You aggress upon our rights and homes, and under the will of God, we will defend them. However, would it not be better to stay peacefully at home, and not roam about the World seeking better bread than is made of wheat never considering that many go for wool and come back shorn? When in the World are we going to begin to live as if we understood that this is life? This is our time, our day, and I is passing. What are we waiting for? Go confidently in the direction of you dreams! Live the life you imagined. The plotters of Earthly and Heavenly paradise have fought, slandered and sabotaged one another for hundreds of years. One stands accused of unbridled hubris (risking divine retaliation, jeopardizing everybody’s chances); the other of superstition (cringing before mystery); and each finds the other obstructing the road to eternal life. If each historical society is in some way a lie or a mystification, the study of society becomes the revelation of the lie. The comparative study of society becomes the assessment of how high are the costs of this lie. Or, looked at from another way, cultures are fundamentally and basically styles of heroic death denial. These costs can be tallied roughly in two ways: in terms of the tyranny practiced within the society, and in terms of the victimage practiced against the enemies outside it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

By assessing the cost of scapegoating and by trying to plan for alternative ideals that will absorb basic human fears, we seem to have brought up to date the Marxist critique of the human evasion of freedom; we seem to have finally a secure grip on the social problem of death denial. In the Marxist view death is an ideology, as the title of an essay by Marcuse has it. This means that although death is a natural fear, this fear has always been used and exploited by the established powers in order to secure their domination. Death is a “culture mechanism” that was utilized by societies from primitive times on an as a means of social control and repression, to help an elite enforce its will on a meek and compliant populace. The definition of culture, after all, is that is continues the causa sui project of the transcendence of death; and so we see the fatality and naturalness of human slavishness: humans help secure their own domination by the tribe, the polis, the state, the gods, because of their fears. When we phrase the problem in these terms, we can see how immense it is and how far it extends beyond our traditional ways of doing science. If you talk about heroics that cost mountains of human life, you have to find a way out why such heroics are practiced in a given social system: who is scapegoating whom, what social classes are excluded from heroism, what there is in the social structure that drives the society blindly to self-destructive heroics, and so forth. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

Not only that, but you have to actually set up some kind of liberating ideal, some kind of life-giving alternative to the thoughtless and destructive heroism; you have to begin to scheme to give to a being an opportunity for heroic victory that is not a simple reflex of narcissistic scapegoating. You have to conceive of the possibility of a nondestructive yet victorious social system. It was precisely this problem that was designed by William James over two generations ago, in his famous essay “The Moral Equivalent of War,” but needless to say we have done nothing about it even on a conceptual level, much less on an active social level. Little wonder that thins are in a mess. One of the reasons social scientists haven been slow in getting around to such designs has been the lack of an adequate and agreed general theory of human nature. James did not have one, and it has taken us this long to begin to sort out the real legacy of Dr. Freud. Modern Marxism still does not show humans in the round and so still seems naïve to mature scholars in its easy optimism. Even the injection of strict and rigid Freudian doctrines into Marxism, in the work of Marcuse, is still too clumsy a commentary on the human condition. We need to focus on an agreed general theory of human nature to exactly what cripples the autonomy of the individual. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

The Enlightenment hope for free and autonomous beings was never born; and one reason is that we have not known until after Dr. Freud the precise dynamics that makes humans so tragically slavish. Why are all enjoinders to us to take command of our fears, to stand upright, to build a science in society that reflects rational control—why are these so impossibly utopian? Because parental love by its very nature is always a conditional love. Children have to earn it by meeting certain requirements. The father loves the son best who best fulfills the father’s expectations and demands. That son is then the most likely to become his father’s successor and heir. There is also a misconception that mothers love their children equally because they are the fruit of her womb, and they all need her care. The only reason some mother nurse and care for their infants is because financial support is attached to them. If the child dies before maturity, then it could jeopardize her marriage and financial support. Therefore some woman make it seem that there is no hierarchies that develop in a matriarchal society, and that the same love is available to tall who need it, but the truth is matriarchal societies and a lot like patriarchal societies. The children have an economic value and once they are no longer valuable, they are useless. Natural bonds are not always there. Not all families follow the law of blood ties, of humanity, of sympathy, which are supposed to be the highest of all laws, which no one can violate. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Transference is a reflex on the fatality of the human condition. Transference to a powerful other takes care of the overwhelmingness of the Universe. Transference to a powerful other handles the fear of life and death. This a spell cast by persons. God is depicted as a great authority we should all obey. The view of the conscience as an internalized authority is an inevitable outgrowth of patriarchal society. What Dr. Freud meant when he spoke of the superego was our internalizing of paternal commands and prohibitions. My father no longer has to tell me, “Do not do that!” to keep me from doing something. I have absorbed my father into myself. The “father inside me” commands and prohibits. However, the force of the command or prohibition still goes back to paternal authority. A humanistic conscience is rooted in the individual oneself and communicates to one what is good and beneficial for one, for one’s development, for one’s growth. That voice often speaks very softly, and we are good at ignoring it. However, in the realm of physiology as well as in that of psychology researchers have found signs of what we might call a “health conscience,” a sense for what is good for us; and if people listen to that voice inside them, they will not obey the voice of some eternal authority. Our own internal voices guide us in directions that are compatible wit the physical and psychic potential of our particular organisms. Those voices tell us: You are on the right track here; you are on the wrong one there. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

Some believe that we are facing an authoritarian crisis that confronts us with a remarkable situation. In the New World, we are experiencing the disintegration, that crisis, is in some way linked to our problem of affluence. Let me try to make this more clearer. The more deprivation a person has to put of with, the more obedient one has to be so that one will not rebel against the deprivation imposed on one. One is told that the deprivation one is forced to endure is meaningful and inevitable, something that God or the state or the law—or whoever—has to demand of one. If it were not for unquestioning obedience, it might occur to people that they do not feel like being deprived any longer. And that would, of course, be extremely dangerous for any social order in which deprivation and obedience are indispensable structural elements. If psychological mechanism and social institutions had not firmly implanted obedience and the acceptance of deprivation as widespread attitude in it, society as we know it could not exist any more. However, if affluence increases, the belief that we have to be obedient and accept deprivation will necessarily lose its force. Why should we submit to an authority that seeks us to obey and suffer deprivation? We can have just about anything we want in any case. That is one reason for the present crisis. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

No one will admit outright—except perhaps in reactionary circles—that in reality the underlying conviction of our educational system and of our whole system of values is that disobedience is the root of all evil. Take the Old Testament, for example. What Adam and Eve did was not in itself bad. On the contrary, their eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was what made the development of humankind possible. However, they were disobedient, and the tradition has interpreted that disobedience as original sin. And in a patriarchal society disobedience is in fact original sin. Ever since the middle of this century many people, but primarily young people, have come to the conclusion that our society is incompetent. Now you may object that we have great achievements to our credit and that our technology has made unheard-of advances. However, that is only one side of the story. The other side is that this society has proved itself incapable of preventing two great wars and many smaller ones. It has not only allowed but actually promoted the developments that are leading us toward the suicide of humankind. Never before in our history have we been faced with so much potential for destruction as we are today. That fact points to a horrendous incompetence that no technological perfection can gloss over. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

When a society that is affluent enough to afford visits to Mars and the Moon is unable to face and reduce the danger of total annihilation, then—like it or not—that society will have to accept the label of incompetent. It is incompetent, too, in the face of the environmental degradation that threatens all life. Famine is in store for India and Africa, for all the nonindustrialized nations of the World, but our only response is a few speeches and empty gestures. As if we lacked the intelligence to see the consequences, we go on merrily in our extravagant ways. That demonstrates a lack of competence. It has shaken the young generation’s trust in us, and with good reason. And so I feel that in spite of all the merits of our success-oriented society this lack of competence in dealing with our most urgent problems has done much to destroy faith in the structure and effectiveness of our authoritarian order. In the United States almost 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. There are, in reality, two classes: one that lives in affluence and another whose poverty everyone else would just as soon not acknowledge. In President Lincoln’s time the great social distinction was between freedom and slavery; today it is between superfluous affluence and poverty. Everything I have said here about Homo consumens does not hold true for people living in poverty, fascinated though they may be by the idea that those who enjoy luxury are leading a paradisiacal life. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

The less affluent are only extras who help fill up the wide screens the rich look at for amusement. The same is true for unrepresented groups in the New World. However, above and beyond that it is also true in the Old World. It is true for those two-thirds of humanity who have never profited from the authoritarian social order. If we are to draw an accurate picture of the relationships between authoritarian and nonauthoritarian populations, we have to realize that though the affluent society may continue to dominate in the World today, it is being confronted not only with totally different traditions but also with new forces that we have already begun to feel and will continue to feel. Just because a being happens to feel one had attained happiness or truth, is no sufficient ground for accepting that one has done so. One could get the same feeling out of the self-betraying attainment of the illusion of happiness and the illusion of truth. Hence we have not only to overcome the difficult of finding competent undeceiving guidance. This problem of finding a maser in what is almost a masterless World, is a difficult one. The only realistic suggestion which can be given is to select somebody in whom you have so far been able to place most confidence. However, if such a person does not exist, then select the book which helps you most and make it your tutor. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

It should also be mentioned that in the recent psychotherapeutic literature the relation between power-drive and love is in the foreground of interest. Love has been more and more acknowledged as the answer to the question implied in anxiety and neurosis. Ontology asks the question of being, for instance, of something that is present to everybody at every moment. It is never speculative in the (unjustified) bad sense of the word, but it is always descriptive, describing the structures which are presupposed in any encounter with reality. Ontology is descriptive, not speculative. It tries to find out which basic structures of being are. And being is given to everybody who is an who therefore participates in being-itself. Ontology, in this sense, is analytical. It analyses the encountered reality, trying to find the structural elements which enable a being to participate in being. It separates those elements of the real which are generic or particular from those elements which are constitutive for everything that is and therefore are universal. It leaves the former to the special sciences or to metaphysical constructions, it elaborates the latter through critical analysis. Obviously this takes is an infinite one, because the encounter with reality is inexhaustible and always reveals qualities of being, the ontological foundation of which must be investigated. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

One must ask: Is there a way of verifying ontological judgments? There is certainly not an experimental way, but there is an experiential way. It is the way of an intelligent recognition of the basic ontological structures within the encountered reality, including the process of encountering itself. The only answer, but a sufficient answer, which can be given to the question of ontological verification is the appeal to intelligent recognition. For the following analysis this appeal is made. Finally, the question of a method cannot be answered before the method is applied successfully or unsuccessfully. Method and content cannot be separated. In 1 Corinthians 2.10, Paul assures his readers that the apostles’ words of wisdom were revealed to them by God’s Spirit. Even more, Paul says in verse 13, God’s Spirit took the thoughts and ideas He had revealed to the apostles and combined them with just the right words necessary to convey these thoughts! It is these inspired words of the Scriptures that the unbeliever resists. The word for “understand” is ginosko in the Greek text and has the sense of “discerning as true and good” or “to know experientially by entering into.” It does no mean simply to grasp something cognitively. It is in this experiential sense that the Bible says a man “knows” his wife. The Spirit assists the believer in being open to Scripture, in entering into it experientially, and in finding it good and acceptable. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

The Spirit helps us apply the significance of the text, but He does not teach us the cognitive meaning of the text. He leaves that up to us. We need local churches dedicated to the task of training believers to think theologically and biblically. We must develop intelligent Christians; that is, Christians who have the mental training to see issues clearly, make important distinctions carefully, and weigh various factors appropriately. If we are not really planning to see this happen, then at the end of day, what we are really saying is that a deep understanding of the Scripture, creeds, and theology of Christianity just does not matter that much. I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this World, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. We are told concisely that consent is nothing else than the adaptation of Forms and Configurations to each other. From that point of view of physics, configuration or scheme refers to the arrangement, the shape or figure, of particles of mater. Form refers to the principle or law that informs or illuminates the configuration, or the statement of the law or principle. Consent, then, seems to be a sort of structural appetite, and its perhaps not unlike the notion of valence in modern chemistry. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

Sometimes the giving and receiving will be dominated by the character of the material itself, sometimes by its scheme or figure. Metals agree well together in quantity and density, especially as compared with vegetables, and so forth, but differ very widely in configuration; while vegetables and animals vary almost infinitely in their configurations, but in quantity of matter or density their variations is confined to narrow limits. The operations of the sense are illustrations of consents, for each sense does only what it can do and functions in its unique way. The eye is adapted to see, the ear to hearing, and neither can do the work of the other. A very few consents have been approved by sure experiment; such as those of the magnet and iron, of gold and quicksilver, and the like. There are the consents of medicines for certain parts, members, and operations of the body. Nor should we omit the consents between the motions and changes of the Moon and the affections of bodies below; such as may be gathered and admitted, after strict and honest scrutiny, from experiments in agriculture, navigation, medicine and other sciences. In ever case of consent, appetite appears when the relationship of structure and material of another thing. Giving and receiving is determined by a complex isomorphic relationship among things. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

The New Testament is replete with relationships and assurances of God’s forgiveness to those who have trusted in Jesus Christ. Just one scripture will suffice to show again the contrast between our dreadful condition and God’s love, mercy, and grace in reaching out to us. It is, incidentally, another instance of God’s wonderful contractions. “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because your evil behavior. However, now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation,” reports Colossians 1.21-22. I want to call your attention to the last phrase of this passage, “Free from accusation.” Does this phrase describe the way you consent to feel about yourself? Or do you often, in your mind, find yourself standing in the dock of God’s courtroom hearing His pronouncement, “Guilty”? If the latter is true, you are not living by grace. If you have never received the free gift of salvation by trusting in Christ Jesus, then of course you are guilty. You certainly are not living by grace; rather, you are under the wrath of God, and you will eventually experience the full force of His wrath. This wrath is not that of a hot tempered tyrant who has lost control of one’s emotions; rather, it is the calm, objective, legal wrath of the Judge who is meting out the stiffest sentence possible to the most violent and recalcitrant criminal. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

Your greatest need is to consent to trust in Jesus Christ as your Savior, then all the expressions of God’s forgiveness are true of you. He has removed your sins as far as the Old World is from the New World. He has put them behind His back and hurled them into the depths of the sea. He has blotted them out of his record book and promised never to bring them up again. You are free from accusation, not because of anything whatsoever in you, but because of His grace alone through Jesus Christ. Are you willing to consent and believe this wonderful truth and live by it? You probably reply, “I do believe it. I do believe my sins are forgiven and I will pass into Heaven when my time is up.” However, are you willing to consent to live by it today, in this life? Will you accept that God not only saves you by His grace through Christ but also deals with you day by day by His grace? Do you accept and consent to the fact the Bible’s definition of grace—God’s unmerited favor shown to people who are totally undeserving of it—applies to you not only in salvation but in your everyday life? This meaning of grace never changes. As I have said, grace is always the same, whether God is exercising it in salvation or in His dealings with us as His children. Jesus said, “I have come that [you] may have life, and have it to the full,” reports John 10.10. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

Do you have life, that is, eternal life? Have you consented to renouncing all confidence in your own moral or religious efforts and turned in faith completely to Jesus to be clothes with His righteousness? If so, you do have eternal life. However, do you have it to the full Are you experiencing both the peace of God that comes with salvation and the joy of God that comes with living by grace each day? If not, you may be saved by grace, but you are living by works. Greek mythology tells of a beautiful youth who loved no one until the day he saw his own reflection in the water and fell in love with that reflection. He was so lovesick, he finally wasted away and died, and was turned into a flower that bears his name—Narcissus. Actually, narcissistic self-love is not a pretty thing! We are repulsed by narcissism and carefully seek to avoid it. However, incredibly, in Ephesians 5 we are called to a sublime self-love: “In this way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated one’s own body, but one feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body,” reports Ephesians 5.28-30. This loving ourselves by loving our wives is based on the one flesh unity—the deep exchange of our souls in marriage which can even make us look alike. It is the love that Shakespeare’s Lorenzo celebrates when he says to Jessica she will be placed in my “constant soul.” Our martial love is our constant soul. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

O Christ, God, great Adonai, crucify us as it were with Thyself to this World, that Thy life may be in us: and put our sins upon Thyself to crucify them; and draw us also to Thyself, since for us Thou wast lifted up from the Earth, to deliver us from the tyrant: for although by the flesh and by sins we are under the devil’s power, yet we long to serve Thee, not him; and we desire to live under Thine authority, and beg to be governed by Thee, Who wast pleased by the death of the Cross to deliver us, mortals, and invaded by death. For which transcendent benefit we this day bring the service of our devotion; and now this day we humbly adore, implore, invoke Thee, that Thou, O God, eternal Might, wouldest hasten unto us. Thou Who by Thy power makest things future to be as things past, and also by Thy presence, things past to be as things present; grant that Thy Pasion may be saving to us as if it were present this day: Thou Who reignest forever with the Father and the Holy Ghost, now begin to reign over us, Man, God, Christ Jesus, King forever and ever. Delivered from evil, and established continually in good, may we be able to cleave unto Thee, Jesus Christ our Lord and God. Break in pieces all the snares of our enemy; accept our fasting and hear our prayer, in these days in all times. Grant us peace and quietness, piety, pure love, and grace, by the wounds of Thy Passion, O our God, Son of God, Who livest with God the Father, and reignest with the Holy Spirit, One God in trinity, abiding throughout all ages. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

All-searching God, Thou readest the heart, viewest principles and motives of actions, seest more defilement in my duties than I ever saw in any of my sins. The Heavens are not clean in thy sight, and thou chargest the Angels with folly; I am ready to flee from myself because of my abominations; yet thou doest not abhor me but hast devised means for my return to thee, and that, by thy Son who died to give me life. Thine honour is secured and displayed even in my escape from thy threats, and that, by means of Jesus in whom mercy and truth meet together, and righteousness and peace kiss each other. In him the enslaved find redemption, the guilt pardon, the unholy renovation; in him are everlasting strength for the weak, unsearchable riches for they needy, treasures of wisdom and knowledge for the ignorant, fullness for the empty. At thy gracious call I hear, take, come, apply, receive his grace, not only submit to his mercy but acquiesce in it, not only glory in the cross but in him crucified and slain, not only joy in forgiveness but in the one though whom atonements comes. Thy blessings are as secure as they are glorious; Thou hast provided for my safety and my prosperity, and hast promised that I shall stand firm and grow stronger. O Lord God, without the pardon of my sin I cannot rest satisfied without the renovation of my nature by grace I can never rest easy, without the hopes of Heaven I can never be at peace. All this I have in thy Son Jesus; blessed be his name. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

The seeker who has gone unsatisfied from organization to organization, for several years, should waste no further time seeking God through such establishments or through self-named Masters but should strive earnestly to purify one’s heart of all lower feelings, such as anger, envy, irritability, fear, and depression, and work constantly on one’s character to improve it. After vigorously doing this for at least six months one may begin to pray daily for further guidance. One will sometimes find that, faithfully followed, the soul will bring one a vivid presence within, a voice that guides where there is seemingly none to guide. In many matters it is needful to submit to the will of destiny. One should know, however, that by the right mental attitude, the inner contact and the inner meeting can be obtained even if the outer cannot. That inner meeting, after all, is the real one—more real than the physical. It is enough to have had a single physical meeting to receiver ever afterwards the possibility of this inner contact. “Now the last words which written by Ether are these: Whether the Lord will that I be translated, or that I suffer the will of the Lord in the flesh, it mattereth not, if it so be that I am saved in the kingdom of God. Amen,” reports Ether 15.29. He knows truth, has penetrated to Reality, feels the Unseen Presence of God. He really lives and moves on a plane where the eyes of the multitude cannot follow him. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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