tremendous assumption [INAUDIBLE]. And I don't want
to tarry with it too long. Because I want to get on with Eckhart.
But the assumption [INAUDIBLE] in my mind is that I can be aware of myself if I didn't have a
body. And [? certainly ?] [? you look. ?] Because how would I know myself? Or do I know
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myself from the inside? And that my knowledge of myself really is not contingent on my righthand or left-hand, my eye or my foot or my body.
These are not the real me. Or are they? If I were to ask you, who are you? What would you say?
What would you say?
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Who are you? Well, am i my mother's daughter? Am I my father's son? My sister's brother? My
boyfriend's girlfriend?
And if I kept asking, kept pushing, what would you finally say? How can you reveal your youness to me, [INAUDIBLE]? How would you go about that?
What has happened when you feel you've really discovered somebody? What happens? What has
happened? Take a nibble, somebody.
You're giving them that self [INAUDIBLE] you've shared something. Or you fulfill a need in
that [INAUDIBLE].
Yeah. Yes.
[INAUDIBLE] tendency to define yourself in relation to somebody else. Take all those example
you said. [INAUDIBLE]
Yeah. So that you bounce back to you off them. And in that bouncing back, ah, this is all right.
Yes.
[INAUDIBLE]
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University of Redlands, Redlands, California
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Edited transcript. Uncertain: *screaming* redundancies; teething; basic influences; discovers it in *him*; by the way - GL 5/21/19
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1970s
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Thurman, Howard
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On Mysticism, Part 16 (University of Redlands Course), 1973
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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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GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13042600.321303 4037296.9410534))
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1973-02
Description
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This recording is the tenth 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. In this recording, Howard Thurman is asking the question, "What do I have?" He poses this question in relation to the mystical traditions that strive to empty themselves of the material world for the sake of transcendental relationship with God. Engaging this question, Thurman struggles with the tension between humanity's innate entanglement with "the real" of the world, and the ways in which one truly experiences the love of God by emptying oneself from all "occupations and distractions of the mind."
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Description by Dustin Mailman
actualization
adventure of the mind
Albert Magnus
aliveness
ant
Augustine
biology
Carl Jung
contemplation
creation
ecology
embodiment
experience
George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Great Plains
identity
journey
kenosis
love
manifestation
Meister Eckhart
Morehouse College
negative way
philosophy
Plotinus
reality
revelation
sanctification
self-awareness
solitude
soul
source
the real
transformation
universal form
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394-095_A.mp3
[LAUGHTER]
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Dr. Thurman?
Oh, yes.
[INAUDIBLE]
People who talk to animals. You remember the book Papa Hemingway? Maybe some of you
read it. It's Hemingway's friend or biographer wrote it. And he has a marvelous discussion in one
of the places about Hemingway, who had a gold pass given him by one of the Ringling Brothers
so that he could always go below in Madison Square Garden when the circus was in New York
to talk or to do anything he wanted to do with the animals.
And there's a description of how he went down, and that was a particularly obnoxious gorilla
who had a rather unhappy spirit. And when Hemingway said, well, it's been a long time since
I've talked gorilla talk, but I'd like to go. And the keeper thought that he was out of his mind.
And he went over and began doing something, making these guttural sounds-- I imagine they
were guttural sounds.
After a few minutes, the gorilla stopped whatever he was doing and stood on his haunches and
took his bowl of bananas and put over his head to express extreme ecstasy. And I won't say what
the keeper of the gorilla said when he saw it.
Then he passed by the polar bear cage, and he said, well, I-- this is a brand new experience, but I
think I can do it. And he had conversation with the polar bear. And the polar bear was so excited
that he got up and walked over to the wall and began rubbing his back against it, which is
another way of getting an expression of the kind of bliss that he experienced from hearing
Hemingway do this.
There are various accounts of this sort that sound perhaps specious to us. But there is a rather
detailed account of an Italian doctor who spent a great deal of time going through the various
parts of West Africa, where he was serving the Italian government as a physician. He'd heard that
there was a Catholic priest who operated at orphanages who, by reputation, once a year had a
meeting with the warthogs.
And he didn't believe this, but he arrived at the proper time, and the Catholic priest took him out
into the woods on a moonlit night. And there was a clearing, and the priest sat there in prayer.
And the warthogs began to come out of the shadows, and they gathered in this opening.
And the priest continued praying, and then when he had finished, he addressed them. And he
said, you know that the children in the orphanage are dependent upon the crop. There is no other
food, and if you eat the crop they will starve to death. And I'm sure you do not want to do that.
And there were some more words-- I've forgotten what they were now. And then he had another
prayer, and the warthogs disappeared. And the crop was saved.
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Now all of this sounds very ridiculous perhaps. But the point that I'm making is that all
manifestations of life are rooted in a common ground-- this is the point-- and that all forms of life
are manifestations of this. And to be repetitive, the marked difference between the manifestations
is the form of the manifestation, is the context, not the ground.
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And self-consciousness, inherent in its very nature, is paradoxical, because in self-consciousness,
I see myself as standing over against the ground of my being. I see myself as being a separate
entity-- separately contained, independent. And much of the journey, the pilgrimage of selfconsciousness in human beings is to try to find their way back to the ground, to re-relate
themselves to the ground out of which they come.
Now, interestingly enough, very often people who are less sophisticated, who are simple, seem to
be closer to the awareness of this ground than others. And an illustration of this just from my
own childhood that I've written somewhere, but I went across the meadow to visit with my
buddy. I was about nine, 10-- somewhere in that awkward period. And when I came into the
yard, his father rapped on the windowpane, telling me to come around and come through the
front door.
And when I came into the room where he was, he pointed into the backyard, and there, Pierce-that was my buddy's name-- his little sister, about four months old, was sitting in the sand-- this
was in Florida-- playing with his rattlesnake. And she pulled him by the tail as he would try to
crawl away. She'd turn him over on his back, and she would giggle. And they were having a very
interesting, intimate experience of fellowship and community.
Pierce was stationed on one side of the house-- of the-- yes, of the house, and I was stationed on
the other side. But why? so that no one would come around and introduce a divisive principle in
the harmony. But as soon as that happened, there would be violence. There would be death.
Now, this quality of man, the time binder, is one of the most important aspects of personality for
the claims and the insights of religion. For it indicates that man has-- to use a good term from the
social psychology, at any rate-- man is born with an ancient memory of a time when there was
harmony among all living things. I'm taking much time to lay the foundation for this because it
will help us in our understanding of what the claim is that the mystic makes. This is why I'm
doing it-- so you'll see the relevance of it.
There seems to be an ancient memory of the race that goes back to forms that I expressed in
myths, for instance, like the creation myths. Some years ago, I had occasion to study creation
myths at great depths. And one of the things that I discovered-- that it didn't matter what part of
the world you examined the myth. The essential elements are always there, whether you begin
with the creation account in our book as found in Genesis, or you wander all over the story of
man on the planet.
Wherever he raises the question, where did we come from? How did the world get going? The
fundamental insight in the answer is always the same. And what is that? That when forms of life
were created, it didn't matter how varied the forms or the manifestations were. When forms of
life were created, they had one thing in common-- they felt that they were all a part of each other.
So the animals and men talk with each other.
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And then the harmony was broken. Now this is the story. Now, the curious and interesting thing,
to me, is that when man began to dream about life at its best, that we call utopias, and you can
pick any one of a hundred, 150 different utopias-- Plato's Republic, More's Utopia. You can run
the gamut. The thing that all of them have in common is that within the context of the Utopian
city, there is this harmony, this community.
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Now, when we read it then, among the poets-- and I wanted to take two or three excerpts here-and we are tempted to say that this is just poetry, with a little [INAUDIBLE] to the excerpt. I'm
reminding you that what they're saying is a poetic way of expressing this basic proposition on
which we have been working these two days.
Now, a few lines from Alexander Pope, for instance-- "All are but parts of one stupendous
whole, whose body nature is and God the soul, that changed through all and yet in all the same,
great in the Earth, as in the ethereal frame, warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, glows in the
stars and blossoms in the trees, lives through all life, extends through all extent, spreads
undivided, operates unspent," and so forth.
Another-- you're familiar with this. "And I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of
elevated thoughts-- a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused whose dwelling is
the light of setting suns, and the round ocean, and the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind
of man."
And then you recognize this from Shelley-- "He is made one with nature. There is heard his
voice in all her music, from the moan of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird. He is a
presence to be felt and known in darkness and in light, from herb and stone, spreading itself
where'er that power may move which has withdrawn his being to its own, which wields the
world with never-wearied love, sustains it from beneath the ground, and kindles it above. He is a
portion of the loveliness which once he made more lovely," and So forth.
And then this from Tennyson-- "Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies,
hold you here, root and all, in my hands. Little flower, but if I could understand what you are,
root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is."
And then from Paracelsus-- "Truth is within ourselves." this is another way of saying this. "It
takes no rise from outward things, whatever you may believe. There is an inmost center in us all,
where truth abides in fullness, and around, wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, this perfect
clear perception which is truth A baffling and perverting carnal mesh binds it and makes all
error, and to know rather consists in opening out a way whence the imprisoned splendor may
escape, than in affecting entry for a light supposed to be without," and so forth and so on it goes.
Now, this is the summary, that there is, inherent in the notion that this is a living universe, that
life is alive, and that every manifestation of life is grounded in the aliveness of life. And
therefore, no manifestation of life, at last, as an independent separate existence from the ground
of life.
And because life is alive, therefore life cannot die. And perhaps life cannot die because life feeds
on itself. Maybe that's why it can't die. And then, the metaphysical, the theological doctrine that
takes the form of the notion of life eternal I think it's rooted grossly-- in the sense of unrefined,
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rather than a sense of vulgar-- it is rooted grossly in the fact that life lives on itself, that life
consumes life. And it's an endless cycle. Men die, you die, I die, men die.
But life keeps coming on. And the thing that has harassed and bedeviled the mind of men as far
as any memory goes is how may I consciously and deliberately participate in this ground?
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How can I experience at all the levels of my being this timeless ground in which my life is
rooted? If I can do that, then there opens up to my mind the secret of life.
Now, the mystic makes no-- I'll say this. The mystic makes no outlandish claim. The only thing
that he insists upon is that he experiences this awareness. And in this sense, there is a mystic
element in all religious experience. I move-- I'm changing my-- moving to the next segment I'm
scheduled [INAUDIBLE].
There is a mystic element in all religious experience because central to religious is the sense of
the awareness on the part of the experiencer that he is in touch with that which to him is ultimate.
Now, there is a meditative confusion about what the claim of the mystic is. It would be a very
interesting thing, if we had the time and the courage, to go around the room and ask each one of
you, what is your idea of a mystic? It'd be very illuminating to us and to you also.
I remember going to an assembly of students once, and I got in in the afternoon. I was doing my
talk in the evening on some aspect of this whole problem that we are considering here. I
happened to go into the men's room, and there were two young fellas in there. And they didn't
know who I was. I didn't care for that matter [INAUDIBLE].
But they said, who is this guy that's coming in from so and so and so who's supposed to speak
tonight? I don't know, never heard of him. What's he going to talk about? And one fella said,
well, I think that it's something about taking rabbits out of a hat.
[LAUGHTER]
Now, this is literally true. And the other fella said, well, I wouldn't miss it.
[LAUGHTER]
In the first place, mysticism is thought of as being pathological. Some queer and curious
aberration of mind generated by emotional instability. Leuba's book on the psychology of
mysticism, which you ought to read sometimes when you-- if we were going for a year rather
than three weeks, it'd be interesting to take some time and work at it.
But his whole point is the pathology of this curious kind of religious experience. It is obvious
that I do not subscribe to this. The claim of the mystic is that he is in primary touch or contact
with ultimate reality, which for the most part, he labels God, God.
This claim has two rather curious elements inherent in it. One, that it is given, the experience is
given. By given I mean that it is a part of the given-ness of his life. It isn't something that he
achieves, it isn't something that he wrests from the stubborn, and unyielding, and recalcitrant
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hands of a determined universe. No, nothing like that. But the first claim is that this is a part of
the given, a part of that which is essentially him.
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And in that sense, it is without merit or demerit. In that sense it is a grace. Now, there are many
mystics who do not go along with this, but in essence, this is one of the first claims-- that this
quality of experiencing the ultimate is inherent in the very ground of his being.
Another way of saying it, that for him it is a part of the given-ness of God in him. And in this
sense, he makes no exclusive claim to it, for it is-- it meaning the sense of the ultimate-- a part of
the given-ness of the creator to his creation.
Now, the religious theory for the Christian mystic-- and I'll say something about the others at a
later point. But the religious basic to the mystic's claim is as follows-- God is the creator of life.
And more importantly, God is the creator of the living substance, that out of which particular
expressions of life emerge, [? for ?] [? instance ?] themselves.
It is an essential I've been calling the ground all along, that God is not merely the creator of life,
but the creator of the living substance, the life stuff that [? for ?] [? instances ?] itself in form,
shape, characterization, classification. But these are phenomenological. They are not inherent.
Now, another way of saying that is that God has not left himself without specific witness in the
totality of his creation. Now, any, any, any religion, any-- well, I'd say any good religion-- but
any religion can accept the general proposition that God has not left himself without witness in
his creation, his signature, the thing we've been talking about-- reading here and talking about.
Now, generally the Christian draws a line there. The Christian can accept this fact that God has
not left himself without a witness in his creation. But what the Christian is unwilling to accept is
that God has not left himself without specific witness in all of his creations.
And this opens up a whole area. I simply call your attention to it. Then, the religious theory in
the first place is that God is the creator of life and the living substance, that out of which all
concretions emerge, that out of which all particulars come, all the [? for ?] [? instances, ?] all the
this-and-that-ness emerge.
But he goes further. It says that God is the creator of existence. Now, this boggles the mind. I am
not sure, I am not sure, or I'm not sure, or I am not sure that the mind can grasp this. Now what it
says, you see, is that God bottoms existence, that there is no thing, no particular, no
manifestation, no anything that is outside of the sweep of the divine context.
Now, you can see the kind of moral problems that creates [? at ?] [? once. ?] I don't know why
this popped into my mind, but it's too good for me to keep. It's just good to break the tension.
A friend of mine sent me a clipping a couple years ago, and it was about a mother and her little
girl. And the little girl kept harassing her mother as only little girls know how to do. And finally,
the mother said, now, if you don't stop doing this, when you die, you will not go to heaven. And
she said, oh, yes I will.
[LAUGHTER]
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I will go right up there where God is, and I'll go in and out of the room, in and out of the room.
And finally, in disgust he will say, either come in or go out, and I'll come in.
[LAUGHTER]
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Now, the notion, the notion, that God bottoms existence implies, you see, that there is not, nor
can there be, anything underscore that outside of the divine context. That has startling, baffling
moral problems. Name one of them, quickly. Can you?
[INAUDIBLE]
Yes, yes, I suppose so. Yes, I guess that's right, because the mind cannot conceive of a
beginning. The mind can only conceive of beginnings. What other kind of problem it creates?
What does it say [INAUDIBLE]?
I'm sorry?
What does it say for [INAUDIBLE]?
Yeah, evil. Yeah. You see the logic of this is that the contradictions of life can never be final or
ultimate, that all contradictions, then, are limited. All dualisms are temporary.
Think what that means in terms of the simple problems of human beings. Everybody in this room
has been in situations in which the contradictions with which he was wrestling or she was
wrestling seemed ultimate, seemed to be final, without solution.
Even in the book, where there is an emphasis upon what seems to be an ultimate dualism,
between heaven and hell, for instance, what does the book finally say about this? There shall
come a time when God will be all and [? in ?] all. It's a daring thing that the contradictions of
life, that the dualisms of life exhaust themselves-- they run out.
Now, this is the basic religious theory upon which particularly the Christian mystic rests his-well, I started to say rest his case, but he's not under judgment. But he does whatever he does
with it.
That God is the creator of life and the living substance-- that's the [INAUDIBLE], the creation of
the forms of life and that out of which the forms emerge. God is the creator of existence so that
there is no thing that is outside of the divine context.
So when the mystic then goes down this way and comes up inside of the form out there, what
he's saying is that there is no expression of life or manifestation of life that is not [? frontally ?]
and fundamentally centered in the creativity of God. And you can see why they cause so much
trouble in the church.
Well, three minutes [INAUDIBLE]. Let's quit. Now, I didn't ask you whether you had anything
to ask me. I'll stop-- I promise you, tomorrow morning-- yes?
6
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
I went to the bookstore, and they didn't have the books in.
Oh, yes, I--
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
7
�
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<iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-095_A.html" ></iframe>
Location
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University of Redlands, Redlands, California
Internal Notes
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Edits: for- instance; creates at once; God will be all and in all - GL 5/20/19
Time Period
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1970s
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394-095_A
Creator
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Thurman, Howard
Title
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On Mysticism, Part 3 (University of Redlands Course), 1973
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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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<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
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1973-02
Description
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This recording is the third 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. Building upon Thurman conception of being a "time binder," he notes that utopian conceptions of harmony are not unobtainable. Drawing from his wider work of "racial memory," Thurman indicates in this recording that humanity's restorative relationship with the animal kingdom provides an inkling for God's participation with humankind in the pursuit of harmony. This harmony has existed before, and in a movement towards this redemptive harmony, Thurman suggests, there is an innate movement towards humanity's created intent.
Contributor
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Description by Dustin Mailman
A.E. Hotchner
Alexander Pope
aliveness
awareness
common ground
communication
creation
dualism
ecology
George Cross
gorilla
harmony
journey
myths
Papa Hemingway
pathology
Plato
polar bear
potentiality
prayer
priest
racial memory
rattlesnake
Ringling Brothers
sanctification
self-consciousness
sovereignty
substance
theodicy
Thomas More
time binder
utopia
vulgarity
warthogs