The

Douglas Harding Archive

Streeter;

Card-S-38-04

DEH: At last I have the real doctrine of diags: there is nothing invalid about them, or artificial, for, if human mind needs them, and thinks that way, then diags are structural, not ornaments or obstacles, in the edifice of thought. If I am obliged to think of the mind in terms of diagram, that means that there is a level from which mind is really diagrammatic. The diagrams then inherit the nature of mind.

Card-S-38-06 DEH Note that grasping an object’s quality (loveableness, beauty, ugliness, power, etc. etc.) is also a behaving of yours. The qualities you attribute are neither the objects nor yours, but you-becoming-object & object-becoming-you.

Card-S-38-13 DEH God, as T.U. monad, is self-conscious of his (externalised) parts, & of you. He does regard you from outside as well as inside, just as you so regard your hand as not-you. Therefore you are always & immediately present to him in all your behaviour & motives. “Thou God sees me” is literally true. This comes to me now, after all these years, with the force of a wonderful discovery. Why should I not then pray to Him? [NH childhood fear of the big Eye watching him]

Card-S-38-15 date 18.5.45

DH is commenting on Streeter’s Reality.

Determinism & Freedom. Streeter “Reality”, p. 225. “Science is always discovering some new law; but this, so far from being the discovery of a fresh limit to man’s liberty, puts new power into his hands.” DEH: Increasing will-from-above or of law, compulsion, (b) is essential to advance in ‘freedom’, (b). Obedience at b is the condition of creation at (a). [Christ is God because He was obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.] Man accepts, under the guise of what he calls Scientific Law, Determinism, the Will of God. He humbles himself, almost unto death, denying his freedom, his power, denying himself & taking up his Cross. Recognition of the Will of God as against a projected caprice in Nature, Science is more religious in a true sense, than most religion. It knows that the way to power is the way, not of self-assertion, but of self-denial. Witness the scientists’ diatribes against anthropomorphism, subjective bias, the use of analogy. Note the reduction of laws to even more inclusive ones, having as goal the one Law. This is the Will of God. Recognising that we are not free, but live under the reign of this Law, is only another, necessary, & effective form of the mystic’s abandonment of self, of the saint’s complete reliance upon God. Of myself I can do Nothing. Nothing. And just as the Saint, by finding all strength outside himself becomes immensely strong, so the scientist, by humbling himself to the Law without, finds Power unimagined coming to him. It is wrong to regard mechanical power, machines, as natural & ‘unethical’ achievements of man: they flow from a very fine & saintly discipline. The moral & spiritual price has been paid, & we have every right to look upon machines as the reward of spiritual growth.

The process does not end till we are humbled to death. Till we realise that Law holds all the way down to the Centre. Psychology, Biology — all are amenable to Law. God can reduce the whole world to exemplification of One Law. That is why he is God. And the One Law itself, since it depends on nothing but itself, is absolutely un-determined. Hence determinism is self-contradictory in the end; while essential all the way up.

The more conscious you are of determinism, & of the path & goal of determinism in God, the more you play your part in the Free-Will of the Whole. When all is determined in one Rule, all is Free. Meantime, more determinism means more freedom to create. We owe our inventions to the humility of the great men of science.

At centre, you have no will of your own: outside there is one law, since the s.e. is simple there can be only one law. Laws get fewer, converge, on the way down.

Card-S-38-20 diagram

Index Card S-38

Home | About Douglas Harding | About the Archive | The Records | Harding Resources | Contact

© The Shollond Trust, UK charitable trust (reg. charity no. 1059551)