We Can Begin Again Together

by Dane Rudhyar

4. Freedom and Commitment

We speak a great deal of freedom, of a free society and free people, of the land of the free. But who is free? What do we mean by being free? Is not our concept of freedom, like our concept of peace or of leisure, almost exclusively a negative concept?

To be free is, theoretically, to be able to act without hindrance. A free activity is an activity in which the individual feels no compulsion, save the decisions of his ego. As there are many basic types of human activities — such as thinking, working, talking, holding intercourse with others, expressing one's opinion, etc. — so people seek and fight for freedom of thought, freedom of work, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of press. The freedom asked is the freedom of doing something in any way one wishes. Because this "doing" always involves other persons — and thus society as a whole and social patterns of behavior — the tendency for the powers that rule society is to interfere with this free activity by making it subservient to overall regulations and compulsions. Certain types of freedom are thus denied. Certain types of activity must follow set social patterns or be conditioned by the compulsory allegiance to traditions, collective ideas and taken-for-granted goals.

In various countries it is assumed today, as a matter of unchallengeable principle, that the welfare of the whole is more important than the welfare of the part, and that, therefore, if the interest of the community as a whole requires that the tendency of individuals to act or express themselves in any special way be curbed, there is no end to which the community can go in compelling the individual; and this is shocking to the "free" citizens of democratic nations who hold that certain basic individual rights are absolute, sacred and inalienable. Nevertheless, the democratic freedom of action, even under the most "rugged" type of individualism, is greatly limited by our standards of value.

American millionaires are free to spend thousands of dollars giving an extravagant debutante ball next door to crowded slums and long lines of starving, freezing people waiting for a bowl of soup. But a man is not free to walk down public thoroughfares without any clothes, or to move into an unoccupied house not belonging to him, even if there is no other place where he can sleep. Can we not easily imagine a kind of society in which the former type of activity would be far more outrageous to social standards than the latter? What determines our concept of basic and necessary freedom for the individual is thus always our idea of what is more valuable or less valuable for human beings. One type of civilization believes that for every man to be free to produce for society up to the maximum of his native potentiality is the most essential individual freedom; another, that for every man to be free to think and speak as he pleases is the greatest of all freedoms. Any society will insist on guaranteeing what it believes is most valuable, if necessary at the cost of what is thought to be of relatively secondary importance.

During World War II much publicity was given to various types of freedom promised as essential to a life of abundance in a world at peace — freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom from all essential social evils. Thus we have the positive freedoms of, and the negative freedoms from. We demand freedom "of" action, and freedom "from" social evils. The one question, however, not usually asked is: freedom for what? The one fact that is not brought forth is that there may be no real significance in gaining freedom . . . for no purpose.

Modern man should understand that his concept of freedom has been in most cases a concept of rebellion, a negative concept. Freedom has meant, in the historical past of the last two or three centuries, freedom from the tyrannic power of church dogmas or royal decrees — and today of totalitarian States controlled by ruthless parties. Man has desperately sought freedom as a protest against bondage — an emotional and intellectual protest. Protest is a necessary phase; and so is the will to liberation, whether it be political or spiritual. The emphasis upon creative freedom and individual personality is necessary — in as much as we live in a de-personalized, mechanized, standardized society dominated by general patterns and regulations, red tape that stifles personal initiative, and impersonal "scientific" laws which, because they can only refer to statistical averages, leave out of the mental picture the creative power inherent in the particular individual person.

Such an emphasis has been necessary; but today it is not enough. Indeed, the exclusive emphasis upon the gaining of freedom by anyone, under any condition — like the indiscriminate application of the principle of national "self-determination" to any racial group who makes a claim on the evidence of past historical events — confuses rather than clarifies the real issue. What is essential today is not actually how much freedom human beings will obtain in their social or personal life — always a relative value — but to what purpose this freedom will be put.

Freedom always means the freedom to use power. Today such destructive powers have been placed at the potential disposition of individuals or small groups that the controls of these powers by the whole community of nations is absolutely indispensable. We do not refer here only to energy, but also to the various possibilities which some individuals or groups have in modern society to dominate and to destroy the political and economic life of multitudes; and the same might be said in reference to psychic and mental, or religious values. The greater and potentially more destructive the energies available, the more fateful for humanity the granting of freedom to those who have not first established their ability to use this freedom for a super-personal beneficent purpose.

Freedom is not a thing-in-itself, or an end in itself. Its value to the whole humanity — and obviously to the one who uses it — depends upon the purpose to which it is put. Even to have freedom and not to do anything with it is still a way of using it — a negative way which in turn reacts socially as an encouragement to tyrannical or destructive abuses by others.

In most cases, the "free" person will use his or her free time by following aimlessly, and with no particularly significant or individually directed intention, various kinds of pastimes which are traditional, well-advertised, fashionable, or which happen to attract his attention. He will therefore have gained freedom merely to see himself in bondage to social compulsions against which he cannot even rebel because he does not see them as compulsions. He slides into the movies habit, the TV habit, the traveling habit, or more sophisticated and supposedly "cultured" habits, and, in some cases, the drug habit. What has he gained, essentially and spiritually, by being free to do as he pleases? Very little else, often, besides the ability to waste his life and his time in activities which are unproductive, unrelated to the vital needs of human evolution, and spiritually meaningless — or worse!

The responsibility for determining a conscious purpose to freedom, a clear and significant purpose to the use of power and wealth, cannot be shirked. It cannot be shirked by any individual, any more than by any nation. The problem confronts everyone. It confronts every man who demands greater personal freedom or more "free time," every individual or nation who insists on that freedom not given to other men who are less free.

Freedom is meaningless if considered as an absolute factor unrelated to our sense of participation into some group or community. Freedom cannot manifest itself as lack of relation to others, and make sense. Freedom, realistically and concretely understood, is the ability to "change gears." It is the capacity for selecting, as an individual ego or an individual nation, the character, level and scope of the binding relationship one has to society, humanity or the universe. To stay "out of gear" is not freedom. It is sheer inertia or self-destruction. It is, at best, merely postponing an inevitable choice. To be free is to be able, without external pressures or unjustifiable inner compulsions, to change one's type of allegiance.

"Allegiance" — a great and significant word! It means the character of one's binding relationship to some person, group, or concrete ideal that incorporates or defines the purpose for which one claims individual freedom. Freedom without allegiance is purposeless freedom — and by allegiance, I do not mean a verbal acknowledgement or a perfunctory sense of relationship. To give allegiance is to bind one's will in terms of a definite purpose, fully and consciously accepted. It is to commit oneself to the fulfillment of a task or the actualization of a potentiality of which one has become aware. Where there is no commitment, there is no steady relationship. Where there is no steady relationship, there is only anarchy. To be free is to be able to pass from a steady relationship, allegiance, or purpose to another. But this process of change (i.e., freedom) can never be truly significant and constructive if the direction and purpose of the change are not conscious, clear and fully acceptable to the individual. That it should be so is the essential point — rather than the manner in which the change occurs.

Freedom of choice does not mean the ability to make any choice. It is the ability to make a choice consistent with what one knows oneself to be, a purposeful and significant choice in terms of a purpose known, or deeply felt, to be valid. A youth who, theoretically and socially speaking, would be absolutely free to do whatever he wants can be considered the most un-free of all persons, if he has been given, or has reached by himself, no realization of what his freedom is for — that is, if having no positive sense of relatedness, he drifts along compelled (perhaps without his knowing or admitting it) by circumstances and collective fashions. Indeed, the worst bondage may well be one's desire for purposeless freedom. It is bondage to a negative; bondage to the sensation of being "out of gear" — even if this out-of-gear state is glorified as a state of "mystical unity" and seemingly absolute freedom — seemingly, because essentially impenianent and, in some instances, leading to disintegration.

Integration means relationship; and as there are many levels of integration there are as well many kind of relationships, each with its specific quality and mode of fulfillment. Every positive binding to a relationship, a group, or a purpose has value, once it is accepted as a means to an end, as a phase of growth. Indeed, the basic difference of value is not between being bound and being free, but between the qualities and the purposes of the various possible types of binding relationships — i.e., of allegiances. To come to realize this as a true fact is perhaps one of the most urgent and vital needs of the so-called free peoples of the world. What people question today is not so much the degree of their freedom, as the vital character and validity of their allegiance; not how free they are, politically and otherwise, but what they are free for — which concretely and actually means: what they are committed to.

Because an era is ending and a new one beginning, because the release of new and startling powers is compelling us all to revise our sense of value and to build new instrumentalities and new controls to manage these powers in our inner and outer lives, our century is witnessing a basic "change of gears" in human society. This means freedom, but it means even more new values, new purposes, a new allegiance to new gods and new ideals of relationship. Wherever men demand the freedom to make this new allegiance and to bind themselves to the destiny of a new humanity and a new civilization, to refuse them that freedom is to oppose evolution or the "will of God." There can be no greater evil, no more monstrous crime against life. But whoever seeks freedom for aimless self-gratification, for paltry comforts, and above all just for the sake of "feeling free," has not yet learnt the meaning of true freedom.

Does this imply, then, that freedom should be denied to human beings still groping toward the state of fully conscious and individualized personality, to confused and struggling groups, and to enslaved peoples; or that it should be restricted, wherever, in so-called free nations, it is geared to what, to a dull majority, seems no significant purpose? Indeed, not. Such a policy, whenever tried out (even perhaps with good intentions!) has always led to ruthless or subtle forms of oppression, by the state or by the church. Humanity is in a chaotic state of transition; but there is no way out of it except forward — forward to a new allegiance, clearly understood or deeply felt out of the impact of human experience upon individuals or groups who have been free to experience, to repudiate, and to adhere — in whatever way is possible — to new purposes.

The rational or individualized determination of new goals is not always possible. There are many ways of choosing, many ways of establishing new allegiances. What matters primarily is the quality of the allegiance, rather than how it was established. Faith is, in this, as necessary as reason, deep feeling as significant as intellectual judgment, intuition as valid as analytical reason. A community may make its allegiances as a whole; just as individuals do so as individuals. We have no right to impose upon any person, group, or nation the technique by which it is to determine the purpose, or the character and scope, of this freedom.

What is our right and duty, however, is to educate ourselves, and others if need be, into the realization that freedom is not an absolute or an end in itself, but only a means to an end; for, like the critical states of matter, it is a phase of dynamic becoming between two modalities of being — two types of allegiance. We should be able to use this phase of activity in order to pass from a lesser to a greater allegiance and purpose, but the first thing is to know what this much-wanted freedom is for. Knowing what it is for, they may begin to find freedom in conditions where previously we could see only the absence of it; and we may discover bondage where before we reveled in the illusion of freedom!

This, then, is the reality of freedom: it is, for any human being, to express, as a person, the spiritual purpose of his or her individualized existence through activities which are necessary to that purpose. What is this purpose? As complete an actualization of ones potential of being as one is able to imagine and to work for, sincerely, honestly, persistently. As the real worth of freedom is determined by the universal value, the living quality of meaning and the inclusiveness of the allegiance which required freedom to be elected was established, for anyone conscious of the purpose of human existence, to be truly free, is to swear an irrevocable allegiance to Man. It is to accept no lesser purpose than that which derives from the place and function of humanity in the universe, from the powers which men, having released, must use. People able to handle only puny powers can be allowed to work and to feel, to think and to plan in terms of puny purposes. But those who can tap the power that feeds the life of the sun have no other alternative than to become radiant with a purpose whose scope is as inclusive as the space to which the sun gives life and light — a "divine" purpose.

So to live that, through the concentrated fullness of focalized and consecrated personality, this divine purpose, in which the individual person finds his ultimate function and identity, is constantly being enacted by means of "necessary" acts, thoughts, and feelings — this is the transpersonal way.

In such a way of life freedom and necessity become integrated. Man rises above the apparent dualistic conflict which has haunted the minds of European thinkers for centuries. He is never more free to choose than when he no longer can hesitate between two or more choices. In inner necessity he realizes his most essential, most creative freedom. It is most creative, because in that state it is not he, the person, who creates, but Man that fulfills through him one phase, however brief and unspectacular, of the vast process of evolution on this Earth.

The Way "Through" The Person

As we are dealing here with concepts which can be all too easily misunderstood and misapplied, a more basic definition of person and personality, as used in this book, is appropriate.

These words are etymologically derived from the Latin "persona" (personare; to sound through) which refers to the masks worn by the actors in Rome as well as in Greece. Masks have also been used in one form or another in all primitive cultures. They are still used today in many parts of the world, for instance by the Native Americans; and a clear understanding of the essential reason for their use in various historical periods enables one to realize the meaning of personality in all that the term can imply.

A contemporary school of thought (particularly along the lines of Theosophy and popular psychology) stresses in its use of the word in its modern emotional connotations of the term "mask" (persona) and thus concludes that the human personality is indeed "nothing but" a mask for the real man, the individuality — the spiritual entity which, it is assumed, is immortal and indeed a spark of Divinity. Also, Carl Jung, the great Swiss psychologist, has used the Latin term "persona" to define that portion of the human being whose function it is to establish a successful adjustment to the demands of society and of the professional life, and which often crystallizes into a rigid mask-like entity. Is, however, the mask necessarily to be interpreted as a something that hides the "real" man — something rigid, usually fictitious and the negative product of a crystallized social function or attitude? Instead, is this concept of the mask not the result of a blend of anarchistic individualism and of a social philosophy derived from the need to restrain the violence and destructiveness of this very individualistic attitude? This certainly was not the meaning given to masks in archaic rituals, in early Greek tragedy, and as well in the traditional theater of Japan, the No drama.

When the Hopi Indian wears the sacred mask of a god, when the Shaman of Asia covers his face with the conventionalized representation of the tribal Totem, these priest-actors are not hiding their individual nature; they are glorifying themselves by identifying themselves with the effective creative power — the mana — of a superhuman or elemental being. They have, in fact, no individual personality to hide! They hardly consider themselves as individuals, in the modern sense of the term. They are functional parts within, to them, a real and concrete organism, the tribe, which in turn is felt, in most cases, to be one with the universe — a living, dynamic, and creative universe.

When the tribesman is entitled — as part of his tribal function — to wear the mask of a god and to enact ceremonially the god's vital attributes, he assumes a universal and creative role. He performs god-like acts, magical acts. He becomes identified with the god in so far as the god acts out his divinity. Likewise, the Christian priest who celebrates the Holy Mass enacts, by virtue of his consecration and of the age-old transfer of the spiritual (magical) power of the Christ, the sacrifice of Jesus. When he puts on the consecrated vestures he is not less-than-individual; he becomes an active and efficient symbol of the divine Incarnation. He performs the works of Christ, not only in the name of Christ, but (at least in the case of the Pope) as Christ.

The sacred rituals become, in time, the repeated performance of the deeds of the great tribal Hero. Then, also, the actor who puts on the mask revealing the countenance of the great Personage identifies himself with his heroic and spiritual essence; while, stirred by the magic emotion of the performance, the men of the tribe feel themselves more tangibly united in their primordial seed-nature (as sons of the tribal Ancestor). They are stirred into more unified actions by the tribal root-power released in them — or, as Jung would say, by a dominant archetype of their collective unconscious. At this stage, the purpose of the performance has already reached the psychological level; indeed, it is a blend of the magical and the psychological. Soon the latter will become the dominant factor. Greek philosophers will consider the tragic performance as a collective act of catharsis (emotional purification or purgation).

The actor's mask — the "persona" — portrays an emotion in its essential, magnificent, or awesome character. Whoever wears that mask, and whoever opens his soul to the impact of the power-releasing performance, is made to live at a pitch of intensity which he has become too weak to sustain in his humdrum existence, or too intellectualized to welcome without fear. The root-functions of his psyche are violently stirred; and this cathartic action parallels in the psychic realms that of purgative substances whose function it is to stimulate the torpid liver and other digestive organs into enhanced activity. Indeed, all rituals are conceived, ever since the dawn of humanity, as magical means to induce a renewal or an increase of activity.

It is in light of this fact that one must understand the significance of the statement by medieval philosophers that personality is the attribute of God — and of God alone. Personality is then conceived as the equivalent of divine Sonship — a vehicle for the creative power of the Godhead. Christ is the only begotten Son of the one Father; therefore, there is but one Personality in the world, which is Christ's. When the priest puts on the sacred vestures of his office (symbolizing the "Robe of Glory" of the Christ), he assumes this divine and unique character of personality. He performs, in such character, the works of God — the eternal trans-substantiation of matter and the redemption of Adamic, earth-conditioned, sinful man. Does such a performance diminish his value as an individual human being? To believe that it does seems to be an instance of what a rather fanatic individualistic attitude can produce in a man's mind. It is to refuse to admit that an individual man can reach a more encompassing and power-releasing state of consciousness and activity by not only relating himself to a greater Whole, but by becoming for a time — and perhaps in some cases, permanently — a mouthpiece fora Power that transcends, yet can focus itself into and act through his consecrated person.

The issue is a fundamental one. The entire philosophy which inspires this book, and the whole life of its author, rests upon the realization — not only an intellectual belief! — that a person can become a focusing means for the exteriorization of a superior and transcendent Power at this level of our physical, terrestrial and social existence — and in some cases the very manifestation of that Power, when the evolution of mankind requires such a manifestation. In other words, I cannot accept the validity of a personalism — and still less an individualism — which considers the individual person as an absolute and an end in itself and everything in the universe as having been made for the sake of the glorified individual human being, or even of everlasting spiritual "monads."

Spirit is the power of integration. It is a universal and, indeed, "transcosmic" Principle of Wholeness. Even when spirit appears to act as the destroyer of obsolete forms, the purpose of such acts is to release frozen units for re-integration into a vaster whole. Personality itself is the result of many and varied kinds of integrative processes. In the "holistic" concept of evolution presented by Jan Smuts, the genesis of personality is shown to be the last in a continuous series of whole-making operations. It is spiritual in as much as it manifests the most inclusive and most coordinated type of integration which universal evolution has produced.

But can we stop with personality and force ourselves not to imagine any further development of the universal integrative process? Must we conceive of some extracosmic God or some evolutionary power that, having produced the human person, had no more integrative energy — no more "spirit' — to use, and thereafter let a spiritual entropy prevail? Is the fulfillment of personality in man the ultimate spiritual fact, and should the universe of spirit be pictured as a multiplicity of perfected personalities?

The personalist, it is true, would not consider these personalities as isolated, and still less insulated, individuals. He would undoubtedly realize that they have emerged from some common matrix, social and biological, and that they have formed themselves through a constant inter-relatedness of activities, from which what Carl Jung calls the "process of individuation" derives its substance and its basic symbols common to all men. The personalist might agree to picture symbolically these personalities as "seeds" which have emerged from the web of complex organic relationships constituting the vast plant of society. Each personality-seed is complete in itself; each has gathered to itself the experience of humanity in freedom and creative interplay. Yet, to say that all these seeds, each by itself, is an end in itself and an absolute value seems indeed to stop short of the goal of spiritual understanding. One step is left to be taken: the realization that every seed born within the vast expanse of the great tree of man's common humanity is a manifestation of the "seed-hood" of humanity.

The seed of wheat does not live for itself, but as a witness to the creative power, significance and immortality of Wheat. The individual human personality, likewise, has ultimate spiritual meaning as an expression of the creative power, significance and immortality of Man. The true life of personality is a life of utter service to Man. An integrated and fulfilled personality is an individualized incorporation of Man.

Spirit is one, and Man is one — personalities are many. They are varied in their characteristics and in the forms which their creative power takes as it expresses itself in answer to the need of the time and of the place in which such a release of spirit occurs. Personalities are varied in that they define Man in time and space by the limits they impose upon Man's powers. Yet except that Man lives and acts through a human person, this person has not attained the spiritual status of personality. Man is the unity of all perfected personalities. This unity constitutes the seedhood of humanity, which is both the beginning and the consummation of human evolution, as any seed is the beginning and the end of the annual cycle of manifestation of the species to which it is totally consecrated.

In this conception of personality nothing is subtracted from the spiritual value and the essential dignity of the human person. The plurality of spirit is recognized in terms of the fact that spirit manifests itself always in answer to a need, and that to the variety of material conditions and needs a corresponding plurality of spiritual characteristics must answer. Yet the unity of spirit is also realized. That all concrete personalities have the same roots is an evident fact of biology and psychology. But humanity is not only a unity below the conscious level. Roots originate in seed. This seed-unity is a spiritual potentiality to be actualized in a more inclusive manner through and at the innermost core of all personalities that have reached fulfillment, and in so doing have recognized themselves as separate manifestations of Man. Each separate manifestation is rightly a "law unto itself"; but only in so far as the personality accepts and acts out completely its inherent participation in Man.

Speaking in religious terms, in so far as a person works toward the actualization of the particular aspect of the total Man-potential which he embodies, he performs the "works of the Father"; he acts as a "son of God." The "mask" he wears is the signature of his consecrated response to the need of humanity at the time and place of his life-performance. In his acts he is differentiated by this particular "need'! — -and this constitutes his limitation. But, at the core of his being, the "seed of Man" is growing, maturing; until the day when, having fulfilled his service to humanity and society, all else but this seed will fade away. This seed is an organism of spirit; it does not die. All seeds constitute the multi-une harvest of the end of the cycle of Man and of the Earth, the omega state of which Teilhard de Chardin speaks in terms of his personal field of operation, Christianity. In this state there is unanimity, but a unanimity which is not enforced by tyrannic means wielded by ruthless individuals. It is unanimity in freedom, it is born out of the dedicated work and lives of persons fully committed to the one great purpose of all true persons, the actualization of the original potential that is Man in the beginning.

"Leaf" and "Seed" Participation

Everyone who is not a completely and artificially isolated individual participates in some manner in the life of his environment. But the character of one's participation in the activities of society and of the universe can be of various kinds. Each type of participation defines essentially the spiritual status of the man. Likewise, the ideal of participation generally held by a social group or culture establishes the spiritual character of this group or culture.

The general philosophy of personalism insists that every human person is entitled to a type of participation in which the integrity of the personality is safeguarded by society. While it considers the individual as an atom which has significance and value, only in terms of its being part of a particular whole to which he "belongs," it regards the person as an integral whole, as a microcosm, entitled to free decisions and to the pursuit of what Carl Jung calls (in his book The Integration of the Personality) his vocation. It is, indeed, in its protest against the collectivistic totalitarianism of the modern State or Church that contemporary personalism — especially in Europe — finds its most forceful expression and raison d'etre.

However, if we take an historical and evolutionistic view of the matter, we cannot fail to realize that no human being is born with the characteristic attributes of personality. Whether in the tribal state, or today in childhood, one has to win one’s personality. Personality is an emergent state. It implies at first a long process of differentiation (the emphasizing of all that makes one different from others), the gaining of a conscious and objective attitude toward oneself and others, a weighing of motives and goals, the acquisition of tested values — and, finally, a process of integration and consolidation.

If a whole civilization becomes polarized by a process of individualistic differentiation, the outcome can only be a generalized accentuation of intellectual analysis, competitive faculities, soul-dissatisfaction with the norm, and spiritual restlessness. This leads, on one hand, to a great development in acuity, analytic power and inventiveness of the mind of ever-farther-seeking individuals — thus modern science and technology — and, on the other hand, to a thorough intensification of the multi-headed hydra of selfishness, greed and lust for power, nurtured by fear, loneliness and insecurity.

Combine the positive results of the scientific and self-emancipating mind with this monster, and you have our modern civilization and its atomic bomb, its monstrous instruments of chemical warfare, its concentration camps and infamous prisons; you have universal skepticism and the wholesale degeneration of all truly communal and human values. When this degenerative process reaches the point where the very survival of the human race and of all life on this Earth is most seriously endangered, a reaction inevitably follows. A blind aggregative compulsion is felt by the common man, confused, insecure, distraught; and this trend is seized upon by power-greedy individuals. "Fascism" is born — a collective form of "return to the womb" the matrix of the old Tradition which seems so comforting in its localism and its familiar symbols.

Under the category of "religious matrix" one should include the Communist Party of Lenin and Stalin, because of the rigorous and impersonal attitude it fosters upon its adherents, because of its dogmatic approach and its resemblance to a militant theocratic organization. Economic materialism and atheism can be the substance of a religious attitude if enkindled by a fervent and even fanatic belief that the Cause is dedicated to human betterment and redemption from social evils, that it is an expression of the "need of the times" and of an evolutionary surge toward higher human goals. Where this attitude develops in an atmosphere of mental scarcity — that is, among races and classes long held in ignorance, poverty, and illiteracy, and thus unable normally to develop personality — the almost unavoidable result is that a minority-group, possessing definitely needed and timely attributes for dynamic leadership, is compelled by the very force of circumstances to emerge as a kind of priesthood, religious Order, or consecrated Brotherhood.

The rule of such a group can be called a matrix-rule, in the sense that it aims at molding a new culture, at setting forth new values with dogmatic, compulsive, and "magical" power. modern totalitarian propaganda is a modernized form of magic — we might call it black magic of a sort — and the element of fear and the menace of invisible hovering death are associated with all its virulent social forms. It does not mean that there is not an element of freedom and democracy in the Communist State; but it is freedom and democracy within the set framework of a dogma, or ideology. If one is born into this social-cultural framework and if one seeks only to fulfill its postulates, its goals and its archetypal structures, then there is great richness of living, of faith, and of accomplishment in store for the individual. However, the goal of the system is to build a collective cultural whole or organism — a "body" — in which human beings act as cells whose activity is structurally defined and limited by a rigid skeleton and by set patterns of metabolism — thus strictly as functional parts but not as wholes-in-themselves (that is, persons).

Such a system was in force in the Catholic Middle Ages, especially during the centuries when the Church reached the apex of her power. Yet these centuries saw the rise of the magnificent Gothic art, and the culture they produced was in a sense greater than that of the much publicized and much overrated Classical Era. The Gothic society had tremendous vitality, faith, enthusiasm, creative power, eagerness for knowledge — and it knew freedom of a sort. Not freedom to become an independent individual and to develop personality as a spiritual fact outside of the organic structure of society; but the freedom to fulfill a particular and, nearly always, inherited function in the social organism, in deep emotional security and with a maximum sense of functional productivity and participation.

Such a participation, however, is not the kind of participation which the personalist philosopher regards as consistent with the character of personality. It is an organic kind of participation which does not start from the individual person as a spiritual foundation, but rather which utilizes individual molecules of humanity to build a collective organism. A strict type of organic participation means participation as part of an organic whole which is born and which will die, with no possibility for the participant to reach beyond the cycle bounded by this organic beginning and end. It is the type of participation which can be symbolized by the function of the leaf of the plant. The leaf cannot reach beyond the plant; it cannot stand alone, nor have meaning of itself and in itself alone; it must die with the disintegration of the plant. A particular leaf has value only in terms of a particular plant, within which it serves a definite purpose — even though the purpose might be modified and the green leaf transfigured into the radiant petal of the flower.

The seed, on the other hand, can stand alone. It carries its own meaning. Even though it was grown from the plant and existed as a functional part of the plant, the seed can — and indeed it must — become liberated from the plant, if it is to fulfill its seed-destiny. Nevertheless, the seed is not an isolated whole. Though detached from the plant it actually participates in that of which the plant itself is an expression. It participates by being free from a particular plant — its mother or matrix — because this freedom is the prerequisite for another kind of participation in a greater reality — the species. And this new participation, born of freedom, implies not only an inner bondage to the future plant, but sacrifice — the sacrifice of all seeds to the new vegetation. This sacrifice is demanded of the seed by the species. whose essential and ultimate purpose it must serve in total self-surrender as a condition for being significant and valuable as a seed.

Root, leaf and seed are symbols; and, obviously, what has been said of them must not be taken too literally; yet they are most potent and meaningful symbols. Indeed, this distinction between two kinds of participation, symbolically called here "leaf-participation" and "seed-participation," is fundamental.

The participation of the leaf in the activities of the whole plant is "organic" in as much as it is both defined and bounded by the circumference — in space and time — of a particular plant's life and destiny. The participation of the tribesman in the tribe, of the medieval craftsman in the communal creation of the Gothic cathedral — a cultural organism — and (in an at least relative sense) of the average Soviet citizen in the collectivistic and Party-ruled society is of the same order. It is "leaf-participation," organic participation.

On the other hand, the type of participation demonstrated in the life of a creative person who (though having matured within a particular nation and culture) has found his ultimate significance and destiny in his service to the whole of humanity, and (though being the ultimate product of a particular soil and root) has established his home on any and all continents — this, indeed, is a spiritual participation. It is the participation of the seed-man in the total life of humanity, past, present and future.

The seed-man has reached freedom from a particular race and culture, freedom from particular human and geographical conditions — but only in order to assume consciously and willingly the bonds of his total responsibility to Man. He has become identified, consciously and deliberately, with the onward surge of human evolution; or, in religious terms, with God's Plan. He is most bound where he is most free. He is bound futureward; while the leaf-man is bound pastward. Free from the pull and the compulsion of the past (the root), he is spiritually bound, together with his companion-seeds, to the future of Man. Just because he is fulfilled in personality, he must die into Man, but this death is immortality, for that with which he becomes thus identified is "divine Sonship." It is God-in-act.

The seed-man loses the limited features of his being, as, having reached the fullness of personality, he becomes identified with the "mask" of God — the Son. Yet even though the words uttered are those of the cosmic Poet, the voice that rings through that mask is the seed-man's own voice. And even though he is one with all seed-men that were, are and ever will be — and they together are the many masks of Man — yet his Name is forever remembered; because it is a link of power and significance in the immortal thread of Man's destiny, a noble deed recorded for all ages in the great Book of the Living Civilization.

Is, then, personality (in its deepest, most vital and most spiritual sense) to be regarded as an ultimate, an end in itself; or as a means to some greater end? It is both. It is an end which consciously and deliberately assumes the responsibility of participating, as a symbolical seed, with all other personalities who, together, constitute the path to, and the substance of, a universal Purpose and a universal Act. Personality is end-fulfillment, but an end-fullfillment which distills out of its very consummation the sacred substance of a universal activity — a cosmic symphony. The performers of this symphony are the seed-personalities who, having achieved perfection, have consecrated it to a universal performance. The symphonic score is Man fulfilled personality — every perfectly trained and masterful virtuoso in his own right — acquires immortality as one of the performers of the symphony, Man; and only thus. What he performs is a linear phase — a melody — of this symphony; and this is his spiritual reality, that into which he has "sacrified," or rather consecrated, his gifts. His technique, his quality of tone and expression, his instrument remain, however, his own — to be recorded forever within the total performance.

How does this kind of orchestral participation differ from the organic participation of a leaf within a plant, of a tribesman within a tribal organism? It differs, first, in fact that, while the leaf is born out of the plant with no choice of its own and no will or purpose of its own, the orchestra performer has come to the performance consciously and of his own volition, because he realized that through such a performance alone he would transform a mortal consummation into an immortal participation. The other basic difference is that all leaves are attached structurally, substantially and compulsively to stem and roots — all tribesmen are bound in their unconsciousness and instinctual nature to the tribe — while the participants in the symphony of Man are united only by their common will and aim; not substantially, but purposefully. They bind themselves, and even then they can fail in the performance and "drop out."

Leaf-participation operates under root-compulsion, in unconscious structural unanimity; seed-participation is performed under qualified rules of action, deliberately accepted by the performer. In the latter, the only compulsion is that which resides in the integrity of the musical score to be performed; and this compulsion is one with individual purpose, because, the moment the performer freely assumes the responsibility of his participation in the performance, he accepts thereby the integrity of the score as the determining principle of his future activity.

Yet this seed-participation is more than the usual type of orchestral participation. It reaches deeper than a mere federation of wills for a common purpose, jointly decided upon. The symphonic score, Man, is not composed by the performers, and we are led to assume that the performance is directed by a guiding spiritual Intelligence. We may call the composer and the conductor, God. But if we do so, we must be careful to distinguish between the concept of a God who is a Root-entity, a cosmic tribal and compelling Ancestor or Father — the God of all pre-Buddhistic religions — and the concept of a God who is the symbolical Seed from whom the Father-God derives, as root derives from seed.

It is from this Divine Seed that "man's common humanity" grew at the beginning of human evolution. And in the last Day of this evolution, when the symphony of Man reaches the final stage of its performance in and through the all-synthesizing lives of personalities who have gathered to themselves the harvest of eons of human civilization, then Man will demonstrate fully his structural identity with the Divine Seed (the Logos, the Eon) that was before Abraham (the Root) and is, now and until the end of the cycle. As this cyclic consummation takes place, a new Divine Seed will have been formed, not only in the likeness of the primordial one, but greater. For all truly integrated and consecrated persons throughout the human ages will have contributed to the new Seed the spiritual character of their independent achievement of personality, the spiritual harvest of their most creative experience, their courage, their understanding and their nobility.

Personality ever creates "divinity," while rooted in the common humanity of all men. As personality performs its melody in the immense symphony of Man, personality makes the potential actual. What in the beginning was only "pattern" becomes "living tone" resounding through space. Intent becomes fulfillment; and fulfillment creates further goals and more inclusive purposes. And to him whose consciousness embraces beginning, development and completion, the dramatist, the performer, and the performance are perceived likewise to be one — as seed, root and plant are one inclusive whole in essence and in consummated act.

It is easy to label such concepts "mystical," and by this simple device — especially if one is trained in "scientific" thought — to free oneself from the trouble of pondering over the problems they pose and facing the challenge of self-transformation which they imply. What an individualistic era, emphasizing unbridled "free enterprise" on the basis of traditional agriculture and small industry, is apt to consider as mystical and transcendental, a global society faced with the necessity of planning (at least within well-defined limits) and integrating its infinitely complex world-wide productivity may have to interpret as eminently practical — nay more, as a basic requirement for effective social functioning.