"Nietzsche was right. We have cast the Divine out of our lives and have effectively appointed ourselves the makers of our own universe. Alas, for all our self-proclaimed divinity we have not yet assumed responsibility for our lives or our new-found freedom. While burying the God metaphor of our old religion we have entombed a part of ourselves - a part without which we cannot truly come alive as free beings.
"We did not merely reject our Judeo-Christian [devotional] heritage but expunged from our cultural and psychic horizon the very possibility of transcendence and a spiritual [awareness].
"The new horizon is yet to be explored: as a culture we have so far failed to understand that the end of the tyranny of the old patriarchal god has set us free to find the transcendental Reality beyond religious dogmas and mere belief - an infinite universal field of inconceivable dimensions. We remain truncated beings, setting the stage for the absurdities of fascism."
Fromm, however, continued to grow throughout his life, eventually beginning to embrace a deeper spiritual perspective. Publishing the book Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis with Japanese Zen Master D.T Suzuki and Richard Martino in 1960 he wrote:
"Zen Buddhism is the art of seeing into the nature of one's being; it is a way from bondage to freedom; it liberates our natural energies; " and it impels us to express our faculty for happiness and love.
"Buddhism helps man to find an answer to the question of his existence, an answer"which does not contradict the rationality, realism, and independence which are modern man's precious achievements. Paradoxically, Eastern religious thought turns out to be more congenial to Western rational thought than does Western religious thought itself."
Rather than "personal independence," which had been Fromm's emphasis in Escape from Freedom, Buddhism maintains that the nature of human life and the universe itself is interdependence. As it turns out, this perspective is one of the most powerful antidotes to the haunting state of aloneness.
Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the same reality:
"It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
Conclusion
Abiding in this state of consciousness is not only in harmony with a the current "systems" view of the universe; it is the polar opposite of fascism and various "escapes from freedom."
In the next article I hope to explore some practical solutions concerning the challenging phenomena of freedom and its obstacles.
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