It is possible for us to catch fear from others much as we would catch a cold, for we are all unconscious mental, emotional, and spiritual broadcasting stations. This takes us back to a thought in the Bible which says that a person’s enemies shall be those of one’s own household, for our real enemies are our fears and phobias, our doubts and uncertainties, our stressors and our inner conflicts. Nervous, fretful, and agitated children, who have nightmares and who cannot retain their food, are affected by the inner agitation of their parents’ thoughts and feelings. The whole World is filled with the thoughts of the people who live in it, and perhaps we are all more or less subject to the passing emotions of the race mind. Psychiatrist will admit that fear can render a person completely unconscious as far as one’s brain is concerned. Fear can paralyze the memory, and, if a person is afraid he or she will forget something, one is likely to do so. We know that in cases of amnesia people are so frightened by some unconscious thought that they even forget their own names and who they are and where they came from. Fear produces a mysterious chemical which is released into the blood, but this chemical disappears when the stress is over. We all have our stress and fears. And we all wish to get over them. The healing of fear and stress is not to be found in any drug or physical manipulation. The cure is to be found only within our own minds. Where fear is the infirmary, we have to be our own doctors. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8

It may be true, as we have seen already, that paranormal phenomena are likely to be troublesome and odd, and that the soul may not play by the rules we would expect. However, oddness in itself is not the issue here. Mere irregularity as such would certainly not constitute evidence of unwarranted design. What would do so would be regularities of the wrong kind. The new question will therefore have to be, not just, does the soul behave in unexpected ways, but does it behave consistently in inappropriate ways? Are there unfitting limitations on what the soul (or its sub-agents) can do? Without knowing in advance what we shall find, it would seem prudent to focus attention on two areas, which in practice often overlap. There might turn out to be surprising limitations on the physical props and manifestations that the soul makes use of. For example, it would seem reasonable to ask why, if it were indeed the cause, psychic power should be capable of transforming a wooden staff into a serpent but not into, say, a diamond sword, why it should be capable of turning water into wine but not into honey, why of producing thought images on photographic plates but not on other people’s retinas, why of divining water in a natural landscape but not an artificial one, why of reading the faces of playing cards in a laboratory but not in a poker game, etcetera, etcetera. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8

The apparent arbitrariness of such constraints should be enough to alert us to the likelihood that something other than paranormal forces is involved. However, it would of course be particularly puzzling if the patterns should turn out to be such as to suggest that the soul can do by paranormal means only what, in other circumstances, a human conjuror can do by normal means. Nothing in our starting concept of the soul would have led us to expect that kind of design. There might equally turn out to be surprising limitations on the psychological or social conditions under which paranormal phenomena typically occur, and on the psychological content of people’s paranormally generated experiences. It would seem reasonable to ask why, if it is so, people should be more likely to witness paranormal events when the viewing conditions are relatively poor, why they should be more likely to do so in company than when alone, why those who already believe in the powers of the soul should be more susceptible than sceptics, etcetera. And, more particularly, why messages from the dead should be so surprisingly vague, why poltergeists are particularly active around teenage children, why a statue of the Virgin Mary rocks her head at night but not during daylight, etcetera, etcetera. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8

Again, the arbitrariness of such constraints should alert us. However, all the more so if it should turn out that paranormal experiences typically occur under conditions that are known to be conductive, in other circumstances, to common-or-garden psychological dysfunction, illusion or mendacity. Noting we know about the soul would have led us to expect that either. Nothing we know about the soul would lead us to expect it? If these patterns of constraints do occur, the riposte from believers might still be that the soul, trickster that it is, is in fact being doubly tricky by arranging things precisely so as to mimic events that are sometimes brought about by normal means. They might even want to argue that the soul is presenting people with a kind of challenge—deliberately arousing their suspicions in order to test their willingness to suspend disbelief. There is an idea that when God created the Word six thousand years ago, he mischievously planted the evidence of evolution in the Earth, as to tempt people to doubt the Bible story of divine creation and hence prove their religious fibre. Only those whose faith was strong enough to enable them to resist the Darwinian heresy, however well it was apparently supported by the fact, would be saved (thus providing, as it were, a kind of natural selection for Christian sheep over Darwinian goats). #RandolphHarris 4 of 8

Such a way of arguing would, admittedly, effectively disarm the Argument from Unwarranted Design. For there is no denying that, by building into the theory of the soul the very pattern of limitations that seems to pose the problem, believers could make the problem go away. If it could be argued, say, that it is of the essence of the soul to imitate a human conjuror, then we would never expect the soul to do things that a conjuror could not. Fair would be foul and foul fair, and all skeptical objections would be beside the point. While the phenomena in question do indeed have their origins in conceptually simple design processes, what has happened is that some sort of filter has got interposed between the underlying process and its particular expression. Take, for instance, what might be done with our own earlier examples. Perhaps the man who sends After Eights on Thursdays is genuinely in love but happens to live somewhere where no other chocolates are available and United States Postal Service only collects on Wednesdays? Perhaps the cockatiel is a true English speaker who happens to have grossly aphasic? Perhaps the Lord Lestat de Lioncourt claimant is the real Lord Lestat with a highly selective memory block? Likewise, perhaps the soul really is out to make monkeys of potential sceptics? The pursuit of truth involves dealing with a great deal of filth and foolishness because here nature takes the field, and nature is an equivocal element: impure, obscene, spiteful, demonic. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8

Certain paranormal manifestations sound bogus, they look bogus. And yet, paradoxically, this is a powerful argument in favour of their being genuine. The soul seldom if ever behaves in ways that are unequivocally paranormal because if people were to be confronted with indubitable evidence they would find it too disturbing. It is possible that the Creator has eternally intended this department of nature to remain baffling, to prompt our curiosities and hopes and suspicious all in equal measure. It may be the case that we cannot absolutely discount this kind of sophistry. God is subtle but he is not malicious. The Bible reports that perfect love casts out fear, and where love is, fear cannot remain. We can apply this principle of faith and confidence to ourselves as individuals, to our families as the first unit we deal with, and to all the people we contact in the everyday walks of life. Did you ever notice the effect of just being with a person who is clam and poised and unafraid? How different you feel, how buoyed up and confident you become! Why should not each one of us become a broadcasting station of faith? The World is too largely governed by fear. We are afraid of this and that and something else; we are afraid of what has happened and what is happening and what we think is going to happen.  #RandolphHarris 6 of 8

If fear is contagious and does in some mysterious way secrete a germ which acts negatively in the physical body, it is not too much to say that is also secretes some kind of mental germ in the whole race mind which affects everyone with a sense of confusion and uncertainty and stress. There is no doubt that this is true, and we should do something about it. Not that we have to become heroic figures who consider themselves the liberators of humanity, for we are probably not in a position to do this. What I mean is that each one of us should analyze our own thinking to determine what is wrong and replace every fear with faith and confidence. However, where are we gong to get this faith and confidence? Certainly not out of the weakness of our previous experience, and perhaps not out of the thoughts that we had in the past—those thoughts that were so filled with stress. It seems to me that we will have to begin all over again. And we must find some reason for having a faith that is stronger than all our fears. So far the Word has never found this reason outside what we call a religious or spiritual idea of having faith in God. There is nothing for God to be afraid of. And if we can, and do, tune in to the thoughts of others, and if they affect us, as they most certainly do, why should be not learn to tune in to the mind of God, which is free from fear and doubt? #RandolphHarris 7 of 8

This is what is meant by prayer. For in the act of prayer we commune with the invisible spirit; we draw its strength, its peace, and its serenity into our own souls. And as a result of this we become strong and self-reliant, because we have built up a confidence in life, a faith and conviction which wards off all fear. Just as a germ of physical infirmary is less liable to infect a strong body, so the germ of mental fear is resisted by a whole and happy mind. Good comes from God. If we keep our focus on the Lord, we are promised a blessing beyond comparison. God’s plan of salvation and happiness will help us overcome every challenge in life. All around us we see a growing desire for spiritual direction the World over. The smile has always been associated with restraint, with the limitations upon behavior that are imposed upon men and women by the rational forces of civilization, as much as it has been taken as a sign of spontaneity, or a mirror in which one may see reflected the personal happiness, delight, or good humor of the wearer. The act of smiling itself is inevitably social and communicative, part of the complex nonverbal language with which our bodies are equipped. A decorous smile, a smile of restraint, is therefore an important ingredient of good manners, just as the lewd grin has to do with the bad. It can be kind of mask. The adversary lulls people into security and cheats their soul. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8