As Is The Feeling,
So Is The Result.

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The Parable of the Talents is a monitory story, a warning, that describes power, responsibilities appertaining thereunto, and consequences of its employment or unemployment, aka abuse.

A talent is a power. In First Century Judea and Samaria it was a denomination of money, one of some size. Money, as is known, is a power in and of itself. In this Parable, a unit of money, a talent, symbolizes power per se, in and of itself, as well as the countless plethora of specific powers with which each of us creatures is endowed.

A parable is a monitory story, a warning meant to alert someone to need or danger ahead so they can avoid being condemned or otherwise hurt. Power is an ability to make something happen, to throw something into existence (Heidegger), to make a latent patent, a potential actual.

There are great powers and small powers and countless flocks of powers of countless degrees in between. The greatest powers are those most subtle, least tangible, while the smaller powers are those most gross, most tangible. A power’s ability to produce and make effect may be estimated from its subtlety, which is to say, from its tangibility. If you can touch it or hear it, see, smell, or taste it, it is a smaller power.

For example, an atomic bomb is less powerful than the intellect of the one who can throw it into existence. Mighty rulers collect to themselves sublime sages, not mountains of munitions.

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Several facets of The Parable of the Talents deserve looking into.

First, the general context. The talents (powers) are given by a master to his servants. The servants do not own the talents. Nor do they request the talents. They are made stewards of the talents by the will of the master. He puts power / responsibility in his servants’ possession. The master throws the talents and their distribution into existence. He owns the whole lot, including the servants. Of such is the condition of powers in this world and as willed by the master in each creature one by one.

Next, assumed in the Parable is that the master is just, fair. The assumption could be otherwise and, ’round and about the park of human endeavor, very often is. Inasmuch as the master is God, and inasmuch as the assumption in the Parable of God’s fairness has currency among First Century Jews, it bears saying that the source of that assumption, the force of history Tillich calls Hebrew Prophetism, is more than a little unique among the nations’ religious peregrinations.

The phenomenon of that assumption — the fairness of God, His Justice — argues, to me at least, that Hebrew Prophetism and Christianity as heir to it descend from a Vedic original. In my awareness, only one other sheaf of soteriological puissance — besides the Vedic original and its Hebrew Prophetic and Christian descendants — exhibits the same degree of strength holding to the assumption that God is fair, just: Pythagorean Monasticism, itself of Vedic origin.

Next, the servants are servants, not free men, but they have freedoms with respect to powers the master bestows upon them, to please or displease the master — with high consequences — being chief among them.

Next, distribution of talents by the master imposes responsibility inside the recipients, the servant, to use powers each is given in a manner the master approves, and that would be multiplicatively. Power (talent, force) must beget more power or it and its recipient are considered waste fit for disposal.

The force of life is not content with inaction or improper action, either one, improper action being that which restricts or diminishes power rather than increases it. Power of any kind must be increased through proper use to prevent its bearer being abandoned to self-destruction (fired in the common parlance, which notably references the infernal regions, as of course does the Parable of the Talents . . . life and The Bible are quite correlative in the common experience of each one of us).

Next, while distribution of talents (power) is differential, the master’s expectations regarding each is the same: make it make more of itself, or else. Whether one starts with ten talents, five, or one is inconsequential. After all, the master distributes talents as he sees fit, and his expectation for each recipient’s production is the same: work with what you have to make it increase.

The master does not expect servants in differential receipt of talents to produce identical result because those recipients have non-identical starting amounts. The master is rational (Logos), after all, and also consistent while inscrutable. A servant who doubles a small amount given them is as approved as one who doubles a large amount given them.

Next, none of the servants keeps the talents bestowed on them or, for two of them, those to which they increased their original trust. They are servants. The master’s property belongs to him, not to them. The master gives his property to his servants to be stewarded, not owned, by his servants.

What does belong to two of his servants is the master’s trust and benediction, which provide for them a happy life. The master’s trust and benediction, therefore, is the real, actual, effective, tangible treasure (talent, power) taught by the Parable. The master, himself, is the true wealth, truly worth having, and truly worthy to be taught, learned, and practiced.

Next, all this accords with experience. The Parable of the Talents describes the world as we see it in operation, as we feel it in operation, and as we make it operate. The Parable ushers in no new or secret knowledge. It uses the ordinary pathways of common experience to highlight a truth about God and salvation, sweetness and soteriology: do your job, do your duty, which is to use what you have, whatever it is, to make more of who you are. Who you are, after all, is your greatest power, and the greatest of all powers, did you but know it.

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Powers are bestowed by God on every creature. Each of those powers is God (imago dei). Far from having power, creatures are power and are stewards of specific powers in more or less profusion. Humans are the most powerful and empowered creature because they are the only creature with power to realize who they are (Power) and revel in the sweetness thereof.

Every power a man or woman is has self-realization as its proper deployment and teleology. Self-realization is the ultimate power multiplier and in that way the ultimate Vision of God and imminent evidence of His transcendent Glory. (That last phrase is a classic Niebuhrian construction, although doubt Rheiny would concur the meaning inside that use of it.)

Proper employment of the specific powers of which one is a steward is the way to self-realization. Proper is easily described: that which helps rather than hurts. Improper employment of specific powers hurts and on that account is improper. And it hurts both ways, doer and recipient, doer permanently or until atonement, recipient temporarily. Proper employment of specific powers are any thought, word, or deed which cultivates help in the form of peace, rest, cheerfulness, gratitude, contrition, good character, love, learning, quiet, bliss, a desire to serve, heroism, increase of skill, satisfaction, yearning for God, contentment, awareness, execution of duty, etc.

For example, an infant’s power to summon the mother is properly employed to suckle her teat and improperly employed to bite it. Again, a mother’s power to make a home is properly used to make it safe and charming and improperly used to allow it to fall into disrepair and filth. A factory worker properly employs their power of building to fashion a product and improperly employs it to sabotage one. A public official properly employs their power to protect their fellow citizens and improperly employs it to bear down and force choices on them.

Much unhappiness is conjured these days by persons who claim ownership of specific powers God or their fellow citizens have bestowed on them. Such as these are thieves. The teacher says they own the student. The government official says they own the citizen. The mother says she owns the father. No one owns specific powers bestowed on themselves much less those bestowed on others. All are servants of the same master. All specific powers are bestowed powers. All duties in life are bestowed duties. A servant is a steward, not an owner, of powers they execute through proper use.

For one claiming to own specific powers bestowed on them by God, nature, or their fellow citizens, self-realization is not the direction they are heading. Hanging is. Everyone does own one thing, however, and that equally:

Everyone Owns God

. . . just as a child owns their parents
and a cat owns their house.

The only thing equal here is that each one of us owns God. The rest is vastly and necessarily unequal, permanently. Were there no differentials, there were no existence. Were all the same, there were no activity. Difference makes motion, and motion makes self-realization, namely, that all is in one and one is in all.

In the corporate and political orbits of action, persons are invested by fellow citizens with specific and widely different powers. In the corporate orbit, specific powers are bestowed for the purpose of making useful and satisfying products. In the political orbit, specific powers are bestowed for the purpose of protecting the community — whether village, city, state, or country — from internal and external aggressors.

In a healthy promotion system, powers are added to them after a person has increased powers already entrusted to their stewardship. Performance is everything. A productive line worker is offered powers of supervision, etc. Powers are added in expectation their futurely multiplication, not as reward for past performance.

Elected, appointed, commissioned, and hired officials of any government of any kind are vested with specific and limited powers all having one and the same purpose: protect the peace and freedom of residents of the jurisdiction to which they were elected, appointed, etc., or, what is the same thing, remove obstacles obstructing said residents’ pursuing happiness The powers of office neither belong to officials nor may be employed by them for a purpose other than that given during their investiture with the powers of office.

Persons in government who increase the powers of an office to execute the purpose of government — protect a general population’s peace and freedom, remove obstacles in roads they take to cultivate their happiness — are offered powers of an office with even wider ability to execute the purpose of government. Those who fail to employ powers of an office are relieved of those powers and the office.

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In the whole wide world — and this is a facet of The Parable of the Talents — there is no general power to do whatever. Each power in this world has a specific purpose. Each power, great and small, is an enumerated power, so to speak. There are neither implied nor plenary powers among the specific powers bestowed on one by God or one’s fellow citizens.

A dog has power to be a dog. Water has power to be water. Clouds have power to be clouds. Humans have power to be humans. Cats lack power to be birds and humans lack power to doorknobs. A man lacks power to be a woman. A Private Soldier lacks power to command an Army. Each creature has their Dharma and that is that.

While there are countless specific powers (talents), none of them exceeds their purpose. And their purpose is, as said, to multiply themselves. A power works properly when increasing itself. A power increases itself when employed in the world according to its purpose. A kitten becomes a cat by employing their power to be a cat. A man becomes a husband by employing his power to be a man. A plain becomes a mountain by employing its power to move against itself.

The power to conceive children has the purpose of bringing children into the world. The power to teach has the purpose of rearing oneself and others to increase the powers with which we are endowed. The power to govern citizens of a jurisdiction has the purpose of increasing their powers to self-govern and removing obstacles thereunto.

It may be taken as a general rule that when we moan that someone or something is going wrongly, we mean they or it are losing rather than gaining power to do the job they undertook to execute by properly employing specific powers bestowed upon them.

A corrupt senator or agency director is one who is losing rather than gaining power. He or she could regain and increase power by properly employing those specific powers of office already bestowed on him or her. Multiply those, concentrate them, and send them forth, plant them, cultivate them, again and again to make more of themselves. Corruption disappears, ease and happiness are welcomed home.

Lord Acton’s comment on power and corruption is malarkey.  Reinhold Niebuhr’s sanctimonious intonations of it put him in the same corral, piled deep with the stuff.

But if we might discuss this point until we found that we nearly agreed, and if we do agree thoroughly about the impropriety of Carlylese denunciations and Pharisaism in history, I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong.   If there is any presumption it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases.   Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility.   Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.   [FALSE!]  Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.  There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.  [TRUE!]  That is the point at which the negation of Catholicism and the negation of Liberalism meet and keep high festival, and the end learns to justify the means.  You would hang a man of no position like Ravaillac; but if what one hears is true, then Elizabeth asked the gaoler to murder Mary, and William III of England ordered his Scots minister to extirpate a clan.  Here are the greatest names coupled with the greatest crimes; you would spare those criminals, for some mysterious reason.  I would hang them higher than Haman, for reasons of quite obvious justice, still more, still higher for the sake of historical science.

Acton — followed by Niebuhr and Liberal / Neo-Orthodox Christians with their posits — reasoned shallowly. Power is not the problem. Power is God is Dharma. The problem is the specific powers of humankind to channel power to purposes to which it is not intended, an employment of power which diminishes power’s power to power anything. The remedy, therefore, is to restore power to its purpose — also a specific power of humankind — which is to multiply itself just as humankind’s fundamental purpose is to multiply themselves. The human birth is power, after all, all and every last smidgen of it.

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You do not protect against crime and invasion in your city by turning off power. You protect against crime and invasion in your city by augmenting power to employment proper.

No one needs empowerment. Everyone needs each other to help remove obstacles to discovery of themselves as power and to execute specific powers with which they are endowed by God and fellow citizens to complete that discovery.

H Y P A T I A

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• Sathya Sai Baba – Divine Discourse, August 15, 1964 /  Daily Email, Sai Inspires: Subscription

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