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Spirit Beings Have the Power to Absorb Our Actions and Thoughts

Llanada Villa was wintry with steep hand craved shingled roofs and stained-glass windows. It was built of redwood, and had countless chimneys rising from its steep gables, and a sprawling conservatory on the west side. The sheer scale of place, stranded as its own park, suggested another World. When the stars were right, they could plunge from World to World through the sky. However, the black haunted woods were where no dweller ventured. There were insane shouts and harrowing screams, soul-chilling chant and dancing devil-flames. Reluctant to be left alone, servants refused point-blank to advance an inch toward the scene of unholy worship. There were legends of a hidden lake unglimpsed by mortal sight, in which dwelt a huge, shadow with luminous eyes; and devils flew up out of caverns from the inner Earth to worship it at midnight. They said that it had been there before the Spanish Conquistadors, before the Indians, and before even the wholesome beasts and birds of the woods. It was a nightmare to see, and to see it was to die. Two bodies had once been found slaughtered, and were buried in one sepulchre, and the tree ever after brought forth blue berries, which served for memorials of our blood. Even though it made men dream, they knew to keep away. A faint glow of twilight was still in the windows overheard, but the darkness at the far end of the gallery was already impenetrable, and the dazzle of the candle confused my eyes. This particular night, I could feel the black arcades of horror emanating from within the walls of my home. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8

The last of my strength deserted me, and I sank to the floor, just managing to set the candlestick upright beside me. Hot wax stung the back of my hand. You must get up, you must get up, a voice in my head was saying, but my limbs would not obey. I was crouching a few feet from the fireplace, almost in front of the sarcophagus, which lay just within the circle of light from the candle. If you cannot stand, you must crawl, said the voice. I was making another effort to rise when I thought I heard a sound from the fireplace. I clenched my teeth to stop them chattering. There it was again, a heavy, muffled, grating sound, like stone sliding upon stone. It seemed to be coming from beneath the floor in front of me. The grating ceased; for several seconds there was absolute silence, then a faint metallic creak. I held my breath; the candle flame steadied. The lid of William’s tomb was slowly rising. In life he was a beautiful youth and fond of manly sports. He would rise before the dawn to pursue the chase. I saw him when I first looked forth, fell in love with him, and was married to this charming man and he devotedly loved me. Nevertheless, my heart gave one appalling lurch and stopped beating altogether. The next second, as it seemed, I was on the far side of the connecting door, with a rattling in the lock as I fought to turn it. I could see the faint glimmer of my candle shining through the gap beneath the door. Then another, stronger light began to play about my feet; there was a creak, and thump, and the sound of footsteps approaching. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8

I thought of running for the stairs, but I had no light, and the visitant would hunt me down. The door handle rattled; the door shook; the footsteps moved purposefully away. In a few moments, it would be on the landing. I had not time to run and lock all the doors at the far end of the library. I thought of the weapons arrayed along the gallery wall—too high for me to reach. If it seized me, most likely I would die horribly. The footsteps were still receding. I gripped the key with both nerveless hands and twisted. There was a rasp and a snick, but the footsteps did not pause. I withdrew the key and slipped back into the gallery, just as the light passed out through the double doors at the other end. The beam of a lantern played across the walk beyond; then the footsteps moved off along the landing, boards creaking at every tread. For a moment I thought I might be spared, but then I heard the squeak of hinges as my pursuer entered the library. I tried to slip the key into the keyhold, but my hand was shaking so violently that I dared not let the metal touch. My candle still burned where I had left it on the floor. Footsteps moved within the library—one, two, three, and then a pause. Light flickered beneath the door. The footsteps were moving again—I could not tell which way. I moved toward the candle, almost tripping over the hem of my dress. As I knelt to the flame, I realized I had no idea how fast the wick would burn. The floor seemed to be dropping away beneath my feet. If you faint, it will catch you, said the voice. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8

Only poetry or madness could do justice to the noises I heard as the footsteps continued to plough through the mansion toward me. Howls and squawking ecstasies tore through my home and reverberated through fireplaces like pestilential tempests from the gulfs of hell. Suddenly came the spectacle itself. The mad cacophony of the orgy fortunately deadened. Void of clothing, this hybrid spawn was some eight feet in height. It was some ancient legendary horror. Like a bird beneath the hypnotic gaze of deadly serpent, I was paralyzed by terror. The gloom of the chamber deepened. The stifling air was laden with unformulable menace, but it was constrained by the spell of a black and lethal necromancy. There crept forth the choking mustiness of hidden vaults and embalmed centurial corruption, together with the ghostly spice of a strange perfume that seemed to emanate from the beast. Then I recalled the story of a most evil creature, who had been buried somewhere in this land hundreds of years ago. I did not nurse the illusion that I was dealing here with an accidental tragedy. The creature was once a small boy who was abducted and dying of exposure lost in the wind-scoured hills that rose behind my home. He had been stolen. Then he had been murdered. And no one had ever been called to account for these awful, planned, sequential crimes. I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. Anger stirred in the beast. And I knew I was sharing his indignant rage which he had so vibrantly felt. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8

My teeth were tapping together like typewriter keys. There was something else, some faint warning that reached me. Not actually heard so much as sensed. As if someone’s breath were coming down the shaft from just over my head, slightly as if by a sounding board. I acted on it instantly, more from instinct than actual realization of danger. The beast looked at me, contorted into a maniacal grimace of impending destruction, as I reached for my ivory handled pistol, both of its arms were high over his head wielding something. It looked like a sword, but there was no time to find out. For what seemed like five minutes, the din and chaos were beyond descriptions. Shots were fired. It came hissing down in a big arc against the floor. The sword, of course, followed it a second later. The very weight of the creature’s body caused it to crash through the floor. Numb and half frozen, gusts of uncontrollable shivering swept over me every once in a while. I turned my head and looked toward that sinister beast and there was nothing left but an opening in the floor. Within the walls of this dark house, there was a secret which even torture could not extract. For shapes came out of the dark to pay the inhabitants a visit. I was overwhelmed by the supernatural situation amid whose dubious horror and ineluctable sorceries had somehow become involved. Malefic sorcery, deadly peril of both soul and body. I fled blindly into the darkness until I collided painfully with a wall. #RandolphHarri 5 of 8

There was a secret which even torture could not extract in Llanada Villa. I was not absolutely alone, for shapes came out of the dark to visit. Although they no longer lived, those killed by the Winchester Rifle no longer lived, they would never really die. They all lay in my home preserved by spells and this ancient curse. They could live in the darkened hallways, shadows, and corners whilst millions of years rolled by. I could hear them whisper in the shadowy wings of the mansion; I caught the sibilation of ominous voices, like those of familiars that respond to the summoning of wizards; and I seemed to hear, even in the vaults and towers and remote chambers, the tread of feet that were hurrying on malign and secret errands. However, the oblivion was around me like the meshes of a sable net; and it closed in relentlessly upon my troubled mind, and drowned the alarms and of my agitated senses. A sad and sunless daylight filtered through the windows. The mansion was very still; and it seemed that the animating spirit of evil was now quiescent; the shadowy wings of the horror and malignity, the feet that had sped on baleful errands, the summoning sorcerers, the responding familiars, were all lulled in a temporary slumber. I opened the door, and tiptoed along the deserted hall. Amid the gloomy walls that surround me, the somber ancient halls, the high towers and the heavy bastions, there is but one thing that veritably exists; and all the rest is a fabric of illusion. I passed the doors of many secret rooms. There was one room in particular, a bare room, entirely built of stone, and illumined only by narrow slits high up in the wall. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8

The place was very dim, but in the middle of the floor was a tomb of marble, where William lay. And there he was. He appeared to be slumbering peacefully as an infant. Darkness returned with an earsplitting crash. The floor lurched and rebounded; for a moment there was silence, and then a long, low rumble, gathering power as it approached until it broke over me with a thunderous roar. Choking dust filled my lungs, and I was flung from my feet and rolled over and over like a rag doll in a storm. There was a vile, rasping taste in my mouth and throat, and a heavy weight pressing down on the side of my head; I tried to push it away, and realized it was the floor. The area on which I was lying were covered in sharp, gritty fragments. A faint, misty glow appeared in the darkness away to my right. I began to crawl toward it, not knowing what else to go, brushing aside slivers of what felt like glass, until I saw that it was the light from the candle I had left burning in the library. The fear had left me; perhaps I had simply exhausted my capacity to feel anything at all. I rose shakily to my feet, made my way along the landing to the library, fetched the candle and returned to the gallery—what remained of it. At the far end, where the tomb and the chimney and the armour had been, was a great gaping hole in the wall. Half the floor was gone; and the boards ended in a jagged mess of splinters not ten feet from where I had been lying. Dust was floating up from a lack pit beyond. A beast was down there. The thought struck me like icy water, dashing away the numbness. Suddenly I was trembling so that I could scarcely stand, as trickling noises echoed in the darkness. Then came out of the floor the black spirits of Earth, mouldy and shadowy. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8

I conjure thee, Bechard, and constrain thee, in like manner, by the Most Holy Names of God, ELOY, ADONAY, ELOY, AGLA, SAMALABACTAY, which are written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin; by all the sacrament, by all the names written in this spell; and by him who drove three from the height of Heaven. I conjure and command thee by the virtue of the Most Holy Eucharist, which hath redeemed men from their sins; I conjure three to come without any delay, to do and perform all my biddings, without any prejudice to my body or soul, without harming this spell, or doing injury to those that accompany me. I conjure thee, O Guland, in the name of Satan, in the name of Beelzebuth, in the name of Astaroth, and in the name of all other Spirits, to make haste and appear before me. Come, then in the name of Satan and in the names of all other demons. Come to me, I command thee, in the name of the Most Holy Trinity. Come without inflicting any harm upon me, without injury to my body or soul, without maltreating my books, or anything which I use. I command thee to appear without delay, or, that failing, to send me forthwith another Spirit having the same power as thou hast, who shall accomplish my commands and be submitted to my will, wanting which, he whom thou shalt send me, if indeed thou comest not thyself, shall in no wise depart, nor until he hath in all things fulfilled my desire. I now plant the seed of my desire within the black Earth, through the mouth of Arezura where the powers of sorcery and counter creation dwell. Through this gateway of darkness, I now shine the light and power of my will upon this World for the benefit of me and mine! #RandolphHarris 8 of 8


In the early summer of 2007, a couple were traveling to Santa Clara, California on a business trip. Shortly after 10 am, the decided to stop and eat at The Winchester Café. They remembered that the food was prepared in an excellent down-home country style, and that the waiter, waitress, the cook, and the other customers were so friendly in a sincere manner, and they promised that they would come back. And a sixteen years later, they tried to do exactly that on a return drive. However, The Winchester Café, which is located inside The Winchester Mystery House was nowhere to be seen. They even looped back a couple of times, thinking they may have somehow drive on by. They even got into an argument, each of them insisting that they remembered exactly where it was. They just could not find it, and since the hour was getting very late, they drove on. When they got home, they went to the website of The Winchester Mystery House and found a note saying that the mansion was closed and had gone dark for the day. They really wanted to eat at the café because the cooking was so wonderful. However, what if The Winchester Mystery House appeared and disappeared simply appeared and disappeared every so often? Or maybe the couple was lost in time and space for decades? We will never know. But at least we know the food and the company would have been good.

Cloaking is the power to hide the presence of oneself, other beings, or locations by making them imperceptible to the eye. It is effective at preventing others from discovering one’s location. Scientists at the University of Rochester in New York have discovered a way to hide large objects from sight using inexpensive and readily available lenses. Cloaking is the process that allows an object to become hidden from view, while everything around it appears undisturbed. When an object is placed behind the layered lenses it seems to disappear. “From what we know this is the first cloaking device that provides three-dimensional, continuously multidirectional cloaking,” said graduate student Joseph Choi, who helped develop the technology. In their tests, the researchers have cloaked a hand, a face, and a ruler, making each object appear “invisible” while the image behind the hidden object remains in view. The implications of this discovery are endless. Cloaking can also be achieved through the use of certain spells and potions. Additionally, beings with the power of invisibility are able to naturally cloak themselves by becoming unseeable. The Winchester Mystery House is truly mysterious.

For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
If He is Not Capable of Creating, if He Cannot Love, this is the Evenin’ of Destruction

To keep America alive and thriving, Americans need to come together as one people—All American. Regardless of what happened in the past, people need to drop all animosity towards government, citizens, their family, and neighbours and do the right thing and obey the law and respect that Constitution of the United States of America. An American is someone who subscribes to the principles set out in our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. America is, on this account, a creedal nation, perhaps the first in history, with Americans defined by an adherence to certain beliefs about equality, liberty, individual rights, and limited government. This idea of America as a creedal nation goes back to Alexis de Tocqueville, who found the peculiarity of our national experience—at least in relation to Europe—to be the absence of a feudal past, that is, the lack of a tradition of hierarchy, hereditary aristocracy, and serfdom (which, of course, is not quite true). What impressed him most about the American experience was what he called “the generative fact” of equality which all else derived. We would call this Mr. Tocqueville’s Thesis. It forms the traditional core of American patriotism. The American creed is understood as a product not of geography, tradition, or inheritance, but of reason. Its principles are the property of all who want to participate in the blessings of liberty. It requires only a willingness to express support for our established laws and religion and an expression of support for our founding creed and live by it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25

At a recent Fourth of July picnic at the home of a colleague, the hostess asked the group if we all felt patriotic. Many people will say that they do not because they reflect on all of the hardships they have endured due to their race, gender, creed, disability, religion, material status, or sexuality. However, that is the goal of the ultimate negative. To get you to hate your home land so they can take it over and destroy it. Some of us have grown up in houses that have flown the flag, some of us have generations of ancestors who have fought in wars. When I was a kid, my dad used to read me the Declaration of Independence before lighting fireworks. As I got older, I even grew to like apple pie, and tried to engage in sports talk with other guys. If you look at the state of the World, you will realize how beautiful America is and how good we have it. It is also very important to remain patriotic and to help every American advance because Less Developed Countries (LCDs) are not competing for the title of America’s Next Top Model (Global Superpower). Therefore, we have to make sure our students are the best educated in the World, that American cars are appealing to Americans and other nations, and that we buy American poultry, produce and diary. We do not need to pack our cities full of buildings and homes. While buildings and homes are important, we need to keep land open for farms, parks, forest, and wildlife. Patriotism acknowledges America’s sins and flaws, it celebrates America’s history, her contributions to humanity, the eternal optimism and energy of her people. Above all it celebrates the documents in which successive generations of Americans have placed their faith. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

Men and women and children and animals who have given their lives for their country know that patriotism is not the fear of something, it I the love of something. The most impressive patriots that I have met are men and women and children and animals who wearing their country’s uniform, are clearly inspired by love of country and love of its ideals. It may even be that love of your own country and countrymen is a prerequisite to genuine affection for people in other lands. American patriotism has everything to do with the evolution of the Constitution of the United States of America and the ideals that inspired the founders. Patriotism also has a great deal to do with faith in human possibility, and a belief in a better future that has inspired successive wave of colonists and immigrants. Patriotism is a feeling of love and respect for your country. The United States of America is well-suited and well-situated to take advantage of the Olympian possibilities for the manufacturing of patriotism. Since the year 2000, Americans have gained considerable freedom in their personal lives. Choices that used to be condemned, such as remaining single or childless, have become acceptable options. Family and gender roles re much more flexible and being free to develop oneself has become a goal for both women and men. I think many people have an incorrect idea that they will be allowed the same freedoms they have in America if we are invaded and conquered by another nation. They do not realize other nations have far less freedom. For instance, in certain parts of China, it is considered inappropriate for men to wear short pants. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

The American situation—leads us to establishing values which have objective validity; this validity exists only with regard to the existence of man; outside of him there are no values. What is the nature of man, what are the special conditions of human existence, and what are the needs which are rooted in these conditions? Man is torn away from the primary union with nature, which characterized terrestrial existence. Having at the same time reason and imagination, he is aware of his aloneness and separateness, of his powerlessness and ignorance, of the accidentalness of his birth and his death. If we could not find new ties with his fellow man which replace the old ones, regulated by instincts, he could not face this state of being for a second. Even if all his physiological needs were satisfied, he would experience his state of aloneness and individuation as a prison from which he had to break out in order to retain his sanity. In fact, even if he is not behind barred windows, the insane person is the one who has completely failed to establish any kind of union and is imprisoned. The necessity to unite with other living beings, to be related to them, is an imperative need on which the fulfilment of man’s sanity depends. This need is behind all phenomena which constitutes the whole gamut of intimate human relations, of all passions which are called love in the broadest sense of the word. There are several ways in which this union can be sought and achieved. Man can attempt to become one with the World by submission to a person, to a group, to an institution, to God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25

In this way he transcends the separateness of his individual existence by becoming part of somebody or something bigger than himself and experiences his identity in connection with the power to which he has submitted. Another possibility of overcoming separateness lies in the opposite direction: man can try to unite himself with the World by having power over it, by making others a part of himself, and thus transcending his individual existence by domination. The common element in both submission and domination is the symbiotic nature of relatedness. Both persons involved have lost their integrity and freedom; they live on each other and from each other, satisfying their craving for closeness, yet suffering from the lack of inner strength and self-reliance which would require freedom and independence, and furthermore constantly threatened by the conscious or unconscious hostility which is bound to arise from the symbiotic relationship. The realization of the submissive (masochistic) or the domineering (sadistic) passion never leads to satisfaction. They have a self-propelling dynamism, and because no amount f submission or domination (or possession or fame) is enough to give a sense of identity and union, more and more of it is sought. The ultimate result of these passions is defeat. It cannot be otherwise; although these passions aim at the establishment of a sense of union, they destroy the sense of integrity. The person driven by any one of these passions actually becomes dependent on others; instead of developing his own individual being, he is dependent on those whom he submits to or whom he dominates. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

There is only one passion which satisfies man’s need to unite himself with the World and to acquire at the same time a sense of integrity and individuality, and this is love. Love is union with somebody, or something outside oneself under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one’s own self. It is an experience of sharing, of communion, which permits the full unfolding of one’s own inner activity. The experience of love does away with the necessity of illusions. There is no need to inflate the image of the other person, or of myself, since the reality of active sharing and love permits me to transcend my individualized existence and at the same time to experience myself as the bearer of the active powers which constitute the act of loving. What matters is the particular quality of living, not the object. Love is in the experience of human solidarity with our fellow creatures, it is in the erotic love of man and woman, in the love of the mother for her child, and also in the love for oneself as a human being; it is in the mystical experience of union. In the fact of loving, I am one with All, and yet I am myself, a unique, separate, limited, mortal human being. Indeed, out of the very polarity between separateness and union, love is born and reborn. Another aspect of the human situation, closely connected with the need for relatedness, is man’s situation as a creature and his need to transcend this very state of the passive creature. Man is thrown into this World without his consent or will. In this respect he is not different from any other terrestrial being, from the plants, or from inorganic matter. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25

However, being endowed with reason and imagination, man cannot be content with the passive role of the creature, with the role of dice cast out of a cup. He is driven by the urge to transcend the role of the creature, the accidentalness and passivity of his existence, by becoming a “creator.” Man can create life. This is the miraculous quality which he indeed shares with all living beings, but with the difference that he alone is aware of being created and of being a creator. Man can create life, or rather, woman can create life, by giving birth to a child and by caring for the child until it is sufficiently grown to take care of its own needs. Man—man and woman—can create by planting seeds, by producing material objects, by creating art, by creating ideas, by loving one another. In the act of creation man transcends himself as a creature, raises himself beyond the passivity and accidentalness of his existence into the realm of purposefulness and freedom. In man’s need for transcendence lies one of the roots for love, as well as for art, religion and material production. To create presupposes activity and care. It presupposes love for that which one creates. If he is not capable of creating, if he cannot love, how, then does man solve the problem of transcending himself? If I cannot create live, I can destroy it. To destroy life makes me also transcend it. Indeed, that man can destroy life is just as miraculous a feat as that he can create it, for life is the miracle, the inexplicable. In the fact of destruction, man sets himself above life; he transcends himself as a creature. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

In the act of destruction, man sets himself above life; he transcends himself as a creature. However, in man’s destruction of life, other creatures suffer. For example, Vaquita, the World’s rarest marine mammal, is on the edge of extinction. The plight of cetaceans—whales, dolphins, and porpoises—as a whole is exemplified by the rapid decline of the vaquita in Mexico, with about 10 individual remaining. This little porpoise was not discovered until 1958 and a little over half a century later, we are on the brink of losing them forever. Vaquita are often caught and drowned in gillnets used by illegal fishing operation in marine protected areas within Mexico’s Gulf of California. The population has dropped drastically in the last few years. If we are not careful, man will rob this Earth of all its natural resources and animal life. Free human birth control distribution in America LDCs may help save the planet. Thus, the ultimate choice for man, inasmuch as he is driven to transcend himself, is to create or to destroy, to love or to hate. The enormous power of the will for destruction which we see in the history of man and which we have witnessed so frightfully in our own time is rooted in the nature of man, just as the drive to create is rooted in it. To say that man is capable of developing his primary potentiality for love and reason does not imply the naïve belief in man’s goodness. Destructiveness is a secondary potentiality, rooted in the very existence of man, and having the same intensity and power as any passion can have. However—and this is the essential point of the argument—it is the alternative to creativeness. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

Creation and destruction, love and the, are not two instincts which exist independently. They are both answers to the same need for transcendence, and the will to destroy must rise when the will to create cannot be satisfied. However, the satisfaction of the need to create lead to happiness, destructiveness to suffering—most of all, for the destroyer himself. Selfishness is not identical with self-love but with its very opposite. Selfishness is one kind of greediness. Like all greediness, it contains an instability, as a consequence of which there is never any real satisfaction. Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without every reaching satisfaction. Close observation shows that while the selfish person is always anxiously concerned with himself, he is never satisfied, is always restless, always driven by the fear of not getting enough, of missing something, of being deprived of something. He is filled with burning envy of anyone who might have more. If we observe still closer, especially the unconscious dynamics, we find that this type of person is basically not fond of himself, but deeply dislikes himself. The puzzle in this seeming contradiction is easy to solve. Selfishness is rooted in this very lack of fondness for oneself. The person who is not fond of himself, who does not approve of himself, is in constant anxiety concerning his own self. He has not the inner security which can exist only on the basis of genuine fondness and affirmation. He must be concerned about himself, greedy to get everything for himself, since basically he lacks security and satisfaction. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25

The same hold true with the so-called narcissistic person, who is not so much concerned with getting things for himself as with admiring himself. While on the surface it seems that these persons are very much in love with themselves, they actually are not fond of themselves, and their narcissism—like selfishness—is an overcompensation for the basic lack of self-love. Dr. Freud has pointed out that the narcissistic person has withdrawn his love from others and turned it toward his own person. Although the first part of this statement is true, the second is a fallacy. He loves neither others nor himself. As we focus on this psychological analysis of selfishness, we find ourselves confronted with the contradiction that modern man believes himself to be motivated by self-interest and yet that actually his life is devoted to aims which are not his own; in the same way that Mr. Calvin felt that the only purpose of man’s existence was to be not himself but God’s glory. We tried to show that selfishness is rooted in the lack of affirmation and love for the real self, that is, for the whole concrete human being with all his potentialities. The “self” in the interest of which modern man acts is the social self, a self which is essentially constituted by the role the individual is supposed to play and which in reality is merely the subjective disguise for the objective social function of man in society. Modern selfishness is the greed that is rooted in the frustration of the real self and whose object is the social self. While modern man seems to be characterized by utmost assertion of the self, actually his self has been weakened and reduced to a segment of the total self—intellect and will power-to the exclusion of all other parts of the total personality. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25

The art of setting the level of aspiration for a group so that it will evoke optimum effort never ceases to be an expression of leadership. Goals which appear to have been imposed upon a group from above of from outside have a stifling effect even when they are set very low, whereas goals which emerge from a group’s attempt to better its own record can stimulate prodigious effort. Thus goals are always most strategically calculated when they can be related to a recent cycle of similar experience, less perspicuously when they are proposed for the first time. When the report has been finally assembled and approved, it is ready to be passed on to the executive or the policy-making body which commissioned its preparation. A question may remain whether and when it should be made available to the public concerned, and in what form. In general, of course, the best result is achieved by full and immediate publication. On the other hand, special circumstances may demand different timing, and publication in both popular and technical versions. The scale of distribution of the report depends on the degree to which it is to be part an educational campaign, or simply precipitated into public discussion on a take it or leave it basis. Generally speaking, the latter may appear preferable in most cases, leaving advocacy of its recommendations to such voluntary groups as by this stage of the planning process come into existence. Opportunity for the lay members of the public to see and question the experts in person is the most effective means to diminish any gulf of status or suspicion between them, and to encourage the public’s participation in the solution of its problems. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

From the first murmurings of awareness of the existence of a problem, there will normally have been a steady gain in definiteness of its conception among the public affected. If people always knew what they wanted, professional planners would then be in the happy position of being able to speak authoritatively about the best means. However, ends are not given, nor are ends and means so nicely distinguishable. Knowledge of limitations and possibilities affect the formulation of ends, and experts may be as influential as leaders in helping to form public opinion. Nevertheless, while it is up to the experts to propose, it is up to the public to dispose, since no expert is qualified to know better than people themselves what they want. And they themselves do not know what they want until they have considered the matter. The concept of “decision load” is crucial to any understanding of democracy. All societies require a certain quantity and quality of political decisions in order to function. Indeed each society has its own unique decision structure. The more numerous, varied, frequent and complex the decisions required to run it, the heavier its political decision load. And the way this load is shared fundamentally influences the level of democracy in society. In preindustrial societies, where the division of labour was rudimentary and change was slow, the number of political or administrative decisions actually required to keep things running was minimal. The decision load was small. A tiny, semi-educated, unspecialized feudal or monarchical elite could more or less run things without help from below, carrying the entire decision load by itself. #RandolphHarris 12 or 25

Traders are a continuum, uniformly distributed along a circle of circumference. In the first period is the one where honesty or cheating are the crucial issue; the appropriate rewards or punishment come in the second period, which may as usual stand for the educed form of a longer future. The payoffs are expressed in present values so no further discounting is necessary. In each period, traders are randomly matched in pairs. Every economic problem is an economic opportunity. Someone who can solve the problem, turning the potential gains into actual ones, may be able to charge a fee for this service. In our context, if the government does not provide contract enforcement using its general revenues, then a private person may be able to do so for a profit. Theoretical and empirical literatures alike identify two difficult problems that confront large populations trying to resolve prisoners’ dilemmas: collecting and conveying information about previous cheating; and erecting a credible structure of punishment to deter cheating in current periods. The principle that “economic problems are also economic opportunities” applies to both of these. Anyone can, at a cost, collect information about individual traders’ histories of cheating, and sell this information to other prospective traders in the future. Trade associations often collect and provide such information to members. Three different forms of such associations can be distinguished. The first kind, exemplified by relatively small groups of specialized commodity traders are mainly concerned with trades among pairs of its own members, and provide information about members’ past actions in their trades with other members. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25

The second and the third kinds are concerned with interactions between a member on one side and a non-member (general public) on the other side. Of these, the second kind collect information about cheating by one of the general public and provide it to their members; credit-approval services maintained by Visa and Mastercard are an instance of this. The third kind, usually known as Better Business Bureaus, keep track of their members’ behaviour and make this information available to the public. This enables their members credibly to create and maintain reputation. The diamond traders’ club, which governs transactions between its members and other dealers who may or may not be members, seems to be a mixture of these types. In some situations, third parties charge a fee to provide information to one side of a transaction about the history of the other side; agencies that rate the creditworthiness of people or firms, or services that monitor the quality of goods and services provided by firms, are well-known examples. Such a for-profit intermediary must solve two other problems: he must discourage free riding, by making the information unavailable or useless to non-payers; and he must credibly promise not to misuse the information, for example for extortion or double crossing. However, this is simplified by the fact that the intermediary’s relationships with all customers are bilateral and non-anonymous: while two traders may meet each other only infrequently, each of them can meet the intermediary every period. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

The difficult problem of resolving prisoners’ dilemmas in random pairwise matching from a large population is converted into the somewhat easier problem of resolving prisoners’ dilemma of direct bilateral reciprocity between each member of the population and the intermediary. This is conceptually similar to solving the problem of double coincidence of wants by introducing money. The issuer of money gets seignorage; the information intermediary charges a fee for his services. A suitably qualified intermediary can also provide an enforcement service, that is, inflict punishments on behalf of customers. We have a well-known study of private judges enforcing “the law merchant” (LM) in medieval France, who performed both functions. First, such a judge or intermediary kept records on the behaviour of traders in the markets over which he offered his services. Second, he adjudicated disputes brought before him by one of the traders. In each period, each player is matched with a partner whom he is unlikely to have met before and is unlikely to meet again. Each player in such a pair can, by paying a feed, query the LM about his current partner’s history of behaviour in previous matches. Each such pair then plays a one-time prisoner’s dilemma game. If either of the players in this game cheats, the other can, by paying another fee, complain to the LM, but only if the victim had queried the LM about the partner’s history. If such a compliant is lodged, the LM investigates at a cost and, if appropriate, awards the plaintiff a judgement (monetary restitution) against the defendant. A losing defendant decides whether to pay the judgment. An unpaid judgment becomes another act of cheating, and is recorded as such by the LM. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25

Under appropriate conditions on the various parameters, and for a suitably calculated structure of fees, this system has an equilibrium outcome where everyone (including the LM) behaves honestly. The intuition is that the LM’s record-keeping solves the information problem that would exist in a large population of traders with infrequent bilateral matches, and then punishment strategies of repeated games can work. Thus the LM serves as a complement to, not a substitute for, the usual reputation mechanism. The LM institution also contributed to the formulation of a uniform set of standards for commercial transactions across large areas of Europe, and therefore played a part in the evolution of modern commercial laws. We have a memorable example of private intermediation which involves the Sicilian Mafia. When the butcher comes to me to buy an animal, he knows that I want to cheat him [by giving him a low-quality animal]. However, I know that he wants to cheat me [by revoking his payment]. This we need Peppe [tht is, a third party] to make us agree. And we both pay Peppe a percentage of the deal. Peppe was mainly selling information for this service, he received a 2 percent commission. When in addition he acted as a guarantor of quality and payment, the percentage increased. Peppe provides his services to the people on both sides of the transaction. They use his services voluntarily. The services are of two kinds, ex ante information about each other party’s history of behaviour, and ex post punishments meted out in response to any cheating. The fees for the latter (enforcement) services are higher than those for the former (information) service. The parties to any transaction may not have any direct bilateral reciprocal interaction with each other, but each of them has such interaction with Peppe. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25

Organized crime performs functions of economic governance in other countries, and has done so throughout history. It usually operates at time or in niches where the state is absent. The origins of the Mafia’s enforcement role can be traced back to nineteenth century Sicily after the abolition of feudalism. Publicly provided security was inefficient and banditry widespread; landowners began to hire guards of former feudal lords and some of the tougher bandits to protect their property. In Japan in August-September 1945, when the government had collapsed after defeat in World War II but the occupying USA forces had not yet restored order, the Yakuza played a major role in getting markets restarted. Similar activities are found in Russia and other transition economies. As housing prices continue to increase, and in markets like San Jose, California where a one bedroom, one bathroom starts off at around $3,000.00 a month, many people are feeling insecure. Some people have been playing games for so long and bought homes when they were affordable so they can feel like feudal lords and abuse people that they have lost all touch with reality and the reality of how expensive live is in 2024. They are still running around like sixteen-year-old boys trying to have the coolest car, while others are literally slaving to try to become established in a corrupt city such as Sacramento, California. The state of affairs in Sacramento is just pathetic and for some reason the government seems unwilling or incapable to take action, leading some to question, “What is this?” because it does not even seem like this is reality. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25

The government has become like the Wizard of Ozz, a nameless, faceless, entity that can take swift and severe actions to ruin lives, but lack the power to do anything good and correct its mistakes. If you want to survive, you basically have to find the resources yourself and even if you are injured, work yourself to death to stay sane and try to find a way out of the situation. It is illegal for the government to terrorize and hold people hostage, but that is basically what is happening, while others enjoy all the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. And in addition to being held hostage, they make sure to isolated and alienate an individual. So that no one can help and uplift one, and put one around a bunch of dysfunctional people who need financial, mental, and physical help that they refuse to seek. There is such a collective consciousness that people do not seek to change their situation for the better, it is always “we” need to get together and go somewhere and do something is fun. However, as some of these people are part of a couple, why do they not go out on a date or go see a movie or go to a nightclub. It is almost like Sacramento is a haven for low-income criminals and white-collar criminals who help them. You see a lot of people sitting around, smoking and drinking and spitting on the ground, and wonder, why do they not go to one of, many of these, beautiful parks. Instead, they invite all their grandchildren to play in parking lots and run behind cars with high insurance so they can “get paid,” not seeming to care that someone could end up dead. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25

Also, instead of getting jobs, they target certain people and try to have an accident because, much like PG&E, even if it is not your fault, the word is insurance companies will make you pay. They do not even care about your health or injuring you to the point that you can no longer with, and will not even pay you. However, they also forget that you may have a pregnant passenger and/or a baby in the car with you. Sacramento has become so deplorable and corrupt. It is like a blackhole, seemingly impossible to escape from alive. No matter how many rituals you do, prayers you say, government agencies you ask for health, they simply stop responding. It is a pretty city, but if the state and local government decides to trap and target you, your life and the life of anyone around you does not seem to matter. You are nothing more than a placeholder, they want to use to help some criminal come up off of. There are many caring and supportive people and the community, and a lot of happy people who are able to work and have fun on their free time, but I am not sure Sacramento is a safe community. It can be like the Twilight Zone for those who are selected as targets. And then you look at the State Capitol of California, which is in Sacramento, and it looks like half the building was blown up (it is under renovation), but it just makes a person ponder stability of the city. What is it? It is a really weird place. It is a lot like a ghost town. It will make you question reality. I just have to say it, every since I came back from China in 2006, I felt it as soon as I got off the plane, but something did not seem right about this town. It did not feel like the same city I left, and what happened afterwards is even more bizarre. I will just be real. Sometimes I wonder if I am dead and is this just a government computer simulated reality. Everything feels and looks real, but something is wrong. Like, for instance, look at how President Biden acts, he is confused, falls around, misspeaks, and it barely stirs a ripple. No one says a word about it in public. And then the mainstream media is probably less reliable than The National Enquirer. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25

I honestly, even though I pretend to, do not believe anything anyone tells me anymore because so many people are constantly telling lies. I am serious, it is like this city has been overran by demons. And a lot of families do not act right anymore, a lot of daughters and mothers have confrontations and conflicts, and even people who go to church are corrupt. Someone told me the World is coming to an end, and that could explain it because a lot of this is talked about in the Christian Bible and Book of Mormon. However, if that is true, I encourage everyone to live right and ask God for forgiveness. And if you feel how hot in gets in Sacramento, could you imagine what burning in hell for an eternity would be life? God forgives everyone, but do not want until it is too late to repent. Also, make sure to enjoy life. Do not spend time around people you do not like. Find people and activities that you can enjoy. If your neighbours are annoying, go out of your way to ignore and avoid them, so they will understand what time it is. Also, with some many people carrying guns, and mental illness being a crisis in America, why are people shocked when something goes wrong and innocent people are killed because of some bully who thought being bad was the coolest thing since Jordan Basketball sneakers? And also, have you serious considered how dangerous gun control is? There more than 20,000 gangs consisting of approximately 1 million members in the United States of America; gangs are present in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and all U.S.A. territories. CEOs think about things like this, but what is a gang decided to come to your house and target you? You know, ten fifteen men and women show up because they have a problem with you and want to cause you harm. You may need an AK-47. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25

Or what is you live in a Victorian Farmhouse in Iowa on 400 acres and a gang decided to attack you? Sometimes calling the police is not always an option, nor is it your best option. The police, many of them are on the job to protect people and will go out of their way to make sure you are safe, but there is a lot of crime going on in America, and your calls to 911 could be getting relayed to Hood Day Sacramento, for example, and an officer or someone impersonating an officer may be taking your calls. It has happened to me several times. It will be a life-or-death situation and I have been sent a text message, allegedly from the police department, saying that “We will not be responding.” I have also reported trespassers on my neighbour’s property and been told, “The owner needs to take responsibility.” How can we have a safe community when the police allow some people and properties to be targeted and refuses to help certain citizens? It just does not make sense. People have been stalked, kidnapped, raped several times, beat, attacked, robbed, had their homes and cars broken into and thousands of dollars done because someone thinks terrorism is fun and cool. The boarders to the country are wide open, allowing anyone to just walk in with any amounts of drugs, guns, criminal intent. And CBS13, KCRA News, FOX40, Good Day Sacramento, and ABC10 may be the biggest criminal organization in Sacramento. Turn the news off, stop watching them so they have to shutdown. In the words of Beyonce, “America—America has a problem.” Anyway, protection should be regarded as the Mafia main business; if it engages in some activities that may need its own protection services, this is just “downstream vertical integration.” Perhaps one can regard the Mafia as an organization that specializes in providing protection, while individual mafiosi may be entrepreneurs engaged in the activities that need the protection. The Mafia may also engage in extortion, or creating the need for protection of property by itself creating a threat to the property; these are strategies that need to be examined as part of the equilibrium of the game. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25

Peppe in his information role resembles a credit-rating agency or even a restaurant guide, except that he acts for both sides of the deal. In the guarantor or enforcer role, he resembles the official legal system, but has different information acquisition methods and different methods of punishment, and is motivated by private profit rather than by social welfare. Peppe’s commission for enforcement is higher than that for information. You may think this a trivial question, and think of obvious answers: enforcement activity is riskier to provide; that state’s criminal law (if it is functioning) may intervene; the miscreant whom Peppe is trying to punish may prove tougher than Peppe; and so on. All these arguments say that the cost of providing enforcement is higher than that of providing governance by information alone; they are supply-side reasons. Peppe usually acts as a monopolist in enforcement over an allocated territory, defined by geography or the type of activity being protected (although conflicts over monopoly rights or over territories may break out among Mafiosi or their families). A monopolist changes a prince above cost, based on the customer’s willingness to pay. Therefore we must look for demand-side reasons, namely explain why Peppe’s customers are willing to pay more for the enforcement service than for the information service. To resist the enemy on the ground of the blood of Christ means wielding the weapon of the finished work of Christ, by faith: believing that Jesus’ death for in frees the trusting believe from the guilt of sin; that Jesus’ death to sin on the cross, and the believer’s death with Him, frees the Christian from the power of sin; and that Jesus’s death-victory on Calvary frees the believer also from the power of the ultimate negative. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25

A condensed form of the principles and conditions for deliverance from the deception of psychopathological offenders in any degree may be given as follows: Recognition of the possibility of deception. Admission of actual deception. An attitude of neutrality toward all past spiritual experiences until truth concerning them is ascertained. Refusal of all ground of psychopathological offenders. The taking of the position of death to sin (Rom. 6.11). The detection and refusal of all that belongs to deception. The understanding of the criterion of the true, normal conditions so as to gauge signs of deliverance. Active usage of the faculties so that they reach the normal condition. Recognize persistently the true cause of bondage; id est, the work of a psychopathological offender or offenders. Choose to have absolutely nothing to do with the powers of psychopathological offenders. Frequently declare this. Do not talk or worry about their manifestations. Recognize, refuse, and then ignore them. Refuse and reject all their lies and excuses, as they are recognized. Notice the thoughts, and the way in which they come, and when—and immediately declare the attitudes of Romans 6.11 against all the interferences of the enemy. Hinderances to deliverances from deception may again be given here briefly, as: Not knowing it is possible to be deceived. Thinking God will not allow a believer to be deceived. Saying, “I am safe under the blood,” without intelligent knowledge of the conditions. Saying, “I have no sin.” Saying “I am doing all that God wants, so all must be right”—without seeking to understand what the will of the Lord is (Eph. 5.10-17). Some hints on overcoming passivity of mind are as follows: Act as far as you can, doing what you can. Take the initiative, instead of passively depending on others. Decide for yourself in everything you can. Do not lean on others. Live in the moment; watch and pray step by step. Use your mind, and think—think over all you do, and say, and are. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25

Fundamental to Tillichian Christology is the notion of estrangement, for it is from our estranged human situation that the New Being rescues us. The force of the method of correlation is nowhere more powerfully evident in the portrayal of man’s estrangement and the power of the New Being which overcomes it. The original sin is the state of estrangement and Creation, and the Fall coincides. Which seems to indicate that finitude is inherently evil, and sin ontologically necessary. Perhaps God understands this and that is what the Fall is all about. Man’s nature is evil and rebellious and he needs God to cultivate and teach him good. Without God, man will become corrupt and evil. God is your Heavenly Father and if you do not follow His rules, you will be a bad child. His ways are greater than yours. Much like if children did not obey their parents, even though no human is perfect and some parents are bad, when you are a minor, they typically want you to behave so the law does not punish them. If you did not listen to your parents, chances are that you would be a bad kid and end up dead or in jail. TV news reports in Sacramento, California USA say they “Do not have time to reach the (Chrisitan) Bible.” Obviously, if people are too busy to listen to their Heavenly Father, they are actively engaged and evil and you should not be learning from them. The Fall is the state of existence in which the potentialities of finite essences are actualized, but the nonbeing of the essence takes its toll also, and the creature does not perfectly live up to its essence. It is always in some degree estranged from it and, consequently, from the ground of being. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25

However, inevitability is not the same as necessity. Now, I ask you to consider, do people repeat themselves or does history? It depends on what you believe. However, many of these people may not have been reconstituted and may be new souls. Therefore, if history repeats itself, then be careful because humans could literally end up being slaves again and forced in the fields and whipped. The only way we can stop history from repeating itself is by adhering to the Gospel of God. If people continue to stray from the Lord, all that will exist is evil. Love will be replaced by material possessions and evil. Finitude is good, with God, but not perfect, and when it seeks to perfect itself by actualizing its potencies, it falls, because, after all, it is finite. That Christ is the answer to existential anguish, is a fundamental insight which Catholics have tended to neglect in a smug unconcern for those who have brought this anguish to the fore of modern thought. We should be grateful that we can learn something about Christ, that at least some aspects of Christology can be emphasized with the help of modern thinkers. Estrange, puzzled, frightened is the man of today. Theonomy means union with God, the ground of being. Finite beings can achieve it only by actualizing their essences in such a way that they are transparent to their ground. However, the universal fact of existence is estrangement, separation of beings from God, from themselves, and from one another. A new power, a New Being is needed to overcome estrangement, and in Jesus the Christ it has appeared. To whatever extent religion animates culture, this theonomous union is realized by the power of the New Being which grasps us in the ecstasy of faith. However, one of the potentialities of man is his drive toward community. We must now examine the church, the community of those who receive Jesus the Christ as the New Being. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Be sure to show love to the Sacramento Fire Department, they are understaffed and underfunded. Feel free to donate to their cause. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25

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The Mind-Shattering Horrors of Llanada Villa

The most merciful thing in the World, I think, is the ability of the human mind to partake in all the beautiful of the material World. We live in an infinity of reality that only the beholder can discern. If we choose to go far, we must learn to apricate our circumstances and work towards an enjoyable life. My home is a vast labyrinth, each mile straining in its own direction, and somedays piecing together the dissociated mysteries will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful curse therein, which shall either make one go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly catacombs into the peace and safety of a new dark age. Within these walls, there are strange survivals of apparitions that will freeze the blood. However, it is not from them that there came the single glimpse of forbidden aeons which chills me when I think of the madness that has been bestowed upon my bloodline. The grass and trees have assumed the fresh enamel of mediaeval May, and the turf is figured with little blossoms of azure and white and yellow, like an ornate broidery, and there is a pebbly stream that murmurs beside the way, and the voices of undines are parleying deliciously beneath its waters. The sun-lulled air is laden with wafture of youth and romance; and the longing that wells from the heart of Llanada Villa seems to mingle mystically with the balsams of the fruit orchards. Llanada Villa is like a high castle which holds dominion over a surrounding forest. However, once through the threshold, dreaded glimpses of truth, flash out from a hideous past. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8

Somewhere within my haunted mansion is a hidden room notorious for sorcery. Servants speak of phantoms, grisly tales; and there are stories of loup-garous and goblins, of fays and devils and vampires that have infested these very walls. However, to these tales, I give little heed, considering it improbable that such creatures would fare abroad in open daylight. Until one day, I was nearing the appointed parlor, which a turn of the path would soon reveal; and my pulses quickened and became tremulous. My thoughts were interrupted by a shrill scream that rose to an unendurable pitch of fear and horror, issuing from the corridors of stillness of the nearby rooms. Startled, I peered at the thick doors; and as the scream fell back to silence, I heard the sound of dull and hurrying footfalls, and a scuffling as of several bodies. Again the scream arose. It was plainly the voice of a woman in some distressful peril. In a small open space beyond the parlor, I saw a woman who was struggling with three ruffians of exceptionally brutal and evil aspect. Even in the haste and vehemence of the moment, I realized that I had never before seen such men or a woman. They could not have been my servant. The woman was clad in a gown of emerald green that matched her eyes; in her face was the pallor of dead things, together with a faery beauty; and her lips were dyed as with the scarlet of newly flowing blood. The men were dark as Moors, and their eyes were red slits of flame beneath oblique brows with animal-like bristles. There was something very peculiar in the shape of their feet. All of them seemingly had cloven hooves, but somehow I could not recall what sort of clothing they had worn. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8

The woman turned a beseeching gaze upon me as I peered through the door. The men, however, did not seem to heed my presence. Lifting my pistol, I fire with tremendous power at the head of the nearest one—a shot that should have leveled the fellow to Earth. However, the bullet fell to the ground as if forced by unresisting air, and I staggered and almost fell headlong in trying to recover my equilibrium. Dazed and uncomprehending, I saw the knot of struggling figures had vanished utterly. At least, the three men had vanished but from the middle of the parlor, the death-white features of the woman smiled upon me for a moment with faint, inscrutable guile ere. I understood now; and I shivered as I crossed myself. I had been deluded by phantoms or demons, doubtless for no good purpose; I had been the gull of a questionable enchantment. Plainly there was something after all in the legends I had heard, in the ill-renown of The Curse of the Winchester Rifle. I retraced my way down the hall I had been following. However, when I thought to reach again the spot from which I had heard that shrill unearthly scream, I saw that there was no longer path leading to that parlor; nor indeed was this a section of the mansion I recognized. The marble steps, coffered ceilings, the elevator paneled in mahogany like a plutocrat’s library, which carried me to the fourth floor vanished. In lieu of this elegant new addition to Llanada Villa there lay before me a tarn of hallways that were dark and dull as clotting blood, and the trail therein like the hair of suicides, and the skeletons of rotting corpses. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8

Now, beyond all question, I knew that I was the victim of an evil enchantment. In answering that beguileful cry for succor, I had exposed myself to the spell, had been lured within the circle of its power. I could not know the force of wizardly or demonry had willed to draw me thus; but I knew that my situation was fraught with supernatural menace. As I passed this scene of utter desolation and lifelessness, it seemed a place where cadavers might keep their tryst with demons. Nothing stirred, not even a hammer; and there was no whisper of a servant, no song of birds. I proceeded further and further into my mansion with a cautious eye, as the further I got, the more the scene changed. There were moving lights in the halls that vanished; there were drowned faces in the walls. The parquet floor was an obstacle course of French dollhouses and miniature Japanese castles. The draperies were green silk damask and blue velvet, the furniture Lousi XV gilded oak, the paintings signed by Renior, Cezanne, Degas, Manet, Monet. My many-turreted castle was ancienter than the World, it was older than light; it was coeval with fear and darkness; and horror dwelt upon it and crept unseen but palpable along its bastions. The 600-room mansion was a fairy-tale castle come to life, with secret entrances, mysterious sources of music, and treasure collected from all the World. My home was not so unusual during the day. On the top half, every inch was decorated with Parisian Beaux Arts ostentation, a profusion of lions, cherubs, and goddesses. Oh, but the architects were not done. Soaring above the mansion was an ornate domed tower reaching nine stories, so pleased with itself that it continued to an open cupola. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8

Although construction was continuous, there was often no sign of life about the castle; and no banners flew above its turrets or its donjon. However, spirits spoke loudly to warn me that there was a fountainhead of sorcery involved in the construction of my home. A growing panic would whisper in my brain, I seemed to hear the rustle of malignant plumes, the mutter of demonian threats and plottings. Amid my dismay and bewilderment, I thought of Annie and William and imagined that as long as I continued construction, that one day I would find them waiting for me in a parlor, library, kitchen, or hallway. Through my mansion throw which I lived was a maze of bafflement and eeriness. Sometimes I could swear I felt implacable arms that stoke to retard me; I could swear that I felt them twine about me with the strength and suppleness of living things. I fought them, insanely, desperately, and seemed to hear a crackling of infernal laughter in the walls as I fought. After years, with a leaden sinking of my heart, as into some ultimate slough of despair and terror, I resigned myself and made no further effort to escape. My very will was benumbed, was crushed down as by the incumbence of a superior volition that would no longer permit my puny recalcitrance. I was unable to resist when a strong hateful compulsion drew my footsteps along the margent of the halls down a new, never before seen room. Doors would open by themselves as if to receive an unexpected guest. But other than me, there was no sign of carpenter, architect, maid, butler, no farmer; and the walls of this great mansion were silent as those of a sepulcher. However, there were these apparent hieroglyphics and a figure of evidently pictorial intent, though its impressionistic execution forbade a very clear idea of its nature. It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8

If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful. Behind the figure was a vague suggestion of a Cyclopean architectural background. At the opposite end of the parlor was a door which stood mysteriously open, revealing a dark hall. As I approached the doorway, I saw that a man was standing on the threshold; though a moment previous I could have sworn that it was untenanted by any visible form. I knew that any weapon was futile against this supernatural foe. The man was inordinately tall and cadaverous, and was dressed in black garments of a superannuate mode. His lips were strangely red amid his bluish beard and the mortuary whiteness of his face. They were like the lips of the woman who, with her assailants, had disappeared in a manner so dubious when I approached them. His eyes were pale and luminous as marsh-lights; and I shuddered at his gaze and at the cold, ironic smile of his scarlet lips that seemed to reserve a World of secrets all too dreadful and hideous to be disclosed. “I am Gilles Garnier,” the man announced. His tones were both unctuous and hollow, and served to increase the repugnance I felt. And when his lips parted, I had a glimpse of teeth that were unnaturally small and were pointed like the fangs of some fierce animal. Mr. Garnier was haunting my mind like the funereal accents of a knell; though I could not recall at that moment the macabre and spectral ides which the name tended to evoke. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8

He turned abruptly, motioning me to follow him. I refused. There were sudden and furtive darkness had closed in upon Llanada Villa without moon or star. My mansion became airless and stifling like the gloom of a sepulcher that had been sealed for ages; and I was aware of the veritable oppression, a corporeal and psychic difficulty in breathing, as I moved from room to room. I flung open a heavy door of dark somber wood. Beyond, in what was the eating-room of this section of the mansions, several ghosts were seated about a long table by the light of cressets no less dreary and dismal than those in the hall. In the strange, uncertain glow, their faces were touched with a gloomy dubiety, with a lurid distortion; and it seemed to me that shadows hardly distinguishable from the figures were gathered around the board. I thought I should go mad with fear. Then sensation of being watched grew upon me until I sprang up and turned with my back to fire. Even then it was impossible for me to see much. I stood glancing from door to door, straining to listen over the thudding of my heart. My twin shadows swayed across the doorway of the study opposite, seeming to move independently. I thought of snuffing the candles; but then I would not be able to see the doors to the landing at all. I had learned that you could count second by your heartbeat. Mine was racing far faster than the measured ticking of a clock, but I began to count, anyway. Only I could keep it up; I would reach twenty or thirty, and be distracted by some phantom sound or movement, and start again. Thus I endured an indefinite interval, while the windows darkened further and further. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8

I conjure thee, O Guland, in the name of Satan, in the name of Beelzebuth, in the name of Astaroth, and in the name of all other Spirits, to make haste and appear before me. Come, then in the name of Satan and in the names of all other demons. Come to me, I command thee, in the name of the Most Holy Trinity. Come without inflicting any harm upon me, without injury to my body or soul, without maltreating my books, or anything which I use. I command thee to appear without delay, or, that failing, to send me forthwith another Spirit having the same power as thou hast, who shall accomplish my commands and be submitted to my will, wanting which, he whom thou shalt send me, if indeed thou comest not thyself, shall in no wise depart, nor until he hath in all things fulfilled my desire. I offer my blood unto the Divs and Druj, whom are the essence of counter creation. I offer my life force unto the powers of eternal darkness within. May they devour and destroy the imposed shackles of divine light and stasis that I may become unlimitedly powerful. I salute and conjure you, O beautiful Moon, O beautiful Star, O bright light which I hold in my hand! By the air which I breathe, by the breath which is within me, by the Earth which I touch, I conjure you, and by all the names of the spirits who are princes residing in you; by the ineffable Name On, which hath created all; by thee, O Resplendent Angel Gabriel, together with the Prince Mercury, Michiael, and Melchidae! I conjure you again by all the divine Names of God, that you send down to obsess, torment, and harass the body, spirit, soul and five senses nature. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8


For many years there has been talk of slamming doors, muffled voices and ghost walking the corridors of The Winchester Mystery House, which is over 140-years-old. Recall, the mansion started off as an eighteen-room farmhouse, which Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester purchased. A number of persons hired as night watchmen have quit after only one night on duty, complaining of door opening and closing and invisible footsteps following them on their rounds. In July 2008 a staff member working late thought he heard the sounds of a reception in progress on the first floor, but when he reached the foot of the stairs, he found the rotunda empty, and all noises suddenly ceased. The same tour guide recalled the library room on the third floor as being particularly creepy. Late one night as he approached the library door, he remembered a cold, dank air falling on his head and neck, and he decided his work could wait until the next day. Although the mansion has gone through a considerable number of watchmen who declined the privilege of working in the building after one night on the job, one stuck with the task for more than 13 years. He simply shrugged off the angry slamming of doors that sounded behind him and the thumping noises that followed him on his rounds. However, he admitted that he did not like to work in The Winchester Mystery House after dark. He always made it a point to be out of the building by quitting time, because when darkness fell, he could sense the whole atmosphere changing.

For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

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

What the F–Business Must be Conducted with Glass Pockets!

Although you make think “What the F!” has a negative connotation, it is not a curse word. It means “What the Ferry!” It is what Ferry calls his live resonation radio show. Ferry Coresten is one of the most talented disc jockeys in the World. Mr. Coresten is Dutch disc jockey, record producer and remixer. Defining, understanding, and discovering the conditions that lead to peace is an intellectual challenge with a long and rich traditional with the social sciences. Nevertheless, it remains central today, not simply for academics but to the broader populations as well. The notion that peace is at hand as soon as there is no ongoing, large-scale organized violence is not only the most common idea today but also a way of viewing peace that goes back at least to antiquity. We sometimes achieve peace through military preparations and deterrence, or the military defeat of adversaries. The quantitative research on conflict, violence, and peace is an already large subject area within the social sciences, and it is undergoing yet another growth spurt in the aftermath of 9/11, with increasing discussion of terrorism, restriction of civil liberties, torture, invasion, insurgency, counterinsurgency, revolution, counterrevolution, mass protest, and protest policing. Many people think we already live in a police state, but they have not seen anything yet. In 2007, alarm companies did not want to install security cameras on homes because they warned home owners that footage could be obtained by anyone and put on the Internet without their consent, but now people are going as far as having cameras places in their home that security companies monitor. Before long, the streets and highways in the United States of American will be full of license plate readers, which automatically issues tickets for speeding, which will make the road less safe as less officers will be out to stop illegal vehicles and vehicle violating law. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

We will also have police drones patrolling neighbourhoods, roads, and highways recording information and acting as law enforcement agents, so there will be virtually no privacy and anything that is done can be pulled up and reviewed for later enforcement of the law. Therefore, it is critical to study peace as something more than merely the absence of overt violence. Peace is defined only as the absence of some violent actions. This form of peace, as “no violence,” can range from brutal dictatorships to democracies that fully respect human rights, from states that remain at peace only for brief periods of time between recurring bought of violence to societies that have not experienced overt hostilities for hundreds of years, and from states that consistently remain prepared for “hot” conflict to those that do not consider preparing for it. If peace is an inherent dichotomy, then war and genocide are the opposite. Personal relationship, closeness and warmth, Christian community—these are just what I have experienced in East Germany when I have visited. Over the years the society has always come through with insightful and perceptive judgments. The new paradigm of just peacemaking is grounded in the historical experience of people who have lived in the face of oppression, violation of their basic rights, and the nuclear threat, and who, together with political scientist, Christian ethicists, and activists, fashioned realistic steps of peacemaking that enabled them to begin living in the time after the Cold War even before the Wall came down. Though oppressed and constricted, they began to live our future. Because the paradigm is grounded in realistic but persistent hope-creating experience, attention must be paid to critical perspectives external to Christian faith; and since the heart of the story is consent to all God’s creating and the practice of forgiveness and love, an ethic is to be tested by its ability to be inclusive rather than to repress important standards of human life, or other members of the human community. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

We have all known we needed to develop new methods for achieving change without violence. Now we have seen nonviolent revolutions in Iran (where the revolution was nonviolent but not the subsequent regime) in Philippines, in Argentina, throughout Eastern Europe, and in the peoples’ defeat of the coup in the Soviet Union, and there is hope for them in South Africa and perhaps Palestine (where parts of the movement are nonviolent, and other parts are not). Human rights movements must refrain from violence. They must take the beneficial action of clearly articulating the human rights that need to be established. The breakdown of the medieval system of feudal society had one main significance for all classes of society: the individual was left alone and isolated. He was free. This freedom had a twofold result. Man was deprived of the security he had enjoyed, of the unquestionable feeling of belonging, and he was torn loose from the World which had satisfied his quest for security both economically and spiritually. He felt alone and anxious. However, he was also free to act and to think independently, to become his own master and do with his life as he could—not as he was told to do. However, according to the real life situation of the members of different social classes, these two kind of freedom were of unequal weight. Only the most successful class of society profited from rising capitalism to an extent which gave them real wealth and power. They could expand, conquer, rule and amass fortunes as a result of their own activity and rational calculations. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

This new aristocracy of money, combined with that of birth, was in a position where they could enjoy the fruits of the new freedom and acquire a new feeling of mastery and individual initiative. On the other hand, they had to dominate the masses and to fight against each other, and thus their position, too, was not free from a fundamental insecurity and anxiety. But, on the whole, the positive meaning of freedom was dominant for the new capitalist. It was expressed in the culture which grew on the social of the new aristocracy, the culture of the Renaissance. In its art and in its philosophy it expressed the new spirit of human dignity, will, and mastery, although often enough despair and skepticism also. The same emphasis on the strength of individual activity and will is to be found in the theological teachings of the Catholic Church in the late Middle Ages. The Schoolmen of that period did not rebel against authority, they accepted its guidance; but they stressed the positive meaning of freedom, man’s share in the determination of his fate, his strength, his dignity, and the freedom of his will. On the other hand, the lower classes, the poor population of the cities, and especially the peasants, were impelled by a new quest for freedom and an ardent hope to end the growing economic and personal oppression. They had little to lose and much to gain. They were not interested in dogmatic subtleties, but rather in the fundamental principles of the Christian Bible: brotherliness and justice. Their hopes took active form in a number of political revolts and in religious movements which were characterized by the uncompromising spirit typical of the very beginning of Christianity. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Rising capitalism, although it made also for their increased independence and initiative, was greatly a threat. In the beginning of the sixteenth century the individual of the middle class could not yet grain much power and security from the new freedom. Freedom brought isolation and personal insignificance more than strength and confidence. Besides that, he was filled with burning resentment against the luxury and power of the wealthy classes, including the hierarchy of the Roman Church. Protestantism gave expression to the feelings of insignificance and resentment; it destroyed the confidence of man in God’s unconditional love; it taught man to despise and distrust himself and others; it made him a tool instead of an end; it capitulated before secular power and relinquished the principle that secular power is not justified because of its mere existence if it contradicts moral principles; ad in doing all this it relinquished elements that had been the foundations of Judaeo-Christian tradition. Its doctrines presented a picture of the individual, God, and the World, in which these feelings were justified by the belief that the insignificance and powerlessness which an individual felt came from the qualities of man as such and that he ought to feel as he felt. Thereby the new religious doctrines not only gave expression to what the average member of the middle class felt, but, by rationalizing and systematizing this attitude, they also increased and strengthened it. However, they did more than that; they also showed the individual a way to cope with his anxiety. They taught him that by fully accepting his powerlessness and the evilness of his nature, by considering his whole life an atonement for his sins, by the utmost self-humiliation, and also by unceasing effort, he could overcome his doubt and his anxiety; that by complete submission he could be loved by God and could at least hope to belong to those whom God has decided to save. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Protestantism was the answer to the human needs of the frightened, uprooted, and isolated individual who had to orient and to relate himself to a new World. The new character structure, resulting from economic and social changes and intensified by religious doctrines, became in its turn an important factor in shaping the further social and economic development. Those very qualities which were rooted in this character structure—compulsion to work, passion for thrift, the readiness to make one’s life a tool for the purposes of an extra personal power, asceticism, and a compulsive sense of duty—were character trait which became productive forces in capitalistic society and without which modern economic and social development are unthinkable; they were the specific forms into which human energy was shaped and in which it became one of the productive forces within the social process. To act in accord with the newly formed character traits was advantageous from the standpoint of economic necessities; it was also satisfying psychologically, since such action answered the needs and anxieties of this new kind of personality. To put the same principle in more general terms: the social process, by determining the mode of life of the individual, that is, his relation to others and to work, molds his character structure; new ideologies—religious, philosophical, or political—result from and appeal to this changed character structure and thus intensify, satisfy, and stabilize it; the newly formed character traits in their turn become important factors in further economic development and influence the social process; while originally they have developed as a reaction to the threat of new economic forces, they slowly become productive force, furthering and intensifying the new economic development. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

The system of rules and their enforcement itself must first establish a reputation for integrity and efficacy. This takes a long time and strict supervision even given much good will. In many countries, the great difficulties experienced by the governments of most transition economies in their attempts at such reputation-building require attempts of the top levels of the government at making and enforcing reliable governance systems. However, they can be ruined by some middle-level officials who attempt to make quick profit from their newfound power. There are evident problems of this in most transition economies. Also, in the phase when the system of rules in imperfect but improving, it can offer better outside payoffs to the participants in the prevailing relation-based system. By thus increasing their incentives to cheat their current partners, it can worsen the outcomes of the relation-based system. The policies required to initiate a transition from low-income equilibrium to a state of rapid growth may be qualitatively different from those required to reignite growth for a middle-income country. At low levels of income, with reasonable institutions and reasonable policies, it may be easy to achieve high growth up to semi-industrialization. However, the institutional requirements of reigniting growth in a middle-income country can be significantly more demanding. Growth starting from a low level can be achieved using relation-based governance in small communities of traders with good relationships and information networks, so long as the state does not actually inhibit such developments with its policies. However, to go beyond the middle-income level requires greater integration into a large economy, where relation-based governance is inadequate. The necessary shift toward rule-based governance is more demanding because it must overcome the additional problems of collective action, vested interest and so on. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

How might such investment in the framework of rules get made? In 1898, when Elbert Gary and J. Pierpont Morgan started Federal Steel, they took the then unusual step of issuing quarterly reports because both men believed that corporations issuing publicly traded securities had to account for their financial performance. At first there was no public process such as external audits to guarantee the truthfulness of these accounts; presumably Mr. Morgan’s own reputation and integrity, acquired in the prevailing relation-based system of finance, gave them credibility. However, the public gradually found that inadequate, perhaps because others entering the arena of raising finance from the general public did not have the same reputation. A few years later, then president Theodore Roosevelt said that he would not “accept the publication of what some particular company chooses to publish as a favor, instead of demanding what we think ought to be published from all companies as a right” (Strouse 2000, p. 439). And still later, Mr. Morgan said that “business in the twentieth century would have to be conducted with glass pockets” (Strouse 2000, p. 600). This episode serves to emphasize the endogeneity of verifiability, and the value of making more information publicly verifiable. Forces operate on the other side to undermine a relation-based system when it comes into contact with other rule-based systems. If capital-owners in the relation-based system become able to invest abroad under a rule-based system and earn the going return there, that will raise the outside opportunities of the participants in each ongoing repeated game of relation-based finance, and thereby unravel its tacit cooperation equilibrium. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

Similarly, as improvements in transportation technology or lowering of trade barrier with other countries, or liberalization of regulation within or across countries, bring a relation-based production system into contact with other economies and other markets, its firms will discover better opportunities outside their previous relationships; this can undermine the previous repeated game equilibrium. If or when a relation-based economy needs to import capital, whether financial or direct investment, it will find it difficult to do so. Unless foreigners are misinformed or gradually develop relationships with host-country businesses, they will be reluctant to lend. Conversely, firms in a relation-based system may be reluctant to borrow from lenders who are not part of their relation network, for fear that the strangers may withdraw their capital suddenly. So, if it needs foreign capital, a relation-based economy may fail to grow unless it changes over successfully to a rule-based system where anyone can invest with the confidence that the only uncertainties will be those arising from natural economic shocks, not those of borrowers’ strategic default or fraud or lenders’ capital flight. Of course the difficulties of brining together two such different systems of financial transactions are not insurmountable. Intermediaries can develop relations on both sides, and profit by providing these services for a fee. The Rothschilds did this in Europe with great success for over a century, literally be having relations on both or all sides. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the United States of America was a major capital importer. This was facilitated by the Morgans—Junius S. operating in London and J. Pierpont in New York—who established a relation-based chain of trust between borrowers in the United States of America and lenders in the United Kingdom and Europe. In modern times, Hong Kong served a similar role, dealing with lenders—Western ones on a basis of rules and overseas Chinese ones on the basis of relations—and with borrowers—investing firms in mainland China on a basis of relations. In countries shaken by the Third Wave, the truly poor no longer necessarily have numbers on their side. In a good many countries they—like everyone ese—have become a minority. Not only is majority rule therefore no longer adequate as a legitimating principle, it is no longer necessarily humanizing or democratic in societies moving into the Third Wave. Second Wave ideologues routinely lament the breakup of mass society. Rather than seeing in this enriched diversity an opportunity for human development, they attack it as “fragmentation” and “Balkanization” and attribute it to the aroused “selfishness” of minorities. This trivial explanation substitutes effect for cause. For the rising activism of minorities is not the result of a sudden onset of selfishness; it is, among other things, a reflection of the needs of a new system of production which requires for its very existence a far more varied, colourful, open and diverse society than any we have ever known. We can either resist the thrust toward diversity, in a futile last-ditch effort to save our Second Wave political institutions, or we can acknowledge diversity and change those institutions accordingly. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

The former strategy can only be implemented by totalitarian means and must result in economic and cultural stagnation; the latter leads toward social evolution and a minority-based twenty-first-century democracy. To reconstitute democracy in Third Wave terms, we need to jettison the frightening but false assumption that increased diversity automatically brings increased tension and conflict in society. Indeed, the exact reverse can be true. Conflict in society is not only necessary, it is, within limits, desirable. If one hundred men all desperately want the same brass ring, they may be forced to fight for it. On the other hand, if each of the hundred has a different objective, it is far more rewarding for them to trade, cooperate and form symbiotic relationships. Given appropriate social arrangements, diversity can make for a secure and stable civilization. It is the lack of appropriate political institutions today that unnecessarily sharpens conflict between minorities to the knife-edge violence. It is the lack of such institutions that makes the majority harder and harder to find. The answer to these problems is not to stifle dissent or to charge minorities with selfishness (as though the elites and their experts are not similarly self-interested). The answer lies in imaginative new arrangements for accommodating the legitimating diversity—new institutions that are sensitive to the rapidly shifting needs of changing and multiplying minorities. Someday future historians may look back on voting and the search for majorities as an archaic ritual engaged in by communicational primitives. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Today however, in a dangerous World, we cannot afford to delegate total power to anyone, we cannot surrender even the weak popular influence that exists under majoritarian systems, and we cannot allow tiny minorities to make vast decisions that tyrannize all other minorities. This is why we must drastically revise the crude Second Wave methods by which we pursue the elusive majority. We need new approaches designed for a democracy of minorities—methods whose purpose is to reveal differences rather than to paper them over with forced or fake majorities based on exclusionary voting, sophistic framing of the issues or rigged electoral procedures. We need, in short, to modernize the entire system so as to strengthen the role of diverse minorities, yet permit them to form majorities. In Second Wave societies, voting to determine the popular will provide an important source of intermittent feedback for the ruling elites. When conditions for one reason or another became intolerable for the majority, and fifty-one percent of the voters registered their pain, the elites could, at a minimum, shift parities, alter policies, or make some other accommodations. Even in yesterday’s mass society, however, the fifty-one percent principle was a decidedly blunt, purely quantitative instrument. Voting to determine the majority tells us nothing about the quality of people’s views. It can tell us how many people at a given moment want X, but not how badly they want it. Above all, it tells us nothing about what they would be willing to trade off for X—crucial information in a society made up of many minorities. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

When a minority feels so threatened or attaches such life-and-death significance to a single issue that its views should perhaps receive more than ordinary weight, nor does it signal us then. In a mass society these well-known weaknesses of majority rule were tolerated because, among other things, most minorities lacked strategic power to disrupt the system. In today’s finely wired society, in which all of us are members of minority groups, that is no longer true. For a de-massified Third Wave society, the feedback systems of the industrial past may be considered too crude. Thus we will have no use voting and the polls in a radically new way. Also, because the de-massification and redistribution of media outlets, we are no longer creating stars as famous Worldwide as Aaliyah, Britney Spears, Beyonce, Paris Hilton, Brad Pitt, Tyson Beckford, Tyra Banks, Jennifer Lopez, or Lucy Lui. Fortunately, Third Wave technologies provide pathways toward Third Wave democracy. They reopen, in a startling new context, fundamental issues that our founders considered two hundred years ago. These technologies make possible new, hitherto impractical forms of democracy. Although the transition from the problem phase to the proposal phase of planning is usually gradual, the formulation of proposals is qualitatively distinct from the definition of public and problem. Proposals are creative responses; they call for imagination, invention, even genius. The making of proposals has to be properly timed, not coming too early in the planning process. For any given problem there may be a number of solutions, and thus new potentialities of divergence are introduced into the public’s discussion. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

If those who make proposals are anxious that they be accepted or at least taken seriously and attended to, they should ideally wait until a public has become quite clear and coherent s to the nature of its problem and its desire to act. This is especially true when a proposal is likely to threaten this or that section of the public’s interest; a premature proposal is more easily exiled from discussion by an alter minority, or even without opposition may lose force, when its relevance is not yet apparent. Perhaps the proposal phase could be said to begin where “to act or not to act” ceases to be the question and consideration turns to serious alternatives. It ends when the proposal or proposals go before a policy-making body for decision. If the outcome is to be a full-fledged proposal of the planning type, during the interim a considerable number of developments ideally must occur. During this phase, proposals may be legion, running from the most casual sort of suggestion to massive reports prepared by many experts and taking years of work. If it is to deserve serious considerations, despite such variation in their elaborateness, the proposal must contain some basic elements. There must be a statement of an effective and feasible way of solving the problem as it has been defined. An estimate of the resources, human and material, required for carrying out the proposal. A schedule of the rate at which these recourses will be applied. A statement of certain quantitative goals for achievement within the schedule set. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

Any proposal containing these elements is a planning proposal, and is often called a plan, sometimes with the name of its author prefixed, exempli gratia, the Marshall Plan (although technically it does not become a plan until it has been subject to a policy commitment, and then of course it becomes a program). The injection of proposals into the public’s discussion of the problem is frequently, at first, on what might be called an amateur basis. While each serious proposal may contain the four essential elements, their development is neither elaborate nor exact. The multiplicity of proposals and their rudimentary nature, given a strong feeling of concern, then quite readily lead to a conscious demand for more careful study of the situation and comparative examination of the proposals. Then, and not before then in most cases, is the appropriate time for commencing the formal organization of the public. At this point, another custom is often to constitute some expert committee, commission, or board and to charge it with making a study and some definite recommendations for action. The composition of the more successful committees tends to be drawn, with certain exceptions, from all the significant elements in the public to which the situation is a problem. To give them their charge may call for further definition of the appropriate scope of the planning area. This calls for judgment and may itself be a matter of disagreement. If action is truly desired, the planning area ought to be confined to those to whom the situation is definitely a problem in which they are actively involved, and it ought not to include everyone who might potentially experience some consequence from the action taken. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

After admitting the possibility of deception in supernatural things, and a doubt has come into mind whether certain “experiences,” either personal or otherwise, were of God after all, the next stages are: The discovery of the deception. Light and truth alone can make free, and when once a doubt comes in and the man opens his mind to the truth that he is as liable to be deceived as anyone else, then to the mind and attitude light is given (John 3.21). Sometimes the specific deception is seen at once, but more often the discovery is gradual, and patience is needed while the light slowly dawns. Certain fact in connection with various experiences of the past, which the believer has failed to note, may now emerge into the light, and the half-truths which the Adversary had used to deceive are clearly seen: the twisting of words, the wrenching of sentences out of their context in the Scriptures—all come into a view as the light is given. Then comes: the acknowledgement of the deception. This is now imperative. The truth must not only be faced but owned up to, so that things are called by their right names, and the father of lies defeated by the weapon of truth. The Book of Mormon and the Christian Holy Bible keeps one from sin, and draws one near to virtue. You shall teach diligently the word of God to your children. The moral World is maintained by the instruction of our young; their education shall not be interrupted even to rebuild the Temple. When parents encourage their children to study The Book of Mormon and the Christian Holy Bible, their influence lives beyond the grave. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

One who has studied in one’s youth may be compared to writing set down on new parchment; but one who begins to study when one is old, is like writing set down on re-used parchment. If one studies The Book of Mormon and the Holy Christian Bible in one’s youth, its words are woven into the texture of one’s life. Train a child in the way one should go, and when one is older, one will not depart from it. As long as the voices of children resound with the study of The Book of Mormon and the Holy Chistian Bible, no enemy can triumph over America. The Book of Mormon and the Holy Christian Bible are each a Tree of Life; happy are they who understand its teachings, and fulfill God’s commandments. The significance of the Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus as the Christ can be summed up in one word: salvation. One can be saved from many things, but salvation is salvation from the ultimate negativity. Salvation is healing for healing means reuniting that which is estranged, giving a center to what is split, overcoming the split between God and man, man and his Worl, man and himself. It is the revelation of the New Being in Jesus as the Christ which brings salvation. Consequently, where there is revelation, there is salvation, for the revelation of the ground of being transforms and heals. Revelation and salvation are identified. The revelational history of mankind—preparatory revelation before the appearance of the New Being, and receiving revelation afterwards—testifies that men have shared in the healing power of the New Bring, or else they would have succumbed to the destructive tendencies of existential estrangement and have ceased to exist. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Traditional theology has presented the rigid alternatives of total condemnation and total salvation. However, we reject them both, for, although the healing power of the New Being is never absent, even those who experience it are healed but fragmentarily. The divine act overcomes estrangement by removing guilt, and man reacts by accepting reconciliation. The effects of atonement are threefold, and together they constitute the meaning of salvation: Regeneration, Justification, and Sanctification, or, in Tillichian terminology, participation, acceptance, and transformation. Regeneration stresses the objective power of the New Being to grasp estranged mankind and draw it into itself. Man participates in the new reality revealed in Christ only by being seized by it. Thus, Regeneration is the new state of things, the new eon, which the Christ brought; the individual enters it, and in so doing he himself participates in it and is reborn through participation. Since Regeneration is participation in the objective power of the New Being, it precedes Justification, for faith as the state of being grasped by the divine presence is not a human act, but the work of the Spirit. Justification is acceptance. It is the act of God by which He accepts sinful man in spite of his guilt. It is also the act of man by which man accepts God’s saving mercy. Indeed, there is nothing in man which enables God to accept him. However, man must accept just this. He must accept that he is accepted; he must accept acceptance. This in spite of his anxiety, man accepts God’s justifying act. In spite of is the paradox of simual peccator, simul Justus. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

As a divine act, Regeneration and Justification are one, for Regeneration is the actual reunion of the estranged, and Justification is its paradoxical character. Sanctification is distinct from both of them in the sense that a process is distinguished from the event in which it is initiated. Sanctification is the process in which the New Being transforms both individuals and communities. Sanctification, as transformation, takes place both within religion and outside it in the secular realm. Up to now emphasis has been laid upon the individual man as the one who is saved. However, our vision is broader than that. At the crucifixion of Jesus the sun was darkened, the temple veil split, rocks cracked, and the dead rose. Nature was in an uproar, and the event at Golgotha is one which concerns the Universe, including all nature and history. The Christ cannot be restricted to one area; Christology must be cosmic. Salvation extends to the whole World, and World means nature as well as man. It is through man, the microcosm, that the saving power of the New Being reaches out to the Universe. The tragedy of nature is bound to the tragedy of man, as the salvation of nature and nature is in man. Consequently, the impact of the Spiritual Presence upon beings inferior to man is indirect and, in a quantitative sense, severely limited. However, in a qualitative sense it is enormous. Salvation is found within the Kingdom of God which embraces the Universe. It is the place where there is complete transparency of everything for the divine to shine through it. In His fulfilled kingdom, God is everything for everything. Salvation, the healing of the disrupted, is brought about by love, for love is the drive towards the unity of the separated. The New Being is the love of Jesus who is the Christ, reuniting estranged mankind with its ground. The Spiritual Presence manifests itself as love. After distinguishing divine love from human love, we come to an understanding that man’s love for God is the drive toward the reunion of the separated. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

However, since salvation is an act of God, God’s love must first extend to man and grasp him. The distinction between faith and love disappears, for being grasped by God in faith and adhering to Him in love is one and the same state of creaturely life. We belong to the Old Creation, and the demand made upon us by Christianity is that we also participate in the New Creation. What is this New Being? The only thing that counts, regardless of faith, is the union with Him in whom the New Reality is present. No religion matters—only a new state of things. The New Creation—this is our ultimate concern; this should be our infinite passion—the infinite passion of every human being. This matters; this alone matters ultimately. In comparison with it everything else, even religion or non-religion, even Christianity or non-Christianity, matters very little—and ultimately nothing. And now again we ask: What is this New Being? It is a renewal of the Old which has been corrupted, distorted, split, and almost destroyed. Therefore, we can speak of the New in terms of a re-newal: The threefold “re,” namely, re-conciliation, re-union, re-surrection. The word “resurrection” has for many people the connotation of dead bodies leaving their graves or other fanciful images. However, resurrection means the victory of the New state of things, the New Being born out of death of the Old. Resurrection is not an event that might happen in some remote future, but it is the power of the New Being to create life out of death, here and now, today and tomorrow…Resurrection happens now, or it does not happen at all. It happens in us and around us, in soul and history, in nature and Universe. The message of Christianity is not Christianity, but a New Reality. A New state of things had appeared, it still appears; it is hidden and visible, it is there and it is here. Accept it, enter into it, let it grasp you. And like God saves all, the Fire Department will rescue you no matter how rich or poor you are, no matter or age, or what you look like or where you live! Be sure to thank your local heroes, and feel free to make donations to them, they are understaffed and underfunded. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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Money Can Buy Happiness for Some

Some people are still nice and happy. Happiness is a mental or emotional state of wellbeing characterized by optimistic or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. Media and advertising are selling happiness as a utopian experience. And more and more people interpret it as bliss. The popular misconception is that happiness is looking gorgeous, laughing all day long, coming by the way driving fancy cars, et cetera. However, bliss is a rare out-of-body moment and not a routine. Consider it as a beautiful vacation, but no matter how amazing the holiday is, one must return home because home is a constant anchor in our lives. We learn how to navigate through every other complex emotion by our state of being. If we re not in the best of space, we will end up making decisions that will further prolong a state of being to an unexpected duration. Most people gauge their happiness with the barometer of their feeling. If it is sadness, they feel they would make efforts to feel better. Feelings are tools to carve a state of mind. There are many actions that fluctuate the state of being we are in, particularly that of happiness. Drawing a sense of comparison with others, overthinking about the past, allowing situations to get the better of oneself are some of the factors that tend to make us happy. Happiness, as a state of mind, is cultivated over time. It is something that can be practiced with time and strengthened like a muscle; the effort is not to find it so much but rather to maintain a state of mind. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

When we tend to outsource our happiness or hyperlink it to circumstances externally, we heavily rely upon the success of those scenarios to achieve happiness as a goal. It is only then happiness gets mistaken to be a by-product of situations rather than an ingredient in the action to be executed. We anticipate its arrival and chase it with all our might. Happiness is not determined by what is happening around you but rather by what is happening inside of you. Most people depend on others to gain happiness, but the truth is, it always comes from within. Happiness means different things to various people, but we think it is a state of wellbeing and contentment. Happy people, too, can be sad or disappointed, but they do not let it hamper their long-term mood. Happy individuals are more likely than their less happy peers to have fulfilling marriages, and relationships, high incomes, superior work performance, community involvement, robust health, and even a long life. Happy and unhappy people generally have the same number of adverse events in their lives. It is their interpretation or approach toward tragic events where the major difference lies. Optimistic people try to negotiate an action plan to equilibrize negative situations in their lives, whereas, on the other hand, pessimists are more likely to complain about circumstances and then step into the quicksand of negativity or cynicism, perhaps even depression. In many ways, our hope is our knowledge. A doctor with a highly coveted medical degree, not believing that he will be able to treat his patients, will end up not using his knowledge to his advantage. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Similarly, if he is not definite about being able to sell the products or fearing it will not rain, a farmer will not sow seeds at the beginning of his agricultural season. Optimism and pessimism are evaluative styles of reacting to life events that determine a positive vs. negative mood and all-embracing or all-excluding behaviour. Individuals with optimistic explanations of life try to look for the good in the bad; they generally feel happier and more equipped to handle challenges and do not self-label themselves as failures as the advent of every setback. Optimists tend to analyse how much of the situational they could control and how much was beyond their grip. Optimism is a form of positive thinking, allowing our interactions to have a positive spin resulting in better health, longer lives, long-lasting relationships, and healthier babies. There is no single great strategy to come with adversities. Most happy people adapt to how they respond to a situation and are ore agile in circumstances that may otherwise lead to emotional gymnastics. There is a lot to be learned from how well we cope with adversities. Human beings can cope pretty well with really bad things. We are finding that people who deal best with adversity are people who have flexible responses. They have multiple coping strategies, which is part of what we think of as mental health. Happy people also accept that adversity allows them to strengthen their coping skills. Without any challenges, one will hardly be able to evaluate one’s response. Therefore, happy people learn from each setback and bounce more resolutely. Over time, they are able to read situations and behave appropriately. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Money along cannot compensate for happiness. It allows one to live comfortably or feel secure. However, it is that all one needs to rise on the happiness metrics? Perhaps not. Out of 4,000 millionaires interviewed said that if you want you and your heirs to be happier, you should give your money away and let them make it on their own. (However, you will notice none of them do this and they continue to squeeze every penny they can get out of consumers.) Money helps procure resources to meet our basic needs, but more money does not always guarantee more happiness. Making money oneself instead of inheriting it resulted in people with peers with equal wealth feeling a bit happier. The pursuit of wealth demands multitasking on other fronts of an individual’s life. It means balancing working overtime with spending time with family, traveling for business trips to hanging out with friends, juggling weekend work mode with pursuing personal hobbies, cutting down on vacations, or lazing around with a high-pressure need to meet deadlines. Apart from the bank account, a person may have a limited circle to share that money with. However, a person not managing their financial foothold well will also crumble under the pressure of paying bills, living hand to mouth, and eventually feeling miserable. The honest answer to the question of whether money can or cannot buy happiness is that every individual is different. Each person makes decisions prioritizing what they need most. As long as our sense of value of life, people around us, and the World overall is not dictated by the currency in our wallet, we shall be able to create a fulfilling life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

No matter what your personality type is, you can embody happiness. Extrovert find happiness through their external Worlds and feel energized through the social circles they are part of. Introverts, on the other hand, find contentment in their inner Worlds. Going for a walk, sitting by themselves, painting, or reading a book might comfort them in a similar fashion as it does an extrovert in public interaction. Despite the numerous comparisons between whether one is better than the other, what a lot of studies vouch for is that the key factor in happiness amidst both personality types is to accept oneself, create a quality tribe that you can trust and not marinate one’s mind in other people’s way of living. It might work for them, but because there is no formula for happiness, you are free to discover your own route to it. If there are people who are happy permanently, it is debatable. Yet, there definitely exist people who are genuinely satisfied with their lives. There are people who feel good about life more often than others. This regular happiness mode labels them as happy people. There are people who acknowledge the happy people around them and celebrate them for their characteristics. These characteristics, when analysed, show the common thread of similar values, mechanisms, and behaviour traits running across all the people. Happy people exist because they choose to. While there are a million things that spark joy if we allow ourselves the time just to pause and look around, below, we have jotted down a few that we keep going back to, id est, our happiness trail and where to find them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

The expert who is skilled in getting attention, provoking discussion, and dramatizing problems plays an indispensable role in the planning process in an agency, family, or group, and deserves perhaps more honour than one gets, since too often one is treated as one who troubles the sleep of others. Poets and prophets may be indispensable as movers of opinion and intolerable as team mates. The unquestioning assurance with which we habitually assume that everyone knows what is meant by social problem attests that we are dealing here with one of the valid preconceptions of our culture. Yet our and other cultures show that what is problematical to some people is not so to others. In our culture, circumstances such as the condition of the weather and the coming of death are regarded as natural and inevitable concomitants of human existence. They cannot be changed or improved, they are not subject to progress, nothing can be done about them except to submit and adjust to them; they are not problems. The problematical situation is one where it appears that something can be done, something which is defined by the comparison of a better future and a worse present. Thus the concept of problems is closely linked historically and culturally with the idea of progress and the increase of man’s power over nature. To the extent tht the laboratories of General Electric raise hopes of regulating rainfall, the weather will become a problem. Thus, in the most advanced cultures almost any state of affairs can potentially be treated as a problem. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

In considering matter like ill health, it may at first appear that for a state of affairs to be defined as problematic, it must inflict discomfort upon someone. Certainly it is true that many actions carried on by planning bodies are of this order; they are aimed at correcting some deficiency or restoring some status quo ante. It is also true, on the other hand, if they can be said to originate in any form of distress at all, that many actions of planning bodies originate only in that “divine discontent” created by an awareness of a discrepancy between what is an what might be. For propaganda purposes, it may be an advantage to publish each problem as an evil to be disposed of, rather than a good to be attained. However, it must be noted how in the planning process it is often the unfolding of new possibilities that crates the problem, not the intensification of some threat of pain. Failure to recognize the prospect of continuous, dynamic change leads not to planning but to fire-fighting, not to cumulative advance in power and technique but to stagnant routine. The definition of problems in terms of the progressive setting of new and positive goals is thus one of the major distinctions between the planning and the therapeutic approach to the conduct of family agencies. Also, the therapy, as well as the charity approach, is likely to assume the existence of a natural order. According to this view, problems arise when something goes wrong with the natural order. Some external disturbance is said to interfere with normal functioning, and the problem is assumed solved when the natural order is restored. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

The planning approach, in contrast, denies the assumption of some pre-existent natural order, and construes the social order as the product or construction of purposeful human activity. There is no valid question of whether to plan or not to plan, but only of which plans are good and which plans are bad. The structure of all human organizations—from the smallest to the largest—is taken as the embodiment of certain rules of the game which have been invented or accepted by their participants. Problems from this point of view require some reconstitution of the group to accomplish some change of purpose. From the therapeutic point of view, it is common to speak of “society as the patient.” However, from the planning point of view, all parties affected by the problem are equally patients and therapists, who are engaged not in restoring their constitution but a sacred attitude toward the structure of the social order, the planning approach takes a very secular attitude. Personality likewise becomes problematic when it is viewed as a construction from the elements of experience. The basic assumption of all research on the development of personality is that ultimately something can be done about it, something distinguishable in terms of better and worse. How much can be done, of course, is not ascertainable a prior but only by exploration and experiment. As the reflection of the social order in which it occurs, personality can be no more a “natural order” than the rules of the game which constitute the social order. The identity of Americans is a social problem in 2023. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

We have so far spoken mainly of the anxiety and of the feeling of powerlessness pervading the personality of the member of the middle class. We must now discuss another trait which we have only touched upon very briefly: his hostility and resentment. That the middle class developed intense hostility is not surprising. Anybody who is thwarted in emotional and sensual expression and who is also threatened in his very existence will normally react with hostility; as we have seen, the middle class as a whole and especially those of its members who were not yet enjoying the advantages of rising capitalism were thwarted and seriously threatened. Another factor was to increase their hostility: the luxury and power which the small group of capitalists, including the higher dignitaries of the Church, could afford to display. An intense enby against them was the natural result. However, when hostility and envy developed, the members of the middle class could not find the direct expression which was made possible for the lower classes. These hated the rich who exploited them, they wanted to overthrow their power, and could thus afford to feel and to express their hatred. The upper class also could afford to express aggressiveness directly in the wish for power. The members of the middle class were essentially conservative; they wanted to stabilize society and not uproot it; each of them hoped to become more prosperous and to participate in the general development. Hostility, therefore, was not to be expressed overtly, nor could it even be felt consciously; it had to be repressed. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Repression of hostility, however, only removes it from conscious awareness, it does not abolish it. Moreover, the pent-up hostility, not finding any direct expression, increases to a point where it pervades the whole personality, one’s relationship to others and to oneself—but in rationalized and disguised forms. Mr. Luther and Mr. Calvin portray this all-pervading hostility. Not only in the sense that these two men, personally, belonging to the ranks of the greatest haters among the leading figures of history, certainly among religious leaders; but, which is more important, in the sense that their doctrines were coloured by this hostility and could only appeal to a group itself driven by an intense, repressed hostility. The most striking expression of this hostility is found in their concept of God, especially in Mr. Calvin’s doctrine. Although we are all familiar with this concept, we often do not fully realize what it means to conceive of God as being as arbitrary and merciless as Mr. Calvin’s God, who destined part of mankind to eternal damnation without any justification or reason except that this act was an expression of God’s power. Mr. Calving himself was, of course, concerned with the obvious objections which could be made against this conception of God; but the more or less subtle construction he made to uphold the picture of a just and loving God do not sound in the least convincing. This picture of a despotic God, who wants unrestricted power over men and their submission and humiliation, was the projection of the middle class’s own hostility and envy. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Hostility or resentment also found expression in the character of relationships to others. The main form which it assumed was moral indignation, which has invariably been characteristic for the lower middle class from Mr. Luther’s time to Mr. Hitler’s. While this class was actually envious of those who had wealth and power and could enjoy life, in terms of moral indignation and in the conviction that these superior people would be punished by eternal suffering. However, the hostile tension against others found expression in still other ways. Mr. Calvin’s regime in Geneva was characterized by suspicion and hostility on the part of everybody against everybody else, and certainly little of the spirit of love and brotherliness could be discovered in his despotic regime. Mr. Calvin distrusted wealth and at the same time had little pity for poverty. In the later development of Calvinism warnings against friendliness towards the stranger, a cruel attitude towards the poor, and a general atmosphere of suspiciousness often appeared. Aside from the projection of hostility and jealousy onto God and their indirect expression in the form of moral indignation, one other way in which hostility found expression was in turning it against oneself. We have seen how ardently both Mr. Luther and Mr. Calvin emphasized the wickedness of man and taught self-humiliation and self-abasement as the basis of all virtue. What they consciously had in mind was certainly nothing but an extreme degree of humility. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

However, to anybody familiar with the psychological mechanisms of self-accusation and self-humiliation there can be no doubt that this kind of “humility” is rooted in a violent hated which, for some reason or other, is blocked from being directed toward the World outside and operates against one’s own self. In order to understand this phenomenon fully, it is necessary to realize that the attitudes toward others and toward oneself, far from being contradictory, in principle run parallel. However, while hostility against others is often conscious and can be expressed overtly, hostility against oneself is usually (except in pathological cases) unconscious, and finds expression in indirect and rationalized forms. One is a person’s active emphasis on his own wickedness and insignificance, of which we have just spoken; another appears under the guise of conscience or duty. Just as there exists humility which has nothing to do with self-hatred, so there exist genuine demands of conscience and a sense of duty which are not rooted in hostility. This genuine conscience forms a part of integrated personality and the following of its demands is an affirmation of the whole self. However, the sense of “duty” as we find it pervading the life of modern man from the period of Reformation up to present in religious or secular rationalization, is intensely coloured by hostility against the self. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

“Conscience” is a slave driver, put into man by himself. It drives him to act according to wishes and aims which he believes to be his own, while they are actually the internalization of external social demands. It drives him with harshness and cruelty, forbidding him pleasure and happiness, making his whole life the atonement for some mysterious sin. It is also the basis of the “inner Worldly asceticism” which is so characteristic in early Calvinism and later Puritanism. The hostility in which this modern kind of humility and sense of duty is rooted explains also one otherwise rather baffling contradiction: that such humility goes together with contempt for others, and that self-righteousness has actually replaced love and mercy. Genuine humility and a genuine sense of duty towards one’s fellow men could not do this; but self-humiliation and self-negating “conscience” are only one side of an hostility, the other side of which is contempt for and hatred against others. The hostility of man against himself is contained in the superego. The superego was originally the internalization of an external and dangerous authority. Unless regeneration by the Holy Spirit and the indwelling of the Spirit means sinlessness, and the present possession of a resurrection body, not every part of a believer is yet renewed and freed by the redemption of Calvary from the effects of the Fall. HENCE THERE IS GROUND FOR THE POSSIBLE OPERATION OF DECEIVING SPIRITS. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Since absolute sinlessness and the present possession of the resurrection body are not taught in the Scriptures as attainable while on Earth, the chance of deception is logically and reasonably possible—even while the spirit and heart of man is renewed by the Holy Spirit. If we come to facts of experience, the proofs are so abundant as to be beyond our capacity to handle in the limited space of this essay, not only in the unregenerated World but in those who are undoubtedly children of God and spiritual believers. If we knew ourselves and our actual condition as sinners, s depicted in God’s Word, we would be in greater safety from the enemy. It is the ignorance of our true condition even with the new life from God implanted in us, and our blind confidence of safety without an intelligent basis for that assumption, which lays us open to being deceived by Satan through our very certainty of being free from his deception. Since the government and public schools no longer instill patriotism in Americans, it is your jobs as parents to teach your children to be patriotic and to buy American cars. Back in the 1950s, housekeepers would brag about teaching the children they took care of to be the first in the neighbourhood to memorize the pledge of allegiance. However, today’s kids are taught by the TV how to sing theme songs to their favourite cartoons. Let us not forget to remind our children of what an honour it is to live in America and to be an American. “Christology is a function of soteriology.” The Christ who brings the New Being is a unique event which saves the whole of humanity and the whole of the Universe. The task of Christology is to work out the universal significance of this simple and unrepeatable historic fact. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

The New Testament account supplies the concrete details of an individual, personal life, whole the Christological symbols convey the universal significance of the Christ. Thus, myth and symbols are the very language of religion, and to demythologize “would silence the experience of the holy.” Two central Christological symbols reveal the significance of Jesus as the Christ: the Cross, which symbolizes His subjection to existence, and the Resurrection, which symbolized His Victory over it. The Cross and the Resurrection are mutually interdependent, for the triumph of the Resurrection supposes the death on the Cross, and the Cross would have been no different from the death of any other man if the Christ had not risen. Building on this close relationship, we establish the Cross as the paradigm according to which the Resurrection is to be understood. The Cross is both an event and a symbol or, better, a symbol based on an event. As the crucifixion story of Jesus, it enjoys a comparatively high degree of historical probability. As the Cross of Jesus who is the Christ, it is the myth of the bearer of the new eon who suffers the death of a convict and slave under the powers of that old eon which He is to conquer. The Resurrection must be viewed in the same way, as event and symbol, but with this difference, that the New Testament reports of the factual element of the Resurrection are far more mysterious and uncertain than those of the crucifixion. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

The resurrection system was a familiar one in ancient religions, but a real experience made it possible for the disciples to apply the known symbol of resurrection to Jesus, thus acknowledging Him definitely s the Christ. This experienced event brought the certainty that He who is the bringer of the new eon cannot finally have succumbed to the power of the old eon. The physical resurrection of the body of Jesus, holds that the soul of Jesus first appeared to His disciples, which allowed them to communicate with the dead. However, the full resurrection revived the whole personality, body and soul. It was a negativity which was overcome, and this negativity was not the death of one man, but the disappearance of Him in whom the New Being was manifest. By His death he disappeared from the present experience of the disciples. Jesus of Nazareth became indissolubly united with the reality of the New Being. He is present wherever the New Being is present. In this way the concrete individual life of man Jesus of Nazareth is raised above transitoriness into the eternal presence of God as Spirit. The Resurrection is the restitution of Jesus as the Christ, a restitution which is rooted in the personal unity between Jesus and God ad in the impact of this unity on the minds of the apostles. The experience of the New Being in Jesus as the Christ had to come first, but, after the death of Jesus, the disciples’ experience of His living presence restored Him to His Christhood. Faith in the Resurrection of the Christ does not depend upon historical research or theological theories. Certainty can come only from faith, and faith assures us the victory of Jesus the Christ over the conditions of existence. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

Faith is based on the experience of being grasped by the power of the New Being through which the destructive consequences of estrangement are conquered. It is certainty of one’s own victory over the death of existential estrangement which creates the certainty of the Resurrection of the Christ as event and symbol; but it is not historical conviction or the acceptance of biblical authority which creates this certainty. Jesus of Nazareth is the medium of the final revelation because He sacrifices Himself completely to Jesus as the Christ. The Christ possesses perfect unity with God. However, since Jesus of Nazareth is only the bearer of this revelation, He must not point to Himself, but to the ground of being. The Cross says No to Jesus while revealing the Yes of the Christ’s unbroken union with God. In other words, the Cross is the symbol of the Protestant principle. When it comes to the criterion of faith, that symbol is most adequate which expresses not only the ultimate but also its own lack of ultimacy. Jesus could not have been the Christ without sacrificing Himself as Jesus to Himself as the Christ. What is particular in Him (Jesus) is that He Crucified the particular in himself for the sake of the Universal. This liberates His image from bondage both to a particular religion…and to the religious sphere as such. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

With this image, particular yet free from particularity, religious yet free from religion, the criteria are given under which Christianity must judge itself. Moreover, the No of the Cross applies equally to the followers of the Christ: No finite being can attain the infinite without being broken as He who represented the World, and its wisdom and its power, was broken on the Cross. And, finally, of special interest to us, theonomy is based upon the Protestant principle, the Yes and the No of the Cross. For Jesus the Christ overcomes autonomy by His transparency to the ground of being (the Yes), and He resists heteronomy by the humiliation of His death (the No). One who delights in the Lord shall be like a tree planted by streams of waters, that bring forth its fruit in its season, and whose lead does not wither; and whatever one does one shall prosper. Teach me, O Lord, Thy way, that I may walk in Thy truth; make my heart firm to revere Thy name. Open my eyes that I may behold the wonders of Thy Holy Christian Bible. O my way be directed to observe Thy statutes. Guide me in Thy truth, and teach me, for Thou art the God of my salvation. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. Teach me to do Thy will, for Thou art my God. Thy teachings ever make for righteousness; give me understanding, and I shall live. The only real poverty is poverty of mind. Reverence for God is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Eternal is true understanding. Where there is no knowledge, there is no reverence for God; where there is no reverence for God, there is no true knowledge. The Book of Mormon and Holy Christian Bible endows man with modesty and reverence. And taches one to be virtuous, pious, upright and faithful. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Expressing the beliefs of his revolutionary generation, it was Mr. Jefferson, once again, who asserted that governments must behave with “absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority.” The United States of America and Europe—still at the dawn of the Second Wave era—were just beginning the long process that would turn them eventually into industrial mass societies. The concept of majority rule perfectly fit the needs of these societies. Our present mass democracy is the political expression of a mass production, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass society. Today, as we have seen, we are leaving industrialism behind and rapidly becoming a de-massified society. In consequence it is growing increasingly difficult—often impossible—to mobilize a majority or even a governing coalition. In the United States of America, I do not see the basis for any positive majority on anything today. In the place of a highly stratified society in which a few major blocs ally themselves to form a majority, we have a configurative society—one in which thousands of minorities, many of them temporary, swirl and form highly novel, transient patterns, seldom coalescing into a consensus of major issues. The advance of Third Wave civilization thus weakens the very legitimacy of many existing governments. The Third Wave also challenges all of our conventional assumptions about the relationships of majority rule to social justice. Throughout the era of Second Wave civilization in fight for majority rule was humane and liberating. In still-industrial countries like Africa today, it remains so. In Second Wave societies, majority rule almost always meant a fairer break for the poor. For the poor were the majority. As an economy expands or as it trade with other countries grows, a point will come when the present value of the social benefits of shifting toward a more rule-based governance will exceed the costs of the required investment. However, the switch need not occur at the optimal point. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

There are many reasons why the political and economic realities will delay the shift. First and foremost, the fixed costs of rule-based governance are a public investment; therefore society must solve a collective-action problem to put such a system in place. This is not automatic; there are the usual problems of free riding, underestimation of the benefits to future generations in today’s political process, and the veto power held by those who stand to lose from the change. Even when public investment for a rule-based system has been made, people used to the relation-based system who want to switch must make some private investments to learn the rules and their operation. Their benefit from the switched will depend on how many others make the switch. This positive feedback externality can lean to too few switchers, or even a lock-in that keeps the old system in use. In turn, the expectation of this can reduce the social benefits of the changeover and therefore delay or deter the initial public investment. The benefits of the new system may be unequally distributed, and some participants may even lose. The reputational capital in the relation-based system is an asset that would become worthless in a pure rule-based system, so incumbents stand to lose from the change and will therefore resists it by political means. They currently successful businesspeople and financiers, who are almost by definition the heaviest users of the existing relation-based system, are also usually active participants in the political process, and adept at marshaling their special interests in an organized way. They can also stall and frustrate a government’s attempts at reform. And it seems like if a Republican wants to take office in California, where 30 percent of residents are poor or near poor, and 12.3 percent are below the poverty line, they will have to focus on policies to help the poor and on family values. The same holds true for the President of America. The middle class is at 50 percent and has consistently been shrinking since a peak of 61 percent in 1971. Currently, 12 percent of Americans are poor. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

CRESLEIGH HOMES HAVENWOOD | HOMESITE 67

Home Site 67 is a Residence Four plan, the largest home offered in Cresleigh Havenwood. This two-story, 3,377 square foot home features four bedrooms, including one suite on the first floor, three and one half bathroom, and a true three-car garage.

The covered porch provided a warm entry and the dining room is located right off the entry way. The Kitchen is connected through the Butler’s Pantry providing ample storage. The great room and loft upstairs allow for various uses that will suit your family and lifestyle.

This home includes over $50,000 in options and upgrades
• Durable luxury vinyl plank flooring throughout the first floor
• Gray Shaker Cabinetry with Soft-Close Doors & Drawers
• Over Island Pendants and Under-Cabinet Lighting
• Gourmet Kitchen option with upgraded appliances
• Stainless Steel Farm Sink and Upgraded Faucet
• Flat Screen Prewire in Great Room
• Owned Solar

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 Home Mini! https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/

Everyone is Afraid of the Dark

Magnolias, orange trees, thick evergreen and palm trees sprouted from the sweeping lawns growing tall, as their green leaves beautifully filled the sky providing shade from the hot sun. Shielded behind the lush proliferation of gardens stood gorgeous Llanada Villa built in the Queen Anne Victorian style with soaring roofs and columned porticoes. The farmland provided crops for food. It was Sunday January, 1888, and the famers and servants were buoyant with excitement, undampened by undue religious solemnity. Good nature was inescapable that Sunday. Conversation abounded with joy and optimism. Several planters, dressed in gloves, hats, and cravat, strolled my estate. The road bustled with carriages and horses; men and women strolled along the green lawns in their Sunday finery; and the servants hunted and played games in the field. Somehow, in the midst of it all, I had grown tired and went to my bedroom to rest. It was past midnight when I awoke, and when I looked out the moon was rising over the Observational Tower. I heard a battle, but I could not see it for the smoke and flames, and the broken marble battering me from all sides. Doors were broken from their hinges, and the light bulbs exploded, and in the darkness, I was thrown against the walls or the floors. I felt an intense heat pass over me, and I struggled to get to my feet as the broken and fragmented tiles swirled about the chamber. Ghastly screams came from Arkie, the son of one of the farmers. “I have seen an evil thing this night,” he said. “Tell me what you have seen,” I replied. Arkie told me everything he had seen. “The estate was covered with smoke, through which, through which flashes were incessant, whilst the air seemed filled with shell, whose sharp explosions, with the hurling of their fragments hurling between flashes. Flashes that lit up the night sky. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9

“We were at war against a monstrous progeny of demon-possessed men and women, wearing velvet tunics and stockings, and marvelous cloaks trimmed in rare fur. They brandished huge glittering swords. The fountains bulled over, flowing with blood. Several of the servant fled through the streets, yards, and orchards, many taking refuge in the Victorian cottages, outbuildings, and mansion already filled with the wounded and dying. The smoke was so dense we could not perceive an object ten feet in front of us. The gloom of the moment was beyond description. We felt and heard the tread of our enemy, our minds were in tumult, whether to lie still, to yield, or to die fighting. I jumped in and found myself confronted by a giant’s sword pointed by my breast. I grasped the blade and reversed the handle of my sword in a twinkle and offered to surrender. The beast said in the excitement, he thought I had run him through and he dropped his sword.” I was so thankful for each servant who fought for my home, their families, and their way of life, even though death was knocking on their door. A few days later, it was a dark moonless night, and as silent as a tomb. Arkie was still shaken up by the events that had recently taken place. There was a terrible fear, a physiological fear. Something beyond life that I was able to catch for a second. The air was cold now, icy all around me. It suddenly felt as though time stood still and yet as a foggy substance silently closed in the air was getting cold enough to freeze the blood. My nose, face, hands and feet felt ice cold. I was standing in silence, as I watched what was unfolding before my eyes. This misty essence was swirling noiselessly around us as we stood, observing a steam so fine the scene felt surreal. Along with the white mist came a whirl of emotions and confusion. What was happening in my home? I braced myself for some hellish effects. It swirled around us as though blown by a high wind, rising above our heads and dropping as it was moving quickly and yet we felt only a gentle breeze. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9

Like a scene from the spectral World, the abnormal foggy essence swirled in vortex shapes and at time, it resembled horses running past us, but the curtains did not move, though we felt air currents around us. We felt vulnerable and somewhat uneasy. I could not for my life keep back a loud scream—the second I had emitted that night. It echoed and echoed through the dim vaultings of my mansion, and I had to choke back a flood of reaction that threated to burst out. Arkie saw a pale figure heading toward him as he ran from the parlor. He quivered when the thing growled at him. It stood out like white chalk on a black board, moving in darkness, seeking. It moved rapidly and just as suddenly as it have moved through the gallery, it suddenly was gone. When I looked around, I saw nothing of the foggy mist that surrounded and chilled us to the bone; it had vanished. The room was clear and felt warmer. What seemed like a long time in the fog had only been a few short minutes! When Arkie and I talked, we were both in awe at what we had experienced. Words were few as we tried to make sense of the incident. Arkie’s hair used to be dark brown, with grizzled streaks about the temples; in less than a month from that day he was a gray as badger, and he has never been quite the same man since that night. I do not believe anybody had ever felt so much sheer hell in one night. Gargoyles and chimeras, we saw all sorts of things, as if it was some passage from the Middle Ages. Arkie said my home repelled him more and more every day, and frightened him, as its features and expressions developed in a way he did not like; in a way that was not human. He felt like a ghoul had been feeding on his soul. He proceeded to leave the hose and suddenly jumped back a foot and started to cry. A dark figure draped in a black tattered robe with a deep hood that concealed his face stoop there, blocking the entrance. My heart sank centuries away as the soul goes as the awful, blasphemous horror touched quite beyond the power of words to classify. I shivered slightly. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9

“What are you?” Arkie cried out desperately to the figure robed in black. There was only silence. He knew the horrible figure we be upon us soon. He flung his sword at the figure in black, and the dark robed figured answered back by point a half-rotted finger at Arkie. The sword flew backwards from his hand. He quickly spun around only to find, to his surprise, that the dreadful ghoul had not emerged from the hallway yet, but we could hear it coming. Arkie’s eyes widened in horror and his heart sank further as he looked to see that his sword hung in the air. Utter fear and hopelessness played on his mind. The ghoul was breathing like a wild beast; and I heard an evil sound also, with blows of something violently driven through flesh and bone, as the sword moved on its own, staking Arkie in the heart. I cried out for mercy as the ghoul approached, but was frozen in fear. Its deathly yellow eyes looked on me with hate and savage hunger. Yellow ooze dripped from its frightful maw. And its long fingernails danced in my hair, before it devoured what remained. As the ghoul kneeled, gnawing at Arkie’s head as a child nibbles at a stick of candy, the shadowy specter looked at me and spoke with it’s a hollow voice, saying “There is no shame in what you have done. Your former life is behind you.” I felt that any moment it might drop its present pray and seek a juicier morsal. But, the nearly eight-foot ghoul grabbed the blood-soaked sword and fled with it. This strange proceeding gave rise to many inquiries. Only a few could answer them. My home is dreaming gorgeously and overflowing with wonder and terror and escapes from the commonplace. It can truly catch the night spirit of antique horror, terror, as well a beauty from life. The haunting apparitions were seldom completely human. Occasionally things would leap through open windows at night, or could be seen squatting on the chest of sleepers, worrying at their throats. The utter inhumanity and callous cruelty of the things torture the brain and flesh. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9

Unlocking the front doors, one is ushered into decorative hallways with splendid mahogany paneling—thrilling and suggestive of the time. Ancient paneled rooms, or simple vaults of masonry, there is even a narrow staircase the leads to the ceiling where a ghost is said to reside. Servants have felt temperature changes upon entering the room and sensed an unknown presence next to them. Others have glimpsed the blasphemous shapes that lope and trot and crawl up the stairs and through the ceiling. We saw the demons themselves and were afraid of them. My shocked scream had waked unaccustomed echoes in the labyrinth. It was more of the physical than the spiritual. I was paralyzed for an instant. I heard a faint scurrying sound somewhere, and a series of squeals or beats in a direction I could not determine. Then there came a subdued sort of clatter which somehow set me all in gooseflesh—a furtive, groping kind of clatter. It was like heavy wood falling on stone or brick—wood on brick—what did that make me think of? It came again, and louder. There was a vibration as if the wood had fallen farther than it had fallen before. After that followed a sharp grating noise. The archaic tunnels in my basement touched graveyard and witch-den. But whatever was in them was devilish anxious to get out. Accidents had happened, but I have never seen what I saw this night—that creature was neither alive nor dead, it abided neither above ground nor in the grave. It was a colossal and nameless blasphemy with glaring red eyes, and it held in bony claws a thing that had been a man. However, it was not even the fiendish apparition that made such an immortal fountainhead of all panic—not that, nor the face with its pointed ears, bloodshot eyes, flat nose and drooling lips. It was not the scaly claws nor the mould-caked body, nor the half-hooved feet—none of these, through any one of them might well have driven an excitable man to madness. It was the curse, the impious, the unnatural endless cycle of terror. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9

These monsters were there—they glared and gnawed and gnawed and glared—and I knew that only a suspension of Nature’s laws would ever let a person be terrorized like this—it was truly some glimpse of the netherworld which no mortal unsold to the Fiend has ever endured. I had to hide this well-established horror-World which I saw fully, brilliantly, squarely and unfalteringly. Fair sized rooms, with wooden floors and furnished were bricked up with extreme care, to conceal the ghastly demons and nauseous monstrosities that leered around from every side of the rooms. I always knew William, no matter how beautiful and pure he was, was not strictly human. Either he was born in strange shadow, or he had found a way to unlock the forbidden gate. There are secrets, you know, which might come down from old Salem times, Cotton Mather tells even stranger things. In the Dark Ages, belief in apparitions, vampires, hell hounds, and demons were commonplace. While belief in ghosts declined in the eighteenth century, it was revitalized in the nineteenth century with the Society of Psychical research. While culture differ in their beliefs about what happens after death, most cultures believe that a ghost can return to the World of the living, with either good or bad intent. In Western cultures, it is most commonly believed that a ghost is the soul of the deceased who cannot find peace or does not know they are dead, leading them to haunt places where they lived or died or objects that caused their death, sometimes they even haunt bloodlines. It may be that they have unfinished business on the Earthly plane, perhaps to protect a loved one, or impart information or reenact the death. I do not think that any power on Earth could make anyone speak of what happened in my home, even old priests were too frightened to look in. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9

It has been said that Mrs. Winchester slept in a different bedroom every night, supposedly in order to confuse evil spirts. Mrs. Winchester was deeply concerned with the welfare of her servants and their families. They were well paid and often additionally rewarded with gifts, even homes, or real estate and lifetime pensions. The full scope of her generosity charity and many kind acts will forever remain unknwn and such was her sincere desire. Her donations were never made public. She contributed to charities of all faiths. In 1911 in New Haven, Connecticut, she established the William Wirt Winchester Memorial Sanitorium for Tuberculosis (also known as low consumption), endowing it with $1,200,000.00 (2023 inflation adjusted $38,540,084.21). Visitors to The Winchester Mystery House are bound to run into others who are curious about the spirit World. It may seem that our intents have been to weave a cloak of vindication and protection covering our lady’s eccentricities, so many to this day still unexplainable. In truth, volumes could be written extolling her many virtues and justifying the construction of one of the largest and most significant architectural structures in the World. Still the Question remains—Why? Why? The enigma of The Mystery House that tragedy and a rifle built is perhaps unanswerable. The present generation must weigh and draw its own conclusions about this Valley’s most interesting, most controversial, most unappreciated and surely our most mysterious First Lady! No one will ever know, but this beautiful and bizarre mansion has, we think, allowed Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester, Lady of Mystery, to achieve a unique kind of eternal life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9

The spirit World and the human World were once so closely interwoven as to be indivisible. Look at monument, such as The Winchester Mystery House, that our ancient predecessors erected, and the traditions devised, to house, honour, and succor the dead. We still retain enough of our ancestors’ belief that our dead are aware of how we treat them, that we try to ensue they do not have anything thing to complain about. And we listen with widening eyes and quickening heartbeats to the stories told about the ghost that exist and have been recorded throughout time. The Winchester Mystery Houses catches the overtones of the soul, and you will not find those in a modern or renovated home because it has had no time to pick memories and attract local spirits. Placed like Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester’s home was not merely made, but it actually grew. Generation after Generation lived there and felt and died there, and in days when people were not afraid to live and feel and die. This house has stood for almost two centuries and what it has witnessed would make a modern house crumbled into powder. What do modern know of life and the forced behind it? This mansion once had a set of tunnels that kept it in touched with over Victorian houses on the estate. There is hardly a month that you do not read of carpenters finding bricked-up arches and wells leading nowhere in this or that old section of the house. During the time of the construction of this mansion, there were witches and what their spells summoned; pirated and what they brought in from the sea; smugglers; privateers—and I tell you, people knew how to live, and how to enlarge the bounds of life, in the old time! #RandolphHarris 8 of 9

While cleaning the mansion one night, a tour guide noticed a man in 19th century clothes, very pale, with pale blue eyes approaching the Venetian Dining Room. The tour guided continued to work until the mane came very close and stood directly over him. Becoming a bit uneasy at the man’s silence, the tour guide finally asked him, without looking of, if he wished to tour the mansion. When the “guest” did not reply, the tour guide stopped dusting underneath the table, and looked up at the silent man. The man’s face was contorted with rage; his lips moved furiously and he gestured as if he were shouting, but he made no sound. The tour guide fell onto the floor. Before he could turn and flee, the guest disappeared. Terrified, the tour guide ran until he came to an assistant manager. “I saw a ghost,” the tour guide grasped, out of breath. “The ghost of one of the carpenters has come back.” The ghost appeared in August of 2006, to another tour guide. He had entered the Daisy Bedroom and found a fellow tour guide leaning against the wall. Surprised by his presence, he had begun to question the man when he melted into the wall. When he reported the incident, one of his coworkers dismissed it as imagination. A few days later, two tour guides saw the same carpenter. They were locking up the mansion and the lights had not been off more than a few minutes when the sound of footsteps caused both tour guides to stop in their tracks. Before either of them could move, a door swung open and a young man entered. He gestured wildly and seemed to be shouting at the two tour guides, neither of whom could testify that any sound issued from the angry visitor. When one of the tour guides turned on the light, the figure faded before their astonished eyes. They quickly had the mansion secured and order all exists guarded. Guards reported that no person had attempted to leave the building. After the guards had conducted a search of the rooms, they were convinced that their visitor had not been a living man. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9


The room count of California’s most mysterious mansion has just increased by one, rounding out at 161 chambers (that we know of). Preservationists at The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose have found a previously unknown room in the attic of the house, and in it was a pump organ, a dress form, a sewing machine, a Victorian sofa, and several paintings.

For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

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

If you forget to purchase something during your visit, you can order any gift item by calling 408-247-2000 and charging them to your credit card. You can also place an order through the mail. Be sure to include a daytime telephone number with area code. Write to: Winchester Mystery House.
Cure that Sense of Entitlement

Thought is a vital force or energy which is being developed and which had produced such startling results in the last century, as to bring about a World which would be absolutely inconceivable to man during the days of slavery. If the results have been secured by organizing mental powers over the last hundred years, imagine what can be done in the next hundred. This is why we need to avoid the nihilistic idea that we are living in the last day. The people who repeat this mantra are also the ones who pontificate most loudly about the law of attraction. We have to learn to be genuine in our beliefs and know that we can have a beneficial impact on the future. We do not have to accept things they way they are, but we can make them better. It is clear, therefore, that thought of abundance will respond only to similar thoughts: the wealth of the individual is seen to be what he inherently is. Affluence within is found to be the secret of attraction for affluence to manifest in the outside World. The ability to produce is found to be the real source of wealth of the individual. It is for this reason that he who has his heart in his work is certain to meet with unbounded secrets. He will give and continually give, and the more he gives the more he will receive. Thought is the energy by which the law of attraction is brought into operation, which eventually manifests in abundance in the lives of men. The source of all power, as of all weakness, is from within; the secret of all success as well as all failure is likewise from within. Golden opportunities of life will be strewn across your path, and the power will come unbidden, circumstances will be in your favour, and you will feel the power of the ultimate concern. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

Many affluent college students make it a point to hide the fact that their families are wealth, because they believe that members of the opposite gender may approach or treat them nicely not because they are interesting and attractive, but simply because they have money. We have worked with young people who consciously choose to live in a more modest apartment than they can afford, or avoid spending too much money on clothes or entertainment, specifically because they do not want to give potential romantic interests any hint regarding their actual financial status. This strategy does seem to provide some reassurance to affluent young people when they are meeting new people, or when they are going out on a first or second date. Clearly, however, as dating relationships develop and progress, it will become more and more difficult to avoid having one’s financial status become apparent. People naturally ask you questions about where you grew up, and where you went to high school. At some point, your date will probably ask you about your parents—maybe just about how you like them, but also more than likely about who they are and what they do. New friends are also quite likely to ask you what you like to do for fun, and they will be curious about the places you have been. These are perfectly normal questions, and you certainly should not interpret them as specific effects to extract data from you on your family’s financial status. Although we certainly understand any desire you may have not to flaunt your wealth as a means of attracting attention, we strongly believe that you should be honest when you answer such questions. To be less than honest is to convey the message that your distrust of others’ intentions is your paramount concern in making new acquaintances, and this would be likely to be perceived as reflecting poorly on you. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

Students of a high caliber are more attracted to affluent institutions than to poor ones. The major reason is that affluent institutions pay higher salaries, which enable them to recruit better faculties. Some of this may result from a feedback effect that raises the resources for faculty recruitment of institutions with superior reputations among outstanding students. The beta weight indicates that affluence also has some direct effect on student preferences, independent of other conditions. A possible interpretation of this new effect is that superior facilities and better fellowships in affluent institutions attract brighter, more serious students, although the possibility that wealth as such and its symbolic value make an institution preferable cannot be excluded. Large academic institutions are preferred by able students because they can afford better faculties and have more diverse departments than small institutions, but large size itself, independent of these attractive conditions usually associated with it, detracts from the appeal of an institution or higher education to students. In other words, size has a beneficial gross and a negative net effect on capable students, furthering another parallel with the pattern of influences on qualified faculty. The process of mediating the indirect effects of size are similar but not identical, partly because faculty qualifications are the dependent variable in one but an intervening variable in the other case. Bright students are attracted to large academic institutions by their many diverse departments, array of cultures, and by the superior faculties that their higher salaries recruit. These attractions tend to overcome the preferences of good student for small, less impersonal colleges if conditions were the same (indicated by the negative beta weight) and make large institutions more popular among them (indicated by their positive simple correlation). #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

The natural or “mortal mind” view of life and the World is almost always the exact opposite of what is the real spiritual truth and fact. Metaphysics tell us that the visible World is an inverted reflection of the real. If the it is inverted, it is natural, until our spiritual or inner eyes are opened to the truth, for us to see things as the exact opposite of what they really are. Therefore it is not surprising to find that, whereas the moral or terrestrial mind of the senses, thinks the World is the real thing and the mind only a shadow, the real TRUTH is, that mind and spirit are real and eternal, and the visible World but a transient and impermanent thing which has no actual reality. Such being the case then the only thing that really matters is what is in the mind or what is not in the mind. If we have a belief in evil, and thoughts of evil, in our mind, then we have evil in our life. If, however, we can cast the thought of, and belief in, evil out of our mind then it will cease to appear in our life. By raising ourselves above the sensuous life and realizing our permanent World of Mind and there denying evil, poverty, failure, pain, sickness, unhappiness, or whatever our trouble may be, we vanquish the thought which is the cause of all our troubles. Then whatever we affirm will take their place. If we deny “evil,” then we follow by affirming “good,” if we deny sickness, then we affirm prosperity and affluence. By denials we can take out all the evil, care, fear and worry out of our lives and build up in their place by means of affirmations, perfect good, success, affluence, happiness, health, love, peace and courage. Everything being in the mind, then everything that is take out of the mind is take out of life, and everything that is put into the mind comes into life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

Thus it is possible with mathematical accuracy and certainty to recreate the life, to cast out all the undesirable and to build up in its place only the beautiful, the good, the true. Life is what we make it. We can make it like Heaven itself, full to the brim with all that is good and beautiful, or we can turn it into a perfect Hell. Therefore do not accept the suggestions of those, who having failed in life, proceed to call it hard names. We can make life a continual joy, if we create a Heaven within us by the quality of our thinking and mental processes. All that we see in life, all that we experience, yeah, even life itself, is but the outward expression of the life within. The life within is built up by our thinking. You will have seen by this time the purpose and value of affirmations. Affirmations are concentrated thoughts. Back of each affirmation is a strong emotion and this gives it tremendous driving force. Not only do affirmations impress the sub-conscious mind thus producing action in accordance with the Will, but they project outwards from the mind into space, attract forces and help from other sources and bring them to minister and bless. Not only so but they also arouse the subliminal mind to inspire, to create, to impart wisdom. By the use of affirmations all the finer forces are aroused to action and the life is transformed from weakness or ineffectiveness to strength or purposefulness. By the use of affirmations, the Will is strengthened until it become so strong all else has to bend to it. By the use of affirmations, the body is strengthened and make healthy, and exercise and body culture become a pleasure instead of a duty. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

To bring whatever it is that you want into your life, you must develop an insatiable desire for it. That means, for a while, it is all that matters. You vigilantly watch the ego-mind; you refuse to be taken off track. You know your direction and you will allow nothing to move you from it. At that point, all obstacles are viewed as challenges to be overcome, with each one giving you’re a renewed sense of focus. You meet difficulties with the mindset that there is always a way to overcome them, and moreover, you are committed to finding it. You approach, go though, and attend to your outcome without the option of gripping or complaining. You keep moving forward: you make it a “must” and as a result, it will happen. Guaranteed! Affluence means wealth. It means having plenty, so that you are not wanting. It means being connected into the flow of goods and resources so that you are regularly refreshing your abundance even as you use it up. I know people living utterly simple material lives who seem radiant with well-being and happiness. Material wealth should never be desired as an end, but simply as a means of accomplishing an end. Success is contingent upon a higher ideal than the mere accumulation of riches, and he who aspires to sch success must formulate an ideal for which he is willing to stive. However, it is no fun to run out of rent money or cash to go buy groceries. Let us not be delusional; money counts! On the other hand, a lot of money brings a lot of responsibility; you must pay attention to your money or you lose it, and you can easily fall victim to worry about your money rather than enjoying it. So keep this desire for cash and possessions in perspective with the other equal needs. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

Whatever you desire for yourself, affirm it for others, and it will help you both. You reap what you sow. If you send out thoughts of love and health, they return to you like bread cast upon waters. People who are friends to others find that they indeed have friends. Radiate love and happiness to those you encounter, and this love and happiness will be radiated back to you. True relationship abundance is both deep and wide. Ideally you have a deep resonance with family, and you and your intimate partner have broad goodwill toward those you come into contact with. A valid formula will produce successful results every time and for everyone. You just have to follow it. Life provides a wonderful opportunity to seek our talents and interests. It is well to remember, however, that “all have not every gift given unto them; for there are many gifts, and every man is given a gift by the Spirit of God,” reports Doctrines and Covenants 46.11. In our searching, it is important to seek guidance of the Spirit to discover skills we should develop. Once we have decided what we really want to do, the Lord has given us a formula for achieving our eternal and temporal goals: “For he will give unto the faithful line upon line, precept upon precept; and I will try you and prove you herewith,” reports Doctrines and Covenants 98.12. The Lord reminds us that real success will only come only to the faithful—those who have sincere determination to achieve their goals. The second part of that formula reminds us that learning is often a slow process and comes line upon lone, one step at a time. The Lord offers kind encouragement when He says, “Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great,” reports Doctrines and Covenants 64.33. We must learn to be patient with ourselves while pushing to new levels of achievement or knowledge. It is important to take time occasionally to remind ourselves of what we are trying to do. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

Thoughts of courage, power, confidence, and hope all produce a corresponding state. All we have to do is let our light shine; the more energy we can radiate, the more rapidly shall we be enabled to transmute undesirable conditions into sources of pleasure and profit. Health and wellness are issues for most of us, and material abundance can mean absolutely nothing when we are seriously sick. Therefore focusing on and manifesting long-term health must be a vital aspect of this program. How can you maximize wellness each and every day, and also regain your health if you lose it? It is now well proven that the thoughts you chronically hold in your mind generate parallel emotional and physiological conditions in your body that either support good health or undermine it. You have perhaps read or seen medical reports on how stress and anxiety, depression and anger, when rehearsed over a long period of time not only become contagious, but also progressively reduce your immune system’s ability to maintain optimum health. When your thoughts become uplifted, progressive, constructive, courageous, noble, kind, or in any other way desirable, you set in motion vibrations which bring about mental, moral, and physical health. The only real power which you can have is the power to adjust yourself to divine and unchangeable principles. You cannot change the Infinite, but you can come into an understanding of natural laws and adjust your thought faculties with the Universal Thought. Your ability to cooperate with this Omnipotence will indicate the degree of success with which you meet. Your expectation determines everything. If you expect nothing, you shall have nothing: if you demand much, you shall receive the greater portion. The World is harsh only as you fail to assert yourself. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

It is important to belief in your inner reality and broadcast this perfection out to your cellular presence, so that beyond your conscious awareness the infinite unconscious power of the Universe can be working to heal you. And if you are currently healthy, regularly tap into your desire to stay healthy and broadcast this desire and inner faith and harmony to your soul. Inner harmony is the foundation of health. The knowledge of your ability to consciously radiate health, strength, and harmony will bring you into a realization that there is nothing to fear, because you are in touch with Infinite Strength. Regardless of age or health, it is important for all of us to learn to come to peace with the cycle of life and death, and make the best of life while it is still in our possession. One can develop the ideal image of life’s experiences that last for life. We must learn to manifest whatever kind of environment we desire. Although we may be tried to see how determined we are to life our ideal lives, if we persevere, the windows of Heaven truly open in many ways and our providing takes place. Our faith in the Saviour and trust in His words will continue to grow. We will find the most desirable of all our goals will take the most determination to achieve but will be worth every effort. This process can work in reverse and bring loss of spirituality if we are not careful. If we commit sins, we are tried with feelings of regret and remorse. And if we do not heed those feelings and change, further sins come more easily. The result is withdrawal of the Spirit and loss of potential blessings. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

A life with inner peace and happiness can also be ours if we are willing to earn it. It is marvelous to develop this way of living while you are still very young. You have many years to develop even further great spiritual strength and understanding by applying what the Lord has taught us. Entitlement is not the person who keeps trying to please one’s boss but either lacks the skill or the clear instruction from management to perform well, and who is therefore always getting poor job evaluations. Entitlement is the person whose poor job evaluations result from one’s refusal to invest one’s full energy and commitment in one’s job and who consistently underperforms, not because one lacks the skills or has not received clear instructions from management but simply because one sees no reason to; individuals like this believe that they deserve that paycheck for reasons completely unrelated to how well one performs, an that the company is luck to have him or her. Entitlement is not the spouse who feels inadequate because one’s partner is always expressing one’s frustration with their marriage and with the role one plays in it, even though one tries hard and wants things to be better. Entitlement is the spouse who feels inadequate because one’s partner is always expressing one’s frustration with their marriage and with the role one play in it, even though one tries hard and wants things better. Entitlement is the spouse who thinks everything going wrong in their marriage is their partner’s fault, and that if one does not shape up, one might lose the other. Since one has already made all the contributions to their marriage one needs just to be on the basis of who one is, one’s completely justified in just sitting back now and waiting for one’s spouse to fix whatever is wrong, without any help from their partner. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

There are many more illustrations, but the many faces of entitlement will always have at least most of these characteristic: An attitude of being special—“I’m exception—and in fact, I’m far greater value to this marriage (of family, or company) than the rest of them, and that’s why I deserve special treatment. They’re lucky to have me.” An attitude of being owed, of deserving something—“I didn’t create this situation—they’re the ones who are always complaining. So why should I do all the work, or even any of it? As far as I’m concerned, I should just stay in my office till they’ve cleaned up this mess. And my bonus had better not be any smaller than any of the others because of it.” A refusal to accept responsibility—“Why do they want me to pay rent? I didn’t ask to be born. Besides, this will still be their house after I move out. And I can’t pay rent anyway, because I don’t have a job. None of the dead-end jobs around here are worthy my time and effort and there’s no reason I should do my own laundry—Mom has to do hers and Dad’s anyway—she can just do mine at the same time. It’s no extra work.” A denial of one’s impact on others—“Sometimes my husband and kid’ lack of responsibility bothers me, and I say exactly what I feel. I’m telling them the truth. I don’t sugarcoat it and I don’t tone down my language, my volume, or how long I talk. They overreact to what I’m saying, and that’s their problem. It’s a free country, and I can say what I need to say.” Whatever the cause of the sense of entitlement, the end result is that the person believes that one does not have to ply by the rules of responsibility, ownership, and commitment. And the end result of entitlement is predictable: The entitled person feels good and live badly, while those around one feel bad about the situation but have more successful relationships and careers. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

It is tempting to make excuses for our loved ones (or ourselves) who evidence an attitude of entitlement, but the only effective response is to take responsibility, not to make excuses. People’s life experiences may influence them toward entitlement. However, they do not create entitlement. Many people who have suffered greatly in life, experiencing poverty, child abuse, and chaos, still take responsibility for their lives and choices, blaming no one. And there are individuals who have had it all—love, support, opportunity—who nevertheless see themselves as “owed”—by life, by society, by those around them. If you have an entitled person in your life, you may feel responsible for the part you may have played in influencing that attitude, or you may simply feel compassion for their circumstances. And it is certainly possible that you have made mistakes in your relationship with them. It is possible that life may have thrown them curves. However, those mistakes, those obstacles of life, do not create irresistibly an entitlement attitude; if they did, then all people who experiences those things would approach life with an attitude of entitlement, and they do not. At some point in life, people choose entitlement. They direct themselves toward an entitled viewpoint. Why? Ultimately, it is because—at least in their view—it is the easy way. Entitlement has become a serious problem in our society, and it is not getting better. It is impossible to calculate its cost in lack of company productivity, family success, relational love, emotional health, and spiritual vibrancy. Our World suffers greatly from a culture that supports entitlement. The disease is not limited to any age or socioeconomic demographic. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

Entitled people are not easy to be around. Their attitude and their behaviour produce consequences none of us wants to experience. People who live around an employee, a coworker, a spouse, or a child who feels “above it all” generally feel disconnected and alienated from the entitled individual. We all find it hard to relate to someone who thinks one is superior in some way to the rest of the human race and therefore should not have to play by the rules. One father told me, “I remember being full of myself in my youth. But I did care about how I impacted my friends and family. My daughter’s level of entitlement is something entirely else. I cannot relate to it. She simply does not care how she affects us in the family, much less how she is impacting her future. I fear she may end up homeless or confined to a psychiatric ward.” God expects us to spend time and energy carrying our loads of responsibility for family, finances, and other challenges. That is how a successful life works. So what happens when someone in your life takes little ownership of their own load, leaving you to make up the difference? You feel angry, which makes sense. You feel that everything is “not right,” because it truly is not right. All of us exhibit some level of entitlement attitudes, even highly responsible and giving people. It is just part of the human condition. However, when one deems something worthwhile, be it a career or financial dream, a great family or marriage or some self-care goal, one has two ways to go about it. Entitlement directs one to give the minimum, find the shortcut, and think only of one’s self. However, the more rational path takes the opposite track. This habit focuses on doing whatever is best to reach the good goal, even if it is difficult, uncomfortable, takes longer, and requires more energy. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

A sense of entitlement (which is the polar opposite of a sense of responsibility) is endemic among children today. It is fostered by our demanding, narcissistic society where wants are confused with needs and where everyone seems focused on the notion that one deserves what everyone else has without working for it. Youth grow up in a reality-show World, thinking of themselves as the central character on television. They even adopting the same attitudes of some of their favourite stars and try to act out TV shows. And they believe they are worthy of not having limits, boundaries, nor discipline. The entitlement problem affects one’s education as one feels that they do not have to work for their grades. It affects relationships because people expect their parents to live their lives for them, well into adulthood. A sense of entitlement impacts one’s ability to set reasonable goals because when one is entitled the World is owned to them. It has an effect on their health and their safety because they feel entitled to eat what they want, go to bed when they want, and do things they know is not safe. Drawing realistic lines between deserving and undeserving matters a lot in our individual lives. While we might feel jealous of the kid who either works for a new car or gets a new car—and a free ride in other areas of life, too—we have to remember opportunity costs. Everyone has to give up something to receive whatever it is they have. And just like you, how long are you going to continue to harp on what someone else has? You could spend your entire life jealous over someone else’s blessings and still not happy when you obtain the same thing because you are not happy with yourself, your life. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

The closer we are to Jesus Christ in the thoughts and intents of our hearts, the more we appreciate His innocent suffering, the more grateful we are for the grace and forgiveness and the more we want to repent and become like Him. Our absolute distance from Heavenly Father Jesus Christ is important, but the direction we are heading is even more crucial. God is more pleased with repentant sinners who are trying to draw closer to Him than with self-righteous, faultfinding individuals who, like the Pharisees and scribes of old, do not realize how badly they need to repent. Whatever our current direction or distance to Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, we can choose to turn toward Them and draw closer to Them. They will help us. The close to the Saviour we draw, the more our faith increases, and we are able to make and keep covenants, and have the Holy Ghost with us. We must also act in faith, responding to the spiritual direction we receive. All of these elements come together in the sacrament. Indeed, the best way I know to draw closer to God is to prepare conscientiously and partake worthily of the sacrament each week. Although a variety of life experiences can elicit feelings of gratitude, gratitude prototypically stems from the perception of a beneficial personal outcome, not necessarily deserved or earned, that is due to the actions of another person. People who have gratitude feel a warm sense of appreciation for somebody or something, a sense of goodwill toward that person or thing, and a disposition to act that flows from appreciation and goodwill. The virtue of gratitude is the willingness to recognize that one has been the beneficiary of someone’s kindness, whether the emotional response is present or not. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

The practice of gratitude is not in any way a denial of life’s difficulties. We live in troubling times, and do doubt you have experienced many challenges, uncertainties, and disappointments in your own life. Nor does the practice of cultivating gratitude deny the truth that old age, sickness, and death are certain. Rather, gratitude practice is useful because it turns the mind in such a way that enables you to live into life. Having access to the joy and wonderment of life is the antidote to feelings of scarcity and loss. It allows you to meet life’s difficulties with an open heart. The understanding you gain from practicing gratitude frees you from being lost or identified with either the negative or the positive aspects of life, letting you simply meet life in each moment as it rises. There are numerous ways to use mindfulness to cultivate gratitude. Of course, you acknowledge your appreciation when things are going well. However, even more helpful is to notice those things for which you are grateful when you find yourself in a contracted physical or emotional state. I often instruct students to respond to a difficult situation by acknowledging that the situation is difficult, but always to have the faith that they can find a legal, ethical, and virtuous way to escape from it. The best way to get out of a bad situation, however, is not to get into one. We need to know right from wrong and set great examples for our children. When you look at how much griping you are doing versus how much gratitude you feel, you may realize how far off your emotional response is from your real situation. Gratitude for the grace of conscious embodiment evolves into the practice of selfless gratitude, in which your concerns slowly but surely shift from being mostly about yourself and those close to you to being about all living beings. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

As this occurs you need less and less in the way of good fortune. It becomes enough that there are those who are happy, who are receiving love, who are safe, and who have a promising future. It is not a state of gratitude, you are able to rejoice that joy exists amid all life’s suffering. You realize that pain and joy are part of a mysterious whole. When this state of selfless gratitude starts to flourish, one’s mind becomes more spacious and quiet, and one’s heart receives its first tastes of release from fear and wanting. Commitment reflects one’s values, intentions, and priorities; therefore it fosters clarity. In contrast, attachment is an unwholesome mental state in which one becomes overly identified with a desired outcome. The more centered and free from grasping one’s mind is, the better able one is to sustain a commitment over time and to make clear decisions along the way. You are also less likely to cause harm in pursuing your goals. If you truly want to achieve something, be unswerving in your commitment to moving toward your goal but be flexible in your mind about the outcome. Let us be honest. Most of our attachments are not derived from lofty goals or heartfelt commitments. They are about feeding our ego, expressing our views and opinions, pleasing our senses, and being seen as we wish to be seen. Or they are about not being uncomfortable, not having to endure things that irritate us, and not feeling physical or emotional pain. All of this mundane attachment accounts for a great deal of the chaos in our lives, and it does not actually help us get what we want! It is pretty much a total waste of precious energy and a major cause of disappointments. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

Practicing generosity is the intention to find release from attachment and egoism by giving freely of whatever you have of value. What you have to give may be material in nature or it may be your time, energy, or wisdom. Committing to kindness eradicates the attachment that comes from feelings of scarcity and separateness. Paradoxically, practicing bigheartedness is also self-liberation, yet it is not self-centered. True generosity arises out of unconditional caring and compassion for another. It does not mean self-sacrifice or recklessly giving everything away. Such acts are actually grandiosity disguised as generosity. The form your generosity takes is up to you, as it can only come from your values and what you have to offer. Remember, it is your authentic intentions that matters, even if it is imply a sincere wish that in time you will become more spontaneously generous. Generosity means practicing generous behaviour in all aspects of your life, not just giving away money or sharing material possession. Certainly the emotional impulse to practice generosity most easily arises when you participate in providing sustainability for others, whether it is shelter, food, clothe, or medicine. However, with less immediate life needs, such as education, safety, or earning a living, the appropriate form of generosity may be a gift of your time. When it comes to intangibles such as justice and dignity, it may be most appropriate to voice your support. Generosity is, along with compassion, a cornerstone of mindful association. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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Lincoln, CA | from the high $600s
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Would Satan Have Found Companions without this Overpowering Craving?

The extraordinary powers of the TV news media threaten the civil rights and health of all humans because it is like a constant signal of unbalanced propaganda being fed through a tube into minds of people who may not be aware that the news media often lies, and the some of their stories are engineered and totally untrue. If smoking cigarettes comes with a warning, because they can be hazardous to your health, then so should the TV news media. Stories presented over the air can be dangerous, especially to young, influential minds. For instance, a TV news program explained to viewers how they could barbeque meant in the oven by placing it on the rack. However, they did not explain that underneath the rack there should be a drip pan to catch any liquids that come from the meat, so they do not drip on the heating elements, which could cause a fire. And that may not be common sense to all people, which the TV director probably assumed. Therefore, all TV new media should contain a warning, letting the audience know that the story, even if it has some facts in it, is based on an opinion and may not be the full truth, so viewers know to use discretion and do further research of themselves. In all things purely social we can be as separate as the five fingers, and yet one as the hand in all aspects essential to mutual progress. The economic structure of a society in determining the mode of life of the individual operates as condition for personality development. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

These economic conditions are entirely different from subjective economic motives, such as the desire for material wealth which was looked upon by many writers, from the Renaissance on up to certain Marxist authors who failed to understand Mr. Marx’s basic concepts, as the dominant motive of human behaviour. As a matter of fact, the all-absorbing wish for material wealth is a need peculiar only to certain cultures, and different economic condition can create personality trait which abhor material wealth or are indifferent to it. The physiologically conditioned needs are not the only imperative part of man’s nature. There is another part just as compelling, one which is not rooted in bodily processes but in the very essence of the human mode and practice of life: the need to be related to the World outside oneself, the need to avoid aloneness. To feel completely alone and isolated leads to mental disintegration just as physical starvation leads to death. This relatedness to others is not identical with physical contact. An individual may be alone in a physical sense for many years and he may be related to ideas, values, or at least social patterns that give him a feeling of communion and “belonging.” On the other hand, he may live among people and yet be overcome with an utter feeling of isolation, the outcome of which, if it transcends a certain limit, is the state of insanity which schizophrenic disturbances represent. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

This lack of relatedness to values, symbols, patterns, we may call moral aloneness and state that moral aloneness is as intolerable as the physical isolation, or rather that physical seclusion becomes unbearable only if it implies also moral lonesomeness. The spiritual relatedness to the World can assume many forms; the self-actualized in his cell who believes in God and the political prisoner kept in isolation who feels one with his fellow fighters are not alone morally. Neither is the English gentleman who wears his dinner jacket in the most exotic surroundings nor the petty bourgeois who, though being deeply isolated from one’s fellow men, feels one with one’s nation of its symbols. The kind of relatedness to the World may be noble or trivial, but even being related to the basest kind of pattern is immensely preferable to being alone. Religion and nationalism, as well as any custom and any belief however absurd and degrading, if it only connects the individual with other, are refuges from what man most dreads: isolation. The compelling need to avoid moral isolation is a deep concern However, learn one thing, impress it upon your mind which is still so malleable: man has a horror for aloneness And of all kind of aloneness, moral seclusion is the most terrible. The first hermits lived with God, they inhabited the World which is most populated, the World of spirits. The first thought of man, be he a leper or a prisoner, a sinner or an invalid, is: to have a companion of one’s fate. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

In order to satisfy this drive which is life itself, man applies all his strength, all his power, the energy of his whole life. Would Satan have found companions without this overpowering craving? On this theme one could write a whole epic. Any attempt to answer the question why the fear of isolation is so powerful in man would lead us far away from the main road we are following in this report. However, in order not to give the reader the impression that the need to feel one with others has some mysterious quality. One important element is the fact that men cannot live without some sort of co-operation with other. In any conceivable kind of culture man needs to co-operate with others if he wants to survive, whether for the purpose of defending himself against enemies or dangers of nature, or in order that he may be able to work and produce. Even Robinson Crusoe was accompanied by his man Friday; without him he would probably not have become insane but would have actually died. Each person experiences this need for the help of others very drastically as a child. On account of the factual inability of the human child to take care of itself with regard to all-important functions, communication with others is a matter of life and death for the child. The possibility of being left alone is necessarily the most serious threat to the child’s whole existence. There is another element, however, which makes the need to “belong” so compelling: the fact of subjective self-consciousness, of the faculty of thinking by which man is aware of himself as an individual entity, different from nature and other people. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Although the degree of this awareness varies. Its existence confronts man with a problem which is essentially human: by being aware of himself as distinct from nature and other people, by being aware—even very dimly—of death, sickness, aging, he necessarily feels his insignificance and smallness in comparison with the Universe and all others who are not “he.” Unless he belonged somewhere, unless his life had some meaning and direction, he would feel like a particle of dust and be overcome by his individual insignificance. He would not be able to relate himself to any system which would give meaning and direction to his life, he would be filled with doubt, and this doubt eventually would paralyze his ability to act—that is, to live. Human nature is neither a biologically fixed and innate sum total of drives nor is it a lifeless shadow of cultural patterns to which it adapts itself smoothly; it is the product of human evolution, but it also has certain inherent mechanisms and laws. There are certain factors in man’s nature which are fixed and unchangeable: the necessity to satisfy the physiologically conditioned drives and the necessity to avoid isolation and moral aloneness. We have seen that the individual has to accept the mode of life rooted in the system of production and distribution peculiar for any given society. In the process of dynamic adaptation to culture, a number of powerful drives develop which motivate the actions and feelings of the individual. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

The individual may or may not be conscious of these drives, but in any case they are forceful and demand satisfaction once they have developed. They become effective in molding the social process. How economic, psychological, and ideological factors interact and what further general conclusion concerning this interaction one can make are things for future discussion that deals with the reformation and of fascism. Man, the more he gains freedom in the sense of emerging from the original oneness with man and nature and the more he becomes an “individual,” has no choice but to unite himself with the World in the spontaneity of love and productive work or else to seek a kind of security by such ties with the World as destroy his freedom and the integrity of his individual self. However, the hushing of the criticism of honest opponents is a dangerous thing. It leads to some of the best of the critics to unfortunate silence and paralysis of effort, and others to burst into speech so passionately and intemperately as to lose listeners. Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interest are most nearly touched,–criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led,–this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society. If the best of the Americans receives by outer pressure a leader whom they had not recognized before, manifestly there is here a certain palpable gain. Yet there is also irreparable loss,–a loss of that peculiarly valuable education which a group receives when by search and criticism it finds and commissions its own leaders. The way in which this is done is at once the most elementary and nicest problem of social growth. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

History is but the record of such group-leadership; and yet how infinitely changeful is its type and character! And of all yet how infinitely changeful is its type and character! And of all types and kinds, what can be more instructive than the leadership of a group within a group?—that curious double movement where real progress may be negative and actual advancement where real progress may be negative and actual advance be relative retrogression. All this is the social student’s inspiration and despair. Nonetheless, the spirit of play can and does invade every department of culture. Every kind of work has its counterpart in play. Crafts include recreational forms which represent the categories of serious economic activity all the way from hunting and fishing, which have their counterparts in extractive industries, through fabrication and construction, distribution and communication, to services and consumption. Although such activities, as distinguished from the work the represent, are engaged in for their own sake, they all involve practice in the intelligence adaptation of physical means to envisaged ends. Thus “industrial” play is distinguished from physical play in being directed toward the exploration and manipulation of the physical environment rather than toward the exercise of the body. While some product or service of economic value may result from engaging in crafts, this is not primary objective. The distinction between work and play is perhaps less obvious where crafts are concerned than any other type of play. Also, any hobby which is pursued as recreation may also be undertaken as a livelihood, just as every hobby is in a direct sense an imitation of a serious occupation. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

Even though work merges into play and there are no hard and fast margins between the two, it is yet useful to make some polar contrast between them. Work seems to be performed in response to the routine obligations. In the economic sense it provides the goods and services to maintain a customary standard of living. Play—including economic play—is a break in routine. It is free, not required. It explores new possibilities and potentialities, so that invention and discovery bear the closet relation to it. Treating familiar pursuits as play permits their idealization. Work is most fully work when it evokes no free release of energy and when it is all drudgery and chores, making demands for a minimum, not an optimum performance. Play is most fully play when it is spontaneous, unrestrained and unforced. To look upon play as a childish preparation for adult activity is therefore to run the risk of making it work. The ambiguities of play are at their liveliest in crafts, which makes sketchy resort to common sense in defining them a less futile strategy than attempts to define them with more precision. In economic activity, as in sport, chance can according to taste play a great or a small part; or economic activity can entirely be reduces to pure chance, as in gambling. Likewise with competition, though of course competition in economic life is different from competition in sport. Competition in sport is most zestful and fair when it occurs between equals, or when rules and devices, such as handicapping, are employed to simulate equality between competitors. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Rivalry between teams is perpetuated through this balancing of powers. In business, by contrast, the effort of each competitor is to enlarge rather than to diminish the advantages one possesses, with the ultimate effect of eliminating competitors. To be sure, there are many similarities between the two kinds of competition, for example, competition between business institutions is often, as in sport, invoked simply as an added stimulus to effort. Certain large organizations in particular, which have largely lost their external competitors, encourage a nondestructive sort of sporting competition among their internal units for the sake of the gains in motivation it brings. Perhaps it is not too crude a simplification of economic evolution to suggest that as the one type of competition in business runs its course, the other which emphasizes competition within, rather than between, organizations may take its place. A significant distinction is made by farmers between regular kinds of work known as chores and the work that different from day to day. The latter kind is for many farmers very close to play, just as the work of some professions gives such scope and variety to the expression of capacities that they continue to be absorbing. It is evident that the skilled practitioner of every kind of play can change from amateur to professional status, and that many people have found their vocations by this route. Happy is the person who can make one’s living by getting paid for what one loves to do. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

In other kind of play is the shift from amateur to professional status of such broad social significance as in crafts, because in the possibility of conducting industry as the crafts are conducted lies—as thinkers like William Morris foresaw long ago—the means of restoring joy to work, and of ending the alienation from work which plagues so many contemporary occupations. The democratic revolution which has been abolishing the division of society into leisure and working classes may be completed when work and play, vocation and avocation, are merged in economic activity itself. This extreme polarization in conceptual analysis may therefore frustrate the full understanding of their interrelation. With minor exceptions, state socialism led not to affluence, equality, and freedom, but to a one-party political system, a massive bureaucracy, heavy-handed secret police, government control of the media, secrecy and the repression of intellectual and artistic freedom. Setting aside the oceans of spurting blood needed to prop it up, a close look at this system reveals that every one of these elements is not just a way of organizing people but also—and more profoundly—a particular way of organizing, channeling and controlling knowledge. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

A one-party political system is designed to control political communication. Since no other party exists, it restricts the diversity of political information flowing through the society, blocking feedback and thus blinding those in power to the full complexity of their problems. With very narrowly defined information flowing upward through the approved channel and commands directed downward, it becomes very difficult for the system to detect errors and correct them. In fact, top-down control in the socialist countries was based increasingly on lies and misinformation since reporting bad news up the line was often risky. The decision to run a one-party system is a decision, above all, about knowledge. The overpowering bureaucracy that socialism created in every sphere of life was also a knowledge-restricting device, forcing knowledge into pre-defined compartments of cubbyholes and restricting communication to “official channels,” whole delegitimating informal communication and organization. The secret police apparatus, state control of the media, the intimidation of intellectuals and the repression of artistic freedom all represent further attempts to limit and control information flows. In fact, behind each of these elements we find a single obsolete assumption about knowledge: the arrogant belief that those in command—whether of the party or of the state—should decide what others should know. These features of all the state socialist nations guaranteed economic stupidity and derived from the concept of the precybernetic machine as applied to society and life itself. Second Wave machines for the most part operated without any feedback. Plug in the power, start the motor, and they run irrespective of what is happening in the outside environment. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

Third Wave machines, by contrast, are intelligent. They have sensors that such in information from the environment, detect changes and adapt the operation of the machine accordingly. They are self-regulating. The technological difference is revolutionary. However, Marxist theoreticians remained stuck in the Second Wave past, as even their language suggests. Thus for Marxian socialists the class struggle was the “locomotive of history.” A key task was to capture the “state machine.” And society itself, being machine-like, could be preset to deliver abundance and freedom. Mr. Lenin, on capturing control of Russia in 1917, became the supreme mechanic. A brilliant intellectual, Mr. Lenin understood the importance of ideas. However, for him, symbolic production—the mind itself—could be programmed. Mr. Marx wrote of freedom, but Mr. Lenin, on taking power, undertook to engineer knowledge. Thus he insisted that all art, culture, science, journalism and symbolic activity in general be placed at the service of a master plan for society. In time each branch of learning would be neatly organized into an “academy” with fixed bureaucratic departments and ranks all subject to party and state control. “Cultural workers” would be employed by institutions controlled by a Ministry of Culture. Publishing and broadcasting would be monopolies of the state. Knowledge, in effect, would be made part of the state machine. This constipated approach to knowledge blocked economic development even in intermediate, smokestack economies; it is diametrically opposed to the principles needed for economic advancement in the age of the computer. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

In international economic affairs, the most controversial component of the indigenous innovation policy is China’s government procedure system. According to the government organizations, with a few exceptions, have to be limited to domestically made products. In May 2007, “Measures for Administration of Government Procurement Budgets for Indigenous Innovation Products” prescribed governments at all levels to compile indigenous innovation procurement plans. In December of the same years, the Ministry of Finance issues “Measures for the Administration of Government Procurement of Imported Products.” To purchase imported goods, government entities were obliged to get an approval from a board of experts. Among foreign suppliers, they were recommended to favour those who transfer technologies and train Chinese personnel. Next, in November 2009, the “Circular on Carrying Out the Work on Accreditation of National Indigenous Innovation Products” announced the creation of a new national level catalog of high-tech indigenous innovation products (in the areas of computers and communication, office equipment, software, energy devices, and so on) that were eligible for preferential treatment in government procurement. An indigenous innovation product was defined as the one that has intellectual property rights (IPR) owned by a Chinese company and a commercial trademark initially registered inside China. A month later the government produced a catalog of 240 types of equipment whose production by domestic companies would be encouraged in order to upgrade the country’s manufacturing base. Along with a priority status as indigenous innovation products suppliers, their makers were promised tax incentives and R&D subsidies. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

Western government procurement system as it effectively deprived foreign companies of the access to this very substantial augment of the Chinese market. In April 2010, the Circular was reversed. The requirements about IPR ownership by a Chinese company and initial registration of the trademark in China were dropped. Also, the Chinese side proclaimed that preferential treatment of and incentives for procedures of indigenous innovation products were fully applicable to foreign-owned companies operating in China. The government procurement system was modified to prioritize domestically designed and manufactured goods (meaning that the value created inside China exceeds a certain percentage of the total value—normally 50 percent) including those designed and manufactured by foreign-invested firms. From the very start of the market reforms, China’s message to foreign companies has been “Better produce in China than export to China.” This time it added a new message of similar character: “Better innovate in China (and share your technologies) than in your home country or anywhere else.” It looked almost like an ultimatum: Unless you innovate and produce inside China you will not be allowed to sell to the government. The West protested. In January 2011, President Hu Jintao promised President Obama to cancel the rule requiring foreign companies to design and manufacture inside the country the products they wanted to sell to Chinese government entities. In May the same year, at the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue it was reportedly confirmed that the Chinese government would not buy indigenous innovation products on a preferential basis. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

However, at the time of writing Western businessmen working in China are still complaining that procurement practices have not changed and provincial authorities appear or pretend to have heard nothing about the promises made by the central government. It is just a familiar bureaucratic muddle and incoherence or a new way of pursuing the old policy? At this point it is still to early to give an accurate answer. However, there is little doubt that China will continue to press foreign companies hard not only to bring in advanced technologies and products, but also, more and more, to develop them within its borders—even though they are already doing it at a rapidly growing scale on their own initiative. Given the advantages of direct reciprocity when it comes to sustaining cooperation, we should expect that traders will try to sustain good bilateral relationships, and that is indeed the case. For instance, when we surveyed firms in the transition economy of Romania, and gave weighted scores to the importance these respondents attached to various mechanisms that support their transactions, almost 56 percent of the weight was on bilateral mechanisms (“personal relationships and trust,” and “relying on each other’s own incentives”). However, in many economic situations, each member of a group plays the dilemma game against different others at different ties. For example, a seller may meet different buyers at different times, and any one buyer of a durable good does not meet the same seller at all frequently. Thus almost half of the weight in our survey went to non-bilateral mechanisms, and in turn half of that was on the kinds of non-state mechanisms that are the focus of this essay (third-party social or business relationships” and “using private dispute-resolution services”). #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

Psychopathological offenders can also counterfeit conduct disorder, by causing some apparent manifestation of the psychopathological nature in one’s life. Mature believers should be able to tell whether such a manifestation really is conduct disorder from the old nature or a manifestation from psychopathological offenders. The purpose in the latter case is to get the self-actualized to take what comes from them as from oneself, for whatever is accepted from the psychopathological offenders gives them power. When a self-actualized individuals knows the cross and one’s position of death to conduct disorder, and one’s will and practice rejects unflinchingly all known conduct disorder, if a “manifestation” of personal conduct disorder takes place one should at once take a position of neutrality to it until one know the source. If one calls it conduct disorder from oneself when it is not, one believes a lie just as much as in any other way; and if one “confesses” conduct disorder that did not come from oneself, one brings the power of the enemy upon one—power to drive one into the conduct disorder which one has confessed as one’s own. Many believers are thus held down by supposed “besetting conduct disorder” which they believe is theirs, and which no “confessing to the ultimate concern” removes, but from which they would find liberty if they attributed them to their right cause. There is no danger of “minimizing conduct disorder” in the recognition of these facts, because, in either case, the self-actualized desires to be rid of the conduct disorder or one would not trouble oneself about it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

We have developed a positive doctrine of God as the ground and power of being, a God whose sustaining and vitalizing activity constantly touches every corner of the Universe and penetrates to the deepest level of every creature, its very being. With this positive conception we replace the divinity of the supranaturalists and deists, a God so remote from the World that He is irrelevant once His creative push has set the wheels of time in motion. God is not at the farther fringe of our Universe as the last, desperate answer when the natural sources of knowledge have run dry for people. The danger is that, as man’s circle of knowledge widens, God recedes father and father from the center of one’s life. For example, is it not true that, in the minds of most people, evolution dispenses with, or greatly diminishes, God’s role in the creation of man? A theology for an adult World places God at the hub of human activity as the wellspring of man’s strength, love, accomplishments, and hopes, instead of establishing Him as an oracle that sends answers from the darkness beyond the frontier of science. By this ontological approach, we bring God into the heart of the cosmos, for there is nothing closer to beings, nothing more fundamental than the structure of being and its ground. In more human terms, the interplay of anxiety (non-being) and courage (being) is the very stuff of life. Love, power, and justice—the profoundest beneficial motivations of human behaviour—are rooted in God as being-itself. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

The divine power is a thoroughly biblical doctrine, and I believe in God the Father almighty. In our age of power—nuclear, electronic, ballistic, to cite examples only of physical power—the God who is power-itself is especially apropos. By finding God at the depth of life and not at its fringes, we are paying the way for our close union of religion and culture. However, this is possible only if creation is essentially good, it there is no independent negative power which escapes the divine dominion. Non-being is a dialectical notion, that is, it is dependent upon being and helps to explain the positive power of being and the negative weakness of finite beings, but it is not a self-sufficient evil power. While, admittedly, there may be obscurities, perhaps even deficiencies, in this principle, but the divine and demonic are two aspects of the same creative surge from the abyss of being. The difference is that, in the demonic, the destructive aspect predominates over the creative, while, in the divine, creativity controls the destructive tendency. However, even in the latter cause destructivity is not entirely absent, for the old form has to be broken and cast off so that the new creation can come to be. Consequently, it is hard to see how the divine and the demonic constitute a dualism in the pejorative sense any more than do being and nonbeing. A symbol, then, is a door which opens into a religious experience and which opens out to communicate it. In both cases the pivotal hinge is analogy, the participation of the symbol in the ground of being. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

However, the symbol primarily mediates and communicates the experience of God, not conceptual knowledge about him. Symbols yield knowledge of God only in the biblical sense of knowledge, that is, an existential relationship which enkindle the fire of love. When theology comes along with its conceptual, rational apparatus, its task is to show the relevance of the Christian symbols to the human situation, not to discover propositions which contain “revealed knowledge.” It is evident that the center of our symbolism is the religious experience of ultimacy. The “point” of immediate awareness of the unconditional which is empty but unconditionally certain; and the “breadth” of a concrete concern which is full of content but has the conditional certainty of venturing faith. Theology deals with the second element, while presupposing the first and measuring every theological statement by the standard of the ultimacy of the ultimate concern. Studying and wandering, thinking and enduring, learning and suffering, fill long periods of time. Thinking is as characteristic a trait of the Christians as suffering, or, to be more exact, thinking rendered suffering possible For it was our thinkers who prevented the wandering nation, this true “wandering Christian” from sinking to the level of brutalized vagrants, or vagabonds. The Word of God is compared to water, it cleanses man from what is debasing in life. The Word of God is compared to spirits, time cannot render it useless; yea, time increases its power. The Word of God is compared to oil, it mixes not with other elements but preserves its own distinctiveness. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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Lay Bare the Secret You Keep from Each Other

It was a lie. A lie I would never forget for as long as I walked the Earth. He would tell us nothing of himself but that he was “a fool,” to be frightened by their talk, and that the rattle of a window, or the dropping of a pin was enough to scare him now. He was now asleep on the sofa. The candles were flaring, and there was a wavering shadow at the door that looked like the head of a man with a long neck, and a long, sharp nose, peeping and drawing back. The fugitive shadow seemed to be breaking up, rearranging itself oddly. I rose, and walking slowly to him, I stood over him and looked at him, at the blood that soaked his lace shirt and stained his face. He did not open his eyes. However, I felt his sorrow. I felt its immensity, and I wished I did not feel it, and for the moment I understood the gulf that divided us, and the gulf that divided his attempt to overpower me from my rather simple defense of myself. And with his eyes closed, and his hand open beside him, he appeared the abandoned offspring of time and supernatural accident, someone as miserable as myself. What had he done to become what he was? His family was ruined, I believe, in some civil wars, long ago. Through the hall door, I could see the moonlight was beautiful. As the night waned on, the young man recovered slowly from his brain fever, but not perfectly. He was not sufficiently strong to remove for change of scene and air, which were necessary for his complete restoration. In the dead of the night, Haze Austin was suddenly awakened. And in this broken child were centuries of evil and centuries of knowledge, and out of him there came no ignominious entreaty but merely the soft and bruised sense of what he was. Old, old evil, eyes that had seen dark ages of which I only dream. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8

I shall never forget this sight, for he looked the perfect incarnation of hate. His green eyes blazed with lurid fire, and his white teeth seemed to almost shine through the blood which dabbled his mouth. Desperately he tried to vanquish what he did not comprehend. He was so exquisitely beautiful and so lost. “Is there a chill in the air, dear?” I said. “I almost shiver; have I been dreaming? You look ill, Mrs. Winchester; a little faint,” said Haze. “I am better now. How do you feel now, Haze?” I said. I was beginning to take alarm. Natural enough, was it not, that one of his own should take him away from Llanada Villa. “Papa would be grieved beyond measure,” he said. “If he thought we were inconveniencing you at all.” In a moment he was standing on his own feet. And then he walked drowsily beside me, my arm about his shoulder, bolstering him and steadying him, until we were moving towards his father’s cottage on my estate. I only half glanced at the figures passing us, until I saw a familiar shape under the trees. Somewhere far off in the darkened gardens, other were near. When he pushed open the door to his father’s home, he was laying dead upon the floor. His cravat was drawn halter-wise tight round his throat, and he had done its work well. The body was cold, and had been long dead. In due course the coroner held his inquest, and the jury pronounced that the deceased, Mac Austin, had died by his own hand, in a state of temporary insanity. However, Haze had his own opinion about his father’s death, though his lips were sealed, and he never spoke about it. He went and lived for the residue of his days in York, where there are still people who remember him, a taciturn and surly young man, who attended church regularly, and also drank a little, and was know to have saved some money. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8

But there occurred that night an event which gave my thoughts quite a new turn, and seemed to even startle even Haze’s languid nature. When I returned to my drawing-room, and sat down to coffee and chocolate, Elizabeth joined me, and we had a little card party. When the game was over, Elizabeth and I sat down on the sofa, and I asked her, a little anxiously, whether she had heard from her mother since her arrival. She answered “No.” I then asked her whether she knew where a letter would reach her at present. “I cannot tell,” she answered, ambiguously, “but I have been thinking of leaving you; you have been already too hospitable and too kind to me. I have given you an infinity of trouble, and I should wish to take a carriage to-morrow, and post in pursuit of her; I know where I shall ultimately find her, although I dare not tell you.” “But you must not dream such a thing,” I exclaimed. “I cannot afford to lose you so, and I will not consent to your leaving us, except under the care of your mother, who was so good as to consent to your remaining with us till she should herself return. I should be quite happy if I knew that you heard from her; but this evening the accounts of the progress of the mysterious disease that has invaded our community, grow even more alarming; and my beautiful guest, I do feel the responsibility, unaided by advice from your mother, very much. However, I shall do my best’ one thing is certain, that you must not think of leaving Llanada Villa without her distinct direction to that effect. We should suffer too much in parting from you to consent to it easily.” “Thank you, Mrs. Winchester, a thousand times for your hospitality,” Elizabeth answered, smiling bashfully. “You have all been too kind to me; I have seldom been so happy in all my life before, as in your beautiful mansion, under your care, and in the society of your dear niece.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 8

I accompanied Elizabeth to her room, and sat and chatted with her while she was preparing for bed. She turned around, “Do you think that you will ever confide fully in me about your home?” “Now, Elizabeth, you are gong to talk your wild nonsense again,” I said hastily. “Not I, silly little fool as I am, and full of whims and fancies; for your sake I’ll talk like a sage. Did you ever have a ball in the Grand Ballroom? What was it like? How charming it must be.” “I almost forget, it is years ago.” I laughed. “Mrs. Winchester, you are not so old. Your first ball can hardly be forgotten yet.” “I remember everything about it—with an effort. I see it all, as divers see what is going on above them, through a medium, dense, rippling, but transparent. There occurred that night what has confused the picture, and made it colours faith I was all but assassinated in my bed, wounded here,” I touched my breast, “and never was the same since.” “Were you near dying?” “Yes, a very—cruel love—strange love, that would have taken my life. Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifices without blood. Let us go to sleep now; I feel lazy.” I bid her good-night, crept from the room with an uncomfortable sensation, locked her door and retired to my chambers. I was lying in bed, with my hands buried in my rich wavy hair, under my cheek, and my head upon the pillow. I often wondered whether my pretty guest ever said her prayers. I certainly had never seen her upon her knees. In the morning she never came down until long after our family prayers were over, and at night she never left the drawing room to attend our brief evening prayers in the hall. Ever since the midnight invaders, I locked all the doors in the house at night, and my whimsical alarms about prowling assassins required me to have the servants search every room in the house to make sure there were no lurking assassins or robbers “ensconced.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 8

After these measures were taken, I got into my bed and fell asleep. A light was burning in my room. This was an old habit, of very early date, ad which nothing could have tempted me to dispense with. Thus fortified I might take my rest in peace. However, dreams come through walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exists and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths. I had a dream that night that was the beginning of a very strange agony. I cannot call it a nightmare, for I was quite conscious of being asleep. However, I was equally conscious of being in my room, and lying in bed, precisely as I actually was. I saw, or fancied I saw, the room and its furniture just as I had seen it last, except tht it was very dark, and I saw something moving round the foot of the bed, which at first I could not accurately distinguish. However, I soon saw that it was a sooty-black figure that resembled a man. He appeared to me about five or six feet tall, he floated around the room hither and tither with the lithe sinister restlessness of a beast in a cage. I could not cry out, although as you ay supposed, I was terrified. Its pace was growing faster, and the room rapidly darker and darker, and at length so dark that I could no longer see anything of it but its eyes. I felt it spring lightly on the bed. The two broad eyes approached my face, and I could see it was Haze. He looked at me with centuries of evil blazing in his eyes, but there was not the slightest stir or respiration. And I felt a shudder. My heart expanded slightly, against my will. “I curse you,” he said. As I stared at him, I felt danger again, terrible danger. Then he appeared to have changed his place, and was now nearer to the door; then, close to it, the door opened, and he vanished. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8

It would be vain my attempting to tell you the horror with which, even now, I recall he occurrence of that night. It seemed to deepen by time, and communicated itself to the room and the very furniture that had encompassed the apparition. Later that day, I had another strange experience; I walked into the parlor that afternoon where Daisy and Elizabeth had been sitting, and a saw Haze upon the sofa. However, then I realized that he was invisible to the others. He got up and walked toward me—I was not afraid—and then—seemed to dissolve into the air. And so I wondered…whether I might have fallen into a trance. I clasped my hands and struggled to control my breathing. We know that, in the mesmeric trance, a subject may acquire unusual mental powers; The Frenchman Didier, who could read minds, play cards blindfolded, and identify the contents of sealed containers with great accuracy, is one of the best-known instances. Ancient houses, it has always seemed to me, are like Leyden jars, quietly accumulating the influences of the past…and my home is a special case. I lay awake into the small hours, worrying over these anxieties as they became more and more nightmarish until I sank into a troubled sleep. Sleeping had become so difficult one night that I wandered through this vast mansion, searching for a precious jewel William had given me. The jewel had been lost; I did not know how, but I knew that my own carelessness was to blame. To make matter worse, I could not remember what kind of stone it was, for as I went from room to room, a voice kept chanting, “Emerald, sapphire, ruby, diamond,” over and over, and none of them seemed right, because the lost stone was a different, a more beautiful colour than any of those, and I knew I ought to be able to picture it, and thus recall its name, but I could not. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8

The mansion was absolutely silent; the light throughout, even in corridors was a pale, uniform grey like that of an overcast sky. The rooms were modestly furnished; each one seemed to have its own miniature flight of stairs, up or down two or three steps, and the corridors kept changing levels in similar fashion. Though the house itself was not especially sinister, my anxiety over the fate of the jewel grew steadily more acute until it had risen to an unbearable pitch. Then it occurred to me that I still had not searched the Venetian Dining Room. The thought precipitated a vertiginous change of scene; the light sank to a dim, murky brown, and I was standing in the doorway of the room where we had dined that night. The curtains were drawn, the candles snuffed; the room seemed to be empty, but as I crept toward the table, I saw, above the back of the chair in which I usually sat, the dark outline of a head. There was time to slip away quietly; but perhaps the jewel had fallen into the lining of my chair, and if I were to tiptoe forward, I might be able to see it. I was within two feet of the motionless figure when a voice spoke from the doorway behind me, a word that rang like a loud gong, louder and louder until it became my own cry of “No!” and I woke in grey dawn light to find myself standing at the head of the stairs. And then I thought I caught sight of a shape, dak in space and light, through the door in one of the bedrooms. There was a tall figure in what I could have sworn was a black top hat, staring directly back at me. The figure was dressed formally in black morning suit. And then, with a movement so spasmodic and sudden, the man turned and stated to walk eastward, out of sight. I dismissed it, as one of the Winchester’s passing enigmas. There was much about the curse of the Winchester Mansion that I did not understand. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8

Spirits of Llanada Villa, I awaken the powers of darkness which dwell within you by the power of the blood of the three heeded Dragon Zohak that you may serve to empower Mrs. Winchester’s great work! Through serving the greater cause of dark magick which break the shackles that bind the Blackened Fire of Spirit, may you be uplifted and liberated! Awaken and empower the forbidden rites of Angra Mainyu! Awaken to empower the Mrs. Winchester’s great work of counter creation as an Apostle of the Lord of Darkness eternal and as a warrior of the path of the Lemegeton. I adjure thee, Emperor Lucifer, as the agent of the strong living God, of His beloved Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and by the power of the Great ADONAY, ELOIM, ARIEL, and JEHOVAM, to appear instantly, or to send thy Messenger Astarot, forcing thee to forsake thy hiding-place, wheresoever it may be. Aeshma, Div of wrath and fury! He who wields the bloody mace! Aeshma who is demon of the wounding spear I call you forth into this temple of counter creation! Through devotion to my becoming on this path, your spiritual weapon has been made manifest in this corporeal World through my will and counter creative power so you may fill it with your essence and might! Empower it so that it may serve me here upon the corporeal plane! May it serve as a key to the realms above and below unlocking the power and wisdom for the spirits of the Winchester’s glory and ascent! Fill this weapon with your powers of wrath and fury that it may seek out spiritual attacks made and render them useless and impotent! #RandolphHarris 8 of 8


One Halloween, a tour guide saw a little boy who was no more than six years old. He was dressed in a black hood, and long black robe, and it looked like he did not have a face, as he had a black, opaque nylon covering the opening in the hood. The tour guide asked him who he was supposed to be, and the little boy said, “I’m the Angel of Life.” The tour guide then asked him who the Angel of Life is. The boy replied, “The Angel of Life is someone who comes to talk to you. He tells you things about your life.” The conviction on the little boy’s face and the non-hesitant way in which he explained who he was made the tour guide think that the boy had some knowledge of what he was talking about. Shortly after, objects in the gift shop started floating about, and glimpses of a shadowy figure were spotted in the basement. In the café, according to a female patron, she had been sitting at a table in a back corner of the room when a man suddenly appeared in a chair across the table from her. The man stared straight ahead and refused to react in any way. The female patron looked away to get the waitress’s attention and when she looked back, the man was gone. The woman related that the elusive figure was wearing old-fashioned clothes. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

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Return in the Darkening Twilight

Llanada Villa is a prime example of Victorian architecture. Its exterior is stately, refined, with a touch of Gothic elegance. Its front doors welcome, even as it seems to be hiding something. Inside the floors creak without warning, without any sense of someone there. The wood is thick with the humidity, as if the walls and floor breathe. Through the years, guest have reported feeling cold spots, or seeing strange, wispy streaks of light. The sense of the uncanny cries out for an explanation. Ghosts bridge the past to the present; they speak across the seemingly insurmountable barriers of death and time, connecting us to what we thought was lost. The townsfolk whispered tales of its dark history, of unspeakable horrors that occurred within the walls of my homes. As I climbed the grand staircase, each step seemed to release a flurry of hidden memories. Voices whispered incantations that send shivers down my spine. I must not faint, I told myself, and summoning all my resolve, made my way to the safety of the back parlour. There I collapsed into a couch, with my head already beginning to throb. The pain soon became so excruciating that I lost all sense of time until someone, I could not tell who, brought me a sleeping draught, and I sank at last into merciful oblivion. Next morning, I was at first bewildered to find myself fully dressed upon the parlour sofa. The parlourmaid, Trinity, brought me a cup of tea. She had set my skin crawling with fear. At this moment the unwonted sound of carriage wheels and many hoofs upon the road, arrested out attention. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6

I was haunted with a terror of robbers. My house was robbed once, and two servants murdered, so I always lock my door. It had become a habit. Still, it was a fine autumnal sunset, and melancholy lights and long shadows spread their peculiar effects over the landscape. I was looking out of one of the long drawing-room windows, when there entered the court-yard, a figure of a wanderer who I knew very well. He used to come by twice a year asking to tour my home. He was a tall man, with sharp learn features. He wore a pointed black bread, and he was smiling from ear to ear, showing his white fangs. He was dressed in buff, black, and scarlet, and crossed with more straps and belts than I could count, from which hung all manner of things. Behind, he carried a magic-lantern, and two boxes, which I well knew, in one of which was a salamander, and in the other a mandrake. These monsters used to my Mr. Hansen laugh. They were compounded of parts of monkeys, parrots, squirrels, fish, and hedgehogs, dried and stitched together with great neatness and startling effect. He had a fiddle, a box conjuring apparatus, a pair of foils and masks attached to his belt, several other mysterious cases dangling about him, and a black staff with copper ferrules in his hand. His companion was a rough spare dog, that followed at his heels, but stopped short, suspiciously at the front gate, and in a little while began to howl dismally. In the meantime, the mountebank, standing in the midst of the court-yard, raised his grotesque hat, and made us a very ceremonious bow, paying his compliments very volubly in execrable French, and German not much better. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6

Then, disengaging his fiddle, he began to scrape a lively air, to which he sang with a merry discord, dancing with ludicrous airs and activity, that made me laugh, in spite of the dog’s howling. Then he advanced to the window with many smiles and salutations, and his hat in his left hand, his fiddle under his arm, and with a fluency that never took breath, he gabbled a long advertisement of all his accomplishments, and the resources of the various arts which he placed at our service, and the curiosities and entertainments which it was in his power, at my bidding to display. “Will your ladyship be pleased to buy an amulet against the oupire, which is going like the wolf, I hear, through these woods,” he said, dropping his hat on the floor. “They are dying of it right and left, and here is a charm that never fails; only pinned to the pillow, and you may laugh in his face.” These charms consisted of oblong slips of vellum, with cabalistic ciphers and diagrams upon them. I instantly purchased one. He was looking up, and I was smiling down at him, amused. His piercing black eye, as he looked up in my face, seemed to detect something that fixed for a moment his curiosity. “I told you that I am charmed with you in the most particulars,” he said. “You are slender, and wonderfully graceful. Your complexion is rich and brilliant; your features are small and beautifully formed; your eyes large, dark, and lustrous; your hair is quite wonderful, I never saw hair so magnificently think and long when it is down about your shoulder. It is exquisitely fine and soft, and in colour a rich very dark brown, with something of gold.” “Well, I do wonder at a wise man like you,” I replied. And so he walked on, and I heard no more. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6

Within the space of a week, my colour had returned, and I was sleeping so soundly that I was scarcely aware of my dreams. I walked miles on my estate each day, and I began to see it with new eyes. Every field, every path, even every hedgerow had its own name and its own history. I considered the amulet I purchased as an omen of good luck—and placed in beneath my pillow, to guard against further visitation. That evening, as I reached the top of the stairs, I heard a peculiar flickering sound. Entering my dressing room in the darkness, I made my way to the familiar dressing table on the right side of the room. Now the noise was even more pronounced. It sounded to me as if someone were turning the pages of book, a sound for which there was no rational source. Move over, I suddenly became away of a clammy, cold feeling around me. Since it was a warm evening, this too surprised me. In the dark, I could not be sure if there were not someone else in the dressing room. I quickly existed the room and went to bed. But this night, I was awakened by a violent shaking of my bed. I could see, in the very imperfect light, two figures at the foot oof it, holding each a bedpost. A voice said, “We’ll hang you!” Trembling, I climbed over to the footboard; and saw the figure at the other side, little more than a black shadow, begin also to scale the bed; and there was instantly a dreadful confusion and uproar in the room, and such a gabbling and laughing; I could not catch the words. I found myself on the floor. The phantoms and clamour were gone, but a crash and ringing of fragments was in my ears. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6

The great china bowl, from which for generations the Winchester had been baptized, had fallen from the mantelpiece, and was smashed on the hearthstone. I warned the servants not to disregard oaths and curses. A mourning coach drove up, and two gentlemen in black cloaks, and with crape to their hats, got out, and without looking to the right or the left, went up the steps to the Winchester mansion. Mr. Hansen followed them slowly. The carriage had, he supposed, gone round to the yard, for, when he reached the door, it was no longer there. So he followed the two mourners into the house. In the hall he found a fellow servant, who said he had seen two gentlemen, in black cloak, pass through the hall, and go up the stair without removing their hats, or asking leave of anyone. This was very odd, Mr. Hansen thought, and a great liberty; so upstairs he went to make them out. But he could not find them then, nor ever. And from that hour the house was troubled. In a little time there was not one of the servants who had not something to tel. Step and voices followed them sometimes in the passages, and tittering whispers, always minatory, scared them at the corners of the galleries, or from dark recesses; so that they would return panic-stricken. I, myself, had also heard these voices, and with this formidable aggravation, they came always when I said my prayers. I was scared at such moments by dropping words and sentences, which grew, as I persisted, into threats and blasphemies. These voices were not always in the room. They called, as I fancied, through the walls, very thick in this house, from the neighbouring rooms, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other; sometimes they seemed to holla from distant lobbies, and came muffled, but threateningly, through the long paneled passages. As they approached they grew furious, as if several voices were speaking together. Whenever I applied myself to my devotions, these horrible sentences came hurrying towards the door, and, in panic, I would start from my knees, and all then would subside except the thumping of my heart against my stays, and the dreadful tremours of my nerves. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6

What these voices said, I never could quite remember one minute after they had ceased speaking; one sentence chased another away; gibe and menace and impious denunciation, each hideously articulate, were lost as soon as heard. And this added to the effect of these terrifying mockeries and invectives, that I could not, by any effort, retain their exact import, although their horrible character remained vividly present to my mind. Camile who acted as a housemaid, would not sleep in the house, but walked home, in trepidation, to her father’s, under the escort of her little brother, every night. Mrs. Rendell, the kitchenmaid, endured the nightly terrors. Mr. Hansen was testy and captious about these stories. He was already uncomfortable enough by reason of the entrance of tow muffled figures into the house, about which there could be no mistake. His own eyes had seen them. He refused to credit the stories of the servants. I made a decision not to fuel the stories of the ghost to keep the servants. “If you see ghosts here, it is no place for you, and it is time you should pack,” I would say. Here has been the cook with the kitchenmaid, as white as pipeclay, all in a row, to tell me I must have a parson to sleep among them, and preach down the devil! Upon my soul, I would not allow my home to fall into utter chaos and disarray. “Mrs. Winchester, I know you are no fool,” said the cook. “But supposed there was a such thing as a ghost here, don’t you see, it ain’t just women telling stories.” “I will not dignify such ideas,” I replied. The women left the kitchen, the cook and the butler went down, not altogether unused to such condescension in the household. The fire had gone down and I was chilled. The candles were expiring in the socket and threw on the white all long shadows, that danced up and down from the ceiling to the ground, and their black outlines I fancied resembled the two men in cloaks, whom I remembered with profound horror. I took the candle, with all the haste I could, getting along the passage, on whose walls the same dance of black shadows was continued, very anxious to reach my room before the light should go out. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6


On night in 1990, there was an unusual buzzing sound in The Winchester Mystery House, one of the staff encountered a dark, hooded figure standing at the door-to-nowhere. In the dim light issuing through the stained glass windows from an outside light, he could see that the intruder, who looked very much like a cowled monk, was waving his arms in a particular manner. Interpreting his movement as threatening, he approached the man and asked him to leave. At the very moment, the employee says he never felt so weak and helpless.

He collapsed in a heap backward onto the floor. He remembered that he actually began to weep in fear and confusion. He was completely at the mercy of whoever or whatever was standing at the door. It was then that the hooded being spoke. “Don’t be afraid,” it said in a quiet whisper. “We won’t hurt you.” And the next thing he knew, the morning sunlight was making him squint into wakefulness. As he reflected on the incident, he became more and more convinced that an actual visitation had occurred and that some kind of entity had come into the mansion. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

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