The most persistent threat to freedom, to the rights of Americans, is fear. What would become of the arts without the luxury that feeds them? If there were no tyrants, no wars, no conspirators, what would history become? If each person, consulting only the duties of the human and the needs of nature, had times for nothing but the homeland, the unfortunate, and one’s friends, who would want to spend one’s life in fruitless speculations? Are we destined then to die fastened to the edge of the pit where truth has retreated? In order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles. The misuse of time is a great evil. Other evils that are worse follow after letters and the arts. Luxury, born like them of idleness and human’s vanity, is one such. Luxury seldom thrives without the sciences and the arts, and they never thrive without it. Two famous republics competed for World domination. One was very rich and the other had nothing, and it was the latter which destroyed the former. The Roman Empire, in turn, after having swallowed up all the wealth of the Universe, fell prey to humans who did not even know what wealth was. Every artist wants to be applauded. The praises of one’s contemporaries are the most precious part of one’s reward. What hen will one do to obtain praise, if one has the misfortune to be born among a people and at a time when learned humans, having become fashionable, have placed a frivolous youth in a position to set the tone; when humans have sacrificed their taste to the tyrants of liberty; when because one of the genders dares approve only what is a match for the other’s pusillanimity, masterpieces of dramatic poetry are dropped and harmonic prodigies rejected? #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

What will one do, people? One will lower one’s genius to the level of one’s century and will prefer to compose popular works which are admired during one’s lifetime instead of marvels which would not be admired until long after one’s death. How many manly and strong beauties have been sacrificed to our false delicacy, and how many great things has the spirit if gallantry, so fertile in small things, cost society? In this way the dissolution of mores, a necessary consequence of luxury, leads in turn to the corruption of taste. If perchance there is, among humans of extraordinary talents, someone who has firmness of soul and who refuses to yield to the genius of one’s century and to degrade oneself by childish productions, woe to on! One cannot reflect on mores without taking delight in recalling the image of the simplicity of the earliest times. It is a beautiful shore, adored by the hands of nature alone, toward which one continually turns one’s eyes, and from which one regretfully feels oneself moving away. When innocent and virtuous humans have wanted to the gods as witnesses of their actions, they lived together in hunts. However, having soon become wicked, they wearied of those inconvenient spectators and banished them to magnificent temples. Finally, they chased them from the temples in order to take up residence in themselves, or at least the temples of the gods were no longer distinguishable from the homes of citizens. That period was the height of depravity, and vices were never impelled further than when they were, so to speak, seen propped up on columns of marble and carved on Corinthian capitals at the entrance to the palaces of the great. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

While the conveniences of life increase, the arts are perfected and luxury spreads, true courage is enervated, military virtue disappears, and this too is the work of the sciences and of all those arts which are practiced in the darkness of the study. People brad to me of their bravery on a day of battle, but they do not tell me how they handle overwork, how they withstand the harshness of the seasons and the inclemency of the weather. All that is needed is a bit of sunshine or snow, a lack of a few superfluities, to melt and destroy the best of our armies in a few days. Intrepid warriors, suffer for once the truth you so rarely hear: you are brave, I know. Battles do not always make for success in war, and for generals there is an art superior to that of wining battle. Everywhere I see immense establishments where youths are brough up at great expense to learn everything but their duties. Your children will not know their own language, but will speak others which re nowhere in use. They will know how to compose verses they will scarcely be capable of comprehending. Without knowing how to separate error from truth, they will possess the art of making them unrecognizable to others by means of specious arguments. However, they will not know the meaning of the words magnanimity, fair-mindedness, temperance, humanity, courage. That sweet name homeland will never strike their ear; and if they hear God spoken of at all, it will be less to be in awe of him than to be in fear of him. I know that children need to be kept occupied and that, for them, idleness is the greatest danger to fear. What then should they learn? That is certainly a fine question! Let them learn what they ought to do when they adults, and not what they ought to forget. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

If not from the fatal inequality introduced among humans by the distinction of talents and the degradation of virtues, where do all the abuses in society come from? That is the most evident effect of our studies, and the most dangerous of all their consequences. One no longer asks whether a human has integrity, but whether one has talents; not whether a book is useful, but whether it is well written. Rewards are showered upon the wit, and virtue is left without honour. There are a thousand prizes for fine discourses, none for fine actions. Meanwhile, would someone tell me whether the glory attached to the best discourses that will be crowned in this Academy is comparable to the merit of having established the prize? The wise human does not chase after fortune, but one is not insensitive to glory; and one sees it so ill distributed, that one’s virtue, which a little emulation would have enlivened and made advantageous to society, languishes and dies out in misery and oblivion. This is what, in the long run, the preference for congenial talents over useful ones must everywhere produce, and what experience since the revival of the sciences and the arts has only too well confirmed. We have physicists, geometers, chemists, astronomers, poets, musicians, painters; we no longer have citizens. Or if there still are some left to us, dispersed in our abandoned countryside, they perish there indigent and despised. Such is the state to which those who give us bread and our children milk are reduced; such are the sentiments they get from us. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Considering the frightful disorders that the fake news media has already causes in the World, and judging by the progress that the evil makes from one day to the nest, it is easy to foresee that sovereigns will not delay in taking as many pains to banish this terrible art from their states as they took to establish it in them. The fake news media is the height o absurdity. Obstacles teach people to work hard and to exert themselves to cover the immense area they traversed. If a few humans must be permitted to devote themselves to the study of the sciences and the arts, it should only be those who feel the strength to venture forth alone in their footsteps and to overtake them. It is for this small number to raise monuments to the glory of the human mind. However, if we want nothing to be beyond their genius, nothing must be beyond their hopes. That is the only encouragement they need. The soul imperceptibly proportions itself to the objects that occupy it, and it is great events that make great humans. May the obtain the only recompense worth them: that of contributing by their influence to the happiness of the peoples to whom they have taught wisdom. Only then will we see what can be done by virtue, science, and authority, enlivened by a noble emulation and working in concert for the felicity of humankind. However, as long as power is alone on one side, with enlightenment and wisdom alone on the other, learned humans will rarely think about great things, princes will more rarely perform noble deeds, and peoples will continue to be vile, corrupt, and unhappy. For us—ordinary humans to whom Heaven has not distributed such great talents and whom it does not destine for so much glory—let us remain in our obscurity. Even if we had all the qualifications to, let us not chase after a reputation that would escape us and which, in the present state of things, would never return to us what it would have cost us. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

If we can find it in ourselves, what good is it to seek our happiness in the opinion of another? Let us leave to others the cares of instructing peoples in their duties, and confine ourselves to fulfilling our own duties well. We have no need to know more than this. O virtue! Sublime science of simple souls, are there so many difficulties and so much preparation necessary in order to know you? Are your principles not engraved in all hearts, and is it not enough, in order to learn your laws, to commune with oneself and, in the silence of the passions, to listen to the voice of one’s conscience? That is the true philosophy; let us know how to be satisfied with it. And without envying the glory of those famous humans who are immortalized in the republic of letters, let us try to place between them and ourselves that glorious distinction observed long ago between two great peoples: that the one knew how to speak well, he other how to act well. It is doubtless impossible to approach any human problem with a mind free from bias. Psychology is morally and ethically neutral. Psychologists hold a wide variety of different moral and ethical views. These widely varying outlooks are often called Worldviews. Science involves more than impersonal, objective, pure facts. We organize observations based on our experience and interests. We decide what to attend to and what to ignore. This subjective element of scientific exploration is even larger in the human sciences, such as sociology, anthropology, and parts of psychology, than in the physical sciences, such as physics and chemistry. Thus psychologists’ Worldviews, which include their personal values, penetrate their work in several subtle and not-so-subtle ways. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

Worldviews also influence psychologists’ choice of research topics and their ethical standards in conducting research. Our interest in topics such as aggression, gender, and smoking prevention are motivated by our personal concerns. Worldviews further influence our conceptions of mental and social hygiene, of self-actualization and fulfillment. Is it better to express and act on one’s feelings, or to exhibit self-control? To seek joy in the here and now, or to endure stress now for the sake of future achievement? Little wonder that in one survey, 425 mental-health professionals were almost equally divided on whether it was desirable for people to “become self-sacrificing and unselfish.” Psychologists also are subtly affected by their philosophical and cultural assumptions. Morality is a matter of thinking, and the humanistic individualism of one’s assumption about the “highest” or most mature moral stage is exhibited by those who make moral judgments in accord with their self-chosen convictions. Sometimes people’s moral ideals, for example, can be an articulate liberal secular humanist masquerading as psychological truth. Moral maturity is not so much a matter of abstract ethical principles as of responsible, committed relationships. So Worldviews including hidden values and assumptions do penetrate psychology. They influence psychologists to construct, confirm, and label concepts that support their presuppositions. The Christian psychologist’s obligation is to tell it like it is, knowing that the Author is at our elbow, a silent judge of the accuracy with which we claim to describe the World He has created. In this sense our goal is objective, value free.  #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

If our limitations, both intellectual and moral, predictably limit our achievement of this ideal, this is something not to be glorified in but in to acknowledged in a spirit of repentance. Any idea that it could justify a dismissal of the ideal of value free knowledge as a “myth” would be as irrational—and as irreligious—as to dismiss the idea of righteousness as a “myth” on the grounds that we can never perfectly attain that. A Christian psychology is one that is faithful to reality. If God has written the book of nature, it becomes our calling to read it as clearly as we can, remembering that we are humble stewards of the creation, answerable to the giver of all data for the accuracy of our observations. Indeed, it is precisely because all our ideas are vulnerable to error and bias—including our biblical and theological interpretations as well as our scientific concepts—that we must be wary of absolutizing any of our theological or scientific ideas. Our religious and scientific ideas are mere approximations of truth that always are subject to test, challenge, and revision. Believing that both the natural and biblical data reveal God’s truth, we can allow scientific and theological perspectives to challenge and inform each other. However, we do so remembering that science and theology operate at different levels of explanation and mindful of the tentative nature of any scientific or theological theory. There is an additional reason why the Christian Bible does not give us completed psychology and why we therefore need psychological science. The Scriptures must embody truth not just for us in our twenty-first-century age but for all the people past, present, and future. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Christianity was never intended to replace or supersede the ordinary human arts and sciences: it is rather a director which will set them all to the right jobs, and a source of energy which will give the all new life, if only they will put themselves at its disposal. The less we know, the more scrupulous and careful we should be in applying and monitoring what we think we do know. Having lost sight of scientific skepticism and the need for careful research, the “professionals view” has become highly compatible with the New Age view without adherence to the scientific standard of “show me,” professional psychology and psychotherapy become a matter of “views” and “schools,” with the result that they are highly influenced by cultural beliefs and fads: currently the obsession is with “me.” We agree that our values and assumptions cloud the spectacles through careful scientific and biblical scholarship. Christianizers psychology never approach their subject completely free of prior beliefs and prejudices. Thus if Christian psychologists are to be fully serious both as scholars and Christians, they must not wall off their scientific and religious levels of understanding from each other. Instead, they should allow the content of their faith to inform their psychology (and vice versa), much as they also allow their faith to inform their social awareness, politics, and personal relationships. Christian developmental psychologists might want to construct a theory that is rooted in an explicitly Christian understanding of morality. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

The Christian response to psychology is that it offers the psychological science a limited but useful perspective on human nature that complements the perspective of faith. The issues for the Christian is not some doctrinaire desire to defend the status of psychology as a science but rather to adhere to the commitment to report the way the World is, no the way we would like it to be. Science is, above all else, a reality-driven enterprise. Every active investigator is inescapably aware of this. It creates the pain as well as much of the delight of research. Reality is the overseer at one’s shoulder, ready to rap one’s knuckles or to spring the trap into which one had been led by over confidence, or by too-complacent reliance on mere surmise. Science succeeds precisely because it has accepted a bargain in which even the boldest imagination stands hostage to reality. Reality is the unrelenting angels with whom scientists have agreed to wrestle. This image should be familiar to those who recall Jacob’s encounter with the living God. Whenever a single wave of change predominates in any given society, the pattern of future development is relatively easy to discern. Writers, artists, journalists, and others discover the “wave of the future.” Thus in nineteenth-century Europe many thinkers, business leaders, politicians, and ordinary people held a clear, basically correct image of the future. They sensed that history was moving toward the ultimate triumph of industrialism over premecanized agriculture, and they foresaw with considerable accuracy many of the changes that the Second Wave would bring with it: more powerful technologies, bigger cities, faster transport, mass education, and the like. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

This clarity of vision had direct political effects. Parties and political movements were able to triangulate with respect to the future. Preindustrial agricultural interests organized a rearguard action against encroaching industrialism against “big business,” against “union bosses,” against “sinful cities.” Labour and management grappled for control of the main levers of the emergent industrial society. Marginalized because of their race, gender, religion, or ethnicity, people began defining their rights in terms of an improved role in the industrial World, demanded access to jobs, corporate positions, urban housing, better wages, mass public education, and so forth. This industrial vision of the future had important psychological effects as well. People might disagree; they might engage in sharp, occasionally even bloody, conflict. Depression and boom times might disrupt their lives. Nevertheless, in general, the shared image of an industrial future tended to define options, to give individuals a sense not merely of who or what they were, but of what they were likely to become. It provided a degree of stability and a sense of self, even in the midst of extreme social change. In contrast, when a society is struck by two or more giant waves of change, and none is yet clearly dominant, the image of the future is fractured. It becomes extremely difficult to sort out the meaning of the changes and conflicts that arise. The collision of wave fronts creates a raging ocean, full of clashing currents, eddies, and maelstroms which conceal the deeper, more important historic tides. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

In the United States of America today—as in many other countries—the collision of Second and Third Waves creates social tensions, dangerous conflicts, and strange new political wave fronts that cut across the usual divisions of class, race, gender, or party. This collision makes a shambles of traditional political vocabularies and makes it very difficult to separate the progressive from the reactionaries, friends from enemies. All the old polarizations and coalitions break up. Unions and employers, despite their differences, join to fight environmentalist. Groups, once untied in battle against discrimination, become adversaries. In many nations, labour, which has traditionally favoured “progressive” policies such as income redistribution, now holds “reactionary” positions with respect to women’s rights, family codes, immigration, traffic, or regionalism. The traditional “left” is often pro-centralization, highly nationalistic, and antienvironmentalist. At the same time we see politicians espousing “conservative” attitudes towards economic and “liberal” attitudes toward art, morality dealing with pleasures of the flesh, women’s rights, or ecological controls. No wonder people are confused and give up trying to make sense of their World. The media, meanwhile, report a seemingly endless succession of innovations, reversals, bizarre events, assassinations, kidnappings, space shots, governmental breakdown, commando raids, and scandals, all seemingly unrelated. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

The apparent incoherence of political life is mirrored in personality disintegration. Psychotherapists and self-actualize do a land-office business; people wander aimlessly amid competing therapies, from primal scream to electroconvulsive shock therapy (EST). They slip into cults and covens or, alternatively, into a pathology privatism, convinced that reality is absurd, insane, or meaningless. Life may indeed be absurd in some large, cosmic sense. However, this hardly proves that there is no pattern in today’s events. In fact, there is a distinct, hidden order the becomes detectable as soon as we learn to distinguish Third Wave changes from those associated with the diminishing Second Wave. An understanding of the conflicts produced by these colliding wave fronts gives us not only a clearer image of alternative futures but an X ray of the political and social forces acting on us. It also offers insight into our own private roles in history. For each of us, no matter how seemingly unimportant, is a living piece of history. The crosscurrents created by these waves of change are reflected in our work, our family life, our attitudes towards pleasures of the flesh and personal morality. They show up in our lifestyle and voting behaviour. For in our personal lives and in our political acts, whether we know it or now, most of us in the rich countries are essentially either Second Wave people committed to maintaining the dying order, Third Wave people constructing a radically different tomorrow, or a confused, self-canceling mixture of the two. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

Everyone has natural desire to know things. That is what Aristotle said a long time go in his Metaphysics. I say to you now, what good is all that knowledge unless it is accompanied by fear of God? Certainly better is the humble farmer who serves God than the proud Philosopher who entertains though about the Heavens. At least that is what Augustine noted in his Confessions. The Devout who knows oneself well has proper self-esteem, one that is not swept away by the blustering winds of human praise. If one’s head contained all the knowledge in the World and yet one’s soul was “empty of all charity”—the words of Pal in his First to the Corinthians (13.2)—what leg would he have left to stand on in front of his judge, the Lord God; all He want to know are the facts. Hunt for knowledge, yes, but do not let the hunter become the hunted. That way lies the wrong end of a blunderbuss. Often the studious want not so much to know everything as to be seen swanning about as authority figures. However, many areas oof knowledge have little or nothing to offer to the soul. Yet these are the very ones the harebrained often turn to instead of the topics that truly serve their own spiritual well-being. A shower of glitter does not slake the thirst of the soul. A life well lived, on the other hand, refreshes the mind, and a conscience well formed develops the confidence once needs when it comes to dealing with God. Antsy? Do not get antsy. Stay in line. Do not push others aside just to get ahead. If you do, you will get slapped with a fine by the Final Judge. That is to say, unless you have lived a holy life. Therefore, do not, every time you learn something new about art or science, break into a trompette volontaire! Rather, have some respect for the knowledge you already have. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

You may know a lot, yes, but there is also a lot you do not know. “Do not be wiseacre,” wrote Paul to the Romans (11.20) Admit you re not omniscient. And when it comes to standing in line, what about the people ahead of you? Apparently, they know more than you do. Get used to knowing less than God. Get used to the middle of the line. That is where you belong. What is the most profound, and yet the most practical, lesson you can learn? That you look like an ant! What is the deepest wisdom and yet the highest perfection? That you are an ant! Have no illusions about yourself—that is what Paul laid upon the Romans (11.20). Hold high opinions only about others. If you come upon a couple in flagrante delicito, do not think for a moment that you are better than they. Why? No one is perfect, said the Great Bernard somewhere in his Third Sermon on Christmas Day. We are all crockery. We all break when we hit the floor. And what is more, no one is more of a crock than you! Life consciousness above the plane of the physical World. Immerse thought in the concept of the higher self alone, forgetting its projected personal self. Next, empty the mind as far as possible of all thoughts and seek inward sacred stillness. When in prayer, picture an ethereal aura of pure, white, electrifying Light all around you. Then, imagine this magnificent Light is actually pulling you upright by the top of your head. Its compelling force should, as a result, automatically straighten the spine, and the back of your trunk, neck, and head from a perfectly erect line. Finally, imagine the Light is pervading inside the whole of your body. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

This should give you a feeling of physical refreshment and complete physical relaxation. Try to see and feel that the aura of Lit has an actual substance and that It is becoming part of you, that you are melting into It, becoming one with It. Next, think of it as being the pure essence of Love, especially in the region of the heart. When this Love has been experienced as a sensation of heart-melting happiness, let it then extend outwards to embrace all the World. This should give one a feeling of being in harmony with Nature, the Universe, with all living beings, and with humanity as a part of Nature. Thinking of the white Light as being Nature’s intelligent and recuperative Life-Force is essential to healing. Let it pour in, through the top of your head, passing directly to the solar plexus center, which is the region which must first be worked on and affected if he healing force is to become efficacious. Thence send it to any afflicted area, remaining there. Feel Its benevolent, restorative, and healing presence working upon it. In order to be fully effective, this exercise must be accompanied by intense faith in the recuperative powers of this Light. Astonishing proof of its effectiveness in relieving a troubles organ or curing a diseased part of the body, when preserved in for a sufficient period of weeks or months, has been clearly shown by results. In some cases, paralytics have regained full use of their disabled limbs by having faith in God and prayer. We are often times, so much the victims of custom and usage, of habit and convention, that even where we at once perceive this weakness in other persons, we fail to entirely perceive it in ourselves. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

We hear often of those who live to a ripe old age in health and in strength, but who eat whatever they fancy and drink what they like; they sin against the laws of health and live without any health regimes or disciplinary controls. This is used as an argument against the latter. However, it is a poor argument. For anyone who follows their example takes risks and runs hazards with one’s health, since theirs is a way based on mere chance and complete uncertainty. They were lucky enough to be blessed by nature with bodies strong enough to resist the ill-treatment thus received or favoured by destiny with recuperative powers to ward off its bad effect. If anyone could collect the statistics, they would unquestionably show that for each person who escaped infirmities and lived long in this way, a hundred filed to do so. Whatever humans harm or hurt, one will have to live with for a time until one learns to refrain, until one’s reverence for life is as active here as anywhere else. This is why the horrors of destruction will have to be expiated by the human who caused them. Those who have followed the Quest in previous lives will generally receive a glimpse a least twice during the present one. They will receive it in early life during their teens or around the threshold of adult life. This will inspire them to seek anew. Let the White Light enter the region of the heart reaming there. Form a mental image of the life you would like to lead. Endeavour actually to see the life there in your heart. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

This will bestow a Grace of God. Those aspirants who bemoan the loss of their early glimpse should remind themselves, in hours of depression, that it will recur before they leave the body. In addition to those glimpses which attend the opening and closing years of a lifetime, a number of others may be had during the intervening period as a dirt consequence and reward of the efforts, disciplines, and aspirations, and self-denials practised in the tame. We ought not to mistake this for the exception; it is really the type. Most aspirants have experienced this mystical glimpse, brief and unexpected perhaps, which has started or kept them on this quest. Even those people who assert or lament that they have never had a single glimpse during their whole lifetime will get it at the end. For it is a divinely ordained part of life.  When the genuine mystical experiences comes, it present the student with the rare chance to know for oneself a state in the evolution of consciousness which still lies far ahead of humankind generally. Such memorable glimpses of higher state of being, which encourage and reassure one, may occur not only at the beginning of one’s spiritual career but also at the beginning of each new cycle within it. A glimpse is apparently something that humans rarely experience or something most of them never experience. However, the fact is that more people have had it than have recognized it for what it really is. And this has happened through their admiration of Nature or art, through failing in love, through sudden news. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

At present this mystic experience is a fugitive one in the human species. However, because it is also the ultimate experience of that species, there is no reason why it should not become a common one in the course of evolutionary development. The beauty of the trees, the softness of the air, the fragrance of the grass speaks to me. The summit of the mountain, the thunder of the sky, the rhythm of the sea, speaks to me. The faintness of the stars, the freshness of the morning, the dewdrop on the flower, speaks to me. The strength of fire, the taste of salmon, the trail of the sun, and the life that never goes away, they speak to me, and my heart soars. O Lord our God, please be gracious unto Thy people America and accept their prayer. Please restore the worship to Thy sanctuary and receive in love and favour the supplication of America. May the worship of Thy people be ever acceptable unto Thee. O may our eyes witness Thy return to America. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who restorest Thy divine presence unto America. We thankfully acknowledge Thee, O Lord our God, our father’s God to all eternity. Our Rock art Thou, our Shield that saves through every generation. We give thee thanks and we declare Thy praise for all Thy tender care. Our lives we trust into Thy loving hand. Our souls are ever in Thy charge; Thy wonders and Thy miracles are daily with us, evening, morn and noon. O Thou who art all-good, whose mercies never fail us, Compassionate One, whose lovingkindnesses never cease, we ever hope in Thee. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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Rancho Cordova, CA |

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