The evening sky was a deep shining blue, as it is often in this part of the World, as incandescent as it can be over Cresleigh Homes Rocklin Trails, and the soft white clouds made the same clean and dramatic panorama on the far edge of the gleaming sea. Entrancing, and this was but one tiny part of the golden state of California. Why do I ever wander in other climes at all? The plain truth is that the more any being is exposed to middle-class values, the more sophisticated one becomes. Many people feel resigned to their fate, however. They are furiously angry at themselves for what they were doing, or desperately hunting other work that would pay as well and in addition offer some variety, some prospect of change and betterment. Some opportunity to obtain the American Dream of owning a beautiful home, having a wife and kids and two nice automobiles, and a saving account to help pay for college, medical bills, home repairs, and maintenance and for family vacations. Beings are sick of being pushed around by harried foremen (themselves more pitied than hated), sick of working like blinkered donkeys, sick of being dependent for their livelihood on maniacal production-merchandising setup, sick of working in a place where there is no spot to relax during the twelve-minute rest period. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

The mature people stay put and wait for their vacations. However, since the corporations demands young blood (if you are over thirty-five, you have a hard time getting hired), the corporation in which I work is aswarm with new faces every day; labor turnover was so fantastic and absenteeism so rampant, with the young people knocking off a day or two every week to hunt up other jobs, that the company is forced to over-hire in order to have sufficient workers on hand at the starting siren. Nevertheless, white-collars commuters, too, dislike their work, accept it only because it buy their family commodities, and are constantly on prowl for other work, I can only reply that for me at any rate this is proof not of the disappearance of the working class but of the proletarianization of the middle class. Perhaps it is not taking place quite in the way that Marx envisaged it, but the alienation of the white-collar being (like that of the laborer) from both their tools and whatever one produces, the slavery that chains the exurbanite to the commuting timetable (as the worker is still chained to the timeclock), the anxiety that sends the white-collar being home with one’s briefcase for an evening’s work (as it degrades the working being into pleading for long hours of overtime), the displacement of the white-collar slum from the wrong side of the river to the suburbs (just as the working-class slum is moved from old-law tenements to skyscrapers barracks)—all these mean to me that the white-collar being is entering (though one’s arms may be loaded with commodities) the gray World of the working being. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

Three quotations from beings with whom I worked may help bring my view into focus: Before starting work: “Come on, suckers, they say the Foundation wants to give away more than half a billion this year. Let us do and die for the old Foundation.” During rest period: “Ever stop to think how we craw here bumper to bumper, and crawl home bumper to bumper, and we have got to turn out mere every minute to keep our jobs, when there is not even any room for them on the highways?” At quitting time (this from the mature foremen, whose job is not only to keep things moving, but by extension to serve as company spokesmen): “You are smart to get out of here…I curse they day I ever started, now I am stuck: any man with brains that stays here ought to have his head examined. This is no place for an intelligent human being.” Such is the attitude towards work. And towards the product? On the one hand it is admired and desire as a symbol of freedom, almost a substitute for freedom, not because the worker participated in making it, but because our whole culture is dedicated to the proposition that the automobile is both necessary and beautiful. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

On the other hand the automobile is hated an disposed—so much that if your new car smells bad it may be due to a banana peel crammed down its gullet and sealed up thereafter, so much that if your dealer cannot locate the rattle in your new car you might ask him or her to open the welds on one of those tail fins and vacuum out the nuts and bolts thrown in by workers sabotaging their own product. Sooner or later, if we want a decent society—by which I do not mean a society glutted with commodities or one maintained in precarious equilibrium by over-buying and forced premature obsolescence—we are going to come face to face with the problem of work. Apparently the Russians have committed themselves to the replenishment of their labor force through automatic recruitment of those intellectually incapable of keeping up with severe scholastic requirements in the public educational system. Apparently we, too, are heading in the same direction: although our economy is not directed, and although college education is as yet far from free, we seem to be operating in this capitalist economy on the totalitarian assumption that we can funnel the underprivileged, undereducated, or just plain underequipped, int a factory, where are can proceed t forget about them once we have posted the minimum fair labour standards on the factory wall. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

If this is what we want, let us be honest enough to say so. If we conclude that there is nothing noble about repetitive work, but that it is nevertheless good enough for the lower orders, let us say that, too, so we will at least know where we stand. However, if we cling to the belief that other beings are our brothers and sisters, not just Egyptians, or Israelis, Canadians, or Hungarians, but all beings, including millions of Americans who grind their lives away on an insane treadmill, then we will have to start thinking about how their work and their lives can be made meaningful. That is what I assume the Hungarians, both workers and intellectuals, have been thinking about. Since no one has been ordering us what to think, since no one has been forbidding our intellectuals to fraternize with our workers, should not it be a little easier for us to admit, first, that our problems exist, then to state them and then to see if we can resolve them? Competitive power is power against another. In its negative form, it consists of one person going up not because of anything one does or any merit one has, but because one’s opponent goes down. There are many examples of this in industry and in universities, such as the appointing of a president or chairman when there is only one desire position and many applicants. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

Competitive power may also be the kind of power present in student rivalry due to the grading system, which promotes destructive personal influences directly counter to whatever impulses students have toward mutual caring and cooperation. It causes college students to hate transfer students from junior colleges because they believe they are better prepared to handle the curriculum. The chief criticism of this kind of power is its parochialism: it continuously shrinks—although not as drastically as manipulation—the area of human community in which one lives. However, at this point we note a very interesting shift from destructive to constructive power. For competitive power can give zest and vitality to human relations. I refer to the kind or rivalry that is stimulating and constructive. A football game in which one side immediately establishes its superiority is simply not interesting. We want our opponents to test our mettle; pure ease at winning is boring. This kind of competition is much more present in the business World than most people assume; that the achievement (which I include in the realm of power) of businessmen is possessed in their own satisfaction in getting better results, more efficient activity, to which their competition pushes them. #RandolpHarris 6 of 16

It is worthwhile to remind ourselves that the great drama of The Queen of the Damned, The Vampire Lestat, Tale of the Body Thief, and Interview with the Vampire and many of the works of Anne Rice were produced in competitions. The implication is that it is not competition itself that is destructive but only the kind of competitive power. The competition between America and China, in the race to the Moon or to produce more cost efficient and better forms of technology (mousetraps), drains off a great deal of tension that would otherwise go to warfare. This kind of competition in sports is a counteraction to the competitive power that might otherwise lead America and Russian to tear at each other’s throats. Even if such assertions presuppose a too simplistic view of international aggression, they nevertheless do illustrate a beneficial form of competitive power. To have someone against you is not necessarily a bad thing; at least one is not over you or under you, and accepting one’s rivalry may bring out dormant capacities in you. For example, Lestat in The Tales of the Body Thief switched bodies with a human, but found he was unhappy because it was not natural for him. He thought he missed blue skies, green grass, Sunlight, and blue oceans, but being human almost killed him. It brought out the weakness in him and made he see that in his vampire body he was happy, a superior being, and knew that his human adventure had failed. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

Fear and anxiety are both proportionate reactions to danger, but in the cause of fear the danger is a transparent, objective one and in the case of anxiety it is hidden and subjective. That is, the intensity of the anxiety is proportionate to the meaning the situation has for the person concerned, and the reasons why one is thus anxious are essentially unknow to one. The practical implication of the distinction between fear and anxiety is that the attempt to argue a neurotic out of one’s anxiety—the method of persuasion—is useless. One’s anxiety concerns not the situation as it stands actually in reality, but the situation as it appears to one. The therapeutic task, therefore, can be only that of finding out the meaning certain situations have for one. Having qualified what we mean by anxiety we have to get an idea of the role it plays. The average person in our culture is little aware of the importance anxiety as in one’s life. Usually one remembers only that one had some anxiety in one’s childhood, that one had one or more anxiety dreams, and that one was inordinately apprehensive in a situation outside one’s daily routine, as, for instance, before an important talk with an influential person or before examinations. The information we get from neurotic persons on this score is anything but uniform. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

Some neurotics are fully aware of being hounded by anxiety. Its manifestations vary immensely: it may appear as diffused anxiety, in the form of anxiety-attacks; it may be attached to definite situations or activities, such as heights, high rise buildings, low income housing, school, streets, public performances; it may have a definite content, such as apprehension about getting married, becoming insane, growing out of your teenage body as an adult, getting cancer, swallowing pins. Others realize that they have anxiety now and then, with or without know the conditions that provoke it, but they do not attribute any importance to it. Finally there are neurotic persons who are aware only of having depressions, feelings of inadequacy, disturbances in pleasures of the flesh, and the like, but they are entirely unaware of ever having or having had anxiety. Closer investigation, however, usually proves their first statement to be inaccurate. In analyzing these persons one invariably finds just as much anxiety beneath the surface as in the first group, if not more. The analysis makes theses neurotic persons conscious of their previous anxiety and they may recall anxiety dreams or situation in which they felt apprehensive. Yet the extent of anxiety acknowledged by them usually does not surpass the normal. This suggests that we may have micro anxiety without knowing it. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

When it is put in this way the significance of the problem involved here does not show. It is part of a more comprehensive problem. We have feelings of affection, anger, suspicion, so fleeting that they scarcely invade awareness, and so transitory that we forget them. These feelings may really be irrelevant and transitory; but they may just as well have behind them a great dynamic force. The degree of awareness of a feeling does not indicate anything of its strength or importance. Concerning anxiety this means not only that we may have anxiety without knowing it, but that anxiety may be the determining factor in our lives without out being conscious of it. In fact, we seem to go to any length to escape anxiety or to avoid feeling it. There are many reasons for this, the most general reason being that intense anxiety is one of the most tormenting affects we can have. Patients who have gone through an intense fit of anxiety will tell you that they would rather die than have a recurrence of that experience. Besides, certain elements contained in the affect of anxiety may be particularly unbearable for the individual. One of them is helplessness. One can be active and courageous in the face of great danger. However, in a state of anxiety one feels—in fact, is—helpless. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

To be rendered helpless is particularly unbearable for those persons whom power, ascendancy, the idea of being master of any situation, is a prevailing ideal. Impressed by the apparent disproportion of their reaction they resent it, as if it demonstrated a weakness or a cowardice. Why is creativity so difficult? And why does it require so much courage? Is it not simply a matter of clearing away the dead forms, the defunct symbols and the myths that have become lifeless? No. It is as difficult as forgoing in the smithy of one’s soul. We are faced with a puzzling riddle indeed. Having attended a concert given by Aaliyah, Sully Erna wrote the following letter when he got home:

My dear Mrs. Aaliyah Haughton,

My wife and I were overwhelmed by your beauty and your voice during your concert. If you continue to sing with such grace and beauty, you will certainly die young.  No one can sing with such perfection and look so beautiful without provoking the jealousy of the gods. I earnestly implore you to sing something badly every night before going to bed…. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

Beneath Sully Erna’s letter there was a profound truth—creativity provokes the jealousy of the gods. This is why authentic creativity takes so much courage: an active battle with the gods is occurring. I cannot give you any complete explanation of why this is so; I can only share my reflections. Although the film Queen of the Damned is based on the legend, one can see the intimidation and disdain when Queen Akasha played by Aaliyah when she walked into the bar. And if you read the novel The Queen of the Damned, by the description of Akasha, you can tell that role was meant for Aaliyah. Her life’s work is probably more significant than most can truly understand. That was a powerful role. It is akin to Meghan Markle being made a duchess, and the struggles she faces carrying and giving birth to a royal heir. Down through the ages, authentically creative figures have constantly found themselves in such a struggle. An architect builds a house with the same feeling as that with which a criminal commits a crime. In Judaism and Christianity the second of the Ten Commandments adjures us, “You shall not make yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in the Heavens above or that is in the Earth beneath, or that is in the water under the Earth.” I am aware that the ostensible purpose of this commandment was to protect Jewish people from idol worship in those idol-strewn times. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

However, the commandment also expresses the timeless fear that every society harbors of its artist, poets, entertainers and saints. For they are the ones who threaten the status quo, which each society is devoted to protecting. It is clearest in the struggles occurring in American to usurp power from President Trump and the republican party. Yet in spite of this divine prohibition, and despite the courage necessary to flout it, countless Jews and Christians through the ages have devoted themselves to painting and sculpting and entertaining and have continued to make graven images and produce symbols in one form or another. Many of then have had the same experience of a battle with the gods. That is because genius and psychosis are so close to each other. Also, creativity carries such an inexplicable guilt feeling. So many entertainers and artist experience death by suicide, or assassination and often at the very height of their achievement, much like Aaliyah. We burn with desire to find a steadfast place and an ultimate fixed basis whereon we may build a tower to reach the infinite. However, our whole foundation breaks up, and Earth opens to be abysses. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

 As result, we have witnessed an explosion of interest in the transcendental dimension of human experience. The recent collapse of traditions has brought an even greater sense of desolation to many clients and even greater impulse to compensate for and deny that desolation. Some have turned to drugs to provide that compensation, others to materialism, and still others to relationships and religion. We have also witnessed an avalanche of studies extolling the transcendental (or transpersonal) dimension of human experience. They have provided a necessary counterweight to the smug, antiseptic traditional psychological theorizing on this topic. Transpersonal psychologist encourage their clients to take guidance not from observed reality or rational thinking, but rather from their intuitive minds and other intangible sources. Some transpersonal theorists, on the other hand, are equally insistent about the virtues of transcendental experience. Such theorists as Ken Wilber unqualifying embrace the notion of an ultimate or godlike human consciousness, totally unrestricted by time and space. The film Queen of the Damned was supervised like no other film anyone knew of. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

It appeared to be one of Warner Brothers most important projects, and they obsessed with every detail. Queen of the Damned (2002) is also considered by some—for example, the British critic Robin Wood—to be one of the finest, if not the finest, motions pictures ever made alone with Interview with the Vampire (1994). The theological strict and rigid doctrines that God can take on the nature of living beings constitutes a mystery beyond human understanding. It is unintelligible and unacceptable to philosophy, which can limit God’s unbound being to no particular place, no here or there. The moment we give to finite human beings that which we should give to infinite God alone, in that moment we place Earthen idols in the sacred shrine. We must not give to finite human beings the attributes of Divinity as we must not give to Divinity the attributes of individual beings. There is metaphysically no such thing as a human appearance of God that we know of, as the Infinite Mind brought down into finite flesh. God cannot be born in the flesh, cannot take a human incarnation. If God could so confine himself, he would cease to be God. For how could the Perfect, the Incomprehensible, and the Inconceivable become the imperfect, the comprehensible, and the conceivable? I guess this is why the legend of vampires, who have godly powers, have flaws and are evil by nature. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

From time to time, someone is born predestined to give a spiritual impulse to a particular people, area, or age. One is charged with a special mission of teaching and redemption and is imbued with special power from the universal intelligence to enable one to carry it out. One must plant seeds which grow slowly into trees to carry fruit that will feed millions of unborn people. In this sense one is different from and, if you like, superior to anyone else who is also inspired by the Overself. However, this difference or superiority does not alter one’s human status, does not make one more than a being still, however divinely used and power-charged one may be. All of this is not to be misunderstood to mean that we suggest that everyone ought to acquire every item of one’s spiritual knowledge afresh through one’s own personal experience, ignoring all the experience of the whole race. On the contrary, we would strongly suggest that one avail oneself of this experience through the form it has taken in great literature throughout the World. A competent spiritual director of one’s way is certainly worth having, but unfortunately the problem of where to find such a being seems insuperable. If an aspirant is lucky enough to solve it without becoming the victim of one’s own imagination one will be lucky indeed. If not, let one exploit one’s own inner resources. Let one appeal to the divine soul within oneself for what one needs. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16