Dreams should be acquitted of evil. Easy for one to think like a hero; but hard for many to act like one. Have no the unconscious impulses revealed by dreams the value of real forces in the psychic life? Is the ethical significance of the suppressed wishes to be lightly disregarded, since, just as they now create dreams, they may someday create some other things? Blended mythology with metaphysics produce an image of the ideal type of individual needed as the savior of humankind. The hero can take many forms: he or she can be a god, a prophet, poet, priest, a man of letters, or a political ruler. In fact, a hero can be what you will, according to the kind of World he or she finds oneself born into: your heroes ever-varying persona results from the deeper needs of society. The subject selected as a hero is directed not by the mechanical needs of humans, but by their dynamical, unseen, mystical requirements. Thus, all heroes have discerned truly what the time wanted and have led it on the right road thither. In this sense, the hero is a gift from Heaven, a force of nature; the hero’s essential quality is original insight into the primal reality of things. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6

With an appreciation of the mode of functioning of the psychic apparatus, and an insight into the relations between conscious and unconscious, all that is ethically offensive in our dream-life and the life of phantasy for the most part disappears. Because of the hero’s firm contact with the great fact of existence, once cannot lie. My hero is heartily in earnest; an unconscious sincerity emanates from him turning his acts or utterances into a kind of revelation, which the ordinary, unheroic man is morally obligated to recognize and obey. For all that is right includes itself in this of co-operating with the real tendency of the World. Indeed, the proper feelings of ordinary men toward the heroes of their age are loyalty (which is akin to religious Faith, reverence, admiration, and an obedience which knows no bounds. Hero worship is a basic and indestructible tendency of human nature: it is the one fixed point in modern revolutionary history, otherwise as if bottomless and shoreless. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6

The hero concept is best understood as a rather curious ad obsessional example of a spiritual phenomenon that reached something of a climax in the nineteenth century. Worship of God gave way to worship of man and human society. What a dream has told us of our relations to the present (reality) we will then seek also in our consciousness, and we must not be surprised if we discover that the monster we saw under the magnifying-glass of the analysis is a tiny little infusorian. The irresponsible pursuit of wealth in which cash payment has become the sole nexus between people, thus displacing the traditional ties of obligation. However, social justice, now paradoxically asserted, can be achieved only through the enforcement of social inequality. Members of the aristocracy and those heroes of the business World, the Captains of Industry, must assume their responsibilities as the rulers of the masses: freedom consists in the right of the ignorant man to be guided by the wiser. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6

It is impossible to exaggerate a hero’s impact, for better or worse, upon all aspects of Victorian culture, ranging from the development of the novel to the formation of social policy. I tend to be constantly misled by a craving for a strong faith which I lack the necessary capacity to experience. However, it is hardly the capacity I lack; rather, I need something to have faith in. In the absence of my father’s God, I chose what seemed to me the best substitute—the hero. For all practical purposes in judging human character, a man’s actions and conscious expressions of thought are in most cases sufficient. Actions above all deserve to be placed in the front rank; for many impulses which penetrate into consciousness are neutralized by real forces in the psychic life before they find issue in action; indeed, the reason why they frequently do not encounter any psychic obstacle on their path is because the unconscious is certain of their meeting with resistances later. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6

In any case, it is highly instructive to learn something of the intensively tilled soil from which our virtues emerge. For the complexity of human character, dynamically moved in all directions, very rarely accommodates itself to the arbitrament of a simple alternative, as our antiquated moral philosophy would have it. And what of the value of dreams in regard to our knowledge of the future? That, of course, is quite out of the question. One would like to substitute the words: in regard to our knowledge of the past. For in every sense a dream has its origin in the past. The ancient belief that dreams reveal the future is not indeed entirely devoid of truth. By representing a wish as fulfilled the dream certainly leads us into the future; but this future, which the dreamer accepts as one’s present, has been shaped in the likeness of the past by the indestructible wish. The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming of that which the wicked man does in actual life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6

I am chasing after memories, trying to recreate that past. All of these night stories make me realize how the past does not help when we are put in a tight spot. Memories are all well and good to hold on to, but it is the promise of making new memories that helps me push through. I have to just keep telling myself that I will be back with you in no time. Nothing else I can do. I think back to the day with that car at the castle, and the standoff the guy in it had with police at our meeting spot and how concerned you were that hours went by and out have not seen me. We have been through a lot, but have you ever really stopped and thought how we would feel if we never saw each other again? As much as I try to push the past aside so that I can keep moving forward, nothing is holding you back that way. You have more questions than memories, more mystery than enlightenment. You have to look behind you. The present and the future are built on the know. I know that you want to find where you came from before you will know where to go. Do not give up. Many grave histories are as dangerous as the most absurd fiction. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6

The Winchester Mystery House

 A tour of The Winchester Mystery House tells the dramatic story of the famous Mrs. Winchester and her family and their Victorian mansion. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/