(Transcript by Tob Hawk)
What we have always tried to do is to bring the wisdom and common sense of other ages and other places to bear upon the problems of our own living and thinking, not because we want to assume that the past was wiser than we are, but because we rather recognize that as long as we are not solving our own problems completely, there is always room for improvement. An improvement may come to us through the quiet contemplation of the ways in which other human beings have faced and solved the issues that perturb us today. Actually all times and places have had the same basic problems and these basic problems still haunt us, still concern us, and still take away from our peace of mind.
One of the notable differences between our way of life and that of other peoples, even in some cases contemporary peoples, is the disappearance among us of most of the so-called religious festivals. The ancient world divided its time by its festivals and there were only a few days in succession without some religious or spiritual reminder of man's participation in a divine plan of things. The key note of ancient festivals was mostly joyous and if for any reason part of the festival was devoted to some melancholy theme, as the death of Attis or Adonis, it was followed by a magnificent outburst of gladness in the resurrection of these deities and in the final restoration of their spiritual authority. Thus the over concept throughout the classical world was one of joy and gratitude.
Gratitude is a very wonderful thing. For the moment the spirit of gratitude ceases in man, the spirit of ingratitude is born. The individual who honestly and sincerely is grateful for good gradually becomes more and more concerned with the discovery of good. The individual who does not believe in good and who is not grateful will find greater and greater incentive to search life for evil and to become depressed and melancholy over the apparent misfortunes and miseries of living. Now we cannot say that life is without its problems, but there is a tremendous uplift in the ingenious discovery of things and about which we can be grateful. This I think was one of the keys of the ancient festival concept. It made man more and more aware of the numerous things for which he should be grateful.
Another important point was that the festival brought the religion very close to the people. Instead of being locked within certain walls and boundaries religion flowed into the everyday life of the Greeks, the Egyptians, the ancient Chinese, many other peoples. This religion moving constantly into living was no longer merely a formal institution. It was not something that stood aloof and separate and apart. It became an experience in the daily living of those who followed the ancient faiths and rites. Thus not only was the person in a position to express his gratitude and his joy, but the divine powers around him took on a much more intimate and friendly appearance, than they do to us. They had not in those older days exiled their gods to some remote sphere beyond the sky. Their gods walked with them, lived with them, shared their daily problems and experiences. We may feel that this is childish or shows lack of mature sophistication, gullibility, superstition - call it whatever we will - it still was a source of internal integrity to the persons who believed and held these convictions. The integrity arose not merely from the belief in such deities, but in the companionship, which this belief brought to these people. They found, as we have not found, the presence of deity in the fountains, in the rivers, in the clouds, in the streams, and in every intimate association of life.
The Romans believed there were little spirits that dwelt under the hearthstone, called the layers and penalties. These spirits were the guardians of the hope. Their ears were forever attentive and their worshipers believed sincerely that these godlings actually had some kind of a residence around the kitchen fire, or in the old family stove, or whatever was its Roman equivalent. In order to keep these deities happy, you had to be happy around the family table. You had to be happy, when you cooked the food. You had to be happy, when your friends gathered to eat it. Unless you had a proper spirit of gratitude and cheerfulness, then these family godlings would be apt to allow the stewed burn or in one way or another to chastise you. And today we know from modern psychological research that a great many persons who have continuous minor accidents, either in their kitchens or in other parts of their homes, that such an accident-prone condition is due often to a neurosis, that it is due often to a lack of basic happiness.
Now, these family spirits not only suggested happiness, but they recommended it. If you really believed in them and you wished to keep your home and your kitchen and your hearthstone a symbol of something important, then you had to bear in mind that you lived in the presence of these attendant spirits and that it was up to you to prove to them continuously that you appreciated the favors which they bestowed, for these favors were friendship, good conversation, an abundant board and a cheerful home and family. It was then and evidence that these gods were present, when your domestic affairs ran well. Now, it might be a little more difficult to imagine a happy family of godlings behind the electric stove or under the gas heater. We have lost the heartstone as the symbol of home but as one of the older Greek writers pointed out:
“The altars of the gods, the great pedestals upon which stood the mighty figures of deities, these were originally rough stones, the symbol of the Heart. That religion and everything began in the home, and that as went the home, so went the heavens.”
This may be religiously difficult to demonstrate, but certainly psychologically and socially it is undeniable. So in these festivals and rituals we have certain principles that we can apply to nearly any problem that concerns us.
When Socrates used to go out into the Athenian groves to discourse with his disciples by some pleasant stream or upon some green and wooded mountainside, he first invoked them into a kind of communion. He always began his discourses with a brief prayer address to the spirits who dwelt in that region, the nymphs beside the fountains, the hammered riots among the trees. He asked that these kindly spirits should move him, that his word should be like their thoughts and that every word that he spoke should be worthy of them and worthy of the presence of invisible powers, impelling man to beauty of thought and graciousness of ideas. It would therefore be rather unthinkable under such conditions for a man to speak unkindly, destructively, critically or to condemn. These things were just not in keeping with the spirit of things, not in keeping with the spirit of the place, which was itself in peace and gentleness and quietude. Thus by becoming peculiarly sensitive to the gentleness and goodness of the world, these people were able to discover it. They found it to be just as real, as the negative situations with which we are confronted.
Let us remember however that this did not mean that they had a more fortunate time than we have. In 600 years of the history of ancient Rome there are only three occasions for brief times, when the temple of the war God was closed. Rome was at war almost incessantly for 600 years. Yet with all of this trouble, misery in the lives of people the festivals of the gods went on. Men were still grateful. Grateful for the great goodness in which they lived, even if themselves they could not maintain its principles. They still realized its value and asked to have more light, more understanding by which they could correct their own mistakes.
To live in a goodness is very, very important. And this concept is of course continuously revealed through reminders by being brought to the attention of the individual on every possible occasion. Thus every year in the ancient world among many peoples there were great festival for the annual birth of the year. The year was a blessing. Men did not look forward to it as a cause of misery, they did not say “oh another year, let's bear it the best we can”. They gave thanks, inwardly assuming that this year was opportunity, was privilege. That it was a possible time in which men could do better. That the natural and good things of life could be more completely fulfilled. To the farmer the new year was a new harvest, to the scholar - a new period of time for learning and thought, to the point new mystical and emotional experiences, to the family - new privileges of mutual understanding.
We cannot say with certainty that there was no misunderstanding, but where these ancient ways have survived to modern peoples and here are still perpetuated, as we find in some distant regions. There is every evidence that these ancient ways did produce and do produce constructive results, that they help to orient us against the prevailing disillusionments and that we will either be disillusioned by the perpetual restatement of our misfortunes, or else we will develop some internal strength, by means of which we can maintain a spirit of gladness.
This spirit of gladness may to some people appear to be an illusion. Some will say it is a form of self deceit. That in a great and troubled universe there is no real ground for gladness. If the ancients were not so completely benighted, that they did not realize that the universe was vast and the problems of living were many.
Certainly Plato, Pythagoras, Aristotle were reasonably well-informed about the essential principles of the universe and they came to a very common conclusion - namely, that the universe is not one of problem. The universe is not responsible for the heavy burden that we carry. This burden arises very largely in ourselves, of our own thinking, of the unreasonable and unfortunate decisions which we force upon life, and this endless determination to criticize, to condemn, to nag and to fall fight. These are the things which make the universe seem bad. And as these small problems rise and increase and become national issues it may appear that the whole world is involved.
But the ancient sage under the stars realized that he lived in a great goodness and that these small panics of men in no way reach up to heaven, nor do they prevent the greater gladness and goodness that encloses everything and sustains us if we will permit it to do so. Therefore, perhaps, all our bitterness is the illusion and is merely that we have locked ourselves away from gladness, away from goodness, away from those simple natural pleasures, which also constitute the substance of essential worship.
In ancient times worship was considered much more as a celebration of good than a petition against the perils of the time. Truly, the ancient man went to his temple and asked protection against evil, but this was more or less the uncommon incident. The religious life of the individual was quite different from ours. He did not so often frequent places of worship, of a formal nature. He rather permitted the principles of worship to flow into his own home, into his own family, through festivals, through rituals, rites and ceremonies and through the fact, that religion and the state being identical, that he was constantly bathed in the common value of both. He did not have to seek it out, as modern man must do. It was ever-present, ever available, immediate to his pressing problem of the hour. Out of all of this he came to recognize the presence of God in almost everything with which he was concerned. There was no problem, no formula, no circumstance in which the presence of deity was not instinctively recognized. He found God as he ploughed the soil, he found deity in the most intimate associations of living, he found God with his friends, he found divinity in the cabin, hut or cottage in which he dwelt.
These differences, this surrounding himself with God, living always in a universe that was essentially God, and therefore a universe in which it was his privilege and his religious duty to find God, to constantly emphasize these elements. There can be no doubt that this brought him a great contentment in terrifying and difficult situations, that it enabled him to bear his problems with a greater dignity and with less neurosis than we know today. It not only helped him to live as wisely and nobly as he could, but prepared him for transition into another life — with cheerfulness, with understanding, with patience and with eternal hope.
These values we still desperately need, but how are we going to revive them? We cannot under any condition, in our modern way of life, hope to restore the patterns of ancient festivals and ceremonies, they are gone with the world they belong to.
Yet this great need to find a good and gracious life remains. We must therefore adapt our own requirements and develop a new understanding of life, by which these things can be solved. We may not be able to accept the literal stories of gods and godlings, but we are coming in a roundabout way, through the unfoldment of our own learning, to realize that there are tremendous powers and forces in our universe. That actually all things manifest one tremendous creative life. That there are laws, and principles, and energies, and powers and that all of these are essentially by their own nature good and the proof of this goodness is that they have dwelt together in space for countless millennia. Laws, that have operated mutually among themselves for a thousand million years and have brought forth out of this mutual operation The Magnificent Ordered Nature that we know, cannot of themselves be evil nor can their minglings and their compounds, the dissonances or causes of terror.
Thus we are surrounded by every evidence of gracious living in space. We are surrounded by evidence of a tolerance in nature, which we have not been able to experience in human nature. We are mostly surrounded also by a bigness, which almost frightens us. Yet in this bigness is our own challenge to a greaterness in ourselves, that we cannot live well and live small, that we cannot fulfill the great motions of space unless we find tremendous creative movement in our own souls.
These things we know and we like to affirm them and we believe that we believe them. Yet in emergencies we run and hide ourselves in inadequate little shelves, trying to protect our natures from the very truths that we most desperately need.
Out of all of these problems that gradually arose what might be termed the more modern approach to the consolation of spirit between God and His creation. And these modifications, these new forms of relationship between God and man, gradually integrated into the structure which we call the Sacraments. These Sacraments were not originating with Christianity, they were old when Christianity was new. But they were brought together out of an eternal worship. We find some of them mentioned in the Old Testament, we find others in the sacred books of other peoples, but the whole principle behind the sacraments, as they are variously administered in those churches which still practice full sacramentalianism, this particular type of thinking is based upon a series of personal allegiances, of personal convictions restated in the life of the individual. Among their purposes, of course, is to bring the conduct of man under the influence of a divine power. The actual statement of this power, that all of the principal activities of life, the principal decisions of life, the great moves and changes which accompany natural unfoldment of man - all of these must be recognized as of spiritual significance. The removal of this spiritual significance loosens or breaks the relationship between man and the great spiritual ethical framework, which is the basis of his life and his world.
Furthermore and perhaps immediately interesting to us is the importance of the visualization and vitalization of the God concept in man. The definite trend today is away from this and gradually those subtle bonds, by which man instinctively turns to God for consolation, or understanding, or inspiration - these bonds are being broken — not always by intent, perhaps as often by carelessness. But by degrees the divine equation is disappearing from the patterns of our daily living. Our deities we hold in solemn reverence, but we do not invite them to our table, we do not recognize them as interested in the little things that we do. We have come to the conclusion that all these deities and powers are so cosmic, so universal, that they have no thought, time or consideration for the problems of the average person.
Yet our religions tell us differently, and even our Christian faith bespeaks firmly. The immediate presence of God, a presence made possible by the invoking of that presence, that wherever human beings gather together in godliness, God is there. Wherever the individual feels the divine presence moving in himself - that presence is present in him. And therefore that the invocation of this presence is by a mood, by a kind of acceptance, by an absolute expectation.
Now, the value of this concept lies in the need for the individual to have some basic factor of strength in his human relationships.
By degrees through the ages man has developed an incredible inferiority complex. He has lost nearly all of his native optimism. He has moved from an aggressive state to one utterly non aggressive, but in this non-aggression there is not the quiet philosophical detachment of the wise. It is the individual feeling himself powerless. It is perhaps the result of a scientific interpretation of his universe. Man suddenly believes himself to be captured in a vast factory, an immense institution, filled with moving parts, vast machines, so complicated that they dazzle and confuse him. He lives in the presence of a great mechanical bigness and in the presence of it he finds his own life, his own purposes, his own dreams very difficult to maintain, because nowhere does he see anything that seems to care about him, that seems to have any real concern for his simple needs. Under such vast terms as progress we have very little private comfort. These things may be good as abstract motives for action. But they do not reach into our personal tragedies, they do not help us now, even though they may give us a certain vision of a golden time to come. Thus man, lacking support and not having within himself, by any means, a sufficient strength to substitute for the gods support, upon which his ancestors depended, is left without strength, without courage and without any kind of an immediate conviction.
Many early Christian mystics pointed out that vast importance of man living constantly in the realization of the presence of God. Just as the layers and penalties were under the hearthstone of the Roman, so man must live with the feeling or the signification that the divine presence is ever near to him, so near that he cannot afford for any reason at any moment or even in the deepest seclusion of his own secrecy to think or say or do in a way that is not proper in the sight and consciousness of God. By so having a discipline upon himself ancient man was, perhaps, influenced by fear to some degree, he may have not been truly as virtuous as he seemed to be, but then again let us not boast too much. Remove statute and law, remove the penalties of misdemeanor and crime, and we would soon discover that man today is also governed very largely by fear. But in those times it was a little different kind of fear. It was not fear of men, it was not fear of punishment as we know it in the form of fines or jail sentences, it was a fear that man would be separated from the love of God, a fear that by his own action he would no longer participate in a way of life that brought him peace and harmony and a moderate return in worldly goods. Therefore ancient man was concerned the unpleasant accede, the ungodlike conduct in his home or in his family would deprive him of the blessings of the gods upon his house and deprived of these blessings his house would not be as good.
Psychologically, we know exactly what this means. It is very reasonable and very proper. The individual who destroys harmony in his own life deprives himself of harmony. But once he breaks its rules within himself, he is no longer able to prevent the spreading of this in harmony, which ultimately becomes a destructive force in his entire environment and can ruin his career. Thus it was in the beginning, that by keeping the faith within himself, he tried to preserve those most immediate values, the loss of which will result in the immediate sickness of consciousness and soul. It is our loss of immediate values that has resulted in our unhappiness and the gradual disintegration of some of our most important ethical structures.
The church therefore in its early days attempted to bind the life of the individual closer and closer to deity. The primary motive was the statement of affirmation of allegiance. The individual made his decision. Perhaps this decision was not entirely maturely thought through, probably it was not. But a primary decision about value is important to most everyone. The individual must either live under a concept of God as good, or else attempt to live without such a concept. Evidence, history, tradition, psychology - all these prove to us, that man cannot live well without conviction, nor can he fulfill his life without some statement of allegiance. If he is strong enough, wise enough and good enough to make these voluntary allegiances himself, dedicating with firm and positive will, his outer life to the service of his inner experience, or has the strength and courage to seek and find that God in himself and make this power dominant in his affairs, if he has such fortitudes, then in all probabilities he has transmuted allegiances to their highest form. He has then found the true mystery of the dedication of a life to a purpose.
If however he lacks this, if he has not the courage or the consistency to make such dedication, then it becomes more important that he finds security in common allegiances. That he finds a certain moral incentive to at least keep word solemnly given or obligation deeply taken. He finds in his obligations therefore certain incentives to keep these things which he has most secretly about that he will keep. Thus he gains a certain strength, a strength of decency, a strength of integrity and consistency, which may give him help in a moment of great confusion or stress, forcing him to choose to keep the words he has given, rather than to depart into a hopeless uncertainty.
Thus all the way down through these problems the effort to bind man in some way to a divine concept, to bind him to the service of divine principles and to give him a recognition of the importance of such bindings, these have always been religious considerations from the very dawn of time and are present in the whole broad field of comparative religion. In each instance they are intended to strengthen the individual's internal realization of the availability of good, so that instead of doubting continuously, the individual has some firm positive attitude. That instead of devoting his life to the endless criticisms of what is wrong, he shall begin to appreciate that of what we call wrong is a tiny area within a vast and immeasurable expanse of good. That these wrongs can be corrected, but that the good which is at the base of things is indestructible, inevitable and eternal, and all that is not good will ultimately be reabsorbed again into the sovereignty of good.
These kinds of thoughts give us a certain security, perhaps intangible, perhaps very deep, but available to us in great moments of stress and uncertainty. Thus something must always be present in our natures, to give us the strength that we need. We have that strength, although we do not know it. It is the knowing of it, it is the discovery of it that becomes so important.
Very few individuals have faith in themselves or their own strength. And many of those who do have unfortunately only a perverted egotism in the place of true faith. Man cannot quite accept that his own personal position will give him authority over circumstances. But he is willing to accept that has always inwardly believed, that there is a power within him, not of himself but within him, which is greater than circumstances and which therefore is part of God and the God in man can accomplish anything. It is therefore a problem of creating a positive dedicated allegiance, establishing a strong and unbreakable relationship between the person and the indwelling divinity.
When such an allegiance is created man can then have a new kind of strength, a strength born not of his own willfulness, but of the divine will in him. A strength rising not from his own belief in himself, but of his inward apperception of the presence of God within his nature.
These statements however cannot be merely made occasionally, nor can they be sustained merely by occasional presence in places of worship. These experiences must be proven through a constant and inevitable testing. The individual must daily call upon this strength and must daily find it available and sufficient. He must be able to look back upon a life in which this strength has preserved him. He must be able to see around him the evidences of the availability of this same strength in the lives of other persons of good instinct and high principle.
This experiencing of the presence of strength is also the experiencing of the presence of good. Such experiences denied the critic. It is denied the sophisticate, it is denied the doubter, because the moment we come into negative situations we explain away the God in things. We try to prove that what we call the good is merely accident, and one of our justifications always is that it occurs to the wrong persons, that it should have happened to us. Therefore as it did not, then there is no good in nature. That we have not earned it is of slight concern.
Actually, however, through the contemplation of these various relationships we attempt to create a concept of sacredness. A concept by means of which we have a new sense of values, and by so doing to enrich and to ennoble the various levels of our relationships with ourselves and others.
Life begins as throughout the ages with the simplest of all sacraments and ceremonies: the welcoming of the newborn. This is the beginning and in most religions it is called baptism. Yet normally and originally it was a ceremony of blessing and placing under the keeping of God the life of the newborn. Now, this of course probably was of no great concern at that moment to the newborn infant, who usually proceeds to disrupt the ceremony by bursting into violent expression of indignation, especially if immersed, sprinkled or dipped in the procedure.
Actually, like so many sacraments and so many religious circumstances, the primary purpose of this particular ceremony is to reveal to all - parent, friend, and stranger - that this child has been placed in the keeping of our faith, has been made part of our life and that therefore this child is now under the peculiar and constant protection of our God.
Such was the ancient concept. Anyone who slighted that child - slighted that God. Anyone who neglected that child - neglected that God. Anyone who broke faith with that child - broke faith with that God, because that child was dedicated. Therefore it was the natural duty of every person who came into that child's life to treat that child as one standing in the presence of God.
This could have a very healthy effect on the relatives. It might not have meant nearly so much to the little one, as a direct personal experience, but it did have a tremendous meaning to those into whose keeping that child was given. That child was set apart from what was called ‘the stranger’. ‘The stranger’ in ancient times was one not of our faith. But the one who was of our faith, by being baptized into our faith became one of our family. Who stole from that child - stole from God. Who kept the heritage from that child - kept the heritage from God. Any ill against that child was a sin against God, because that child was dedicated.
Therefore the presence of God was assumed to have entered in with the sacrament of baptism. Their child was then placed primarily in the keeping of that God. If that child should die in infancy, its soul would return to God, because by baptism God became the guardian, the constant and ever present champion of that child. And if in anywhere in its childhood it raised its voice in supplication, as in the story of El Sol Aundre “The knight of the Grail would come” the presence of God would come to champion that child. And whoever broke that faith, would be presented with a champion who would destroy him.
Now, if we think that way about it the ceremony suddenly begins to make a little sense. It begins to have meaning for us. It reminds us of our spiritual obligation. It reminds us that with this ceremony, by which a child is brought into our faith, he is brought into our family, he is brought into our lives, he is one of us and no man may turn against his own, without the vengeance of God according to ancient belief.
Now, this vengeance of God was not a thunderbolt or anything of that nature. This vengeance of God was the broken home, the delinquent child, the juvenile criminal. It was the neurotic child, going out into life ill adapted, and also the child that in later years turns with anger upon the neglectful parent. These things work out their own ways, but according to the ancients, all these little evidences, all these working out of things, all were evidence, primarily, of God and the Law, kept or broken. And that in Deus Society having accepted the child with the sacrament, then neglected that child, would have the delinquent to face later, because it had broken the faith.
So the theory of baptism was, of course, clan membership. It belonged into the pattern of things. Now, among the other ancient ceremonies there was always that which was originally called “the giving of the milk name”, which was given in the ceremony, or baptism, or sacrament of christening. In this sacrament the child received a name. In the old days of the church it was usually a saint's name, in order that the child might come under the particular influence of that saint, who for some reason was regarded as of special benevolence. Also it was assumed that it was a saintly name and in ancient times every name that was given, was given with a motive, with a reason and with a purpose. Who speaks a man's name, tells him something. Who uses his name, who addresses his name, calls upon not only the outer nature of that person, but upon the total being of him.
An individual is not merely a body with a tag hung on it. This name has meaning, therefore this name was secretly bestowed, and whenever a man is called by his name, that which he is called the do must be lawful. Whenever he is addressed by his name he must be attended, whenever his name is placed upon a document or a paper, that name is a sacred obligation. Everything therefore means, that the defense of this name is very important. In ancient times the priests usually devised the name or selected it, often because it represented a hero or some person of great previous accomplishments as we said in the early Christian church usually a saint. If this name had a sacred or spiritual connotation (and originally it always did) any individual who went against his name, broke his word, which was his name, was therefore guilty not only of an ordinary civil era, but brought contempt, brought disrepute upon the meaning of that name, and that name was given to him to honorably bear, and by that name he should be called, and when he is called he should answer, and that name is placed in the book of life, and that which is against that name is against the bearer of that name.
Therefore by name the individual was initiated into the mystery of Honor. That all relationships in life are to be held with the greatest and the most exacting honor. That this name is a bond, that this name is the intangible ingredient in every compound, that when we speak a man's name we know his bond and his word. All we must do is say his name and everyone will know that he is honorable, because it is an honorable name, and because he has kept it so.
Therefore religion anciently taught that it was a spiritual virtue necessary to the salvation of man that he shall keep his name clean. That when his name is spoken, no man shall rise against him with good cause. That when his name is spoken, man will honor his name and the father in whose name he served. And as the sacred name of God was called upon in the most profound rituals and mysteries, so the sacred name of man is called upon in all emergency. When we are in trouble, we call the name of our friend. When we are sick, we call the name of our family. Whatever arises, we call the name, and that name shall not fail and the failure of that name is a sin against God.
These things became quite obvious and appreciable to people who held this kind of understanding, but today in our way of life the Bills, and the Marys, and the Joes, and the Petes, do not mean what they used to be and yet they do in a strange way. Every woman with the name of Mary - this means something, but she never thinks of it or seldom does. Every man by the name of Joseph - this means something in our faith. And in ancient faiths every name was so selected, because it meant something, because it was a constant reminder of honor, that it was a constant reminiscence to our faith. And by being in this way a reminder, a binding between ourselves and the common structure of our believing, it helped also to orient us within our own way of life, so that when anyone thought of our name and thought of its great historical spiritual connotation, and then that person met us, knew us, worked with us, they would not feel that that name was badly given. But that rather in us they found the exemplifications to at least a reasonable degree of the qualities, for which a name may stand.
Later in ancient philosophy and religion the milk name gave way to the name of maturity. And this is still in a certain way partly concealed, partly revealed under the Sacrament of Confirmation, but it's not as much so, as was in ancient times. In the in the old religious ways of the individual at infancy was placed in the keeping of his plan, or his tribe. It was assumed that he was not a self-sustaining being, so that for him all the members of his clan must play God, they must be his God. They must serve him, meet him, fulfill him. They must in every way make possible the unfoldment of his natural abilities and they must counsel him, guide him and discipline his life, so that he may move in the way of heaven.
But there comes also a time in the life of the human being, when his mind, his heart and his soul begin to unfold and it is no longer a problem of his mere acceptance of his birthright. It is now necessary in the way of life for each individual to confirm his own faith. Having reached an age of discretion he must decide the nature of his faith. And this confirmation is actually a movement, it is a movement from a position of being protected to line oneself with the protectors, in other words it is the voluntary acceptance of the mature responsibilities of the tribe. It is a first experience in parenthood, because by this move the individual makes the voluntary statement: that this is his faith, this is his belief, this is his doctrine and that therefore he voluntarily accepts its responsibilities, that he voluntarily accepts his part in the life of the next newborn babe that is born into the group, that as he is only, perhaps, a child yet himself in years, still he is the elder of the newborn. Therefore he must be the servant of God for the newborn. He is the elder brother, or she is the elder sister. And in this becomes for the beginning a part of the presence of God in the collective of that group.
A part of the divine presence voluntarily giving allegiance in its own name, rather than being bestowed for protection by the parent as at the beginning of life, so all things are confirmed in man and the confirming of his faith, the positive statement that his faith has moved into himself, has been enthroned there and is now to become the guiding and moving spirit of his life. These things are very important to us.
The next is perhaps the most controversial of all the religious Offices of the faith, and that is the confessional. The confessional has divided very largely the church into as powerful and opposing branches, or brackets. But we are beginning to recognize that what we call the confessional really stems from a way of life that we have essentially forgotten, and that if this way of life could be revived and restored in its natural form, that we might be indeed much better than we are today. We might not need to consider the formal confessional as it was anciently known.
For the confessional today we have the psychologist couch and whether it is a couch or a little room with a curtain on it makes very little difference. It is serving something, it is serving a problem in human consciousness and that problem is the great need of the individual to get certain things out of his system and more than that to relieve himself of the strange weight of original and natural sin.
We all have guilt mechanisms. Guilt is a very useful emotion up to a certain point and then it becomes a very tyrannical and terrible one. The storing up of guilt can be one way of dividing man from God. The individual who is constantly worried about his sins or who finds in his sins a cause of such terrific self-punishment, as to destroy for that person all of the grace, all of the goodness, all of the beauty and the happiness of living. When sin gets this heavy upon the soul of man he is in trouble. He is going to either have tremendous psychological pressures, or he is going to drown in an uncertainty. He's going to reach the point in which he feels there is no return and he is going to regard himself as destined inevitably for limbo.
Now, between these two positions and modern agnosticism, in which the individual not believing that he is going anywhere in any case, is relieved a part of this, but what he is not relieved of, is the pressure of complexes and confusions of daily living. He cannot be relieved of these, in fact he is made in a more difficult situation, because he suffers from the total disturbance of disorientation. It is bad enough to believe that we are miserable for a purpose. It is still worse to believe that we are miserable for no purpose. (Laugh) And that is very largely the problem of the materialist.
As one individual observed when he went to the funeral of an atheistic friend of his and found the gentleman laying in the casket in a fine new suit. He shook his had sadly and turned to another man and said: “All dressed up and no place to go”. (Big laugh)
This type of confusion is also most disheartening. Our psychological problems today are in multiply rapidly because the individual now regards himself as suffering for no reason. Having no good reason for suffering, he has to find other reasons, that are not so good. So now he decides that suffering is caused by his ancestry or because he fell on his head in childhood. (Laugh) Anything, no matter how trivial, man is desperately trying to find out why is miserable. The ancient had a very simple answer which was perhaps more reasonable: that if you are miserable you are so because you have broken the laws of God. Now, these laws of God did not mean necessarily this long group of “thou shalt nots” with which we are so burdened, but to the ancients the law of God represented much more intimate and gracious things.
When we break the law to the minds of our remote ancestors, when we cease to be hospitable, when we are no longer kindly, when we are no longer willing to overlook the inevitable shortcomings in others. We may break the laws of God and a peace of mind when we begin to criticize, and condemn, and fault, and bind, and neglect, and avoid, and evade. These are the simple ways, that we break simple laws and bring upon ourselves simple and natural misfortunes.
So all these came under the general concept of the need for ventilation. The ancient man went to his priest for consolation back in Egypt, Rome and in ancient times. In those days the temples did not have ceremonies as we know them, weekly or daily. You went when you needed to go, you received help and most of your formal religion consisted of these great festivals and occasions. Therefore the priest was always available, as a counselor, to try to assist the individual in the orientation of his life. But he was not a preacher as we know it, he was rather a teacher and a counselor. In this way by telling the story, by being reminded, perhaps, that all our problems were not as big as we thought they were, that actually because we forget, or falter, or fail a little, is not as time we are lost forever. That it is possible for the child to make a mistake, to come and honestly regret it and still remain a happy adjusted and welcomed member of the family.
Whereas if the secret is kept, whereas if the child hides its mistake, all the parents do not intelligently help the child to solve the mistake, the small mistake becomes an interval, which gradually increases until comradeship, returning and understanding are totally lost.
All these things the ancients concealed within this concept of the individual relieving himself of his pressures by expressing them, by unfolding them, by listening to his own words and perhaps learning greatly from them. And also from the realization that these small mistakes do not constitute so terrible a structure of sin, that man should believe himself to be living in a world, that exists only to punish him. And the individual who has no outlet comes off onto conceive the world as a field of punishment rather than as a field of growth, and understanding, and joy, and friendship.
The next of the important sacraments of course in connection with our way of thinking was the sacrament of marriage. And in this we have a problem that still survives very strongly in our human relationships. There is an ever broadening problem here, a problem as to the sacredness of human relationships. And of course in the course of time a large part of this sacrament has been diluted, has been reduced. Until today it is either ecclesiastically or a merely legally a requirement rather than a sacrament. It is something that must lawfully be done, whereas to the ancient man nothing was truly lawful or truly necessary, unless it was done with great beauty, meaning and significance. Thus the sacrament of marriage was one of those that goes through nearly all the religions of the world, represented in some way, sometimes comparatively simple, sometimes very powerful. I think that the sacraments are especially powerful in those groups, where the daily life is not as strongly influenced by religion, where the daily life is constantly lived in religion. We find the various interludes, not with tremendous pressures upon them. In native primitive worship marriage is a comparatively simple ceremony, sometimes little more than a feast. But it is not the kind of a feast that we pay five dollars a plate for in some hotel. It was a feast within the faith of the people. You did not need to make a special ritual out of it, because the whole life of the individual was a ritual and this was only one episode in it. He was living in his faith all the time, so that one simple ceremony was enough.
Where faith is not so strong we have a tendency to make a great deal of sacred ceremonies, one or two which seemed to carry a certain opportunity for emotional religious expression, and also, unfortunately, for numerous expressions of vanity.
In the sacrament of marriage, the concept was originally that marriage was a total union of purposes in the divine sight and in the divine nature. The presence of God was invoked to be present at this ceremony, that this ceremony might be sanctified and set apart from other contracts, and deeds, and associations which were of less vital significance to the individual and to society.
The marriage ceremony was strong because of its tremendous social importance, because it was the foundation of the survival of the state, or of society, or of the system, the religion involved in that particular ceremony. The concept therefore that religion united two persons in the sight of God, in the life of God, meant of course there would be the requests, the supplication, the deity be present with these young people starting out in life, moving with them daily and hourly, living in their hearts and lives, and causing these hearts and these lives to be essentially noble, dedicated and purposeful.
The ancients had many kinds of symbolism, which they used in the sacrament of marriage and the rites differ considerably, but always these rights are to remind the individual that out of many associations he has selected one, and that by this selection he has created the need for a tremendous unity. And that in the sight of God these two become one person. And as Hamlet might have said, “I here's the rub”.
In modern thinking this concept of becoming one person is almost totally lost today, and perhaps for that reason we have a situation that religion should have coped with but could not: namely that where two persons become one, neither can be in himself selfish or separate, neither can he put his own good upon the good of the other, nor can he being one person, be in conflict, debate, argument or dissension, because very few people argue with themselves. They always argue with other people. If therefore the home is one person, one being, with one mind and one heart, then we cannot have the continuous squabbling, the disfigures they made in home in our Western life.
Now, everybody gets worried about this one person problem. Somebody says it means submergence. It means that the individual can be no longer himself. That he must sacrifice this and give up that, that he must be overshadowed by this, that he must become a nonentity as the result of that. And all these things and all this goes against our tremendous dramatic militant desire to remain ourselves at all cost. So we remain ourselves and it is at all cost. The cost is far greater than we will ever be able to understand or appreciate.
Western man has not found the virtue of attempting to forget himself in the service of other things, is always self reminding, self remembering. But actually the problem is not as serious or as difficult as it might seem. The psychology has built too many overtones that have no substance in reality. Man believing in God and believing in God in him does not enter into conflict necessarily, because he is expected to obey the laws of life. Nor is it necessary that he should enter into conflict or sense competition in his effort to establish a home. These things represent a superficial approach. Actually the individual wishing to go ahead, wishing to be successful, wishing to be in some way outstanding in his community, wishing for happiness and all these things, all he has to do is enlarge his wish and enclose all of himself in that wish instead of making it a thing separate. If these two are now one person, then that good which either desires becomes the common good, and the individual who wishes to get ahead brings his family with him, rather than entering into conflict with them. And we also observe that in experience in living a sense of a spiritual requirement, a spiritual emergency in our lives by which we have to keep certain principles, often gives us the courage that the so-called legal ceremonies or secular ceremonies do not give. Also this ritual is something to be remembered, it is an occasion, and particularly in the life of the young woman the remembrance of this is an important strength in time of trouble. If all of the religious overtone is gone, there is very little to remember except the cost, and that is not enough. Whereas if the individual firmly believes that there is a spiritual magic in this ancient ritual, then this magic may come to his help in time of trouble and will have a tendency to cause him to try a little harder to make this marriage important, because it has been made important by his most sacred belief and feeling, that is the authority of his faith.
Now, the next sacrament of course only occasionally deals with the average person. It is a sacrament set apart and that is the sacrament of Ordination. The Sacrament of ordination is that in which the individual chooses to enter into the priesthood of his God, or to wake upon himself holy orders. It is therefore the dedication of life to the service of the faith which the individual has held to be sacred and important. Various ways ordinations are performed and were in ancient times; the general ceremony of ordination is always the acceptance into the faith as the result of an assembly of those previously ordained. On the concept of an unbroken line of descent of spiritual integrities, this concept being called in Christianity the apostolic succession, presumably directly traceable to the laying on of the hands of Jesus upon his disciples, and they in turn dedicating others by the placing of their own hands upon them.
Thus this concept is a descent of a spiritual kind of special value, but today we are no longer so profoundly concerned with its antiquity or its apostolic demonstration as we are with the simple fact of consecration. The individual who has determined in his own life to dedicate his life and his purposes to the preservation of his faith. Therefore this becomes one of the most serious and important decisions in the life of the individual. It is a change of career, it is man choosing God as a career and as this choice develops, we find the tremendous importance of the fact that the individual has been previously indoctrinated with certain principles, certain ideals and certain concepts, because the moment the individual rests his full future and life upon spiritual foundations, he finds great need for fortitude, great need for patience and understanding and forbearance. He finds also that he has dedicated himself to a comparatively humble level of living, for if a few outstanding examples have attained to comparative luxury the average minister or clergyman is a person living moderately, living constantly also under the pressure of his duties, constantly under the surveillance of his congregation, and under continuous need for his advice and help in pastoral capacities. These constitute therefore the services which are rendered.
These services must be rendered from conviction. They are supported only by the individual's own belief. Where this belief is inadequate, where the person is not shown or indicated clear signs of the courage and they certitude within himself, ordination should not be performed because it represents too definite a decision for the average person to make, unless he is almost born with this drive within his own consciousness.
The ordination does not have a necessary equivalent among the physical ceremonies of the labor, but there is an ordination, that frequently occurs in the life of the person at about the same period as it would be conferred within the structure of religion, and that is ordination to responsibility. The individual finds that in the course of living he must take on certain duties, certain tasks, and that these duties and tasks themselves become his profession, his life and his work. And the equivalent of ordination therefore is the recognition of the importance of the presence of God in daily work. This was originally held a great deal by the families of ancient times, because in the very early history of mankind every guild, every group of workmen who specialized in any activity usually decended from a family, therefore the iron smiths were family, a clan of descendants, sometimes this family was opened slightly by into marriage with an outside person who then came into the clan and took upon himself not only its physical problems but also its trade. So there was in all cases a period in the life of workmen, whether they be agriculturists or tailors, merchants or even soldiers, in which a kind of ordination took place. It was not a call to the ministry, it was a call to the labor of the individual. It was the graduation of the apprentice, who then became a full-fledged member of his guild or his trade.
And in ancient times this ceremony, regardless of your trade or profession, was always religious. As in the case of the guilds whose ordinations and consecrations took place in the cathedrals, when you became a tailor this was a sacred thing. A tailor was not one level and a priest another. A tailor was a priest with a pair of shears, a tailor was also bound to something of value, to make a good suit of clothes, make it honestly and to take care of his customers properly was his spiritual responsibility, and then the individual who made a poor job of it, not only outraged his guild but offended his God. Therefore he took oath, an obligation that he would never compromise his production, he would never make inferior goods, he would never cheat his customer, he would regard his trade as his sacred profession, and he would dedicate himself to the ministry of his job, just as surely as he would accept ordination.
Therefore there was this dedication to the life work whatever it was. A dedication that meant that that work should be carried on forever as in the presence of God and that there should be no failure to recognize the divine presence in all transactions between men. There is an old guild hall that has a statue in Europe that shows a merchant handing merchandize to a customer and the customer handing coins to the merchant and between the two with his hand raised over both of them is the figure of Christ, blessing the transaction. This was the concept of the guild: that the merchandize were worth the money, that they had been fairly made and honorably exchanged, and that the customer would find the merchandise as he had ordered. This was a sacred duty, and when the sacredness went out of this duty we began to see some of the symptoms that annoy us so much today - the loss of the sacredness of honorable transaction. That was another kind of ordination which perhaps was the Lehman's phase of dedication to the ministry.
Then the ancients recognized the sacrament of Extreme Unction. Extreme Unction was for the most part bestowed in the presence of death. Extreme unction was that sacrament in which the individual prepared his life or put his life in order for the transition from this world to the next. One of the most amazing things about Extreme Unction has been the number of persons who have recovered from it. (Laugh) There are countless reports of deathbed scenes in which after receiving the solicitations of his faith the individual got up and got well. All of which has a tendency to point to the psychological significance of creating a state of harmonious relationship in this case with the unknown that lies ahead. The Egyptians had their Book of the Dead, which was actually a preparation for the afterlife. The Tibetan has his Bardo, the ritual of unction, which is performed for a dying Lama by other members of his faith. Nearly every religion has some form of observance, intended to cause the person to make the transition from this life to the next, in a sense of complete internal peace, in order that he may have no confusion, no concern, no disturbance in this transposition. And Buddha points out of course the importance of it, in as much as he says in his dialogues that he'll pass from this life to the next in a state of complete peace is a tremendously important factor in the nature of the kind of rebirth which the individual will achieve. So whether you believe in reincarnation or not, those who did believe in it also made a great point of the importance of this peaceful transition from one life to another. The transition in faith rather than in fear, and the realization that this transition is the supreme evidence of the sufficiency of faith in our daily living.
So this blessing, this preparation for the individual's transition, was of course of the greatest importance to antiquity and ancient peoples also followed this by prayers and special ceremonies for the repose and rest of the soul after death, on the assumption that the soul could very well participate in such experiences. Incidentally, there was a very great and practical point in the festivals for the dead. A type of point that we have completely lost in our modern way of life. For those recently bereaved or under the great strain of loss, it is a terrible thing to simply let these persons work this out the best they can. There is something wrong about this. For a bereaved family to listen to some clergyman that the funerals say “the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away” is very, very unsatisfactory. It results in a great deal of negative self pity, sorrow, disintegration of personality, disorientation and a long and perhaps critical period of psychological recovery. That is of course assuming, and we should assume, that these values represent real relationships and that the loss is a real loss.
The ancient did not face it in quite that way. He usually arranged a pattern. One thing he did which was very important, was that he claimed and believed, that he wanted the deceased person, who might hover around for a time as a soul, to be sped on its way with gladness. In other words, it was considered a very bad break and a breach of etiquette to go around mourning “you're dead”. What you had to do was to think of them and not yourself, and in so doing to do everything possible to make them feel that you were strong and that they were free. This was essential. Now, of course the thing that it actually did was to help you to believe that, so that your own life instead of being dedicated to these powerful circumstances, consisted our festival, ceremonies and occasions in honor of the dead, by means of which you repeatedly proved to them that you remember them with love and affection, but you always wished them well and you hoped for them all happiness. And as one of the old Greek writer said, “no soul can be happy, if it is of the opinion or is of the mind that those that it left behind and loved are miserable”.
Therefore the point is to try, as the Greek did, to prove that this loss was not without understanding, that God had brought comfort and that the primary concern was that the deceased soul should know that we are carrying on wisely and happily and well and doing all the things that perhaps they would have wished us to do. So to create a ceremonial around this constituted part of the ancient way of life.
Now, from these various elements there are things we can learn and in the learning of them perhaps find courage in minor directions of our own lives, always realizing that the purpose of all these rituals is to remind us of the presence of a good God, to remind us of the availability of a divine power and to remind us that our own lives, if they are to be happily lived, must be lived in a condition of perpetual dedication to the principles, will and purposes of this God, but that this God is not a God of vengeance, or of hate, or a misery, therefore may be worshipped in joy, in beauty, in truth and in understanding, and is most worshipped by those who discover in God the source of all goodness, rejoice therewith and strive to live according to such conviction.
Time's up.
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