Seminar: Big Sur; Contemporary images of Man, part two

If. The vowel he says by the graciousness of its comings gracious because you cannot will it and the solemn sadness of its going because every that again because it. It teaches us to meet others and to hold in the end very often to be one of the other who leave our ground and go over to others. We thought of. Air defenses. And keep the others off there it's much harder to be open to the other and at the same time rely on your own ground. But right there's this alternation teach us this because of course the fast loaded is just plain too togetherness for you and them are the model of McCall's magazine and the big billboard at the very time the whole editorial staff resigned of the bet. Someone asked me to write rose with the words commitment to become so fashionable today I thought about it a method because there's so little of it. There's the comparison. That's not bad at all. Who cannot have an issue or a single one

ever to accept the fact that the little moment of them is going to get to change and I have a ground to stand on not to feel terrified that you will plunge into the abyss. Because you can't every moment. Has a meeting and Martin it was three years ago. He lived. With his mother and father. In Vienna and he's under the house every day with a sense that nothing would ever happen to him when he was four years old. His parents separated they both went away and his mother. Remarried in Russia and he was sent to live with his grandparents and grandfather to the recognized authority under him and I had a great estate and so on. His grandmother a remarkable woman coming very seldom seen.

His grandmother and his grandfather were noble people in the exact sense of the term and he was quite sure they didn't talk to each other about what happened and certainly they said nothing to him and his mother would come back and he said one day he was on the great tangere inner courtyard in the grandfather's estate and he was standing there. In the balcony. The carriage ride with the younger a few years older than him was taking care of him and he says I do not recall asking the question but I recall the day here and there. No he will never come back and he said I knew it was true. These words and every year they were more and more deeply is that when I was 10 years old I invented or rather I invented the term missed meeting this encounter for a meeting which somehow does not take place and then years later he said he saw this as something that concerned not only himself but on them. Because

even when his mother came back to visit and sat up in his right the children. And I looked into her still unbelievably beautiful. I heard as them somewhere were to dress in the meeting. It was that I believe it was them that are on the balcony that are about genuine dialogue in the course of a long life had a beginning. But of course there was a dialogue with the young girl who had a question you probably couldn't even ask that question but somehow on this earth where you could not have expected it there came an answer that will certainly SHORTEN I think more important is the fact that he accepted something then he accepted that even though his mother's eyes were really

unbelievably beautiful. He could not live his life clinging to those beautiful eyes hoping once more to be absorbed into them. He could not live there right as that young boy up on the balcony because his mother was down below at a dinner party. He could not like that the father had lived long in such a way that when Max bird once said when you make the relationship your father too important is a cow that was around the mother barrage of argument. He didn't want to give up this relationship it was his existence. The beginning of genuine is the acceptance of the distancing. Of separateness against us as the ground from which And then the moment everyone meeting again and again common. I believe this as a matter about religious philosophy as any statement he has made that has to do with God is eternal but that crest and I can again that want to meet

present reality but not in any way that I can hold onto. Or conjure up and murders his writing that letter he says to her I love you more than with any ethical or because for him the reality that he could meet and through which he could find real. Life. Had been one for many could not accept. The possibility of it going and then either it's coming again in another form or something else. But you see it's not just me who's left by his parents that doesn't happen to every other boy. They're both apparently even that. But it concerns all of us because even when your parents remain there even when your marriage is happy and remains and so on but only continues or your friendship only continues. I was constant movement or the other goes out

and then where you bring back to each other a new world of experience you know what happens sometimes to guard friendship. There are very fine you want to see your friend. And it's real what you said then what you said at the end of that community. Some of them continue. Most of them do but those who continue continue only because people come in the meeting and they may say oh that's you again but they have to recognize you really and not just talk about the good old times they have to have a new meeting with a vow they have to allow the other. To keep being the new and the breath of fresh of all such relationships. When your theory either has fixed me in a category it doesn't allow me to be. Never forget that Harvard. Tolerated two members of our group one of whom we call 100 percent 200 percent of the rest of us who are types that.

10 years after I graduated we had a job. The little birthday party for me which was made up simply a. Runabout that I had been in some touch with both of the two of the men in this group. One of whom bright I'm sorry for not being condescending 100 percent normal. The other man had become a psychoanalyst. A great lover of theater and New York of whom he. Couldn't go anyplace but that is very fine and so on and he was not happy but the remarkable thing that happened that meeting these two men had met each other that ten years and this band is the one I'm talking about is it become a psychoanalysis to this. Very good one I gather that when they went down afterwards the US turned to the other Matt and said. In tones of bitterness and. Norm you have admitted the fact that women

consider normal. But it is a fact that we imprison others in our comfortable images of them and leave them free. To come as every experience is going right to get rid of his nickname sometime because you're still our little brother or something and you aren't really a person with a distance of your own. Men do not become themselves through their relationship to themselves that their becoming is induced by being confirmed by the other eye knowing that the other makes you present in your uniqueness as the person you are not just that he knows about you. The betting means you and me and you from your side to. This takes an act of rubber because experiencing the other side of the relationship is not empathy. You don't lose your own side but nonetheless you can to some extent actively. Imagine through a possible fantasy with the other is thinking willing and feeling and you know that you don't do it as a and deliberate thing. Just do it once. Right side of the river this is very hard.

This experience on the other side is that it's not hard at all. The greats. Don't work at it but if you are open. They can come to you and how do we ever know that we understand each other if it isn't through a certain amount of this. You may be sure that I would have to go on endlessly. No my point was that my point was No my point is this is one where there is no experience on the other side and of course the sad thing the path of. The earth man becomes man through being confirmed by the other but confirming his uniqueness. Then at the point where people no longer really listen to each other. And this booze is the mark of modern man he never really hears another person and his otherness as man is a kind of experience that for years already. As it were listening for what makes him say that is. What analyzing him there do thing here in the writing This is a typical modern glance in an analytical or derivative is one I don't accept him with clear sighted trust

in the case combination of goodness and openness. Instead I want to see through him not for a deliberate deception. But rather for that which is imprinted on his consciousness itself. Once we had a thing on free will and determinism with the faculty and students all bets cigarettes as to where the faculty would be. I was part of the panel and I made a statement that even Freud didn't believe entirely in determinism. Because obviously he believed that therapy that the possibility of freedom in the presence of not simply being on the path and one very brilliant senior on the afterwards. Was that. Why did I say that I have a topper and he started out to walk up the stairs. And turn to me with a branch. And said you want to know what I think I said I'm sure you don't agree with me. I thought what is it Mr. Friedman's path that makes it necessary for him to think this way. I was with your flipper when. There was a great

dialogue is really. Used as a dialogue where we have two beautiful statements about this. In one of which he speaks of a debate in which people are not concerned about the real points that are you know the truth of what's going on but they want to score points on each other. A conversation in which a person wants to stare at his shaky ego inflation and other levers popping within his own precious worth. Of feelings and so on are these. Specters which are not really that are. A wonderful statement about him. And this connection which I don't just use the other assert things that possesses freedom that I can in fact. Confirm him. Through a swinging over to the other and

a right of the contemporary NATO at rest being the nation they had over there and joins it on the neck. If you are not in your neck then on that one over there on the beloved one and yet you yourself are not as it were stanch to where you are here and so on this is that you're able to confirm the other and leave him his freedom to rhythm to his own freedom. And so far as to say that in actual making that you can experience it. For a moment anyway from the other side the width of the sides of the skin and if this happens that can never again be a mere elaboration of subjectivity. This person is present to you for all time. For real who is the responsibility of an eye for responding to without and the feelings of love that that there is an elaborate monologue which lives in a world of mirrors and mirror rings. The rest of it I do not assimilate into my own soul about which lives and fates is me. I

doubt it faithfully faithfully to myself and myself to it but in the era of Maharaj it was many years I have wandered through the land of man. And not yet reached an end to studying the varieties of the erotic man. As a vessel of a broken wing want to describe himself. Wherever stands around as in Lebanon with his passion. There one is wearing his differential like medal ribbons. Very well as enjoying the adventures of a fascinating effect. Verizon is losing enraptured at the spectacle of his own supposed surrender their own is collecting excitement where one is displaying his power there on his premiums up with vitality. They wanted the writing to exist simultaneously as him self and as an idol very unlike himself. Very well as Warming him south of the blows of what has fallen to his lot. There one is experimenting. And so on and on just with their mirrors in the apartment of the most intimate dialogue.

For real living is meeting those little meetings. Where in fact people simply use each other is also the death of real living. If we need to be and we do need to be concerned by the other we need to be confirmed by him in our uniqueness and this is where a very profound problem which I believe is at the center of a great deal of the taboos and that the therapy and isn't only partially reachable by the therapist however a very profound problem is that we are often faced with the choice. Between. Being confirmed only as the bride of the group where the group is in the group chat or what have you. Something which we cannot with Larry not being confirmed be ourselves and being rejected. This is a horrible choice because whichever you decide you are not really comparable you get the notion that you will

stop our unlovable and leave or beat your head against the ladder again and again. Reconfirming yourself that no one could laugh at you or accept you or her. Except the confirmation that times deal but you don't really get as you are you know that you aren't being. There just the fact that you play with a role that is hypocritical on your side of course as it is in the other. It becomes a habit you will thing that Marion said was true for generations. I respect. Which was the true authority which grew not out of respect for authority but out of the need to be confirmed by authority. And this is a sad thing of course about simply being concerned in social wrote. Better need of confirmation is so great that many people into being requires the same man. In order to try to bring a sort of. Illusion of confirmation. There are two types of men being

and seen by types he means no one is really one of the other or a mixture that some men are so much the one that they can be called being men and some are so much the other that they might be called semen then. A Blue Man is not one with all of the things that he has known who in his relation to the other. We wish to influence him but is concerned with whatever it is that's between them with what they're talking about is not trying to create a certain impression but assuming that. He's trying them at work to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet. If he thinks that you don't have to be he will appear to be insincere and spontaneous you think you want him to be polite and reserved he will appear like Missouri and of course. So threaten as confirmation this is not just a deliberate hypocrisy on the contrary something which becomes very often lose overnight the fact that we aren't therefore right and

there is a person or this through person and the fact is that at each moment we are in a sense trying to watch the impressions we make. He says it's fine to get a conversation between two such people we get six appearances in a row I think we can prove that I'm a rare nothing athirst transfer between them. Temptation to Google into seeming is a very great one for a man to give in to it is man's essential cowardice to withstand this temptation is man's essential courage that I have never yet met a young person I could say was a bad seed. You know this even in itself with older people however you get. The rare rare air of seeming in such a way that things like the nature of this person is that even here it says the program perspective is mistaken

man as man is redeemable. It's very understanding how we try to do this. But of course there's a horrible Joker in it for even if we aren't aware of it we are not going to confirm from the more I despise you because you've fallen for it on the one hand and also the less I really feel that and therefore I can reach the place where I might mistrust. Coming out of my own deception is so great that no one can say a word to me that I will ever take. As a word to me. I like groups form Gregory where he says the girl with the beautiful. Hair says I'm going to dye my hair. Character or green or something so that the young man will love me for myself alone with long hair. The wise old man only God an idea will love you for yourself alone and I will hear. Rest assured if yourself it was just the essence crap. It wasn't it wasn't impossible. They both would be there at once but it was more and more threatened in our.

Culture. There's more and more a sense of what is the line at the very point where a person shows interest in me I must say what is he trying to put out over only what he thought he was an approach that is reciprocal and mindless trust also. Then he would withdraw a little and maybe you know it goes back and forth. But. It isn't. It isn't a state we have the possibility of moving toward being or being people and this is where real chaos comes out in the center of who within the demand is existential trust trust which is not true that something will happen. But simply that biblical trust that can say that I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil for thou art with me nothing no evil will happen to me it will happen. I will walk through without the shadow of death and it will be for the real. Over never had a word to say in his life about immortality or anything that gave you safety as a as itself is a word rather was walking on the narrow ridge in the holy insecurity. And yet

the trust was a readiness to meet with reality in there. What does this do to the question that I've been hammering for week about how do we find our direction. If some critic catching hold of my method should not come to me and say. Or how do you find a direction for it in the demand there and this is one of the all of these things are important to me as they are to all of us. The vitalists and so on. But this is you know I was one of the things I have made my own. The only one I would have to say where there is no direction there in the sense of something which you can shoot out. Where you don't have to take into account. What comes to me with you. There is no destiny here in the sense of something you can superimpose. In the course of existence and make your existence meaningful by an act of will as it were. I believe we're very much. You know we are the masters of our fate and we are

very much in the hands. Of a situation which isn't always that. We often find that the other person or just see the true or something good is something. We could never. Get ourselves in that that moment enables us to walk a step further. Through that sort of direction this here round not that which disowns of the past or what you have been but that which underlies says that a great person is run who doesn't draw on the past anything that's prepared and ready but who is ready to meet the present and who knows what the situation doesn't demand anything prepared it demands you. And you does that mean that the everybody that already it means you which is no one has ever understood the Ten Commandments unless he has understood them as addressed to him as in his situation. And one of the reasons that there's been such a strong reaction against the Ten Commandments in a broker in each and so on is precisely that they have been seen as the head rather culture.

Suppressing. Our drives and desires rather than something which calls to us. To which we can respond and really caused you in your situation. But if this is so then I cannot discover what I ought to do. We thought of a situation where the person has not only yours but a medal. You may say something that will surprise you. If this is so you cannot really I was an Eagle Scout but you cannot really be prepared. In the sense of knowing the answer in advance. If you rob the answers you know the answers for an answer is only real with the question. And even if you think I've heard that one before it isn't. That the person who is standing there asking you that brings a whole new meaning to the question I have a relationship to it even if they use the same words. That someone else has used. Anyone who's ever confronted a person or situation knows that I mean. You can't have the answer in advance. Or you could have it as a readiness. To

respond. But this was actually what I mean by the direction of the image and then I direction. Responding not something that will occur you will. Read it you will be the next area where you will get a weapon though you will reach but rather an image of what it moves to be a man standing. Every reason I asked the question after the experience in the concentration camp. What does it mean to be an enemy to submit as a mean to rebel. And where we all ask ourselves these questions. No for me I will answer them for us. But we begin to get. Their relation to others and bring our own image of manly beginning that image. Makes the other man what makes man man. In the fact that some people in their unique remember less can respond humanly a more authentic way and some people rest. This is not a comparative thing that can be seen from the outside because if you really

understand that response then you can't take it over the formula and yet it can enter into your own response at a future time. Who didn't go to school until he was 10 years old. Then it was a small school in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The mixture of. Various groups and they sat in a small schoolroom with benches. And each bring out is assigned place to version of that and he said it was run far in that it was utterly bad by rain and they couldn't go out for the recess this time around the cork out as you like to do They had a verse that each in its place in the band or through the recess. Everywhere. These are two of the brothers in the group began to. Entertain the other boys as a sort of mimic game and I could peep in their faces at first and offer the service of the master wouldn't notice what was going on in the other birds just launched in science that are still in my prime and that is that observers they were there. After a

couple of weeks this game took on a new and unmistakably sexual character. The reports and the faces of the brothers looked like the faces of the Serbs who are tortured and how as he said some of his Catholic school mates knew how to. Inform him in the tone of experts. And after this it brought on program. Remember now if I was called into the master's office and the master said to him in a gentle friendly way that they knew was invariable in him tell me what you know of the two boys. I know nothing about it and the master in the same gentle friendly way they're doing him. We know you well you are a good boy you will help us. I run it is because I learned that within the major shot help instead of rich I fell into a weeping as never before in my life and was led away almost unconscious.

But he said it when I got home and I recalled. The last will of the master. It was not any longer the gentle friendly face but a frightening one that had met me. I thought of home two weeks when I got back to school row and which the boy sat with him and remained empty for the rest of the year. From Briscoe resident of my target to this I began that long series of lessons that taught me of a problematic relationship between Max and situation and with whom on which commands that you were beating that yourself. What was problematic in this relation to makin the situation a maxim is a general rule. Or bad in early to rise makes a man healthy wealthy and wise. It is addressed to everybody and to nobody that doesn't speak to you as you would speak to you as one or those who do

and so on. Most will be addressed in fact that we get from each other is rather of that nature. Therefore as a general rule addressing you only as a Roman. Maxim necessarily split you at the moment when you are responding to a situation by pressing on you something from the past and not allowing you really to be present there. In the present not allowing you to respond rationally to the situation. That has been seven our banks are featuring this week a discussion by author and scholar Marty Friedman on existentialism and contemporary images of man. Next week we present the thoughts of psychoanalyst and author Dr. Rollo May this series is produced by Radio Station K x K x FM in San Francisco in cooperation with the excellent Institute of Big Sur California. This program was distributed by national educational radio. This is the

national educational radio network. Thank God you know I think and I think there's a God. This has been seven our banks are featuring this week a discussion by author and scholar Marty Friedman on existentialism and contemporary images of man. Next week we present the thoughts of psychoanalyst and author Dr. Rollo May this series is produced by Radio Station K x K x FM in

San Francisco in cooperation with the excellent Institute of Big Sur California.