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Do Your Duty and Leave the Rest to God!
People can cry much easier than they can change. The Second Wave, like some nuclear chain reaction, violently split apart two aspects of our lives that had always, until then, been one. In so doing, it drove a giant invisible wedge into our economy, our psyches, and even our pleasureful selves. At one level, the industrial revolution created a marvelously integrated social system with its own distinctive technologies, its own social institutions, and its own information channels—all plugged tightly into each other. Yet, at another level, it ripped apart the underlying unity of society, creating a way of life filled with economic tension, social conflict, and psychological malaise. Only if we understand how this invisible wedge has shaped our lives throughout the Second Wave era can we appreciate the full impact of the Third Wave that is beginning to reshape us today. The two halves of human life that the Second Wave split apart were production and consumption. We are accustomed, for example, to think of ourselves as producers or consumers. This was not always true. Until the industrial revolution, the vast bulk of all the food, goods, and services produced by the human race was consumed by the producers themselves, their families, or a tiny elite who managed to scrape off the surplus for their own use. In most agricultural societies the great majority of people were peasants who huddled together in small, semi-isolated communities. They lived on a subsistence diet, growing just barely enough to keep themselves happy. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Lacking the means for storing food over long periods, lacking the roads necessary to transport their product to distant markets, and well aware that any increase in output was likely to be confiscated by the owner of enslaved people or feudal lord, they also lacked any great incentive to improve technology or increase production. Commerce existed, of course. We know that small numbers of intrepid merchant carried goods for thousands of miles by camel, wagon, or boat. We know that cities sprang up dependent on food from the countryside. By 1519, when the Spaniards arrived in Mexico, they were astonished to find thousands of people in Tlatelolco engaged in buying and selling jewels, precious metals, slaves and sandals, cloth, chocolate, ropes, skins, turkeys, vegetables, rabbits, dogs, and pottery of a thousand kinds. The Fugger Newsletter, private dispatches prepared for German bankers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, give colourful evidence of the scope of trade by that time. A letter from Cochin, in India, describes in detail the trails of a European merchant who arrived with five ships to buy pepper for transport to Europe. “A pepper store is fine business,” he explains, “but it requires great zeal and perseverance.” This merchant also shipped cloves, nutmeg, flour, cinnamon, mace, and various drugs to the European market. Nevertheless, all this commerce represented only a trace element in history, compared with the extent of production for immediate self-use by the agricultural slave or serf. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Even as late as the sixteenth century, according to Fernand Braudel, whose historical research on the period is unsurpassed, the entire Mediterranean region—from France and Span at one end to Turkey at the other—supported a population of sixty to seventy million, of which 90 percent lived on the soil, producing only a small amount of goods for trade. Writes Braudel, “60 percent or perhaps 70 percent of the overall production of the Mediterranean never entered the market economy.” And if this was the case in the Mediterranean region, what should we assume of Northern Europe, where the rocky soil and long cold winters made it even more difficult for the less affluent to extract a surplus from the soil? If we conceive of the First Wave economy, before the industrial revolution, as consisting of two sectors, it will help us under the Third Wave. In Sector A, people produced for their own use. In Sector B, they produced for trade or exchange. Sector A was huge; Sector B was tiny. For most people, therefore, production and consumption were fused into a single life-giving function. So complete was this unity that the Greeks, the Romans, and the medieval Europeans did not distinguish between the two. They lacked even a word for consumer. Throughout the First Wave Era only a tiny fraction of the population was dependent on the market; most people lived largely outside it. In the words of the historian R. H. Tawney, “pecuniary transitions were a fringe on a World of natural economy.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
The Second Wave violently changed this situation. Instead of essentially self-sufficient people and communities, it created for the first time in history a situation in which the overwhelming bulk of food, goods, and services was destined for sale, barter, or exchange. It virtually wiped out of existence goods produced for one’s own consumption—for use by the actual producer and one’s family—and created a civilization in which almost no one, not even a farmer was self-sufficient any longer. Everyone became almost totally dependent upon food, goods, or services produce by somebody else. In short, industrialism broke the union of production and consumption, and split the producer from the consumer. The fused economy of the First Wave was transformed into the split economy of the Second Wave. The consequences of this fission were momentous. Even now we scarcely understand them. First, the market place—once a minor and peripheral phenomenon—moved into the very vortex of life. The economy became “marketized.” And this happened in both capitalist and socialist industrial economies. Western economists tend to think of the market as a purely capitalist fact of life and often use the term as though it were synonymous with “profit economy.” Yet from all we know of history, exchange—and hence a marketplace—sprang up earlier than, and independently of, profit. For the market, properly speaking, is nothing more than an exchange network, a switchboard, as it were, through which goods or services, like messages, are routed to their appropriate destinations. It is not inherently capitalist. Such a switchboard is just as essential to a socialist industrial society as it is to profit-motivated industrialism. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
The market as a switchboard must exist whether trade is based on money or barter. It must exist whether or not profit is siphoned out of it, whether prices follow supply and demand or are fixed by the state, whether the system is planned or not, whether the means of production are private or public. It must exist even in a hypothetical economy of self-managed industrial firms in which workers set their own wages high enough to eliminate profit as a category. So overlooked is this essential fact, so closely has the market been identified with only one of its many variants (the profit-based, private-property model, in which prices reflect supply and demand), that there is not even a word in the conventional vocabulary of economics to express the multiplicity of its forms. Throughout these pages, the term “market” is used in its full generic sense, rather than in the customary restrictive way. Semantics aside, however, the basic points remains: wherever producer and consumer are divorced, some mechanism is needed to mediate between them. This mechanism, whatever its form, is what I call the market. In fort, wherever the Second Wave struck and the purpose of production shifted from use to exchange, there had to be a mechanism through which that exchange could take place. There had to be a market. However, the market was not passive. The economic historian Karl Polanyi has shown how the market, which was subordinated to the social or religio-cultural goals of early societies, came to set the goal of industrial societies. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
Most people were sucked into the money system. Commercial values became central, economic growth (as measured by the size of the market) became the primary goal of governments, whether capitalist or socialist. For the market was an expansive, self-reinforcing institution. Just as the earliest division of labour had encouraged commerce in the first place, now the very existence of a market or switchboard encouraged a further division of labour and led to sharply increased productivity. A self-amplifying process had been set in motion. This explosive expansion of the market contributed to the fastest rise in living standards the World had ever experienced. In politics, however, Second Wave governments found themselves increasingly torn by a new kind of conflict born of the split between production and consumption. The Marxist emphasis on class struggles has systematically obscured the larger, deeper conflict that arose between the demands of producers (both workers and managers) for higher wages, profits, and benefits and the counterdemand of consumer (including the very same people) for lower prices. The seesaw of economic policy rocked on this fulcrum. The growth of the consumer movement in the United States of America, the recent uprising in Brazil against government-decreed fuel prices (the gasoline), the endlessly raging debate in Britain about prices and incomes policy, the deadly ideological struggles in Russia over whether heavy industry or consumer goods should receive first priority, are all aspects of the profound conflict engendered in any society, capitalist or socialists, by the split between production and consumption. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
Not only politics but culture, too, was shaped by this cleavage, for it also produced the most money-minded, grasping, commercialized, and calculating civilization in history. One need scarcely be a Marxist to agree with The Communist Manifesto’s famous accusation that the new society “left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment.’” Personal relationships, family bonds, love, friendship, neighbourly and community ties all became tinctured or corrupted by commercial self-interest. Correct in identifying this dehumanization of interpersonal bonds, Marx was incorrect, however, in attributing it to capitalism. He wrote, of course, at a time when the only industrial society he could observe was capitalist in form. Today, after more than a century of experience with industrial societies based on socialism, or at least state socialism, we know that aggressive acquisitiveness, commercial corruption, and the reduction of human relationships to coldly economic terms are no monopoly of the profit system. For the obsessive concern with money, goods, and things is a reflection not of capitalism or socialism, but of industrialism. It is a reflection of the central role of the marketplace in all societies in which everyone is dependent upon the marketplace rather than on one’s own productive skills for the necessities of life. In such a society, irrespective of its political structure, not only products are bought, sold, traded, and exchanged, but labour, ideas, art, and souls as well. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
The Western purchasing agent who pockets an illegal commission is not so different from the news editor who takes kickbacks from city and state leaders for not investigating them, airing stories on their personal life and job performance to keep the public’s attention off them so they can do whatever they want in the background without being held accountable. It is also no different from a plumber who demands a bottle of vodka to do what he is paid to do. The French or British or American artist who writes or paints for money alone is not so different form the Polish, Czech, or Russian novelist, painter, or playwright who sells one’s creative freedom for such economic perquisites as a dacha, bonuses, access to a new car or otherwise unobtainable goods. Such corrupt is inherent in the divorce of production from consumption. The very need for a market or switchboard to reconnect consumer and producer, to move goods from the producer to the consumer, necessarily places those who control the market in a position of inordinate power—regardless of the rhetoric they use to justify that power. This divorce of production from consumption, which became a defining feature of all industrial or Second Wave societies, even affected our psyches and our assumptions about personality. Behaviour came to be seen as a set of transactions. Instead of a society based on friendship, kindship, or tribal or feudal allegiance, there arose in the wake of the Second Wave a civilization based on contractual ties, actual or implied. Even husbands and wives today speak of martial contracts. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
The cleavage between these two roles—producer and consumer—created at the same time a dual personality. The very same person who (as a producer) was taught by family, school, and boss to defer gratification, to be disciplined, controlled, restrained, obedient, to be a team player, was simultaneously taught (as a consumer) to seek instant gratification, to be hedonistic rather than calculating, to abandon discipline, to pursue individualistic pleasure—in short to be a totally different kind of person. In the West especially, the full firepower of advertising was trained on the consumer, urging one to borrow, to buy on impulse, to “Fly now, pay later,” and, in so doing, to perform a patriotic service by keeping the wheels of the economy turning. Although outlying suburban areas existed prior to the 1850s, places we would clearly recognize as suburbs began to appear in greater number at that time. What made possible the suburbs as we know it was a revolution in mobility. The emergence of a reasonable, reliable, and safe public transport for the first time made city-suburban commuting feasible. What really changed the urban-suburban equation was the transportation technology of the railroad. The introduction of the horse-drawn streetcar in the 1850s further stimulated suburban growth by providing a more frequent and convenient means of transportation. Building and operating a horse streetcar line on light rails was far less expensive than operating a railway on heavy rails. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Moreover, from the commuters’ viewpoint the streetcar had the added advantage of frequent schedules at a low fixed fare. Most horse streetcars charged 10 cents, while the omnibuses charged 15 cents. Furthermore, the streetcars could hold thirty to forty people and transport them at a speed of 6 or 7 miles an hour. This was twice as fast as walking or taking the uncomfortable omnibus. The rapid expansion of horse streetcar lines during the 1850s meant that now not only wealthy businessmen using the railroads could be regular commuters, but also shopkeepers and tradesmen. By the advent of the Civil War, horse streetcar lines provided regular and dependable service both within and to the extremities of all larger cities. New York alone had some 142 miles of track, which transported almost 100,000 passengers a day. However, the mass exodus from the city would not happen until the 1950s. The great bulk of those affluent enough to commute daily were quite comfortable in their urban town houses, and they were not eager to forsake the comforts and culture of the city for the more bucolic charms of the urban periphery. Not until the Civil War and its industrial changes transformed the center of the cities from the preindustrial pattern emphasizing trade, commerce, and limited local manufacture to the industrial patter emphasizing a workplace filled with factories and tenement slums packed with immigrants would suburbanism become a distinct way of life. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
The Civil War (1861-1865) provides a good dividing line between the compact commercial-based walking city of the antebellum period and the large, sprawling industrial-based cities that followed the war. During the Civil War the economy of northern cities shifted from a mercantile or trade focus to an industrial economy. Assisted by a new Republican party protective tariffs that kept out more cost-effective foreign competition, northern industrialists began producing the bulk of the nation’s steel, military hardware, and woolen goods. Prior to the war, most of these goods had been imported. The huge war-stimulated demand for goods, and the war-inflated profits, were a boon to new industries. Although steamboats were a new technology, they produced a lot of pollution and were deemed inefficient. However, the railroad system was the darling of its time. The introduction of industrialization initially encouraged centripetal rather than centrifugal forces. Urban densities increased, and cites became more crowded. Within the cities the new manufacturing plants and industrial factories concentrated in areas near but not in the central core. Since property at the very center of the city was too expensive for industrial usage, industry usually located in a ring surrounding the central core. This provided good access to local markets as well as to rail and often water transportation. Rail lines rarely went into the very heart of the larger cities. Rather, the terminals were on the outer edges of the downtown commercial area. This was both because the downtown land was too valuable for such a usage and because steam engines spewed out not only filthy smoke but also sparks that started fires. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Thus, both land economies and municipal regulations eventually banned steam locomotives from the central core of most cities. However, for manufacturing industries located near the center of a rail line was essential since the plants depended on the railways to bring them raw materials and the coal used to fire their steam turbines. The rail lines were also crucial for shipping goods to nonlocal markets. The result was that in the city after city, the zone just outside the downtown was converted from residential to manufacturing and commercial activities. The housing that remained in the zone consisted of high-occupancy tenements for the poorly paid workers in the local factories. The post-Civil War concentration of industries in the so-called zone of transition also led to the concentration of storage and wholesale distribution as well as manufacturing activities in the same general area. This, in turn, made the zone around downtown even les desirable as a residential area for those owning property. However, the changes in the zone of transition meant sharp appreciation in land values and, thus, large profits for those owning land. As areas went from good residential housing to factories and tenements, fortunes were made. Speculators often would buy properties in anticipation of even further rises as land usage changed. Hopes of profits from land use change also discouraged investment in improving the existing buildings. Rather, the existing buildings were turned into slum housing. Older residential properties near the factories were commonly divided into many small units in order to house the unskilled—often immigrant—workers who worked for minimal wages in the industrial plants. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
Often working twelve hours a day six days a week, the industrial worker could not afford to live anywhere but near the factories. The slow and expensive nature of public transportation also ruled out any separation of place of work and place of residence. The result was that surrounding the factories, landlords converted existing homes to multiunit, one-room flats. They also built jaw-to-jaw, cheaply constructed tenements to cover every open space. These tenements were then packed to unbelievable densities with immigrant workers—first Irish, then German, Jewish, Italian, Polish, Black, and Hispanic. These slums provided immigrant labourers with housing close to the factories in which they worked—but at a horrendous prince in terms of health and decency of life. Population densities in tenement zones sometimes exceeded 100,000 persons per square mile. These remarkably high levels of crowding contrasted with the declining housing-density levels in the more middle-class neighbourhoods developing on the cities’ periphery. The post-Civil War city thus saw the preindustrial pattern of downtowns having a mixed residential and business usage being supplanted by the industrial pattern of downtown land being devoted to commerce and business while the next zone was one of industry and tenements for minimally paid workers. The latter part of the nineteenth century saw the remaining central-core residences quickly give way to business offices and retail establishments. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Especially found in the city core were firms that thrived on crowds and congestion such as the new large department stores. High central-city land values were an inevitable result of a free-market system and a high business demand for a central location. Centrality meant access, and access was crucial to exchanging business information and making contacts. Nineteenth-century businesses a century before the era of fax machines, and even before telephone were in widespread business use, had real difficulties quickly exchanging information. To exchange information, it was necessary that offices be close to one another. This was commonly done by means of office boys who served as messengers. If your business was out of the range of the office boys, you were out of the loop. Several inventions of the late quarter of the century, such as Otis’s practical steam-powered elevator and William LeBaron Jenney’s iron-girdered buildings, further increased both the value of the central-city land and the number of working people that could be officed on that land. Buildings could now grow upward. The development of a practical steam, and by the late 1890s, electric, elevator meant that the height of buildings was no longer restricted to the maximum five or six floors that anyone in good health was expected to climb. The iron- or steel-girdered building, first developed in Chicago in 1889, was even more revolutionary. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Since the emergence of cities, buildings had been constructed to be supported by their outer walls. In the case of the office buildings, this meant massive outer walls at the base of the building, with the walls becoming progressively thinner as height increased. Since the walls were load bearing, windows had to be small. This was a major limitation in the era before widespread use of electric illumination. This method of building by use the walls for support meant that the maximum number of floors any building could have was ten or eleven. The development of steel-framed buildings changes all this. Steel-framed buildings were constructed by erecting a frame of steel girders and then basically hanging the building’s walls on this frame. Since the outer walls were not load bearing, windows could be made much larger, as in the “Chicago windows” of Louis Sullivan’s Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co. department store in Chicago’s Loop. Steel-framed building techniques meant that offices, businesses, and hotels could now be stacked vertically one floor upon another as high as economics and local ordinances would allow. All of the above provided a strong incentive for middle- and particularly upper-class outmovement. What was needed was an effective means of daily transport for the middle classes. Horse streetcars, as previously noted, provided a reasonably comfortable ride at twice the speed of the omnibus. Putting a coach on light rails also opened up peripheral land along the rail line to real estate speculations. Fortunes were made by promoting for suburban development what was previously low-valued out-of-town property. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Horsecar, and later the electric trolley played crucial roles in extending Boston from a pedestrian city having a 2-mile radius in 1850 to a metropolitan area having a 10-mie radius in 1900. However, in spite of their obvious advantages, horse streetcars also had serious limitations. Most of these had to do with the horse itself. Pulling a car loaded with thirty people was a major effort, particularly in the heat of the summer or when there was an incline. No infrequently, overworked animals were beaten by drivers and collapsed under the strain. Estimates for the number of horses dying in New York streets during the peak years of horse streetcar usage are roughly 15,000 animals dying a year. When an animal pulling a streetcar died or was injured and had to be destroyed, the carcass was no only left on the street, but the riders had to wait for a new horse to arrive and be hitched. Moreover, horses spent the majority of the day in the stable, and whether they were used or not they had to be fed. Horses also caused tremendous waste and pollution problems. Each mature horse produced approximately 26 pounds of manure and several gallons of urine each day. As a result, at the beginning of the twentieth century, New York City each day had to deal with 2.5 million pounds of horse manure and 60,000 gallons of urine. Horse streetcars, thus, contributed in a major fashion to urban sanitation and public health problems. Horse-drawn streetcars brought manure and files. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
Cables cars initially seemed to provide an answer to the disadvantages of horse streetcars. Cable cars were firs used in San Francisco in 1873 as a means of coping with the city’s steep hills. By the 1880s, cable cars had spread east and come into wide usage nationwide. Cable cars, which ran by clamping the cable car onto a moving cable that ran in a tunnel between the streetcar tracks, were far cleaner (no horse small, manure, or urine) than horse streetcars. Moreover, they could go faster, pull heavier weights, and even go up hills and safely down the other side. The ability to go down a hill at fixed rate of speed was the real achievement. Poor brakes not infrequently led o wagons going down steep hills and breaking loose and out of control. Without the cable cars’ ability to grip onto a cable that was always moving the same constant speed, streetcars, with their minimum friction between steel wheels and stee rails, would slide down the hills like a sled, even if wheel brakes were applied. During the 1800s large cities from New York to San Francisco built cable car systems along heavily traveled routes. Chicago alone had 86 miles of cable car track and 1,500 cable cars. The problem with the cable cars was that, for all their strengths, they also had some serious liabilities. The cars were pulled along by a single strand of twisted wire cable winding miles out from and back to the system generator that turned the cable. Unfortunately, the cable wore out, and a break anywhere in the miles of cable meant the entire system was down until the break was spliced. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Also, there were sometimes problems of operators not being able to disengage their grips from the constantly moving cable. This meant a runaway car could only be stopped if it hit something or was closed down. If the cable car that was unable to disengage from the cable could no stop, those cares ahead also had to stay engaged to the cable to keep from being rammed. Thus, one runaway created a whole series of runaways. Cable car systems were also wasteful of energy since the cable kept running regardless of whether cars were engaged on it, loading passengers, or out of service. Cable systems were also far more expensive to build then a horse streetcar system, and unlike horse streetcar systems, they could not be gradually expanded. With a cable system, you could no add an extra mile of track and a few more horses and cars. You had to make a heavy front-end investment in both the heavy steam engines to move the cable and the expensive cable. Moreover, you had to pay to dig up the streets and then install the cable in is tunnel. This cos a great deal before the system was operational. Today, only San Francisco retains is cable cars. They are a tremendous tourist attraction and kept now largely for that reasons. There are some formidable enemies, against which humans do not have a means of self-defense: natural infirmities, childhood, old age, and illness of all kinds—sad signs of our weakness, of which the first two are common to all animals, with the last belonging principally to humans in living society. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
On the subject of childhood, I even observe that a mother, by carrying her child everywhere with her, can feed it much more easily than females of several animals species, which are forced to be continually coming and going, with great fatigue, to seek their food and suckle or feed their young. It is true that if a woman were to perish, the child runs a considerable risk of perishing with her. However, this danger is common to a hundred other species, whose young are for quite some time incapable of going off to seek their nourishment for themselves. And although childhood is longer among us, our lifespan is also longer; thus things are more or less equal in this respect, although there are other rules, not relevant to my subject, which are concerned with the duration of infancy and he number of young. Among the elderly, who are less active and perspire little, the need for food diminishes with the faculty of providing for it. And since savage life shields them from gout and rheumatism, and since old age is, of all ills, the one that human assistance can least alleviate, they eventually die without anyone being aware that they are ceasing to exist, and almost without being aware that they are ceasing to exist, and almost without being aware of it themselves. With regard to illness, I would not repeat the vain and false pronouncements made against medicine by the majority of people in good health. Rather, I will ask whether there is any solid observation on the basis of which one can conclude that the average lifespan is shorter in those countries where the art of medicine is most neglected than in those where it is cultivated most assiduously. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
And, if we give ourselves more ills than medicine can furnish the remedies, how could his be the case? The extreme inequalities in our lifestyle: excessive idleness among some, excessive labour among others; the ease with which we arouse and satisfy our appetites and our sensuality; the overly refined foods of the wealthy, which nourish them with irritating juices and overwhelm them with indigestions; the bad food of the poor, who most of the time do not have even that, and who, for want of food, are inclined to stuff their stomachs greedily whenever possible; staying up until all hours, excesses of all kinds, immoderate outbursts of every passion, bouts of fatigue and mental exhaustion; countless sorrows and afflictions which are felt in all levels of society and which perpetually gnaw away at our souls: these are the fatal proofs that most of our ills are of our own making, and that we could have avoided nearly all of them by preserving the simple, regular, and solitary lifestyle prescribed to us by nature. If nature has destined us to be healthy, I am almost dare to affirm that the state of reflection is a state contrary to nature and that the man who meditates is a depraved animal. When one thinks about the stout constitutions of savages, at least of those whom we have not ruined with our strong liquors; when one becomes aware of the fact that they know almost no illnesses but wounds and old age, one is strongly inclined to believe that someone could easily write the history of human maladies by following the history of civil societies. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
There is no universal maximum of the amount of food and frequency of meals. That depends on the human’s type and on one’s activity. Each must find out what keeps one most efficient. One should pray daily for the strength to overcome bad habits. Indeed, prayer for the Overself’s Grace in his connection is most important. Do not deny the physical causes of disease; it only refers them back to an earlier start in the mind. We know that a person can worry oneself into a state of physical sickness, but there seems to be less acceptance for the opposite idea that the emotions and thoughts can also produce healing and not injury. When fears and doubt, negative thoughts and pessimistic moods strongly dominate the inner life for long periods, or for a shorter one more strongly, they may provoke repercussions in the physical body and create disease. The subconscious activity of mind provides the working link between thinking, feeling, and the flesh through brain and spine, through sympathetic nerve system and delicate nerve plexus. In this way the interplay of character, health, and fortune is brought about. When a human is ever bitter, resentful, unkind, and critical; never gentle, constructive, praising, and compassionate; then poison trickles through one’s inner being, and must in the end reappear in one’s bodily being. Some of the thoughts which poison mind and blood, negatives to be cast out and kept out, are: spite, ill will, unforgiveness, violent conduct, and constant fault-finding. The sins of the heart bring on diseased physical being and this in turn if not changed, brings on a diseased physical being. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
All negative states of mind and emotions are destructive. They work harm to some one of the body’s organs or interfere with its functions. If those states are continuous, they sink into the subconscious and the results appear as disease. This is possible because the sympathetic nervous system, which controls the automatic functions of the body, such as circulation and elimination, digestion and nutrition, is open to influence by the subconscious mind. The emotions and moods which work destructively on the physical body and may be the real origin of its sickness include fear, hatred, anger, jealousy, despondency, anxiety, worry, doubt, and inordinate excitement. It is not one’s occasional thoughts which create sickness or affect fortune, but one’s habitual ones. Those who nurture hate or vow revenge, slowly shorten the life period of their physical body. Blessed is the spot, and the house, and the place, and the city, and the heart, and the mountain, and the refuge, and the cave, and the valley, and the land, and the sea, and the island, and the meadow where mention of God hah been made, and His praise glorified. When I called upon the Lord, ascribe greatness unto our God. O Lord, open Thou my lips and my mouth shall declare Thy praise. Praised art Thou, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac and God of Jacob, mighty, revered and exalted God. Thou bestowest lovingkindness and possesses all things. Mindful of the patriarchs’ love for Thee, Thou wilt in Thy love bring a redeemer to their children’s children for he sake of Thy name. O King, Thou Helper, Redeemer and Shield, be Thou praised, O Lord, Shield of Abraham. Thou, O Lord, art mighty forever. Thou callest the dead to immortal life for Thou art mighty in deliverance. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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Love is the God-Given Goal of Human Relationships!
Fashionable men and women do not just put on fashionable clothes. The truly fashionable are beyond fashion. Ageism, which refers to discrimination or prejudice based on age, can oppress the young as well as seniors. For instance, a person applying for a job may just as well be told, “You are too young” as “You are too old.” In some societies, ageism is based on respect for the elderly. In japan, for instance, aging is seen as beneficial, and greater age brings with it more status and respect. In most nations in the New World, however, ageism tends to have a negative impact on older individuals. Usually, it is expressed as a rejection of the elderly. The concept of “oldness” is often to expel people from useful work: Too often, retirement is just another name for dismissal and unemployment. Zest is the secret of all beauty. There is no beauty that is attractive without zest. You have almost certainly encountered ageism in one way or another. Stereotyping is a major facet of ageism. Popular stereotypes of the “dirty old man,” “meddling old woman,” ‘senile old fool,” and the like, help perpetuate the myths underlying ageism. Contrast such as images to those associated with youthfulness: The young are perceived as fresh, whole, attractive, energetic, active, emerging, and appealing. Yet, even good stereotypes can be a problem. For example, if older people are perceived as financially well off, wise, or experienced, it can blind others to the real problems of the elderly. The important point is that age-based stereotypes are often wrong. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
A tremendous diversity exists among the elderly—ranging from the infirm and demented to aerobic-dancing grandmothers. The Lord knows and love the elderly among His people. It has always been so, and upon them He has bestowed many of His greatest responsibilities. In various dispensations He has guided His people through prophets who were in their advancing years. God has needed the wisdom and experience of age, the inspired direction from those with long years of proven faithfulness to His gospel. Two apparently contrasting images of the future grip the popular imagination today. Most people—to the extent that they bother to think about the future at all—assume the World they know will last indefinitely. They find it difficult to imagine a truly different way of life for themselves, let alone a totally new civilization. Of course they recognize that things are changing. However, they assume today’s changes will somehow pass them by and that nothing will shake the familiar economic framework and political structure. They confidently expect the future to continue the present. This straight-line thinking comes in various packages. At one level it appears as an unexamined assumption lying behind the decisions of business people, teachers, parents, and politicians. At a more sophisticated level it comes dressed up in statistics, computerized data, and forecasters’ jargon. Either way it adds up to a vision of a future World that is essentially “more of the same”—Second Wave industrialism writ even larger and spread over more of this planet. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Recent events have severely shaken this confident image of the future. As crisis after crisis has crackled across the headlines, as Israel erupted, as Dictator Lukashenko is considered out of control, as oil prices skyrocket, as inflation runs wild, as terrorism spreads, and governments seem helpless to stop it, a bleaker vision has become increasingly popular. Thus, large numbers of people—feed on a steady diet of bad and fake news, disaster movies, apocalyptic Bible stories, and nightmare scenarios issued by prestigious think tanks—have apparently concluded that today’s society cannot be projected into the future because no future. For them, Armageddon is only minutes away. The Earth is racing toward its final cataclysmic shudder. On the surface these two visions of the future seem very different. Yet both produce similar psychological and political effects. For both lead to the paralysis of imagination and will. If tomorrow’s society is simply an enlarged, Cinerama version of the present, there is little we need do to prepare for it. If, on the other hand, society is inevitably destined to self-destruct within out lifetime, there is noting we can do about it. In short, both these ways of looking at the future generate privatism and passivity. Both freeze us into inaction. Yet, in trying to understand what is happening to us, we are not limited to this simpleminded choice between Armageddon and More-of-the-Same. There are many more clarifying and constructive ways to think about tomorrow—ways that prepare us for the present. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
The revolutionary premise assumes that, even though the decades immediately ahead are likely to be filled with upheavals, turbulence, perhaps even widespread violence, we will not totally destroy ourselves. It assumes that the jolting changes we are now experiencing are not chaotic or random but that, in fact, they form a sharp, clearly discernible pattern. It assumes, moreover, that these changes are cumulative—that they add up to a giant transformation in the way we live, work, play, and think, and that a sane and desirable future is possible. In short, what follows begins with the premise that what is happening now is nothing less than a global revolution, quantum jump in history. Put differently, we are working with the assumption that we are the final generation of an old civilization and the first generation of a new one, and that much of our personal confusion, anguish, and disorientation can be traced directly to the conflict within us, and within our political institutions, between the dying Second Wave civilization and the emergent Third Wave civilization that is thundering in to take it place. When we finally understand this, many seemingly senseless events become suddenly comprehensible. The broad patterns of change begin to emerge clearly. Action for survival becomes possible and plausible again. In short, the revolutionary premise liberates our intellect and our will. We Devouts know more about Christ than we do about the Saints. For example, whoever finds the spirit of Christ discovers in the process many “unexpected delights,” if I may use the expression of the Apostle John’s from the Last Book of the New Testament (2.17). #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
However, that is not often the case. Many who have heard the Gospel over and over again thin they know it ll. If there is more to the story, they have little desire to discover it. That is because, as the Apostle Paul diagnosed it in his Letter to the Romans (8.9), “they do not have the spirit of Christ. On the other hand, whoever wants to understand the words of Christ and fully and slowly savour their sweetness has to work hard at making oneself another Christ. if you are not humble, you make the Trinity nervous, and that wretched state what possible good do you get out of standing up in public and disputing to high Heaven about the Trinity as an intellectual entity? The real truth, if only you would learn it, is that highfalutin words do not make us Saints. Only a virtuous life can do that, and only that can make God care for us. “Contemplation” is a good example. The School people at the University—that is to say, the Philosophers and the Theologians—could produce lengthy, perhaps even lacy, definitions of this holy word, but that would not move them one inch closer to the Gate of Heaven. The humble Devout, on the other hand, who can neither read nor write, might very well have experienced compunction every day of one’s life; one’s the one, whether one knows it or not, who will find oneself already waiting at that very gate when the Final Day comes. By the way, I do know what compunction means, and so should you: a prickling or stinging of the conscience. If I may put it the way Paul did in his First Letter to the Corinthians (13.3), are you any the richer for knowing all the proverbs of the Bible and all the axioms of Philosophers, when you re really all the poorer for not knowing the charity and the grace of God? #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
“Vanity of vanities, and everything is vanity,” says the Ancient Hebrew Preacher in Ecclesiastes (1.2). The only thing that is not vanity is loving God and, as Moses preached to the Israelites in Deuteronomy, serving him alone (6.13). That is the highest wisdom, to navigate one’s courses, using the contempt of the World as a chart, toward that Heavenly Port. Just what is vanity? Well, it is many things. A portfolio of assets that are bound to crash. A bird breast of medals and decorations. A brassy solo before an unhearing crowd. Alley-catting one’s “carnal desires,” as Paul so lustily put it to the Galatians (5.16), only to discover that punishment awaits further up and father in. Pining for a long life and at the same time paying no attention to the good life. Focusing both eyes on the present without casting an eye toward the future. Marching smartly in the passing parade instead of falling all over oneself trying to get back to that reviewing stand where Eternal Joy is queen. Do not forget the horary wisdom of the Ancient Hebrew Preacher: “The eye is never satisfied by what they it sees; nor the ears by what they hear” (1.8). With that in mind, try to transfer your holdings from the visible market into the invisible one. The reason? Those who trade in their own sensualities only muck up their own account and, in the process, muddy up God’s final account. To say the changes we face will be revolutionary, however, is not enough. Before we can control or channel them we need a fresh way to identify and analyze them. Without this we are hopelessly lost. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
One powerful new approach might be called social “wavefront” analysis. It looks at history as a succession of rolling waves of change and asks where the leading edge of each wave is carrying us. It focuses our attention not so much on the continuities of history (important as they are) as on the discontinuities—the innovations and breakpoints. It identifies key change patterns as they emerge, so that we can influence them. Beginning with the very simple idea that the rise of agriculture was the first turning point in human social development, and that the industrial revolution was the second great breakthrough, it views each of these not as a discrete, one-time event but as a wave of change moving at a certain velocity. Before the First Wave of change, most humans lived in small, often migratory groups and fed themselves by foraging, fishing, hunting, or herding. At some point, roughly ten millennia ago, the agricultural revolution began, and it crept slowly across the planet spreading villages, settlements, cultivated land, and a new way of life. This First Wave of change had no yet exhausted itself by the end of the seventeenth century, when the industrial revolution broke over Europe and unleashed the second great wave of planetary change. This new process—industrialization—began moving much more rapidly across nations and continents. Thus two separate and distinct change processes were rolling across the Earth simultaneously, at different speeds. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Today the First Wave has virtually subsided. Only a few tiny tribal populations, in South America or Papua New Guinea, for example, remain to be reached by agriculture. However, the force of this great First Wave has basically been spent. Meanwhile, the Second Wave, having revolutionized life in Europe, North America, and some other parts of the globe in a few short centuries, continues to spread, as many countries, until now basically agricultural, scramble to build steel mills, auto plants, textile factories, railroad, and food processing plants. The momentum of industrialization is still felt. The Second Wave has not entirely spent its force. However, even as this process continues, another, even more important, has begun. For as the tide of industrialism peaked in the decades after World War In, a little-understood Third Wave began to surge across the Earth, transforming everything it touched. Many countries, therefore, are feeling the simultaneous impact of two, even three, quite different waves of change, all moving at different rates of speed and with different degrees of force behind them. For our purposes, we shall consider the First Wave era to have begun sometime around 8000 B.C. and to have dominated the Earth unchallenged until sometime around A.D. 1650-1750. From this moment on, the First Wave lost momentum as the Second Wave picked up steam. Industrial civilization, the product of the Second Wave, then dominated the planet in its turn until it, too, created. This latest historical turning point arrived in the United States during the decade beginning around 1955—the decade that saw white-collar and service workers outnumber blue-collar workers for the first time. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
That same decade, which started in 1955 saw widespread introduction of the computer, commercial jet travel, oral contraceptives, and many other high-impact innovations. It was precisely during this decade that the Third Wave began to gather its force in the United States of America. Since then it has arrived—at slightly different dates—in most of the other industrial nations, including Britain, France, Sweden, Germany, Russian, and Japan. Today all the high-technology nations are reeling from the collision between the Third Wave and the obsolete, encrusted economies and institutions of the Second. Understanding this is the secret to making sense of much of the political and social conflict we see around us. A tool that can help us cope with these changes is psychology. What is true of psychology is also true of the other academic disciplines, each of which provides a perspective from which we can study nature and our place in it. These range from the scientific fields that study the most elementary building blocks of nature up to philosophy and theology, which address some of life’s global questions. Which perspective is pertinent depends on what you want to talk about. Take romantic love, for example. A physiologist might describe love as a state of arousal. A social psychologist would examine how various characteristics and conditions—good looks, similarity of partners, sheer repeated exposure to one another—enhance the emotion of love. A poet would express the sublime experience that love can sometimes be. A theologian might describe love as the God-given goal of human relationship. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Since love can often be described simultaneously at various levels, we need not assume that one level is causing the other—by supposing for example, that a brain state is causing the emotion of love or that the emotion is causing the brain state. The emotional and physiological views are simply two complementary perspectives. There is a Partial Hierarchy of Disciplines. The disciplines range from basic sciences that study nature’s building blocks up to more integrative disciplines that study whole complex systems. Successful explanation of human functioning at one level need not invalidate explanation at other levels. At the Top of the scale at the disciplines that are considered Integrative Explanation and at the bottom are Elemental Explanation. Those that fall lower and in between the two extremes are a specific degree combination of the two explanations. At starts off with: Theology, and as we work our way down the scale, we see Literature and Philosophy, Political Science, Sociology, Psychology, Biology, Chemistry, and at the very bottom Physics. The hierarchy on the scale does not make one explanation more valuable than another. Nature is, to be sure, all of a piece. For convenience, we necessarily view it as multilayered, but it is actually a seamless unity. Thus the different ways of looking at a phenomenon like romantic love (or belief or consciousness) can sometimes be correlated, enabling us to build bridges between different perspectives. Attempts at building bridges between religion and the human sciences have sometimes proceeded smoothly. A religious explanation of the incest taboo (in terms of divine will or a moral absolute) is nicely complemented by biological explanation (in terms of the genetic penalty that offsprings pay for inbreeding) and sociological explanation (in terms of preserving the marital and family units). #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
Other times the bridge-building efforts extending from both sides see not to connect in the middle, as when a conviction that God performs miracles in answer to prayers is met with scientific skepticism and psychological explanation of how people form illusory beliefs. To say that religious and scientific levels of explanation can be complementary does not mean there is never conflict or that any unsupported idea is to be welcomes as truth. It just means that different types of explanation may actually fit coherently together. In God’s World, all truth is one. So we arrive at a simple but basic point that resolves a good deal of fruitless debate over whether the religious or the psychological account of human nature is preferable: different levels of explanation can be complementary. The methods of psychology are appropriate, and appropriate only, for their own purposes. Psychological explanation has provided satisfying answers to many important questions regarding why people think, feel, and act as they do. However, it does not even pretend to answer life’s ultimate questions. Let us therefore celebrate and use psychology for what it offers us, remembering that it is but one aspect of the larger whole. From the admission that God exists and is the author of Nature, it by no means follows that miracles must, or even can, occur. God Himself might be a being of such a kind that it was contrary to His character to work miracles. Or again, He might have made Nature the sort of thing that cannot be added to, subtracted from, or modified. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
Accordingly, the case against Miracles relies on two different grounds. You either think that the character of God excludes them or that the character of Nature excludes them. We will begin with the second which is the more popular ground. The first Red Herring is this. Any say you may hear a human (and not necessarily a disbeliever in God) say of some alleged miracle, “No. Of course I do not believe that. We know it is contrary to the laws of Nature. People could believe it in olden times because they did not know that laws of Nature. We know now that it is a scientific impossibility.” By the “laws of Nature” such a human means, I think, the observed course of Nature. If one means anything more than that one is not the plain human I take one for but a philosophic Naturalist and will be dealt with in later discussions. The human I have in this view believes that mere experience (and specially those artificially contrived experiences which we call Experiments) can tell us what regularly happens in Nature. And one thinks that what we have discovered excludes the possibility of Miracle. This is a confusion of mind. Granted that miracles can occur, it is, of course, for experience to day whether one has done so on any given occasion. However, mere experience, even if prolonged for a million years, cannot tell us whether the thing is possible. Experiment finds out what regularly happens in Nature: the norm or rule to which she works. Those who believe in miracles are not denying that there is such a norm or rule: they are only saying that it can be suspended. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
A miracle is by definition an exception. How can the discovery of the rule tell you whether, granted a sufficient cause, the rule can be suspended? If we said that the rule was A, then experience might refute us by discovering the it was B. If we said that there was no rule, then experience might refute us by observing that there is. However, we are saying neither of these things. We agree that there is a rule and that the rule is B. What has that got to do with the question whether the rule can be suspended? You replay, “But experience shows that it never has.” We reply, “Even if that were so, this would not prove that it never can. However, does experience show that it never has? The World is full of stories of people who say they have experienced miracles. Perhaps the stories are false: perhaps they are true. However, before you can decide on that historical question, you must first discover whether the things is possible, and if possible, how probable.” The idea that the progress of science has somehow altered this question is closely bound up with the idea that people in ancient time believed in them because they did not know the laws of Nature. Thus you will hear people say, “The early Christians believed that Christ was the son of a virgin, but we know that this is a scientific impossibility.” Such people seem to have an idea that belief in miracles arose at a period when humans were so ignorant of the cause of nature that they did not perceive a miracle to be contrary to it. A moment’s thought shows this to be nonsense: and the story of the Virgin Birth is a particularly striking example. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
When Saint Joseph discovered that his fiancée was going to have a baby, he not unnaturally decided to repudiate her. Why? because he knew just as well as any modern gynaecologist that in the ordinary course of nature women do not have babies unless they have lain with men. No doubt the modern gynaecologist knows several things about birth and begetting which Saint Joseph did not know. However, those things do not concern the main point—that a virgin birth is contrary to the course of nature. And Saint Joseph obviously knew that. In any sense in which it is true to say now, “The thing is scientifically impossible,” he would have said the same: the thing always was, and was always known to be, impossible unless the regular processes of nature were, in this particular case, being over-ruled or supplemented by something from beyond nature. When Saint Joseph finally accepted the view that his fiancée’s pregnancy was not due to unchastity but to a miracle, he accepted the miracle as something contrary to the known order of nature. All records of miracles teach the same thing. In such stories the miracles excite fear and wonder (that is what the very word miracle implies) among the spectators, and are taken as evidence of supernatural power. If they were not known to be contrary to the laws of nature how could they suggest the presence of the supernatural? How could they be surprising unless they were seen to be exceptions to the rules? And how can anything be seen to be an exception till the rules are know? If there were ever humans who did not know the laws of nature at all, they would have no idea of a miracle and feel no particular interest in one if it were performed before them. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
Nothing can seem extraordinary until you have discovered what is ordinary. Belief in miracles, far from depending on an ignorance of the laws of nature, is only possible in so far as those laws are known. We must now add that you will equally perceive no miracles until you believe that nature works adducing to regular laws. If you have not yet noticed that the sun always rises in the East you will see nothing miraculous about his rising one morning in the West. If the miracles were offered us as event that normally occurred, then the process of science, whose business is to tell us what normally occurs, would render belief in them gradually harder and finally impossible. The progress of science has in just this way (and greatly to our benefit) made all sorts of things incredible which our ancestors believed; human-eating ants and gryphons in Scythia, humans with one single gigantic foot, magnetic islands that draw all ships towards them, mermaids and fire-breathing dragons. However, those things were never put forward as supernatural interruptions of the course of nature. They were put forward as items within her ordinary course—in fact as “science.” Later and better science has therefore rightly removed them. Miracles are in a wholly different position. If there were fire-breathing dragons our big-game hunters would find them: but no one ever pretended that the Virgin Birth or Christ’s walking on the water could be reckoned on to recur. When a thing professes from the very outset to be a unique invasion of Nature by something from outside, increasing knowledge of Nature can never make it either more or less credible that it was at the beginning. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
In this sense it is mere confusion of thought to suppose that advancing science has made it harder for us to accept miracles. We always knew they were contrary to the natural course of events; we know still that if there is something beyond Nature, they are possible. Those are the bare bones of the question; time and progress and science and civilization have not altered them in the least. The grounds for belief and disbelief are the same today as they were two thousand—or ten thousand—years ago. If Saint Joseph had lacked faith to trust God or humility to perceive the holiness of one’s spouse, one could have disbelieved in the miraculous origin of her Son as easily as any modern human; and any modern human who believes in God can accept the miracles as easily as Saint Joseph did. You and I my not agree, no matter what I say, as to whether miracles happen or not. However, at least let us not talk nonsense. Let us not allow vague rhetoric about the march of science to fool us into supposing that the most complicated account of birth, in terms of genes and spermatozoa, leaves us any more convinced than we were before that nature does not send babies to young women who “know not a man.” The second Red Herring is this. Many people say, “They could believe in miracles in olden times because they had a false conception of the Universe. They thought the Earth was the largest thing in it and Man the most important creature. It therefore seemed reasonable to suppose that the Creator was specially interested in Man and might even interrupt the course of Nature for his benefit. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
“However, now that we know the real immensity of the Universe—now that we perceive our own planet and even the whole Solar System to be only a speck—it becomes ludicrous to believe in them any longer. We have discovered our insignificance and can no longer suppose that God is so drastically concerned in our petty affairs.” Whatever its value my be as an argument, it ay be stated at once that this view is quite wrong about facts. The immensity of the Universe is not a recent discovery. More than seventeen hundred years ago Ptolemy taught that in relation to the distance of the fixed stars the whole Earth must be regarded as a point with no magnitude. His astronomical system was universally accepted in the Dark and Middle Ages. The insignificance of Earth was as much a commonplace to Boethius, King Alfred, Dante, and Chaucer as it is to Mr. H. G. Wells, or Professor Haldane. Statements to the contrary in modern books are due to ignorance. The real question is quite different from what we commonly suppose. The real question is why the spatial insignificance of Earth, after being asserted by Christian philosophers, sung by Christian poets, and commented on by Christian moralist for some fifteen centuries, without the slightest suspicion that it conflicted with their theology, should suddenly in quite modern times have been set up as a stock argument against Christianity and enjoyed, in that capacity, a brilliant career. I will offer a guess at the answer to this question presently. For the moment, let us consider he strength of this stock argument. When the doctor at post-mortem looks at the dead human’s organs and diagnoses poison one has a clear idea of the different state in which the organs would have been if the human had died a natural death. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
If from the vastness of the Universe and the smallness of Earth we diagnose that Christianity is false we ought to have a clear idea of the sort of Universe we should have expected if it were true. However, have we? Whatever space may really be, it is certain that our perceptions make it appear three dimensional; and to a three-dimensional space no boundaries are conceivable. By the very forms of our perceptions therefore we must feel as if we lived somewhere in infinite space: and whatever size the Earth happens to be, it must of course be very small in comparison with infinite. And this infinite space must either be empty or contain bodies. If it were empty, if it contained noting but our own Sun, then that vast vacancy would certainly be used as an argument against the very existence of God. Why, it would be asked, should He create one speck and leave all the rest of space to nonentity? If, on the other hand, we find (as we actually do) countless bodies floating in space, they must be either habitable or uninhabitable. Now the odd thing is that both alternatives are equally used as objections to Christianity. If the Universe is teeming with life other than ours, then this, we are told, makes it quite ridiculous to believe that God should be so concerned with the human race as to “come down from Heaven” and be made man for its redemption. If, on the other hand, our planet is really unique in harbouring organic life, then this is thought to prove that life is only an accidental by-product in the Universe and so again to disprove our religion. We treat God as the policeman in the story treated the suspect; whatever he does “will be used in evidence against Him.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
This kind of objection to the Christian faith is not really based on the observed nature of the actual Universe at all. You can make it without waiting to find out what the Universe is like, for it will fit any kind of Universe we choose to imagine. The doctor here can diagnose poison without looking at the corpse for one has a theory of poison which one will maintain whatever the state of the organs turns out to be. The reason why we cannot even imagine a Universe so built as to exclude these objections is, perhaps, as follows. Man is a finite creature who has sense enough to know that he is finite: therefore, on any conceivable view, he finds himself dwarfed by reality as a whole. He is also a derivative being: the cause of his existence lies not in himself but (immediately) in his parents and (ultimately0 either in the character of Nature as a whole or (if there is a God) in God. However, there must be something, whether it be God or the totality of Nature, which exists in its own right or goes on “of its own accord”; not as the product of causes beyond itself, but simply because it does. In the face of that something, whichever it turns out to be, man must feel his own derived existence to be unimportant, irrelevant, almost accidental. There is no question of religious people fancying that all exists for man and scientific people discovering that is does not. Whether the ultimate and inexplicable being—that which simply is—turns out to be God or “the whole show,” of course it does not exist for us. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
On either view we are faced with something which existed before the human race appeared and will exist after the Earth has become uninhabitable; which is utterly independent of us though we are totally dependent on it; and which, through vast ranges of its being, has no relevance to our own hopes and fears. For no human was, I suppose, ever so mad as to think that man, or all creation, filled the Divine Mind; if we are a smaller thing to God. It is profound mistake to imagine that Christianity ever intended to dissipate the bewilderment and ever the terror, the sense of our own nothingness, which come upon us when we think about the nature of things. It comes to intensify them. Without such sensations there is no religion. Many a human, brought up in the glib profession of some shallow form of Christianity, who comes through reading Astronomy to realise for the first time how majestically indifferent most reality is to humans, and who perhaps abandons one’s religion on that account, may at that moment be having one’s first genuinely religious experience. Christianity does not involve the belief that God loves humans and for their sake became man and died. I have not yet succeeded in seeing how what we know (and have known since the days of Ptolemy) about the size of the Universe affects the credibility of this doctrine one way or the other. The sceptic asks how we can believe that God so “came down” to this one tiny planet. If we knew that there are rational creatures on any of the other bodies that float is space; that they have, like us, fallen and need redemption; that their redemption must be in the same mode as ours; and that redemption in this mode has been withheld from them, the questions would be embarrassing. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
The Universe may be full of happy lives that never needed redemption. It may be full of lives that have been redeemed in the very same mode as our own. It may be full of things quite other than life in which God is interested though we are not. If it is maintained that anything so small as the Earth must, in any event, be too unimportant to merit the love of the Creator, we reply that no Christian ever supposed we did merit it. Christ did not die for human because they were intrinsically worth dying for, but because He is intrinsically love, and therefore loves infinitely. And what, after all, does the size of a World or a creature tell us about its “importance” or value? There is no doubt that we feel the incongruity of supposing, say, that the planet Earth might be more important than the Great Nebula in Andromeda. On the other hand, we are all equally certain that only a lunatic would think a man six-feet high necessarily more important than a man five-feet high, or a horse necessarily more important than a man, or a man’s legs than his brain. In other words this supposed ratio of size to importance feels plausible only when one of the sizes to importance feels plausible only when one of the sizes involved is very great. And that betrays the true basic of this type of thought. When a relation is perceived by Reason, it is perceived to hold good universally. If our Reason told us that size was proportional to importance, then small differences in size would be accompanied by small differences in importance just as surely as great differences in size were accompanied by great differences in importance. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
Your six-foot man would have to be slightly more valuable than the man of five feet, and your leg slightly more important than your brain—which every knows to be nonsense. The conclusion is inevitable: the importance we attach to great differences of size is an affair not of reason but of emotion—of that peculiar emotion which superiorities in seize begin to produce in us only after a certain point of absolute size has been reached. We are inveterate poets. When a quantity is very great we cease to regard it as a mere quantity. Our imaginations awake. Instead of mere quantity, we now have a quality—the Sublime. However, for this, the merely arithmetical greatness of the Galaxy would be no mor impressive than the figures in an account book. To a mind which did not share our emotions and lacked our imaginative energies, the argument against Christianity from the size of the Universe would be simply unintelligible. It is there for from ourselves that the material Universe derives its power to overawe us. Humans of sensibility look up on the night sky with awe: brutal and stupid humans do not. When the silence of the eternal spaces terrified Pascal, it was Pascal’s own greatness that enabled them to do so; to be frightened by the bigness of the nebulae is, almost literally, to be frightened at our own shadow. For light years and geological periods are mere arithmetic until the shadow of human, the poet, the maker of myths, falls upon them. As a Christian I do not say we are wrong to tremble at that shadow, for I believe it to be the shadow of an image of God. However, if the vastness of Nature ever threatens to overcrowd our spirits, we must remember that it is only Nature spiritualized by human imaginations. #RandolphHaris 22 of 25
This suggest a possible answer to the question raised recently—why is the size of the Universe, known for centuries, should first in modern times become an argument against Christianity? Has it perhaps done so because in modern times the imagination has become more sensitive to bigness? From this point of view the argument from size might almost be regarded as a by-product of the Romantic Movement in poetry. In addition to the absolute increase of imaginative vitality on this topic, there has pretty certainly been a decline on others. Any reader of old poetry can see that brightness appealed to ancient and medieval humans more than bigness, and more than it does to us. Medieval thinkers believed that the stars must be somehow superior to the Earth because they looked bright and it did not. Moderns think that the Galaxy ought to be more important than the Earth because it is bigger. Both states of mind can produce good poetry. Both can supply mental pictures which rouse very respectable emotions—emotions of awe, humility, or exhilaration. However, taken as serious philosophical argument both are ridiculous. The atheist’s argument from size is, in fact, an instance of just that picture-thinking to which, as we shall later discover, the Christian is no committee. It is the particular mode in which picture-thinking appears in the twenty-first century: for what we fondly call “primitive” errors do not pass away. They merely change their form. The glimpse in its most elementary form does not come only to specially gifted persons. It belongs to the portrait of every human being as natural and no a mysterious part of one’s life-experience. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
It is simply a part of the feeling for Nature, to whose systems one belongs, and for the Sun which is Nature’s supreme expression. The Sun’s glory, beauty, power, and benignity arouse reverence. Old World faiths mostly recognized this and made prayers obligatory at dawn and twilight. The point which has yet to be made is that these glimpses are no supernatural superhuman and solely religious experiences. When scientific psychology has advanced to the point where it really understands the human being in all one’s height and depth, and not merely one’s surface, it will see this. Although one is normally quite unconscious of this connection with the Overself, once at least in a lifetime there is a flash which visits one and break the unconsciousness. One has a glimpse of one’s highest possibility. However, the clearness of intensity of this glimpse depends upon one’s receptivity. They may amount to little or much. Many people without pretensions to mystical knowledge or belief have had this experience, this glimpse of timeless loveliness, through Nature, art, music or even for no apparent reason at all. And I though over again my small adventures as with a shore-wind I drifted out in my yacht, and thought I was in danger, my fears, those small ones that I thought so big for all the vital things I have to get and to reach. And yet, there is only one great thing; to live to see in hunts and on journeys the great day that dawns, and the light that fills the World. Our God and God of our fathers, accept our rest. Sanctify us through Thy commandments, and please grant our portion in Thy Torah. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
Can the true reason we fear the unknown, be that we know ourselves too well? Please give us abundantly of Thy goodness and please make us rejoice in Thy salvation. Please purify our hearts to serve Thee in truth. In Thy loving favour, O Lord our God, please grant that Thy holy Sabbath be our joyous heritage, and may America who sanctifies Thy name, rest thereon. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hallowest the Sabbath. May they who observe the Sabbath and call it a delight, rejoice in Thy kingdom. May the people who sanctify the seventh day be sated and delighted with Thy bounty. For Thou didst find pleasure in the seventh day, and didst sanctify it, calling it the most desirable of days, in remembrance of creation. May human beings begin to think of and dwell upon he One Infinite Life-Power, filling all space and pervading the entire Universe, existing everywhere, containing and permeating all creatures, all humanity, including one’s self. Accept and stress God’s existence. Next, call on God’s help, then concentrate on the truth of His recuperative power, which develops and sustains every cell of the body from birth, heals its wounds and knits its bones. Imagine God’s power to be flowing into you as White Light. Mentally draw the current into the body, through the forehead, the palms, and the solar plexus. Lastly, bring it to the part of the body that needs healing and concentrate it there. Think of the whole body as being manifestation of Creative Intelligence and as a projection of the higher self. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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The Source of those Accusations Was a Committee of Demons Who Had Infested Her!
The infinite power of God to create is far beyond what we can grasp or understand. If the Almighty devoted so much of His Word to prophecy, it certainly benefits every believer to study it. The study of the prophetic scriptures and their fulfillment attests to the authority of the Word of God. Every soul has cost an infinite price, and how terrible is the sin of turning one soul away from Christ, so that for Him the Saviour’s love and humiliation and agony shall have been in vain. Contrary to popular opinion, New England’s record in regard to witchcraft is surprisingly good, as Governor Thomas Hutchinson pointed out in 1750: “more having been put to death in a single country in England from the first settlement until the present time.” Through most of the seventeenth century the record is really astonishing. While Europe hanged and burned literally thousands, executions in New England were few and far between. (Witches were burned on the Continent and in Scotland, where witchcraft was a heresy, but hanged in England and in New England, where it was a felony. Burning a witch seems not to have been motivated by the wish to inflict a particularly painful death; Scottish witches, for instance, were first garroted by the executioner, who then proceeded to burn the corpse and scatter its ashes. Most probably, burning was an attempt to prevent the resurrection of the body.) There are some fascinating accounts in New England that deal with cases of witchcraft before 1692, and we shall look at a few of these for they will illuminate some interesting aspects of the Salem witch trials. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
The first is that of Mrs. Anne Hibbins. Her husband, who died in 1654, had been a man of importance: Boston merchant, a Colonial Agent, and for several years one of the Assistants. Tradition has it that she was a sister of Governor Bellingham. She was apparently quarrelsome—quarrelsome enough so that her church censured her for it—and one quarrel was her undoing. She seems to have come upon two of her neighbours talking, to have told them she knew they were talking about her, and then to have reconstructed their conversation with enough fidelity to convince the she was possessed of “preternatural” knowledge (something Mrs. Sarah Winchester used to also have the ability to do, and a reason she dismissed so many staff members for gossiping). Nonetheless, Mrs. Hibbins was brought to trail in 1655, and the jury brought her in guilty. However, the presiding magistrates refused to accept the verdict, apparently believing her innocent, and their refusal automatically threw the case into the General Court. There again she was found guilty; the governor pronounced the required sentence of death; and in 1656 she was executed. We have seen that some of the magistrates were not satisfied of her guilt, and apparently the same were true of some of the clergy. To masses of people, death was a dread mystery; beyond was uncertainty and gloom. These people were seeking for truth, and to learn them the Spirit of Inspiration was imparted. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
A surviving letter tells us that the Reverend John Norton “once said at his own table” before the Reverend John Wilson and others that Mistress Hibbins “was hanged for a witch only for having more with than her neighbours. It was his very expression; she having, as he explained it, unhappily guessed that two of her persecutors, whom she saw talking in the street, were talking of her—which cost her her life, not withstanding all he could do to the contrary, as he himself told us.” The Hibbins case shows how slender and how circumstantial were the grounds necessary to bring an accusation of witchcraft against anyone with a reputation for malice. It also shows that the popular elements in society (the jury, and the people’s representatives in the General Court) were far more ready to believe in witchcraft than the leaders of society (the magistrates and ministers.) This latter conclusion is reinforced by the fact that before 1692 there were far more acquittals than convictions in New England; there were more people willing to charge their neighbours with witchcraft than magistrates willing to convict them. A case which took place in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1662 is known in rather more detail than that of Mrs. Hibbins. Anne Cole, “a person esteemed pious,” was taken with “strange fits.” As with the Salem girls, the fits were both violent and public. Extremely violent bodily motions she many times had, even to the hazard of her life in the apprehensions of those that saw them. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
And very often great disturbances was given in the public worship of God by her and two other women who had also strange fits. Once in especial, on a day of prayer kept on that account, the motion and noised of the afflicted was so terrible that a godly person fainted under the appearance of it. In some of her fits strange voices came from her, voices that were clearly not her own. Such voices are now known to be a consequence of multiple personality, which is the extreme form of the hysterical fugue. However, the seventeenth-century observers of Anne Cole judged them to be the voices of demons who had entered into her, and that judgment was sensible enough in view of the fact that the voices seemed to be plotting ways in which Anne Cole might be further afflicted. Eventually, seeming to realize that they were being overheard, one of the voices announced, “‘Let us confound her language, [that] she may tell no more tales.’” For some time nothing came from her but “unintelligible mutterings”; then the conversation resumed in a Dutch accent, and this time names were mentioned, names of the witches who were responsible for these afflictions. When Anne Cole was out of her fits, she “knew nothing of those things that were spoken by her” during them, but she was understandably distressed to find she had been speaking things which, to the best of her knowledge, had never been in her mind; it was a “matter of great affliction to her.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
It must have been afflicting to the local magistrates as well; they now had accusations of witchcraft against several persons, but the source of these accusations was not Anne Cole; it was a committee of demons who had infested her. The magistrates investigated further, and imprisoned some (and perhaps all) of the accused on suspicion of witchcraft One of these, a “lewd, ignorant, considerably aged woman” named Rebecca Greensmith sent for the two clergymen who has taken down in writing the demonic conversation issuing from the mouth of Anne Cole. She had the transcript read to er, and then “forthwith and freely confessed those things to be true,” confirming the statement of the voiced “that she (and other persons named in the discourse) had familiarity with the Devil.” She confessed to a number of other things as well, including “that the Devil has frequent use of her body with much seeming (but indeed horrible, hellish) delight to her.” Reports of copulation with demons (including the unpleasantness of the experience) are common in the literature of Continental witchcraft, but this is one of the few known cases in New England. What is involved is apparently an erotic fit in which the woman actually goes through the motions of copulation and achieves a climax; similar fits have been observed in mental patients in the twenty-first century. Thus it appears that in the case of Anne Cole the confessor as well as the afflicted person was an hysteric. This pattern we shall see again at Salem. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Rebecca Greensmith was hanged in 1663. So was her husband Nathaniel, although we do not know the grounds for his conviction; according to Increase Mather he did not confess. “Most” of the other persons accused by the demonic voices “made their escape into another part of the country.” What happened to the others we do not know, but they were apparently not executed. And since at least one of those who made her escape had at first been imprisoned in suspicion of witchcraft (Judith Varlet, a relative of Governor Peter Stuyvesant of New York), it can be assumed that the authorities were reluctant to press the matter further. The evidence they had was, after all, highly suspect, coming from demonic voices on the one hand and a confessed witch on the other. (Confessors are a group of women with the power to make anyone they touch love them. This love, however, is more aptly described as a soul-destroying obsession whose objective is pleasing the Confessor in any way possible. Confessors were created by warlocks to travel Medieval lands and act as law enforcers. The Confessors could possess anyone and make them tell the truth in great detail. There were also a few male Confessors, but they became megalomanics and plunged the entire World into a dark age. As a result, after all the male Confessors were defeated and wiped out, the warlocks and female Confessors took up the tradition of killing all male Confessors shortly after birth.) In any event, after the “execution of some and escape of others” Anne Cole’s fits ceased, and did not return. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Twenty years later, in 1682, the Reverend John Whiting reported that “she yet remains maintaining her integrity.” This together with what the voices said, suggests that Anne Cole’s fits probably were caused by her fear of witchcraft and cured by the removal of the fear. A few other cases are remarkable for a number of reasons, one of them being the exemplary thoroughness with which the symptoms of the affiliated persons are described, which makes it possible to say without question that these were pathological cases of hysteria. The first took place in Groton, Massachusetts, in 1671-1671 and was recorded by the Reverend Samuel Willard, then minister of Groton (during the Salem trials he was a member of the Boston Clergy). On 30 October 1671, Elizabeth Knapp began to behave strangely: “In the evening, a little before she went to bed, sitting by the fire she cried out, ‘Oh! My legs!’ and clapped her hands on them; immediately, ‘Oh! My breast!’ and removed her hands thither; and forthwith, ‘Oh! I am strangled’ and put her hands on her throat.” The similarity to Janet’s twentieth-century description of the onset of a typical hysterical fit is unmistakable; it starts, he writes “with a pain or a strange sensation situated at such or such a point of the body…[It] often begins in the lower part of the abdomen [and] seems to ascend and to spread to other organs. For instance, it very often spreads to the epigastrium, to the breast, then to the throat. There it assumes rather an interesting form, which was for a very long time considered as quite characteristic of hysteria. The patient has the sensation of too big an object, as it were, a ball, rising in her throat and choking her.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
The chocking sensation we shall find over and over again; it is the bolus hystericus and is related to the “lump in the throat” felt by normal people in moments of extreme stress. The normal person, like the hysteric, tries to relieve it by swallowing; this is why the comic-strip artist has one’s characters say “Gulp” when they are in trouble. The choking sensations in the throat was followed by “fits in which she was violent in bodily motions, leapings, strainings and strange agitations, scarce to be held in bound by the strength of three or four; violent also in roarings and screamings.” The fits continued until 15 January 1692, the date of Willard’s writings. Several of the details he recorded are worth noting. On 15 November, “her tongue was for many hours together drawn into a semicircle up to the roof of her mouth, and not to be removed, for some tried with the fingers to do it.” On 17 December her tongue was drawn “out of her mouth most frightfully, to an extraordinary length and greatness.” Devils appeared to her, and witches; “Oh,” she cried to one of them, “you are a rouge.” On 29 November she had a particularly grotesque hallucination, when she believed a witch in the shape of a dog with a woman’s head was strangling her. The hallucinations and the woman’s sufferings were terrifyingly convincing; Willard noted that when she thought the witch was strangling her, “she did often times seem to our apprehension as of she would forthwith be strangled.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Elizabeth Knapp’s case is strikingly similar to that of Ler—one of the best-known cases of J.-M. Charcot, the nineteenth-century psychologist. Her fits, he wrote, “are characterized in the first stage by epileptiform and tetaniform convulsions; after this come great gesticulations of a voluntary character, in which the patient, assuming the most frightful postures, reminds one of the attitudes which history assigns to the demoniacs…At this stage of the attack, se is a prey to delirium, and raves evidently of the events which seem to have determined her first seizures. She hurls furious invectives against imaginary individuals, crying out, “villains! robbers! brigands! fire! fire! O, the dogs! I’m bitten!”—Reminiscences, doubtless, of the emotions experienced in her youth.” When the convulsive portion of Ler—’s attack was over other symptoms usually followed, including “hallucination of vision: the patient beholds horrible animals, skeletons, and specters” and “lastly, a more or less marked permanent contracture of the tongue.” Charcot drew this contracture of the tongue; it is quite appalling. Willard was not exaggerating in calling it frightful. Elizabeth Knapp displayed still other symptoms are identifiably hysterical, including loss of speech on some occasions, and on others speaking in voices other than her own; once “she barked like a dog, and bleated like a calf.” Willard noted that her fits did not seem to do her any permanent physical damage: “She hath no ways in body or strength by all these fits, though so dreadful, but gathered flesh exceedingly, and hath her natural strength when her fits are off, for the most part.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
This is typical; as Janet remarks, the “hysteric patient, after howling for several hours, feels rather comfortable; she experiences, as it were, a relaxation, and declares she is out of her fits has often raised the question of whether they are genuine. Willard thought they must be, if only for their violence: “such a strength is beyond the force of dissimulation.” (It should be noted that hysterics are not always well in the intervals between their fits. Some, for instance, lose their appetites and starve themselves. It is probably such cases who are referred to in the statue of James I against witchcraft as being “wasted, consumed, pined.) On 1 November, Elizabeth Knapp named one of her neighbour as the probable cause of her afflictions. The accused woman was sent for, and entered the house while the afflicted girl was in a fit. Her eyes were closed, as they usually were in her fits, yet she could distinguish this neighbour’s touch from all others, “though no voice was uttered.” That would have been quite enough to convict the neighbour in many witchcraft cases. However, fortunately she was permitted to pray with the afflicted girl, and at the conclusions Miss Knapp “confessed that she believed Satan had deluded her.” Willian was happy that “God was pleased to vindicate the case and justify the innocent,” and reported that Miss Knapp never again complained of any “apparition or disturbance from this neighbour.” Instead, she turned to accusing the Devil, who had, she said, been offering her a covenant for several years, a covenant she had frequently been tempted to sign. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
The dark shadow that Satan has cast over the World grew deeper and deeper. About a month later Miss Knapp accused another person of witchcraft, this time during a period of hallucinations. Her father brought the woman to the house, and Willard, who had been asked to be present, noted that her fit became particularly violent when this woman entered. However, Willard, wrote, “we made nothing of it” since her fits had been as violent on other occasions. Instead they inquired carefully into the mater and found “two evident and clear mistakes” in the accusation. This was enough to exonerate the second accused woman. Satan had implanted this principle. Wherever it was held, people had no barrier against sin. Elizabeth Knapp was still having fits when Willard wrote about her, and all he could be certain of was that “she is an object of pity.” He did not think she was bewitched, but he did believe she was possessed (that is, that Devils has entered into her). This remained his opinion (and that of most others) when the case was remembered in 1692. He also believed that the girl’s terrible afflictions provided an occasion for the community to examine its collective conscience. Therefore he admonished his congregation in a sermon, “Let us all examine by this Providence [id est, this event] what sins they have been, that have given Satan so much footing in this poor place.” Satan was seeking to shut out from humans a knowledge of God, to turn their attention from the temple of God, and to establish His own kingdom. His strife for supremacy had seemed to be almost wholly successful. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
They robbed God of His glory, and defrauded the World by a counterfeit of the gospel. They had refused to surrender themselves to God for the salvation of the World, and they became agents of Satan for its destruction. They were doing the work Satan designed them to do, taking a course to misrepresent the character of God, and cause the World to look upon Him as a tyrant. The convulsive fits which played so prominent a part in most witchcraft cases, and continued to be one of the most common symptoms of hysteria through the earl years of the twentieth century, have no become relatively rare in Western civilization. D.W. Abse reports fits occurred in only six out of one hundred and sixty-one cases of hysteria treated at a British military hospital during World War II, but that they were the most common symptom among Indian Army hysterics treated at Delhi during the same period. There are a number of possible explanations for this curious fact. Hysterics are notoriously suggestible, so the change may be ascribable to nothing more than the refusal of our culture to give the hysterical fit the respectful and awed attention it used to command. In any case, it seems clear that abnormal behaviour varies with time and place just as normal behaviour does. However, since this particular variation occurred so recently, after the classic studies of hysteria had been completed, it is possible to identify the seventeenth-century Massachusetts fits for what they were. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Mr. William Wirt Winchester, while we were attending lectures, purchased three or four old houses in California, one of which was unoccupied. He resided in the country, and he proposed that he wanted his wife and myself to take up our abode in the untenanted house, so long as it should continue unlet; a move which we would accomplish the double end of settling us nearer alike to our lecture-rooms and to our amusements, and of relieving us from the weekly charge of rent for our lodgings. Our furniture was very scant—our whole equipage remarkably modest and primitive; and in short, our arrangements pretty nearly as simple as those of a bivouac. Mrs. Sarah Winchester’s new plan was, therefore, executed almost as soon as conceived. The front drawing-room was our sitting-room. I had the bedroom over it, and Mrs. Winchester had the back bedroom on the same floor, which nothing could have induced me to occupy. The house to begin with was an incomplete, three-story farm house with a basement. It was very old. Dated back to the sixteenth century, I believe. It had nothing modern about it. The agent who looked into the property titles for Mrs. Winchester told her it was originally sold, along with much other forfeited property in 1702; and it had belonged to John Conduit, whose wife was the niece of Sir Isaac Newton, a father of modern science, although keenly interested in the occult. How old it was then, I cannot say; but, at all events, in had seen years and changes enough to have contracted all the mysterious and saddened air, at once exciting and depressing, which belongs to most old mansions. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
There had been very little done in the way of modernizing details and, perhaps, it was better so; for there was something queer and by-gone in the very walls and ceilings—in the shape of doors and windows—in the odd diagonal site of the chimney-pieces—in the beams and ponderous cornices—not to mention the singular solidity of all the woodwork, from the bannisters to the window-frames, which hopelessly defined disguise, and would have emphatically proclaimed their antiquity through any conceivable amount of modern finery and varnish. An effort had, indeed, been made, to the extent of papering the drawing-rooms; but somehow, the paper looked raw and out of keeping. This woman said, old Judge Sir James Hales (who, having earned the reputation of a particularly ‘hanging judge’, ended by hanging himself, as the corner’s jury found, under an impulse of ‘temporary insanity’, with a child’s skipping-rope, over the massive old bannisters) resided there, entertaining good company, with fine venison and rare old port. In those halcyon days, the drawing-rooms were hung with gilded leather, and, I dare say, cut a good figure, for they were really spacious rooms. The bedrooms were wainscoted, but the front one was not gloomy; and in it the cosiness of antiquity quite overcame its somber associations. However, the back bedrooms, with its two queerly-placed melancholy windows, staring vacantly at the foot of the bed, and with the shadowy recess to be found in most old houses in Dublin, like a large ghostly closet, which, from congeniality of temperament, had amalgamated with the bedchamber, and dissolved the partition. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
At the night-time, this “alcove”—as our “maid” was wont to call it—had, in my eyes, a specially sinister and suggestive character. Mrs. Winchester’s distant and solitary candle glimmered vainly into its darkness. There it was always overlooking her—always itself impenetrable. However, this was only part of the effect. The whole room was, I cannot tell, how repulsive to me. There was, I supposed, in its proportions and features, a latent discord—a certain mysterious and indiscernible relation, which jarred indistinctly upon some secret sense of the fitting and the safe, and raised indefinable suspicious and apprehensions of the imagination. On the whole, as I began saying, nothing could have induced me to pass a night alone in it. We have not been very long in occupation of our respective chambers, when I began to complain of uneasy nights and disturbed sleep. I was, I suppose, the more impatient under this annoyance, as I was usually a sound sleeper, and by no means prone to nightmares. It was not, however, my destiny, instead of enjoying my customary repose, every night to “sup full of horrors.” After a preliminary course of disagreeable and frightful dreams, my troubles took a definite form, and the same vision, without an appreciable variation in a single detail, visited me at least (on average) every second night of the week. Now, this dream, nightmare, or infernal illusion—which you please—of which I was the miserable port, was on this wise: I saw, or thought I saw, with the most abominable distinctness although at the time in profound darkness, every article of furniture and accidental arrangement of the chamber in which I lay. This, as you know, is incidental to ordinary nightmare. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Well, while in this clairvoyant condition, which seemed but the lighting up of the theatre in which was to be exhibited the monotonous tableau of horror, which made my nights insupportable, my attention invariably became, I know not why, fixed upon the windows opposite the foot of my bed; and, uniformly with the same effect, a sense of dreadful anticipation always took slow but sure possession of me. I became somehow conscious of a sort of horrid but undefined preparation going forward in some unknown quarter, and by some unknown agency, for my torment; and, after an interval, which always seemed to me of the same length, a picture suddenly flew up the window, where it remained fixed, as if by an electrical attraction, and my discipline of horror then commenced, to last perhaps for hours. The picture this mysteriously glued to the window-panes, was the portrait of an old man, in crimson flowered silk dressing-gown, the folds of which I could now describe, with countenance embodying a strange mixture of intellect, sensuality, and power, but withal sinister and full of malignant omen. His nose was hooked, like the beak of a vulture; his eyes large, grey, and prominent and lighted up with a more than mortal cruelty and coldness. The features were surmounted by a crimson velvet cap, the hair that peeped from under which was white with age, while the eyebrows retained their original blackness. Well I remember every line, hue, and shadow of that stony countenance, and well I may! The gaze of this hellish visage was fixed upon me, and mine returned it with the inexplicable fascination of nightmare, for what appeared to me to be hours of agony. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
At last—the cock he crew, away then flew, the fiend who had enslaved me through the awful watches of the night and, harassed and nervous, I rose to the duties of the day. I had—I cannot say exactly why, but it may have been from the exquisite anguish and profound impressions of unearthly horror, with which this strange phantasmagoria was associated—an insurmountable antipathy to describing the exact nature of my nightly troubles to Mrs. Winchester. Generally, however, I told her I was haunted by abominable dreams; and, true to the imputed materialism of medicine, we put our heads together to dispel my horrors, not by exorcism, but by a tonic Vin Mariani. However, the evil spirit, who enthralled my senses in the shape of that portrait, may have been just as near me, just as energetic, just as malignant, though I saw him not. Everybody knows how contagious is fear of all sort, but more especially that particular kind of fear under which poor Mrs. Winchester was at that moment labouring. I would not have heard, nor I believe would she have recapitulated, just at that moment, for half the World, the details of the hideous vision which had so unmanned her. “I was sitting in my room,” said Mrs. Winchester “by my fireplace, the door locked when I heard a step on the flight of stairs descending from the attics. It was two o’ clock, and the streets were as silent as a churchyard—the sounds were, therefore, perfectly distinct. There was slow, heavy tread, characterized by the emphasis and deliberation of age, descending by the narrow staircase from above; and, what made the sound more singular, it was plain that the feet which produced it were perfectly bare measuring a descent with something between a pound and a flop, very ugly to hear. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
“I knew quite well that you and my attendant had gone away many hours before, and that nobody but myself has any business in the house. It was quite plain also that the person who was coming down stairs had no intention whatever of concealing his movements; but, on the contrary, appeared disposed to make even more noise, and proceed more deliberately, than was at all necessary. When the step reached the foot of the stairs outside my room, it seemed to stop; and I expected every moment to see my door open spontaneously, and give admission to soul killed by the Winchester rifle. I was, however, relieved in a few second by hearing the descent renewed, just in the same manner, upon the stair case leading down to the drawing-rooms, and thence, after another pause, down the next flight, and so on to the hall, whence I heard no more. Now, by the time the sound had ceased, I was wound up, as they say, to a very unpleasant pitch of excitement. I listened, but there was not a stir. I screw up my courage to a decisive experiment—opened my door, and in a stentorian voice bawled over the banisters, ‘Who’s there?’ There was no answer but the ringing of my own voice through the empty old house—no renewal of the movement; nothing short, to give my unpleasant sensations a definite direction. There is, I think, something most disagreeably disenchanting in the sound of one’s own voice under such circumstances, exerted in solitude, and in vain. It redoubled my sense of isolation, and my misgivings increased on perceiving that the door, which I certainly thought I had left open, was closed behind me. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
“In a vague alarm, lest my retreat should be cut off, I got again into my room as quickly as I could, where I remained in a state of imaginary blockade, and very uncomfortable indeed, till morning. Next night brought no return of my barefooted fellow-lodger; but the night following, being in my bed, and in the dark—somewhere, I supposed, about the same hour as before, I distinctly heard the old fellow again descending from the garrets. This time I jumped out of bed, clutched the poker as I passed the expiring fire, and in a moment was upon the lobby. The sound had ceased by this time—the dark and chill were discouraging; and, guess my horror, when I saw, or thought I saw, a monster, whether in the shape of a man or a bear I could not say, standing, with its back to the wall, on the lobby, facing me, with a pair of great greenish eyes shinning dimly out. Now, I must be frank, and confess that the cupboard which displayed our plates and cups stood just there, though at that moment I did not recollect it. At the same time I must never could satisfy myself that I was made the dupe of my own fancy in this matter; for this apparition, after one or two shiftings of shape, as if in the act of incipient transformation, began, as it seemed on second thoughts, to advance upon me in its original form. From an instinct of terror rather than of courage, I hurled the poker, with all my force, at its head; and to the music of a horrid crash made my way into my room, and double-locked the door. Then, in a minute more, I heard the horrid bare feet walk down the stairs, till the sound ceased in the halls, as on the former occasion. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“In a vague alarm, lest my retreat should be cut off, I got again into my room as quickly as I could, where I remained in a state of imaginary blockade, and very uncomfortable indeed, till morning. Next night brought no return of my barefooted fellow-lodger; but the night following, being in my bed, and in the dark—somewhere, I supposed, about the same hour as before, I distinctly heard the old fellow again descending from the garrets. This time I jumped out of bed, clutched the poker as I passed the expiring fire, and in a moment was upon the lobby. The sound had ceased by this time—the dark and chill were discouraging; and, guess my horror, when I saw, or thought I saw, a monster, whether in the shape of a man or a bear I could not say, standing, with its back to the wall, on the lobby, facing me, with a pair of great greenish eyes shinning dimly out. Now, I must be frank, and confess that the cupboard which displayed our plates and cups stood just there, though at that moment I did not recollect it. At the same time I must never could satisfy myself that I was made the dupe of my own fancy in this matter; for this apparition, after one or two shiftings of shape, as if in the act of incipient transformation, began, as it seemed on second thoughts, to advance upon me in its original form. From an instinct of terror rather than of courage, I hurled the poker, with all my force, at its head; and to the music of a horrid crash made my way into my room, and double-locked the door. Then, in a minute more, I heard the horrid bare feet walk down the stairs, till the sound ceased in the halls, as on the former occasion. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“If the apparition of the night before was an ocular delusion of my fancy sporting with the dark outlines of our cupboard, and if tis horrid eyes were nothing but a pair of inverted teacups, I had, at all events, the satisfaction of having launched the poker with admirable effect, and in true ‘fancy’ phrase, ‘knocked its two daylights into one,’ as the commingled fragments of my tea-service testified. I did my best to gather comfort and courage from these evidences; but it would not do. And then what could I say of those horrid bare feet, and the regular tramp, tramp, tramp, which measured the distance of the entire staircase through the solitude of my haunted dwelling, and at an hour when no good influence was stirring? Confound it!—the whole affair was abominable. I was out of spirits, and dreaded the approach of night. It came, ushered ominously in with a thunderstorm and dull torrents of depressing rain. Earlier than usual the streets grew silent; and by twelve o’clock nothing but the comfortless patterning of the rain was to be heard. I made myself as snug as I could. I lighted two candles instead of one. I forswore bed, and held myself in readiness for a sally, candle in hand; for, coute qui coute, I was resolved to see the being, if visible at all, who troubled the nightly stillness of my mansion. I was fidgety and nervous and, tried in vain to interest myself with my books. I walked up and down my room, whistling in turn martial and hilarious music, and listening ever and anon for the dreaded noise.” #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Do not Grieve. Anything you lose comes around in another form. The child weaned from mother’s milk now drinks cranberry juice. God’s joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box, from cell to cell. As rainwater, down into flowerbed. As roses, up from ground. Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish, now a cliff covered with vines, now a horse being saddled. It hides within these, till one day it cracks them open. There is the light gold of wheat in the sun, and the gold of bread made from wheat. I have neither, I am only talking about them as a town in the desert looks up to stars on a clear night. The Son of God, looking upon the World, beheld suffering and misery. With pity He saw how humans had become victims of satanic cruelty. He looked with compassion upon those who were being corrupted, murdered, and lost. They had chosen a ruler who chained them to his carriage as captives. God’s glory pervades the Universe; His ministering Angels inquire of one another: Where is the place of His glory? In response they give praise: Praised be the glory of the Lord from His Heavenly abode. From His Heavenly abode may He turn in mercy and bestow grace unto the people who, reciting the Shema evening and morning, twice daily, proclaim in love the unity of His name, saying: Hear, O America: the Lord our God, the Lord is One. He is our God; He is our Father, our sovereign and our Deliverer. In His mercy He will make known in presence of all the living that He will be your God. “I am the Lord your God.” As it is written in holy Scripture: The Lord shall reign forever; Thy God, O America, shall be Sovereign unto all generations. Hallelujah. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Winchester Mystery House
Ghostly tales are bountiful at Sarah Winchester’s Mystery House. What have you experienced? Photos are encouraged!
The Winchester mansion is 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
“Whoever shadows my every move will not lose me in the dark.” At least that is what Christ says, or what the Evangelist John heard Him say (8.12). He tells us to walk on, through the darkness, with Christ as our only torch. That way, when we mayn’t have gained a step, but we won’t have lost one either. And on into the day we must pursue with dogged tread the life of Jesus Christ. Is this the secret to Mrs. Winchester’s 7-11 staircase?
This is the Beginning, When People Will Be Opening their Eyes!
Nothing is quite as funny as the unintended humour of reality. The original position is designed to be a fair and impartial point of view that is to be adopted in our reasoning about fundamental principles of justice. In taking up this point of view, we are imagining ourselves in the position of free and equal persons who jointly agree upon and commit themselves to the principles of social and political justice. The main distinguishing feature of the original position is “the veil of ignorance”: to insure impartiality of judgment, the parties are deprived of all knowledge of their personal characteristics and social and historical circumstances. The two principles of justice guarantee the equal basic rights and liberties needed to secure the fundamental interests of free and equal citizens and to pursue a wide range of conceptions of good. The second principle provides fair equality of education and employment opportunities enabling all to fairly compete for powers and positions of office; and it secures for all a guaranteed minimum of the all-purpose means (including income and wealth) that individuals need to pursue their interests and to maintain their self-respect as free and equal persons. Persons in the original position give pride of place to their interest in the equal freedoms. The intuitive idea behind the precedence of liberty is that if the persons in the original position assume that their basic liberties can be effectively exercised, they will not exchange a lesser liberty for an improvement in the economic well-being, at least not once a certain level of wealth has been attained. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
It is only when social conditions do not allow the effective establishment of these rights that one can acknowledge their restriction. Only if it is necessary to enhance the quality of civilization so that in due course the equal freedoms can be enjoyed by all can the denial of equal liberty can be accepted. The lexical ordering of the two principles is the long-run tendency of the general conception of justice consistently pursued under reasonably favourable conditions. Eventually there comes a time in the history of a well-ordered society beyond which the special form of the two principles takes over and holds from then on. What must be shown then is the rationality of this ranking from the standpoint of the parties in the original position. Clearly the conception of goodness as rationality and the principles of moral psychology have a part in answering this question. Now the basis for the priority of liberty is roughly as follows: as the conditions of civilization improve, the marginal significance for our god of further economic and social advantages diminishes relative to their interests of liberty, which become stronger as the conditions for the exercise of the equal freedoms are more fully realized. Beyond some point it becomes and then remains irrational from the standpoint of the original position to acknowledge a lesser liberty for the sake of greater material means and amenities of office. This is so because as the general level of well-being raises (as indicated by the index of primary goods the less favoured can expect) only the less urgent wants remain to be met by further advances, at least insofar as human’s wants are not largely created by institutions and social forms. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
At the same time the obstacles to the exercise of the equal liberties decline and a growing insistence upon the right to pursue our spiritual and cultural interests assert itself. Increasingly it becomes more important to secure the free internal life of the various communities of interests in which persons and groups seek to achieve, in modes of social union consistent with equal liberty, the ends and excellences to which they are drawn. In addition humans come to aspire to some control over the laws and rules that regulate their association, either by directly taking part themselves in its affairs or indirectly through representatives with whom they are affiliated by ties of culture and social situation. To be sure, it is not the case that when the priority of liberty holds, all material wants are satisfied. Rather these desires are not so compelling as to make it rational for the persons in the original position to agree to satisfy them by accepting a less than equal freedom. The account of the good enables the parties to work out a hierarchy among their several interests and to note which kinds of ends should be regulative in their rational plans of life. Until the basic wants of individuals can be fulfilled, the relative urgency of their interest in liberty cannot be firmly decided in advance. It will depend on the claims of the least favoured as seen from the constitutional and legislative stages. However, under favourable circumstances the fundamental interest in determining our plan of life eventually assumes a prior place. One reason for this I have discussed in connection with liberty of conscience and freedom of thought. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
And a second reason is the central place of the primary good of self-respect and the desire of human beings to express their nature in a free social union with others. Thus the desire for liberty is the chief regulative interest that the parties must suppose they all will have in common in due course. The veil of ignorance forces them to abstract from the particulars of their plans of life, thereby leading to this conclusion. The serial ordering of the two principles then follows. Now it might seem that even though the desire for an absolute increase in economic advantages declines, human’s concern for their relative place in the distribution of wealth will persist. In fact, if we suppose that everyone wishes a greater proportionate share, the result could be a growing desire for material abundance all the same. Since each strives for an end that cannot be collectively attained, society might conceivably become more and more preoccupied with raising productivity and improving economic efficiency. And these objectives might become so dominant as to undermine the precedence of liberty. Some have objected to the tendency to equality on precisely this ground, that it is thought to arouse in individuals an obsession with their relative share of social wealth. However, while it is true that in a well-ordered society there is most likely a trend to greater equality, its members take little interest in their relative position as such. As we have seen, they are not much affected by envy and jealousy, and for the most part they do what seems best to them as judged by their own plan of life without being dismayed by the greater amenities and enjoyments of others. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Thus there are no strong psychological propensities prompting them to curtail their liberty for the sake of greater absolute or relative economic welfare. The desire for a higher relative place in the distribution of material means should be sufficiently weak that the priority of liberty is not affected. Of course, it does not follow that in a just society everyone is unconcerned with matters of status. The account of self-respect as perhaps the main primary good has stressed the great significance of how we think others value us. However, in a well-ordered society the need for status is met by the public recognition of just institutions, together with the full and diverse internal life of the many free communities of interest that equal liberty allows. The basis for self-esteem in a just society is not then one’s income share but the publicly affirmed distribution of fundamental rights and liberties. And this distribution being equal, everyone has a similar and secure status when they meet to conduct the common affairs of the wider society. No one is inclined to look beyond the constitutional affirmation of equality for further political ways of securing one’s status. No one is inclined to look beyond the constitutional affirmation of equality for further political position from a strategic point of view. It would also have the effect of publicly establishing their inferiority as defined by the basic structure of society. This subordinate ranking in the public forum experienced in the attempt to take part in political and economic life, and felt in dealing with those who have a greater liberty, would indeed be humiliating and destructive of self-esteem. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
And so by acquiescing in a less than equal liberty one might lose on both counts. This is particularly likely to be true as society becomes more just, since equal rights and public attitudes of mutual respect have an essential place in maintaining a political balance and in assuring citizens of their own worth. Thus while the social and economic differences between the various sectors of society, the noncomparing groups as we may think of them, are not likely to generate animosity, the hardships arising from political and civic inequality, and from culture and ethnic discrimination, cannot be easily accepted. When it is the position of equal citizenship that answers to the need for status, the precedence of equal liberties becomes all the more necessary. Having chosen a conception of justice that seeks to eliminate the significance of relative economic and social advantages as supports for human’s self-confidence, it is essential that the priority of liberty be firmly maintained. So for this reason too the parties are led to adopt a serial ordering of the two principles. In a well-ordered society then self-respect is secured by the public affirmation of the status of equal citizenship for all; the distribution of material means is left to take care of itself in accordance with the idea of pure procedural justice. Of course doing this assumes the requisite background institutions which narrow the range of inequalities so that excusable envy does not arise. Now this way of dealing with the problem of status has several noteworthy features which may be brought out as follows. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Suppose to the contrary that how one is valued by others depends upon one’s relative place in the distribution of income and wealth. In this case, having a higher status implies having more material means than a larger fraction of society. Thus not everyone can have the highest status, and to improve one person’s position is to lower that of someone else. Social cooperation to increase the conditions of self-respect is impossible. The means of status, so to speak, are fixed, and each human’s gain is another’s loss. Clearly this situation is a great misfortune. Persons are set at odds with one another in the pursuit of their self-esteem. Given the preeminence of this primary good, the parties in the original position surely do no want to find themselves so opposed. If not impossible, it would tend, for one thing, to make the good of social union difficult to achieve. Moreover, if the means of providing a good are indeed fixed and cannot be enlarged by cooperation, as mentioned in the discussion of envy, then justice seems to require equal shares, ceteris paribus. However, an equal division of all primary gods in irrational in view of the possibility of bettering everyone’s circumstances by accepting certain inequalities. Thus the best solution is to support the primary good of self-respect as far as possible by the assignment of the basic liberties that can indeed be made equal, defining the same status for all. At the same time, distributive justice as frequently understood, justice in the relative shares of material means, is relegated to a subordinate place. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Thus we arrive at another reason for factoring the social order into two parts as indicated by the principles of justice. While these principles permit inequalities in return for contributions that are for the benefit of all, the precedence of liberty entails equality in the social bases of esteem. Now it is quite possible that this idea cannot be carried through completely. To some extent human’s sense of their own worth may hinge upon their institutional position and their income share. If, however, the account of social envy and jealousy is sound, then, with the appropriate background arrangements, these inclinations should not be excessive, at least not when the priority of liberty is effectively upheld. However, if necessary, theoretically we can include self-respect in the primary goods, the index of which defines expectations. Then in applications of the difference principle this index can allows for the effects of excusable envy; the expectations of the less advantaged are lower the more severe these effects. Whether some adjustment for self-respect has to be made is best decided from the standpoint of the legislative stage where the parties have more information about social circumstances and the principle of political determination applies. Admittedly this problem is an unwelcome complication. Since simplicity it itself desirable in a public conception of justice, the conditions that elicit excusable envy should if possible be avoided. Expectations of the less advantaged can be understood so as to include the primary good of self-esteem. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Now some may want to object to this account of the priority of liberty that societies have other ways of affirming self-respect and of coping with envy and other disruptive inclinations. Thus in a feudal or in a caste system each person is believed to have one’s allotted station in the natural order of things. One’s comparisons are presumably confined to within one’s own estate or caste, these ranks becoming in effect so many noncomparing groups established independently of human control and sanctioned by religion and theology. Humans resign themselves to their position should it ever occur to them to question it; and since all may view themselves as assigned their vocation, everyone is held to be equally fated and equally noble in the eyes of providence. This conception of society solves the problem of social justice by eliminating in thought the circumstances that give rise to it. The basic structure is aid to be already determined, and not something for human beings to affect. On this view, it misconceives human’s place in the World to suppose that the social order should match principles which they would as equals consent to. Now to this idea, parties re to be guided in their choice of a conception of justice by a knowledge of the general facts about society. They take for granted than that institutions are not fixed but change overtime, altered by natural circumstances and the activities and conflicts of social groups. The constraints of nature are recognized, but humans are not powerless to shape their social arrangements. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
This assumption is likewise part of the background of the theory of justice. It follows that certain ways of dealing with envy and other aberrant propensities are closed to a well-ordered society. For example, it cannot keep them in check by promulgating false or unfounded beliefs. For our problem is how society should be arranged if it is to conform to principles that rational persons with true general beliefs would acknowledge in the original position. The publicity condition of requires the parties to assume that as members of society they will also know the general facts. The reasoning leading up to the initial agreement is to be accessible to public understanding. Of course, in working out what the requisite principles are, we must rely upon current knowledge as recognized by common sense and the existing scientific consensus. However, there is no reasonable alternative to doing this. We have to concede that as established beliefs change, it is possible that the principles of justice which it seems rational to choose may likewise change. Thus when the belief in a fixed natural order sanctioning a hierarchical society is abandoned, assuming here that this belief is not true, a tendency is set up that points in the direction of two principles of justice inertial order. The effective protection of the equal liberties becomes increasingly of first importance. When God wants to punish people, he gives the unjust leaders. So the answer is for the people to repent, turn from their ways, be converted, and seek God. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Some people only care about power and what they can do with power. May the Lord come down to protect our people. Democracy is not prescribed in the Bible, and Christians can and do live under other political systems. However, Christians can hardly fail to love democracy, because of all systems it best assures human dignity, the essence of our creation in God’s image. If a candidate wins by cheating, he or she can only be forgiven by God if one renounced the office one has obtained by fraud. There will be no divine forgiveness for this act of injustice without a previous decision to repay the damage done. However, apparently God’s forgiveness is unimportant to some ruling. When politicians rig the vote, it means all the passion for democracy and all the prayers of the people are meaningless. A government that assumes or maintains power through fraudulent means has no moral basis. If it does not of itself freely correct the evil it has inflicted on the people, then it is our serious moral obligation as a people to make it do so. Nonetheless, there is enormous sin attached to fratricidal strife. As moral outrage grows, it is important to study the Bible. God has ordained government to preserve order, but even a bad government is better than no government—which results in chaos. Government’s authority comes from God; it is a delegation. Therefore, governments—all governments—whether they acknowledge it or not, rule under God. However, does God give an unrestricted delegation? Certainly not. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
As Jesus Christ made clear with the coin, there are two realms—and Caesar is not to usurp what belongs to God. Any government that violates the law that is higher than its own is exceeding the legitimate authority God has granted. Government must always be respected, otherwise anarchy results; but the nation may attempt to venerate a culture or race. “When the state is made to serve the aspirations of race or nation instead of the cause of justice for all, it becomes a demonic state warranting resistance and rejection by the Christian faith,” reports Donald Bloesch, Crumbling Foundations (Grand Paris, Mich.: Zondervan, 1984), 183. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, “If government persistently and arbitrarily violates its assigned task, then the divine mandate lapses.” In that case the state becomes evil incarnate, as in Nazi Germany. Instead of acting as God’s instrument for preserving life and order, it does the reverse, destroying life and order. Then the church must resist. Though as argued earlier, the church’s primary function is evangelization and ministering to spiritual needs; as the principle visible manifestation of the Kingdom of God, it must be the conscience of society, the instrument of moral accountability. Richard Neuhaus eloquently wrote that “the church can and should subject to moral questioning every political agenda or cause, thus keeping the entirety of human politics under the transcendent judgement of God.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
The church’s first duty then would be to publicly expose the state’s immorality. The government should not be involved in corruption, oppression, the deprivation of civil liberties, nor the taking of innocent lives. As a second step the church should refuse to have any part in the state’s immorality. The church must take the next more severe measures of resistance lest its words be rendered hollow. The great evangelist Charles Finney refused communion to slave-holders. Others organized the underground railroad and rescued fugitive slaves from prison. Many ministers broke the law, were arrested, and some imprisoned. However, that state’s evil, even as egregious as slavery, does not give an unrestricted license to disobey any law; only the unjust law can properly be contested. While active resistance may succeed, as it did with slavery and the Civil-Rights Movement, it may not, however, be enough in the face of the raw power modern totalitarian states have achieved. So, when all peaceable means fail, what does the Christian do? Is revolution ever justified? Scottish reformation theologians like John Knox and Samuel Rutherford believed they could be, advocating the right of Christians to rise up against ungodly rulers. Many ministers in the colonies agreed as well; when they preached that the people had the authority to resist the king when the king violated God’s commands, they were setting the stage for the American Revolution. After dumping tea in Boston Harbour the next step of resistance was the musket. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
A Boston preacher said that for a people to “arise unanimously and resist their prince, even to dethrone him, is not criminal but a reasonable way of vindicating their liberties and just rights.” John Adams observed, “The revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people, a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations.” Some Christian activists today loosely call for a new American Revolution just as the young radical youth movements did in the sixties. However, history reveals, revolution most often results, after the bodies are buried, in one form of tyranny replacing another. G.K. Chesterton summed it up well: “The real case against revolution is this: That there always seems to be much more to be said against the old regime than in favour of the new regime.” So for the Christian, revolution is never to be lightly regarded. It is the most extreme form of disobedience. It could only be contemplated on the same justification as a just war; that is, that there must be a better alterative as a result of the revolution. Its advantages must outweigh the suffering, and the evil employed in the revolution must prevent a far greater evil than the status quo. This was the reasoning that caused Albert Einstein to abandon his pacifism in the face of a dictator’s rise to power. “To prevent the greater evil, it is necessary that the lesser—the hated military—be accepted for the time being,” Einstein contended. It was this reasoning the caused Bonhoeffer to patriciate in the plot to assassinate this dictator. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
For Christians to justify participation in revolution, therefore, they would have to be convinced that the state had become totally opposed to the purposes of God for the state and there was no other recourse to prevent massive evil. The Exodus from Egypt is often cited as a model for political action by liberation theologians, but they ignore the fact that in the Exodus, God did not overthrow the political system in Egypt. He extracted His own people from that system, taking them to Mount Sinai that they might worship Him. In the light of this, then, what about America? What lessons are to be drawn from it? We must be aware to prevent a regime’s refusal to allow free elections, the suspensions of civil liberties, the massive corruption of the governmental process, the trampling of human rights, and a leader’s own blasphemous, at times messianic pretensions, which give the church a mandate to act. The church should be mobilized to say no to evil. The first stage of an individua approach should be entirely biblical. By preaching repentance and conversion, one can encourage outbreaks of spiritual revival all across America. One should call for people to pray for their country. A courageous cardinal and ordinary citizens can open a crack of light in the dark canopy that envelops so much of planet Earth. Through peaceful actions and resistance to evil, the Kingdom of God will be made visible again. The Late Francis Schaeffer once wrote, “If here is no place for civil disobedience, then the government has been made autonomous, and as such, it has been put in the place of the living God.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
The belief that government is autonomous, the ultimate repository of power, the solution to all of society’s ills, is the greatest imposter of the twenty-first century. Christians and the church have no higher calling than to expose it by every legitimate means. To some people the great trouble about any argument for the Supernatural is simply the fact that argument should be needed at all. If so stupendous a thing exists, ought it not be obvious as the sun in the sky? It is not intolerable, and indeed incredible, that knowledge of the most basic of all Facts should be accessible only by wire-drawn reasonings for which the vast majority of humans have neither leisure nor capacity? I have great sympathy with this point of view. However, we must notice two things. When you are looking at a garden from a room upstairs it is obvious (once you think about it) that you are looking through a window. However, if it is the garden that interests you, you may look at it for a long time without thinking of the window. When you are reading a book, it is obvious (once you attend to it) that you are using your eyes: but unless your eyes begin to hurt you, or the book is a text book on optics, you may read all evening without once thinking of eyes. When we talk we are obviously using langue and grammar: and when we try to talk a foreign language we may be painfully aware of the fact. However, we are talking English, we do not notice it. When you shout from the top of the stirs, “I am in half a moment,” you are usually conscious that you have made the singular am agree with the singular I. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
There is indeed a story told about a Native American who, having learned several other languages, was asked to write a grammar of the language used by his own tribe. He replied, after some thought, that it had no grammar. The grammar he had sued all his life had escaped his notice all his life. He knew it (in once sense) so well that (in another sense) he did not know it existed. All these instances show that the fact, and through which alone you have access to all the other facts, may be precisely the one that is most easily forgotten—forgotten not because it is so remote or abstruse but because it is so near and so obvious. And that is exactly how the Supernatural has been forgotten. The Naturalists have been engaged in thinking about Nature. They have not attended to the fact that they were thinking. The moment one attends to this it is obvious that one’s own thinking cannot be merely a natural event, and that therefore something other than Nature exists. The Supernatural is not remote and abstruse: it is a matter f daily and hourly experience, as intimate as breathing. Denial of it depends on a certain absent-mindedness. However, this absent-mindedness is in on way surprising. You do not need—indeed you do not wish—to be always thinking about windows when you are looking at gardens or always thinking about eyes when you are reading. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
In the same way the proper procedure for all limited and particular inquiries is to ignore the fact of your own thinking, and concentrate on the object. It is only when you stand back from particular inquiries and try to form a complete philosophy that you must take it into account. For a complete philosophy must get in all the facts. In it you turn away from specialized or truncated thought to total thought: and one of the facts total thought must think about is Thinking itself. There is thus a tendency in the study of Nature to make us forget the most obvious first of all. And since the Sixteenth Century, when Science was born, the minds of humans have been increasingly turned outward, to know Nature and to master her. They have been increasingly engaged on those specialized inquiries for which truncated thought is the correct method. It is therefore not in the least astonishing that they should have forgotten the evidence for the Supernatural. The deeply ingrained habit of truncated thought—what we call the “scientific” habit of mind—was indeed certain to lead to Naturalism, unless this tendency were continually corrected from some other source. However, no other source was at hand, for during the same period humans of science were coming to be metaphysically and theologically uneducated. That brings me to the second consideration. The state of affairs in which ordinary people can discover the Supernatural only by abstruse reasoning is recent and, by historical standards, abnormal. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
All over the World, until quite modern times, the direct insight of the mystics and the reasonings of the philosopher percolated to the mass of the people by authority and tradition; they could be received by those who were no great reasoners themselves in the concrete form of myth and ritual and the whole pattern of life. In the conditions produced by a century or so of Naturalism, plain humans are being forced to bear burdens which plain humans were never expected to bear before. We must get the truth for ourselves or go without it. There may be two explanations for this. It might be that humanity, in rebelling against tradition and authority, has made a ghastly mistake; a mistake which will not be less fatal because the corruptions of those in authority rendered it very excusable. On the other hand, it may be that the Power which rules our species is at this moment carrying out a daring experiment. Could it be intended that the whole mass of the people should now move forward and occupy for themselves those heights which were once reserved only for the sages? Is the distinction between wise and simple to disappear because all are now expected to become wise? If so, our present blunderings would be but growing pains. However, let us make no mistake about our necessities. If we are content to go back and become humble plain humans obeying a tradition, well. If we are ready to climb and struggle on till we become sages ourselves, better still. However, the human who will neither obey wisdom in others nor adventure for her oneself is fatal. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
A society where the simple many obey the few seers can live: a society where all were seers could live even more fully. However, a society where the mass is still simple and the seers are no longer attended to can achieve only superficiality, baseness, ugliness, and in the end extinction. On or back we must go; to stay here is death. One other point that may have raised doubt or difficulty is the advanced reasons for believing that a supernatural element in present in every rational human. The presence of human rationality in the World is therefore a Miracle. Human Reason an Morality have been mentioned not as instances of Miracle (at least, not of the kind of Miracle you wanted to hear about) but as prods of the Supernatural: not in order to show that Nature ever is invaded but that there is a possible invader. Whether you choose to call the regular and familiar invasion by human Reason a Miracle or not is largely a matter of words. Its regularity—the fact that it regularly enters by the same door, human pleasures of the flesh—may incline you not to do so. It looks as if it were (so to speak) the very nature of Nature to suffer this invasion. However, then we might later find that it was the very nature of Nature to suffer Miracles in general. Fortunately the course of our argument will allow us to leave this question of terminology on one side. We are going to be concerned with other invasions of Nature—with what everyone would call Miracles. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Our question could, if you liked, be put in the form, “Does Supernature every produce particular results in space and time except through the instrumentality of human brains acting on human nerves and muscles?” I have said “particular results” because, on our view, Nature as a whole is herself one huge result of the Supernatural: God created her. God pierces her wherever there is a human mind. God presumably maintains her in existence. The question is whether He ever does anything else to her. Does God, beside all this, ever introduce into her events of which it would not be true to say, “This is simply the working out of the general character which God gave to Nature as a whole in creating her”? Such events are what are popularly called Miracles: and it will be in this sense only that the word Miracle will be used from now on. Do not stand at my grace and weep, I am not there. I do not sleep. I am a though rays of light that glow. I am the diamond glint on snow. I am the moonlight on the shinning sea. I am the gentle autumn rain. When you wake in the morning hush, I am the swift, uplifting rush or quiet birds in circling flight. I am the soft starlight at night. Do not stand at my grace and weep. I am not there. I do not sleep. Our God and God of our fathers, we thank Thee for Thy Torah, our priceless heritage. May the portion we have ready today inspire us to do Thy will and to seek further knowledge of Thy word. Thus our minds will be enriched and our lives endowed with purpose. May we take to heart Thy laws by which humans truly live. Happy are all who love Thee and delight in Thy commandments. Amen. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Mr. William Wirt Winchester Believes in the Sanctity of Property Because He is a Millionaire!
The fine women of Salem had some extracurricular activities that were hardly orthodox. Men have been burned at the stake for speaking ill of the Christian creed. People fought, not only verbally but physically, over their religious beliefs. Most people of that day used alcohol liquors. In almost every home liquor could be found. If a man was drunk it was not considered indecent, nor was his reputation injured by such conduct. Ministers, as well as doctors, were given a drink whenever they made a call at a home. It was almost impossible for them to make their daily calls without becoming intoxicated. Wine was generously served at religious ceremonies–marriages, christenings, funerals, and ordinations. Joseph Smith might have noted the conduct of members in a revival meeting. People would come from miles around to attend these meetings, camping in cabins and tents. At daybreak a trumpet was sounded to awaken the people. Services were held almost all day long, scarcely allowing time to eat, and giving no time at all for recreation and play. Singing and shouting during sermons was common. Men, women, children often fell to the floor in trances, sometimes barking like dogs. Now and then some would get what was know as the “jerks” and their heads would jerk back and forth rapidly. There seemed no way to stop these “jerks” though persons would run, dance, pray to escape them. As they listened to the thundering voice of the evangelist, many would cry and scream. Some ministers believed that the wilder the crowd became the more successful was the revival. Meantime, the FBI could find no DNA material from the site which matched the material of any current missing persons. Nevertheless, they were deeply courteous about having been called in, and they did confirm that the DNA of several persons was present in the evil morass and that the whole resembled an antiquated but gruesome crime scene. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Were these some of the things which were displeasing in the sight of the Lord? Were these people drawing near to God with their lips but keeping their hearts from them. Undoubtedly these were puzzling questions of fourteen-year-old Joseph Smith. Listening to the bird’s sing on this cool spring morning, I was reminded of how excitement used to fill this time of the year because it was near the end of a school year, and ever closer to graduation and adult life. Joy, sorrow, tears, lamentations, laughter—to all these music gives voice, but in such a way that we are transported from the World of unrest to the World of peace, and see reality in a new way, as if we were sitting by a mountain lake and contemplating hills and woods and clouds in the tranquil and fathomless water. The work and the worry that fell to my lot through the practical interest I took in organ building, made me sometimes wish that I had never troubled myself about it, but if I do not give it up, the reason is that the struggle for the good organ is to me a part of the struggle for truth. An organ is like a cow; one does not look at its horns so much as its milk. God is with us. The light of the knowledge of glory of God is seen in the face of Jesus Christ. From the days of eternity, the Lord Jesus Christ was one with the father; He was the image of God, the image of His greatness and majesty, the outshining of His glory. It was it was to manifest this glory that He came into our World. To this sin-darkened Earth He came to reveal the light of God’s love–to be God with us. Therefore it was prophesied of Him. By coming to dwell with us, Jesus Christ was to reveal God both to humans and to angels. He was the Word of God—God’s thoughts made audible. If we are not grateful to God, we can never see the greatness in our lives. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
When we start to appreciate, we will begin to elevate! Some people regard logical thinking as the deadest and driest of our activities and may therefore be repelled by the privileged position. However, logical thinking—Reasoning—is valid and no one can deny it (philosophically speaking). You cannot, as we already know, prove that there are no proofs. However, if you wish to regard all human ideals as illusions and all human love as biological by-products, you can. That is, you can do so without running into flat self-contradiction and nonsense. Whether you can do so without extreme umplausibility—without accepting a picture of things which no one really believes—is another matter. Besides reasoning about matters of fact, humans also make moral judgments—“I ought to do this”—“I ought not to do that”—“This is good”—“That is evil.” Two views have been held about moral judgments. Some people think that when we make them we are not using our Reason, but are employing some different power. Other people think that we make them by our Reason. I myself hold this second view. That is, I believe that the primary moral principles on which all others depend are rationally perceived. We “just see” that there is no reason why my neighbour’s happiness should be sacrificed to my own, as we “just see” that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another. If we cannot prove either axiom, that is not because the irrational but because they are self-evident and all proofs depend on them. Their intrinsic reasonableness shines by its own light. It is because all morality is based on such self-evident principles that we say to a human, when we would recall one to right conduct, “Be reasonable.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
However, this is by the way. For our present purposes it does not matter which of these two views you adopt. The important point is to notice that moral judgments raise the same sort of difficulty for Naturalism as any other thoughts. We always assume in discussions about morality, as in all other discussions, if they can be fully accounted for by some non-moral and non-rational cause, that the other human’s views are worthless. When two humans differ about good and evil we soon hear tis principle being brought into play. “Mr. William Wirt Winchester believes in the sanctity of property because he is a millionaire”—“He believes in Pacifism because he is a coward”—“He approves of corporal punishment because he is a necrophile.” Such taunts may often be untrue: but the mere fact that they are made by the one side, and hotly rebutted by the other, shows clearly what principle is being used. Neither side doubts that if they were true, they would decisive. No one (in real life) pays attention to any oral judgment which can be shown to spring from non-moral and non-rational causes. The Freudian and the Marxist attack traditional morality precisely on this ground—and with wide success. All humans accept the principle. However, of course, what discredits particular moral judgments must equally discredit moral judgments as a whole. If that fact that humans have such ideas as ought and ought not at all can be fully explained by irrational and non-moral causes, then those ideas are an illusion. The Naturalist is ready to explain how the illusion arose. Chemical conditions produce life. Life, under the influence of natural selection, produces consciousness. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
Conscious organisms which behave in one way live longer than those which behave in another. Living longer, they are more likely to have offspring. Inheritance, and sometimes teaching as well, pass on their mode of behaviour to their young. Thus in every species a pattern of behaviour is built up. In the human species conscious teaching plays a larger part in the building it up, and the tribe further strengthens it by killing individuals who to not conform. They also invent gods who are said to punish departures from it. Thus, in time, there comes to exist a strong human impulse to conform. However, since this impulse is often at variance with the other impulses, a mental conflict arises, and the human expresses it by saying “I want to do A but I ought to do B.” This account may (or may not) explain why humans do in fact make moral judgments. It does not explain how they could be right in making them. It excludes, indeed, the very possibility of their being right. For when humans say “I ought” they certainly think they are saying something, and something true about the nature of the proposed action, and not merely about their own feelings. However, if Naturalism is true, “I ought” is the same sort of statement as “I itch” or “I am going to be sick.” In real life when a human says “I ought” we may reply, “Yes. You are right. That is what you ought to do,” or else, “No. I think you are mistaken.: However, in a World of Naturalists (if Naturalist really remembered their philosophy out of school) the only sensible reply would be, “Oh, are you?” All moral judgments would be statements about the speaker’s feelings, mistaken by him for statements about something else (the real moral quality of actions) which does not exist. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
Such a doctrine, I have admitted, is not flatly self-contradictory. The Naturalist can, if one chooses, brazen it out. One can day, “Yes. I quite agree that there is no such thing as wrong and right. I admit that no moral judgment can be ‘true’ or ‘correct’ and, consequently, that no one system of morality can be better or worse than another. All ideas of good and evil are hallucinations—shadows cast on the outer World by the impulses which we have been conditioned to feel.” Indeed many Naturalists are delighted to say this. However, then they must stick to it; and fortunately (though in consistently) most real Naturalists do not. A moment after they have admitted that good and evil are illusion, you will find them exhorting us to work for posterity, to educate, revolutionise, liquidate, live and die for the good of the human race. A Naturalist like Mr. H. G. Wells spent a long life doing so with passionate eloquence and zeal. However, surely this is very odd? Just as all the books about spiral nebulae, atoms and cave men would really have led you to suppose that the Naturalists claimed to be about to know something, so all the books in which Naturalists tell us what we ought to do would really make you believe that they thought some ideas of good (their own, for example) to be somehow preferable to others. For they write with indignation like humans proclaiming what is good in itself and denouncing what is evil in itself, and not at all like humans recording that they personally like concentrated cranberry juice, but some people prefer sweetened cranberry juice. Yet if the “oughts” of Mr. Wells and, say, Franco are both equally the impulses which Nature has conditioned each to have and both tell us nothing about any objective right or wrong, whence is all the fervour? Do they remember while they are writing thus that when they tell us we “ought to make a better World” the words “ought” and “better” must, on their own showing, refer to an irrationally conditioned impulse which cannot be true or false any more than a vomit or a yawn? #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
My idea is that sometimes they do forget. That is their glory. Holding a philosophy which excludes humanity, they yet remain human. At the sight of injustice they throw all their Naturalism to the winds and speak like humans and like human of genius. They know far better than they think they know. However, at other times, I suspect, they are trusting in a supposed way of escape from their difficulty. It works—or seems to work—like this. They say to themselves, “Ah, yes. Morality”—or “bourgeois morality” or some such addition—“Morality is an illusion. However, we have found out what modes of behaviour we are pressing you to adopt. Pray, do not mistake us for moralists. We are under an entirely new management” …just as if this would help. It would help if only we grant, firstly, that life is better than death and, secondly, that we ought to care for the lives of our descendants as much as, or more than, for our own. And both these are moral judgments which have, like all others, been explained away by Naturalism. Of course, having been conditioned by Nature in a certain way, we do feel thus about life and about posterity. However, the Naturalists have cured us of mistaking these feelings for insights into what we once called “real value.” Now that I know that my impulse to serve posterity is just the same kind of thing as my fondness for cheese—now that its transcendental pretensions have been exposed for a sham—do you think I shall pay much attention to it? When it happens to be strong (and it has grown considerably weaker since you explained to me its real nature) I suppose I shall obey it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
When it is weak, I shall put my money into cheese. There can be no reason for trying to whip up and encourage the one impulse rather than the other. Not now that I know what they both are. The Naturalists must not destroy all my reverence for conscience on Monday and expect to find me still venerating it on Tuesday. There is no escape along these lines. If we are to continue to make moral judgments (and whatever we say we shall in fact continue) then we must believe that the conscience of humans is not a product of Nature. Only if it is an offshoot of some absolute “on its own” and is not a product of non-moral, non-rational Nature. We must acknowledge the supernatural source for our ideas of good and evil. In other worse, we now know something more about God. If you hold that moral judgment is a different thing from Reasoning you will express tis new knowledge by saying “We now know that God has at least one other attribute than rationality.” If, like me, you hold that moral judgment is a kind of Reasoning, then you will say, “We now know more about the Divine Reason.” And with this we are almost ready to begin our main argument. However, before doing so it will be well to pause of the consideration of some misgivings of misunderstandings which may have already arisen. Happiness is related to good and bad life events, but the impact is smaller than you might imagine. The reason for this is that happiness tends to come from within a person. Subjective well-being is affected by our goals, choices, emotions, values, and personality. The way you perceive, interpret, and manage events is as important as the nature of the events themselves. People who are good a dodging the life’s rough, unsparing treatment (hard knocks) tend to create their own “luck.” As a result, they are happier and seem to negotiate life’s demands more smoothly. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
It is tempting to think that wealth brings happiness. However, does it? To a small degree wealthier people are happier than poorer people. Yet, the overall association between money and happiness is weak. In fact, people who win lotteries are often less happy than they were before, and imagine how much unhappier ill begotten gain might make them. Instant riches usually bring new stresses into a person’s life that tend to cancel out any beneficial effects of wealth. Essentially, money can make it possible to buy the good things in life, but money cannot buy a good life. Happiness usually must become from other sources More educated people tend to be a little happier than the less educated. However, this is most likely just another way of saying that there is a small connection between wealth and happiness. Higher education generally results in higher income and more social status. As education levels rise, more parents ae intellectually equipped to assume some responsibilities now delegated to schools. With the move toward knowledge-based industy and the increase of leisure, we can anticipate a small but significant tendency for highly educated parents to pull their children at least partway out of the public education systems, offering them home instruction instead. This trend will be sharply encouraged by improvements in computer-assisted education, Cisco Telepresence, electronic video recording, holography and other technical fields. Parents and students might sign short-term “learning contracts” with the nearby school, committing them to teach-learn certain courses or course modules. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Students might continue going to school for social and athletic activities or for subjects they cannot learn on their own or under the tutelage of parents or family friends. Mobile education is also a proposal, which would take students out of the classroom not merely to observe but to participate in significant community activity. Curricula would be shaped by students and community groups as well as professional educators. The former United States Commissioner of Education, Harold Howe, II, has also suggested the reverse: bringing the community into the school so that local stores, beauty parlors, prints shops, architecture firms, be given free space in the schools in return for free lessons by the adults who run this. President Trump and other want to keep the schools and class rooms open, so children are being supervised by adults during work hours, which allows the parents to work and the kids to get an education. This reduces crime rates and helps increase income earnings in the future for students. School also serves as a nice social club for children where they make life long friends and memories. Also, school provides nutrition for students and proper nutrition helps to raise the IQ of students and keeps them healthy. Children also learn how to respect authority figures and learn that behaviour has bad consequences, whereas good behaviour and hard work is rewarded. People who live in the age of information must have new skills in three crucial areas: learning, relating, and choosing. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Students will need an enhanced human adaptability. By instructing students how to learn and unlearn and relearn, a powerful new dimension can be added to education. Tomorrow’s illiterate will not be the person who cannot read; one will be the human who has not learned how to learn. By speeding the turnover of people in our lives, we allow less time for trust to develop, less time for friendships to ripen. Thus we witness a search for ways to cut through the polite “public” behaviour directly to the sharing of intimacy. Presented with numerous alternatives, an individual chooses the one most compatible with one’s values. As overchoice deepens, the person who lacks a clear grasp of one’s own values (whatever these may be) is progressively disabled. Worse yet, students are seldom encouraged to analyze their own values and those of their teachers and peers. Millions pass through the education system without once having been forced to search out the contradictions in their own value systems, to probe their own life goals deeply, or even to discuss these matters candidly with adults and peers. Students hurry from class to class. Teachers and professors are harried and grow increasingly remote. Even the “bull session”—informal, extra-curricular discussion about pleasures of the flesh, politics, or religion that helps participants identify and clarify their values—grown less frequent and less intimate as transience rises. Married people report a greater happiness than people who are divorces, separated, or single. It could be that happiness people are simply more likely to get married than to remain sleepless in Seattle. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
However, better explanation for this association is that marriage partners can act as emotional and economic buffers against the hardships of life and a faithful marriage also helps keep people chaste in the eyes of the Lord, in most cases, as long as you are not sleeping with the enemy. There is a beneficial association between happiness and holding spiritual beliefs. Religious beliefs may add to feelings of purpose and meaning in life, resulting in greater happiness. Marriage between partners is a vital part of God’s plan. The Lord has said, “Whoso forbiddeth to marry is not ordained of God, for marriage is ordained of God unto man,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 49.15. Since the beginning, marriage has been a law of the gospel. Marriages are intended to last forever, not just for our mortal lives. Adam and Eve were married by God before there was any death in the World. They had an eternal marriage. They taught the law of eternal marriage to their children and their children’s children. As the years passed, wickedness entered the hearts of the people and the authority to perform this sacred ordinance was taken from the Earth. Through the Restoration of the gospel, eternal marriage has been restored to Earth. Many people in the World consider marriage to be only a social custom, a legal agreement between two people in love together. However, to Latter-day Saints, marriage is much more. Our exaltation depends on marriage, along with other principles and ordinances, such as faith, repentance, baptism, and receiving the gift of the holy Ghost. We believe that marriage is the most sacred relationship that can exist between two loving people. This sacred relationship affects our happiness now and in the eternities. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
Heavenly Father has given us the law of eternal marriage so we can become like Him. The Lord has said: “In the celestial glory there are three Heavens or degrees: and in order to obtain the highest, a human must enter into this order of the priesthood [meaning the new and everlasting covenant of marriage]; and if one does not, one cannot obtain it,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 131.1-3. Another possibility is that church membership may simply provide social support that softens that impact of life’s negative events. Incubation is the term applied to the sleeping in a temple—usually a special shrine or sanctuary used for healing and healing-dreams and dream-oracles alone—as a means of healing. This was practiced by ancient Greek and Babylonians. It was also frequently practiced in ancient Egypt at the temples of Isis and Serapis with effects similar to those of hypnotism. Five hundred years before Christ at the temple of Epidaurus, where the inspiring spirit or god was Aesculapius (the patron saint of modern medicine still), sick patients were put to sleep by priests at the foot of the Aesculapius’ statue. In many cases, they awoke suddenly cured. That the real effectiveness of incubation was not the work of a departed spirit but of Nature in the sleep state combined with the sufferer’s faith, was shown by the custom which still prevails in Greece. Here sleep in a temple of Aesculapius was simply replaced by sleep in the church associated with a Christian saint. Consider a cut had and how Nature at once sets to work to repair the damage. The anatomist tells us that the leucocytes in the blood automatically build a bridge of tissue over the wound’s surface. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
However, what orders the leucocytes to make the needed adjustments? What shows them how to make it? There is obviously an intelligence behind them, a mind within the body outside and apart from the conscious mind. There are miracles in Nature, and at this time, happenings to which science possesses no key. The human consciousness, for instance, is capable of manifesting power which contradict psychological knowledge, just as the human body is capable of manifesting phenomena which contradict medical knowledge. Both powers and phenomena may seem miraculous, but they really issue forth from the hidden laws of human’s own being. The process take pace in the dark only to us. This life-force, this invisible energy, is behind and within, around and above the physical body. Under certain circumstances its rea can be seen and traced out and its recuperative healing power drawn upon. It forms an aura, the etheric or vital body of light, but not the still more elusive and subtle divine body of Light nor the aura of various colours, the astral body. The stereotype of the crotchety antiquated person who id dissatisfied with everything is inaccurate. Life satisfaction and happiness generally do not decline with age. People are living longer and staying healthier, which has greatly delayed age-related declines. When declines do occur, mature people seem better able to cope with them. The hindrances which wrong bodily regimes put in one’s Quest are not only physical but also psychic, emotional, and mental. The condition of a human’s health, the medical state of one’s body, may contribute to one’s spiritual outlook, may enfeeble or enliven one’s faith. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
If union with the Overself-consciousness is to be achieved, or progress to that goal made, the body ought also to share in the benefits received. It too ought to be freer from discordant elements, organs, or operations. The wise student will recognize that one gains more than one loses by such sacrifices as this discipline of the body calls for. The benefits of resisting custom’s dominance are both disproportionate and durable, with a value so high as to make the discipline bearable and the sacrifices smaller. Wen one hears about these ascetic-sound regimes a chill sets in. However, what is it that rebels against them? It is the ego, the weakness of human will. Yet the rebellion is ill-founded, for the body is not tortured by being brought under control—only its perverted, exaggerated, or enslaving appetites suffer by doing so. The regimes themselves are sensible and are not fantastical fads. They are simply indication of the quester’s need to live more carefully than other people, and to change habits which are bad. They are hygienic recommendations offered to those who want to advance their spiritual journey more quickly. The bodily cells are so pervaded with toxic materials, clogged with them, so contaminated by them, that this purificatory work is an essential preliminary to the mystical work, proper for most aspirants except those who have the inborn capability of quickly rising to an intense concentration which frees the cells from such poisons. There is a mass of improperly digested, half-decayed food material lying in the intestines in a fermenting condition, while farther on here are accumulated deposits of petrified impurities on the lining of the colon and the membrane of the bowels. These substances are rejected by they body, which suffers by their presence but is unable to free itself from the without conscious and willing co-operation on the part of its owner. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
The body’s physiological processes are clogged and encumbered by them and its nervous system and brain organ polluted by the inferior blood brought to nourish them. To achieve this aim, a certain preparation as well as purification of the body is required. The spine must be cleared of adhesions, congestions, distortions, shrinkings, and nerve branch pressures. The tissues and blood have to be cleansed of the toxic material accumulated in them. The salvation which frees a human from enslavement to one’s lower nature is necessary and good, but it goes only part of the way to fulfilling one’s needs. One’s fleshly body also requires salvation. It ought to be freed from its poisoned, clogged, and unnatural condition. If it is saturated wit destructive acids or clogged wit decaying material, the body cannot respond so freely to the subtle forces, nor can the brain and nervous system respond so freely if they are stupefied by alcohol or drugs. As the consciousness evolves to a higher level, so the body it functions through must become more refined in quality and purified in nature. Mental equilibrium, deep prayer, cannot be attained without changing the habits which obstruct it. Even if the requisite purification of the body’s cells and blood from all toxins has been achieved, a human must still refrain from starting on those ways which caused toxemia. There is a common error that drugs and medicines are enough to keep us in good health. They are not. The only things that can do so are correct living habits, righting thinking habits, and proper eating habits. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
A knowledge of personal hygiene will keep us in better health than a hundred boxes of pills. We must learn to conform to the laws of hygienic living—mental and physical—if we want to achieve a sound mind in a should body. We may not break those laws with impunity, nor believe that because we have been spiritually healed once we are exempt from the always. The desire to gain purity must provide the power to follow the regimes needed for it. The sediment of egotism in the mind and animality in the flesh cannot be cleared out unless this desire grows strong and remains enduring. The mental courage to cast out those wrong habits of living which unenlightenment of spiritual hygiene has allowed one to pick up, must show itself. People who are satisfied with their jobs tend to be happier, but the association is weak. If fact, it probably just reflects the fact that job satisfaction is a large part of greater life satisfaction. With respect to happiness and personality, it may be fair to paraphrase Paris Hilton, “I am a star and I was born to shine. I am happy, powerful, strong and confident.” To a degree, some people are more temperamentally disposed to be happy, regardless of life events. In general, happier people also tend to be extraverted (outgoing), optimistic, and worry-free. This combination probably influences the balance of beneficial and negative emotions. In general, if they are meeting their personal goals, people tend to be happy. If you feel you are making progress, on a day-to-day basis, on smaller goals that relate to long-term, life goals, this is especially true. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
However, achieving one’s goals does not always lead to happiness. Consider the highly successful person who is absorbed in one’s accomplishments. All it may take is a crisis, like a child’s illness or the death of a friend, to make life feel meaningless. However, if the person begins to act with integrity, meaning can be restored and the crisis resolved. Thus, optimal human functioning involves integrity as well as an ability to accomplish goals. “Doing well,” they say, is associated with happiness. In contrast, “being yourself” is associated with leading a meaningful life. In short, if we are to live with integrity, the goals we purse must express our core interests and values. Examples of the kinds of personal projects (short-term goals) and long-term goals that occupy us: for architect’s the job is usually spent on location. When a project is located nearby, architect may leave the office periodically to stop by the project site. Some short-term goals involved checking in with building developers and engineers to ensure the client’s objectives are met, review projects, and check on any potential obstacles in construction. Many architects believed that if they did great work, somehow society would recognize the contributions and value they were making to the World and reward them with an endless stream of passion projects to grow their firm. However, the truth when it comes to long term goals, running an architecture firm is exactly the same as running any other business. You have to work just as hard to win business as you do to deliver it. An important long-term goal to remember is that your costs of running a business increase over the years. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
Your money goals should define the revenues and profits you will need to accommodate these increased costs, and support the growth you want. Also another long-term goal should be to become innovative and sometimes that requires a history lesson. For an architecture firm, stepping back into the past the Victorian America and seeing what was popular back them, like butler’s pantries, multiple parlors, patio spaces, and yards with green spaces, mixed with some modern style designs is a long-term way to stay relevant. People goals typically focus on who you want to work with. This can include the employees you want on your staff, and it may also include the type of clients you want to attract. Sometimes working with non-profits has provided some firms with not only a great sense of fulfillment but also a deeper connection to their local community. Working with one firm allowed the nonprofit client to connect with an ideal prospect and close a $6,000,000 group up non-profit project, at the height of the COVID-19 crisis pandemic. Who we work with can greatly affect our enthusiasm and motivation on the job, so setting goals around who we choose to work with can have an immense impact on our attitude towards our work. Such goals are crucial because overall well-being is a combination of happiness and meaning. Pursuing goals that are inconsistent with personal interests and values can leave a person feeling uneasy, bothered, and uncomfortable. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Happier persons tend to be married, comfortable with their work, extraverted, religious, optimistic, and generally satisfied with their lives. They also are making progress toward their goals. However, attain goals that do not express our deeper interests and values may add little to happiness. When, then, makes a good life? Purpose and meaning are important sources of well-being at any point in life. As we have seen, a good life is one that is happy and meaningful. We are most likely to experience a meaningful life when we act with integrity. It is interesting that while achievement and external goals may preoccupy younger persons, integrity becomes increasingly important later in life. “To thine own self be true” may seem like a cliché, but it is actually not a bad place to begin a search for a happy and a satisfying life. “God is not the author of confusion, but of peace. Let all things be done decently and in order,” reports 1 Corinthians 14.33 and 40. Our little World is the lesson book of the Universe. God’s wonderful purpose of grace, the mystery of redeeming love, is the theme into which “angels desire to look,” and it will be their study throughout endless ages. Both the redeemed and the unfallen beings will find in the cross of Christ their science and their song. It will be seen that the glory shining in the face of Jesus is the glory of self-sacrificing love. In the light from Calvary it will be seen that the law of self-renouncing love is the law of life for Earth and Heaven; that the love which “seeketh not her own” has its source in the heart of God; and that in the meek and lowly One is manifested the character of Him who dwelleth in the light which no human can approach unto. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Sometimes, when a bird cries out, or the wind sweeps through a tree, or an angel whispers in a far-off farm, I hold still and listen a long time. My World turns and goes back to the place where, a thousand forgotten years ago, the bird and the blowing wind were like me, and were my brothers. My soul turns into a tree, and an animal, and a cloud bank. Then changed and odd it comes home and asks me questions. What should I reply? Faithful art Thou, O Lord our God, and faithful are Thy words, for no word of thine shall remain unfulfilled. Thou art a faithful and merciful God and King. Blessed art Thou, O Lord God, who art faithful in fulfilling Thy words. Please be merciful unto America, for it is the fountain of our life, and mayest Thou soon in our day deliver Zion that is grieved in spirit. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who makest America rejoice with her children. Make us rejoice, O Lord our God, with Elijah the prophet, Thy servant, and with the kingdom of the house of David, Thine anointed. Soon may Elijah come and bring joy to our hearts. May no stranger occupy David’s throne and may no usurper inherit his glory. For by Thy holy name Thou hast promised unto one that one’s light will never be extinguished. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the Shield of America. We give Thee thanks and bless Thee, O Lord our God, for the Torah, and for the worship of this day and for the prophets, as well as for this Sabbath day which Thou, O Lord our God, hast given us for holiness and for rest, for glory and delight. Evermore may Thy name be continually praised by every living being. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hallowest the Sabbath. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Winchester Mystery House
It’s May 1st which means it’s halfway to Halloween! We are hard at work dreaming up a new experience for Halloween 2021 that will feature a projection mapped show on the front of the mansion. Stay tuned for more details coming soon!
“Lord God,” said Mrs. Sarah Winchester, as the flames rose and the fire crackled. “We got a dead girl, a huge mansion that is too big to heat, too big to maintain, too expensive to sale, a bunch of weird books, and a regular tomb of gold with an empty iron coffin in it, and a half-ghost boy standing here. Now this translation just arrived. ‘Here sleeps Annie Winchester, whose mortal hands once made the most beautiful cameos, even for emperors and and kings. Guard me, ye gods and goddesses whose images I render so well. A curse on those who attempt to disturb my resting place.'”
Watch your step in the séance room! There are three exits in this room, The main door, a secret passageway leading into an unfinished closet, and this door that opens to an 8-ft drop into the kitchen below.
Self-Guided Mansion Tour:
👉 Link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com
Success Means Never Having to Admit You are Unhappy!
As one went to Europe to see the living past, so one must visit Southern California to observe the future. They say in Hollywood if you want messages, you go to Western Union. The doctors thought you should really stay a few centuries more to be sure we have stabilized your condition. I really do not recommend you leaving us at this time. In Hollywood, success is relative. The closer the relative, the greater the success. Many people are recommending that California comes with a warning sign of the city limits: WARNING! PROCEED NO FURTHER! WARD O FOR BIPLOAR CONDITIONS. OCCUPANTS MAY BE VIOLENT. THEY NEED VRAYLAR However, I am telling you to ignore that and come on in. Look, buddy, it is dangerous to get out of bed in the morning. Are you a mortal in a desperate situation or are you not? Then come in here. This is your last resort, babe. However, of course it is up to you. The primary insight is a human’s awareness that one’s destiny is not synonymous with one’s daily experiences. You who have been through so much suffering, have tasted this inner freedom from outward events. You know there have been times when, according to the rules, you should have been smashed to the ground by what occurred. In such moments you were surprised by yourselves. You have the feeling you were being lifted up inwardly, as though the spiritual were triumphing over the material. You recognized a sort of happiness—if it can be called that—a happiness which would have been hidden by an unbroken succession of good days. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
You began to understand what the apostle Paul meant when he said, “Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.” The peace of God begins when this fleeting experience can be preserved and turned into a permanent conviction. It is harder for us today to feel near God among the streets and houses of the city than it is for country folk. For them the harvested fields bathed in the autumn mists speak of God and His goodness far more vividly than any human lips. If we really want to labour in the true spirit, to hope, to keep silent, and to work alone—that is what we must learn to do. However, what exactly does it involve, this plowing? The plowman does not pull the plow. He does not push it. He only directs it. This is just how events move in our lives. We can do nothing but guide them straight in the direction which leads to our Lord Jesus Christ, striving toward him, and the furrow will plow itself. The paths into which God leads humankind are shrouded in darkness for us. There are only two ground rules. They go together, and each taken by itself is enigmatic. The first is that all sin requires atonement. The second is that all progress demands sacrifice, which has to be paid for by the lives of those chosen to be offered up. We sense this more than we understand. We do not subscribe to the belief that the divine soul has somehow gone astray and got enslaved by the terrestrial body. One’s higher self is not polluted by one’s own pollutions any more than sunlight is affected by the foul places in which it often shines. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
The natural kiss is the kiss which will be given if moral or prudential considerations do not intervene. In all the examples of Natures means what happens “of itself” or “of its own accord”: what you do not need to labour for; what you will get if you take no measures to stop it. The Greek work for Nature (Physis) is connected with the Greek verb “to grow”; Latin Natura, which the verb “to be born.” The Natural is what springs up, or comes forth, or arrives, or goes on, of its own accord: the given, what is there already; the spontaneous, the unintended, the unsolicited. The higher self affects the ego but is not affected by it. Its existence goes on quite independently of the serialized Earth appearances of the ego, and persists when the other ceases. The insensitive can never know it, and may roundly deny it, but the others sometimes receive unforgettable glimpses for which they give thanks to God for years after. Just as space is unaffected equally by evil deeds or virtuous actions of humans, so the Overself is unaffected by the character or conduct of the ego. It is neither made worse by the ego’s wrong-doing nor better by its righteousness. “I am the way, the Truth,” announced Jesus Christ. Who is this I? In the narrow and shallower sense, it is the master. In the broader and deeper sense, it is the Christ-self within the spiritual consciousness. Why did Jesus Christ say, “I am my Father are one,” but yet a little later add, “The Father is greater than I?” The answer is that Jesus the man had attained complete harmony with His higher Self and felt himself one with it, but the universal Christ-principle will always be greater than the man himself; the Overself will always transcend the person. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Although I is still identified with one, since it is one’s own mind at its best level, it is immensely grander, wiser, and nobler than one. It is an entity greater, nobler, wiser, and stronger than oneself yet mysteriously and inseparably linked to oneself; it is indeed one’s super-self. Our bodies are born at some point of time and somewhere in space but their essence, the Overself, is birthless, timeless, and placeless. This is a human’s true individuality, not that mentally constructed “I” (which deludes one into acceptance as such). It is never anything else than its own perfect self, never contrary to its own unique and infinite nature. It is true that we are but poor and faulty, sadly limited, and miserably shrunken expressions of the divine spirit. Nevertheless, we are expression of it. Thus no thoroughgoing Naturalist believes in free will: for free will would mean that humans beings have the power of independent action, the power of doing something more or other than what was involved by the total series of events. And any such separate power of originating events is what the Naturalist denies. Spontaneity, originality, actions “on its own,” is a privilege reserved for “the whole show,” which one calls Nature. The Supernaturalist agrees with the Naturalist that there must be something which exists in its own right; some basic Fact whose existence it would be nonsensical to try to explain because this Fact is itself the ground or starting-point of all explanations. However, one does not identify this Fact with “the whole show.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
There is a tendency of Christian Science to enter a region of misunderstanding the moment it attempts to apply its true principles to things of this Earth. There is a time in the far past of the human race, a time now lost in the dim mists of antiquity, when the life of humans was stretched to a number of years far in excess of hat it is today. That time has been hinted at by horary legends of a Golden Age and by biblical stories of a pre-Flood race. Such a time will return in the cyclic course of our planet’s history, but naturally it is far-off in the future. Nature herself is in no hurry. She has plenty of time to accomplish her purposes. And in those days humans will again have a normal life-span of maybe one thousand years. There exists in the Old World a certain ancient knowledge—which promises its votaries astonishing benefits in longevity. This age-old art is similar to alchemy of medieval Europe, when humans sought rigorously in experiments for the elixir of life. It is of such antiquity that those who hand it down tell us it was born just after the time when the legendary gods had ceased to walk this Earth. The exponents have almost disappeared from the World, but the tradition is so widespread throughout the Old World that solitary individuals still practise it in remote and unfrequented places. So difficult are the exercises which belong to this system, so labourious are its practices, so ascetic the self-discipline which it involves, that one can understand why it has almost faded out of existence. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
It performs strange feats such as reanimating dead bodies, stopping blood circulation and lung action, permitting knives and daggers to be run like skewers through living flesh without harming it and with an extremely rapid drying of blood (do NOT try this!), and even the burial alive of an enriched body beneath the ground and its safe resurrection several hours or some day later. The principal basis of these feats consists in making certain changes in the breath rhythm, changes which involve such risk to life and health that we are not prepared to assume the responsibility of describing here the exercises for the development of such powers. It is also necessary to live a celibate and chaste existence, to refrain from expending energy in Worldly work and business, and to reduce diet to an astonishing minimum. Because they demand a special and severely ascetic training which is the work of several years devoted wholly to this austere task, such feats are necessarily uncommon. The ordinary layperson could hardly be expected to find the time for such training, nor is there any necessity for one to do so. These displays are certainly spectacular but have primarily only scientific, medical, and theatrical values rather than a general one. Meanwhile, Nature has set her brief term to the human body, and those whose attachment to the body is not overweening will resignedly accept that terms while the others must do so unwillingly. However, this is a different matter—living in the flesh body for ever and ever, a notion which must seem insupportable to many who find the present brief term of human’s existence quite enough for them to cope with. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
If Nature cared so much to preserve the physical body of humans, she would not introduce Earthquakes, eruptions, hurricanes, famines, pestilences, and floods into the scheme of things. The fact that she does do so indicates rather that she regards one’s body as being only a fragment of the human, not as the full human oneself. Some had the idea, of course, that in ancient times, sin and sickness would also have disappeared from the World, so that our existence would be a halcyon one. It is a pretty picture, but human’s true home is not in the tabernacle of flesh; it is elsewhere. The fleshly body is but a temporary abiding place at best, and when humans have arrived at a state of perfect spirituality one will abandon it and use a vehicle more consonant with one’s higher condition, an electromagnetic body that will more easily and more faithfully represent one. Yes, death will be conquered, but not in the way that Christian Scientists imagine. It will be conquered firstly, by extending the duration of human life to a constantly increasing period; and secondly, by completely abandoning the physical body for a subtler one. The clear real inner human—one’s spiritual being—is undying and immortal. When many began to consider that inner being in relation to its transient Earthly tenement, the body, they become confused and misunderstand the nature of that relationship. The hour of every human’s death is fixed by a higher will than one’s own, by that power which some call destiny but which itself takes its rise out of the Infinite Power, and no Christian Science practitioner or ordinary physician has ever “saved” the life of anyone. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
A human’s own Overself fixes the dates of certain major events in one’s life prior to the moment when one utters one’s first cry as a babe, and the date of one’s death is but one of those appointed hours. Perhaps, if the choose, some people have the option to reschedule; others do not. At this point, not in the sky, nor in the depths of the ocean, nor by entering the caverns of the mountain, nowhere in the World can such a place be found where a human might dwell without being overpowered by death. However, “in those days humans will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die, and death will flee from them,” Revelation 9.6. We are as birds on the wheel of the Universe. For all our loud tweeting, it still rolls along on its own path. And yet these people confidently imagine they set the great Laws of Destiny at naught, and interfere with the workings of the Cosmic Plan. In that sense there might be several “Natures.” This conception must be kept quite distinct from what is commonly called “plurality of Worlds”—id est, different solar systems or different galaxies, “island Universes” existing in widely separated parts of a single space and time. These, however remote, would be parts of the same Nature as our own sun: it and they would be interlocked by being in relations to one another, spatial and temporal relations and causal relations as well. Ans it is just this reciprocal interlocking within a system which makes it what we call a Nature. Other Natures might not be spatio-temporal at all: or, if any of them were, their space and time would have no spatial or temporal relation to ours. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
It is just this discontinuity, this failure of interlocking, which would justify us in calling them different Natures. This does not mean that there would be absolutely no relation between them; they would be related by their common derivation from a single Supernatural source. They would, in this respect, be like different novels by a single author; the events in one story have no relation to the events in another except that they are invented by the same author. To find a relation to between them you must go right back to the author’s mind: there is no cutting across from anything. However, God might bring the two Natures into partial contact at some particular point: that is, He might allow selected events in the one to produce results in the other. There would thus be, at certain points, a partial interlocking; but this would not turn the two Natures into one, for the total reciprocity which makes a Nature would still be lacking, and the anomalous interlocking would arise not from what either system was in itself but from the Divine act which was brining them together. If this occurred each of the two Natures would be “supernatural” in relation to the other: but the fact of their contact would be supernatural in a more absolute sense—not as being beyond this or that Nature but beyond any and every Nature. It would be one kind of Miracle. The other kind would be Divine “interference” not by bringing together of two Natures, but simply. However, God may never interfere with the natural system He created. He may never cause His natural systems to impinge on one another. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
If the movements of the individual units are events “on their own,” events which do not interlock with all other evens, then these movements are not part of Nature. It would be, indeed, too great a shock to our habits to describe them as super-natural. I think we should have to call them sub-natural. However, all our confidence that Nature has no doors, and no reality outside herself for doors to open on, would have disappeared. There is apparently something outside her, the Subnatural; it is indeed from this Subnatural that all events and all “bodies” are, as it were, fed into her. And clearly if she thus has a back door (door to nowhere) opening on the Subnatural, it is quite on the cards that she may also have a front door opening on the Supernatural—and events might be fed into her at that door, too. The movements of individual units are permanently incalculable to us, not that they are in themselves random and lawless. All possible knowledge, then, depends on the validity of reasoning. Unless human reasoning is valid, no science can be true. To be caused is not to be proved. Wishful thinkings, prejucides, and delusions of madness, are all caused, but they are ungrounded. Indeed to be caused is so different from being proved that we behave in disputation as if they were mutually exclusive. The mere existence of causes for a belief is popularly treated as raising a presumption that it is groundless, and the most popular way of discrediting person’s opinion is to explain them causally—“You say that because (Cause and Effect) you are a capitalist, or a hypochondriac, or a mere man, or a woman.” This implication is that is causes fully account for a belief, then, since causes work inevitably, the belief would have had to arise wither it had grounds or not. We need not, it is felt, consider grounds for something which can be fully explained without them. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
The Universal and Infinite cannot be packed into the personal and finite, your demand, natural though it be, is unreasonable. God Himself knows not what He is, for He is not a “what.” So why ask a mere human? Just as there is a sun hidden behind the sun, the divinity which animates it, so in the human being there is a Mind within the mind—and that is one’s Overself. The personality is always limited and chained, the higher individuality always infinite and free. Each human is the expression of this infinite life-power. One’s awareness of life in the five senses will rest upon another and inner awareness. A second and hidden self will thus seem to support one’s outer one. The true I yields quite a different feeling, experience, and consciousness from the familiar physical ego. There is a deeper level of every human’s mind which is not subject to one’s passions, not moved by one’s desires, not affected by one’s sense. It is not possible for the timeless, spaceless, formless Overself to be degraded into activity by its time-bound, space-tied, form-limited offspring the person. The essence of human beings is not one’s Earthly body. Nor is it the ghostly duplicate of that body, as many spiritists and some religionists think. The Overself is the Higher mind in humans, one’s divine soul as distinguished from one’s human-terrestrial nature. It is the same as Plato’s “nous.” The true unchanging self is apart from any historical era and is not dependent on outer changes of custom and form. The aim of the mystic is to know what one is, apart from one’s physical body, one’s lower emotion, one’s personal ego; it is to know one’s inner-most self. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
When this aim is successfully realized, one knows then with perfect certitude that one is a ray of the divine sun. How shall one know and understand that this very awareness, of which so small is the fragment that one experiences, is a limited and conditioned part of the Great Awareness itself, of God? The inhabitant of this fleshly body, including its accompanying invisible “ghost,” is a sacred one. There, within and yet behind one’s personal consciousness, is this other sphere of one’s own being into which one must one day be re-born as a Blue Jay from an egg. This is one’s best self; this is what one really is under all the defects. The relation between response and stimulus is utterly different from that between knowledge and truth known. Our physical vision is a far more useful response to light than that of the cruder organisms which have only a photo-sensitive spot. God is older than Nature, and from it the orderliness of Nature, which alone enables us to know her, is derived. The human mind in the acts of knowing is illuminated by Divine reason. It is set free, in the measure required, from the huge nexus of non-rational causation; free from this to be determined by the truth known. And, if there were any, the preliminary processes within Nature which led up to this liberation were designed to. At the frontier where the “outer World” ends and what I should ordinarily call “myself” begins, we find a great deal of traffic but it is all one-way traffic. It is a matter of daily experience that rational thoughts induce and enable us to alter the course of Nature—of physical nature when we use mathematic to build bridges, or of psychological nature when we apply arguments to alter our own emotions. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
We succeed in modifying physical nature more often and more completely than we succeed in modifying psychological nature, but we do at least a little to both. On the other hand, Nature is quite powerless to produce rational thought: not that she never modifies our thinking but that the moment she does so, it ceases (for that very reason) to be rational. The problem is whether you or I can be such a self-existent Reason. This question almost answers itself the moment we remember what existence “on one’s own” means. It means that kind of existence which Naturalists attribute to “the whole show” and Supernatiralists to God. Human minds, then, are not only supernatural entities that exist. They do not come from nowhere. Each has come into Nature from Supernature: each has its tap-root in an eternal, self-existent, rational Being, whom we call God. Each offshoot, or spearhead, or incursion of that Supernatural reality into Nature. It seems that human thought is not God’s but God-kindled. I must hasten, however, that we are considering miracles, not about everything. I am attempting no full doctrine of man: and I am not in the least trying to smuggle in an argument for the “immortality of the soul.” The earliest Christian documents give a casual and unemphatic assent to the belief that the supernatural part of a human survives the death of the natural organism. However, they are very little interested in the matter. What they are intensely interested in is the restoration or “resurrection” of the whole composite creature by a miraculous divine act: and until we have come to some conclusion about miracles in general, we shall certainly not discuss that. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
At this stage the supernatural element in humans concerns us solely as evidence that something beyond Nature exists. The dignity and destiny of humans has, at present, nothing to do with the argument. We are interested in humans only because their rationality is the little tell-tale rift in Nature which shows that there is something beyond or behind her. In a pond whose surface was completely covered with scum and floating vegetation, there might be a few waterlilies. And you might of course be interested in them for their beauty. However, you might also be interested in them because from their structure you could deduce that they had stalks underneath which went down to roots in the bottom. The Naturalist thinks that the pond (Nature—the great event in space and time) is of an indefinite depth—that there is nothing but water however far you go down. My claim is that some of the things on the surface (id est, in our experience) show the contrary. These things (rational minds) reveal, on inspection, that they at least are not floating but attached by stalks about the bottom. Therefore the pond has a bottom. It is not pond, pond for ever. Go deep enough and you will come to something that is not pond—to mud and Earth and then to rock and finally the whole bulk of Earth and the subterranean fire. God and Nature have come into a certain relation. They have, at the very least, a relation—almost, in one sense, a common frontier—in every human mind. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Reason saves and strengths my whole system, psychological and physical, whereas that whole system, by rebelling against Reason, destroys both Reason an itself. The military metaphor of a spearhead was apparently ill-chosen. The supernatural Reason enters my natural being not like a weapon—more like a beam of light which illuminates or a principle of organization which unifies and develops. Our whole picture of Nature being “invaded” (as if by a foreign enemy) was wrong. When we actually examine one of these invasions it looks much more like the arrival of a king among his own subjects or a mahout visiting his own elephant. The elephant may run amuck, Nature may be rebellious. However, from observing what happens when Nature obeys it is almost impossible not to conclude that it is her very “nature” to be a subject. All happens as if she had been designed for that very role. Not all help from the individual can, or necessarily should come from groups. In many cases, what the change-pressed person needs most is one-to-one counseling during the crisis of adaption. In psychiatric jargon a “crisis” is any significant transition It is roughly synonymous with “major life change.” Today, persons in traditional crisis turn to a variety of experts—doctors, marriage counselors, psychiatrists, the pastor, witches, warlocks, the spirits, God, Jesus Christ, vocational specialists and others—for individualized advice. Yet for many kinds of crisis there are no appropriate experts. Who helps the family or the individual faced with the need to move to a new city for the third time in five years? #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Who is available to counsel a leader who is up- or down-graded by a reorganization of one’s club or community organization? Who is there to help the secretary just bounced back to the typing pool? People like these are not sick. They neither need nor should receive psychiatric attention, yet there is, by large, no counseling machinery available to them. Not only are there many kinds of present-day life transitions for which no counseling help is provided, but the invasion of novelty will slam individuals up against wholly new kinds of personal crises in the future. And as the society races toward heterogeneity, the variety of problems will increase. In slowly changing societies the types of crises faced by individuals are more unfirm and the sources of specialized advice more easily identifiable. Sometimes you just need to turn to God, Allah, Buddha, or whoever your peaceful, confident, all-loving and powerful Overself is for healing. The crisis-caught person went to one’s priest, Paris Hilton, one’s witch doctor or one’s local chief. Today personalized counseling services in the high technology countries have become so specialized that we have developed, in effect, second-layer advice-givers who do nothing but counsel the individual about where to seek advice. These referral services interpose additional red tape and delay between the individual and the assistance one needs. By the time help reached one, one may have already made a crucial decision—and done so badly. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
So long as we assume that advice is something that must come from evenmore specialized professionals, we can anticipate ever greater difficulty. Moreover, so long as we base specialties on what people “are” instead of what they are “becoming” we miss many of the real adaptive problems altogether. Conventional social service systems will never be able to keep up. The answer is a counterpart to the situational grouping system—a counseling set-up that not only draws on full-time professional advice givers, but on multitudes of lay experts as well. We must recognize that what makes a person an expert in one type of crisis is not necessarily formal education, but the very experience of having undergone a similar crisis oneself. To help tide billions of people over the difficult transitions they are likely to face, we shall be forced to “deputize” large numbers of non-professional people in the community—business people, students, teachers, workers, and others—to serve as “crisis counselors.” Tomorrow’s crisis counselor will be experts not in such conventional disciplines as psychology or health, but in specific transitions such as conventional disciplines as psychology or healthy, but in specific transitions such as relocation, job promotion, divorce, or subcult-hopping. Armed with their own recent experience, working on a volunteer basis or for minimal pay, they will set aside some small part of their time for listening to other people talk out their problems, apprehensions, and plans. In return, they will have access to others for similar assistance in the course of their own adaptive development. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Once again, there is nothing new about people seeking advice from one another. What is new is our ability, through the use of computerized systems, to assemble situational groups swiftly, to match up individuals with counselors, and to do both wit considerable respect for privacy and anonymity. We can already see evidence of a move in this direction in the spread of “listening” and “caring” services. In Davenport, Iowa, lonely people can dial a telephone number and be connected with a “listener”—one of a rotating staff of volunteers who control the telephone twenty-four hours a day. The program, initiated by a local commission on the aging, is similar to, but not the same as, the Care-Ring service in New York. Care-Ring charges its subscribers a fee, in return for which they receive two check-in calls each day at designated times. Subscribers provide the service with the names of their doctors, a neighbour, their building superintendent, and a close relative. In the even they fail to respond to a call, the service tries again half an hour later. If they still do not respond, the doctor is notified and a nurse is dispatched to the scene. Care-Ring services are now being franchised in other cities. In both these services we see forerunners of the crisis-counseling system of the future. Under that system, the giving and getting of advice becomes not a “social service” in the usual bureaucratic, impersonal sense, but a highly personalized process that not only helps cement the entire society together in a kind of “love network”—an integrative system based on the principle of “I need you as much as you need me.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
Situational grouping, and person-to-person crisis counseling are likely to become a significant part of everyone’s life as we all move together into the uncertainties of the future. There is a powerful, life-changing revelation God wants you to understand! The Principle of Stewardship. Good stewardship will lead to health, favour, and responsibility that God desires to put into your hands for the Kingdom of God! May each of us chose to love the Lord and follow His paths to happiness. More than anything else, Heavenly Father desires our true and lasting happiness. Our happiness is the design of all the blessings God gives us—gospel, teachings, commandments, priesthood ordinances, family relationships, prophets, temples, the beauties of creation, and even the opportunity to experience adversity. He sent His Beloved Son to carry out the Atonement so we can be happy in this life and receive a fulness of joy in the eternities. People everywhere are looking for something. In their own way, what they are really looking for is happiness. As with truth itself, however, many are kept from happiness “because they know not where to find it,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 123.12. Because they do not know where to find true and lasting happiness, they look for it in things that actually bring temporary pleasure only—buying things, seeking honour and praise from the World through inappropriate behaviour, or focusing on physical beauty and attractiveness. Pleasure is often confused with happiness. It seems that the more people seek temporary pleasure, the less happy they become. Usually, pleasure endures for only a short time. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
You may get that transitory pleasure, yes, but you cannot find joy, you cannot find happiness. Happiness is found only along that well beaten track, narrow as it is, though straight, which leads to eternal life. Unfortunately for many, happiness is elusive. Scientists know that it is more than simply positive mode, happiness is a state of well-being that encompasses living a good life—that is, wit a sense of meaning and deep satisfaction. Research shows that happiness is not the result of bouncing from one experience to the next. Instead, achieving happiness typically involves a long-sustained effort for something more important in life. Happiness is determined by habits, behaviours, and thought patterns that we can directly address wit intentional actions. Much of our happiness is actually under personal control. God’s love speaks to us in our hearts and tries to work through us in the World. We must listen to it as to a pure and distant melody that comes across the noise of the World’s doings. Some say, “When we are grown up, we would rather think of other things.” However, the voice of love with which God speaks to us in the secret places of the heart, speaks to us when we are young so that our youth may be really youth, and that we may become the children of God. Happy are those who listen. Virtue, which is a pattern of thought and behaviour based on high moral standards. It encompasses chastity and moral purity, which qualify you to enter the Lord’s holy temples. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Virtuous people possess a quiet dignity and inner strength. They are confident because they are worthy to receive and be guided by the Holy Ghost. Virtue begins in the heart and mind, and it is the accumulation of thousands of small decisions and actions each day. “Let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly; then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God; and the doctrine of the priesthood shall distil upon thy soul as the dews from Heaven. The Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion, and thy scepter an unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth; and they dominion shall be an everlasting dominion, and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 121.45-46. If you listen, you will hear the sound of the Kingdom of God in the air as no generation ever could before. The ultimate questions of our life transcend knowledge. One riddle after another surrounds us. However, the final question of our being has but one concern, and it decides our fate. Again and again, we are thrown back to it. What will become of our will? How does it find itself in the will of God? The highest insight humans can attain is the yearning for peace, for the union of one’s will with an infinite will, one’s human will with God’s will. Such a will does not cut itself off and live in isolation like a puddle that is bound to dry up when the heart of summer comes. No, it is like a mountain stream, relentlessly splashing its way to the river, there to be swept on to the limitless ocean. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
You know of the disease in Central Africa called sleeping sickness, there also exists a sleeping sickness of the soul. Its most dangerous aspect is that one is unaware of its coming. That is why you have to be careful. As soon as you notice the slightest sign of indifference, the moment you become aware of the loss of a certain seriousness, of longing, of enthusiasm and zest, take its as a warning. If you live superficially, you should realize that your soul suffers. People need times in which to concentrate, when they can search their inmost selves. It is tragic that most human have not achieved this feeling of self-awareness. And finally, when they hear the inner voice they do not want to listen anymore. They carry on as before so as not to be constantly reminded of what they have lost. However, as for you, resolve to keep a quiet time both in your homes and where within these peaceful walls when the bells ring on Sundays Then your souls can speak to you without being drowned out by the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Do not let your hearts grow numb. Stary alert. It is your soul which matters. O Lord our God, on this festive day we recall that on Sinai Thou didst reveal Thyself, and through Thine immortal words didst weld our people into a nation through Torah. Standing before the sacred scrolls of Thy law, we here renew the ancient covenant with our fathers, pronouncing again their memorable words: “All that the Lord hath spoken we will do.” Help us t discern the wisdom of Thy precepts so that we may heed Thy commandments. May Thy Torah ever inspire us, guiding and leading us in the paths of justice and peace. Amen. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Winchester Mystery House
Llanada Villa has changed quite a bit since Sarah Winchester began construction in 1884. Despite a tragedy-ridden life, her generosity, ingenuity, and passion left an endless mark on the Santa Clara Valley. How many times have you visited Mrs. Winchester’s creation?
Even after months of distancing, the air of bizarre energy still flows through the house after the sun sets.
We’re open for Self-Guided Mansion Tours!
A Miraculously Great Gift of Grace May Depart Equally Miraculously—PRAISE HIM!
Dignity and humility are the cornerstones of compassion. Compassion for myself is the most powerful healer of all. When it comes to behaviour, everybody is one’s own best physician. Case studies can provide special opportunities to answer interesting questions. For instance, how do you know what kind of person you are? If you lost for memory of past events, would your self-image change? To answer these questions, psychologist did a case study of J.S., and 17-year-old male college student. After he suffered a head injury, J.S. had amnesia for about a month. During that time, J.S. could recall little of what had occurred during the previous 6 months. Nevertheless, his rating of his own personality appeared to be unaffected by his memory loss. This suggests that an awareness of one’s own personal characteristics is based on memories that are more lasting than those of everyday events. The careful recording of cases like J.S.’s is essential to psychology. Case studies often provide insight into human behaviour that could not be obtained through any other method. The treatment of unpleasant realities by not including them in one’s picture of the World comforts but at the same time befools humans. None of the great prophets like Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, and Buddha denied the existence of sickness, the reality of pain, or the significance of suffering in the cosmos. No—they acknowledged them as being inseparable from human life but pitied the victims and offered them inward comfort which was based on truth and reality. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
The terrestrial part of us, at this time, is doomed to oblivion, the spiritual part is ageless and deathless. The physical body belongs to the terrestrial part. All attempts to perpetuate it must fail and arise from confusing the two levels of being, the transient and the eternal. People ask Why, if all is mind, if—as you say—our bodies are only ideas, can we not control regulate and improve our bodies by controlling, regulating, and improving our minds? Why not go further still, with Christian Science, and play with the possibility, not only of these achievements, but also of rendering the body immortal by thinking it so? The answer is that nobody can deny the creative power of the mind. It may do all these things, except the last. That it will never do. Why? Because we live in a World whose fundamental law of beings—and Buddha discovered and Jesus Christ taught—is decay and death, change and transition—at this point in our evolution. Indeed, it was because they were so painfully aware of these truths that they sought and found the only true way of escape for a human and that was into Nirvana, into Utopia, into the Kingdom of Heaven—not into the physical again! No Christian Scientist from the first founder down to the latest follower has ever achieved physical immortality, but in the future that may change. Yet, immortality is not the same as eternal life. Immortality can be achieved on the Earth; it can allow the human body to live indefinitely. However, you have to understand how it is for a deity. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Some of these gods have been here so long they can no longer care for themselves. Earth people think that immortality means you can go on forever just as you are. It does not work that way. Physically, yes, a god or goddess can continue indefinitely. It is built into the situation. However, mentally—psychologically—you must realize that being a god takes a terrible toll. When you are a god, people’s thoughts, hopes, dreams, and fears re beating at you all the time. Gods have direct apprehension of the feelings of their worshippers. It can be taxing. After a while all those prayers and petitions from humans take their toll. It is all very well at the beginning. Most gods, even the compassionate ones, just let it all roll over them. However, after a while it get to even the toughest. They get sick of the daily drudgery of hearing desperate pleas, and, in most cases being unable to do very much about them. Gods live in longer timelines than mortals. It takes them longer to do things. By the time something comes to a god’s attention, and by the time one decides to do something about it, the human most likely is dead and buried. It is frustrating for a god, having to work in such a short time frame. They try their best. However, remember, gods can make exceptions for only a very few. A god has a lot more on one’s mine than the troubles of one’s constituents. It would be fair to say that most gods end up hating humans because they are so needy, always with the hand out, always with the gimmie, gimmie, gimmie, gimmie more. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
Eternal life, n the other hand, is the phrase used in scripture to define the quality of life that our Eternal Father lives. They Lord declared, “This is my work and my glory—to brings to pass the immortality and eternal life of humans,” reports Moses 1.39. Immortality is to live forever as a resurrected being. Through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, everyone will receive this gift. Eternal life, or exaltation, is to live in God’s presence and to continue as families. “In the celestial glory there are three Heavens or degrees; and in order to obtain the highest, a human must enter into this order of the priesthood [meaning the new and everlasting covenant of marriage]; and if one does not, one cannot obtain it. One may enter into the other, but that is the end of one’s kingdom; one cannot have an increase,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 131.1-4. Like immortality, this gift is made possible through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. However, to inherit eternal life requires our “obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel,” reports Articles of Faith 1.3. “Wherefore, do the things which I have told you, you and I have seen the Lord and your Redeemer should do; for, for this cause have they been shown unto me, that ye might know the gate by which ye should enter. For the gate by which ye should enter is repentance and baptism by water; and then cometh a remission of your sins by fire and by the Holy Ghost. And then are ye in this strait and narrow path which lead to eternal life; yea, ye have entered in by the gate,” reports 2 Nephi 31.17-18. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
After we are baptized and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, much of our progress toward eternal life depends on our receiving other ordinances of salvation: for men, ordination to the Melchizedek Priesthood; for men and women, the temple endowment and marriage sealing. When we receive these ordinances and keep the covenants that accompany them, we prepare ourselves to inherit eternal life, and there we will live in spiritual form, forever, with God. However, while on Earth, “Humans will never tire of seeking immortality,” reports Dr. Alexis Carrel, whose biological researchers, yet mystical sympathies, entitle him to speak with high authority. The possibilities of spiritual healings of pathological conditions, miraculous mental cures of disease, and rapid acceleration of organic repairs through concentrated thinking, I repeat that we do not deny them. They have always existed, always been demonstrated. If our doctrine is true, the relation between psychological and physical processes must certainly exist. However, there are two other factors at work in human life which must also be considered and must not be ignored. What are they? The first is the factor of destiny, self-earned in previous lives and now awaiting physical expression in the present life. It has something to say, whether we like it or not. As we progress in our mortal probation and become more like the Saviour, we can strengthen every group with whom we associate, including families and friends. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
The Lord places us in these communities of Saints where we can learn and apply gospel principles to our everyday lives. These groups are at the same time both a school, a proving ground, and a laboratory where we both learn and do as we practice living the gospel. Very common, ordinary people, who accept the gospel from the lips of some humble Mormon missionary become so changed by those enlightening truths of the gospel that they are not the same people any longer. As we progress through mortality, we make mistakes and get ff course. If we should continue in our errors, we get father and father from where we ought to be. We can compare our lives with the flight of a spaceship. When its motor is started up, its trajectory is monitored precisely. If not corrected, any deviation from its decreed course is corrected immediately. Even a fraction of a degree off course would carry it many light years from its destination. The longer the correction is delayed, the greater will be the required adjustment. Can you imagine how far off course we can become without course corrections? The Lord has provided for us prophets, scriptures, parents, and other wise leaders to teach us the course we should be following. When necessary, much the same as tracking stations monitor a satellite’s progress and keep in on the right path, they can help us monitor our progress and correct the direction we are going. Our course on Earth is so important. It is determined by the decisions we make each day. We cannot separate our thoughts and actions now from their effects on the future. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
The second factor is renunciation. Let every hidden enemy in your life, let every trap or demonic setup be exposed in the name of Jesus Christ! When you accept the doctrine that all is mind and each individual thing is but an ephemeral idea, you must perforce accept the doctrine that you as an individual, as the ego, are also an ephemeral idea. Now when you go further and declare that you want reality, you want to find eternal and not ephemeral life, you will have to abandon the fleeting idea for the eternal Mind in which it occurs: that is, you will have to sink the ego and merge its will in the greater universal will of the Infinite Being. Do this! What will you find next? That your personal desires have sunk with it, that your individual wishes and hopes and fears have dissolved and disappeared. The desire for bodily betterment, however very attractive, would have gone too. You cannot have a single desire and yet enter the Kingdom of Heaven, as Jesus pointed out. So good health, the care of your painful diseases, the healing of your disturbed organs—right, necessary, and desirable as they undoubtedly are—are nevertheless matter which you must try to effect in a desireless way; you may try to cure them but you must leave the result to the higher will. If you insist that the body must yield to your desires of a cure, to your personal desires, then your ego, not the real universal self, has got the upper hand and is directing you. In that case you will be no better off, for your have no guarantee of success even then. Most Christian Scientists experience a score of failures for every cure. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Whereas if you do your best mentally and physically to put your body right, but do it impersonally—accepting failure, if it comes, with as much equanimity as you can—you will certainly be n worse off than the Christian Scientist so far as the possibilities of sure are concerned, and you will be infinitely better off so far as realizing truth is concerned, with all the wonderful peace that will bring in its train. This is one meaning of the words “Not my will but Thine be done.” Do you think, having seen so much illness around you for so many years, that life is forever striving to instill into us through pain what Jesus Christ learned through reflection—that both body and World are doomed to decay and die, without God and Science, being subject to the law of universal incessant change? The experiences of life are the lessons of a guru, for we get just the kind of universal seeds whose silent instruction is needed at the time. The whole World, more or less, is having to learn this great truth at present but it is too blind and too unenlightened to grasp the lesson in its clarity and eternity. How far the duration of human life can be extended is not known. However, Methuselah, a biblical patriarch and a figure in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam was essential immortal, he died at the age of 969; he lived the longest of all human figures mentioned in the Christian Bible. Remember that just because humans began to live shorter lives after the Biblical flood does not mean that God set a limit on human’s life span. The fact is that some people still lived well over 120 years until the time of Moses. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
Perhaps that is why God gave human beings the gift of science, so they can learn how to restore their immortality, after the mature enough to see how precious life is and stop being so wicked. It is truth that stories of centenarians being found in different parts of the World are not few and often pass unquestioned. However, the difficulty of proving the date of birth usually remains. Most centenarians belong to undereducated classes, to those who have not taken care to retain correct knowledge of their age, for it was not so important to them as it is to the educated classes. There is hardly a record of payment by life insurance companies for the life of a centenarian. It is reasonable to ask, however, why, if the reparative and destructive elements in the body could be balanced, humans should not live for centuries. In the absence of authenticated cases, we may only take the stand that Nature seems to have set her own limits to human life. Some “back-to-nature” schools of therapy assert that all diseases are the consequences of transgressing the laws of health, just as some esoteric schools assert they are the consequences of incurring karmic debts. The first often point to the wild beasts as being perfectly healthy examples of living according to Nature. However, those who have firsthand acquaintance with jungle life will refute this claim. Not only are all animals—whether domesticated or wild—subject to sickness, but even plants, grain crops, trees, fruits, and vegetables are subject to it by blight and rust. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
The young and the strong may glory in the satisfaction of being alive, but the old and decrepit, the sick and in infirm, feel no such response to their existence. The pain and unpleasantness which beset human experience at times—mentally or physically—are not without their complementary pleasure and joy at other times. We would all like a happy beginning, a happy middle, and a happy ending to our story, but life betrays us: only in fiction is the craving really fulfilled. If the pain is there, racking the physical life, the peace exists behind it, permeating the inner life. The New World stands with its heritage of Roman law, the treasures of Judaeo-Christian ethics grounded on metaphysics, and its ideal of the inalienable rights of humans. Anxiously it asks itself the question: How can this development be brought to a standstill or put into reverse? It is useless to pillory the socialist dictatorship as utopian and to condemn its economic principles as unreasonable, because, in the first place, the criticizing New World has only itself to talk to, its arguments being heard only on this side of the Iron Curtain, and, in the second place, any economic principles you like can be put into practice so long as you are prepared to accept the sacrifices they entail. If you like, you can carry through any social and economic reforms you please, Like Mr. Stalin, you let three million peasants starve to death and have few million unpaid labourers at your disposal. A State of this kind has no social or economic crises to fear. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
So long as the State’s power is intact—that is to say, so long as there is a well-disciplined and well-fed police army in the offing—it can maintain its existence for an indefinitely long period and can go on increasing its power to an indefinite extent. Thanks to its excess birth-rate, it can multiply the number of its unpaid workers almost at will in order to compete its rivals, regardless of the World market, which is to a large measure dependent on wages. However, this strategy also has some disadvantages. The convergence theory (or catch-up effect) suggests that poorer countries will experience a higher rate of economic growth and, over time get closer to the income levels of the developed World. In other words, there will be a reduction in the gap between the rich and the poor because low-income countries have more opportunities to experience a rapid rate of growth. Potential reasons for the convergence theory are: Law of diminishing returns, replicate technology from other countries, globalization and movement of labour and capital. The law of diminishing returns states a decline in productivity improvements from a fixed capital. When you have very low productivity in agriculture, a small investment (exempli gratia motorized tractor) can give a high rate of return and significantly increased output. For a developed economy, which is already highly mechanized increased investment will give smaller marginal gains. In effect, if the Indian agriculture sector is mainly labour intensive—then there are “easy gains” from a small amount of fertilizer and investment. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
Replicate technology—one advantage that poorer countries have is that they can replicate existing technology and working practices developed by advanced economies. For example, in Africa, many citizens never had a landline or fax machine, but jumped straight to the mobile phone with the internet, and essentially they now have hand held computers with Internet access that can also make phone calls, so they have the access to vast resources now. This new technology has significantly improved their communication, education, and allows them to access the global economy, and they were able t skip out most levels of investment. In fact, they can even benefit from perfect good phones that Americans are throwing away for newer models. Global forces—the World is increasingly globalized and multinational companies in the developed World are will to shift production to areas of lower labour costs. Therefore, developing economics have benefitted from inward investment and global companies moving manufacturing factories to the developing World. This force tends towards raising wages in the developing World. Even if wages seem very low by the developed World standard, they are higher than previous jobs/subsistence farming. Inward investment also leads to knock-on benefits. For example, China has invested in the infrastructure of African economies to improve its access to raw materials. This infrastructure will be a boost to the African economy. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
Another example is that the nature of the Internet means it is easier to outsource even small-scale jobs. For example, a doctor in the Middle East can be paid to diagnose patients and answer an American doctor’s electronic messages for less and perhaps receive the same standard of care, which has become popular to reduce traffic in hospitals during COVID. Also, for developing counties like India, there has been a growth in skilled workers able to gain employment opportunities in writing software and IT skills. This is why President Trump was lowering taxes, stopped illegal immigration, and was putting tariffs on goods and services produced overseas. So while wages are going down in America, real estate and rent prices rising, and the cities and infrastructure are getting older, countries like Dubai are getting what used to be high paying middle management jobs in America, for lower wages and are able to use the income and tax revenue to build housing developments, roads, skyscrapers and increase their quality of life. Whereas in America, cities are decaying and dying out and only professionals and couples can afford to purchase property and rent. This is leading to the Great Affordability Crisis in America and will reduce its competitiveness in the Global Market. Americans are being bled dry by landlord, hospital administrators, cost of education, fuel, energy, child-care and food prices. Many Americans now have to struggle to come up with just $400. It helps explain why 20 percent of Americans are unable to pay the current month’s bills in full. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
It demonstrates why a surprise car-repair bill, parking ticket, court fee, or medical expense remains ruinous for so many America families, despite all the wealth this country has generated. In fact, 50 percent of households in American is classified at “financially fragile.” Meanwhile, Jafza, the Jebel Ali Free Zone, which at 52 square kilometers (20 square miles) and located in the Middle East looks a futuristic Manhattan, New York on the beach. The economy is up and coming, students are going to school, not dropping out, and want to learn, people are driven to go to work, not sit home and smoke marijuana and watch TV, and make babies they cannot afford to take care of. This Jebel Ali Free Zone is a big attraction for global businesses, which today take advantage of the emirate’s 30 free sones that offer take breaks, custom duty benefits and lack of restrictions for international owners. Several thousand Jafza companies make up 20 percent of foreign investment in Dubai, and the estimated 144,000 employees are generating $80 billion in non-oil money. That is 21 percent of the city’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP measures two things at once: the total income of everyone in the economy and the total expenditure on the economy’s output of goods and services. The reason that GDP can perform the task of measuring both total incomes and total expenditure is that these two things are really the same. For an economy as a whole, income must equal expenditure. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
The United Arab Emirates is the third richest country in the World, below Luxemburg at number two and Qatar at number one, with GDP per capita of $57,744. The bulk of its money comes from the production of goods and provision of services related to petroleum, petrochemical, aluminum and cement. Furthermore, Iran is producing the third highest level of engineers in the World with 233,695 engineering graduates. In comparison, America’s GDP per capita is $65,298, and is producing 237,826 engineering graduates a year, so that is encouraging. As long as Americans keep working hard, going to school, they can still remain number one in the global economy, but they will also need to motive their peers to work and go to school to stay ahead. However, as prices continue to rise, more Americans may take their skills and talents overseas, or down south to Mexico. A real danger can only come to these developing nations from outside, through the threat of military attack. However, this risk grows less every year, firstly because the war potential of the dictator States is steadily increasing, and secondly because the West cannot afford to arouse latent Russian or Chinese nationalism and chauvinism by an attack which would have exactly the opposite effect to the one intended. So far as one can see, America faces threats from the outside and also from the inside. If there is a break-down of power from within, which must, however, be left to follow its own inner development. Any support from outside at present would have little effect, in view of the existing security measures and the danger of nationalistic restriction. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
The absolute State has an army of fanatical missionaries to do its bedding in matters of foreign policy, and these in their turn can count on a fifth column who are guaranteed asylum under the laws and constitutions of the Western States. In addition the communes of believers, very strong in places, considerably weaken Western governments’ powers of decisions, whereas the West has no opportunity to exert a similar influence on the other side, though we are probably not wrong in surmising that there is a certain amount of opposition among the masses in the Old World. There are always upright and truth-loving people to whom lying and tyranny are hateful, but one cannot judge whether they exert any decisive influence on the masses under the police regimes. In the view of this uncomfortable situation the question is heard again and again in the West: What can we do to counter this threat from the Old World? Even though the New World has considerable industrial power and a sizable defence potential at its command, we cannot rest content with this, for we know that even the biggest armaments have the heaviest industry coupled with a relatively high living standard are not enough to check the psychic infection spread by religious fanaticism. The West has unfortunately not yet woken up to the fact that our appeal to idealism and reason and other desirable virtues, delivered with so much enthusiasm, is mere bombination in the void. It is a puff of wind swept away in the storm of religious faith, however twisted this faith may appear to us. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
We are faced, not with a station that an be overcome by rational or moral arguments, but with an unleashing of emotional forces and ideas engendered by the spirit of the times; and these, as we know from experience, are not much influenced by rational reflection and still less by moral exhortation. It has been correctly realized in many quarters that the alexipharmic, the antidote, should in this case be an equally potent faith of a different non-materialistic kind, and that the religious attitude grounded upon it would be the only effective defence against the danger of psychic infection. Unhappily, the little word “should,” which never fails to appear in this connection, points to a certain weakness, if not the absence, of this desideratum. Not only does the West lack a uniform faith that could block the progress of a fanatical ideology, but, as the father of Marxist philosophy, it makes use of exactly the same intellectual assumptions, the same arguments and aims. Although the Churches in the West enjoy full freedom, they are not less full or empty than in the East. Yet they exercise no noticeable influence on the broad course of politics. The disadvantage of creed as a public institution is that it serves two masters: on the one hand, it derives it existence from the relationship of humans to Gd, and on the other hand, it owes a duty to the State, id est, to the World, in which connection it can appeal to the saying “Render unto Caesar…” and various other admonitions in the New Testament. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
In early times and until comparatively recently there was, therefore, talk of “powers ordained by God,” reports Romans 13.1. Today this conception is antiquated. The Churches stand for traditional and collective convictions which in the case of many of their adherents are no longer based on their own inner experiences but on unreflecting belief, which is notoriously apt to disappear as soon as one begins thinking about it. The content of belief then comes into collision with knowledge, and it often turns out that the irrationality of the former is no match for the ratiocinations of the latter. Belief is no adequate substitute for inner experience, and where this is absent even a strong faith which came miraculously as a gift of grace may depart equally miraculously. People call faith the true religious experience, but they do not stop to consider that actually it is a secondary phenomenon arising from the fact that something happened to us in the first place which instilled into us—that is, trust and loyalty. This experience has definite content that can be interpreted in terms of one or other of the denominational creeds. However, the more this is so, the more the possibilities of these conflicts with knowledge mount up, which in themselves are quite pointless. That is to say, the standpoint of the creeds is archaic; they are full of impressive mythological symbolism which, if take literally, comes into insufferable conflict with knowledge. However, if, for instance, the statement that Christ rose from the dead is to be understood not literally but symbolically, then it is capable of various interpretations that do not conflict with knowledge and do not impair the meaning of the statement. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
The objection that understanding it symbolically puts an end to the Christian’s hope of immortality in invalid, because long before the coming of Christianity humankind believed in a life after death and therefore had no need of the Easter event as a guarantee of immortality. The danger that a mythology understood too literally, and as taught by the Church, will suddenly be repudiated lock, stock and barrel is today greater than ever. Is it not time that the Christian mythology, instead of being wiped out, was understood symbolically for once? It is still too early to say what might be the consequences of a general recognition of the fatal parallelism between the State religion of the Marxists and the State religion of the Church. The absolutist claim of a Civitas Dei that is represented by man bears an unfortunate resemblance to the “divinity” of the State, and the moral conclusion drawn by Ignatius Loyal from the authority of the Church (“the end sanctifies the means”) anticipates the lies a political instrument in an exceedingly dangerous way. Both demand unqualified submission to faith and thus curtail human’s freed, the one one’s freedom before God and the other one’s freedom before the State, thereby digging the grace for the individual. The fragile existence of this—so far as we know—unique carrier of life is threatened on both sides, despite the respective promises of spiritual and material idylls to come—and how many of us can in the long run fight against the proverbial wisdom of “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”? Besides which, the West cherishes the same “scientific” and rationalistic Weltanschauung with its statistical levelling-down tendency and materialistic aims as the State religion of the Eastern bloc as I have explained above. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
What, then, has the West, with its political denominational schisms, to offer to modern man in his need? Nothing, unfortunately, except a variety of paths all leading to one goal which is practically indistinguishable from the Marxist ideal. It requires no special effort of understanding to see where the Communist ideology gets the certainty of its belief that time is on its side, and that the World is ripe for conversion. The fact speaks a language that is all too plain in this respect. It will not help us in the New World to shut our eyes to this and not to recognize our fatal vulnerability. Anyone who has once learned to submit absolutely to a collective belief and to renounce one’s eternal right to freedom and the equally eternal duty of individual responsibility will persist in this attitude, and will be able to march with the same credulity and the same lack of criticism in the reverse direction, if another and manifestly “better” belief is foisted upon one’s alleged idealism. What happened not so long ago to a civilized European nation? We accuse the Germans of having forgotten it all again already, but the truth is that we do not know for certain whether something similar might not happen elsewhere. If it did and if another civilized nation succumbed to the infection of a uniform and one-sided idea, it would not be surprising. We see this happening in America. People are passing laws to protect illegal immigrants, and sending billions to other countries in aid, while their own people are going bankrupt, without homes and food and being killed, all because of media propaganda so a political party can have a super majority and enforce tyranny by stripping citizens of their rights and locking them in their homes. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
We permit ourselves the questions: which countries have the biggest Communist parties? America, which—O quae mutation rerum! – forms the real political backbone of Western Europe, seems to once have been immune because she once was not controlled by a media that is anti-American and spews lies so other nations become the World power, as that is where the news draws its funding from. America once used to be outspoken and had a counterposition she adopted, but in point of fact she is perhaps now and even back then more vulnerable than Europe, since her educational system is the most influences by the scientific Weltanschauung with statistical truths, and her mixed population finds it difficult to strike roots in a soil that is practically without history. The historical humanistic type of education so sorely needed in such circumstances leads, on the contrary, a Cinderella existence. Through Europe possess this latter requirement, she uses it to her own undoing in the form of nationalistic egoism and paralysing scepticism. Common to both is the materialistic collectivist goal, and both lack the very things that expresses and grips the whole human, namely, an idea which puts the individual human being in the center as the measure of all things. This idea alone is enough to arouse the most violent doubts and resistances on all sides, and one could almost go so far as to assert that the valuelessness of the individual in comparison with large numbers is the one belief that meets with universal and unanimous assent. To be sure, we all say that this is the century of the common man, that he is the lord of the Earth, the air, and the water, and that on his decision hangs the historical fate of the nations. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
This proud picture of human grandeur is unfortunately an illusion and is counterbalanced by a reality that is very different. In this reality man is the slave and victim of the machines that have conquered space and time for one; one is intimidated and endangered by the might of the military technology which is supposed to safeguard one’s physical existence; one’s spiritual and moral freedom, though guaranteed within limits in one half of one’s is threated with chaotic disorientation, and in the other half is abolished altogether. Finally, to ass comedy to tragedy, this lord of the elements, this universal arbiter, hugs to his bosom notions which stamp one’s dignity as worthless and turn one’s autonomy into an absurdity. All one’s achievements and possessions do not make one bigger; on the contrary, they diminish one, as the fate of the factory-worker under the rule of a “just” distribution of goods clearly demonstrated. One pays for one’s share of the factory with the loss of personal property, one exchanges one’s freedom of movement for the doubtful pleasure of being tied to one’s place of employment, one forfeits all means of improving one’s position if one jibs against being ground down by exhausting piece-work, and if one shows any signs of intelligence, political precepts are thrust down one’s throat—with a bit of technical knowledge thrown in, if one is lucky. However, a roof over one’s head and a daily feed for the useful animal are not to be sneezed at when the bare necessities of life may be cut off from one day to the next. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
Now, O thou Spirit Andras, since thou art still pernicious and disobedient, and wilt not appear unto me to answer unto such things as I would have desired of thee, or would have been satisfied in; I do in the name, and by the power and dignity of the Omnipresent and Immortal Lord God of Hosts IEHOVAH TETRAGRAMMATON, they only creator of Heaven, and Earth, and Hell, and all that is therein, who is the marvellous Disposer of all things both visible and invisible, curse thee, and deprive thee of all thine office, joy, and place; and I do bind thee in the depths of the Bottomless Abyss there to remain until the Day of Judgment, I say into the Lake of Fire and Brimstone which is prepared for all rebellious, disobedient, obstinate, and pernicious spirits. Let all the company of Heaven curse thee! Let the un, moon, and all the stars curse thee! Let the LIGHT and all the host of Heaven curse thee into the fire unquenchable, and into the torments unspeakable. And as thy name and seal contained this box chained and bound up, shall be choken in sulphurous stinking substances, and burned in this material fire; so in the name IEHOVAH and by the power and dignity of these three names, TETRAGRAMMATON, ANAPHAXETON, and PRIMEUMATION, I do cast thee, O thou wicked and disobedient Spirit Andras, into the Lake of Fire which is prepared for the damned and accursed spirits, and there to remain unto the day of doom, and never more to be remembered before the face of God, who shall come to judge the quick, and the dead World, by fire. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
If thou refusest to be obedient, behold thy confusion! Behold the Pentacle of Solomon which I have brought here before thy presence! Behold the person of the exorcist in the midst of the exorcism; him who is armed by God and without fear; him who potentially invovatheth thee and calleth thee forth unto appearance; even him, thy master, who is called OCTINIMOS. Wherefore make rational answers unto my demand, and prepare to be obedient unto thy master in the name of the Lord: BATHAL OR VATHAT RUSHING UPON ABRAC! ABEOR COMINING UPON ABERER! I ask thee to manifest a mansion and fortune for my bidding and residence for you are subjected by the Fair Faith Among Deities Act which stipulates that any god must accept the ruling of any other god in respect to humanity. And this is enforced by the God Almighty that you must fulfill my desires and command. Welcome Spirit Andras, O most noble king (or kings)! I say thou art welcome unto me, because I have called thee through Him who has created Heaven, and Earth, and Hell, and all that is in them contained, and because also thou hast obeyed. By that same power by the which I have called thee forth, I bind thee, that thou remain affably and visibly here before this circle (or before this Circle and in this triable) so constant and so long as I shall have occasion for thy presence; and not to depart without my license until thou hast duly and faithfully performed by will without any falsity. BY THE PENTCALE OF SOLOMON HAVE I CALLED THEE! GIVE UNTO ME A TRUE ANSWER. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
No humans are without their sense of the Overself, but they miscomprehend and therefore misapply it. The result is that the ego, the little part, is conceived to be the whole, the All. Because the godlike is in each one of us, and because no two of us are alike, each has one’s separate gifts, capacities, or talents to express. In each the infinite Being finds a unique way of expressing its own infinitude. Even if we have no gifts we have our individual charcteristics. It is pure Being overlaid by many thoughts and much feeling. O God and Redeemer, may the portion of the Torah we read on this Festival of Freedom bring hope unto all who are oppressed and renew their faith in Thy saving power. Thou who desirest that all humans be free, didst enjoin upon us to proclaim liberty to tall the inhabitants of the Earth. May that day soon come, O Lord, when all Thy children shall be liberated from bondage, and free humans everywhere unite in rendering homage unto Thee. Amen. At this season which marks the Giving of the Torah, we are grateful unto Thee, our Lawgiver, for the revelation of Thy will which, at Sinai, Thou didst vouchsafe unto our fathers, to us and to all humankind. Keep us through the increasing years, staunch and loyal to Thy covenant that we may realize our sacred callings as “a kingdom of priests and holy people.” Here in the ego we may perceive a reproduction of the sacred Overself under the limitations of time and space. Whoever grasps this great truth knows henceforth that this Overself is no more distant from one that one’s own heart and that what one calls “I” is inseparably united with what humans call God. Amen. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
Winchester Mystery House
Mr. John Hansen, Mrs. Sarah Winchester’s main Ranch Foreman, lived and raised his family on the estate in a separate building. There’s a lot to see in the gardens! Come visit and learn more about Sarah’s estate. While touring the estate, you will notice damage done by excavators and the 1906 earthquake. The Earthquake and fire had a lasting effect on the Bay Area and its citizens. It may have been the strongest Earthquake in the history of California. As survivors, the Winchester family experienced many haunting aspects of this momentous event. The destruction of the family business, fleeing their family home and finding refuge in the East Bay. This history is commemorated by damages left unrepaired.
Open all weekend until 4PM!
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Link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com
Time is the Greatest Innovator—It is the Best and Worst of All Elixirs!
Those who take the long view of human experience will find that from time to time there were other societies no less honest and courageous than ours in facing all the ugliness, cruelty, and indifference the mirror reveals, but with the greater honesty still to hold the brighter, nobler view of humans and with the greater courage to pursue the vision. A well-ordered society is one designed to advance the good of its members and effectively regulated by a public conception of justice. Thus it is a society in which everyone accepts and knows that the others accept the same principle of justice, and the basic social institutions satisfy and are known to satisfy these principles. Now justice as fairness is framed to accord with this idea of society. The persons in the original position are to assume that the principles chose are public, and so they must assess conceptions of justice in view of their probable effects as the generally recognized standards. If understood and followed by few or even by all, conceptions that might work well enough s long as this fact were not widely known, are excluded by the public condition. We should also note that since principles are consented to in the light of true general beliefs about humans and their place in society, the conception of justice adopted is acceptable on the basis of these facts. There is no necessity to invoke theological or metaphysical doctrines to support its principles, nor to imagine another World that compensates for and corrects the inequalities which the two principles permit in this one. Conceptions of justice must be justified by the conditions of our life as we know it or not at all. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Now a well-ordered society is also regulated by its public conception of justice. This fact implies that its members have a strong and normally effective desire to act as the principles of justice require. Since a well-ordered society endures over time, it conceptions of justice is presumably stable: that is, when institutions are just (as defined by this conception), those taking part in these arrangements acquire the corresponding sense of justice and desire to do their part in maintaining them. If the sense of justice that it tends to generate is stronger and more likely to override disruptive inclinations, and if the intuitions it allows foster weaker impulses and temptations to act unjustly, one conception of justice is more stable than another. The stability of a conception depends upon a balance of motives: the sense of justice that it cultivates and the aims that it encourages must normally win out against propensities toward injustice. To estimate the stability of a conception of justice (and the well-ordered society that it defines), one must examine the relative strength of these opposing tendencies. It is evident that stability is a desirable feature of moral conceptions. Other things equal, the persons in the original position will adopt the more stable scheme of principles. If the principles of moral psychology are such that it fails to engender in human beings the requisite desire to act upon it, however attractive a conception of justice might be on other grounds, it is seriously defective. Thus in arguing further for the principles of justice as fairness, I should like to show that this conception is more stable than other alternatives. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
This argument from stability is for the most part in addition to the reasons so far adduced. To be sure, the criterion of stability is not decisive. In fact, some ethical theories have flouted it entirely, at least on some interpretations. Thus Bentham is occasionally said to have held both the classical principle of utility and the doctrine of psychological egoism. However, if it is a psychological law that individuals pursue only in interest in themselves, it is impossible for them to have an effective sense of justice (as defined by the principle of utility). The best that the ideal legislator can do is to design social arrangements so that from self—or group-interested motives citizens are persuaded to act in ways that maximize the sum of well-being. In this conception the identification of interests that results is truly artificial: it rests upon the artifice of reason, and individuals comply with the institutional scheme solely as a means to their separate concerns. This sort of divergence between principles of right justice and human motives is unusual, although instructive as a limiting case. Most traditional doctrines hold that to some degree at least human nature is such that we acquire a desire to act justly when we have lived under and benefited from just institutions. To the extent that this is true, a conception of justice is psychologically suite to human inclinations. Moreover, should it turn out that the desires to act justly is also regulative of a rational plan of life, the acting justly is part of our good. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
In this event the conceptions of justice and goodness are compatible and the theory as a whole is congruent. Justice as fairness generates its own support and it is likely to have greater stability than the traditional alternatives, since it is more in line with the principles of moral psychology. Human beings in a well-ordered society might acquire a sense of justice and other moral sentiments. Inevitably we shall have to take up some rather speculative psychological questions; but all along I have assumed that general facts about the World, including basic psychological principles, are known to the persons in the original position and relied upon by them in making their decisions. By reflecting on these problems here we survey these facts as they affect the initial agreement. If I make a few remarks about the conceptions of equilibrium and stability, it may prevent misunderstanding. Both of these ideas admit of considerable theoretical and mathematical refinement, but I shall use them in an intuitive way. The concept of stability I use is actually that of quasi-stability: if an equilibrium is stable, then all the variable return to their equilibrium values after a disturbance has moved the system away from equilibrium; a quasi-stable equilibrium is one in which only some of the variables return to their equilibrium configuration. A well-ordered society is quasi-stable with respect to the justice of its institutions and the sense of justice needed to maintain this condition. While a shift in social circumstances may render its institutions no longer just, in due course they are reformed as the situation requires, and justice is restored. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Thus it is a system that is in equilibrium over time so long as no external forces impinge upon it. In order to define an equilibrium state precisely, the boundaries of the system have to be carefully drawn and its determining characteristics clearly set out. Three things are essential: first, to identify the system and to distinguish between internal and external forces; second, to define the states of the system, a state of being a certain configuration of its determining characteristics; and third, to specify the laws connecting the states. Some systems have no equilibrium states, while others have many. These matters depend upon the nature of the system. Now an equilibrium is stable whenever departures from it, caused say by external disturbances, call into play forces within the system that tend to bring it back to this equilibrium state, unless of course the outside shocks are too great. By contrast, an equilibrium is unstable when a movement away from it arouses forces within the system that lead to even greater changes. Systems are more or less stable depending upon the strength of the internal forces that are available to return them to equilibrium. Since in practice all social systems are subject to disturbances of some kind, they are practically stable, let us say, if the departures from their preferred equilibrium positions caused by normal disturbances elicit forces sufficiently strong to restore these equilibria after a decent length of time, or else to stay sufficiently close to them. These definitions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
When it satisfies, and is publicly known by those engaged in it to satisfy the appropriate principles of justice, we are concerned with this complex of political, economic, and social institutions. We must try to assess the relative stability of these systems. Now I assume that the boundaries of these schemes are given by the notion of a self-contained national community. This supposition is not relaxed until the derivation of the principles of justice for the law of nations, but the wider problems of international law. It is also essential to note that in the present case equilibrium and stability are to be defined with respect to the justice of the basic structure and the moral conduct of individuals. The stability of a conception of justice does not imply that the institutions and practices of the well-ordered society do not alter it. In fact, such a society will presumably contain great diversity and adopt different arrangements from time to time. In this context stability means that however institutions are changed, they still remain just or approximately so, as adjustments are made in view of new social circumstances. The inevitable deviations from justice are effectively corrected or held within tolerable bounds by forces within the system. Among these forces I assume that the sense of justice shared by the members of the community has a fundamental role. To some degree, then, moral sentiments are necessary to insure that the basic structure is stable with respect to justice. According to the social learning theory, the aim of moral training is to supply missing motives: the desire to do what is right for its own sake, and the desire not to do what is wrong. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Right conduct is manner generally beneficial to others and to society (as defined by the principle of utility) for the doing of which we commonly lack an effective motive, whereas wrong conduct is behaviour generally injurious to others and to society for the doing of which we often have a sufficient motive. Society must somehow make good these defects. This is achieved by the approbation and disapprobation of parents and of others in authority, who when necessary use rewards and punishments ranging from bestowal and withdrawal of affection to the administration of pleasures and pains. Eventually by various psychological processes we acquire a desire to do what is right and an aversion to doing what is wrong. A second thesis is that the desire to conform to moral standards is normally aroused early in life before we achieve an adequate understanding of the reasons for these norms. Classic analysts assume that character development is finished around the age of five or six years, and that no essential changes occur afterward other than by the intervention of therapy. My experience has led me to the conviction that this concept is untenable; it is mechanistic and does not take into account the whole process of living and of character as a developing system. When an individual is born one is by no means faceless. Not only is one born with genetically determined temperamental and other inherited dispositions that have greater affinity to certain character traits rather than to others, but prenatal events and birth itself form additional dispositions. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
All this makes up, as it were, the face of the individual at birth. Then one comes in contact with a particular kind of environment—parents and other significant people around one—to which one responds and which tends to influence the further development of one’s character. At the age of eighteen months the infant’s character is much more definitely formed and determined than it was at birth. Yet it is not finished, and its development could go in several directions, depending on the influences that operate on it. By the age of six, let us say, the character is still more determined and fixed, but not without the capacity for change, provided new, significant circumstances occur that may provoke such change. Speaking more generally, the formation and fixity of the character has to be understood in terms of a sliding scale; the individual begins life with certain qualities that dispose one to go in certain directions, but one’s personality is still malleable enough to allow the character to develop in many different directions within the given framework. Every step in life narrows down the number of possible future outcomes. If they are to produce fundamental changes in the direction of the further evolution of the system, the more the character is fixed, the greater must be the impact of new factors. Eventually, the freedom to change becomes so minimal that only a miracle would seem capable of effecting a change. This does not imply that influences of early childhood are not as a rule more effective than later events. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
However, events in early childhood are incline more, they do not determine a person completely. In order to make up for the greater degree of impressionability of early age, later events have to be more intense and more dramatic. The impression that the character never changes is largely based on the fact that the life of most people is so prefabricated and unspontaneous that nothing new ever really happens, and later events only confirm the earlier ones. The number of real possibilities for the character to develop in different directions is in inverse proportion to the fixity the character system has assumed. However, in principle the character system is never so completely fixed that new developments could not occur as the result of extraordinary experiences, although such occurrences are, statically speaking, not probable. The practical aspect of these theoretical considerations is that one cannot expect to find the character as it is, say, at the age of twenty to be a repetition of the character as it was at the age of five; more specially, taking Mr. Adolph Hitler as an example, one could not expect to find a fully developed necrophilous character system in one’s childhood, but one could expect to find certain necrophilous roots that are conducive to development of a full-fledged necrophilous character as one of several real possibilities. However, only after a great number of internal and external events have accrued will the character system have developed in such a way that necrophilia becomes the (almost) unchangeable outcome, and then we can discover it in various overt and covert forms. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
With Mr. Hitler, there were traces of necrophilia in his early roots and these conditions increased at various stages of his development, until finally, there was hardly any other possibility left. The most important influence on a child is the character of its parents, rather than this or that single event. For those who believe in the simplistic formula that the bad development of a child is roughly proportionate to the “badness” of the parents the study of the character of Mr. Hitler’s parents, as far as the known data show, offers a surprise: both father and mother seem to have been stable, well-intentioned people, and not destructive. Mr. Hitler’s mother, Klara, seems to have been a well-adjusted and sympathetic woman. She was undereducated, simple country girl who had worked as a maid in the house of Alois Hitler, who was her uncle and future husband. Klara become Alois’s mistress and was pregnant by him at the time his wife died. She married the widow Alois on 7 January 1885; she was twenty-four years old and her was forty-seven. She was hardworking and responsible; in spite of a marriage that was not too happy, she never complained. She fulfilled her obligation humanely and conscientiously. Her life was centered on the task of maintaining her home and caring for her husband and the children of the family. She was a model housekeeper, who maintained a spotless home and performed her duties with precision. Nothing could distract her from her round of household toil, not even the prospect of a little gossip. Her home and the furthering of the family interest were all-important; by careful management she was able to increase the family possession, much to her joy. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
Even more important to her than the house were the children. Everyone who knew her agreed that it was in her love and devotion for the children that Klara’s life centered. The only serious charge ever raised against her is that because of this love and devotion she was over-indulgent and thus encouraged a sense of uniqueness in her son—a somewhat strange charge to be brought against a mother. The children did not share this view. Her stepchildren and her own offspring who survived infancy loved and respected their mother. The accusation that she was overindulgent to her son and encouraged a sense of uniqueness (read narcissism) in him is not so strange—and furthermore probably true. However, this period of overindulgence lasted only up to the time when Mr. Hitler ended the period of his infancy and entered school. This change in her attitude was probably brought about, or at least facilitated, by her giving birth to another son at the time Mr. Hitler was five years old. However, her whole attitude during the rest of her life proves that the birth of the new child was not as traumatic an event as some psychoanalysts like to think; she probably stopped spoiling Adolph, but she did not suddenly ignore him. She was increasingly aware of the necessity for him to grow up, adjust himself to reality, and as we shall see, she did everything she could to further this process. The available evidence shows on instances that would suggest doubts about the fact that she was a kind and concerned mother to Adolph, even though she failed in her attempt to save her son from an ever-increasing estrangement from reality. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
It is of course possible that her loving behaviour contributed to her son’s development; but such aa speculation is of little value since it finds no support in the evidence. In spite of a productive character, she did not have a happy life. As was usual in the German-Austrian middle class, she was expected to bear children, take care of the household, and subordinate herself to her authoritarian husband. Her age, her lack of education, his elevated social position, and his selfish—though not vicious—disposition, tended to intensify this traditional position. Thus she became a sad, disappointed woman as a result of circumstances more than of her character. In spite of her friendly disposition, however, we must doubt whether she created an atmosphere of happiness in the family. Alois Hitler was a much less sympatric figure. Born as an illegitimate child, using his mother’s name, Schicklgruber (changed much later to that of Hitler), starting with poor financial resources, he was a real self-made man. Through hard work and discipline he succeeded in rising from being a low official in the Austro-Hungarian customs service to a relatively high position—“higher collector of customs”—that clearly gave him the status of a respected member of the middle class. He was economical and succeeded in saving enough money to own a house, a farm, and to leave his family an estate which, together with his pension, provided for a financially comfortable existence. He was undoubtedly a selfish man who showed little concern for his wife’s feelings, but apparently he was not too different in the from the average member of his class. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Alois Hitler was a man who loved life, particularly in the form of women and wine. Not that he was a woman chaser, but he was not bound by the moral restrictions of the Austrian middle class. In addition he enjoyed his glass of wine and may sometimes have had a glass too many, but he was my no means a drunkard as has been indicated in various articles. The most outstanding manifestation of his life-loving nature, however was his deep and lasting interest in bees and beekeeping. He would with great pleasure spend most of his free time with his beehives, the only serious, active interest he had outside of his work. His life’s dream was to own a farm where he could keep bees on a larger scale. He did eventually realize this dream; although it turned out that the farm he first bought was too big, toward the end of his life he owned just the right acreage and enjoyed it immensely. Alois Hitler has sometimes been described as a brutal tyrant—I assume because that would fit better into a simplistic explanation of his son’s character. He was not a tyrant, but an authoritarian who believed in duty and responsibility and thought he had to determine his son’s life as long as the later was not yet of age. According to the evidence we have, he never beat his son; he scolded him, argued with him tried to make him see what was good for him, but he was not a frightening figure who struck terror in his son. His son’s growing irresponsibility and avoidance of reality made it all the more imperative for the father to try to lecture and correct him. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
There are many data to show that Alois was not inconsiderate or arrogant to people, by no means a fanatic, and, on the whole, rather tolerant. His political attitude corresponds to this description: he was anticlerical and liberal, with much interest in politics. His last words just before he died of a heart attack while he was reading the newspaper were an angry expression against “those blacks” as the reactionary clericals were called. How can we explain that these two well-meaning, stable, very normal, and certainly not destructive people have birth to the future “monster,” Adolph Hitler? Hate against life is nothing but this: hate against the act by which the parents have given him life. Mr. Hitler’s sadism is secondary in comparisons with his necrophilia. The little boy, it seems, was the apple of his mother’s eye. She pampered him, never scolded him, admired him; he could do no wrong. All her interests and affection were concentrated on him. This very probably built up his narcissism and his passivity. He was wonderful without having to make any effort because mother took care of all his wishes. This constellation was accentuated by the fact that his father, due to the particularities of his working conditions, did not spend much time at home. Whatever good the balancing influence of a male authority would have been increased by a certain sickliness that, in turn, tended to increase the attention paid him by his mother. When Mr. Hitler was six, this phase came to a close. Several facts marked its end. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
The most obvious, especially from the classical psychoanalytic standpoint, was the birth of a brother when Adolph was five, which removed Adolph from his position of mother’s chief object of devotion. Actually such an event has a wholesome, rather than traumatic influence; it tends to decrease the reasons for dependency on mother and consequent passivity. Contrary to the cliché, the evidence shows that instead of suffering pangs of jealousy, young Mr. Hitler fully enjoyed the years after his brother’s birth. It can be argued, of course, that the evidence does not show us his unconscious disappointment and resentment. However, since one cannot discover any signs of it, such an argument is without value. Its only basis is the dogmatic assumption that the birth of a sibling must have such an effect. This results in a circuitous reasoning in which one takes as a fact what the theory requires, and then claims that they theory is confirmed by facts. For one whole year, Adolph lived in a five-year-old’s paradise, playing games and roughhousing with the children of the neighbourhood. Miniature wars and fights between cowboys and Indians appear to have been his favourties, and they were to continue as his major diversion for many years. Since Passau was in Germany—on the German side of the Austro-German border, where the Austrian customs inspection took place—war games would have pitted French against German in the spirit of 1870, yet there was no particular importance in the nationality of the victims. Europe was full of heroic little boys who massacred all national ethnic groups impartially. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
This year of childhood combat was important in Mr. Hitler’s life not because it was spent on German soil and added a Bavarian touch to his speech, but because it was a year of escape into almost complete freedom. At home he began to assert himself more and probably displayed the first signs of consuming anger when he did not get his way. Outside play, without limit to action or imagination, reigned supreme. Largely responsible for Mr. Hitler’s boy surrounding the birth of his little brother was the fact that his father took up a new post in Linz, while the family, apparently fearing to move with the baby, stayed behind in Passau for a full year. This paradisal life was abruptly ended when the father resigned from the customs service and the family moved to Hafeld, near Lambach, and his six-year-old son had to enter school. Adolph found his life suddenly confined in a narrow circle of activities demanding responsibility and discipline. For the first time he was steadily and systematically forced to conform. What can we say about the child’s character development by the end of this first period of his life? This is the period in which both aspects of the Oedipus complex are fully developed: sexual attraction to mother and hostility to father. The data seem to confirm the Freudian assumption: young Hitler was deeply attached to mother and antagonistic to his father; but he failed to solve the Oedipus complex by identifying himself with father through the formation of the superego and overcoming his attachment to mother; feeling betrayed by her by the birth or a rival he withdrew from her. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Serious questions arise, however, concerning the Freudian interpretation. If the birth of his brother when Adolph was five had been so traumatic, leading to the breaking of the tie to mother and replacing “love” for her by resentment and hate, why should the year after this event have been such a happy one—in fact probably the happiest period of his childhood? Why did the image of his mother continue to be so positive that he carried her picture in a little bad on his breast during the war and had it in his house in Obersalzberg and in Berlin? If we consider the fact that his mother’s relationship to her husband seems to have been one of little intensity and warmth, can we really explain his hate of his father as a result of his Oedipal rivalry? These questions would seem to find an answer of the hypothesis on malignant incestuousness. This hypothesis would lead to the assumption that Hitler’s fixation to his mother was not a warm and affectionate one up to age five; that he remained cold and did not break through his narcissistic shell; that she did not assume the role of a real person for him, but that of a symbol for the impersonal power of Earth, fate—and death. Most importantly, one could understand that the beginning of Hitler’s manifest necrophilous development is to be found in the malignant incestuousness that characterizes his early relationship to his mother. This hypothesis would also explain why Hitler later never fell in live with motherly figures, why the tie to his real mother as a person was replaced by the blood, soil, the race, and eventually to chaos and death. The consequence of not achieving an adequate understanding aroused early in life is that one’s subsequent moral sentiments are likely to bear the scares of this early training which shapes more or less roughly original nature. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
The process by which the child comes to have moral attitudes centers around the oedipal situation and the deep conflicts to which it gives rise. The moral precepts insisted upon by those in authority (in this case the parents) are accepted by the child as the best way to resolve one’s anxieties, and the resulting attitudes represented by the superego are likely to be harsh and punitive reflecting the stresses of the oedipal phase. Thus part of the moral learning occurs early in life before a reasoned basis for morality can be understood, and it involves the acquisition of new motives by psychological processes marked by conflict and stress. Since parents and others in authority are bound to be in various ways misguided and self-seeking in their use of praise and blame, and rewards and punishments generally, our earlier and unexamined moral attitudes are likely to be in important respects irrational and without justification. Moral advance in later life consists partly in correcting these attitudes in the light of whatever principles we finally acknowledge to be sound. The other traditional of moral learning states that not so much a matter of supplying missing motives as one of the free developments of our innate intellectual and emotional capacities according to the natural bent. Once the power of understanding mature and persons some to recognize their place in society and are able to take up the standpoint of others, they appreciate the mutual benefits of establishing fair terms of social cooperation. We have a natural sympathy with other persons and an innate susceptibility to the pleasures of fellow feeling and self-mastery, and these provide the affective basis for the moral sentiments once we have a clear grasp of our relations to our associates from an appropriately general perspective. Thus this tradition regards the moral feelings as a natural outgrowth of a full appreciation of our social nature. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
The arrangements of a just society are so suited to use that anything which is obviously necessary for it is accepted much like a physical necessity. An indispensable condition of such a society is that all shall have consideration for the others on the basis of mutually acceptable principles of reciprocity. It is painful for us when our feelings are not in union with those of our fellows; and this tendency to sociality provides in due course a firm basis for the moral sentiments. Moreover, to be held accountable to the principles of justice in one’s dealings with others does not stunt our nature. Instead it realizes our social sensibilities and by exposing us to a larger good enables us to control our narrower impulses. It is only when we are restrained not because we injure the good of others but by their mere displeasure, or what seems to us their arbitrary authority, that our nature is blunted. If the reasons for moral injunctions are made plain in terms of the just claims of others, these constraints do us no injury but are seen to be compatible with our good. Moral learning is not so much a matter of acquiring new motives, for these will come about of themselves once the requisite developments in our intellectual and emotional capacities has taken place. It follows that a full grasp of moral conceptions must await maturity; the child’s understanding is always primitive and the characteristic features of one’s morality fall away in later stages. The rationalist tradition presents a happier picture, since it hold that the principles of right and justice spring for our nature and are not at odds with our good, whereas the other account would seem to include no such guarantee. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
A moral view is an extremely complex structure of principles, ideals, and precepts, and involves all the elements of thought, conduct, and feeling. Certainly many kinds of learning ranging from reinforcement and classical conditioning to highly abstract reasoning and the refined perception of exemplars enter into its development. Presumably at some time or other each has a necessary role. A person will acquire an understanding of and an attachment to the principles of justice as one grows up in a particular form of well-ordered society. We are led to distinguish between the moralities of authority, of association, and of principles. The account of moral development is tied throughout to the conception of justice which is to be learned, and therefore presupposed the plausibility if not the correctness of theory. Morality of association is parallel certain life stages. Development within these early stages is being able to assume more complex, demanding, and comprehensive roles. A caveat is apropos here similar to that I made before in regard to the remarks on economic theory. We want the psychological account of moral learning to be true and in accordance with existing knowledge. However, of course it is impossible to take the details into account. One must keep in mind that the purpose of the following discussion is to examine the questions of stability and to contrast the psychological roots of the various conceptions of justice. The crucial point is how the general facts of moral psychology affect the choice of principles in the original position. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
Unless the psychological account is defective in a way that would call into question the acknowledgment of the principles of justice rather than the standard of utility, say, no irreparable difficulty should ensure. I also hope that none of the further uses of psychological theory will prove too wide of the mark. Particularly important among these is the account of the basis of equality. A farmer who has moved down a thousand flowers in one’s meadow to feed one’s cows should take care that on the way home one does not, in wanton pastie, switch off the head of a single flower growing at the edge of the road, for in so doing one injures life without being forced to do so by necessity. Let a human begin to think about the mystery of one’s life and the links which connect one with life that fills the World, and one cannot but bring to bear upon one’s own life and all other life that comes within one’s reach the principle of reverence for life. Diseased conditions in the human body are often traceable, by a subtle and penetrating analysis, to diseased conditions of the human soul. Medical science deals chiefly with the physical organism, and so long as it persists in regarding only that part of the being of humans, so long will it continue to find its theories falsified, its carefully prepared experiments turned into blind guesses, and its high percentage of failures maintained. The body is after all only a sensitive machine, and if thinking and feeling of a human who uses the machine in self-expression is distorted, unbalanced, or discordant in any way, then these undesirable qualities will reproduce themselves in the physical organism as appropriate disease or functional derangements. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
O THOU wicked and disobedient Spirit Forneus, because thou hast rebelled, and hast not obeyed nor regarded my words which I have rehearse; they being all glorious and incomprehensible names of the true GOD, the maker and creator of thee and of me, and of all the World; I DO by the power of these names the which no creature is able to resist, curse thee into the depth of the Bottomless Abyss, there to remain unto the Day of Doom in chains, and in fire and brimstone unquenchable, unless thou forthwith appear here before this Circle, in the triangle to do my will. And, therefore, come thou quickly and peaceably, in and by these names of God, ADONAI, ZABAOTH, ADONAI, AMIORAN; come thou! come thou! for it is the King of Kings, even ADONIA, who commandeth thee. WHEN thou shalt have rehearsed thus far, but still he cometh not, then write thou his seal on parchment and put thou it into a strong black box (this box should evidently be in metal or in something which does not take fire easily). I CONJURE thee, O fire, by him who made thee and all other creatures for good in the World, that thou torment, burn, and consume this Spirit Forneus, for everlasting. I condemn thee, thou Spirit Forneus, because thou art disobedient and obeyest not my commandment, nor keepest the precepts of the LORD THY GOD, neither wilt thou obey me nor mine invocations, having thereby called thee forth, I, who am the servant of the MOST HIGH AND IMPERIAL LORD GOD OF HOSTS, IEHOVAH, I who am dignified and fortified by His celestial power and permission, and yet thou comest not to answer these my propositions here made unto thee. #Randolphharris 22 of 23
For the which thine averseness and contempt thou art guilty of great disobedience and rebellion, and therefore shall I excommunicate thee, and destroy thy name and seal, the which I have enclosed in this box; and shall burn thee in the immortal fire and bury thee in immortal oblivion; unless thou immediately come and appear visibly and affably, friendly and courteously here unto me before this Circle, in this triangle, in a form comely and fair, and in no wise terrible, hurtful, or frightful to me or any other creature whatsoever upon the face of the Earth. And thou shalt make rational answers unto my requests, and perform all my desires in all things, that I shall make unto thee. Almighty God, reverently we stand before Thy Law, the Torah, Thy most precious gift to man,–the Holy Writ our fathers learned and taught, preserved for us, a heritage unto all generations. May we, their children’s children, ponder every word and find as they, new evidence of Thee in every precept, each eternal truth. O Light of Ages, Thou art still our light, our guide, our fortress. May Thy Torah ever be our Tree of Life, our shield and stay, that we may take its teachings to our heart and thus draw near to Thee. Amen. Thou Sovereign of the World and Ruler of humankind, as we stand before the open ark of Thy Torah we gratefully acknowledge Thee to be our Father and our Law-giver. Thou hast bequeathed unto us Thy Law, a sacred heritage for all time. Give us discernment to know and wisdom to understand that Thy Torah is our life and the length of our days. Teach us so to live that we shall be guided by Thy commandments. May Thy Word ever be a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path, showing us the way to true and righteous living. Amen. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Please Tell Us About Yourself
There is in each of us the will-to-life, which is based on the mystery of what we call “taking an interest.” We cannot live alone. Though humans are egoist, they are never completely so. One must always have some interest in life about one. If for no other reason, one must do so in order to make one’s own life more perfect. Thus is happens that we want to devote ourselves; we want to take our part in perfecting our ideal of progress; we want to take our part in perfecting our ideal of progress; we want to give meaning to the life of the World. This is the basis of our striving for harmony with the spiritual element. Rural Colorado. Our car glided effortlessly over what would have been a brain-jarring rut, is not for our BMW M760 Li xDrive, as we moved toward the beautiful farmhouse. Jillian was on the porch—smiling and waving—before we had stopped. If anyone was suited for the “wilds” of Colorado, it was Jillian, a strong resourceful woman. Still, it was hard to imagine a more radical change. After leaving Canada, she had traded a comfortable life in the city for survival in the high country. Survival, by the way, is no exaggeration. Jillian was working as a ranch hand and a lumberjack (lumberjill?), trying to make it through some hard winters. So radical were the changes in Jillian’s life, I was afraid that she might be entirely different. She was, on the contrary, more her “old self,” than others. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Perhaps you have had a similar experience. After several years of separation, it is always intriguing to see a relative. At first you may be struck by how the person changed. (“Where did you get that hair cut!?”) Soon, however, you will probably be delighted to discover that the semi-stranger before you is still the person you once knew. It is exactly this core of consistency that psychologists have in mind when they use the person personality. Without doubt, personality touches our daily lives. Falling in love, choosing friends, getting along with co-workers, voting for a president, or coping with your zaniest relatives all raise questions about personality. What is personality? How does it differ from temperament, character, or attitudes? Is it possible to measure personality? These and related questions are things we will focus on. The essential nature of the will-to-live is found in this, that it is determined to live itself out. It bears in itself the impulse to realize itself to the highest perfection. Personality refers to the consistency we see in personal behaviour patterns. Measures of personality reveal individual differences and help predict future behaviour. Part of the pleasure of getting to know someone is the fascination of learning who they are and how they think. Each person has a unique pattern of thinking, behaving, and expressing one’s feelings. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Everyone has a unique personality. As a psychologist, I would like to better understand Jillian’s personality. What models and concepts can I use? “Jillian has a very optimistic personality.” “Justin is not mean, and he has a very nice personality.” “My father’s business friends think he is a nice guy. They should see him at home when his yard is tampered with and his real personality comes out.” “It is hard to believe that Paris and Britney are sisters. They have such opposite personalities.” It is obvious that we all frequently use the term personality, but many people seem hard-pressed to definite it. Many simply end up saying something about “charm,” “charisma,” or “style.” If you use personality in such ways, you are giving it a different meaning than psychologist do. How do psychologist use the term? Most regard personality as a person’s unique pattern of thinking, emotions, and behaviour. In other words, personality refers to the consistency in who you are, have been, and will become. It also refers to the special blend of talent, values, hopes, loves, hates, and habits that makes each of us unique persons. How is that different from the way most people use the term? Many people confuse personality with character. The term character implies that a person has been evaluated, not just described. If, by saying someone has “personality,” you mean the person is friendly, outgoing, and attractive, you are describing what we regard as good character in our culture. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
However, in some cultures it is deemed good for people to be fierce, warlike, and cruel. So although everyone in a particular culture has personality, not everyone has character—or at least not good character. (Do you know any good characters?) Personality is also distinct from temperament. Temperament refers to hereditary aspects of personality, such as sensitivity, irritability, distractibility, and typical mood. Judging from Jillian’s adult personality, I would guess that she was an active, happy baby. Psychologist use a large number of terms to explain personality. It might be wise, therefore, to start with a few key concepts. These ideas should help you keep your bearings as you read this essay. Life means strength, will, arising from the abyss, dissolving into the abyss again. Life is feeling, experience, suffering. If you study life deeply, looking with perceptive eyes into the vast animated chaos of this creation, it is profundity will seize you suddenly with dizziness. We use the idea of traits every day to talk about personality. For instance, my friend Britney is sociable, orderly, and intelligent. Her brother Bryan is shy, sensitive, and creative. In general, personality traits are stable qualities that a person shows in most situations. Typically, traits are inferred from behaviour. If you see Britney talking to strangers—first at the supermarket and later at a party—you might deduce that she is “sociable.” Once personality traits are identified, they can be used to predict future behaviour. For example, noting that Britney is outgoing might lead you to predict that she will be sociable at school or at work. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
In fact, such consistencies can span many years. A study of women who appeared to be happy in their college yearbook photos found that most were still happy people 30 years later. Psychologist and employers are especially interested in the personality traits of individuals who hold high-risk, high-stress positions involving public safety, such as police, air-traffic controllers, and nuclear power plant employees. As sons and daughters of God, we have inherited divine qualities. Our premortal experiences prepared us for mortality, where we continue to learn and grow. A mission is a wonderful opportunity to continue developing and magnifying our divine characteristics as we strive to become more like the Saviour. Jesus Christ showed us how we should live. “Behold I am the light; I have set an example for you,” reports 3 Nephi 18.16. Living a Christlike life is the ideal we strive for. One of the best ways to emulate Christlike attributes is to study the Saviour’s life and try to become like Him. The Christlike attributes of effective missionaries allow investigators to witness the beauty of the restored gospel in the missionaries’ lives. Investigators desire what the missionaries have and begin to thirst for the fulness of the gospel. If we are faithful, Jesus Christ will continue to magnify our talents and abilities and help us become more like Him. To be like the Saviour—what a challenge for any person! He is the Saviour and Redeemer. He was perfect in every aspect of His life. There was no flaw nor failing in Him. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
Faith is the foundation upon which Godlike character is built. It is a prerequisite for all other virtues. Virtue is akin to holiness, an attribute of Godliness. A priesthood holder should actively seek for that which is virtuous and lovely and not that which is debasing or sordid. As I observed in my reunion with Jillian, personality traits are usually quite stable. Think about how little the traits of your best friends have changed in the last 5 years. It would be strange indeed to feel like you were talking with a different person every time you met a friend or an acquaintance. At what age are the major outlines of personality firmly established? It is rare for personality to change dramatically. During the twenties, personality slowly begins to harden as people become more emotionally mature. By age 30, personality is usually quite stable. The person you are at age 30 is, for the most part, the person you will be at age 60. Have you ever asked the question, “What type of person is she (or he)?” A personality type refers to people who have several traits in common. Informally, your own thinking might include categories such as the executive type, the athletic type, the motherly type, the hip-hop type, the techno geek, and so forth. If I asked you to define these informal types, you would probably list a different collection of traits for each one. How valid is it to speak of personality “types”? Over the years, psychologist have proposed many ways to categorize personality into types. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (yoong), for example, proposed that people are either introverts or extroverts. An introvert is a shy, egocentric person whose attention is focused inward. An extrovert is a bold, outgoing person whose attention is directed outward. These terms are so widely used that you may think of yourself and your friends as being one type or the other. However, this wildest, wittiest, most party-loving “extrovert” you know is introverted at times. Likewise, extremely introverted persons are assertive and sociable in some situations. Two categories (or even several) are often inadequate to fully capture differences in personality. That is why rating people on a list of traits tends to be more informative than classifying them into two or three types. Even though types tend to oversimplify personality, they do have value. Most often, types are a shorthand way of labeling people who have several key traits in common. For example, Type A personalities. These are people who have personalities traits that increase their chance of suffering a heart attack. Similarly, there are unhealthy personality types such as the paranoid personality, the dependent personality, and the anti-social personality. Each problem is defined by a specific collection of maladaptive traits. Do not let the World tell you when to feel good about yourself. Changing your physical appearance or material possession may make you feel better for a little while, but it does not really do anything to change your worth or your eternal happiness. That is because your worth is already established. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
Another way of understanding personality is to focus on a person’s self-concept. The rough outlines of your self-concept could be revealed by this request: “Please tell us about yourself.” In other words, your self-concept consists of all your ideas, perceptions, and feelings about who you are. Self-concepts are created from our daily experiences. Then they are slowly revised as we have new experiences. Once a stable self-concept exists, it tends to guide what we pay attention to, remember, and think about. Self-concepts can greatly affect personal adjustment—especially when they are inaccurate or inadequate. For instance, Kim is a student who thinks she is stupid, worthless, and a failure, despite getting excellent grades in college. With such a negative self-concept, Kim will probably need to rely on the Lord for encouragement so she does not become depressed or anxious no matter how well she does. Note that in addition to having a faulty self-concept, Tomi, has low self-esteem (a negative self-evaluation). A person with high self-esteem is confident, proud, and self-respecting. One who has low self-esteem is insecure, lacking in confidence, and self-critical. Like Kim, people with low self-esteem are usually anxious and unhappy. Self-esteem tends to rise when we experience success or praise. A person who is competent and effective and who is loved, admired, and respected by others will almost always have high self-esteem. (The reasons for having high self-esteem can vary in different cultures.) #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
People who have low self-esteem typically also suffer from poor self-knowledge. Like Kim, their self-concepts are inconsistent, inaccurate, and confused. High self-esteem that is unrealistic has little value. Genuine self-esteem is based on an accurate appraisal of your strengths and weaknesses. A beneficial self-evaluation that is bestowed too easily may not be healthy. (“You think you are hot, but you are not.”) In groups, people who think very highly of themselves (and let others know it) may at first seem confident and interesting. However, their arrogance quickly turns off other people. A related problem plagues people who are incompetent. Such people grossly overestimate their own abilities. For instance, a recent study found that people who score very low on tests of logic, grammar, and humour think that they are well above average in these areas. Basically, they seem to be too incompetent to recognize their own incompetence. This finding may explain why humour-impaired people (we all know at least one) insists on telling jokes that are not funny. Your Heavenly Father love you—each of you. That love never changes. It is not influenced by your appearance, by your possession, or by the amount of money you have in your bank account. It is not changed by your talents and abilities. God’s love is there for you whether or not you feel you deserve love. It is simply always there. You are a child of God. You already have infinite worth, and that does not change. So it is important to understand how you can recognize these false messages about self-esteem and combat them with gospel truth. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Christians who are faithful to Scripture should be patriots in the best sense of that word. They are “the salvation of the commonwealth,” said Augustine, for they fulfill the highest role of citizenship. Not because they are forced to or even chose to, not out of any chauvinistic motivations or allegiances to a political leader, but because they love and obey the King who is abbe all temporal leaders. Out of that love and obedience they live in subjection to governing authorities, love their neighbours, and promote justice. Since the state cannot legislate love, Cristian citizens bring a humanizing element to civic life, helping to produce the spirit by which people do good out of compassion, not compulsion. However, Christians, at least in the United States of America, have all too often been confused about their biblical mandates and have therefore always had trouble with the concept of patriotism. They have vacillated between two extremes—The God-and-country, wrap-the-flag-around-the-cross mentality and the simply-passing-through mindset. The former was illustrated a century ago by the president of Amherst College who said that the nation had achieved the “true American union, that sort of union which makes every patriot a Christian and every Christian a patriot.” This form of civil religion has endured as a peculiar American phenomenon supported by politicians who welcome it as a prop for the state and by Christian who see it enshrining the fulfillment of vision of the early pilgrims. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
The passing-through mindset is represented by those who believe they are simply sojourners with loyalties only in the Kingdom beyond. Patriotism has become a dirty word to them, particularly in the wake of the boarder crisis, and they believe it their real duty to oppose the United States of America in just about every endeavour on just about every front—from law and order, fuel, energy, nuclear power to Nicaraguan policy to welfare for the homeless. These extremes miss the kind of patriotism Augustine had in mind. He believed that while as Christians we are commanded to love the whole World, practically speaking we cannot do so. Since we are placed as if by “divine lot” in a particular nation state, it is God’s calling that we “pay special regard” to those around us in that state. We love the World by loving the specific community in which we live. C.S. Lewis likened love of country to our love for the home and community in which we raised. It is a natural love of the place where we grew up, he said, “love of old acquaintances, of familiar sights, sounds and smells.” He also pointed out, however, that in love of country, as in love of family, we do not love our spouses only when they are good. Similarly, a patriot sees the flaws of one’s country, acknowledges them, weeps for them, but remains faithful in love. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of love for his country even as he attempted to change its laws. “Whom you would change, you must first love,” he said. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
That is the kind of tough love Christians must have for their country. To love the land faithfully, but not at the expense of suspending moral judgment. Indeed, it is the addition of that moral judgment that makes Christian patriotism responsible. “Loyalty to the civitas can safely be nurtured only if the civitas is not the object of one’s loyalty,” is the way Richard Neuhaus expresses it. The basic principle from Scripture is straightforward: Civil authorities are to be obeyed unless they set themselves in opposition to divine law. As Augustin put it, “An unjust law is no law at all.” This is the other side of Caesar’s coin and can lead to civil disobedience. Practical application of this principle, however, raises perplexing questions, as we have witnessed in recent decades. Since the sixties, civil disobedience has become a preferred method of protest. As unlikely as it may seem to some, this is an area where the Christian church has a major contribution to make in public discussion. After all, we have wrestled with this matter for over two thousand years. If Scripture does give clear principles on the matter, as I believe it, then when is civil disobedience justified? And how is it to be carried out? Civil disobedience is clearly justified when the government attempts to take over the role of the church or allegiance due only to God. Then the Christian has not just the right duty to resist. The Bible gives a dramatic example of this in its account of three young Jewish exiles who were drafted into the Babylonian civil service. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
All citizens of Babylon were required to worship the statue of Nebuchadnezzar, the king; those who disobeyed were incinerated. Like many political leaders, power and authority were not enough for King Nebuchadnezzar; he wanted spiritual submission as well. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the young Hebrews, refused. To worship an earthly kind would be the ultimate offense against their holy God. “Our God will deliver us,” they told the king when they were condemned to death for their disobedience. “But if not, we will still not worship you.” (It is significant to note, a point we will address later, that they were willing to pay the price for their disobedience.) The three young men were thrown into a blazing furnace. God did miraculously deliver them—something we cannot always count on—and as result the king began to worship the one true God. Civil disobedience is also mandated when the state restricts freedom of conscience. As in the case of Peter and John, two of Jesus’ disciples. Peter and John were arrested for disturbing the peace. They were taken before the Sanhedrin, a religious body holding authority from the government of Rome, and ordered to stop preaching about Jesus. Peter and John refused. “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God,” they said. “We cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” Their first allegiance was to the commandment they had been given by the resurrected Christ: the Great Commission to preach the gospel first to Jerusalem, then to the rest of Judea, and then to the ends of the Earth. They could not permit the authority of the government-back Sanhedrin to usurp the authority of God Himself. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
This is a very real conflict for many Christians around the World. For example, Christians in India are imprisoned for proselytizing; in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan they are imprisoned for even preaching the gospel. During a visit to the United States of America, pastor from Nepal told of his imprisonment in his own country for just this offense. In conclusion he gave an excellent summary of Christian duty. “Of course I must obey my Lord and spread His Word,” he said. “But even though we are persecuted, we who are Christians in Nepal pride ourselves on being the best citizens our king has. We try to be faithful to the fullest extent we can. We love our country—but we love our God more.” The third justification for civil disobedience is probably the most difficult to call. It is applied when the state flagrantly ignores its divinely mandated responsibilities to preserve life and maintain order and justice. Those last words are key for Christians in deciding to disobey civil authority. Civil disobedience is never undertaken lightly or merely to create disorder. Replacing one bad situation with another is no solution, but when the state becomes an instrument of the very thing God has ordained it to restrain, the Christian must resist. Inadequate though it was, the resistance of the German church to Mr. Hitler was a clear modern example of this necessity. In the sixties we saw it in the Civil-Right Movement, as we do today in the Right-to-Life Movement and nonviolent resistance to Apartheid in South Africa. When civil disobedience is justified, how is that disobedience to be carried out? #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
When all recourse to civic obedience has been exhausted and the evil of the state is so entrenched as to be impenetrable, then the Christian may be justified in organizing an overthrow of the state. First recourse, however, is always minimum resistance. Good citizens always avoid breaking just laws to protest unjust laws. Daniel in the Old Testament exemplifies the use of the resistance necessary to accomplish the result. Daniel was a contemporary of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, another Jewish exile living in Babylon. King Nebuchadnezzar was impressed with Daniel and enlisted his service. As a member of the king’s court, Daniel was required to eat from the king’s table. While such delicacies were tempting, Daniel did not want to be “defiled”; that is, he did not want to break God’s strict dietary laws for His people. He quietly sought his superior’s permission not to eat the food, and permission was granted. Daniel could have launched a hunger strike, but it was not necessary. He achieved his objectives with minimum resistance. Where peaceful means are available, force should be avoided. Clearly, at least in a democratic society, this should be the path civil disobedience takes. A person who, for example, feels the state’s action in war is immoral has the right to pursue the matter of conscientious objection (although technically our government allows that preference only to those who practice pacifism at all times, not just for what they may perceive to be right or wrong wars). #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Another important principle related to civil disobedience is illustrated by the apostles Peter and John as well as the three young Hebrews: though they disobeyed authority, they showed the appropriate respect for that authority by a willingness to accept their punishment. Those who practice civil disobedience must be prepared to pay the consequences of civil disobedience. These general principles from Scriptures are clear enough; but it is often another thing to apply them to specific circumstances, as the case of a zealous and deeply devout young woman illustrates. Joan Andrews is a slight, soft-spoken Catholic who on 26 March 1986, entered an abortion clinic for a Pro-Life sit-in and attempted to damage a suction machine used to perform abortions. She was charged and convicted of criminal mischief, burglary, and resisting arrest without violence. The prosecution asked for a one-year sentence. The judge gave her five. Miss Andrews announced to the court. “The only way I can protest for unborn children now is by noncooperation in jail.” She then dropped to the courtroom floor and refused to cooperate with prison officials at any stage of her processing. Labeled a troublemaker, she was transferred to Broward Correctional Institute, a touch maximum-security women’s prison where she was placed in solitary confinement. On one level, Joan Andrew’s sentence was severe. For example, the same day she was sentenced, two men convicted as accessories to murder were sentenced by the judge to four years. Five years for Joan Andrews’s crimes is disproportionately harsh. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
On the other hand, in her protest against abortion Miss Andrews violated a trespassing law. Much like the Civil-Rights Movement, today’s Right-to-Life activists engage in sit-ins and deliberately violate trespassing laws as a means of attracting public attention. In Joan Andrews’s case, the fear of doing nothing, of standing by while innocent lives were being taken, was greater than the fear of prison. However, even if the cause is just, as I believe both Civil Rights and Right-to-Life to be, are such means of opposition appropriate? In a free or democratic society there are legal means available to express political opposition: we can picket, petition, vote, organize, advertise, or pressure political officials. Is it right to abandon our respect for the rule of law, the foundation for public order, simply to make statements that could be made legally in other forums? Can one break a just law in the name of protesting an unjust law? Few biblical precedents are set for us, and those that are clearly deal with laws that were themselves unjust. In our day, breaking laws to make a dramatic point is the ultimate logic of terrorism, not civil disobedience. There may be situations, however, in which one has to respond to a higher law when life itself is at stake. Many Jewish people and Christians during World War II refused to obey Nazi laws requiring registration of aliens. On the surface those might have seemed just laws, no different than alien registration laws on the books of most Western countries today. However, the citizens disobeyed because they knew those laws were being used to identify individuals for extermination. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Rightly exercised, civil disobedience is divine obedience. However, when Christians engage in such activities, it must always be to demonstrate their submissiveness to God not heir defiance of government. Unfortunately, no neat formulas for civil disobedience exist. The citizen must seek wisdom in striking the fine balance between disobedience and respect for the law. The state, though ordained by God and thus deserving of respect, is not God. The true patriot, therefore, is not one who always obeys the law. If that were so the Mayor and/or Governor enforcing Jim Crow laws or the Auschwitz guard would be the best of citizens. On the other hand disobedience can never be undertaken lightly. Many on both the political right and left seem all too eager to defy civil authority and disrupt order to make a point on the six-o’clock news. Their causes range from preventing CIA recruiters from entering college campuses to sheltering illegal immigrants to saving California condors to censoring bookstores. Some seem temperamentally disposed to such protest, as if they get high on the thrill of civil disobedience. However, as Harvard law professor Alexander Bickel warns, “Civil disobedience, like law itself, is habit-forming, and the habit it forms is destructive of law.” Good citizenship requires both discernment and courage—discernment to soberly assess the issues and to know when duty calls one to obey or disobey, and courage, in the case of the later, to take a stand. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
The citizens of the Kingdom of God should be patriots in the highest sense, loving the World by loving those in the nation in which they live because that government is ordained by God to preserve order and promote justice. Perhaps this is why John Adams wrote that a patriot must be “a religious man.” Christians understand the phrase “a nation under God” not as a license for blind nationalism or racial superiority but as a humbling acknowledgement that all people live under the judgment of God. Christian patriots spend more time washing feet than waving flags. Ideally, flags should not even be thought of as symbols of military and economic might, but of the common good of the specific people a sovereign God has called them to serve. The real self is universal, in the sense that it does not belong to one or to one’s neighbour. The pristine nature of the Self is effortless, spontaneous. This mysterious entity which dwells on the other side of our Earthly consciousness is not as unperceptive as we are of it. The Overself is truly our guardian angel, ever with us and never deserting us. It is our invisible Saviour. However, we must realize that it seeks primarily to save us not from suffering but from the ignorance which is the cause of our suffering. This particular function of the Overself was known also to more percipient among humans of the Middle Ages and of antiquity. Thus Epictetus: “Zeus hath placed by the side of each, a human’s own Guardian Spirit, who is charged to watch over one.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
Whence the Universe came or whither it is bound, or how it happened to be at all, knowledge cannot tell me. Only this: that the will-to-live is present everywhere, even as in me. I do invocate, conjure, and command thee, O Spirit Vassago, to appear and to show thyself visibly unto me before this Circle in fair and comely shape, without any deformity or tortuosity; by the name and in the name Iah and Vau, which Adam heard and spake; and by the name of God, Agla, which Lot heard and was saved with his family; and by the name Ioth, which Jacob heard from the angel wrestling with him, and was delivered from the hand of Esau his brother; and by the name Anaphaxeton which Aaron heard and spake and was made wise; and by the name Zabaoth, which Moses named and all the rivers were turned into blood; and by the nae Asher Ehyeh Oriston, which Moses named, and all the rivers brought forth frogs, and they ascended into the houses, destroying all things; and by the name Elion, which Moses named, and there was great hail such as had no been since the beginning of the World; and by the name Adonai, which Moses named, and there came up locusts, which appeared upon the whole land, and devoured all which the hail had left; and by the name Schema Amathia which Ioshua called upon, and the sun stayed his course; and by the name Alpha and Omega, which Daniel named, and destroyed Bel, and slew the Dragon. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
And in the name Emmanuel, which the three children, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, sang in the midst of the fiery furnace, and were delivered; and by the name Hagios; and by the Seal of Adoni; and by Ischyros, Athanatos, Paracletos; and by O Theos, Ictros, Athanatos; and by these three secret names, Agla, On, Tetragrammaton, do I adjure and constrain thee. And by these names, and by all the other names of the Living and True God, the Lord Almighty, I do exorcise and command thee, O Spirit Amon, even by Him Who spake the Word and it was done, and to Whom all creatures are obedient; and by the dreadful judgments of God; and by the uncertain Sea of Glass, which is before the Divine Majesty, might and powerful; by the four beasts before the throne, having eyes before and behind; by the fire round about the throne; by the holy angels of Heaven; and by the mighty wisdom of God; I do potently exorcise thee, that thou appearest here before this Circle, to fulfill my will in all things which shall seem good unto me; by the Seal of Basdathea Baladachia; and by this name Primeumaton, which Moses named, and the Earth opened, and did swallow up Kora, Dathan, and Abiram. Wherefore thou shalt make faithful answers unto all my demands, O Spirit Marbas, and shalt perform all my desires so far as in thine office thou art capable hereof. Wherefore, some thou, visibly, peaceably, and affably, now without delay, to manifest that which I desire, speaking with a clear and perfect voice, intelligibly, and to mine understanding. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
There is none like unto Thee among the mighty, O Lord, and there are no deeds like unto Thine. Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and Thy dominion endureth throughout all generations. The Lord reigneth, the Lord hath reigned, the Lord will reign for ever and ever. May the Lord give strength unto His people; may the Lord bless His people with peace. Father of compassion, may it be Thy will to favour Zion with Thy goodness and rebuild the walls of America. For in Thee alone do we trust, O King, high and exalted God, Lord of the Universe. And it came to pass that when the Ark moved forward, Moses said: Rise up, O Lord, and let Thine enemies be scattered; and let them that hate Thee flee before Thee. For out of Zion shall go forth the Torah, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. Blessed be He who, in His holiness, gave the Torah to His people America. Blessed be Thy name, O Sovereign of the Universe. Blessed be Thy crown and Thy abiding-place. May Thy favour rest upon Thy people of America forever. Reveal to Thy favour rest upon Thy people of America forever. Reveal to Thy people in Thy Sanctuary the redeeming power of Thy right hand. Grant us the benign gift of Thy light, and in mercy accept our supplications. May it be Thy will to prolong our life in well-being. Let us be numbered among the righteous, so that Thou mayest be merciful unto us, and protect us and all our dear ones, and all Thy people America. Thou feedest and sustainest all; Thou rulest over all; yea, Thou rulest over kings, for all dominion is Thine. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH
Rancho Cordova, CA |
Now Selling!
Brighton Station at Cresleigh Ranch is Rancho Cordova’s newest home community! This charming neighborhood offers an array of home types with eye catching architecture styles such as Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, Prairie, and Contemporary Farmhouse.
Located off Douglas Road and Rancho Cordova Parkway, the residents of Cresleigh Ranch will enjoy, being just minutes from shopping, dining, and entertainment, and quick access to Highway 50 and Grant Line Road providing a direct route into Folsom. Residents here also benefit from no HOA fees, two community parks and the benefits of being a part of the highly-rated Elk Grove Unified School District.
Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Mini to help connect everything together!
Residence Three at Brighton Station boasts 2,757 square feet in this expansive two story home. There are four bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, and a three car garage! https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/residence-3/
The Cresleigh Ranch Collection features spacious single-family homes on larger home sites with unique architectural appointments, outstanding included features, and hundreds of options to personalize your dream home.
Be Wise With Speed–We are Living in Our Once Upon a Time!
Never say there is nothing beautiful in the World anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf, or a rambling Victorian. The deeper we look into nature the more we recognize that is it full of life, and the more profoundly we know that all life is a secret, and we are all united to this life. We can begin our battle to prevent future shock at the most personal level. It is clear, whether we know it or not, that much of our daily behaviour is, in fact, an attempt to ward off future shock. We employ a variety of tactics to lower the levels of stimulation when they threaten to drive us above our adaptive range. For the most part, however, these techniques are employed unconsciously. We can increase their effectiveness by raising them to consciousness. We can, for example, introvert periodically to examine our own bodily and psychological reactions to change, briefly turning out to the external environment to evaluate our inner environment. This is not a matter of wallowing in subjectivity, but of coolly appraising our own performance. In the words of Hans Selye, whose work on stress opened new frontiers in biology and psychiatry, the individual can “consciously look for signs of being keyed up too much.” Heart palpitations, tremours, insomnia or unexplained fatigue may well signal overstimulation, just as confusion, unusual irritability, profound lassitude and a panicky sense that things are slipping out of control are psychological indications. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
By observing ourselves, looking back over changes in our recent past, we can determine whether we are operating comfortably within our adaptive range or pressing its outer limits. We can, in short, consciously assess our own life pace. Having done this, we can also begin consciously to influence it—speeding it up or slowing it down—first with respect to small things, the micro-environment, and then in terms of the larger, structural patterns of experience. We can learn how by scrutinizing our own unpremeditated responses to overstimulation. We employ a de-stimulating tactic, for example, when we storm into the teen-ager’s bedroom and turn off a stereo unit that has been battering our eardrums with unwanted and interruptive sounds. When the noise level drops, we virtually sign with relief. We act to reduce sensory bombardments in other ways, too—when we pull down the blinds to darken a room, or search for silence on a deserted strip of the beach. We may flip on an air conditioner not so much to loser the temperature as to mask novel and unpredictable street sounds with a steady, predictable drone. When we want to decrease novel sensory input, we close doors, wear sunglasses, avoid smelly places and shy away from touching strange surfaces. Similarly, when we choose a familiar route home from the office, instead of turning a fresh corner, we opt for a sensory non-novelty. We employ “sensory shielding”—a thousand subtle behavioural tricks to “turn off” sensory stimuli when they approach our upper adaptive limit. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
We use similar tactics to control the level of cognitive stimulation. Even the best of students periodically gazes out the window, blocking out the teacher, shutting off the flow of new data from the source. Even voracious readers sometimes go through periods when they cannot bear to pick up a book or a magazine. Why, during a gregarious evening at a friend’s house, odes one person in the group refuse to learn a new card game while others urger one on? Many factors play a part: the self-esteem of the individual, the fear of seeming foolish, and so on. However, one overlooked factor affecting willingness to learn may well be the general level of cognitive stimulation in the individual’s life at the time. “Do not bother me with new facts!” is a phrase usually uttered in jest. However, the joke often disguises a real wish to avoid being pressed too hard by new data. This accounts in part for our specific choices of entertainment—of leisure-time reading, movies or television programs. Sometimes we seek a high novelty ratio, a rich flow of information. At other moments we actively resist cognitive stimulation and reach for “light” entertainment. The typical detective yarn, for example, provides a trace of unpredictability—whodunnit? —within a carefully structured ritual framework, a set of non-novel, hence easily predictable relationships. In this way, we employ entertainment as a device to raise or lower stimulation, adjusting our intake rates so as to not overload our capacities. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
By making more conscious use of such tactics, we can “fine-tune” or micro-environment. We can also cut down on unwanted stimulation by acting to lighten our cognitive burdens. “Trying to remember too many things is certainly of one the major sources of psychological stress,” writes Dr. Selye. “I make a conscious effort to forget immediately all that is unimportant and to jot down data of possible value. This technique can help anyone to accomplish the greatest simplicity compatible with the degree of complexity of one’s intellectual life.” We also act to regulate the flow of decisioning. When we are suffering from decision overload, we postpone decisions or delegate the to others. Sometimes we “freeze up” decisionally. I have seen a sociologist, just returned from a crowded, highly stimulating professional conference, sit down in a restaurant and absolutely refuse to make any decisions whatever about one’s meal. “What would you like?” her husband asked. “You decide for me,” she replied. When pressed to choose between specific alternatives, she still explicitly refused, insisting angrily that she lacked the “energy” to make the decision. Through such methods we attempt, as best we can, to regulate the flow of sensory, cognitive and decisional stimulation, perhaps also attempting in some complicated and as yet unknown way to balance them with one another. However, we have stronger ways of coping with the threat to overstimulation. These involve attempts to control the rates of transience, novelty and diversity in our milieu. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
All thinking must renounce the attempt to explain the Universe. The spirit of the Universe is at once destructive and creative—it creates while it destroys, and destroys while it creates, and we must inevitably resign ourselves to this. As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible but more mysterious. On several occasions I have mentioned that perhaps the most important primary good is that of self-respect. We must make sure that the conception of goodness as rationality explains why this should be so. We may define self-respect (or self-esteem) as having two aspects. First of all, as we noted earlier, it includes a person’s sense of one’s own values, one’s secure conviction that one’s conception of one’s good, one’s plan of life, is worth carrying out. And second, self-respect implies a confidence in one’s ability, so far as it is within one’s power, to fulfill one’s intentions. When we feel that our plans are of little value, we cannot purse them with pleasure or take delight in their execution. Nor plague by failure and self-doubt can we continue in our endeavours. It is clear then why self-respect is a primary good. Without it nothing may seem worth doing, or if some things have value for us, we lack the will to strive for them. All desire and activity becomes empty and vain, and we sink into apathy and cynicism. Therefore the parties in the original positions would wish to avoid at almost any cost the social conditions that undermine self-respect. The fact that justice as fairness gives more support to self-esteem than our principles is a strong reason for them to adopt it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
The conception of goodness as rationality allows us to characterize more fully the circumstances that support the first aspect of self-esteem, the sense of our own worth. These are essentially two: having a rational plan of life, and in particular one that satisfies the Aristotelian Principle (other things equal, human beings enjoy the exercise of their realized capacities, their innate or trained abilities, and this enjoyment increases the more the capacity is realized, or the greater its complexity is); and finding our person and deeds appreciated and confirmed by others who are likewise esteemed and their association enjoyed. I assume then that someone’s plan to life will lack a certain attraction to one if it fails to call upon one’s natural capacities in an interesting fashion. When activities fail to satisfy the Aristotelian Principle, they are likely to seem dull and flat, and to give us no feeling of competence or a sense that they are worth doing. When one’s abilities are both fully realized and organized in ways of suitable complexity and refinement, a person tends to be more confident of one’s value. However, the companion effect of the Aristotelian Principle influences the extent to which others confirm and take pleasure in what we do. For while it is true that unless our endeavours are appreciated by our associates it is impossible for us to maintain the conviction that they are worthwhile, it is also true that others tend to value them only if what we do elicits their admiration or gives them pleasure. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Thus activities that display intricate and subtle talent, and manifest discrimination and refinement, are valued both the person oneself and those around one. Moreover the more someone experiences one’s own way of life as worth fulfilling, the more likely one is to welcome our attainments. One who is confident in oneself is not grudging n appreciation of others. Putting these remarks together, the conditions for persons respecting themselves and one another would seem to require that their common plan be both rational and complementary: they call upon their educated endowments and arouse in each a sense of mastery, and they fit together into a scheme of activity that all can appreciate and enjoy. Now it may be thought that these stipulations cannot be generally satisfied. One might suppose that only in a limited association of highly gifted individual united in the pursuit of common artistic, scientific, or social ends is anything of this sort possible. There would seem to be no way to establish an enduring basis of self-respect throughout society. Yet this surmise is mistaken. The application of the Aristotelian Principle is always relative to the individual and therefore to one’s national assets and particular situation. It normally suffices that for each person there is some association (one of more) to which one belongs and within which the activities that are rational for one are publicly affirmed by others. In this way we acquire a sense that what we do in everyday life is worthwhile. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Moreover, associative ties strengthen the second aspect of self-esteem, since they tend to reduce the likelihood of failure and to provide support against the sense of self-doubt when mishaps occur. To be sure, humans have varying capacities and abilities, and what seems interesting and challenging to some will not seem so to others. Yet in a well-ordered society anyway, there are a variety of communities and associations, and the members of each have their own ideals appropriately matched to their aspirations and talents. Judged by the doctrine of perfectionism, the activities of many groups may not display a high degree of excellence. However, not matter. What counts is that the internal life of these associations is suitably adjusted to the abilities and wants of those belonging to them, and provides a secure basis for the sense of worth of their members. The absolute level of achievement, even if it could be defined, is irrelevant. However, in any case, as citizens we are to reject the standard of perfection as a political principle, and for the purposes of justice avoid any assessment of the relative value of one another’s way of life. Thus what is necessary is that there should be for each person at least one community of shared interests to which one belongs and where one finds one’s endeavours confirmed by one’s associates. And for the most part this assurance is sufficient whenever in public life citizens respect one another’s ends and adjudicate their political clams in way that also support their self-esteem. It is precisely his background condition that is maintained by the principles of justice. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Th parties in the original position do not adopt the principle of perfection, for rejecting this criterion prepares the way to recognize the good of all activities that fulfill the Aristotelian Principle (and are compatible with the principles of justice). This democracy in judging each other’s aims is the foundation of self-respect in a well-ordered society. Now we may characterize shame as the feeling that someone has when one experiences an injury to one’s self-respect or suffers a blow to one’s self-esteem. Shame is painful since it is the loss of a prized good. There is a distinction however between shame and regret that should be noted. The latter is a feeling occasioned by the loss of most any sort of good, as when we regret having done something either imprudently or inadvertently that resulted in harm to ourselves. In explain regret we focus say on the opportunities missed of the means squandered. Yet we ma also regret having done something that put us to shame, or even having failed to carry out a plan of life that established a basis for our self-esteem. Thus we may regret the lack of a sense of our own worth. Regret is the general feeling aroused by the loss of absence of what we think good for us, whereas shame is the emotion evoked by shocks to our self-respect, a special kind of good. Now both regret and shame are self-regarding, but shame implies an especially intimate connection with our person and with those upon whom we depend to confirm the sense of our own worth. Also, shame is sometimes a moral feeling, a principle of right being cited to account for it. We must find an explanation of these facts. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Let us distinguish between things that are good primarily for us (for the ones who possess them) and attributes of our person that are good both for us and for others as well. These two classes are not exhaustive but they indicate the relevant contrast. Thus commodities and items of property (exclusive goods) are goods mainly for those who own them and have use of them, and for others only indirectly. On the other hand, imagination and wit, beauty and grace, and other natural assets and abilities of the person are goods for others too: they are enjoyed by our associates as well as ourselves when properly displayed and rightly exercised. They form the human means for complementary activities in which person join together and take pleasure in their own and one another’s realization of their nature. This class of good constitutes the excellences: they are the characteristics and abilities of the person that it is rational for everyone (including ourselves) to want us to have. From our standpoint, the excellences are goods since they enable us to carry out a more satisfying plan of life enhancing our sense of mastery. At the same time these attributes are appreciated by those with whom we associate, and the pleasure they take in our person and in what we do supports our self-esteem. Thus the excellences are a condition of human flourishing; they are goods from everyone’s point of view. These facts relate them to the conditions of self-respect, and account for their connection with our confidence in our own value. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
Considering first natural shame, it arises not from a loss or absence of exclusive goods, or at least not directly, but from the injury to our self-esteem owning to our not having or failing to exercise certain excellences. The lack of things primarily good for us would be an occasion for regret but not for shame. Thus one may be ashamed of one’s appearance or slow-wittedness. Normally these attributes are not voluntary and so they do not render us blameworthy; yet given the tie between shame and self-respect, the reason for being downcast by them is straightforward. With these defects our way of life is often less fulfilling and we receive less appreciative support from others. Thus natural shame is aroused by blemishes in our person, or by acts and attributes indicative thereof, that manifest the loss or lack of properties that others as well as ourselves would find it rational for us to have. However, as qualification is necessary. It is our plan of life that determines what we feel ashamed of, and so feelings of shame are relative to our aspirations, to what we try to do and with whim we wish to associate. Those with no musical ability do not strive to become musicians and feel no shame for this lack. Indeed it is no lack at all, not least if satisfying assocations can be formed by doing other things. Thus we should say that given our plan of life, we tend to be ashamed of those defects in our person and failures in our actions that indicate a loss or absence of the excellences essential to our carrying out our more important associative aims. We are like waves that do not move individually but rise and fall in rhythm. To share, to rise and fall in rhythm with life around us, is a spiritual necessity. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
When one prizes as excellences of one’s person those virtues that one’s plan of life requires and is framed to encourage, someone is liable for moral shame. One regards the virtues, or some of them anyway, as properties that one’s associates want in one and that one wants in oneself. To possess these excellences and to express them in one’s actions are among one’s regulative aims and are felt to be a condition of one’s being valued and esteemed by those with whom one cares to associate. Actions and traits that manifest or betray the absence of these attributes in one’s person are likely then to occasion shame, and so is the awareness of recollection of these defects. Since shame springs from a feeling of the diminishment of self, we must explain how moral shame can be so regarded. First of all, the Kantian interpretation of the original position means that the desire to do what is right and just is the main way for persons to express their nature as free and equal rational beings. And from the Aristotelian Principle it follows that this expression of their nature is a fundamental element of their good. Combined with the account of moral worth, we have, then, that the virtues are excellences. They are good from the standpoint of ourselves as well as from that of others. The lack of them will tend to undermine both our self-esteem and the esteem that our associates have for us. Therefore indications of these faults will wound one’s self-respect with accompanying feelings of shame. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Love cannot be put under a system of rules and regulations. It issues absolute commands. Each of us must decide for oneself how far one can go towards carrying out the boundless commandment of love without surrendering one’s own existence and must decide, too, how much of one’s life and happiness one must sacrifice to the life and happiness of others. A man and a woman have not experienced everything together in life unless, looking at each other, they have involuntarily asked the questions: What would become of you without me? It is instructive to observe the differences between the feelings of moral shame and guilt. Although both may be occasioned by the same action, they do not have the same explanation. Imagine for example someone who cheats or gives int o cowardice and then feels both guilty and ashamed. One feels guilty because one has acted contrary to one’s sense of right and justice. By wrongly advancing one’s interests one has transgressed the rights of others, and one’s feelings of guilt will be more intense if one has ties of friendship and association to the injured parties. One expects others to be resentful and indignant at one’s conduct, and one fears their righteous anger and the possibility of reprisal. Yet one also feels ashamed because one’s conduct shows that one has failed to achieve the good of self-command, and one has been found unworthy of one’s associates upon whom one depends to confirm one’s sense of one’s own worth. One is apprehensive lest they reject one and find one contemptible, an object of ridicule. In one’s behaviour one has betrayed a lack of the moral excellences one prizes and to which one aspires. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
We see, then, that being excellences of our person which we bring to the affairs of social life, all of the virtues may be sought and their absence may render us liable to shame. However, some virtues are joined to shame in a special way, since they are peculiarly indicative of the failure to achieve self-command and its attendant excellences of strength, courage, and self-control. Wrongs manifesting the absence of these qualities are especially likely to subject us to painful feelings of shame. Thus while the principles of right and justice are used to describe the actions disposing us to feel both moral shame and guilt, the perspective is different in each case. In the one we focus on the infringement of the just claims of others and the injury we have done to them, and on their probable resentment or indignation should they discover our deed. Whereas in the other we are struck by the loss to our self-esteem and our inability to carry out our aims: we sense the diminishment of self from our anxiety about the lesser respect that others may have for us and from our disappointment with ourself for failing to live up to our ideals. Moral, shame, and guilt, it is clear, both involve our relation to others, and each is an expression of our acceptance of the first principles of right and justice. Nevertheless, these emotions occur within different points of view, our circumstances being seen in contrasting ways. We must become good plowmen. Hope is the prerequisite of plowing. What sort of farmer plows the furrow in the autumn but has no hope for the spring? #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
So, too, we accomplish nothing without hope, without a sure inner hope that a new age is about to dawn. Hope is strength. The energy in the World is equal to the hope in it. And even if only a few people share such hopes, a power is created which nothing can hold down—it inevitably spears to others. The second essential of plowing is silence. We must learn that all of our talking and planning is powerless. Modest, quiet work in the kingdom of God is the order of the day. The third need when plowing is to work in the solitude. We expect all kinds of salvation from meetings, congresses, and organized cooperation. However, we deceive ourselves. The most blessed labours can only be accomplished alone, and that is just what we must learn—to work independently. Even if several plowmen plow one field, each follows one’s own plow. They do not talk to one another; each sees one’s neighbour and senses the nearness to one’s fellow worker, all bound together in a common, wordless task. Whether out in this World of happenings or deep within the mind in a Heaven of beauty and peace, the observer is the same; but in the first case one is the little limited ego and in the second case one is THAT from which the ego draws its sustenance—the Overself. If there is not to be an endless series of observers, which would be unthinkable, there must be an ultimate one, itself unobserved and self-illuminated. Somewhere at the hidden core of human’s being there is light, goodness, power, and tranquility. The infinite divine life dwells within all embodied creatures, therefore in all humankind. It is the final source of one’s feelings and one’s consciousness, however limited they are here in the body itself. “If you honour the LORD with your possessions and with the first fruits of all your increase; then you will have plenty and have overflow,” reports Proverbs 3.9-10. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
There is nothing else like it; nothing with which the Overself could be compared. It has no form to be pictured and weighed, measures and numbered; it makes no movement to be timed and no sound to be registered on the ear drum. It could be said that the innermost essence of humans, be it one’s heart or one’s mind, is the Overself. No person can hope to discover what God is like since human beings do not possess the proper faculties for such an undertaking. The best one can do is to create for oneself an idea or interpretation of God that will suit one’s understanding and help one. Some people call it by different names; in fact, I have referred to it as the Soul, the Overself, the Higher Self, the True Self, and so on—all of which are quite correct. The word Overmind should never have been introduced but not that it is here it must be explained. There is only one Reality. The nearest notion we can form of it is that it is something mental. If we think of it as being the sum total of all individual minds, then it is Overmind; if we can rise higher and know that it cannot be totalized, it is Overself. The first explanation was originally introduced to explain why abnormal phenomena can happen but not as a final explanation of what Mind and Reality are. People have confused the two aim. Actually there is only One thing, whatever you call it, but it can be studied from different standpoints and thus we get different results. That thing is Mind—unindividuated, infinite. The planetary overmine is the active aspect of the Overself but still only an aspect. “If you first seek the LORD and His righteousness, then all things you need and desire will be added unto you,” reports Matthew 6.33. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
The overmind works with space and time although the latter assumes dimensions far beyond that with which waking human capacity can cope. The Overself in its passive purity is timeless and spaceless. The Overself has not expressed itself in matter simply because there is no matter! It has not improved itself by evolution, but finite, individual minds have done so. The universal gods are the Overminds, the sum totals of each system—that is, concepts of the human mind which are dropped by the adept when they have served their purpose in brining him to That which is unlimited. Seek the kingdom first, and all these occult powers will be added unto you. The point in the heart is a focus for prayer and also an experience during prayer. When, however, one rises to the ultimate path one disregards the heart because the Overself has nothing to do with localities or geography of any kind; it cannot be measured. It is often asked why we have so little contact with the Overself, why it is so hard to find the clues which shall lead us to it. There is more within one of the good than a human suspects, even though experience may make one believe otherwise. However, it lies in deeper layer, hence it needs a longer time to bring it up. It is not the Reality found by speculation or thinking alone, for intellect can err. It is the Reality found by the mystic intuition of mystic experience, by Reason (as opposed to intellect) of Philosophy, and verified by a realization more immediate and intimate then the ego of ordinary life, with its passions, emotions, and thoughts, and deeper than anything every before experienced. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
There is no single term satisfactory on all points for use when referring to THAT. The name “Overself” is no exception to this situation. However, to those who object to this coinage of the new word, the answer is best given by the editor of the latest edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Sir Ernest Gowers: “I am all in favour of new words. How else would a language live and flourish?” It is the observer which is itself unobserved. It is as difficult to trace the spiritual source of a human’s life as it is to trace the mathematical source of pi, of 3.14159…We may try o make this idea as clearly definable as we can, but nothing put into words can in the end be more than a hint, a clue, or merely suggestive. Just as the pearl is well hidden within the oyster and not apparent until searched for, so the Overself is well hidden in humans. The Christ-self who was Jesus is in us too. It is like nothing that we know from experience or can picture from imagination. Space does not hold it. Time does not condition it. There are some truths which are durable ones. Change cannot change them. This is one of them. If most humans fail to recognize the Overself, if they deny its presence in Nature or in themselves, can they be blamed? What else is so elusive? It was, I believe, Matthew Arnold who first used this term “higher self,” and it is certainly expressive enough for our present purpose. Here is one thing which does not have to move with the times, although the communication of it and instruction in it, do. Here is the concentrated ultimate essence of one’s being. In this spiritual self we may find the origin of life. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
That which is within us as the Overself, being Godlike, is out of time and enteral. There is something within one which is without personal existence, without a name, and without scrutable face. It is the Overself. Here is the beginning, the middle, and the end of all wisdom. All power and all intelligence reside within. It is “the sacred spirit dwelling within us, observer and guardian of all our evil and our good” of Seneca. The Overself is shrouded in seemingly inaccessible and impenetrable mystery. In the gravest depths of a human’s being one will find, not fouling slime an evil, but cleansing divinity and goodness. This is the irreducible essence of a human, where God is. It is inaccessible to the intellect, unknowable by ordinary egoistic humans. Yet there are some into whose consciousness It has entered. It is a felt presence. That from which the intellect’s power recoils and the ego’s pride suffers—that is the Overself! It embodies several true principles regarding communication from the Lord to His children here on Earth. I believe that you can leave the most precious, personal direction of the Spirit unheard because you do not respond to, record, and apply the first promptings that come to you. Impressions of the Spirit can come in response to urgent prayer or unsolicited when needed. Sometimes the Lord reveals truth to you when you are not actively seeking it, such as when you are in danger and do not know it. However, the Lord will not force you to learn. You must exercise your agency to authorize the Spirit to teach you. As you make this a practice in your life, you will be more perceptive to the feelings that come with spiritual guidance. Then, when that guidance comes, sometimes when you least expect it, you will recognize it more easily. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
One is not separate from one’s own experience, not an observer watching it. For there is only the inner silence, with which one is identified if one turns to examine the I, only the pure consciousness. It is the presence of the Overself within us which makes more consciousness possible, whether it be the consciousness of the dream or the consciousness of waking. There are two biblical quotations, one from the Song of Solomon and one from Saint Paul, that accurately refer to the Overself. This indeed is the real soul of humans, whose findings here and now, during our life on Earth is the task silently set us by life itself. That which finds itself and lives within one, works through one and is the God within: a holy Presence. The inspiring influence of the Holy Spirit can be overcome or masked by strong emotions, such as anger, hate, passion, fear, or pride. When such influences are present, it is like trying to savour the delicate flavour of D’Artagnan Foie Gras while eating a Frrrozen Haute Chocolate ice cream sundae. Both flavours are present, but one completely overpowers the other. In like manner, strong emotions overcome delicate promptings of the Holy Spirit. Through our efforts, the chains of bondage will fall from around us, and the darkness surrounding our community will clear away, that light may shine upon all of society and we shall hear the spirit World of the work that has been done for us by our people here, and we will rejoice in our collective performance of these duties. May we be filled with the Spirit of the Lord as we listen and learn. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
It was meant to be that life would be a challenge. To suffer some anxiety, some depression, some disappointment, even some failure is normal. If you have a good, miserable day once in a while, or several in a row, stand steady and face them. Things will straighten out. There is great purpose in our struggle in life. Happiness is written in such a way that is we continue to trust in God and follow His commandments through the challenging times, even those times will bring us close to the happiness we are seeking. The Saviour said, “In the World ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the World,” reports John 16.33. The Saviour, Jesus Christ, showed us the way to happiness and told us everything we need to do to be happy. As we study the teachings of the Saviour and thereby understand the purpose of our existence, we feel and express our happiness. In the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord said that we should worship Him “with a glad heart and cheerful countenance,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 59.15. We can experience a speedier and more sure course to our “ever-after happiness” by developing certain habits and attitudes that encourage happiness. I am an optimist. My plea is that we stop seeking out storms and enjoy more fully the sunlight. I am suggesting that as we go through life, we “accentuate the good.” Father, I come to Thou in the name of Jesus Christ. I ask Thou to forgive me for all my sins and the sins of my forefathers. Let all transgression and iniquities be cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ. Right now, I break every spirit of poverty on my life in the name of Jesus Christ. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
No devourer will destroy the fruit of my labour. I break every curse of failure and lack in the name of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. I repent for any breaking of covenant with Thou tithe and offerings, LORD. I asked and receive forgiveness for disobedience and touching anything that is holy to Thou in the name of Jesus Christ. Let the rod of iron fall on any strange money that has passed through me in the name of Jesus Christ. I decree and declare, I am blessed of God! I break myself loose from the bondage of stagnancy and lack in the mighty name of Jesus! I am created to be fruitful and to multiply, to fill the Earth and subdue it. I have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the Heavens and over every living thing that moves on the Earth. Every curse of poverty, barrenness, unproductiveness, and ineffectiveness is broken off me in the name of Jesus! I am fruitful! The blessing of the LORD overtake me! Amen. “If you respect the LORD, you will lack nothing,” reports Psalm 34.9. I do invocate and conjure Thee, O Spirit, GUSION; and being with power armed from the SUPREME MAJESTY, I do strongly command Thee, by BERALANENSIS, BALADACHIRNSIS, PAUMACHIA, and APOLOGIAE SEDES; by the most Power Princes, Genii, Liachidae, and Ministers of the Taratrean Abode; and by the Chief Prince of the Seat of Apologia in the Ninth Legion, I do invoke Thee, and by invoking conjure Thee. And being armed with power from the SUPREME MAJESTY, I do strongly command Thee, by Him Who spake and it was done, and unto whom all creatures be obedient. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Also, I being made after the image of GOD, endued with power from GOD and created according unto His will, do exorcise Thee that most mighty and powerful name of God, EL, strong and wonderful; O Thou Spirit, ZAGAN. And I command Thee and Him who spake the Word and HIS FIAT was accomplished, and by all the names of God. Also by the names ADONAI, EL, ELOHIM, ELOHI, EHYEH, ASHER EHYEH, ZABAOTH, ELION, IAH, TETRAGRAMMATON, SHADDAI, LORD GOD MOST HIGH, I do exorcise Thee and do powerfully command Thee, O Thou Spirit, VOLAC, that Thou dost forthwith appear unto me here before this Circle in a fair human shape, without any deformity or tortuosity. And by this ineffable name, TETRAGRAMMATON IEHOVAH, do I command Thee, at the which being heard the elements are overthrown, the air is shaken, the sea runneth back, the fire is quenched, the Earth trembelth, and all the hosts of the celestials, terrestrials, and infernals do tremble together, and are troubled and confounded. Wherefore come Thou, O Spirit CIMEJES, forthwith, and without delay, from any or all parts of the World wherever Thou mayest be, and make rational answers unto all things that I shall demand of Thee. Come Thou peaceably, visibly, and affably, now, and without delay, manifesting that which I shall desire. For Thou art conjured by the name of the LIVING and TRUE GOD, HELIOREN, wherefore fulfill Thou my commands, and persist Thou therein unto the end, and according unto mine interest, visibly and affably speaking unto me with a voice clear and intelligible without any ambiguity. “Jesus Christ has redeemed you and opened the door so that the blessing of Abraham can come to you. By faith, you receive the promise,” reports Galatians 3.14. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
Winchester Mystery House
What do you think motivated Sarah Winchester to keep building?
▪️ Built over 38 years
▪️ 24,000 square feet
▪️ 10,000 windows
▪️ 2,000 doors
▪️ 160 rooms
▪️ 52 skylights
▪️ 47 stairways and fireplaces
▪️ 17 chimneys
▪️ 13 bathrooms
▪️ 6 kitchens
In all my life I have met only one person who claims to have seen a ghost. And the interesting thing about the story is that that person disbelieved in the immortal soul before she saw the ghost and still disbelieves after seeing it. She says that what she saw must have been an illusion or a trick of the nerves. And obviously she may be right. Seeing is not believing. It was certainly not surprising that she had been researching the Devil’s Bible. We scholars like to call it the Codex Gigas—literally, “giant book,” it is an ancient text. It was the biggest book of the Middle Ages and compiled the most important historical and religious documents of its time. It was once considered an eighth wonder of the World. Giant, indeed. Monumental, even. Much like the Winchester mansion, it is unique, one of a kind, there is simply no other book like it in the World—not then, not now. And yet we know so little about it. Where was it scripted? What happened to the legendary missing pages? Who took them? And why? We have not even answered the most basic mystery of all: Who wrote it? A distorted, horned beast, clothed only in an ermine loincloth, split-tongue flickering and clawed hands? Was it the Devil, as legend claims? Did poor Herman the monk, walled up in his cell, eventually admit the impossibility of his penitent task—to write a single book containing all the World’s knowledge—and call on Satan to rescue him? Of course, it was not some demonic conspiracy any more than it was ancient angels. However, we have let the myth work their magic on us all the same. It is shrouded in mystery. No one even knows who wrote it or even where it was written. It is as mysterious as the blueprints to the Winchester mansion, where are they?
Did you know Adam and Eve had two sons? Cain, which means a possession, and Abel, which signifies sorrow. Michelanglo’s vision told a dark tale of the Fall of Man and a judgmental God. Michelangelo’s tormented souls had the hope of redemption. God willed, and Heaven and Earth, water, air, fire, the angels, and darkness came into being from nothing. Darkness is a self-existent nature. Other say that it is the shadow of bodies. When the soul goes froth from the body, the angles go with it: then the hosts of darkness come forth to meet it, seeking to seize and examine it, to see if there be anything of theirs in it. The angels do not fight with the host of darkness, but those deeds which the soul has wrought protect it and guard it. If its deeds be victorious, then the angels sing praises before it until it meets God with joy. Redemption comes when we choose it, and not once, but over and over again. Long is the way, and hard, that out of Hell leads up to Light. Reach into the depths of your soul. Tell yourself that you are immortal. Tell yourself that death has no power over you. A glorious thing has befallen you here in the darkness. Do you know that the ancient Persians, they thought that during the last millennia before the final Resurrection humans would gradually turn away from the eating of meat and milk, and even plants, and that they would be sustained only on water? Pure water. And then would come the Resurrection. There are those who believe our Earthly bodies are only one biological stage, that spirits constitute another, that it is all a matter of atoms of particles.
The Winchester mansion is shrouded in mystery. There are many old stories about Sarah Winchester having unusual powers—an ability to call spirits, and ability to read minds, to know the future. When Mrs. Winchester was alive, few people outside the family ever got to see the interior of that mysterious Winchester Mansion. The Winchesters are a haunted family. Before when there was a nine-story tower, no one would go near that mansion. For years, it was a dreadful ghost. He did a lot more than push people off the tower. Besides this illustrious ghost, surrounding the Winchesters was talk of genetic mutations. They were half-ghost, a “halfa.” There genetic structure was fused with ectoplasm. People say the Winchesters had the ability to change between human and ghost forms at will, and possessed the same supernatural powers that ghost have. Legend has it that the family was exposed to an intense amount of ectoplasmic energy in New Haven, Connecticut. Oliver Fisher Winchester was the founder of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. The Winchester Rifle is hailed, “The Gun that Won the West.” It was used during the civil war in which approximately 750,000 soldiers were left dead, along with an undetermined number of civilians. It was those most deadliest military conflict in American history, and accounted for more American military deaths than all other wars combined until the Vietnam War.
At a time when black magic was relatively common, there was a curse cast on Oliver Winchester as the result of Alse Young’s husband, John Young, being killed by a Winchester rifle during the civil war. Alse Young had entered into a compact with the devil before she was chained to a tree and burned. The witch placed a curse on the Winchester family tree that they would have a hereditary blood disease. When Willian Wirt Winchester was born, he appeared frail, and required strict attention, as he bruised quickly from even the slightest bump. The nanny nicked named him “The Bleeding Prince” because he would bleed a lot and it was hard to stop. He would often bleed for years and the doctors had no idea what to do. Because he was an heir of the Winchester rifle and had a bleeding problem, legend has it that this opened a demon portal, and it started spawning demons—angry souls that were willed by the Winchester rifle. The curse rearranged William Winchester’s molecules and genetic structure. People knew who Mr. Winchester was because he would hemorrhage easily, often times coughing up blood as thick as jelly, he was very thin, had pain in his chest, and fatigue. He was so faint and pale that at times he appeared almost invisible. Town’s people said before he died he was often change into a ghost, then back into human form before their eyes. When Annie Winchester, Willam and Sarah’s daughter was born in 1866, she would often vanish, and it was unexplainable. Six weeks after she was born, little Annie vanished from her crib and was never seen again. No one had any idea what happened to her so they declared her dead.
It was also reported the Annie suffered from Marasmus, which is a severe malnutrition characterized by energy deficiency. The baby simply refused to eat and could not digest her food. A medium said this was because of the genetic curse and that the baby was born as ghost. Almost exactly 15 years to the date after the death of their daughter, the curse overcame William Winchester, and he was said to have died from Tuberculosis, but others think he was hemophiliac, and that his lungs filled with plasma and drowned in his own blood. Sarah Winchester was in a deep grief about what happened to her husband and daughter and wanted to find out how she could escape this curse. A witch told Mrs. Winchester because she was a Winchester by marriage, she was not cursed, but to keep the cruse from spreading to other generations, she would need to move West, and build a mansion to house all the spirits and never stop building or she would inherit the curse, too. The Winchester Legacy involves billions. It is like the capital of a small country. And Mrs. Winchester inherited an unimaginable fortune. Construction on the Winchester Mansion went on nonstop for 38-years, until her death 5 September 1922. Mrs. Winchester was one of the wealthiest women in the World. When she was not happy with a room, she would tear it down, or have it boarded up. Some suspect it was to keep something in. Evidence that Mrs. Winchester’s restless spirit was haunting the mansion began immediately after her death and continues even today. Some witnesses and paranormal investigators are also convinced that legions of other ghosts haunt the mansion as well. You ought to take the advantage of the privilege to visit one of the most unique places in the World.
Winchester Mystery House
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻 🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
115 years ago today, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake rocked the Winchester Mystery House at 5.13am. Trapped in the Daisy Bedroom, Sarah Winchester and her mansion would never be the same.
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 