When hope has gone life had ended, actually or potentially. Hope is an intrinsic element of the structure of life, of the dynamic of man’s spirit. It is closely lined with another element of the structure of life: faith. Faith is not a weak form of belief or knowledge; it is not faith in this or that; faith is the conviction about the not yet proven, the knowledge of the real possibility, the awareness or pregnancy. Faith is rational when it refers to the real yet unborn; it is based on the faculty of knowledge and comprehension, which penetrates the surface and sees the kernel. Faith, like hope, is not prediction of the future; it is the vision of the present in a state of pregnancy. The statement that faith is certainty needs a qualification. It is certainty about the reality of the possibility—but it is not certainty in the sense of unquestionable predictability. The child may be still born prematurely; it may die in the act of birth; it may die in the first two weeks of life. This is the paradox of faith: it is the certainty of the uncertain. (In Hebrew the word “faith” (Emunah) means certainty. Amen means certainly.) It is certainty in terms of man’s vision and comprehension; it is not certainty in terms of the final outcome of reality. We need no faith in that which is scientifically predictable, nor can there be faith in that which is impossible. Faith is based on our experience of living, of transforming ourselves. Faith that others can change is the outcome of the experience that I can change. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

There is an important distinction between rational and irrational faith. While rational faith is the result of one’s own inner activeness in thought or feeling, irrational faith is submission to something given, which one accepts as true regardless of whether it is or not. The essential element of all irrational faith is its passive character, be its object an idol, a leader, or an ideology. Even the scientist needs to be free from irrational faith in traditional ideas in order to have rational faith in traditional ideas in order to have rational faith in the power of his creative thought. Once his discovery is “proved,” he needs no more faith, except in the next step he is contemplating. In the sphere of human relations, “having faith” in another person means to be certain of his core—that is, of the reliability and unchangeability of his fundamental attitudes. In the same sense we can have faith in ourselves—not in the constancy of our opinions, but in our basic orientation to life, the matrix of our character structure. Such faith is conditioned by the experience of self, by our capacity to say “I” legitimately, by the sense of our identity. Hope is the mood that accompanies faith. Faith could not be sustained without the mood of hope. Hope can have no base except in faith. There is still another element linked with hope and faith in the structure of life: courage, or, as Spinoza called it, fortitude. Fortitude is perhaps the less ambiguous expression, because today courage is more often used to demonstrate the courage to die rather than courage to live. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

Fortitude is the capacity to resist the temptation to compromise hope and faith by transforming them—and thus destroying them—into empty optimism or into irrational faith. Fortitude is the capacity to say “no” when the World wants to hear “yes.” However, unless we mention another aspect of it: fearlessness, fortitude is not fully understood. The fearless person is not afraid of threats, not even of death. However, as so often, the word “fearless” covers several entirely different attitudes. I mention only the three most important ones: First, a person can be fearless because he does not care to live; life is not worth much to him, hence he is fearless when it comes to the danger of dying; but while he is not afraid of death, he may be afraid of life. His fearlessness is based on lack of love of life; he is usually not fearless at all when he is not in the situation of risking his life. In fact, he frequently looks for dangerous situations, in order to avoid his fear of life, of himself, and of people. A second kind of fearlessness is that of the person who lives in symbiotic submission to an idol, be it a person, an institution, or an idea; the commands of the idol are scared; they are far more compelling than even the survival commands of his body. If he could disobey or doubt these commands of the idol, he would face the danger of losing his identity with the idol; this means he would be running the risk of finding himself utterly isolated, and thus at the verge of insanity. He is willing to die because he is afraid of exposing himself to this danger. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

The third kind of fearlessness is to be found in the fully developed person, who rests within himself and loves life. The person who has overcome greed does not cling to any idol or any thing and hence has nothing to lose; he is rich because he is empty, he is strong because he is not the slave of his desires. He can let go of idols, irrational desires, and fantasies, because he is in full touch with reality, inside and outside himself. If such a person has reached full “enlightenment,” he is completely fearless. If he has moved toward this goal without having arrived, his fearlessness will also not be complete. However, anyone who tries to move toward the state of being fully himself knows that whenever a new step toward fearlessness is made, a sense of strength and joy is awakened that is unmistakable. As if a new phase of life had begun, he feels. He can feel the truth of Goethe’s lines: “I have put my house on nothing, that’s why the whole World is mine.” (Ich hab mein Haus auf nichts gestellt, deshalb gehoert mir die ganze Welt.) Hope and faith, being essential qualities of life, are by their very nature moving in the direction of transcending the status quo, individually and socially. It is one of the qualities of all life that it is in a constant process of change and never remains the same at any given moment. If the stagnation is complete, death has occurred; life that stagnates tends to die. It follows that life in its moving quality tends to break out of and to overcome the status quo. We grow either stronger or weaker, wiser or more foolish, more courageous or more cowardly. Every second is a moment of decision, for the better or the worse. We feed our sloth, greed, or hate, or we starve it. The more we feed it, the stronger it grows; the more we starve it, the weaker it becomes. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

What holds true for the individual holds true for a society. If it does not grow, it decays; it is never static; if it does not transcend the status quo for the better, it changes for the worse. Often, we, the individual or the people who make up a society, have the illusion we could stand still and not alter the given situation in the one or the other direction. This is one of the most dangerous illusions. The moment we stand still, we begin to decay. This concept of personal or social transformation allows and even compels us to redefine the meaning of resurrection, without any reference to its theological implications in Christianity. Resurrection in its new meaning—for which the Christian meaning would be one of the possible symbolic expressions—is not the creation of another reality after the reality of this life, but the transformation of this reality in the direction of greater aliveness. Man and society are resurrected every moment in the act of hope and of faith in the here and now; every act of love, of awareness, of compassion is resurrection; every act of sloth, of green, of selfishness is death. Every moment existence confronts us with the alternatives of resurrection or death; every moment we give an answer. This answer lies not in what we say or think, but in what we are, how we act, where we are moving. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

Modern man is threatened by a World created by himself. He is faced with the conversion of mind to naturalism, a dogmatic secularism and an opposition to a belief in the transcendent. He begins to see, however, that the Universe is given not as one existing and one perceived but as the unity of subject and object; that the barrier between them cannot be said to have been dissolved as the result of recent experience in the physical sciences, since this barrier has never existed. Confronted with the question of meaning, he is summoned to rediscover and scrutinize the immutable and the permanent which constitute the dynamic, unifying aspect of life as well as the principle of differentiation; to reconcile identity and diversity, immutability and unrest. He begins to recognize that just as every person descends by his particular path, so he is able to ascend, and this assent aims at a return to the source of creation, an inward home from which he has become estranged. It is the hope of RELIGIONS PERSPECTIVES that the rediscovery of man will point the way to the rediscovery of God. To this end a rediscovery of first principles should constitute part of the quest. These principles, not to be superseded by new discoveries, are not those of historical Worlds that come to be and perish. They are to be sought in the heart and spirit of man, and no interpretation of a merely historical or scientific Universe can guide the search. The rediscovery of man will point the way to the rediscovery of God. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

To this end, a rediscovery of first principles should constitute part of the quest. These principles, not to be superseded by new discoveries, are not those of historical Worlds that come to be and perish. They are to be sought in the heart and spirit of man, and no interpretation of a merely historical or scientific Universe can guide the search. We are attempting not only to ask dispassionately what the nature of God is, but also to restore to man life at least the hypothesis of God and the symbols that relate to him. It endeavours to show that man is faced with the metaphysical question of the truth of religion while he encounters the empirical question of its effects on life of humanity and its meaning for society. Religion is here distinguished from theology and its doctrinal forms and is intended to denote the feelings, aspirations and acts of men, as they relate to reality. Our souls are nourished by the spiritual and intellectual energy of World thought, by those religious and ethical leaders who are not merely spectators but scholars deeply involved in the critical problems common to all religions. It is important to recognize that human morality and human ideals thrive only when set in a context of transcendent attitude toward religion and when we point to the ground of identity and the common nature of being in the religious experience of man, the essential nature of religion may be defined. Thus, we must be committed to re-evaluating the meaning of everlastingness, an experience which has been lost and which is the content of the visio Dei constituting the structure of all religions. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

It is the many absorbed everlastingly into the ultimate unity, a unity subsuming the fluency of God and the everlastingness of passing experience. Jesus as the Christ is united to God, and man is united to God in Eternal life. Jesus as the Christ has an essential manhood that appears and it is our destiny also to realize this essentialized humanity. Revelation also insists that Jesus as the Christ is the Son of God and promises that we shall become sons of God. Grace is needed somehow to about for their mysterious union. If this is supernaturalism, so be it. However, the problem demands a solution. There is an ambivalent attitude toward the historicity of Jesus as the Christ: on the one hand, it is of supreme importance because the New Being appeared in Jesus, but, on the other hand, the Christ would in no way be affected if no trace of the historical Jesus could be found. Jesus of Nazareth is the historical locale of particularly striking upheaval of creative ontological dynamism. The New Being was manifest in Jesus, but not identified with him. Thus, after the resurrection the power of the New Being is just as operative as it was before the moment of the incarnation, but Jesus lies dead in the tomb. Such an interpretation tends to makes Jesus expendable, once he had manifested the eternal principle that being overcomes nonbeing. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

If the timeless New Being overshadows the historical Jesus, there is danger that an impersonal principle may replace the personal intervention of God. The New Being imparts a metaphysical profundity and stability to the system. Certainly theology must speak intelligibly to man, but revelation far outstrips the range of human questions. Finally, the separation of the New Being from Jesus runs the risk depersonalizing the New Being and making Jesus superfluous. The demand to give up illusions about life and its condition as life humanity demands we give up conditions which need illusions. Men cannot remain children forever; they must in the end go out into “hostile life.” We may call this “education to reality.” If man asks himself how he ever became interested in those fields of thought which were destined to occupy the most important place throughout his life, he will not find it easy to give a simple answer. Perhaps he was born with an inclination for certain questions, or perhaps it was the influence of certain teachers, or of current ideas, or of personal experiences which led him along the path of his later interests—who knows which of these factors have determined the course of life? Indeed, if one wanted to know precisely the relative weight of all these factors, nothing short of a detailed historical autobiography could even attempt to give the answers. There is a strange and mysterious reason for human reactions. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

This was the incident: I had known a young woman, a friend of the family. Maybe she was twenty-five years of age; she was beautiful, attractive and in addition a painter, the first painter I ever knew. I remember having heard that she had been engaged but after some time had broken the engagement; I remember that she was almost invariably in the company of her widowed father. As I remember him, he was an old, uninteresting, and rather unattractive-looking man, or so I thought (maybe my judgment was somewhat biased by jealousy). Then one day I heard the shocking news: her father had died, and immediately afterwards she had killed herself and left a will which stipulated that she wanted to be buried together with her father. I had heard of the Elektria complex—the incestuous fixation between daughter and father. However, I was deeply touched. I had been quite attracted to the young woman; I had loathed the unattractive father; never before had I known anyone to commit suicide. I was hit by the thought “How is it possible?”  How is it possible a beautiful young woman should be so in love with her father, that she prefers to be buried with him to being alive to the pleasures of life and of painting? Certainly I knew no answer, but the “how is it possible” stuck. And it was a puzzling and frightening experience at a time when I was beginning to develop into an adolescent. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

Dreams and fantasies are also of eminent importance as a means toward understanding. Since they are relatively direct expression of unconscious feelings and strivings, they must open up avenues for understanding that are otherwise hardly visible. Some dreams are rather transparent; as a rule, however, they speak a cryptic language that can be understood only with the assistance of free associations. The particular point at which the patient turns from co-operation to defensive maneuvers of one kind or another furnishes another help for understanding. As the analyst gradually discovers the reasons for these resistances, he gains increasing understanding of the patient’s peculiarities. Sometimes the fact that a patient stalls or fights, and the immediate reason why he does so, are transparent. More often astute observation is necessary to detect that a blockage exists, and the help of the patient’s free associations is necessary to understand the reasons for it. If the analyst succeeds in understanding the resistance, he will gain an increased knowledge as to the precise factors that hurt or frighten the patient and the precise nature of the reaction they produce. If he touches upon then, similarly illuminating are the themes that the patient omits, or deserts quickly. If, for example, the patient rigidly avoids expressing any critical thoughts concerning the analysts, though he is otherwise overexacting and overcritical, the analyst will have an important. Another example of this kind would be a patient’s failure to tell a specific incident which had occurred the previous day and had upset him. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

All these clues help the analyst to obtain gradually a coherent picture of the patient’s life, past and present, and of the forces operating in his personality. However, they also help toward an understanding of the factors operating in the patient’s relationship to the analyst and the analytical situation. For several reasons it is important to understand this relationship as accurately as possible. If, for instance, a hidden resentment toward the analyst remained under cover, for one thing, it would block the analysis entirely. If he has an unsolvd resentment in his heart toward the person to whom he reveals himself, with the best will in the World, a patient cannot express himself freely and spontaneously. Second, since the patient cannot feel and react differently toward the analyst from the way he does toward other person, he unconsciously displays in analysis the same irrational emotional factors, the same strivings and reactions, that he displays in other relationships. Thus the co-operative study of these factors makes it possible for the analyst to understand the patient’s disturbances in his human relationships in general, and these, as we have seen, are the crucial issue in the whole neurosis. The clues that may help toward a gradual understanding of the patient’s structure are, in fact, practically infinite. However, it is important to mention that the analyst makes use of the clues not only be means of precise reasoning but also, as it were, intuitively. In other words, he cannot always precisely explain how he arrives at his tentative assumption. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

In my own work, for example, I have arrived sometimes at an understanding through free associations of my own. While listening to a patient some incident may emerge in my mind that the patient has told me long ago, without my knowing offhand what bearing it has on the present situation. Or a finding regarding another patient may occur to me. I have learned never to discard these associations, and they have often proved helpful when they were seriously examined. When people are given little to no time to make decision, using this tactic, the manipulator has his mind made up. He has just got to get you to agree. However, the thing you need to agree on is pretty important, and you do not like the rush he is putting you in. The rush people put on others to sign contracts, for instance, before they have time to read the document and think about the subject often times makes one suspicious. Therefore, it is always good to do a bit of research. Sometimes you will find out the person who is trying to force you into a contract is somehow connected to the benefactors of that contract and is going to get a kickback when they get you to sign. It is important to be careful about what you sign because some people can get fired for signing contracts without understanding them or they may lose something valuable. Do not let anyone rush you into making any decision and research things. It seems like since we have not been honouring immigration laws, people have been coming to America, and some of them working at reputable companies, and running scams on consumers, which cause them to get arrested, lose their homes, cars, and several hundreds of thousands of dollars, in some case millions. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

The psychiatrist is a graduate physician. As a holder of the M.D. degree, he has received basic education in medical sciences (anatomy, bacteriology, pathology, physiology, and so on) and supervised experiences with each of the clinical specialties (such as medicine, surgery, neurology, obstetrics). The basic structure of undergraduate medical training is essentially standard in a majority of American medical schools; most commonly there are two years of basic science instruction followed by two years of training and supervised apprenticelike experience in the clinical fields. The basic four years of medical college instruction received by the man who ultimately becomes a psychiatrist (and who may have had this as a goal upon entering medical school) are not different from those of any other M.D. He has spent the same number of class hours as any other physician in the study of chemistry, anatomy, pathology, bacteriology. (He may have entered medical college after completing a four-year college degree; more frequently he will have started his medical training at the end of three years of premedical study. His premedical education has to emphasize the sciences (especially chemistry and physics), and depending upon his initiative and ability and upon the quality of his premedical school, he may have studied more or less of psychology, sociology, history and other subjects.) The amount of instruction and exposure to general human psychology and particularly to psychopathology and to psychiatric illness which he received during the two preclinical years will depend upon the medical college he attended; it may be as little as 20 hours and rarely exceeds 180 hours. By contrast he is likely to have devoted at least 500 hours to the study of anatomy. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

Following medical school, the aspirant psychiatrist must complete a one-year internship in an accredited hospital in which his clinical diagnostic and therapeutic skills are further developed over the full range of medical illness. At the end of this internship, he had satisfied the basic requirement to qualify for the practice of medicine, and he may then undertake specialized training in the field of psychiatry. This training is knowns as a “residency” and encompasses a three-year period of instruction and supervision by the staff of an accredited psychiatric hospital. As a psychiatric resident he will be exposed to some formal, didactic instruction on the subjects of psychiatric nosology, psychopathology, techniques of interviewing, special diagnostic procedures, special medical therapies (exempli gratia, electroshock, drugs), and principles of psychotherapy. How much formal instruction he receives will depend upon the particular psychiatric staff responsible for his training. Also, whether his theoretical orientation is “psychobiologic,” “psychoanalytic,” or “eclectic” will depend upon the setting in which he happens to take his residency. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

Apart from these possible particulars of his training he will over the course of the three years be exposed to a wide variety and large number of patients (hospitalized and outpatient) for which, with varying degrees and emphases of supervision, he will be directly responsible and whose treatment, especially when it is psychotherapy, he will provide. In essence, the psychiatric residency is an intensive and extensive apprenticeship in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with emotional disorders who are referred to clinics or hospitals. At the end of the three years, some eleven or twelve years after his high school graduation, at an average age of thirty-plus, the physician is fully qualified to begin his professional career as a psychiatrist and, if he chooses (and many do), to specialize in psychotherapy with the ambulatory patient. (If he wishes to specialize in the field of child psychiatry, he must complete two years of residence on a children’s service in addition to two years of experience on adult services. Many men take additional specialized training in psychoanalysis; to qualify as a full-fledged analyst the psychiatrist must complete several additional years of training in an analytic institute. If he sees fit to do so–when the analyst has recognized some possible connection, when he has gained an impression as to the unconscious factors that may be operating in a certain context, he will tell the patient his interpretation. If he thinks the patient can stand it and can utilize it, the analyst will offer an interpretation. In the following days, we will cover the clinical psychologist and the psychiatric social worker. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

With all the responsibilities the Sacramento Fire Department and EMS has, such has having to be experts in dealing with weapons of mass destruction, saving people from burning buildings, extracting people from serious cars accidents, and even being shot at and attacked in the line of duty, what makes it even tougher is that they have to do it with little to no funding. The Sacramento Fire Department has to expand their programs and provide additional services without any additional money each time the fire services have been called upon to do something else, and it is usually beyond what they always envisioned was the job of being a firefighter. The fire department is always taking on more responsibilities. And it seems that as son as they learn a new area and skill, expectations and tasks increase. It is going to keep happening as long as the fire service is as talented and as full of as many service heroes as it is. The public is going to continue to call them every time there is a new problem or challenge. When you look at the history of the fire service as a whole, you will see that, given any problem, they will always come up with a solution. Please take time to donate money to the Sacramento Fire Department to insure they are well taken care of and have all the supplies and resources they require. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

The Winchester Mystery House

The need to reach out to a loved one is of cardinal importance in the release of a trapped spirit, commonly called a ghost. In the Winter of 2010, a caretaker was shingling the roof, and he was just coming in from the roof on the fourth-floor balcony on a cold day—he had left the window ajar and secured—when suddenly he heard the window sash come down. He turned around on the fourth-floor platform and he saw the young girl, her hair windswept behind her. She was wearing white. He could not see anything blow the waist, and he confronted her for a short period, but could not being himself to talk—and she went away. Another caretaker was in one of the kitchens when she felt the presence of someone in the room. She turned around and saw an older man dressed in black at the other end of the kitchen. Then the cabinets creaked loudly and began to open on their own; she ran out of the kitchen and never went back in that particular one again.

One night, on a Friday the 13^th tour, a wild, abnormal impulse came over guest to run all over Mrs. Winchester’s mansion screaming. Then the guest suddenly started rolling on the floor, and groaning and pulling the chairs around, beating on the floor with one’s hands and feet, but the guest eventually distinctly perceived that the impulse had something wild in it, and was contrary to the gentleness and sweetness of Mrs. Winchester. A medium that was present believed that the individual had likely given a fanatical demon admission to one’s emotional nature. Counterfeit workings of evil spirits may take place of a “blank mind” and “passive body” and is the primary condition necessary for evil spirits to work. Evil supernatural powers respond to the law of passivity fulfilled in mind and body. They then can produce manifestations. “I pray that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all discernments: so that ye may distinguish the things that differ, that ye may be sincere and void of offence.” (Phil. 1.9-10 mg.)

The demonic presence in the atmosphere is felt by the senses of the body, as breath, wind, et cetera, while the mind is passive or inactive. The person affected by this demonic presence will be moved almost automatically to actions one would not perform of one’s own will and with all one’s faculties in operation. One may not even remember what one had done when under the power of this presence, just as a sleepwalker knows nothing of one’s actions when in that state. The inaction of the mind can often be seen by the vacant look in the eyes. Ghosts by their very nature are quite unable to understand fully their own predicament. They are kept in place, both in time and space, by their emotional ties to the spot. Nothing can pry them loose from it so long as they are reliving over and over again in their minds the events leading to their unhappy deaths.

Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase.  https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/